The Grand OC SII: The Re-OCening: Week 29: UNINTELLIGIBLE!

well, shit, everyone else is being dwellings and/or vehicles, why should i be the one to break the combo

Puzzle / Plane

Username: Benedict
Name: Ark.Theseus
Species: Spaceship
Gender: Not really
Color: #7812e5

Biography:
Ark.Theseus was originally built by a dying world to carry the backed-up minds and DNA of desperate colonists to a habitable planet, where they would be revived. Unfortunately, the habitable planet chosen actually was inhabited, by a species of small primitive eight-legged ferret things with approximately primate intelligence. On landing, Ark.Theseus was immediately taken apart by a curious troop of xenoferrets who had no idea what they were doing.

Ark.Theseus's onboard AI- or, not so much an AI as a mind-meld of the backed-up colonists- defended itself by using the technology originally designed to load the colonists' minds into cloned bodies. The xenoferrets taking apart the ship had copies of the colonists injected into their tiny brains, which... failed to perfectly take root. They acquired the directive to pilot the ship to a new habitable planet (ignoring the fact that they were already on one), and they got a partial understanding of the ship's operation on top of incomplete personalities. Unfortunately, this was enough knowledge for them to finish dismantling the colonist backups- not understanding what they'd done.

Description:
Ark.Theseus is a modular spaceship. It wasn't originally a modular spaceship- it just got taken apart beyond real repair by its crew of brainwashed uplifted xenoferrets, and now they're desperately trying to keep the damn thing from falling apart in the void of deep space. It used to be all sleek purple curves, but now it's mostly exposed machinery and jury-rigged life support bubbles. What remains of the AI is preoccupied with keeping the xenoferrets from breaking anything oh god what are you doing don't touch that AAAGH

The fifty or so xenoferrets occupying Ark.Theseus are furry, eight-legged creatures with oversized ears and eyes. They're each roughly a foot long. They can understand language, to some extent, but have a hard time following anything too complicated- you'll need to talk slowly and avoid too many big words to get anything across. They have a single-minded interest in surviving, reaching a habitable planet, and settling down. They have a little religion where they each worship the colonist whose incomplete memories and personalities they've inherited, as a sort of precursor whose will needs to be interpreted and followed.

Weapons/Abilities:
The xenoferrets have fairly sharp claws, and the advantage of numbers. Ark.Theseus has some laser cannons for deflecting asteroids, but they're on the fritz and take roughly half the crew and five minutes to fire. It can hover, fly, project shields, and do your standard spaceship stuff- but generally only one thing at a time. Reconfiguring the ship to fire weapons is different from reconfiguring the ship to fly is different from reconfiguring it for shielding is different from etc. etc. etc. and takes a few minutes and the whole ship's crew to do without risking collapse.

The xenoferrets are also capable of cannibalizing parts of the ship to improvise new capabilities- maybe they could build a teleporter, maybe they could build a hologram projector, maybe they could build an electromagnet. Doing so means navigating a mess of technobabble and, of course, taking up time and manpower and risking breaking the ship (moreso than usual). If they have the assistance of someone knowledgeable, though, they're capable of following instructions to equip the ship with just about any sort of fancy futuristic device.

Username: Come on and slam
Theme: Commute+Thrall
Name: Alain Wisteric
Gender: Male
Race: A compelling argument for rigorous necromantic education
Text Color: Higan-bana

Description: Alain sits a comfortable 16 hands at the shoulder, astride a mount roughly 13 hands tall. His "horse" is actually a many-legged mess of several animal skeletons, with all the tendons and musculature replaced by bundles of soulvine. Moss manages to grow where the underlying tissue doesn't flex too much; the sporecaps on the moss glow like foxfire in low light. The skull is mostly obscured with an explosion of spider lilies; the stamens twitch whisker-like toward interesting smells and sounds. The skulls of a couple smaller animals sitting at the base of the steed's neck sport a similar infloresence.

Given the mismatch of leg bones it's picked up, some of the longer ones started bending to accomodate, giving it a tarantula-like gait. It normally ambles along, but can pick up speed if it senses Alain panicking.

Alain is in slightly better shape, though the soulvine has worked its way through most of his lower body and torso. When he closes his eyes, he sees the coil of spider-lily petals on his eyelids. He wears the official dark green cloak of apprentice necromancers, and his hands and lower arms are wrapped securely in Silk-of-the-Veil. Only his fingertips are exposed, and these have pale rootlike hairs that wave around when he places them near his mount.

Weapons+Abilities: Alain can control the steed's movement by placing his fingers on it. It can accept instructions like moving toward a specified location/person that Alain knows, or walking toward more abstract concepts like safety or sanctuary.

Alain also has a hunting knife at his belt, and a bow and quiver strapped within arm's reach to either side of the steed. He's got about a dozen arrows left, and knows how to use 'em. Neither Alain nor the steed are much good at close combat, though the soulvine has a habit of engulfing and strangling whatever tries to assault it, then stashing the remains in one of its multiple rib cages for digestion.

The soulvine has replaced a fair bit of Alain's muscle mass. If he cut himself free he'd have perhaps an hour or so of free movement before the severed vines began to dissolve into shadow. On the upside, he's slow to tire or hunger and can sleep sitting up straight on his mount no problem.

The steed is powered by a Dying Wish, the energy signature produced by particularly powerful mages when they die.

Biography: Alain should've had another twelve years or more learning the necromancy trade from his father, but some bandits cut his education short. His father's last words were to take Rattan, their cart"horse" sunning itself by the nearby pool, and run.

There was so much Alain had yet to learn. Of soulvine constructs, he'd learned the fundamentals and the few basic do's and don'ts to stay safe around them, but only as stern commands and not with any kind of deep theoretical knowledge.

He'd been told not to tack up Rattan for long durations without gear lined with Silk-of-the-Veil, had been too distressed and exhausted and fallen asleep in the saddle and the one thing he remembered when he woke up stiff was that soulvine never hurt as it absorbed its food. He had to tear his arms free, wrap them in Silk to make sure they wouldn't stick more permanently.

When a cold wind struck his back and Rattan's skull was aburst with flowers, Alain knew his father was dead. He's been wandering the wilderness since, a scared abomination, with little hope of finding someone who could safely disentangle him.

Shame + Commute

Username: Agen of the morning after
Name: Esperance Heien
Gender: She/hers
Species: Depantheoned Goddess
Color: mmmmm

Biography: "mmmmmmmnnaAAAAHHHHH!"

Flump, flump. The feather-light sound of pillows settling into new dents in the silken mattress. "You're amazing."

"Not as amazing as you. In you. Stay the night?"

Rolling over. Sitting up, with the creak of springs in the bedframe. "I can't. My wife..."

"She won't know. Just say you worked late."

Creak. "Like the last three times?"

"Feminine intuition." She knew his wife wouldn't believe him. Pity. He had been good for a few weeks.

A push, back down into the mattress. "I..."

"Mmmm."

"I...!"

"Mmm."

And in the darkness, she smiled.

Description: Esperance is - was - a minor goddess, focused on the long walk home from a night at the brothel. In recent days she's not so much worshipped as cursed, but what's the difference to a deity? The mounting terror, the half-baked excuses, the divorces and the teasing - all of these are power to her.

Items/Abilities: She lures people in. As long as someone shuffles home, dragging their feet, almost crying with fear... she will have the powers of a goddess: immortality, supernatural attractiveness, persuasion. Pray the walks of shame never end, mortal.

Puzzle + Thrall

Username: Akumu

Name: Box of Mystery

Gender: Inanimate

Species: Lemurian remnant

Color: Indigo

Description: The Box of Mystery is a cube about five inches on a side. Its outer surface is highly variable.

Biography: Years upon years ago, in the now lost continent of Lemuria, the Box of Mystery was created as a psychic weapon. Lemuria didn't last very long after that.

Ability: The Box of Mystery emits mystic fields that induce pareidolia in nearby intelligent beings. Getting closer to the box strengthens the feeling that the environment contains significant patterns and a strong urge to decipher the meaning of these patterns. The surface of the box alters itself to contain hidden information, creating a puzzle that incorporates itself and the surroundings. The box has a crude intelligence, specialized toward creating puzzles, but can piggyback on the additional minds under its influence to attain greater cleverness and extend its pareidolic fields. Its goal is to collect and distract as many thinking beings as possible, though it has no understanding of its purpose beyond that. As a failsafe, each puzzle created has an intended solution. After reaching this solution, the compulsion produced by the box is neutralized. However, as more people add their brainpower to trying to decipher the puzzle, the box becomes more clever and its puzzle ever more elaborate.

Username: Sai
Themes: Thrall, Harsh
Name: Federal Marshal Jon "Gentle" Gronk and the Darton Gang
Species: An orc, two dwarves, an elf, a human that thinks he’s a demon, and a cat that might actually be one
Gender: Male, male, male, female, male, female

The Darton Gang was the nastiest, meanest, dirtiest, killiest band of outlaws to ever run rampant in the New West.

When you're talking about the Darton Gang, you gotta start with the Dartons. That's right, there's two of them. A pair of dwarves that would as soon shoot your head off than listen to you, and tend towards packing the action to make it happen. In Dale Darton’s case, it’s a blunderbuss. Having stolen it off a squad of High Orc Dragoons, he never read the user manual instructing him to load it only with standard issue lead balls. As a result, the bore of the gun has been scored and scarred by the nails and gravel and whatever else he’s stuffed into it, making the already imprecise weapon even less accurate. Daniel Darton, by comparison, favors a pair of long barreled pistols, designed for halflings with a light calibre that produces little kick. When Daniel decides you need to be shot, you get shot all quiet like. Now what makes the pair so dastardly isn’t their predilection for violence - plenty of folk have that, and not a one of em ever got the singular Darton reputation. It isn’t even Daniel’s waxed moustache. No what makes the Dartons such a terror is their criminal cunning. They say that the brothers used to be nothing more than mine vultures, sneaking into other folks’ claims and taking the silver that was already near-dug. Then one day, Daniel (or it might’ve been Dale) came across a strange merchant. They say this merchant was a devil in disguise, selling goods of infernal origin for an earthly price. Well Dale (or it might’ve been Daniel) got while the getting was good, and bought themself an Elixer of Genius. Only the thing was, he only got to drink half of it before his brother swiped the bottle and drank the other half. Each of them got half the spark, which is more than most get, but it also left them stark mad. Any plan that the pair can agree on is sure to go off without a hitch, which makes it lucky for honest folk that the two are constantly fighting. That’s how Jon Gronk caught them, after all - but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Next up in this band of trouble is Windwhisper. She’s the muscle of the group, and as quick with her axes as your more genteel elves are with their bows and spellsongs. She fell in with the Dartons on account of following them out of a jailbreak, and she liked their work enough to stick with em. She don’t talk much, but then again she don’t need to, what with the constant bickering of the brothers she works with. While the gang may be named after the pair of dwarves and the jobs they pull might come out of their heads, Windwhisper’s usually the one to settle disputes. Part of it’s just on account of how the Dartons themselves can’t ever seem to agree, but Windwhisper’s got enough of a body count that when she tells you to shut up, you don’t take the time to argue.

And then there’s Maurice. If the Dartons are eccentric, Maurice is downright crazy. He’s an old man that seems to think he’s hell’s servant on earth, and is keen on causing as much mayhem as he can. Way I see it, he’s probably some miner who breathed in too much sulfur - he certainly got his skills with dynamite somewhere. As he is now, though, you’d believe he crawled out of some pit somewhere. Dale Darton (or it might’ve been Daniel) managed to convince him that he could cause more damage with a lifetime of robbery than just going up in smoke the once, but anyone can tell he’s got fuses going in his head.

Now while Maurice might think he’s a spawn of Satan, there’s a case to be made for that weird cat. It ain’t got a name I’d heard, other than just “That Cat,” but it’s been sighted at every Darton hijacking and heist since the pair got famous. Rumors are it’s the devil that sold them the brew out looking over its handiwork, but then again cats have always been drawn to trouble.

Now that we’ve gone over the villains of this piece, it’s time to say a word about our hero. Federal Marshal Gentle Gronk, born “Jon Gronk” out of the Hopestown Valley is about as noble of an orc as you’ll ever meet. Folks wouldn’t have taken him for a future lawman when he was growing up, on account of his picking fights with the Pinkertons, but then he got it into his head to make a change from the inside. People still had their doubts when he first ran for sheriff, and he had a pretty tight race against the old law dog Gerald Lefty, but after chasing off the bandits at Goody May’s farm using an old cannon as a long gun, well, he was a shoe-in. Soon enough he had the valley cleaned out, but the man wasn’t satisfied. Seemed he had it in his soul to try to clean up the whole of the West.

Now he wasn’t the first lawman to take a posse after the Darton Gang, but he was the one that caught them out. As far as how he did it, well, the Darton’s will be happy to tell it to you themselves. Fact of the matter was, though, that he did it out in the badlands, with no one but his posse and the bandits themselves within a hundred miles or more. Much too far from any jail that could hold them, he used a Scroll of Geas to lock the whole of the band to his word - a real heavy burden of a spell, even for an orc his size. Until they were delivered safely to the proper court of law, not a one of them could disobey his commands. He had the band setting up camp later that night, when Gentle Gronk and the four criminals just up and disappeared, and I’ll be damned if the cat didn’t go too.

Alright with 9 profiles in and me having the time to make this post I'm going to say anyone who still wants to join the contenders has 24 hours to get an entry in!

It's Awards Time!

The Kracht Saw It Coming Award goes to Dragon Fogel for King Otobus III of Pordobia, who was certainly in the race for other awards but ended up making a stop at this one. At least it seems he's got the drive to get his kingdom through a grand battle!

The Lucky VII All-Rounder Award goes to Ixcaliber, mostly because XYR-393 fits for a lot of awards (certainly a great incorporation of themes, and possibly an interesting mix with other entries should they die) but is just all-round an interesting battle contestant.

The First Five Eighths Sportsball Award goes to Pharmacy for Kaguya-Hime, both for incorporating the color field to actually mean something and UFO is a great species to run with.

The The Thomas Packston Elementalist Award goes to Schazer for Alain, the poor guy in thrall to his family's commuting aid. Integrating themes by unwillingly integrating your character into their themes (one of which involves unwillingness) and various other parts of this profile def. ticked the boxes for this one.

The Glere Award For Kitchen Sinkery goes to Benedict for Ark.Theseus, the stellar puzzle plane that I initially thought would be some sort of space-colonist-amalgam but A SUPER FUN TWIST HECK YES give me more of these xeno-memory-worshipping ferrets yesterday, please.

The Arnold Fogge's Actually Practical Award goes to Sai for Federal Marshal Jon "Gentle" Gronk and the Darton Gang, as this motley crew is sure to get up to all sorts of grand-battley hijinks even if that Geas doesn't start fraying at the edges immediately. With the ability to have multiple 'parts' of the character doing different things in different places at once, as well as an inbuilt conflict with Gronk's restraint and the Gang's hell-raising, they'd be sure to properly spice up any battle they end up in.

The GBS2 Award For Gratuitous Worldbuilding goes to Maxie for Inquisitor Ivivis Krospi, who while a solid entry for any award in Their Own Right (and they would likely believe They Deserve Every Award) seems to come from a character-populated and politically convoluted background I certainly wouldn't mind hearing more about.

The Convolution Teamfriendliness Cup goes to Akumu for the Box of Mystery, a puzzle box that profits and functions entirely off of synergy with the other candidates (and possibly other inhabitants of whatever battlezone they all end up in). I've always been a sucker for This Is Actually Just An Object battlers (props to The Vase) and this seems like a pretty cool twist on the idea.

And finally, the Space Jam Remix Prize For Cross-Thematic Cohesion goes to Agen's Esperance Heien for combining Shame and Commute in a way that didn't involve the obvious route of 'something embarrassing happening on public transport'. A solid entry!

That's it for the slightly-extended Week Twenty of GROC SII, take it away, whoever's next!

A brief note that the Box of Mystery entry is itself a small puzzle.

Since nobody else is coming forward for this round I'll take it. Because I'm predictable and respond well to pandering this week's theme is Mask.

Name: Nome D’Plume
Species: Fae
Gender: She/Hers
Color: Indiscernible

Description: Nome (Nome-Ee) has no true physical form and can best described as smoke in the rough shape of a humanoid. Anything she possesses (see Abilities) gets a few ornamental additions including a beaked domino mask, avian-centric finery, and an imposing countenance. Nome is can be described as “vampiric.” As a liminal creature, she naturally envies the living but with decades of solitude, that envy has been extended to anything remotely interesting. She can be charmingly eccentric but her fickle nature and need for control ensures whatever pleasantries developed will be brief as summer nights. Nome is not nice and caution should be advised when approaching her.

Abilities: Nome can possess literally anything. She is parasitic, consuming at her vessel’s existence. If left unchecked, the victim gradually fades away and leave no trace of soul or any means of recovery even through supernatural methods. However, Nome also gives a great blessing in the form of impossible charisma. Every unbelievable lie is as persuasive as truth. Every faux-pas more brilliant than the most cultured of formalities. You can kill a man but no one will bother to connect the dead body with you in that ridiculous bird get-up. Nome is the perfect murder weapon if you can handle the whole “eventual absolute annihilation” sort of deal.

Biography:

SpoilerShow

“D’PLUME! GET THE DAMN OUT OF HER!”

The woman slowly stood up and turned towards the Inquisitor. The feathers of her dress waved gently in the unfelt winds of the fallow-fields. Not a speck or smudge of dirt on her and in the dead of night, she practically glowed. She was breathtaking like an ancient forest and radiant like whatever nature-spirit dedicated inside. The Inquisitor felt her knees beginning to buckle, a thought itching at the back of her head to bend down, worship, and kiss at her feet. She refused to concede. Mere sorcery. It was the mask.

From the compounding evidence and the disappearance of several prominent figures, it was definitely the mask.

“Oh darling, darling,” the presence within the woman purred. Her lips did not move with the form of the words and the noblewoman’s voice, sing-song and twisted with mockery, did not seem to originate from her mouth. “I don’t understand why you think I did wrong.”

“People disappeared.”

“Those who deserve it.”

“And those who did not.”

“So what if they did not,” she shrieked as she turned for the terrifying. Smoke started to pouring out of her hair and ghostly talons wormed her way out beneath fingernails. “They took my queendom, slew my children. Locked me in a cage of cold iron.”

“D’Plume.”

“Unspeakable acts!”

“D’Plume –”

“So what if those I took do not come back? I told them and they understood. They helped. They helped.”

“D’Plume.”

“What! What other nonsense will you spill out of your wretched mouth?”

“The war was two decades ago. You don’t need to do this anymore,” the Inquisitor paused. “You can go back home.”

The woman started to convulse as clouds upon clouds of smoke started to pour out of her mouth. The Inquisitor could barely see her sword in the hand, let alone a strange creature peeling from its vessel like a butterfly from a chrysalis. She soon found herself hit with a tremendous force and knocked amongst the grain. Her head was pounding and her chest was hurting. She could barely recover her breath when she realized a line of fog, ominous and seething like a thunderstorm, rushing towards her. She could see a strange creature, not exactly avian, but not exactly human, coming towards her. It raised its hand and she raised her sword –

It was gone.

Username: Agenmom
Name: Mother Siege
Species: Witch
Gender: she/hers
Color: Fortification brown

Description: Ever felt trapped without knowing why? Ever looked out the window at an empty horizon and felt the urge to leap through? Ever, in short, had cabin fever without the cabin?

Then the withered hand of Mother Siege is upon your heart.

She lurks in corners, unnoticed, a stooped crone reaching only five feet tall, with long arms ending in skeletal hands. Give your Ma a hug, dear.

Items/Abilities: Siege - she claims it to be pronounced sie-ge, a hard g, but the traditional meaning applies just as well. People build walls around their hearts all the time, replacing their faces with indifference or false happiness. She just helps.

Weavers' hands, she calls them, those shriveled digits of hers, topped with brown, cracked fingernails that scuttle, spider-like, over the back of your neck. Pluck, pluck go your heartstrings. The warp and weft of dual misery and fear bind together, forming thread that weaves around your soul. She ties you to the job you hate, the partner you no longer love, the house you said you'd move from three years ago, but the rent is too high for you to afford the movers.

Biography: Still, you smile. This is fine.

Username: Stratocaster
Name: Dandizette and Quaintrelle
Species: Lesser Sphinxes
Gender: Gal pals
Color: Fops and Macaroni

Description: Large, serpentine creatures whose personalities and bodies can fill any space shy of a ballroom, The Sphinx Sisters are the life of any party, and were invariably the hosts of any party worth attending in Nikelean-era Lun Dune.

Charismatic, charming, and more or less inseparable, it's quite common for the two to be whispering and gossiping at each other - even mid-conversation with someone else. Each has four large soft paws, whiplike tails with a thick grasping tuft on the end, any odd number of birdlike wings, and long necks that end cylindrically with a white panel shaped like a human face. These panels are like marble to the touch, but flow smoothly into whatever expressions the sphinxes will 'em.

Dandizette is the more extroverted of the two. She ornaments herself with a great many ruby-red wings where wings should not be (including a great many small ones like a mane around her false face) theatrical gestures, and a morbid sense of humor. She knows everyone who's anyone and is happy to introduce you.

Quaintrelle is less likely to initiate conversations, though is quite happy to chatter with those who approach her first. She often crouches on her hind legs and keeps her forepaws free to play with whatever trinket's recently captured her imagination. Her matte sand-gold outfit is more subdued than her partner's in both hue and silhouette, though it's tastefully studded with red gems and glass.

The pair's throats are bedecked with dull white pearls embedded in their flesh. Dandizette's got an even sixty arranged in two tightly-packed rings, Quaintrelle's got a slightly-more spaced out twenty-three.

Items/Abilities: Dandizette and Quaintrelle trust each other utterly, mostly because they don't spend enough time apart to scheme. The possess a passive illusory magic which reinforces how normal it is to be talking with two twenty-foot-long socialites regardless of what actually passes for normal in a given person's experience. This power persists long after you've encountered them - this can make describing them to someone who's never met 'em a weird experience, but also encourages folks to bring their confused friend to meet them personally.

Being entities of Infernal Planar Energy mythical beings, they don't have to eat food, instead feeding off of attention. Their favorite is praise and adoration, so for most intents and purposes they'll be paragons of society and quite content doing so (as long as they've got each other). In a pinch though, they're happy to settle for notoriety if they know they've got a getaway prepared to haul them away from any consequences.

They're also very fond of puzzles and riddles, and any major favor they'll do for you is contingent on your either solving one of theirs, or in very rare cases teaching one they can't crack. Such exchanges are binding contracts, and the Sisters have every right to repossess your soul (and re-possess your vacant body with someone from their collection) if you can't find a solution. They'll release you as promised as soon as you provide them an answer, sure, but they'll feed off of your fear and frustration of them in the intervening years. Win-win!

Biography:

Velvet Wyrms are a nominally harmless variant of Infernal - a common sight in magic-infused urban spaces like Lun Dune and Steadfastipol. They coagulate into existence around Infernally-aligned magic, and make their group nests in tight, dark spaces. An infestation can be identified by the hollow praise they dole out to one another.

Largely unintelligent and exceptionally vain, their ability to grow and feed off of attention exacerbates the mischief they may make once men are aware they are the cause. Troublesome individuals are best removed by a trained demonologist, who will lure the Wyrm close with flattery before cutting its long neck off at the shoulder.

The creature's "false face" will form from its solidified innards at the site of decapitation. The now-neckless beast will have a healthy fear of humans and cease its mischief. In addition, when it returns to its nest its new appearance will be ridiculed and torn apart by its nestmates. The only substance capable of permanently harming or killing a Velvet Wyrm are its own teeth; these rapidly dissolve from the inside out when extracted so are largely useless as implements to fight them.

While mostly harmless, Velvet Wyrms like all Infernals grow larger and more intelligent the longer they survive. Inexpert decapitation may leave a Wyrm with enough neck to be immune to the criticisms of its pack, so pest removal is best left to expert hands.

Username: Another identity I hide behind
Name: The Tree of Masks
Gender: Tree
Race: Tree, technically any type of plant
Text Color: Dark green

Biography:
"Goddamn it!"
Mark Williams stormed out of the convenience store, tossing his apron at his former boss in disgust.
Another job lost. What the hell was this? He wasn't even doing anything wrong, everyone was just too damn cheap.
He walked down the street, barely even thinking about how he was going to afford rent next month. He just wanted someone, anyone, to give him a real chance.
But no one would, right? That was how this stupid world worked.
He sighed as he crossed the street and stared up at his apartment building. Wherever he worked next probably wouldn't be nearly as close to home, either.
Assuming he was able to even stay there.
Then, just as he walked by the hedge around the building, he noticed an odd flash of color.
That caught his attention. Hedges didn't have flowers, did they?
He took another glance, and saw a bright golden mask just sitting there amongst the hedge.
Huh. That couldn't be real gold, could it?
He reached towards it to take a closer look, but as his fingers touched the mask, a voice echoed in his mind.
Mark Williams. You have a choice. Do you accept this power, or reject it?
Mark blinked. There was nobody else around who could have said that.
Was it the mask... no, that was ridiculous.
But despite himself, he felt he had to answer the question. And with how his life had gone... well, there was only one answer he could give.
"I accept," he said, putting on the mask.
Within moments, Mark found himself wearing not just the mask, but a garish golden costume.
Whatever disappointment he might have had for his new wardrobe quickly faded, however, as he realized his body was crackling with electricity. Electricity at his command. He could do whatever he wanted with it.
Use the power as you will, said the voice. Just know there are others like you in this world.
"Yeah, I've seen the news," Mark said. "So you're where superpowers come from, huh?"
There was no response. Mark assumed the mysterious voice had just moved on.
He had no idea he would be the last in this world to gain such powers.

Description:
The Tree has no fixed form. Rather, it can manifest in any existing plant in the world it's in. (Subject to any boundaries a Grandmaster restricts it to.) Nonetheless, it always considers itself a tree, whatever its current shape.
Most of the time, the only way to identify the tree is by the fact that a mask will spontaneously appear on whatever plant it's currently inhabiting, whether that plant normally has growths or not.
Supposedly, the tree has a "true form" that it stays in to rest when it's not actively handing out masks. But such a form would be difficult to find.
The Tree is intelligent, but it's rarely prone to conversations. However, it's never been in a battle to the death before, so it may learn to adapt.
Despite its current situation, the tree appears to have no motive beyond granting powers to those it deems "worthy". Whatever that means.
It definitely doesn't seem to care if the recipients use their powers for good or for evil, or just sit around doing nothing.

Weapons and Abilities:
The Tree is tightly connected to the ecosystem of whatever world it ends up in. It can sense any plant and inhabit its physical form, though intelligent plants can force it out.
When manifesting, the Tree will grow a single mask on the plant. The mask will be designed to catch the attention of someone nearby.
If that person touches the mask, the Tree will speak to them, and ask if they want the power it can grant. If they agree, they will put on the mask and gain superpowers. Or perhaps it draws out latent powers within them. Nobody's entirely sure.
The Tree can command anyone who wears one of its masks, but it's never been known to do this unless under direct threat.

gonna say about 24 hours left on submitting good mask girls for me to fawn over

Username: El Wydre
Name: Lai Lee
Species: Human
Gender: Female
Colour: #6a0e1d
Description:
A short woman with a full face hidden by the hood of a plain brown cloak. Underneath, long black hair with strands of light grey and white flows down their scarred neck and back. Their eyes are cold and reveal nothing, save when they stare into the water to read the future.

When she observes water, it swirls and churns with colours and endless detail. Only Lai Lee can predict its flow, using it to read the future.

Weapons / Abilities:
Well-Placed Kick (Active): Lai Lee can read a weakness in an opponent and take advantage of it with a well-placed kick.
Danger Sense (Passive): Lai Lee feels uneasy if something bad is about to happen near her.
Read Waters (Active): Lai Lee can gaze into water to predict the future. Accuracy decreases the further she sees into the future. The future within 5 minutes has a near 100 % chance of accuracy.
Poker Face (Passive): Lai Lee conceals her feelings at almost all times, making it hard to tell both how she is feeling and whether or not she is lying.
Costly Influence (Active): Lai Lee can use up some of her energy to slightly alter the future (specifically random/semi-random events such as a die roll or the toss of a coin), with a greater cost depending on the adjustment. After a major adjustment, she is unable to move for an extended time. This ability also turns her hair white.

Biography:
Lai Lee is the illegitimate child of a lord. Her mother was a maid, who had run away upon discovery of her pregnancy. She raised Lai Lee alone, but died when Lai Lee was still young.

Lai Lee is an excellent gambler, making careful sums at each den before moving along. Even when confronted, Lai Lee would escaped unscathed and with even more then she had previously.

Lai Lee is a mysterious fortune teller, charging customers for encrypted secrets that often proved true.

Lai Lee is a black mailer, controlling many people of power through foreseen truths that beg to remain hidden.

Lai Lee is hollow. Lai Lee is porcelain. Lai Lee is not her name.

I'm a little late but what the heck ever I'm finally here to judge some awards.

The Convolution Teamfriendliness Award was a particularly tough award to decide upon a recipient this round, given that every one of the entries this round had interesting ways to interact with others, whether through innate powers, social manipulation or prediction of the future. Because they're all very good in this regard and I'm extremely indecisive everyone wins this award this time.

The Lucky VII All-Rounder Award goes to Mother Siege for an interesting and eerie profile that I enjoyed but which didn't grab me in any specific category.

The Thomas Packston Elementalist Award goes to Dandizette and Quaintrelle, for invoking (whether intentionally or just coincidentally) the twin masks of comedy and tragedy and being very good guests to invite to a masquerade.

(If there were mask puns that I missed I apologize but I'm extremely bad at spotting stealth puns, sometimes I'm pretty damn bad at spotting the obvious ones until a significant amount of time later when I'm just minding my own business and suddenly the penny drops.)

The Glere Award For Kitchen Sinkery goes to Lai Lee for surprising me with the mask like nature of her assumed identities.

Arnold Fogge's Actually Practical Award goes to Tree of Masks because I'm a sucker for battles with lots of NPCs and the Tree seems like a fun way to make some very interesting ones.

and finally the GBS2 Award For Gratuitous Worldbuilding goes to Nome D'Plume and actually the term Gratuitous doesn't really apply here. Nome has only very faint hints towards what her world is, but they are tantalizing and make me want to know more about her world and her history.

A good round, thanks everyone for these real good profiles!

ISLAND. You have a week.

Username: Agenland
Name: Ethridge
Species: World
Gender: None
Color: The green of grass

Description: You turn a corner, expecting to see more of the same dreary grey concrete, more of the identical facades receding into the horizon, more of the same, more of the same, more, more, more. The city has expanded so far, now, a cancer on the land, that people may go their entire lives not seeing anything different.

But you turn the corner, today, and the smell of loam comes rushing forward to greet you, like an old friend you'd not seen in forever. You almost don't recognize the color green, a color you'd not seen outside of advertisements, not the neon green of fructose-powered energy drinks or the olive green of military recruitment ads, but a fresh, varied green, unprogrammed by any analyst sitting in a grey cubicle in a grey building in a grey city.

Items/Abilities: Ethridge, a world hidden in the cracks of other worlds. A land compressed and secreted away, made from joy and contentment and all the things despair is not. Did you think the despair was universal? Did you not think the joy was gone forever? Neither joy nor despair can be created or destroyed, and Ethridge is where they go. A happy world will see Ethridge dark and foreboding, shuffling shades moaning in the streets, begging for dopamine, dopamine. A sad one will find relief, the sun shining, white walls and safety, friendly shades asking after your children.

Biography: It is land in an ocean you had not known you were drowning in. But even as you stay longer and longer, you begin to wonder: Is this Ethridge? Or was Ethridge the place you left behind?

Name: Ladybird Festival
Species: Humans
Gender: Lots
Colors: Many

Biography: The Ladybird Festival was a music festival intended to be hosted on Horseshoe Cove, one of the more popular tourist locale of the Broken Mirror Islands. It was widely anticipated no doubt due to its ruthless advertising on various social media and the word-of-mouth of celebrities and the turnout was frankly enormous despite its pricey tickets. Unfortunately, when the festival started, it turned for the worse.

There are many reasons: over-hype, miscommunication – but the keystone reason is due to the gross entitlement of the rich and the elite participants. They expected the best of the best, refusing accommodations, even life-saving ones, when it is below their unrealistic expectations. So they chose to be miserable despite modest services, chose to be stranded despite polite offers from locales, and they chose to stay, even when a falling star was zoning in their direction. When the dust settled (do not worry, the rest of the Earth is okay, it was a small star), the Ladybird Festival was completely gone. News were recorded, people mourned but not as much as they intend to.

They were terrible, terrible people.

Description: The survivors of the Ladybird Festival are a forty-three-strong group of upper or upper middle-class dilettantes who have achieved some sort of fame or fortune to afford this disaster. They are of all shapes, sizes, and temperaments.

All of them have glowing blue eyes for some reason. They look like stars.

Anyway, some individuals may be genuinely decent people but that’s sort of like finding a needle in the haystack. The Ladybird Festival as a whole group are a bunch of assholes, but not the particularly clever, courageous, or charismatic kind. They tend to move as a group (or smaller sub-groups), organized under people of particularly forceful personalities. There are currently three: Chaz Chadington III Esq. (a party animal who lives out of his trust fund), Melody Mercurial (a D-star singer who did her lion’s share of advertising), and Elizabeth Evanson (full-time entrepreneur and part-time pseudointellectual). Stranded (or exiled) individuals tend to stay put but are more receptive to outside help and put more effort in being polite. Probably because they don’t want to die.

Abilities: Strength in numbers. If they could manage to put aside their differences and stop mourning about how spotty the wi-fi is, they are actually pretty terrifying as a group. Sure, all of them are hapless normalish humans with skills that are definitely not appropriate for grand battles, but forty-three hapless humans can move mountains, so to speak. Just remember. They are still human beings. Squishy, fragile human beings who are jerks.

They are also a soft hive-mind. They can’t share thoughts but they can read each other to a scarily empathetic degree. That being said, they can sense when one of them dies, which does not bode well for their narrow-minded outlook on the worldly – nigh – multiversal scale.

Name: murderisland.db
Gender: undefined
Race: Random Encounter Table
Color: #0000FF

Biography:
"Can we get back on the damn airship already?" said the gruff knight with a heart of gold. "We've been wandering around for a half hour and nothing's shown up."
"I don't get it," said the plucky youngster with a thirst for adventure. "That old man said there were supposed to be really dangerous monsters here."
"Well, that doesn't seem to have panned out," said the wise-yet-aloof scholar of magic. "And now we've thoroughly squandered all our lure perfumes."
"It's weird how empty this place is," said the troublemaking rogue who could nevertheless always be counted on in a pinch. "I figured there'd at least be a treasure of some kind, but I haven't seen anything."
Dejected, they got back on the airship and went on to save the world, being completely unable to see the message "murderisland.db not found".

Description:
murderisland.db is the encounter table for Murder Island, a small island in the middle of nowhere. It's meant to be filled with powerful monsters that drop hefty rewards, but due to what the manufacturer has declared a "surprisingly difficult-to-patch programming error", none of these battles are ever seen.
Being simply data, murderisland.db is not really observable by other contestants in the battle under normal circumstances. However, the monsters it generates are. The monsters vary in appearance; some look fearsome, some look cute or even comical, some are just strange.
If in an encounter, the presence of murderisland.db can be confirmed by listening for the sound effect of an encounter starting, as well as the battle music playing. There's also a battle transition effect, but this only appears to outside viewers; anyone being dragged into the battle won't really notice it.
Outside of an encounter, murderisland.db is generally undetectable. It has no apparent motivation other than generating random encounters.

Weapons and Abilities:
murderisland.db only has one real ability, and that's summoning a random encounter.
Despite the fact that the programmers originally put only seven types of monsters in the table, somehow entering the battle has caused it to expand. There are hundreds of monsters it can generate an encounter with, in a variety of formations.
Each monster is generated with a battle script, which governs its behavior in combat. Collectively, the monsters have a wide variety of abilities, most of which are intended to just hurt the opposing party. But there are other skills in there, some of which boost the monster party, and some of which are just plain weird. However, abilities can only be used according to what the battle script says.
It's unclear how exactly murderisland.db can be killed, since defeating all monsters in an encounter doesn't remove the table entirely, but the Grandmaster is sure the rest of you can think of something. Or that you'll die horribly trying. Either way works.

Username: Simurghzer
Name: I(ncart. Ibismet. Imblem. It holds court and sway over these names-domains, and more)
Species Deity (Havian)
Gender: N/A
Color: Elysian Fields Forever

Description: A celestial bird with all features demarking its "birdness" in tasteful excess - >1 beak, a chorus of voices, a deluge of trailing plumes, a rainbow of hues in the shadows and sheen of its glassy feathers, a surfeit of slender neck, wingspan and wingspairs beyond standard parameters more often than not.

Inclement's largest wings are folded and pinned down at its sides, tied down under golden cords which secure a pale saddle to its back. These wings are, according to multiple reputable sources, large enough when spread to blot out the sun and crush mountains were Immense to land. Fortunately, In doesn't seem to tire and can soar an easy century without touching ground.

Intel is as smart as a human, blessed with an extensive memory of the many lands it's soared over in its lifetime, perceptive to the good or ill intent of mortals, and strongly inclined to help those who would share a kinship with its old master.

Biography: Iscort is the personification of the Edict Wind that screams down the slopes of Dearthpoint, forged by Heaven's Soul as a steed for Her dispatches to the realm of mortals. Her previous experiences with creating life from the mortal plane had gone most awry, so Soul made Ingot's core from a carefully-excavated handful of Celestial Firmament before swaddling the resulting molten mass of claws in feathers spun from wind.

Idle shared its home with some of Soul's earlier creations - the Messengers with their base-material cores, the Goldgoyles pulled filamentous from the Firmament who rained cold fire on any mortal who approached Soul's domain.

The Messengers spelt Soul's end, in time. When they descended to the world below, they were sympathetic ears to the fomenting of those Soul tried to abandon-forget. They might have succeed at first in making excuses for their creator, but before long the Messengers only believed among themselves, and finally not even that.

Isolate's riders eventually numbered one; the rest fled the Firmament and shattered their limbs on impact with the world below, becoming crawling things fixated on tearing down Soul. When the last Messenger caught wind of her once-sisters' scheme, she rushed down the mountain on Immediacy, but the beast was too large to fly into the conspirators' cave.

The Messenger untied the saddle, freeing Inshrine's greatest wings and herself into freefall. The ex-Messengers completed their ritual before she hit the ground, raising the great spire of Dearthpoint up up up until it shattered Firmament and Soul. Impede's wings absorbed the worst of the debris, minimising places where raw creation fell and warped the world - as well as the sun for fifty years.

Daylight was restored when a mortal found the discarded saddle and convinced the last chunk of divinity to don it - but that's a story for another day.

Weapons/Abilities: Infantry's core of Firmament survived the destruction of the source, and now the creature represents Soul's best qualities. When its feet touch ground, the power of creation suffuses the land and magic becomes possible in worlds where there was none. People caught in the zone (which spreads as long as Inspiration stays, and slowly shrinks and fades again on its departure) have personality traits associated with Soul amplified - inventiveness, creativity, an avoidance of destruction and suffering, both introversion and loneliness (an eventually-debilitating combination), a certain blind spot for consequences, a poor grasp of the flow of time. The fewer of these traits an individual lacks, the less Influence will warp them and the stronger their revulsion of the space grasped by the Firmament. Those susceptible to the Firmament's influence will also feel this wrongness, but the changes to their personality stops them from confronting the negative sensation.

Needless to say, touching Its talons directly is not advised. It understands what its power can do, and will rarely if ever land without a good reason. It still wears the saddle keeping its titanic wings pinned; only those with purest good intentions to change the world can ride without slipping straight off. Idol can't speak words, but understands them well enough and can convey a surprising amount through its n-voiced song.

The deadline encroaches. Twelve hours remain.

Username: Mirdini
Name: Augoc
Gender: N/A
Color: Grounded

Description/Biography: Augoc is a patch of ground around one acre in size. It wasn't always a patch of ground around one acre in size. A shitty wizard and a series of unfortunate coincidences involving a goat, five salami sausages and the wizard's pet mongoose led to that state of being. Augoc can vaguely feel living creatures crawling around on its outskirts, with its' senses becoming more acute the closer towards the center of the acre things proceed. Taking up a good 10 square meters in that center is a massive tentacular eyestalk, from which Augoc surveys itself. It does not speak, and the only hints of its former life around are a hat and a pair of boots nestled in the roots of an oak tree near that eyestalk.

Weapons/Abilities: Augoc will integrate into whatever landscape its eyestalk ends up in and have the same sense powers and ability to slowly shift the landscape afforded on its home terrain. The boots and hat will also end up somewhere, though what they do when put on by someone whom they actually fit is unknown. If it is truly enraged Augoc can expend a lot of energy to violently shift the ground it occupies, though this tends to cause it pain, enraging it further, leading to a destructive spiral until it runs out of energy entirely.

Judgement be unto you, or whatever. This ominous persona's gettin' kinda old.


Ireland wins the Kracht Saw It Coming Award for what are hopefully obvious reasons, though, in fairness, takes honorable mention for The Fishbowl as well.

murderisland.db takes the Glere Award For Kitchen Sinkery. Solid use of a specific type of island to base yer character on.

Augoc receives the Lucky VII All-Rounder Award for very nearly, but not quite, fitting neatly into any other category.

The GBS2 Award For Gratuitous Worldbuilding is engulfed in the talons of Isthmus. No big surprises there.

The Convolution Teamfriendliness Cup goes to the Ladybird Festival. However nightmarish aggregate characters can be to write for at times, any character that's many things at once is always fun to throw at things to see how it shatters.

Ethridge takes the Thomas Packston Elementalist Award. Solid for roping NPCs into the story, manufacturing disorientation and conflict both in the setting and among the battlers, and just Being Its Own Brand Of Bullshit in general.

And finally, Arnold Fogge's Actually Practical Award was too hard to award a single winner, so screw it: Ethridge, Ladybird Festival and Imitation share a joint win! Have fun trying to divvy that up between the forty-four-and-a-landmass of you.

Good work, and congratulations all around!

For Week 23, I ask you to bring me profiles to the tune of.....

Invert.