Manchester Honors OOC

I first want to apologize to everyone for my lack of activity in recent weeks. School started last month and along with that and a new position at work, I'm so busy I can hardly breathe. Sadly, the last thing on my mind these days in RP.

If you want to close any threads we might be doing together, I'll totally understand. If you're willing to hang on, I'll try to get to them soon. For the next little while and as I adjust to my new responsibilities at work, I will be very slow with my replies.

I'm sorry for this, I truly am. Thanks for understanding.

-Ally

Hi, everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that today begins the fall semester for Alden University. Not every class will begin today, but by the end of the week each class will have had its first meeting. I encourage you to make up some sort of schedule for your character. It doesn't have to be coordinated with anyone else, as there are multiple classes being taught by multiple teachers at different times and days.

Also, if you haven't seen this post about your character's class load, please read it and adjust your character's classes. Remember that each Freshman should be taking Appreciating Paranormal Diversity, either in their first or second semesters.

There will be some fun activities coming up in the next month, so we look forward to those as well as a game-wide plot.

I have updated the list of sports with the months in which their games/competitions will run. They will compete against other houses for the first couple of months and then go national to compete with other Supernatural schools the last month or two.

Just FYI, we seem to be experiencing some trouble with people being spontaneously removed from the community without Mark or I doing the removing. If you find that you cannot suddenly see the posts or post to either the OOC community or the RPG community, please let us know and we'll get you put back.

As the game has progressed we have had several people ask us about the world surrounding Alden University and how the interactions between humans and supernaturals is affected. Here are a couple of points everyone should be aware of:

The Supernatural World vs. Humans
Humans have known of the supernatural for a very long time; practically as long as they have known about themselves. However, in centuries past, the supernatural community in general was very secretive and tried to keep themselves hidden, because of reigning persecution. It was around the 1960s, that much of the violence and persecution began to lessen, which gave the supernaturals a sense of security and caused them to expose themselves. Van Helsing, witch hunts, etc. were all very real things that happened to the people in this world.

They are citizens of their respective countries, but have very few rights in the United States- other countries have different rules and laws regarding the supernaturals. They may own houses and have jobs, they may own businesses and have families, but they may not vote, and they are discouraged (sometimes violently) from mixing with human company. A supernatural and human marriage is illegal. Supernaturals are feared for their powers and differences and treated like savage minorities. Some humans don't mind them, and may even like them, but the majority of the humans hate the supernaturals and fear them. The supernaturals are segregated from humans, they have separate churches, schools, restaurants, bathrooms, drinking fountains, etc. Humans are discouraged from using supernatural facilities, but they aren't as heavily discouraged as supernaturals are from using human facilities. Because Alden is a predominantly supernatural school, the facilities surrounding it are either primarily supernatural or allow both humans and supers to use them but have separate areas for each. Obviously, some of the more prejudiced humans would have issue with this, which causes problems the closer facilities are to the borders of Manchester.

Alden's Houses and Their Purpose
The Houses were formed to house supernaturals of like nature together, form bonds and create teams for inter-University competitions. This would ensure sound body as well as sound mind and create a healthy sense of sportsmanship and team comradery. The Houses were divided using the 4 most basically recognized elements: Air, Earth, Fire and Water. Humans were placed in the Houses based on their western birthsigns.

Arvandor- The ‘Air’ House. Celestials, Extraterrestrials and supernaturals that move through the air, Faeries, Pixies, Banshees etc, are housed here.
Kemen- The ‘Earth’ House. Forest dwellers and plains dwellers, tree spirits and giants, hobbits and dwarves, centaurs and satyrs…all those who live upon the good earth itself, or are a part of it, find their home here.
Naur- The ‘Fire’ House. All those creatures you prayed were fictional…Vampires, Dhampir, Werewolves and other Lycans, Exotic Djinn, Demons…they all lurk in House Naur.
Shae- The ‘Water’ House. The spirits and supernaturals of the sea, rivers, lakes, marshes, etc live here. Merfolk, Selkies, Sirens, Naiads, etc.


If you have any questions or need further clarification, please let us know! Thanks!
♥Mark & Ally

Hey everyone!

We know that the classes taken at Alden are not the most important aspect of this game. However, we would like to bring some points to your attention so that you may adjust class schedules accordingly. The fall semester at Alden will begin August 16th.

1. Your character's major probably doesn't require a slew of supernatural courses, their focus each semester should be on their major, not the supernatural courses offered. Unless, of course, your character is majoring in Supernatural Studies. Please be sure that your character is not taking more than two supernatural courses per semester.

2. Please be aware that most students take five or six classes as a maximum. More than this requires studying and homework pretty much all the time, leaving no time for extracurricular activities, especially a job. However, they should be taking more than three classes per semester, excluding the summer semester.

3. Each Freshman is required to take Appreciating Paranormal Diversity, either their first or second semester. If your character is not a Freshman, we can assume that they already took this course.

I will be making a list of the supernatural classes each student is taking along with the teachers for those courses. You may decide which teacher teaches your student's class if more than one teacher is teaching the course.

I will also be making a list of majors, so that people know which classes their characters might have in common with other people taking the same type of classes.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please let us know!

Hey guys! It's Ally, bringing you one Micah Petrov. He also goes by a shortened version of his middle name, Drew, but only to family. Speaking of family, Micah here has a cousin who is also attending Alden. A cousin he loathes with every fibre of his being. Once upon a time they both loved the same girl, and that girl died which tore them up. Anyway, Micah is a werewolf. He's also a playboy and a thrill seeker. He's a charmer, but can also be pretty manipulative. On the outside, he's the epitome of a gentleman, but on the inside he's pretty rotten. But look how pretty he is! He's got some major tattoos, too. But some of them you have to get him naked to see. *brow waggle*

That's it from me, come play with him!

Hey guys!

We have four new characters to the game! Please update your friends list here. Dori is bringing us a new faculty member, Meda, a kitsune. Jenni is bringing us a new student, Takeshi, another kitsune. I have a new character, Micah, a werewolf. And Mark has a new character, Dano, a werelion.

We would like to announce that we are lifting the limit of characters to 5. Not many of you are even close to that, so it's probably not that big of a deal, but Mark and I are happy!

We also have a concern about OTA threads that are going unanswered. I have a thread that has been up since July 15th that hasn't been answered. This is not a "poor me" rant. There have been others who have had OTAs go unanswered so long that they've taken them down. We are happy with the level of activity from most of you, but what concerns us about the unanswered threads is that if it were a new player and their thread went unanswered for over a week, that would be a very poor reflection upon us as a whole. I understand that your characters might not fit into every scenario put up under an OTA, but this is a game that is meant to be played, and not just with the people you are friends with. We are by no means trying to get on anyone's case about this, we just wanted to bring it to your attention in case you were unaware.

We really appreciate you all!

♥
Ally

Hey guys!

We have a new player, Dori, bringing us a new character, Kaydence (a siren). Please give her a warm welcome and update your friends list here. We lost a character and gained a new one, so make sure you update. I'm unable to update the website for the time being because it appears to be down, but I'll fix it as soon as I can. Thanks for your patience!

I have been really under the weather. I've been sick for over a week now and haven't been feeling up to doing much which is why I haven't been around. I will try to catch up on my tags as soon as I can, but as I'm going back to work today I have a feeling I'm going to have a lot of work to catch up on, too. Thanks for understanding!

♥
Ally

Okay. The group chat happened tonight, and the only people that showed up were Ally ((mod and mun of Britta, Dannika, Isabelle, and Marie)), Matt ((mun of Alissa and Gemma)), Misery ((mun of Desmond and Jack)), and me.

We discussed some future plot points and everything, so it's definitely worth reading the log. I managed to save it successfully this time.

Ally is livebythebone.
Matt is wasurenaikara182@gmail.com.
Misery is Virtua1Poet.
I am xluridlullabyx.

( Manchester Honors Chat Log for 06.22.10 )

Okay, so since my internet was down when the other chat was supposed to happen, we're going to shoot for having another chat on Tuesday night at 6:00pm PST/9:00 EST.

Mark, I know you don't want to start a chat that late cause of work the next day, but if you could just pop in to say hello before you head off to bed that would be wonderful.

If this time doesn't work out for a lot of you, we can reschedule for this Friday at the same time.

Questions, comments, criticisms, let me know!

♥
Ally

Hey guys! I think most of you who have ever played with us have played in games where cell phones and computers were obsolete or not in use. With this game, our characters have access to the internet, email, cell phones, and all sorts of other technology.

Being that we haven't really run a game where all that stuff was used, I probably didn't explain how it works all that well within the context of the game and the journals. Allow me to do that now:

Personal journals, meaning the journals you use to post your characters, are to be used for any network/internet, texting, phone calls, announcements, journal entries, etc. that you want your character to send to another or multiple other characters. For example, if I were to have Britta text Alissa, I would post a thread in Britta's personal journal with the following (and the format is up to you, but there is no need for headers), probably behind a cut: [Text to Alissa] Hey Alissa, how's it going?

From there, Alissa would be able to respond to Britta's text. Characters are also welcome to post their thoughts about certain things, the weather, the elections, etc. wherein other characters would comment unless it was marked private.

Please make sure that your personal threads like this are marked clearly so that someone doesn't mistake a texting conversation with one being done over the network that anyone would be able to read. If anyone is still confused about how this works, please feel free to IM or email me and I'll try to further clarify! Thanks!

♥
Ally

I can't tell you all how relieved I am to finally be home. I love Texas, it's beautiful there, but the heat is excruciating and flying standby is too nerve wracking.

But, I'm home. This means I should shortly be catching up on my threads and that I should be able to start new ones.

I have four girls available: Isabelle is my art professor and demon, Britta is my flirtatious and environmentally conscious nymph, Marie is my shy but friendly selkie, and Dannika here is my naive and limber gymnast human.

Let me know if anyone wants them for anything!!

Tomorrow I leave for Texas. I'll be gone for a full week plus a day. We are taking the computer and will have wi-fi in the hotel but that doesn't mean I'll have time to post, but I'll try. I will also have my phone and be checking emails, so if you need to get ahold of me you should be able to. Don't have too much fun while I'm away!

-Ally

I'm Ally, one of the mods. I take care of the website and mod journal for the most part. Any problems, spelling errors (cause God knows there are some), mistakes with your character info, etc. Just come to me and I'll get them fixed asap. My aim is livebythebone and my email is livebythebone[at]gmail[dot]com.

Just a little about myself... I'm old enough to be your mother. Okay, maybe not, but I'm old. I've been RPing for about 12 years all total. I started out on AOL in chat rooms and over IM. I moved to message board games briefly before I moved to journal games about four years ago. I've modded most of the games I've played in, so I have a lot of modding experience. I've been married for six years, I have no kids, but I do have two cats which is almost the same thing. I'm currently going to school for a multimedia degree (graphic design, photography, video, web design, etc.) and my passion (aside from RP) is music. I also have a habit of taking the limit in characters. I, of course, have the limit now, which is four. Let me tell you about them:

This journal is for Britta- she's an Eleionomae which is a marsh nymph. She's very flirtatious, especially around virgin boys (which is starting to become extremely hard to find). But she likes girls, too. She's majoring in Biology and likes the marshy places. She's a Sophmore this year. House Kemen.

her_own_skin is Marie- she's a selkie. She's very shy around humans, and doesn't especially enjoy big crowds. She's wary of getting to close to anyone, but she's really great once you get to know her. She works at an ice cream parlour as a waitress and is currently majoring in Oceanography. She's a junior in House Shae.

the_gymnast is Dannika- she's a human. She's in House Naur cause her sign is Leo. She's overly bubbly, loves gymnastics and music and is somewhat naive. She's adopted and thinks a crazy night is a sleepover with friends. She's a Freshman this year. Like other humans, she carries a talisman that keeps her from falling in love with every supernatural around. She's majoring in Applied Technology because she can't major in gymnastics.

demon_art is Isabelle- she's a demon. She's also an art professor at Alden. She hates to be around more than one or two people at a time and prefers to be alone if possible. She sort of suffers through her classes. She's old, around 260 or so and has been teaching at Alden for 100 years now. She controls a nasty disease called Porphyria. It affects the nervous system and the skin and makes the victim's urine and bowel movements purple! She also has the ability to figure things out about a person or object by licking and smelling them.

They're all mostly finished except for their backgrounds. But once they're finished I'll be ready to play! Looking forward to this game and playing with all of you!

-Ally