Opinionated
09-16-2007, 03:09 PM
STORY
Centuries ago, in the Homeplane, sorcerers discovered the means to travel to other worlds, called ‘Planes’.
Traveling from Plane to Plane requires the use of a Planesmaster, a highly trained person who’s devoted their life to providing the means to cross the boundaries between the Planes. Without them, there would be no inter-Planar travel at all.
Many of these planes resemble the Homeplane, or environments of the Homeplane. There’s Tartarus, the fiery volcano world, the pillar-world of Hern-Teol, the vast oceans of Acwa-Costoe, to name but a few.
Regardless of terrain, virtually all of these planes were colonized during the Great Migration of the human race. Gradually the discovery of new planes has leveled off to less than a trickle of the former rate.
A few months ago, a Planesmaster by the name of Loenard Valeroi discovered a new world. A dead one. The sky was cloudy and gray, with only a trickle of sunlight coming through. The earth was dead, only a few withered shrubs clung to life. There was no trace of anything living except for empty cities.
The records that survived hinted at the use of a great power source used throughout the Plane, a world resource. Such a power would bring great wealth to the Plane that possessed it.
Loenard joined forces with a rich private merchant by the name of Richese Briers to create teams to explorers to set up a base camp and search for more ruins. Loenard concluded from his research that the secret of the power was contained in three books, and some kind of artifact. The first book was in the city that he had traveled to in his initial journey. The last two and the artifact were apparently in fortresses dotted across the land.
Airships, the lighter than air specialties of Hern-Teol were brought in to search. One of the castles was found. The team that was sent to investigate it never returned. A second expiditon was sent. Only the airship pilot returned, bringing stories of horrible creatures that swarmed around the party members as they approached the book.
Richese decided on a new plan: Send teams of expendable mercenaries and treasure hunters into the castles instead. Bulletins went out across the Planes, seeking mercenaries to apply for "Merchandise Retrieval" with Richese Enterprises.
Universe Information
A Note on Planes:
Players can exercise their creativity and make their own Planes for their character to be from. Just post a paragraph or two summarizing your Plane and it’s culture. Also, if you think your character sounds like it came from a Plane another person posted, I declare a blanket permission to use that as your Plane of Origin, so long as you use it in a respectful manner. Don’t go rewriting the history of a player-created Plane that’s not yours. Also, these planes are not mystical in origin. They can be named after mythical realms(Valhalla, so forth), but they are not magical in any way.
Technology in the RP:
Airships: Airships are lighter than air aircraft, and have become more or less the most popular mode of transportation in the Planes. A large gasbag holds up the gondola of the craft, which is propelled by a propeller system powered from a magic source within the craft. Though you can buy parts of an airship(Ropes, gasbag, gondolas, ect.) in other planes, the artisans of Hern-Teol maintain a tight monopoly on airship engines.
Firearms: Firearms have not quite yet overtaken bows as the preferred form of distance killing, primarily due to deep-rooted traditions and the large amount of skilled archers still alive, but advances have been made. All firearms are flintlocks. Paper cartridges that hold a preset amount of gunpowder have been reliably proven. Reliable breech loading mechanisms have been made, but take more training than muzzle loading and are more complicated to produce, so roughly 80% of all firearms are muzzle-loaders. Rifling has also been discovered.
Magic:
Magic, simply put, only exists in objects imbued with it and Planesmasters. Planesmasters, through a combination of their will and life force, can move objects through the voids between Planes. Talented Planesmasters can either travel with the transported objects to the destination, or just stay in the starting Plane. By using that same force and will, they can imbue objects with magic, but there are few uses for this outside of powering Airships, due to the fact that magically imbued objects can easily release their magic in the form of an explosion. Airship pilots stress the need for a smooth landing. And if the stone you're using is defective... it takes even less force to destablize them. These risks in mind, it's generally a bad idea to use magically imbued things for any task were safter alternatives exist. Aside from Planestravel and airship power, there are no other uses for magic and no one who uses magic for any other purpose.
GM NOTE: No player characters will be allowed as Planesmasters without PMing me beforehand.
Sample Planes:
Gahouren: As far as terrain goes, Gahouren is a flat, plains filled Plane with extremely fertile soil. Professional chefs swear by Gahouren produce. Being primarily farmers, it’s people are well-behaved and kind to strangers, though gangs of bandits become more prevalent the farther you go from the developed cities.
Hern-Teol: Hern-Teol, often called the Pillar-World, can be summarized as ‘vertical.’ Ancient events brought up towering mesas clawing far into the sky. It’s people mostly live in cliff dwellings, saving the flat tops for farmland. Due to its nature, it’s little wonder airships were perfected here. Most of the land is owned by the nobility, who also harshly regulate the trade, which fosters smugglers.
Tartarus: Tartarus is a world dominated by volcanoes and lava flows. A few attempts to settle it failed to find any stable area to build a city. Thusly, there is no such thing as living permanently on Tartarus. People only come for at most a week to collect nutrient-rich ash to export to other Planes.
Acwe-Costoe: Acwe-Costoe’s landmass can be best described as a large island chain. Most people survive a diet of fish and fruit, and selling those fish off-Plane. Almost every native of Acwe-Costoe has sailing experience; most have their own canoe.
Character Sheets & Sample Characters
Character Sheet:
Name:
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname:
Age:
Plane of birth:
Appearance:
Weapon 1: (If your character is an archer, this is their bow)
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2:
Personality:
Biography:
Airship pilot: [YES or NO](It’s not necessary to be an airship pilot.)
Sample[My]Characters:
Name: Tyrol Saulan
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname: None.
Age: 41
Plane of birth: Gahouren.
Appearance: Fairly tall and well muscled, but a little on the thin side. His hair is black and hangs untidily down to his shoulders. His eyes are an emerald shade of green. He usually wears a dark brown leather duster.
Weapon 1: A naginata-style spear with a sheath for the blade.
[OPTIONAL] Weapon 2: A katar that hangs from a shoulder-to-waist strap.
Biography: Tyrol led, for the most part, a normal childhood, and hardly dreamed of becoming a fighter. He actually wanted to grow up and become a priest. But, one of the village militia shoved a spear in his hands and told him to fight with it, which Tyrol did well. With a lot of self-training and teaching, Tyrol became a force of nature with his naginata. There were a few large struggles that highlighted his career, but then he sank out of the limelight. The part of his life once filled with battle and glory is starting to fill with drink. He sees this job as his last great achievement before he becomes another drunk old veteran, sitting in a tavern all day and unloading everything about the ‘good old days’ to anyone with ears.
Personality: Pretty rough and quite sarcastic. He can be brutally honest about what he thinks at times, making him somewhat difficult to get along with.
Airship pilot: No
Name: Cormic Hauges
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname: Airman.
Age: 56
Plane of birth: Hern-Teol
Appearance: Average height and thin. Most of the color in his hair is gone, and what’s left is a light brown in color. His eyes are a nondescript brown, but he wears tinted glasses so often that it’s doubtful you’ll see them.
Weapon 1: A rifle that hangs from the gun rack above the main window of his airship’s cockpit.
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2: A survival knife.
Personality: Cormic is a chatterbox. He’s full of stories about his travels, his late wife, children, grandchildren, and everything else he can think of. He’s also very untidy and very unorganized. He has nearly all the controls labeled in his ship, but not all labeled in the same language. He’s far from the courageous, adventurous type.
Biography: Cormic was born on Hern-Teol, and almost immediately joined his family in the black market shipping business, dodging Dragonrider patrols. He’s literally been flying since he was a child. Eventually, he earned enough money to buy the immigration fees for his fiancée, his son, and himself. He established himself in legitimate shipping, and never looked back on Hern-Teol. Time passed, his children grew up and moved out, his wife died peacefully, and he kept working. Known to be one of the best in the business, a representative from Richese’s company approached him about the job.
Airship pilot: Yes
Name: Loenard Valeroi
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname: None.
Age: 31
Plane of birth: Kolob
Appearance: Loenard is not tall, but neither short. His light brown hair hangs down just to his shoulders. A goatee circles his lips and is the exact same color.
Weapon 1: A small, easy to hide pistol he stashes in his robes.
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2: None.
Personality: Loenard is a flirt, liar procrastinator, gambler, and possesses a knack always delivering enough to save his skin at the last second. Other than that, he’s quite charming.
Biography: Loenard primarily gained entry into the Planesmaster academy through his charm. He passed using all his talents, consistently disappointing annoyed instructors while brightening the days of several of his female classmates. He passed with enough honors to noticed, but not enough to be guaranteed a good job. He was working as a Planesmaster in a back-country, second hand Planestravel Office on Kolob that was frequented by those people who can’t afford to stop in the cities. It was a pitiful job, and Loenard quickly learned how to do just enough work to stay hired. In the free time he took from the office, he accidentally shifted himself to the Lifeless Plane, and began the chain of events that led to the mercenaries being hired.
Airship pilot: No.
Centuries ago, in the Homeplane, sorcerers discovered the means to travel to other worlds, called ‘Planes’.
Traveling from Plane to Plane requires the use of a Planesmaster, a highly trained person who’s devoted their life to providing the means to cross the boundaries between the Planes. Without them, there would be no inter-Planar travel at all.
Many of these planes resemble the Homeplane, or environments of the Homeplane. There’s Tartarus, the fiery volcano world, the pillar-world of Hern-Teol, the vast oceans of Acwa-Costoe, to name but a few.
Regardless of terrain, virtually all of these planes were colonized during the Great Migration of the human race. Gradually the discovery of new planes has leveled off to less than a trickle of the former rate.
A few months ago, a Planesmaster by the name of Loenard Valeroi discovered a new world. A dead one. The sky was cloudy and gray, with only a trickle of sunlight coming through. The earth was dead, only a few withered shrubs clung to life. There was no trace of anything living except for empty cities.
The records that survived hinted at the use of a great power source used throughout the Plane, a world resource. Such a power would bring great wealth to the Plane that possessed it.
Loenard joined forces with a rich private merchant by the name of Richese Briers to create teams to explorers to set up a base camp and search for more ruins. Loenard concluded from his research that the secret of the power was contained in three books, and some kind of artifact. The first book was in the city that he had traveled to in his initial journey. The last two and the artifact were apparently in fortresses dotted across the land.
Airships, the lighter than air specialties of Hern-Teol were brought in to search. One of the castles was found. The team that was sent to investigate it never returned. A second expiditon was sent. Only the airship pilot returned, bringing stories of horrible creatures that swarmed around the party members as they approached the book.
Richese decided on a new plan: Send teams of expendable mercenaries and treasure hunters into the castles instead. Bulletins went out across the Planes, seeking mercenaries to apply for "Merchandise Retrieval" with Richese Enterprises.
Universe Information
A Note on Planes:
Players can exercise their creativity and make their own Planes for their character to be from. Just post a paragraph or two summarizing your Plane and it’s culture. Also, if you think your character sounds like it came from a Plane another person posted, I declare a blanket permission to use that as your Plane of Origin, so long as you use it in a respectful manner. Don’t go rewriting the history of a player-created Plane that’s not yours. Also, these planes are not mystical in origin. They can be named after mythical realms(Valhalla, so forth), but they are not magical in any way.
Technology in the RP:
Airships: Airships are lighter than air aircraft, and have become more or less the most popular mode of transportation in the Planes. A large gasbag holds up the gondola of the craft, which is propelled by a propeller system powered from a magic source within the craft. Though you can buy parts of an airship(Ropes, gasbag, gondolas, ect.) in other planes, the artisans of Hern-Teol maintain a tight monopoly on airship engines.
Firearms: Firearms have not quite yet overtaken bows as the preferred form of distance killing, primarily due to deep-rooted traditions and the large amount of skilled archers still alive, but advances have been made. All firearms are flintlocks. Paper cartridges that hold a preset amount of gunpowder have been reliably proven. Reliable breech loading mechanisms have been made, but take more training than muzzle loading and are more complicated to produce, so roughly 80% of all firearms are muzzle-loaders. Rifling has also been discovered.
Magic:
Magic, simply put, only exists in objects imbued with it and Planesmasters. Planesmasters, through a combination of their will and life force, can move objects through the voids between Planes. Talented Planesmasters can either travel with the transported objects to the destination, or just stay in the starting Plane. By using that same force and will, they can imbue objects with magic, but there are few uses for this outside of powering Airships, due to the fact that magically imbued objects can easily release their magic in the form of an explosion. Airship pilots stress the need for a smooth landing. And if the stone you're using is defective... it takes even less force to destablize them. These risks in mind, it's generally a bad idea to use magically imbued things for any task were safter alternatives exist. Aside from Planestravel and airship power, there are no other uses for magic and no one who uses magic for any other purpose.
GM NOTE: No player characters will be allowed as Planesmasters without PMing me beforehand.
Sample Planes:
Gahouren: As far as terrain goes, Gahouren is a flat, plains filled Plane with extremely fertile soil. Professional chefs swear by Gahouren produce. Being primarily farmers, it’s people are well-behaved and kind to strangers, though gangs of bandits become more prevalent the farther you go from the developed cities.
Hern-Teol: Hern-Teol, often called the Pillar-World, can be summarized as ‘vertical.’ Ancient events brought up towering mesas clawing far into the sky. It’s people mostly live in cliff dwellings, saving the flat tops for farmland. Due to its nature, it’s little wonder airships were perfected here. Most of the land is owned by the nobility, who also harshly regulate the trade, which fosters smugglers.
Tartarus: Tartarus is a world dominated by volcanoes and lava flows. A few attempts to settle it failed to find any stable area to build a city. Thusly, there is no such thing as living permanently on Tartarus. People only come for at most a week to collect nutrient-rich ash to export to other Planes.
Acwe-Costoe: Acwe-Costoe’s landmass can be best described as a large island chain. Most people survive a diet of fish and fruit, and selling those fish off-Plane. Almost every native of Acwe-Costoe has sailing experience; most have their own canoe.
Character Sheets & Sample Characters
Character Sheet:
Name:
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname:
Age:
Plane of birth:
Appearance:
Weapon 1: (If your character is an archer, this is their bow)
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2:
Personality:
Biography:
Airship pilot: [YES or NO](It’s not necessary to be an airship pilot.)
Sample[My]Characters:
Name: Tyrol Saulan
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname: None.
Age: 41
Plane of birth: Gahouren.
Appearance: Fairly tall and well muscled, but a little on the thin side. His hair is black and hangs untidily down to his shoulders. His eyes are an emerald shade of green. He usually wears a dark brown leather duster.
Weapon 1: A naginata-style spear with a sheath for the blade.
[OPTIONAL] Weapon 2: A katar that hangs from a shoulder-to-waist strap.
Biography: Tyrol led, for the most part, a normal childhood, and hardly dreamed of becoming a fighter. He actually wanted to grow up and become a priest. But, one of the village militia shoved a spear in his hands and told him to fight with it, which Tyrol did well. With a lot of self-training and teaching, Tyrol became a force of nature with his naginata. There were a few large struggles that highlighted his career, but then he sank out of the limelight. The part of his life once filled with battle and glory is starting to fill with drink. He sees this job as his last great achievement before he becomes another drunk old veteran, sitting in a tavern all day and unloading everything about the ‘good old days’ to anyone with ears.
Personality: Pretty rough and quite sarcastic. He can be brutally honest about what he thinks at times, making him somewhat difficult to get along with.
Airship pilot: No
Name: Cormic Hauges
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname: Airman.
Age: 56
Plane of birth: Hern-Teol
Appearance: Average height and thin. Most of the color in his hair is gone, and what’s left is a light brown in color. His eyes are a nondescript brown, but he wears tinted glasses so often that it’s doubtful you’ll see them.
Weapon 1: A rifle that hangs from the gun rack above the main window of his airship’s cockpit.
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2: A survival knife.
Personality: Cormic is a chatterbox. He’s full of stories about his travels, his late wife, children, grandchildren, and everything else he can think of. He’s also very untidy and very unorganized. He has nearly all the controls labeled in his ship, but not all labeled in the same language. He’s far from the courageous, adventurous type.
Biography: Cormic was born on Hern-Teol, and almost immediately joined his family in the black market shipping business, dodging Dragonrider patrols. He’s literally been flying since he was a child. Eventually, he earned enough money to buy the immigration fees for his fiancée, his son, and himself. He established himself in legitimate shipping, and never looked back on Hern-Teol. Time passed, his children grew up and moved out, his wife died peacefully, and he kept working. Known to be one of the best in the business, a representative from Richese’s company approached him about the job.
Airship pilot: Yes
Name: Loenard Valeroi
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname: None.
Age: 31
Plane of birth: Kolob
Appearance: Loenard is not tall, but neither short. His light brown hair hangs down just to his shoulders. A goatee circles his lips and is the exact same color.
Weapon 1: A small, easy to hide pistol he stashes in his robes.
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2: None.
Personality: Loenard is a flirt, liar procrastinator, gambler, and possesses a knack always delivering enough to save his skin at the last second. Other than that, he’s quite charming.
Biography: Loenard primarily gained entry into the Planesmaster academy through his charm. He passed using all his talents, consistently disappointing annoyed instructors while brightening the days of several of his female classmates. He passed with enough honors to noticed, but not enough to be guaranteed a good job. He was working as a Planesmaster in a back-country, second hand Planestravel Office on Kolob that was frequented by those people who can’t afford to stop in the cities. It was a pitiful job, and Loenard quickly learned how to do just enough work to stay hired. In the free time he took from the office, he accidentally shifted himself to the Lifeless Plane, and began the chain of events that led to the mercenaries being hired.
Airship pilot: No.