daniel_gudman said:
Re: Proposed recursive fanfic of FRO
To: Mokofooja
Go for it!
I'm looking forward to seeing what you've got, so I'll be the first to read it when you start the thread!
To: Mokofooja
Mokofooja said:
However, I also am interested in posting what I've written, for public critique and to breathe some life back into the crossover. Since FRO was your brainchild, I assume it would be polite to ask first for your permission - and perhaps provide you with a preview if you were so inclined.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you've got, so I'll be the first to read it when you start the thread!
Like Hardcore Heathen and his "A Mirror's Honest Reflection," I came away from the trapped in FRO discussion with stuff that I had to put into words.
On the one hand, I want to make it clear: I really like what daniel_gudman's got in store for FRO, and the personal touches Hardcore Heathen has given it as well.
Having said that, I also wanted to address topics that weren't critical to the original fiction's plot, and so were going to be glossed over. Stuff like foreign players in FRO, or alternate magic systems like Sacraments that Kayaba was not too familiar with, etcetera.
In these drafts, I hope to avoid conflict with the established storyline while actually creating new content based off of it, to provoke thought and discussion, and most importantly to entertain. But if conflict does occur, I would be more than happy for you guys to speak up, and to correct what I can; it would mean a lot to me.
And now, without further ado, enjoy Dusk of Knowledge.
001 - Diving Off the Deep End
0015 - Little Web on the Prairie
002 - To Move Immediately Upon Your Works
0025 - Historia Ex Machina
---
Prologue - The Manse
"This place doesn't look too haunted."
At Wong's remark, I rolled my eyes, while KakamaJosh groaned and put his face in his hands. Half-jokingly, PowPowLoosa reacted just as dramatically.
"You just had to say it! You just HAD to say it! Now you're gonna jinx us!" he hammed in his exaggeratedly hoarse voice.
"Chill. SAO isn't call of Resident Evil, and we've already done some practice," chuckled Wong. He stretched his arms a bit before bringing his fists together, a small habit he claimed previously was from his short-lived career in boxing.
I glanced around at the lonely residence in the middle of the sparse clearing. Several shattered huts and agriculture landscaping surrounded the manse, but weather and the animals of nature had long since weathered their outlines into disrepair.
"That's true, if it counts for anything," I concurred, "At least if there are fantasy zombies, they shouldn't spread the effect through biting. But there's still the whole difficulty with magic here, and this quest IS an escort mission-exorcism thing. We should prepare."
"Yup," said PowPow, lacking the theatrics of his last comment. Wong nodded as well and focused on his glove-covered arms, while PowPow tapped his spear twice on the ground, centering himself on it.
Kakama suggested, "let's make this place in front of the house the rally point if things go south." He unslung his own two-handed sword and placed his hand on it. Even though I couldn't use magic yet, I could see the long sword gain a reflective hue, and in my head I could almost hear the sound effect of sharpness.
"Alchemy this time?" I guessed. Kakama tilted his head in acknowledgement, his attention still on his sword.
Having learned more than one format of magic without specializing in one for whatever reason, KakamaJosh had taken to practicing a different one each time he needed a magical effect. Mechanically, the effects stayed roughly the same, but the game engine seemed to graphically manifest them differently, as if to insist that all the mumbo-jumbo between magecraft, alchemy, and runes really did separate them at the fundamental level.
By now I had seen him magically enhance his sword - [Reinforcement], the game called it - several times with each kind of magic. Default magecraft didn't seem to do anything visually, while runes tended to have a glowing symbol etched on the sword. Alchemy seemed to be a subgenre of normal magecraft, but it’s mechanics were geared more towards crafting than on-demand use, as Kakama had told me. As a crafting magic used to temporarily improve an object instead of making it from whole cloth, it was ultimately limited by the user’s own skills and knowledge about the item at hand, rather than by the potential of the item and resources itself. So thanks to Kakama’s limited knowledge of a “good sword,†my weapon was certainly shinier and sharper-looking, but still not as good as a magecraft enhanced weapon.
Inwardly, I dragged myself away from contemplating the art I had yet to wield, and looked at our fifth member, my sister. She had unlimbered her buckler and thrusting sword and was stretching out, even though it would obviously have no effect on her digital body's performance. She was nervous.
"You alright, Tirakima?" I asked as I drew my own arming sword. My shield was already equipped, as I preferred it that way out in the field.
"Oh, I'm fine," she brushed me off politely and calmly, also beginning to cast her magic on her equipment. "I'm just not into the horror stuff like you and your friends are. I'll try to ignore the surroundings and pretend I'm doing another fencing match."
"Just don't forget to use your buckler," I chided her. It must have been annoying for Tirakima, to finally get used to not using her off hand when she fenced; now she had to unlearn everything in order to get better at Sword Art combat.
"Oh, Moko? Can I do it this time?" requested Kakama.
"Get your hands off mah big bro!" Tirakima mocked him in her fake high-pitched sassy voice.
I snorted. "You guys are just fighting over me and my equipment. Am I that good of a guinea pig?"
It was good-natured ribbing that everyone was used to by now. Kakama touched my blade and then my shield quickly, making quick glowing marks -runes - on each, and then on my armor backing he sketched another mark. Patiently, our group waited, and as Kakama finished and slapped my back shoulder, we turned and walked towards the home. I mouthed a "thank you" to him.
In front of the building, Father Gabriel stood, his white stole fluttering in the breeze, hinting at his black cassock underneath. Approaching him, PowPow caught the the good father's attention and he turned to the spearman, the closest one in the party.
"It is good to see you again," he greeted us in English, a Latin accent flavoring it. "You are ready to confront the spirit?"
"We're good," PowPow replied. "Let's do this! Moko, you're calling the play this time!"
"Gotcha!" I acknowledged, jogging up next to PowPow. "Let's poke some eyes out."
"Follow me," Father Gabriel instructed, and the gloom of the house enveloped him. As he entered, we trailed behind him, close on his heels.
---
Having played or watched horror items like Amnesia, Sinister, Vanishing on 7th Street et al, I had half-expected the interior of the building to be stained brown and abandoned. Personal belongings and furniture would be randomly scatterred in a haphazard fashion; maybe they'd dump a good heaping of dust over everything and arrange irregular lighting everywhere even in the middle of day, all to give that impression of a hasty abandonment and lengthy absence of proprietors not unlike Chernobyl.
I was not disappointed.
"The spirit is bound to the ampitheatre," Father Gabriel said. "It's haunt as a whole, however, is particularly restless. Be on your guard."
"Ampitheatre? This place is big enough for that?" Wong pondered.
I looked around at the modest foyer. "If those are the offices over there, then perhaps it's at the back," I guessed.
"Wait, guys. Quiet."
"What?" I looked back at my sister, who had hushed us.
She cocked her head, looking around. "Listen."
Nobody moved.
PowPow was the first to speak, saying, "I don't...hear anything?"
"That's the point!" Tirakima hissed. "Wasn't there a constant wind blowing while we were outside!?"
"But we're inside now," I pointed out. "Of course there isn't going...to...be..."
Looking around the foyer again, I realized my mistake; all the windows had blown out, and a collapse on a part of the roof had fallen down in the west wing, joining the interior zone with the exterior zone and cementing it as [Still Outside].
And on second thought, the standard [Forest BGM] had stopped too. There was truly an absence of sound.
"Is something the matter?" queried Father Gabriel. He had stopped ahead, his cassock hidden by his stole, which was most definitely not ruffling from any sort of moving air.
"Nothing!" I called to reassure to him absentmindedly. But rather than put truth in my reassurance, I joined my party in warily examining our surroundings.
KakamaJosh squeezed his sword grip a little harder, throwing over his shoulder at us, "It could just be a weather change, but it's too-"
He ducked.
Above Kakama, a throwing hatchet loped over him and slammed blade first into the decaying wood column next to him. Everybody heard it's meaty thump - and saw the crimson red of a health bar come into focus above the hatchet.
"Eight o'clock!" Wong confirmed. To our left, abandoned tools, rubble, and weapons were slowly levitating into the air, more health bars emerging above them. Even as our party addressed our flanks, the background music started again, but this time with a very new and yet unheard [Strings and Waterphone BGM]. I glanced back towards the good father, and held back an inward groan.
As he made for the back of the mansion, the priest shouted, "Make haste! Time is against us!"
"More like game design is against us," I muttered under my breath. "We're still on the first floor and they're already throwing raydrics at us. Wong, Pows, on point!" I started hollering, "Tirakima, cover Gabe with me! Watch our back, Kakama! Remember, priority is stay alive, then keep Gabe alive!"
Our party surged. Off guard from the appearance of a new type of enemy, we reacted on instinct and rote instruction. PowPow and Wong sprinted up and past Father Gabriel. Guessing which door the good father was moving towards, Wong body-checked it instead of calling up the door menu, surprisingly bursting through without trouble. Behind him, PowPow sidestepped a self-hurled rock and parried an incoming scimitar blade, grunting. It attacked him again, sparks flying as the two weapons struck each other, and the angry crimson bar shrank.
"Guh! These guys take damage from being blocked," he shouted, then glanced at his spear. "But they wreck up your weapon if you block with it! My spear went down five percent!" He slashed at the scimitar, and backed through the door.
So if they respawn, then the battle becomes a speed check; we had to complete the exorcism before we lose all of our equipment, I thought to myself.
Even [Tomb of Horrors] didn't make these guys the very first encounter of the dungeon. What a terrible misfortune.
Tirakima [Bashed] aside an incoming coffee table with her buckler as she and I flanked Father Gabriel, the three of us going through the door next. Hastily, I deflected a set of silverware flying towards the good father's back with my own shield. Even though they wouldn't physically scratch the shield, they still made that torturous chalkboard screech as they collided with my trusty defense.
Pausing to repel an assault by a chair leg, Kakama unleashed a [Horizontal] at it, and the leg shattered as it's health bar emptied. Splinters flew everywhere - including into Kakama. He yelped.
"Ohmygoshohmygosh," Tirakima hyperventilated, "KAKAMA GET IN HERE!"
Hurriedly, she grabbed the door that Wong had battered open, and I backtracked to cover Kakama as he half-ran, half-dove for the opening. With a solid slam, Tirakima wrenched the door closed the moment we were both through, and I hammered my own weight against it, hard enough that [Object Collision] and [Damage Modelling] brought up the [Immortal Object] tag. Struggling, I tapped the door with my shield hand to see if it could be locked.
The door menu came up, but the [Lock] option, in Japanese text, was greyed out. Confused, I glanced down at the door handle, and realized that the door may or may not be [Immortal], but the lock most assuredly was not, thanks to Wong. [House fires] might not have been implemented yet, but it seemed [Simplified Vandalism] models were already in effect. I cursed incoherently.
"Kakama, you're alright?" demanded Tirakima behind me.
Getting up from the prone dive he had executed, Kakama held onto his long sword with his right hand as he dusted himself off. His health bar had chipped about ten percent when he took the wooden shrapnel head on.
"Got my face, got my armor, got my sword. Life. Is. Good," he snarked.
"If you're in one piece, then do us a favor and grab some of those benches there and bring them over!" I reprimanded him. "PowPow! Wong! Are we at the ampitheatre?"
"Yes!" Wong responded.
"Good! You guys cover Gabe!" Under my hands, the door shook violently as the possessed objects on the other side began pounding it. The [Strings and Waterphone BGM] grew louder.
Those cheeky developers! Giving aggressive mobs algorithms to attack physical obstacles in their pathfinding was only fair in Dwarf Fortress! Well, let's see how they like barricades, a la Les Mis!
Three benches came our way courtesy of Kakama, and my sister and I wedged them firmly against the door, floor, and nearby walls. As they vibrated a little and the frame rate dropped, I smirked as repeated [Object Collision] permutations reduced graphic performance locally. A little bit of revenge against a systematically unfair situation, I thought.
"---eclesiasticooo---"
I lost that thought as I turned around at the new voice.
"The hell? Another Spanish speaking NPC?" Kakama voiced everyone's thoughts.
Before us, the amphitheatre spread out like a classic Greek theatre, worn down benches on a semicircle hill gently sloping down to the stage. Similar to the wrecked foyer, a raiment of destruction and neglect punctuated the orderly lines and arcs, all topped by a toppled pulpit perched on the stage. Balconies rose behind us, and light streamed in from two smashed stained-glass window frames flanking the theatre; the light beamed onto the wall behind the pulpit.
And at the foot of the stage where the pulpit was, though we could see nothing there, everybody's hackles rose. I tasted bile. I could feel it rising up my throat.
"---eclesiasticooo---" the new voice repeated, a stage whisper gone morbidly threatening, "---no eres bienvenidooo---aquiii---"
Beside me, my sister, our other Spanish-fluent group member, paled further, mumbling, "a ghost with a grudge. We are so dead."
Even Father Gabriel seemed to be affected by it. "Felipe...," he said himself, lapsing back to his native language.
Suddenly, a windy gust smashed into the room, knocking us and Father Gabriel to the floor. Clouds of dust billowed from where it rested, and the sound of splintering wood and glass above us rang out as the miniature storm howled in our ears. When we recovered our sight and balance, I looked up to see several blood-red health bars appear. Some of the possessed objects’ AI must have pathed up through a second floor entrance; they now stood floating near the ceiling, hesitating.
Down below, though, the swirling dust did not stop and condensed near the fallen pulpit. A figure slowly emerged, thousands of individual particles coming together to form a humanoid shape from top to bottom. In response, Father Gabriel confronted it, his health bar soon mirrored by the figure's own angry red line of "life".
I double checked that I still had sword and shield in hand, sliding over inconspicuously to the good father. Crouching with spear out in front of him, PowPow coiled up like a spring, ready to move at a moment's notice. To his left, Wong bounced off his back into a centered stance, his fists coming up in a classic boxing form. I heard rather than saw Kakama and Tirakima shuffle up behind me, and raced to call the shots in my head.
Time to improv.