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Hearth of the Mountain

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London Mallory Quinn has three things going for them in a new and fantastical world:
They are nigh-indestructible by any means the new world has to offer.
They possess nigh-godlike levels of magical powers allowing them to reshape the very fabric of reality around themselves
Their new bestie is plugged directly into the underlying system that shapes and defines the world.

Unfortunately, what they've got going against them is having their soul-stuff shredded in the transfer, becoming several tonnes of a non-ambulatory highly magical and magically resistant crystal, waking up in an area of intense magical fallout, and an entire world full of people who have been conditioned over the millennia to respond less than positively towards the kind of existences of which they have just become the platonic ideal.

A somewhat farcical adventure romp playing with some of the dungeon core tropes coming from the strange and not entirely sane mind of an author whose writing and non-existent writing schedules constantly suffer from bad luck, worse health, perpetual near exhaustion, a fickle muse that is more ADHD than a roomful of toddlers on meth, and a severe lack of proper editors.
Consider yourselves warned.
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Prologue
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    • yannoshka

    yannoshka

    Thunda birb
    Location
    Smartarse cramschool


    When the gods of old first populated the world of Eise, they almost came to blows until Chaena, goddess of balance and justice and arbitrage intervened and arranged for a compromise. Since there were fifteen gods, seven races would be created, and to keep affairs in balance each would be embodying one deadly sin and one cardinal virtue. She herself chose to abstain from creation, assuming instead a supervisory role.
    Thus elves were made prideful but temperate; greenskins became wrathful yet just; shortfolk are charitable but gluttonous; fay are utterly honest and just as envious; Treekin are humble but slothful; Oni lust knows no bounds but neither does their legendary loyalty; and dwarves personify fortitude and greed in equal measure.
    As time passed, the elder races would go their own ways – Elves would retreat away from the rest of the world disparaging all other races, greenskins would spread around and wander as nomads and raiders troubling all others with their battlelust, Fey would hide themselves, and then use their great magics to play cruel tricks upon the other races, etc…
    As was their wont, the dwarves dug wherever they found a mountain or a sturdy enough looking hill. Wherever they figured there might be something worth digging, truth be told. And then, in an age now long forgotten, in the depths of the biggest, toughest mountain in all of Eise they found IT. An opaque crystal so large it dwarfed the mother tree of the Evergrove, which, it was said, had been the oldest living being in all the world, and from which all Treekin and all the woods of Eise originated. The crystal was so though that it took the dwarves an entire era just to develop tools that could even chip at it. And most important of all, the crystal, which eventually got named 'The Hearth of the Mountain', thrummed with such power that it allowed the dwarves to develop the most advanced civilization Eise had ever seen.

    But, as was already established, Dwarven greed knows no bounds, and the results ended in a sadly predictable fashion.
    It is lost to the mists of time whom exactly was to blame, some legends say a cabal tried to take a piece of the hearth for themselves, other say that the king wanted to carve himself a throne into the hearth, and there are a thousand other, different legends.
    What is known is that whatever was done ended up shattering the hearth and releasing such mad outpouring of magic that, not only did it completely alter the face of Eise, it even reached into the realm of the gods and wiped them out as well, which eventually led to the coming and the rise of the younger gods. As if that wasn't bad enough, the fragments of the hearth that, intermingled with the vestiges of the old gods, were flung around the world by the explosion would give birth to a completely new and utterly exceptional lifeform - that of an inanimate semi-sentient crystal capable of warping the world around itself. A Dungeon Core.

    It has been several long millennia since the shattering and the wild cataclysmic mana storms surrounding the exiled mountain are beginning to ever so slowly subside, to the point that it is theoretically possible, although still ludicrously dangerous, to survive the trip through wildlands and actually reach the mountain.
    Spurred by the fragments of ancient legends, the brave, the valiant, the foolhardy, the ambitious and those of darker and more sinister inclinations prepare expeditions to try and secure the remnants of legends for themselves.
    Into this maelstrom of trouble, tribulation, and terror a soul of a hapless 21st century Terran is thrust into the single largest remaining shard of the hearth without a clue as to how or why. Now armed only by their wits (not all that impressive), guts (almost nonexistent), sensibilities (completely useless), ingenuity and a shard of a god (OK, those last two might just, possibly, if one squinted and hoped really hard, actually amount to something useful), our bumbling MC has to muddle through, somehow survive against staggering odds and, ultimately, either save or condemn the world.


    Ok, that at the very end is probably a bald-faced lie, but it sounds exciting, ne?


    A/N: And, so I begin.
    This is still in great measure a work in progress, so, please, don't be shy with criticism.
    Be as harsh and astringent as you feel the need to be, but keep in mind that I can and will choose to ignore any and all critiques that I find lacking whether in deliver or in content.
     
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    • Due to some problems with formating (namely that the forums are mangling the tables) that even after two days of attempting various means of solving, I have yet to find one that is to my satisfaction, I will be posting the story over on

    Home | Royal Road

    Read stories online for free, or write your own story!
    www.royalroad.com www.royalroad.com

    As soon as the chapter gets approved, I will be putting a link up here so anyone wishing to follow the story has somewhere to do so.
     
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