IntroductionYou are [INSERT NAME HERE], a golem. And, as far as you are aware, the only golem in the world.
Ten years ago, your former master Alex Lancester found the disassembled pieces of you after falling into a cave while exploring the mountains on the outskirts of the Free City of Armstrong. He took you back to his home and re-assembled you.
You have no memories of your existence before your discovery by Alex. The two of you soon find out, however, that you are literally unable to leave the island on which Armstrong is located, as an irresistible force drags you back onto the land whenever you so much as place one foot onto the surrounding sea or a boat floating on it - which suggests that your existence is somehow linked to the island itself.
You served Alex as his valet since you were found by him, until his death from illness and old age six months ago. Alex’s third last act, before his death, was to release you from your mystic bonds of servitude to him; his second-last act was to will all his assets and property to you, his sole “family member”; and his last act was to engage the famed law-speaker Chun Lan Ting to argue for your behalf before the city administration and secure for you full rights of personhood and official recognition as a free individual.
It has taken Lan Ting the past six months, and most of the assets in Alex’s estate, to complete his assignment, and today is officially your first day as a free person. Unknown to you (until the reading of Alex’s will at Lan Ting’s office), Alex had in his youth been an adventurer and explorer of minor fame, before settling down to found and manage an adventurer’s guild in Armstrong. Although he had shuttered the guild doors twenty years ago, for reasons unknown to you or Lan Ting, he had continued to make the annual payments to the city for the guild charter and his charter has passed down to you together with the rest of his estate.
You have decided to revive Alex’s guild in memory of him, and also because you do need to make a living for yourself. As a golem, you do not need to eat or drink like humans do, but conversely you need to make regular repairs and maintenance on yourself for which spare parts and materials are required, and in the past ten years you have also come to appreciate some of the finer things in life like music, dance and other forms of entertainment.
In appreciation of the fees which Alex’s appointment has enabled her to earn, Lan Ting has agreed to offer you the use of one of her properties as your guild-house, rent-free for the first year, to get you on your feet.
The map is not to scale and only names features and landmarks of which you are personally aware.
Founded more than three hundred years ago by a band of colonists (from a land to the far west, with whom contact was lost approximately seventy years thereafter) led by a woman known only as Armstrong, the eponymous city prospers due to the rich fisheries in the surrounding waters, its strategic position between the four surrounding nations of Xing, Lukano, Bloodstone and Nikovladya, its steadfast neutrality towards the disputes and affairs of its neighbors and, for the past fifty-odd years, its harvests of the Cloudscent Incense grown at the Oasis of the same name in the deserts to the city’s southeast.
The Oasis had been discovered shortly when the colonists explored the interior of the island shortly after the founding of the city, but the stubby shrubs with gold-speckled purple leaves found near the Oasis were dismissed as a useless weed after attempts to use it as food, medicine and colouring all ended in (sometimes fatal) failure.
Fifty years ago, however, a group of drunken foreign sailors on shore leave visited the Oasis and decided to burn the “pretty bushes” for the sheer hell of it. Unexpectedly, the resulting smoke, when inhaled by the sailors, gave them the most vivid and stunning visions of the gods that any of them had ever experienced.
When they reported their experiences back in the city’s bars and taverns, the news quickly spread and the priests in the city declared that the smoke of the “weed” actually opened a door to the gods’ worlds. The city administration swiftly dispatched squadrons of militia to the desert to secure the Oasis and the weed (now renamed “Cloudscent Incense”).
Exports of Cloudscent Incense (which has never been found anywhere else in the world and which has thus far been uncultivable outside of the Oasis, despite utmost efforts by the other four nations) has formed the foundation of Armstrong’s growing wealth, financing an expanded navy and many civic improvements.
The city is governed by a Mayor, each of whom is elected for a 5-year term. Strictly speaking, any citizen of the city can stand for and win election to the office, but in practice the position of Mayor rotates between the members of a group of the wealthiest mercantile clans.
Anyone (other than recognized outcasts and criminals) can enter the city and live and work in it, but only citizens have the following privileges (among others):
(a) own land and buildings in the city;
(b) stand for election as Mayor and cast a vote during elections;
(c) carry weapons and wear armour in public within the city;
(d) in the event that he is charged for a crime, demand trial by a jury of other citizens;
(e) join the city militia or navy, or obtain a job in the city administration; and
(f) remain within the city at all times (e.g. in the event of war, siege or other emergencies, non-citizens can be involuntarily expelled from the city, but citizens cannot).
To become a citizen, one must:
(i) be at least 25 years old;
(ii) have resided in the city for at least 5 consecutive years;
(iii) be free of debt to anyone within the city;
(iv) be free of a criminal record in the city;
(v) have the written endorsement of at least 3 other citizens in good standing; and
(vi) pay a substantial one-time fee (the amount varies from year to year).
A child or spouse of a citizen does not automatically become a citizen, nor can it be transferred or inherited. On the other hand, a citizenship can only be revoked by the unanimous consent of a panel of 50 citizens and the written approval of the Mayor.
You are recognized by Armstrong as a free person, but you are not currently a citizen.
Every human is capable of magic (you have never tested your own capacity for it as a golem). Most magic comes from three sources, operating on the principle of equivalent exchange – something for something, nothing for nothing.
Magic comes from the gods or other god-like entities. In exchange for accepting a geas or a taboo which imposes a restriction on your conduct, you are granted an ability within the domain of the god. Most lay members of a cult have not actually, and will not ever, enter into such a binding relationship, but simply benefit from the sense of community of belong to a cult as well as access to blessings offered by their priests.
Magic comes from within. In exchange for accepting a permanent deformity or disability (such as loss of sight or loss of the use of an arm), you are granted an ability scaling in magnitude with your sacrifice, which can only be used to benefit other persons. Such magic glows like a beacon in the dark, and anyone who is willing to make such sacrifices to aid others is hailed as a saint and lauded with honors and gifts (honors can be retained but gifts must in turn be given away to help others).
Magic comes from other people. By sacrificing the lives, liberty or happiness of other people, you are granted an ability scaling in magnitude with the sacrifice, which can be used to benefit anyone (but in such cases will almost always be used for exclusively selfish purposes). Such magic stinks like a rotten egg at the peak of summer, and anyone who performs such sacrifice is always swiftly hunted down and removed from the world.
Apart from these, there is the magic of the blood-oath, which also works on the principle of equivalent exchange. The parties to the blood-oath each accept a restriction on their liberties, and in exchange receive the assurance of the other party’s restriction on his liberty. The blood-oath sworn by an adventurer and his guild-master operates on this basis.
Last but not least, items which are used in the accomplishment of sufficiently epic achievements may become imbued with magic, this too is being a recognized form of equivalent exchange. For example, a sword used to slay a fire-breathing dragon may subsequently grants its wielder immunity from flames; a pot that was used to cook a meal which satisfied a god may later provide its user with the knowledge of how to cook anything, even things which are ordinarily inedible.
Due to Armstrong’s prosperity, status as a mercantile centre, position as the naval crossroads of the four nations, and its access to Cloudscent Incense, the city has attracted many people seeking wealth, glory, excitement and/or converts.
The role of an adventurers’ guild is to provide these “adventurers” with a sense of identity and camaraderie, safe shelter, a convenient and centralized supply of new jobs, information and rumors, and such other services, equipment and contacts as the guild and its manager is able to procure for its members. The adventurers’ guild may also be held responsible for any misconduct of the adventurer within the city or at the Oasis. In return, the adventurer is bound by blood-oath to the guild-master to return a portion of his reward / payment and any other treasures found during the job to the guild, and to protect the guild in the event of any attacks on the guild.
On the other side of the picture, an adventurers’ guild provides an employer or quest-giver with a convenient and centralized supply of adventurers, and the reputation of an adventurers’ guild provides guidance and assurance to the employer of the level of quality he can expect to receive. In certain cases, an employer can also bargain for compensation from the adventurers’ guild if the assigned adventurers fail to complete their mission.
Adventurers are of course at liberty to remain independent “free-lancers”, and prospective employers are similarly free to contract directly with freelance adventurers, at the cost of forgoing all the advantages of working through a properly chartered adventurers’ guild.
Adventurers will be given broad descriptions of their “Traits and Attributes”. This will include both physical, mental and social traits (strengths as well as weaknesses), notable equipment, and notable relationships with others.
As you get to know the adventurer better, you will discover more of his or her traits and attributes. Adventurers may also gain new traits and attributes and/or lose existing ones, especially after completing (or failing!) missions.
Traits and attributes are inclusive and not exclusive – they describe the adventurer’s most prominent abilities and does not mean that the adventurer does not know how to do anything which is not listed there. The collective traits and attributes of the adventurers sent on a quest will broadly determine the outcome of the quest – for example, if no-one in a group of adventurers sent to explore a mountain range has expertise in mountaineering, then the chance of success will be markedly lower.
Although golems do not need to sleep, they do need to set aside time for personal maintenance and, it seems (now that you are a free person), entertainment. Each day, you will have 8 Time Units – the first two Time Units will be approximately equivalent to morning, the next four Time Units will be approximately equivalent to afternoon, and the last two Time Units will be approximately equivalent to evening and night-time. It is assumed that you spend the rest of your time carrying out personal maintenance and updating your files and books at your guild-house.
1. This CYOA is intended to be a "theme park" like World of Warcraft, in that there's something for you to see and do everywhere you go, but a "sandbox" in the sense that it's a freeform game and we are not limited by a dialogue wheel or computer memory space.
2. Within this general framework, the decisions you make, in relation to what I provide for you to see and do, will have "realistic" consequences - for example, if you insult figures of authority within the city, then they will use their power to punish you. If you repeatedly fail a customer’s missions, they will stop coming back to you. And so on and so forth.
3. And because of that, I will make sure to provide you with a warning and/or red flag every time you make a decision which has consequences which you may not expect but which Durin as a character in the setting should reasonably be aware of. I'm not trying to "kill you" and there will not be any unforeseeable traps or tricks. I'm not a killer DM, and you do not have to poke everything with a ten-foot pole or spell out everything you want to do in exhaustive sequence and down to the minutest detail.
4. Despite this being posted on the Bay 12 Games forum, I'm not trying to emulate Dwarf Fortress in the sense of keeping track of every last hair and fat layer on every person in the city. This is in no way, and makes no attempt to be, a simulation of a "realistic world" - it's more like a video game where many elements are abstracted. The terrain map was not procedurally generated, the city was not organically developed from a small fishing village, the characters don't each have a biography going back to their births, and so on and so forth.
5. I'll also freely handwave things that I do not think are particularly interesting, like having to visit a place for the first time (with the chance of getting lost etc) before you can identify its location.
The game will end when a suitably satisfying goal (to be selected by you along the way) is achieved. This may include (but is not limited to): solving the mystery of your past existence, discovering the way back to the far-off land of the original colonists of Armstrong, becoming Mayor of Armstrong, uniting the four nations, founding a new nation, and/or overthrowing a god and taking his place.
Alternatively, if I sense that interest in the thread has declined prior to that, I will write a brief epilogue on the closure of the guild and your post-retirement life, based on the wealth and relationships you have accrued up to that point.
(a) What is your name?
(b) What is the name of Alex’s (now yours) guild?
(c) Among the items in Alex’s estate (that part of it which was not used to pay Lan Chun Ting’s fees) is a single, small, enchanted item. Is it: (i) a spoon; (ii) a sewing needle; or (iii) a pebble?Coming up next:
1. Your current inventory and assets.
2. A map of Armstrong.
3. Notable persons and institutions in Armstrong.
4. Your very first assignment.
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Topic: You are the Guildmaster of an Adventurers' Guild (Revamped) (Read 2377 times)