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☀ THE DEVOURER CYCLE — Act I ☀

@Kalleth You've received my critique via Discord, but I liked what you've provided so far.

☀ THE DEVOURER CYCLE — Act I ☀

@Cyclone, thank you for your encouragement and your advice.

Regarding your last paragraph: I quickly realized while planning this RP that there would be no perfect solution which allows me to have my cake and eat it too. I definitely don't want minmaxing, stat rolling, or for people to otherwise "win" my game. But by the same token, this being the goal for many characters was inevitable, given the IC circumstances. Even if they have no ambitions of their own they must concede that they will only have a feasible chance of standing up to the Nhirian Empire under a unified rule, and everyone ought to have a different idea of who will be most capable, or the most deserving, within this role.

Furthermore I wanted other players to be just as much a source of conflict as Nhir itself. I think I wrote about this in the mechanics section already but seeing as how this game will generally have a lot of talking and not a whole lot of fighting (at least at first), those different voices need to be the biggest obstacle between Thraxia and its due progress. This inherently entails a certain degree of competition, and an "us vs. them" mentality.

You can see the dilemma. I had to choose between encouraging IC conflict and stifling it. This same choice is also between players being rivals or partners. If they come as a packaged deal then the story will benefit most from the former, at the OOC's expense, and vice-versa.

Ultimately however it all comes down to metagaming. If the players can keep these bitter sentiments IC then I believe we'll have no issues. And I'm assuming the best of everyone until someone gives me reason to doubt his true motives for playing.

Thank you again for your comments. While I must currently focus on moving forward with the IC, I will take some time—eventually—to review what is already written, and assure that it does not give the wrong impression.

The Black Undeath

I'll be busy working on my own RP if the Tarne situation progresses too quickly, but that outcome doesn't worry me until Yeet logs in.

He and I planned to each do one solo post to introduce our characters' lives outside of their partnership. Now that mine is written I will in fact be waiting on him for the next collab, within reason.

Is it possible to wrap text around a picture on roleplayerguild?

Yeah, whip up a very basic example, including [color=2e2c2c]_______________________your long string of space-less text hidden somewhere on the image side_______________________[/color], and you'll see that you can adjust shrinkage with the width of this line. Add more underscores to make it wider, take them away to make it shrink more.

Kinda annoying knowing that mobile probably ruins it, but with a bit of liquid design you'll be able to make it look good on most if not all desktop resolutions.

Is it possible to wrap text around a picture on roleplayerguild?

It did shrink, but by the same principle, I didn't want it to smoosh those first few paragraphs way too narrow, which would just have made them painful to read. So it was partly by design, even if I didn't make enough of a fuss over how much shrinkage I wanted out of it. (You can adjust that by adding or subtracting from your invisible text line.)

In a perfect world there'd have been no gap between the table with two cells (paragraphs vs. image) and the table with just one cell (the bottom paragraphs spanning the whole width of the page). It'd look like an encyclopedia entry or something, perfectly margined. Only once you let images get too big, the paragraphs adjust to be longer as compensation for having less breadth, and you end up creating that gap anyway. If I'm making sense here.

It's not perfect yet (if perfection can even be achieved with these very rudimentary tools), but I've been practicing for a few months and I've gotten it to a presentable level, anyway, I think.

Basically, you want a bit of shrinkage unless you're using your image manipulation programs and online image uploaders to re-size your images manually. Most of them at full size will be too big for your side-paragraphs to look natural and easy to read.

Is it possible to wrap text around a picture on roleplayerguild?

Also

Just keep in mind that the first line on a table will always be bold,

@BrokenPromise

Technically yes, but if you leave the first [row] empty then that is easily bypassed.

[table][row][/row][row][cell]stuff goes here[/cell][cell]more stuff goes over here[/cell][/row][row][/row][/table]

Is it possible to wrap text around a picture on roleplayerguild?

Yeah, the secret to stopping image shrinkage is to type stuff into the image's cell. This balances them out (if text causes one side to grow then it follows that it'll cause the other side to grow as well). And if you use color code #2E2C2C then it'll be totally invisible against the Guild's background. Alternatively you can place actual relevant information on that side of the sheet. Like I like to put the one-word answer stuff there under the image, like age, gender, profession, maybe a short image caption, that sort of thing.

Dāmaxāriš I, Scourge of the Sons of Hezeret

𝕊ome twenty years ago, a man stepped aboard a chariot and rode for a commune in the desert. He wore gold looped around his fingers and stricken through his ears, spun into his beard and the hilt of his sword. He had seen feathers in a dream, feathers like forge-fresh bronze, bright and glowing, which fell from a great wing in the sky. Their heat melted the desert sands into glass, dried up the Silken Sea; rendered the peoples there all to ash. Only an oracle, a witch of Yivir, would know what tragedy this foretold. The king who arrived at this commune was good and gentle. He kept only one wife and loved her as dearly as he loved all the cities' subjects. He danced with them during the many festivals to their gods, and executed the landowners who beat their slaves, and listened carefully to all woes brought to his court. But the king who left—he locked the door to his chamber and let no one else inside, not the girls of his harem, not his servants or stewards. He sent caravans east past Sarsis, and ships deep into the lands of the barbarians, where they searched for the strongest weapons and armors in all the world. He poisoned the teas and soups that his cooks brought to his pregnant wife. He neglected state duties as his empire withered around him. For quoth the oracle: the feathers are sons of a great golden eagle, and the eagle is Ārtammat, and all kings are born of His most sacred lineage. Three feathers fall and the first shall burn the others, burn the land and sea, burn all it sees and touches. Ephaerzes could not bring himself to kill his darling wife, nor to cut her open and scoop the baby from her belly. Not while he loved her still. How she cried; how the sound of it rent his heart! But on the day of the birth she was cast from his palace to live with the beggars. She found a home there, taken in by a kind family with two little ones of their own. Here she raised her boy, the only she would ever bear. The reason for all her suffering and her only reason to live.

𒁕𒈠𒀝𒐼𒊑𒅖 𝔻āmaxāriš I King of All Eshkhep, King of the Nhirians, King of Kings, Lord of the River, Highest Priest of Ārtammat, Steward of the Flame-Eternal

Her husband sent merchants bearing gifts to her new home, to ensure that she was never without necessities. In the same breath he sent assassins to follow the boy as he made mischief in the marketplace, watching and ever biding. It had to look like an accident, lest he become the scourge of his darling Kažhrys, and the very ruin of whom the oracle had forewarned. No, a simple knife to the throat would not do, not when it would drive her away from him, for a life without his one and only love was not worth all the peace and prosperity in the world. His chance finally came when the boy had reached his twilight years. At the dawn of adulthood he had grown weary of his mother's doting, her obsessing over his safety and whereabouts. He had wearied too of manual labor and the sick and the stink and of sleeping on the floor of a hut where the other boys looked at him strangely. So he asked of his only and most unlikely friend, an officer's son named Mitruya, that he secure a horse and wagon and as many provisions as would fit inside. They set off together to see the world and find a place which would accept them as they came. The assassins followed, and Ephaerzes rested easily, thinking his troubles had ended. He sired two more sons with his new wife, formerly his favorite concubine, and began to groom them as heirs. Only, some years had passed and the boy had returned. With an army at his back and hatred in his heart for whatever he had seen on the other side of the world. Immediately he imprisoned his own father and began to cull the sycophants of his court. The conquests of an urchin turned emperor, of King Dāmaxāriš, had begun. The all-devouring flame had come at last for the people of Eshkhep. Actually his reign started off amicably. After choosing a new staff (including Mitruya, now the general of his armies), he quelled the rebellions of the frontier territories. Then he began charity work for the poor, giving merchants and traders tax incentives to make donations to a new dole. Flour, medicine, and clothing became available to the capital's most destitute and desperate like never before. He funded the arts and the full calendar of festivals,, even for those gods whose stewards slandered and disowned his rule, and began a campaign to eliminate piracy beyond the city docks. He even lifted the ban on lepers, political prisoners, and other untouchables, allowing those who had been exiled across the River Mesphoth to return to their homes, assuming they had family to wait for them. Of course this generosity was draining the royal treasury. There were more people to feed and they all ate better than before. Further straining this money was the military, which the new king was reforming for a strange and personal conquest. Suddenly it was larger than it had ever been under the Nhirian rulers of Eshkhep. The king was gathering the larger, faster horses from eastern lands and training cavalrymen to shoot from horseback, rather than the clumsy chariots they had been using before. He was shrinking baggage-trains and forbidding women and children from the march. He was training professional heavy infantry from skirmishers and levied peasants. It appeared he planned to pay for his policies through conquest, and, unlike the past few kings, he planned to win. He has not shared his reasons for hating the Uzûrenids, and for warring with them, well beyond the fathoming of their two countries' past emperors. Should it matter anymore, now that they have been so utterly crushed on the battlefield? It was like nothing the world had seen before: sailing an army across an ocean, marching it across hostile territory and through a treacherous mountain range during wintertime, all with only the barest of baggage and burden-animals. Rendezvousing with their cavalry at an enemy port which they first had to conquer with barely half of their army (itself half the size of their enemies'). Besieging an "unsiegable" city and winning. The suit for peace has begun. Dāmaxāriš must decide not only how he will keep his new subjects in line, but also how to manage the affairs of the western plots from afar. He must appease his nobility both old and new, with their never-ceasing squabbles over land and wealth and power. He must decide what to do with the allies he has made beyond his walls ... and the enemies within.

The Black Undeath

Many thanks. Discomfort was the aim here, and receiving some affirmation that it hit its mark for someone is more than I could have asked. I too am enjoying the contrast between cities as they explore different strata of the survivors' society.