A Test Of The System

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....).  

"An Unreliable Narrative" - A Prototype Welcome to Night Vale Quest Set for Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (Part 1)

Okay, so I've been thinking about Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, and I've been thinking about Welcome to Night vale, and I've been thinking about how to combine Chuubo and Night Vale together. More specifically, I've been trying to think about Chuubo Quest Sets and just how tricky they are to make.

If you don't follow Welcome to Night Vale, it's one of the most popular podcasts ever, about(and I'll use the cliche description everyone uses from the first episode) "A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep": http://commonplacebooks.com/welcome-to-night-vale/

If you don't follow Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, it's an unreleased Tabletop RPG written by Jenna Moran, designed, primarily, for playing Miyazaki-inspired games, but its same sense of normalcy among the strange definitely can fit:  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1710667762/the-chuubos-marvelous-wish-granting-engine-rpg

As a fun exercise that no one will ever get any use out of, I thought I'd mess around a bit with making a Cecil Quest Set, which I am going to tentatively call the Unreliable Narrative Quest Set.

Alright, so let's break down a Cecil Arc. In my mind, the Cecil Arcs of Welcome to Night Vale typically traverse a certain path:

Reporting: Cecil dispassionately observes and reports even momentous events, as if they are completely external to him.

Editorializing: Some crisis or issue strikes Cecil/Night Vale causing him express fear or concern OR state opinions that clash with official opinions

Becoming the Story: Cecil is, personally, drawn into events, whether it be physically, emotionally, or merely by association.

Human Interest: Cecil has some sort of personal revelation, emotional catharsis, or transformative event

A Return to Normalcy: Cecil settles back in, the revelations of the past ignored or integrated.

Now, for various reasons, I'm pegging Cecil as being on a Storyteller Arc, generally. The most obvious is the nominal relationship, but the authorship abilities of the Storyteller Arc, and the slow burn character development of its Quest set both fit the character, in my mind. As, Ms Moran said, he's almost a background character-type, not a lot of actual growth along his path for most of the story, except, perhaps, in short bursts.

Basically, the Storyteller Arc is as follows...

Doing your thing, being cool

Continuing to do your thing even as things start getting messy

Facing things outside of your expertise

Go for the gold, the biggest prize

Fall back to earth, rebuffed by your earlier overreach

It's not exactly a map, but it's not too far off. The overall shape of the Arc feels similar.

I think I should go to bed now... But I'll come back to this, i think. Maybe. 

Well, maybe not.

Three!  Spheres!  Cataclysm!

The Angel of Fortitude and Chibi-Sa'a Lingurth.

My fairly terrible Mignola-copying cover for a fictional Natalie Coutourier-starring Chuubo's comic called "Winter: Flowers in the Ice". I'm not done, but I don't know that I ever will be done so...

The Vice Magus

Academics Skill: Average but people think more than that Sports Skill: Exactly as Incompetent as Expected Favorite Foods: Pierogies, Gyros, Outside Dust Blood Type: B- Animal: Pig Age: 16 An Interesting Fact About You: You’re probably the richest kid in the Walking Fields. Character Description ❀ You’re a Titov. In Town that usually says all anyone needs to know about the sort of unsavory fellow you probably are. And, honestly, that first impression isn’t really wrong. You like to imagine yourself as a Byronic hero, romantic and brave and wrestling with deep dark emotions. But, really, you’re mostly just a jerk. You think of yourself and your own needs more than you think of other people. When you’re feeling especially self-reflective, you blame your upbringing for how you are. And it is true that the Titov family magic and its associated curse tends to breed a sort of listless, amoral hedonism. But… When it comes down to it… yeah… you’re mostly just a jerk. ❀ You live in a vast gothic mansion down the road from the Light Seeker. Your family had it moved, brick by brick, from Horizon when they chose to leave the hustle-and-bustle of Town for the idyllic countryside. It’s a strange place. Outside dust tends to collect in the carpets and drapes, lending a psychedelic, phantasmagoric feeling to everything. You spend your days skulking around your domain, lounging on chaise longues, eating individual grapes sensually, practicing your magic to get anything that you want. ❀ You’re probably going to go on this quest for selfish reasons. You’re friends with the Light Seeker, but the habit of self-interest is a hard one to break. In your dreams, you’ve been hearing a whispering voice promising you power and magics. In the Outside there is a treasure... a True Thing, the voice says, and all you have to do is find it and claim it. Becoming a God sounds good to you, doesn’t it? Sidebar: Shake it Up! For an atypical Vice Magus experience, pick 0-2 of the following: ❀ Instead of Roderick Titov, you can be Zoey Titova, a girl ❀ Instead of Roderick Titov, maybe you’re... ✶ … Roderick Susanov, a rogue seer who was tempted by what he saw with his magic. ✶ … Roderick Yatskaya, a channeler guided by vast dark powers. ✶ … Leonardo deMontreal, a nightmare-scientist questing to complete his Incomparable Nightmare Engine. ✶ … Colbrand, the False Light, one of the Mysteries of the Rats who wants to become the new sun.

Sidebar: Playing as Colbrand, the False Light

Roderick is verging on inhumanity, you take it much further. You are Colbrand, the False Light, who is called Monstrous, one of the Mysteries of the Rats. Once, you were the thing that made all of the world worthwhile, the thing which even the swans agreed made reality true and good. And then you were lost… and, as it turned out, the world didn’t really need you after all. You do not want to be small and unimportant, you do not want to be unneeded. You look to the sky, to the void left by the sun, and you see the chance you’ve been waiting for for so, so long.

A Boy and His Star...

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

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 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