Siriel

Taking a little break from updating the other one because what's coming is particularly ridiculous so I need to gather my thoughts and do some rereading first.

Instead, let me talk about the other Anima campaign in play in. That one started a few years later and consists of four of my game's players (Corim's, Solomon's, Ardelyn's - I think and Taran's) and myself as players, with the GM being Tasha's player.

It progresses very slowly, and hasn't gone anywhere near the depths of insanity of my own campaign (something the GM is thankful for). You can think of it as more political intrigue as opposed to my game's epic adventures; I think talking about it will give another point of view at what Anima can be when it's not being run by me for the Party From Hell.

The game take place in Gabriel, which is a mercantile country and basically the direct opposition to my campaign's frozen hellhole of a setting. Conflict in Gabriel is all about political manipulation instead of swords to the face (though knives in the back are to be expected) and since we'll mostly be hanging out in populated areas, it would be a good idea for our characters to not be entirely reliant on supernatural powers. Also, Gabriel has an honor system where you can be challenged to a duel with either pistols or rapiers, so knowing how to fight with at least one of those weapons would be useful for the party's sake.

That turned out brilliantly.

The basic outline we got for the campaign was that our characters were to be heading toward Gabriel for reasons of their own, and needed to be willing to be hired.

Since I'm not the GM this time, my information on the other characters beside mine and the NPCs is limited to an outsider's perspective, so when I saw another character is X, or has Y ability, that's mostly my speculation from what they've done combined with my knowledge of the rules.

Our noble party for this diplomatic adventure:

Vilhelm Lydia - Myself, the amazing, undefeatable mage. And by amazing and undefeatable I mean I have no combat skill at all. I literally can't hit the broad side of a barn with my magic, and that's if I roll well enough to reach it. My build is insanely min-maxed to let me quickly cast spells without having to lose on skills to have the points to pay for that, and I specialized in a non-combat branch (Essence - basically natural and soul related magic) consisting mostly of beneficial support spells or AOE status effect spells to compensate for that whole "can't hit shit with them" issue. By the time I reach level 3 I'll be able to exclude targets of my choice from my AOEs, so I'll be able to do things like "Put everyone in a 150 meter radius to sleep except our party" or "Heal all my allies in one shot".
My secondary magic branch is spells to hide the fact that I'm using magic, and generally hide things. I have the strongest spell of that sort in the game (Eliminate Traces) which allows me to at-will retroactively erase all traces of my having passed through an area to the point that only the strongest of characters could pick up my trail and even looking into the past wouldn't show that I was there.
Now, having no combat skills may look really bad, but I've compensated for it reasonably well; I have a permanent spell on me that automatically stops esoteric effects like mental attacks (obviously it doesn't stop all of them, but it stops them up to a level where I couldn't succeed in my check against them even if I rolled 100, so as far as characters our level I'm almost mental-effect proof.) and my character has a Sheele.

A Sheele is a familiar, a fairy, which is created from splitting up part of its creator's soul. It's absolutely loyal and the one I picked (Darkness) has a variety of abilities that make it hard to detect and lets it hide. Also, it has a special ability that lets it block attacks with its ability to attack/defend with magic (and its ability to do that is unrelated to my character's, so she does have it) which combined with all Sheeles having the ability to attack/defend for their master as long as they're on the same square means that my character is as well defended as someone of his level that actually put points into combat skills. So really the only thing I lost from my build is the ability to do any sort of significant damage.
Also one of my disadvantage from character creation is Unlucky Destiny, which means that the rule that rolling 90+ on the dice lets you add another roll to it does not apply to my character (but does to the Sheele). Lots of people hate that disadvantage because it means that they don't sometimes get really great results, but I felt that it was statistically insignificant compared to the advantages I could get with the points it gave me.
Naturally I am the one with the highest average roll in the game and I could probably have solved the entire campaign by now if I didn't have that disadvantage.

From the roleplay point of view: Vilhelm is a young man (though not as young as he looks because slow aging spells for the win - by which I mean he looks 15-16 and is closer to 18, it's a silly detail.) from the most educated province in the Empire. His dad is a summoner that was part of one of the secret magic societies, who disappeared shortly before he was supposed to introduce Vilhelm to it (so Vilhelm doesn't know it exists and gets no benefit from this), and throughout Vilhelm's youth mostly insisted on three points:
-Learning is good for you.
-Manners will get you far.
-Secrets secrets secrets always keep your secrets.
The first two Vilhelm got, the third not so much.
At the time the campaign begins, Vilhelm is heading for Gabriel because he knows his father was born there and it's as good a place as any to start looking for the guy.

Adell - The simplest of my four buddies to figure out unless he's playing the long game. He's designed to emulate the Disgaea character, and as such fight with his fists. For a frontline fighter he has the worst goddamn disadvantage - Deep Sleeper, which means he's basically never going to wake up if we get ambushed during the night, and even if he wakes up he'll be under such a huge penalty that he'll be useless.
I hate Deep Sleeper and people need to stop taking it. Everyone looks at it and are like "So it's not an issue as long as I'm not sleeping!", but dammit people you're asleep for a third of the day. Taking Deep Sleeper is equivalent to saying "if someone wants to kill me they can do it without issue as long as they wait a couple of hours first.".
That's...about all I know about Adell. His posting has not been that great so far. At least I know that if he ever ends up betraying us/being controlled I can automatically defeat him with a sleep spell.

Giovanna D'Agostino (Ardelyn in my game, I think)- A blind teenager using psychic powers to get around, inquisitive and loud. Vilhelm has a bad first impression of her because the first time they met she was screaming about incoming bandits and he likes his silence.
The fact that she's blind already tells me a fair amount about her build gameplay-wise; it means she has the perception and telepathy paths of psychic powers, probably the latter at a higher level than the former since Iknow she doesn't have second-tier (psychic powers come in three tiers) powers of perception. She also showed off telekinesis.
I haven't roleplayed much with her, so I don't know much about her personality aside from the fact that she appears distant.
From a conflict perspective I'm pretty fucked if she decides to attack me because I can't see telekinetic powers so her first strike is going to murder me. On the plus side if she tries fancy brain-stuff there's a high chance it'll bounce off my barrier. On the side of things the fact that she's blind probably means my Sheele can take her out if I was the attacker.

Serafyna Wiselzjka (Solomon in my game) - Another girl. 'Looks' 15 according to her description, which I assume means she's older. She's a martial artist of some sort, probably specialized in martial arts more than fancy ki powers. She has the ability to pass through solid matter, and there are only a handful of ways to do that in Anima; since she had the ability as a level 1 non-monster character there are even less. The following is my speculation:
-There are a bunch of super deities in Anima that grant powers to those who act in a way they like, and I think she's connected to the one that represents Freedom; the highest level power on his list that a level 1 character can start with is the ability to pass through solid matter. If that's true it also means that she can get visions of the future (which would explain some things I'll cover as I recap our adventures) and is highly resistant to any sort of control-type effects.
This speculation is backed up by the fact that roleplaying-wise she's a whimsy, disrespectful person who thumbs her nose at authority (people linking with Freedom are obsessed with not being restrained). Vilhelm finds her pretty annoying because of her lack of politeness and tendency to act excited and switch subjects mid-conversation.
In case of infighting I think I'm pretty screwed because she's faster than Vilhelm and her ability to resist control-type effects combined with good defense roll means I'd basically be stuck casting Sleep and praying it works.

Samuel Fairchild (Corim in my game) - Finally not a teenager, Samuel is oddly the character I know the most and the least about. RP-wise he's told us a bit about his family that's had dealings in Gabriel and he took the caravan from the same province (but not city) Vilhelm did so he obviously had some dealings there, though he's been tight-lipped about what sort of dealings those were. Also he dresses like Sherlock Holmes. All in all I think he's either a fallen noble or a con artist.
Gameplay-wise I have no clue what he is. He has some skill with unarmed combat (boxing, namely), but not enough for that to be his specialty. He hasn't shown any overt magical, psychic or ki abilities, and his knowledge skills don't appear to be above average either. I supposed it's possible that he's a jack of all trade but even then I feel his player would have given him something special. (His player is staying silent of what Samuel can actually do, incidentally.) I can't even figure out what class he is.
If it came down to infighting, I would ???

So, to summarize: We have a mage who can't fight without having a shadow fairy help him, a martial artist who sets his fists on fire, a blind psychic, a fist-fighting girl who hates authority figures, and a mysterious gentleman with boxing skills.

In the country of commerce and diplomacy.