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So I am not gonna update a ton, but a) I'll update every night, and b) I'll start to include 'default' options once I get rolling so even if turnout is low, I'm not gonna get deadlocked.

----


You are an eskimo, a man (or woman?) of the very cold land.

As silly as it is in this day and age, you have decided to embark upon a quest of discovery and maturity. You're a week and change after you're 18th birthday, and you're going to spend a month in the wilderness. Sorta like snow jesus.

You've got your mecha, kind of a low budget model, your basic teenagers hand me down ride, and whatever else you thought of.

Even today, alaskan landscape isn't all that built up, it shouldn't be too hard to find some quiet space and prove to the city folk that you know how not to freeze to death for extended amounts of time.


> What kind of mecha?
> Whatever else you thought of?
> Who are you?
> A non-stupid name. Pun name would be acceptable, though.

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Defaults if ya'll don't vote. Vote's open 'till tomorrow night.
> What kind of mecha?
Motorcyle that turns into a lion.
> Who are you?
Totally zen dude who zones out on the beauty of nature.
> A non-stupid name. Pun name would be acceptable, though.
Caramel Dream.
I have terrible taste in humor and names. Help me. Please. x_x

>>1321959
> What kind of mecha?
Unicycle that turns into a snake
> Whatever else you thought of?
> Who are you?
Conservative Inuit
> A non-stupid name. Pun name would be acceptable, though.
John Smith

> What kind of mecha?
Backpack that turns into a pair of legs and abdomen of a roughly 20 foot mech

> Whatever else you thought of?
Brother or sister with a backpack that changes into the chest head and arms of the same robot.
He/she has to get on your shoulders for the full robot to form. Otherwise its just you with big legs / the brother/sister a a upper body laying on the ground.

> Who are you?
Some guy with a neat backpack

> A non-stupid name. Pun name would be acceptable, though.

Hailrold McChillin
&
Icy McChillin

Oh holy cow I forgot about april fools. Still gonna update tonight.
It's ridonk how much katara/zuko shipping comes up when trying to find good images.

Ties I'll choose one, merge, or roll dice to pick between at my discretion.
Big Leg mecha seems really goofy w/o the top, I could have fun with that.

Get shitfaced on homemade booze, beat the shit out your wife, and take a nap

>>1321959
>>1322130
Support, we may have budget models but it's a force to be reckoned with if we can be bothered to be at the same place at the same time!

>>1322130
>>1323769
Which is the mc and which isn't? Harilrold or Icy?

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The busy part of the day's cleared up, I'll update probably in an hour or two once the aftershock cleared.

>>1324359
>>1325869
>>1322130
Uh, good question. I guess that was up to whatever once we got the general choice.
I'll vote for Hailrold McChillin.
>>1323445
Imagine the shenanigans if we're ever separated!

called, writing

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>>1321959
>> What kind of mecha?
A GIANT BIPED BACKPACK MECHA. You've got the bottom half, BIG LEGS.

>> Whatever else you thought of?
Your dead^C^C^C^C dear sister, who's not with you, has the top part of your GIANT mecha. You've got the bottom part in a transformable backpack, though.

>> Who are you?
Conservative Inuit w/a neat backpack.

>> A non-stupid name. Pun name would be acceptable, though.
Icy McChillin. Cooool.


---

You trek the first part by small foot, not wanting to get muddy robot footprints all over. But once you're out of town, you pop open BIG LEGS, and take the rest at a running pace.

The dull, THUMP THUMP, THUMPTHUMP, of the rubberized toes atop the heavy reinforced steel frame of the legs echoes across the thin snow and large, quiet, runs of thick ice.

Perhaps two hours later, you can't see the city at all anymore.

The aurora above flickers, even in the dim daylight, and you stop and consider.

For the first time a long time, your time is /yours/. No errands or school or family or whatever. It's part of the reason yu did this, but the sudden reality of it is a bit ... enlightening.

Heh. Getting more wisdom already.

> Go fishing? Ice fishing's pretty cool.
> Go hunting? Even if the local wildlife is ... kind of terrifying, thats part of why you're here.
> Go exploring! There's maybe something cool, or even undiscovered!
> Other?

Same deal as before, I'll update tomorrow night. I'll try to be around to answer questions in the interim, but no promises.

>>1326662
>>1326682
Did our sister die or is this just a joke because she might as well be without mecha legs to walk around with?
>Check to make sure gear is still good.
>Go exploring! There's maybe something cool, or even undiscovered!
Let's try not ending up like the Antarctic explorer expeditions while we're at it.

>>1326712
Nah, she's not dead. Maybe. Buuut she's not with you on your MANLY WISDOM JOURNEY. Yet, maybe?
She might come up later, might not. DESU, I'm not sure where this is going yet, though I have a few EVENT! ideas in mind. Still feeling out where this is going to lead.

... or not. Da World sort of fatally distracted me. Will do it first opportunity today.

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>>1326662
>>1327060
>Go exploring! There's maybe something cool, or even undiscovered!

The horizon stretches out before you. Unlimited directions, except for the ones back to town. Lacking a map except for the one printed in the sky, you set off for the least civilized direction you can see. Currently, that translates to the area with the least light pollution.

You set out at first with BIG LEGS deployed, but the steady thump-thump, thumpthump, drowns out the sounds of the surroundings, and you pack 'em up and walk on foot.

The sky is very, very pretty, but the land is largely... snow, and ice.

You're really not sure what else you were expecting.

You keep up your trek, anyways, meandering away from the obvious Knowns and looking for anything interesting.

It's nearing night; and just when you're thinking about settling down, you see it.
Two its, of interesting.

A faint, glowing crack that's just now starting to be seen in the dim, off the the west.
And the silhouette of ... a totem? You can't make out the signs or what it's supposed to be a totem of yet...
It could be benevolent - a totem spirit sighting is an incredible blessing; especially if you're on a quest. But it could also be a corrupted oil totem, and those are extremely bad news. Definitely uncool.

>Glowing crack?
>Totem Spirit?
>What. No. They're both [expletive].


Holy cow real life hits like a truck.
>'oh, it'll be like 10 minutes a day to do this, no biggie.'
>slammed by everything at once

>>1334544
>>Totem Spirit?
>>Glowing crack?
Blessings first, then spelunking or signs of civilization.
If either of them look too spooky or ominous, back away.

>>1332532
It's fine.
>>1327060
>DESU
Just wondering, what does this mean? I've seen this a few times on Reddit and multiple on 4chan and I'm not sure what it's used for in the context of anime responses.

>>1335062
it's a wordfilter; i hand typed in shorthand 'to be honest' and it autoreplaced with DESU. So.

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writing

Rolled 6, 6 = 12 (2d6)

1 = good, 2 = bad.
These are base odds, but as things go along, you might pick up the ability to pick up a stronger affiliation one way or the other.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>1336918
Or actually use the right dice. >_<

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>>1334544
>>1335062
>Totem Spirit!


You figure the glowing chasm - a dim glow, but you think it'll be brighter as the sky dims - isn't going anywhere.

The Totem Spirit, though...

You creep up on it; but along the approach, you give it up. It knows you're there, and you know it knows, and you know it's waiting anyways.

"Yo," you call out, plainly, with an open, friendly wave, as soon as you can see it more than a silhouette. It's a little unnerving, the whole area around is saturated with a frozen fog that makes seeing details difficult.

There's four segments to it, but they're all facing away from you. The middle two turn, independently, and you tense - the faces that should be there have been replaced by tortured remnants of what was once the face of a totem spirit, bleeding unending oil, crude and black, from where the eyes should be.

What little you recall of your great grandpappys stories about this come to mind - corrupted oil totem spirits come from sacred sites protected by them being drilled too deep and the natural balance of the area destroyed. 'Blind, blind to all, and angry, no longer able to tell between respectful Inuit and those who sold out to the corps.'

You wish you could remember what his warnings were about them - but it's not there and you've only got a moment to make a decision.

>Run
>Agress!
>Try and think it through and risk it's continued attention.
>Other?

>>1336973
Slow going, so:
Default option: Agress! (this may or may not be a bad idea.) Again, not a vote, but if there is no vote, this is the vote.
Seey'all tomorrow night.
(Any /qst/ vets know when I need to make a new thread instead of just continuing the old one?)

>>1336973
So is there a way to pacify the corrupted totem spirits or do we have to kill it to end its misery?

>>1337111
>(Any /qst/ vets know when I need to make a new thread instead of just continuing the old one?)
I've only been lurking for more than a month and questing for more than a week, so I can't really say.
Quests stay a long time on the board and can last up to a week after they autosage so you don't need to worry about making new threads too often.
I would say you should start making a new thread once you autosage and reach Page 9 or 10 from my personal experience. Any active quester would go for the ones with the most recent last reply than bump order. Better to run it to the ground with a higher reply count and total players for the archives too.
Of course, this is done under the standing there's roughly 3+ active players in the thread, below that I'm not so sure. I think for the first thread or 2 the same guideline still applies.
Threads autosage after roughly 3 days or 750 replies, if I recall.

>>1336973
>>1337264
>If there's a way to pacify, attempt to pacify. If not, agress.

>>1337264
Pacify? Maybe. Grandpappy might've said some stuff, might not've, but it'll take time to think through and dredge your memories of what he said.
Which is the 'think it through' option.

>>1339144
>>1336973
>>Try and think it through and risk it's continued attention.
This may either be the worst decision if it fails, or the best decision if it works. No pain, no gain from corrupted totem spirits.

update pending; writing

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>>1339286
>Try and think it through and risk it's continued attention.

It stares at you (twice). You stare back. You gotta be cool about this.

You face the the faces that are facing you; trying to figure out what they were, trying to remember what to do. You're acutely aware of the control button to engage BIG LEGS. But you hold off. Something niggling in the back of your head says no; and a moment later you recall that the corrupted oil totem spirits hate machines even more that traitors.

A third face - this one the top one - rotates around to you; only one of it's eyes is bleeding endless oil, the other is a dull, faded, avian eye of some sort. There's bits of it's face - some sort of bird. Owl? Hawk? The face is flat, just ... art, but the lone eye is /alive/.

What comes next you are not prepared for.

You mentally keel over; visions of horrors and abject failure, despair - personal and dear - ho -w - ca- -can ...

Visions hit you back and forth; viscerally, then changing to another at the speed of a car crash, just as cruel.

>Your sister; bisected by a energy field. Her upper half sustaining her just enough for her to look at you, and blame you, silently, and you can't help, she's on the wrong side...
>Yourself; sometime in the future. Setting out to sail, on a fishing boat, just like you've done every day before and after, hair greying more and more the only thing marking the days apart...

Throughout it all, your mind keeps working; grandpappy said something, something that has to work! Appeasement? Hurt it, talking, a sacrifice?

>Yourself; being kicked, on the ground. It's painful, the knife wound to the stomach, the two fingers they've cut off, and the boots despite being less painful hurt worse with demeaning humiliation...

Somehow your hands find the other control, and you shrug the backpack holding BIG LEGS off, throwing it away. The intensity dims.

>Your parents; leaving. No word, no warning, just coming back home and it's empty and locked and there's noone there, just a note that says goodbye...

"I NAME MYSELF AN INUIT!", you cry out, the phrase coming to mind, finally.

The mental onslaught stops; dimly, you realize you haven't fallen over like you thought you did, and that you're holding an ice shiv fairly close to your neck, the sharp end torwards you.

"I NAME MYSELF AN INUIT!", you cry again. "AND I NAME YOU IN KIND!" A pause. The words, the rest, what was the rest!?

The totem stares at you balefully. "I name you in kind, as an ancestor." The rest rolls off your lips, shaky, but whole.

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>>1340650

The second and third faces rotate away from you, and the bottom rotates to you. There was a face, but not anymore. It's been drawn over with the semblance of clawed feet, with eyes in the middle of the bottom of the feet. Curiously, it's an electronic sketch, not hand-painted.

That meant... it heard him. The words, were just to get it's attention; it was blind so you had to speak, and now it was deciding if it beleived him?

You chuck the ice shiv away. "I'm on a quest of discovery, as a rite of passage for manhood. Like my grandpappy did long before. Noone does them anymore, I don't know why, maybe because of creepy things like YOU just waiting for someone to try and fulfill tradition?" you level at it, angry now that the panic has passed.

It stares - perhaps less balefully? You're not sure at all, really.

You stare back; you're not sure what else to say, really, at least not yet.

And then smooth as just-frozen ice; it simply descends into the solid ice below it. The frozen fog accompanying it takes a moment to clear, but when it does, there's no sign or mark at all that it was ever there.

You idly note your hand is bleeding, even through your gloves. The ice shiv had no handle, and you were gripping it pretty tight.

Your LORE has increased to 2!

The glowing chasm the other way; it's dimming as you watch, and then it's gone. Just solid ice with a good cover of snow again.

That was pretty stressful...
>Blow it off. You're cool like that.
>Pray. You've just got to have faith, and get in touch with the rock that keeps you steady.
>Study. A challenge learned from is a challenge no more.

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>>1340654
Write-in is also an option; for the most part assume '>other?' is always there.

Yeah, there's scores, not sure what to do with them yet, but got a rough idea.

Another update tomorrow night!

>>1340654
>>Pray. You've just got to have faith, and get in touch with the rock that keeps you steady.
Pray for the totem spirits' recovery. We will find a way to redeem their wretched souls whether it be by SCIENCE or religion.
>>Study. A challenge learned from is a challenge no more.
Obtain KNAWLEDGE to acquire more fuel units!
>>1340654
>>You idly note your hand is bleeding, even through your gloves. The ice shiv had no handle, and you were gripping it pretty tight.
>Find something to disinfect bandage the wound with before it gets worse.
Don't want to die of hypothermia and blood loss, now would we?

>>1340686
Thanks for the info! Sorry for the slow responses, it took me a while to figure out what to do with the options given since I'm not familiar with settings like this.

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>>1340720
choose one, please.

>>1340720
>Thanks for the info! Sorry for the slow responses, it took me a while to figure out what to do with the options given since I'm not familiar with settings like this.

That's fine! Neither am I. <_< >_>

>>1342124
>Neither am I. <_< >_>
We can discover this setting, together?

>>1341927
>>>1340654
>>>Pray. You've just got to have faith, and get in touch with the rock that keeps you steady.
>Pray for the totem spirits' recovery. We will find a way to redeem their wretched souls whether it be by SCIENCE or religion.
Well since, you know, the corrupted totem spirit DOES seem to be under unimaginable torment, best to pay some proper consideration to them, y'know. Religion seems to have a rather real presence here, so I see nothing wrong with that here.

Called, writing.
Apparently this little bored side project is sticking around, if 'yall wanna boost signal, it should be here to refer to.

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>>1340720
>>1342124

>Pray. You've just got to have faith, and get in touch with the rock that keeps you steady.


Gathering your thoughts, you mull it over. The old ways die hard; as you've just had proven to you.

You hum a prayer to the eskimo gods, in particular, Torngasak. You pray to thank him, you pray about your hand, becuase you're pretty sure that it wasn't just your own luck that got you out of that.

You're not sure, but you pray for the spirit totem, too. You don't know enough to know if it is kinder to put it out of it's misery, or try to save it, but you put in a prayer for it, too, trusting that whomever may hear you knows best.

Something about the ice shiv catches your eye - a bit of reflective glimmer, from the stars above. You're not sure, it's only for a second, your grandpappy would know more - but was that a sign? A one-armed figurine?

The night falls; and the dark comes into full effect. More practical things, first.

You bandage up your hand as the temperature plummets (why, oh why, did you think this would be a good idea to do in the middle of winter?) and start digging with the titanium edged survival shovel; breaking up chunks of ice and making a crude pocket in the earth; a shallow bed with ice softened by snow in the bottom, and chunks of ice atop serving as a small roof and windbreaker.

Truly, how the eskimo of old did it, and it'd probably suffice. But you came prepared.

You unroll the very modern EskimoTech polar-grade sleeping bag and stick it in there, then yourself in it, arranging your backpack and bulkier belongings nearby.

And then you sleep.

At least... you try to. As brief as it was, the visions and worries inflicted upon you linger, and you lie awake.

Eventually, you do.

The dreams are only half-remembered when you awake. The penguin had finally found it's tuxedo, and BIG, you and your sisters combined mecha, had turned black because of it, and... and... the things that that made sense, gone, forgotten.

You never really recalled dreaming that vividly before.

You crawl out, and the ice shiv, is still there. Melted, slightly, (how, it's been well below freezing the entire night?) it looks even more like a one-armed person. Definitely a sign.

And... you're not alone. So much for this being a lone journey.


>What to do with the ice shiv? (write-in)

and

Who's there?
>Your sister.
>Your grandpappy.
>A cougar.
>Other? (This had better be a really good one.)

So, this is technically my 2nd quest; but the 1st was a terrible, short-lived failure that was a quick, hard lesson on do-nots. I thought this'd be super easy with all the GMing and on-and-off writing I've done, but noooo.
Feedback and criticism is welcome and encouraged.
Seeya'll tomorrow night.

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>>1344012
Slow going, so the default will be a die roll if still tied/unvoted when I call to write later tonight.

>>1345109
Well, that's an interesting system.
>>1344012
>I thought this'd be super easy with all the GMing and on-and-off writing I've done, but noooo.
What are the differences in challenges between the two?

>>1343995
>And... you're not alone. So much for this being a lone journey.
>Who's there?
So this is going to be our starting companion?
If so, then
>>Your sister.
Companion to complete the big mech and she's our sister. She'd be the closest to us, I'd think.

>>1343995
>>What to do with the ice shiv? (write-in)
Keep it, it's a gift from the corrupted totem spirits that used it to nearly kill us.

out on errands, on page 8, so I think next one will be NEW THREAD time. Will write/call probably in ~2 hours

>>1346380
That's fine. We already resolved most of the tutorial to my understanding.

>>1346475
well irl strikes again. Busy tonight, will update (late) tonight w/new thread.

>>1349369
>well irl strikes again. Busy tonight, will update (late) tonight w/new thread.
That's fine. Best of luck, QM.

Thread #2 :
>>1350848
>>1350848