Alicornutopia

an author thread for me, diaeresis. hello. all the cool kids have one of these. now that is me.

my characters:

ellie:
my precious amoral disinterested baby. she wants nothing more than to be left alone to learn about all the lost, forgotten, and obscure knowledge she can get her hands on. tends to have bad things happen to her early on in life that both introduce her to the concept of magic and also stop her from pursuing it the way she really wants until she gets stronger. often manifests as an abusive mentor/parental substitute. under certain circumstances, acquiring power can snowball until that becomes her primary motivation. ellies with ultimate power are, uh. scary. ravenclaw/slytherin in sortinghatchats' system.

anna:
tends to have a relatively happy backstory. cares deeply about her friends, less so about people in the abstract. her morality is more flexible than ellie's, informed by her social circle. prefers the direct solution to most problems. slytherin/gryffindor in sortinghatchats' system.

nine:
nine is kind of slippery, they tend to mold themself to whatever situation they find themself in. most comfortable operating within some sort of larger organization or in service to a goal bigger than themself. hufflepuff/ravenclaw in sortinghatchats' system.

2B:
good at following directions and compartmentalizing off the part of herself that questions why. doesn't like introspection in general. tends to be shy and reserved with unfamiliar people, but if she likes you she will die for you. template attractor for Big Sword.

settings:
star wars: the old republic era. this is ~3500 years before the events of the movies. republic and empire coexist and are fighting for galactic dominance. jedi and sith are both large groups, involved in their respective polities.

cardsharp. new original setting with associated magic system. said system can be found in outline form here. i have a sketch of a plot and a vague idea of what the world looks like. we can figure it out together, it'll be fun.

automata: far-future post-apocalyptic earth. human-made androids vs alien-made machines, no signs of either humans or aliens.

i'm pretty much open to doing anything, hit me up if you have any ideas.

other things i'm interested in possibly exploring

• PMMM
• roger zelazny's amber setting
• warcraft (lore is a trainwreck but i might be able to hack something out of it)
• A:TLA
• importing an arabek god/acolyte to places
• wheel of time
• dropping androids on places

I once thought about what if someone from my 'claimverse'-which-is-the-name-people-gave-it-for-lack-of-a-better-one met a Sith. On one side you have "ha ha you call that telekinesis" and on the other side you have mind tricks and cunning.

I haven't thought of anywhere interesting to go with that, though.

updated with a short list of ideas. always interested in doing something.

I'm curious about your characters in PMMM! Any ideas what powers your characters would wish for, etc? (I haven't really thought about mine there, so this probably isn't very threadable, but I'm definitely curious.)

Actually, same for A:TLA – any ideas of backstory / what nation they'd be from / if they're benders and what type?

i haven't really thought about what specific wishes they might make, i just think the world is really cool. wishes are a little context-sensitive. also if you've read to the stars, i think the worldbuilding in that is great. bit different from base canon but there's a lot of room to explore.

for avatar i have slightly more thoughts; backstory elements are based around assuming it's the time of the original series but they're sort of flexible. ellie is an earthbender with fire nation parents. there was a Forbidden Romance a couple generation back. she doesn't get on with her family. anna is a firebender and thinks that the fire nation are obviously the good guys. she can be Redeemed through the Power of Friendship. nine is either a waterbender or a nonbender, they haven't decided.

new setting! cardsharp, featuring magic tarot cards that do unique spells, link in OP.

oh cardsharp looks nifty!!!

It does!

Can you use someone else's cards? Are there other typical or at least not uncommon foci, like say tattoos or jewellery?

you can use someone else's cards in a pinch, but you're not going to get great results from them. i'm thinking there's something like an attunement effect at play.

just about anything can be made into a focus, but it's not necessarily easy or effective. for a jewelry fireball focus eg, a good carving of a flame would be better than a stylized flame would be better than a plain ring or something. i would say the first is probably about as good as a card, but cards have the cultural advantage of standardization and tradition. tattoos are a bit of a separate issue; they are "always on" in a sense. not that the effect is continuous, but they're constantly draining your magic. if you have more than one tattoo you've imbued, you won't be able to use other sorts of focii and your ability to use those tattoos decreases when you add more.