And here we are.

New OOC is up, new thread is coming. Your trials are over and it's about time to start the main plot. In game, we shall have a rest period of pure RP. It'll add up to three days. You may all create for yourself, or RP with others in creating, a single tool to aid you all in battle. For example, Jared has expressed intentions of working with Awakener to make a bag of endless holding to keep his creations in. By no means do you need to create one, but you may.

It's also time for Shift Upgrades. As will be explained in game, you have two options. You may either feed your Ether into your Shifts for an unguided upgrade (which will be decided by me and thus be more powerful) or do the same but Guide where the Ether goes, meaning you choose what your upgrade does and how it effects your Shift, but the results will be a little less potent.

Either way, from then on out your Shifts have a small chance at opening. The first opening is easier, of course, and the more you level your Shift, the greater the chances of it opening. You may also use an action in battle to try and make it open, but at just it's first upgrade it'll be a really low chance. It can also happen on it's own. Once it opens once, you can open your Shift again at any time.

After our break, we hit our 4th mission - at the end of which you'll have your first Full Upgrade, where you get to choose where your points go ^_^

I'll also be contacting you all for some choice background information, as I want to start building some player arcs for later.

If you wish to RP a conversation with Athena during this break, I'm open to that as well. If you wish to RP with each other in chat and have someone post it in thread, go for it.

Working on the new thread now!

Alexis' "closer look" involves echolocation and his Sonic rune, with the effect of doing an ultrasound of Serpico's insides. It's useful for medical work.

Poor Serpico. Alexis doesn't even acknowledge his response on being taken to his room.

And I get into work, still sick as a dog, and smile at all the wonderful posts I've read.

You guys are amazing. Keep up the good work and this game will be running a long time to come. Soon as everyone posts, regardless of Shift picking or not, I'm going to set a night to pass. In the morning, those who upgraded will have the results. I'll also be approaching you all, be it on Skype or PMs, for some personal RP time with Athena that you can either post or keep private, depending on your taste. As I said, this is about character growth before the next world.

Expect some questions too about background stuff if I haven't asked already.

Tonight I'll also be posting a small summary of stuff I've gotten from people thus far, in case anyone is interested. (non-spoiler variants)

Mainly because Serpico is no longer on Alexis' list of Things To Be Seriously Worried About (which currently includes Mr. Tattered-cloak and M.U.S.E.). Also partly because Serpico was quick with the door, and Alexis is tired enough to be a bit slow to respond.



Yay!

I'm not ready to RP Asch's new Shift Upgrade yet, but I do have a good idea of where I'll be taking it.

The upgrades wont be due till the end of our little RP break, before world 4.

Chandi may want to note Lumina's shift hasn't actually opened - it's just been upgraded. If I didn't make that clear, sorry. They have chances at opening now, but for the moment they are just stronger.

I'm so confused by these things.

Alexis has had a busy morning.

Expect updates from me tonight -- I want to get Lumina and whomever else is going to Ryuseii's world and move us forward a day.

Any sign of Draco? The Awakener has been quite silent during all of this.

"Ja nee" (pronounced more-or-less "Yaa near") would be Afrikaans for "Yes no". That was the first thing to come to my mind when reading that.

Himi - there's a couple of things Alexis would like to talk to Asch about. I don't know if you'll be on the chat while I can be on (probably about nine to thirteen hours after this post); if not, maybe we could arrange the scene via PM?

Heh. 'Ja ne' - pronounced jah ney - is something similar to 'see you', in Japanese. It's a shortened form of 'ja, mata ne', which is essentially 'see you later'. Similarly, 'mata poop' is 'see you tomorrow'. Generally either is said only to friends. Interestingly, I've seen the English word 'bye' (as in shortened form of goodbye) used instead of sayonara.

Anyways, in this case it's another thing of Harmony having something randomly pop up from a memory and not knowing where it came from.

Aaargh. This plus.im client is aggravating, annoying, exasperating, frustrating, infuriating, trying and vexatious. It drops the connection at regular intervals, for no understandable reason (whether or not I'm in the middle of a conversation at the time), and sometimes seems to refuse to connect at all (including, sometimes, when it's just been connected a minute before).

It abruptly dropped my connection an hour ago, for no reason that I can fathom, and I've been unable to reconnect since then. As I'm sure you can imagine, this has left me rather irritated (and probably a little prone to ranting, which is somewhat counterproductive). Does anyone by any chance happen to know of any other alternatives that might work?

Rog-Limitation: The White Rune Blade

A brief foray into something a bit more abstract

The Book

The Awakener, having somehow lost its mask, finds a helmet instead

Alexis' foot: three 'fingers', two 'thumbs'

The tip of Alexis' tail. With steering fins.

I'm pretty sure Serpico's version was better drawn than this

...I've really been getting into this whole 'drawing' thing.