>>6320937I'm glad you liked it. I am trying to improve, but it's difficult most of the time. I learn something, then forget it after a while. I think maybe I should make notes not only for worldbuilding and characters and more particular quest aspects, but also for techniques and things to remember that apply to any quest. And keep thinking more throughout the story, not write it on autopilot.
>>6321465>The qtg had a discussion about this quest?I made a post about how shit I am at running quests and it was pretty obvious what I was talking about in my examples if you followed along this one. A couple anons replied to encourage me.
Anyway, (some of) the lore, as promised.
One theme I initially planned to reveal but decided would take too long was of immortality. The outlands are an ancient place, and there were several factions searching for hints at the way to achieve it in these ruins. There were mages behind the Knowledge Vaulters that looked for immortality for the king of Hien and themselves. There also were the paladins that didn't appear in the end, who wanted to obtain the secret of immortality to safeguard it since they considered regular people unworthy of it, only gods. And finally, the dark lord's minions in the north also were searching for it for, well, the dark lord himself.
Some unused NPCs were that woman working with documents and the dark elf. The documents woman was a forger that finished her sentence in prison and was going to the outlands to continue her line of work under less scrutiny from authorities. The dark elf was an exile from her kingdom still adapting to life on the surface.
The mages you encountered in Agante, the earth ones, were looking for Asta, the prodigy mage, because she found a way to tremendously raise the fertility of earth. Problem is, that required human sacrifice. That's why they were so guarded about their secrets.
One other piece of lore I had was about Avris. They were taking special glass from literal lakes of it, and the ironwood was from a cursed forest. They combined them to create spires that would probably be hard to build even with magic. They also had travelling performers that were a fusion of errant knights and troubadours / biwa hoshi, with their followers, squires and retainers. They travelled and collected and told stories. Had a certain etiquette and culture, like knights. One of the NPCs I didn't introduce in the end was a travelling performer that rejected the whole ritualistic / high manners thing about it and just collected and told stories alone.
Didn't have much written for Beretta, it's what you've seen already. I set her up for a "actually, dark lords aren't so bad if you look deeper" plotline, but since this was a oneshot, I obviously didn't get to that part.
That's pretty much everything interesting (in my opinion) I have in my notes.
I'll archive this quest a bit later.