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Unarmed attacks do 1d6-2 (just like hopper's claws, though the bite looks to be more lethal) and carry no tags, so they are not fast. However, if your intent is to stun rather than deal damage, that part is irrelevant. Trying to stun carries a lesser potential reward than trying to stab it (naturally) but is also less risky, because as long as you get a 7+, you will have interrupted the thing's attack.
D) Attempt to stun with fist, then use *belief move* to communicate how very poisonous we are to touch and taste. If stun fails, strike to kill to death with dagger. As we used our first action on the stun attempt, the hopper's attack is likely to hit us first, but on the off chance the damage is low enough that we survive the blow the fast attack speed of the dagger gives us another chance to save our skin.
D) Attempt to stun with fist, then use *belief move* to communicate how very poisonous we are to touch and taste. If stun fails, strike to kill to death with dagger. As we used our first action on the stun attempt, the hopper's attack is likely to hit us first, but on the off chance the damage is low enough that we survive the blow the fast attack speed of the dagger gives us another chance to save our skin.
You pull your fist back as the hopper's jaws snap towards your face.
...2d6+Strength
Result: 6; Failure (by a fucking hair)!
The flapping of wings.
A sharp beak punctures the beast's eye, driving itself deep into the brain. The hopper rears up and thrashes about in agony, its mouth still open, the warmth of stinking saliva splashing on your face. A great flying beast, easily the length of your forearm, dives towards the hopper's carcass. Eight feathery wings grace its narrow body. It strikes again, burying its entire head in the hopper's eye-socket, then removing itself as the omnivore stops moving. It sits upon the cadaver, turning its beaked head towards your bewildered self. No red stains its pure white feathers except for a small ruby in place of one of its eyes.
It is majestic mercy in this wickedly wretched place. It is that which does not belong.
It is your slow death.
You move your hand to snatch it but it flaps its many wings and takes off. The bulk of the dead hopper weighs you down as you struggle to stand up. By the time you get the corpse off you the beast has flown out of the hovel, leaving you alone in the dark.
Catharsis takes you. You lie on the filthy metal floor for a while, almost not feeling your stinging flesh. Until the panic sets in, that is.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! You rush to your feet, knowing that you must find what you came for and get out as soon as possible.
You search and search. Some broken pottery. Two rotting wardrobes stuffed with old clothes. A cracked table. An altar of filth where a bed should be. Nothing but piles of fucking junk.
Then, the corner where the hopper once was. The floor is marked with scratches around a...hole. You peer through it. It goes straight to the Void – nothing tied down underneath, no hidden cache. A makeshift latrine? You grasp the top of your head in despair, peeling back the membrane, thinking of thrusting a dagger in your brain...
No. Focus, damn you! You've almost died many times on many Shards – what's a slow death? Shit, it is easier to run from than from a fast one...
Run, that's it. You thought that scratch mark looked surprisingly legible – now you see that it is Whisper's old code rune for “run”. Suddenly a bucket materializes beyond the hole, suspended by a hook. You reach for it gingerly and place it on the floor. So that's what this is, a kind of portal, the key being the comprehension of the rune. Whisper and his tricks...
You remove two objects from the bucket. The first is a large, heavy vial of alchemical glass, filled with a dark, cloudy liquid. The second is wrapped in a sheet of paper, the kind a butcher would use to wrap meat...you unfold it anxiously. A small ball of flesh rolls onto the palm of your hand. A small slit opens up in its previously-smooth surface before your very eyes. The pink of a tiny tongue pushes itself out of the hole, leaving a wet trace on your bare skin. The surface of the ball changes once again as it grows something like an eye. It stares at you.
Do you take the items? Also, specify if you (k)eep or (t)hrow away Whisper's letter.
A) Yes – it is why you came here, after all. This is clearly no longer a safe place to conceal them in. Everything will be for naught if you don't recover them. Trying to figure out what these items are and what their significance is as soon as possible might just allow you to survive the torment coming your way. B) No. Not yet. The Inquisitor's spy has flown away, having seen you. You will be watched and, at some point, visited. Being seen or caught with these items on your person would spell your death. You will wait for a better time to recover them, perhaps after you somehow lessen the suspicion that has been placed on you. C) No. NEVER! Damn you, Whisper! Damn you...
Pain reminds you of your wounds. You desperately need a place to rest and recuperate in tonight...
Where do you go to rest? Also, specify if you (h)ire a healer to attend to you tonight, which costs 15 coins and increases your chances of recovering from your wounds.
a) The room you are renting out at an inn called the Last Meal, here in the Voidship Yards. It is cozier than the alternatives, though less discreet. The rent of 70 coin is due in 5 days. b) A bed in some flophouse in the Facade Ghetto. You will have little to no privacy but anyone trying to be subtle is unlike to try to harm you in the common room. It costs 5 coins a day to stay there. c) A small cave-dwelling on the roof of the Termitarium. It allows for privacy but has no routes for emergency escape. It costs 5 coins a day to stay there.
Still, this doesn't add up...out of every shanty in this slum the hopper decided to come here and has spent hours scratching at the floor around Whisper's cache. Why?
because all wretches seek the void as all are wretches to the void
You spin around, baring your steel. A herald. It must be. You dash to the hole madly, hyperventilating by the time you've climbed up on the roof.
There is no one there. No one looked into your eyes just now.
Goddamn.
As you can see, not every failure will result in you taking damage. I can do much worse than kill you, and in most cases it is also more interesting that way. Still, sometimes there are no avian friends to save you, sometimes the only logical outcome of failure in narrative is death. So by no means take this for a CYOA that lacks fail states.
-added the property rules to the equipment section of Mechanics
-added the Experience & Training section to Mechanics
-you receive XP for the following things:
*First time you get wounded (per Level) – 20XP
*Complete a mission on Demiurge's Shard – 25XP
*First time you drop below half your Health (per Level) – 40XP
Alright, time for me to explain how healing and experience works.
Healing: there is no max HP in this game. Instead, your health is re-rolled each time you rest, which entails rolling a d6, any extra d6s depending your environment, then adding your health bonus (which is +1 at Lvl1) and Constitution. If more than one d6 is rolled, only the highest result is considered. If the result is lower than your current health, you keep your current health. Staying at an inn as opposed to the shitty places gives you an extra die, and so does a healer's attention.
Experience: You accumulate XP by either 1. performing feats such as the ones above or 2. investing coin into training (1 coin for 1xp). You can spend 1000xp to level up in order to get various benefits (see the chart in the Experience & Training section of the second post). You may spend 250xp under a trainer's consent to get training in a new class, which means that when you level up you may choose to get abilities from the new class instead of your current one. I will elaborate more on that last bit when you reach 250xp.
"But Lithium Cunt, we've done quite a lot of things and we have nowhere near enough xp to level. Is the system rigged?" Well you see, imaginary person, the system I based this ruleset on was infatuated with the idea of your primary way to get xp being looting various riches, then spending money you get from selling them into the xp moneysink. I found that this works p. well in the actual PnP campaign I run, but I am not sure how well it will hold up in the more narrativistic CYOA format. So I might very well change the system, by quintupling the XP rewards or giving you levels for every mission you complete, for example. For now, let's see how the system works as-is.
The rules I added to the second post are a bit more comprehensive, so check them out if you want to learn more.
tBa So that was the inquisitors spy eh? That's not good. One, we were spotted and might be simply terminated, as our belief lets us move quickly if they try to apprehend us. Two, should the inquisitor try to be coy, we now owe him/her a lifedebt. Three, we can't really keep the things we found, if we're marked by the inquisitors. Better stash them again for later retrieval.
Lithium Flower, have we been to the cave hostel before? If the answer is yes, I vote we use a belief move to travel instantaneously to the cave, destroy the letter, get a healer, bring the goods. thAc
If the answer is no, I suggest we thBb. Last thing we want to do if we are observed is to hole up in a non-public place.
You will cover your tracks, and the letter will be thrown into the Void (which is a much better way to ensure that it is not going to be found than anything else you could do to it, trust me).
The reason why you know about both these places is probably because you scoped them out beforehand. So you weren't inside either but you've been near both, not to mention you have visited both wards before. So you absolutely can use the belief move to get closer to the hideout, then cross the rest of the distance on foot.
I'm sowwy for a being late by a few hours. Not sure if I will be able to update tomorrow – the PnP campaign I run in this setting is on sundays. There is a good chance I will be able to have something for you, though.
Hmm, overwhelming win for throwing away the letter and staying at the inn, but it looks like I will have to roll to see if you keep the “goods” in the bucket-cache or take them with you. To make it interesting, lets say that odd numbers mean that you leave them and even means you take them with you.
...the Die of Fate
Result: 4! You take the items!
Part 10 - Musty Cage
You've packed the items quickly. The ball of flesh is nearly weightless but the vial is quite heavy. Afterwards you concentrate on hiding your tracks as efficiently as possible, distracting yourself from your many worries. After you are done, the hovel looks more or less exactly like it was before you came to it.
Then you think. You think of drab bed sheets and yellow walls of your room. You think of the yellow walls until the colour makes you sick. You think of no longer being here but there, for here is no longer here if you are already there.
You are gone.
The gloom of the hovel is replaced with the blandness of a plain private room. You dash to a small chest by the bed, one of the few pieces of furniture in the room. You stash Whisper's things into the folds of your spare clothes, then collapse on the bed. You've come here for the warm sheets, clean linens, and a basin of water that will help you recover from your injuries and yet all you feel is repulsion at the piss-yellow walls oppressing you. They seem, smell, and probably taste like a musty cage for some beast scared out of its mind. You wonder when the hunter will arrive?
Enough. Your cuts need a fresh dressing, then you shall sleep...
...two Recovery die
Health Bonus: +1
Constitution: +1
Result: 5, 1; You now have 7 hitpoints!
---
That night you dream of dying. The hopper rips out your throat and your blood and tears fall upon the muddy earth, which churns and grows into something like clay...
---
As the distance between Demiurge's Shard and the Shard of Curious Depths diminishes, the distant outline of a new Shard becomes visible. The sorcerers of Censors College and Seekers Guild augur the new Shard and release some information to the hungry public.
They say it is a place of hunger and thirst; of bones picked clean and marrows drained...
---
It is the early morning of the second day.
You have been pacing around your small room for about half an hour now. A dull ache on every surface of your body is all that reminds of you last night's pain. The cuts have been shallow and cleaned up well. Rest has subdued your anxiety. For the first time you begin to think about your situation with a degree of calm.
Let's recap. You are holding onto some items that used to belong to your old, likely dead friend. You've no idea what they are, except that they are most likely contraband, hunted by some Lord-Inquisitor. Said Lord-Inquisitor knows that you have visited the house where the belongings were kept. Additionally, you don't have much money to your name, no gig going on despite being a freebooter, and no allies beside some crazy old man. Oh, and rent is due in four days.
However, your situation is far from hopeless. First of all, a job will not only give you money but also a good reason to move around, perhaps even leave the Shard, which will make you substantially harder to find. Secondly, the items in your possession might turn out to be valuable. Powerful, even. Finally, the Inquisitor has no idea what your connection to Whisper is besides your presence in the house. This gives you an opportunity to come up with an excuse, or perhaps...
The door clicks open, and Boxes enters. The tall hammerite is your landlord, his pale chitin a symbol of old age.
“Strider? There are rooms below you, you know. I've been getting complaints about the noise...” he says, then looks you up and down. “You look...listen, I didn't know you came in last night, and you don't look your best. Is everything alright – I mean, should I fetch a healer?”
You let him know that is not going to be necessary. He gives you a weird look, then reminds you once again to stop dancing a jig so loud that the tenants under you can hear, then leaves.
Damn. Boxes is a plain, reasonable hammerite. You've stayed in his inn plenty of times in the past. He never went out of his way to poke his nose in your business. Then again, you never gave him a reason to do so. It would be a shame if you had to kill him...
Before deciding to walk tight circles around the room you have quickly packed your belongings and made yourself look presentable. Dirt and scuff marks have been removed from your topcoat (which thankfully was open when the hopper scratched your chest, and thus undamaged) with manic speed. You folded up your cut, blood-stained wool trousers, shoving them in the chest, and put on some old leather breeches.
At least now you will look decent when the Temple Guard takes you away. You allow yourself a smile.
How do you spend the morning? Also, feel free to specify if you wish to store any items here.
A) Time to find another place to live. Inns are nice and all, but discretion should be your top priority. You don't want your landlord to sell you out, now do you? Describe what kind of place you are looking for and in which ward; I will give you something close to what you are looking for (note that you can only afford the cheapest level of lifestyle costing 5 coins a day, so you are pretty much limited to flophouses, shacks, etc. Alternatively you could live on the street, which brings down your cost of living to 1 coin a day for food, but is very risky.)
B) You need to be two things right now: making money, and hard to find. Go see if you can get a job. This will give you a good reason to get out of the house and might just allow you to make the rent payment.
C) The sooner you figure out what exactly it is you are holding onto, the better. Make a trip to the Facade Ghetto and show Knows the goods.
D) Spend your dwindling jingle on something useful. Tell me which goods/services you would like to purchase, and from whom (if they don't fall under one of your contacts, tell me how you plan to look for a source).
E) Stay indoors and lay low for a while. In the meantime, try to figure out what Whisper's belongings are through experimentation.
F) Desperate times call for desperate measures. Travel to the Termitarium and find the door within an endless hallway.
G) Something else, please specify what.
-added the descriptions of every remaining ward to the Journal: Demiurge's Plaza, Heartisle, Censor's Island, and the Twilight Beastlands.
-added the remaining sections of the Goods & Services portion of the Mechanics: Hirelings, Beasts, and Transport.
-added the new Shard to the Journal
-added Boxes to the journal.
Now things open up and you get to choose your destiny like a real person with agency. Sort of. As a prophet once said: “now the real rape begins.”
