The Legonater

I more or less went out of my way to make Soren the opposite of Dyric.

A man of virtue is a rare sight in such a mercenary establishment. I look forward to seeing how your 'proper values' manifest; as our Valesia says, I suspect we'll find many of figure of, ah, 'twisted' nature. At that, Soren chuckled, waving his hand in protest. Just a humble pilot, sir.

Soren considered for a moment, taking in the newcomer. After some thinking, the pilot allowed himself some wry musing. I'm not convinced corruption and honesty are necessarily opposites. Surely someone could be corrupt, but honest about their corruption. I could be quite corrupt, but be honest to myself in doing so. If it were in my nature to be corrupt, would it be dishonest to not be corrupt? He returned to his drink, which now was finally defrosting. Surely he was not thoroughly convinced by his own words, and as he mulled over what he had just said, he worried that he had spouted pure nonsense. But still, maybe some shred of knowledge was buried within it.

Soren flashed a genuine grin. Thanks. I dig the gun. If you're looking for work, there's a quest board in the corner. The pilot points over his shoulder with his thumb. 'Should still be open slots. At the consensus, Soren gives an affirming nod. A pleasure, he echoed, albeit somewhat hollowly.

Only a few days in and there's a philosophical debate in the Hall, this is the Heroica I remember.

I'll agree with the notion that the goal is to be at peace with where we are. But the way I see it, it's all a game of improv. You deal with the cards you've been given, and hope that fortune's wheel keeps spinning. And the name's Soren, he says, nodding to Zaria. Soren Aeolus.

Soren shrugged, swirling his drink in an absent-minded effort to thaw it faster. We're impatient because we want something out of our grasp. It's not that you lack control so much as no one has control. All we really have power over is the here and now. He glances down at his frozen glass. And sometimes even that's up for grabs. The sounds of misfortune drift to Soren's insightful ears. Like I said...

So long's it lands me a paycheque, you'll hear no complaining from me. As they say, there's no time like the present. 'Sounds like you're halfway there - impatience comes from a lack of control. The key 's to live in the moment. The rest will fall into place. Soren tries to take a swig from his glass as if to punctuate his point, having said more than usual, but all he got was still-thawing ice and a small trickle of rye.

It's kind of akin to watching a cutscene. It's difficult to engage with a block of text, especially when it doesn't seem to directly impact any of the other characters. For what it's worth, I thought everyone did a decent job in trying to engage with the brawl in our conversation, but if there's something more we could have done @samurai-turtle I'd be interested to hear what you were thinking!

Dyric and Thothwick say hi.

Well, it's not for everyone. 'Sounds like the sort of religion I'd enjoy, Soren says with a small grin. Soren shrugs. I don't make a habit of watching terrorist groups, sorry mate.

Soren takes some offense at being called skittish but lets it slide. I can't imagine any local terrorist group having the funding to pay for something like that. I mostly saw 'em with rich socialites and the like. I'm still not sure what this 'line of work' is, exactly. I mostly do flying.

It took Soren a moment to fully register the offer of candy. He was confused, but wasn't about to turn down the generous offer. Before he began the impossible process of choosing a flavour, he selected a cinnamon swirl - the first flavour the Cladrasith had suggested. Swiftly, he unwrapped the taffy and popped it into his mouth. As he let the sweetness settle on his tongue, Soren considered the woman's question. Looked to me like some sort of defence matrix. I've seen similar machines before, but nothing quite like that.

Soren kept a tight hand on his holstered weapon during the entire brawl. He continued to keep his guard up well after the Chimeran's enemy had been disposed of. Finally, Soren eased his grip and returned to his glass, clutched in his other hand. To his dismay, the drink was now a solid block of ice. Noticing the espers of elemental magic still drifting from his hand, the pilot let out an exhausted sigh. Damned nerves, he muttered to himself. Looking up, he saw the Cladrasith approach and strike up a conversation with the elf. The two of them, at least, seemed here to actually do some work. Somehow I doubt just one would do the trick. Soren said, somewhere between wry and grumpy.

Soren cast a surprised glance at the armoured woman. That was rhetor- ...nevermind. Glancing up from his drink, Soren looked over to the Mission Board that Thorvald had mentioned. Sure enough, it seemed three quest offers were pinned to the board. That's what he was here for. He grabbed a drink and shuffled past the conversation, looking at the missions in more detail. 150 potential credits? Soren let out a low whistle. That's the kind of cash he was looking for. With the digital stylus, Soren signed up for Mission 1. Satisfied for the moment, Soren returned to the bar counter and leaned against it as he watched the others talk.

'Preciate it. I'll keep that in mind. Taking his drink, Soren glanced around sourly at the sudden chaos that seemed to have erupted around him. Between the broken stools and the loud customers, this was hardly the bit of respite he had been searching for. Are things always so loud around here? He asked to no one in particular.

Soren haphazardly pulls out a tablet and writes 'Ms. Kreri' into it, before returning to the conversation. Uh, give me a Riqon Rye, on the rocks.

The doors of the hall had barely closed before they were opening again to a newcomer cloaked in a dark jacket. The human glanced around as he strode in, taking stock of the small collection of individuals inside but addressing none of them. Instead, he spotted the taproom and quickly made it his destination. As he approached, the man gave a quick wave to the Chimeran behind the counter before taking a seat. I'm new here, my name is Soren - Soren Aeolus, I don't know if you have me on file or anything, I don't think I was asked to file any paperwork - what do you have here to drink?

Soren Aeolus (The Legonater) 31-year-old male Human Character Points: 1/21Vitality: 5/5Velocity: 3Strength: 1Skill: 4Smarts: 2Spirit: 3/3Proficiencies: Nature 2, Insight 1, Piloting 2, Short-Range Weapons 2Spells: Elemental Evocation, Mystic Binding, Entropic MendingEquipment: MK-12 personal handgun (short-ranged calibrated energy weapon), Reaction Dilator (+1 to Piloting and Insight Checks) Inventory: Whip Tail (Calibrated Short-Range Kinetic Weapon), Farsight Goggles, Adrenaline Decoction, AV Rig, Hacking Chip, Plasma Potion, Energy CellCredits: 90

Whoops, I'm sorry for not seeing this sooner! Basically, Discord is a structured chat platform. I can supply images of you want, but you can probably search those up yourself. Essentially, a good discord server will have multiple different 'channels,' in different categories. So, in this instance, you could have a category about say, planning game mechanics and a separate category for lore decisions, and perhaps even a separate category for art or figbarfs or whatever. Within each of these categories you could have specific channels: a mechanics category could have a channel for discussing player build, or combat, or weapons, etc. You could mute any channel or category you don't want to be involved with, and have easy, categorized discussions that have less ideas speaking over each other. An admin can 'pin' posts as well, meaning important developments can be easily accessed for later. The search bar also functions a lot better than the Eurobricks search function, and you can choose to search for key terms in the entire discord server, or just a specific channel or category. I don't know, that was a lot of words, I hope that makes sense.

So this may be a kind of wild idea, and feel free to shoot it down, but has there been any talk about setting up a Discord for the planning 2.0? It just seems to me that part of the difficulty in planning in a format like this is that ideas can easily get lost in waves of conversation or behind pages and pages of other ideas. Not to mention there might be people who are interested in hashing out lore and others who are more interested in discussing mechanics. Having a Discord with different channels and the ability to pin core idea or give solidified concepts their own feed, not to mention arguably better search functionality, might streamline the process here a little bit. It would also make back-and-forth discussion a lot easier.

At the same time, I think there's a lot to be said of restrictions bringing out a lot of creativity. At least for me, it's often more rewarding to come up with something new within a set of confines than to have an open field to work with. In my own world that I've been building, each species has kind of its own take on spaceflight. I don't think it should be that complicated for 2.0, but I do like the idea of some culture having magic spaceflight and others maybe having more scientific spaceflight. As a whole, though, Jump Gates are a good way to keep things really simple. Otherwise, you start having to ask the mechanics of FTL travel and how small the world really is. Yes to this. I always love having room for outer space to be this unknown, cosmic thing. Jumping onto the Jump Gates idea, another possibility is simply that there are limited Jump Gates outside of the inner territories, and thus the outer worlds are mostly unexplored.

Ooh... I had been kicking around an idea for a hive mind race to use somewhere. Something along the lines of the Replicators from Stargate, but organic. That could actually be incorporated really easily into LEGO. I don't have a lot of my bricks on me, but I am willing to collaborate on some lore if we really need species and such fleshed out. I've been hitting a wall in my personal writing and have been needing to switch up projects a little bit anyways. Congrats!

It might be a long shot, but I know @CMP had a pretty detailed writeup on Orcs for the OG Heroica, if this is meant to be an extension of that world you might be able to ask him for a couple pointers. I do really like the idea of this; it allows for a really developed-feeling world. The impetus, then, is to have new races to fill that void, of course. Is the plan to have, like, major alien races, or to keep things still relatively bound to Olegaia (presuming that's a name that's staying)?

I've been watching the development here from the shadows - I don't know if I really have much to say in the way of mechanics - but this gave me a huge blast from the past! It's shaping into something great, folks!