In Progress [LP CYOA] Tower

[Baltika9]

And you want us to go back in there and fight some more because???? What the fuck is this, Naruto? What are we going to do next, yell out FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE!!! as we stab him with our 10 year old penis?

No. We will scream "My hyperweapon will pierce the heavens!" at the top of our lungs.

 

[Kz3r0]

For the record - I don't actually think that we'll die if we pick B, as insane as that is.

Actually I think is a possibility, I have nothing against rolling another character, it’s just that we chose a strong guy, let’s fight.

 

[Kipeci]

B > D

Baltika has me convinced and I still don’t intend to let it go get that free lunch after robbing us of ours

 

[Esquilax]

For the record - I don't actually think that we'll die if we pick B, as insane as that is.

Actually I think is a possibility, I have nothing against rolling another character, it’s just that we chose a strong guy, let’s fight.

First off, he's not a "strong guy" he's a ten year old kid that is kinda tough and hardy on account of living in the woods. That's it. And even if that were the case that he were some badass warrior, that doesn't mean you should fight all the time regardless of the situation.

You're happy to re-roll after two updates and a dozen pages of character creation back-and-forth? Jesus, talk about tapping out.

 

[oscar]

D>C>A>B

Just because we are (probably) safe from dying in the prologue doesn't mean that Treave might not leave us with some permanent reminder injuries if we insist on retardation. The creature (probably a shapeshifted man) found us an amusement the first time, if we delay him again he might break more than just our bow.

 

[Baltika9]

===Early poll===

A - 3
B - 5 (6)
C - 3 (6)
D - 3

Votes

Tigranes - A>C>D
Absinthe - A>B
ItsChon - A>C>D

ERYFKRAD - B
Baltika9 - B>D
Life of the Party - B
Kz3r0 - B
Kipeci - B>D

Esquilax - C
Grimgravy - C>D>A
hello friend - C>D>B

baud - D
oscar - D>C>A>B
Nevill - D

===

For the record - I don't actually think that we'll die if we pick B, as insane as that is.

Actually I think is a possibility, I have nothing against rolling another character, it’s just that we chose a strong guy, let’s fight.

First off, he's not a "strong guy" he's a ten year old kid that is kinda tough and hardy on account of living in the woods. That's it. And even if that were the case that he were some badass warrior, that doesn't mean you should fight all the time regardless of the situation.

You're happy to re-roll after two updates and a dozen pages of character creation back-and-forth? Jesus, talk about tapping out.

Glorious Revolutionary Comrade Bull will not be suppressed so easily. Rise up, comrades! To victory!

Just because we are (probably) safe from dying in the prologue doesn't mean that Treave might not leave us with some permanent reminder injuries if we insist on retardation

Scars are p. manly, tho. We don't have a lot of charisma, so might as well go for the 'strong and silent' look.

 

[Nevill]

Our defining personality could be that while we try to help where we can, we are cold-blooded & rational enough to think of self-preservation (A), or that we turn to some higher power in times of great need (D)

D for Deus Vult.

Though Nagas are fine too.

 

[Baltika9]

 

[Tigranes]

So pretty even split B-C-D for first choices right now. But people like Nevill might want to do some conditionals.

I still don't hear a single coherent theory of how B will result in a positive outcome. That means B is always reliant on speculative meta thinking + some weird fetish for being stupidly gung ho. Like "we rolled a strong char let's fight" when we are TEN YEARS OLD.

If this was the Mongol Horde or a black dragon you still going to vote the 10yo kid fights to the death? Hell, that probably has better chances of impressing the general into sparing your life.

 

[Baltika9]

I still don't hear a single coherent theory of how B will result in a positive outcome.

I don't think there's a positive outcome here. We are in close proximity to the Thing and it, quite literally, owns our immediate surroundings. It can, if it deigns to do so, set the entire forest ablaze, or just toy with us some more. Or just straight up eat us. What I find curious, however, is that it didn't eat us yet and that it seems to be intelligent:

Just for an instant, the snout of the beast wrinkles, the maw widening almost imperceptibly, as if in a grin. The tail comes for the fourth time. You dodge… and are promptly blindsided by another blow, sending you tumbling across the ground like a ragdoll. You feel a sharp, biting pain, and clutch your sides. It feels like you have been cut up by something sharp. Blood seeps from between your fingers. Gritting your teeth and enduring the agony, you glance up at the beast. You see that it now has two tails. If you were not convinced before, you are now. This thing is far beyond your comprehension, beyond any of your expectations.

But then, the beast does something that surprises you. As if it had suddenly lost all interest in you, it turns away from you, back towards the woman that it attacked.

To be honest, I think we amused it by attacking as we did. Maybe it is indeed intelligent and it, I dunno, respects us?

We're in a pretty shitty position no matter what we do, really:
A - we try to crawl away from a Thing that can grow and elongate its tails at will. Maybe it will let us go. Maybe it won't.
B - we attack the Thing that just whooped our ass. Maybe it will let us live again, maybe it w
C - we go catatonic and hope for our Bullshit Anime Powers to activate, as Esquilax described in an earlier post.
D - We'll be wishing for them tails once the nagas are done with us. Hora hora hora.

If this was instead us starting with a 10yo kid in a frontier zone, and kid was practicing swordplay when the Mongol Horde descended upon him and the general just trod on your ribs with the horse, what you gonna do? Vote "let's fight"??? Hell, that probably has better chances of impressing the general into sparing your life.

The Mongols were a peaceful, mercantile people. All wars were waged for self-defense. Cease your slanderous lies and lying slander at once! Jing's grandson is a good boy who did nothing wrong.

 

[Nevill]

I still don't hear a single coherent theory of how B will result in a positive outcome.

Astra Power awakening, hunters arriving, or... something classic.

Spoiler

Before his claws my breast could rip,
My bough I did more firmly grip,
And, plunging it in his throat, twice
The weapon twisted. Loud rang his
Howl o'er the wood. He gave a bound.
And, like two friends their arms around
Each other, or two serpents wound
Into a ball, over the cold,
Dew-sprinkled moss and grass we rolled....
An untamed beast, as wild as my
Foe was I then; his savage cry,
His snarls were echoed by my own.
It was as if I'd only known
Of leopards and of wolves the ways,
Their company, and all my days
Had in the forest spent among
Its dwellers, and the human tongue
Forgot.... Within me, deep, was born
The terrifying and forlorn
Call of the wounded beast, and I
No other sound could utter, why
I cannot say.... Meanwhile, my foe
Was tiring, and his breath grew slow [...]

I told you, we should have tired it out.

But serious talk here, fighting it head on does not look like it would lead to a much worse outcome than lying there shaking in fear, trying to crawl away while bleeding out, or praying for something else to intervene.

In which case the positive thing here is the attitude itself!

If this was the Mongol Horde or a black dragon you still going to vote the 10yo kid fights to the death? Hell, that probably has better chances of impressing the general into sparing your life.

Spoiler

From here.

 

[Baltika9]

Ah, Lermontov. It's been a while

By the way, does anyone else find it curious how most of our protagonists are orphans?

 

[treave]

By the way, does anyone else find it curious how most of our protagonists are orphans?

I gave you guys four other backgrounds, each with living family, at the start of this CYOA. What did you guys pick?

 

[Baltika9]

By the way, does anyone else find it curious how most of our protagonists are orphans?

I gave you guys four other backgrounds, each with living family, at the start of this CYOA. What did you guys pick?

Yes, that's what I was making fun of.
Can you confirm or deny the possibility for Hora Hora if we vote D? This is important.

 

[Nevill]

The vote for Pray Hora Horas entire LPs. Inevitably.

Maybe doing it early will get it out of our system. Then again, with only two modes, YOLO and PRAY, where does that leave us?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I didn't know being manly equated to being a total moron who tries to fight a fighter jet by smashing his own skull into i

Well I'd smash it if the fucking thing stops flying around dammit.

 

[Tigranes]

Oh, now we think the monster respects us? That's a new one. We aren't going to do it enough damage to get respect if we had 20 turns free to smash at it.

"We're so fucked by this overwhelmingly powerful enemy, surely therefore attacking it headon again and again is just as OK as trying to run away now that it's ignoring us!"

Again, this is just delusional thinking ignoring the plain reality in treave's update: that the monster, seemingly having lost interest, turns away from us. It's not sitting there watching, it's not waiting for the fires to get us, it's letting us be & leaving.

B is where you actively tell it "hey wait we want to fight some more, please stick around!!!!"

 

[ERYFKRAD]

B is where you actively tell it "hey wait we want to fight some more, please stick around!!!!"

I'm just saying man, you are not dissuading me very well.

 

[ItsChon]

A>C>D Y'all are dumb. Never really done a Treave CYOA except for the Hobo one which was a bit meme and interrupted by long breaks. IDK if Treave is the kind of person to kill us off at the beginning of the game for doing something stupid, but TBH I hope he is, because I like consequences. B is stupid and ridiculous. There's nothing we can do, and I'd rather not take the chance on Treave being nice or meta and letting the most stupid option work out. Nothing in what Treave wrote suggests we can't eventually stand up and limp away.

The beast turning away suggests it's giving us a chance to nope the fuck out. People who are claiming that the Beast is going to kill us anyway are being disingenuous. If you want to do the meme, edgy, anime badass option of charging the beast, at least say so and be frank. Let's not pretend that A is a bad choice though.

 

[Baltika9]

Oh, now we think the monster respects us? That's a new one. We aren't going to do it enough damage to get respect if we had 20 turns free to smash at it.

I already told you what my rationale is, and judging from the comments of other B voters they either agree with my train of thought, or they just want to fite.

I like B because it sets up an interesting character as a person. Here's how I see our character at this moment: our boy doesn't have anyone to serve and anyone close to him. He has nothing except an abusive guardian and the skills to survive. However, his reason for surviving (not even living, simply surviving) is completely absent. And before you compare him to Jing's adventure of deprogramming himself from being shun's sock puppet, our protagonist has no programming to break through, because no one programmed him to do anything. He is pretty much nothing and no one. Esquilax, in fact, got his wish: we are indeed a very primal sort of character; we exist for no other reason than our biological imperative to survive and eventually procreate. And, to be honest with you, I find this to be pathetic.

As for interpreting B, you see it as:

"We're so fucked by this overwhelmingly powerful enemy, surely therefore attacking it headon again and again is just as OK as trying to run away now that it's ignoring us!"

Whereas I read it as a small human boy being prepared to do something truly human and heroic: to fight, not to prove a point or be a badass, but for the sake of another human being and its chance to have a good life that was denied him. His age and feeble stature only magnify the grandeur of this deed. And B doesn't feel stupid to me at all. On the contrary, it feels natural and I've faced a similar situation before (I can tell you more about it if you're interested, but I don't want to monopolize everyone's time). The story that B promises to tell me (as I read it, at least) is that of a wild animal that happens to be a homo sapiens finding its way to becoming the human being it was borne as. I don't know why, but that just sounds like a cool story and I want to explore it. And, yes, I do think that there is no reliably 'good' way out of here: we are at the Thing's mercy and it can kill us or spare us arbitrarily.

We're a dumb young kid (oxymoron, I know), faced with death. Right now, there are no unnecessary thoughts about what is right or wrong, moral or immoral, or what will we do with our life tomorrow. There is only one question: what do I do now. The answer that B provides is simple: 'this dumb motherfucker just showed me his ass and I'm gonna make him pay for it, because no way will I let him kill that woman and her child.' All of the other stuff that I'm talking about isn't actually in the boy's head at the moment, as the choice itself says. He's just a petulant kid that won't stay the fuck down and that is what makes B glorious.

Edit: the 'respect' comment was me pointing out the Thing's weird behavior, nothing more. I don't know much about it, obviously.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

can tell you more about it if you're interested

Do.

 

[Baltika9]

can tell you more about it if you're interested

Do.

K.

When I was growing up in Riga, Latvia, my apartment was broken into by two armed robbers; this happened when my mom and I were leaving for the grocery store ( I think). The two mean met us at the door, put a pitol to my mother's head and ushered us back in. Then, they asked where the valuables were and one of them started looting the place.

This is how fucking stupid I was: once that other dude left, I jumped on the guy's arm and tried to wrestle the pistol away from him while yelling "Get away from my mom, you asshole" as loudly as a five year old could. I even bit the dude. Thankfully, the two gentlemen were very composed and understanding, and were just trying to make a buck. The man's partner came into the room, literally peeled me off of the other dude, gave me a smack upside my head and told me to use my fucking brain next time. Then, they left.

The point of the story is not that Little Baltika9 was a badass, but that things become really simple in dangerous times and you stop considering long-term philosophical questions like 'how will this decision shape me as a person?' All I could see was that someone put a pistol to my mom's head and I all knew I had to get her out of that. All our boii sees is a woman and child that are about to be ravaged and savaged, and all he knows is that he wants to protect them. So, yeah, this train of thought makes complete sense to me.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

our boii sees is a woman and child that are about to be ravaged and savaged, and all he knows is that he wants to protect them

And he's twice the age you were, so that instinct doubles. And there's two of them, so it quadruples.

Spoiler

Man you were damn lucky those two didn't lose their heads. Could have gotten ugly real fast.

 

[Azira]

WELL THEN! Would have been amusing to try and shoot the thing.
But interesting to know it wields fire astra.

And I agree with Baltika here. It's toying with us. Might even have taken interest in us, in the creepy way.

I don't think any of these options would result in an end to the LP.

So, in order of preference:

B>D>C

 

[Nevill]

To be honest, I think we amused it by attacking as we did. Maybe it is indeed intelligent and it, I dunno, respects us?

Let's see.

The tail retracts, and then whips towards you yet again, with the beast itself seeming to have no intention of stepping beyond the fire. You barely avoid that attack too, stumbling around desperately in your attempt. [...]

The pulsating red streaks across its body glow brightly. It howls. Raising its head up to the skies, it lets out a high-pitched howl. As if in answer, the small fires roar to life, forming a ring of flames around you and the monstrous beast. [...]

But there is no more time to think about such things. The tail comes about once more, aiming for your head. You duck this one with more composure. The tail attacks are very fast, but also rather monotonous, and always come from the same angle. If that is all it is going to do, you might be able to survive this. [...]

Just for an instant, the snout of the beast wrinkles, the maw widening almost imperceptibly, as if in a grin. The tail comes for the fourth time. You dodge… and are promptly blindsided by another blow, sending you tumbling across the ground like a ragdoll. [...] You see that it now has two tails. If you were not convinced before, you are now. This thing is far beyond your comprehension, beyond any of your expectations.

But then, the beast does something that surprises you. As if it had suddenly lost all interest in you, it turns away from you, back towards the woman that it attacked.

The beast made 3 slow, lazy attacks knowing that it can tear us apart in a single swing. It gave us hope of survival. Then it shaped the flames we thought to use as a weapon to cut off a path of retreat and trap us with it. Then, when we thought "I can still do this", it slapped us with a second tail - but again, not to death. And then, after demonstrating that we are powerless against it, it turned its back on us, saying "you wanted to distract me with your antics to save the kid? I'll have you watch me eat it before you die."

Intelligence, yes. But I don't see it as any kind of respect.

That is the ultimate disrespect and taking joy in the helplessness of your opponent, the kind that makes you want to wipe that smirk off their face even if it costs you your life.