LIGHTNOVELONLINE Prologue
Black, the whole world for as long as the eye could see was of blackest night, it was thick and suffocating. A single speck of white struggled in the dark, wriggling and twitching in the vast void of nothingness this went on for day, months, years, decades, millennia and so for until something shattered the serenity of the infinite plane of black.
“Welcome,” the voice said,” I didn’t think a soul could survive so long here.”
There was no response.
“I know you can hear me, have you forgotten how to speak?” the voice held a measure of mirth,” Oh, my bad. I forgot humans can’t use Soul Resonance to speak.”
A single snap rippled through the broken void and finally shattered the black with it’s resonant hum. The void was quickly consumed by an equally overwhelming stream of color and filled the area with a light scent of life itself. It splashed harmlessly against the speck of white and fully encompassed it filling it with a sense of energy. Slowly but surely the speck changed, from a mere speck to a blob and then into a hazy humanoid silhouette. Thoughts crashed into it’s ‘mind’, memories flew back after millennia of being apart. A blue planet filled with life far away, family, friends, enemies and strangers. A life filled with the repetitive grind of someone not long for that world; wake up, go to work, come home, spending hours looking at a screen before going to bed to do it all over again. Day in and day out this continued with no signs of respite until the inevitable happened, with this individuals’ resilence was slowly whittled away till it was nothing more than a splinter.
‘He’ jumped off the highest building in a seclude area at the start of the weekend, maybe startling a few alley cats. He was made aware that day that yes, he was very much afraid of heights. He member's his arms waving wildly in the air and involuntary regret right until his body hit the pavement and finally being relieved from his depressing existence. Sure there were things he would be leaving behind, like that web novel he just knows will make it big someday or one of his favorite manga that would be getting its own anime. When he became aware of the void he was in at first he was confused, sure he thought maybe some sort of punishment was due this? Years went by as he cried, begged, prayed and even cursed at whatever sent him here. Until eventually those emotions were worn away by the void itself, leaving nothing but his over active imagination. Worlds were created and destroyed in an infinite cycle, lives lived, love gained and lost, any experience his mind could dreg up was foiced onto the front lines against the endless hoard of the void itself for the battle for his sanity. His mind was not up for the challenge and fell into the eternal spiral of insanity.
Every once and awhile he would crawl his way out of the ocean of madness and curl up on the beaches of sanity and the try to fight the good fight but would once again fall to maddening boredom and the cycle would continue. Until finally, something came to disrupt this circle of creation and destruction.
“Have you pulled yourself together again?” the voice asked, and even with his unknown time alone he could tell it was laced with annoyance,” I know it’s hard for your kind to deal with The Black, but I am kind of on a schedule and this meeting of ours isn’t helping that. But let’s get to the introductions, I am Astoroth but you may address me as either sir or lord. I am here after it came to my attention there was an unauthorized entry and stay inside The Black, now as you are a mortal soul I am inclined to make amends for the mistake so I will be sending you to another world with a system like in one of those trashy novel you like to read.”
The soul’s spinning mind screeched to a halt as a feel of….something filled its ‘chest’, the feeling was akin to a slight burning of the lungs and quickening of the heart.
‘Is this...excitement?’
Oh how this feeling permeated his entire being after so many millennia of boredom and ‘hope’ began to quickly follow. He would do anything, absolutely anything to get out of this place, hell if this voice wanted him to spin around three times and bark like a dog he would do it with no hesitation or pride.
“Hold your horses there,” Astoroth began, with the earlier amusement now to the forefront,” I don’t want or need to do anything like that. You might not like everything I have to say next.”
‘Anything and anywhere is better than here’
“We’ll see how you feel after everything. First the world I will be sending you will have some similarities to your world’s DC universe. Superman, The Justice League and all that will be present in some way on this world.”
His frozen thoughts began to roll back in excitement, could he live the life he always dreamt of as a kid? Running along with the Flash? Flying through Metropolis with Superman? Fight crime like Batman? Explore space with a Lantern Ring? There were so many opportunities in the DC Universe, he could literally become anything with a system involved.
As if hearing his last thoughts, Astoroth voice filled with mockery,” I’m not done yet, this system you’ll get won’t be your average system where it’ll give you everything on a silver platter. For instance, the system will follow The Call of Cthulhu RPG 7e rules.”
Any sense of excitement he might have felt wasn’t just dashed, no it was ripped apart by calloused fingers and was instead hosed in a sense of soul deep dread. Where Dungeons and Dragons and other of it’s ilk are all embodiment of exploration, magic and heroism, Call of Cthulhu is the complete opposite. Investigators (or PC) are just ordinary people in a very cruel world were anything (and I do mean anything) can do great harm to you, hell death is usually the preferred ending for most players. There are cults, monsters and Gods who are all so beyond the player that their ‘win’ condition doesn’t necessarily mean that they won, sometimes it just means they pushed the problem further down the road for humanity to deal with later. Exploration? Sure if you want go insane faster go on ahead. Magic? Please avoid this like the plague, there is there a good end involved. Heroism? It’ll most likely wind up with you dying in excruciating pain while being sacrificed to some unknown deity that sounds like a goat yowling.
“That seem to have put the breaks on your excitement, hasn’t it? Don’t feel to down about, with how many years you spent down here I’m willing to give you a choice. You can choose the CoC System (heh) and pick one stat to be at 90 and the rest will all be at the human average.”
Stats in Call of Cthulhu works on percentile base system, and they are all follow: Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Appearance (APP), Constitution (CON), Size (SZE), Intelligence (INT), Education (EDU), Power (POW), Sanity (SAN) and Luck (LCK). Strength, Dexterity and Constitution are all readily self explanatory primarily like in most video games. Appearance is how physically attractive you are and Size is how big your body is. Now onto the more specially stats, Power, Sanity, Intelligence, Education and Luck. Power is the primary stat behind magic and resisting magical effects. Sanity is like a second health bar, except if it drops to zero you will have wished to have just died. Intelligence is quantified as an individual’s innate ability to process and extract information, while Education is how learned a person is. And finally Luck, arguably the most important out of all the stats so far, it is a resource which allows you to turn a failed roll into a success by permanently burning those points with a 1 for 1 ratio.
“Or I can give you the more interesting option,” the smirk in Astoroth voice was so easily apparent it was as if he could see it even in this endless span of darkness,” You can choose the lesser know Pulp Cthulhu (PC) system and have all your stats below average to make up for all the special abilities you can get from it.”
Pulp Cthulhu is what happens when you want to play CoC but also want to actually have a chance at beating a threat permanently with Investigators having some sort of supernatural abilities to close the gap between them and everything the Mythos has to offer. With less harsh rules, like with Luck becoming a renewable resource, age inhibiting stats, and giving Luck more of a role in the game. Special abilities and weird technology being more readily available this is the game you would want to play if you had just got out of a 2 year long DnD campaign and want to try something different.
The excitement he felt was quickly creeping back after hearing the choices given, but all the excitement in the world couldn’t shake the wariness of either option. In one case, he could be someone with one part of him being near the peak of humanity and depending on how he spends his skill points he could be an incredibly skilled person. But that’s the thing, he would just be an insanely skilled human. He’s not Batman and by the time he could reach Bruce’s level of skill he wouldn’t even be able to scratch those monsters from beyond space and time. Hell he would probably be forced to travel down the darker aspects of CoC’s magic system, like human sacrifices, flaying his own skin, becoming some insane mind swapping lich and worshipping creatures older than the universe in order to keep up with the threats the Dcverse would throw at him. And after all he would have to do to keep up would most likely put him on the wrong of the Justice League (there are some scary mages on there). The other choice wasn’t all that appealing either, it would be a similar experience to the previous choice but with a lower starting point and some supernatural abilities.
But the one thing that decided everything for were those ‘powers’, they just offered to many advantages that sacrificing highers stats were more than worth it. The ability to shrug off a deadly poison was a lot more valuable than any amount of Constitution could ever give him. Sure he would have to work on his lower stats but he just had hope there would be a way to increase them in the future. With his mind made up, he was interrupted by Astoroth,”It seems your mind has been made up, now that we have the world you’ll be transferred to I will send you on your way. You can create your Investigator while you are traveling, Adios and don’t let me see you again. This life is my gift to you, don’t throw it away this time.”
A lurching feeling pulled at his being and before his mind could spew out a respond the iridescent bubble of color stretched into a tube that pierced through and out of the void with a shattering of reality. Worlds blur passed his ‘eye’ and filled his ‘heart’ with a sense of world he hadn’t felt since he was a child. Some worlds were like his old world, some had technology beyond his wildest imagination, others had knights and wizards, some even had some cultivators whose eyes locked onto his as he flew past. He even saw a world that had a familiar scene of a red and blue costumed man holding onto the corpse of a blonde woman while wailing out into an empty clock-tower. His entire being shivered slightly at the sorrowful scene and the memories it brought. His thoughts were dragged to the blue screen that popped up infront of his ‘face’.
[Welcome to the Pulp Cthulhu System! After analyzing the host’s personality, a list of 5 Pulp Archetypes that the most compatible will be provided below, these are not in particular order.]
[Pulp Archetypes are NOT classes or Professions, they are the basic building block for personalities]
[1. Dreamer, Core Characteristic: POW, Any 2 Talents]
[2. Seeker, Core Characteristic: INT, Any 2 Talents]
[3. Mystic, Core Characteristic: POW, 1 Psychic Talent and 1 other Talent]
[4. Outsider, Core Characteristic: CON or INT, Any 2 Talents]
[5. Explorer, Core Characteristic: POW or DEX, Any 2 Talents]
While looking over his options, he immediately gained a bit of insight into the system. He guessed because of his less than active life in his previous world bared him from the more physically inclined Archetypes, and from what he could see the system seems to be pushing him more towards a POW path than the classic run n’ shoot em up road. Not that he was complaining, he picked this system because of the powers it could give him in the first place. After not receive anymore information from the system, he could only guess at which option meant. Explorer seem to be the most self-explanatory option out of everything, it called to his more thirst to explore the wider world out there and meet new people and try new things. In simpler words, a death flag just waiting to raise. He didn’t want to be like those explorers in movies that brought back an ancient cursed goblet or something and unleashed a greater evil back into the world after thousands of years. Seeker seems to be similair to Explorer but less into raiding tombs and more into buying said artifact and tinkering around with it until it too unleashed some greater evil just to know what it does. While the Mystic Archetype seems to be one warning the other two to not meddle with that artifact because they have the ghost of person who put it there next time yammering there ear off. The Dreamer seems to be the one just wishes for the best and maybe the greater evil is long gone. All while the Outsider is far far away looking at everyone and calling them crazy for being anywhere near that thing. As his eyes glossed over all the options it frozen and immediately picked one out of pure instinct.
[You have chose the Seeker Archetype, 100 Points will be set aside for skill allocation. Please 2 Pulp Talents from the list below]
A long list of talents appeared in his mind, causing his mind to spin with all the juicy talents at his finger tips. Some could resist poison, others could make him harder to see, some out right granted him psychic abilities. Instead of letting his instincts lead him to a brash decision again he paused and actually thought.
‘What do I need to survive in the Dcverse,’ he mused,’Preferably I would like to be bullet proof, fly and warp reality as I will need to pull out power-ups out of my ass. But being more realistic, I need ways to get me out of serious binds.’
His ‘eyes’ flicker through the list until he found just the Talent for the job,
’Resourceful will let me spend Luck to find equipment most suited for the job infront of me. Whether that be breaking into a vault with the bank manager accidentally leaving the key in the door or finding a functioning diving suit if I need to swim away somewhere.’
With his mind made up, he picked his first talent, Resourceful, and scanned through the remaining list,
’Now that I have a way to get out situations, I need something to help me with my terrible stats. Luck is going to have to be my crutch for the time being, and I have the feeling its going to be leaking like water, so I need a way to recover more of it. It seems Lucky will allow me to recover more Luck while recovering.’
[You chosen your Pulp Archetype Talents, please select an Occupation from the provided below.]
[Warning! Occupations will change how the system introduces quests]
[1. Private Investigator, Occupation Points: 200]
[2. Engineer, Occupation Points: 220]
[3. Artist, Occupation Points: 200]
He barely held off from not just picking the option with a roll of his eyes, yes he knew being a PI was always thing whenever Cthulhu was mentioned. Just look at how many lovecraftian games and books where the main character was always either a PI or a detective, its a classic choice and he sees no reason not to pick it. Sure being an Engineer or an Artist could be considered safer but with eldritch elements involved they would all have equal risk. For instance, as an Engineer he could discover some alientech and loose his mind trying to intergrate it into himself because it whispered in his ear that he could become the next Machine God’s Vessel. Or as an Artist he could attract the attention of an art loving entity and get dragged into its realm with the offer to trade his best work in exchange for answers and never reach that level of mastery again. Frankly, being a Private Investigator atleast made it so the enemies he’ll be forced to contend will atleast start off as humans. Hopefully.
[You have chosen the Private Investigator Occupation! Cases will grant rewards from the system! System rewards will correlate with case difficulty! You have a total of 300 skill points to allocate! Warning! Skills cannot be raised above 60% at this time!]
[Seeker Skills (100): Accounting, Appraise, Disguise, History, Law, Library Use, Listen, Occult, Psychology, Science (any), Spot Hidden, Stealth)
Private Investigator Skills(200): Art/Craft (Photography), Disguise, Law, Library Use, one interpersonal skill (Charm, Fast Talk, Intimidate, or Persuade), Psychology, Spot Hidden and any one other skill as personal or era specialty (e.g. Computer Use, Locksmith, Fighting, Firearms) ]
After going through the long list of skills and allocating the necessary amount, his skills looked like this.
[Seeker Skills: Accounting, Appraise (+20), Disguise, History, Law, Library Use(+10), Listen (+10), Occult (+30), Psychology, Science (any), Spot Hidden (+10), Stealth (+20)]
Private Investigator Skills: Art/Craft (Photography) (+50), Disguise (+15), Law, Library Use (+30), Persuade, Psychology (+40), Spot Hidden (+25) and Fire Arms (Handgun)(+40)]
[You have allocated your skill points! Please review your full status down below, this will be your one and only chance to see your entire status window afterwards all stats and most skills will not be shown!]
|
Archetype: Seeker |
Occupation: Private Investigator |
|
STR: 45 DEX: 45 CON: 45 SZE: 55 APP: 45 POW: 45 EDU: 55 INT:45 LCK: 45 |
HP: 20 SAN:45 MAGIC:9 DMG BONUS: N/A MOV: 8 |
|
Appraise: 25% Art/Craft (Photography): 55% Disguise: 20% Fire Arms (Handgun): 60% Library Use: 60% Listen: 30% Occult: 35% Psychology: 50% Spot Hidden: 60% Stealth: 40% |
Cthulhu Mythos: 0% |
‘This status window seems to be a bit sparse’, he thought,’ Maybe I need to learn the others, though it is a bit concerning that I even have that Mythos skill. I will have to keep an eye on it at all times if possible.’
[Congratulations! You have completed Character Creations! Please choose a name and enjoy!]
In his own mind, no matter how many years, decades, or millennia has past he will still always associate his self as one name for as long as his memories persist. He might not have enjoy or even liked his old life but he still couldn’t imagine responding to another name.
‘Albert.’
[You have chosen your name, welcome to the Dcverse Albert!]
And with that his entire world was filled with black, causing his mind to feel as though it was back in that accursed void and the specks of hope that filled his being blew into the breeze leaving him nothing more than a husk. Until he felt discomfort on his arms and legs, along with press of bodies on either side of him. Opening his eyes he saw himself and a few others cowering in a corner of a large building in shambles, and in front of him two pools of the void stared at from the end of a double barreled shotgun.
