Alicornutopia

In that case, let's try Elcenia or Fae, whichever you prefer at the moment. (If you have no preference, Elcenia.)

Sure. What's your IM?

Alicorn wrote:Sure. What's your IM?

IRC works for me, but I can also do Kik/Skype if you prefer one of those. (Or, if there's some standard among the community regarding what IM is used for glowfic, it might be worth it to me to download it.)

Gchat is typical but IRC works too. I have created #gap on the psigenix.net server.

The setting sounds a interesting setting, I still sort of... "lost" on how RP-ing would go, I want to know more...

...the obvious question is about... astronomy! Can we assume the world is a spheroid held together by gravital forces and orbits a G-type main-sequence star? Does the world map resembles Earth? what would Oceania look like in that map?

Also, Vampires, how are they different?

Bluelantern wrote:The setting sounds a interesting setting, I still sort of... "lost" on how RP-ing would go, I want to know more...

...the obvious question is about... astronomy! Can we assume the world is a spheroid held together by gravital forces and orbits a G-type main-sequence star? Does the world map resembles Earth? what would Oceania look like in that map?

The world is indeed a spheroid with a Sol-like sun and a local equivalent of gravity.

The world map generally resembles earth with different countries. (I am not a geologist/ecologist/geographer and it's easier to crib existing biomes and geography than make new ones.) Grand Victoria's in the geographic location of England; Mori occupies most of mainland Europe; Ulvenwald is North America, with Eyesocket near the mouth of the St. Lawrence; Oceania is a dense archipelago in the area where China would be on earth (and, indeed, was, until it was eaten.) The entire area is also heavily volcanic now, due to chunks of crust being missing below where former hubs of Oceanic civilization existed.

Africa exists and is ruled by feuding werewolf clans; in-setting it's collectively called 'Lupinia' by the Grand Victorians and Morians. It actually contains many smaller nations with their own names who care about equally as much about Grand Victoria. Colonization efforts are beginning to start in the area on behalf of both Victoria and Mori.

Vampires are different depending on how close they are to Dracula (and thereby, how much of the power of the moon-shard they have.)
Most of the standard vampire weaknesses (sun burning, thresholds, need blood to live) are the results of various spirits fighting the moon shard inside the vampire's body. The sun is spiritually opposed and powerful, so if you enter its domain it can burn out the moon shard (killing the host in the process.) The more powerful the moon shard, the more resilient it becomes, and so the more sunlight the vampire can stand. Similar things occur for sacred ground and thresholds- a spirit is dedicated to defending it, so the moon shard is partially occupied with immune response and not all its power is available. Blood-drinking is a result of the body itself fighting the foreign spirit inside it, and thereby requiring more 'human spirit' to maintain itself. (Animal blood doesn't work for this reason.)

Vampires are untroubled by holy symbols and garlic, and can cross running water. However, they have two specific weaknesses that grow more powerful with more moon in their spirits:

1: Crossing the Sea/the Full Moon/both.
The sea is the domain of the tides, and is thereby in the domain of the moon. The night is also the domain of the moon, though it's shared with the stars. When the moon is full, its domain is particularly strong.

Being exposed to the waxing domain of the true moon makes vampires violently sick as the shards inside them attempt to rejoin the true moon - increasing in severity, the larger the shard. If you had a large enough shard and were out on the sea during the full moon, it's possible that the shard could be pulled from you completely, which might kill you or might just make you not-a-vampire.

2: Madness
The moon is linked to lunacy. Therefore, carrying a shard of it around inside you is not a good influence on your mental health. Most vampires are eccentric at best, with the more powerful generally worse-off.

So, why do you want to be a vampire? Well, you get to shapeshift into various other forms, control over your own reflection and shadow, generalized stronger-faster-tougher, immortality, mental domination and suggestions, and massively improved potential for certain kinds of magic. These also come in degrees, based on how much moon you have inside you.

(The traditional way to acquire more moon is to eat the heart, and thus the spirit, of another vampire. You could gift part of your own shard willingly, but very few vampires would be willing to do so.)

Do vampires grow up? If Vampires require/interact spirits, how that interact with other worlds with other magics? Suns and moons from other worlds have the same effect?
Do you need to kill the person or just drinking their blood works? synthetic blood works? What kind of vampire powers the sisters have?

What about werewolves?

Bluelantern wrote:Do vampires grow up? If Vampires require/interact spirits, how that interact with other worlds with other magics? Suns and moons from other worlds have the same effect?
Do you need to kill the person or just drinking their blood works? synthetic blood works? What kind of vampire powers the sisters have?

What about werewolves?

Vampires don't grow up - or to be precise, their base forms don't grow up. They can appear to be older than they are via illusions or shapeshifting, but that requires them to draw from their shard, which taxes their bodies, causing fatigue and hunger over time.

Vampires don't need to kill, just drinking blood works. Theoretically you could even do it by being hugged a lot or something similar to acquire bits of spare spirit from people, but the quick & dirty way is to drink blood, since that's strongly associated with life. Synthetic blood won't work, nor will animal blood- the point is a transfer of metaphysical 'humanity'. The standard vampire answer to this issue is to keep blood-servants of one type or another to nibble on. If you're an ethical vampire, you swap out your blood-servants every few months so that nobody is exposed too heavily. (If you're not ethical and you don't swap them out, then gradually the people you feed on will lose personal identity, then intelligence, then simply give up and stop living, due to their humanity being stretched far too thin. Diligent rotation allows the spirit to recover between feedings.)

In worlds without spirits, the most likely result is that vampires become very strong with few weaknesses (no interference from other spirits) but then starve if they didn't bring any chattel along (since they have nothing they can suck life energy from to preserve their bodies with.) Local magic may or may not affect this. I'd imagine a vampire would be able to live comfortably forever in Chronicle's enchanted forest just by feeding on residual life magic, though the forest might not like it.

Isabella's powers run towards mental magic and biomancy. After a few centuries in Shadescast, she's become a skilled mage-surgeon to the point of being able to create new forms of magical life. This is exceedingly rare: Isabella has managed to get breathing room in the assassinate-or-be-assassinated world of vampire politics because she 1: has specialist knowledge that makes her valuable and 2: doesn't waste bodies.

Her sister's powers are stronger in the realm of animal empathy and shapeshifting; she's also far faster, stronger, etc than Isabella.

Werewolves are a whole other ball of fish/kettle of wax. I'll get to them later in a separate post.

Regarding Lupinia & Werewolves:

Lupinia is poorly-named, since most of the were-creatures in it don't turn into wolves. Said were-creatures are the result of a particular brand of shamanism in the area, which involves trading the temporary use of your body to an incorporeal spirit-of-bears/wolves/panthers/lions/whichever local totem animal your village keeps in exchange for their blessing. So you might spend your weekends as a bear in exchange for a ward against the winter cold for your village, or a personal gift of strength, or, if the particular bear really likes you, even a gift of spiritual 'bearness' that you can tap at will to be a bear while staying in the mental driver's seat. All of these various exchanges of spiritual energy are moderated and made possible by the spirit of the moon, which takes a cut in exchange in the form of tribute from all the various shamans and their clans. The full moon is thus spiritually important - it's something of a 'market night' for all the shamans of all the clans, where they work to maintain and establish their reputations, bargain to find spirits they prefer, and so on. Posturing and shouting is common; since the various practitioners are from different clans, it's as much a political game as a market, with clans adopting new totem animals and ceasing to worship their old ones.

Eva wrote:Regarding Lupinia & Werewolves:

Lupinia is poorly-named, since most of the were-creatures in it don't turn into wolves. Said were-creatures are the result of a particular brand of shamanism in the area, which involves trading the temporary use of your body to an incorporeal spirit-of-bears/wolves/panthers/lions/whichever local totem animal your village keeps in exchange for their blessing. So you might spend your weekends as a bear in exchange for a ward against the winter cold for your village, or a personal gift of strength, or, if the particular bear really likes you, even a gift of spiritual 'bearness' that you can tap at will to be a bear while staying in the mental driver's seat. All of these various exchanges of spiritual energy are moderated and made possible by the spirit of the moon, which takes a cut in exchange in the form of tribute from all the various shamans and their clans. The full moon is thus spiritually important - it's something of a 'market night' for all the shamans of all the clans, where they work to maintain and establish their reputations, bargain to find spirits they prefer, and so on. Posturing and shouting is common; since the various practitioners are from different clans, it's as much a political game as a market, with clans adopting new totem animals and ceasing to worship their old ones.

I must I didnt like how Africa-equivalent was ruled by were-clans, but this is really, really good.

This means that were-creatures aren't considered unholy or something?