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Post by Bloodbane on May 9, 2017 1:58:53 GMT -5
Looks like we're off to a pretty good start! Don't worry so much about tonight's crazy speed, that's going to change a fair bit once things get underway and more people are involved with the interactions. Keep the characters comin'!
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Post by Swim on Mar 26, 2018 19:38:01 GMT -5
So I wasn't joking about throwing together a crappy sprite comic...
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Post by Sorrum on Mar 27, 2018 3:29:34 GMT -5
This is the greatest thing you have ever done.
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Post by Bloodbane on Mar 27, 2018 22:52:03 GMT -5
... Well. That's a thing.
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Post by Arashi on Apr 6, 2018 16:22:08 GMT -5
incredible
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Post by Swim on Aug 15, 2019 1:41:55 GMT -5
Since Lucas Boltin's posts are so spread out I've linked them all here for easy viewing, for anyone that either joined late or just needs a refresher on what this character has been up to. -------------------------- Boltin meets Rion - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/158970New test subject? - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/158976Of elements and eavesdropping - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/159061Curiosity - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/159077Missed flight - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/159279Analysis - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/159322The spoils - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/159488Boltin encounters bandits - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/159600Boltin flays and electrocutes bandit - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/159753Boltin arrives in Bultaranis and makes a friend - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/159826Success at last - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/160096Lisesh's decision - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/160097Repeated success - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/160173A storm rises - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/160210Slagveld crossover - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/160292The mayor is out - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/160324Finding supplies - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/160519/threadDelegating tasks - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/160596Bottled Lightning - zerovirus.proboards.com/post/160674Since it looks like the RP won't be continued and we had that storytime session in discord I'll summarize what Boltin was building towards and how his arc would've been concluded. As of the final post Boltin has become a town leader, amassed a small army of lightning mages and begun to create artificial crystals using a mineral he found exploring the remains of Terra's blight consumed hometown. With the remaining money from the Slagveld winnings he's going to buy wind cores and install them underneath the town, eventually lifting the entire village up into the sky. The party might later come across the huge crater and wonder about what had caused it but New Boltarnis as the city would be called would be long gone at that point. Aboard his floating city Lucas and his army of Lightning mages would travel the region floating from town to town and raining lightning down through a special crystal cannon. About 1 in 5 people would perish but the other 80% would be awakened as Lightning mages and Boltin's influence would spread. Eventually it would be revealed that Boltin hadn't granted anyone powers, he'd merely awakened something dormant that was already there. In ancient times there had been a conqueror called Ostal Bultarnis who been a Lightning archmage and had unified the region by force and had thousands of children in the same manor as Genghis Khan had historically done. That was why all of the mages he'd 'awakened' in this region had been of lightning element, because of that ancient bloodline. Even though Lucas had no relation to this ancient conqueror he would eventually become a Tyrant of Chaos in his own right. At some point the main party would catch up with Boltin, and they'd be joined by Lloyd Satravas, a former House of Lords bounty hunter who'd been after Terra, now he'd been hired to investigate a fanatical cult. Boltin would welcome the party onto his floating paradise and show off all of the modern luxuries he'd been able to give to his people through the power of science. Because he'd learned how to channel energy through the crystal they were able to simulate sunlight and grow crops through all types of weather, store food for longer, have certain machines to make work less arduous, all kinds of stuff that would be shocking for the rest of the party to see. None of them really took Boltin seriously before and they'd been kind of dismissive about his scientific research but the technological marvels he'd created and the general happiness and well being off his people would be hard to argue against. Eventually though the party would discover that he's evil, either by discovering the crystal cannon or that he'd received assistance from Urufu and they would clash with the army of lightning mages. After defeating them all Boltin would decide that his philosophy of spreading his power among many people had been flawed and that it was better that power be concentrated in the hands of one person who had real vision, so he'd use the mother crystal powering the whole city to drain the energy of all the lightning cultists and funnel it into Boltin. Now that he was a supercharged raid boss the party would fight Boltin directly, eventually shattering the central crystal and causing the city to free fall. The party has no choice but to leap off the plummeting landmass and escape on the backs of our dragon party members. Boltin would be enraged seeing his life's work literally crumble around him and in desperation he'd tap into the Blight magic that Urufu had gifted him, sprouting claws and bat wings and other enhancements and come flying after us for phase two of the boss fight taking place in the sky as chunks of his floating island crumble all around us. There was talk that another villain might revive him or at least bring back his zombified corpse for a rematch toward the end of the RP but for all intents and purposes this would've been the end of Lucas Boltin's story.
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Post by Swim on Apr 3, 2023 19:34:56 GMT -5
Terra's remaining plotlines
The Lord's House is the prominent religion for most humans on the main continent, and we would've seen its influence eventually reach into the Frontier by the conclusion of that arc. We don't know very much about them aside from what Terra has experienced, and she's more familiar with the House of Lords, their underground criminal element. Terra first encountered the group before the RP started when she was living on the street and fighting in underground tournaments to earn her bread money. She'd never disclosed her mage abilities to the tournament organizers, and though she didn't use her magic in any flashy or notable ways her Earth magic enabled her to take hits much harder than a normal girl should, and as a result she ended up costing some higher ups in the House a lot of money when she refused to go down the way she was supposed to. They threw a bag over her head and hauled her off to a church basement for revenge where she killed her kidnappers, set fire to the church and made herself the enemy of a powerful institution.
Terra's history with the House presented some early obstacles in BoZV, the most notable when House agents ambushed her and Aqua at the Eulene festival and slashed her throat. This near death experience made Terra consider abandoning the party so as not to put the rest of them in danger due to her presence. After they left the mainland and escaped to the Frontier it seemed like Terra was finally out of the House's influence and could breathe a sigh of relief, but unbeknownst to the party the House had sent a specialist to capture her.
Lloyd Satravas was a bounty hunter and enforcer for the House of Lords. He's also a Light mage, created specifically in contrast to many of the other Light mages the party has encountered. His most notable ability was creating hardlight walls, both as protective barriers and also as nearly invisible platforms that he could use to walk over water or through the air. He could also fire concentrated light through his guns, as well as charge random objects with light and hurl them like flash grenades. Lloyd was born into a wealthy family of nobles and indoctrinated by the church from a young age, never really questioning their teachings until he encountered the party on his mission to capture Terra.
The party first encountered Lloyd aboard the Shephard where he pretended to be a traveling merchant. During the battle with Calico's forces he helped to safeguard Captain Waverly and when Terra was drowning he would have rescued her if Rion had not dove in first, instead he tossed in a stone imbued with light magic to repel the tentacle pig creature. The party would re-encounter him in Meribia where he was keeping tabs on the party from a safe distance, like when he observed Itham's trial from the café across from the courthouse and witnessed the bomb that killed Barr. He knew that he had no chance of capturing Terra while she was with the party and they were all surrounded by Sentinels so he watched from a safe distance and waited for his opportunity. While observing the heroic acts of Terra and the party Lloyd started to question his orders and whether she was really a dangerous criminal heretic.
In Meribia the party began to split up to accomplish their own objectives and Lloyd finally had his chance one night after Terra had finished her apprenticeship with the elven blacksmith Ruby November. While wearing a mask to hide his face Satravas ambushed and overwhelmed Terra who had been caught unprepared without her weapons and armor and forced her to flee to Laphaseer Academy for protection, where Arelyn and Archmage Silennai were happy to capture her and fit her with one of their slave collars to use against Aqua and the rest of the party.
Archmage Silennai was one of the elven supremacists who wanted to expunge the humans from their lands or else enslave them the way it had been done in Vane. He worked alongside Greys to destabilize Meribia and seize power. To that end he was the one who orchestrated many of the kidnappings and child disappearances that the party had been investigating. Some of the more prominent children like Vafiel Barr were brainwashed using the slave collars and used to spy on or even assassinate their parents, as was the case with Councilor Barr. As an archmage and master of both Fire and Ice magics, and the head of a school for gifted young mages Silennai would have likely been the next Big Bad for the party to overcome. In many ways he was the ideological opposite of Itham, in the same way that his daughter Arelyn was intended to be a rival for and mirror opposite of Aqua.
After the Frontier Arc when the party was back in the wild Lloyd would pop up again at some point to kidnap Terra while she was training or hunting away from the party and they'd have a proper fight. Terra would unmask him and spare him and Lloyd would return to the House full of conflict about the teachings of the House not really squaring with the reality he'd discovered. For his failures he'd be excommunicated, his family stripped of their titles and lands and he'd become a target of the House much the same as Terra. Eventually I had planned for Lloyd to join the party and at some point they'd confront the Lord's House directly.
The Lord's House as a religious institution was meant to be left ambiguous as to whether there was any truth behind their teachings. Their central figure is a sort of savior prophet called the Masked Lord who opened his house for all who come seeking aid and comfort. The significance of his mask was that any one of us could be the Masked Lord, all of us have the capacity to serve others, and we should all strive to be a force for good in this world even if we remain anonymous and are never personally recognized or rewarded for those efforts. Whether or not the original Masked Lord existed, whether they were a divine figure or simply a good person is irrelevant to the organization now. The current Masked Lord is sort of a Pope like figure and is secretly chosen by ruling elites, but the masses of people believe that this man is still the original savior prophet and believe in the House's teachings. After Terra unmasks him she forces him to admit to the masses that he's not really the original savior, that the religion is a sham and that the House of Lords is the front for a criminal organization responsible for murder, kidnapping, extortion and a number of other crimes. To her surprise the majority of people refuse to accept the confession as truth, and Lloyd helps her come to the realization that even if every word of their gospel is a lie it still brings hope and comfort to a large number of people, and as long as they adhere to the original tenants and strive to be good selfless people it really doesn't make a difference whether it's true or not.
There was one other plot that I had in mind for Terra, not enough to carry its own story arc but I had spoken a bit about it with Silver and Sorrum and planned to splice it in whenever our party started working more directly with the human military. Terra's old flame was a young colonel named Sheth Tarcado and he'd risen through the ranks since they'd last seen one another. When Terra's hometown of Delbray was consumed by Blight many years before the RP he'd wanted to help but his commanding officer deemed the town strategically insignificant and refused to deploy forces for fear that it would leave their more important cities undefended. This man was called General Raymund Caveer, and by the time our party encountered him he was to be one of the most high ranking generals in the human military. Caveer was a ruthless man when it came to combatting the Blight mages and was prepared to utterly sacrifice certain cities in order to safeguard the more strategic/important ones, towns like Terra's were necessary sacrifices like pawns on a chess board. He wasn't an evil man necessarily but he wasn't exactly good either. Tarcado was being groomed to be Caveer's eventual successor, and was also engaged to marry his daughter Iyrena Caveer.
All of this becomes complicated when he encounters the party and learns that Terra was not killed that day, although when she learns about the military's decision to sacrifice Delbray she does lash out at him and blame them for the deaths of her family. At some point the party would get word of another blight crystal being dropped on a nearby settlement and head out to save the day, Tarcado would try to convince Terra that the situation was hopeless and she'd tell him that he's not the man she thought he was, and that he'd need to get out of the way or be prepared to fight if he intended to stop them. At the settlement the party would save several townspeople but be attacked by some new Blight creatures, and at the 11th hour Tarcado would rush in and make a heroic sacrifice laying down his life to save as many innocents as he could. We'd find out later that he disobeyed orders not to come, redeeming himself in Terra's eyes and putting the party at odds with Raymund Caveer. Caveer's army would at some point be overwhelmed by Blight mages and he would go on to be one of four horsemen of the apocalypse in Sorrum's plots, the aspect of War. It's noteworthy to mention that this entire plotline was concocted to pay a bit of homage to Terra's conceptual origin as a character in Vile's Repliforce RP which never got off the ground, with the characters of Tarcado, Caveer and Iyrena being loosely based on Colonel, General and Iris in personality.
That was the end of the Terra-centric plotlines I had in mind. As far as developing her powers and abilities go, at some point she'd use the ideas from quartermaster Jacobs and the blacksmithing techniques from Ruby November to forge herself a new suit of armor. It'd be infused with the fire crystal and she'd have a new set of gauntlets that she could channel her magic through for new abilities. Rather than punching people all the time she'd be able to extend crystal claws similar to Wolverine, and she'd be able to reform them with magic into other shapes like shovel claws or drills to help her tunnel through the ground like Yung Fueg. After training with Fueg and also with Arelyn and Silennai at Laphessir Academy she'd have much greater control over her powers, able to utilize her stone form more reflexively rather than coming on passively whenever she takes enough damage, and she'd also gain a fire form and the ability to fly around. Later on in the RP she'd combine both earth and fire magics to gain mastery over magma and become as Vic described a "human volcano." She's come a long way from an orphaned gutter rat fighting every day for her next meal, and I'm really happy with her growth as a character, her role as sort of team mom of the Dawnbringers and the and the different bonds and relationships she formed with the other characters in our party. She didn't really have an ending per se but in my mind after her fighting days were over she'd learn a craft like using her earth magic to build roads and houses and she'd settle down somewhere to live happily ever after with Aqua. And that closes the book on Terra Bicheparte.
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