While we finish up various things, let us begin with our neighborhoods to keep things moving!

Who wants to go first?

I can.

Hello everyone, I will be playing Bhaskara Kohli, an Iconoclastic Gallant of the Order Goetica who Listens to the Whispers.

Bhaskara will be a curious sort for a Goetic, as they primarily won't be traveling down either the Right Hand Path or the Left, but instead will focus the vast majority of their colloquy upon the summoning of spirits of arachnids.  I promise not to lean too heavily onto the Spider Vislae theme, I'm not making a superhero, but the idea of Truespiders is incredibly interesting to me and I want to develop that as a concept into a full fledged, multi-story character arc.  The books don't even list stats for them in general, just giving the stats of a particular Truespider named Raajathamos.  A quick scan shows Raajathamos with nearly Godlike powers, which isn't all that uncommon for this setting, but it still means that Bhaskara is going to be aligning themselves with dangerous and utterly alien powers.  To start that journey off, one of their contacts is an agent of said Truespider, and their Hidden House in infested with Spiders.

More importantly, the Whispers that they Listen to are the vibrations of the universe transmitted along the great web.  They are the mindless chitter of lesser spiders, the utterly alien conversations of other Truespiders, arachnid spirits speaking in tongues.  Bhaskara is connected to the great web, and it sings to them.

Why go Iconoclastic then?  I didn't want Bhaskara to be comfortable, I wanted them to already have an enemy that is much bigger than them, and not already be connected with the Truespiders.  Stalwart would have gotten me Rank 3 connections with Turespiders and no enemies, the interactions would already have been done.  So instead I took Iconoclastic to give them beef with the Abnormous.  What beef?  Well, the books say that Spiders tend to get seduced by Demons, and the Abnormous are all about possessing themselves with Demons, so I saw a good opportunity for overlap.  Easy to have a problem with an organization who literally keeps tricking and arachnid-napping your potential allies.

How about you both?
This message was last edited by the player at 00:02, Fri 17 Jan 2020.

Hello!

I will be playing Everly, An Eremetic Empath of the Order of Makers who walks with a secret companion.

Everly is a woman who isn't quite sure of who she is. She's lost an arm to the War but she doesn't know the how or why. She lives in a house that bears what she is certain is her family surname... but there's no one else there and the House goes on seemingly forever... much to her quiet and secretive horror. Stranger yet, she's surrounded by portraits, pictures, and other visual representations of women rather too similar but not exactly her from all sorts of eras, places, and dimensions as if the house was a strange little nexus of probability and branching paths of the multiverse. All the more disquieting is the ubiquitous presence of mirrors, though no where near as omnipresent as the portraiture of self yet not self.

Perhaps made all the more maddening that apparently there has always been a Ms or Mrs Everly as long as the House has stood. The rest of the family coming and going as the whim of Suns wills. In the end, her great enemy is perhaps no more than the notion of her own identity. Great swaths of it lost to the lies of the Shadow and other parts locked behind the fog cast by The War that no one can recall or talk about. Her exploits and deeds past that saw the loss of her right arm all the more maddening for the fact they can't quite be recalled. Her face further reflected in a dozen lifeless gazes from beyond the frame or seeming to follow in her reflection from mirror to gilded mirror.

That slipping sense of self by the same token has made it so she is sensitive (Empath), after a fashion, to the feelings and motives of others which has, in turn, aided her in a way to market herself as a Maker of some skill with metal and clock work. The latter especially reinforced by the exquisite details of her now purely clockwork right arm in it's silvers, brass, and golds.

Regarding the great orders and people of the Actuality, she's remained somewhat distant (Eremetic). Wrapped up in herself and the establishing of what may have once been or will be from her home on Listener's street. Her only standing and renown among the guild halls of the Order of Makers and those seeking her out specifically for her skills as a Maker of clockwork and metal. Some as a result come to her for weapons, others for art, and others yet for a little something to make them whole in the way she's done for herself.

Of course, even as an Eremetic, she can't quite and wholly exist in a vacuum beyond such transactional interactions. She has a rare few friends and colleagues. Fragments of whatever fell by the wayside or were born of a certain necessity when it came to her work. Those underlying motivations and questions though means she can't exactly be away from the Actuality, stewing in a house of familiar yet not faces captured in paint and ink... and that does drive her out from time to time into Satyrine and it's sub dimensions. Whether by her own will or perhaps at the goading of something else that shares her home with. People with information or the possibility of greater insight into past happenings always catching her eye, attention, and orbs.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:30, Fri 17 Jan 2020.

Excellent, Bharskara and Everly.

Bharskara, shall we start with your neighbors?

How many do you have?  One on each side?  A third in the back?  Who might some of them be?

Excellent.

I’m happy to add as many neighbors as allowed, I like doing this sort of thing.

Let’s see, for the first one let’s go with a paranoid Weaver by the name of Carthis, who is convinced that mirrors are tracking them everywhere that they go.  It’s what led them to take up residence in the painting, with the hope that mirror can’t follow them in there.  They regularly patrol the Street, looking for even the smallest hint of a mirror infestation.  If they find anything reflective, be it a puddle of water or a shiny piece of metal, they weave their magic to render it unreflective.  Specifically, they have a cloth that when rubbed against a surface renders it unreflective, a reverse polish if you will.  If they can’t do that, they destroy the offending item.  As such, they are seen as a nuisance by most of the other members of the neighborhood, constantly defacing things in minor ways.

Their house is a single story to the right of Bhaskara’s hidden abode, a canvas tent almost as large as a circus tent.  Within it is filled with hanging silks and cloths, covering every surface and billowing in an unfelt breeze.

Bhaskara likes them, because they ensure that the windows of their Hidden House are always unreflective.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 14:54, Wed 22 Jan 2020.

A most excellent sort to have about!

Let's chuck in a few more possible neighbors - any we don't use for one person's neighborhood, we might use for another, or use them to spark another idea.

Killian - a lacuna who runs a small spice shop called "Variety".  He offers such spices as existential ecstasy, isolated loneliness, hearth contentment, old flame returns, first crush, exciting accomplishment, really any sort of spice you need for your life.  Killian resembles a tall man through which can be see a bed of ferns in a rain-drenched forest.  He is gregarious and very interested in what people have to say about their lives, recording them avidly in an endless stream of notebooks.

Dilah Jawo - A collector of musical woodwind instruments and stray birds, Dilah is a zilat who can control small winds.  Her home is constantly full of musical sounds, chirps, screeches, and bird talk.

Mimsy - a young woman who lives in a house not much bigger than her oustretched arms, she nevertheless seems to be cooking constantly, providing an endless stream of aromas from her window.  People seem to be drawn to her window by these scents, and she rarely doesn't have someone chatting at her window at any hour of the day (and evening).