Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Character: First Draft and Missions for Allies

I was just like you once.

I had a normal family - well, normal by the modern-day standard, which probably isn't all that normal. I did a little traveling, had boyfriends, went to college. I spent my time consumed with all the mundane, boring minutia that occupy the time of those who don't know better.

And then everything changed.

I discovered, purely against my will, a whole other world, living right on top of this one. A world of darkness and terror and such amazing things that I never thought could exist. A world of vampires, and weres, and demons that live in the shadows of our lives, pulling strings and creating machinations right up to the very top of society. Nearly eight years ago, while walking home from a summer course on macroeconomics at university, I was attacked. A beast that moved with inhuman speed overtook me, mauled me, and left me bleeding on the cement. I don't know why it left me alive. Maybe it got scared off. Maybe I just didn't taste very good.

The doctors said it looked like an animal attack, but I knew they were wrong. Fire ran through my veins, and pain unlike anything I had ever experienced wracked my body. I felt different. Something moved through me, slithering under my skin. The docs released me from the hospital, but I didn't get better.

I changed.

Scared, hurting, and not knowing what was happening to me, I thought I was going to die. An animal lived inside me now, one that I could not control, and when I changed, the toll on my body was unbearable. Fortunately, a group of people found me soon after I left the hospital. They had been attacked too, and they taught me about my new life, and this other world. Some of the other newbies couldn't take it, and left to go hide away from everyone, to give up and moan the loss of who they previously were. For a while I felt like joining them.

I learned that I had been attacked by a werewolf, and that its virus now infected me. I learned about the Abiding Evils, about the secret movements of demons controlling our country, about vampires spreading their disease, and about the rage that my Wolf brought forth. I learned small amounts of magic, learning to concoct potions and spells to soothe the Wolf and keep me me. I learned that the same thing that made me strong, that made gave me incredible power, could also cripple me if I lost control. The more I learned, the more I wanted to fight.

Over the better part of a decade, I've built up my knowledge to fight these dark forces. And I've gained valuable allies to help me. I used to be like you. But now I'm a Were, leading a double life as a creature of light and darkness, and I fight for you, though you'll never know it.

My name is Jessica, and I am a Night Hunter.
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So I'm open to suggestions, and to any other ideas besides Night Hunter - Erin also suggested Shadow Hunter.  Thoughts?

Missions
I thought rather than assigning missions to people, I'd post what I needed help with and let you all decided what you wanted to do.  Here's what I've got so far (I know some of you have already volunteered for some of these, so no worries, we'll just make a record of it in the comments):

-Come up with rewards (small and large) for achievements
-Research medical info
-Find me good food to eat that adheres to my soft-foods and Crohn's restrictions, and is nutritionally balanced
-Txt me to remind me to get up and walk around during the day at work (between the hours of 8am and 4pm Mountain Time)
-Help me with WoW
-Keep me motivated for a little exercise at least 3 times a week
-Coordinate mission/achievement-giving and brainstorm other missions/achievements among other players both to give me and for each other
-Call or email me 3x per week
-Tell me funny stories or find me funny stuff on the Internet
-Help me with web programming
-Find me good music
-Help me clean my house - this obviously has to be local people, but I thought maybe we could have a big cleaning party and Matt said he'd bribe participation with tasty food
-Help me learn stress management techniques AND USE THEM
-Help me to not overexert or overexhaust myself

Feel free to add to this list - sometimes I think you guys know better what I need than I do.

*Terminology: I use "missions" to signify the things I've asked you all to help me with,as well as the tasks you given me to do, and "achievements" to mean something kind of one-and-done. In WoW terms, missions would be like quests (both for you and for me) and achievements would be, well, achievements.  Matt knows my daily routine, so he and JP can help coordinate what missions or achievements to give me, or you can look at my Superhero To-Do List.

I hope this makes sense.  Any thoughts? Feel free to claim missions in the comments - and don't worry, multiple people can claim the same missions! :)

10 comments:

  1. I know right off the bat that I can help with WoW and txting you during work to tell you to move around. I can help you with web programming as I get back into it too. Oh and the easiest one for me is researching medical info. I research like most people breathe so I can definitely help there (and I still have access to medical journals).

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  2. @Amalthea: Haha I like that you picked the missions that I had you in mind for! THE HIVE MIND LIVES!

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  3. Mission types I think I might be able to accomplish: I can help with funny (well, I think I'm funny), I can help find recipes if you let me know what sort of thing you're looking for. I can probably help out with music, if you tell me what you're in to. Tracking stuff down is basically what I do for a living and I'm happy to extend that to WoH. Also happy to call anytime. Do I get a cool WoH name?

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  4. I can help with sending you music (Youtube links on FB work?).

    Also, I can give pointers on some meditation styles, etc., and energy working to help with not only stress but also the actual ick.

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  5. Ooooh, many of these missions appeal to my adventurous spirit! :cracks knuckles:

    - I can help you with exercise. In the last couple of weeks, I've been trying to incorporate weight loss and exercise into my own life, and supporting you would not only allow me to help you, but also myself! I know you said you don't want to get to heavily into exercise until you know if you have to go under the knife again, but I'm taking things super, super slow on my end (for reasons I can explain elsewhere!), so if you wanna build a work out routine super, super slowly with me, I would be honored to help you :)

    - I can send you good music! I love music, and am constantly trying to find good stuff for myself. So I can just shoot tracks along to you as I find them.

    - I would love to call/email you 3x a week! It's something I've been wanting to do with you anyway, to keep in touch, and this is great motivation.

    - I can help you research/brainstorm stress management techniques. I need those in my life as well!

    - And finally, I would love to help you come up with rewards for yourself. I've come up with a lot of fun rewards for myself for reaching personal goals! I feel like this is a sort of short-term goal; once you come up with the rewards, you just set a schedule for yourself and it's done. So I can help you with that.

    Not sure if I am overextending myself here, hehe. Let me know what you think.

    Also, I like Shadow Hunter. And, what Carrie said: do we get to create awesome characters for ourselves??? :D:D:D

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  6. I love what you put up.

    I would love to have "trainer" under my missions for you. We've already been training kinda together, so that would be great for us I think. I may also even try to create a mission training log for you, so I can tell and motivate you and know when you need extra pushes. Knowing what types and what times you usually exercise would be great.

    Also I can try and be creative with coming up with missions/rewards. And I love finding new things on the web to make you happy, but I think we all do. I would be all about email you 3X a week min too, but that can be combined with trainer.

    Also, as I'm big into it, I think stress management/meditation can also be built in to training. Can work into exercise/stress management schedule to work together. Some ideas.

    I hope we get to help create your world further with characters. Even been coming up with story with all this. lol.

    Just some thoughts.

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  7. Be prepared for one massive comment to reply to everyone...

    @Carrie: Yay! Haha most of you guys are picking the ones I had in mind for you anyway, which is awesome. And yes you get a cool name! That's part of this whole game - ya'll gotta create your characters too!! :D

    @JP: YouTube links on FB totally work. And anything that helps with stress and ick is much welcomed. Also, you know you have one additional mission - to be my GM for this, lol.

    @Lindsay: Sounds good! Please don't feel pressured to do all of them, or all of them all the time. There will likely be others that come up too, but I always appreciate whatever you can do!! <3 And yes, please, part of this is to create your own characters for this game, with awesome backstories and stuff! :D

    @Courtney: You are awesomesauce. I like the trainer idea too - and I was going to ask you if you would take on the "coordinator" mission to help other people and help JP (you guys are much better at running any kind of game that I am, lol.) One thing in particular is coming up with missions to give me - I thought you, Matt, and JP would be pretty awesome at wrangling that. :D And yes, please, create a character!! That's totally part of this game - I'm not the only one that gets to have fun. :D


    When you guys get your characters created, please post them to the blog. Also please use the tag mechanics: characters on those posts. I really look forward to seeing what you come up with!! :D <333333

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  8. (Sorry, I had a surprise grading assignment come up, so I'm a little behind. -_-)

    -I can definitely help with cleaning; just let me know when.

    -I can find funny stuff on the internet like a champ. In fact, that's pretty much all I do when I'm not at school and/or doing school related activities.

    -I can help with stress management techniques and try to keep you from overexerting yourself (one "Carl Rogers Said to Suck Me" sampler coming up).

    -I can help try to coordinate rewards for meeting achievements

    -I can try with the food/exercise thing but those are things I tend to be compulsive about myself and I don't want to contaminate you with my weird habits. :/

    Let me know if there's anything else! And I'll work on a character profile but I'll probably need to see a couple other people's first because I've never based a character on my actual self and I don't know how to do it in a balanced manner.

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  9. @Jamie: That sounds good to me! And don't worry about the food/exercise thing if you don't feel comfortable, I've got it covered by others. :) For the food part though, it wasn't necessarily a trying-to-lose-weight request, but more of a I-need-to-eat-something-other-than-yogurt-and-soup request. If you have any suggestions for things I can eat on a soft-foods diet that aren't yogurt, cottage cheese, pasta, soup, and oatmeal, I would love to hear them - I'm getting really sick of those items. >.<

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  10. Alrighty. Offhand, I can help with WoW, and teach you some stress management techniques I've learned through Energy Medicine.

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