Bloody Nine

Likely so, yeah. Though I do kind of derp that this new map has kind of a lotta floating patches of land.

Name: NeroAge: 50Race: Human, humie, paleskin, etc etcGender: MaleClass: Nominally Mage, functionally a RoyalEquipment: Nothing but his invocation tome.Appearance: Tall, pale. Grey hair, blue eyes. Wears a black trenchcoat 1600 years before they were invented.Personality: Cold, forbidding, everything about him squeals 'stay away from me'. And that's the way he likes it. Beyond this, though, he is something of a scientist, a mad one. And not the comical Doc Brown kind, but of the more Doctors-without-(Moral)Borders kind.Alignment: NEBio: Nero was a mage ensconced away in a tower once upon a time. However, he didn't work on making a fireball or a lightning bolt, or whatever other people did. He tried something different, something new. He experimented on the living, on beasts. Any beast, any manner possible. Then obligatory lab accident. He survived, though when he woke, he woke... hungry. Vicious. Five different minds, bestial in nature, were sharing his body, demanding, clamoring to be fed. And that's why he's here. To feed, to eat. He feels that the remnants of this empire would provide a good feast for his friends, enough to satiate them.Power-Though he's nominally a mage, he has no training in the way of tossing fireballs and whatnot. He can, however, call on the beasts residing within him, five in total. He can fully extricate them from his body to act autonomously, or conjure up an aspect, like changing his hand into a wolf's claw. He can only manifest three total forms at once either way. For example, having beast A while using beast B's claw, or having both A and B out, etc. Switching between them rapidly is a tiring process, though. Aside from this, he's a vanilla mortal. Hence why he's functionally Royal. The beasts can be harmed, and have to incubate inside Nero to heal. The beasts are:Drake - Mage - Not a full dragon, per se. More like a baby / child dragon, about the size of a fully grown man, wingspan being thrice as long as a man. Not fully developed its physical prowess, though its fire is devastating. It may not possess the control of a fire mage (Or any, for that matter), but it can provide heck a lot more fire, despite its youngness. HELLFIRE, DARKFIRE, AND NOW, GYPSY, YOU SHALL BE MIIIIINECrab - Champion - GIANT ENEMY CRAB. Half as high as a man, twice as wide as them. Heavily armored, deadly claws.Wolf - Fighter - A dire wolf. Nothing too fancy.Bear - Champion - IT'S A BEAR. A ton of pure muscle and fat and claws.Snake - Fighter - Slithery. As strong and long as a python, with ACID POISON, capable of spitting it, too.[actually trying something different]

Oh, really? Huh. Thanks.Does this mean a different biome has slightly more blue-ish grass than normal?

Sergei Lukyanenko? Pretty nice writer, that. I forget, did I introduce that to you? I remember pushing you to Dresden, Power.Zahn, Butcher, and Simon R. Green are a few that I like.Do videogame writers count? If so, then I'd throw in Chris Avellone, too.

Huh, does anyone know if it's possible to update your old maps to the newer version?

On Linear vs Open-Ended: YMMV. Open-ended means that people with initiative can go strike off and whatnot, but if you're not careful enough, everybody will be too scattered around your set locations to do anything meaningful, and your presence as the GM is limited to RPing packs of deathclaws, whereas linear means... well, nobody likes toeing to the line, but on the other hand, some structure goes a long way to helping things stick, stay cohesive. And if you read the post where I brought sandbox up, you'd have noticed where I did so only to mention that the past FO rp was too sandbox. I mean, you have a railway rifle. Great. What do you do with it? Be the guy who shoots a pack of raiders full of nails?

... :x And that's not quite what I mean. FO3's storyline is so painfully linear and cookie-cutter it's not even funny. All that happens is you walk around through the set pieces that it gives you, and does what the narrative wants, whereas NV and FO2 let you shape the world according to what you want. Don't like NCR? Go join the Legion because you're an cool dude if you want to join the Legion. Or join Mr. House, or go Wild Card, etc. Halo, FO3, Call of Duty, etc, don't give you that choice. There's the difference between them and games like New Vegas.

OOC: Next time, I'd like to write my own stuff shattering. It's specifically reinforced by his own mask power to be better than a chunk of ice. IC: Starkad, sensing the cracks in his shield, dropped and rolled the moment before it shattered, hurling what remained of the normal chunk of ice at the Skakdi's feet, releasing his control over it. With his other hand, he was already forming another buckler on his forearm. Less rounded and more angular in shape, Starkad stopped his rolling as he stuck the shield in the sand, reinforcing it with his mask, turning it into a barrier against the Skakdi's force blasts.

Think the problem was info overload. Not to mention that Fallout as a whole doesn't really lend itself well to a sorta-regimented roleplay, out of ridiculously huge sandbox, sicne the main theme is how you, one man can make a huge difference - which doesn't work so well when you have multiple players. unless you're playing FO3 and it's brotherhood of steel jedi, but... well, who plays Fallout 3 for the story, really? On another note, necro'ing this... Because automatically causing someone to spontaneously combust with no saving throw is fuuuuun, amirite?

IC: As Starkad scrambled to his feet, he saw the Skakdi's eyes flash. Always a sign of something nasty from them. Was it some sort of mental blast? If so, then his defensive options were painfully limited. Regardless, he lifted his shield anyways, feeling a pair of dull, blunted thud-thuds smacking against the bulwark - followed by several more. The shield would hold. Holding his weapon at the ready, Starkad turtled behind his shield, dashing at the Skakdi.

"Whgh-" Without warning, Starkad was bowled over by the tiger, sent skidding across the sand. He swore furiously as he forced himself up. "Bloody heart o' Makuta, what do you think you're doing!?" He snarled, forming a sword to go with his shield. It, too, was similarly reinforced.

if you're talking about the one CJ made, I'm sure that died after 13 posts. Not a paragon of success, imo.

IC (PW): Didn't even take notice of his surroundings. Stupid. Starkad clearly stood out from the sand. He hefted the spear, reversing his grip on it. It changed shape minutely, until it more resembled a javelin, built more for throwing than stabbing, and took careful aim. The Toa threw. The javelin streaked through the air.

IC (Parched Wastes - Starkad): Stupid, stupid. Why go to the desert? Where the dusty sand hissed and spat at you before whispering away in the wind? Where there was nary a drop of water to drink? Because nothing would willingly live here, of course. Starkad was a being of steel and flesh - he did not need to drink much for long, nor did he need to hunt and eat. These... Shepherds could play their game. Starkad would stay out of it. Or so the Toa thought. Sitting on a dune, he was... marginally surprised to see a Skakdi appear over the horizon, and less than pleased to see the lout waving a Mask around like it was a little toy. A Great Mask was a Toa's identity, his face. Even in these times, when so many had fallen to petty greed and cruelty, it was still an icon, a symbol. And he would not see it get sullied by some Skakdi's filthy hands. Starkad rose, materializing an ice spear and shield in his hands. The crystalline weapons formed, immediately thrumming with power beyond its base materials, power that would allow it to sustain itself in combat. OOC: That's you, Greel.

Exc- Oh, that joke got used already.

Don't see why you're acting that smug, since you never indicated that you were planning to use it for a Skakdi until now.

But isn't going 'hay guiz I herd u were cache hunting' going a bit meta? Or were the announcements public?

Also, you have to resize images yourself, whether in photoshop or paint.

Doesn't Despair fall under fear?

I was sorta hoping for a specific place open for interaction. Because I don't feel right in jumping on something that's already happening and then screwing it up.

ToD, might want to cut that second paragraph there. Especially the last sentence. Not even joking here. I was not aware that you had to be a Christian and had to found an order of nuns to do good things, TAA. And I never brought up CS Lewis. But if you insist... My point was that you can easily discuss Teresa and Tolkien in a non-religious context. The Nobel Peace Prize is given irrespective of religion. She could have been Hindu or Buddhist or Atheist, and that wouldn't change what she did! Lord of the Rings, same thing! Either I'm dense and missed the subtext, or there's nothing there! A guy who made his career on theologizing and philosophizing, not so much. That's sort of what I was saying... You can discuss Teresa for her good works, Tolkien and CS Lewis for the merits of their WORLD-BUILDING AND PROSE (As debatable as Chronicles of Narnia is, given the lion subtext), but you can't discuss what they're doing for their own beliefs, or their essays related to said beliefs. People are multi-faceted. There are aspects of them that do not relate to religion. Helping people is not a religious calling. Writing a book about people going to toss the One Ring into Mt. Doom is not a religious calling. Heck, even magical lions and doors to another world is not religious, so long as you don't go into the parallels. But it would be much harder to find such an aspect for a career theologian and philosopher. If you do, more power to you. If not, then them's the breaks. Also, this convo is getting a bit too out of hand for me. I don't even know how the other subject got in here, but I don't like it. If you still don't get what I'm saying, then fine. I wash my hands of this.

OH RIGHT I WAS APPROVED ...Any places to jump in?

This can't be. You're supposed to be preventing the heat death of the Universe. How can you do this if you are bad in physics!?

When I think of Mother Teresa, I think of a nice lady who did a lot of good to help the people of Calcutta and got a Nobel Peace Prize. It would be in poor taste to say that she did what she did only because her religion told her to do it, not because of the goodness of her heart. When I see Santa, I see a jolly old man who is some representation of Christmas, not as Saint Nicholas. This is the same way I can see JRR Tolkien as 'a great writer' but not have to include 'He's British.' It is possible to talk about the above two without bringing religion in the work. Otherwise, you wouldn't be allowed to have any modern people, since they all have a religion / political affiliation of their own. Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, is a philosopher, a theologian and a priest. Invariably, his spiritual workings would dip into Christianity and Catholicism, which is flame war bait.

I'd say a bit of both. The tree branch would, for all intents and purposes still be a tree branch. The only difference is that it can clash against epic fire swords without snapping, and that it will be able to pierce armor like a regular weapon. Though the mask obviously doesn't work on, say, a handful of sand or a pocketful of coins. Unless you want them to explode when thrown.