Mori's Minions

[RoboticLIN]

You sir! Yes, you, generic peasant! You have been volunteered for the King's Magic Acquiring Service! What does this entail? Why, we will put you in the Magical Acquiring Service Trebuchet! YES TREBUCHET MY GOOD SIR! You will soar the skies for but a few moments, to catch as many spells as possible! Such a worthy duty!

Survival? Ah well my good sir, you'd best find something to break your fall on the way! Luckily for you I definitely spot a safe falling bubble right around... FIRE THE TREBUCHET! Ah, what a glorious sight. Well, go on then. Tell his family he died saving the princess from the plague.

YES THEY ALL SAVE THE PRINCESS FROM THE PLAGUE gosh, it's like you only know how to fire trebuchets. It doesn't matter if it's the seventh time today! Go tell the family.

[Moriwen]

(helpless giggling)

[Adelene]

This setting needs a Jokerfamily SO MUCH.

[Kappa]

omg.

[RoboticLIN]

... Is it actually possible to corpse-loot magic? Assuming you had someone next to the soon-to-be-deceased to grab the rapidly ascending bubble.

Can you pop the bubbles? Assassinate an important spell on the enemy's side with a well-placed dart?

Can you cast a spell multiple times? Would this reset the timer/accelerate it?

You need to bare hand touch it to acquire the spell, do gloves interrupt this? Would the gloves just phase through until hand touches the bubbles?

At least tell me the Magical Acquiring Service Trebuchet has some sort of merit! I may or may not have giggled myself stupid.

[Moriwen]

...I'm ruling that corpse-looting magic works because that seems optimally awesome/terrible.

Can't pop the bubbles, the dart just goes through it. Yeah, gloves just phase through, so it's okay to keep your fingers warm at high altitudes.

Of course the MAST has merit! Corpse-looting magic definitely helps, because that way you can just position someone where the Generic Peasant is going to fall, and grab the spells once they hit the ground. You do run the risk that they'll get a "bolt of lightning" spell and take a potshot at you on the way down...

Spells are one-use-only, should have specified that.

[RoboticLIN]

You do run the risk that they'll get a "bolt of lightning" spell and take a potshot at you on the way down...

I said it was such a worthy duty! Just not for the impending splatters... I MEAN VOLUNTEERS! Us MAST members have many workplace hazards! Uppity peasants, uncooperative peasants, peasants with inordinate amounts of luck who get combat spells, peasants without inordinate amounts of luck that acquire no spells... Think of our poor, poor Trebuchet Winder Specialist! He has to take double duty as Peasant Family Heroics Informer! What we do to save the Princess from her hourly plague infections...

[Moriwen]

I continue to setting! This time: Pilgrim's Progress meets Temple Run meets Brian Patten's The Terrible Path.

"The Terrible Path" is an excellent poem which is for some reason next to impossible to find online. Thus I'm sticking it below.

The Terrible Path

---

While playing at the woodland’s edge
I saw a child one day,
She was standing near a foaming brook
And a sign half-rotted away.

There was something strange about her clothes;
They were from another age,
I might have seen them in a book
Upon a mildewed page.

She looked pale and frightened,
Her voice was thick with dread,
She spoke through lips rimmed with green
And this is what she said:

I saw a signpost with no name,
I was surprised and had to stare,
It pointed to a broken gate
And a path that led nowhere.

The path had run to seed and I
Walked as in a dream.
It entered a silent oak wood,
and crossed a silent stream.

And in a tree a silent bird
Mouthed a silent song.
I wanted to turn back again
But something had gone wrong.

The path would not let me go;
It had claimed me for its own,
It lead me through a dark wood
Where all was overgrown.

I followed it until the leaves
Had fallen off the trees,
I followed it until the frost
Drugged the autumn’s bees.

I followed it until the spring
Dissolved into winter snow,
And whichever way it turned
I was obliged to go.

The years passed like shooting stars,
They melted and were gone.
But the path itself seemed endless,
It twisted and went on.

I followed it and thought aloud,
“I’ll be found, wait and see.”
Yet in my heart I knew by then
The world had forgotten me.

Frightened I turned homeward,
But stopped and had to stare.
I too saw that signpost with no name,
And the path that led nowhere.

The Path is like Milliways in that it nabs people from various worlds, and they can meet on it. It is, however, somewhat less ... friendly. Details follow.

Path

---

The Path is always heralded by a blank signpost, and appears as a broken-down road of a sort appropriate for the setting where it is visiting. The signpost has a mild fascinating quality, making you want to investigate the Path, but you're not compelled to do so. If you want, you can turn and walk away, and the Path will be gone when you come back.

Once you start walking on the Path, you cannot escape. Over the first few minutes, without you noticing, your senses fade; you can no longer see colors, you lose your sense of smell, and while you can still hear your footsteps, the environment is totally silent. Birds sing silently, rivers flow silently. While you walk on the Path, you will not age or tire, and you don't get hungry or thirsty -- in fact, you can't eat or drink even if you try. You can still be injured, though. You just can't die.

At this time, the Path determines what your "virtue" will be. (I'm using "virtue" loosely because it's the best term I have -- the Path doesn't pass moral judgement.) It pulls out of your psyche what trait you will be required to perfect. This isn't necessarily the trait you think it would be, but it's always in an important sense Correct, and appropriate to you. You may not be happy about the Path's choice, but if you were at this moment shown a version of you with that trait perfected, you would admire that person and want to be them. However, the choice of virtue does not change during your time on the Path, so if your personality changes significantly it may no longer be something you're happy about perfecting. You cannot escape from the Path until you have completely perfected this virtue.

Some examples here, because the selection of "virtue" is a little hard to describe. It can be something that would be conventionally considered a virtue: courage, humility, patience. It can be something less positive: ruthlessness, stubbornness, cruelty. It can be a skill: swordfighting, painting, chemistry. It can be something a little more complex, like a vocation: to become the perfect scientist, or the pinnacle of Christian virtue. There's often subtle nuances to what exactly you're supposed to perfect, but it's a definition that intuitively makes sense to you.

You aren't told about any of this. You're just walking down the Path. It winds through various appearances and landscapes, some fantastical, some frightening. There may be wildlife and even buildings, but the only other people you will see are others on the Path. You can step a little ways off the Path to the side, but if you move too far you will be stopped -- usually by impassible landscape, but the Path is willing to use other methods. It doesn't matter what powers you have. The Path will not let you escape until you have perfected your virtue.

If you turn and start walking back, or stop walking for too long (there's some leeway on that, depending on circumstances), the angels come. These are terrifying angels -- wheels of fire and eyes and wings and eldritch monstrosities. You do not want to meet the angels. Just being around them is terrifying to the point of agony. That's before they start talking. That's before they start hurting you.

The angels will rebuke you for turning back or for stopping. They're cryptic, but you can get some information from them. This is probably how you find out that you're supposed to be perfecting a virtue, although it may be some time before you find out which one. They may tell you some of the rules -- no stopping, no turning back, no leaving the Path -- if you haven't figured them out already. They will certainly criticize you, for your failures and imperfections, and it hurts when they do. These are not nice angels.

When the angels think you're suitably repentant, they let you go. Keep walking, or they will come back. Start working on perfecting your virtue. Don't worry, the Path will give you opportunities to improve on it, and trials to face. These can come in any form, often looking like something out of a myth or fairy tale, a dog to be kind to or a steep hill to push a boulder up or a lion to face down. Often, though, the trials are other travelers. The Path can bend itself through space and time, so every so often, as you walk, you will find yourself coming up behind someone else on the Path, or them coming up behind you.

The Path wants you to meet, to help one or the other or both of you perfect your virtue. It may not be clear how -- the Path works in mysterious ways. If you have magical healing powers, you might meet someone who's been torn to pieces by a previous trial, and have to patch them up. If you're perfecting patience, you might meet someone irritating. Or you might someone who's perfecting their torture skills, which would be unpleasant for you. If you're new on the Path, other, more experienced travelers can tell you about how it works. You can gossip about whether escape is really possible at all, or whether the angels are lying. If they have magic, or weapons, maybe they will share with you. You may run into the same person more than once, but there's no guarantee. Once you're out of eyesight of each other down the Path, it can twist itself and separate the two of you, and you may never see each other again.

You will spend a very long time on the Path, most likely. You may wonder if it's even possible to perfect "painting" or "courage," or if they can just improve indefinitely. But, after a long time, centuries or millennia, you will start to notice something returning to you. Maybe the color blue will come back first, or the sound of running water. Gradually, as you improve in your virtue, you'll be rewarded with pieces of your humanity. The order varies, chosen by the Path to motivate you in some obscure way. Some of the things are inconvenient: you start to grow hungry, thirsty, tired. (You can lie down to sleep. The Path makes allowances for necessity. But don't sleep too long. The angels are coming.) No matter what, though, you cannot die, and you do not age.

Eventually, if you keep striving for perfection through time and space, you will reach the end of your Path. You will find perfection. You see the angels again, but now that you are perfected, they hold no fear for you. You stop, and stare at a signpost.

This one has words on it.

It points home.

You follow it, and find yourself in the time and place you left. The Path is gone. Your new perfection, and any other changes you have acquired along the way, remain. You may find them helpful in solving the problems you left behind, if they still interest you after all this time.

If you are very, very lucky, you will never see the Path again.

[Bluelantern]

I really like this setting idea.

[Kappa]

This is an awesome setting idea.