RPG in Six Parts

Joyce Chong

December 8, 2014

I. EXP

There is a cycle to this wandering. The woods, the wells, the grasslands, the towns, the monsters, the bandits, the thieves. Your rusting weapons and armor, your tired bones.

As a child you were never warned about the cost of being a warrior. There is no end to your journey. You win and it is not enough and you kill and it is not nearly close to enough.

When the stars reveal to you that you are the one, you have no idea of the calamity that is to come. They give only ethereal voices to command you, and an endless sea of obstacles set before you to kill. Only the piling on and piling on of the world upon your shoulders until you are more earth than man.

The more you slaughter, the greater you become, until you are like death itself. Downing mobs with quick slashes, quelling the perpetual onslaught of destruction that spawns in your path. And after all this, the fates gift you more death.

II. PAUSE – NEW GAME

You have been drifting in this void for a short millenia. Stuck somewhere between the conclusion of your journey and the beginning, only the end and the start are intertwined, and upon finishing one, you appear again at the other. Your youth restored, your strength stripped from you, along with your scars. Again, the fates sing. Again.

III. BATTLE

You watch your friends and allies die. You revive them. You see the wear of war and turmoil build upon them, change them. Watch them mourn for you as you lose yourself in a hemorrhage of life and blood, only to wake at the start of the middle. Memories wiped, wounds reversed. Your battle unfought.

IV. GAME OVER

When you fail, the world ends. Blinks out into a flat darkness. If you lose, you will not go on. You die. This is the only option. And if you die, your entire universe ceases.

You carry the fragile heart of the world in your hands.

V. PATH

You are given infinite chances at revival, infinite gifts from the universe that have constructed you, but you are given no option to stray. You cannot drift the course or wait the day. You cannot leave, much as you try.

VI. PC

The unknown compels you to act, to move and to defeat and to solve. You stave off the death of your world one kill at a time. You move because your body commands you to. You will die and you will fight and you will live. You will scar and you will be scarred. You will finish this journey if it tears you to pieces.

You must, because you are the hero.