DEATHGAME 9000 [S!3] Round Two: Interplanetary Circus

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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“Gentlemen,” a voice coldly intoned, “I bid you to venture out into the multiverse and find for me eight suitable candidates; eight veritable paragons of power or skill. Bring them to me wherein I shall inter them into the most awful, most brutal battle ever designed; a battle… for their very lives!”

If the owner of the voice in question had expected awed whispers or an audible gasp, he was to be disappointed by the stony silence it received. He clenched his fist and narrowed his eyes as he attempted to stare down his irritatingly inert gentlemen. After a full minute of non-responsiveness he balked.

“Curse you wretched automata!” He cried. “I’ll have you melted down for scrap metal and then, then I’ll hurl the entire scrapyard into the burning depths of the nearest star, you hear me?!”

A continued lack of response caused The Incompetent to angrily stride towards his nearest creation and land a kick upon its shin. This was immediately followed by a short vocalisation of pain and the disinclination to step the foot in question back upon the floor. He hopped over to a chair and sat himself down. When the pain had eventually subsided he turned his attention back to his gentlemen; he sighed. Things just never seemed to go his way. Take for example his grandmaster status; it had only come about as the freak result of an experiment to produce a infinite supply of cheesits. And while it was far from the most catastrophic mistake he had ever made, it still irritated him that no matter how he thought about that experiment he could never quite explain just how this had happened. He suspected that his new neon orange skin colour was a direct result of the whatever it was that had happened.

With a multitude of new powers and little to no idea how to actually use them, it was not long before he became aware of the Grandmaster community at large, or put another way, it was not long before the Grandmaster community became aware of him. He was not exactly welcomed into the fold with open arms, and unless he was managing to accidentally fuck up something they were invested in they deigned to more or less ignore him. But he was not going to let a little thing like a collective unwillingness to interact with him get in the way of what seemed like a most interesting pastime; he sought to host a battle of his very own.

His first attempt at doing so had been so disastrous that no sentient being had ever expressed an interest of being one of his Gentlemen again. This had been something of a problem. Eventually he had hit upon the idea that he was, at this specific point in time trying to make work; robot gentlemen. His first batch, based on his own design, were at the very least mobile. Unfortunately for him, and for the potential battler they had gathered, they had a propensity to unexpectedly and catastrophically explode. After a number of setbacks he was eventually forced to admit that he needed help. A grandmaster by the name of The Machinist had been reluctant to part with the schematics for his own gentlemen, and when I say reluctant I mean The Incompetent had to steal them. Even so most of the construction and design of the Gentlemen who now stood before him had been guesswork due to an accidental spillage of coffee ruining the bulk of the blueprints.

The Incompetent having collected his thoughts gathered up his tools and made a few modifications to the mechanical gentlemen. It was not without a considerable amount of persistence that he was able to coax them into something resembling working order. Eventually they stood assembled before him, ready to receive their orders.

“Gentlemen,” he intoned as melodramatically as he could, “you are tasked with going out into the multiverse, into it’s vast and uncharted depths, and finding me eight of the most powerful or most interesting beings in all of existence. Bring them to me so that they might fight the most gruelling, the most treacherous battle ever devised… DEATHGAME 9000!”

It was at the end of this burst of theatricality that he became rather embarrassingly aware that they had all already left. He adjusted his glasses and glanced around the empty room, as if to ascertain that nobody had seen that.

SpoilerShow

SO WHAT IS THIS?
This is a Grand Battle. It is a collaborative writing contest wherein eight characters are forced into a battle to the death. It consists of seven rounds with one character being eliminated at the end of each round. Though it seems to suggest otherwise these battles are not really about fighting or who has the most powerful character. They are judged upon who is the best writer, and while some fighting is inevitable in a battle to the death, the thing I find more interesting is interaction between characters that would never normally meet, in locations they would never normally get a chance to go.

Here are some potentially helpful links:

• Season Intermission Organization Thread – Planning information for the rest of the battles in this season.
• Grand Battles Introduction/Planning Thread – Though it is primarily focused around a different continuity than the one featured in this season, the basic information it has on Grand Battles should still be relevant.
• Grand Battle Wiki

RULES AND SHIT
Standard Grand Battle rules apply;

• Do not kill off other competitors (unless I guess it is deathpost time and you have been authorised to kill off a character on someone else’s behalf).
• Do not inflict major injuries on other competitors unless you have spoken to them beforehand and they have agreed to what you want to do.
• Good co-operation is essential. Don't go around fucking up other people's plans just because, but on the other hand don't plan too rigidly that it makes it difficult for other people to do things.
• If you are writing a post you think will take some time you can post a reserve, during which nobody else should be writing for the battle so as to prevent conflicts. Strictly speaking these reserves last twenty four hours, after this people may hold off for a while after that, out of courtesy but if they wanted to post they could do so. If you’re going to take a long time on a reserve and you really don’t want people to post over it, the best way is probably to stay in touch with the other players; make it clear you are working on it and it is coming along and you will probably get some leeway.

HOW THIS IS JUDGED
As I mentioned before this is contest is all about writing well. At a very basic level this constitutes correct grammar and all that kind of thing (though that said I would prefer to see an interesting character with slightly dodgy grammar than a boring character with perfect grammar). Once you have that down it is mainly about a) making and developing an interesting character and b) interacting with and writing for other characters.

APPLICATIONS
I’m keeping applications open for a week. There may be a little wiggle room allowed for the fulfilment of reserves but broadly speaking this is open for a week. This is probably the only part of this entire block of writing anyone has actually read. Here’s the profile.

Username: Your username. Included here because it doesn’t feel like a grand battle profile without it.
Name: Your character’s name. What do we call them?
Sex: Male or female? Or more likely both, neither or undecided.
Race: If your character is of a non-standard race please feel free to include a description of their race in general.
Colour: Choose a text colour for your character. You can if you want go for a background colour as well. Do try to bear in mind that text colours serve little to no real function in battle and there’s very little point messing around trying to get the perfect colour. #DF8000 is taken.
Description: Here you write a description of your character’s appearance and their personality. Pictures can be used if you want but are not necessary.
Items/Abilities: What cool powers does your character have?
Biography: Tell us about stuff that has happened in your character’s life.
Writing Sample: This is an optional section. I guess if you are new it would help with the process of choosing who gets in, but it is kind of prohibitive and I'm certainly not going to disqualify you for not providing one. Essentially this section is here in case you want to do it, or if you feel that perhaps writing a profile does not do justice to your writing or your character (profiles are rarely representative) and you use this as a way to demonstrate what you are capable of, or something. If you don't want to do this section, just forget about it.

PLAYER LIST:
1. Lynette Spettro and Vigil - #D94600 - Solaris - Profile
2. Gomorrah - #525252 on #FFFFFF - -Benedict - Profile
3. Dr. Trisha Bearonrollerblades - #802A2A - Lord Paradise - Profile
4. Weaver16 - #206C60 - Snowyowl - Profile
5. ER/IC - #708090 - Jacquerel - Profile
6. Keagan Lambert- #003300 - Drakenforge - Profile
7. Jolene Kamiensky - #CC0000 - Momatoes - Profile
8. Eris - #FFFF00 on #808080 - Adenreagan - Profile

Here are the colour codes in an easy to copy and paste format.

Here is a plotting/planning document for keeping track of plans or what is going on in the battle.