Quest Dymphna Dell, a Webcomic Quest. (Original Sci-fi/Fantasy.)
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Vote for who is telling a story around the campfire tonight:
[] Jim talks about why he works for RemCo. (Red armor dude with beard.)
[] Jerry talks about his last military deployment (Green armor dude.)
[] Jill talks about why she flies a shuttle instead of a fighter (Turqoise armor woman.)
[] Alexandra and Cromwell talk about how they met (Couple in Blue armor.)
((()))
So, that vote certainly sped things along.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
[X] Alexandra and Cromwell talk about how they met (Couple in Blue armor.)
It's now time to vote for professional skillsets. This first vote is at the most general, least-specific level of detail, and will have a notable impact on the characters' backstories, though obviously the players don't have total control there.
Cromwell Drake, 29, husband, employee of RemCo for ~six months. Like most going on away missions for this endeavor, he has two professional skillets expected to be useful on the job.
Profession 1; will share part of this with Alexandria:
[] Biologist.
[] Botanist.
[] Zoologist.
[] Doctor.
[] Write-in for a life-sciences profession useful in field work.
Profession 2; pick a general field, details will be followed up on in a later vote.
[] Martial/Combat.
[] Wilderness/Survival.
[] Mage.
[] Engineer.
[] Other sciences.
[] Write-in.
Alexandria Drake, 28, wife, employee of Remco for ~six months. A dual-specialist like her husband.
Profession 1; this had the same undergrad stuff as Cromwell.
[] Biologist.
[] Botanist.
[] Zoologist.
[] Doctor.
[] Write-in for a life-sciences profession useful in field work.
Profession 2 cannot be the same as Cromwell’s.
[] Martial/Combat.
[] Wilderness/Survival.
[] Mage.
[] Engineer.
[] Other sciences.
[] Write-in.
Both characters will receive a single tertiary skill that’s good enough to be relevant, so don’t vote for something just because you can’t be without any amount of it at all. Some skills will also be able to grow as the quest goes on, but don’t expect to learn an entire profession from scratch.
It's now time to vote for professional skillsets. This first vote is at the most general, least-specific level of detail, and will have a notable impact on the characters' backstories, though obviously the players don't have total control there.
Cromwell Drake, 29, husband, employee of RemCo for ~six months. Like most going on away missions for this endeavor, he has two professional skillets expected to be useful on the job.
Profession 1; will share part of this with Alexandria:
[] Biologist.
[] Botanist.
[] Zoologist.
[] Doctor.
[] Write-in for a life-sciences profession useful in field work.
Profession 2; pick a general field, details will be followed up on in a later vote.
[] Martial/Combat.
[] Wilderness/Survival.
[] Mage.
[] Engineer.
[] Other sciences.
[] Write-in.
Alexandria Drake, 28, wife, employee of Remco for ~six months. A dual-specialist like her husband.
Profession 1; this had the same undergrad stuff as Cromwell.
[] Biologist.
[] Botanist.
[] Zoologist.
[] Doctor.
[] Write-in for a life-sciences profession useful in field work.
Profession 2 cannot be the same as Cromwell’s.
[] Martial/Combat.
[] Wilderness/Survival.
[] Mage.
[] Engineer.
[] Other sciences.
[] Write-in.
Both characters will receive a single tertiary skill that’s good enough to be relevant, so don’t vote for something just because you can’t be without any amount of it at all. Some skills will also be able to grow as the quest goes on, but don’t expect to learn an entire profession from scratch.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Winning vote:
[X] [Cromwell] Doctor
[X] [Cromwell] Mage
[X] [Alexandria] Zoologist
[X] [Alexandria] Wilderness/Survival
So, Cromwell is going to be a Doctor and a Mage, Alexandria is going to be a full-depth wilderness specialist.
Subspecialization votes:
As Cromwell is a full-up doctor going on field deployment, I'm going to default him to specializing in trauma medicine, because you'd not hire a cancer specialist for field work. He's also trained (and experienced) in the kind of first-response work that EMTs and Paramedics do.
Cromwell's mage specializations will have enough stuff to vote for to make up for it.
Elements:
This system uses an 'element' system. The elements are Earth, Water, Air (Solid/Gas/Liquid), Fire, Ice (Hot/Cold), Light, Shadow, Lightning, and Life. For reasons that will be explained later, Lightning and Life are not options available to Cromwell.
The concepts behind Elemental magic use are very straightforward. An Earth Mage can use magic to push around and shape non-living solids. A fire mage can apply heat with no apparent source but his will and concentration. The more one practices, the more powerful and skilled they will become. As a rule of thumb for this setting's magic, magic applies the impetus (adding heat, kinetic energy, etc), then normal physics determines what happens thereafter. Elemental magic is not 'conceptual,' IE 'light' isn't associated with 'healing,' 'darkness' isn't associated with 'poison' or suchlike that you see in some other magical settings.
(As a note, I've been developing this setting for 20 years. So yes, I've thought of most of the weird interactions you are likely to, and they're largely accounted for, though I'm sure if this story lasts long, some more will turn up.)
The average person has access to two or three elements, and most people pick up a couple useful or entertaining tricks, such as lighting a fire or creating enough light to serve like a flashlight. These 'basic tricks' are about as hard as learning to ride a bike, or to drive a car. Much like how an eight year old might learn to ride a bike, and a 16/18 year old might learn to drive a car, but have nowhere near the skills of a professional dirt bike racer or stunt driver, professional mages are operating on a completely different level from the child learning the basics.
Vote for elements Cromwell can use; the fewer he uses, the better he will be with them, the more he has, the more versatile he will be, but the less fine control with each he will have. Minimum 1, maximum 5:
Cromwell's elements:
[] Write-in.
[] Write-in.
[] Write-in.
[] Write-in.
[] Write-in.
What he does with his magic:
[] Offensive specialist; throwing fireballs, lobbing spikes of earth, geysers of water, etc. This means Cromwell paid for his higher education with a stint in the military.
[] Defensive specialist; Ice walls, Earth shields, concealing things with illusions, etc. This means Cromwell worked part time as a prison guard at a maximum security prison to pay for his tuition.
[] Utility specialist; Air for flight spells, analyzing and purifying Water at inspections and disaster relief, construction work with Earth, things like that. This means that Cromwell learned via an apprentice-mentor relationship, and paid for his schooling doing odd jobs.
[] Enchanter. This is one of the rarest and most grueling skills to develop. Cromwell's father was an enchanter, and he learned the basics from the old man, then paid his way through school taking personal commission work. This is a very lucrative skill to possess, and means he has the most raw power of any option.
Whatever above wins (except for enchanter), he will have reasonable proficiency with the others (except for enchanter). When the tertiary skill vote rolls around, it will be possible to vote to have one of the above as a tertiary skillset at lesser, but still somewhat useful levels.
Alexandra:
Alexandra, as a combination zoologist and Wilderness/Survival specialist, Alexandra is a consummate outdoorswoman. But how did she become such a dedicated person of the forests and fields, and why did this motivate her to study zoology?
[] She grew up a part of a family of hunters and trackers. This means she's also an excellent shot with a rifle.
[] Her early childhood was spent in sealed space environments, and she became incredibly enthusiastic about nature as soon as she was properly exposed to it at twelve years old. Alexandra will get 4 tertiary skills instead of 1, 1 of them must be a useful skill aboard ship.
[] Alexandra grew up on a planet that was wracked by war, and her family was surviving out in the wilds to try to stay away from it. This means Alexandra is somewhat (and only somewhat) socially warped due to being exposed to death and high-lethality lifestyles so early in life. She's also much hardier when it comes to dealing with emotional trauma (the main part of why she is socially warped), and familiar with both how to make wilderness a very nasty place for a hostile military to move through, and how to move through mined/booby trapped wilderness.
[] She just loved nature and animals so much that she became as familiar with them as possible. This will give her a particular facility for dealing non-aggressively with wild animals, like a more realistic version of the 'disney princess' trope.
Zoology is a very broad field, covering a large variety of creatures. While Alexandra has at least basic familiarity with the traits and peculiarities of all creatures in Kingdom Animalia, which group was she more personally fascinated with?
[] Mammals.
[] Reptiles.
[] Birds.
[] Arthropods.
[] Fish.
[] Amphibians.
[] Marsupials.
[] Life of non-terrestrial origin.
(If someone knows of a major Phylum/Class that is worth voting for, I'm not opposed to it being added in here.)
This ended up being way longer than I expected it to, hopefully I didn't forget anything.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
So, regular vote this time! What does the team do next?
[] Descend the cliff and start searching the valley.
[] Stay on the clifftop and use the commanding view to try and spot wildlife.
[] Follow the cliff edge. As a natural barrier game trails should naturally run into it sooner or later.
[] Zig-zag between the cliff and the coast to see what wildlife is in that stretch.
You may split the team once, to fulfill two tasks. If you do, members are:
[] Jim (red armor), team leader, jack of all trades, extremely well-read scholar and combat veteran.
[] Jerry (green armor), designated security, cook, and reasonably competent outdoorsman. Also combat veteran, served alongside Jim.
[] Jill (light blue armor), Pilot and mechanic. Her skills don't much directly apply to field work, but she can remote-summon the ship if need be.
[] Alexandra (darker blue armor), Zoologist and outdoorswoman.
[] Cromwell (also darker blue armor), Doctor and Mage.
If the group is split, Alexandra and Cromwell must be split up, as they're the biology specialists. When it comes from dealing with threats, they're all in power armor and carrying side-arms, and Jerry has a fairly powerful rifle. Anything short of a charging rhino has no meaningful chance of hurting them, unless it gets them in the head without helmets on.