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>>1473799

The gnomes are moving about everywhere. You bend down and scoop one up as it runs by, subtracting a tiny bit from their chorus of clinking metal feet.

It has a silver metal top hat. Shiny. “No kidnapping!” The construct states immediately.

“Something feels funny,” you say. “What’s happening outside?”

“Doom!” One gnome pipes up while circling your ankles. “Bad things!” Squeaks another.

“The city is being brokened!” The book gnome you’re holding says. “Bedlamonium!” “The constructs are breakening everything!” “Dooom!”

That does sound like bad things. Skyhaven has lots of constructs and you didn’t really see many people being guards while you were walking around the city. If the constructs became like the ones you saw in the town from a few days ago...

“People have come here!” “The Archives are safe!” “Safe!” “The Curator said so!”

You think they’re talking about some of the people in plainer clothing. Civilians, ordinary people. They look tired, some sitting on the ground and resting with their backs to the walls of the foyer.

You don’t hear anything outside but there’s that feeling hanging over the night. Something weird and wrong, and a little bit everywhere.


>

[ ] Look around for yourself. Head out the Archives.
[ ] Focus on Seeing for a bit.
[ ] Ask about the Curator.

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Archives: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=GFQ

So far, a goat has:

Met a useless and a demon.
Met an elemental, an artificer and a big clay man.
Visited a city of constructs, magic, and a tall tower.
Had a cordial chat with a vampire.
Attended a something that involved costumes and confusion.
Sat by a river.
Stared at clouds.
Fed grass to a tortoise.
Obtained sugar through the power of commerce.
Attended class. Talked to a professor.
Met little constructs.
Learned things from books. Fell asleep on book.

>>1473809
>Look around yourself...

>>1473829
Why not? Good to see the truth...

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You put the gnome back on the ground (“Freeedom!”) and go to leave the Archives, walking on the end of the foyer away from the arguing people. The entrance is open; you don’t see a door, actually, just a big doorway. Maybe it’s always open.

There’s some people outside coming in, but they stop when they see you. A small and unremarkable group, some younger some older, all seeming a little bit worn. They look at you, at the wolf, at the fairy slumped on your head, at your shovel.

The lady that happens to be at the front tries to clear her throat. “Is it okay if we go in?”

You tilt your head, not knowing.

She looks back at the four or five people with her, then decides to continue on into the building. They all keep some distance from you and from Ashtia.

You step outside the Archives. A ceiling extends past the entrance, held up by tall stone pillars. You keep walking and looking around.

It’s late at night. The moon is out. The city is quiet, and you don’t really see anything.

Except thin trails and hints of twisted colours, faint and not quite there.

“Um- Please wait!”

You turn around and come to face the girl with braided pigtails. She’s taller than you and close to adult, maybe the same age as Lexy.

She seems uncertain. “Everyone’s saying that the city isn’t safe. You- I think you should stay in the Archives for now.”

Mm. You don’t know what’s happening, but you do think you should find out.


>

[ ] Go back inside. See what you can learn from talking to people.
[ ] Focus on those colours. Follow the weird.

>>1474046
>[x] Focus on those colours. Follow the weird.

We gotta know things

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You look around and try to focus on those colours. They’re like cuts in reality, openings whose shapes warp and drift like smoke. You find a direction where they start to grow stronger, deeper.

“I’ll be okay,” you tell the girl. You hear her hesitation and her next ‘um’, but she doesn’t stop you when you walk away.

Ashtia moves forward, following the same trail as yours and taking you north through the Scholar’s District. You start to hear shouting, hurried footsteps from a distance; signs of chaos.

Your path joins with one of the main, wider streets of the district. You turn the corner and see a fight.

It’s those guard constructs, the ones that you’ve seen at the gates of the city, and at the town you had visited a few days ago. There’s at least seven of them in the middle of the street where the Scholar’s District ends and the Maker’s District starts, slamming their weapons into shields and smashing each other apart.

They all look the same, but half of them are strange. Thin broken streams flow around them.

Closeby is a scrawny, flinty-eyed woman. She notices you at the time you notice her, though she pauses for a moment when she sees Ashtia.

“You. You’re that...” she seems to have trouble deciding, “girl, from a few days ago.”

Oh. It’s the doctor lady.

“You didn’t come from Set’s shop, did you?”

You shake your head and she bites the corner of her lip. “Never mind then. The Academy’s safe from all this, so stay there until this blows over.”

The shop. It’s close and in the same direction. Or maybe that’s where your trail leads?

“I’m going to Set’s place,” you tell her.

>>1474857

You guessed that was where the doctor lady was going and you were right. She’s unsure but doesn’t tell you to do otherwise, so you end up following her away from the constructs fighting each other and through quieter passages to the Maker’s District.

Lulette wakes up along the way. “It’s dark,” the fairy says after looking around. She hops off your shoulders and retrieves Bob’s pot from your bucket before vanishing.

The doctor lady freezes when she reaches the alley where Set’s shop is. You look past her.

The door to the shop is open. Leading from it is blood.

The alley is without light. You see splashes and indistinct pools of black against the floor and against the walls, and you scrunch your nose at the smell of iron.

The doctor lady whispers. “What the hell happened... Set?”

The store is completely still. She follows the trail through the short alley, to a street in the Maker’s District.

There’s some lanterns and lamps here. It’s easier to see the red.

Strewn around everywhere are the pieces of maybe a dozen guard constructs, torn apart and also covered in blood. There are small holes and craters in the ground and surfaces of nearby buildings.

Across the street from you and the doctor lady, slumped on the stone brick road with a wall to his back, as battered as the constructs around him are ruined, is the form of a boy. A boy with black-hair and pale skin who could pass for the age of nine, if not for the crimson eyes and fangs.

“Gloria. You shouldn’t be here.”

>>1474864

“Set? What happened- What-?”

“Don’t move closer!”

His voice is strained, worn and frayed and barely able to shout. He coughs, then looks up at the doctor lady without moving from his place on the ground.

“You... Really should have kept practicing your Sight spells. Though you probably don’t need them to see what I am now, huh.”

Set doesn’t wait for her response. You don’t think she has one. The vampire turns to you.

“Your medicine’s done... It‘s on the counter. I’ve got a favour though, Keeper.” He points a finger to his chest. “Get rid of this.”

You don’t move, staring.

“I’m wounded, and spent. The next thing I’m going to do is find someone to drain.

It was going to happen sooner or later. We can’t keep going without blood.

And I’m... tired of it.”


>

[ ] Bury the vampire.
[ ] You don’t want to.
+[ ] Give doctor. A bonk can stop him from taking a lot.
+[ ] Give goat. You’re an expert. This can’t possibly go wrong.

>>1474877
>[X] Bury the vampire.

He's nice. Time for him to rest.

>>1474877
[x] You don’t want to.
+[x] Give doctor. A bonk can stop him from taking a lot.

Though dead things should stay dead, this one did help us. Could we use the sight for a more thorough examination?

>>1474877
>[ ] You don’t want to.
>+[ ] Give doctor. A bonk can stop him from taking a lot.
As the doctor permission. Not nice to just take.

>>1474877
>[X] Bury the vampire.

It's his time to go

The doctor looks between the two of you. “Wait, what are you saying?”

“Kill a starving vampire before there’s victims,” the pale-skinned boy replies blandly.

Her normally sharp expression lost to something more fearful. “You wouldn’t do that, Set-”

“I said stay away!”

The scrawny woman yells and stumbles back, falling to the ground as a spear of deep-red crystal from above smashes into where she stood. The air seems to shake, and things seem to shiver and move at the corners of your vision.

Ashtia heads to the side and you drop your bucket, running forward next to the doctor. In front of you the the vampire stands, pushing himself off the wall and ground with weak hands and shaking feet. He coughs again, more roughly, more painfully, spitting out a splatter of blood on the stone below.

His mark is a mess. Tears in the world held together by unnatural power, something broken that can’t be fixed. Like all unburied.

A crimson-eyed gaze catches yours.

“You can see, can’t you? Why are you hesitating?”


>

[ ] The dead should stay dead.
[ ] Rest, for his sake.
[ ] He hasn’t done anything wrong.
[ ] Set is a nice person.

>>1475392
>[x] The dead should stay dead.
Since he can't be fixed barring a nat 20

>>1475392

"Is not just blood isn't it? You have to main, you have to kill. That's what not alive must steal life to keep on the world on the living."

"The constructs, are they undead now? Or what's wrong? Chained spirits? What?"

[ ] Rest, for his sake.
[ ] He hasn’t done anything wrong.

>>1475392

>[x] Set is a nice person

>>1475392
>[ ] Set is a nice person.
>[ ] He hasn’t done anything wrong, but...
>[ ] The dead should stay dead.

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(Mm. I'm going to have to try updating after I wake up. Might as well consider the vote still open too.

I'm going to just pretend everyone expects the updates to be this sporadic now. Ha ha.)

>>1475668
>[x] Rest, for his sake.

He may not have done anything wrong, so we should help him rest before he does.

>>1475849

Yes, being undead is a curse so no matter how good a person is, it doesn't change the fact that it is a curse and is keeping someone from the afterlife while corrupting them.

Take a look at the litch, she used to be a heroine but then after becoming undead she only cared to keep her unlife.

We cannot grant a new life, we can help the living and bury the dead, that's it.

"Your existence as not living is a curse, I hope you get to a better place in the afterlife."

>[ ] Set is a nice person.
>[ ] He hasn’t done anything wrong, but...
>[ ] The dead should stay dead.

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You don’t know.

It’s the same with the baroness. The same with the unburied before her that you’ve forgotten. They don’t belong here.

Set. You didn’t talk with him much, but you did talk with him. You remember his name.

He helped you. You think he’s nice. That’s why you’re hesitating?

That’s why you shouldn’t hesitate.

You take quiet steps forward. At some point you leave your shovel behind, clattering to the ground.

Someone cries out from behind you. You don’t really hear it.

You stand in front of the boy with pale skin and red eyes. His breathing has been heavy and he looks like he can barely stand, but he still looks up at you.

You reach out with a hand. He doesn’t look away, lifting up his own.

When they touch, Set bursts into flame.

For a long moment the night is illuminated by spectral light. Fire covers the vampire’s form and turns him into ash.

Despite his failing voice, you think you heard him laugh.

“Didn’t know I could still feel warmth.”

>>1476812

You walk back to the Academy.

The doctor lady followed. She didn’t say anything on the way, and neither did you.

You went into the store and found a ceramic jar and a small wooden spoon. It was filled with gooey stuff that smelled like grass, and came with a note:

‘One spoon each day. Might need more for you, I have no idea. Find someone else to make you more when you run out.’

You placed all of it in your bucket. It’s getting full.

The constructs at the Academy gate are still there, and say something about staying inside when your group passes them.

There’s lots of people in the main building of the Academy. The hall has groups loitering about and muttering to each other, and classrooms have doors left open and are half-filled with men and women and children.

Ashtia gets funny reactions from some people, but that’s normal.

The doctor lady, Gloria, continues on and climbs the stairs. She tells you which classroom she’s going to in case anyone’s looking for her. You think it’d be better if no-one bothered her.

You stand in the hall for a while. Lulette reappeared on your shoulders some time ago. She doesn’t really weigh anything, but her presence is familiar and comforting.


>

[ ] Find someone to ask questions to.
+[ ] About the rogue constructs.
+[ ] About what’s happening around the city.
+[ ] (Other?)

>>1476817
>[ ] Find someone to ask questions to.
>+[ ] About the rogue constructs.

HI MITTS

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>>1476927

[x] Find someone to ask questions to.
+[x] About the rogue constructs.
+[x] Find the most important person you can. They have the best answers.

Poor Set. Centuries of successful vampire abstinence ruined by our chaotic ways.

>>1476817
>[x] Find someone to ask questions to.
>+[x] About the rogue constructs.
>+[x] Find the most important person you can. They have the best answers.

>>1476979
Mitty, that was bad and you should feel terrible.

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>>1477329

(I'm sorry. I present you one (1) goat in compensation.)

The constructs are breaking the city. One of the gnomes said something like that. They were fighting each other. There were lots fallen around Set.

You shift side to side, glancing around. A part of you wants to go outside again, but you don’t have a destination or something like that. You feel like you should be moving, doing something.

Information. Stuff you don’t know. You should find someone.

Important people always have answers, right? But you don’t know anyone.

Maybe the professor. Nik. Kay? Beard-man.

Lulette vanishes from sight again, though you know she’s staying close. You start walking around to look for the old teacher. There’s an uncertainty in the voices you hear, and mixes of tired sighs and nervous worries float throughout the Academy’s halls.

You find the professor on a second floor, almost running into him as he leaves a classroom.

“Ah, Miss Baphy. It is good to see you again,” his voice is as calming as before. “Though with the situation in mind, I believe you did not visit for a casual chat?”

You nod. “Do you know why the constructs are broken?”

“My attention has been spent on making the Academy as safe as possible,” he says. The classroom behind him is empty, but there’s a sense of energy inside. “So I am afraid I only have suspicions about the going-ons in the city.”

Kay thinks the constructs of the city are being controlled, and the thing controlling them is demonic in nature.

Demons. Outsiders. The darker threads through the Veil did not belong.

>>1477670

Apparently, the city has underground sections. Lots of tunnels that go between facilities and stuff that the public usually can’t visit. The professor says that each district has maintenance places for constructs.

“There are wards over the city and the maintenance facilities, but those precautions may have failed. I was asked to empower the spells over the facility in the Scholar’s District, but I was unable to do the same for the others.”

The gray-bearded teacher smiles. “I would tell you to stay in the Academy and wait, Miss Baphy, but I suspect you would not listen.”

Maybe.

Kay gives you a metal plate the size of your palm. It looks plain, but he says that it works like a key for some of the entrances to the underground.

“I suspect those routes would contain fewer rogue constructs, given that you do not near the maintenance areas. Do stay safe, Miss Baphy.”


>

[ ] (More stuff to ask?)
[ ] Go through the city’s surface. You still want a better view of what’s happening.
[ ] Find an entrance underground. You want to see one of those maintening things.
[ ] ... You haven’t seen Lexy and Howard.

>>1477674
> [ ]Threat your veil mark first. You need to be in good shape when facing demons.
> [ ] "Something like this, it happened before, right? Long ago, long before this city existed, there were others who had constructs do everything.
> [ ] How do constructs work, are they slaved spirits? Machines? Both?

"The people who lost their jobs because constructs are doing it instead, they aren't happy. Maybe they are being used? That's how demons work, they offer you something you think you want, but what they give you always costs too much and might not be what you wanted. Is this a cult or a single person?"

> [ ] ... You haven’t seen Lexy and Howard.

"People always keep making the same mistakes, be it machines, spirits or whatever, slavery is wrong. I wonder were Lexy and Howard are?"

> [ ] Find those two, then you might have to deal with a few demons. If you are lucky they just want to go home, if you are not, you might have to fight, how troublesome.

>>1477674
>[ ] ... You haven’t seen Lexy and Howard.

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You thank the old professor. Then something else comes to mind; there’s someone that you think should be here, or maybe at the Archives, but you haven’t seen him yet.

“Where’s Lexy and Howard?”

You have to explain who you’re talking about because Kay hasn’t met the youth and his earthen friend. The professor leads you to a jittery glasses-wearing woman, another teacher at the Academy, and to her you ask your question again.

“Lexy and... O- Oh! You mean Alexander?”

Nod.

There’s dormitory buildings that most students use outside of the Academy, but the teacher says he probably wouldn’t have been there when the city’s constructs went rogue. She says Lexy went to the Maker’s District today and could have stayed there until night.

From what Kay said, the other districts sounded less safe than this one.

You think you’re going to look for them.

You put the ceramic jar back into your bucket, having tried a spoon of the stuff inside. It was like honey but bitter and kind of... peppy. Like aatane plant.

Which is what it is, you guess.

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>>1478152

With that done you leave the Academy. The professor said you could try going under the city but it didn’t sound like anyone normally goes there. You’re looking for someone, so you stay on the surface.

Lexy was supposed to be at some workshops at the northern bit of the Maker’s District. Getting to the district is quick, but once you’re there you start hearing the heavy footfalls of constructs roaming the streets. Ashtia moves forward again and picks paths through passages and alleys, the wolf much quieter than you, your shovel, and your bucket.

Before leaving you asked Kay how constructs worked. There’s spells carved within those metal frames, runes on joints and mechanisms and enchantments that make up a simple kind of ‘thinking’.

They’re like puppets, now with new and tainted strings that grow denser as you near the middle of the Maker’s District.

There’s a while where you wonder if you need to do something in particular. Lexy wouldn’t still be at those workshops, you think, so where should you look to find him?

You end up just spotting him from afar, because Howard is really big. That also means other things have spotted him.

“Situation Observed. Evaluation: Really Bad.”

“Thanks, Howard.”

You see the young artificer and the clay man backing into the wall of one building, and closing on them are a bunch of guard constructs. Five or six with swords, axes, and shields for arms and strange ripples and threads in the Veil twisting their purpose.

Really bad.


>

[ ] Bonking.
[ ] Try something weird
+[ ] like cutting the strings.
+[ ] or stopping the spells inside.

>>1478155
>Stop the spells inside
The strings could be reattached this close to the district, better to try shut them down, or at least slow them for Howard to stomp.

>>1478155
>[ ] Try something weird
>[ ] like cutting the strings.

>>1478155
>[X] Try something weird
>[X] like cutting the strings.

Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZfmR5WZP3w

Everything was fine earlier, yesterday, the day before and before that. Then you woke up and things changed so much, so quickly. You don’t like it at all.

You shake your head, placing your bucket down and gripping your shovel. You need to help.

Ashtia is a blur, darting across the distance in an instance and changing to her largest form as she leaps onto one of the rogue constructs, slamming it to the ground and rending its metal plating with her claws.

Then, one after another, two very different voices cry out.

“Chaarge!”

Lulette is clinging to the top of Howard’s round head, the potted plant with her mouth wide and stretching out in parallel with the fairy’s pointing finger.

“Executing Attack Strategy.”

The big earthen man straightens one arm horizontally forward and the other back, then rotates them like a pair of windmill blades while advancing. The nearest metal guard raises a shield just as Howard trips over, weight and size toppling the other construct with a crashing thump.

You’ve placed yourself by a third attacker with shovel raised.

You’ve done something like this before, you think. A time kind of recent, when you ran into a snake in a swamp. Ignoring the stuff that’s here, cutting at something elsewhere.

Swing, and fire wreaths the head of your shovel. The black wood passes through the rogue construct’s chest and tears out with it strands of non-colour that disintegrate in pale flame, and without those strings your target seems to just stop moving.

>>1478333

That worked. You think. But there’s still three more.

Lulette flutters into the air with a leaf-pouch in hand. Ashtia looks ready to pounce. You pull your shovel up again but the metal guards have turned to the three of you with weapons raised, the enchantments within recognising the new threats.

“Rryaah!”

A sweep and a kick like a falling axe blade crushes the head of one. The new arrival pulls her stance back then immediately rushes to swing a gloved and steel-knuckled fist into the next construct’s torso. With a huge resounding CLANG the rogue construct is thrown into its remaining ally, both crumbling to the ground.

A young woman or girl with reddish-brown skin and a pair of small horns poking out of her forehead.

“Are you guys alright?” She turns to ask. Then she looks properly and almost jumps in shock. “Baphy?”

Somehow, you feel very, very, very, very, very happy to see her.

“IZZY!!”

You run into the taller girl, wrapping her in a hug-

-BONK!

And forget to leave your shovel behind when you do.

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Aand that's the end of thread 17!

Usuals:
Announcements at https://twitter.com/boxofmithril
Archives at http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=GFQ

That was a bit messy, but I hope it turned out entertaining anyway.

I think I'm going to try another thread in a week's time. Whatever happens ends up announced at usual.

Thanks for readin'!

>>1478336
>And forget to leave your shovel behind when you do.
Hah. That'll learn her!

>>1478342
Cool beans, thanks for running boss

>>1478342
Thanks for running mitts

>>1478342
Thanks for running. This quest is always a pleasure.

>>1478342
mitts, why don't you ever draw for the quest?

>>1485133

Still consider it, but sadly I'm really, really out of practice.

>>1486965
Bad art is moe.