Archer

It's more a question of non-Sanderson scifi, and how the general power level tends to be higher than that of Sanderson tech and characters.

Mace nodded when the man pointed at him. "Let's get this over with," he said. He stepped up to the starting line, looking over the course. It seemed simple enough, so he felt confident he could ace it. Upon the starters' orders, he stepped forward, onto the ground in front of the first stepping stone. It immediately gave way beneath him, dropping him unceremoniously into a shallow pit. He managed to slide downwards without hurting himself, but it still hurt. He decided it would be best to store his senses as he went through the course. He had a feeling it was going to be painful. Mace grabbed the top of the first stepping stone, which he could now see was a large metal column, and hefted himself up on top of it. He then stepped forward, and fell into a second pit trap. This time he didn't bother to get out. Instead, he created an amberite shovel, and started to dig his way to the next pit. The amount of dirt between them was small, so he had soon made his way through to the next hole, which was dark and stuffy. Minutes later, he arrived at what he calculated to be the last one, so he used his shovel to punch his way through the surface, then climb up to the end of the stepping stone section of the course. "Time!" he called. "How'd I do?" One of the people watching shook their head and pointed to the other course. "But he said to start at the metal platforms," Mace complained. "You want me to go up there?" Feeling a little embarrassed for having run the wrong course, he trudged his way to the ladder, and climbed up to the platform. "I can't fly, you know. This will end badly." He no longer felt confident. "Three, two, one, let's get this over with. Again." Mace stepped out onto the first metal stepping stone. Then he stuck his leg out to get to the second one, but found he couldn't reach it. Shrugging, he shifted his weight forward anyways. As he plummeted towards the ground, he had time to reflect upon the fact that this was one of his worse ideas. As his used some stored health to heal his broken legs, he thought about all the ways he could have approached that obstacle better. When he had recovered, he re-climbed the ladder and stood on the platform. When he got there, he grew himself a pair of amberite stilts, to make him tall enough to reach the net that hung over the course. As he released the amberite and it crumbled beneath him, he stored as much weight as he could, and drew on some strength, allowing him to hold himself up by grabbing onto the net. Then, like a kid on the monkey bars, he began working his way over the course. "Is it lazy? Yes." He called as he worked his way over the spiked log. "But I don't like the look of those obstacles. And I see you put a trap in by that bar. Why didn't you think to put any on the net?" At that very moment, an automatic catapult began launching stones in Mace's direction. "I spoke too soon," he complained as he took the hits. It still beat going through the course. When he got to the end, he let go, and dropped to the ground. It broke his legs again, but he didn't mind. It was fun listening to his bones click as they fitted into place. "Don't tell me my time," he said, then flopped on his back to catch his breath.

This is why we need more oversight of the bot slayers. I think it's obvious that Voidus hasn't really been banhammering the accounts that get reported. He's actually been secretly recruiting the bots to commit voter fraud for the DA. Well played, well played. (I'm really tempted to make the voters' names visible, just to see who shows up, but I'm afraid of what I'd find.)

Out of breath, Klo grabbed the sword that was thrown to him. He didn't no this man, but he trusted him. After all, he'd just given him a weapon and exposed his back. That wasn't the sort of thing enemies did. Klo gave the blade an experimental twirl with his shimmering hand, then moved to stand behind his new fighting companion. He then mimed a response to the man's question. No, I'm horrible with metal weapons that oh I see your back is turned so you don't know what I'm saying. Watermelon. We're all going to die. Look out! He slashed his sword at an oncoming bird, hitting its outstretched claws. He shuddered as the flock screeched ominously. As he stabbed at any birds that came close enough, he tugged on the back of the other man's shirt. The birds were in their element in the open air, they needed to seek cover. Or use a flammable lighter than air gas to burn them all while they laid safely on the ground, but that was hard to communicate in sign language.

I can't vote. We've run into this before, you have to delete the old questions, otherwise people who've already voted can't vote for the new ones.

YOU DARE SUMMON ME? *minions whispers in my ear* ONE MOMENT. YOU DARE SUMMON ME? My immediate family does celebrates Christmas on the 24th, then on the 25th we travel about visiting various relatives celebrating the holiday again. So I know I won't be sharding on those days. If we decided to have it end on Christmas or Boxing Day, I was just planning on killing my characters off early. I think ending before Christmas would work better, because of the awkward period of inactivity the celebration might cause, but New Years or any day a bit after the 25th would work too. It also depends on how the era ends. If there's a one-post finale (eg. bomb explodes) then we can easily have it end on a specific day. If not, we might miss our target anyway (Remember the "Seven" Day War?).

@Darth Ookla There's a few things I don't understand. I'm not into Halo, so could you explain his enhancements to me, as well as the tech? (And since these are new elements in the verse if I recall correctly, I think they should be discussed in the Homeless PM first. If they already have been, ignore that and just point me to the page, I might have missed it.) Also, how did investiture power his sword? Thanks. @Ookla the Libre I don't mind. If you ever get too many, I'll give you your own post or something. We'll make it work.

The theory of fictional time travel I subscribe to is that when someone hops in their time machine and turns it on, they create a split in the timeline. The universe they leave from continues to exist, unimpacted by anything the time traveller does, but a duplicate universe is created that is impacted by the actions of the protagonist. This way of thinking of it eliminates a lot of paradoxes. For example, if you kill your grandfather in the second universe, you still exist, because your grandfather in the first universe is your real ancestor. And if you meet yourself in the second universe, it's no big deal, because you're different people. The timeline there that has you invent the time machine can be messed with to your heart's content because you invented the machine in the first universe. When the traveller returns to the original universe, that still get to share what they've learned, but they've had no impact any events of the past or future there. Our there's an alternative ending to the theory that says you can never get back, and are stuck either trading places with your duplicate when they get into a time machine, or perpetually travelling, while in the original universe, you've ceased to exist. Either way, time travel is complicated, and introduce a lot of elements I'd prefer not to have to get into. So I'll vote against it. Moving on, Darth made a comment about wanting to rp an OP character. I still like the plan to power down in E3, and think having an OP villain wouldn't be beneficial. And for this era, until I hear otherwise, I'm going to continue trying to keep characters at a similar level of power, to ensure fairish interactions. But I think if someone wanted to make a powerful secondary character and rp with them, assuming they recognized that it wouldn't be fair for that character to use their power on normal characters, that could be arranged. Like that non cannon monster duel we had a while ago. Maybe not now, but if at the end of the era we all just want to let loose, that'd be the fair thing to do. Edit: Mace had a lot of potential. If I chose to, I could cause a lot of problems with him. He's been using his powers pretty liberally this era, but I'm consciously keeping him out of fights. So as far as interactions with other characters goes, I like to think that he's on par with Mac. I wouldn't feel comfortable doing much more. But that does't excuse his OPness. By the next era, he'll be dead. For real this time.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHH! All the feels. Things I liked: I like who they tapped to play Artemis, he looks young enough for the part (That's always an issue with movies with child protagonists). Having Kenneth Branagh direct was also a plus. From what I can tell, they've kept the plot very similar to that of the book. You can see the progression from Artemis meeting the fairy in Ho Chi Minh, to him capturing Holly (I'm guessing around the same time as that scene where he drops something in the hole), to the LEP ships being deployed and everyone fighting each other. And overall, the trailer was cinematic ally appealing. It has nice animation, camera effects, etc. But like everyone else, I'm concerned they may have made the whole thing too family friendly, at the expense of the good parts. Things I disliked: I disagree with the decision to cast Judi Dench as Root, for the same reason Invocation listed. Next, Butler looks adequately large and well dressed, but white hair looks weird on him. And seeing him use a bow was strange. In the books, he relied more often on his Sig. I hope Disney hasn't cut the normal guns from this movie in a bid to make it PG. Moving on, to my disappointment, the symbols on those metal circles that kept showing up didn't match the gnommish of the books. That would have been a nice easter egg to include. Some of the symbols at the end that turned into the title looked similar to some letters we're familiar with, but they'd been altered. Finally, I now it's just a teaser trailer, but I was annoyed that we didn't get to see many characters beyond their silhouettes or closeups (looking at you brown eyed person who showed up for two seconds). Things I'm unsure about: I am reserving judgement on the scene with the explosion in the restaurant. I will be very concerned if that's a recreation of the opening scene of the Eternity Code. But if it's some other shenanigans caused by a troublesome troll, we're cool. The other thing I'm unsure about is how little we've heard anyone speak. It may be silly, but if Artemis' voice doesn't match my headcannon, I'll be disappointed. Hopefully they acting is okay.

That's sad. 'Twas a good way to go though. When characters die, I do not remove them from the list. The information should remain available for people to refer to if they're reading old posts, and so it can be referenced in resources like our wiki. If they're submitted, or I happen to notice it happen, I add a character's cause of death to their bio, usually right after their name, so people can easily see their current status. For Raithor, I'll do something similar. If you would prefer a different wording, you may message me with what you'd like written in the relevant field. EDIT: I'd forgotten he was an adopted character. I would recommend keeping him under your spoiler tag as well, because that's where people will look if they're reading a post of yours involving him, but if you really feel strongly about it, I'm willing to remove him, knowing he's also under MoHaam's spoiler tag.

"Sure I saw him. He nearly ran into me." The man paused to sip his drink. "He was so loaded up with papers and these metal rods and the like that he was staggering like Dale on a Saturday night." Mace nodded, then gestured to the bartender to give the man a refill. While they waited, Mace shifted his weight around, trying to get comfortable on the weathered bar stool he'd chosen to sit on. His drinking companion seemed oblivious to the decrepit nature of the establishment. In fact, he seemed quite at home. The man sloshed his coke, getting some on his scraggly beard as he downed the contents of his cup. "He was coming out of that place on Fifth that sells writing stuff. Then he went down Main, headed towards the store with the ship in its window." Mace nodded. There was no way of telling for sure if the man's information was correct, but it corroborated what other people had told him. He'd been interviewing townsfolk for the better part of an hour, trying to retrace the footsteps of Zaphoid. He was mentally compiling a list of places he'd visited, trying to find a connection between them all. But so far, the store owners he'd spoken to had all said the same thing: yes, a man had bought some supplies. No, he hadn't done or said anything suspicious. And no, we're not a front for a secret smuggling ring. As Mace thanked his informant for his time, he wondered if he had misjudged his new employer. "Still, better safe than sorry," he mumbled as he stepped onto the street. His next destination, the local bank, where he hoped to discover the source of Zaphoid's funding, wasn't far. After that, he'd have a chat with some of the local miscreants and criminal overlords, to see if any felt like confessing to anything. "Or maybe some of them could be persuaded to do a job for me," he wondered out loud.

Klo landed awkwardly atop a small sand pile. He spilled his bucket, losing his only weapon. But he didn't have time to grab it again, because seconds after he landed, an angry looking bird swooped over him, shrieking unapologetically. As Klo fled from it, he caught sight of a man holstering a pistol a few hundred paces to the left of him. Klo dodged a slash from the bird, then altered his course to intercept the man. Safety in numbers, right? Or, if he's a slow runner, he'll make a good distraction. As he scrambled over the unforgiving terrain, he suddenly began to experience a feeling. He briefly wondered why, but was too busy running to give it much thought.

Mace hesitated. He was still suspicious of the set up. The last time he had visited the Canton, a group of space marines had beat him up. But the man had called for him specifically, and he was his new boss. "You go ahead, I'll catch up," Mace told Zaphoid before he left. As the others left for the Canton, he lingered behind. When he thought no one was looking, he stepped into an inner room of the house. It was time to do some snooping. Searching the building didn't take long. The place was in a state of ill-repair. Twice he caught sight of beetles scurrying along the floorboards. Most of the rooms were lightly furnished, with only a few boxes or the occasional chair. Judging by the amount of dust in some of them, they hadn't been used in weeks. In fact, beyond the front room and a side closet, none of the rooms appeared to have been lived in recently. Mace grew himself a pair of amberite stilts, and returned to the main room. He walked around the perimeter, running his fingers along where the roof met the wall. Huh. Nothing out of the ordinary. While he was up there, he poked at the roof a bit to check for anomalies. Disappointingly, none could be found. So if this is a trap, external forces will be brought in. Or this was just a way to get people to the Canton, where the real trap will be sprung. He briefly worried about the people who had gone with the man, but then he remembered who they were. They can take care of themselves. Hopefully. Unused space. An odd advertisement. Is he choosing marks? Or is it some other kind of scam? But how does he hope to overcome all these heavy hitters? Mace lowered himself to his regular height as he thought back to what the man had told them about himself. Not much. For all I know, he's invested enough to take us all out. But that doesn't tell me how he profits from all this. I could attack him, to see what magic he wields. Risky. What if I set this building on fire? Then I could see if it has any value to him, or if its just a means to an end. I should talk to Him. He'd know what to do. Or ask around, get more intel. Mace checked the time. If he hurried, he could make it downtown before the businesses closed for the day. Pleased to have a plan, he exited the building, and started jogging down the street.

Here you go! It won't give you special powers, but it's also 60% less likely to instantly incinerate your soul. We hope. And friendly reminder, the mods get grumpy when you double post. You have to plan in advance when quotes are involved, because you can't add them in afterwards, but most of the time you can just edit your first post to add anything new you think of. Have fun Sharding!

Yeah, the spam filter does a great job of stopping bots, but sometimes new members get caught too. The good news is the threshold is pretty low for how many upvotes you have to get in order to be able to post links. Here's the link to your project: (nicely composed, by the way) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pb8wPIcSqxYjip3D8erQ5IIAvhbH4IQ0

"You all are quite hopeless. Don’t ever change." [Aside] "Oh yes. Our plan’s working well. First the mimes, And second the Dross Slayers. Third’ll be The auctioneers. Come, minions! It’s now time To twirl mustaches, leer ominously, and scheme!"

Not to be the Lightsong of the group, but I'd like to officially decline godship. It's not really my style. I'll volunteer as the janitor or something.

Mace rubbed his chin where the blow had grazed. He accepted and down the vial of steel flakes. "Huh. You could be sisters," he remarked. "You both let your elbow flare out too much when you punch. Thanks for the assist." He turned to Lusk. He was momentarily confused by the gift, but then he realized what it was. His eyes widened, and he nodded thankfully to the man. "Where?... thank-you. Thank you, sir." For a moment, he stared vacantly at the bottle, then he closed his fist over it. "Well," he said, starting to pace. "That was bad. No one has tried to kill me in weeks. Then I show up here and suddenly there's assassins dropping in from the ceiling." He looked around for his prospective employer. "And where was the boss during all this? Better question, has anyone here actually seen anything space-travel related? Because so far all I've seen has been a bunch of high profile targets." His eyes darted about as he checked which exits were clear, and mentally calculated how long it would take to get to them. "This feels like a trap."

The birds circled menacingly. Unexpectedly, one of them was roasted with a column of fire. For a moment, it looked eerily similar to a phoenix. Then it was gone. Caca! Caca! The lead bird commanded. Luckily, the birds didn't speak that language, so their victim got off easy. Instead, the flock of birds merely dive-bombed them. Meanwhile, Klo was getting ready to fight. He was doing a fancy boxing shuffle he'd seen his uncle do once, and had a bucket of sand ready to throw at any birds that came close enough. But they all seemed to be focusing elsewhere. "C'mon, guys!" Klo shouted. "What about me? I've got sand!" Klo sighed. I'll have to go to them then, he decided. With that, he eyeballed the distance to where the swarm was attacking, inputted it into a spare Tia card, and teleported away.

Mace was quietly minding his own business, totally not participating in acts of industrial espionage, when a friendly looking woman approached him. He smiled. She punched him in the face. It was a good uppercut, the knuckles only dragged along his jawline for a second before the blow landed on his nose, instantly shattering it. Blood began to spew from the wound generously, slicking Mace's arms as he raised them defensively. His vision swam. He instinctively flared everything he had, which at that point in the day wasn't much. He felt pewter kick in, that was good, and copper, briefly. He didn't often need to burn that so he rarely had much on him. The cloud dissipated in seconds. He also accidentally sent out a burst of angry rioting. Then he fell to his knees in agony as he started burning tin. Really. Need. Practice, he thought as the pain washed over him. At that point it wouldn't have mattered if he was punched again, or even stabbed. It would just be another drop in the pain bucket. Lying on the floor, he formed an amberite sword and waved it in the general direction of the woman who had hit him. Who was she, anyway? He was confused, and hurt. It was fight or flight time. As he lay there, his metal reserves petered out, which was a blessing in disguise. The pain lessened to manageable levels, enough for Mace to draw on his reserves of health stored in his gold metalmind to heal his wounds. That helped significantly, enough that he could start to plan his next moves. His brain started thinking with magically enhanced speed. If she's an awakener, tap heat to burn off these clothes. If she has a Shardblade, block with a metalmind, then run. Rithmatists will try to trap you, but increased weight will drop me safely into the basement level. Wish I had bendalloy. Mistborn will use speed and strength to grapple, then hit me with metal. Can I leech? Need to check supplies. No metalminds visible, but that doesn't mean they're not there. I should counterattack to test their capabilities. Mace flicked wrists, sending a small spray of blood at where his attacker had been last time he'd checked. Then he jumped forward to tackle them. Just need to grab them and they're toast. Mace's grip could be strong when he needed it to be.

I agree that using the original word would be best, but if you really want to translate it and don't mind an imperfect translation that drops a few spaces in the name of sounding cool, my suggestions are as follows: Spanish: polvomitón or guante pararomper French: poussièrizer or gante fracasser

The hair on the back on Klasten's neck rose. He got the distinctive sense that he was in serious danger. Then he heard that terrible warning. "Shadowbirds!" Reacting quickly, Klasten reached into his bag for a weapon. He needed something, anything to defend himself. Rummaging around, the first thing he grabbed was a small jar of perfume. To be safe, he checked the label before applying it. ‘Animals Hate Him’ Perfume. Made from the finest bottled swe- Klasten tossed the jar overboard. I'm definitely not using that, he thought to himself. The next thing he found was a laminated pamphlet acknowledging The Player Is the Most Important Resource. We've already got a thread for that, he decided. Finally, he came across a bucket of sand that looked like it would be good for throwing in an enemy's eyes, or could be used to knock someone out from behind with a single blow. Unable to make his usual pre-battle speech, Klasten defiantly brandished his weapon and looked around for birds to fight.

This post is long because of all the quote boxes, so I put it in a spoiler tag.

I'm making ambiguous investments! And also encouraging you to move to the next phase in this venture to stop Mace from accidentally breaking all your lab equipment. Mace tapped his zincmind so he could contemplate the logistics of making an amberite greatbow. I need to start carrying bowstring, he decided.

Heads up, this is going to completely change the topic. But the MotG discussion has mostly moved over there, and I didn’t want to make a new thread, so I’m hijacking this one. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve come to realize that there are others who feel similarly, so it’s high time we had this chat (and what better place to do it in than the Chat Thread?). We all love the Alleyverse for different reasons, but if you’re reading this, I’m sure you agree it’s pretty cool. But at times it can be draining. I’ve been discussing how we can improve the RP with some people (thanks guys), but it has become clear that this discussion needs to be open to all the Homeless. So, I’ve gone through and summarized what we’ve discussed into some subtopics. Give these a read-through and let me know what you think in a post below. Or, if you don’t want to publicly comment, there are other ways to get in touch. The idea is to gauge how people are feeling about these, and to come up with tangible ways to do better going forward, if they’re needed. Things the Alleyverse Could Improve On: 1. Reduce burnout. Sometimes the Alleyverse can be draining. FOMO and all those social media pitfalls kick in, or you have trouble balancing Real Life and Sharding. To quote someone wise, ‘maybe you're in a lot of threads and feel like your hands are being bound by the commitment, if you want to make your characters do other things. Or you're not in any threads and want interaction, but feel that you'd be invading the tight knit group that's already there’. I’ve felt it, it can be stressful. Ideally, we don’t want people to feel they have to quit the RP altogether to decompress. So how can we allow people to balance RPing and their lives without having to choose one or the other? Here’s some suggestions our brainstorming came up with: a) Increased summarization. So that someone can come back after a period of inactivity and easily get up to date, we summarize threads. This would also eliminate the issue of people accidentally doing stuff that contradicts other people or accidentally godmods them. We recommend people ask for summaries if they need them anyway, so why not make them standard? This would only apply to plot threads. But, who would do the summarizing? The two suggestions that got thrown around were i) the creator of the thread updates the OP regularly, or ii) whoever starts a new page in the thread edits their post to includes a quote box at the top of it with a two or three sentence summary of the last page. I prefer the second option if we’re going to start something like this, because it shares the workload. b.) Shorter threads/regular pitstops. The idea is to consciously bring threads to a conclusion more often to provide spots for people to drop in/out of the action more often and not feel like they’re losing out. Entering a thread requires a certain level of commitment, but if RPers worked in points in the plot where it was reasonable for characters to leave and the authors didn’t have to feel guilty about it/worry about what’s happening to their character while they’re gone, it might help reduce people’s stress about RPing. To implement, we’d decide one a general time (eg. A week) or length (eg. Five pages) after which every plot thread would (coordinating this in quote boxes or PM) make these kinds of opportunities. It requires coordination, but I believe it’s possible to do. c) Slow down. No one wants to miss out on what’s going on, but if we make an effort to avoid pushing things forward to quickly, then maybe people wouldn’t stress about it so much. 2. Organization. We’re a pretty loosely structured RP, compared to ones with set campaigns or gamemasters plotting out arcs. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, we don’t want to have an unsustainable amount of threads going, lest most of them go inactive, or leave a small amount of people stuck trying to keep them going. We also have some other organizational idiosyncrasies that if you want you can comment about below. Suggestions: a) Avoid dud threads. Make a policy of before people make a thread, they should mention it in a PM or discussion thread. That way people can help develop the idea or express support so you know it won’t die off before it begins. That would also be a good time to tell people any quirks about the thread, for example if interrupting will cause issues. b.) Plan stuff out with other people. If people collaborate more in sketching out general plots for a thread, it could ensure threads run more smoothly, and help improve their longevity. A lot of our best threads have been the result of people making plans with others (which is different than making individual plans for character development). Everyone loves a planning thread (eg. The Other Side of the World one was fun), so don’t be afraid to make those. 3. Plot. Similar to the organizational subtopic, we have a lot of threads with narrow plots, but little that connects everything together anymore. Depending how you look at it, we either have too few or too many main plots going on. A suggestion that was put forward: a) Increased guild involvement. The Alleyverse got started through inter-guild conflict. Guilds aggressively attempted to achieve their differing goals through RPing. Get guilds to increase their role in the creation of plots and encourage their membership more to see it through as a group. Like I said off the top, I know this is a lot to cover, but I feel we need to address it. So, join the conversation by posting your thoughts below. Feel free to agree or disagree with anything I’ve written or add your own suggestions. If we need to vote on anything, I can make that happen by editing the OP of this thread, but I want to talk this through first.