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“You endure what is unbearable and you bear it. That is all.”

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Me, clicking on someone’s character to sneakily get a better look

My character: 

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Writing an action scene-

In your head:

Trying to describe it like:

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So the other day, I was thinking about the classic alignment chart, and how it doesn’t really do much for me personally since it’s more about how characters interact with systems rather than how they interact with other people

I had a minute, so I figured I’d throw something together that DID suit my needs!

(Note: This chart regards a character’s intent rather than the outcome of their actions—and for sake of clarity, here are the definitions I’m working with:

Good: concerned with the well-being the collective, often at expense of the self

Evil: concerned with the well-being of the self, often at the expense of the collective

Kind: concerned with the emotional responses of others

Cruel: unconcerned with the emotional responses of others)

I like conceptualizing things this way, cause sometimes Bad People behave with ‘good’ or ‘kind’ intentions, and sometimes Good People do things that seem ‘evil’ or ‘cruel’

Also this gives me a way to compare/contrast characters who get lumped together under the other system

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What is a quality or feature you have that you /always/ end up projecting onto your OCs?

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Senya is fucking badass 😵

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Using body language is one of the best ways to show and not tell when we write. This is why we are always told to use body language in our writing. 

Sometimes, it’s easier said than written. So, we created these cheat sheets to help you show a character’s state of mind through his or her body language.

When you are completing your character biographies, be sure to include how your main characters move and talk. 

This is especially important for your protagonist, antagonist, confidant, and love interest. They are the characters that hold the story together and they should be as well-rounded and believable as possible.

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Some monsters don’t have to be conventionally fightable.

There can be win conditions like Don’t Die, Turn it Off or Avoid It. It might have a way to be killed but stabbing it until it works isn’t one of them. So here’s some examples, going from typical to more abstract.

1: Things like hydras, trolls or some such, which can be killed with one specific source of damage. A good thing to try is a troll type deal which the players and probably characters can go “that’s a troll, fire and acid it is” and then have neither fire or acid be the answer. So now you gotta work that out but once you do, as long as you can survive long enough to kill it, you can kill it pretty easily.

2: There’s a thing that disables the thing. It is nowhere near the monster. Classic non-D&D liches, which are utterly unkillable unless you destroy their fingerbone, do this well. A robotic creature that can’t be taken down with weapons accessible to the PCs, where killing the remote operator fixes the problem right up, but nothing else short of an antitank missile will.

3: Things which don’t exist enough to be killable. The Color Out Of Space is a great example of this, a non-corporeal and non-visible entity which blights the land, robbing plants and animals of vitality, colour and nutritional value until they disintegrate and the land is left as nothing but grey dust. Find a way to get it to fuck off, that’s gonna probably work, but actually punching it? No way.

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Anger

I wrote this as a venting piece. I’m getting really burned out in the rp community. Granted, Leja is no walk in the park, but damn, what a perfect vessel to express my frustrations through.

Appearance of my agent Jor’ca as well.

Councilor Leja Jodonn, Darth Auctus, Head of her Order’s Sphere of Galactic Influence, was slouched low in her desk chair. Her wintery locks fell, unbound around her shoulders. White strands fell across her face. Slow, rolling tears smeared dark lines down her cheeks. 

“Eight,” the Darth’s voice was low and hoarse. The agent with vivid red hair in the corner of the room snapped to attention. 

“Milord.”

“Kolto.”

Eight wasted no time in hurrying forward. Quickly he opened her desk drawer and reached for the box she kept just for this purpose. He pulled out a jar of kolto, bandages, wooden applicator sticks, and medical gloves. He worked the gloves on over his black, regulation ones. 

Delicately, Eight lifted one of her hands from the armrest. He took extra care to be gentle since her skin had been burned black by her use of Sith lightning. Golden eyes saw the burns extending up to her elbows. Farther this time, than the last.

“Damn acolytes,” she hissed as he smeared soothing kolto over her skin. “Don’t know when to quit. Don’t understand their place.”

Eight jerked back as sparks rippled over her skin. He waited for it to settle then went back to his work. 

He finished coating her arm, then set to carefully winding bandages over it. When that was done, he moved onto her other hand.

“You think I don’t know what they call me?” she asked after a moment of silence. “‘Frigid Bitch,’ ‘Heartless,’ ‘The worst.’ And yet they do not know what it takes to rise up to where I am. They think they can do it on… on what?” Eight had to pause again as the air around her went frigid. He held his breath as he watched frost gather around the outside of the kolto.  “Attitudes that make them think they’re more than they are? Attitudes that show they are unreliable? Unteachable? A waste of time? How is a master supposed to train them if acolytes cannot follow simple orders?”

Leja scoffed and the frost receded. Eight went back to work. A chuckle fell from her lips. Soon she was laughing. More tears fell from her eyes. More hair slid in front of her face as her mirth shook her shoulders.

“They think I don’t know,” she drawled. “Think I haven’t seen them before. Never encountered anyone quite. Like. Them.”

Eight set the kolto aside.

“Think they can take and take and take. Think I don’t do anything for them.”

Her agent said nothing as he wrapped clean bandages over her burns.

Leja sighed heavily and slumped back against her chair. Laughter gave way to more tears. The dark streaks of make-up stretched down her cheeks making it look like spider legs draped over her pale skin.

“Eight, my hair.” 

The agent pulled off the medical gloves and gently pushed her hair out of her face. He tucked the strands behind her ears, brow creased in worry.

Bright, pale eyes glanced up and met his concerned gaze. 

“Don’t look at me that way,” she hissed. Leja reached up and shoved his face away with a bandaged hand. The force of it made him stagger to the side and pull his fingers from her hair. Silver strands wafted back to her shoulders and settled.

When the agent had his balance, he righted himself and stood at her side waiting silently for his next order.

It came in a brusque: “Clean this up.” 

He did so. Leja slouched low again, reflective eyes fixed unseeingly on the entrance of her office.

“Get out,” the Darth snapped the moment Eight had thrown the last of the supplies away.

He saluted, then did as he was told.

Councilor Leja Jodonn, Darth Auctus, Head of the Odacai Saarai’s Sphere of Galactic Influence, slouched low in her desk chair. Her wintery locks fell, unbound around her shoulders and slow, rolling tears continued to smear dark lines down her cheeks.

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Agent: Instead of confronting Keeper, I’ve consumed an entire bottle of wine.

Vector: You don’t seem that drunk.

Agent: Oh, we agents never do. The alcohol is neutralized by our bottled-up anger.

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i think im funny

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this mystery has been gnawing at me for weeks. it was eating me up. the answer may be hard to swallow but i’m working on digesting it.

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Lana: I am at a loss for words!

Outlander: [narrating] Despite being lost for words, Lana yelled at me for the next ten minutes.

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Weird, but friendly reminder the Empire is kind of a Police State.

Walk through Dromund Kaas. There’s literally soldiers on the street harassing civilians.

It’s a dystopian society, almost bullet point by bullet point.

Propaganda is used to control the citizens of society. Information, independent thought, and freedom are restricted.

A figurehead or concept is worshiped by the citizens of the society. (Sith and the Emperor)

Citizens are perceived to be under constant surveillance. (Intelligence and Minders)

Citizens have a fear of the outside world. (Everyone not-Imperial is bad)

Citizens live in a dehumanized state. (Their lives are just assets to the Sith).

The natural world is banished and distrusted. (or perhaps they can’t do shit about DK being on a jungle planet lmao)

Citizens conform to uniform expectations. Individuality and dissent are bad. 

The society is an illusion of a perfect utopian world. (If it’s not Imperial, it’s inferior).

Intelligence is used heavily against their own population that they have a Minder rank near explicitly for loyalty checks and the Empire has PACIFICATION DROIDS all over the streets. The majority art is rarely anything Sith-worshipping propaganda or direct Imperial propaganda.  The Keeper, probably the most aware Imperial, does acknowledge the Sith ARE the Empire. That is how it was made. That is how it is structured. The Empire IS a monolith of the Sith.

The Empire has an UNREAL amount of control. That is how they succeeded with what they had against the Republic and how they maintain so much control. They were nearly destroyed, so they have no more time for games. The Empire is a threatening force against the Republic because it is a MACHINE. The dismissal of morality for results is scary-effective, which is just a huge driving force of the light/dark choices this game has.

If the Empire was not a bad society, then the Light Side Sith Warrior or Inquisitor has no motivation in why they want to change the Empire.  The agent wouldn’t have had to frequently bash heads with the Sith leadership to succeed for the good of the civilians. 

As you can tell I love the adventure of working in a society like this for writing and RP. I RP’d open world back in the beginning days where there were wars of Sith powerbases and it was literally a scary hazard to walk around as a non-force user alone.  This is just the Empire. There’s potential for improvement, especially with the constant changes of leadership, but it’s not comparable in terms of Republic life. The scary part of dystopias are that they do leave their individuals unwanting and take care of their own, but the civilians have to remain ignorant of consequences of their utopia or they willfully ignore it because they are just fine. The sheer lack of freedom the Empire has alone is enough to make the call that it is not going to be the same as Republic life.

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