<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-i">You find yourself sailing upon a sea of molten red; an odor strong and metallic that burns your nose and lungs, a brightness that blinds the eye and hurts the mind. It sears brands upon your face and chains upon your body; a steel-gray shell, an iron ship, is all that stands between you and the burning lake. You have not come here by choice, but there is also no way back; you must continue forth, and see the river clear, yet the journey is so long, and the path there so unclear.</span></span>
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-i">Worst of all, you do not pass here alone.</span></span>
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-i">These mighty colossi, formless and bare, they wade through the fires, they march there upon you, like moving mountains of brick and stone. Their faces, if they be faces, remain hidden from your gaze; their eyes, if they be eyes, remain far beyond your sight. They hold hammers upon their arms, and raise them. They seek to sink you? Has death grasped your soul at last? You feel an impact that shakes the teeth, so hard your vision blurs. Their hammers had fallen upon your ship, side by side in perfect symmetry. Your sight dims again, and you feel another shake. Their soundless blows rain upon your vessel, deforming it, caving it ever more so; what had brought you to these fates? Yet they hammering holds no malice. Their touch, though rough, bears no malice; their hands, though heavy, seek to destroy not, but to shape it to greater heights, like a smith upon his forge.. They wish to forge it, then? To mold your raft into a vessel, a galleon standing proud? You know not, care not, think not of such grand designs! You know only of your fate, your current fate, your roiling fate. You grasp your arms around the mast, hoping you will not be thrown off and burnt into an withered ember! For now, you must hold, hold to your life, hold on tightly!</span></span>
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-i">You hold on tightly.</span></span>
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-i">You hold on tightly..</span></span>
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-i">You hold on tightly...</span></span>
The demon lord has been enslaving your people to dig in the obsidian mines for who knows how long. Something about gaining one soul for all eternity, and then multiplying it somehow. One day you discovered quite by accident that the laws of hell allow your people to have a representative. You voiced to the demon that was whipping you that you wished to become your people's representative. He just laughed and continued whipping you. However, a few days later, a dark wagon showed up in the mines. Those usually came full of fresh prisoners, who would be ravaged and then put to work. It came empty. The dark knights within singled you out and brought you into the wagon. You were took to a torture chamber.
That night, your eyes were plucked out.
You were taught to read with your hands. Ancient clay tablets. Thousands upon thousands of them. You were whipped every time you recited them wrong.
Somehow, you stopped aging. Took centuries of torture, but eventually you memorize all of Hell's Laws and Customs.
Then you were taken to the presence of the Demon Lord.
"Speak now. What is it that your people crave?"
"We crave to be Free!"
Now was the turn of the demon lord to laugh. It started as a minor chuckle. And then it became a booming laughter. And then all the demons started laughing as well.
"Very well. You owe me two souls for everyone I am freeing. The souls cannot be taken, they must be willing sacrifices. I will simply employ them in the same fashion as I've employed your people. If you cannot repay within a thousand years, I will reclaim all your people as slaves again, and also the entire plane in which I will release you. You will have to serve me for ten thousand years without complaint before you can strike a new bargain."
All his terms were in accordance to Hell's Laws and Customs. You couldn't help but agree.
He formed an island in the middle of the ocean in one of the myriad human planes. He then opened a chasm portal all the way from Hell into that island, somehow.
"Go forth and conquer this world for yourselves. Spread and remember to sacrifice the required amount. Once you pay your debt, we'll trade sacrifices for magical boons."
According to Hell's Law, a Representative must know all of Hell's Law. Merely by knowing it, he becomes Immortal. You don't understand how it works, but this is the sort of magical forbidden knowledge that changes your very being. There can be only one Representative, however. Being immortal doesn't mean you can't be destroyed. If you are destroyed, someone else Could take your place, but the spot could also be vacant for many millennia.
You have around Two Million People, unskilled, starving, who have known nothing all their lives but toiling in the obsidian mines. The island is huge, but the grimm reality sets in. Many will starve to death before you can figure out a way to eke out a living. You owe the Demon Lord Two Million Souls, give or take.
Scribbling noises furiously sound off across the worn pages of his journal, the scratch of pen against paper echoing in the dimly lit room. His gaze rarely left the crumpled photographs of Wilson Fisk, aka The Kingpin, plastered haphazardly across the walls. Each image seemed to exude an aura of menace and corruption.
"The Kingpin," Frank wrote, "A cancer on this city. Feeds off its desperation, breeds more suffering. I've been chipping away at his empire, one pawn at a time. His thugs, his enforcers - they're all just steps in the way of who I really want."
He paused, collecting his thoughts before continuing. "His organization is vast, deeply entrenched. But I've managed to infiltrate it, using some reluctantly donated tech, courtesy of a Stark Industries supply truck. I know Kingpin's routines, his hiding places, his most trusted lieutenants. It's only a matter of time now until the New York streets are a little less dirty."
Frank's jaw clenched as he recalled the countless lives ruined by The Kingpin's greed and brutality. He had seen the worst of humanity during his time in Vietnam, but Fisk's reign of terror was a whole new level of depravity.
"I'll make him pay for every innocent life he's claimed," Frank vowed, his pen stabbing into the paper with renewed ferocity. "I'll tear it all down, piece by bloody piece, until there's nothing left but a corpse and a legend of the man who brought him down."
As the last rays of sunlight faded, casting the room in an even darker hue, Frank closed his journal and rose to his feet. He knew the road ahead would be long and treacherous, but he was ready. For he was the Punisher, and punishment would be served.
>Plan an attack on a lieutenant
>Send a message and prepare to blow up one of Kingpin's hideaways
>Review the people to keep an eye out for with each mission
The battle is over. The screams, the light, the fire, all of it is gone. Only silence remains now. Your boots crunch over the shattered tiles of the ruined elvish sanctum, deep beneath the earth where the final clash with the Demon Lord took place. Your clothes are torn, your lute is cracked, and your hands tremble not from exhaustion but from the sheer emptiness that follows. They’re all dead. The paladin who shone like the sun, the rogue who danced between shadows, the knight with the dragonbone spear, the priestess who sang louder than you ever could, and the mage. Gods, the mage. He held on to the very end, standing in the burning crater as the Demon Lord’s screams melted stone and sky. He spoke a word no one knew and the world went white. You woke up alone. Alive. But not for long.
A cold wind stirs and a flicker of violet light gathers beside you, coalescing into the shimmering ghost of the mage. His face is tired, his voice calm and final. “I bound him for a thousand years. The world will breathe again. But this won’t last. Someone else will have to seal him when he rises. That task is yours now, bard.” You stare at him, throat dry and heart pounding. “Me? I just sang the songs.” He nods. “And now you must write one. In my tower, far to the north, there are tomes, relics, and gold. Use them. Start churches, secret orders, traditions, myths. Whatever it takes to prepare them. But first...” He turns his face upward toward the broken vault above. “Survive. This is Kal Morith. The pets of the old lords still prowl here. And they are hungry.”
The ghost fades, leaving you in the dark. The ruined city breathes around you, whispering in broken elvish. The air stinks of wet stone, decay, and something deeper. Far above lies the surface and a road to the tower, but first you have to climb out of the grave.
A buzzing sound woke you – not the usual alarm clock noise, more like a large bug flying right past your ear. The scenery greeting you was unfamiliar. Trees. Bushes. Insects flying around. The sounds of cawing and croaking filling the air. “Shit.” You usually spend your days holed up in your cramped apartment, playing videogames, shitposting. Drowning in your misery, finding comfort only through energy drinks and junk food. Try as you might, you can’t seem to recall what could have possibly brought you to this place. Kidnapping? Finally having a psychotic breakdown? You got up, brushing the dirt off your clothes. Being alone in the woods gave you the creeps, like at any moment some animal would jump you. Something shuffled in the bushes. You flinched. “Hello? Anyone out there?” you called, cautiously. “Yes. I’m here. Watching. Just like I was watching when you typed down those words.” That didn’t come from the bushes. Sounded like a woman. Girl, really. Yet, hearing another person didn't bring you any comfort. Your eyes darted all over, looking for the speaker. The realization set in that the voice was really in your head. “You said, and I quote ‘I could take the gorilla solo.’ Well, here’s your chance, hero. Prove it to this one goddess,” she said, the poison dripped from her words. Something straight out of a shitty anime burst into view: a game menu. Generic as hell, blue translucent UI, the works. >[Mission Acquired: Defeat 100 Evil Gorillas and Save the World] “Oh no…” you rubbed your temples. “I’m stuck in a shitty fucking isekai.” Another menu popped up. >[Status] Class: Shitposter (Lv.1) Might: -1 Agility: -1 Endurance: -1 Intellect: +1 Skills: Videogames +1, Shitposting +2 Now, what the fuck should you do in a survival situation? You think… >A) I’m pretty sure I read online that I had to find water first… (Roll d20 best of 3) >B) No wait, it said to find shelter. Definitely. (Roll d20 best of 3) >C) Or perhaps it was to find a weapon? (Roll d20 best of 3) >D) Freak the fuck out! >E) Write-in
It begins with a woman, as these things often do. It was not her shapely figure, all sinuous curves, or her piercing grey eyes seemingly evaluating you, that originally caught your interest. No, that honor fell to the red dress, a thing made of hundreds of red ribbons all woven together and bound close to her flesh, showing little and hiding less. It was strikingly out of place, here on the half empty city bus as you waited for it to creak and groan and crawl across the city. Here, amidst the sour smell of last night's mistakes and today's sweat the red dress did not belong. No one else seemed to notice though, least of all the snoozing old man she stood next to.
But she noticed you. With a finger and a smile she looped a red ribbon around her finger and pulled, a strip of red coming loose, revealing a stripe of her midriff. Without quite knowing how, it is in your hands and she is gone. Life goes on. You step off the bus, you enter your office, you ride the elevator, you walk the halls, you force your face into a smile and you speak the required words of small talk.
Then, of course, you-
> Drink. Just a little of course. > Steal. Just odds and ends really. > Work. Just to break up the routine. > Plot. Just one or two mad fantasies.
The year was 2091 when you left. The technology was brand-spanking-new, and the corporations that owned it became the richest in all of human history by exploiting the fact that nobody on Earth was happy, getting the people who inhabit the serene valleys of the Bell Curve to sell off all of their worldly possessions and, prince or pauper, cram themselves into a sketchy freezerbox and be fired off at a distant sun, never to be seen again. (God willing.) This didn't just lead to dozens of official, government-sponsored colony missions with actual objectives and trained specialists of course, suddenly, any minority or fringe group whose (paying) membership could fill a sportsball stadium could crowdfund themselves their own 1,500-pod Colony Ship, made in bulk beyond the atmosphere in some vast staryard packed with increasingly-spindly Indians. Representatives of every single ethnic group on Earth were to be found suddenly trekking across the Milky Way alongside ideological separatists, whether conservatives, liberals, religious pilgrim societies, monarchists, basically every Mormon, far-removed simps of some ancient civilization, vegans, every form of communist, and every form of fascist as well. <span class="mu-s">And you.</span> <span class="mu-r">And you quickly regretted it.</span>
Greetings, this is the "my first quest" disclaimer. Also I'll be using AI for some accompanying images, but not for the narrative content itself.
Welcome back. Seeing as we got cut short last time I am going to start off with the final update from Thread 12 and include the update I had planned for the day the site went down at the very end. So if you want to skip the 'recap' and get right to the new vote you can scroll to the bottom.
"Kimble, toss me the shotgun. I'll pull guard while you head up first, then the Warden'll follow after you, then Hawthorne." You state confidently with a hand extended.
"You can't be serious, I-I'm handcuffed!" The warden shouts at the same time.
"Yer hands are in front of ya, quit whining." Hawthorne barks, shaking his head. Kimble, however, looks at you with a raised brow.
"You sure?"
"You've got the most experience. At least I'm guessing." You turn to the warden. "Which is exactly why you'll be following him. Anything goes wrong he's your best chance at getting saved and with Hawthorne right behind, I think you'll be shocked how easy it is to get up that ladder."
"And if you do anything slick you'll have a long time to regret it on the way down." Hawthorne growls.
The warden gulps quietly and nods his head. You accept the weapon from Kimble and toss the sling over your shoulders and get used to the weight of it. "Any quirks I should know about?"
"It's got slugs in the tube, so if you have to shoot.. y'know. Aim."
"I'll try." You state as you check your sight picture.
You all stand there, outlined in dim moonlight, dark silhouettes on the edge of Blackgate. Yourself on the edge of something, at least you have a lingering feeling you will be. You push that feeling and your thoughts on the mysterious vortex away as you take your place by the door, weapon in hand, and Hawthorne looses a gravely order.
"Get ready, Kimble. Don't let this softbody fall."
"Wouldn't dream of it." Kimble replies with a dry bite.
You hear the clatter but only allow it a brief glance as the aluminum rungs of the rope ladder drag across the rough roof. Kimble takes a few steps and hops up, grasping a high to mid-bar and ascending, the warden hesitates for a few seconds before you hear a dull thud and a hiss of pain.
"Move your ass." Hawthorne barks, followed by the haphazard scuffing of shoes and punctuated by a shrill exclamation as the warden manages to grab a bar and slowly begind to pull himself up.
"Running out of roof here, Kimble." Hawthorne shouts, you can't help but notice how much closer he is to you now than a few moments ago.
"Get.. the..fuck... UP!" Kimble spits through gritted teeth as his fingers close around Quinn's tie and he pulls with all his force.
