The City at the Center of the Multiverse (Signup Thread)

ok. so, how can I make it work?

I mean, the starting point would be to have Mami's powers rely on some sort of energy source that can easily run out. The second would be to establish limits on what kind of tech she can interface with (for example, she can't interface with an old computer because, y'know, old). The third would be to establish limits on the ribbons themselves, so that they either run out, or aren't strong enough to accomplish certain kinds of tasks. See where I'm going with this?

Ok, I actually just reworked the entire sign up. Could I get you to look at it again? Thanks.

And yes, I realised that I explained the whole soul gem thing really badly. Her magic does run out, in fact she uses it up just by existing.

TLDR, I've signed up as Vanilla! Mami. So, no more computer stuff or advanced age. It should be better this way.

Edited by biomechtraveler on Jul 6th 2018 at 5:13:45 AM

Heya Bio. I'm on board with Yui and Mami being friends, I can see that working . Could you explain your rationale behind Mami and Satsuki not getting along, though? Not that I'm deeply opposed to the idea, I could just use some more context for it.

Between Satsuki and Mami, if feel like there would be tension since both of them have quietly dominating personalities. Both like to have things their way. So I'm thinking that although there are no open hostilities, there is always palpable tension as they both manage to rub each other the wrong way.

Hmm, okay. I can see how that could play out. It might also be that Satsuki has intuited to some degree how much of a facade mami's usual personality is.

Mami is powerful enough for her to want her in the fusiliers anyway, but she'd have her on her watch-list.

Alright, seems like an a-ok sheet. Accepted.

You've got Discord, right? Here's the link to our chat.

I RETURN TO THE GANG

LEMME PLAY YOU THE CHARACTER OF MY PEOPLE

Guess what character tvtropesnoob aka the 'Dresden-Everywhere-System Admin' is here with, again?

The name, the man, the (not)legend!

• Carlos 'disintegrator' Ramirez I made the nickname up but it fits, the master of the shit eating grin.

Age:

• Somewhere in his mid twenties when he was taken, so late twenties to about 30 later.

Wave:

• Fourth. Fresh face but not so fresh that I have to RP out him being a paranoid asshole for several months in an RP that moves at one post a week

Canon or OC:

• Dresden files character, with an OC cream on top of the sexy spaniard mancake due to him being a side character so I have to fill in a few holes

Appearance:

Handsome

wanker

Unsatisfactory Backstory, unless you want me to describe the entirety of a 15 book series

Far reaching details are unfortunately unknown to us audience — y must your farther back sidecast be so unknown, jim. ;-; He's a spanish american (not latino, specifically spaniard) who was apprenticed as a young boi, and was noted to be a prodigy who graduated at an extremely early age. (Bit of backstory here for those who have no idea what a warden is — in the dresden verse, the top 1% of magical practioners are forcibly accepted into the white council of wizards, an organization for their own protection and mortal protection against them, founded way back by Merlin. 'Wardens' refer to combat-minded wizards who enforce the law and act as soldiers). By the time he was in his mid 20's he was a regional commander for the wardens, for north america specifically — though that's half his skill, half cause the war at the time had killed quite a few of the good wizards lying around. Was the only one authority in the continent for the few years prior to him getting ragdolled across the omniverse, due to the other one Harry Dresden being...occupied. He's a diligent guardian of his region, managing the section and his underlings well, tirelessly juggling the responsibilities given to him to try and keep things under control in an extremely chaotic time. He fell somewhat into the council's poor graces due to pulling a small rebellion on them as protest for their incompetence, but due to him being damn good at his job they couldn't fire him, so there he stayed, having many off screen adventures and heroics. Never had much going for him outside of the job for most of his life, it's pretty much been one wildfire dropped into his lap after the next, post-apprenticeship.

What is this thing you call 'personality'?

At first glance you'd read Carlos Ramirez as a jokey, relaxed casanova. His outward facing persona card would certainly be the Fool. He revels in showing off and loves to play himself up, having more than a bit of an ego, both for said persona and also in reality. Laid back, boisterous and cheeky, his over the top personality stirs both eye rolls and chuckles from his cohorts. He deliberately plays all these features up in order to both put people at ease around him, and also cause people to underestimate him, being a definite believer in obfuscating stupidity. This would normally be the part where I'd say 'oh but don't you worry it's all just a mask!' but nah, it's more that he has those traits already and just exaggerates them to comical levels for amusement and obfuscation. Underneath his larger-than-life persona, he's extremely savvy and much wiser than he normally lets on, being quick on the uptake and bearing good instincts. He's young, relatively, but there's a reason why he was chosen to be the head wizard authority in all of North America (besides there not being anyone else for the job!). When he needs to be, he's extremely competent and efficient. Pragmatically minded, ruthless when he needs to and as sharp and dangerous as an obsidian knife's edge, he's practically glued to his harsh duties at all times and can never let his guard truly down even when it seems like he's lazing about.

If there was one word that would describe the central core of his character, 'duty' would probably be it, next to 'ambition'. It's the ideal that binds his life and gives him his seemingly inhuman determination and drive. From a very young age he decided that he would use his innate power to serve his fellow man and ensure that the people who don't share it are guarded under his wing, his duty as a powerful wizard to see to the security of others against the things that go bump in the night. Duty to his position as the Warden regional commander for north america, guarding, leading and inspiring less gifted ('compared to me, who isn't!?') wizards in their wars and in upholding the law. It's this feeling of calling that keeps him up at night, exhaustively researching new spells and obsessively planning for the future of his subordinates and protectees. It's also probably why his love life is garbage, but hey, something's gotta give.

He's definitely on the side of the good guys — you'll be rare to find a wizard more loyal or good intentioned. He's gutsy and not afraid to speak his mind, even to his superiors — though he's not quite as mouthy as other people from the series (cough cough Dresden cough), having a bit more restraint when needed. He's playfully snarky to people he likes (and also to people he doesn't, with a bit more bite), and hard to seriously perturb. Like all wizards he also is used to playing politics, being a regional commander himself — he's much better at bearing with it though, not generally grumbling though at times he's quick to retort if he thinks his superiors are being stupid.

Like most wizard wardens, he's paranoid and independent, slow to give out trust to strangers through words alone, and (unless compelled by duty or his sense of warrior's honor) will hesitate to jump into unknown situations. He keeps secrets like a hobby and it takes a decent amount of prying to get him to open up, firstly guarded by his wizardly sense of keeping cards to his chest, secondly enforced by his masochism and desire to play things off when possible. He's always looking for more power to give himself the edge, and is willing to be the one who pulls the trigger on despicable actions, but he's still got lines that he won't cross. He won't torture even heinous enemies unless extremely pressed for example, and it would break his heart to do so despite his warden's sense of ruthless pragmatism. He's not interested in the darker sides of magic, or in messing with any powers that could lead to personal corruption, preferring to keep his nose clean when at all possible.

He'll make a show of being the big tough boi on the block and never shies away from a fight, but internally he genuinely hates hurting most things and wishes that he was more able to solve situations without violence, and gets sick anytime he has to bring harm onto anyone even though it's 90% of his job. Given the option he'd much rather let enemies live and go, though he's found that he's rarely given that option. A good man at heart, but he's still someone who's position demands he occasionally do things such as executing teenagers, and does it without complaint.

He's practically minded, but his 'spanish pride and honor', as he'd put it, occasionally gets in his way and can wind up holding the dumb ball when properly provoked. He's payed for it plenty so he does a pretty good job of keeping his emotions in check these days, but his hot headedness still can rear its head and drive him to brash decisions in its name. Like that time he apparently decided it would be a 10/10 idea to lead a small rebellion in his organization due to feeling like they were all being stupid. He's a bit more reserved now, thankfully.

Finally, he loves to talk so much shit about how he's gods gift to women and gay men everywhere — but he's actually a virgin, who woulda guessed. He's pretty attractive physically and chill so it's definitely by choice at this point — I figure he's a combination of 'married to the job' and 'hopeless romantic afraid to accidentally get into a casual fling' sort of fellow, when pushed to actually admit it.

Powers! (aka the part where eyes roll back in heads)

• True Sight: The ability to see the world in symbolic form to reveal its truer nature; for example, if a wizard sees a man whose wife has just died, he might see the man with sword wounds all over his body. Helps with seeing magic stuff more clearly and can gain an insight into other people but the things seen can never be forgotten in the slightest, so he's extremely careful using it as looking at something particularly evil or unpleasant can basically break his mind.

• Opening doors to magical realms: In series wizards can open holes in reality to step into the magical reality that exists next to us, so in general it means that if someone puts him into some space-time magic spell that puts em apart from normal reality he can try to cut through it. Only works if it's magic that's done it though.

• Wizard Sense: It's similar to "Spidey sense" in how it works. Instead of danger, what it detects is Magic in its natural state and worked forms. Wards, for instance, are invisible to the normal eye, but a wizard would be able to sense when they are present.

• Soul gaze: Wizards can do something called soul gaze, which allows people to see into their souls and vice versa, happens automatically with eye contact that lasts more than a couple of seconds. The benefit is that you can't hide your fundamental nature during a soul gaze so it can help establish trust or the like, once you see what someone basically is, but the downside is that like true sight you can never forget what you saw, it'll always be just as pixel perfect clear as it was when you saw it. Less dangerous than true sight — you usually can't be driven outright insane from it, but it can be a very unpleasant experience if it's a very unpleasant soul you witnessed. Also, due to souls being hard to interpret and just giving you a broad image the benefit is pretty vague unless you just want to know if that saint is secretly a complete monster.
  • Actually seeing the soul: what I mean when I say 'you see the other soul' is actually something not set in stone and is generally a good place for a player to be creative (though it'll always be something that gives you a broad impression rather than gritty narrow details of their lives). Carlos hears people's theme songs for example, though I imagine it's much more vivid and descriptive than just basic audio. Lasts about as long as you want, in real life it takes about a second of time passing, during which the characters will simply be frozen in place due to their minds having other things to process.

• quick reaction time: due to a lifetime of fighting opponents with highway like super speed, he's able to react quicker than a normal human would. So in the amount of time it takes you to think "Oh shi—dead" he'd manage to react "Oh shit shields up "

• Magic circles: Drawing a small circle or otherwise making the image of one and solidifying it in his mind can basically summon up a shield in its radius, both to keep magic things out if he's inside and to try to keep magic things in if he's outside. It'll shatter if it takes too much damage and isn't meant to be permanent due to it, larger and more complicated geometry drawings can help make it stronger, and it breaks if anything non magical goes through it (past dust or the like).

• As he is a wizard he's able to control magic and unleash it as physical matter. This ability is tied to a number of factors: the emotion one uses to draw the energy in, the intention of the person using it, etc, that shape how the spell comes out. It also draws on the actual energy from the caster - the bigger the spell is, the more energy it takes to cast, thus the more energy the wizard ends up using, naturally stopping when they have too little to continue. High emotions can be burned as well for energy, though the supply usually isn't nearly as much in comparison to bodily energy. The caster can draw some natural energy from other places as well to help, though the environment itself usually has little to give. Specifics of what he has super down to cast are below, but I made this post back in the day to be a total generic primer for the magic system as a whole and usually reference back to it for my narrations so I know how to word the castings.

• Combat/evocative (speedy casting) spells:
  • General powers: Like most combat experienced wizards, Carlos knows a few spells from varying schools. Cab blow some wind around, probably pull up a fireball or two, etc etc. Not his specialty though, so he won't be using most of that for combat — takes him longer to form such spells, can't control them well, and uses more of his energy. Same thing as usual for these guys with non-specialty spells. In terms of magical capacity, he's much more reliant on speed and accuracy for his strikes than overt strength — he just doesn't have that much juice to throw around. So most of his spells don't pack quite the same punch or as wide an area even with his specialty schools as other magic uses might — but he's epic tier at dexterity and control, something something 'dagger in the kidney instead of a greatsword to the shielded body'. He can form some shell-like shields in various shapes, but they're not particularly strong and can only ward off a strike or two from strong combatants before blowing due to his lack of capability in strength contests.

  • Major school: Water magic. Carlos's main abilities are all wrapped around water — he can manipulate it and control it, pulling moisture out of the atmosphere to create pools he can manipulate. He can morph it, like small scale water bending would be a decent equivalent. He can manipulate water's physical properties — increasing surface tension to make it more solid, increasing water pressure to smash things, that sort of thing. Water is pretty malleable as far as elements go, so it'd be a bit hard to list every possible way he could use it for this list. Shouldn't result in things that are OHKO's or anything, though. Worst he could probably do is trap you in water and try and crush you/drown you — and that's avoidable if you're nimble or if you carry good defense, and unless you try fighting him next to a lake you'd probably also be able to shrug your way out of such traps. He does have one very nifty trick for water spells that deserves to be covered in more detail; in the dresdenverse, water magic is associated with entropy and decay, and he can use this to vaporize things in spells that take various forms.
    • FRIGGIN LAZAH BEAMS: His most common usage of forming vaporizing water puddles. He can fire out water lasers, about the diameter of a fist. They're pretty quick — less so than a bullet, but...er, still fast — and pierce through most things like proper lasers should. Chews right through wood, rock, and most metals, will get stopped by intense magical shielding and really really hard things that are also large in volume, though he can simply keep shooting if it's a stationary sort of thing. When hit it tends to vaporize portions of its target, spreading out like a puddle up to a few feet wide before simply turning it to dust.

    • Disintegration shield: His shielding technique is to put a disintegration field up and use it to block things. Redirects force rather than outright stopping it. Objects that come into contact with it will generally be vaporized, like a larger but relatively unmoving example of his particle beams. Unlike his more normal force based 'put a shell up and block me' shields, Carlos's distortion shields really only have the one purpose, and his aren't nearly as expandable or malleable as the simple force shields, and can't block all sides. So it's a bit of a trade off — the other's shields can't last as long, but can block all directions, while he gets longer lasting but not as universally defensive shields.

  • Major school: Illusions: He's got a talent for veils and illusion crafting — the art of manipulating light, sound, and other things for trickery. They can't be too large or ridiculously complicated, but he's good enough to make stuff up that's either very distracting such as blasts of light or sound or deceitful such as appearance masking. I'd describe Carlos's overall specialization being 'security expert', so his preferred uses of this magic take on an effect fitting to it. He's good at disguising himself or others, from appearance changing to becoming invisible against sight (well a human's eyes anyway) and sound. He can still wield magic and fight while keeping up most illusions, but veils (IE invisible shit) require his full magical attention and as such before actually doing any actions he has to drop it if he's got one on. Mostly used to be a sneaky boi.
    • One very odd out spell that lets him put someone to sleep if they're already weak and not trying to fight you. No combat application whatsoever since it has to be directly casted and someone actually trying to fight won't even notice.

  • Major school: Earth: His final specialization is earth-based. He's not really down for tossing huge chunks of earth around or anything — see earlier comments about 'dexterity > strength' but he can manipulate it in smaller quantities and draw strength and stability from it as a buff. His biggest trick here is that, similar to how water gives him properties over odd side effects of the element such as entropy, he uses earth mostly to let him do things with electromagnetism, from summoning up magnetic fields to their manipulation, to just flat out shooting lightning around. His biggest attack from here is straight up lightning, quite strong but also extremely draining, I reckon he can shoot two or three strikes of it at full stamina before just blacking out, so only really used as a last resort when he needs to really throw a punch.

• Non evocation (not-instantaneous) spellweaving:
  • Thaumaturgy (and security): the study of magical connections between objects and observing those connections/ sending forms of magic through the connections. Objects that are bound together include parts of the same whole like silly puddy globs, blood, hair or fingernails, or extremely good images to the thing that was imaged. He's not specificially good at this, but most wizards at least know the basics. For himself, he focused on things orienting around security and surveillance such setting up small enemy-detecting fields with spells candles and playdough...listening to someone from a distance by sticking a piece of playdough onto their door and listening in from the other fragments of playdough he still has in his pocket...monitoring a room with a glass eye stuck through playdough (lots of ways to use playdough lemme tell you). He uses this and pulls in tricks from the other schools to help fortify locations, creating traps and alarms and the like.

  • Security and charm making: Los is specialized as a security expert and can create and apply charms that contain his magic to locations for a variety of purposes related to his stronger schools. Such as sticking an illusion to the door to make it look like just a wall, or setting off a water bomb when combined with thaumaturgy to make a trap when the wrong people try to walk in, as examples.

  • Vast magical theory knowledge: Man's spent his life studying magic and its laws and schools and whutnut, so if he gets in a room with spellcasters from a setting that loves their lore they'll go nuts with talking. He knows a fuckton about enemy monsters as a point of study from various mythologies, so he can go into some fights knowing some good tactics beforehand if they're earthish foes.

• General physical abilities: Carlos is well trained in a lot of forms of combat. He's good at martial arts and a good marksman. I'd extrapolate that he's expert class at swordplay. In terms of physical attributes, he's basically a really athletic human.

• Otherwise competencies: His experiences as a commander warden in an era of wartime have basically left him a cia-cross-specops-cross-military leader-cross-politician/diplomat-cross-adventurer-cross-scout kind of thing, so he can do a wide variety of jobs and be pretty competent at it. There are better and he definitely can sometimes show his youth, but there's a reason why he's in charge of an entire continent's defense and operations. Not a 'power' but eh it's a capability I guess.

• Notable weaknesses: He absolutely refuses to violate the 7 laws of magic — and if he did, it would pretty much destroy his mind. The 7 laws basically are a bunch of rules that say 'don't use your magic to directly do x', with it being easily summed up as 'don't break into people's minds, cause time paradoxes, or kill people with magic'. The last one is the biggest ball buster; he can indirectly use it to slay opponents, but killing mortals (IE humans or similar beings) directly with magical strikes is a big no no. If you violate them, it slowly drives you insane and makes you more likely to do it again, so it would quickly start to harm him after one or two violations.

Equipment:

• Desert eagle: Got a good gun. Though fuck if he's gonna be able to find ammo for it anywhere. Managed to preserve two bullets into modern day. Probably planning on preserving one permanently in case any gunsmiths open up and need the model.

• Magical Willow Sword: Got a good sword. It's magically enchanted to be nearly unbreakable, burn if it's not held by its master / with its masters permission, very sharp. It has anti magic properties, being made to murder other shield-happy spell users, and can generally just remove any magic it comes into contact with does basically critical damage against magic with a swing instead of...normal damage.

• Some grenades: Also fuck if he's gonna be able to find any replacements. Has exactly one left in current day.

• Wardens cloak: Has a big ol grey cloak he typically wears on his shoulders. Is enchanted to provide good defensive capabilities and against the elements — I'd put it probably as an equivalent to modern-day combat armor if we also built them to withstand claws and swords too. Doesn't stain or stink!

• Actual combat armor: Has modern military defensive gear like the a military combat vest as well, and puts ceramic plating into his garments to protect against knives, claws and the like.

• Gauntlet thing (I am feeling unimaginative with my names): He wears a gauntlet of serrated metal plates on his right hand, with aztec runes all over it — it's his focus for his entropy magic, a piece of equipment especially made for helping him cast spells involving disintegration magic. Helps him focus his magic in general, and makes a decent parallel for brass knuckles in a pinch.

Personal backstory

• 30-35 AD:
  • The Los arrived and helped weather the newest assault, though the town's newest and best defenses meant he was mostly just cheekily grinning while the psuedo's got their asses handed to them by everyone else. For the next several months, the paranoid wizard (as they all, if you're not they train it into you for funzies) kept his head low, being a chatty but otherwise inconsequential social butterfly in central city in the name of figuring out what the fuck was going on here and whether these weirdos in charge were nice or if there were some not-so-secret skeletons in the closets of the history of this place.

  • Eventually feeling confident that no one in charge was a real tyrant in disguise (yet!) and that society had a decent thing going on even with signs of power and societal struggles to come, Carlos found himself finally having to accept that he might be here a while so might as well make himself useful. Not being much of a tradesman or a politician (and the local military being way too old fashioned for his liking, having come from a fairly lax military himself due to only having 200 fucking people), he decided to move out to the eastern quadrant. Being a fairly dangerous part of the city and all, he felt he could actually use his life skills, or at least have the space needed to continue to hone his craft.
    • At some point fairly early on, he went out of his way to sneak into Mayor Pea's office to meet with a fellow wizard. He found her defensive wards and guards depressingly easy to get past, most of them having not exactly been built to deal with magic like his, and introduced himself as a fellow user and developer of the arcane. He intended and did use the exercise to convince her to let him beef her defenses up, which would require him to come by fairly often. Sheer coincidence, obviously. He went out of his way to do it both because he had heard enough to decide that Pea was a genuinely well-meaning ruler — and she did nothing to dissuade him of that notion when meeting in person — and heaven knows that a growing civilization needs one. And also because, frankly, he was lonely without many other wizards around, and would greatly benefit from having a second opinion anytime the city encountered anything magical or otherwise that he imagined he'd wind up having to deal with. The two struck up a good repertoire as fellow wizards and to this day are both good friends and collaborators. He even gives her a discount for all those security wards. He made sure through her that the other city officials knew he was a good man to call in anytime they encountered something that seemed particularly bizarre or supernatural in nature as well (for what goes for 'supernatural' around here).

  • He decided that, while he could probably use his experiences and abilities to have some influence in the fledgling society one way or another, he'd have little to do with the internal affairs of their civilization. At heart, he still felt himself an outsider, as all wizards were basically brought up to think when it came to the mortal world. His old council preached that the affairs of wizards and men were not to bleed into each other, lest the magic users wield unhealthy amounts of power over their brethren, and so Carlos practiced the preaching even in a society where there wasn't exactly a separate wizard sphere to exist in.
    • He put himself instead towards the area where he could fully unleash his destructive capabilities and mentality without negatively affecting others, IE in throwing himself into the hostile wilderness as much as possible. Not only for the ability to throw magic around freely, but for the ability to simply focus on gleaning as much information on their new home as possible. The fact they were on a freaking dead god was much more interesting to him than anything, and much more his comfort zone than figuring out social issues. He spent as much time as he could finding excuses to cross beyond the boarders, signing up as a bodyguard with the more adventurous cults, the university's researchers, thrill seeking idiots, did a few expeditions with ITCH, got special permission from various offices to conduct magical research surveys, pretty much every reason to leave that existed. These days he can usually just get through the gates by virtue of being a known frontiersman and personally acquainted with all of the gate guards, but he's still rather famous within frontier-leaning circles for being an extremely competent man for most any job. Besides, actually being contracted pays, and rent doesn't take care of itself. He focused on discovering as much as he could about their world from a magical and otherwise perspective, and has been personally responsible for more than one breakthrough in understanding the nature of the corpse that makes up their environment due to his unique magical senses. A rather popular man on university campus, due to that. He doesn't run with ITCH much more due to not having many opportunities to push into new and more dangerous environments, but he does still sometimes work for their CEO Martin as a bodyguard and consultant on the side.

  • At some point soon after he had begun to try and settle down and focus on the future, his 'thou shalt not interfere' policy grew a bit harder in ways he hadn't expected. While the non interference idea was all very good in theory, in reality the wizard knew he wouldn't be able to escape the swift societal upheavals that were sure to follow as he was a citizen himself, as much as he liked thinking of himself as an outsider to its affairs. Besides, outright ignoring the plights of people around him didn't mesh well with his valorous spirit. So despite displaying a public distaste and disinterest in society's internal affairs, he privately kept his ear to the ground all the same, using his downtime between contracts to stay on the up and up. Besides the Cults, crime was the thing he payed the most attention to. The outskirts didn't often play well with the central city policies after all, and you didn't have to look hard to find lawless elements though the presence of the fusiliers kept out and out anarchy away. Compared to the distant-if-overlooming problems of city central, the often-lawless nature of the outskirts were much closer to him in more ways than one. Carlos only really cared at first about keeping an ear out for magical crimes, but he found it increasingly difficult to actually stay on top of things as a relatively distant outsider. He had little love for his relatively powerless position and suddenly being way less useful, to put it mildly. This wasn't a conducive environment for paranoid wizards, that's for sure.
    • Things began to change soon after he discovered a trade of The Gods Nerve running out of his quadrant, during one of his many expeditions. Annoyed by how it interfered with his own operations — and very irritated by now with the lawless nature of the outskirts in general — the ex-commander decided to begin putting some of his old, more subtle skills to practice once more. Use it lest you lose it, as they say. For reference, while he was known as a guy who liked to charge valiantly into situations head first, truth was his old job had trained into him that reputation, appearances, and control of information was infinitely more valuable an asset than pure brute strength. He had had to fight a war, back then, while dozens of uninvolved organizations were constantly nipping at his and his peoples' heels even while the war was being fought. The wardens had had absolutely no chance if they showed any signs of weakness to the neutral parties of Earth's magical sphere; the wizard council wasn't exactly a popular cheerleader in the high school that was Earth's supernatural underbelly, and they would have been devoured by the rest instantly if the monster chads of the magical world thought they could get away with giving those wizard nerds one final atomic wedgie. They also bore no chance of victory if they attacked them outright in response to their provocations, as they lacked the physical strength to drive them away being a bunch of nerds trying to stare up at them big swol chadmen. They only stayed alive, with their girlfriends un-stolen, by zealously guarding the secrets of how strong they actually were so their would-be opponents could never feel comfortable with actually starting shit. So the leaders of the wardens, himself included, had long since become veterans of using the information game to keep the less important figures out of the way in place of force. Lifelong training and a decade of warfare beget instinct, and instinctively he dealt with these yahoos he'd encountered. Figuring out who was involved was easy; once he had identified that it existed, it was as simple as following a few back from behind a veil to where the rest of the operation was centered at. A few surveillance spells and pieces of the head honcho's hairs later, and this particular group suddenly decided to pack up a few days later and get out of the quadrant. The delivery of a mountain of evidence implicating them and a threat to dump it all on the local fusilier officer's desk might have had something to do with that decision of theirs. Carlos, satisfied, went back to worrying about 'the important things in life'.

    • Except of course that wasn't the end of that. Keeping tabs on the same people — Carlos wasn't going to just leave them alone after all, though they probably never even realized that he was listening in on them — the wizard found through them yet more groups of unsavory types that were keeping under the overworked fusilier's noses. Disturbed by a few bits of information he had heard on them, he spread out and started doing the same to those people as well in order to exert some pressure to stop the worst of the worst, the mostly-muggle groups of people fairly helpless to stop or even really notice his slowly spreading net of observation, subterfuge and blackmail. Which lead to him uncovering more, and monitoring more, which uncovered more...

    • A few months later, Carlos basically had a moment where he stopped and looked down at his feet and saw the beginnings of a real information network forming, like the kind he had enforced back on Earth. He sat down and had a little heart-to-heart with himself, and was forced to admit that he had absolutely no ability to claim the 'non interference' card anymore. Whether it had been unconscious problem solving meshing with his desire to be valorous, or simply old habits dying hard, he couldn't keep telling himself that it was just a side activity anymore. Going back and forth on the future internally, he eventually came to the conclusion that he had not violated his Duty. In fact, through his investigations and information gathering via slowly spreading net, he finally had found what he really needed. A tool to keep himself on top of the growing civilization's underbelly, a network that would allow him to instantly finger any magical crime almost the instant it happened. And, should things truly go belly-up, perhaps a little bit of influence to keep himself alive when things start burning down around him. At least that's part of what he told himself, that he could keep this up and use it to find and prevent magical crimes before they even started and for personal security and power. Truth was, he was just filling in the empty hole his sudden lack of strong duty had left in him, willing to stop trying to maintain a facade of being distant in order to feel like he was actually using his abilities to have a positive effect. Even if it was using his powers to exert some control on the mortal realm. This was something he could do with himself, that most others couldn't, a role he could fill out personally. A personal slot that he had been craving in a new and scary world where his old role hadn't been needed. So the wizard decided to keep his activities up and formalize the whole affair from side activity to true war-like effort.

    • By the time 35 AD rolled around a few years later, he had formed a small but workable circle of assistants and volunteers, mostly of people who had been personally burned by the psuedo wild west that was the outskirts. Through careful control of security, information and closely guarded magical methodology, there are few operations in the low life-side of things in the quadrants that Carlos isn't familiar with. Though an exception is that the larger and well-organized operations (IE, those done by other PC's) he's only begun to nip at the heels of — a worry, but not yet necessarily a threat. Carlos remains careful with how he actually uses his sources — knowing that if he pushes too hard with what he's got, it'll snap and break — but it's become fairly common knowledge in the outskirts by now that people that get too violent or deal in crimes such as enslavement and trafficking have a mysterious habit of somehow being turned in, or disappear all together. So there are plenty of rumors in various places, with a fair few knowing that this information hoarder/dealer exists (some because he's outright met with them under guise, usually to hand info over to people in the government who can get shit taken care of), though some just figure it's the fusilier's being sneakier than usual. Carlos himself occasionally breaks from the shadows (though still under guise) to blackmail and coerce when he feels it absolutely necessary, but most of the time when he actually takes action he simply tells a few choice people in the government about them. Because he almost always uses people in more powerful positions to take action in his place, and because he zealously guards both his identity and his methods, no one's managed to follow any trail back to him or his in turn, hidden behind shadows and cats paws. His efforts haven't done all that much when laid out on paper — it's only been a few years for one thing, and he mostly just uses his network jack to keep an eye out for the types he's really interested in — but he's still proud that he's managed to help suppress the worst of the worst while remaining shady and unknown himself.
      • He remains secretive even if in most ways he's technically on the establishment's side. For one thing, he probably has occasionally helped some technically illegal operations out when he thought the fusiliers were just being anal. But mostly, by keeping his allegiances and capabilities/knowledge in shadow, he maintains his comfortable position of being not quite enough of a presence to merit people's full attention, but remaining distant enough to where he is under no obligation to follow anyone's judgement other than his own. The fact that there are some highly exaggerated rumors about his alter-ego being whispered of in hushed voices amongst criminals and cops alike tickles him to no end. Power of being an unknown figure, baby. In his personal and actual working life he remains a boisterous and highly regarded up-and-coming frontiersman and occasional magical government contractor. Competent, but too slimey and foppish to be even a name on the long list of suspects, at least in most people's minds.

  • He still doesn't trust those fucking cults — figuring that if anyone stumbles onto magic around here it'll probably be them — but he figures by now that they're mostly harmless, even if he still makes a point of working with them every now and then to make sure they're not being naughty.

Relationships

Edited by tvtropesnoob on Aug 28th 2018 at 9:40:58 AM

• Opening doors to magical realms: nope.
• Laser beams: they can't chew through metal at first and need to pack a punch to dig through it. Wood, rock (and therefore skin) still goes.
• Desert eagle: two bullets left.
• Sword: can't remove any magic it comes in contact with and can be stolen. Blame it on Balder.
• Grenade: one left.

Good.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me, with the clarification that the sword now still does heavy damage against magic but can't just blow through it in one blow anymore, and it can be stolen but will burn non users on direct contact and only carlos can activate the 'for heavy damage' feature himself.

Last thing: I edited in a notable weakness I fucking forgot about, and added one more piece of equipment in I also forgot about (he also wears actual military infantry armor when he can. Honestly probably trashed up by now but worth putting down).

Edited by tvtropesnoob on Aug 25th 2018 at 12:15:21 PM

Accepted then.