Multiple Settings EXPERIMENTAL RP: Looking for literate RPers

[Cat.Chrestomanci]

Hello. I've been craving a short-term (1-2 arcs) RP recently and had a really strange idea. What if we skipped the introductions and went straight into the RP? As much as I like to plan things out meticulously, sometimes it gets overly complicated and tedious. Then, before you know it, the RP is a chore to start.

Here are the conditions for this Dive In RP:
1. Be pretty literate (if you don't have confidence in your proofing ability, I recommend Grammarly. Sorry for sounding like one of those infomercials at the beginning of youtube videos). Because of the nature of the RP, you'll have to be giving a lot of details, in the beginning, to build the world and get the plot and setting across. A few typos here and there are fine but if it affects the meaning of your words, that could prove to be a problem.
2. Don't be afraid to correct me if I get something wrong. I don't bite! Also please bear with me because sometimes I ask really stupid questions. Also if you had some mechanics in mind but I contradicted them, you can just say so. Posts can be edited~

Other points of interest:
a. If you want to keep ooc strictly about questions regarding the RP, you can just use the embedded ooc (( like this )) but if you want to have more casual chatting in ooc, it's better to open a separate PM for it.
b. I know that this is a really strange format and I can understand if you would want to drop it. If you've not replied in ~3 days, I'm going to assume you've dropped if there's no prior notice. I'm not locked into this style of RP so if you've tested it and don't like it but still want to RP with me, just say so and we can try something else.
c. If you have that one starter that you've never gotten going for some reason or another, or you have a starter that you've wanted to use and there's never been a good opportunity to use it, you can test it here.

How we get started:
I. You PM me with your starter. The starters are a little more in-depth and either have a background information section before the characters are introduced or have the background information embedded as the characters are introduced.
II. You leave a comment stating which of the openers you were interested in RPing with.

Openers:

• A: Modern Fantasy
• B: Modern Fantasy
• C: Sci-fi Fantasy

• 
  
  Tarot Wonderland was a short-lived mobile game. At the start of the game, the player would draw a random avatar from a deck of tarot cards. There were twenty two unique suits based upon the major arcana. Within the various suits, there were unique characters named after gods and heroes of myth. The avatars were used to compete in arenas. A player could collect multiple avatars and choose which ones they would battle with.
  
  
  One day, the game was suddenly taken out of all application stores. The servers were all shut down and there was no way to access the data. After a few months, the game faded into the background, dismissed as a simple fad and no questions were asked as to the disappearance of the game. Some time after the deletion of the game, there were several strange murders committed in the city from which the game originated.
  
  The murders baffled any who were investigating the murders, as they seemed to be physically impossible to commit. There were some; however, who knew the true perpetrators of these mysterious murders. Several of the old Tarot Wonderland forums were revived as users began to post stories about seeing some of the avatars in the real world. There were several conspiracy theorists who posted to the forums.
  
  One day, a strange user by the handle of Pandora201 posted in the main forum. I understand that some of you have come into contact with cards from Tarot Wonderland in the real world. If you have contracted a card, I would like to invite you to Rho Aias. Your card should be able to tell you how to reach us.
  
  Most users laughed the message off as a joke but some replied in all seriousness that they had contracted cards and were thinking of joining Rho Aias. There were several exchanges between users that involved a user announcing their involvement with cards and then other users chiding them for their delusions of becoming a protagonist who fights crime.
  
  
  --
  
  It was a clear night with a waning quarter moon hanging in the sky. A light breeze meandered through the lowly-populated streets of Metropolia. It was quite late into the night at this point and although the neon signs glowed brightly, the streets had few pedestrians walking down the concrete streets. The buses and subways had all stopped for the night leaving only a few taxis picking up stragglers who had stayed out too late.
  
  
  They had been chasing the rogue card for a while now. It had taken quite some time to pinpoint its location, especially since the card was Melanion VIII. He was a quick and strong card that was not to be taken lightly. One of their cards had already sustained significant damage after engaging the card in an unarmed state. She sat on a rooftop, watching the humanoid dash between alleyways, searching for an acceptable prey. This one appeared to enjoy preying upon athletic young women.
  
  The manifestation of the card was a rather strange-looking humanoid figure. He looked to be composed primarily of some sort of opaque substance that moved like smoke but was much thicker. His form seemed to absorb the light emanating from the electronic sign boards, which made him difficult to follow at times but she had managed to keep him in her sights for a while now, as she had gotten the hang of his movements and could predict the direction of his travel. The visual was merely a confirmation of her prediction.
  
  Tonight, they had laid bait Melanion could not refuse. She was an attractive young woman with an athletic build and an air of defiance. While the young woman strutted through the dark alleys alone, the watcher stood by, waiting for the opportunity to attack Melanion and weaken him for sealing. The young woman waiting on the rooftop gripped the flower-shaped pendant around her neck unconsciously.
  
  “Are you nervous?” cackled the dark-haired spectre that accompanied her everywhere she went. He had the form of an automaton with rotational balls at each of his joints. On his face, he wore a mask that had a triangle with wings in gold on the right cheek. There was no mouth on the mask and it was primarily flat with the only curvature a gentle curve down from the nose to the sides of his face. He was dressed like a normal human might be dressed. He wore a white collared shirt underneath a grey vest. Around his neck was a gold tie. He wore simple black slacks and dark shoes. The spectre floated in the air with his hands casually in his pockets. “Melanion does seem to be quite problematic. He has high physical specs and isn’t particularly stupid,” he commented. “If we were up against someone like Ajax VII who is all brawn and no brain, this would be a simple task.”
  
  “I do not need your input, Daedalus,” she replied curtly. “I just require your assistance in apprehending him.” She continued to follow the ghostly figure as he finally came to the alley in which the bait was laying in wait. “It’s time to move,” she ordered. “We’re going to come in from above and use the element of surprise to engage in battle. From there we should be able to weaken him enough to seal him.”
  
  “Yeah, yeah,” Daedalus grumbled. “You’ve been over this enough times that it’s absolutely ridiculous.” He clapped his hands together and as he spread them apart once again, smoke poured forth from his palms. The smoke proceeded to take the form of a pair of metal wings. He stuck them onto her back, fitting prongs on the wings into outlets of sorts below her shoulder blades that were visible due to the open back of her shirt. She winced as the nerves in the wings connected to her own nervous system. She flexed the metallic structures a few times before taking to the skies, Daedalus following her dutifully.
  
  Just as Melanion was approaching his prey, the winged woman dropped from the skies, landing on his head. He was much more solid than he appeared and she felt as though she had landed on a thick skull. Shivers ran through her as her feet felt the brunt of the force. From there, she did a backflip off of his head and landed on the side opposite the other woman.
  
  “Don’t interfere,” he growled, turning an angry red gaze upon her. His voice sounded distorted, almost as though he were speaking from inside a tank of water. “I was just about to have a nice snack.”
  
  “I’m can’t let you do that,” she replied. “I’m not going to let any more of you steal these people’s lives. I know that you draw your energy from humans but you shouldn’t go about it like this.”
  
  “Would you rather I become one of your little slaves?” He turned his gaze to the spectre floating behind her. “I wouldn’t sink so low as to ingratiate myself to a lesser being. We are superior to these insignificant creatures.”
  
  Daedalus shrugged in reply. “It isn’t so bad. I get a steady source of life, so I never go hungry. It also gives me the opportunity to battle with other cards, although I feel bad about picking on weaklings like you.”
  
  Melanion hissed. “Who are you calling a weakling!?” He rushed at the other spectre, grabbing what passed as a neck. “Take it back!”
  
  “Take your filthy hands off me,” Daedalus replied in a perfectly calm voice.
  
  “Why don’t you make me, you dog of the humans.”
  
  “You asked for it,” Daedalus replied, putting a hand on Melanion’s chest. There was a flash of light and a wave of heat. Melanion shrieked in pain and released Daedalus. Daedalus formed a fireball in his left hand and readied to fire it at Melanion but the card turned tail and fled toward the larger street.
  
• 
  
  It was just another part of his daily activities. Once he had completed a mission, Ember would visit the tattoo parlour down the way from his flat. Even if the mission had taken days to complete and he was so tired that his bones ached, he still visited the parlour, almost ritualistically.
  
  
  A pretty brunette with a thin figure and devious green eyes sat in her chair with her left leg crossed over her right and leaning lazily on a padded armrest. A black tank top hung loosely from her thin shoulders and stopped halfway down her torso. A fishnet shirt overtop failed to obscure sleeves of ivy winding down her arms and an ouroboros wrapping about her middle. A scanty pair of black shorts revealed tendrils of wind snaking down her legs to meet with some body of water up to her ankles.
  
  "Good evening Alice," Ember greeted, tipping a head capped with strawberry blonde hair.
  
  "Ever formal, eh Em?" Alicia replied, sitting up straight and uncrossing her legs. "Sit, sit." As he complied, she picked up and inspected her needles and tools. She pulled up her appointment list and cancelled all of them for the rest of the afternoon, as this would probably take a while. While it irked her customers when she cancelled like this, she was one of the best artists in town, so if they wanted her artwork, they would wait.
  
  "Why do you go through all of this pain on a daily basis? Something as silly as a drawing in pen would suffice for your purposes, even something drawn on a leaf of paper," she inquired casually.
  
  "It reminds me that I'm still alive and reminds me of the the sins I commit on a daily basis." His fierce gold gaze met with the brunette's emerald one.
  
  "Did you use all of them today?"
  
  "Yes. I need them all redone," he replied, pulling his black, skin-tight shirt over his head and revealing a smooth, tan back, clean of any signs of tattoos.
  
  "A high order," she mused in that cheeky way she had.
  
  "I'll route it to your account later," he murmured, cracking his neck as he turned it from side to side.
  
  "I know I don't have to warn you to stay still, just tell me when you start feeling stiff or something falls asleep."
  
  After two hours of swift, yet meticulous work, the boy's back was covered in ink depicting various weapons, chains with daggers at the end, Japanese longswords, even a bow and quiver. Alice sat back to admire her work for a bit. "You know my price, just be off with you now. I should be irked by the fact that you waste my art, but you pay a high enough price in many ways."
  
  "Thank you," Ember replied quietly as he pulled his shirt on. Despite the ink being fresh in his skin, the skin itself had already healed. With that, the 19-year-old boy headed home, popping his shoulder, stiff from staying in the same position for so long as the young woman decorated his body.
  
  Once home, he pulled up the electronic mission board. He preferred to work alone, but at this point, there were only missions for two or three members. After scrolling through and rejecting several pages of missions, the boy chose a mission to capture a rogue hiding in the nearby slums. The warrant read "dead or alive". There appeared to be no other takers for the mission at that time, as he would have been able to see their files if they had accepted. His file was now visible to anyone who looked into the mission, with some aspects redacted depending on the clearance level of the reader.
  
  --
  
  Ember Chroni, alias INK'd, was not a top tier Starfall, which would appear in the file. His file picture was back before he began inking himself all the time. Even so, his golden eyes were dead or perhaps just disillusioned, given his upbringing. Even if he weren't a top tier mutant, given enough physical training, his power could wreak significant havoc. Because of this, his parents had given him to the government to train. Twelve long years later, he was finally given a sort of free reign. They gave him a flat to call his own, decorated sparsely with simple oak furniture and new appliances. Their condition was that he wear a tracker at all times, the metal stud in the upper cartilage of his right ear. Of his own volition, the boy had gotten a little bengal cat by the name of Mimsy. Even with daily trips to the tattoo parlour for full inking, he was not impoverished.
  
  The government paid him quite well to serve their needs: eliminating political adversaries or Starfalls who did not know their place. Recently, the government had even begun looking into toppling other countries and establishing an empire with the mutant warriors, Starfalls, that they employed.
  
• 
  There was a loud screech of distress from some young woman, as though she had seen a ghost. It wasn’t quite so dramatic but her scream was enough to cause a commotion that drew the attention of many passersby, for what could possibly elicit such an upsetting sound from one of the elites living in luxury? A crowd was gathering with onlookers craning their necks to see what exactly had happened.
  
  
  It was indeed a horrific sight that the young woman had witnessed, but the remains were quite possibly more disturbing still. The subject had already fled into the audience, taking with her what she could, but that which she could not salvage was alarming in itself. Before she had run from the scene, she had left splashes of blood on the pavement of the cruelly beautiful streets that seemed to taunt her kind, showing her the difference in status between her and them.
  
  Blood, injury, the reminder of their mortality was enough to shake up some of the observers. With the miracles of modern medicine and the safety of their status, what did the denizens of Luxem have to worry about? The Maji were oppressed and kept in their places by anti-magic technology. There was no crime committed, but there was a clash between magic and technology.
  
  She always stayed as far away from anti-magic technology as she could, for it would undo that which was quite literally holding her together. She thought she knew where all of the anti-magic machines were between her and the cafe where she worked. Even if she didn’t, she was able to keep a careful eye out for anything that might disrupt her magic.
  
  Today, she had been running late on her way to work. The cafe was managed by a charitable woman who had decided that charity work for Maji made her a saint. She was such a good woman that she would allow Maji to be employed in an upper-class establishment. It was absolutely sickening, but work was work. And the woman was even accommodating of her Maji’s condition, turning off the tech at the employees’ entrance when she came to work.
  
  The young woman had strayed a tad too close to a nullifying machine and what little colour she had in her pale face drained as she felt her left arm get lighter and heard the thud as something fell to the ground. The screech confirmed her suspicions. The segment of her arm from just above her elbow down to her hand had separated itself from the rest of her as the binding magic was deactivated.
  
  It was everything she could do to keep her right calf from following suit as she stumbled away from the glinting machine that she spied out of the corner of her eye. Warm red liquid dripped down from the point of separation but quickly stopped as she bound the two pieces back together. In a flash she had stooped to pick up her fallen arm and before too many had gathered, she shouldered her way through the crowd, reattaching her arm as she sped through the throng of people. The blood that ran down her fingers stopped when it was successfully reattached and no longer left the trail of her departure.
  
  Her soft, blue-black hair was falling from its bun and hung in loose tendrils about her shoulders, bouncing with her quick strides. Although she was of average height, she was able to move swiftly through the crowds, heartbeat pounding in her ears. There had been disappearances of Maji recently and her brother had warned her that it wasn’t safe for her to continue to work outside of Noxeria, especially alone. Now that she had been revealed as a Maji, it was probably much more dangerous for her to be out and about. Instead of running toward her work, she had turned tail and run back toward the safety of the district of the Maji.
  
  She just hoped that no one would try to follow her. The city-dwellers seemed preoccupied enough with the reminder of their own mortality, but she couldn't be sure that no one had peeled off and decided to investigate the bloodied girl weaving between the relaxed pedestrians.
  
  She had heard that there had been Maji disappearances recently and had tried to keep vigilant about concealing her identity. If they were being picked off for weakness, then she would definitely be one of the first to be offed. If they were being apprehended for even more nefarious purposes, then she could only hope she didn’t fit the description of what they were looking for.