Board 8 > The Notes of Cain, Topic 2 [CYOA]

(+) Yeah! (+)

Nice pic :O
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that spooky ghosts worries me! look out!

Poor Leone with the missing hand :(
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Cute trio shot

Enoch is stylish
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Why do you think I chose a trenchcoat? (Besides the fact that pockets are wonderful)
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I thought it was because you were secretly two kindergarteners stacked upon each other? Isnt that the true purpose of the trench coat?
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>inb4 that is the plot twist
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Ive always liked three to six puppies in a trenchcoat theory myself
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speaking of salt, who is ready to get salted by some slugs
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Assault and buttering with intent to kill
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Entry 14: Nothing More, Nothing Less

'Nihihihi... You have found yourself some odd companions this time, haven't you, Valter?'

Valter kept his eyes ahead, focused only on what was in front of him. She had returned to him, again, as she always did. He heard her voice. He felt her presence. And he knew that if he saw her... his heart would stir again as it always did.

'Reliable. Easygoing. Even if they aren't friendly or nice, that's okay, because they are the kind of people you can get along with. Isn't that what's most important of all, Valter?'

And, in the end, he knew where she was going with this.

'.... But...'

Because that was the direction it always went with things like this.

As far his Mona was concerned.

There wasn't any reason that Valter should share his compassion with anyone else.

'But don't you think it's odd? We come down here to learn about Elder Gods. They're nothing more than Devils, you know? Maybe they call themselves ""Gods"" but those things are surely Devils.' Mona was floating there now, at the edge of his vision. Tempting him. She was watching the backs of his allies, just as he was. 'Which among them do you think are Devil Worshipers?'

Mona's green eyes were glinting now.

'Which among them are Devils in disguise?'

Well, if he had to think about it, Valter would say--... No, he wouldn't force himself to think about it. He wouldn't do as he was told. He wouldn't -allow- himself to think about it. Because once he went down that path there would be no return. He couldn't come back to the place he was at right now.

This healthy, stable place.

Valter had known it for some time now. It was the same reason why he had forced himself into bondage, restricting his own impulses and his own intent. Valter was a monster who was just smart enough to put a leash on himself. And the moment he gave into that temptation, the moment he removed the leash, he would return to his natural state -- that of a rabid dog. Nothing more, nothing less.

'You might choose not to think about it, but...' Mona floated suddenly in front of his field of view. Her angelic wings filled the passage before him, completely blocking his vision. And, here, hanging upside down in the air, her hair spun downward like magnificent spindles of thread. Her green eyes were gleaming their mischievous gleam. There was an odd temptation here, a transcendent sense of otherworldly beauty. With a mere look she had made his heart begin to stir. 'If you're ignoring the potential threats that means you're only opening yourself up to be stabbed in the back. That's all I wanted to say, Valter.'

"Oi, Abom!" A voice called to him from ahead, cutting through the delusion. It was Dismas, who had been leading the pack. The rogue was glaring at the big man who had, apparently, stopped walking and was staring ahead at nothing. "What the hell are you doing? Let's go already. Jeez."

".... Right." Abom muttered quietly to himself. He looked to each of those before him now. His companions. His allies. If walking together with people and fighting at their side made them friends, then that meant these people were his friends.

Maria Taylor, Cata Spade, Dismas the Guilty, and now this Goetic who had mysteriously returned from beyond the shadow. Who among them were Devil Worshipers? Who among them were Devils? It would have to be-...

"You and Mr. Hero over there are the idiots who came up with this brilliant idea of searching for monster nests," Dismas was grumbling to himself, now. Though it was more like he was complaining for all to hear. "Now if we're going to do it on your account you better do it properly. No lagging behind and getting lost in your own thoughts, big man."
---

"I know. It sounds foolish," Cata grumbled. "You don't have to keep reminding me."

"It doesn't just -sound- foolish, it -is- foolish," Dismas stressed.

"Be that as it may, there is some logic to it," Goetic cut in, trying to bridge the gap between the two. "We're going into a dangerous place where there will surely be fiends around every corner. Why not try to cull their numbers before we go too deep into the labyrinth?"

Maria held up the monster manual. "Plus the book here says that these fish monsters do lay eggs. We'll be doing a public service by getting rid of those."

Dismas grabbed the front rim of his hat, pulling it down in frustration. He made an exasperated face and then turned away from his companions. "Since when the hell did I get in the business of doing public service?" He marched off down the long and uneven corridor, cut haphazardly into the stone. He'd always been the kind of guy who looked out for himself and no one else. He was a selfish rogue. Nothing more, nothing less. "Come on already," he cried out to the others. "I said I'd do it so let's go!"

The passage from the ready room down to the lower tunnels was crooked, but eventually led to a series of open caverns that were each connected to each other by natural paths. The crooks and crannies housed within each allowed space for the mining operation to set up camp sites, but none of those were still functioning. And, in the last year or so, the monsters had begun to make use of these niches as their own little resting and nesting areas.

The first large open cavern had a bottom so low that they couldn't make it out through the dark, and a winding passage that wrapped around the outer rim of the high shelf. The first notable open cave attached to the outer side of this was one where a series of egg pods were found. Without hesitation, the group went to work burning and smashing those. The creatures within would never hatch to wreak havoc upon the world.

"Well, technically, if you want to look at it this way," Cata went on, "we are carrying out the terms of Cain's will. That means if we finish cleaning up this place we'll be entitled to the Lordship."

Despite that this was meant to make Dismas feel better, he still had a sour look on his face. "Do I look like I want to be the Lord of some crummy run down keep that was infested by monsters and Elder Gods and cultists and... who the hell knows what else?"

Abom stopped to examine his surroundings. Yes, this place was bad. It was a dark place. It wasn't a place he would want to call home. He knew that his Mona would never be happy in a place like this, and so it was a place that he couldn't stay.

Not further down from here they found a large open pit where the corpses of humans from above had been dragged down. They had each been feasted upon before being tossed down into the pit. Oddly enough, there were a number of fishlike corpses that had found their way down here as well. Some of them had crawled into the chamber only to curl up and die. Others were down in the piles of bodies, looking as if they had been feasted upon as well.

"Hungry bastards must've started eating their own," Dismas noted. "Heh."

"I've read theory that monster populations can't sustain their numbers over long periods," Maria said. She knelt down at the edge of the ditch, seemingly not bothered too much by the smell, and observed. With only a small cloth retrieved from her pocket she covered her nose and was examining the gore beneath her. "Invasive species that appear from nowhere, kill and eat the native populations, and disrupt the natural ecosystem. Eventually there's no more biomaterial left in the food chain and everything breaks down leading to... this."
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Maria stood back up, then glanced toward the direction they had come from. Some gears seemed to be turning in her brain. "This could explain why the eggs hadn't hatched yet. Maybe they aren't hatching... or, rather... maybe the eggs are meant to lie dormant until a new food source arrives. Until then, we're dealing with the last survivors of a starving population that has been driven mad with hunger."

"You can figure all that out just from looking at this?" Cata inquired. He seemed a bit skeptical, but also like he was willing to believe it as long as she asserted that it was the truth.

"Well, it's just a theory." Maria gave a shrug and went toward the exit to this chamber. "Shall we continue?"

As the outer passage looped around the great cavern in the center, they eventually reached the next lowest level of the underground labyrinth. From here they came across a rather odd sight. It was something they couldn't see above from the darkness but which caught their attention as soon as it came into view.

Here, far below the mansion, as a smooth stone wall carved into the side of the rock face. And, in the midst of that, was a perfectly functioning stone door. The vertically scrolling portal had been built into the man made structure. That was of course assuming that humans had made this structure at all. It was entirely possible something else had put it beneath the earth before the original ancestor of Cain ever moved to these lands and built his estate.

Goetic was the first to go to the structure and examine it, placing his hand on the door and running that hand along the length of it. The Abnormal seemed to be highly interested in what they had found down here. "Now this is quite a wonder. I simply must know what is inside!"

"Doesn't look like it'll be too easy to get in." Dismas walked up behind Goetic and tilted his head. Examining the way the door was structured it didn't look like there was a way to open it normally. They'd have to either find some kind of mechanism to force the door open with brute strength.

"Just what do you think could have built a structure like this so deep underground?" Goetic inquired, looking to the others, but, most especially to Maria.

"There's nothing in the journals about this," Maria replied. She gave a thoughtful expression but didn't say much in the way of a concrete explanation. "We could come up with a hundred guesses and each one would be as valid until we found some real evidence."

'But I know,' Mona told Valter, as he was watching the others quietly from the back of the group, the place where he had naturally fallen to. 'I know, I know... oh ho ho.... nihihi....'

It was unclear if she actually knew or if she was just trying to put dark thoughts into his head.

"We can... force our way in," Abom said suddenly, stepping forward. "I'll help dig it up from the bottom."

Goetic slid down to the ground, planting himself on his butt, and putting his feet against the door. From here he could reach forward and touch the bottom of the door frame. He looked back up at Abom and smiled up at him. "That's more like it. So you're curious too, aren't you?"

Abom, however, was looking down at the Abnormal with more than a bit of apprehension. He'd been trying not to think about it but the thought just wouldn't go away. At that time he could feel Mona's hand on his shoulder, and her warm breath against his ear. He couldn't make out her exact words but he knew what she was saying.

"We'll I've had enough damn digging for one day," Dismas said. "Why don't the rest of us go look around while you two focus on that?"
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"Just don't go anywhere too dangerous," Goetic warned them. Though it was a half-enthused remark which he seemed to speak while paying more attention to the door in front of him than the people behind him.

Abom squatted down beside Goetic and began to think about the best way to work the door from this angle below. With enough force they should be able to push it up and reveal whatever was behind. Some kind of lever would help but it would absolutely require a bit of time and effort to unmask the mystery behind that door.

And, at the end, he had a feeling he would see something that would answer a lot of questions.

"How are we supposed to know if it's dangerous before we go there?" Cata muttered to himself. But, not having much to do about it, he simply followed Dismas and Maria as they led him down the winding circular path into the next lowest chamber.

From here, Cata and the others found a forked split that led into two separate areas. One of them contained a cache of unhatched eggs, similar to the ones found above. The other was a more open room which had been originally used as a miner's camp but had fallen out of use over the last year for obvious reasons.

There was a rectangular table with one broken leg, leaning in an uneven manner, on the right hand side of the room. Though not quite against the wall now, it looked like it had been dragged out of its original position. Against the back wall were two large barrels which might have contained anything but could also be empty by this time. It was hard to say without checking directly.

And, in the center of the room, a fishy monster was waiting for the group. This one hadn't managed to sneak up on the party, nor had they managed to sneak up on him. Instead, the monster was simply watching them with a curious and silent gaze. Both sides completely locked into not moving. Because both sides knew that as soon as one person moved the entire room would erupt into chaos, and then the battle would begin.

The monster then took a step forward and bared its long claws. Thankfully, its eyes flashed a dim and weak color, almost signalling that it didn't have the strength to fire any fully powered beams of light at the group.

Cata advanced forward with his sabre at the ready, a look on his face similar to 'okay, fine, I'll do it.' However, when he met the enemy, he found it was a bit more limber than he might have expected. Despite its body being a bit more thin than the others, looking tired and weak and possibly starved, the enemy still fought back with a ferocity that he hadn't expected.

The two exchanged slashes and Cata was forced back without dealing any damage, just to avoid being damaged in return. As he stumbled across the room he tried to correct his footing. It was all he could do to plant his back foot firmly and avoid falling over from the unbalanced way in which he'd been forced to retreat, all because he had advanced without expecting the enemy to be fully ready.

And, at that time, Cata knew he'd have to keep a steady balance. He couldn't rely on evasion against the second stroke of the enemy. If he tried to do that he'd probably have to tumble to the ground to get away, and the enemy might come at him while he was on the ground. Instead, he had to bring his blade forward and attempt to parry the incoming attack.

Cata's eyes narrowed and he maintained an intense focus beyond that which he normally experienced. This was, after all, a life and death moment. The parry was not an easy technique to pull off, definitely not as simple as it was often portrayed in stage plays or in novels which often espoused the virtue of knights and duelists.
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Like all real fights this was going to be messy and bloody, and it would likely end in three or less attacks. And that enemy was launching the third stroke right now. That meant odds were in favor of him dying within the next few moments. Or, if not, he'd somehow manage to turn the odds in his favor and kill the enemy before it killed him. As for what he was about to attempt; Cata would be forced to try and hit a fast moving object with his weapon perfectly with enough angle and force to redirect the attack away from himself.

His blade rung quietly as the enemy claws caught on it and, as was the nature of this technique, the sabre was actually somewhat damaged in the process. He felt a jarring strength in his arm as the impact from the blow caused a heavy strain on his shoulder. And, as Cata ripped the sword to the side, he realized he had failed to execute the move perfectly.

The claw of the enemy slashed diagonally across the space between the two, and the pointed ends of those blades dug into his shoulder on the way by. His sword, in that moment, was knocked out of his hands because of the failed parry and went sliding across the ground.

That was, in essence, the third strike which had ended the encounter. In any normal situation the disarmed Cata Spade was as good as dead. He had two options now. If he attempted a grapple there was a small chance that he might be able to fight the attacker off. However, more likely than not, injured and without a weapon, the enemy would overpower him and kill him. The other option was to dive after his weapon and get stabbed in the back about 99 out of 100 times.

The only thing Cata Spade knew was that this wasn't a duel.

At the end of the day he was in a living and breathing world with many moving variables. And that 99 out of 100 times was not really an absolute in his case. So he dove in the direction of the blade even as it spun across the ground.

As Cata did that, the enemy turned and lunged at him.

And, as the enemy made that movement, he extended his arm and left himself exposed to a critical strike. Dismas stepped into the space between the two and drove his knife in under the armpit of the foe. Dismas wasn't exceptionally strong but he was strong enough to force the enemy back and cause him to fail that strike against Cata's exposed back.

Cata did a diving fall, using his arms to slide forward, then grabbed his weapon and flipped his momentum as he skidded against the rocky ground. He could feel the angled stone digging into his stomach, creating small cuts and bruises on the way by. But, as his body spun, he was able to leap back to his feet with his weapon in hand and throw himself back at the enemy.

Dismas took a step backward, ducking the return swipe of the enemy. And, at the same instant, Cata's quick response time and absolute control over his body at allowed him to launch another thrusting attack at the foe. This time it was the enemy that was off balance. It didn't have the intelligence or the skill needed to even attempt a parry. So, instead, Cata's blade ended up stuck in its neck.

He put his other hand on the pommel of the blade and pushed, charging the enemy and forcing him all the way back against the far wall. Cata held the enemy, pinning him there, and waited for the foe to stop twitching.

While he was doing that Dismas lowered his knife and quickly examined the room. It was unlikely there were more of these large monsters hiding in here but it never hurt to be too cautious. 'Whew. That was another close one," Dismas said. "Oi, Maria, are you alright?"
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"Oh, you needn't worry about me," Maria said. She strode into the room cautiously while also keeping a keen eye on her surroundings. She ended up between Dismas and the overturned table. Then, in her paranoia, she even stopped to peek behind the table and make sure nothing was hiding back there. "I'm an absolute master at hanging back and observing things from the sidelines."

Cata drew his blade from the enemy which had finally finished dying. He wiped the blade, attempting to clean it, as he looked back at the other two. "You should be a bit more careful, though. Not every foe is going to allow you to do that."

"Yeah, and don't expect me to babysit you," Dismas said in a grumpy tone.

"Oh, Dismas, don't be like that," Cata said. "You've watched my back every time. I know if she were in trouble, you'd go to her aide as well."

Dismas looked down at his feet, thinking about his nature as a person. Why was it like that? It must have been a practical thing. Nothing more, nothing less. In the end it would give him better odds to survival if he kept his companions alive. He definitely wasn't the kind of idiot who would risk his own ass just to save people for sentimental reasons. "Yeah, I guess. As long as we're all here together we should all look after each other."

"And," Dismas hesitated. He didn't really like revealing to others that he had a soft side at all. "Of course that means I'll look after both of you."

At that time there was a silent but significant drippy drop from the ceiling, which dripped and dropped from above. The space where that creature was perched, that salty and puffy bodied dripper, began to drop something that would completely destroy the current atmosphere in the room. If only they had known how significant one drop of that dripping substance could be. Perhaps this moment proved that ignorance itself was the greatest danger that could possibly exist.

Dismas looked down at his hand. "Oh. Something wet."

Then there was a hissing sound as his flesh began to burn and sizzle. His eyes went wide with shock, but also with pain, as moisture began to form in the corners of his eye sockets. Then freely streaming tears began to run from his face as he hissed in extreme agony. "GG---Ahhh!"

Dismas dropped the knife he had been holding and stumbled. First toward Maria, causing her to back away cautiously, and then away from her. His free hand went to the one that was burning, clutching at it, trying to stop the pain but unable to think clearly. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know if there was anything he -COULD- do. "Maria, help me!" he pleaded.

However, at that time, Maria had a completely flat and distant expression on her face. She wasn't empathizing with him, she wasn't worried about him. At that time she was entirely an observer. There was a chance, she thought, that she might try to save Dismas if she could. But before all of that, Maria took a step away from him and looked up at the ceiling above him.

There was a twisted and fleshy body of some kind of giant slug. It was hanging down off the stone above, now, looking like it might release its grip and drop down below. If that thing fell on top of Dismas it'd be bad. But if it fell on Maria when she was moving that way it'd be even worse for her. The only way to guarantee her safety was to stay back for now.

"GG----AHHH! FUCK!" Dismas hand suddenly swelled and then exploded. As it did a strange purple and green goop erupted from the stump of his hand. And inside of that soupy, pulpy mixture were small fragments of bone. Attached to those fragments of bone were strange little hooks that almost looked like they were alive. The hooks writhed and slashed like shrapnel as they fired out from the infected hand in every direction. "S-Someone help! Someone get it-... Offa-!!!"
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Three of the bone shards fired outward into the room around them. One slashed right through the wooden barrel Cata was standing right beside. The other one hit the ground between Maria's legs. The third one fired in a direction that wasn't near to either of them. And, aside from those three, there were two additional bone shards that fired right up at Dismas and struck him in the face as he swung his hang upward.

Maria's eyes widened and she let out a gasp. It was the first time Dismas had seen her make any reaction to anything. He wondered how horrifying he might look right now. As he was locking eyes with her, he realized that there was nothing she could do to save him now. And, if their positions were reversed, he doubted he would've risked his neck to save her either.

It was fine. This was a fitting end for someone like him.

"Ggggkk! It hurts!!! It hurts so-!!!!" Dismas was unable to finish the rest of that sentence, at least not vocally. One of those shards had hit him in the neck. And, as that happened, his throat began to swell up to the point where his air passage was blocked and he couldn't speak anymore.

Maria was watching in horror as his lips began to swell from the other infection but then as his head grew in size she realized it was about to burst. Maria let out a panicked shriek for the first time since arriving on Cain's lands.

It was all Maria could do to take a step forward the overturned table and then roll over it. She grabbed the far end of the table as she made her way across it, to hold it steady due to the missing leg, but also to pull the table down once she was safely on the other side. As she did that, the table flipped. It was impossible for her to fully control it or fully predict what it would do.

The table ended up slanted in the moment when Dismas head exploded.

A shower of those bony shards fired in every direction away from him, launching those infecting spurs into the room at multiple angles. One of them punched a hole right through the overturned table, blasting right past Maria and missing her by only an inch. It seemed her idea of using cover hadn't made a difference but she had gotten lucky in that moment.

Where was Cata? Was he alive? Dismas definitely wasn't. Glancing through the hole she could see his mutilated corpse there on the ground, the entire top part of his head missing, a pulpy mess with flesh and blood streaming out of the side of his neck. Oddly enough the spurs didn't seem to be reacting with his corpse. Nor were they doing anything to the wood from the table or the stone.

Organic matter. Rather, beyond that, it seemed they needed to hit living flesh in order to trigger a chain reaction. It meant if she got hit one time she'd be pretty much guaranteed to die. And, if Cata had gotten hit, it meant another explosion was coming in just a few seconds. Would it be smart to run for the door? Did she have time to run for the door?

Did it even matter what she did at all?

Maria felt her chest rising and falling, swelling with panic. Her lungs seemed too big to fit inside of her chest. They were burning with pain as they crushed her ribs from the inside. Her pupils wouldn't stop shaking and she couldn't see straight. Was this panic? Was this what it felt like to panic?

There was absolutely no control over this situation. Too many things that she couldn't account for. It seemed like in the next six seconds she was going to live or die and she'd have no way to affect the outcome. It was all a matter of whether those spurs would hit her by random chance or not.
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She tried to peek her head above the table to get a glance around the room, but her gaze instinctively went to the monster before it could go to Cata. And she saw that it was staring at her. She ducked her head back down just in time to avoid having a ball of that acidic goop strike her clean in the face. Instead, Maria slumped down and then rolled to the side as the slug's saliva burned the top of the table on that side and began melting through it.

Why hadn't she kept the crossbow? Now that was underneath Dismas corpse. There wasn't any weapon she had on her right now, not really. Some of the ingredients that had gathered from the lab. What... what was she supposed to do? Maria felt her entire body shivering as she was locked in place. Was there anything in there that could work, that could kill this thing, that could even hurt it...?

"Are you still alive?" Cata called out. Perhaps to her, or to no one in particular. His back was against the wall. His sword was drawn. The walls to either side of him had been torn to pieces. A green liquid was flowing freely from the barrel beside him, where it had been punched through with multiple holes. Cata's entire body was shaking too. He couldn't even hold his weapon straight.

But he had found the strength to speak.

"I'm.... I'm...." Maria's voice was weak and lacked all confidence.

But that didn't matter to Cata. He knew that she was still alive and that meant he wasn't alone in this death trap. He looked at the monster and then looked to the table. Was there a way to save her, still? What about himself? Or were they both doomed to death? To be honest, Cata wasn't the best at figuring that kind of stuff out.

And, at the end of the day, he was definitely scared. There were times when he got so scared that he almost couldn't force himself to act. Multiple times now in the last few days he'd been in situations where his courage had been tested and he hadn't always been proud of himself in the end. However... now that he was here, with his back against the wall, there was nowhere else to go.

Cata Spade knew that if he did nothing he would definitely die.

He just needed to make sure Maria understood that, too.

"As long as we're both here," Cata said, honoring the words of the recently departed Dismas, "Let's look after each other." He tried to sound confident but he had no clue how he was going to do that. And, without seeing her face, he didn't know if his words had given her any courage or not. All he could do was imagine that there was still some chance for them to survive.

[End]

14. How will these wacky characters get out of this pickle?
A. Valter and Mona will purge all evil with the power of Love!
B. "Bright Eyes" Goetic calls upon his wicked cool pal, Gray!
C. Maria and Cata will have to escape on their own...
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14 C
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B. Turn arouuuund Bright Eyyyyyeees
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C, of course.
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B.
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C.

I'm feelin' lucky

hmmm, why does that sound familiar when I say it
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B
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B.
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B!
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Going with C.
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I said a drip, drop
Drippie to the drippie
The drip, drip a drop, and you don't stop rock it out
Slugga to the boom bang sluggie, sluggie to the sluggie
To the rhythm of the sluggie's beat

B
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Mmm kinda iffy situation with the potential Mona nuke and Goetic calling the devil will basically out him to Mona and Abom which could lead to some awkward stuff

Also this is assuming Gray will even help personally (though he did say it would be crappy if Goetic went down so who knows)

Mehhh screw it I'll go with 14.B for now, its been awhile since we saw that guy.

Willing to switch to C though if its more of a Maria and Cata teaming up thing or if there is generally similar support for it. Maybe Maria happened to nab some salt from the lab?
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A, man
Mona's gonna save us all.

(Poor Dismas did not deserve his death).
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https://imgur.com/VgSeVOC

NOTHING MORE

NOTHING LESS
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Well shit. That's terrifying. Uhh...lets go with...

C
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yes, let's all vote for the guy standing next to the demon hater to summon a demon

C
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14. Deep Slug Rescue
(1) A. Valter and Mona
(1111111) B. Goetic and Gray
(111111) C. Save your damn selves, Maria and Cata!

looks like shin megami tensei is winning right now
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Swap to C cause ties are fun :P
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You know, Lefty raises a good point. Swap to C.

Also, jfc that was horrifying. Is that the first kill where there was no decision that we could even pretend to matter?
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so this isn't really like D&D where I design a dungeon ahead of time and then the players make specific decisions or moves to try and "beat" the game. it's more like an improv theater course where I know the general beats of the story and I adapt based on the prompts I am given by the players.

what I mean by that is: if you guys had voted for something else (like looking for treasure) you likely would have seen a different dungeon layout where the group could have found some treasure and then potentially faced some kind of different enemy while trying to escape.

it's not really a given that the group always walks down this exact same passage with the exploding body horror slug at the end and finds no treasure along the way. I'm constantly adapting the story based on the prompts I'm given.
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B
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in this specific case I had been intentionally cultivating the feeling that Dismas should have seemed to be invulnerable, highly capable and probably in the back of the readers mind they felt like he had some kind of plot armor or even a bit of author favoritism. for me it's very fun to build up those expectations only to completely flip them on their head. it's not really a guarantee that Dismas was going to die here or in this way but I've pretty much known all along that I was going to use his death as a set piece at some point in the story. it was only a matter of when it was going to happen.
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Swapping to C since the majority of that team wants to go for that
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No one wants Mona to save them. For shame.
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Sorry but we've had more bad experiences with ANGELS than with DEVILS
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catastrophy15 posted...

Sorry but we've had more bad experiences with ANGELS than with DEVILS

Short ;_;
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MariaTaylor posted...

in this specific case I had been intentionally cultivating the feeling that Dismas should have seemed to be invulnerable, highly capable and probably in the back of the readers mind they felt like he had some kind of plot armor or even a bit of author favoritism. for me it's very fun to build up those expectations only to completely flip them on their head. it's not really a guarantee that Dismas was going to die here or in this way but I've pretty much known all along that I was going to use his death as a set piece at some point in the story. it was only a matter of when it was going to happen.

Ah, so it's not actually a story to see if we can live then. There was no way he was getting through this alive. There are some planned story beats and sometimes a death is one of them.

If that's the case it might not even matter if we choose not to summon the demon now. It was a lot of work to get him in the story and he's probably coming out at some point.

A is as likely if not more likely to get Mona to kill Goetic who is right next to them as it is to save Cata and Mara. Purge all evil? I mean she wanted him to kill EVERYONE. This is the worst option.

B is as likely to do the same, except now that I think about it Abom might even agree. But maybe he wouldn't.

C is going to get one or more of them killed for certain. But the text does read "Cata Spade knew if he did nothing he would definitely die" is that a hint they need to "save themselves"?

I don't even know anymore. But there's no way we are getting through the whole game without this demon/angel can of worms opening.

I'll choose C for now but I'm not convinced it's not just putting off the inevitable and losing Cata and Mara to do it. Or at least Cata, who might give Mara time to escape with his life.
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FakeAccount3000 posted...

Ah, so it's not actually a story to see if we can live then. There was no way he was getting through this alive. There are some planned story beats and sometimes a death is one of them.

the best way to put it is that some characters are definitely going to die, based on the outline I come up with them at the start. MOST characters have some chance of surviving, based on where the story takes them, but sometimes there can be a ripple effect where a direct choice doesn't kill them as much as a choice that was made 10 chapters ago. for example when we made the squads. it's entirely possible I decided ahead of time "Everyone in Squad Q will die over their next few chapters" and so we get a situation where the choices only determine which order they are going down and how quickly it escalates to a bad end. not saying that did or didn't happen here, but that line of logic is possible and I've done it in the past. in a case like that the "choice" of putting characters 2, 4, 5, and 7 into Squad Q already decided their deaths.

Lastly, there are NO CHARACTERS who I decided ahead of time that they "definitely will" survive. meaning there is a chance for every single character to die before the end.
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14. Deep Slug Rescue
() A. Valter and Mona
(111111) B. Goetic and Gray
(1111111111) C. Save your damn selves, Maria and Cata!
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C.

B seems like it would lead to Abom attacking him.
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some IRL stuff has come up. not sure yet exactly how busy I'll be the next few days but in the worst case scenario we may not see an update till sunday or even monday. just keep the topic bumped, I guess.
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mmk
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alright not gonna promise anything but I do plan to be up for the next few hours and if I get anything complete and written I'll go ahead and post it! would like to have at least one more update this week.
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Entry 15: Under My Fingernails

Fakeru was laying on her side in a darkened room. She had fallen into a puddle but that was the worst of it. There were those who hadn't survived. Maybe in this kind of situation she was lucky to even be alive. Her dress was soaked. Her hair was wet. Somehow she felt nothing.

A person in this situation would normally panic, or become hysteric. She had just nearly died, hadn't she? So why wasn't she screaming or crying? Why hadn't her breathing increased to a rapid pace so intense that her chest was going to burst? It was more like the encounter had made her feel completely dead inside. Her body might have survived but her spirit felt weak.

This wasn't the first time Fakeru had been so low to the ground.

As a child, Fah and her parents had moved across the Wide Ocean on a small ship that had barely been suited to make the journey. Her father had perished due to lack of nourishment on the voyage, and he wasn't the only one. Almost thirty percent of the passengers had died on the voyage. When Fakeru and her mother arrived in Hendrake, having spent their fortune just to afford their place on the ship, and now having lost their precious immediate family, they were all alone with nothing to do.

At that time Hendrake was in a period of 'Blossoming.' It had always been a medium to large sized city, but things like crime and poverty had long been stain on the perception of Hendrake. It wasn't ever going to be considered a respectable major city unless the local Lord was able to clean that perception away. Unfortunately, as more effort and resources were poured into expanding the city, the public services which were already stretched thin began to collapse under the strain.

It was like the Lord had missed the point entirely.

Rather than fixing things and looking after the people he had simply poured more money into the problem and expanded the number of people he already wasn't taking care of. Fakeru and her mother were in that group. People who had come from across the Wide Ocean looking for a new life of opportunity, only to find this was a land without much opportunity at all. Her mother ended up taking a job peeling floor tiles and wood from the base of buildings that were being torn down or reconstructed.

Fakeru remembered those times as well. To her it had been a game, to come to work with her mother, and to help play at picking apart the floor boards. It might have been hard work, and she could remember the pain beneath her fingernails, and it was hard when she got splinters, too. At the same time her father had just died and she was too young to really understand the world. To her, this wasn't 'Child Labor.' This was just a chance for a girl, all alone in the world, to spend more time with her mother.

"Why is this young girl peeling floor tiles?" An angelic voice had arose from somewhere at the border of her perception. It was the voice of a young girl, not much older than her, but one who had lived a far different life. "She is far too cute to be doing the work of a laborer..."

This is when Fakeru entered the service of Lady Marigold.

Maybe it was wrong to enjoy it, to trade one life of service for another, but to her this job was much better than the last. She had already grown tired of the pain beneath her fingernails. Serving tea and brushing hair and helping Tenna get dressed was a much easier job. Only, it was Lady Marigold when her father and the others were around. She had to remember to say Lady or she would be punished.

"It's just like that, Fah. It's always been like that. No matter how much money we throw at the problem that's not going to fix it." Tenna was always talking about these sorts of things. Even though she was only a few years older, when they were teenagers those few years seemed to make a world of difference.
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