Question 23

[Ataraxian Wist]

11 minutes ago, Hemalurgic Headshot said:

Oh wow, I had almost forgotten about this thread. Sure, whatever sounds good. If we can kick the Meeting into gear, we may declare it the conclusion (for now) of WHiE. 

Welcome back! Also, that collab--after I edit it slightly to include details of Nicro's appearance--is yours to post. I did our last one.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles]

Just go ahead and make Jade and Nathan NPCs if you need to. 

[Ashbringer]

To whoever is leading this and may or may not be trying to revitalize it, do I have permission to dump a large quantity of my Epic ideas into this thread?

I shall tease by saying one involves an Epic-version of viral, semi-non-lethal Hemalurgy 

[The Young Pyromancer]

Sure, though I think Edgedancer is the nominal GM (though they're rarely active).

[DrakeMarshall]

@TwiLyghtSansSparkles Thanks for weighing in. It shouldn't be necessary to make them NPCs with what we are doing though, since I will be inciting a disaster that makes everyone's characters MIA and presumed dead. If it turns out later that some or all of those people actually survived, well, then that's great news  But probably in the meantime nobody will be looking for them much.

That said, do we actually want to start things up again right now? I'm pretty much down to give it a go regardless, but I also kinda remember that the plans to reboot that eventually resulted in the creation of the Edmonton thread seemed to have a lot more interest overall. If we wanna just start a whole new thread in a different city and not worry about Edmonton for now, or if we wanna just agree to put the Reckoners RP on hold for a little while, I think either of those would honestly be fine as well.

EDIT: I've apparently been ninja'd twice, since I had this tab open from a day ago.

@Ashbringer Yeah I think Edgedancer would be the GM. I'm also fairly sure you don't need permission to share your ideas for epics in here. We actually have a dedicated thread for that (somewhat misleadingly titled "Edmonton's Recipe For Epic Maple Pug Treats" ) but I'm pretty sure you can also put them here to talk about.

New blood is a good sign I would say 

Edited June 29, 2020 by DrakeMarshall

[Ashbringer]

Oooh! I like disasters. Although my big bad of an Epic is more a lurking threat that will inexorably start taking over cities and things. I’ll put a kit for him in the... ERFEMPT... thread. I’ve got a “few” others I’ll put in later.

[DrakeMarshall]

You're in good company then, heh. Over the months I've accumulated a ridiculously sized google doc of various powersets, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one here who has something like that.

[kenod]

You're not. I've got a decent number stored away in my head as well.

[Ashbringer]

Mine are just scribbled in the back of my math notebook. I’ve got 3 more written up fully and like 6 more bouncing around in my skull.

Ferocity’s kit is live. I’d love to know what you think, but he IS supposed to be really... a lot.

[Ataraxian Wist]

23 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Mine are just scribbled in the back of my math notebook. I’ve got 3 more written up fully and like 6 more bouncing around in my skull.

Ferocity’s kit is live. I’d love to know what you think, but he IS supposed to be really... a lot.

PAPEL stands for Practical Application of Powers in Everyday Life, just FYI.

[the winter system]

Oh, activity here? 

[Ashbringer]

I’m trying...

[DrakeMarshall]

Ferocity's kit sounds like the unholy child of Teacher's Shard and the Shard of Ruin.

Absorbing attributes has no upper limit. Are there some diminishing returns when concentrating a lot of power in one person though?

[Ashbringer]

2 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

Ferocity's kit sounds like the unholy child of Teacher's Shard and the Shard of Ruin.

Absorbing attributes has no upper limit. Are there some diminishing returns when concentrating a lot of power in one person though?

Yeah, he’s supposed to be a cross between Ruin and the Dahkor attack in Elantris 

I haven’t really thought about diminishing returns. His boosting is additive, not multiplicative (obviously), but a large part of his goals is to continually boost his abilities. I was just thinking that there isn’t much point to healing 20000x the normal rate vs 10000x.

It would make some sense, but story-wise Ferocity is supposed to be a lot more potent than any normal Epic should be - that should make more sense the more Epics I add. I’ll probably add some diminishing effect with his backstory.

[DrakeMarshall]

41 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

I was just thinking that there isn’t much point to healing 20000x the normal rate vs 10000x.

Hm, that's a fair point, yeah.

42 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

It would make some sense, but story-wise Ferocity is supposed to be a lot more potent than any normal Epic should be - that should make more sense the more Epics I add.

There are definitely some of those in this RP. Kinda the premise of the books is that the world is ruled by a handful of weirdos with absolutely unfair superpowers.

Epoch's time screwery is arguably in that category.

Speaking of which, wanna have one of your characters kill Epoch? I've been planning on killing him for ages but I can't find a good enough way to do it.

[Ashbringer]

You know, a well-timed Speed Acolyte could pick Epoch up, run and carry him to who-knows-where away from civilzation, and either kill him or leave him to die in a desert  it wouldn’t be incredibly dramatic though. You could also put him in a situation where he thinks he has loyal allies, but they’ve all under Ferocity’s control.

But since Ferocity can’t convert Epics under normal circumstances that would be rather unlikely. Which I think is a limitation that needs to stay.

Of my other main Epic ideas, two are mosly non-combative, and the others I forget how strong they are, but I doubt they could handle a timestream manipulator.

Except maybe one... one of my Epics flicks in and out of existance. She may be unaffected, although her powers are veeeery similar to teleporting 

[kenod]

Out of curiosity, are independant entity Epic powers a thing? I know there are abilities that allow for puppetry of things, but I'm not sure if there are abilities that allow for the creation of semi-independent entities. Maybe something that runs off the subconscious of the Epic?

[Voidus]

14 hours ago, kenod said:

Out of curiosity, are independant entity Epic powers a thing? I know there are abilities that allow for puppetry of things, but I'm not sure if there are abilities that allow for the creation of semi-independent entities. Maybe something that runs off the subconscious of the Epic?

Arguably Mitosis, but I might be misunderstanding exactly what you mean. Other than that there's not too much in the creation of sentient or semi-sentient entities outside of the RP.

On 30/06/2020 at 5:57 AM, DrakeMarshall said:

You're in good company then, heh. Over the months I've accumulated a ridiculously sized google doc of various powersets, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one here who has something like that.

I have no idea what you're talking about. 

[Ashbringer]

There’s the Epic in the coma in Firefight who does things semi-subconsiously, but I don’t really know if that’s what you mean. Ferocity’s been artificially boosted, I’ll just say. One of my Epics can do that.

Ah yes, the Vault...

[DrakeMarshall]

On 7/1/2020 at 7:56 PM, Ashbringer said:

You know, a well-timed Speed Acolyte could pick Epoch up, run and carry him to who-knows-where away from civilzation, and either kill him or leave him to die in a desert  it wouldn’t be incredibly dramatic though. You could also put him in a situation where he thinks he has loyal allies, but they’ve all under Ferocity’s control.

But since Ferocity can’t convert Epics under normal circumstances that would be rather unlikely. Which I think is a limitation that needs to stay.

Of my other main Epic ideas, two are mosly non-combative, and the others I forget how strong they are, but I doubt they could handle a timestream manipulator.

Except maybe one... one of my Epics flicks in and out of existance. She may be unaffected, although her powers are veeeery similar to teleporting 

See, this is why I'm having a hard time  It's not very easy to make a move "well-timed" against Epoch's abilities. Still, if you wanna kill him using whatever means be my guest because as entertaining as he was in life he would be in death too and I have an incessant stream of new character ideas.

19 hours ago, kenod said:

Out of curiosity, are independant entity Epic powers a thing? I know there are abilities that allow for puppetry of things, but I'm not sure if there are abilities that allow for the creation of semi-independent entities. Maybe something that runs off the subconscious of the Epic?

I don't think there's a clear-cut example in canon, but I also don't think there's any canonical reason why that kind of power shouldn't exist, either. I would say it's probably a thing but just fairly rare.

5 hours ago, Voidus said:

Arguably Mitosis, but I might be misunderstanding exactly what you mean. Other than that there's not too much in the creation of sentient or semi-sentient entities outside of the RP.

I have no idea what you're talking about. 

Of course not  I definitely was not referring to any hypothetical google docs you may or may not have concerning epics.

[Voidus]

My Google doc is actually relatively small, most of them are in local word docs

[kenod]

Here's the independent avatar character I was talking about earlier:

Little Red:

Spoiler

Name: Alice DeWitt

Epic Name: Little Red

Age: 15

Appearance: 4'7'', with long, white-blonde hair, blue eyes and a skin that's way too pale to be healthy Her face is rather small, and while pretty tends to be rather disturbing, because the way too pale skin gives it an inhuman quality. Normally wears a blood-red cloak with the hood up, a white dress with what seems to be dried blood on it, a red skirt, long socks and black boots. Normally carries a small basket with her that mostly contains various weapons like knives, guns and grenades.

Power(s): She can create a large (8') wolf that appears from her shadow, and is capable of acting automatically, including defending her. While dangerous, it can be killed or wounded, though its size means you generally need large swords or spears, heavy guns or explosives to do so. It is capable of healing by eating people, as well as retreating back into any large nearby shadows to return back to Red's shadow, where it can also recover from injuries, which generally takes a few hours. If it hasn't eaten anyone for over a week it will become weakened, its size changing down to only 5'. On the flip side, as it eats people it can gain temporary increases in its strength and speed, as well as the cutting/piercing ability of its fangs and claws. However, this charge will half with each day that passes, as well as each time it's summoned back into Red's shadow. Once it has a charge it'll start regenerating as well, though at a fairly slow rate.

Red is also capable of merging with the wolf, changing her appearance to be more werewolf-like. In this state she gains enhanced speed, strength and regen, based on the number of people the wolf had eaten up until that point, and the wolf's instincts will give her enhanced reflexes, but will also make her much more aggressive. She will also gain the ability to summon tooth-like knives, and the ability to travel through shadows to other nearby ones, though the shadows need to be large enough to cover her, and it tires her out a lot. The range on this increases with her kill count.

Weakness:

Spoiler

Being forced to acknowledge she's just a normal human, and that there isn't anything inherently special about her.

Personality: Can act somewhat childish at times, tends to be quite nice to people she considers friends. The issue is that she considers most people to just be people, and thus unimportant, considering them toys she can do with whatever she wants, and enjoys feeding them to her wolf. In these cases she tends to switch between total disinterest, utter sadism, and playful toying with them, sometimes multiple times in a single interaction.
She believes the world is somewhat similar to a story, and only "special people" actually matter, and everything else doesn't matter and is just there as a backdrop. Normally she considers Epics to be special people, though if a normal human manages to do something that particularly impresses her, like killing an Epic she might acknowledge them as well, since only a special person can kill another special person.
If she'd be forced to acknowledge everybody is normal and there's nothing special about people she'll probably break down, since it'd mean that all the people she killed were murders, not just her playing with some toys.
Considers her wolf to be her best friend, and tends to call it out just to cuddle or play with it.
Most of her motivations can be summed up with: "Because it amused me."

Backstory: When she was young she loved reading fairy tales, and was at an age where she still believed them to be true, and the fact that to her the people around her were incredibly boring she concluded that she must be the main character, and everyone else unimportant. While normally she'd have grown out of this after a few more years Calamity happened in this case, and her powers to her mind confirmed that she was indeed special. A few months later she let her wolf slaughter everyone around her out of boredom, and then disappeared, only showing up sporadically in different towns every so often, sometimes not doing much, other times hanging around for longer, making friends with local Epics before moving on again. During this time she also matured somewhat, growing out of her believe that she lived in a story to some degree, realizing it as childish, though she still kept her believe that normal humans don't matter, compared to special people like her. Eventually she ended moving up to Edmonton, having wanted to see Canada, and see if it had anything amusing.

 

Edited July 7, 2020 by kenod

[Majestic]

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to check in and see how everyone is. Been over 2 years since I was last here (crazily), so I understand if nobody remembers haha. It's great to see there's still activity, was an absolute blast to participate back in the day and I'm sure it still is. There's also quite a few familiar faces still around, which is also great to see.

Hope you're all keeping well anyways, and I'll try to be a bit more active for the next few weeks at least. If anyone wants to chat, I'm here

[Ashbringer]

I'm here trying to do CPR on this subforum, but who knows how well that will go. The Young Pyromancer, DrakeMarshall, and Kenod (and Voidus?) have been thinking about a reboot.

So... hello!

Most of my Epics are done (except Blockade), although personalities need some work.

Edited July 27, 2020 by Ashbringer

[kenod]

On 7/27/2020 at 6:01 PM, Ashbringer said:

I'm here trying to do CPR on this subforum, but who knows how well that will go. The Young Pyromancer, DrakeMarshall, and Kenod (and Voidus?) have been thinking about a reboot.

So... hello!

Most of my Epics are done (except Blockade), although personalities need some work.

If we actually manage to get a reboot going I have some other character ideas as well.

We'd need to discuss the actual setting though, and location, unless we decide to stick to Edmonton.