In Progress [LP CYOA] Tower

[Baltika9]

...I think I reconsidered being conscripted to the Leib-Guard. Baltika9 may still disagree, of course.

Why would I join the Pretty Boys' Club? No, our path lies with Father Rasputin. Master Zhang he is not, but neither are we Xu Jing. Hopefully, he didn't leave us forever and is just testing us.

Serious talk: Andrew was being an erratic, irrational punk and Alexei did nothing wrong except being a little harsh. Andrew is lucky to be alive at all.

 

[Tigranes]

I knew it, Andrew had seen something that really fucked with him, hence his panicked reactions. In the future, let's focus on the information we can get from the update, rather than bash our heads repeatedly at information we don't have.

There's no helping Andrew or Scotty for us, Nathaniel will have to take care of that. And the fake Knights make it clear that they're not really super interested in chasing us down. I think all we have to do is get out, and get the story straight with the girls that we never saw anything interesting and got out quite quickly.

Now for the choices. A is consistent with the decent strategy of following sound of water, and the Astras help us with environmental challenges. In contrast, we possess nothing that will help us against Shadowbeast Returns.

A

 

[Nevill]

I knew it, Andrew had seen something that really fucked with him, hence his panicked reactions.

I am pretty sure all he had seen was foreigners in place of people who were supposed to handle the ruins on behalf of the Council.

 

[Life of the Party]

Turns out Elizabeth is quite a sweet lass.

A

 

[Baltika9]

In contrast, we possess nothing that will help us against Shadowbeast Returns.

We have Father Rasputin. The Angels of God he speaks of are obviously the beautiful elves, and the Nazguls are the devils. I think that he's testing us and I think we can trust him. It seems that Rain's destiny found us.

 

[Egosphere]

Hehe Andrew gets owned (literally), we get the Astras and the girls

A we go out the water way. Chain beast can stay upstairs.

 

[Absinthe]

Hm, so the monk did notice us, but didn't say anything and even encouraged the men to leave. Instead he allowed the door to be blocked behind him and put us through a trial. Interesting. Well, everything went better than expected all the same.

A. Our party isn't built for combat. Instead, we have very good scouting abilities. One of the girls has boots that make it easy for her to traverse difficult terrain, another has glasses to reveal hidden things, and we have a handy mapping tool to ensure we don't get lost. I'm also curious if the fact that our astra is water aspected will do anything for us mapping our way through waterways.

Treave, did we bring food with us for the trip?

 

[asxetos]

Fucking Scotty....
OK we got the minimap. Now we need a quest compass and we good to go grinding.
Voting A tentatively. If many people believe we can take a fight i will flop.

 

[Baltika9]

If many people believe we can take a fight i will flop.

The last one went down like a bitch, and there was only one of us. Yeah, we're a bit hurt, but we can take it with three people.

 

[Tigranes]

If many people believe we can take a fight i will flop.

The last one went down like a bitch, and there was only one of us. Yeah, we're a bit hurt, but we can take it with three people.

Yeah, we really smashed that shadowbeast before with only a long-term crippled leg! If Elizabeth casts black magic and Sophie uses steal I'm sure we can take it down without a hitch and get some loot too no problem!

 

[Azira]

Hm, so the monk did notice us, but didn't say anything and even encouraged the men to leave. Instead he allowed the door to be blocked behind him and put us through a trial. Interesting. Well, everything went better than expected all the same.

I suspected he is testing Wrinkly. Wrinkly is probably marked after his encounter with the thing in the woods. So he's more interesting than Andrew. And this is just a test.

What he will do if/when he discovers we (hopefully) pass it is another matter though.

 

[Azira]

A B!

 

[Azira]

Also, Elizabeth Bathory?

Nasty.

 

[Baltika9]

If many people believe we can take a fight i will flop.

The last one went down like a bitch, and there was only one of us. Yeah, we're a bit hurt, but we can take it with three people.

Yeah, we really smashed that shadowbeast before with only a long-term crippled leg! If Elizabeth casts black magic and Sophie uses steal I'm sure we can take it down without a hitch and get some loot too no problem!

But Tigranes, shadowbeasts don't drop loot. That would be silly.

 

[Life of the Party]

Do other characters also get stats?

 

[Absinthe]

scotty a fucking snitch, andrew a stupid bitch.

thank you for reading my poem.

I think Andrew's worth more than that. A bit stupid, aye, but at least he has balls, a bit of skill, and tries to do what's right. So he's not useless. Scotty on the other hand really is just a cowardly opportunist.

...I think I reconsidered being conscripted to the Leib-Guard. Baltika9 may still disagree, of course.

Yeah, these guys would make horrible bosses.

Thankfully, our face isn't pretty. No, Elizabeth, I don't think we'll be fixing it anytime soon.

Wouldn't be a bad idea, honestly. It's not doing us any favors. We stick out like a sore thumb with our burns.

We have traded Seven League Boots of Amazing Stealth and Waterwalking for a glorified automap!

I'm still a bit more partial to the glasses than the boots, but you really shouldn't look down on the power of an automap that shows you where there's stuff on the other side of the wall. This book is going to stay rather handy in pretty much any ruin (and even other terrain) alright. It might still be best that we got the map, seeing as we have the most mental endurance to keep using it and hopefully our water astra helps us out now that we're headed for the water.

I suspected he is testing Wrinkly. Wrinkly is probably marked after his encounter with the thing in the woods. So he's more interesting than Andrew. And this is just a test.

What he will do if/when he discovers we (hopefully) pass it is another matter though.

Aye, we'll see how it goes. But judging by the way the priest is treating this, he is affording us some freedom at least.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

The book’s pages were empty when you had first opened it, but now it shows a map of the room. Elizabeth says it's popularly called a Tome of Theseus – a mapping Astra whose functions are relatively common, but much sought after amongst cartographers and explorers. She had obtained for herself something she says are Boots of Free Movement, while Sophie’s eyeglasses are the Lenses of Seeing.

In fairness, they all kind of suck, but boots of free movement would probably cancel out whatever Alexi uses...probably.

It seems my supposision about the monk was..."correct". He chose not to waste time dealing with us. Though Baltika, you did get your wish. Rasputin is our teacher now. The locked room was our first lesson.

 

[ItsChon]

It worked out in the end. Props to Andrew, we've shit on him but he really hasn't done anything bad, and he's got some balls for taking up the duel against the big scary Russian. That chain astra is fucking sick though. The book being a map is not as cool as I was hoping, but it's undoubtedly useful, and I think we'll probably get more use out of it than we would some stealth boots or some special seeing glasses.

A. We have a water affinity Astra, and we're also a Fish sign. We can always go back up if going down leads no where, and running water would indicate that it has to go somewhere.

 

[Esquilax]

My respect for Andrew has increased considerably. Despite initial Codex paranoia to the contrary, the kid is brave, principled, and willing to stand up and do the right thing even when the he's completely on his own and the chips are down. He's solid.

treave, I take it that our bum leg wouldn't affect our PC's ability to swim if need be?

Going to echo the hivemind's insistence on A. We aren't equipped to fight this beast, but we are built for navigating around it.

 

[Nevill]

B. For some bestial badness, because someone has to vote for it.

Kid vampire is afraid of running water, ok? >_>

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

A - no way I am messing with that beast. Let's hope the stream leads to another exit...or an underground elf village were they do not, I REPEAT NOT, eat children.

I would also like to add that while I am glad Andrew got a well-deserved beat down, I'm not pleased by him getting the D from a Russian pedophile. A beating is fine, death is fine, but this is a fate worse than death to be sure.

In hindsight, Absinthe, I can see us shooting the light and escaping going one of two ways. It's clear they would have had an interest in pursuing us. Silencing witnesses. But Rasputin and the others didn't really seem to care about it too much. Alexi wanted to get his rocks off more than he wanted to keep Andrew from talking via the shame of being raped. I think they may have let us go. However, if we fell during our escape, we would have to pray Alexi didn't see our burns as a turn on.

 

[Azira]

I wonder if this, our first Astra would have been "Water, mutability", to perfectly align with our sign, no matter which of the three we chose. Or if we got lucky with the book?

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

My respect for Andrew has increased considerably. Despite initial Codex paranoia to the contrary, the kid is brave, principled, and willing to stand up and do the right thing even when the he's completely on his own and the chips are down. He's solid.

He's a moron. If he knew they weren't supposed to be there, he should have also realized Scotty's father was complicit in their plans before singlehandedly trying to arrest a group of enemy knights.

His mistake was trusting too much in the power of his astra. He wanted to play hero at the risk of his own life and the lives of his friends.

 

[ItsChon]

My respect for Andrew has increased considerably. Despite initial Codex paranoia to the contrary, the kid is brave, principled, and willing to stand up and do the right thing even when the he's completely on his own and the chips are down. He's solid.

He's a moron. He should have realized Scotty's father was complicit in their plans before singlehandedly trying to arrest a group of enemy knights.

His mistake was trusting too much in the power of his astra.

He's like 13 bro. It's difficult for grown men to take proper stock of a situation before acting rashly, much less a kid. He was struggling between doing what he knew was right, and his basic instincts of self preservation. Kid has probably never lost a fight in his life, this will be a valuable lesson for him. Hopefully the Russian dude is just gonna make him do laundry or chop onions with his sword or something. I don't have much faith in Andrews ability to withstand a week of getting his shit pushed in without losing his sanity.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

He's like 13 bro.

Oh I know, but see my edits.

I'm saying he didn't do this for principles. He did it because he wanted to play the hero and thought his astra made him invincible.

Also, he understood enough to know the knights were enemies. For a 13yo to think he can win against a group of grown soldiers - all of whom are also likely armed with astras - isn't just arrogance, it's foolishness.

That in concert with the fact that he risked the lives of his friends, which he also did in coming here while bragging about how his astra could deal with anything, leads me to my conclusion.

He wasn't making some noble sacrifice or brave stand. He thought he was invincible and wanted to be a hero. He got beat down for it and he's about to learn just how vulnerable a 13-year-old boy can be.