Short Form Pitch

"Kerch sits atop beautiful land. The oceans are clear and filled with life. The sky is a brilliant, unspoiled blue. The cities we’ve created are awe inspiring in their majesty. Generations of people, able to live and pursue their dreams in the world we’ve created. It’s a land worth living in. It is a land worth fighting for. Don't surrender it to the darkness."

The Covenant is a site concept set in an urban fantasy world besieged by monsters called Corrupted Objects that fight through the thin layer between Earth and another dimension teeming with monsters who emit an energy poisonous to living beings called corruption. An elite group of warriors known as Counters have stepped up as the defenders of humanity since the incursions started, their distinctive watches both unlocking superhuman abilities and providing them with a near immunity to Corruption Rays present both on Earth and the Other Side for as long as the watch is charged. The federal government of the Federation, the Administration, has made it their mission to spearhead the movement to fight back the Corruption. For generations, they have held the remnants of humanity together, and succeeded enough that each city-state had risen back to roughly the standard of living enjoyed prior to first contact.

General World Notes

This will be an original site basically mashing up the “unending alien threat to humanity coming from another dimension” Counter:Side and the “commercialization of what was once honorable warfare into spectator sports due to the increases in technology, safety, and security of the state meaning that total war was an alien concept to most of the population” Kazimierz in Arknights. The setting is future Earth set in around 2212, well after the first contact and subsequent failed wars against the monsters known as Corrupted Objects slipping into the world. The playable region has stabilized, and while worldwide communications are still down there are eight remaining megacities left that comprise the Federation, the new attempt at a world government.

The forum itself will focus on one of those megacities, located in the remains of modern day Crimea in the Black Sea. A tentative pitch for that city goes as follows: The City-State of Kerch has the third largest population in the Federation with roughly fifty-two million inhabitants that are part of the island nation with its population split among two major islands and several micro islands around them including the eponymous Island of Kerch which is roughly 750 square miles (~1924 Square kilometers) in area to the right and the Island of Yalta to the left of Kerch which is slightly smaller at roughly 650 square miles (~1683 square kilometers). This high population density leads to vertical solutions being the solution to most land scarcity issues, and most of the population would live in skyscrapers which each house thousands of people. The government has smaller scale floating cities in the ocean that are made up of hexagonal platforms perched atop the water which can house permanent populations of a few thousand workers who need to keep essential functions working as well as military bases, but constantly need to be resupplied and the artificial platforms cannot sustain enough weight to have comparable population density to natural land. Only the very rich can fund the expensive and inefficient land reclamation process and thus afford to build small artificial islands with beaches for their estates or company property. These bits of artificial land almost always have a geographic area of at or below 8 square miles (~21 square kilometers) and will be located within 50km of the major islands unless the builder of the island is truly a recluse.

Exiles

Exiles, put simply, are people from a different world than the main setting on the site. The more corruption and blight take hold on a world, the thinner the barrier between the two becomes. Any society that has progressed to interdimensional jumps will invariably have some people who will risk jumping to unknown or random coordinates in order to escape being killed by Corrupted Objects (COs) in their own world. The vast majority of these jumps lead to the death of everyone on board the dive vessel, as the Other Side is the most common destination for these jumps. Those who are particularly lucky, though, will land in a space in the Other Side that connects to another world… one that isn't under immediate threat of annihilation.

This concept does have a few restrictions, however. Exiles must be humanoid in shape and general size, fitting somewhere in the ballpark of one to four meters in height. Exiles must also not break the setting by existing with either powers, items, or physical attributes they possess. They must also not have knowledge of technology or magic sufficient to replicate any of it that is more advanced than the setting itself.

The first rule means that there are no pixies who are no taller than a foot and no giants who are ten meters high. Orcs, elves, and satyrs are fine but a sentient sponge or a dragon is not. The second rule means that essentially it's not okay to break system rules and justifying it by saying that the previous world the exile inhabited had the banned ability like Corrupted Object control, the ability to time travel, divinity, or the power to summon a swarm of dragons. The third rule prevents an engineer from coming from a more advanced sci-fi universe and making bigger, better, intergalactic ships from Star Wars with their knowledge or a grand wizard with magic far beyond what our system allows.


General OOC/Structure Notes

Site will be on Jcink premium with a custom skin. Working model is really slick right now and I’m really excited for others to see it once it’s finished.

System still in development, but the first version of the system will focus on Counter Companies fighting both monsters and each other in an effort to get all the fame/glory and rank up in that Company Leaderboard to get bigger perks, pay, and the ability to go on the talk show circuit as a celebrity. Help or hinder other Companies while you work to destroy hordes of monsters and recover ancient relics that are akin to magic items and advanced technology that can lead to setting improvements for everyone back in the main city. Systemless option available for those not interested in combat.

Application will be pared down following recent trend, with many sections being made optional. Systems specific sections will have to be filled out still to ensure powers/etc. fit within approved spectrum but most of the flavor stuff will be optional so those like me who prefer long form applications can do it and those who want to jump in and do it later or never can also do that. I’m not really worried about abuse of this to slip things past the radar, because while it will definitely happen at least once I think a policy of just kind of trusting that most people will not break boundaries set in rules will work better in the long run for the day-to-day roleplay.

Progression system tied in with the combat system. General ways to progress will be either IC posts or IC total word count, with no word minimum/maximum in either direction. Some form of first character bonus and canon roles so people who don’t want to do the zero to hero thing can start more mid-range if they want.

Noob Ramps

This is a term I have for ways for new people to get in and contribute very easily to the site, and this concept is made from the ground up with this in mind.

The setting itself is a megacity where you would have to try really, really hard to make your character unable to interact with others. If you’re in the city, you can interact with each other and that’s step one.

Bulk of the combat will likely be group of PCs against monsters. PCs who fight monsters organize themselves primarily into Counter Companies, which have a more fluid membership compared to something like a Naruto or RWBY team. Openings in existing companies or noobs coming together to make their own companies provide early things to do and the leaderboard lets you have an alternate form of progress in the form of fame/prestige as well as the ‘getting stronger’ type of progress common in sites.

Making the bare minimum for applications take as little time as possible so people can just kind of jump in and see if the vibe is good for them so they can jump in while still hyped.

DMless mission boards that will act basically as thread prompts for you to go out and do a thing. A man in a dung beetle costume has locked themselves into a gas station, go resolve the situation. Coming up with thread ideas/etc. is hard and having changing prompt lists and replacing ones that people use over time allows for a quick way to do an action-y or at least focused thread by picking a prompt you think would be neat.

Easily swapped subgroups. Let’s say you make a character concept to join an open slot at a company and don’t like the vibe or whatever. It’s not a hard lock sort of deal where you have to massively change your character – just quit your job IC and look for another one. Since one of the main systems will be focused on Counter Companies competing with each other, poaching and shit will happen and be perfectly reasonable IC. Because it’s all in the same megacity as the home base for the site, everyone is nearby and your OC could just go off and do something else if they don’t find success in one thing. People will make their own subgroups and recruit for them, and I think that’s the way to go.