The Wight King(WIP) - Chapter 6 added (12/01/2023)

I feel the choices have been setting the stage; You are basically customizing your Wight King and the actual story is yet to begin. Everything up to this point is you fleeing and finding sanctuary.

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And that’s why we makes our castle have small corridors and give them guns. And line the surrounding area with trenches.

ah shoot. What’s the point of necromancy if you can’t better yourself using other’s hard work?

Aww, too bad. Add a weakling to a weakling, and what do you get? Still a weakling!

Like friendship? Please elaborate?

Break from work. Break from college. Mom let go from one of her jobs. Still no internet, just phone. Still no cable. I’m bored out of my mind. Though I’ve been using this free time to catch up on games and whatnot.

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Can an undead become sentient in it’s own or at all if not risen/summoned sentient?

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Yeah, I have to admit I’ve been a bit railroady on this one. Part because I wanted to get to Dreadspire fast and part because there are things I wanted to set up, customization, a little world building, etc. But I’ll try once I work again on these earlier chapters to think of ways to make it less linear. At this point in the story, I just thought there wouldn’t be many interesting ways to create branching without derailing the plot entirely.

Yes, that’s pretty much it. Everything up until this point in the story could be seen as part of the prologue.

If I were a necromancer, I’d bury husks just slightly underground around my lair, or make them climb trees to ambush enemies. Get those sweet drop attacks.

Making other’s corpses do the hard work of course!

The MC is being a bit arrogant. But the power gap was really laughable to them in that scene.

Ew, no.

What I mean is that magic is chaos and chaos is in all things, magic is extremely flexible. Wizardry for example has almost nothing in common with theurgy or witchcraft, and even though it shares some abilities with sorcery it’s still extremely different.

Even people that were never taught any kind of magic can eventually develop abilities over time. For example pure warriors that never even approached something remotely related to magic could eventually unconsciously use magic while they fight.

Magic itself is an ever-changing energy that is channeled by different means into what we would call magic, different expressions of a same force.

Yeah, it’s a bit strange. Update on the internship I was supposed to do is that everything will be postponed until the end of the quarantine. Luckily, I’m used to living on my own so it’s not so different from how I usually live. Except that my city looks like an horror movie decor now with almost no one in the streets. Just add a little mist and you’d have Silent Hill.

It depends on the power of their soul. Undead with strong souls are more likely to regain their sentience than weaker souls.

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Question. If we use a complex enchantment on a doll, puppet or golem what would its sentiance level be at? Would it be more like machine learning where it learns something and is able to repeat it perfectly but is not self aware in the slightest, or would it be more like Plain Doll from Bloodborne? Would it be able to disobey any orders that its given if it does not agree with them?

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It depends. Not all constructs will develop in the same way because the circumstances can have a great impact on them. But the more complex the enchantments binding them are, the more likely they are to develop sentience and self-awareness, to a more advanced level. Most dolls or golems never go beyond simple emotions, like the fear of being destroyed or love for their master.

Full sentience is extremely rare, almost impossible to reach with enchantment alone. The level needed for something like that is so high that most people can’t even conceive it. And even if they were to reach a high level of sentience, most of the time they don’t really think like humans.

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What kind of circumstances do you mean?
How differently from humans would they think?
And finally couldn’t golems and dolls tehnicaly be used as dreadnoughts or something along those lines? Like take a dead or barely alive person and put their souls into a golem to allow them to keep fighting for a while?

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So spending 3 months of off time to designed a Complex series of enchantments on a Suit of armor wouldn’t give them much sentience then?

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Circumstances, that’s the point. The conditions under which a construct is created and the events to which they are exposed over time can deeply affect them. Things you have absolutely no control over can change everything.

Even self-aware constructs aren’t humans, they aren’t even animals. At this point they don’t feel anything, they merely are artificial beings with clear goals and clear reasons to be, and will more than likely follow their orders, but they will be much more autonomous and better able to execute these orders because they will be willing to compromise and willing to bend the rules.

But it depends on the construct and how advanced they are, every construct will have different specs. Their level of intelligence, self-awareness and such can make for very different types of “personality”.

Usually no, the souls used to animate golems or dolls are too damaged by the process to retain their identity. So the golem has no memory of who they used to be, or only shreds, glimpses.

Technically, it could be possible to make a special phylactery to contain a powerful soul and allow it to control an artificial body. But you couldn’t do that for just anyone, souls aren’t made to be contained, they risk being consumed or dissipating and returning to Chaos over time. You’d need someone with ridiculous willpower and with a very strong soul.

If you used the guy’s dead body, then it would be more simple. Because it would be a simple matter of raising them as an undead and then making them artificial extensions that would be compatible with an undead.

Three months? You’re being a bit optimistic here. There’s a reason why most puppeteers wouldn’t bother. It would be the work of their life.

We’re not talking about scultping, painting or such. We’re talking about creating “life” from nothing, it would be like being able to program a fully simulated, sentient and self-aware human being.

Let’s say it’s as close to impossible as you get. You could spend your entire life working on that and never succeed. That “perfect” construct is a goal for which puppeteers would kill to even make the equivalent of an ant’s step toward.

Hard work and dedication is just not enough when you play god.

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Final questions concerning constructs.
What are the benefits of putting one in your armor?
Could we tehnicaly turn an empty suit of armor into a fuctioning construct?
And just to get a sense of scale, how high on the scale of advancediness (is that even a word?) and sentiance would the Plain Doll be?

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Could we bind a ghost to suit of Armor?

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Could we make our house out of bones and flesh and then could we make our house into a epic undead fortress

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What’s the benefit of having an exoskeleton? It makes normal people able to wear more imposing armor by supporting some of its weight and use larger weapons by increasing your strength.

Not really because it would be made with the assumption someone is meant to wear it. Meaning it wouldn’t be able to go anywhere or do anything on its own.

I don’t really know.

Yes but ghosts are weak, they can’t possess objects for long. If you want a living armor it’s easier to make the target’s body part of the armor so that the binding can be permanent. Wraiths can be bound to anything, but they’re hard to control.

No

Yes

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For one thank you for for all the world building you have done it really helps me imagining the world better.

What environments are we likely to visit?

What’s the medicine like? ( Free leeches for everyone!)

And while unrealistic and I’m not expecting it are prosthetics a thing? (NVM got my answer)

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@CultOfCthulhu

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Can we make custom undead? And does our body rot and when will our body be destroyed by Natural causes?

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Can’t we have a human body but we are still undead. It’s just we are just stronger, faster,more powerful than normal human/paladin. And the only thing that differs us is the undead powers. I mean I wanted to be the Lord of the undead but I don’t want to have a rotting body, or sharp claws or teeths etc.

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Well, I come up with more lore almost every day. Though I can remember all of it, telling about it is a good way to make sure there’s a trace left if I end up no thinking about it anymore.

Arkadia is similar to western Europe in term of vistas. It has hills and valleys, abrupt cliffs, mountains, swamps, forests, lakes, chasms. Beside the places touched by chaos.

Scientifical medicine isn’t very widespread. Common knowledge like bandaging, sewing wounds shut is something people can do of course. But people have often relied on magic to help recovery. There are potions used to regenerate faster or to help fighting diseases, but they have a number of side effects. Poultices are less aggravating, and also prevent infection of wounds, they’re often used instead of alcohol.

The monopoly on “scientifical” medicine belongs to an ancient cult revering Kurrow, the pagan two-faced raven god of plagues and medicine. They’ve been hoarding knowledge about biology, surgery and pathologies for millenias, so they have quite a bit of experience and are able to cure almost anything. Though one would expect them to use traditional methods or rituals, they are actually the most willing to go with modern or even experimental solutions, they shun the use of magic unless as a last resort. Though they don’t have the best of reputation, they’re the most reliable there is.

But recently some people have taken an interest in the knowledge of Kurrow’s adepts, and some of them have been happy to train surgeons and physicians and share their knowledge even to people unwilling to join them fully.

Yeah as I’ve said before. Since puppeteers can build construct, making puppet limbs for people was the logical extension of puppeteering.

Maybe later.

Wight Kings are constantly regenerating, so they don’t rot or degrade naturally usually.

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Hey there, hope you’re all still healthy.

I just wanted to tell you about the changes I’ve made yet for the next update.


First, for the gender choice. The old gender choice was like such:

  • Full female

  • Full male

  • Gender Neutral/androgyne

This was a little limitating, so I’ve thought about how to give the player as much customization as possible on that front. So now, the third choice lets you enter a series of choices, that let you fully customize your body as well as your pronouns, allowing you an almost total control over your character’s gender.

So now, you have:

  • Full male

  • Full female

  • Custom gender


Next, personality. I was thinking about what I wanted to do with it, and I thought of a way to make it more fun, and involving the player more. The old system was your typical opposed pair stat bar. Now the plan is to make the bars secondary, and making it so you get a different “trait” depending on your actions. Instead of just having a “ruthless” bar fill up, you will see your ruthlessness grow, for example from ruthless, to full-on cruel. The goal will be to give more nuance to your MC’s personality using these traits.

There will most likely also be acquired traits that aren’t related to the personality stats. For example, traits associated with your reputation.


Now for the weapons.

I thought of way to apply a trait system to weapons as well, since it seemed very convenient and cool. This is also a way to streamline weapons while still keeping a good amount of variety in fight scenes depending on your weapon of choice, I thought about writing fight scenes depending on the category of the weapon first, with some unique flavour or options depending on the weapon itself and its traits. So the main weapons will be spread in categories, for example by type and weight, with one or two additional trait for each weapon.

For example the maul and eveningstar would both be blunt weapons, but the maul would be in super-heavy category while the eveningstar would be in heavy. Additionally, the maul could have “wrecker” that makes guarding useless and allows you to break things more easily.

By doing that, I can add more weapons while still making the choice interesting.

For secondary weapons, they will mostly be made to give you unique options in fight, and I’m hesitating between letting you pick only one, or two of them. The list will include non-exhaustively:

  • A grappling/butcher hook designed to be usable in combat
  • A pair of “brawler gauntlets” that act as improvised shields to deflect attacks but also increase the damage of your punches
  • Throwing knives enchanted with a homing effect
  • A pair of daggers made to penetrate tough materials

Things like that, I’m still working on it. It will probably include a dual-wielding option or such.

I’ve made decent progress so I might be able to make an update soon with all those changes and chapter 4.

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Oh boy variety for violence in various venues, alliteration out of the way this sounds like it is gonna make violencing people a lot more interesting

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