Doki Doki Dungeoneering Club

Interlude: Father's Journal

To my Son Nathan,

I cannot express the joy I felt when your Mother wrote that she had given birth to our son, nor the sorrow that I should not be there to welcome you into the world. I hope that this war shall end soon and we will read this together some day, but fate is not always so kind and thus I thought it prudent to send this journal to your Mother to give to you when you are grown, so that; should the worst occur, you would have some measure of the type of man your father was.

I must express that I have never been much of a writer and so shall start my story from the beginning – boorish though it may be. Your Grandfather, for whom you are named, is an honorable and kind man, though perhaps overly fond of puns, as your uncle Baron will be sure to attest. His success as a blacksmith made my childhood in the Principate city of Gwyned an easy and happy one, and someday I should like to take you and your mother to meet him and see the Worldmeet waterfalls, while I make amends for the way we parted.

You see, unlike Baron who took to our Father's craft diligently, I grew bored of my happy life and so took to making mischief as rebellious youth oft do. My thrill seeking ways soon saw me become a thug within the local syndicate, which at the time felt deliciously dangerous and exciting. I have no doubt that I would have ended up dead in a dark alleyway or rotting in prison if not for a chance encounter with one of the most brilliant and bizarre men I have ever met, Professor Cornelius Firenipple.

The old man was vomiting in the alleyway after having stumbled to the ground in his drunken stupor and me and the rest of our band of miscreants saw an easy opportunity to relieve a feeble old man of his valuables; this was of course because we lacked two very important pieces of information, namely: There has never in the history of this world, been a more experienced drunkard then Cornelius Firenipple and secondly, that that same debacherous old man was one of the few beings in this world capable of casting time stop.

In quite literally no time at all my erstwhile allies and myself found ourselves trapped in a cage of force with… rude images drawn upon our faces, staring dumbstruck at the hairy posterior of the same old man, pants dropped to the ground and humming as he relieved himself against the alley wall.

Thus began my apprenticeship under the greatest wizard of our time. In my more hopeful moments I like to think he saw a spark of talent within me when he chose to recruit me rather then turn me into a newt, as he did my companions, but in truth I suspect the eccentric professor picked me out because I fit into the costume he had prepared for Oktoberfest.

Despite his highly unorthodox lifestyle, Firenipple was an unparalleled teacher and the years I spent under his tutelage saw me develop into a capable practitioner in my own right. Having concluded my apprenticeship and with Firenipple expressing his desire to explore the Fey Wild, my teacher used his considerable network of contacts to place me into the service of King Jarvic as the court wizard of Novgrad before journeying off to pursue his academic research, which would no doubt focus an undue amount on the Dryads, Nymphs, Sirens and Alraunes native to that strange plane.

My time as court wizard has been a blur of travel and activity: fortifying and establishing wards and magical communications relays, providing council to Dukes and Counts on all matters arcane, and most importantly recruiting and training the royal cabal for integration and use by the king's armies against the Savage Niflem and Beastmen herds of the north.

In my extensive travels I have seen the wonders of this land and rubbed shoulders with the greatest and most influential men of the North, but the greatest wonder of all was that I should meet your incredible Mother. The few months I was able to spend in Montfort were the happiest of my life and when circumstances permit I look forward to retiring from the King's service and Marrying Helen properly.

For the time though know that even from the bitter cold of my camp tent in the desolate Northern wastes of Niffleheim that You and your Mother are always in my heart and thoughts.

With all of my love,

Your Father, Mathew S. Graves

P.S. Though it may never prove of use to you, I have enclosed in the following pages a listing of the principle arcane formula's and a simple assortment of spells that follow naturally upon these fundamental teachings. Should such things fascinate you, I advise you to look into the arcane college of High Castle within the Principate, and have thus with great care attached a seal that if broken should enable contact with my mentor, who is for all his faults, the Head Professor of that esteemed institution. It should go without saying that I have of course also added a seal for contacting myself, though I fear this will be largely redundant as by the time you read this I will likely have been home with you for many years, or perhaps if fate be cruel, be well beyond contact.


To my dearest Helen,

I wish to write to you that though the savage Niflem warlord lies dead and their armies have been shattered, I shall be delayed in my return to Montfort. I hope that the monies attached within this letter shall prove helpful to you as you continue to care for Nathan. Please know that I wish nothing more than to return to you with all haste; however my attentions here are most urgently required.

On the night before the final battle, the first prince was attacked by an Assassin from within his very guard. Though the crazed traitor was put down before being able to seriously harm the Prince, the small cuts made by his weapon have had an unsettling effect on the Prince's mind and health. In the course of a month the Prince's health has continued to decline despite the Priests of the all Fathers best efforts, and he is now comatose, kept alive only by the constant healing efforts of the clergy.

I have been tasked with the study of the blade and the unusual rune work laid upon it in an effort to understand the enchantment and dispel the foul magic's that beleaguer the King's eldest son and have spent my every waking moment since the war's end to this purpose.

I must admit I fear that I am not equal to the task before me, the rune's carved upon the blade defy me, seeming to shift and alter in form and purpose each time I begin to understand the form of the magic's within, taunting me with its myriad forms. I confess that I find sleep challenging, the cursed runes flittering between forms even in my dreaming mind.

As I'm sure you have realized, this task will require me to stay and see it through to it's conclusion, I pray that you stay strong and wait patiently for my return. I shall continue to give my utmost effort to the destruction of the foul magic and am motivated deeply by the fact that my success shall see me holding you once more within my arms. I fear that I must cut this letter short, as even now the Prince's condition continues to deteriorate.

With all of my love,

Matthew.

P.S. I have been gifted a momento from our Dwarven allies, given for saving one of their scouting regiments from destruction in the course of one of our skirmishes. I have no need for such a thing, but I find the craftsmanship charming and the enchantment is of some small quality. I have sent the hammer to my Father Nathan as an apology for my rambunctious youth with a letter stating that I should like to see it passed on to my own son one day when he is older. When all of this is done and Nathan is old enough to travel we should travel to meet with my parents, a blacksmith's craft is a good solid trade and I should very much like to see my son get along with my Father in a way I never was able.


Helen,

They are lies, everything you hear from everyone around you is no more than lies told by those who are jealous of my power. I cannot see you, even now they are watching, always they are watching. They think to trap me as I return to you, but I hear their plans in my mind as clear as if they were spoken aloud. Such simple schemes are nothing to one who has seen the face of the great plotter, who knows the truth of this world as I have come to. I dare not send help in response to your letters claiming sickness, for I cannot tell if these messages are yours or merely more traps laid forth by my enemies. Even this letter I suspect will be intercepted and used to find me, but they will never find me, no I am far beyond the point where such feeble plots may touch me.

The blade! It's enchantments that I had so foolishly sought to destroy have been the very source of my salvation. It was that same blade, those same enchantments that eventually spoke the truth to my mind, that showed me how this world truly is. I hear it now, the blade. It twirls and changes in my mind speaking to me the truths that those fools at court are too afraid to hear, opening my mind with stabbing revelation. It is a good pain.

Do not trust anyone. They will say I am mad, for they fear what I have come to know. I tell you truth, I have never before been as sane as I am now. You must hide away our Son, soon I shall return, yes even now I plot my return to the Kingdom that has banished me. I will level their forts, I will bring sorrow to their homesteads, and I shall kill the King in order to save you and our Son from their plots and schemes. The blade whispers to me what must be done, and I shall follow the path through the thousands of plots and measures that must be made complete. Wait for me my love, wait for the coming of the end, and we shall dance together upon the ashes of this kingdom as we take our proper place in this world. Do not worry, it comes soon. The blade stabs and sings and speaks this truth and I know that it is so. It is a good pain.

-Mathew.

Turn 10: 07APR-16APR


My legs creaked and popped in protest as I stretched them out. I had spent the last two weeks virtually comatose, only waking up long enough to read through my Father's journal before falling asleep once more. The journal itself was a mess of poorly organized personal records detailing his daily life as court Wizard and was bloated with arcane schematics for warding systems that remained indecipherable, but picking through his memoirs I found three messages to my mother and myself that had proven rather interesting.

I rolled my shoulders a bit to loosen up before getting dressed, I'd have time to think over what I had learned from the little leather bound book and attached notes later, for now it was time to finally get out of bed and start getting things done.

I began my morning by checking in on my pint sized vampire; who was sound asleep within her footlocker, whilst Kyu-bei slept on the actual bed. The little fox somehow managed to look perfectly comfortable despite the ridiculous curved angle of its back and splayed out paws. I closed the box gently in order to not disturb the sleeping Kyu and carefully removed the sleeping fox from the bed, plopping her on top of the three soiled maid uniforms that dominated the little laundry hamper in the corner of the room before transporting fox and laundry both outside to the nearby brook.

Kyu-bei pawed playfully at the suds floating downstream as I scrubbed the clothes on the washboard, letting the cold water and manual labor wake me up in the chill of the early morning air. I had been spoiling kyu lately as she continued her training with the Catgirls, who seemed overjoyed to have someone to test their outfit designs on. It was nice to see her making new friends, the stuttering sad girl of only a few weeks ago was slowly being replaced by a smiling and ever so slightly more confident young woman and it amazed me how quickly I'd become attached to the silver haired vampire; who I now saw as the cute little sister I'd never had.

Finishing up with the washing I noticed the fox had wandered off; despite it's affinity for people, our new pet was rather independent, but I was confident the greedy vixen would return in time for supper. So, leaving the clothes hanging to dry, I returned to the Inn.


Monika was waiting for me when I returned, breakfast set and a notepad and ink quill sitting beside her on the table.

"So, you finally decided to get out of bed. Welcome back to the land of the living." I sat down and eagerly accepted a cup of hot coffee as she continued.

"While you were laying about, some of us were busy working." She was pretending to be mad, but the twinkle of mischief in her eyes let me know she was simply teasing.

"I put together a list of jobs I'd like you to take a look at later. More importantly I've scouted out some local talent that might be willing to join us in exchange for a cut of the pay." Her eyes drifted to the side reminding me that we weren't the only ones in the café. "We'll talk it over in my room after breakfast since it concerns the… unusual nature of our mutual friend."

Agreeing that this wasn't the place to discuss Kyu's vampiric nature I settled into breakfast and small talk with my best friend before following her back to her room. As we entered the room, Monika shut the door behind us and then suddenly fell leaning against my shoulder to stay on her feet. "Are you feeling alright?"

Leaning heavily against me she whispered weakly into my ear, "I just feel so weak all of a sudden, so vulnerable and easy to take advantage of." She batted her eyes at me as she said this, I sighed, she was so weird sometimes.

I plopped her down on her bed, "want me to get you some water or something?"

Seeming to instantly recover she glared at me. "Seriously Nathan, I love you, but damn you're an idiot sometimes."

I sat down on the bed, "Umm… sorry?"

Taking a long sigh Monika pulled out her notebook and put on a serious face, "Don't worry about it, I brought you here to talk about potential party members anyway."

The notebook had a long list of names, but most of them were lined out, "So despite how small the town is, I did manage to find a surprising amount of people willing to pick up a sword for some cash, however almost all of them would be less than happy when they realized they were working with a vampire, so that narrows the list down to these two."

"The first prospect is a big fellow by the name of Bran Joricson. He's currently working at the lumber yard chopping wood, but he's not using a normal hatchet. The man literally cuts down trees with a battle axe, and his co-workers say he's been in more than one war band before coming here. He's definitely one of the strongest guys I've ever seen, but he's… well he's slow. If we took him on we'd have to take care of basically everything but the fighting for him, but the good news is he's definitely too dumb to know what a vampire is, even when Kyu goes all bitey bitey. From what I can tell he'd be willing to stick around as long as we ensure theirs food and beer and give him a chance to hit things with that axe of his, and considering the nature of most of our jobs, that shouldn't be much of a problem."

"The next prospect I found following a rumor of a fortune teller living in a small cabin in the woods. Her name is Lisa Eversong, and she's an honest to god's witch. She's about our age and is taking care of her two much younger sisters after their parents passed away and she's hungry for any work that will help her pay to take care of her sisters. I don't know who taught her magic, but her fortune telling is the real deal, and after a few drinks I was able to get her to show me some of her other spells. It's not the nice kind of magic, but we don't exactly go into Goblin den's trying to make friends, and a real spell caster would offer a lot of options we don't have right now. She has no training in actual combat, and has no gear, but that matters a lot less when you can cast curses and shoot lightning from your hands. She's keeping her magic on the down low, which is smart because they'd probably burn her alive if they knew what she could do, but her own darker repertoire of abilities should keep her from ever exposing Kyu's identity."

As always I was impressed by just how much my friend was able to do in so short a time. "We'll have to think about it a little bit, but it would probably be good to get a hold of at least of at least one of the two, god's know we could use more bodies, it felt like we were always outnumbered back in the Goblin den."

Putting the notepad down Monika fidgeted a bit with the quill pen before turning to me, "Anyway that's all I've got for now. Me and the little bloodsucker were going to go check out a cave later tonight, so I've got some preparations to do, but umm… you know we haven't really spent much time together recently and I was wondering if you could make some time to join me for a night together. I found this really cool place about a mile up the stream from here, so if you…"

I stood up and offered her my hand to help her up from the bedside. "There's a lot going on, but yeah, that sounds nice. I'll let you know." And with that I left the room and made my way to the usual hideout in the woods.

* Potential recruits discovered: Bran Joricson lvl 3 berserker. Lisa Eversong, lvl 3 hexmage, lvl 1 wizard.*

The now familiar spot helped me to relax as I leaned up against the hard bark of the old oak and focused on my holy symbol as it whirled around, dangling beneath my fingers. The mark of shadows placed upon the inner flame seemed to ooze from the symbol until an inky cloud formed about the size of a person. The cloud compressed and merged until its outline was perfectly humanoid and then took on color and texture. Standing before me, seemingly manifested from the cloud was a scholarly looking Wildkin, with the features of a fox tucked neatly away beneath his suit. The fox pushed his glasses up to rest at the start of its nose before offering me its strange skeletal hand.


"Nathaniel Graves? I am Leslie Mengsk and I have been assigned to tutor you in the ways of our mutual master."

I shook the fox's hand which had a surprisingly firm grip for a fleshless claw, "Nice to meet you then Leslie, I'm Nathan Graves yes. I must say I didn't expect you to have such a… normal name."

"Yes a common misunderstanding. You have to understand all of us devil's were once mortals like yourself and most of us have elected to keep our mortal names. I'm afraid if you were expecting to meet some belexathunphatar prelator-xhahakomtehp, you'd have to summon a demon. Not that I'd advise that kind of thing, they are formed from the primordial slosh of negative emotions, and are a rather unpleasant lot."

"So then, what exactly are you, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Not at all, I was originally a human merchant from Estalia, then when my life ran it's course I began my service as a Djinn. After re-enlisting at the end of my thousand years of service I was promoted to the form you see now, that of an Arcanoloth."

I nodded my head, slightly confused. "Oh ok… wait, did you say you… re-enlisted?"

"Certainly! A fair number of us do you know. True immortality is hard to come by, and many prefer their life as devils rather than being tossed back into the pool of souls to be reincarnated without any memory of our past lives, but this conversation has gotten away from the point. You have summoned me here to learn more about controlling the power given to you from our dark lord have you not?"

I nodded my head in agreement once more and took a seat at the base of the tree as my tutor continued.

"Our lord can in many ways be considered both the oldest and youngest god in existence today. He was born from the destruction of the old material plane some thousands of years ago. Many find this difficult to understand, so I'll quote from the scriptures of Azmodeus penned by a lunatic by the name of Marius Luther, who despite his derangement, has made a reasonably easy to understand origin story."

The fox coughed into his skeletal paw to clear his throat before pulling out a scroll from thin air and began reading.

"In the end was planted the seeds of new beginning and from the fires of destruction of all the old world was forged a god. As the fires dwindled the infant deity was bathed in smoke and shadow until at last the old world faded leaving the god completely alone, lord of the perfected order of the nothingness that was the void. The new god was unpleased however, as what was order without subjects to enforce it upon? So the new god gathered up the embers of the four who had brought about their own demise and splintered them into their many facets, forming anew the pantheon that once was, before the four consumed them. From them was forged anew the material plane, but the four could not be defeated so easily and with the return of life and magic so too did they return. But the new god, would not allow them to destroy so soon what he had made and mustered great armies to keep them from spreading. Apocalypse will not be denied forever though, and someday the four will swallow the gods and the whole world with them once more, until again all is returned to the void."

I understood almost nothing the fox had just said.

"Does that help clear things up?"

I nodded my head yes, "Yup! Clear as day, so how exactly do I go about learning new miracles?"

Very good, right to it then. You should know however before we begin that our master has rather high hopes for you, especially after your involvement in the destruction of the Montfort mines last month.

"That wasn't my fault!"

"As you say, still my master has high aspirations for you. I am not the only teacher who you may call on, and should you wish to turn your attention to more civic affairs, we will be standing by to offer what aid we can. For the time being though let's focus on miracles. To wield the power of our lord you must understand the aspect they come from. Which aspect do you wish to study first: Flame, Shadow, or Void?"




Voting:

Choose one: A faith check will be made. 25-49= 1 miracle 50-75=2 miracles 75-99 =3 miracles 100+=5 miracles learned. At least one will be lvl 2, otherwise they will be purely random from the aspect chosen.


[Flame] Study the aspect of flame. The consuming flames destroy all in their path, includes miracles that provide offensive buffs, and miracles that deliver raw damage.


[Shadow] Study the aspect of shadow. Shadows can shield allies and cripple enemies, includes miracles that protect and buff allies, and debuff enemies.


[Void] Study the aspect of void. Void is the aspect of control, includes miracles that control the enemy both living and dead.

[ ] Nathan: Plans for the week: Choose 2


[ ] Kyu: Plans for the week: Choose 1


[ ] Monika: Plans for the week: Choose 1


-[ ] Look around for jobs, chance of success: 50%, 25% 2 jobs.
-[ ] Look around for promising recruits or part timers, chance of success: 50%, 25% 2 candidates 10% 1 candidate and one candidate at twice your reputation limit.
-[ ]Meet with Bran Joricson the berserker (gain full character sheet)
-[ ] Meet with Lisa Eversong the witch (gain full character sheet)
-[ ] Talk to the townsfolk (specify) Vanilla and Chocolla, Drunky, Agatha, Jarl Olaf, Write in.
-[ ] Explore the area around the town: May not be performed by Nathan due to injury.
-[ ] Scout something's fishy (+10 from previous failure)
-[ ] Spend time with Monika: May not be performed by Monika.
-[ ] Spend time with Kyu: May not be performed by Kyu.
-[ ] Spend an evening with Monika, Monika's indicated that you haven't been able to spend much time together lately, and she has a place upstream she'd like to show you next week: May only be performed by Nathan
-[ ] Summon your devilish tutor: May only be performed by Nathan
-[ ] Miracles
-[ ] Civic?
-[ ] Train with Sargent Redford (finesse) costs 500 gold, Chance to increase 1-5 points of finesse permanently. Odds are greatly reduced for characters with higher finesse.
-[ ] Play with ?Fox?
-[ ] Contact Nathans Dad
-[ ] Contact Firenipple
-[ ] Quest! Somethings fishy: Consumes both Monika and Kyu's actions. Quest difficulty for just the two of them is increased to Hard.
-[ ] Write in