Firstly, regarding Guardians -- you know those little fuzzy kitties that followed the Sailorsenshi about Tokyo, telling them about their past and introducing them to their powers and leading them on and telling them what to do? I'm going to let you in on a little secret that few people seem to be clicking with: we don't have any.

Yes, that's right, there are /no/ Guardians in the Genesis world. None. At all. There are no sentient animal critters from Mau or Coronis or where ever who were sent here billions of years ago to watch for and guide the starseeds. As far as these people know, they are the first kind of their type of transform-into-superheroes EVER: they don't even have a name for it, they don't have any idea what it means, they don't know why they were chosen, they don't know what it /is/ -- and in order to keep that plot point that we at Genesis love and think makes us unique, there are /no/ Guardians. Anywhere. Of any senshi. If you try to have a Guardian, you will not be approved. Period.

I can hear you now: "But what about Cafall?" Or even "But what about Shiri?" I can answer the latter off the cuff: Shiri is Anana'Kele's pet. Not Anzu's guardian: Kele's pet. Shiri is just as likely to tell Anzu what to do as my finches at home are to tell me what kind of job to take, because the relationship is exactly the same. I have a pair of finches that sit in my living room, look pretty, and make lots of noise. Shiri sits on Kele's forearm and brings her decapitated mice to show his love. That's about it. Cafall is a little harder to explain because he does show up in combat. Quite frequently. Always, in fact. This is because Cafall is Alu's weapon. Her weapon, mind, not her Guardian; Cafall doesn't talk, doesn't get the whole bit about senshi powers, doesn't know anything at all about past lives: he is a dog. That's it. A very, very large dog with very, very sharp teeth who is rather bright, but he is /just/ a dog. The only thing that makes him more important to Alu than Tiamat's knife is to her is because he's a living thing, and this ties in with Kele and Shiri: Cafall is Alu's pet. They've been together since Tawela's graduation into apprenticeship with the miners of her people, and will be together for as long as is possible.

And now, here is the part where I vent about all the applications that come in with canines, Guardians, Guardian canines, or any other combination of the above: Cafall is Alu's special thing, her unique point, her /concept/. Her powers are completely non-offensive, she's teeny-tiny and could never herself affect any damage, and Cafall is the /only/ thing that makes her physically useful as a senshi at all. How dorky would Rinoa have been if she didn't have that groovy Angelo scooby-snack limit break? It's the same thing with Alu and Cafall; instead of flinging a knife at people, she sics her dog on them. Anyone who tries to come in with an animal as their weapon steals that one useful and unique point from Alu and she's suddenly no longer a balanced character: she's completely useless. It's not nice, so don't do it. Alu was the first, so she gets to keep it.

My second point here, so as so make sure that this article doesn't come across as 'it's my character you can't have it go away' is the question of power spheres. There have been a lot of applications both currently and in the past that seemed to have ... confused the listed power spheres. We've already addressed the Mammetum/Nanshe issues, and we admit that that was entirely our fault for not making things more clear. However, this does not explain those applicants who so desperately want a Bianka/Salgiel that they ignore Ishkur's encompassing weather sphere to make it just snow and ice. Or those Aion applicants who would really, really like to play a Hotaru, so they twist the time sphere into something incomprehensibly attached to destruction and change... and it doesn't stop there, so I'll make a nice neat little checklist of suggestions.

° Fire senshi do not have to be pyromaniacs. Leo is not the only fire sign, people; you also have Aries and Sagittarius to work with. Instead of an arrogant leader pyro Nusku, try maybe an adventurous pioneering roughing-it Nusku, or a bouncy outgoing social butterfly Nusku.

° Aion is the soldier of time; while it might be rather hard to avoid the stop-time/turn-back-time cliches, we'd still prefer that you stick with just time. Maybe Aion can remember the past really, really well (though be careful not to horn in on Nanshe or Mammetum) and always knows exactly what time it is to the very second; maybe Aion is a secretive anal-retentive planner who compulsively plans his/her day down to minutia. There are many, many ways you can go about this, and few of them are Setsuna.

° Ishkur is storms: not just lightning or snow or thunder or rain, /storms/. Please don't tell me that I'm too old when I equate Ishkur with Ororo Munroe; we're talking the real one here, not the Halle Berry version. Storm controlled /the weather/. She could make it windy or foggy or rain or snow or any combination thereof; she could even use the wind to fly. How is this not cool?

° Ninazu, soldier of incantations, is what I would consider a witch. You can get inspiration from any number of Medievally stories for this; wily witch-women can not only cast spells, but can enchant things, use mixtures of Eye of Newt and Frog's Underbelly and make potions in cauldrons and chant really groovy things like 'double, double, toil and trouble.'

° Ninsun, soldier of wisdom and good counsel, is not the same as Nabu's sphere of knowledge and writing. Knowledge is booksmarts, being able to go to school and learn things and digest them and maintain a wealth of useless trivia. Ninsun, however, is wisdom. Wisdom is common sense, not knowledge: you could be dumb as a brick and not know that two and two do not equal five and still be very, very wise. Common sense and wisdom are things like Confucianism or Aesop's fables; a person who's been around the world and knows how things work and can instruct other people in such things (possibly while shouting out random proverbs).

The most important thing to remember about all of the open Astrals is that they not only have their power sphere but they /also/ have general magic. It's like a specialist mage in a D&D game -- not only do you get all this special stuff that only you can do, you also get a whole bunch of stuff that everyone can do. This is very, very important. All Astrals, when compiling their power sphere, MUST also include a list of all of those things in the general sphere that they can cast. ALL OF THEM. We have our single unique magicless Astral and we will not accept another one, so please don't forget the importance of including these standard, regular spells within your power sphere and special skills sections.

Another thing to remember is that we, the GMs, /want/ people to play our game. We are incredibly happy to receive questions of any and all kinds. Therefore, instead of submitting an incomplete application or fill up your senshi sections with comments about how hard it was to come up with powers based on your sphere, email us. Ask for suggestions. We would love to give them.

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