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Topics - YOLF

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Areas / Nexus Campus Town
« on: May 20, 2019, 04:38:04 PM »
NEXUS CAMPUS TOWN

There are as many avenues of learning in the Nexus and inequalities between them as the districts of the sprawling city-state differ from one another, but most of its prestigious higher learning institutions gather in one place: the complicated and lively Nexus Campus Town. Workshops, investigation labs, student housing, shopping streets and entertainment centers fill the gaps between campuses and their lecture halls, archives, and department buildings, with newly risen technical schools across from ancient art academies meeting in shows of frankensteinian architecture repurposed by students for any amount of reasons.

Nearly every field of education and academic research has a notable presence in the district, including magical ones that offer alternatives to the insular atmosphere of the Citadel of Magic. Invariably high tuition fees and exploitative student loans allow the institutions of the Campus Town to maintain some of the most modern resources and equipment, and encourage the continued activity of highly experimental clubs and courses with dubious safety standards. All in all, the variety of schools lends itself to some pretty wacky stuff.

Student-organized events are a common occurrence, whether their goal is funding, recruitment, or simple entertainment, but district-wide events are organized by each of the biggest universities on a fixed rotation. Each institution contributes to law enforcement and security in some way, with management of these aspects also periodically rotating, not between the biggest institutions, but between those that train and possess the most pertinent assets to the tasks.

Mundane activities in the district are frequently broken up by minor incidents involving demons summoned at frat parties, overenthusiastic magical girls interrupting public disputes, susceptible sentai heroes fighting crime, and magical girls fighting sentai heroes, with students and staff for whatever reason often finding themselves tangled in convoluted magical plots along with these characters.

Albeit a hotly debated topic, the female dress code in much of the Campus Town’s faculties mandates skirts that end halfway down the thighs and shirt size limits that don’t quite accommodate bustier individuals.

Notable Residents

The Headmaster - A cloaked, cryptic young woman who serves as the Chief of the Nexus Campus Town, whose hands are perpetually stained with blood. She has been the sworn protector of the district for many years, and its de facto premier authority figure, despite being largely hands-off in the majority of its decisions. By default, she has a place in the directors' board of every university in the Campus Town, and tie-breaker rights in its communal administrative council.

Despite her mysteriousness, she speaks pleasantly to everyone, and occasionally sponsors or mentors a handful of students elected by standards only known to her. She is fond of advising people as much as her experience allows, but it seems that due to a reckless promise, she is obligated to speak vaguely of important information and not address it directly unless unavoidable or speaking to someone who is already in the know.

Strength: Amazing
Agility: Incredible
Durability: Amazing
Magic: Extremely High
The Headmaster's magic allows her to animate and control any inanimate matter within the Nexus Campus Town, and magically reinforce it by one or two ranks, up to Heroic durability. This is a kind of instantaneous enchantment, which allows her to take control even of materials that are already imbued with magic, unless it is of at least Very High potency - and with the creator's consent, she can control even these things. Controlled matter can change shape in an instant, and when in need, she transforms the very brick and stone of the streets into giants primed for battle, and grants such things limited autonomy based on her purpose.

A powerful contract ensures that she cannot physically leave the boundaries of the Campus Town, but within it she is effectively immortal - she is not immune to injury, but endlessly recovers from conventional injuries in moments, and even if she were decapitated or reduced to ash, she would reappear somewhere in the district within an hour.

She can also magically project her senses anywhere in the Nexus Campus Town, and magically link any two passageways within it, allowing her to travel basically anywhere there in an instant provided there's a door or something similar to use. In order to attend meetings outside the Campus Town, the Headmaster creates a half-solid astral projection that she can control as her own body.
 
Instructor De La Fontaine - A popular professor from the Institute of Modern Magic Research, whose charm and availability for seemingly free consulting on her extensive knowledge in magic theory have made her beloved by students and colleagues alike. She doesn’t show up with the same hairstyle or eye color twice, and her honeyed, tranquil words have the reputation to compel people to open up about a great many deal of things.
 
Places of Interest

Library Island - In the middle of a lake occupying a small portion of the Campus Town is an island entirely occupied by a castle, which serves as an incredibly extensive modern library. Many people come here daily for some book or another, but most steer clear of the innumerable underground floors, where the bookcases grow taller and the curation of the library less reliable. But documents allegedly dating back to the earlier history of the Nexus lie in storage somewhere in these labyrinthine depths, attracting adventurous historians and explorers willing to brave traps and other obstacles to rescue information valuable to many.

The Clocktower - A elaborately decorated clocktower where much of the administrative services of the Campus Town operate from, it also doubles as the residence of the Headmaster. The highest floors, where light passes dimly through obsidian windows, are always open to anyone who wishes to consult them, provided they can be found, and from the balconies over the great clock one can look over nearly everything in the district.

The Faculty of Robotics - A few highly angular buildings of smooth, unassuming construction make the front of this university. The expensive but plain reception halls and classrooms, however, conceal extensive underground installations laden with hangars and blast doors, where advanced machinery, electronics and computer science are put into practice to their utmost by the most eager of tinkerers. Of interest to many enterprises in the Nexus, a burgeoning cybernetic research scene has a home here, but members of the faculty have also created a lot of automated security, for the Campus Town in particular. And they’re working on giant mechs, of course.

The Institute of Modern Magic Research - Students of magic of all stripes and practices gather here, in a hybridized enclosure of buildings with aged lecture halls and shiny laboratories that hosts (at least on paper) open discussion and studious breakdown courses on wizardry, sorcery and theurgy. Its courses focus on distilling a myriad of traditions into unified theories, experimenting with the combination of wildly different schools, and integrating traditional magecraft with advanced technology tools and methods, such as app programming.

Seto Kaiba Achievement Center - Supposedly created after a brown-haired billionaire managed to have the entire board of education fired for refusing to include deck building as a graduate degree in one of the colleges. It is an after school center focused on teaching students study skills for higher education.  In addition, the entire staff is required to be at least "a second rate duelest with a third rate deck."  Naturally, the duel monsters club gets the funding priority, but somehow the center has some of the best facilities among the graduate prep schools.

Neighbors

The Nexus Campus Town has a long-running relationship and business arrangement with its closest notable geographical neighbor, the Citadel of Magic. Aside from a small amount of interchange borne of overlapping education fields - although officially, the management does not condone the Citadel's isolationism and cutthroat policies -, the university city regularly imports homunculi and summoned slaves as labor to maintain the grounds and experiment on, such as for medical studies (after all, who needs cadavers for dissection when you have a fully functioning tool that is a perfect 1:1 for the human body?).

It also seems plausible that the magical incidents that frequently trouble the Campus Town's public order spill over from the Citadel's more unruly parts, but its government disowns any association with these events.

Other than this, the Campus Town provides promising professionals straight out of training to many places in the Nexus, and receives funding to pursue advancements in primarily the areas of science and technology.


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Exactly what it says on the tin.

This serves a similar purpose as the NPC thread, but with different implications. People can submit sheets here for buildings, areas and structures in the Nexus. This is to fill in the setting with specific locations, as opposed to defining in broad strokes what exists in the city and its surrounding regions, so it's different from the Nexus Guide. If you think a place is relevant to a character or the story, if you've come up with a thing that would fit in the world of Cross Effects, in general if there's a location you want to establish as part of the RP, with consistent characteristics then you should detail and post it.

Sheets should be clear and descriptive, and include any special qualities or features of the place. If pertinent, you can also describe its neighborhood and surrounding geography, or even its typical residents and the like.

Not every location requires a sheet. If your character just has an apartment and this is a known fact then you don't need more detail than that. However, notable locations should probably be explained to a degree, with the caveat the GMs don't disapprove of anything and their existence and traits make sense.

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NEXUS CITY

The Nexus is a hodge-podge of locales and cultures both mundane and supernatural, a weird melting pot of all kinds of people that often swirls into a maelstrom of self-interest, conflict, and occultation. Monsters, both mortal and not of human seeming, make the streets dangerous and the night inhospitable, but many fantastic beings and individuals live in peace with the mundane and temper this darkness to a degree.

Nexus City is a vast modern metropolis as varied as all the great cities of Earth (and with landmarks from many), surrounded by mountains, forests and farmland, kissed by the sea on one side, and touched by pockets of wilderness and unusual environments. Each part of nature provides the Nexus with the best of its boons (and sometimes the worst of its curses and the bloodiest of its answers).

Thanks to its completeness and diversity, this small world manages to be self-sufficient. At the same time, it is also limited, for the boundaries of the Nexus as a whole stretch into themselves. If you try to leave it, whether by air, water or earth, when you go far enough out you'll find yourself moving back in the direction you came from. Or eaten by something conspicuously massive.

You can find a little bit of everything in the Nexus. It has advanced technology (but not too advanced), it has things from the medieval era, it has unexplained magical items.... even phone and internet service that can reach beyond the databases of the city. Except they never allow contact with anyone outside of the Nexus, and social media only work internally. The canny might ask how exactly that even works. Most will tell them "don't ask". External resources and connections with the outside just seem to trickle into the city as appropriate.

The Nexus is a unique place that pulls in objects, places and living beings from a myriad of different universes, in no discernible pattern. It has people from all kind of cultures and every way of life. Little peculiarities (and big ones from time to time) are a natural facet of how things work, and just about what the residents expect.


Properties of the Nexus

> The strange is common but generally not normal.
> It has a little bit of everything.
> You can't just leave.
> Time is more narrative than linear.


THE PEOPLE

Being a completely mundane person in the Nexus is a bit like walking a tightrope. But the tightrope isn't that far from the ground. Sure, your legs might feel tingly if you land on them or you might get hurt if you fall, but you won't die. Except sometimes the ground where you just landed opens up into deadly hazards. Like lava. Or spike pits. Or bone marrow sucking giant carnivorous plants.

Of course, everyone knows about the supernatural, but the vast majority avoids it or doesn't acknowledge it unless they have to. A winged person could walk down the mall like anyone else, but people are not very likely to engage with them if they have that choice. Not everyone's like that, of course, and some supernatural denizens are welcomed or not distrusted - but it depends on the exact place and case-by-case circumstances. Though rarer than on Earth, the opposite stance also exists: vampires, werewolves and mages are shunned and prosecuted at times, even those that are entirely fine people. It's an aversion based on fear. Racism and discrimination of supernaturals unfortunately both stands out more and tends to be extremely hazardous for the health of both sides. But all things considered, it could be worse.

For good or for ill, everyone is aware of the truth. Some feign ignorance, but they'd need to be blind and deaf to actually be so. The impossible is seen as commonplace, but that doesn't mean it's any less impossible.


THE CITY

The City is effectively maintained and managed by private interests and organs, but it possesses a central government that handles much of the day to day processes and administers public services. In essence, it acts more like a middleman between the citizens and the philanthropies and businesses that keep the city running, but that's not to say they don't try. Like everything else in the Nexus, it suffers from variable corruption and the occasional spontaneous takeover by supernatural tyrants.

Registration in the Nexus is for the most part lax, but punitive. Unless you seek out an office and get registered (which involves paying taxes), newcomers are likely to get saddled with difficulties, with few guaranteed rights. But with so many coming and going without warning, it doesn't take a lot to be considered a legitimate citizen, and arguably takes less to avoid legal processes for those who wish to keep a low profile. The economy is in flux as much as the city itself, but corporate interests tend to find a way. They just might not necessarily be the same tomorrow.

How Does The Average Citizen Get By?

The same way as anyone in our world might. They're registered municipally or nationally (or what passes for nationally), they have a job, they do taxes, and they pay for basic services probably distributed by privates. This is more or less the case for everyone unless they have particular deals with local powers or the like.



PLACES

Nexus Downtown

Sewers - There is no reason for the City's sewage tunnels to be as wide, tall, or inhabited as they are.

The Barrens - Not so much a place as a title indicating that all semblance of human civilization in a location has been destroyed. Small pockets of survivors scrounge for supplies, isolated monsters stalk ruined apartment blocks, and swarms of unnatural vermin make their nests. Any district is one catastrophe away from becoming Barren.

East Asian Special Ward - It's a mix of old and new, with influences of China, Japan, and others. Youkai and spirits walk the streets openly, and some run businesses. Yakuza, Triads and oni gangs dispute territory, but all tread lightly in the shadow of the Sky Palace.

Primeval Woods - The forested area past the irregular arrangements of farmland, and outside the urbanized limits of Nexus City. The trees at the edge are so thick no car can pass, and the only humans here qualify as such by narrow margins. Predatory beasts, faeries, and pre-human monsters await in the brush and branches.

Golden Rule Commerce District

Emporium Of Man

The Bay


GROUPS

Police
Enforcers
Corporations
Criminal Syndicates
Gangs

(Work In Progress)

Credit to Aiden for descriptions of locales

4
Cross Effects 3.0-It was good while it lasted / NPC Idea Thread
« on: January 15, 2015, 05:23:57 AM »
Halloweeners

"Who's laughing now!"




Races: Human, Orc, Troll (small minority)

Appearance: The gang apes the look of a slasher out of an old, outdated flick, with black leathers, orange cloth, creepy accessories, and masks that range from hockey masks to cheap rubber halloween ones.

Strength: Human
Agility: Human
Endurance: Human

Note: A few members may have one attribute at Exceptional, in some cases as many as two, due to their inherent natural physique as orcs or trolls, or maybe superior training.

Magic Ability: Mundane

Other Abilities:

Shooting and beating and stabbing: At least average knowledge of firearms, blades, and using their fists.
Vandals: Very good at vandalizing stuff.
Cybernetics: The occasional member of the Halloweeners may have a minor and cheap piece of cyberware like an artificial arm, or enhanced muscles.

Gear:
- Kevlar Vest
- Molotovs
- Enhancing Drugs
- Small Caliber Handgun
- Cheap Assault Rifle or SMG
- Knife of some sort

Origin: The Halloweeners are a gang that scares even some gangs. Their fascination with macabre, over-the-top Halloween imagery seems to sometimes go to some pretty nasty places. Originally from the Seattle of the Sixth World, the gang is a constant presence there; no matter how many times they're cracked down or destroyed, they always reform, sometimes bigger and better. Since some members ended up in Nexus City, they've done what they tend to do. Spread their mania and increase their numbers. They make their living with a mixture of dealing, arson, petty theft, and violence-for-hire.

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