>- Rise of the Ascendants -<

[Lobos]

This is the auto-generated OOC topic for the roleplay ">- Rise of the Ascendants -<"

You may edit this first post as you see fit.

[ElRey]

I'm definitely intrigued.

Going to throw up a character sheet shortly.

EDIT: Would you mind going into a bit more detail on the more exotic races? I'm sort of up in the air on height and weight and whatnot.

EDIT PART 2: I submitted a character, sort of made a bunch of stuff up as far as size and whatnot, based on Salt Water Crocs, so yeah if he's too gigantic, just lemme know hahaha.

[Terpsichore]

Putting together a character for the Mistress of Darkness (or so she hopes)

Edit: Character submitted

[Duchessa]

Readying my own character for either the Court of Air or Light, potentially. I could just do with a bit more information on the magic system you're planning.

[Terpsichore]

I created my character, after re-reading the intro, under the idea that there are no gods/goddesses or any other the other positions filled because of a great war and therefore everyone is fighting for the positions or helping each other get what they want.

[Vio-Lance]

Awesometastic- another Cronac. We can totally say they're from different tribes...that don't nessicarily like each other. Kindly disapointed though. I have to say, I was hoping that my character would be the largest. But that's alright. He's still plenty big.

[ElRey]

Agreed. I sense potential for epic duels. Or an near unstoppable team. We'll just have to see how it breaks down.

[ElRey]

If nobody else shows interest, I'd be happy to tweak my character to be one of the flying fellows. Just so we would have a fully diverse cast. Just throwing it out there.

[Vio-Lance]

It's cool. I think we're not going to start for a while.... GM said he'd be gone untill sunday, which gives plenty of time for others to join...

Andthisroleplaytodie. What?! Who said that?!?

[Terpsichore]

Oh... that's not good. Why would you start a RP if you couldn't be on? That's like pushing a newly hatched baby bird from the nest on it's first day...

[ElRey]

We have an awesome cast of characters so far. I'm stoked.

With all these archers and magi running around I feel like I'm going to need more than a shield, lol.

[Terpsichore]

Unless the GM changes the rules for the way magic is use I'm excited for the way Lacricia's power is going to work.

Anybody up for making alliances? Give us something to do until we start.

[ElRey]

Though I'm hesitant to set anything in stone before we get underway. But I'm open to hear suggestions.

At this point, I can see both sides.
I see many reasons Le'Shaa would ally himself with either of your characters, especially if it meant furthering his own goals.
But at the same time, he's sort of got this "I'm the king of everything" mentality that I want to portray. & While Lacricia is more up his alley personality wise, I think his racist tendencies would cause him to prefer a fellow Cronac (even a rival) ascend to godhood than a mere human.

So idk, what do you guys think?

[Terpsichore]

Touche.

Lacricia is all about gathering people to help her toward her goal, makes it all he easier to step on people to get that much higher. As of now she is the only one after the Mistress of Darkness so there's not a lot of competition going on but I'm hoping for more. Haven't had an evil character in the longest time, mean and spiteful yes but not evil, so I'm rather excited.

Once things get started Lacricia can pave the road in gold for Le'Shaa to help her if you don't want to start with an alliance... though I'm getting the feeling that any alliance made is going to be more based on mutual desire to obtain power rather than getting along.

[ElRey]

Good point. Since there are so many open spots, it seems like everyone will be able to get what they want. Just a matter of how stubborn the characters are about working with others.

I'm hoping for some competition too. /fingers crossed.

[Terpsichore]

I'm good for creating another character once we get rolling but I don't want to throw another character together until I know we're going to use them. It sucks to create a character and then never have the option to use them.

[Vio-Lance]

Well, Drah is generally a good person; he's not going to maim someone just because he doesn't like him. He's got a good moral compass, just because he's spent so much time with a bad one. But if Le'Shaa didn't seem totally barbaric, and completely "I smash you face 'cause you dumb.", Then I can see Drah helping him. You have to remember that having faught in an arena all his life, he was treated as "Pit Dog". Everyone's higher on the food chain than you unless you can prove it. And since he's kinda laid back now, I don't think he'd challenge Le'Shaa to like....mortal combat or anything.

[Steppin' Razor]

I thought the ideas in this roleplay sounded interesting so was reading a little about it and the books which apparently inspired it. As Cryovizard said:

This is an interest check for an RP with HEAVY influences to a book series I'm addicted to, the Erickson 'Malazan Books of the Fallen'. Note, this is not a tribute RP to it, but if you've read them, I highly recommend that you sign up. But that of course, depends on how many of you show interest.

I was curious about the magic system myself, knowing how wild and creative (for good or ill) players can become when they have no guidelines or understanding of fundamentals. So, mostly for the heck of it, I'll provide a few links I was glancing at that discuss the world of the Malazan books. It provides a little insight onto the way magic functions in this world, how races affect access to it, etc. Obviously, Cryovizard's RP is not Malazan. It is just that it has, in his own words, heavy influences. Once you get around the wide array of sometimes overlapping jargon specific to the Malazan books it starts to make sense.

((At this point, if you are tl;dr and want to look at some of the inspiration behind Rise of the Ascendants for yourself and skip my long-winded ramblings about stuff that might not even be related to Cryovizard's RP, just skip to the very end of my post and dig around in the links for yourself. For the rest, read on.))

Oh, and the links I mentioned will be at the end of this post. While reading about races and Warrens and Holds and mortals being cursed by gods and overthrowing gods and trapping gods and gods dying or falling then rising again or vanishing and so on and so forth I finally got tired and lost my focus. So I stopped right before I got to the good bit with specifics on Malazan magic. Here are some generalities I gleaned from a wiki, however:

Warrens are the source of magic. This might be called a Warren, a Path, or a Hold, or even something else in Malazan, depending on what race you are or what sub-species of a race, or where you live. The equivalent in Rise of the Ascendants (hereafter referred to as RotA) are Paths.
Warrens are usually, quite literally, an entire separate realm with its own world(s?), own races, entire ecology and rules (I'm talking the way things work like physics, I suppose, I didn't get that deep). These may or may not be similar to or mirror the way things work and look and exist in the primary world the books take place in. There are races that actually invaded from a few of these Warren realms into the normal world the humans and whatnot live in. The way I read it was not that Warrens were some external thing you pluck magic power from, but that you access them internally, as you would a door in your mind. It requires concentration and great care, and can be utterly exhausting. The more you open one of these metaphoric doors in your mind, the more power you draw from the Warren, the more you risk exhausting yourself, harming yourself, breaking yourself mentally and losing your sanity. So it has its drawbacks, especially for the reckless. But yeah, please take that with a grain of salt and understand that is just my very limited understanding of one perspective on magic in the _books_, not this RP. But I am guessing that however it works in RotA will be fairly similar.

At a rather quick glance, the Gods in the book do seem to have some kind of structure similar to the Courts mentioned in RotA. Except there are like 10 or 15 different levels or something. I am guessing it was pared down to reduce levels of ridiculosity needed for the roleplay. I could give more insight into the relation to the courts if I'd actually spent more than--I'm being serious here--6 seconds skimming an article related to Gods in the Malazan books. I'm tired and wasn't able to concentrate. But, yeah. For what it is worth.
Also, Warrens seem to be the home of Gods, at least in some cases. I suppose they reside there and look to rule the Warrens. This would explain the tie between Gods and the Warrens. Or in the case of RotA, how a God that focused on a particular Path would hold hold supremacy within a certain Court. Or something to that effect. I've been losing my train of thought easier and easier as I type this out. I'll try to finish quickly. Another thing I forgot: In the books, some of the Warrens seem to overlap or exist in duplicate while possibly being the same realm? I don't know what is going on there. In RotA, the Paths seem refined so as to make more sense. Air is Air. Light is Light.
Also, I get the impression from the books that even though a God is pretty powerful and all, they aren't indisputably secure on their throne. Things happen. Looked like they were weaving a pretty tangled web of chaos, backstabbing, manipulations, full-on confrontation, death and rebirths, and whatwasthats? over hundreds of thousands of years.


I was going to say a couple more things but I can't even think straight anymore so here are the links. These all deal only with Malazan and will not necessarily have _anything_ to do with this roleplay. But since he went on hiatus for a few days after putting up his RP to allow it to gain awareness this might give you something to look at and ponder:
{{If you plan on reading the books, these websites are going to contain *SPOILERS*. I mean, I know it is common sense a wiki site about a book will have spoilers, but I hate when someone ruins the ending of a book I might want to read. There you go.}}

http://encyclopediamalazica.pbworks.com/ - Encyclopedia Malazica - If you want to get straight to the part that discusses magic in the Malazan world, scroll down and there are category menus on the right side of the page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen - Wikipedia - Oh, look, Wikipedia. A bunch of stuff that doesn't make sense about the Tigafluawful Widgitgidgit Adhg2i3hrsdf and all the other wacky series specific terminology I don't F'ing understand. It talks about magic a little if you scroll to the portion of Magic towards the bottom and click on Magic in the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

http://malazan.wikia.com/wiki/Malazan_Wiki - Malazan Wikia - I don't even know if there is useful information here but there might be. I didn't like its layout so I didn't look very hard.

*Edited like three times because I don't know how to use tags. Okay, I can't get url tags to work. I give up.
*Edit #2 - One typo.
*Edit #3 - Mostly unnecessary spoiler alert added with regards to external links.

[ElRey]

Nice. Thanks Razor!

[Lobos]

First off, I'm back like I said I would be. And I did not go back on my promise to get the ball rolling. ;)

The RP is officially started, feel free to begin posting whenever. My first post is already made, I'd highly recommend reading the first part if you're looking for any more backstory. Otherwise, have at it, ladies and gents!

As a sidenote, though, I would ask that you talk with your friends to see if their interested. We got a rather sad amount of joiners while I was gone, only two additional people since I left. If we can get anymore people, I'm going to still be accepting characters for a while. Possibly, characters may be accepted throughout the RP.

Comments on OOC Posts:

Elrey: I will work on those statistic things you asked about, I realized that I should have to start with. Thanks.

Steppin': Thank you for providing the basics of what I based the RP off of, it should help those that join with figuring out how everything works.

Final Words: Have at it, people! ;)