So, a bit of a trigger warning concerning Salem's creator. I didn't intend for it to get so dark.
Name:
Gender:
Age:
Appearance:
Occupation:
Residence:
Character Focus:
Personality:
Creator Information:
Notable Equipment:
Notable Skills:
Total Level:
Class Levels: 40
Race Levels: 15
Alignment:
Stats:
Combat Summary:
Dominion: The City of Lost Things
Themes:
Implied suicide
Salem Vicarious, Lord of Lost Things
Name:
Salem Vicarious, Lord of Lost Things
Gender:
Nongendered
Age:
10
Appearance:
Normally, Salem is a small, ball-jointed doll in the form of a young, androgynous child with short hazel-red hair, heterochromatic red and green eyes, and porcelain white skin. They keep their joints hidden under long sleeves and stockings, while their face and hands are covered in a magical 'skin' that mimics the real thing and hides any doll-like appearances. they are normally dressed in a boyish, dark-blue, frilly outfit, complete with a black top hat. However, like a true boss fight, Salem can take on increasingly monstrous forms by combining with discarded weaponry and the scattered remains of other dolls and mannequins, becoming a gigantic, monstrous, multi-limbed beast. In truth, Salem's true form is the red glass eye in the doll's head. When defeated, the body crumbles to sawdust and the eye attempts to levitate away to find a new body somewhere in the City of Lost Things. If the eye is destroyed, Salem dies. Permanently.
Occupation:
Boss Monster, Surveillance Scout, Infiltrator, VP of Automation (title reluctantly accepted from Graft)
Residence:
Chapter 1: The City of Lost Things
Character Focus:
Salem is a true, multi-stage Boss Monster focusing on self-preservation, control effects, area denial, and wasting the party's time with convoluted mechanics.
Personality:
To outsiders, Salem behaves like a precocious, coquettish youngster and is quite good at endearing themself to others, but this is simply a veneer to hide their condescension and general misanthropy. Salem hates humans, and by extension, sentient non-monsters, with a passion, having inherited this passion from their creator. Around the other members of Chateau Gothika, Salem is their true self, a bit bratty, and quite a bit sadistic, and plagued with thoughts of abandonment and worthlessness. On the one hand, it is in Salem's nature to please others to derive a sense of self-worth, on the other hand, Salem wrestles with the desire for independence and to be free from the shackles of needing acceptance and recognition. Salem frets constantly about appearances and putting on a good show, while tending to hide their insecurities behind a facade of sarcasm, and smugness.
Creator Information:
Dr.Drd was one of the early members of Chateau Gothika, and the go-to guy for coding and otherwise fine-tuning all the original user-generated content for the guild. An automation programmer by trade, Dr.Drd raged against the inevitability that automation would replace human labor and recognized, with guilt, his own hand in creating rampant unemployment. Yet he also raged when human clerks or IT help-desk personnel proved inadequate. But mostly he just raged. A man with a lot of deep-seated frustrations, and unanswered emotional problems, it came as no surprise that he would create Salem. Salem was originally made as an experiment in ways to break or exploit the game's physics engine. Dr.Drd intended Salem to manage the automatons and mannequins that, in his mind, were to form the backbone of Chateau Gothika's workforce and defense force, but that idea was pushed aside in favor of skeletons and Brushen Penn's biomechanical monstrosities. For this slight, Dr.Drd signed off of YGGDRASIL for half a year. When he returned, he changed the as yet unfinished first chapter, the Dollhouse, into the City of Lost Things. Through his constant experiments in crafting, he made a plethora of low-level objects and weapons, and the City of Lost Things became a garbage dump for these discarded creations. Over time, it seemed that creative expression within Chateau Gothika softened Dr.Drd up somewhat, and he even developed a sense of camaraderie among his fellow guildmates. Everything seemed to be going well, until one day Dr.Drd just never logged back in. His last message ever sent in the game was, "I'm happy right now."
Notable Equipment:
- The Eye of Dread -Salem's true form is a small glass eye. The downside of taking advantage of so many object exploits is that Salem is technically an 'artifact' and does not follow the normal rules of healing and revival. If the eye is destroyed, no one exists anymore who can craft a replacement and imbue all the convoluted code into it. Even if recreating the eye were possible, there is no chance that Salem's 'consciousness' would revive within the new eye.
- The Toy-Box -The Toy-Box is an oversized coffin that Salem slings across their back when traveling. Compared to Salem's size, the coffin is ridiculously large. Only Salem can unlock the coffin with a skeleton key hidden in their right index finger, and within are stored myriad spare doll parts, filled with dangerous, spring-loaded (often bladed) mechanisms.
Notable Skills:
- Telekinesis -A simple low level concentration spell that allows Salem to levitate and move objects. This is Salem's main attack and the foundation of their physics engine-exploiting shenanigans.
- n-Stack Equipment Slots -Salem's primary exploit, any object wielded by telekinesis or fused to Salem's body is considered 'equipment', so all weapon and armor proficiencies that Salem has applies to the wielded weapons and armors, and any bonuses that that said weapons or armor confer to the wielder apply to Salem.
- Paranormal Activity -Telekinesis is, in and of itself, a bad combat spell because it is a concentration spell, and typically, multiple concentration spells could not be used simultaneously, and concentration spells break if the user is hurt, distracted, or otherwise breaks their concentration. Dr.Drd noticed a loophole with certain ghost types, particularly, poltergeists. Applying the loophole to Salem removes the restriction, allowing Salem to telekinetically wield innumerable thrown objects. This restriction is also removed for other concentration spells that Salem might cast, though Salem does this rarely, preferring their bread-and-butter attack spell.
- Aichmophobia -This translates as 'the fear of sharp objects', slashing or piercing weapons wielded by Salem get increased armor penetration.
- Possessed Item HP/Durability Paradox -Typically, only 'killable' entities have HP, whereas 'breakable' objects have durability. Certain monsters were possessed or animated weapons, and suddenly had HP in addition to the weapon's actual durability. Dr.Drd took advantage of this strange conundrum by tying Salem's health to the sum total of the durability of all wielded items, since item durability loss usually decreases at a much slower rate than health during combat. This does give Salem a particular weakness to item- and equipment-destroying skills but since those are typically niche skills the fight against Salem is fairly cryptic to most unprepared adventurers. This also prevents Salem from wielding items with the 'indestructible' tag, whether by touch or with telekinesis, as it causes a 'divide-by-zero' error in health calculations leading to cascading code failure. In the New World, this translates to a complete and total mental breakdown for Salem, whose philosophy is that all things break, all things become obsolete, and all things lose usefulness. Any attempt to wield an unbreakable item causes Salem to lose all their abilities, dropping all wielded items, and be reduced to having control only over the Eye of Dread, requiring Salem to retreat to the City of Lost Things to recuperate.
- Antique Affinity -Deal bonus unholy magic damage based on missing weapon durability, gain bonus armor and magic resistance based on missing armor durability. This ability helps to mitigate Salem's main weakness as well as making fights with Salem take longer than they should. The more time it takes the party to fight Salem and attempt to figure out their weaknesses and attack patterns, the more dangerous and harder to kill Salem becomes.
- Parts Cannabilization -The City of Lost Things provides a limited stream of doll and mannequin parts to Salem's boss room be incorporated into their body during the course of a fight, allowing health regeneration and to the ability to grow into a multi-limbed monstrosity as the fight progresses.
- Thrown object/Collision detection exploit -Thrown objects, attacks made with melee weapons, and attacks made with thrown or projectile weapons followed different damage calculation mechanics. Dr.Drd found a way to combine these mechanics for stacking bonus damage from collisions while not losing out on passive benefits for ranged attacks from Salem's various ranged classes, and passive benefits for melee attacks from Salem's various dueling classes.
- Creepy Doll Heads -Salem can see, hear, and speak through any mannequin or doll head that they wield as an item, allowing them to perform surveillance and communication throughout Chateau Gothika.
Total Level:
55
Class Levels: 40
(B) Archer 5
(B) Fencer 5
(B) Wizard 5
(H) Ranger 5
(H) Duelist 5
(H) Shaman 5
(R) Sniper 5
(R) Weapons Master 5
(B) Fencer 5
(B) Wizard 5
(H) Ranger 5
(H) Duelist 5
(H) Shaman 5
(R) Sniper 5
(R) Weapons Master 5
Race Levels: 15
(B) Ghost 5
(H) Mannequin 5
(R) Poltergeist 5
(H) Mannequin 5
(R) Poltergeist 5
Alignment:
Chaotic Evil
Stats:
HP: 100
MP: 25 (but only uses low-level spells)
PHY. ATK: 100
PHY. DEF: 85
AGI: 75 (decreases over combat duration)
MAG. ATK: 20 (increases over combat duration)
MAG. DEF: 20 (increases over combat duration)
RESIST: 45 (As a construct, Salem is immune to most biological status ailments, but shares undead weaknesses and is susceptible to durability-harming effects)
SPECIAL: 85
Total: 555
MP: 25 (but only uses low-level spells)
PHY. ATK: 100
PHY. DEF: 85
AGI: 75 (decreases over combat duration)
MAG. ATK: 20 (increases over combat duration)
MAG. DEF: 20 (increases over combat duration)
RESIST: 45 (As a construct, Salem is immune to most biological status ailments, but shares undead weaknesses and is susceptible to durability-harming effects)
SPECIAL: 85
Total: 555
Combat Summary:
Salem is a 'bullet hell' boss and fights primarily by overwhelming opponents with a cloud of thrown objects, mostly discarded weapons and weaponized doll parts, though they are not above wielding weapons themself, or attaching grotesque bladed limbs to their own body and engaging in melee. Salem primarily uses sharp objects, such as over-sized gardening shears or kitchen knives, though sometimes Salem brings in chains, coffins, iron maidens, and other torture equipment to immobilize foes. The esoteric mechanics that went into Salem's creation make it difficult to take Salem down. Salem prefers to fight in claustrophobic rooms and hallways, where their thrown objects are more difficult to avoid. Salem is most at home in the City of Lost Things, where they have access to all their items. Outside the Chateau, Salem must rely on whatever is inside the Toy-Box as ammunition and is much weaker, needing to rely on passing off as a normal human child and the element of surprise.
Dominion: The City of Lost Things
The City of Lost Things is a physical mindscape representing Dr.Drd's vision of the concept of innocence lost. Originally the dumpsite of discarded crafted goods, The City of Lost Things takes the discarded and abandoned and pretties it up, giving it a second, grotesque life, like undeath but for already inanimate objects. The City appears like a Toyland, filled with childish decadence, like toys and sweets, juxtaposed with images of gratuitous violence, body horror, and lewd innuendo, such as mannequins forever locked in grotesque poses. The City is a mix of Victorian, Baroque, and Gothic art and architecture, demonstrating artistic intricacy and meticulous attention to detail, while completely lacking comprehensive high-level artistic sense as the various styles clash with each other, like the inhabitants, the style is borrowed and hacked together. The City is like a pre-modern metropolis with soot-covered cobblestone alleyways filled with junk and newspapers that make no sense. Tall, narrow, sharp buildings crowd togehter, and you never know if there was an animatronic jump-scare around the corner. The main danger of the City are its inhabitants: randomly generated dolls, animatronics, automatons, and gigantic stuffed animals wielding dangerous equipment. Their danger lies in the fact that no two creatures are the same, follow the same rules or patterns, have the same strengths and weaknesses, etc., making preparation a veritable nightmare. In the middle of it all sits a mansion, The House That Salem Built, where Salem plays very dangerous versions of 'House' and 'Tea' with the currently highest ranking subjects.
In away, the City is like the Factory, but significantly less organized, and in fact, Dr.Drd had commissioned the factory to provide automaton bodies as the workforce for Chateau Gothika. When the idea was scrapped, Dr.Drd never stopped the order, so a stream of mannequins continues to funnel into the City, a testament to the abandoned project and the resentment that Dr.Drd continued to harbor. As someone who dabbled in AI, Dr.Drd played with the idea of 'evolutionary machine learning', and experimented with the idea of programs that could change their own code while self-optimizing to compete for computational resources. This embodies the controlled chaos of the City as the discarded automatons tear each other apart to survive, like humans after the Rapture fighting each other for the forgiveness of a god that has long abandoned them. Salem rules over all this, like an abusive parent who outwardly shows love and caring beautifying the automatons, but then demands that the inhabitants of the City vie for Salem's favor. In the end, nothing is above being broken down for parts, and the refuse of this chaos is collected and returned to the Factory as raw materials, where the futile cycle begins again.
In away, the City is like the Factory, but significantly less organized, and in fact, Dr.Drd had commissioned the factory to provide automaton bodies as the workforce for Chateau Gothika. When the idea was scrapped, Dr.Drd never stopped the order, so a stream of mannequins continues to funnel into the City, a testament to the abandoned project and the resentment that Dr.Drd continued to harbor. As someone who dabbled in AI, Dr.Drd played with the idea of 'evolutionary machine learning', and experimented with the idea of programs that could change their own code while self-optimizing to compete for computational resources. This embodies the controlled chaos of the City as the discarded automatons tear each other apart to survive, like humans after the Rapture fighting each other for the forgiveness of a god that has long abandoned them. Salem rules over all this, like an abusive parent who outwardly shows love and caring beautifying the automatons, but then demands that the inhabitants of the City vie for Salem's favor. In the end, nothing is above being broken down for parts, and the refuse of this chaos is collected and returned to the Factory as raw materials, where the futile cycle begins again.
Themes:
