Dungeon Delver Quest (Original Fantasy... again)

[Sirrocco]

[X] Yuuka

Click to shrink...

Why, Bre Karn? Why must you do this to me? We were so close.

*weeps glorious, manly tears of loss*

 

[yrsillar]

Alright Oni girl has it. Everyone give a hand for the runner up.

You'll be seeing her around.

 

[Tavarokk]

[X] Yuuka

Click to shrink...

Yay! Best girl wins!

 

[Bre Karn]

Why, Bre Karn? Why must you do this to me? We were so close.

*weeps glorious, manly tears of loss*

Click to shrink...

Sorry pal, when yrs announced the tie break it was a split second's decision for me, and Best Oni just appealed to me more.

At least you get to see your pet creation soon, mine... I don't know when

 

[Arkeus]

Well, it seems like introduction post of MC will involve being captured and waking up on a sacrificial altar.

 

[Sirrocco]

Sorry pal, when yrs announced the tie break it was a split second's decision for me, and Best Oni just appealed to me more.

At least you get to see your pet creation soon, mine... I don't know when

Click to shrink...

*hugs*

Hopefully we'll get to see him reasonably soon. I certainly wouldn't mind pulling him on as a party member.

 

[yrsillar]

You were always a light sleeper, and not exactly a morning person either, so when you feel something cold and wet against your shoulder, well no one who knew you would be surprised by what happened. Your fist snaps out and smacks straight into what feels like a persons face, if you know, a person was made of thick jello.

You still sit up immediately though, blinking groggily in the dim, misty light of the early morning. Your haphazard camp is just as you remember it, except for the whimpering bundle of rags curled up at the base of a tree about five feet from your bedroll. You only get a brief glimpse of panicked and watery blue eyes set in a pale face before it vanishes in a swirl of gross looking shadows.

What the hells?

"Oi, what's the big idea!" you call out in annoyed tone, as you snatch up your club from the ground beside you, while scrambling to your feet. You notice some weird strands of those gross, oily shadows falling off your arms too, almost like cords that somebody had torn apart. Really, just what kinda situation are you in now! Things on the mainland are so weird.

Your challenge gets no response except for some early morning birdsong though, and although you are still plenty tense from waking up with somebody right over you like that, eventually you are going to have to relax out of your combat stance and admit that you look really silly standing here glaring at the trees with your sleeping robe hanging halfway off your shoulders. You don't feel like you're being watched either, so you musta scared them off. Whoever it is must be pretty tough though if they were still conscious after getting socked by an oni. Maybe some kinda slime? Their face felt pretty weird on your knuckles after all, but you haven't seen a slime since hitting the continent.

Casting one more wary glance around you lower your club a bit and quickly tug your robe back into place. No point in going back to sleep now, you can see a glimmer of sun on the horizon, and only one of the moons is still out. Not like it's easy to fall asleep in this damp forest anyway. You never thought you would miss the rocky cliffs of your home so much, but at least it was dry most of the time there.

This tower thing has been all folks have been talking about on the mainland though. Ever since you hit Jhaggra, the trading port your people deal with you've been hearing about people setting off for it and leaving, seems like half the people your age are running off to this place. You ignored it for a while. It sounded like total bull. Sure, there was that big tower on the Four Deva's Mountain, but no one really believes those stories about the First bodyslamming a demon the size of a castle off the top and creating the Three Rivers Gorge, it's just a story to get the youngins pumped up and motivated.

Folks around here seem to believe it though, and you've seen a couple more towers in the mainland cities that looked awful familiar, usually with their own stories of some hero doing something ridiculous at that top. That's not to say you really focused on it. the whole point of this trip was to see some of the world your people spent so much time ignoring. The old scrolls might say otherwise, but the reality is your people don't tend to leave your islands much. That's just so boring though.

Of course… that doesn't mean you have any idea of what you're doing. You didn't exactly make plans. Or let anyone know you were leaving. The most experience you had with the mainland was your Dad humoring a younger you and bringing you along to market in Jhaggra when he was selling some wares. Oni forged steel is apparently pretty prized around here. So… you've kinda been wandering at random, you have tradespeak down pretty well, so communication isn't a problem…although you're hazier on the letters, but that doesn't mean you know where you're going. Without a destination in mind, you eventually decided to go see what all the fuss was about. If it was just a jumped up monster lair, you could have a bit of fun knocking heads and be on your way. If not, well, you guess you can hang around then.

You should probably quit having lengthy flashbacks while some creeper is out in the woods watching you too, you think a bit wryly as you finish packing up your camp. You don't have much, just a few changes of clothes, your weapon and some camping supplies, as well as a handful of mixed coinage. You might have to do a little merc work soon if this tower thing doesn't work out, an Oni's appetite is pretty hard on the coinpurse.

Hopefully you're getting close. You're pretty tired of these woods. Not even to mention that you're down to drinking water. You've had a bit of a headache for past couple days because of that. For some reason good alcohol is kinda expensive on the mainland. Actual oni brew even moreso. You don't understand why, it's not like foreigners can drink it without acting all weird and goofy… or passing out twitching in the case of oni stuff.

Trudging through the woods isn't so bad. There's surprisingly few monsters around, and normal animals don't really bother you. The mist is a little hard to navigate through though. Still, the sun burns it off with time and by the time noon comes the trees have thinned out pretty well. Soon enough you find a rough path, one made by countless feet and vehicles passing through, and figure you should follow it toward the valley in the distance, that's where the tower is supposed to be after all.

It's supposed hidden through some big magic, but once you get close enough you can see it? Sounds weird, but there are stranger things in the world. The path is surprisingly empty though, which is good, since it lets you keep an eye on your surroundings better, but weird, cause you thought everybody was coming to this place. Still, another hours walking brings you a change in scenery… namely a rather sad looking sign nailed haphazardly into the soil next to the path. You squint at the messily painted letters, trying to decipher what is written.

Ugh, couldn't whoever put this up have taken it slower? It looks like a toddler wrote this, and you aren't just saying that because your grasp on written Tradespeak is kinda shaky.

'Point of No Return: There's no going back after this.'

You snort, yeah, real subtle messy sign guy. How many people you think you'll scare off when they've already come this far? Shaking your head at the silliness of the sign, you step past it and…
Identifying new player. Scanning World Archive…
The… the hells, you can't move at all! It's like the air turned to stone around you or something!
race 64. charID 3456729 Subject found. Scanning Bio Data… creating adventurer template, please wait…
You struggle with all your strength, but somehow you can't budge an inch, you're actually starting to freak out a little. Is this that creeper from this morning again?!
Template created, applying…. Application Success. Loading tutorial…

Spoiler: Welcome

The Tomb welcomes all challengers into its hold. Seek the apex of the tower, and witness Truth, and any desire will be yours. Fail and die in ignominy, your bones a warning to those who will pass through next. The beasts within are born of the Blood of Gods, and in death, they return to it. Only through use of the blood will you have any chance of victory. You are no longer simply mortal. You are the seed of something more. Whether you wither or flower is solely your choice.

Spoiler: A brief explanation of mechanics

Stat Explanation

Strength: Your ability to leverage brute force, affects melee attack acc/damage.
Toughness: How much physical punishment you can take: Defense against physical damage, adds to health
Agility: Your speed and maneuverability and reaction time. Defends against physical attacks if higher than toughness, determines turn order.
Dexterity: Controls smaller, fiddly motions and actions. Used in crafting, trap disabling, stealth and other such things.
Perception: Your ability to notice small details and find hidden things. Mostly used to counter stealth and find secrets.
Power: Your ability to leverage the well of arcane power available to all living things. Affects magical attacks acc/damage
Will: Your ability to persevere through difficulty and resist mental assaults: Defense against non-physical attacks. Adds to health.
Presence: Your ability to inspire others and lead: Some social effects, used for various leadership and pet taming classes.

Basic System Workings:

Rule 0: All rules are subject to change when QM deems necessary

Rule 1: All dice used are d10, success occurs on a roll of 7 or higher.

Your dice pool is determined by adding the values of your attributes and skills. For skills the dice assigned to each letter rank are as follows. The number of dice granted by your attributes are your stat divided by 2 rounded down. Minimum is zero.

E: 1 dice
D: 2 dice
C: 4 dice
B: 6 dice
A: 10 Dice
S: 15 Dice
EX: ??

Equipment relevant to a task at hand (such as a weapon during an attack, or lockpicks in a door unlocking) add automatic successes equal to their quality. You may only equip items with a quality lower than or equal to your level plus one.

In the case of static challenges, the challenge will have a flat number of minimum successes needed to pass. In the case of competitive challenges(attacking another person, a race against an npc etc.) all characters involved roll and the one with the highest number of successes wins.

In the case of attacks, for every success which exceeds the defenders successes one point of damage is dealt. So if you attack a monster and get 3 successes on attack, while it gets 2 on defense you deal one damage.

There are other modifiers, but they will be discussed later.

Raising/Purchasing Skills and Job Ranks

Skills and jobs have their rank increased through exactly one method. Use of deucite. Deucite is the crystalline material that remains after a tower monster is slain, and is colloquially known as godsblood. Monsters invariably drop at least one deucite shard when slain, with stronger monsters dropping more or larger pieces. Raising skills past C requires the larger pieces dropped only by elite monsters and bosses.

D: 5 Shards
C: 10 shards
B: 1 chunk
A: 1 Slab
S: 1 Slab, 2 Chunks
EX: ??

Purchasing skills is a bit different, in that each skill has its own price in shards. Some rare or high ranking skills may require a larger piece just to purchase/attune. Now you may be wondering, what does the Job Rank actually do? Increasing your job rank raises your stat caps(the number in parenthesis) and unlocks more skills for purchase. Certain ranks will also grant passive benefits, typically one at C and another at A and S.

Combat Systems

Aside from the basic attack/defense, there are a couple other items that should be mentioned. Turn order is determined solely by agility, although some npcs and monsters may have skills that affect it as well. Highest agility goes first and then all others in descending order.

The other major item is the 'target priority' system. Each character in your party begins with a target priority of zero unless modified by a skill. Enemies will move to attack the target with highest priority value. Each time a character damages an enemy this increases their priority by one. In the case of attacks that affect multiple targets this does mean that the characters priority increases by one for EACH enemy damaged. Killing an enemy increases your priority by two. Using a healing item or skill on another character increases your priority by two. Using such a thing on the character with the current highest priority increases it by three.

As always some skills may modify the base functions of this system.

Suddenly you couldn't care less about not being able to move as a searing pain sweeps through your body. For just a bare instant, it feels like your nerves are aflame, and your vision blacks out. You feel a rush of alien knowledge wash through your mind, and a moment later you come to, having fallen to your knees. As you blink away tears of pain, you find your vision dominated by…by some kind of glass pane with black writing on it in oni script… there's your name, and a bunch of numbers and words and…

You groan as knowledge of what it means bubbles up in your head, intensifying your water headache. Ugh… well, you guess that explains why they say people who go into the towers get strong ridiculously fast. You swipe your hand through the 'glass' banishing the irritating thing back to your thoughts. You fumble for a minute to pick up your club from where it fell in the grass. You're a little irritated at how low your weapon was rated. This was some of your dad's best work damn it. Stupid freaky magic.

Then you look up, and find out where everyone was. Spread out in the valley below you is a vast sea of tents and pavilions filled with what must be thousands of people thronging through them. Smoke rises from hundreds of campfires. You spot people of every species you've seen and a few dozen that you haven't. Rising above it all is a gargantuan tower of black stone, dead center in the encampment. It must be nearly a mile around at base and rises high enough to pierce the clouds, shrouding the top from view.

You force yourself back to your feet, steadying your still shaky knees and set off down the path. You might have to apologize to the sign guy if you ever saw him… but well, it would feel awfully pointless to go back now without getting at least a little of this 'Godsblood' stuff, now that you've gone through the pain of entry.

You draw surprisingly few stares as you reach the edge of the massive encampment. You get a few appraising looks, but nobody really stares the folks in the cities did when you passed through, despite the fact that you tower over most of them by a good two or three feet. Probably because there's people stranger than you wandering around. You spot everything from a androgynous man(?) made of purple crystal hawking armor, to a giant four armed bug putting on a show juggling swords, to a shifty looking guy with three bushy fox tails arguing with some lady who's half snake over the price of some potions, and that's just with a quick glance around. There are plenty of the more 'normal' races around too, humans and elves of every shade, stocky dwarves and downright tiny halflings.

You… honestly aren't sure what to do first. For all that the… entry filled your brain full of a bunch of junk about numbers and flowery bullcrap, you don't really know much. What's the currency like around here. Do you need some kind of permission to go into the tower? Is there somebody in charge of this mess? Where can a girl get something for this Deva's damned headache?

[] You can smell some good food from one of the bigger pavilions nearby, and you really could use a drink. Maybe you can kill two birds and get some information and a meal?
[] You should just wander around a bit, see what there is to see, maybe something or someone will stand out… Or take pity on the obviously lost newbie.
[] You can eat later, and screw wandering around like a lost puppy. You came here for the tower. You want to check out the tower.
[] No reason to go anywhere. Pick a person nearby and start talking.

((Alright, sorry this took so long, but here it is. I will take into account questions asked when Yuuka goes info hunting... if Yuuka goes info hunting. If it's a mechanics clarification I'll try to clear it up in thread.))

 

[Xicree]

[X] You can eat later, and screw wandering around like a lost puppy. You came here for the tower. You want to check out the tower.

She doesn't really seem like the info-hunter type. A goal is infront of us... just do it.

Figure things out as we play.

 

[Arkeus]

Mmmh, beginning solo without a party? Unsure that's really smart, but tempting.

yrsillar, you forgot to explain Perception in the stat explanation above.

 

[Sirrocco]

[X] You can eat later, and screw wandering around like a lost puppy. You came here for the tower. You want to check out the tower.

Dip in, fight a couple of things, get our bearings the old-fashioned way... then we can come out and talk once we have a bit of success under our belt.

...and Shadow gets a cameo on the first story post. Poor thing.

 

[Tavarokk]

[X] You can eat later, and screw wandering around like a lost puppy. You came here for the tower. You want to check out the tower.

 

[tEN]

Well, Arkeus, Du would likely go info hunting, but we're running Yuuka, who would not.

[X] You can eat later, and screw wandering around like a lost puppy. You came here for the tower. You want to check out the tower.

 

[yrsillar]

...and Shadow gets a cameo on the first story post. Poor thing.

Click to shrink...

She served as a very nice intro point, and learned an important lesson

 

[Bre Karn]

yrsillar may I suggest another name for deusite? Theolith (literraly 'god-stone') or, for the pedantic ones, Theohaemin/Haemotheite (garbled 'gob-blood')?

[X] You can eat later, and screw wandering around like a lost puppy. You came here for the tower. You want to check out the tower.

 

[Xicree]

Well, Arkeus, Du would likely go info hunting, but we're running Yuuka, who would not.

Click to shrink...

And hopefully we'll run into Ansom...

Who also would not.

^_^

 

[yrsillar]

Mm, I suppose. I was going for a play on Titanite because I'm a Dark Souls nerd, but if folks think one of those sounds better I'll change it.

 

[Sirrocco]

And hopefully we'll run into Ansom...

Who also would not.

^_^

Click to shrink...

Ansom could make for an interesting rival. I don't think I'd want to party with the girl on anything other than a temporary basis (and "party on a temporary basis" fits in just fine with "interesting rival").

Mm, I suppose. I was going for a play on Titanite because I'm a Dark Souls nerd, but if folks think one of those sounds better I'll change it.

Click to shrink...

Not all that sold on them myself. Might call it Deucite, though, as "cite" seems like it fits that construction better than "site". Up to you.

 

[Arkeus]

Dip in, fight a couple of things, get our bearings the old-fashioned way... then we can come out and talk once we have a bit of success under our belt.

...and Shadow gets a cameo on the first story post. Poor thing.

Click to shrink...

I knew that!

Well, Arkeus, Du would likely go info hunting, but we're running Yuuka, who would not.

Click to shrink...

How so? Yuuka is a bookworm and a hunter after all. Socializing to get info is not out of her purview, and I was actually more thinking about "eat with people and get a couple of people to go up with".

OTOH, it can be good to get some first hand experience first, and Yuuka actually is better suited than most when it comes to surviving such.

 

[Xicree]

Ansom could make for an interesting rival. I don't think I'd want to party with the girl on anything other than a temporary basis (and "party on a temporary basis" fits in just fine with "interesting rival").



Not all that sold on them myself. Might call it Deucite, though, as "cite" seems like it fits that construction better than "site". Up to you.

Click to shrink...

Rolling with Ansom would be like rolling with a Kender. They're dammed certain to get you into trouble... But dammit they've super useful when trouble actually hits.

 

[Bre Karn]

Mm, I suppose. I was going for a play on Titanite because I'm a Dark Souls nerd, but if folks think one of those sounds better I'll change it.

Click to shrink...

Titanite sounds cool
(Or as Sirocco said, Deucite, but I like Titanite better).

 

[Sirrocco]

Rolling with Ansom would be like rolling with a Kender. They're dammed certain to get you into trouble... But dammit they've super useful when trouble actually hits.

Click to shrink...

It's not the getting into trouble. Wasn't even thinking about that. It's whether or not you can trust the woman... and who else is willing to tolerate her company. We're going to want a party at some point, after all. Our girl Yats can actually handle Ansom reasonably well - but the other characters we're likely to want to recruit might have issues.

- Murdan's in it to win it. He might be willing to put up with Ansom if he thought she'd improve his chances of actually beating the tower.
- Linnea seems to be mostly motivated by "hey, *you're* interesting". She might get along with almost any group, if she decided she liked the people, and that's not all that predictable

For the rest, though, I'd see the relentless aggression and laughing in the face of real and present danger to be disadvantages that they'd probably avoid.

I do appreciate the degree to which she'd be pushing us to keep moving forward if we did wind up in a party with her... but it's also the case that that might be too much of a good thing, and Yats can provide a fair amount of that herself.

Edit: huh. Our club is actually pretty nice. It's about as good as a weapon can get without moving into "cannot be wielded by normal men" territory. Also, I'm appreciating that we can use it for door-smashing as well as face-smashing.

 

[Arkeus]

It's not the getting into trouble. Wasn't even thinking about that. It's whether or not you can trust the woman... and who else is willing to tolerate her company. We're going to want a party at some point, after all. Our girl Yats can actually handle Ansom reasonably well - but the other characters we're likely to want to recruit might have issues.

Click to shrink...

TBH she would be a pain to have in a party. She reeks protagonist, and that's a rival, or a leader of a rival party. Having to constantly be on the lookout for what the crazy girl will do next in our own party is draining, especially as role-wise she seems very similar to Yuuka.

 

[Xicree]

It's not the getting into trouble. Wasn't even thinking about that. It's whether or not you can trust the woman... and who else is willing to tolerate her company. We're going to want a party at some point, after all. Our girl Yats can actually handle Ansom reasonably well - but the other characters we're likely to want to recruit might have issues.

- Murdan's in it to win it. He might be willing to put up with Ansom if he thought she'd improve his chances of actually beating the tower.
- Linnea seems to be mostly motivated by "hey, *you're* interesting". She might get along with almost any group, if she decided she liked the people, and that's not all that predictable

For the rest, though, I'd see the relentless aggression and laughing in the face of real and present danger to be disadvantages that they'd probably avoid.

I do appreciate the degree to which she'd be pushing us to keep moving forward if we did wind up in a party with her... but it's also the case that that might be too much of a good thing, and Yats can provide a fair amount of that herself.

Click to shrink...

Mind you she's also the one who would put herself on the front line to ensure danger doesn't get to everyone else first added to the ability to literally skew the odds in her favour (though I am interested in seeing how Yrs would implement that, which may be fairly different from the ways I'm thinking... cause I wouldn't want her abilities to be relegated to simple bruiser with better dice).


Yats I agree is one of the characters who would best match Ansom in terms of drive forward and blatant disregard for danger (in terms of confidence that they could handle what ever comes their way). Though approached from pretty different directions. Ansom is manic where Yats would be mellow.

 

[Sirrocco]

TBH she would be a pain to have in a party. She reeks protagonist, and that's a rival, or a leader of a rival party. Having to constantly be on the lookout for what the crazy girl will do next in our own party is draining, especially as role-wise she seems very similar to Yuuka.

Click to shrink...

Hmmm. In the anime of this, she would be the recurring NPC rival/dark reflection who does the "More Yatsurugi than Yatsurugi" thing to show that there *is* still space on the far side of our protagonist from everyone else. There's a decent chance that she'd pick up a party of rivals to our party members... Lona and Murdan could actually serve as rival opposites in either direction, with a bit of character tweaking (depending on which one we pick up). Don't know about the rest of them.

Mind you she's also the one who would put herself on the front line to ensure danger doesn't get to everyone else first added to the ability to literally skew the odds in her favour (though I am interested in seeing how Yrs would implement that, which may be fairly different from the ways I'm thinking... cause I wouldn't want her abilities to be relegated to simple bruiser with better dice).

Click to shrink...

I'd probably see it as some sort of a "you get to reroll a limited number of times per day when the dice go badly, refresh those dice by living on the edge, you don't get to know how many dice you have left or when a reroll got burned" schtick. Given that it's a form of luck magic, it could also take a toll in terms of bad luck hitting somewhere else - maybe herself (in non-combat ways), maybe her friends (if you want her to be constantly having her companions die around her), maybe her enemies (once she's high enough rank to pull BS like that).

 

[Minion #Q]

[X] You can smell some good food from one of the bigger pavilions nearby, and you really could use a drink. Maybe you can kill two birds and get some information and a meal?

 

[Bre Karn]

yrsillar if I wrote an omake involving Murdan, would it hasten or increase the odds of his recruitment?

(I still need to update at least one of my Quests before I do that, and I have that Mother of Monsters Hellhound what-if idea, buuuut... why not?)

 

[Darkened]

[X] No reason to go anywhere. Pick a person nearby and start talking.

 

[Nohbody]

[X] You can smell some good food from one of the bigger pavilions nearby, and you really could use a drink. Maybe you can kill two birds and get some information and a meal?

 

[Arkatekt]

[X] You can smell some good food from one of the bigger pavilions nearby, and you really could use a drink. Maybe you can kill two birds and get some information and a meal?

 

[yrsillar]

yrsillar if I wrote an omake involving Murdan, would it hasten or increase the odds of his recruitment?

(I still need to update at least one of my Quests before I do that, and I have that Mother of Monsters Hellhound what-if idea, buuuut... why not?)

Click to shrink...

Maybe, I could see doing something like that as a reward.