Post by Aleu on Nov 26, 2007 14:18:20 GMT -6
IT'S ALIVE!
At P-chan's subtle prodding, I've brought this back. Same as before, except with double the beef and it WILL be active. I've also spruced up the details to make it more readable.
Please ask any questions about the setting here. I may have left some things out, maybe I didn't.
"Did you know that there's two worlds: one above, and one below?" The pale, green-haired girl swings a leg idly over the side of the skyscraper on which she sits. She turns her eyes away from you and peers downwards over the edge. Following her gaze, you see the building stretch down, and then abruptly end in a solid wall of blackness. "No one above knows anything about the ones below. No one below knows anything about the ones above." She stands up and spins slowly on the very edge of the building, arms spread and face turned towards the gray clouds above. "Nor does anyone know who built these towers, nor why the black Veil splits into the Below and the Above." She drops her arms and faces you again. "A bit of a puzzle, no? It's just the way things are."
She stops her monologue for now, and casts an eye over your surroundings. Around you stretch an endless series of flat rooftops, covered in gravel, small metal structures, and the black flakes falling from the sky. No two are the same height: some are low enough to nearly touch the Veil, others pierce the gray clouds above. A myriad collection of ladders connect the high and the low, and rickety bridges spread between the far apart.
"It falls every day," she says, catching a few black specks in her hand. "The ash, I mean. They call it 'lith.'" She turned her hand over, letting the black ash slide off and onto the ground. "It gets everywhere and sticks to living things, like people or the creatures that roam around here." She catches the look in your eyes, and grins a little, amused. "There's more than a bit of strange fauna up here. But it's not really them you have to watch out for." She steps closer, balancing easily upon the edge. The smile on her face has an air of menace, and you see a touch of madness glow in the red of her eyes.
"It's those like me." She vanishes from sight, and you catch a glimpse of her green hair as she falls, then fades, into the Veil.
Logistics. Most of this is important
Setting is about the same as the normal world: dragons and such aren't hanging around but the creatures that do sneak around aren't exactly what you'd call normal either. Think possessed critters, and you'll be close the mark.
The world consists of nothing but the top half or quarter of buildings. People live here and grow some small plants, but because of near total cloud cover, they don't get very big or healthy. The total population is very small, concentrated in little towns that span over about ten rooftops. They're generally pretty close-packed, no more than five miles apart or so. The whole of the rooftop world is about 20 verst x 20 verst.
General:
Time is measured in five units: the stroke, the spin, the dark whirl (or just "whirl"), the ring, and great ring. There are one hundred strokes to the spin, one hundred spins to the whirl, one hundred whirls to the ring, and one hundred rings to the great ring. A stroke is about 3 seconds. In terms of measurement relative to what we're familiar with, the closest I can come up with is:
Stroke ~= 3 seconds
Spin ~= 5 minutes
Whirl ~= 8 hours (the time one individual spends asleep)
Ring ~= 1 month
Great Ring ~= 8 years
Date is measured with 3 numbers. Whirl/Ring/Great Ring. Each number except for the Great Ring is between 0 and 100. The current date is 87/97/11. No one knows exactly what 0/0/0 was.
Units are length are the hand (~10cm), wal (200 hand to the wal), and verst (500 wal to the verst). As a reference, 1 wal ~= 2 metres, and 1 verst ~= 1 kilometre.
The center of the "world" is an enormous tower, that stands more than a hundred wal high, including the spire. Its surface is scorched all over, earning its name: the "Black Line." The home of our characters, the settlement of Ellus, is about three verst north and about a half west of the Black Line. The characters have no sense of north/west/etc though.
Geography:
There is some ambient lighting, which peeks through the gray clouds above. It simply filters through as a kind of dull glow, as the cloud cover never breaks.
As I said, the world consists of only the tops of buildings, which range from almost level with the Veil to more than a hundred wal high. All of them are badly burned, but have very little actual damage to the structure. Some of these look like they used to have writing on them, but it's either been scorched away or otherwise unreadable.
The buildings do have doors, but if one is opened, all that is visible inside is a black mist, like that of the Veil.
The lith falling from the sky is non-toxic, but can only be removed with fire, or by touching it with a stone marked with the name of a dead person (this is called a "deadstone"), and his or her date of death. After treatment by either method, the affected lith never sticks again.
Characters:
All the characters are assumed to be members of the same "town" of Ellus. Ellus is one of the larger towns, spread across at least fifteen different rooftops and including about a hundred people.
Within the larger towns are craftsmen are artisans, who work with whatever bits and pieces of buildings they can find or break off to make tools and weapons to fend off the animals. They only create melee weapons. Pistols and other firearms are sometimes found on rooftops, but this is extremely rare. There have only been two cases of this, and those have occurred on the fringes of the world's limits.
The people of the city are all given jobs, which are shifted bi-weekly. Hunters, Cleaners, and Messenger are but a few of the myriad functions that each townsman is expected to be able to carry out.
Food generally comes in the form of animals roaming the rooftops, whose meat is lethally toxic unless cooked at high temperatures. Some people claim that these creatures can move through the Veil, but this has not been confirmed.
Technology and Magic:
There is no advanced technology nor electricity. Some fusions of magic and tech exist, however (see below)
Magic is a limited art, being a fairly recent discovery (no more than five Great Rings / 40 years ago). However, human ingenuity propelled it along rather quickly, and spells are generally myriad and moderately powerful. (Think of it as like progressed along to the level of "Fire 2" or "Fira," and while the potential for "Fire 3" and "Firaga" exist, it is generally unheard-of (though I may approve a character specially adept at magic who has access to such spells))
Transformational magic is available though very buggy. It's hideously difficult to make it work reliably (this is what happened to Serene).
Magitech is allowed on a steampunk-ish level. Stuff like Senith's mechanical wings are examples of what is allowed (and relatively common, as many rooftops are far out of reach). However, robots, computers, and such are not permissible :3
Please repost all characters. Please exclude the "Race," "Class," and "History" parts from your profile. The old thread is just a little bit down, so you can copy/paste from there if you like. All questions should be asked here. Thanks!
At P-chan's subtle prodding, I've brought this back. Same as before, except with double the beef and it WILL be active. I've also spruced up the details to make it more readable.
Please ask any questions about the setting here. I may have left some things out, maybe I didn't.
"Did you know that there's two worlds: one above, and one below?" The pale, green-haired girl swings a leg idly over the side of the skyscraper on which she sits. She turns her eyes away from you and peers downwards over the edge. Following her gaze, you see the building stretch down, and then abruptly end in a solid wall of blackness. "No one above knows anything about the ones below. No one below knows anything about the ones above." She stands up and spins slowly on the very edge of the building, arms spread and face turned towards the gray clouds above. "Nor does anyone know who built these towers, nor why the black Veil splits into the Below and the Above." She drops her arms and faces you again. "A bit of a puzzle, no? It's just the way things are."
She stops her monologue for now, and casts an eye over your surroundings. Around you stretch an endless series of flat rooftops, covered in gravel, small metal structures, and the black flakes falling from the sky. No two are the same height: some are low enough to nearly touch the Veil, others pierce the gray clouds above. A myriad collection of ladders connect the high and the low, and rickety bridges spread between the far apart.
"It falls every day," she says, catching a few black specks in her hand. "The ash, I mean. They call it 'lith.'" She turned her hand over, letting the black ash slide off and onto the ground. "It gets everywhere and sticks to living things, like people or the creatures that roam around here." She catches the look in your eyes, and grins a little, amused. "There's more than a bit of strange fauna up here. But it's not really them you have to watch out for." She steps closer, balancing easily upon the edge. The smile on her face has an air of menace, and you see a touch of madness glow in the red of her eyes.
"It's those like me." She vanishes from sight, and you catch a glimpse of her green hair as she falls, then fades, into the Veil.
Logistics. Most of this is important
Setting is about the same as the normal world: dragons and such aren't hanging around but the creatures that do sneak around aren't exactly what you'd call normal either. Think possessed critters, and you'll be close the mark.
The world consists of nothing but the top half or quarter of buildings. People live here and grow some small plants, but because of near total cloud cover, they don't get very big or healthy. The total population is very small, concentrated in little towns that span over about ten rooftops. They're generally pretty close-packed, no more than five miles apart or so. The whole of the rooftop world is about 20 verst x 20 verst.
General:
Time is measured in five units: the stroke, the spin, the dark whirl (or just "whirl"), the ring, and great ring. There are one hundred strokes to the spin, one hundred spins to the whirl, one hundred whirls to the ring, and one hundred rings to the great ring. A stroke is about 3 seconds. In terms of measurement relative to what we're familiar with, the closest I can come up with is:
Stroke ~= 3 seconds
Spin ~= 5 minutes
Whirl ~= 8 hours (the time one individual spends asleep)
Ring ~= 1 month
Great Ring ~= 8 years
Date is measured with 3 numbers. Whirl/Ring/Great Ring. Each number except for the Great Ring is between 0 and 100. The current date is 87/97/11. No one knows exactly what 0/0/0 was.
Units are length are the hand (~10cm), wal (200 hand to the wal), and verst (500 wal to the verst). As a reference, 1 wal ~= 2 metres, and 1 verst ~= 1 kilometre.
The center of the "world" is an enormous tower, that stands more than a hundred wal high, including the spire. Its surface is scorched all over, earning its name: the "Black Line." The home of our characters, the settlement of Ellus, is about three verst north and about a half west of the Black Line. The characters have no sense of north/west/etc though.
Geography:
There is some ambient lighting, which peeks through the gray clouds above. It simply filters through as a kind of dull glow, as the cloud cover never breaks.
As I said, the world consists of only the tops of buildings, which range from almost level with the Veil to more than a hundred wal high. All of them are badly burned, but have very little actual damage to the structure. Some of these look like they used to have writing on them, but it's either been scorched away or otherwise unreadable.
The buildings do have doors, but if one is opened, all that is visible inside is a black mist, like that of the Veil.
The lith falling from the sky is non-toxic, but can only be removed with fire, or by touching it with a stone marked with the name of a dead person (this is called a "deadstone"), and his or her date of death. After treatment by either method, the affected lith never sticks again.
Characters:
All the characters are assumed to be members of the same "town" of Ellus. Ellus is one of the larger towns, spread across at least fifteen different rooftops and including about a hundred people.
Within the larger towns are craftsmen are artisans, who work with whatever bits and pieces of buildings they can find or break off to make tools and weapons to fend off the animals. They only create melee weapons. Pistols and other firearms are sometimes found on rooftops, but this is extremely rare. There have only been two cases of this, and those have occurred on the fringes of the world's limits.
The people of the city are all given jobs, which are shifted bi-weekly. Hunters, Cleaners, and Messenger are but a few of the myriad functions that each townsman is expected to be able to carry out.
Food generally comes in the form of animals roaming the rooftops, whose meat is lethally toxic unless cooked at high temperatures. Some people claim that these creatures can move through the Veil, but this has not been confirmed.
Technology and Magic:
There is no advanced technology nor electricity. Some fusions of magic and tech exist, however (see below)
Magic is a limited art, being a fairly recent discovery (no more than five Great Rings / 40 years ago). However, human ingenuity propelled it along rather quickly, and spells are generally myriad and moderately powerful. (Think of it as like progressed along to the level of "Fire 2" or "Fira," and while the potential for "Fire 3" and "Firaga" exist, it is generally unheard-of (though I may approve a character specially adept at magic who has access to such spells))
Transformational magic is available though very buggy. It's hideously difficult to make it work reliably (this is what happened to Serene).
Magitech is allowed on a steampunk-ish level. Stuff like Senith's mechanical wings are examples of what is allowed (and relatively common, as many rooftops are far out of reach). However, robots, computers, and such are not permissible :3
Please repost all characters. Please exclude the "Race," "Class," and "History" parts from your profile. The old thread is just a little bit down, so you can copy/paste from there if you like. All questions should be asked here. Thanks!