Your eyes flutter open after your strange dream, and you once more join the waking world.
But… something feels… Random Event Roll=18: Negative modifier to major event.
Different.
The Pit, once a cold dead and empty hole inside you, churns and worms through you like you a raging storm. It's ever-changing, in a constant flux. It disturbs you, the feeling of a roaring ocean frothing just beneath your skin.
You look at your hand and cringe, a whimper escaping your lips.
Your skin, once unnaturally pale, is now completely stark white, an inhuman and unliving color. As you focus your gaze on it, something pulse in your arm, causing a black vein to momentarily throb up, before diving back beneath the surface.
You feel like crying, like breaking down and just going back to bed. Not moments after waking up and you're inhumanity has only gotten worse. It's as if your own body has betrayed you, as if it's screaming "We're a monster, Elsa."
"Embrace us."
Still, you overcome it, if only for the moment. You take a shuddering breath, attempting to center yourself, to push out the voices.
You focus on your dream instead, trying to recall it.
Dream Remembrance Roll: 48
Minor Failure
You vaguely recall it's existence, but like most dreams, the more you try to grasp at it the more it slips through your fingers.
In the end, you huff, and move on, realizing the futility of it all. You might try again later, though. Something in the back of your mind tells you that the dream is important somehow.
Still, as unfortunate as your morning has been, you still need to get up. You still need to do what you had set for yourself to do yesterday.
You would rise to greet the day.
/-|-\
\/-\_|_/-\/
/\-/_|_\-/\
\-|-/
You currently regret meeting the day.
I should've just stayed in bed You think glumly, standing before a door that's imposing to your small frame.
Still, you push through and open the door. The old hinges creak slightly, signaling your entrance, and sure enough, as you pass through the boundary, you've drawn attention to yourself.
"Elsa…"
"...Father"
He sits at a desk, going through letters and documents in his private study.
You hope that the simple introduction would have been enough to get the conversation going, to warm things up, but it isn't. It's like there's a wall of dead air between you, something that just sucks out any attempt of speech.
Anything you want to say is instantly torn apart by your own mind. You try not to think about the way that your father flinched when he saw you and your inhuman skin. After that, he almost pointedly tried not to look at you, instead of ignoring you to work on his desk.
Finally, you decided enough is enough, and you push through anyways.
Dammit, it all! I have to say something!
I have to fix this.
"I'm sorry." You begin.
You father pauses. "...Sorry?"
"F-for making you and mother worry." You say, stumbling in your words as you slowly lose confidence. Each word feels forced, like it should not be said, like each movement is a mistake.
He actually turns at your words, smiling, "It's the duty of a parent to worried about their children. Don't worry about it, dear."
"Yeah, b-but…" Your mind already turning, the words coming to you as you push them onwards.
You barely gave any time to think it over.
"I'm sorry I ate them!" You blurt out.
Try and thaw your icy relationship:
9
Major Failure
Your father blinks, "...Ate-?"
"T-the assassins!" You trudge onwards, "I-I'm sorry I ate them. I-I knew I shouldn't have, I knew it was w-wrong, e-evil, but I-I just couldn't help myself."
You feel shame, embarrassment, and a burst of fear in you, but despite it, you can't feel a blush. You can't even feel a flicker of heat grace your cheeks, not anymore. You try not to think about what that means.
"It was...they were so satisfying, and I was so hungry." You moan, trying not to let your mind veer into that path of dark thoughts, but all to no avail. The Pit was stronger than that, more relentless than that.
"And it was good, it was so good, but it was wrong. It was vile, and evil, and wrong, and terrible, and I never want to do it again, but it does. This roaring Pit inside me just wants to eat and eat and eat and eat. It calls the flesh of man. A-and it hurts, father. It claws inside me, whispering in my mind for food." You ramble,
"It sings for fresh meat, it roars for feast. It's dark and cold, bottomless and empty, but most of all it hungers. And, and…" You trail off, noticing the way he's looking at you.
The way he's been looking at you ever since you…
Oh.
"Y-you didn't know about the people...did you?" You ask slowly, a cold dread slowly pouring into your veins.
He doesn't even need to open his mouth.
+Greater Fear Agnar
"Sorry!" you rush forward, trying to make your heartfelt plea. There had to be some way to fix this, there had to be a way to make this up.
"I'm sorry, I don't-I didn't mean it!" You plead, your heart in the icy grip of fear, "I just-"
Random Event Roll: 18
Negative Modifier to Major Event: Metamorphosis
-10 Humanity
+50 to Max Hunger/Sanity
140/180 Satiety
100/180 Sanity
75/100 Humanity
Suddenly, the Pit surges, rolling and roaring within you. You can feel it's cold tendrils ripping through you, crawling across your insides.
You cringe, pain tearing through your whole body in waves. You cry out, your eyes throbbing in your sockets. And in that moment, you can feel something...else.
Agony erupts in from your eye, you clamp your hands over the offending orbit as you scream, collapsing to the ground.
Even as you do, you can feel...something, writhing under your skin like a worm in your flesh, A tendril from the pit, reaching out to touch you.
And it scares you. It scares you because it makes it real. Something you can just dismiss as a fantasy, as a childish fear.
It's something inside you, and it's all too real.
But when you look up, you see something that makes your own heart shatter.
Your father, looking down at you, with naked fear painted clear across his face.
+Greater Fear Agnar
You can see it, looking in his eye. You know that he saw something when he looked at you. You know what it is, how can you not? You want to take it back, you want to rewind time, to make it so you never came here. Regret burns in your soul as you realize the weight of what you've done.
In that moment, when the Pit reached out to you, you channeled it. When your father gazed into your eyes, the Pit gazed back.
Even glimpsing at the Pit...you can tell, it's shaken him. It's not something he was meant to see. It's not something anyone is meant to see. It's something dark, cold, and empty, but more than that, it is aware, and it is hungry.
"F-father," You choke out, throat constricting as your own mind becomes a typhoon of despair. Fear, regret, and pain all pound within your skull as they burn your heart.
"A-are you okay?"
He can't even respond to you. He only looks at you with that stunned look of terror. Unseen events replaying in his mind over and over again.
"Father," You croak, stumbling to your feet even as you hold one eye closed.
And as you do, he stumbles back, backing away from the terrible monster you are.
Tears prick at your eyes and your heart bleeds.
Gods, what have I done?
"Father, please" you beg, shambling towards him, your legs tired, your heart aching.
You can see him trembling as he looks at you. The way his hand reaching for the dagger at his side. The way he look at you like your a monster. The way his eyes screamabomination.
And you did this.
This is your fault.
-10 Sanity
All made worse by the sick, twisted, pleasure you took in drinking in his fear. Massive waves of it radiated off his form, it's intoxicating scent filling you, fuelling your darkest thoughts.
You gut twists in guilt, in self-loathing at what the Pit had made you, at the thing you were, at the things you did to the people you loved. Just the other day you came so close to devouring your sister because you lacked any self-control. And now, you'd inspired paralyzing terror in your own father.
A father you loved, perhaps not as much as Anna, but still, loved all the same. The same father who'd raised you, taught you right from wrong, was now hurt by your very existence.
"I-I'm sorry," Tears begin to fall from your eyes, the pain too much to hold it in.
As your emotions spun out of control, so too did your abilities. You could feel the frost gathering around the room, the way you unconsciously ripped the heat from the air. A small cyclone blew about the papers in the room from the extreme temperature differential. Your father's breath came out puffs of cold air.
Even now, in your broken moment, scared and crying, the Pit inside worked to make you as fearsome and inhuman as possible.
"I-I just," You stammer, trying to do whatever you could to salvage the remnants of this meeting. Trying to at least build some bridge between the two of you, to rebuild something that had been lost. But it all slipped away, like water through your finger. The harder you tried to grasp hold of the situation, the more it fell away.
He was the one that taught you right from wrong, good from evil. And here he was, looking down at you with eyes that declared you an evil to be feared. And it was the fear that he was right, that you deserved this that drove you to act.
But you couldn't be a monster. You couldn't be evil. You had to be good, you had to be human.
"I just want to be your little girl again."
Right?
And then you heard it.
A chuckle filled with such bitterness, such venom, such loathing, that you could taste in the air.
"I want to love you." He laughs, "I want to love you with all my heart. But you make it so hard."
"Hell, I don't know if you're my daughter."
You head shoots up, your blurry eyes meeting your father's gaze in shock at his words. "Wha..?"
"You heard me," He says, something new, something dark, in his tone. "I don't know if you truly are my blood…"
"..Or if you're just a curse the gods sent to drive me mad."
"I-what!" you panic, your mind whirling at his words, confusion and paranoia running rampant, "Father, what do you mean!"
But all he does is chuckle bitterly, sitting down to hang his head over the table. And with each laugh sends another crack through your heart.
You...
[ ] Push for answers
Moderate chance of success
High chance of burning relationship further
Moderate chance of lowering sanity
Low chance of calming Agnar down
Extremely low chance of repairing relationship
[ ] Leave, you need to think about this, talk to someone about this. Maybe mother knows?
High chance of success
Low chance to lose sanity
No chance to repair relationship with Agnar for another week
[ ] Run to your room, you just want this cursed day to be over.
Absolute chance of success
Will auto-turn to next day
Everything done here will be set in stone with no chance of immediate recovery.
/-|-\
\/-\_|_/-\/
/\-/_|_\-/\
\-|-/
A/n:
Ha!
Oh man, I am so fucking happy. This couldn't have gone better if I'd planned it.
In summary, your relationship with your father is practically in tatters. You actually did far more damage than you fixed. Technically, you'd all would've been better off doing nothing.
Before, he was worried about you. He was somewhat scared of your curse and what the trolls said about you. Worried, but he was willing to look past that.
Now? He's straight up terrified of you. Granted, he's justified because you've got a bit of inhuman abomination in you and you eat people, but still.
It's going to take a lot of effort, and not an insignificant amount of luck, to repair your relationship, or even just bring it up to a neutral relationship.
As for the random event, that actually ties into something that was already going to be happening this week. It was going to happen regardless, but the random event roll was basically to see if anything special happened. Getting an 18 meant, yes, something did, and it was bad.
It tied into this thing with your father by kicking in at the worst time, by making you appear more monstrous to him.
It was basically a double attack on your relationship with your father, both by you fumbling your words and by the Pit chaning your body.
So, yeah, the option at the end is basically asking if you want it cut your loses and end the day, or try to get answers immediately.
OH!
I added a new metric. Humanity.
Given recent events, I've realized that I need to give you that. Humanity is different from Satiety or Sanity. You can have low sanity but high humanity.
As an example, let's say you decided, consciously and on purpose, to tear apart and eat a whole family of 6. Your sanity is fine because you totally meant to do that and you're fine with it, but your humanity is low because, well, humans don't usually tend to do that.
Conversely, You could accidentally eat all of them in a burst of hunger, and then have a soul-crushing regret when you get out of the haze. It would mean you have low sanity because you are really not ok mentally, but you would have high humanity because you still feel regret for it.
And, since I'm not too tired right now, I can actually update your character sheet right now.
Adhoc vote count started by Metaldragon868 on Oct 18, 2017 at 2:49 AM, finished with 1297 posts and 10 votes.
[X] Leave, you need to think about this, talk to someone about this. Maybe mother knows?
So, should we leave it at that, or once again throw ourselves to the winds of fate, hoping to God that we can pull something useful out of this clusterfuck?
God fucking dammit. The world hates Agnar. Nothing can go right with him and he doesn't get to be blessed with the super humanity to deal with this inhuman spate of terrible luck.
Its not about him being a good dad or poor anymore like canon was with it soft accident with superpowers that the trolls fucked up.
Its about the station turning being a good dad and king into a state increasingly familiar with the idea of killing your kid while she's still human enough to thank you for it , before she fails the wrong will save next to Anna and slurps her up like a smoothie wakes up and jumps into the bay.
[X] Leave, you need to think about this, talk to someone about this. Maybe mother knows?
We really can't catch a break with the guy, we have had a lot of bad luck at trying to downplay our worst traits with him and I don't think we could do much better at this point. I think is better to just leave mom and anna deal with this at this point
It's not about knocking sense into dad that's the problem. Good Sense for the age and really even in most of the world today says that on a pure practical level Agnar should be getting the shotgun or getting her into a super asylum.
Our. mom can hang case she's a super human freak and legend and thus not in personal danger and able to spank us. She also doesn't have us attached to the hip.
Anna will hang despite Elsa having truly proven that she can not be trusted now or anytime in the near future near people because she's as gander for us as we are her.
See all these terrible rolls? These can happen on any given day Anna gets a cut and bam. She gets slurped up and Elsa implodes.
Agnar loves everyone involved in the situation. He just wasn't born a Solar and he is the one who in the time before mom was superman would probably be burying the love of his life and other daughter due to an assassination on the possible demon possessed changeling child (and changelings are a thing. This is magic land) who he found eating his other daughter.
The idea that parents are supposed to be and can be infinite font of love and support no matter what happens or what their kids do is insane and impossible and quite frankly many many more practical kings who loved their kids even more probably would have had Elsa killed quietly in her sleep and buried with honors in a made up attack.
[X] Leave, you need to think about this, talk to someone about this. Maybe mother knows?
High chance of success
Low chance to lose sanity
No chance to repair relationship with Agnar for another week
Agnar-quest, where the hardest thing isn't organizing a war or running a country. It's trying to be a good person in the face of madness; in some cases literally.
Also, are we sure Elsa's mom will help?
I have a funny theory.
A chapter or two ago, Fergus, elsa's uncle, brings up the idea of a 'Death Cult.' Our in-universe mother knows exactly what they are, but she stops him from informing Elsa and Anna. Now, our father brings up info that Elsa's heritage is in question. I think dear demigoddess mother was in said cult, or at least a cult. She must have done some sort of cult ritual to be as great as she is with the usual ritual cost.
Evidence article one: Her stats. Obviously, a result of or by-product of her past cultist behavior.( Please, disregard the QM insistence of using a random # generator. It's clear the ritual blindsided him in his own DARK FANTASY SETTING).
What was the ritual for? Power? Full access to all her potential? Greatness? It doesn't quite matter because now Elsa and Anna are paying part of the cost. Which brings us to our second piece of evidence?
Evidence article two: The cost. Obviously, this hypothetical-ritual needs to be 'paid for' as all cult-rituals/old magic demand. Human sacrifice, of the self or others, was a big component in the olden tales in humanity's history. This cost was mostly covered by the toll Elsa, the First born daughter.
In older stories, the witch/curse/demon-contract always seems to call for the first-born child of the family. Usually, the sons, but I image rituals don't discriminate against daughters. Now, what exactly was this cost I believe might exist?
The cost was an affliction upon the body-mind-soul of those near her; specifically, her children. Why these three components and not say body-mind-magic? Look back at the paths on Elsa's character sheet, and see that they read: Body, Mind, Soul. Also, notice how unnatural low her strength stat appears before we began to fix it. That stat was 0.8, not even 1, and we would be helpless against everything. Then, there is the issue to Elsa's connection to the 'Pit' or the 'Dark' as the tag on top the webpage implies. This seems to have changed Elsa's soul, either twisting it or making it the opposite of what humans have. With the Lovecraftien-undertones( and hard to read text) back when we seizured in the library with Anna, I would bet on the latter option. Incidentally, the difference of her soul or a by-product of the magic ritual helps give Elsa a stronger ability to use magic. The curse has afflicted Elsa with a weak Body, and a Dark Soul( I see the joke, and I think this is the best analogy for Elsa). However, Elsa didn't pay for the full curse since her mind isn't under any 'special' effects, but Anna paid the remainder. Anna's genius is the curse of the mind. She is a genius too far ahead of her time, alone, and coping with the strangeness of the world as best as her logical mind can handle.
Why is this the case? Maybe, Idna knew and she tried to spread the costs. Maybe, whatever magic or entity( Remember the lovecraft undertones) saw that Idna was trying to meta-game the ritual. As a result, the costs were 'spread' so when she saw the full effects Idna would be shocked. Maybe, Idna thought that she would pay the costs, but at the end of her life. Maybe the cost is spread to three people with the third being her husband. Considering all the low rolls involving him, the curse could make the children( Anna and Elsa) monstrous, drive the husband insane or suicide, and Idna forever alone. We have one final piece of evidence to this theory. The new stat of Humanity.
For Elsa, what would be best for her is to have relatively high Humanity, and high Sanity. This allows Elsa to live happily without feeling worry over her state of being. A low Humanity- low Sanity combo would result in a wild animal, feral human, or a monster. All of which, are generally lose conditions. Another lose condition might be having high Humanity, but low Sanity which results in a gibbering wreck of a human being. A being with high Sanity but low Humanity results in something which would be bad for all nearby humans as the QM described, but what sort of humans could originate from such a balance? For a half-human like Elsa, this could be a monster as she allows herself to indulge in humans, but what about someone who is full human? Would this result in a sociopath as the individual has no strong empathy towards others? How about a psychopath who is all right with causing pain and death?
What about an individual who in their youth dabbles in the occult rituals practiced by a Death Cult, a cult which might worship strong magic-users, in order to make gains? Someone like Idna Lothbrok!
Edit: This started out as a joke which spiraled out of control. I still thought it was worth posting.
[X] Leave, you need to think about this, talk to someone about this. Maybe mother knows?
Seriously, why are people pushing for answers from Agnar? Its probably the worst choice we could choose, considering our rolls it'll basically make our relationship irreparable and screwing everything up even further.
Adhoc vote count started by Codex on Oct 18, 2017 at 2:53 AM, finished with 1298 posts and 11 votes.
[X] Leave, you need to think about this, talk to someone about this. Maybe mother knows?