3a48e9 No.1143[Last 50 Posts]
First, choose which deity devised your form from the shapeless essence.
d3d27b No.1144
3a48e9 No.1148
Carefully selecting each piece of your existence from his golden sea of currency, Optus fashions your name here into something of value.
>Roll 1d10 to determine starting wealth
>1 - mild poverty
>5 - wealth
>10 - extreme luxury
Three vast worlds present themselves for your lucrative endeavors.
>An arid, rocky world. The scattered inhabitants are somewhat similar to earth's species, but packed with large, deadly natural predators.
>A lush, biologically and geographically diverse planet. Extremely similar to Earth, there seem to be subtle differences in the laws of nature.
>A collapsing planet. Despite incredible technological advancements, the resources of this world are so diminished that the structures of the planet crumble–economically and biologically. The inhabitants are extremely diverse, and often unusual by a human's standards.
301a46 No.1150
 | Rolled 10 |
I say arid rocky world
3a48e9 No.1151
>>1150From the vast deserts, blasted badlands, and tremendous scraped crags of the Yralhal, Optus compels you to capitalize the desolate landscape. Massive fire-drakes lurk in the icy fissures where no sunlight penetrates, and fearsome sky-beasts hunt lions and wolves by daylight. A fearsome place, for your people:
>Select a race & sex>Human>Brute - bulky, direct, aggressive>Fey - mentally focused, delicate>Quick - nimble, small, hasty>Other 301a46 No.1152
d3d27b No.1154
3a48e9 No.1156
>>1152Maximum privilegePick your background:
>Warlord's Son:>Merchant Lord:>Royal Alchemist:>Vanquisher:
>Prince of Thieves: having filched nearly your entire wealth from other's possessions, you now are more an influential businessman than a master sneak – but you can still remember the skills from your impoverished childhood.>Benefit: underworld connections, thief skills, acrobatic >Drawback: lowlife
>Warlord's Son: armored in the finest weapons, armor, and practiced with the most vicious and valorous weaponmasters, you're a fearsome foe on the battlefield. Your father's influence carries much weight, and you a prince amongst your people–and an enemy to those your father has vanquished.>Benefits: Combat prowess, strength, paternal holdings>Drawbacks: military enemies
>Mechant Lord: Having fashioned your wealth from a meager trading caravan, you've constructed an entire merchant empire. Your company is quite profitable, despite your relatively young age you are a well-made man. This has earned you the admiration of some, and the malicious envy of others.>Benefits: social graces, merchant connections>Drawbacks: feeble-bodied, political enemies
>Royal Alchemist: Due to your more… occult abilities, the emperor has tenured you as an alchemist. In return for providing him with a life-sustaining potion, you are given access to a magical alchemical laboratory, and all the amenities of a royal lifestyle. You're an expert in your field, and many others.>Benefits: scholarly, royal connections, magical training>Drawbacks: duties, feeble-bodied
>Vanquisher: As awful, gigantic monsters terrorize the civilized lands, you have carved your wealth as a talented mercenary. Your skills have earned you the title of 'Vanquisher' and much wealth (in a remote location). However, your experiences have left you traumatized and somewhat insane, and all you crave is the fresh blood of a demon on your axe and the glitter of jewels.>Benefits: Savant slayer (incredible combat skills), independent wealth, isolated holdings>Drawbacks: insane, poorly educated d3d27b No.1157
3a48e9 No.1158
>>1157To which emperor have you pledged your loyalties?
>Emperor Salk-Mult'o the Golden: fat, brilliant, and miserly, his bulk reflects the state of his empire. Despite much wealth, the serfs of his land lack for many excessive commodities, while the ruling merchant class play economic games for imperial favor.
>Emperor Durj the Deep-Mutterer: ruling the twisted, frozen tundras of the north, he traded his soul for the power of demons and devils many years ago. His lands are sparse, and mostly populated with demented abominations of life and haggard peasants. Despite this, his treasury overflows with rare wealth and knowledge, which he shares liberally with his favorite concoctioner.
>Celestial Empress Lei-Aloris: a fair and relatively just ruler, the empress is greatly loved and valued by her people. With extremely loyal lands, and a powerful inherited kingdom, she was quite impressive until a poisoners attack left her scarred and shocked. She relies heavily on your abilities to keep her alive, and her kingdom greatly respects and supports your efforts to do so.Additionally, you have a friend from your childhood.
>>1154A follower of Ersu, your friend has been with you ever since you were children. More of a tomboy growing up, her skills with weapons eventually blossomed into an array of deadly combat abilities, which she employs as your personal bodyguard. She's quite crass, and doesn't take any guff from you.
d3d27b No.1159
3a48e9 No.1160
File: 1411813894697.jpg (345.3 KB, 1280x951, 1280:951, castle mountainside bridge.jpg)
>>1159The beautiful mountain kingdom of Ko-Schakka has stood for thousands of years as a pinnacle of art and philosophy. The proud, wind-blown Schakkan skyknights fearlessly soar above the crags on the backs of massive hawks, while noble scholars muse within the towering palaces of the Celestial City. Empress Lei-Aloris, only twenty-four years old, recently inherited the throne from her powerful and much-respected father after a freak accident–usurpers already flock around her, swooping in for power and wealth.
Roll 1d6 to determine Imperial Standing
>1 - Lei-Aloris considers you her most trusted friend>2 - The imperial court holds you in high esteem>3 - You are well regarded by all the land>4 - Though somewhat of a knave, though most like you>5 - You're often shunned, but the Empress is not unkind to you.>6 - The Empress prefers her potions delivered, by someone else.Choose a laboratory benefit:
>Clockwork Engineer: Your alchemy is agumented with an understanding of mechanical systems, and your laboratory is equipped with clockwork goblins who can take care of simple tasks. Once per day, you can order them acquire materials for you, generate a potion (not the Empress'), or construct a simple device. The goblins disintegrate if removed from the laboratory, but should one disappear another mysteriously replaces it within a day.
>Arcane Ritualist: Your potions imbue transcendental knowledge of the ethereal, allowing you to summon spirits that further enhance your alchemy. However, this has left the laboratory somewhat haunted and altered, so that anyone but you finds the place a little uncomfortable. The spirits you summon can help you with any non-material task, such as learning a new skill or scheming against your foes, but this may negatively affect those around you.
>Library: The knowledge contained in your scholarly brain is not unformidable, but your library expands your resources to extraordinary proportions. You have access to nearly any theoretical information and many compendiums, but perusing the volumes of texts takes a significant amount of time. An alchemical librarian has been installed to help you manage the library, and can delve into the tomes to research for you – the time of which can be halved if you help it.
>Mystic Forge: Your understanding of alchemical metallurgy allows you to construct and operate a magical forge, allowing you to smith equipment of incredible rarity and ability. While effectively wielding your masterwork weapons would take practice, you can equip your allies or sell your products. The forge can produce weapons, armor, and jewelry, as well as other small metalwrought items. Smithing takes both time and resources, and must be performed by you. d3d27b No.1161
| Rolled 3 |
>>1160please let me not fuck this roll upLibrary preferably.
301a46 No.1162
| Rolled 5 |
>>1161Helping the roll
Also library
d3d27b No.1167
>>1162That doesn't exactly help anon
3a48e9 No.1180
>>1161confirmedYou still need to name yourself!Elana: "Rise and shine, sleepyhead. Lei-Aloris needs her juice before noon."
>You realize you've fallen asleep in your lab, again.Morning sunlight washes in from the eastern windows, flooding over the iron-wrought chair and table where your Elana, your most loyal and trusted childhood companion, drinks tea and smokes a thin cigar of Berveese tobacco. With amuse, she watches your efforts to extract yourself from an overstuffed chair. Her lajatang rests on the wall behind her, and from beyond the window the beautiful vistas of Ko-Schakka unfold from the mountain peaks.
Elana sips at her tea.
Elana: "Also those new courtesans wanted a potion of something or another. The guards turned them away last night while you were fucking around in here. Bunch of painted bimbos, you ask me, but they've got a ton of money. If you're up for that sort of thing."
She winks at you.
7ca105 No.1181
| Rolled 4 |
>>1180Let's name ourself Boddle.
Also, lemme just roll here to see if we wink back at her well enough for her to take interest.
7ca105 No.1183
| Rolled 3 |
>>1182I roll to scratch my head successfully without it looking stupid and out of place.
3a48e9 No.1184
>>1181>>1183Elana: "Don't be weird Boddle."
She's quite pretty, sitting there in the sun, puffing a cigar. Her bright blonde hair and lithe, narrow body distinguish her from the dusky valley dwellers and colorful Schakkan women. Despite uncounted drunken nights, you and Elana have never felt comfortable in an intimate manner.
Elana: "So you gonna get started on the Empress' potion or what?"
>Activities to consider:>Empress Lei-Aloris needs her potion ready before noon. Without it, she will grow sick and irate, and within 3 days time will succumb to her illness. Should Lei-Aloris die, you will probably lose access to your royal favors and palace laboratory.>Courtesans request that you brew a potion of some sort, you'll need to consult with them as to the specifics.>Research new theory at the library>Wander the Celestial City for something to do. d3d27b No.1185
>>1184Let's get the potion out of the way first. Better to be snappy on that seeing as the Empress' good graces are nice to have and all that.
3a48e9 No.1188
>>1185After finishing her tea, Elana leaves to train with the imperial soldiers in the palace yard.
You begin on the Empress' medicine. With all of the necessary ingredients well stocked and the alchemical methods well practiced, you create the potion in a little less than an hour.
As you finish, a scrawny courier arrives at the antechamber to your laboratory. Nervously, he calls for you.
Courier: "Sir? Exalted Imperial Alchemist sir? The Empress requests the potion be delivered to her."
d3d27b No.1191
>>1188Let's deliver it ourselves, preferably.
3a48e9 No.1192
>>1191Taking the flask full of silvery, fuming liquid in hand, you wordlessly follow the courier, noting his slight discomfort at your presence.
Navigating the incredibly large palace is an effort; as you follow, you pass by treasure vault and galleries, imperial dormitories, kitchens, storerooms, audience chambers. Hundreds of servants and retainers pass you by, some carrying wash-buckets and rags, others plated in gilded armor with weapons at their sides.
After twenty minutes, you arrive in the Imperial Throne Room. Resplendent with indigo tapestries draped over mottled marble, the Throne Room floods with daylight from the large glass windows on either walls. Empress Lei-Aloris sits the high, ivory throne, her frail body wrapped in a delicate white shawl. As you approach, you can see the tremble in her hands, the horrible scarification on her cheeks where the poisoner's efforts melted the flesh from the inside out, and her serene purple eyes, shining at the sight of the potion. Around the throne, the noblest and most influential retainers quietly gossip amongst themselves.
Courier: "Hail, Exalted Imperial Alchemist Boddle!"
The courier's hark goes ignored. Only Lei-Aloris seems to notice you, as she calls out.
Lei-Aloris: "Approach, noble Boddle! You may present the medicine."
Her voice glows with anticipation.
d3d27b No.1193
>>1192"As you wish, Your Highness." take a deep bow (while careful not to spill of course) and give her the medicine. Observe etiquette to the very best of our ability all along.
3a48e9 No.1195
>>1193You personally present the potion to the Empress, and with a small smile she accepts. The monarch searches beneath her shawl, then presses twelve individual gold pieces into your hand.
>Each gold coin is marked with the celestial wings and mountains of the Ko-Schakka.Lei-Aloris: "Thank you, kind alchemist. Your continued service honors Ko-Schakka."
As you bow before exiting, the Empress stops you.
Lei-Aloris: "A moment, sir. Your Empress requests a private audience this eve, after your dinner. I shall see you in my royal chambers, bring only yourself and materials to record my wishes as you need them."
This proclamation causes a slight disturbance amidst the court, you notice. Arched eyebrows abound, and some shoot searing glances towards you.
Roll 1d100 to determine social standing after response.
>100 - the Schakkan Court believes your intentions utterly pure and honorable>50 - the Schakkan Court is unchanged by your response>1 - You deeply offend the Empress, and the entire court. d3d27b No.1196
| Rolled 37 |
>>1195You bow deeply "Your wish is my command, Your Highness."
Make our exit and head back to the laboratory. Unless something happens to indicate otherwise, the Courtesans are next up.
d3d27b No.1197
>>1196> 37 I guess we accidentally coughed halfway through the sentence or something.
3a48e9 No.1199
>>1196The Empress looks at you strangely. A bit too late you realize that the Ko-Schakkan word for 'command' has overt sexual overtones.
Lei-Aloris: "You are… dismissed."
You can hear the cacophony of excited whispers and small laughter as you exit the Imperial Royal Throne Room. You're vaguely compelled to get drunk.
Outside of the chamber, a sweaty and bright-cheeked Elana awaits, lajatang held loosely over her shoulder. She hails you.
Elana: "Ay, Boddle. Ready to meet them whores? They came lookin' for you again, seems… urgent."
A wide grin splits her face.
Elana: "I told them to meet you at the ebon-drake solarium. There's a bunch of them, they seem pretty well off for streetwalkers. Lots of silk and their jewels don't look like glass."
Roll 1d6 to avoid drowning shame in potion / liqor
> 1 - get drunk before courtesans > 5-6 - resist temptation 7ca105 No.1205
| Rolled 3 |
>>1199 7ca105 No.1206
| Rolled 5 |
>>1205>>1199Wait shit, I rolled with a 10-sided die, lemme try again.
3a48e9 No.1210
>>1206You decide against getting drunk. There are better ways of dealing with imperial shame than drink.
> +3 to next resolve check On the way to the Solarium, you try to remember what you can of Schakkan courtesans. Much more than mere prostitutes, they are often highly educated and artistically talented, and 'entertain' many of the noble class, both theatrically and otherwise. Often held in extremely high esteem, it may be wise to treat them with dignity. You near your destination.
Elana: "So what if they offer to suck your–"
As you turn the corner, you find six courtesans staring at you and Elana. Their faces are inscrutable, but their eyes are wide. There are four women and two men, all garbed in extraordinarily fine clothes and wearing expensive jewelry. They would almost seem like very young nobles, if it were not for the sultry, knowing looks in their eyes.
The most bedecked of them approaches you, a tall woman with the thick, iridescent-black hair of the Ko-Sshakkan valley dwellers. She has a small white scar under her hazel left eye.
Courtesan: "Royal Alchemist Boddle, I presume? I am Kasika, proprietor of the Heavenly Boudoir."
>You recall that the Heavenly Boudoir is perhaps the most illustrious brothel in the Celestial City. The wealth of this woman may even rival your own.Roll 1d10 for perception check.
>Success: 8+ 7ca105 No.1212
| Rolled 8 |
>>1210 7ca105 No.1213
>>1212W-wait does it have to be at least 8 or more than 8?
3a48e9 No.1215
>>12138 passes the checkYou notice the smaller of the two male courtesans fidgeting and patting at his left breast. He seems uncomfortable.
Elana notices the nervous man as well; she appears somewhat tense.
>How does Boddle respond to Kasika?>You have not yet entered the solarium 7ca105 No.1216
>>1215"As the proprietor, what business have you come here for?" I also roll to see how many inches hard she manages to make me.
7ca105 No.1217
| Rolled 2 |
>>1216Whoops. Messed up the roll.
7ca105 No.1218
| Rolled 2 |
>>1217AH well. Guess Boddle is either not very horny whatsoever right now or is impotent. Rolling to find out which one it is because I'm a ballsy asshole.
3a48e9 No.1220
>>1216Boddle doesn't seem very lucky with the ladies…You experience a slight fluttering in your chest as the courtesan lightly kisses your hand. There seems to be a momentary surge of interest from her, but it quickly dissipates.
Kasika: "Illustrious Boddle, I come on behalf of one of my sisters. She seems to have become rather ill, would it be more discrete to speak in private?"
The courtesan moves to the empty chambers, a wavering smile dancing across her full lips, and her posse follows. The Ebon Drake Solarium is bright in the afteroon sunlight, and the rosey marble walls are covered with numerous dried wreathes. Above the room, the stuffed hide of a small black drake drake coils around the alcoves, large enough to pose threat to a score of soldiers.
7ca105 No.1221
| Rolled 1, 10 = 11 |
>>1220"What may I do to help your sister?" okay, rolling twice. First to find out if "impotent" only means I can't impregnate anyone, and if so, the second one to find out how many inches hard I get now.
7ca105 No.1222
3a48e9 No.1226
>>1221>Boddle, confronted with the courtesan's allure, furiously questions his sexual capacities. This insight seems to arouse him, but nobody seems to notice.
>You remember that amongst Schakkan courtesans, 'sister' is a term of sororital affection. Kasika: "Scholarly Boddle, my sister has fallen gravely ill with a strange malady. None of the city's apothecaries or physicians have been capable of remedying her affliction, and the most accomplished of them recommended that I seek your assistance. I've brought a vial of her blood, if that should help your assessment."
>The blood can aid your research of this disease, should you choose to assist these people.As you are about to respond, she cuts you off.
Kasika: "I'll not yet hear your reply, save it for me until you've had time to discern your duty."
She swoops upon you to plant a kiss on your forehead, before sweeping out of the room with equal haste, her congregation in tow. Elana fanatically brims with gleeful mockery. As the courtesan exits, she suddenly spins alarmingly, and as if she's forgotten something.
Kasika: "Oh, and… Jerivo wanted to speak with you of some matter?"
The nervous courtesan stops as if struck by lightning. He smiles weakly at Kasika, nods to you, then waits as the rest leave the room.
Elana warily eyes the man. It is just the three of you.
>roll 1d20 for next post>replies in character receive bonuses to efforts 7ca105 No.1229
>>1226"Y-yes?" Was that in character enough?
7ca105 No.1230
| Rolled 2 |
>>1229FUCK
3a48e9 No.1231
>>1230>Roll 1d100
>"Y-yes?" you hear yourself sayThe courtesan steps closer, his mouth opening as if to reply. Sweat gleams bright as snow on his brow.
With much more speed that you had ever thought possible, the man reaches into his robes, then punches you. You collapse, and to your surprise, a knife has sprouted from your left shoulder. The edge seems to glisten with a black, vaporous essence, and strangely you feel no pain.
Elana shrieks, her lajatang suddenly whirling in a glittering storm of lethal steel.
>Roll 1d20 (+10 rage bonus) for Elana's counterattack 7ca105 No.1232
| Rolled 2 |
>>1231Elana counterattacks with a powerful thigh attack.
3a48e9 No.1238
Unless Boddle specifically commands her tactics, Elana and other companions operate of their own accord.
Seemingly equally surprised by the attack, but erupting with fury, Elana brutally skewers the man with her polearm, then muscles his twitching body through a crystal pane window. You hear the faint plop and startled cries from the broken frame.
Elana's warcries cut short as she sees you collapsed on the floor, blood seeping from your wound. She frantically calls for help as she holds you, wrenching out the dagger and pressing her tunic against the perforation. You hear her mutter something about 'not the worst place to get stabbed.'
As you fade out,
>Roll 1d100 to determine success in resisting magical contamination
>+25 bonus from scholarly background
>100+ total resistance to corruption, and a lasting immunity to this spell
>75 total resistance to corruption
>50 slight continuing hallucinations
>25 severe, lasting psychosis (curable to slight hallucinations; if researched in library)
7ca105 No.1240
| Rolled 50 |
>>1238 3a48e9 No.1242
File: 1411872698852.jpg (510.25 KB, 900x1273, 900:1273, character imperial guard.jpg)
>>1240>Spell corruption totally negated.You wake, in your bed, to a red-eyed Elana staring glumly at your feet. Near the entrance to your chamber, two Imperial Guards chat quietly, and the Empress sits in an overstuffed chair near the foot of your bed, wrapped in her white shawl.
>There is significant pain in your left shoulder>All other statuses normal. 7ca105 No.1243
>>1242"Why did that happen?"
3a48e9 No.1244
>>1243Elana bursts into tears. Surprisingly, you notice the amethyst eyes of the Empress shine with wetness also. You thought you hardly knew the woman.
After a moment, when neither of the women spoke, one of the guards chimes in.
IG: Your excellence, there was an assassination attempt on your life. The only suspect we have was hurled from a window, we're investigating the Heavenly Boudoir and other broth–er, theatre halls for more information.
Elana: It was all my fault! I killed the fucking dog before we had a chance to torture him for information. He tried to use some sort of magical toxin on you! It was awful! You weren't waking up for hours, just screaming and crying and saying the most aw-awful–"
She hugs you, shuddering with tears.
This isn't the first time you've considered her most singular value, and appreciated her companionship.
Empress Lei-Aloris: Are you alright?
>You identify the poison as Dryx Venom, extracted from the skittering spider-creatures in the dark places of the world.>Furthermore, this venom seems to be cursed by a disciple of Quet.trying not to write too much of Boddle [your character]… if you want access to any information about the surroudings, he's borderline autism-level scholarly.And acts like it with girls,apparently 7ca105 No.1245
| Rolled 9 |
>>1244Boddle explains what poison was used to the empress autistically before finally saying he is alright. Also, rolling to see if my autistic knowledge impresses the empress in any way.
3a48e9 No.1246
File: 1411875725593.png (Spoiler Image, 68.94 KB, 817x584, 817:584, the mind of a royal alchem….png)
>>1245Royal Alchemist Boddle: "I've identified the poison as Dryx Venom, extracted from the skittering spider-creatures in the dark places of the world."
Royal Alchemist Boddle: "Furthermore, this venom seems to be cursed by a disciple of Quet."
Royal Alchemist Boddle: "My supreme alchemical accomplishments and insights have allowed me to purge the toxins from my body entirely."
Both women regard you strangely, you overheard a guard mutter that toxins have affected your brain strangely.
//IG (whisper): "Or was it the potions he quaffs?"//
Empress Lei-Aloris: "That is…most impressive, fine Boddle. I implore your expertise in service to your Empress, and all the glorious lands of my ancestors."
Empress Lei-Aloris: "However, you must be exhausted; no matter how virtuous your blood may be, iron still carves the flesh. This matter that your Empress beseeches is of great and immediate importance, but I would have my alchemist's mind be utterly clear for my words"
alternative: whyOPdoesntdrawfag.png 7ca105 No.1247
>>1246Well, time to fall asleep right there for now in order to follow her orders. Rolling to see if sexual words whispered in your sleep about the empress either interest her or make her feel concerned. Ten-sided die like last time.
7ca105 No.1248
| Rolled 4 |
>>1247Wait shit.
3a48e9 No.1249
>>1247"I had… better rest," you answer her.
She looks somewhat disappointed as she slowly rises from the armchair. Her body trembles, wracked by the residual agonies of the poisoner's attempt. Despite this, she provides you with a wide, sweet smile, the scar tissue of her cheeks crumpling inward with the movement.
As she leaves, you hear the chatter of the royal maids from somewhere in your alchemy laboratory.
>roll 1d6 to determine internal disturbance"Elana," you hesitantly ask, as the cacophony fades from your space, "what did I say when I was asleep?" She looks deeply concerned, and you suspect she might cry again. "It wasn't anything about girls… was it?"
Elana hesitates for a moment, then collapses in hysterics on your chest. You are unable to discern whether she is laughing or crying, nor are you strong enough to push her off of your agonizing wound. After a minute, she relents.
Elana: No, Boddle, no.
She sniffs and wipes her eyes.
Elana: You were saying stuff about demons, and writhing gods from the guttering deep-shadows, and how the spiders were going to eat you from the inside out. It was so frightening! I didn't know what to do… you're the one who knows all the juice stuff, anyway."
She thinks a moment. "You did say three names, or maybe they were words I'd never heard before. Here, I wrote them down."
Elana hands you a paper sheet. The words "OPTESS ZM DERG VANK-WISHER"
are scrawled in big, shaky letters. You remember that a disgraced Elana only learned to read and write at your tutelage after being scammed by a vicious merchant. She lacked much interest in books, or reading.
7ca105 No.1250
| Rolled 4 |
>>1249I roll for the internal disturbance to have been the royal maids finding my experimental sexual potion recipes. That evidently haven't turned out well considering I'm impotent.
3a48e9 No.1251
>>1250just go fap anon christ 7ca105 No.1260
>>1251But anon, why do you expect the potions to work out for them if they worked so badly for me?
3a48e9 No.1306
>Boddle anxiously wonders if the giggling maids discovered his stock of aphrodisical concoctions.
>This further induces anxiety concerning his laboratory space and lackluster capacity with girls
> -1 to next social-skill roll
7ca105 No.1308
| Rolled 9 |
>>1306I roll a ten-sided die for Boddle to manage to get up so he can actually check for himself if the maids are doing what he wonders if they are doing.
3a48e9 No.1311
>>1308>The maids, along with the Empress and her royal retainers, have already left your apartment. You spring from bed, eager to investigate any disturbances to your work space. Elana looks surprised and annoyed.
Elana: Hey! Fuck, aren't you going to thank me for saving your life?
Ignoring her, you dart from the room to examine your workspace. Aside from a few fingerprints on your alchemical glassware, the laboratory looks untouched. Despite this, you carefully search through the immaculately arranged drawers and cabinets, taking inventory while your friend rages.
Elana (following you): –and you turn away the damn Empress because you're too sick to hear what she has to say, then you fucking jump out of bed to go digging around in your drawers. You sure that spell didn't go to your head? Fucking egghead…
This would not be the first time Elana has raged at the Royal Alchemist so.
7ca105 No.1314
| Rolled 5 |
>>1311Rolling to see if the potions were taken or not.
3a48e9 No.1316
>>1314You discover 5 potions have been pilfered from your supply. These are:
>An alchemical catalyst of no real value to a non-alchemists; extremely toxic to ingest>A philter inducing temporary madness>A poorly-fashioned healing potion>An extremely potent regeneration brew>A transmutative virtue; extremely valuable, a few drops magically transmute base metals to precious elements 7ca105 No.1318
| Rolled 8 |
>>1316Explain to the empress and your friend what was stolen as autistically as possible. Rolling to see if your knowledge once again impresses the empress despite your autism.
7ca105 No.1319
>>1318Well shit, it's just a tad less this time, but we're really keeping the empress's attention here.
3a48e9 No.1323
>>1311>>1318>>1311>the Empress is no longer in the room, Anon. She's gone. Boddle must go find her if he wants to speak to her.>Boddle isn'tautistic he's just very scholarly and seems to have poor luck with the ladies. Start a new quest if you want to playretarded.Boddle: Elana… some of these potions are missing.
Her anger dissipates as her protective, big-sister nature kicks in.
Elana: What? You didn't misplace them?
Boddle: No, don't be stupid. I never misplace anything. They seem to have pilfered an alchemical catalyst, which is very toxic if drunk, a philter of madness, a…less effective healing potion, an extremely potent regeneration distillation, and a transmutative virtue.
Elana: A transmut-what?
Boddle: It magically changes a substance like iron to silver, or silver to gold.
Elana: You can /brew/ that?
>You're capable of changing iron to gold from touch alone, but Elana is ignorant of this, as she is equally oblivious to your occult abilities. >>1143>Boddle's abilities: >Midas Touch>Vault>Benefit: Lord of Change 7ca105 No.1326
>>1323Use a potion that will give you "insights" so that you may deduce where the potions were whisked away to.
3a48e9 No.1327
>>1326>You select a philter of celeric insight from your stocks. This potion, when taken, will enhance your cognitive capacities, making you extremely perceptive and inducing severe paranoia for 12 hours. >From the clear night sky beyond your window, you determine it must be something in the very early morning, approximately 6 hours until dawn.>You will not be able to sleep or rest if you take this potion, and will probably be territoriality compelled to discover the thief.>Socially, you will be very disturbing for the duration of this potions effects. 7ca105 No.1328
>>1327Do it anyway, and go find the empress and tell her about what got stolen before you go and head out to discover the thief. Already rolled to impress her so there's that I guess. Then just let the potion take you where it takes you.
3a48e9 No.1330
>>1328Boddle: Of course I can brew such. I'm the Royal Alchemist.
You pop the cork from the philter and drain it. The clear liquid slithers down your throat, leaving a bitter aftertaste.
Boddle: "Okay, I have five minutes before the alchemical agent takes effects. Elana, I trust you to guide and protect me."
She nods. "Aye, Exalted Royal Alchemist," she replies with a grin.
Boddle: "Alright, let's go find the Empress."
>You have access to more regeneration potions that will heal your wound in a few hours, however none of the potions compare to the stolen one, which would heal the wound in mere seconds. 7ca105 No.1332
>>1330Rolling to see how long it takes to find the empress and/or find out what happened to her.
7ca105 No.1333
| Rolled 3 |
>>1332FUCK
3a48e9 No.1341
>>1333Please include XdY in the post, as 8chan's email filters block the die input>Also: >1d6 : social rolls>1d10 : ability rolls (high number always favorable)>Abilities include: skill checks, attribute rolls (strength, intelligence, etc); powers from Optus do not require checks>1d20 : combat rolls (high number always superior)>1d100: miscellaneous rolls You quickly dress, while Elana collects her lajatang and throws on a light cloak. You notice that her tunic is still stained with your blood. After a few moments, you start on the way to the Empress' chambers.
Elana: "You still never thanked me."
She comments as you leave the apartment.
Boddle:
>respond with thanks>respond with scathing sarcasm>chide Elana for killing the assassin>ignore>other
>Your mind begins to rush with information your brain previously considered unimportant. Flashbacks to sitting in bed pour through your mind, and your brain carefully isolates and hones on the particularly thieving giggle of one of the maids. A few moments more, and you can recall the maid; a washing girl, with greasy brown hair and a piggish nose, who serves the royal handmaids. She lives in the Celestial City somewhere, you remember.>You're certain that this girl is responsible for the theft. 7ca105 No.1344
>>1341>respond with thanks 3a48e9 No.1347
Boddle: "You're right. Thank you, Elana, for saving my life. Again."
Elana beams. "You're quite welcome, just… be more prepared some time. You can train with me if you'd like, I'll show the basics of not-getting-stabbed," she teases.
As you near the Empress' imperial apartments, a group of four elite guardsmen stop you. Their commander approaches you.
>Your heightened senses detect that this man considers you extremely odd, he's quite capable of killing with you little effort, and would not mind doing so. Also, he is attracted to Elana and that he's had sex recently with one of the other guardsmen in his presence. Physically, he is quite robust, and probably has a wife and a few children.
Guard Commander: "Halt, Royal Alchemist sir. The Empress has retired to her chambers for the evening. She will receive visitors tomorrow, in her throne room."
Elana: "With due respect, sir, the Royal Alchemist has been summoned personally by the Empress. We spoke with her not too long ago."
Boddle: " "
>demand that the guards let you past
>remind him that the Empress summoned you earlier that day, for sometime after dinner
>attempt to charm the guard (1d6 -2) (-1 for potion) [success: 3+]
>other
7ca105 No.1348
| Rolled 6 |
>>1347>other: try blackmailing him, say I'll make sure his wife finds out about his romp with the guardsman if he doesn't let us throughOkay, rolling a 1d6 to test success.
7ca105 No.1349
3a48e9 No.1352
>>1348A rush of gleeful energy washes over you.
Royal Alchemist Boddle: … You.
GC: "What? Sir."
He looks bemused.
Boddle: "You seem to have been engaged in a 'trial of arms' with tubby Tonio over there."
You gesture toward the blushing guardsman.
Boddle: "Doubtful your loving wife and children would care to hear that the commander of the Empress' guard extramaritally escapades not with beautiful courtesans, but those of equal stature and bodily form."
Boddle: "If…you…were to stand in my way, your wife would be sure to hear of your…attitudes."
The four guards stare, dumbfounded. Behind you, Elana whispers "/what the fuck, Boddle?/"
Guard Commander: "Ah, er…"
His face is very red.
"Just… go through."
As you and Elana pass the guards, you hear the commander mutter under his breath, words thick with venom. "Best watch yeself, potion-chugger."
>Your mind rushes, as you notice the guards tensing, and fidgeting with their weapons. It's doubtful they'd try to attack you here, but they're quite menacing. Elana: "Boddle, holy shit. What the fuck is that potion? I didn't know you could scare people like that." She laughs. "Anyway, if they try anything with you, I got your back."
You are now in the Empress' apartments. This section of the palace alone is massive, with a bedroom, a dining chamber, baths, the Empress' personal kitchen and retainers' quarters, and library.
>Elana considers you more impressive>Imperial Guard standing depreciated >Imperial Palace standing depreciated> +1 to (most) future intimidation checks 7ca105 No.1355
>>1352Head straight to the bedroom to make absolute sure that guard was lying.
3a48e9 No.1359
>>1355You rush to the Empress' bedchambers, ignoring the drowsy retainers' startled jumps, but Elana stops you at the door. She insists that as befitting decorum with an Empress, a woman should announce their presence first.
She quickly returns. "Yeah, she's awake, apparently she doesn't sleep much anymore. She's been anxious to speak with you."
>The horrendous damage inflicted by the Empress is probably surpassing the recuperative and resistive effects of her medicine. 7ca105 No.1362
>>1359… wait are you saying the Empress just hit is or not?
3a48e9 No.1363
>>1362>You are speaking with Elana outside of the Empress' bedchambers. The door is closed, but the Empress can probably hear you if you were to speak loudly. There are several drowsy retainers behind you; they seem to be politely ignoring you. 7ca105 No.1373
>>1363Head directly into the chambers with your friend.
3a48e9 No.1412
You enter the Empress' bedchambers. The floor of the room is covered in thick rugs and furs, and a sweltering blaze of coals shines from a brazier in the center of the room. There doesn't appear to be a bed, at least not in the immediate room; instead, Lei-Aloris nestles in a luxurious highbacked throne–you've not seen it in some time, it was her deceased father's seat.
The walls of the room are draped with numerous tapestries, and graceful avian sculptures and figures cover nearly every surface. A massive bird, nearly the size of a large hound with a vicious curved beak, perches on the carved wood above the Empress. You recognize the bird as a pygmy Roc.
>The bird disturbs you, it has probably tasted human flesh. This room has not been cleaned in a very long time, and the soot from the brazier blackens the ceiling in a thick coat. Lei-Aloris is extremely unwell, but her demeanor seems quite hopeful. Elana is disgusted by the state of the room, and seems unnerved by the Empress.
Lei-Aloris: "Greetings, Alchemist Boddle. You are now feeling well enough to hear my words?"
>You detect faint annoyance in her words, but she continues.
Lei-Aloris: "This matter is of the utmost importance to the Imperial Throne. Did you remember to bring everything you needed?"
7ca105 No.1415
>>1412Say yes, but ask why the bird has partaken of human flesh.
f846bd No.1425
>>1415Veto. Just say yes.
36c9b2 No.1427
7ca105 No.1450
>>1438
Let's do this.
7ca105 No.1451
3a48e9 No.1513
Sorry about previous post, ctl-a on notepad.Chalk it up to potion-induced flashback because 8chan's post delete system isn't working.
You begin to shudder, tears leaking from your eyes. Visions of horror and demise within the necromancer's stronghold swarm your vision, the clarifying effects of the philter elaborating each detail with artistic precision. Your mouth contorts into an ugly twist and you cannot stem your weeping eyes.
Elana: My god, Boddle, are you okay?
Lei-Aloris: Something troubles you, brave alchemist?
Boddle: " "
>Explain about the potion, and your inherent fear of necromancer tyrants
>Ignore emotional state, agree to help the Empress
>Refuse on account of terror
>Other
9c75cf No.1531
>>1513"It's too obvious. It must be a trap of some kind, trying to lure you out and test your reaction to the possibility of a cure."
Potion-induced paranoia, and all.
9c75cf No.1532
| Rolled 2 |
>>1531dropped my dice.
3a48e9 No.1556
>>1531Lei-Aloris: "That's… that may be true, Boddle, but…"
She lowers her head, her visage shadowed. The pygmy Roc opens its beak, undulating its tongue with a hissing creak, and the Empress offers the bird a strip of dried meat.
Lei-Aloris: "I fear… my lineage should not continue, should a cure remain undiscovered soon. My body is tormented and racked with awful pains, despite your wonderful alchemy my physical state continues to weaken. I have taken no consort in my sickness, nor could my body bear healthy children… with my passing, my lineage will crumble. My heart fades, Boddle, with each day the heat seeps from my bones and my enemies draw nearer, waiting for my collapse."
>You wonder what kind of meat the Empress feeds her bird. To your enhanced olifactory senses, it smells like no barn-animal you've ever smelled.Lei-Aloris: "If this task is unsuited to you, I may send another. I have… employed another alchemist, for some time now. His skill and abilities are far beneath your insurmountable own, I assure you, but his capacity to brew my needed medicine is sufficient to tolerate your absence. I've experimented with his potions for some time, now, when the night-pains grow too deep and the illustrious Boddle toils in his workshops. I may ask him to take your stead in the North, should your duties be most loyally expressed in my presence."
Elana: "Excuse me, Lei-Aloris, but… what is this alchemists name? Have we heard of him?"
Lei-Aloris: "You may have, Lady Elana. He hails from the Celestial City, his name is Thoilo Guffrahg."
Both you and Elana tense. The borish, crude Guffrahg was a competing candidate for the position of Royal Alchemist; since your skills earned your position, he has constantly slandered you and your friends amidst the Imperial city, loudly proclaiming his own superiority. On occasions that you ventured out for revelry in the city, he has almost unflaggingly made effort to follow your crawls, mocking you and purchasing rounds for the cheering crowds. While his skills are indeed formidable, they pale next to the abilities of the illustrious Royal Alchemist; you highly doubt that his capacity to medicate the Empress is anywhere near your own.
>Guffrahg definitely has access to Dryx venom; it seems unlikely he would be fearsome enough to orchestrate an assassination attempt however. Furthermore, any relations of his to Quet are completely unknown to you.>This reminds you of Guffrahgs particular penchant for the finest of courtesans. The ape may have plucked enough cunning from his simple brain to compel one of the prostitutes to murder, but it seems unlikely. Tholio, historically, bragged loud but shied from fights and abhorred physical violence. 7ca105 No.1566
| Rolled 3 |
>>1556Finally agree to help the Empress. On the condition that she lets you be the one to help pass down her lineage. As in a marriage proposal, not just a one-night stand. Rolling for success using six-sided die.
7ca105 No.1567
>>1566Well, we're screwed. She'll probably feed us to her bird now.
3a48e9 No.1576
>>1566The Empress gives you a strange look, somewhere between deep confusion and mild disgust. Elana guffaws, then, unable to hold herself back further, bursts into manic laughter. After a moment, she composes herself.
Elana: "Sorry, Lei-Aloris, my apologies on behalf of the–*snort*–royal Alchemist. He quaffed a potion tonight to catch some thief and then ran straight over here."
She grabs you in a headlock and gives your head a friendly rub.
Lei-Aloris laughs, her momentary tension dissipates. "I understand, it's been a most stressful day for our alchemist. I am glad that you express desire to assist your Empress in this way, Boddle, but I must decline your proposal. Simply stated, I do not feel for you as you express towards me."
She gives you a warm, kind smile.
888bca No.1578
| Rolled 6 |
>>1566Ask if you can have a date with her instead as your condition to see if it can change her mind later. Rolling six-sided die again.
888bca No.1580
>>1578DOWN BUT NOT OUT
FUCK YES
3a48e9 No.1589
>>1578>The Empress has no concept of a date, as Ko-Schakkan royal life would prohibit much private social interaction. Even this current conversation is extraordinary, and largely due to Boddle's apparent obsession with the Empress and the potion's compulsions.>Furthermore, the Empress' physical condition inhibits much romantic interest in her. She's basically explained that her restoration comes paramount to any romantic inclinations she might have.Roll 1d100 if you still want to push romantic relations with the Empresssuccess at87+ f62dcc No.1590
| Rolled 34 |
>>1589Aw c'mon son.
f62dcc No.1591
3a48e9 No.1592
>>1590Boddle can get a girlfriend.Dice permit.Her highness and Elana are both sort of friendzoned, Boddle is high as tits and was ugly crying from fear a second ago; he's not at the top of his game.Fade to black for any sex actBoddle: " "
>Agree to help Empress still>Allow Thoilo Guffrahg to aid the Empress in your place>Excuse yourself until in a better condition for discourse with the Imperial Crown>Other f62dcc No.1593
>>1592Change the condition to her truthfully telling you what she feeds her bird and why.
3a48e9 No.1595
>>1593Boddle: "What… what are you feeding that Roc? I must know, if you tell me I will help you acquire this healer."
Lei-Aloris looks at you strangely, her kind smile twisting with slight displeasure, though you do not feel it is directed towards you. "Thank you, kind Boddle. My retainers will provide you and lady Elana with anything you may need for your travels."
Elana: "Thank you, Lei-Aloris. What /is/ that bird eating?"
Lei-Aloris: "Tirran was my father's hunting Roc, my uncle himself fetched its egg from brood-mother. A previous royal alchemist enchanted the egg so that the chick might grow to a size reasonable to humans. When I was a child, I used to try to ride the bird, but he never harmed me or lashed out at me."
"But battle was a different matter, and my father often brought Tirran on his campaigns. He is a war hero." She reached to stroke his beak, and he lightly gripped her hand in its cruel beak. "He's quite harmless to humans, but he acquired a particular taste for the flesh of forest-elves." Her purple eyes, for a moment, glimmer with the same darkness as the bird. "My great Skyknights provide him a plentiful stock of his nutrition, and in return he is a more lethal and loyal bodyguard than any man or woman."
Elana looks both horrified and disgusted.
f62dcc No.1596
>>1595Immediately renounce the empress and escape from her with Elana on a quest to liberate the forest elves.
3a48e9 No.1598
>>1596>Forest Elves are extremely unlike humans. A sentient humanoid species, they are smaller, thinner, and proportionally stronger than humans. They live for ~40 years, and are extremely xenophobic, like all elves. They are known to attack humans that enter their territory, even preying on merchants and travelers that stray too close to elvish lands. >Their opaque, white-less eyes are often black or brown in color, and their skin varies from darkish greens to dappled yellows to pale white, depending on the season. They have extremely sharp teeth and nails, making them vicious hand to hand fighters, but prefer javelins and bows to melees. They are very stealthy, and an individual is capable of hunting and killing an elk unarmed, with ease. They primarily consume other sentient humanoids and vegetables.>They are the least civilized of the Elvish creatures. Ghost Elves consider them to be goblins, and several monarchs have waged campaigns to exterminate their presence.>Even so, feeding pets elf jerky seems pretty disturbing for a human. f62dcc No.1601
>>1598Oh. Then uh, don't renounce her, but silently bare a grudge and purchase that odd bird you've seen at the pet shop in the city. You know, the one the shop owner said he got from some "squinty-eyed fellow who talked funny" and supposedly promised it would grow into a majestically powerful friend and hunting partner if given some exercise? The one that is most likely a golden eagle, though no texts in your native land know of the bird, and thus not you either? Yeah, when you leave the palace, train it as an ally and also to assassinate her bird secretly at a later date.
f62dcc No.1603
>>1601Oh, and as a correction, the shopkeeper didn't promise those things, just the fellow he got it from.
3a48e9 No.1606
>>1601>NotedThe faint sounds of servants from outside of the Empress' quarters suggests that sun-up must be soon. The Empress looks tired as well–doubtless she will be resting before noon, but she'll need her vulnerary soon regardless.
>The philter of celeric insight still affects your mind for another 8 hours, preventing sleep or rest. The urge to discover the thief gnaws at your haggard mind. Your wound, while neither deep nor particularly disruptive, tires your largely indolent body. f62dcc No.1608
>>1606Something PROBABLY about your mental condition causes you to use your hate of her bird as inspiration for what to defeat the thief with. You hear a voice ring out in your head: "BOTTLE. REMEMBER THE BASICS OF SMT. THE AVIAN RACE IS PRIMARILY SUSCEPTIBLE TO GUNS. YOU NEED TO INVENT THE WORLD'S FIRST GUN, BOTTLE. CHOOSE YOUR MATERIALS WISELY." You have no reason why it keeps calling you Bottle. But anyway, head back home with Elana to see if you can build a 'gun' using only items you own. The voice in your head keeps yelling about some 'board' that knows how to do it and that you should thus be able to do so as well.
7edc44 No.1619
| Rolled 3, 6 = 9 |
>>1608Is this still going?
7ca105 No.1621
>>1619Probably, but what was that roll for?
3a48e9 No.1626
>As the bird peers at you, you are manly compelled to destroy it by extreme means, as a true heroic knight might, as this could quite possibly impress the impress women. Thoilo's sort would murder the bird with some sort of toxic guile; stooping to such mean method is far beneath your potioned mind.
>A blueprint for dwarfish flame cannons is somewhere in your library. You are suddenly inspired to modify it for the Royal Alchemist's personal equip. However, it would take at least 4 hours to addle out an alchemical / mechanical methodology for firing, loading, and operating the device, (+/-2 hours 1d10). Furthermore, a palace smith would need to forge the metallic components of the cannon.
>Were you to attempt such device in a less-hypo lucid state, it would only take 2 hours. Once clear of the philters influence, the .
>The modified cannon will be somewhat a blunderbuss. Every blast has a 1 in 20 chance of breaking your puny shoulder, but it does 25d2 damage + alchemical effects to immediate targets.
>These externalized voices disturb your mind. The only outside presence you've detected is Optus, who most compels you to be wealthy.
Elana: "Boddle? You're being awfully quiet."
You've returned to your quarters with Elana. You're not quite certain how you got back so fast, the brew and exhaustion seems to be heavily affecting your perception.
>An alchemical catalyst of no real value to a non-alchemists; extremely toxic to ingest
>A philter inducing temporary madness
>A poorly-fashioned healing potion
>An extremely potent regeneration brew
>A transmutative virtue; extremely valuable, a few drops magically transmute base metals to precious elements
>greasy brown hair and a piggish nose
3a48e9 No.1627
>>1626>edit: Once clear of the philter's influence, the cannon design would only take two hours.>Forging the metallic components would take a day. 7edc44 No.1630
| Rolled 4 |
Rolling 1d10 to attempt to assemble this gun in this strange state of mind.
3a48e9 No.1650
Ignoring Elana's protests that you should sleep, rest, eat, and stop fiddling with your papers. After a little over two hours, with the bright morning sun already dissipating the mountain fogs, you finish the blueprints for your blunderbuss. A tremendous weapon, it can be loaded with lead shot or alchemical bombs, and takes only three minutes to load. Preparing ammunition and charge for the rifle will take at least 2 hours for a dozen shots.
However, this is all theory. A palace blacksmith still must fashion the metallic components of the weapon, utilizing your blueprints for the design.
7ca105 No.1653
| Rolled 7 |
>>1650Okay, let's get that done too. Rolling 1d10 again to see how long it takes.
3a48e9 No.1655
>>1653>>1627
>Forging the metallic components would take a day. 7ca105 No.1661
>>1655Aw man. Okay, well leave it at the blacksmith for now and have him do that while you go try and find the culprit without it. If anything, at least after the thief/thieves are caught you'll have the world's first gun and the… west's strongest bird.
85d0ed No.1768
| Rolled 9 |
>>1650Alright, grab a flask or two of acid and strap them under your sleeves if you have them, for quick throwing. and quaff any potion of healing we have.
Then quaff a potion of wakefullness if we've got one, and load a syringe (if they exist) with a sleeping/knockout potion, then we confront the tomoko esque maid, while possibly thinking up the schematics to a spring propelled syringe gun
7ca105 No.1818
3a48e9 No.1820
>>1818Nonsense lassy>>1661>>1768
>The potion of wakefulness only works effectively once every three days. Abuse of this potion yields unpleasant psychological and physical effects, and the user incoherent.You quaff several healing brews, growing ravenously hungry from the regenerative effects, but completely restoring the flesh to an unblemished whole. No impressive scars from magical to flaunt for girlfriends. While you relax into your armchair and begin devouring several stale pastries, provided two days ago from the palace kitchens, you send Elana to deliver the blunderbuss schematics to the venerable imperial blacksmith.
When she returns, a somewhat-satiated and newly restored Boddle stashes away a flask of highly corrosive solvent and a somniferous elixir before departing the palace, and into the upper-crust Argent-Falcon Scenic, a neighborhood of palaces carved from the oldest and highest living stone of the towering Ko-Schakkan mountains. The rich veins of the mountains were still bare, gleaming with traces of silvery ores and sculpted into stylized birds and drakes and heroes.
>Your mind questions the possibility of other methods of administering alchemical mixtures; you remember reading a passage concerning vaporized alchemical effects, and a hideous uncivilized forest-elf manner that you did not read well into>You must somehow acquire a bird, simply possessing a firearm capable of slaying the Empress' warhawk cannot satiate your terrified obsession with the diminutive Roc 7ca105 No.1821
>>1820Head to that shop as stated before so as to acquire that odd bird as also stated before.
8bbfab No.1870
the thred is ded agen
3a48e9 No.1875
>>1870disgust from masterchan contamination has put thread on hiatus
7ca105 No.1876
7ca105 No.1912
>>1875please start posting again anyway please
3a48e9 No.1927
The terraced Celestial City rises with the sun, its lofty avenues and balconies awash with morning light already, while the shaded valleys beneath the mountaintops still slumber. The motley, resplendent Schakkan nobility promenade already, their women ascetically pure as carved marble, faces devoid of jewelry and paint but adorned with scintillating iridescent tattoos; gleaming on the youngest and fairest and darkened to murky bursts of color amidst the elders. The men wear tall, coiled hats, peaked like the tips of mountains, streaming with various ribbons displaying wealth, lineage, and education, swathing themselves in expensive, intricate robes. They break their fast amidst small, outdoor public tables arranged before each mansion, artfully arranged with the finest delicacies and beauties eligible for strategic alliance.
As you traverse the socialites' district, the Koschakkan nobility fade to the rugged and hardy standards of Koschakkan pragmatism; the intricate carved frescos simplify to geometric engravings above the numerous apartments where raucous living mingles with the streets' clamor. Derelict and impoverished souls crouch away in alleyways, the braver amongst them begging for alms from passing merchants, craftsmen, laborers, and soldiers, most of whom pass with the proud disdain of Koschakkan communism; ignoring those who cannot contribute. Hunters sport their catch beneath their tethered dire hawks, of the sort the Koschakkan skyknights bravely cling to in aerial combat, the gargantuan birds snapping at the bits of bloody elk and goat. You see a few animal merchants, but they seem mostly interested in selling pigs, chickens, and the curiously large, bearded rodents that the peasants seem to gobble up called gnomepigs.
Elana chatters constantly, pestering you with questions about Durj and the North. In the feverish bind of the potion, her words go largely unheard, but she accepts your occasional nodding as some kind of acknowledgement.
>greasy brown hair
>piggish nose
>maybe she drank the catalyst first?
>Idiot serf
7ca105 No.1936
| Rolled 100 |
>>1927So are we almost to that bird shop yet? I guess uh.. I'll roll 1d100 to see if it takes us a while to get there or not?
7ca105 No.1937
>>1936op how
how on earth do i get lucky with this roll now
7ca105 No.1938
3a48e9 No.1942
As you scan the merchant's wares, flinching slightly from the dire hawks' snapping beaks, you spot a merchant vending nothing but trained falcons, eagles, and various other birds. The man, his skin dark like mahogany and his coal-black mustache drooping at either extremity, flaps his arms about and squawks his advertisements to the apathetic passerby. Above him, a stony grey apartment shrieks the keens of mourning women, laying eerie tones over the merchant's calls.
As you beeline for the merchant, you hear an enraged bellow. Focusing through the fading waves of the potion, you suddenly recognize it as the guard captain you threatened the night before. Despite his late watch, he seems very awake and very drunk, and there's something incredibly miserable about him. He charges towards you, a kitchen cleaver in his hand.
As your mind sharpens to deal with the turmoil, you catch a faint glimpse of the washing girl from the window where the keening emanates the loudest. She disappears from the sill before you're able to adequately identify her.
>Reaction to charging Guard Captain
>Social: attempt to placate 1d6 (-1)[success: 4]
>Combat: try to dodge his attack 1d10 (-3)(exhausted, potioned, weak)[success:5]
>Other: roll 1d100
7ca105 No.1946
| Rolled 73 |
>>1942Rolling 1d100 for the probably-golden-eagle as mentioned before to suddenly fly off its perch and snatch the knife out of his hand.
3a48e9 No.1947
>>1946>>1238>Unless Boddle specifically commands her tactics, Elana and other companions operate of their own accord.>Should clarify this goes for all NPCs; unless Boddle were to acquire some sort of familiar 7ca105 No.1948
>>1947Uh… okay, Boddle suddenly cries out "help, he has a knife" and points to the knife, something along those lines, and the probably-golden-eagle can hear the fear in his voice and see where he's pointing, and grabs the knife on a curious hunch.
3a48e9 No.1965
Amongst the merchant's most luxurious raptors, a single, gold-eyed monstrosity of eagle catches your particular attention, captivating you for a moment of lucid clarity. The bird shrieks, a high piercing sound that pierces your ears and for a moment is incredibly menacing.
>You recognize it as an alpha gold-eye eagle, rarely tamed and famed for their cunning intellect and hunting abilities.
>You feel this bird could have great value.
>It is perhaps a third the size of the pygmy Roc.
While you bask in the glorious cry of the gold-eye eagle, Elana takes no time in lashing out with a single, well placed palm strike to the man's torso. He sits down hard, shaking and shuddering, gasping for breath as his solar plexus spasms.
Elana: "You! What the fuck, man, what's your fucking problem? Why would you attack him over barbed words and bloodless jabs? Drunken pig."
Despite her harsh admonishment, she did not strike the man again, instead keeping her lajatang close at hand.
From the doorway, the washing girl appears. Her eyes are unnaturally dull, and her ordinarily miserable look has acquired a frightful intensity.
An empty potion vial falls from her fingertips.
Suddenly the market grows extremely quiet. The merchants nearest to the apartment's rocky face rush to collect their wares, their silent hustle masking with the wheeze of the guard and the washing girl's panting breath.
7ca105 No.1966
>>1965…… buy the golden eagle and head upstairs.
eac058 No.2037
>>1965sucks this is dead. It was rather good.
cbd15c No.2041
>>2037Not quite dead yet, there've been pauses of a few days before.
3a48e9 No.2044
File: 1413275723964.png (122.42 KB, 2168x1652, 542:413, gold-eye eagle (sans glass….png)
You begin to haggle, somewhat dazedly, with the merchant; he is mostly confused, babbling and pointing behind you while you jab at the gold-eye eagle, perched on a bejeweled tether-stand. Perhaps this merchant doesn't recognize the Royal Alchemist, for he seems more concerned with the ruckus behind you than with the exorbitant prices he could extract from your fixated manic desire.
Elana: "Boddle, who is this? She's twitching awful weird, Boddle?"
Something of a wail rises in pitch to a howl behind you, somewhat disrupting the effect of the eagle's haunting keen. You recognize this sound as probably emerging from the washing girl, who too, it seems, has quaffed many potions.
7ca105 No.2068
>>2044Tell her you'll make the antidote for the potions she stole from you if she buys the eagle for you.
3a48e9 No.2083
Your eyes follow the merchant's shaking finger to where the washing girl stood, shivering and shuddering, demented fury seeps from her livid gaze as unintelligible babble erupts from her frothing mouth. Her capacity to negotiate eagles or comprehend antidotes seems dubious.
"Boddle?? What should I do, Boddle?" Elana seems distressed, probably in moral turmoil of attacking a clearly incapable person. Another keening bellow erupts from the washing girl's lungs, and you notice that the apartment windows flood with curious faces.
The guard captain has slouched himself against a wall, breathing heavily with a hand gripping his chest. Elana probably broke some lungs. As you notice the knife he wielded on the paved street, the washing girl scrambles to snatch it up, waving it threateningly at Elana.
With another incoherent burst, the washing girl begins to slash at her face and stomach with the knife. With horror, you watch the wounds fold and seal before the spatters of her blood splash the cobblestones and crowd.
She lunges for Elana.
7ca105 No.2084
| Rolled 10 |
>>2083Rolling 1d10 to grab the eagle and throw it at the washing girl, startling it enough that its first instinct is to use its talons on whatever is nearest to it at the time, thus causing the eagle to lift her up in the air by the hand she's using to hold the knife, thus ensuring her grip is so tight she can't so much as move her wrist sideways to even barely touch the eagle with the blade.
7ca105 No.2085
>>2084IT'S OVER
GOLD-EYE IS OVERPOWERED
BANNED FROM ALL TOURNAMENTS
3a48e9 No.2086
You hurl the jewel-encrusted tether-stand with the eagle still attached. The heft of the tether stand smashes the knife from the girl's grip, knocking it away while the weighty stand tumbles the thief over. The bird, shocked, annoyed, and angry, begins to peck furiously at the washing girl. Each of the raking wounds seal almost immediately.
She bellows, struggling under the weights of the stand, before tapping into some maddened reserve and hefting the bulky tether. The eagle squawks indignantly.
She careens towards you, bare-handed and delirious.
>Extremely potent regeneration brew clearly was one of your finer concoctions.
>You're not sure where the strength to hurl the stand came from.
7ca105 No.2087
>>2086>>2086Force her to be your servant for the rest of the adventure for her transgressions.
3a48e9 No.2088
>>2087>All attempts to communicate with her will be fruitless, she's clearly berserk. 7ca105 No.2089
>>2088>>2088Oh right. Well knock her out then. And carry her home so you can create an antidote. Then do it.
7ca105 No.2090
>>2088>>2089Oh wait, though. Make sure to buy the eagle after you knock her out but before you go back home.
3a48e9 No.2091
>>2089>Have to be more specific regarding actions; how does Boddle incapacitate her? 7ca105 No.2092
| Rolled 6 |
>>2091Punch her in the head to knock her out.
And buy the eagle after you do so and before you take her back home. Rolling 1d10 for success.
7ca105 No.2093
>>2092Uh.. well she's weaponless now and just kinda helplessly swinging her arms around so.. that's enough right?
3a48e9 No.2095
>>2092>Boddle is extraordinarily ineffective at melee combat or anything related to athleticism. You feebly strike at her dome with your fist, less of a punch and more of a limp-wristed pummel. She ignores the blow and smashes your nose with her skull.
You're in a lot of pain. Blood gushes from your nostrils, and you stagger, stunned and seeing stars.
Elana's moral compass swings, and she cracks the washing girl's skull with the haft of her lajatang. The washing girl snarls, turning from you with blood running down the back of her head, hunched and haggard but clearly still aggressive.
The market is now roaring with people, some calling out encouragement and others shouting for help. Elana spins her weapon gracefully with one hand, waiting for her opponents next move.
>You're exhausted and stunned. >Elana is infuriated, and defending you. 7ca105 No.2097
| Rolled 1 |
>>2095Rolling 1d10 so that, in a final burst of mental strength triggered by the drug you took, your mind suddenly forms a temporary tulpa, only visible to you, that is magically able to knock out the girl.
3a48e9 No.2100
>>2097>>2097You have a sleeping potion in your robes what the fuck Boddle just huck that shitYou attempt some sort of psychic attack on the washing girl, but the pressure rush in your head merely causes you to faint.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Elana: "Hey! Boddle? Are you awake?"
Groggily coming to, you find yourself in your bedsheets. You realize that you are extremely unbathed and sporting the whiskers of a few days growth. Elana is seated in your overstuffed chair, smiling brightly at you. Her left eye is faintly spotted with the shadows of old bruises, but she seems fine otherwise. She's playing with a tied piece of a string, contorting her fingers into various twiny shapes.
>You've been out cold for some time. 7ca105 No.2101
>>2100>>2100Thanks, but what happened? Did you spend my money on that bird like I meant to?
3a48e9 No.2104
"Yeah I bought the bird with some of that money you gave me a while back. Seemed like good of use as any," she runs her fingers through her hair, then ties it up with the string into a pony tail; Elana never seemed to buy anything except new gear and the finest spirits, despite the generous investment of the allowance you provide her. "Where should I start…" she trails off, tapping a finger on her chin.
"Not sure how much you remember, what with being sleep deprived and skull-butted. After she smashed you in the face you sort of keeled over and passed out. We fought for a while, I didn't want to kill her, at first, but after a while it was nearly immpossible to fend her off. When I started using the blades of the lajatang, her wounds healed in moments. Once I skewered her through the heart, must have crushed her ribs too, and she pulled herself up the haft to smack me." She points at her eye, with a small smirk. "She was a truly horrific opponent."
"After a while, she began to to falter– she didn't relent, but the wounds started healing much slower. When I struck her with the lajatang's handle, she was unable to regain her stance, and soon after gave in to exhaustion. A physician had already rushed to the conflict and was able to revive her, and they are keeping her in the palacial dungeons. She's quite ill, but they provide her with food and blankets and medicine, I think the potions she drank may have affected her mind.
"You slept for three days! It's nearly nightfall of the fourth day, that boylover Thoilo's been brewing the Empress' medicine in your stead." She snorts. "Even I can tell the Empress doesn't savor his work nearly as much. Oh! And your contraption's finished, they even assembled it for you once I showed them the drawings, and made it work much better than it was before. The smiths said your eggheaded designs were 'true bookreader's work.'" Elana giggles, and gestures towards the corner, where the blunderbuss rests.
f62dcc No.2111
>>2104Go over to where the washing girl is and ask her directly why she stole your potions and drank them all.
3a48e9 No.2126
Navigating your way through the Imperial palace, Elana accompanying, you eventually find the palacial dungeons, carved into the heart of the mountain. The turnkeys direct you to a well-lit room, where the washing girl sleeps fitfully on a pile of fairly clean blankets.
You rouse the girl by banging the heavy wooden door of her cell. "You there, servant," you call to her, "why did you steal and quaff my potions."
She grumbles at you, clearly angry at being rouse from sleep. You call at her again, and after a moment she thrashes up in a fury. "What do you //WANT//," she shrieks.
"Why did you drink my potions. Why did you steal them from my laboratory." You have no patience to spare for this washing girl, and your straightforward attitude seems to cow her.
"You… brewed that drink… like you did for the Empress, it makes her better." She shudders. "She drinks it and it makes her feel better, is that right?" You nod. "I took some… of the drink, the same color as the drink you give our majesty, my son was sick…"
>You recall that the transmutative virtue and the alchemical catalyst had a passably similar appearance to the Empress' medicine; however, they have clearly different viscous consistency and smell.
"I gave him one of the drinks," she continues, "and as soon as he swallowed he began to scream in pain. I gave him the other, and it seemed to make him better, for a little bit, and then Haak, my husband, said to give him the one that he knew was a healing…" she trails off, gripping her head with her hands. "It hurts, there's an ache in my head and it won't stop throbbing…"
"I didn't know what to do, he woke up and told me that his insides were burning up. I tried to make him drink mare's milk but he wouldn't, then he just…" she starts to cry.
You stare fixedly at her until she regains some composure and returns to her tale. "I drank the other two, I didn't want to live and I knew I had taken poison from your laboratory. Then it all… shattered, in my head, and my skin crawled like worms were in my veins. She'd cut me," she looks hard at Elana for a moment, "and it would hurt for a moment then close back up, it hurt so much…"
f62dcc No.2127
>>2126Ask her why she didn't just ask you for the right potion
eac058 No.2129
>>2126This.
>>2127 What the fuck woman.
3a48e9 No.2147
"Why did you not ask for a healing potion? I could have provided one, for a minimal fee."
She guffaws miserably. "Yeah, like I've got gold for the Royal Alchemist's drinks. Twelve gold coins the Empress gives you for her medicine, that's more gold than I ever saw in my life."
She laughs, a bit more enthusiastically, but the cackle dissolves into more sobs. "And the drinks, they clouded my mind… the voices, they never stop! Make it go away, please your lordly Royal Alchemist, do you have any medicine to spare for me?"
Elana seems distraught and very sad. You can tell that she's divided over her actions, as clearly the woman's insanity was her own folly, but the washing girl's plight plucks a sympathy from her. "Haak, your husband, is he the night-guard captain?" Elana asks.
"Yes m'Lady," the woman replies. "An' the father of my children."
"How many children do you have?" Elana inquires.
"Fi… four, m'Lady."
>Optus compels you to seek payment for all services and goods rendered. This has earned you a stingy reputation, as you never buy anything for anyone else, ever, unless its a form of payment. Even the funds you divert to Elana as allowance are carefully considered and articulated to her; Elana never seems to care, however. To your disgust, she sometimes passes silver coins to beggars.
eac058 No.2148
>>2147We will give her treatment, in return for contracted services that she must perform to pay off the cost of the potions. She will perform these services during her 'free' time.
These services will include fetching items and such for us. Pretty much whatever we need, within reason. (no rapey shit)
3a48e9 No.2150
"I'm sorry for your loss," Elana says softly, after a few moments.
"I will provide you with a treatment for your mind," you assure the washing girl, "in return you will work for me until the base costs of the medicine are restored–I won't charge you for the hourly fees of the Royal Alchemists."
"But, but… I work for the Empress, and my family…" her brow furrows and her eyes close. "Yes… alright, if you'll cure my mind… I can work for you."
"Very good. You'll mostly be fetching ingredients from the city markets, delivering messages–can you read?" she shakes her head, "Excellent, then I can write them down for you– delivering food, that sort of thing."
"Yes, Royal Alchemist. Can I go home first?"
"Certainly, but before, what is your name?"
"It's Frika, lord Alchemist."
You nod, and Elana motions for the turnkeys. After a few minutes the washing girl warily curtseys you and leaves for the city. Before she departs, Elana takes her aside and speaks with her for a moments. The women hug and you hear Frika's grateful, half-shouted thanks from the palace courtyard.
>It's early night, and you're still somewhat tired and drained from the fight.
>You remember that the Empress urged you to go to the North for a Very Important Reason, but the blackout seems to have blocked its recollection. You're quite certain that it has something to do with Durj Deep-Mutterer and the Empress' restoration.
>The elite Schakkan courtesans are probably wondering about their blood sample, and the assassination attempt on your life continues to baffle.
>You still haven't seen your gold-eyed eagle.
eac058 No.2151
>>2150>You still haven't seen your gold-eyed eagle. 98e697 No.2154
>>2150Meet your new eagle friend.
3a48e9 No.2168
Elana wipes at her eyes as she returns to you. "I offered to help her out with the expenses, you know, if she'll accompany us North," she says, then cheers up. "Oh yeah, do you want to see your eagle?"
You nod excitedly and she leads you to the Palacial rookery, where you find the bird with a heavy cloth bandage around one of its feet. "It broke its leg during the fight," she explains, "all that jerking about with the tether." The eagle emits a piercing screech, seemingly in agreement. "He's healing quickly, he doesn't even hop 1-footed anymore and its been only a few days."
The eagle tilts its head. the golden eye menacing you with ferocious intensity. "Oh, I named him Gehrys, after the old hero. It just seemed to fit." She gently strokes the eagles feathers. "The merchant said he was trained as an imperial warbird, but he was too loud to fly with the Skyknights, so they sold him to a Vrubba spice merchant. Then that crazy bird merchant noticed how valuable he was and picked him up off the spice guy, and then you threw him at Frika."
"Oh yeah, and apparently he only eats plump gnomepigs and anything bigger than himself, if he's allowed to hunt. The merchant stressed that he needed to be fed."
>As a trained warbird, the gold-eye eagle can easily savage an armored knight, but it is most equipped for dealing with aerial threats, such as wyvern and the like.
>You sense that this eagle can perceive you as its master, and will never turn on you. Furthermore, the bird seems to like Elana; if the eagle isn't allowed to hunt or kill for a while, it will grow restless and may possibly attack nearby fauna.
>Elana can call the bird whatever she likes, but so can you.
7ca105 No.2177
>>2168>>2168Decide to stick with Gehrys anyway, but start getting prepared for your travels.
3a48e9 No.2205
As you begin to munch on a late dinner, succulent lamb marinated in a ginger-mushroom sauce, with crispy rosemary bread, sharp white cheese, and a tall glass of Anturian pale (the Ghost Elves brewed the finest of spirits, aside from the dwarven ales Elana gulped), your oldest and closest friend tells you all about the past several days. "So… not sure how much you remember, you were acting /very/ strangely the night before I fought Frika…" she says, munching on bread dipped in your sauce. "But the Empress asked us to go to the frozen wastes to rescue this healer, who she believes can cure her terrible wounds." She swigs her dwarven rocknut ale. "But she's been captured by Durj the Deep-Mutterer, the so-called 'monarch.' He's looking for a new alchemist, and that's where you come in."
You sigh. That orc-fucker Thoilo's going to be brewing all the Empress' potions, for a while. Elana continues, beginning to explain her strong moral reasonings for wanting to liberate the north. "I gotta take on a new persona," she says after her rants, then laughs, "like when we were younger, remember that?" When you were in your teens, still learning the mercurial methodology of alchemical concoctions from the hedge-witch of that Xai-Glav shithole you two passed your teens through. By day she'd sleep in the witch's hovel while you studied, and by night she'd immerse herself into the taverns and inns and wayhouses, stealing, fighting, and gambling for the money to purchase your ingredients. "I used to pretend to be all sorts of people." Her smile has a faraway look. You still remember the stench of the hag's awful breath. The succulent lamb is absolutely delicious.
The Koschakkan mountains, and the faint glows of lamps in the celestial city, speckling the mountainside like wayward sparks, unfold beneath the wide, glass-paned windows of your suite. As Elana begins to monologue her ideas on the changes to her dress and character she'll need to make, you reflect on what ingredients and equipment you'll need to bring north, the various ways of sealing your palacial laboratory from intruders in your absence, and the terrifying power of the Pygmy's Roc's glare. You won't need much; with your abilities, you've learned to fashion much of the equipment you need, transmuting glass potion vials from gourds, iron apparattuses from carved wood, and eventually Royal Alchemist robes from commoner's rags.
You figure that you'd be able to begin your journey at least a day from now; enough time to acquire horses, supplies, and equipment for the road. It'll take perhaps a month, by horse, to reach the Froze-Teeth, massive, jutting broken mountains separating the more temperate midland forests from the icy wastes to the north. You hear that summer lasts only about a month, in the North, and that the winter's solstice darkens the land for nearly an entire day. Once past the mountains, it'd be a day or two before reaching Durj's 'capital,' a basalt megalithic castle he'd somehow conjured from the rocky wastes in his mortal years. The place was called "Razotetur," and the few travelers from that place spread only rumors of horror.
When you finally bid Elana goodnight, you slump into an exhausted sleep. Dreams of soaring, gold-eye eagles come to you in your slumber, and the Empress' smile, her cheeks whole and unmarked flesh, purple eyes shining with healthy pride for her triumphant Royal Alchemist.
>Before you set off, is there anything you'd like to do in the Imperial City?
>courtesans might need help, but Elana hasn't mentioned anything of them
>While you travel, you may choose three of the following:
>Learn a new skill; this can be alchemical, martial, magical, athletic, artisanal, creative, etc. You'll be a little under proficient by the time you reach Razotetur.
>Train your physical strength and combat skills with Elana. You will still be unseasoned, but you'll be stronger and more capable of defending yourself in melees.
>Read three books on any subject from your library.
>Become a practiced 'falconer' with your eagle.
>Develop a new personal equip (only one at a time; currently: alchemical blunderbuss)
>Write in; within reason
7ca105 No.2272
>>2205See if the courtesans need help. Then, while traveling, train physical strength with your friend, train your bird, and learn 8-Way Fist.
3a48e9 No.2276
>>2272The following day, while visiting the Celestial City for your travel preparations, you visit the Heavenly Boudoir to call on Kasika. When you enter the theater house, there are a dozen beautiful courtesans draped over the furniture, languishing and sipping at wine, chatting quietly to each other, and occasionally glancing at you with curious, seductive eyes.
Kasika was not present, but a lovely girl with tremendous, plump breasts escorts you to a parlor in the back, and is able to ply you with information as to the matron's business. You learn that Kasika has disappeared, vanished without trace but leaving specific instructions for her properties and holdings. She also left you a warning: a vanquisher of tremendous capacity and insatiable bloodlust has learned of your 'abilities,' and seems to want you personally dead. The courtesan-assassin Elana fended off you seemed to be working for him, and the vanquisher would doubtlessly be searching for you. Furthermore, this dread warrior seemed to be an occult fanatic, sacrificing victims to an ancient demon-goddess. As the girl relays the message, you can hear the concern quaver in her voice. Additionally, as part of Kasika's instructions for the Boudoir, the girl purchases a stock of medicine for the women and their families, placing a fat purse of gold upon your lap in exchange for a writ for the palace.
================================================================================You rest in the saddle of your horse, Gehrys perched on your shoulder, Elana mounted on a fiery-tempered mare beside you. The morning sun shines down, drenching the palacial officials and imperial guards, arranged around the monarch as she says her farewells.
Lei-Aloris wanted to see you before you embark on your voyage. She wears no shawl today, as she says her farewells to you, the elf-eating Roc perched on the walls behind her silently boring into your skull. Your gold-eye eagle shrieks in retaliation, and for a moment, there is a menacing tension between the birds.
"May you soar on your travels, brave scholar" she urges you, tone hopeful and face unscruitable. "I wish you well, Royal Alchemist Boddle."
================================================================================Interlude
3a48e9 No.2286
3a48e9 No.2287
7ca105 No.2288
>>2286I don't understand all of this yet.
3a48e9 No.2299
Interlude
===========================================================================
The journey north takes you through the arid highlands, skirting through the rocky canyonlands where greenish rivers wound like viney tendrils through the eroded stone plateaus and spires. Though the howls of wild animals often woke you in the night, and by day the persistent threat of bandit or monster attacks kept your senses sharp, the journey never seemed too troublesome. Elana had a knack for finding amenities and shelter, and when there was none to be found you slept beneath the vast, starlit heavens, ate wild game, and trained your gold-eye eagle.
To both yours and Elana's delight, Frika is a talented cook. Her meals, while never particularly fancy, never fail to satiate your party and provide you with newfound strength. You find her attitude coarse and direct, and while she has no concept of certain scientific concepts or historical relevance, she proved capable of mending or fixing nearly all of your gear, or inventing substitutes for the trashed. She didn't talk to you, much, preferring her own, tunless hums, or the company of the horses while you camped.
Most of your vigor is turned toward's rigorous physical training, overseen by an often amused Elana. After a few weeks, you find yourself growing tougher and stronger than you've ever been in your life, having learned the basics of an ancient martial art. With your bare fists you can quite easily crack skulls and break ribs, and your muscles and athletic form have improved as well. She assures you that you're no warrior, and that you couldn't defend yourself unarmed against a sword or an axe, but you can hold your own in unarmed clashes. Your technique is very untrained; while powerful, it's not particularly advanced or practiced.
The rivers you follow north eventually take you to the tremendous Avalanche Falls, a massive sheet of freezing water that dammed the northern lake resevoirs from the more temperate midlands. The dam didn't always hold, particularly in the late summer, and when the ice shatters great torrents of water pour into the rivers and flood the lowlands and canyons, washing the riverfolk downstream with any too foolish to build houses on the banks. The spectacle unleashes a powerful crack, louder than thunder, and a few indegineous tribes and species worshipped the event in their animistic rituals. Behind and above the chunks of the dammed river, running with trickling water-rivulets from the crisp autumn air, the Froze-Teeth loom. You'll have to climb an old, dangerous path to reach the pass through the northern mountains, and leave your horses behind.
Durj's dark fortress awaits, just a few days away now. You've managed to keep your resolve thus far, but nonetheless– you're nervous. The message you sent north should have reached Rezotetur by now, confirming that you'd be accepting your position in the Deep-Mutterer's court. You desperately hope that the infamously deranged monarch would recognize the Royal Alchemist Boddle and his skills, while Elana schemes with wild speculation as to saving the Empress' healer from his dark clutches. She dyed her hair in the last city you passed through, and bought a set of heavy black armor ; she explained it was necessary to blend in with Durj's landscape. In her grim attire, she looked almost an entirely different person, and she even seemed to spar more viciously as she trained your martial technique.
3a48e9 No.2300
>>2299Navigating the rugged peaks on foot soon proves an arduous task; the icy winds howl day and night, and the meager fires and ice-caves you shiver the night through are a far cry from the sunny deserts and shrublands of the south, and even after such short a time the comforts of palacial estates are but a bygone dream. In the night, the rumbling voices of distant giants echoes through the chasms of the mountains, and warnings carved into the waymarkers urge travelers southward. You're thankful Frika cannot read, she seems somewhat impervious to the cold as well, trudging on dutifully through the snowy drifts; Elana is another matter. She stares glumly at the signs she notices and complains of the cold constantly, fashioning makeshift snow-pads for the party's feet.
Crossing the mountains takes three days, with little sleep as you took turns standing guard against the wolves and more dire threats, tending the sputtering flames of the shelter's fire as the blankets provide meager bastion from the biting winds. By the time the mountains break into the wide, open tundra, you'd used nearly all the alchemical reagents you'd acquired making potions to ward off the frostbite. To your surprise, not far after managing the foothills of the descent, a man with grey skin, wearing only a pair of ragged trousers on a very clearly dead horse greets you. He rides to hail as you approach, and when he nears you can percieve the hollow holes where his eyes once were, and the rigid set of his massive jaw. His right ear appears mutated and shredded, and his left is altogether gone, and atop his head is perched a small, tassled cap. The whipping wind seems incapable of dislodging it from his crown.
"HAIL, TRAVELER," he intones, his voice booming through the blizzarding winds. "Are you the Royal Alchemist, arrived to pledge your alliegence to Emperor Durj Deep-Mutterer, commander of the freezelands, the supreme sorcerer-king, master of the dread fortress, the greatest of all immortal kings?"
"Yes," you manage to reply from chattering teeth, "'Spose so." He considers you a moment.
"ROUSE YOURSELF!" the grey-skinned rider urges, waving his arms in the air, and suddenly you feel your body dashing through the icy drifts. You see Elana and Frika similarly rushing, and a strange bend seems to pull you closer to the castle. You feel utterly exhausted, hyperventilating the algid atmosphere, legs burning and cramped from the cold, when suddenly you are before the gates. You cough and sputter, the three of you shivering before Razotetur's gargantuan black gate.
"OPEN THE GATES," booms the rider, "KARL BRINGS THE ROYAL ALCHEMIST FOR THE EMPEROR. QUICKLY! THEY FREEZE."
The gate creaks open, and you are thrust into warm darkness.
3a48e9 No.2384
Your eyes slowly adjust to a gloomy antechamber. Two sullen coal brazers glow at the far end of the room. The hoarfrost coating your traveling gear has already begun to melt, spattering water across the dark, stone floor.
"Boddle, what the fuck was that?" sputters Elana. Frika seems to be coughing uncontrollably, undoubtedly too hastened by the rider's warping spell.
"The rider only–" you begin to explain, when a low, sultry voice calls to you from the far shadows.
"Royal Alchemist Boddle, I presume?" a woman inquires, "and his… entourage?"
>Respond with greetings
>Demand to know who speaks
>Remain silent
>Other
c0efb1 No.2540
>>2384>Respond with greetings. No need to antagonize anyone within possibly hostile territory. 3a48e9 No.2544
You offer a tentative hello to the darkness, soon followed by a quavering confirmation that you were indeed Royal Alchemist Boddle and his company. The woman moves into the gloom of the glowing coals, and you're immediately struck by her rapturous allure and cruel charm. She's dressed in a fringed, green jacket that extends nearly past her knees and leaves a good deal of breathing room for her bountiful bosom. She clicks toward you in tall, leather boots.
"My name is Karva, I am castellan for Razotetur, black hall of the imperious and lofty northern king, Emperor Durj the Deep-Mutterer. I oversee the affairs of this palace, of which you are now a tenant. You will obey my commands, and you will provide glorious Durj with any and all equipment he demands of you. We've been expecting you, since you sent that plump dove here." She smiles, licking her lips.
You sense that Elana already has a deep dislike of this Karva.
She continues, "should your experiments or recipes necessitate ingredients or reagents unavailable to the fortress' stores, you may ask me to provide these and I will work to provide them to the king. Should the expenses of your efforts grow too great, I will provide your worthless corpse to the king as a measure of my contempt for incompetent alchemists."
Frika finishes sputtering, and the room falls very silent. Karva seems to have a mad light behind her darkly verdant eyes. You have no idea what her abilities could be, but you sense that she's more than capable of matching her words with deeds.
>Try to make reasonable conversation about your new tasks and duties
>Subserviently acknowledge Karva's supremacy
>Order Elana to unleash on the castellan.
c0efb1 No.2549
>>2544Try to make reasonable conversation about your new tasks and duties while glancing towards Elana, both to see if she has my back and can control herself instead of engaging against the castellan. (Btw, how do you make a roll in the thread? First time being here)
3a48e9 No.2550
"Er… what sort of provisions does the king require?" You hesitantly ask.
"I am not king, nor an alchemist, why would you ask me?" Karva narrows her eyes. "The previous tenant was working on a series of flesh-altering potions for the king. He didn't spend a great deal of time with the court, preferring to work in the laboratories."
"What happened to him?" inquires Elana. She seems on edge, ready to defend you in this strange place.
"I fed him to my dogs after one of his concoctions sickened the Emperor." Karva beams with a wide, flat smile.
"WOMAN," bellows a familiar voice. From the shadowed hallway where Karva revealed herself from, Karl stomps into the room, brushing snow and ice from his gray, bare shoulder. "Don't scare these southern pups, they still have warmth in their blood." He sniffs. "Their hearts still pump with natural vigor." The hollows of his eyes turn toward you.
"Yes, they can still pump," spits Karva, "unlike my dead husband." Karl snorts, and you can see the muscles of his arms and shoulders tense and expand. "Oh, stiffening up I see? At least death could do that for you."
Karl practically bristles with unliving fury, but restrains himself. "Travelers, the Deep-Mutterer has requested your presence," he informs you through gritted teeth.
>Agree to go see Durj Deep-Mutterer>Ask more questions of Karl / Karva>Demand to see your lodgings first>Other >>2549"Dice XdY" without quotes in the email field, where X is the number of die and Y is the # sides of the dice. So rolling two, twenty sided die would be dice 2d20 c0efb1 No.2551
Agree to go see the Deep-Mutterer. Lodgings and the likes could wait, the emperor less so.
3a48e9 No.2557
You nod, unsure of any desire to go deeper into the dark emperor's fortress, but Karl waves you onward. "Ignore the bitch," he grumbles as you follow him through the twilit halls, "she's that haughty to everyone, I should know." He grunts, something between of a laugh and a cough. "She was my loving wife in life." His voice drips sarcastic bile.
"Karva Corpse-Drinker, they call her now. Don't be fooled by her looks, she's as dead as I am. Most of the castle is."
>You're quite uncertain about this. Necromancy, banned in the southern kingdoms and practitioners exterminated by peasantry and crowns alike, is an inherently corrupting art. Once a necromancer has established a lust and capacity to enslave corpses, they seem to reanimate with wild abandon, generating necrotic lairs quickly from graveyards and the like.
>An incredible power source is necessary to sustain necromantic energy for any length of time; most necromancers rely on continuous fresh corpses for their sustenance. For a castle of this size, Durj would need to slaughter an army every day to maintain his strength. He likely possesses another source of energy.
>You've never experimented with necromancy yourself, but you could probably manage it. From what you know, entities like Karl and Karva are extremely advanced and complex works of necromantic effort.
"She's different than I am, I gotta stay cold." He slaps his granite skin, "else my meat rots. She can wander around anywhere, smelling like roses. Long as she has some blood to slurp. She prefers it from dead bodies. Mostly." He turns the vacant slots of his ocular cavities upon you. "Don't think of fucking her. You won't survive."
Elana nearly guffaws. "Boddle's not the most amazing with noble ladies," she gleefully tells the conversational corpse.
"She'd eat a runt like him alive," rumbles Karl. He continues to rant on his ex wife, leading you through gloomy, dark-stone walls. The exterior of the castle was grandiose, but clearly in disrepair; internally, the structure was utterly sound and sterile. No dust seemed to waft through the fortress, despite the uncountable shambling and discarded undead scattered throughout the halls. The reanimated bodies seemed mostly engaged with mundane or disturbingly arcane tasks; as you pass by one room, you see a zombie butchering a caribou, hacking off limbs with a thick cleaver, in another a mass of entwined limbs twitches and moans, while emaciated mummies chop and stick limbs, rearranging the heap. Each of the walls is periodically engraved with a stern, bearded visage; no doubt Durj Deep-Mutterer.
Soon, you come to an antechamber filled with most impressive undead guards; chained, necrotic minotaurs, wheezing and sighing from leathery lungs as they shamble around the chamber. Karl stops you here. "Do not taunt or touch the guardians," he informs you. "They will rend you to pieces. Through this room is the grand and greatest of thrones, most umbral seat of the great Durj. You alone will have your audience with the king, your companions must wait outside.
One more thing. I am the king's executioner. And torturer. And champion. Harm him, touch my wife, or challenge me, and you will die in agony." Karl leaves you, shambling down a corridor with a heavy step.
>Discuss events with party
>Ponder and strategize before audience
>Rush into the king's throne room
>other
3a48e9 No.2581
7ca105 No.2583
>>2581>discuss events with party 3a48e9 No.2588
Elana watches Karl leave with something akin to admiration. "For a walking corpse, he's alright," she comments. "Anyway this place terrifies me, when are we going to locate the healer or whatever so we can leave?"
"It's pretty big in here," remarks Frika. You frown at her simplicity. "I don't know where m'lord would even start looking."
>You reflect that going into Durj's seat of power, alone and unaccompanied, isn't incredibly suave or clever.
>He's clearly expressed more magical ability for one person than you've seen in your life.
>Doubtlessly your alchemical expertise will keep you alive, as long as you can continue to provide Durj with whatever he needs. Karva mentioned something about a 'flesh-altering' experiment undertaken by the previous tenured alchemist.
>Durj's champion and castellan alone are very very scary.
"Are you worried about going in there alone?" asks Elana.
"No," you lie. You're about to inform her of your alchemical expertise requiring a living brain, but you remember that none of the people you've met here possessed such.
"I'd be," puts Frika. "This place is scary." This is the most she's uttered in the months since leaving Ko-Schakka.
"You'll be alright," chirps your closest friend. "You'd best leave that blunderbuss here with me, you don't want him thinking you're an assassin." You highly doubt that leaving or taking the blunderbuss would affect your chances of assassinating Durj, but you smile at her sentiment.
>You sense that Elana and Frika both are trying as hard as they can to hide their fear. Neither like this place at all.
5d1a5d No.2706
>>2588You leave your blunderbuss with your friend and head in with caution.
3a48e9 No.2770
| Rolled 2 |
As the women begin to make as effective small talk of the horrors around them as they can, you begin to ready yourself to enter the throne room. The elaborate linen tapestries, cool marble floors, and woeful, hopeful, eager amethyst eyes seem all but a fever dream. The gurgling and hissing of the minotaurs slithers from the shadowed basalt antechamber like some demented fanfare.
You entrust the potion-blaster to Elana, who promises to keep it safe for you, and gives you a hug. Frika produces an awkwardly curtsy, and wishes you luck.
The chained beasts hiss with greater ferocity when you enter, somehow sensing your presence despite lacking functional sensory organs. Their chains, perhaps of a metal known to you, creak and groan in the gloom, the rasping grind a cacophony of groan and occasional shriek. A few of the minotaurs snap their bony jaws at you, but the faint illumination from the hallway behind you guides your path forward, and their chains inhibit their violence.
You stand on the precipice of umbra. You have spent a few hours in absolute darkness, for alchemical experiments, yet the black of a windowless palatial studio was welcoming and natural compared to the void before you. This utter lightlessness was not full of an alchemist blundering about with photosensitive philters. This lightlessness was guarded by dead minotaurs and thralls, horrifying from their industry without exerting effort to intimidate. This black is full of
their king.You are the Royal Alchemist. There's no accomplishment too impossible for your capacities.
You step through.
1d100 for Boddle's response 3a48e9 No.2771
You find yourself in the most comfortable library you can imagine. The air simmers with the scent of rosebushes and fresh garden air, and from the tall, single-paned, utterly perfect glass windows stretching nearly three stories to the ceiling, the banners of a bloody sunset depict a scene more beautiful and natural than any embroiderer's tapestry. Between the strips of magenta atmosphere, vast bookshelves rise, completely packed with histories, texts, manuscripts, manuals, discourses, dissertations, illustrations, and tomes of every practice and facet of the natural world you've ever heard of or cared to study, and many, many more. Before you, seated at an armchair most luxurious, is the king.
He sports a large, pointed white beard, with two tendrils of luxurious silky mustache curling on either side of his cheeks. His bushy, silvery eyebrows furrow and twitch, seemingly of their accord, creasing his brow into a perpetually teeming mass of lines. His blue coat is utterly devoid of unsightly contamination, gleaming with gold buttons and rivets. The nostrils of his pointed nose flair at you as you spot him. His iris of his eyes are bright, carmine red, and much larger than a normal humans, but his lids spread wide to reveal white around them. He appeared to be reading, until you enter.
"Boddle! You've managed to make it! Might I comment on the celerity of your peregrinate, you've come quite far! And it's cold, so they tell me." He suddenly appears to be sipping at a liquid in a small, daintily embossed ceramic cup. "Coffee," he smacks his lips, "it's from the south. Wonderful stuff. Makes the brain surge with practical juices.
"Err…greeting," is all you manage to eek out. The mad, twisted monarch before you
"Ha!" he barks, "Were you expecting the king to be /ghastly/!" He states at you. "Some monstrous, malevolent foe to haunt your deficient spawn's nightmares?" He begins to laugh, wildly, and you are filled with dread as the corners of the room erode into shadows.
The laughter stops, quite suddenly. The king appears before you, his eyes boring into your own not two inches away, the bitter stench of his drink rolling from his humid breaths. "Don't fuck with me, boy," he grunts, voice sawing with deep, discordant undertones, "The king is not uncivilized, but I can be." He reappears in his chair, dainty cup in hand.
>What the fuck how does someone respond to this
>Ask why you're here, generally trying to be polite
>Demand to know what is going on
>Tell him you want out. There must be another way to rescue the healer.
>Inquire about the king, and his realm
c2fb58 No.2803
| Rolled 22 |
>>2771>Ask why you're here, generally trying to be politeRolling 1d100 like you said.
c2fb58 No.2804
3a48e9 No.2806
"Ah… why has his majesty brought me here? And… how does his majesty know my name?"
He grunts. "So you think yourself brought here, do ye? By my majesty, even?" His chuckle ripples the fabric of the phantasmal archive. "Hardly. You strode through ice and snow and my basalt halls and through my shadows to present yourself to my pleasure.
"As for your name, it is known to some in whom his majesty trusts counsel. They urged you as champion for "
Outside, the sunset seems to being growing dimmer, yet no lamps illuminate the library. Instead, the parchment of the books begin to emit an eerie glow, as do Durj's crimson eyes. The smell of roasting steaks wafts through the room, as do rich spices and herbs. Two platters heaped with bloody cuts of beef, sweet potatoes, crunchy bread and two goblets of thick, dark ale appear before you.
"But it is of no matter, your narrative syntax," continues Durj. "You arrived, and his majesty is esteemed for your presence. You see, I desire something. Something very dear to me indeed." As he speaks, the furrows in his brow quiver and mold into frightful designs, above the bustling of his bushy eyebrows.
"Er…What does his majesty want?"
"A body."
"A body?"
"Yes, corpus. Form. Tangible essence, of a biological construction. Taste. Touch. Smell! I desire it all once more, and his majesty craves the excitement of mortal conflict." His nostrils flare, sniffing his meal with relish, and a small knife manifests in his gargantuan hands before he hacks at the cowflesh. "As you, most scholarly of alchemists, must have discerned, this place is fictional. It isn't real! You imagine it." He bites the beef, eyes for a barest moment fluttering before snapping to fixate on you, his hand mechanically shoving the food into his mouth. "Ah… it's been such a long time since I was able to remember such a fine meal. Those Celestial City chefs know their stuff."
"How…?"
"I'm king here, boy!" He bellows, lurching forward to spray you with bits of meat and and sweet potatos. "And his majesty bestows most merits on the reminscence of a good meal. This isn't a place that exists," he restates. "You just imagined it. But I am king here! His majesty's vassals provide his visionary capacity. Observe, boy."
The room flickers and falls away, into an inky sea of shadow. You seem floating, without any means to support your body, through the empty vaccuum, until your feet touch on cold, hard stone. "Look," the grating voice of Durj urges you.
The most insignificant flicker of light glows in the chamber, and your desperate eyes find the source to be a small gem, embedded in the head of a titanic, metallic construct. The gloomy shade looms over you, inert and rusting, but you sense a tremendous vitality within the golem. On his back rests an axe, with a single-headed blade larger than your entire body.
"This is my corporeal matter," eminates the voice of Durj, seemingly all around you. The glow fades back into shadows, and once more you are in the library with the man shoveling his meal in front of you.
>Durj seems to desire an end to his immortality.
>You could research this in Ko-Schakka, or have a courier deliver your books. (This would unseal your laboratory.)
>Agree to help Durj find his body without condition
>Attempt to extract information about the healer
>Inquire about Durj, Razotetur, his people, or the previous alchemist
>Other
3a48e9 No.2807
bf7747 No.3279
Such a good quest dies because of players and not the QM being inactive? Jeez…>>2807Attempt to extract information about the healer. Don't make it sound too obvious that finding him is a part of our mission. Let's say that we have heard several stories about him, as well as rumours that he's somewhere in the area. Say that we would be eager to work with such a talented alchemist. Mention something about sharing knowledge and having common autism to make it sound more genuine. Finish by saying that if we could find him and work together with him, our work on his body would go much smoother and would have much higher chance of success.
3a48e9 No.3317
>>3279"Certainly… if I may inquire, have you explored any other arcane venue? The Ko-Schakkans mentioned a particular thaumaturgical practioner who wandered these parts…" you paraphrase, misquoting an excerpt from an old arch-magus of particular narcissism and imperialistic philosophy. Durj's mustache quivers approvingly, his brow knotting and gnarling furiously.
"That healer, eh? The one infesting my basement," his voice grates angrily, "enthralling my slaves! The nerve of it. Your king commands you to brew a vat to brim with searing inferno or caustic toxin to remove its filth from the bowels of my castle! Nay, the healer was totally rebellious to my cause, and in mine own kingdom!" His fury heightens with every outburst, and outside the evening garden flickers and seethes with shadows.
"Sire, what if I could convince him to work with us? Surely such a powerful source of magic might be researched…"
"No! Ha!" he barks in a mad laugh. "It's impossible to subject! His majesty does NOT will it reside here, and you will obliterate it by my command!"
>Ask about the healer's status>Change the subject >Agree to help Durj>Agree to help Durj / attack the healer>other bf7747 No.3318
>>3317Let's politely inquire about the healer. Ask him why did he come here, what kind of trouble did he cause and what's happening to him right now, as well as how dangerous he may be.
3a48e9 No.3721
"That curmudgeonous rebel! It defies the royal dominion, in mine own home!" The metallic echoes of his voice have become perceptible, the clinking clamor of the iron monarch shuddering through your bones. "The serfs that his majesty commanded were somehow… relinquished. Their obscene organic fester corrupts my kingdom's perfect, immortal stature!" he erupts, spittle ejecting from his maw.
"As far as for the danger, the living present little," Durj's tone darkens to more controlled and languid surety. The ends of his illusory mustache vibrate violently, seemingly whipping and curling like the tail of a young mouse. "Those bold enough to venture from the disgusting nest quickly re-assimilate into the kingdom. My lieutenants and lesser champions even now stand watch at the borders of the green filth. Green! Even here, so blighted of all living organisms!" You vaguely wonder what horrors Durj posted at the perimeter of the healer's verdant defiance.
"Despite the impudence, it doesn't seem interested in any aggression toward my dominion. It sallies no beasts, nor spells against my force, it makes not even effort to extract itself from the dungeons." As Durj explains this, you sense a very slight confusion in his voice, as if the pacifism presented an insurmountable, uncrushable foe.
3a48e9 No.3722
>>3721>discuss the healer further>explore Durj's plans for a new corporeal form>Agree to help Durj>other bf7747 No.3736
>>3722>explore Durj's plans for a new corporeal form 42d74b No.3873
"Err… I understand your need for ascetic purity, sire," you awkwardly fumble for your words, then decide to change the subject. "What does the king intend to do with his new body?"
"Why, live of course!" the mad monarch bellows with a hearty laughter. "To taste! To touch! To smell a rich, delicious dinner, to inundate my own senses with the direct and raw sensations of the outside world! I could conquer the southern kingdoms atop a stallion, like a true hero! His majesty would need to dodge arrows, deflect swords with his brute strength! Ha-ha!" Durj's brow smooths for a moment. "To die… to truly fear death…" his eyes glaze in rapturous euphoria, "Immortality is boring, my dear alchemist, bland and full of dusty memories with little real thrill beyond the psychical sense of slaughtering and maiming and subjugating the living."
His brow returns to a furious storm of knotting lines. "Begone, we will speak again when you've recovered your strength."
The library dissolves, and umbral waves sweep over your mind.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You awake in a plush bed in a cozy room, the swirling snows of the north dance beyond a thick pane window. A fireplace merrily crackles in one corner, a skull perched atop the hearth reminds you of Durj's domain. Several empty bookshelves are arranged around the chamber, and an ornate wooden desk with a matched carved chair. Next to the stand is Gherys, your gold-eyed eagle, peering curiously at you with a luminous yellow eye.
From the doorless aperture leading from the room, a bustling Frika spots your rousing form. "M'lady!" she calls, presumably to Elana, and soon both women crowd around you, babbling with questions: what happened in the room with Durj, how long before they can return to Ko-Schakka, what does the emperor want you to accomplish?
>explain to them Durj's plans in careful detail
>ignore Durj, and plot escape from this frigid necromantic hell
>ask them how long you've been out
>briefly gloss over your experiences in the umbral throne
>other
bf7747 No.4141
>>3873
>explain to them Durj's plans in careful detail 3a48e9 No.5254
NOTICE:
due to OPs progression condition(s), any efforts to continue this quest will be deranged, and tangent to the original conceptualization of characters, setting etc
That said, OP can and is capable of writing the quest, drawings less so
bf7747 No.5354
>>5254We still want you to write it OP. Drawings were nice, but the Quest was good enough on its own. We can do without them if you can continue.
3a48e9 No.5368
You carefully recount to an incredulous Elana and disturbed Frika, who keeps interrupting your recollection with disquiet mutters of black magic. Anger flared in your friend's eyes at the Emperor's designs for a new body; "He's already got everything, what does he need some creepy ritual and new taste buds for?" contempt riddling her voice. You confide your ignorance to her.
As you explain that you could return to Ko-Schakka, if need be, for materials with which to perform some alchemical procedure from your library and laboratory, Frika collapses at your knees, begging to return with you. "Please, m'lord alchemist," she sobs into your hand, "I want to go back to my family, please take me back to Ko-Schakka."
"We could bring the healer, too, maybe," Elana offers, "if we can save him, or her… we'd have to get her out of here, somehow." She stares at the wastes beyond the icy window, toying with a strand of darkly dyed hair, while you warm your hands next to the cheery fire and ignore a softly blubbering Frika.
"You could always… ask him."
The voice, smooth, low and leaden, reverberates from above your head.
>roll 1d6 success >3
>"Ask what?"
>"Who said that?"
>Command Elana to attack
>Other
bf7747 No.5369
| Rolled 1 (1d6) |
>>5368We seem to have forgotten that as a disciple of Optus, we have the access to the Vault. Make a mental note to ourselves to put all the necessary equipment we may need on our journeys next time.
>Ask who is it and have everyone scan the area. Tell Elana not to attack yet, but to make ready for eventual combat. 3a48e9 No.5404
>You are deeply disquieted.
>You feel as if something now slightly dominates your mind, as you fathom the mechanisms of Optus' occult vault, and the potential inventory you could sequester in it.
"Raahahahhahahha," the voice thunderously chuckles above you. "Bow before me, Grand Mo-Zu, Greatest of All Arcane Spellbinding and Most Luminous Amidst Lamps." Your eyes slowly turn up toward the skull, resting on the mantle above the blazing logs. Ectoplasm fire drips with eerie, whitish-blue flame from above the bleached, cracked cranium, embers spattering on the gnarled and amorphous bone before dissolving into the air.
"The fuck is that?" Elana asked, tensing, but abstaining from lifting her lajatang. Frika ceases her dismay to stare in flat horror at the talking skull, making some superstitious peasant gesture over her forehead.
"I am Grand Mo-Zu, the Greatest of Lamps!" the skull insists, taking a slightly whinier tone when addressing the woman. "Wizard to Durj, once. Now, I am an archivist for his library."
"Don't attack, Elana. The former alchemist?" you ask, remembering Durj's mentions of the previous magi.
"No," blares the lamp, "A //wizard//, not a grungy glugger. I produced spells and incantations for the Emperor, once, now I chatter on your mantle and tell him all your secrets."
Elana frowns. "I jest, woman," Mo-Zu continues, his tone apologetic, "I don't divulge to his majesty all that I know. For example, he could remain oblivious of your machination to spring the plant creep in the basement. Or he could learn of it immediately, if you refrain from telling me where you're leaving to and how, and promise to bring me with you." Having made his proclamation, the skull's ball glows sullenly, as if waiting for your response.
>You've never encountered anything like Grand Mo-Zu; he could be an advanced necromantic construction, a demonically bound spirit, or something else entirely.
>"Who are you?"
>"What does Durj need archivists for?"
>"Why do you want to leave?"
>Hurl the skull in the firepit for spying on you.
bf7747 No.5414
>>5404We could work with Mo-Zu, but we need to learn who he was in life and what it is that he became right now, as well as why would he want to leave this place.
"I assume that as Durj's archivist, your role was to research and document everything related to necromancy and immortality?"
3a48e9 No.5423
>>5414"Of course not," disdainfully burbles Mo-Zu, "do I seem a festering lich to you, swishing about with robes and clattering skeletal legions? I was a very renowned scholar-wizard, in life, some hundred years ago. I mastered such sorceries as sustainable illumination incantations, everlasting candles, inextinguishable lamps, et cetera. Undead do not interest me, my most beautiful and wondrous spells I wove beneath noonday skies, surrounded by perfect sunlight. Ah…" he trails off. "But then Durj invited me here, said he needed light-working for his library. After that bitch Karva greeted me, those wretched servants of his ripped my skull from my torso and His Majesty's magnificent golem hulk consumed my body and brain while His Majesty offered service or annihilation of my incorporeal essence.
"I suppose you're doing well, so far, considering you're alive," the lamp compliments you, "but you're a sniveling cantrip-smit compared to the most profound Mo-Zu. I can see why Durj has no interest in your quintessential."
>Elana looks as if she could chortle, a wry smile on her face. You sense she might laugh, were her vocabulary broader."As far as documentation, his Majesty has no such need; the entirety of his wealth is well maintained within his mental vaults, a perfect inventory, I'd imagine. I oversee the luminescent needs of the library, and Razotetur for those breathing residents with nonmagical sight."
bf7747 No.5453
>>5423"That's interesting. You don't seem to be too fond of Durj after he killed you and forced you to serve him, and apparently you don't like the thought of assisting him for eterenity either. Yet at the same time, it appears that others like Karl or Karva don't have any problems like that, and they all look very loyal to him, despite them being killed and enslaved similarly to you, can you explain that?"
3a48e9 No.5463
>>5453"The castellan is…she's an evil cunt, honestly" grumbles Grand Mo-Zu, "Her sadistic dementia was renowned before her undeath. Karl was a different sort, he was honorable, if a bit cruel and domineering towards his foes. They both owe their existence, and immortality to Durj, freely of their own accord as I know the histories of this place.
"Really, though, Durj isn't so bad when you're not living," the fluorescing skull comments. "He's quite generous with his archives, I've read spellbooks beyond my most obscene fantasies from his library, and expanded my own reserves and repertoires greatly. The shambling grunting sorts of corpses here comment they enjoy undeath as well, being numb to the cold and the hunger they enjoyed daily in life and all. Personally I find it dark, here, and gloomy, and I've perused all that I care to from his Majesty's dominion."
bf7747 No.5464
>>5463"Honestly, this is the first time I'm about to trust a floating skull, and I hope it's not going to be my last mistake.
We will be departing for the Imperial City of Ko-Schakka to obtain several alchemical ingredients. We're going to inform His Majesty that they don't occur naturally in Razotetur, so it's rather unlikely Karva could provide them.
If Ko-Schakka suits you, we may take you along, but how are you going to convince Durj to let you leave is your own concern."
3a48e9 No.5465
>>5464Mo-Zu emits a deep, gloating laugh. "I'm pleased for your trust!" he exclaims. "And more pleasurable to me is the prospect of Ko-Schakka, it's quite bright there, isn't it?"
"M'loooord…" Frika whimpers behind you, "please, m'lord, don't bring the skull home. It's unnatural."
"Silence, serf," the Grand Mo-Zu snaps at her. "I could shatter your pitiful mind with an illusion so blissful you'd die before wanting to wake up, and beg me to return you before you forgot it." He chuckles, contented by her whimpers. "If it would please m'lord Boddle," the dome's voice twisted to mimic Frika's, "The voyage of the Grand Mo-Zu to Ko-Schakka would go unnoticed by Durj, as it would appear to his Majesty that the resident alchemist and entourage would be performing duties as usual…"
"We don't need magic junk," Elana tells the spectral wizard, "Durj gave us permission to just leave to Ko-Schakka for Boddle's alchemy, right?"
Gehrys screams, startling you and Elana. "Obnoxious bird," Mo-Zu sneers at the gold-eye eagle, "It's doubtful Durj will let you go. He, or the castellan, can provide nearly any reagent a wizard or alchemist would have need of. As a monarch he's jealous, by divinity he's god of Razotetur. So really, if you want to shroud His Majesty's all seeing-eye to sneak off, you must in fact must convince the Grand Mo-Zu to blind him for your departure. Or hack through the rotting minotaurs with whatever that spear thing the woman spins around and order the serf to shatter stone with her fists, or some other peasant implement.
"Oh, and I won't help you with the basement, the thing down there is abhorrent to Mo-Zu and I cannot give you my assistance in removing it. If you wish to steal it away to Ko-Schakka, do so of your own impetus."
>Mo-Zu does not seem trustworthy, but you're almost certain he does genuinely want to depart Razotetur>You probably don't need Mo-Zu to escape>Keeping Frika near the skull is probably unwise
>Ask about the healer in the basement>See if Mo-Zu knows any weaknesses of Durj>Try to figure out what Mo-Zu wants in order to leave Razotetur (roll 1d100)>other bf7747 No.5466
| Rolled 29 (1d100) |
>>5465>>Try to figure out what Mo-Zu wants in order to leave Razotetur bf7747 No.5467
>>5466Gosh, I always have bad luck with dice.
3a48e9 No.5478
>>5467"What exactly do you need, Mo-Zu?" You ask the skull.
"The Grand Mo-Zu requires a carrying box. A good one, something ornate, artistic. You know the sort. And, once we're to Ko-Schakka, access to a professional necromancer or some sort of occultist, I've no persuasion which. I'll need a resurrection, of sorts, at the very least some putrescent corpse to stagger about in leper's rags. My most luminescent spells often require gestures, and such. Oh, and a Ko-Schakkan hat, pointy like you've got."
"Anything else?" Elana asks.
"No," Mo-Zu replies, "that is all I need of you."
"Let me grab you a velvet cushion, too," she jeers. "Why the hell should we trust you once you've got a body, isn't that what Durj wants too?"
"Well, sure," he offers, "Except I am not a Black Necromantic Emperor of Lokt's favor, only a mere light wizard. With a body, I can at best continue my magical studies with severe impediment. Raising a hoard of undead is hardly within my power."
"I see," Elana states.
>Ask about the extent of Mo-Zu's abilities >Inquire as to details about the basement healer>Roll to learn more about Durj and Razotetur (1d100)>OtherMultiple offered choices can be selected, as well as modified by players' discretion bf7747 No.5484
| Rolled 56 (1d100) |
>>5478>Roll to learn more about Durj and RazoteturAfter that, ask him about his abilities.
3a48e9 No.5487
>>5484Mo-Zu mutters a few words in an incomprehensible language, before levitating himself to hover in the center of the room, putting your back to the fireplace as you turn to behold the floating sorcerous skull. Frika scuttles out of your bedroom. "What do you know of Durj and Razotetur, Grand Mo-Zu?" you politely ask.
The room glows a moment, a luminous burst flaring from the lamp's embers. "Quite a bit. However, he's no simple man, nor hardly human, and so there's quite a great deal that Mo-Zu is ignorant of him, too. What do you wish to know of the Deep Mutterer?"
"How powerful is he?" Elana interjects.
"How much power does a malevolent thaumaturgical grave-king possess? Far beyond my abilities to gauge, woman. You could not fight him alone, not with a thousand brave knights at your side and several mages at your back."
"Well… what would it take to kill him?" she asks, ignoring his challenge.
"Perhaps, melting the golem to a puddle of slag. True dragonfire could do it, the drakish stuff will only warm him, but perhaps Lokt would revive him, if he died in battle…"
"What magical abilities and schools is he proficient in?" You pose to him.
"All of them known to me. Elemental kinesis, tribal shamanism, necromantic arts, ritualism, demonology, even geomancy and the secrets of life-magic. Of my candescence studies he possessed incredible aptitude, made more for his consumption of the old brain, no doubt."
"What can you tell us about Razotetur?" Elana asks.
"The fortress is impenetrable, impregnable, and immune to any forces which Durj resists. It is surrounded by the northernmost and bleakest wastelands to be called a kingdom. The wealth, both material and immaterial, in Razotetur is unfathomable and cannot be counted by any mortal secretaries nor constrained by ordinary archives, and the entire southern nations could not hope to plunder Durj's vaults in less than a year of persistent pillaging–but they would tear themselves to pieces fighting each other for the trove long before reaving it. The restless undead His Majesty commands here are both somewhat individually conscious and totally loyal to Durj, unlike most necromancers, who must strip all from the corpses before enslaving them."
A heavy fist bangs hard against the door in the next room. Frika yelps.
"Alchemist!" comes the deep, muffled bellow from the door.
bf7747 No.5488
>>5487Gather everyone and anwser the call, but proceed with caution.
3a48e9 No.5499
>>5488Frika scurries back into the room at the heavy thuds, and Elana springs into a defensive posture, guarding the three of you. You stare over her shoulder towards the booming oaken frame, disquieted.
"Calm yourselves," Mo-Zu reassures the group. "It's Karl, his voice is recognizable. What do you want, zombie?!" The skull bellows at the portal, which bursts open to reveal a dour Karl, a greatsword strapped to his back.
His foppish hat seems small and out of place atop his gargantuan dome as the ashen royal executioner beholds the three of you with his sockets. "Drop that stick, girl, before I take it and snap it over my knee," he grunts at Elana. She lowers the weapon after a moment.
"What is it, Karl? I was telling them how to kill Durj."
Karl provides a guffaw, the zweihander strapped over his shoulder clattering with the dessicated noise. "They're welcome to try." He grates, slowly turns his gaping eye-holes towards you. "The castellan requests your audience, alchemist. Come or I'll break your girlfriend's spine." He stomps away from your door. "Not you, woman, stay. Just the alchemist. And Mo-Zu, if it cares to."
>Go with Karl>Ask what the Castellan wants>See if you can convince him to let Elana accompany you >Refuse bf7747 No.5503
>>5499"Of course, I will go at once. I would ask you to let Elana accompany me though, if possible. It's not really like we're going to try anything, we're aware of your and your late wife's impressive combat skills…"
*pause for deep breath*
"It just kinda… makes me feel uncomfortable and a bit nervous wandering in some dark Necropolis Fortress surrounded by skeletons, walking corpses and floating skulls all the time y'know… Having at least one living person in my surroundings would be a huge relief…"
*autistic chatter begins*
"Besides… you were alive once, so unless you enjoyed the company of decomposing corpses in life I think you could understand that the living tend to stick with the living, the dead stick with the dead… et cetera… I guess that in such place it's easy to forget how it felt to be alive?"
3a48e9 No.5506
>>5503The Grand Mo-Zu chortles at your babble. "So many centuries have passed, who cares about the living feelings? Dusty Karl's sustains his unlife by the sword, and Durj's spells, and his hatred of our dear castellan. Whatever previous life he experienced is long obliterated from his memory."
"I'll crush you more," Karl threatens the lamp, before considering your proposal. "If you need the woman to keep from wetting yourself while you're here, then take her with you. She must leave the sweepy staff-spear, or at least keep it away from me or Karva. I will fight her to break her bones. Karva will eviscerate her, maybe quickly." Elana's frown sneers into a glare, you reflect on her dark visage and fearsome armor, and wonder how much she has adapted to Razotetur.
"Fine. C'mon, Boddle, let's go see Karva." She stalks fearlessly past Karl, matching his menacing eye hollows with her bright blue eyes. You follow her into the labyrinth of hallways, the Grand Mo-Zu bobbing the brilliant flames above his head as he levitates behind you. The mummified undead slither and shamble past your small crew, ignoring you and hissing away from Mo-Zu's shine with disapproving gurgles. Some of the more impressive zombies, wearing bone crowns studded with torturous iron spikes, seem to peer at you with a lifeless cleverness that raises your hackles, lesser ghouls teeming around their gnarled legs like fetid infants.
>Attempt to start conversation with Karl (roll 2d100)>Rationalize horrors with Elana>Ask the lamp about Razotetur, Durj, Karl, Karva, etc>Observe horrors in abject silence as you navigate the fortress (1d100)>>5503 bf7747 No.5507
| Rolled 82, 79 = 161 (2d100) |
>>5506Subtly ask Elana to observe the surroundings and Durj's undead creatures as we walk. Have her keep an eye on anything that may give us some insight into this place. In the meantime, try to strike up a conversation with Karl.
"Say, Karl, there's one thing that has been on my mind ever since I got here. Out of all of His Majesty's servants, you seem to be kinda… different. I'm aware you could slash a person in half with as much cold blood as all the ghouls surrounding us, but still, for an undead you have some sort of… standards. Which makes me wonder, what kind of person were you in life? From what I've heard you used to be a warlord of some sort… And how did you get to know Karva? You don't seem to suit each other at all, unless she was different in life than she is now…"
3a48e9 No.5520
>>5507"Elana, keep an eye out for anything interesting or unusual," you whisper to your friend. She silently nods and continues following the large undead.
"Of course I'm different. I'm better. They're worthless dregs, I can kill you with my fist.
"Don't think that I have standards, human. Morality fled with my lifeblood. I can command a legion of Durj's zombies better than Karva, I slaughter mortals dumb enough to fight me. Like you're friend, if she ever flicks that stick at me." He slowly turns his head over one shoulder, the glow of Mo-Zu harsh on his slaty features. Elana wordlessly ignores the challenge, but her tense shoulders suggest a cooly restrained bloodlust.
"In life, I was King of Jyrcia, near the Murking Root. My people built castles from the rocky riverlands at the inlet of the swamp, and conquered the highland satyrs and the rotten elves. I was the most fearsome king. The others were fat fools, scheming vipers in gold, they would not fight me man to man. I killed their champions and my soldiers salted their corpse-ridden fields to the howls of their women's anguish. Durj was a man, then, or at least human in form." He pauses a moment, seeming to reflect as you pass by several zombies gnawing on the wing of a large rotting penguin.
"When Durj Deep-Mutterer first arrived in Jyrcia, my lady wife was smitten with him. He was a simple sorcerer with a fiendish charisma, in flesh, and he convinced Karva to goad me into building a passage through the Froze-Teeth, near Avalanche Falls. How and for what purpose I did not know, but he disappeared with twenty of whom I thought were my most loyal and brave men.
"A year later, he returns with a great hoard of undead. Rotting hydras, drakes, packs of wolves… thin naked peasants, the armored corpses of my men on shambling destriers, Durj himself atop some kind of great lizard.
"I remember he seemed very friendly, as he offered greetings to me, asked after my lands, and Karva. He demanded I give him my lands and my people, and he would let me live. I refused, and demanded a duel. He is no fop king; he accepted, and asked that we fight hand to hand. He beat me bloody into the dust, and brought me back to snap the neck of my lady wife. Then he spelled her up, too, and the rest of my peoples who did not scatter to the winds. He brought us north, to the black citadel he raised from the wastes, and we are bound in service evermore. It's all centuries ago. It doesn't matter, now."
"I thought you gave yourself willingly to Durj?" Mo-Zu confusedly inquires from behind you.
"You think me as incapable of destroying myself as you, lamp?" the executioner snarls. "I like this."
>Loo[k] at Razotetur (1d100)>Ask Dusty Karl another question>quietly follow until you meet the castellan bf7747 No.5522
>>5520"But of course…" - I think to myself. "Durj could bend both living and dead to his will that easily… And now Mo-Zu mentioned Lokt… Everything makes sense now… But I wonder if Karl still has some of his willpower inside of him… Maybe if I tell him…"
Approach Karl a bit closer, but in a slow motion and keeping a safe distance so we don't actually lose a limb.
"Karl. You said that Durj has convinced your most trusted men and your wife to his cause with next to no effort. Have you ever wondered how he could have both the living and the dead submit to him almost without question? Or have you ever wondered why you have never questioned your service to him in exchange for an afterlife in a Necropolis where there's nothing left for you anymore but Karva's insults ? Or how fast did your past life stop mattering to once a proud and a powerful King that you used to be?"
I lower my voice.
"I'll tell you something. Durj has summoned me here because he wants a mortal body. He told me he finds Immortality boring, and that he wants to fear Death again. Have you ever thought about what it would be like to finally die? To release your soul and see if there's something more on the other side than eternal service and insults of your former wife? Probably not. But Durj did. Do you wonder why?"
I lower my voice further and pronounce slowly, almost gravely:
"Lokt. The Will to Power. Does that name tell you anything?"
3a48e9 No.5525
>>5522"There is Void beyond the shadows of un-life. I refuse to glance at the depths. His Majesty engorges himself in its black aether."
"Poetic, Karl," comments Mo-Zu.
"If His Majesty wishes to thrill himself with life, he acts with the abyssal maw in his core. I will ride at his side and strike down his foemen without consideration. Their broken bits will join my legion in service to Durj and the Emperor will glut himself on the luxuries of the opulent south, if he commands me to march.
"If Durj were to abandon Razotetur and relinquish me from his service, where would I go? Without his necromancy, I would rot in the south. In the north there is snow and wolves and gaping heavens, little else. My people, what little remains of them, are here and I command them and many more yet." He stops you before a hallway, where agonized shrieks and harsh hiss preclude a miasma of burning hair and flesh. "Down here, first on the left," Karl motions to a basalt portal, where the screams seem to be the loudest. "I'll be around, alchemist. Be careful if you want to survive the castellan."
>Go see Karva>discuss Karl/Razotetur with group>confide in Elana alone about what you've learned>ask Mo-Zu about the details of Karl's story >other bf7747 No.5527
>>5525>Discuss the events with Elana and Mo-Zu. Keep our voice low."Mo-Zu, you've mentioned that Durj's power comes from Lokt's favour… I have been studying a bit about all of the Gods, but what I've seen here is completely beyond me."
"I've heard several stories about Disciples of Lokt. The more time people spend being around them, the more they find their minds submit to their will. At some point, they can even wipe that will off completely, creating a husk of a person… (I glance at one of the shamblers in the distance) More like the ghouls surrounding us than a human being. Then they use their authority to become usurpers and warlords."
"That would make sense, Durj implanted his will in the living to convince him to his cause. I assume he uses the same trick to keep his intelligent undead like Karl and Karva loyal to him. Maybe the Castellan would enjoy doing what she does even without that, but I felt that deep inside Karl is not pleased with what he has become… But it seems Lokt has shattered his willpower so much he doesn't care about it anymore."
"Do you think it is possible to free someone from the influence of a Disciple of Lokt? The only one I can think of would be having Durj anger him and lose his favour somehow… Which would take either creating an obstacle for amassing more Power, which Lokt demands from his disciples, or having Durj hindered by sentimentalism… He lost his Humanity ages ago though, I doubt either is possible."
"But now something I find even more disturbing… You mentioned… Lokt's *necromantic* favour? Did he ever grant such powers to his Disciples? I always thought Quet was the one associated with Necromancy…"
I pause for a while to reflect, and look at my companion.
"Well, Elana, what do you think about all this?"
3a48e9 No.5549
>>5527>>5527"Well, I'm still me, I think," Mo-Zu suggests. "Surely, I've //learned// much from His Majesty's library, but my memories are all here, the thoughts I consider are my own. Durj himself has not asked anything of me in quite a while, decades at least since he last considered the Greatest of Lamps. I'd imagine that the less-willful undead are equally ignored by him, he has no reason to torment us. That's Karva's delight."
"Why didn't you join him?" Elana skeptically asks of the skull. "What's to say that he controls you without your knowledge?"
"Do we really want to speak philosophy here? I am the Grand Mo-Zu. I am not Durj. Fundamentally, by the my light-loving essence, it's completely against my nature to entertain shadows."
"I can still see the shadows in your sockets, lamp," she shoots, "It's completely against mine to watch people suffer in undeath. If we could free them from the Emperor's dominion, somehow, would their souls be at peace?"
"Of course not. They're accustomed being undying immortal shades of former existence, half of them would prefer whatever dessicated lungs they have to hiss with compared to the gangrene of frostbite on their toes and the persistent malnourishment the living suffer in the north. The older ones, weaker than Karl, probably cannot fantasize for a moment of any free will and would be horrified for the consideration of doing anything for themselves. Durj stripped them of life's joy and pain and gave them purpose, his mad, lethal capricious purpose but a directive nonetheless, an alternative to oblivion and slow death in a peasant cottage. The alchemist could probably speak to them and ask them himself if he learned any basic necromancy."
"That's awful," she says, "If we stay here much longer, will we begin to think like you?"
"The Grand Mo-Zu doubts your survival as a living human," the skull tells her. "You're fragile, and warm. Cerebrally you will forever be inferior to the Greatest Lamp."
Bursts of high, pitious shrieks alarm you and Elana before another wave of burning flesh and hair wafts over you. "What in the hell is she doing in there?" Elana swears.
>you may learn basic necromancy (divination, banishing glow, sense undead) over 1d6 days if you choose to from Durj's libraries>learning necromancy from Durj instinctively seems like a bad idea, but you are the Royal Alchemist Boddle and could probably be fine, maybe. There's plenty of other places to learn too, like your library.>having access to basic necromancy seems very useful in Razotetur
>Ask the Grand Mo-Zu about his philosophy on individuality and free will >Conspire with Elana to overthrow Razotetur >Go see what Karva wants>Other e91b3d No.5550
bf7747 No.5554
>>5549"Elana. As much as I'd like to discuss how are we going to survive here as soon as possible, I'm afraid we could be making a woman with… short temper wait for us a bit too long. We'll try to figure it out once we finally have our own quarters assigned."
"Don't worry" - I try to say reassuringly - "I'll get us all back in Ko-Schakka in one piece."
As I slowly walk towards the portal, I turn to Mo-Zu:
"Got any tips on how should I approach our Dear Castellan to keep all of my limbs where they belong?"
3a48e9 No.5580
>>5554>>5554Your friend nods. Mo-Zu tells you to keep your wits and limbs to yourself, and be as succinct and passive as you can possibly manage.
Crackling orange flames dance, crimson vines above the coal brazier at the center of the wide, circular room, throwing Karva's green velvet, shapely back into shadows. Durj's stony likeness watches impassively as Karva leans over the rough surface of an obsidian slab, slowly rubbing the inky glass with her hands. The sharp yelping squeals pitifully crescendo, loud over the slopping noises of Karva's hand, and you hear the Castellan emit a soft moan when the room falls silent.
A trickle of ruby leaks over the edge of the slab, the glow of the brazier illuminating the sinuous red drip as it snakes through a collection of small glass vials, pooling in the darkness near the floor. The stench of seared flesh and fur gags you as Karva shivers.
More squeaks and frantic cries emerge from a woven basket next to the doorway. You notice that the room is comfortably warm, compared to the rest of Razotetur, and that Karva has plunged several metal stakes to heat white-hot in the coals. As you watch, she strains and something plops, disturbing the red ripple. Her back unfurls, drawing the castellan to her full height, and she raises her face to the ceiling and a bloody finger to her lips; glistening with euphoria she sucks it.
After a moment, she notices your voyuerism. "Alchemist," she purrs, "You took a while to get here."
"Oh my gods!" Elana exclaims. "That's an Arcturia Moon hare!"
"Yes, these animals have exquisite scent," Karva tells her, ignoring her distress.
"They're /rare/ and sacred to the Ghost Elves! What the hell are you doing?"
"Entertaining myself." She lifts her handiwork from the table, and shows you the punctured, charred rabbit remnants, sliding her fingers in and out of the gash as she watches the crimson stain her nails. "Sacred, you say?"
"Gods, why would you do this?"
"Are you part Ghost elf, girl?"
"No, I'm not, but those hares are /rare/, the elves say–"
"I don't give a damn for the elves' say. They provided me these specimens and the reagents for this distillation…now I study their materials." The rabbit's corpse spasms, once, then after a moment a few more times. Karva lifts the blackened wound to her mouth and begins to slurp, taking a few short pulls before revealing her bloody jaw and enraptured glaze.
"You're sick," Elana says.
"The elves gave me a potion," she continues, ignoring Elana's diagnosis, "they give it to their dying to shepard their souls to the elvish afterlife. It's very rare, but they sold the ingredients to Durj, and the rabbits… we got them in yesterday, I couldn't wait." She speaks in a distant, cheery voice, drunkenly swaying with the occasional jerk as she stares past you. "I wanted to try the potion, maybe I could have grabbed an elf-ghost for His Umbral Majesty… but it did nothing, so feed them a few drops before the skewer, the savor…
"My
God, human… if you've never tried it… this blood is to die for." As she speaks to you, the features of her face seem to smooth and sharpen, and a glimmer coalesces in her pupils.
She focuses on you. You notice that her sallow milkish skin is slightly glowing.
>"What did you need, Karva?">Leave before Elana enrages>Attempt to discern what Karva is doing >>5550:^) we won't skip you, Boddle is the PC if you want to suggest input for his actions bf7747 No.5588
>>5580>Attempt to discern what Karva is doing 3a48e9 No.5774
>>5588Elana's disgust twists her face into a hideous mask as she peers at Karva's handiwork. The hares, breathing slowly, probably sedated from the elvish draught, clump like white rice balls in a puddle of cherry sauce at the castellan's feet. Karva braces herself with her hand on the slab, her motions unsteady as she struggles to focus her eyes.
"Hail, Castellan," Mo-Zu brazenly greets her. "Fine rabbits you've found for yourself. They've got an excellent hue to the coats." The skull levitates over the table, seeming to peer at the smoldering, blood-crusted iron spike.
"Mo-zu," she coos. "What do you want?"
"I'm following the alchemist here. You summoned him for some nefarious instructions you've devised, or a whim of which I was otherwise unaware.
"What?"
"Why are you killing the hares?" demands Elana.
"It feels…incredible. To call it good is inadeqate," the castellan chuckles softly to herself, plunging her fingers into the holey rabbit to lick more from the tips. "But Mo-Zu reminded me correctly. Alchemist Boddle. I need to you to make something for me."
>Karva appears to have satiated herself on the magical energies of the dying sacred animals>she's potentially quite powerful in her current condition; her magical proficiencies are unknown >While the details of Karva's necromantic construction are obscure to you, you recall from your conversations with Karl that the castellan gains energy from consuming blood >she's probably not a vampire; you've not encountered any, but according to your books they're rare, hideous creatures that prey on wayfarers in the night
>Roll 1d100 to maintain Elana's cool>"What did you need, Karva?">"Elana, you should probably step outside.">"Karva, did you have some reason to kill rabbits in front of me?">Other ef721c No.5894
>>5774try to find out what Karva wants.
3a48e9 No.5986
>>5894
The pearly hare convulses in its shivering death spasms, as Karva pulls another suck from the kicking rodent its long ears twitch with her gulp. Her eyes snap open, suddenly, she then clenches her fingers, crushing the hare with her bloody hands before tossing it like a rag into the pile. Manic fury floods her sallow features with a frightful lurid mimicry of vitality, too cold and flat and cruel to be considered truly human.
"What did you require, Karva?" you timidly ask.
"I need… more… blood."
"Come again?"
"More." With one hand she removes the crusted iron spike from its slot in the center of the table, and with the other she pulls a fresh searing brand from the flames, clutching the white hot metal with her bare palms. She thrusts the shaft into the center of the obsidian slab, twisting it in place while returning the cool spike to the glowing coals; as you watch, the bubbling, melting flesh of her hands coalesce and reform into pristine skin as soon as she removes them from the metal.
"Do not… don't do this, not in front of me." Elana's dark features boil like a thunderhead. "Boddle, if you need me, I'll be waiting outside. You're sick," she hisses at Karva before leaving you alone with the crimson-slathered undead.
The castellan plucks another hare from the satchel. "I need more blood, alchemist. I need you to slake my thirst."
>offer your veins
>"Come again?" (ask her to clarify)
>Express annoyed confusion
>Suggest she crack open another sacred hare
bf7747 No.6062
3a48e9 No.6090
>>6062
As Elana stomps away, muttering angrily about the castellan and Emperor Durj to herself, Karva beholds you with a lightly bewildered, wan joy, as if she cannot decide wether to kill you or kiss you for whatever blood she needs.
"Blood," She repeats. "I'm thirsty, Alchemist, I haven't drank good, healthy sapient blood in decades, since a group of lost starving merchants sold us several slaves from their caravan."
"I can remember that!" Mo-Zu interjects, floating above the plinthy stone. "They were Cithanians, of near where your people once lived Karva. They had fine oil lamps, one in particular with a scene depicting a frog consuming a nude, squirming woman… odd people, really."
"Shut up," Karva moans at the skull. "I don't want to consider my people this very moment, there's… more hares." With a fel grin she closes her eyes and gestures her hand at the basket, and a hare jerks itself onto the obsidian plinth, its whitish paws slipping ithe blood as it scrabbles towards her, panting in terror in the orange fireglow, its eyes rolled back from whatever horrific spell she weaves around it.
"I need to think right now," she mutters, slavering over her prey, prodding it with aura-dusted fingers. "Alchemist," the castellan says to you, "one of your fellow professionals once mentioned a certain seeping heart, which once possessed, perpetually leaked an amount of human blood with every phantom pulse."
>You've never heard of it.
>That doesn't mean it doesn't exist;
>consulting the library in Ko-Schakka could be of benefit to you.
>You're pretty sure you can figure out another method of procuring endless human blood.
"Gruesome. It must make you thirsty," Mo-Zu comments.
She chuckles, deep and melodically, not unlike a ghost of Durj. "You've no idea, lamp."
>Make something up (lie) (1d10)
>Confess you've never heard of this heart, but could certainly research it.
>Suggest she consider another method
>Roll (1d100) for alchemical inspiration
>1 – wooden cup of crimson dribbles
>25 – mug of elderblood
>50 – Cask of War Wine
>75 – Voracious Purity (???)
>100 – (your choice)
bf7747 No.6091
>>6090
Say we didn't really research it, but we think one of our alchemical books mentioned something about it. We could go back to retrieve it and do some research, but she would have to convince Durj to let us go.
3a48e9 No.6332
>>6091
"Ah, Castellan Karva," you begin.
"Don't say my name so much!" she angrily cries, clenching her fists to evacuate wisps of unholy aura. "You peons, always referring to me by my name when I'm the only Durj-damned individual in the room."
You blink. "I'm thirsty now," Karva continues, looking at your neck eagerly. "You're thin, strangling you wouldn't be difficult…"
She steps toward you, ravenous joy illuminating her features.
>roll 1d100 for ability to recall your martial arts training
3a48e9 No.6615
SL8 is out of town for a few days, he said I could take over for a bit; the quest will continue as you wish.
Karva lunges, grabbing you by the throat. With a swift clench she crushes your windpipe, and the essence drains immediately from your body, into her claw-like grasp.
>Too bad.
"Next to worthless, can't even defend himself," she chuckles, gloating over your cooling body. "Oh Mo-Zu…" she coos, curling an iridescent finger towards the gaping portal. "Come here, will you?"
As darkness clouds your vision the bobbing ectoplasm of Mo-Zu dispels some of the shadows. "M'Lady?" you hear faintly, the resonating voice shimmering through your throbbing ears. "You needed something?"
>You are now dead.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A flash.
Karva stands before you. You feel different, the crackle from the hearthfire now possesses an allure you've not seen in decades. You appear to be lying face-up in a pool of hare blood.
"Well, you look fresh," Karva murmurs. "Never knew you had it in you, Mo-Zu."
>That's not your name anymore. What is your name?
You look around, both luminous levitating skull and Boddle's corpse are nowhere in the room. You look down at your hands, and notice that they possess a pallid quality that Boddle never had, but there appears to be a vivacity in your beating heart. Fingering your throat, you find it whole and undamaged.
>Optus courses through your skull. You are aware of his presence, but cannot appear to use any of your old abilities. It appears that whoever you now are, you must make amends to your deity before unlocking your occult powers.
>Additionally, you have the following abilities:
>Lampglow: your eyes can pierce darkness, the shadows of Durj's castle no longer hinder you
>Illusions: you can make minor illusions
>Searing: you can strike a living target blind for [1d3] days
>Radial Aura: any nearby undead can be feared at will for [1d10] minutes, and most will be uneasy towards you.
>Lumen affinity: any lamp in your possession no longer requires fuel, and provides a welcoming and soothing cheer
>Karva appears to have melded Boddle's corpse with Mo-Zu's skull, making you. Remember you still need a name.
>You're almost certain you're alive, and not undead.
>Elana is no longer loyal to you, and Frika will probably flee. Deception will probably only work temporarily.
>You no longer have your previous goals, or any motives at all.
> Those moon hares must have been extremely sacred. Lokt's imperium has weakened over you. However, you seem unnaturally compelled to follow Karva's commands at the moment.