Seas of Sand

[Ruins]

Welcome to Alternia, a world of endless deserts, bottomless canyons and mountains that scrape the sky. A world where water is scarce and fiercely fought over, where the highest-blooded citizens live in towns by the lake-shores and the rest pick out a meagre existence wandering the barren wastes. Where seadwellers are rare and strange, fated either to be some high-blood's personal pet or to be forever on the run from greedy slavers. Where the oceans boiled away hundreds of sweeps ago, changing life as the troll race knew it forever.

 

A strange world indeed.

 

This world is where our story begins. Twelve young friends will come together to play a game called sGrub - a game with consequences far greater than most of them could imagine, where the bonds of their friendships will be tested as they leave behind everything they ever knew. Will they triumph against all odds, or will this be yet another dead session in a multiverse full of failure and destruction? Will they even manage to get into the Medium without killing each other?

 

There's only one way to find out. But for now, let us take a closer look at this strange planet...

 

Plot:

In an alternate universe version of Alternia, twelve young trolls - all of them alternate universe versions of the canon trolls - come together to play sGrub: a game of unimaginably high stakes where the ultimate goal is nothing less than the creation of a new universe. The RP will start just before the beginning of the session to allow the players to meet and group up with each other.

 

Setting:

In this version of Alternia, the seas were destroyed during a war hundreds of sweeps ago by a mysterious super-weapon known only as the Deepfire Nuke. As a result most water takes the form of underground streams or large lakes and is usually dangerously radioactive, although fresh water exists. No water-dwelling life remains, not even fish. All trolls carry around small purification devices with them that allow water to be safely drunk with larger and more efficient devices coming present in every hive. To steal or destroy another's purifier is seen as the worst sin, something only a complete monster would do.

Most the planet's surface is covered either in deserts, scrub or grasslands, with patches of woodland around what little open water remains. It tends to be extremely hot during the day with temperatures plunging to almost below freezing at night. Rain and storms are very rare and snow is almost nonexistent except at the poles; sandstorms, however, are extremely common. The deserts are dotted with high mountains and deep canyons, the remains of undersea mountain ranges and trenches. These canyons often have lakes at the bottom of them, making them popular places to live for both trolls and animals. The old troll cities remain as crumbling ruins just waiting for the curious troll to come and plunder their riches. Fossils are common, too, making archeology a popular pastime.

The wasteland is spotted with pumping and purifier stations, large windmill-like machines that suck fresh water from underground streams and to the surface. The upkeep of these ancient machines is seen as a communal responsibility with all who take water from them cleaning or fixing whatever they can. To damage one would be unthinkable.

 

The hemospectrum is also slightly changed. With the seadwellers practically extinct, the purple-bloods became the most important trolls around, shunting what few violet-bloods managed to get born down to the bottom of the pecking order. They are seen as rare and valuable novelties with most being taken into slavery as grubs and sold to highbloods as little more than exotic pets. They live in gilded cages, pampered and utterly useless to everyone. What few manage to escape capture are forced to live a life of hemoanonymity in the wastelands, keeping their heads down to avoid those who make a living in trading trolls. At this point in time there are only two alive in freedom, neither of whom have met or even heard of each other.

 

Highbloods, those above olive (Nepeta's colour) in the spectrum, live in towns grouped around the few rivers and lakes that exist. They tend to be grand affairs: clusters of buildings painted gleaming white to reflect the sun's baking heat, murals in bright colours on the walls, flags and streamers of the owners' blood colour flying proudly on the roof. The inhabitants are no less colourful with a tendency among the higher classes to wear brightly coloured silk robes and gold chains, laden with sapphires and amethysts. What lowbloods in the towns are servants or slaves captured by the roving bands of (usually mid-blood) slavers and taken back to the towns in chains.

Thanks to their forced closeness, trolls in this universe are much less independent and more social, often gathering in large groups in the town square to talk and gossip. Most business is conducted at around dusk or dawn, when it is dark enough to emerge safely but not so cold as to be uncomfortable.

 

Lowbloods, on the other hand, live as nomads and wanderers in the wastelands. They tend to live solitary existences, sometimes roaming miles and miles from their hives in search of water and following migrating prey animals. Some have no hives at all and live purely out of animal-skin tents that they can pack up and move at a moment's notice. Most, however, make their base in a cave and guard it fiercely. Possessions and freedom are important to them with thieves being seen as shameless cowards - unless they've looted it from the ancient ruins, of course. When two lowbloods meet, they tend to swap tips - the locations of prey and water, slaver band sightings - and stories of their experiences around the campfire.

Unlike the richly-dressed highbloods, lowblood clothing tends to be old and tattered, usually in shades of black and grey. Loose clothing, both to keep out and keep in the heat, is preferred, mostly in many layers. Face-concealing scarves and wide-brimmed hats are common. Some take their freedom as a chance to decorate themselves in looted jewelry and clothes of many colours, others use natural pigments to camouflage themselves whilst hunting.

 

Pictures:

A typical view

A canyon in the wasteland

Some scrubland

Edited April 16, 2014 by Ruins

[Ruins]

Rules:

1. This is a semi-lit RP. Please use your best grammar and spelling, although I do understand typos; the recommended post length is 100 words or more.

 

2. No Mary-Sues or Gary-Stus allowed. All characters have personality flaws and weaknesses.

 

3. Only canon trolls as Player Characters, please, although you can change and tweak their personalities or appearances. All non-canon trolls are NPCs.

 

4. Two characters per player maximum. (Although I might increase that to three, depending on popularity.) Make as many NPCs as you like/can handle. The password is: If I hate myself so much, why don't I hatemarry myself?

 

5. No harming, hitting and definitely NO killing another's character without their permission. Keep your fight scenes fair. Again, kill as many NPCs as you please - they're fair game.

 

6. Keep it PG13, thanks. No excessive gore or hanky-panky, though violence and romance are not so much allowed as enthusiastically encouraged. Just don't describe it, if it happens.

 

7. Don't machine-gun. Give people in the other timezones a chance to post.

 

8. And most importantly- have fun! Go crazy!

 

Form:

*PM ME THEM WITH THE PASSWORD. THE PASSWORD MUST BE INCLUDED!*

[B]Username:[/B]
[B]Name:[/B]
[B]Tag:[/B]
[B]Looks:[/B] (Five sentences plus, please. Pictures optional.)
[B]Personality:[/B] (Five sentences plus, please.)
[B]Strife Specibus:[/B]
[B]Fetch Modus:[/B]
[B]Lusus:[/B]
[B]God Tier:[/B]
[B]Land:[/B]
[B]Password:[/B]

 

Trolls Taken:

Feferi Peixes

Eridan Ampora - taken by Ruins

Gamzee Makara

Equius Zahhak

Vriska Serket

Terezi Pyrope

Kanya Maryam

Nepeta Leijon

Sollux Captor

Tavros Nitram

Aradia Megido

Karkat Vantas

[Ruins]

Good question! She's dead, yeah. That was the point of the Deepfire Nuke - it was the opening blow of what was supposed to be a full-blown lowblood revolt, killing off her and tonnes of seadwellers in one swift move. But unfortunately it was far more powerful that even its inventors imagined, leading to the seas boiling away completely when they were only supposed to boil a little.

In the resulting confusion the lowblood rebels fled 'inland' into the deserts, which kept from being slaughtered but unfortunately left the old shorelines and what remained of the seas in highblood hands. With most of the remaining water in their possession, as well as the newly-invented water purifiers, the highbloods were able to keep their power and population levels. They basically sat pretty whilst the lowblood rebels died of starvation, thirst and radiation sickness in the wasteland. When the next generation of lowblood grubs popped up they decided to banish them into the wasteland to live as nomads, simultaneously keeping their numbers down and stopping them from effectively rallying another army. The highbloods use the purifiers as a sort of leash - the secret of making them is closely and jealously guarded by their engineers, meaning that the lowbloods literally rely on them to carry on existing.

 

Incidentally, the inventors of the Deepfire Nuke were some slightly... well, very crazy followers of the Sufferer and the water purifiers were the work of Darkleer. The Condesce is assumed to have died along with Gl'bgolyb and the other 99.9% of the seadwellers. The Grand Highblood was supreme ruler of what remained for a while until his death, helping cement the purplebloods' rule of troll society.

 

(I'll add this stuff to the first post in the morning...)

Edited April 17, 2014 by Ruins

[octopi]

Ooh, interesting!

 

So did this war replace the Sufferer's attempt at revolution? Because that would cause a pretty interesting ripple effect. Alternia wouldn't solely be populated by children, for one, and I feel like Karkat would have had a way harder time surviving since, uh, a lot of former followers probably started hating the Sufferer after the crazy guys did this in his name.

 

Another thing, too: trolls have hyperspace travel. Wouldn't a lot of the trolls have fled the planet? The fleet was based on Alternia back then so there definitely would have been ships, and they would have brought at least some lowbloods with them for use as mechanics/living batteries/janitors/etc. A fair amount of seadwellers would have survived if they were off-planet at the time too, now that I think about it

[Obscure_Trash]

((Approved. If you want any of the posts back, such as the question you were replying to in the two above posts, just let me know.))