He was the youngest king they’d had yet; frightened, somewhat naive, and overeager to impress his people. The royal advisers bit back smiles when he locked himself in the main hall to practice his coronation speech.

He didn’t emerge for two days.

Somehow, in spite of all his preparation, in spite of his young, handsome charisma, the people didn’t like him. The way they spoke of him when his eyes were elsewhere. The terms they used.

Inexperienced. Foolishly zealous. Unrealistic.

Kyne Allegera, Crowned King and Primary Ruler of Throstate, was determined to prove them wrong. Kyne Allegera, oldest son to a recently deceased and much loved father, was determined to prove <i>himself</i> wrong.

***

The advisers had given the information harmlessly at first, of course, never considering that the young ruler might take them seriously. But they had unwittingly set temptation before one who had not yet learned to resist.

It was rumored that a neighboring country, Celsea, had an inventor whose mind was beyond compare. Who conceived ideas so brilliant that no other man could understand how to carry them out. He designed machines that measured the unmeasurable, machines that could conquered the elements.

And it was rumored that he had designed a weapon so powerful that it could kill instantly. A metallic tube, projecting some sort of a piercing element that could tear through flesh, powered by some kind of explosive powder. A self firing bow, the common people whispered. A miracle.

His designers had to admit their own incompetence in creating this wonder that was only within his head and on his parchments. So he set about creating one himself.

King Allegera’s advisers said that the word was there was only <i>one</i> copy of the machine, although Celsea would soon set about duplicating it. By the thousands.

If it was true, Celsea would soon be the greatest nation on the continent. If the notion hit them, Throstate could be crushed. Easily.

His eyebrow’s creased, Kyne ignored the unconcerned talk of his councilors, advisers, and wise men. In a rushed, strained voice, he announced, “I will have that weapon. I will have it at all cost.”

The room fell to a dead silence around him. Rising from his seat, Kyne exited quickly, and set about making impossible plans for the acquisition of an impossible invention.

***

Imagine that the night is dark, without stars. There is a soft rain, heavy thunder. A shivering messenger stares at you as though you’d caused all the pain in the world, before whirling on his heel back into the night.

You open the damp paper.

<i>By Royal order, Crown King Allegera has requested an audience with you on the eighth day of the month. Bring a ready pack of necessities, equipment, and tools. Come before sunset, and present this invitation. Do not bring a companion.</i>

***

<b>Rules, A Necessary Evil</b>

1. Your character should not be a Mary Sue (please. For the sake of my sanity) but <i>should</I> have at least one special talent or skill. When the RP begins, they will be appointed positions by the king based on that skill.

2. If you join, please contribute. I only have the foggiest structure of a plot in mind, and would appreciate some help from other characters.

***

I will play the king for the time being, and another charrie, whose bio I should have up soon. If you’re interested, please post your bio in this thread by Sunday. Kthnx. And have fun!

(And ignore the cheesy title. If you have a better one, <i>pleeeeaaase</i> share.)


***

<b>Characters</b>

Freya Baranfinnel - <i>Herbalist</I>
Terrel Morey - <i>Merchant</I>
Fredric - <I> Archivist</I>
Devin Arkheim - <i>Assassin</I>
Elanna - <i>Scribe/Musician</I>
Lorne - <i>Spy</I>
Ifan Ware - <i>Messenger</I>
Alenia - <i>Thief</i>
Breora Arroway - <i>Warrior Mage</i>
Bronwyn Maelstrom - <i> Dignitary</i>
Lyrra - <i>Tracker</i>
Roderick Grishome - <i>Master Rider and Blacksmith</i>
Adrian - <i> Swordsman</i>
Kayne Brody Stasiak - <i>Escape Artist</i>

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<center>
"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

Mememememememe...[trails off]

Yep, I'm joining

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Sounds intriging (don't know how to spell that word XD) I think I shall enter. BTW... Um... this is a really long bio. I sorta frankensteined one of my other charries... hope you don't mind...

Name: Freya Baranfinnel

Age: about 20

Gender: Female

Afflictions: Freya goes berserk in battle, especially when angered; Sees in red when this occurs. She can still see, but her vision is red-tinted, not completely masked over. It causes her no pain. She was born with it. Freya knows exactly what she is doing when this ailment takes over, but she has no power to stop it. The affliction will dissipate about 5 minutes after the reason for it occurring has passes.

Occupation: She is a healer but also a warrior/mercinary type.

Possessions: Freya carries five daggers/throwing knives (one in each boot, one under the shoulders of her clothes, one strapped to her arm), a walking stick, a bag of useful healing herbs, and a leather pack for items she collects on her journeys. She also owns a journal in which she chronicles her adventures.

Appearance: At 5 feet tall, with Blue-green-brown eyes set in a tanned thin face, slightly frizzy brown hair and a tendency to slouch, Freya looks harmless. Her faded green leggings are dirty and worn, as is the light-brown linen tunic that seems to swallow her whole. Over her tunic, she wears a scarred, deep-brown leather over-jerkin to provide warmth and a small amount of safety. Like her over-jerkin, Freya’s boots are deep-brown leather, but are newer in appearance.

Personality: Though her appearance is meek, Freya can pack a powerful punch. Her demeanor is that of a dragon that does not wish to be woken, prickly as a porcupine and due to explode at any moment. Fiercely protective of friends, once they gain her trust, Freya would die to save them. Despite her violent outbursts, she also has a soft side. Anyone hurting, physically or mentally, be they on her side or not, she will try to help, hence her position as a healer.

Skills & Abilities: Freya is a master of the art of daggers and throwing knives. She is also a master herbalist and healer, specializing in physiological disorders, though she has some experience in wounds and as a midwife. Though she can ride horses, she prefers her own strong legs.

Knowledge: As I said above, she is a master herbalist, she knows what good herbs are and where they grow, as she is never in one place long enough to grow her own. Freya also has an excellent understanding of different psychological disorders, how they affect the brain and body and the possible cures. She has a working knowledge of body systems and the body’s chemical makeup.

Strengths:

– Social: She is a fierce friend who protects those she knows and trusts. This can overcome fear of her prickly exterior, gaining her the few friends she would not have otherwise.

– Career: Freya is well versed in the use of different herbs and this makes her a wonderful healer. Many choose to come to her, boosting her business.

– Combat: Her expertise on daggers and throwing knives cause her to be a formidable opponent, as does her berserker tendencies. These tendencies mask pain, give her heightened reflexes, and glaze over most of the urge to help those who are hurting.

Weaknesses:

– Social: Freya is volatile and hard to get to know and therefore does not make friends easily. She is more likely to make enemies, or scare others away. She lives a primarily solitary life for this reason.

– Career: Her prickly personality has lost many of her patients to other healers. This gives her business a bad name, and she does not get many patients after a while.

– Combat: Despite the advantage given by her affliction, her compassionate Elven nature will occasionally shine through, and she will have to fight herself in her mind in order not to be skewered by her opponent. In other words, she randomly hesitates. Also, her daggers are heavy and do not go very far when she throws them.



History:

When she was born, Freya was a seemingly normal infant, calm and quiet, with a quick smile and silvery laugh. However, all semblance of normality shattered when, at the slightest annoyance, her eyes turned blood-red and her fair infant face twisted into a grimace of utter fury. Scared and bewildered, her parents consulted a healer, but nothing could be done except to make sure that Freya did not become irritated. This plan went well until she was 10 years old.

Freya’s eldest brother delighted in tormenting his younger siblings, and though he knew that she was not to be annoyed, he could not help himself. Freya imperiously ignored him for a while, but the last straw came in the latter part of the summer of her tenth year. Her brother had, against the will of his parents, gone with some friends to the village tavern and had come home, bold and dreadfully drunk. Finding that Freya was the only one in the house, he proceeded to harass her and ordered her to do mundane household chores repeatedly, insisting all the while that he was her master.

Finally, she could take no more. Before her brother’s horrified eyes, her berserker form took hold and she leaped across the room, grabbing a kitchen knife on the way. That night, when her parents came home, they found her kneeling on the floor, laughing and weeping in turns at the feet of her dead brother, bloody knife still in hand.

Though Freya had gruesomely murdered her brother, her parents did not have the heart to take her to be executed. Instead, they blindfolded her and dragged her to the fringes of the woods, where they let her go. Insane and alone, Freya wandered aimlessly for 5 years, eating whatever she could find, her berserk tendencies protecting her. During this time she forgot what had brought her to the forest in the first place.

One day in the early spring of her fifteenth, Freya stumbled on a ramshackle hut in the heart of the Westwood. There she met a reclusive and elderly healer, who, taking her in, succeeded in curing her madness, but was unable to dispel her berserker nature. Freya had no remembrance of her past, though in the years to follow she would have flashbacks of a life other than that which she had believed herself to live. The healer taught Freya the art of being an herbalist and healer, as she had no children to pass her former trade on to.

When the woman died, 3 years after Freya first met her; Freya left the woods for the world beyond the fringes. Living a simple, wandering life as a traveling healer, she gathers information about the world she never truly knew until recently.

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Married Artemis Fowl on July 16, 2007
[!+^$%=#?&]
The Seemingly Nice But Actually Really Nasty Nazgul
School ate my life. *sigh*

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Just became a college freshman; be on sparingly

Coolio idea! I'd like to join.

Name: Terrel Morey
Gender: Male
Age: late thirties/early forties
Occupation: Merchant
Appearance: Pale hair (thinning, though he'll deny it), blue eyes, of average height. He used to be in excellent physical condition, but good living has softened him and added a few pounds on. He may have been good looking in his youth, but...

Personality: shrewd on matters of business. in everything, he is arrogant and smug. He is the best at everything, of course. As such, he knows better than you. He will attempt to correct you in everything. Terrel is used to getting his own way and living well. He's not opposed to back stabbing if he thinks it's the best way.

History: His merchant business has been in the family for generations, but due to his unscrupulousness and forceful personality, he has expanded it and taken over some smaller businesses. His father had little to do with the family because he was too busy running the business. His mother, on the other hand, was the sort who believed her son could do no wrong. Terrel was left to his own devices (with his mother watching carefully to make sure her baby didn't get hurt) until the age of 15, when he entered his father's business as a clerk. He learned how to run it and was practically a partner by 30.

His father decided to retire from the business; he and Terrel's mother moved to a house out in the country. Terrel was left in town, and work continued to thrive. He has not married nor had a girlfriend, though he believes this has nothing to do with him.

Specialty: He is quick to see advantages and knows how to bargain/haggle/etc. He has money, connections, and can wield a quarterstaff.

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going on a journey through my old claims

Name: Fredric
Gender: Male
Age: Mid/late thirties
Occupation: Master archivist at the royal palace
Appearance: Sandy brown hair that tends to grow down into his eyes before it gets cut; thick spectacles; pale complexion due to little time spent out of doors
Weapons: Kept away for the good of himself and those around him
Personality: Generally quiet; walks the fine line between brilliance and madness

History: A quiet boy born in the capital city to a family of little significance, Fredric was often thought to be rather unintelligent. He didn’t speak his first words until the age of five, and even after that seldom tried to communicate with anyone beyond his immediate family. While other boys played and had adventures, he sat indoors and silently entertained himself. His parents made many attempts at coaxing him into more "normal" behavior, and he would dutifully comply with their requests, but immediately after would return to his own private thoughts. Finally, his parents having despaired of their son ever being bright enough to take up the family business, a preteen Fredric was hired out as an apprentice to the master royal archivist to bring in a bit of extra money.

The job turned out to be rather well-suited to one of his tastes. Quietly organizing things off by himself, delivering notes that required very little communication on his own part. He went about his job much as he went about everything else - quietly, dutifully. But by night, Fredric read. Reading had been a skill necessary for anyone who wished to work in the archives above the level of errand boy, and so Fredric had learned to read. And read. And read.

He dove into reading with far more zeal than anything else before, consuming massive tomes in his spare time. He found that he had an especial liking for history, and while he had little desire to engage in battle himself, he loved to read of wars and campaigns long past. He soaked up any information that he could find, constantly expanding his repertoire. Over the years, it gradually became the accepted practice that if one wished to know anything from the archives - be it tax records or who had courted the king’s second cousin three centuries prior - one asked Fredric. When the master archivist retired, Fredric was the obvious candidate for the job.

Skills: Quick assimilation of new information, memorization, rapid recall of facts already learned. He could be considered something of a strategist, though his knowledge of much beyond the walls of the castle is almost entirely theoretical.

I'd like to join! *goes to work on bio*

I'll think I'll give this a chance.

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I was cured all right.

Methinks I shall join too.

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Oh golly gee, Ellie, I wonder where you've gotten the inspiration for THAT character from. (And I haven't even read the book.)

[/sarcasm]

Anyway, this character has been bugging me all morning.

Name: Elanna
Gender: female
Age: 26
Occupation: For a living, a scribe. Otherwise, a talented musician who dabbles in the arcane.
Appearance: Always very neatly dressed, clothes clean, if plain. For traveling, she adds a cloak and sturdy boots to her normal dress.
Weapons: Just one, a belt knife normally used practically. Technically also a cat.
Personality: That would be spoiling it.
Skills: Extremely musical, to the point of an uncanny aptitude. For years she has experimented with musical forms of enchantment, and has used a fair few for varying purposes. Can write neatly and legibly, and is reasonably if not extensively well-read. Has never trained with weapons.
History: Again. That would be spoiling it.

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Just a small announcement, to clarify in case there has been any confusion. I would prefer to keep this RPG human-central. No elves or vampires or green aliens please.
That's not to say magic is prohibited though. If your character is inclined to magic (providing it doesn't make him/her all-powerful) that's perfectly fine.

Loving the vastly different characters we have so far. Going to make things verrrry interesting indeed.

<b>Name:</b> Lorne
<b>Age:</b> 28
<b>Occupation:</b> Spy for Throstate.
<b>Appearance:</b> Of average height, with mild features, and an engaging smile.
<b>Weapons:</b> Carries around a pouch of poison. Besides an obvious defense in emergencies, it's also necessary for the safety of Throstate; for as his training emphasized, often suicide is more appealing than death by torture.
<b>Personality:</b> Pleasant, sociable, but guarded when it comes to discussing his personal life.
<b>Skills:</b> Extremely talented with adaption into culture. Decent at quickly picking up languages. Knows the basics of sailing.
<b>History:</b> Born on the coast of Throstate, Lorne was apprenticed on a ship at a young age, but showed no promise in the work. Clearly disinterested in anything but traveling, he was ever in trouble with the ships authority, and learned to talk his way out of undesirable situations.

As a young man, he met a royal diplomat on a return journey, who recognized his talent immediately. The king had no need of another diplomat however, and so Lorne was offered a position as a royal spy. Even though the work was dangerous, tense, and slightly disgraceful, he took the position, and excelled.

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<center>
"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

<b>Name:</b> Ifan Ware
<b>Gender:</b> Male
<b>Age:</b> 36
<b>Occupation:</b> Formerly a messenger, currently a groom.
<b>Appearance:</b> A bit shorter than average, brown hair, green eyes, and nondescript clothing.
<b>Weapons:</b> He carries a knife with him, but knows how to handle a sword.
<b>Personality:</b> To be revealed.
<b>History:</b> Ifan began working as a messenger in his early twenties. He frequently travelled between Throstate, Celsea, and a few other countries. After about ten years, though, he was accused of selling information between countries, and he lost his job. Disgraced, he had a hard time finding any work and eventually settled for a position as a groom at a small inn in Throstate.
<b>Skills:</b> Has an almost photographic memory when it comes to maps and directions. Familiar with the layout of cities in Celsea (as they were five years ago, anyway).

Soooo.... the people we play are going after to get this weapon?(sounds like a gun, lol) For this king? I'm guessing that's the point. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Hm... *checks schedule* *checks rps already in* *checks life* I think I can fit in one more rpg! Mind if I join?

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08

Ellie: Out of sheer curiosity, what is the "book[s]" you and Melda referenced?

Eruraina: Yes, it's a gun actually. And yes, for the king, to sum it up. Of course you may join! But if you're too busy right now, don't worry about it, I can always let you jump in at a later date.

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<center>
"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

Name: Alenia
Gender: Female
Age: 26
Occupation: Professional thief
Appearance: Her hair is long and dirty blonde, often wore in a ponytail, allowing her to move freely and without being hindered. Her body is of medium build, made up with moderation, neither too tall nor too short, not too thin but not too voluminous. But her most exceptional features are her green eyes, capable of ensnaring the attention of a man, while her hands silently tip into his pocket.
Personality: She is rather carefree and hedonistic, focusing on the simple pleasures in life such as wine, money, and sex. Her criminal abilities gives her a sense of However she steers far away from violence and very rarely threatens her victims' lives or families.
Weapons: A dagger, but she much prefers to run away from threats
History: Alenia was born in a rather poor family in the inner city where her father left them. Her mother died later from an illness, leaving Alenia to live on the streets at the age of seven. She was taken up by a man, Tagin, who led a group of orphaned children to become thieves. She ended up so skilled at theft that she no longer needed Tagin. At the age of 16, she walked out of Tagin's group, only to have him catch up to her in an inn. After a heated argument, Tagin assaulted Alenia, only to have Alenia to push him down a flight of stairs, paralyzing him. Alarmed by her action, she fled the inn. After seriously considering suicide to escape her demons, she decided to immerse herself in decadence of life, financed by the fruits of her work.
Skills: Stealth and deception are among Alenia's skills, integrated into her through years of Tagin's training and experiences. She is a skilled liar, able to twist the truth to her advantage. Her hands are incredibly fast, able to slip into a pocket and out within seconds. In addition to pickpocketing, she is good at lockpicking, another essential talent. And finally, she is capable of free running, for evasion.

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I was cured all right.

Nah, I'm not too busy right now! I'll post my bio when I get it done!

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08