ERode

Darkest Before the Dawn: A CYOA Magical Girl Roleplay [Completed]

Blippity bop, lotsa thoughts.

Buncha Stuff

Luck

Luck is a stat that predictably has no clear, obvious way of being applied to any other situation, especially because suffers from the fact that there’s no actual rolling done. For future cases, Luck will be the stat that gives a small bonus to every other stat when performing an action or reaction, serving as a way to improve one’s success or soften one’s failures. Your accuracy, which the CYOA defines as something based off AGI, is partially improved by your LCK, enabling you to turn a graze into a hit or something like that. Your durability, which the CYOA defines as something based off VIT, is partially improved by your LCK, with an attack just missing your vitals or whatever else. STR and MAG are also benefited by LCK.

As a mathematical representation, imagine it like this…

STR/AGI/VIT/MAG + ¼ LCK = final stat

Stat Costs

The price of raising your stats will be changed to make it easier to get stats up to 20, but more difficult afterwards. Though the shop does not reflect that change yet, it’ll happen soon enough.

1-20: 1 Gold OR 4 Silver OR 16 Bronze
21-30: 2 Gold OR 8 Silver OR 32 Bronze
31-40: 4 Gold OR 16 Silver OR 64 Bronze

These numbers are based off the total of individual stats, taking into consideration the bevy of bonus stats one would get from perks, specializations, benefits, powers, and weapons.

Perk Bonuses

Every Perk, except for Monstrous Metamorphosis, now grants a +1 to a stat. Please go through the list below and input changes where necessary. This is largely to bridge some of the gap between monster girls and other girls, who already benefit from having access to three whole other tables of perks, as well as some hella potent mutations.

Combat Perks

+1 MAG, Mystic Artifact
+1 VIT or MAG, Enhanced Transformation
+1 VIT, Disguise Artifact
+1 LCK, Hammerspace Handbag
+1 VIT or MAG, Healing Artifact
+1 AGI or MAG, Wings
+1 MAG, Purification Artifact
+1 LCK, Awareness
+1 STR or MAG, Power Artifact

Support Perks

+1 LCK, Interdimensional Tourist
+1 STR, AGI, or VIT, Training
+1 LCK, Interdimensional Home
+1 AGI, Incognito
+1 VIT, Environmental Sealing
+1 AGI or LCK, Get Out of Jail
+1 AGI or MAG, Big Damn Hero
+1 LCK, Absolute Direction
+1 LCK, Big Backpack
+1 STR, AGI or VIT, Natural Aging
+1 MAG, Overcity Shift
+1 LCK, Money
+1 Any, Familiar
+1 VIT or MAG, Soul Jar
+1 MAG, Eternal Style
+1 LCK, Fake Parents

Red Perks

+1 Any, Big Friend
+1 LCK, Patron Interference
+1 VIT or MAG, Fix-It Band Aids
+1 MAG, Memory Link
+1 STR or MAG, Leitmotif
+1 AGI or VIT, Transfiguration
+1 LCK, Watcher
+1 MAG, Mirror Move
+1 LCK, Snapshots

Payment

Payment in magical coins will work this way for all events, including the Rave/Cindy shebang. At the end of the event, all participants will receive equal rewards, determined by the GM. Afterwards, the GMs will determine whether or not they’ve progressed their Patron’s three overarching goals. If they have, they will receive additional coinage reflecting that.

An example of overarching goals is this:

Ebon Mint
Beat Up Rival Organizations: Low Reward
Fulfill Mission Objectives: Medium Reward
Recruit New Magical: High Reward

Each of these goals must be pursued separately. If, for example, the mission objective is to recruit a new magical girl, you’ll receive only the ‘mission objective’ reward if you do not then recruit another girl outside the parameters of the mission. Otherwise, however, it is definitely possible to obtain all the goals of your Patron and receive a significant payout at the end of events. GMs will be setting the overarching goals of Beacon and Ebon Mint. Leaders of player organizations can set the overarching goals of their own organization, under the caveat that they cannot pay themselves. Magical girls beholden to a singular patron, whether it be Horror, Deity, Lesser Force, or Puchuu, can set their Patron’s overarching goals.

The more specific or difficult to achieve a goal is, the higher the payout.

The Payment Benefit doubles your rewards from progressing Patron goals. The Empty Pockets Drawback halves your rewards from progressing Patron goals. If you happen to be beholden to multiple Patrons or Organizations, you only receive the Payment/Empty Pockets modifiers for one set of goals, which should be clarified in your sheet, and must choose which set of goals you’ll want to receive rewards from at the start of an event.

Solo girls do not get bonus rewards unless they are working for someone else's Patron/Organization at the start of an event.

Headers

Everyone has a lotta shit on their sheets that GMs can’t memorize. For future posts, please include a header that contains the character’s stats, powers, perks, specializations, mutations, benefits, and drawbacks. We just need the name, not the paragraph or so of detail. Hopefully, this will reduce the amount of times a shapeshifter slips past the detection of 3 Third Eye girls, and similarly reduce incidents where someone is killed when they’re literally unable to die.

Try to get these changes in ASAP. Once there's a revised count on stats and everyone has established reward goals for their Patrons/Organizations, the GMs will work on paying people and revising prices in the shop to hopefully make everything more affordable. If you have any questions, drop 'em in the OOC too.

There will probably also be a timeline that exists where we get rulings done on how buffs work.

Darkest Before the Dawn: A CYOA Magical Girl Roleplay [Completed]

_{@BrokenPromise@Ariamis}

Askefye stared at Su Fang even more intently than before, her scattered brain plucking fragments of the too-long talk the dragon girl had ejected out of her mouth. Beacon bad. Ascendancy badder. Washboard good? Psh, washboard trash. Who was Justine and why did she matter? Didn’t matter, really. Probably be old news after a couple more weeks. Whatever. Meetings. Ugh. Bureaucracy was even more ugh.

But…food was still food.

“Askefye,” she said, pointing at herself. “And sparring’s boring. I’ll go to the meeting though. But we’re doing all-you-can-eat, and you’re paying.”

If the meeting went to shit, she could at least properly kill that washboard, anyhow. Blow her up, as well as the room they’ll be meeting in, as well as the building the room is in, and hell, may as well blow up the crapsack city of Penrose too. Maybe Aria had a new bomb in stock…

With more disjointed schemes pingponging through her skull-frame, the fire spirit flew off again, this time at a slower pace for the others to follow comfortably.

Unless they didn’t follow.

In which case she was definitely bringing a radioactive smoke bomb to the meeting.

Cacophony Concord

The melee quickly became both brutal and confusing.

As Lugh dropped away, he felt a light thump against his lower stomach, as the kappa slammed their knee into his torso. For a moment, there was some sensory dissonance, seeing the slimy creature’s knee pressed so deep into his body and yet not registering it at all as actual pain. His health though, did reflect that change, 7 points of damage inflicted by that unarmed strike. He would survive, that was for certain, but it was still worrisome that the creature before him, manlet or not, could even inflict damage upon him through Lugh’s crazy END.

If he simply held on, threatening with his blades in his hands, perhaps Magpie would have been able to score a clean hit. Instead, however, Lugh abandoned his weapons, and became an afterthought to the kappa’s mind. As polished steel thumped into the ground and the warrior went to reciprocate the grapple properly, he noticed something.

Those were some hella thick neck muscles that the manlet was sporting!

Dropping their own spear, the grappler kappa twisted their body, pivoting to face the same side as Lugh who was already unbalanced due to his strange posture. Magpie, rushing in with a wild haymaker, suddenly didn’t have much of a target at all when the kappa pulled Lugh closer, preparing for an over-the-shoulder throw. To strike would be to crack Lugh’s cranium, not the kappa’s, and the brawler barely managed to stop in time!

"Get out!"

Until Klein returned favors and barreled into her from behind, inflicting 3 points of physical damage and infinite points of humiliation. It was a domino effect from there, one that Raime saw play out in slowed motion. Zoned in, he could see Magpie fall over a Lugh who was on top of the kappa, before Klein’s inertia carried him onto the other two adventurers as well. There was a split second where they all flopped onto each other, supported by the surprisingly strong kappa on the bottom, before that slippery river-monster sprung out from underneath, and they all fell into a disorderly heap. With foes prone and weapons scattered, the kappa grabbed for the closest weapon available, Lugh’s wakizashi, and it was then that Raime’s bolt was fired, causing the creature to hop back, a crossbow bolt vibrating on the ground where their leg was moments ago.

Of course, where one kappa was unarmed, another was certainly ready to steal some kills. Having spent most of his time hopping to and fro, evading Ari’s surprisingly well-aimed stones, the spear kappa saw a golden opportunity amongst the heap of Immortals. With a squawk of ‘fuck yea, three in one’, the turtle rushed forwards, thrusting its spear into Klein’s back and inflicting a hefty 19 points of damage as the spear dug deep. For the poor 40% pain player, the experience was as if someone stabbed him with a pencil with all their might, his virtual muscles flaring up in pain. That wasn’t all though! The kappa’s muscles tautened, feet pushing into the dirt, as they prepared to thrust in even deeper, hopefully to skewer Klein and stab into the second Immortal layer: Magpie.

"Pieprzyć twoją matkę!"

Amulak felt a burning in his veins, something warming up beyond just his blood as an incomprehensible exhilaration filled him up until he was like a balloon about to burst. Motes of energy manifested around him, before swirling into the palm of his outstretched hand, and with a flash of light, a recoil that he felt through his whole body, a magical bolt shot out, hitting the spear kappa right in the shoulder and sending them spinning away from Klein, Magpie, and Lugh. A solid hit!

But as the kappa reoriented himself, eyes narrowed in frustration and anger, blood dripping from both his spear and his shoulder, Amulak knew too, that he was most certainly on the top of the river-manlet’s hitlist now.

Which was why it was definitely a smart, savvy tactical decision to have one melee specialist, in this case Ames, stay in the backline!

From Oubliette to Oublioth [R.I.P]

Yeah, don't think I'll be able to get a post up this week. Brain's going no places, so just arrange for Cecilia to follow whoever wherever.

Cacophony Concord

Lugh's intent was read, and his body filled with more might than ever before. The katana shot out of his sheathe with such force that the wind itself moved, the hairs of the leftside kappa being blown back. Blade met haft forcefully, and even with two hands reinforcing it, the kappa's spear was knocked astray, giving Lugh opportunity to close in further. But close range too, was the expertise of a kappa. They only wanted two things in life after all, cucumbers and sumo wrestling. With the dark-haired warrior too close for the spear, the kappa readily moved in as well. The green beast sprung forward on webbed feet, grabbing Lugh's left wrist and arresting the wakizaki's movement before it could cleave into the skull. They struggled for a moment, both at too close of a range to use their main weapons, before the kappa utilized an ancient sumo wrestling technique.

A powerful knee to the groin, using all the frog-like springness in its body in an effort to make the Immortal Infertile.

Cacophony Concord

After many mishaps and misgivings, the group of Discord buddies, who may or may not be seriously reconsidering their buddyhood, congregated once more at the West Gate. Magpie, though still suffering from getting absolutely tossed to the curb by a player that got sick of her disruptive shit, looked to be the best out of all of them, sporting a non-beginner class and an HP bar that still had 80 left. Ames, though not in the possession of any glorious magical powers himself, did, due to Krizanteme’s abrupt log-off, find himself in possession of not one, but two of Fa Trung’s Talismans. Lugh may be the tankiest fellow around and may possess actual weapons, while Raiman had a slick new crossbow and knew where one could exchange precious ores for actual currency, but Ames was swole and was really feeling the effects of having +10 to all her stats. There was a spring in his step, a sureness in his balance, a sturdiness in his gait. Weaponless though he may be, the red-haired warrior felt confident going out into the monster-infested wilderness.

The moment they took a step out of the West Gate, they all heard a ping in the back of their heads. A screen appeared before their eyes, the contents different for each player.

Ames

Weapon Proficiency LVL 1 _{Increase proficiency with all weapons.}
Power Attack _{Actively consume SP while preparing for an attack; unleash for increased damage on attack.}

Amulak

Mana Control LVL 1 _{MP cost and damage of spells can be increased or decreased by 20%.}
Magic Bolt _{Fire a concussive blast of mana towards a single target. Requires a three word chant.}

Lugh

Weapon Proficiency LVL 1 _{Increase proficiency with all weapons.}
Power Attack _{Actively consume SP while preparing for an attack; unleash for increased damage on attack.}

Magpie

Improvised Weapon Proficiency LVL 1 _{Set equipped weapon’s damage bonus to ½ STR if damage bonus is less than ½ STR.}
The [Magpie] Special _{Swing wide for a powerful, but inaccurate whallop.}

Raiman

Ranged Weapon Proficiency LVL 1 _{Increase proficiency with ranged weapons.}
Zoned In _{Increase AGI by 20%, passively consuming SP.}

Naturally, without having selected a class, neither Klein nor Ari had the same benefit. Whether that would be an extremely detrimental thing or merely a temporary setback was yet to be seen.

Regardless, with skills now understood, and at least two of the party members armed with proper weapons, the group of seven marched off, following the beaten dirt roads that extended out from Nyu-Taro before spotting the familiar sight of other players going up and down the Pearl Bloom River, farming all sorts of monsters. The waters were fresh and sparkling, though the blood of slain beasts made it a bit murky, while the ‘pearls’ that bloomed within the river appeared to be clusters of alabaster lotus buds, which extended out from the riverbank towards the center. It would have been a pretty place for a picnic, if not for the amount of Immortals going around killing everything they could find. Close to Nyu-Taro, the population density was a bit intense and friendly fire seemed rampant, but the further down the river they trekked, the less Immortals there were, until finally, at a wide bend of the river, the party found themselves relatively alone.

It was here that they spotted their first unclaimed prey.

Amongst the reeds, two green, humanoid creatures, sporting turtle shells on their backs and a bone-like plate on their crown, stared at the party with dead, fish-like eyes. Lugh and Ari, connoisseurs of anime, would know what they were: kappa. Rudimentary spears were in their hands, and their beaked mouths were filled with an abundance of small, tiny teeth. The creatures didn’t lash out or charge though. After a moment of observation from both sides, the creatures grinned, then smugly stepped out from the reeds, approaching the party with the menace of someone who can’t beat you up without getting closer.

Real cocky, honestly, when they were only five feet tall.

Darkest Before the Dawn: A CYOA Magical Girl Roleplay [Completed]

_{@Crusader Lord@Ariamis@BrokenPromise@PlatinumSkink}

If it was just a book…

Amaryllis could feel herself fading away. The situation hadn’t been nearly so dire as she expected, and now, even the vestiges of her magical energy were being pulled, teased away by that invisible barrier constructing itself over Penrose. Though her specialty still laid in physical combat, her transformation still relied on magic. Magic that was seeping away, grains of stardust between splayed fingers. Her Sword thrummed, knowing that she had no leeway to show mercy this time, but the Knight of Rose stayed where she was.

Just a book. What was the book?

But the world continued to turn, even for the girl who could chain down space itself. Nuncio arrived, Sammy in tow. The girl was still zoned out, and the swordswoman flashed a grim smile. More people to protect. What was the play here? The Mint Agent before her summoned beasts, but summoners were, in the magical girl world at least, rarely weaker than their minions. Amaryllis tunneled into herself, gathering up what remained. Could she behead him in a singular blow? The monstrosity beneath her skin writhed; if she pulled the trigger now, she wouldn’t be able to restrain herself afterwards.

Nuncio stepped in front. Amaryllis didn’t have a straight shot. He handed over the book, was kneed in the process, and then shouted for them all to escape.

“Hah.”

A laugh, not at the feline mafioso’s bravado, but at the chain of events that occurred instead. Golden barriers, lighting up the dark interiors of the warehouse. A storm of dark chains, batting away the Vermin Killer’s swarm of wolverines. Rosa, transformed, leaping towards the agent with murderous intent. Amaryllis would have been fine with running, would have been fine just making sure Mariette and Sammy got out alright, but now?

She couldn’t let Sophia down, could she? A whole season’s worth of monster-slaying and Horror-stomping, and Amaryllis was still the girl who valued what friends she had, who’d do a whole buncha stupid things for them.

Stupid, like continuing the fight.

Stupid, like making an enemy of the Mint.

Stupid, like saddling Mariette with more problems.

Amaryllis dug deep into the husk of her mana font, breathed in, watched the writhing of the chains and the swarming of the beasts. Her Sword rattled, and she promised too, that they would hunt for many moons after this, that she would build it a mountain of monster corpses for the leniency it had shown today, the mercy it allowed her to enact.

A blade formed in her palm, a sliver from which silver thread extended.

She sighted her target. She flexed her hand back. She threw.

A line of moonlight shot through the links of Sophia’s chains, the gaps of a wolverine’s claws, shooting towards Nuncio’s back. If it struck, there was only one thing Amaryllis needed to do.

Use her ridiculous strength to sling him after Sammy, Eli and Mariette.

_{@BrokenPromise}

That was a Skeleton Key? No...that was a skeleton key! Myria stared at her taxi fare, for a moment absolutely incensed. Her eyes burned black and her magic, still plentiful from a whole night of really doing nothing, flared up, digging into the resentment of the dead.

Then Fine dumped a bucket of ice water over her head.

"C'mon, kiddo," the silver-haired dame said, an oddly kind smile on her face. "Let's get going."

Myria narrowed her eyes further, then shook her head from side to side like a wet dog. Finally, she let out a deep sigh and dropped her new skeleton key into her Hammerspace. At least, now that she was fully drenched, no one would think that she pissed herself a half hour ago. Not that she did. Nope. Not at all. Her nose wrinkled, she sneezed, and then the dark magical girl nodded.

Soon, the truck, its bumper still warped from impacting Evira, disappeared into the streets of Penrose.

_{@BrokenPromise@Ariamis}

Talk? There had been plenty of time to talk back then, but who talked? No one!

…

Though she supposed that races with no clear goal and no piranha plants did get pretty old after a while. Not like Askefye could watch Su fly while she did too, so whatever fancy effects the girl did was lost on her. And competitions were so meaninglessly orderly too. The flaming girl slowed, white jets gradating to a warm orange as she spun around. If she didn’t like the talk, she could just go again. If she really didn’t like the talk, she could give them a fistful of fingerbones to their foreheads.

“Talk then,” Askefye said, still a bit petulant. “Talkity talk tock.”

World Beyond the Lexicon

Out of a single digit sample size.

Darkest Before the Dawn: A CYOA Magical Girl Roleplay [Completed]

Thought I may as well drop this here too. This is the stat count that Flame collected some while back, and should still be relevant currently.

Stat Data

Penny: 67
Thalia: 60
Eliza: 58
Katelyn: 57
Amaryllis: 54
Eden: 54
Sophia: 53
Serenity: 51
Janet: 51
Lily: 50
Alicia: 49
Alex: 48
Jenna: 47
Shane: 45
Trixy: 44
Hilaria: 44
Shion: 43
Su: 43 (or 47, depends on which version of AGI is correct)
Sakura: 43
Summer: 42
Viva: 42
Valentine: 42
Emily: 41
Reaver: 41
Anaya: 40
Celia: 39
Mariette: 37
Silhouette: 37
Annabelle: 37
Tetrad: 36
Deni: 33
Connie: 33

Around 41 to 45 is where the plateau seems to be. Dina is at 46, Charles is at 45. There's still a relatively gradual increase over all though, with only Penny being the outlier, featuring a jump in stats of seven (which could be much higher if she had spent her coinage solely on stat-raising).

An end of season reward is worth 4 stats, while one can be expected to earn another 3-4 stats based off events alone.

Past the 50-stat mark, there are no S3 characters, outside of Eden, who exist there. Note, of course, that she used her Ruby Coin (gifted from a S2 character) to gain a third specialization. Psychic gives you 4 stats, so she broke even after accounting for the -4 in stats you get from that stuff. At base then, Eden would still have 53 in stats, indicating that you could start off with fairly high stats fairly easily.

If we ignore Eden's existence, I would be comfortable with talking to the other GMs about setting a stat cap at 50. Afterwards, perhaps at the end of every season, everyone's statcap is raised by a minimum of 4 (accounting only for the End of Season reward) or a maximum of 8 (accounting also for the coinage you'd get from other stuff). Or perhaps some number inbetween.

There are other catchup mechanisms I have in mind for newer players, such as the ability to refuse the stat cap increase for extra coinage (though that sounds easily abusable) but I'll wait on everyone else's thoughts on the subject first.

World Beyond the Lexicon

_{@Matsuri@Blu@Dezuel@metanoia@Relin}

Well, that was exciting!

Swept up by the maelstrom of Lady Blumenthal's accelerated morning ritual, Kress simply went with the flow, spending the time to pack up her breakfast into a container for future fooding before she practically dragged him to Genelogia Station. It wasn't the first time he had ridden a carriage, but it was certainly the first time he had ridden a public one, and the differences in decor and mannerism was quite interesting. Though his dormmate may have busied herself with becoming even more presentable than she already was, Kress had popped out his sketchbook instead, scribbling down notes, both written and drawn, on the strange circumstances around them. Not like worry about the time would make the horses go any faster...though Lady Blumenthal certainly tried.

They arrived a step behind Sekhandur, who looked about as unflappable as always. Ty was there as well, and Kiara too! Honestly, considering how Professor Nyx had eradicated most of the class on day one (though, of course, it was more as if they were relocated) and how he didn't even bother to pretend Misaiya existed during homeroom on that same day, Kress had thought they were going to be left behind completely. It was nice to see, really, that there was some niceness in the professor after all. Tough love, was it? Avalice Academy brought many experiences and this was certainly one of them. Leaving Lady Blumenthal to excuse herself first, Kress was perfectly willing to wait his turn...until Caelum spoke up.

Two weeks had been plenty of time to understand how refined his classmates' speech was, and amongst them, Caelum was decidedly placed upon the same category of Ty, though perhaps he was worse in that he did so unintentionally. The blue-haired youth's eyes widened slightly, pupils dilating as he read the warrior's intention before everything was vocalized, and in that moment, Kress spoke up, hoping to cover up what fire-fuelling nicknames his classmate was about to speak out.

"Ah, I stayed behind to wake Lady Blumenthal up, because I noticed that she wasn't up when she usually was," he said, all smiles. "Ty, you went ahead of us to explain the circumstances of our tardiness to Professor Nyx, right?" Hopefully Ty'd pick up the white lie from there. Certainly sounded better than the past where Ty left the dorm before any of them even woke up.

There were others, of course, who had more...scandalous theories. Kress flushed a bit at the implications that Mandi leveled upon the two. Lady Blumenthal may be a lovely individual, goal-driven and hard-working almost to a fault, but to imagine a situation where they'd have coupled in a mere two weeks? Weren't most meaningful romances something that culminated in a chaste kiss after a year or two of cordial friendship? Kress rubbed his ear, feeling how hot it was, and then shook his head.

"No, no, Mandi. Lady Blumenthal was just up late studying...protective spellcrafts, was it? Theories and Practicums on the Manifestation of Static Resistance?"

Didn't take a genius to read the spines of all those library books she brought in, after all.