Her plea for faith fell on deaf ears, which in hindsight was somewhat unsurprising with everything else going on. People pulled out of wherever they had come from, unsure if it was just part of wherever that was. Rayne at least had the advantage of knowing this was somewhere entirely beyond the context of where she had been due to the loss of her links. Meanwhile they called out for allies, made preconception leaps of logic, or in one case slipped away from the group as if they were a danger.
It only came to Rayne’s mind that that last was perhaps the smartest reaction to finding yourself around dangerous looking strangers when one of them floated up into the air, activating some kind of power in what came off as a threatening manner as he demanded answers. Rayne hoped it was just that he was scared and defensive, rather than wanting to lash out, and so she approached her reply with that hope in mind.
“We’re-” she pushed because technically she couldn’t talk for everyone and then corrected “I’m not a ghost, and I don’t know where we are, but I do know it's nowhere near where we once were. I was connected to everyone left alive where I was from, and none of you were among them. So. It's a different place ? A different world? We’ll need to figure it out together so please, don’t attack anyone here!”
She wasn’t really sure what terminology worked in terms of how to talk about this place outside of the context of the place she had just been, but they were beyond the reach of Gaia’s cycle, and that raised all sorts of questions. The information they got from the locals raised even more, about who this goddess was, how she’d brought them here, why people were being attacked, and oh so many more. But the questions would have to wait, because one of the others wanted to be proactive when dealing with these ‘Raven Heralds’ who were attacking the church.
The creator of the barrier agreed, and so it looked like they were going to have a fight on their hands ever so soon.
Acting out of habit Rayne lifted her hand up and splayed her fingers as she always did when preparing for battle, only to be surprised to find a trio of spectral cards appearing in her hand.
“Wait but how…” she asked herself, before figuring it out.
Her mana pool wasn’t sourced from the Link, she’d grown the said pool via hearts of nature and the cards were technically physical things, enchanted to work alongside her Link given powers rather than being sourced directly from them. So she had this power at least. Just no way of refilling her incredibly limited mana reserves.
Wrecking ball, magic shield, sentry gun, she saw as she checked her hand. The first was powerful, but the way it shot wrecking balls out in front of and behind her meant that she’d risk wrecking the church’s wall if she used it too close. The third was worthless, because if she couldn't shoot magic bullets, it couldn't either.
The second however came in handy almost right away, because while the green haired woman’s barrier was lower to let people sortie out just after a volley of arrows struck, that didn’t mean that that volley was the last. So if she could do one thing, she resolved to do something about that problem.
She jogged over to the window through which the shooters outside could get the best angle on them and then called out “Magic shield!”as she put a thumb to the spectral card and flicked it upwards out of her hand to use it. As soon as she did, a 3 meter tall oval shield of some kind of brassy-bronze material appeared before her, floating in the air, blocking the window, and a few moments later absorbing some arrow fire just as she’d intended it too.
Said shield was invulnerable, but as a trade off it did not last forever. So Rayne set about doing what she had said she would if she didn’t have power: making a barricade. Heaving with all her might, she dragged over and then upended a few of the worn benches in the church in-order to block the windows with something physical and permanent.
The Witch Knight whipped her brow and gave a little sigh after the physical exertion, and then checked her hand of cards to see what she’d drawn after her use of Magic Shield.
“Armageddon?” she read out loud, finding one of her most indiscriminately destructive cars in her hand, and then quietly adding “let’s hope it doesn’t come to that”
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
As the darkness grew, the Troop took part in helping light up the way. First and foremost, Kamek created a few wisps, the glowing blobs of mana fanning out and trying to act as little floating lamps. This, unfortunately, only worked somewhat, only really offering the ability to see what was right around them. Bowser’s first contribution had the same problem, as the king first set fire to a load of worm grass and then bathed in their light, drinking it in and cursing the tentacruel domes on his shell to glow with inner light.
They had a second problem, which was that while they lit up the cavern a little, they lit themselves up a lot, making for ever so easy targets for the things which lurked in the dark. Both Bowser and the wisps thus ended up being priority targets for the spitters, something that came to a head when the troop entered into a cavern via a narrow passageway while a touch ahead of the rest of the party.
Immediately upon entering, they were ambushed by a spread out collection of spitters, which nailed most of the wisps in quick succession, and then focused in on the glowing king himself.
”Gahhh!” he roared in pain as the acid ate through his vine armor, before he tried to fight back with his turret guns, firing wildly into the dark at where he thought he was being shot at.
This had little impact on the bugs hiding above, nor did Rika’s own firing when she joined in. Jr meanwhile was less concerned about the ceiling bugs and more about the swarm coming towards them.
The prince opened up by splashing a crescent of ink in front of himself, before hucking a fireball at the first grunt, creating a flaming patch on its location, which added a bit of light. Then he hefted the javelin he’d formed while spitting and hurled at the next, nailing it in the jaw with his olympian strength and skill. Another fireball, another javelin formed while fireballing, but this one did not find its target, as Kamek ended up crushing it with a magic fist while Jr was tossing.
”Hey! I had that one” Jr complained
”My apologies, it is difficult to see what you are aiming for in this gloom” the mage replied as he launched a fireball at another grunt.
The prince grumbled, and then happened to see how a Glyphid guard was forced to pick its way around the javelin that had embedded itself in the ground, giving him an idea for later.
Behind them, Bowser and Rika needed ideas for right now, as the spitters continued to target the king, which had caused the pair to burn through both of their healing strikers already in order to keep his vine armor up.
”Oh! My shock swarm, maybe they can go find them!” Rika realized as she came up with a plan, before popping open her gauntlet hangers and unleashing a swarm of electric insects from them.
The swarm spread out, and in doing so unintentionally outlined the terrain with their light glows as they sought out the targets. Then, when one came across one, it attracted the rest, and soon enough a spitter was zapped into oblivion.
That was good, but there were still several more spitters, but fortunately, Rika had a second idea based on the first. She launched a cheap distracting swarm, and then another, and another, flooding the cavern with the electric motes whose whole purpose was to create flashing lights. With just a little tweaking, she’d made them instead produce a steady glow, filling the air with dozens of firefly like motes and softly lighting the walls as they did so.
It was more than enough to make the bright red spitters visible and target-able. Cannons boomed and gunfire cracked as they took down the rest of the spitters, with the final one finding itself faced with a giant slow moving fireball floating towards it.
A giant slow moving fireball that acted as a giant flare, lighting up the whole room.
”Oh… Uh… Yeah I was just, uh, letting you all flex your creativity, I always knew that would work” Bowser said after a long pause after the discovery of the fact that he could just use mega fireballs to light up large rooms.
Admittedly, Rika’s own innovation still came in handy, with the princess sending her swarms forwards through the smaller tunnels, because in the particularly twisty turny ones the fireballs would only provide a brief amount of light till they hit/went through the walls.
They ended up providing both light sources when the brother longlegs snatched up the remaining wisps, a great fireball bringing a brief dawn to the cavern while Rika’s electroflies made for handy distractions that the strange monsters tried and failed to grab.
Once they had the lighting situation all set up, the smallish groups of two dozen or so bugs they came across were a manageable matter. Which naturally meant that it wasn’t long till the universe decided to toss a fresh complication at them, one heralded by a big inverted triangle and a handful of dwarven miners.
”Bet if you just make me massive I could smash that shield” Bowser insisted, but his advisor, well, he advised against that
”For all we know it would be another flame clock situation, not to mention you might cause a cave in in the process” Kamek warned, before starting to say that ”So I’d rather save my mana for any new bug threats,” only for the scrambling of claws to creep in mid sentence, causing him to sigh and conclude that he had been talking about ones ”Like that”
Having been inspired by his missed spear toss earlier, as the swarm started to dig into the cavern Jr jogged out in front of the group, tossing up a pokeball and bringing Mimi into the fray as he did so.
”Copy me!” he commanded his pokemon, before he crouched down and pressed his iron tattooed hand to the ground. Up from it sprouted a few long spikes, and as the prince quickly moved to one side, more and more formed, creating a freestanding spearwall that would deter the smaller glyphids from trying to get past. His pokemon copied him, and created her own wall of spears, forming a nice little defensive perimeter on their part of the battlefield.
To add to it, the prince flicked his paintbrush, coating both the spears and the ground in-front of them with burning goop, further deterring the ground crawlers, and funneling them to either side of it.
As for what to put behind it? Well, Rika covered part of that by screaming out in pain and summoning her the white whale that had belonged to the pacific princess, who’s to mounted turrets swiveled to the side and started blasting, while it used its mighty jaws to bring the pain to foes that came past the barrier.
Bowser ended up holding the other side of said barrier, burning and blasting glyphids that came round, and raining his shell spikes up and over the spear wall, and down to any clumps of glyphids trying to get past.
Unfortunately, that was just the smallfry handled, and as Jr worked to patch his sister back up, the two potential major complications to his plan arrived.
A trio of hulking praetorians stomped forwards amidst their lesser kin, and it was quite clear that the spiky barrier would be no barrier to their acid sprays. Similarly, the buzzing Mactera Spawn hovering through the air were able to simply huck their horrid projectiles down at the defenders, bypassing their barrier entirely.
With Jr’s clowncar still needing repairs, and the tunnels having not been considered suitable for flying steeds, that left Kamek as the troop’s only available air force. Still, he wasn’t alone, as the mage naturally had more hims, and a little extra help in the form of Mimi who had elected to ride on the tip of the mage’s broomstick. All of his broomsticks actually, as the copycatting specter had mimicked the mage’s clone spell, equipping all the doppelgangers with a familiar of their own.
He’d opted to make red clones only, and those clones made great use of their passengers, recklessly charging forwards and getting up in the mandabled faces of the enemy fliers, at which point the Mimis could scratch away at the bugs with their claws.
As his doppelgangers tied up many of the fliers Kamek prime swooped forwards between them, both he and Mimi delivering drive-by blasts as they did, before they cleared the flying swarm and soared over to the praetorians.
”Time to say, bombs away, and bid these bugs good day” Kamek chanted in a sing-song tone as both he and Mimi began dropping dark energy mines ontop of them. The magical mines spiked down into the earth, pulsed once, and then as long as there was something beneath them, immediately exploded upwards again in pillars of dark energy, hammering the unarmored undersides of the glypids, as well as the exposed green rear of the praetorians.
Things were going wonderfully until a quartet of Centiwings crawled their way into the room via tunnels in the ceiling, and then dropped down into the air and commenced their unnerving spiraling flight. They’d encountered them alone on their way here, but the number of them combined with the surrounding hostels spiked them way up in the mage’s threat assessment. He did not want to find out what they could do if they got ahold of him with their many legs, that was for sure
As he could not simply teleport away due to his passenger, he started falling back via flight, but low to the ground as he had ended up while bombing, he could not swoop for extra speed without getting attacked by ground bugs. Even if he made it past them, he might very well ram into Jr’s spikewall, so it was a dangerously slow hover he committed while backing away from the flying bugs.
As the mage and Mimi blasted at the rapidly approaching Centiwings there came a call of ”I’m coming to help!” from Rika. The freshly healed shipgirl had been tossed over the spikewall by her brother on her request, and then grappled to one of the remaining Mactera spawn, before kicking off of it for more distance. Now close enough to aim without risking friendly fire, she blasted one of Kamek’s pursuers with her rigging guns, finishing it off, and then called out ”Crimson Queen!” as she summoned that striker.
The Vespikan queen appeared beside her, and then immediately charged forwards, her humongous cleaver held overhead, before it slammed it down upon one of the Centiwings, slicing it clean in half in a single stroke. Then she thrust her stinger forwards, impaling another, before her spirit returned to Rika.
With that touch of breathing room, Kamek and Mimi managed to blast the fourth and final centiwing with spells and electroballs. As its spirit fell, the mage turned to thank Rika for her assistance, only to see the girl slowly floating down to the ground, lacking as she was in any grapple points due to his clones having taken down all the Mactera while they had all been dealing with the centiwings.
”Oh no! Rika!” he cried out in alarm when he looked down below her and saw a swarm of glyphids preparing to claw at her when she landed, before quickly coming up with a plan and casting ”sphere of protection” upon her.
”Thanks Kamek!” the princess called up, before she, now surrounded in a shimmering amber barrier, cut her antigravity and feather fall effects and dropped down into the mass of bugs.
Claws slashed and jaws bit, but the barrier reduced the damage to a mere ⅕ of what it could have been. It still hurt, and she was still at risk of being cut down, but it meant that rather than being torn apart in moments she was able to fight back. Her spear jumped into her gauntlet’s jaws, and then was driven into a sclicer’s head. Her hull claws slashed at a grunt, and her disruption cannons blindly unloaded their globby payloads into foes behind her, all of which allowed her to strike several foes at once.
She wasn’t unsupported either, as Kamek floated low, bouncing fireballs down into the bugs trying to still reach her, while Mimi’s shadow appeared at Rika’s feet and slashed at more of them with its spectral claws.
Finally, Jr threw some support her way, sending his own Vespikan strikers into the fray, the four large wasp woman rapidly closing the distance between their shelter and the out of position princess, and delivered swift death with their four-handed cleavers.
With all this support, the bloody princess broke out of the mass that had greeted her on landing, and sprinted towards cover. After clearing some ground, and building up momentum, she leapt up with her featherfall rune, sailing forwards landing upon Bowser’s Trowlon striker that he’d sent floating her way. It moved her a bit closer, and then before it timed out she leapt again, clearing more ground and then launching her grapple and latching onto Bowser. The winch reeled her in quickly, into the awaiting hand of her papa, who caught her just before she ran body first into Jr’s spike wall.
”I gotcha” he told her reassuringly as he lifted her back into the relative safety of their defensive position, and handed her to Jr’s care, the prince only lightly complaining about how much he was having to heal her as Kamek returned as well.
Reunited behind their spiky defenses, the Troop were well placed to hold off the remaining smaller crawlers, and ready to face whatever fresh horrors of chitin came their way.
“We don’t have much time…” so spoke the colossal figure of stone and greenery that was the only other thing in this void with her. So spoke Gaia, so spoke life, death, and rebirth itself “there can’t be two of us at once”
“Two of what?” the small figure floating before Gaia, Rayne, asked
“Every living being is connected to you. You share their life, their strength. They trust your judgment. They have faith in you. That is all it takes to be me” the goddess explained, and Rayne knew that the first half of this at least was true. She could feel them through the link, that magical connection that gave her the power to do the things that had gained her that faith in the first place. She hadn’t known it was everyone however. Or she had, deep down she knew it was everyone, but she’d hoped there were more people out there, that other places had survived the splitting of the sky.
They hadn’t.
She had the faith of everyone who was left alive.
“Am I… a Goddess?” she asked, as she came to the conclusion Gaia was leading her too, before attempting to reject it “But… I don’t care about the Link! I never did! I just wanted to help people! I don’t want to be a Goddess!”
“If you were chasing personal ambitions, you wouldn’t be here” the Goddess replied simply, before attempting to be reassuring “Do not worry, You are confused, and sacred… Like I was when it was my turn. But, with time, you will do fine. We have done this many times before.”
Then she did perhaps the least reassuring thing, and began to fade away as she declared with a measure of finality that “My cycle has ended, and so your cycle begins…”
Rayne could not simply let the moment be, still reeling from it all, and crying out “Wait, I don’t know what to do!” which was an entirely reasonable concern to have when the burden of all that lived was placed on your shoulders.
“Just close your eyes. See the patterns in nature. Rearrange them - find the balance. Life can sustain itself indefinitely when it is balanced.” the goddess replied, which was less than reassuring when the reason that they were here was because people had repeatedly knocked it out of balance “After that… you’ll simply inhale death, and exhale life.”
“What if I can’t find a way?” Rayne called out, reaching a hand towards the goddess as if she might be able to grasp the fading Gaia, as if she could hold back her end.
“You’ll find it…” the goddess replied, almost silent, almost gone now “You’ll make your own cycle. You have all the time in the world” and then her time ran out, and she was gone.
There was silence, and then Rayne was truly alone in the nothingness. It took her several long moments to break the shock and then that silence.
“Ok. Ok. You can do this Rayne. Everybody was already counting on you to save the world, making a new one is basically the same level of responsibility… right?” she lied to herself, before her natural honesty forced her to admit “No. No, it's so much more. But… I can do this. I just have to breathe. Find a rhythm. Close my eyes and then-”
And then in a flash of light she was gone
??? — Ruined Church
Rayne tried to shield her eyes from the glare, and started to ask herself “did it work” before she realized something was oh so wrong.
“Wait. What. no no no no no no what happened, where’s the Link? Where did everyone go?” in a panic as she realized she’d lost her connection to all the people she’d saved, and even the people she’d saved them from. Lost her connection to Akai…
The only thing that stopped her absolutely freaking out was her vision returning, and forcing to ask the more immediate question of “Where am I?” as she laid eyes on the unfamiliar architecture, and unfamiliar people.
Many of them were strange, but she had no eyes for them, only the wounded pair who she immediately stepped towards while asking “Are you alright? Who did this?” before having that question somewhat answered for her when a volley of arrows smashed in through the window.
Despite the Link having vanished, and that meaning she had functionally, no power, she still stepped around them, putting her armored body between them and the entrance. “Stay behind me, I’ll protect you” she told them, causing her to feel the faintest bit of Link, to feel the promise of a start of a whole new network burgeoning in her soul.
As she did that powerless act, another of the strangers acted with sorcerous might, sending bits of paper out of the windows, and forming a barrier around the church.
The little promise of Link faded as hope was redirected towards this savior, but Rayne didn’t mind, even if she could see how that feeling had sent one of her fellow Knight Witches spiraling into madness. She was just glad someone had bought them time to work out what was going on.
She didn’t move from her spot however, just in case the barrier went down, and instead simply turned to face the others.
“Thank you for that” she said to the stranger in the starry dress who had created the barrier, before starting to ask “but who are you?” before pausing that line of inquiry and saying “No wait, that’s rude, let me introduce myself first. I’m Rayne, Knight Witch, and nice to meet you, despite… whatever the circumstances we’re in are?”
One of the people among them, a cloaked knight in gray armor, guessed that a good source of how to find that out would be the ones who were, unlike the rest of them, hurt (presumably by whoever was outside) and so asked them about what was going on as a small pale girl knelt down to aid one of them in some way.
“I’ll help too,” she told the pair, perhaps redundantly given her first action being putting herself in between them and danger, before broaching what she now realized was a slightly awkward topic to bring up right now, namely that she needed Link to be able to help “but I need you to believe I can help in order to help. I know that sounds weird and cyclical now that I say it out loud to someone who probably doesn’t already know what the Link is, but if you” she paused and then addressed everyone “if any of you believe I can help, then I can”
"Even if you don't I'll do what I can anyway" she clarified, "Build a barricade or something like that"
Appearance: Rayne is a halfling, with (pierced) pointy ears and a rather short stature.
Personality: Rayne is a kindhearted soul, brave if not daring, determined and honest even when it is to her own detriment. Despite having had some self confidence issues, she is no pushover, and will stand up for what she thinks is right even if the whole world is against her. She is notably very much against the idea of killing people, even if they are her enemies.
Brief History: Rayne comes from a world devastated by the byproducts of magitech, and while the regime responsible for that devastation has been overthrown, it was too late for the surface world. The sky was shattered, bathing the land in deadly radiation and the last living souls in the world had to hide away in a series of underground caverns known as Dungeonidas. Rayne herself was at one time member of the Knight Witches, a 5 women group that overthrew that regime, but was ejected from the group before battle for the fate of the world took place due to branding reasons (her name and that of the leader Robyn were considered too similar).
Despite this ejection (for, unbeknownst to her, very stupid reasons) Rayne still held the power of the link, the power to gain magical strength merely from having people put their faith in her. Thus, when the remnants of the regime's golem armies invaded Dungeonidas, and with the other Knight Witches nowhere to be found for unknown reasons, Rayne was the only one able to stand up against them.
After a series of conflicts, twists, turns, and conspiratorial backstabs she eventually discovered that the new society had simply traded one world destroying magitech powersource for another, hexoil, power stolen form the circle of life itself, one that began to slowly rend reality asunder as the war for Dungeonidas reached its peak. She delved into the cracks in reality, defeated the avatar of this new apocalypse, the fallen knight witch Robyn, and was poised to become the avatar of life itself, Gaia, charged with restoring life to her ruined world.
Then, instead, she found herself here, in this new one.
Universe of Origin: The Knight Witch
Equipment:
Armor: Rayne’s armor is somewhat fashion over form, but the solid plate covering her chest, shoulders and hips still provides a fair bit of protection
Runedge: An enchanted blade made to be far heavier than its form suggests
Abilities:
Flight: Ryne can effortlessly hover through the air, though her power walking pace speed leaves much to be desired.
Dashing: Rayne can perform a straight line dash, teleporting a fixed 3 meters in any direction and appearing again with a bright flash. While this used to render her untouchable while doing so, something about this new world causes this not to be the case, which is going to give her quite the scare when she first takes a hit while dashing. There is only a short half second cooldown between dashes, making it quite useful for mobility as well as dodging.
Weapon Summoning: Rayne can store weapons in her magic, and then pull them out in the blink of an eye to attack, before returning them to storage at the end of her stroke.
Magic Bullets: Rayne can fire large magic bullets from a hovering glyph at a slow but steady pace, and for little to no effort. They have a fairly limited range however, and simply dissipate when they exceed it.
Spell Cards: Rayne can use her mana to cast larger spells via special spell cards. Her max mana pool is pretty limited (and she can only briefly hold over her maximum), but she has incredible versatility in the spells she can cast. The only issue is that it is based on a deck and card draw system, with 10 cards in a deck, and 3 in hand, rather limiting her ability to effectively wield that versatility. (Rather than try and simulate this however, let’s say that once Rayne has cast a spell, she then has to cast a few other, different, spells before she can cast that same spell again). Note that these spells occur around her rather than being fired in a direction.
Ryne’s max mana is 8, however spell costs are for context only, and and we won’t be keeping track of the minutia
(6) Death Spiral - Creates a shmups worth of bullets for several seconds
(1) Seeking sword - fires a single phantom blade that homes in on and stun enemies
(2) Seeking swords - fires 3 phantom blades that homes in on and stun enemies
(3) Ethereal sword - summons a giant sword to spin around her for a while
(3) Magic ax - summons a giant ax to spin around her once
(3) Lightning - A vertical lighting bolt that strikes down from above her to below her
(4) Wrecking ball - causes two giant spiked wrecking balls to smash out from either side of her
(4) Armageddon - a massive wave of destructive magic
(1) Wreckless blast - which also hurts her
(1) Shockwave - a blast that destroy enemy projectiles,
(2) Parry - a blast that reflects enemy projectiles
(2) Flashbang - a blast that stuns enemies
(2) Runic bomb - a single touch/damage activated bombs
(4) Bombardment - a rain of several touch/damage activated bombs
(2) Cloud of darkness - Create a large lingering damaging cloud
(4) Electric orbs - 4 orbs of ball lighting fired around her in an X shape
(3) Flamethrower - replaces her magic bullets with a stream of flames
(3) Machine gun - massively increases fire rate, but reduces individual bullet size and damage
(4) Triple cannon - fire 3 bullets in a spread
(5) Shotgun - fire a dozen small bullets in a wide spread
(4) Boomerang gun - fire a crescent moon that pierces foes and terrain, and then comes back
(4) Hand Cannon - bullet size massively increased
(5) Ghost gun - makes her fire rapid fire multi shot homing terrain piercing bullets that also have much longer range
(5) Rocket launcher - bullets have no range limit, and explode in a 3 meter aoe on impact
(3) Death ray - replaces magic bullets with a lock on laser that does more damage the longer it hits a single target
(2) Reload - recasts the current weapon, letting it be active for longer.
(3) Gaia’s shield - summon a permanent ring of (destroyable) floating rocks,
(3) Magic shield - summon a temporary indestructible floating shield,
(4) Sentry gun - summon a floating automated turret that copies her current weapon
(5) War spirit - summon a dragon whelp shaped familiar that copies her current weapon
(2) Wise spirit - summon a temporary aven shaped familiar that fires seeking swords when she casts a spell.
(5) Etheria armor - Give herself magical armor, letting her take an extra hit (does not stack)
(0) Mana surge - Restore a point of mana
(0) Collection - Attracting all the mana in the area towards her
(2) Garbage collector - lets her gain 1 mana for each enemy destroyed for a time
(3) Manna gamble - makes the next drawn card cast 0
(0) Loan - refills mana entierly, but causes her to draw a hexed card that takes 3 mana to destroy
(4) Discard frenzy - for five seconds, all cards cost 0, but also have 0 effect
(0) Wild card - discards her hand and draw three cards
(4) Butterfly swarm- Several dozen crimson butterflies burst out from Rayne, which then flutter towards foes in order to collide with them, detonating in little bursts of flame when they do.
Momentos: Rayne can gain cards themed on the abilities of bosses she defeateds.
Mana bubble off: When Rayne hits a foe with an attack that does not use mana, that strike has a moderate chance of causing a football sized orb of mana to appear next to the impact site. This mana can be collected by anyone who has free capacity for it (as in they have used mana to cast spells) which includes, unfortunately, the target. Rayne’s natural mana regeneration is rather pathetic, meaning that unless she has time to rest, this (and a few specific cards) will be the only way for her to regenerate mana, barring the discovery of alternate/external sources.
The link: The more people who feel gratitude and have faith in Rayne, the more powerful she becomes (gained from people directly giving her thanks). Specifically her base bullet damage/rate of fire increases, and her mana bubble off chance and spell power/duration increases. These upgrades are noticeable, but not massively dramatic.
Appearance: Rayne is a halfling, with (pierced) pointy ears and a rather short stature.
Personality: Rayne is a kindhearted soul, brave if not daring, determined and honest even when it is to her own detriment. Despite having had some self confidence issues, she is no pushover, and will stand up for what she thinks is right even if the whole world is against her. She is notably very much against the idea of killing people, even if they are her enemies.
Brief History: Rayne comes from a world devastated by the byproducts of magitech, and while the regime responsible for that devastation has been overthrown, it was too late for the surface world. The sky was shattered, bathing the land in deadly radiation and the last living souls in the world had to hide away in a series of underground caverns known as Dungeonidas. Rayne herself was at one time member of the Knight Witches, a 5 women group that overthrew that regime, but was ejected from the group before battle for the fate of the world took place due to branding reasons (her name and that of the leader Robyn were considered too similar).
Despite this ejection (for, unbeknownst to her, very stupid reasons) Rayne still held the power of the link, the power to gain magical strength merely from having people put their faith in her. Thus, when the remnants of the regime's golem armies invaded Dungeonidas, and with the other Knight Witches nowhere to be found for unknown reasons, Rayne was the only one able to stand up against them.
After a series of conflicts, twists, turns, and conspiratorial backstabs she eventually discovered that the new society had simply traded one world destroying magitech powersource for another, hexoil, power stolen form the circle of life itself, one that began to slowly rend reality asunder as the war for Dungeonidas reached its peak. She delved into the cracks in reality, defeated the avatar of this new apocalypse, the fallen knight witch Robyn, and was poised to become the avatar of life itself, Gaia, charged with restoring life to her ruined world.
Then, instead, she found herself here, in this new one.
Universe of Origin: The Knight Witch
Equipment:
Armor: Rayne’s armor is somewhat fashion over form, but the solid plate covering her chest, shoulders and hips still provides a fair bit of protection
Runedge: An enchanted blade made to be far heavier than its form suggests
Abilities:
Flight: Ryne can effortlessly hover through the air, though her power walking pace speed leaves much to be desired.
Dashing: Rayne can perform a straight line dash, teleporting a fixed 3 meters in any direction and appearing again with a bright flash. While this used to render her untouchable while doing so, something about this new world causes this not to be the case, which is going to give her quite the scare when she first takes a hit while dashing. There is only a short half second cooldown between dashes, making it quite useful for mobility as well as dodging.
Weapon Summoning: Rayne can store weapons in her magic, and then pull them out in the blink of an eye to attack, before returning them to storage at the end of her stroke.
Magic Bullets: Rayne can fire large magic bullets from a hovering glyph at a slow but steady pace, and for little to no effort. They have a fairly limited range however, and simply dissipate when they exceed it.
Momentos: Rayne can gain cards themed on the abilities of bosses she defeateds.
Mana bubble off: When Rayne hits a foe with an attack that does not use mana, that strike has a moderate chance of causing a football sized orb of mana to appear next to the impact site. This mana can be collected by anyone who has free capacity for it (as in they have used mana to cast spells) which includes, unfortunately, the target. Rayne’s natural mana regeneration is rather pathetic, meaning that unless she has time to rest, this (and a few specific cards) will be the only way for her to regenerate mana, barring the discovery of alternate/external sources.
The link: The more people who feel gratitude and have faith in Rayne, the more powerful she becomes (gained from people directly giving her thanks). Specifically her base bullet damage/rate of fire increases, and her mana bubble off chance and spell power/duration increases. These upgrades are noticeable, but not massively dramatic.
Spell Cards: Rayne can use her mana to cast larger spells via special spell cards. Her max mana pool is pretty limited (and she can only briefly hold over her maximum), but she has incredible versatility in the spells she can cast. The only issue is that it is based on a deck and card draw system, with 10 cards in a deck, and 3 in hand, rather limiting her ability to effectively wield that versatility. (Rather than try and simulate this however, let’s say that once Rayne has cast a spell, she then has to cast a few other, different, spells before she can cast that same spell again). Note that these spells occur around her rather than being fired in a direction.
Ryne’s max mana is 8, however spell costs are for context only, and and we won’t be keeping track of the minutia
(6) Death Spiral - Creates a shmups worth of bullets for several seconds
(1) Seeking sword - fires a single phantom blade that homes in on and stun enemies
(2) Seeking swords - fires 3 phantom blades that homes in on and stun enemies
(3) Ethereal sword - summons a giant sword to spin around her for a while
(3) Magic ax - summons a giant ax to spin around her once
(3) Lightning - A vertical lighting bolt that strikes down from above her to below her
(4) Wrecking ball - causes two giant spiked wrecking balls to smash out from either side of her
(4) Armageddon - a massive wave of destructive magic
(1) Wreckless blast - which also hurts her
(1) Shockwave - a blast that destroy enemy projectiles,
(2) Parry - a blast that reflects enemy projectiles
(2) Flashbang - a blast that stuns enemies
(2) Runic bomb - a single touch/damage activated bombs
(4) Bombardment - a rain of several touch/damage activated bombs
(2) Cloud of darkness - Create a large lingering damaging cloud
(4) Electric orbs - 4 orbs of ball lighting fired around her in an X shape
(3) Flamethrower - replaces her magic bullets with a stream of flames
(3) Machine gun - massively increases fire rate, but reduces individual bullet size and damage
(4) Triple cannon - fire 3 bullets in a spread
(5) Shotgun - fire a dozen small bullets in a wide spread
(4) Boomerang gun - fire a crescent moon that pierces foes and terrain, and then comes back
(4) Hand Cannon - bullet size massively increased
(5) Ghost gun - makes her fire rapid fire multi shot homing terrain piercing bullets that also have much longer range
(5) Rocket launcher - bullets have no range limit, and explode in a 3 meter aoe on impact
(3) Death ray - replaces magic bullets with a lock on laser that does more damage the longer it hits a single target
(2) Reload - recasts the current weapon, letting it be active for longer.
(3) Gaia’s shield - summon a permanent ring of (destroyable) floating rocks,
(3) Magic shield - summon a temporary indestructible floating shield,
(4) Sentry gun - summon a floating automated turret that copies her current weapon
(5) War spirit - summon a dragon whelp shaped familiar that copies her current weapon
(2) Wise spirit - summon a temporary aven shaped familiar that fires seeking swords when she casts a spell.
(5) Etheria armor - Give herself magical armor, letting her take an extra hit (does not stack)
(0) Mana surge - Restore a point of mana
(0) Collection - Attracting all the mana in the area towards her
(2) Garbage collector - lets her gain 1 mana for each enemy destroyed for a time
(3) Manna gamble - makes the next drawn card cast 0
(0) Loan - refills mana entierly, but causes her to draw a hexed card that takes 3 mana to destroy
(4) Discard frenzy - for five seconds, all cards cost 0, but also have 0 effect
(0) Wild card - discards her hand and draw three cards
updated sheet: clarification about how card costs are just for context, added card names, added better descriptions for cards, added a few oddball cards I missed, dash description updated no longer makes her untouchable, mana generation has it's own section in abilities with the described mana stealing possibility outlined in it
Name: Rayne
Gender: Female
Appearance: Rayne is a halfling, with (pierced) pointy ears and a rather short stature.
Personality: Rayne is a kindhearted soul, brave if not daring, determined and honest even when it is to her own detriment. Despite having had some self confidence issues, she is no pushover, and will stand up for what she thinks is right even if the whole world is against her. She is notably very much against the idea of killing people, even if they are her enemies.
Brief History: Rayne comes from a world devastated by the byproducts of magitech, and while the regime responsible for that devastation has been overthrown, it was too late for the surface world. The sky was shattered, bathing the land in deadly radiation and the last living souls in the world had to hide away in a series of underground caverns known as Dungeonidas. Rayne herself was at one time member of the Knight Witches, a 5 women group that overthrew that regime, but was ejected from the group before battle for the fate of the world took place due to branding reasons (her name and that of the leader Robyn were considered too similar).
Despite this ejection (for, unbeknownst to her, very stupid reasons) Rayne still held the power of the link, the power to gain magical strength merely from having people put their faith in her. Thus, when the remnants of the regime's golem armies invaded Dungeonidas, and with the other Knight Witches nowhere to be found for unknown reasons, Rayne was the only one able to stand up against them.
After a series of conflicts, twists, turns, and conspiratorial backstabs she eventually discovered that the new society had simply traded one world destroying magitech powersource for another, hexoil, power stolen form the circle of life itself, one that began to slowly rend reality asunder as the war for Dungeonidas reached its peak. She delved into the cracks in reality, defeated the avatar of this new apocalypse, the fallen knight witch Robyn, and was poised to become the avatar of life itself, Gaia, charged with restoring life to her ruined world.
Then, instead, she found herself here, in this new one.
Universe of Origin: The Knight Witch
Equipment:
Armor: Rayne’s armor is somewhat fashion over form, but the solid plate covering her chest, shoulders and hips still provides a fair bit of protection
Runedge: An enchanted blade made to be far heavier than its form suggests
Abilities:
Flight: Ryne can effortlessly hover through the air, though her power walking pace speed leaves much to be desired.
Dashing: Rayne can perform a straight line dash, teleporting a fixed 3 meters in any direction and appearing again with a bright flash. While this used to render her untouchable while doing so, something about this new world causes this not to be the case, which is going to give her quite the scare when she first takes a hit while dashing. There is only a short half second cooldown between dashes, making it quite useful for mobility as well as dodging.
Weapon Summoning: Rayne can store weapons in her magic, and then pull them out in the blink of an eye to attack, before returning them to storage at the end of her stroke.
Magic Bullets: Rayne can fire large magic bullets from a hovering glyph at a slow but steady pace, and for little to no effort. They have a fairly limited range however, and simply dissipate when they exceed it.
Spell Cards: Rayne can use her mana to cast larger spells via special spell cards. Her max mana pool is pretty limited (and she can only briefly hold over her maximum), but she has incredible versatility in the spells she can cast. The only issue is that it is based on a deck and card draw system, with 10 cards in a deck, and 3 in hand, rather limiting her ability to effectively wield that versatility. (Rather than try and simulate this however, let’s say that once Rayne has cast a spell, she then has to cast a few other, different, spells before she can cast that same spell again). Note that these spells occur around her rather than being fired in a direction.
Ryne’s max mana is 8, however spell costs are for context only, and and we won’t be keeping track of the minutia
(6) Death Spiral - Creates a shmups worth of bullets for several seconds
(1) Seeking sword - fires a single phantom blade that homes in on and stun enemies
(2) Seeking swords - fires 3 phantom blades that homes in on and stun enemies
(3) Ethereal sword - summons a giant sword to spin around her for a while
(3) Magic ax - summons a giant ax to spin around her once
(3) Lightning - A vertical lighting bolt that strikes down from above her to below her
(4) Wrecking ball - causes two giant spiked wrecking balls to smash out from either side of her
(4) Armageddon - a massive wave of destructive magic
(1) Wreckless blast - which also hurts her
(1) Shockwave - a blast that destroy enemy projectiles,
(2) Parry - a blast that reflects enemy projectiles
(2) Flashbang - a blast that stuns enemies
(2) Runic bomb - a single touch/damage activated bombs
(4) Bombardment - a rain of several touch/damage activated bombs
(2) Cloud of darkness - Create a large lingering damaging cloud
(4) Electric orbs - 4 orbs of ball lighting fired around her in an X shape
(3) Flamethrower - replaces her magic bullets with a stream of flames
(3) Machine gun - massively increases fire rate, but reduces individual bullet size and damage
(4) Triple cannon - fire 3 bullets in a spread
(5) Shotgun - fire a dozen small bullets in a wide spread
(4) Boomerang gun - fire a crescent moon that pierces foes and terrain, and then comes back
(4) Hand Cannon - bullet size massively increased
(5) Ghost gun - makes her fire rapid fire multi shot homing terrain piercing bullets that also have much longer range
(5) Rocket launcher - bullets have no range limit, and explode in a 3 meter aoe on impact
(3) Death ray - replaces magic bullets with a lock on laser that does more damage the longer it hits a single target
(2) Reload - recasts the current weapon, letting it be active for longer.
(3) Gaia’s shield - summon a permanent ring of (destroyable) floating rocks,
(3) Magic shield - summon a temporary indestructible floating shield,
(4) Sentry gun - summon a floating automated turret that copies her current weapon
(5) War spirit - summon a dragon whelp shaped familiar that copies her current weapon
(2) Wise spirit - summon a temporary aven shaped familiar that fires seeking swords when she casts a spell.
(5) Etheria armor - Give herself magical armor, letting her take an extra hit (does not stack)
(0) Mana surge - Restore a point of mana
(0) Collection - Attracting all the mana in the area towards her
(2) Garbage collector - lets her gain 1 mana for each enemy destroyed for a time
(3) Manna gamble - makes the next drawn card cast 0
(0) Loan - refills mana entierly, but causes her to draw a hexed card that takes 3 mana to destroy
(4) Discard frenzy - for five seconds, all cards cost 0, but also have 0 effect
(0) Wild card - discards her hand and draw three cards
Momentos: Rayne can gain cards themed on the abilities of bosses she defeateds.
Mana bubble off: When Rayne hits a foe with an attack that does not use mana, that strike has a moderate chance of causing a football sized orb of mana to appear next to the impact site. This mana can be collected by anyone who has free capacity for it (as in they have used mana to cast spells) which includes, unfortunately, the target. Rayne’s natural mana regeneration is rather pathetic, meaning that unless she has time to rest, this (and a few specific cards) will be the only way for her to regenerate mana, barring the discovery of alternate/external sources.
The link: The more people who feel gratitude and have faith in Rayne, the more powerful she becomes (gained from people directly giving her thanks). Specifically her base bullet damage/rate of fire increases, and her mana bubble off chance and spell power/duration increases. These upgrades are noticeable, but not massively dramatic.
I'm going to be honest, I'm not going to be super nitpicky as to exact mana costs for skills and abilities. Going to be very hands-off on people doing stuff under the assumption that I can trust that they're not pulling some insanity by dumping all of the everything out at once. To that end, costs don't really need to exist in this context (beyond any translation of mechanics like you suggested for the card system). That being said...
Yeah those numbers are more there for comparing to each other effort/power wise (Death Spiral is a big expenditure, projectile destruction explosion not so much) (and now that i write that I might have to get the rest of the actual names so i never have to write 'projectile destruction explosion' ever again), rather than for doing exact math which would be a pain in the butt
Mana exists within the world as its own... Thing. Would that mana and the mana that the character uses fall under the same umbrella and, if so, what effects does that have in turn?
Hmmm, good question. Either we make it it's own thing that only she can see/interact with ooooor, and I think this could lead to some more fun situations, it is very much floating globs of mana that anyone, friend or foe, can absorb if they have the capacity for it. But only if they have spent mana somehow, to prevent non magical foes from just reabsorbing it. Naturally this means that she would be very bad at wizard duels, because if she hits them with her bullets they are going to be able to steal the mana it produces. If we do that then she can also gain mana from other sources, potions or what have you, but either does not gain passive mana, or does so very slowly compared to the locals.
Dashing as you have it is a very literal translation of game mechanics to prose, which I don't think would allow for anything like "abusable iframes" in this context. Could do well enough to remove it or rephrase it to be more of a general movement option.>/list>
To clarify, 'dash' is a short range blink teleport rather than an iframe filled combat roll or something of the sort (traversal wise it gets used to bypass barriers/walls for more context).
If I where to rephrase it to something like: "Blink Dash: Rayne can perform a straight line teleport, warping a fixed 3 meters in any direction in the blink of an eye, with the path she takes being outlined by a visible woosh of magic and a bright flash on arrival. There is only a short half second cooldown between dashes, making it quite useful for mobility as well as dodging" would that work?
if that is too much we can nerf it into a dash rather than a teleport tho, which will lead to either a panicked moment where she gets hit whens he thought she wouldn't, or a funny one where she rams face first into a wall ... ok i'm honestly kinda sold on that now lol
Appearance: Rayne is a halfling, with (pierced) pointy ears and a rather short stature.
Personality: Rayne is a kindhearted soul, brave if not daring, determined and honest even when it is to her own detriment. Despite having had some self confidence issues, she is no pushover, and will stand up for what she thinks is right even if the whole world is against her. She is notably very much against the idea of killing people, even if they are her enemies.
Brief History: Rayne comes from a world devastated by the byproducts of magitech, and while the regime responsible for that devastation has been overthrown, it was too late for the surface world. The sky was shattered, bathing the land in deadly radiation and the last living souls in the world had to hide away in a series of underground caverns known as Dungeonidas. Rayne herself was at one time member of the Knight Witches, a 5 women group that overthrew that regime, but was ejected from the group before battle for the fate of the world took place due to branding reasons (her name and that of the leader Robyn were considered too similar).
Despite this ejection (for, unbeknownst to her, very stupid reasons) Rayne still held the power of the link, the power to gain magical strength merely from having people put their faith in her. Thus, when the remnants of the regime's golem armies invaded Dungeonidas, and with the other Knight Witches nowhere to be found for unknown reasons, Rayne was the only one able to stand up against them.
After a series of conflicts, twists, turns, and conspiratorial backstabs she eventually discovered that the new society had simply traded one world destroying magitech powersource for another, hexoil, power stolen form the circle of life itself, one that began to slowly rend reality asunder as the war for Dungeonidas reached its peak. She delved into the cracks in reality, defeated the avatar of this new apocalypse, the fallen knight witch Robyn, and was poised to become the avatar of life itself, Gaia, charged with restoring life to her ruined world.
Then, instead, she found herself here, in this new one.
Universe of Origin: The Knight Witch
Equipment:
Armor: Rayne’s armor is somewhat fashion over form, but the solid plate covering her chest, shoulders and hips still provides a fair bit of protection
Runedge: An enchanted blade made to be far heavier than its form suggests
Abilities:
Flight: Ryne can effortlessly hover through the air, though her jogging pace speed leaves much to be desired.
Dashing: Rayne can perform a straight line dash, teleporting a fixed 3 meters in any direction, which renders her immune to damage while doing it (but unable to take any other actions at the same time). There is only a short half second cooldown between dashes, making it quite useful for mobility as well as dodging.
Weapon Summoning: Rayne can store weapons in her magic, and then pull them out in the blink of an eye to attack, before returning them to storage at the end of her stroke.
Magic Bullets: Rayne can fire large magic bullets from a hovering glyph at a slow but steady pace, and for little to no effort. They have a fairly limited range however, and simply dissipate when they exceed it.
Spell Cards: Rayne can also use mana, which is dropped from enemies she damages (and which then hovers where it falls in the form of football sized glowing blue orbs that she has to get close too to pick up) to cast larger spells. Her max mana pool is pretty limited (and she can only briefly hold over her maximum of 8), but she has incredible versatility in the spells she can cast. The only issue is that it is based on a deck and card draw system, with 10 cards in a deck, and 3 in hand, rather limiting her ability to effectively wield that versatility. (Rather than try and simulate this however, let’s say that once Rayne has cast a spell, she then has to cast a few other, different, spells before she can cast that same spell again). Note that these spells occur around her rather than being fired in a direction.
(mainly for my own benefit (why did I make myself do this, there was no wiki for me to steal from))
(6) Creating a Death Spiral (a shmups worth of bullets for several seconds)
(2) 3 seeking swords (stun enemies)
(3) A giant sword to spin around her for a while
(3) A giant axe to spin around her once
(3) A vertical lighting bolt that strikes down from above her to below her
(4) causes two giant wrecking balls to smash out from either side of her
(4) armageddon, a massive wave of destructive magic
(1) wreckless blasts, which also hurts her
(1) a blast that destroy enemy projectiles,
(2) a blast that reflects enemy projectiles
(2) a blast that stuns enemies
(2) a single touch/damage activated bombs
(4) a rain of several touch activated bombs,
(2) Create a damaging cloud of darkness
(4) 4 orbs of ball lighting fired around her in an X
(3) death ray (does more damage the longer it hits a single target
(2) reload the current weapon.
(3) Summon a permanent ring of (destroyable) floating rocks,
(3) Summon a temporary indestructible floating shield,
(4) Summon a temporary automated turret that copies her current weapon
(5) Summon a temporary accompanying (dragon whelp shaped) that copies her current weapon
(2) Summon a temporary accompanying (raven shaped) familiar that fires seeking swords when she casts a spell.
(5) Give herself ethereal armor, letting her take an extra hit (does not stack)
(0) Restore an 8th of her mana pool,
(0) Attracting all the mana in the area towards her
(2) lets her gain 1 mana for each enemy destroyed for a time
(3) makes the next drawn card cast 0
Momentos: Rayne can gain cards themed on the abilities of bosses she defeateds.
The link: the more people who feel gratitude and have faith in Rayne, the more powerful she becomes (gained from people directly giving her thanks). Specifically her base bullet damage/rate of fire increases, and her mana generation and spell power/duration increases. These upgrades are noticeable, but not massively dramatic.
wintersoldier
Snowdrops
LG
Lord Zee
Timemaster
Damycles
Izurich
Villamvihar
FunnierPrez
