Too Many Cooks Spoil The Multiverse: This Is (Not) A Joke [Interest Check/Signup Thread]

Second try!

Name: Doombox

Appearance: BRING IT.

Setting: Lethal League (Blaze)

Powers/Abilities: Doombox is a boombox, but with extra doom.

• Sonic Blast: He is generally loud. So much so that if he really tries to shout, the soundwave can throw back and stun some opponents.
• Hover: With his jet feet, he can hover in the air for a short while.
• Play Ball: He always keeps a ball with him similar to baseball, but unlike a baseball, it can bounce off of walls with almost no friction while at speeds of 6000 miles per hour. And Doombox can consistently get the ball to those speeds, given the right play space.
• Strength: If the size of his fists is not an indication, he can punch well.
• Crouch: He can morph down to a small size and almost appear like a regular boombox, only being given away by his menacing eyes. In this form, he can even be carried around like a regular boombox.

Backstory: Doombox is an out of control experiment that escaped and took control of the first machine it could find - a classic boombox. He has a tendency to go berserk for reasons unknown. His reasons for playing in the Lethal League are likewise unknown.

He served as the final opponent in both Lethal League and Lethal League Blaze's Challenge Mode - in the second game, he got hacked by the Safety League organization, with the aim of shutting down the Lethal League entirely, but after getting defeated (by whatever character you pick for that match), he gets reset to his old raging self by Latch.

How did he get into the setting? Good question, but...

Role in the City: He's found his position fighting alongside the rebel militia. Or against it?

Other things of note: Doombox is a Dumb Muscle. He looks imposing, and physically, he is, but he's easy to manipulate. With words, actions - or hacking, as the Safety league demonstrated in Blaze. He also needs regular maintenance.

Also, I will be toning down his level of aggression to the point where he's capable of holding conversations.

Edited by StepexNo2 on Mar 27th 2023 at 4:30:24 PM

Name: Vanitas

Appearance:

The boi masked◊.

The boi unmasked◊.

Setting: Kingdom Hearts

Powers/Abilities: Vanitas is the dark half of a boy named Ventus, a youth chosen by a mystical weapon known as the Keyblade. This makes him a monster with numerous abilities to make him a threat.

• The Keyblade: The Keyblade is a powerful weapon that chooses its wielder, granting them the ability to accomplish feats unheard of by the average person. Keyblades are powerful weapons able to adjust to their wielders intent (meaning that they're as fatal or as harmless as the wielder wants them to be) and are natural conduits for magical abilities. Their Keychains can be swapped to grant them new forms (and sometimes abilities) and they function as actual keys too; able to open nearly any physical or magical lock within reason. Unfortunately, Keyblades also have the tendency to serve as attractive catnip for hostile creatures such as Heartless and other monsters; not that the battle-junkie Vanitas minds this.

Vanitas' base Keyblade is the Void Gear - A natural channel for the power of Darkness that accentuates his natural aggression. Whether he'll find/gain other Keychains remains to be seen.

• Darkness Control: Related to the above, Darkness is an actual element within the world(s) of Kingdom Hearts (Darkness in this context is more in-line with the Dark Side from Star Wars, with a fantasy twist) and Vanitas is able to control it to a moderate degree. Having been trained/abused by the villainous Master Xehanort, Vanitas is able to weaponize Darkness in various ways, most of which are magical: He can infuse his magic with negative energies, launch the energies as projectiles and/or shockwaves, create (very brief) duplicates of himself or even use the Darkness to travel.

• Magic Talent: The Keyblade is an inherent channel for magical power. Vanitas is capable of using magic based on the primary elements of Fire, Blizzard and Thunder (Vanitas' variants being called "Doom Firaga," "Fatal Blizzaga" and "Umbral Stormga."). Vanitas incorporates these spells into his attack combos directly to accentuate his movement-oriented battle style. Whether he can learn more remains to be seen

• Battle Style: Vanitas' battle-style is centered around agility and aggression, making him a mix of Magic Knight and Fragile Speedster. His defense is rather minimal, especially with the inherent weakness that stems from his connection to the Unversed. However, he is almost afterimage incarnate in terms of agility and his ability to mix-and-match his own attacks into one another gives his deceptively-small arsenal variety.

• Unversed Control: Vanitas has the unique ability to spawn monsters known as Unversed, monsters created from his sporadic emotions; most of which are negative. His transition to The City appears to have dulled this ability somewhat, preventing him from summoning more than two at a time. The creatures are loyal to Vanitas yet remain rather mindless and not especially coordinated. Notably, striking these creatures down causes Vanitas immense pain.

Backstory:

Vanitas is a Dark being that was extracted from the heart of Ventus (There's more to that, but it's very very VERY complicated, detail-heavy and irrelevant to the RP. His Tropes page, if you'd like to know about all that), a Keyblade wielder that trained under Master Xehanort, an enigmatic schemer with dark plans. While Ventus was eventually sent to train under the significantly-kinder Master Eraqus, Vanitas was trained/abused by the apathetic Xehanort into becoming a deadly fighter for his own ends, never treated as more than an expendable tool. The resulting "training" turned the boy into a battle-junkie that projected his own self-loathing outward in the form of unrestrained sadism.

Xehanort and his "apprentice" plotted to re-ignite an ancient conflict called "The Keyblade War," a conflict that saw many wielders of the magical Keyblades clashing against each other for the powerful Kingdom Hearts. To this end, Xehanort worked on corrupting Eraqus' most gullible apprentice Terra while Vanitas spurred his lighter-half Ventus into pursuing Terra and growing stronger (contending with Aqua in the interim); hoping to clash with him and forge the X-Blade: a special Keyblade that would serve as the Key to unlock Kingdom Hearts. Vanitas succeeds in goading Ventus into clashing (and even fusing) with him, but underestimates the lengths Ventus will go to in order to protect his friends, destroying his own heart to stop Vanitas from using his body to wield the X-Blade.

Desperately reaching for the shattering X-Blade, the evil boy's eyes grow heavy and close. When next they open, he's somewhere else entirely. A new city. A new world. A new place to rampage.

Role In The City: None yet, though he’ll most likely end up a mercenary or enforcer; whatever lets him fight more. A businessman within The City may have taken notice of this wild child...

Other Things Of Note:

• On the surface, Vanitas is little more than a sadistic thug with a skill-complex. And he’s very much that. However, he too is a victim of the scheming of Master Xehanort – His sadism is a cocktail of self-loathing and envy towards the better life Ventus led compared to him. He’s essentially resigned himself to being "The enemy." To prevent Vanitas from being little more than a generic edgelord wallflower, the trauma aspect of his relationship with Xehanort (much of it being espoused on in the non-canon novelizations) might crop up more. I'm not opposed to him embracing a kinder trait or two. A full-on redemption?...We'll see.

• Vanitas can try to be manipulative if he wants to, but he’s bad at selling any social illusions. "Socially patient" describes him better – He likes fighting dirty if he's able, isn’t afraid to invoke Screw This, I'm Outta Here and can wait out long cons.

• The name of Vanitas' various Magic spells were lifted from the Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix Vanitas Game Mod by Xaggdx Absol Brasse. Better than the generic "Dark" names.

Edited by klom99 on Mar 27th 2023 at 7:49:43 AM

Thank you both for taking the time to sign up. After talking it over with my players, I can foresee the same problems for both characters, and it's that they might have difficulty integrating into the cast. Doombox has basically no hope of getting in, thanks to not being a real character even in his source material - it would be very difficult to strike up a conversation of any substance with him as stands, just based on pure probability, and unlike many other games on this forum, about 95% of this RP is talking - the remaining 4% is talking about the possibility of violence, and only about 1% of the remainder is actual violence. For that reason, I'm going to have to preemptively reject him.

In the same way, I understand that Vanitas is a bit of a one-note villain in the source material, and while the novelization probably expands on his characterization, I'd need to be reassured in some way that he won't just bounce around making big villain speeches, as there's not really a place to accommodate someone who does that.

None of this is your fault, incidentally; the game has changed substantially from what it was when I wrote that OP, and you're both operating from a position of information asymmetry. I would advise you both to read through the last few pages of the RP to see what the general style is like, and really think about a character who would be able to withstand all those mansions of text. I understand that I'm raising the bar pretty high, but none of this is out of elitism or snobbery - I'm just trying to make sure that every player fits in the cast and has something to do, and as I mentioned in the OP slots are limited. I put a lot of effort into accommodating every character in the game, and that means that certain characters just won't work.

Please feel free to hit me with any further questions, and I'm happy to send examples of how we work or additional lore information if you need it.

Got it, thanks for the clarification. Only talking isn't an RP style that really interests me, so I'll look for some other RP to join

It doesn't feel like you're being snobby/elitist at all; you're just explaining. No hard feelings!

I feel like a change in style (and requirements) this drastic needs to be directly addressed in the opener. 'Cause that "info asymmetry" is absolutely fierce; outright misleading if you'll allow me to be a little blunt. I scrolled through those recent pages per your recommendation and oooof. You and your folks know what you're looking for and that's a-okay! But that lack of context can lead to misunderstandings like this.

I'll concede on Vanitas. A character like him prolly won't fit for this. I'm not entirely sure if I'm still interested but I'll do some formulating and see if I can think of something.

Edited by klom99 on Mar 28th 2023 at 8:55:03 AM

Point taken, and thanks for your understanding. Looking forward to your next character if you're still interested, but if not, thanks for your time and have a good one.

May I drop in?

Name: Akira Kurusu (AKA: Joker)

Appearance: (Left: His casual outfit, Right: His Metaverse Outfit)

Setting: Persona 5

Powers/Abilities: Joker is, by himself, an agile combatant, able to fight shadows normally much stronger and faster than him. He is an expert knife user and marksman, favoring pistols, and is good with using grappling hooks. He is also fast enough to slip from hiding place to hiding place almost instantaneously, and very stealthy, as his job entails. He's good at martial arts as well. He's also quite the strategist, able to think of cunning plans on the fly.

His supernatural powers start with the Third Eye, which slows down Akira's perception of time and allows him to single out targets relevant to his objective or see details invisible to the naked eye, or gauge an opponent's strength relative to himself.

His real power comes from his Persona. Personas are the manifestations of psyche, coming from the Sea of Souls and taking the form of an archetypal figure depending on the wielder's personality. Each Persona is represented by the Major Arcana, and have their own magical powers, and is used by Persona users to defend themselves from demons or Shadows. Personas' strength is relative to the. resolve or willpower of its user, and Akira is very determined. Akira can activate his Joker alter ego and rip off his mask to summon his Persona.

His Persona is Arsene, the personification of the archetypal phantom thief. When Joker summons Arsene, the giant, winged demon can act on Joker's orders to tear people to shreds with his claws or bladed stilettos. Arsene is also versed in curse magic to blast people with darkness, and he can shoot needles that cause drowsiness and sleep. He and Joker can telepathically communicate, and Arsene can help Joker fly to nearby places. Arsene can only go about 30 ft. away from Joker before being pulled back.

Backstory: Akira has always heard a voice in his head. The voice sounded scary, but was kind to him. When he was in high school, he and another kid was bullied, and one kid tried to stab the kid with a knife. That was the catalyst for him awakening his Persona, and he beat up the kids who bullied them. However, Joker was blamed and punished for the kids' actions, and he was sent away. Now he tries to live a normal life by day in order to feel... well, normal, and by night he acts as a vigilante.

Role In The City Akira is a student at one of the city's schools (up to you guys what school it is, who runs it, etc.) to be inconspicuous. While he isn't studying, training, reading, or doing anything else, he goes out crime fighting as the vigilante Joker.

Other Things of Note:

Joker speaks in normal white text.

   Arsene speaks with evil red text.   

Any telepathic conversation between    the two is written in italics.   

Edited by Jules-Firenze on May 16th 2023 at 7:16:04 PM

Hi there, thanks for signing up! I looked over the sheet and talked with my players, and I'd like to clarify a few things:

1) The Metaverse and the Velvet Room are definitely not going to be accessible in-RP, and for a similar reason, changing hearts is naturally out. I would also like a list of the set Personas Ren will have with him, so I can balance his abilities somewhat and work things out from there. The number may be less than ten if necessary. No need to work out specific abilities apart from obvious no-nos like insta-death and what-not, I just need ballpark figures. Ren will still be able to access his powers in the real world through Patented In-RP Shenanigans, and everything will be open to negotiation.

2) Same stipulations as to the previous players, but this RP has almost no combat for the vast majority of the time. Fighting is fast and furious when it does happen, but the vast bulk of the action occurs around the fallout of this violence rather than the violence itself. If you can handle a story-driven 'PVP once a year PVE every six months' RP, then this is the right place for you, but please be prepared and check out the thread to see if this is the type of RP you might be interested in.

3) no satanael pls

Thanks so much, and let me know what you think!

Edited by troydenite on May 3rd 2023 at 9:45:11 PM

Deal. I'll edit the post in a bit.

Sorry for the late edit, how is it now?

Hi there, sorry for the delay! After discussing it with my more Persona-inclined players, I think that the best way forward would be to limit Ren specifically to Arsene only, as multiple Personas are far too strong and even with Arsene only, he'll still be on the upper end of the power scale. Also, given that not many other players will have characters in school, is there something else he might be able to do in the City? Something he might be able to do as a more regular thing, assuming he's been displaced from his homeworld for a while. Let me know what you think and maybe we can work something out.

Oh hey, are sign-ups open? I don't think the OP says that they're closed but I wanna be sure just in case.

Ok, done editing!

Edited by Jules-Firenze on May 7th 2023 at 7:48:39 AM

@Jules-Firenze: Looks good to me, please check your PMs for a Discord link!

@Cutegirl920fire: Unfortunately, that was our last open slot - the RP may open again in future, but for now entry is closed. Sorry about that, but hopefully we'll open sooner rather than later. Stay tuned!

GENERAL NOTICE: With the final open slot filled, the RP is now CLOSED to open signups, and adopting a REFERRAL SYSTEM. This means that new players will only be accepted with a referral from an existing player. While open signups have resulted in quality players in the past, the RP is currently in a state where getting new players up to speed will require significant time, effort, and planning on everyone's part. Open signups will only resume upon notice in this thread. Thank you very much!

Edited by troydenite on May 12th 2023 at 4:10:58 AM

I understand, have a good day/night!

And hopefully, last character, and one with actual potential for plot action.

• Name: Jackson Waites
• Appearance: pretty much what you’d expect for an accomplished mercenary
• Setting: S.T.A.L.K.E.R
• Backstory: Jackson was formerly a member of JTF2 in Canada, he served his time and found himself restless shortly after. When various contracting companies and Private Militaries were being sent out to the zone, Jackson signed up and went in looking for work. For 5 years he served in the zone, recovering artifacts and eventually even making it to the heart, where an intense gravity anomaly was found. Jackson approached, hearing a voice calling to him, finding what looked to be an immense monolith, only to vanish… and wake up in Concordia.
• Powers/Abilities:
  • Operator Equipped - A former special forces operator, Jackson is familiar with all forms of infantry and manned warfare, and has experience in the zone with a variety of weapons. Preferring functional tools over the fancier weapons and exoskeletons developed from Zone Research.
  • S.T.A.L.K.E.R Survivalist - you don’t last a few years exploring the zone for artifacts without picking up the necessary survival skills, from surviving off of bad food to knowing how to avoid anomalies.
  • People Person - Mercenaries only make it as far as their contract, and working with people is necessary. Most mercs look down on others, Jackson however knows that if he wants to keep getting paid then being an alright person to talk to is a must.
• Equipment:
  • Body Armor - An old military suit, marked with old Merc patches from various companies Jackson has served with.
  • Bag of Bolts - a must for any good explorer of the Zone. Useful for spotting anomalies and dangers.
  • First Aid Kit - Basic healing supplies.
  • SIP-t M200 Pistol (Sig Sauer P220)
  • T Rs 301 (Z-M LR-300ML) - Outfitted with a scope and silencer, grenade launcher can be attached but Jackson hasn’t had grenades in awhile
  • PDA - Every S.T.A.L.K.E.R is equipped with a digital personal assistant, necessary for keeping track of information and locations in the zone, the map function is functionally useless in Concordia as there are no satellites.
• Role In The City: Draughtsman
• Other Things of Note:

Edited by EchoingSilence on Jun 6th 2023 at 10:28:30 AM

The special thing about making signups and then never playing the character is that you can sign up again like nothing happened.

• Name: Bernadette Bassenger
• Appearance: She is beauty.◊ She is grace. She'll put her foot so far up your arse you'll be cleaning your teeth with boot polish.◊
• Setting: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
• Powers/Abilities: In pretty damn good shape for a lady rounding on the business end of sixty. Knows how to dance and how to fight. Really knows how to dress.
  • Stagecraft: Bernadette is a seasoned drag and cabaret performer - she knows how to plan a routine, how to organise rehearsals, and how to herd cats. More importantly, at least when you work with a bunch of depressed vampires, she knows when to shout and when to offer a shoulder to cry on.
  • Combat feats: Kicked a reasonably drunk miner in the bollocks until he stopped moving and also once instant transmissioned a lamp directly at Guy Pearce's big stupid mouth - by scaling this against his appearance in Iron Man 3 we can establish she's roughly twice as strong as Tony Stark and at minimum massively hypersonic.
• Backstory: Surviving a pleasant and uneventful postwar childhood, Bernadette made the sensible decision at a reasonably tender age to flee the UK for Australia, arriving just in time to become one of the founding members of semi-legendary Sydney drag revue Les Girls. This launched a long career on the nightlife circuit, wonderful for the first twenty years, tolerable on-and-off for the next ten. She arrived in the Concordia shortly after the depletion of her savings and the death of her husband (peroxide fumes, bathub), about four years ago, gravitating inexorably to the Barovian.
• Role In The City: Stage manager at the Barovian Backdoor Special
• Other Things Of Note:
  • Has heard enough ABBA to last six lifetimes.
  • Knows a clever trick to do with gin, where you drink the gin.

Edited by OG-Sama on Dec 2nd 2023 at 5:36:27 PM

Accepted.

Name

• Sayaka Miki

Description

• Some random girl with blue hair. She’s 5 ft 6 most of the time. Looks underage, probably is. In accord with all cute anime girls, she possesses exceptionally large doe eyes which act as a window for her souls. They reflect sadness, and youth, but mostly self-pity.

Setting

• Bootleg version of Madoka Magica where Sayaka Miki discovered the joy of universe-hopping. With the multiverse at her beck and call she realises her true calling: to kill herself, and by kill herself I mean find every last Sayaka Miki in the multiverse and take their soul gems. A wish that should never have been made should stay unmade.

Powers and Abilities

• Superhuman Physique: Due to her soul being shoved into a soul gem, Sayaka's body is now a meat puppet; this allows her to break the normal boundaries of reaction speed and pain inhibition, which allows her to move faster and punch harder than anyone her size has the right to do. It doesn’t matter if she breaks every metatarsal in her body, she can punch through a steel wall. When she is transformed, her ability to ignore conventional wisdom is boosted through the nine heavens. It is a fact that the human hip can shatter concrete; it is also a fact that Sayaka can shatter concrete with her face- her skull is made of bone, hips are made of bone. Easy maths.

• Healing Factor: The act of universal providence that was bestowed upon her was that Sayaka’s magic is based around an absurdly good regeneration ability. When transformed she is a human starfish, nay, a human planarian: cut off her arm? Tis but a flesh wound. Remove her legs? They’ll be back, you’ll see. Decapitate her? Not anymore. Of course this is all based on the availability of her soul gem.

• Swords: Every righteous soul has a thing for swords. This is truth. Sayaka is a righteous soul and thus her magic allows her to produce swords; from where? Don’t ask. The size of the sword is made to order: toothpick size? Easy. Slayer sword? Of course. Building-sized paper-cleaver-of-the-divine-heavens? It will be hard but it can be done. Of course, this is predicated on her access to her soul gem.

• Magic Cape: Everything about her is magic, that’s why she’s special. Specifically in this case, Sayaka’s cape is made of pure magical girl magic and this means it can be made to do any number of magical things: this includes expanding in size (max size to be determined); storing things like a Bag of Holding (max carrying capacity to be determined, but certainly able to carry the body of certain 5'6'' girls); and blocking the bullets produced by small firearms (unconfirmed).

• Soul Gem: Sayaka is a magical girl, but this is merely the side effects of also being a human soul transfigured into glowing Faberge eggs. As Sayaka uses magic, impurity in the form of angst and unwritten expy fanfiction builds up within the egg and slowly corrupts the soul within. This impurity can only be removed by the application of a Grief Seed to the soul gem- whereupon the Grief Seed provides therapy and removes the desire to write bad Twilight fanfiction from the Soul Gem. The build up of impurities actively warps the persona contained by the soul, with critical build ups being ultimately fatal. Should the Soul Gem be destroyed, the soul contained within evaporates and the magical girl dies.

Personality

• Sayaka is your average Japanese anime middle schooler who is also a magical girl. It doesn’t narrow the margin by much but hey, it ain’t nothing. To be fair, she isn’t middle school aged any more- decades spent hopping between dimensions will make you age like that. The only hitch is that Sayaka doesn’t age- whether it is another quirk of being a soul gem or it’s just stubborn suspension of disbelief, Sayaka is in all facilities just another middle schooler. She thinks like a middle schooler: justice is good, evil must be purged, other Sayakas must be murdered with extreme violence. That is the foam that covers the coffee; the rest of her persona is a bit like the underside of a leaky bathroom sink: no one’s looked at it for a few decades and any one that did hasn’t lived to tell the tale. What do you get when you mix an ungodly amount of self-pity with just the right amount of self-hatred and a twist of lime? No one knows, but Sayaka might be a good metaphor for it.

• That is the starting line of the race, Sayaka is here for the marathon. As her Soul Gem accumulates impurities and progressively more girlboss fanfictions, her personality strays further and further from the light that is Ao 3. She may appear quite charming at first, quite normal; a few days later, she might start smelling like ozone; a month later she will be the Japanese equivalent of a redneck high on the smell of guns: the earth is a donut, the government is evil (it really is), and the only way to cure world hunger is by killing all the lizard people running the hospitals. Are you a lizard disguised as a humble ICU nurse? Do not worry, Sayaka will find you - the health of her soul gem depends on it.

Equipment

• Sayaka currently hauls around her meagre earnings as a producer of girlcubes. In the same bag she also carries 101 soul gems, each lovingly harvested from a worthless degenerate in an alternate universe. These soul gems are in varying states of corruption, as all things should be. Sayaka uses them like grief seeds - they cleanse her soul gem for her so she can continue her jihad across the multiverse.

Role in the City:

• Sayaka Miki, being twenty-eight years old, is about done with the whole magical girl thing, but her constant need to purify her Soul Gem with the Soul Gems of other Sayakas from across the multiverse is keeping her in the loop. As her Soul Gem darkens she becomes increasingly deranged, and falls more and more under the influence of various conspiracy theories, most significant of which is the existence of a Control Room.
• After arriving in the City she was approached by Greed’s cronies, who offered her a job in the girlcube factories; she accepted but demanded to be paid at least 25% more than the . She spent her workdays transforming under pink graphite, going home and cleansing her Soul Gem, and occasionally nabbing a passing Sayaka.
• This worked very well until some Peacekeepers blew up the Happy Eggy Confectionary Warehouse. Sayaka escaped in the background, and now spends her time scrounging the streets, looking desperately for a way out of this accursed City…

Accepted.