Welcome to Gaia! ::

Directory:

1. Back Story
2. Rules
3. Game Flow
4. Battle Role-playing
5. Weapon Classes
6. Magic Classes
7. Summon Classes
8. Sign Up/Roster

1. Back Story

Within the psyche of Vaughan Smythe lay a seed. Or at least, it started out that way.

Each night, the dreams of Smythe, represented by smoke wisps, populated the space surrounding the seed. While some dreams portrayed magic, bliss, and wonder, others (meaning, most others) shunned such happy thoughts with abominable nightmares. The terrors started out as simple suicides, such as a painless fall or the ingestion of the kind of medicine you see with a sticker bearing the skull and crossbones. As time went on, the dreams became more intense, including the murders of family members and acts of terrorism. Although this caused a level of mental torture, all appeared well in Vaughan Smythe’s real life.

But the seed in his mind could not remain thirsty among wisps, upon vapors of smoke that could quench its thirst. With each puff of smoke ingested by the psyche, the seed sprouted and burst into growth. By Smythe’s adolescence, the life form from the seed had turned a myriad of colors. Grey dreams of hunger and boredom created steel pillars instead of fibrous twigs, while blue and brown dreams of sadness and sickness smothered the mind with sewage and neon lights. It suddenly hit Smythe that this was not a seed, but a city.

A living, breathing, city.

So he started to populate the city. In the daytime he would draw, writing names, attributes. He’d draw limbs, hearts, eyes, noses, hair, teeth. At night his creations would, by material means, disappear. Of course, they were never forgotten. His animated citadel would be heard with the chatter and the preconceived mannerisms and the inherited realities and the emotions and the psyches of his society. His people; parts of himself.

On one fateful morning, twenty days before graduation from high school, Vaughan Smythe had infected the art studio with his presence, filling the canvas walls with crude characters of paint, as if Prendergast himself had lent him his artistic gift. Over a matter of seconds, oil had flooded the room. Lit matches flying from the direction of gleaming preppie eyes and surly grunts set the studio ablaze. Fire alarms sounded, the edifice was evacuated, and later, automated messages boldly assured concerned parents of unconcerned children that everything was alright.

Forty days later, a new studio had quickly replaced the old, which had been so overwhelmed by wispy flames. As the news celebrates the school’s quick “recovery” from financial trouble and commemorates the patrons of the new studio in the only way they can (with a plaque and keys to the city), Vaughan Smythe sits upright in his wheelchair within his room, within the “Mental Recovery” unit, within the Sally Right Memorial Hospital, without the accompaniment of friends, family, or press.

His citadel-seed had ruptured.

Lanster Smith, a C-plus alumnus of the same school as Smythe, works at Sally Right Memorial Hospital and is his most intimate human contact. With a nascent recovery from coma and amnesia, Smythe begins his momentous story (to Smith) of the characters, the figments of his imagination. Their lives. Their times. Their struggles.

How they survived.

Directory:

1. Back Story
2. Rules
3. Game Flow
4. Battle Role-playing
5. Weapon Classes
6. Magic Classes
7. Summon Classes
8. Sign Up/Roster

3. Game Flow.

Your character is basically one of the “characters” that Vaughan Smythe invents. Although you are a figment of his imagination, your character can follow any of a wide-range of behaviors, as long as he or she is human and he or she is not maliciously intent on destroying the world. After picking a character, the narrator (Vaughan aka me) will dictate bits of the story, leaving characters the ability to socialize and interpret the world created around them. All characters have separate health systems, attack lists, item lists, and abilities which contribute to winning battles. A lot of this roleplay will be in battle. Your character will level up and learn new abilities. The story will progress as Vaughan progressively remembers his tragedy.

Directory:

1. Back Story
2. Rules
3. Game Flow
4. Battle Role-playing
5. Weapon Classes
6. Magic Classes
7. Summon Classes
8. Sign Up/Roster

5. Weapon Classes

Ka-nives: Short-bladed, short range weapons with high capabilities for speed and combo moves.

Level 1 Ka-nife abilities: Single-hit combo, two-hit combo, three-hit combo, knife throw (Leaves unarmed until next turn), uppercut, stab

Hackners: Hammers or large, blunt swords. Low speed, but capable of single-blow attacks that deal great damage.

Level 1 Hackner abilities: Single-hit combo, charge attack, horizontal swing (area damage), knock down

Phalangites: Augmented knuckles for powerful combos at extremely close range.

Level 1 Phalangite abilities: Single jab, two-hit jab, three hit combo, four-hit combo, uppercut, kick

Casperades: Guns. Guns of all sorts are easiest to augment with magic. However, physical attacks are actually slower and generally weaker.

Level 1 Casperade abilities: Bash, Single shot, Aim, Charge, Powder up (Need Powder x 1) *moves also change depending on gun equipped. Level 1 gun is a pistol*

La Chemia: Technically not a weapon, but the art of making expendable weapons out of debris and other common materials.

Level 1 La Chemia abilities: Gather materials (organic only, as opposed to standard, rare, pestilential, and fatal), morph (change single material into battle-usable item), combine (really ineffective at level one, but worth a shot), use (only alchemist can use items created by him/her; objects can be stockpiled for future battles)

Directory:

1. Back Story
2. Rules
3. Game Flow
4. Battle Role-playing
5. Weapon Classes
6. Magic Classes
7. Summon Classes
8. Sign Up/Roster

7. Summon Classes:

Familiars: A weak creature will fight alongside you.

Fragment: Clone a piece of yourself temporarily on the battlefield. This clone will have an amplified version of a couple of your abilities. However, a character and his/her fragment attacking with less than three posts between each other can be quite dangerous.

Anthropomorphism: Turn into a humanoid, gaining certain special powers of an animal of choice.

Bestiary Guardian: Turn into a monster, as long as the involved character has already slain it (meaning, has delivered the final blow that once killed it).

Omenism: Summon a seemingly heavenly force to turn the tides in battle. However, opportunities for this type of attack are extremely limited, and the use of one such attack will have a momentous effect on the storyline.

At level one, no summons are available.

Roster/Character Stats

SETTING

Five City is broken up into nine main sectors, which nearly form a 3 by 3 square. The uniformity that the founders of Five City wanted to instill into the communities is reflected in the uniformity of the boundaries and buildings of Five City.

The center of the city is reserved for People's Park. A green common spanning roughly nine square acres is fitted with spurts of potted plant gardens on pedestals on the edges and corners. In the center is a fountain inlaid with pennies and nickels, thrown in many years ago by residents of the slums and intermediate residencies who believed they had a chance at social mobility. Crabgrass populates most else of the common. On the edges of the park, buildings line all four sides. Among them are a novelty shop (which currently offers a whopping two items for barter: an amino sludge and a Ka-nife with an ambiguous identity. There is also an inn, a bar, an eatery, a grocery, a temple, and sundry residences scattered about. All of these buildings are quaint: not too big, not too small, neither lavish nor in shambles. Most are made of wood with cheap siding.

In the Southern slums are three main roads. The first connects the People's Park with the Reservoir. It is a winding road littered with houses crafted with whatever materials happened to be available: wood, steel, iron, plastic, and even cardboard and newspaper. Houses with strong wooden foundations have second floors which consist of more slum apartments. The residents of these often "guard" their windows, throwing scraps of food at others who appear to be richer than them (keyword is APPEAR). The central reservoir is polluted and creates a pungent air. The people who live at the reservoir only ocme out for food, or when mandated to do so by the Threeman guards who patrol it. Branching off of the reservoir are also two other roads: one starts northwest, curves north, and ends in a cul-de-sac. Little is known about this section; few commute in an out of it. The second road forms a loop, stretching from the west side of the reservoir, south, passing several houses in greater shambles occupied by more sinister residents, and curving back to the east side of the reservoir (which is roughly a mile long and 500 feet wide).

Further information will soon surface for:

People's Park (Center, EXP Level 1-5)
The Slums (S, EXP Level 1-7)
The Intermediate Residences (SE, EXP Level 6-15)
The Upper Crescent (N, EXP Level 7-25)
The Industrial East (NE, EXP Level 11-35)
Hot Town (NW, EXP Level 15-50)
Gallowera's Strip (E, EXP Level 21-50)
Pecos Holding Center (W, EXP Level 15-50)
Dyne Village (SW, EXP Level 30+)

And we begin!

Chapter 1: Shiny Happy People

...

“Lanster. I got something to tell you.”

Lanster Smith looked at Vaughan Smythe apathetically. “You mean another story? But you’re suuuuch a good storyteller. Just rest your voice till next week. Now good-night.” Lanster Smith approached the light switch of room 401 of the Mental Recovery Unit of the Sally Right Memorial Hospital, when an unpleasing moan beckoned him back.

“What?”

“I gotta tell you something.”

“What?”

“I gotta tell you what happened.”

“What happened? What are you-”

“Once upon a time, in the streets of Five City, there lived many creatures. You can call them humans, but I have special names for them because they are special. Ka-peesh? Ka-peeshie. Heh heh.”

Lanster, realizing the inevitability of leaving without seriously offending the inpatient, sat down in the off-white chair next to Vaughan Smith’s bed. He propped his head up on his arm as if the nine-o-clock evening was getting to his head. Yet, he was truthfully wide awake, a subject to yet another story of Smythe’s capricious psyche.

“The people complained because the world was dirty, but the mayor did not do anything to make it cleaner. All of the special people were special, but they were not living in a special place.

“All of the best of the people lived in houses like next door neighbors. They were great people, but you couldn’t tell because they stayed indoors all day. But one day the tax collectors came. One tax man was not enough to make the people unhappy enough and the mayor rich enough, so a hundred came and took all the people’s money. Then all the special people stopped realizing they were special-”

“Um, you kind of lost me there.”

“Be quiet!” Vaughan Smythe’s voice had accelerated in amplitude such that the next room, were it occupied, could hear him. Medical doctors who were supposed to be walking the corridors did not act upon the volume. Was one even on duty?

“As I was saying, the people were really mad at the mayor for stealing their precious belongings. Gems. And even rubies too. And photographs, lots of photographs. But it doesn’t matter what was stolen, all that matters is that it was stolen and the people had a reason to get together and work out their problems. This is what the people did. They met in the middle of the neighborhood near a fountain in the center of People‘s Park. There were buildings all around, but not houses. Stores. General stores, weapon stores, item stores, food stores, stuff like that. But everyone knows that the stores shouldn‘t be there anymore because the tax men came and took all the money away. Still, People‘s Park was a sea of green in a desert of grey. Does that make sense?”

Lanster Smith smiled. “Alright, go on. What did the people talk about in People’s Park?”