Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hiroshi Mumei was alone.

What was this inky blackness that covered his soul? He floated through it so effortlessly, so gently, so helplessly. No sound penetrated the darkness. The chill of the void wrapped around his body. No man had ever been as alone as Hiroshi Mumei was in that moment.

The world burst into existence around him. Up and down came into focus, and he fell flat on his back. The hard asphalt pained him, his muscles cramped under the weight of gravity. A bright light in the sky flared up in his eyes, seering his vision, the heat burned deeply into his skin. The sounds suffocated him--thousands of sounds, feet pounding into the ground, birds shrieking through the air, the people yelling blindly at each other in an attempt to be heard. Hiroshi heard them all, and it deafened him. He convulsed, limbs and head alike smacking against the ground.

As quickly as it had come upon him, the world around him began to dull. The vibrant colors clouded over, the beating sun let up just a little. There he lay on top of the stone-like pavement. He could see the heads crowd around him--mostly the heads of foreigners, though some Japanese were there, as well. He felt his lips move, his tongue wrapped around familiar sounds.

"Where am I?"

"Barton Town," one of the heads said. "You okay? You just 'ported in here."

Willing his muscles to move, his back curled, and Hiroshi was sitting. Everything was foreign. Unnatural walls surrounded him, reflective surfaces and metal beams and red stone, all meshed together. Never before had he seen such a bizarre place.

"Where is Barton Town?"

The head, revealed to belong to a boy who looked to be 14, snorted. "East of Durem."

Hiroshi pulled himself to his feet. The twenty-something samurai turned to face the boy, who stood a full head under him. "You will treat your elder with respect."

The boy rolled his eyes, and though the gesture was not in Hiroshi's lexicon, he somehow recognized the impertinence of it all. "I may look 14, but I'm three thousand years old. Elder, my a**!"

Without waiting for the boy to insult him further, Hiroshi wipped his katana from its sheath, the blade flashing through the boy's body--if the body were only still there. "Missed me." Spinning, Hiroshi found the boy standing on the opposite side of him. How was that possible? Another swing of his blade, and...

The boy held the blade, clenched between two fingers. "Man, this is lame. I'm outta here, you loser." He vanished in a puff of smoke, and Hiroshi's katana clattered to the ground.

Crouching, cat-like, Hiroshi took his blade up. Instead of sheathing it, he clenched it in his hand. This certainly was not Japan. This wasn't anywhere on Earth.

Though Hiroshi did not realize it, he was one of a fortunate few. The place he called home was not Japan, nor did it resemble the true Japan on any more than a superficial level. The place he called home existed only in a fleeting permutation within the world of Gaia, and that permutation had since crumbled and vanished. To everyone he knew, to those he served, this meant a fate worse than death: it meant complete non-existence.

Somehow, the powers that be had smiled upon Hiroshi, and delivered him to the very center of the Gaia universe.

Hiroshi Mumei was.





"...forces from beyond, part the threads that bind this world!"

Squashed nose, puffy cheeks, whispy goateegoatee—this was the face that spoke the words into the night air, intermingling with the smoke of the fire. Tadashi wore crimson robes, same as his two companions, though he was the only one who had his hood off. "Create the path to other places, that we might return to where we belong!" Between verses, he took drags of the cigarette pinched between his fingers, his other hand bundled up in the folds of his garment. "Open the way home!"

He clenched the cig between his teeth and clasped his hands. Looking past the smoke to the town of Barton below, he released a puff of air into the cold.

Nothing.

"That should've done it," he said, leaning back on his heels. "That should've worked." His eyebrows lifted, his head tilted to the side. "That should have worked."

"Do it again," commanded the deep voice of one of his companions.

The edges of Tadashi's lips pulled up, and he helds his hands out, palms up. Moving towards the fire, he replied, "I can't just do it again. You sure there isn't something you're keeping from me?"

"Why would I do that?"

"I don't know." Tadashi's foot crashed through the fire, sending sparks and burning wood scattering; his face remained calm. "That should have worked."

"Now what?"

"Look." The third companion, a feminine voice, took their attention. She pointed to distant Barton. A pillar of light grew from the center of town, reaching into the sky. A shattering noise filled the air, distant but clear, and the pillar broke into innumerable pieces, dots of light careening to places far and wide.

Tadashi's hand shot out, and when he opened it, a single marble rested in his palm, glowing a brilliant blue against the light of the dying embers.

"Curious," he said, before letting the cigarette fall from his mouth and crushing it under his heel.




Sullivan's tooth bounced quietly off the alleyway's brick wall. The last few years had not been his best: he'd worked as a slave to some robotics genius, has his jaw wired shut against his will (the scars remained from when he removed the wiring himself), been beaten every which way, and, of course, all of his dastardly deeds had been foiled by no-good do-gooders. In the last few weeks, his teeth had begun to fall out, one at a time, and he had no idea what was going on.

Muttering a curse, he wiped the blood from his lips with a gloved hand. Five spirits—or rather, the remains of five spirits—crowded around him, not out of concern, but because he had stripped away so much of what made them human that all they could do was stand there and take orders. He jerked his head up, his attention grabbed by a flickering of something in the sky. His hands flew skyward, and he let out a cry.

"Inki sotnirgi!"

White flame swallowed either fist, and into the air flew to of his companions, huge, indistinct, humanoid thinks that took corporeal form as they went. They collided with a stream of light high above the rooftops, and they descended with three glowing spheres.

"Zhennir," he muttered, and they vanished, leaving the marbles in his hand. Immense power pulsated from each of the objects. Power that threatened to swallow him whole and leave no remains, power that would turn a god to dust.

Power that Sullivan would take.

He closed his fingers on the items, though in his mind they screamed for him to leave them be. He felt them sink into the palm of his hand, and waves of power overtook him. No single body could contain the power of the three combined.

"Candard!" Sullivan's voice tore from his throat. The individual among his spirits took physical form, a twisted body wearing a mantle, a face with no feature other than a twisted nose. The power swam through the spirit's temporary body, giving it power, giving it more magic than it had ever contained even in when it was alive.

It was not enough. The energy burned in Sullivan's veins; Candard was not enough. Nor were any one of his remaining spirits, and he could not summon more than any two spirits at once—

"Arnold... Longstrom." His eyes closed, a bead of sweat gathered at his temple. "Marianne Covell. Victor Grabowski." As he named past collaborators of Cat's Cradle Robotics, a ethereal vacuum opened between his remaining spirit companions, and they were drawn in, coming together in a single point in space, becoming a single entity. "Shen Fei."

With the name of the CEO and founder of the company, the merge snapped into completion, creating a single nebula of spirit and being. The power of the marbles flowed through it, and with Sullivan's command, "Nirvokr!" they took shape.

A hulk of metal stood before Sullivan, arms and legs protruding from a monstrous body, nanomachines coming together to form a seamless creation of technology. In the center of it's body sat a mask, white plastic, with two gleaming red eyes that peered back at him. Carter City had not been a waste of his time, after all.

And yet, Sullivan could not remember. Who was he again? What was he doing there? What was all this for?

Something about killing, certainly. Well, no time like the present.




Curio stepped into the stout stone building that stood in north of the Durem clocktower. In previous years, the twenty-something year old was training to be a priest of Salamander, but his training was cut short when his temple--and hometown--were destroyed a little over a year previous. He had immigrated to Durem, where he used his fire-based healing magics to work as a nurse at a local Durem middle school, but some recent sightings were beginning to bother him.

A few reports had popped up in the news about robot attacks. A robot was going around, attacking and killing indiscrimanently, popping up out of nowhere and vanishing as quickly as it would appear. Though many adventurers took to the streets, few had actually encountered it, and those that did were left beaten and broken. It seemed like Carter City all over again, and that was something Curio would not allow.

A man in a white robe, katana and wakizashi slung at his hip, greeted Curio. "Here to fight the good fight?"

"You're Hiroshi Mumei?" Curio asked, glancing around the dark room. Four figures, similarly adorned in white robes, sat at a low wooden table.

"I am," Hiroshi responded, cracking his neck. "You're here to help put an end to the recent attacks, I hope."

"The robot attacks, yes."

"Oh, not just the robot attacks," Hiroshi said. "I hope you realize that there's more to this."

Curio responded the best way he knew how: with a blank stare.

"Certainly you've noticed the wave of evil that has spread across the land?"

Curio shook his head.

With a sigh, Hiroshi continued, "Nobody ever notices the wave of evil that has spread accross the land. Very well." Gesturing towards the table, he took a seat, and Curio joined him. "Two days ago, in the dead of night, a great pillar of light errupted from the center of Barton Town, sending accursed marbles throughout the area. These marbles contain a dark, evil power, and this power has been corrupting whoever finds the marbles and tries to use them. The aim of our group is to put a stop to the rampaging victims of this evil, whatever the cost."

"I'm here about the robot."

"Of course." Hiroshi threw his hands up into the air. "Everybody's here about the robot. Well, the robot's part of it, so if you want to stop the robot, join us."

[New Player Faction: The Circle of Justice]
[Goal: Put an end to the Evil Guys]
[Perk: Access to Attack/Defense Healing]




"And so, what we have here is an epedimic," Tadashi said to the group, pausing to take a puff from his cigarette, "of awesomeness."

The five or six scientists who crowded around were all non-descript, and he knew that what they thought did not matter one bit, but he liked to hear himself speak. He would use them as he liked, get them to do all the thinking, and then he would reap the benefits.

"12:41am, Friday. Some sort of blotched incantation causes an entire thread of reality to up and explode, releasing tiny pieces of existence or somesuch into the atmosphere. These pieces have a ton of power in them, and of course, Gaia being what it is, everybody wants a piece of it." He glanced out the window into the rock quarry below, where tinker-toy robots were busy at work. Aekea had an abundance of brainy types that weren't all ready working for Gambino, and so Aekea is where he had set up shop. "So now, the folks with the really potent pieces have gone completely nutso, going around wrecking havoc and committing acts of mass murder, and the folks with the lesser pieces got nothing. You follow?"

A murmur of vague agreement fluttered through the crowd.

"Great. So, I'm calling you all here 'cuz I think somebody needs to figure out what these things are, how they affect us, and most important, how they work. I'm pretty close to figuring out an interface that'll let people actually use these little marble dealies, but in order to test it, we need to actually have some people who've found some marbles.

"So, your job is simple: tell two people whom you can trust to get the word out. Once you've done that, come back here and we'll get to the research. With any luck, we'll have this thing nailed down in, say, early February."

Tadashi rested one hand on his hip, and with the other, he pinched his cigarette between two fingers. No one else moved. "Well, what're you waiting for?"

One of the researches spoke up. "What exactly is the word, then?"

"The Institute of Lost Marbles is looking for people who have found some... erm... marbles."

[New Player Faction: The Institute of Lost Marbles]
[Goal: Research and Development]
[Perk: Advanced In-Game Intelligence]





"It's quite simple really." The woman in the white dress military uniform looked at the gathering of people in front of her, her hands behind her back as she paced at casual ease.

"Time" She snapped out a riding crop that whipped the board behind her with a ear piercing crack. "Is Money." Another snap. "Money is Power." She turned and faced her audience with a grim smile, holding out a little marble in her hand.

"Power is all."

Her smile turned sly as she faced away, and slid a large briefcase out onto a table where everyone could see. With a click that echoed throughout the room, the cache fell open, revealing an untold number of Gaian gold notes.

"For each of those itty bitty marbles you bring me, I give you one of these." She tossed a stack of bills at a man, one who looked like he might be a bit squeamish at what exactly they might have to do to get the money. And he did, looking up, though he kept a tight grip on the wad of bills.

"Why are you doing this?"


"I do believe I said," The red haired woman brought out a marble, the light reflecting off the glass like surface and let it ride over the ridges of her fingers, only to disappear again into her palm.

"Power is all.'"

[New Player Faction: The Fist of Power]
[Goal: Collecting Marbles at All Costs (for Profit!)]
[Perk: Access to an Accessory Store]






All hell broke loose.




Team Cerberus unwaiveringly held position around the portal to the Unravelling World, even faced against almost every member of the three competing factions. Tadashi, Minxi, and Hiroshi, all working together, meeting in this place after running three very different organizations with very conflicting goals--there was something more going on here.

It was Tadashi's magic that opened the portal, just as Tadashi's magic had spawned the marbles in the first place, and Tadashi's magic that both gave the heroes new powers and took them away. It would soon be Tadashi's magic that would lead to the end of Gaia.

All in the name of going home.

Yet not even Cerberus, the team that had met the most success when it came to gathering up the mystical accessories, couldn't keep all those who would interfere at bay. First Team RAIF, then Team Rage V, and even as diverse individuals as Athan Cole, Eileen Patterson, and Zen Rider made it through the gate.

The Unravelling World was a place of reality and unreality, where the threads that make up this world became plain to see, and the trio were busily digging through these threads, searching for a path home. The interlopers saw the actions for what they were: a careless offense against the natural order, and a threat to existence itself.

First came RAIF: by channeling all of their powers into Stryphe, they enabled him to go head-to-head with Minxi, obliterating her summoned monster with a single strike and making quick work of the woman herself.

Hiroshi was no fool. Coming face to face with certain defeat, the samurai saw the path of honor, and he saw his freedom. He died in a manner of his choosing, a way of honor, by slitting his own belly. In a moment of compassion, Rage acted as his second, delivering the killing blow and saving the warrior from what would have otherwise been a slow, excrutiating end.

That left Tadashi against every other person on the plane. Even with an uncanny ability to see through things, he was unable to parry every attack that came his way, and soon he found himself with an arrow-pierced heart, severed arm, and countless other injuries. Mortally wounded, he stepped off the edge into the abyss between the real and the fantastic, two last words on his lips.

"...I'm home..."




The original caster gone, the marks that had formed on the bodies of so many would begin to fade. Any accessory the marks held would fall to the floor, now useless to the adventurers who once used them.

It was perhaps for the best. Over time, the mystical energies of the marbles would fade away, nothing sustaining them, until they were nothing more than that: marbles.




Tadashi squatted against the wall of the Family Mart, smoking a cig and watching the ladies stroll on by. His fingers stroked the whispy goattee at his chin, and every once in a while his companion would let out a low whistle. Life was good.

"So, you gonna get with her?" his buddy, Shigeru, asked. The two had been friends since 1st year Junior High; they were 3rd years in High School.

"Which one?" Tadashi asked.

"The one in your apartment." Shigeru shook his had. "Man, if I had a hot girl like that living right next door--"

"Yeah, dude, which one?"

"The hell?" Shigeru's eyebrows creased. "The half. The one from America."

"Guy, there're three from America," he said. "There's the shy one who goes to our school. There's the frickin' hot landlady in her mid 20's." Tadashi let out a puff of smoke, deep on thought. "And there's that one who looks 16 but acts like she's 2000."

A glint in the sun caught his eye. On the other side of the busy Tokyo street was a young boy, a netted bag of marbles in his hands. As the kid continued on out of view, Tadashi gave an involuntary shutter for reasons unknown.

"Man," Shigeru said, interrupting Tadashi's thoughts, "anyone ever tell you that your life's like a ********' dating sim?"

Tadashi smiled, the warmth of his friendship wiping away all remnants of the mysterious chill. "Yeah man, I know."

Life was good.

This game will be an intense weekend of RPing, covering the first weekend in February. All times are Pacific Standard Time.

While the game will continue between official moderated game times, I recommend making yourself available to play during official hours. At the very least, make sure that you have one teammate on during those times: in-game events will occur, and not being around for those events will be a disadvantage.

Friday, February 2
12pm: The pre-game begins! A chance to get a small (very small) head start on your score. Nothing major will happen yet, for those who are in school or have work.

Saturday, February 3
10am-6pm: The official game begins! Judges and GMs are guaranteed to be on at this time, for all of your judging and GMing needs.
6pm: The game continues, but there's no guarantee that there will be a judge to handle any disputes, nor are GMs required to be around.

Sunday, February 4
10am-6pm: Day two begins! The timer's ticking and the world grows more dangerous with every passing minute. Survive... if you can.
6pm: Game over or grand finale, as I see fit.

The Goal

Over the course of the game, you will receive objectives. These objectives may range from taking down another team to finding and keeping a certain item. Completing your objectives earn points for your team, and points are good. You want points in order to win. Simple, no?

The Basics

Remember how your bio gets a score from 1-40? And remember how we asked for a ratio of offensive ability to defensive ability? Well, here's where it comes into play.

Your character's score gets divided into two smaller scores: attack and defense. Attack represents your character's ability to dish out damage, and is their vitality, while Defense represents your character's ability to take a beating, and is their health. These numbers can (and probably will) go down as you play, and if either Attack or Defense hits 0, you're out of the game. Unless, that is, you somehow get your stats repaired...


Disclaimer: If you use a blatently min-maxed ratio, and your character bio doesn't really, really support it, we'll divide your attack and defense however we please. So please, be reasonable.

If this all sounds very complicated, don't worry: these numbers shouldn't come up too often. The most they could come up for any one player over the entire game would be 8 times, and that would be pushing it. Really, really pushing it.

So, when do they come up? The answer to that would be...


Critical Rolls

There comes a time when your character can't take any more and everyone knows it. In conventional freeform roleplay, this is where miraculous saves and pushing yourself to the limit come into play. However, since points are awarded for defeat of players, this has to be moderated. In the event of critical damage, and only in the event of critical damage, a roll is made.

This is the first situation in which your attack or defense score comes into play. The attacker and the defender each roll a 20 sided dice, and add their attack and defense score, respectively. If the attacker comes up with the higher number, the defender takes the full force of the attack, and their defense drops to 0. If they get equal numbers, or if the defender rolls higher, the defender somehow escapes certain defeat (make sure to RP this!). However, the defender's defense goes down by 5 points.

Once a character's defense drops to 0, he's out. Whether this means he blacks out, or if he actually dies, is up to his player. Regardless, unless an ally somehow heals him (more on this later), he's out of the game.






While ultimately the defending player is to decide when to roll, an attacker can request a roll. There are also times defeat is unavoidable (see Example D, above) and the roll can be waived for a one hit KO. If there is a disagreement a Judge can be called in to force a roll or a OHKO.


Post Order

As a general rule of thumb, post order should go by team. In short, everyone from Team A should post, then everyone in Team B, and so on until all teams have posted. Then start it all over. Within each team, it doesn't matter who posts first, since most teams will (presumably) work with each other, and not against each other.

This method helps ease confusion while still letting us go at a good clip. Also, it makes it easier to perform...


Group Combos

This is the only other time when those dastardly numbers, Attack and Defense, come into play. When it is your team's turn, you can announce that you're performing a Group Combo, and then the team members involved each take that turn to contribute to the combo.

A Group Combo is teamwork, Chrono Trigger-style. It's a single, multi-faceted attack that is executed by multiple characters working in unison. It could be something simple, like two swordsman striking an opponent simultaneously, or something more grandiose, like two mages combining two spells to create a single super-spell, or something wacky, like a wrestler tossing his robot ally like a bomb. The important thing is that there's teamwork involved.

Needless to say, everyone who is contributing to a Group Combo must be physically availably to join in the attack. For the purposes of this game, Group Combos are directed at a single target. Only characters on the same team may perform a Group Combo.

To perform a Group Combo, a member of your team has to declare, OOC and in bold type, that they are performing a Group Combo, who they're targeting, and who is in the combo. Clearly you'll need to co-ordinate with your team before launching a Group Combo, which is good--you'll see why in a moment.

Every member of the Group Combo posts their part of the attack, and the last poster rolls a 20-sided dice. That's right, it's a Critical Roll. The target of the Group Combo also rolls a 20-sided dice. Unlike a normal Critical Roll, all attackers involved in the Group Combo get their attack added to the attacking dice. This means that, in most situations, a Group Combo can result in an automatic KO. The downside to this is that each character involved in the Group Combo loses 5 Attack, regardless of the outcome.

So use your Group Combos carefully. Also be aware that there may be situations in which your opponent may be able to turn your Group Combo on its head, and as in any RP situation, if the combo makes absolutely no sense or is used unwisely, a judge could step in and allow the victim a dodge...






Accessories

Perhaps you've noticed certain vague comments indicating that sometimes the rules can be bent. This is good; it means you're paying attention. If you didn't notice, that's okay too, because here's where we lay it on all on the table.

In this game, there will be certain items that your character can equip. These items are called "Accessories" (You console gamers will know this term, of course). At any time during the game, your character must have one and exactly one accessory equipped. Not to worry, for we'll give all characters a starting accessory, and better accessories will be rewarded for completing challenges.

If you get a shiny new accessory that you're itching to use, don't worry: you can take your accessory out for one turn, and put the new one in in the exact same turn. You cannot do anything else in this turn, so be careful about switching accessories out in combat!

Each accessory gives your character some sort of ability or bonus. This can range from the simple starting accessory that gives you an extra two Attack, to the accessory used only by healers to bring a fallen ally back into the game for a price, to the rare accessory that allows a team to use Defensive Combos, equalizing the playing field when the other side uses a Group Combo.

Further explanations of exactly what each accessory is and how exactly it is used will be released as each accessory is uncovered.


And that is the system for this game. A little more complicated than usual, but it shouldn't come up too often.

Current Prize Pool: 210,000 gold!

Here are the prizes to be won. With more donations, jackpots may expand and/or increase.

Story Victory: 90,000
This prize goes to whichever team is most victorious in character. For example, say that we have a final boss: the team that kills it would get this prize.

Technical Victory: 90,000
This prize goes to the team with the highest score at the end of the game. In essence, the team is the most active throughout the game. If it's the same team that wins the Story Victory, this prize goes to the second highest scorers.

Honorable Mention: 30,000
At the end of the game, the staff will choose the most kick-a** moments from the game, then have the players vote on their favorites. The person responsible for the winning moment will get this prize.

Want to see even more gold get thrown about? Please send any donations to R66-Y.

What? gonk That title made me come and now I have nothing to show for it?

Can you tell me what it is all about? gonk It haunts my every wakeing moment.

What is this, hmm?