Me, 2015: Hey, let's have a quest with ninja punching each other with fireballs!
MfD players, 2015-2022: Let's build hang gliders and toilets!
Me, 2022: ffs. Fine, let's have a quest with humans scrambling through a dungeon fighting monsters.
DCY players: KILL THE HUMANS!
Me: Did not see that one coming.
To be fair, the ninjas we want to kill are all capable of curbstomping us or protected by ninjas capable of curbstomping us. Now all humans are pretty much equally powerless inside the dungeon! shoots bigots in the kneecaps
Me, 2015: Hey, let's have a quest with ninja punching each other with fireballs!
MfD players, 2015-2022: Let's build hang gliders and toilets!
Me, 2022: ffs. Fine, let's have a quest with humans scrambling through a dungeon fighting monsters.
DCY players: KILL THE HUMANS!
Me: Did not see that one coming.
I've found that when I play a quest, it's really easy for me to just adopt the goals of the protagonist without any compunctions. In addition to the "Goody-goody paragon in the ninja deathworld" quest I'm playing, I'm also a part of a "We once caused an apocalypse because we were grumpy one morning, but we left that world behind so it's not our problem anymore" quest just as easily.
Here, what we got is pretty middle of the road. Taylor's a good person with functioning human empathy but he's also in this to win it and, well, statistically speaking everyone he meets has very little time left anyways. If push comes to shove there's no real reason not to shove back.
Me, 2015: Hey, let's have a quest with ninja punching each other with fireballs!
MfD players, 2015-2022: Let's build hang gliders and toilets!
Me, 2022: ffs. Fine, let's have a quest with humans scrambling through a dungeon fighting monsters.
DCY players: KILL THE HUMANS!
Me: Did not see that one coming.
To be fair: It is not humans in general, but specific humans. Specific humans throwing up redflags for "we are dangerous to you" and "we are reprehensible". And most of the discussion seems to be mostly "ok, they are dangerous, they will probably try to attack us, we need to get out of this situation and need to plan how how to fight back and not get killed", with some "yuck" at those individuals.
Zoe: Preacher, don't the Bible have some pretty specific things to say about killing?
Book: Very specific. It is, however, a bit fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.
Me: This is the best show ever.
To be fair: It is not humans in general, but specific humans. Specific humans throwing up redflags for "we are dangerous to you" and "we are reprehensible". And most of the discussion seems to be mostly "ok, they are dangerous, they will probably try to attack us, we need to get out of this situation and need to plan how how to fight back and not get killed", with some "yuck" at those individuals.
If we have a permanent marker, we should doodle embarrassing things on their faces once we beat them unconscious. Maybe it'll even serve as a mechanical debuff to intimidation!
If we have a permanent marker, we should doodle embarrassing things on their faces once we beat them unconscious. Maybe it'll even serve as a mechanical debuff to intimidation!
Taylor: Drew, start your smoke forms. Leo...you know cool better than us. Do as you think best, but don't start the fight.
Drew: No worries, man. No worries. S'all good.
Calliope: You better do the talking. Drew is baked and they're not going to respect a teenage girl.
Taylor flicked a glance at his niece. Acknowledging that she wasn't the best one to solve an issue? Presumably the devil's air conditioner had finally been installed and promptly run amok. She glared back at him and jerked her head towards the strangers. He grinned at her and faced front.
"I'm Taylor," he said to the opposing leader with his two murder-marking skulls. He shifted his hand to rest along the top of his shotgun, which still hung from the patrol sling and was therefore facing forward and more or less aimed at the man's navel. "And you are?"
"Luke. Where you three from?" Unsurprisingly, Luke had a thick Southern twang to his voice.
"Outside Chicago. You?"
"Tennesee."
"Long way," Taylor said, his eyes flicking away from Luke as the man with the broken bottle shifted his weight.
"Guess the dungeon don't care too much about distance," Luke said. "You mind aimin' that thing someplace else?"
"Let's all put our weapons in our inventories."
Luke started to reply and then stopped as the pot cloud that had been covertly trickling along on the ceiling above the team suddenly drifted down to hover four feet over the Southerners' heads. The smoke shifted to be emerald green and then coalesced into the form of serpents whose bodies shifted and swirled without ever leaving the confines of the snake form.
"Don't worry," Taylor said. "They're friends of ours. I believe we were all going to put our weapons away?"
"Suddenly not too inclined to do that, what with you having snakes hanging over us."
"I'll back them off." He raised a hand and waved the snakes aside. Better if the Southerners didn't know who was actually controlling the things.
The snakes didn't move.
Taylor: Drew, back the damn snakes off! Move them so they're above and behind us.
"Huh? Oh, yeah," Drew said out loud. He started giggling. The snakes backed away as Taylor had ordered, hovering above and behind the team.
Luke raised an eyebrow, looking from Taylor to Drew and back. Taylor cursed silently.
The yo-yo was currently on Taylor's left hand, the string pulled in tight so as to hold it against the back of his fingers like a ridiculously oversized diamond ring. Taylor dropped the shotgun into his inventory and simultaneously activated the yo-yo's 'rave mode' as he had started thinking of it. It glowed softly and sparks flew out from it like from a sparkler, bouncing between all the colors of the rainbow.
"Your turn," Taylor said, chinning towards Luke.
Luke pursed his lips, but his chain and kettle bell vanished into his inventory.
Taylor: Drew, put your shotgun in your inventory.
Honestly, it would be an excellent idea for Drew to not be carrying a firearm right now. His muzzle and trigger discipline were bad at the best of times, and 'stoned out of his socks' was not the best of times.
"Dude, you sure that's smart?" Drew asked out loud, his voice dreamy. "These guys seem intense."
Taylor: Goddamnit, Drew, use the chat system! And put your damn shotgun away!
"Okay, okay. You don't have to shout." Drew's shotgun vanished into inventory.
"Your friend there seems a little stoned," Luke noted.
"You think that's gonna help you, bitch?" Calliope said, dropping her hand to her shotgun's grip, trigger finger extended beside the trigger but not on it. "Try it."
"Calliope!" Taylor snapped, chills crawling across his neck as his heart suddenly raced. "Stand down."
Calliope: Relax, Unc. I'm just being bad cop.
"You'll have to excuse her," he said out loud. "She's a little testy."
Luke nodded slowly. "Guess I know somethin' about that. Girl, put that shotgun away and the rest of us will put ours away."
Taylor flicked his glowing, sparking yo-yo out, lengthening the string as he did, and let it drop into a sleeper for a second before binding it back up to his hand and repeating the action. "Leo, put the shotgun away. Leave the pistol holstered for now."
Calliope glared daggers at Luke but reluctantly obeyed.
Luke gestured and his crew's weapons shimmered away in turn.
"You headed that way?" Taylor asked, jerking his head back the way they'd come.
"Plannin' on it."
"We came from there. Trade info?"
"Boss..." said peroxide-blonde-with-murderskull.
"Hush now," Luke said, not looking at her. To Taylor he said, "We'd be more interested in trading for some of those guns. We got caught without, been feeling the lack."
"Not happening, sorry."
Luke nodded, unsurprised. "We've got some good loot boxes. Might be worth your while for one shotgun. What are those, anyway? They look like something out of some sci-fi movie."
"Tavors," Taylor said. He smiled slightly and added, "Israeli made."
A muscle in Luke's cheek twitched and his eyes narrowed slightly. "Way you say that makes me think you're assuming that I'm a racist asshole just because I'm Southern."
"Dude— Ow, fuck man!" Drew said as Taylor grabbed his bicep and squeezed, cutting off whatever he had started to say.
"You're wearing Confederate flags," Taylor noted. "Doesn't do you any favors."
"Southern pride, my brother."
"Flag of traitors and slavers. And I'm not your brother."
The five members of Luke's crew shifted angrily, muttering. The broken bottle reappeared in Aryan Bro's hand and he started to step forward, then froze as Luke raised a clenched fist in the 'stop' handsign that anyone who had ever watched an action movie knew.
"Not lookin' for a fight here," Luke said.
"Looks like you already found three of them," Calliope said, nodding to their skulls. "You backstabbing hick bas—"
"Calliope!" Taylor snapped. "Shut up."
Taylor: Sorry, Leo. Just part of the act.
Calliope: S'all good, Unc. I think it's working.
Drew started giggling.
"Your friend there's got a real smart mouth," said the skinhead woman. "Seems like maybe she should keep those lips clamped."
"Seems like maybe you should follow your own advice, Roxy," Luke said. "All of you, step back."
"Boss—" said the broken-nosed twin.
"You questioning me, Nose? Step the fuck back."
Reluctantly, the five members of the gang took a step back.
"One more."
All five of them glowered but took a second, smaller, step back.
"Y'all seemed a tad tense," Luke said to Taylor. "Now, if you can keep your girl there from pissing in anyone's Frosted Flakes for five minutes, maybe we can do business."
"Yeah, that'll—"
"Calliope."
The girl glared at Taylor but stopped talking.
Drew giggled harder.
Luke's cheek muscle twitched again as his teeth clenched. "Care to share what's so funny?"
"You," Drew said, giggling madly. "All of you. Everybody's so tense and puffy. Bad vibes, man. Bad vibes."
Luke's teeth had moved from 'clenching' to 'grinding', but he forced himself to take a breath and look back to Taylor. "The skulls aren't what you think," he said. "We were having a dustup in the parking lot of the Bulls'n'Babes. We're kickin' ass, but it's friendly-like until one of 'em pulls a knife, stabs Roxy's sister in the guts. Just then the 'Babes vanishes into the ground along with all the cars and trucks. A staircase opens a bit away. Georgie stays with Mad Mary, tries to stop the bleeding while the rest of us go after the guy with the knife. Yeah, we were gonna stomp him dead for what he did, but only him.
"Their trucks are gone, so he and his buddies run down the stairs. We follow and suddenly we're in here. He and his buddies all pull knives, go after my crew. I caved one guy's head in while he was trying to shank Holt." He jerked his head towards Aryan Bro, who still held the broken bottle. "Rest of the fight went how you'd think."
"So, what?" Calliope asked. "You're a bunch of sweet little misunderstood lambs who were just defending yourselves?"
"You've got a real smart mouth on you, girlie. Might want to see to that." Luke's voice was disturbingly mild. Frighteningly so; Taylor would much have preferred that he sound angry.
Taylor: Back off, Leo. I think he's about at his limit.
"You wanted to do business," Taylor said. "So let's do business. Guns are off the table, but we've got information on what's back that way. Trade you for a read on where you're coming from."
Luke considered him for a moment. "All right. You start."
"Big bugs called kruthak," Taylor said. "We saw two kinds, the regular ones and the assassins. Think 'four-legged crab'." The regular ones are about four feet across, the assassins are smaller but pure black. You can't see them in the shadows." He tapped the LED miner's light on his headband. "Once you get a light on them they're pretty easy."
Drew looked over at him in surprise.
Taylor: Drew, shut the fuck up. Keep your eyes on Luke, do not speak, do not react to anything I say. You're stoned and you're going to screw this up.
Drew rolled his eyes but turned back to look at Luke, who had not missed the byplay.
"Seems like maybe they weren't that easy," Luke said.
Taylor shrugged. "Everything's relative, but yeah. Not that hard, but not trivial either."
"'Trivial'," Bobby muttered in a mocking sing-song. "Geek."
Taylor sent his sparking Skyhawk into a series of fast Around the World spins, the string lengthened until the Skyhawk nearly brushed the floor. He spun it fast enough that it blurred into a wheel, and stared Bobby down the whole time.
"You mentioned that my niece has a smart mouth," Taylor said calmly. "Seems like your boy does too."
Bobby's chin came up. "Fuck you, you geek fa—"
"Bobby, shut your hole before I need to shut it for you," Luke said. "Swear to god, you open your lips one more time and I'ma put your head in the wall."
"Boss, are you gonna let him—" That was as far as Roxy got before Luke turned around and backhanded her to the ground.
"I told you before to hush yourself," he said calmly.
"No you didn't," Drew said helpfully. "You said that she should follow—"
"Not the time, Drew," Taylor said. "Just be quiet. This doesn't have to get ugly."
The five members of Luke's backup band shifted angrily. Bobby helped Roxy back to her feet; her lip was split and her face was already puffing up. She glimmered and the injuries disappeared as she used her Heal spell. Luke turned away, deliberately leaving them all at his back and returning his focus to Taylor.
"What's ahead?" Taylor said. "We showed ours. Your turn."
"This area looks to be divided into a grid of neighborhoods," Luke said. "Each one's two, three miles across and's got a different type of critter. The neighborhoods only join together at a few places, one or two places on these main halls and a few more on the side channels. The monsters seem to mostly stay out of the main halls. The bit you're headed to has weird cat monsters in it, and if you go about thirty minutes where you're headed you'll run into a bunch of folks. A hundred, hundred and fifty of 'em, somethin' like. They were at some kind of outdoor party when everything collapsed, so they came down together. Buncha kids, buncha meemaws and pawpaws, but mostly grown folk. Most of 'em don't know what the hell to do so they're just sitting around."
"And you just blew on by?"
Luke shrugged. "I've got a responsibility to my own." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the other five. "We've been in here a few hours and I've already lost four brothers. This place is dangerous and we can't take responsibility for those as won't take it for themselves."
Taylor nodded. "All right," he said at last. "I think it's best if we all just move on now."
"Feelin' like I gave a little more in that trade than I got," Luke said. "You might could even that up a bit."
Taylor: Drew, do not say anything out loud or react.
"All right," Taylor said after a moment. "Here's a piece of advice for you: the dungeon gives loot boxes with most achievements and it gives achievements for doing things that will entertain the audience. That means either killing stuff in new and exciting ways or generally doing weird shit. Sing raunchy songs at the top of your lungs or hop on one foot for an hour, that kind of thing. Also, the AI enjoys seeing us do embarrassing stuff. Our game guide said that drinking your own piss will sometimes get you a good loot box, but only if you do it early before enough other people have done it."
"You're fucking kidding me," said Holt, aka Aryan Bro. "Boss, I ain't drinkin' piss."
Taylor shrugged. "Yeah, we weren't hard up enough to try it. Still, our guide said that the first couple dozen people to do it usually get a Legendary box. Apparently the prizes drop off fast, though. The hundredth person only gets a Bronze and then nothing after that." He pondered. "Oh, yeah. If a guy can jerk off four times in an hour that's apparently worth a good prize too. Again, it's one of those things that you need to do early before the AI gets bored of it."
"Damn, only guys?" the skinhead woman said. "Four times in an hour ain't nothin' for me." Several of her male compatriots snorted their amusement.
"Dunno," Taylor said, raising his hands helplessly. "It's possible that our guide was just fucking with us." He pulled the Skyhawk string in, clamping the yo-yo to the back of his hand, and pulled his shotgun out of inventory, keeping the barrel pointed down. "Now, if y'all will step to the side, I think it's time for you to go on your way and us to go on ours."
o-o-o-o
"Whoa," Taylor said, jerking to a halt. "You guys see that?"
"Yup," Calliope replied. She was a few yards in the lead this time, tic-tacing back and forth down the corridor with a clacking noise that was making Taylor's teeth itch and temples pound. She paused, cocking her head as she studied her map. "Six, seven, eight...thirteen of them?"
Taylor was only seeing five. He walked forward to stand beside Calliope and eight more blue dots appeared on his minimap. Most of them were sitting still while a few shifted back and forth. They were camped in the corridor around a safe room. Not one of the guild halls which always contained Levi, just a blank room labeled 'safe room' on the map with a white-dotted NPC inside it.
He pinched out on the minimap, expanding the area that it covered at the expense of losing detail. More blue dots popped into existence. Dozens of them.
"Wow," Drew said, beating him to the punch. His voice was dreamy and slow, the effects of the THC he'd taken in while building up the smoke cloud needed for their earlier encounter with Luke and his gang. "That's...a lot of people."
"I guess that's the group NaziHickFuckBoi told us about," Calliope said. "Maybe he was playing it straight." She laughed. "Also, that thing about drinking piss and jerking off? That was fucking epic, Unc."
"Language," Taylor said absently, focusing on his minimap. "Do we engage or do we leave?"
"We're already on their maps," Calliope said after a moment. "And we're heavily armed, probably more than them. I'd rather know what we're dealing with. Plus, if there's really kids there..."
Taylor grunted. "I suppose. Drew, your thoughts?"
"Hm?" Drew said. He was looking at his hand, twisting his wrist and curling his fingers. "What?"
"Never mind," Taylor said. "Calliope, you're right. Let's do it." He wasn't at all sure if it was safe to get themselves tangled up with this group, much less if it was a good idea. Still, it wasn't necessarily a bad idea and giving Calliope her way might tone down the teenage rebellion for a while.
"Cool! Thanks, Unc."
"Just...please stay with us?" he said. "I want to present a united front."
Calliope rolled her eyes. "Fiiiine."
They moved down the corridor, Taylor and Calliope with their shotguns slung and aimed down, Drew with his shotgun in inventory because he was so stoned that he was less 'walking' and more 'moseying'.
They saw the light first. Someone had lit a series of fires in the hallway, and the minimap showed dozens of people clustered around those fires.
"Who goes there?!" came a voice from the shadows.
"Geez, Charlie. You can see our names on the map," Calliope replied. "What's the 'Tho' for? Charlie Tho seems like a weird name."
"Leo," Taylor hissed.
"What? It does!"
Four men walked out of the shadows. The leader was carrying a baseball bat with nails hammered halfway into it. The second had a fireplace poker, the third a steel garbage can lid, and the last man was carrying an unlit torch as a club.
"It's short for Charlie Thompson," the man in the lead said. He was medium height, maybe five nine, with thinning red hair and freckles. "The dungeon abbreviates your name to distinguish you. Presumably there's a Charlie, a Charlie T, and a Charlie Th running around somewhere in here." He looked them over. "You seem pretty well kitted out."
"Yeah, we got lucky," Taylor said vaguely, putting a hand on Drew's shoulder to keep him from saying anything. "What's your story?"
Charlie glanced back down the hall to where the others waited. "We were at a star-watching party, looking at the meteor shower. Cars got sucked down, staircase opened up, we were a hundred miles out in the desert with no way home, so we went down."
Taylor winced. "You've all had the tutorial?"
"Most of us. There's a tutorial guild about half a mile that way and we're cycling people through it. We're camping here because there's a bathroom and we can get food from the safe room."
Calliope: Speaking of bathrooms, I gotta wee as soon as we're done with this guy.
"How many people do you have?" Taylor asked, ignoring Calliope's message.
"Counting everyone including the kids, 194. It was 217 when we came down but we got jumped by these cat things, and then...well, stuff happened. We've been prioritizing getting the wounded through the tutorial so they can use Heal."
"Ouch." Taylor looked past the man to where the people were sitting. "What are you doing about leveling?"
"We're limited by the weapon supply. We've got groups out collecting whatever they can find, earning loot boxes if they can, and bringing it all back to divide up so we can send out more groups. You guys have guns; you'll be a huge help."
Irritation spiked through Taylor at the presumption that they would be placing themselves under Charlie's direction, or even sticking around.
"We need to take care of a few things first," Taylor said. "Hit the bathroom, eat something, and check in with our game guide. After that we can talk about whether and how our two groups can work together."
Charlie's lips tightened as he caught the subtext. "Sure. Why don't you come with me? I'll show you where things are, introduce you around a bit."
"That bathroom thing would be really good," Callipe said, shifting uncomfortably. "We haven't passed one for a bit and I didn't want to say anything, but I really gotta go."
"Right this way," Charlie said, giving her a nod.
He led them back towards the light. There were, as the map suggested, dozens of people camped out here. Several of them had guitars or other portable instruments and were playing music softly. Those were the exceptions.
The majority of people that they walked past were slumped against the wall, knees drawn up, staring at the ground. There were so many that Taylor's brain only recorded snippets of what he saw.
One plump young woman, late twenties with blonde hair sweatily melting out of its careful style, was holding a ripped teddy bear in one hand, staring at it silently.
Two young girls were playing one of those mysterious clapping games that all grade-school girls somehow know. Their teenage sister sat nearby, staring blankly at them.
An ancient man, limbs thin and twisted like dried-out tree branches, was staring at his left forearm and idly rubbing one finger back and forth across the blurred number tattooed there.
A man in dirt-streaked tan boat shoes and a woman in an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse were arguing in angry whispers. Their neighbors hushed them every time their voices began to rise.
A red-headed woman had gathered eight children of ages six- to sixteen-ish around a fire and was telling them fairy tales.
Calliope: Holy shit.
Taylor: Yeah.
Charlie led them to the bathroom, which was a red metal door with a unisex sign on it, the kind that you would see in any fast-food place or truck stop. There was a line, but he jumped them to the front.
"Hey!" whined the man who had been about to go in. "No cuts!"
"Chill, Eugene," Charlie said. "These guys really need to go and they've got better weapons than anyone else. If we're nice to them they could do a lot of good for us." He crowded the other man out of the way, turned to face Taylor and the others, and gestured to the bathroom door.
"Dunno if you've used the bathrooms yet," Charlie said. "Everyone gets their own. Any bathroom door you open will be your particular version. Don't try to walk into someone else's version. You'll explode."
"You'll what now?" Calliope asked.
"Explode. That was how we lost Travis." He snorted in grim and humorless amusement. "Granted, it got a Bronze box for the seven people who got splattered with his blood, and two of those boxes had decent weapons in them. So, hey. Take the win where you can get it, I guess."
"That's seriously fucked up," Calliope said. "You knew this Travis guy and you're making jokes about him blowing up?"
For just a moment, Taylor thought Charlie was going to shout at her, but then the man caught his temper. "No, Calliope," he said calmly. "I'm acknowledging exactly how messed up our situation is and looking for the tiniest shred of silver lining in the middle of this cloud. Now, why don't the three of you do your business? The safe room is a self-serve taco bar. I'll be right back with a plate for each of you and then I'll take you over to the guild hall. Remember, you need to open the door for yourself when you go into the bathroom." He nodded to them and strode off.
Calliope watched him go and then quickly wrenched the bathroom door open and ducked inside, closing it behind her. Taylor only caught a brief glimpse of the bathroom itself; it was tiny, barely larger than a shower stall, with a sink and a regular porcelain toilet like you would see anywhere in America.
Calliope: Guess he wants to get us pushed through ASAP so we can go out and start farming weapons for him.
Taylor: Yeah. Let's talk to Levi and then we need to figure this out.
Calliope: Not to be a bitch about it but... I mean, we're carrying a shit ton of stuff that would make good weapons.
Taylor: True, but not enough to outfit two hundred people. Yes, some of that stuff I bought specifically so that we could give it out to other people in the dungeon, but do we want to drop it all in one spot or should we save some for future groups?
"Damn, I'm hungry," Drew said out of roughly nowhere. "Tacos sound amazing."
o-o-o-o
"...and then he brought us here," Taylor said. "What do you think, Levi?"
The rabbit man's tentacle eyes waved lazily for a moment. "I think big groups are a trap," he said. "There's only so much XP in the dungeon. Every floor has a janitor mob—on this floor it's rats, on the next it'll be something else. Those spawn indefinitely and can be moderately dangerous but they don't give any XP, or at least so little it doesn't matter. Aside from the janitors, there's a finite number of mobs and they don't get replaced after they're killed. If there's a thousand trolls in the neighborhood then there's only a thousand trolls worth of XP to be had. That's a good amount if you're dividing it among three people and their dog but it doesn't mean squat when you're dividing it across two hundred people. They all came in together, right?"
"Yeah, why?" Taylor asked, ignoring the way that Drew was shoveling down taco mix in the next chair.
"If you come in together then you're put into a party together, and XP gets divided across the entire party," Levi said. "There's a lot of different factors and it's too complicated to explain—who makes the kill, the distance you are from the person making the kill, on and on—but the essential thing is that if those people are all in one party then the useless ones are leeching XP off the useful ones, keeping them from leveling as fast as they should. If they break into smaller parties then they're still dividing the same amount of XP in this area up between all those parties because there's only so many targets to hunt. If you guys stay with these people it's going to flatline your growth. It's also going to tank any chance you have of doing something exciting enough to make it onto the recap episode."
"The what now?" Calliope asked. "I thought the views didn't turn on until the second floor?"
"They don't, but that just means that the hoi polloi can't watch. The press can, and obviously the showrunners can. Right now they're working frantically to cherrypick the most exciting moments from the crawl and turn them into the first episode of Dungeon Crawler World: Earth. It'll tunnel in a little more than a day. If you can be on the first episode it'll give you an early lead on the social side and that can snowball easily once you hit the second floor. If you're not on the first episode, you aren't hosed but you're giving up on an advantage.
"The stuff that makes it on the recap is exciting. Derring-do, narrow escapes, clever tactics, big explosions, badass speeches, that kind of thing. Moreover, it's personal. A mysterious lone hero, or maybe a scrappy team of underdogs. A group small enough that the audience can tell them apart—and keep in mind that most of the audience isn't human, so you want to give them easy ways to distinguish you." He gestured to the team. "You guys are fine. She's short and blonde, you've got that yo-yo, and he's the other one." (Taylor stifled his wince and pointedly didn't look at Drew to see how his friend would react to being called 'the other one.')
Moose barked.
"And he's the dog," Levi amended.
Moose panted happily.
"Wait, most of the audience isn't human?" Calliope asked, sitting forward intently, elbows on knees.
"Yeah. The way it was explained to me, the Syndicate seeds worlds with various species and humans are one of them. They also nudge cultures slightly to ensure that there will be at least a few common elements everywhere that people can use as a touchstone.
"Anyway, not the important part right now," Levi continued, "Like I was saying: the stuff that gets on the recap show is exciting and personal. Know what is not exciting and personal? Two hundred people sitting around the fire telling fairy tales and wiping kids' noses. If you latch onto these people you're pretty much signing your own death warrant."
The three humans digested that.
"You didn't mention the recap before this," Taylor noted.
Levi shrugged his lower shoulders. "There's a lot that's useful to know but it's not all equally important. If you dump too much on people at once it just overwhelms and distracts them. I gave you what you needed to know and sent you out. Either you were going to die immediately, in which case it didn't matter, or you would survive and come back to see me again after a few hours, at which point I could read you in. Like I said, there's a process."
"Suppose we survived but didn't come back to see you?" Calliope asked, grinning.
"Then you would have died a little later and it wouldn't be my problem." The alien man's voice was completely flat, refusing to play along with the joke.
"So you're saying that we shouldn't link up with these guys," Taylor said.
"Right. Dump some weapons with them if you must, but then get the hell out of there. Get over to the next neighborhood, grind for a while, then kill a boss. And get out of the main hallways. The first few levels are easy, so you guys should already be level 4 across the board. Get into the guts of the neighborhood where the good monsters are."
"Thank you!" Calliope said, flopping dramatically back on the couch. "I said that we should go after the rest of those kruthak bastards, but Uncle Taylor had to puss out."
"Calliope—"
"C'mon, Unc, you know it's right! Those things were sweet, tasty little XP dumplings on four legs. We killed seven of them between us and it got me up to level 4 and you guys to level 3. If we'd gone straight in like I wanted I bet we'd be the most bitchin' group in the dungeon right now and we totally would have made the recap!"
"Speaking of 'bitchin'," Levi said, "you guys should choose a team name. Taylor, as party lead it's your choice. Look in the Party menu and you'll see a place where you can customize the name of the team and give each person individual titles if you want. The individual titles aren't important, but the team name is a good way to let press refer to you and to—"
"—build brand identity, right," Taylor said, nodding. "Do the titles have any mechanical effect?"
"Nah. It's just an aesthetic and branding thing. It's still important." Levi glanced up at something the others couldn't see. "Cyberknight Squad is about to start, so it would be great if you guys could get out of here. Unless there's anything else...?"
Taylor pursed his lips in thought. "I think—"
What does Taylor think?
Voting time! What do you do next? Voting ends at
.
Four votes going on, the categories of which are:
[] (Team Name) name goes here
[] (Gifts) plan name here, details below
[] (Where) direction to travel and enemies to be found there, see below for options
[] (Actions) plan name here, details below
Specifics:
[] (Team Name) put name here
[] (Gifts) plan name here, details below
Charlie's group has plenty of food and basic necessities. What they need are weapons. Things that you could contribute:
3 Tavor shotguns (ammo will be included)
3 .45 pistols (ammo will be included)
30 rough but functional metal spears
20 cheap stunguns (not useful after the batteries run dry)
50 cans of pepper spray
Several dozen tools such as hammers, heavy wrenches etc. Most of these you only have one of
Based on what Charlie and Luke have told you, you're in a grid of neighborhoods, each of which has a theme to the mobs that live there. Known themes and how to vote for them are:
[] (Where) East (kruthak)
[] (Where) North (winged snakes)
[] (Where) South (oozes and slimes)
[] (Where) West (birds and bats)
[] (Where) East,North (weird sheep-like monsters)
[] (Where) North,East (weird sheep-like monsters)
[] (Where) East,South, (plant monsters)
[] (Where) South,East (plant monsters)
[] (Where) East,East (kobolds)
[] (Where) write in a direction or two-direction path here (not more than 2, please)
Note that options like 'East,North' and 'North,East' are distinct because they describe a path -- i.e. walk (one neighborhood east, then one north) vs (walk one neighborhood north, then one east). In this case it means that in order to get to the sheep monsters you need to either go through kruthak territory or winged snake territory.
Finally, (Action) is a catch-all category where you can put write-in details if you like. An (Action) plan must receive at least 4 votes in order to be counted as passing. If it conflicts with one of the other category-based votes then I'll reconcile them based on my best judgement and preferences.
[ ] (Team Name) String Theory
I really dig it, though we would need to figure out how the other three factor into the name. Maybe they'd get loot for it later? Right now our aesthetic is like... a bunch of teen hippies lmao
Smoking weed, riding skateboards, and doing yoyo tricks (also, there's a dog)
If questioned: we were at an outdoor guns and knives convention when this all went down.
Callie: Keep Drew silent.
Information
Warn about kruthaks and assassin variants.
Warn about the bigots
Use Dungeon Dropped Weapons, if you can. Gun ammo runs out (implication: we're low on guns because of this) and loot weapons scale better. Immediate survival is important, but so is long-term thinking.
Food drops are apparently common, and nutritious, if nasty.
Health Potions are common drops on lower levels.
Quit your massive party. Disban and split into smaller parties. This will drop XP sinks. Those who can't fight can still be protected without being in the same party (and combat parties can bring back important loot)
Offer to add Charlie Tho and his various lieutenants to our Contacts List, in order to periodically send each other more info as we discover it.
Information is priceless, and the more of us who survive, the greater chance we have of winning this thing.
Ask Levi if we can add him to our Contacts List, that way we don't have to keep interrupting his show
This seems like the next tier of enemies to fight, and would net more XP for us. Slimes would probably be resistant to blunt force trauma (yoyo) and I could see them also having resistance to guns (absorbing and diffusing the impact).
[X] (Gifts) Information is the Best
[X] (Team Name) String Theory
[X] (Team Name) Trick Shot
[X] (Where) South (oozes and slimes)
[X] (Where) East,East (kobolds)
Kobolds are intelligent so they might drop weapons and tools that we can bring back to the big group. We could also barter with some of them. Slimes might be more likely to drop stuff like elemental slime essences that we can use to craft elemental grenades.
While humiliating those guys was fun, I suspect we've earned nemeses.
[] (Where) East (kruthak): Mini Zerg/Tyrannids. They are swarm tactics incarnate, and they have specialist bugs. They could be a fantastic way of farming xp if we had automatic weapons or explosives for a kill-zone, but we don't.
[] (Where) North (winged snakes): No thank you on flying, hard to hit poisonous monsters.
[] (Where) South (oozes and slimes): Guns probably won't work here.
[] (Where) West (birds and bats): Still flying and hard to hit, but shotguns would work.
[] (Where) East,North (weird sheep-like monsters): This might be best.
[] (Where) East,East (kobolds): If they aren't Tucker's Kobolds, it'll be fine. I suspect they'll be Tucker's kobolds.
[] (Where) East,South, (plant monsters): Tough, hard to kill with bullets, probably poisonous.
[x] (Where) East,North (weird sheep-like monsters)
[x] (Where) West (birds and bats): Still flying and hard to hit, but shotguns would work.
[x] (Gifts) Self Defense:
-[] 10 spears, 5 stun guns, 10 pepper spray cans
-[] Give information on the warnings you've received, the monsters you've encountered, the racists, etc.
[X] (Team Name) Trick Shot
[X] (Team Name) Yo Radical Yo
[X] (Where) North (winged snakes)
[X] (Where) West (birds and bats)
Okay hear me out: in terms of comparative advantage we're pretty good against flying mobs. We have a gravity-defying skateboard, a magic yo-yo, and plenty of mundane ranged weaponry. Any ol' crawler can grab a 2x4 and smack a slime or something, but there should be more of these guys left than anything else.
Fortunately, nemeses make for good TV and these guys are chumps. Just need to outpace them in levels and we can use them to make ourselves look cool a second time.
[X] (Team Name) Trick Shot
[X] (Where) North (winged snakes)
[X] (Where) West (birds and bats)
[X] (Where) North (winged snakes), but also keep an eye out for the staircase
[X] (Where) West (birds and bats), but also keep an eye out for the staircase
Is the Safe room food infinite? Can it be put into storage? If both yes, take as much as you can without getting into trouble
Consider the possibilities:
that you find a group of people cut of from food sources and you want to give them some (as donations or trade)
that future safe rooms could have barely edible food (intentionally disgusting like a game show, alien without care for human needs and so on)
that future safe rooms could be blocked of to you by being camped by hostile players (imagine bigger gang of confederates)
that future floors could take a year or longer, the alien that warned you said that each would get longer, who knows how extreme it gets by floor 10+
you may need a big food store from each safe room to not get stuck eating the same food every day for a year
[X] (Action) Use your time to train as circumstances allow
during running you can at least try basic yoyo throws
while walking or idle you can experiment with your yoyo, see what new tricks are possible with weight and string length changing yoyos
good tricks might make it into the trailer to stand in for traveling or waiting
whenever you are about to reach max mana: try a spell. Every point of mana that you didn't regenerate because you are at max mana is a point that could have gone into training spells.
[X] (Action) Take everything
everything could become useful. The more you have picked up the more you have to be creative with when future problems arise
always take enemy corpses
kruthak
If you are within pheromone range of the main force, they can be used as a trap, if they still have some pheromones left in them when picked up
acidic blood could be useful for traps or to be apply to indestructible weapons (enemy gets hit AND acid in their face)
it burns relatively clean? Campfire material!
it burns dirty? a pile of it + some fuel + a torch -> smoking out a cave or similar
it is kinda heavy? If Calliope can lift it for 4 seconds she can drop it from inventory while high-speed-fleeing on the skateboard to trip up pursuers
if we go to the sheep through the kruthak territory we should see if we can take one of those corpses, quick inv it and see if we can un-storage it close to a few sheep to make the kruthak reinforcements attack the sheep.
Might get xp for it. Might get a lootbox for the idea.
If we do it with to big a group of sheep we risk losing too many kills if we don't get xp for fights we caused.
[X] (Gifts) Information is the Best
[X] (Team Name) Trick Shot
[X] (Team Name) Yo Radical Yo
[x] (Where) East,North (weird sheep-like monsters)
-[x] (Action) Try to take a kruthak corpse, quick inventory it very quickly, before all of its pheromones leak out, and drop it from inventory close enough to a few sheeps thta if kruthak come they could attack the sheep
on [] (Gifts) Information is the Best:
I'm not sure about giving away our main non-dungeon weapons (or 1 set at least), maybe give them 5 tasers and pepper-spray instead? then each person in our group would still have a full set of our main non-dungeon weapons.
Note that options like 'East,North' and 'North,East' are distinct because they describe a path -- i.e. walk (one neighborhood east, then one north) vs (walk one neighborhood north, then one east). In this case it means that in order to get to the sheep monsters you need to either go through kruthak territory or winged snake territory.
