Fantasy Heart of the Sorceror (OOC)

[Enkerzed]

If you have any questions, ideas or just wanna chat then this is the place.

For updates regarding the roleplay, I'll lay it out here and edit as we go. Currently we are...

- Waiting for Enkerzed 's lazy ass to finish setting up the roleplay.

- Thinking up character ideas I imagine. It'll be covered in the lore later on, but I'll lay out a few details to take into consideration before we begin.

The roleplay will start off on the island of Olisium and if you want to join the roleplay as soon as it begins, your character must be a trainee who was present for the lecture in the first post of the main thread. Immediately afterwards, there will be some leisure time for your character to burn before their first field trip to the Wastelands. They won't know what to expect or what they'll have to do, all they know is where to be tomorrow. As for the deal with scores, that's how seniority is determined among trainees. The higher the score, the higher your rank and those with the highest are earmarked to be future leaders of their own teams. Provided they live that long.

All Seeker trainees can be as young as 18 or as old as 30. By the time of the first post, it would have been a year since your character joined the Seekers and they'll all have been trained in stealth, survival, medicine, marksmanship, martial arts, demolitions and, most importantly, nanomancy.

See, all citizens of Olisium are given neural implants at birth known as a 'Link' which allows them to interact with nanomachines, so all Olisians are nanomancers to a degree. At the most basic level, it can be used to remotely interact with Olisian technology through thought, but at more advanced levels one can command nanomachines to form protective barriers, move distant objects, bend light around you to make you invisible, swarm and rip apart enemies, or heal and augment allies. The more sophisticated the technique however, the more micromanagement nanomancy demands so while you're busy controlling the nanomachines for doing whatever, you are distracted and therefore vulnerable as it requires full focus. All depending on one's skill level of course.

So when I have the character sheet setup, there'll be a section for abilities and you can have as many as is practical for your character to have in order of proficiency (best at the top, worst at the bottom, zilch for anything they just aren't practiced in). There's never too few or too many, but consider how many things you're skilled at irl and apply that to the roleplay. Some people are talented, some aren't, some are skilled in many areas, some in just the one, it's all the same deal here. Just be prepared to be make your case if I see something and say 'wait a minute', because with the level of creative freedom I'm allowing, it's all too easy to slide into overpowered territory. Unfortunately, there's no real measure to go by when it comes to deciding what's op, so I'll just eyeball it and say that I'll know it when I see it.

For those who want to make a more veteran and seasoned sort of Seeker, you're just going to have to wait a bit until after the roleplay moves to the Wastelands. From there, you can make just about any kind of character. Seeker, rogue Seeker who's gone native, mutant, Wastelander, even one of the Stormsung, the enemy faction of the setting. If you do decide to rp a Stormsinger however then you'll have to accept that the only way your character will get to stick around is if they ally with the Seekers for whatever reason, because otherwise they'll eventually be killed off or put on a bus. This roleplay is about the Seekers, so naturally it'll be following their perspective. Maybe in a future roleplay it'll be about the Stormsingers, but for now, not the case.

Speaking of the Wastelands, if you want your trainee character to actually be a Wastelander in origin, then you'll have to consider why they might have been allowed onto Olisium at all and how long they've been around. Maybe they saved the life of a Seeker and the Seeker vouched for your character in return. Maybe your character was adopted and brought back under unusual circumstances. Maybe they were born to Seeker parents who had gone native in the Wastelands, but still had enough clout to pull some strings and get their kid back home to grow up in safety. Also consider when your Wastelander character might have gotten their own Link implant and how they'd deal with suddenly being able to move things with the power of their mind (plus nanomachines), and also how they might use it in ways that a native Olisian might not. Absolutely no mutants though. Not for trainees anyway.

Just one last thing before the end of this wall of text. The culture of Olisium is very... regulated. Children are pretty much born from test tubes and raised in communal wards before beginning a rigorous education in a bit of everything, starting from the age of 6 before being assigned a role at the age of 18 depending on wherever they performed the best and wherever they might be needed. Then it's work, work, work until the day they die and their biological parents probably wouldn't even be aware of their existence the entire time, so the idea of family is pretty much foreign to Olisians. The only voluntary vocations are either joining the Guard (the military) or the Seekers, and even then it's the same sort of deal. You get placed wherever you perform the best. If anyone's familiar with Dragon Age, it's a bit like the Qunari. Difference with the Seekers is asides from training, they're allowed the greatest degree of individual freedom since they're expected to operate on their own once they hit the Wastes, so as soon as they leave home, they're on their own. A Seeker will have to make decisions that no one else on Olisium will ever have to make and as pointless as everyone thinks their age-long struggle against the Sorceror is, they're kind of needed since space ran out on Olisium a long time ago. So the Wastelands is pretty much the frontier of the setting and one of these days, Olisium will have no choice but to expand. But first, the Sorceror must die.

And that's about it.

 

[Scavenger]

I'm up for taking part so just putting a post to watch this thread

 

[Enkerzed]

So now that I'm working on the lore, I'm wondering if I should make specialized roles for the Seekers. A sort of fighter, rogue, mage archetypes deal except for the setting of the rp it'd be soldier, survivalist and scientist.

Soldiers would obviously be the muscle of the team, trained to use weapons, martial arts and tactics to protect everyone around them while using nanomancy to augment their combat effectiveness.

Survivalists on the other hand are specifically trained to be able to navigate the Wastelands on their own, know how to use old tech, sneak around, build traps, understand what kind of threats there are and how to deal with them, how to find food and shelter, use the environment to their advantage, stay alive. A bit of everything really.

As for scientists, if anyone would be able to figure out a way to slay the Sorceror, it'd be them. Having a deep understanding of physics, chemistry, technology and biology, and being able to apply that knowledge to their abilities, they'd be the nanomancers of the team and can control nanomachines on a level that the soldier or survivalist simply can't.

My main concern however is that Seekers are supposed to be able to do ALL of these things to some degree and if I included these roles, the rp would suddenly become more like a videogame or mmorpg, which would be fine considering the whole abilities aspect, but I wouldn't want it to detract from the story. Anyone care to share any thoughts on the matter?

 

[Scavenger]

I think that it would be better to leave it open but it might be worth writing them up to help give a feel about characters. So a seeker could have 4 abilities associated with soldiers and 2 to do with scientists, no clue on the numbers, and that would help people direct a sort of feel for there character

 

[Enkerzed]

Ah, I see. Categorizing the abilities rather than the characters, I suppose that could work. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Scavenger]

What sort of tech level where you invisioning for Olisium in terms of aircraft, computers, personal shielding, power armour, cybernetics, genetics and space?

 

[Enkerzed]

Sorry, I saw this at work and forgot to respond. Basically, everything on Olisium is powered by fusion energy thanks to the nanomachines covering most of the planet and absorbing helium 3 from the sun rather than reflecting it, so basically basically Olisium runs on nanomachines. That's all to say that in spite of the island's lack of natural resources, energy is simply not a problem. The problem is the rest of the world around it and I'll try to address each thing in your question in order of appearance.

Aircraft is only commonly used by the Seekers as every location on Olisium is reachable by road and rail. That said though, Olisian aircraft is every bit as advanced as the rest of their tech and as well as being powered by fusion, they also have on-board Links that can be used to interact with nanomachines to do whatever a nanomancer can, only scaled up. Despite all this, one cannot simply fly into the Wastelands due to the completely random and destructive nature of nanostorms, so Seekers can only get so far before having to drop down and ditch their ride, or go right back to Olisium straight away.

As for computers, picture Google glasses, only you don't need the glasses. Or virtual reality, only you don't need the headset. It's all thanks to the Link embedded into every Olisian's brain at birth. From turning on the lights to opening doors to calling someone on the other side of the island or even browsing the Internet, all of it can be done with a single thought and with no need for a computer, though terminals are still convenient to have for storage and direct access to certain places and systems. Here's the catch though, for all of it to work, it takes having a whole bunch of Links gathered together in one area and although that's not a problem for people living on Olisium, the Seekers out in the wastes, well, their only connection is with their own equipment and any team members in their immediate surroundings. So essentially, anyone out in the Wastelands is cut off from Olisium. Relay stations could be setup in the Wastelands, but the nanostorms make it impossible to build anything within their zone of influence (which is like 99% of the world), so Seekers really are on their own once they leave home. Just one more reason to slay the Sorceror I suppose.

Personal shielding? Nanomachines. Or to be more precise, nanomancy. It's possible to produce force fields without the use of nanomachines, but that takes up more energy than simply commanding a bunch of them to do it for you and although that's, yet again, not a problem on Olisium, it's a different story in the wastes. A Guardian (Olisian military) has nice big generators to rely on at home. Seekers gotta run on batteries.

For power armour, Seekers get to have what is known as a 'nervesuit'. It's basically a second skin made of nanomachines that can reactively protect its wearer from just about any form of harm. Bullets, explosions, radiation, lasers, you name it. Just about the only thing that they're useless against are nanostorms, but then again, nothing can stand up to those anyway. For further protection, nervesuits can be worn under a full blown military exosuit, which provides the more traditional passive form of protection as well as enhancing the user's physical strength. Difference is they don't autorepair like nervesuits can.

Cybernetics and genetics, I'll address both as they're somewhat intertwined. By dint of Link implants, every Olisian is technically already a cyborg but in terms of prosthetics, Olisian tech is advanced enough that entire body parts can be regrown in a vat and reattached to wherever they belong with cybernetic replacements usually only meant for temporary use. Full prosthetic bodies are a thing though, ala Ghost in the Shell, but so is genetic engineering and all Olisians are already bred to be superior in every way to a regular human from the wastes, so on top of nanomancy, there's not much that cybernetics can improve. Only members of the Guard benefit from full cyberization, otherwise it's simply a hindrance to everyday life on Olisium what with the level of maintenance required.

Space, here's the one area where no single advancement has been made at all and it's not because of the nanomachines or the Sorceror, but good old space debris. One of the many follies of the Ancients that led up to the First (the nuking of the world). Those Ancients sure made a mess of things, huh.

And I think that's about everything.