All Blood Solstice - Vampires (OOC & Apps)

[dispatch99]

BLOOD SOLSTICE - VAMPIRES

They haunt the nightmares of young and old...
They stalk the pages of fairytales and legends...
And they are out for blood.
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Welcome to the City of Myrekirk: the Jewel of the Sea.

Once a small village in a cold swamp on the River Ichor, the town had proliferated into a bustling, powerful city-state of more than ten million people. Fueled by a new kind of semi-magical fuel named Blue Marrow found nearby, steamships and dirigibles glide through and over the world-famous natural harbor, while other mechanical marvels of steam are found on shore in the uncountable factories, universities, and armories of the city. The trade of the world is routed through this city, occupying as it does a strategically valuable central position on the shores of the vast Continent. People from all over gather in Myrekirk to trade and to live, all under the watchful eyes the oligarchic Grand Council. From criminals and pirates and foreign empires, the city maintains its independence with the soldiers and gunboats of the powerful Admiralty. The population has bloomed into ten million people—the largest in the world of Veltera.

It also plays host to many, many vampires.

Beneath the high alleys and deep tunnels of this huge city, hundreds of these creatures lurk in human form although able to shift their appearance to that of a bat, or a misty shadow). Believed by humans to be the stuff of old legends—silly fairytales, superstitious religious texts, mystical grimoires, worthless pulp journals—the vampires keep to the shadows and continue the masquerade, despite the efforts of intrepid reporters, agents of powerful men and women, and Inquisitors of the state-run High Church. Able to withstand almost any mortal blow save from the blaze of the sun or a stake through the heart, vampires also have powers beyond this: strength, speed, ability to evade view, and even more. Some of these vampires are brand new specimens, born just today from taking part of the Red Sacrament: that is, the act of drinking the blood of a vampire. Others are ancient beings, older than the great city, older than the little town it was built around... and if rumors are to be believed, older than the very swamp itself. Most are in between these two extremes.

Yet in this underworld of blood and shadow, everyone has an agenda. Vampires, like humans, use their abilities to chase what their most basic wants: wealth, power, sex, and pleasure. But, also like humans, they have more complicated feelings, and ideals... The adherents of ancient cults seek to awaken dark goddesses, ushering in an age where vampires can walk in the sunlight and humanity is kept under heel, or even wiped away. Others, groups of radical thinkers ranging from wide-eyed students to crazed eccentrics, seek to keep the humans free, out of an enlightened—or delusional, depending on your point of view—spirit of interspecies cooperation and equality. Still others follow their own individual feuds, love affairs, religions, ideologies, and grand designs: after all, it is hard to be immortal and have no complicated history.

You find yourself thrust into this shadowy world of vampires and victims, of paramours and parasites, of ancient and advanced. How will you behave? If a vampire, how will you deal with your history, and will you be cruel or kind to your (more or less) oblivious human cattle? If you are a human, what will you do in this world run from the shadows, and where do your loyalties truly lay? And what will you do if, potentially, the world begins to spin off of its axis...?

The Blood Solstice approaches, friends. Prepare yourselves.


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Welcome friends! You have stumbled across the out-of-character and application thread for Blood Solstice - Vampires: an open-ended, relatively free-form vampire roleplay set in a dark, mystical, and mysterious steampunk world. The idea is to have a fun, dark, engaging roleplay focused on this underworld of vampires. This is a free-form RP that is still something of a work in progress, but we wanted to advertise this story and give everyone an open place to discuss and develop things. I'm not even really the OP or head of this idea—that honor belongs to @Eternity —but I volunteered to take the first dark drink and begin this roleplay by posting a thread.

Short programming note: Unless I am told otherwise by my collaborators, this is expected to be a story that does include sexuality as well as violence—nothing egregious, and any sexually NSFW moments will be hidden behind a spoiler, but the overall RP will be at perhaps an R-rated movie level. If you have significant triggers around any of those related topics, please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate you, but please understand that a certain level of sensuality and bloodshed is frankly necessary for the genre.

I hope you all enjoy! Feel free to apply and tell us what your ideas are: more will be added as more is decided upon. Thanks for reading!
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Spoiler: SUGGESTED CHARACTER APPLICATION

NAME: Please include any titles or aliases that your character might go by.

SPECIES: Vampire, Human, or Other.

AGE: For vampires, please include both chronological and apparent ages—18+ only for both, please.

APPEARANCE: A description or a spoilered picture will suffice.
GENDER: If applicable.

PERSONALITY: What makes your character tick? What are their likes and dislikes? Are they volatile, and if so, how? Include sexual and romantic preferences here, if applicable.

BIOGRAPHY: Give us a suitably brief history of your character—make sure to include any allegiances or creeds here. Don't worry if it is not too long: mystery is always understood and appreciated among this crowd.

ABILITIES & WEAKNESSES: Include things that your character may be able to do that are beyond normal human skill, adhering to reasonable limits. At a minimum, vampires have regeneration—with the necessary caveat that weaknesses include silver, sunlight, and stakes through the heart—as well as heightened strength, speed, and senses, and the ability to transform into a bat, a shadowy mist, or other diverse and frightening forms (one could just put "is a vampire" here for brevity's sake if they so wish). However, if you are an "other" sort of creature, or if you want to add some unusual spice to your vampire, make sure to put their abilities as well as their concurrent vulnerabilities.

NOTABLE POSSESSIONS: If applicable... And please spare us the mundane details of your larders and boudoirs. This is for any holdings your character has that might be considered special or unusual—heirlooms, titles, properties, pets, weapons, gadgets, alchemical or magical items, people, and so on.

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[dispatch99]

NAME: Prince Ishvan Tahsiç, Fifth Scion of the Tahsiçid Dynasty, of the Basrian Empire.

SPECIES: Human.

AGE: 21

APPEARANCE: Prince Ishvan is blessed with a suitably regal, yet youthful and human appearance, with his smooth dark skin—a sun-kissed chestnut brown typical of people from Basria—contrasting finely against his sharp jade-colored eyes and his platinum blond, almost white hair (a hallmark of the Tahsiç noble family), which is typically short-cut. Although at a mere 5'7" and a light 130 pounds he is perhaps not as physically imposing as you might expect from a dashing prince, his love of noble sport (hawking, riding, fencing, aerial silk dancing) has given him a fine physique, slender yet muscular, and well capable with surprising strength and endurance. Ishvan always keeps himself well-groomed, clean shaven, and finely dressed for the occasion—whether in his smart colonel's uniform, finely-tailored Myrekirk-style suits and cloaks, or even occasionally in resplendent traditional Basrian robes and jewelry.
GENDER: Male.

PERSONALITY: The word that describes Ishvan the best is "bold"—he possesses confidence born of both the privilege of high nobility and of a self regard that is not entirely at odds with reality. He is an open-minded and energetic self-described intellectual, hungrily devouring new ideas and experiences, and he utterly despises ignorance, bigotry, and superstition. Ishvan enjoys the finer things in life, but takes special care to the needs of the common man—he has been described uncharitably as something of a "champagne socialist", a charge that is inaccurate: his personal ideology is a sort of enlightened despotism in what we might call the Napoleonic style. Not quite a libertine but certainly adjacent, he frequently enjoys bohemian pleasures in the company of his varied friends: wine and hash in particular are his drugs of choice when pleasant delirium is called for, and he has the typical aristocratic disdain for prudish puritanism. In romance, Ishvan exclusively courts women (usually older than him), which is also his primary sexual preference as well—however, he is no stranger to the delights of male companionship, and is not at all opposed to that sort of pairing (it's not uncommon in his Basria). As for family, well… needless to say, the young prince has complicated and not entirely good feelings about the dynasty, and prefers only to discuss such matters in details with confidants he can trust absolutely. At a personal level, Ishvan is a brave man, has a strong sense of right and wrong, and can be quite ruthless when it is called for, but prefers to be good natured and level-headed about things when his hot blood will allow him…

BIOGRAPHY: Prince Ishvan Tahsiç was born to the royal Tahsiçid Dynasty, the ruling family of the distant Basrian Empire—a distant land of sun and sand, palm trees and oases, where rich bazaars bustle by blazing sunlight during the day and where colorful legends are told around the fire at night, as the crescent moon and ancient ruins rise into the starry sky... Ishvan was the fifth and youngest of an impressive brood of Tahsiçid royal children, spending his childhood in the palace. A middling and admittedly declining power in the Great Game of Velteran world affairs, Ishvan was born into the unenviable position of being forced to watch his older siblings—closed minded, selfish, and myopic (at least according to him)—continue to drive his homeland and birthright into decline, since as the youngest of two royal sons and two royal daughters in line ahead of him, he had little chance of ascending to the throne.

The exact details of his early life are a mystery, although we can know that as he grew Ishvan became a voracious reader, charismatic charmer, and an obnoxious political firebrand—all of which irritated his staid, conservative family. Eventually, as he became a man, Ishvan was sent by the royal family to Myrekirk to become a student in the city's grand and prestigious Hoffbridge University, like many other foreign elites. Although Ishvan characterized this as a sordid and violent "exile," it was quite a comfortable one: he was provided with a personal staff of servants, a spacious apartment in the richer districts of the city, and a comfortable (or in commoner terms "eye-watering huge") allowance, deposited into an anonymous account with the stately Tanergild Bank. He quickly adjusted to his new lifestyle, becoming a fixture in Myrekirk society as a charming and exotic character, while simultaneously pursuing degrees in Economics, the Liberal Arts, Political Philosophy, and other sciences while studying at Hoffbridge. Despite becoming comfortable in his new life, Ishvan never forgot where he came from, nor did he ever give up his birthright, and he continued to work towards some kind of return, more or less seriously, more or less secretly…

It was during this "exile", as Ishvan studied, partied, and plotted among the students and socialites of Myrekirk, that he first fell in with the shadowy world of the vampires—specifically by falling in with a vampire woman, as the pair spent a wine-fueled evening together in a secluded corner of one of Hoffbridge's innumerable libraries. Far from being frightened off by the dark world that his eyes were now opened to, Prince Ishvan was intrigued. Here was a shadow world of power, endlessly diverse and endlessly ancient, with knowledge and power previously beyond his dreams… It was a world that was beautiful to him, and that could also help the exiled prince with his goals.

ABILITIES & WEAKNESSES: Ishvan is no superhuman: he possesses no powers of transformation or regeneration beyond normal mortal ability. That said, he does have a few unique and notable skills and vulnerabilities:
-Ishvan is trained with weapons: he is quite proficient in swordplay and pistol shooting, though he is awkward with fisticuffs and long guns, has no really knowledge of explosives… and is utterly hopeless with the Basrian composite bow famously used by their horse archers, much to his great embarrassment.
-His practice in the art of aerial silk dancing—a brilliant and somewhat enticing traditional Basrian art comparable to ballet—has given Ishvan great flexibility, climbing skills, endurance and core strength, and has utterly banished any fear of heights he might have once had.
-Ishvan fancies himself a brilliant organizer and tactician, and indeed he is… if he knows all of the details, can reasonably control everything, and there is no "fog of war". He cannot readily adjust to confusion and chaos, and has a dangerous tendency towards overconfidence and overcomplicated designs.
-Ishvan is charismatic and a natural social fixture, and has ease in making friends, forming alliances, and in seductions. However, this is a double-edged sword: though he would be furious with you if you pointed it out, Ishvan can be led around himself as easily as he leads. Goading and taunting in particular, he cannot seem to let go, and is quick to get starry-eyed about new opportunities.

NOTABLE POSSESSIONS: Ishvan owns the deed to a well-furnished luxury apartment, stocked full of books, tobacco, and wine. He also has access to a functionally infinite line of credit, although it is in danger of being cut off by his royal family at any time if they suspect that he is misbehaving. Among his personal armory is a gleaming gilded saber in the Basrian style—a treasured royal heirloom, one of the few things they let him keep showing his princely status—as well as a stylish two-shot pistol engraved with his name and coat of arms, which he keeps loaded. Ishvan also has an extensive and varied wardrobe, full of all sorts of clothes and costumes. He also frequently wears a Nazar amulet, a charm of protection, on a silver chain—another symbol of home, with the royal coat of arms engraved on the back. He also has a tamed pet ocelot, a female named Cleopatra, that he pampers and occasionally walks.

 

[Eternity]

I am going to be posting my character soon, and I hope to get an IC thread going ASAP. Sorry for the delay in all of this!

 

[dispatch99]

I am going to be posting my character soon, and I hope to get an IC thread going ASAP. Sorry for the delay in all of this!

No worries at all! I've been trying to make my vampire characters for a month now, you're fine

Looking forward to getting this bloody plot rolling!

 

[Eternity]

Character(s) - Eternity's Characters

Birth Name: Revna Vilulf Preferred Name: Revna Titles: Bloodhound, Hunter Alias: Oracle Sex: Female Age: 28 Race: Human/Werewolf Orientation: Bi-Sexual Marital Status: Single Occupation: Huntress -Formally of: Guild of Hunters known as the Bone Collectors Birthplace: A Northern Village ~Vitals~...

writerssanctum.com

Link takes you to my Vampires Profile.

 

[mngrls]

Hello! I just joined the site but this RP caught my eye! Is it still open? If so I can post my character in this edit.

 

[dispatch99]

Hello! I just joined the site but this RP caught my eye! Is it still open? If so I can post my character in this edit.

It is still open—Not sure when the OP will be, but feel free to post what you have!

 

[Eternity]

We can start whenever.