The Shaman Guild Roleplay IV: Twin Axes [UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

I'm actually a little hesitant to start this up now, as this is the first time I've been online in the last few days and college orientation is only a week away! What do you say, you're in college, how much does starting the year detract from your free time?

Given a full courseload's worth of homework, at a research university?
...massively. Less so than ending the semester, though. (Neglecting start-of-year logistic overhead.)

I should admit that my own semester starts in two weeks. It may be that circumstances allow or that they do not. Since I haven't known delaying an RP to improve its odds of later running, I propose deciding this experimentally.

That said, as performing well in your first semester is important, any hesitation on that account is prudent. 'Tis your call.

Seconded with jazzy, but I don't mind long delays between posts, I'll just make each one count more when I do type them up!
But again, no pressure, real life > role play lives

Weeell I sure am glad for the enthusiasm you two showed for this but I think the best thing would be to freeze this for now! I can bug my friends for their sheets in the twixt time :P Best case scenario, we awake in a few weeks after Jazz and I (And Tierax, if you've got school, too) have adjusted to a new routine. Worst case scenario, this never wake up. I sure would hate for that to happen especially after the awesome sheets you guys turned in! xP But we never know. I'll keep popping on here to see the buzz and if/when I'm ready to RP again I'll call out and see if you guys are ready, too.

Orrr.

If y'all like we can use the time to plan out what we're gonna do when this thing starts! Cause we'd have to do that anyway, and it'd be easier I think to do that with a strict schedule than to do actual RPing. Course that's just an idea, you don't have to do that! What say y'all? :D

Already planned what i want my characters to want, ill.let them grow in game though, i have found it more interesting to develop them this way. unless i misinterpreted what you meant?

To answer your question though, no i work full time, and have pretty regular hours

Hey, I'm here to write. Planning counts, too.

We're in the big city, right? (How tall do the buildings get?) Chased by the police, or close enough. Lots of fun disaster movie visuals; not a lot of power to do something about it, yet. Maybe the Iron Wind blows in to take advantage.

We're gonna defend the innocent civilians, presumably? If so, which faction is working in their best interests? (If not, which faction is working in our best interests? how much do we trust the rebellion?)

We'll probably be run out of town, sooner or later. Hopefully we'll have acquired a map and/or guide (faction dependent). By then, someone should have picked up on the arc plot; we can trawl for leads on artifacts in villages and inns based on physical proximity. Or just follow the guide.

NEXT STOP. (Though adding concreteness to this one would be good, too.)

edit: Hm, Tierax, when/where d'you want a Shaman to meet each of your chars? I was gonna send 'Alala to the first village we come across, or maybe even leave hir in Chorion 'till we get there.

My rock was going to follow a random player. whoever is the most naive or paranoid... my bot was going to be the freed bot, willngly given freedom by its late owner, maybe it found work on board gaurding the captured shamans

Yeah, I work really late at night, sometimes 12 hours so I basically just work and sleep when that happens, no time for anything else. Regular hours a lil more time I can squeeze out. By the way like the story you painted in the OP, was great Mata.


I must get a character out soon yis.

Good ideas mates!

Shamans will find themselves on the streets of Man Den - buildings in the downtown areas might be up to twenty stories, everywhere else a three- or four-story place's a rarity.

Of course our philosophy will tell us to put the safety of the innocents first, yes, but having only to believe it for hundreds of years - not actually practice it - will probs lead to moral disputes where the individual's personality shows. The Drive operate the police, which care more about protecting their citizens - well, the Earthborn ones - but struggle with the use of devastatingly powerful technology (grenades and automatic guns) that they still don't really know how to control yet.

Hmm, interesting. i like the idea that for all their technological advancement the cut and file that fill the ranks aren't so proficent. I'm taking that to mean trigger happy and unskilled for the most part.

Hm. WW1 tech, then, excepting the voidships? (So... WW1 super-spy film, then.)

Building-wise, the early skyscrapers should be loads of fun. No set-back means they'll block views where clustered. Manual elevators will be cramped, esp. for larger Seeds.

Big impressive entryways might make amusing gathering-places for Torquat, and scenic locations for firefights. Unlike other Earthborn buildings, they'll have to be built with steel or an equivalent, not just stone. (Barring more unusual weight-bearing techniques.)

We'll probably have a bunch of last-of-their-kind type chars, which should influence their outlook on things. Accordingly:

Of the dozen or so captured Shamans, will all break out together? (i.e., will the PCs have NPCs accompanying them?) Will they have seen their families killed, or did some individuals remain trapped in the village at the time of the voidship's departure? (Which would itself merely precede a fiery death, of course, barring plot intervention.)

How large was the Shaman village to start with? A few hundred individuals, maybe, using half (or more) of the landmass for agriculture? Was the predominant source of population growth in-village births or clandestine immigration?

For what I have in mind, crowded locations would be the most difficult and fun place for torquats... I can't wait to show you how I think they behave... Pretty please can I have total control how they are represented?! So excited and yet I don't want to step on anyone's toes

Yep, everyone will break out together, with the remainder abandoned in the village! So they're pretty dead now. The Shamans subsisted with agriculture and herding, performing mystical rituals to bless their land with nutrients every so often. Births were few and contact with the outside world was nonexistent, yet the people survived for thousands of years. All the Shamans knew about it was that the world was kind to its guardians! Of course now that they've been struck down, they might start to develop some negative attitudes towards the land they've been protecting - or at least view the whole event as a sign that times are changing, and either they're not needed anymore or their services are being put to the test.

You have all the control you like, Tierax! I wanna make that, clear, too, that you guys have a huge say in what happens to NPCs. Even if I've been controlling them up til then. That right can even go so far as autohitting/oneshotting if the time is right, I trust you guys :P

So it's Saturday now and I have a proposition - I haven't done anything scheduled today, and it looks like weekends will be preeeetty bare of important stuff for me to do. I think I could go ahead and get this started with the schedule of I update on weekends, giving everybody the week to post before I post again! That'll be pretty slow though. What do y'all think? We could even start this Sunday, heck.

Little-to-no fatal illness in the Shaman village would've been a given, then. If cancer is included in that, then under the theory that aging is (like apoptosis) a cancer-prevention mechanism, old age - let alone death by it - could've been staved off as well.

This would result in rather short family trees - like, a couple dozen generations in families that'd usually have human-length lifespans, - but long enough for their origins to be shrouded in myth. Even if peoples' memories aren't addled (due to computational constraints!) by the disproportionate passage of time.

Sure, birthrates could've been low without prolonged lifespans, but not as low.

Either way, with a population of fewer than a thousand individuals, either there weren't many reproductive barriers and/or cousin marriage was a common thing. Island rules, I realize. But this may have implications regarding the interfertility of various Seeds.

Aside from deaths by old age, there may have been some subpopulations with Type III survivorship curves, which would experience a certain amount of infant mortality - more likely prenatal than due to misadventure, depending on the nature of the world.

Bah, I haven't even gotten to crises of faith yet. I'll have a better idea of Feckless's characterization when I figure out what the dominant foundress is like.

(Unless I give up modelling her family off of paper wasps. Either they grow up over the course of one winter [the eventual foundresses, that is - the workers just die], or I need to redefine 'overwintering'.)

May we make sideplots, as well? I'm tempted to introduce 'Alala in the process of acquiring an artifact for its employer. (Never mind the actual workers - in stories about doing business, accumulation of influence is where it's at.)

I don't know how my schedule will shake out yet. But in theory, I'll have time to hop online on Tuesdays. If you're ready to give this a stab, then go for it. I'll be surprised if my opinion has changed by next week.

I don't mind slow. as i said earlier I'll simply make my posts as detailed as possible. So if you want to go for it i am keen. also thanks for clarifying how much control we have over the world and its lore, i am eager to see how it plays out

Make all the sideplots you want, those enrich the world! I'll try and have something up next weekend :D

Wait out of curiosity what's overwintering o:

Going somewhere warmer / more-sheltered to wait out the winter

See, paper wasps abandon the colony when it's winter. So to get generations of longer than a year, I need to give them some other motivation to do that. Hm, unless there's just been this one colony the entire few-thousand years...

That would make for a... substantially sized colony wouldn't it? to beat out competition and survive as long as it has.

What competition is there, among shamans? As long as the colony is of breeding size - and environmental fluctuations aren't strong enough to knock it below that threshold, - it should persist.

So if carrying capacity (probably socially enforced) isn't much higher, then the population should be able to hold steady at a relatively small size.

Deleterious recessives would've had to have been purged (1, 2) at some point, either before or after the village's founding. But the colony could semi-plausibly have kept going in the same nest ever since, provided each queen thought to produce some breeders before dropping off of old age.

Oooh, I think that's going to be a very interesting role play with that basis

Okaaaay working on the art. Tablet doesn't jam with this laptop so it'll be a bit cruddy but HYPE HYPE HYPE

Hyped! I am hyped!

Are you feeling it now? can you FEEL THE EXCITEMENT?!?

Okaaay it's been more than a few weeks now and I've gotten no closer to getting this going. Think we'll just have to call it quits! Thanks for coming out though guys, maybe some other time I'll pull this outta the shed again :P I really enjoy the ideas of your characters, sorry you won't get to use them! If I ever finish the art I started I might post that just to have it here, and if ever I get to a point where I have lots of time on my hands I might call y'all back and see if you're still up for some adventure! For now, though, toodles!

Nngh- I... may as well toss out a few more ideas, before archiving them until more story-conducive times.

Self-indulgent sketchdump:

Also, some plot arc spoilers that I also had written, pending further polish. (Also in case something like this happened.)

Feckless:

'Alala:

'Till later, then, and thanks for the inspiration.