Want to be a hero on an epic quest of adventure to save a kingdom beyond the most distant shores? Then join me and the Jester as we guide you.
The Jesting Hero: A Homage to the Souls Games [On Hiatus Pending Reboot]
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Chapter 1, The Home At the End of the World and the Dregs.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A jester is called from their home at the edge of the world. The Kingdom of Findel is cursed and it is dying. Fate wishes for it to die unjustly. There is no hope. There is no succor. There is only sadness and madness.
How will you save it?
The sun rose and lit upon a ring of stones that sat atop a hill growing thick with colorful trees. Their five pointed leaves rustled in the whispering wind. This hill was a lonely hill and it sat on a plain of golden grass at the edge of the world, where the sky fell after the strong breeze.
The wind danced in the leaves and the grass and played and tumbled. You sat atop the tallest stone, taller than the trees as it thrust from the center of the ring, and slept peacefully. The tinkle of the twelve bells hanging from your red and white hat woke you with a start! "Silly wind, so playful today are you?" You asked it as it touched them softly.
Tinkle tinkle.
Stretching your long arms you waved them and grasped at the sun, bright and yellow like a storybook far above. You stood on long legs far longer than a man or woman's and the bells sown to your poofy red and yellow and blue striped pantaloons gave a jingle jingle.
Your white mask grinned a jolly grin.
You hopped off the rock and alighted daintily on the grass blades en pointe, your weight bending the stalks not at all as you span on one foot with a hand to your brow. All about were the trees and their slowly falling leaves dance and spin.
But why did the wind wake you up, the silly dear?
You tilt your head with a jingle and hold a hand to your very pointy ear and listen for a sign.
Come away Jester, come away to the east with a cheer.
You blink and a joke , "Eh really Goddess? I'm rather happy here dontcha know? Why must I go save the kings and queens and courts who leer?"
You have a spark that need be shared to save lives.
Come first by leaping, then by walking, then by unseen bier.
You should not be saddened, for I am watchful and you haven been chosen.
You laugh with the sound of wind chimes and the wind plays around you in a flutter.
"A kingdom to save is just the way to start the Story. Will you push me in?"
You ask the wind and it tickles your nose.
You walk out of the trees with a chuckle slouched and jolly with a song in your heart and come to the edge where green roots reach with tiny swinging hands.
"Here goes!"
***
You leap and you fall. Down and down and down with the wind your bosom companion and clouds never coming closer. Who knew the cliff at the End would be so tall?
You certainly didn't remember after so long away from the real world. Days flash before your eyes as your body plummets gracefully through the air and turn into weeks and then you hit into the clouds. They are soft and cushy and you pass through them, swimming and fluttering off the droplets as you whirled.
In a moment you have punched through them and alight on soft dust and dirt that clings to your red shoes. It is dark all around you and the eyes of men would see nothing but for you it is like a summer day. There is nothing to see but the dusty path and the cobwebs hanging off nothing like ooze.
This is a secret way, a Path through nothing and the cobwebs left over from the world's creation left to do as they will. Your long legs carry you down the path and you bat at the cobwebs with cat like distaste. When you pass they return to their state like ghosts and no trace is left of your passage in the chill.
Days of walking seem to pass in no time at all and you whistle jolly show tunes from people you fondly remember from so long ago. You walk for so long through this twisting space and around the labyrinthine turns that infest the place that a being from the many races would surely wear their legs to stubs and die. But you only begin to feel tired as you walk for you have a very very long way still to go.
It feels like years down in the dark as a family of eternities trot past you and all thoughts but to simply walk are driven from your head as you seek your destination. But that is fine because your destination cannot be reached by the common means used in this place and instead must find you. You walk and walk and walk and walk with a quiet jingle jingle of bells until you collapse with sweat soaking your brow and clothing and sticking the dust to you till you look like you walked out of a cremation.
You sleep and in the paths outside the world you dream and a tall and cloaked being with a long and crooked ferryman's paddle comes to collect your body. When you awaken, it is to the feel of fabric on your face and a firm panel at your back. A bier for yourself even if you can feel the craftsmanship is shoddy.
You are rocking and relax as you count the fibers in the gray roughspun cloth. The swish of water is a kiss to your ears as the shushing of the ferryman's paddle pushes you onward to your destination. This hidden voyage is passed in stillness and you listen to the shushing of the water's froth.
This is the shortest of your trips, only a day and a night by your sense of the passing light and cold touch overhead. Soon the ferryman's rowing stops and the boat thumps into an obstacle and then strong hands grab the bier and tip you out. Down into a long and slick chute which reeks of blood and bile and cold steel till you reach a most foul and distasteful pile of the dead.
Kingdom of Findel, The Dregs
All about you rises sheer cliffs of manmade stone and metal and windows like empty eye sockets and gaping doors. A pile of rotting goo and rotten wood and glowing slime is your place of rest. Levering yourself up is easy and you shake out your cloak and take in the new outdoors.
The sky is a sickly green and yellow choked by rainbow smog. Below the pile lies a sump, a green pool of what was once water. Morbid shapes disturb the still surface of the evil bog.
Far across the cursed lake is a waterfall descending from a broken pipe easily large enough to swallow five of you standing together with arms spread. Swirling your cloak about yourself you parade down the pile and reach the shore. There you lift a leg and leap ahead.
The corpse you land on jerks with life, not a corpse at all, and you skip over its thrashing back on to the next. All around you a scream echoes off the stone and assaults your sensitive ears. The bells strewn about you as you dance and flexed.
Your skipping and frolicking parades over the grotesque barely living things as they surge to their feet. Their mouths were normal once you think, but now they are sucking tubes like a lamprey to drink more of the polluted waters. You feel nothing in their bodies and conclude that they are empty and incomplete.
Empty of hope, despair, hate and love. All that is left is the purpose of the curse hanging about this place to spread misery. These are the Hopeless, left at the very bottom of the kingdom to be forgotten by those above.
Dozens upon dozens surge to their feet and charge for you with swinging arms and thrashing feet. Their twisted teeth gnash for your flesh and their cries are answered by dozens more from the doors and windows from which creatures throw themselves. They scream and thrash and bleat.
But you are a shadow and a flicker flitting over them. Balancing on one lolling head you push and leap up into the skies. One turn and your jump carries you far higher than should be possible. One more turn and then you pull your hands from your cloak with fingers full of razor tipped knives.
They leave your hands like rain and thud deeply into heads and hearts, two for each beast. With gimlet mocking eye you examine the evil laid out below you as you hang in the air like a leaf. They keep moving and reaching for you, their last tenuous grasp on life held the tightest, never released.
You frown and glinting wires tighten around your bone white finger. Your cloak envelops you like a red and yellow cyclone and your blades rend the creatures to bits in a whirl of dismemberment. You alight on a piece of driftwood and the pieces rain around you in a patter of goo and truly dead flesh that will not linger.
Thirty of them, dead in a blink. A tug and your knives disappear into your cloak to sit at your back and hidden on your chest. This sump feels just a little happier for just a moment, lost with clink.
Unnatural despair settles again on your shoulders and is shrugged off without penetrating your cheer as you hear a clank behind you. There beneath the waterfall is another much larger doorway, an arch, and through the waters walks a squad of armored beings. Their armor is smashed and nailed shut around them and the rust spells out litanies of false hope as their boar spears level to run you through.
These are the City's Men, taken by its awful purpose and bent to the curse. The ten creatures give a whistling shriek like air across a blade and charge across the lake at you. With a dash and a wink you appear before them in a blur of prismatic colors and then you are amongst them. The first thrusts forward and you bend in a crescent around it and leap into a graceful spin and a jingle of bells spelling out a praising verse.
A deceptively powerful spin as your blurring palm clamps onto the prongs of the boar spear and yanks it clean out of the monster's grasp. You are not slowed and your spin carries it up and over and down into the steel of the monster's head. The creatures begins to scramble at it and then your foot slams into a prong and jolts its head clean off its shoulders in a broken metallic rasp.
Riding the corpse down you leap over and off the X two thrusting spears make below you. The creature takes a spiked heel to the back of the helm and its head shatters like an overripe melon. Running down its falling back and leaving oozing holes from spiked soles you turn into a whirling laughing dervish of legs as sharp as spears to knock them askew.
Four fall to your snapping fangs and then you freeze, balanced on one finger with a crescent bent back and legs stabbed into the chest of two different creatures. Yanking out of your split you spin and leap above the five spears stabbing for your life. They thud into the corpse of their fellow below you and your hands are free to work their whiles.
Large curving meat knives flash as you decapitate the rest in a flash of steel on steel. With a flourish you flip and land in the waves in front of the waterfall, facing the chute you descended from and the pile of rot that was your entrance. You give a flagrant gaudy bow and to the invisible crowd, kneel.
Then you exit and jump up into the waters with a flutter of colorful cloth. Your feet dance atop the waves and you fling yourself upward into the pipe. Its metal walls surround you and you race against the flow and the feeling of the congealing air thickening into an evil broth.
You pay it no head and the light ahead is reached quickly, and with a final step you are free and falling through the air into a great pit. Below are spires and spines and broken vertebrae buildings amid a swamp of pollution, shadowed by a twisted mountain consuming the horizon. You are falling from one of the lowest spires as the entire mess of pipes and spires tilts upward towards the mountainous City leering above the pit.
A city the size of a mountain, with slopes and valleys and far above the smog a glowing peak. And as you fall the air traces patterns of despair across your cheeks and you can smell the looming presence of the great Demon of Cities the inhabitants gave themselves to in folly. In every shadow and piercing ray of light and brutalist grey stone and keening shriek.
This is the Kingdom of Findel, extending beyond even where your eyes may see.
Where do you guide your fall? Where do you look for life amongst this wreckage?
[] Upslope. Here you smell and feel a subtle tinge of fear.
[] Into the Eastern Dregs. Here you can hear the clang of anger.
[] Into the Western Dregs. Here you can see a distant glimmer of loneliness.
How will you save it?
The sun rose and lit upon a ring of stones that sat atop a hill growing thick with colorful trees. Their five pointed leaves rustled in the whispering wind. This hill was a lonely hill and it sat on a plain of golden grass at the edge of the world, where the sky fell after the strong breeze.
The wind danced in the leaves and the grass and played and tumbled. You sat atop the tallest stone, taller than the trees as it thrust from the center of the ring, and slept peacefully. The tinkle of the twelve bells hanging from your red and white hat woke you with a start! "Silly wind, so playful today are you?" You asked it as it touched them softly.
Tinkle tinkle.
Stretching your long arms you waved them and grasped at the sun, bright and yellow like a storybook far above. You stood on long legs far longer than a man or woman's and the bells sown to your poofy red and yellow and blue striped pantaloons gave a jingle jingle.
Your white mask grinned a jolly grin.
You hopped off the rock and alighted daintily on the grass blades en pointe, your weight bending the stalks not at all as you span on one foot with a hand to your brow. All about were the trees and their slowly falling leaves dance and spin.
But why did the wind wake you up, the silly dear?
You tilt your head with a jingle and hold a hand to your very pointy ear and listen for a sign.
Come away Jester, come away to the east with a cheer.
You blink and a joke , "Eh really Goddess? I'm rather happy here dontcha know? Why must I go save the kings and queens and courts who leer?"
You have a spark that need be shared to save lives.
Come first by leaping, then by walking, then by unseen bier.
You should not be saddened, for I am watchful and you haven been chosen.
You laugh with the sound of wind chimes and the wind plays around you in a flutter.
"A kingdom to save is just the way to start the Story. Will you push me in?"
You ask the wind and it tickles your nose.
You walk out of the trees with a chuckle slouched and jolly with a song in your heart and come to the edge where green roots reach with tiny swinging hands.
"Here goes!"
***
You leap and you fall. Down and down and down with the wind your bosom companion and clouds never coming closer. Who knew the cliff at the End would be so tall?
You certainly didn't remember after so long away from the real world. Days flash before your eyes as your body plummets gracefully through the air and turn into weeks and then you hit into the clouds. They are soft and cushy and you pass through them, swimming and fluttering off the droplets as you whirled.
In a moment you have punched through them and alight on soft dust and dirt that clings to your red shoes. It is dark all around you and the eyes of men would see nothing but for you it is like a summer day. There is nothing to see but the dusty path and the cobwebs hanging off nothing like ooze.
This is a secret way, a Path through nothing and the cobwebs left over from the world's creation left to do as they will. Your long legs carry you down the path and you bat at the cobwebs with cat like distaste. When you pass they return to their state like ghosts and no trace is left of your passage in the chill.
Days of walking seem to pass in no time at all and you whistle jolly show tunes from people you fondly remember from so long ago. You walk for so long through this twisting space and around the labyrinthine turns that infest the place that a being from the many races would surely wear their legs to stubs and die. But you only begin to feel tired as you walk for you have a very very long way still to go.
It feels like years down in the dark as a family of eternities trot past you and all thoughts but to simply walk are driven from your head as you seek your destination. But that is fine because your destination cannot be reached by the common means used in this place and instead must find you. You walk and walk and walk and walk with a quiet jingle jingle of bells until you collapse with sweat soaking your brow and clothing and sticking the dust to you till you look like you walked out of a cremation.
You sleep and in the paths outside the world you dream and a tall and cloaked being with a long and crooked ferryman's paddle comes to collect your body. When you awaken, it is to the feel of fabric on your face and a firm panel at your back. A bier for yourself even if you can feel the craftsmanship is shoddy.
You are rocking and relax as you count the fibers in the gray roughspun cloth. The swish of water is a kiss to your ears as the shushing of the ferryman's paddle pushes you onward to your destination. This hidden voyage is passed in stillness and you listen to the shushing of the water's froth.
This is the shortest of your trips, only a day and a night by your sense of the passing light and cold touch overhead. Soon the ferryman's rowing stops and the boat thumps into an obstacle and then strong hands grab the bier and tip you out. Down into a long and slick chute which reeks of blood and bile and cold steel till you reach a most foul and distasteful pile of the dead.
Kingdom of Findel, The Dregs
All about you rises sheer cliffs of manmade stone and metal and windows like empty eye sockets and gaping doors. A pile of rotting goo and rotten wood and glowing slime is your place of rest. Levering yourself up is easy and you shake out your cloak and take in the new outdoors.
The sky is a sickly green and yellow choked by rainbow smog. Below the pile lies a sump, a green pool of what was once water. Morbid shapes disturb the still surface of the evil bog.
Far across the cursed lake is a waterfall descending from a broken pipe easily large enough to swallow five of you standing together with arms spread. Swirling your cloak about yourself you parade down the pile and reach the shore. There you lift a leg and leap ahead.
The corpse you land on jerks with life, not a corpse at all, and you skip over its thrashing back on to the next. All around you a scream echoes off the stone and assaults your sensitive ears. The bells strewn about you as you dance and flexed.
Your skipping and frolicking parades over the grotesque barely living things as they surge to their feet. Their mouths were normal once you think, but now they are sucking tubes like a lamprey to drink more of the polluted waters. You feel nothing in their bodies and conclude that they are empty and incomplete.
Empty of hope, despair, hate and love. All that is left is the purpose of the curse hanging about this place to spread misery. These are the Hopeless, left at the very bottom of the kingdom to be forgotten by those above.
Dozens upon dozens surge to their feet and charge for you with swinging arms and thrashing feet. Their twisted teeth gnash for your flesh and their cries are answered by dozens more from the doors and windows from which creatures throw themselves. They scream and thrash and bleat.
But you are a shadow and a flicker flitting over them. Balancing on one lolling head you push and leap up into the skies. One turn and your jump carries you far higher than should be possible. One more turn and then you pull your hands from your cloak with fingers full of razor tipped knives.
They leave your hands like rain and thud deeply into heads and hearts, two for each beast. With gimlet mocking eye you examine the evil laid out below you as you hang in the air like a leaf. They keep moving and reaching for you, their last tenuous grasp on life held the tightest, never released.
You frown and glinting wires tighten around your bone white finger. Your cloak envelops you like a red and yellow cyclone and your blades rend the creatures to bits in a whirl of dismemberment. You alight on a piece of driftwood and the pieces rain around you in a patter of goo and truly dead flesh that will not linger.
Thirty of them, dead in a blink. A tug and your knives disappear into your cloak to sit at your back and hidden on your chest. This sump feels just a little happier for just a moment, lost with clink.
Unnatural despair settles again on your shoulders and is shrugged off without penetrating your cheer as you hear a clank behind you. There beneath the waterfall is another much larger doorway, an arch, and through the waters walks a squad of armored beings. Their armor is smashed and nailed shut around them and the rust spells out litanies of false hope as their boar spears level to run you through.
These are the City's Men, taken by its awful purpose and bent to the curse. The ten creatures give a whistling shriek like air across a blade and charge across the lake at you. With a dash and a wink you appear before them in a blur of prismatic colors and then you are amongst them. The first thrusts forward and you bend in a crescent around it and leap into a graceful spin and a jingle of bells spelling out a praising verse.
A deceptively powerful spin as your blurring palm clamps onto the prongs of the boar spear and yanks it clean out of the monster's grasp. You are not slowed and your spin carries it up and over and down into the steel of the monster's head. The creatures begins to scramble at it and then your foot slams into a prong and jolts its head clean off its shoulders in a broken metallic rasp.
Riding the corpse down you leap over and off the X two thrusting spears make below you. The creature takes a spiked heel to the back of the helm and its head shatters like an overripe melon. Running down its falling back and leaving oozing holes from spiked soles you turn into a whirling laughing dervish of legs as sharp as spears to knock them askew.
Four fall to your snapping fangs and then you freeze, balanced on one finger with a crescent bent back and legs stabbed into the chest of two different creatures. Yanking out of your split you spin and leap above the five spears stabbing for your life. They thud into the corpse of their fellow below you and your hands are free to work their whiles.
Large curving meat knives flash as you decapitate the rest in a flash of steel on steel. With a flourish you flip and land in the waves in front of the waterfall, facing the chute you descended from and the pile of rot that was your entrance. You give a flagrant gaudy bow and to the invisible crowd, kneel.
Then you exit and jump up into the waters with a flutter of colorful cloth. Your feet dance atop the waves and you fling yourself upward into the pipe. Its metal walls surround you and you race against the flow and the feeling of the congealing air thickening into an evil broth.
You pay it no head and the light ahead is reached quickly, and with a final step you are free and falling through the air into a great pit. Below are spires and spines and broken vertebrae buildings amid a swamp of pollution, shadowed by a twisted mountain consuming the horizon. You are falling from one of the lowest spires as the entire mess of pipes and spires tilts upward towards the mountainous City leering above the pit.
A city the size of a mountain, with slopes and valleys and far above the smog a glowing peak. And as you fall the air traces patterns of despair across your cheeks and you can smell the looming presence of the great Demon of Cities the inhabitants gave themselves to in folly. In every shadow and piercing ray of light and brutalist grey stone and keening shriek.
This is the Kingdom of Findel, extending beyond even where your eyes may see.
Where do you guide your fall? Where do you look for life amongst this wreckage?
[] Upslope. Here you smell and feel a subtle tinge of fear.
[] Into the Eastern Dregs. Here you can hear the clang of anger.
[] Into the Western Dregs. Here you can see a distant glimmer of loneliness.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Picture belongs to: Evgeniya Chertova
Welcome dear visitors to "The Jesting Hero", a quest about heroism in the face of doom and inevitable fate. This is my homage to the Souls games and everything made by From Software in the last decade. Their worlds have become ever more breathtaking to see and here I hope to share with you that feeling of wonder I had as we save a kingdom from its doom.
For the sake of presenting this as a game instead of an interactive story I will be providing some arbitration mechanics.
The Jester is a supernatural entity of nearly boundless stamina, skill and ingenious death dealing devices but they are not free to act as they will. Fate has decreed that the Kingdom of Findel will be cursed and will die from that curse. It will stand in your way at times to prevent you from changing what has been decreed.
This will be represented by a dice roll that I will call for at times. Roll the d6, and read it to determine what Fate's response is. 1-2 means something bad happens as Fate bears down on you, 3-4 means it was able to throw in a complication even as you succeed, 5-6 means it was tricked and you have gotten off scot free.
For every bad thing that happens you get a Token of Fate. You can hold a total of three Tokens at the start of the game, though that capacity may increase as you work to resolve the curse and your powers are more free to act. You can spend a Token to enhance a single vote or alter a situation to your benefit. If an update contains multiple vote categories the Token can only apply to one of them. I will mark what you can spend Tokens on.
Additionally for every complication that happens Fate gets closer and closer to you. After five complications Fate can manifest a Spectre of Fate, a powerful boss monster that will hunt you down until you deal with it. Of course being a cheating Jester you do not have to fight it head on. When you win you gain three (3) Tokens of Fate as Fate reels from the blow.
Things I will roll for include but are not limited to: Important combats, important conversations, and discoveries which leave things at a tipping point like a major clue to resolve the curse.
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Dramatis Personae
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Dramatis Personae: For your companions.
Dany, The Child/The Former Rat: A small child the Jester met at the Three Bells Church in the Gateway to the Upper Dregs, the top of their brown hair only barely comes up to the Jester's knee and they are thus adorable in the Jester's mind. The rat tail, red eyes and scruffiness only adds to this. They're the child of Mira and while lonely they have hope now finally after an eternity of misery and no longer need fear their Parent and may perhaps not be so lonely anymore with both of you in the City.
Mira, The Parent/The Former Serpent: A tall person of indeterminate gender the Jester met them after they exploded the door of the church for their introduction with a Massive Wheel symbol of their faith in the Wheel of Ye. Mira is for a human almost disturbingly tall but only comes up to the Jester's chest and their white braid is nearly unto a weapon itself with its heft and thickness. For all they use a massive weapon grace follows them and they hold love for their child paramount, a shining beacon even in their insanity and while what they did in the past pains them beyond any sane measure they have hope for a better future thanks to you.
Dany, The Child/The Former Rat: A small child the Jester met at the Three Bells Church in the Gateway to the Upper Dregs, the top of their brown hair only barely comes up to the Jester's knee and they are thus adorable in the Jester's mind. The rat tail, red eyes and scruffiness only adds to this. They're the child of Mira and while lonely they have hope now finally after an eternity of misery and no longer need fear their Parent and may perhaps not be so lonely anymore with both of you in the City.
Mira, The Parent/The Former Serpent: A tall person of indeterminate gender the Jester met them after they exploded the door of the church for their introduction with a Massive Wheel symbol of their faith in the Wheel of Ye. Mira is for a human almost disturbingly tall but only comes up to the Jester's chest and their white braid is nearly unto a weapon itself with its heft and thickness. For all they use a massive weapon grace follows them and they hold love for their child paramount, a shining beacon even in their insanity and while what they did in the past pains them beyond any sane measure they have hope for a better future thanks to you.
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1337Procrast
Fire Emblem Enjoyer
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Into the Western Dregs. Here you can see a distant glimmer of loneliness.
Sounds like someone could use some joy.
Sounds like someone could use some joy.
[X] Into the Western Dregs. Here you can see a distant glimmer of loneliness.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
[X] Upslope. Here you smell and feel a subtle tinge of fear.
Don't be afraid...
Don't be afraid...
[X] Upslope. Here you smell and feel a subtle tinge of fear.
HircumPrinceps
Goat Lord
- Location
- Seattle
[X] Upslope. Here you smell and feel a subtle tinge of fear.
Pandemonious Ivy
Panties, Revolution. Big Drawers. Parachute.
1st thought: We're obviously the ultimate dex build
2nd: What holds the Moonlight Greatsword
3rd: is the Demon the City, or sized like a City, or worse?
oh boy oh gosh grandpa you have all my hype
Maybe I'm biased bc I grew up alongside the HP books, but I've always liked the idea that laughter in the face of fear is particularly potent. So I'm thinking whatever is here could use a hero the most.
Let's look at the rest, tho.
I see this as a path heading towards the Foe, whatever it may be. So it might not be where we're most wanted, maybe where we're most needed at the same time.
But if this is the path laid out for us, is it not our duty to flip Fate the bird as much as possible?
Oooooh boy, this one is another heart tugger. It feels like the flip side of fear, maybe the inverse of anger, but definitely isnt as immediately pressing as the other two sound.
Dexter here shouldn't really slow down, even for matters of the heart.
[X] Upslope. Here you smell and feel a subtle tinge of fear.
2nd: What holds the Moonlight Greatsword
3rd: is the Demon the City, or sized like a City, or worse?
oh boy oh gosh grandpa you have all my hype
Maybe I'm biased bc I grew up alongside the HP books, but I've always liked the idea that laughter in the face of fear is particularly potent. So I'm thinking whatever is here could use a hero the most.
Let's look at the rest, tho.
I see this as a path heading towards the Foe, whatever it may be. So it might not be where we're most wanted, maybe where we're most needed at the same time.
But if this is the path laid out for us, is it not our duty to flip Fate the bird as much as possible?
Oooooh boy, this one is another heart tugger. It feels like the flip side of fear, maybe the inverse of anger, but definitely isnt as immediately pressing as the other two sound.
Dexter here shouldn't really slow down, even for matters of the heart.
[X] Upslope. Here you smell and feel a subtle tinge of fear.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Glad to see you here! I will admit to taking from Eldar Harlequin's for the Jester because why the heck not right!
Pandemonious Ivy
Panties, Revolution. Big Drawers. Parachute.
Eldar anything makes me wonder what flavor of abomination we'll end up revealed as...
DemiRapscallion
Apathetically Excited
- Location
- California
[X] Into the Western Dregs. Here you can see a distant glimmer of loneliness.
Looks like someone could use a jester!
I'm a huge fan of the Soulsborne series, so I'm very excited to run about as a roaming boss of our own, a filthy dex user that we are.
Looks like someone could use a jester!
I'm a huge fan of the Soulsborne series, so I'm very excited to run about as a roaming boss of our own, a filthy dex user that we are.
- Location
- madison
[X] Into the Western Dregs. Here you can see a distant glimmer of loneliness.
let's go brighten someone's day, whether they like it or not.
let's go brighten someone's day, whether they like it or not.
thePUNisher
Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In My Lane
- Location
- Brazil
[X] Into the Western Dregs. Here you can see a distant glimmer of loneliness.
Chapter 2
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Falling is easy, as most children figure out. Falling and you are good friends! It is well worn skill that throws your cloak open and catches the wind on your cloak and in your bells without doubt.
Jingle jingle. The air parts as you float along the wind and feel its sickly fluttering quite unlike the happy wind in your home. This one is full of many evil things and a dark skin tingle.
You crest the top of a spire and a quaint churchyard and plaza surrounded by tall towers leaps up at you. The tall and pointy metal fountain in the center serves as a hook for one of your feet and you spin around and around and then up to the top. There you balance on a toe and listen for anything that went boo.
Three Bells Church, Gateway to the Upper Dregs
Fear not your own hangs off your shoulders and sounds its own mystical bells in the back of your head. Your head turns slowly and you resemble a turning weathervane as you examine the plaza with its pretty cobblestones and the large church before you full of dread.
It is a large and arch filled edifice with flying buttresses holding the roof up high and three spires spread in a triangle around it, carved from marble and alabaster. You can see a bronze bell in each one. And to your amusement it's all sealed tighter than a drum with a pair of oak doors twice your height that sit under a grand stained window of blue and red glass that traces out a Wheel with three spokes spinning around an aster flower.
Beyond the church is a grand staircase which leads up to a huge gate, chained shut. That would be the way into the Upper Dregs. Your roving eyes pass over an alley to the left of the church between two towers who lean towards each other. From the darkness you can feel a quiet childish gasp as you keep turning. You can hear fearful murmuring from the church, curdling the gut.
Then you stop and a spin of your cloak has you disappearing from sight. A quick hop and you appear at the mouth of the alley, barely tall enough to not scrape your bells on the leaning stone ceiling. Deep where the blighted sun does not touch there is a tiny cleft into the building on your left and there you can feel a child's fright.
You dance and jingle and sing in a whisper. "Oh little child, why are you in there? Dontcha know? The Show's about to start!~" Glowing eyes peek out of the hole and you tilt over and wave with a big smile on your face.
"Hi?" The child asks in the curious voice of children the world over when faced with a bright and jingly thing. "Hi?" You respond. You crouch and scrunch yourself down, your legs so long your knees easily touch your ears as you fold yourself up like a spring.
"What show are you talking about, strange thing?" The child asks with surprising maturity. You giggle and wiggle your feet while spreading your hands like a flower. You'll just have to share, that's a surety!
"The Show! With music and dancers and actors and lions and tigers and bears and so much fun! Have you never been to a Show?" You ask with a deep frown. The child emerges from the shadows, revealing a deep brown mop of hair under a bonnet and thick clothes wrapped around them. They shake their head and look down.
"No, never. My parent was too scared to take me with the City like it was." The tiny child says with solemn sadness. Ah, then this poor one was born after the coming of the Demon of Cities. Their nose twitches and you see a rat like tail curl out around their legs. It looks sickly and twisted, wrinkled and speckled with rainbow oil-spots of badness.
They're touched by the Demon too, they are a creature wearing a false skin you can hear shifting around their other form, but they are still sane. They're tiny, not even coming up to your knee. Your frown grows deeper again.
"Where is your parent? They need to come too." You ask with a tilt and a jingle, resting your chin on your hands with a jingly lurch. The child points behind you to the church and a shiver prods your back. The fear surges within the church.
The child is shaking their head. "Don't go in there. They're sick." They say, wringing their hands and shivering. You blink and your pointy ears twitch at the sounds of heavy and angry breaths, weighty like liquid lead.
Heavy scales are rasping inside the church and something heavy is being picked up. The child hears it too, their bright red eyes flinching and twitching.
Something's ire has been kicked up.
What do you do?
[] This is probably the Parent, reassure the Child and go in to meet the Parent like a polite gentleperson.
[] Stay with the Child and hide like they wish, watching what the Parent is up too.
[] Write in (optional)
Jingle jingle. The air parts as you float along the wind and feel its sickly fluttering quite unlike the happy wind in your home. This one is full of many evil things and a dark skin tingle.
You crest the top of a spire and a quaint churchyard and plaza surrounded by tall towers leaps up at you. The tall and pointy metal fountain in the center serves as a hook for one of your feet and you spin around and around and then up to the top. There you balance on a toe and listen for anything that went boo.
Three Bells Church, Gateway to the Upper Dregs
Fear not your own hangs off your shoulders and sounds its own mystical bells in the back of your head. Your head turns slowly and you resemble a turning weathervane as you examine the plaza with its pretty cobblestones and the large church before you full of dread.
It is a large and arch filled edifice with flying buttresses holding the roof up high and three spires spread in a triangle around it, carved from marble and alabaster. You can see a bronze bell in each one. And to your amusement it's all sealed tighter than a drum with a pair of oak doors twice your height that sit under a grand stained window of blue and red glass that traces out a Wheel with three spokes spinning around an aster flower.
Beyond the church is a grand staircase which leads up to a huge gate, chained shut. That would be the way into the Upper Dregs. Your roving eyes pass over an alley to the left of the church between two towers who lean towards each other. From the darkness you can feel a quiet childish gasp as you keep turning. You can hear fearful murmuring from the church, curdling the gut.
Then you stop and a spin of your cloak has you disappearing from sight. A quick hop and you appear at the mouth of the alley, barely tall enough to not scrape your bells on the leaning stone ceiling. Deep where the blighted sun does not touch there is a tiny cleft into the building on your left and there you can feel a child's fright.
You dance and jingle and sing in a whisper. "Oh little child, why are you in there? Dontcha know? The Show's about to start!~" Glowing eyes peek out of the hole and you tilt over and wave with a big smile on your face.
"Hi?" The child asks in the curious voice of children the world over when faced with a bright and jingly thing. "Hi?" You respond. You crouch and scrunch yourself down, your legs so long your knees easily touch your ears as you fold yourself up like a spring.
"What show are you talking about, strange thing?" The child asks with surprising maturity. You giggle and wiggle your feet while spreading your hands like a flower. You'll just have to share, that's a surety!
"The Show! With music and dancers and actors and lions and tigers and bears and so much fun! Have you never been to a Show?" You ask with a deep frown. The child emerges from the shadows, revealing a deep brown mop of hair under a bonnet and thick clothes wrapped around them. They shake their head and look down.
"No, never. My parent was too scared to take me with the City like it was." The tiny child says with solemn sadness. Ah, then this poor one was born after the coming of the Demon of Cities. Their nose twitches and you see a rat like tail curl out around their legs. It looks sickly and twisted, wrinkled and speckled with rainbow oil-spots of badness.
They're touched by the Demon too, they are a creature wearing a false skin you can hear shifting around their other form, but they are still sane. They're tiny, not even coming up to your knee. Your frown grows deeper again.
"Where is your parent? They need to come too." You ask with a tilt and a jingle, resting your chin on your hands with a jingly lurch. The child points behind you to the church and a shiver prods your back. The fear surges within the church.
The child is shaking their head. "Don't go in there. They're sick." They say, wringing their hands and shivering. You blink and your pointy ears twitch at the sounds of heavy and angry breaths, weighty like liquid lead.
Heavy scales are rasping inside the church and something heavy is being picked up. The child hears it too, their bright red eyes flinching and twitching.
Something's ire has been kicked up.
What do you do?
[] This is probably the Parent, reassure the Child and go in to meet the Parent like a polite gentleperson.
[] Stay with the Child and hide like they wish, watching what the Parent is up too.
[] Write in (optional)
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BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sorry @thePUNisher your vote was too late. Thank you for voting anyway though!
1337Procrast
Fire Emblem Enjoyer
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Stay with the Child and hide like they wish, watching what the Parent is up too.
We can't leave a kid alone in this place and who knows maybe we'll find out something nice.
We can't leave a kid alone in this place and who knows maybe we'll find out something nice.