Poster by arzenpai
Chasing the Aurora Teasers
Adrift in silent Arctic waters
Broken systems beneath an electric sky
Impassable rooms filled with liquid memory
A sinking feeling lies beyond the horizon
Yet the only way forward is in our dreams
September 21, 1913
The night was crisp and clear around the SS Boreas. I stood on the bridge, watching the unfolding luminescence spreading across the northern sky.
Sailors and passengers gathered, their faces etched with wonder as the Northern Lights began to dance across the inky sky like celestial ribbons reaching towards the North Star.
Wonder quickly turned to alarm when the ship’s engine suddenly sputtered and died. Navigation systems flickered and went dark. The radio, the only connection to the outside world, emitted nothing but static.
All systems down.
We were now a powerless vessel, surrounded by the aurora’s ethereal glow, with no way to determine our position or call for help.
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You are an arcanist aboard the SS Boreas and everything is falling apart.
What started as a grandiose trip across the sea has turned into a nightmare. An Olympic-class cruise sailing from Greece to New York, now trapped within the Arctic sea.
A mysterious aurora appeared and fried the ship’s navigations and communications. The SS Boreas drifts in dangerous waters. Foundation members are hunting a suspected terrorist in the engine room. And that enigmatic aurora seems to be alive that it’s even dreaming.
The ship creaks and groans around you. Before the cold finally seeps through the metal walls, you might be the what is standing between this ship and total disaster.
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Content Overview
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▐ RATING: R-16
▐ GENRE: Urban Fantasy, Historical, Sandbox
▐ CONTENT ADVISORY: Fantasy Racism, Violence
▐ PACING: Player-Driven
▐ MECHANICS: Light
▐ DURATION: 8 Weeks including Break Week
▐ MODS: Milo, Zen, Coby, Jakey, Chew
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Charting a New Course
This roleplay will be hosted on its own site: https://chasingtheaurorarp.bettermode.io
After experiencing unreliable notifications, commenting problems, vague moderation policies, and many more issues, we wanted to explore another platform for roleplaying.
The next platform has an interface similar to Facebook, complete with a rich text editor reminiscent of the old Facebook notes feature. Since it operates without algorithms or AI, getting zuck’ed should be a thing of the past.
If the platform proves successful, Milo might consider refine it for future roleplays and helping other teams migrate here.
Weave the Arcane
This is heavily inspired by the world of Reverse:1999.
‘Mages,’ ‘wizards,’ ‘con artists,’ and ‘freaks.’ There used to be more of them but now there are not that many left. Arcanists live in an uneasy coexistence with regular humans, often seen as naturally unpredictable and impulsive.
Arcanists have the inherent ability to wield the arcane since birth, filtered through their unique personal lens: from alchemy to acting, from Alice in Wonderland to film-making.
On the last day of 1999, the “Storm” fell upon the world. Defying all reasons, what unfolds before the survivors is the world of an era long past.
Enjoy your stay in an alternate version of 1913, an era before the first world war.
Playing with Words
We will be using a narrative-focused system.
Most things in this roleplay are described with labels called Tags. There are no numerical values describing how strong or how fast your character is. Instead, they have descriptive Tags.
Tags are short and specific descriptions of a quality, ability, object, situation, catchphrase, or anything narratively relevant. By invoking the relevant Tags in an action, you increase its effectivity and chances for success.
These Tags are created by answering the questions in your Themebooks. Themebooks are questionnaires that help you put together your character’s Tags and help establish their overall capabilities.
Each character should have a total of three Themebooks and twelve Tags that describe who they are and influence their actions.
Of Temporal Tides
We want to make the roleplay more relaxed and easy to follow. And so, Free Roam will be posted once a week on Monday. This post will cover all the interactions for the week.
It is our hope that this approach gives us more breathing room to reply and helps all of us keep track of our ongoing narratives.
[Kingdom of Toys] presents a linear, combat-oriented mode to retake the engine room.
[Slumbering Aurora] is a roguelike exploration mode to uncover the aurora’s secrets.
[Voyagers at Sea] provides a list of passenger requests for a more relaxed mode in free roam.
Activity modes like [Kingdom of Toys] and [Slumbering Aurora] are designed to be player-initiated. Even though the mods will facilitate these modes, the players are meant to spark the action.
We want to make sure the pace matches the current enthusiasm and energy while staying responsive to what people want to explore.
Main Primer
You can get a head start on reading the lore and system materials here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hKrPW9sg-DDlqfnLaheA9crM6SSDWZu5/view?usp=sharing
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About the Author
