The Struggle for Aldaris - An Apocalyptic Fantasy RP - Interest Thread

For everyone who doesn't know, here's the discussion thread.

@Daltar: First of all, Brennan is a title; my character's real first name is Dolgain.

Second, your concerns may be aleviated if I specify things a bit. The forces under Dolgain's command mostly consist of the Geldan tribes that had escaped from the city with him years ago, which is to say that it is a far cry from the gargantuan horde his father led years ago. In that great disastrous battle, many tribes were killed off entirely; and as for those tribes that managed to escape death and enslavement, the burning impression the battle left in them, coupled with numerous demon possessed animals appearing in the plains, has kept the vast majority of the tribes on the run ever since. Their fear has made it highly difficult for Dolgain to convince them to join him.

Overall, the total number of warriors in Dolgain's army is 750. The way the Geldan's conduct their campaign, however, makes the total number of warriors immediately available to Dolgain much smaller. The army is split up into the individual tribes it is composed of. The way it goes, each of the tribes split up to go about the land, causing damage and chaos in the empire as they individually see fit before reconvening at a predetermined place at a predetermined place to share what they have experienced and decide what to do next.

Therefore, Dolgain really only travels with his own particular tribe, meaning only the resources and manpower of that tribe is immediately available to him. Based on how many npcs you're willing to let me use, the number of able-bodied warriors could range from 45 to 110.

It would indeed be possible for Dolgain to leave his tribe for a little while; Dolgain tends to be a rather hands-on leader. With the nomadic nature of the Geldans though, it would be possible to take his tribe with him; that or possibly send the tribe to initiate an attack on some off-screen place as a strategy may see fit.

This is related to my interest.

• Name: Father Mortimus Haven, Father by virtue of being monk rather than a priest.
• Age: 53
• Gender: Male.
• Species/Class: Human. Technically a Hero of Old, but crusading on the trail of his deity's Sacred Arm.
• Appearance: I ineptly doodled him a while back.◊ Staunch, vaguely stern, balding, redheaded, in possession of gloriously holy sideburns, and generally built like a blacksmith. Wears a cassock with a battered leather mantle. Gives off that Scandinavian/Eastern European vibe that seems ever so slightly out of touch with reality.
• Personality: Father Haven is a man with worship and piousness in spades; he's a great believer in the beauty of a god-created natural world. He also believes that mankind can only achieve salvation by actively pursuing it, that the unassuming will inherit the world, and that all men are worthy of redemption behind their flaws. This is lucky, because he also believes that all men will find redemption in death. He's reserved, humble, quietly faithful, and sees no conflict between feeding the starving and punishing those who steal food.
  • He also harbors a strong dislike of secularism, the undead, art that isn't about religion, and women who aren't nuns. For reasons obvious below, his (unsurprisingly male) sect has a strong distrust of femininity and views it the false beauty to counterpart and distract from man's equally-detested cruelty.
  • Despite his brow he tends to be in a good mood most of the time, albeit in a srs bsns sort of a way. That happens when every birdsong you hear is a gift from your god.
• Skills: Literacy, some fighting and physical skills born of years of practice and a carefully controlled streak of brutality, and rudimentary blacksmithing skills. His sect believed in function before form, and that the creation of beauty was best left to nature, so the weapons and armour he can make tend to be basic forms of steel or iron. While he can cook for himself, that tends to translate to various stews and very little else.
  • He has the authority to bless water, although as he's not a priest this is going to be of very little use in a baptism quest.
• Assets: The robes on his back, his holy book and pendant, a small one-handed and extremely plain war-hammer, and the yak◊ he uses for transport. The yak◊ itself has a tent and saddlebags strapped to it, containing bread and dried meat and other things that can be relied on to keep, and also a very small shrine at which to pray.
• Bio: Father Haven's youth was unimportant, save that at the age of 21 he chose (or was chosen) to become a monk in an obscure sect and swear away from earthly possessions; his past was one of these, as was his name. The central tenant of his new life was that beauty (and with it, peace) was to be found in the creations of their god, and not the work of an inherently flawed mortalkind. Their temple was designed to be humble and austere in all places except those entirely devoted to worship, and even then it was the bare-bones beauty of a place where prayer's doing most of the work. Once taken in he was re-named for a saint of no particular importance, taught to read, write, cook meals bland enough to remain acceptably far from the base desires of humanity, and defend himself against the unenlightened.
  • When news of the Dark Lord came from the west, they took it as further proof of man's place as most flawed among mortals. When rumours of his consultation with demons reached their ears, they prayed for his soul. When they heard of the Cradle of Humanity and Verthnix's mockery of natural grandeur, they took it as an affront to their god and dispatched the expendable experienced of their number to find and retrieve a prophecised weapon of holy wrath. A plain hammer of simple beauty and purpose, designed to redeem man's sin one life at a time. To wield such a weapon, the first direct gift to a shameful mortalkind since the sect's origin, would be an honour any of their monks would gladly die for.
  • Since being dispatched, Haven's search has led him far, wide, and ever closer to the Dark Lord he finds so distasteful. A suspicion is beginning to form in his head regarding a set of almost rapturously beautiful blue mountains, and it has led him to stopping for the night in Alicris.
• More on that Sacred Arm: The warhammer has no name, out of a belief that weapons don't deserve them. It's a two-handed warhammer, with a rough knotted oak handle and an un-ornate studded head with a spike on its reverse side.
  • Offensively, it strikes stronger than a warhammer its size should. A blow with it is not a physical blow, but a blow that purifies the spirit and redeems the soul. Against demons it is as effective as any other blessed weapon, but against the shameful follies of mortalkind it shines with its full rage, and strikes dead any unprotected and worthy of its wrath. Because of this spiritual element, the physical range of the weapon means very little. Entire swathes of a worthy battlefield can fall to it in one swing, driving souls from doomed bodies and burning away their sin.
  • Its gift to the user is to make them step closer alongside their god; the aches and pains of mortality are dull within them, they move at times clumsily and at times with grace through their disconnected world, and their intentions become more obscured and out of touch with the mortals around them. Their eyes become closed to the surroundings they once saw, and instead they look down on them from a more enlightened position. They are given no sanctuary other than this, no boosts to speed or strength or stamina, and its true gift is a religious ecstasy the purity of purpose the sect likes to think comes with it.
  • The catch here being that while it's extremely good at cutting down an army of righteous farmers or a heretical peasant uprising, it's less suited to killing demons or breaking through magic that doesn't originate with mortals. They also have to be worthy of its wrath. If a man is humble, if he's done nothing wrong, it'll leave him completely unaffected. Admittedly that won't be much comfort to him after he's been hit with a warhammer, but still
  • Catch 2: While his mind moves upwards, his body does not. He's no stronger or more resilient, he just has a much better idea of what to do, where to hit, and more certainty about it. In the same way, his emotions aren't muted or enhanced apart from the aforementioned religious methamphetamine, and he doesn't become any smarter.
  • And, finally, he still has to find the thing first.

edited 5th Jan '13 3:10:03 PM by TheMalignancy

At last, it's my turn! Tell me if something is wrong and I'll try my best to fix it.

• Name: Asvel, the Azure Sorceress/Witch of Veldin
• Age: 12 years wandering as a spirit, learning about the world. 23 years living as an elf.
• Gender: Female
• Species / Class: Elvish Sorceress (blue)
• Appearance: She is slender and medium sized (for an elf, at least), with long dark blue hair that easily reaches her waist and ebony black eyes, who wears a dark blue cloak that easily covers the upper part of her body, and is oftenly seen with a grey shirt and equally grey pants. Her title wasn't given by coincidence, after all.
• Personality: Very curious, insidious, talkative and ingenious by nature. Even so, she's extremely emotional, and lets herself be moved constantly by her own feelings. Her temper is easily changed for the best or the worst in short time, and she seldom keeps her cool when dealing with stress or dealing with things while stressed. She was forced to bear with some restrictions from the elven society to keep living among them, and as such, her curiousity became more restricted by the years the sorceress matured, and she became more organized, responsible and wise, but it's not as if these traits are not still present on her, like a curse that just won't let her be.
• Skills: A Glass Cannon, basically. Her physical strenght and endurance are terrible, but her speed and agility compensate for this. She's useless for any kind of combat that doesn't include magic, and too clumsy to use other tools.
  • Air Manipulation: Her main skill. Exactly as it sounds, she can manipulate the air to assist her in any way she can think about. Manipulate the air to jump high enough to climb a ceiling? It's possible, though it's limited by her weight (on her own, she can probably reach the roof of a small sized building, but that's when she isn't carrying anything heavy). Manipulate the air so that her falling acceleration won't necessarily break all her bones/kill her? It's possible (though it's limited by her weight, again). Depending of the ventilation of the area, she can be either deadly or pathetically weak, as manipulating the air to send things and people flying is one of her specialities.
  • Runes of Air Propagation: She carries five of these runes. As it's hard to find another rune to imbue her magical energy with (and imbuing it with magical energy is a tiring proccess that requires time), she's very cautious about using them. These runes can be re-used later, but they become "blank" after the magical energy within them is unleashed, and must be recharged again. After a few uses and recharges (the limit is usually 3 uses, though some may break with only 2, and others with 4), it'll be destroyed. When they are activated, the wind around the targetted area is dissipated (which -must- be on her field of vision), pushing everything within the affected area away with the force of a small radius explosion. They can also be used passively as some sort of land mine.
  • Broom Flight: A simple concept. Her air manipulation allows her to use her broom to fly on heights below the clouds, though it's not made for long trips or quick traveling because it requires the caster's concentration and energy to keep going, and that can be very tiring.
• Assets: The aforementioned runes and a broom (though she usually leaves it at home, and only carries it when she's planning to use it later).
• Bio: As soon as the spirit found himself in this world, it wandered through every corner of it, moved by a boundless curiousity. The entity saw the changes the Dark Lord did to this world, saw the suffering and oppression of countless people, but also saw how much people struggled to keep their tiny bit of happiness intact, living through every day. Asvel found this conflict and the world's vast ammount of potential interesting, especially the elves, who had a vast ammount of knowledge and wisdom, and were less likely to be corrupted or affected by the Dark Lord (or so it thought). Taking the shape of a female elf, she lived in the elvish city of Veldin for 22 years. Whether she was a diligent student and observer, good listener and friendly; she was also seen as overly talkative (and annoying), eccentric, and volatile, so opinions about her were very controversal. Either way, she managed to live a rather happy, satisfactory life for 21 years, until the Empire decided to expand its territory even further and take this city as well. When it happened, Asvel volunteered to be part of the Veldin army, and they stopped the imperial troops for half a month using their knowledge of the battlefield, field advantage and traps (some using the sorceress' own runes of air propagation for this). In answer to this, the Empire decided it would be better to just burn the forest and let the spreading flames take over the city along while they advance. In one night, Veldin was completely subdued, its citizens either fled, died, became slaves or worse. Asvel fled from the city, helping anyone who had the same idea as her to get away from the soldiers, found a hideout and stayed there until the dust settled and the city was reduced to ruins. From that day on, she decided to track any survivor, find out where the imperial army might have taken its prisoners, and fight agaisnt the Dark Lord as the only way to live in this world would be to end his reign of terror.

edited 5th Jan '13 3:21:33 PM by Rapier

Roosevelt: Denied for already discussed reasons.

Leonard: Approved

Theodore: Still, even being smarter and with more insight than normal humans Prometh would have started his life only twenty and something years ago... having to learn a lot. For himself to place himself as Justice and look down on all humans as corrupt... I guess it could be a sign of immaturity on his part, but I'm still iffy about the concept.

Sonof: I like those numbers, but still I am not comfortable with having to work with them on this stage of the RP. If Dolgain leaves him men behind, with them knowing he will be back but not when and are left to their own devices as the actual group and Dolgain adventure for a while, that I could accept.

Malignancy: I like the concept, however I can see some obstacles in implementation. We have quite a good number of female characters, thus your character's views might bring about conflict. That could bring about interesting interactions, however it could also bring some problems. Furthermore, his Sacred Arm deals with some big absolutes. They redeem the soul and bring down entire armies? That is too strong and even in this RP that is more Black and White than most, it seems like a big judgment to pass. Thus, I cannot allow such a Sacred Arm.

Rapier: Approved!

Okay then Daltar, I'm running low on things to tweak. Perhaps it might be more efficient to ask what you would like to see in Prometh's profile, considering what has already been established. I'm not asking this in annoyance or contempt; I just want to know what needs to be done.

@Daltar: That could be done. He could just reunite with them at the place where all the tribes are planned to meet once more, or otherwise know of the general direction his tribe will head once he's gone and track them down. He would need a good reason to leave on his own with some unfamiliar westerners though.

Just to clarify: the important bit I was trying to go for isn't that it brings down entire armies, it's that it'd kill (and by the sect's logic, redeem) anyone found impure by the same logic. The idea being that while that's not really anything objective, it's a religious instrument and barred from objectivity by default. While they're redeemable in his god's eyes, they're still damnable in those of however many others they've offended, but that's really none of that particular god's business.

The other thing being that I was trying to make something extremely powerful in a certain situation but crippled in a lot of others. Like a situational glass cannon.

So, nerfed and better thought out/phrased idea:

• Nameless due to being a weapon, etc etc. Most of the time it's an unassuming warhammer of the kind described above, with no real special properties. If the user concentrates in battle they can go into a state of divine fatherly fury, during which impure (by the sect's ideas) opponents will have their souls driven from their bodies by the hammers blows, killing them instantly. If it's acted on quickly, this process is reversible by anyone powerful enough - demons, gods if they weren't absent, powerful mages and sorcerers, etc.
• Those pure by the sect's logic are immune to this but still take the physical effects of being hit with a steel brick on the end of a stick. This means that against an enemy force of down to Earth and comparatively humble race like, for example, dwarves, it'd have much less effect than it would against elves or humanity.
• It only has the range of a normal warhammer. I got a little carried away on the holy weapon vibe, sorry.
• Against demons the divine fury instead attempts to burn them with a cleansing flame, the logic being that unlike mortalkind they're irredeemable, but this has less effort put into it than the anti-mortal effect and can be countered if the demon's powerful enough. What constitutes 'powerful enough' is completely at Daltar's discretion, due to you actually knowing the setting, but due to the deity's contempt being focused on those uppity mortals I suspect they wouldn't have to be too far up the pecking order.
• Clarification of what walking closer to his god would mean:
  • Because he's no longer entirely grounded in his fragile mortal body, he feels pain and hunger and the other trapping of flesh far more weakly than a normal man would. He's not actually free from them, however, nor is he any stronger or faster.
  • He has a shorter reaction time, which helps in the heat of battle but isn't much use anywhere else due to not being backed up by muscles that can match it. He can't look into mortals souls or pass absolute judgement himself, however, because there's no way to gain that right without being the god himself.
  • His emotions would be intact, but most of his existence would be taken up with the humble good mood he'd get from knowing he was close to the being he worshiped. He'd see the beauty of the natural world even more than he does already, knowing he's in step with the being who created it. As he'd have gained understanding and a clarity of purpose from this, and eliminated any repressed doubts he might have, he'd also burn a lot more angrily when confronted with something he'd find heretical. Which is the basic mechanism behind the divine fury thing.
  • Being absent and rather begrudging of human affairs anyway, the god wouldn't talk to him or communicate in any way. The understandings he gained would be his own invented ones, as would be the clarity of purpose. Think of it as a divine boat, and him floating behind at the very end of its slipstream.
  • All in all, it just makes him a marginally-blessed disciple rather than a common or garden monk.

@Misogyny: That's more down to being one half of a cheerful philosophical misanthropy: he dislikes them because they represent the temptations of his gender's flesh, and (more importantly) because they distract from the cruelty and generic religious badtouch that constitutes his take on the other gender. Presumably the nuns of his religion have a reversal of the same view.

All of which is theoretical and mostly applies when dealing with people as a plural. If someone's in front of him, being a monk he'll probably end up liking them as long as they're not actively sinning and wearing enough clothes to satisfy his natural prudishness. Being reserved and vaguely humble gives a high tolerance for anything not outright blasphemous.

edited 5th Jan '13 9:23:48 PM by TheMalignancy

Not Dalt, but I'm going to say, I think pretty much everyone is going to be relatively secular in this too. I don't plan on having my character say much more on religion than cursing once in a while.

I'd just forwarn that I can't see even what you have there meshing well with the group. Either it's never touched on, he holds onto to it the whole RP and never gets a reason to develop past it or else it comes out and makes his interaction with everyone a little awkward since only one or two party member of all of us might meet all the qualifications on that list and then they'd not be inclined to deal with him.

So either he spends the game at arms length from the party avoiding too much interaction or he lets his prejudice show and people are wary of him for it.

It could maybe work but I can understand her hesitance here.

edited 5th Jan '13 9:35:06 PM by Fauxlosophe

He's not super religious or anything, but Gerrard, having been raised on ridiculous stories, knows the power of belief and religion. I'd say they'd get along pretty well.

If we've got a spoiled Ifrit princess, two thieves who would have no qualms with stealing from the party (one of whom is also a con artist), and at least two people who killed their entire clan/burned their own city to the ground in fits of rage, I have a feeling the group's going to be able to tolerate a single weird priest.

It doesn't really seem like it'll ever be something he'd be at all confrontational about unless someone were, like, having an orgy right in front of him, in which case I doubt he'd be the only one to object to it.

edited 5th Jan '13 9:39:53 PM by DoctorThunder

Theodore: Hmmm... correct these things. I would prefer if you called him a lawyer instead of a attorney. In his bio, improve a little his view on mortals as he should have learned all he knows from them. With that, it should be alright after I thought about it for a bit longer.

Melon: A reason could be to learn. So long he has fought only with his people who are not the most fit to fight Lord Karnas given their beliefs. He could decide to stick around with the group after finding these natives to the lands of Karnas and seeing them fight with their varied methods against the Dark Lord. And then given that his people are few and don't have a true plan to defeat the man, he could remain with these brave warriors until there is an opening for his people to act.

Malignancy: Mortimus can work in my opinion specially if he acts as you have described. However, the Sacred Arm in question I am way more wary off. It seems like a bit too much of a one hit kill on people sorely because they don't follow the doctrine of the character's sect. Furthermore, the Sacred Arms were created specifically to give mortals weapons with the which to defeat the rising darkness. This is important, since even though I can see the hammer working as the artifact of a God in particular, it seems more driven to spread his agenda instead of fighting Karnas, given that he is too strong to be affected by the Soul ripping effect and that the strongest of his minions are either demons or have been tainted by demonkind.

Hmmm in general, while I like the concept, I don't think the nameless mace will work for this RP.

What I was going for is that it is to stop the rising darkness. It's just that this particular god has differing priorities on what constitutes darkness. The killing someone because they disagree with his belief system was also intentional, that being a pretty large part of any functional religion.

Anyhow, if the sacred arm won't work I'll just scrap it and have him be a hero of old. Even if he's searching for it, it doesn't have to A: actually exist, or B: ever be found by him. Given he's going to be getting caught up in active rebellion anyway, the weapon that was only ever going to serve as a means to facilitate the exact same thing would probably wind up slipping his mind.

Alternatively he's searching for a holy book that has no powers other than soothing rhetoric. Guidance in times of darkness and all that sort of spiel.

• Name: Lihtu; 'Little One'
• Age: 25
• Gender: Female
• Species: Black Dragon/Wood Elf
• Appearance: Compared to a healthy young Black Dragon◊, Lihtu is barely bigger than a drake; her wingspan is a mere ten feet across, and the rest of her body is similarly underdeveloped. The purple and red frills on her body are small and pale, and the spines are as well. She is visibly a runt in both size and musculature, and while she can fly, she's nowhere near the fastest or the strongest at it and trails near the back fringe of a hypothetical pack.
  • In her humanoid form, Lihtu prefers to adopt the guise of a young Wood Elf woman. With dark caramel skin and pitch-black hair, she casts a low profile with the exception of her teeth, which are longer and sharper than they should be. As in her dragon form, she is small and scrawny, standing only five feet tall and weighing maybe ninety-five pounds; she cuts her own hair when it starts to annoy her, which manages to keep it around shoulder-length and out of her green eyes. She tends to favor brown, beige and olive traveling clothes. The multi-pocketed satchel and long, hooded traveler's cloak she wears everywhere are both rather worn, but sturdy and trusty enough given that. Her cloak, especially, smells musty and vaguely unpleasantly of swamp mud.
• Personality: Lihtu was taught the value of patience from a very young age. Persistence and subtlety are her virtues; if she is rebuffed from one avenue of attaining her goal, whether that be information on an enemy camp or to find out what's being made for dinner that night, she will retreat, regroup, and try again, waiting several hours if she has to to regain the element of surprise. Truly a Black Dragon by nature, she relies on ambush in any meeting of two parties; in both combat and conversation, equal footing or a disadvantage is anathema to her, and she prefers to let the brunt of focus go to her allies while she works unnoticed on the edges. That said, while she prefers to have a chance to study a target before engaging it, she is terrible at actively manipulating people; she exploits opportunities, she doesn't create them.
• Skills: By nature both as a dragon and as a person, Lihtu is an ambush predator. She knows how to move silently, taking advantage of her small frame and light weight in both forms to make approaches that her targets might feel safe leaving unguarded. Her strength, while lacking due to her poor constitution, is still draconic, and thus can surprise someone not prepared to counter it.
  • Lihtu's fighting style is centered almost entirely around the element of surprise. If at all possible, she will seek to end the battle in one strike, attacking her enemy's weakest point as hard as she can from concealment; if that doesn't work, she will retreat and let her allies distract the target until another opening reveals itself. Lihtu fights with a black iron rope dart anchored in a heavy vambrace on her left forearm; she wears the dart itself as a segmented claw-ring (to about the second segment there)◊, where it can be whipped out at a moment's notice. The chain can be stored by winding inside the vambrace, but this must be done manually.
  • Lihtu dabbles in alchemy, mostly in terms of distilling and adding chemicals to her own acid breath. She has some small interest in soporifics and hallucinogens as well, but can't get her hands on them with anywhere near the same regularity. She is not averse to testing these compounds by smearing them on her dart.
• Assets: Lihtu is functionally a swamp hermit; she has a hideyhold burned into the trunk of a huge tree near the center of the swamp she was raised in and a small grass hut in the roots to deal with any humanoids who wander in. The majority of her assets consist of the dart and vambrace set, the clothes on her back, her bag (which contains rudimentary tools for alchemy, a dagger, several vials of substances she has found or created that are useful and a small flute), and her traveling cloak. A modest amount of money taken from bandits and the like sits in a little wicker basket in the corner of her nest.
• Bio: Discovered half-buried in a peat bog by farmers looking to harvest the rich mud for building material, Lihtu's egg was taken in by the entire town, who viewed the rare find as a sign of hope in an increasingly dark time. However, as Karnas' Conquest swept across the land, subjugating or enslaving those who could not escape, the farmers grew disillusioned with the dragon who was to have saved them single-handedly from the Dark Lord - a sickly, weak child - and in time they abandoned her, taking what they could carry and fleeing the still-distant tide of war. As chance would have it, the battlefield itself did not come any closer than it had already; the swamp accepted its nominal new master with hardly a change in the daily routine of its inhabitants. Still, the farmers were gone, and Lihtu, barely more than a girl, learned to live off the swamp that was her natural habitat. From time to time she would join with travelers, refugees or swamp dwellers met by chance, sometimes staying with them for months, but she would always return to her tree fort.
  Now that Karnas has begun tightening the noose around the territories already behind Imperial lines, not even life in the swamp has been safe from the influences of worldly politics. Travelers are fewer, and colder and harder when they do pass; the people of the swamp have begun to settle in for the coming storm, one which may be more fearsome than any they have experienced in their lives. Lihtu, making a trip to the nearby city of Alicris, was trapped by the cordon of the Imperial Army; so far, she has escaped the notice of the convoys. Without allies, she has no hope of stopping the convoys or of escaping; and so she waits, and watches...

edited 6th Jan '13 11:03:02 AM by RedSavant

Alrighty, that's easy enough to fix.

There you go!

That sounds alright.

Malignancy: With the Sacred Arm scrapped, I can accept your character.

Lihtu: Approved!

Theodore: Approved!

Can you describe the evil city, it's tech, and what it's like to live there?

So would I be accepted now Daltar?

Yup, Melon!

As for the Capital City... ah, may you ask for that in the discussion thread again? I'm about to leave for a while and it would be good for the question to be there to remind me to answer it.

I can't believe I didn't catch this earlier. Assuming signups are still open, I have a few ideas for a character.

Before I decide on one, I was wondering what the rules are in this setting regarding undead? Do they exist/can people come back, are they sane if they do, etc.

They exist and how they are depends on the kind of undead. If you wish you can PM me with the particular and I can see what we can do.

Dropping a post here for interest, assuming you're still accepting signups. I'm still working out the specifics, but I'll drop a proper signup here when I get time to write everything up later today.

I would like to join the list of people working on signups.

Well, this thing needs a little CPR so its nice of you guys to join