Shards of a Broken Empire, Planning Thread Options

[Uleni Athram]

OK, let's do this.


First off, we need to plan where are we going. Hey Jack, wanna go for another try for the Roots? This time without a crazy spy thinking he's a warrior? Or an assassin and his wife? *shrugs*

TBH, I prefer this. Second time's a charm, yes? There were so many potential in being in Morrowind and Black Marsh, and we didn't even got a chance to properly set up shop. If we choose this, we go there with the same way, boats and all. This time, however, we properly land someplace other than Seyda Neen. Perhaps Ebonheart? Either way, once we get out of the ship, we get to hear some crier about how the local lord is hiring mercenaries for an 'assault' on a nearby.....

Just pick a province before I talk your ears out



And since I get a feeling that "making things up as we go" would likely result in the horrid death of this RP, NPCs that has some sway in the story is very much needed. These NPCs I would list in the following list: only if we meet/heard about them in their respective province. I control these NPCs, of course.


I'm going to introduce some plot-moving NPCs with, hopefully, humanized personalities. I would update this list in a seperate thread when we progress with the plot or set foot in each respective province so you guys can get a 'feel' of each NPC's ambition and goals. First off:




CYRODIILS


Emperor Martin Septim

The illegitimate heir now turned Emperor, Martin Septim rules the Fourth Era as a broken man. He still has his wits and sanity, but in those blue eyes one could see the turmoil that plagues him. The province of the Imperial race is safe under his fair, yet firm, guidance and the Legion reinforces the peace. As the Fourth Era now dawned on Tamriel, the weakened Empire has lost its leash on each province and chaos now reigns. Mysterious artifacts also appeared in seperate locations and Martin has some strange interest in them, hiring mercenaries and sending Blades to recover each one. While the reason is unclear, some say it would be vital in restoring peace.


The Champion of Cyrodiil ( the preset character just to make it easier and not confusing )

The lone wanderer who repelled Oblivion single-handedly. His name and background is unknown, but his deeds marked him as one of the powerful Heroes who rose before him, like the Incarnate. Currently, he resides in the Royal Palace, guarding the Emperor despite his friend's wishes for him to venture out and collect the Gems.



Severus Horatius Caesus

Succeeding Adamus Philida as the overall commander of the whole Legions and a military advisor to the Emperor, Severus is regarded as a brutish man with the mind of a genius. Under his command, the borders of Cyrodiil is kept safe. While the Emperor is sending out mercenaries and adventurers to collect these hogwash 'Gems', the Primo Legatus is waiting for the opportune moment to mobilize the Legions and pacify the independent provinces with brute force. And he is running out of patience.


Councilman Noriquel

With the demeanor of a shifty rat and the personality of a zeta male of the pack, this Bosmeri is reputed as one of the greediest and disloyal in the whole of the Elder Council. Many times has the other Councilmen petitioned for Noriquel's retirement, but it has always been rebuked. Simply because Noriquel is one of the best in the games of politics. Ruthless and efficient, he could get the job done. He has many pawns under his thumb and all of them are arguably spies, too. Nothing can get in and without of the Royal Palace with Noriquel not knowing of it. Emperor Martin dislikes him and the Champion is outright suspicious of him, but they keep him simply because of his political savvyness. Lately, however, the Bosmeri councilman acts with strange eccentricity and keeps mumbling to himself during Council sessions.

A great plan is in work, he says. A great plan is in work.





Praetorian Lania Horatius Caesius

Women serving in the Legion is a strange sight. Women having the ranks even senior officers can only dream of having is viewed upon with disgust and secret awe. Lania, daughter of the Primo Legatus, is the head of the Praetorian Guard: an organization bent on defending the Royal Palace and the Emperor himself, in conjunction with the Blades. Founded by Martin to reinforce his security from assassins, the Praetorians maintains the safety with borderline-fanatiscism. And this job suits Lania well. She was not the one who seeks out battle, unlike his father, but would rather have battle seek her out. And this job, it attracts assassins like a moth to a fly. But with the erratic behavior of Councilman Noriquel and the restless demeanor of her father, the tension inside the palace is unbelievably thick. No one knows who is loyal to whom, and enemies hide in the guise of friends. It is times like these that Lania loves her job.


(When the RP starts, I would edit this post and this "Character List" would be moved up so new comers would get an idea of the RP. Hope it makes sense, which it probably wouldn't)

[jack cloudy]

The problem I think with the old rp was mostly a lack of planning and too much storming off followed by blind catching-up. I also thought a certain character behaved a bit odd considering his/her background, but that's an irrelevant detail.

Anyhow, I don't have any real preference regarding the first province we go for. Morrowind might be as good a warmup as any. That said, I don't know if we should go to Ebonheart. Assuming that the Argonian/Dunmer conflict is at least somewhat based on a race for the roots, and considering that the Argonians seem to be losing. (Not that I see the Dunmer armies live long when they reach the real swamp)
I propose we start on the mainland instead, closer to the front lines. How about Mournhold? It's big and the capital, which makes it a good place to have a good number of spies and informants.

And how do we want to start? With our arrival at whatever starting site we pick, or first have everyone post a scene where they're hired and get their orders?

[saqin]

I'm okay with going to Morrowind first, or anywhere else for that matter. Would make sense that we first meet in Mournhold(if we go to Morrowind) as that's closer to the border and a great place for gossip. If anything is going on with the ruling factions of the land, that's the place you'll find out the fastest.

As for how to begin, I wouldn't mind writing up how the hiring happens. Could be a good way to introduce the characters. I'm fine either way though.

[Uleni Athram]

Mournhold, huh? Gotta be the third that says that it makes sense. With the residing God dead thanks to the Nevvy, I suppose the Temple took over and made the City their headquarters. Which, y'know as Jack said, ripe with spies and all that stuff.

The Beginning with the RP should be on being hired. That said, I don't think that the Five of us would be ... convincing. Sure, the smaller the faster we can travel, but how about a dozen? Irrelevent mercs that would be ignored later on (or not, if you have plans for them).

Hmmm... I'm ready. Want me to make the Playground or we wait for the others' opinion (Ahrenil and Grif)?

[Ahrenil]

I'm happy with starting in Morrowind, however if we're starting off there are we already hired? Who's hiring us? Where are we being hired? Were we told to go to Morrowind? It just seems a bit unlikely for a group of 5 mercs to be hanging around Mournhould when theres already so many oppurtunities outside the city, are we all on a break or something?

As far as other characters go I had another in mind that i'll add, to flesh out the party a bit more and add some survivablity, a medic. The only thing I have to say about starting in Mournhould is isn't the temple notoriously distrustful of outsiders? Having a large group of heavily armored mercenaries from various not particularily friendly provinces seems like a bad idea.

[saqin]

I might be able to create another character, if I don't have time to write two later I'll just have that person die in that case. I was thinking a bit of a mage focusing on destruction and/or conjuration, with the right clothing such a person could be very inconspicuous as well since he/she won't carry a weapon.

As for the beginning, if we start with how we are being hired we could just do it so that we are contacted by a blade, an imperial guard or a courier and whoever it is brings a closed missive with the orders in case we agree to do the job(which we obviously will), then we skip forward to when everyone have gotten to Mournhold and meet there. If you are in Cyrodiil you could of course be called to the palace, and then get hired but that would show that the emperor is taking an interest in the character and would probably cause the temple to be suspicious of him/her. Yeah, I think it's very likely the different powers of Tamriel are spying on each other. I would anyway.

As for it being suspicious with a large group of mercenaries from different provinces, I don't think that we'll be the only mercenaries around and as such, though we'll probably be monitored, I don't think we'll be that closely monitored. After all, when the soldiers are busy on the front lines mercenaries will probably be hired to take care of things that the soldiers would do otherwise. My opinion, take it for what it is.

[jack cloudy]

I agree that being hired individually is probably best. Our Blades members for example will go through regular Blade-channels for the thing, whatever that might be. (coded Letter with orders and a few forms for requisitioning supplies/transport?)

As for a second character, I've got no ideas yet.

[grif11]

Well, I've finished with Taedril Uvaren.

Luckily, I've given myself a good bit of freedom on where to start off, so I think I'll just be heading for the borders of Valenwood when I'm stopped by a Legion patrol, and told to be heading for the Imperial city palace.

This post has been edited by grif11: Sep 26 2011, 05:47 PM

[Uleni Athram]

Hmm. A medic, huh? Well, you beat me to it, Ahrenil. Go right ahead. As for who's hiring us, its the Emperor. The old RP 'Shards of Broken Emperors' should be your geyser of information. Beware however, noobish content is abound in there! Lol.

Saqin's plan makes the most sense. To me, atleast.

Off to create the Playground, then.

[Lord Revan]

Morrowind... interesting. Perhaps, Valero could have been captured by Dunmer near the border. Then the group could chance across him in Morrowind on trial for associating with necromancers.

[Dantrag]

Morrowind is okay, and it seems that we've pretty much all placed ourselves in Cyrodiil, after getting a letter, so the journey will begin after the Emperor's speech, I presume?

Another thing, just to make sure I'm getting this right; The Emperor is sending different groups out for different artifacts, and there happens to be one artifact for every two provinces. We will be but one of those groups, searching specifically for the Roots. Am I right?

Also, I remember there being guns in the last one. Can I respectfully ask that we not include them this time?

[Kiln]

The problem I think with the old rp was mostly a lack of planning and too much storming off followed by blind catching-up.

Lol I've seen basically this exact thing said right after an RP crashes and burns so many times that it isn't even funny.

[jack cloudy]

Actually, if I were the emperor. I would send multiple groups after each artefact. And I'm not just talking about mercenaries with the occasional spy mixed in. I'm talking about spies already deployed in the province, perhaps orders sent to a nearby general to prepare his troops to march. Of course, all the other groups can remain out of our sight and fail offscreen.

I'm not sure how open we want the hiring sequence to be, so I'll let Uleni handle the emperor's speech.

And I second the no-guns statement. They would look off and last time I checked, Tamriel is safely in a zone of technological stasis. Or even regression, considering the recent loss of spells like passwall, daedra (Azura and co.) summoning, loss of spears, crossbows, flails, removable underwear, multilayered clothing, armour being reduced to a few big simple pieces.

Oh, and maybe I should talk about Semir's disguise. I was going to put him among the mercenaries, but then I realized that he's a spy so he should do spy-things. Anyway, his identity is Simon Perdien as already mention. Just imagine him in some gaudy Noble-man's outfit. With a full black beard, black hair and some heavy jewellery.

This post has been edited by jack cloudy: Sep 30 2011, 11:37 AM

[Uleni Athram]

After we get the Briefing, we go to Morrowind.


AND CAN I MAKE A SUGGESTION? Big RPs such as these have many players (duh). And things can go really haywire when it comes to posting our characters. Anybody knows of "Round-Robin"?

Basically, we take turns at posting so we can have this RP organized and orderly. Aaand, if anybody here gets absent for a while, the next guy-in-line would post.



Kinda like:


Uleni = Ahrenil = Jack = Dantrag = Grif = SaQin = Lord Revan

I really don't know which "line" we need to choose, so maybe you guys have some suggestions? Anybody wanna go first in line? middle in line? last at line? Waiting for ideas.

Thanks, mah brahs. Ten Taasand Yeez of Hono sha bee Awaz! Banzai Banzai!

Later.

This post has been edited by Uleni Athram: Oct 1 2011, 02:45 PM

[grif11]

Yeah, I think a line might be kinda handy.

Although I'd like to add a rule: if a character speaks to another character DIRECTLY, they should be allowed to respond before there turn. e.g: the line would be Uleni=Jack=Revan=Ahrenil=Saqin=grif=etc. in this case.

"Would you mind passing me that platter, Taedril" says Semir.

"Of course, sir" Taedril replies.

So, only if a character is asking another a question, or asking for something.

[Uleni Athram]

Hmmm... OK. That kinda makes sense.

[jack cloudy]

I have no problems with a line. As for who goes when, I posted not too long ago so I'll wait for everyone else to respond first.

And moving on to planning. How do people want to handle the backstage recruitment? As for Semir, I was thinking of having him excuse himself from the banquet. I can always use the excuse that he's off to get himself cleaned. (Thanks, you mysterious jester!) While cleaning up, he'll revert to Semir Grey and his regular outfit. Simon Perdien is a fool and not someone who the Emperor would even bother to notice. Not to mention that if someone saw Perdien enter a room with mercenaries, questions would be asked which someone might lead back to places Semir doesn't want them to go.

Also, I see the return of Cyldreen...Celdryn. Now given his mention as being an ex-knight of Daggerfall and personal bodyguard even, it would make sense for Semir to have at least passing knowledge of the guy. I don't expect this to be too important as he was probably just intended as a cameo. First off, I'll assume that he's a bit more stable than a certain other masked guy with similar name. Would it be fine if Semir's train of thought mentions that he's heard rumours regarding Celdryn's retirement and potential other functions besides his official knighthood? I'll keep it vague. Rumours, just rumours.

[saqin]

I think a line would be a good idea, and maybe we should make the order according to how we've posted this far? Just a thought, I don't really mind what order we go in.

[Uleni Athram]

Hmmm... How about the order of when we sign our characters up? And the secondary characters doesn't really matter. They all merge into one post with the first character.

Ahrenil = Jack = Uleni = Saqin = Grif = Dantrag = Lord Revan.


So, Jack... Did you like jelly balls landing on your head? I did! Muahahahah. And the excuse that he's off to get himself cleaned seems good. And this time's Celdryn is somewhat 'stable'. Its fine that Semir only hears rumors about Celdryn. In fact, that was what I'm aiming for!

[Dantrag]

The line idea definitely adds more structure, and will likely eliminate dead times, which I like. This is somewhat unrelated, but I also like the way Uleni's posts add direction and move the plot, giving us all something to go on, so awesome job there.

But - do we plan on making exceptions for direct conversations between two players, as mentioned by grif? Also, if the main group becomes separated, do you then have two lines?

If no exceptions are made, and we always follow the predetermined order of posting, everything should work just as smoothly, but we will be slowing things down, which is the last thing RPs around here need.

Either way, I'll go with whatever is decided, just figured I'd throw in my two cents.