Dollhouse

Pretty much every SG my characters (and you don't even want to know how many I have scattered over two accounts...) are in are "serious RP" groups. That is to say, they're RP-as-you-go, in missions, streetsweeping, etc. Don't do a lot of "hang out in Pocket D doing cyber in /tells" sort of RP, but other than that, I RP every toon I have.

As previously stated, Pinnacle has a good RP population. In addition, Triumph is kind of a "stealth RP" server. A lot of us there...

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dollhouse its on test,lol

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Ah, cool...didn't see that!

I've kinda let Test slide since CoV beta...might have to get it caught up and bring someone over for that.

Oh, I love the idea! As something of a rarity on Triumph - a PvPer who RP's...or is it RP'er who PvP's? - this is a very appealing concept. If it's on Virtue, I'd only be able to jump in at fairly low level (highest Virtue character is a PvP-useless Fire Controller, next is a lvl12 kin/rad defender...I forget what else I have there...over 60 alts and counting). I have some higher-level characters on Infinity, Guardian, and Liberty (and several 50s on Triumph), but I might have to work at levelling someone up a bt on Virtue, depending on the format.

We have an Arena League on Triumph, and I'm kind of the "token RP'er." It actually goes over pretty well...

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Ragork listened, and decided that he wouldn't go to the nurses, instead he would hang around with Lily. "Ragrok dont know who Carnie is, Lily please tell what 'carnie' is?" He asked while walking with Lily.

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Lily smiled, pleased to be able to be a source of information about something.

"Well, when most people in Paragon City think 'Carnie,' they're thinking of that creepy Carnival of Shadows. They're the ones that try to come across all happy and madcap...but rumor has it that some people that go into their performances never come out again. Or if they do, something's just not right with them any more. There have also been incidents between heroes and some of their leaders over on Peregrine Island. Their honchos are serious bad news.

"But a while back, a different Carnival rolled into town. The rumor about them is that most of them come from an alternate Earth, a messed up place ruled by the Praetorians - whoever they are. Anyways, in that place, the Carnival of Light are apparently freedom fighters...heroes or some kind of goody-two-shoes crap like that. No one trusted them much at first, but they've been laying a pretty serious smackdown on some of the big name baddies lately. Katie Bonham, the supermodel, is one of their "combat Harlequins." She's not from their world...she's from the Row, like me. Joined up when the Carnival of Light hit town."

The pair arrived at a door much like the others in the hallway. "Here's our palatial abode..."

"Ragrok don't need 'infrimay' as Lily say he does, Ragrok better over time." He stated bluntly and went along anyways. "So where Lily from?"

The pallid girl looked up, a flash of uncertianty crossing her face. "Well...if you're sure, no problem. I've spent enough time in the clutches of the medical profession to understand not wanting anything to do with the infirmary unless, like...bones are showing or something."

She paused a moment, then shrugged. "Whatever. My problems are barely interesting to me, to say nothing of anyone else. I'm from King's Row, over near the power station. Yeah, it's kinda shabby, but it's home. Katie Bonham, the Carnie supermodel, is from a few blocks over. We got cred..."

Lily winced as Douglas's chewing out erupted over her. When was she ever going to learn to just zip it sometimes?

"I'm sorry, Mr. Washington." she said with genuine contrition. "You just seemed so cheesed off. I shouldn't have said anything."

She took Ragrock's forarm in hand (her hand barely reached halfway around his wrist...). "Let's get you to the infirmary..."

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"Lily," she said without taking her eyes off Douglas, "Have you met the new Anger Management Counselor, Mr. Washington? He's a very strict disciplinarian."

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Lily tried, she really did. In fact, the pallid goth girl made a near-superhuman effort not to wise off and to keep her features composed. Unfortunately she succeeded at only one of these things.

"Anger Management Counselor?" she deadpanned. "I can see why. It would take a real professional to manage that much anger."

She offered her best version of a smile in mitigation. Of course, people usually interpreted (correctly) that smile as sarcastic, but she figured it was better than nothing. She glanced over (and up...cripes that guy's big!) at Ragrok.

"I'll go with him to the infirmary if you guys want. He's my new roomie, so maybe I can get him filled in on what's what around here."

Lily slid quietly into the room and knelt next to her new roommate. She nodded respectfully to Douglas, and said, "I'll talk to him, Mr. Washington...try to get him to come to grips with reality here. I know how hard it it to get your head around being here..."

She glanced down at the fallen Ragrok, summoning a more worried expression than she really felt. If this guy was going to be a problem for the staff, that would send a ball of crap rolling down hill that might just land on her. That wouldn't do. She had to get this guy figured out, and fast.

Lily had heard that her new roomie, that towering lug Ragrok, had headed down to the gym. So she walked over herself, thinking to get to know the guy while he was in what she fiigured would be a comfort zone for him. He was probably strong, right? He'd be less likely to be reflexively combative or peevish if he could show off something he was good at.

That mattered to her, Lily realized to her mild surprise. This roomie situation coudl be good or bad, depending on how it played out. She could be in conflict with a big, probalby dangerous hulk of a guy...or she could make a useful ally. Best to try to make it work out to their mutual benefit.

Then she heard the stentorian voice ringing out. "...YOU PIECE OF DRIED UP ####. GOD DAMN, STUDENTS COMING IN MY GYM THEIR FIRST MOTHER####### DAY!!!"

Great. Just great. Ragrok was going to be in just a peachy mood now. Lily walked faster, anxious to get there and see if she could salvage the situation.

An excellent read!

/em applause

Lily glanced up at Nurse Shepherd's comment about her smoking, fully prepared to unleash a full barrage of angsty teen scorn. But before she could, it hit her that this wasn't some solicitous twit...this was Nurse Shepherd. Unctious admonitions and babbling platitudes just weren't something that were going to come out of her mouth. Lily's face registered what might almost be called a smile.

The smile (and her blood) froze for a moment when Nurse Shepherd went on to tell her to report in for a "checkup." What did she know? Was it bad? A lump formed in the pit of her stomach, cold and malevolent.

"Yeah...I'll stop by. I'm..." Lily's voice trailed off for a moment, then she seemed to change mental directions slightly. "Haven't had a checkup in a while."

Lily filed in with the new meat, mostly just to see if she could get away with it. She'd heard The Talk before, but it woudl be fun to see how the noobs reacted. Christ, anything to break the boredom...and to quell her craving for a clove.

She found a place to sit, against the left wall, and let her mind wander. As ever, it didn't make sense to her why she was here. This was supposed to be a facility for redeemables, for kids that might actually not spend the rest of their lives in the Zig or hare off to the Rogue Isles to try to claw their way to a place in the Arachnos hierarchy. It wasn't for people like her.

Not that she was so uber bad. Sure, she'd offed a few people...her and her Nictus symbiont. But she's have staked a full pack of Djarum Blacks that she wasn't the only one in the room who could say that. No, she was an irredeemable becasue she was more than one person...and the other part of her was never going to reform. Not ever. Vrai was the last Nictus in the galaxy she figured would want any part of that Warshade crap.

And without him, she was dead. At least that's what she figured. She'd hoped - hell, she'd heard - that the bonding caused the human host's body to be permanently healthy and brought to its athletic peak. But now she wasn't sure. She felt ill...and was rapidly convincing herslef the leukemia was coming back.

So why waste resources on her? It didn't make any sense.

The gruff adult voice brought her out of her gloomy reverie. Better pay attention...

Lily didn't even try not to roll her eyes at the pronouncement of a dinnerless evening. Whatever. She wasn't hungry, anyway. That thought sent a shiver down her spine. Was she getting sick again, cut off from her Nictus symbiont, Vr'ai'l'oin? Lack of appetite had been a problem before, when the leukemia was killing her. She was pretty sure she didn't rely on Vr'ai'l'oin for her health on an ongoing basis, that the Nictus had simply fixed her cancer-riddled body.

Hell, he had massively improved it, come to that. She was faster, stronger, and more agile than she had ever thought she could be. Not superhuman, to be sure, but damned athletic, despite still looking like some uber-goth ideal of a sick, consumptive waif. She'd been made healthy. Was she still healthy? It sucked not to be sure.

She swore vilely under her breath and fixed this Circe person with a brief venomous glance, her violet eyes narrowing. Then she turned and headed for whatever assembly the Powers-That-Be in this dump had in mind. That should be entertaining.

Yeah. About as entertaining as a root canal.

"Oh, great...rain."

Lily pulled her hoody up over her head and brushed a few now-dampened stands of hair out of her violet eyes. She struggled to contain a smirk at the line of new arrivals being marched from the bus. No point making enemies without good reason, and the fresh meat wasn't going to be in a good mood.

Instead she looked bored and disinterested, something she was good at. That was a talent most any 15-year-old possessed, but Lily could take it to a whole 'nother level...while still avidly checking out the new inmates.

"Jeez, what a crew," she thought, inwardly rolling her eyes. Not a clue among 'em. She'd only been here a couple of weeks, but seeing these poor lost souls made it seem like an eternity.

Deep down, a part of her wondered if there might be a friend among them, someone to talk to, to be something other than a cold facade with. The thought was ruthlessly beaten down. Friends? Here? Yeah, right.

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((I'd already posed Twilight Lily in the courtyard watching the bus arrive before the post saying we were all on the bus. It was too late to edit once I'd seen that, so I went ahead with that development. Hope it's okay...))

"Christ, I'd sell my soul for a pack of Djarum Blacks right about now."

She hugged herself, shivering in the cold wind that sent leaves rustling through the courtyard. Strands of light-devouring, jet black hair whipped across a pale face. She stubbed one booted toe on the asphalt. Wasn't going to cry. Not here, not now.


"Alone again, Lily-girl," she thought, glancing down at the band that circles her right wrist, its malevolent LED eye glowing green. "Can't feel him...damn well can't hear him. It's like the bonding never started. I wonder if I'm going to get sick again?"

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It had been a reprieve from a death sentance. Acute lymphocytic leukemia...and she'd had a couple months. Maybe three. When the Nictus Vr'ai'l'oin invaded her mind and body, what some people would have considered the end of the world was, to her, an unlooked-for beginning. The alien energy had coursed through her stricken body, renewing, repairing...improving. But when Vr'ai'l'oin moved to complete the takover with a final assault on her mind, a curious thing happened.

The Nictus lost.

The frail, dying goth kid was possessed of a tremendous strength of will and an agile, resilient mind. Resigned to death, Lily was nevertheless adamantly unwilling to permit this possession, this invasion. She fought back, assailing the Nictus' consciousness on multiple levels, and swiftly forcing it to retreat. When Vr'ai'l'oin attempted to break off the attack and flee, she held him fast...at the point of very real death.

A deal was struck. A bonding, a symbiosis, like that offered and freely accepted by a reformed Nictus and its partner in the Warshad pairing. With one critical difference, however: none of the altruism with which a Warshade acted was present in this pair. Vr'ai'l'oin was far from reformed, and Lily Carpenter was no hero. The bitter, desperate anger against a Fate that had condemned her to dying young still drove her, still warped her sense of what was right and what was wrong. No hero, she...

They'd lasted six months.

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Lily raised her head at the sound of an approaching vehicle. A bus.

"More grist for the mill." A smile devoid of the slightest trace of humor passed across black-limned lips.

Bravo!

A very enjoyable read...my compliments.

I rather liked the previous thread, and I really liked the character I made for it (Death Nell still exists in-game). But it became just another combat thread, basically, and I lost interest.

The conventional wisdom is that it's Virtue, and there's certainly a good RP community there. However, I've not found there to be significanltly more RP'ers there than on Triumph or Guardian. This is particularly the case if you subtract the "sit around in Gemini Park and unleash an avalanche of angst" style of RP...and I do.

For better or worse, RP'ers are pretty well scattered around the servers.

FWIW, I RP with all my characters (over 50 active toons). Feel free to flip me a /tell, in-game. My Global is @Dollhouse.

With a dramatic flourish of her hand, Morgan Calloway keyed the last "Ctrl+S" to save the outline of her marketing campaign for the new Z-Chip program. The announcement had taken her by surprise - to her considerable annoyance - but the chip itself was a marketer's dream. Sure, there were alarming, almost sinister aspects, if one considered the military possibilities of complete weather control. And it wasn't as if her plan ignored those possibilities, with a strategy for approaching several polities without (she hoped) violating an US technology export restrictions.

The marketing upsides were breathtaking. Drawing on her memory of some European history classes she'd taken as an undergrad, Morgan recalled that the warm period that preceded the Fourteenth Century's "mini ice age" had been referred to as the "Time of Plenty." This had formed the basis of her overall theme: "Ushering in a new Age of Plenty."

This campaign, this product, coudln't miss. Morgan's opinion of her stock options, which she had previosulyu though to be too large a portion of her compensation package, rose considerably.

Her stomach rumbled. SHe realized with twin shocks both that it was lunchtime already...and that she had outlined a complete marketing plan for a company-critical product in the course of three hours.

"Some plans just make themselves," she mused as she locked down her laptop.

((No way I can (or, more precisely, care to) keep up with this posting pace...but I'll pop in to catch up when I can. Enjoy...this is a fun thread!))

The white-masked Master Illusionist floated just above the welcome mat at the front door, resplendant in her Elizabethan finery. She held the hand of the small Carnie girl as she spoke to Essex.

"Thank you for caring for Lili during the...troubles. It means more to us than I can properly express. Call on the Carnival of Light, should you ever need us." She glanced down at the child, the affection showing in her eyes even as the mask hid the rest of her expression. "Come along, mon petit...we're going home."

Morgan Calloway sipped her breve' and mused on the wildly varying signals being sent by the body language of the meeting attendees. Moreover, she marveled at the tremendious variation in awareness of the signals being sent by every person in the room. Some were clearly aware, obviously (to her) making every effort to send precisely the signals they thought best. Others were almost painfully aware, their emotions worn on their shirtsleeves.

Why was all of this so obvious to her? Her musings took on an introspective note as the moments drew on. It seemed to her that she had always been able to read people, and to read how they reacted to her (and adjust her own presentation accordingly).

She'd had to. Petite, fair-haired, and with a turned up, elfin nose and a faint dusting of freckles on her cheekbones, Morgan Calloway was practically the dictionary definition of "cute." Not beautiful or elegant...cute. Unless she took steps to offset it, she was continually being dismissed as a perky decoration. People saw "cute," and missed the agile, focused mind and the iron will beneath.

Not that anyone in this room was likely to make that mistake. Morgan had, at 31, become one of the youngest Vice Presidents of Marketing in any major corporation through a combination of hard work and incandescent talent. And a not-inconsiderable skill at corporate politics, based in no small part on her almost uncanny ability to read people. If she didn't know better (she'd been tested), she'd have sworn she had some sort of paranormal abilities in that regard. But that was silly. She wasn't a "meta."

Snapping out of her musings as the meeting looked about to come to order, Morgan assured herself that her laptop was on the network and ready to help her instantly fetch any marketing info that might be called for. She had no firm idea of teh agenda for the meeting, which bothered her. But when the bigg(er)-wigs elected to be mysterious, there wasn't much the not-quite-so-big-wigs could say about it. One adapted.

"We could beat up the boy's side any day. Right Lili?"

Lili wrinkled her very prominent nose in a grin and waved her hand at the boys dismissively. "They're gross!" Then she lifted her chin and added magnanimously, "But I suppose we can let them play...we want to have enough to have some real fun!"

Morgan Calloway carefully eased her Audi into her reserved parking spot in the "executive" portion of the lot. It shouldn't have been an act requiring any particular care, given the diminutive dimensions of her TT100 and the comparatively generous size of the spaces. But as usual, Stephen VanLoosen's ridiculous Hummer was encroaching on her space. Bad enough that Van Loosen's rolling testament to conspicuous consumption took up more space and consumed more resources than it had a right to, but the oblivious creep never could manage to park straight.

"Christ, how small does it have to be to drive an overcompensation-mobile like that," she murmured as she made her way towards the front door, Damiro briefcase under her arm, cardboard drink carrier loaded with two cups in her hand. She glanced at the S-class Benz in Mr. Tharomar's reserved spot and her exasperation faded, turning into a sly smile. Clarence Thomas was not going to be a happy camper this morning. And that was okay.

Glancing up as she passed the guardpost, she wiped every trace of slyness out of her smile as the guard greeted her.

"Good morning, Ms. Calloway."

"Good morning to you, too, Khell. Don't rat me out for being late!"

"Wouldn't think of it, Ms. C."

Just banter, of course...and it's not like the VP of Marketing was on the clock. But what an easy thing it was to cultivate goodwill among the employees...all of them. Some of her fellow execs just couldn't be bothered to learn the name of someone like a "lowly" security guard. Idiots. They had no idea how important word of mouth was, how "viral marketing" worked. And they had no conception of the fact that everything is marketing. Everything.

Her secretary's desk was empty, but her computer was up and running, her purse slung over the back of the chair. Morgan set a steaming Starbuck's cup beside the blotter and walked into her office. Time to check her e-mail...and the RSS feeds that kept her appraised of what Crey, Portal, and the rest were up to.

More, please!