Aethos/roleplay
From Tel'Laerad Wiki
The roleplay Aethos takes place in the channel #Aethos. The OOC channel is #Desthera.
Contents |
Basics
Aethos takes place on the world of Ter'Desthera (other settings may be used at the GM's discretion), which is largely a pure-fantasy setting of the ordinary proportion. Technology on Ter'Desthera is generally limited to pre-industrial simple machines, but includes rare instances of higher-order technology and magitechnology.
The Story Thus Far
(Logs excluded because I'm currently lazy. Maybe later) The original party began in the moderately-sized town of Vynroad, during the Festival of the Lady of Life. While the event was occuring, a strange astronomical event was witnessed, which harbingered an influx of energy which ended up destroying the town completely. The protagonists woke within the destroyed town, and escaped a number of indestructable (but vaguely described) monsters. On a related note, they had somehow aquired amazing super-wish powers.
After several interesting events in the woods (involving large quantities of nude women, but not in a good way), the party discovered that not only had the same fate befallen another town, which had a name but is destroyed now anyway, they had been asleep some forty years. Gadzooks, deus ex!
The party eventually arrived at the Shrine of the Echos, a huge structure containing an unfathomable amount of bound spirits. During their stay, a wandering monk, Brother Melodious, advised the party that they had somehow come into the possession of Aethic Magic, and ordered them to leave the Shrine in the morning. His advice was to seek the Temple of Aethos in the Daggermonts, warning that the Aethic magic would eventually kill them...(!!!!)
State of the Union
Gentlemen (and ladies), the state of affairs stands thus: one month has passed since the party (I made them do this using evil mind control which goes so far beyond railroading that it's not even funny) actually left the Shrine, headed for the Daggermonts. Currently, they are occupying the town of Neitgott, which is unique in that it is actually comprised entirely of tents. That is because it's the waystation for people who want to join a caravan to cross this huge honking desert. That's right, you've been marooned. If you want to play, you either have to join a caravan or stay in Neitgott for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. Enjoying their local theatre, which features two musicals, over and over. Both are opera.
Now then, this may sound like a lot of railroading- and it is, because you've got to go towards the Daggermonts or die- but I swear that it will end after that.
Can I play?
If you actually want to play this, you have two options:
1. If you were in the original party, and you want to keep playing as that character, you can do that.
2. If you were not part of the original party (or even if you were, and don't want to be that character), you may make a native character. A quick consultation with me will produce a reasonably realistic setting/background to fit your style.
3. You can import a character from another world, but you must check with me FIRST, because I want some restriction on little details. Remember that there are no barriers to extraplanar magic on Ter'Desthera.
Bios? You're joking D:<
Sorry D:
Don't worry, these will seriously take about three seconds to fill out. There is one for each option:
Old player:
Name-
Aethic Number- (What I assigned to you. If you have no logs, I GUESS I can look it up, grumble grumble)
Intrinsic effects- Did you get any special powers conferred on you?
Description- Blah (You can include other information, but that will be purely for your own use.)
New (Native):
Name-
Title- (Do not make this yourself. When you consult with me, I will figure this out. It's really kinda important)
Description-
Intrinsics- (If you have any special powers, this is the place)
New (Extraplanar):
Name-
Title- (Yes, you get one too. I'll figure it out.)
Description-
Intrinsics- (See above, and then above that)
Pertinant Backstory- (I seriously don't care how many kings you've slaughtered, not even a little. If you've got something in here which will be important to me as GM in regards to your character, put it here. If you tell me later on that you're the Dread King of the Dark Plane of Falafel, but it's not here, I'm not letting you use your dread mastery of falafels.)
If you have an actual list of spells you can cast (I don't require it, but it will keep me from calling shenanigans on you), make sure that you give it a label according to the list of types under 'notes' below. If it doesn't fit any of those, either ask me about it or just stick 'Intrinsic' next to it.
Bios Go Here
Name- Claire Deleon
Aethic Number- 8
Intrinsic effects- None.
Description-
- Claire is a nineteen year old girl, dressed in simple black clothing. Quite simple, she doesn’t look rich or well off in the slightest. Her hair is short, and dyed black, only reaching about to her shoulders, and looks unruly in general. A bit of the natural red from her hair pokes out, but it’s subtle. She stands at an average height, and has a thin, lithe build, despite having a bit of muscle on her. She has no visible weapons or anything of the like. Her gray, piercing eyes dart back and forth, almost as if expecting something to jump out at her.
Name - Lakhan
Aethic Number- 5
Intrinsic effects- Super Strength
Description: Needs to be salvaged
Name- La'Tien Thre Serolaan
Aethic Number- 7
Intrinsic effects- None at this time
Description- La'Tien stands at 5'8", and always wears a tattered brown hooded cape with what appears to be an intricately crafted armor underneath. His hair is well hidden under the hood, but his eyes are a shade of green that's almost refreshing to look at. He almost always has his walking stick with him at all times. it appears to be little more then the branch off a tree. It's amazing how it hasn't broken yet.
Name- Eos
Aethic Number- 7
Intrinsic effects- None, but being a ghost is probably worth a mention.
Description- A young man who appears to be somewhere in his late teen with long, gray hair that drops to his shoulders and covers his right eye at all times. He keeps himself wrapped in a cloak for less then cosmetic reasons, as maintaining a completely physical body with details is a pain, a blank template underneath is a lot easier. He has some tattered farm clothes underneath, but whether they're his or someone else's isn't all that obvious... His face is pasty, and he has a piercing blue eye, something else under his obscured one.
Name- Adam E. Hartholm
Title- Servant of Infinity, Ward de'Metric, Ward of Adam, Broken of Worlds
Description- A young man somewhere between his seventeenth and eighteenth years of life, slightly shorter than average and whipcord-thin. His features would be handsome if not marked by signs of a perpetual state of sleep deprivation, lending a sharp cast to his defined chin and high-thrust cheekbones. His skin tans easily, and his naturally curly black hair falls down to just above his shoulders. He sports the beginnings of a moustache and beard, though they are both little more than fuzzy growths at this point. His eyes are always sunken, even when sparkling with gaiety, and his general mien is one of frailty even though a close inspection of his body would reveal an admirable amount of the thin, corded muscles athletes tend to build up; he’s hardly a weightlifter, but he keeps himself in shape. His garb is rather outlandish, for Desthera, sporting as he does an extremely finely-woven yellow-and-blue t-shirt and a darker blue pair of long pants, though the quality of their make is more apparent to the touch than it is to sight. The material is very tear-resistant, or both garments would have gone the way of his tennis shoes some time past; his feet are now cradled by a pair of sturdy hide shoes. He commonly carries a single-strapped traveling sack slung over his back, in which he keeps a number of small slips of yellow parchment, written across with odd runes, as well as a waterskin and an exorbitantly embroidered white cloak. The numerous pockets evident on his pants are home to a digital watch with a broken wristband, a microcellphone completely out of juice, a portable music player dangerously low on power itself, a small number of peculiarly smooth but otherwise completely normal rocks, a small bronze coin, and a warmly-polished wooden marble wrapped in a finely wrought crystalline feather.
Intrinsics-
· Metric Magic: Gaian Flavor – Adam is used to working magic by internalizing, processing and exporting magical energies. He is constantly aware of his upwards power-handling limit, as such, as well as any alterations in the characteristics of the energies he is working with, but is subject to being utterly disabled by sudden surges in power while he is casting. Upon holding energies within himself for long enough, he can attune them to his own life-flow and use them to attempt workings normally too complex for his skill by using the induced affinity for the power to feel his way along the more advanced areas of the working. This is, however, very tiring for him, incurable fatigue increasing proportionately to both the amount of power held and the time it is held for.
· Gaian Magus: Lesritt – Adam’s consciousness is no longer entirely dependant upon his body, as his spirit-being expands itself beyond the immediate material world and creates a small, self-contained pocket dimension to store itself in. Both the expanded conscious and the dimensional space are referred to as “the lesritt”, and the dimension allows him several superhuman senses, mainly sight and smell, in which he perceives things normally hidden from most humans.
· Gaian Magus: the Sight – Adam can, with a conscious and deliberate act of will, channel his expanded consciousness out of his lesritt and into the material world, piercing all mundane optical illusions and most weak magical ones, as well as allowing him to see in low-light conditions and in blinding brightness as well. This ability does not inform him when he is being deceived by an illusion; he must guess for himself and activate it. Prolonged use of the Sight causes migraine headaches, and can if taken to extremes lead to bouts of unconsciousness, brain damage and heart failure. Innately magically-sensitive beings commonly get the suspicion that he is paying close attention to them when he is employing his Sight on them, even if he is not looking at them at the time.
· Gaian Magus: Scenting – though not truly a product of the olfactory sense organs, that is the best way Adam’s physical being is able to interpret the sensitivity to supernatural disturbances bestowed upon him by his lesritt. Always active, it informs him of the presence of overt magical workings and spiritual disturbances in the form of odd scents on the breeze; in areas of leyline-esque activity, wherein magical forces “flow” in a certain direction regularly, this sense is subject to such directional vagaries as being “upwind” or “downwind” of the event being detected.
· Chaos’ Scar: Madman’s Intuition – (see below backstory notice) Adam has a deep and intuitive understanding of the relationship matter has with itself. Note, this understanding is not knowledge, and he can’t just summon up random factoids off of the top of his head. Give him a lump of anything, however, and tell him to do something with it, and given enough time, he will figure out how to do it (factoring out risks and injuries to himself incurred in the experimenting, stresses placed on his mind and body in the working, and the absolutely horrible nightmares he’ll suffer for weeks after putting it into practice) and once he does he will never forget it. Each subsequent time he uses a skill gained this way, it becomes less time-consuming and less physically and mentally stressful to him.
· Chaos’ Scar: Stumbling Stride – Quite simply put, Adam can’t stand travel-based powers and spells. Portals, teleportations, time-space dilations, you name it, he feels it in the pit of his stomach and loses his lunch. Depending upon the power put into the act and the distance traveled, the symptoms can range from resembling a bad stomach bug for a few minutes to sending him into seizures. Oddly, planar shifts do not have this effect.
Pertinant Backstory- Because Harken is a flipping irresponsible asshole, Adam was exposed to a brief glimpse of the infinite permutations of matter and energy in the Gaian universe when he was some twelve years old. While you can tell that it was exceedingly brief, given how he’s not a vegetable and all, and while it can be reasonably assumed that he had no damned idea what he was looking at or what it all meant, it touched upon something within his lesritt, simultaneously blasting out of him the stunning potential as a magical prodigy he previously showed and prematurely spurring the development of his being as a magus on some several centuries beyond his fellows', effectively an artificial step forwards on the evolutionary chain. It’s a small alteration, really, but…
Name- Sylen del Karr'anath
Title- Servant of Fiennyl, Warden of air, Warden of water, Ward of the dance, Ward of Sylen, Knight of Fiennyl, Imbued of Aethos
Description- Sylen looks to be in his mid-twenties and stands at 6'7". He is solidly built, skin deeply tanned from the desert sun. His hair is very dark, almost blue-black, and cut fairly short for the sake of practicality. Long hair is far from useful in the desert. Hard, light-blue eyes look out at the world, the eyes of a man who has carried heavy burdens and knows that he will carry more until the day he dies. Despite this, he does not look sad, but determined.
The man's clothes are worn more for practicality than for fashion. Sylen is typically seen in a light-weight white tunic, along with long, dark-blue pants and a light-grey cloak. He is rather lightly armored, with only a chest covering made of tough hide reinforced with wood and some straps circling his arms. A scimitar hangs at each hip, and a sabre is slung across his back. All three blades seem to shimmer when drawn, seemingly distorted by heat.
Intrinsics-
Short-Range Teleportation-Sylen is able to use teleportation to instantly traverse short distances.
Razor's Edge-By applying Aeromancy, Sylen is able to decrease air resistance and bolster the speed of his blade attacks immensely.
Precognitive Reflex-A sixth sense of sorts, granting superhuman reaction time.
Divine Magic-typically memorized spells
Create Water- Uses Aquamancy to draw moisture out of the air to create water, a vital resource in the desert.
Mend- A spell used to mend broken objects.
Fiennyl's Will- The final judgment of the God of Death...
Backstory- Sylen del Karr'anath hails from a nomadic desert tribe dedicated to the worship of Fiennyl, God of Death. The second son of a warrior, he took quickly to the ways of combat, and was chosen by the tribe's Champion to be his second. The two got along well, and Sylen was content. However, fate cares little for its pawns; his superior was struck down in battle. Young as he was, Sylen accepted this as the will of Fiennyl, knowing full well the dangers of the tribe's life and that the same end could one day come to him. With this, he became the tribe's Champion of Death.
Despite his new status, or rather because of it, from that day on the man spent most of his time away from his tribe. As Champion of Death, it was now his duty to execute criminals, even if that meant hunting them down like game as they tried to escape. Sylen is currently pursuing one such criminal for the murder of a tribe mate, intent on washing the rogue's crime clean with their own blood.
S.L.I.M.E
Title- High Ward of S.L.I.M.E, Servant of Magic, Ward of Singularity
Description- S.L.I.M.E is a slime-creature, of a generally grey transparency. It is currently comperable in volume to a medium-sized dog, and shows no particular interest in ceasing growth. I would love to make a long paragraph about it, really, but if you're imagining a lump of slime which moves around a lot, you've rather got the picture, I daresay.
Intrinsics-
Thaumnivore: The slime-creatures can consume magic to sustain themselves and grow. This may be done either by soaking up background radiations, tapping the flows of active spells, or draining artifacts. Attempting to use this ability on certain higher-class artifacts will result in death.
Backstory: S.L.I.M.E was recently roused, along with many other slimes, in the desert west of the Daggermonts. Spurred to life by a sudden geyser of wild magic, the slimes were nearly all destroyed by native lizards. S.L.I.M.E was rescued (unintentionally) by Etho, Sylen and Lakhan. It now follows them, driven by the need to eat and grow, and possibly, just possibly, stirred by the strange longing for companionship which lies within every mortal soul.
Nah, I'm just screwing with you.
Name- Claris S(pring) Donair - NEEDS APPROVAL -
Title- Ward of Fiona, Servant of the Center, Ward of Nonluminary, Ward of Memoir, Broken of Memory, Branston Pickle. Okay, not Branston Pickle.
Description - Fiona appears to be in her early teens or late childhood, her child-like face holding an eerily somber and sorrowful look it it. Her frame is stick-like, lacking much if any curves that would be found attractive and looking overall feeble appearance, a main point of notice being her ocean blue hair that reaches down to her waist. A hint of haunting depression looms in the back of her glittering, emerald green eyes as if foreshadowing to something looming in the future.
Intrinsics -
Pertinant Backstory - Claris or as she calls herself, Fiona, is the favored vessel and sole communicant of a powerful Overlord who governs Corruption and Balance upon Vrtralux. She comes from a long line of magi, the fourth oldest on the planet, in fact, and was blessed with expertise over Elemental Water and Moonlight. A chronic illness that intertwines with the very fiber of her being has left her feeble and generally unhealthy, also generating a phenomena that retains the characteristics of undeadening.
Generic powers: Darkness - Able to draw forth corruptive energies from the planes of Murkworld an fashion it into single-use objects such as spears or swords, as well as open up Gates to consume foes themselves. Water - Able to manipulate the temperature, form, and flow of small bodies of water and moisture in the air. Healing - Able to draw forth healing energies that envoke reverse necrosis and cause wounds to slowly heal themsleves. Moonlight - Able to bend (Vrtran) moonrays into solid matter and craft short-term shields of excellent durability but little practicality, as they require maintained concentration to support them.
Notes of interest
-More pages about this area or notes may be added as time goes on.
-The closer one goes to the Daggermonts, the more difficult metamagic and reality-imprinting spells are. Within the Temple of Aethos, both are impossible.
-There are several kinds of 'natural' magic in this RP:
Titular- If you're the 'Warden of the Wyrbrook River', you will naturally have a degree of power over the river, and perhaps over any water you encounter. Etc. (Note that this form of magic encompasses any magic which is part of a character's being or requires no physical incantation or design - 'powers' are reflected in a title)
Linguistic (normal magic for mages) - This includes both incantations and runes, both of which alter reality by redefining it. This is potentially the weakest form of magic.
Metric - This is the alteration of reality via the re-direction of power along set paths. Much more difficult than Linguistic, but used in most enchantments. High Runic magic is actually a fusion of Metric and Linguistic technique.
Divine - Comes from a god. Bada bing, bada boom. Divine magic always costs something to aquire, but not to cast. Some divine magics can be aquired at a moment's notice (Usually healing magic) by a simple prayer to the relevent power. Others require rituals. Note that, by displeasing some gods, it is possible to have this ability revoked, some of the lesser gods cannot do so. One may pray to multiple deities for spells, but magic from your patron will cost the least.
(If you choose to utilize this form of magic, please make a note of which spells you would normally have ready, either because it's some form of healing which you have an infinite amount of, or else because you ask for it daily)
Aethic - Aethic magic is simply the art of creating a bridge between a material plane and Aethos, the Grey Lord's demesnes, wherein thoughts consious and subconsious entirely control the world. This method involves forming an object or force or spell in Aethos, then dragging it into reality. The effects can be absurdly destructive, even effecting the entire world. The downside? The 'bridge' is in your brain, and once you use Aethic energy enough, your brain MELTS. It's also possible to let nasties into your own head by accident.
-Can I just get Dynseal and pwn the world, lololol? : Technically, I guess you could. Realistically, that's not going to happen unless the RP takes a turn into storyline in which Dynseal is needed for something.
-What if I want to make a magical portal to another world? - Portals to other worlds are fine, but if you try to go yourself, you'll find it strangely impossible. There's an excellent reason for this, and I'm not telling you what it is.
-Do people die a lot? : Hey, I'm not all that big on killing players. It may happen naturally, just along the course of the RP, but probably not all that often. Unless you do something stupid.
-Did you know? There is a town in Ter'Desthera populated entirely by retired archmages in disguise. I'm not telling you which. Therefore, you should always assume that while you can PROBABLY kill that NPC on a whim, he might be able to sunder mountains. Yes, that one, the guy cursing his cow out for the lack of milk. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.