Katpride
Story Collector
Something happened, once, and it was not what you wanted to happen. It was so far from what you wanted to happen that it and your wishes may as well have been on different planets. Or, perhaps, they were separated by only a few centimeters, but the line was crossed in the wrong direction.
The details matter, you’ll see. The details may be the only deciding factor between your success and your failure.
The details matter to you, that is, but they do not matter to me. You would do well to remember that. All that matters to me is that you are here, and that means you must want to change something badly enough to risk changing everything. Everything for you, of course, though it may be nothing to many others.
You’ll want to collect everything you know before beginning this endeavor, and hold tight to it. When you return, your memory may be all that exists to tell you whether your quest was successful. Write it down as completely as you can, memorize it, then burn it and bury the ashes, cast them out to sea, or let the wind take them. Whatever method you’d prefer. Do what feels right. Methods, too, matter much in matters like these.
Each of you will get only one chance to change your past. If you don’t have the means, look to your neighbor. Perhaps they will have the skills you lack.
And dears, do remember this: Whatever you do, things will change. Time does not care whether they are small things or very important ones, but you will.
Be sure.
Hello everyone and welcome to my wacky time-travel RP. Before we get into it, let’s go over some key details:
- Your character should have one (1) standout event in their past that they desperately want to change. Perhaps a death or disappearance, some unsolved mystery that still haunts them. Or some tragedy they could’ve prevented by being in the right place at the right time.
- This should be something in their personal life, something that happened to them and not to the world at large.
- Please write out this event (in whatever manner or point of view you’d like) so that we have “what happened” to reference when things change. You can put this in spoiler text if you’d like, but please include it.
- We will be leaning heavily into the fantasy vibes rather than sci-fi vibes. This is a world with magic in it, and magic is a living, breathing force that may act in your favor or to your detriment. That said, all characters should be human, with normal human limitations*.
- *Read the next section for how this gets interesting.
- This is also set in somewhat old-timey times, definitely before cell-phones and the internet. Think vaguely DnD but without the magic items and other races.
- I’m limiting this to a total of 5 people including myself. If you want to be considered for this group please say “aye aye, captain” in the replies to show that you read through everything. Submit your CS and I’ll get back to the four chosen people after a few days. If there’s a lot of interest I can run more threads in the same universe in the future, so don’t fret if you aren’t a part of the first run.
- I’ll want this to be active but not to infringe on anyone’s time, so if you want to join please know I’ll want no more than a week between consecutive posts.
Rosalind Harper is sure. She has never been so sure of anything in her life. When the old woman finishes her speech, she is the first to step forward.
“I am sure.” She keeps her chin held high, looking evenly (if slightly down) at the stoop-backed woman. She keeps her hands at her sides rather than reaching up to touch her own face, the pronounced jowls on the old lady making her question, again, whether she has ones of her own, whether it might be something intrinsic to those in their profession. But no, she has seen her face in mirrors and knows it to be thin-cheeked and sharp, with none of the roundness of youth or the wrinkles of age.
“How did you dispose of the ashes?” The old woman asks.
“I tossed them from my roof on a blustery day,” Harper is not ashamed to admit. It had been a trial to get onto the roof without falling off herself, but it was the only thing that seemed appropriate.
The old woman regards her for a long moment before nodding and turning to the closet behind herself. The handle turns with a small, polite sound, and the heavy clunk of a latch opening. Within - and oh, it is a treat to see within, to know that she will get to keep one of these instead of handing them out to others - is a wide array of cloaks in many different styles. Some are quite colorful, shimmering with iridescence or bright patterns. Most consist of more muted, earthy tones that range from tan to midnight black. The old woman searches for only a moment or two before turning back with a cloak, one that is long enough that she has to drape it over her arm to hold it without it brushing the floor.
It seems plain at first glance, a matte black ream of fabric with only one of its three buttons holding it shut, but when Harper takes it into her arms, it feels slightly textured, some kind of embroidery or trick of the fabric making it feel soft in one direction and reluctant to ruffle in the other.
The old woman lays her hand atop Harper’s, not tenderly but with a heavy purpose. When Harper meets her gaze, she says, “You’ve been waiting for this. Don’t let it disappoint you.”
And then the old woman goes to the next of their guests, to assess them and give them not, perhaps, what they need, but what they can no longer live without.
This is the second part of the deal: you get to travel to the past to change your event, but to do so you must take the form of an animal. You can change back into human form once you’re in the past, and switch between the two freely, but once you’ve returned to the present (upon successful or unsuccessful completion of your mission) you will be unable to access your animal form. There is only one loophole to this clause: you can join someone else's mission as many times as you'd like before attempting your own, provided that they'll let you. The first thread will be Harper's mission, so feel free to think of ideas on how reconnaissance or practice might help your character, and their motivation for joining her.
If your character chose to bury the ashes of their memories, they will be a terrestrial animal. If they gave them to the sea, they will be an aquatic animal. If they tossed them into the wind, they will be an aerial animal.
Regardless of the type, they will receive a cloak with three buttons, its fabric the color and pattern of their animal. The fabric shifts from a normal fabric to something closer to the animal’s pelt depending on how many of the buttons are fastened.
Your character must be wearing their cloak with all three buttons fastened in order to fully become their animal and gain the ability to travel into their past. If they only have one or two active, they will only partially shift, gaining some of the more distinctive traits of their animal but being unable to access their full potential. Having more buttoned will also make them more sensitive to the magic around them, so it can be a boon or a detriment depending on if they've dabbled in magic before and how the ambient magic reacts to them.
Include in Your Character Sheet:
- Name
- Pronouns
- Number of Previous Ventures
- Occupation/Skillset
- Physical Description/Defining Characteristics
- Animal Form
- Past Event
Please pick a (readable) font for your character to use! If you're unsure how to do that, look at this snippet of code:
Code:
[style]
@import url(LINK_FROM_GOOGLE_FONTS_HERE);
[/style]
[font=YOUR_FONT_NAME]
words words words
[/font]
