applications

[groundrules]

APPLICATIONS

Eastbound is primarily an invite-only game — each existing player can currently invite up to one person per month, or get in touch about further invites. Existing players can hold two characters in game. A third character can be applied, if players can prove they have met activity requirements for two consecutive months with their existing two characters and have stayed engaged with the game. If you don't have an invite, somehow stumbled upon this neck of the woods, and you’d like to stay, drop the mod journal a line — we'll try to figure it out.

As of Oct. 1, cast/game caps are off. Please note, as of Dec. 1, Eastbound only has 3-4 months of gameplay left.

WHAT CHARACTERS CAN BE APPLIED?

YES: canon and original characters, if they have a solid and consistent personality and background. Characters brought in after they've died are a-okay. For characters taken from a time point just as they're in the process of dying, please read below on meeting medical requirements.

NO (at this time): real people, original characters set in a canon environment, characters from canons or canon instalments that have been released for less than one month, characters with imported development from other games (CRAU), alternate universe, or gender-swapped versions of canon characters.

Children or characters with very specific medical/magical/environment needs: appable, but please make a note of how your character will ICly meet their requirements and stay alive. Likewise, if you are applying for a character taken just as they're dying, provide a suggestion for how they can be kept alive on arrival (this might be easier in some app cycles than others). You can bend the world a little to make miracles happen (ex: a substitute for the medication your character needs to survive can be found for a high price at certain apothecaries, etc.)

Characters that were dropped or swept by activity checks: yes, but they’ll come back without their previous memories, if they are applied in by a different player.

APPLICATION FORM & INSTRUCTIONS

EXISTING / RETURNING PLAYERS

<b><Small>PLAYER NAME</small>:</b> <b><small>CONTACT</small>:</b> <b><small>CHARACTER</small>:</b> <b><small>CANON</small>:</b> <b><small>CANON POINT</small>:</b> <b><small>BACKGROUND</small>:</b> link out or write no more than two-three paragraphs...! <b><small>PERSONALITY</small>:</b> bullet points a-okay, or written out. You can also link out to it, if you agree to what's on your wikia. <b><small>SAMPLE</small>:</b> a written sample or one or more threads to show your character's personality. <b><small>NOTES</small>:</b> you know the ropes, jot down if your character has any world-breaking powers or accommodations you need for them!

NEW PLAYERS

<b><Small>PLAYER NAME</small>:</b> <b><small>CONTACT</small>:</b> <b><small>REFERRED BY</small>:</b> Who invited you, please? c: <b><small>CHARACTER</small>:</b> <b><small>CANON</small>:</b> <b><small>CANON POINT</small>:</b> <b><small>BACKGROUND</small>:</b> written or linked history both fine. Bullet points also a-okay. If no information is available in English, please write this out in short. <b><small>ABILITIES | POWERS</small>:</b> Include any relevant power restrictions, so you don’t break our playground. <b><small>PERSONALITY</small>:</b> make sure this ties back to the character’s time point and background. <b><small>SAMPLE</small>:</b> one or more samples to showcase the nuances of your character’s personality. Submit at least one prose sample of five comments or more. You can link memes, PSL or other game threads, provided they took place within the last 12 months. You can also write a single prose sample in the game or character canon setting, if you think you can cover good introspective ground that way, or a top level with enough variety to show how the character engages in various scenarios. <b><small>INVENTORY</small>:</b> No world-breaking items. For living or magical beings, or anything colossal (think... Gundams...) please let's talk beforehand! <b><small>SUITABILITY</small>:</b> Eastbound is a plot-heavy game that typically features sleuthing, action and the undead. How is your character likely to deal with all that (and the game bear)? <b><small>NOTES</small>:</b> Are there any particular accommodations your character will need? How do you propose to handle that?

APPLICATIONS CLOSED


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Comments

sumeragi subaru | x/1999 | not reserved

[sacral]

PLAYER NAME: eve
CONTACT: pm sacral
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: mod blessings!

CHARACTER: Sumeragi Subaru
CANON: X/1999 (previously Tokyo Babylon)
CANON POINT: Vol 16, Nocturne, Kekkai VI. Post Seishirou's death. Pre-the eyeballening. Listen there's enough to contend with without the addition of taking a certain someone's last name. And powers.

BACKGROUND:

PROLOGUE. Be Sumeragi Subaru.

1. Be born on the Pisces side of the Piscean-Aquarian cusp, part two of twins, with a silver spoon in your mouth in regards to lineage. Be destined to become the 13th head of clan Sumeragi, a family of onmyouji (❀) who have served as the spiritual protectors of Japan and its emperors for hundreds of years. This is a lot of clout for a baby, but we'll get there.

2. Be trained from birth to funnel immense raw power into onmyoudo. Be adored. To be fair, you are cute as a button, but should really learn some self-preservaton. (Spoilers: you don't.)

3. Be 9-years-old. Have your loving grandmother not use the Sumeragi's generational wealth to purchase a child leash. Wander off to a flower viewing, but witness a grisly murder instead. When the creep committing the murder tries to scare you, react with big pleading shoujo eyes. Get the creep to make a bet with you that you won't remember, because you are are 9 and he is 16 and his onmyoudo is way better than yours. Something about love? Who knows! Narrowly escape murder, but at the price of having sick scars and being hunted for the rest of your life.

4. Upset your poor grandmother with this news. She hides you for seven years.

5. Until you move to Tokyo at 16! You go to school! Get paid to ghostbust! Skip meals because you're a workaholic! Incur the loving wrath of your older twin sister, Sumeragi Hokuto! You sure hang out in Kabuki-cho a lot —

6. As seen previously on Days of Our Lives: Exorcists edition... Be lead on a wild... goose... raven? chase by your shikigami. Eat pavement in front of a handsome man with a job. Become friends. Have your twin sister betroth you without your consent. Now, you are a power trio who hunt spirits, fight for the downtrodden, and go on dates. Experience domestic bliss.

7. Be unaware of your life's dramatic foreshadowing. Even though your handsome man friend with a job's name is Sakurazuka and your rival clan's most infamous assassin is the Sakurazukamori. Weird.

8. Have one of your cases result in your handsome man friend with a job being blinded in one eye. Lose your absolute mind with fear that he will hate you, when in fact, 9/10 people find scars sexy.

9. Realize you've fallen in love with him.
    9b. This goes poorly.

10. Have this be the catalyst for the unveiling of the bet you weren't aware you made. Surprise, Sakurazuka Seishirou, your handsome man friend with a job has another job: the Sakurazukamori!

11. Tragically, he does not love you back. Allegedly. Instead, have him attempt to kill you. Don't fight back, even though you could. You are much too heartbroken for that.
    9a. Have your grandmother intervene, saving your life at the expense of crippling herself.

12. Go catatonic while your twin sister confronts the man who broke your heart. Be awoken by her death at his hands — but not before she exacted a little insurance in the form of a spell.

13. Drop out of school. Withdraw from society. Get (magically) swole. Take up smoking. Perfunctorily do your duties as the clan leader while hunting the handsome man friend you wish would hunt you back to fulfill your wish. Turn 25.

14. Finally reunite with your handsome man friend at the beginning of the end of the world. He has another job! He is a Dragon of Earth, one of the Seven Angels, someone who is on the side of changing the Earth at the expense of culling humanity. Luckily (citation needed), you are a Dragon of Heaven! One of the Sevel Seals, tasked with saving humanity. You get a sweet interdimensional, damage-reducing forcefield as a participation award.
    14a. You do not actually care about the fate of the Earth. (But the barrier is pretty sweet.)

15. Fight. Become a boyfriend mentor to the boy who is tasked with saving mankind. Meet your teammates, meet your enemies. All to varying degrees of success.

16. Have your new boyfriend's boyfriend gouge out your right eye because you wished to be like your handsome man friend whom you wish was your boyfriend. Congratulations, you are now half blind! You only mentally scarred your colleagues a little to get there.

17. Have a final confrontation with your handsome man friend on Rainbow Bridge under the pretense of keeping that area's barrier safe. Go all out, look cool as hell doing it. You sought this moment for years, no reason to hold back.

18. Have your handsome man friend come to a realization about the nature of your wish. Prepare to let yourself be killed by him.

19. Have your handsome man friend pull the biggest Uno reverse in shoujo history and knowingly activate the last spell cast by your twin sister upon her death — one that turns the killing blow back against him.

20. Kill Sakurazuka Seishirou against your will.

21. Be told something by him that has haunted the imaginations of X/1999 fans to this day. Have some regrets. Wear your clothes stained with his blood for a couple days, it might help.

22. Lose your ability to create your sweet barrier and be unseated from the Dragons of Heaven. Have your new boyfriend's boyfriend offer you the remaining eyeball of your now dead would-be (???) boyfriend.
    22a. Have him drop the bomb that he did consider you special to him. Have more regrets.

23. Accept eyeball. Brief intermission. Become the Sakurazukamori. Become a Dragon of Earth. Fin.

EPILOGUE. we're just gonna ignore the implications of Sakurazuka Subaru huh

ABILITIES | POWERS:

ONMYOUDO — Subaru is an onmyouji, a professional practitioner of the art of onmyoudo, which is a system of magic and natural science based on the principle of yin and yang and the five elements (wuxing). Subaru is a psychic and medium who performs the rites and rituals associated with divination, exorcism, protection, and other such services. He can sense, see, and communicate with spirits, ghosts, and demons. Subaru's spellwork is most often routed through ofuda, paper talismans. He can create psychic blasts, beams, and shields, as well as manipulate the elements to some degree.

Subaru's power as the 13th head of the Sumeragi clan is thought of as very rare and he has been trained in the art and its adjacent magic combat since he was a child to hone the skill needed to wield it effectively. In adulthood, he is counted as one of the most powerful standing onmyouji alongside Sakurazuka Seishirou. He has some typical superhuman traits which aren't expressly attributed to his role as an onmyouji or a Seal (see below): increased speed, stamina, acuity, the ability to battle-cavort around the city by leaping or running wild distances, etc.

One of the Sumeragi clan's defining techniques is the development of the ability to enter the consciousness of another person. It's a dangerous ritual for the caster and subject alike, but it can be used to aid the possessed or comatose in their return to reality.

SHIKIGAMI — As an onmyouji, Subaru can summon shikigami, or familiars that are connected to the spiritual force of their masters. Subaru's shikigami takes the form of a large, white, three-headed bird, capable of separating into three birds. He can also summon weaker droves of white birds conjured from ofuda. These creatures are capable of reconnaissance and offensive/defensive magic.

KEKKAI — In X/1999, Subaru is a Dragon of Heaven and one of the Seven Seals, a group of individuals who were ordained to save humanity from destruction. One of the abilities of the Seals is to create a kekkai, a spiritual barrier that protects Tokyo from harm. When a kekkai is established, it temporarily phases the area inside of it to a different dimension where all physical damage sustained does not carry over to reality. Should the owner of the kekkai be mortally wounded or killed, the barrier forcibly dissolves and the damage affects the real world. Kekkai are born from a need to protect something, and with Subaru losing the person he most wanted to protect as of his canon point (Seishirou, by his own hand), he has so lost his ability to create a kekkai. His kekkai took the shape of a pentagram.

LIMITATIONS — None of Subaru's powers are particularly game-breaking and will suffer any natural limitations incurred by the setting, such as a supply of paper and ink for ofuda. His kekkai would be the biggest concern, but I've included it for completion's sake only and he will not have the ability to create it with his current canon point.

PERSONALITY:

HOW IT STARTED — Subaru began life with an overabundance of "desired" traits. Heir to the Sumeragi who wielded prestige and power over all other onmyouji clans in Japan, Subaru's strong latent abilities were fostered alongside the purity and softness of his nature. Subaru was a just, kind, and caring child with a critical lack of self-preservation that often put him at odds with the dangers of the profession he was being reared into. Even in his youth, Subaru was well aware that no two people shared the exact same experiences or emotions, but his ability and willingness to empathize so wholly with the people, spirits, and monsters around him made his talents as an exorcist flourish. Subaru often looked the things that terrified people the most in the eye, corporeal and ephemeral both, and smiled. Funnily enough, he bore the responsibility of his position with a pragmatism that seemed to defy his skill, treating his prestigious and deadly job as anyone would treat any job they were being paid well for: just a job. Granted, his raw skill is still raw skill even when routed through hard work and competency — because of his morality, empathy, and deep distaste for harming (or seeing harm come to) others, he often pulled his punches and diminished his efficacy in the interest of "saving" others. Even those who often didn't deserve or desire saving; the first time he had to lie to a grieving mother to protect her in life from her young daughter's visceral wishes in death, it tore him apart.

This segues into an interesting piece of Subaru's thought process. Despite his gifts, Subaru doesn't see himself as special, only as not normal. He is often mercilessly othered by his own powers. He himself states that he's not good with people and because of this, he doesn't wish to work as an onmyouji forever. This seems contradictory to who he is and how well he performs in soothing the spiritual aggravations of others. However, there is truth in it — it's because Subaru lacks the ability to discriminate that he often feels misunderstood and like he can't communicate well with others. This blanket empathy makes no exceptions and often shrouds his own heart and soul from him. He treats everyone the same way and expects little from how others view or remember him, making him more than a little repressed, firstly, but also near impossible to betray. Save the one glaring case where he did let someone in at the behest of his own nascent wants: his antithesis, a man who treated everyone with the same apathy. That clash of Subaru's empathy and Seishirou's apathy ultimately resulted in the death of his sister and the shattering of his freshly-shaped heart. The pieces remained, but their shape very much changed.

HOW IT'S GOING — Going from there, Seishirou's betrayal drastically altered the course of Subaru's life. He grew from a fairly emotional, cooperative, and hardworking teen into a reticent and isolated adult. Subaru denied all other possibilities in life in pursuit of strength to stand equal to Sakurazuka Seishirou. This was not to exact revenge on him for the death of his sister or for betraying him, but to satisfy the one wish that lies at the axis of who Subaru was and who he grew into as a result: to die at Seishirou's hands. Because Subaru couldn't make himself unlove Seishirou, he sought to become a worthy opponent in his eyes. Worthy enough to be granted the Sakurazukamori's death that Seishirou never claimed out of what Subaru believed to be scorn. With this single driving force, Subaru became a knowledgeable and competent onmyouji who did perform the duties of the clan head, if not somewhat perfunctorily — iron wrought expertly over his heartbreaks and hauntings. Subaru did not ever let himself heal from his formative hurts and so isolated himself with his wish to die at the hands of the person who hurt him. This immovable belief in his means to an end highlights his stunning lack of self-worth — he will meat shield it up because he's already decided on his course and nothing (good or bad) will stay him from it.

Despite this outlook being unhealthy and self-defeatist, Subaru is certain and stern in his undertakings even when he knows that it doesn't seem to make any sense, that it is selfish and will only benefit himself in the end. But Subaru also has a strong sense of self. He is still kind at heart, even though he has grown into a chilly and standoffish adult. He still reaches out. He still comes to the rescue. He does still, at his core, love. However, it is because he is who is he through his trials that he holds the wish that he does. It would be easy to seek strength as a means of revenge, but his heart only seeks the absolution of his first and only desire, and so he has woven his entire life around his pursuit of it. He knows that above all else, there is no way to make everyone happy.

TL;DR — overpowered sadsack with masochistic tendencies here to tell you that having too much empathy is bad

SAMPLE: tdm tourism & meme.

INVENTORY:

⋆ The clothes on his back.
⋆ A lighter + half a pack of cigarettes.
⋆ A few ofuda.
⋆ Seishirou's left eyeball in a sacred cannister.
⋆ (I'm kidding.)

NOTES: None, he's just here to have an arguably better time than in canon.

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot-light. ...He deserves a tiny bit of a break. Just one.

APPLICATION RECEIVED

[groundrules]

[groundrules]

Heya - the app is accepted, but just to reunite everything under the same acceptance note, if you can help figure out Subaru's curseload in Ke-Waihu:

Please pick, out of a list comprising pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony/drunkenness, wrath and sloth/indifference:
— two sins that will form the basis of his ancestral curse

— the sin you think Subaru is guiltiest of

Try to avoid repeats between the sins chosen for the ancestral and the individual curse.

[sacral]

certainly ♥

— two sins: pride & envy
— sin he is guiltiest of: greed

ACCEPTED

[groundrules]

Thank you for your application!

ADMIN

When you have a second, have a last read through the game rules and comment to the TAKEN LIST.

Join eastbound, lostcompass, westwhere. Feel free to make an OOC intro post on lostcompass, if you want!

All game-relevant updates will be posted on lostcompass, but you can also consider following eastbound. There is an informal optional game discord server — you’ll get a private message with an invite, once you comment to the Taken List.

Like it says on the application page tin — you can have a maximum of three characters in the game, and you can invite one new person in per month.

If you’re not already served on that front, we have some custom codes to help you set up a character inbox or permissions post. Both are entirely optional, and feel free to customise at will!

Your character is exempted from activity requirements this month.

Our latest plot point is here — feel free to jump right in.

NOTES

Sounds like a tough love life there, Subaru. Have you considered OkCupid?

The kekkai magic seems fine! He can keep it.

INTRO: Subaru can slide in during our test drive event. He’ll be officially introduced as a new member of Ke-Waihu and asked to drink or tricked into drinking an elixir that will let him take over and atone for the sins of a village ancestor. Cultists villagers believe this will gradually right the wrongs that have infested the community, to everyone’s welfare. You can find Subaru’s ancestral curse here — no need to be hyperspecific in how you break it! Check out how ancestral curses manifest and decide which of his two sins you’d like to play with.

You can find also find Subaru’s glorious ’family unit’ and housing assignment. The villagers of Ke-Waihu suffer under the delusion that the housemates are truly part of a family or clan — so try to fake you’re all bosom buddies.

You’ve gone with a plot-light entry, so leaving it up to you — but if after you’ve had a read of the upcoming events you think you’d like more to sink your teeth into, give a shout. We can hook Subaru up with a NPC thread, a smooth transition into one of the plot rolls, or his own thing.