[TRPG] Live by the sword, -DIE IN THE DEPTHS!- (2024)

Unlike most maps this one wasn't fully populated with baddies since it was so drat big and since I figured it would get visited at different points and at different level ranges. (and also because I just flat out hadn't made sprites for all the units I had planned when the map first opened) I just filled the sections in when the player get close, (1-2 rooms away) with tier determined by Y-Depth (roughly broken into 3rds) and long open areas like the hallways are left usually clear. (the two assault golems that were visible when you came back the 2nd time originally patrolled the S corridor.) Some of the previously visited rooms are left empty because they'd been cleared and no repopulated, But you can see what I had loaded at the moment the game ended.

The bottom third is meant to have the highest-level content, and while none of those units are placed ATM they would have been the T3 exiles:

Also, FTN had different versions of 'Ridley's lair' as its BGM:
Original SNES
SamoStudios Orchestral Version extended << This one is rad
TheOnlyDeerAlive Rock Version
Which were suppossed to progress depending on how many bosses you had downed.

The exits leading off the map are spawn points for reinforcements, but they never really got used.

Anyway, on to the bosses:

===================
HOUNDMASTER KHITRAN
===================

Honestly not much to say about Khit except she isn't well liked by ANYBODY, but was kept by the exiles beause she's real good as what she's good at. Mostly she herself is with the Exiles for revenge against underside. After going back to read some of her earlier dialog I relaized I mischaracterized her demeanor on the second visit. :/ She wound up being a lot more reserved and rational that originally. Bleh.

You pretty much saw about everything there was to see about Khit's first phase. Angry dogs and shooting and sneaking around when not in LOS. After losing all her dogs she will try to escape and get more and then try to sneak back at the players. (there are 2 spots on the map where she can restock her dog supply, and she can self-buff her movement to 12 in order to get there quick-like, though once the portals went in that didn't matter as much)

I think the only facet you didn't get to see was that dogs would intercept any killing blows aimed at Khitran if they have the movement to do so. (this ability kills them regardless of their actual HP level) This actually for the player's benefit, because Khitran has a Phase 2 once you kill her and it's best if you don't have spare dogs around for:

Beast Khitran! Yep she is a werebeast, which is why she was kicked out of underside, after contracting the disease on a surface hunting expedition. (Hard to notice maybe but she had red eyes in her portrait instead of the usual drow purple, and Kelys said something that hinted that Khit was different, IIRC.) Anyway, about 1-2 rounds after being 'killed' she comes back in this form. Beast Khit is fast and hits and applies a stacking a 'bleed' debuff on hit thatcan only be reset by resting. But she loses her humanoid AI and so pretty much just attacks whatever's closest, (theoretically) allowing players to have some amount of control over who gets attacked. Beast Khit has a fair amount of HP but almost no armor.

Houndmaster Phase 2 fight BGM: FFIV Boss Theme (SSH cover)

=================
ENGINEER NNERRILL
=================

Nerrill is younger than most of the Exiles and was actually born on the surface. She is a wierd sociopath who tends to think of machines and people as equivalent and only the exceptional examples of either fully register to her as important. Everyone/thing else are just faceless grey background characters she finds impossible to really care about. Despite this she still wants everyone to appreciate her creations, and so will try to present them in their best light.

Fun Fact: If KLOMBO had (or had appeared to) surrender when he was isolated she totally would have let him wander around in her area unharmed until he did something hostile.

Before getting to Nnerrill you would run into a Drow Assault Golem of her design. It would have been souped up version of the T2 gnomish Assault Golem, (that she went to GREAT PAINS to foreshadow) with autorepair off the bat, a electric self-AOE (damage bypasses armor, Armor and move reduction on END check) and a cannon that is a Line AOE with an AOE:1 at the end. It also can do a wall-shield like effect as an action.

Once the players get into LOS of Nnerril she will run off the map onto another submap (which I hadn't build yet, y'all weren't that close, but it was going to just be a circularish room) and there's where she'd try to fight the players. I say try because Nerrill's actual abilities are pretty weak, coming down to a ranged attack that AOE's at the target like Khitran's, and some throwable bombs. But she of course does have annoying stuff like another Drow Steam Golem. This one is less aggressive than the last, and mostly just uses it's Wall shield to try and protect Nnerrill, and self-destructs when she dies. Depending on how many people actually got into the fight I might have thrown in Shocker and Scyther spawns too, but probably only if it was >6 players going after her. But yeah, the actual fight wouldn't have been that bad, the hard part was ment to be getting to her in the first place.

Nnerrill fight BGM: Ultrakill - Castle Vein (Syl Remix)

Q: Could you have recruited Nnerril?
Maybe, depending on how you handled things. (honestly, walking in screaming "WORK FOR US AND WE WON'T KILL YOU!!!" would probably have had just about as good results as anything else.) and she would have gone back to the guild and sort of faffed around there and probably produced a random assortment of bombs and INT tools per update, probably would have touched Udilov's stuff and thereby gotten into a fight with him, but probably would have eventually escaped or broken out. (and/or gotten killed or caused to die by Mallian)

=========
KASTARAN
=========

An Acolyte of Korteras, who tend to be gallant knight in shining armor types. His devotion to Korteras means he is a champion for just causes and the protection of the helpless. A close mentor, friend, and sworn guardian to Emillira, who together with her survived some pretty awful times. Having already lived a long and full life, Kastaran is amongst the oldest of the Exiles in Fal-Tagra, more than ready to lay down his sword and shield as his body starts to decline.

Perhaps because of their close bond, Kastaran was the first to notice the subtle but drastic change in Emi that began with the events that drove them both to the surface. And despite that close bond, he eventually decides that the new darkness he sees in her is a threat so severe that he cannot allow her leadership of the Exiles to continue. (He isn't that big a fan of the Exiles as a whole, actually, he tends to think they should move on with their lives instead of nurturing a suicidal grudge against Underside.) He is her honor-bound protector though, as well as a dear friend, and so far hasn't been able to bring himself to act.

So when first encountering the players, instead of fighting them he will instead ask to parley, and will actually help them with information somewhat with the hope they can do the job for him. (previously this would be an explanation that there are 3 keyholders that have the keys to Emi's inner sanctum, but that stopped being a thing when the time limit started.) He would also ask that if you have to fight Emi, then please not to kill her.

He is honor bound to defend Emi however, but instead of a fight to the death he will propose a duel of honor between himself and ONE player character, and after a loss he will step aside. To an especially worthy opponent he might pass on his shield, which is a divine Relic of Korteras, allowing that character to make a covenant with the god. If whoever fights him can't beat him (he'll call the duel when he or the other guy hits <25% HP) he'll heal and then wait for another fight. Mechanically the fight is pretty simple and meant to end pretty quickly. He has an ability that roots people that try to run away, cause all he's got is a sword. He also has the ability to perform a short term Banish, which he would use on his opponent at least once. (Checkhov's Banish) His only unique trick is an action that gives you a 70% chance to self-own if you attack him the round after he uses it.)

Kastaran 'good' fight BGM: Big Giant Circles - The trials of MAN
(I really love this track, it really get's K's intended character across I think. He wants to be a good guy and has been for much of his life. This fight is also probably his last hurrah, the ultimate capstone of a generally heroic career.)

Fun Fact: When Rodric was contacted by Kavakk and told that he needed to kill a failed acolyte in order to gain Kavakk's favor, Kastaran was who he was talking about. In his angry youth, Kastaran became an acolyte of Kavakk until finally forsaking the path of blood after realizing all he was doing was spreading the misery he felt everywhere. (Also if one thing can be said about Kavakk it is that he REALLY loves loving with his acolytes, pitting them against one another or otherwise getting them killed in a constant bid to get someone stronger to pick up his weapons.)

Fun Fact: If Kastaran's wish for an honorable duel is not honored, (he is attacked by multiple people, the players express that theyr'e going to kill EMino matter what, etc.) he will try to revive his pact with Kavakk in order to try to prevail, making him MUCH more powerful offensively and more of a suitable fight for several people. This would be a shameful repudiation of his years spent as a protector, but hey sometimes you really gotta win a fight. Kavakkastaran uses Kavakk abilities like the HP drain and regen and stuff. His Dread weapon is a greatsword, which the victor could pick up to become an acolyte of Kavakk. (Again, he will Chekhov's Banish someone, if he hasn't already)

As folks might guess, this was mostly set up so Rodric could essentially have a choice between becoming a Korteras guy or a Kavakk guy if he wanted.

Kastaran 'evil' fight BGM:Tekken 7 OST - Devil Kazumi
Because all Tekken music is unreasonably good, somehow.

==================
GRAVEWAKER LLENDYL
==================

Honestly not to much to say about this poor soul. She lost too much at one once, and that included her mind. I probably would have come up with a decent backstory in time, (probably whole listening to Chokebore on repeat) but more or less all I've got now is that she is Very Sad and 90% of the time doesn't really know what's going on. Her main function besides being a boss and keyholder was to perform a corpse cleanup of the map (since rezzed creatures turn to ash and disappear eventually) so she would port in to areas with a lot of corpses, 'fix' them, and then port out. She wouldn't engage in a fight with the players while wandering unless they attacked her (though she'd still port out as soon a she had a free action) or they confronted her in her home area. She is armed with a scythe, raises corpses from coffins that are scattered around her home area, (including any available player corpses) can teleport to wherever on the map she feels like, and has an HP-drain effect on her GW scythe attack.

LLendyl fight BGM - Zelda OST - Sanctuary (Simon Loveridge Metal Cover)
(gently caress yeah)

=========
EMMILLIRA
=========

A scion of a major underside house, literally born and raised to be a warrior and a leader. A shining star in her homeland until the fall of her house and the death of most of her family. Kind of an Atreides deal here, they were loyal but getting too powerful and popular and that spooked the Matriarch. She arranged to have some members of the house's leadership (including Emillira) implicated as traitors plotting aginst the Matriarchy. This dividied the house against itself as one half fought to expunge the 'traitors' from their midst and profess their continuing loyalty to the Matriarch. After the dust had cleared the matriarch brought in her own forces to tear down what was left, even though the 'loyalists' had prevailed. Emi survived all this but most of the people she knew and loved didn't, many of them giving their lives to save hers as they fought to escape to the surface, Kastaran being one of the few survivors of this entire ordeal.

She didn't take any of this real well. Her hatred is such that she will not stop at anything short of the destruction of all of Underside, regardless of consequence and whether it costs her own life. Once a part of the Exiles she quickly took over leadership and reformed the organization to be much more effective and dangerous. While she is popular and even celebrated among the Exiles as one of their best leaders, she sees them as little more than pawns; a weak shadow of her former house.

In FTN, Emi was originally behind 3 doors you'd need to kill her other officers to get keys for (ultimately removed during the 100 days period, so after getting by Kasteran you could just pick the one door and walk in.)

Her fight would combine a lot of powerful single-target and/or GW attacks, Vee AOE's and a 'nova' AOE that hits everyone in her LOS. (This starts relatively tame but ramps up as the fight goes on.) Her first action would be to use one of these to shatter the small room she starts in, turning it into a larger battle arena. (Some pillars would remain standing so you can try to LOS the visual AOE attack.) Each of her single-target attacks applies a stacking 10% chance for any of her direct attacks to ignore all armor on the target, and she had other abilities as well, like marking a number of targets and then being able to teleport to one of them instantly within # number of rounds if she wanted, and other just absolute horsesh*t. But she was intended to fight 12 people and have a good chance at killing some of them. Pretty definitely the most dangerous single encounter in the game.

Emmillira fight BGM - S.S.H. - Aggressor
SSH doing black midi with a guitar tracker. But I like how it feels uncontrolled but is still very controlled.

If he's still alive, Kastaran would show up when Emi hits around 40% HP and beg everyone to stop fighting. Realizing he had betrayed her, Emi would attack him specifically, and he would probably get slamdunked within a few rounds without help. If Emi is somehow prevented from killing him and is lowered to almost dead, Kastaran will Banish her (this is why he's hardcoded to use it earlier, so it won't seem like so much of an asspull >.> )so the players can't attack her for several rounds, then beg them to just get what they came for and leave. If the players refuse he'll attack them (pretty hopelessly, probably, but then Kastaran is pretty doomed on any route he takes, thinking about it. >.>) Of course this could play out in a bunch of different ways depending on what the players do, including some probably unexpected ones, but that's the basic idea, anyway.

========================
WHAT THE EXILES WERE UP TO
==========================
Or actually, it's more like what was Emillira up to. While the majority of the Exiles still believed they worked towards a reconquest of Underside under Emi's leadership, She had her own secret objective. Seething with blind hatred for the homeland that destroyed her family and cast her out without cause, her aim is to avenge her house, family and friends by destroying Underside completely, regardless of the cost.

Bit of history real quick: Underside suffered comparatively little from the Sea on account that all entrances to the underworld save for one, The Maw, had already been tightly sealed up to prevent unexpected assaults from overside. Once they heard the Sea was coming, they sealed The Maw, and that was mostly that. (New Maw was constructed later to reconnect them to the surface, this time high upon a mountainside out of the sea's reach.)

Emi's plan was to bore through the top of underside's largest and most interconnected chamber, and leading the sea in to swamp everything. Only a few of the exiles knew about this plan, however. (Nnerril and Khitran, sociopath and Literal Bitch respectively) and Kastaran found out on his own accord.

Nnerril was in charge of creating the drills, and by the point where the game ended they are already set up and in action. This is what the players would figure out once they get done with Emillira fight. (Or, I guess you wouldn't actually have to finish that fight, since the actual trigger for the next phase would have been searching Emillira's desk or bookshelves, which you could technically do whenever. (Though, obviously, she'll start a fight as soon as she sees you, and if you did leave without killing her she'd for sure make an appearance to try to stop you in the last mission. Kastaran could I guess theoretically keep her chain-banished long enough to keep her off your backs while this happens, if you take that route.)

So in a nutshell, Emi's plan is real bad news if you live in Underside, but ALSO bad news for everyone else, because in the process of devouring underside the Sea would swell by hundreds of thousands more lives, possibly growing large enough to finally get at the towns closest to the sealine, and then who knows how far that chain reaction would go. The time limit added to the game at the end was essentially a countdown to the time when the drills would punch through and it would then be too late to stop anything.

Anyway. After learning of Emi's plan, the mission(s) after that would have been to basically chase the drills down their boreholes and try to destroy them before they punch through their objective. (# drill maps depending on the number of players remaining, to be a challenge but give players a decent shot.) This would also be a Sea mission, so you'd have corrupted Exiles (trapped and overtaken while setting up the drills) to fight through, while the sea chases you down the borehole into a dead-end. I kind of expected that most characters that went would probably die or get taken by Corruption.

The probably one-way nature of these missions would be made clear going in though, so if you wanted to save your character you could just have them stay home (and presumably start hiking uphill. >.> )

Even so, This is, honestly, kind of a rough way to end the game. Like a lot of things it wasn't planned from the beginning, it's just where the plot wound up taking things. I'm okay with failing on these endgame missions having really nasty consequences (end of campaign/game after all) but I'm not sure I'd have wanted to punish success by killing everyone anyway. Knowing myself I probably would have relented and given everyone a macguffin to lay down that would TP them out or something.

But yep. That was the plan for the end of FTN and the final mission(s).