Fade Rift Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faderifting) wrote2018-02-28 08:35 pm
faderifting) wrote2018-02-28 08:35 pm
Side Characters
SIDE CHARACTERS
Side characters are a middle ground between PCs and NPCs, with short apps and no AC. Our hope is to allow players to flesh out the environment with character types that are underrepresented in Fade Rift—commoners, Andrastians, people with more mundane skills or boring jobs or OOCly unpopular opinions, etc.—but who wouldn't necessarily be as fun to play with the same level of commitment as more unusual or sympathetic characters. If you think it would be fun to sometimes write a put-upon diplomat telling other characters to behave themselves or a haughty Chantry Sister judging heathens, that’s what this is for!
Alternatively, you can use side characters to test or develop vague concepts that you might be interested in apping as full characters later, or to play characters with a specific short-term arc, such as temporary allies or citizens that cross paths with Riftwatch somehow.
Side characters are not required to be Riftwatch members. You can play a Kirkwall local or an openly hostile antagonist. However, please keep in mind that unaffiliated characters won’t have access to sending crystals, and it’s your responsibility to keep them playable. We won’t provide plots or mechanisms to keep them from wandering away forever if that’s what they would do. And if you decide to app one as a normal PC later, they’ll have to join up.
This is not meant to allow anyone to indefinitely RP six full-fledged permanent characters, and especially not six strange egalitarian poster children with lots of special skills, so please use it in the intended spirit. Characters who have more unusual qualities than side characters warrant may be given time restrictions on how long they can be voice tested as side characters before becoming standard characters.
RULES
Character Limits
- You must be a current player who made full AC the prior month.
- You can have two side characters at a time, but you can only add one per month.
- You can app a side character as a full character at any time, as long as you have open slots. You can also change main characters to side characters if you want to put them on the back burner without dropping them. But you can’t use it just to dodge AC for a month or constantly rotate.
- Side characters must be native OCs.
- They can’t be from any character category we limit to one-per-player.
- Side characters do not submit AC and are also not eligible to earn AC reward points.
- Other PCs can earn reward points by playing off of other people’s side characters.
- Side characters can be members of projects, but they aren’t eligible for any IC leadership roles.
- Side characters are allowed to participate in plots, but must be given lowest priority in sign-ups for any closed plot, including player plots. It’s fine for them to fill out a group that has empty slots, just not to take a slot that could otherwise go to a willing PC.
- You can propose your own player plots for your side characters, and obviously in that case the 'lowest priority' rule doesn't apply.
APPLICATION
Side character “apps” are very short and meant to encompass just the broad strokes of the character concept, to allow people time to figure details out in play. However, you can’t add big things like mod plot-relevant events or connections that were not included in the initial proposal. E.g., it’s fine not to tell us the details of a character's childhood if that childhood was pretty normal, but you can't then say that the character spent their childhood learning shapeshifting from the Chasind or is Corypheus' secret love child.
Please post your app in the body of the comment rather than linking it.
PLAYER
Name:
Other Characters:
CHARACTER
Name:
Race:
Nationality:
Mage?:
Age:
Affiliation:
Occupation:
Goal: Briefly, in one or two sentences, are you planning for this character to stick around indefinitely? Voice testing a potential full PC? Apping a temporary character for a specific plot arc? (It’s fine for your plans to change later; we just want to know what you're up to now.)
About: In 100-500 words, tell us generally who this character is—key background facts or personality traits, opinions, skills or connections, etc. You don’t have to have every detail worked out, but you do have to tell us anything that’s hugely important, controversial, rare, or plot-relevant in advance. Otherwise, think of this like the elevator pitch section of a CR meme: what are the essentials that make your character who they are and set them apart?
no subject
Name: Hope
Other Characters: Byerly
Name: Linden
Race: Elf
Nationality: Marcher (Starkhaven)
Mage?: Yes
Age: 55
Affiliation: DEFINITELY the Circle of Mages. (In actuality: a Starkhaven crime boss.)
Occupation: A very polite loyalist mage. (In actuality: a fixer/all-purpose muscle. And also not polite at all.)
Goal: Sort of testing out the character, and interested in running a plot where Riftwatch gets pulled in to support the criminal underworld in their anti-Tevinter activities.
About:
Linden grew up a street urchin in Starkhaven, without even enough relatives to anchor him to the Alienage. Like a lot of motherless children, he drifted into the sphere of influence of criminal organizations - in his case, a crime family called the Heathcotes. He grew up under the dubious care of this gang, kept at arms’ length the way that nonhumans always are in such organizations, treated just a little worse than the kids with round ears.
Around ten years old, his magic started to emerge. The Heathcotes, like any gang of a reasonable size, had a decent number of apostates, and so these apostates taught Linden to control his power. Linden proved especially adept at blood magic. He also proved pretty adept at survival, whatever it took.
Part of survival was learning how to come across as respectable. And so Linden has often ended up being the Heathcotes’ fixer - someone who can go into a situation and use a combination of guile, muscle, and wheedling to make the problem go away.
Now, the thing about crime families is: they’re not really good people, but sometimes, they’re rather patriotic. The Heathcotes are this way: they have a general attitude, most of the time, of fuck the Vaels, fuck the established order, but with the recent Tevinter incursions, that anti-authority attitude has been pushed away as they’ve gotten much more fired up about fighting off the invaders. Part of this passion has manifested in the form of them becoming rather Riftwatch-curious: Linden is being sent out to investigate Riftwatch and perhaps offer an alliance.
Generally, in terms of personality, Linden is a fairly unpleasant person; he’s obsequious to those who are more powerful than him and distant and standoffish towards those he doesn’t need to kowtow to. A lifetime of being treated like shit - but, because he’s so useful and powerful and trusted, like the king of shits rather than a shit underling - has shaped him into an incredibly depressed and defeated person who also has a rather inflated sense of importance. He doesn't tend to start fights, but if someone else nips at him, he'll bite back viciously. Ideally, removed from his usual environment, his worldview will expand enough that he’ll learn to be a bit more generous (but maybe he’ll just continue to be an asshole - we’ll see!).
ACCEPTED + NOTES
Your application has been approved, with the following notes:
Welcome to Fade Rift. Before you start playing, please: You're then welcome to begin RPing!
If you decide to drop this side character, please do so via the drop page. If you decide to app the character as a main character, you can do so without letting us know here—we'll remove the side character profile for you on acceptance of the full character application. Please remember that this character cannot earn AC points and must be given last priority in plot sign-ups.
If you have any questions, let us know.