Welcome to Gaia! ::

Regarding the ALERT! ALERT! thread Shazari posted regarding May. I have two concerns.

Firstly, April and May are like... midterm and exam Hell for most people. Will this shopwide event be keeping that in mind as a lot of the regular are indeed students and won't want to miss or be left out of the fun.

codalion: Given that more than one of the GMs, self included, are students as well, it would be very hard to forget that! Worry not, fair maid: no larger time commitment is inherent other than the usual, and no one is in danger of losing anything if they can't play at any time.

Secondly, I gotta be honest, seeing that this event states that it will affect everyone no ifs ands or buts kind of scares me since I know most of us have our own little plots and things that we are working towards. So I guess my question for this part is: what sort of effects are we talking here? I'm not asking for spoilers or anything. It's just I know a couple of people who are plotting eventual redemptions or corruptions and the like. Will this event essentially be clubbing those plots in the kneecaps and running?

codalion: Destiny City will be in a very different state than it was before (temporarily) -- however, the major effect it will have on characters is, in fact, an optional one, depending on if players want to play in the event! The whole thing is very major but also very temporary. <3

So in keeping with the recent questions:

A Part 1. The Cavaliers, for the parallel, do they follow the normal Cavaliers in their growth? Cavalier, Knight, Paladin?

codalion: Quite!

A Part 2. Do they (both white and parallel Cavaliers) have a super secret forth stage? Or are they just the three stages?

A Part 3. Are Cavalier requirements going to be posted when there's more cavaliers or are they on a achievement based plan? (Aka like how active a person is or what not) Or is this a we can't tell you?

Shazari: There are actually a couple of factors involved in cavaliers levelling up, as it ties to both RPs written as well as what's happening in the plot around them. Further details are a bit hush-hush.

B. The Alert for the big plot event coming up. Will this also end in Amnesia for those that play in it? Obviously it won't be all death and red coats with people coming back to life like Barren Pines. However, I'm curious because I'm debating on playing but I'm not sure Azzo could handle another month of his life missing...

codalion: Nope, everyone will be keeping their memories of this one!

C. This one isn't quite in line with the other two. However, I was reading the Winters Family RP with Astra in it and noticed that Sailor Nova, Sidra, said she became a senshi at age 12. Would this logically mean she started out as a Chibi sailor? Or was she just a normal sailor at the start for sake of the story line?

Natsube: She was a regular Sailor, not a chibi-- can't tell you much more than that!

Have another question in regards to the Sailor Soldiers of the Black Moon Court!

I'm not sure how closely they mirror the White Moon Court, but are they born as Princesses, too? If so, I'm assuming that since there was never a war between the Black Moon and the Black Earth, they've all still retained their royalty? Or, are all of the sailor soldiers just in Nehelenia's court, and not royalty?

Shazari: At present, they generally have royal titles representing sovereignty over their kingdom, though their kingdoms each fall under the jurisdiction of the empire -- in this case, the Marcasite Millenium.

Maybe this was like aleady answered, ( I got bored after reading the first page ) Bute how do you get an RL slot? Do i contact a staf like Natsu, Rose, and cauldron?

Shazari: Links to information about RL customs are in Natsube's Gaia signature. Those can only be discussed offsite because RL transactions taking place over Gaia's PM/forum system is a TOS violation. <3

Senshi who are established as being a 'Captain' of their particular team get an item to signify this, like Super Sailor Pegasus and her bell, right? Is this item just a status symbol or can it, depending on the senshi and the team, also be a weapon of sorts (thinking more along the lines of defense than offense)?

Along those lines, but not really... I know that senshi attacks are not meant to involve weapons at all, but could a senshi choose to carry a weapon around with them when they were henshined up, provided it had no magical properties/value/worth at all and if they lost it there'd be no way they could summon it back to themselves? Or should all senshi whose attacks are either passive or require some sort of battle activation just be prepared for some hand to hand combat or reliance on their allies when it comes to protecting themselves?

codalion: I don't see why not! In fact, I'm pretty sure characters like Sailor Thuban have already done this, and improvised weapons of whatever they've got at hand. Our only caveat on this is to please keep in mind what's realistic for a teenager in a dorm room/living with their parents to be able to keep without being discovered and what they can get ahold of, as well as to note that for them to have it when they transform, they have to carry it around all the time or have it somewhere they can grab after they've henshined. For example, a schoolkid carrying a katana in their backpack is not really workable. However, a schoolkid carrying a can of Mace that they then take with them when transformed is. This isn't just in the interests of realism, it's also in the interests of being fair to our Negaverse and Cavalier players, who only have the weapons they have.

I'm here, amazing!

I've already talked about this, but I think it'd be helpful to reveal the clarification I got with everyone else. <3

1. What lifestyle did the White Earth cavaliers live in terms of love interests, marriage and chastity? Did they bond with their respective senshi back in the Silver Millennium? Do the Black Earth cavaliers have these same rules to follow?

codalion: Cavaliers, both White Earth and Black Earth, were sworn to celibacy: never to marry and never to reproduce. However, many (though not all) discreetly broke this rule at least when it came to under-the-table affairs and one-night-stands, as is the case with any order sworn to celibacy! However, it would have had to be completely discreet, and marriage and children were right out. The exceptions to this rule were the Princes, Endymion and Alexandros, who were expected to marry and produce heirs to their kingdom.

They were partnered formally with their corresponding senshi, but it's up to individual players how well they knew each other and how often they worked together.

I'd like to emphasize however that these rules were very much a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: the White Earth and Black Earth cavs have no intention of enforcing this now. Who knows? It may turn out that Parallels want to bond with someone other than their Parallel-counterpart. Tomorrow is another day. biggrin

2. What physically happens when you bond yourself to a senshi?

I'm asking this cause the post Miza made about the subspace pocket is bothering me. :/

Why can't civilian forms have access to their subspace pocket? From what I understand of the anime and manga (even maybe the live action from the little I've seen of it) it would be cannon for civilian forms to have access to it.

Shazari: Because it would be deeply unfair for, say, Uranus to be able to walk around in her civilian form and a wig, popping out the Space Sword at a moment's notice and stabbing a Negaverser with it. Being able to instantly transform and call their weapons is the province of the cavaliers and the Negaversers -- one of the restrictions which senshi have is that they HAVE to transform to use their abilities and items.

Bear in mind that the exceptionalism which you see in canon, while certainly canon, doesn't work so simply for an RP like Name of the Moon with dozens of players and characters, and countless story scenarios to be navigated around. Sailor Moon had just one author, Naoko Takeuchi, and just one main character, Sailor Moon. She was at her liberty to do whatever she felt like with the other characters, kill who she wanted to, and have the rules of magic in her world be so loose and situationally applied that she could write whatever she wanted to and needed to. That kind of fudging can't be used so generally in an RP of this size and complexity; we can't apply rules of game physics sometimes and not other times based on whatever suits just this one story here, because that's how you get gigantic loopholes that later become horrendously impossible to write around.

For example you never see the senshi carrying around their henshin pens on their person, most of them don't even carry bags unless for school and yet they can call their pens from literally thin air, which I've always attributed to their subspace pocket.
Not to mention that, Crescent Moon Wand aside, that we never seen Usa carry around her wands in civilian form. And there have also been times her compact has appeared from fricken no where at the same time.

Shazari: Please assume, as I do, that if you were a magical girl and you knew you'd have to be able to produce a pen or a compact at a moment's notice, you'd make sure all the clothes you wore had pockets! Note that only some items -- your transformation item, principally -- can be used in your civilian form. Everything else remains stored in your subspace pocket, the same place where your fuku lives!, until you transform again. The subspace pocket is always THERE, but when you're not transformed you do not have access to it. You cannot put things in it or take things out of it.

Does that help clarify?

Natsube: ACTUALLY, I do recall an episode where Usagi left her wand behind accidentally! I think it fell out of her bag. Just FYI. You also have to recall that showing the wands or pens in bags and having them take them out takes time away from plot, and is usually unneeded animation! They wouldn't show that sort of information when they could just use the same animation over and over and over. Far cheaper and we as an audience are meant to assume they have them on them.

>x>;;; Sorry if this seems... uh, unwarranted or comes off in a way it shouldn't, but I've been quite confused and it really doesn't make sense to me.

BWOAHSHIT I'm back run.

Q - I know Shaz said that it's okay to assume that the senshi go on vacations and such, because really they are optional crime fighters. I'm going on vacation this summer, and was simply going to ship Audrey off to her cousins' home in Kansas. However, Cuter brought up a good point - how does a Captain justify this to the leaders? Is it simply just 'I have to go, my parents are making me.'?

Shazari: Pretty much -- a Negaverser's cover identity is pretty important for their ability to function, so jeopardizing it's not ideal. I imagine she's expected to return with X amount of starseeds.