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Fantasy Magic, Dinos, and Laser Guns, oh my!

Deadwood Deer

Ten Thousand Club
Somethings about me ahead of time:
  • Be at least 18, or close to it. I don't mind RPing with minors, but that does put some restrictions on what I can say and do just by the different levels of subjects that are appropriate.
  • I am online pretty much constantly from 7-9:00 AMish EST to 11:30 PMish-1:30 AMish-the-next-day EST. I'd prefer you to be frequently active during that time as well, especially during what is my early morning, from 7:30-12:00, if at all possible. I'm looking to fill my morning slot so I'm not twiddling my thumbs while I wait for classwork to be uploaded or for other RP partners to be able to be able to respond.
  • OOC chatter is non-negotiable. I like to talk, I'd like you to like to talk. When we’re not having conversation it feels like I’m just talking at a wall that occasionally puts little cookies and hearts on my words. We don’t need to be having full on detailed conversations, but I’d like if we could occasionally just chat about stuff.
  • My post length depends on the rate of posting between us, and what you write. If we're going back and forth every couple minutes, I'll write a couple paragraphs. If we're not going back and forth like that, I'll write longer. That said, if you can’t come up with anything, don’t force yourself to write more than is necessary.
  • I firmly believe the only circumstance in an RP where it is okay to write a one-liner is when it’s pre-agreed that the RP isn’t that serious. 1 paragraph minimum for in-character shenanigans.
  • I'm a nerd. When something interests me, I research it. This includes the effects/requirements of powers or events in the story. If I have a concern about how something works, I'll look it up, and apply what research tells me to describe what happens.
  • I'm also very blunt. I don't do it on purpose, but sometimes I say things that come across the wrong way. If you are confused or something I say bothers you, say something, I'm not a telepath. If I'm not made aware that there's an issue, I can't do anything to fix the issue.
If anything above there bothers you, I'd prefer you didn't respond, everything up there are my deal breakers. Be active, be willing to have out of character conversations, be able to write posts of comparable length and good quality.

As to what I’ve come up with this time that drives me to post an interest check:

I’ve had an idea for a world, where dinosaurs, sci-fi, and medieval europe-like fantasy combine. In a world long after modern humans did the dumb thing with technology that screwed up the world and knocked us back to the stone age, the dumb thing with technology had some… let’s call it side effects. One was that dinosaurs began to appear. Another was that magic, through some quirk of how it affected stuff, became a thing, leading to humanity eventually returning to a medieval era of technology.

Big scaly lizards, big fuzzy mammals, crazy critters and odd bits of machinery that resemble and behave like animals. I call them dinos, but really I’m calling them dinos in the same way ARK: Survival Evolved does. Any prehistoric creature that’s cool fits under this banner for our purposes, as well as any fantasy creatures we insert. My only rule is that humans remain the only intelligent species on the planet.

A big old T-Rex alongside a pack of Dire Wolves. A gigantopithecus amongst a mechanical approximation of the housecat that the ancients made because they could. Stuff like that.
My idea for magic is that, instead of learning it or being born with it, you add it to yourself in the form of a tattoo. Say I want to be able to cast Fireball, then i need to tattoo Fireball onto myself. These tattoos are drawn with ink made from particular plants, which is only visible when interacting with mana. So, your skin appears bare when you’re not using magic, but you can either have your magical tattoos pigmented to always be visible, or get other non-magical tattoos done on top that won’t interfere with the design, if you want to always be able to see something as a visual reminder of where your spells are.

Each spell has a part of your body where it should go for the best usage. For example, Fireball should ideally be on the hands or forearms, so you can make and throw it. Some spells don’t have that issue. For example, if it’s a spell that adds things to something, like a support effect, then it can just be tattooed anywhere. Say I want a spell that adds elemental effects to my weapon, I can just ink that anywhere there’s space, and it won’t cause any problems.

This kind of magic comes with a trade-off, though. A, there’s limited space on your body, and spells can only be made so small before they don’t work, so what spells you can learn depends on how well you can organize, how much space is on your body, and how much you can tolerate getting inked onto you. B, in order for the spell to work, the skin it’s tattooed on, and therefore the magic ink that lets it work, needs to be exposed to open are in order to interact with mana, so even though you can theoretically cover your entire body with Spell Tats, if you want them all to work you’d have to parade around naked to use them all if you did that. You can’t wear full armor and still use the good magic, but if you use the good magic you’re physically vulnerable because you can’t cover your tats and still use magic. You can disable a mage by making them wear heavy clothing.
I like the idea of a world like in Horizon: Zero Dawn, where wreckages of the Old World are still decaying, and in some places you can find undamaged technology. Perhaps you may find a laser gun in some old ruin, or perhaps you stumble into a bunker and you find something like the Shield Weaver armor from Horizon, or maybe the Tek Armor from ARK, or a RIG suit like Dead Space. Maybe you find machines that can make weapons or bits and bobs.

Perhaps wandering the ruins of the Old World, you can find mechanical approximations of animals, like perhaps robot rats, mechanical dragonflies, a tek housecat or lapdog, that have survived because they were equipped to self repair, and machines that make them surviving long enough to continue adding to their numbers.
Within that structure, we can come up with a plot to follow and characters to play! Comment or PM me if you're interested, I'd love to have a friend or two to write with!
 
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Day 1 of Booping with Dinosaurs until someone responds:

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Raptor. Once known to the Old Ones as the Utah Raptor, over the millenia these creatures have changed in response to the environment of modern and post-Cataclysm Earth. Some of these creatures have been tamed and used as mounts. Their center of mass makes them very difficult to saddle and ride, and they have limited abiltity to carry weight. However they are quite fast, and in groups, quite deadly to small and medium sized creatures and humans in general. For this reason, they are a favored mount by hunters for their pursuit abilities, able to keep up with most prey so long as their rider does not weigh them down.

They are also used in law enforcement when speed and lethality is required, as they are able to outrun many creatures used as mounts and quite gifted leapers, able to take human riders off of even the back of a diplodocus if required, and being agile enough to dodge the stomps of large sauropods and the tails of stegosaurs.
 
Day 2 of booping with dinos until someone responds

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Cybercat. During the advancement of the old ones, experiments were undertaken in an attempt to create household pets that could defend their owners without compromising household safety. Putting a gun on the family dog probably wasn't going to work, and violated several animal rights rules, so instead mechanical engineers worked to design a machine that could near flawlessly replicate all the movements a housecat was capable of, with the addition of truly retractible razor sharp claws and fangs, and a tazing weapon in the tail. Their programming prevents them from attacking humans unprevoked, but does nothing for their hunting of small rodents such as squirrels and rats, an imitation of cat behavior that also serves to fuel their bio-batteries.

Found in most commonly near engineering labs, where the machinery that builds them still functions, many lose the synthetic skin and fur they are built with very soon without maintenance, resulting in their current appearance.
 
Day 3 of Booping with dinosaurs

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Parasaurolophus. While not a particularly fast creature, these herbivores prove quite reliable mounts. They have good ability to carry weight as a pack animal. Most commonly, parasaurolophuses are used to pull cargo carts.
 
Day 4 of Booping with Dinos (shut it I know I missed a day)

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Dilophosaurus. These therapods can't be tamed, unfortunately, though not for lack of effort. They frequent the seasonal climate at the edge of deserts, preying on smaller dinosaurs and occasionally humans if they get the chance. Travelling in small family groups from between two and ten members, sometimes these dinosaurs attack caravans, as the average human and their herbivorous beasts of burden harnessed in place make easy prey for these creatures.
 
Day 5 of Booping with Dinos

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Griffins. Descended from large predatory birds, these aerial predators are the size of a large horse, with wingspans exceeding forty feet. Unlike their mythical cousins, these birds are not some hybrid of an eagle's head, wings, and forelegs grafted onto and replacing parts of the body of a lion. Rather, these birds are much like bats, pteranodons and wyverns, in that their wings are their forelegs, complete with sharp claws to help them navigate. They possess long tails similar to that of their mythological cousins, and their hindlegs are much more muscular and like that of their mythological cousins, but that is where the visual similarities end. To remain warm in the cold mountain climate these birds are native to, their entire bodies have a thick layer of downy feathers, similar to an owl.

These aerial predators have little interest in anything smaller than a dog, except as food. These cannot be tamed, those kept in captivity and used as mounts and companions by mountain-dwelling peoples were hatched from stolen eggs and raised by humans. The feathers they shed during maturity are highly valued for making arrows, headdresses, and other items. A griffin-feather pen is a beautiful masterpiece if made from a healthy griffin's feather's by a master craftsman.
 
Boop #5 with Dinos

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Tyrannosaurus Rex. Colloquially known as a Rex by the current human inhabitants, few things are as deadly as a rex. While dilos are danger to caravans. Feral raptors are dangerous to un-walled towns. Pteranodons and argentavis threaten travellers in temporate regions, but few natural predators can rival the shear power of a tyrannosaurus. Difficult to domesticate because they don't breed in captivity, rexes do as they please with few exceptions. The only way to tame a rex is to commit 20 years of your life to stealing and hatching a rex egg, raising and training the offspring.

Females are much larger and more powerful than males. Laying up to 20 elongated eggs in a single season, with less than half of them hatching, the young stay with their mother until late adolescence. A female with young appearing in the vicinity of a town almost always marks that town's demise, even if it is walled against the pack's attacks. Hunting a rex is extremely dangerous, made nearly imposible when there are more than one in the area. Entire cities have been evacuated because of a rex pack's appearance, as their presence makes the movement of supplies, agriculture outside the walls, and living in un-walled towns exceedingly dangerous and rarely sustainable.

When a lone rex is spotted, a hunting party is launched, employing at least 15 trained soldiers to fell the beast a master hunter to track it down and find the best place to ambush it, and at least one magician who possesses and is skilled with healing spells and medicine, to keep them all alive, as well as mounts and supplies, sometimes with tamed raptors or other fighting dinos to aid the hunting party.
 
#6 Boop with Dinos

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Thunderjaw. Nobody really knows where these monstrous mechanical cousins of the Rex came from, they have appeared alongside the dinosaurs with the fall of the Old Ones. Those who delve the ruins theorize that they came first, the Old Ones attempt to replicate the beasts of the past with their mighty machinery of the present, only for the real thing to appear in the Cataclysm. Others thing that they were a response by the Old Ones to the appearance of the dinosaurs, by making their own. All that is known now to those who have delved into the subject is that the shackles of whatever controlled them are broken, and they are ruled only by the simulated brain that runs them. Supposedly, once a man was able to find an incomplete Thunderjaw, and he learned much about them, but as the thunderjaw was dismantled for metal and to produce trinkets to commemorate the finds, no one has been able to verify what the man found, and it is exceedingly dangerous to get closed to one, moreso than a Rex. The only saving grace is that these monstrous machines only seem to care about other machines from the Old Ones, avoiding inhabited human settlements unless provoked.

Heavily armed and armored, these machines prove quite resistant to what humanity currently has for weaponry. Its armor is able to resist cannon fire, while in its mouth it possesses a machine gun that fires bits of metal at high speeds, propelled by compressed air instead of black powder. On its back, it carries radar equipment, so that it can always see everything in its surroundings if it wants to. On each flank there is a disc launcher, which fires small bladed discs into the air that seek out a target, ideally a dense group of enemies, using a laser, and dive towards it, exploding in sharp shrapnel that proves capable of rending through some kinds of plate mail armor. Its tail is also bladed, and it carries in its belly a kind of fuel processed from biomass, which can be expelled from its mouth in a burst of flame.

The theorized weakness seems to be the legs, as with Rexes. If they can be tripped up, they cannot easily get back up, allowing for other efforts to be launched.
 
#7 Boop with Dinos

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Equus. It's not really clear how these ancient ancestors of modern horses came to rejoin the world, but they have, and they are well-prized as war horses, beasts of burden, and transport by many for their ease of taming and general good temperament. Few creatures were as easily harnessed by humans as these.
 
#8 Boop with Dinos

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The Brine. Mutated brine shrimp that have become carnivorous. Easily identified by the cloud of pink in the waters, these creatures only inhabit the deepest ocean waters, but occasionally swarms are washed further inland. They present real danger to organisms with noticeable electrical activity and lacking a strong hide, as when this cloud of microscopic shrimp detect that electrical activity, swarm and rip the poor creature apart piece by piece, leaving only bones. Creatures of advanced size, such as large whales, can often form some kind of symbiosis with the Brine, as the shrimp will eat the dead skin and parasites, which ultimately benefits them both, as the whale's health improves, and the Brine are fed.

Due to their danger, most sailors believe any red tint in the water, be it the water changing color reflecting the sky, or turning red from chum, draws the Brine, and don't dare come close to the waterline while it's a different color than blue.

Some researchers have figured out what Brine are, and nicknamed them "Blood Shrimp", but as with most scientific discoveries, the common folk that lack the education either reject or cannnot understand what is meant, and "blood shrimp", became a colloquial term for any aquatic creature that swam in groups to eat people, like certain sharks or piranha. Anything aquatic that can and will kill a human in a group is generally referred to as a Bllood Shrimp, even if there's nothing shrimpy about it.
 
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#9 Boop with Critters

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Pterolycus, also known as the Wolf Drake or the Winged Wolf. It's not really clear how these creatures managed to break the rule of vertebrates having four limbs, and instead having six, they share this problem with dragons. Some philosophers theorize that these creatures, as well as dragons and certain other creatures that break the rules were products of the Old Ones indiscretion when it came to their experiments. They are one of many theorized reasons why the Old Ones fell. Nature has rules, break them and you will pay for it with your life.

Standing more than twice as tall as a man at the shoulder, these massive winged wolves have a massively increased amount of muscle in the chest to enable their powered flight, on top of the chest muscles for their forelegs and breathing, to the point where vital organs hidden behind their ribcage are unreachable by any means humans have, short of a large ballista. They prey on elk and reindeer in the icy tundra, and fill the same niche as griffins. Despite being canines, they are solitary animals. One Winged Wolf can occupy a massive territory, only leaving that territory to find mates. Their fur is actually closer in structure to feathers, yet can be combed and brushed like fur if a human is brave enough. The male is larger than the female, on average.

Although some northern tribes use tamed pterolycus as mounts, taming one from the wild is exceedingly difficult. You need to find a fresh litter, young enough that they can be trained, but old enough to not die when they leave their mother's den. The pups are easily trained, as long as they are raised with care, and like all dogs are exceedingly loyal, but the wild mother is not going to let you just walk out of her den with one of her puppies. One of the earliest experiences of any wild-tamed Wolf Drake is watching the battle between the tribesmen coming to claim the litter and the mother trying to defend her pups. This does not end well for the mother if the humans are successful. Not only are winged wolves prized mounts, but their pelts are highly prized for furs, but their blood is mixed with Spell Ink to fortify it, and their teeth are used for needles to install those spells. Their meat is tough, but when smoked into jerky does not spoil, and in fact some reports state that the jerky can still be used for stew years after the creature was killed, even if it is not stored properly, so long as pests don't soil the meat.
 
#10 Boop with critters

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Stegosaurus. The large plates on the back of a stegosaurus do many things. They let the stego radiate heat away, they protect from predators trying to get at their back, they change color for intimidation as blood flow increases during stress, and in the case of stegos used by humans, their plates provide natural armor from small predatory dinos annd arrow fire from the side, making these dinos ideal for guard patrols in areas with a low population of large predators.

Their tail spikes are also an excellent natural weapon. In many cases, when a stego dies, the tail spikes are saved and used to make spears and ballista bolts, as nature made them sharper than humans could sharpen a spike.
 
#11 Boop with Critters

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Meganeura. These giant dragonflies betray something about Earth's new atmospheric composition. The volume of oxygen in the air is much greater than it was in the time of the Old Ones, allowing such large insects as these to exist. Residing primarily in swamps and on the edge of open plains, meganeura have a typical dragonfly diet, consisting of mostly other insects. If the adult bug happes to find a recent corpse lying around, however, they will pursue that larger piece of meat. If they are in sufficient numbers near that carcass, then they will defend it if they can. The jaws of a dragonfly, while very tiny on a normal bug, when scaled up to this size are quite painful and can do significant damage.
 
#12 Boop with Critters

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Direwolves. In ancient history, direwolves were barely larger than the Grey Wolves. But the Old Ones tinkered with forces they didn't understand, so the story goes, and brought them back. Bigger, meaner, more powerful, faster. More deadly. Now the size of a grizzly bear, direwolves roam the wilderess in familial packs ranging in size from a single parent couple and a litter of up to six all the way up into the fifties over successive generations. These packs are led by the eldest wolves, the matriarch and patriarch of the pack, and can occupy territory spanning over a hundred square miles (Over 161 km for my friends across the pond!). They hunt large prey, such as mastodons in the north, herds of deer and elk, herbivorous dinosaurs, and even certain small carnivores.

While a lone human makes easy prey, and even small groups of even the best armed soldiers can be brought down, these creatures have learned over the millenia that humans are to be avoided. They may kill one group of hunters, but unlike rexes or dragons, any town on the frontier can easily prepare to kill some big dogs. They will attack humans that encroach on their territory, and they may even kill and eat humans they find on the frontier, but when the walls go up, the wolves go away. If you are ever in the woods, and you see pawprints the size of dinner plates that are less than a week old, they're still in the area. And if the entire forest goes silent, they're hunting, and you are on the menu.

As with all canines, it is highly unadvised to ever allow one sight of your back. It probably won't save you if you're alone, but if you're close to a village there are almost definitely hunters seeking these wolves out, and any time you can buy yourself by not making yourself appear vulnerable is time that may lead to your rescue.

These wolves are actually the origin of some breeds of dog humans currently use, through domestication similar to how humans tamed wolves all those millenia ago. If you ever come across a mastiff the size of a horse, or a puppy the size of a child, you know you are looking at a Dire breed. The pelt of a direwolf, if well treated and cared for, makes for incredibly soft fur, and is prized for rugs, decorations, clothing, and even saddle blankets in northern territories.
 
#13 Boop with Critters

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Mosasaurus. These large marine reptiles hunt small whales, squid, and crustaceans. They generally avoid anything larger than themselves, as their mobility in the water is actually quite low for their size. They have trouble making lateral turns due to the inflexibility of their abdomen. Their powerful jaws can rend flesh with relative ease, and they continue growing throughout their entire lives. There doesn't seem to be a limit on how big they can actually become, outside of their ability to find non-toxic food. Once they reach a certain size, the volume of prey that is worth hunting that isn't toxic shrinks for some time, and does not grow again until another, presently unknown, size threshhold is surpassed, which results in the largest size most mosasaurs reach being somewhere in the region of thirty meters long.

Reportedly, at least one Mosasaur, known as the Big One to sailors, has managed to survive for so long and grow so large that it can even attack ships, with jaws capable of biting them in half. Such a creature hasn't been verified. But then... no ship that's gonne searching for the beast has ever returned. Dead men tell no tales.
 
#14 Boop with Critters

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Fire Wyvern. Nobody really knows how wyverns are connected to dragons. Some theorize that they are young dragon spawn, as no one has ever seen a dragon nest and lived, but wyvern nests are often found in regions where there are dragons. Fire wyverns in particular seem to have a special connection to their draconic friends that live in volcanic regions, their eggs are often found near lava flows.

Wyverns in actuality are only related to dragons. Fire Wyverns are the most closely related, as they share the elemental ability of fire, but Ice, Lightning, and Poison Wyverns are still related.

Wyverns aren't intelligent enough to be trained. They are, for all intents and purposes, big, dumb, hungry, angry lizards with wings that breathe fire. Large and fast enough to snatch a horse off the ground and kill it before the horse realizes what's happened, the only way to deal with wyverns is to use anti-flyer weaponry like ballistae to discourage their flight near certain areas. Like any animal, when bad things happen in an area, they're going to avoid that area, because no one wants bad things to happen.
 
#15 Boop with Critters

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Megatherium, the giant ground sloth. These giant sloths are usually quite peaceful, and avoid humans in the wild. When bred in captivity, however, they are quite useful for travel in wet, swampy regions. Able to subsist on a diet of plants and insects, they are also excellently equipped to deal with the large insects inhabiting those areas, as they are hardwired to be hostile towards anything that makes a buzzing or chittering noise.
 
#16 Boop with Critters

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Carbonemys. Giant turtles, native to swampy regions. They eat both plant matter and freshwater shellfish, ad they make a good stew, too!
 
#17 Boop with Critters

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Ice Wyvern. Closely related to the Fire Wyvernn, the Ice Wyvern lives in the frozen tundras of the icy north, competing with pterolycus in the far north for food and territory. It's not uncommon that when the local pterolycus has been killed that ice wyverns will move in, taking an icy peak to build their nests in tunnels dug into the ice. Although they bear the name "Ice Wyvern", they do not expel ice like their volcanic cousins. Rather, Ice Wyverns carry within their throats a set of organs that produce chemicals, creating different reactions. They can expell hot steam to melt ice or boil prey alive, or a supercooled mist to freeze. Their entire bodies are covered in a light coat of fur to help insulate against the frosty chill of their native environment.
 
#18 Boop with Dinos

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Lightning Wyvern. Related to fire and ice wyverns, no one really knows where these ones nest. Supposedly, there's a part of the world constantly having lightning storms, and that's where these creatures reside, as they seem to be attracted to electrical activity. They are one of the few dinos that can get along with the Old Ones machines, as they can somehow manipulate electricity with their bodies, rendering themselves invisible to machine beasts.
 

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