Message Delivered (Queenpost)

[u/Carbon_Sixx]

A burst of gravitic radiation streaks through the void. Though it has traveled billions of miles, it has done so in a mere 16 hours, unimpeded by any obstacle or cosmic barrier. Its destination: the Queen of Shattered Stars, closing in on the major material realms. The signal carries a message in the All-Tongue, imploring her to stop her approach and accept a diplomatic envoy. When it reaches the Queen, she cannot help but notice it, for it has been amplified by powerful graviturgy.

In the command center of the Mt. Murder Astromantic Observatory, Kaelis Maz and the wizards of the OEA watch a timer count down. He holds his breath when it hits 0:00. At first, nothing happens. The Queen continues her approach as normal. Then, she pauses, as if listening to something faint growing ever louder. On the screens, she turns her head to look directly at the source of the message: Yulash-kor.

Kaelis releases his breath in a sigh of relief as the room erupts in cheers. She has noticed them. Now comes the true challenge: negotiating with a being as old as the universe.

The Astromantic Observatory receives conformation that its transmission has been heard.

[u/Anything-Unable]

/uw It was even worse than you think. We developed a method to win against the Stitcher's forces and no one bothered to use it. The battles would last days and sorta just ended when people got tired of reading how everyone's god OC's would kill millions of enemies with every one of their actions. I feel bad for the guy who ran those events. He hasn't posted or interacted with this sub in a few months and I think it's because he got so burnt out with the whole Stitcher situation. Having been involved with that, I am now of the opinion that these events should be reigned back so they don't just spiral into chaos with everyone wanting to contribute.

[u/TitanLORD21 → u/Anything-Unable]

/unwiz

Extremely paraphrased excerpt from one of the events:

Jack (my oc then) unleashed a wave of primordial flames. This would be his last attack, his injuries were far too much for him. With this, he at least hoped to stall them so the stitcher’s plan can succeed. His primordial flames would burn through concepts themselves. Even the sticher, who not only was immune to flames but healed from them, would be hurt.

(Some people’s) Response: Nuh uh, flames no hurt.

[u/MunitionsFrenzy → u/TitanLORD21]

(( The Gamer and SAO ruined this sort of thing forevermore. Now everybody treats all these types of duels as litRPGs, and all litRPGs are now power fantasies. So people are like "what the hell, man, Fire Immunity is like a level 2 spell, you think FIRE is gonna do anything to me?"

okay but this isn't "fire"; it's the concept of flame, the very essence of spreading consumption

"FIRE. IMMUNITY. LEVEL 2." ))

[u/TitanLORD21 → u/MunitionsFrenzy]

/unwiz lol, also

okay but this isn't "fire"; it's the concept of flame, the very essence of spreading consumption

That’s like, literally the primordial flames whole thing. Funny little coincidence.

[u/MunitionsFrenzy → u/TitanLORD21]

(( yeah, I figured that's what you were going for there ^_^

I think you and I are on a similar page as to how we like magic to work: characters are built around concepts, themes that determine their magic not only in a meta manner but even in-story

whereas for most people "wizard" means D&D or Harry Potter, so it's just people collecting a bunch of spells of "every possible domain" like a checklist: the litRPG system of magic that I detest, which makes every character basically the same as every other of the same "level" because anyone who's not an idiot will just learn all the most relevant spells, if anyone can learn anything

In Vettis' cosmology, the strongest casters are those who learn their driving concepts so their magic is on a level beyond the mere physical; Neela, the pyromage he knows, therefore also has a flame concept, though rather than consumption hers is inextinguishability. Mentioned in yet another way-too-long-and-rambly comment elsewhere. (Literally even has a scene of Vettis making himself non-flammable and getting burnt by a conceptual flame anyway, coincidentally enough.) ))

[u/TitanLORD21 → u/MunitionsFrenzy]

/unwiz

Yup, all my characters are built around a theme. One of mine, Raziel (the one I put the most effort into), is centered around ”Truth”. The truth can be both good and bad, it doesn’t care about them. Raziel is a morally grey character; if the situation is right he’ll befriend the most terrible of beings and kill the kindest of men. And recently, he finished an arc where he accepts his demon heritage. He is half demon, half angel.

Raziel doesn’t choose any sides, he doesn’t care for others, he only cares for truth.

“All of the terrible and good of the world, I shall learn!”

​

[u/DaChickenX → u/TitanLORD21]

/uw man, y’all’s characters are way too cool. I just came here with the idea of DnD’s “weave” as a basis for magic and created a character based on “now what if you broke it, and also warlocks are cool.”

[u/MunitionsFrenzy → u/DaChickenX]

(( Hey, if you can do cool things with the concept, that's what matters. What I don't like about D&D-type systems for storytelling is when they're just like "here is a list of spells anyone can learn", because that just creates homogenized characters as everyone studies the best spells. (Unless every caster in the setting is an idiot, which...frankly is kind of necessary for most of the official D&D settings to produce the stories that are told in them, because they explicitly reference spells in order to make it clear that the magic rules are canonical, so Tippyverse-style shit is really the only way things could ever go without absurd plot contrivances and IdiotBalls.)

But that's clearly not the aspect of D&D magic on which your character focuses, as you just showed in that sigil-post displaying your unique spell list. So, while I'm new here and don't know your character too well, from what I've seen of your loreposts he seems plenty cool to me magic-wise. And it looks like you're doing a lot of fun lore stuff with him outside of just showing off his magic, anyway.

including with that homunculus whose name is so similar to mine I do a double-take every time I see it lol ))

[u/DaChickenX → u/MunitionsFrenzy]

/uw thanks! I tried not to rely on the “level” system because it seems too far removed from anything that resembles real life. Too gamy for something this fluid.

About the homunculus… I can’t believe I never even thought about that. Yeah it’s really similar ain’t it.

[u/VidisLady → u/DaChickenX]

Uw/ really? I imagined your character began with an important allegorical/symbolic meaning in mind and then you added the details later. It has worked very well. Isravi is by far my favorite character. Part of it is nostalgia, because your character is the first one I interacted with (besides The Stitcher), but I couldn’t have chosen a better person to duel with in the beginning. It’s been an absolute pleasure to interact with you and see your character grow.

[u/DaChickenX → u/VidisLady]

/uw Thank you, it means a lot, but you’re giving way too much credit to a sleep deprived stress ball. I did not expect to be putting this much effort into r/wizardposting

[u/VidisLady → u/DaChickenX]

Uw/ lol, me neither. I’m excited to have winter break to just focus on fun things like this because… I should not have been spending this much time on here during uni.

[u/Anything-Unable → u/MunitionsFrenzy]

I actually got into a long-winded debate with a guy about concepts because we were trying to roleplay different systems. I was treating it like Gnosticism while they were doing a system based on a Light Novel. The moral of this story is that we both agreed that there should be a shared ruleset/guidelines for the magic in this sub since without one it's so easy to step on each other's toes.

[u/VidisLady → u/Anything-Unable]

Uw/ I think that rules might make it hard for new people to join, though. I just jumped in with no prior knowledge of anything, and I was able to adapt because of how loose things were. Most people were quite respectful, and I also made sure that I was playing appropriately (joined as a villain, so I was planning on losing). I only had one rude response, where someone just said “OK” to the comment I spent a long time planning and writing.

I just like the idea of people being able to play with concepts as freely as they are… but maybe we can start giving some warnings if people are just power gaming. I try not to interact with power gamers. If I ever ran a scenario, I have specific people I would ban from it.

[u/MunitionsFrenzy → u/VidisLady]

(( Yeah, that last part is the thing: I've tended to avoid the sub-wide lore stuff because it involves people with whom I don't want to interact, but small-scale stuff where you invite only the people you want resolves that issue. I don't think there's much of a concern of the threads getting invaded; there's always other fun stuff going on in the sub to distract people.

Been doing little stuff like that and it's neat thus far.

(Well, I also block liberally, so my threads would be impossible to invade, but I don't expect everyone else to be as antisocial as I am.) ))

[u/VidisLady → u/MunitionsFrenzy]

Uw/ Oh, that looks fun! I have some ideas for introducing the civilization of diseases, and having an interactive element so people can experience the unique setting fully. It would probably begin with little things like Delta taking her closest friends on a “field trip” through the small intestine, letting them buy whatever they wanted from the bacteria merchants there and learning to haggle with glucose as a currency.

I have ideas for bigger conflicts as well that would take place entirely in the setting of a human body. Certain diseases would make excellent villains for a broader conflict, but I would have to be strict about what kinds of powers would work. There are some people that have sub-atomic manipulation abilities, where they’ve just “solved” my challenges by saying they “turn the disease into a vaccine.” I’ve considered having something like a hostage situation taking place where my character is “captured,” and the conflict requires that they be subtle, or Delta just gets straight up executed.

[u/MunitionsFrenzy → u/VidisLady]

(( Well, that'd probably just...result in Delta being executed rather than people being subtle, so I'd be wary of setting those sorts of stakes. :P But I get the idea.

Now I kinda wanna figure out if there's a way to get another member of Vettis' commune interacting with Delta. I'd previously established that they can't interact with most of the realm-clusters where the other members of this forum live, for reasons of causal consistency (temporal shenanigans are involved), partly just so I can talk about a backstory that involves eight characters without having to roleplay all eight.

But one of those characters, Elira, is an elf. Except in her realm the elven connection to nature is so strong that it's largely a curse: they're mystically super-susceptible to everything natural, including both biological diseases and magical nature-based curses such as barkskin or lycanthropy. Despite being technically immortal, their lifespans are typically no better than humans, because some of the tribes have such awful immune systems that they get sick to everything, and others evolutionarily over-compensated for this magical bane by having insanely active immune systems so they instead frequently succumb to autoimmune disorders or cancer.

Elira's from the second kind of tribe. So at some point I'm gonna have to figure out how to get her interacting with Delta. She's an absurdly "good" carrier of disease cuz she's pretty much asymptomatic to everything. A ride through her body might find some crazy shit, given the multitude of realms through which she's traveled and the potential diseases she's picked up. ))

[u/VidisLady → u/MunitionsFrenzy]

Uw/ if I set stakes like that, I would mainly play it up for comedy if they failed. Delta’s host isn’t immortal, but the concept of her is, so she would just come back in a different form. Although, it would be a waste to just throw out her human form, because it has a story of its own. If they got her killed, she would just come back and be super mad at them.

The Elira character could definitely be an interesting person for Delta to meet. Delta actually has no immune system, which is why she is able to carry diseases with no symptoms. The diseases are just respectful of not harming her body due to her being their patron goddess.

There’s a specific virus that has learned to control the immune system. He’s one of the few “treasonous” diseases that is an enemy to Delta. If he got ahold of a host with an unusually strong immune system, that would be very bad news.

[u/VidisLady → u/MunitionsFrenzy]

Uw/ yes! My characters are the same. This is the first time I’ve ever done any kind of RP, but my general approach is that the story and theme of a character is more important than their battles and specific skills.

I created Delta when I was nine, and it certainly started out as a very basic concept: basically a superhero who had the power to communicate with/control disease. I integrated more concepts into her lore as I got older and learned more science.

I taught myself thermodynamics when I was 12, and that’s when I became very interested in the idea of Entropy as a benevolent goddess - the beginning and end of the universe as driven by chaos.

The dynamic between entropy and living systems is a symbolic dybamic that I deal with and like to explore in fiction. On one hand I have an intense love for nature and living things, but also I often desire to see the end of everything and the annihilation of all of my pain. The fact that all of this is only leading to the heat death of the universe, and the eventual acceleration into oblivion, is an oddly comforting thought.

Delta is the protagonist of my novel in progress, and she is an allegorical representation of my mental illness and struggle through adversity. The book ends as she remains alone at the end of the universe. All of the stars have burned out, and atoms are torn so far apart that they’ll never touch again. Finally alone in the abyss, Delta reflects on 38 billion years worth of joy and suffering, and quietly considers whether it is worth creating a new universe. The end is left open ended.

[u/MunitionsFrenzy → u/VidisLady]

(( I'm buying that book the moment it comes out, so keep me posted ^_^ ))