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Rea
Apr 5, 2011

Komi-san won.


Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth (世界樹の迷宮Ⅴ: 長き神話の果て/Sekaiju no Meikyuu V: Nagaki Shinwa no Hate, lit. "Labyrinth of Yggdrasil V: End of the Long Myth") is a first-person dungeon crawler RPG developed by Atlus, released in Japan on August 4th, 2016, and due for release in the US and Europe in Fall 2017. It's the fifth main entry in the Etrian Odyssey series, and the seventh overall (not including Etrian Mystery Dungeon). Much like the previous games in the series, EO5 is all about exploring pre-made dungeons with characters you create yourself, while evading deadly FOEs on the field and occasionally running into a random encounter that's capable of smashing your party into a fine paste. Also cartography.

EO5 is more of a return to form after EO3 and EO4 experimented with giving you more things to do outside of the Labyrinth, which were...shall we say, of varying degrees of fun. In EO5, there is nothing to do but explore the Labyrinth and do sidequests, which are almost all based around going back to areas you've already explored. The plot's also extremely minimal, almost mirroring EO1, in that you get some bits and maybe a side story, but all of the actual plot is saved for literally right before the final boss. This return to form's also shown in the class designs (gameplay, not visual), which eschew the class-mixing encouraged by EO3/4 subclassing and EOU/EO2U Grimoires and instead have each class be pretty much self-contained.

Hold up. Not out in the US or Europe yet? I don't know Japanese! Alternatively, I am in the future after the game came out in the US and Europe, and I'm wondering what this subheader is about!

Lucky you, then, because this is a translation LP! I don't know the first thing about Japanese either, so I'm going to be joined by Clarste and alcharagia, who are doing the roles of translator and editor, respectively.

Clarste and alcharagia aren't just going to be helping behind the scenes, though--they'll be joining me fairly frequently as co-commentators.

About the future thing: this LP was started a year before EO5 came out in English, and was done entirely via fan translation. There are parts that will differ quite heavily from the official version, so bear that in mind.

Co-commentary? You mean varying up BBCode, which ends up looking ugly as hell?

Nope. To distinguish who's talking at any given time, we'll be using some wonderful portraits drawn by my friend oB2Ko Mario.

Ragnar

Clarste

alcharagia

Is this gonna be another narrative LP like EO2U?

You know it.

Why are all the music track titles really simple?

Because the OST wasn't out yet when I prepared the images, so I just opted for really simplistic titles. I like the link images smaller, anyway.

Speaking of the music, each track has two different versions--the normal one, and the FM synth version (think the Sega Genesis and EO1-3). Clicking on the left of a link image brings you to the normal version, while clicking on the right brings you to the FM version.


Table of Contents

1st Stratum
Update 0: Adventure's Outset
Update 1: Nameless
Update 2: Creepy Crawlies
Update 3: Eventualities
Update 4: Useless Crayfish
Update 5: Stoneborn
Golem Overview
Update 6: Grow! (Nameless vs. Golem)

2nd Stratum
Update 7: Rockface Rumble
Update 8: Swammerdami on the Rocks
Update 9: The Labyrinth Before Time 7: The Great Neckbeast Migration
Update 10: Something Important Happens
Update 11: Trumpeting Intensifies
Update 12: Unexpected Baboons
Update 13: The Strongest Link
Update 14: E2M5 (Alternatively: MAP10)
Hippogriff Overview
Update 15: Princess and Mage Make Technicolor Bird Cower in Fear (Nameless vs. Hippogriff)

3rd Stratum
Update 16: Dad Was Proud, He Didn't Care How
Update 17: Agitating Skeletons
Update 18: Half-Life Full Life Consequences Joke
Update 19: Haunt/Reality
Update 20: Haunted Hall
Update 21: I Already Used The Levelord Message Joke
Update 22: Explorers' Abbatoir
Undead King Overview
Update 23: Night of the Living Dead (Nameless vs. Undead King)

4th Stratum
Update 24: Uh
Update 25: Shiny Entertainment
Update 26: Lizard-kun
Update 27: Current process: SEKAIJ5
Update 28: Memes
Update 29: Mauthe Doog
Update 30: Teleporting Noise
Update 31: Stay Crystal, Dragonboy
Crystal Dragon Overview
Update 32: No Eyes Blue-and-White Dragon (Nameless vs. Crystal Dragon)

5th Stratum
Update 33: Harisuzume no Naku Koro ni
Update 34: Waiting For Ragnar to Play
Update 35: Clarste's Asleep
Update 36: Harisuzume no Naku Koro ni Chiru
Update 37: Kinu's Got the Hacksaw
Lord of the Primordial Darkness Overview
Update 38: Nobody Told Me About id (Purpose) (Nameless vs. Lord of the Primordial Darkness)

6th Stratum
Update 39: My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada
Dryad Overview
Update 40: Beautiful Fighter! Dangerous Dryad (Nameless vs. Dryad)
Update 41: The Innocent Devil's Song
Oliphant Overview
Dragon Zombie Overview
Update 42: All the World's Fish Kneel Before Their Master (Nameless vs. Oliphant and Dragon Zombie)
Update 43: Sugar Mama
Update 44: Rage Awakened ~The Origin~
Lamia Overview
Update 45: The Real Queen of Snakes (Nameless vs. Lamia)
Update 46: C'mon, Let's Go Home...
Star Devourer Overview
Final Update: ...To the Planet That's as Cool and Blue as Me! (Nameless vs. Star Devourer)


Classes
Common Passives
Fencer
Dragoon
Cestus
Reaper
Warlock
Necromancer
Hound
Masurao
Shaman
Herbalist

Mechanics
Ailments and Binds
Races

Rea fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Nov 15, 2017

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Rea
Apr 5, 2011

Komi-san won.
Guild Nameless's Roster


Illusionary Fencer: Alexis (Submitted by blizzardvizard)

quote:

Alexis is the forty-seventh prince of a kingdom from a far, far away continent. He was to marry the thirty-second princess of a neighboring kingdom in another one of their families' endless list of political marriages, but this particular princess turned out to be a bit of a rebel. She ditched him on the wedding day without so much an explanation or an apology. Later that he found out that she had grown dissatisfied with her caged and dictated life, so she escaped to Aeolis to become an "adventurer" and scale its giant tree--Yggdrasil. Even later on, he found out she had perished inside the dungeon.

He may not know her name, or have seen her face, or...know much anything about her at all, but Alexis has his honor. He would not let the murderer of his bethrothed go unpunished. There's one problem, however. He did not know who or what, exactly, killed the princess, and deducing that is definitely an impossible task. But then the answer dawned upon him - it was not the monsters that killed her. She could have died to the boars, the cat-birds, the legs-in-a-pudding, but it would never had happened... without the challenge that the tree presents.

And so, he ran away from his home of sixteen years and got on a ship to Aeolis. (He was silently pleased at how dramatic it was to leave his pampered life just like the princess did.) Armed with a decorative sword he took off the palace walls and about three weeks' worth of fencing lessons (that he took before he got bored of it, as princes do), he's going to duel the killer of his lover to the death...the entire Yggdrasil Labyrinth.


Thunderclap Fencer: Iseria (Created by alcharagia)

quote:

The third of seven noble sisters, Iseria is royalty of a small, matriarchal island nation whose primary export is politically arranged marriages to princesses.

Okay, actually, it's its lucrative spice trade, but the joke is there among many traders who note the frequency with which the nation's princesses are mailed out to become brides to other nations' dashing royalty. They have a lot of them, relatively speaking, and you'd be surprised how many arranged marriages suddenly fall through.

Such was the story of Iseria's marriage to a Prince Something-Or-Another, after his other betrothed died shortly before the marriage was made; King Something-Or-Another, father to the prior, had "a Dad moment, ahahaha!" and immediately went and got his son another lovely bride.

Struck hard by middle-child syndrome and hardly first in line for the throne, Iseria's patriotism yet burns hot within her soul; she dons the ancient ritualistic garb of her peoples' ancestors dating back hundreds of years at all times, and drat your sacrilege! A self-fashioned environmentalist, she has a history of disappearing for weeks at a time because she needed to take a swim off to another nearby island to "catalogue" its flora, fauna, and exactly how worth it it would be to declare it a part of their territory. She claims her all-green eye is proof positive that this is part of her lot in life.

Displeased by the marriage at first, Iseria was given the greatest of outs when Prince What's-His-Name dashed gallantly off to the Labyrinth, of all places, to avenge his prior betrothed. Iseria, ever impulsive, was shortly behind; her goal in the Labyrinth, twofold.

First! Catalogue the greatest untouched biome in the ntire world, and do it in a way that nobody can deny your keen natural eye!

Second! Do not lie meekly down and become a sacrifice for another nation! Prince I-Can't-Remember would not take Iseria as his wife- she would take him as her husband, and drag him back to Queensland to take the less-vaunted-but-still-important role of Vice-Queen!* She would become Queen and guide her great nation to even greater heights, or die trying in an environmentalist's paradise!




*Vice-Queen is a gender-neutral title. "Kings" are as foreign an idea as a memorable Brownie character.



Dragoon: Sasha (Submitted by Efe)

quote:

"Hey, you! Yeah, I'm talking to you, the adventurers! How about I offer you a once-in-a-lifetime chance? Picture yourself, all geared up and ready to make your mark on the labyrinth. Treasures, excitement and more await! But hark! Our of nowhere, you find yourself surrounded by all manner of vile creatures; golems, dragons, even the dreaded forest deer! Why, the threat alone has been enough to scare off lesser adventures, and taken the lives of too many others. But fear not, my fellow explorers, for I have a solution that will benefit us both. For a price that I'm sure we can negotiate later, you'll be blessed with the services of the legendary (but not really) Dragoon, Sasha! With my stalwart shield to protect your fragile lives, and you doing all the actual hard work, the untold riches waiting in the labyrinth are but mere steps away. So, what are you waiting for? A free pass through the terrors that menace all treasure hunters doesn't come around so often. Hire me, and you have my word that our adventures will be met with resounding success!"



Cestus: Cecil (Submitted by BlackPersona)

quote:

Cecil was the third born son of his noble family, destined to never stand out from his elder brothers with regards to his inheritance. He was a listless youth that barely succeeded in anything they introduced him to. Fencing, art, mathematics, dancing, etiquette, nothing stuck to him... until they finally introduced him to music. It turned out he had a magnificent ear for music, and in no time at all he began to become a budding virtuoso. There was no instrument he could not work into a wonderful song, and, indeed, he was naturally proficient in every instrument he laid his hands on. As a young adult, he was already well known far and wide for all the music he composed. He was such a refined gentleman that he was always on demand for every royal dance and ball.

Unfortunately, on his way to yet another party, his caravan was attacked by a horde of Cutters and Bloodbears. Only Cecil managed to barely escape from the attack, with a scar across his chest to show for it. Ever since then, the world assumed that he was dead. They couldn't be more wrong.

Ten years later, a man claiming to be the musical composer of old emerged from the forest, very much covered in bear blood and bear fur. He had a deranged eye and a rather booming voice, quite the contrary to the soft-spoken, slim Cecil of old. No one could get quite a straight answer from him - his answer changes every time they ask. However, there is without a doubt that he does have the same talent as the old Cecil, complete with composing music with his fists (Did you know punching the skull of a bear just right makes the same sound as C-Sharp minor?). And now he's arrived in Aeolis to show off his art. Just... don't let him get too into showing it off, because he might go into a frenzy.



Reaper: Raven (Submitted by Dr. Fetus)

quote:

Tired of his home life and not being taken seriously, Raven set out to explore the Labyrinth to make a name for himself. He took one of his tools he frequently used at his home, and decorated it to make it seem shiny and cool. An awesome weapon means the wielder is awesome too, right? And can't forget the awesome looking outfit too. But despite all his attempts to seem all cool and edgy, he comes off as pathetic or adorable to other people, much to his chagrin.

“I'm not a farmer! I'm the deadliest and coolest assassin around! ...That happens to know a lot about crops and cute little animals-and why are you laughing!? Stop petting me on the head!”



Warlock: Kaelin (Submitted by Aniodia)

quote:

Have you ever met someone who's incredibly smug, for seemingly no reason? Not just smug, but so smug, you just want to punch them in the face? The kind of person who just oozes smugness from every pore, even if they're not trying? That's Kaelin. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had everything he's ever needed handed to him, the family servants only feeding more and more into his superiority complex. Even when he went into training as a warlock, it was all but a folly to him, nothing more than a minor dalliance to while away the time. The fact that he actually had the talent to back up his braggadocio took a couple of his classmates by surprise, but it was all fun and games for Kaelin.

When the city of Aeolis opened its gates to the multitudes of explorers' guilds, Kaelin had spun a yarn about how he was going to be the first to the top, and how it was enough of a foregone conclusion that no one else should dare try. Only once his bluff was called did he realize the enormity of his task, and even then, the self-confident Lunarian walked with a swagger in his step the likes of which couldn't be matched (or so he thought). Now if he could just avoid the rest of these commoners on his way to the top, he'd be all set.



Necromancer: Lanzon (Submitted by Txn)

quote:

Who doesn't like to have a marvelous body? Working as a model was what he lived for, not because of the amount the artists paid him just to pose, but for being immortalized in the endless work of painters and sculptors from all over the world. But those days are a thing the past.

Lanzoni, the one who loved being the center of attention now lies hidden from the world, his body now covered in scars.You see, having an excellent physique attracted a lot of people but also attracted those who were envious, and those scars are the painful reminder. Alone, his only company was the whispering wind that flew to his window, or so he thought.

One day, he realized that those whispers were not from the wind, but from the dead. Somehow, he could hear and talk to them. Spirits that came to talk to him despite his scars, some even talked about their days exploring ancient ruins, and a few just talked about spending hours looking at the paintings and statues made in his image. That day, he found a new calling, the path of the Necromancer.

With a renewed spirit, he set forth with one goal in his mind, being the most fabulous Necromancer that ever existed. Who knows, maybe he can even recover his tanned body. Yikes dude, you need some sunlight.




Hound: Gram (Submitted by mischievousart)

quote:

Gram's always wanted to go on a grand adventure, but life seems to keep getting in her way. First, her parents needed help on the farm, then she was looking after her siblings and cousins, then there were children of her own, then GRANDchildren...

Now that everyone's finally grown up and there's other, younger people to put in charge, she's finally taking the chance to follow her dream. Who needs a boring quiet retirement when you can have adventure? No stinking monsters or silly youngsters who want her to slow down are going to get in her way, you hear me? NONE.



Masurao: Jana (Submitted by oB2Ko Mario)

quote:

Jana hails from a traveling circus, known far and wide for its feats of wonder and awe. Following in her parents' footsteps, Jana began learning card tricks at the age of 3, eventually mastering sleight-of-hand by the time she learned how to read and write. She continued to learn all sorts of mind-boggling tricks that, eventually, she became a headliner for the circus. Her most famous tricks involve her swords, featuring the most death-defying stunts any circus-goer has ever seen. From coffin-stabbing to near-decapitations, Jana garnered much attention for her stunts; it wasn't long before rival magicians tried to outperform her and upstage her acts. One day, one such rival uncovered the secrets to her magic, and in a bid to ruin her, he exposed everything about her stunts. Ashamed, Jana left the circus, but never gave up on her sword tricks. While she now works as a sword-for-hire, the Magnificent Jana never lost her magical touch. The stunts she's capable of doing now make her older magic look like cheap parlor tricks, and it's rumored that she incorporates such stunts in her mercenary jobs as well. Come one, come all, and see the most amazing swordplay on earth!



Shaman: Mio (Submitted by Endorph)

quote:

Mio used to be a normal girl in a country called 'Japan.' In Japan, she was a nerdy student with few friends, poor grades, and few interests outside of her favorite games and buying fan-comics about fictional characters in romantic relationships. Truly, hers was a pitiable lot.

Until one day, in the middle of the night, her 3DS began to glow! Reaching out towards it, she brushed her fingers across the screen - and was sucked into the world of the game! Overwhelmed, outmatched, and out of her depth, she is forced to rely on the good will of those around her, hoping that the labyrinth will unveil the truth of why she was brought here, and give her a way to get back home. And also hoping that her guild is filled with cute boys.

... That's her story, anyway. Nobody's really sure if it's true or not - or frankly, what she's even talking about when she explains it. She might just be weird. True, she can actually kind of fight despite everything, but maybe she got bumped on the head during training. And she seems weirdly fascinated by all the non-Earthrun races, but she could just have a bit of exoticism going on. Either way, she tries not to go on too long about all that. Not that many people seem to buy it. She's more than happy to go into great depth if someone does buy it, though! Especially, you know. A handsome man of about her age, maybe a little older.

Please buy it.



Deeply Compassionate Doctor (Healer Herbalist): Dosen (Submitted by Level Seven)

quote:

There goes a legend of a treasure sleeping in the depths of the labyrinth. A treasure so great, mere words cannot describe it. A treasure that incredible led to Dosen trying (and failing) to sneak into the labyrinth long before it was officially open to the people. The one time he managed to make it inside, the first monster he ran into (or more accurately, an bird's shadow) sent him running for his life. Realizing going alone would be crazy, he took the time to learn survival skills (he just read adventure novels). Now armed and ready with what medicinal knowledge he possesses (read: whatever was in that book he found in the trash last week), he'll let others do all the hard fighting while he provides aide. Whatever it takes to get that legendary treasure.

Unfortunately, this so called legend came from his village's drunkard, so maybe he should learn to stop believing everything people tell him.



Innocent Poisoner (Smoke Herbalist): Magda (Submitted by Rangpur)

quote:

Born to a Lunarian clan who took astrology extremely seriously, Magda has an elaborate depiction of her star sign, the Dinogator (may he frolic forever in our hearts) tattooed on her back. To be born under such a sign marks one as an exceptionally dangerous warrior, a destiny the typically meek and unassuming Lunarian girl thoroughly failed to live up to until she bought a second-hand Smoke Herbalist starter kit from a passing Brownie caravan. Magda's ancestral homestead is currently the thaumaturgical equivalent of a Superfund site, an incident she hotly denys was her fault, blaming it instead on 'that gormless bint, who couldn't tell the difference between (unpronounceable compound) and (equally unpronounceable compound, but with a silent 'W').'

Whatever the case, her family made it clear she should pursue her destiny... elsewhere. Anywhere, really, so long as it was very far away. And so she came to Arcadia. Truthfully, she'd much rather BE a Medic--hence the outfit, purchased secondhand from the same caravan. Unfortunately the closest she's come so far is a poison so toxic it caused her patient to vomit out the tumors afflicting them. But if she has the chance to practice her craft under real-world conditions as part of the Nameless guild (who haven't been around long enough to know of her reputation), surely her wish to become a great healer will be within reach, right? RIGHT?! Dinogator, spiritual patron of great destroyers, smiles knowingly.



Ghosts: A, B, and C ("Submitted" by Poltergrift)

quote:

Just a note: imagine all this with the approximate emotional tone of Telenovela.

The ruined heiress Alicia Rosette was deeply in love with Barnaby, the "gentleman" thief, and abandoned her family and legacy to be with him, but Barnaby only wanted to use Alicia for her family's inheritance and -- once it became clear that she was no longer the favored candidate for family head -- abandoned her for greener pastures and more fortunate ventures. Twisted with rage, Alicia contacted the sage Charlotte to learn the art of necromancy and obtain her revenge on Barnaby. The sage complied, but conditional on Alicia binding Barnaby's ghost to the bones of his hands and feet, and bringing them to her -- for a ghost made with such a grudge would become a powerful resource. Alicia agreed, and abandoned her family name and all but one letter of her first to the darkness, receiving further mastery of the necromantic arts; from then on, she was only known by her shadow name, "A."

"A" hunted down her former lover; flush with wealth and drunk on his success in infiltrating the (then closed-off) Yggdrasil Labyrinth for rare, illegal medicinal herbs, Barnaby was known as the mysterious thief Monsieur "B" to the people of Aeolis. In the process of fighting his way through the Labyrinth, in order to combat the monsters, Monsieur "B" embedded vials of poison into the bones of his hands and wrists, allowing him to kill with a mere touch. Confronted by "A," Monsieur "B" was chased, dismembered and killed by "A"'s phantasmal army, but -- in the last moments of his life -- managed to flick his embedded syringe out from his finger. Taking it in her triumph, to bind his ghost, "A" pricked herself, and received a slow, incurable dose of a rare and lethal Brownie poison.

Knowing her time was short, "A" took the bones of "B" to the sage Charlotte to fulfill her deal, in the hopes of receiving aid in waging war on the family that had rejected her. On arrival, however, her bound ghosts heard that Charlotte was a servant of her family, deployed in secret to ensure "B"'s death and trick "A" into returning gratefully to the Rosette family. Filled with rage and drunk on the death in her veins, "A" set her ghosts on Charlotte, detonating them, down to the essentia level, all at once, inside the sage's meager hut. As they both lay dying, "A" took her revenge on "B" and Charlotte: she ripped away Charlotte's name, to eternally prove her power over life of death, and bound all three of them together. Locked together, "A," B" and "C," necromantically entangled, forgetting themselves and their lives, remained in the ramshackle remains of the sage's hut for thousands of years, all bound to their bony fingers -- locked together forever.

Then a popular dancer found the pared-down bone bits, mistook them for dancer's bangles and hooked them to his waist. He was not entirely thrilled to learn that there were ghosts living inside them.


Fanart



blizzardvizard spent a day of Inktober to draw Jana, complete with magician's top hat.



These were not part of Inktober, but are just as fantastic, nonetheless.





These wonderful bits of art were drawn by off-SA fan Olivine Arc. Check them out!

Rea fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Nov 6, 2017

Rea
Apr 5, 2011

Komi-san won.
Update 0: Adventure's Outset




Well, not much else to do but start.

(Fun fact: the background changes between day and night based on what your 3DS's clock is currently set to. For example, because I recorded this footage when my 3DS's clock was around 8 PM, it's night time.)




Contrary to EOU and EO2U, EO5 goes back to only having two difficulties, ala EO4. Whereas the easier difficulty in EO4 was more akin to giving the player a bunch of conveniences as well as adjusting damage by 50% in the player's favor both ways, EO5's Basic is the baseline difficulty, with Advanced adjusting a whole bunch of values out of your favor.

I'll be going with Advanced, incidentally.




(Music stops here.)



(Any time Japanese text shows up, the dialogue transcriptions below will include translations of that text.)

At the heart of the great continent of Arcadia is the city of Aeolis, located at the foot of Yggdrasil.

https://zippy.gfycat.com/VictoriousDecisiveGalapagosdove.webm

(No GIFs this time around, sorry.)

Yggdrasil is a gigantic tree reaching up into the heavens that has been an object of worship since ancient times... For this reason, no one approaches the tree; in fact, it had been forbidden by order of the council that governs Aeolis. ...However, at some point, they released a proclamation: "To all adventurers on the continent of Arcadia: come to Aeolis and challenge Yggdrasil."
From the populous Earthrun came the deft and dextrous fencers, the mighty cesti, the impenetrable dragoons, and the reapers who fought from the darkness...
From the tall towers of the Lunarians descended warlocks who had mastered the elements, and necromancers whose research had led them to call upon the living dead...
From the Therians, in the mountains, came hounds, who communicated with animal life, and masurao, who carried the blood of valiant warriors and an undying fighting spirit...
And from the Brownies, living humbly in the plains, came herbalists, whose natural remedies were second to none, and shamans who communed with ancient natural spirits.
Seeking adventure, they all gathered in this town, their chests swelled with pride. You, too, are an explorer who set out for Aeolis, your heart gripped by the exciting proclamation. You have but one goal: to challenge the labyrinth of Yggdrasil, and explore its unknown forests. If you've made up your mind, then let the adventure begin!




Not much we can do besides go to the Explorers Guild. Can't even access the Options menu right now.




(The telop says "Armor-wearing man.")

Y'know, this town used to be full of promising young talent. Explorers with ambition, who risked their lives for the sake of adventure. Nowadays, it's nothing but riffraff; lowdown punks who don't wanna get hurt, so they're fine with living hand to mouth. ...New around here? If you're fixing to challenge Yggdrasil, you'd better make yourself a guild, and gather comrades who share that ambition of yours. ...So that is what you're here for, then. Let me welcome you. Whoops. Forgot my manners. Name's Edgar. I'm the head of this here Explorers Guild. Good to meetcha, I suppose.



Making a new guild?

Hard to demo stuff without saying yes here.

Great. Guess it'll need a name, then.



For the sake of this demo update, I'll just be using the guild I usually use for my personal playthroughs. Excuse the name, it was created when my friends and I were all idiot preteens.


TFKrew, huh? That's a name whose reputation you'll have to make yourself. You won't be hailed as a hero for nothin'. Next up, you gotta recruit explorers for your guild. Exploring the forest by your lonesome might as well be suicide. Startin' with at least 5 people with different tricks'll probably do you well. You can only have up to 30 people in a guild's roster. Give a good, hard think to who you choose as comrades.

30 is more than plenty, we'll need maybe 15 or so at most.



Character creation should be familiar if you've played any other Etrian Odyssey game before, but EO5 introduces a couple of twists into the mix. Firstly, this isn't a class selection screen--no, this is where you pick a race for a character. In a series first, EO5 divides up the class roster amongst four different races, all mentioned in the Yggdrasil pan.

In addition to this, a character's base stats are no longer solely reliant on their class--their race determines the bulk of their stats, with some additional modifiers coming from class specializations, which we won't see for a while.

Speaking of stats, anyone familiar with past EO games might notice that the TEC stat is missing. In EO5, it's been split up into two discrete stats: INT, which determines magical damage, and WIS, which determines healing amounts and magical defense. I assume this was done not only to make what stats control what more intuitive to people coming from other RPGs, but also because TEC was probably a nightmare of a stat to balance due to how much it controlled in previous EO games (magic damage, magic defense, healing amounts, disable infliction/resistance in EO3-EOU).

Speaking of stats, here's a short summary of them:

  • HP: Health Points. If a character's HP reaches 0, they die. Certain skills on some classes consume HP in addition to TP.
  • TP: Technique Points. Analogous to mana or MP in other RPGs. Needed to use every skill in the game.
  • STR: Strength. Determines damage for STR-based skills, which nearly every physical damage skill falls under.
  • INT: Intelligence. Determines damage for INT-based skills, which basically every magical damage skill falls under.
  • VIT: Vitality. Determines how much damage a character takes from enemies--higher VIT equals less damage.
  • WIS: Wisdom. Plays a role in determining how much damage a character takes from INT-based attacks, and is used for calculating non-fixed healing.
  • AGI: Agility. Determines when a character acts in a turn, their accuracy, and their evasion.
  • LUC: Luck. Determines a whole bunch of things, including accuracy and evasion, but is primarily used for disable infliction rates and resistances.

With all of that in mind, let's go over each of the races:

Earthrun:

quote:

The most populous race of Arcadia. Residing all over the continent, they have the most classes to choose from. Though generally average in most ways, they boast high Vitality.

Earthrun possess physical stats ranging from decent to great--their HP and VIT are the highest of any of the races, and their STR's pretty good too. They also have the best LUC of any of the races, making them better at inflicting and resisting disables, among other things. Unfortunately, their TP, INT, and WIS are all pretty bad (they actually have the lowest TP of any race), meaning that they need to watch their TP pretty closely, they make for really terrible spellcasters and healers, and they take more damage from magical attacks than other races on average.




Lunarian:

quote:

Tall and thin magic studying race. A race that's long studied magic in the frozen land of Sidonia. Perhaps because of that, these thin people have exceptional Intelligence.

Lunarians are the offensive spellcasting race. Their STR and AGI are sub-par, and they have the worst HP and VIT of any race, but their INT is through the roof, and their WIS and LUC are nothing to scoff at. This, pretty obviously, makes them really good at dishing out burst damage with magical skills from one of their classes, and through...some other means for the other class. Just don't expect them to be very quick, or be able to take hits.



Therian:

quote:

Warrior race with the blood of beasts. A people that hail from the deep forests of the mountainous land of Yamato. Said to be descended from beasts, their incredible Strength and Agility make them peerless warriors.

Therians are the agile physical damage dealer race, similar to Ronin from EO1 and 2. I'd say their job is entirely, y'know, dealing damage, but one of their two classes is more akin to a support that can occasionally contribute some damage. They do offer the best damage-dealing class in the game, though, which is augmented by their incredibly high STR and AGI. They have okay HP, TP, VIT, and LUC, but nothing spectacular. They suffer from even worse INT and WIS problems than Earthrun, though, so they make for even worse spellcasters and take even more damage from magical attacks.

You might recognize the name "Yamato" as another, more old fashioned name for Japan. However, in this case it's written as "Mountain Capital". Honestly, I wasn't sure if it was meant to be a place name at all, at first, but it became clear that it's the fantasy-Japan of this setting, where all the katanas come from.



Brownie:

quote:

Small, friendly race close to nature. A small-statured people who make their homes in the Great Plains. They worship Mother Nature, and can make medicines from plants or call upon divine power.

(EO5's romanization of Brownie is closer to "Bronie," but like hell am I gonna be calling them that.)

Brownies are a somewhat odd race dedicated entirely to supporting. They have the absolute worst STR and LUC of any race (the LUC part is more relevant than you might think), and pretty bad HP (just a little more than Lunarians), but actually decent everything else--they have the highest WIS of any race, and their VIT's not too far off from Earthrun. Their INT's pretty good, too.

Note that in addition to their stat differences, different races have access to totally separate trees of racial skills. Especially important are the racial Union skills (essentially limit breaks, they'll be explained in more detail later), some of which are powerful enough to completely change your strategy.

Informative, no? Let's move onto the main event, however: the classes.


Earthrun classes:




quote:

Front Row Evasive Attacker

Swordsmen who dodge attacks with nimble movements while attacking with chained strikes.

Fencers are a combination of dodge-tanks and supporting attackers. Dodge-tanking should be fairly simple to understand just from the name, but supportive attacking might need further explanation: about half of their basic skillset and one of their specializations are dedicated to Chain skills, which are slight retoolings of the elemental Chaser skills that Landsknechts had in EO1/2/U/2U. And yes, I said Chasers, not Links from EO4--Chains are sadly not as easy to use as Links.

I personally prefer using Fencers as dodge-tanks, but Chains aren't bad--they're easier to set up than Chasers ever were, and can deal really good damage even with only 3 Chains per turn. Hell, you could have two Fencers in a party, one for dodge-tanking and one for Chains, and it'd actually work out pretty well.

Y'know, before we go any further, how about we actually try making a character? That sounds fun.




Oh lord that's a big change from previous EOs.

One of the major selling points of EO5 during its pre-release phase was the expanded character customization. In EO1/2 and U/2U, you had a choice of a select amount of portraits, and that was it (2U DLC excluded). EO3 introduced palette swaps for each portrait, and EO5 carries on that feature. However, now, you can also adjust a bunch of other things about characters--specifically, their hair, eye, and skin color, as well as giving them a voice (we'll get back to that).

Customizing hair and eye color is actually pretty in-depth. There's a couple of presets for each, but you can also manually set RGB values for both the primary and in-shadow colors.



Meaning you can do dumb stuff like this.



Eye customization works much like hair customization does, with one exception. See that "LR LINK" checkbox?



Turning it off enables heterochromia!



Skin customization's more limited compared to hair and eyes, but you still have a decent amount of options here.

Worth noting that skin colors change between races--Lunarians have a ton of weird, alien-looking skins, for example.



And lastly, voices. You have a selection of 20 voices per gender, each labeled with an archetype. Note that voice selection isn't restricted based on portrait or race--you're free to, say, put one of the annoyingly high-pitched female voices on the large angry Cestus.

Here's samples of each of the voices. (Any audio oddities are Premiere's fault. They don't get in the way of anything, anyway.)

As for what each archetype translates to, along with what their sample translates to:

quote:

1: Hot Blooded; "Let's do this!"
2: Youth; "I'm going!"
3: Confident; "Let me show you how it's done."
4: Somber; "Time to go?"
5: Rascal; "Here I go!"
6: Military; "Go!"
7: Intellectual; "I'll be going."
8: Cowardly; "Why me?!"
9: Calm; "I'm going."
10: Gentleman; "Let us proceed."
11: Gentle; "Let's go."
12: Nihilistic; "Let's start this."
13: Samurai; "Advance!"
14: Invigorating; "Let's give it a shot!"
15: Polite; "I'm going."
16: Cocky; "Here I go!"
17: Cold; "I'll go."
18: Excitable; "It's party time!"
19: Apathetic; "Guess I've got no choice..."
20: Rough; "Let's do this, you bastards!"
21: Tomboy; "Let's go, everyone!"
22: Domineering; "I'm going!"
23: Soldier; "Let's show them how it's done."
24: Princess; "Let's get going, everyone!"
25: Lively; "I'm psyched for this!"
26: Feral; "Roar!"
27: Meek; "I'm going!"
28: Airhead; "I'm goooing."
29: Composed; "I'm starting."
30: Cheerful; "All right!"
31: Boyish; "Just leave it to me!"
32: Hag; "Well aren't you eager?"
33: Serious; "Winners make the first move!"
34: Cool; "I am going."
35: Old Fashioned; "Might as well give it a shot."
36: Timid; "I-I'm going!"
37: Stubborn; "Leave it to me!"
38: Cruel; "Do I really have to?"
39: Taciturn; "...I'll help."
40: Sexy; "Let's get this started!"

If you're boring, you can also choose to give no voice to a character, but why would you do that? Having some noise in battle is always fun, as long as it's not some of the more irritatingly high-pitched ones.

It's the Jouji Nakata customizer of my dreams :allears:



Also something of a weird change coming from the English versions of EO, names are limited to 6 characters in the JP versions. It's probably not that restricting if you're typing in Japanese, but it can be a pretty big pain trying to spell out a name in English.




Well, that was a fun detour. How about we get back to classes?


quote:

Front Row Defense Specialist

Dragon knights who boast of wearing heavy armor as tough as dragon scales. Can also bombard with their cannons when not defending.

Dragoons are basically Protectors from EO1/2 and/or Hoplites from EO3 after being given a bunch of spit and polish, and some okay offensive capabilities. Their primary job is keeping the party alive via damage mitigation (and some semi-unreliable tanking if you feel like it), but as their description mentions, they also have a couple of offensive skills to use on turns where you don't feel a shield skill is necessary.

It's really hard to go wrong with a Dragoon, honestly, assuming you have a party that isn't overly defensive.


Making history: The first time a Dragoon has ever actually been exciting in an RPG.




quote:

Front Row Technical Attacker

Warriors who fight with their tempered fists. Can disable their enemies with precise strikes to their weak points.

Cesti are combination damage dealers and disablers, and one of my favorite classes to use. In EO1/2/U/2U terms, think Dark Hunters, but a little less good at inflicting binds and with far lower variety of ailments, in exchange for which they gain fun combo skills and skills that both drain their HP and become better as their HP goes lower (both of which are their own specializations). Binds are incredibly powerful disables, and having a class that can inflict good damage (or at least amplify it on other classes) while inflicting them is a massive plus in my book. Much like with Dragoons, I find it really hard to go wrong with using a Cestus.

Note that despite the bit in the description about "tempered fists", Cesti actually use gauntlet-type weapons. Brass knuckles, etc. So there's no weird unarmed attack scaling to worry about. Not many other classes can do binds at all, so when you throw in their excellent damage potential, it's hard to imagine a party that wouldn't be improved by adding a Cestus.

I hope you know which portrait to pick.




quote:

Front Row Debuffing Attacker

Users of a mysterious force known as miasma, with which they spread disease and frailty to their enemies. Their peculiar style reaps their foes with large scythes.

Reapers are kind of a strange class. They're debuffing damage dealers with some options for inflicting ailments as well. The description mentions miasma, and that's for good reason--their skills almost entirely focus on one particular thing, Miasma Weapon, which is essentially a state you either manually trigger or can passively activate through a few skills. In a way it's almost easier to describe them through their specializations: one focuses on damage and ailments, while the other focuses on debuffs and supporting other party members.

Moving onto Lunarian classes:





quote:

Back Row Elemental Attacker

Users of an ancient school of magic. They freely command the elements to attack.

Alchemists, Zodiacs, Runemasters--whatever you want to call elemental magic attackers, Warlocks follow in their footsteps. They are all about inflicting magical damage, usually of the fire, ice, and volt variety. EO2, EO3, and EOU experimented with giving them access to physical damage, but none of those worked out. In EO5, however, Warlocks do actually have a specialization that gives them magical cut, stab, and bash damage, and they're not actually garbage this go-around! How about that?

Fuckin wizards, how do they work?

The downside to Warlocks is that Lunarian stats mean they're incredibly fragile, and it's really easy to end up with a useless Warlock that's bled dry of TP really quickly in the early and midgame if you don't invest your skill points right.





quote:

Pet-based Jack of All Trades

Summoners who command the spirits of the dead. A jack of all trades who can attack, defend, or support.

The title and description really do sum Necromancers up quite neatly. Their skill trees are kind of all over the place with all types of skills, with one consistent theme: summoning, using, and expending summons. Necromancers are one of two summon-focused classes in EO5, and one of three that can summon overall (Dragoons have two summon skills that aren't crucial to their function). They can be a little finicky to use due to that fact, but they do make up for it by being able to fill quite a few roles at once.

Unlike in EO3, pets in this game go into special pet slots in front of the front row. There are three of these pet slots, and unlike the other pet classes Necromancers are encouraged to use all three of them at once. This can mean that they don't play nice in some party set-ups. The summons themselves will attack random targets each turn (or randomly do nothing, sometimes), but mostly they exist solely to be sacrificed by the Necromancer's spells. Both Hound and Necromancer pets can be summoned out of battle, so you don't have to worry about summoning 3 ghosts every single battle.

get dressed you loving corpsehugging hippies

Shifting over to the Therian classes:





quote:

Pet-Based Ranged Attacker

Veteran hunters skilled with a bow. Good at making combined attacks with a falcon or wolfhound to bind their foes.

Hounds are the other summon-focused class. They operate a little differently from Necromancers--instead of working with multiple disposable summons, Hounds summon either dogs or hawks, both of which almost function a little like autonomous party members. Dogs focus on healing while hawks focus on damage. This isn't to say that the Hound themself is just a vehicle for the summon, though--they can contribute a little extra damage with their bows, and Therians' high STR means it's not totally insignificant.

You can name your Hound pets. Technically, they're actually part of your guild, in that you can see them on the guild management page. There's only one dog and one hawk per guild, even if you have multiple Hounds in your party. Luckily they can share, and pets that have received multiple commands on the same turn will act multiple times. Pets have their own separate stats, so even as a Therian with low WIS, Hounds can make decent healers. On the other hand, this also means you can't increase their stats with equipment.

Wanna pet that dog





quote:

Front Row Offense Specialist

Experts who cleave their foes in two with the razor sharp blades known as katanas. Masters are able to wield multiple katanas at once.

Masuraos are almost direct parallels of Ronin from EO1/2/U/2U--aka hard-hitting damage dealers that are also very fragile compared to other classes... Except the last part doesn't apply as much to Masuraos, because they have not-awful VIT and access to heavy armor, so unless you go with the 4-sword specialization (we'll talk about that when we get to specializations), they're not as fragile as you'd expect. Meaning that they're big physical damage dealers without too much of a downside. They don't do a lot outside of inflicting damage, though.

And lastly, Brownie classes:





quote:

Back Row Support Specialist

Mediums who communicate with the invisible spirits, and can call on their blessings to heal or buff.

Shamans are really kind of strange and unwieldy. They have the standard buffs you'd expect from a buffing support class, of course, but the rest of their skills all operate on manipulating buffs they themselves or the entire party have to put down various effects, such as dispelling specific elemental resistance buffs to reduce all enemies' resistance to that given element for one turn.




quote:

Back Row Healer

Doctors who make medicines from herbs. Can also use those herbs to poison their foes.

It wouldn't be an EO game without a Medic class, would it? Herbalists can function exclusively as old-style Medics if you want, and they're really good at that job. However, they also have access to Smoke skills, which attempt to inflict an ailment (with lower-than-average base inflict rates), and apply a debuff to enemies that reduce their resistance to that ailment. As I mentioned earlier, Brownies have really terrible LUC, so inflicting ailments with a Brownie Herbalist is an exercise in frustration. However, there's a way to create a character that can make good use of Smoke skills, which we'll see in a few updates.

"This is a class Brownies use. They're terrible at using half of it." Race equality!



And there we have it, a guild of 10 misfits ready to demonstrate the combat system, because I'm saving all the other tutorial stuff for when we actually have a real guild.



I'm gonna roll with Dragoon/Cestus/Reaper, Necromancer/Hound for now. I wouldn't necessarily use this party in an actual run because of the Necromancer and Hound kind of stepping on each other's toes, but eh.

You can totally beat the game with both a Hound and a Necromancer in the same party. Don't let the Man tell you what to do.

What if you combined them. What if you had a ghost dog. I'm gonna sell this idea to Atlus.


https://zippy.gfycat.com/SoupyPresentAfricanparadiseflycatcher.webm

Starting a battle plays this effect.




I'll save full enemy writeups for the actual first update.

Note the blue thing with Japanese characters above the front row--that is a dog that I had the Hound (Jib) summon in the field. It's also why Jib is missing TP.




The battle UI's undergone a massive overhaul compared to previous EO games, but all the basic functions are still here. In order, you have the following commands:

  • Attack: Attacks with your equipped weapon.
  • Skills: Lets you use skills.
  • Defend: The character will not act on this turn, in exchange for taking 50% less damage from all sources and reducing their chances of being disabled.
  • Items: Lets you use consumable items.
  • Switch: Lets you swap party members' positions. Summons cannot have their positions swapped.
  • Union: Lets you use Union skills. We'll see those very shortly.
  • Escape: Attempts to end the battle immediately. Disabled if the character's legs are bound.



Ned's only skill is Line Guard, which reduces all physical damage taken by a row for one turn. Line Guard functions almost exactly like its counterpart in EO3, with the exception that the damage reduction is the same for both rows.



Glock, meanwhile, initiates the Union skill Double Attack, with Ned cooperating, on the left Roper.

Union skills can be initiated by anyone with a completely full Union gauge, and require a certain number of party members to cooperate. When a Union skill is used, all participants have their gauge drained to 0, and the Union skill is used at the start of the turn. In Double Attack's case, it requires two participants, who both will basically do normal attacks on the targeted enemy.

Note that only the character who initiates the Union skill needs to have a full Union gauge: all participants are drained, but they can still participate with 0. If you plan it right, you can use, say, a 4 person Union skill two turns in a row. No one can partipate in two different Union skills on the same turn though.



Party members using Union skills can also take actions as normal. In Glock's case, he'll use Arm Break, which inflicts bash damage while also attempting to bind the target's arms, on the left Roper.



Yorsh sets up a Double Attack on the right Roper, with Jib cooperating...



And will use Scythe of Numb Stasis for her normal action, which'll deal cut damage to one row. If she had the Miasma Weapon state, it'd also attempt to inflict paralysis.



Heavy will use Ghost Summoning, which consumes a bit of his HP to create a ghost with some slight bonus HP.




Jib's only skill is Dog Whistle, which is useless right now, so he'll just attack.

https://zippy.gfycat.com/RegularDisgustingFoxhound.webm

Spending two characters' Union to get two extra normal attacks on one enemy is pretty decent for the earlygame.



These two did it, too.



Like Clarste mentioned earlier, pets have their own special row, if the dog didn't give it away already.



This battle shouldn't take too long.



Line Guard looks like that when it activates. Enemies hit really drat hard early on, and Line Guard can often be the difference between life and death for a character.

Early enemies hitting hard in an Etrian Odyssey game? I don't believe you.



The dog has its own passive AI--every turn, it'll provide a small amount of healing to whichever party member has the lowest amount of absolute HP at the start of the turn. This can include itself.



Easy enough.



Anyone still alive at the end of a battle gets EXP, enemies drop items, I'm sure you could assume this information.

Well what if there's some redneck out there who still thinks that RPGs are in the age where spiders drop gold coins? Maybe they'd be confused by the fact that you're just getting items instead, Ragnar. Think of the elderly and the sheltered here.

And that should do it for this demo update. Next time: we actually start!

Rea
Apr 5, 2011

Komi-san won.
Hey, kids! Can you guess what time it is?

That's right, it's time for the post that explains how to submit characters for the LP's narrative! Rolls right off the tongue.

Anyway, there's some things you should know about character creation that were glossed over in Update 0. Firstly, you are not limited to a class's portraits for selecting a portrait. That might sound strange, but hear me out.

Each race has a set of two generic portraits that you can use for any class in that race--you actually saw them already in pretty much every screenshot, but here they are again:


(From top to bottom: Earthrun, Lunarian, Therian, Brownie.)

In addition to these generic race portraits, you also have a selection of twelve DLC portraits--six different types, each with two versions:


(Fans of Etrian Odyssey might recognize the fourth, fifth, and sixth sets of DLC portraits--they are, respectively, Protector 2, Medic 2, and Gunner 2 from EO1/2.)


Anyway, yes, character submissions. The same rules as EO2U apply: pick a class, a portrait, give the character a name, and provide a bio of whatever length you want. However, because of how character customization works in EO5, you can also provide:

  • Hair and eye colors. We'll take either presets the game gives, descriptions of colors, RGB values (ie. 155 Red, 0 Green, 155 Blue), and even hex color values if you're feeling spicy (#ff88aa).
  • For hair, you can specify if you want a specific color for either section (lit/in shadow) or if you just want the shadow portion to be a darker version of the primary color.
  • For eye colors, you can specify if you want the character to be heterochromatic--if you do this, you should (obviously) also give what other color you want. You can specify what eye should have what color, too, if you really want. If you don't, I'll just pick an eye at random.
  • For skin colors: see the images below.
  • For voices: see Update 0 for the list of voices and samples.
  • For names: because we are limited to 6 characters for names here, you can either write out the name you want and we'll do our best to convert it to katakana, or you can give a name that's already in Japanese and I'll try my absolute hardest to not screw up inputting it.

Lastly: you're free to submit however many characters you want, but please limit yourself to just one character per class. In addition, if one of your characters is picked, the rest are disqualified.

Skin colors:

Earthrun, Therian, Brownie



Lunarian




Hair/eye presets:

Hair


Eyes



Just for convenience, here's all of the class portraits again:

Fencer


Dragoon


Cestus


Reaper


Warlock


Necromancer


Hound


Masurao


Shaman


Herbalist


And, for posterity, here's all the early submissions from the EO2U LP:

quote:

Now come, Samurai. Put on a good show...

(BlackPersona)
Name: Nolan
Class: Dragoon
Portrait: 3B, except with 3A's whiter/grayer hair.
Voice: Somber

Nolan is an experienced explorer from an older time, who actually did manage to make a good name for himself. The people that did know him knew he retired after a few good years as an explorer. The people that knew his rumors know him as one of the best protectors across the lands. The people that met him after his retirement will say that he's a funny man that pretends everyone is his son (especially when he's drinking... which is often). Not many people can say why he's suddenly back in the exploring business, though. All they know is that bright spark that was in his eyes before suddenly became a bit duller than usual, and his laughs are more hollow than they were before. The people that knew him, though, they will shake their heads and sadly turn away, without an answer. When asked, he will say that he wants one last journey before he dies, with his shield in one hand and his sword in the oth-

"...Wait, where'd my sword go?!"

Name: Shin
Class: Masurao
Portrait: 3B, Skin: 4th, bottom row, Hair: 5th, top row.
Voice: Confident

Shin was the best swordsman of his age group, easily the ace Therian warrior in his tribe. He picked up the sword as soon as he was able to walk, and managed to make a name for himself at the young age of 15. He wandered around the mountains of his home and bested every swordsman he found, and, with it, his ego inflated heavily. A few years later he managed to be known as one of the swordsman in his land. So with this reputation and confidence, he left the mountains to find stronger opponents. Unfortunately, being so used to the swordsmanship that Therians utilize, Shin found himself humiliated more often than not against the other ways of sword-fighting, especially against those drat Fencers. Soon he was the laughing stock of most swordsmen outside of his home. Undaunted and still overconfident, he left for Aeolis after hearing the announcement for challenging Yggdrasil. Not to actually challenge the labyrinth, moreso to understand how these Earthrun swordsmen manage to beat him so handily (he thinks it's their hair, but he wouldn't admit it). But, hey, if he could pick up some glory too, that'd be just as expected.

Name: Emma
Class: Fencer
Portrait: 4A, Skin: bottom, 3rd. Eyes: brown
Voice: Cruel

Emma's first, last, and only dream was to be a princess. She dreamed of all the parties she would attend, the princes that would woo her, the gifts that she would receive. She would be the belle of the ball, and everyone would fight over her, just to have one dance! The delicacies would be fanciful, amazing, and she would have the prettiest dress, and all eyes would be on her... She'd eventually marry a prince, and settle down somewhere, maybe somewhere close to Armoroad or Tharsis, in her own private castle, with hundreds of her attendants waiting on her every hour of every day... But she would still be the most beautiful dancer in all the lands, and she'd dance every night with her beloved prince...

...Yeah... Turns out dance lessons aren't exactly cheap for a farmer's girl. They weren't exactly poor, per se: they lived comfortably enough, and Emma even had a decent education. The problem came later on, when she and her father found an injured man in the forest. After delivering him to the were allowed to attend a ball after they delivered an injured noble to the local doctor's. From there, Emma became fascinated with the richer life of the upper crust, from their table manners to their more refined dances. When that single night ended, she became obsessed with emulating that life. She would spend so much time buying random things that caught her attention, from odd little sculptures she insisted were much more refined than the average person could acknowledge to plays of romance and love. Soon she was demanding money from her father to take the dancing lessons and etiquette classes and, and, and...

Well, let's just say that she may or may not have singlehandedly bankrupted her family. She did turn out to be a natural talent at dancing, but everything else that Emma insisted on learning she was a poor hand at. And it wasn't as if her family was going to help her reach her dreams. That was when she heard of the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, and all the riches and fame she'd get if she could conquer it. Well, she figured that she'd just latch onto a guild and see if she couldn't get her own riches! She was a pretty decent farm hand, at least, and all that dancing helped her be light on her feet, too, so she'd be able to help along the way, maybe. Draw attention from the monsters, and they'd not hit her. Hopefully. And hope that no one was watching her skin every animal they found. Gotta get that money in somehow, right?

She's totally not desperate, nope, no sirree.


(Kemix)
Name: Ritz
Class: Hound
Portrait: 1B (Keep the white wolf if ya can)
Voice: Hag

A wild, violent murderess of the woods, she had long since learned to commune with nature as well as bloody it if it got too close to her with their fangs. She brings about a wolf she raised from a pup to help her fight, and up until being found for the guild, had avoided overly populated areas and stayed away from people in general. She might be young, she speaks with age and wisdom far beyond even her years, even for her species. She was found on the outskirts of town and convinced to join in the climbing of the tree in an attempt to keep one's barrings within the labyrinthine tree. Though she communes with animals...she does have this penchant to misunderstand, for better or worse...mostly the latter. Also, don't touch the ears, one of two things will happen; A. You pacify her for the time being or B. you wind up pulling back a bloody stump.

"How cute, look at that luxurious fur...lets not bloody it too much, I needed a new blanket."


(Dr. Fetus)
Name: Raven
Class: Reaper
Portrait: 1A, except with black hair and black eyes.
Voice: Intellectual

Tired of his home life and not being taken seriously, Raven set out to explore the Labyrinth to make a name for himself. He took one of his tools he frequently used at his home, and decorated it to make it seem shiny and cool. An awesome weapon means the wielder is awesome too, right? And can't forget the awesome looking outfit too. But despite all his attempts to seem all cool and edgy, he comes off as pathetic or adorable to other people, much to his chagrin.

“I'm not a farmer! I'm the deadliest and coolest assassin around! ...That happens to know a lot about crops and cute little animals-and why are you laughing!? Stop petting me on the head!”

Name: Wanna
Class: Herbalist
Portrait: 4B
Voice: Airhead

Once a renowned professional in the medicinal department, Wanna lost her medical license because her crippling addiction to herbs got in the way of her job. After that, she lived out on the streets for a good while, feeding her herb addiction in the meantime, while annoying the townsfolk severely with her stream of consciousness ramblings. She was viewed as a waste of space and a complete nuisance by the townspeople, and so they made a suggestion to her that she should explore the Labyrinth, where she would hopefully die or just be gone for a good long while, never bothering them again. She agreed, not really understanding what she was agreeing to, because she was high as gently caress at the time. She doesn't mind sharing her herbs with others. In fact, she's a little too generous with them, to the point of giving others overdoses. Though she tends to get snippy with people who demand for more after that. She also wishes that those stupid monsters would let her smoke her herbs in peace.

Name: Gabbo
Class: Shaman
Portrait: 1A
Voice: Invigorating

A poet at heart, or so he claims to be. To everyone's annoyance, he has no idea when to stop talking. The worst part is he never speaks like a normal person would, always talking in poems, riddles, iambic pentameter, limericks, and excessive use of rhymes. Though he loathes puns. Gabbo set out for the Labyrinth to get more inspiration for the written arts. He thinks he's blind, but in reality he just needs a haircut.


(Level Seven)
Name: Duke
Class: Cestus
Portrait: The correct one (3B), with red hair and orange eyes.
Voice: Rough

A former prize fighter banned from the arena due to his disregard for the rules in the ring and for the amount of brawls he was involved in outside of it. He tries to stay calm but once somebody/thing tries to pick a fight with him, nothing can stop him till the offender is a wreck. In an attempt to put his habits towards a better purpose, his trainer pointed him toward the labyrinth where such tactics are a key for survival.

"They aren't broken yet? Well, Let Me FIX THIS PROBLEM!"

Name: Non
Class: Shaman
Portrait: 1B, darker green hair than the default color
Voice: 11 (Gentle)

Non has lived as a wanderer for as far back as Non can remember. Non has sometimes lived in a town and sometimes lived in the wild. Non has lived with people and left them when it was time to. Non has lived with animals and left them to meet new animals. Non's latest trek brought Non to a town that wants to explore the unknown. Non wants to wander in a place Non hasn't seen yet. Non speaks in the third person for no reason, Non just does.


(Grashbar)
Name: Sheila (シーラ)
Class: Dragoon
Portrait: 2A, base colors.
Voice: Soldier

Ex-soldier who left the military for glory, Sheila has already attempted to explore the labyrinth. Keyword being attempted. Sometimes solo, sometimes in a guild, all in failure. She's decided to give it one last attempt before she begrudgingly accepts the offer to return from her former superior. She doesn't like talking about her missing eye (Don't play with knives at a young age folks... Actually just don't play with knives.)


(AweStriker)
Name: Nille (ニーユ)
Class: Warlock
Portrait: 4B, ice blue skin, light purple hair, black eyes
Voice: Domineering

The latest in a long line of sorcerers passing a title from master to successor in the style of the Dread Pirate Roberts, Nille is much more vocal than any of her predecessors, willing and ready to prove to the world that magic conquers all.


(Aniodia)
Name: Anya
Class: Fencer
Portrait: 1B.
Skin: first row, fifth
Hair Highlight: 214, 73, 73
Hair Shade: 151, 21, 23
Eyes, top: 46, 192, 239
Eyes, bottom: 198, 242, 228
Voice: 29([Composed)

The second child of a moderately well-to-do tradesman, Anya was not quite spoiled, but had a bit more leeway with her parents than her older brother had at her age. As is wont to happen in situations like these, this led to a life of boredom punctuated by various thrill-seeking (and often illegal) activities. After one particularly destructive incident, her parents had little choice but to send her off to a military school in the hopes of instilling discipline.

Surprisingly, it worked, and Anya returned home as a young adult, formally trained and disciplined to a T. In the meantime, however, she found that she wasn't much of the darling of the family, what with two younger siblings now running about. Leaving home to find meaning to her life, she heads to Aeolis to challenge Yggdrasil. Seems there might be a bit of that old thrill-seeker left...

Name: Kaelin (カエリン)
Class: Warlock
Portrait: 3A
Skin: first row, first
Hair Highlight: 102, 111, 178
Hair Shade: 101, 48, 99
Eyes, top: 120, 165, 167
Eyes, bottom: 81, 107, 92
Voice: 03 (Confident)

Have you ever met someone who's incredibly smug, for seemingly no reason? Not just smug, but so smug, you just want to punch them in the face? The kind of person who just oozes smugness from every pore, even if they're not trying? That's Kaelin. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had everything he's ever needed handed to him, the family servants only feeding more and more into his superiority complex. Even when he went into training as a warlock, it was all but a folly to him, nothing more than a minor dalliance to while away the time. The fact that he actually had the talent to back up his braggadocio took a couple of his classmates by surprise, but it was all fun and games for Kaelin.

When the city of Aeolis opened its gates to the multitudes of explorers' guilds, Kaelin had spun a yarn about how he was going to be the first to the top, and how it was enough of a foregone conclusion that no one else should dare try. Only once his bluff was called did he realize the enormity of his task, and even then, the self-confident Lunarian walked with a swagger in his step the likes of which couldn't be matched (or so he thought). Now if he could just avoid the rest of these commoners on his way to the top, he'd be all set.


(Tyty)
Name: Teyla (テイラー)
Class: Reaper
Portrait: 4A
Skin Tone: 3rd, first row
Hair light: 146, 76, 60
Hair dark: 86, 50, 52
Eyes: Red
Voice: 21

Orphaned as a child, she and her brother grew up together on the streets of the Earthrun capital. While her brother trained to be a dragoon in the militia to support them, she learned the ways of miasma from reapers traveling through the city. Remembering strange dreams of being a princess sailing the waves, she aspires to climb Yggdrasil to claim a wish for her and her brother to have fortune to live on and to hopefully find a meaning behind those dreams. Bubbly, eccentric, and snarky, she comes up with weird plans and has a tendency to get into trouble. She has a bad habit of being a bit overly self-sacrificial, and sometimes gets caught up in weird fantasies.


Name: Jill (ジル)
Class: Cestus
Portrait: 2A
Skin Tone: 4th, first row
Hair light: 214, 42, 60
Hair dark: 132, 0, 42
Eyes: Green
Voice: 22

The daughter of a well-off family, from a young age she was trained in the way of the dragoon.... Though she hated the stuffiness of military school, and instead chose to wander the lands and improve on her martial arts. She dropped out and spent most of her teenage years meditating under waterfalls and punching trees. Capable of punching down an entire forest on her own, she looks to scale yggdrasil and find the treasure on top, having heard legends that the person who reaches the peak will become the world's strongest. She looks to complete her art with the world's strongest punch. Stubborn, cocky, and likes punching things. She has a knack for mechanical things.


(GeminiSun)
Name: Amelie (アメリー)
Class: Cestus
Portrait: Generic Earthrun female
Skin Tone: 4th, bottom row
Hair light: 1st, top row
Hair dark: 4th, bottom row
Eyes: 2nd, bottom row
Voice: 8 (cowardly)

Life is hard when you're Amelie. All she ever wanted was to go into medicine and become a chiropractor; indeed, she had a real aptitude for it, demonstrating exceptional grasp of the theory. If she'd ever been able to go into practice, she surely would have done well for herself and left many people much happier and healthier. However, Amelie has... a little problem with controlling her strength. It was never confirmed whether she broke somebody's spine in her practicals, but... Well, at any rate, Amelie's trying to make the best of things. With her chiropractic knowledge and exceptional strength, becoming a Cestus and exploring Yggdrasil seemed like a natural fit. Too bad she's not a fan of combat...


Name: Kaede (カエデ)
Class: Hound
Portrait: 1A
Skin Tone: 2nd, first row
Hair light: 4th, top row
Hair dark: 4th, top row
Eyes: Unlinked; one eye grey, other eye bright aqua preset
Voice: 39 (taciturn)

It's not as hard as you might think to make your way in the world when you're blind from birth - even in the sight-heavy role of a bow hunter. Of course, being a Therian helps; those big ears aren't just for show! What helps even more, Kaede has found, is forging a magic link between yourself and your loyal hunting pets, so that you can literally use their eyes. It's a little strange sometimes, she'll admit, but there are plenty of advantages. The loving gaze of her wolfhound is better than any mirror for making sure her camouflage is in order (or, when she ventures out of the forest, making sure she doesn't look like a disaster), her falcon's aerial perspective is incredibly useful for getting the lay of the land and helping Kaede line up her shot, and... okay, she'll admit it. It's great fun to mess with people who don't think you can see them. A girl's gotta get her laughs somewhere.


Name: Momoka (モモカ)
Class: Masurao
Portrait: 1A
Voice: 29 (composed)

Blah blah ancient and noble warrior clan, yada yada deadly rivals, yakety yak revenge for the family honor, blibbity blah proving her worth in the Yggdrasil. Look, let's get one thing straight here - Momoka does not care about any of that poo poo. She just really loving loves swords. All she wants to do is have a lot of swords and use a lot of swords and do the awesomest possible things she can do, with swords.


(blizzardvizard)
Name: Jude
Class: Necromancer
Portrait: 1A
Skin Tone: 4th, top row
Hair: White/default colors
Eyes: Grey
Voice: 19 (Apathetic)

Jude recently graduated from Sidonian Magic Academy's Necromancy school, and the thing with Sidonian Magic Academy is - it's goddamned expensive. Oh, there are scholarships and bursaries, sure, but only Warlocks really ever receive them, since the kingdom doesn't want to encourage the whole 'probably using the life energies of your dead loved ones to make explosions' business. But since young and edgy Jude decided being a Warlock was too mainstream for him, today's Jude has to deal with a student debt amounting to tens of thousands of Entals. (This is why you don't make life choices while going through a phase. He'd note it down for the future, if he still thinks he has one.)

Now Jude's quite good at the necromancy thing, in fact, he's one of the top students in his (admittedly pretty small) class, but there's just not a lot of demand for people who can explode ghosts into poison clouds, compared to conjurers of flame and lightning. Sadly regret and disillusionment don't pay the bills, so now he works as a waiter at Melina's bar. It's pretty reliant on tips, but turns out the patrons quite dig the scarred look, so he's been making do. At least that's some silver lining to all of the organ selling. (God, he seriously should've become a Warlock.)

While working at the bar, though, he saw an influx of 'adventurers' coming to the city to explore the giant tree dungeon, and those who made it out alive came back with all sorts of treasures in their hands... and buying equipments that cost more than his yearly school fee... which gave Jude an idea. Surely some adventuring group out there could make use of his talents in combat. Melina's a good boss, but with his current income he'd still need three lifetimes, at least, before being able to pay his debt off. And hey, fighting monsters would be a nice way to release all of his pent-up frustrations. He knows the dangers, but if he ends up getting mauled by a giant squirrel or something, well... that's another way out, too.


(FriskyBoat)
Name: Dak
Class: Herbalist
Portrait: Herbalist 3A
Skin Tone: Row 1, Column 5
Hair: Row 1, Column 3
Eyes: Row 1, Column 2
Voice: Meek

Generally cheerful and bright, Dak is nonetheless a skilled healer who knows the value a talented doctor can bring to an adventuring party. While his patients would swear he was trying to kill them at the time, all of his remedies have turned out to ease the pain and suffering of those who have sought him out. Despite his skill, he still lacks the necessary funds to properly treat his sister, Dis, who has lived her entire life bedridden. He has chosen to take up the sword (or his herbs, as it more often is) to collect the necessary ingredients for his sister's convalescence. Polite, friendly, and cowardly, Dak has faced his fears and is determined to do what is necessary to help his sister.


(theshim)
Name: Aurora
Class: Warlock
Portrait: 4A
Skin: First row, third
Hair: First row, fourth
Eyes: First row, fifth
Voice: 29

You know the typical JRPG villain, who has decided the world is too far gone and must be destroyed? That's Aurora. In her meddling in the cosmic nature of the universe, she came to the conclusion (she insists it was a prophecy) that she should destroy all that is. She also knows she isn't up to the task (yet), so she seeks to better herself in the trials of the labyrinth to attain the ultimate power of destruction. Hates alchemists for stealing the name Eschaton for their lame and ineffective formula.

A bizarre person at the best of times. Aurora is weirdly easy to get along with once you get past the whole "destroying everything" bit, and is supremely confident in her "prophecy" and in her power being able to overcome anything. Actually quite helpful and sensitive to her companions. Shrugs it off when said companions may try to convince her not to destroy all of creation. Likes fruit, especially tropical fruit. Hates cheese and all things pink.


(mischievousart)
Name: Gram
Class: Hound
Portait: 4B
Skintone: 6th, top row
Hair: 5th, bottom row
Eyes: 3rd, bottom row
Voice: 25 (Lively)

Gram's always wanted to go on a grand adventure, but life seems to keep getting in her way. First, her parents needed help on the farm, then she was looking after her siblings and cousins, then there were children of her own, then GRANDchildren...

Now that everyone's finally grown up and there's other, younger people to put in charge, she's finally taking the chance to follow her dream. Who needs a boring quiet retirement when you can have adventure? No stinking monsters or silly youngsters who want her to slow down are going to get in her way, you hear me? NONE.

Name: Caleb
Class: Herbalist
Portrait: 3A
Skintone: 2nd, bottom row
Hair: 3rd, top row
Eyes: 6th, top row
Voice: 15 (Polite)

Caleb is all about finding and growing new and different kinds of plants. The stranger they are, the more he loves them. He quickly became one of the most notorious gardeners in the city not because he wins contests (though he almost always gets an honorable mention), but because his more interesting specimens tend to have a mind of their own in ways that land him in the constable's report. Uh, several times a month. He puts up signs up for the dangerous ones, really, it's just that the plants seem prefer those to their trellises.


(Pyro Jack)
Name: Cassie
Class: Herbalist
Portrait: 4B
Skin Color: Second row, first
Hair Color: 202, 57, 75 (highlight) 141, 7, 26 (shade)
Eye Color: 113, 86, 151 (highlight) 164, 79, 164 (shade)
Voice: Cruel

Herbalists are generally helpful, gentle and kind. Cassie is not one of those types and is definitely not your typical Brownie. Forced into a position that she loathes with a passion and having to deal with idiots that throw themselves into danger drives her to drink, drink and drink until she's mumbling underneath a table wondering why she didn't become a Necromancer or something. Bluntly rude and completely willing to take funds to fuel her drinking problem, it's no surprise that her teammates don't like but unfortunately for them, they have to deal with it because she's the only reliable source of mending wounds in the beginning of their journey and she is willing to rub it in their faces of that fact.

Name: Corvus
Class: Reaper
Portrait: 3B
Skin Color: First row, 6th
Hair Color: 105, 109, 177 (highlight) 55, 58, 101 (shade)
Eye Color: 250, 180, 123 (highlight) 199, 98, 69 (shade)
Voice: Cocky

Corvus (real name: Johnathan) didn't initially wanted to be a Reaper, he wanted to be a Troubadour but his sense of style and his taste of music were too different from normal Troubadors that he didn't get the job. At least Reapers get a cool outfit and a sweet scythe to go with it, which is fine by him... Probably one of the friendlier adventurers despite appearances.

Name: Florete (Floret because of the small space)
Class: Fencer
Portrait: 2A
Skin Color: First row, 5th
Hair Color: 170, 101, 96 (highlight) 110, 67, 73 (shade)
Eye Color: 73, 182, 121 (highlight) 45, 91, 68 (shade)
Voice: Lively

Florete is a legendary warrior who braved a Labyrinth, solved its mysteries and vanquished terrifying beasts! There's nobody that can beat her in battle, leadership and everything else!

At least, that's what the real Florete wishes to be real. Like almost every child that lives on a farm, Florete desires nothing more than, making a name for herself, having an adventure and becoming famous for it. Maybe it's because of bored of the farmer's lifestyle, maybe it's that she heard tale of guilds succeeding in traversing the various Yggdrasils or maybe it's that her dad named her after a sword because he couldn't think up a name for her. Regardless, when she heard of Aeolis now allowing adventurers to step foot into their Yggdrasil, she grabbed what she needed and headed to fufill her dream.

Name: Vega
Class: Dragoon
Portrait: 2A
Skin Color: Second row, 2nd
Hair Color: 216, 172, 254 (highlight) 148, 118, 173 (shade)
Eye Color: 164, 79, 164 (highlight) 99, 38, 98 (shade)
Voice: Soldier

Vega is a veteran explorer who traveled around the world to see the various labyrinths and mazes from the ruined world not for fame or fortunes but, disturbingly enough, for the sheer thrill of fighting dangerous creatures and especially against FOEs. One such fight that she'll never forget was against a Dinogator who gourged out her eye and she paid the creature back with it's death. Why does she love to feel the adrenaline rush against deadly battles is unknown but to her.


(Wonderslug)
Name: Morris
Class: Necromancer
Skin: Top row 2
Hair: Bottom row 5
Eyes: Top row 4
Voice: Excitable

Morris's business cards used to say "troubadour," but his gigs--mostly kid's birthday parties and senior centers--always seemed to end the same way: with the unwelcome appearance of a troupe of ghastly spectral backup dancers, followed shortly by his speedy exit from the venue trailed by projectile party favors or tubes of denture adhesive, or in extreme cases actual torches and pitchforks. Attempts to spin this as part of the act were met with, at best, stony silence, and all efforts to prevent it from happening at all were futile.

It was not until he was fleeing a tavern near Armoroad that he encountered a wandering zodiac who took an interest in his problem. After weeks of poking, prodding, measuring, and divination she informed him that, by pure happenstance, nearly every facet of his being, from the hour of his birth to the proportions of his body to his mean resting heart rate to the mineral composition of his hair, was cosmologically (and funkadelically) attuned to the primal rhythms of life and death. The merest hint of a waggle of a groove thang was sufficient to set up sympathetic vibrations in the ether powerful enough to yank the slumbering dead back into this world, filled with a fearsome need to shake their moneymakers.

Faced with this explanation of his repeated failures, Morris reluctantly shelved his dreams of bringing joy to children and retirees and restyled himself as...the necrodancer.


(Poltergrift)
Name: Paige
Class: Shaman
Portrait: A4, with pale eyes -- think "blind seer"
Voice: Old-Fashioned

Sure, Paige has the Sight--or clairvoyance, or ESP, or future vision, or whatever else you want to call it. Especially acute Sight, no less--which is sort of the problem. Cosmic-class prophecies are so deeply alien to the daily life of a Brownie in a quiet Plains town as to be irrelevant--who cares whether "the moon will be as blood, and the seas as ash, come the day of the King in Yellow, blessed be his name"? Paige wanted to win bets and avoid getting hit by carts, not to foresee the end of civilization in a parallel reality or to witness the birth of a curséd star whose hideous name was Wormwood. Like, if it's not going to turn the seas into blood this century, we probably don't need to stockpile water, you know?

By means of a variety of material foci--Zener cards, tarot cards, talismans, the occasional blank piece of card stock just to keep the Gods guessing--Paige has managed to significantly narrow down the range of her Sight, albeit just to "continent-sized" instead of "all time and space." She came to Aeolis to make her fortune on minor foretelling (Brownies don't need all that much in the way of prophecy) whilst refining her card-based fortune-telling to a science, only to discover something curious: her visions had stopped concerning themselves with anything but events inside Yggdrasil. Convinced that the Labyrinth was the key to her divine science--and somewhat concerned that the end of the world might've suddenly become way too local for comfort--Paige managed to convince a local explorers' guild to hire her on, ostensibly as a "geomancer" for avoiding spiritual troubles, but mostly as a good-luck charm... as a person, Paige likes gambling (especially on cards), seeming more mysterious than she is, and big dinners.

Name: Sette
Class: Fencer
Portrait: B4, with hair the same white as her torso and eyes the same red as her... skirt thing
Voice: Soldier

Everyone has heard tell of the legendary Knight of the Arc--the vigilante, tied to no country, but as impermanent as the wind, a dashing and romantic figure, who dispatched a thousand armed soldiers in a single night...

Well, everyone except the Knight herself, who kind of remembers all those guys being drunk and having to "fend off" -- i.e. make threatening motions at with a small saber -- a few morons who mistook her for an enemy combatant. The next morning, someone was found dead by unrelated means, and the blame was laid on her head, but Sette was always fairly good at not getting caught. Her evasion of said guards likewise grew in the retelling, partially due to guards who didn't want to admit they'd been outrun and outwitted by some rando fencer. Two weeks of the rumor mill grinding later, Sette was a folk heroine called Lancetta, the D'Arc Knight, a master of four-sword style who had stolen and refined to perfection the esoteric techniques of the mystic East (although opinion was divided as to whether she also fought by strapping guns to her feet and performing high-impact gun-based martial arts).

Sette is kind of understandably wigged out by this, but over time, she's grown into the "folk heroine" role; in fact, she claims it's improved her handling of the sword to know mythographers are industriously writing papers about her, not to mention that her old weapons will probably sell for a mint once she's old and gray. As for the Labyrinth... well, is unbelievable fame and fortune in battle against unrelenting monsters something any self-respecting heroine could stay away from? No, and that means Sette's going to have to go too.


(Dark Flame Master)
Name: Ren
Class: Cestus
Portrait: 4A
Skin Color: Second row, 4th
Hair Color: Preset, row 2, 2nd
Eye Color: Preset, 1st row, 4th
Voice: Timid

Ren is the warm, kind and motherly sort. She is somewhat shy around people she doesn't know and has a tendency to stutter when she's nervous. Don't let that fool you, though, when the chips are down she can punch her way right through a solid brick wall. She picked up this talent while hunting for her own ingredients in the wild, as she's a cooking hobbyist at heart. Really, really wants to pat a Therian on the head to see how soft their ears are.

Rea fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Oct 15, 2016

Araxxor
Oct 20, 2012

My disdain for you all knows no bounds.
Already diving into another one, huh? Well, good luck with this.

BlackPersona
Oct 21, 2012


Ragnar Homsar posted:

Anyway, yes, character submissions. The same rules as EO2U apply: pick a class, a portrait, give the character a name, and provide a bio of whatever length you want. However, because of how character customization works in EO5, you can also provide:

  • Hair and eye colors. We'll take either presets the game gives, descriptions of colors, RGB values (ie. 155 Red, 0 Green, 155 Blue), and even hex color values if you're feeling spicy (#ff88aa).
  • For hair, you can specify if you want a specific color for either section (lit/in shadow) or if you just want the shadow portion to be a darker version of the primary color.
  • For eye colors, you can specify if you want the character to be heterochromatic--if you do this, you should (obviously) also give what other color you want. You can specify what eye should have what color, too, if you really want. If you don't, I'll just pick an eye at random.
  • For skin colors: see the images below.
  • For names: because we are limited to 6 characters for names here, you can either write out the name you want and we'll do our best to convert it to katakana, or you can give a name that's already in Japanese and I'll try my absolute hardest to not screw up inputting it.

Still forgetting to list voices as part of the character submissions, Ragnar? :v:

Rea
Apr 5, 2011

Komi-san won.

BlackPersona posted:

Still forgetting to list voices as part of the character submissions, Ragnar? :v:

It just wouldn't be something I make without some glaringly obvious error I forget about later, huh?

Fixed.

Rea fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Oct 14, 2016

Kinu Nishimura
Apr 24, 2008

SICK LOOT!
it's hard to stand an eo game without my precious dinogator but i... will survive...

TeeQueue
Oct 9, 2012

The time has come. Soon, the bell shall ring. A new world will come. Rise, my servants. Rise and serve me. I am death and life. Darkness and light.
I'm looking forward to this a whole lot, and I'm sure you'll make it as wonderful as your last thread. The best of luck to you.

Kinu Nishimura
Apr 24, 2008

SICK LOOT!
make more dragoons necromancers and mushrambos also thanks. this is a public service announcement from the aeolian council

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.
Specifically, we have low submission counts (2) for three of the classes: Dragoon, Necromancer, and Masurao. That said, the highest count is only 4 anyway. The deadline for submissions will probably be the end of this weekend, as we'll likely be deciding on Sunday or Monday.

theshim
May 1, 2012

You think you can defeat ME, Ephraimcopter?!?

You couldn't even beat Assassincopter!!!
Ground floor motherfuckers.

Level Seven
Feb 14, 2013

Wubba dubba dubba
that blew.



Megamarm
I for one am ready to see who is the first to be mauled by whatever this game's equivalent of the Great Lynx is.

Kemix
Dec 1, 2013

Because change
Quite looking forward to this. Just don't go burning yourself out Ragnar.

TeeQueue
Oct 9, 2012

The time has come. Soon, the bell shall ring. A new world will come. Rise, my servants. Rise and serve me. I am death and life. Darkness and light.
Well, if you insist...

Name: Bryce
Class: Dragoon
Portrait: 3A
Skin Color: Row 2, 3rd from left
Hair Color: preset row 1, 2nd from left
Eye Color: preset row 1, 5th from left.
Voice: Apathetic, 19

Aloof, easily distracted, and almost slothlike, Bryce is a Dragoon who would vastly prefer to spend 22 hours out of his day sleeping. Since that doesn't pay the bills, he has to work instead and has made his way to the town of Aeolis by working as a bodyguard. Being out of money and only having enough willpower to go without food for about a week or so, he's currently been spurred into action to find something to help him pay the bills. Prefers to work by expending exactly enough effort to finish a job, and not an iota more.

Name: Lioth
Class: Necromancer
Portrait: 4D
Skin Color: 2nd row, far right
Hair Color: Preset, 2nd row, 5th from left.
Eye Color: Preset, 2nd row, far left
Voice: Hag, 32

'There's no problem that can't be solved by reanimating it and making it your slave' is Lioth's favorite philosophy. She's proud of her necromatic techniques and is happy to use them first and often, whenever the opportunity arises. She's haughty, brash, and a bit of a flirt--though it often comes off badly when she tells someone that their eyes would look great preserved in formaldehyde. She likes to lord her intelligence over others and always tries to feel superior. It's not hard to take her down a peg since she frequently doesn't know as much as she pretends to about anything other than cadavers or spirits, but doing this makes her sulk.

Name: Bow
Class: Masurao
Portrait: Generic Therian F
Skin Color: 1st row, 4th from left
Hair Color: preset 1st row, 5th from left
Eye Color: preset 2nd row, 5th from left
Voice: 39, Taciturn

Bow is a former student who was banished from her home after an unfortunate training accident in which she accidentally killed her master's son. (In hindsight, they probably shouldn't have used real swords.) While she used to be expressive and energetic, years of wandering and living by herself have made her keep her focus but lose the bounciness that went along with it. Businesslike and to the point, she's honed the skills she learned through her time on the road to become something of a competent swordswoman. She doesn't ever talk about her past, changing the subject anytime someone brings it up. Hearing about the exploration boom in Aeolis, she's here to get in on the ground floor and make a name for herself. By doing that, she hopes that her hometown will hear what's become of her and feel really bad about running her off all those years ago.

Tuxedo Ted
Apr 24, 2007

Wow, that's a whole ton of character apps already, but I'm still gonna submit one.

Name: Law
Class: Necromancer
Portrait: Row 1, Column 3
Skin Color: Default purple, it's too good to change
Hair Color: The white/grey default works well here too
Eye Color: I didn't see it in the presets, so whatever looks most like the color of a dead fish's eyes to you.
Voice: (10) Gentleman

Law comes from a village where necromancers are raised as guardians of life and death, protecting the natural flow of things. This also involves putting ne'er-do-wells that'd exploit the dead and undead for their own purposes to justice, as well as anyone who'd seek to unnaturally prolong their own life. Or at least, that was the idea, but like all things corruption eventually settled in. Nowadays, most necromancers from Law's town will happily use necromancy for their own benefit (and for the benefit of others if the price is right) while still claiming to be infallible guardians of nature, and Law is no exception. He's already lost count of how many times he's died (it's starting to show) and he doesn't care in the least about how many kickbacks and benefits he gleans from his work. He does have to keep up appearances, however, and recently back home the hammer has been coming down hard on necromancer corruption.

Law was recently slated for an audit and thought now would be a good time to get far, far away from town for a while and actually do his job properly for a while with some low-key heroics. Y'know, get some solid and well-tabulated work down on his tally sheet before returning home. And maybe he might offer a few of the more cautious adventurers in town some "life insurance policies" on the down-low to earn some pocket money.

Law is easy enough to get along with when he isn't doing his high-pressure salesman shtick, and he's polite enough not to try force sales on his close friends. Once you get past his unending need to abuse his powers and authority for easy coin and favors, he's actually a pretty talented and hardworking necromancer.

Kinu Nishimura
Apr 24, 2008

SICK LOOT!

all shall bend to my will. hubadabudabuda

Booky
Feb 21, 2013

Chill Bug


I'm already excited to see the submissions and FOEs!! Also :laffo: "Thunderclap Fencer".

Also, out of curiosity, will you be adding that new portrait info from the submissions post to an update?

Logicblade
Aug 13, 2014

Festival with your real* little sister!
Oh god too much customization, I can't do it. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

Pyro Jack
Oct 2, 2016
I guess I'm just curious but are the classes here balanced much like in EOIV or not?

Crosspeice
Aug 9, 2013

I won't submit a character, since I'm sure my Survivalist stole the show last time, so I'll just enjoy this LP greatly. And no one can stop me.

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009
Name: Mio (ミオ)
Class: Shaman
Portrait: DLC Row 2, Column 1
Skin Color: Default
Hair Color: Something like
Eye Color: Green
Voice: 37, Stubborn

Mio used to be a normal girl in a country called 'Japan.' In Japan, she was a nerdy student with few friends, poor grades, and few interests outside of her favorite games and buying fan-comics about fictional characters in romantic relationships. Truly, hers was a pitiable lot.

Until one day, in the middle of the night, her 3DS began to glow! Reaching out towards it, she brushed her fingers across the screen - and was sucked into the world of the game! Overwhelmed, outmatched, and out of her depth, she is forced to rely on the good will of those around her, hoping that the labyrinth will unveil the truth of why she was brought here, and give her a way to get back home. And also hoping that her guild is filled with cute boys.

... That's her story, anyway. Nobody's really sure if it's true or not - or frankly, what she's even talking about when she explains it. She might just be weird. True, she can actually kind of fight despite everything, but maybe she got bumped on the head during training. And she seems weirdly fascinated by all the non-Earthrun races, but she could just have a bit of exoticism going on. Either way, she tries not to go on too long about all that. Not that many people seem to buy it. She's more than happy to go into great depth if someone does buy it, though! Especially, you know. A handsome man of about her age, maybe a little older.

Please buy it.

Endorph fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Oct 14, 2016

Rea
Apr 5, 2011

Komi-san won.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that. DLC portraits can be used for any race. You can use the Medic 2 portrait for a Brownie Herbalist, for example.

If I'm gonna be honest, I'm surprised people haven't been using the DLC portraits. When I first showed them to Clarste, his opinion was basically "everyone's going to use these, they're too good." :v:

Geizt
Dec 10, 2014



Name: Aeren
Class: Dragoon
Portrait: 1 (Top Left, red armor)
Skin Color: Dark brown (bottom right on the Earthrun presets)
Hair Color: Green
Eye Color: Purple
Voice: 12, Nihilistic

Sometimes professional adventurers have to unwind after a nasty fight, this is true of most cases. Sometimes instead of just unwinding, said adventurer gets drunk as hell, uses an aether shard while drunk and covered in void mana, blows up said aether shard and ends up in the middle of who knows where. And thus we have Aeren Tellos, professional adventurer, joining up because he doesn't know where in Eorzea he is and needs cash to find out. Being an old hand at taking hits and protecting others doesn't hurt his credentials either. Now if only he'd stop insisting that he was a Paladin and not a Dragoon...

theshim
May 1, 2012

You think you can defeat ME, Ephraimcopter?!?

You couldn't even beat Assassincopter!!!

Ragnar Homsar posted:

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that. DLC portraits can be used for any race. You can use the Medic 2 portrait for a Brownie Herbalist, for example.

If I'm gonna be honest, I'm surprised people haven't been using the DLC portraits. When I first showed them to Clarste, his opinion was basically "everyone's going to use these, they're too good." :v:
It helps that most of the class portraits are pretty good again.

Most of them.

TeeQueue
Oct 9, 2012

The time has come. Soon, the bell shall ring. A new world will come. Rise, my servants. Rise and serve me. I am death and life. Darkness and light.

Ragnar Homsar posted:

If I'm gonna be honest, I'm surprised people haven't been using the DLC portraits. When I first showed them to Clarste, his opinion was basically "everyone's going to use these, they're too good." :v:

Well I'm all about using stuff other people haven't, so...

Name: Clara
Class: Warlock
Portrait: DLC - Protector 2 B
Skin Color: 1st row, 3rd from left
Hair Color: preset, 1st row, 4th from left
Eye Color: preset, 2nd row, 2nd from left
Voice: 25, Lively

A warlock who's found herself on the business end of one too many beatings during her travels. Because of it, she's started dressing and acting a lot like a Dragoon in order to discourage targets from attacking her. The armor is all actually cardboard and is 100% cosmetic. She's got a go-get-'em attitude and is always eager to be the second person through a door--so that the person in front can tank for her if need be. Her sword is a modified version of a warlock's staff, and getting it to work right is her proudest achievement. She hides her Lunarian ears under her hair since everyone knows only Earthrun are Dragoons.

lord hobo
Mar 7, 2010

Name: Sarah
Class: Fencer
Portrait: 4A
Skin Color: Row 1, 2nd from the right
Hair Color: Row 1, 3rd from the right
Eye Color: Row 2, 3 from the left
Voice: Timid

Sarah as the youngest sibling in her family was always shy and reserved. But following a near death experience she took her eldest sister advice to break out of her shell and train with her to learn the ways of the Fencing, While still a little shy shes cares for her comrades like they were family.

lord hobo fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Oct 14, 2016

blizzardvizard
Sep 12, 2012

Shhh... don't wake up the sleeping lion :3:

Two more 'cos hey.

Name: Gideon
Class: Dragoon
Portrait: 1B
Skin Color: Top row, 5th color
Hair Color: Red
Eye Color: Green
Voice: 20 (Rough)

Joining the Dragoon Corps has been Gideon's lifelong dream. But when he's finally inducted... he immediately regrets it. You see, he's only here for the sick, sick uniform. Trenchcoats are badass, the draconic pauldrons even moreso, and have you seen those gold chains?? But nobody ever told him about this stupid 'taunting your enemy so you get axed in the face' deal! His hair takes ages to style, and he's sure as hell not letting cow horns or frog bollocks anywhere near his proximity. And what's with his peers' obsession with using their shield to protect people or some poo poo when they've got a huge kick-rear end gun? That's super lame. (The huge guns are the other reason he wants to join the corps, but people tend to snicker and giggle when he says that out loud.) He would quit, but then he would lose the uniform and the gun, plus he's also spent a not-insignificant sum... gifting... the right people so he could get in. So whatever, this assignment to accompany tourists to a giant tree or something seems easy enough, he could fulfill his required duty hours while getting these lamers out of his perfect hair.

You may think no one in their right mind would want someone like that in their party, but Gideon is extraordinarily talented at one thing, and that's being punchable. He is so naturally obnoxious and abrasive, even monsters incapable of understanding human speech can't help but feel compelled to hit him whenever he opens his mouth. Quite ironically, this makes him a pretty effective Dragoon, even if he's nowhere near a noble one. His party may not be able to stand him, but they could do worse than having a good meatshield to get axes away from their faces.

Name: Alexis
Class: Fencer
Portrait: 3B
Skin Color: Default
Hair Color: Dark brown
Eye Color: Dark grey
Voice: 10 (Gentleman)

Alexis is the forty-seventh prince of a kingdom from a far, far away continent. He was to marry the thirty-second princess of a neighboring kingdom in another one of their families' endless list of political marriages, but this particular princess turned out to be a bit of a rebel. She ditched him on the wedding day without so much an explanation or an apology. Later that he found out that she had grown dissatisfied with her caged and dictated life, so she escaped to Aeolis to become an "adventurer" and scale its giant tree - the Yggdrasil. Even later on, he found out she had perished inside the dungeon.

He may not know her name, or have seen her face, or... know much anything about her at all, but Alexis has his honor. He would not let the murderer of his bethrothed go unpunished. There's one problem, however. He did not know who or what, exactly, killed the princess, and deducing that is definitely an impossible task. But then the answer dawned upon him - it was not the monsters that killed her. She could have died to the boars, the cat-birds, the legs-in-a-pudding, but it would never had happened... without the challenge that the tree presents.

And so, he ran away from his home of sixteen years and got on a ship to Aeolis. (He was silently pleased at how dramatic it was to leave his pampered life just like the princess did.) Armed with a decorative sword he took off the palace walls and about three weeks' worth of fencing lessons (that he took before he got bored of it, as princes do), he's going to duel the killer of his lover to the death... the entire Yggdrasil Labyrinth.



Also, I actually edited the description for my Necromancer from "tens of thousands of Entals" to "hundreds of thousands of Entals". :v: It's not that big of a deal, but I thought there's no harm in telling it either.

blizzardvizard fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Oct 14, 2016

Araxxor
Oct 20, 2012

My disdain for you all knows no bounds.

theshim posted:

It helps that most of the class portraits are pretty good again.

Most of them.

Yeah, I really didn't like EO4's portraits overall. They were really boring and bland compared to EO3's. EO5's portraits are a lot better.

OgretailFood
Oct 9, 2012

Recommended by 10 out of 10 Aragami

Ok so, here goes nothing, I guess.

Name: Lanzoni (ランゾニー)
Class: Necromancer
Portrait: 2nd Male, A
Skin: Third (left to right) Bottom row
Hair: 3rd? (Left to right) Bottom row
Eyes: 4th (left to right) Top row
Voice: Nihilistic

Who doesn't like to have a marvelous body? Working as a model was what he lived for, not because of the amount the artists paid him just to pose, but for being immortalized in the endless work of painters and sculptors from all over the world. But those days are a thing the past.

Lanzoni, the one who loved being the center of attention now lies hidden from the world, his body now covered in scars.You see, having an excellent physique attracted a lot of people but also attracted those who were envious, and those scars are the painful reminder. Alone, his only company was the whispering wind that flew to his window, or so he thought.

One day, he realized that those whispers were not from the wind, but from the dead. Somehow, he could hear and talk to them. Spirits that came to talk to him despite his scars, some even talked about their days exploring ancient ruins, and a few just talked about spending hours looking at the paintings and statues made in his image. That day, he found a new calling, the path of the Necromancer.

With a renewed spirit, he set forth with one goal in his mind, being the most fabulous Necromancer that ever existed. Who knows, maybe he can even recover his tanned body. Yikes dude, you need some sunlight.



I'm just a fan of Fabio-like haired dudes in RPGs, ok?

Rea
Apr 5, 2011

Komi-san won.
...Aw, crap, I forgot to mention: we need a guild name, too. Same thing as character names: either give us something in English and Clarste'll translate it, or give us something already in Japanese and I will spend forever hunting-and-pecking the correct characters.

Also, the initial party vote. Almost forgot that too. Just vote for whatever 3 classes you like.

Also one minor thing: if your character isn't picked, don't be too sad! You'll get another chance when specializations roll around, because I'll be adding more characters to have one character for each specialization (minus one specialization I find kind of pointless). Any characters that aren't picked here will be auto-entered when specializations roll around unless the authors specify otherwise.

How many more characters, you might ask? ...Um, well, 8. Plus another character that won't be picked now, but will show up soon after 1F.

And people thought 15 was a lot of characters for EO2U. :v:

Lastly, if you're one of those Twitter users and feel like having another method of being informed when an update goes live, I might as well put this thing to some use after registering it back in 2009. My Steam profile's also on there if you feel like having me babble at you.

Rea fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Oct 15, 2016

Haifisch
Nov 13, 2010

Objection! I object! That was... objectionable!



Taco Defender
Name: Mark
Class: Cestus
Portrait: Male
Skin: Rightmost color, top row
Hair: Dark purple
Eyes: Yellow
Voice: 16 (Cocky)

Mark likes punching things. A lot. So much so that he became a Cestus, and it wasn't enough. He joined the guild in search of more things to punch, and secretly hoping he gets to punch the World Tree. Despite his punching-centric worldview, he's incredibly loyal to his friends and surprisingly empathetic. Any attempt at discussing his past ends in frustration, because he invariably starts talking about things he's punched.

BlackPersona
Oct 21, 2012


Do we really need a guild name? We should be the Nameless Guild :v: (Hopefully that fits the 6 characters in Japanese...)

GeneralYeti
Jul 22, 2012

Look at this smug broken asshole.
I don't really have a character to submit, but I'm just gonna say I hope the Feral voice gets at least one slot.

E: seconding Nameless guild, if we can.

vdate
Oct 25, 2010
I just hope the Necrodancer gets picked because that is the greatest character pitch I've seen since alcharagia's Shogun for the EO3 thread. Actually, it might be better than that one. As for names, given as we're in the D&D flavoured version of EO, how about Guild Grognard?

As for classes... Shaman, Necromancer, Masurao.

vdate fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Oct 15, 2016

Poltergrift
Feb 16, 2014



"When I grow up, I'm gonna be a proper swordsman. One with clothes."
Another vote for Nameless, and initial party vote for Cestus, Dragoon and Necromancer.

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Voting for Nameless!

Not sure what to think of the game yet. I'll have to wait until it comes stateside, but let's hope it's good.

Level Seven
Feb 14, 2013

Wubba dubba dubba
that blew.



Megamarm
First time I heard the word Yggdrasil, it was Tales of Symphonia. Guild Mythos. I know it's spelled incorrectly shut up.

Herbalist, Masurao, Warlock

Rea
Apr 5, 2011

Komi-san won.

Pollyanna posted:

Voting for Nameless!

Not sure what to think of the game yet. I'll have to wait until it comes stateside, but let's hope it's good.

I mean, the fact that I'm doing an LP of it should tell you my opinion of it.

In all seriousness I really do like EO5. It takes the series away from some of the bad JRPG habits that the Untolds were slipping into, like RNG-reliant core mechanics (you could ignore them in EOU, but Grimoires were mandatory in EO2U) and serious problems with number inflation. I also far prefer the class specialization system to Grimoires and even subclassing (both the EO3 and EO4 versions).

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Rea
Apr 5, 2011

Komi-san won.
Hey look I'm switching things up in order to encourage more variance in some classes that don't have as many submissions WOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

For EO5, we will be staggering announcing what characters win over the weekend to Monday maybe, announcing one at a time. I feel like doing this because there's some classes that soared from a really low amount of submissions near the end of EO2U to an incredibly high amount (Fencer went from 1 submission to 5 in a matter of days) and I kind of want to divert anyone that's thinking about writing any characters towards classes with less submissions.

And the first winner of this arbitrary non-contest pseudo-judged by us three and some of my friends is:





Mio (submitted by Endorph), who will be our initial Shaman.

(I'm posting images so that people that submit characters can look over them and make sure they're fine--especially standalone/cropped portraits, since I have to manually do those in Photoshop.)

quote:

Mio used to be a normal girl in a country called 'Japan.' In Japan, she was a nerdy student with few friends, poor grades, and few interests outside of her favorite games and buying fan-comics about fictional characters in romantic relationships. Truly, hers was a pitiable lot.

Until one day, in the middle of the night, her 3DS began to glow! Reaching out towards it, she brushed her fingers across the screen - and was sucked into the world of the game! Overwhelmed, outmatched, and out of her depth, she is forced to rely on the good will of those around her, hoping that the labyrinth will unveil the truth of why she was brought here, and give her a way to get back home. And also hoping that her guild is filled with cute boys.

... That's her story, anyway. Nobody's really sure if it's true or not - or frankly, what she's even talking about when she explains it. She might just be weird. True, she can actually kind of fight despite everything, but maybe she got bumped on the head during training. And she seems weirdly fascinated by all the non-Earthrun races, but she could just have a bit of exoticism going on. Either way, she tries not to go on too long about all that. Not that many people seem to buy it. She's more than happy to go into great depth if someone does buy it, though! Especially, you know. A handsome man of about her age, maybe a little older.

Please buy it.

Rea fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Oct 16, 2016

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