Shadows of Africa is a shop based on the native species of Africa, set during the mid-20th century Africa. All of the animals of the shop live in the wild and have little to no contact with the urbanized world of humans. Each animal should be roleplayed as living in their natural habitat, or as close to it as possible. We understand that not everyone is an animal expert so there is some leniency concerning the habits of the shop species.
In addition to the basic roleplay setting, we have a few rules and guidelines concerning roleplay that are important to know!
Roleplaying is encouraged, but not required. However, you will not be able to breed your characters if you do not.You may set up journals for your characters if you wish. This is particularly helpful for keeping track of character's histories and roleplays.
RP can be done in the guild or the main thread or on AIM/another messanger service. You are encouraged to have plots with your character/other characters, as long as you have the approval of those characters' owners.
Do not god-mod, twink, etc. This will not be tolerated. You cannot play as someone else's character unless you are given permission from his or her owner.Expect IC actions to have IC consequences. If your character hurts another character in any way, do not expect for your character to be able to get away without harm - the owner has every right to retaliate. If you enter into an agreement to have your character blessed/cursed by a god, understand that this is binding and may not be reversed just because you decide you don't want to RP it anymore. Unless you have spoken to the owners of all characters involved, be prepared for people to respond in ways you may not have predicted.These are animals. All of the pets in this shop are animals native to Africa. They are not from another continent, they are not aliens, and they are not magical fairy creatures. They can't communicate with humans, they can't wield swords, and they can't dance the macarena. They can communicate with other members of their species and members of other animal species. We allow them to have human emotions, thoughts and ideas but they are still animals. Please be realistic about the things you roleplay.There are no human characters allowed. The pets in this shop are not meant to have any extensive contact with humans. They do not even live in a part of Africa that would give them contact with the urbanized world. Small amounts of contact with hunters or tourists are permitted but these should be treated as rare once-in-a-lifetime occurrences. Though encounters may be referenced in backstory (such as a character's parent being killed by a hunter), human characters should never in appear in roleplay.They live in the early 1970s. (Previously specified as the 1960s, but we've been around a long time!) This is not extremely important to the shop since not much will have changed about the wild between then and now. However, we do allow people to incorporate items that could be lost by a human explorer into roleplays. That being said, do not have your wild dog find an mp3 player, or your cheetah pick up a cellphone to carry back to her cubs for playtime.The landscape is not RL-accurate. Originally intended to be set in/near the Great Rift Valley, SoA has long since expanded beyond its original borders, and we play pretty fast and loose with locations. Though important geographical locations do exist (the Ngorongoro Crater, the Nile, the Namib, etc.) our critters have spread from sea to shining sea, and if we want them to live in a desert or by a river, we make a desert or a river. We won't be policing where you choose to set up your pride, but if you want to set them up as bordering on another pride, you do need permission from that pride's owner(s).Be aware of prides and packs. In SoA, your character can either be a rogue or a member of a pride or pack. Prides and packs own land, have their own rules, and each one gets their own cert for the members. If you're interested in joining or even interacting with one, please read all their rules and understand what is and isn't allowed. (More information available in the Prides and Packs post.)You may only play one of the shop species if you own one. You may not create OCs as any regular or familiar species in the shop unless you have a character on these lines. The only free characters you can create and play are African animals that currently do not have lines within the shop (meaning we do not give them out them as pets).