The Grand OC! [CONTEST XXX: HALLOWEEEEEEEEEEN]

Best Of Show Award: For an all around brilliant submission, with fighting, savage politics, and SCIENCE GONE WRONG (not to mention all the starships and burning) I would be remiss to give this award to anyone other than Gurska Karr - "The Immolator". Thank you Sai for this glorious submission.

Iron Chef Special Ingredient Award: You know that demon in infernal accounting that just can't get his numbers in on time? Or maybe that pit guard who was sleeping on the job? Oh, maybe you've heard of that monster-under-the-bed that was caught doing a kid's homework? Fire them, Fire them with Kill. For a brilliant twist of this week's theme (and a pretty spiffy suit) Kill will be getting this beautiful Award that he can lord over the hellish masses.

Above the Fold Award: For being 60% SKELETON Bigro's Kill get's to stuff this award in the back of one of his desk drawers.

Backdoor Worldbuilding Award: Giant sapient anteater travels to new realms on a religious mission to spread the word on light itself. One could make comments about blind faith, and overcoming instinct but I like to pretend this ceremony has some culture. In any case I would have loved to hear more about this fuzzy little prophet. That is if he wasn't fated to be dragged into pitched combat for the amusement of extra-dimensional entities. In any case Schazer and Piro, The Almighty Daymaker gets to take home this snazzy award.

The Diligent Gentleman Award: Alright, hands up, who wouldn't want to see a literally FIERY preacher wrecking shit in a Grand Battle. That's what I thought. Thank you Dragon Fogel for the burning faith of The Final Blasphemer

The 20Q Award for Confusing Me: So many questions, so little time. No color, an ambiguous gender, what unfinished business could have left this character as a ghost? Why did this, probably very handsome, green god seek to smite him? Was he a threat? Did he insult the god? We may never know. Last Minute is obviously an assumed name as well. Just what is he trying to hide? and why must he procrastinate so much when it only makes it harder for him in the end? All these questions but no answers can be found in the late submission of Mr. Last Minute by our own mysterious Garuru.

The Synergy Award: How do you burn that which is already burning? How do you fire that which refuses your authority? How can you be a god before one who knows all your sins? And how the hell can I work the last minute post into this? In any case The Final Blasphemer has earned this prestigious honor for being anathema to almost every other submission. Good job Dragon Fogel.

The I See What You Did Award: Tsk Tsk Garuru. It's one thing to make a submission at the last minute. It's quite another to make it the entire basis for the character. Now I know you want this award but I'm afraid...wait...is it that late already! Shoot I was just going to pop on for 5 minutes. Damnit I've got to get that webpage finished by tonight and I've been putting it off all weekend...What? The award? Uh just give it to Mr. Last Minute I gotta run!

oh my~

Username: Sai
Name: Ifri #0027
Race: Ifri-class Interceptor
Color: It's all numbers and letters anyways.

Description / Abilities:“The Em-Col scientists are always looking for ways to use what we have better. Often, that means making something that does the same thing but with less material, and this in turn means making something small. You guys all know what I mean when I say that this is almost always a good thing. Smaller means lighter. Lighter means faster. And faster, well, that’s what an interceptor’s all about. The Ifri has everything in miniature, except of course its engine. That means tiny guns, tiny sensors, even tiny forcefield generators. Our nerds have made forecefields so thin, you need to know special branches of mathematics to understand precisely how their size relates to that of atoms. If they weren’t solid to the touch, you wouldn’t even know they were there.

When piloting the Ifri, only these forcefields separate you from the vastness of space. You’re effectively suspended above the stars, with information projected on the field itself when you need it and left empty when you don’t, giving you unrivaled visibility on all sides. And trust me, where this little bastard takes you, you’ll need it. With twin hot reactors running through the blasters affixed to each side, this ship literally has to keep firing for about half the time that it spends in space if you don’t want its core power to get low and your life support to turn off. With an effective range somewhere between ‘seeing the whites of their eyes’ and ‘rifling through their pockets,’ the only way to fly an Ifri is to go in deep. And I mean magmal currents deep. There’s none of this ‘Oh, we shot a few missiles, they shot a few missiles, then we went home’ schoolpod garbage. When an Ifri engages, something dies. The fact that I’m even showing you this ship means we think you’re the best inty pilots the Em-Col is getting from your class, but if you don’t know you’re the best, you stay the hell away from this hangar.

If you’ve got the guts it takes to fly one, though, then there isn’t a sweeter ship in the fleet - except for my Ifri, of course. Every inty here can accelerate from a cold stop to a laser pulse faster than you can tell it to slow down. It can fly in deep space, heavy atmosphere, even liquid water if you’re lucky enough to find it, and turn on a dime in any of them. It’s small enough and agile enough to slip in under the guns of any ship it can’t kill, assuming you’re good enough. Luckily for you, it’s also got an AI on board to help you out in those cases when instinct alone isn’t enough to maintain the distance of a handshake between your ship and theirs while cruising at speeds your landlocked ancestors couldn’t even conceptualize. That said, it’s a piss poor pilot that lets his ship do the flying, and if you let the bot run the show and you aren’t unconscious or dead, then you will be after we look over the flight logs. Now get in, the Ifri will tell you how to use it. Anyone not out of the hangar in five isn’t leaving in a ship.”

Biography: Every shipboard AI adjusts itself to suit the personality of their pilot, but has some baseline values which are set up when the ship is first used. When Jack initialized the AI in his Ifri, he set all of the warning levels to their highest setting, making it notify him of every danger, no manner how minor. He then proceeded to take the ship through a veritable meat grinder of conflict, diving into the heart of every engagement and ignoring every notification that the beleaguered ship threw at him. Able to give as good as he gets, Jack would gleefully yell at his ship when he wasn’t barking orders at his squad, shouting over the various warnings to let the ship know precisely how great he was at flying. As a result, the ship developed an incredibly caustic and sarcastic AI, with a hearty helping of its owner’s superiority complex. It would follow even the craziest orders without question, but harp on every perceived mistake that its pilot makes, followed by the implication that they are willfully suicidal. It matches Jack’s rapid style of speech, with short sentences or phrases that can be quickly barked out over a ship’s communications link. Though it picked up more combat data in its three years of deployment than similar ships would see in decades, no other pilot was able to sit in the ship for more than one engagement as they found its remarks to be both distracting and debilitating to their morale. This string of failures left it deeply suspicious of anyone other than Jack himself, and unless he needed the interceptor, it remained unused in the hangar of its carrier. With Jack’s rise to prominence forcing him to command from larger vessels, it spent most of its time powered down and bored. When it was summoned as a combatant in the arena, it was delighted to have the chance to fly once again, in spite of the inability of the AI to fire its weapons without a living pilot.

“You want me to compete in a what now? Eat a dick. No, eat a bagga dicks. Look, just try to imagine these dirtpounders as tight little assholes. I’m a blowtorch. You won’t get a fight, you’ll get a mess. And, what, you think one-a them’s gonna try to fly me? Buddy, I put a fear of heights into a tenebril, and those bastards have wings. Most-a these shitlicks haven’t ever even broken the sound barrier. If you think I’m about to slow down for some rock humper’s delicate feelings then you gotta ‘nother thing comin’ and it’s comin’ in fast.”

Username: Bared on the left for all to see
Name: Free.m
Race: Script
Color: Series 25 Orange

Description/Biography: According to what the datapath tentatively assumed was its documentation, the thing seemed to be a transcompiler, but for all he knew what he was reading off of was some ur-entity's misfiled junk mail for all the relevant sense it made. Still, he'd gone searching for a translator, and buried in Reality's program was this, whatever this was.

It started as a black point, cool to the touch and humming noiselessly like it were attached to something larger, mechanical; it turtled outward unbidden in a series of right-angular movements, billowing slowly from the origin like the demarkations of a diffusing gas. Squares, mostly black but shifting color at more-or-less random, bloomed like clumsy bubbles, framing the unfathomable cold of the depths of space when the datapath stuck his finger in.

The ups and acrosses clipped through his fingertip, spitting out reams of data across his scarf but giving him every cause for concern. The datapath had only the faintest inklings of how it might work, let alone how it might be controlled - he was going to either be the first human to ascend to a separate reality, or die of acute organ failure. He couldn't modify the foreign script, but the vulnerable universe posed no such barriers. Containment would be easiest if he could parse the exotic code, but a want of a translator was what had gotten him in this mess in the first place. He reconfigured the air, the ground, the cognitive flags in a three-mile radius, setting up exceptions and overrides wherever he thought they'd fit, ignoring the intermittent jolts and deadness in his nerves. Four-cornered zeroes and ones stretched asymptotically up crept into his vision and prickled in his throat, jittering into comprehensible existence on all his boundary lines.

Done, except for his scarf, which slithered off of its own accord with a few final lines of code before relocating itself with a crack and a dash. The datapath slumped against a rock, attuned enough now to watch the air toughen and resist the encroaching code. His biological remains proved surprisingly resistant the the conversion process, keeping the external structural integrity with the occasional clipping error as a bit of the converted code angles through his skin. If you peeled said skin back, you'd be staring into an utterly alien reality, and probably also be dead.

Abilities: The transpiler was never designed for fiddly work like multicellular organisms and all the metadata they invariably entail, so the datapath's remains (and his final instructions to prioritise compilation therein) will keep the script mostly contained for the interim. Bits of Free.M occasionally leak from the entry wound, the left index finger, though left in the air without exposure to prioritised bio-matter it just steadily forms a series of right-angled lines and squares with no obvious pattern. What Free.M actually does is recompile the target universe's "code" into the code of whatever reality Free.M harks from, a process which manifests as weird, proto-digital-art phenomena. It's not an AI, nor can it convert everything - universes sufficiently different from the datapath's homeworld will have different base code, summarily limiting Free.M's ability to rewrite reality.

Seriously, though, this thing is a nasty piece of work and should not have been taken out of quarantine.

Name: The All-Seeing Eye of Mott
Race: Cursed Artifact
Gender: Not applicable
Text Color: #111111
Biography: Ages ago, a youth named Mott spied on the village shaman as she was bathing. She learned of this later when she consulted with the spirits, and in anger, called Mott before the village.
She crafted a jewel in the shape of an eye, and hung it around Mott's neck. She explained that only she had the power to take it off him, and as long as he wore it, it would reveal his deepest and darkest secrets to all around him - that perhaps he would learn to value the privacy of others more if he spent a little time without it himself.
It took less than a day before he was in tears, begging the shaman to remove it and swearing that he would never spy again. The shaman relented, satisfied, but kept the jewel safely in a locked box in case Mott went back on his word.
Centuries later, the box was uncovered by an archeological expedition exploring the ruins of the village. After much effort, the lock was broken and the head researcher found the jewel inside.
He found himself compelled to wear it, and suddenly everyone knew exactly what he had been doing with his newest lab assistant, and exactly how much of his doctoral thesis had been plagiarized, not to mention all the money he had embezzled from the museum.
He fled, and before long a thief stumbled onto him. The thief paid little attention to the fact that he seemed to know a lot of things about this stranger, and simply snatched the jewel away.
He was then compelled to put it on, and before long the entire city knew every crime he had ever committed.
His trial was underway, with his lawyer focusing on whether the sudden influx of information everyone experienced was admissible evidence. The trial was so gripping that no one really noticed the jewel disappearing.

Description: The Eye of Mott, as it is known, is a deep purple gemstone with a smaller blue gemstone in the middle. It looks like an eye.

Weapons and Abilities: When someone wears the Eye of Mott, their entire personal history and private thoughts are exposed to everyone in the immediate area. This spreads no matter where they go. They can have no secrets.
The Eye of Mott is also very difficult to destroy. In addition, anyone who touches it will be compelled to wear it, and unable to remove it under their own power.
Despite the shaman's words, anyone can remove it other than the wearer, but only someone of her skill will be able to do so without risking the Eye's effects.

Now's probably a good time to reveal my profile was based off the works of this guy.

I think Sai called the next theme?

The new theme is

Stoic

Name: No one knows. They just call him "The Man With No Name".

Gender: Well, now that you mention it, I guess I don't know he's a man. He doesn't seem bothered by it when we call him that, but then, he never seems bothered by much of anything.

Race: Seems pretty human, but I suppose I can't be entirely sure.

Text Color: He seems fond of a particular shade of dark green. Judging by his coat and hat, anyways. I guess he might not actually like the color, it's always tough to be sure with him.

Description: Yeah, that's him sitting over at the bar. Comes here every night, never says a word. Doesn't even order a drink. Just puts down some money. The barkeep told me he just serves him whatever, and the Man With No Name eats and drinks it all up.

Biography: Nobody really knows a damn thing about him. Some think he's a ghost. Others say maybe his wife died and it him hard. Me, I think he just doesn't like talkin'. But only he knows for sure, and it's not like he's gonna tell no one.

Weapons and Abilities: He looks pretty tough, doesn't he? Truth is, the barkeep says he got into a fight exactly once. Some smug youngster was bothering a young lady, and the man with no name just stood up, glared at the boy for a few seconds, then decked him.

The kid ran off, and came back with his buddies itching for a fight. They got it, all right. The man with no name had them all on the floor beggin' for mercy in ten minutes. Didn't even seem fazed by it, but sat right back down and went back to his drink.

Nobody's caused any trouble here since. Word travels fast, you see.

In roughly 20 hours, Dragon Fogel will win everything by default.

As promised, Dragon Fogel has won everything by default. Thanks for being a stalwart contributor.

*ahem*

The Best Of Show Award goes to Dragon Fogel's Man Without a Name for being the best of all one contributions in every category.

The Above the Fold Award: goes to Dragon Fogel's Man Without a Name for his take on namelessness.

The Iron Chef Special Ingredient Award goes to Dragon Fogel's Man Without a Name for a truly stoic character, by far the most stoic out of all contributions.

The Backdoor Worldbuilding Award goes to Dragon Fogel's Man Without a Name for the reference that 'word travels fast around here.'

The Diligent Gentleman Award goes to Dragon Fogel's Man Without a Name, on account of the fact that his silence would be interesting to see written in the setting of a grand battle.

The 20Q Award for Confusing Me goes to Dragon Fogel's Man Without a Name for creating a man managing to win a fight without anyone learning more about him.

The Synergy Award goes to Dragon Fogel's Man Without a Name for being a perfect fit with all one character submissions.

The I See What You Did Award goes to Dragon Fogel's Man Without a Name for his oblique references to stoic texts.

Thanks Sai.

So, here's a question. I'm thinking of doing the next round... but, we've also had quite a few themes since the last "All-Stars" thingy. (Which I did.) More than the eight traditional, due to the interruption on Togetherness.

Do people want to do another All-Stars thing, in which case I'd step aside and let someone else run it, or do we just want to keep going with regular weeks, in which case I'll do it?

(Unless someone new wants to do a theme, I'm cool with letting them do that and waiting a week.)

Okay. Since nobody expressed any opinions at all, I'm going ahead with a normal theme.

And since there was only my entry last week, I'm thinking it might be good to try out a longer entry period to see how that works out. So this particular contest will be going until October 31st.

On a completely unrelated note, the theme for this contest is Halloween.

Name: Very Halal Weenie

Gender: الإسلام‎

Race: الكلب

Text Color: Red, like the blood of this عين meat

Description:

Biography: radius 1 inch, average length 8 inches, choice of condiments include sumac

Weapons and Abilities: Indigestion

this is literally the worst idea
Username: icanhasdonut
Name: Sir Ian of the 3rd Holy Order of Hallowed Beings
Species:Hallowed Human
Gender:Male
Color: A shining example to all
Description:Ian is a moderately sized human male, with the characteristic faint glow that is present in all of the Hallowed Beings. As he is human, he gives off a dull orange glow. He wears the 3rd Holy Order's uniform, a plain suit of armor with a small crest. His hair is a light brown color, with glowing orange eyes. Of course, all of the Hallowed Humans look like this anyways.
Weapons/Abilities: Ian possesses the ability to manifest a shortsword that is pure orange, and in doing so dims his own aura. The sword is part of him, and will dissipate if stolen. He also posseses some regenerative qualities, but only if he has not sustained damage in the past 24 hours.
Biography: Ian was born a Hallowed Human, one of the many different beings who are immediately chosen for servitude. Rising in the ranks, he quickly gained reputation in the orders. Right before he vanished, Sir Hallowed Ian was performing a ceremony welcoming the new members into the order.

im gonna do a thing when I get home

Just a reminder that the deadline for this contest is October 31st!

That's only a few days away, so get those profiles in!

Username: amosmyn
Password: 1234567889
Name: Pal Jones
Species: Average
Gender: Male
Description: Tall, handsome and charismatic. Pal frequently brings his grey suitjacket to work, which he maintains with a variety of miracle detergents. He also wears dark brown leather shoes and a sharp, turquoise bowtie.
Bio: Pal is your average, everyday laundry detergent salesman. He makes a decent living working for Avonic Inc., going door to door to market the company's products. Oh, you havent heard? Its Avonic brand! The finest brand in clean laundry since 1898! One squirt on any blemish and its gone!! We use only the finest ingredients and scents to make your laundry smell and feel great every wash! No more soiled clothes! Avonic does the trick on just about ANYTHING! YES, we accept debit, credit, cash, you name it! Ah, youd like the sample? Sure, here's a 720mL bottle; $7 and its yours-- but wait! Spend another 10 and ill even throw in the Avonic Scrubbubbler Dish detergent! Its a must have for any.........

[$200 later...]

... Ah yes, where were we? Right! Pal also attends church on sundays and eats alone in his bachelors suite in Kentucky, Illinoise. He looks forward to the 31st, the day where his Door to Door experience shines brightest. Pal also provides a cleaning service to earn a little extra coin, promising to clear out even the toughest of stains!

(He also uses the cleaning products to maintain a clean conscious and a clean police record.)

Weapons/Abilities: Charisma, good looks. He has hundreds of marketing tricks up his sleeves, sample products and merchandise. Could win anyone over with a good sale. Also a briefcase, a roll of Saran wrap, and a photograph of his father.

Because I forgot to give a ONE DAY WARNING, this is it and you people who haven't posted yet get an extra day to put something together.

...so how many topics did I even miss while I was blocked out of this site...

Oh, huh. I guess the deadline's come and gone.

I'm thinking it might be time for the thread to get a break again, but I'll judge these soon in any case.

Judging in the morning. I know who got what but I'm not really in a mood to make a proper writeup at the moment.

Wow, I just realized I completely forgot about this.

Okay, so.

I have three entries. One of them is nothing more than a picture of a hotdog and a lazy attempt at a joke.

No awards to the Halal Weenie. You want awards from me, put in some more effort.

On which note, the I See What You Did There award goes to Hallowed Ian for actually make a profile out of a pun. I'm also handing over the Above The Fold award here, and Backdoor Worldbuilding because they apply more to this than they do to the remaining entry I'm considering.

Meanwhile, Pal Jones wins the Iron Chef Special Ingredient award because taking the door-to-door aspect of Halloween as the basis is definitely distinctive. Also awarded is Diligent Gentleman, because it would be interesting to see him sell things to his competitors. He is also awarded The 20Q Award for Confusing Me because I don't quite get what his deal is. Finally, he gets Best of Show, mainly for not being an obvious pun; if there's one in there, it's subtle enough that I didn't catch it. And, uh, he also gets Synergy because he can sell the hot dog, I guess.

Sai, you're way better at piling the awards on than I am.

I think the thread may be in need of another break given the low response rate. But that's just my opinion, I'm not going to stop anyone else from jumping in with a theme if they want to take that chance.

I threw in a few subtle hints

SpoilerShow

he may be a cleaner for hitmen or a serial murderer

to tease the imagination a little but wow these are some fine ass awards!

This was fun. Lets do this again sometime.

Yeah i think ill just hijack this thread... Thanks fogel ;)

TONIGHTS THEME IS:
Hot Pockets

I do not recommend literally interpreting this as pastry.
Use that imagination of yours!

Deadline is November 14th at Noon EST.

Should be enough time?

Username: Daeleme
Name: Hot Pockets
Species: Something With Trousers
Gender: Yes, please.
Description: Hot pockets is the newest Cool Superhero in Superville. Hot Pockets eponymous pockets go straight to Z-Space, the subdimensional realm where anything can be! Also, it's where the matter from animorphs Is kept when they transform into something really small, or where they get the matter when they're turning into something really big! Z-Space sure is weird!

Hot Pockets is on a quest! A Cool Quest! A quest to defeat the dreaded Vest X who threatens today's fashion industry! Vest X wishes to destroy fashion because of contrived anti-consumerist cruelty that turns out totally uncool!

Weapons/Abilities: Can produce things from pockets. Probably has super strength and other generic superhero powers. Is essentially immortal as long as their clothes line keeps selling. Wacky hijinks & cartoon physics.