You wake up in a small room covered with the color gray, and your body warped and disfigured. Your mind is so shattered that you cannot think of a way out.
But, not all hope is lost. The pity of a group of beings has filled you with the capacity to free yourself. You might want to figure out your past and what you're going to do once you're out of here, though, because this place shouldn't be that big.
Welcome to Re:Flourish, an art quest by someone who's bad at both art and quests. I hope that you have fun.
Man, what a day. Or week. Months? Years? You don't know.
Ever since your Color was Deflourished, and you were forced into this Gray Room, your brain has deteriorated to the point where you can't even think.
Your eyes are literally closed all of the time. The drool that came out of your mouth during the Graying Process is now a permanent feature on your face, having turned into a line of color. Your feet are now simply an outline of the shape, lacking toes, and your fingers are shaped more like icicles. Your hair is basically a mess of triangular bangs and you can't even determine what gender you used to be by looking at you. Your clothes have melded into you, taking the brunt of the Loss of Detail, and your body is now an eternal shade of gray.
You have a feeling (since you're literally not smart enough to think about it and you're so sense-deprived that you can't have memories) that you tried to get out before. Unbeknownst to you, you did, but at that time the door was too tough. When the door itself lost detail along with the unfortunate window, you weren't strong enough to take advantage of it, since your body had weakened considerably. If you were more sapient than a plant right now, you might question how you haven't had to deal with thirst or hunger, but you can't.
One day, you feel an intense, divine feeling of pity. Vaguely. You can't understand it, as both your Wisdom and Intelligence have been reduced to below 1F, somehow. Who knows why these merciful deities decided to pick you? Perhaps if your Mind had not degraded so heavily, they might attempt to communicate with you. But you're literally dumber than a toddler. And they realize this. The forces that collectively pitied you send you a feeling of exasperation, which you also can't really understand, so they elect to try a different method of communication.
The sound of wet paint splashing across the floor (somehow in straight lines) barely registers on your mind, as your head is overloaded with new colors! You get the desire to touch one of the colors.
Pick a color. No write-ins. Don't worry about missing out on the experience of another color as you will absolutely have the opportunity to use them in the future.
[] Black Extremely defensive, to the point that it's not good for much else. Still handy, though.
[] Pink Modest power, high stamina, high speed. Basically never stop attacking. Your attacks aren't good but this brings consistent damage.
[] Red Powerful but reliant on sacrifice, be it body, mind, or soul. A glass cannon, if you would.
[] Brown Crafty, either literally (crafting something) or figuratively (creative). Heavily utility-based.
[] Yellow Either a savant or a jack-of-all-trades, or a little bit of both. Red Mage, basically. Recommended pick.
[] Green Very support-oriented. Cannot do much by itself, instead bolstering others.
[] Blue Frustratingly adaptable and intelligent. Similar to Brown but weaker, the primary benefit being that Blue requires a lot less preparation.
[] Purple Very individualized. Even I can't tell you what it might do. Has the potential to be exceedingly good or exceedingly bad. Absolutely not recommended.
[] White Extremely offensive to the detriment of all else, the inverse of Black. Again, still handy.
Welcome to my second-ever quest, and hopefully unlike my first one, this one will turn out better.
First: Pleez be jentl i am fragil
Second: Don't pay much attention to the Informational tab right now (or if you're looking at this immediately after me posting the space reserved section), I'll explain stats when you pick a color.
Third: This quest is mostly to recover my art abilities; I wasn't good in the first place, but months of inactivity has further worsened my abilities, which served as this quest's main inspiration. It's fun to disguise your incompetence as plot stuff. Though it might not be a good idea. Now you might ask; why didn't I just practice with my art before making this? Well, I did this in the hopes that maybe at least one or two people would be interested, and that would give me motivation to practice my artistic ability through this quest. Because God knows my own resolve is too pathetic to let me practice without any sort of motivating factor, and that apparently being able to enjoy my art is not a motivating factor according to my brain.
Thanks to carni and RunicRhythm, though I've never talked to them nor have they probably even heard of me. Their game systems served as the inspiration for about 1/4th of the system I'm going to be using. They have showed me that art quests don't need perfect art to gain an audience, which was a realization essential to the formation of this quest. Actually, that sounds like an insult. Whatever, my point still stands and I can't think of a better way to word it.
I hope I haven't messed anything up while making this (aside from the art, I already know that it's fucked). Now to go freak out in my bed questioning why I ever decided to make this since regret is an emotion that is easy for me to stumble across. I guess if it flops it's not too bad.
Yin-type Magic
A type of magic that focuses on passivity and slowing things down. It has little value besides supportive spells.
Passivity Shot
A spell that reduces the nearest living being's strength by 1 letter. Ego not high enough to define targeting parameters.
Brackish
Forces beings near you to test their Resolve, Wisdom and Structure against your Structure statistic. If their Vitality is lower, their Strength and Dexterity will be decreased by 1 letter. If their Resolve is lower, their Intelligence and Wisdom will be decreased by 1 letter. If their Structure is lower, their Zeal and Ego will be decreased by 1 letter. If they move away from you, they will regain their stats. Brackish has the potential to grow the more celsus you gain.
Backpack:
It's about the size of your torso. Which isn't saying much given the fact that you're fairly short. With some semi-clever packing (shoving the mace into the breastplate primarily) it works, but it feels kinda heavy. Surprisingly notgrayed out, probably due to it being stored outside of the cells.
Dull Spear: It hasn't recovered from the beating that White gave it, but it's a lot sharper now.
Dull Shield:
Still partially grayed, but you can make out the metal and leather used in it's construction, something like a buckler. Still less durable than you, but it'd be good for White.
Glowing Pendant
The multicolored necklace that came from the splotches of color you came out of. You've figured out that it glows in response to finding a candidate for blessing.
Color: White
Flourish: grayed out
Body
Strength: 2A
Dexterity: 1E
Vitality: 1D
Mind
Intellect: 1C
Wisdom: 1E
Resolve: 1E
Soul
Zeal: 2F
Ego: 1E
Rigidity: 1E
Skills:
???
Yang-Type Magic
Hyperdoro:
A spell designed to temporarily increase one's own strength. Boosts Strength and Zeal by 1 letter for a short while, moderately inexpensive.
Items:
Dull Breastplate:
A bit snug on her, not to mention that it's still not very tough, but it's better than nothing. It's been partially returned to it's former state, definitely tougher than White is. If struck in the chest, she will be treated as having 1A vitality for the sake of damage resistance, and 1C vitality against blunt weapons.
Yadael's Hammer:
A hammer made out of a unique metal, so heavy that it left a small trench in the floor after being dragged.
Yadael's Shield:
A shield made out of the same metal his hammer seems to be made of. It doesn't look as heavy, but it looks tough.
Stats
There are three categories for stats; Body, Mind, and Soul. Body simply determines your ability to physically act out your votes. Mind determines the PC's ability to remember, use, and apply information. Soul affects the PC's social interactions and ability to use magic. More specifics below:
Body
Strength: Your physical power. Determines running speed as well, but see Dexterity for why this isn't always the case.
Dexterity: Your dexterity and skill with objects. Also determines reaction time. While Strength is necessary to run fast, you need roughly equal Dexterity to do it without tripping over yourself.
Vitality: Determines physical hardness, resistance to shock, illness, and overall injury, and stamina.
Mind
Intellect: Your ability to take in, remember and apply information.
Wisdom: Your ability to solve problems that Intellect does not cover (I.E heat-of-the-moment problem solving and problem solving in general). Also covers physical senses (touch, taste, sight, etcetera).
Resolve: Your willpower and focus. Will improve the PC's ability to properly use Intellect and Wisdom, and act over long periods of time without distraction.
Soul
Zeal: Increases mana capacity and the power of spells. Increases charisma.
Ego: Increases your ability to control magic and modify spells; does not correlate with a feeling of pride, that's a different kind of ego. Increases social finesse.
Rigidity: Increases your ability to resist magic; if two spells clash, the caster with higher Rigidity will win. Increases composure in social situations.
Stat Scaling
Each stat has a letter and a number next to it.
The number determines what scale you're on; for reference, 1 is the level of an average human, 2 is the level of athletes, and so on. This is exponential as each scale is an order of magnitude above the last. For example, 15E is not 15 time stronger than 1E, it's closer to 437 times the strength of 1E.
The letter determines where you fall on that scale. For reference; F is the crossing point between the previous scale and the one you're on, E is below-average, D is average, C is good, B is great, and A is exceptional. So 1A Strength is about the amount of Strength a fit and healthy but ultimately average person has.
Status
At the end of every update. Conveys your condition, such as current injuries, and how much mana and stamina you have left.
Skill Checks
Some actions require Skill Checks. These run your current stats by the current situation to determine if you can accomplish something. There are situations in which dice rolls can happen, and they're not all that uncommon. Dice rolls occur when either:
1. A situation could go either way, or;
2. You fail a Skill Check, but are just barely close to passing it.
A large part of gameplay involves judging your own abilities, comparing them to the situation you're in, and planning around them if you don't think they're enough. This has a fair amount of luck, but this isn't like D&D where a bad dice roll can ruin a perfect plan.
An unfortunate fellow who underwent such a severe Loss of Detail that he lost both his mind and original shape, only vaguely resembling what he once was as he was filled with gray, causing great envy towards anything unique in this cold jail. Vague memories that haven't yet died insist that he's not quite Human, but you still can't remember precisely what he is. Some part of you leads you to believe that you knew him before you were grayed out.
Color: grayed out
Flourish: grayed out
Body
Strength: 1C
Dexterity: 1B
Vitality: 1D
Mind
Intellect: 1F
Wisdom: 1F
Resolve: 1E
Soul
Zeal: 1E
Ego: 1F
Rigidity: 1F
Skills:
Gray Envy
A gray-type Skill. allows one to become instinctively aware of high concentrations of celsus within a range of 10 meters. Was used by Polygon Man to somewhat account for his heavily-reduced sensory organs.
You are uncertain if this is his actual name, but it works for now.
Strength: 2C
Dexterity: 1C
Vitality: 2F
Mind
Intellect: 1F
Wisdom: 1F
Resolve: 1D
Soul
Zeal: 1A
Ego: 1D
Rigidity: 1A
Skills:
Grayed out.
Magic:
Yang-Type Magic
High Power
Increases Strength of self by 2 letters for a short time. Not terribly long-lasting. Fairly inexpensive.
Flashpoint
A spell that allows one to double their power in every regard for three seconds. Fairly expensive; scales such that it can only be cast 5 times, taking a fifth of one's mana. Fairly detrimental to one's health. For the sake of vitality checks, Flashpoint's damage-through-overloading part calculates based off of the user's regular Vitality, and not their Vitality while using Flashpoint.
Holy Magic
Heal
Does what it says on the tin. It requires multiple high-level casts to even begin healing a lost limb, and its mana cost is fairly middling.
Condenser Javelin
Charges and releases a spear of raw yang-type energy, throwing it at the enemy. Moderately inexpensive.
Items:
Yadael's Hammer:
A hammer made out of a unique metal, so heavy that it left a small trench in the floor after being dragged.
Yadael's Shield:
A shield made out of the same metal his hammer seems to be made of. It doesn't look as heavy, but it looks tough.
Celsus:
A sort of power that optimizes and defines beings. It is attained through three methods: Achievement, repetition, and killing. Achievement grants a meager but still solid amount of celsus, though greater achievements can have a rather large degree of celsus. It gives overall general improvements.
The second method, repetition, is basically similar to growing in real-life; repeatedly training something will generate celsus and put it all into the thing being trained. The unfortunate result is that it only improves what is being trained; getting celsus from training your muscles will only up your Strength.
The third method gives celsus depending on the strength of the thing that is killed. If you're below something and kill it, more is gained. If it is equal to you, you gain a fairly decent chunk of the celsus the killed being had. If you're above it, you will gain barely anything from it.
Flourish:
Someone's 'class', so to speak. It adjusts their growth and grants them Skills based on their colors.
Graying Process: A magical process that disperses celsus, causing the target to slowly lose definition and capability. Works different depending on the person; high enough Rigidity can stave it off, or even nullify it.
I see your recommendation, I keep the recommendation in mind when voting, I appreciate you putting the recommendation in because you want us to have the best experience playing your quest!
But, alas,
Alright, I seem to have misinterpreted how the tallying system works; as such, I'll just state the results cleanly as I have a small enough voter pool to just look at it myself; in fact, I'm probably going to keep doing this unless I inexplicably get a large playerbase. Since I'm basically already halfway done on the next post, I'll go ahead and mark down the results.
Black has won! Sorry @Hutchmang , but you'll have to wait a while to see the wackiness of Purple. Next post coming tomorrow.
Your mind can hardly comprehend what's going on, but you feel drawn to the closest color near you. You lazily flop over, muscles too weakened to make any proper movement just yet. You feel the passive gentleness of the Black paint on the tips of your fingers. You feel a sigh of reluctant acceptance originating from the other bars of color, and some sort of feeling creeps into your hand.
The nature of Black is causing your body to rapidly compress; I could exposit to you about why, but that's not important. Fortunately, you lack the perceptiveness to feel the pain from having your entire body squeezed. The good news is that your eyes are no longer reduced to curved lines on your head; your vision goes from fuzzy and barely-working to passable, somewhat. The development of color on your arms grants a weird feeling of strength that you had lost. It's not a lot, but at least you have the capacity to function. Your body begins to rapidly regain definition. Even though they're mostly just for show and don't work, you have stuff like toes and a belly button now. Maybe you even have internal organs. The clothes that merged into you from the Loss of Detail begin to reappear, granting you sleeves. You notice the remaining traces of Black that didn't leave into you begin to conjoin with the other colors into a tent-like shape.
You feel the last traces of color enter your chest and arms, and your hairstyle settles into a... less than visually pleasurable cut, perhaps even moreso than your last one, but it feels more like hair now, rather than a bundle of brittle fibers. Still, the '3 bangs on the forehead and the rest of the hair pulled back' look is doing nothing for your style. Three things are most notable; one, you can think. You still aren't intelligent enough to handle language, but now you can recognize the world around you to some degree, and you have memories! Hooray! Second is that your body is now strong enough to... kind of support itself. You don't think standing up to long is going to be a good idea but you can do it. Third is that you think you know magic. You can feel it on your fingertips, but trying to flex it at all feels somewhat draining. At the moment you're still not smart enough to really think it through, so you'll have to come across that later. The swirling colors coalesce into an oval and begin to shrink.
It wobbles before settling on the floor as a necklace of colors that releases a mild glow.
Now that it's done being all fancy, you have time to consider your options with your limited smarts.
[] Pick up the necklace.
-[] Play around with it a little to see what it does.
[] Try to go through the win-
*THONK*
A rectangular-ish object bursts through the door, frightening you immensely! You were thinking about busting it down, but it couldn't be that easy, right?
As the door shatters into many pieces due to the shifting weight of this polygonal being, you relearn the concept of tempting fate. Your legs begin pushing with as much force as they can, barely managing to lift you up, desperately carrying you to the wall.
Well, your day could be worse. Time to decide what to do.
Choose a plan.
[] Your legs don't work, but you're propped up against a wall; punch him out!
[] Try and take his sword.
[] Run for your life!
[] Write-in.
The Character Sheets section has been unlocked! Check it for knowledge on how this game's mechanics work.
The Atlas has been unlocked! Check it occasionally for information you have obtained.
The Status tab has been unlocked! Check the end of every update to see your character's condition. The more your Wisdom stat increases, the more information you'll get from it.
Physical condition: Nominal, though you're barely able to keep yourself standing.
Stamina: Mostly full.
Mana: Full.
Now here's where we come into the main aspects of gameplay; judging your own abilities against the situation and planning around it. I highly recommend that you at least check the 'Stat Scaling' section under Gameplay Explanations and then look at your own to understand your options.
Last hints. First, I've put in options that are quite obviously bad ideas if you've checked your character sheet. This fight is set to 'baby mode' difficulty compared to some of the stuff I've planned, but that's because I want to gauge your ability to check the information I give you; how well you do will change how difficult I make things. Of course this might incentivize you to do bad to set it lower, so I'll say that if you do well enough, I'll give you an in-quest gift; not a large one, but it'll be very handy. Second, this fight will be almost essential to your future growth in-story. It is possible to escape the fight, but this is not recommended.
Lastly, I'm not going to play with SV's built in voting mechanics since I still don't have a solid idea of how they work, but voting will last for roughly 24 hours before I collect the vote. If voting is slow, I might extend this.
So... At the very least, we're too weak to try fighting, probably not strong enough to try wresting the sword from our opponent, and probably not fast enough to try escaping. The only thing I can think of, looking at our stats versus our opponent's, is to turtle down and try to outlast them, but they have a weapon and we don't have anything but our own bodies to protect us, so despite our higher vitality that seems like a really bad idea. That said, if we take the sword, I doubt there's anything our enemy can actually do to hurt us, so against my better judgement, I'm going to say
Dude's a guy, he's called Polygon Man in the Atlas.
Assuming Grayed Out people look like they're low-stated, Polygon Man should still be based around F~ + whatever the stats of his knife is. From reading the stat scaling thing I don't think he can even hurt us.
Think we should just turtle up and get hit in our black parts, easy way to torpedo ourselves though. Don't know the exact numbers though but ~F strength vs 2A vitality has to be a no sell right?
[X] Turtle up, lean our body towards the swing to kill momentum, take sword when possible.
These could be famous last words, but taking the knife should be a roll while this could be a automatic success.
Think we should just turtle up and get hit in our black parts, easy way to torpedo ourselves though. Don't know the exact numbers though but ~F strength vs 2A vitality has to be a no sell right?
I will say this; 1D is the level of an average person, and 2A is a bit above the level of a world-class athlete. 2A vitality is definitely sword-resistant, but I wouldn't say it's immune to swords. Plus, Polygon Man is at least 1F, which means that he could be above it, though to what degree is questionable. Also, one more misconception to correct; your entire body is on 2A vitality, not just the colored parts; though some parts of the body are weaker than others just like in real life, such as your eyes or your neck. I suppose I should have made that clearer as well.
I appreciate the thought and effort put into this! Thank you very much for participating; I hope people see your vote and at least consider it before the timer runs out.
Think we should just turtle up and get hit in our black parts, easy way to torpedo ourselves though. Don't know the exact numbers though but ~F strength vs 2A vitality has to be a no sell right?
These could be famous last words, but taking the knife should be a roll while this could be a automatic success.
I will say this; 1D is the level of an average person, and 2A is a bit above the level of a world-class athlete. 2A vitality is definitely sword-resistant, but I wouldn't say it's immune to swords. Plus, Polygon Man is at least 1F, which means that he could be above it, though to what degree is questionable. Also, one more misconception to correct; your entire body is on 2A vitality, not just the colored parts; though some parts of the body are weaker than others just like in real life, such as your eyes or your neck. I suppose I should have made that clearer as well.
I still don't know if I'm right or not, but this has at least convinced me that my first instinct is less wrong than I thought it was. Changing my vote to
[X] Turtle up, lean our body towards the swing to kill momentum, take sword when possible.
Hmm, I thought that it would be too difficult with our meager stats to pull something like that off, but polygon man shouldn't be much better than us, and it's basically an extension of the standard vote anyway.
[X] Turtle up, lean our body towards the swing to kill momentum, take sword when possible.
I'm not sure if anyone is into this quest enough to care, but I made like, 9 separate pieces of 'art' for the next update and I'm not sure if they're good enough to pass so it's going to have to wait 'till tomorrow where I will temporarily regain my reasoning abilities in the morning such that I can look them over. Actually, this brings a question to the table.
If this quest were to switch from an Art Quest to a quest accentuated by art, would anyone care? Not only would the posts be overall higher-quality than what they are now since I'm much better at writing than drawing (and I wouldn't drag down my writing by having to match it with my art), but I could consistently get posts out a lot faster, so you wouldn't have to wait a day to see the results for every little thing we do. Only problem is I don't know how to remove the Art Quest tag, I'm fairly certain it's permanent, plus I already have personal reasons for wanting to make it an art-quest, so I'll have to put in art somehow.
Let's put it to a vote:
Let's not.
I'm going to make this quest primarily writing-based for various reasons; it seems like people like my premise more than my art, so I'm going to deliver on that premise rather than focusing so strongly on artistic expression.
Only problem is I don't know how to remove the Art Quest tag, I'm fairly certain it's permanent, plus I already have personal reasons for wanting to make it an art-quest, so I'll have to put in art somehow.
What are your thoughts on this, though? I personally think I bit off more than I could chew making an art quest with the miniscule amount of experience and talent I have in art, but I want to know if people are actually at all interested in the art or if I should just drop the pretenses and make a standard quest.
[X] Use art mostly to accentuate the writing instead of having the writing support the art (will reduce how much art there is in this art quest, somewhat counterproductive, but the overall quality and updating speed will shoot way up).
Not really, no. The expectations for the quest are still forming, and Art Quests run a gamut of how much art is inside.
I am not going to suggest a vote, since I don't know about the goals or the scope of the quest, and you should have a much better idea of its desired pacing. How long do you estimate it'll take us? How long will it take you to produce that many illustrations? Can you even do that with 9 pictures per update, and potentially several updates per encounter?
Plan ahead for the 1st arc (roughly what you expect to happen as we learn the ropes, and how many updates/RL time it takes for us to get there), experiment with the pacing, see if it is to your liking, and make adjustments if you feel they are necessary.
