The ice that forged an age old kingdom for gigantic beasts is breaking. Unable to cope with nature’s turbulent upheavals, they perish. Only their bones lie in memory.
But their deaths breed opportunity.
Welcome to the In Dire Straits DA Group!
In Dire Straits (PG-13) is a semi-realistic, open plot, multi-species/wolf focused RPG forum (dires.net/) with some fantasy elements. Since 2005, our close-knit community of artists and writers have been weaving stories together without pause. Horror, heartache, love, humor, sorrow, hope— you'll find it all, and we're always eager for more authors to pen new adventures along with us.
Our DA group is a compilation of the many, many IDS artists who love to draw and write about their characters. We do not do any rewards or point base systems, but we put out monthly prompts for fun.
Our World
Long ago, amidst an environmental catastrophe, wolves, sabres, lions, foxes, and dogs sent scouts to find a new home for their people. They discovered an ice bridge, and across the bridge was the Dire Strait, separating two pristine land masses. They forced the native inhabitants-- massive Fringe Dire Wolves and bizarre Hellbeasts-- to bend or perish. Humans came, fell, and deserted their ruins, leaving only pieces of their cultures behind. When the bridge melted, the animals remained, and over time this distant history was forgotten.
Our first chapter begins now, many years later. The strait's descendants rise up to claim the world as theirs, submerging themselves into a torrent of conflict and uncertainty. Their stories have different motivations—to love, to fight, to thrive, to build, to learn, to rule—but one instinct drives them above all: to survive.
IDS exists in a deliberately ambiguous era, comprised of an oddball mixture between the ice age, the bronze age, and the dark age. An unstable climate causes rapid and dramatic geological shifts, allowing both flexible terrain as well as entirely invented species (plant and animal), but the physics and underlying science should be familiar. Beyond the Fringe and over the Chasm exists only an uncharted, mysterious and foreign realm said to give birth to an impossible array of beasts and monsters... some truly beyond the imagination. It's safer to stay on this side.
We do not restrict character colors or markings, and all animals existing past 10,000 BC are available for creation— with some extra, forum created species. Most people make wolf characters, but there are many other options. It's a big, strange world, ripe for exploring.
Are you an ARPG?
We are not! IDS is a forum RPG (dires.net/) with a very prolific artist community. We generate a lot of content, as you will see while looking through the group, but we do not require, track, or reward points for drawing your characters. Participating in the DA group won't impact your characters during actual roleplay.
Prompts
Now and then we release three new prompts for members to participate in if they'd like. One prompt will always be "canon" to your character, one will be an "au", allowing you to explore different options that would not happen in their actual storylines, and one will be for RP threads.
How to Join
Participating in our deviantArt group requires a forum membership. If you would like to join our community, sign up on the forum, and when you send a join request on DA just let us know what your username is. If you aren't interested in joining and just want to follow the art and stories generated within the group, we understand and look forward to being added to your watchlist instead.
