BBeast

Sanctuary

Zachary walked into the old grocery, bracing himself for the smell. He would have considered clearing it out if the smell didn't serve as a likely deterrent for passers-by. For now he would just have to bear it. At least it wasn't as bad as the supermarket. Entering the back room he found that the skyway unit and shopping trolley were still there, to his relief (although not his surprise). He placed down his heavy bag on the ground and unloaded what he wouldn't need to move the carriage he had found. Out came most of his tools and food, the textbook on endocrinology, cores, and also the plasma rifle. He kept a few choice tools- plasma cutter, crowbar, hammer- a small portion of food and water, and his wind cannon. No point in being defenceless.

Why don't you take the plasma rifle? came the voice of Kaa'is, ever ready to criticise and stir doubt.

"I'm not used to it," Zachary replied, "It'll be a liability."

Ready, he went outside and approached the pile-up. As always, it stood pretty tall, and this time he could easily spot the carriage he wanted. But before he started moving it he would need rollers. Any long rod-shaped object would do, although whatever he chose they should all be of similar diameter. Taking a short look at the pile, he decided that light-posts would be good, as there were plenty of them and they are all of standard size. So he took his plasma cutter out and began preparing them. He needed to cut off the top and bottom of each light-post, leaving just the straight rod-like middle. He found that they were heavy, so he cut them in half to reduce their mass, at the cost of reduced length and as such a reduced margin for error when it came time for the move. He laboured for several hours, eventually managing to prepare and position ten rollers. He had gone through water faster than expected, so he had been forced to return to the abandoned grocery part way through to grab some more, along with grabbing a spare fire and lightning core for the plasma cutter.

Now he leaned against the carriage he wanted to move and pondered how he would go about executing the next step of his plan. He would have to shift the carriage about another meter before it would be free, but to do that he would need to dislodge it from the surrounding wreckage, which would be no easy feat. He started on it anyway, using his crowbar, hammer and powers to shift aside rubble on either side of the carriage by just a few centimetres, which is not much but enough to loosen the pile's grip on the carriage. The harder part would be getting it out from the wreckage on top of it, as that pressed down on the carriage with a substantial amount of mass. But as with the sides, the best approach would be one of increments. If he could shift it by a centimetre, then he could shift it by another, then another, until it was free. So he fiddled around with the crowbar, then a more substantial and longer lever he found lying around, until he found a method which allowed him to slowly push the carriage forwards.

The slow progress over the next hour was at times discouraging, but Zachary's determination to make this carriage work drove him on. Finally, he reached a tipping point and his next push freed the carriage and sent it sliding down the slope and into the path of rollers he had made. Zachary cried out in triumph as he hopped down after it.

The following part was not much easier. While pushing the carriage along the rollers was not difficult, moving the rollers at the back to the front was, as they were heavy. He made it about 30 metres before he stopped to rest and eat. While chewing his rations, he looked up to the sky to get a sense of the time. The Sun was visible overhead through the aerial barrier, meaning it was around midday. Having finished his meal and caught his breath he resumed his task, going through the tiring sequence of pushing the carriage forwards a metre, moving a roller from behind to the front, then pushing the carriage again. It took a lot of straining and sweat, but eventually, sometime in the afternoon, Zachary rolled the carriage into the grocers and got it into the back room. Exhausted, he slumped down on a chair which was in the room.

Finally done! That was a lot of work, I must say, Kaa'is said, If we had more power it would have been much easier.

"Ah, shut up," Zachary responded.

Although the carriage was inside, he still had one final step to do. He needed to get rid of the rollers, because they quite obviously pointed to where he was working. Fortunately, clearing those away was easy, as all he had to do was roll them over to the other side of the street. Finally finished, Zachary allowed himself to rest and started reading the textbook he had borrowed under the light of his torch, which he turned into a lamp by removing the top cover.

Dungeon Keepers

Thank you for joining, Dawnon. We need more people. You won't be able to know where everyone else is simply by sitting around in the Void, and we'd like further information about your Keeper in the coming posts, but otherwise it was a reasonable entry, giving us a good look at the basic character of your Keeper.

We haven't got any Rogue Beings yet. They may come soon, probably in response to your request.

Dungeon Keepers

Calvartem spent a couple of hours having his spirit work on a number of different corpses. The idea he had been working on was very simple, one of the most straight-forwards in necromancy, but he needed time to make sure it would work reliably. The freshly dead are easy to resurrect as they still have most of their muscles, but a disjointed skeleton takes a lot more work, requiring necromantic energies to replace its missing muscles, tendons and ligaments. The matter of having a proper connection to his will and being somewhat coordinated also takes extra time, but now the first being to form his undead hordes was ready.

Calvartem's spirit returned to his skeletal body where his ethereal eyes saw the creatures before him. Three corpses stood before him, all in various states of decay. One still mostly resembled a human, just with dry wrinkled skin and little hair. One was rotten, its flesh falling apart but still mostly attached. The last was ancient, nothing but a skeleton with a few scraps of shrivelled dried flesh which were missed by the process of decay. All of them stood with slumped posture, looking around, their arms dangling. The occasional faint moan or growl came from the first two, although the third was silent on account of the absence of lungs. The one feature which made them all stand out was that their eyes glowed faintly with black fire, revealing Calvartem's link to them.

These three standing corpses represented the Necromancer's Walkers. Little more than a resurrected corpse, these zombies would form the backbone of Calvartem's hordes due to their ease of summoning and low drain on his power. The Necromancer would be able to summon these Walkers on command, creating them from any corpse lying around or buried in the ground, then send them back to the ground when he was done.

"This is just the beginning," Calvartem announced, although the Walkers paid little attention, "We swarm upon the town immediately, so I will control this region. Then we expand." Walking forwards, he struck the ground with his staff and tendrils of black fire spread from that point to the coffins lining the walls. After a few seconds the coffins rattled and moved until more zombies broke their way out, following behind Calvartem. To the two imps guarding the door, he commanded, "Open the door." The imps responded swiftly. They had found a mechanism to open the door and the now operated it, the stone slab grinding away, letting the moonlight flood into the chamber.

When the door was fully open Calvartem stepped through and stood two meters in front of it, looking at the town. It looked like a peaceful town. They probably only had a sheriff and deputy, no army or guard force or night watch. It didn't even have walls. They were defenceless against this undead assault which would strike them while they slept, and that was exactly how Calvartem liked it. His Walkers need no commands, for they knew what to do- swarm through the town and kill every living being in sight. The Walkers poured out of the dark crypt behind him, all 40 of them, and limped and lunged into the village beyond.



Walker - First minion. Little more than a resurrected corpse, these zombies form the backbone of Calvartem's hordes due to their ease of summoning and low drain on his power. Their eyes glow with black fire. The Necromancer is able to summon these Walkers on command, creating them from any corpse lying around or buried in the ground, then send them back to the ground when he is done.

Dungeon Keepers

@Trapezoid, asking questions is good. It shows that you're thinking. Yes, you may build a construct as soon as you like. If you really wanted to you could make a construct before your first creature, although that's hardly conventional.
Typically, a Construct is a beefed up version of the corresponding creature, although you can make it as whatever you want (with-in reason).

@Jay, that is a very fitting theme and art. I'm yet to find a suitable theme for Calvartem.

Dungeon Keepers

@Jay, This early the creation of a new creature only takes a few posts, so waiting is hardly a major problem. The doing other stuff is for later when you'll be waiting a page to get your latest and greatest creation.
Now that I think about it, unless our cohort grows, it may be necessary to remove the restriction on the posts not being your own. But we'll see how it goes.

@Cyclone, I think being around the same city would be interesting. Just probably not on the same side of the city. If you were maybe North or West of Paterdomus that would be fine without being uncomfortably close.

Dungeon Keepers

The posts that don't count are those you post. It does not matter who you are posting as. Later, if the pace slows down too much, we might make exceptions in order to prevent you from being locked doing nothing, but we'll have to do that on a case by case basis. This post timing system is important as it prevents you from, say, building an army of constructs or designing super-high-level minions.

If we do lift the restriction on it being only other people's posts, then we'd have to add a clause where double-triple-etc posts don't count. But at present we have no cause to make such a modification.

P.S. I would like to add that while you are creating a creature you are not limited to doing nothing. Although your Keeper is tied up, your forces are not. Your forces, presumably led by a Construct or two, can still go out and do things.

Sanctuary

That was a fair chunk of downtime.

Dungeon Keepers

Dr Trapezoid, you gave the coordinates of your dungeon as N50W05, which puts it due east of Altearx and in the northern end of the mountain range. On the other hand, you described its location as being in the tundra north east of Altearx. Which one is it? In terms of terrain the only practical difference is that one is hillier than the other.

Jay, you've given latitude, but not longitude. When you decide on longitude, don't forget to tell me.

Once everyone has established their dungeons and locations I can then update the map.

Dungeon Keepers

It was the dead of night and the moon cast its faint silvery glow on a small village somewhere south of Paterdomus, in the foothills of the Hindrun Ranges. In the town was a small church, and next to it was the sealed stone entrance into an underground crypt. Inside the crypt was total darkness, but if it wasn't dark one would see coffins stacked efficiently into stone shelves in the walls with engravings beneath them detailing the name, date of birth, date of death and perhaps a little note about family or community contributions of each person in each coffin. The crypt was set out with a 30 meter long corridor which branched every 5 meters, giving more room to stack coffins. For such a small town it was no small crypt, so it must have been around for a very long time. It was evident that it had been extended numerous times since its initial development, as the stonework differed in quality and wear from section to section. Dust lightly coated most of the place, but not all of it as it becomes unsettled whenever a new body is added or someone comes to check on their deceased relative. There was also the obligatory cobwebs, present in small quantities. At the far end of the hallway was a rather ornate tomb, which clearly belonged to someone who had been held in great regard by the people of the town. Whoever lay in there had been there for a very long time.

Thud

The muffled noise of something hitting stone came from within the tomb at the end of the crypt.

Thud

Dust on the lid of the tomb jumped as it shuddered.

Thud

A light sprinkling of dust fell from the edges of nearby coffins.

Thud!

More dust scattered as the tomb began to succumb to the strain.

Crack!

The stone lid of the tomb split apart as a skeletal hand broke its way through. The hand gripped the edge of the tomb and pulled itself out, along with a whole skeleton. The flesh of the corpse had long rotted away, leaving only rot-grey bones. An ancient robe dressed the skeleton, so old it looked ready to crumble to dust at the slightest breeze. The robe revealed that the man had probably been a wizard when he was alive, a hypothesis confirmed when the skeleton reached into the tomb and pulled out an engraved wooden staff which had been buried with him. Then there was the eyes, or eye sockets. Instead of being empty holes in the skull, the eyes of this skeleton was ablaze with a black, shadowy fire which cast no light. The face, made entirely of bone, was locked in an eternal skeletal grin, as there was no flesh to make expressions with.

The skeleton stood and looked around the crypt. The darkness did not inhibit his vision. On the contrary, he felt right at home, in the darkness among the dead. The skeleton struck the cold stone floor with the base of his staff and the black flame burst forth from that point for a moment. A few seconds later dark figures rose from the floor, although they would be indistinguishable from the darkness of the crypt to the human eye. When they finished rising there were four shadowy apparitions standing before the skeleton, no taller than three feet, and each was in the shape of an imp. However, they had no features, for they were merely ghostly shadows, made from black flame like that in the skeleton's eyes.

A hollow, inhuman voice resonated from within the skeleton. "I am Calvartem the Necromancer. Turn this tomb into a throne fit for me so I may have a place to call my Heart."

The imps, voiceless, nodded and glided towards the tomb. In their ghostly hands ghostly tools materialised, but the tools were more than able to chisel away the stone. As the imps chipped away, Calvartem walked slowly through the crypt, inspecting the coffins and looking at the bodies within. Although the prior occupant of this body may have known some of the names, that prior occupant was no more so he knew not and cared not of the people of this town other than their potential as an army or a threat. His bony feet clicked on the stone floor, the sounds echoing around the crypt with its hard stone walls. After a while of patient waiting the chiselling stopped and the crypt was suddenly quieter, signalling that the imps had finished their work. Calvartem turned and looked upon his new throne. It was stone, which would make it uncomfortable for any creature of flesh, but that did not matter to the Necromancer. The armrests and the headrest was decorated with a carved bone motif- an impressive addition in such a short period of time.

Calvartem walked towards the throne and sat down approvingly. Then, at a wave of his hand, two of the four imps simply dissolved into the darkness from which they came. To the remaining two imps he commanded, "Guard the entrance. Make sure I am not disturbed at any cost." The imps simply went off and did as they were told, while the Necromancer sat and released his spirit from the bounds of his body. There he began designing and creating the first being which would be part of his undead horde.


First minion: 0/3

Calvartem the Necromancer- a Keeper, inhabiting the skeleton of a long-dead wizard, complete with old robes and wooden staff. His eyes burn with a light-less black fire.

Dungeon Keepers

Yes, Dr Trapezoid's first creature would be done now.

Overall we have some very good introductions.