Outlining allows you to create longer quest narratives with scripted events. You have much more control over the narrative, but almost no control over the loot or rewards. Outlining removes the [Chaos Seed] element, which reduces risk and potential rewards. If you create a repeatable quest narrative, every time an [Author] completes it, you gain 10% of all gold they earned during the quest. One attempt at Outlining is allowed per day.
Warning: Creating a narrative has a low success rate (Pantsing: 17% | Outlining: 32%). It requires a balance to create a successful quest narrative, and the effects of them could, and often do, change parts of the game. This creates ripples throughout the game and the system may create counter quests to stop you.
Pro Tip: Stacking odds in your favor is allowed, but for each benefit you try to achieve, the system pushes back twice as hard. Example: If you try to make it so you only have to fight level-one goblins, the system might force you to fight thousands of them. Understand, monkey? Don’t bend it to your will, give the system guidance and let it decide what you can handle. Or you’ll regret it.]
Shit tits, a quest generating ability? This was really awesome, and I couldn’t wait to sit down and plan a few to see what would happen. For now, it looked like I might get assistance with our escape.
A side gate of the Stone Place opened, and we were ushered through a tunnel which had more murder holes than I wanted to count. At a T-intersection we went left and headed down a set of stairs. A few minutes later we reached a threshold.
[You have entered a Sanctuary blessed by the Goddess of Games.]
“That’s means we are below the big cathedral—near the entrance to the Stone Place,” Jason whispered and we went through another door.
A quick glance showed that only a few of the green-belted gnoks remained, the rest had not followed us down.
[You have entered the Prison of Terrich]
“Welcome to your new home,” Nomar said.
“That was a rather boring speech for stealing away our game play for your perverted ends.” I gave the Minotaur my most winning grin.
“The Father only keeps puppets around,” Jason Shagwell’s cheery voice matched my winning grin. “Those that will follow him blindly. Take this big cow here—”
“Enorph,” Nomar said, the word twisted in his mouth. We understood him, and even if we didn’t, no way did we want to anger him. Getting called out as a Goddess of Games heathen was already bad enough, but mess with the bull and you’ll get the horns. “It stinks down here. Smells of non-believers and heretics.”
“You sure you took us to the right place?” Jason asked. “Smells like the cattle stockade, you know where they keep the cows?”
“Why are you being a dick? I represented your work fairly and justly,” Nomar grunted.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you are repressing [Authors] and taking away their fun. You know, as in it’s still just a game, and you’re the dick.”
Nomar’s red eyes were lighting up in the prison’s darkness. He towered over the Necromancer but showed no other signs of aggression.
“Look,” Shagwell pointed toward the side. “You are with the Father, and you helped create that.”
I looked to where he was pointing, and the room was full of desks with [Authors] chained into place. Most of them were reading stacks of books in front of them—well reading might be a stretch. A gnok flitted about the room with a whip and howled at them. “Flip pages faster and then switch accounts. Or I’ll send you to the meat grinder to die a hundred times.”
[Authors] flipped the pages as fast as their fingers allowed them. A few had high agility, maybe [Thief] classes, because the pages blurred. None of them were actually reading, but once they reached the back cover, they dropped it and picked up the next book.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“The Father found a clever way to destroy [Authors], he uses these people to increase pages read. It spikes at abnormal rates which alerts the Archgod Zon of ill intent, and when Zon gets involved, lives are destroyed, and for what?” Shagwell asked Nomar. “No answer, you cow? I can tell you one thing, this is not what the Goddess wants, it’s about power.”
“Not to mention summoning the Archgod Trademark so he can become the sole owner of your Goddess.” I injected into the conversation. “You think the Pantheon of Genres will allow that? Worse, you think Zon will allow it? Do you even know what a [Fallen God] is?”
Even if summoning Trademark failed, I had a feeling that the Father’s stranglehold on it would kill her, just much more slowly.
“Stop it. The Father wants to protect her. He loves his goddess, and would let no harm come to her.”
“That’s a lie, and we all know it. He wants control, he wants power—”
“Arrgh, shut up.” Nomar stomped the ground and the [Authors] in the reading room didn’t even look up. “Move.” The big Minotaur said nothing more. He used a caveman like club to hit us if we tried to talk and kept herding us forward.
It was when we reached the next set stairs I experienced a feeling I had no basis for describing. An awareness? My [Quest Narrative] had just engaged, and the system would provide an opportunity for escape.
I leaned over to Shagwell and whispered, “Be ready.”
Chapter 56
Location: Prison of Richter… err Terrich
A large metal door slammed shut behind us, Nomar was at the top of the stairs making sure it was secured, and he pushed Shagwell and me down the stairs. Nomar was a much higher level than both of us, and his over confidence was to our benefit.
“This is it,” I whispered, thankful that no one could remove my [Bag of Holding] without my consent.
Plop!
The sound echoed in the stone passageway, and I could hear Shagwell scrambling backward. “What the actual fuck?”
Nomar finally realized something was happening and turned around and clomped down the stairs only to come face to face with a zombie cow rushing towards him. His roar was high pitched and made our ears bleed. More impressive—he fled up the stairs faster than he came down and slammed into the metal door. The walls and ceiling shook with enough force that dust and debris showered us, not that either of us noticed as we stood staring at the fleeing Minotaur in shock.
“He really suffers from Bovinophobia!” Shagwell’s awed voice echoed. “And where the fuck did you get that thing from?”
“Let’s go, that won’t hold them back long,” I told him and jogged away from the stairs. “Keep an eye out. I’m going to try something.”
“You are just full of surprises,” Shagwell muttered. “Don’t worry; I got your back.”
I pulled on the fire in my core and felt the shackles suppressing my ability. Normally, that might be an issue, but I’d already upgraded my [Ku]. My center was more powerful than the magic in the cuffs. The liquid fire could not be kept from the tattoos on my arms because they were intrinsically linked.
“It shouldn’t surprise me at this point, but damn man, you’ve already upgraded your [Ku]?” Jason said, and I heard him, but I’d distanced that part of me while I worked on feeding more mana into my hands. The wraps on my arms smoldered, caught fire and burned away under the intense heat. I felt the impact of the lost attributes, but nothing I could do about it.
“Get ready with a [Healing Potion],” I gasped through grit teeth. The metal shackles melted, burning into my skin and tissue. A growl escaped me as I yanked all four arms apart, the muscles on my chest, shoulders, and arms bulged. Pain ripped through my body as the metal almost reached the bones on my wrist before the cuffs snapped, releasing me. Jason was already pouring the potion down my throat, and my mind cleared, but the pain was still staggering. “More,” I hissed, craving more of that sweet stuff.
“It's all I have, man. Someone’s been buying up all the potions,” Shagwell said by way of apology, and I took one out of my inventory and downed that one too. Damn, I loved these things. Was I the one creating a shortage?
Fighting against myself, I handed three potions over to Shagwell. I didn’t know what was ahead of us, but I’d need his help. Getting back to my feet we kept moving, and I flexed my wrists feeling bits of metal still inside my flesh. That was not good, but I’d worry about cutting them out later.
“Need to get you free too,” I told the necromancer.
“Ok, but just melt the chain linking the cuffs, that’ll break the suppression magic. I can worry about the cuffs later.” Jason told me, and I sighed. That would have been good to know ten minutes ago. Rather than get upset over, I reached out and melted the chain links close to each cuff.
[-1 HP]
[-1 HP]
[-1 HP]
The metal in my wrists melted and smoldered inside my flesh. It was nothing compared to when I removed my own cuffs. The moment the chain fell away, and I stopped channeling fire—the damage ended too. It was annoying, but nothing a [Healing Potion] couldn’t fix.
Now that I was paying attention again, I looked into the cells as we passed them and saw emaciated [Authors]. They seriously looked like skeletons with skin, and their bodies looked frail. “Why do they look like that?”
Jason glanced into a cell and shrugged. “Prison’s won’t allow our avatars to disappear if they log off. So the game takes over, and it treats them as NPCs. So the [Authors] probably stopped using these characters. I doubt the Father feeds them and they technically can’t die, so their bodies waste away. It only takes about a week to recover an emaciated body, but it is an unpleasant experience.”
That might the hint I needed from the system, so I melted locks off as many doors as I could. Our path was anything but straight because we traveled with no clear direction in mind. I figured the quest would guide me when it was time, and in the interim we explored.
There were gnoks around, but they were already down here when we arrived. Not to mention Shagwell could take them down from a distance without alerting anyone. He used a miasma cloud thing that cut off their screams and caused them to rot away. They looked like flesh pudding, and I wondered if Butter would have called them human smoothies.
Slurp!
The thought caused me to shudder, and once more doubt my sanity. So when I saw a neon-like sign that said ‘Welcome to the Torture Chambers’ I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. “What in the inferno is that?”
“The Father’s funhouse. Those three doors are levels of torture. See the MG, YA, and NA? Its Middle Grade, Young Adult, and New Adult. I’ve never been here though, so I have no idea what’s behind those doors.”
“Let’s take a quick look before we leave.”
“Don’t think that’s a good idea,” Shagwell said, and he shifted uncomfortably, which was understandable. My curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the YA door, thinking it safe. The room was filled with corpses of young men between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Every corpse had died of asphyxiation. I am not a criminal pathologist, but it didn’t take a genius to see they’d all had their dicks removed and shoved down their throats.
“Fucking hell, if this is Young Adult I’m a goddamned virgin,” Shagwell said in a low and dangerous voice. “And don’t even think of opening the NA door. You go near it and I’m—you’re on your fucking own.”
Jason vocalized what I was thinking.
“Shit tits,” I said, closing the door and backing away. Calling something like that [Young Adult] took a twisted fucking mind, and there was a special place in hell for someone like that.
Turning away I heaved the contents of my stomach onto the floor and kept heaving until nothing was left.
“Sorry,” I whispered to Jason.
“Come on; let’s get out of here.”
Neither of us said anything for a while. We roamed and looked for a way out in silence. The torture scene took us both by surprise.
“What are we looking for, and how do you know it's down here…” Shagwell’s voice drifted off, and I turned to find him staring at me. “You built in a narrative on the fly? Impressive! Tell me what you did?”
“Someone told me about a sewer or dungeon under the Kongdom Proper, so I designed a narrative that allows us to escape into it.”
Shagwell laughed, and the tension between us disappeared.
“That’s brilliant. The dungeon you are talking about is called [Smuggler’s Den]. It houses the black market and has connections all over the Kongdom Proper. We are pretty far away from there and deeper underground. Not sure how far those sewers extend, but I didn’t think they came this far out. Either way, if it accepted your narrative, we should end up there. The two of us should be able to make it through, but the sewers have enemies of all level ranges.”
The shuddering of the ground made us both look back, and we saw Nomar charging at us, nostrils flared and steam rising off his shoulders. Those glaring red eyes bored into us.
“Oh man, you don’t have to worry about getting locked up here. Look how pissed off he is. You are going to get pounded into paste. That beast has one major flaw, and you exploited it.”
I grinned because I spotted our way out. The intersection we were at had a left-branching. At the end of it was a set of stairs dug into the roughhewn walls. Reaching the stairs, I knew this area was all newly created, but it felt ancient. The darkened entry, cobbled stairs, and décor had the feeling of an old crypt.
“Down we go,” I laughed, and let Jason go before me. The tunnel going down was narrow, so we could not go down shoulder to shoulder.
“This is part of my narrative; I can sense it,” I informed him.
“There is no way we can reach the end before he catches up,” The necromancer was panting. “I don’t have your kind of stamina.”
Laughter escaped me once more. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I turned to face the minotaur.
Plop!
Another zombie cow appeared on the steps facing upward. It had no room to turn. The moment it appeared, Nomar screeched once more and collided with the zombie cow before he scrambled backward. The red in his eyes faded and now I could see the whites of his eyes appear as he fled in a panic.
[Fearmonger +10]
In the silence that followed, Shagwell laughed with me. “You crazy son of a bitch. I won’t even ask how you got a ring of holding, but seriously, what the fuck are those and where can I get some?”
“Zombie Cow is what I call them. They are from the hills north of Shreddit—” Another large bang echoed down to us, followed by the twisting screech of metal. Nomar was trying to hold back the cow with the door, and I could hear the evil laughter of the gnoks as their claws slashing in the wet rotten flesh.”
“Gnoks rule…” a soft voice carried down the stair, and I shivered. The phrase did not carry the mischievous nature from before, nor the mantra-like feeling from the soldier type gnoks. No, this time the phrase held a [Sinister] aura.
Jason grabbed my arm and pulled me down the hall after him, and we both ran off. Leaving behind the sounds of the deadly cow eating its victims. Part of me hoped the gnoks turned into zombies and it spread to the entire city. They were all slaves; they just did not realize that the [Drama Meters] were their collars.
“There it is,” Shagwell said excitedly. “You don’t know how brilliant this is. We now have a way into the prisons. Your story contains enough drama and excitement to overwrite the story behind the prison. I know you didn’t plan it, but you changed how we will battle in the future.”
“That’s because none of you understand [Drama] is a power all its own.”
Jason turned to look at me and arched an eyebrow at me, inviting me to continue.
“Amard, my companion, she can control [Drama], and its power is primal. It’s why the Father tried to repress it, hide it, bury it, delete it, and change it where he could. Imagine a city that wants to stay low-key, oppressed. It gives the Father complete power over the [Quest Narrative]. Who would dare counter him? He made these people fear [Drama] because if they used
it, they’d realize they had the power all along to stop him.”
“[Drama] as power?”
“Watch,” I told him and held up my wrist. “Nomar doesn’t read people’s stories before he judges them.” Beep! “The Father wants control because he knows compared to the Russian [Authors] his stories are second rate, and he founded nothing except an online community group. BanHammer has a small dick.” After a few more insults I pegged the [Drama Meter at 100%. “The truth is, the Father tries to control everyone because he has low self-esteem, probably from eating too many Twinkies.”
The band on my wrist sparked and then smoke rose from it before it went dormant and crumbled away off my wrist. The crystal inside of it bounced across the ground, cracked and inert.
“What!?” Jason nearly cried out.
“It has a crystal that absorbs the power of [Drama]. Too much [Drama] and you overload it, causing the crystal to crack. The same crystal that powers the device. It’s why they come after you at seventy percent.” I laughed at the look on his face. “People have had the power all along to fight his regime. More [Drama]. And look, here is our dungeon. Shall we?”
Chapter 57
Location: Ebon Dragon’s Lair
The prison was vast, and to think all of this was under the church dedicated to the Goddess. Behind us, we could hear them still trying to fight the cow, and in those narrow confines, it was bound to be a battle of attrition.
“Hmm, this might be bad,” Shagwell said approaching the portal. “I think this goes into the sewer’s sub-dungeon. Kato is supposedly down there, and he’s more myth than man. Sonya once had a strong team of NPCs, not quite a [Harem] but they were all top fighters. Kato is part of the [Ebon Dragon], a faction of mercenaries, and he massacred her people. Kato acquires mortal enemies like I pick up women. And I’m as smooth as creamy peanut butter.”
The Land of Trademark Online Page 33