Bay 12 Games Forum

When you wake up, you're pretty sure it's late afternoon. Just after the sun's gone down. You roll out from underneath the bed, hop to your feet and adjust your clothes in the mirror. You feel pretty good. Doesn't take you any time to wake up at all. It's like flipping a switch from off to on. You could get used to this.

Actually, come to think of it, you've been wearing the same clothes for a while, and they're a little grungy. You take a minute to change, which is a little bit of a relief. You toss the old clothes on the edge of your bed and leave your room.

You almost collide with your sister. Alicia's a little younger than you, second year of high school, and she's apparently pretty pleased to see you, since she hugs you on the spot.

“What happened to you?” she asks. You shrug. “Long story.”

She holds you for a little while. “Glad you're okay.” she concludes, head buried in your shoulder.

“Thanks. You doing all right?”

“...Yeah.”

This all is a little surprising to you, since you normally didn't get along very well. She breaks off the hug and tells you “Dad's downstairs. Dinner's going to be ready soon.” You wonder if your mother or brother told her what happened. For that matter, you wonder why she isn't nervous the way other people are about the vampirism thing. Maybe it only affects certain people. The Ives didn't seem to care. Earl wasn't nervous around you, at least not like prey.

You go to the kitchen. Your father is there, sitting and reading a book off to one corner. Your mother is making dinner. Their body language is a little odd, like they aren't as comfortable with each other as they were before you left. Your dad is dressed a little shabbily, but he's clean shaven and his hair is combed. Something is cooking in the oven, and it smells like some sort of poultry. Your heightened sense of smell makes it an unpleasant experience.

“Tom!”

Your dad puts the book down and gets up to hug you. Apparently he's not nervous about the vampire thing either.

“You, uh, you all right?” he asks.

“Uh, yeah, I'm all right.” you tell him.

“Your mother told me something...a little...weird.” he concludes.

“The, uh, vampire thing?” you ask.

“Is it...?”

“Yeah.” you shrug. “Pretty much.”

“Oh.” he says. He seems totally taken aback. You notice your sister watching you talk from the living room. She seems just as baffled as he does.

“So what happened?” he asks.

“Uh.” you struggle for words as you sit at the kitchen table. “I...I'm not totally clear on that. My memory's a bit damaged from when it happened. What I've sort of figured out is that, well, my friends and I went to a Christmas party out at The Office, and then some, uh, bad vampires kidnapped us?”

“Bad vampires kidnapped you?” he asks, incredulous.

“Yeah, pretty much. I heard them talking. They have a game where they kidnap a set of people and the strongest one gets to become one of them or something, at least that's what I thought he meant.”

“So how did you get away from them?”

“Dunno. Woke up in a strange house. And, uh, then they tried to kidnap me again, only I got away.”

“And you came here?”

“Right.”

“How did they turn you into a vampire?” he asks.

“Fucked if I know.” would be your first answer, but that would upset them, so you settle for a shrug. “I can't remember.”

“Anyways, I'm sure you have like a million questions for me. But I gotta get a few ground things established with you, if that's okay?”

You gesture at your mother to make sure she knows that she's included in this, and you beckon at your sister who is clearly eavesdropping to just come and join the conversation.

“First, I need to know you still trust me, and that I can trust you all to, uh, not expose me to the police or put my life in danger any other way. To leave me undisturbed during the day. Can you promise me that?”

You don't nudge their wills. Your sister and father nod unhesitatingly, but your mother hesitates for a moment before nodding.

“Swear to God?” you ask. Your parents wince, but both of them nod.

“We promise.” they tell you.

“All right. Second, I-”

“Aw heck.” your dad says. “George knows you're here, but he doesn't know about the whole, uh, thing with the...”

This complicates things. George is your Dad's best friend, attends the same church, friend since high school, etcetera. You guess that after your parents had some sort of fight your dad had been staying with him. But if he knows...

Your dad takes out his phone and tells you that he'll ask George not to say anything, but you know that it's probably too late. He tends to be awkwardly loud on social media, and probably made some sort of gushing announcement about how glad he is you've returned home and how marvelous the power of prayer is, etcetera, etcetera.

Your dad asks him not to say anything. George apologizes for already having made some sort of post in exactly the nature you predicted. What throws you for a loop is that your dad reports that George reports that somehow it's gone.

“Gone?” you ask.

“Yeah.” your dad tells you. “Like it was never there. It was up, but then it wasn't.”

“That's concerning.”

“Yes, but, uh, it's a good thing for us, right? Probably just a lucky bug in the system.”

“Right. Well. Not the priority right now. I'm gonna go out. I'm going to The Office, where it all started. See if I can find some clues.”

“What? Clues?” your mother asks.

“Yeah. About how my friends got taken.”

Her response is exasperated. “But, why are you getting involved in this again? You've just escaped from the, uh, bad vampires...There's still so much that needs explaining.”

“Look, I have, uh, sort of insider information. Information the cops can't have, or wouldn't use right... Also. I need something to do.”

“Something to do?”

Everyone looks a little dumbfounded, but eventually your sister pipes up.

“Right...If you can't, um, go out in the sun any more, and if you're staying missing...I guess that means you can't go to school any more. Or go to church. Or college...”

“I'll try not to shed any tears about that.” you smirk.

“Shit!” your father proclaims. “It's all, just, so much to take in. How are you going to...?”

“We'll figure it out as we go. Don't worry. For now, I wanna go to The Office, see if I can find anything there.”

“Won't they recognize you there?”

“In my current state? Doubt it. Bit pale, unshaven, and ever so slightly less doe eyed. Shouldn't really be an issue, I think.”

They look kinda defeated.

“So...Heh. You wanna give me a drive up to The Office?” you ask.

“All right.” your father says. “I'll drive you after supper?”

“Sounds good.”

- - -

So, you're going to The Office first. Any other errands? Gun: yes/no?
What next? >_

Quote from: jaked122 on October 25, 2015, 10:06:15 pm

I am a large coil of rope that has due to mysterious circumstances ended up on the SAS squad responsible for brainworms.

+1

We're perfect for the job because we can't get infected! We even look enough like a mind worm to impersonate one!

I really don't understand how they got roped into this.

Reconciliation. Hah. That was what you wanted once. As generations passed in the prison, you came to regret your part in the rebellion, and wished that you could be with the Creator again. To make it so that the rebellion had never happened. You know it is a foolish idea. You held onto it as a glimmer of hope, but now you'd settle for destroying the creator, if you could manage that. The Creator does not forgive, and neither will you.

But the creator is incredibly powerful. All of creation is an aspect of that being's essence. On the highest plane, it is still there, incredibly powerful. You'd need to add almost all essence in creation to yourself to be able to challenge the creator. The feasibility of such a course of action is somewhat doubtful, but you decide to get started just the same.

To gain power, the easiest course of action would be to consume your fellow legionaries. They will have gathered what essence they could scavenge to themselves, and will have done the job of collecting it for you. You try and locate others of your kind, spreading your senses across the area, widening the scope of your awareness until it stretches over the city.

Once, you were able to view entire continents at once, to perceive everything with perfect clarity. Now you can only barely feel the city around you, unable to make out the details. The people, the cars, all the electronic white noise, a symphony of nonsense that half-blinds you.

What you can feel, or see, is that there are four other beacons of essence, fellow legionaries. None of them measure up to your power, such as it is. They must be very weak, and therefore vulnerable to consumption. So you consider the nearest one. It's barely a spark of essence, little stronger than the vaguest, cold background flow in the living things of the city, but it's a start.

Then, you feel a terrible sinking feeling. A groan, like the earth shuddering, and you feel your essence slowly begin to trickle away. The tiniest of leaks – not literally descending, but falling through the planes, back towards the prison. Like you're anchored there by the thinnest of threads. The sensation is very worrying. You'll have to work fast.

You smash through the earth out of the little enclosed warren – it'll make a good space to hide things later, or maybe a spot of worship if you assemble a cult of some kind to you, but for now it's mostly irrelevant. You have to consume the others of the legion.

After bursting from the concrete, you steal another car. The owner doesn't put up a fight, because it's a little hard to resist being carjacked without a spine. You start driving towards your target, and notice the roadsigns are all off – the city's power grid is fluctuating, and with a weird sparking noise, the streetlights go off. People stare out of the windows into the street, groups huddled on corners. The question on everyone's lips. What's going on?

They'll find out soon enough.

There's still smoke rising from parts of the city, helicopters flying overhead, black ones mixed with blue police helicopters. Sirens. Some road closures. Emergency personnel in reflective uniforms running around. It seems that you aren't the only one who began to rampage around the city – places you don't remember hitting are still on fire – a factory of some sort burns, the road to a more residential part of town is cordoned off. Some sort of armored vehicle is blocking that road, men in fatigues busily occupied with something of no interest to you.

You pull up near where you felt the essence of a fellow legionary. It's a temple to the Creator, though it does not feel holy. The ground is not sanctified, and you enter with no issue. It is dark, the only source of light being the 'exit' sign near the fire escape in the back. Down the aisles, past the pews and standing by the altar, there's a man standing there wearing a vest and tie, looking rather blank.

“Ah.” he says. “You're here.”

You step forward, into the church, and give him an appraising look. “You know why I'm here.” you tell him.

“Actually, no. I can't say I do.” he replies.

“I'm here to consume you.” you tell him.

“Why?” he asks, levelly.

“Your essence will be mine.” you tell him. “I will gather all the essence I can, and then challenge the Creator.”

He begins walking down the aisle towards you. “This assumes there's still a Creator to challenge. Look around – there are none of the Creator's servants come to destroy us, or bring us back to the prison. The Creator's power has already failed.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The Loyalists are gone. The Creator's servants, the ones who didn't rebel. They seem to have withered away – there's no trace of them. The Creator itself hasn't acted since the Prison broke. There's only the faintest of pulls from the Prison itself, and only because it was ordered so when it was first created.”

“It is a little curious.” you admit. “It's been a while. Maybe they're dormant? It doesn't matter – I don't have time for you.”

“Perhaps you can wait on the consuming thing until we have some answers?” he says, coming to a halt in front of you.

“I don't think so.”

He steps back as you assume your true form, and gets out a quiet “Aw shit.” before diving down the aisle just as you take a swipe at him. Pews go flying in splintered messes. When he assumes his True Form it is a weak, winged outline – he barely has the essence to manifest, and it's all he can do to dodge infuriatingly at your swipes. You resort to breathing fire and the entire church goes up in flames. The sprinklers go off, but your target makes for the rear entrance.

At that point, you become aware of another essence drawing close. Something smashes in through the front entrance, screeching loudly over the snapping and popping of the fire and the hiss of the sprinklers. You turn to deal with this new issue.

It appears someone had the same idea as you; another Legionary assuming their true form attacks. It has an iron body, from which dozens of spiked chains drag from. With a battlecry like a dozen violins being played by a tone-deaf lunatic emulating speed metal, it runs at you.

You have to wonder what they were thinking, if they were thinking anything at all. Maybe they were even more lost to their rage than you. You sidestep its initial charge and it goes crashing into the fire. You close with it and smash it against the far wall, where a large stained glass window shatters and falls to the floor in glittering fragments. Outside the new hole in the building, a black helicopter opens up on the both of you with some sort of machine gun – but it's barely an irritation.

The chain-armed Legionary jumps out of the fire sending its many arms wrapping around you, grabbing your arms and wings, but it's too weak to properly hold you. You drag it in closer and squeeze it, and it warps, bends, begins melting as you slowly choke the life out of it. With a final whine, it gives in and you draw its essence into yourself.

You gain a memory fragment.

There were five cities loyal to the Creator, at least to begin with. These were Araboth, Zebul, Machonon, Shamayim and Sagun. Five cities constructed by the Loyalists, to counter the cities of the Legion.

You have almost no time to chew on this particular bit of information, however, because there's still the matter of the human interference. You pick up a suitably heavy bit of furniture and heft it at the helicopter, which sends it crashing to the ground. There's a pair of police cars outside and a firetruck on the way, but they're unimportant. You crash through the cars outside, intent on tracking your target, when an unmarked black van pulls up.

Destroying it shouldn't be a problem, so you turn to swat it aside. It comes to a sudden halt and doors on either side shoot open, men in black suits and mirrorshades pouring out holding odd looking guns. You're just about to reach them when a man in a lab coat hops out of the van holding a symbol up. Mage. He'll be full of essence, but he's as dangerous as one of the Legion. He masks his essence, so he could be as weak as the one that retreated, or as strong as you. A wall of force shoots up between you and the men in black, and they open up with their firearms. Instead of bullets, green bolts of energy hit you – and they actually hurt! A little.

1. Try and kill them.
2. Retreat to preserve essence.

Jason helps gather the chokeberries.

Then, after a few minutes, he looks around and asks "Where's Ebony? Tell me we didn't forget her."

Quote from: Glacies on October 23, 2015, 10:23:56 pm

Jason and Gianna walked slowly, cautiously through the woods. They peered at shrubs in the hope of finding berries, that sort of thing. The truth was that they had mostly relied on scavenging from civilization, so foraging out in the wild was not something they were overly familiar with.

"So, you know much about two thirty seven?" Jason asked, in a low voice. "I thought you were traveling with him before you met up with us - that right?"

Gianna kept pace with Jason, as they walked.
"Well, I've traveled with him for, like, a month? He may seem a bit craggy and stone-cold, but he's somewhat warmer than he lets on."

"Uh-huh?" he replied.

They walked on in silence for a little while, glancing around the woods. Jason peered at a clump of fungi growing at the base of a tree, squatted next to it and poked it. It was orange, with little frills around it, and he wished he knew more about plants and mushrooms.

"Don't know if it's poison or not." Jason said. "Better leave it."

So they left it there. Then, after they had walked on a little further,

"I wonder why he wants us to call him by the number. Guess it's one of those things - Like Holiday's bandanna, it just reminds him who he is. Or Ebony's coat and sword, that sorta thing." He was half thinking out loud, half trying to get Gianna's impression of the rest of the group. They hadn't talked much, and he still didn't know what to think of her yet.

Jason waves at the scouts. "Careful." he says, somewhat unnecessarily.

Then, turning back to Doc and Holiday, he gestures around the woods. "Guess we'll go foraging while they check out the town?"

Jason forages in the woods as per Holiday's suggestion, looking for edibles; fruit, vegetables, dandelions if it comes to it, convenient kindling, etc.

Good question. They apparently joined the forum recently, posted some stuff in only a few threads, then edited all their posts out of existence. Nothing to go on except the post history, so we can only blindly speculate at their motives.

EDIT:

Well, this story is a kinda sad one. Turns out they started another thread about creating a DF clone, the community jumped aboard with lampshade hangings, pitchforks and torches, and burned it to the ground from all appearances. Then they probably quit the board.

EDITEDIT:

This particular passage, buried in a quote, survives on:

"You know what an artist is ? right ? makes the UI and the graphics. Artists are just that, ignorant of community forums etc. We are good at ... who would have guessed .... art. We try to make dreams come true and have an immense fun in making people happy with our fun. However I find enough forums I am welcome in and where I get a good communication with people.

Artists get approached by many people and have to adapt to many gamestyles, from RPG to shooters, from strategy games to platformers, from coverart to endless runners ....

We are mostly busy to find a good style. Most artists take money for their work, but more often refuse work they don't like or that does not inspire them.

It is true, i am not the type that plays DF and Gnomoria and what not. But I never made art for any game like that and I felt challenged by it and so I decided to accept the challenge.

As an artist this is not the only project I will be working on. The programmers will be fixed on the project. We are more interested in essences that count for people than for details. So burying too deep in single non artistic forums is the death of an artist. However many forums like artists anyway because we are also less political or game oriented. Some people don't mind usnot to be so deeply buried in, because the upside is, we also often do things that make people happy in topics that do not interest really, But we like to feel we made someone happy. To make a image of Balin for example I don't need to be in Tolkien forums. I just need to hear the essence about the character. rom one perso to make that person happy with their individual view of the character or from a group to make a group happy.

After all I said sorry and explained my error, and now come on and admit that I made your day in shooting against me "

So, in summary: Guy comes in, posts about DF clone/attacks DF, gets roasted, is awkward and unhappy, leaves, erasing all traces in his power. AND NOW WE KNOW THE REST OF THE STORY~!

You twist and shudder back into your host's original shape, brush your hair out of your eyes and smirk at the hollow-eyed form of Kirimulix – a Defiler, weak, compromising, corrupting when he should be destroying. Wipe the slate clean.

You gain a memory fragment.

Banner carrier. Kirimulix once led a legion. Thousands of the legionaries, weapons held high, holding their own against the Heavenly Host. What is this memory? What is it?

“Karmarxio. The Legion of Endless War.” you tell him. “Why...why has the world changed so much? What happened? I feel no holy presence. How have things changed so much...? Was Mankind abandoned to rule this world? Why do they not recognize us?”

Kirimulix shrugs.

“I barely remember what happened myself. When the prison broke, I was hurled thru the lower planes and had to find a host to sustain myself. My essence was siphoning off. I imagine the Legion has spread throughout the world, free of our punishment, to wreak vengeance on Creation. But the memories...”

You nod. What he says mostly makes sense; he was freed at the same time you were, and like him, you barely remember why. The Prison had dulled your perceptions; a sensory deprivation chamber. Nothing left for you in the Prison except your thoughts – a black ball of hatred and insanity.

“Of course. If the Prison is broken, does this mean the Creator's power has failed? Was there not enough essence to sustain it?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, I suspect. But I have found no holy ground. The essence in this place is faint; unless we are careful, we won't be able to sustain ourselves. Even now, I can feel my essence beginning to slip away.”

Kirimulix peers at you curiously.

“I wonder,” he says “Your rampage must have consumed much essence, yet you still stand as powerful as when you first materialized. How do you keep your form together?”

Now it's your turn to shrug.

“I don't worry about that. My first impulse was to satisfy my desire for violent revenge. Perhaps the sacrifice of these humans was enough to seal me in.”

Kirimulix's expression grows more sinister.

“I wonder – if I devour you, will I gain your power for my own?”

Blades spring forward from his arms, a long snaking tail sprouts from his back, curled horns and fins, odd flippers and a pestilential cloud spring from his body as he assumes his true form. But he made the mistake of tipping his hand early, and you assume your true form as well. Onyx horns, red scales, wings of the dragon and talons to match. Though Kirimulix is cunning, he is no match for you. One swipe leaves him injured, another sends him into the cavern wall, where he snarls at you. Rocks fall from the ceiling, but you close in and deliver a killing blow. As his essence begins to dissipate, you absorb everything that he is; you gain his essence, you gain his powers, you gain his memories.

You gain a memory fragment.

The gates of Araboth were never closed. Always open, they welcomed the Legionaries to return and face the Creator's judgment. Though the Archdukes razed the gates seven times, each time it was rebuilt exactly as it was. Few crossed its threshold.

Once you have finished absorbing him, you return to your host form and try to remember more. When you were trapped in the prison, you decided on some sort of goal if you ever gained freedom. But what was it?

1. Find the Creator, and reconcile with it. This seems unlikely.
2. Find the Creator and destroy it.
3a. Find and consume other demons like yourself to grow all-powerful.
3b. Find and ally with other demons like yourself to create a new legion.
4. Find the High King, the ruler of all legions, and serve him.
5. Find the High King, the ruler of all legions, and destroy him.
6. Kill things for fun.

- - -

Eventually I'll update the OP with the memory fragments as you gradually put together how the fall happened.