Alleyverse Character Discussion

[AonEne]

20 hours ago, Vasher212 said:

Along the way he became a rithmatist 

I'm not totally sure if it's possible to become a Rithmatist without having lived on their Earth, since as far as we know it has to happen by eight. Unless of course you use Hemalurgy. 

[18th Shard]

Good morning, afternoon, evening, or night, my fellow denizens!

It is I, 18th Shard (character: Xanas). You may not recognize the name (I have been a bit inactive due to a 2-year mission), but I was an early member of the DA - I created the symbol that is my user profile picture and the Disclaimer. I joined on page 6 of the original thread if anyone wants to perform a background check - though to be fair, my character didn't have much background at the time. 

I decided it is by far time to resurrect Xanas. And by resurrect, I do mean resurrect. @Voidus could you check for accuracy on the Void and Voidmaking? Thanks!

Here is what I am thinking:

Spoiler

80 Years Previous

Remember. Xan touched the copper in front of the large metal plate at the front of the lab. Memory surged through him. He remembered how to read again. He glanced up and read the plate.
“Do not look at laser with remaining eye. This side up. Shake well. Contents under pressure. This side down.”
Xan searched the coppermind for the log. This was the Eye coppermind, and it contained most of the records of events that occurred. Nothing today, he noted. He looked at the sensor beneath the plate. Nothing registered abnormally. Not today, his coppermind indicated. He made the note. Xan didn't think, not anymore. He hadn't since he had died. But when he was remembering, when he was touching one of the higher copperminds in the lab, he could almost remember ....
Memory faded. Xan's hands dropped to its side. Remember. Its eyes, glazed, scanned the room for the nearest copper. It grasped it. Memory surged through it. He remembered how to read again. He glanced up and read the plate.
Batteries not included. Not covered by most insurance policies. Side effects may include drowsiness, glowing...
Xan searched the coppermind for the log. Today's entry had been filled in. Not today, it read. He moved on down the instruction list. The Heart coppermind was next. He reluctantly relinquished his grasp on the metalmind. He walked across the room to where a blood purifying machine was running. Deoxygenated blood flowed through the machine's artificial heart. You needed the blood to keep clean and not coagulate if the spikes were to be preserved. If all the work that had gone into those spikes were lost, it would be... Xan couldn't quite conceive how he should respond, but with the spikes of Connection and Identity in his chest, and the Breath within him, he could almost imagine what he would have done before...
Memory faded. Xan's feet slowed without purpose. Remember. Its eyes, glazed, scanned the room for the nearest copper. It walked forward and grasped it.
Memory surged through it. This was a lesser coppermind, with mainly instructions on how to clean the area nearby. It carefully grabbed a glob of mistwraith muscles, placing them on the end of the spike in front of it. It turned the switch that diverted the blood into another tube, emptying this slot. It lifted the spike, careful not to allow the spike to come free of the mistwraith flesh. It rinsed the slot, translucent red water flowing around its gray hands.
Xan didn't think about feeling. It didn't think about where this spike came from or what it did. It didn't even notice the circle of Shardblades, stabbed into the stone in front of it. There were eight, each of a different order. If it had looked into the Cognitive Realm, it could have seen the eight deadeyes, standing numbly in the same spots. It could have seen the spikes, rammed into each of them, binding them to the man it once was. It could have seen the other two spren standing still, defiant, as if waiting, a spike in the eye of the inkspren and in the abdomen of the spren behind him. That one had once been bonded to a Stoneward. Xan didn't see them though. After all, it was Lifeless. It couldn't think. It just continued its task, as the coppermind had instructed. Remember. Remember. Remember.

10 Years Previous

Xan reached for the coppermind. Memory surged through him. He noted the wires that were deteriorating slightly on the lab’s systems, silently measuring lengths. He began to uncoil the loop of wire, keeping the coppermind against the skin of his knees. He braided the wire together, then dipped it in the plastic that he had kept liquid in the vat.

Behind him, he heard a clatter. He turned and saw a Blade fall to the ground. He turned to the coppermind, searching for the protocol he should follow. Check Linchpin coppermind database. He turned and started running for the Linchpin coppermind.

Halfway there, his memory faded. Xan slowed, but his pace brought him close enough to the coppermind to reach it. He tapped the memories stored there, a flood of information flowing in. Place in stone in center of room near Heartmind. If only one Blade left, engage warning fabrial on final spren.

He grabbed the Blade, noting it to be the Stoneward blade, and stabbed it into the stone pillar near the others. He flicked on the fabrial, and then sprinted back for the coppermind, barely making it in time before his memory faded.

He tapped his memory of peeking into the Spiritual Realm. He saw, again, that place within places, the time between times, connections spanning eternity, fracturing into the future, words in gold covering every surface. He almost grasped why he had done what he had, why he had killed himself, leaving behind this husk of himself. Almost. But not quite. He let go of the memory, and sat, looking at the dead spren in the stone by him. Tears fell from his eyes. He didn’t feel anything at the spren’s death, not really, but it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. He could almost imagine what it would be like to be one of those spren, to just one day break and die.

Memory faded.

Today

Xan checked the sensor. Nothing again, he noted. He started to turn, but the fabrial next to the sensor started blinking. He looked, with a hint of what once might have been curiosity. Well simulated memories seemed to make it easier to remember what it had been like when...

He'd missed it. A faint distortion on the sensor, so faint it was almost imperceptible. He turned up the sensitivity. Then did so again. And again. And again. It wasn't clearing up. What was this?

He kept increasing the sensitivity until he could see the Investiture in the trace metals floating in the air. The pattern, it was... What was that? It looked like something had been inverted from normal, an emptiness where his sensor should be reading. He flipped the colors on the screen. That's... that's my spiritweb. Inverted.

He checked the coppermind, almost frantic. Almost. It was time. This was the signal he was supposed to remember. He tapped all the memories that had been stored years earlier.

He turned to the metal plate that had been installed so many years earlier. His eyes glanced over the first line: “I set these words in metal, for nothing else will last.”

People had always wondered what the unwieldy disclaimer had been for. Surely no one could prosecute the Alleys and win a legal battle. They had never understood. These weren't warnings. They were instructions.

Push only labeled buttons. Xan pushed every labeled button.

Do not look directly at sun. Xan opened the sunroof, exposing the solar panels to the sun.

High in sugar and iron. Xan turned the knobs labeled sugar and iron to high. Liquid connection, like that once used by the Ire, began to flood into a small green basin.

Keep arms and legs inside of machinery. Xan turned off all system functions in the lab extremities, focusing all power to the vital functions.

He continued down the list....

Void where prohibited except where not prohibited. Xan turned off the Realmatic stabilizer.  He began to panic as darkness started to coalesce on the sensors. He started. This was real panic, real fear. Not memories. Real. What was happening?

Unintentionally lost connections may be collected at no extra cost. He poured the Connection from the basin onto himself. His vision snapped into all three Realms. Threads of Connection exploded out of him. Many of them snapped to the copperminds, and to the inkspren hovering on the edge of his vison.

Complimentary cookies will be provided for all non-living entities, free of charge. He picked up the atium spike - uncharged - and rammed it into his chest next to the other two.

Please keep all spren visible at all times. He held out a hand and began to summon the spren as a Blade. Darkness began to ripple around it in his vison. The spren started to shake, resisting the summons. There was something else there, something familiar, holding onto the spren, invisible even to his eyes. He felt the Blade fall into his waiting hand.

In case of emergency, ask for help from any of our non-existing help entities. He seized the threads of Connection attached to him and grasped onto the spot from which the drag on his Blade had seemed to emanate. He felt the ties grab hold of soemthing, strengthen, and began to collapse into him. He dropped the Blade, and it clattered to the floor. The darkness surged, ripping into the lab.

If all other methods of recourse fail, we extend our apologies. Xan screamed, and all went black.

 

Xanas gasped for air. He rolled onto his side. It had worked. It had finally worked. He dry heaved, adjusting to once again having a body. He had finally escaped the Void. The emptiness where even darkness was too light a word, where description failed because there had to be something for you to describe it. Some had thought the Spiritual Realm the source code of reality - but the Void was all the zeroes of reality's binary. It was the consuming vacuum, except consume made it sound like matter and energy were going somewhere.

Xanas seized the coppermind, seeking to draw in the records and memories he had made. Memory was so fallible compared to a coppermind. He could feel the investiture inside the metal. He pulled on it, and it... drained away. The metal drooped, loosing its shape a little. Xanas felt a seizing inside. What had happened? He reached for the table and stood. As he did, his hand brushed the fabrial on top. The gem shattered, dimming. Light extinguished. Xanas stepped back, wary. He turned to the metal plate, polished almost to a mirror's sheen. He saw himself. Grey, Lifeless. Eyes a deep black. A single dark, warped spike in his heart, unlike any metal he had seen before. And dark black lines, spreading faintly out from it. He stepped closer, still staring at his own face. Storms. He had thought he had made it back completely. I have. Mostly.

He turned to ask Tsarik what it had looked like on this side of the transition. He saw the Blade laying, still on the floor, point sticking into the ground. He peered into the Cognitive Realm, still barely visible from the perpendicularity that had formed here. He saw the dark inkspren, and the spike in his eye was now somehow darker. There was no light or even Tsarik's usual texture there, only a dark emptiness. And his other eye. Storms. Where it once had been, there was just a series of scratches, as if oil had been poured into a scratched plate and then frozen. Tsarik did not speak. Xanas began to weep. The other spren, they had been... acquired, but Tsarik, Tsarik had been all his own. He had bonded him long before he had ever seen a spike or even left Roshar. He had been the only real remnant left of who Xanas had been, once. Enough. There's no time to grieve. You need to identify what has changed, why the metalmind and fabrial you touched drained away.

...

Xanas dressed in an aluminum-lined, gray-white robe (it had once been an Elantrian's, who had embroidered Shao on the back - Xanas thought the Aon was appropriate). With aluminum-lined gloves on, Xanas carefully picked up Tsarik's corpse. He placed the dark black Shardblade into an aluminum sheath that he slung over his back. He didn't dare try bonding it. The others that  he had tried to bond had dissolved into the Void, along with every other Invested object he had touched. Spikes that had taken years to make, Awakened machines, all gone. Even the Aviar had lost all its Investiture, and then slowly died. He had figured out that aluminum allowed him to interact mostly normally with things, blocking the Investiture from getting in contact with him.

The tests he had carefully run had shown him to be Lifeless still, physically, but the darkspike in his chest somehow had stapled him back into his body. Whether his Cognitive aspect had been affected by his moment in the Void was debatable (he hadn't been the most sane before that experiment), but his Spiritweb had been entirely replaced. Where once there had been Investiture, now there was only darkness, an inversion of who he had once been. The souls that had been attached to his by spikes had been ripped off, leaving behind a mangled excuse for what had been a Spiritweb anyways, but this was worse. As far as Xanas could tell, he was now anathema to kinetic Investiture - but he needed it. He could feel, inside him, the Void, pulling on him, drawing him back. Like a twisted version of a Returned, he would need to consume Investiture to keep the Void from pulling him back, and he couldn't even compound or infuse anything anymore. He looked at the lab. There was nothing here he could use or would need anymore. He needed answers, and he’d learned all he could here. He pressed the self-destruct button and stepped out into the Alley. It was time to find some answers. He needed to find an old friend.

 

As far as character sheet goes:

Spoiler

Name: Xanas

Physical Characteristics: Lifeless, black spike impaling chest, black eyes, short-ish.

Investiture: None - but he does manipulate the Void - I will leave it up to you to determine how powerfully. He acts as an always passively burning Leecher, which slowly destroys investiture on touch. Low control over his Voidmaking abilities. Cannot gain any other abilities.

Skills: Genius intellect. Experience with most Realmatic mechanics.

Equipment: Deadeye shardblade.

Weakness: Requires ~1 breath equivalent of investiture a week or he dies. Cannot use investiture or be affected by it - no healing, no transportation, no Cognitive Realm.

Family: None (living). 

Home Planet: Roshar

Backstory: See above.

Guild: N/A (yet at least).

Psyche: Genius but can be unstable, particularly after spending time in the Void.

Personality: Once sarcastic, now far more somber.

Appearance: White-gray cloak lined with aluminum, Aon Shao embroidered on the back. Gloves. Black Shardblade in sheath on back. Gray skin/hair.

Theme Song: If he had to pick, probably Berlin by the Piano Guys.

Fighting Style: Tries not to fight unless he has overwhelmingly good odds. 

 

[He who goes DORIYAH!!]

On 12/11/2019 at 2:38 PM, Ookla the Roleplayer said:

I'm not totally sure if it's possible to become a Rithmatist without having lived on their Earth, since as far as we know it has to happen by eight. Unless of course you use Hemalurgy. 

Hemalurgy is a yes, however he doesn't know who gave the spike to him. He believes that it was the ghost of his mother, and is on a constant search to find the person in question.

[mathiau]

Hello, I'm currently writing my first character and I'm searching for a way to get him into the alleyverse without knowing anything about what it is, so I would like to know if it would be possible for the Nightwatcher to send someone in the alleyverse as their boon?

[+ZincAboutIt]

1 hour ago, mathiau said:

Hello, I'm currently writing my first character and I'm searching for a way to get him into the alleyverse without knowing anything about what it is, so I would like to know if it would be possible for the Nightwatcher to send someone in the alleyverse as their boon?

You could probably do it that way, but also, arrival in the Alleyverse can occur in many ways and is usually rather random. They could hook up with a Worldhopper caravan, for example, or just sort of... fall through a hole in reality  We've had all sorts of arrival stories. Some people keep it deliberately vague on purpose. 

[mathiau]

31 minutes ago, ZincAboutIt said:

You could probably do it that way, but also, arrival in the Alleyverse can occur in many ways and is usually rather random. They could hook up with a Worldhopper caravan, for example, or just sort of... fall through a hole in reality  We've had all sorts of arrival stories. Some people keep it deliberately vague on purpose. 

Ok, thanks you. This flexibility for the arrival stories is quite cool

[+ZincAboutIt]

10 minutes ago, mathiau said:

Ok, thanks you. This flexibility for the arrival stories is quite cool

If you want to create a crazy backstory on their arrival, please do. But also, don't stress yourself about it  

[mathiau]

I recently made a character on the Alleyverse and it was approved but it was not graded and I would like to know how much index point he has because from my point of view it could be anything between 100 and 155 before factoring the weakness.

My character sheet is here

[+Sorana]

14 hours ago, mathiau said:

I recently made a character on the Alleyverse and it was approved but it was not graded and I would like to know how much index point he has because from my point of view it could be anything between 100 and 155 before factoring the weakness.

My character sheet is here

He has copper feruchemy (30), expert scholarship (= the metalminds, 40), intelligent (30). That puts him at 100 before the weaknesses get factored in.

[mathiau]

1 hour ago, Sorana said:

He has copper feruchemy (30), expert scholarship (= the metalminds, 40), intelligent (30). That puts him at 100 before the weaknesses get factored in.

Ok, I had counted twice the the feruchemy (because of the medaillon)

[SingingMosaic]

OK, so gonna try out this text way of implementing spoilers I found in tech support, because the editor isn't screenreader accessible as far as I've found. *crosses fingers* If this doesn't work, this post is going to be eight miles long. Maybe literally.
Edit: Oh no help, I'm sorry, I either did it wrong or it doesn't work. Prepare your poor eyeballs... unless this isn't as bad as I think it is.

Second edit: Trying something...

Here's a bit of story so you can get an idea of my writing style and where I'm coming from, and backstory ideas for the character. I am terrible at names, they still don't have a name, poor thing, look at me being a typical human.
It's not necessary to read the story bit to get most of where I'm going if you don't want to/don't have the time.

They were raised blank on Roshar, or some of them called it later. Blank--paralyzed, but not paralyzed enough to be numb. At ten, the manor they were assigned to burned to the ground, something they would later suspect was no accident. They had been outside at the time, had looked up at the sharp smell of smoke to see flame pouring from the windows, and somewhere inside the stuttering remnant of a survival instinct called: "Hide, hide ..." before that proved too much effort, and it trailed away into silence. Numbly they stumbled through tattered sheets of smoke, whatever they'd been carrying forgotten, away from the open front of the building, back toward the tumbled ridge which sheltered it. There, a little further down from the house, they found two others--their father and the only other aside from them, who'd been owned by that family for some time, aging and fragile. She was covered in burns, huddled in a ball, staring sightlessly into the distance.
Several humans staggered out of the building. They could hear them searching around for all of their live property, until the head of the house, some minor Brightlord, what did it matter, told them sharply to leave. His wife, one of their children, and two battered servants could be seen staggering away with him. "If they're not dead, they'll still be here when we come back," was the last thing they heard him say, until the three of them were left alone with flame and stone and sky.
The next humans to show up were not the remains of the lighteyed owners of the house, but several varied humans they'd never seen before, who spoke together in words they didn't know. They searched the grounds, eventually finding the three of them where they'd hidden in the shelter of a few tumbled boulders, and led them away. The three of them were separated. They saw the gentle old one only one more time after that. She was probably too fragile for the kind of experimentation they wanted to do.
Several of them were brought to a temporary camp surrounded by a ring of tumbled rock and backed by a broken outcrop, full of strange objects and people with strange voices. They were provided simple but not outright cruel quarters--small, hastily-built, and functional, from what they could remember of the space later. A few others were there, none younger than they were, and only one older than the one who came with them. He had the delicate, outlined look of someone near death, a thing they would come to know in time. It seemed like the humans had hastily collected them, like they hadn't had much time. Like their window was narrow...
When the Everstorm rolled over, they were prepared for it, humans in their temporary structures, mute Singers in cages outside. A few spren did try to get close to them, but a slim, angular figure, its face obscured, quietly came out to meet them, unhurried, calm, as if whatever it knew had nothing on this. It raised its hands, distortions of torn reality pooling there, and snuffed them out like candle flames, moving around the sides of the cages, carefully holding the bars for balance. It let some spren pass and others it closed its hand over, catching out of the air with motions more carefully timed than fast.
The figure crouched, one hand against the bars of one cage, eyes on the sky. Spren fluttered around the figures within. Thunder boomed above, wind gusting erratically, cage bars rattling. Crackling sounds. Flashes of red light. Near pitch blackness. Jagged chaos, and then--a sudden energization, a lifting and opening like a rockbud opening for rain, a cool current of sound, and a sensation like bursting out of thick, sluggish water, ears popping, the world full of detail and definition. Senses assaulted by the storm and its heavy, discordant rhythm, taken for a physical sound at first, confusion, the sudden movement of information generating only more confusion.
The storm beginning to trail off to the east, some of them began to move, their father among those who stood up first. He was different, taller, more solidly framed, with short hair like a human's but heavier, and with eyes that flashed with determination. A few others huddled in knots in corners, their reaction different. And a few more stayed where they were, uncertain, preferring to watch and listen rather than act abruptly.
The figure beside the cage stood and turned to face them. Anyone else might have looked fragile with those bones, but it looked dangerous, like a blade designed for precision. As their father started to speak, it motioned for silence and spoke to them in measured tones, in a voice at once flat and curiously resonant, a sound they would later come to associate with unnatural noises. "The rest of your people are currently being gathered together, gathered to form an army to pit against the humans. Those doing the gathering, however, don't care about your conflict. Not the way you do." It gestured around them, toward the open land beyond, toward the sky. "They will flatten this place, the only place you've ever known, to get what they want. You they will mock by treating well, giving you your own possessions, your own space, and then hurling you at an army to die in droves. Someone rules even them, and he cares nothing for your conflict, and nothing for theirs. It's a tool to him. You, the humans, the spren, it doesn't matter. You're a way for him to get what he wants. And whatever he wants, it will not involve you surviving in any meaningful way."
It paused, looking over them slowly. "But this means nothing to you right now, does it? Oh, I won't lie to you. This fate isn't much better. But if you survive it, you might be something new. Something no one expects. Something that stands a chance of having the element of surprise against whatever it is that you want to tear down. Is it humanity? Will it be the army you'll inevitably see if you live? The system that created it? The one who designed the system? Ah, that one you may have no chance against. But where are you going to go? Face it. you have nowhere to go. Can any of you remember how we got here? Can any of you remember where the nearest settlement is? What is it full of? Humans? Will you take your chances with them, if you can find it? How many of you even know how to fend for yourselves in the wild? I killed the spren who would have led you, yes."
Into the following silence, their father spoke. "So we go from something you use to something you change," he said bitterly.
"Exactly," the figure replied, immovable. People were trickling out of the structures behind it, carrying equipment and talking among themselves. "Try to escape if you want. Struggle if you want. We have ways of keeping you senseless, that might be better than the state you were in. Everyone has set their plans in motion, all over the world. You, a lot of humans, and a lot of spren will just be casualties to those plans." It shrugged. "Whatever you do with it is ... up to you, in a manner of speaking, but not yet. The potential information to be gained here is bigger than what anyone wants." It turned away, speaking to some of the approaching people in their strange language.
Another familiar but different figure rose wearily, her coloration slashed through by ugly scars. "You aren't as organized as you want to think," she said. It was the first time they'd ever heard her voice. It was soft as worn cloth, crackling and smoky as if the fire still guttered in her bones. She spread her hands, looking utterly exhausted. "I'm here, after all. You have no use for me and you know it. I'm dying. This is my end, in another human cage." She closed her eyes and stood, small and forlorn in her narrow bones.
The figure turned back to them. "You're right," it said, something in its tone almost gentle, but not quite. "Very astute of you. If you were forty years younger... But you're not." It raised its hand. Something flickered, something that refused to be seen. She slumped against the bars of the cage and fell sideways. Her face, in the last moment it was visible, was smiling. And then she was gone, as if she'd never been.

Any of that can be changed to fit more in line with story. I'm not sure what all exists in the Alleyverse, so descriptions of abilities etc. are flavor text for the time being. And here's the potential backstory with variations. Also, I know that Roshar's current time is in the middle of fighting Odium, but do we have a set number of years since the Everstorm started rolling around the planet messing everything up for everyone? I could make them a touch older. Or not. Not doing so might make it interesting. Definitely open to suggestion on that one. Brandon says they grow up a little faster but die a little earlier than humans, but everyone's version of not much is different so I'm not sure what equivalent age this would make the character.

Raised on Roshar in the looming shadow of the Everstorm's arrival, their mother had been sold to make the family that owned them some money, leaving only their father and an elderly female aside from the humans, the family and servants. At ten, the manor was destroyed, the lighteyes fled, and they were picked up by a group of worldhoppers interested in experimenting on some other intelligent creature than humans. At the arrival of the Everstorm they were caged with roughly thirty other singers, a few almost too young for experimentation, at least two far too old, showing their lack of time to set their plans in motion. A few of them died attempting to resist, a few of them were rendered chemically or magically senseless to make operating on them easier, some of them went quietly, defeated and afraid. They were treated clinically and carefully; these people were intelligent enough to understand that unnecessary cruelty only damages your intended end result. They were interested in information for information's sake--at least, that was one of their motivations. They took them off planet for the time it took to go through with their experiments, they had no intention of drawing Odium's attention. A few that proved too young or too old were spiked for the ability to grow gemhearts. Most of the others died in operations designed to add traits or abilities to them. Four managed to survive that they knew of--one with enhanced physical abilities, much faster and stronger than before. He disappeared into whatever well-oiled machine their captors had come from. One had allomantic steel and iron. She was most often silent, but she was a fast learner. One they successfully gave several abilities to, some of which they never knew, and wore three different types of metalmind as well as being a coinshot. She was their most successful experiment. The last one (my character) was a sensory experiment, given a spike that granted them allomantic tin as well as one that increased their mental processing power. Their father's fate was unknown, if he survived they never saw him.
The other potential branch of this story has them as a proto Radiant by the time they fell into the Alleyverse. No oaths yet, spren following them around, a victim of different experiments, based on figuring out how much of their environment they could effect with sound. I don't know how many points that would be, especially since it could all go horribly wrong depending on what happens.
They were eventually taken out, under supervision, to see the world mentioned to them by the quiet maybe human with its precise hands and analytical thoughts, mentioned in the story section above. Sometimes stealthily, sometimes in disguise, they observed some of both the human and Singer armies from afar, occasionally saw Radiants in action, and once swore they'd seen one of their own using Stormlight. They were given a choice: Stay on Roshar, and fend for themselves, carving out their own path, or go with them. Go and see the universe, bound as part of a system, another purpose.
They chose the former, melting into the background, most often wearing workform. Listening and waiting, the only thing that had served them well so far. They met a few others like them--not experiments, but people lying low, unwilling to trust the too good to be true system that suddenly presented itself to their species, unwilling to trust humanity, remnants of another time and a lost people, or any combination of the above. These people taught them how to move quietly, how to disappear, how to pay attention, how to read through information and between lines.
Terrible magical conflict in one of the places a group they blended into had gone made reality thin, fragile, worn through in spots like threadbare cloth. One night, as they prepared to melt into the background again, disappear and find somewhere else to "pay attention" as they were calling it (it's accurate, just not complete), they stepped into a cooler patch, a spot where the senses gently fuzzed around the edges, where the shadows were thicker. By then, it was already too late to turn back, but they didn't know. Turning around and retracing their steps only led them deeper into the threadbare spot. One foot slipped off the ground and gently, soundlessly, they tumbled through space, through worlds, through the walls of reality made rundown by people who didnt understand just how far the ramifications of their actions extended. And finally came to rest haphazardly, lying half on their side, dazed in the cool dimness behind a nameless building in a city that exists between, outside of, maybe too far inside of, time and space.
In short, mechanically: a Singer with two spikes, I want to say one is brass and the other is steel, correct me if I'm wrong. Zinc metalminds and vials of tin. However, I'm not sure we have any confirmation hemalurgy works on people who aren't human, though we know it can take from them so I figured it might? Anyway I would understand if you think that wouldn't work out to be on the safe side.
Or: proto Radiant Singer with spren following them around nudging them and stuff, have not yet decided order. Probably latched on and rode the crumbly universe hole to the Alleyverse with them.

Any resemblance to persons or organizations already existing in the Alleyverse is (kind of) unintentional. By this I mean I definitely drew inspiration from things I'd read, but as I don't have a complete picture of anything, that's where the resemblance stops. It can either be left mysterious, or left open for people to interact with/know about them past or present, given some conversation and chewing over ideas. The figure in the story bit wasn't inspired by anyone specific but more by ideas that percolated through my brain as I read. And any and all of this may be torn down and reworked depending on what happens in the creation process.
I've been fleshing out their personality, skills and weaknesses too, doing little what would you do if mental exercises and stuff, but not going into that yet... We don't need another century of text! lol
I think this has been longer than most of, if not all of, the essays I have ever written. To anyone who stuck with me this long, I might find at least a bit of a kindred spirit in you. To anyone who didn't, who skipped the story exercise, it's all good. Short and sweet is often better than holy why all of this text, I've just never quite gotten the hang of that. Though I promise I don't drop this much text on someone in an interaction. That'd break the flow in most cases.

Edited March 3, 2020 by SingingMosaic
I'm trying one thing to fix it and properly collapse things, if it doesn't work, I won't mess with it until I find out why it broke.

[+ZincAboutIt]

3 hours ago, SingingMosaic said:

Any resemblance to persons or organizations already existing in the Alleyverse is (kind of) unintentional. By this I mean I definitely drew inspiration from things I'd read, but as I don't have a complete picture of anything, that's where the resemblance stops. It can either be left mysterious, or left open for people to interact with/know about them past or present, given some conversation and chewing over ideas.

Hi there! Your idea sounds pretty cool, and it's clear you put tons of thought into your creation. This is all really awesome! You filling out the more standard character sheet for feedback would probably net even more helpful results, since we'd know what to ask you about more specifically. Making a Radiant character can get highly-powered pretty quickly, and multiple spikes can also add up fast if someone already has innate investiture. Also, if you wanted to name-drop, say, the Dark Alley in your backstory as the shadowy group doing some interesting experimentation, that's totally doable and people have done it before. If you want to leave it more nebulous, also fine!

If you need any help with names or anything else, you only need to ask!

[SingingMosaic]

Ah thanks  will do. I hammered out a sort of brainstormed outline version of skills, weaknesses, and personality earlier, I'm just chewing on some finer details before I start dragging all my text into a (more refined) version of a character sheet.

I thought about the potential issue of them becoming overpowered, I know generally where I want them to have been and how I want them to have reacted to it, but the finer details are still floating, partially because of that. This was a vague character concept which mainly appeared in my mind in the presence of certain music, and when I initially thought of them in context with the Alleyverse, my initial reaction was oh no they wouldn't make it. They're not devious enough.  Though the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of someone who, at least in part, hadn't been made for the universe. It felt more real, it felt like it could be more the day you wake up and find that, inexplicably, your world has changed. There's no going back, there's nothing to do but figure out how to adapt to your circumstances enough to be able to change them. I didn't figure that, if I went with the spiked branch, they'd have a ton of them. I was thinking about what this might do to a creature who exists in magical symbiosis with another. But, if no one knew this, if no one knew the dangers of artificially cracking a soul like that, it could wind down some strange roads. One of the potential futures I bounced around in my head involved them eventually being like a magical antenna, with all the drawbacks that might have. A creature with no defense against the emanations of their environment, more heavily effected by forms and their associated spren. I also played with the idea of just dropping modification based experimentation entirely, or it having failed.

The DA definitely fed the way I characterized that person. I figured that an organization interested in hemalurgic experiments could have come from a couple different places outside the Alleyverse as well, so I wanted to leave that open ended, but I'll see where that goes as I put the sheet together.

I'll edit this when I get that set up.

[AonEne]

14 minutes ago, SingingMosaic said:

...when I initially thought of them in context with the Alleyverse, my initial reaction was oh no they wouldn't make it. They're not devious enough.  

Don’t worry about that, there are plenty of characters who aren’t devious  

[+ZincAboutIt]

10 minutes ago, AonEne said:

Don’t worry about that, there are plenty of characters who aren’t devious  

More's the pity  

[SingingMosaic]

Was going to edit what i'd written before, but my computer is full of molasses (not literally... I hope) and I don't trust it. So here's the sheet. I had this done a while ago, but was waiting on a name. However the language brain having human (humanity debatable) that I asked to help come up with one has disappeared. So I'll go ahead and stick it here. I usually come up with names last anyway.

Name: still to come
Gender: genderwhat (their answer, probably also mine if you asked me)
Physical Characteristics: Varies. Their coloration is red on black. Several trails of red cascade over their shoulders, drops and streaks of it drifting over the rest of their frame. Also varies. One thing that stays semi consistent are the distinctive red markings bracketing their eyes, though their specifics vary from form to form.
Investiture: Singer born disconnected, picked up some knowledge of their existence after the Everstorm but the information is full of gaps.
Skills: Good survival skill, not going to lead you unerringly through a blinding dust storm somewhere, but can find food and water, sleep safely, and navigate over unknown terrain. Experience as part of an information gathering network, which equates to spying experience. Intelligent, but this varies, not sure how we should handle that. Skilled hand to hand.
Equipment: two hemalurgic spikes, one stealing ferruchemical mental speed, and one stealing allomantic tin. Zinc metalminds and vials of tin.
Weaknesses: is afraid of fire, will have debilitating flashbacks if reminded of it in the context in which their trauma happened. Isn't too afraid of candles, and isn't impaired by the presence of average firepit/fireplace sized fires. Has issues with emotional attachment. An emotional allomancer could take advantage of their spikes. Is overly magically sensitive compared to others of their kind, and has greater issues not blending with forms.
Family: A father, missing, presumed dead. A mother, missing since infancy, also presumed dead. There are probably half siblings given the circumstances.
Home Planet: Roshar
Backstory: to spare the screens of everyone:

 

Raised on Roshar in the looming shadow of the Everstorm's arrival, their mother had been sold to make the family that owned them some money, leaving only their father and an elderly female aside from the humans, the family and servants. At ten, the manor was destroyed, the lighteyes fled, and they were picked up by a group of worldhoppers interested in experimenting on some other intelligent creature than humans.
At the arrival of the Everstorm they were caged with roughly thirty other singers, a few almost too young for experimentation, at least two far too old, showing their lack of time to set their plans in motion. A few of them died attempting to resist, a few of them were rendered chemically or magically senseless to make operating on them easier, some of them went quietly, defeated and afraid. They were treated clinically and carefully; these people were intelligent enough to understand that unnecessary cruelty only damages your intended end result. They were interested in information for information's sake--at least, that was one of their motivations. They took them off planet for the time it took to go through with their experiments, they had no intention of drawing Odium's attention. A few that proved too young or too old were spiked for the ability to grow gemhearts. Most of the others died in operations designed to add traits or abilities to them. Three others managed to survive that they knew of. They were a sensory experiment, given a spike that granted them allomantic tin as well as one that increased their mental processing power. Their father's fate was unknown, if he survived they never saw him.
They were eventually taken out, under supervision, to see the world they had been taken from. Sometimes stealthily, sometimes in disguise, they observed some of both the human and Singer armies from afar, occasionally saw Radiants in action, and once swore they'd seen one of their own using Stormlight. They were given a choice: Stay on Roshar, and fend for themselves, carving out their own path, or go with them. Go and see the universe, bound as part of a system, another purpose.
They chose the former, melting into the background, most often wearing workform. Listening and waiting, the only thing that had served them well so far. They met a few others like them--not experiments, but people lying low, unwilling to trust the too good to be true system that suddenly presented itself to their species, unwilling to trust humanity, remnants of another time and a lost people, or any combination of the above. These people taught them how to move quietly, how to disappear, how to pay attention, how to read through information and between lines.
Terrible magical conflict in one of the places a group they blended into had gone made reality thin, fragile, worn through in spots like threadbare cloth. One night, as they prepared to melt into the background again, disappear and find somewhere else to "pay attention" as they were calling it (it's accurate, just not complete), they stepped into a cooler patch, a spot where the senses gently fuzzed around the edges, where the shadows were thicker. By then, it was already too late to turn back, but they didn't know. Turning around and retracing their steps only led them deeper into the threadbare spot. One foot slipped off the ground and gently, soundlessly, they tumbled through space, through worlds, through the walls of reality made rundown by people who didn't understand just how far the ramifications of their actions extended. And finally came to rest haphazardly, lying half on their side, dazed in the cool dimness behind a nameless building in a city that exists between, outside of, maybe too far inside of, time and space.
(Doesn't have to start here, but that would be ... interesting. Also who were they spying for? Questions! I love them! I leave this vague so elements of the universe can have interacted with them if that interests anyone, also so developments can come up about their background in future. But even without this hopefully it isn't too vague to stand on its own.)

Guild: unaffiliated
Psyche: somewhat emotionally unstable, but this isn't as apparent sometimes as it would be in a human. Friendly on the surface, but doesn't open up easily. Cynical, but not often dangerously or bitterly so.
Personality: Gentle and generous, slow to anger but once angry they are the slow, cold, implacable kind of angry. Too stubborn for their own good--more dig your heels in and reinforce the perimeter stubborn than shout and puff up stubborn. Discreet and attentive. Could sometimes be perceived as callous due to their lack of experience with emotional connection.
Theme Song: I had a Spotify playlist I built while I was thinking about them, but not a specific theme song yet.
Fighting Style: They can defend themself if they need to, using a hand to hand method that utilizes quick, disabling strikes so they can get away. The fact that they're a little faster and a fair bit stronger than humans has helped, but not much in environments full of magical people.

Edit: I just had a look back at guidelines and realized skilled anything is going to take longer than I think has passed in current time since the Everstorm. So may need to change those.

I started second guessing everything, fell asleep, woke up, looked back at everything, what I'd written, all my original text, and realized I could feel this person, sort of, as in the outline of what their existence would be like in the back of my head, but I'm missing something. Some fundamental chunk of being a person that I must have known I was missing because I kept generating more text. ... Maybe I should write fic, even if only for me...

And it occurs to me that I haven't written anything in which they have a voice. And they do have one. It's conflicted, it's confused. It's the voice of a person whose brain doesn't stop running, the voice of someone who knows how to do one thing well--handle and process information--and who understands, on some level, that they don't know the world. But they don't realize you can't just look at something until you figure it out. You have to interact with it. You have to experience it. But what if there's no way in? What if it seems like it and you're a pretty smart person who's been trained to read the world, within one's capacity to do so anyway, so you know there's something and you know it seems simple and you can't get how you're not figuring it out...

OK story time be back.

Edited March 5, 2020 by SingingMosaic
Clarifying something and chewing on something and I've been awake for five minutes so it probably makes no sense.

[AonEne]

17 hours ago, SingingMosaic said:

Gender: genderwhat (their answer, probably also mine if you asked me) 

Maybe I should write fic, even if only for me... 

May I know your pronouns?  

We actually have a thread for stuff like that! It’s called Character Development Scenes, I believe, and it isn’t very long. 

[SingingMosaic]

1 hour ago, AonEne said:

May I know your pronouns?  

We actually have a thread for stuff like that! It’s called Character Development Scenes, I believe, and it isn’t very long. 

Disclaimer: This is me trying to see if the reply/quote thing is actually accessible now behave, website.

Mine are ze/zir, though a lot of people use they and I don't mind that.

That's fantastic, I definitely foresee myself making use of that. Someone once gave me a piece of advice that rescued my roleplay back when I was doing it on games, they told me to take what couldn't be put into a game format and take it to a word processor, develop their voice, put them in situations and see how they might react to them. I developed my love of trying to make characters that don't necessarily fit the nature of a setting perfectly, like people, from that. It's a balance though, then they need to change like we do, adapt and confront things that don't work or that they didn't know, which has been interesting, painful and sometimes very cathartic. I'm not sure what the general idea is here or if everyone does it differently, but on games there was a lot of this idea of separate from your character going on. It probably works for some, and if you punch my character in the face I'm not going to take it personally, but isolating them entirely like some host teams recommended disconnected me too much from their voice. Sorry, I digressed a lot, don't mind me. I was having a really interesting conversation before I looked at this and am in that mental place full of detail and connections now.

[+ZincAboutIt]

My main character takes up so much space in my brain nowadays that she feels like a real person, so you can relate as little or as much to your character as you want in here. I have other characters that are more for fun or to explore an idea, but I built Lita as an entire person on purpose. So yeah, get deep, you can totally explore that here.

[SingingMosaic]

Nice!

What do you think? Are they ready--once inspiration strikes for a name--for the creation thread?

[+ZincAboutIt]

1 minute ago, SingingMosaic said:

Nice!

What do you think? Are they ready--once inspiration strikes for a name--for the creation thread?

I'd think at least for initial submission sure! You may want to tag a mod for pre-approval, they can add up your point count and ask you to change or refine things before you submit, or you can submit and work it out later as you like.

[SingingMosaic]

1 minute ago, ZincAboutIt said:

I'd think at least for initial submission sure! You may want to tag a mod for pre-approval, they can add up your point count and ask you to change or refine things before you submit, or you can submit and work it out later as you like.

If I update the post I have above and tag them there, will they get notified or would I have to make a new one for that?

Just to be sure, what's the current list? I've seen a bunch of them mentioned but I want to make sure I know who I'm looking for.

Thanks.

[+ZincAboutIt]

Just now, SingingMosaic said:

If I update the post I have above and tag them there, will they get notified or would I have to make a new one for that?

Just to be sure, what's the current list? I've seen a bunch of them mentioned but I want to make sure I know who I'm looking for.

Thanks.

You can edit your above post with tags, you don't need to make a new one! Our current mod team is Voidus, Sorana and i think i am here. The list is longer on the home forum page, but those three are the currently active mod team.

[SingingMosaic]

OK. Thanks. Should hopefully have a name some time today.

[AonEne]

11 hours ago, SingingMosaic said:

Mine are ze/zir, though a lot of people use they and I don't mind that. 

I’ll be honest, one of my first reactions was achievement unlocked! because you’re the first person I’ve met who’s used those.  Would the equivalent of the contraction they’re be ze’re? 

And here’s this thread, if you still want it.