Zeal's Roleplay Ideas [M for F, Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Historical]

[Zeal]

I've gathered here a few different potential roleplays I'd like to write with the right partner.  My Ons and Offs are on the Roleplay Preferences page of my profile.  If you're interested in writing with me, please send a message.

Marooned

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Your character is traveling on a sailing vessel through sparsely populated tropical waters.  She may be a high-status woman journeying to a not particularly welcome betrothal, a handmaid or lady-in-waiting to the same, a low-status maid or serving girl--any station in life, but traveler rather than crew, and used to the sheltering conveniences of her native civilization.

My character might be a bodyguard of a high-status character, or simply a fellow traveler of a mid- or low-status character: a powerfully built, intimidatingly foreign figure who is also not a part of the journey, but along for the cruise.

The ship encounters insurmountable hazards and sinks--maybe pirates, but probably just a storm.  Our characters wash up alone on a fertile but uninhabited tropical island, with very little more than what clothes remain on their backs.  They must work together to establish shelter, food and water, and eventually a way off the island.  All the while, primitive conditions and close proximity wear away whatever mores your character's society adheres to, giving way to passionate indulgence in the absolute privacy of an almost uninhabited island.

Looking for female writing partners interested in a survival story.  Flexible on the state of the wider setting, but prefer fantasy, bronze age through early modern.

Auctioned

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The city is ancient.  It was founded by the earliest of kings, and has been the seat of more than one transient empire.  By sheer weight of age it draws towards it every stream of trade and travel: ships plying its encircling rivers and caravans lumbering across the wastes from beyond the cultivated lands all find rest and markets behind its sheltering walls.  The wealthy lead lead lives of obscene luxury while the poorest toil in the fields or mines, or fight to the death in the arena.  The city exhibits every trade and art, along with every vice and cruelty.  Trade and vice intertwine an the city's slave market, where human (and near-human) captives from every corner of the known world are sold to those with the riches to buy.  Some of those sold were captured in war, others taken for their debts or the debts of their family, a handful even sell themselves into slavery when their lives in freedom grow desperate enough.  Purchased for the labor or pleasure of their new master, the luckiest and ablest can win comfortable posts in the household of the mighty, but the vast majority will lead cruel, brief lives of toil and squalor.

I am interested in a writing partner who'd like to play such a captive, purchased by a stranger and taken into a strange household.  Maybe your character was a noble lady in a now-conquered land, or a lush peasant girl seized by passing raiders.  Maybe she was a woman-warrior, taken to the block in heavy chains.  Maybe she sold herself out of desperate poverty; maybe she's simply exotic, and drew the wrong attention.  Regardless, our story begins with her stripped bare and exhibited at auction, before she's carted off the unknown precincts of her new master's house.

The Blue Temple

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The Twelve Cities are as old as civilization.  Their priests and princes would say they are civilization, though the rich and mighty in other lands would disagree.  Each is a jewel, a garden of carefully husbanded water in otherwise arid, deadly wastes.  Each city has its own chief god or goddess, embodied by its king or queen, and recognizes the gods of the others.  Each of the Twelve Cities has, from their founding, hosted at least a shrine to the Blue Goddess, whose domains are love and war.  In modern days the Blue Goddess's temples in the Twelve Cities are huge, rich compounds that serve as home and workplace for Her priestesses.  The acolytes of the Blue Goddess come from every walk of life.  Some begin as lowly as slaves sold to the temple, while others are the darlings of ancient, powerful noble dynasties, offered to the Goddess for the rich rewards alliance with the temples can bring their families.  Many are simply young women from the sprawling cities and desolate hinterlands, who swear themselves to the temple in the hopes of a better, more exciting life.

Those the temples accept are trained to express both the Blue Goddess's domains: through a relentless regimen of both mental and physical training they become sublimely talented and cultivated warrior-courtesans.  Full acolytes return riches to their temples by accepting service in the world outside as soldiers, bodyguards, entertainers, companions, escorts, and stranger roles than combine one or more of these.  Their education is intended to prepare them to be equally at home in the mess tents of the Twelve Cities' brutal conscript armies and the decadent boudoirs of their elite.'

I'm looking for a writing partner interested in playing a priestess from the temples of the Blue Goddess described above, in a sort of sword & sandal Bronze/Early Iron Age fantasy setting.  I'm open to fantasy races in the game, and want to work with whoever joins me in this story to flesh out the bare bones of the setting presented above.  I'm open to playing a variety of characters opposite your priestess as well: a successful slave-gladiator she's been hired to reward for a victorious bout; a foreign notable in need of a reliable, formidable companion in a hostile land; a bodyguard who's been hired to accompany her to a distant locale.  There's a huge number of potential plots for us to develop.

After the Battle

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Royal armies of the great western empire travel in style.  Their camps are mobile cities, pavilions and pastures and even impromptu gardens raised for a week or a night by the Great King's magi, meant to house hosts numbered in the tens and hundreds of thousands.  The Great King's officers ride in splendor, their armor fairly dripping with gold and jewels, and the sovereign himself shines like a second sun from his personal chariot, but even the meanest foot soldier of the host has a jeweled scabbard for his sword.  The fighting men are only a fraction of the full population of such an army on the march, as slaves and hired hands guide the baggage animals, fetch water and food for the soldiers' mess.  The nobles ride with whole retinues of servants, advisors and concubines--both male and female--in their tow, while the Great King attends his wars with even his close family in spectacularly luxurious tents the size of a splendid palace.

Often, the sheer glory of the marching army is enough to cow the Great King's foes.  When that fails the storm of his archers' missiles and the spears of his shining, armor-sheathed cavaliers makes short work of even the most tenacious foes.  When they fail, their commanders are executed for their obvious cowardice, and their heads paraded to encourage their replacements towards better results.  When the royal army is led by the Great King himself, such force is mustered about the royal person that resistance crumbles like sandcastles before the rising tide.  At least, until today.

Today, the Great King's army met a host out of the barbarian east with a fraction of its numbers, the mercenary vanguard of one of the empire's own rebellious satraps.  The barbarians' armor shed arrows like inconvenient raindrops; their pikes slew both splendid cavaliers and the thoroughbreds beneath them.  The Great King fled the field, abandoning his gilded chariot to the enemy's plunder, and with him fled the army's spirit.  The royal host broke and ran before the barbarians, leaving the numberless servants and treasures of their camp to the tender mercies of the conquerors.

Your character was among those left behind.  She might've been some high lord's lady, a concubine, a servant girl, one of the Great King's mage-priests, or even a rare woman-warrior from some far-flung outpost of empire.  Whoever she was, she was captured in the royal army's rout and has fallen into the hands of a foreigner, maybe an officer, maybe a private soldier.  She might welcome the change of circumstances, as a chance to be free from the cruel, haughty lords of the empire, or she might revile her captor.  Regardless, she's become so much plunder in his keeping, to do with as he will.