Quest:Lamia Daughter Quest

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Lamia Daughter Quest is a quest run by EchoGarrote, in which /tg/ plays as Ssen, who is the title character of "The Lamia Child", all grown up and ready to see the world after her father's funeral. She started out fighting for His Light (the generically Lawful Good religion of the region), even though she was discriminated against for being non-human; as she has risen in prominence, she has gotten entangled in ancient conspiracies revolving around semi-sentient kingdoms, witnessing grave injustices committed almost unconsciously by people caught in their influence. She and her companions have made it their over-arching goal to free the people of the world so they can stand on their own and choose their own fates, rather than being forced into the same old cliched stories.

Party

Isen nicknamed the main party the "Beautiful Nightmares" after they saved Purple Sands from an insane wasp witch. We're not sure if we like the name, but the other members went ahead and spent some of the reward money on armor and clothing that has red and green highlights (red for Ssen's hair and green for her scales) in an approximation of a uniform.

Later on the group takes up the name of the "Caligo Clarus," an old order of Paladins and other people devoted to aiding people through times of great change and difficulty.

• Ssen Patrick, a Lamia ranger who became the first lamia paladin. She's good with a bow or sword, and her snake-like lower body is strong enough to crush a man in armor. She gets a lot of flak for being a lamia, though she remains devoted to fighting the good fight.
• Tricia, a "wasp witch", or a sort of druid who can communicate with insects. She and Ssen grew up together; while their relationship was not always friendly, they have grown a lot closer after fighting for their lives together and encountering bigotry and hatred in other towns.
• "Mage", a nameless boy who was rescued from a band of Ghouls (see below) who were going to eat him for his magical talent. Ssen tried calling him Bob, Muna, and other names, but none of them seemed to fit him, so she started calling him Mage, and the name has stuck.
• Persephone ("Peri"), a quarter-elf rogue rescued from another band of Ghouls. She used to be a member of the Fey Court.
• Mari, a thirteen-year-old prodigy scholar. Her soul was separated from her body and placed in Peri's; one of the party's long-term goals is to get her back in her own body, which is presently in cold storage at the Conclave in White Tree (though, after getting a little drunk from Peri's drinking, she admits that she likes being a "sexy quarter-elf assassin"). In the meantime, she and Peri have had to get along, which results in hilarious hijinks when Mari wants to return items that Peri steals, and some tears and vomit when she experiences her first kill. She's also discovered that she's a dead shot with a crossbow.
• Lea, a monk who wears bandages all the time to cover up the bruising, discoloration, and scarring from when she got treated for cancer. She has some talent for music, and is a very devout follower of His Light and the holy scriptures known as "The Teachings."

Other Characters

Allies

The Citadel Kingdom is deeply entrenched, but the Caligo Clarus are not alone in fighting it. Most of these people violate some stereotype that Citadel attempts to enforce, which Citadel reacts to by making people mistrust and shun them.

• Isen the Audacious, a flirtatious bard who gets on our nerves, but is on Ssen's side. He is the one who made sure that the party got the credit for saving Purple Sands, and nicknamed the party the "Beautiful Nightmares" and called Ssen in particular the "Savior of the Sands". It turns out that he's actually Prince Itzak Solomon Elegante Newgate, a member of the royal family (11th in line for the throne). His ego and libido are completely out of control, but he has a good heart deep down.
• Tara, a Half-Minotaur girl and an arena fighter. She went through a very painful surgery to make her face less like a minotaur's and more like a human's ideal of beauty. She's not the brightest torch in the dungeon, and she has a short temper, but she's a good person. She's also in love with Isen.
• Princess Mumei of the Phoenix Empire (read: totally-not-Asia). The royal families of the Phoenix Empire and Citadel Kingdom have arranged for her and Isen to marry, but after being taken out of Citadel, she's not been nearly as passive as she was during her Citadel-forced "courtship" of Isen. Through her, the party has learned what can happen when fighting Citadel-like "Land Spirits" goes wrong: the Phoenix Empire is a rigid, authoritarian state, to the point that she has asked Ssen to kill her rather than allow her to be re-captured by the Empire or Citadel (according to the Empire's religion, dying by snake-bite results in reincarnation, while suicide does not). At the moment, it's not certain if or how her marriage with Isen is going to go forward, given that his heart belongs to Tara and she was never really interested in him romantically.
  • "Phoenix Tongue" uses lots of bird metaphors, so the names she uses are based on birds -- e.g. "loon" for Isen, and "cuckoo" (a kind of bird that lays its eggs in other birds' nests) for Ssen.
• Lord Julian Graves, a paladin who was basically Ssen's uncle, though he was too busy fighting a war against the Fey Court to show up to her father's funeral. He also wrote a book about lamias based on watching Ssen growing up; it's a little creepy that Ssen only learned this after finding the book in a library, and it goes into quite some detail about how to kill a lamia. Still, it's a very thoughtful work that doesn't paint lamias as monsters, and Ssen also realizes that her father made her armor specifically to protect the weak points identified in the book. He's one of the few paladins the party can trust to generally do the right thing.

Ghouls

The Ghouls are not literal undead ghouls; rather, they are human bandits who practice ritual cannibalism, consuming flesh of others to gain traits from them (i.e. eating flesh from a troll to gain regeneration, or from a wizard to gain magical power). Mage is apparently the child of someone high up in the Ghouls, and was going to be cannibalized for his magical powers, but when the ghouls ambushed Ssen and Tricia, they ended up losing and Mage was rescued.

The Fey Court

The Fey Court is a group of Elf terrorists who fight the Citadel Kingdom. Their grievance is that human culture is slowly destroying their old elven ways. Because of the nature of Citadel, they are actually right, though their attacks harm a lot of bystanders, and to be honest, some aspects of elven culture really aren't worth saving.

• Donovan was the leader, and Peri's boyfriend and lover. When Peri got pregnant, she chose not to carry the child to term, which, under elf law, meant that Peri's fate was in Donovan's hands; he chose to hunt her down (with her mother's help) and force-feed her a sterility potion. Ssen learned this when she took confession from him -- though he didn't so much "confess" to forcibly sterilizing Peri as declare that he was fully within his right to do so, and that he was being merciful for not killing her. This caused the rest of his cell of the Fey Court to abandon him to Ssen and her party, who took him to the Paladin force fighting the Court. He was imprisoned, and is likely being tortured at Citadel.

The Dramatae/The Humors

A group of masked men that seem to be the primary antagonists. The masks represent the four temperaments of humanity, or the four aspects of all stories. Tragedy, Comedy, Rage, and Peace. Peace appears to be the leader. There is also an unnamed Fifth Humor who seems to be the party's ally.

They serve the Citadel by fabricating Lightbringer stories. They start by creating a villain, who then kills everyone but a single child in a particular town; that child then is directed to companions, and they all become Lightbringers, fight the villain, and then, somehow, get sacrificed to "feed" Citadel. The current iteration of Lightbringers are not doing so well, which is causing some strife among the Dramatae; when they failed to save Stone Gate from the Ghouls (losing three of their number in the process), and Rage expressed regret for having instigated the Ghoul attack (as he was born there), he was killed, and the others are looking for a replacement.

Citadel

• The Citadel Kingdom itself is actually a mildly sentient and tremendously powerful genius locus with the personality of a young, spoiled child. It demands stories that fit the stereotypes (e.g. monsters are always Chaotic Evil, "protagonists" are always the last survivors of destroyed hometowns, the male lead has spiky hair and an impractically huge sword), and it can exert some influence over the humans living within its borders, and especially those within its capital, to enforce them. It does provide for the humans, ensuring that winters are never too harsh, harvests are always bountiful enough to feed everyone (everyone who toes the line, anyway), and so on, but it has kept the land in a near-stasis for seven "Ages" (inventors and freethinkers are poorly treated by all) and those creatures on the "outside" are entirely out of luck. Ssen, being a lamia and not a human, is basically immune to Citadel's influence, and her father's paladin medallion seems to help ward it off from those near it. Most of the party is mildly resistant to Citadel, though this is partly thanks to Ssen keeping everyone level. Isen is also immune to Citadel despite being fully human thanks to his massive ego.
• The (current iteration of the) Lightbringers are the "designated" heroes of the story, having been chosen by the Dramatae to run around, fight monsters and villains, and eventually get fed to Citadel. Ssen gets visions of their progress every so often. They are every inch the stereotypical RPG party, and if the discussions of the Dramatae are any indication, they are the ones who should have been following the path taken by Ssen and company and fighting the same enemies, but the main party's actions have disrupted the Dramatae's scripted events, which cause things to go awry; the "muscle man", "smart girl", and "Would-Be-Traitor" all died during the attack on Stone Gate, leaving only "the boy" and "the girl". "The boy" is the designated lead hero, and he is a spiky-haired, minimally-armored jerk with a big sword, who makes the angstiest of JRPG protagonists look positively friendly (his favorite word when talking to Ssen was "Whatever"). "The girl" is the designated love interest (though there doesn't seem to be any chemistry between the two), a woman with impractically large breasts, impractically long hair, and impractically revealing clothing. She seems to be a little more level-headed than her companion; Ssen gave them Lea's Caligo Clarus medallion, hoping to disrupt Citadel's influence over them, and while the boy threw it away, the girl kept it.

External Links

• Lamia Daughter Quest on sup/tg/
• Trip The Light, the adopted theme song of the quest. We're gonna trip the light / We're gonna break the night / And we'll see with new eyes / When we trip the light...