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Underpowered Quest

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Chapter 0: Naraka

It's been a long day at your university-- It was midterm week, after all...
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Tam Lin

Tam Lin

The Evolution QM
Chapter 0: Naraka
​
It's been a long day at your university-- It was midterm week, after all. Thankfully, today was the last of it.

Everyone else was out partying, but not you. It's not like you're an introvert, or that you have no friends, or anything like that. It's just that you've been running off of coffee and energy drinks for the past week.

Quite frankly, you don't have the energy to party right now, so here you are lying in your bed surrounded by nearly a dozen pillows. You pick one to hug, lying onto your side and curl up into a tight ball of exhaustion.

Despite your tiredness, you find that you have a hard time falling asleep. Even worse, you feel an overwhelming sense of vertigo. Despite the unpleasantness, you remain steadfast in your attempt to sleep only to be woken by one of those unpleasant falling dreams.

It takes you a second to process—you're not dreaming. You're actually falling!

You fall face-first, landing in a position that SHOULD have broken your neck, but it didn't.

You dust yourself off, finding that you're now wearing some kind of skin-tight cybergoth clothing, rather than your comfortable pajamas. You're pretty sure you haven't owned anything like this since high school.

As soon as you get comfortable, numbers flash in your vision, scrolling through various configurations before settling.

Though you don't recognize ANY of the symbols, it seems like you can read them just fine.

There are three sets of numbers in the upper left corner of your vision—Bhava, colored red, is set at 100 %, Sankhara, colored blue, is set at 0%, and lastly, Karma, colored green as well as the only number not labeled as a percentage, is set at 1600.

None of those words, except Karma, mean anything to you.

Not even a second after looking at the numbers, you feel something heavy in your left hand. You clutch it subconsciously.

What are you holding?

--

[] Red (A destructive playstyle, focusing on dealing as much damage as possible. This is the easiest to master.)

[] Silver (A defensive playstyle, focusing on deflecting and reflecting damage.)

[] Black (A supportive playstyle, focusing on status and field effects. This is the hardest to master.)

--

[] Stiletto Dagger (Hard mode)

[] Revolver (Very Hard Mode)

[] Buckler (SV Goes to Hell Mode)
 
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Character Sheet
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    • Name: Teejay Vasquez
    -- "No, it's not T.J. It's Teejay. It doesn't stand for anything because my parents hate me or something."

    Age: 20
    --"I'm not a teen anymore, but I don't feel like an adult yet. TEACH ME HOW TO ADULT!"

    Weapon:

    Abhaya Mudra

    --"You have chosen the Abhaya Mudra. The Abhaya Mudra is a small, red revolver that uses Karma as ammunition. The chamber is composed of 6 Karmic Vents, which allows it to store 6 charges for 10 Karma.

    The barrel is ornate, covered in mysterious symbols whose meanings don't reveal themselves to you.

    When the trigger is squeezed, the gun uses one of six charges to fire a baseball-sized fireball.

    Though normally weak, the fireballs have a slight chance of causing Karma Bleed, allowing you to reload the Abhaya Mudra with the enemy's own Karma.

    Despite having a chamber for storing Karma charges, the grip contains a magazine composed of solid crystal. When ejected, the Abhaya Mudra cannot function.

    As you gain Sankhara through battle, you unlock more options for the Mudra."

    Inventory:

    Corruption Core
    -- "A sphere with a black, glassy exterior. You can feel the whirring of a motor within."

    Skills: --None--

    Objectives:
    Where the Hell am I?
    -- "Stop being lost."
     
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    • [X] Red
    [X] Revolver


    We went all out on defence last time, so let's do something radically different this time.
     
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    [x] Red (A destructive playstyle, focusing on dealing as much damage as possible. This is the easiest to master.)
    [x] Revolver (Very Hard Mode)

    Let's see what happens.
     
    Chapter 0.1
  • Threadmarks
    • Like the numbers before, the object into your hand morphs into various shapes and colors. Finally, it settles into a red revolver.

    Thick, red, unfamiliar characters flash into your face. Like the letters and numbers in the upper left area of your vision, you can instinctively read the symbols. "Abhaya Mudra", they read, though you still have no idea what that means.

    Your cybergoth outfit glows and morphs. When the light is one, you find yourself wearing a pair of beaten-up red converse shoes, black pants smeared with red paint-- you're silently thankful that they're not the figure-hugging type of pants--, a black shirt, again smeared with red paint, and a red jacket textured like it's made of alligator leather.

    You give yourself a once-over and-- Holy shit-- you're glad you did, since you wouldn't have noticed otherwise. You have three swastika armbands on your left arm. You're definitely getting rid of those.

    After a few seconds of pulling, you find out that they won't budge, as if they're sewn to the jacket. You find that you also can't take off the jacket when you try.

    You shrug-- you suppose it's not really worth it to get worked up about swastikas in a dream. You figure you'll just talk to the student counselor about it, if you even remember the dream in the morning.

    You spin around, taking a good look at your surroundings and arbitrarily name them after compass directions.

    There is a sprawling city to the north, a weird forest to the south, and some kind of large rock formation to the west.

    For good measure, you also look up and find that the moon has been replaced with a large, holographic, Aries sign.

    Where do you go?
    [] North
    [] South
    [] West

    (Also, roll 1d100. I'll take the lowest of three rolls from DIFFERENT users)
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] South

    My half-formed instincts tell me that we might find smaller gribblies there, perfect for cutting teeth on.

    EDIT: Welp, you hardly need another roll...

    EDIT@: I win the lowest dice contest! DO I get a prize? Will it eat me?
    Skewfiend threw 1 100-faced dice. Reason: Random Encountuar Total: 1
    1 1
     
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    Chapter 0.2
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    • You head south, or rather, what you defined as south, into the forest. You note that the forest looks artificial. There's a clear divide between the forest and the red desert, almost as if the trees were cultivated to act as some sort of park. You've never been to a real forest before, and you're still pretty sure that the transition into dense trees should be more gradual.

    You shrug, and just go with it.

    The trees are leafless, resembling gnarled hands reaching up into the sky.

    You quickly get lost, losing sight of the edge of the forest.

    By luck, you find the remnants of a stone path and follow it. It leads you to something like a gazebo, outfitted with stone seats. The roof, also made of stone, has mostly caved in on one side. Dust and rocks litter the floor of the gazebo.

    In the ruins, you spot an odd sphere. The exterior looks like it's made of black glass and you can feel the whirring of a motor within.

    You look closer at the sphere-- strange letters label it a 'Corruption Core'. It's smooth, seamless, black glass. You bounce it onto the stone floor, then catch it. It didn't chip or crack, so it's relatively tough. Still, with a name like 'Corruption Core', you doubt it does anything good.

    Regardless, you pocket it. If there's anything you learned from procrastinating by playing video games, it's to take anything that isn't nailed down.

    Another ruined stone path extends further into the forest.

    [] Follow path forward
    [] Follow path back
    [] Rest in gazebo
    [] Other

    ((At any time, when not in battle, just say Inspect [x] where [x] is anything in the scene and I'll try to elaborate more on that thing. I'll edit it into a post, rather than making it its own post))
     
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    • Well, we got the core. So... [x] Rest in gazebo. Let's see what tries to eat us while we're resting.
     
    [Q] Eat Sphere, gain the power of corruption!

    [X] Follow path forwards.
     
    [X] Rest in gazebo

    Forest isn't the ideal environment to be using a gun. There didn't seem to be anything from the way we came either so lets just see if something comes to us. The gazebo should provide some decent cover if we do have to shoot at something.
     
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