Ayrphish's Dragon Empires (Inactive)

Game Master Ayrphish

Got a lot of interest very quickly when I asked for it, so I decided to embark on this project. As I mentioned in the interest thread, I am a new GM to pbp, so your patience is required if you want to be a part of the game. The campaign will be mostly homemade and make use of the gazetteer, though I will surely borrow and modify some content that I have laying around the house as well. With that said, here are my guidelines in creating your characters.

I will accept 4 players (Maybe 5 if i just can't make up my mind)

The game will begin in the region of Bachuan, though you may be from anywhere in the Dragon Empire. (More below)

Ability Scores & Alignment
You have 20 points to create your character's ability scores. None maybe higher than 18 or lower than 8 before racial modifications. Only 1 ability score may go below 10.
As for Alignment, I will probably be most favorable towards good and neutral aligned characters. If you want to be evil, please private message me with your intentions, and if I am persuaded or interested, I will write you back and see where things go.

Races
Character races may be Elven, Half-Elven, or any of the races (including all the human variations) from the Dragon Empires Primer. Characters do not have to be natives of Bachuan, they may be from anywhere in the Dragon Empire, and they must have 1 trait from their native region.

Classes
Any class that comes from Paizo will be considered, however it needs to have a Dragon Empire Flavor attached to it. If you want to be an AM Barb, that might be ok, but you need to tell me where that character fits in the Empire, and how it is thematically appropriate for region. Archetypes are fine(again, must be Paizo), and some will make the task of flavoring your character a little easier.

Misc
You may begin play with average starting gold for your class. I'm not sure how I will respond to +startinggoldtraits but initially they elicit a frown from me.
Speaking of traits, you get 2. One of them must be from the Dragon Empire's Primer and relevant to where your character is from. The other may come from anything published by Paizo.
No guns.
I am hoping for players to be able to post 1/day during the week, with no expectations for posts during the weekends.
I will do initiative rolls, saves, and other monotonousness rolls to help keep the game moving forward and the story the primary interest.

What am I looking for?
I want interesting characters that make me want to see them develop. I really hope that a majority of the 'story' is written by the players, and applicants who inspire my imagination in this way will get preferred and chosen to play.
At the very least character applications should tell me who the character is, where they are from, why are they in Bachuan, what motivates them, what scares them? Are they Grandmother Pei loyalists, or are they rebels, if they are not native to Bachuan, how will they react to the Grandmother's rule?
Beyond that, imaginative, and creative characters are encouraged, do not feel limited or bound by the above questions.

I will stop considering applicants on Wednesday the 15th of February, with an anticipated start date of the following Monday. If I get overwhelmed, I may stop applications early, especially if I find 'the right' group.

Please post your questions in this forum so that I only have to answer them once. Good luck and thank you for considering my game and exercising the patience to want to play it.

May the avalanche begin...

I'll work up my concept for a Kitsune Bard...

First level characters?

Thinking Sword Saint, but maybe Ninja. Not sure what race just yet.

Hooray! I'll look over the Primer and give this a good think. I'm definitely interested, though!

EDIT: I'm leaning toward a Human Witch (white-haired witch archetype) with the Spirit patron. Perhaps a young woman who was orphaned and raised in the woods by the spirits themselves, who gave to her a familiar to watch over her. Now she is grown and the spirits wish her to go into the world, though she does not know what purpose.

Yes level 1

@James good start flesh it out :)

I'll have a character for you tomorrow. I'm changing the Spirits patron to the Animals patron. I like the idea of a Snow White-like girl who was raised by the forest animals when her parents died.

Ayrphish - I've a concept for a Nagaji Paladin, vanilla without archetypes. Grew up in Nagajor as a vassal of the naga, before getting inspired into his holy calling by an Aasimar of Tianjing. Trained in the temples there and has now set out to work against the regime of Grandmother Pei.

Worship is of an amalgam of the sun goddess Shizuru and the moon God Tsukiyo. Specifically embodied in the dawn and the dusk times. Thinking of writing up a custom Paladin code to suit it. Will be a bastardization of the concept of ying-yang and karmic balance.

Will work on it over the weekend and put up the details when I've settled them mentally.

Why is it every time there is a game that Samurai would fit in I don't feel like playing one...well dotted for interest.

I'll have a character for you tomorrow. I'm changing the Spirits patron to the Animals patron. I like the idea of a Snow White-like girl who was raised by the forest animals when her parents died.

Perhaps there was a certain fox as one of the animals!

Everything sounds good so far. Let me know when something is "finished" so I can start making a list of applicants.

I like this idea. Most of my games I am GMing have slowed to a crawl. I am only a player in one maybe two games right now. One of those games is going so slowly 1 person posts a week.

So here I am. Gonna be working on a concept for a two weapon fighter who happens to be a Samurai.

I am also considering an actual samurai.

Hope to have something up by tomorrow afternoon.

The Nagaji is taking shape - will be basing his fighting style off of Okinawan Kobudo and more specifically the tinbe-rochin, sansekuton and eku... which does lead me onto another question...

What is your opinion on Exotic Weapon Proficiencies? - would you consider granting proficiency in a weapon through a trait or will you need a feat to be used?
I'm interested potentially in the kusarigama and meteor hammer; though not enough to spend a feat on them.

The Nagaji is taking shape - will be basing his fighting style off of Okinawan Kobudo and more specifically the tinbe-rochin, sansekuton and eku... which does lead me onto another question...

What is your opinion on Exotic Weapon Proficiencies? - would you consider granting proficiency in a weapon through a trait or will you need a feat to be used?
I'm interested potentially in the kusarigama and meteor hammer; though not enough to spend a feat on them.

You may use a trait.

Okay, here goes:

Meilin was 10 when her parents did not return from the mines. They were poor, barely scraping by and living in a small hut in the woods, but they were happy. Meilin was their blessing, a beautiful girl child with hair as white as snow. She was a polite, dutiful daughter, nevertheless prone to long walks in the woods, fearing none of the creatures that lived there. When her parents did not return from the mine, she waited, making tea as she was taught and keeping the fire going. On the third day the firewood ran out. On the seventh day, the food ran out. Meilin waited still, her duty overwhelming her hunger. On the tenth day the animals of the forest came to the hut, bringing honey and berries. They adopted the girl, guarding her and becoming her companions. In return she ate only what the woods provided: berries, fish, root vegetables, eschewing meat that might have once been a friend. She also sang to them and told them stories, long tales she had heard from her parents. In time, the spirits of the forest came too, and they taught her the languages of the woods, and spoke to her of a new duty, a duty to serve the spirits and the animals. Now, grown to the mature age of 17, she is ready to leave the forest and seek the destiny the spirits have spoken of to her.

Meilin is polite and dutiful, but the years of self sufficiency have given her a steel spine. She knows little of civilization, but much of the woods, and of the animals. She is honest and forthright, not prone to lies or subterfuge. She knows little of politics, only that there is a human world beyond the woods. She knows only what little she has heard of Grandmother Pei from travelers or the spirits. She has no real opinion either way.

Meilin is a slight girl, willowy and slender, with long white flowing hair and eyes so blue as to be almost clear. She wears very rough homespun dresses and no shoes, even in the cold months. Her constant companion is a fox named Minko, whose mate was killed in a hunter's trap and who has adopted Meilin as a family. It is he who imparts the spirits' knowledge to her, teaching her to tame the wild beasts who may not know her and to heal the wounds of those in need.

Dotting

I've got the Gazetteer, but not the Primer, so I don't know what the traits would be, but I'm definitely interested. Still thinking about the character.

The traits are now available on d20PFSRD.org, under the regional traits.

James...I PM'd you.

I'm going to submit a Quain Monk, I'll post later.

For my character concept, how do you feel about a Tiefling with the Fiendish Heritage feat? I was wanting to tie the flavor in with Oni-Spawn which really fits the setting.

Like everything so far, keep it all coming! Plenty of room if new people want to apply.

For my character concept, how do you feel about a Tiefling with the Fiendish Heritage feat? I was wanting to tie the flavor in with Oni-Spawn which really fits the setting.

I'll take a look at the finished character, write him/her up and we'll see where it goes.

Question: will this be more of an RP game or a Hack and slash game?

Time for random character generation.

Question: will this be more of an RP game or a Hack and slash game?

Time for random character generation.

I am really going to try and have some of both. However, will probably have more RP.

Okay I have the mechanic of the character down. He is Kenji Masada of the two sword style.

He is a Fighter with the Two Weapon Archetype. Still working on the back story as I have yet to have had time to read about the region we are in enough to build one.

Also I cannot find the trait that allows Katanas to be taken as a weapon. If it doesn't exist then I will simply take the feat for it.

Lastly. I know I should read the info myself but that will take a lot of time. Anyone have like cliff notes on it or something that I can review for ideas? I really want to give this campaign a shot and I'd like to be able to play my character like he knows his way around the region to a degree.

Thinking about Meilin, I think I will change her from a White-haired witch archetype to a straight witch class. I think the beast-speech Hex will work better than the hair in the long run for her. The modified Meilin is below:

Alright, its after midnight but I'll go ahead and post as my Monk. The mechanics are there currently, tomorrow I'll flesh him out. I have a really neat idea and his heritage and Chu Ye should come together. G'night!

Okay so I have a character concept but I wanted your thoughts on something. I would like to create a fighter or monk wielding a sword, specifically a jian, like what Chow Yun Fat in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Piandao in The Last Airbender (tv series, not movie) wield. I have a backstory worked out, but I'm trying to work out stats. I'd like to use an Aldori Dueling Sword to graceful movements of the character and also use the Aldori Sword Lord archetype for the fighter, reflavoured to be a jian wielding martial artist. If this is a no go, would you be all right with the temple sword used by monks be at least described as a Jian, this amounts to a Weapon Adept monk using a longsword to make Flurry of Blows attacks. If all of that is a no, that's fine too. As a last resort I figure I can still make it work with a Free-Hand Fighter.

Thanks for your help in this!

I'll let you use an aldori sword, the one hand fighter might make things a lot easier though. I'm fine either way.

I'll be making my randomisation list tonight and do the rolls to see what I get.
Or I could take an existing alias that's inactive?

Alright here is Bai-Yin Dao's stat block. I'll post his full back story later this weekend probably. But for a quick run down: A self-christened "Hero of Quain" Bai-Yin is on the run from assasins and his own guilt. He carries with him a single tooth the size of a short sword, and is always on the lookout for powerful clerics or killers lurking in the shadows. He believes Bachuan is far enough away from his homeland of Quain, that he'll be able to concentrate on his quest. He also has come to believe that somewhere in the nearby mountains lurks a hidden treasure he calls the "Shen-Dao", though why he believes this or what the "Shen-Dao" is, he has yet to reveal to anybody.

I haven't given him any adventuring gear yet, but he has 24gp left which is enough for a typical selection.

I'll be making my randomisation list tonight and do the rolls to see what I get.

Or I could take an existing alias that's inactive?

As long as it meets what I'm looking for it doesn't matter to me.

So far, there hasn't been much indication of the actual story for the game, so I'll focus mainly on the character concept without other considerations.

I haven't looked much into the Dragon Empires yet, but I'll be doing some reading up on it. The specifics of the DE don't really affect the concept, so it's not terribly important at the moment.

I'm pitching in with a kitsune Druid with the Reincarnated Druid archetype. I'm going to be drawing a bit on some of the associated folklore and archetypes that kitsune are often associated with, with an emphasis on the trickster, and some wise sage thrown in for good measure.

This character is no ordinary kitsune. Drawn to this plane ages past, he is a spirit creature from the First World. While not native to Golarion, early on it felt a kinship with the unseen spirits of the natural world and forged bonds, tying himself to this plane. Even death does not give him leave to pass on, and he is instead reincarnated. At first, the reincarnations were a bit chaotic, and he has seen many different forms, though lately it seems that he has found a proper form, as his past three selves were kitsune. When he is reincarnated, he initially has no knowledge of his true nature, save for maybe the vague understanding that he is somehow more strongly in tune with the world. By seeking out and strengthening that bond, he inevitably comes to understand what he is.

This incarnation does not yet know, though he has realized that he is different from other people and takes infinite pleasure in trying to understand them and manipulate them. He gives little thought to the small things in everyday life, because he feels sure that it will all work itself out. Where he sleeps, what his next meal might be or even when he might have one, these things don't concern him. He is very protective of the natural world and believes that it must be preserved, for we truly have nothing if not the ground beneath our feet.

Here is what I have so far, I have only listed submissions that have given at least a partial back story or character sheet. If I am missing you and you have given me something please let me know.

As you can see, there is plenty of room for more applicants. Please keep the submissions coming, I am greatly enjoying reading the ideas and stories.

Meilin - Witch - Human
Asura of the Iron Fist - Monk - Tiefling
Bao-Yin Dao - One Hand Fighter - Human
Hurley? - Reincarnated Druid - Kitsune

Dotting for interest.

Here is Chan Gho, my Kitsune Bard. I'll write up the background tomorrow, but basically he grew up in the outskirts of a border town, so spent time both in the wild, and in the city. His parents were both entertainers, so his talents ran in the family. He had a bit of a wild streak however, and had no interest in joining the family troupe. This worked out for the best however, as from his early teen years, he was left behind to fend for the family business while the rest of the group took to the road. One of his favorite haunts was a secret glade in the woods where he would silently watch a young girl play. He found her songs enticing and often found himself humming them in his head as he returned home. He found her fascinating because she had no parents, like him much of the time, but she'd never had parents as far as Chan knew. Instead the animals of the forest seemed to take care of her.

Chan Gho is thin and wiry with a dark gold pelt/hair, and the amber eyes of his species. He is equally at home in the wild, and in town, and loves nothing more than a bawdy tavern, or the warmth and vibrancy of a Varisian Caravan by night. In combat, which he avoids if possible, he tends to move around a lot, tumbling, and dancing, while firing his bow, and staying out of range of big weapons. He delights in inspiring his allies, and taunting his foes.

One day as his boredom with the small town he lived in had reached it's height, he decided to pay a visit to spy on his friend in the woods. When he arrived he found her missing. As he watched her hut for signs of activity, a great storm blew up. He decided to chance things and ran for the shelter of her home. Upon arriving he found that all her belongings were gone. Apparently she had left the woods. This was a sign to him. Maybe it was time he went off on his own, and experienced life.

He returned to his home, and two days later when his parents returned from a tour, he left with their blessing. Now where to go. Maybe he'd ask around and find out where the little Wild girl, and her pet fox were. He missed her songs.

Go ahead and take a look at my profile, you'll see my background posted within and his appearance which will finalize the character. If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks!

I am thinking of a Tengu Cleric of Chamidu, but I'm not certain if that would fit in this part of the world. I'm also not sure what domains Chamidu would offer, so I guess I could pick two.

A dual sword wielder, with healing abilities. Doing some more research now.

I would like to see Shanosuke's character come to fruition, a dual-wielding swordsman like Miyamoto Musasha pioneering a style using the katana and wakizashi. However, given this is an Eastern setting would it be more appropriate to change the proficiencies of classes to reflect the more common weapons in the various cultures? Otherwise, a 1 level dip into the Samurai class may be your best bet not to incur a Feat tax so you gain the proficiencies with the weapons you want.

Miyamoto was exactly the concept I had in mind. Reading thiz stuff is taking far too long. I plan to have a more finalized character and story in the morning.

I can say with confidence that the backstory will need work even after I post it but I want to have something submitted for consideration sake.

I strongly recommend purchasing the Dragon Empires Primer PDF -- its less than $10 and gives you and good general overview of Tian Xia. I edited my previous post, recommending a 1 level dip into Samurai to get a Katana and Wakizashi proficiency. If you want me to help you out, send me a message and I can help with your background.

The tengu Chkaia Linthel was discovered by humans on the eastern Vudrani coast after a storm destroyed a merchant vessel. Having lost his parents in the same destructive storm, the humans raised him as one of their own, training him in the devout ways of faith that the Vudrani are known for, the thousand gods, and more. Under their guidance Chkaia came to understand the significance of the gods, and sought his own spiritual experience in the Tower of Hemachandra. But his father had other intentions for his education.

Chkaia was to be shown the ways of the world, in addition to understanding his spiritual presence. His parents traveled, speaking of the faith and ancient wonders of Vudran to those who would listen. And he traveled with them, learning a variety of the ways of Tian-xia. Still, though, he always returned to his meditations at the statues of Chamidu. Over time, he devoted himself to militant perfection, the grace of the dance of swords that Chamidu herself embodied.

Chkaia finally took up the blades of his faith, and traveled to Kwanlai to see if they would listen to his story, and open their minds to the truth of spirit.

(Instead of a Regional Trait from the Dragon Empire, Chkaia instead has Adopted (with the human trait of World Traveler: Sense Motive), and Ease of Faith)

Domains: Healing and Revolution.

Feats: Two Weapon Fighting

I'd like to submit Katomo Nobuda, a Ronin Samurai with the Sword Saint archetype. I will stat the character over the weekend, but here is the character concept:

The wise and noble lord Katomo has served was assasinated, and his son began ruling in his stead. But the son ruled with an iron fist and without honor, which caused much suffering for both the commoners and the army. Katomo found himself unable to carry out the young lord's evil orders, and revoked his pledge. Bushido demanded he committed seppuku, but he was not able to relinquish his fear of death.
Ashamed of himself, he fled the land and wandered around the Empire, having devoted himself to perfecting that single strike which will one day end his own life. In the meantime, he tries to avoid any bloodshed, but should a fight be inevitable, he believes it has to end as soon as possible, to lessen the suffering of all involved.

Fiendish Heritage

Will I be allowed to roll on the table for an alternate racial ability? Its optional so I figured I'd ask. Whether I roll or you pick the ability, or whatever, just let me know. :)

Barbarian
Bard
1d2 ⇒ 2
Cleric
Fighter
1d2 ⇒ 2
Monk
Ninja
1d2 ⇒ 1
Oracle
Paladin
1d2 ⇒ 2
Ranger
Samurai
1d2 ⇒ 1
Sorcerer
Witch
1d2 ⇒ 2
---------------------------
Bard
Fighter
1d2 ⇒ 1
Monk
Paladin
1d2 ⇒ 2
Ranger
Witch
1d2 ⇒ 2

---------------------------
Bard
Paladin
Witch
1d3 ⇒ 1
---------------------------
Bard

Samsaran
Kitsune
1d2 ⇒ 1
Assimar
Tiefling
1d2 ⇒ 1
Half-elf
Human
1d2 ⇒ 1
----------------------
Samsaran
Assimar
Half-elf
1d3 ⇒ 3
----------------------
Half-Elf

Lotus Geisha
Archaeologist
Daredevil
1d3 ⇒ 2
Archaeologist

Was it necessary to create the character randomly?

For me it generates characters I like and prevent me from doing the same old same old,
and sometimes I get a very interesting character concept.

That's interesting. :) Usually I go for a different race, something I haven't played before, and just think about that race for a second, then it just comes to me.