Small Miracles (a xianxia villainess quest, reboot!)

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A gentle try at rewriting my previous xianxia quests.
How It Starts 1.1
Location
out there
"No creature is born inherently evil." - the Song of Mercy

There was a new game at the Store.

"Heavenly-Defying Master" as the name suggested was an immersive role-playing game with an oriental-style fantasy background. Not that rare a thing to see nowadays, considering the recent boom of cultivation novels and the whole wave of BL-dramas sharks biting into the young-adult oriented products and tearing the former king - isekai - to shreds. The only reason this particular game seemed to stand out so much was the fact that during the character creation process, there was literally not a single "good" option to choose from.
You either played on the side of the evil or not played the game at all.

"So we are the bad guys?" Astra chimed in, throwing herself onto one of your shoulders. For the last three years or so she was a perfectly passable table mate, a generally nice person to chat with and a terrible snoop to stick around. Which pretty much made her your obligatory best friend, obviously. "Nice!"

"What got you so excited, lightbulb? With the exams rolling by, there's no chance in hell we'll be able to play it."

Life was unfair like that. High school was a terrible low-budget romcom full of plot holes where you were content with the role of a decently unseen background character number 5. If the genre would suddenly change into horror, you'll either die first or stick till the end, only to add some high-energy drama to the main pair with a predictable betrayal.

Astra on the other hand was a female lead material kind of girl. Not only was she an embodiment of sunshine stuck into a girl's body for reasons untold, she was also a literal Little Mistress of an Ancient, Wealthy As Heck Family. A Clan Princess, no less! Even the reason you two went to the same school was cliché - the sheltered greenhouse flower had run away from home to experience the life of the commoners.

That's pretty much how the two of you met, really. She was a stupidly nice person not all there in her head and ready to get mugged for dear life, and you were passing by and bored enough to help her. Little you knew at the moment that this princess has a soul of a starved dog. You feed her once, and she would never let you get away.

So, after the incident, the superpowers of money did their dirty thing and Astra was begrudgingly placed into your class. And that's how the two of you were stuck together for almost three years now.

"Suuuure thing. But Kama-chan, can we at least make up our charas and get some cool names?" Oh, the fates were cruel. She had used her hidden God-level technic on you. The Peerless Eyes of Hopeful Longing! Too low, Little Star, far too low!

"We will not play till the exams are over." Where was no jumping off that burning bus now. You were onboard and had already fastened your seatbelt. The only rational thing left to do was to take the wheel in your hands and steer it away from the danger roads.
Was this how life will always play out for the two of you? With Kamelia Young slowly growing to be a professional caretaker and trusted, rational right-hand woman for her little princess? If so, maybe the life wasn't all that bad.

"Sounds fair. But now you have to promise to choose the same fraction as me!" She was a daughter of a noble birth. You give her a handful, and she shreds your whole hand to pieces. "This way we will stay together forever, even in the game!"

"What fractions are there anyway?"

Time to choose!

[ ] Rogue Cultivator
– those who don't follow the rules are trash yet those who leave behind their friends for the rules are worse than trash, as the saying goes.
Rogue Cultivators' faction as name suggests are mostly consisted of runaway disciples of various righteous sects. By deciding upon this option, the player would either become a first-generation Rogue with a cleverly made-up reason for their betrayal of the sect or the child of an already created rogue cultivator.
-[ ] First of her name. You are the one who run away.
-[ ] Runs in the family. Your parents did the deed.
Opens further [Rogue Cultivator] character creation. Race is [Human] by default. You will spawn in the [Human Realm].

[ ] Demonic Cultivator – peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Demonic Cultivators are notorious abominable counterparts to their righteous reflections. By utilizing the vices of a human being and engraving it into their Dao they challenge the heavens to their will. And bear the scars of heaven's wrath in turn. Balancing the thin line of a human being and an abominable ghost is a hard path to take. And yet those who succeed make the heaven tremble.
Opens further [Demonic Cultivator] character creation. Race is [Human] or [Abomination] by choice. You will spawn in the [Human Realm].

[ ] Demon Cultivator – it takes a village to rise a child, after all.
Residing in the boiling pot of blood of the Endless Abyss, these creatures find their own way of cultivation and their own way of life. Vastly different even among themselves, the demons claim four great continents and an innumerable amount of smaller isles as their domain. Hated by gods and monsters alike, demons spat at the heaven's will and take the fate into their own hands.
Opens further [Demon Cultivator] character creation. Race is [Demon] by default. You will spawn in the [Endless Abyss].
 
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So You Wanna Be a Cultivator?
By becoming a Rogue Cultivator, one would not instantly dump all their belief system and engraved arts and technics. You are still a base-line righteous cultivator, after all. Just the one currently on the run from a very angry sect out to get you. Which makes it easier for you to blend in with other righteous cultivators. You also don't have to make up any new ways to cultivate or fuse yourself with some nasty ghost or spirit to gain power. Great boon, right? On the other hand, having a whole Major Sect really mad at you is kind of a really shitty way to go.

A Demonic Cultivator on the other hand is like a black spot on a pristine white cloth of the world in the eyes of the heavens. For one reason or another, they are physically incapable of the normal, righteous way of cultivation. Which, over the years, made them crack up another paths to immortality. Being it by stealing others lifespan, fusing themselves with whole chunks of other creatures, undertaking diabolical rituals or other unsavory means.

A Demon is not a human being, no matter how humanly they look. They possess high cognitive abilities so even the proudest of righteous cultivators cannot call them just demonic creatures, yet the unanimous concession among the Human Realm is - they are simply not-humans. And as an entirely different species, they have far too many differences to ever be trusted. Trapped in the realm of the Endless Abyss, over the centuries passed, demons had created their own way of cultivation and their own way of life.

Attributes
This quest will have four basic attributes.

Charisma
(CHA) – "how the world sees you". It has very little to do with being pretty and a lot with being smart about using social intricacies to your advantage.
Intelligence (INT) – "how good you are with information". Intelligence correlates best not with being smart, but with being able to devour and comprehend large amounts of information in the shortest possible time.
Power (POW) – "how easy you are to kill". It's your battle prowess and general fortitude. For demons, it also correlates to their ability to keep their physical form together and evolve. Note, that if your Power is much lower than your Spirit, heavy sanctions to your cultivation will be bestowed due to your body being unable to keep the spirit inside and more or less falling apart.
Spirit (SP) – "but will the death really stick?" The power of your soul. All you know about Spirit is that it is the "soul source" inside of you that makes it possible for you to evolve.

you can vote if you want to.
 
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Oh my gosh you're back! I've missed your writing.

Let's try something different from last time..

[X] Rogue Cultivator
-[X] First of her name.
 
[X] Rogue Cultivator – those who don't follow the rules are trash yet those who leave behind their friends for the rules are worse than trash, as the saying goes.
Rogue Cultivators' faction as name suggests are mostly consisted of runaway disciples of various righteous sects. By deciding upon this option, the player would either become a first-generation Rogue with a cleverly made-up reason for their betrayal of the sect or the child of an already created rogue cultivator.
-[x] First of her name. You are the one who run away.
 
[X] Rogue Cultivator – those who don't follow the rules are trash yet those who leave behind their friends for the rules are worse than trash, as the saying goes.
Rogue Cultivators' faction as name suggests are mostly consisted of runaway disciples of various righteous sects. By deciding upon this option, the player would either become a first-generation Rogue with a cleverly made-up reason for their betrayal of the sect or the child of an already created rogue cultivator.
-[X] First of her name. You are the one who run away.
 
added some details about fractions in the info dump
tldr - rogues are the humans with an agenda, demonic dudes are hated by the heavens and demons are not humans in any way lol
 
[X] Demonic Cultivator – peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Demonic Cultivators are notorious abominable counterparts to their righteous reflections. By utilizing the vices of a human being and engraving it into their Dao they challenge the heavens to their will. And bear the scars of heaven's wrath in turn. Balancing the thin line of a human being and an abominable ghost is a hard path to take. And yet those who succeed make the heaven tremble.
 
Hm, seems the votes are mostly tied with Demonic Dudes only lagging behind with a single vote. Nice!

Think I'll lock the votes in another three to five hours, so we won't get stuck in the chara gen forever and get to the juicy parts sooner rather than later.
 
Locking the votes now
Demon Girls have won.

Not to worry, though, we aren't playing the exact same story yet again. Of that you can be sure.
Scheduled vote count started by moon_bear on Jun 25, 2022 at 12:53 PM, finished with 12 posts and 9 votes.

  • [X] Demon Cultivator – it takes a village to rise a child, after all.
    [X] Rogue Cultivator – those who don't follow the rules are trash yet those who leave behind their friends for the rules are worse than trash, as the saying goes.
    -[x] First of her name. You are the one who run away.
    [X] Demonic Cultivator – peace is a lie, there is only passion.
    [X] Rogue Cultivator
    -[X] First of her name.
    [X] Demon Cultivator
 
How It Starts 1.2
The Demons Cultivator? Now that'll be a picture for the ages. The thing is, demons simply didn't cultivate the same they humans, even the most botched-up of them, did. When a human being was made to repel its own nature and break the shackles of their mortal body to reach ascension and overcome heavenly tribulation, the demons did pretty much the exact opposite.

They were creatures made by the acid fumes of the Abyss, more an idea suddenly turned self-aware than a body given a mind of its own. To climb the levels of the realm, they had to become more and more "real" and slowly mold together the intricate shape of their form. Those who fail to do so swiftly enough would be simply devoured by the ever-starving ether of the realm itself.
Of course, different types of demons used rather varied ways to keep themselves and their clansmen alive.

What kind of demon are you?

[ ] Desert Tribes.
A somewhat backwater community ruled by a unanimously chosen Great Mother of a current generation. These demons are known to be highly communal creatures, most of the time strictly sticking together, and somewhat infamous even by the southerns standards for their spousal stealing tendencies and cannibalistic approach to their enemies.
Being an insectoid creatures in their true form, these demons hide their young and elderly in the long, intricate tunnels running for miles under the desert's soil, becoming the only tribe truly thriving in the harsh desert biomes of the south.
-[ ] Red Sand Centipedes. As the largest and sturdiest demons of their line, this tribe takes the majority of menial labor of the community. They are also the once solely responsible for looking up new collectables for the Mother's chambers.
-[ ] Black Soil Spiders. The smallest and arguably the weakest of their kind, this brunch of the family prefer staying in the safety of the underground and dealing with the spiritual affairs of their tribesmen.
-[ ] Wandering Dune Scarabs. Begrudging aristocracy of the hidden city. These demons take upon themselves all the dealing with the other population of the continent and voluntarily leave the graceful hold of their family behind for the betterment of the community.

[ ] Golden Thread Caravans. A nomadic clan of reptilian demons made up of several large caravans wandering from one rare city to another and a handful of carefully hidden green cradles in the deeper deserts. Each caravan mostly consists of ten to twenty nuclear families sticking together for the better chance of survival and is ruled with an almost tyrannical authority by the Sage of the Path.
While some demons prefer staying back at the few green cradles owned by the clan, most find such an existence demeaning and pick up the life of a wandering merchant with relish.

[ ] The Winter Court. An extremely hierarchic caste-based society spread vastly among the northern regions. Ruled by the Emperor or Empress of the current generation, the Winter Court consists of the Royal Family, the council of the five Most Ancient Noble Clans taking care of their ancestral holdings and a handful of New Blood stuck ups granted a personal possession of some land.
-[ ] True North. An ancestral holding of the Bai Clan. Situated at the furthest borders of the continent, it covers the Bared Teeth Mountain Chain and shield the rich boreal forests of its closest neighbor from the barbaric tribes of the frozen seas and the horrors lurking in the depths of the endless ocean. The Bai demons in their true form resemble great felines with six limbs and several wings. As a matter of honor, wings take a special part in their culture and oftentimes the ripping of a pair serves as a punishment worse than death.

[ ] Frozen Sea Tribes. A mismatched community abhorrent of the imperialistic ways of the Winter Court and taken residence on the lonely isles floating through the frozen seas. Most of the tribes consist of the runaway servants and slaves of the empire that over the years had made up their own little havens. They reach a symbiotic relationship with great leviathans of the depths and grew artificial isles on their backs, safely drifting through the harshest of snowstorms.
-[ ] Depth Serpents. Demons endemic to the True North that were slowly forced to either bend the knee to the Empire and serve gracefully or do just that in shackles. Most of them died in the series of genocidal battles that followed the order, yet some succeeded in reaching one of the isles just in time for it to dive into the merciful embrace of the Mother of Oceans.
-[ ] Arctic Foxes. A sisterhood of ethereally beautiful females with a genetic trait that allowed them to produce only other snow foxes as daughters and a pure-blooded scion of the father's line as sons. Which pretty much made them perfect concubines in the eyes of the nobility. In the Empire's clutches, they are raised to be fangless petite figurines that cost their weight worth in bloodstones. Yet in the wilderness of the frozen seas they are the force to be reckoned with.

[ ] The Labyrinth of Knowledge. One of the great treasures of the Cerulean Empire, this holding is a city stuck completely in the void between the realms, with only a tiny crack in the wall connecting it to either of the realms. On the bright side, this means that no one can harm those, trapped inside. On the not so bright side, before the demons responsible for the mishap found the way to at least create some kind of connection to tether the Labyrinth back to the Abyss, several generations had passed, and the void had taken its toll on their offsprings.
The Void Demons are elusive and cryptic with their speeches most of the time, and nigh heretical at worst. It seems they just don't see the world as normal demons do. At least, with them being all scholars and researchers, they are far too busy bickering among themselves to create trouble for the empire.



"Why are those options all so mean? I thought we'll be a cute demon princess, not some… sand bug or a war dog! And weren't we supposed to play an easter fantasy? There the heck did all the other stuff came from?!" Astra cried out full of righteous indignation. She made a grubby gesture your way before swiftly taking away the phone and scrolling through the list. "Oh, so they do have a special paid content!"

Not surprisingly, yet again. It was a mobile game, after all. Even during the open beta, the devs would surely do their best to milk the players with cute yet useless costumes and titles.

"Here, with this, no matter what kind of trash demons we'll end up being, it won't be that bad in the end."

Time for the traits! By the Grace of Astra being a nice person you have FIVE (5) points to spend.

[ ] Heaven-Defying Luck (3)
- maybe it's your Platinum Account talking, or maybe you were some kind of saint in your previous life, but the heavens seem to smile upon your earthly struggles. [After every CritFailure roll a d10 for a heaven's blessing with 6 and upper being a successful save.]

[ ] Booksmart (2) - while you lot were playing games, I was reading books! [Adds a natural 1,2 modifier for INT and INT-related skills.]

[ ] Rare Flower (2) - some demons just seem to win at the genetic lottery. And even among them, you are a rare treasure by your family's standards. [Adds a natural 1,2 modifier to CHA and CHA-related skills.]

[ ] Sturdy (2) - you are stronger than you look. Sometimes it makes for a fun anecdote, and sometimes for a battle-changing move. [Adds a natural 1,2 modifier to POW and POW-related skills.]

[ ] Spiritual (2) - the flow of Qi in a creature's body, the pulse of ether through the Abyss's heart. Can you here the singing? [Adds a natural 1,2 modifier to SP and SP-related skills.]

[ ] Energetic (1) - what a fussy child you were, always running around and bringing trouble. Well, better use that endless energy in some productive ways. [+1 Action Point per a level of cultivation.]

[ ] Loyal Friend (1) - every princess needs an animal companion, after all. Even the warrior ones! [Grants a Pet at the start of the Game. Pet's properties may wildly vary.]

"Are you done yet? I've already made mine all nice and ready!" You smiled at girl's whining. She was so excited about a mere game, it made your heart tremble a little and chest fill with warmth.

"Sure."

You clicked the ready button.

The world turned black.



"We are going to be together forever, right?"
"Forever sounds like way too much hassle. Well, guess I'll humor you for now."
 
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[X] The Labyrinth of Knowledge

[X] Heaven-Defying Luck (3) - maybe it's your Platinum Account talking, or maybe you were some kind of saint in your previous life, but the heavens seem to smile upon your earthly struggles. [After every CritFailure roll a d10 for a heaven's blessing with 6 and upper being a successful save.]

[X] Energetic (1) - what a fussy child you were, always running around and bringing trouble. Well, better use that endless energy in some productive ways. [+1 Action Point per a level of cultivation.]

[X] Loyal Friend (1) - every princess needs an animal companion, after all. Even the warrior ones! [Grants a Pet at the start of the Game. Pet's properties may wildly vary.]

Classics are classics, by that I mean the inbetween choice from a powerful faction with a princess wandering the realm with a build that screams optimum potential.
 
[X] Heaven-Defying Luck (3)
[X] Spiritual (2)

[X] Frozen Sea Tribes
-[X] Depth Serpents

[X] The Labyrinth of Knowledge

[X] Desert Tribes
-[X] Black Soil Spiders.



They're all too cool D:
 
-[x] Arctic Foxes. A sisterhood of ethereally beautiful females with a genetic trait that allowed them to produce only other snow foxes as daughters and a pure-blooded scion of the father's line as sons. Which pretty much made them perfect concubines in the eyes of the nobility. In the Empire's clutches, they are raised to be fangless petite figurines that cost their weight worth in bloodstones. Yet in the wilderness of the frozen seas they are the force to be reckoned with.
 
[X] Heaven-Defying Luck (3)
[X] Spiritual (2)
[X] The Labyrinth of Knowledge

Hah! I made it!
 
As most people prefer the Labyrinth, I should totally warn you that these demons would not be oriental in the slightest, as I tried to pull through different kinds of cultures and origins for different area mobs here.
Which pretty much made the majority of north and some eastern regions your typical eastern fantasy bad boys. This will still be a cultivation story no matter the region you'll choose, but the flavor to it will drastically change from one species of demons to another.

Have fun!~
 
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