#freeform

IRC moniker

Dread

Channels you hang out in

#dataclaw and #freeform

Describe yourself briefly

I am prone to waffling on a lot about nothing and take longer than average to post, though I can usually be whipped into shape for faster posting (but you will probably not manage to get my average post size to shrink much, alas). I greatly appreciate and encourage unreasonable amounts of torture being heaped onto my characters.

Would you like GMs to advertise their roleplays to you?

Yes, please!

What are your five favourite sessions you've roleplayed to date, and why?

1. Michael's resiring in Nightchilder's Gehyra plotline.

You can read most of that mess here. Michael/Mictian is a vampire, and was forcibly re-sired by the de-facto leader of the clan antagonising his, simply to mock him with the constant, tangible metaphysical presence. It was very effective at eroding his sanity, even though he did not fully understand it would do so at the time, as it's normally possible to break that metaphysical bond.

I really enjoyed the session because it's psychologically brutal to Michael, who subscribes to a radically pacifist philosophy and does not believe in as much as physical retaliation. He's used to people trying to beat him up. He's not used to people abusing his passive nature to better fuck with his head.

2. Dakarai's death in Sehto's Arsaga run.

Dakarai N'Sehla is a character in the Sehto setting that is loyal to a fault, but a feisty critter and with a strong sense of personal justice. In almost all cases, said sense of justice aligns perfectly with that of his superior. In Arsaga, there was a situation where he disagreed on a fine detail and ended up violating a hard rule (although also only on a fine detail, though that didn't help him). The punishment for violating the rule was death - something he knew when he violated it.

I like the session because he didn't try to run, he didn't try to fight, he just accepted his death with quiet dignity - and also because his superior, about equally as stubborn as Dakarai, had a lot of opportunity to strongly regret following through with his threat, making the scene intensely heart-breaking. If either of them had been a little less stubborn, the situation would not have ended as tragically.

3. Dready/Sirena/Frederick where Dready twists Freddy's coping mechanisms against him.

Dread is a psychic (and GM character) in the Wildcard setting and a recurring main antagonist (although usually not for the full group, but on an individual basis, whenever he finds the time to torment someone lovingly). His shtick is to slip into people's dreams and twist them into nightmares, often with a regrettably Freudian undercurrent laser focus, making him strictly not safe for work (technically, I suppose, not safe for life).

He's the character behind my friendly habit of wishing people pleasant nightmares.

At any rate, Frederick was one of his favourite recurring victims, and had some interesting coping mechanisms to deal with Dread's antics that essentially involved stopping to think about it. This indeed helped preserve his sanity, but proved to be rather exploitable the moment Dread tugged someone else into the dream with him.

The resulting waking world social fallout from Frederick's complete inability to act rationally in the dream world was fun and interesting and nearly had characters thrown out of airlocks.

4. Archleone's death in Wildcard(v3)'s Mer world.

Wildcard's VR world Mer is based on Pirates of Dark Water. It turns out that if you get Dark Water in your eye, unfortunately, you are just going to die, and there's nothing anyone can do to help you. Sucks to be you, Archleone. What's that, I was you? Of course I was. (To be fair, I was probably something like half the characters in the session. No matter…)

5. Michael's blinding in Nightchilder's Gehyra plotline.

Following his traumatic experience (see #1 in this list), Michael decided he needed circumstance to force him to actually think about and process what had happened. Given that he's part of a highly masochistic philosophy, the natural first thought that occurred to him was to get his eyes put out with holy water. Nothing to it, right? His friend Shadowvein was so kind to assist him, because that's what good friends do.

I like the session because it's a lovely (albeit unusual) study of friendship and trust.

Which of your characters (or characters of a friend) would you like to be, if you could and had to, and it came with all associated social ramifications and thrust you into the setting they're in?

One obvious answer is Dread. I would be exactly as awful as he is, though, but! On the plus side, I would also get away with it as easily as he does. No regrets.

A less obvious but significantly more sincere answer is Francisco Ahlgren. Francisco is the figurehead of an anarchic nation, bearing the title Archon, which allows him to do jack all. That said, he's the founder of the nation and a lot of people look up to him. He also represents the nation internationally, although this is primarily to the frustration of foreign politicians, some of which go as far as to openly loathe him for his inability to promise them anything (even a signature under the human rights charter). Outside of his nation, he is not very popular, though I consider him a genuinely nice and forthcoming person.

Ultimately, Francisco has much thicker skin and resilience than I do and I would love to have that, even if it meant that a majority of the world adopted a passive hate of me through the way the media portrayed me. I would make that trade; I think Francisco's resilience (and to some degree his position as his nation's founder) allows him to do more good than I do out of character.

I find fan-fiction of yours on the internet. It's on a roleplay setting. What's it about? (Has anyone left comments on the fan-fiction, and if so, what are the comments?)

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Which character of yours (or of a friend) do you most identify with and why?

Evenatra from kraiaKy. Evenatra is something of a fallen goddess at grave risk of getting murdered by a living weapon made specifically to destroy her kind. She's sticking around on the planet this is happening on, anyway, out of a sense of responsibility - even though her staying there is possibly even making things worse for the creatures she's trying to protect (by making them more hunted in an effort to get at Evenatra). Her kind of helpless courage has inspired a lot of my personality since I created her (when I was around ten-ish).

Note: kraiaKy is not currently a roleplay setting, but I am writing a book in that universe (at time of writing, October 2016, it has about 100k words and I would say is about halfway done), and once that is done will probably try converting it into a roleplay backdrop.

This player described as a sum of parts of their characters' personalities by…

1. …Rehchoortahn

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