Persona: Eternal Sin (Persona Sandbox RP)

Truth. There have been many things said about truth. 'Truth is universal.' 'Truth is subjective.' 'Truth is constant. All of these and none of these are true. Facts are immutable, but truth is in the eye of the beholder.

In the city of Josep and the year 2012, truth is constantly in flux. No-one's sure what started it, but over the last several months, rumors and superstitions have become reality. Monsters under the bed, cracks that break your mother's back, social misfits shaped and molded into whatever their peers fancy. Even cults and gangsters aren't out of the question. What may start as harmless hearsay can soon become a dangerous reality, especially for those engulfed in careless slander.

But for everyone caught up in the latest stories and gossip, there is someone who refuses to believe it. Those who struggle against such falsehoods and come out with their self intact can obtain a a Persona. A representation of their subconscious will, these powerful beings and the masks they harbor allow them to stand tall in the sea of conscious. With this power, they will be able to determine their own truth. Only then can they save their city from self-destruction.

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Hey everyone! As the header says, this is a Persona sandbox RP. It takes inspiration from some of the early games, but is very much its own thing. For those who have never heard of Persona, they're physical manifestations of various aspects of the self. Be it the self imbued with divine love or the self capable of demonic cruelty, people live by wearing different masks. If someone accepts this truth, they can summon their Persona and perform supernatural feats. Only then can they pierce the veil of falsehoods engulfing the city and save it from destruction.

In the Persona verse, the supernatural and metaphysical are very real things and manifest in different ways. In the city of Josep, both take the form of rumours. They start small enough. Perhaps everyone says the class jock wets the bed. Maybe the social misfit is a crazy stalker. Some even say the school bully is a gangster. But the more rumors spread, the more they escalate. And the greater chance they have of becoming true.

Rumours are this RP's bread and butter. Anything can come true no matter how crazy it seems. If enough people say the principal's a ghoul or the school is haunted, then it will come true. Monsters and cryptids start appearing in droves, superstitions are common fact and even the craziest conspiracies and theories can become reality. Anything you think of can become true as long as enough people believe it. Conversely, quashing rumours works the same way. If enough people think it's false, then it's no longer true. Anyone can use the system to their advantage, but it's just as easy to get caught up in it.

Whether your character already has a Persona or gets one at the start of the RP is up to you, but most of you got them a certain way. In Josep, Personas are achieved through overcoming rumors and gossip. The more someone believes a rumor about themselves, the easier it is for it to overtake them. Those who overcome those rumors can summon a Persona, but even if the rumour isn't true, there's probably truth in it.

CHARACTER CREATION SHEET

• Name:
• Age: Most Persona games focus on teenagers, but a few let you play as adults. Your character can be old as you want, but the older they are, the more the nature of their Persona starts to shift. Younger Persona users are all about the future and figuring out who they want to be, older ones are more concerned with the past, but masks and other selves are constant.
• Appearance:
• Personality:
• Persona: Most Persona games have a theme. Most Personas in 4 were based on Japanese Gods, but the Fifth game was about legendary thieves. Here the focus is rumors or tall tales. Cryptids, folklore, things wrapped in mystery or that shouldn't be true. It's not a hard rule, but it should be based on figures from myth and legend. Whether you get your Persona at the start of the RP or before it begins is up to you.
• Persona Abilities: Most Persona can use magic, but they also increase your stats. Strength, Endurance, Intelligence, Agility or Magic are all valid stats and can increase your performance, but most Persona lean towards one or two. (For balance purposes, this is a hard rule.) You can check the Persona/Megaten wiki for specific magic or skills, but you don't need to worry about it too much.
• Equipment: Certain stores sell weapon or equipment to defend yourselves. Most shops won't have them at the start, but if you spread enough rumors, that can change. A clothing or antiques store can easily become an armoury if enough people believe it. If you want a specific piece of equipment, you can get those too, but it takes more work.
• Background:
• Etc: Anything you can think of that doesn't fit into the other categories.

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Let me know if there are any questions about the RP you have and I'll do my best to answer them. Here's the Sign-in sheet:

CHARACTER LIST:

Edited by kkhohoho on May 15th 2023 at 11:33:38 AM

• Name: Zelda Gatsby
• Age: Chronically a couple months old but is physically and mentally in her twenties.
• Appearance:
  • Face Claim◊; She has blonde hair, grayish blue eyes, a fair, rosy complexion and is around 5'6" feet tall.
  • She's usually found wearing this specific,◊ stylish 1920s suit◊.
• Personality:
  • Zelda is a charming, charismatic individual with an alluring smile. She's eloquent and often quite gaudy. She often goes on shopping sprees, buying costly and extravagant items to show off her wealth. She's basically Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense.
  • She's also wild, out-going and dramatic, frequently causing chaos and putting on a show. Zelda loves the attention she gets from her antics. As a result, she enjoys throwing crazy parties at her mansion and is highly extroverted.
  • While Zelda is willing to do shady, often illegal things to achieve her goals, she's quite amicable and good-natured. She's willing to help out others whether they requested it or not and doesn't mind giving money away. She's optimistic to an almost naive degree, especially towards her dreams which she has high hopes for. She specifically longs for Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby and wants to see her.
  • It's somewhat easy to push Zelda mentally and when that occurs, she loses control of her emotions and becomes very anxious. In that state, she's neurotic and is panicky, making her easily able to make impulsive decisions that hurt everyone involved and have freakouts. It usually takes a while for her to calm down and recover from that state.
• Persona: Trimalchio, a former slave turned wealthy wine merchant originating from the 1st-century CE Roman Satyricon who threw lavish parties, obsessed with death to the point he has a clock telling him how long he has left to life, pretends to be a victorious general, and is overall very egotistical. As Zelda's Persona, he manifests as a satyr-like figure that towers over his user, has a giant clock poking out of his chest, has a cooked pig carcass over his shoulder and wields two golden wine gauntlets. Zelda already awakened her Persona prior to the events of the RP.
• Persona Abilities:
  • Curse Magic: Trimalchio is able to inflict curses on enemies that damage and weaken them over time, thus being able to do skills like Eiha (Light Curse damage to 1 enemy) and Maeiha (Light Curse damage to nearby enemies).
  • Mental Ailment Magic: He can use spells that mentally hinder enemies such as Tenetarafoo (inflicting confusion in nearby enemies) and Evil Touch (inciting fear in a nearby enemy).
• Equipment:
  • Rolls-Royce: A bright yellow car straight out of 1922. Zelda's main mode of transportation.
  • Abundant Wealth: Zelda is quite wealthy but when not throwing parties or going on expensive shopping sprees, she puts herself on a budget so she doesn't spend it all in one go.
  • Browning Model 1922: A semi-automatic pistol that is her main weapon.
• Background:
  • The Great Gatsby was the third novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in 1925. It tells the story of the titular Jay Gatsby, an enigmatic millionaire who made his money from bootlegging and desires the Old Money Daisy Buchanan who was a past lover that he never let go of, and his eventual downfall. While receiving favorable reviews, it was a financial failure at the time of its publication. However, the novel received a surge of popularity during World War II when American soldiers fighting overseas received copies of the book and The Great Gatsby soon became an iconic classic and a contender for the Great American Novel.
  • Yet, there is a particular rumor about the book; that F. Scott Fitzgerald didn't write it and it was written by his wife, Zelda, instead. While it was true that Scott had occasionally taken Zelda's writings as early as his first novel, This Side of Paradise, many scholars heavily doubt the claim. Nonetheless, a group of literary high school nerds in Josep unironically believed the rumor and spent a good amount of their time trying to prove that Zelda wrote the Great Gatsby. Because of their insistence, the rumor was able to spread a good amount and thus a living being manifested from the rumors; a woman who's the composite form of Zelda Fitzgerald and Jay Gatsby – Zelda Gatsby.
  • Zelda Gatsby spent the first month of her existence exclusively partying. She was wealthy upon her "birth", bought a mansion and her Rolls-Royce and threw gaudy parties every single day. She loved the thrills and excitement and didn't care about anything else; that is until cryptids born from rumors crashed one of her parties and attacked the attendees. Zelda helped other people escape and even fought off some of them but she got quite injured in the process. After the attack, Zelda wanted to figure out where these cryptids came from and did some research.
  • There, she learned more about the rumors and how they came alive and possess the potential to cause great harm. Along the way, she discovered that she was a living rumor this whole time. She had developed sentience over the span of her currently short life and was unaware of it nor her status as a rumor. She was surprised but took it in stride, embracing her identity as "The rumor about Zelda Fitzgerald being the Great Gatsby's true author" and during another cryptid attack, was able to awaken her Persona, Trimalchio. Now, while still partying on the side, Zelda seeks out other rumors to stop them before they hurt others.
• Etc:
  • Zelda's text is cinnamon and frequently calls others "old sport". She speaks in a Southern accent.
  • She's sapphic but is only romantically interested in Daisy Buchanan.
  • If the PCs manage to stop whatever makes the rumors come alive, Zelda will cease to exist as she is a sentient rumor unless they manage to do something that would allow her to keep existing.
  • Zelda's Arcana would likely be the Moon.
  • In Zelda's bedroom at her mansion, she has a shrine dedicated to Daisy Buchanan, filled to the brim with pictures of various film portrayals of her.

Edited by Cutegirl920fire on May 15th 2023 at 6:41:09 AM

Victor of HGS S320 | "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember."

• Name: Hans Schultz
• Age: 17
• Appearance: Hans is a wavy haired young man with blond hair, blue eyes, and a powerfully muscled, athletic body, though given he dresses in roomy white polos and heavy jeans, he doesn't exactly advertise it. He has deep set eyes, and to a significant degree still looks rather intimidating. His clothes in fact seem highly controlled and chosen for him. This is largely due to his scars - his upper body, arms, and even his jawline have quite a few painful looking scars that serve as eternal reminders of a sincerely regretted past. He carries a pendant on his person that has a picture of his mother in it...and his father scratched out.
• Personality: Hans is a rather intense and socially awkward boy - he often has intensely awkward social faux pas, and even though he's left his old affiliations, the anger and impulsiveness remains as part of him. He has an intense dislike of his father, and yet due to his family situation he has to dress and to a degree publicly present himself in a way fitting with what his father wants - contributing to a simmering nature. Hans is deeply curious though about life outside the "trad" landscape, particularly girls his dad wouldn't approve of.
• Persona: Siegfried, the legendary hero of the myth of the Nibelungs. He appears as Hans' Persona as a powerful figure in armor and wielding a longsword...the decorated armor and fine features stained by a layer of dragon blood. Hans' Persona specializes in powerful physical attacks.
• Persona Abilities: Strength and Endurance
• Equipment: Hans' weapon of choice is, due to sheer familiarity, a knuckleduster.
• Background:
  • Hans has a rather difficult upbringing. His father, the chief of police, was always a rotten presence in the city, from the very start of his campaign to be Police Chief. The man started as a far, far right wing radio shock jock, and by the time he became chief of police, Jerome Schultz got it into his head to apply his politics through the office of police chief. It was through his job that he met Hans' mother, Lilah, though the two of them soured just before Hans' birth - their second child together. Lilah left few pictures behind, most of them disposed of by Hans' father.
  • Hans was raised more or less to be the shock trooper, a brutal punk of a son that would do what daddy couldn't quite openly do. By the time he was all of twelve, he'd become embroiled with a group of hard right street punks who coincidentally never really got arrested for any of their vandalism or acts of violence. Not that they spared Hans the violence either - part of his initiation was getting beaten up. Thus producing his scar at his jawline.
  • They would eventually attempt to intimidate a new teacher at the school who went against what Jerome wanted taught - and when the teacher (a former army man) turned the tables on them, the punks all ran off and left Hans to take the brunt of the retaliation. The teacher ultimately gave young Hans the harsh lesson he needed - that hate and racism were poor unifying factors, and he'd only keep getting used, hurt, and injured the more he went along with them.
  • Hans drifted away from the gang, and took up sports and athletics, as well as trying his best in what ways he can to be socially conscious. The friction at the Schultz House has been going up due to his father detecting the idea that Hans is leaving "the movement".
• Etc:
  • He's not very good at it, but Hans likes trying to dance. Particularly at the school dances.
  • Owing to his father's draconian control of what gets shown or talked about, he's quite oblivious about several things most other people know about.

Edited by NickTheSwing on May 14th 2023 at 10:59:38 AM

Name: Marlo Laesus

Age: 26

Appearance: A haggard looking man, quite Older Than He Looks, looking around his early 40s, with his face looking worn, eyebags under his eyes, and a sickly frame. He usually wears a striped suit and a bowler hat, both gray, and holds a cane.

There's usually good in people. If you don't have it...◊

Personality: Marlo is a world-weary man, who, while kind, doesn't feel like giving it his all unless his life or someone else's (non-enemy, of course) is on the line. He's quite reserved, but usually spends his time trying satisfying things like cooking for himself or feeding ducks. Basically, he's a sad and lonely rich (well, used to be) person.

Persona: The Greek Witch Medea. Of the Lovers Arcana, Medea takes the form of an uncannily beautiful, literally porcelain woman covered by a dark purple cloak with gold trim. She holds a jagged dagger in her right hand and two cracked baby dolls by their hair in her left.

Persona Abilities: Medea leans towards Psychic attacks as a witch, while leaning towards some buffs and debuffs later on (As her role in the story revolves around helping and hurting others through subterfuge). She specializes in Magic and Agility, and falls short in Strength and Endurance. She resists Psychic and is weak to Wind.

Equipment: Aside from the remains of his money, Marlo still keeps some little tricks, such as his trick weapon. A cane with a hidden blade at the end, but the handle can be pulled out to use a serrated whip.

Background: A love story for the ages. Marlo, a Spoiled Brat, fell in love with another, a rich girl, Jennifer Mendax. They were caught up in a whirlwind romance, and both loved each other deeply. At least, until one day when Marlo found himself in bed with a peasant girl who he did not know. Of course most people would immediately assume he got drunk and cheated, but Marlo does not drink, as he was not in favor of In Vino Veritas. However, his wife screamed and made a scene, and divorced him after a lengthy trial, in which witnesses who made false statements took the stand, and Jennifer took almost everything from Marlo, including the love and trust of his family. Now he lies in solitude within his mansion, with nobody but his butler to serve his depressed life. With the spread of rumors that become true, his reputation became worse, as a cheater, someone who disgraced his family, and a petty man. Some people even say he killed his unborn children with Jennifer. Now everybody who has at least heard of him has at least a modicum of disgust for him, and usually avoids him.

Etc: Marlo used to play violin and sing, but stopped after the incident. Actually a lot of hobbies he stopped. He also had an affinity for roleplaying, and would entertain close friends with stories.

Edited by Jules-Firenze on May 25th 2023 at 2:33:00 AM

You piss off the Venom T-Rex. Roll initiative.

• Name: Susan "Strun" Leones
• Age: 21
• Appearance: Susan is a bright and beautiful Italian-American woman who is almost too good to be true: a faint tan, platinum blonde (almost naturally white) hair and amber eyes. Her usual fashion sense is on the more affluent side of casual, well-tailored jeans and button-up blouses along with brand-name (though not particularly 'in trend') sneakers.
• Personality: Susan is kind of heart and yeah she has a little bit of an ego but she's more than happy to let others prance about trying to prove superiority while she lazes back with something to snack on, comfortable in the feeling that they are not her betters. She puts out the archetype of a ditzy rich girl out into the world but sometimes she lets slip surprising wits or a threat hidden in a joke. However, the current situation of rumors coming true and especially the awakening of assorted members of the community to extraordinary power has sparked something in her; she has plans, massive plans about how to utilize this kind of consensus-based reality manipulation for the betterment of her fellow man but foremost among them is to spread the rumor that she is straight up a dragon like out of fantasy stories. She has, quite clearly, not been successful in the slightest and it's fraying her patience.
• Persona: Lindworm, a wingless draconic entity from European folklore. Susan's manifestation seems to draw specifically from the legend of Prince Lindworm, however due to a unique interpretation of the myth (that Susan is very enthusiastic to explain) the resulting Persona claims to be feminine.
• Persona Abilities: Lindworm prioritizes Strength and Magic, providing more raw damage to its Physical and Electric skills while sacrificing defensive ability.
• Equipment: Vintorez, one of father's men, has been teaching Susan how to knife fight using prop daggers. One day she hopes to beat him in a fair (though still non-lethal) match.
• Background:
  • Rumor has it that Mr Leones, the middle-aged Italian-American man who lives in a villa on the outskirts of the city and who uses his extraordinary wealth to host parties for the influential, is in fact the kingpin of Josep's organized crime scene. They say he's a mafia don, the local patriarch of that widespread family of crime that held roots in Sicily. The thing is, even without the miasma of fulfillment that has fallen onto the city, that rumor is entirely true.
  • Susan Leones is thus what could be termed a 'mafia princess', a child spoiled rotten because of the joy and respite from the stress of leadership she provides. She never knew her mother, one rumor too small to bear influence on the world suggests Don Leones had her murdered but there's no proof and Susan herself knows how much her father pines for a beloved wife lost in childbirth. For much of her life Susan has lived in the villa mostly unawares of her father's criminal deeds, though as she grew older and was allowed to sit in on parties or talk with some of her father's loyal men she began to realize the truth. She's conflicted about it, at once both repulsed by the mere idea of being so close to crime and also at the same time endlessly seeking rationalizations to soften that disgust.
  • And then rumors started coming true and Susan realized that she could perhaps softly and gently extract herself and her father from the world of organized crime by quashing the rumors, generating new ones to succinctly explain her family's wealth and power and perhaps to fulfill a dream that for so long was silly impossibility. If she could just convince enough people that she and her father were dragons...
  • It wasn't working. She couldn't overcome the momentum of the existing rumor alone and her own attempt to spark new ones couldn't stick; the people were willing to accept so many life-altering rumors without batting an eye, but a secret dragon in their midst was just a step too far and would require the burden of proof. Which is when she found something that just might work: A ritual, attested to only in urban legends, to awaken one's true self and the power hidden within. A few adjustments to the chant to fit her beliefs and changes to the method to allow her to do it alone and she undertook the childish ritual, awakening her Persona.
• Etc:
  • She might not look or act like it around others, but Strun is kind of a massive nerd. She reads books, she plays video games and generally if someone actually sat down and listened to all her attempts at explaining the lore of dragons she is trying to rumor into existence all of the brazenly stolen pieces of worldbuilding are easy to pick out.

It's clearly a case of backroom political albumizing.

Name: william

Age:35

Appearance: a ragged man, younger then he looks, white hair with red streaks, a beard, wears a red trenchcoat with a black top and navy ripped trousers.

Personality: sleep deprived, feels guilty for a lot of things. tired, feels great remorse, wishes to return to how his life was when he was younger. nicotine addicted.

Persona:nessie, the loch ness monster.

Persona Abilities: ice and nuclear magic.

Equipment: a small pen knife, a walking cane which has a sword inside due to rumours about him carrying a sword at all times.

Background: lost the love of his life and his family in a war and he blames himself. he was a very high ranking military officer before retiring when he lost everything.

you should trust and come with me, after all, everyone who does that dies in the same room as me.

I appreciate the effort, but as things stand, your sheet is pretty barebones. There's potential, but it needs more detail. If you want, you can use the other sheets in this thread as an example.

Everyone else is accepted.