[Suzerain of Sheol]

Ruining my fun! :O

Also, there's seriously nothing going on outside this place, so no need to waste much more time with this hyperparanoid advance. :P

If no one else wants to, I'll move us ahead soon.

[Gallagher]

I HAVE SO MUCH WRITING TO DO!

-flailflail- -buries deeper into word-

[Espy]

but hyperparranoid is fun! ...and then you know espy is tired when i can't be bothered to fix puncuation adn spelling, hah.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

You should... probably... get some sleep, Espy.

...I should, too.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

In the nethermost void of the Abyss...

Demogorgon: Okay, game night! Time to vote! Let's hear it!

Aides: Call of Chthulu!

Orcus: Ravenloft!

Chance: Monopoly! Risk! Chutes and Ladders! Parcheesi!

Rumour: Gladiatorial combat. To the uttermost end.

Discord: Diplomacy! No -- Settlers of Catan! Wait, no, I changed my mind -- Twister!

Tumult: Wave pool! I want a wave pool!

Confusion: Solitaire! No, that's too few players... Stratego!

Orcus: *murders Chance* -ahem- I actually have my own RPG campaign I've been working on, you see it's set in a world like our own, but with these giant talking scoprions who happen to be sorcerer-kings, and--

Chance: *reforms from the essentia of Ancient Night* Yahtzee! Life! Scrabble! I know! Dominoes!

Demogorgon: Chinese checkers it is!

Aides: That sounds awfully racist. Can't we just call it That Heptagonal Peg Game?

Demogorgon: Need I remind you that this happens to be my Dark Pavillion? For that, you get to play tag with Chance and Turmoil. *points to the Gates of Hell* Out there.

Aides: But... but the last time Orcus poked his head out there, he got--

Orcus: Shut up!

Rumour: I heard they have a skate park in Pandaemonium. See you losers later.

Tumult: Duck-duck-goose!

[Arikana]

I'll make a new post soon (hopefully before the next advancing/update)... I just need to edit my previous/most recent post first. x_x


BUT FIRST REPLIES!!! O3O

Originally Posted by Suzerain of Sheol

1. One cannot learn to sword-fight with a tree as one's opponent. I'm pretty sure one can't even learn to cut down trees effectively that way. Oh, and slashing at solid wood is a really great way to ruin a sword. Not to mention, no matter how much she practices, someone her weight cannot biologically have the endurance needed for protracted violent combat. And finally, watch some of this and tell me how many techniques you managed to pick up. Bearing in mind that even these guys are holding back compared to the speed she'd be seeing these techniques executed with.

2. Claws of translucent light? What are those exactly? Telekinesis could do what she did, but there'd be no visual component. It isn't just straight up magic, psyke here is a manipulation of the world around the psychic, not D&D Evocation spells. The amount of effort and practice it'd take to create the visual of a huge claw to go along with a telekinetic attack is... both beyond what someone without specific training should be able to do, and a prohibitively dangerous waste of ability when all that power and effort could go into something... actually useful. And I feel like I need to stress here, psychics cannot just conjure effects out of the ether -- any physical manifestation is an application of telekinesis: pyro- or cryo-kinesis involves vibrating or slowing molecules in a specific way and requires a working knowledge of the physical properties of matter to execute with any degree of reliability. Tornado blasts are telekinetically manipulating the surrounding air to behave in a specific pattern with a specific force. Cain could do it effortlessly because he's had aeons of practice to hone his ability to multitask and fire off powers without even consciously concentrating on them. There's no way she shouldn't have to focus intensely to do something like that, even assuming she's powerful enough to stir up cyclones to begin with.

3. On that note, why, again, is she so so powerful? Cain literally had Adam's (the most powerful psychic ever) undiluted DNA running through him. Tearing apart buildings was par for the course for him. Where do these amazing talents of Ei's come from? If Zach even has psychics of that ability in his forces, they're probably his prized shock troops and have been snatched up and put through extreme training, not allowed to just wander the streets on their own. People notice these outbursts of power.

4. Being schizophrenic should hamper her ability to manifest rather severely. This stuff requires focus and discipline, which... in my experience, people suffering from crippling mental illnesses don't tend to have.

5. Speaking of that, stuff should not just be happening by accident. The psychic impulse is a natural property of the brain. This is more like "My fingers turned into hot dogs all the sudden for no reason!" (in a real-world context) than "My fist punched him in the face of its own volition."


I really, really hate to give anyone a hard time about playing their character, and again, I do not care if we have powerful characters, all I want is justification for why they can do what they do. I'm going to point this out again.

Cain: 8,000 year-old son of Adam whose powers have been augmented by undeath. Can fire off tornado blasts with his mind.

Ei: Teenage waif street-rat with a disease of the mind. Can also for some reason fire off tornado blasts with her mind.

Do you see what the problem is? If you're positing this level of power for someone so low, I have to raise the bar on everyone else who has both more innate ability and far more experience than her, to the point where any psychic we run into is just going to go "I dominate you all, no save" rather than have any kind of meaningful encounter.

And for the group dynamic: This sort of thing worked in Firefly with River being an insane out-of-control psychic prodigy, because that crew was a bunch of thieves-with-hearts-of-gold. Ei is literally signing on with a bunch of hyperparanoid psychopaths here. At this point, there's no way they'd even let her come along rather than have her hauled off to an asylum. At best.

Finally, I'm getting the sense she's apparently amazing at all things psychic, not any particular branch, which is.... not how it works, at all. People have talents in different areas, and most choose to focus training on the things they're good at and the disparity between that and the things they're *not* good at gets even wider. To reference, Diogenes is flat-out amazing at buffing up his own physical abilities -- it is what he does. He is also horrible at telekinesis, telepathy, chirurgery, and only okay at foresight. You can expect any human psychic to fall along similar lines. Adam's blood is too diluted to even be an impact at this stage, but there's a reason a lot of his progeny are still around. *They're* the guys who are awesome at everything.

I'm getting the sense of those stories where everyone around the hero is incompetent and the hero is just naturally better at everything than everyone else, because, well, they're the hero! That is not what we're doing here. Anyone who can survive in this setting is a badass, and there is always someone more badass than any of our characters waiting right around the corner. There is no "institutional incompetence". Humanity survives by mass-production and constantly refining their methods of war. Not by special snowflakes. I guess what I'm saying is that none of us have any right to be heroes, just other fish in the pond.

I'm sorry for how long this was, I would just really prefer to get this taken care of before we get too much farther.


Edit: And not needing sleep? What? No. THAT is the sort of thing that would require rigorous training to be able to do. I will point out once again, Diogenes (who as mentioned, is very good at this sort of thing) has trained for exactly that sort of ability for thirty years and can go without eating or sleeping for maybe a week at a time. It is a constant drain on the psychic's mental resources and requires skill at multitasking (something else that needs to be taught) to be able to do it while functioning at anything like normal capacity. Shealtiel was able to ignore sleeping and eating because he was not a psychic, and was literally eating away at his own cellular structure and turning himself into a wraith the entire time for forcing himself through that kind of privation.

To be honest, I only skimmed the whole thing cause I don't have time to read it all word for word. Plus, I didn't expect such a long post for a reply. >_> So my reply is kind of summarized...a lot. >_>

Powers/Abilities & Specs: What I'm trying to get at is she can manipulate the elements (earth, water, fire, air, ice, light, dark, time (she hasn't used this one yet nor do I intend on bringing it out anytime time soon cause she's definitely not ready for this one)). She hasn't had any training to use them, but the way I pictured Ei'lycia is that the myelination rate of the neurones in her mind is a lot faster (around 1000x that of normal/most people) and combined with her eidetic memory, she's able to pick up information and skills on the fly. As a result of her myelination rate, her brain is generally free of physical injuries as the nerve cells will simply regenerate. But due to her eidetic memory, she tends to tune the world so as to not store unneeded information in her long term memory.
She just needs some training cause she's very rarely seen psychic powers being used and doesn't want to unintentionally harm those she doesn't want to harm. Plus, she's not actually tampered with them at will so she doesn't really know what she can do.
She'd be able to watch the kind of sword fighting in that video and replay it in her mind, then learn from there.
So I might even say her psychic powers is more of a poor-average but with a crap load of potential to be high. :3 Especially since she doesn't even know the actual extent of her limits. >_>

She may have "lived underneath a rock", but she has seen quite a bit of intense sword fighting from some few to many years back.

Uh, telekinesis? She doesn't have that? Or maybe she does? I'm confused about that part. D: Could you clarify on Skype since I'm more likely to get to it sooner than on here? o3o


Schizophrenia: While her mental disorder does affect her, she doesn't have as many episodes now than when she first developed the schizophrenia. I just wanted to have her have an episode soon just cause. But the next one is like far, far away. The only aspect of her schizophrenia that's almost always in play is how it causes her perception of reality to be skewed.



I think I skimmed most of the post. D: Let me know if I missed anything else. x_x

Originally Posted by Gallagher

Ei - so suze picked out this one but my pick has gotta be this one

Uh, neither? :P

Her voice isn't airy and delicate anymore, but it isn't that dark and raspy/hoarse. She's got a typical boring "sally jane" voice now, so probably like Colbie Caillat if she were to sing dark, heavy rock songs. :P



-----

Okay. I'm off to die. I mean edit old post. x3x

[Espy]

Erm. Being able to control all of those elements seems a bit omnipotent.

[Gallagher]

Yeah dude, wot... I mean after so many elements, you're pretty much just saying she can do anything.

[Arikana]

Okay, then I'll remove some of those elements. Just limit to basic four?

I updated previous post in rp. Is that better?

Also, I'll be back later. I'm gonna log off and go eat and/or head home now.

[Espy]

That still feels damn powerful. Fire, air, water, and earth can still include metal, trees, volcanoes, toxins...

[Gallagher]

Yeah, my biggest issue with all this is the fact that it wasn't even really hinted at in her profile. Even the abilities she had listed already weren't elemental in the slightest. I'm cool with elements and all, but it's like, WHERE IS THIS COMING FROM!? From her profile, I thought she was going to be very technical, not all earthly and nature forces. I'm confused. Having better defined limits/expectations would help me a lot with wrapping my head around her.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Most of those elements aren't even...things, here. It's, by definition, not magic. 90% of the stuff you want her to be able to do involves ALTERING REALITY which is the province of theurges calling on divine intervention. Psyke is manipulating matter with the mind, or interacting with other minds in some way. Anything she evokes has to be, by definition, physical in origin.

There's literally no circumstance I could think of wherein she would be able to apprehend the fundamental fabric of the universe and manipulate space-time, when even with all the super science, they haven't figured out what the hell time even *is* yet.

'Dark' is not an element. Necromancy is a thing, that theurges do by drawing on Sheol and using their own soul as a power source. It has nothing to do with psykosis.

Same with 'Light' it involves either drawing forth power from one's own soul (if the soul is strong enough) or drawing it straight from heaven (something rather dangerous).

'Fire' and 'Ice" are just telekinetic alterations to 'Air". Earth is telekinesis applied to the ground. Water is... either once again messing with the molecular structure of air, or telekinetically pushing molecules of H2O around.

And you're telling me she has a very special cerebral structure. Why. Why does she have this talent that no one else has? Where did it come from? Why can't it be replicated and mass-produced by cybernetics and neurosurgery? Why is she the first one to exhibit it? What sort of genetic mutation caused it, and what environmental factors influenced that mutation? Is it inherited? You've so far given no reason or justification for her having the abilities she does.

Hell, if you want to make her really overpowered, being able to visualize things so acutely would theoretically allow her to split atoms telekinetically -- PLEASE DON'T DO THAT.

[Gallagher]

She already has the temp control established, which is cool and all, at least those are related to one another, elemental without being elemental, a classic. What's set in her profile also looks like... what would you call it... playing around with light wavelengths? idfk. Still, those can be hella powerful when she gets them refined. I mean, thinking of all the damage temp control can do scares me a little, ugu. Would not want to get in the way of one of her moods.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Yeah, I'm fine if Ari calls it ice or whatever. Do keep in mind even psychically weak people have a subconscious will that's holding their in equilibrium; disintegrating someone into ash with a thought would be a hell of a lot harder than just setting their clothes and the air around them on fire.

And electromagnetic manipulation.... I ... am honestly not sure what one could even do with that. Been a while since Physics 101. She can apparently see x-rays? Or her mind projects x-rays that function sort of like echo-location and render a black and white image in her mind? Pretty sure Gamma radiation can disrupt cellular structure to the point of disintegration in high enough exposure. Alpha and beta are relatively harmless as far as I remember. I guess she could blind people with super-intense light? I forget if that was on her profile. I mean, it's all just accelerating or decelerating photons to some degree.

Probably lightning, as well, or rather, electrical charge manipulation.

Can I stress, though, that if this is her thing, she really shouldn't excel in any of the other areas? It's pretty much either be *okay* at everything, or specialize and fall behind in other areas.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Also, about learning to swordfight, it's physically impossible to learn how to react to someone trying to kill you with a bladed weapon, unless... you actually practice with someone simulating exactly that. All those in-close moves rely on having an understanding of how the human body reacts to applied force from certain directions and under specific leverage. She would *have* to have a sparring partner, at the least. Trees won't cut it. (pun not intended)

[Gallagher]

I think you intended it a little.