Another Shade of the World - An Urban Fantasy RP

You know, vampirism have always struck me as having >Connotaions. Far me it from me to start something, through.

Bit late to say that when one has been in the RP since the very beginning. Besides, Vampires Are Sex Gods, didn't you get the memo?

That reminder's a bit terrible. Or appropriate, From a Certain Point of View.

Uh, I don't know what you mean or what the problem would be really, there's a vampire(even if it's a different type) in already, so, um, yeah.

Admittedly, I can't think of Vlad without seeing him as Graff Hermann for some reason (I blame Taco's avatars, I think), so it's odd to consider him a Sex God, but the point does stand.

Supernatural monsters of all sorts have been used as allegories for social issues and so on since they were invented, anyway.

Well, it'll be nice for there to be another vampire for Vlad to interact with; I was actually expecting more vamps to be around, but this new character is a more modern take on the vampire like I hoped. Oh, and have a Paladin.

• Name: Ignatius Romanus
• Age: 18
• Gender: Male
• Religion: Catholic
• Race: Human
• Appearance: Ignatius is a giant white guy. Broad-shouldered, with a long, flat, narrow nose, he tries his damnedest to look non-threatening. His nose and thin eyebrows make a sort of T-shape over his eyes, which are blue. His hair is black and shaggy, pulled back into a loose ponytail. He's clean-shaven. He stands around 6 and a half feet tall, and is massively broad and muscled. Built like a superhero. Under magical detection, Ignatius glows blindingly brightly, registering as having interacted with something divine very recently.
• Personality: Ignatius takes his religion as a very large part of how he defines himself. He believes that, as a practicing Paladin, he is in the moral right at all times, and that God ordains it such that he always is. He treads a fine and very subjective line between sanctimonious and pious, trying to help those who cannot help themselves. People who willingly sin, however, people who would do wrong, completely unrepentantly, receive no pity from him. Their fate was decided by themselves.
• Bio: Ignatius grew up in a deeply religious family in the countryside of Italy. Descended from a bloodline that could trace itself back to Roland and Charlemagne's Paladins, he was raised from birth to succeed that line, to become a great hero and protect humankind from the villainy they could never know about. His parents also understood the value of normal socialization, however, and so they attempted to keep Ignatius well adjusted, letting him learn at a normal high school as well as study the way of the Paladin. A few fights with school bullies and several heavenly burns later, and he had to change schools. This continued throughout his teenage years, and as a result Ignatius became secluded in books, Quixotic and isolated in all but the most superficial relationships. The best he ever got was a nickname, Iggy. But then the day came! Every Paladin in his line was given a city to journey to, a place where God's providence would place them on an adventure, or a quest! At 18, the day after high school graduation, Iggy was sent off to Volwick city, a frontier of the supernatural masquerade, and told to get to work. His apartment and car would be paid for, but he'd have to figure out the rest. He faced this adventure with a smile on his face and hope in his heart, ready to continue a thousands-of-years old tradition and bring justice to Volwick!
• Skills:
  • Heavenly Fire: Upon touching creatures masquerading as humans, Ignatius feels a scorching burn, like touching a live stove. This energy can also be turned outward, covering his hands in scorching flames that allow him to smite evildoers. He can also transfer this fire onto any weapons he wields.
  • Hand-To-Hand Combat: Iggy is skilled in the martial art of Krav Maga, a martial art centered around disarming and counterattacking with fast and brutal precision. He is also skilled in the use of a saber, allowing him to lay dancing blows on enemies he can't touch.
  • Lay on Hands: By reciting Acts 28:8, Ignatius can lay his hands upon someone and heal them, curing disease and making it possible for normally critical injuries or permanent disfiguration to be recoverable. He can perform a variation on himself, though instead of lessening severe injuries it allows him to erase more minor injuries from his body with concentration and energy.
  • Instruction: Provided the person is well-connected to God, Iggy can teach the powers of a Paladin to someone else in limited capacity, allowing other people to develop similar Heavenly Fire and Laying on of Hands.
• Possessions and Assets: Plenty of comfortable, low-maintenance workman's clothes, good solid wearable boots, and a car. He lives in a sparse apartment on the east side of town. He also owns his Dad's old cavalry saber, and a phone. He has a part-time job as a janitor at a shelter for battered women.

Approved, Anno!

Approved as well Tomato, though I'll have to say no to the seeing the future thing mostly out of convenience... given hat I don't know what's going to happen in the RP xp

Hmmm I'm sorry but denied Taco... We kind of already have a descendant of the twelve peers and his outright divine power of an actual Paladin... seems like it may not work. His personality worries me as well.

Exactly what would be the upper cap of power for a professional monster hunter (with and without magical elements in their powerset) (under the assumption they're just a kickass human with nothing supernatural about them, per say)?

It's all about the equipment, up to a certain point. Shotguns with a fine cocktail ammunition of silver, salt, iron, non-denominational holy wine, sacred water, some talismans, and wood, with a touch of wolfsbane and garlic for you traditionalists.

Noted! It could just an informed ability, over the Onmyodo thing. XD

I won't be able to post right away, but regardless I'd like to submit a few profiles for when I can.

• Name: Renee Fontaine
• Age: 17
• Gender: Female
• Religion: Non-Practicing Christian
• Race: Human
• Appearance: Like so, but Renee prefers to wear hoodies.◊
• Personality: Renee is a meek girl even amongst her closest friends, barely able to eek out a few quiet words to those who know her. She's most "vocal" when she texts, e-mails, IMs, or etc. where her filter comes off and she speaks her mind in the most abrasive way. She can be insufferable like this, but it's mostly all bluster.
• Bio: A young woman living with her parents in Volwick taking classes in the local community college. She dreams about being a popular actress, but her introverted nature is kind of a problem. Still, she's in the campus's drama club and hopes that the four years of college will help her open up a bit.
• Skills:
  • Hiding: Her shyness is so strong she can practically remove her presence from a situation. Well, for most people anyway.
  • Writing: Due to her typical means of communication, she's got a good grasp of the English language, which she usually uses to snark and/or complain.
  • Staging and Special Effects: She works as a stage technician for the drama club so she knows the ins and outs of scene setting.
• Possessions and Assets: Nothing out of the ordinary for a college age girl. Saving up for a car.

edited 29th Nov '13 10:16:44 PM by Starbound2

• Name: Arr'kree Rekarrz'z, alias Edgar Harkins
• Age: 30
• Gender: Male
• Religion: Gaknulak, Kobold god of protection, stealth, trickery, and traps.
• Race: PoliticianKobold—using Dungeons And Dragons 3.5 edition's description.
• Appearance: Under his typical glamours, Edgar is a man standing at 4 feet tall, suffering from dwarfism. He has black hair and dresses in well-fitting casualwear and snapbacks. He always wears prescription sunglasses. He has a thin salt-and-pepper beard and hard, broad features. His voice comes out as steady, but reedy. As a Kobold, he is a wiry, twitchy specimen, scales a dull brown. His tail is a little larger than usual, and his eye ridges and muzzle are more pronounced. Without glamours, his voice sounds like a yapping dog.
• Personality: Arr'kree is a very fastidious and paranoid guy. He refuses to work with people who don't have precedent as being on the level, feeling little guilt about tossing some poor gangbanger into what is possibly a sting to make sure there aren't any cops involved in a deal. All in the name of profit and advancement, he supposes. Among other supernaturals, he's much the same, sneering and denigrating races that are less monstrous than the goblinoid and verminous lower class of Volwick's supernatural crowd, believing that they all think they're better than humans, when he believes the opposite: ain't nothing more monstrous than a human. A troll will just eat you, but a human, they're creative. He feels a sense of kinship with the humans, a race that he sees as joining the wider world of the supernatural as a whole very soon. One of the few things he's fully optimistic about, really.
• Bio: Arr'kree was born as the oldest in a litter of 5, in A warren under inner-city Volwick. He gained official US citizenship at 15, and engaged in an unusually large amount of activity among the humans. He went into the drug trade, using a combination of cunning, gas explosions that seemingly came out of nowhere that were totally not magic, and also drugs to climb his way up despite his racedwarfism. Confounded by the rest of his family's extreme shunning of human society, Arr'kree pushed himself to excel more and more in his position in the Syndicate, pushed himself to excel to the fullest by maximizing networking and efficiency in production and distribution. He's recently set up a partnership with Sylvia du Bois, aiming at having a powerful, low-profile distribution center with good insurance from the Harpy's own compulsion power easily overpowering most tweakers.
• Skills:
  • Diversified Portfolio: Arr'kree has done work as a gangbanger, a chemist, and as a dealer, though he currently deals. He possesses all the skills necessary for the trade: he can speak multiple human languages, he is a decent shot with a gun and can ruin anyone's day with a good knife, he is skilled in the preparation of various narcotics, and knows all sorts of little signals, signs, and smuggling methods to get stuff from one place to the next.
  • Kobold Physiology: As a Kobold, Arr'kree possesses multiple traits other races lack. He can see in the dark, eyes magnifying any trace of light to allow him perfect vision in equally perfect darkness, though daylight is dazzling without sunglasses. Even in a job as sedentary as his, his reflexes are naturally sharp and his senses are keen—he won't be dodging bullets, but he also won't be losing any knife fights any time soon. He also possesses inborn magical energy running through his blood, allowing him to use and learn magic from a young age.
  • Magic: As a child, Arr'kree learned the basic glamours that allow most supernatural beings to blend in with modern society unnoticed, but his big "thing" was in blowing shit up, via the art of Dragonism. Harnessing the dragonblood all Kobolds have in limited capacity, Arr'kree developed the ability to vomit forth a stream of either fire or ice, conjure batlike wings for limited flight in short, single-direction bursts, and create scales for himself by attaching metallic objects, ferrous metals, and gemstones to his body like a shell.
• Possessions and Assets: A car, adjusted for Arr'kree's proportions, a top-of-the-line smartphone, a black market MAC-10 machine pistol and a scary-ass Bowie knife, a nice house in the inner city with a bolthole in the first-floor bathroom that leads to the modest warren the rest of his family lives in, and a modern, mundane alarm on every entrance to said house. He doesn't own any labs himself, instead preferring to work at other gangs' hideouts to get his product to sell.

edited 8th Dec '13 2:55:22 PM by Taco

I'm really not sure what youean here dalt. I mean, what I thought you meant (The Same But Less) was the very next sentence, so I don't know what you mean.

My guess would be that, in generic game terms, if you have three points sunk into Power Copy and copy the Fire Blast ability of some guy with five points sunk into it, you get three points of Fire Blast. Same if the guy has ten points. You get the same power, but only to a certain limit.

Exactly, if copying an effect would mean that your guy would need to suddenly be able to use a lot more power than they have, they will mimic the effect to the best of their ability with the amount of magical power they have. Then again, given the Lady he worships, there may come a time at my discretion when Lady Luck may give you the extra power you need to mimic another power if you've been daring and lucky enough.

So, this one was to be paired up with Raineh's angel character, in case I didn't make it clear enough.

• Name: "Charlotte". She doesn't actually remember her real name.
• Age: 9
• Gender: Female
• Religion: She can't remember.
• Race: Human
• Appearance: Whee.
• Personality: Almost cripplingly shy, the only person Charlotte will speak to at any kind of length right now is Rachel and that's only because they'd been together for a while. She is easily surprised and startled, which can lead to her accidently setting off her powers, but she'd never try to hurt anyone on purpose. She's a kind and sweet girl, and she wouldn't dream of using willingly using her powers on someone. Even though she can barely remember anything from before the fire, she has still been deeply affected by it and has become deeply pyrophobic.
• Bio: "Charlotte" can't remember her past. To her, it's nothing more than a nightmarish blur of fire and destruction. However, anyone with even the smallest amount of skill in information gathering will be able to discover links between her and a house fire that occured about a month ago in the residential district of Volwick. It's easy to see that she has some link to this, although since she seems to be suffering from PTSD-related memory loss she does not know herself. Soon after losing her memory, however, she was approached by the fallen angel, Rachel, who has been charged with looking after the amnesiac little girl. Because of this, Charlotte is aware of the masquerade, although whether this is a good thing for her or not shall remain to be seen.^Spoiler!: It was an accident caused by her powers manifesting for the first time, and there was absolutely no ill will involved on her part. Her parents were genuinely loving, and she would never have done it on purpose. Speaking of her parents, I'm not sure if they're still alive or not. I guess we'll see how that works out. XD
• Skills: Charlotte possesses psychic powers, specifically pyrokinesis, the ability to create fire with a thought. However, she still has very little control over this ability, and so it only ever really seems to manifest itself when she is scared, angry or generally deeply upset. She doesn't really have much conscious control over it at the moment, either, as the first indications of her using her powers will usually be her acting in surprise and fear at things around her suddenly bursting into flame.
• Possessions and Assets: None. The only thing she currently owns are the burnt clothes she's wearing.

Ugh, I swear. I will make a character...

Eventually...

Very belated, 2 school projects plus a day trip for a meeting in NY (from DC X_X) for work left me kind of dead, but I can see your reasoning, although I don't have any other ideas a the moment. I'll post if I come up with something.

• Name: Sylvia Dubois
• Age: 122
• Gender: Female
• Religion: Non-Denominational Polytheistic
• Race: Crane Harpy
• Appearance: Oui.◊ (Under a glamor, she looks like same, but with arms.
• Personality: Sylvia is a charming and captivating young woman whose personality demands attention. She loves to be the most important person in the room, and to entertain people. In conversation, she often comes across as innocent, sweet, very cute and flirty. But the truth is that she is a selfish girl with very little empathy. She is often very calm and calculated, and not quick to anger. But when she does get mad, she will be very enraged and ruthless. She often plays the trickster, trying to see how she can squeeze a deal out of someone. At the same time, she genuinely loves to entertain and perform, especially singing and dancing.
• Bio: Sylvia is a member of the Crane sub-race of Harpies. Her family mostly lived in parts of China and Japan for hundreds of years. Her mother lived in France and used her magical singing voice to seduce a French fisherman, and quickly conceived Sylvia. She was one of three young harpies born in that conception, but she was lost and found by her father, and raised by him in France. She never knew her mother. She has spent most of her life traveling the world, favoring large cities where she has been exposed to all forms and colors of life. Two worlds in particular have fascinated her. The club scene, and organized crime. She spent quite a while building up a reputation in both areas, mostly in Europe. While she became a popular underground club singer and dancer, she was also becoming an infamous but rumored and mysterious criminal, dealing in all sorts of illegal operations ranging from the trade of drugs both magical and not, weapons, money laundering, and prostitution. She has been in Volwick for a few years now. Her name is already very well known as a performer, but only a few know of her illegal activities, but that number is sure to grow.
• Skills:
  • Harpy: Sylvia is a Harpy, and as such, as large beautiful wings instead of arms. She can fly for quite a while, using mostly swoops and diving to maintain speeds over long periods of time. She holds things using her wings as hands basically, like so.◊
  • Magical Song: She has the Harpies' ability to charm and hypnotize with her singing voice. Those who are exposed to it become calm and very weak-willed targets often obey her commands. Only works in close audible range, and a very strong will, or magical interference can sometimes render her singing ineffective.
  • Crane Harpy: Specifically as a member of the Crane Harpies of China, Sylvia has inherited a few of their magical abilities. She can perform a very captivating and sensual dance that works in a fashion similar to her Magical Song, but obviously through sight. It can also force weak-willed targets to expose truths when asked questions, and it can be used as a very powerful seduction technique. It is a belief of Sylvia's culture and race, as well as many other magical races, that if she is capture and her wings are clipped, she will be forced to give 1 wish.
  • White Crane Boxing: Sylvia is a skilled practitioner of the White Crane Fist art of fighting. It makes less use of physical strength, stressing evasion and attacks to vulnerable areas instead.
• Possessions and Assets: Sylvia currently owns the popular Volwick nightclub Fairies. It is a large, bumping dance club with smaller, classier private rooms for rent. Sylvia uses her secret base in it to run her illegal rackets. She usually employs weak-minded human men to do her bidding, and they are often quite dispensable. She usually has about a dozen or so mooks wokring on her behalf at a time. She has yet to meet someone she would consider a partner.

edited 3rd Dec '13 8:24:27 PM by Saturn

If both Arr'kree and she are accepted, would you consider a business partnership between the two of them?

... mind control seduction powers?

Importantly, though, there's kinda... absolutely nothing listed there that would let her blend into society for all of ten seconds.

What do you expect? She's a Harpy.

My thought process was that if her wings are folded around it would just look like an exotic scarf.

Or should could easily make it a persona. People would think it's a costume, like a gimmick.

EDIT: But we have glamours, so your point is moot.

Sure, only because they would make an interesting duo.

edited 2nd Dec '13 4:26:37 PM by Saturn

It's been taken for granted that, as I mentioned, most supernatural beings have glamours to blend in. In the previous incarnation of this RP Daltar made that a little bit more clear.

That's... a little much, considering vampires (usually considered the go-to fantasy powerhouses) can only dodge bullets and heal non-dismembering wounds within a relatively short timeframe. Same goes for what we've seen draugrs and other monsters do. She seems to have like, all the powers. She's a winged pied piper.

Where does it say about dodging or recovering from attacks? She's weak to strong-willed or deaf or homosexual men shooting her in the face. Typical criminal mastermind manipulator.