We have a board!

[Ebiris]

Ok!

First, I wouldn't mind if everyone would check in here so I can make sure I set the usergroups properly.

Secondly, I'm hoping to start next week - maybe Tuesday, since I'm off work that day. So that means I'd like to see PC bios on this board before then.

I've already spoken to Bean and Merc, and hopefully I'll track down Ed before too long, but here's a few things to bear in mind -

Players will begin the game as agents of the British Library. You can be brand new, or a seasoned veteran, but everyone is in the job and knows what they are doing. I don't want to mess around with recruitment and training and suchlike.

Bear in mind that also means your characters have to be British citizens. Don't worry, it's not hard to get! Especially if you're a secret agent!

The cast of the OVA & TV series will likely appear, although some less frequently than others. However, make no assumptions regarding their ulterior motives, please. While the base setting is the same, I won't just be following the same plot as either TV or the OVA.

That also means no clones. There's only two Nancy Makuharis, and one of everyone else! You can have the same powers, sure, but try not to be the same person as an original cast member.

The tone of the game I'm aiming for is closer to the OVA than the TV series. More secret agent adventures than whacked out conspiracy come to life. That's not to say there will be no conspiracies, but I want to stay closer to the feel of the OVA.

Hmm... Okay, regarding the rest of the world, it's set in the mid 90s. I'll probably invent fictional world leaders and suchlike so I won't be too tempted to parody anyone. I make no promises about US Presidents keeping their bladder control, mind you.

Anyway, I'm sure more concerns will be raised as and when I think of them. And feel free to bring up anything you feel pertinent to my attention.

[Merc]

Codename: The Illusion
Real Name: Frederick Gamby
Aliases: Fred, Freddy

A 32 year old hailing from Germany, he has been a citizen under the queen for the last thirteen years. He has been at the Gamby Magic Shop for most of those years.

This quaint magic tricks shop is in the downtown area of England. The softspoken Gamby keeps his business up and running by having small shows in the shop, attracting new customers with his occassional trick of magic and his dazzling display of illusions made possible by his powers. He gets his kicks out of entertaining passerbies and customers alike, but fears he is not good enough for the world of stage magic and does not wish to rely on his powers (let alone is unsure that he could manage to with a large enough audience).

He has come under the employment of the British Library as of two weeks ago, and though he has not had to commit any 'spy' jobs, so to speak, he was granted the codename at that time. He seeks to find rare books, diaries, and secrets of past magicians to someday develop into a first rate stage magician. He currently is fluent in English and German, with some very limited knowledge of Latin.

Gamby has short black wavy hair, parted down the middle, blue eyes, and a slim figure of about 6'5". While not choosy about his clothing, he does prefer them loose. His strenght is about the expected human average for a man who exercises regularly, as are his speed and reflexes.

Powers: Given his codename, it's no surprise that his powers center around illusions.

Centered around hypnotic manipulation, Gamby requires to be heard (though eye-contact helps), his softspoken manner making it hard to dispute what he states to be present, especially as his illusions of choice are always something that is within the realm of possibility.

One won't suddenly find themselves in an alien paradise for example, but could find a room to be empty that has people, or see the wrong cards during a card game.

The illusionary effect is instantaneous, but as mentioned, he is limited to simple twists on the reality of the person(s) he targets.

[Edward]

I'm having computer problems and am posting this from a friend's place.  Hopefully, I'll have my system up and running in the next few days.  Sorry, and I understand if you need to start without me or give someone else my spot.

[Ebiris]

Don't worry about it, Ed.

What I have planned is for everyone to start in their own threads and get a chance to shine individually before being brought together after a fairly short while.

I can start Merc & Bean on Tuesday, and Ed can join when he gets his computer situation sorted. Your intro will obviously be shorter, or possibly skipped entirely, Ed, but I think this way works out best for all concerned.


Also, nice bio, Merc. Can I just ask you to add a few things to it? Firstly, I'd like to know what languages the PCs can speak, since this game will involve lots of globe trotting.  Secondly, I'd like a description of the character's physical attributes as well as his nifty super power. Just so I know how to arbitrate situations involving physical skills in the game.

[Bean Bandit]

Codename: Miss Origami
Real Name: Kaitlin O'Hara
Aliases: Kat, 'Hey, you'

Hair: Black, with auburn highlights
Eyes: Grey-Green
Skin: Pale
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 119 lbs (She tends to get involved in books enough to forget to eat)
Build: Slender and fit.


Languages: Russian, French, and a smattering of Japanese. She has difficulty with the written form, though. She also knows a fair bit of Latin, and some ancient hyroglyphics. She's not able to read these flawlessly, but if given time to examine them, she can accurately come away with the general meaning.


21 years old, and recently finished with several supplimental university courses, Miss O'Hara's education is...patchwork, to put it politely.

The daughter of an an educated Irishman, Literature professor Seamus O'Hara, and his wife, Catherine O'Hara nee Winterfield, an archeologist from London, Kaitlin, as would be expected, grew up in a house full of books. From the time she was very young, reading was the entertainment of choice in the O'Hara home. However, with parents in two highly respected, yet active fields, Kaitlin found herself taken along to her mother's digs more often than not, and pressed into service as an assistant.

Thusly, for much of her younger years, Kaitlin was not only active physically, but also spent virtually all of her free time immersed in books. And even not so free time.

Later on, as the young girl turned about 8, her father was killed in an IRA attack on the college he taught at. Heartbroken, Catherine O'Hara packed up her daughter and returned to England, taking up a position as an assistant professor at Cambridge. Being a traditional mother at heart, She eschewed the idea of a nanny, and when Kaitlin wasn't in school, she was at the university with her mother, or in the library. As she grew up, she became an unoffical mascot for several of the classes she snuck into. Between her time reading and at the university, Kaitlin fairly breezed through high school with excellent marks.

Right around the time she turned fifteen, she began noticing the beginnings of a peculiar ability. Paper would literally obey her wishes. Unfortunately, She found this out by accidentally destroying a texbook from the university. Henceforth, whenever she had nothing new to read, she practiced with this talent, and by the time she graduated from high school, she could manage a variety of crude talents...not the least of which was the ability to change the physical properties of paper.

During a rather public incident where she was forced to use this ability to make paper hard enough to brain a mugger with it, the young eighteen year old came to the attention of the British Library.

Always on the lookout for new talent, and for 'paper users' in particular, Kaitlin was offered education and a job in exchange for honing her particular talents for use in the special forces division.

Intrigued by the concept, and having read many Ian Fleming novels, She was deeply interested and excited by the offer. Naturally, she accepted, and At the tender age of twenty one, despite some difficulties with the more complex aspects of her talents (Specifically, Large and detailed items. On a small scale, her detail is flawless. On a larger scale....well, Caitlin's Paper 'Marionettes' are....serviceable. Barely. The tend to either appear grotesque, or collapse before the job can be completed. To compensate, she tends to opt for as simple as possible when something large is required.) she has been deemed ready for active duty.

[Ebiris]

*nods* Looks good, Bean.

Okay, I'll try and get you two started sometime tomorrow.

[Edward]

Hopefully, I'll have my computer working in the next day or two.  More hopefully, I'll have the files off the Hard Drive the system quit detecting.

Anyway, here's my PC idea.  (Again, posting from a friend's)

Codename: Mr. Babel.
Real Name: Richard Blake
Aliases:  Mr. Babble, Professor

Age: 36
Hair: Dark Brown with a himt of gray at the temples
Eyes: Gray

Richard (he dislikes diminutives of his name) was born in the Crown Colony of Hong Kong.  His father was a businessman, his mother a housewife.  At an early age, he was found to have a talent with languages.  Richard easily picked up the major Chinese languages of Cantonese and Mandarin, as well as the lesser Chinese languages of Min, Hakka, and Wu.  And Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Siamese, Indonesian, Tagalog, and Russian.

When Richard was eleven, his family moved back to England.  He was educated in the best schools and went to College at Oxford, where he added Welsh, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic, Farsi, and Hindi to his list of languages.

Of course, the British Library Association was interested.  Richard can learn new languages in mere days, provided he is exposed to enough written examples or enough people speaking the language.  Of course, he has to learn the written and spoke parts separately, just books won't tell him how to speak the language, just conversation won't tell him how to write it.  And there has to be enough of the source.  Though showed the Phaistos Disk, Richard was unable to decipher it, due to the limited number of characters on it.  He is good at cracking codes and ciphers, though.

Like most British Library Association agents without ranged powers, Richard was given training in firearms, though he dislikes anything larger than a pistol.  He was also given training in hand-to-hand combat, where he showed surprising aptitude.  Richard's talent was more than just ability to learn languages, but actually he had the power to recognize and analyze patterns. Against trained combatants, he fares well, because their actions follow patterns he can learn to predict.  Untrained opponents don't use standard tactics or training, so his powers don't help him much.

Not that he can't learn the patterns used by untrained opponents in combat, but it takes longer for Richard to figure out those individual patterns than the average combat gives him time for.  Given the chance, Richard will study combat footage of any powered opponents, so he has some chance of being able to predict their actions at the start of battle, instead of towards the end, if he lasts that long.

For example, against someone with standard military training, such as Drake, Richard would have an uncanny ability to not be where he was firing.  In hand-to-hand combat, Richard's defenses would be almost impenetrable, and he'd be able to sense the holes in his opponents' defenses.  But Richard's power would be useless against creative and unpredictable stunts like firing a torpedo from a beached submarine, or many of The Paper's actions.

Richard's powers can be useful in non-combat ways as well.  He does fairly well in the stock market and plays a mean game of billiards.  Regardless, he has to be able to sense something in order to analyze and predict its patterns and it will take him time to do so.

Richard is slender and fit.  He enjoys jogging, swimming, and sailing.  He's fairly agile, but of only moderate strength.  When he's not working for the BLA, he's a Professor of Linguistics at Oxford.

(Feel free to change Oxford to Cambridge if you want to tie his and Miss Origami's histories together.)

Richard lived a happy, but solitary life until five years ago, when he had Erica Shen as one of his students.  She was also born in Hong Kong, and he asked he about what had happened while he had been gone.  It was the start of a mutual attraction and eventually they became lovers (She's the only one he let call him Ricky).  They were happy until very recently, when they were out boating and were caught in a sudden storm.  The boat foundered, Richard barely survived, and he has no idea what happened to Erica.  The odds of her surviving are remote, but he would follow up even unlikely rumors about her.)

(Or if the GM wants to tie this to OAV's, perhaps they were in India when a certain I-jin monk did some things with the water level)

Richard is now quiet and withdrawn.  He'll do his job, out of duty and patriotism, but he doesn't enjoy it.  Richard dresses well in most situations, but favors sweats or other athletic wear when it seems more appropriate.  He wears a diamond ring on a chain around his neck; Richard had planned on proposing to Erica just before he lost her.

[Ebiris]

Interesting power, Edward. I like it.

As for changing his university to Cambridge, I won't make any decision, there. Feel free to discuss it with Bean if you two want to have connected backstories.

Also, remember what I said in the first post - the events of the OAVs haven't happened, and perhaps never will.

Okay, I'll try and get everyone started, today. Just need to get a few last details ironed out on my end.

[Edward]

Thanks.

Well, Bean, do you want to connect the backstories?

Sorry I missed the bit about the OAVs haven't happened yet.  Another Christmas in retail has left me with few functioning braincells.  :)  And my net access has been a bit spotty.

Fortunately, I appear to have regular net access back.  If I'm more fortunate, I'll have my datafiles back in the next day or two.

[Bean Bandit]

Sure, I'm up for it. ^_^

Though, how thoroughly to you want them to tie together? Want them just to know of each other (That much is certain, due to her rather odd status) or have her as a 'niece', of sorts?