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[IronyOwl]

The land of Alkenia was beautiful, once. Then bugs conquered everything and it got a bit gooey. The gardens are still pretty nice, little more glowy than normal, but really, just goo everywhere.

Fortunately for you, your insectile overlords have a keen interest in aggressive use of primitive assets, meaning stuffing you through a magical portal to go colonize lifeless hellscapes for them. For a mundane peon, this might be somewhat concerning. For an unbalanced master of the arcane, jackpot.

Spoiler: Mechanics (click to show/hide)

Turn Structure
Turns are divided into two general types: Settlement and Adventure.

Settlement Mode involves performing settlement actions: Building structures, harvesting resources, seducing peasants, and other "in town" activities. This is generally the default mode for anyone not currently out in the wilderness.

Adventure Mode involves performing adventure actions: Investigating a peculiar jumble of rocks, climbing a tree to get a better view of the surroundings, being eaten alive by radioactive jackals, and other "on an adventure" activities. This tends to happen when players strike out on an expedition, either to another plane of reality or just in the land around an existing settlement.

Under normal circumstances, both turn types run simultaneously, so a given player's current activities have little bearing on how often they get to act. In the event of high player load, players may be cycled into and out of temporary inactive mode, wherein they amass perfectly average results rather than roll for their complex multi-stage plans.

Basics
Most rolls use standard RTD results.

Roll	Outcome
6	Overshot. You succeed a little too enthusiastically, causing unintended side effects.
5	Flawless Success. You succeed about as well as could be hoped.
4	Success. You succeed more or less as intended.
3	Partial Success. You accomplish some of your goal but not all of it, or it suffers a flaw of some sort.
2	Failure. You fail.
1	Critical Failure. You ruin everything.

Modifiers can apply to rolls, usually from traits and raw materials. End results of 7+ or 0- are progressively more extreme versions of 6 and 1, respectively.

Experience and Skills
Skills represent your talent in a given field, or more specifically the number of units worth of effort you can apply in an action. For instance, someone with +3 Woodcutting can harvest 3 units of lumber per turn.

Note that not all skills are created equally. Narrower skills tend to have a deeper range of effects, while shallower skills tend to have a broader range of effects. In addition, players tend to be far more talented and... unrestrained than normal people, and as such tend to wield far more potent versions than their peasant fellows.

Skills increase through experience gain. Any time you perform an action, you have a chance to gain experience in its relevant skill.

Roll	XP Gain
5-6	+2
3-4	+1
1-2	+0

The experience needed to increase a level is equal to the skill's current bonus. For instance, +4 Carpentry requires 4 points of xp to raise to +5 Carpentry.

Traits
Traits are relatively unique facets of a character, be it a biological quirk, special magical talent, or simply bizarre obsession. Traits can have a wide range of effects, but are notably a common source of modifiers to rolls.

Every three levels you acquire among all of your skills, you will receive a choice of several traits based on your actions and achievements. You may only select one, though it is possible for unselected traits to appear in later selections.

Spoiler: The Multiverse and You (click to show/hide)

Mission Statement and Legal Status
As with most things involving cruel insectile overlords shoving livestock through unstable holes, the art of planar travel is a little... complicated. The chief obstacle is that most planar destinations are not very accommodating, and many are not very stable, in a ground-literally-falls-into-the-void manner.

Accordingly, travel to other worlds consists of three phases. The first phase is to shove a magical probe to a given destination, collecting data on local conditions. The second involves insane magical livestock jumping through in order to harvest it of resources, collect additional information, and even erecting crude structures to do livestock things in. The third, and incredibly rare, stage is for the imperious overlords themselves to establish some manner of presence in a sufficiently secure and developed region.

As insane magical livestock yourself, you are of course primarily concerned with Stages 1 and 2.

World Qualities
The first step in exploring a new world is making sure you don't die instantly upon entering it. This can be more complicated than you might think, because most alternate planes are really just terrible. Probes return the following rough statistics:

Temperature
How hot or cold the area is. Extreme ranges are generally only survivable with proper protection, but even perfectly habitable ranges tend to require concessions to thrive in.

Moisture
How much liquid is around. Sometimes this means water, other times it's an ocean of acid. As might be expected, especially wet or dry areas tend to be obnoxious to work in.

Fertility
How well the soil and other conditions support life. Note that the exact definition of "life" can get rather subjective, so occasionally it will return "Barren Wasteland" on a rock elemental jungle or "Overgrown Paradise" in an eternal hurricane of acid bats. Also note that this is an estimate of potential, not actual living things, so sometimes "fertile" areas will lack present inhabitants or "barren" areas will be strangely overstocked.

Rockiness
A rough estimate of the area's geography. Note that the probes equate uneven terrain with hard surfaces and vice versa, so an ocean wracked by mountain-sized waves and a perfectly flat plain of glass might both return as somewhat hilly.

Stability
How, uh, stable the world is. Note that this refers to far more than geography- many worlds are literally rotting away to nothing in an alarmingly short period. "Normal" worlds are "permanent," meaning infinite or effectively infinite stability (or rather, no detectable decay). Others literally feature ground falling away, color draining from the world, the sun slowly dimming to nothing, or other bizarre phenomena. While not generally recommended for permanent settlements, their decay often makes it easier to plunder whatever resources remain.

Note that the probe can sometimes, but not always, note unspecified abnormalities in the above categories. It usually does not return abnormalities in other fields, such as whether the world has a sun, if there's a hungry worm staring at the tasty probe, if a gentle paradise is visible from the hellish volcano crater it has landed in and is reporting back to you, and so on. It will, however, report excessive sources of damage to itself, assuming it's given enough time to do so.

Expeditions
Once you've decided that a Scorching Waterlogged Bleak-But-Something's-Off Mountains is the perfect spot to do things other than die, you can arrange an expedition. Normally this consists of a pack of unstable mages jumping through to figure out the fine details of what is clearly a giant frying pan, but sometimes it can involve other peons to assist in some manner.

Your insectile overlords refer to this as an "asset expenditure," though you prefer "adventure." Depending on the exact conditions, this may involve examining rocks and topography for a good settlement location, or running screaming as wave after wave of hellbats hurl themselves at your delicious, delicious flesh.

With the information and, if successful, pacification of the region in question, a more permanent settlement becomes much more feasible.

Settlements
Once a good (or horrifyingly bad but you're doing it anyway) spot for a settlement has been selected, proper construction may begin.

One unit of structure is, very roughly, a 10-ft. cube. Larger and more complex structures are generally just multiple units squished together, and thus require more manpower and materials to complete.

Inhabitants for your settlement may migrate in search of food, shelter, protection, and so on. They may also be coerced or purchased, bred from existing inhabitants, created outright through insane rituals, and so on. As might be expected, less skilled peons will accept much simpler living conditions than more skilled peons.

Finally, structures and possessions may grant bonuses to their owners, depending on their exact value and nature.

Spoiler: Magic (click to show/hide)

Magic is the manipulation of a particular element, or more specifically a particular type of mana. Mana is sometimes described as the essence of the world, or a "purer" form of a thing. Things tend to produce and contain their type of mana, so stone is a source of Stone Mana, fire is a source of Fire Mana, and so on.

This does place two important limits on magic use. The first is that a given type of magic is only feasible if you can find appropriate mana; concepts, such as Immortality or Awesome, are notoriously difficult to find and extract mana for. The second is that, even if a type of magic is feasible in general, it requires raw materials to function; either physical materials containing appropriate mana, or refined mana itself. This makes, for instance, using Water Magic to end droughts difficult, because you can't create water without water mana in some form, which is liable to be difficult if you don't have enough water in the first place.

Because mundane materials are sufficient for most purposes, mana is typically only used in pure forms when necessary. This most often occurs for large or exotic projects, where the end result is much smaller than the materials that would need to be used, or the logistics of transporting that much unrefined material are prohibitive.

When it is needed, mana is extracted from the environment by meditation or prayer, or from raw materials directly through some manner of rendering.

Code: (Signup Sheet) [Select]

[b]Name:[/b] What you call yourself
[b]Primary Skill:[/b] A skill to start at +5. There is no standard skill list, though you may ask for samples or clarifications on just what a given skill could accomplish.
[b]Secondary Skill:[/b] A skill to start at +3.
[b]Physical Description:[/b] What you look like
[b]Bio:[/b] What you're like on the inside, and your general history and motivations, if any and relevant
As a reminder, there is no player limit, though there is a mission-style cycling mechanic.

[IronyOwl]

Player List
-Fedelmid Cowhunter, Hunter of Cows (voliol)
-Brian Keens, Middle Manager (NJW2000)
-Sairian, Agrariamancer (Nirur Torir)
-Baeset Musre, Mana Milker (OceanSoul)
-Nix, Fire Paladin (NRDL)
-Karen, Upjumped Urchin (Coolrune206)
-The Dilettante, Cheating Whore Feather Monk (ATHATH)
-Ogneer, Obvious Ogre (crazyabe)
-Suzume, Favored Soul (AbstractTraitorHero)
-Ryan 'Blu' Samson, Rebel Scum Water Medic (BlastoiseWarlorf)
-Nar Azzar, Rebel Scum Golemancer (Atomic Chicken)
-Bruva Bugert, Race Traitor Insectile Sycophant (Yottawhat)

[IronyOwl]

Atlas

Spoiler: World 8 (click to show/hide)

World 8 Probe Results:
Hot Wet Overgrown Mountain - Sturdy*

Additional survey in progress.

World 8 Survey Results:

"I got a report to give, right this second! You see, this world 8 place is pretty dark and wet, like a poorly-insulated root cellar. I mean, this is a really wet root cellar, like the one at my Uncle Ron's house. The thing was that Ron never actually used his root cellar, and so he never actually repaired it. So as time went on, the ceiling started to leak real bad, and it was almost like there was rain in there. Me, I though it was a lot like a rain forest. Now, I'm not saying world 8 is like a rain forest, it just was all rainy and thundery and such. So I get there, and there's this big old castle, made of stone. It reminded me of the castles they had at fair I went to back when I was thirty, but those castles were made of paper and wood and paint, and not real stone. The paint back then wasn't very good, because they had to make the dyes out of fruits and vegetables, and so all the colors looked a lot like the ones you'd see in food. Of course, if you tried to eat the paint you'd just straight up die, 'cause it's paint. But as I was saying, there was a castle, and a bunch of crazy cultists there with a church of fighting. This wasn't no nice peaceful church like the Church of Seven back in Wilbusville. I remember going to Senbaville, which was what we called Willbusville back then, and I saw this big huge church, all fancy and stuff. There was a nice old priest there, and he was a good fellow. I learned that his name was Sam, and we had these long, pleasant conversations about all sorts of things whenever I was back in town before we had a falling out. This wasn't a nice church like the Seven, and there certainly was no Sam. You see, these cultist peoples love fighting, and violence. Now, I've been in a few fistfights in my own time, back before I was in this here wheelchair. But I never got into fights like these people were all into. You see, it seems that this whole world 8 place is obsessed with fighting, and the dominance of strength and power. I wanted nothing to do with it, partially because I know I can't win no fights in my condition, but also because I didn't like the feel of these cultists. I never like cultists, not since Sam started his own cult, he called it the Eight. There's another thing I didn't like about this place, it was called world 8 and I have bad feelings about the number 8 since Sam started going all crazy-like. But that's pretty much the whole story right there."

Spoiler: World 12 (Plague World, Caution Advised) (click to show/hide)

World 12 Probe Results:
Cool Arid Overgrown Hill - Sturdy

World 12 Survey Results:

"World 12 is relatively flat, with a few minor hills here and there. Its major feature is being covered in enough mushy material to wade in, which apparently can harden into gunk (*points to the remaining gunk around my eyes*) and encrust into a crusty material (*points to voliol*). We suspect that the gunk causes disease in those that are exposed to it. While I sensed a source of life mana either beneath or in the plague-mush, I could not extract any life mana from the plague mush that is on me. It might be either dead or never alive in the first place; I am not sure which. In theory, the plague mush could be turned into an effective bio-weapon- it started affecting my friend here quite soon after we arrived in World 12. I recommend sending plague magicians to World 12 to investigate it further, and perhaps a telepath to communicate with the plague mush if it is sapient, but I do not recommend creating a permanent settlement there unless it is for research and/or diplomatic purposes (depending on whether or not the plague mush is sapient)."

"Also, you might want to have a cleanup crew sterilize everything that I and everyone else that went to World 12 touched since going there."

Spoiler: World 9 (click to show/hide)

World 9 Probe Results:
Warm Wet Green !!Tomb!! - Reinforced

Survey in progress.

Spoiler: Undiscovered Candidates (click to show/hide)

World 1
Temperate* Arid Green Quicksand - Decaying
World 2
Cool Waterlogged* Barren !!Wisp!! - Doomed
World 3
Cold Waterlogged Barren Plain - Ironclad
World 4
Cool Wet* Habitable Ground - !!Evaporating!!
World 5
!!Molten!! Dry Lush Rock - Doomed
World 6
Hot Dry !!Sterile!! Plain - Doomed
World 7
Scorching !!Submerged!! !!Sterile!! Plain - !!Sanctuary!!
World 10
Scorching !!Dehydrated!! Green* Plain - Doomed
World 11
!!Molten!! Balanced Overgrown Hill - !!Evaporating!!

[voliol]

This sounds fun

Name: Fedelmid Cowhunter
Primary Skill: Hunting
Secondary Skill: Leather-working
Physical Description: A burly man clad in various skins and hides, most notably a cape made of the remains of a moss-green mutant cow. His face is covered by a massive beard and wild hair, but if you look at it more closely you can see a broad chin and gleaming eyes. He carries bow & arrows and a steel knife used for skinning his prey.
Bio: He has hunted since his youth, bringing down many-a-mutant beasts in Alkenia. Now he has been sent out to probe and colonize new worlds, and seeks to find the most ferocious monsters to slay, and make epic leather trophies of, of course.

[NJW2000]

Looks awesome.

Name: Brian Keens
Primary Skill: Identification: recognising and understanding foreign objects and systems. Where a normal person sees a bunch of large insects stripping a corpse of meat, Brian sees cooperation between several individual teams to meet carefully selected targets and accomplish goals with maximum energy-efficiency within a given timeframe. Where a normal person sees a horrendous toothy maw, Brian sees a perfectly adapted set of specialised tools capable of working in tandem. Where a normal person sees a human being used as a host for larvae, Brian sees... well, you get the idea. Brian knows whats going on.
Secondary Skill: Management. Brian isn't a leader, he's an organiser, and is good at communicating, facilitating teamwork, and bringing out people's natural talent.
Physical Description: Middle aged, a little pudgy, bald, he wears an enthusiastic grin on his expansive head. He is dressed in a grey suit, the dull fabric specially adapted for wading through goo.
Bio: Brian is completely on board with his insect overlords, and has been a lot happier since they arrived. He is highly dedicated to the success of any mission they task him with, his obedience overriding almost any scruples. He is percieved as a little odd by most people, not aloof or withdrawn exactly, but somehow inacessible: it's hard to understand what makes him tick. He is very enthusiastic.

[Nirur Torir]

Name: Sairian
Primary Skill: Plant Magic (Growth/Mutation focus, control and sensing are tertiary concerns)
Secondary Skill: Mundane Agriculture
Physical Description: He looks like a young-ish working man, tanned from spending time working in fields. He has slightly fat.
Bio: He was originally from a small farming village, fallen on hard times, and knew intermittent hunger. War and famine happened, and the survivors migrated to a city, where he was eventually trained as a mage. He is a hard worker, and wants to feed the hungry. He particularly likes experimenting with plant magic to increase yields or plants capable of defending against invaders. He is somewhat interested in studying xenoflora. He doesn't like lazy people, and hates leadership/organizational-inflicted hunger and suffering. He has a fear of heights.

[OceanSoul]

Name: Baeset Musre
Primary Skill: Extraction of Mana from biotic beings.
Secondary Skill: Animal Handling.
Physical Description: Dirty green hair (it's a magic thing), faded red coat, thin, yet comfy green fur boots and gloves (dyed), red socks.
Bio: A man who's interested in extraplanar scouting just for seeing all the animals the multiverse has to offer. Subconsiously hopes to make a spell to reduce the insect overlords to mere rabbits or such.

[NRDL]

Name: Nix
Primary Skill: Pyromancy
Secondary Skill: Persuasion
Physical Description: A very tall, gaunt, giant of a man wearing a snow-white cloak that covers him head to toe. His eyes are pitch black, and his hands are covered in bandages that look like they haven't been replaced in years.
Bio: Nix from an early age was exposed daily to the Secret Fyre, an energy source which gifted him the powers of flame and heat. In return for this power, Nix swore to fight the enemies of order and civilisation, in whatever form they may exist.

[Coolrune206]

Name: Karen
Primary Skill: Stone Magic
Secondary Skill: Carbon Magic
Physical Description: A generally young female, of an age between late teens to early twenties, who bears scars from her early days. However, her eyes are quite bright, and her lips generally curved into a smile.
Bio: Karen had to beg through her early childhood. She cannot remember her parents, and can't even remember if they named her Karen or if she named herself Karen. Her first memories are simply of sitting, half-starved and barely conscious, on the outskirts of cities, relying on the kindness of passersby to survive. Things improved when her magical skills flowered, and she managed to obtain a job, and better quality of living. That is, until the bugs took over. From having nothing, she has learned to treasure the few things that life gives her, and generally is an optimist.

[ATHATH]

IN!

Reading OP...

[ATHATH]

Name: The Dilettante
Primary Skill: Air Magic
Secondary Skill: Life Magic
Physical Description: A raptoran (winged humanoids/bird-people that normally reside in/hail from the Elemental Plane of Air) with blue feathers instead of the normal white ones.
Bio: The Dilettante wants nothing more than to acquire as many different skills as possible. Why he does, few can say, although the Dilettante claims that it "helps his character growth", whatever that means. Like most of his species, he is very claustrophobic and prefers being under an open sky to being in enclosed buildings, caves, etc.

[ATHATH]

Question: Can you draw mana from yourself? For example, if you had the Evil Magic skill and were a mustache-twirling, puppy-kicking a-hole, would you be able to draw evil mana from yourself? What about, say, human mana (with the Human Magic skill, of course)?

[crazyabe]

Spoiler: sheet (click to show/hide)

Name: Ogneer
Primary Skill: Earthmagic
Secondary Skill: Stoneworking
Physical Description: Big, Grey, Standard number of eyes and legs, four arms, Mouth with slightly less teeth then normal
Bio: Ogneer "Allegedly" fell through a portal it didn't see, after finishing off a bunch of weird meat things that were on his island and thought it would be a good idea to eat HIS poisonous berries, and kill HIS livestock. After roughly several months of interrogation it was decided that the most profitable way to dispose of him was to send him back Away on an expedition.

[IronyOwl]

Primary Skill: Transmutation magic
Secondary Skill: Summoning magic

These aren't elements. Where are you going to find summoning mana? D:

Question: Can you draw mana from yourself? For example, if you had the Evil Magic skill and were a mustache-twirling, puppy-kicking a-hole, would you be able to draw evil mana from yourself? What about, say, human mana (with the Human Magic skill, of course)?

Yes and no. You can use yourself as a source of mana, but for settlement-scale actions you're insufficiently large and intense for (feasible) passive collection, and you probably don't want to render yourself into a larger quantity. This is especially true for things you're less than entirely composed of or embody, such as Teeth Mana.

For adventure-scale actions, it seldom comes up, but if you have no other sources you can theoretically replenish your adventure-scale mana using your own nature.

[OceanSoul]

Primary Skill: Transmutation magic
Secondary Skill: Summoning magic

These aren't elements. Where are you going to find summoning mana? D:

Well, technically, Summoning Mana wouldn't be needed to summon as an effect of a spell. For example, if you used a combination of Stone Mana and...say, Horse Mana to make a stone horse under your command, the modifier might apply there. Similarly, if there was a sufficient amount of Gold Mana used to turn lead into gold, the Transmutation bonus may apply there. So, technically, it's a separate form of classification that could get its own bonuses, maybe. Ultimately, it's YOUR choice on whether non-Mana spell classifications are bonusable or not.