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(Suggested OST: Two Steps From ###### – Strength of a Thousand Men) *** Radamir! Radamir the Blessed! King of the Wild Hunt! Your subjects call to you in the dark of night! Come to the world, and deliver it from evil! Wipe this evil scourge from our home realm! We ride, on our spectral mounts as the wind howls by! We ride, bearing the swords of destiny! We seek vengeance, we seek justice! We seek to unleash our wrath on the living world, to remind them that the dead live again! We seek glory, to remain immortal in songs of fear and terror! We seek freedom, we seek deliverance, we seek to die, this time for real! *** Our universe is in ruins. We have burnt it, burnt it to the ground with our own hubris and foolishness, caused chaos and war, destruction and wrath. Our cities have been razed to the ground, our lands turned to dust, our dreams lost in the wind and the darkness. The last remains of civilization remain locked in an eternal struggle with this dark fate. Our universe is dead. All is dead. We are dead. The darkness has engulfed our lands, the lands we died to protect. We died courageous: we met our death smiling and brave, with our king at our head, as the Makuta slit our throats and pushed our bodies off the cliffs of Destral. But even after death... We are alive, barely. A small pocket of Matoran, Toa and Skakdi refugees fled to the abandoned remains of the Makuta fortress of Destral. We came here, thinking this would be a suitable location to withstand the storms of fate. We tried many places before: the Southern Continent, from whence the rabid bandit gangs that would kill and and devour any living thing that could still be eaten chased us, and Daxia, where the swamp devoured the earth, and even looked on the ruins of once-glorious Artakha before coming dangerously close to being devoured by Crystal Serpents now with no master to control them. We dared not go to the southern islands, of whom now only a few atolls remained as the protodermis ocean devoured them... we dared not go north, where only chaos reigned. At Destral, we foolishly thought we found refuge... Even after death, our thirst for vengeance is strong. Once, our king Radamir the Blessed, the greatest Toa to walk this earth, led us to Destral to challenge the rule of the Makuta. Radamir took us across the sea to the seat of that savage race and laid siege to the beaches of this god-forsaken island. We burnt their watchtowers and fought them for justice and honor, freedom and liberty. The Brotherhood of Makuta's war upon the rest of the world was a devastating catastrophe. It left civilization in ruins and set loose such evil that it destroyed their war machine just as much as it destroyed the rest of the world, forcing them back into Destral as the world collapsed in a series of both natural and unnatural catastrophes. We had no idea what forced them out, caused their deaths, but we felt glad once we reached these shores, convinced that we were finally safe. We fought in the name of vengeance for the ones we loved. The Toa Code no longer mattered: we killed in the name of our king and in the name of those we loved. But in the end... we lost. We fought bravely: we fought all the way up to the highest towers, took down many famous Makuta: Krika, Chirox, Gorast, Antroz all died by our blades. However, ultimately it did not matter. Radamir was wounded in the assault on Mutran's quarters, and the Makuta took this opportunity to counterattack and push us back to the gates. Our king fell into the hands of the enemy. Our men, hard as they tried not to be, were demoralized. We had nowhere to run besides away, and that was something we would not do. We hopelessly observed as the Brotherhood's counterattacks and sallies made our siege pointless. The Makuta captured those few of us who remained alive and executed us, pushing us off their battlements into the sea of protodermis, Radamir leading us for what we thought was the last time. When the first deaths came, when the alarms in our camp went off at night, we realized something was wrong. But we live, even after death. We have sought the death of all the malicious and vile Makuta who still lived after our attack, and we have had it. But we still seek our vengeance and our freedom. Darkness rules this world, and we will not rest until we have slipped free of its grasp and broken free into eternity. We do not know why these specters hound us. But we are sick and tired of running. We will not run. We will not hide. We will have justice! We will not surrender and let death blindly take us. We will live! We are the Wild Hunt! Undying The Plot The elders say that it was the failure of the Toa Nuva to raise Mata Nui from his slumber that doomed the universe we dwell in. The Brotherhood of Makuta, especially its deputy leader Icarax, proved more clever than ever their own overlord Teridax. As the Toa rushed to the swamps of Karda Nui to awaken the Great Spirit, the Makuta opted for a completely unorthodox approach - the destruction of the dome of Karda Nui entirely by making the dome's ceiling collapse upon them, trapping the Toa within, and, judging by their failure to awaken Mata Nui, also killing them. It proved to matter little within a few weeks, however, as Icarax, at the head of a massive army - Teridax himself was nowhere to be found - assaulted the free peoples of the Matoran Universe. The war lasted a century, with both sides - the Order of Mata Nui, and its allies, and the Brotherhood and their allies - failing to gain any significant victory over the other. The weapons that both sides used grew more and more destructive and caused more and more collateral damage, to society, to civilization, to the world. On the hundred and sixteenth year of this horrible war, Metru Nui lied half-sunken into the Silver Sea, the Southern Continent was a terrifying, lifeless wasteland of ash and smoke to rival even Karzahni, and even the great city of Artahka was razed and transformed into ruin. The Makuta suffered similar losses. Gradually, they simply could not feed their armies trapped in distant realms - for the realms were horrific and desolate - and, leaving them there, they retreated to their fortress in Destral, too weak for any further conquest - not to mention, there no longer was anything left to conquer. Thousands upon thousands of refugees - hopeless, homeless individuals - wandered the lands, seeking some sort of refuge. This was a moribund existence on a dying world - there were few resources to feed them, and only a few Toa still left to guide them. Slowly, the universe settled into anarchy. A hundred years later, three shiploads of refugees landed on an island. An island crowned with a once mighty, now abandoned and derelict, fortress. A sole island, rounded by the vast protodermis ocean. It didn't take long for the refugees to discover that this was the island of Destral, once the home of the Makuta, and the place they had retreated to after their failed conquests. It didn't take long for the refugees to discover the source of the Makuta's demise, either. It was not old age that finally claimed them, no. It was their own pride, personified, that finally defeated them. It was the Wild Hunt - a host of ghostly Kikanalo-riding warriors, once followers of a mighty king named Radamir who once led them here to Destral to challenge the might of the Makuta, to no avail. Radamir and his kin, however, were not easily defeated, as the Makuta would discover - they returned to life as ghosts, as spectral riders haunting the ruins of Destral. These were not your ordinary visions of the dead; these were actual material creatures, actual people that could, apparently, talk with each other, think, make plans, and most importantly, they could kill you. The refugees' contact with the Wild Hunt, who, despite the Makuta's deaths, did not seem willing to return to rest, went rather painfully. The Wild Hunt slew a number of refugees and torched their camp; it was only because then a curious little Skakdi, named Turag, discovered that the Wild Hunt feared the most - fire (as it was rather ignorant of them to come and torch the place) that the refugees even survived. Before long, they found themselves in a lose-lose situation. They could not flee from Destral: having camped within the fortress, they found making their way back to the old dock nigh impossible with the Wild Hunt rampaging 'round the island, and their old boats were now destroyed as well. Fighting the Wild Hunt proved difficult, even though the specters had a paralyzing fear of fire. For every time a specter was slain, they'd return again 24 hours later, upon a cliff that the Wild Hunt named the Sorrowcliff, and again they'd begin their relentless assault, again, again, and again. For the Hunt believed these refugees were merely servants of evil – for that was the only explanation they had for why they had not been put to rest even after their vengeance – and that vengeance they sought. There remained no way out for the refugees except to fight. And fight they did. TL;DR Long story short, this RPG is set on Destral, where a group of spectral riders called the Wild Hunt are waging an endless, unstoppable war against the living, in this particular case, a group of refugees fleeing a now desolate Matoran Universe. Will you break free of this haunted island, and lead the refugees away from this terrible place? Will you somehow smash the Wild Hunt's curse upon you? Or will you, as a Huntsman, claim your vengeance upon the living world and destroy it, in hopes of your redemption? It's up to you. Factions The Refugees. The Refugees are exactly that – a ragtag bunch of refugees. They can be of pretty much any origin you can think of (as long as they‘re not members of an outlawed race) and can be as old, pretty, powerful or wise as is reasonable according to the basic rules of the game. How your character joined the particular group of refugees that was heading to Destral is pretty much up to you – these people formed as packs of wandering Matoran, Skakdi, Vortixx, Toa, et caetera, grew and grew until they numbered a few hundred people wandering the Southern and Northern Continents before they came to this island. A few might even have arrived on their own. There are two things they all have in common: they are not undead, and they are enemies of the Wild Hunt (although that’s almost completely unrelated to their own choices). Most of them are settled in the Refugee Camp in the northeast of the island, which functions somewhat like an anarchist commune slash direct democracy – there are no actual leaders mainly due to the refugees’ differences and inability to decide on any, and decisions are made by camp-wide referendum. The refugees do appoint several notable offices – veterans of various wars are generally posted as leaders of military defence groups. When they need food or supplies, the refugees either loot the Destral Fortress or fish – with obscenely long fishing lines – off the cliffs of Destral. Sometimes, the more adventurous among them wander into the lower levels of the fortress dungeons and slay the scores of Rahi that roam them. The Wild Hunt. The Wild Hunt are a vast army of spectral riders – usually riding Kikanalo, that are just as spectral – of various species. Their one major unifying trait is that they are all former members of King Radamir’s army that he led to a hopeless, yet fierce assault upon the Makuta of Destral. Most of the Wild Huntsmen are Toa, but that’s not a rule. The Hunt is typically fiercely loyal to their king – even in this state of undeath, and usually – after a century of such a state – fiercely devoted to the goal of breaking this curse upon them, whatever its source. Radamir, and most of the Hunt, supposes that the curse comes from them having failed to fulfill their destinies – which they see as cleansing Destral, if not the world, of all evil. The Wild Hunt not only launches assaults on the refugees. Due to the refugees’ staunch resistance despite the rather unhealthy way the Hunt hugely outnumbers them, they have moved on from cannon-foddering the battlefield (and returning to life afterward), which has proven ineffective against strategic weapons such as barricades, spike and lava pits, and generally fire, to strategic attacks at key choke points and attempts to force through the refugees’ defensive lines. As a result, they have been forced to occasionally pull back, gather their strength, wait for their fallen fighters to be reborn, and wait for the refugees to accidentally make an opening. For this result, they have established the closest thing they have to a base – they gather at a field before Sorrowcliff, where they have established, around a flat stone named the Altar of the Fallen, a gathering point for the Hunt before they march to war. A notable feature of the Hunt is their appearance. They all look like normal people, except for one distinguishing feature: their eyes are filled with nothing but a cold blue flame. From one rim to the other, a Huntsman's eyes are bright blue. Their blood is also peculiar: instead of normal red, it is a ghastly, almost transparent blue liquid that is so unthick (compared to actual normal blood) that it seeps through your fingers. The Wild Hunt (gameplay specifics) Players may find the gameplay specifics of the Huntsmen rather unusual. First of all, communication between the Hunt and the refugees via traditional methods – namely conversation – is entirely frozen. Null. Void. It doesn‘t exist. Anything a Huntsman says will sound, apparently depending on the Huntsman‘s personality, as either a loud screech, a quiet hiss, or some other unintelligible sound to any common refugee. Moreover, no Huntsman can die – their unachieved destiny effectively bars their door to the afterlife, and unless said destiny – which Radamir, King of the Hunt, assumes is the wiping of all evil from the island – is achieved, the Wild Hunt will not have their rest. The specters can be slain – to provide brief respite for the refugees. However, this merely means that they will be reborn in a location called Sorrowcliff (further info in the Locations section) – from whereupon they will again begin their quest for vengeance. Thirdly, the Wild Hunt fears fire. Huntsmen can suppress this fear – this is less a rule than a guideline. Think of it this way: fire is something the Hunt wants to avoid, and the last thing it will do is intentionally come into contact with it – but that does not in any way mean that you should have your Huntsman immediately die upon such contact. It’s more a pathological fear than an actual susceptibility. (We will be expecting good RPing from you people. Don’t have your Huntsman as a tough macho specter guy who ain’t fearin’ no fire – I do not approve of hipstering, except when it’s my fellow GMs doing the hipstering.) Fourthly – Huntsmen do not feel pain (broken hearts and shattered dreams don’t count) and therefore attacks that are based on causing them pain rather than damage are pretty much doomed to fail. Stunning them is also impossible. They can’t go unconscious, either. Kill them or they’ll kill you. (And even if you DO kill them, there’s a distinct possibility they will kill you either way.) Last of all, the Wild Hunt cannot use their elemental powers. Elemental powers appear to have been inextricably linked with the biologies of their original bodies, rendering them impossible to use in the afterlife. UPDATE: Going to elaborate on a couple of things I forgot, neglected, or didn't think of but was later reminded of. Huntsmen are killed rather like normal people. They bleed, and if they bleed too much, they will die. If you pierce them through the heart, they die. Once they die, they vanish into thin air. The next day (in-game) goes with your character being just sort of out of the game, and then he reappears once 24 in-game hours (not "real life" 24 hours) pass. APPENDIX TO THE UPDATE: If you people find it difficult to play with having to go twenty-four in-game hours with your character wandering the paths of nonexistence, I'll probably make it less. We'll see how stuff works out. NPCs There are none. Yes. You heard that right.There are no NPCs. Well, nominally. Just so we're clear: I mean important, staff-controlled characters, not NPCs in general. Staff characters will be posted in the profile topic, and will be essentially treated as ordinary characters – at least on paper. They will only be played by their players and will be only as strong as any other characters. There is one exception – Radamir, the King of the Wild Hunt, who I will play, is pretty ###### invincible for any starting character, but that’s just so I have a potent tool to keep rulebreakers in line. Not to mention, it gives something for you people to strive for. Play well, play cleverly, and you might just become more powerful than him. If I feel like it. Locations Destral Fortress The old fortress on Destral has effectively become a frontline for the Hunt and the refugees. Because the only way from the southern to the northeastern courtyards (where the refugee camp lies) is via the fortress’ hallways, the refugees have mostly adopted tactics of barricading shorter hallways, littering longer ones with traps, and firing endlessly on the enemy as they made their way through, rather like a tower defense game. Throne Room The Throne Room, the heart of Destral, is a place none save maybe the King of the Hunt dare tread. First of all because it now lies pretty much empty, thus rendering it useless for scavengers – and then secondly because both the refugees and the Hunt share a myth that the darkness of Destral’s past - that they both understand as more an abstract, theoretical concept than a physical threat, hence why people who go in and out are not under any actual threat – still lies within. It’s a cold place – a long hall with just one entrance, where at one end lies an old throne – now slashed in two by a tact sword movement usually attributed to Radamir the Blessed. Nothing else remains in the Throne Room – the tables have been carried away to use for barricades by the refugees, and the masks that once hanged on the walls were taken and reused. Dungeons The ancient dungeons of the Makuta are another mostly avoided location, except for more major and larger ones that are often also used as a battlefield. Both the Hunt and the refugees have not as of yet properly examined the deepest levels of the dungeons, and monsters beyond imagination are said to lurk within. Well, that, or they’re just called by their usual name that is rather within imagination: Rahkshi. Their Kraata now lacking even a set of masters, they’ve retreated far from daylight, deep into the bowels of Destral. Similar fates have occurred to other Rahi that once served the Makuta. The higher levels, because they were used as repositories for food and supplies, are often looted by the refugees for useful tools and things. Laboratory And then there’s Mutran’s old laboratory. It’s also not particularly used to people visiting – but that isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t. Everyone who has until now tried to access the laboratory has failed. The door is equipped with a voice recognition system and the need to enter a password of all things – and a lock that seems rather uninviting to any attempts to pick it. To elaborate, around said lock is a… decoration that happens to be shaped in the likeness of a takea shark’s jaws, and there’ve been rumors that some days they seem to just slightly move when foreign fingers are placed just a bit too close. Pity, too, because anything so protected must be priceless. Even more importantly, potentially useful. Courtyards Refugee Camp The Refugee Camp is in the northeast of the island, a huge makeshift village where most refugees opt to live, except in cases of misanthropy so extreme they’re willing to risk their lives to stay alone. Most of the makeshift huts they’ve set up are wooden lean-tos built upon foundations of buildings that were once used as barracks to house the thousands of servants the Brotherhood of Makuta had back then. Some more clever refugees have built more acceptable accommodations – accommodations they often share with other refugees, to save space. Sorrowcliff Sorrowcliff has, effectively, become the very pinnacle of the Wild Hunt’s unfortunate pseudo-existence. It is a cliff before the sea, where the followers of Radamir were once led for their execution – and it has become the place where the specters return to upon their deaths. Before Sorrowcliff lies the large, flat, meteoric stone named the Altar of the Dead, used as a marking point for where the Hunt gathers before they ride out to war. Sorrowcliff is the Hunt’s sorrow, the Hunt’s home, and the Hunt’s destiny. Profile Form Profiles ought to be posted in the Discussion Topic for approval, whereupon they can be moved to the Profile Topic. Any co-GM (Krayzikk or Tyler) or the head GM (Dovydas) can approve the profiles, but the head GM reserves a right to scream, “WAIT JUST A SEC” if his co-GMs approve a profile but he sees a problem. The head GM also reserves a promise to do this as rarely as you see a donkey passing through Manhattan. Below is the profile form. If you deem it necessary, you may add extra points at your leisure. Rules (designed by Krayzikk) 1. A. First of all, no gmodding of any kind. This includes but is not limited to autohitting, insta dodges, and metagaming. The first two should be clear, but in case they are not, I will explain. You cannot automatically hit a PC opponent. Nor can you dodge any attack of their's that you should not be able to. Metagaming is when your characters know something they should not, simply because you, the player, knows it. NOTE: Just because Wild Huntsmen can't die, doesn't mean that you can autohit them. B. I'm adding a subsection of this to directly address anyone thinking of playing as one of the Wild Hunt. You have some advantages, a fair amount of them. But to use one as an example, immunity to pain has disadvantages as well. You can't feel when you're hurt, can't know how badly you're hurt etc. Play in accordance with these inherent disadvantages. 2.Realism. Even in a Bionicle setting, there are ways that you cannot behave. You cannot, for instance, have a Toa of Ice freeze the island and then decide to make some ice sculptures while you're at it. Nor will you take on a swarm of NPCs and win just because you're a PC. You are not superior to everyone else. In fact, you're not superior to anyone at all. All powers have limits, as do your characters. Be wary of breaking them. 3. Use “IC” and “OOC”. IC stands for “In-Character:, and OOC stands for “Out-of-Character”. For example:IC:The Ko-Toa hurled a globe of ice at his pursuers, hoping to trip them up and make his escape.OOC: Anyone want to give him a hand? 4. OOC discussions should be taken to the discussion topic, or PM. No more than one OOC only post will be permitted in a row. 5. Respect the staff (Dovydas, Grochi, Krayzikk, KNI). I shouldn't have to make this clear, but this rule is broken an unfortunate number of times. The staff know what they're doing, and their job is to keep an eye on the game. If you feel one is being unfair, try talking to them. If you still feel they are, contact one of the other staff members or the Head GM. We'll sort it out. 6. We would rather not use it, but we have a punishment system in place. First offense is just a warning, and a slap on the wrist. Don't do it again. The second one will be accompanied by another warning, and a significant detriment to your characters occurring in-game. Depending on the severity of your actions, this could be either injury or death. The third offense will, depending on the severity of your offense, be either a temp or permanent ban. 7. Have fun. Staff Head GM - Eduard Bernstein (Dovydas)Co-GMs – The Snark Knight (Krayzikk), Bane of No Isles (KNI), Ilyusha Brokvey (Grochi) Thank You From an early age I’ve been taught that there are two things most important in life. One is lasagna. The second is saying “thank you”, when a thank you is necessary. This is one of those times. First, let me thank Krayzikk and Tyler for helping me run this thing. I’d go crazy, probably, if I tried running an RPG on my own. You two are also great friends and I appreciate your support. Second, thanks be to RAZGRIZ, Legolover-361, Kal Grochi, Kal the Guardian, KNI, Zarayna and the remaining host of people I have had the honor to roleplay and generally socialize with in my time here on BZPower. Also to all the old players of Gangs of Metru Nui, my first and classic TBRPG, which I still remember with a burning passion of mixed rage and affection – which is good, I guess, because that either means my players had a habit of inciting fierce and unadulterated rage or the thing was done very well to incite such feelings in me. Probably both. Last of all; let me thank the makers of the Witcher computer game, because god knows where I’d be without it.
