Sorana

What about the house scenes thread? It's like the CDS thread but meant for vharacters interacting with each other in a secluded environment. To me it was super helpful to rp some character development without having to worry about someone else crashing the scene.

Alright. I'll work on a character. I'm not sure yet which metal, I'll just roll a die and take whatever I end up with. Sheet will be up within the next 24 hours. Planning pm is good, or we use the thread for planning and rp in a pm. But I'd keep it separated.

"It did." Shana nodded and smiled when she saw the gratitude in his eyes, how he searched for words. Not that she would ever tell him, that it was written all over his face, she knew he prefered to remain a stone. "Just do me a favor and don't tell them they're wrong and leave the room." She grinned and finally started roasting some of the dough for herself. "If I say I help, I do it. And it was more fun than maths." Which she still hadn't done. Well she would get up early tomorrow, try to remember what Ben had told her and write something down. It didn't really matter, as long as she had more than an empty sheet of paper. She could hardly tell her teacher, that she had to fight some demon-like being in her sleep. That sounded like she was taking drugs.

Wes approached the girl, who had claimed to be a friend of Lusk’s and Mike shook his head in concern. He was right, she was acting strangely, and in a way he hadn’t expected. It was good, that at least one of them was thinking beyond taking pictures and going on a date. He blushed again, hastily turned to Lusk „Hi, sir.“ He greeted him and guestured towards the Vortex. “Seom proposed to throw aluminum in there, and she-“ A guesture towards Freedom, “asked after the foil. We hope, to be able to cut if off, or to disturbe it or something like this.” @I think I am here. The man sketched a quick bow before Baker pi and contacted Zokora. Zokora moved the screens she was monitoring to a device she could take with her and left the ship. Lusk headed to the kids at the Vortex, so she could meet with TUBA. She made sure to read through her instructions on how to conduct such a meeting. Be polite, don't let them get the better of you. Stay calm. They are way too nice for their own good. You can do this. She smiled at the last words. Almost everything in here ended like this. Trust yourself and you are fine. She made sure to walk up to the Baker Pi guy, instead of simply appearing but she didn’t remove her weapons. They were stowed away, and she made sure to keep her hands away from the handles, but there was no need to pretend she wasn’t dangerous. With or without a weapon. As long as she had stormlight, she was a potential threat. “Thank you for coming. My name is Zokora An'Inera and I am the Righthand’s assistant.” She greeted the man. “I askes for this meeting to discuss how we could cooperate regarding the evacuation. According to my reports its going well, but we are still loosing men, and I hope we could reduce that amount, if we coordinated our actions.” @AonEne

“… but one.” Attayl saw the shadow over Nerin’s eyes when she obviously remembered, and she looked down, stared at the cakes herself. But one. They all had their one, she guessed. The one person that overpowered you, that overstepped borders, that was in control. She swallowed, grabbed another cake and took a bite herself. Nerin’s mother had been a whore, just like her own. 1st Octant, whereas hers had worked in the 7th. Nerin was who she could have ended up, had she spoken about her alomancy, had she been brave enough to take control over her life. It was like a mirror, they were two sides of one coin. “I think that’s a good idea.” She replied and got to her feet. Go back to the parlor. See if Brillin had woken up, try to find out where Lance had gone. See if they could get some information about the harbor. John, that crazy one who claimed to be from a different world. Probably a drug addicted of some sorts. She took another cake, enjoyed the sweet taste. Brillin. She would have to talk to him, later. She looked at Nerin sitting there at the table. It was the first time, she had opened up, she had really talked to her. Attayl looked outside, slowly “Thank you.” She gently squeezed her hand again. There were no other words necessary. Nerin knew, that she understood. Attayl carefully covered the remaining cakes, folded a napkin in a form that indicated a thank you and they walked back to the parlor. “If you ever need to get out of everything again – Jo now knows your face. And nobody there will ask a question.” They walked through the streets in silence and Attayl decided on a slightly longer way back, which would give her the opportunity to walk over the marketplace. There was a shop that sold tea and maybe a good cup of tea would help Nerin as well. She walked by the little store, knew what she wanted and where the owner usually placed it. Without really looking she grabbed to packages. A good herbal tea for Nerin and a one that helped to soothe you stomach for Brillin. Judging his earlier drunkenness, he would need it. She never changed their speed, but made sure to take some turns, so that they would be out of reach before the owner realized what was gone. He was easy to steal from, but then most thieves weren’t interested in tea. Grinning slightly she handed the package to Nerin once they’d stepped into the parlor. “It’s one of my favourites. You should give it a try.” @ZincAboutIt

Shana handed out dough to everybody who was interested and then remembered something. She walked back inside, moved things from her table to the floor and started to search for arguments for Rob. She summed them up, added examples and figures, and once she was finished she made another list, full of information about what his opponents might say and how he could reply to their arguments. It took her a while, but when she walked back down she hoped she had enough fodder for him to get through the debate without leaving the room after one sentence. She returned to Evelyn with an apologetic glance and handed Rob the pages. @I think I am here.

"Sure, gladly." Shana took another glimpse at her, at the strange skin, but with Ashlyn here she kept quiet. "You could make another batch of dough or prepare the garlic butter."

Awkwardly Mike nodded, unsure how to reply. "I mean of course. You're great and -" He sounded lame. Like an idiot. Which he was. An idiot. "Would you like to go to a cafe?" There, that was a save question.

Shana got to her feet and walked over, two mixing bowls in her hands. "I'm Shana." She introduced herself and put some flour into the larger bowl. "I plan to make a dough we can wrap around sticks and roast over the fire. And some garlic butter to go along. It's delicious." Adding water, salt and some eggs she started to knead. "And the marshmallows are there to be roasted as well."

Mike blushed. "Um... you know... there's Bella and I -" Turning a deep crimson he fell silent. Seom was more like he was. Unlike Bella. Bella was his idol. And she had left him again, while Seom was here. He suspected that Bella had a crush on him. "So, I mean maybe? If we survive and all of it works, and I mean, we could talk for a while and-" Mike stared at his mobile, wished that it would send him any kind of message, but nothing. Nothing he could use as an excuse. It was a date. Nothing more. Only a date. "Yes." He looked into her eyes and suspected his face had to look like a tomato. Then he heard the girl talk about aluminum foil. "Aluminum Foil? Sure I'll ask." Quickly he send another text asking after the foil. @I think I am here.

"Send it to me, please?" Mike asked and texted Zokora, who contacted Lusk to send them a squad with some aluminum. @I think I am here.

Surprised Mike showed the camera a thumbs up and hoped his grin looked only half wrong. "We can give it a try, I suppose." He nodded at her. "You don't happen to have some with you?"

@xinoehp512 Mike turned to Seom. "It sounds great. But I'm not sure what to do now." @Ark's Boyfriend

„… be sure you have enough guards posted outside. The guilds will be preoccupied with the Vortex, but I don’t want any of these creatures to leave the area before we are ready to attack.” The man gestured towards the entrance. “You promised me an army of useful creatures, half of them are too dumb to know which side of a gun to grab, not even talking about shooting. Their bodily features make up for that, but still, I expected you to do better.” The white clad people around him lifted their hands apologetically, try to reply, to defend themselves, but he waved their words away. “I don’t care for your explanations. They will do. The guilds are still bickering among themselves; our assessment of this world seems to be accurate. I will wait until this strange storm hits the city, then the Vortex is out of control and then we can start chapter four of our plan and attack them. Between my forces and the Vortex they will perish for sure. Go. Prepare. Hand out the weapons. We have enough time left for the final preparations, there’s no need to hurry – yet.” @kenod ========== Mika nodded, grabbed the arm of the scientist and led him out of the room. The man followed meekly, not even trying anymore to get away. He seemed to have given up. The strange shadow-like-thing hissed at the Vortex some drops of his figure flying towards it and vanishing. Mike’s eyes followed the drops and he paused, turned to his friends and the girl. “When we prepared for our earlier task, we thought about the power of the one we planned to fight. And then how to neutralize them.” Excitedly he gestured towards the Vortex. “That thing takes Investiture, so it has to be able to absorb it. And it absorbs everything we throw at it. And it can create things.” His thoughts fled him, when he looked back at the Vortex, a fin touched its surface again, and vanished in its depts. Mike swallowed and forced himself to focus again. “So we have three powers. Absorbing and more importantly needing Investiture, absorbing things and creating monsters.” @I think I am here. @xinoehp512 @Silva @Vargo Seldon @Ark's Boyfriend

I agree this leads to lots of work on your side. Though honestly, it's the best I can think of right now. Maybe we just have to have our apply to characters that were actively rped, and then trust everybody to distribute them faintly, or to write a short summary where their character learned it. I like that idea, but honestly for me it won't work. Because I don't decide how my characters will grow before they interact with other characters. Maybe set Althea aside, but even withher I only had her speak her oath, because it fit the situation. If we had found the time to rp her leaning how to use her shardweapon, then she would have fine that. Maybe we could state that you have a goal, but if something else comes along, something based on good rp, then you can change it. So that you are a new to leave your character in a beautiful scene and don't need to leave because your goal dictates, that you should do this or that, but maybe the thread you planed with went inactive (e.g. the sewer System, the Canton, ...). I fear that might lead to frustration. In the end we probably all submit a new Version of or character sheets one the era ends. So maybe we just mal which skill the character gained with a short explanation why. Just a sentence. Still a case to case decision, but hopefully people would choose a skill they really rped gaining and with the explanation you don't need to look everything up.

I have to say, that I am not a huge friend of this. I can see, why it makes it "easier" to "rate" how a character grew, but in the end it will make the whole system even more complicated. I am alright with the points system, as it offers a quick and easy way to get a feeling for a character and to exclude OP combinations, but even with that I sometimes see cases where I feel like a nomal attribute like "curious" is suddenly treated as a weakness only to gain points. I can live with that, it's simply something I noticed over the course of the era. To the "gain points through actions thing". What I really want to avoid is people doing things only to get points they then spend on different skills. If someone goes to the Canton and they spend lots of posts on training a weapon skill there, then I am find if the character learns that skill. Same if someone sits down with Lena and spend the time tp brew poisons, and so on. But if joining a guild grants me points, then in the end every character will join a guild and then spend the points whereever they fit. What intrigues me about the Alleyverse is, that I can focus on character development and that I can rp. If we include a system that focusses on gaining points, then it will disrupt all of that. I agree that we need to find a solution for character growth, but maybe we can do something more easy: Everybody gets 50 (random number here) points per era, and they can only be spend on a skill if you've got a reason why the character gained that skill. Because you rped them training, got them spiked, spoke an oath. Points you don't use, either you can stack them, or not. I'm not sure if that's better, but at least there would be no need to act in a certain way to get the points. If a character spends a whole era doing nothing but studying, they can advance in the field they studied and if a character psend time fighting enemies, they can learn something in that regard as well. Personally I feel like the whole jumping from one plot to the other has happened a lot less this era, than in the previous ones. Of course we still have characters that appear and then vanish, but that is also due to their player rping only for a while and then going inactive again. We will always have some kind of fluctuation in that regard, and I think the amount of times people hopped around was withing good borders this era. I agree when it comes to the weaknesses though. I know that it's really hard to rate a weakness and to discern it correctly, but I feel like on the one hand there are lots of weaknesses that almost never trigger, because they are avoided and on the other hand there are things count as a weakness, that aren't a weakness. Like the whole moral code thing (yes I know it influences how your character happens, but why should I get points for deciding to play a character adhering to moral values?) either I play a character that is good, or I don't. Same with weaknesses like curious and the like. And then I think it's sad, that weaknesses rarely trigger, or are set to trigger only in a special situation. I am fine, if not every character is as broken as mine, but I feel like so much rp comes out of failing something - it's fine to not be the hero everytime. But then we can't force someone to actively do that, so in the end we rely on every rper. tl;dr: Please no system where I gain points through actions. Weaknesses should be thought over (which ones give points) and included more into rp. =============== Edit: @MetaTerminal I agree But we need a way for character to advance, if only because it's the concept of all KRs to speak their oaths and to advance. So these characters will grow stronger over the time, or the whole character concept is screwed. And I think, if someone rps their character's advancement/ training whatever, it's fine if the character learns/ improves. (If they are a KR or not)

Attayl didn't need to burn her metal to realize Nerin was soothing her. But she smiled at her, sat down and took a cake herself. "Jo takes care of those like me." She explained. "A place to get out, and she knows how to look after smaller wounds as well. We make sure that we only go here when we need it, when someone is in need of help." Her smile widened when she took a bite. Jo's cake were tasty and they were haven. "No questions, no explanations. Just a few minutes of quiet outside of the usual - business." Taking another bite she turned earnest, took Nerin's hand, offering silent comfort.

I prefer smaller groups, so if that's an option I'm in. Or I'll help with the plot.

So we don't act as group, but rp 1:1 with you?

The bugs scurried over the ground, vanished between houses, their feelers touching the ground, smelling the air. They flew over the cobbles this way and that way, turning around, leaving a place and returning yet another time. They searched. Now and then one got stomped on by somebody running along a street, but there were many, and loosing one or two didn’t mean much to their number. Their feet touched the earth outside of the city, until one paused, its feelers repeatedly pressing against the ground. It turned its head and then change its direction, towards a place with an unusual amount of vibrations. The building itself had no meaning to the bug, it didn’t know what a factory was, or the purpose of a warehouse, it was nothing more, but a huge place with few windows. It felt the vibrations of the creatures when they walked, it felt the air resonating when they talked and screamed. And so it moved closer, slipped into the building and followed the trail to a ramp leading down into the ground to a former warehouse, with massive doors blocking the entrance. The closer it came to the doors the quieter it became, until it was eerily silent, but it tasted the distinct taste of fresh chalk in the air. The doors opened and two figures slipped out of them, their voices silenced to a faint whisper about standing watch and it quickly rushed through. It passed two doors, quickly ran through the small rooms, some tables and an old kitchen, and then followed the hallway until reached a larger room. The ground still showed the marks where the storage racks had been standing, some of them pushed against the walls. The room was confusing, there was so much noise, so many smells, so many creatures stomping around. Most of them seemed to be the same, moving this way and that way. They smelled like the ones the bug had smelled in the city, those that killed and were killed. One of them was different, shouting loudly, his voice angry, and it paused, looked up at that two legged-being. Its eyes were bad and the two-legged ones looked the same anyway. But it seemed to be the leader. @kenod =================== "Is it possible for him to confer with my commanding officer?" The man asked uncomfortably, glancing over the shoulders. He expected a trap, he was alone per his orders. He knew, that was probably observed by the rest of his squad, but here, right now he was alone and his weapon out of reach. ================== Mike nodded his agreement. "Then let's get the prisoner out, secure him and seal the room. All in favor?"

"See a friend of mine." Attayl replied, realizing that Nerin wasn't really interested. She looked to the ground, about to call it all off, and then shook her head. Maybe it would help her, get her head off Brillin. His Elizandra. but he was drunk. There was no way, he could have meant that. Or there was more to the figure of Elizandra than she knew. "It's not far." She opened the door and led Nerin outside. Inhaling the air outside she smiled, when she caught the familiar stench of a city. It was something she knew, something she knew how to handle. Contrasting what had happened earlier, these streets were her home. She headed through the streets, made sure Nerin kept up, until the crossed the invisible line into a part of Elendel where the better situated lived. Her steps picked up a bit, when she aimed for a little cafe, but instead of stepping inside, she walked around, to the backdoor, knocked and stepped into a small room. There was a bank and a table and she gestured for Nerin to sit down. "I'll be right back." She told her, but before she could turn around a portly woman stepped inside the room, saw her and hugged her. "A new one?" The woman asked and Attayl shook her head. "The Farriers killed her friend, father, employer. Something like that." She explained and saw a flicker of sympathy cross the woman's face. "Wait here. I'll bring something." Without waiting for her to reply she felt and returned later with a plate full of small cakes. Attayl grinned at her in thanks when she placed them on the table, before leaving the room with a short explanation about how she had guests to look after. Still grinning Attayl turned back to Nerin. "Try one. We always say, they can help with almost anything. Jo's cakes are the best."

@Blessing of Potency @BookishOcelot