Okay, Five Phases/Elements it is.<br/><br/>I'm going to make an executive decision as GM and say that we're going to use the Chinese five elements as a foundation, but I'm going to keep it general - that is, we'll be using the mythologies and philosophy of the Chinese five elements, but in the roleplay, they won't necessarily be "Chinese". Hopefully, when I mock up the details and information for the story, it'll make more sense.<br/><br/>As far as how decisions will be made - I will be looking at group preference,<em>but</em>if you don't agree with someone else in the group, that is completely fine. Any decisions that aren't reached by consensus, will be decided by me (GM). Also, I want to iterate that I don't want you to feel pressured into a decision just because everyone else feels a certain way - please speak your mind. I will always take your reasonings and explanations under consideration.<br/><br/>Speed won't be terribly fast - I don't imagine being able to post more than once every 1-2 days. How does everyone feel about a posting rotation? I'm considering it, but I don't want to lock down posting order too tightly, especially if you have an idea that requires you post next for whatever reason.<br/><br/>Also, I want to make it clear that the five phases/five elements are an East Asian philosophy, but that each East Asian culture might have different specific beliefs. I am going to be adamant about not trying to include elements of different cultures, even from different related cultures, so the specific mythos/philosophies we'll be using will be from the Chinese five elements. I'm not sure where you all are getting the idea that the animals all correspond to different cultures, but that's not exactly true - the celestial animals all correspond to constellations, and I'd imagine that India, China, Japan, and Korea all saw the same constellations. Since I do want to limit the scope of our cultural inspiration, we'll be drawing only from the Chinese philosophies.<br/><br/>I think I would actually like to concentrate our ideas off of the astrology aspect of the five elements. This page explains things pretty well, and I've had exposure to this usage before, so I'll be better equipped to draw out something for our story from this.<br/>http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/ssu-ling.shtml (http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/ssu-ling.shtml)<br/><br/>This website is specific to Chinese beliefs about the five elements, so use this rather than the wiki page: http://lieske.com/5e-intro.htm (http://lieske.com/5e-intro.htm)<br/><br/>I'll see if I can find other sites, but from what I gleaned, these two were more of what I had in mind.<br/><br/>Really apologize for not saying something earlier, I only managed to get online to post when I dashed off to a Starbucks tonight. >___>!<br/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote</div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">Eastern State University School of Performing Arts and Sciences</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>AWESOME. Thanks, Silver & Martee. ♥<br/><br/>Hope I didn't miss anyone, if I did please highlight it for me and I will do my best to respond.