Archer

It was primal instinct that drove Klasten to seek cover. Under different circumstances he would have stayed out in the rain, enjoyed the feeling of it kissing his skin. But he was frightened. His day had been nothing but brief encounters with deadly monstrosities and lengthier periods spent running from them. He looked at, through, his invisible arm. The infection had spread since he had last checked it. His shoulder and a portion of his torso had faded out of view. He looked like the victim of a fire-shark attack: a rare predator that cauterized the wounds it inflicted so its prey could live to be eaten another day. Assuming that brochure can be trusted, he mentally noted. It’s been wrong about a few things so far. The rain continued to fall, but he hardly noticed it. His sole focus was on the water in the ground. After so much running, he needed a drink. Klasten fell to his knees and dunked his head into the pool, gulping the refreshing liquid greedily. When he did, he noticed movement in the depth below him. One shape, the largest of the blobs he could spot, began to approach. The loud patter of raindrops assailed his ears he came up for air. I wish I could speak, he thought. Then I could say something dramatic. Something like ‘It’s here’. Exhausted and mentally drained, he heeded Nogard's advice and lay down on an open section of dirt, covering his head with his hands as the eyewall approached their position.

I'll put up a poll based on this, including questions like whether or not people want to continue out of character spying.

Why would I make you choose? Everyone knows the first book was the best. At the moment, my favourite Sanderson book is The Emporer's Soul. In addition to all the standard Sanderson elements, like great characters and plot, it's beautifully put together. The story flows really well. And you can read it in a single sitting.

Gak! The DA has mammoths now? Welcome to the Shard! What's your favourite Sanderson book?

We've been trying to cut down on the amount of pinned topics we have, that way there's more space for other threads on the first page. That's why we unpinned the redundant explanation threads. Upon reading this, I've unpinned the Subforum Announcement topic as well. It doesn't provide much relevant information. At some point, we may be able to combine the Guide and No Multiple Accounts threads, but for now they will remain separate to make sure everyone gets the message. I expect to get some new Homeless in Era Three, so it'll be good to have the reminder prominently displayed. The Characters thread needs to be separate to allow me to keep using the OP as the place to house The List. But three pinned topics isn't that bad. For the next little while at least, I think that's the best I can do.

That's Daddy Voidus' job. But thank-you for your compliment anyway.

Proposal: End first-person spying (infiltration of OOC PMs). We still plot the destruction of, and steal secrets from, other guilds, but do it in-character. I think I've got support for this, so any objections? I should mention Mac's proposal while I'm here. Make guild leadership fully in-character. As part of a renewed focus on doing as much in-character as possible, your character's position is the same as yours. To use myself as an example, Klo would try to recruit people into TUBA. If he gets killed, my next guy would have to work his way back up to that position. (I know people will probably find ways to fast-track the process, but it still works as a way of introducing consequences). OOC PMs still exist, and can be used for sketching out plots and stuff (see: increased planning discussion), but the emphasis is on acting as much in-character as possible.

In this family there's bound to be a sister or daughter of some sort. That's not me. No, I'm the guy the sister/daughter says she's dating, but you've only ever seen one picture of me, so you aren't entirely sure if I exist or not.

Meanwhile, conveniently providing an explanation for how this establishment acquires its raw materials, a deliveryman unloaded several crates of gold from his truck. He placed them by the back door for the owner of the Forge to collect. Then he retreated to his vehicle and drove away.

Mace laughed at Tena's comment. "What? No. Don't be ridiculous. My spirit web was permanently altered by an ankh-morporphic incarnation of death. The effect was the same though." He paused, furrowing his brow. "I think I could do a few hundred pounds. For the initial launch, I could increase my weight, removing the need to anchor myself with a second Push. That would allow me to focus solely on moving the ship. But once it gets high enough, I'd have to Push off the ground to stay within range of it. Breathing wouldn't be a problem, but I'd get pushed backwards more the higher we went. Eventually gravity would win. I don't think we'd be at the minimum... hundred? I think's it's a hundred miles." He started pacing. "We could chain it. Have him launch the ship and follow it. Then Push a steel block after him to Push on. Then we launch me up, and you send a block after me so I can keep the other going. Past halfway we have someone who teleported up there start Pulling. But the distance is so far..." Then Zaphoid said something infuriatingly mysterious. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Hey Tena, what's your range on steelpushes?" Mace asked out of the blue. "And what's the heaviest amount of metal you could Push into orbit? If we want to launch a rocket into space, we're going to need to know if Pushes are a viable method." He refrained from asking the question of the unconscious man. ******** Meanwhile, at the HQ, Xena knocked on the door frame. The unsavory character Mace had hired to watch the house stepped out from behind the bushes and approached her. "House's empty, miss," he said, extending his soot-covered hand. "There all at the Canton. Can I help you?"

Really? Maybe I need to reread Mistborn E2. When Miles used compounded health to heal from wounds, I thought he just swallowed metalminds with less stored health than he'd need, then compounded it up to the amount he required. I can't recall them ever storing the excess. Was this mentioned explicitly, or is it an assumed thing? Edit: Thanks Itiah, Invocation, and HSuperLee. Your comments were super helpful. *two thumbs up*

Yes, you're one of the awesome people who hang out with us even though you don't RP much. I assumed you already knew that...

I try to tell myself that Midnight Essence is the name of a powerful spren, but I every time I look at it, all I can think is, That looks like the name of an expensive perfume.

If a fullborn burns one of their goldminds, once they become as healthy as is physically possible, is it possible for them to store the rest of the health that’s generated? If they can, it would allow them to fill goldminds without spending much time sick. And if they burned duralumin before burning gold, that would create a massive amounts of excess health to store, right? Thanks in advance for your answers. My apologies if this has already been discussed elsewhere.

Welcome to the Shard! Go for the Longest Thread collaborative writing project in the General Discussion subforum. It's an easy spot to learn how to forum. Most posts are only a sentence long, but it's still a lot of fun. Fair warning, Chaos will probably move this post to the Introduction section. This is more of a tech support area.

Overnight armies never made sense to me. When someone magics up an army, one day they didn't exist, then the next they do. The buildup isn't there. That takes away the opportunity for characters to react to armies establishing themselves. Big groups like that have a large impact on the areas they're in. I prefer if they're foreshadowed, to provide an opportunity for characters to react to their creation. That can include setting up a business to service the soldiers, attempting to stop it, or changing one's methods of operation to accommodate the army's presence. Some things can be assumed, like that a stock city would have a militia, but others shouldn't be. Dropping armies into a place characters are assumes their reaction to the establishment of them, which is a missed opportunity in my books. The Great Game organizers did something I haven't seen happen very often, they made an in-character PM. That's one model we could look at for how guilds plan stuff. I know guilds like the GBs have a very complicated structure of ranks. That'd be interesting to RP. It raises questions like, do recruiters recruit in-character or out? If a guild leader is killed, how do they (the Sharder) retake control of their guild? (I think how that question is answered will also impact how we deal with deaths. There will be more seeking of revenge of the consequences are greater) But a big part of leading is planning, and I think that can be RPed easily(ish).

Welcome to the Shard @Rehrig76! On September 11th, In a blog post on his website, Brandon wrote, "Hello, all! My new book is coming out next week! Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds is a compilation of three stories that tie together to form a single narrative. Two of the stories (Legion and Legion: Skin Deep) were available previously, but the third (Lies of the Beholder) is exclusive to this edition." Speculating here, while it's possible he might release the novella as a standalone (it would make a good ebook), I suspect he probably won't until he's maximized the profits he can make from selling L:TMLoSL. So to read the third story you'll have to buy the book. Sorry about your luck.

Klasten wished he could talk. We're all going to die! he thought to himself as he hobbled along. And my feet feel like lead blocks that gained sentience, then decided to spend their existence torturing me. He shook his invisible fist. I hate you all for making me run so much! He tried to frown, but he could only muster the energy to smile. Huh. I guess my mother was right about that, he reflected. In short, Klasten was having communication problems. Outwardly he was unperturbed, but inwardly he was screaming in pain and out of fear that the eyewall would kill them all. Whatever that is. But still he kept running. Others were slowing down, but he was determined to get to shelter as soon as possible.

To do that, we need to get in the habit of planning with other people, then communicating your intentions. If characters acted as guild members, they'd have to have planning sessions or take the time to receive orders from their commanders in order to reach the level of synchronization we sometimes see them have with others. What happens now is generally the author receives the order, then manipulates their character to support their guild, whether that makes sense or not. I think secret PMs are workable, but we use them out of fear others will see our plans and work to counter them. We've got to decide if we want to continue with the guild-guild spying or not.

It would be up to you to create a character who can reasonably be in both. Which is pretty easy, given that the GBs often try to infiltrate other guilds under false pretenses. But that implies your first loyalty is to them... *backs away slowly* That was a very rough estimate. Overlappers didn't help. Wed just have to make sure people don't confuse 'independent' with 'affiliated with multiple guilds'.

The problem with characters like Mace is it's ambiguous has much power they can access. I could give him unlimited amounts of stored attributes in his metalminds. He did spend 16 years storing up for his return, I could argue. As an RPer, I choose not to do that, but if I wanted too, he could cause serious problems. It's easier just to avoid situation where people could so easily act OP. Agreed. The nature of the RP allows for characters with unlikely powers to come together. But we do need some sort of general consensus on how improbable is reasonable. For example, combining powers from multiple books is highly unlikely (eg. I became a rithmatist on top of the Mistborn abilities I was born with). Twinborns are uncommon, but Mistborns more so. Epics are more common than mistborn, but Epics with Prime Invincibility are about as common as them. This should be considered along with how OP they can be (see Voidus' comment of Steel twinborns).

I think we need to be more realistic about armies. The average character in this RP would never be given command of an army. And those characters who are designed to be officers should have to go through a process of raising and maintaining their army. What causes issues is magicing up massive armies without any buildup. I think a blanket ban on armies is one solution, but we could also look at limiting the power of NPC soldiers you can create. For example, your soldiers have to be uninvested if you intend to use them offensively. How about for official counting purposes, you can only represent one guild (no overlap)? So Persons A,B,C, and D count towards making Guild 1 official, and persons W,X,Y, and Z count towards making Guild 2 official, but if A, J, K, and Z make a guild, it doesn't count because there's only two original members. I think everything else in your post is a good idea. Even the TUBA comment. I count ~28 active members. There's about four who have very limited involvement in the RP, but hang around anyway. The rest of the 63 in the Homeless PM are inactive. The spread is about a third of active members are in the big three guilds, with a little more in the GBs and a little less in the DA.

Let's do planning in this one. I expect there will be overlap with the Guild one, but it's a smallish thing.

Not a problem. There's no rush. Here's the link, other people: