Twokinds ARCHIVE Forums

STORY

Centuries ago, in the Homeplane, sorcerers discovered the means to travel to other worlds, called ‘Planes’.

Traveling from Plane to Plane requires the use of a Planesmaster, a highly trained person who’s devoted their life to providing the means to cross the boundaries between the Planes. Without them, there would be no inter-Planar travel at all.

Many of these planes resemble the Homeplane, or environments of the Homeplane. There’s Tartarus, the fiery volcano world, the pillar-world of Hern-Teol, the vast oceans of Acwa-Costoe, to name but a few.

Regardless of terrain, virtually all of these planes were colonized during the Great Migration of the human race. Gradually the discovery of new planes has leveled off to less than a trickle of the former rate.

A few months ago, a Planesmaster by the name of Loenard Valeroi discovered a new world. A dead one. The sky was cloudy and gray, with only a trickle of sunlight coming through. The earth was dead, only a few withered shrubs clung to life. There was no trace of anything living except for empty cities.

The records that survived hinted at the use of a great power source used throughout the Plane, a world resource. Such a power would bring great wealth to the Plane that possessed it.

Loenard joined forces with a rich private merchant by the name of Richese Briers to create teams to explorers to set up a base camp and search for more ruins. Loenard concluded from his research that the secret of the power was contained in three books, and some kind of artifact. The first book was in the city that he had traveled to in his initial journey. The last two and the artifact were apparently in fortresses dotted across the land.

Airships, the lighter than air specialties of Hern-Teol were brought in to search. One of the castles was found. The team that was sent to investigate it never returned. A second expiditon was sent. Only the airship pilot returned, bringing stories of horrible creatures that swarmed around the party members as they approached the book.

Richese decided on a new plan: Send teams of expendable mercenaries and treasure hunters into the castles instead. Bulletins went out across the Planes, seeking mercenaries to apply for "Merchandise Retrieval" with Richese Enterprises.

Universe Information

A Note on Planes:
Players can exercise their creativity and make their own Planes for their character to be from. Just post a paragraph or two summarizing your Plane and it’s culture. Also, if you think your character sounds like it came from a Plane another person posted, I declare a blanket permission to use that as your Plane of Origin, so long as you use it in a respectful manner. Don’t go rewriting the history of a player-created Plane that’s not yours.

Technology in the RP:
Airships: Airships are lighter than air aircraft, and have become more or less the most popular mode of transportation in the Planes. A large gasbag holds up the gondola of the craft, which is propelled by a propeller system powered from a magic source within the craft.

Firearms: Firearms have not quite yet overtaken bows as the preferred form of distance killing, primarily due to deep-rooted traditions and the large amount of skilled archers still alive, but advances have been made. All firearms are flintlocks. Paper cartridges that hold a preset amount of gunpowder have been reliably proven. Reliable breech loading mechanisms have been made, but take more training than muzzle loading and are more complicated to produce, so roughly 80% of all firearms are muzzle-loaders. Rifling has also been discovered.

Magic:
Magic, simply put, only exists in objects imbued with it and Planesmasters. Planesmasters, through a combination of their will and life force, can move objects through the voids between Planes. Talented Planesmasters can either travel with the transported objects to the destination, or just stay in the starting Plane. By using that same force and will, they can imbue objects with magic, but there are few uses for this outside of powering Airships, due to the fact that magically imbued objects can easily release their magic in the form of an explosion. Aside from Planestravel, there are no other uses for magic and no one who uses magic for any other purpose.
GM NOTE: Word of warning, very few people will be accepted as Planesmasters.

Sample Planes:
Gahouren: As far as terrain goes, Gahouren is a flat, plains filled Plane with extremely fertile soil. Professional chefs swear by Gahouren produce. Being primarily farmers, it’s people are well-behaved and kind to strangers, though gangs of bandits become more prevalent the farther you go from the developed cities.
Hern-Teol: Hern-Teol, often called the Pillar-World, can be summarized as ‘vertical.’ Ancient events brought up towering mesas clawing far into the sky. It’s people mostly live in cliff dwellings, saving the flat tops for farmland. Due to its nature, it’s little wonder airships were perfected here. Most of the land is owned by the nobility, who also harshly regulate the trade, which fosters smugglers. The most prevalent of the nobility-funded security forces call themselves 'Dragonriders' based on their ferocity.
Tartarus: Tartarus is a world dominated by volcanoes and lava flows. A few attempts to settle it failed to find any stable area to build a city. Thusly, there is no such thing as living permanently on Tartarus. People only come for at most a week to collect nutrient-rich ash to export to other Planes.
Acwe-Costoe: Acwe-Costoe’s landmass can be best described as a large island chain. Most people survive a diet of fish and fruit, and selling those fish off-Plane. Almost every native of Acwe-Costoe has sailing experience; most have their own canoe.

Character Sheets & Sample Characters


Character Sheet:
Name:
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname:
Age:
Plane of birth:
Appearance:
Weapon 1: (If your character is an archer, this is their bow)
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2:
Personality:
Biography:
Airship pilot: [YES or NO](It’s not necessary to be an airship pilot.)
Planesmaster: [YES or NO]

Sample[My]Characters:
Name: Tyrol Saulan
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname: None.
Age: 41
Plane of birth: Gahouren.
Appearance: Fairly tall and well muscled, but a little on the thin side. His hair is black and hangs untidily down to his shoulders. His eyes are an emerald shade of green. He usually wears a dark brown leather duster.
Weapon 1: A naginata-style spear with a sheath for the blade.
[OPTIONAL] Weapon 2: A katar that hangs from a shoulder-to-waist strap.
Biography: Tyrol led, for the most part, a normal childhood, and hardly dreamed of becoming a fighter. He actually wanted to grow up and become a priest. But, one of the village militia shoved a spear in his hands and told him to fight with it, which Tyrol did well. With a lot of self-training and teaching, Tyrol became a force of nature with his naginata. There were a few large struggles that highlighted his career, but then he sank out of the limelight. The part of his life once filled with battle and glory is starting to fill with drink. He sees this job as his last great achievement before he becomes another drunk old veteran, sitting in a tavern all day and unloading everything about the ‘good old days’ to anyone with ears.
Personality: Pretty rough and quite sarcastic. He can be brutally honest about what he thinks at times, making him somewhat difficult to get along with.
Airship pilot: No
Planesmaster: No

Name: Cormic Hauges
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname: Airman.
Age: 56
Plane of birth: Hern-Teol
Appearance: Average height and thin. Most of the color in his hair is gone, and what’s left is a light brown in color. His eyes are a nondescript brown, but he wears tinted glasses so often that it’s doubtful you’ll see them.
Weapon 1: A rifle that hangs from the gun rack above the main window of his airship’s cockpit.
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2: A survival knife.
Personality: Cormic is a chatterbox. He’s full of stories about his travels, his late wife, children, grandchildren, and everything else he can think of. He’s also very untidy and very unorganized. He has nearly all the controls labeled in his ship, but not all labeled in the same language. He’s far from the courageous, adventurous type.
Biography: Cormic was born on Hern-Teol, and almost immediately joined his family in the black market shipping business, dodging Dragonrider patrols. He’s literally been flying since he was a child. Eventually, he earned enough money to buy the immigration fees for his fiancée, his son, and himself. He established himself in legitimate shipping, and never looked back on Hern-Teol. Time passed, his children grew up and moved out, his wife died peacefully, and he kept working. Known to be the best in the business, a representative from Richese’s company approached him about the job.
Airship pilot: Yes
Planesmaster: No

Name: Loenard Valeroi
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname: None.
Age: 31
Plane of birth: Kolob
Appearance: Loenard is not tall, but neither short. His light brown hair hangs down just to his shoulders. A goatee circles his lips and is the exact same color.
Weapon 1: A small, easy to hide pistol he stashes in his robes.
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2: None.
Personality: Loenard is a flirt, liar procrastinator, gambler, and possesses a knack always delivering enough to save his skin at the last second. Other than that, he’s quite charming.
Biography: Loenard primarily gained entry into the Planesmaster academy through his charm. He passed using all his talents, consistently disappointing annoyed instructors while brightening the days of several of his female classmates. He passed with enough honors to noticed, but not enough to be guaranteed a good job. He was working as a Planesmaster in a back-country, second hand Planestravel Office on Kolob that was frequented by those people who can’t afford to stop in the cities. It was a pitiful job, and Loenard quickly learned how to do just enough work to stay hired. In the free time he took from the office, he accidentally shifted himself to the Lifeless Plane, and began the chain of events that led to the mercenaries being hired.
Airship pilot: No.
Planesmaster: Yes.

i would like to see thing take off... it seems to be good.

Name: Fitty Soul
Age: unknown.
Plane of birth: Japanese heaven
History books: a beautiful place filled with light. The plane itself is usually cut off to most people that is undeserving. It has a lot of protection on it so it take a person, that doesn't know how to do it, some powerful magic to break into it.
Appearance:

Weapon 1: On the outside, looks like a wooden staff but has a few magic properties.
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2: Moon stone.
Personality: Very peaceful. Because he is a powerful being, he doesn't like to use it. Very outgoing and loving.
Biography: Most of his history is in the books of the Japanese culture. Some that is lost and some that he has kept for himself. So if he wants you to know his past he will tell you. His magic has been practice again and again for ages and is very good.
Airship pilot: NO
Planesmaster: YES


Hopefully this is good

Name: Vaan Katal
[OPTIONAL] Preferred nickname: Vaan
Age: 19
Plane of birth: Unknown

Appearance: Jet black hair that is slightly spiked, giving him a rougish appearance. He is on the rather tall side, 6' 4", but his body is limber from the punishment he puts it through. His muscles are honed to perfection and his lean physique gives him the speed he needs to pull off impressive displays of melee combat. He typically wears black slacks and thick leather armor and always has a black-metal gauntlet covering his left hand.

Weapon 1: A black-metal Katana, the metal used in crafting it is of
unknown origin.
(Small edit to my post i forgot to mention, the gauntlet on his left hand is primarily used as defence)
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2: Unarmed melee combat

Personality: Vaan is a quiet person who likes to keep to himself and unconsiously rebuff any attempts of people who approach him. He does not try to be rude, but he often comes of that way. He seems to have a strong sense of justice, and acts based upon it, no matter the consequences.

Biography: Vaan grew up in a plane called 'Valhalla' which was named from North mythology as the world of slain heroes. To Vaan, it was anything but a heroic world to live in as a child abandoned to the lawless outskirt towns. Only his quick wits and his steadily growing fighting skills kept him alive on what was known as 'The edge of civilization'. For nearly the past six years, since he was little more than a child, he has been working as a mercenary, always 'flying solo'.
Airship pilot: Only small craft
Planesmaster: No, His study of combat has not allowed him to learn the ways.

Snuggles: I'm sorry, but unapproved. Maybe you're confused by the concept of Planes. It's really not all that dissimilar from a sci-fi story where humans have colonized X number of worlds, but found no sentient aliens on them(Firefly, Dune, Battletech). Planes can be named for mystical realms, but they are not that realm. Also, there is no magic outside of Planesmasters and objects imbued with magic. Objects imbued with magic have few to zip other purposes outside of powering airships, as they explode when roughly handled.

For example, let's say you have a garden-variety rock imbued with magic. Smash that rock with a hammer and it'll explode. Throw that rock against a wall hard enough and it'll explode. Drop it? Hope you didn't drop it hard enough, because it might explode.

Lord Jersh: Approved. Glad to have you onboard!

Dune may not be among the best examples. The Sandworms are there (And seemingly Sentient), and the Txleiu / Facedancers, even if human, don't quite seem that way usually. Same goes for Navigators. Though speaking of Dune... nah, can't bother with the Copywrite issues. Will try and think of something.

Be warned, though. A portion of this forum seems to have a NEED for their character to be inhuman.

Sandworms weren't sentient until after Leto II. The Tleilaxu and Navigators were once human. You got me on the Face Dancers, I'll admit, though.

Well, I wanted to try and keep the setting "low fantasy". In hindsight, I'll change the racial restrictions. Furred or scales characters are allowed WITHIN REASON. The magic rules and nature of Planes haven't changed.

Name: D'en Zydidode
Preferred nickname: Den
Age: 18

Plane of birth: Wintermarsh,(sorry if i need to post the plane before the charactor, or after) Wintermarsh is a very oily swampy plane, the plane is a great source of money and trade. the city is the only place where there is acqualy land that wont sink into the swamps. The plane has lots of untouched nutrients in the ground; however, the land parts are far to small to farm and has a very great chance of getting sunken into the swamps. but nutrients didnt make this plane a very rich plane. it came from the oil which dwell in the swampymarshes, but that is not the only thing that dwells in the marshes, there are sorts of animals that eat each other to servive. the traders that live in the city export their oil from the marshes and inport food. many traders use slaves, people who came to this plane in search for food since their jobs couldnt support their family, to pump oil from the marshes, and in extange, the slaves get a first clas meal.(win win for everybody) the tempurater is very very cold, the oil, however, is one of the reasons why it is a swamps and not an ice field. the oil is hot enough to melt the snow that falls apon them, yet cool anough not to explode the entire marshes, the reason why the people dont inport wood to keep them warm, is becuase they have a whole plane of oil and more they havnt even seen yet, the marhclands also have anouther reasorce, gunpowder, which is,of course, used for the flintlock. it allways snows in the plane which is why the name is called Wintermarsh.

Appearance: blond hair, blue eyes, sort of albino. looks to be 14-15,
Weapon 1: the flintlock, apperently the flintlock has a longer berral then a normal flintlcok does; however the affect still stays the same as a normal flintlock.
Personality: he is cheerfull, joyfull, allways a greatsport, even while he is in combat. once a year, for one whole year, he has an emotional meltdown, for unknown reasons, were he becomes...sadistic.

Biography: he comes from a very rich family trading company, his great great great great grandfather found the marshy plane and its oily substance. his father owns one of the many city towers of the plane. his tower consits of a living quarters, which has a kitchen, bathrooms, diningroom, airfilter(magicla of course), bedrooms,ect.ect.ect., the Zydidode family lives on the top part of the living quarters, of course, while the slaves live in the bottom part. the top part is the landing pad of the airships. the most bottom part was the airlocks that ran on magic. he has been trained in the art of the gunpowder, which basicly is the only art there is on that plane. he also knows how to servive in harsh climates, since he goes hunting in the swamps by himself. he doesnt like to act rich, and his only friends are the slaves of his tower.

Airship pilot: no
Planesmaster:yes

Name: John Rhelnon
Age: 28 (Considering the Medieval life expectancy is around 33, impressive)
Plane of birth: Lyr'il. Lyr'il is not much different then the usual Earth-like world. Much of the plant life is similar, animal life, land regions, etc. However, unlike many other worlds (Which have grown to a state beyond much violence) Lyr'il is oft to have wars with itself, and the standard of living is relatively poor. In return, however, the people born here are a hardy folk. Self sufficient, skilled with blade and mind, and able in body.
Appearance: John stands roughly five feet and ten inches in height. This allows him in his own realm to stand above the average peasant, yet makes him shorter then the average noble. His brown hair is long and dirty, sticking along his shoulders and the back of his neck (though around his face the hair is short). His face holds a lone scar across the right brow, scant centimeters from his eye. While not a fat face, he does show signs that he is at least close to proper nourishment, and seems to be coloured enough to not look sickly.

His body is in a relatively fit position. While not quite as strong as, say, a builder, he definately has muscles to back up his blows and propel himself at a decent speed (around average human). The torso is almost always covered by the breast plate of a cuirass, though seemingly (Besides a pair of bracers and shin guards) there is no other armor to speak of. The plate is worn overtop a standard medieval shirt, died blue-greenish to represent his affiliation. The pants are standard cotton britches, with a similar color to them.

His sword is strapped to his side, while he has his throwing knives concealed in small pockets along his outfit (One in a boot, another in a sheathe beneath his left arm, and a final inside his cuirass).
Weapon 1: Sword (Standard Long Sword, Steel, roughly 34" in length for the blade).
[OPTIONAL]Weapon 2: Throwing Knives (x3).
Personality: John has a personality that you'd expect from a Medieval Mercenary: Completely Arse-hole-ish. If it doesn't have to do with profit, or a good favor down the road, odds are he won't even bother with it. Worse, he seems to have no problem stabbing someone in the back if their need is done or they may pose a threat to his current standing / pay.

Even if lucky enough to only be seeing him once, John is rude, has a temper that a barbarian would wince at, and is likely to only show interest or act kind if he feels it will weaken his opponnent, or strengthen himself. He does, however, have a sense of humor. If you can get him to laugh, he MAY reconsider eliminating you, if only for just a bit. Also, like minded individuals seem to get along well with him (Although with all such individuals planning, like John, to stab the other in the back eventually and make their way).
Biography: John was not always a selfish, self concerned prick. When he was but a lad... Nah, just messing with you. He was always a prick. And still is.

Since he was a child, he has managed to support himself on his own. Since his mother was weak from having children, and his father was, to put it lightly, a heavy drinker, he had to find a way to support himself early. This was easy enough to do as a child through thievery, and errands for townsfolks (Though mostly thievery). From stealing bread, to cleaning in the town pub, to stealing cheese, he managed to support himself well enough. Quickly, he started to take a larger emphasis on thievery (less work, more rewards). The errands managed to leave a mark on him, though (Namely, how he could control the prices when the only one available), and led to his future career as a mercenary. He had fought with militia's against neighboring kingdoms, killed men in secret with poisons from the Apothecary, etc.
Airship pilot: No
Planesmaster: No

Glad to be onboard -nods- I hope my character will mesh well with the plotline you have planned out.

So.... shall we wait for a few more? or begin relatively soon?
Oh also i forgot to mention, my character is a male :P

I'm very interested in this. :) I'll try and come up with a character within the next couple of days.

Talonmaster Zso: I'd hit it. With my rubberstamp of approval!
hellsingman: Approved. Just try and work better on the grammar. Also, gunpowder isn't naturally occuring, it's a concotion of other materials. But, hey, no one knows everything.

Name: Felix Jaeger
Age: 21
Plane of birth: Pirate world, think pirates of the carribean..But with airships.
Appearance: Stand 5'7", 130 lb., reddish eyes and light grey hair. Has 2 'lightning' shaped marks under eyes.
Weapon 1: Rusted Rapier, decorated with dragon shaped hilt, the dragon's eye is a ruby that shines brightly at night.
Weapon 2: Classy(Pistol), stolen from a noble.
Personality: A happy personality, chaotic and a woman chaser alike. The only way to make him serious is telling they're running low on rum. His favorite quote is 'He who sins usually wins!'
Biography: Adopted by a pirate captain who found him abonded, he grew up surrounded by sin, affecting him greatly. When he killed the captain and became the new captain, he soon lost that position when he spend the treasuries in one night at a 'special' inn.
Airship pilot: YES
Planesmaster: NO

Fixed. :D

Damn, didn't noticed the e was missing :p
It was the only name I could think off XD

Still going? This seems like it'll be a good 'un.