From the team that once brought you Resonating Spirits, both players, DM, and one newcomer, comes a new cosmic tale.
Gods. Powerful ruling beings. Where do they come from? What gives them their power? Who keeps them in line?
Enter the Arbiters. Drawn from every origin, mortal and divine, these new gods are tasked with the job of keeping the balance, both with power mad Deities and with Demons who destroy the world. The Weave must be preserved.
Our heroes are a newly graduated team of Arbiters, taught by the goddess Athena(no relation), and now ready to begin their work. Will their work maintain balance? Or shake the cosmos?
Here is a list of characters in the game and with a small description of them and some tropes they fall into.
Player Characters:
- Asch Sheppard: What happens when a Great Detective decides to fight the forces of darkness. Formerly of a group called the Mystery Breakers, this serious mortal prefers to fight through knowledge, learning the truths of a story and using it as a weapon. Likes to used colored words.
- The Awakener: A spirit of Endings, this being was at some point sealed into a suit of Animated Armor. Very taciturn and bad with emotions, but doesn't let that bother it. Manipulates the concept of the "End" in battle.
- Lumina: A Magical Girl demi-god. Good with Shock and Awe and force powers. Has a Spirit Animal fox as an Empathic Weapon. Also has the power to regress things.
- Harmony: An Elemental girl with the power of Magic Music, which she uses to attune with the environment. Also has a floating spirit called MUSE, a Canon Foreigner from other games on the same forum. MUSE is big on Breaking the Fourth Wall, and is a character in its own right that is tied to Harmony.
- Alexis: A Bat-person from a primitive planet. This ascended mortal is big on elemental powers themed to the night, and a big believer in both Dark Is Not Evil and Light Is Not Good.
- Chandi: Born of a god. Irritable sort, and don't tell her that her parentage means she was Born Lucky. Missing a limb, which considering that gods normally avert Scars Are Forever, is a big deal. Has a tendency to go out of control, leading to remarkable Off the Rails moments.
- Serpico: Looks like an unassuming mortal, with Eyes Always Shut. Really isn't. Although always with a smile, most people immediately don't trust him. An Art Attacker using Color-Coded Elements, and with a tendency towards trying to defeat opponents just by talking
Tropes:
- Artificial Intelligence: MUSE. The CORE program has strong Knight Templar tendencies when it comes to protecting Harmony, but it has also deliberately created a Personality Matrix to interface with other living beings and to understand normal 'human' values. It also helps out in cases where logic cannot be applied, preventing A.I. Breaker style attacks. Of course, said Personality Matrix borrows heavily from any and all media, so there is a lot of Shout Outs and Breaking the Fourth Wall.
- Apocalypse How: Planetary scale, level 5 (total physical annihilation) on their third test mission. Hinted at similar cases happening in character backstories and in the background at points during the game's plot.
- Artificial Limbs: Chandi gained an arm during the team's first mission, to blend in with the Cyber, a population where this trope is commonplace.
- Bizarre Alien Biology:
- Alexis has neither arms nor hands, and has to use his feet or tail instead.
- The Awakener is a hollow suit of armor, with no biological processes at all. This renders it immune to some dangers the flashier members of the team have to deal with (being blinded, having its blood drained), while opening it up to others (being absorbed or controlled by an Element Absorber).
- Chandi's largely humanoid, but her profile is a bit smudged when looked at, and it only grows hazier with distance.
- Bizarre Alien Senses: Alexis can echolocate, 'seeing' the world through sonar. Harmony constantly hears the musica universalis at all times - she once shut down when MUSE was temporarily 'shut off', because she was completely freaked out that she couldn't hear it.
- Casting a Shadow: Two variants for Alexis. His Dark Rune allows him to create, and manipulate shadows and darkness, and his Shift is a literal, moving shadow, under his control.
- Color-Coded Elements: Serpico's ink comes in a variety of colors, all elementally themed, though slightly different from the usual choices.
- Combined Energy Attack: An unusual example in that the powers of four characters, Serpico's device combined with the runes of Awakener, Chandi, and Alexis, were used to shatter the Blight's hold on Harmony.
- Cosmic Keystone: The titular Leylines; each planet is sustained by a Leyline, and if the Leyline is severed, the planet collapses.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The first death in the story involved Athena being blown up by one hundred and sixty three floating ice-mines. The first permanent death involved a Chrome Champion having his brain rusted to nothingness by an angry Chandi. It turned out not to be permanent
- Death by Origin Story: Many of the Arbiters used to be mortals, who were killed and reborn as Arbiters.
- Doomed Hometown:
- Serpico's entire home planet was destroyed shortly before he joined the Arbiters.
- Where I Was Born and Razed: Awakener personally depopulated its entire home planet, after every lifeform on it was rendered unable to die without its assistance.
- Empathy Pet: Naomi, Lumina's Spirit Fox, is this. While it has sentience all its own and is capable of operating interdependently of Lumina, Naomi is nonetheless tied inextricably to her soul and as such can also be considered one and the same with its owner.
- Expy: Several of the team.
- Serpico has roots in characters from Medaka Box and is named after a character from Berserk.
- Asch is a remix of multiple Umineko: When They Cry characters, primarily Battler, Beatrice and Dlanor.
- The Awakener wears Nyx's mask and its Spiral Nemesis drill sword is reminiscent of Ea.
- Lumina is an older, more mature version of Sailor Moon.
- Fragile Speedster: Serpico. Fastest member of the team. No physical or spiritual defenses otherwise.
- Heroic BSoD: Harmony has gone through this several times. Once when she temporarily got her memories back, and once again when MUSE was shut down.
- Heroic Willpower: Harmony demonstrates this when The Virus took her over, using what she was able to learn via telepathic link to the Crystal to disable its defenses and eventually shut does its Golem.
- Hellish Pupils: One of the reasons Serpico's eyes are always shut. They are a deep blood red with slitted pupils like a snake.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Athena is defeated when the floating minefield she created is caused to all move inwards on her.
- Ryuseii's own attack is redirected by Chandi's Power Incontinence to destroy his own temple.
- Chandi and Lumina, working together, later manage to create a lightning dragon to use in battle.
- Jack of All Stats: Chandi's not the fastest, strongest, toughest, or most magically inclined member of the team, but she's not lacking in any of those departments as a result.
- Jerkass: Shin, in spades. He even abandons the team to fight on their own because he felt that he wasn't treated nicely enough.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Chandi's memories are spotty at best, the most notable being she doesn't know when or how she got her scars or lost her arm.
- Let's Split Up, Gang!: In the latest mission the team splits up between a group of four and three. The group of four to save Athena from another Dark Crystal, and the group of three to stop a bomb that'll blow up the Arbiter Academy.
- Loyal Phlebotinum: All Arbiters have a Shift, some object or device that cannot easily be permanently seperated from them (they can recall it instantly with a thought).
- No Biological Sex: As a hollow suit of armor, the Awakener is neither male nor female. This doesn't stop people from calling it him, despite its writer's frequent admonishments to the contrary.
- Off the Rails: The DM makes several plans for how a story may go. So far, every time the story has gone in ways he never expected.
- Athena in the tutorial battle was meant to kill the party as a lesson. Instead she got Hoist by His Own Petard.
- By dint of Chandi exploding and setting off a random Harmony effect, the entire plotline of the first planet was cut short. Which led to an improvised storyline that had what he called a Super Good ending.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The Dracaii of the first mission's world are a populace largely based on Western Dragons. However, they differ in that their wings are made up of an element they have an affinity with, and not all breathe fire.
- Our Zombies Are Different:
- Technically-Living Zombie: The Utopia citizens are feral, unresponsive, unintelligent, but are in a massive linked Hive Mind that also modifies them to respond to threats, they are capable of firing guns, and all indications are they can be saved if the influence is removed. The heavily emaciated condition also indicates that the state burns through their energy, possibly making them Off Screen Big Eaters.
- Scars Are Forever: Played with. The physical form of gods don't scar, but if the soul of the gods is damaged, the scar becomes permanent, and becomes associated with a physical scar, or change. In some cases, it's nothing worse than hair changing colors. In other cases, limbs can be entirely removed.
- Stock Footage: Played straight. The text describing Lumina's transformation sequences are copied and pasted from the last time previous time she did it, with minor edits done to incorporate situational changes.
- Swiss-Army Superpower: All Runes, to some extent. Rune magic allows significant control over a wide level of concepts related Rune's domain, even on a metaphorical level.
- The Awakener and Harmony show the greatest levels of this. Both only have a single rune, which they use for everything. The Awakener has used a Rune of Endings to enchant itself and other team members, create barriers, dispel magic and heal status effects, and pick up and toss around a spaceship, while Harmony's character concept is built on using her Rune of Harmony to tie into the songs of various elements, giving her access to any Rune at the cost of extra actions and a backfire risk.
- Serpico's Art Attacker power is similar to a Green Lantern Ring as well, due to its normal function of creating various colored weapons to fight with.
- Third Eye: Chandi has one, though it's scarred shut most of the time. When it opens up, it puts Chandi into a Super Mode.
- Token Evil Teammate: Serpico. Constantly smiling while heaping sarcasm and cruel thoughts. Advocates breaking an opponent's mind and cheap shots. The rest of the team dislkes him so far.
- Transformation Sequence: Lumina goes through a different one every time she transforms, usually taken from anime of all kinds.
- Transformation Is a Free Action: Surprisingly enough, Averted by Lumina. She has to take an action to transform and fight better.
- Played straight with her ability to transform other Arbiters, which uses the free action her fox-spirit familiar gets.
