B/C IT city of a distant sun ✦ info links up

[livun]

NEWS
2012.02.06 ✦ Guild info section is up. MASSIVE TEXT WALLS LOL This is only a reference & no one is required to read it, and at this time portions of it are still under construction. If anyone notices any mistakes/inconsistencies/nonsensical stuff, or just has questions, feel free to ask; I don't mind answering.

2012.02.02 ✦ Thread is still under construction, but open to posts.

CONTENTS
rules & info ✦ setting ✦ factions ✦ stages ✦ pet: spirits ✦ pet: machinata ✦ plot & npcs ✦ minipets ✦ misc ✦ links ✦ credits

[livun]

General
✦ Follow Gaia TOS & forum rules.
✦ Don't be a d**k. Sort of all-encompassing, but don't be rude, don't harass people, don't start drama, don't whine etc. Let's have fun! Unless you have fun being a d**k; then . . . just go away.
✦ Don't steal. Whether it's art, characters, writing, etc. Falls under not being a d**k, but just in case.
✦ Please don't spam the thread.

Owner
✦ This B/C is RP required.
✦ 1 pet/owner, no co-owning.
✦ Pets may not be resold, transferred, or given away.

RP
✦ Written RPs should be 3rd person, past tense, paragraph form.
✦ No god-moding, controlling other people's characters, etc.
✦ Please keep any text formatting readable.
See guild thread for thread tags.


GENERAL INFO

I think I summed up the setting/plot somewhere as "Two factions are always on the edge of open conflict in an isolated dystopian city", ha ha. In spite of how brightly-colored the pets look the setting isn't exactly an idyllic wonderland.

Anyway, there's more below; I'll link to some guild threads w/ the in-depth worldbuilding once I've drawn more pics. Here's an example cert — full-size transparent .png & small size.

If you have any suggestions/questions, please do post. óuò


livun's worklist orz
✦ revise info sections for grammar, clarity
✦ ~14 setting drawings, ~13 npc drawings, spell references, ref for enforcer uniform/mask/eyes
✦ decide how to give away the 8 currently available pets

[livun]

( SETTING )

Beneath a weak and distant sun in a green-tinged sky, the city lies on a silty river close to a cliff's edge and waterfall. Hazy clouds frequently blot out light, and nothing flies high above except the occasional machine or lost bat. In the wastelands surrounding the city in all directions as far as anyone can see, nothing lives.

But the city itself is very much alive. Made up of multiple tiers and always expanding upwards and outwards, the city is a chaotic organism all in itself. Its inhabitants travel often, most of the time going about their daily lives of maintaining the city's structure and cultivating food and so on, but always wanting to move upwards. Norimora, the abandoned and ignored slums at the base of the city, are the last place anyone wants to end up; since the slums lie beneath most of the city, it's almost perpetually dark down there, and muddy with polluted water and trash. Luerion, the largest district, contains mostly lower and middle class citizens who make a living building and maintaining city structure, cultivating food, or extracting natural resources. In Agatum, upper-middle-class sorcerers, rich merchants, researchers, and so on live in comparative ease, with the wealth and power to not have to struggle to obtain daily needs. In Thedekul tower, which lies at the furthest end of the city and rises like a spike into the sky, those inhabitants of the city who've gathered unimaginable wealth and power might not even know what "need" means at all, only "want".

Resources are limited, so the city is rife with competition both metaphorical and literal. Those citizens with magical ability, even if very limited, can rise above non-sorcerer citizens, and sorcerers with a lot of power — and the help of good political maneuvering — can rise up all the way from the makeshift shacks of Norimora to the tower of Thedekul. Those who do face a fierce fight to keep their power, however, since most people in the city plot and scheme to try to get ahead, and there's a fair amount of violence in the city between the two major powers.

The Sorcerers' Council and the Enforcement Group more or less control the city, with their influence fluctuating in their constant attempts to gain superiority over each other. The Council was originally formed in order to provide guidance and support for the sorcerers of the city, but has become more of an oligarchy of wealthy elite sorcerers who control nearly everything in the city, and which often ignores or actively excludes much weaker sorcerers without any formal training. The Enforcement Group was originally formed to counter the sorcerers' influence, as an impartial organization that would monitor sorcerers' behavior and take action against any sorcerers who abused their power, but has become more of a secret society of vigilantes who take any opportunity to kick around sorcerers who get in their way, even outright kill some — even if those sorcerers haven't actually done anything wrong.

Surviving in the city is difficult, and few go through life unscathed. Some citizens are caught between the Council and the Enforcers' struggle for supremacy, while other citizens enthusiastically participate in the violence and political maneuvering in cold-blooded attempts to gain power for themselves, or in genuine dedication to their respective causes.

✦ setting info
✦ magic system
✦ general info

[livun]

( FACTIONS & CHARACTER TYPES )

Sorcerers aren't so much a faction as a demographic; there are sorcerers in all classes and tiers of the city, ranging from the very poor in Norimora to the rich in Thedekul. There are sorcerers who participate in the administration of the city, and there are sorcerers who do the work of maintaining the city and extracting natural resources or growing food. There are sorcerers who are powerful and those who are weak, but for the most part they're still above citizens with no magical ability in status, and the most powerful sorcerers control the city, because the city can't survive without magic. As such, they're often resented and feared by the majority of the city's inhabitants — including each other.

The Enforcement Group, by contrast, is much more organized — in fact, it was created early in the city's history specifically to oppose a potential sorcerous dictatorship, although the Enforcers are recruited from every stratum of the city. All the members of the Enforcement Group go through an induction ceremony which strips them of all magical ability that they might have, but allows them to travel through water surfaces, and which makes them immune to magic. Every Enforcer has tattoos and a black ring around the irises of their eyes, a consequence of the induction ceremony, and every Enforcer — some of whom were sorcerers themselves — is dedicated to countering the influence of sorcerers in every way they can. If that involves injuring, crippling, or killing sorcerers outright, so be it.

One tool of the enforcers are living machines called the machinata, which grow from a machine seed that produces a sort of gaseous magic into an independent creature that hunts, and in some cases actually eats, spirits. The machinata are trained to be loyal partners of the Enforcers. Senior Enforcers are ruthless in culling out machinata that are weak or inefficient or disloyal, but many Enforcers become fond of their machinata. The machinata think just as well as any human, and can be even more dangerous at their full power.

The spirits in the city don't have it easy either; there are few of them to begin with, since they usually form purely by accident. Like the machinata, they're sentient and intelligent, although (also like the machinata) the degree of their intelligence can vary from the start. It's difficult to spot spirits around the city, mostly because they tend to run as fast they can from any humans. Those that don't are caught quickly, and it's a toss-up whether it's worse being caught by a sorcerer — being bound to a sorcerer means being forced to obey that sorcerer's will at all times — or by an Enforcer, every one of whom will kill unbound/free spirits on sight. If spirits manage to grow to their mature forms, then they can be quite formidable as well.

✦ character types & factions

[livun]

( PET STAGES )

vessel: camellia hairpin

INCIPIENT Incipient spirits aren't much more than a little bit of magic that's gained intelligence and taken an object as a vessel. They don't have much power and look very much like the object itself, and it's easy for sorcerers to catch them in this state. The majority of spirits have inanimate objects for vessels; the ones that manage to control an animate creature long enough to take its shape tend to be very aggressive.

MANIFESTED As spirits grow, they become more human, although parts of their bodies often remain strange in shape and insubstantial. In general they grow in size — for the most part they start out the size of the vessel they take over, and grow into human size, although in rare cases they shrink. They can learn an ability now.

CULMINATED In the final, culminated state, spirits are entirely substantial and look almost human. Most spirits never reach this state because of the dangers of the city and because they often can't find enough energy on their own to supply their growth.

? There's a rumored fourth state, but no spirit seems to have ever attained it.

vessel: weedy seadragon

SEED The bodies of machinata in the seed state are mostly metal and mechanical, and the magical smoke produced by that internal machinery forms their bodies. In this state they can't move very quickly and are fragile. Most of the time machinata are animal-based, rather than based on inanimate objects.

CORE Core machinata have grown to the point that machines form only some parts of their bodies, rather than the bulk of them, and they're capable of moving efficiently and helping their Enforcer partners. However, they're still vulnerable if their machine parts are damaged or destroyed, as much of their bodies are still smoke.

UNSEALED Unsealed machinata can act independently of their Enforcers and look almost human, and the remaining metal portions of their bodies are mostly only decorative. However, many machinata don't reach this state, since the Enforcement Group is wary of giving any magic-made creature much power.

? If a fourth state for machinata exists, no one's ever seen it.

GROWTH REQUIREMENTS

1 » 2 ✦ set up & fill out journal, 2 solo rps, 3 prps, 1 plot-related prompt
2 » 3 ✦ 3 solos, 4 prps, 2 metaplot, 1 plot-related prompt, character development demonstrated
3 » 4 ✦ ??? but basically massive metaplot involvement

Solos have a 500 word minimum, and all requirements should demonstrate something happening (i.e. not just the character/pet standing around doing/thinking nothing).

If you'd rather draw than write, your responses can be done in comic panels or some other form of sequential art. At a minimum the art should be monochrome sketches, with a simple bg in at least one of the panels to establish where the characters are, and any dialogue should be readable. You're not required to add shading/coloring or a description/caption, although you're free to do it if you want. The specific formatting of the art doesn't matter; how you arrange the art is up to you. Only different panels are counted towards the minimums — if you C&P the same panel for comedic effect, for example, those duplicated panels count as one. This is so that the art shows something happening in narrative form.

solo equivalent minimum ✦ 6 panels
rp (prp, meta rp, etc.) minimum ✦ 3 panels per response

Please do what you feel you're best at or most comfortable with! You are not required to do both, nor are you restricted to only either writing or drawing all your responses.

[livun]

Named ones have an owner already (some may belong to NPCs); unnamed ones have no owner.

Incipient Spirits



Manifested Spirits

Culminated Spirits

[livun]

Named ones have an owner already (some may belong to NPCs); unnamed ones have no owner.

Seed Machinata



Core Machinata

Unsealed Machinata

[livun]

( PLOT & NPCS )

Lately in the city, an improbably large number of spirits are appearing, and some speculate it's related to the Enforcers' search for a student from the Demonological Research Institute in Agataum. Rumors abound, but some people think something was discovered there that had to be hidden before it could be revealed irrevocably to everyone. Something that might cause outright war between the sorcerers and Enforcers in a final bid for control of the city — something which might make a smart sorcerer want to stack the deck in the sorcerers' favor by allowing as many sorcerers to gather spirits as possible to help them fight.

Whatever the truth may be, the Enforcers are on edge, and sorcerers are wary. The tensions in the city have always balanced on a knife's edge, but if they happen to tip a little too far one way or another . . .

✦ npc list (text profiles; I have to draw the pics, but here's Ingram & Lang for the curious)
✦ plot events

[livun]

( MINIPETS )

more info later; these are rewards for plot/event involvement & the 1 pet/owner rule doesn't apply to them

[livun]

( MISCELLANEOUS INFO )

conveniently in q&a format ha ha

Are the pets made from a template?
✦ No, every stage is unique art.

Do all the pets change in the same way as the examples?
✦ In the 2nd stage part of the body will become human, and in the 3rd stage the entire body becomes human in shape mostly. The theme colors will stay more or less the same, although they may appear on the chara in different amounts (ex. much more of one color). Otherwise no! What parts change and so on is random.
✦ Also the pets won't necessarily look cutesy like the examples! They can look older/not cute etc. The starting stage is always a chibi, but the 2nd & 2rd stages can be a childlike character, an older adult, have different faces/builds, etc. Spirits and machinata don't grow/age like humans.

Will items/animals be repeated?
✦ Possibly; for example, there's a dark lion counterpart to the golden lion. & some sets of twins.
✦ But not for a long time yet, and the pet designs will always be different.

What are the RP requirements?
✦ To keep the pet, the minimum activity is a journal entry (writing or drawing) per 3 months, or any kind of rp.
✦ For the pet to grow . . . idk I'm still working that out & suggestions are appreciated!

What if I don't have time to RP?
✦ If you don't want to RP or can't, or don't enjoy it, this isn't the B/C for you. :c

What happens if a pet is abandoned?
✦ First livun will be really sad. ;_;
✦ Then the pet will probably be given some in-story death & will remain dead; no rehoming.

How are pets obtained?
✦ They'll be available in flatsales for 10k w/ a writing/RP prompt.
✦ In events one or two will be given out for free.
✦ Semi-customs will be v. v. rare; there won't be any full customs.

Can the pets breed?
✦ Yes, but there's no plan for that at this time.

If the setting is violent, is there a battle system?
✦ Nope. Too complicated for livun's tiny brain to figure out
✦ Fights & factions aren't that structured in the city; technically the two factions are never supposed to engage in open conflict, "winning" the city's metaplot isn't about killing everyone on the other side, etc.

[livun]

( LINKS! )

[url=http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/t.77304435/][img]http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t432/distantcity/bcit200.png[/img][/url]

If you'd like to affiliate, post in thread! 200x40 banners only, please. c:

[livun]

concept/worldbuilding & art by livun
special thanks to cae/Anyong Kim for help w/ the machinata name/concept! (any poor execution of it is my fault) also this wouldn't have happened w/out cae's encouragement ha ha

textures from lostandtaken.com
fonts from dafont.com

[livun]

[livun]

[livun]