Inactive [LP CYOA] Overlord

Where to, though? It's not like we have a secret hideout to fall back upon. We only have Grahferde, which we are slowly starting to turn into a fortification, and you are hellbent on revealing it before it finishes.

In other words, skip from the first chapters straight to the epilogue? That can be arraged, I suppose.

Edit: Reading comprehension, where art thou?

 

What's the motivation behind destroying everyone right now?

 

True, but it's a start. A better illusion spell will probably be down the line, just like with the heal spell.

 

I was referring to the idea of turtling until we have an unstoppable horde and only then daring to move out and crush skulls.

All we need for teleporting away like a ninny is to be somewhere where a thousand buff, angry templars with swords are not. Doesn't need to be teleporting; Gigadyne has all the answers, so there's also zipping away in lightning form. Once we're out, we sleep on sticks and eat gall, in general think vengeful thoughts, we build our health back up and then return to crush the kingdoms with the power gained from Gigadyning thousands of their men off the face of the Earth in the earlier step.

 

Well, they kind of want us dead - or will want us dead shortly. :paranoiac:

Barzam - for killing their expedition and robbing them of their artefact.
Methuss - for messing with the nobles, though motivations differ (the Crown Prince might dislike us for interfering with Farland, the rest for the murder of Wisteria)
Dijeh - for stealing their inventor.
Byarlant - we are a rival to their archmage and his pet/master Athos. With a name like Jilius Gallardo, it's a given that we are bitter enemies!
Galbaldy - because it is rowdy and competitive and won't stand aside if the 4 others join on the fun!

Most of them have reasons to become our enemies. Thankfully, they either don't know them yet, or don't know where to find us.

That will last us until we run into another Magic Canceller or its equivalent.

 

To Catch A Fish

The main highway following the river Amscray is well-travelled; carriages and carts can be often found trundling along its roughly paved surface. A short distance from Yuiria, there was a large metal sign just outside where the thoroughfare began, proclaiming its name as Amscray Way. The locals shortened the name and took to calling it Amway. For obvious reasons, you do not follow the road. Instead, you travel along the river itself on foot – or rather, Lucy’s feet – avoiding as much contact as possible. Passing by numerous small villages, none of which seemed to have more than a few dozen inhabitants, you have Aria ask for directions on your behalf. The villagers had been rather tight-lipped but let slip enough to ensure that you were on the right track. Soon, you are off the beaten path. A mountain range – the river’s source – lies before you, and instead of following the main stem of the river, you find yourself following one of its many tributaries further upstream, and deeper into the foggy, damp lands where the slimes are said to reside.

Three days into your journey, you run out of food.

“I-I’m a growing girl,” mumbles Aria, half-apologetic, half-mortified. You shake the cloth bag. Nothing but crumbs can be heard. Lucy moos.

“It’s not your fault,” you reply. “I only brought three days’ worth of food on purpose.”

“But why?” asks Aria, her eyes wide.

“Bringing any more would be a waste when I could just snap my fingers and be back in Grahferde and have a nice, hot goblin-cooked meal.”

“Oh.” Her stomach rumbles at the thought.

“That, and it’s cheaper to scrounge for your own food. Practically free, in fact.”

“We… aren’t going back for food?”

“Hands out, Aria.” She complies dutifully. You take out a long wooden pole that you had been carving in your free time. There is a string attached to it, and a metal hook dangling at the end. You put the pole in her right hand and the bag of crumbs in her left. “Go get some fish.” You didn’t get much fish in Grahferde, and it would be a nice variation to your usual diet. Seeing Aria’s doubtful face, you add, “It’s part of your training. To capture a fish is to test the prowess of your hands and eyes.”

That seems to have convinced her. Aria marches off to the river, the pole swinging from side to side over her shoulder. You, on the other hand, hop up onto a nearby branch. Pulling your hood deeper over your head – and wincing when you hear it snagging against that damnable halo – you lean back on the wide trunk of the tree.

“Think the little missus will be fine on her own, do you?” says Barbatos.

“I’ll be keeping an ear out, even if I don’t look like it,” you say, your eyes half-closed.

“Well, it is a good time to train on controlling your aura, I say. You have been neglecting the way of the fist for far too long, boy, and you have nothing better to do at the moment, do you?” nags the gauntlet.

You grumble, but he is right: you have nothing better to do. In the distance, you can hear the gurgling flow of the river. You let your magic flow in a pulse matching the river’s beat, channeling it into the force that Barbatos calls an aura. Fully closing your eyes, the flow takes shape in your mind. The rushing of the water. The miniscule, almost undetectable turbulence swirling from its numerous denizens. The scene feels so close that you feel like you could almost reach out and part the water with your bare hands…

There is a loud splash – two loud splashes – and you pick up Aria’s faint cry of surprise. Eyes snapping open, you leap towards the river immediately, hopping from tree to tree as your heavy cloak flaps around you, still keeping your wings concealed. You arrive at the riverbank a scant few seconds later, Lucy trotting along the forest floor as she follows you there. Is it a monster? A slime? Or…

A single look tells you all you need to know about the situation. Aria is standing knee-deep in the water, soaking wet, her boyish clothes plastered to her slim frame. In her hands she clutches the head of a fish that is the size of a large dog. It is still wriggling and fighting for its life. The hook of her fishing pole is entangled in its lip, but there is also an arrow sticking out of its side. At the other end, its tail is held on tightly by a brown-haired young girl of Aria’s age. Her chainmail dress tinkles as she tugs at the fish’s tail.

Aria pulls at the head and shouts, “Let go of my fish, you metal bitch!”

“It’s mine, you… you stupid country floozy!” shouts the girl in return. Behind her, you can see four other youngsters in similar gear: blue livery over chainmail, swords, axes and shields. Five of them in total, three boys and two girls.

“Ah.” These must be the knight trainees that Wisteria spoke of.

Down at the river, Aria seems to have come to the same conclusion. “You five… you are trainees with the kingdom’s knightly order, is that it?”

“That’s right, bumpkin. So this fish is mine! We need it more than you do!”

“We don’t get any rations at all, miss,” explains one of the boys, a tall and lanky one with a perpetually depressed look on his face. “We’re supposed to scavenge what we can get along the way as part of our training.”

“Hah, that’s none of my business now, is it?” snorts Aria haughtily in a way that somehow reminds you of Rin.

“It should be,” complains another of the rookies. “We train and fight to protect the people. We are prepared to lay down our lives to do that, so surely you wouldn't begrudge us a fish?”

“You aren’t prepared to starve to protect the people, I see,” taunts Aria mockingly, keeping her death-grip on the weakening fish.

“You are quite getting on my nerves.” The girl who had been squabbling with Aria grimaces.

“I am, am I? Is that all your knightly training affords you?” Aria giggles. “I bet I could fight circles around you anyday.”

The knight girl’s blue eyes flash angrily. “Do not mock our training!”

With an arrogant grin, Aria drops the head of the fish without warning. The other girl tumbles over, unbalanced by the sudden weight on her hands. She splashes into the river, spluttering. Her teammates shout out in warning and alarm. When she looks up, Aria already has her sword drawn, pointing it at her face. “If this was a real fight, you would already be dead,” says Aria coldly.

The girl’s face knits into a frown, and then she springs into movement in a flash, drawing her own blade and knocking Aria’s sword aside in a single, practiced movement. A surprised Aria retreats, her legs splashing through the water.

“A silly peasant girl thinks she can play with swords,” drawls the girl slowly. “Just because you have a weapon doesn’t mean you know how to use it.”

“Oh yeah? Try me,” retorts Aria, waving her sword around as it traces a silvery arc through the air.

“Eileen, don’t do this!” her friends call out. You get the distinct feeling of an “Oh no, not again!” in their voices.

“Watch me! I’ll win the fish back and show that the pride of the knights is not to be mocked! I am Eileen Mesthall, Knight-Apprentice in the Order of the Azurelion, leader of the 16th Blue Squires! I challenge you to a duel here and now!”

“Aria Heavensell, eldest disciple of the Mercant Fighting Style,” remarks Aria quietly. “I accept your challenge!”

“A duel over fish,” murmurs Barbatos. “Indeed, whosoever possesses strength, possesses dominion over the white piscean flesh of the riverine king. A worthy cause!”

You keep quiet, looking at their wet, dripping figures. Aria is lithe and slim, her soaked clothes outlining every curve she has, and even under the chainmail you can tell that Eileen Mesthall is quite well-developed for her age. The both of them would definitely blossom wonderfully in a few short years. It only serves to remind you that the absolute worst thing about this situation is that no matter how enticing a wet catfight is to you, nothing will happen. You sigh.

Lucy lows and looks up at you with big, brown questioning eyes. ‘What do you want to do?’ seems to be what she is asking.

***

A. You send Lucy over to interrupt the duel. You can always get more fish after the knights have left. There is no need to fight over this particular one.

B. You interrupt the duel yourself, revealing yourself to Aria. Your presence should be enough to get the knights to back off, and you are certain you can handle this diplomatically. They should know where the slimes are and be able to guide you there.

C. You intervene and capture the rookies. They aren’t very useful to you, but you can’t have them traipsing around the forest while you are looking for the slimes. It should be a simple task to defeat them without revealing yourself.

D. You watch over Aria and let her handle it. There is no need for you to step in here, and careful observation could gain you more information. Win or lose, she should be able to learn a lesson here, though you are not yet certain what that lesson is yourself.

 

Erdrick will (eventually) be the best dad ever!

Bowfishing with a combat bow? That's pretty hardcore.

Heh, I only noticed her family name just now. It's a pretty badass one, for a villager. So she is the elder twin, eh?

As much as I want to watch a wet t-shirt contest, I am not certain about our course of action. The kids are heading to the slimes, so we should be able to find those by following them anyway, regardless of the encounter result.

treave, how recognizeable are we to the kids, considering the illusion spell? Would they be able to connect us to the killer of their Knight Captain? Is being seen undesireable to us?

We probably could be identified at a later date, now that Aria gave away her name... but no one but Farland should know her...

Is it important that Aria does not know we are here? I would not be against her winning the duel with our, ah, help, which would hopefully be more useful than the one we provided to Arlin. That, and she would be able to trade the fish for information (more like share food with them while they are gossipping) from her position as a victor. We did try to make her more mercantile, after all.

I just want to let her have her fight, but if there are any profits we might extract, I'd like to take advantage of those as well.

 

D

 

B.

 

D>A

 

Ah, what the hell. Let's follow the wisdom of BRObatos, for once.

A challenge is issued! Do we want the kids to shy from it?

Let the Mortal KKKombat begin! Let skill and daring decide the fate of this raw tasty morcel!

Do it, Aria! For the honor of the Mercant Fighting Style!!

 

It's a +1 Arrow of Fish Stunning.

You're not wearing your hat, so they won't recognize you easily. You will cast an illusory spell on your face should you show yourself before them. Unless you do something like cast Lightning Tiger, you don't think they're likely to know who you are.

She might be embarrassed and get flustered if she finds out you are peeping on her.

 

Do they issue those as a standard part of their squire outfit? Man, Methuss is one rich country! Or is it a hereditary artefact Eileen got from her grandparents?

It is a duty of every responsible guardian to ensure the safety of their charges!

But more importantly, how many peeping sessions do we need to go through to beat this challenge?

 

What a waste on the face magic... well, I suppose it's fine, I wasn't expecting more than All-Clear at the start anyway.

I'm for D, let's see Aria give it a shot. If she fails, have an electric wolf or five munch on these kids while we teleport back to put her in a healing pod/cast minor heal on her dependent onhow bad her wounds are.

 

update rules

slimes rule

 

C.

 

This is difficult one.

If we use diplomacy option then we won't have to waste time at searching slimes, but we would interrupt Aria survival training and duel...And we would have to deal kids later, even thought it's highly unlikely they will be problem.
On other hand we hadn't had prisoners for while and Rin could use boys for practice, but leave the girls alone of course.

Then there is letting Aria to duel, which should serve as good experience event and perhaps even learning good lesson here....Perhaps..

 

Which is obviously that you kill the fish and throw it on the riverbank before starting a fight.

I suspect it will just get away while the cats hiss at each other. Still, it would be a valuable life lesson. Priorities, and all that.

Maybe they'll befriend each other. That works with boys, and these two are pretty tomboyish. Then we won't have to engage in kid diplomacy ourselves.

 

D > C

 

D. Lets see what our girl is capable of.

 

D
Fish king will be ours emm its important lesson for Aria, so she should deal with it while her master secure fish to prevent any foul play from opposite party.


Dunno why, but i kind of hope that people are pissed off because this resurrect spell had worked horribly right. Resurrecting Wes and changing her into kid. I find this idea hilarious, but i am bit biased. Its of course unlikely.

 

Yay, an early update! And as always, both hilarious and interesting. Congrats treave.
So, Methuss does really send children rookie knights to die fight against slimes as part of their standard training. Sending a bunch teenagers away to dangerous locations without food nor supervision doesn't sound like a smart idea, but then again if they were intelligent they wouldn't force kids to attack dangerous monsters. On the other hand, they seem to be aware of jrpg rules: they evend bothered to give these rookies actual armor and weaponry! So I guess it balances out.

Erd most likely agrees with the latter. He would go as far as to point out that he was forced to do the same when he was ten but only with a wooden stick. In fact, he seems to be taking advantage of the situation to inflict needless mental and physical abuse plus humiliation with the excuse of "training", just like what he had to suffer when he was a kid give Aria the same kind of training he had endured during his early "heroic" days.

In any case, I vote for A>C>B

Let the children play and have fun until the situation gets dangerous/one of the involved parties wins. Then Erdrick will step in to point out that the fish escaped/was dragged away by river long ago while everyone wasted their time being idiots, teaching them to stop fighting and instead cooperate to catch more and bigger fish that hunger is a force that rarely listens to wisdom. To further add salt to the injury, he can do so while loudly munching a sandwitch he took from the goblin village after a brief teleport trip.


Either way, regardless of the result, I say we capture these knights after they bring us to the slimes' location (in one way or another), offering half of them to the slimes as proof to show our goodwill. The other half would be rescued and kidnapped taken to the goblin village to give them the opportunity to have a better life. Needless to say, their gear would be looted and recycled/sold for spare money.

Heh, I kinda wonder how that "ascetic trip" went for Barbatos.

By the way, Fortunio really has some good managerial skills to be able to keep 100 cutthroats under his control. Perhaps he'll be intelligent enough to teach Erdrick the forgotten art that is getting sleeping-bags for these long trips outside of civilized world.

 

D>B

The obvious problem here is that we are dealing with two girls who don't know how to hold back or when to quit. They are also fighting with real swords.

But yolo.

 

The good thing (?) is that they also don't know how to hold a sword.

I am not too worried about Aria, 'we have the technology' (c). And as for Eileen... if we missed on FrankenWist, I guess we can settle for a golem apprentice, if only to get Arlin his date. The boy has been so desperate* as of late, he chases goblin skirts! For shame!

*less than we are, though.

 

C