Eight Last Embers (Inspired by Rain World and Caves of Qud)
- Thread starter jelloloaf
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
Turn 12 Results, Part 1
New
jelloloaf
Theoheretical
Beta-read by @Fated-Plan.
-[x] Explore the settlement
It's been days since the rain stopped, but other than an absence of the sounds of rushing water far below the city, there's not much indication of it. Shrine of Dust is still just as dark and chilly as it was before the storm. Dark and chilly and gray.
The wall you're seated (slumped, more precisely) against is made of the identical gray chiseled brick that seems to be the only construction material here. The sky is tinted gray from the shadow of the mountain. The leaves of the passers-by are faintly hued gray, though almost certainly just from a lack of proper lighting. Everything is the same gray as the person who killed Nothr.
You'd say something about it all being thematically appropriate, but this isn't really the time for humor. Nothr's dead. You can't just make a little joke and get on with things like it never happened. Xe were your mentor, your inspiration for wanting to go into research in the first place, and even beyond that, xe were your friend.
Not to say that you're an innocent child, unable to accept that people eventually die, but it was too soon. You were supposed to be able to tell xem about everything you'd been discovering. You were supposed to be able to impress xem with how you were following your name. You were supposed to at least be there for the funeral, if nothing else.
But there's not even going to be a funeral. Because xyr corpse is being puppeted by someone else, xyr spirit still trapped within helpless flesh. Even though you know funerary rites are a delicate procedure, you want to do nothing so much as to find this 'Basid' and throw xem into the pyre yourself.
You don't, though. Not only would it be supremely unhelpful – possibly the only thing worse than having your body controlled by a different person is to have your spirit meld with theirs forever – but you wouldn't even know where to find xem.
Also, 'you shouldn't murder people', but does it really count if the original owner of the body is already dead?
No, no, Nothr wouldn't want you to be a criminal. You need to keep the moral high ground here.
The question of whether or not you've already lost it – you found that strange key, you're the reason xe were in this scenario to begin with – is carefully left unanswered.
And around and round in circles you go, swinging between a depressive stupor and impotent anger. However, after three days of listless wandering across the labyrinth of bridges and columns disguised as a city, it all stopped feeling so sad and just started feeling exhausting. Not the same tiredness that you put upon yourself by working through the rain, but emotionally tiring.
Your immediate promise to yourself was that you'd mourn Nothr forever, never forgiving xyr unjust death. But you just can't. You can't hope that things will change. You just have to accept it.
That was what your name was supposed to mean. Acceptance of the world as it is, rather than trying to change it in a flawed vision of perfection that would ultimately make things worse than before. But now, the empathy is all worn out, leaving just the stone behind. No fire, the shaper, only earth, the shaped.
Only the cold, gray earth.
Alone.
…
But there is another fire now. Your own flame has been doused, but your mind still holds an old, burning memory. And from that spark, you may be relit.
Hmm? Oh, you've reached the level of stress where you start dissociating parts of your personality and acting like they're different people. Well, more than they already are. The idea of the spirit as a unified whole is actually just a common misconception, usually cited as being a result of minor syncretization with neighboring religions. The official theology is that there are seven different components of the soul, corresponding to the–
Already, you can feel the heat rising. Fire is creativity, intelligence, the animating force of the mind itself. In a word, agency.
Agency? That's certainly a definition for it. You'd probably call it something more like–
You don't need to waste time with idle debate. The task is out there. All you must do is go forth and perform it.
… Yes, you're right. You should be doing something. The one who caused all this in the first place, Basid or whatever xyr real name actually is. Nobody else knows what happened. You need to stop xem.
…
Look, nobody's perfect. Your only flaw is that you get overly philosophical when you're stressed. Still, it doesn't stop you from taking the wet lump of clay that you were calling a mental state and firing it into something more useful.
A plan.
-[x] Return to the Tenju site
You read somewhere once, while in the depths of your detective phase, that the key to solving any problem is to gather all of the available information, and start making conclusions. If anything contradicts what you already know, then you can cross it out and try a different path. Thus, eventually, you will be left with only the truth.
An elegant theory, to be sure. But not one that's particularly easy to implement for someone that's not able to deduct everything purely through author fiat. Still, anything is better than just sitting around and doing nothing while Nothr's killer gets away clean. What do you know?
Tapping a pen (dry, no sense in wasting ink) against one of the cleaner pages of your notebook doesn't immediately unearth any answers. Maybe if you keep trying.
What … do … you … know?
Wow, says your sense of sarcasm (which has apparently been toying with the idea of more permanent secession from the rest of your personality as a result of the last few days of sad philosophy, citing a dearth of representation in the conscious mind), turns out acknowledging that a problem is hard doesn't somehow magically make it easier.
Idly ignoring its lack of patriotism, you start tracing little circles with the still-dry pen. The metal nib leaves faint impressions on the paper, but it still fails to leave any in your brain.
…
Okay, new plan, you'll go back to the scene of the crime and look for clues. That always works.
Packing up your things is the work of just a few minutes; you really don't have that many. Then, you're out of the small common area in the traveler's quarters and back out on the bridges. It takes a few wrong turns to make a right one, but you eventually manage to find your way back to the seemingly-abandoned building that holds the secret entrance.
Peeking inside through an unreasonably high window, it still seems to be abandoned. For all of around ten seconds.
You quickly duck down when you hear what sounds like the faint echo of talking, most likely from someone ascending the staircase down to the Tenju site. It's almost indistinguishable from the background noise of the nearby street at first, but as the seconds continue to pass, it grows a little louder, and eventually differentiates into two distinct voices.
"Okay, we're almost at the top, I think. I recognize this crack."
"Finally. This thing is way heavier than it looks."
It's difficult to make out, but you think you can hear the distinctive sound of rustling leaves. Plants, which makes sense, given where you are. Still, for someone else to be there, they must be at least adjacent to the Librarians, and thus, for now, your enemies.
Making your way around to the front of the building, you stand next to the entrance, where the outward-opening door would hide you from the view of anyone leaving. Doing your best to act casual, you lean against the wall and wait.
It's not long before the thin stone slab is pushed aside and two plants walk out, carrying something between them.
"Where did you say we were taking this again?"
You scarcely breathe for fear of being noticed, but the workers (?) are focused on their labor.
"Just a few streets down."
You spare only a moment to glance at what they're carrying, but you can see that it's roughly cylindrical, and shrouded in an off-white cloth.
But, as you said, only a moment. As quietly as you can, you slip past the two and through the closing door, letting it click shut behind you. Success. You're so good at this.
Making your way back down the spiral and into the Tenju site proper goes much like you remember, with the immense circular portal still left open, and the decorative (you think) metal detailing around it just as intricate. However, the space beyond it feels … different.
It's still the same vast space with the same mysterious metal towers jutting out seemingly at random, but the air is wrong. It's quiet like it wasn't before, and the previous constellations of blinking lights are all dimmed.
Of course, not to mention the lack of heat. The pillar where the ember once stood is cold and dark. As you walk towards it, you note that Sphaera's (if that ever was xyr name) corpse is gone. It must have been taken for … whatever the plant rites are. (Something about carving?)
But you're not here to speculate. You're here to explore.
Going past where you stopped before, you can see that the bridges continue outward in several different directions from the central pillar. Picking a direction at random, you head right.
As you get deeper and deeper into the structure, it seems to be in worse and worse condition. Some of the strange spires have their tips broken off, and you can see clumps of cordage hanging down from the distant ceiling like stormclouds. Even with the legendary durability of Tenju construction, this place has been buried for millenia, shaken by the force of the torrential flooding above it.
Eventually, after a very harrowing leap across a collapsed section of walkway, you reach a wall. It's very abrupt; with the dim lighting, you nearly run into it face-first.
Tracing a hand along the rough substrate, you travel parallel to it until you reach something else of note – another doorway, though much smaller than the grand entrance you saw previously. It's little more than a circular hole in the wall, but it's enough to fulfill its purpose and let you through to a new room.
The first thing that strikes you is how small it is. It's still cavernous compared to any modern building, but the ceiling would at least be reachable by a stack of five, rather than fifty. The walls here seem to be taken up by vast racks of … something thin and flat that you can't make out in the darkness.
Continuing forward, you eventually see a small puddle of, if not actual brightness, at least more light than the average here. Inside the circle of illumination is what looks to be some sort of workbench, with what you can now recognize as some sort of tapestry laid out on it. It's in a state of disassembly, with countless threads stretched out across a maze of needles, themselves hanging from a ceiling-mounted arm.
Getting closer, you think you can make out the distinctive form of Tenju glyphs upon the tapestry, although neither its current state nor your lack of knowledge are very helpful towards figuring out what they might mean. You have to bring it to someone who could translate it if you want to find out.
But, before you can do anything else, you can hear a faint voice. One of the plants from before.
"Seniority my roots, if you think you heard something, you should be one to go check. HEY, IS ANYONE DOWN HERE? THIS IS A RESTRICTED AREA."
Damn it, apparently you weren't as sneaky as you thought. You can't see anywhere to hide, and while you're confident in your ability to outrun a plant, xe would definitely notice you doing so. You'll need to prioritize.
[ ] Take the tapestry
You don't have time to carefully detach it from the needle-ball, but you can definitely get most of it packed up. However, you'd almost certainly be seen, and running away doesn't stop someone from being able to remember your face.
Gain unidentified Tenju artifact (damaged). Relationship loss with Librarian's Union
[ ] Leave
If you go now, you can probably make it away from the light before you run into the plant, giving you a scant amount of anonymity. Xe'll know someone's here, but not that it's you specifically. Of course, there are only so many people matching your description in the city…
Small relationship loss with Librarian's Union.
Hey folks, hope you're doing well. Outside the quest, of course. Inside it, things haven't been too great. Thankfully, we've managed to find an extremely healthy coping mechanism that will definitely not have any negative consequences later on. Your character sheet has been updated with your new promise to yourself.
Hopefully it all got depicted reasonably well. I'm currently trying to write longer scenes, both so that you can all have more story to enjoy, but also so that we can have more natural breakpoints between scenes with the major votes, rather than having to keep several different unfinished scenes in memory before they get resolved all together in a single update. While the non-chronological aspect could be a stylistic choice elsewhere, I don't think it fits here.
On the other side of the ludo-narrative hyphen, I think that the one-or-two day space-filling action being a reversed form of the skipping rest giving a small roll malus will work out well. It gives a mechanical reason to not always be rushing everywhere, in addition to the existing reason of that simply not always being fun. I might tinker with it a bit later if it ends up incorrectly scaled, but for now, each day spent on the Rest action will give a 1/10 chance to gain +1 to all rolls on the next cycle. (2 days 2/10 chance, 3 days 3/10 chance, etc etc.) I'll start giving it to you once the next turn starts in Stone-Perch; for now, we still have some more business in Shrine of Dust.
Finally, I've made a small change to the way DC's work. Previously, not reaching a DC was just failure, period. This can feel very disappointing, especially when we're almost there like with this action we just had. The new method is that being exactly one off from reaching the DC is a Bare Failure, where despite not succeeding, we were able to get away with at least a little. This is meant to be the counterpart of the Bare Success that comes from matching a DC exactly, and give a little more narrative wiggle room for me to work with in making a compelling story.
Voting will be open for four days, or until we have a clear majority.
-[x] Explore the settlement
Roll: 1 (d10) + 1 (Ember Sparked) - 1 (Tired) = 1/6, failure
It's been days since the rain stopped, but other than an absence of the sounds of rushing water far below the city, there's not much indication of it. Shrine of Dust is still just as dark and chilly as it was before the storm. Dark and chilly and gray.
The wall you're seated (slumped, more precisely) against is made of the identical gray chiseled brick that seems to be the only construction material here. The sky is tinted gray from the shadow of the mountain. The leaves of the passers-by are faintly hued gray, though almost certainly just from a lack of proper lighting. Everything is the same gray as the person who killed Nothr.
You'd say something about it all being thematically appropriate, but this isn't really the time for humor. Nothr's dead. You can't just make a little joke and get on with things like it never happened. Xe were your mentor, your inspiration for wanting to go into research in the first place, and even beyond that, xe were your friend.
Not to say that you're an innocent child, unable to accept that people eventually die, but it was too soon. You were supposed to be able to tell xem about everything you'd been discovering. You were supposed to be able to impress xem with how you were following your name. You were supposed to at least be there for the funeral, if nothing else.
But there's not even going to be a funeral. Because xyr corpse is being puppeted by someone else, xyr spirit still trapped within helpless flesh. Even though you know funerary rites are a delicate procedure, you want to do nothing so much as to find this 'Basid' and throw xem into the pyre yourself.
You don't, though. Not only would it be supremely unhelpful – possibly the only thing worse than having your body controlled by a different person is to have your spirit meld with theirs forever – but you wouldn't even know where to find xem.
Also, 'you shouldn't murder people', but does it really count if the original owner of the body is already dead?
No, no, Nothr wouldn't want you to be a criminal. You need to keep the moral high ground here.
The question of whether or not you've already lost it – you found that strange key, you're the reason xe were in this scenario to begin with – is carefully left unanswered.
And around and round in circles you go, swinging between a depressive stupor and impotent anger. However, after three days of listless wandering across the labyrinth of bridges and columns disguised as a city, it all stopped feeling so sad and just started feeling exhausting. Not the same tiredness that you put upon yourself by working through the rain, but emotionally tiring.
Your immediate promise to yourself was that you'd mourn Nothr forever, never forgiving xyr unjust death. But you just can't. You can't hope that things will change. You just have to accept it.
That was what your name was supposed to mean. Acceptance of the world as it is, rather than trying to change it in a flawed vision of perfection that would ultimately make things worse than before. But now, the empathy is all worn out, leaving just the stone behind. No fire, the shaper, only earth, the shaped.
Only the cold, gray earth.
Alone.
…
But there is another fire now. Your own flame has been doused, but your mind still holds an old, burning memory. And from that spark, you may be relit.
Hmm? Oh, you've reached the level of stress where you start dissociating parts of your personality and acting like they're different people. Well, more than they already are. The idea of the spirit as a unified whole is actually just a common misconception, usually cited as being a result of minor syncretization with neighboring religions. The official theology is that there are seven different components of the soul, corresponding to the–
Already, you can feel the heat rising. Fire is creativity, intelligence, the animating force of the mind itself. In a word, agency.
Agency? That's certainly a definition for it. You'd probably call it something more like–
You don't need to waste time with idle debate. The task is out there. All you must do is go forth and perform it.
… Yes, you're right. You should be doing something. The one who caused all this in the first place, Basid or whatever xyr real name actually is. Nobody else knows what happened. You need to stop xem.
…
Look, nobody's perfect. Your only flaw is that you get overly philosophical when you're stressed. Still, it doesn't stop you from taking the wet lump of clay that you were calling a mental state and firing it into something more useful.
A plan.
-[x] Return to the Tenju site
Roll: 5 (d10) + 1 (Ember Sparked) - 1 (Tired) = 5/6, bare failure
You read somewhere once, while in the depths of your detective phase, that the key to solving any problem is to gather all of the available information, and start making conclusions. If anything contradicts what you already know, then you can cross it out and try a different path. Thus, eventually, you will be left with only the truth.
An elegant theory, to be sure. But not one that's particularly easy to implement for someone that's not able to deduct everything purely through author fiat. Still, anything is better than just sitting around and doing nothing while Nothr's killer gets away clean. What do you know?
Tapping a pen (dry, no sense in wasting ink) against one of the cleaner pages of your notebook doesn't immediately unearth any answers. Maybe if you keep trying.
What … do … you … know?
Wow, says your sense of sarcasm (which has apparently been toying with the idea of more permanent secession from the rest of your personality as a result of the last few days of sad philosophy, citing a dearth of representation in the conscious mind), turns out acknowledging that a problem is hard doesn't somehow magically make it easier.
Idly ignoring its lack of patriotism, you start tracing little circles with the still-dry pen. The metal nib leaves faint impressions on the paper, but it still fails to leave any in your brain.
…
Okay, new plan, you'll go back to the scene of the crime and look for clues. That always works.
Packing up your things is the work of just a few minutes; you really don't have that many. Then, you're out of the small common area in the traveler's quarters and back out on the bridges. It takes a few wrong turns to make a right one, but you eventually manage to find your way back to the seemingly-abandoned building that holds the secret entrance.
Peeking inside through an unreasonably high window, it still seems to be abandoned. For all of around ten seconds.
You quickly duck down when you hear what sounds like the faint echo of talking, most likely from someone ascending the staircase down to the Tenju site. It's almost indistinguishable from the background noise of the nearby street at first, but as the seconds continue to pass, it grows a little louder, and eventually differentiates into two distinct voices.
"Okay, we're almost at the top, I think. I recognize this crack."
"Finally. This thing is way heavier than it looks."
It's difficult to make out, but you think you can hear the distinctive sound of rustling leaves. Plants, which makes sense, given where you are. Still, for someone else to be there, they must be at least adjacent to the Librarians, and thus, for now, your enemies.
Making your way around to the front of the building, you stand next to the entrance, where the outward-opening door would hide you from the view of anyone leaving. Doing your best to act casual, you lean against the wall and wait.
It's not long before the thin stone slab is pushed aside and two plants walk out, carrying something between them.
"Where did you say we were taking this again?"
You scarcely breathe for fear of being noticed, but the workers (?) are focused on their labor.
"Just a few streets down."
You spare only a moment to glance at what they're carrying, but you can see that it's roughly cylindrical, and shrouded in an off-white cloth.
But, as you said, only a moment. As quietly as you can, you slip past the two and through the closing door, letting it click shut behind you. Success. You're so good at this.
Making your way back down the spiral and into the Tenju site proper goes much like you remember, with the immense circular portal still left open, and the decorative (you think) metal detailing around it just as intricate. However, the space beyond it feels … different.
It's still the same vast space with the same mysterious metal towers jutting out seemingly at random, but the air is wrong. It's quiet like it wasn't before, and the previous constellations of blinking lights are all dimmed.
Of course, not to mention the lack of heat. The pillar where the ember once stood is cold and dark. As you walk towards it, you note that Sphaera's (if that ever was xyr name) corpse is gone. It must have been taken for … whatever the plant rites are. (Something about carving?)
But you're not here to speculate. You're here to explore.
Going past where you stopped before, you can see that the bridges continue outward in several different directions from the central pillar. Picking a direction at random, you head right.
As you get deeper and deeper into the structure, it seems to be in worse and worse condition. Some of the strange spires have their tips broken off, and you can see clumps of cordage hanging down from the distant ceiling like stormclouds. Even with the legendary durability of Tenju construction, this place has been buried for millenia, shaken by the force of the torrential flooding above it.
Eventually, after a very harrowing leap across a collapsed section of walkway, you reach a wall. It's very abrupt; with the dim lighting, you nearly run into it face-first.
Tracing a hand along the rough substrate, you travel parallel to it until you reach something else of note – another doorway, though much smaller than the grand entrance you saw previously. It's little more than a circular hole in the wall, but it's enough to fulfill its purpose and let you through to a new room.
The first thing that strikes you is how small it is. It's still cavernous compared to any modern building, but the ceiling would at least be reachable by a stack of five, rather than fifty. The walls here seem to be taken up by vast racks of … something thin and flat that you can't make out in the darkness.
Continuing forward, you eventually see a small puddle of, if not actual brightness, at least more light than the average here. Inside the circle of illumination is what looks to be some sort of workbench, with what you can now recognize as some sort of tapestry laid out on it. It's in a state of disassembly, with countless threads stretched out across a maze of needles, themselves hanging from a ceiling-mounted arm.
Getting closer, you think you can make out the distinctive form of Tenju glyphs upon the tapestry, although neither its current state nor your lack of knowledge are very helpful towards figuring out what they might mean. You have to bring it to someone who could translate it if you want to find out.
But, before you can do anything else, you can hear a faint voice. One of the plants from before.
"Seniority my roots, if you think you heard something, you should be one to go check. HEY, IS ANYONE DOWN HERE? THIS IS A RESTRICTED AREA."
Damn it, apparently you weren't as sneaky as you thought. You can't see anywhere to hide, and while you're confident in your ability to outrun a plant, xe would definitely notice you doing so. You'll need to prioritize.
[ ] Take the tapestry
You don't have time to carefully detach it from the needle-ball, but you can definitely get most of it packed up. However, you'd almost certainly be seen, and running away doesn't stop someone from being able to remember your face.
Gain unidentified Tenju artifact (damaged). Relationship loss with Librarian's Union
[ ] Leave
If you go now, you can probably make it away from the light before you run into the plant, giving you a scant amount of anonymity. Xe'll know someone's here, but not that it's you specifically. Of course, there are only so many people matching your description in the city…
Small relationship loss with Librarian's Union.
Hey folks, hope you're doing well. Outside the quest, of course. Inside it, things haven't been too great. Thankfully, we've managed to find an extremely healthy coping mechanism that will definitely not have any negative consequences later on. Your character sheet has been updated with your new promise to yourself.
Hopefully it all got depicted reasonably well. I'm currently trying to write longer scenes, both so that you can all have more story to enjoy, but also so that we can have more natural breakpoints between scenes with the major votes, rather than having to keep several different unfinished scenes in memory before they get resolved all together in a single update. While the non-chronological aspect could be a stylistic choice elsewhere, I don't think it fits here.
On the other side of the ludo-narrative hyphen, I think that the one-or-two day space-filling action being a reversed form of the skipping rest giving a small roll malus will work out well. It gives a mechanical reason to not always be rushing everywhere, in addition to the existing reason of that simply not always being fun. I might tinker with it a bit later if it ends up incorrectly scaled, but for now, each day spent on the Rest action will give a 1/10 chance to gain +1 to all rolls on the next cycle. (2 days 2/10 chance, 3 days 3/10 chance, etc etc.) I'll start giving it to you once the next turn starts in Stone-Perch; for now, we still have some more business in Shrine of Dust.
Finally, I've made a small change to the way DC's work. Previously, not reaching a DC was just failure, period. This can feel very disappointing, especially when we're almost there like with this action we just had. The new method is that being exactly one off from reaching the DC is a Bare Failure, where despite not succeeding, we were able to get away with at least a little. This is meant to be the counterpart of the Bare Success that comes from matching a DC exactly, and give a little more narrative wiggle room for me to work with in making a compelling story.
Voting will be open for four days, or until we have a clear majority.
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