Welcome to CBF, a game set in the cyberpunk future of Charleston, SC, using the horror/urban fantasy world of Changeling: The Lost (and most of the rest of World of Darkness) as it's larger backdrop.
You will be a <span class="mu-g">Changeling</span>, someone that was taken by the <span class="mu-r">True Fae</span> to an alien realm, <span class="mu-r">Arcadia</span>, across the hedge between reality and dreams. They left a <span class="mu-g">Fetch</span> behind in your place, a simulacrum that took your place among your friends and family, making your disappearance unnoticeable. While in captivity, you were traumatized, and forcibly transformed into a creature, or perhaps a decoration, or tool. You've since escaped, back to the real world, back to Charleston, SC, now, in the year 2198.
You command certain supernatural abilities by making contracts and pacts with the forces of nature and reality, and can also make magically binding bargains with other Changelings and mortals. To non-fae creatures, you are by all appearances a human, maybe quite similar to your original self, but possibly older, younger, scarred, or with certain traits having since been altered - time passes in strange ways within <span class="mu-r">Arcadia</span>, and the marks left by the <span class="mu-r">True Fae</span> vary in their subtlety. Other Changelings, fae creatures, and certain other supernatural beings, however, can see past the <span class="mu-g">Mask</span> of concealing faerie magic, and view your true self - be that a musclebound troll, or an automaton cobbled together from wax and copper in your own former image.
Megacorporations and stranger monsters than yourself pull the strings of society in these neon nights, and you will struggle with maintaining your humanity, and sanity, while navigating the maddening world of the fae, and the soul-crushing dystopia that's been produced by generations of greedy, sociopathic humans. You escaped from the creature that abducted you some ten years ago, and have survived in that time by honing your skills and picking your battles.
You are <span class="mu-s">Lorinda de Lindan</span>, Princess, Inquisitor, and soon-to-be Tournament Champion! Well, not really, for you see the Inquisition is sending you into the <span class="mu-s">Grand Tournament of Bloodgrave’s Fall</span> as an agent to see if any otherworldly <span class="mu-s">Strangers</span> from the wicked and barbarous dimension of Earth sneak in to gain lands and glory right from under your father’s nose. Regretfully, the Inquisition has <span class="mu-s">banned</span> you from seeking victory as once your analysis of the competition is complete, it will be time to make a dramatic exit fitting of your desire to be the tournament’s <span class="mu-s">underdog hero</span>. Currently, there is a mere <span class="mu-s">14 days</span> before the preliminary rounds begin for the <span class="mu-s">duels</span> where you shall compete. Now if only you knew the best way to prepare…
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-i">Frieden Moon, The Mind-Killer. Black-Band pilot of ZAFT.</span></span> Has found himself participating in a covert infiltration of the Atlantic Federation's G-Project using his background as a former EA pilot... Though unfortunately caught in the crossfire of ZAFT's operation to steal the Mobile Weapons in Heliopolis Colony. A deceived partner uncovers a secret of the Nation of ORB. <span class="mu-i">Which now lays on Frieden's own hands to pilot.</span>
You can't quite remember how it happened, you remember screaming and the crunching noise of metal on metal. You remember feeling pain and scared for only a split second. The glitter of crushed glass beneath your collapsing body. And then... Then what?
<span class="mu-i">Then nothing.</span>
You die and then you wake up.
Cold silk. The soft drip of rain drops against large windows. The muffled, chaotic heartbeat of a grand estate in full movement, like a buzzing hive. People laughing all around you, you're surrounded by a crowd of men and women dressed in elegant clothes; talking to you, smiling to you, vying for your attention.
You flinch, and everything is wrong: the portrait on the wall, the candlelight, your dress... You know these details. You've seen them before... not in life, but in fiction.
So shocked, in fact, that you've dropped the glass of wine you'd been holding mere seconds before, and it breaks on impact, splashing the wide, long skirt of your dress with red like a blood stain. Everyone's attention is on you. And a handsome man with dark hair and dressed in an old-fashioned military uniform approaches, handkerchief in hand.
He talks, but your head's roaring, and can't really focus on what he says. You're panicking, you need to get out.
He tries to get you to stay still, and you pull away, choking, suffocating. You need to get out. You need to escape. Panic's got it's ice-cold grip around your throat, around your heart and you manage to pull away, but whoever this man is he seems to understand what's happening and instead of forcing you to stay he herds you out into a balcony overseeing a beautiful rose garden that surrounds the manor you're in.
There's no denying it anymore. You're in <span class="mu-s">Crimson Grace of the Rose Bride</span> a game you played back in... Back in the <span class="mu-i">before</span>.
Jail Quest: a text adventure occasionally illustrated.
A night of drinking and a failed attempt to cheat on cards had landed you the strangest job slash community service sentence you've ever had: ensuring Gongalla Gaol survives the reality storm called Singularity.
Now you travel around with your employer and a handpicked crew to survey the four Reality Anchors. Hey, beats being tarred and feathered, right?
You suddenly jolt wide awake in an unfamiliar room, with no recollection of the past few hours. It even took you a few seconds to remember you are Rosa Montagni, and another few seconds to realize the other person in the room is your crewmate, Valencio. Slowly, hazy recollections piece together a loose narrative of previous events: you've reached Viridis, the first leg of your journey to the East's Reality Anchor, when you receive news that your go-to destination slash transport, the walking city Freeport, had problems with its engine. Then you were sidetracked into a casino, where you played cards and unwittingly aided a truant Hexbourne student against a haughty twin Hexbourne students sent to retrieve him. Then you got entangled in a complex emotional... something with the casino owner, Don Bosco. Something about your mentor, Sierra (no relation to Sierra, the deity of the South anchor) and copious amounts of drinking? That must be why your memory's so hazy.
“The Southlands.” That’s what the races of the Northwest call them, as if they were one place—a realm unified under a single nation or people. In truth, the Southlands are a molten mosaic of humans, beastmen, and sundry others flowing over and through each other in coexistence and in conflict. The land itself is a tapestry of desert and jungle, of low savannah and high plateau, where even the Race of Man is far from uniform: the hides of the humans here range from a ruddy tan to a deep blue-black that nearly equals the Drow of Wevenore.
Not that you got to see much of it.
<span class="mu-s">You</span> are James Efron, Senior Initiate of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower. At your age—twenty-three—you really ought to be a Mage Apprentice. You should be studying in some stuffy laboratory back home in the big city like Izirina Henzler, or maybe taking a practicum under some smaller adjunct Associate Tower like your old pal Testa. But <span class="mu-i">nooo</span>, you craved a life of action, of adventure! ‘<Fireball> is meant for the field!’ you used to boast of your favourite spell. So you’d taken the field, first as a formal Field Researcher and then later as a freelance adventurer-for-hire.
And that had led you here. To the Southlands. To this dungeon.
It isn’t the cool kind of dungeon, full of monsters to kite and <Chain Lightning> for coin, alas. It’s the kind where Southrons store their prisoners-of-war, for that seems to be the size of your sad situation: a prisoner, at the beginnings of what is shaping up to be a full-scale intercivilizational conflict.
The Men of the South may be myriad, but tensions between their ilk and the fairer folk of the Northwest—your homeland, Hawksong’s aegis—have been a unifying cause as of late, and not only for the human races. Relations have been fraying since before you were born, when a sinister cabal of dark-skinned demon-worshippers staged a terrorist attack on the Mages’ Tower itself, assassinating the Archmage and destroying the much-beloved Eternal Fountain.
"We should keep moving and catch up to the NPC. My transformation only lasts a minute and we should make the most of it." You say motioning to the next cave entrance. Ryuji nods and tears his glaive free from the zombie just as Irene finishes her trance. The three of you regroup and begin to run through the cave system once more, all pretense of stealth lost. Not helping was the fact that Ryuji was constantly gushing and asking questions about your abilities.
"What else can you do? How long is the cooldown? What buffs do you get? Did the coat come with the costume?" He asks, eagerness overtaking any sense of restraint on his curiosity. "I don't know anyone who's ever gotten this far!" He concludes. You suppress a small sigh building up. You had expected him to explode with excitement given his love of the game but you hadn't really expected to see him get this excited. Still, you couldn't help but share a bit of his enthusiasm. How long had it been since you had eagerly spoken about the game with someone just as passionate instead of trying to avoid the conversation with non-answers? You pull back your helm, allowing it to fold back behind your head and somehow vanish causing Ryuji to let out a noise that sounded like a mix between a squeal and roar of excitement.
"It folds back..." He manages to eek out.
"It's on a 5 minute cooldown. So it's really more of a boss fight kind of ability though right now I don't think we have the luxury to hold back big CDs. While I'm in this form, these are considered two handed weapons." You say raising your fists. Ryuji's jaw drops.
"Waitwaitwait. You're dealing two hander damage with your fists alone? I've seen how fast you can swing those things and you're telling me they can hit as hard as a warhammer?" He asks.
"Yup. Only while transformed though. Untransformed I have the Brawler's [Powerful Fist] skill but it seems to scale better because I can't really wield anything else." You continue. "Also, I'm considered to be wearing light armored outside of my transformation and medium while transformed. Stacks with the bit of damage reduction my class gives. Class seems to give me a handful of abilities from other classes to pick from on level up but it seems to lean towards fighter and brawler skills." You pause for a moment. "But I get this feeling that there's more to it. Almost like the game is keeping note of what I do and adjusting for it. I got a weird quest regarding another player on the tutorial island and now I'm expected to grow under strife, whatever that means. For the moment it seems my class progression is locked until I meet some kind of requirement. Nothing about this class is straight forward and the power seems to compensate for it." You say, drawing your helmet back on. "If I'm honest...that's the fun part."
