Character City is the twenty-third installment of the main-series Character Development Thread.
At the point where two rivers become one, there is a city. Its architecture is all over the place and tends to alternate between modern and 19th Century style in a heartbeat (though the older buildings are closer to the city's center). The very center is marked by numerous skyscrapers, the tallest of which is high enough to make the description of "skyscraper" seem literal.
For some reason, this city seems prone to attracting a wide variety of beings. Even the natives are oddly varied. There's no telling who one will meet here while they walk down the streets....
The thread can be found here
. It started in May 2013 and came to a close in October.
Character City contains examples of:
- Big Bad Ensemble: Uffern and the Eyes and Teeth (though the latter has been the more active of the two thus far). In as much as a CDT can have a Big Bad, anyway.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep":
- The antique shop's shopkeeper.
- Uffern for a good chunk of the thread. Until it finally gave its name to Micheal, it was called either "the knight," "the demon," or "the essence."
- Evil Versus Evil: Amu (and later the Eyes and Teeth) versus Uffern. On one side, Amu thinks of himself as a hero protecting the city while the Eyes and Teeth just wants to devour the other side. Meanwhile, Uffern is intent on destroying or otherwise getting rid of the Eyes and Teeth, who it sees as competition.
- Interspecies Romance: Joseph's and Rachel's relationship seems to be heading this way.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Rachel's and Joseph's conversation about alternate universes heads into this territory.
- The Magic Versus Technology War: The way the lines in the battle for the Skyscraper end up being drawn, though Alice and Ksenya make the border a bit grey.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted with Jonathan Amsel and Jonathan Feller; John Mills and John Richman; and again with Marianne and Marianne.
- One-Winged Angel: Uffern manages to get the upper hand on Amu, but that just makes Amu lose control of his powers, allowing the Eyes and Teeth to possess him.
- Our Demons Are Different: The thirty-foot creature that attacked the construction district early on and was later (ironically) possessed by Uffern. It has incredible regenerative ability and an insatiable hunger for flesh, but doesn't seem too intelligent.
- Sanity Slippage: After the bank collapses, trapping her and several others in its basement, poor Rachel goes off the deep end and speaks nothing but gibberish. She gets better.
- Sheathe Your Sword: While the Eyes and Teeth tears apart all challengers, without an enemy to fight Amu manages to regain control, through his refusal to harm innocents.
- Villainous Rescue: The Eyes and Teeth, in its urge to devour the goddess and elven spirit, unintentionally defused a hostage situation (though it didn't actually free the group being held hostage).
- The Worf Effect: Alice Winters, master of anti-magic, getting thrown around by the unbound Eyes and Teeth to establish its capacity and nature.
