Hi! I've just thought this up with some inspiration from a HTTYD fanfiction known as Nightfall. It's an interesting read and I encourage you to check it out sometime.
This is my first attempt at an RP prompt, so feel free to clarify parts -- in either the thread itself or via PM, though I would prefer PMs -- if you don't understand what I'm saying or think that I'm being overly vague. I want it to be as clear as can be!
You could -- and probably should -- also ask me to relax things, since I have a tendency to overthink things or put bars up too high and will probably act the same way here... so go ahead and call me out on it, I don't bite often. (Even if I do it's probably just nibbles.)
This RP is going to be
[*]Xenofictional: This is a TV Tropes term, I'm fairly sure, so I can link it to you here or just explain it to you. It's a trope where the story (partially) takes place from the perspective of an inhuman creature. That means that the ways the character acts or thinks or speaks will be fairly alien to the way a human does the same things. They may not have the words for concepts that are intuitive to a human being, and they may have concepts that humans don’t have the words for. Seeing as in this RP a human will be interacting with a feral beast, expect some culture shock.
[*]Fantastic: Not in the "great" sense -- though I hope it will be -- but it's a general fantasy setting. The humans haven't yet harnessed electricity, fire is used for light, they live in villages instead of cities, and the world is overrun with sentient-maybe-sapient bat-beasts called harpies. Getting to that last bit.
[*]Harpies: Kind of like the person in this tutorial when it comes to the wings. Or maybe like Greek-harpy/bats? They're humanoid creatures that have membranous wings, tails (which attach to said membranes), fur, and are about 4 feet tall when upright. Curious opportunistic predators, but they're seen as pests by the resident village for killing livestock to eat and now shy away from human contact when not hunting during the night. Still, a fully-grown harpy’s fangs and talons could inflict dangerous wounds, especially to a young human.
[*]Slice of Life-ish: It deals with two creatures who have a language barrier with both sides thinking that the other may be dangerous. The main conflict will probably be the two of them trying to understand one another, making and breaking boundaries, and starting to trust. (Then maybe something comes along that they need to trust each other to defeat. That's just if this RP actually gets that far.)
I'm overthinking this thing, huh? If I do more with this I might as well write a novel.
... *keeps writing*
One of the settings is in a village that's been pestered by harpies for decades now, as a flock of them roost in a cave on a sheer cliff that overlooks the village. The village is in a pretty rocky clearing near the edge of the cliff, and to its north is a thick forest, not moist enough to be a marsh but pretty wet all the same. The south becomes a rough, slightly moist terrain with rock piled up into hills and the occasional mossy cave, working its way south with a few streams scattered here and there until it smooths out into sand as the ocean comes into view.
Nobody has been able to get up the cliff and find the harpies; they just know that the creatures flee up the cliff after raids. Most of the characters in the village are background props; they can hate harpies and want them gone, they could be the friends of the human char, they could be the everyday layman, etc. Blank slates you could work with.
The other setting is to the south of the village in a cave embedded in one of the hills. It is a while’s walk from the village, and the cave itself is rather small. The hill it’s in is to the west of a clear, fast-running stream, about thigh-deep at its worst.
The plot starts when a young harpy gets lost on the way back to the flock’s roost on its first hunting raid, and it tears its wing fighting a village protector, rendering it unable to fly. The harpy flees to the south and hides in a small cave, waiting for its wing to heal and unable to hunt.
The human character then happens across the young harpy and decides not to kill it. Maybe it was just too small to be a threat, maybe it looked too pitiful a prize, maybe they were feeling sympathetic. For whatever reason, they decide that it could be interesting to watch the flightling. Thus begins a tenuous interspecies “friendship.”
So. I'm planning to improve this so that it doesn't look too intimidating... but for now I'm wondering if anyone would like to be the human character? ('
)
This is my first attempt at an RP prompt, so feel free to clarify parts -- in either the thread itself or via PM, though I would prefer PMs -- if you don't understand what I'm saying or think that I'm being overly vague. I want it to be as clear as can be!
You could -- and probably should -- also ask me to relax things, since I have a tendency to overthink things or put bars up too high and will probably act the same way here... so go ahead and call me out on it, I don't bite often. (Even if I do it's probably just nibbles.)
This RP is going to be
- Detailed: I'm looking for at least three moderate-length paragraphs that can describe the situation your character is in, incorporates their surroundings, gives your character emotion, and generally gives me something to work off of.
I've written three paragraphs full of just the mental aspect before and, though I think it's really fun, it doesn't give the other character much to react to.
- Same thing goes if your character shows no emotion whatsoever. Also, it could get into the uncanny valley pretty fast and throw off the game.
- Try to keep your grammar/spelling up and make sure that it's all legible, please!
[*]Xenofictional: This is a TV Tropes term, I'm fairly sure, so I can link it to you here or just explain it to you. It's a trope where the story (partially) takes place from the perspective of an inhuman creature. That means that the ways the character acts or thinks or speaks will be fairly alien to the way a human does the same things. They may not have the words for concepts that are intuitive to a human being, and they may have concepts that humans don’t have the words for. Seeing as in this RP a human will be interacting with a feral beast, expect some culture shock.
[*]Fantastic: Not in the "great" sense -- though I hope it will be -- but it's a general fantasy setting. The humans haven't yet harnessed electricity, fire is used for light, they live in villages instead of cities, and the world is overrun with sentient-maybe-sapient bat-beasts called harpies. Getting to that last bit.
[*]Harpies: Kind of like the person in this tutorial when it comes to the wings. Or maybe like Greek-harpy/bats? They're humanoid creatures that have membranous wings, tails (which attach to said membranes), fur, and are about 4 feet tall when upright. Curious opportunistic predators, but they're seen as pests by the resident village for killing livestock to eat and now shy away from human contact when not hunting during the night. Still, a fully-grown harpy’s fangs and talons could inflict dangerous wounds, especially to a young human.
[*]Slice of Life-ish: It deals with two creatures who have a language barrier with both sides thinking that the other may be dangerous. The main conflict will probably be the two of them trying to understand one another, making and breaking boundaries, and starting to trust. (Then maybe something comes along that they need to trust each other to defeat. That's just if this RP actually gets that far.)
I'm overthinking this thing, huh? If I do more with this I might as well write a novel.
... *keeps writing*
One of the settings is in a village that's been pestered by harpies for decades now, as a flock of them roost in a cave on a sheer cliff that overlooks the village. The village is in a pretty rocky clearing near the edge of the cliff, and to its north is a thick forest, not moist enough to be a marsh but pretty wet all the same. The south becomes a rough, slightly moist terrain with rock piled up into hills and the occasional mossy cave, working its way south with a few streams scattered here and there until it smooths out into sand as the ocean comes into view.
Nobody has been able to get up the cliff and find the harpies; they just know that the creatures flee up the cliff after raids. Most of the characters in the village are background props; they can hate harpies and want them gone, they could be the friends of the human char, they could be the everyday layman, etc. Blank slates you could work with.
The other setting is to the south of the village in a cave embedded in one of the hills. It is a while’s walk from the village, and the cave itself is rather small. The hill it’s in is to the west of a clear, fast-running stream, about thigh-deep at its worst.
The plot starts when a young harpy gets lost on the way back to the flock’s roost on its first hunting raid, and it tears its wing fighting a village protector, rendering it unable to fly. The harpy flees to the south and hides in a small cave, waiting for its wing to heal and unable to hunt.
The human character then happens across the young harpy and decides not to kill it. Maybe it was just too small to be a threat, maybe it looked too pitiful a prize, maybe they were feeling sympathetic. For whatever reason, they decide that it could be interesting to watch the flightling. Thus begins a tenuous interspecies “friendship.”
So. I'm planning to improve this so that it doesn't look too intimidating... but for now I'm wondering if anyone would like to be the human character? ('
)
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