"Gill and Kane, stay here and keep watch. Alert us if anybody sails near the wreckage. The rest of you, with me."
“Yessir, boss!”
Two men split off from the group and stand guard by the gaping hole that had allowed you all an entrance. It was a miracle the remains of the ship were afloat at all, nearly half of it shorn off by Sea Devil knows what. You count yourself lucky you weren't a part of the battle and count yourself even luckier that you and the rest of the bandits got here first.
Somehow, you doubt even your imagination can conceive the type of loot a ship from the fleet of an Emperor of the Sea might contain.
You proceed down the hallway, avoiding the gouges in the flooring and the dagger-sharp planks sticking out of the walls. The primary instinct that strikes you is to hover at the back of the pack, but there seems to be constant jockeying for position over there - no good bandit welcomes a backstabbing - so you stay where you are and keep your eyes and ears open. This wasn't your first job with these guys, but that was no invitation to let your guard down.
The boss kicks down a door and steps inside a room up ahead. With furtive looks at each other, the rest of you follow suit and funnel in. Scattered gasps and murmurs fill the silence of the chamber.
The chamber was chock-full of glittering, glorious treasure chests.
"Boys... we hit the JACKPOT!" The boss of the bandits nearly stumbles; such is his excitement in approaching the nearest chest. The rings on his hand clink together as he reaches for the clasp that separates riches from the ragged. One more step...
But of course, could it have ever been so simple?
"Boss!" the shout travels from the front of the wreck, faint, but not faint enough that you fail to discern the panic in his voice. "There's a pirate cre━!"
A crack of thunder swallows his final words. A body slumps to the ground on your left.
<span class="mu-i">Huh?</span>
It feels like time grounds to a halt for a precious few seconds, as your eyes trail from the corpse, to the hole where the bullet entered the room, to then finally land on the hole it left exiting. One bullet. Had you been a mere three steps to the left, that would’ve been your end.
All of you hit the deck. You wait a beat, but no further shots ring out. You peer over at the boss and notice that he’s still eyeing the chests, that familiar glint of greed in his eyes warring with fear and uncertainty.
What do you plan to do? >You’ll follow the boss’s orders; your best bet for staying alive is to stick with the others.
>You’ll betray the boss and the rest of the bandits at the first opportunity; you want all the treasure for yourself, and maybe you can use this chaos to your advantage.
>You’ll cut and run the moment you find a way; you don’t want to end up dead, even if treasure beckons.
>You’ll be arresting all of them; because you’re a Marine in disguise, conducting a sting operation.
War War Never Changes. They finally fucking did it. The bombs fell not long ago. The world is over. No more people. Just shambling radioactive corpses. No more nations, just glowing craters, dust, and shadows of people that once were. No more seasons, just nuclear winter. Shopping? No such thing. Have fun struggling to find a drop of water or a crumb of food that won't kill you. The RADS oh god the fucking RADS, inescapable and everpresent. Truly the end of the world. Rapture maybe happened and whatever is left...well, most people are quickly giving up on God. Kinda hard to keep believing when the world ended, and you were left behind. Except for the zealots, anyway, but those guys are crazy as the cannibalistic raiders.
That isn't even getting into all the weird shit that keeps happening and becoming. Makes you wish it was 'just' a nuclear winter. Walking corpses. Mutants. Inexplicable anomalies. Unnatural terrain. Strange whispers that you aren't the only one hearing. Honestly, it just keeps getting worse...especially with everything you have to do just to 'survive'. Living...living is just a luxury that only the pre war world got to enjoy. You meanwhile, are just another poor sucker caught up in this clusterfuck, trying to survive.
(This quest will be ripping heavily from games like Fallout, Metro, Stalker, and Bioshock basically anything that fits within the setting theme to keep things interesting)
>Character Creation You may choose any trait from any game OR include a custom option that may be vetoed by me IF it's too unbalanced. Custom traits MUST include both positive and negative effects otherwise, it's an automatic veto.
The first character will be a young male because this is about a dynasty over the generations. So long as you have a living family member the game will not end however, your characters can and WILL die over time.
Anyway the last character DIED without offspring, resulting in game over, so now it's a restart with some adjustments. So here we go again. I wasn't joking about the difficulty...
Across the stars there exists a legend walking among the myriad species of the stars, and his name is Zarus.
Zarus is a creature that is known as a human, a species that came from somewhere unknown. In truth, they aren't too much unlike those of the intergalactic community, with meager lives only a fraction as long as yours, of flesh and blood and with hands and feet, spacedust given fleeting form. Only, Zarus himself isn't like other humans - at least, not to your or anyone else in the galaxy's knowledge. Zarus is the most powerful of all psykers in the galaxy. This is <span class="mu-i">by far,</span> no contest. He doesn't perform acts as directly lifting his enemies and sending them flying, no. His reality changing powers are matched only by his warped perspective and inflated ego. Many have tried to kill him, and the world itself bends over backwards to protect him. Bullets sheer by him, laser weapon systems malfunction as they pull the trigger, bombs spontaneously detonate before he enters their blast radius, and other psykers lose their powers as he draws near. Some speculate you could catch him off guard with orbital bombardment or destroying the very planet he stands on, but the empires of the galaxy know he is more precious alive than dead. If it weren't for his self-centered attitude and racial prejudice, he would have had any seat he desired in any empire of his choice, but he prefers the free life of a gun for hire.
If you were to believe the man himself, he was once part of a crew of fifty men sailing through the stars, incidentally struck by debris of an ancient errant missile smashing into a nearby asteroid. The lone survivor, he landed on a fertile planet in the process of colonization and took it as a sign he was still protected by his gods. The planet he refused to name, but rumor has it he calls his home the "mystic city of Agartha." Many have gone to search for it. Some empires are running vast intelligence operations to acquire any information they can about the city. You know better than to actively go and find a planet where there may be hundreds, thousands, millions of humans just as capable as Zarus in the psychic arts. Their elevation to a spacefaring race would upheave the order of the entire galaxy.
So of course, you came across the planet on pure accident.
<span class="mu-i">Howdy bros, I'm back. I wanted to continue RimQuest, but the combination of an artist shafting me, Rimworld 1.6 breaking all of my saves, life events, and depression have fucked that into the dirt. So instead here's something new.</span>
<span class="mu-s">These are the dark years of the occupation.</span> Gordon Freeman is still just a story passed between cells, squads, strangers, and couples. In this moment in time there's only you, a lone human working to resist the Combine occupation however you see fit and remain able. There will be an <span class="mu-s">Uprising</span> someday, this you're sure of, but the path there lies on the other side of lakes of blood and considerable effort on the part of unsung warriors like you.
It had felt like days since you last saw the sun back outside the outskirts of <span class="mu-s">City 11.</span> The awful stench of the sewers and cisterns which meandered under the streets of what used to be <span class="mu-s">Berlin</span> forced you to find something to plug your nose with almost immediately upon beginning your infiltration. Deep regret at leaving the accommodations, spartan as they were, of the Resistance base north of the city had massaged your mind, but failed to slow your occasionally-soggy step through the barely-lit darkness. All this had a purpose, you reminded yourself. In the newspeak of the Combine you are an Anticitizen, a <span class="mu-s">Malignant</span>, the malformed cell that starts the cancer, the one that sets the spark which will light the torch of humanity's liberation. Or, in more plain terms, the crazy fucker that volunteers to go back into the Cities in order to bring contraband in, people out, and start up new resistance cells along the way. If there were some omniscient statistician in the sky, he could have given you odds of survival that would have seen you sit your ass back down in Finow when they called for somebody to replace Parks's sector after his presumed loss, but all the same, it needed to get done. The whole goddamned species was at stake, with a biological time limit that edged closer to expiration every year and a planet slowly being strangled of its life. If this generation didn't stop them, there would be no other. Never in human history had there been as existential and desperate a struggle as the one you now trudged through obscure German shit-tunnels to wage.
It had only been half a day since you entered the sewer system when you reached your target. A junction in the tunnels marked by a chalk marker and a lone, white coffee mug. The route into this part of the city was prepared beforehand by a two-man reconnaissance team, people with equipment and experience too valuable for you to know or to be risked with the next, most dangerous part of City infiltration. You were briefed that they left you a red bag full of necessaries to help you along on your mission from here, hidden in a storeroom near the marker.
Faces unfamiliar to you pass by, speaking in a tongue of gibberish that is only partially comprehensible. Half of them wear tribal attire of losers larping as tribal warriors, but their cosmetic scars and muscles were way too refined to be just costumes. The sky rolls in a color you've never seen before.
You are the self-proclaimed KING of the WASTELAND.
Ever since the great BIG BOOM in the far off year of 2007, the world has gotten pretty nasty–ruins and mutants litter the desert wasteland all around you, roving bands of warlord kings and factions in all sorts of endless wars.
You never did much mind, though, as you kept to yourself in your reclusive “castle” (a pre-BIG BOOM convenience store) with your friend and roommate, DUKE NASU, watching one of your 24 copies of SUPERBAD (2007) and pumping iron–that is, at least, until a demolition company drove up to your front door.
You found out your castle was apparently on land that fell under the titleship of a “GUN KING”, who sought to evict you and bulldoze it into the ground. You took ownership of the demolitionist’s wrecking ball and drove out to the GUN KING’S castle to confront him on the matter.
You managed to infiltrate his castle whereupon you engaged in one-on-one combat with the king, PANZER GRAAD–however, defeating him only led to the appearance of another freak, the “MUTANT KING,” who kidnapped your dear friend DUKE NASU to bring him to its kingdom. You need to get him back.
You were woken up from a midday nap by the grinding of the brakes as the train arrived at X-X Station (pronounced "Double Cross," according to a clerk), and thus missed the first opportunity to queue for a quick exit from the car, as you were still quite drowsy and groping around to ensure that your possessions had (also) arrived unperturbed. Now you have queued behind a pair of rotund priests (Reformists, you think), as they gingerly step onto the platform and lose themselves in the sea of people. There are more people here than you've ever seen in once place, at least since you were a child. It's hot: hotter than it would ever get in Iscthymia. At least it's a dry heat there. Here you can feel every layer of clothing beginning to drip. But you can't take off your jacket just yet. It's dangerous, you think.
If there is one thing you hate it's traveling over-encumbered, so, in the spirit of new beginnings, you packed only the bare essentials. There's a nagging feeling of regret as you begin to intuit that perhaps you wouldn't know what would really count as essential in this new chapter of your life, in Chaotzakka, with its fourteen million people. These are things you would've pondered on the train ride had you not dozed off immediately. You're carrying a hardshell briefcase, a backpack that's coming apart at the seams, and a little bum bag crossed over your shoulder. You lift your patrol cap to see more clearly; you don't want to remove it as your hair is almost certainly a mess, but the material is itchy. The cap and bag are from your year of mandatory civil service. The backpack is from your school days. The briefcase used to be your dad's.
You're trying to get used to the smells and sounds. It seems like everything ticks, rings, or thuds in this city. You are buffeted by a blast of hot steam and struggle to breathe for a moment. Unlike a country bumpkin such as yourself, city-dwellers know to back away from the train as soon as they get off. That's why they call the station the "sauna." Just a little sample of that big-city wit for you.
You thought you'd checked that you had everything before getting off the train, but a sudden irrational panic grips you and you fear having left your most important possession behind. But of course this isn't the case; you can feel its weight on your right hip. Still, just for assurance, you reach down with your free hand and grip your
It’s a beautiful early Wednesday morning! All the love sessions have come to an end, and now you must return to the not-so-violent reality (because you’re cuddling with Beth); one in which you must keep your promise. You must go on a date with Celia. She even went through the trouble to remind you with a text. Not the best way to wake up, but a way to wake up nonetheless. You must fulfill even if you’re tired! And if! With the legendary Calamity Cola, you’ll be at 100% in a second…
You drink the evil beverage to recover all your stamina.
“Busy again?” Beth woke up as well.
“Yeah, sorry…” You lament.
“Relax, my beloved. I have you covered…” Beth snaps her fingers. “Don’t forget to return to me once again.”
You reappear at the front of the Prisoner’s house with your casual clothes on! Oh, and with a breakfast box. Looks decent. It’s like you were expelled out of Beth’s domain back to the silly real world…
It’s pretty clear that, with the thermostat still broken, it’d be better if you part ways — and do your own thing. The problem is that you weren’t here alone! Maybe you should ask them to bring those lovely people over?
<span class="mu-s">What do you do?</span>
>Ask for Lydie to be thrown your way, please! >Ask for Liu to be thrown your way, please! >Ask for Vera to be thrown your way, please! >Ask for Bagna to be thrown your way, please! She loves being a bag after all! >On second thought, you’ll reunite with them at school. Go there, so you can change to your uniform in the lockers. >Write In.
Welcome to /qtg/, a place to talk about quests. Previous thread >>6271040
>What is a quest? An interactive story in which a Quest Master (QM) writes and provides the readers with options on how to proceed — similar to a choose-your-own-adventure book or an old text adventure
>Formatting guide: Only the thread's OP can format. Note that should the OP change ID, they will lose this ability as well. Remove the spaces between the [] brackets and the letters: Bold: <span class="mu-s">text</span> Italics: <span class="mu-i">text</span> Red: [ red ] <span class="mu-r">text</span> [ /red ] Blue: [ blue ] <span class="mu-b">text</span> [ /blue ] Green: [ green] <span class="mu-g">text</span> [ /green ]
>Formatting guide for everyone: Dice (type this in “options”): dice + [no. of dice]d[no. of sides on the dice] (optionally you can add modifiers: dice + [no. of dice]d[no. of sides on the dice]+[modifier]; for a negative modifier type: +-[modifier]
Examples: dice+1d100 = a 1d100 roll, dice+1d100+10 = a 1d100 roll with a +10 modifier.
Spoiler: spoiler or by pressing alt+s in-thread (doesn't work in OP)
>QM Question: If you allow write-ins, what are the best and worst you've ever gotten that received votes? How often do you get write-ins better than your actual options? If you don't allow write-ins, why not? Would you ever consider it?
>Player Question: How much do you take in-quest discussion into your vote? Do you just show up and vote? What would get you to engage with quests more if you don't already?
>General Question: How would you get more voters to engage with quests other than just voting? Have you ever done an in-quest event for your players? If so, what?
>Lurker Question: There is no question, vote.
>Miscellaneous Question: Any big plans for the last part of the year? Get anything big done over the summer?
This is part 8 of the "side quest" for "Disappearing Hogwarts". An unofficial alternate timeline based on HeadQM´s highly praised quest, Disappearing Hogwarts. Reading the original story is not exactly necessary but heavily encouraged since this quest will contain references to it. Created mostly as a place to wait while HeadQM was away for a while but slowly evolved into his own thing.
Quick recap so far: >Recently graduated Ravenclaw student is hired at Hogwarts as the new Caretaker. >Merlin somehow ended up inside your head. >Harry Potter´s daughter died, letting Salazar Slythering (previously stuck inside her head) free to continue his quest to control The Beast, an all powerful ancient creature accidentally created by Merlin. >He is currently now trapped inside a poor and weakened girl named Artemis. >You obtained a piece of The Beast >The Beast is now trying to escape under any circumstance >Because of it, magic is now gone and you now have to find a way to get the rest of the pieces before The Beast escapes What will happen now? Let's find out!
