- Location
- Pilipinas
I think everyone else that voted for this plan, missed the [] vote box thingy
Warhammer Fantasy: Thirteen Tolls - An Apocalypse Quest
- Thread starter Graf Tzarogy
- Start date
- Fantasy
[X] Plan The Prince and the Sword (updated)
-[X] Explore a district: Summerland [R].
-[X] Meet with Prince Stonehammer. (S) [P]
-[X] Investigate somebody:Ambrose
-[X]Harbour fugitives. (S) (Because League BOGO and it's a good thing to do)
-[X] Set up a ratline.
-[X] Visit another temple: Ahalt
-[X] Study your sword.
-[X] Investigate somebody: Lady Tophania. [A] [M]
I will join you in correctness.
-[X] Explore a district: Summerland [R].
-[X] Meet with Prince Stonehammer. (S) [P]
-[X] Investigate somebody:Ambrose
-[X]Harbour fugitives. (S) (Because League BOGO and it's a good thing to do)
-[X] Set up a ratline.
-[X] Visit another temple: Ahalt
-[X] Study your sword.
-[X] Investigate somebody: Lady Tophania. [A] [M]
I will join you in correctness.
- Location
- Between dreams and reality
The way you did it was already correct. Please delete this post so you are not double voting.
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How was the way I did it before correct? My previous vote did not have the [] in front of Plan.
- Location
- Between dreams and reality
It doesn't matter since you voted for the plan in it entirety. @butchock did not. Irragaudless you should have gone back and edited your post instead of creating a new one.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
There is nothing wrong with Talon voting again. The vote tally will count the newest vote, and ignore the first one Talon made.
Also if you don't vote for the Plan part by doing [] Plan, what actually happens is that the tally splits each component into its own little vote.
[X] Plan: Completing the Puzzle
-[X] Write to Arkhan.
-[X] Pray.
-[X] Investigate the Tower.
-[X] Explore a district: Summerland [R]
-[X] Explore the undercity. [P]
-[X] Investigate somebody: Lady Tophania. [A] [M]
-[X] Steal Warpstone. (S)
-[X] Meet with Prince Stonehammer. (S)
-[X] Write to Arkhan.
-[X] Pray.
-[X] Investigate the Tower.
-[X] Explore a district: Summerland [R]
-[X] Explore the undercity. [P]
-[X] Investigate somebody: Lady Tophania. [A] [M]
-[X] Steal Warpstone. (S)
-[X] Meet with Prince Stonehammer. (S)
Vote closed
- Pronouns
- He/Him
TTS Rogal Dorn: "The votes has spoken."
- Pronouns
- He/Him
(Another mystery meme-reference. When others do not have perfect knowledge of pop culture it gets tiresome after a while, no offense. References are like salt IMO: to sprinkle with care, so the ones that are sent are worth more.)
Oh no, they are perfectly balanced. Should we vote again, or will the dice decide between some of the equally-voted alternatives?
Oh no, they are perfectly balanced. Should we vote again, or will the dice decide between some of the equally-voted alternatives?
Flip - Tiebreak
- Pronouns
- He/Him
1 - There's a Rat, 2 - Completing the Puzzle.
Edit: There's a Rat!
Edit: There's a Rat!
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
We're the rats
We're the rats
We are the rats
We're the rats
We are the rats
I guess the Prince and the Sword (Updated) wasn't in the running because one person didn't properly title their vote?
Turn Four Results (Part 1) - Feral
- Pronouns
- He/Him
A city is a temple to you. Anywhere you stand, for miles beneath, the work of hundreds and thousands as memorial to you, for people like yourself to live and fuck and die. And your efforts continue to build the monstrosity, to make it liveable for the next fellow to come in, to build on and on, yesterday unto tomorrow. Your fellow citizens, without knowing, offer you the great gift of a whole second creation, their labours, blood and sweat and tears, to lay the stones and raise the roofs to let you eat a nice little sandwich. Most remain easy, on the surface, within the veil of ignorance. It's easy to think, with the infinite sky above, that all this was nature, not effort, that this merely was, not no great gift to you. But descending underground, to see the sewers and the sinew, you realize what an immeasurable task this all was, this new world just for your own comfort and happy existence.
That is what strikes you, as you and Pelops schlep along the edge of a sewer. You're long used to the smell, now, honestly. You're just taken by the scale of the work; canals dug, supports laid – for all of this, Tylos-Kavzar. The though of destruction – of undoing literal centuries of work – is a crime just against honest effort, damn the blood and tears extraneous.
Of course, only when you've rather developed a proper appreciation for the fine architectural flourishes of the sewage tunnels – really, fascinating arch-work, and interesting drainage gargoyles – the explosions start.
BOOM!
Goes something far too close, and the sewage-water quivers like jello as a lungful of dust descends from the ceiling. Coughing awful, you drag Pelops into a corner, and just as well, as another-
BOOM!
-strikes the hall, and a dislodged boulder strikes where you were just standing, bounces twice, and smashes into the drain. You realize you are not that yet used to the scent, as the turgid "water" and sundry associated human waste begins to pool. If this is happening across the city, you'll be lucky to have running water within the week. You and Pelops continue onward, into the descending dark.
…
The aim here, vaguely, is to find the secret city of mutant magicians. They more or less seemed to know what's going on, really proper, if the notes left outside were them, and if they know that last piece you need they're a proper valuable ally. The difficulty of course, is that you can hardly remember the way, other than a vaguely defined down, so you and Pelops have been circling the underground for about two hours now, not seeing a soul but the pounding of distant explosions and what sounds like sword-fighting.
For lack of a better idea, you two at this point are unadvisedly approaching the clamour, finally frustrated with locating yet another storage sub-basement. Really, a true waste of human resources here; pots, pans, tile, grain, steel, rotted and rusted. All that man would need yet hoarded for lack of a sufficient price and so left to ruin.
…
The area of the city with the blocked off sewers was the area adjoining the Pall, directly beneath Pleroma. You've actually brought a compass this time, so you can orient yourself, and you think where whatever war's going on is right under there.
The first sign something is wrong is the mould on the walls. The grey-green-black fuzz turns slowly browner and furrier, until a splash on your head alerts you that it is not any sort of fungus at all anymore, but sort of tumorous flesh-grows, living hairballs, pulsing and dripping blood. You push a door open, and wince – the blast of Ghur coming from below is enough to put all your hair on edge and make your fingernails sharpen.
Enforcers of the temple stand before you, in a sloping hall. Soldiers, in fine array, with runed blades and plumed helms. In front of them, something the Second Creation was not for, who all built to put away and banish forever into the world before. A scorpion, as big as a bear, its horrible body covered in shiny black chitin. Eight clawed legs sprout from the sides of a squat body, while giant arms tipped with terrifying pincers protrude from its front. Two lustrous eyes gleam like rubies, above a gaping maw of thousands of razor death. Rearing from its back, poison drips from the dagger-barb of a muscular tail. Riding on its back; a mutant a two-headed man, armed with a wooden club, lovingly embedded with rusty nails.
Here is what was left behind as the world built on, and now it refuses to die.
A second, and a solider dies, his head exploding with a strike of the scorpion's tail, a punctured eye now hanging off the tip. Two others scream with fury, and launch themselves forward – one is snapped in half by a pincer, while the other raises a gladius to strike, before another surge of Ghur from the depths and he's clawing at his face as a snout bursts from his face, and oinking, the scorpion's rider strikes him down. The fellow turns to you, two heads silhouetted, both tilting in curiosity at your non-intervention. You raise in hand in greeting but as you do there's a cry from above of "HAIL!" and an ornament of brass and green powder stops in front of him. It pulses, once, twice.
BOOM!
You're knocked off your feet, and Pelops too. The door you were looking through is knocked off its hinges, shielding you from the worst of the blast but almost taking off your leg. You look forward; a mangle of flesh, melted together in magic and heat, sits fused into the body of a scorpion. The thing, with half a face, perhaps left, lets out a cry of horror, and with the one pincer that remains intact, stabs up and above, and you hear another death scream. This is a bad place. This is where the new world is being built. This is where the old world screams its death-cry. You and Pelops run deeper and deeper.
…
[Flip: The Sixth Circle – Heads (Success)]
Down a forgotten stairwell of an abandoned distillery, between the great vats and kegs, a little camp. In the infinite past made manifest, the lost world, it's still easy to find friends. THE QUEEN OF THE PITS smokes a pipe by a small fire, a small treasury of gold and pearls beside her. She leans back, and pats for you to seat yourself beside her.
"Speak" she says "what brings you, traveller?"
"the End" you say.
"It's here" she says.
"For you? Or for us?"
"No difference, really – just yesterday and today."
"As below, so above?"
"You get me."
"Why?"
"Only one story there can be. We're extraneous."
"One god, one tale?"
"Smart boy."
She touches the iron rats on her sash. You feel your hourglass in your pocket. Why get rid of that which is already waste? Why bother disturbing the trash? The second creation, the temple, cannot countenance excess. If there is to be a God in the Tower, there cannot be others. The weak and the dispossessed first, but it comes. You think of Angelus, and Ditatis, and the rest. You wonder if they know.
…
You leave Justinia. She gives you directions to where the Verminlord is. She's getting out. You don't blame her. Pelops at your back, you wander down a new tunnel, dug by a thousand thousand tiny hands. You hear the chittering before you see them. Per Ater, that's how he knew. He can see through their eyes, feel their pain. Heard through their ears the plan – the true one. One true god. One true story. One true destiny for us all.
Here's another way. A man with wilted daisies for a face, in robes so dirty they're more mud than cloth. Every bit of visible skin the wild tries to break through – feather and fur and tooth and claw, a mutated morass. He's clearly exhausted. Around him, great beasts. Rats, huge and tiny. The bigger ones are armed; someone's stuck blades to their tails. Mutants, mostly children. They've been weaponized too, little girls and boys with maws and webbed fingers clutching rusted daggers and sharpened forks.
They stare at you, and you stare back. You wonder if you're meant to do a funeral, here and now, or if they're going to wait till they're physically dead. It'd be easier early, you think.
A voice in your mind. "Our last stand". The warmth of the last day of summer.
"How long?" you say.
"A week. Maybe two."
"Anything I can do?"
Some petals fall of the daisies. It might be weeping.
The lion's pride. The wolf's love. The bear's bravery. "Kill me" the Verminlord, Priest of Ahalt, asks.
BOOM!
Dust falls from the ceiling. The rats squeak, and the children too. "Is there no other way?" you ask.
"No way to be free. A captain goes with the ship."
"And them?" You gesture to the room.
The flower-man points to Pelops. "You have one stray. A few others?"
You bow. "On my soul."
He gets up, only to kneel before you. You ask Pelops to take the kids back up into the tunnel. The rats stay, and watch.
You pull out your sword.
[Flip: A Terrible Fate – Heads (Success)]
You think twice and sheath it.
BOOM!
More dust, a closer noise.
You need more. If this is what this is, a stopping of the final recreation of the world, you want something from the old. It is a temple to you, after all. Why not be worshipped, if everything before was wild and cruel? You hold a hand forth, in the soft, dying flowers. You pray for the first time in a while.
Winter's last breath. Flowers going limp, and then brittle. A body slumps. A thousand rats descend and devour. You turn away – no. You turn back. Shining white bones. A skull without a face. You pack them away. You feel, from far, far away, a predator-God snarls. Among the remains – a sickle. You pick it up, and your blood sings. You hear teeth grinding, and taste blood and guts. You break it over your knee.
BOOM!
That was before the city was, kept as an idol, farmed, domesticated, tamed – free. The energy worshipped and in such made comprehensible to man, liberated. You exorcize Ahalt and with his presence and clergy gone Ghur is unchained. The walls pulse, and the rats snarl, and mutate. Each of them, rippling with muscle, doubles, triples. You see their souls shred and become just wild, nasty things; long teeth and claw and a carnivore's hate. Beaneath you, around you, old things, sleeping things, things thought long dead – the wilds are reborn, for one last offense, and the underground will not die quiet.
BOOM!
That wasn't a warpstone bomb. You, Pelops, and a cavalcade of kids proceed to the land of light. Behind you are only screams.
…
The newspapers the next day report a long list of casualties to gas explosion deep below. You expect it to increase. A visit to the Temple of Ahalt reveals as you expect, a sinkhole. Plenty of guards around, but of course, not much to protect. You See, and sense true; one less ally, but one less thing to be turned into a brick in the Princeps' great pyramid. Now for the rest. A way to stop it, you think, to starve it. But that means you're ended too, and your new followers just the same. A better way, then, find everyone. Unite everyone, march on it, don't get eaten along the way. Simple, if you ignore they've got the army and the navy and the guillotines. But a way forward.
Speaking of potential futures, you have twelve more charges. For now, you rent a house adjacent to the Roost with your surprisingly plentiful honey money. Pelops agrees to be a good big brother, and look after them for the week; you only hope Ambrose has found something reasonable for what is increasingly seeming to be mostly everyone to stay. A mystery down; more murders to follow.
AN: This was proving very difficult to get out, and I ended up getting really weird with it. Let me know if you have any questions. Next update soon.
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Well, at least we didn't use the Necoho sword on the Priest; that would have been the worst of two execution options.
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
I must admit I didn't understand much of what happened here.
Evaunit02mark1
S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.
Really rough guess?
1.Went into the sewers to try and figure out what's going on down there
2.Met the "vermin queen" who's basically the leader of the undesirables
3.She's basically bugging out because she's seen the writing on the wall and she'll be damned (possibly literally) if she stays.
4.She directs us to people willing to stay or just unable to leave.
5.Meet Flowey priest.
6.He explains he's being hunted and theres basically no running for him or what's left of his god (who apperantly sheltered mutants from chaos, no wonder they hunted him the bastards.)
7.We agree to save the kids and give him a better death than being eaten alive by the agents of the Horned Rat
8.We mercy kill him
9.We mercy kill his god denying the Skaven an easy meal
10.Said god gives the Horned Rat a final fuck you by turning everything down there into a bootleg ghur elemental and aiming it at his face
11.We skedaddle with the kids back to the temple.
In summation, we walked into the Princeps' attempt to purge the cult of Ahalt and sacrifice a chunk of Ahalt to the Tower. We stumbled down to where the Ahalt Priest was hiding, we confirmed with him that the Tower will be going after all the gods in the city rather than just the lowly, and he asked us to kill him to deny the Tower his essence. We decided not to stab him with the Sword of Atheism, but rather to exorcise the chunk of Ahalt residing in the Priest, Temple, and lower parts of the city's underground. We did not exorcise the Ghur the Priest and the Cult were tending to, which led to practically every animal and gribbly with a pulse down there growing three sizes and choosing violence against citykind. We also got a bunch of mutant children out, who now reside in the Roost.
This means going forwards we can either try to unite the various cults of the city and march on the tower, or if that fails try to drive as much deific energy out of the city as possible to stifle the growth of that which lives in the Tower.
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K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Thakns, it's much clearer now.
The first option is bound to be difficult. We have to prove to all the other cults that the Princeps wants to eat their god. There's also the fact that all the cults seem incredibly corrupt.
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
Considering the vision we were given from Myrmidia, this is… really where things go bad quickly. The Rose she left was the last good piece of the son she trusted. The garden she loved. With it gone, all that was left is a ruin to be blasted clean to minimize what corruption would come.
You've been very helpful Nec, but you're still kinda a Chaos God, and right now we need something a bit more merciful.
I love this passage. It's the quest's themes wrapped up in a bow. Lovecraft had "we're all meaningless so just go insane", Robert E. Howard believed in the will to power, Dylan Tomas had Do Not Go Quietly Into That Good Night. The quest has this: The end cannot be stopped. But we can reach out and save what we can.
It's pretty clear in hindsight that this god was a god of nature, a Taal equivalent, and the flower-man was a kind of Druidic figure that kept going even when the cities built over the garden once blessed. As a place of natural became a sewer and trash heap, the nature that remained became tied closer and closer to what was left behind by Myrmidia. The Rose always remained, but what nature exists amidst steel and stone of oppressive civilization is different from the viridian respite that once was.
- Location
- Washington
We... MAY have also done some real damage to the concepts included in The-Horned-Rat-That's-Forming from the priest being called a Verminlord, and denying that being easily "eaten". Don't want to pat ourselves on the back too early, but it does feel meaningful.
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
Without the concept of the rat to build around, now the god of urban decay and ruin will need to use the other common animal that lives quite well among civilization… Racoons.