It's Been a Long Time Since I did This. . . .

Well, hasn't it been forever and a day since I last actually had to write an introduction post . . . okay, so, hi, everyone, as if it weren't obvious from my posting here, I'm completely new to this site and I'm posting here to say hello and whatnot. Suffice it to say, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing here, more or less, I am just here? Yeah, that's pretty much it. I'd like to say I'm a veteran roleplayer, I've done my share of it over the last four years, started off on a very small time site that no longer exists and moved onto be a big fish in a bigger pond. I spent four years on another roleplaying site and now find myself no longer liking the direction where it's headed, if only because the site is down every other day as it goes now. Seriously, it's annoying wanting to write, or get into character, only to find that the whole site has gone down and is still down two days later.


That's my current situation. I've just returned to roleplaying after a long hiatus from it and have been wanting to jump back in full swing, but that's been put on hold as the site is down again for the umpteenth time this year and I'm getting to be kind of done with it. . . . This place looks like it holds a lot of potential for me, so I figured I'd make an account and test the waters to see if this place is what I might be looking for in terms of roleplaying.


I greatly enjoy writing, and won't lie, there are plenty of times where I just let it go and end up overdoing it with post lengths, I am very wordy, but I put my all into everything I write. The site that I am floundering around with at the moment has kept track of how many words I have written in the duration since I've been active there and I am proud to say that I've neared 600,000 words in my time there.


So, here's to everything, and here's to me hoping that I might've found a new roleplaying home.

Hello and Welcome to RpN!


My name is Shura, and you'll see me floating around the site and sometimes in the Shoutbox which is like this place's chat-room. Everyone there is always super friendly, so don't hesitate to say hello if you ever have the chance. If you need a starting point check out this link . It's got a lot of helpful links like Official Site Rule and such. Once you have made at least 10 posts, you’ll be able to access more of the site’s awesome features and send private messages!


You’ll find a lot of great members to roleplay with here. You can head over to the Roleplays board for all of your roleplaying needs. You check out the roleplay recruitment forum to see any roleplays who need members or browse through the different open roleplays. You can create new roleplays for one on one or group settings and propose your own ideas.


If you ever find that you’re stuck, you can always refer to News & Updates or Questions & Information. Myself or any of the other staff members are always willing to answer any questions you may have. :3





Don't feel to bad about being wordy or post length there tend to be a good number of other players who do the same ^^ I hope you enjoy the sire Happy roleplaying!

Thank you very much for the welcome, Shura. ^ ^ I always appreciate it when someone takes the time to greet me when I'm a total newbie on a site. ^~^'' I'll be floating around here myself, as the site I spoke of on my intro post last night is again down, this makes time number four in the last week alone and it is getting very irksome I must admit.


I'm going to probably start off roleplaying here by proposing something very simple so that I can hopefully come to grasp the concepts and basics of the site here before moving onto things that are more complicated. That's what I did beforehand and what I will do here, I tend to learn best when I'm experiencing things myself and experimenting in general. If I do find myself with any questions though, I'll make a point to ask if I can't dissect it myself and fine the solution. Thank you again, Shura!

No problem I'm happy to help out. ^^ I would advise RP's tagged intermediate to advance because they tend to have players who write at a decent length. I hope everything works out.

I don't have too much to say, but man did I love Ar tonelico 2. Mir is the best.

Ar tonelico is one of my guilty gaming pleasures. It's silly in a lot of places, damn near pornographic in others, innuendo and fan service and simple game mechanics abound..


But it's just fun, and I absolutely adore the whole idea behind teams being Vanguard + Revyateil. I like magical girls + their strong, manly bodyguards. Lets me exercise those protective instincts and play melee tank.


Croix + Mir forever.

It's a guilty pleasure of mine as well. xD Definitely over does it in the fanservice areas, but some of it is so utterly ridiculous that it actually made me laugh. However, I was able to brush that aside in lieu of liking the characters and the overall story, and I enjoyed the game's simple mechanics, I liked the slight twist on the turn-based battle system.


Aaaand I really liked the teams too, Vanguards and Reyvateils. xD I liked playing the Reyvateils, I know they're glass canons but the fact that they can unleash such devastating magic and overkill most anything is just . . . awesome.


And yeah, I made sure I got the Jakuri ending, if that wasn't obvious. She deserves some happiness with Croix. ^ ^

The Revyateils are pretty awesome, yes. Bunch of pretty girls employing all-powerful song magic, but they need to be protected by their dashing, and typically romantic, male partners? It is ridiculously sexist, in some really old fashioned ways.. but I still like it. Alas, there was no ending to get every single one of them at the same time, so I went with Mir too. She's nifty.

I don't really think it sounds sexist in truth, I know there are plenty who would try to claim it as such, but it's a very enjoyable game, and while the Reyvateils might need to be physically protected by their partners, they're also extremely powerful in their own respect and I think that more than evens out their roles. They're partners, they share equal roles in the field of battle and they rely on the other for the sake of protection, albeit in different respects. Even if it seems old-fashioned, I don't think it is. It just needs to be looked at from a different perspective, and I think it becomes a bit clearer that there's more to it then meets the eye. ^ ^ I mean, look at what Jakuri managed to do in her history without having a partner. X'D She sunk half of her known world under the Sea of Death and waged a war. . . .


The concept of it though is indeed very romantic, and it's touching that the partners come to rely on each other so much, trusting one another with their very lives. I saw all the endings, aaaaand of them all, including every game, Jakuri's remains my favorite because it's the only one where the Vanguard actually sings. The only time!

I was kidding about the sexism, mostly. It's important to remember that the Revyateils are the most powerful beings in the world - but that power isn't available on demand, and using it renders them vulnerable. The roles are complementary: vanguards enable their revyateils to flourish.


To the extent it's sexist, it's that the physical protectors tend to be male and the delicate super weapons female, but again that was tongue in cheek.


I tend to play the protector in most games so I enjoyed it greatly.

Ah, I apologize if I came off as overzealous, I'm far too used to defending the game and such to people who would say otherwise. . . . But it is true that Reyvateil's powers are not available right off the bat, that they have to focus to use it as a spellcaster would focus to use magic or powerful spells. They are very vulnerable . . . unless you could Cocona and the whole population of Cluster Reyvateils from Ar tonelico Qoga.


In truth, I prefer to play the delicate super weapon female character in any game that gives me the option. . . . Such as in Dragon Age where I go with a female Elf Warden who is of the Magi Origin, I go with Mage FemHawke. . . . I enjoy that role as you enjoy playing the protector.

Everyone has a place they excel. When I was younger, I loved playing magic users. I especially had a thing for necromancers. I don't know why. Nowadays they don't interest me at all. As I got older, magic became dull, and I gained an appreciation for the physical up close and personal types. The only sort of magic I still like tends to be mind control.


There are some exceptions. I'm down with lightning and light-based powers. I've got a God complex going

Funny, we seem to be opposite in that regard. I grew up playing the up close and person fighters, and I loved it, Now though, I prefer fighting from a distance, taking my time and striking back at an enemy through pure power. I went from knight to magic user, as far as videogames though, when it comes to roleplaying of course, I like to play a mix . . . though, always female. I like playing healers or something of the like, or a fire user.


Fire and such are my favorite powers. Aha, they aren't destructive so much as they are awkward with their abilities, like, sneezing fire? I've had one lightning user, and that was only because the roleplay called for her to have lightning powers based off her restricted mythos.

I like lightning because of its emotional associations and privileged position in human history and mythology. Lightning is the wrath of the gods, of the heavens: it is a force that makes mountains shake with violent thunderclaps, a force that splits the sky with rending claws, a power that descends from on high to startle and annihilate. The kings of godly pantheons are frequently associated with lightning, or the heavens--it is, broadly speaking, the power of the holy.


It's the same reason I like light, though as a power it shows up much more rarely than lightning. Bright light, searing light, lasers, hard-light barriers, etc., etc. They're pure. Holy.


Fire is good, too, as it shares a number of associations. Fire is a force of cleansing and judgment.


I really dig paladins, in whatever games they show up in. They combine my likes rather well.

Lightning is a fantastic element. The particular character I played who used it was bound to it by their very birth, she was an incarnation of Opal, the gemstone. Some myths said that the gem was born from lightning itself, so I went with that as a theme, and so the character wound up having the most destructive power of any of the characters in the particular roleplay, especially since she couldn't control it very well and her body had a defense mechanism where she'd fire off lightning if her gemstone sensed any "evil" or "danger". Gods are oft associated with lightning, which is something I always did find interesting.


Light was never an element I played around with, though I do have a roleplay buddy who played a character who used Light as his element, however he was anything but "pure" or "holy", actually, he was a dark character, initially a sort of villain who probably could've evolved into an anti-hero or redeemer sort. . . . Still, he was very interesting!


I played fire as something deeply intertwined with emotions and feelings. The girls I've played who wielded fire sometimes feared their power and other times, embraced it. Some were a bit destructive while others were careful and used it for better.


I like paladins too. ^ ^ When it always came to messing around with warrior characters in videogames, like Dragon Age, I always took specializations and abilities that more turned my character into a Blood Knight. Like I tinkered with an Elf Warrior, and gave her a Reaver/Berserker combo. When I went through with a Mage character, she wound up taking to Blood Magic . . . and the path of the Arcane Warrior where she did fight with a sword/shield combo but supplemented her lack physical prowess with her magic. She could fight well, but still did cast devastating spells and used her Blood Magic to control and immobilize her enemies.

That's a pretty cool idea, the opal bit; were all characters involved tied to gemstones? As for light and holiness or purity: it can be fun to play with associations and reverse them like that. Video games often run with it via a corrupt church or God is evil reveal, revealing that "holy" is startlingly similar to "demonic", it just has a different color scheme. Alternatively, compare it to someone like Azula, from Avatar, who is a master of fire but usually very cold and focused.. it's only later on she becomes increasingly unstable and her facade cracks.


Dragon Age was a great game. My first character was a blood mage / arcane warrior as well. I was disappointed by blood magic, though--didn't have any mind control options despite the setting pointing out that was the main reason people feared blood mages. I also really liked rogues, that backstab damage was insanely good.


Have you ever been big on dice RPGs? My favorite are Vampire: the Requiem and Exalted. The latter has a character type called the Solar Exalted, culture-heroes based on various human heroes throughout time, larger than life and blessed with superlative skill. They're men and women of Apollonian might and focus that move through the world enacting their will upon it. They're very cool, I like the sun motif.

Yeah, all of the characters were tied down to gemstones, basically they were gemstones born into human form in order to restore the disrupted balance of nature and to revive the rotting and crumbling world around them. However, they were possible victims of being tainted by evil and whatnot. . . . Light is an interesting element to play with, I think it always is. =) When you talk of that running theme in games where churches and such are revealed to be evil, that makes me think of Grandia II where that's the central theme of the game. Like the tropes say, "Light is not Good" and "Dark is not Evil".


Rogues are fun to play, but I prefer the Mage since the specializations for a rogue are kind of blase to me. Still I did thinking it was fun playing as a Blood Mage, even if it was a little bit less insane and powerful than it was built up to be in-game. It did have a really good move though that could immobilize a lot of enemies at once, which was helpful


And I've never been big on dice RPGs, I've had a friend try to get me into them, and I gave it a go, but it just wasn't my cup of tea.

That does sound exciting! I'm currently involved in three games, though none are particularly oriented around high levels of magic or balancing the world--I play Mordred in an Arthurian RP, the big bad Wolf and Captain Hook in a fairy tales in the modern world RP, and a vampire in a custom setting run by the user Grey. And yeah, Grandia II was a really old example, and it comes up in many games. The Shin Megami Tensei series is good too and noteworthy for having you literally fight Yahweh, who is an evil prick in the games.


A shame you're not fond of dice RPGs! They're my favorite, I enjoy the structure they add to the RP and the world. Clear systems for interacting and moderating character actions and influence, regulating conflict, adding challenge and tension. Exalted and Vampire are great settings, too. Exalted gives me my awesome hero kicks, kicking ass, building empires, exploring ancient ruins and going on amazing quests, and Vampire scratches my evil mind control itch, where you can totally break someone's mind and change who they are as a person in a million different ways.


Vampires are definitely my favorite supernatural creature

My best friend has quite a creative mind. ^ ^ I was very much honored to have played a part in her excellent story. I enjoy high-fantasy roleplays more than anything else, but I can adjust and more or less make myself fit any environment that a roleplay possesses, from slice-of-life to otherwise. I do have my limits though. Mordred, every time I hear that name I always think of Fate/stay night, that sort of twisted my views of Arthurian legend. xD But it sounds like you have a penchant for playing the bad guys, eh? Nothing wrong with that. Even Ar tonelico had it's own variant on the whole evil church bit what with Tyria's second coming actually being Mir. . . .


I'm glad you're very fond of dice RPGs, to each there own. ^ ^ It sounds like you very much enjoy yourself with them, which is nice. I've always taken to play-by-post myself. . . . Easier for me to sort my thoughts and decide without a die. And Vampires are very interesting supernatural creatures, though my favorite is, well, I'm really not certain.

It's easy to say I have a penchant for the villain, but it isn't quite that simple. What I like most are characters that can impose their will--characters who have strong convictions, and a willingness and ability to act, who are proactive instead of reactive. The sorts of characters who dictate how the world around them works through their words and actions. Typically, this means I like villains, because villains as a rule are the ambitious characters in a story who push the action forward. They are the agents of change who rock the status quo, and the goal of the hero is to bring back peace, stability, and staticness.


When I can play heroes who are ambitious and active, I have just as much fun.


Admittedly, even my heroes tend to be rather dark and lean fully toward the Byronic. Powerful, domineering, aggressive, stubborn, cunning, ruthless.

And I have the penchant to play a hero, or a reluctant hero at that. xD I do like to play the sort of character who maintains peace, who prefers peace to anything else if it can be helped. Even if they agree that change needs to be made, they don't agree with the idea of forcing it, it's something that needs to happen gradually. So, I like heroes, even if they are maybe a bit uncertain or unwilling to initially act because they don't want to accept the fact that they hold on their shoulders a weighty fate and that a lot is riding on them and their success.


I've played villains before, but my favorite one was actually this girl who begins to act as a morality chain for the actual big bad, she's only as evil as he makes her be. She basically cracked at one point and lost her mind, and to survive, she locked away her human heart and mind and began to act as a tool to him, undyingly loyal, which had an affect on him overall. It was an interesting combination.


So, do you like to sort of play the anti-hero? That's neat too. ^ ^ I actually enjoy anti-heroes in truth.

I can play every sort of character and enjoy it (well, out of the big three: hero, anti-hero, and villain). They tend to be extremely moral and principled in their own fashion that differs from the norm. Politically, I personally lean toward authoritarianism and socialism, and that often pokes its head in my characters. To give you an example..


I once played a vampire in a game. A Ventrue. The short definition of the Ventrue is that they're vampire kings, barbarian lords, and conquerors: typically, they have powerful mind control abilities, superhuman toughness, and the power to control and possess all manner of beasts. Furthermore, this Ventrue of mine was a Voivode -- someone who studied the powers of vampire blood, who researched it and did all manner of terrible things to unlock its secrets and realize its full potential.


He had interesting powers. If you ever drank his blood, even a sip, you would become addicted to it, and it would be the most powerful, overwhelming addiction in your life. You would instantly be bonded to him at the maximum level, breaking all other bonds you had. At this level, you would worship him as a God. It would be a mad, all-consuming love and loyalty; you would kill for him, and die for him, and beg him to let you do either, all without him lifting a finger. He would, quite literally, be the most important thing in your life, the pole star that orients you. He could speak and give you orders you had to obey. He could rewrite your memories, completely changing what you knew, what you thought you knew. If he wanted, he could erase your past completely, and make you forget everything. He could inspire madness, provoke people into feral rages, and bring animals back to life as necrotic pets. He could make you do anything, remember anything, and he could set triggers and conditions into it to turn the orders and the memory wipes on and off at a moment's notice. Perhaps, to amuse himself, he'd change it so that whenever he snapped his fingers you would remember, in vivid and grotesque detail, the most terrible torture you can imagine going through--and how you inflicted it on your parents, your siblings, your significant other. How you ruined them.


And with another snap he'd make you forget, and you'd know that if he ever wanted to, he could do it again. And he could make you perform that torture in the first place.


He could summon hordes of rats, wolves, bears, carrion birds--he could send them across the land to be his eyes and his ears, to savage his enemies, to infiltrate their homes.


Oh, and those who drank his blood? It's not just the addiction--they became ghouls, gaining powers of their own, frequently the ability to give irresistible orders themselves, though their powers would never work on him.


So you have this man who has god-like control over the thoughts and feelings and actions of everything around him, who can inspire mad, life-defining devotion in a heartbeat, who can take a shotgun to the chest and keep coming at you.. a guy completely willing, and able, to utterly destroy who you are as a person, to turn you into a toy, a puppet, on strings no one can see, not even yourself..


And what was his goal? Well, it was pretty simple: take over the territory he lived in, keep it safe, and make it prosperous. Give everyone a chance to shine. Let them pursue their own goals, their own happiness. Keep the vampires fed and entertained, keep the mortals healthy and the population growing. Make the place wealthy and secure.


My characters are often benevolent in intentions but have absolutely no limits when it comes to what they're willing to do if they deem it necessary or useful.

I do my best to enjoy the roles I play, whether they were evil or good. The particular character you mention sounds very interesting. ^ ^ I've never made a character like that before myself, really, though sounds fun.