Starflame13
Moderator
|
Welcome and congratulations to all who participated in the 2024 Elemental Championships! Welcome to the Heart of the Arena! A huge round of applause to all of our entrants this year - I especially appreciate everyone’s determination in making this a year worth reading and worth enjoying even with our smaller number, and everyone’s flexibility to ensure we could hold a full event with those who were able to enter. Thank you sincerely to everyone who participated. Now, due to our smaller number, only four entrants will be joining Finals this year - as the Chosen of the Arena. So, without further ado, I am proud to present to you: All chosen finalists, PLEASE READ THE REST OF THIS POST IN ITS ENTIRETY. Anyone else, feel free to skip to the final paragraphs after the line break, with information as to where you can go from here! You are also welcome to continue fighting in your Paragon Arena, join in the Spectators thread, or write an exit post. All of the same rules from the initial OOC thread apply. Any extensions that were made in the first round have been reset as well, meaning that each writer starts with 36 hours in extension, in 12 or 24 hour increments. Note that for Finals, you CANNOT request all 36 hours as an extension for a single post. The maximum extension per post is 24 hours. I will do my best to continue to give people 24 hour idle-out warnings, but this is the Finals. You are ultimately responsible for posting on time, so plan your posting schedule accordingly. Once your character awakes in the Finals Arena, you start with a clean state. Writings from the Paragon Phase will be evaluated again only if a tie-breaker is absolutely necessary. Here is where you truly need to focus. Communicate and collaborate with each other, ask questions when needed, proofread your posts, and have a blast showing off your writing skills and abilities. The Arena will open at 11:59 pm EDT on Wednesday, August 21st. I intend to speak with the four finalists before confirming how we will handle the pacing of the Cuts, given our decreased size this year. As of now, I do not intend to make any cuts for the first week and half - or until Saturday, August 31st at 11:59pm ET. When a Finalist is Cut, they will have some sense or awareness that the favor of the Arena has been withdrawn, and a gate will materialize beyond their initial starting point for them to exit through. Once Cut, a competitor has three choices. They can Submit, recognize the will of the Arena and exit through their gate. They can Surrender, and allow an opponent to slay their character through a collaborative effort. Or they can retaliate with Spite, and make one single, final attack in the arena. If you choose this last option, your character will then be left to the mercy of those left in the arena, with no further outlet for collaboration. As such, to any competitor targeted by a Spite attack, please treat it with the appropriate severity. As with the Arena OOC threads, I will be editing in any questions about the Heart of the Arena here! Starting with: What are the dimensions of the Arena? The Heart of the Arena is smaller than the Paragon arenas. From the geographic center, it is 30 feet (or 9.14 meters) to the edge of the sands. The first entrant listed above is at Cardinal North, the next at Cardinal East, and so on. The statue of the prior Champion of Wind, Vosta ver Vostadteir, is in the center of the Arena. The plinth is roughly 5 feet (1.5 meters) in diameter and 10 feet (3.05 meters) tall. The entire statue is made of silver, and is carrying a long boar spear. It is unbreakable, appearing and acting as normal statues during the combat. As there are no Paragons this year, no one has additional grace or risk from coming into contact with the statue - but it is painful to come into touch with, as if the nerves aren’t sure to react as if they are experience burns, frostbite, shock, or all at once. How do our characters get transported to the Arena? All Combatants experience the transition from Sky and the entrance into the Arena at the same time - but what you do with the space in between is up to you. This year is a little different as you are not traveling through the physical arena complex, but you are still welcome to have memories, visions, conversations with your Lord’s representative, or similar in this space between transitions. While not required, each combatant has the option of a full heal/restore to the point they were upon entering the Paragon Phase, as well as the restoration of any ammo/armor/weapons that were lost or damaged in the first round, enacted however they wish in the transition. Please reach out to me if you have specific questions about this mechanic. Once again, thank you to everyone for participating in the Elemental Championships! Even if you did not make it through to the Finals, stick around to watch and cheer on your favorites either here or in the Discord server! Additionally, you can move your characters to the Spectators Thread - where anyone can enter the stands and interact with Bren post-combat, or comment on the fight in Sky! As stated prior, Spectators is treated similar to the Yulgar’s Inn Roleplay, where characters do not need extensive (or any) bios, you can include as many people as you’d like in your conversation or simply just observe, and no fighting is allowed. It is entirely for fun (or for practice), and anyone can join in whether or not you participated in this year's ECs. Keep in mind: Any conversations or activities here DO NOT IMPACT those fighting in the final arena. It is for the spectators' enjoyment only. For anyone who would like to continue improving their own role-playing skills, I encourage you to check out either the Role Playing Academy or the Combat Training forums, or else swing by the casual Role-Play Yulgar’s Inn. Additionally, keep an eye on the Role Playing General Discussion for any future, member-led RP’s, or feel free to look into creating your own! Lastly, I am happy to give feedback on individual performances in the Elemental Championships. People are welcome to PM me to ask for said feedback, but please be patient if it takes a while for me to respond as I will be slightly busy judging the Finals Phase. I hope to see all of you return for our other annual RP competition, Where Powers Collide, in January, or to the Elemental Championships of 2025! Best of luck to all of our Finalists!
|