breakingamber

Would Lethe count?

That... took way longer than I expected. damnation, writing believable dialogue is difficult. Anyway, probably Part 1 of a 4 part backstory detailing why she is the way she is, why she gives any bits about Megan, and a couple things I just wanted to write down. I can hardly believe that authors like wildbow and erratic erratica can write so many words in just 2 days at such a high quality. This took 2 days.

4 years ago "Picture a skyscraper. You've seen skyscrapers, right?" "Uh, yeah. It's not Chicago or New York, but Houston's no slouch in the very tall building department." "It's Newcago and Babilar now, but I know you don't care so I'll stop pushing it." Karina quickly disconnected the barrel of her rifle from the stock. She carefully put the parts down on the table, then turned to grab the can of WD-40 sitting on the table beside her, then turned some more to glance at the man lazily sitting at the other end of the room. He wore a Men Down Under t-shirt with thick trousers, and smiled bemusedly as he tossed a leather-bound round ball from hand to hand. "Hey, where'd you get a baseball, Davy? Please don't tell me you expect me to - " Davy loudly gasped, then chuckled. "No, I would never encourage you to play ball when you've got all your work to do. This is for your sister. " Karina quietly sighed in relief. "Good, because I hate baseball. Never understood Serena's fascination with the game." She grimaced and turned back to her partially disassembled rifle and sprayed it liberally with the fish oil. "Anyway, I'm picturing a skyscraper. What about it?" "Ah, right. Imagine it hovering in midair," The Australian traced an L in the air with his finger as he continued, "and then grab both ends, and rotate them such that they form the - what's the square corner thing again?" "A right angle?" Davy nodded. "Yeah, that's it, a right angle. A skyscraper, bent at a right angle. Now there are stairs inside this skyscraper, and when you climb them and reach that bend you made, when you continue you don't just fall off. You can climb those stairs all the way to the 'top', as if the laws of reality had gone on vacation." He frowned and lost his concentration, dropping his baseball, which rolled under Karina's table. She poked her newly reassembled rifle at the ball and sent it rolling back. "Come to think of it, they kind of have, haven't they?", the other man mused. Karina shrugged. "Finish whatever you were saying, would you?" "Fine. Anyway, on the outside of this strange otherworldly building floating a mile above the ground, there are corridors poking out of it in all directions. Regular-looking hallways from the inside of them, long steel tubes from the outside. These hallways, they're about, say, the length between me and the kitchen, but they can stretch on for miles and miles until they reach their destination, which is another strange twisted building. There's a massive network of these strange tubes, poking out in every direction on every axis we know of, as well as some we probably don't. That, Indy - "Don't call me Indy. My name's Karina." "Sure. Anyway, that is what the locals call the Twisted City, the largest city in Australia. It's a sight to behold, eldritch and strange, all courtesy of the Epic ruling there." Karina raised her eyebrows. "You've been there?" Davy chuckled. "Nah, I haven't been to Oz since Calamity. Most of what I've heard are second, third, fourth, and probably hundredth-hand accounts of what the city's like. What I've told you is just the common threads in all of them. They're probably at least partially true." Karina grunted. "Yeah, right. If what you've said is true, I personally would doubt it even exists. People are pretty stupid. I'd bet this Twisted City's just some scammer's attempt to get people to buy doctored photographs or some druggie's fever dream." Davy stood up and wagged his finger. "Now now, I don't want to hear your arbitrary skepticism. First, people are, on average, average, by definition. Second, you've heard of and have proof of stranger things. Babilar has naturally glowing spraypaint ghost-powered radios that work without batteries. California is missing an entire perfectly round portion of its desert, as if it was cut out by some Epic scalpel. Why's a strange space-warping floating city so strange to you?" He folded his arms, awaiting his teammate's response. Karina shrugged. "I dunno. I guess it's because if I believed every sparking rumour I heard, I'd be thrown out for being a madwoman, as well as probably dead." She reached into a nearby bin and grabbed a couple rifle magazines, loading one into her SKS and putting the rest into her pockets. Davy looked at her red t-shirt, then her jeans, then asked, "Have you considered getting a good sharp knife?" The other woman sighed loudly, then turned to face the Australian. "Please, do we really need to go over this again? I don't need a sparking knife. I'm a good enough shot with this rifle." Her tone grew sarcastic and snippy, "And your constant insisting that 'you don't need to reload a knife' and 'a rifle's not good in close-quarters' and 'what'll you do if you run out of ammunition' I've thoroughly addressed already. Give it up. I'm not getting a knife." Davy threw his hands up in mock surrender, then put them back down. "I get that you're busy, but can you please just consider making time to at least learn how to use one? Hell, I'd buy a good one for you, and I'm sure Clement would teach you how." "I'll think about it," Karina tiredly replied. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and walked out of the room, ignoring Davy's protestations of, "You always say that!" Just remembering something, she stopped just outside in the hallway, she turned around and yelled, "Don't forget, the briefing's in two hours! Make sure to be there, or else you're in the kitchen tomorrow, and I'm really sick of your sparking overcooked ketchup-covered burgers!" Ignoring his muffled protests about his hamburger quality (they really weren't that bad, but she wasn't going to let him know that), Karina exited the safe house and went to check up on her sister.

Annnd okay maybe I should've waited for someone else to affirm that. Regardless, the new What Happened Inside Of Canon thread is up. Go wild?

This is a thread for random insanity that actually is canon in the Reckoners RP. If you have something you want to post but belongs to a new character or whatever, or happens at a significantly different time, post it here.

What Happened Inside Of Canon? Fanfics of Edmonton? Edmonton Side Stories?

I personally was planning to do something with Turt regarding the ERA, so I'm in favour.

So something like the Fanfics of Oregon thread?

I've been thinking about this as well, and I've only been able to think of two to three solutions. The first one is always trying to keep in touch. It's the reason I established the Discord server. While it may work, sometimes people will drop off the grid entirely and if that happens to someone really important, there's a big problem and deadlock is reestablished. The second one is having a 'designated writer'. Like Drake said, having someone else able to write for you might be able to resolve some of the issues regarding off-grid-dropping. However, I personally wouldn't feel confident writing for most other people (I worked up a cold sweat publishing the one Taya post, and I know the quality isn't as good as Drake's other posts), and delegating everything to the better writers (not to be writerist) might overwork them or something. I had a third idea but it was stupid. I don't know if it's possible to keep this RP together without some method of keeping people here. Unfortunately.

Unfortunately, Sazedezas is holding up a lot of things. We need Bloodlight's response to Liam, we need Karabiner to teleport in so we can set up his assassination, and maybe something from Arachnerd's perspective might be helpful. Besides those things, Jade and/or Nathan's perspective could be interesting. A little more clarification on whoever notices Nicroburst might be helpful. Anyone else who wants to claim (more) territory in the city? That could include Armageddon, Phytomagnet (though I'm not sure about that), or Blank (even less sure). That's my thoughts. EDIT: kenod, bit of a dumb question. Why would your character call herself Shade if she's not aware of the only power that would designate her as a 'shade?'

Can we ask the mods to find out the email address he used to join the Shard and email him or would that be unethical?

What is the speed of plot? Basically, what I'm asking is, who's in favour of the timeskip and who is not? I'd rather go on with a difference of a couple hours at most because writing for the characters outside Epoch's bubble is bound to be a pain otherwise.

Hm. I reread Drake's post earlier, and you're right, he planned on a timeskip. Not sure what to think about this. What is the rate at which Epoch slows down the rate of time in such a large area? I remember something about how his time slowing takes longer than his time speeding upping, but what's the approximate rate? 1 hour of RL time is a decrease of - oh god this rate equation is so confusing.

Yeah I think that originally was the idea, but someone would've noticed beforehand? Blank, for example, as he's outside the dome and would see the time slowing before the hours could turn into months.

IC, Epoch should die by the time the stadium scene's over, or so Darshall - Marshmallow? It's weird when people change their names - has told me. And hm. Maybe just asphault and concrete then.

Alright, makes sense. After Epoch dies today, would it be unreasonable for the two to enter the city the next day? I've got a couple ideas to work out (can you actually snap someone's spine by putting a heavy block on your head? How far down is bedrock anyway?), and a couple interpersonal things I'd like to work out.

Haha, I'm imagining a young girl's Rending with few to no offensive powers. Would you rather play a girl with very little experience with her biokinesis power or someone who has a little more? I'm largely fine with either. I think I can justify Downfall taking Shade along with him by putting it as a win-win situation - if she stays loyal, he gains more power and can take on more powerful and more diverse Epics, and if she betrays him he gets a good fight. I'd have their first encounter occur during the first scenario, where she first discovers her biokinesis and is robbing someone.

Yes. First, I rewrote my character (mostly). He's really more support than anything else, and I just wanted to see how such a power could and could not be used in this setting. Here's what I was thinking: As for interactions with your character, I figured maybe... actually, what's your character's backstory? Would you mind fleshing it out a little bit? I have the vaguest inklings of an idea, but I don't want to write you into a corner, if you know what I mean.

Sounds like an interesting weakness.

Thanks for the advice. Does anybody have a way to contact Sazedezas? He's not on the Discord and he hasn't been online since June. From what I can tell, Karabiner's assassination is one of the next important parts of the plot, and we kind of need him around for that.

Yay. I've just finished the first Mistborn trilogy. Now to go through the rest of Sanderson's works, which I should've done a loong time ago. EDIT: Is Epoch really going to agree so quietly?

So if we're going to work together on this, I'll need to think about the relationship our two characters have together, as well as flesh out my own character's personality more. Maybe instead of a similarity to Backtrack I should go for more of a blood knight vibe? (I'm going to call him Downfall for now) Downfall's powers do lean more towards the skill side than the raw power side, and seemingly so does yours? Maybe? *shrug* Sorry I'm bad at this. Anyway. The first thing that came to mind was... not family friendly, so I'll move on. The second thought was a student-mentor relationship, but I'm having difficulty justifying that based on Epic characteristics. My third thought would be ripping off poor Aldo and doing a partners in crime style relationship, but I don't really want to do that and I'm horrible at writing witty banter. So far I'd go with option two, but I think I'd need help with that. Anyone have any ideas?

Hm... some of my first and probably laziest thoughts. People are just well-stuck together sacks of cells, correct? Can she manipulate something living that is touching something else that is living that she is touching? What is the range of her sensory ability? A mile? Sight range? 20 feet? For her last ability, would people notice her if she did something warranting attention? How would this be defined? Is she actually harder to perceive, or is it just difficult for people to perceive her? How enhanced are her reflexes? Fast enough to dodge a bullet? A car? She's young for an Epic. Not sure how that might affect her story, but that in mind maybe? Where do you plan to go with this character? Static or changing? Her age makes the latter more likely, but how? How does her corruption affect her? I've got a couple more questions, but I think I'll stop now.

For the record, I'd be more than willing to pair my character with yours, kenod. It even kind of fits: Yours is a character that manipulates and sees only living things, while mine switches non-living things. There's a justification for teaming up there somewhere, but I'm a bit too tired to think of it.

I was. I think a page or two ago, I mentioned an Epic I was thinking about with the ability to swap two regions of space. Would you like me to copy it over? EDIT: As of now he has no backstory and no characterization besides paranoia. Here's what I was thinking: What were you thinking for your character?