Raezenoth
Poster
Posts: 79
World: Arabek
Pronoun: He
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Post by Raezenoth on May 19, 2015 22:08:23 GMT
Raezenoth is a god from a world that's full of various gods that are having a subtle (and sometimes not to subtle) divine free for all. Every god has a 'domain,' a territory that they have near-absolute control over. The size of this domain is based on how many people think of them. This can be in various forms, worship just being the most obvious. The more people that think a lot about a god, the bigger a domain they can have. They can move the borders of their domain, if they live (or even split their domain) at will, though it takes time to move a large amount of a god's domain. The domain has a set biome that is somewhat appropriate to the god in question. The god cannot change this, it is a vital part of them, but they can change how the domain represents itself. Raezenoth could not un-desert his domain, but he could make it a stereotypical set of dunes instead of the friendlier desert-with-occasional-shrubs-and-underground-aquifers he has now. Gods have the ability to create a manifested form, which is a fancy way of saying that they can make a body and goof around in it. This body doesn't have to eat, drink, sleep, go to the bathroom, or feel pain, though if the god wants to it can do all of the above. A manifested form will not die of old age or sickness, and if killed is only inconvenient to the god. A god may remake their manifested form, but making a new body takes time. Generally gods will try to avoid getting their manifested form killed because who wants to waste the effort, right? Plus it makes them look bad. Gods may choose six blessings and one super power that they may grant mortals. Blessings are small but useful things - improved reflexes, the ability to walk on water, a better memory, so on. Things that are helpful but not particularly life changing. A god's granted power, on the other hand, is... Not that thing. This power depends very heavily on what the god is focused on, philosophy wise. Raezenoth grants the ability to fly. There is a subtle scaling to this granted power - more powerful powers tend to require something touch-based or the user only, whereas less powerful ones may have range. On Rae's continent those with powers are called acolytes, and are the most trusted followers the god has. This is because it opens a very close connection between the god and the mortal with the power - a piece of the god's holy domain is required to wield the power. At the same time, this connection can be abused by the mortal with the power. There are a few ways to actually kill a god of Raezenoth's type. Starving them of mortal thoughts is the most obvious one; a god whom no one thinks of will have a slowly shrinking domain, until they eventually reach a point where they can't sustain themselves, and they die. The other, more violent way to kill a god is an acolyte betraying and killing the god, and taking their place as one of the divine. This is why gods don't grant their powers to many people and create an army - members of this army would almost certainly turn and try to have a shot at becoming a god. Raezenoth has no setting thread of his own, Raezenoth related questions may be asked in General Discussion. Played by Aestrix.
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Post by a_potato on May 21, 2015 21:02:24 GMT
(posted by DanielH) This account was created by jalapeno_dude from Alicornutopia. It was only intended for the two posts thus far seen. He has given anybody else permission to take over the account; he said “the password is the obvious one, repeated twice so it is long enough to be accepted as a password”. The character is Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. This is a Harry Potter fanfiction that I (DanielH) think is better than the original series in most ways (although a lot of people disagree). I’m fairly sure this takes place a few years post-canon, and there are indications it may be an AU. Magic in Methods works approximately but not exactly like in Harry Potter canon; however, several characters and the Hogwarts social structures, especially around Harry, are sometimes quite different. If somebody takes over the account, I believe that discussions can go in the General Discussion thread; if nobody does, then such discussions are irrelevant. If you want to take over the account, you are welcome to. If you have not finished MoR, I would highly recommend against it. If you cannot guess why I think the account might be from an AU, then I feel like it would be a bad idea to take over the account but I might be falling prey to the illusion of transparency. If you do want to take control of the account, I would appreciate a PM to DanielH and/or Backstage post to discuss the potential AUnes relative to Methods canon.
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Post by Swish on May 24, 2015 4:19:59 GMT
Swish is a pixie from a world based on Alicorn's pixies AUSJ. In short: Goblins habitually enslave pixies; also there is an internet. Discussion of Swish can go in General Discussion. Played by Kappa.
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andygal
Poster
Posts: 17
Pronoun: she
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Post by andygal on Jun 2, 2015 19:52:57 GMT
HajeneAnda is from the Sime-Gen Universe by Jacqueline Lichtenburg, an overview of that universe is Here because I am lazy and it's a fairly good overview. Edit: I've decided that, for the purposes of this forum, the apocalypse the destroyed "our" civilization happened some decades in the future, so the computer is in fact super high tech. That reduces the amount of Random Inexplicable Magic involved.
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Post by Ahrotahn on Jun 4, 2015 16:39:39 GMT
Ahrotahn (Myst Online username Lena) is from the Age (world) of D'ni (also known as Earth), capital of the former D'ni empire, in the world-cluster Terokh Jerooth. The Art of Writing consists of creating magic books that allow travel to other worlds. These come in two types: Descriptive Books, which create worlds corresponding to the descriptions in their text, and Linking Books, which connect to the world and location where they were written. To travel through a Book, you touch the "linking panel", which resembles a moving illustration. The D'ni are basically human (even being interfertile with humans) but about 50% taller on average. The D'ni empire ran out of the city of D'ni in a cavern located a few miles under New Mexico, and treated other worlds in an imperialistic fashion. At some point, they also enslaved the Bahro, a species with a hard carapace, a vaguely humanoid body plan, and poorly-understood-by-humans abilities including the ability to travel between worlds at will. The D'ni empire was eventually destroyed by a bioterrorist attack by a D'ni individual. Earth-native humans are in the process of exploring the Cavern and the ruins of D'ni. The earlier Myst games exist, and were commissioned by an Earth-human archaeological group to raise awareness and money to support their work. Yeesha is magic. Relto, which she Wrote, breaks some of the usual rules of the Art. She also caused many Earth-native humans to feel an urge to travel to the Cavern. These "Called" have Relto books , and are able to find their way to the Cavern even if they previously had no knowledge of any of this. She is currently busy preventing the recently freed Bahro from attacking humans or D'ni. Ahrotahn herself is a generic-ish explorer but may develop more of a personality through play. Her thinking is somewhat skewed by the fact that her life has tended to work like an adventure game with Puzzles and Clues. With OTC's help, she is now a masochist. Setting thread here. Played by lambdabeta/sonatagreen.
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Post by Home on Jun 19, 2015 0:35:33 GMT
Home is a sapient universe. She is new to the idea of directly communicating with people, but enthusiastic about it so far. Her existence and consciousness depend to some extent on the flexibility/subjectivity/uncertainty of her universe. As such, she may become frightened and uncomfortable if poked with heavily rules-based magical systems, especially ones designed to return information or achieve results with more clarity and precision than she herself supports; and for her own protection, she automatically scrambles that kind of poking so that incompatible spells and artifacts break on entry and incompatible scrying and divination return random informational noise. She doesn't have a setting thread of her own yet, although if anybody comes to me with a question I'll probably try to start one. If you would like to be that person, go ask me a thing in General Discussion. Played by kappa.
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Post by anthusiasm on Jul 11, 2015 22:29:18 GMT
Bree is from a standard-earth type universe with some Norse mythological influences. These influences mostly consist of loose interpretations of various mythological creatures. This is a relatively new project so a lot of the worldbuilding will probably change between now and when I finish the story it's from (Bree isn't all that well-informed, which gives me some leeway), but the basics are these: The world contains multiple dimensions. The dimension containing earth is a prison dimension where humans and other undesirable creatures are stored. Humans are unique in that they have souls, which produce tasty emotions that provide sustenance to many of the other creatures and are generally addictive, and are much worse at fighting off creatures that feed on emotions than other souled creatures.
The prison dimension also contains valkyries, who basically function as prison guards. Their job mainly consists of escorting souls to the afterlife dimension once the physical bodies they're attached to die, as well as keeping peace between warring supernatural factions.
Valkyries are pretty good at their jobs, and as such, modern humans mostly don't know that these supernatural beings exist. Bree is friends with a guy who is dating a valkyrie and consequently got himself and some other people mixed up in supernatural politics.
There's a lot more I could say about this setting, but this is most of what's immediately relevant to Bree's life, and she'll probably mention any other details she knows.
ETA: Wanted to provide some info on Bree as a person. She's about fourteen years old, she spends a lot of time on Tumblr/watching TV, she swears a lot because it makes her feel cool, her parents are overprotective, she's anorexic but recovering, she has a low opinion of valkyries and their ilk, and she recently went through some valkyrie-related trauma that did not improve her opinion any.
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Novelty
Poster
Posts: 64
Pronoun: she
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Post by Novelty on Jul 13, 2015 3:34:40 GMT
The aranea known as the Bold Explorers live in a place we shall call "the spider zone". It is a network of underground caverns, lit by various glowing mosses, lichens, and algaes.
The Bold Explorers control a territory near a feature known as the Cave of Big Things. Creatures that come out of the Cave of Big Things tend to be several times larger than their more common counterparts. Most other clans don't want to live so near to the big creatures.
Enthusiastic Seeker of Novelty is a hunter for her clan, living separately near her traps and hunting grounds.
Hot Needle of Inquiry is the (third) Queen of the Bold Explorers. By convention she is considered the mother of all clan aranea of Novelty's generation, regardless of bio parentage.
Aranea take the form of outsized jumping spiders. ("Cat-sized.") They communicate telepathically. Usual aranea lifespan is under four years. Other kinds of people known to the Bold Explorers are vashneesht and a small proportion of humans.
The magic of the Bold Explorers is mostly limited to the usual aranea telepathy. They sometimes trade with other clans for magical artifacts.
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Verdancy
Newcomer
Posts: 4
World: IRL
Pronoun: she
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Post by Verdancy on Jul 25, 2015 4:43:54 GMT
The Starcrosser is a colony ship's AI from a universe that was full of starfish aliens before Homestuck happened to it. The universe has a pervasive doom effect that causes sapient beings, and then other life, to meet their end. The Starcrosser has survived by being not-quite-sapient and being very diligent about repairs. Also some amount of luck.
If your character visits Starcrosser's universe before the doom effect is lifted, which it might someday be, and it is at all possible for your character to die, they will. If it is not at all possible for your character to die, things will start to go wrong for them. Things they need break, it rains on their scheduled event, someone gets inopportunely sick, their enemies are unexpectedly better-equipped and more numerous and waiting to ambush your character in their closet, etcetera. The doom effect prefers to act subtly but will escalate to bridge-dropping if it has to.
If the Starcrosser invites your character to visit eir universe, that is eir way of telling your character to do something anatomically difficult.
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Verdancy
Newcomer
Posts: 4
World: IRL
Pronoun: she
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Post by Verdancy on Jul 25, 2015 17:05:43 GMT
Lizzie is a teenage (human) girl living in a universe based off of the Sims franchise (mostly Sims 3). I am calling it Goal.
The universe is comprised of billions of pocket dimensions, more of which are constantly being created. A colonized pocket dimension is known as a town, neighborhood, or 'hood. Unfortunately, the pocket dimensions do not enjoy time-syncing, at all, so each town is very isolated.
That said, it is possible to move between towns!
Anchoring People in Goal are primarily anchored to their town, and secondarily anchored to their household's plot of land. Both forms of anchoring are optional, but being secondarily unanchored is unpleasant and being primarily unanchored for long enough will result in your being being messily torn apart. You cannot be secondarily anchored without also being primarily anchored.
If people in a town start feeling crowded, they can store large amounts of simoleans, form a household, and then very briefly unanchor themselves. This is very dangerous because there's no guarantee where you'll come out- could be underwater, could be within a mountain. For obvious reasons, this does not happen very often.
If people want to move to a different, established town, they reserve a tiny, tiny plot of land, which the members of the household will then transfer to, and then shortly into a larger plot. Because of the lack of time-syncing, plots can be reserved for thousands of years before the household comes through, and it's not unheard of for a town to die out between reserving a plot and transferring.
Anyone can choose at any time to stop being anchored, but if you are not anchored to a specific plot, you will randomly pop in and out of existence. "Out of existence" is sometimes called "the Netherworld," but it is not actually a place. Simoleans are necessary to anchor yourself to a new plot.
Magic There are four kinds of magic.
Simoleans are units of everyday magic. They are used as currency. You gain simoleans by sacrificing items, and you spend simoleans to instantiate items. The more common, or established, an item is, the easier it is to summon. Some items cannot be summoned at all.
Goal-magic, which will get a better name later I promise, is obtained upon setting a goal and then reaching it. It can be used to buy magic items or attributes.
Occult magic is magic that is specific to an occult type. This includes the magic that witches use for spells and fairies use to play tricks or generate auras.
Belief magic is the ability of the residents to shape the plane they live on. The planes have strong defaults and are slow to change, but a town collectively deciding how they'd like their plane shaped can change the geography. This is also most of what decides the difficulty of instantiating an item.
Sapient Beings There are six kinds of sapient beings in Goal: Humans, aliens, simbots, plumbots, horses, dogs, and cats.
Humans are the most numerous and have the ability to change between various life states. They have a single language, Simlish, of which there are many dialects but any two people will likely be comprehensible to one another, even if they are from different towns.
Aliens are humans that have spent a bit too long in the Netherworld. For most purposes they still count as human, but they have a distinct appearance, a particular method of reproduction, and some alien powers.
Simbots and plumbots are two kinds of android with two different origins. They may or may not be sapient, but they all have the potential and it's considered rude and kind of skeevy to keep one deliberately nonsapient. Simbots and plumbots can acquire witchery and become ghosts but not other life states or related abilities. There isn't much of an internet in Goal, but simbots and plumbots can upload with the help of someone experienced with their software.
Horses, dogs, and cats are all sapient but not acknowledged as such, and are legally barred from owning plots. They all have a weak form of telekinesis, which is useful for making up for the need for opposable thumbs, but not much else. Horses, dogs, and cats all have their own languages, but they've mixed well enough that any one person can generally understand another. Horses, dogs, and cats that live with humans generally pick up Simlish, but can't speak it. Humans can learn their languages but generally don't bother.
Life States Human sims, other than being vanilla human, can be witches, fairies, vampires, werewolves, mermaids, mummies, plantsims, genies, or ghosts.
Dogs, cats, and horses can become ghosts, and horses can additionally become, or are born as, unicorns.
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Post by Lady of Death on Aug 4, 2015 19:11:30 GMT
Lady Death the Dread Necromanceress of Creepy Glade is one of the most formidable Dark Sorcerers in all of Equestria!(Don't you mean Grandma Creepy? That's what everypony calls you.) Her imposing Dark Armor made of the bones of innocent!(Mice I, her Second in Command Mr. Fluffles, ate.) No one is more versed than her in the field of Dark Magic or sacrificial Rituals. (Except wandering showponies, who flunked out of Phillydelphia Uni.) While she isn't as formidable a spellcaster because of her advanced age her extensive preparation make her and her Dark minions a force to be reckoned with!(Weren't you defeated by that bunny that pulled your tail because it mistook you for it's owner?) SILENCE! She has perfected a technique to ascertain the magical properties of incredients using a faulty ritual circle. The Armor tries to sacrifice something in a variety of small rituals, but the Circle is incorrectly drawn and thus each and every one of those rituals fails miserably. Magical Sensors note how much Magic the object almost released and analyze how and why it was created as well as what the creator felt and if it was stolen or extorted. (She's also an about two feet high, yellow and pink, wrinkly old unicorn.) Pink hair is a sign of great magical power! (Also it becomes really fluffy when she is upset.)
OOC: The Equestria Girls universe is a halfway point between Equestria and a real human world. Everything extrapolated from it has nothing to do with what real humans are like compared to ponies. The transformation effect is a property of the portal, used to depower the sirens.(Didn't completely work because their powers were in their amulets.) Pretend that she doesn't have an avatar until she gets the yellow one.
Note: 174years 458 failures Seargeant bloodcurdler: 41months Dandelion Danger Dynamite: 38 months
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Trumpet
Poster
Posts: 18
World: Yarth
Pronoun: He
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Post by Trumpet on Aug 20, 2015 5:05:08 GMT
Yarth is a jumble of magic that likes to pretend it's scientific. Everything in it must follow some set of consistent mathematical rules, and it pushes those rules to be simple, but it doesn't require rules to be universal.
The underlying physics has several distinct and mutually-inelegant subsystems; gravity and motion are Newtonian and follow Galilean invariants, electromagnetism and light follow Lorentz invariants (though not quite Maxwell's equations; magnetic monopoles exist, and there's a term for 'magnetic current density' analogous to current density). Quantum mechanics slightly resembles ours, but there are no quarks, and all elementary particles have either the mass of a proton or the mass of an electron. (Light is not an elementary particle; it is a wave in the luminiferous aether, which exists.) There is not nuclear strong force; gravity is just much stronger at small scales. And exotic particles are possible and may be used in making odd materials, but won't arise without Spark intervention (or other magic).
Spark physics: Sparks's creations follow their own sets of rules. Any given Spark's inventions will mostly follow the same rules, or at least ones which are fairly compatible with the rules their other creations use; this is more or less synonymous with a Spark's 'style' and runs in families for no clear reason. (Uniform rules for genetic inheritance? Surely you mean 'special cases everywhere'!) These rules are always mathematical; they are weird, nonuniform physics, not chaos. But since the rules change everywhere, violating thermodynamics is trivial; a state that's very orderly in one set of laws can be highly disordered in another, and that's assuming that conservation of energy holds locally within both of them. Most Spark creations will persist when the Spark leaves; there is some amount of exotic matter or structure involved which propagates the weird physics and makes it persist.
Sparks interacting: Sparks can, with some difficulty, divine the principles behind another Spark's work; this is much easier if they're along to help out or if you've seen them working on the device or procedure. Sparks working together find it easier to create complex custom rules, which helps a lot for large projects.
An outside source of magic will be treated a lot like a Spark; Yarth will impose mathematical rules that make it follow it's own odd physics, as simple as it can manage. They will continue to work essentially the same as they did outside Yarth, though the mechanism won't necessarily be the same. Some magic will be above its pay grade; alethics will probably just port the whole system over from Entelechy (maybe temporarily, maybe permanently). Like any other Spark's work, a Spark will be able to reverse-engineer the principles and eventually replicate it, potentially in a mass-produced way.
Where different conflicting systems interact, results will be fuzzy but will resolve themselves if inspected closely enough as Yarth figures out the details of the physics that incorporates both.
The Spark fugue: When someone with the Spark gets alarmed, agitated, or otherwise excited, they may slip into an altered state where grasping strange principles becomes much easier and they have preposterous amounts of energy. This carries a single-minded hyperfocus that makes them extremely good at invention and everything associated with it, but makes them behave progressively less human. As it progresses (through three rough stages), they gradually lose concern for their surroundings, concern for the health of others, ability to conceive of anyone as moral patients, and their self-preservation instinct. Their speech also gets distorted MORE AND MORE.
Suchi's style specifically is ad-hoc; she's very good at reverse-engineering and working out novel rules for new creations, but not so much at replicating systems she used before, generalizing, or mass production.
Trumpet/Krak is an anti-Spark (though he is unaware of this). Spark creations are unusually likely to fail in his presence, and he has a damping effect on Spark fugue, particularly the dangerous aspects of the hyperfocus. This runs in his family in the same way as the Spark does and cannot coincide with the Spark, and is the cause of some of Krakow's traditions. This will also generalize to localized magic- and memetics-dampening if he leaves Yarth; if he was foolhardy enough to try to fight the exsurgent virus with a sword, it would probably work, at least locally (and he'll be naturally extremely resistant to it).
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Write It Down
Poster
Posts: 37
World: Quinn
Pronoun: Female pronouns
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Post by Write It Down on Aug 29, 2015 20:53:46 GMT
Quinn is based on the Elemental Blessings series (Specifically the Effulgence version, since I haven't read the original) The MWF instance of Quinn can be considered compliant with the Effulgence version, minus the relevant characters and it is set a bit in the future, with technology good enough that my character is a popular book author (automated press that allows for regular newspapers and mass produced books, plus steam boats) The Elemental Blessings
In the countries of Welce and Elannwy people use blessings as a fortune telling method. The process only works to people that have their Birth Blessing draw. Typically your birth blessings are draw a week or so after you are born, but I am giving my Elay Prime NPC the ability to draw someone's Birth Blessings at any time she wants, thus allowing people from the forum to get their birth blessings draw.
- Anyone that wants their characters to have their birth blessings draw needs to contact Amber IC (either through the thread or through PM) and OOC give me what their characters' birth blessings. Typically, they are only three blessings, and represent the broad strokes of one's personality and life. Normally it isn't possible to change birth blessings, but there is a IC way to retroactively have them being "wrong, the Elay Prime is extremely distractible and it is completely possible that she wrote the wrong blessing down. The character doesn't need to know their corrects birth blessings to use the blessings correctly.
- IC Amber believes that the blessings are invariable right but it is possible to change the outcome they foretell. There might be other character-or-setting specific methods to counter them, but that is up to the individual author.
- To properly draw blessings you need to have them write (marked, sketched, draw, etc) on a physical object (usually a coin) and pick one at random. I am ruling that if you are using a incomplete set of blessings the magic picks the one most fitting for the situation.
- Blessings usually foretell something that is going to happen "in the near future", typically a week, rarely more than a month. They are vague and open to interpretation, they also depend on what is going to happen, as oppose to when you become aware of the fact. You might get rich because a distant relative dies, but only receive the money much later.
The Following link has all the blessings for reference and where you can post the blessings for your characters docs.google.com/document/d/1DTOoSKGh7bpsNAJFaUyf54iA5aHTrS8fk2nUeoQhOOA/edit
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