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[Roboson]

Mortals And Monsters

In a time before time, the Blind Titan Mu drifted across the empty void. His abyssal form undulated as he slept. Ancient drums and melancholy horns accompanied the somber breath of the leviathan. For eons Mu drifted through an empty cosmos. As he drifted his power radiated outwards, only to condense into stars and rock. In time, his domain became bright and full. This light disturbed the sleeping titan, stirring him from the eternal depths of his rest. The beast reached out and scooped vast swaths of night, catching rock and debris, and piled it upon himself. It is this blanket of rock and heat that allowed the beast to return to it's endless sleep. Resting at the center of the universe, a world had formed atop the titan, and unbeknownst to the monster, life would take root there...

Titans roamed the land for a time, but eventually, they too came to sleep like their father. However, after a great deal of time, the first of the gods appeared. Yonlu and Eeyn, sisters goddesses of primordial power and far worse temperament. The two set out to sculpt the world along their own design. Yonlu desired a beautiful world full of life and light. Mortals would live and prosper here. Eeyn wanted a world of darkness and strife. Monsters would slay eachother in the dead of night, and all would come to fear it. The two began their work, but soon came to find that their plans could never coexist. They fought. For eons the two clashed tearing at eachother and at the world the other sought to create. Their blows thundered across the heavens and struck the earth. They were perfectly matched, and this was their downfall. Given time, they disturbed the sleeping behemoth, and this was their undoing. The blind abomination struck twice, and the gods souls where shattered into millions of pieces, raining down upon the world as the beast returned once more to its lair. Yet the sister's fight was far from over. From their essence came forth Mortals and Monsters...  In time, civilizations rose and fell, creating a fragmented world of ruins and lost tribes. As the eons rolled past, other deities began to form in the world. Now the world sets down a new path, as mortals, monsters, and gods vie to rule over this strange realm.


Mortals and Monsters is an experimental game, with the purpose of creating a vibrant and interesting world. Players will chose one of the three factions: mortals, monsters, and gods. These three factions interact in the world in hopefully interesting and complex ways, that I think will make for a rather fun game. This is going to play a bit differently than most godgames, having an emphasis on writing and roleplay over mechanics.

Mortals
Mortals begin the game with almost nothing and must learn to tame their surroundings, build fortifications, and research new technology so that they may survive in this harsh and unforgiving world. Mortals will spend their time collecting resources, researching, beseeching the gods, and defending their kingdom against the monsters. Strategy and resource management will be the name of the game for them.

Spoiler: Mortal Start Sheet (click to show/hide)

The mortals are weak and frail. They have oh so recently pulled themselves from the mud. Yet already, leaders rise from the masses to build the mortal kingdom. In time, the hands of mortals will build kingdoms which come to rival even the gods in their power. Here you play as the spirit of a nation, the guiding force behind all it does. You influence the current leaders and guide the nation down the path you lay out for it.

Civilization Name:
Civilization culture:
General starting biome: (You may not get it exactly if it's incredibly specific, more than anything it depends on how the player base shakes out.)
Mortal Race Name:
Mortal Race description: (Try not to go too overboard here, but feel free to go with something that's not your standard human/elf/dwarf. Or if you like those, feel free to take those.

Monsters
Monsters are quite different than mortals. They do not research new technologies, but instead spend mana to design new monsters. They operate on a mana system, generating a set amount each turn. However, they may bolster this income through destruction, corruption, and murder. By spreading darkness across the world, they grow stronger with each season, and the nights grow longer and longer with each setting sun.

Spoiler: Monster Start Sheet (click to show/hide)

The monsters are coalesce in dark places, forming their bodies from the ichor of their dead god. While they are young and frail, in time the hordes will grow. However, managing the hoards becomes more and more difficult as they grow in number. With each action after the second, the cost to do so increases by one.

Monster Lord: (Name and physical description. This is your final boss, they will sit in your starting lair and command your forces.)
Starting type: (Beasts, Undead, Evil Mortals, Slime, Demon)
Starting trait: (Giant, Multitudinous, Cunning, Ferocious)

Monsters start with two weak monsters of their starting type and trait.

Gods
Gods play a bit differently than the physical players of the world. They are ethereal, watching down from the heavens. They can influence the world in a variety of ways, generating a set amount of mana each turn, which is bolstered by the worship of mortals and through the completion of divine milestones.

Spoiler: God Start Sheet (click to show/hide)

God/Goddess: (Name and physical description.)
Starting type: (Nature Guardian, Embodiment of a Sphere, Patron of Mortals)

Gods are powerful beings, yet distant. Their ability to influence the world is unrivaled, but they are not omnipotent. Like with monsters, each action after your second action, will cost an additional mana.

This game will take place almost entirely on discord, which I will link to [Here] when it's ready.

[KittyTac]

Reserved.

[Rockeater]

Reserve

[RadtheCad]

Well, here's mine.  It's an ex-aquatic, (mostly) humanoid mortal race with shapeshifting limbs.  They're obsessed with arguing about mathematics, and their current civilisation is based around an ongoing three-way argument about metaphysics, with each side trying to gain knowledge through mathematics and natural philosophy, believing it'll vindicate their own side's theory.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mortal Race Name: The People of the Isles (Colloquially, Ilsesfolk)
Civilization Name:  The Orthogonal Triarchy

Mortal Race description:
A race that rose from the Seas to escape calamity, and were twisted in order to live on the Land.
Generally Humanoid.
Their bodies are partly amorphous.  They don't have proper bones;  instead, muscles harden and entwine, temporarily forming bone-like structures.
Their central mass, containing vital organs, can't alter very much and is about as vunerable as a human's torso (perhaps more, as their bones aren't as strong), but limbs, in particular arms, are readily extruded, absorbed and reshaped.
Absorbing or extruding an arm takes about a minute.  A well-fed, healthy adult has enough shifting flesh for two and a half human-sized arms.  More limbs are more difficult to control:  it's a feat of  skill to wield three arms as well as one can two.  Four arms will always be weaker individually, and require great training to use properly.
Changing shape costs a lot of energy.  It's not to be done on an empty stomach, or by the mal-nutritioned.  Food is usually the limiter on how much shifting muscle an individual can maintain:  This limits how much flesh is available to extrude limbs with, and how big those limbs can be, of course.  Children of a period of famine can be recognised by their few and meager limbs, and the difficulty with which they reform them.
 
The most common form taken is humanoid, with additional small arms and simple hands for carrying things, acting like pockets and hooks.  These carrying hands have limited dexterity.
Other limb configurations are sometimes used, e.g. quadrapedal layouts for transporting goods over long distances in the absence of pack animals, or specialised configurations for bucket brigades that optimise for rapid bucket-passing.  Ilsesfolk learn and master configurations over their lifetimes;  novel configurations take time to get used to.
Serious trauma can stunt the afflicted area's shapeshifting ability, sometimes permanently.  Ilsefolk are thus generally more afraid of fire and scalding water than a human would be, but less afraid of superficial cutting damage to limbs, as these can be resorbed and the damage healed more easily.

Islesfolk form monogamous breeding couples.  Mating occurs using organs on the lower torso.  Women give birth by growing a polyp of morphogenic flesh that eventually splits off after about a month, becoming a newborn.
A child's first limb extrusion is treated as the equivalent of a human child's first word.

Owing to their aquatic origin, the Islesfolk have transparent secondary eye-lids that offer protection from Salt Water.
They are omnivorous.

Civilization culture:  The Trichotomy
A culture dominated by elaborations on a three-way disagreement on the nature of reality, had by the Three Wise Ones at the Founding.
Four generations ago, atop Zanth's Rock, the three Wisest of the Islesfolk convened and entered into a heated discussion about metaphysics.  For a year and a day they argued, and in that time, the Ilsesfolk who came to hear their words built a shanty town at the area.  Over time this grew into the city of Orth, first of its kind and seat of power in the Ilses, having conquered all other political factions by virtue of superior military theory spawned from some notes scribbled down during the Founding.
The Rock, at the centre of the city, has been mined, hollowed, tunneled and reshaped over generations and decades into the Concent of Orth, where the philosophical descendants of the Founders study and argue.  There are three main sects, each aligned with one of the Wise Founders:

The Platons claim Reality is a deriviative of the primal space, where all mathematical objects exist.
(They're Platonic realists.)

The Sophates claim mathematical objects are created by the thoughts of conscious souls, and deride theoric realism.  The mind-soul is all that can be known to be real.
(They're spiritual Solipsists.)

The Praticans believe metaphysics is a fool's errand.  The world you can touch and feel is all that is:  the mind is an illusion.  Mathematics is a tool like any other.
(They're Engineers.)

All sects believe that by expanding their knowledge of the world, and finding Truth, their own position will be validated.  Thus they relentlessly theorize, research, and innovate, sometimes at the consternation of the wider populace.  In recent times, their gaze has been turning greedily outwards- for perhaps new Concents, across the Islands and beyond, can reap ever greater Knowledge.  The Triarchs, having to deal with their inter-sect rivalries as well as the general running of Civilisation, are only too happy to pursue these expansionist ambitions.

General cultural traits:  High numeracy, due to required of knowledge of geometry in order to resolve disputes over the limited farmland available on islands.
General almost religious devotion to seeking and preserving knowledge; mathematics is seen as the height of civilisation.  Great mathematical understanding is a sign of high status.
However, many factions and groups guard many secrets, only revealed in their inner circles.

They farm and raise livestock, with a cultural divide between rural and more built-up areas.

General starting biome: Temperate archipelago, with a few mountains.

(If anyone can name the authors I've 'taken inspiration' from, they get netpoints.)

[Kashyyk]

How much RP do you expect per day? I can afford short bursts, but I definitely wouldn't have time for prolonged discussions.

[Demonic Spoon]

Civilization Name: Tide
Mortal Race Name: Cicadas
Mortal Race description:

Cicadapeople that form social groups, with a twist. The nymphal cicada are active ambush predators(also proficient diggers), a favoured tactic being to dig large pits and chasing prey animals into them, supplemented by a diet of tree sap. The youngest cicadas, and thus smallest and slowest have to be particularly cunning and reliant on traps, instead of using their physical abilities to simply hunt down prey.

This led to a strange evolutionary quirk, where the first cicada instars have the highest intelligence, with the intelligence slowly deteriorating with each molting, until the most drastic metamorphosis into the imago, gaining wings, switching from being omnivorous to only drinking tree sap, and having only the intelligence of particularly bright animals. The flights of the cicada, and their chorus songs are both extremely beautiful to the younger instars, and a source of horror at their own inevitable regression, with only the wonder of flight and laying the eggs of the next generation as small comforts of adulthood.

Other: Sometimes non-paragons can temporarily enter waking dream states, especially during periods of high stress, particularly during battles. Generally they just gain the skills of their previous lives, rather than any mystical powers. This lesser waking dream state is generally called a "martial trance".

Civilization culture:

Tide Religion: They believe that after death, cicada are reincarnated anew. They liken life and death to dreaming and waking. Just as a night's sleep may be filled with dreams of powerful drives, passion and wonder, only to slowly fade like mist before the sun once awake, so death is a time of sleep and dreaming, from which cicada awake once they hatch, slowly losing the power of the dream, and their intelligence with it, forgetting it's wonder, until they sleep again. Each nights sleep is seen as a microcosm of this larger cycle of life and death, a temporary return to the dream, yet even more ephemeral than the sleep of death.

A somewhat more complex and subtle expansion of this concept, is the cyclic nesting of dreams within a dream, with your previous life in fact being part of the deathdream for this dreamlife, that is part of the deathdream of the dreamlife after it. As such, along with the dreams themselves, you are forgetting your memories of your past life.

There is another sect which believes that each cicada moulting was part of a slow ascension to a higher plane of existence, with the lowered intelligence being caused due to getting less and less in tune with the base lowly current plane, until finally the adults fly up past the clouds, past the sky and sun and become spirits.

Method of Ruling: A child shall lead them.

Sometimes a particularly large and special type of cicada egg is lain, a Paragon. These Paragons can survive being broken out of their eggs before they hatch naturally, thus entering the waking world while still being in the deathream. This state, known as the "Waking Dream" allows the paragon to access the skill, experience and knowledge of their past lives, as well as the mysterious powers of the dream. Whenever such Paragons are forced to be born, they become the leaders of the tribe. The forceful creation of the first Paragon was is the impetus of the current rise of the Cicada Tide and as such much is still unknown, including how moulting will affect the Waking Dream state, though it seems depressingly likely that it will break the waking dream.

Without a paragon, generally council of children will be chosen from the first instar of the tribe to rule, generally by selecting those that managed to build the best traps in a competition.

General starting biome: A forest with giant trees that have sweet, syrupy sap.

Spoiler: Addendums (click to show/hide)

The Cicada are good climbers who prefer to make their homes in large trees. When such are absent, they will probably dig out subterranean buildings in soft soil, or if such is also lacking, build crude structures on the surface.

They are omnivorous, but prefer to subsist on a diet of meat and treesap. Honey may or may not become popular once discovered.

The adult imago subsist entirely on treesap for the rest of their lifespan, though that can easily kill most wild animals with their impressive physical capabilities.

[Dustan Hache]

Monster Lord: Ashbloom, Aradian beetle queen.
Monster race description: Aradian beetles are characterised by their iridescent green and blue shells, their un beetle-like hive clusters, and the mind-numbing drone their wings can emmit.
Starting type: Beasts
Starting trait: Multitudinous.

lets try this again.

[Roboson]

How much RP do you expect per day? I can afford short bursts, but I definitely wouldn't have time for prolonged discussions.

That's more up to the players and how you all come to interact. If you can write detailed posts and do some IC and/or OOC discussion, you'll be fine.

[Kashyyk]

I'm not sure which I want to go for, so would you opposed to me putting a sheet together for each faction, and then choosing the one that evens out the player count best?

[Roboson]

I'm not sure which I want to go for, so would you opposed to me putting a sheet together for each faction, and then choosing the one that evens out the player count best?

Yeah that would be fine by me! I am trying to get some sort of balance with the different factions, so if people are open to whichever, that would be fine.

If anyone else would like to put forward sheets for different factions and have me pick to round out the distribution, feel free to do so.

[WyrdByrd]

Count me in.

[piratejoe]

You know, its been a while. Glad to see this is back. May as well be what I was before since I never really got to play, though some minor changes are in order, just to clear descriptions up a bit better.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Monster Lord: Heionna is a particularly large demon that stands at a towering 100 feet (30 meters) tall and unlike what most would think of as the traditional demon, has greyish purple skin. Additionally, they have five horns on their head, two large horns on the side of their head and a row of three smaller, spear head shaped horns that looked like it was partially made of a gem along the edges, going across the top of their head. It also has two eyes, both with a black sclera and amber iris. Their weapon of choice is a large scythe which has a double edged blade and they wear the pelts of varying creatures, both monster and mortal.
Starting type: Demon
Starting trait: Giant

[Kansa]

I'll make something for this.

[crazyabe]

PTW

[RadtheCad]

Civilization Name: Tide
Mortal Race Name: Cicadas

[...]

General starting biome: A forest with giant trees that have sweet, syrupy sap.

I wonder how the biomes are going to work.  Is there going to be a world map?  Will different groups have defined distances from each other?  Or will it be more abstract?
Cool element of biological horror there, by the way, spoon.