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+---- Thread: [Whitelisted] Application of B'tone Alliman (/showthread.php?tid=133)
[Whitelisted] Application of B'tone Alliman - Robodragon - 04-04-2013
IGN
R0b0drag0n
Why do you want to join?
Just wanting to get back into roleplaying
Do you have any RP'ing experience?
Played on a few RPâing servers over the past years, but itâs been a while so it may take some time to get into the swing of things. Though a game called SS13 has recently gotten me back into RPâing.
Tell us a bit about yourself:
I always try my best to improve myself, be it from advice from others, or from things I discover. Either way, life itself has wonderful opportunities for self-improvement. At least, that is what I believe. As far as interests go, I mostly spend my time playing Dwarf Fortress or SimCity 4, or browsing a conspiracy forum (Mostly for a few laughs). But enough about me!
Background Story
Helena Clarke and Flint Alliman had one thing in common; they both lived through the slavery and eventual uprisings against the Xitians. It would be an understatement to simply say it left mental and physical scars on them.
âFor the XitiansâXitiansâXitians!!â roared throughout the mind of poor Helena as she slept
âFor the Xitians!â
The crack of the whip, the stench of burning bodies, and the cries of men and women paint the air in pain.
A flash goes by! The scene changes; something tightly grips Helenaâs young hand, dragging her through a town. Is that her home in the distance? Nothing but fire and screaming surround it. Whose grasp is this? Briefly, she sees the face of her eldest brother as he looks back at her. The fear in his eyes, the pulse of her heart, itâs all too much for her.
The dream goes black, yet she still feels his grip. Next thing she knows, sheâs laying down, secured in a nook underneath an ancient tree. Sunlight peels away at the shadows. Away from the cries and shouts of the people, she sobs quietly waiting for someone to find her, anyone. Her wish comes true, as a black form blocks the sun, engulfing her whole.
Panting, she wakes up, wiping off beads of sweat from her neck and forehead. Her husband is missing and heâd better be out providing for their only son. The Purge had brought out his violent tendencies, not that he was ever levelheaded to begin with, but the large bruises on her body was evidence enough. But if it isnât her, itâs always Bâtone, and with Flintâs strength, itâs a sacrifice that she canât always make.
Calm and collected, Bâtone lived as best he could at age eight. This was nineteen years ago, when people moved back and forth like water sloshing in a bucket all across the land. His mother made a name for herself through teaching the townâs children with the assistance of a Lucin. With her newfound knowledge of mathematics and language, she coauthored many books to outline subjects that she taught. The Lucin assisted her to see the town's education move forward. This in part stemmed from the ignorance that plagued the resistance, something that both the Lucin and Helena wanted to prevent. Flint on the other handâwell he certainly got around the townâs women. His sleazy behavior acted as a release valve similar to his beatings; a bittersweet alternative to Helena. She knew that it would only be for so long until he moved onto something else. But Fiolanthe be it anything but those beatings, she prayed.
And for a while, things were calm. Bâtone was taught up until his twelfth year by his mother, and, objectively, by his father. But when the lies and corruptions spread across the mainland from the Xitians, the town grew restless. Kith fought against one another, and religious moralism grew within the community as different ideologies clashed. The surname âAllimanâ now carried with it moral indignation.
"Flint is a heathen, a corrupter of goodwill!"
"That child is the spawn of Flint, and therefore has black a soul as his father."
"Helena, a victim in it all, but her refusals to leave the child and man are unacceptable!"
"No longer will they live peacefully until they repent their sins, their religious choosing will be of issue later."
The religious leaders however, continued to argue over which sect should have the converts, but unanimously agreed that until the day they repented, they held no warm welcome in the town.
When Flint was informed, he couldn't bear to swallow his pride and repent, he'd rather damn his family's name than give up his lifestyle all because a few religious poofs wanted it so. And so people spat at them as they walked by, regardless of what religious sect they belonged to, because hatred in this town was unanimous.
Bâtone understood very little of it. It opened a floodgate of questions, questions his mother could not easily answer, outright avoiding some because of her own wounds inflicted upon her. The once gentle, caring mother was now an exhausted, empty shell. The father now left an alcoholic with a growing hatred for his wife and son. The townâs cruelties ran deep in the psyche of the family.
Bâtone could hardly comprehend the two daysâ worth of events. One minute the townâs religious sects tear the city apart, next minute the pillagers and criminals begin slaughtering and raiding the ruins. Seemingly spared from the violence Bâtone, Helena, and Flint all huddled in their squat house, waiting for the day to end. And when the screams died down, and the smoke cleared, the candles were lit for night.
The soft hums of his mother gently rocked him to sleep as Bâtone laid there, staring up in the ceiling.
His eyes closing as the sound enveloped him.
Shut; completely black.
Not a thought or sound to be heard.
THUD, THUD, BOOM!
A shriek startles Bâtone awake.
TING, TING, THUMP, THUD.
Instinctively he ran into the living room, curious and both fearful of what had produced those sounds. His mind could not conceive of the sight he would soon behold in living room. His father, standing over three bodies, two men, one a woman, looked at him and immediately instructed to gather up all essential items.
Bâtone obeyed.
Abandonment, exhaustion, beatings, there was no relief from it all for Bâtone. His mother was the only thing that kept him coming back the times his father would drag him blindfolded out into the woods.
Soured and embittered, Bâtone spent twenty-seven years of his life in a precarious situation. Since the civil wars, you could say he lived in a less thanâideal conditions. Not to say in years prior he existed in an idyllic and picturesque world, but perhaps if asked he would say slavery at age thirteen was hardly a step towards a utopian society.
His father, Flint Alliman, sold him off into slavery the next day his wife died. After all, what better way to ensure your own survival through all this chaos AND getting rid of that twerp in one fell swoop than selling flesh and blood for profit. No more dead weight, no mouths to feed but your own, and enough money to (hopefully) last until this conflict is over!
Flint held no trust for Xitians. He hated them with a passion after years of abuse as a child. But what he did hold trust for was gold. He figured heâd settled the score with the Xitians long ago with the purges anyways. So when a red-eyed man offered to buy his son, he willingly sold him out.
âIf anything, that little runt should have thanked me for his quick wit and survival skills from all those times I abandoned him in the woods, despite the opposition from the olâ ball and chain. Spending nights is good for the boy, and good for some nice quiet time. Hell, the time she was alive, she should have been thanking me for the food I provided and the roof over their heads rather than being an ungratefulânever mind her, the future is bright, and the past shanât trouble me now. Iâll be set for life.â thought Flintâ¦
â¦Until he died of thirst in a desert a few days. He could have obviously used some lessons from his son.
But those were just memories now to Bâtone. His new life as a slave was on the forefront of his troubled mind. The Xitian gladly explained where they were heading to.
âYer worth quite the gold, youngâin. I wouldnât doubt it myself if thar be a few oâ them bourgeois that could use ya. Especially now them fringe lands be lookinâ mighty attractive! Ahahahaaahaa!â cackled the red-eyed old man, âOff to the ports with ye!âAnd so they set off to a town settled on a river.
It was there that Bâtone and a group of other slaves were sold off as servants for a family of dethroned royals. After days of crossing the river, the group settled down on a large tract of land and began construction of a mansion for the family. Bâtone was used as a laborer to assist in the construction. He earned no break in labor due to his age.
His small size allowed him to squeeze into smaller areas of the mines and obtain stone and coal in hard to reach areas than the average slave. When it came to smelting stone, he had it down pat. After all, it wasnât that hard to put cobblestone into an oven, then chiseled and cut the stone into bricks.
As menial as the work was, Bâtone couldnât help but think slavery wasnât such a bad thing. So long as he obeyed the slave drivers, did all that was asked of him, and spoke very little, they would not beat him. He noticed however, that the other slaves werenât as bright as him. They ran their mouths every chance they got about how gluttonous their masters were, those fat bastards, living off the work of others! Nothing but scraps of bread to eat, and if they were lucky, the fat of the meat from the dinner before.
Bâtone held no qualms with any of the family or their hired slave drivers. His father seemed to go far thinking only of himself, so why concern himself with the conditions of others if they werenât receptive to obeying commands. Clearly, he thought, it was their fault.
When construction finally ended, the rebellious slaves were sold off to work their life away in the mines and the good ones kept as domestic servants. Bâtone was lucky enough to stay as a servant to the family, and was given the role of hunting and gathering meat with a few others. It was there he learned the art of the bow and arrow along with the making and proper management of such a weapon. Though he was no Robin Hood, he still learned how to effectively aim and shoot it.
With his persistence and work ethic he gained good favor in the eyes of the family through the years. And on his twenty-second birthday, the family forged him a bronze mask as a reward of his unconditional loyalty. The mask covers the bottom portion of his face, nose included, and is held in place through a band of leather that secures around the skull. Small slits in the metal allow for breathing, and allow for speech to be heard.
He knew in the back of his head that he wasnât loyal to them by a longshot, but if thatâs how they saw it, then why protest?
He could just sense the jealousy of all the other servants, and he reveled in it and wore the mask with pride.
The hills they had settled grew to be dotted with similar mansions and manors across it all. And something peculiar happened in the demographics. The ratio to master and slave grew disproportionately into the slavesâ favor.
A revolt was imminent. It needed not the assistance of the Xitians, for the source of all this trouble was the dissatisfaction that grew within the slaves. And when Bâtone was twenty-four, all hell broke loose once more. This time, Bâtone was prepared to handle anything thrown his way. Loyalty not to the people, not to the aristocracy, but to himself was all he needed. He knew that his fellow slaves would turn on him for his loyalty, and he knew the owners would no longer trust him, so when word broke out of the first attacks, he vanished into the woods and never looked back.
His purpose, he thought, was now to survive. Where shall he go? Should he stay in the forest? No, too risky. Perhaps finding a town would be his best bet. A town with an ocean view and beach like the one the Lucin man had drawn when he was just a young boy.
Oh, the sights he encountered while exploring the mainlands looking for a hint of civilizations; from vast canyons, to vibrantly colored prairies, each sight earned him a new admiration for nature. Three months had passed, and B'tone finally stumbled across a caravan heading to a city. Graciously, the merchants took him along to the city. After a few days of travel, they arrived at their destination. It was there B'tone inquired, with as little words as possible, where the nearest coast was. To his surprise, it was only a few daysâ worth of traveling to the east.
And so, B'tone once again set off after a few days of rest. Upon arrival, B'tone felt a sense of accomplishment. Here he was, at the destination of his dreams, ready to start anew. He lived peacefully, in the outskirts of town, visiting the beach and the town's port for fish. Using his mining skills and masonry, he had built himself a quaint cottage. Passerbys occasionally admired the balance between nature and structure with his home. So much so, that every now and then, Bâtone would receive a letter or odd knock on his door asking where they could get someone to build a house like his. Bâtone, understanding the opportunities, capitalized immediately on his skills. While he made no kingâs salary, he could at least live comfortably with a few coins to spare.
Sadly his paradise wasn't his paradise alone, for an influx of survivors from ransacked cities, torn apart by warfare settled in the coastal city. As the months passed, the waters grew murky from the waste, and the fish no longer as plentiful or desirable as it once was. However, word of new paradise reached him, one that involved a risky trip across the vast ocean to settle at. One that B'tone was willing to make. And so, three years of watching the town grow into a stinking metropolis finally pushed him to head on the voyage.
And through a stroke of luck, B'tone found a client he helped earlier with their house. As it turned out, the man was a sailor, making round trips to the Forbidden Lands charging a sizable sum of money. After a few exchanges, Bâtone, for building the sailors house, had to pay only a fraction of the gold. Naturally Bâtone agreed to these terms.
Leaving everything behind, he set of to these new lands, anticipating what sights await him. As the boat left shore, he watched the town rock back and forth whilst disappearing off in the distance, looking forward to living in these so called, "Forbidden Lands." Ready, to search for the perfect place to settle down in.
Weeks passed, but every day on the ocean was pure misery for him. Bâtone had yet to earn his sea legs and doubted he ever would. Headaches, nausea, what did he get himself into? In an almost a daily routine, Bâtone cursed his decision to get on the ship. There wasnât a damned thing the crew could do, and he knew it. But what ate at him most was the ridicule he received, those bastards, laughing at his pain. And right when he reckoned heâd just jump off the ship, he heard the call âLand, ho!â
As the ship docked, Bâtone parted ways with the crew, choking out a, âThank youâ as he left. He had received word that a group of people had traveled down a pathway that had strange beacons built. As much as he still held reservations about settling in yet another town, he understood that there was always safety in numbers. Plus, it wasnât as though hundreds of folks were flocking to the lands.
Bâtone promptly set off, knowing that he had quite the catching up to do. This wasnât different for him, after all, he did spend a few months surviving off the lands as he traveled in search of his paradise, and so here he was again searching for paradise. As the lands became arid, and the grass changed to dirt and finally to sand, Bâtone was pushed to his very limits in survival. He had conquered canyons, but he had never defeated deserts as vast as the one he was about to enter. He prepared a walking stick, since walking in sand wouldnât be easy with just two feet.
The heat cook through his clothing and ate away at his mind as each ray of sun beat down upon him. His water now almost consumed, placed in him a yet another peculiar situation. What was he to do? Should he press on forward, or succumb to the desert and welcome death with open arms? No, he had come too far. He canât give up now or his life would have been nothing but an empty waste. There has to be some wayâsome way to surviveâ¦
He thought long and hard as he lie on the sand, staring up at the cloudless, blue sky. âWait, the stories!â he remembered. The hero always survived by digging into the ground to get water. But alas, he had no shovel. His walking staff would have to do for now. Each minute that went by fried Bâtone further. Not even half a foot into the ground and he gave up, figuring it was all rubbish. What lay in front of him was an endless abyss of sand and heat. He had no choice but to turn around and try searching for a way around. Those damned beacons would lead straight to his death without a group of people. And he hadnât seen another soul since his horrid ocean experience.
Drinking the last of his water, he backtracked until he arrived at the chaparrals before the sand dunes. After refreshing himself at a nearby watering hole, he began investigating the area around him. Determined not to faultier twice, Bâtone set off exploring the possibility of walking around the desert. After some stocking up of resources, Bâtone set off once again, this time under guidance of his own intuition. He maintained sight of the dunes, but kept them barely visible on the horizon as to ensure he walked in the right direction. The path he now traveled on was by no means a Garden of Eden, but it certainly wasnât as unbearable as the dunes themselves. Occasionally, he would find an area with a few watering holes that could sustain him, due to a few rains from the season.
After weeks of travel, he had spotted a beacon out in the distance. If he had overshot it, he no doubt wouldâve walked in a huge circle, but luck was on his side. Finding a trail accompanying it, he would follow it until the end.
And through a yearâs travel, Bâtone had reached the age of twenty-eight. Still following the trail of beacons, Bâtone pressed on, anticipating the life that lies ahead of him.
Skills
Archery â Apprentice
Landscaping â Novice
Masonry â Apprentice
Mining â Novice
Survival Skills â Apprentice
Traits
Positive Traits
Educated
Strong-willed
Persistent
Agile
Negative Traits
Pessimistic
Emotionally Calloused
Withdrawn
Cold Logic
Abusive
Do your character bring anything to the setting (part from clothes)?
Just his bronze mask
Re: [New] Application of B'tone Alliman - SentaiPink - 09-04-2013
HI! Iâm Pinkie~! Welcome! Thank you so much for being patient with us! Iâm so sorry for the delay on your app, but I finally have your feedback finished. Overall its a good story, generally its well rounded, you clearly have read the lore and I can get a good idea of who your character is based on what you've supplied. However, a few revisions will be necessary. So lets get started!
- I understand that you're trying to tell a story but the jumping around in the timeline can get a little hard to follow. If you could revise how this transitions just a bit to aid ease of reading, that would be fantastic, But that's a relatively small issue.
Quote:âFor UmbriaeâUmbriaeâUmbriae!!â roared throughout the mind of poor Helena as she slept.
Umbriae isn't curently ruler of the Dusk realm, its been 1000's of years since his reign, so much so he's seen more as a god or prophet of battle then a king. The slaves would likely be saying something more along the lines of 'Yes my Xitian master'
âFor Umbriae!â
Quote: With her new found knowledge of mathematics and language, she wrote many books to outline subjects that she taught.
It seems unlikely that someone who learned reading and writing as an adult would know enough to write many books on the subject. Did the Lucin that taught her help? Just a bit of elaboration on how that might of been possible would be recommended.
Quote:But Aether be it anything but those beatings, she prayed.
Aether is a element, like earth, fire, water, but most mesalians don't really understand it or know what it is, if she was praying it would likly would of been to one of the gods in the Religion lore <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://mesalia-rp.enjin.com/forum/m/2573451/viewthread/3759771-lore-discussion-ic-religion">http://mesalia-rp.enjin.com/forum/m/257 ... c-religion</a><!-- m --> [Sorry not everything has been transferred from the other forums, I know this is confusing.]
Quote:The surname âAllimanâ now carried with it moral indignation. Bâtone, Helena, and Flint were all ostracized from all social functions. All people spat at them as they walked by, regardless of what religious sect they belonged to.
Its a little unclear as to why they became ostracized, is it because of Flints behavior or something else? Please elaborate.
Quote:He spent the remainder of his years living off the land as nomad and exploring the Forbidden Lands in search of the perfect place to settle down.
The story must end with your character arriving in the forbidden lands, there aren't opulent towns built by nobles escaping the war. In the mainlands this is possible but not the forbidden lands. Please revise this. Also you seem to skim over the last few years of his life. Granted, with what I've just said this may be removed altogether, but if not: you would need to provide just a little more insight as to what he was doing wondering the seemingly endless wilderness alone.
Quote:...the family forged him a golden mask as a reward of his unconditional loyalty. He knew in the back of his head that he wasnât loyal to them by a longshot, but if thatâs how they saw it, then why protest?
A solid gold mask? That is so lavish it scarcely makes sense, to put that into some perspective, we have a man in the setting whom not only already has a golden mask but its only a half mask and he was once a king. This needs to be revised into something somewhat more realistic for a reward befitting a slave.[/list:u]
And that's all I've got for you! Great application! Youâre not far off! And thank you again for your understanding while we transition to our new map.
Re: [New] Application of B'tone Alliman - Robodragon - 09-04-2013
Thank you Pinkie! I pretty much changed the organizational structure of the paragraphs for flow, but I colored the text that I had revised. Anything else, and I'll be happy to jump on it to improve!
Re: [New] Application of B'tone Alliman - SentaiPink - 09-04-2013
Hello again! Great work! Lets see here
- First thing is first, I owe you an apology, I was wrong in the following:
Quote:âFor UmbriaeâUmbriaeâUmbriae!!â roared throughout the mind of poor Helena as she slept.
You were correct, please excuse me for that. I should know better then to review apps while working my FT job! x3 What you have now isn't inaccurate, so changing it back is up to you.
âFor Umbriae!â
Quote: ... through a stroke of luck, B'tone found a man with a small sailboat who was doing it for free.
This sort of breaks my suspension of disbelief. The trip takes a very long time, and it's a considerable demand on resources to travel it, so just perhaps the reason the captain wouldn't charge him or even a trade for safe passage or something.
- You corrected the gold mask to bronze which I suppose works though I don't know how a metal strap would attach or how it would cover the lower portion of his face and him still breath. Also;
Quote:Do your character bring anything to the setting (part from clothes)?
forgot to update that.[/list:u]
Just his golden mask
And that's it! I really had to look just to find these so you're doing great. We should have you ready in no time.
Re: [Pending] Application of B'tone Alliman - Robodragon - 11-04-2013
Edited, but given the update, I'll add more later.