What would readers prefer?

  • Pure narrative quest: no dice will be used, the author will have free reign to decide what happens.

    Votes: 25 59.5%
  • New dice system: the author will design a new, better dice system to add some randomness and risk.

    Votes: 17 40.5%

  • Total voters
    42
  • Poll closed .
It's possible that the black magic is just a Normal Thing where revenants are concerned.

Let's not take the risk.

[X] Plan Lurking Darkness
 
It's possible that the black magic is just a Normal Thing where revenants are concerned.
To some extent it most likely is.

From way back when Artemis was telling Ryza to zap Robert with prejudice:

"You get the chance: hit him with as many lightning bolts as it takes to ensure that's he's very permanently dead. I'd prefer to kill him myself, but I'll settle for him being gone."

"…Is that something I need to worry about?" you ask nervously. "I didn't think ghosts were real."

Artemis blinks as she looks back at you, some measure of her wrath fading. "No, no, it's just an expression," she says. "While the dead can rise when subjected to enough unhallowed magic, it's just their bodies; souls only remain in this world under very specific circumstances that I don't expect to find here.

Now, Artemis says "unhallowed" magic I don't know if that means any color could do it or if there's another aspect to this. She's also admittedly not a scholar on magic so she could be wrong on details. It's certainly possible I'm making connections where there are none but there's already enough weird things going on with magic here that I don't want to leave anything to chance if possible.
 
Monster Magic
So on the topic of the quasi-Black magic Ryza saw, she's read that some powerful monsters can use a form of magic that has superficial similarities to manakete Black magic, but Black manakete have always insisted that they are very different once you look past that.

She's guessing that this "revenant" has something similar going on, but she's never read about the dead rising before so she's not certain. She's already making plans to check Beast, Bird and Monster when she has a chance.

OOC: I'm using the Sacred Stones monsters as a basis for the monsters of this continent (along with a few others of my making.) Ryza has never read anything about Revenants, Entombed, Bonewalkers and Wights, but things like Mauthe Doogs, Gargoyles, Baels, Mogalls, etc, she's heard about. In game, the spell-casting monsters use Dark magic, but I wanted to draw a distinction between "good" Black magic and "bad" Monster magic.

That's not to say other type of magic can't affect/be affected by monsters, but by basic nature they use their own variant exclusively.
 
Hmm. I'm mostly okay with Maximum Information but to give another angle here...

As others have noted, something is very much up here.



It's possible whatever is behind the walking dead has begun infecting the runes. That's... ominous. And it's because of that I want to include the Ward in our activities. Otherwise I'd argue it might even be advantageous to leave them be because fixing them might tip off the next unwanted visitor that someone skilled enough to work them was here but a possible magical infection is not something I want to ignore. Absolute worst case scenario the next time we come back here we're facing the raised corpse of Ryza's dad because it's spread even further into Kepesk-Okar. Finally, "Even Deeper" to check on more mundane reasons why we've got a monster infestation and seal it up if needed.

Checking Ryza's dad's lab might help us with the wards and while my primary reasoning for wanting to visit the crypt is to pull on that "peace or wisdom" thread, the fact that we're dealing with raised dead means I very much want to at least check here - even if it turns out we need to run away at full speed.

Ugh... this does even more things that Maximum Information though but I don't want to drop anything. :sad: If pressed, I suppose I'd be most willing to drop the personal rooms (from a pure utilitarian perspective it's probably the weakest option included but I don't want Ryza to be all cold logic) and either of the libraries (on the basis that the main one may have been raided/redundant with the other sources of info and the deep library on the basis that it may be less immediately useful.)

[X] Plan Lurking Darkness
-[X] Upper Floors: This area seems mostly safe. A bit run-down, a bit dirty, but now that the Talons and bandits are gone there doesn't seem to be any actual threats. However, this makes it more likely that thieves have stolen most things of use.
--[X] Visit yours and your parents' rooms. These places may be destroyed, but they were some of the most important places of your early life. Maybe you'll find… something… to remember your roots by.
--[X] Dig through the main library. This was where the scrolls and tablets that your parents used on a regular basis were kept. While you have plenty of scrolls from the box in the shrine, there might be other things here.
--[X] Look at Father's Runewrighting labs. These were the places where Father carried out his experiments and made his runes. Maybe there's something here that could prove useful
--[X] Visit Mother's study. As the Matriarch of the family and tribe, Mother used the ancestral study of the Matriarch and Patriarch when doing official business. Maybe there's something here that can give you some answers as to what happened a thousand years ago…
--[X] Your Shrine. Not only do you want to get the rest of the scrolls, you want to try and figure out how that place survived as long as it did. If other manakete have survived, surely it is by some similar method, and so knowing the signs to look for will be useful.
-[X] Lower Floors: Past the ward and the barricade, you fear that you will start running into monsters, possibly the revenants your human friends fear, possibly more dangerous ones like baels or doogs. However, if humans were afraid of going down there, then it is more likely that useful materials survived.
--[X] Visit the Deep Library. A massive storage space for all those scrolls and tablets that were rarely used, you're sure there's something interesting and useful here, if only you can find it.
--[X] The Crypts. The ancient burial place of your ancestors. Not only might this be a place to bury your family, but perhaps you will be able to find some peace or wisdom among the memories of those who came before.
--[X] Even Deeper. Down in the darkness is a passage beyond which you were forbidden to tread. You don't want to go through it… but maybe, if you look at it, you can figure out how the monsters got into your home.
--[X] The Ward. If you spend some time, you might be able to reinforce the warding runes so that they at least won't fail. At least, not anytime soon.
As a thought, if we do completely clear the mountain we shouldn't really need the ward any longer.
 
As a thought, if we do completely clear the mountain we shouldn't really need the ward any longer.
Well, to elaborate on how my thinking went because I was sleepy and probably didn't explain it well in my plan post.

When I saw the passage about the black magic around the revenant I didn't think particularly much of it beyond, "Oh yeah, that would be the case, wouldn't it? I remember back when Ryza asked Artemis if the undead were actually a thing she was told that when the magic in a place was just right/wrong it could happen so if we've got undead here it follows those conditions must be in place." and thinking well, the depths of an abandoned manakete enclave might qualify as such.

It was only when I saw the same kind of description used for the runes that I perked up and got alarmed because I started thinking, "Wait, can whatever ambient magic conditions/'zombie virus' that raise the dead also infect/take hold in the magical subsystems that permeate the ruin? Could we literally be looking at the signs that Ryza's home is becoming a haunted house and is it possible it could use those rune systems to spread?"

It's admittedly entirely speculation on my part but I admittedly wanted to take action to investigate and potentially clear out whatever the source of this is and that meant selecting the options that had the description in Ryza's observation (The Ward) and the natural place of concern if we've got a potential zombie plague brewing to check/secure/make absolutely sure is safe (The Crypt) as well as checking the more mundane explanation of there just maybe being a tunnel or something (Even Deeper.)

It could certainly be the case that I'm simply paranoid and seeing and connecting things that aren't there and maybe the undead just wandered in from a cave-in that let them into the ruin from the Even Deeper area but I'm concerned and think the possibility is at least intriguing enough to be worth exploring even in the event I'm wrong just because of the potential consequences. It's not like I think any of them are wasted votes in that event - except potentially, as you note, The Ward
 
While it's probably too early in story to happen across another Manakete, I feel like some of the things found this chapter could point to a black Manakete hiding in Ryza's basement. Her potentially seeing something in the stair way could be it checking out the disturbance, and the rune having black magic in it could be a result of them charging it. While it probably wouldn't be the nicest place to live, a forgotten place, guarded by monsters, and filled with collections of Manakete media probably wouldn't be too bad of a place to hide out.
 
[X] Plan Lurking Darkness

Making this a safe place to go is our next order of business. This plan does that.
 
I'm using the Sacred Stones monsters as a basis for the monsters
Now the real question is if anyone's ever stolen a Gorgon's Eyes and used the innate Petrification magic to learn to cast Dark Magic :p
There's a thing you can do in the GBA Fire Emblems known as the "Enemy Control Glitch", forcing the game to be confused as to which turn it is, and allowing you control over enemy units. Using this glitch in Sacred Stones, you can deposit enemy-exclusive weapons into the Convoy. The melee weapons can only be equipped by Myrrh, but the magic used by Mogalls and Gorgons can be equipped by anybody despite being considered Dark Tomes by the game. Of these, only one actually grants any Weapon EXP, Stone, and if stolen through the Enemy Control Glitch, can be used to achieve E-Rank in Dark Tomes on any unit, at which point you can equip Flux and start grinding it the normal way. Of course, if you teach a non-Magic user how to use Dark Tomes this way, you have to disable animations when they use it, else things get buggy.
Enemy Control Glitch can also be used in FE7, but there's only one weapon particularly worth stealing; everything else can be obtained by the players anyways, so there's nothing fancy you can do like using Stone to teach any unit Dark Magic.
 
I am not a fan of those plans spending so much time here.
 
Now the real question is if anyone's ever stolen a Gorgon's Eyes and used the innate Petrification magic to learn to cast Dark Magic :p
There's a thing you can do in the GBA Fire Emblems known as the "Enemy Control Glitch", forcing the game to be confused as to which turn it is, and allowing you control over enemy units. Using this glitch in Sacred Stones, you can deposit enemy-exclusive weapons into the Convoy. The melee weapons can only be equipped by Myrrh, but the magic used by Mogalls and Gorgons can be equipped by anybody despite being considered Dark Tomes by the game. Of these, only one actually grants any Weapon EXP, Stone, and if stolen through the Enemy Control Glitch, can be used to achieve E-Rank in Dark Tomes on any unit, at which point you can equip Flux and start grinding it the normal way. Of course, if you teach a non-Magic user how to use Dark Tomes this way, you have to disable animations when they use it, else things get buggy.
Enemy Control Glitch can also be used in FE7, but there's only one weapon particularly worth stealing; everything else can be obtained by the players anyways, so there's nothing fancy you can do like using Stone to teach any unit Dark Magic.
Found a video explaining the glitch a bit more, though since he's discussing the glitch as it occurs in a different FE game, he doesn't talk about the gorgon stuff. Sounds like it's the same core bug, though.

The first 28 minutes of this video shows the enemy control glitch in action, including obtaining monster magic. He mentions that teaching it to someone who can't use magic, and leaving animations on, will make the game "probably freeze". I get why he didn't show that, but I kinda wish he had.

The wiki goes into more detail, claiming that swords will cause glitches, Tethys puts the game in a loop if she doubles with magic (with animations on), that petrifying the final boss crashes the game, and some other stuff. None of this is cited, because fan wikis are terrible about that kind of thing.


I am not a fan of those plans spending so much time here.
We're not going to change our minds without a proposed plan of action.
 
Vote closed
Scheduled vote count started by SoaringHawk218 on Jan 6, 2023 at 4:54 PM, finished with 36 posts and 21 votes.

  • [X] Plan Lurking Darkness
    -[X] Upper Floors: This area seems mostly safe. A bit run-down, a bit dirty, but now that the Talons and bandits are gone there doesn't seem to be any actual threats. However, this makes it more likely that thieves have stolen most things of use.
    --[X] Visit yours and your parents' rooms. These places may be destroyed, but they were some of the most important places of your early life. Maybe you'll find… something… to remember your roots by.
    --[X] Dig through the main library. This was where the scrolls and tablets that your parents used on a regular basis were kept. While you have plenty of scrolls from the box in the shrine, there might be other things here.
    --[X] Look at Father's Runewrighting labs. These were the places where Father carried out his experiments and made his runes. Maybe there's something here that could prove useful
    --[X] Visit Mother's study. As the Matriarch of the family and tribe, Mother used the ancestral study of the Matriarch and Patriarch when doing official business. Maybe there's something here that can give you some answers as to what happened a thousand years ago…
    --[X] Your Shrine. Not only do you want to get the rest of the scrolls, you want to try and figure out how that place survived as long as it did. If other manakete have survived, surely it is by some similar method, and so knowing the signs to look for will be useful.
    -[X] Lower Floors: Past the ward and the barricade, you fear that you will start running into monsters, possibly the revenants your human friends fear, possibly more dangerous ones like baels or doogs. However, if humans were afraid of going down there, then it is more likely that useful materials survived.
    --[X] Visit the Deep Library. A massive storage space for all those scrolls and tablets that were rarely used, you're sure there's something interesting and useful here, if only you can find it.
    --[X] The Crypts. The ancient burial place of your ancestors. Not only might this be a place to bury your family, but perhaps you will be able to find some peace or wisdom among the memories of those who came before.
    --[X] Even Deeper. Down in the darkness is a passage beyond which you were forbidden to tread. You don't want to go through it… but maybe, if you look at it, you can figure out how the monsters got into your home.
    --[X] The Ward. If you spend some time, you might be able to reinforce the warding runes so that they at least won't fail. At least, not anytime soon.
    [X] Plan Maximum Information
    -[X] Upper Floors: This area seems mostly safe. A bit run-down, a bit dirty, but now that the Talons and bandits are gone there doesn't seem to be any actual threats. However, this makes it more likely that thieves have stolen most things of use.
    --[X] Dig through the main library. This was where the scrolls and tablets that your parents used on a regular basis were kept. While you have plenty of scrolls from the box in the shrine, there might be other things here.
    --[X] Look at Father's Runewrighting labs. These were the places where Father carried out his experiments and made his runes. Maybe there's something here that could prove useful
    --[X] Visit Mother's study. As the Matriarch of the family and tribe, Mother used the ancestral study of the Matriarch and Patriarch when doing official business. Maybe there's something here that can give you some answers as to what happened a thousand years ago…
    --[X] Your Shrine. Not only do you want to get the rest of the scrolls, you want to try and figure out how that place survived as long as it did. If other manakete have survived, surely it is by some similar method, and so knowing the signs to look for will be useful.
    -[X] Lower Floors: Past the ward and the barricade, you fear that you will start running into monsters, possibly the revenants your human friends fear, possibly more dangerous ones like baels or doogs. However, if humans were afraid of going down there, then it is more likely that useful materials survived.
    --[X] Visit the Deep Library. A massive storage space for all those scrolls and tablets that were rarely used, you're sure there's something interesting and useful here, if only you can find it.
    --[X] Main Storage: Another titanic cavern, where countless odds and ends were packed away in case they might ever prove useful. Rune-structures, tablets, maybe even elixers… you're sure you can find items here.
    --[X] Even Deeper. Down in the darkness is a passage beyond which you were forbidden to tread. You don't want to go through it… but maybe, if you look at it, you can figure out how the monsters got into your home.


Okie-doki-loki, we're doing this then. Can I get 2 d6s and 4 d10s please, for the events that happen while you're here. If there are any repeats within dice sizes, please reroll.

For example, if someone rolls a 7 on the d10, any other 7s get rerolled. However, if one of the d6s is a 3, the 3s on the d10s don't get rerolled.
 
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Third d10

EDIT: middling...
EDIT 2: wait... repeat...
EDIT 3: okay just noticed the throw another dice; a 7?
Brainbow threw 1 10-faced dice. Reason: Third d10 Total: 5
5 5
Brainbow threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Reroll due to Repeat Total: 12
5 5 7 7
 
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