Character Development Thread--Discussion

@ladytanuki:

That was a beautiful post. I would send a character to your new area, but unfortunately I am not quite managing to write the ones I already have nowadays.

On the plus side, my solo writing is advancing (kind of).

Hm, this day turned out to be much busier than I had hoped. Might need to rethink my posting plans. Sorry if I'm holding people up.

*grin* For some reason I was thinking of you as I wrote it - figured it would be a location you would like. Of course, you do have the option of sending the Sentinel there (I'm sure Sinistrina would follow), not that you have to of course. But regardless, just like with Nemaforte's herb shop in Space Liner, I plan on keeping the cathedral there until Dream II ends, so don't worry if you can't introduce a character there now. And like Nemaforte, Lacriment will not be going anywhere. I will forbid her from doing so. (And I just realized I had been in such a rush to do that post that I forgot to proofread it - what kind of a word is "affornation"?)

And good for you on your solo writing! Eh, I should probably get to that myself; for that reason I won't be introducing any more characters anytime soon. Once Frontier's over that'll help anyway...

@Ryuhza: Oh, speaking of Frontier, how do you feel about having the Washington group leave in the next couple of posts or so and then head for the train station? I'm ready for our arc to end, but not sure if you are.

edited 30th Apr '17 8:16:55 AM by ladytanuki

I've been feeling a little out-of-it this week, so I threw in a short Farm post where Tsadro stitches up Fuwa's wound.

@Sickbay group:

Does anyone else want to talk to Cecilia? Can we split that group? Can I post an answer to Tigris right away?

@Miller: I'm waiting on Rolph and Minerva first. Though admittedly, I'm still not certain in full what Cecilia did- Did she decide to mess with Anna's cybernetics anyways despite her reassuring their necessity? Did she do anything to Anna's psychic mutation (it would of replaced normal brain functions for smell and taste)?

She simply sped up the recovery process. She is not able to mess with any kind of electronics and she didn't tamper with her mutation.

Does that mean that you're going to make one of your characters join the dialogue? Cecilia kinda split away by sitting on the bed next to Anna.

Well, Gabriel and Anna would definitely be amazed at the display of possible magic, so at least they'll thank her.

Okay, waiting, then.

@Ladytanuki

That's fine by me.

Posted in Dream. Will try to get to Rolph and Glitch tomorrow. I'm still feeling all bleeeugh from moving boxes around the last two days.

@Library group:

I forgot to post this here, but the Library messes with supernatural senses and with the supernatural in general. Both the building itself, the things there and its workers are indistinguishable to any form of supernatural of extraordinary sense, only reading as a big grey (or multi-coloured) blob of practically unreadable information. This ties in with something I have planned.

edited 30th Apr '17 12:20:18 PM by EternaMemoria

I shall get to working on posts tomorrow when I have a chance, since it's my turn to post in several places now.

Meanwhile, I'm mulling around my various varieties of nocturnal blood drinkers, two of the three (so far) varieties aren't undead, merely hard to kill. These two are your classic vampire and the nosferatu: a repulsive, draconic, winged wolf beast thing. Your undead variety is the strigoi, blood absorbing liches who can transform into giant killer owl monsters. Yes.

edited 30th Apr '17 4:04:16 PM by WillDeRegio

There we go, sorry for the delay. I'll try to get Oswald's post done in the next day or two.

Ah, I see I am not the only one who intentionally blurs the line between vampire and lich, as you have done with the strigoi. Looking at Sinistrina, I realize I made her very vampire-like for a lich - she drinks blood to sustain herself, can quickly regenerate, doesn't rot like most other undead, and is harmed by sunlight (and the red eyes help). To the point where in Porcelain Wonderland I'm having a few characters mistake her for a vampire - hence why in Space Liner she said she was flattered that Mancipium called her a revenant instead. Really the main things that distinguish her as a lich are her preference for magic over physical/transformative abilities (vampires almost universally favor the latter ability-wise) and possession of a Soul Jar.

And traditionally, not all vampires are technically undead - though the definition of such is kind of iffy. The viral variety, especially, are usually not. Heck, I'm still trying to decide if my succubus character counts as undead or not - on one hand, she can't die in the traditional sense and is harmed by healing magic (and garlic, which she is incredibly averse to), but on the other, her body is warm and her heart still beats (by necessity since she feeds through sex). The latter could be considered glamour though, as I've seen many more traditional vampires do that too. The three vampire characters I have have a similar issue. One of them has similar physical characteristics to the aforementioned succubus (in part because she is her daughter), while the other two are clearly undead (though one is more ghost-like and the other doesn't even have a soul). Perhaps somewhere down the line when I introduce a couple of these characters into a thread, you'll see what I mean.

edited 30th Apr '17 6:02:29 PM by ladytanuki

The "hurt by sunlight" thing always bothered me vis-a-vis vampire weaknesses. We understand quite a bit about the nature of sunlight, so designing countermeasures against vampires should be trivially easy. Some fiction with vampires addresses this by saying ultra-violet frequency light is what harms vampires, but if that's the case, then killing vampires should be trivially easy. Just build a UV laser and you've got the single most lethal anti-bloodsucker weapon that could possibly exist.

I've got it so that only degraded vampires and nosferatu have the "visible reaction to sunlight". And while having a nosferatu ignite under sunlight might eventually kill it, it'll still be trying to maul your face off. "Regular" vampires are only weakened by the sun. Strigoi, on the other hand, get empowered by UV rays.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure says hi. For one part at least.

edited 30th Apr '17 7:03:21 PM by WillDeRegio

This is why sometimes it's best to just let the wizard live, folks. Unless of course you actually want a setting where people shoot vampires with UV laser guns, which personally I wouldn't find too objectionable.

BTW, Gault, think I'm waiting on either activity from your characters in the hangar or confirmation that they aren't coming out of their ship at this point.

Sorry 'bout that. On it.

I basically establish Our Vampires Are Different is an in universe phenomenon, resulting in everything from In Name Only to things that are only similar at their base (needing, benefiting or compelled to steal something specific) and the "Standard Vampire" on the other end of that sliding scale. The same applies to all other similar tropes- You might find a Werewolf who changes at moonlight, or a Werescientist who awakens to smack talk the existence of magic.

I have many beings that blur the line between vampires, liches and ghosts. That is mostly because in my verse a mind needs a body to exist fully and actively in this plane, and not simply fall into the Beyond (the Spirit, for example, actually exists in Sentinel's brain, sharing it with her mind, and other ghosts are only active in the material world if chanelled by a medium), and dream/shadow/thoughtform magic in my verse (the magic most of my magic-users use) needs a blueprint to work and stay stable, or borrowimg materials from more real sources.

Which, if you want to preserve your body, means either indulging in You Are Who You Eat (surprising as it may seen, they aren't considered evil, and when they are they are seem as Noble Demon types), using part of someone's body (generally some blood) to develop a sympathetic bond allowing their body to act as said blueprint or cutting the middleman and using DNA from cells in said blood sample as a blueprint, which isn't easy, even with a few hints left from the Advanced Ancient Humans.

...or you can become a half-ghost living nexus between the material world and the Beyond, which has no side effects like uncontrollable Reality Warping, constant hallucinations, undead suddenly rising around you or literally sinking into the afterlife together with the whole town/country/planet you live on. Perhaps thankfully, no one really knows how to do that.

Of course none of those are mutually exclusive, and both the Spirit and Sentinel combine multiple of them.

I think poor Rolph might strain his eyes if he keeps witnessing impossible things...

Glitch is up next.

Regarding the undead, Gwenafer's and Moreena's verse has three loose, main categories that they fit into:

Ghouls, which is a catch-all term for many forms of mutated, zombie-like creatures, not all of which might technically count as "undead" in the traditional sense.

Revenants, which are corpses (or occasionally other things, though that is very rare) possessed by spirits, whether their own or someone else's. They range from "smarter than average zombie" to "classical vampire" depending on the condition of the corpse, the circumstances of the spirit's death, and it's will power and/or skill with magic.

Ghosts, which are similar to revenants but use magically conjured, pseudo-physical "shells" instead of corpses. Interacting with the material world takes a lot of effort, and can usually only be done for short periods of time or under special conditions.

Posted for Shireen, at the Arboretum. Not really sure what to do with her next, though. Probably I'll have her interact with Glitch and Robin, who are heading that way.

Made my Horizons post. And added hypnotic reflection interfaces to the ship because I think it is a very novel idea and kinda helps integrate it more with the rest of the ship's design IMO.

Posted for Space Liner. And now Kokoro is stripping. Because her Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing. Also, Loki's coat pockets are Bigger on the Inside. Expect a high(?) goddess to start pulling random stuff out of them eventually.

Now, I'll get around to posting for Dream and Frontier, in that order.