Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[pisskop]

  So this is an experimental writeup Ive wanted to do for some time on the game 'Darkest Dungeon'.  The idea will be a jounal, and writing up enough backstory to fill in th rather big gaps in the cannon lore.  You cant play, buy Im sure I can find a way to kill you if you ask.

There is 1 alteration to the game:  I have given a chance for a party of adventurer-monsters to spawn.  They have moves that are heavily burrowed from the hero counterparts, if not direct mirrors.  They can spawn everywhere, but should not be common.

[pisskop]

     4^th of May;

  Later today I am to arrive at the site.  From what little I've been able to read up upon the area it seems to be a troubled land; a seaside county left forgotten by the ouside world.  There appears to be scattered hamlets, whose peasants are skittish and resentful of authority.  At least, thats what the infrequent caravaners have told.  Stories of brigands and more vile horrors lurking in the dark.  Death in the area is not uncommon, and it is rumored closer to the old estate grounds inhumane wailings can be heard.  Its certainly frightening; but I won't be swayed from the chance to learn about my estranged family roots.  If only my mother would have told me more about our past; about Father's heritage.  That information, that piece of mind, that money even; all of it will serve me better than the life I left behind.
  I shall apprise you of the situation when I arrive on-site; I hear major excavations were recently abandoned.  But for now I must oblige my hired bodyguards; what a terrible host I must be scribbling notes instead of keeping council with them!

[pisskop]

     5^th of May;

  How terrible the last 24 hours have been!  Our cart has been utterly destroyed; dashed against one of the many decaying stone walls that guide it down its narrow route.  The driver and 2 of my bodyguards were dead, with obvious signs of head trauma.  Worst, what belongings I did have will have to be abandoned at present.  We have no way to carry much more than some emergency food rations.
  After collecting Reynauld and Dismas, the surviving guard, we checked the source of the accident.  A body, putrifying in the middle of the road.  How lovely.  Ahead, over the treeline, we could see thin trails of smoke, so we are close to a settlement of some kind.  We headed in that direction, hopeful it was not one of the many bandit clans that are supposed to wander the area.

  Wandering down the trail, one could not help but take the chance to examine the giant fungal overgrowth in the area.  How peculiar, this fungus is.  It grows the size of a human head, and seems to grow where one expects vines.  A sickly pale yellow in color, the fungus seems to suck all the life out of the trees it grows on.  I began to grow concerned about the safety of the very air we breathed, but more immediate concerns were stumbled upon.  A bandit camp!
  Made of tattered cloth and shoddy engineering, this small encampment was full of men more scarred than some of the veterans of the last crusades some 15 years ago now.  We skirted the main camp, only to find a groups of them in a foreward position, likely to be lookouts for the road.   I cant imagine what they do to passersby, but we put a stop to it and took the loot they had horded.  We had hoped the owners would be close by, and alive, but when we found noone at the hamlet willing to claim the goods we divided it up for ourselves.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  Reynauld took a nasty whiplash, and is in treatment for it.  Such as it is, treatment right now means little more than flask of brandy and a hot iron to the wound to prevent infection.  Who knows what those mushrooms can do.  I can still feel the scratching at the back of my throat every time I think about the thick green particles in the air.
  Well, Reynaulds slow relflexes will have to go; as soon as we have a proper training area set up, we'll beat it out of him.

[pisskop]

     11^th of May, Week 00

  What a mess this place is!  Almost all of the infrastructure is gone and boarded, from blacksmith to church, the bar is infested with rats and leper-spotted wenches, and there's a creepy old sanatarium run by a bruish-looking nurse.  The local populace seems to refuse to speak to me or my help, and it was all I could do to get help so I could begin my work!
  There was a trader in-town as we stumbled in.  He looked about ready to leave, but upon hearing my last name he pulled me aside and appraised me of his situation.  He said he was a superstitous man, and would only travel these roads under the best of omens; with the best of trinkets to guide him.  He refused to tell me what was wrong with the land, only that he didn't ask questions and in return his ignorance has kept him healthier.  After some debate, I managed to arrange for a weekly cart to be sent our way; and for him to print and post up help wanted signs at any guild or hall he may visit.  With a down payment I secured this and a supply cart to trade with us frequently enough to secure our base here.
  Taking the rest of our money, I found and bribed the local herbalist and monk to accompany us on our initial investigation of the ruined workshops at the base of the hill leading up to DiMonte Manor.  The locals won't tell us what's in it, but the witch doctor (named Restault)  told me that many legends and horror stories originated from actual events that occured here.  Im not sure what she meant by that; the letter I got was old and ratty, but was hardly old enough to account for legends springing up!  I'm back to being nervous about what this letter actually meant, and why I got it out of the blue . . .

  Gathering Restault the Plague Doctor and her rival Theroulde the Vestel, we set off to survey the ruined landscapes.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[pisskop]

     Week 01, The Crypts
  These ruins are disguisting.  Just How Long Have They Been Abandoned?  Its looks liek decades, if not centuries, but then how old is that letter?

  There're workshops intersparsed with hastily dug out tombs; more elaborate sarcophagi adorn more cerimonious looking rooms that are adjacent to libraries and stockrooms!  Old statues and confessionals litter the hallways, and meticuloously stacked tomes sit conspicuously next to stacks of destroyed and moldy wooden furniture.  I can't imagine what kind of operation was going on here; for this clutter to be considered efficient.  We found the occasional damaged skeleton lying around.  Dismas tells me they bear puncture wounds.  "stabbed in the ribs", he says, 'Ri't in the lungs.  Whoever did this wasn't wanted these sops to suffer'.  Just awful.
  Admist the piles of rubble, we saw shumbling shapes.  They didn't do a good job noticing us, and as we approached them our torchlight revealed they had no skin!  Nay, more than that, they had no organs!  They were skeletons, clad in rotted armor and rusted weaponry.  We took the chance to attack first, since they clearly were suprised.

  The skeleton party was quickly dispatched, although our elation and shock gave way to confusion when we saw what they were doing.  They were building a wall of stone with bodies as the mortar!  Mortifying, truely.  Digging through it would have to wait until a construction team got down here; these were adventurers and fighters, not workmules.  We continued onwards, anxious about the unknown lurking in the shadows.

  A hallway or so later, we were approached by a clothed figure flanked by two scantly clad guards.  It was not hard to see the white of bone on the guards, but the figure was draped in bristled fur, black as the dark outside the torches reach.  The figure had stopped short of the light, swishing this chalice about like he was tasting wine.  After a brief moment to collect herself, the vestel approached it with inquiries on her lips.  The figure responded by throwing the contents into he face and hissing.  The black liquids steamed as it connected with her face, and Theroulde reeled backwards, which is good because the skeletons all moved to attack.
  The fight itself was rather brief, the poorly armed skeletons no match for the less-poorly armed party.  The liquid seems to have unsettled her, but I can see no major harm done other than a redish irritation over her face.  She wasnt very pretty to begin with, but I certianly knew better than to mention that to her . . .

  As our torchlight dimmed, we slaughtered more of these skeletonal abominations.  They seemed to be a mixed bag, actually, with various states of training and equipping being represented.  Guards, administrators, and workers perhaps . . .?  Well, no matter, they aren't living any longer, I don't think.  But we did find something living in the deeps.  A group of men and women, painted for ceremony and dressed in matching garbs.  The religious fanatics, these cultists were chanting around a groups of skeletons.  Perhaps they were the ones raising the dead.  In a rush, we charged in as the last of our torchlight dimmed, and killed them all in a frantic battle.
  Theroulde seemed nervous and somewhat twitchy after the fight, and claims that she saw the witches chanting and waving at her.  She feels odd, violated somehow.  I don't know what she means, and honestly from the look on her face, I don't think I want to.  I told her our task was nearing completion, and she could rest at the church once we got the funds to hire some priests and fix the place up some.  That chapel was a wreck; I honestly don't know how any proper God-fearing community could go without one.  Any religious particularities aside, it seems unhealthy to let it fall into such a state.

  As the dungeon drew us into it deeper, more skeletons appeared for destruction.  They all seemed to have a special hate for the holy vestel, however, and those noble skeletons kept throwing goblets of that black fluid at her.  It got to the point where she become focused about their destruction.  She is a pretty scary woman when she gets into a fervor, yelling about the destruction of the unholy and the glory of our task and gods.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  Her strength under that sort of opression gave strength to us all, I think, and when the torches went out and we lacked a way to relight them we saw the greatest resistance from these undead nightmares.
  With blow after blow, critical strike landing on us from all sides, her devotion to healing and inspiring battle cries left us with the willpower to persevere when others would have taken the obvious choice and fled.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  We returned from the dark with 4500 units of money, after we converted it with the weekly trader.  The plague doctor and vestel are a little frazzled from the experience, and we've arranged some gambling and prayer for them respectively.  I'm not exactly sure why they're so bent about this, haven't they lived here their whole life?  Maybe they didn't know how close to hell they really were.  Maybe they arent combat hardened like Dismas and Reynauld are.  Or maybe, like Reynauld implied, they were women.  Who knows, but its hard not to see the differences between the party.

  The caravan is pulling up for the week, we await what supplies and heroes it holds in its raggidy tarp.

[pisskop]

     Week 02, The Crypt

  That wagon brought a small stock of booze, and  enough nails to cobble together the pews at the church.  This is great news, because after seeing the dead walking Im sure the heroes could use it. Hopefully, we can also get the peasants back into god or drink.  We could use the taxes either way.
  The heroes who came with the wagon were a fleeing pair of highwaymen, bandits from a neighboring county.  Said their names were Cyrus and brai  I told them that if they were willing to work we would harbor them and provide them with a stipend of booze.  But at the first sign of trouble we'd string 'em up and use them as bait in the waters.  Sadly, from what Ive heard it'd be effective too . . .

  Well, we had nothing else to do but send them in and see what ends up making its way out, so I did just that.  Almost 24 hours later Brai and Dismas came out.  Dismas was bleeding from multiple wounds, and had to be held steady by his fellow highwayman.  I asked them what happened, and Brai simply threw a bag of gold and gems at my feet and torted, 'This is why we went in there, right?  This is what is more important than our lives.'
  Later, when we managed to seperate the pair and question them, the story came out.  They had begun by Traveling down a dead end, and were forced to backtrack through a trapped room.  Reynauld recieved a bleeding wound there, and it was only made worse when they came upon multiple stacked stone-body walls.  They clawed their way through the latter 2 walls and kept exploring.  They ran into multiple guard patrols, a cultist/skeleton arbalist combo team.  After the second wave the party was in a fairly bad way, and used the torches I supplied them with to keep the light up.  It wasn't enough, it seems, as one of the heavily armored 'skeleton defenders' kept stunning the crusader while the arbalast skeleton kept shooting cyrus.  Both perished in this last fight, before the team called off the expedition.  Fortunately for them, they marked just enough rooms to succeed in our goal.  We have not yet fallen behind the schedule for recon I worked out before I arrived.
  Though the loss of two fine men grieves us all, I refuse to dwell on it when there is important documentation to do.  Documentation, I may add, that was a primary reason they went into the crypts in the first place for.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  The skeletons are indeed created, controlled, allied, or otherwise convertable by the cultists.  Judging from my own experiences and the stories of Brai and Dismas, I can conlude that the cultists themselves are likely not able to create them.  Perhaps a senior member of theirs' is, or else their object of worship is.  It matters not too much right now, they're all equally our enemy.
  Along with the obvious gold and gems, I've asked the heroes to collect any family documents, artwork, or publishings they find.  I think that the clue to whatever this undead menace is will be in my Ancestor's memiors.  Of course, we must also turn our attentions to the fungal overgrowth in the weald on the way in.

  The wagon brought Cybil the barbarian, Vittles the Man-At-Arms, and Samson the Leper to our hamlet.  They each boast amoungst each other their own feats and strengths, a naive if not enviable trait I've come to see.

  Vittles, the Man-At-Arms, claims to have been a mercenary whose company met their end in this last Crusade.  They were holding a coastal fort not too far from Jerusalem when the crusaders were pushed back.  The Muslims, cunning as they are, had timed their push so that a horseman unit would arrive along the beaches to cut off the boats.  By the time they were seen, his unit had the option of either holing up and enduring a siege on distant shores surrounded by enemy for hundreds of miles, or rush out to cut down the horsemen,
  It would seem that they were the ones getting cut down; almost a full 3 quarters of them died before the fleeing crusaders came with sufficient support to save them.
  After this he says he spent more time in a bar than sleeping, so I can't imagine a reason for him not to be here . . .

  Samson says he figured finding death was quicker than death finding him.  A fair enough assessment of life, I suppose.  I wonder if his name is really samson, or if he's trying to compensate for something with that name, his mask, and that huge sword?

  Cybil the Hellion is a traveling mercenary.  She says she's never had a real home, and doesn't really need it.  The Caretaker, who is responsible for keeping the cemetery, ledgering the stocks, and other mundane matters of state, says that she reported having a locket about her neck.  I'm sure there's more of a story than we're hearing, but its not my place nor my concern.  We have booze, beds, whips, and any other pleasure you'd need for short-term release.


They have no common background, even originating from different lands, however they all fight for each other now.

[pisskop]

     Week 03, The Weald

  The latest caravan brought with them casings for the blacksmith and an instructor for the abandoned guildhouse.  Both men were hired on at our behest from the Dukes own stock of craftsmen.  Both men were solomn and seemed more fond of the silence between them than the words I shared when they arrived.  I made sure the guildmaster was actually more capable than our heroes, but other than that I somply decided to let them get about their work.

  With 13 thousand gold in my coffers, I arranged for a night at the brothel for Dismas and paid fist over mouth to have the guildmaster aquaint himself with the entire cast of 7 heroes we currently house.  Those that were capable were borught to the newly errected traning yard.  They were then taken inside to a private quarter for the more intense parts.
  With 8 thousand gold units spent, I sent us out for the warrens, to scout the area for my luggage.

  Picking Cybil, Samson, Theroulde, and Restault out into the bleak warrens, I tried to turn my attentions to recruiting the pragmatic caretaker of the old asylum on the hill into a functioning facility for the heroes as they rested.  I hopefully will even try to coax a peasant or two into the chairs and see what they know of the activities in the area.  In fact, the village elder, all of 56 years old if official documents are to be trusted, would likely know more about the exact nature of my Ancestor's inquiries . . .



  The group came out without the Leper or the Hellion.  Both fell, to different sources.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Samson is not confirmed dead, only MIA.  They told us it was spiders.  They ambushed the group, webbed Samson, and dragged him off before much else could be done.  The giant maggots and other assorted insectoids that infested the area were only further sign that a Scorched Earth policy might not be the worst idea in the making when figuring out how to secure the area.  Such infestations rarely get dealt with in a year, or even a decade.  they require a lifetime of vigilance, and more sacrifice.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  Cybil, on the other hand, died when some kind of 4 armed walking fungus shot poisonous barbs into her flesh.  They sapped her of life as they sapped the trees of the area, and I'm afraid she lies with them now.  What are these things?  They told me that despite having hands, it walked on those very hands and shot bits of fungus out as it went.  Both Theroulde, and Restault think it used to be a human, but it was so small it could have been a child at some point . . . how devestating that even our children are vulnerable to special kind of Damnation on Earth.  The 4armed cloud spewng menaces were accompanied by a shambling humanoid mushroom and a partially rotted wolf of some kind.  They reported that the wolf lacked outward signs of fungal infection, oddly enough, but seemed content to work with the fungal men.


  The survivors reported finding waysided wagons, some of which contained locked treasureboxes still.  Which implies that bandits are not the only source of misfortune in the area.  They looted the ones they found, usually finding documents pertaining to business plans, however the occasional land deed was present amoung the bundles; land that was by tradition DiMonte being sold by forgers to saps and suckers.
  Cultists were found, living in squalidy and overrun cottages.  They were just as hostile as the ones in the run, if not more ferocious for the fresh(er) air out in the warrens.  I might work up the nerve to accuse them of dancing in pale moonlight, if any of the nights were ever really clear enough to see a good, healthy full moon.

  . . . In addition to the gravestones and ornate pathways, they found purified fountains that have utterly resisted the corruption of the surrounding landscape.  These fountains were said to even have a calming effect.  They found all the vegitation passable with the help of shovels, despite the misshappen and engourged thorny underbrush, and they found . .  a cave.  Not a natural cave, but an exit to some kind of underground labyrinth.  They didn't do too much with it, but peering inside they could smell both decay and rot.  something was in there, this vast expanse of arched rooms and grim-soaked floors.  Said it went right towards the Estate proper too, so we will likely find more evidence of its existence should we search around more.  What little I could find in the libraries I have access to mention a few caves in the area, most noteably the excavation site, the warrens, and a place called 'the cove'.  A lot of patterns here, if  don't say so myself.  Cove, Crypt, Warren, Weald.  I wonder if their similar first letters eludes to something more?  I'm sure not.

Spoiler: The dead (click to show/hide)

[pisskop]

     Week 04, The Warrens

 Awful, just awful.  We've failed to map out an area we arbitrarly set out, an as such we lost ou chance to sieze the Helion's trinket as a reward.

  We had nothing left to do but hope the caravan brought with them more men to replace the front line soldiers who have repeatedly fallen in battle.  Maybe Theroulde and Resault are better than we've been giving them credi for.  Theoulde, for her parts, lamblasted me for my choice in skills I assigned her to focus on.  IF she had had a front-line comabt ability she could have kept up the fight.  But I had given her a quipout that was supportive in nature; an occasional sniper and light crowd control.  I will consider my choice in the future; at least that is what I told her before I sent her off to meditate.  The Plague Doctor gets to go drink her pain away.

  The caravan brought us three hopefuls; pisskop the crusader, Curteys the Hellion, and Poer the highwayman.  Hopefully we can keep these alive.  I sent the crusader to get a healing skill, and the highway man has had his agility tended to.  He should be capable of dodging to and fro now, to offset ambushes.

  We will take some time off of exploring that accursed weald to see what that cave was.  Warrens?  What a name.  Hopefully it will be a pleasant experience.
  The party consists of pisskop, Vittles, Brai, and Poer.  A crusader, a Man-at-Arms, and 2 highwaymen.  What a motly lot if ever there was one.  At least they are all capable of moving ranks, so hopefully an abundance of first-aid will keep whatever horrifying diseases are present in the sewers at bay.

  And, for their part, the sewers seem to be older than the Estate itself.  They existed before the area's conversion from paganism, perhaps.  Who knows what's down there, but from the research on my Ancestor I've been doing, he's been quite sloppy containing the waste from his research; in the best of cases dumping it there instead of disposing of it more thoroughly.

  Sending them in, I began to assess the condition of the newly opened asylum.  Its prices were outrageous, but for that price she said she could cure the most entrentched conditions the adventurers could pick up.  Be it rabies or an addiction to alcohol, the burly nurse was confident that her experience would outweigh any horror of the night.
  We don't have the funds for that really, having just suffered a full-scale defeat.  But, at the same time, the quirks that the surviving heroes had seemed completely managable.  So much the better that she is here, however.  I plan to send the next debtor we get to her, so I may uncover the background surrounding the area.  I announced as much, offering a stipend to the family of the person who volunteers as well, but still not so much as a nibble on the bait.  Despite the horrors of the area, these peasants stay here.  Their wealth is almost negligable, but still they stay rather than scrounge up a few days of food and heading off.  Why?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  The Crusader, pisskop, stumbled out of the dungeon with just 2k loot in hand.  All alone, on the edge of delirium, pisskop spoke of mutated pigs and a party of seasoned adventurers who killed the rest for the loot they had.  We sent hm to the hospital, and I wept for the loss of another expedition and the money they had.  When his condition had stablized, I stopped by the infirmary and questioned him.
  The inhabitants of this new dungeon appear to be cultists.  The damn corrupted dreg of humanity, found in as many places as filthy maggots.  These cultists, how do they find their way here?  It doesn't make sense, the amount of them we find and slay suggests a massive dwelling of the somewhere in the region.  Why haven't I heard about them yet?

  It didn't take long for the monsters of the deep to test them, lightly at first.  2 of the hulking male cultists were torturing this piglet thing; it had long knobbly arms and stumpy hooves.  They described the legs as if they were baby's shoes, they were so short and neat looking.  The rest of the body was stretched and distorted.  They thought it looked like a clay man was moulded into a new, decrepid beast, with recognizably human features stuck in completely absurd anatomical positions.  A skull was seen on its left hip, for instance.  It vomited little chunks of food at the heroes, burning the skin and understandably grossing the victim out some.
  The ever-present maggots were found here too, swarming half-eaten corpses.  One has to wonder how fresh the bodies were, and where they came from.  Did they come from the excavation teams?  If they did that would make sense as I've been completely unable to locate any of them, nor the company that contracted them.  A complete enigma, like they were simply vagabonds hired for the task.  Which would be neither unreasonable nor suprising.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  The most deadly inhabitant of the warrens, however, seems to have been a party of adventurers, looking for a share of the loot as it stood.  The crusader describes them as 'dark-hearted heroes', intent on the treasure they could aquire.  They called our group an easy mark and attacked.  Clearly more skilled, our group stood little in the way of chance.

  Now we must contend with trained men in addition to the natural ferocity of the twisted dark?  We have no money, no trained warriors, no clue what is causing the regional or global disturbances.  We don't know whre all the skulls and bodies are coming from, nor if the enviorment even follows natural rules!  I'm frankly half tempted to try to get some kind of naturalist over here, but we don't even have a way to ensure his safety.

  What are we going to do?  The caravan came, and I saw some Jesters.  Why would they come here . . .?  No matter, we need to destress  the crusader, because he's the only front-line soldier left!