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Post by esthfora on May 17, 2015 23:55:26 GMT
Guidelines:- Precisely one post per character
- Describe setting and relevant details, or refer to another setting post if character's setting is shared; include world name(s) where relevant
- Provide link(s) to places where this character/setting may be discussed; default to General Discussion if nothing more specific would be appropriate
- Do not respond to posts in this thread; instead, take it to linked thread(s) as appropriate
- Try to keep updated
Esthfora is a personification of certain aspects of thought, particularly dreams, intuition, and truth. She has a very rainbow-heavy aesthetic. Her introduction was first discussed here, and Special Accomodations contains some further notes on her. She has three especially relevant properties: - She is the forum's memetic hazard censor, operating on the level of individual access. When a forum user encounters a message specifically dangerous to them, Esthfora replaces the message in that instance with something harmless and probably rainbow-themed, such as an image of peaceful swirling colours. It is possible to opt out of this filtering; Hadassah has done so, for example. But unless otherwise specified, it should be assumed that hazards cannot reach forum users through the forum. Esthfora herself is also categorically immune to all memetic hazards: if a thought would be dangerous for her to think, she cannot think it.
- She occasionally speaks in rainbow text which presents as obviously true to readers, and which comes with a subtle synaesthetic rainbow effect if delivered without a visual channel. It is possible to disbelieve or doubt rainbow truths by deliberate choice after thinking about it, but belief is the default. Forum users who, for whatever reason, would be upset by beholding rainbow truths will instead see mundane rainbow formatting with no synaesthetic backup and no special believability. Depending on forum manifestation and author discretion, there may also be a discreet note explaining that the effect was filtered. Like the memetic hazard filtering, this is per-access: someone who changes their mind about how upsetting rainbow truths are will start or stop seeing them as appropriate. Rainbow truths are always legitimately true.
- Sometimes she knows things without any mechanism for finding them out. This ability is not especially responsive to conscious direction, but its results are infallible when they appear.
Less importantly: she lives in a personal universe which is a manifestation of her mind, and doesn't experience consistent linear time. Her realm is called Esthfora, same as her.
The backstage thread about her introduction is a good place to discuss her relevant special properties and their potential interactions with other settings. Played by Kappa.
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the keeper
Poster
Posts: 97
World: the kept
Pronoun: she
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Post by the keeper on May 18, 2015 0:04:29 GMT
The keeper may be thought of as a kind of afterlife-caretaker or death goddess. By default, she is theoretically able to access complete information about the entire past history of every universe, including erased timelines, but practically so overwhelmed by the scale of this power that she mostly can't locate any specific universe on request. Her domain currently consists of an infinite flat expanse of rock next to an infinite expanse of air, with relevant physical laws edited so that the rock remains stable and the air pressure remains comfortable at surface level. Her power within that domain is absolute, but her ability to affect any other universes is strictly limited to communicating through this forum, plus whatever interaction other forum users might facilitate - for example, someone with functional interworld transport magic could visit her domain and retrieve objects from it. She has named her domain "the kept" for world-indexing purposes. This thread contains a list of all the worlds the keeper is able to informationally access and which of them she has consciously identified. The keeper can be discussed there. Played by Kappa.
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Post by Mother Starlight on May 18, 2015 0:17:35 GMT
Mother Starlight (played by lambdabeta/sonatagreen) runs the forum, and to some extent is the forum. - The forum manifests in a form appropriate to the local universe.
- The local manifestation of the forum may be censored:
- to placate local authorities with the power to shut down the forum.
- for safety reasons, especially by redacting memetic hazards.
- When accessing the forum from Daevinity, all references to the spell plane shift are changed to refer instead to the spell dig, including adjusting spellbook prices where necessary.
- Mother Starlight is immune to most memetic hazards, infohazards, cognitohazards, and other similar dangerous information.
Further information currently lives here.
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Turquoise
Poster
Posts: 19
World: Uplides
Pronoun: She
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Post by Turquoise on May 18, 2015 0:21:18 GMT
Turquoise is a a red panda Balt: a type of human-sized, sentient animal from the world called The Uplides. She works as a Medium and historian for her government and lives in the Region Pluma, one of 7 major Regions in The Uplides. She is very interested about the history of other worlds and likes to collect objects of historical importance. Here is the post that explains what Regions there are: manyworlds.boards.net/thread/10/stuff-world?page=5The Uplides itself is technologically advanced and its citizens take up a lot of land, but the main government tries to keep the natural beauty on each Region. The physics there works the same as it does here and there is magic. The government isn't perfect, but is better than it could have been. Unemployment and poverty do exist and crime is rampant in some communities all over.
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Post by Leaf on May 18, 2015 0:23:35 GMT
Leaf is Miles Vorkosigan, from Nexus. If you read Effulgence or keep up with glowfic sandboxes you already know pretty much everything there is to know about Nexus, but otherwise: It's 2995 ECE (which is the same as 2995 AD, but renamed to "Earth Common Era"). Humanity is spread out across a network of planets known as the wormhole nexus, transited using wormhole jump technology. Multiple interplanetary empires exist. Technological development in general is high, but besides jumpships, notable accomplishments of Nexus humanity include: really fucking good cryptography; uterine replicators, which are artificial wombs used to gestate humans or other animals without inconveniencing the owner of a flesh-and-blood uterus; respectable but not miraculous terraforming technology; a highly effective-on-humans truth drug called fast-penta. Of these, the ones mentioned on the forum so far are uterine replicators and jumpships. Terraforming has been alluded to. Leaf collects interesting magic in secret, and may be motivated to secretly dispense it to worthy parties. Relevant PM threads have been backstage-publicized here. Leaf has no setting thread of his own; Leaf-related queries may be directed to General Discussion. Played by Kappa.
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Nifl
Poster
Posts: 35
World: Nexus
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Post by Nifl on May 18, 2015 0:24:23 GMT
Nifl is Lisbet Serise, from Nexus. She is the Empress of Cetaganda. She and Leaf are aware of one another's identities. Nifl-related queries may be directed to General Discussion likewise.
Played by Kappa.
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Post by Gray Librarian on May 18, 2015 0:34:31 GMT
The Gray Librarian (played by lambdabeta/sonatagreen) is a librarian at the Library of Babel.
The Library of Babel is a library of unlimited capacity, spanning multiple worlds (subject to those worlds' native support of interdimensional space-warping, and not yet established in all worlds that it can reach). The Library aims to collect copies of all books, but this is a work in progress.
Being a librarian in the Library of Babel involves being an initiate of a mystery cult, the details of which I'm still not clear on. The Library itself is, or is the domain of, something like a deity; the distinction may be largely academic.
If I made a setting/character post elsewhere, I've lost it. I'll link here if I acquire one.
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Post by QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS on May 18, 2015 0:54:26 GMT
QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS (played by lambdabeta/sonatagreen) is a business selling magical books that, when read, cause the reader to learn spells. These can only be bought for a specific type of gold coin called "zorkmids". The company's customer service is mediocre and the "graphic design" of their promotional materials is deeply unfortunate. - Spellbooks are magical. Creating one by nonstandard means might fail if attempted by insufficiently powerful magic. Learning a spell from one destroys the spellbook beyond repair. Attempting to copy a spellbook by mundane means will fail.
- Knowing a spell does not give the ability to cast it freely; casting expends mana, which can be regained but is capped at different maximums for different people.
- The zorkmid specifications given in-thread by Andrew are subtly inaccurate, and coins made in accordance with them do not qualify as valid zorkmids.
- The company is currently unable to receive or deliver orders due to multiple personnel being kidnapped by the SCP Foundation.
The name "QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS" is sometimes abbreviated QDS for convenience. The company operates out of a world-cluster called Dungeon. More information is available here.
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Hadassah
Regular
Posts: 107
World: Pantheon
Pronoun: She/Her
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Post by Hadassah on May 18, 2015 1:08:35 GMT
Hadassah is a Golem animated via divine magic. She is not recognized as sentient, does not sleep, and does not have a soul. For the effects of most spells, she is treated as a non-living object, not a person. She cannot be contacted psychically and is very resistant to most memetic effects especially those that target humans or other organics. Her job is to watch the forum for any dangerous or interesting events apparent in the forum, and she works for a department of her United States of America to monitor and investigate interuniversal travel. Hadassah's world Pantheon is a world that consists of all Earth-made deities that have existed since before 1400 A.D. Pantheon's natives is capable of dectecting portals and access points into their world that have lasted longer than 2 hours, or that happen longer than 1 day ago. They are actively trying to control access into and out of Pantheon, in order to maintain a semblance of balance and peace. There are shadowy forces that exist on dimensions unassailable to nearly any forces within Pantheon, and are incredible hard to detect outside of the universe of Pantheon. Only a very few even suspect their existence, but they are mostly benign. These forces do, however, have the ability to detect any loss of mass or material from the universe and "pull it back to Pantheon". If something powerful tries to prevent it, these forces will actively manipulate the more common denizens of Pantheon to seek out the thieves and interlopers and would even be willing to hunt and fight anyone who steals from them. Pantheon is exceedingly unfriendly to mental manipulation that forces belief, trust, or faith on sentient beings. Manipulating Hadassah will not invoke any direct wrath, but it will be extremely frowned upon. Any person from Pantheon, Hadassah included, is observing the forum via set of several mirror sites, as well as through other filters, both technological and magical, to prevent emotional or ideological manipulation, on top of Esthfora's filters. Now, additionally, Pantheon's feed of the forum is being filtered through the domains of at least two different pairs of freedom and truth gods. This should remove any and all external means to manipulate belief, understanding or meaning, excluding the default forum translation settings. There are downsides to this, but no longer can Pantheon's users be affected by magical comprehension or a compulsion to believe. Even the deities filtering the information are not possible targets for this because they are not directly looking at the information but are simply acting as a pass-through. Spells directed to do more acute effects that can get through the forum may still affect Hadassah, but the rest of Pantheon is protected by Esthfora's domain. Pantheon as a whole is playing an isolationist game right now. They aren't actively exploring new worlds or trying to actively cause trouble, but they are monitoring anomalies. If other worlds wanted to start an official diplomatic discourse, that would be managed, but they would be cautious about it. Feel free to discuss or ask about Hadassah in the General Discussion Thread or via PM.
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MagicPhD
Poster
Posts: 95
World: Fractal
Pronoun: he
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Post by MagicPhD on May 18, 2015 1:28:58 GMT
MagicPhdD is a human physicist (specializing in magic) on an 21st century Earth. Physics works precisely as it does in ours (Quantum mechanics, relativity, etc.) with the addition of magic. Magic in this universe works by exactly one mechanism, which is distinct from all other mechanisms seen in this board. Conceptual magic is not a thing that can exist. Any otherworldly magic will cease to function as soon as it enters this universe, due to incompatible physics. Sufficiently advanced magic might be able to detect this, and cast an in-universe spell to achieve the desired effect. Magic from this universe will not work outside of it. I my setting has been given a thread here. Feel free to ask on any or PM.
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Post by lurkingkobold on May 18, 2015 1:38:33 GMT
The kobold using this account doesn't have a name, but is OOCly referred to as Lurking or Lurker. Her world has similarly not been ICly named but is OOCly referred to as Carp. Carp is mostly based on Dwarf Fortress, but with a custom magic system added to it. Lurking speaks some amount of Animalperson Trade Language, but isn't fluent in it. Kobolds don't have their own language and most of them don't use language at all, though the average kobold does have the ability to understand language at at least the level of a very clever dog. Lurking cannot read or write, and accesses the forum via a magic mirror that reads it to her and transcribes her replies. Like most kobolds, Lurking has a magical effect applied to her that makes her invisible to other spells - she comes across as illusory, which means that she never triggers magical items in her world unless she intends to. Magic cast directly by a person or affecting an area still works on her, and she can suppress the 'invisibility' effect at will to intentionally interact with magic items. (She can't suppress it selectively; if she happens to be standing on a magical trap when she tries to access the forum she will trigger the trap.) Lurking is played by Adelene, who can be skyped (text only, please) at handle "adelene.dawner". She and her world can be discussed here.
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Post by Captain Viridian on May 18, 2015 2:28:48 GMT
Captain Viridian is from Terry Cavanagh's game VVVVVV. (S)he is the captain of a ship which travels between dimensions called the D.S.S. Souleye, which is crewed by five other people whose names all begin with V and are all colors, which match their sprites. In-game, (s)he looks exactly like my avatar, but I am taking that as an abstraction and holding his/her real appearance to be that of an ordinary human being in a viridian uniform. His/her gender is never specified in-game, being left to the player to determine, and will as such not be specified here barring unusual circumstances. The home dimension of the crew of the D.S.S. Souleye is currently being tentatively called "Vearth", and is a standard earthlike world except for some issues with dimensional instability and a tendency to use the same letters (especially V) a lot in names. Little is yet known about this dimensional instability, other than that it causes weird things to occur to the concept of location which make life fairly unpleasant. The D.S.S. Souleye was launched (in the year 2410 CE) to attempt to find a solution to this problem. Edit: It has been discovered that one possible cause of instability is a device known as the Distortion Drive, which provides (relatively) easy travel between worlds at the cost of (if something goes wrong) ripping open tears in the fabric of reality. The most recent dimension which the D.S.S. Souleye has visited is Dimension VVVVVV, which had much worse instability than Vearth. The D.S.S. Souleye crash-landed, causing the crewmembers to be scattered and the plot of VVVVVV to occur. I am holding that checkpoints (from which one can be revived upon death an unlimited number of times) were discovered in this dimension, and teleporters (which allow one to teleport to other teleporters one knows the location of) were already largely understood. Dimension VVVVVV is full of spikes, enemies, and other appropriate platforming hazards, but also frequent checkpoints and the occasional convenient teleporter. Captain Viridian and his/her crew have reunited and escaped from Dimension VVVVVV, after finding a few research notes on dimensional instability. However, this was not enough information for them to solve the problem, and they continue searching. The captain is accessing the forum from the ship's computer terminals, since the comms equipment includes ViFi capability (exactly the same as WiFi) to allow terminals to be wireless, and the crew had discovered a mysterious extra access point in the middle of nowhere. Captain Viridian and related topics can be discussed in General Discussion.
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Post by Andrew on May 18, 2015 5:38:41 GMT
Andrew is an OC; I am mostly writing him to get better at characterization. His world is Daevinity. It’s like Earth in 1995, but with secret magic. The rest of this paragraph is known to less than two hundred people on that world. Its inhabitants have minor magic tricks barely worth mentioning, and the ability to summon daeva. There are three types of daeva: demons create matter (but, although Andrew doesn’t know this, not antimatter), angels change things (size/shape/composition/color/etc), fairies have really good TK. Each type of daeva lives in its own world. The afterlife situation for people who have at any point summoned daeva is that they become daeva (type loosely based on personality). The afterlife situation for non-summoners is that they go to Limbo, which is neither great nor terrible. More information on the world-in-general can be found in this thread started by the world’s original creator. Andrew’s world differs from the standard Daevinity world in that it is 1995 and that unless Alicorn starts interacting with this forum directly or contacts me about it, Cam does not exist in Andrew’s world. This means Revelation will not cause daeva to go public in Andrew’s world (although something else might). Andrew and the MWF do not exist in a standard Daevinity world, but if it’s a question about how daeva work I expect it’s already been discussed and overanalyzed there. If I made a mistake and daeva work differently in Andrews world than the standard Daevinity, I’ll try to remember to mention that here. Andrew is played by DanielH.
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Post by Grigori on May 18, 2015 6:10:39 GMT
Grigori is a Genius, or 'mad scientist', from the relevant fan-made World of Darkness game. His powers will follow the relevant rules-system as exactly as makes sense. He is, naturally, from the World of Darkness. The WoD appears to be a normal Earth around 2012 CE, but there's an awful lot of nasty stuff lurking in the shadows. It's kind of like a physically instantiated horror movie; all the classic movie monsters are lurking somewhere in the world, leading to a distressing rate of missing persons cases, which typically go unsolved (because actual vampires have infiltrated the government and police, and are motivated to cover that kind of thing up). I've put up a thread to discuss the WoD; feel free to poke me there to discuss current and potential plots. Played by Endovior.
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Post by gabriael on May 19, 2015 19:50:22 GMT
Gabriael is a very old, very blue and orange Angel of "Vengeance", a hunter of dangerous things. He was last on Earth six thousand years ago and only recently reacquainted himself with the culture. He's experienced in seeming to fit into new cultures, but his mode of thought is alien to social primates. He doesn't see any point in hiding that from the Forum and enjoys talking with people he has no power over, since he can seem dangerous and unhinged to mortals.
He'll never say or not say anything because of modesty or to avoid insulting anyone. He will understand verbal aggression, but never practice it or answer in kind, because he is a good person and those things are contraproductive and mostly tools of evil. If what you teach is right and true than it should be apparent enough without having to be cloaked in dignity and a superior attitude.
He wants to make the Multiverse a better place. He thinks killing an innocent is kind of dickish, especially if they are people that are doing something interesting with their lives and have invested a lot of education and work into their place in life. Killing someone means all that work is wasted. But it's better than someone being in heavy pain or drugged or raped, because those can damage the soul. God forbid(metaphorically) imprisoning people and subjecting them to continuous boredom, which would make him likely to hurt you. He wants to introduce more mass and more variety in his universe and thinks this Forum can help him with that. He wants a demon to make him black holes to make new Galaxies from it. But there's time for that. Someday, Andrew and Leaf will grow old and die and then he can just ask the next Summoner he meets.
His Father is a superintelligence who values interesting stuff happening with a limitation of keeping things in balance(which it really dislikes). It's female(because it created a cadre of seven male Archangels.), secretive and insanely paranoid about being eaten by another God. It doesn't have any positive proof for there being other gods who could eat it, but thinks it would be stupid to think of itself as anything but common and ordinary. Gabriaels Universe does indeed shrink, which has been a popular but unproven theory for some time. The rate is 4^^^^4 "^"s between two fours in Knuth's up Arrow notation per plank time. Anyone entering his Universe without compensating for the shrinking would just enter a black void Yottalightyears in all dimensions and with an unreasonably tiny speck of ultradense gravityless point of mass randomly moving about, passing unnoticed through their atoms.
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