Welcome to The Duality of Man, an original animanga role-play that features numerous supernatural creatures. Unfortunately, these various species have distanced themselves because of the war that occurred thousands of years ago, plaguing some with eyes that only see their dualism. While others meddle themself with their differences, two groups fight, each attempting to eliminate the other in for their definition of worldly peace. These two groups of the Terror Response Syndicate (TRS) and the Assembly of Phantoms (AP). With individuals fighting merely over their differences, it brings uncertainty to the outcome of this war.
We happily accept all role-players as long as they obey the rules and are capable of meeting our word count of 50. This does include those who are unfamiliar with this style of role-playing. The staff of The Duality of Man are willing to happily help those who are new to the role-playing world so they feel comfortable on site. Feel free to message the staff if you need help, they can be found here or in the site Discord and will gladly answer questions alongside calm concerns. If you have any suggestions we would love to hear them; guests may use the support board as a suggestion area as well. Should you decide to join, may I say welcome to the site and we all hope you enjoy your time here.
Yours Truely,
The Staff
season
Summer 2024
Heat has broken through into a glorious summer. The snow has entirely dried through the spring, leaving to the brilliance of the warmer months. Terror activity has risen as people are brought out of their homes, leaving the TRS in a position of consistent work. Each are attempting to maintain victory in the endless struggle for power.
Since the wonderful members of TDOM enjoy the site enough to play around on it, this thread is to assist with the site's tidying! Functionality is important and we want to make the site functional even if its activity will be minimal at best!
Touri's words were misguided, but even as she marked their falsities in her mind they cut deep. She held perfectly still, refusing to show any immediate reaction. What a simple life Touri must live. It was hard to believe it existed within the same world as her own. Good and bad. The concepts weren't relative, they were just considered as such by people that didn't want to balance their complexities or didn't want to acknowledge their own treachery. Philosophers had spent centuries defining the terms and there were plenty of different ways to measure them. It was one of those benign things her father had insisted she learn. While she was in his world, there was no room for disillusionment. That's why she so preferred taking her own path, even if it was leading nowhere.
"You mistake my intentions." she frowned as he started to turn away. She had to come up with an excuse for this behaviour and the truth simply wasn't an option. Coming up with a quick lie was easier anyway. "The last thing I need is to be coddled and told I'm a good person. I'm just worried about my rep back in Italy. Got a text from my uncle saying people are beginning to suspect I've gone soft." She held up her phone nonchalantly as though that contributed to her explanation. As she did, the screen buzzed to life, revealing a new text from her sister.
'No way!' Her gaze only slid over the first two words, but they were enough to catch her off guard. It took a moment to school her expression from distaste. How stubborn could a single girl be? Sure she hadn't given much reason behind her request, but she'd been under the blind assumption that she held some sort of command over the other girl. As though they didn't share the same sense of self-determination.
She still had loose ends to tie up before she could address this new issue, so she pasted on a pleased smile to finish her excuse. "But! If any malicious action can be considered bad regardless of intent, no one would be naive enough to even argue that I have any sort of soul." She smugly brushed past him. She couldn't allow herself to linger here any longer. It would only be a matter of moments before some other passing party-goers found them and she didn't feel like being interrupted. What she needed now was to get all the dynamic pieces of this puzzle in order. She hadn't really come here expecting conflict and now it was occurring to her that she'd better put up her walls quickly.
Mikaela tilted the top of her phone towards her chest so Touri wouldn't be able to peek over her shoulder and shot out a response to Libby. 'If you insist at the very least stay with friends. There are some people around here i don't much like.' That was the best she could hope for at this rate, and she had more important things to do than spend the night arguing. As long as she kept anyone dangerous focused on her until midnight there shouldn't be a real problem.
There was a dim light ahead, the promise of an end to this cheesy haunted house, giving her only a few seconds to chose a new mask for her next encounter. A cool layer fell over her features, blocking her emotions from her face, and she straightened into a practiced posture. "What do you say we move on to something a bit more interesting?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder at Touri with a wry smile. As always, the question was more a courtesy than anything else. She didn't care how he felt, she was ready for the explosions to begin.
As the outside world came into view, her gaze scanned the shadows, knowing exactly which spots her prey would choose to hide in. She yawned as she found him. "Enrico, sono annoiato con questo gioco.* Come out and say hi or I will just go home." she called, loud enough that she knew he'd hear. It didn't really matter if anyone else decided to listen to their conversation. She had a feeling it would be more incrimination to her friends than herself, and she couldn't care less where their lives ended up.
*Sono annoiato con questo gioco. - I'm bored with this game.
Very suddenly, Touri was there. Close enough that she could have accidentally stabbed him if he'd started walking in her direction a second earlier. Her breath still came too quickly and she couldn't get a grip on her rapidly beating heart.
Touri was talking. His words washed over her, more a mass of sounds than anything else, but they weren't angry. There wasn't a drop of sense in her anymore, but there didn't have to be to know the calm way he shrugged it off was wrong. Wrong and suspicious. Why was he so insistent against killing her? What else could he possibly want from her? And she was quite convinced he wanted something from her. She didn't believe in consequences and this was the second time he'd come up to her.
"Maremma maiala!" she gasped. "I could have stabbed you! Why would you leave yourself open? Or, more importantly, let me keep breathing. What the hell is your deal! Is my life really that significant to you?!" She was still talking to herself more than him. For all she knew he could have gone on walking, leaving her to her ramblings. It didn't matter. Scolding him for his stupidity was easier than accepting her own thoughts. Now that she'd stopped talking, her thoughts had begun to wrap their icy chains around her once more, binding her in place. It wouldn't be long before someone else stumbled upon them, but she couldn't bring herself to care enough to break free and move.
Is my life that significant to you. Her life shouldn't be significant to anyone. After all, her life could never be worth anything she valued. Any hope of her truly living a life she could be proud of had been tainted long ago. Even if she tried to live every day doing the best deeds she could, she wouldn't be able to guarantee her future. The twisting fate set out before her wasn't hers to control. All it would take was a simple accident and her father would be calling her back. She had been given a nice little break for now, but she'd be stupid to think it could last forever. This was her life. A room with bloody tools she had no desire to ever see again.
"Wait, Touri, stop!" she called, finally looking up at him. Hanging around an assassin was probably a bad idea, but whether he thought she should or shouldn't die tonight, he was probably right. "D-do you believe people can change?" She gazed up at him with wide eyes, desprate to hear his answer. She wasn't sure which answer would be worse, that she could change and become the monster her father wanted of her or that she would be trapped with her conscious dragging her down when she got caught back up in real life. "Or at the very least is it possible to do a bad thing for a good reason?"
Mikaela had been undercover on a mission for the past week and she was exhausted. She hadn’t slept properly in days. Unlike most things, Mikaela took her jobs very seriously, which meant dedicated commitment and attention no matter how late it kept her up. She'd just finished reporting back, and she couldn't start her next assignment for a couple more days. While she was tired, the last way Mikaela wanted to kill the time was by sleeping. She never got to have any fun while she was playing a role and boredom weighed on her.
Her ear picked up on the footsteps before she actually saw him. Walking down the hall, as refined as ever, was none other than Maverick Bove. A grin grew across her face.
Whether he was the best or the worst person for her to run into at that moment was hard to say, but his presence definitely promised something interesting to come. The Godfather’s Son. The title alone was enough to catch Mikaela’s attention. After all, it wasn’t that different than the godfather’s daughter and she’d fled across an ocean to escape that burden. She didn’t really understand how he could bear to put up with it himself. She understood the rise to power that ambitious godfathers went through, but being raised for the role didn’t feel right. Either you didn’t have the ambition to do it well or you were cunning enough to do it better. No one cut out for that life would allow themselves to be molded by the hand of another.
Well, obviously not no one. There was a middle ground where Maverick belonged and one she had no doubt her brother was filling in light of her absence. Cautious, planning for the right moment and not taking risks that might lose them power, no matter what they stood to gain. That type of rule was stable enough until it came across someone playing poker while they played chess. Not every gamble was a win, but not seeing the value in gambles at all was a sure loss.
Regardless of her distaste for people that let themselves get pushed into any role, Maverick offered a fascinating opportunity to see what her life would have been like if she had any interest in playing by the book. Although she had no malicious intent towards him, she took any chances she was given to test his limits.
"Gemello!" she sang in greeting. Gemello. The nickname she’d developed for him when she’d first learned of his existence. She never bothered with real names. They were just too risky. First of all, there was no telling whether any given person would give her their real name. Secondly, throwing names like “Bove” around could be as dangerous as throwing out her real name. No need for some passing eavesdropper to get suspicious, and there was no telling where dangerous bystanders might be.
"You busy?" she asked, not really caring what the answer was.
She cast a sharp glance in his direction, although she could only see a vague outline of him standing amongst the fake ghosts. Scared? If her stalker was dangerous enough to be scary she wouldn't have entered a haunted house where she'd be funneled to a single exit that would allow anyone to take a surprise hit if they could estimate when you'd be coming out. She desperately wanted to point this out to Touri, but she didn't want him suspecting what she was really doing by binding him to her tonight. It was a balancing act to keep two peoples' attention on her without them suspecting anything, but it was a necessary effort. There were far too many dangerous people wandering around for her to actually let something happen.
Silent steps navigated the mass of fabric, traveling in the opposite direction of Touri. If he found the exit she'd be able to tell when he responded to her from the next room... Or when he didn't respond at all. Either way, she tracked his footsteps to keep a general idea of where he was. "I have no clue what you're implying, but I haven't committed any crimes by Canadian law." she said indignantly. "From what I know of it, at least. It's not like I've studied the intricacies of this godforsa--" her words fell short as she pushed aside a curtain of ghostly fabric to reveal a blur of white.
The room that opened before her was meant to be some cheesy horror movie scene, undoubtedly about a mad scientist doing experiments on passing strangers or something of the like. She didn’t have a chance to take it all in. On one side of the room, the one close to her, there was a table covered in blood with prop tools randomly strewn about.
She blinked and a similar but altogether different scene formed around her in her mind. A steel table. The stench of chemicals as she cleaned blood off her tools. A whimpered plea that would burrow under her skin and never quite be forgotten, yet one she was forced to ignore. She could feel the blood on her hands, both physically and metaphorically. She still remembered exactly how it felt to slip a blade just beneath the skin, to slow its pace for the most painful effect, to block anything she felt inside from showing on her face. Cold and cruel, like the steel she’d been taught to wield. That was what her father expected of her. That was why her brother would always be a step better than her. That was why she’d been forced to come here.
She knew she was out of that life, but the logical bit of her mind was never quite logical enough to overcome her irrationalities. There was no way she could make up for even half her sins, and trying to was a fool’s hope. They were too potent. She wasn’t sure how they could keep themselves hidden. She expected to look down at her skin and see them written across the surface in crimson stains for the world to see.
Mikaela didn’t realize she’d come to a standstill until the breath caught in her throat started to burn her lungs. Putting up some sort of front for Touri no longer seemed so important. She needed an out and there wasn’t one. What sort of escape could there be from her own past? There was none and there was no escape from her present either. She was trapped. She’d always been trapped and she always would be, no matter how much she denied it. She was trying to fit into a place where she didn’t belong, and that made her a monster.
This room may have been less crowded than the previous one, but it felt like the walls were closing in on her. She was conscious of her breathing now, but she couldn’t get enough oxygen. A vague memory flitted into her mind, something about what she should do in moments like this. The advice given so long ago may as well have been in a different language for her lack of understanding.
She was alone and it felt like any move she made would be met with a solid object to block her path. Indeed, as she stumbled half a step away from the triggering scene she felt the brush of something against her back. She let out a short yelp before jumping into action, grabbing the hilt of her blade at her thigh and whipping around. A clump of harmless fabric swooshed over the knife, not held taught enough to actually get cut.
Insane as it was, she got the feeling there was someone hidden beyond the layers of fabric, ready to leap when she turned to walk away. Then again, that hidden attacker could have been behind her now in the lab scene. She pressed her back against the side wall, giving her a view of both of the rooms she'd rather block out, and slipped her blade back into its sheath. She needed to calm herself down before someone seriously got hurt. Only, there wasn't much reality left for her to grip onto. An intense paranoia was all she had left to cling to.
Somewhere beyond the veil of cloth was Touri. She'd been too preoccupied to listen and keep track of where, exactly, he was, but he was there somewhere. "You wanted to know my name!" she said, clinging to the idea that he was out there and he was... relatively safe.
"It's Ma- um..." Mikaela paused, realizing the dilemma in promising to give her 'real' name. She wasn't sure, exactly, which name counted as her real name. She certainly couldn't give him 'Arabella.' That was hardly her name anymore anyway. So should she give him the name people like him should know her by? That was definitely the fakest name she had. In fact, she was pretty sure most people knew it was fake but that didn't really matter. The point of it was to keep information of any shady business away from her father.
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credits
The skin is created by Wolf of Adoxography and Gangnam Style. The thread and conversation remodels are by Kagney. The Strange Reality board list, Heal My Soul info center, I Remember Now mini profile and Electric Requiem profile remodel is made by Pharoah Leap. The Who's That Member member list remodel was made by Tictactoe. The Cbox.ws Shoutbox remodel was made by Trinity Blair. All templates used for claims, information sheets, applications, etc are credited to their owners; credits for these can be found in the threads the templates are use on. Images that are used on The Duality of Man are credited to their owners, however, they have been edited by Zac with a few being edited by Chibi Magician. The plot, rules and various other information pieces for The Duality of Man are written by Chibi Magician with the assistence of her co-admins, Finnegan and Dremulf, alongside other unlisted people who were kind enough to give their input. The TRS, AP and face claim were all created by Fleur for specifically the use of TDOM. All plugins used on The Duality of Man are credited to their owners. The templates my members use are credited to their maker, if you find a template that belongs to you, but is uncredited, please speak to Chibi Magician or the member themself. Characters created on The Duality of Man are credited to their owners and should not be used elsewhere without the creator's permission.
Special thanks for the members of TDOM who make suggestions to help make this site better. Even though we can not accept all suggestions, we immensely appreciate it. Thus, we give credit to any additions that you thought of and were later implimented by the staff, because we are glad you give us these excellent ideas.
