Pokésona Blue Version (OOC)

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

Spoiler: Character Posts

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Name: Renault "Monty" Montblanc
Arcana: Tower
Background: A relatively new transfer student that was moved over to live with his aunt after his parents died in an accident en route to visiting family in Kalos. While normally proactive and outgoing he's in a really bad place, in a new place and faced with intrusive thoughts that it wasn't an accident.
Everyday Life: Charlie... Charlie makes him laugh, which is probably the only thing keeping Monty above-water, so the speak. Assigned to the same study hall, Charlie is the only one that's really been able to get through his shell. They don't really hang out much outside of school, with Charlie busy with her band and active social life. The two still get up to the occasional mischief.
Acquaintance: Scott is one of the regulars at the gym where Monty goes to blow off steam. They talk occasionally but never see each other outside of the occasional running into each other. However, Scott's dad did go through a recent "prepper" kick and now is trying to get rid of his folly (rations, clean water, first aid supplies)
Secret Society: Aunti Lizz is part of the League religion. Fun fact - there are competing faction. Lizz is 'speaker to the flame prophet' of the 'children of dome' faction.

Background: Fletcher has always wanted to be a scientist. From elementary school, he's been hardworking and curious, always wanting to learn more about each topic. But when his mom died of cancer, he set his track on medicine. He wanted to help people with the same problems, and cure other diseases. He moved to Saffron City, where he got a scholarship to the University involving his research of medicine patches, which would make medicine cheaper and safer to use in higher concentrations on patients. Since then, he's been working long hours, researching and studying, hoping to solve problems.

Everyday Life: Prof. Claire is Fletchers mentor. She has helped him through his research, and guided him through tough times. Fletcher owes his success with the patches to Claire, and they are slowly becoming friends, which Fletcher definitely needs.

Acquaintance: Ryan Uptmore is a classmate who occasionally studies with Fletcher. He used to be someone he could talk to, but lately he’s been acting strange, almost… emotionless.

Secret Society: Prof. Claire is working for Team Rocket and wants to use the Patches to deliver performance enhancers at a high price. Fun Fact: Team
Rocket wants to establish a monopoly on the performance enhancer business.

Roland is obviously still in progress but I want to make sure the sheet is accessible.

Background: A part of the Saffron City police force for a couple of years now, he is currently on paid leave after he reported having strange dreams involving seeing monsters roving around at night and shadow people with glowing hearts - assumed to be trauma related by his therapist. His fiancée fell victim to White Out Syndrome shortly after the meteor strike: she is sufficiently listless that she stopped taking care of herself and is currently in long term care.
Daily Contact: Bika Excelsa serves coffee at Roland’s favorite coffee shop, which he stops by almost every day his morning run. Friendly and keen of mind, she knows when to keep her mouth shut and when to lend a sympathetic ear – both assets for the shop as Roland’s not the only member of the force to stop by that particular place for coffee.
Weekly Contact: Roland's work therapist, Lara Midia to whom he goes for therapy about once a week. She's the one who recommended him for leave. She hunts for interesting rocks in her spare time - geodes, agates, occasionally pans for gold - mostly she just finds curiosities and she hasn't struck it rich yet, but it's a hobby she enjoys. She also has good general knowledge of the surrounding area where said rocks are found, such as campsites and lesser-known trails, and a working knowledge of who to contact if you or a friend are stranded in said areas in need of assistance. Ask her how she knows!
Secret Faction: One of his other co-workers moonlights as an acolyte at the Sky Dragon's Aerie (church of Rayquaza) faction of the League religion. There's a rivalry between the Sky Dragon's Aerie and the Temple of Time (Dialga) over who is the One True Dragon - nothing serious, it's mostly things like the Temple trying to one-up the Aerie's number of donors at the annual blood drive, the Aerie deliberately scheduling their bake sale on the same day the Temple has their craft fair, that sort of thing.

In case that it is still alive, I'd like to throw my hat in the ring as well.


Finn Leister, programmer desperately trying to figure out why this fox is burning so brightly.

Spoiler

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Name:Finn Leister
Arcana: The Hermit IX
Background: Daemon_Ologist (++Focus, +Edu: Tech, -Combat, -Survival, -Intimidate)
Classes: Ace Trainer/Special Attack Ace/Duelist/Researcher(General/Gadgeteer)
Starter: Emrys the Fennekin


Close Contact (The Moon XVIII): Xena Munroe, Finn's lifelong friend. The two share an interest in the occult, though Xena's runs a lot deeper, and she has gotten deep into spiritualism. When the two are together, their particular energies, quirks, and obsessions tend to equal parts amplify and negate each other. As a result, together they tend to spiral in distinctly different ways than they would when apart.
Casual Acquaintance (The Emperor IV): Gavin Trevors, Finn's cyber security professor, and closest thing Finn has to a personal mentor at the university. He's been in the business for a while, and has a lot of connection and resources that can be tapped into, within reason.
Secret Society (Hierophant V): Avery Oden, Finn's Machine Learning Professor, is also employed by Silph Co, working on some of their high end AI projects. Fun fact: Silph Co. is working on an artificial digitial Pokémon to help explore and exploit the Dark Hour.

Spoiler

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Name: Nui Londalt *
Arcana: The High Priestess
Background: PreMed Aspirant (MedEdu++, Intution+)
Starter: Harrow the Litwick

Everyday Contact: (I - The Magician) Rex Colton, Nui's eternal rival for top of the class and the chaotic yang to her ordered yin. At least to hear their classmates describe them. In truth Nui and Rex have been study partners since high school, exchanging expertises in biology and organic chemistry, and they find the speculation of their peers alternatingly amusing and exhausting.

Acquaintance: (XVII - The Star) Tanya works at the small health and wellness shop where Nui buys protein shakes on the way to and from school. The punk goth girl frequently badmouths the mainstream pharmaceuticals that makes up most of the store's stock, but is oddly upbeat about their homegrown supplements and herbal tonics. (Herbal Restoratives, Herbs, and eventually Vitamins)

Secret Society: (VII - The Chariot) Nui's mother, Jade Londalt, works as a paralegal for Silph Co's marketing and legal department. Unknown to most Silph Co owns a non-controlling but significant share in most of the major television channels, not enough to dictate policies but it certainly doesn't hurt with pushing advertising and reporting on any new product lines.

Spoiler: Build Notes

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Nui is a Medic, Commander, Firebringer, and Ace Trainer (the last largely for lack of better options that fit the concept). They focus on active support in the form of healing and multiple orders, and in a big fight can apply Burn for DoT and reduced defense. They will later gain the ability to spread those Order bonuses to allies.

Spoiler: Premise

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The Dark Hour. A period of frozen time, taking place each night between 12:00 AM and 12:00:00:01. Some of you have experienced it almost every night since a certain small meteor struck Mt. Moon a few months ago. For others, this will be your first time seeing it.

For most other humans, the hour is imperceptible, since they are frozen in time along with everything else. Their bodies become ghostly silhouettes surrounding glowing, heart-shaped cores. The mountain in the distance sprouts crystalline towers and stairwells. Strange monsters in the forms of bats and fairies invade the city, more of them each night, and steal away people's hearts. When time resumes, these victims are left listless and affected, almost robotic, a condition termed White-Out Syndrome by doctors who don't know better.

Stories of monsters are still retold, of course. They have even made virtual pets based on the ones from folklore, which have become fairly popular despite complaints that they're sacrilegious. Some people venerate the monsters' memories through various traditions, while others deny that they ever existed. In any case, humanity has long been adapted to a world without them.

As some of the few people who can see what's really going on, it's on you to fight back the monsters and shut down the mystery dungeon that seems to be spawning them. That said, it seems that they're not all bad, necessarily? Each of you has a monster that comes to your aid when you need it most, which is certainly helpful. Not very informative, though. You have a lot to investigate!

If you're a teenager, you're a student at Cerulean Academy, a high school in the North of your country's Kanto prefecture. If you're looking at an academic future, the best universities are in Celadon City and Saffron City, known for their colleges of botany and engineering, respectively. Modern transportation means these cities are only a short train ride away, kept running by a huge multi-modal power plant East of town.

Here's the discord link! It expires on 2/8, so if you haven't used this by then, tell me and I'll regenerate it.

EDIT: Here's the dice thread! Yes, I know the first post links to Red. I can't edit it! You can't edit posts in the dice thread!

Everyone post here and there to check in. The discord is shared with everyone playing in Red because why shouldn't you all talk about this together? If you have something important or that we'll need to remember, here is better; for quick questions and random fun, discord is better.

As long as you're checking in, before I make the IC thread, there are a few meta-narrative things I'll ask first:

- [Vote] Would you like the IC opening to be outside during the dark hour itself, or with you all gathered together in a meeting?

- [Individual] Would you like to RP your character's initial awakening, or start out already knowing what's going on?

- [Vote/Discuss] Would you like your group to just be the PCs organizing from the ground up, or would you like a sponsor?

[MCerberus]

[Vote] Would you like the IC opening to be outside during the dark hour itself, or with you all gathered together in a meeting?

Since the group isn't completely geographically together I would vote inside the dark hour unless there's forces trying to get their attention before-hand

[Individual] Would you like to RP your character's initial awakening, or start out already knowing what's going on?

I'm okay with either one depending on how much motivation/actions you want getting to the point. Maybe asking for a prompt given the circumstance leading to your intended insert point?

[Vote/Discuss] Would you like your group to just be the PCs organizing from the ground up, or would you like a sponsor?

Always like an Igor type

[Harbringer]

[Vote] Would you like the IC opening to be outside during the dark hour itself, or with you all gathered together in a meeting?

A bit more in medias res during the dark hour would be fun.

[Individual] Would you like to RP your character's initial awakening, or start out already knowing what's going on?

While I'd prefer to have at least a basic clue as to what's going on, getting to RP the realisation would be fun... If it's practical to do the realisation scene, which would've taken place a couple of days beforehand, but still be as up to date as can be expected at the start of the actual game, that'd be cool. If it's not really doable, that's fine too.

[Vote/Discuss] Would you like your group to just be the PCs organizing from the ground up, or would you like a sponsor?

Sponsor would be fun.

[ProgressPaladin]

[spoiler=Character Posts]







- [Vote] Would you like the IC opening to be outside during the dark hour itself, or with you all gathered together in a meeting?
I would prefer to be in the dark hour.
- [Individual] Would you like to RP your character's initial awakening, or start out already knowing what's going on?
I would prefer not to.
- [Vote/Discuss] Would you like your group to just be the PCs organizing from the ground up, or would you like a sponsor?

A sponsor would be fine.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Checking in!

- [Vote] Would you like the IC opening to be outside during the dark hour itself, or with you all gathered together in a meeting?

Since the group isn't completely geographically together I would vote inside the dark hour unless there's forces trying to get their attention before-hand

I second MCerberus.

- [Individual] Would you like to RP your character's initial awakening, or start out already knowing what's going on?

By awakening, do you mean seeing the shadow monsters or realizing they're a real thing and not a dream/hallucination? My backstory for Roland was that he's been seeing the monsters for a while, he just thinks they're hallucinations/dreams.

- [Vote/Discuss] Would you like your group to just be the PCs organizing from the ground up, or would you like a sponsor?

I don't really have strong feelings either way, but since Roland doesn't have a background in mystical stuff he's probably going to need someone to give him a tap on the shoulder and go, 'Hey, magic exists! And it's affecting the world you live in and your life specifically!'

[ProgressPaladin]

Lokyar hasn’t been active since January first, so would you, the GM, be fine running this with three?

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Lokyar hasn’t been active since January first, so would you, the GM, be fine running this with three?

You mean four?

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

Lokyar hasn’t been active since January first, so would you, the GM, be fine running this with three?

You mean four?

Seems reasonable! Thanks for the input everyone, I'll get started on the IC opener.

[Harbringer]

Before we get started, ProgressPaladin, there's issues with your build that really should be fixed, since it'll really mess with the balance of the party if they stay as is. I think you might've made some mistakes in your build because of the higher starting level.

• At level 6, you can have at most 1 Expert level skill.
• You can not have Features or Edges that are reliant on Expert Level Skills yet, with some specific exceptions (in the form of a couple of gifted feats from eg. Hobbyist's Dilettante).
• You can't use Features that grant Skill Edges that you got at an earlier level to get skill edges of a level higher than was available at the level you would've gotten the feat at (so eg. if you got Breadth of Knowledge at level 1, you can't use it to increase an Education Skill to Adept, or if you get it at level 3 or 5, you can't use it to raise a Skill to Expert)
• You can't use the level 2 bonus Skill Edge to increase a Skill to Adept.

So, in your case, you can only have one of Medicine Education, General Education, and Intuition at Expert level, the others can only be Adept at most. Instant Analysis and Medicinal Techniques aren't available as Feats for you yet, and neither is Scholar as an Edge, so you'd need to swap those out for something else that's legal. Plus you'll need to rearrange your Skill Edges so you don't get Adept General Education as the bonus Skill Edge at level 2 (though that needs to happen anyway, so you should still be able to have it at Adept anyway).

[ProgressPaladin]

Fixed. I am much more… varied now.

[ProgressPaladin]

MCerberus’s Zorua can have both pack hunt and illusion.

[MCerberus]

I must have misclicked it off I thought illusion was on there but its slot is empty on the sheet.
Everything should be current with feedback

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

IC Thread deployed!

I have selected Monty to be the one person who is doing this for the first time. Now we have some stakes right off the bat!

The enemies will start approaching in about one round.

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

I almost forgot to ask: Does anyone want their character to be the guinea pig for the Biomonitor? It's a bunch of implanted electrodes and sensors, with either:
1) An implanted wireless radio to transfer data, or
2) A little gizmo attached to you like an insulin pump (with a plug for a wired connection)

Harbringer volunteered Finn in Discord if no one else wants to do it.

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

Also also: Because this is the Pokémon world, there are no, "regular animals." Without monsters, the three kingdoms of life are humans, plants, and microbes. Feel free to make up fun facts about what people eat for world-building purposes!

[MCerberus]

Ooh, I would recommend either the Time Machine method for this (sans CHUDs) or having the pokerus from one of the more wild fan theories except it wiped out everything. In any case it would require direct human intervention to maintain the biosphere and thus why the prestige university seems directly involved in plant science.

edit - or oooooh someone way back in ancient times forgot to measure how much juice was in the apocalypse machine in Kalos

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Also also: Because this is the Pokémon world, there are no, "regular animals." Without monsters, the three kingdoms of life are humans, plants, and microbes. Feel free to make up fun facts about what people eat for world-building purposes!

No insects then? Are you counting fungi under microorganisms?

Most of our crops are going to need to be self-seeding, wind pollinated, capable of being hand-pollinated or otherwise not requiring the help of bees. (Or bats. Or hummingbirds. Or any other critters that would assist with that.) So I guess everyone is vegan/vegetarian by necessity? I second the importance of the botany school.

No eggs, plant-based milks only. Are plant-based cheeses a thing? Protein intake is going to be an issue I think. Lots of nuts, beans, seaweed is apparently a thing as far as plant based protein? I’m going to propose seaweed farms off the coast.

On the flip side: no mice, termites, ants, aphids or other insect pests wrecking harvests or spoiling food in storage. No mosquitoes, ticks etc. to bite and spread disease.

[ProgressPaladin]

Never mind.

[ProgressPaladin]

Wouldn’t the plants over whelm the ecosystem?

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Wouldn’t the plants over whelm the ecosystem?

Hmm. 🤔 There’d still be a finite amount of soil resources and sunlight for them. They could still catch diseases if a given species got too prevalent. Fires could still happen. Maybe more plants develop their own herbicides vs. other species, like walnuts? Spreading seeds would be harder - actually I’ve been meaning to ask, have Pokémon existed previously and they just vanished long enough for people to forget about them, or are they a completely new thing? With the various Legendary religions I’ve been assuming the former; that would make it easier to justify the existence of things that spread their seeds via fruit, or similar methods where they would usually rely on critters eating something they produce to spread.

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

Spreading seeds would be harder - actually I’ve been meaning to ask, have Pokémon existed previously and they just vanished long enough for people to forget about them, or are they a completely new thing? With the various Legendary religions I’ve been assuming the former; that would make it easier to justify the existence of things that spread their seeds via fruit, or similar methods where they would usually rely on critters eating something they produce to spread.

Your assumption matches the facts. Most plants that rely on animals for reproduction are endangered or extinct without humans cultivating them. There's a school of thought positing that ancient humans cultivated them from scratch over thousands of years, but there's no pre-poké-religious tradition nor any archaeological record to back that up.

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

So, I've spent a week trying and failing to make a map that looks good. How about if, instead of that, I just express what's going on with words? That seems much suited to this medium! It might work better with the game-like initiative system anyway.

As such, IC post is incoming!

[Harbringer]

I've always just used Google Sheets to make combat maps. Make the cells square and delineate the map space, use letters or pictures as tokens. Not pretty, but functional enough. Theater of mind def does work as well though.

[MCerberus]

this is my first combat round with the system so I will run the first round of math by the discord when I'm home

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Your assumption matches the facts. Most plants that rely on animals for reproduction are endangered or extinct without humans cultivating them. There's a school of thought positing that ancient humans cultivated them from scratch over thousands of years, but there's no pre-poké-religious tradition nor any archaeological record to back that up.

Excellent. We don't have to invent the entire biome from scratch then.

So, I've spent a week trying and failing to make a map that looks good. How about if, instead of that, I just express what's going on with words? That seems much suited to this medium! It might work better with the game-like initiative system anyway.

I have to express some concern about being able to tell distances, since at least one of my attacks changes if the target is far enough away.

[MCerberus]

forum weirdness may have eaten the rolls

scratch - (1d20)[19] AC2
damage - (2d6+17)[20]

[Harbringer]

As a note, you can use your standard action to just wake up a Sleeping ally without any further effort

[MCerberus]

will get action posted this evening, but would like your opinions if the bonus trainer action from moment of action would help finish things this round and prevent Zero from getting knocked out

[Harbringer]

Moment of Action wouldn't do much in this case. It grants temp Action Points, not any form of Action. These on themself don't do much, but are used as currency to power abilities, mostly. I don't think any of us will have run out of them yet, so granting temporary ones won't do much.

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

ProgressPaladin, you can have Fletcher wake up Charles and have Charles act immediately. They wouldn't let you do that in league battles, but it's fine as far as our turn format is concerned.

Also, I was reminded that Hypnosis can't be used twice in a row, so the last owl is targeting Emrys with Tackle now, in case that changes anything. (If you don't say anything by tomorrow, I'll post under the assumption that it doesn't.)