Donte sighed. He pocketed his PDA and pulled up a nearby stool, having a seat with an elbow on his knee, holding up his head.
"You wanna talk about it?"
Probably not with him. He should probably explain himself a little.
"Look, I've got some... family issues..." His father interrupted him, yelling his full name from outside one more time, clearly angry and audible to everyone in Slifer Red. Donte winced. "The bottom line is that I ain't going nowhere unless it involves grievous bodily harm or immediate expulsion." He waved his hand nonchalantly, like none of it mattered. "Dealer's choice. You can just say it was self-defense or whatever."
He settled back into a glum, bored expression, hand propped up his head. "Another concussion would suck, though."
@Goose Looks good. I agree that Powerload Ogre's gotta go - after that, you can drop them in the character's tab.
I've never really explained it on the forums before so our main two benchmarks for balance are:
1. Set normal monster > pass on turn 1 (usually) won't immediately lose you the game (though it's not necessarily a good play) - mainly just something to measure a deck's immediate swarm against. A lot of the decks in the RP rely on slow starts when they can't draw their combo pieces, and while they're expected to draw them quickly/put up some kind of defense or lose, being able to stall a little helps.
2. Nothing is super difficult to remove; if it's unaffected by card effects, for example, then its attack should be moderately low, and the deck shouldn't be capable of buffing it. Crooked Cook and Libromancer Firestarter are about the upper limit for this, and cards like Left-Hand Shark or I:P Masquerena would require you to limit the contents of your extra deck accordingly. Once-per-turn negates aren't as bad, unless they are also omninegates, in which case they may need the same restrictions. Naturally, other aspects of the deck can easily push them off the table entirely. For example, Libromancer Firestarter, Libromancer Bonded and Libromancer Fireburst aren't allowed in the same deck, since Fireburst would be able to achieve immunity to destruction by battle or card effect, as well as immunity to banishment. I don't want everyone to be forced to run Lava Golem/Kaijus/Effect Veiler/etc. to deal with particularly ornery monsters.
The rest is mostly balancing guesswork.
The Libromancer archetype is used in an NPC deck if it wasn't obvious by now. As a modern archetype, it's quite capable of swarming the field. I decided to take out the Libromancer field spell- (among other support cards - amusingly the really good continuous spell was taken out simply because it was making Fireburst hit too hard) -to slow down how much the deck can throw out its ritual monsters, since the rest are generally non-threatening. This wasn't strictly necessary, and I might go with other workarounds if I think of them so I can take out bonded and put Firestarter back in, (relying on several different generic ritual spells is awful) but for now it hit the otherwise fairly modern deck pretty hard and brought it down to a decent level.
Nobody has submitted an anti-fun deck (e.g. burn/mill/exodia) yet but we'd probably be harsher with them, such as Fonda Fontaine's nurse burn deck that doesn't actually have a lot of burn or control cards.
Jon in the NPCs is a temporary exception to these rules mainly because it ties into his character arc, his deck is a (very inflexible) gimmick I really like, and because I thought it'd be cool if there was an unreasonably strong NPC available to duel against. Nobody has dueled against him yet though, so maybe I thought wrong.
Donte It was such a relief to be out of the line of fire that Donte didn't even notice the girl sitting at her desk until she spoke up. "Oh. Hey."
What was she doing here?
Well, obviously, it's gotta be her room, but he and his father didn't waste much time coming here. It took some time to ditch him, but the bottom line is that if she's here alone, her parents were probably no-shows, which meant he was in the clear. Not as lucky as finding an empty room, but he could work with this.
He stood up, dusting himself off. "-And naw, this is right where I'm tryin' to be right now." He casually took a few steps into the room and started leaning against the foot of the bunkbeds. "You don't need to mind me, though if you do, make sure it's scandalous." Despite sounding like he was coming on to her, his tone was matter-of-fact, and his body language was disinterested. He had said it without even looking in her direction, pulling his PDA out of his pocket and fiddling with it as if hanging around uninvited was a perfectly natural thing to do.
He had burst into Ms. Hibiki's room, which doubled as her office, and announced it out of nowhere. "You heard me."
The woman shook her head. "I didn't hear a 'why'."
Donte crossed his arms. "Because I don't want to be here anymore."
Ms. Hibiki raised an eyebrow. "Why would your father send you here if you didn't like dueling? Isn't he a tech magnate?"
"Yeah, yeah, 'hOw CoUlD mR. pErFeCt MaKe A mIsTaKe?' Well, I'm telling you, he did."
"I was just going to ask why he'd go out of his way to send you here if you hated dueling. Don't most successful businessmen like him want their children to 'inherit the empire' or something?"
"Hell no. Maybe when I was a baby and he didn't think of me as a such a fuck-up."
"Donte. Look at me. You're not a fuck-up."
Donte frowned. "Damn STRAIGHT I'm not, so you gonna expel me or do I need to damage school property first?"
A voice rang out from upstairs, interrupting their conversation. It wasn't hard to hear through the walls at all. "DONTAVIUS LORENZO!"
Donte grit his teeth, visibly going into fight or flight mode. "Fuck. Hide me."
Ms. Hibiki shrugged. "You can hide, but I'm not going to lie to your father's face."
"You're useless, then." Donte didn't waste any more time here, bolting out the door as quickly as he could without making a ruckus.
He needed to hide and fast. He was bound to be found in no time in the mess hall, but hey, none of the Slifer Red Dorms actually have locks. He ran into the nearest one, Room 102, shutting the door quickly and quietly behind him before pressing his back to the door and sliding down it.
Personality: Despite his noble upbringing, Akio is easygoing and hates standing on ceremony. Although he's capable of showing the manners of a member of high society, there's nothing he hates more than pretentious snobs. He's a bit reckless, and has a penchant for getting involved where he doesn't need to, though he's surprisingly cool-headed and not as much of an idiot as his devil-may-care attitude might suggest.
History: Akio ran away from his life as a noble, abandoning his family name and forging a new identity for himself. He found he much preferred the company of commoners and a traveler's lifestyle. He mostly worked as a courier, delivering goods and messages between towns. He was camping in the woods one night when he stumbled upon a large mansion, just sitting there in the middle of the woods, far from any towns. Although curious, he wasn't going to intrude until a pack of wolves cornered him and forced him inside - the doors were unlocked, luckily.
Although he hadn't planned on staying for long, he was soon greeted by a short girl with long, curly white hair. Akio asked to meet with her parents, though she insisted she was the lord of the manor, and also a fully grown adult in her mid twenties. Akio, barely an adult at the time, was about a foot taller than her, though he didn't want to be rude when he was already intruding on her home, so he didn't comment on it further. He explained his situation, and a look of realization swept over the girl, before she moved past him and opened the door. The wolves immediately tackled her, and after a brief moment of Akio's panic, the girl started laughing as the wolves licked her face affectionately. "They're my precious children", she said. He didn't lower his guard as one of them growled at him.
The girl invited him to stay in her mansion, and against his better judgement, he accepted, if only because he was still curious about the strange girl and her empty mansion in the middle of nowhere. The girl said she already ate, but volunteered to make him dinner, and sat at the table with him, asking for his opinion on her cooking. The food was pretty good, if a bit salty, and he gave her his compliments. As he was finishing up and she was reading a book, he asked her why she had a mansion built in the middle of some woods, and also how she tamed a bunch of wolves. She simply responded that it was magic, to which Akio immediately asked her to teach him.
In the following days, Akio learned the basics of druidcraft. The girl started off trying to teach him wizardry, but it proved too boring for him to handle. Although they weren't doing anything special, learning the ways of a Druid proved exhausting. There also seemed to be a mosquito problem in his room, because he had irritating bite marks on his neck.
It all made sense when he announced he was ready to leave, returning to his travels. The girl didn't want him to leave, and had more than enough pure physical strength and speed to stop him. Turns out, she was a vampire, and apparently a very lonely one, because she refused to let him leave. In the end, he had to hold a knife to one of her wolves to get her to let him go, cringing as it sank its teeth into him all the while. She said she regret not turning him into a spawn, and swore she would find him again one day.
He managed to drag himself out of her castle and back to the nearest town, wrestling with the wolf as he did so, though even after managing to release it without tearing him to shreds, getting his wounds treated and coming to rest at a local inn, her vow to find him weighed on his mind.
Years passed by as he managed to avoid being found by both his family and the vampire girl. As dangerous as it was, he still felt he owed a lot to her as his mentor, but when he tried to visit the girl again, he found that her mansion was completely gone.
What kind of Vampire becomes a Druid, anyway? They don't exactly scream "communer with nature". In any case, he's continued on, learning more and more as a Druid. He's heard they can even change into animals, something he never once saw the girl do, which is ironic since Vampires are known to change into bats. Using his newfound magical abilities, he took on more work as an adventurer, though, perhaps even more ironic than the girl, he found he preferred close combat over sitting in the back, tossing around spells.
After double checking to see if I could find out the details of the conflict, I think I messed up.
So, the population was 25k, rather than 250k
Second, every single resident died, but it wasn't from the Orcs, instead being because a Dwarven high priest summoned Aurgloroasa, a shadow wyrm, in the middle of the city who proceeded to turn every dwarven resident into undead. It was then taken control of by 3000 human troops before it was captured by the orcs until the Dwarves recaptured it from them.
I know next to nothing about Forgotten Realms, but the events within evidently abide by D&D 5e lore if it's mentioned in official material, and the wiki for it had this to say on their relationship:
the entire (Dwarven) race had more or less declared war on goblins and orcs as a whole
Given the racial enmity between dwarves and orcs and the importance dwarves placed on lineage, it was easy to understand their temptation to hold distrust and resent half-orcs. Half-orcs meanwhile thought dwarves would be funny if not so dangerous, for despite their capacity for drinking and raucousness they were serious, judgmental, task-oriented, and strict. However, half-orcs held respect for the strength and martial prowess, and further admired dwarven skill with stone and honesty while sharing an appreciation for simple pleasures. Dwarves were predisposed to letting those so inclined prove themselves, and the two could be surprisingly staunch companions, to the point that less traditional clans would adopt particularly worthy half-orcs, demonstrating the possibility for even the oldest grudges to be wiped clean.
It's an optimistic spin on their relationship, though I'm not surprised it ends at the first sentence of this quote for the barmaid kicker IC.
....And a "BURNING HATRED" for Goblins & Orcs......
True, I kind of glossed over that since it didn't explain how or why beyond the obvious.
Citadel Felbarr had a population of a quarter million Dwarves so even if it was just that, being able to point to a Dwarven equivalent of 9/11 or something felt more explanatory.
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