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In the space between here and there, and somewhere south of existence but east of death, a reddish black cloud held together by twisting spires of bone and lightning waits, sleeping as it prepares for its only purpose... And in its sleep, it dreams, and in those dreams, it plans...

The world is about to end, and already the vultures are circling. Individuals have appeared, gathering the souls of mortals and fighting one another for dominance, and strange creatures have been sighted in the wilderness, hunting one another. A secret war is being fought directly under the world's nose, but these people are not alone. Normal humans have awoken to find themselves branded with the symbols of one of the three factions, granted the same power as they are recruited to the war.

You are among those humans. What will you do with your newfound power? Join the hidden conflict, hide from it, or fight only for yourself? It's your choice, but just remember that all actions have consequences...

Welcome to the Gambit, an original fiction 'verse created by myself and a few friends, and now an RP since I decided to see if it would work out. It's an Urban Fantasy (usually) 'verse involving the Psychopomps of universes, called Cultists, as they fight to see who gets the power released by its destruction.

Rules

• Subtlety, not random murder, is the name of the game here. While it is indeed a war, and there will be some battles of astonishing size, you'll still need to maintain a certain level of secrecy.
• Relatedly, no one likes a character with only one personality trait. If they can be summed up by one or two tropes, try to flesh them out a little.
• Godmodding, autohitting, and ghosting *
  ^{Like autohitting, but in the opposite direction; Dodging everything that comes at you, either without sufficient explanation/ability or regardless of the realistic chance of it happening.}
  will not be permitted, save for if the other player agrees to what you post beforehand.
• Try to let the other side of the conflict post before continuing to attack, and don't cram too many attacks into one post. The same applies to other actions, like conversation. It's just polite and helps cut down on improbably dodging.
• Try to stay within the limits of the 'verse, please? There are boundaries and limits on the magic, and Magic A Is Magic A. Which will be explained in a bit.
• At the start of the game, you do not know about the whole situation (Unless you're a cultist by request) and thus will be a normal human.
• This will also come up in the game, but this is not Earth. It is Earth-like, but Earth itself is long gone. Each world has a set time before it is destroyed, at which point Omega engulfs it and absorbs everything but the Gifted and the Cultists, who had begun appearing in the world anywhere from a month or two to a week beforehand. The power created is then sent to whichever faction won the battle, and then a new world is created. This is the hundredth world in that cycle.

Some Useful Terms

• Mortal: Your average, mundane human being. They can't usually use magic, and those that have figured it out can barely do so- They have nothing to supply the power necessary.
• Gifted: A Mortal with a symbol and magic. They're worth a lot when killed, since all the power invested in them is stolen by the killer. If they survive to the end, they become a...
• Cultist: No longer entirely human, they have the greatest control over their magic and are functionally immortal. If killed, they can eventually return to life if their body is not destroyed, and even then they can be revived with Bless magic.  They do not age, nor need to sleep, eat or drink, although all three are advisable as they do feel the strain of not resting, and food tastes good. There are ways to destroy them, though they are convoluted and the permanence of those methods is questionable.
• Servants: Summoned creatures from the Spirit World who aid the Cultists in battle or in other ways. They come in five levels, increasing in strength: Minor, Lesser, Greater, Major, and Central. Each of those is divided into twelve Circles, representing their path to advancement to the next level and their general ability. Most are non sentient, though the intelligent ones are in far greater demand. Some are artificially created through unknown means, while others are former Cultists who gave up their humanity for power. The rest are 'natural' Servants.

Magic

Each Cultist/Gifted has their own Innate talents for each of the eight types of magic. The eight are separated into four subgroups- Cast or Strike and Indirect or Direct.

Here's the octagon.◊

• Strike (Red) Description
  ^{The basic form of the close-range school of magic. That isn't to say it is totally limited to close range- The actual definition is 'as far as your weapon can reach'. Thus, Strike magic can be used at range with guns, bows... Anything that uses physical ammo, really. The effects are varied, ranging from additional physical impact to various elements attached.}
• Control (Tan) Description
  ^{Direct Strike magic. Control is a fundamental part of magic, allowing the user to warp reality in a small area. This has various applications, ranging from walking on walls to controlling minds. Highly useful for a Cultist hoping to gain control of figureheads or governments. Less effective on Cultists and Gifted.}
• Imbue (Pink) Description
  ^{Indirect Strike magic dealing with Bonds and their like. It can be used to put spell effects onto weapons or armor, but Strike and Field magics allow most of that more easily. It gets some mileage when groups want to arm Mortals with magical weaponry. The most useful application is the ability to be combined with Summon magic to bind Servants to items for quick summoning, as well as binding Mortals to a faction to gain power slowly.}
• Bless (White) Description
  ^{Direct magic, but neither Strike nor Cast. Simply put, the entirety of White Magic- Buffs, healing, and most importantly revival. The polar opposite of Curse.}
• Curse (Sickly Green) Description
  ^{Indirect magic, but neither Strike nor Cast. Deals with debuffs, hexes, curses. Its effects are more powerful if certain materials can be procured, for example the hair off of the target's head. Has effectively unlimited range in that case as well. However, unlike the other types of magic there are only six masters of this school, each one possessing a Familiar instead of Summon magic. The Familiar allows the user to easily empower their Curse magic and negate the need for rituals or materials, as well as filling the roles a Servant would.}
• Field (Green) Description
  ^{Direct Cast. Magic that works in a spherical area around the user. Most commonly used for Shield magic, it gets some use for area attacks or healing. It requires charging to make the area any larger than about a meter away.}
• Summon (Purple) Description
  ^{Indirect Cast, and the only way to summon Servants to the mortal world. Certain rituals can make the process faster or find stronger Servants at random, though the summoner can also request one they know by name.}
• Cast (Blue) Description
  ^{The basic form of long-range magic. As long as the caster can physically see their target, the magic will seek them out until it hits them or something solid, though the homing aspect is weak without focus. Like normal Strike, it has varied effects and appearances, usually unique to every user.}

The Factions

• Omega (Ω): The soldiers of the destroyer of worlds. They tend to be loners, highly individualistic- some might say selfish. They embody the ideals of Chaos and Freedom.
• Infinatus (∞): The faction that fights to preserve the worlds and keep them alive, even if they themselves must leave. Cultists of Infinatus tend to be protective, working in small groups and cells to build off of each others' weaknesses and strengths. They embody the ideals of Order and Sanctuary.
• The Lesser Powers (⊗): The fallen gods, who fight to regain their place at the top of the pantheon. Those who serve them tend to work in large groups, faceless but efficient and undeniably powerful. They embody the ideals of Loyalty and Strength.

APPLICATION

GIFTED *

• Name:
• Gender:
• Age:
• Personality:
• Appearance*
  ^{Please put where your symbol will appear.}
  :
• Bio:
• Other Notes, Preferences:
• Faction:
• Innate Magic*
  ^{Basically, what magic does your character specialize in? And you can't be a master of all.}
  :

SERVANT *

• Name:
• Type of Servant:
• Gender:
• Origin*
  ^{Former Cultist, artificial, natural?}
  :
• Personality*
  ^{If applicable}
  :
• Appearance:
• Equipment/Abilities*
  ^{Generally they fill a specific niche, using a few specialized abilities to accomplish those goals. Some can sense nearby Cultists and Gifted, while others are skilled at stealth and espionage- Combat is only one use they can have.}
  :
• Rank:
• Circle:

edited 2nd Jun '11 2:56:28 PM by Hydrall

Um... Something like this?

• Name: Jack (short for Jacaranda, but he kind of doesn't tell other people about that.)
• Gender: Male
• Age: 20
• Personality: This will probably seem odd, given the setting, but Jack hates conflict. He will never initiate a fight on his own, and much prefers to stay on the sidelines, healing others and helping his friends. Despite being a Technical Pacifist, he tends to be fairly OK with his allies killing other people for him or their cause. This is his way of attempting to be realistic. He can be rather flighty and has a tendency to panic under pressure, something that he truly detests about himself. He is also a little weak-minded, allowing himself to be guided by others rather than making decisions on his own. However, he is extremely loyal to his friends, and will go out of his way to help others whenever he can keep his fears under control. Jack also has quite a good memory and is reasonably intelligent academically. He also has a slight preoccupation with tidiness.
• Appearance: Somewhat short and skinny, with dark hair and light brown eyes. Dresses neatly but not fashionably; he takes care of his appearance, but this has more to do with his neat freak tendencies than vanity, and it shows.
• Bio: Dreams of becoming a doctor, or at the very least a nurse.
• Other Notes, Preferences: Um... If at all possible, I'd like Jack to be part of a team with at least one other character, since that's probably the only way he's going to be useful. If that's OK.
• Faction: Infinatus
• Innate Magic: Bless, of course!

edited 6th May '11 8:07:50 PM by KiriAme

Actually, there's one issue- You don't choose what Faction you're in, you wake up and the symbol has appeared on your body. It normally depends on your personality, but not always.

Edit: Looks fine to me now!

edited 6th May '11 8:11:18 PM by Hydrall

Ah, right. Gotcha.

Edited.

I would like to hear more about the requirements and such of a PC Cultist... I have a character idea that I think would work more as an Cultist than as a just branded Gifted.

Can our characters speicalize in more than one field of magic?

Yes, though I'd prefer you keep it around two or so. You can use all the types of magic no matter what, though. (unless you choose to be a Curse 'master', in which case you can't use Summon.)

• Name: Rachel Theresa Newman
• Gender: Female
• Age: 59 -Looks 29-
• Personality: Rachel is a bit of a subdued woman, so she tends to show her emotions in a discreet way. She doesn't like stick to one place for long, so she's forever moving around both due to her work and preference. Rachel has a bit of a cold temper. She gets irritated easily but she's not likely to let her anger out in a loud way. However she can be very petty with Mortals that have bothered her. Since she has to kill people anyway, why not take those who tick her off? As for who fits the criteria... rude people, loud people, those she considers idiots and jerks, thugs and lousy parents. Many years involved in this war has led her to become desensitized to human death, murder comes naturally and without hesitation to her as she has learned how to stop thinking about the consequences of her actions. That is not to say that is completely without empathy. Those people she comes to like for whatever reason will always count as people to her, and seeing them angry, sad or in pain will bring a reaction out of her.
• Appearance: Rachel is a tall woman with an athletic build. Her skin is extremely pale, and her long straight hair is a dark as her skin is light. She also has striking blue eyes which are an unusually bright color. She usually dresses in shorts, a top which bares her midriff, leather boots, sunglasses and a long jacket on top of it, all of them black in color. Needless to say, most of the time she's not the most inconspicuous person in the room. However, given how iconic her standard outfit is, people tend to not recognize her when she wears something more normal.
• Bio: A child of failed marriage who lived in a horrible family life until she ran away from home at age 15. She got along with the worst company possible, living an extremely dark life, totally bereft of a future or dignity. At this stage of her life she was little more than an insensitive brat, filled with too much pain for her to trust anyone completely. That is until one noon she woke up with a mark on her arm and her life took a big turn. Now she had strange powers which obviously went straight to her head. Nothing worse than a selfish child with too much power. Thankfully that was a long time in the past and the years and hardship that came with them tempered the girl into a woman with some measure of dignity and purpose. Her travels now aren't just a way to escape from her past, but a journey to find new sights and to pick up the newly Gifted before they do something stupid or they are killed by an opposing faction. In the meantime she also resolved to clean the world of those she sees as scum.
• Other Notes, Preferences: Rachel travels around in a black motorcycle inhabited by her own animalistic Servant Wulf. Stuck to the side of it she carries a long metal pole, which serves as her close range weapon. On Wulf she also carries a sawn-off shotgun on a pouch and on her own person a handgun. As of the moment the RP starts she's trying to quit smoking on a whim. Due to it she's carrying a variety of sweets and bubblegum since she heard those can help deal with the anxiety.
• Faction: Omega.
• Innate Magic: Strike, Control. She specializes on Strike, so she's able to protect the recruits into the secret world. She's a fierce fighter, her attack imbued with more strength, speed and more often than not an electrical shock or the burn of a blue flame. Even though she's also highly skilled in Control those in her Faction have given up on using her to gain control over influential figures. She firmly refused to step into such a role and given how she looks and who she is there would have been needed quite a lot of changes for that to work out. Control might not work well on other recruits, but hell it can help with first impression, right? It also helps her avoid the law, erase evidence of her passage and gain commodities wherever she goes.

May I join? This sounds interesting...

• Name: Ilsa B. Rakes
• Gender: Female
• Age: 19
• Personality: Ilsa is a happy-go-lucky young woman who is mostly seen smiling. She is extremely polite and rarely brings out her anger upon others. Her thoughts are mostly kept to herself. However, she can be a ruthless killer if she wants to. She has a warped sense of justice and little remorse for killing people she believes deserved to die in the most painful way as possible. Thieves are worse than murderers...
• Appearance: Average height and built for a European woman of that age. She has long brown hair that is usually tied in a low bun and has matching brown eyes. Dresses neatly and conservatively. Her symbol is located on her forearm.
• Bio: Only child, came from an upper middle class family. She was a strange and twisted child who had a fondness for Black Humour. Mostly kept to herself and revealed few things to her friends. She was a victim of bullying but was let go before she could take revenge. The girl was also exposed to violence at a young age because of the community she grew up in, and accepted that as a normal fact of life.
• Other Notes, Preferences: Ilsa's a Knife Nut, but owns very little blades due to an accident in her childhood. (Accidentally injured a friend). She doesn't like being a leader and prefers to being either part of the team or the right-hand man. She travels around with a switchblade hidden in her pocket and a crowbar. Because she liked it better than all the heavy tools in her father's shed.
• Faction: Lesser Powers
• Innate Magic: Cast and Field.

EDIT: edited appearance for symbol

edited 2nd Jun '11 5:23:29 PM by theindefiniteone

Unless you want me to choose it for you, yes.

Also, I added this to the OP, but this isn't Earth. It's pretty much the same and the setting outside of Vessels won't come up too much (simply because that would be headache inducing), but it's still an important detail. So describing them as European-looking is perfectly alright, but them actually being from Europe is a bit iffier.

edited 8th May '11 5:06:33 AM by Hydrall

Meh. You can choose my Faction for me. Is that okay? It's because I really want to end up in a 'random' one.

Right, then... I can tell you now, she's probably bound for the Lesser Powers.

Thank you!

...

-Bump-

...

Hey, I like the premise...

I want to start, but we currently don't have quite enough players. Even if we lumped everyone together...

Yup, I guessed so...

Hope more people join now.

Can I still join? Because it's been a few weeks or so, but...

•Name: Arianna Drew (adopted last name), commonly known as "'Ri"

•Gender: Female

•Age: Twenties

•Personality: Outwardly, she makes a great effort to be calm and controlled, almost to the point of overkill. Ruthless. She does what has to be done, no more and no less, and without any outward feeling of remorse. The preservation or destruction of the world will generally come before everything else; she would like to think she's first and foremost a soldier. She speaks only when spoken to, and what little she says is cynical and jaded, and she uses sounds and facial expressions more often than words to convey her feelings anyway. She becomes envious and hateful of anyone with a better up-bringing than her, and the fact that she was a street urchin and a daughter of a prostitute is a touchy topic. However, fidelity is her strong streak, and she will fight for her goal and those close to her till the end.

•Appearance: Light chestnut skin, brown eyes, mousey dark hair cut down around her shoulders, not very tall, fond of leather boots. She always draws a bless-mark (a black mark down from her forehead to the bottom of her nose and two slanted lines beneath her eyes) every morning, if possible. She wears what's appropriate for the job, but she's never without two handguns and two stilletos (the knives :D) to match,

•Bio: I'm not completely sure yet, but she was the daughter of a prostitute and did a runner, grew up as a street rat, and got involved with the Triads. Her past is a source of shame for her for some reason, which is strange because she apparently lived like she does now, and she has practically told nobody about it.

•Other Notes, Preferences: She's mildly proficient at magic, but she makes up for it with her speed and her almost natural ability at weilding guns. Growing up on the street had inadvertantly trained her to be quick-thinking, stealthy and agile, using all of her body (hands, feet, brains) and whatever blades or tools she has to defend herself, and the moment she got her hands on a gun she trained with it as much as possible. Because she's not rich enough to afford bullets by the barrel, she's learnt to make every shot count.

•Faction: I don't mind, but preferably Infinatus, just to be different.

•Innate Magic: Mainly Control, but she's broken into the Cast sector before as well. She primarily uses it to affect her physical attacks, but she can dip into the mental aspects of Control as well.

Thanks for reading :)

edited 23rd May '11 2:33:13 AM by Aralyn

Looks fine to me. Welcome!

So when do we begin? :D

Not yet, unfortunately. I'm not quite certain, but a few more people for each Faction would be great. Going with just one or two Gifted per faction seems almost too small of an RP to me, but it is how it is and it'll go how it goes. I might end up filling the gaps with NPCs, but I'd rather not.

Okay :) How many more do you suppose?

Like I said, I don't know. Two or so Gifted for each Faction would be sufficient, I suppose... As it is, the only one to have even that is Infinatus.

• I: 2 Gifted.
• O: 1 Cultist
• LP: 1 Gifted.

Hope we get more R Ps...

Indeed, I really want to play this.

Hmmm I know it's missing the point more than a little, but if our numbers don't grow too much would it be possible to pool us all together in one organization and treat the other two as antagonists?

That would make sense...it would pull a lot of the conflict out though. But I suppose it might be necessary for the RPG to function at all :D

edited 23rd May '11 12:52:46 AM by Aralyn