"An Unreliable Narrative" - A Prototype Welcome To Night Vale Quest Set For Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting

And, finally, here's a Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine Doodle I did.

  An Octopus Singer, a Fortitude Rat, a few Octopus sketches, and a Horizon Ghost (the ghost I am the least happy with....).  

I guess this is the first nonsense I’ve ever reblogged.

I want to know how big the Tumblr Chuubo’s and Nobilis fandom is!

If you like Nobilis or Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, like this post. If you generate content for them, reblog this post.

(Re what counts as “generate content”: posting an occasional character sheet every so often is plenty. There isn’t a “you must post this frequently to count” bar.)

The Servant Prince

Academics Skill: Average Sports Skill: Average Favorite Foods: Gems, Diamonds, Wizard Blood Type: O+ Animal: Dragon Age: 14 An Interesting Fact About You: You are the disgraced heir of a line of Draconic Nobility. Character Description ❀ You used to be important. As the son of the Fifth Lord of the Polar Palace, you were destined to live a charmed life of duty and glory. You were to oversee a fief in your father’s domain and watch over the world from on high. But then, you made a mistake. You brought shame on yourself and your family. In his inimitable wisdom, your father stripped you of your titles and lands and banished you from his domain. You’re still a member of the spirit courts, but you are marked and disgraced and few will still take your calls. Now you live in a modest cottage in the Walking Fields, with only your most loyal servants to keep you company. It all seems sort of rough for a kid, but… that’s just how it is, you guess. ❀ You aren’t really a human. Most of the time you look like one, but, in fact, you are a coatl, a shapeshifting sky dragon. You can change your shape into any animal and even transform into an enormous feathered serpent with scales like rainbows. It’s a pretty cool thing to be! ❀ You’re going on this trip because you’ve been ordered to. Your brother, the Tlatoani of the Eastern Palace, has tasked you with aiding in this quest. If you find the Treasure, he says that it will go a long way to proving that you are ready to return to the Courts Innumerable. You’re much more concerned with what completing the quest will mean for you than the actual fulfillment of the quest, at least at first. Sidebar: Shake it Up! For an atypical Servant Prince experience, pick 0-3 of the following: ❀ Instead of Julian, you're Yurian, the Servant Princess. ❀ Instead of a quest to regain your honor, you’re on a quest to repay a debt. ❀ Instead of a shapeshifting dragon prince, you are… ✶ … an illusion-casting fairy prince. ✶ … a metafictional storybook prince. ✶ … an angelic warden. ✶ … a musical sea lord.

A pretty quick round of doodles of the four currently-released Chuubo's Main Characters.

Looking through some old stuff, I found this pile of adorable Yozis I doodled years ago.

A quick doodle of... okay, it's Meenah from Homestuck, but it's, in this case, the image I'll be using for my character in an RPG who is also a fish-chick with a trident.  It's... complicated...  whatever.

A quick doodle of Princess Hereford, of the Bear Fairies.  Don't ask,

"An Unreliable Narrative" - A Prototype Welcome to Night Vale Quest Set for Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (Part 2)

Alright, so.  I should talk about what this Quest Set is “About” before I start making it, I think.

Since it’s the Cecil Quest Set, it’s going to be, primarily, about Strange Happenings and Emotional Reactions.  It’ll be about mildly dealing with the strange and terrible, being filled with apprehension or worry or passion, about facing off against the dark monsters around you, and about finding a new boyfriend, or finding out about your own weird past or finding that maybe, just maybe, you were wrong about someone… who was still a total jerk.  

Who else, other than Cecil might be on “An Unreliable Narrative” Arc?  Fox Mulder is probably on either the Bindings or Otherworldly version of this Arc.  Of the other characters of Night Vale, only Old Woman Josie seems to be on the the Cecil Arc*… probably a Shepherd or Mystic version of it.  I’m not sure who else off the top of my head.  

Anyways, quest by quest for the Cecil version of the set.

Storyteller 1:

This Quest is about simply dealing with strange happenstance.  Weird stuff is going on, but that doesn’t mean you need to get all bent out of shape about it!  Do what you’re doing.  Talk about the weird stuff.  You’ve got a job to do and you can’t let strange stuff get in the way.  Sounds like a Work-and-Study Quest to me.  Perhaps something like…

Stoic Witness

20 or 25 XP Quest

You’ve got a job to do.

The news won’t report itself.  The bagels won’t bake themselves.  There are strange things going on and you take note.  You watch them.  You talk about them.  But you don’t let them side track you.

After all.  People are counting on you.

✿ Stoic Witness (25 XP)

Major Goals

The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

You maintain your composure even as something world-changing and terrifying is happening just off screen.

You give up an opportunity for wealth, power, or happiness, because you have other duties to attend to.

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

Quest Flavor

1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP towards this quest when you:

✿ go about your work day as usual

✿ take pride in a job well done

✿ spend time admiring something simple (a flower, a cup of coffee, a stray cat)

✿ describe something strange you witnessed to another person

✿✿ give a monologue of seemingly nonsensical gibberish, ostensibly about the nature of reality, but with deep metaphorical relations to current events

✿✿ give a monologue of seemingly nonsensical gibberish, ostensibly about the nature of reality, but apropos of nothing

✿ pretend that what you’re doing is more important than it is

Or, the shorter version....

✿ Stoic Witness(Simplified) (20 XP)

Major Goals

The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

You maintain your composure even as something world-changing and terrifying is happening just off screen.

You narrate the events of a phantasmagoric dream state as they occur.

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

Quest Flavor

1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP towards this quest when you:

✿ talk about what’s going on around you

✿✿ talk about what’s going on with your everyday life

✿ spend time admiring something simple (a flower, a cup of coffee, a stray cat)

✿ describe something strange you witnessed to another person

✿ find yourself surrounded by water, snow, or strange mute children

✿✿ talk about things you cannot possibly know

✿ worry that you might be missing out on something because of work

Annoyingly, I didn't realize Tumblr wouldn't keep my coloring.  Anyway....

One Quest down.  I’m going to take another break…  this was the first thing I did when I woke up!

* I thought, with its themes, some of the other Night Vale characters might fit… but really, Carlos is on a Scientific Adventure.  The Apache Tracker was on a Heartwarming, Heart-rending Coming-of-Age Story Arc.  Tamika Flynn is on a Secret History, and The Man in the Tan Jacket and The Faceless Old Woman Who Lives in Your House seem to be on Numinous Gardens Arcs.  Intern Dana is probably on a Heartwarming, Heart-rending Coming-of-Age Story, too.  

The Light Seeker

Academics Skill: Scholarly Sports Skill: Clumsy Favorite Foods: Rice Balls, Sugar Cereal Blood Type: O Animal: Rabbit Age: 15 An Interesting Fact About You: You’ve never been further from home than School. Not even to Fortitude! Character Description ❀ You're just a simple kid, living in the Walking Fields. You like going to school, playing football with your friends that live down the lane, reading books, and listening to radio dramas on the wireless. Your parents farm strawberries for a living, shipping them to Fortitude where they are made into jam. You've never been very good at farming,but your dad doesn't mind, he has another son and two daughters to help him with the fields. You're a bit hapless and clumsy, the kid who tends to lose things, including himself, at the drop of a hat… which you lost. People say that you're unlucky, but you always seem to make it out okay. ❀ In your heart, you dream of being a great hero, traveling out of Town on a ship to explore the far shores of Big Lake or setting out to the edges of the Walking Fields and beyond. But those are just daydreams. In real life, you've never been further from home than School. You've never even gone on a trip to Fortitude! You have visited Arcadia (awesome!) and Old Molder (spooky!) but never for long. You tell yourself that one day you'll have your adventure. It turns out, your lucky day is coming up! ❀ Your next door neighbor is Ms. Kseniya, a sad-looking jotun lady who likes to sit alone on her porch and watch the storms come in. She always waves when she sees you, but she doesn't smile much. On summer nights you and your friends visit her and she tells giant stories from the time before people came to Town. You can tell she enjoys the company, she tries to teach you some of the Old Words that the Jotun know,though you usually don't have much luck. Once she taught you a charm to keep away hydras; it has always proven effective! Sidebar: Shake it Up! For an atypical Light Seeker experience, pick 0-3 of the following: ❀ Instead of Tripp, you can be Susan Numidia, a Rider girl. ❀ Instead of being strawberry farmers, your parents could be… ✶ … woodcutters. ✶ … cattle ranchers. ✶ … retired pirates. ✶ … ex-soldiers. ✶ … dead.

❀ Instead of living next door to Kseniya, your mentor is… ✶ … Ms. Numidia, your aunt, who teaches you the art of hiding who you are. ✶ … Mr. Calazas, a former masked wrestler, who teaches you his patented leg holds. ✶ … Mr. Carneleon, the mailman, who teaches you about origami and the value of a hand-delivered letter. ✶ … The Headmaster of the Bleak Academy, who, against your will, teaches you things you should not ever have to know.

Sidebar: Playing Susan Numidia You’re not just an ordinary boy living on your parents’ farm… you’re an ordinary Rider girl living on your parents’ farm. Besides having eyes of night and falling stars and… well… you know… you’re different from Tripp in a few ways. You’re a bit grumpier than Tripp. You’re bored with the Walking Fields and with your parents’ peaceful rural life. You have a feeling in your heart that you have a destiny out in the Outside. It’s where you’re from, even if you’ve never even seen the Outside. You’re still going to find yourself falling into trouble, but you’re going to be pretty annoyed by it. Your mentor is probably your aunt Bogud, a Rider witch who tells you stories of the Not and the Old War and teaches you the Outsider secrets of hiding who and what you are. ❀ Susan usually has the Magical Skill Changeling instead of the Jotun Cantrips skill. That’s not necessarily true, it depends on your mentor, but usually Tripp is all about weird ancient magics he only sort of controls and Susan is more focused on strange Bleak subterfuges.

A Fortitude Rat from the upcoming Tabletop RPG "Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine" by Jenna Moran.  This, specifically, is my character Remy Chiaroscuro, an Ace/Creature of Fable from an RPG.net game.

See the Kickstarter here:  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1710667762/the-chuubos-marvelous-wish-granting-engine-rpg