Welcome to Gaia! ::

Added Notes: Everyone who posts here and receives a new rank, won't have any additional attempts at ranking evaluated after the first until there's seen increased activity and more role-play's in the Haven.

Alright, so this thread has a similar concept as Gear's Rank Fix with an exception. You could respond to one of the three prompts below (copied almost entirely from the front page) and I'll evaluate your response and grant you a new rank from that. Or, if none of the prompts appeal to you, send me a PM with a sample of your work, something I can and will reply too, and then send me another reply. I'll evaluate both of your pieces and grant you a new rank.

Either way, make sure it's your best work, and act quickly; I'm not leaving this open for long. It's primarily meant for any current members who think they can produce better material then what they posted in Gear's thread to show they can. After a month or two, I'm shutting it down since we'll be ranking new recruits upon entry and we should see a float of them soon.

Remember, be realistic, and be fair (AMP).


Instructions: Save yourself from death, and possibly counter.


Instructions: Prevent the laser fire from harming you, and possibly get around the Commander.


Instructions: Cancel/disable/negate the lightening spell from killing you, and possibly counter with a spell of your own.

D's evaluation: Strikes: unnecessary or improper words
Green: improper grammar
Red: unrealistic actions

Strike 1: unnecessary preposition.

Green 1: In this case, 'this' is a word used in present-tense. 'The' would show past tense when introducing a noun, which is proper role-playing form.

Red 1: Speaking from a purely modern perspective, uncommon state-of-the-art motion detectors employ detection methods that cannot be 'slipped' by, such as infrared, ultrasonic, and even microwaves, unless the security system is hacked and they're shut down. Now, since the prompt is set in a more advanced (combat laser) age then our own, consider the detection methods they would employ with more advanced tech.

Strike 2: unnecessary preposition.

Green 2: In this case, you use 'they', which shows multiple people. But it's only you who's returning, so it should be 'she'.

Green 3: Again, 'here' shows present-tense in relation to a noun. 'There' would show past-tense.

Strike 3: The comma before "would not harm" isn't necessary, since you're not expressing a new idea in what follows it.

Green 4: "Would not be harmed", missing a subjective.

Red 2: In the first past of this, you say your character threw her body to the floor to avoid the laser
fire, and then proceeds to continue forward to a handstand, a backflip, and somehow a kick. She wouldn't have the momentum to carry out those actions without a meaningful pause before the handstand, giving the commander enough time to take a second shot, all because your character 'threw herself down to the ground'. Now, if you had wrote 'she dove straight forward and landed on her hands,' the rest could be realistically done quick enough that the commander couldn't react until the kick.

Green 5:'Lifting' is present-tense, 'and lifted' is past-tense.


Final Decision: C Rank

Michael knew that this moment was coming. He had questioned the ordered flow of the magic, and sought to unlock mysteries of it that should never have been discovered. Dark Magic, corrupted Magic. Magic that could sear the mind and drive the user insane.

How little the zealot fool across the canyon knew. There was nothing dark about the magic Michael discovered. Light and Dark are only names, misconceptions to fool the people. Misconceptions probably started by the Elders who sent this man to kill him, in order to keep him from revealing the Secret. The secret that was now his truth.

There is no such thing in the world as Good and Evil. There is only power, and those too weak to seek it. Michael knew this, now. The Elder's knew it too, it was the only reason that they would have sent Azarien to kill him. Oh yes, the world would burn. The world would burn and learn his truth. First, however, there was a simple matter to deal with.

Michael looked at Azarien in the eyes. The fool was raising his hands, shouting silly words to the sky. The noise was lost across the canyon, but MIchael could read his lips, and knew what was coming. Immediately, his mouth started moving, muttering an incantation that would negate the unpleasant spell headed towards him. His feet sank into the ground. He was now grounded. Let the lightning strike him now, why should he care? It would just pass through him, and go harmlessly into the dirt and rock.

The lightning struck him, and he felt nothing except for a light tingling. He could smell something smoking though, and reaching up, he found that his hair was burnt off. Chuckling amusedly, he got out of the ground. He opened his arms to show his opponent he was not injured. "Do you not see now, Azarien? You cannot harm me! The council has sent you to your death!" He shouted across the canyon to his foe.

It was his turn to retaliate. With a simple gesture and three spoken words, Michael created a spear of pure psychic energy. It was black and sleek, rippling with energy and distorting the molecules around it. Another spoken word, and there was now twenty of them. A flick of his outstretched hand, and they went soaring across the canyon, aiming for Azarien.



(((In this prompt, I have once again found my love of playing a villain. Is this a real plotline Darius? Because if it isn't, I'm going to make this into a roleplay at some point in the future.)))

Fuuuuuuh... Alright, you've got me on most of those. I did put you in charge of this for a reason. I admit defeat, pure and simple.

D's Evaluation: I'm excited to rate your work, Nxe.
Alright! Instead of coding everything differently, I'll just bold and talk.

Before the rest, the 'the' before your first reference to magic is struck out because it wasn't necessary.

At the beginning of your post you wrote the word 'magic' capitalized and not capitalized. Frankly, I don't capitalize the word 'magic' when I write for Darius, but I have wrote it capitalized when I write for other characters, so I'm not biased either way. However, you weren't consistent in your preference, and it sets the writing off a bit. Magic is always a general term, because the specific term of magic is a spell, or something related to the result of magic.

Secret and secret. Since you can use it referring to a specific 'Secret' or a general 'secret', I'm not biased. But again, you weren't consistent with it, capitalizing it first but not the second time.

'too, it' Okay, I'm not going to penalize you for this, since it's a minor comma error. Because of the way you wrote the entire sentence, grammatically speaking the comma should have been a semicolon. The comma is separating two complete, but related sentences. If you had wrote 'too, and it' the comma would have been correct.

'amusedly' is incorrect spelling. 'Amusingly' is the correct spelling.

'rippling with energy and distorting the'
Written this way is confusing. There's no indication of what's distorting the molecules.
'rippling with energy that distorted the'
This suggests that the rippling energy distorts the molecules around the spear.
'rippling with energy and distorted molecules'
This suggests that the spear itself distorts the molecules around it.

Another minor tense error. 'Now' should have been written 'then'.

The writing was solid, good transition from one paragraph to the next, kept me interested from start to finish, but you didn't provide any real character or scenery detail that would have given your writing life. You did excellently introducing the character's relation to the story, negated the spell effectively, and countered fairly. All and all, excellent response.

Final Decision: B Rank

D's Notes: I've seen you at your absolute best, Nxe, and by God you're good when your at the top of your game. I would have no problem giving you an A Rank, but I honestly think you haven't dedicated yourself to being at the top of your game as thoroughly as the Rank demands just yet. Hell, I usually don't dedicate myself as thoroughly as the Rank demands.

[[If you don't post here to get re-ranked, I'll rank you off of your old post in Gear's Rank Fix.]]

Two gloved hands reached out to the keyboard and began to type furiously. A technology expert and cyberpath, Gear occasionally liked to actually put his hands to a keyboard, rather than just strictly control a computer with his mind. It felt more personal, more skillful. Anybody could think at a computer. Granted not everybody could psychically control one, but still, it took little effort if one had the ability. Typing, however, required at least a degree of manual dexterity that Gear felt determined to keep up to par, if only for his personal satisfaction.

Each file he scanned through was carefully memorized within a tenth of a second. Slower than normal for him, but he had plenty of time. Since entering the compound, he’d taken out multiple guards silently, reprogrammed security cameras, disabled defensive countermeasures, and stolen a large amount of Tritium to power this new weapon these guys were developing. Not that Gear really knew who “these guys” were. A client pays a mercenary to work, not to ask questions, he would often say. He would also often say, albeit silently, that a mercenary worth his salts would have no need to ask questions; he would already know the answers.

There was the file. A smile crept across his half-hidden face as the blueprints for which he had been searching finally came to light. It had taken a whole thirty seconds -- apparently his recon could use a little work. Within moments, he memorized every aspect of it, only for the smile on his face to vanish when he realized just what he was seeing; this weapon had far more power and versatility than anyone could have ever thought. Gear clenched his fists as he stared at the blueprints for a few more seconds before hitting the delete button. Anything he could do to slow down the production would be of some help. Whatever these guys were planning, it couldn’t be savory.

The metallic backpack Gear was wearing sent a wireless signal to his helmet: a simple bicycle helmet outfitted with opaque green cyber-eye goggles under a translucent green faceplate. The goggles indicated that some of the sensors he had placed in the hallways on the way in had detected some movement. “Time to close up shop,” he whispered to himself as he shut down the computer and attached a small disk-like device to it. He then cyberpathically sealed shut the door he had used to enter, and exited through a door on the opposite side of the room.

Gear found himself in a long corridor. Being careful to avoid the gaze of the security cameras, he instructed his backpack to send out a wireless signal that manipulated a loop of the camera’s feedback; whoever was watching the security cameras would see the same thirty seconds of empty hallway repeated. Confident that he had covered his tracks well, he slowly crept down the hallway, walking from the lateral to medial portions of his foot to reduce the noise he made. Within a minute, he found himself at a corner.

On command, his backpack switched the output of his visor from normal vision to infrared as he peered through the wall without being seen. There was someone standing in the hallway, apparently carrying a weapon that had not been fired recently. Without it giving off a heat signature, Gear couldn’t confirm the identity of the weapon, but based entirely on the man’s stance, it had to be something heavy-duty. Given the technological specs of the place, he could expect it to be either a laser or plasma-based weapon. He wondered for a brief moment how to get past him without causing a ruckus until he turned around. There were heat signatures approaching the door he’d sealed. Somehow, something had tipped off security that there was an intruder. Okay, Gear thought to himself with a smile. Let’s play this game through.

As the guards struggled with the door he’d sealed earlier, Gear took out a cyberpathically detonated grenade, setting it down on the floor in front of him. He ordered the sealed door to open, and then pulled out a metallic retractable bo-staff from his dark matter storage pocket on his belt. He watched the guards creep closer to the computer he had been using as he slowly extended the staff, trying to maintain noise discipline as he did. The moment the guards got to the computer, Gear activated the device he’d planted, which fired an electromagnetic pulse through the building, temporarily shutting off all power.

Now shrouded in darkness, Gear quickly switched to night vision and got down low on the ground. He used his staff as a pool stick, and after running thirty-seven calculations in the span of 30 nanoseconds, he struck the grenade like a pool ball. It ricocheted off the wall in front of him, and was sent rolling down the hall in the direction of his escape route. As soon as it got to the guard, Gear cyberpathically detonated it, causing a moderate explosion, presumably enough to kill the man in question. He could feel the shockwaves rolling through the building, and knew that he had no time to waste. He stood to his feet, turned the corner, and barreled down the hallway, running at top speed. The shuttlecraft was dead ahead, and one way or another, he was going to make it.

((Actually, I haven't had a new RP ranking since MDG ranked me in 2005.))