#Backstory: A former magic thief

[playstationvii]

#GTA:MagicKingdomDisney

Game Development Overview:

Title: GTA: The Magic Kingdom Platform: PlayStation 7 Developer: Rockstar Games in collaboration with DearDearestBrands Genre: Open-world Action/Adventure

Storyline:

In GTA: The Magic Kingdom, players explore a dark, reimagined version of Disney's iconic Magic Kingdom. The world is divided into themed lands, each with its own rules and factions. At its core, the story follows a criminal protagonist who is embroiled in a high-stakes battle for power and survival within the kingdom's chaotic, secretive underworld.

The protagonist (you) is a mysterious figure drawn into the Magic Kingdom's politics, where a sinister force is using the enchantment of Disney’s original lands for darker purposes. The hunt for Bambi, who is rumored to possess extraordinary powers tied to the kingdom’s survival, becomes a central pursuit, while the player navigates treacherous alliances, heists, and confrontations.

Main Character:

Name: Maximus Dark (or choose your own name) Backstory: A former magic thief, Maximus was exiled from the underworld for crossing a powerful figure. Now, forced to work in the Magic Kingdom's black market, he must hunt down Bambi and unlock secrets from deep within the kingdom's enchanted areas. Maximus has a personal vendetta against the kingdom’s rulers, who wronged him in his past. Throughout the game, the player will uncover the protagonist’s lost memories and long-forgotten connection to the forest kingdom that Bambi hails from.

Motivation: Maximus's primary goal is to reclaim his lost power, discover the truth behind Bambi’s existence, and stop a powerful corporation that seeks to rewrite the very essence of the Magic Kingdom. As the story unfolds, Maximus will face moral dilemmas, where every choice shapes the fate of the kingdom and his own soul.

Supporting Characters:

Bambi - The elusive and powerful figure whose very presence is tied to the survival of the kingdom. Bambi is the key to restoring balance but is hunted by those who wish to harness their power for dark purposes. They are often seen as a mystical being, guiding the protagonist toward their true destiny.

Claire Jorif Valentine – An enigmatic leader of a rebel faction, Claire operates in the shadows, challenging the corrupt rulers of the kingdom. She provides Maximus with missions, allies, and sometimes betrays him to further her hidden agenda. A powerful figure in the underworld, she seems to know more about Bambi than she lets on.

The Enchanted Guardians – These figures protect each themed land within the Magic Kingdom. They could either be allies or enemies depending on how the player approaches them. The Guardians are immortal beings who represent the natural forces of the kingdom—ranging from corrupted versions of iconic Disney characters like Captain Hook, Maleficent, or the Queen of Hearts.

Tiger Lily – A key ally who once helped Bambi and holds secrets to unlocking the magical energies in the kingdom. She is on a quest to stop the dark forces from taking over the kingdom. As a supporting character, she aids in quests related to nature and magic and can unlock special abilities for the player.

Walt - A mysterious figure who seems to control the Magic Kingdom’s darkest secrets. He appears to have been a creator of both the magic and the corruption that now threatens the lands. Maximus will need to confront him as the story builds toward the final confrontation.

Gameplay:

Open-World Exploration: The game world is split into different magical lands, such as Adventureland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, and others. Each land offers unique challenges, missions, and enemies. Players can freely explore these areas and engage in side missions while unraveling the main story.

Combat: Players can engage in both ranged and hand-to-hand combat, using magical powers, enchanted weapons, and advanced technology. The combat system is dynamic, blending traditional open-world combat with the ability to wield magic and technology.

Heist Missions: As Maximus tries to gain control of the Magic Kingdom, he must undertake heists to infiltrate high-security areas and steal vital items—such as keys to unlock magical areas or magical artifacts that help in the hunt for Bambi.

Choices & Morality: The game emphasizes player choices, with the narrative changing based on decisions. Will Maximus become a hero, villain, or something in-between? The relationship with Bambi and other characters is crucial, as decisions affect both alliances and the kingdom’s fate.

Stealth and Deception: Players can also use stealth to infiltrate the kingdom’s high-security areas or employ deception to manipulate enemies. Using disguises, magic, and technology, Maximus can change the course of battles or avoid them altogether.

Motivation of Player:

The player is constantly driven by the need for power, knowledge, and redemption. They must build their empire, uncover the dark secrets of the kingdom, and forge relationships with various characters—each with their own agendas. However, the hunt for Bambi represents more than just a physical chase; it's a quest for deeper understanding, as Bambi’s powers could either save or doom the Magic Kingdom.

Key Objectives:

Locate Bambi: The primary objective is to find Bambi before the forces of darkness do. Along the way, players uncover the mysteries of the forest kingdom and its connection to the greater magical world.

Restore the Kingdom: Players must gather allies, defeat corrupt leaders, and unlock ancient powers to restore balance to the kingdom. Each land requires the completion of key quests, often involving battles, negotiations, and solving puzzles.

Uncover Maximus’s Past: As Maximus’s memories return, the player will unlock hidden abilities and unique storylines. The past is filled with betrayal and secrets that will help guide the future of the kingdom.

End the Corruption: Maximus must dismantle the oppressive corporation that seeks to control the kingdom's magical energy. This requires sabotaging their operations, stealing key documents, and confronting their leaders in epic battles.

The Final Confrontation: In the game's climax, the player must decide whether to join Bambi in their fight for freedom or betray them to seize ultimate power. The fate of the Magic Kingdom—and possibly the world—rests in the player’s hands.

This game blends classic open-world gameplay with dark fantasy elements and a rich narrative, providing players with the chance to explore a re-imagined Disney universe full of intrigue, magic, and moral complexity. The pursuit of Bambi adds layers of mystery and suspense, making this a truly unique entry in the GTA franchise.

To project the potential success of GTA: The Magic Kingdom in 2025, we need to consider various factors including market trends, audience engagement, and the unique elements of the game. Here's a breakdown:

Market Growth for Open-World and Action-Adventure Games:

Current Trends: The gaming industry, especially for open-world games and action-adventure genres, has shown steady growth. Titles like Grand Theft Auto V, The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 continue to drive demand for expansive worlds with immersive stories.

Projections: The global gaming market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 9.5% from 2024 to 2028. As GTA: The Magic Kingdom combines elements of beloved franchises (GTA and Disney), it could tap into both established fanbases, providing a unique mix of nostalgia and innovation.

Audience Engagement and Sentiment:

Nostalgia Factor: The reimagining of Disney’s Magic Kingdom with dark and mature themes will likely engage both nostalgic fans of Disney and mature audiences looking for an alternative take on Disney. This could boost both initial sales and long-term engagement.

Fanbase Growth: By 2025, your fanbase could grow significantly as the game's story unfolds. Assuming solid marketing campaigns and collaborations with influencers or streamers, you might see a steady increase in followers and engagement leading up to and after the game’s release.

Projections: Positive sentiment is expected if the game's unique blending of fantasy, technology, and dystopian elements resonates with audiences. Projections for engagement could range from a 15-20% increase in social media mentions in the first year after release.

Technological Advances and Game Development:

PlayStation 7 and Future Hardware: Given the expected launch of PlayStation 7 around 2025, GTA: The Magic Kingdom could be designed to take full advantage of next-gen console power. This will allow for an even more immersive experience with advanced graphics, smoother gameplay, and expansive worlds.

Projections: With the integration of next-gen technologies (such as AI-driven NPCs and advanced virtual reality options), GTA: The Magic Kingdom could have a 30-40% higher player retention rate due to these enhanced features.

Sales Projections:

Market Demand: Based on trends for similar games (open-world, fantasy, and action-adventure), initial sales could range between 5-10 million copies within the first year.

Projections for 2025: The game could potentially reach 15-20 million copies sold by 2025, depending on post-launch expansions, updates, and downloadable content (DLC). A strong, loyal fanbase built from the early adoption of the game could help push this figure higher.

Expansion and Future Growth:

DLCs & Expansions: By 2025, the game could see its first major expansion, adding new zones, characters, and stories to keep players engaged.

Projections: Expansions or sequels could drive continued engagement. This could result in an additional 10-20% increase in sales in the second year post-launch, especially if the game incorporates user feedback and evolves based on community input.

Marketing and Brand Partnerships:

Brand Alignment: With ties to Disney, GTA: The Magic Kingdom could attract partnerships, cross-promotions, and collaborations with major brands.

Projections: These collaborations could increase visibility, leading to higher-than-expected sales and engagement. With a proper marketing push and potentially viral content, the game's overall reach could expand significantly, especially if there are partnerships with influencers or Disney-themed events.

Summary of Projections for 2025:

Sales: 15-20 million copies sold globally

Player Engagement: 30-40% higher retention with the introduction of new technology

Audience Growth: Significant increase in fanbase with positive sentiment and engagement, likely 20-25% growth year-over-year

Brand Partnerships and DLCs: Increased revenue from post-launch content and collaborations

Overall, with the unique blend of popular genres and the anticipated growth of gaming markets, GTA: The Magic Kingdom could be positioned for strong performance by 2025, with significant growth in both sales and player engagement.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #20 – Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

I’ve in theory been a big fan of Bennett for a couple years now, having adored American Elsewhere when I read it. I say ‘in theory’ because I had not actually followed that up by reading any of his other stuff until I happened to see him doing an AMA on r/fantasy and was jolted to go put something of his on hold. The most convenient option was Foundryside so, here we are.

The story follows Sancia, a former slave-turned-magical-experiment who now uses her rather inconveniently always-on sort of object empathy to be a really excellent thief for hire in the hopes of earning enough cash to pay some black market surgeon to make her normal again and then stay quiet about it. That price tag lures her into accepting a job for an eye-watering amount of money from what it clearly one of the merchant houses who rule the city – which she discovers to be an ancient relic, a key that can open any lock. And talk to her. And revolutionize the entire industry of enchanting upon which the city’s fortune and empire are built. She correctly assumes that there’s no way they’re planning to let her live after turning it (him) over, and things spiral out of control from there.

It’s fundamentally a heist story, with all the main action setpieces being about breaking into places and stealing things. And like all good heist stories, the protagonists are totally incapable of winning through anything like brute force, and have to be clever bastards about it – sneaking past guards, not slaughtering them in the night. Those heist sequences are all vividly described and just a lot of fun, almost worth the price of admission on their own.

So this is the rare story where calling it ‘magipunk’ is both accurate and helpful. Which is to say, it is almost literally a cyberpunk story translated into the idiom of vaguely-early-modern fantasy city states instead of corporate arcologies. Scheming oligarchs, overmighty corporate states, miraculous technologies that are only felt by the underclass as news ways of being oppressed and objectified, the works. The most triumphant and hopeful part of the ending involves the founding of a worker’s coop that doesn’t get immoderately crushed. Notably useful and plot-relevant enchanted items include a listening device, trackers, and a powered gliding rig. It’s only when you really get into it that the magic starts feeling at all magical, is what I’m saying – you could translate almost all of this into Cyberpunk 2020 terms in a couple of hours. I think it’s quite fun.

Sancia’s whole backstory – a slave on one of the plantations supplying the city with food and spices, taken as a subject for bloody experimentation in creating perfectly obedient magical cyborgs, surviving and escaping because they got sloppy with occult grammar and reality interpreted ‘be like object’ as ‘be like [INSERT NEAREST OBJECT HERE]’ – is fun on a few different levels. The story definitely leans into a running theme of the reduction of the powerless and subordinate to literal objects and tools wielded by those who control them, both metaphorically and literally. But also there’s an absolutely great beat where she’s explaining her story to the rest of the main cast who are all horrified and disgusted that anyone would do such a thing. To which she reacts very angrily and goes ‘you know that isn’t, like, worse than the whole rest of the chattel slave economy, right? More people get horribly tortured to death as part of everyday operations than creepy magical experiments?”

Sancia as a character is just a lot of fun to spend time in the head of, honestly. Her relationship with Clef (the magical key, the more literal example of being objectified and insturmentalized by one’s masters) is the core dynamic of the first ~half of the book, and it absolutely carries it. Though in the final act it then runs into the very common action/adventure story issue where she starts talking about this guy she’d known for barely a week like a life-long friend she’s shared more good times than she could count with. Entirely forgivable but like, it does stand out.

There’s this whole subtheme of, like, futile misogyny running through the text? It’s never explicitly brought up, and the only character whose actually vocally sexist on the page is the asshole philistine moneygrubbing abusive husband wannabe-coupist you’re clearly supposed to hate. But it’s a repeatedly mentioned point that the culture of enchanting grew significantly more patriarchal in the previous generation (for unstated reasons, possibly just the one epoch-defining genius being a misogynistic ass) and that this was very bad for the career prospects of several major characters. Despite this, important women in the story include a) half the main cast, b) the only competent and attentive head of any of the four merchant houses and c) the enchanting-prodigy wife of aforementioned sexist asshole who turns out to have been feeding him every useful idea he ever had until she could kill him and scoop up everything he’s gathered. This is one of those things that amuses me because it’s clearly deliberate but is never directly mentioned.

This is also one of those books that’s queer rep not in the revolutionary groundbreaking it’s-a-core-part-of-the-tezt way, but in the ‘wow isn’t it great how normal and unremarkable queer representation is now?’ way. Like, Sancia is gay, which is one of remarkably few things about herself she never expresses a single moment of angst, anger or self-doubt about, and she has the sort of C-plot romance subplot every adventure story is obligated to (right down to agreeing to go out for a drink if she survives the last big heist), but with a woman. Her sexuality otherwise basically doesn’t matter. When people ask for queer SFF book recommendations I’m never sure if offering stuff like this is missing the point or exactly what’s desired.

As mentioned, the only other book of Bennett’s I’ve read is American Elsewhere. Which was an absolutely horrible way to set my expectations going into this. Foundryside is fun adventure fantasy, but it has far fewer literary pretensions. The prose is incredibly readable – it’s absolutely a page turner – but that’s basically all it aspires to be. Elsewhere had several different passages I stopped and reread just for the pleasure of it, Foundryside I went back and reread only when I skimmed past some important detail and got confused.

But it’s a really fun fantasy heist story, and the sequel promises to be about a rampant artificial intelligence clockwork djinn which turned against the ancients who made her. So I’m sure I’ll get to it sooner rather than latter.

[chibishortdeath]

Alright I’ve thought about, I’m gonna actually start posting some of my criticisms of Netflixvania starting with the first season. I actually have a notepad document on my computer somewhere that’s just various rants about it that I’m gonna take from lol

Rant under a cut cause it’s long, spoilers, and also cause uh tldr I do not like the show 💀

Ok let’s start from the beginning of the show, episode one.

The first episode isn’t terrible, it’s a bit rocky, some red flags here and there for what was to come, but that’s kinda expected of animations like this. It usually takes them a couple episodes to pick up and grow into their own, so I was skeptical, but not gonna knock it entirely when I first saw it.

My biggest criticism of this episode was the complete missed opportunity to introduce certain characters from this section of the series’s story. Imagine if they had shown Isaac and Hector in the background of the castle or something at this point for foreshadowing later, as they would’ve already been studying under Dracula at that time. Imagine if that old woman Lisa helped ended up being one of Lyudmil’s family members, cementing them as friends of her for later. Alas, Netflix just decided not to use most of the already written backstories for most characters. But eh, that’s getting into nitpick territory.

And then the second episode happens… I honestly genuinely hate the concept of the Speakers and it’s because they completely replace a much more interesting (especially for the tone and themes they were going for) group for Sypha to be a part of: The Church. In the game, Sypha is a witch, something that’s currently not very good to be at this time, however the church employs a bunch of male wizard soldiers. This is already a perfect opportunity set up and ready to go for them to make their points of the church being hypocritical, add some intense dramatic irony with maybe the audience getting to know Sypha is a witch before anyone else does and seeing her interact with a bunch of people who would have her dead if they knew, and create a super conflicted situation where these church soldiers all die during their encounter with the cyclops, but yet they scrapped it for uh random group of magic users that kinda exist entirely for a plot that didn’t need a new device to work. And Sypha just being all hood down and no hiding just takes away something interesting about her character, making her kinda bland in the process. Like it’s one thing to have the Girl™️ who owns the braincell trope and another to have a character with some actual immediate conflicts. They totally could’ve played up the “oh no if Trevor knew would he kill me” dynamic, especially with witches being commonly lumped in with ‘monsters’ in a lot of other media and Trevor being ya know a monster hunter. And already just from this one design choice she completely loses her symbolic putting the hood down scene for much later in the story to show that she actually trusts people and feels safe enough to not need to hide anymore because she’s got people on her side now.

Also the lack of Grant is just a crime in itself. Grant could’ve worked perfectly as like the everyman of the group. Hell, with his background of being a former noble turned thief presumably after hard times to straight up losing his entire hometown to flames and leading a revolution about it, Grant literally has like almost every common not magical vampire hunter person experience. He could’ve given the group any of those perspectives and been told the perspectives of the vampire hunting life he hasn’t had, ya know? And he’d help differentiate the personalities and humors of the group in general. I literally can’t think of a negative to having Grant in the group.

So we were robbed of character development for Sypha and the existence of Grant, what’s next—

The Bishop character is someone that could’ve been interesting if he was written with any kind of nuance, but instead he’s extremely on the nose and blatantly laughably evil. Otherwise this guy is pretty forgettable besides how lame it was that they used Blue Fangs to kill him instead of ya know an actually recognizable enemy. Like the Blue Fangs design wouldn’t be bad if it was in literally anything else, but compared to the designs of most Castlevania monsters it’s just really lame. I’d’ve even accepted a Warg or something, idk. Personally I think having Death walk in taking the form of Zead and going through that speech while eventually turning into the skeleton form we know him as woulda gone hard but for some reason Death isn’t a thing until seasons later which sucks.

I also absolutely hate Alucard and the Cyclops being in the catacombs! Hate it! The Cyclops kinda had like a courtyard area for it and made sense being there since it was standing guard on the way to the castle. Literally what it is even doing in the catacombs 💀💀💀. Standing guard for… eepy Alucard? Why??? And the whole sleeping soldier thing or whatever they called him is just so obviously an excuse to have him appear faster and make it seem like it tied into the plot. Alucard absolutely should not have been introduced to the main group this early on because again that robs him of a bunch of opportunities for background and character development. He got maybe the one oh no dad don’t commit mass death that’s bad scene and nothing else when they had plenty of time to show him initially following his fathers orders and eventually growing to stand against him. And again??? Missed opportunity for anything radio drama related??? Like if there’s any opportunity to get any of that story more known it’s in an animation? And besides, it’s less work to just use whatever materials and supplemental materials already existed for the game!

Dracula’s Curse and CoD have:

Two games

Two manuals

Three manga (TokyoPop and Preorder)

A couple game guides

Flashback sequences in a radio drama

Flashback sequences in SotN AKA: the game everyone knows

A ton of references in later games cause IGA is a big Dracula’s Curse fanboy

Pachinkos

That is plenty of material to make an animation based on, especially because most games don’t get half of that, especially not NES games. They were literally handed like the NES game to adapt lottery and decided not to scratch like half the ticket 💀💀💀.

Alucard also being able to levitate kinda negates a lot of things. Like what the hell is the point of having a bat/mist form and a double jump then? If he can just be flying vampire Jesus immediately or whatever people call him idk. And you can’t tell me Alucard wouldn’t be painfully embarrassed if someone ever saw him shirtless come on this is the guy that wears like 5 layers of clothing in every game he’s in to the point that even in the modern era he’s choosing a suit over casual clothes. Every action he makes in this introduction to him is obviously fanservice for the sake of fanservice with very little thought behind it, except I’m not feeling very served right now. And having Trevor kinda lose that fight is a reoccurring problem this show ends up having: putting down other characters just to make certain ones get the cool fanservice moment. Contrary to what the writers of this show may believe, it actually doesn’t make me go “oh wow, Alucard is so cool and much badas”, it just feels weird and uncomfortable that Trevor is getting cheated out of one of his canon achievements because the writers preferred one character’s tits more than him.

So, basically, the show starts out with missed opportunities, concepts and characters getting cut out, watered down versions of characters that did make it in, cheap fanservice, poor explanations for things, etc etc. this all culminates into a resounding m e h + dread for later seasons being worse (boy was I correct on that fear lol).

Here’s some other things for the first season I didn’t know where else to fit:

None of the humor hit for me at all, like not a single joke. The humor was either a no response at best, but definitely a physically wincing from secondhand embarrassment at worst. Related to this, I feel like most of the dialogue reads like either someone who just learned what swear words are and thinks they’re really cool and funny or genuinely forced. At times most of the characters talk with the same delivery, cadence, personality, etc, it’s really obvious they were all written by the same person or group. And that even goes for background and side characters, too. This is a criticism I’ve never seen said: I really don’t like the voice acting in this show. I’m sure it’s no fault of the voice actors at all, but there were times in this where I either could not hear characters properly or could not understand characters properly and I had to watch it with closed captions on. The clearness and volume of the characters voices varies A LOT even just between scenes sometimes. And that combined with all the characters having really similar speech patterns, there were a lot of times where if I looked away from the screen, I genuinely could not tell if it was Alucard or Trevor speaking cause it sounded like it could reasonably have been either of them (and in some cases it literally didn’t even matter that much which character was saying what). It’s an absolute tragedy that the color schemes in this show are not remotely similar to Dracula’s Curse too. I understand why some color combos wouldn’t make it for eyestrain reasons, but the pixel artwork in all the NES titles is beautiful. Same goes for music, like I am never going to forgive this series for using Bloody Tears for a Dracula’s Curse ‘adaptation’ and not Beginning or Aquarius or Dead Beat or Ghost Ship or Clockwork or— ya know? These are two things that the series are really known for so you’d think with some of the fanservice they did they’d be all kinds of ready to use stuff like that for more of it.

Anyway, past season one is when I started watching the series primarily through clips/episodes reposted on YouTube or elsewhere cause I had completely lost any interest in it. I’ll probably go through synopsises online again for season 2 just to try to better remember what happened in that one because I do remember having very little good to say about season 2 as well and I gotta do that research so I can hate things properly :3.

There’s a certain part of this where I just kinda blanked on things to even say, partially because Season one is kinda bland in general, but partially because I started getting sleepy while typing. So if I feel like I missed anything season one specific I’ll just put it in the beginning of the season two post. d(_ _ )

[dapper-nahrwhale]

Sad that I cannot find my old old old post Abt leverage but DND world anyways. Here I go again:

They are all different subclass of rogue multiclassed with other things.

Sophie is a Dispater tiefling bard college of eloquence (wordplay and theatrics) and an inquisitive rogue (disguise, lying, and perceptive). Bigger focus on character and backstory (or lack thereof) than build. Definitely has disguise self.

Nate is a high elf former investigative rogue turned mastermind rogue (manipulation and misdirection tactics) and eventual multiclass of undying warlock (makes a risky pact).

Parker is a classic lightfoot halfling thief rogue (sneaky and quick) and a battle master fighter (multiple attacks to deals lots of damage). Absolutely optimized build.

Hardison is a half elf alchemist artificer (support with creating useful magic items) and a swashbuckler rogue (charisma). His comms are definitely magic items he made.

Eliot is a mountain dwarf turned slightly undead former oath of vengeance paladin (strong offence and damage) turned oath breaker paladin (harms anyone) and assassin rogue (infiltration and sneak attacks), turned way of the long death monk (defensive tanky and damaging) and assassin rogue multiclass.

Breanna is forest gnome a battle smith arcane trickster rogue artificer.

Harry is a human inquisitive rogue multiclassed with something, idk what yet.

[theotherrookie]

A new challenger approaches

Name: N/A

Nickname: Five

Age: 36

Birthday: N/A

Gender: Cis male

Sexual Orientation: N/A

Species: Human with powers

Ethnicity: White

Nationality: N/A

Height: 6’3”

Weight: 160 lbs

Body Type: Lean and muscular

Faceclaim & Voiceclaim: Cillian Murphy

Hair: Short and black. The color might shift when he’s using his powers.

Eyes: Green. The color and shape might change when he’s using some of his abilities.

Distinguishing features: Some old scars on his right side and he’s always seen wearing gloves. He has been trying all kinds of remedies to get rid of the scar on his right hand.

He puts great care in the way he looks, usually preferring formal attire paired with a strange looking metal belt with the buckle shaped like a snake’s head. He looks awfully fine for a smoker.

Personality: He’s the charismatic type who always knows what to say to keep his audience wrapped around his finger. He rarely goes overboard with his comments and is surprisingly patient even with the most rude individuals. He’s a businessman, after all. One can’t be sloppy even if they wish to succeed.

Out of the field, on the other hand, he’s a real bastard. The rules of engagement are simple: humans must be protected at all costs while everything else must be wiped out or driven away. The concept of monsters hiding in plain sight in cities is simply abhorrent and something must be done about it by any means necessary.

Current Residence: N/A

Former Residence: N/A

Mother: N/A

Father: N/A

Siblings: N/A

Other Family: N/A

Languages: English, French, German, Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese

Hobbies and Interests: A dedicated scholar of the supernatural and a martial arts master with experience with a multitude of weapons. He likes spending his time sparring as much as he enjoys going for a swim.

Occupation: Being rich.

Powers and Abilities: Skilled martial artist, master of many weapons. He has an affinity with water but prefers focusing on more offensive means. Thus, he has made it so his body can produce a number of toxins with different effects.

The toxin he’s using can be recognized depending on the current color of his hair.

Blue: sleep

Red: caustic

White: paralysis

Yellow: neurotoxin (lethal)

Pink: mind control/charm

Green: stun

Weapons/equipment: He carries a composite sword. The blade is made of a whip on which several smaller blades are mounted to form a larger one, essentially allowing him to switch between the two modes with ease depending on the situation.

When he isn’t busy drenching yet another expensive suit in blood, he wears tactical gear, occasionally paired with a metal mask to hide his identity.

Weaknesses: He’s unable to stray from the code he follows almost religiously, making it very simple to turn against him. He can’t touch or be touched without leaving the other in an altered state.

Basic Backstory: Little is known about this elusive guy, except that he’s rich and has some kind of magic affinity. He’s an excellent fighter and he’s looking to establish his influence as a monster hunter with the help of his group of fellow minded nuisances.

THE NUISANCES

Frosty: An ice mage who shops at Hot Topic. His magic made him resistant to cold and loathe the warmer seasons.

Crosshair: A sniper who can hold her own against the others even without magic. Give her a gun and she’ll take down her target.

The Twins: Mercenary brothers. One is an excellent driver, the other is a master thief. They’re in exclusively for the money and offer their talents to the highest bidder.

Ratchet: Some would call him an artificer. He considers himself a person with exceptional fashion taste. He lovingly crafts his outfits and all his accessories which double as hunting tools and traps.

[tildeathiwillwrite]

In general, how did you come up with the Tales of Valeria series, and what is its premise?

(in reference to this ask game)

Tales from Valaria Masterpost

Well, it wasn't intended to be a series in the first place, little twelve-year-old me had no clue when she started writing a backstory for her human ranger that a story like The Watcher and the Thief would appear almost of its own volition. It all began with that backstory, and then I renamed rangers to Watchers to separate from D&D, and then I expanded the world of Valaria, and then Octavian sprang into existences, and then I introduced magicians and Draigo and devar, and then the first draft of The Hunter, the Myth and the Cure was written, and then I wrote Magician's Bait, and then I began revising both TWatT and THtMatC, and now we here.

Tales from Valaria is a collection consisting of two novellas and currently one short story that takes place on the fictional planet of Valaria.

The first novella, The Watcher and the Thief, is a story about a Watcher named Hector Epsilona whose apprentice and nephew, Luc, gets cursed by a magician and seeks a way to reverse it. It is also about a thief known as Rift who attempts to steal an artifact from the Draigo, a mysterious semi-immortal species of great political and historical power. I like to refer to it as the worst two weeks of Octavian de Silv's life.

The second novella, The Hunter, the Myth, and the Cure, takes place about a decade after the events of TWatT and a plague of lycanthropy descends upon the population. It follows Draven Cozenson, a human gunslinger and well-known lycanthrope (werewolf) hunter, Octavian, an elf skinwalker and former Draigo messenger, and Reese Takari, a thirteen-year-old girl who gets kidnapped for reasons known only to her abductors. Draven seeks to get his work done, Octavian seeks the fate of the Draigo after the outbreak, and Reese seeks escape.

Magician's Bait is a short story occuring about four years after the events of THtMatC. The crown prince of the city Caenum, Damian, is abducted by someone known as a Stalker, a magician who broke the rules of magic and seeks nothing but more magical power. She intends to lure the city's magician into a trap and take her magic by force. Seventeen-year-old Reese is recruited by Luc (the same Luc as TWatT) to defeat the Stalker.

[ansu-gurleht]

okay, i’m calling the polls!

part 1, race, goes to dunmer! but khajiit did come in pretty close second at the end, so i’m going to say this character is half-khajiit or raised by khajiit! no way to do the former in game unfortunately but it will be part of their backstory!

part 2, archetype, goes to mage! but thief was a very close second, so we’ll weave that in a bit! so a bit of a magic trickster or arcane archer or something! i’ll figure that out more as i play.

i’m going to use alternate start, and unless i can think of a particularly interesting start for what we’re working with, i think i’m going to just pick one at random. wish me luck!

[lostcndfound]

Name: Willoughby Clay

Nickname: Will

Age and Birthday: Looks in early 30s

Height: 5ft9

Pronouns and gender:  Uses he/him pronouns and their equivalents. Man. But it’s a long story and best boiled down with ‘his gender is performative but whose isn’t?’ and then left alone. 

What they are: A kind of wild fae - debatably. 

Style and Appearance: Lot of corduroy and knits. Brings a sort of ‘former hippie who became an english professor in a wes anderson film’ vibe to things when out in public. Thick dark hair, typically styled up and back, and at least a few days of stubble growth. Has light hazel eyes. 

Piercings and tattoos: None. 

Scars and distinguishing marks: None. 

Sexuality: Closest human equivalent would be pan or bi. Not got a lot of experience, but is up for trying most things, and is also very open about his lack of experience in all things romantic or sexual. 

FC: X

Abilities: Travel between worlds with total ease using the in betweens. Shadows, rivers, bridges, thresholds. Anywhere he wants at dawn and dusk. Physically alter shape and appearance to that of a human. Tough skin, a bit of a resistance to some physical harm but nothing huge. Wicked good sense of smell for all kinds of things, but especially good at finding magic. 

Weaknesses: Iron. Perfumes fuck him up, too strong, too much of a chemical feel. Creature brain says you hide when things are scary, so he is prone to spooking and then destroying things to disappear. Seems like a weakness. 

Links:  Canon - Media  -  Fun Stuff  -  Aesthetic  -  Music  -  Threads

Other bits and pieces:

As said, the human look is an ability. One he will keep up under almost all circumstances. He knows people who are aware of non-humanoid fae do not take them seriously in their real appearance, and he’s invested a lot into being ‘Willoughby’. It is a physical form.

Comes from the inbetweens. A sort of refuse pocket between realms, where things that get lost might end up, and which exists more strongly within the transitional parts of realms. Sometimes you lose something and it ends up there on its own. Findable by its original owners, or by something else, making it gone forever to the person who lost it. It’s sort of a junkyard. 

Sells things he finds in the in between, both in fairy markets and human ones. Stall is always called Lost and Found. A mix of genuinely interesting stuff, and total crap. Sort of a dodgy antique dealer, because sometimes things need some help getting lost before he claims them. 

Considers himself a gentleman thief. 

Only part of his inhuman appearance that's seen occasionally are the claws, four of them on each hand, two long, two short. For digging and climbing. They can do some harm, but aren’t meant for it. Potentially people might feel a roughness to his tongue, too, which is definitely a normal human length at all times, don’t look any closer, take my word for it. 

Has a true name in a fairy sense. A name that has power over him. But that’s a lets talk ooc if you want your muse to know it thing, cause he isn’t someone whose real name would be a known entity. Not important enough to be recorded anywhere. 

Temper can show when things don’t go how he wants and expects. Prone to tantrums and outbursts. Petty, vindictive, hissy fit throwing.

Wants to be taken seriously. Sticks to his idea of what is proper and respectable regardless, even though it was informed by literature, and almost exclusively things written before the 1930s. 

Actually isn't completely ignorant to a lot of human things, he lives in a world of lost crap after all, he's seen more and read more than what he's latched onto as 'Will'. There are still major gaps in his knowledge though, putting people together through trash isn't the best method of getting a full understanding.

Long form backstory and bio (Least necessary read, you can skip these bits):

Willoughby is just a little creature. Born into a junk pile of lost and unwanted belongings. Not considered a fae by most of faerie, but humans who don’t know better would see him as one. Initially raised with a family, and then isolated over the years. It’s a lonely existence just scuffling around an endless field of trash searching for stuff to eat. Incidentally, part of why they’re so good at snuffling up magic is because spirits that get lost are a staple part of their diet. Usually it’s parts of spirits, full human or fae don’t usually wind up with them. 

At some point in the endless repetitive cycle of searching, they stumbled upon something quite unique. A house. An entire home. A large country house at that. Something that could’ve been used as a filming location for a bbc miniseries based on a Jane Austen novel. Maybe it’s not landed gentry, managed by the national trust levels of big, but it was clearly a home with money and worth. Left to moulder and rot for a few decades, totally abandoned and untouched. Furniture, belongings, everything. 

Exploring the house brought them to a library full of crumbling and poorly cared for books, hallways of portraits and little bits and pieces to uncover and learn about the people who’d lived there. All subtly covered in the smell of fae magic. Whatever got the house lost, it involved some kind of pissed off fairy. 

So they created a character, for fun at first, built from the stories they’d read. Name picked from the pages to fit the home. He became ‘him’, not really having any connection or relationship to human concepts of gender before, but ‘him’ seemed the most fun when it came to stomping around an empty home and playing pretend. Willoughby wasn’t the only voice, he was just the one that lasted, that became more than just play. 

He thinks he can duel, swords of guns, that he's a deft hand with a bow and arrow, and an accomplished piano-forte player. Reality might say otherwise. Only having himself to please and impress. Also likes croquet, cross stitch, writing by hand, pretending he knows what horses are and how to ride them,

The appearance of 'Willoughby' wasn't taken from the portraits, they didn't look like the humans and fae he saw scavenging in the inbetween, so he took the softness, delicate features, and incredibly pale skin, to be an art style. It's never occurred to him that his human build and appearance is incongruous with the clothes, the language, the character.

Realizing their opportunity, their position, Will decided to change up how they were living and existing. Why scrounge around endlessly for survival when he could build something better for himself. Sell what he found. It wasn’t unheard of, he saw and ran away from numerous scavengers from other realms looking for goods to sell or use. So he decided to do that. You can find him at antiques fairs, flea markets, car boot sales, bring and buys, anything and everything where he can set up a little stand and sell the crap he’s found. 

Overtime, he realized it’d be easier to find stuff worth selling if he could help it to get lost. Using the ability to move through in betweens - shadows and thresholds in particular - to start finding things to make lost, only to ‘find’ them later back home. And sometimes flat out steal stuff, cause it’s easier. 

Profoundly, deeply, lonely. Very isolated. Wants to gain connection, but is always acting and playing a part, so finds it difficult because people don’t react how he expects. For the sake of RP, if we’re rolling with pre-established relationships, we can bypass getting through that outer layer, and have a more genuine connection where Will can just be them. Not Willoughby Clay, human. 

Even alone. Will stays as a human. Stays as Willoughby. Sure, if completely alone he might dress a bit less reserved, but he will always look human. It is a choice, and a part of him. He started using his hobby/entertainment of a human appearance for work. People don't take inhuman fae seriously in his line of work, even others who also aren't humanoid by nature. Fae hounds, redcaps, cat sidhe, he'd been laughed at by more than one when trying to make deals as himself. Even if they can tell, and not all can, what kind of creature he is, it made a difference to be perceived as humanoid. It got respect.

[memento-morri-writes]

Hi Morri! Happy blorbo blursday!

This is a semi-unconventional ask, since it’s not about the characters that you’re writing, but what is your favorite DND or ttrpg character to play and why?

// @cryptid-s-wips

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR ASKING ME ABOUT D&D. This shit is my special interest, and has been for MONTHS.

Okay, okay, buckle your seatbelt. I have a lot to say about this. (Note: the only ttrpg I'm familair with atm is d&d 5e, so just assume everything I say is about that.)

This is going under the cut, because it's about 6 miles long.

My favorite class is rogues by far. They're just so awesome??? Like, not only do they have sneak attack (my beloved), but they also get so many amazing subclasses?? Like, swashbuckler, assassin, arcane trickster are all amazing. (I'm aware this is most definitely biased by my obsession with thief/pirate/etc. characters in writing, but idc. Let me live my dream.) I have at least 4 thief characters out of my 20 or so character concepts.

Aside from rogues I love fighters, because I love stabbing people (IN GAME, I SWEAR). I've yet to play a paladin, but that would also probably be up there because it's a good balance between fighting and magic. (Smite, my beloved.) Also, Oath of Vengeance is such a sexy concept.

I will say that Warlocks have some of the best concept possibilities, though. Just the number of possibilities. Did they sell their soul? Did they ask nicely? Did they have a choice at all? What is their relationship with their patron like? (For example, I have one warlock whose patron possesses them every so often, forcing them to do things they would never agree to do. When they come to, they've received new powers. It should be noted that they didn't ask for the pact at all. But I also have a warlock who has a decent relationship with their patron, and is very happy to have their gift, and uses it to help people.)

Also, it should be known that I have a tiefling obsession. Best race in-game, hands down. Idk, I just love them so much. The horns, the tails, the colored skin, I love it all. (It will come as no surprise that I have both tiefling rogue and tiefling warlock concepts.)

When it comes to my actual characters, I have WAY too many. (The current count for concepts is 20...) The one thing they all have in common is very complicated, always traumatic, backstories. I haven't played most of them (I've only played 3 in campaigns, and one more in a oneshot, but two of those campaigns got cut very short.)

Here's a pic of my character database that I made in notion:

My favorite characters on that list are Laverna (who I've had as a concept for 2 years), Zen (the warlock I mentioned, the one who gets possessed), Alarion (half-drow ranger who started out as a sorcerer concept, but I realized that was Not Right for him.), Avra (shadar-kai assassin rogue!!!), Asra (human fighter with so much shit in her background), Rook (half-elf pirate swashbuckler who makes his debut on Satuday!!!!), Sabe ("what life is there for a warforged with no war?"), Elira (aka Ellie, autistic former gifted kid abjuration wizard with a cat familiar), and the Feylost Bard (wandered out of the woods/feywild with no memories whatsoever. Has a very uncanny valley aura about them.)

Okay, I promise I'll shut up now, but if you want to read more about my characters, I made a post about them all here, which I just updated for this ask. <3

[crxwnguard]

AU 02: 'Dragon Age The Veilguard'

TAG: one more breaker of chains [datv au]

LOCATION: Katolis is home, but he's been traveling beyond the city-state all over Thedas for a year or two

OCCUPATION: head of Katolis' Crownguard & their first Chainbreaker

MAIN TRANSPORTATION: walking, riding horseback / dragonback (the latter only on Pyrrah)

BACKSTORY: Katolis is a city-state in the Free Marches, between the Vimmark Mountains & the Planasene Forest, roughly equidistant from Kirkwall & Cumberland. It is the only Free Marcher city-state to have the ruling position of 'king / queen'.

Soren was born with chronic respiration issues, which grew worse through his childhood until he was bedridden at around 6 years old. No treatments or healing spells fixed it permanently, at best only soothing the symptoms for a while. While his younger sister Claudia & mother Lissa did their best to tend to him & keep his spirits up, his father Viren desperately sought a way to heal Soren's chronic condition. A spell was found, but it was blood magic. It demanded not only rare magical ingredients, but blood from his mother... which Viren forcibly took from her. Though the spell did work, Lissa couldn't bear to be around her husband afterward & returned to Cumberland. Soren & Claudia were given the choice which parent to stay with. Soren chose Viren, because he'd just started to go outside again & make friends in Katolis, while Claudia didn't want to choose but Lissa urged her to stay with her brother.

Claudia showed quite an aptitude for spirit & elemental magics, but Soren had little, which only added to the cold distance his father now showed him (blaming Soren for the blood magic Viren had performed & the resulting fracture of their family). Soren grew healthier & stronger by the day, soon starting to train for Katolis' Crownguard, though none of his efforts seemed to make a difference - even when, as a teenager, he not only became the Crownguard's youngest member in its history but also won the Grand Tourney. He got to know King Harrow's sons as well, Callum & Ezran, though the former was the king's stepson. Envious of the open fatherly affection Callum was nonetheless shown by Harrow, Soren would often bully & tease the younger boy. Still, it wasn't as deep as hatred, since he did help in Callum's attempts to impress Claudia. Tragically, King Harrow was assassinated by a small group, mostly Dalish Elves, who sought a stolen High Dragon's egg. It wasn't Harrow who was the true thief, though, but Viren. Callum, Ezran, & Rayla - one of the assassins - discovered the baby inside the egg was still alive, despite attempted magical experiments, & took it from Viren's chambers. They escaped into the Planasene Forest; Soren & Claudia were sent after them, with Viren giving Soren a secret order to kill the princes (as his father intended to take the throne instead).

When they caught up to the group, the egg had hatched. They tried to convince the princes to come home with them instead, but were unsuccessful. While the group escaped them, Soren and Claudia instead captured Corvus, a soldier sent by Katolis' General Amaya to protect the princes. Upon taking him to the nearest town, they discovered it was being swooped by a newly-matured Highland Ravager (who would later be named Pyrrah). He attacked first, & downed her after she retaliated, but when he & Claudia went to collect her - hoping to bring her back to their father in lieu of the Vinsomer dragonling (named Azymondias) - she was still alive & fought back. In the struggle, Soren was thrown against a boulder & paralyzed, with other wounds as well. Pyrrah flew off & escaped. Claudia delved into the blood magic Viren had begun teaching her & managed to heal the paralysis, though some other injuries remained. They returned to Katolis with only a severed piece of Pyrrah's horn... only to find that Ezran had gone back to Katolis, & taken his rightful place as his father's heir. Viren was locked in the dungeon, but Ezran decided to let Soren & Claudia go free. Their father, however, was still livid at his children's failure, even shouting that it didn't matter if Soren could've died so long as Claudia had the chance to steal back Azymondias.

Ezran did step down for a time, out of conflict over what was best for Katolis, & Viren crowned himself king. Soren, meanwhile, secretly helped break Ezran out of the dungeon, after which Corvus (who'd grown more amicable after Soren freed him from capture while fighting Pyrrah) escorted the errant king out of Katolis to help Callum, Rayla, & Zym. Viren, meanwhile, decided to march the kingdom's forces into the Vimmark Mountains - intending not only to steal Zym again but to then turn eastward to lay siege to Kirkwall, in an attempt to expand Katolis' influence. When Soren saw the kinds of spells being cast on the soldiers, saw how Viren expected him to willingly submit to a blood-magic transformation for the mage-king's ambitions, he left... despite Claudia begging him to stay, not wanting her family to split again.

He rode nonstop to where Zym, Ezran, Corvus, Callum, & Rayla were sheltering with Zym's mother (a fully matured Vinsomer) in the Vimmarks, to warn them of what was coming. They eventually decided to stay & fight, with the aid of a couple Dalish Elf clans, fellow 'deserters' from Viren's army, & even some other dragons in the area. It was a fraught battle, but they triumphed... though Viren & Claudia were left unaccounted for. Soren aided in tending to the dragons who'd been injured, recognizing how much better it felt to be helping them. Soren returned with the others, & the slowly-healing troops who'd been controlled by Viren, to Katolis.

For the next few years, they rebuilt & recovered with Ezran on the throne & Callum serving as High Mage, even establishing a certain understanding with the dragons of the Vimmarks & beginning to mend relations with both the Dalish Elves & neighboring city-states. (On a lighter note, Soren won the Grand Tourney for a second time.) The fight with Viren, however, exposed his connections to the Venatori & other blood mages. To help push back against them, Soren was named the first of Katolis' Chainbreakers - an elite group of soldier-adventurers tasked with protecting endangered dragons & stopping blood mages across Thedas. This has been brought up in whispers throughout Tevinter, though generally it's accompanied by doubt that one southern city-state could do much to disrupt things.

Pyrrah, having experienced his efforts to change, insisted on following along with him when he ventures out. Soren regularly tries to find somewhere for her to hunt while causing as little damage to anyone living nearby, or at least to find treats for her where he can. In return, for longer journeys she allows him to ride on her back most of the way. He does still have obligations as a Crownguard, & periodically returns to Katolis, but otherwise can be found almost anywhere in Thedas.

[lunarbard]

I've been working on a personal ttrpg project for well over two years now, but it's only been since around summer of this year that I've really honed in on what I want out of a ttrpg that I haven't been able to find in existing games.

My goal for this game has been to make a system, primarily for my personal group, molded to how I like to run ttrpgs & how I like to play them. This has come with several realizations; like how group tactical combat / combat as sport and purely associative decisions/mechanics don't play well together, at least in what I can design at the moment.

And I'm basically running my ideal game and playing a character who's coming out ideally between my two games.

For the latter: thanks to a fantastic DM, Brigid, the fighter I play on Sundays in the Order of the Fallen Acorn, has developed a reputation as a hero. Some of that has been purely chance - like a crit success on a death save and a critical hit to win a duel- but a good part has just been playing her to the world rather than a character sheet, and taking heroic opportunities when they present themselves. Brigid's reputation in the party didn't start with crits; it started with her jumping off a small cliff to impale a zombie bugbear with her greatsword. Even with the aforementioned duel, she started it to give the wizard space to escape.

Brigid also has been 98% produced by the results of playing at the table. Her backstory gave her trajectory with the party, but I hadn't even realized she was depressed & trying to die in battle until five sessions into playing her. Her shift from "already gave up her soul, here to take on sin so the party won't have to, especially murder" to "we are all equal and I will fight to save any life I can" came about from two campaign moments that made her change perspective. I could never have imagined Brigid being where she is now when I first came up with her - and it's only made me more skeptical of any game asking me to define my character's arc before we even start.

For the former: when I started a new 5e campaign at the beginning of the year, I expected it to end up combat-centric just as a consequence of being in 5e. But many sessions later - and having stumbled into some good campaign design half by accident - the party has nailed the approach I love to run for. They are heroic and want to help/save people, but are also wary of their foes and prefer to rely on avoiding any danger they can with their wits. It's the perfect blend of valorous and crafty that fits the genre of play I've been craving in ttrpgs.

The party also hit the perfect composition - EK fighter, ranger, rogue, paladin, and divine warlock - for magic to have the right feel. Nearly everyone has a little bit of magic and can interact with it, but the world's magic still feels strange and, well, magical.

I am sorta wrestling with the system in both cases (with Brigid because combat is a necessary, dull evil, as ironic as that is for a "fighter;" and with my campaign because a good part of mechanics we're using are homebrewed to fit the dungeon-crawly game we're running). And that's why I've been working on my own game.

Believe me, I've scoured ttrpg spaces for an existing game that fits what I want from it.

4e is too disassociated.

3.5 is a mess of math, having played Pathfinder: Kingmaker + Temple of Elemental Evil (the crpg) and run a several-month Starfinder campaign.

I despise thief skills & similar in pre-3rd edition D&D. Any mildly extensive homebrew I try to make of a D&D edition will inevitably result in filing all the classes down to "fighter" and "magic-user," then deciding everyone should have access to magic and losing even that.

Every PBtA ttrpg close to medieval fantasy I've found has some mix of playbook nonsense (character arc-based playbooks, disassociated / plot-control mechanics)

Classless OSR that hits some of the vibe tends to be non-heroic

My second draft is sort of PBTA-adjacent, using the general 2d6+Stat resolution method with 6/7-9/10+ result bands and five attributes (Strength, Agility, Finesse, Wisdom, and Charisma).

Each character has a small set of talents, which are basically traits that let you roll one additional d6 (max) in a roll and take the highest two if they apply.

Weapons & other significant items get a set number of beneficial traits based on their bulk. So a bulk 2 spear might have "greater reach" and "usable like a quarterstaff" as its traits. All weapons also deal the same damage (1d6 base), and armor is trait-oriented, rather than bearing any straight mechanical benefit.

Magic uses a pool of spirit dice for GLOG-style spellcasting (available to all characters). There's a luck point system to modify rolls or call for a small benefit in a scene, inspired by some moments in my recent reread of the old Deltora Quest books I loved so much as a kid.

I'll probably post more on the system as I work out quirks and get its procedures properly written up.

[johnnytl]

Mausritter The Estate: Session 1

I'm running a campaign of the Mausritter adventure The Estate so I thought I'd run through the events of each session here just so I can have a record of them.

There are five player characters in this campaign:

Pock Gnitnatter, Former noblemouse.

Poplockrockstop "Rock" Pipsqueakpippop. Ex-gang member.

Odette Halva, Farmer who desperately wants to be an adventurer.

Mortimer Grant, Bookish mouse who wants to see the outside world.

Erin Thorne, Daring trap thief.

The setting for this campaign is a sprawling countryside estate. Events take place in the buildings and surrounding nature of this estate.

Some relevant backstories here. Rock is an ex member of the Bone Gang, the local gang of rats around the estate. Having escaped a life of crime they've left behind a brother who has continued down that path. Louie Two-Knives is a member of the Bone Gang who has been seen around Brickport, the main settlement in the campaign. Two-Knives is a family name which comes from the heirloom knives they own, Louie has one and Rock has the other.

Pock used to be a noblemouse in the farming community of Brambletown but has since lost most of his money. Looking to reclaim his standing he has joined with this group. He has a particular son who has joined the following of one Reverend Goldenfur.

This group came together due to a series of increasingly desperate advertisements from Odette for a group to go adventuring with. Everyone else joined for their own reasons. Money, safety, or glory.

The town of Brickport lies underneath the main building of the estate, spanning the length of an underground stream. The group is talking with two guard, Nibby and Canon, who want them do do something under the condition that they keep anyone important from finding out. As it turns out, they've lost the key to the gate into Brickport. While the gate can still be opened and closed, the padlock that locks it is stuck shut until the key is found. They promise the group 300 pips for finding the key, 500 if they can do it without anyone important finding out. After some cajoling Canon also offers to throw in a magical(?) sword as well. The gate guards tell the group the route they took before realizing they had lost the key. They also mention they had walked by another guard on the bridge named Ol' Jim.

The group splits of to explore. Pock to the mayor's office, Odette and Erin to the Glow- the local marketplace, and Rock and Mortimer head to the bridge. Pock, Odette, and Erin walk past the chapel, formerly devoted to the Mother, it now hosts part of Reverend Goldenfur's following who are preparing their congregation for a pilgrimage to the Chapel, the followings centre.

Pock gets an appointment with the mayor, Audrey Pipp, an extremely stressed woman dealing with the fallout of many disasters. He discovers more about whats been happening in Brambletown. Queen Madriga has gone mad and locked herself away in her castle. Meanwhile, monsters are attacking the citizenry. He also immediately tells the mayor that he has heard rumours that the gate key has been lost. The mayor offers 100 pips for a report on the situation as well as mayoral writ for free lodgings and a beetle for agreeing to look into and resolve the situation in Brambletown.

Odette and Erin interrogate the people in the marketplace and eventually discover that the guards were seen with the key at the marketplace and it had not been lost there. Erin also discovers rumours of a Faerie Queen who has been messing with peoples sense of time within the building above.

Rock and Mortimer find Ol' Jim and ask him about the guards. He recalls that they walked past him on the day after a huge storm had swept over the estate. He recalls they had the key on them when they left. He also mentions that a lightning bolt hit a tree outside and he's heard that the tree is still smoking. Ol' Jim figures out that the key has been lost and offers to get some discreet help, for a couple of pips. Agreeing to that offer, he says that he'll get some guards together to sweep the residential area of Brickside. There have been reports of pickpocketing and break ins in that area. Given the key has a bounty on it if returned to the mayors office, Jim believes someone must have stolen it. He'll have some information ready in the morning.

Pock bargains the mayor's writ into a proper meal and bath at the local inn, the Tinbox, and the group meet Jim in the morning. Jim gives them an area that the thief likely operates in and Erin inquires about the rumours of the Faerie Queen. Jim's heard rumours of the strange time phenomena but also mentions that faeries tend to stay outside the buildings.

Investigating Brickside, Rock is grabbed from an alleyway by the thief. It's the thief, Louie Two-Knives, and he's after the other knife. The group manage to fight Louie to a surrender. He guides the group to his stash, but the key's not there. Laughing, he explains the key has already been sent away and is now in Goadholm. Goadholm is a seedy place southwest of Brickport where the Bone Gang's hideout is located. Rock forces Louie to give up the other knife and decides to let him go. There are still a lot of stolen goods left in the stash. The group decide to return the property to it's rightful owners, (except for a nice bit of cheese).

Pock exaggerates Louie's abilities in his report an the guards get off with a chewing out but nothing more. The guards, deciding it's best to get in good with the heroes of the hour, give the party the magic sword. The sword is indeed magic and it is given to Erin, allowing them to remove one condition whenever they deal critical damage.

The group now has to plan their next move. Go to Goadholm and find the key, or find a new padlock and key in the house above.

[smallblueandloud]

YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR THE LITS AND HERE'S WHY

the librarians (2014) is a tv show about The Library, a magical tardis-like space intended to safely store magical objects + their history. The Librarians are the group of people responsible for protecting the library and discovering new magical artifacts that tend to pop up and make trouble. it's a delightful show full of found family, tropey goodness, and hijinks! if you're a fan of leverage, this show was ALSO made by john rogers and dean devlin, and christian kane is in the main cast :D

the LITs (librarians-in-training) are three of our main characters and they're wonderful and perfect and prime OT3 material and you should vote for them!

CASSANDRA is a burned-out former gifted kid whose specialty is math and science. her parents pushed her math skills until her terminal illness and resulting/comorbid neurodivergence made her realize she had to put herself first. she's a subversion of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope (she's manic-pixie-dream'ing herself), happy flaps when she's excited... oh, and did i mention she's canonically bisexual? in the episode where they turn into fairy tale archetypes, she's prince charming ;) cassandra is a great librarian because she seeks to understand what they are archiving and she is always questioning whether they should actually be hiding magic away or if their job is to spread knowledge and awareness!

JAKE is an internationally-acclaimed art expert who, before the show's first episode, had never left the county he was born in. feeling obligated to his dickhead dad and understanding his responsibility of inheriting the family business, he got all his degrees online and kept his passions secret. one of his most pivotal episodes involves facing down a clone of his father literally made out of lies and telling the truth about who he is. (along with being played by christian kane, his backstory's compatibility with eliot's led to the popular headcanon that they're twin brothers.) jake has defeated multiple enemies via translating classical poetry and once infiltrated a college by literally just pretending to be an expert architecture professor (and it WORKED).

EZEKIEL is the team's tech expert and world-class thief. although he claims not to be a team player, he's actually the best at having everyone's backs. the fandom's favorite episode of the show is the one where he gets stuck in a time loop of protecting his team and is finally forced to admit to himself that he cares about them :') and his team sees this! and they finally understand! in terms of librarian-related bona fides, he's the librarian who knows their collection best -- he's put a lot of effort into figuring out how to use the library's existing artifacts in conjunction with technology to make them even more useful!

for those of you who've watched leverage, i know we're spoiled with the leverage ot3 but these three are also a very strong subtextually-polyamorous relationship! the show literally shows us, time and time again, that these three do NOT function as good librarians without the other two together -- and that the literal world suffers when they're not working together.

also this show should advance even past the first bracket because it's a show called THE LIBRARIANS based off the movie series THE LIBRARIAN and the show's favorite running gag is someone getting suspicious of the team asking for access to the bank's vault or classified government secrets or whatever and asking for their credentials, the team saying "oh, we're the librarians" and the person going "oh yeah okay makes sense" with absolutely zero follow-up questions. vote for the librarians-in-training!!!!!!

[thelandswemadeofpaper]

Before the Plot Tropes

A Greater Conqueror

Reincarnation of an Legendary Figure (An Celestial Guard? Hero? Keeper? Chosen One? Cursed One?)

First Meetings.

Failed Quest

'Just So' Story: Kinda...origins? (Of the moon? Winter? A creature? Why the sky is blue? You choose).

An ancestor that lives through his descendants.

A dispute between founders of a place/organization. A dispute between lines descendants of siblings.

A mysterious city of the past.

A character sealed for decades, even hundred of years. A sealed hero? Maybe self-sealed? Guarding something? Who sealed them?

Founders in general (also, what is their origins/backstory? What lead them to found whatever? A Hidden Kingdom founded by refugees or former slaves for exemple).

The Beginning of Something?

Origins in general (of a clan? a power? a kingdom? magic? a race? a person?).

Some fuck up the atual characters need to fix. Can be more personal, like its your Ancestor's fuck up.

A familiar foe, enemy to your ancestor/parents. Which one is the right or the wrong? Both? One cursed another? Sealed? Betrayed? For a good reason? Your antecestor fucked up. (Cursed someone or an group/family? Started an eternal winter? Released an creature? Stole an McGuffin?)

Someone did something considered impossible (survived something? Went to a Forbidden Place? Used a weapon? Touched a cursed thing? Exposed to a thing?)

A character is compared to a another (either so they wont take the same evil path, privilege, the former ruler is better...)

The hierarchy of the land changes a lot with time (like a Family that previously was the Ruling one is now a subordinade). So can the landscape.

The 'First' of whatever: wielder of power, ruler, dragon rider, bloodline, patient zero...

Take a good look at your world and start asking questions, How to begin with. If they have dragons, where they come from? O how they tamed them?

The Predecessors (of the current leaders? heroes?). If there is something like a competition, there will be the former winners.

Creators of something (Power? Kingdom? McGuffin?)

Backstory: A Mysterious Past that eventually catched up.

A Nation created by refugees? By exiled prisioners?

A tragic romance or friendship between the founder (or an hero) and a Villain.

A love triangle with Villain, Hero and an Priestess Archetype

A dynasty with Divine Heritage (good or bad)

A rivality between lines/folks/kingdoms (maybe the reason too?). Could it be an betrayal of their - at time - leaders? Thief? An Insult? An refusal of cavalary?

A group of legendary warriors.

A thing that ended (order? clan?) and the heroes will probally bring back.

A being/person (or more than one) who gets reincarnated a lot of times. Reincarnation Romance?

An ancient immortal manipulator who is behind A Lot Of Shit (capital letters needed)

Legendary Hero betrayed and turned into an Mysterious Villain/Cynical Anti-Hero with an secret identity.

Legendary Ancient Figures and their relation to the actual characters.

The kingdom/organization was founded on an lie.

An Revolution/Rebellion

Legendary Hero has his own redeemed Villain.

A clan starts/creates something

An Ancient Immortal Evil

A fallen legendary kingdom of the past. Maybe the remains split into the 'modern' kingdoms?

The fall of an hero/rise of the villain .

An massacre/purge

An Ancient Tragedy that is totally different than the one in the history books.

An character's backstory give him/her an bad/cruel reputation, but the story is far different than the real one. (An murder can turn into suicide or have an good reason, they could sacrificed their reputation to protect another person, to hide an secret, being an silent scapegoat, rebelled against the Kingdom's corruption or framed, he killed his friend because as asked to)

An Great Failure.

The Legendary Hero is an fraud or the actual villain.

The story of the parents/grandparents of one of the characters.

How the world (or an land) became chaotic. Like...there is a Eternal Winter? Then why and how.

An legend/tale of an fictional folklore/mythology that is associated to the main plot.

Two siblings became enemies (and their lines too)

Anything related to an line/family really (an curse? An ancestor? An system? An deal? An conflict?)

The story of an folk (past leaders, migration, part or inaction in an war, how they got their lands, refugees, stolen lands (places in general) and goods, extermination). An conflict with another folk (forced to share land, prejudice, envy, rulling class, suborninade folk)

The start of a Noble House, Clan, Family or whatever.

Maybe the return of those people after they were exiled from their lands? Or driven out? Or they went in search from something? They run away? Who is living on the land now?

If the race is more magical, explain their magical origins.

Why is a folk discriminated against? Why one is considered superior or inferior? Why two Kingdoms or Families hate each other?

The goverment tries to hide the origins of a important person or discovery because they belong to a marginalized group.

Two characters are revealed to have a past.

You have to fix an mistake the hero group did (well-intentioned maybe? Stole an magical artefact from an Ancient Being/Tomb/Cavern and its pissed now? Or false accusation that got someone punished - like losing an position - has to be corrected? Settle an argument between two Rulers/Kingdoms/Factions over a Very Old Conflict? A thing your Ancestor did? A wronged enemy has a good reason for waiting revenge?)

While the 'mystery' and fishy things about the society and world you live into is pretty cliche thanks to bad YA, it can be very good if done properly.

Ghost Story: How did a undead character died? Maybe they are trapped in the limbo?

[stormvanari]

Name: Darian Vernworth

Occupation: Head Witch of the Illusion Coven (NBI Era), engineer, daredevil; thief (pre-DoU)

Age: Early 40s

Pronouns: He/Ze/Zir

Relatives: Adrian Graye Vernworth (twin)

Alma Mater: Unknown

Coven: Illusion

Likes: Steampunk, stunt performances, engineering, hoodies, joyrides, fruit-infused water, pranks

Dislikes: Those titandamn Basilisk experiments, Adrian being an asshole, getting spoiled (in terms of media like crystal balls), his tail “betraying him,” being outsmarted by Loopy

A former thief, Darian Vernworth is one of the New Boiling Isles’ Coven Heads, specifically as the new leader of the Illusion Coven. He is also a basilisk, who once relied on heavy evasion to avoid the Emperor’s Coven for ~30 years, after their raid at his former home. Most of his knowledge is solely based on human books bought from a market, especially the engineering ones. It helped him develop his signature tail prosthetic.

While Adrian threw his identity as a basilisk out the window, Darian did not.

——————————————————————

Backstory: There was once a place near the center of the Boiling Isles that Basilisks used to thrive in. Among them were twins Darian and Adrian (the former is a month older than the latter): the two used to sneak to the nearest town and steal items to liven their home more. Part of this activity was suggested by Adrian, because he was tired of eating the same food.

When the Emperor’s Coven invaded their territory, both Darian and Adrian accidentally separated each other during a fight. The older basilisk hid inside a cave and casted an illusion over it to hide his spot from the Emperor’s Coven.

However, Darian was more concerned about where Adrian fled: when the coast was clear, he looked everywhere for the younger twin, but couldn’t find him in the end.

Until he heard the sound of airships flying over head.

•••••

It was then that Darian planned to follow them to facilities operated by the Emperor’s Coven under the illusory disguise of a coven scout.

For several times, he tried to free all of the captured basilisks (some were successful, such as letting III, IV, and Vee escape), but kept getting caught by coven forces. One day, when he came back for a soon-to-be-last attempt, Darian was shocked to see the rest of the basilisks(even Adrian) missing from every facility. Instead of fleeing, Darian got into a fight with coven forces out of fury, believing they have eliminated the basilisks for good. During the fight, one of the coven members managed to cut his tell via firing a spell at Darian.

Expecting to be on a wanted poster, he fled back to the same empty cave he hid in during his first escape from the coven. It would eventually become the basilisk’s secluded hideout for the next ~30 years.

•••••

During those ~30 years, Darian became an elusive cryptid who raided markets and stores at night for his survival supply (and hid the mess under an illusion). Moreover, Darian was searching for a tail replacement, as the original was lost to the raid years ago.

But there was a market that stood out to Darian’s interest: one that sells “human treasures.�� He will eventually buy a book on human engineering that will help him make a prosthetic for his missing tail. This goal led to an improvement of his evasion (and illusion) skills, as he did this on a daily basis. He also created handmade weapons back at his cave for additional support (plus casting illusion magic over his projectiles to speed up the damage).

Did I also mention that the earring Darian wears is part of a concealment stone he stole from a market? The earring amplified his magic, while the concealment stone transformed the basilisk into a witch that bears a striking resemblance to Adrian (he had to get a cloak to avoid raising suspicion).

From here, Darian frequently used this disguise for his next heists, which will eventually catch Adrian Graye’s (the Head of the Illusion Coven during this time) interest. This will become a test for Darian’s evasion skills honed over time.

It was a perfectly normal reunion that did not end in a wanted poster after an argument of conflicting ideas between the twins.

•••••

After the Day of Unity, Abomination magic has been looked down upon due to the Blight Industries’ contribution to the horrific event. As a result, many demanded an alternative to abomination prosthetics (Belos loyalists preferred to stick to this option, though). As a result, Darian became the last member to be appointed to the Titan’s Council: he wanted to take a chair because, being the arrogant engineer he is, wishes to show off his mechanical knowledge to the rest of the New Boiling Isles. With that, he brought up the idea of illusion prosthetics, by left space for abomination-engineered ones for witches who preferred to gain accessibility with the latter.

In addition, Darian’s position allowed him to make friends, especially a young prankster who took the Abomination chair, and have a better lab to move his work into afterwards. Moreover, Darian began to oversee a rising industrial age of his home.

During breaks, the basilisk makes visiting arrangements for his twin when they both have the chance together. They try to piece back their relationship slowly, even though Adrian is hesitant due to their argument in the past. Darian also took on a new activity that involves performing stunts.

——————————————————————

During Duels: Although he is an engineer, Darian has shown front-line competency with illusions. As previously implied, he is very evasive and athletic. In other words, he is more active in battle than Adrian.

His prosthetic tail is his signature weapon: it can shapeshift into various weapons, such as a mace, and his most notable is the head of a basilisk. The tail can also grab (onto) objects, either for protection or leaping across a platform.

However, Darian’s tail also serves as a weakness: it is easily vulnerable when extended at great lengths, as an opponent can grab a part of the tail. A common consequence is Darian being tangled by his own tail.

He uses his earring that functions similarly to Adrian’s, only that the former acts as a monocle and the lens has a larger shape. But, Darian upgraded it to cast miniature illusions of various blueprints and figures.

——————————————————————

Personality: Clever, Resourceful, Detailed, Inventive, Observant, Snarky, Melodramatic, Secretive

Darian is best described as a streetwise quick-thinker. He relies on observation in order to make his next move to overcome difficulties. Moreover, the basilisk has good photographic memory.

Although the size of his ego is smaller than Adrian’s, Darian does have a tendency to show off his inventions in an arrogant and dramatic manner. That’s why he took the Illusion chair of the Titan’s Council.

Darian likes to be detailed with his notes, but it can get confusing.

——————————————————————

Relationships with Titan’s Council members:

• Sonore Skual: The captain of the Demon Realm Expedition drags Darian to provide better defense for his ships. Additionally, Sonore is often tasked to keep an eye on Darian, who would wander off and come back with stolen items packed away in bags attached to his belt. This is a case during their travels to the Human Realm.

• Loopy Crulle: Darian is an honorary “Crulle” to her, otherwise they share one sibling-like brain cell. These Coven Heads love pulling pranks at each other, but Darian hates being outsmarted by the clown (he is the Head Illusionist, and “should be the one that outsmarts her!”).

[ren-c-leyn]

Happy STS Ren^^

So other than asking for an update for your projects in general (twice a week to be informed these days :D) I would like to know, are there any skills characters across your wips are good at but don't like to use for whatever reasons? And specifically in Shackles of time universe - is there a skill or knowledge that would be frowned upon knowing?

@writingonesdreams

Happy STS to you too, Dreams ^^ I hope you're having a lovely one, thus far.

lol, to be fair, if you didn't request a twice weekly update, I'd probably never think to them on my own. It never really feels like I have anything exciting to talk about, you know?

Hm, this is a tricky one. Here's your read more.

There are, there most certainly are, but I can't talk about most of the ones that came immediately to mind because of massive spoilers. Let us just say, The Plight of a Sparrow's cast have very, very complicated backstories and relationships to magic and the world state in general.

One example that I can, and have talked about, is Thistle from The Firewalker. She has a wide knowledge of both how to save and end lives, as she is a former thief/assassin and is currently a traveling healer. She doesn't care much for poisons, picking pockets, or breaking into people's homes and hates using it, but she is good at it. She can't quite seem to get fully away from her dark past, but she's trying to. Unfortunately her old associates and Valerian's enemies are not making it easy.

I imagine Silver knows how to poison people, with her knowledge of herbs and wild plants how could she not? But it never comes up and she never uses it, and that makes sense since she follows Cordial. Cordial's law of hospitality forbids the harm of hosts or guests after food or drink has been shared. Which means she'd probably get some divine punishment for it if she poisoned someone, and whereas she has Eternity's magic, poisoned blades sound like more effort and risk than a bolt of magic to the face at a distance is. So, best to skip the poison and just make tea.

Sparrow, from The Plight of a Sparrow, has a lot of skills she either can't use because of the difference between her modern setting original home and her new fantasy home, and some skills from her past life and some knowledge about the game world she tries (and usually fails) not to use because she's scared about how everyone will react to finding out her full story. Though, the longer the story goes on, the more she questions if she really knew all she thought she did or not....

As for The Shackles of Time universe, none of the characters have skills like that, that I know of, at this moment. That's not to say there won't be, or that they aren't hiding them from me :/ My chaotic writing process is prone to surprising people, especially me. XD

As for knowledge that would be frowned upon in The Shackles of Time, I think that depends a lot on the region and culture you are dealing with, much like our world.

A knowledge that would be universally frowned upon is knowing how to break The Time Keeper's seals. If you let the Mad God out or open The Shadowed Gates, you're gonna be the most hated and hunted person on that world and nothing you do is ever going to make it up to them. Even in death, you will be maligned for as long as you are remembered. There may also be some lost magics from eras past that may be universally maligned, such as rituals like the one that made the Shadows and Shade-kin and a bunch of different undead monster types. The ancient magics are powerful, and not always nice, so using them without knowing what they are for or how they work can, and has, caused massive damage and long-lasting consequences. I don't have a whole bunch of the ancient magics fleshed out, yet, so that's my only example for the moment.

The rest would probably be on a culture by culture basis. Like say you could bind greater spirits to your will with a very powerful magic tradition, the wood elves would not let you anywhere near their forests since the greater nature spirits are very important to them, their culture, and their way of life. The Auroral Mountains probably wouldn't appreciate powerful fire-based casters since those mountains are literally the glacial/stone body of an ancient dragon and they don't want their homes to melt away.

So, yeah. It's hard to find a generalization for The Shackles of Time, partly because my world building is not as finished as it may seem and partly because the world building I do have is way more complicated than originally intended, and unfortunately my characters who don't like to use certain skills tend to like to try to bury those skills under 20 layers of secrecy and plot and sometimes don't even tell me about them until I'm halfway through a project and need to go back and foreshadow a bunch of stuff to make it fit right XD

Writing updates ~ None. So sorry, life and stress got in my way the last few days so I haven't had the energy/mental space to work on my writing. The only thing I can think of is I added two more questions to that moral quandary list for my dnd players.

I do, however, have something writing adjacent I was able to work on: The third follower celebration post. I finished and scheduled the second one to post, my writing partner loved it and so did my housemates. (I still find it cute and funny that they all want updates for the anniversary specials of a series they don't even read.) Then I got started on the third one. It's going to take a lot of work and some time, and it's definitely out of my comfort zone creative-wise, but it's turning out better than I expected ^^ Having a few difficulties with it as I'm working on it now, but I'll work them out eventually.

Thanks for stopping by, Dreams~! I hope you have a lovely day/evening.