_Fea_

Hmm, so far I only have Belus, aka Rauri Connell, but there's plenty of time to think up more.

Personally, I think this is one of those debates that comes down to anything being acceptable within reason. If someone wants to play the Peacebringer AT without their toon actually being one for RP purposes then I have no problem with that so long as they don't start claiming things that are so against the established lore that it breaks my immersion.

I favour using the basic mechanics as a starting point, and then going from there, but certainly not sticking to them at all costs. Generally I have no problems with deviations from the lore side of things either.

As an example, I play my Peacebringer as having two distinct and separate personalities; the human host, and the kheldian symbiote. I know that goes against what has been stated as cannon for a merged pair, but personally I preferred the idea of the Stargate Tok'Ra approach than the totally new personality. Admittedly she's a new RP toon for me, and I'm still working a lot out, but it seems to be going well so far and I've not had anyone who objects outright to my take on the character. I certainly hope it stays that way, because I don't want to play a version that is exactly asthe cannon lore states.

So all in all, my rather convoluted thought process is basically that almost anything goes and that really so long as no one starts insisting that "you have a name floating above your head and that being 'x' AT means that 'blah'", then it's all in good fun.

Emily cleared her throat and nodded, "Yes, very much, thank you. My condolances for your loss."

Then she sat down, scribbling notes and trying not to look uncomfortable. This would certainly make for an interesting angle in her article on the new hero.

"Yes thank you," she said with a little smile, "Now, would you care to elaborate on the nature of your deal? Purely in the interests of accurate reporting, of course."

The woman gave him an innocent look, fully expecting him to entirely refuse to answer the question.

"Mr. McAvoy, Emily Turner, of the Daily Post," said another reporter, standing up and giving the man at the podium a carefully charming smile, while holding out her own recording device.

"I'm sure you've been asked this by others before, but what made you choose to become a hero?"

She looked at him expectantly, waiting for her answer.

I have no idea if this will be helpful, but in terms of US visas, an American friend on mine has said that it's easiest to go to the US and apply to stay while your there, rather than doing so before hand. How that would work without having a tourist visa to start with, I have no idea, but she said it could take around a year for everything to be sorted.

In my opinion, I think the game mechanics should be used as a guideline, rather than any specific rules. After all, there are times when the way the system works makes a toon far too powerful, as well as not powerful enough to fit a concept.

As an example; my scrapper, Neit, is a normal human with (IC) over 15 years of martial arts training. That means he's a good fighter with an impressive level of fitness. According to game mechanics though, he can run at around 45mph, and easily do standing jumps of around 40 feet. Suffice to say, as a character who is supposed to be a baseline human in most respects, I don't want him to be able to actually do that, so IC he can do free running, but anything else is strictly OOC.

On the other side of that, my main, Fea, is a flyer. She is slotted to the flight speed cap of 55ish mph (whatever it is, I don't remember the numbers). Now IC, she has stated that she's never bothered to find out how fast she can fly because she's not interested, she simply enjoys it enough that she doesn't feel the need to worry about that kind of thing. However, I have always personally felt that she can go faster than the limit that the mechanics allow.

My point (and I actually do have one ), is that I think power level and the game world can be fudged within reason. I feel that the success of said fudging is usually down to the player more than anything else. For every person that has a well thought out character concept, with good reasoning for whatever power level they're claiming, there's another who will insist on playing Teh Überman who can pwnz us all.

Poor Annette/Ni! You really are being mean to them! Fantastic story!

I think a bit of both could work well. All depends on what Birdy has in mind though.

Awesome! That's fantastic!

Shanna sat back with a grin, feeling slightly smug that her search had yielded results. She had taken a gamble with the theory that the demon they were hunting down had been summoned, and that the person doing it had used books from one of the libraries in the city. The resulting list was short and sweet.

Most of the names seemed to belong to people from out of town, or researchers like Cassandra. The short list did include a PCU student though... She quickly accessed the university's records, absently scrawling a circle around the name on her note pad as she waited for the system to process her request.

A few moments later, the academic record of one Barry Botherton came up on the screen, listing his course of study and a home address in Galaxy City, along with an attendance record that said he'd been absent for the last few days.

Making a pleased noise in the back of her throat, Shanna scribbled a note saying she'd gone to check a lead, and left the office.

The trip over to Galaxy City was short, and it wasn't long before she was knocking on the door that was listed as Barry's address.

Let's see why ye've been cuttin' class, shall we... She thought as she waited for a response.

Realising that she had just re-read the same paragraph for the third time, Shanna sat back with a sigh, glaring at the book she had been studying. If force of will alone had been enough to get the answers she was looking for she would have been finished hours ago. As it was, she was slogging through a pile of books that only seemed to grow larger. She scrubbed at her face with her hands and stretched before bending back to her task.

It was all a long shot anyway; looking into any possible previous occurances and trying to find names of mages and demons who possessed both the power and the skill to create the bodies of two children. Of course, once she had that list she still had to narrow it down to those who may have a reason for wanting to cause trouble for magic users.

She sighed again as she flicked through the pages, wishing that Cassandra would hurry up and finish giving her lecture and come back to help wade through all the books.

Awesome story, and more than a little creepy! More please!!

Personally I would say avoid PC World like the plague.

Otherwise, have a look on ebay. You can get some pretty good deals on either fully built PCs or parts to build your own.

It's actually surprisingly hard to sing with an accent. People like the Proclaimers will have had to make a conscious effort to sound like they do. The vast majority of singers are busy concentrating on the lyrics and melody so as a result people singing in the same language generally sound like they have the same accent.

You could ask why Americans sound like Brits when they sing...

Thanks for doing this! Now all I've got to do is try and contain my impatience until GR's actually out

I'd love to go, unfortunately until they realise that *I'm* the one who's supposed to have won the lottery last week I'll just have to dream.

*sigh* Customers....what can you do?