Welcome to the Character Development Threads! These shared story exercises allow you to develop your characters in a setting shared by other authors and their characters. No sign-up is necessary; simply look over the last few pages and hop on in. If you need questions answered or a recap, head over to our discussion thread
and ask; we’re happy to help. There's also a trope page (with location descriptions and other info).
Archipelago is semi-casual — no violence on the central island, but the rest are fair game. Other islands are built on-the-fly by the tropers whose visiting them, but you should probably grab a few others before having your characters head off — there's not much point wandering an island alone, since this is supposed to develop characters by bouncing them off one another and putting them in unusual situations. Be sure to communicate with the tropers you go with so you're on the same general page.
With thanks to, among many others, Gault, who came up with the initial idea, Nrjxll, who wrote the first draft I shameless ripped off, and the various people who contributed to the trope page location descriptions.
[[Current Time: Early Morning]
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL INTRO FOR THIS THREAD
This has made the hub island something of a designated neutral ground for various strange characters and dimensional travelers. A small cluster of buildings has sprung up near the one natural harbor and its dock: a couple of bars, a couple of casinos, several shops, and even the cheap but comfortable Pax Island Hotel. This is not a tourist trap, though, as much as amenities for the visitors that come here for various reasons. The Hotel's entrance leads out to a central square, with a shamelessly cheesy tiki bar calling itself the Big Kahuna and the Pax Island General Store being the most obvious, though not the only, services.
Inland, the island is covered in jungles that rise steeply into a central mountain, covered in ruins that don't seem to exactly match any of the local cultures. Apart from that, though, they're harmless and unrelated to the area's strangeness. The population on the island, humans of mixed origins, are quite used to the strangeness of their island, staffing the amenities and filling newcomers in but otherwise keeping to themselves.
Beyond this hub island, the archipelago grows more mysterious and dangerous. Fogs often cover the ocean, and compasses and other forms of navigation don't always work right. There are at least a half-dozen other islands at any one time, but that's all anyone can say for certain. The docks on the hub island offer numerous boats for visitors to travel to these islands, either under their own control or with the aid of a local sailor. Of course, there's always an element of risk involved with visiting these islands, because you never know quite what you'll find. One rule has proven consistent, though: any truly catastrophic event on an island tends to result in it vanishing into the fog, never to be seen again.
edited 27th Jun '14 6:59:52 PM by KillerClowns
Isaac nodded, then did a double take. "Sorry, what - what on earth is Amu?"
Isaac looked around and finally took notice of all the unusual people around him. The bottom started to drop out of his stomach as he began to realize what was going on. "Actually, before you answer that... where am I, exactly?"
"You seem to be in command. No need for this voice." Claire cycled through a few voice settings, and settled on the her usual voice. Most people thought it sounded friendly, female and not too strange, few thought that it was uncanny. It didn't hurt her own ears either.
"I'm a explorer. I have seen many different animalsnote and other beings. Never met a talking one that so closely resembles a fox."
Crazy Kiwi
"Yeah, we can walk and talk," said Teri, then, remembering Askeda's glance, "you heading near the Big Kahuna? If so we'll grab our packs as we go by."
Ian looked at the woman who had interjected, "Sorry, I haven't seen the bloke you're looking for, but there's food at the Big Kahuna - it smells delicious."
"Shall we get a move on, then?" asked Teri. "That deer looks heavy and I'm sure Askeda doesn't want to be standing around all day."
Laugh and grow dank!
Rikael took the doctor’s hand and shook it, matching Violet’s level of enthusiasm. She let out a short bark of laughter, “Ahah- thankless! Oh, trust me, you have no idea!” Then she grimaced. Rikael was practiced enough with the norms of Human interaction not to accidentally hurt Friedrich with her claws, but Friedrich nonetheless felt their tips press against the soft flesh of his palm.
She released his hand after a moment and continued, “I know economics has a bit of a reputation- being the so-called Dismal Science- but vocationally, my first love has always been analyzing the political-economy. I guess I’m a bit of a romantic at heart.” She shrugged. “For me, the work’s kind of its own reward. Still, it does get a bad rap from the other harder sciences. And they’re right in some ways- like, engineering or chemistry might be more immediately practical than economics, ‘specially with the war going on- but the Commonwealth wouldn’t exist if not for political-economic theory.” Realizing she had started to ramble, Rikael looked back over to Violet and asked, “So, Violet, how about you? What do you do exactly?”
edited 12th Oct '13 4:47:34 AM by Gault
yey
[Harbor]
Esa looked at Isaac in mild confusion. "Amu is... Amu. You haven't heard of him?" She sighed, then shook her head. "Never mind. More important question. We're on Pax Island. Some sort of tourist resort in the middle of a bunch of other islands. Y'know, relax, sip wine on the beach, that sort of thing. Well, that's me and Sonuera, and I've already told you what Layi's planning on." Then she glanced back. Sonuera had quietly come up to them. "Ah," she said, "there you are! Sonuera, Isaac. Isaac, my daughter Sonuera."
Sonuera half-heartedly brought her fist to her chest, and gave Isaac a nervous smile, but said nothing.
Gotta go, will write for the stranger and Layi later.
[Town center —> behind Big Kahuna]
"Actually," Askeda said to Samuel, "she can talk to me all she wants, I don't mind. But I do want to get this deer off my back."
She turned to Ian and Teri. "Well, then, come on." She began walking to the Big Kahuna, but headed towards the side of the building. "I've got kind of an unofficial partnership with them," she explained. "I go hunting for them, they pay me for fresh meat. Simple, really."
At the back of the bar, they came to a door. It looked a bit like a service entrance of some kind. "Here we go," muttered Askeda. She pounded on the door a few times. "Henderson!" she called out. "You in there? I've got a chital buck for you!"
Crazy Kiwi
"Sounds like a great arrangement," said Teri, as she and I and fell in alongside Askeda.
"Are you able to tell us what and where this place actually is?" Ian asked. "The bloke in the Big Kahuna just said we were on an island in an archipelago - which is not much more information than "you're on dry land" - something we'd already worked out.
edited 12th Oct '13 1:21:26 PM by Wolf1066
[Hotel]
The stranger continued to experiment with the new power. Desiring to know more, the stranger's aether-form started to attempt to bang on Jubal's door. Partially to see what the results of impact would be, partially to inspire fear. There was no danger here. The stranger could not harm Jubal, nor even enter the room without explicit permission. But did Jubal know that?
[Across the island]
A rainbow formed across the island in a most unusual way, as it started from the other side behind the mountains, then arced across the sky before touching down into the water nearby the Harbor, more like what one would see in a cartoon, although continuously colored, than in real life. Stranger still, it appeared to be a actual object, not merely a optical refraction. If one were to go close to it, it would not move, but upon contact, one would notice that it is not actually solid, but apparently something like a hologram of spectral light. Those with truly extraordinary senses may notice that it appears to be possibly alive, but clearly very alien if so.
Have more time to post now. 
edited 12th Oct '13 2:12:50 PM by Sonzai
Danger: Intense gravimetric distortions nearby. Please reverse the polarity on your deflectors now..gif_100.jpeg){kind=avatar}
[Town Center —> Big Kahuna]
Aya took a whiff of the Big Kahuna bar, and found herself compelled to agree with Ian. "It does smell delicious— thanks!" She stepped towards the building, led by the tempting aroma. Aya figured that Jubal was already settled in at the hotel; he could wait a little longer...
[Hotel]
Okay, think. Jubal tried to recall everything he had read on Mimics: Native to aether-rich jungles. Attracted to aether flux. Animal intelligence, but can replicate any spell it watches you cast. Rarely hostile. Always annoying. Case in point, he saw its second form knock on the door. What does it want, Jubal asked himself. At least, what does it think it wants?
...The real question is, how to make it go away? He couldn't remember. Was he supposed to turn off the juice; break the trance and don't cast anything until it leaves? Or maybe that'd just irritate it. Still, Jubal couldn't think of anything else, and it was worth a try. He returned to his own room, faced his sleeping self, and woke. Returning his violin and bow to their case, he laid down on his bed and waited. Hopefully the Mimic would find something more interesting to follow around.
[Hotel —> Behind the Mountains]
At least part of Jubal's suspicion was accurate. The stranger saw nothing further of interest, and so woke as well. Then the stranger left.
The stranger was at the more remote end of the strange rainbow. If the stranger was aware of its specific traits, there was no sign of this. The stranger patiently waited to see if there would be a reaction.
edited 12th Oct '13 5:34:25 PM by KillerClowns
[Behind the Mountains]
Here, the rainbow touched down into the water, quite close to the shore as before, and at first showed no reaction either.
However, a few moments later, it began retracting from the Harbor side, until it collapsed down into the water on this side, almost invisible. It then exploded in a shower of multicolored light, the multitude of chromatic droplets forming into the approximate appearance of a translucent human female. When the droplets had coalesced, her form unified into a greenish-blue color, complementing the ocean water perfectly.
She hovered over, and landed softly on the beach, with the look of animated water. She looked at the stranger with interest, while keeping a reasonable distance, and said, "Hello, I'm Cyana. Who are you?"
Danger: Intense gravimetric distortions nearby. Please reverse the polarity on your deflectors now.
[Behind the Mountains —> Mountaintop]
The stranger flitted away, but an easily-traced trail of energy could be followed, leading to a mountaintop.
edited 12th Oct '13 5:20:01 PM by KillerClowns
[Behind the Mountains >> Mountaintop]
"Playing hide and seek?" Cyana said as the stranger left.
Her form then morphed into a solid beam of white light, and traveling at approximately 299,792,458 m/s, she arrived and rematerialized at the Mountaintop as well, presumably looking at the Stranger and smiling.
Hey KC, is there any description for what the stranger looks like? Or is that too a mystery? 
[Mountaintop —> Big Kahuna]
The stranger imitated Cyana's transformation into light to shift several feet to the right. Faster than the method it had taken from al-Faddil. Still not as fast as it usually traveled, but that method had... certain flaws. This would serve well.
The stranger was gone again, this time lingering in a corner of the Big Kahuna where nobody had been looking.
[Mountaintop >> Big Kahuna]
"A copycat, eh?" Cyana said.
She then once again followed the stranger, morphing into a white beam, traveling towards the Big Kahuna, before making an abrupt turn through a window, and into a blue light hanging from the ceiling. She then rematerialized as a shimmer from the light, imitating a transporter effect.
"Found you," she said, smiling at the stranger again.
Danger: Intense gravimetric distortions nearby. Please reverse the polarity on your deflectors now.
Intro!
[Pax Island ~ Outside Hotel Entrance]
Two strangers approached the Pax Island Hotel.
One, who was clearly a young woman, wore a grey tank-top, beige hiking pants that had been zipped off at the knee, and a green outdoors jacket that was fairly unsuited for the weather of the island. Her skin tone was somewhat light, though her facial features and dark hair, cut short just above her shoulders, suggested some Native American descent, if distant. She raised her head, taking in the size of the hotel with a look of some satisfaction.
The other stranger, who—with questionable clearness—appeared to be a man of some sort, wore a black duster coat, even more out of place than the woman's jacket. Beneath his duster was a jacket similar to the woman's, and beneath the jacket he wore a purple t-shirt with large horizontal stripes. Sitting loosely on the man's head was a tattered straw hat with a very large brim. Besides looking very out of place against the rest of his attire, the hat covered a large portion of his head when he tipped his head downward, which he was doing just then.
They hadn't arrived from the passenger boat, but the island was clearly not their home.
The young woman glanced between the hotel and her companion, then all the way back towards the shore, raising a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun.
"All right, I think this'll be our best bet." she said, looking again at her companion, who had taken a position leaning against the hotel's outside wall. "Now we've just gotta wait. I'll do all the talking, all right? And I'll cover you, so just... sit tight for now."
The woman's companion gave no response, resigned to his post already. The woman herself resumed a lookout, prepared to stop the next person or group of people trying to enter the hotel. After a bit of a wait, she glanced at her companion again and asked, "Howe... you sure you're alright under all of that?"
Her companion, whom she'd referred to as 'Howe', shrugged. A few seconds later, he added, "It's not that bad." Though his face was indistinguishable under the straw hat, his voice sounded rather young. Quiet, definitely male, American, and young; the voice of someone in their mid-to-late teenaged years.
"Well it won't be for much longer; there's only so much we can do after all." The young woman offered a slight smile. "May as well put on a normal face while you can. Remember, we're far from home and expectations aren't going to be the same."
Howe, for his part, only shrugged, and the two of them resigned themselves to waiting for some passerby.
edited 28th Feb '14 3:57:24 PM by Ryuhza
this place needs me here
Drummer Boy
[[Harbor]]
Friedrich winced just a little when he felt the claws. It could have been worse. The claws were sharp, but Rikael was more mindful of them than the second-oldest widow in his district was of her long fingernails. Why did she always insist on gripping his arm? And she was always flirting with him. Ick.
"Ah, yes. As long as you know you're the ones running the show, the work is satisfying without the fanfare and public recognition. Takes a... certain kind of person to be content without it." The last bit was Friedrich's attempt at a compliment, and he nodded slowly to emphasize his point.
"I'm an engineer!" Violet picked up one of the satchels that Friedrich got from their boat. "Most of my big, amazing projects are at home, which is where we're going right now, but while I was at Friedrich's place I started some new designs to pass the time and I think they could really go somewhere!"
She proceeded to dump the satchel's contents on the ground. Friedrich watched in horror as she went through the piles of clothes and other items until she found a small leather-bound sketchbook.
"Ah, here it is." She flipped to the very first page. As Friedrich grumbled to himself and tried to re-pack the satchel, she looked upon him with some guilt. "This is a device that generates electricity and then, aided by magic, you'll be able to strike your targets with lightning! I'm still refining the inner workings and performing the runeological calculations. But all the materials can be supplied by the state if they like the design. If I can get this done, maybe I'll finally get a promotion! The head of the Department of Military Technology reports directly to my parents, you see, and he's so afraid that giving me any kind of promotion will make everyone scream corruption, so I haven't had one in ages. I wanna be the youngest chief engineer, and I'm the youngest in the department, but I have to do it before I'm twenty-five if I want to be the youngest."
edited 13th Oct '13 10:20:59 AM by SnowyFoxes
The last battle's curtains will open on stage!
[Behind Big Kahuna]
Askeda grinned. "Oh, you'd be surprised how much information 'you're on dry land' can give you. If the ground is dry, there's probably not a lot of water about, so you're in a desert, pretty far inland, or sort of high up. With more variations depending on how dry. And those aren't mutually exclusive, s-"
At that moment, the door opened, revealing an average-sized, very tanned man with a mop of black hair and a butcher's uniform. Evidently, Henderson. He was dragging a cart behind him. "Askeda," he said with a nod. Getting a look at the deer on her back, he said, "Nice one. Big."
"Yep," said Askeda. With a practiced motion, she dropped a little while simultaneously flexing her wings up , sending the deer smoothly over her head and into her waiting hands. "I'm estimating two thousand," she said, heaving the deer onto the cart.
"We'll see," said Henderson, and closed the door.
Askeda groaned, arched her back, and spread her wings to their full extent, giving them a small flap. "Dotrey, it feels good to finally have that off me," she muttered. She turned back to Ian and Teri. "Anyway, 'here' ain't really anywhere." Flexing her bow a little to get more space, she pulled it over her head and stowed it on her back, between her wings. "Or anywhen, for that matter. Probably can be found anyplace, if you know where to look." She waved a hand vaguely. "Get people from all over. You ain't the first to wind up here by accident, and you definitely ain't gonna be the last. Not by a long shot in either direction."
edited 13th Oct '13 10:15:15 AM by TeraChimera
The future of warfare in UC.
[Behind the Bar...no outside it, not literally behind the bar that's inside the bar]
"I might be able to," Samuel said to Ian, "but I'm not sure it would mean anything to you. The location is dimensionally shifted by about a quarter, making access from the exterior difficult but not impossible. Unfortunately, it's also unanchored by the same token. It exists in several dozen places at once when viewed from the exterior. A fine mess, probably not one that can be fixed at this point. Once it started appearing in more than one place..."
edited 13th Oct '13 11:51:42 AM by Night
Nous restons ici.
Crazy Kiwi
"Fantastic," said Teri, shaking her head, "that makes this place marginally weirder than the last place we were in."
"Marginally weirder but with cigarettes, coffee, alcohol and food that we don't have to shoot, skin and gut first," said Ian with a grin.
"I didn't say I didn't like it," said Teri, grinning.
"What race or species are you?" Ian asked Askeda. "If you don't mind me asking."
[Big Kahuna —> Behind Big Kahuna —> ???]
Something about Cyana was making the stranger very restless. Nervous, even.
Without warning, the stranger bolted through a back door, running past Samuel, Askeda, Ian, and Teri, before turning a corner and vanishing, this time without a trace, while out of sight.
edited 13th Oct '13 5:04:54 PM by KillerClowns
Crazy Kiwi
"The fuck?" said Teri. She looked in the direction the stranger had run.
"That's odd," said Ian, "could'a' sworn a place this big would have plenty of toilets to go 'round. Anyhoo, I'm starved and the smell of food from this place is making my stomach rather vocal. Time to rejoin the others and get some kai. At least we know that the venison burgers are going to be fresh."
Teri turned to Askeda. "Would you like to join us for lunch?"
[Big Kahuna >> Behind Big Kahuna]
Cyana followed the stranger out the back door, then looked around quizzically.
"Hey, did any of you see a nondescript presence bolt out this door?" Cyana asked in a friendly voice to Samuel, Askeda, Ian, and Teri, "and if so, do you know where it(?) went?"
Cyana's appearance is that of a translucent human female, a near-solid greenish-blue color approximately the same as the clear ocean water near the beach - she looks a lot like animated water. If one has extraordinary senses, one might be able to see that she's a patterned-energy lifeform, something like a living hologram or living light.
edited 13th Oct '13 5:32:20 PM by Sonzai
Danger: Intense gravimetric distortions nearby. Please reverse the polarity on your deflectors now.
[Town Center]
"She's saying to leave her alone because deer are heavy and she wants to get it off her back," Samuel observed to Aya. He also noted the telepathic scanning, and after a moment decided he might as well give it both barrels. Instead of letting Kayuga read his mind, he summoned a memory and threw it at her probe; Iorgu and his repeatedly running someone's chest through while they refused to fall, complete with the actually not very much blood, the rush of wind because both of them had been flying, adrenaline running through his system. And the closet thing to actual emotion being a muted annoyance that his opponent, after having been stabbed through the chest three times, kept fighting.
Be mindful of your curiosity, he sent telepathically a moment later, as there are things you may not wish to learn in people's minds, and people you may not wish to provoke. The tone of his telepathy was not truly unkind, but clearly a rebuke.
edited 11th Oct '13 11:14:31 PM by Night
Nous restons ici.