[Nexus] OoC 1: The Shape of Things to Come

[Kris on a Stick]

Due to general agreement between people on both sides of the line, TOWN and ACRO have been merged. Thus, all threads which previously would have fallen in once category or another, should now be tagged [NEXUS].
LONG LIVE THE NEXUS!

So, what is Nexus?

Spoiler

Well, the Nexus itself is like a rift, a single, brilliant point where all the universes in this strange thing we call 'reality' meet. Traveling to, from, and between any world or cosmology is theoretically possible here, and the Nexus itself seems to encourage this happening, often sucking beings and locations out of other universes at random, and dumping them on the world that lies at its center. It was not always like this, however. Once there were two worlds at the Nexus' heart, separate and distinct, though somewhat similar in ways. Similar enough that they slowly and eventually merged, so that only one remained. Here in this world the Nexus' influence reigns supreme, and as such the world has defied almost all attempts at classification. Here, knights of old may engage with Jedi knights. Gleaming spaceships land in Dark Age hamlets. Cowboys and samurai quest together to find holy sandwich boxes. And in the heavens above, Xi Wangmu and the Flying Spaghetti Monster meet every Woden's Day to play bowls with Pelor (it gets pretty epic). Here the possibilities are endless, and the universe without rules (except the Forum Rules, and the general FFRP rules, and the Individual Thread Rules, and oh whatever). Welcome to Nexus. Fun is had here.

Major Locales

Spoiler

For an endless world that defies all logic and classification, Nexus can be pretty darn consistent at times. As such, several locations have survived the test of time, remaining (somewhat) constant amidst the chaos of the rest of the world.

Town - At the heart of the Nexus lies the city-state of Town. Self-governed by an elected council, Town can most accurately be described as a city's planner's worst nightmare. A sump of urban madness, here spires of glass and steel can be seen next to Ancient Babylonian slum. Where Hellenistic Temples co-exist with Gothic Cathedrals and the odd Oriental Pagoda. Where crumbling, zombie infested crypts lie untouched in the middle of verdant parkland. It's craaaaaazy. It's Town.

Inside - A sister city to Town, the City of Inside is less chaotic than its close relative. Inside mostly resembles a modern city, with high-rise buildings and apartments, alleyways and roads, though the odd Demonic Monument can still be seen rising up above the surrounding suburb, teeming with dark cultists. Inside is the current seat of the Acronymian Empire, which controls much of the surrounding area.

Outside - If you ain't Inside (or in Town), you're OUTSIDE! Simple as that. Outside is a meta-thread for all those wildernessy type areas that don't merit their own threads, be it wood or lake or tiny shack.

ACRONYMS - Home to adventurers, these complexes provide headquarters and occasionally living space for like-minded Player Characters. Invariably equipped with cheesy names, these structures provide a place for their various members to fight crime, cause chaos, or have kinky lesbian sex. Current Acronyms include:

• AMEN - Association for the Malicious, Evil and Nefarious. Evil aligned organization, exists to be EVIL! And sometimes Ebil.
• HALO - Heroic, Anti-evil and Lawbreaking Organization. Non-Evil aligned organization, exists to smite wrong-doers.
• GLoG - Good League of Good. Good aligned organization, exists to redeem evil-doers.
• NO - Neutralist Oganization. Neutral aligned organization, exists to arbitrate between other organizations, and occasionally do their dirty work.
• WATCHTOWER - You Know What? Screw It. Non-aligned aligned organization. Exists to destroy threats to Nexus, whatever form they may take.

The Taverns
What kind of vaguely DnDesque adventurer would you be if you didn't visit one of these places at least once? The various Taverns, Grills, Hotels, Cantinas and Restaurant provide meeting places for the Player Characters, areas for quest givers to stand mysteriously in, and also places for people to eat and spend the money they seem to have infinite amounts of. Though there are a vast number of such places in Nexus, some with their own thread and some without, throughout history three major hubs have existed, without which Nexus as we know it wouldn't exist. The Dancing Fox Inn, which is located in Town. Taverna Generica, which is located near Inside. And Trog's Tavern, which is located, maddeningly enough, in Town and Inside at the same time.

Other Locations - Directory

Spoiler

To be filled out later, once we get a clear idea of what threads shall be included. For example, creating a single Town meta-thread will end up conglomerating most of the more minor location threads in the current Town Directory.

Nexus Character Directory

[iElf]

I'm defiantly supportive of this idea,(even if it does mean I have to rewrite my char entry's).

Random Idea: how about we have a little fixed geography in the nexus? could help a bit. also, is the world flat or round?

[Kris on a Stick]

Cone shaped.

[Morty]

Nexus is on the inside of a cube.

[Kris on a Stick]

Which is nestled in the branches of a tree, which is inside a giant cosmic snowglobe. Which is then being shaken by a turtle, which is swimming in a pond, which is in the head of a giant kappa, which is currently terrorizing Tokyo, which is on a chunk of rock hurtling through space at the speed of light. Said space is a single nerve cell in Einstein's brain.

Or in a more referency manner:
Elfidus: What manner o' world is your Nexus?
Krisony: It is shap'd, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just as high as it is, and it is made with its own material. It exists by that which beget it, and the elements once out of it, it disappears.
Elfidus: What color is it of?
Krisony: Of its own color too.
Elfidus: 'Tis a strange world.
Krisony: 'Tis so. And the seas of it are wet. Excepting when they are dry.

[iElf]

Declared canon^^

[Morty]

Originally Posted by iElf

Declared canon^^

Seconded.lawl10chars

[Darkcomet]

*appears in a puff of smoke*

This thread is relevant to my interests.

Anyway, few things I wanted to comment on: I think the Town thing is intended to not be a clear or established city at all, so I think it might bear mentioning that it's supposed to be a meta-location thread rather than a permanent city or anything like that.

Unsure, really. The line gets a bit blurry sometimes, which is why the city of Inside even exists. Ah, wonderful accidents. You know, I wasn't actually intending to win in the initial uprising there...<.< I blame you, Kris. You did kinda give me heavier weaponry and tanks. Anyway, moving on.

Random comment on the Empire mentioning: I would prefer it if it was referenced as the Acronymian Empire rather than Acro-Imperial Empire, as that's just plain redundant-sounding. >.> [/nitpick] 'course, sometimes it seems like no two people call it the same exact name, to me...

[horngeek]

Originally Posted by Morty

Seconded.lawl10chars

Objected. I'd actually prefer that the shape of the world is 'whatever the plot demands', and that we don't define it.

[AmberVael]

Originally Posted by Darkcomet

Anyway, few things I wanted to comment on: I think the Town thing is intended to not be a clear or established city at all, so I think it might bear mentioning that it's supposed to be a meta-location thread rather than a permanent city or anything like that.

Well, I don't really post around here anymore, but I feel like clearing this up.

Town, at least in the past, was pretty much equivalent to Inside. It was an actual place, an actual town (which eventually kind of blossomed into a city just due to the sheer amount of stuff in it).

The difference is that Town never was its own, single thread. There were streets, sewers, slums, temples, all kinds of stuff. It is a clear place, it just wasn't ever really a single location, from an OOC perspective.

So yes, town is pretty much an established city (if a weird one that always shifted with all kinds of stuff in it), but it never was just a single thread.

[Morty]

Originally Posted by horngeek

Objected. I'd actually prefer that the shape of the world is 'whatever the plot demands', and that we don't define it.

Oh, come on. This definition is too absurd to be relevant.

[horngeek]

Originally Posted by Morty

Oh, come on. This definition is too absurd to be relevant.

Magtok's satellite. That's something it affects.

[Darkcomet]

Well, I was mostly referencing some chat discussions about it being used as a more meta-location-y thing than Inside, since my opinion on Inside being used as both a city and that would lead to extreme confusion on my part. Mostly in terms of what the Empire is and isn't allowed to react to. >.>

Also, horngeek is correct. <.< I'm kinda using that satellite too, so I would know. >.>

[Kris on a Stick]

It was just a joke. The actual appearance of Nexus is described in my Antony and Cleopatra reference. Which I referenced because I am an intelligent and educated person, not because I ripped it from a certain TVtropes article.

@v: Oh poopyshoes. You were actually serious(ish) about seconding it.

[Morty]

The satellite isn't affected, it still hovers inside the cube. I think you're both taking it too seriously.
@^ With the emphasis on "ish".

[Darkcomet]

I wasn't paying that much attention to it, in all honesty. >.> Though something like that does sound a bit...iffy, honestly. But meh.

[horngeek]

It sounds very iffy. Maybe I am taking this too seriously, but we do not want Nexus to be too 'weird'. And making it the inside of a cube would do that for me.

[Morty]

I think ACRO and Town, or Nexus if it works out, could use some more silliness, but if it's going to upset people, let it drop.

[Rebonack]

Repost from the Town OOC thread <_<

>_>

Draft for the opening The Town post.

Where am I?

Here, of course.

What is this place?

Everywhere and everywhen.

How did I get here? I didn't look for it.

But it was looking for you.

****

Horizon to horizon it stretches, a vast jumble of streets and alleys. Of stalls and shops. Of great gleaming steel and glass spires. Of Gothic cathedrals and sprawling fields. Dank sewers and forgotten slums. Crumbling cemeteries and verdant parks. Rivers banked with hewn stone, slithering through the city as silver serpents. Temples both profane and sacred.

A winding spire that stretches into the heavens.

A mammoth tree whose roots reach to the very foundations of the world.

Caverns teeming with forgotten things.

Mountains that drift among the clouds, tethered to the earth far below with gilded chains.

Medieval hamlets. Hissing steam of brass and wooden mechanations. Gritty urban decay. The dull glow of neon and the whir of technology. The clanking of horse-drawn carts...

All these things and more can be found in this strange place, the crossroads between reality and dream. Between the concrete and what only the imagination can conjure.

Search long and hard, good traveler, for you will never find an end of wonders in this place. A place that is everywhere and everywhen. A place known only as The Town.

Spoiler

So what have we here?

Well... This is Town. Town is a meta-location. And a meta-setting at that. Not so much a place as all possible places. The only limit on what can be found here is one's own imagination.

Due to the present nature of FFRP it has become necessary to consolidate all the various smaller Town related threads into a single topic since having an individual thread for The Beach and The Streets and Bob's Doughnut Hut just won't work any longer as it once did.

Players from any setting are quite welcome here, such is the very concept behind Town. General rules on godmodding and so forth apply. And try to avoid ruining the fun of others since being nice is rather nice!

When posting in this thread it's best to have a [Location] tag at the top of your post so others know where you are. Because there are certainly lots of places to be around here. As the thread expands a running list of various [Locations] will be added to the opening post.

Town can be reached quite easily by simply wandering along the byways. Your feet will lead you there. Though one had best know where one is going when leaving Town, otherwise there's no telling where you'll end up!

So jump in! Get involved. And watch the world unfold.

Feel free to make suggestions for additions, whether in the narration or the OOC blurb at the end. This is supposed to be a group project after all.

[happyturtle]

And another repost:

Re: Town and Inside becoming two separate cities.

Here is the way I would prefer to understand it:

1. The Nexus is large enough to encompass both cities and the lands around them. This means new buildings and characters can suddenly pop into existence in either.

2. Town is one city, Inside is another. The Empire controls Inside, but not Town. Because of the structure of the Empire, the city of Inside is not as fluid as Town. But it is still part of the Nexus and still can have strange things happen.

3. One can move between the cities easily, or between the cities and other locations.

4. People who want to instigate trouble in Inside do so knowing that Empire forces are likely to be involved. People who instigate trouble in Town are more likely to face vigilante PCs.

5. We all put [Nexus] in thread titles to separate us from the other ffrp universes and to make it easier for people to find threads from the main ffrp subforum page.

Basically what I'm envisioning is this, but with a big circle around the entire thing that says NEXUS

Spoiler

Thoughts, criticisms, and questions welcome.

[Rebonack]

The way I'm imagining it The Town would be more or less at the epicenter of the Nexus where as Inside is more toward the edge of its area of influence. That would help to explain why The Town is so much stranger than Inside is.

[Kris on a Stick]

What happened to the 'Townies stay out!' sign on the Taverna?
It should be kept even if we do decide to merge the universes, just for added humor. Maybe with a strikethrough, or with the 'Enjoy your time' sign hastily scrawled over it.
...
Yeah, I've decided to pick on completely unimportant things now.

[Darkcomet]

>.> That would be okay if there's a disclaimer about that, I imagine.

[happyturtle]

I edited the OP to be more up to date a thread or two back. Since the thread was created in the middle of the drama where Acro people were being told to stay out of Town threads, it carried over a bit of divisiveness that I didn't think was appropriate anymore.

Of course there are still more than 25 Taverna Generica threads in the archives where the original text can still be seen.

Edit: Does anyone else wish we could go back in time to the split and thwap some sense into people?

[The Bushranger]

Originally Posted by happyturtle

Edit: Does anyone else wish we could go back in time to the split and thwap some sense into people?

Indeed.

Also...I have to say I'm still rather opposed to anything other than "keep the status quo". <_<

[Morty]

The status quo isn't changed. The only thing that may change is that we'll have one OOC thread instead of two, really.

[The Bushranger]

Ah...in that case, carry on.
And a cube? Pfft. Clearly it's a disc on the back of four elephants on the back of a turtle...

[happyturtle]

As far as I can tell, the only thing that will really change is making everything more accessible to new people.

Town will still be the home of the Dancing Fox Inn. Inside will still have the Empire. The Acro organizations will still be around. The godmodding rules will still be in effect. No one's character history will be changed. No retconning will need to occur. It's really more of an ooc organizational change than anything in character.

[iElf]

Originally Posted by The Bushranger

Ah...in that case, carry on.
And a cube? Pfft. Clearly it's a disc on the back of four elephants on the back of a turtle...

....been done.....more than once.....and we know the speed of light is to fast for this to be plausible

[celtois]

Aww I spent forever on the town directory. Though I am in favor of this, it is sad to see my work being for naught.

On a different note town has had a random location thread for a while it was used to replace most of the slower moving threads it may have fallen off the top though. But I made it the same time I made the town index.