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I have been writing as a hobby for longer than you have been alive. I have been a regular member and roleplayer of no less than fourteen different online forums during that time (including the old RPG), five six eight of which no longer exist.

I was previously a regular on the Homestuck forums, but I became so sick of thread turnover there that I asked around and eventually found the Guild. Since joining, I have exclusively only participated in Advanced RPs. Before Mahz gave NRPs their own subforum, I used to be an NRP regular in the Advanced Subforum. I am a Guildfall survivor, and know/regularly write with a few others.

If you ask anybody who has written with me in previous RPs, they should tell you that I have a generally open schedule, I post regularly and in a timely fashion, and I never drop an RP once I join unless the thread dies. Some of them may tell you that I have extensive expertise within the realms of Biology, Psychology, and Physics, which I will make no effort to validate since there is no way I can provide hard proof of aforementioned alleged expertise to anybody over the internet (though I am happy to try and answer any questions you send my way).

My favorite fandom is the Myst franchise, which seemingly nobody other than me has ever heard of.

I was a Contest Moderator for the Writing Contests Subforum for just a little bit over two years. I wrote the Moderation Policy for that subforum and I ran a contest called the Twelve Labours; you can still go there and see all of them and the entries people wrote for them in the Contests Section and the Victory Archives.

I have been quadruple secret banned from the guild discord. That is not a joke.

Most Recent Posts

@shylarah Shy the post you're speaking of was made in reply to trial one of ttl 1. I'm not entering this time around. I'd assume that unless something I don't know about has changed I'm still judging.


Yep. Unless you want to enter /and/ judge, which is totally fine. I would need to get an additional judge, which will be harder now considering I am Quadruple Secret Banned from the chats - but doable.

@Darkspleen

Checking in here. Been busy elsewhere in the Guild. I have also been working on the promised post, but a need to rewrite it entirely arose due to the flurry of drops, and I have not had much time to attend the Chatzy as of late.

I have *a* post ready, but I am having something of an existential crisis predicated on the fact that four of the five nations I had significant historical interactions with/shaped a great deal of my current history/nation details effectively no longer exist. I can technically make do, but the material I have prepared is very bare-boned.

I can post what I have anyway, but it is very bare boned - and even then, it still makes several very distinct assumptions of historical fiction fact that might preclude people interested in the new territories from taking certain routes, or would force me to get busy with a large amount of retroactive editing. To wit,

1. I have a Great Wall along my Northern Border. If we assume another power took over /after/ the Ogryn incursion this is not as big of an issue, but it would also not be unreasonable to assume somebody would want full claim to the whole historical span of that region.

2. There was, until very recently, a Drakkon Invasion Force on my doorstep poised within the now defunct Xi'An dynasty. Around 70% of the content of my post deals with that specifically, so whoever is interested in that region would have to be ok with having Drakkon armies in their territory, along with the campaign of harassment I have been throwing their way historically.

Those are the two big points. There are smaller details of similar concern, but those are the messy retroactive plot causticity hurdles to potentially overcome.

How should I proceed?
@Terminal, you said that every character in the story must be entirely new, correct?
Yes.

Must every single mention of anyone be entirely new too? What about setting?
No.

It sounds to me like using that world and those other characters to detail the story of the new one would disqualify my entry.
Characters yes it would. Setting no it would not.

Actually, I guess the setting could be preexisting because otherwise any fandom work would be automatically disqualified, as would anything where you have to credit someone else (unless they helped with this entry specifically).
No. According to the original challenge rules, use of preexisting or 'fandom' settings is permitted as long as you credit the original author. This challenge makes no mention whatsoever of any rule precluding the use of preexisting settings.

Additionally, I have a question about death. What do you consider death?
Dying.

Additionally, I have a question about death. What do you consider death? No longer being alive, complete destruction, or no longer being able to have a deliberate impact on the world? You stated that dying but then skipping permanent removal would be trite, and I can agree with this. But what about the other way round? For example, if there is a creature who dies but is reborn -- in this case, a phoenix -- dying isn't so much of an issue. However, if one were to put her in a state where she is not really alive but not truly dead, and thus unable to burn to ash and respawn, I would consider that a death. While the body might remain, it would be an empty shell, and given that I've always felt death in the OOC sense to be a matter of consciousness and not form, I believe this qualifies. For example, someone who dies IC but then lingers on as a ghost is not dead-dead, but someone who is braindead or in a permanent coma is, if Word of God says there will be no recovery. Though I might make an exception if a literal act of an IC god might bring them back...because that /has/ happened before, but that's not relevant here.

In fact, I'd feel the phoenix was the precise opposite of a technical death without lasting consequences -- since it's all the lasting consequences and a removal of her as a player in the story, but technically lacks full death. Given, however, that I don't always see things as others do, and since I've come at things from an entirely opposite perspective from your own in the past, I want to be sure before investing any more effort in her story for the moment. Even though I now desperately want to tell it, and am definitely going to in the near future even if not for this.


Here I was merely referring to how subverting the death of one's characters is, in and of itself, a trite and thoroughly played-out aspect of fiction that I am not looking forward to seeing in your entries. Subversion of the need for their death, in a general sense, is trite - regardless of how doubtlessly clever the accompanying excuse might be. As indicated in the clarification though, I would merely be unamused, and I did say I would not be as strict as I was in the original First Labour. I would be unlikely to disqualify an entry just because you revived the character, or said they were playing dead, or had it so the afterlife was already the focus of the setting anyway, etcetera.
Terminal Eleven Posts Ago
@JaceBeleren Oooooh. I like the idea. It is perhaps ill-suited to the twelve labours (one will note that traditionally Terminal tries to formulate Labours that are creatively or psychologically taxing on the writers, but not by restrictions on the form the writing must take - rather by the nature of the required story) but it is nonetheless a creative idea. Unless @Terminal wants to take it I'm going to conscript it for RPGC somewhere down the line.


Take it away . I already had the next eleven Labours planned, so you have a need/desire to use it that I do not.
<Snipped quote>

Meaning the midnight which leads into Feb. 12, or the midnight which ends Feb. 12?


Which ends.
@Terminal But you can only win one challenge accolade per entry, so there should be a maximum of two lives earned per entry submitted. O.o So if three different stories won bonus awards, that'd make sense, but winning four lives with one story was not even possible for most of the later labors.


You are not the only one who is displeased with how that particular turn of affairs played out. All the more so since only the one person won more than one of the Bonus Challenges. I still stand by what was determined however.

@Doc Doctor
@Bright_Ops

Both of your characters have been noted and approved.

A Wind of Change Passes.
Notification PMs should have now been sent out to everybody who has won a TTL challenge before.

If anybody thinks I got a Life total wrong, let me know.

And yes, @PlatinumSkink, you /DO/ have Eleven Lives. Your entry for the First Labour - which won on appeal - then subsequently won three of the Bonus Challenges associated with the First Labour. Due to Legacy Parity, each one is worth the same as an Accolade.
Both a Roster with life totals and a character template have been added to the OP. Here is a copy of the Roster in order to ping (most) of the relevant parties.

-An Anonymous Poster has 2 Lives
-An Anonymous Poster has 2 Lives
-@Cruallassar 4 Lives (1 Accolade)
-@Dark Wind 4 Lives (1 Accolade)
-@Doc Doctor 2 Lives
-@Holmishire 11 Lives (1 Accolade)
-@JulienJaden 2 Lives
-@jumpadraw 2 Lives
-@mdk 12 Lives (4 Accolades)
-@PlatinumSkink 11 Lives (3 Accolades)
-@Psyga315 4 Lives
-@RomanAria 2 Lives (1 Accolade) [1 Donated to shylarah]
-@Sen 2 Lives
-@shylarah 3 Lives [1 Donated from RomanAria]
-An Anonymous Poster has 2 Lives
-@WiseDragonGirl 11 Lives
@RomanAria aww, thank you~

@Terminal ...but TTL stuff was more of a personal challenge, not a contest. *tilt head* eh, whatever. I'll certainly try. So what do you want in terms of submitted characters? A brief blurb? Concept? detailed history? General skills? ...Just a name?


Knew I was forgetting something.

Expect a character sheet template tomorrow. I will likely post it along with the tally list.
I suppose it would in fact be possible if unsporting to have another poster assisting in the creation/handling of a character as long as only one of you actually posted for them. Given the anonymity of the PM system, there is little to nothing I could do to stop you if you really wanted to anyway, so I will concede that point.

Also, to reiterate: The entire point of the roleplay is as a merciless sudden-death bonus round. The reason there are significant OOC difficulties is because it is still, technically, a contest. The rules present are there both to ensure a small measure of parity in addition to keep things running smoothly, keep activity going and steady, and also to prevent it from malingering on death's door for months on end. There may be future Final Hazards post each successful series of the Twelve Labours - or not. We have to see how this one goes.

@RomanAria Duly noted. Your tallies have been updated on my list and should show as much once I get around to posting it.
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