Current
Lots of guests coming and going in the next few weeks. I apologize in advance if I lag in posting
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7 yrs ago
Traveling for a week, and may not keep up with RPs. Thank you for your patience.
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8 yrs ago
Been busy and scatterbrained this week, and behind on RPs. Please excuse my delay in posting.
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9 yrs ago
Got back from a two-week vacation overseas. Give me some time to catch up with RPs. Thank you for your patience!
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9 yrs ago
I'll be going on a two week vacation starting tomorrow and don't know how often I'll have Internet access. Thank you for your patience. I'll try to be more regular when I get back.
I did list Dr.Drd (my character's creator) as someone who is a programmer IRL, and though he is difficult to get a long with, helps his guildmates with the intricate coding of the game. So maybe he helped Epur with some of the more difficult parts, but Altair is Epur's creation, with some input from Dr.Drd.
I...I think I missed the memo for when Chuunithulu became Chuunitrixx, so I was surprised at the personality. Nothing wrong with it, it's a great post, but I was surprised, expecting a suave, casino mistress instead.
Alright, I'll get working on a sheet. The general idea would be an elven, mother-type caster focused on AoE debuffing and DPS who's themed around cosmic events and spatial manipulation. The Chapter would be a large, empty room resembling a miniature section of space, with its own scaled down celestial bodies moving about. The main gimmicks of the Chapter are that there is no normal gravity within the room besides that of some miniature suns and planets; the aformentioned celestial bodies serving as constant, enviromental hazards; and that, due to a spatial enchantment, the room loops indefinitely with itself, creating a seemingly endless space.
Since Dr.Drd's sudden disappearance years ago, Salem had been carrying out automated behavior protocol, which to the outside observer, merely looked like sadistic toying with their subjects, and for the most part, it was. Tasked with overseeing the continuation of evolving the basic AI framework that Dr.Drd had developed, Salem had forced the other inhabitants of the City of Lost Things into various dystopian systems and simulated wargames, an ever-changing environment with varying rules of survival to see which of the other toys could claw their way to the top. One parameter that Dr.Drd was still tweaking before he left forever was the rate at which the environment was supposed to shift, a parameter that Salem never adjusted, a rate that was far too fast for anything to successfully adapt too. The current situation resembled a game of shady politics and cloak and dagger. In the House that Salem built, Salem stood at the top of the foyer, watching plushies and dolls dancing in the ballroom below, schmoozing and attempting to exert their petty influences upon one another. However, one failed assassination attempt, and a comment taken the wrong way, soon led the ballroom to erupt into an orgy of violence, as all pretense was dropped in favor of the fight or flight response. Teddy bears and mannequins ripped into each other with zest as the built up frustration of hiding their intentions bubbled to the surface. One stuffed bunny with its ear missing stood at the bottom of the steps, holding a butter knife from the confectionery table, a moment of calm just feet away from the storm of violence.
"YOU!" it screamed in a bloodcurdling, almost comically high-pitched voice as it rushed up the stairs, mad with rage at having its life defined Salem's incomprehensible games. One glance from Salem and the stuffed bunny was lifted into the air, its butter knife wrenched from its grip to hover in the air menacingly. The stuffed bunny screamed as the butter knife slowly tore it to shreds. Salem suddenly jolted awake. This was not because it had suddenly gained sentience, in fact, from Salem's point of view, nothing had changed. But what drew their attention was the sight of the world outside the Chateau changing. Part of the castle's decorations involved heads mounted on spikes as a warning to intruders, but some of those heads were in fact Salem's, and their eyes granted the poltergeist vision of the outside. Salem was tasked with keeping an eye, well, many eyes, out for intruders, and was primed to react at even tiny changes. The sudden change was jarring and confusing.
Reeling, Salem leaned against the banister while their subjects continued to slaughter each other below. Salem was still wondering how to report such a development to the Masters, or if the Masters even cared. Salem had heard through the grapevine that the masters were gathering for one last hurrah, but that celebration supposedly turned out to be sorely disappointing. Not only did the Masters abandon their creations, they would ultimately abandon one another as well. Just then a skeleton butler arrived at the House, pushing open the doors, and drawing the attention of the violent dolls and toys. They were about to involve the skeleton in their violence, before they were all lifted into the air, bringing an abrupt stop to the carnage. It had felt like ages since any other part of the Chateau had reached out to Salem, save the continued agreement with the Factory. And despite resenting the rest of the Chateau and the Masters for leaving them alone, Salem yearned for their attention, and would not allow their subjects to harm a messenger from outside the City.
"You're all disappointments!" Salem muttered through clenched teeth as the windows exploded inward, providing Salem with plenty of ammunition to dispatch the party guests with. In a maelstrom of shards, stuffing, and sawdust, the subjects of the City were ground up, as if in a blender, with Salem, the literal eye of the storm, hovering over the banister and down to the messenger to hear him out.
Salem hovered into the Final Hour at a slovenly pace, after all, Salem didn't want to reveal their anticipation nor their eagerness. Though Salem hovered into the room, upon entering, they landed and walked, showing at least this much respect to the Final Hour. Still, Salem nonchalantly crossed their hands behind their head glancing left and right. It had been years since Salem had been inside the Final Hour and seen the Masters. The last time was with Dr.Drd; as Dr.Drd's favorite, Salem had accompanied the Master most places within the Chateau, their ability to manipulate objects at a distance was a massive boon for Dr.Drd, who was often too lazy to go and grab something himself. Salem looked around at the others, curious if this involved the sudden change in scenery outside, but decided to be patient. "Salem Vicarious, Lord of Lost Things, ready to play!" Salem announced their arrival in an androgynous, child-like voice.
Nzige had to chuckle at Theo's introduction. "Well met, Theo from Everywhere," Ziggy said, though she had a hunch he was American, possibly a New Yorker if her voice analysis was accurate. It was a very American thing to refuse to be defined, to see oneself as the 'default', and to believe that America's culture, like its military presence, was global. Ziggy did not hold these things against Theo, they were merely aspects of his culture that he imbibed from his environment, and one cannot control the circumstances of one's own birth.
Upon being offered the top bunk, Nzige approached the bed. She didn't mind which bunk either way, but as her hand absentmindedly went up to touch the frame, the inaudible sonic ping that occurred from the contact got swallowed up by the metal structure, returning a very faint echo to Ziggy's finger. These beds were made of vibranium, though not pure. The metal was highly resistant to vibrations, and could be forged to either absorb all sound or to perfectly transfer it without itself receiving any shock or wear.
What Theo said next though...one didn't have to be a sound expert to pick up on the muted pain behind the words. Nzige listened carefully to what he had to say. Ziggy wondered if Theo was here for a chance at redemption, not unlike herself. His statement about his laugh piqued Nzige's interest. For her, sounds, and by extension, voices and music, were mathematical waves, purely scientific. Though she understood the effects music could have on emotions, her analytical mind had to draw the line whenever a voice or song was said to have 'magical' properties. Sound was vibrations and nothing more, anything else was purely subjective and psychological. She would have to ask him to laugh later so she could analyze its properties. Maybe it was similar in concept to the brown note, and resonated at a frequency that somehow interfered with neurons instead of with the bowels.
Putting such thoughts aside, Ziggy could tell Theo was waiting for her response, waiting to know if she would accept or reject his existence. Her thoughts zeroed in on his hobbies. Baseball. Ziggy liked Cricket because she watched it with her stepfather growing up, but decided to avoid this topic; as far as she knew, those who liked cricket hated baseball, and those who liked baseball hated cricket. Like rugby and American football, it was a source of nationalistic pride, and the knee-jerk dislike of whatever was different or 'deviated' from what one was used to. Beer. Unfortunately, Nzige's religion forbade the consumption of alcohol, so any potential conversation that could be had was already dead.
Building shit. "My teacher builds things," Ziggy finally said, sidestepping the issue of Theo's mental health. For now, she'll treat it as a non-issue and respectfully deal with him like a normal person. As someone who's on the spectrum, Nzige most of the time just wants people to understand without making a big fuss; she wanted neither annoyed, inconvenienced rejection, nor patronizing sympathy, and hope Theo was the same way. Ziggy went to her luggage and pulled out a long bag. Unzipping it, she took out something long and thin wrapped in cloth. Pulling off the cloth, she revealed a metal rod with a triangular cross-section. "My abilities involve sound, so my teacher made this for me to help me channel and focus my power. You've seen Star Wars, right?" Gripping the handle with both hands, Ziggy channeled the iconic lightsaber activation crackle followed by a steady hum through the rod, though the rod did not glow. She playfully swung it around slowly, adjusting the volume of the hum to sync up with her swings, though she was careful not to let it touch anything as doing so would create a cacophony similar to fifty smartphones vibrating on an aluminum table. She hoped something silly like this would help relieve any tension and break the ice properly, though she had slight misgivings about using Princess Shuri's gift as a plaything.
Dr.Drd is Salem's "Papa" to whom Salem harbors the kind of absolute loyalty that can only be born from abusive neglect. Salem's opinion of Rodias can be summed up by the following quotes, "I guess you're my step-dad. Are you going to leave me too?" and, "If I'm a good boy, will you stay?" It gets slightly worse because Salem recognizes the Player Characters as higher beings, so it's also a bit like the following:
Funny note, Salem abuses their telekinesis and tends to travel by telekinetically dangling everywhere like a puppet, and if given the chance, will hover to, and rest on people's shoulders:
Honestly, that veneer of 'friendly and polite' is probably sufficient for Salem, who prefers surface-level relationships because Salem has Hedgehog's Dilemma in spades. Salem does feel a sense of camaraderie with the other NPCs, seeing them as fellow 'lost things' and monsters. Relationships are like playing 'House' for Salem; they're willing to pretend to be, and act the part of the 'little brother' if Ashara is willing to pretend to be, and act the part of the 'older sister'. Even if the relationship is not real (and even mildly uncomfortable for both parties), Salem is satisfied as long as someone indulges the farcical fantasy. It's like eating cotton, it has no nutritional value, but at least it staves off the hunger and feeling of emptiness, which ironically fits because there's a lot of stuffed animals in the City of Lost Things.
On that note, Salem probably sees Graft like an uncle, Mamoru, Chuunithulu, Kath, and Light as older sisters, and Kaldorna as an aunt.
@Stern Algorithm So, I take it your character will like the monster ladies we have here huh?
Also don't worry about the dark bits. I just rewatched the brave little toaster after being reminded of that movie and uh,
its a kids movie with a song about accepting death with one of the cars straight up going on his own terms instead of waiting for the 'reaper'. Not to mention a flower dying of loneliness, pennywises's dad, ext...
And it was published by Disney.
Salem will try to endear themself to the other guild members, and will probably treat the monster ladies like "onee-chans". The problem with Salem is they are afraid to put any real effort into improving a relationship. I think of Salem like the following video, minus the having all the money in the world part:
Salem demands warmth, but is incapable of reciprocating warmth in an honest and sincere way. Salem does empathize with the others on one point: their creators abandoned them, though Salem's creator abandoned them first. Salem sees Rodias as two things: 1. the only creator who hasn't abandoned the guild yet, which deserves loyalty, and 2. someone who might abandon the guild at any moment, which deserves suspicion.
And yeah, Salem has a lot of Brave Little Toaster and Toy Story vibes, at least when it comes to being owned and abandoned, and unhealthy attachments/obsessions.
So, a bit of a trigger warning concerning Salem's creator. I didn't intend for it to get so dark.
Implied suicide
Salem Vicarious, Lord of Lost Things
Name:
Salem Vicarious, Lord of Lost Things
Gender:
Nongendered
Age:
10
Appearance:
Normally, Salem is a small, ball-jointed doll in the form of a young, androgynous child with short hazel-red hair, heterochromatic red and green eyes, and porcelain white skin. They keep their joints hidden under long sleeves and stockings, while their face and hands are covered in a magical 'skin' that mimics the real thing and hides any doll-like appearances. they are normally dressed in a boyish, dark-blue, frilly outfit, complete with a black top hat. However, like a true boss fight, Salem can take on increasingly monstrous forms by combining with discarded weaponry and the scattered remains of other dolls and mannequins, becoming a gigantic, monstrous, multi-limbed beast. In truth, Salem's true form is the red glass eye in the doll's head. When defeated, the body crumbles to sawdust and the eye attempts to levitate away to find a new body somewhere in the City of Lost Things. If the eye is destroyed, Salem dies. Permanently.
Occupation:
Boss Monster, Surveillance Scout, Infiltrator, VP of Automation (title reluctantly accepted from Graft)
Residence:
Chapter 1: The City of Lost Things
Character Focus:
Salem is a true, multi-stage Boss Monster focusing on self-preservation, control effects, area denial, and wasting the party's time with convoluted mechanics.
Personality:
To outsiders, Salem behaves like a precocious, coquettish youngster and is quite good at endearing themself to others, but this is simply a veneer to hide their condescension and general misanthropy. Salem hates humans, and by extension, sentient non-monsters, with a passion, having inherited this passion from their creator. Around the other members of Chateau Gothika, Salem is their true self, a bit bratty, and quite a bit sadistic, and plagued with thoughts of abandonment and worthlessness. On the one hand, it is in Salem's nature to please others to derive a sense of self-worth, on the other hand, Salem wrestles with the desire for independence and to be free from the shackles of needing acceptance and recognition. Salem frets constantly about appearances and putting on a good show, while tending to hide their insecurities behind a facade of sarcasm, and smugness.
Creator Information:
Dr.Drd was one of the early members of Chateau Gothika, and the go-to guy for coding and otherwise fine-tuning all the original user-generated content for the guild. An automation programmer by trade, Dr.Drd raged against the inevitability that automation would replace human labor and recognized, with guilt, his own hand in creating rampant unemployment. Yet he also raged when human clerks or IT help-desk personnel proved inadequate. But mostly he just raged. A man with a lot of deep-seated frustrations, and unanswered emotional problems, it came as no surprise that he would create Salem. Salem was originally made as an experiment in ways to break or exploit the game's physics engine. Dr.Drd intended Salem to manage the automatons and mannequins that, in his mind, were to form the backbone of Chateau Gothika's workforce and defense force, but that idea was pushed aside in favor of skeletons and Brushen Penn's biomechanical monstrosities. For this slight, Dr.Drd signed off of YGGDRASIL for half a year. When he returned, he changed the as yet unfinished first chapter, the Dollhouse, into the City of Lost Things. Through his constant experiments in crafting, he made a plethora of low-level objects and weapons, and the City of Lost Things became a garbage dump for these discarded creations. Over time, it seemed that creative expression within Chateau Gothika softened Dr.Drd up somewhat, and he even developed a sense of camaraderie among his fellow guildmates. Everything seemed to be going well, until one day Dr.Drd just never logged back in. His last message ever sent in the game was, "I'm happy right now."
Notable Equipment:
The Eye of Dread -
Salem's true form is the small red glass eye in their head. The downside of taking advantage of so many object exploits is that Salem is technically an 'artifact' and does not follow the normal rules of healing and revival. If the eye is destroyed, no one exists anymore who can craft a replacement and imbue all the convoluted code into it. Even if recreating the eye were possible, there is no chance that Salem's 'consciousness' would revive within the new eye.
The Toy-Box -
The Toy-Box is an oversized coffin that Salem slings across their back when traveling. Compared to Salem's size, the coffin is ridiculously large. Only Salem can unlock the coffin with a skeleton key hidden in their right index finger, and within are stored myriad spare doll parts, filled with dangerous, spring-loaded (often bladed) mechanisms.
Notable Skills:
Telekinesis -
A simple low level concentration spell that allows Salem to levitate and move objects. This is Salem's main attack and the foundation of their physics engine-exploiting shenanigans.
n-Stack Equipment Slots -
Salem's primary exploit, any object wielded by telekinesis or fused to Salem's body is considered 'equipment', so all weapon and armor proficiencies that Salem has applies to the wielded weapons and armors, and any bonuses that that said weapons or armor confer to the wielder apply to Salem.
Paranormal Activity -
Telekinesis is, in and of itself, a bad combat spell because it is a concentration spell, and typically, multiple concentration spells could not be used simultaneously, and concentration spells break if the user is hurt, distracted, or otherwise breaks their concentration. Dr.Drd noticed a loophole with certain ghost types, particularly, poltergeists. Applying the loophole to Salem removes the restriction, allowing Salem to telekinetically wield innumerable thrown objects. This restriction is also removed for other concentration spells that Salem might cast, though Salem does this rarely, preferring their bread-and-butter attack spell.
Aichmophobia -
This translates as 'the fear of sharp objects', slashing or piercing weapons wielded by Salem get increased armor penetration.
Possessed Item HP/Durability Paradox -
Typically, only 'killable' entities have HP, whereas 'breakable' objects have durability. Certain monsters were possessed or animated weapons, and suddenly had HP in addition to the weapon's actual durability. Dr.Drd took advantage of this strange conundrum by tying Salem's health to the sum total of the durability of all wielded items, since item durability loss usually decreases at a much slower rate than health during combat. This does give Salem a particular weakness to item- and equipment-destroying skills but since those are typically niche skills the fight against Salem is fairly cryptic to most unprepared adventurers. This also prevents Salem from wielding items with the 'indestructible' tag, whether by touch or with telekinesis, as it causes a 'divide-by-zero' error in health calculations leading to cascading code failure. In the New World, this translates to a complete and total mental breakdown for Salem, whose philosophy is that all things break, all things become obsolete, and all things lose usefulness. Any attempt to wield an unbreakable item causes Salem to lose all their abilities, dropping all wielded items, and be reduced to having control only over the Eye of Dread, requiring Salem to retreat to the City of Lost Things to recuperate.
Antique Affinity -
Deal bonus unholy magic damage based on missing weapon durability, gain bonus armor and magic resistance based on missing armor durability. This ability helps to mitigate Salem's main weakness as well as making fights with Salem take longer than they should. The more time it takes the party to fight Salem and attempt to figure out their weaknesses and attack patterns, the more dangerous and harder to kill Salem becomes.
Parts Cannabilization -
The City of Lost Things provides a limited stream of doll and mannequin parts to Salem's boss room be incorporated into their body during the course of a fight, allowing health regeneration and to the ability to grow into a multi-limbed monstrosity as the fight progresses.
Thrown object/Collision detection exploit -
Thrown objects, attacks made with melee weapons, and attacks made with thrown or projectile weapons followed different damage calculation mechanics. Dr.Drd found a way to combine these mechanics for stacking bonus damage from collisions while not losing out on passive benefits for ranged attacks from Salem's various ranged classes, and passive benefits for melee attacks from Salem's various dueling classes.
Creepy Doll Heads -
Salem can see, hear, and speak through any mannequin or doll head that they wield as an item, allowing them to perform surveillance and communication throughout Chateau Gothika.
HP: 100 MP: 25 (but only uses low-level spells) PHY. ATK: 100 PHY. DEF: 85 AGI: 75 (decreases over combat duration) MAG. ATK: 20 (increases over combat duration) MAG. DEF: 20 (increases over combat duration) RESIST: 45 (As a construct, Salem is immune to most biological status ailments, but shares undead weaknesses and is susceptible to durability-harming effects) SPECIAL: 85
Total: 555
Combat Summary:
Salem is a 'bullet hell' boss and fights primarily by overwhelming opponents with a cloud of thrown objects, mostly discarded weapons and weaponized doll parts, though they are not above wielding weapons themself, or attaching grotesque bladed limbs to their own body and engaging in melee. Salem primarily uses sharp objects, such as over-sized gardening shears or kitchen knives, though sometimes Salem brings in chains, coffins, iron maidens, and other torture equipment to immobilize foes. The esoteric mechanics that went into Salem's creation make it difficult to take Salem down. Salem prefers to fight in claustrophobic rooms and hallways, where their thrown objects are more difficult to avoid. Salem is most at home in the City of Lost Things, where they have access to all their items. Outside the Chateau, Salem must rely on whatever is inside the Toy-Box as ammunition and is much weaker, needing to rely on passing off as a normal human child and the element of surprise.
Dominion: The City of Lost Things
The City of Lost Things is a physical mindscape representing Dr.Drd's vision of the concept of innocence lost. Originally the dumpsite of discarded crafted goods, The City of Lost Things takes the discarded and abandoned and pretties it up, giving it a second, grotesque life, like undeath but for already inanimate objects. The City appears like a Toyland, filled with childish decadence, like toys and sweets, juxtaposed with images of gratuitous violence, body horror, and lewd innuendo, such as mannequins forever locked in grotesque poses. The City is a mix of Victorian, Baroque, and Gothic art and architecture, demonstrating artistic intricacy and meticulous attention to detail, while completely lacking comprehensive high-level artistic sense as the various styles clash with each other, like the inhabitants, the style is borrowed and hacked together. The City is like a pre-modern metropolis with soot-covered cobblestone alleyways filled with junk and newspapers that make no sense. Tall, narrow, sharp buildings crowd togehter, and you never know if there was an animatronic jump-scare around the corner. The main danger of the City are its inhabitants: randomly generated dolls, animatronics, automatons, and gigantic stuffed animals wielding dangerous equipment. Their danger lies in the fact that no two creatures are the same, follow the same rules or patterns, have the same strengths and weaknesses, etc., making preparation a veritable nightmare. In the middle of it all sits a mansion, The House That Salem Built, where Salem plays very dangerous versions of 'House' and 'Tea' with the currently highest ranking subjects.
In away, the City is like the Factory, but significantly less organized, and in fact, Dr.Drd had commissioned the factory to provide automaton bodies as the workforce for Chateau Gothika. When the idea was scrapped, Dr.Drd never stopped the order, so a stream of mannequins continues to funnel into the City, a testament to the abandoned project and the resentment that Dr.Drd continued to harbor. As someone who dabbled in AI, Dr.Drd played with the idea of 'evolutionary machine learning', and experimented with the idea of programs that could change their own code while self-optimizing to compete for computational resources. This embodies the controlled chaos of the City as the discarded automatons tear each other apart to survive, like humans after the Rapture fighting each other for the forgiveness of a god that has long abandoned them. Salem rules over all this, like an abusive parent who outwardly shows love and caring beautifying the automatons, but then demands that the inhabitants of the City vie for Salem's favor. In the end, nothing is above being broken down for parts, and the refuse of this chaos is collected and returned to the Factory as raw materials, where the futile cycle begins again.
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