Some Characters Walk Into A Bar, Pan Fandom RP II (OOC)

p.s. part 2 of my series of clarifications that don't really have any bearing on the RP: Berit is MAYBE not being fair to Leliana, because they MAYBE don't get on as well as they used to.

 

I´m sorry Berit, you handed that one to Mina on a platter.

 

Pff. My warden did not get on well with her at all because he was scared of her. Then she left in a fury when he tainted the Sacred Ashes because just.

Look at them.

Human history and sacred artifact. All nice and unsullied.

how infuriating

He'd probably be a lot more approving of her had he bothered to learn anything about her. Alas. Kom'rk's love for weirdos and cast offs does not extend to "I HEARD THE MAKER TELL ME TO HELP YOU".

At some point I should work on having Merrill run into him behind the scenes because that would not go happily. Due to the whole clan was killed thing. He'd be one of her most stalwart defenders on the blood magic thing if that hadn't happened though. Though honestly he still might.

 

WAIT A FUCKIN SECOND DOES RIAA WORK AT THE PPC

(/is proud of herself for getting this)

 

Why yes! Yes she does!
...I was going to mention something about her having plants for bosses and hunting 'dimensional parasites,' as well.

 

I just got that as well! And I think we might actually have roleplayed together in a Rudi's thread.
And now I regret not using the OC I plan to use for the PPC for this RP, this could have been a good way for her to get to HQ. Maybe I'll make her join in later.

 

Katters says she wouldn't, but I am thinking that I need to have her experiment on a magic in a short story, now

 

Mina is uh, not very nice sometimes.

 

@rats Nat is invisible; it would be amusing if Raoul was therefore startled :P

 

yes, thank you, I kind of forgot to say. oops.

 

ooooooh thank you, i forgot about that

 

Berit on radioactivity: That sounds fake but ok

 

ooh should we put lil blurbs about our characters here, because if so i love Sharing

 

(I actually like talking about scientific ideas and stuff so she can ask more. And if I don't understand something, I'm using the lies-to-children version of science so it's ok!)

 

I'm trying to keep the workings of the Bar as ambiguous as possible, but I really dig the idea of stories as currency and couldn't help it. She did mention secrets, and (kind of because she's a bartender and people blab when drunk) she does kind of collect them, but she has a Thing about keeping them. (It's kind of based on a weird thing that happens to me- I talk to distressed strangers for more than a few minutes and they just... tell me things. They even recognize that they don't talk about these things/have never told anyone else, I just 'feel trustworthy' and it's weird as fuck but whatever, I'll keep their secrets. As a witch bartender in an interdimensional pocket Riya probably experiences much of the same.)

 

@KarrinBlue Your explanation is really good! I'm trying to figure out where she'd trip up on it, but I'm having trouble switching mindsets to someone who knows nothing about science, so her upcoming question is likely to be less than insightful. :P

Another thing I didn't think I'd have to work out: how she takes her coffee. Thedas doesn't have it!

 

Mutations, maybe?

Also, I think that Thedas DOES have coffee - it's just that it's mostly grown in Par Vollen, where it seems to be tropical, so only the Qunari get it. Or that's my headcanon, anyhow.

ETA: WAIT NO I forgot about Arabic-style coffee! So there's probably coffee on the Thedas mainland and Berit could've had some while in the desert.

 

The Qunari have chocolate, I remember that much, and I wouldn't be surprised if *somebody* had coffee. I don't remember any mentions of it off the top of my head, though, so I'm assuming Berit hasn't had it.

 

Some of Riya and Remi's backstory:

Spoiler: Relevant worldbuilding

They live in an urban very-fantasy world where bloodlines are Very Important. Even in the modern world there's a lot of only associating with like-blooded people because haphazard mixing of bloodlines means incompatible magics, and/or low life expectancy and higher chances of physical/mental issues (their body is a battlefield for the conflicting magic). Nobody really knows if early humanity went looking for power at roughly the same time globally or if what they found had been looking for them, but around the dawn of civilization humanity found magic from various sources and it carries through family lines. Some of these sources are compatible (like-blooded) and some are not.

There's also personal aptitude for magic, and even though there's magic in every bloodline there's not always enough to use. So when Riya said she's witch-blooded, she meant she can use magic but neither she or her family have university-level magus training, which 1) strengthens existing magic in the person and 2) means more magic carries down into the children. Magi tend to marry magi and have little magi children, and the universities are a lot like Ivy-league colleges: a witch-blood or fluke magi-blood can in theory get in on scholarship, but most students are grandfathered in from powerful bloodlines. And magi lines tend to want their children to be trained because power waxes and wanes in a line, and if they decide to be a civilian or only use witch-level magic then down their line they might end up just witch-blooded. Born-witches are regarded by magi as either the common man's cheap knock-off or dangerously untrained, and magi are high-society so one of their family being one is terribad and badong.

There's another kind of witch, which are pact-witches. They made a deal with one of the entities that originally granted humans magic but are now considered uncontrollable and dangerous and most people avoid them because magic's in their blood and they don't have to. The entities always ask for (part of) the soul in exchange, which is actually where part of the magic comes from: they change the soul to be more like them. Pact-witches are universally regarded as dangerous, evil, and cataclysmicly stupid even if some of them are desperate instead of greedy. Riya's mother was one of the greedy ones, and tried to get out of the soul-selling by selling Riya's instead. It was accepted, but she didn't get the power she was expecting because no soul change. She booked it not long after to avoid people finding out she was a pact-witch and left Riya behind, who grew up stronger than she was because she got part of her soul changed. Riya would totally rub it in if they ever met- she's not vengeful about it but she is a little betrayed and would like to point and laugh at how it turned out not at all how mommy dearest was expecting it to.

Spoiler: Riya herself + Remi's birth

Riya's natural magic manifests through music. She has a hell of a voice and empathic manipulation from it is pretty easy, but certain combinations of notes and tones and stuff let her manipulate growth and decay. Biomanipulation is easiest there- she can promote healing (or the growth of pathogens/overexcite the immune system) or entropy. She doesn't use it much now that she has the Bar, though, so now it's mostly an informed ability. She's had to kill people with it so she's not inclined to do it for things like aging wine, especially when the Bar can do that itself.

She's had blackouts since she was a kid, they've always assumed it was because of the nonstandard pact-witch thing, especially since she had a tendency to vanish during them even when they were really short. She'd blank out for an hour and no one could find her, and then there'd she be, right outside. Length of time it lasts usually influences how far away she is when it ends, but not always. It was a pain in the ass, but she had good friends that all knew about it so they'd be keeping an eye out for her to turn back up. Her band worked around it and mostly stayed local anyway, and it's a fantasy 'verse. Weird shit happens all the time. The longest one was a month and it was anomalous and maybe helped along by (magic) recreational substances at a very rowdy party, she came to half a county over on a rooftop wrapped in a canvas sheet.

And then there was the Big Disappearance. There are usually a handful of small signs before one of the longer blackout/vanish combos, but she up and vanished overnight. Everyone waited and kept an eye out, but she didn't show after a month. Or another month. Or another six months. She was gone for a year to a year and a half before she got picked up by a Good Samaritan outside her home city very sick and in labor. She had also apparently been through hell and maybe tortured, because she got all but one of the scars visible on the doll while she was missing (the one is from the C-section.) She doesn't remember any of it and completely lacking in trauma as a result. Doesn't even dream about it. (That's why she shows them off- it's funny to her. "Something horrible happened and all I can manage to feel is confusion. Isn't that weird?") A lot of her friends gave up waiting, the band broke up, and most of the people who held out hope were VERY nervous about Remi because of the bloodline thing. She has no clue who his dad is, which means he might not be like-blooded, which means Remi may either be doomed or a time bomb. Riya doesn't give a shit, he's her son and that's what counts. But a lot of people she was close to left rather than gamble.

If I ever get around to actually writing her story it'd start a little while after she came back, with Remi as a baby and her trying to reassemble her life. But this is an AU where I'm thinking she found the Bar not long after, and between the Bar's vague intelligence and the people coming through she settled down that way instead. She's still got some friends from before, the ones who stuck by her and aren't scared of Remi, plus a few she made trying to figure out what happened, but the latter aren't as many because she's focusing on the Bar instead of chasing down answers.

Not exactly a 'lil blurb' but I've been so spoonless I'm just glad words are even happening I'm not gonna bother editing that down.

 

This is Katters' blurb on the RP tumblr

Spoiler

Raised by humans who were ill-equipped to raise a nonhuman, Katters grew up in Killeleigh, and suffered for it. She ran away to Snowtown upon reaching her teens, and found herself ill-equipped for life on the streets.

Soon thereafter, she found herself involved in a high-profile murder, with herself cast as the murderer. The courts took pity on her, and dumped her in an institution for wayward adolescents. Where she continued to suffer.

Upon reaching adulthood, she was dumped back out on the streets, more because the asylum wasn’t sure what to do with her than because she was ready to be released — though her experiences in therapy had equipped her with coping mechanisms, and her mental issues were more-or-less under control.

She enrolled herself in med school, and was prepared to settle into a life of semi-normalcy when she ran into Zebra, who turned out to be a particularly bad influence.


Katters currently co-owns The Katters’ and Zebra’s Inconspicuous Meat Pie Shop and Tonsorial Parlour, where she can usually be found either manning the counter in the pie shop or the chair in the barber shop. She’s paranoid, and not one to shy away from physical altercations, but isn’t necessarily aggressive unless you give her a reason to be. Good luck avoiding that.

She no longer has a Killeleigh accent, except when intoxicated.