Astelaine

As I posted just a bit ago, nobody will be starting with a holy weapon, so don't worry. God-moding, super-eliting, ubering, whatever you want to call it, will also not be allowed. If anyone is concerned about that, please rest easy. Non-holy blood characters will also get just as much attention as characters who have it. The character-making process will go like this: I post all the necessary bits. Interested people throw out a concept and discuss their relationships and connections with others. When you've got that down, post a filled-out sheet. Said sheet will be reviewed by me, and if there are problems, you'll modify the character so he or she is appropriate for play. Then, first-postingness. :D Don't do any of this now. Ask me questions, or post any concerns you have about the game, and when the stuff is up, we'll rock! This is a great point. Holy blood - being descended from one of the mythical twelve crusaders - has attendant obligations, responsibilities, and consequences. Noble society is restrictive. Those who do not have holy blood are more free from that, and have many more choices about how they can live their lives.

Hahaha, I'm glad you guys are so eager to get rolling on your characters! However, I'm not going to look at any character things you post right now. I have some specific instructions I will need you to look at, and some sections of the character sheet that you haven't anticipated needing to fill out. It also isn't fair to people who don't know the game well. I need to give them time to read anything I prepare. So just hold them horses :)

Preliminary holy blood rules: Choose only one type of holy blood. I know that certain characters can end up with a mix of several types depending on who you paired in the game, but let's aim for simplicity. Characters may have major blood (which in most cases marks them as a promising warrior or high noble, and allows them to use a special holy weapon), minor blood (which makes them slightly better fighters, and reinforces their social status), or no holy blood at all. Keep in mind that some nobles also rule castles without having any holy blood. Check the chart below to see what your blood and House options are. (Lol I will add a chart) Again, to keep it simple, only one character may have major holy blood in each type. For example, multiple people may play characters with Hezul blood, but only one character will have major Hezul blood and access to the Misteltain sword. Major blood is first-come, first-serve. Please don't claim major blood if you won't be able to post at least once every month. No player will start the game with a holy weapon. Most of them are either protected by senior family members, or locked away somewhere. However, if you want to gain one in the course of play, great! Make it a story goal, strive to get there, and it will happen. If your character has holy blood, it will physically manifest as a mark somewhere on his or her body. Keep this in mind when considering his or her appearance! Hope that answers some questions! Also, please no claiming blood yet, wait on that til I get the rules/sheet/info up :)

Yeah, the pairings are a possible trouble spot. The way I think I'll handle it, though, is that if you claim an ancestor, you can only claim one. For example, you may say you are a Velthomer duchess descended from Azel, or a thunder mage of House Freege descended from Tiltyu, but don't say Azel and Tiltyu. Just pick one, it makes everything easier. I understand that treating each character as having their own lineage, not connected to other ones by marriage, undoes some of the very interesting endings you can get. But this is the easiest way, IMHO, to use the game's events as history background and inspiration without getting too caught up on details. If some game pairing needs to be established as this RP's "canon" for whatever reason, I will decide on it as GM. I don't intend to go around making this game my own Favorite Pairing Playground, however. Fair warning that I will gloss over things that aren't important to what the characters are doing. Edit: Thanks for the interest, everyone! I'll have the preliminary rules and sheets up late tonight (EST time) or maybe tomorrow. Got some packing to do for a move. >_> As for stats: this roleplay will focus on character and story development, as opposed to fighting or tabletop-style wargaming. While duels, fights, and war will likely become part of the story (it really depends on what the players opt to do,) the narrative is more important than the numbers. As such, you won't need to pick stats. Combat resolution will be talked out among involved players, or I'll decide what happens. We can work on a loose system for how to resolve crap when people try to stab each other, but I don't want to futz with stats, experience, or leveling up.

Wow, that guy really IS in everything! I'd love to have you as a player, welcome aboard. Time for me to start drafting up some background/rules/signup sheet stuff! Here's the thing. YOU are the (distant) children of them! Why leave that to some NPC when you could be such a person yourself, hmm? :D For a teaser, here's the opening setup. (Not the first post, but the "hook.") Two hundred years ago, Celice the Liberator freed the continent of Jugdral from the stranglehold of the Empire and the machinations of the evil Loputous cult. Through his guiding hand, and the work of those blessed with the holy blood of ancient crusaders, peace spread throughout the land. Fallen kingdoms were slowly rebuilt; wounds of war were healed; the populace regained confidence and flourished. Jugdral entered a golden age. Since then, Celice's descendants have ruled as kings and queens of Grandbell, Jugdral's leading nation. The other nations - Verdane, Agustria, Silesia, Isaac, United Thracia, and Miletos - have also been governed by scions of Celice's army. With the stability provided by long dynasties and unbroken lineages of royal families, the people of Jugdral hoped this peace of two centuries would last forever. Few things, however, stand eternal. Grandbell's current monarch, the aging King Sveinn Baldos, has called the nations together for a triumphant celebration of the 200th year of Celice the Liberator's victory over the Empire. Nobles from all across Judgral, along with their retinues, have been invited to attend. Commonfolk arrive at Grandbell's capital, Barhara, in droves, eager for the trade and pageantry of such an event. Others prepare to air grievances carefully nursed for centuries, ignite old rivalries, and begin recharting the continent's map of power. It is year 978 of the Gran calendar. Once again, a storm brews within Jugdral.

Thanks for those great questions, Kanami! Let's dig in on answering them... 1. Importance of prior knowledge While I would certainly love to run this for a bunch of people who already know the games well, it seems that requiring such might greatly limit the pool of people willing to play. While I'm not aiming for LoAF's large cast of characters, I would like this to be accessible enough for me to get about 5 or 6 players, and I'm not sure how many people on SF are both (1) Holy War/Thracia junkies and (2) interested in joining a roleplay. Hence this post XD Hopefully, the response here will help me tailor the game to the interested parties, so if you're posting here, please tell me how much you know about the game. I think that at least basic knowledge of Holy War/Thracia will be required. As in, "What is the basic story? Who were the most important main characters? What's holy blood?" However, it's easy enough to help players less experienced with the game by making a chart detailing which countries/castles/noble houses/holy bloods their characters may start with, or fill in background info in the signup sheet or in my own story posts. I do intend to incorporate story lore on my part, and certainly the RP will be enriched by how much knowledge the players bring to the table. However, while I love the lore, the roleplay isn't intended to be about geeky devotion to detail (believe me, I use this phrase fondly), but rather to use elements of the game world to make a set-up for something positively epic. 200 years have passed, that's license enough to gloss over some of the finer details that aren't critical to roleplaying. However, knowing the game world and plot will help you use them to create relationships with other player characters (long family feuds, rivalries, obligations of service or life debt, etc) that come out of a deeply-entrenched history. In short: if you don't know much about the games, don't sweat it. I'll help you out. But if you do - great. Infuse that into your character for maximum awesome. 2. Canon I can't think of any characters from the games that would appear in the roleplay as NPCs. As for references, there will be plenty, and some will be important. For example, the current King of Grandbell is descended from Sigurd and Celice, and you can sure bet he's going to be tapping into their image, and that of Saint Baldo, to legitimize his position as ruler. I don't ever want references to overshadow the players and their own motivations and goals, but rather to inform them, to create a sense of history and legacy. Again, the point is to use game detail to enrich the story, to steep the players in an atmosphere, rather than alienate anyone who'd want to play. Players can be descended from the characters in the games. The level of detail they take it to is up to them. It can be "Hey, I have Hezul blood and I rule this castle because that's how things played out, two hundred years ago," all the way down to "My predecessor was King Eltosian of Nodion, and I am going to wreak vengeance on your house for your family's ancient crimes against him. I'll never permit anyone to denigrate House Nodion again!" (I suppose one should beware of spoilers, seeing as you never know what other players will bring up, haha.) As for the canon of the Holy War/Thracia story itself, I want to be true to it, and will use it as a basis. However, I may well decide that things have gone down a certain way in the past 200 years. This won't be crazy stuff like flying cars (lol) but rather things like "oh, said house is the ruling family of this country now." Things that make logical sense. Tl;dr: Make no mistake, I want this roleplay to feel like the games. References will provide the history and atmosphere of the story, and help establish the theme. But the players and their goals are the prime concern. 3. How carefully I have thought this over I rather agree with LunarAegis. The aim of this roleplay isn't to railroad players down a plotline I've determined from the beginning. Their goals and desires will shape the course that events take. I definitely see what you mean, though, about doing some planning and not just flying by the seat of my pants. That certainly isn't my intent. After I post signups and see what characters people have made, where they'd like to take the character, or some preliminary goals their characters have, I will develop, more specifically, where things will go. I already have some ideas, and know some happenings among the NPCs that will shape the story and the characters' world. I'm not doing this blind. The players will determine where they want to go, and together we'll cut the road. (To use a horrifically cheesey metaphor. >>) 4. This is a serious RP, right? Ahaha, yes. The Quest for Nothing is fabulous, but I'm going to keep the tone in line with that of the two games that have inspired all this. 5. How fast will things progress? Ohh, good question. I think this one will be more slow. I want people to put thought into their posts, and write longer entries rather than shorter ones. I don't want to obligate people to write a novel, but anything less than a solid paragraph or two is not going to cut it, and I'd prefer more. I'd like to aim for players to post once or twice a week, ideally. Not everyone has the luxury of a school schedule. Of course, it will obviously vary by how much time people have and how interested they are. The posts in Shu's Quest are long (and awesome), I'll go take a look at how often people post in that and use it as a guide. Also, wow, interesting discussions about technology coming up as I was writing all this. I agree that you'd get technological advancement after two centuries.The world certainly wouldn't be in stasis. Though obviously we wouldn't be jumping from, say, medieval technology right to an industrial revolution in that time. Think more the type of advancements you'd get from 1000 AD to 1200 AD, with some differences because of the obvious effect of magic, and Jugdral's unique resource situation, on the process. Unfortunately, the games don't give us too much information on that, IIRC. I also don't really want this game to be steampunk, or to be about technology, or speculating on the future in a magical society. That's all really interesting (I'd play a game like that, for reelz,) but I don't want to break the Fire Emblem feel. If those two things could be seamlessly integrated, however, I wouldn't mind. And stuff like carriages, better plows, a flight relay system using pegasi, and printing presses don't seem out of bounds. Gonna stew on this one a little more. Edit: About my choice of 200 years. I picked it because it's soon enough after the events of the game that the events and history are still important, but it's not so close that the game characters would overshadow the players' new characters. It's also far enough away that people who don't know as much about the games could participate, without sweating about knowing some very spoilery piece of game info. I can change my choice if no one is interested in the time I have set, but keep in mind that the year the game is set in should afford freedom, and the primacy of the player characters, above all.

[Oct 25th: The FE4 RP is on hold for now, postponed due to RL concerns. Thank you all for your responses and interest, I'll update this thread again when it's ready to go.] Hello everyone! (Sweet god, I hope I didn't post this in the wrong forum section.) For some time now, I've been toying with the idea of starting a roleplay set in Jugdral, the continent that served as the setting for Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776. Holy War is my favorite game in the Fire Emblem series. However, I realize these two titles are older and never enjoyed an official English language release, and perhaps not many Fire Emblem fans have played one or both of them. Therefore, before I invest too much time in designing or drafting rules for something no one will play, I'd like to gauge interest in this project. It will be set 200 years or so after the events of Holy War's second generation, with a new wave of trouble stirring the continent. Players will take up the roles of the nobility and descendants of the holy crusaders, just like in the game. Emphasis will be on character development and interaction rather than wargaming (though I imagine combat will still happen, I mean, it's Fire Emblem.) Drama, political intrigue, romance, and epicness are encouraged. Who'd be interested in playing a game like this? If people seem to dig it, I'll update this post with actual rules and a signup sheet and all that jazz. Lemme know, or toss me questions. :)

Just gotta say, Waqwaq, I really love your work. You splice together the elements from the original mugs in really creative ways, and your color choices and ornamentation on the armor trim/jewelry/hats are boss. Looking forward to seeing more! :D

Yep, it's a splice! I didn't custom anything. No prob about the complexity though, completely understood. I'm a sucker for pretty female characters with crazy jewelry bling, all comes down to taste. :) I have to say, there are a lot of great entries. I went for Cappucino's because it's well-made without looking overdone, and the character, to me, looks like one that could easily appear in a Fire Emblem game. The color choice was also attractive. Further props to Acey, ALS, and Waqwaq for putting the different elements together in creative ways. I also really liked the hair on Chalis' mug, and the cleanness of MarioKirby's.

Thanks for the kind words! As for the shading inconsistencies, ALS, would you mind pointing them out to me here or in a PM, if you get some time? I won't touch this piece again til this round is over, but I'd sure like to improve my work. :) Oh mans, eyepatches... And Acey, that you could build that whole headpiece out of those three mugs, that's just badass.

Heyo :) I'm pretty new to Serenes, and haven't entered any of these splicing competitions before. I hope I did this right. My entry: It was pretty fun to make, and seeing everyone's work is definitely cool... good luck folks!

Doh, now I regret choosing Johan. He's ending up pretty lackluster for me, outshone even by lower-leveled units. Not that he's terrible, but he's not quite keeping up in this rebel army full of glamorous and overpowered people. I'll definitely try Johalva next time. As for the crab walk... maybe he's got some secret Verdancer blood in there.

Interestingly enough, "Tailto" is what you see on the Fire Emblem trading cards. So presumably that was made/translated into English by someone Japanese! Some of the weirder sounding variants come from the Japanese source materials. I mean, go check out the official character art for Holy War in the gallery here on Serenes. "Bligit," lol. I guess it all comes down to how familiar a translator is with the native sounds of the languages in question. While no one but the localization team can say for sure, I imagine this is a case where the translators erred on the side of readability and ease of use, rather than trueness to the original name/sound. While "Soanevalcke" is awesome, it's also a little burdensome. It also seems to stick out among the other names in Path of Radiance, because it is so long. Compare it to Ike, Mia, Bastian, Greil. With complicated-sounding names there's always a tradeoff when deciding an English equivalent, so I sure can't blame them for just changing it to Stefan. That sure makes more sense to me, too. Then again, I'm not sure how the name would be pronounced in Gaelic. And we really have no idea what Diadora's creator over at Intelligent intended her name to be like. Did they intentionally take liberty with the name, even if her concept is drawn from the myth? All we know is that there are some clear analogues between the two figures, story-wise - a woman prophecied to have men shed blood over her, who grew up in seclusion, and who loses one lover to find herself with another. Actually, an interesting project would be to look up some Japanese translations or writings about the myths and locations that inspire the names in FE4. Say, for example, that a collection of Irish myths, written in Japanese, writes the name "Dierdre" a certain way. Or what about "Sigurd," in a Japanese copy of the Volsunga Saga? Would they match the way the names are written in Japanese FE4? It would help in checking the validity of some of our English translations. Unfortunately, that's a project way beyond my own ability, but it sure would be neat. Edit: I'm dumb, I could just try Japanese wikipedia! Durrrrrrr- And Sirius, thank you for fixing that list with the spoiler tags! You win the internet.

For anyone who is curious, here are the romanizations of the characters' names. They are not the actual names as we would write them in English - they're just the sounds Japanese speakers make when pronouncing the names. This is why there are so many variants of naming in FE4. Anyone translating them from the Japanese katakana script into English has to figure out which English name (and according English spellings) the sounds are referring to. As a result, they are open to interpretation, to some degree. For example, Tiltyu's son's name is pronounced "Aasaa," according to the way it is written in Japanese. But listening to the name, we can tell it's supposed to be "Arthur." As Rufus mentioned above, the name "Deirdre," from Irish myth, is the likely inspiration for Sigurd's wife's name. But for Japanese speakers to pronounce it, it has to be converted into their sound system, so it becomes "Diadora," and is written in katakana as ディアドラ. Anyone then trying to translate the name into English has to take the literal sound of "Diadora" and guess what it is referencing, or at least turn it into a spelling that wouldn't be difficult for an English speaker to read or use. In this way, "Diadora" works just fine, though it's probably more accurate to use Deirdre, since it's pretty clearly taken from the myth. In any case, I'm just a dabbler who knows very little Japanese, so if anyone finds any errors below, please correct me! :) Key: Japanese spelling Romanization English names commonly found in the translation patches, artbooks, trading cards, etc. (Having seen the romanization, you can now decide for yourself if you think the English names the translators chose were the best.) Second generation. I won't bother with the substitute characters or minor villains unless someone wants to see them. To Charpig: According to Wikipedia, it was Nintendo Power #87 that had the FE4 article. I actually have this laying around the house somewhere... I'll see if I can find and scan it. :)

I was just playing through the first generation myself, and it's interesting to see how differently our games turned out. I gave Lachesis the Elite Ring and a Silver Sword, and when she promoted at the beginning of chapter 4, absolute rape ensued. She ended up one of my best units, next to Sigurd. I can't blame you for not raising her though, it's such a pain in the ass when the game gives you a weak, underleveled character so late. But she really is great if you can get her there. Anyways, thank you for posting such a hilarious playthrough log. I look forward to reading the rest of it! :)