Editing Darkest Dungeon (section)

===The Story===

So far it's a jar of [[Skub]]. The following part is likely speculative, so read with a pinch of salt. (a grain would be too harsh)

Turns out killing the Heart of Darkness (last game's final boss) may not have been the the best of ideas. The entire world has gone mad, cultists burning and [[Cannibalism|eating each other]], plague infested "Hamlets" with sick fuckery that would scare Nurgle away, and everyone outside isolated camps and inns are mad and/or dying. The economy does not exist; you barter with relics and looted supplies with no sale option. Refugees beg you for help every step, and if you don't help, the fire of hope will diminish. You rest at inns between regions and take a breather, eat, drink, and play cards. 

Survivors of the first game, the four-man/woman party drives towards the mountain which is literally CLEAVED in two, carrying a mythical fire of hope tied to the stagecoach. The mountain itself has eldritch abominations the size of cities peeking out of the ice. 

Inside the mountain, where you can only enter if you killed a "boss" creature in your journey, the party faces iconic Eldritch mutaions resembling organs describing by the following order: Denial(Brain denying the party abilities), Resentment(Raging lungs with breath attacks), Obsession(Focusing eldritch eyes), Ambition(Gnarled hands), Cowardice(a gutless, spineless godling sitting on a throne of oblivion, you fight the disembodied guts, eyes, then the creature)

The entire fight and the scene vaguely details that victory will mean that our heroes will move on from their past traumas, forgive themselves and move on. While not necessarily bad, the story is a direct contrast to the first game, not just the gamestyle:

Instead of unstoppable Eldritch abominations that make humanity a mote of dust in the universe, the sequel is ''entirely'' human-centric. It is heavily implied that the cosmic order was shattered precisely because the professor's lingering failures in his mind, and psychological self-healing and facing one's own deepest fears and overcoming it actually *destroys* the final boss, who salutes you and disappears, and the heroes use their skills for good and move on with their lives.

The iconic stress and affliction system has been replaced with a new relationship system: Party member relationships are *very* well nuanced, actions and pastimes at taverns changing the relationships from love to hate, and anything in between. Said relationships give bonuses or maluses in combat, such as a lover rushing to defend his/her lover with a riposte. This ties into the new game's greater emphasis on the individual characters themselves, forging a more tightly knit narratives between established characters compared to the first game, where you can have duplicates of each class and the focus is on managing a large, varied roster of anti-heroes. 

Every character will also have an interactive backstory you can view as flashback events at special nodes during your runs, expanding and/or [[Retcon|revising]] the backstories of each character, sometimes through creative minigames using the battle system. These events also unlock new skills for each character so it's in your interest to view them. To give a few examples:
* The Man-At-Arms was changed to a rookie commander who had gotten his position through nepotism and [[Indrick Boreale|unsurprisingly fucked up his first battle thanks to his inexperience]]. Since then he developed a case of survivor's guilt, returned to the battlefield to put his comrades' restless spirits (literally - their angry ghosts haunted him every night) to rest and demoted himself into a mere sergeant so he could learn how to be a commander the proper way. 
* The Leper was revealed to have contracted his condition by [[Salamanders|showing compassion towards his subjects]] against the wishes of [[High Lords of Terra|his treacherous advisors]], comforting supplicating beggars of which one of them had the disease. As his condition got worse, he [[Awesome|outsmarted the advisors who wanted to assassinate him and install a puppet king]], [[Not As Planned|rooting them out and killing them]] before willingly going into exile. The fact that his story is tragically heroic and he didn't screw up in any way (he knew the risks of taking care and helping the afflicted) is also symbolised by his drawing at the shrine. While everyone lean over, back to the light, ashamed in darkness, [[Noblebright|he stands tall and proud, looking directly at it]].
* The Hellion actually ''did'' fight in a raid against a column of knights, alongside her clansmen; rather than freezing up and hiding as her brethren were butchered, she instead ran from the battlefield when it became clear the raid was a lost cause as the clansmen were doing some heinously awful DPS. She returned home to be confronted by the grieving widows of those slain in the raid, who drove her out of the camp as a dishonoured exile.
* The Grave Robber was trapped in an abusive relationship with her husband, being subject to his drunken rages and lusts. She ended up poisoning him to death after snapping from the abuse, only to find that his drunken habits and wasteful ways had run the family's fortunes into the ground. Faced with crippling debts, she resolved to rob his tomb and retrieve the valuable jewellery within only to be caught mid-deed by some night watchmen, whom she murdered to get away cleanly. Despite being able to pay her debts, she left the jewels behind to embark on a life of grave-robbing, enjoying the thrills of the profession over her former noble life.
* The Plague Doctor sought to resurrect a professor she disliked through a combination of her own toxicological knowledge and necromancy, largely to show him up. It went horrendously wrong; the method used to resurrect him left the professor in a state of constant, horrific pain, to the point where even moving left him shrieking in agony. The good Doctor, after desperately trying and failing to save him, mercy-killed him and subsequently left (or was expelled from) the university, though given she was in her final year she might have quietly finished up before leaving.
* The Jester started out as a wandering musician whose songs lacked the passion needed to really succeed. After engaging in a musical duel to the death with a sinister violinist, his songs dramatically improved and started him down the path to playing in a tyrant's royal court, as in his comic. After years of abuse from the court, the Jester decided to play the song he learned from the violinist out of frustration; surprise surprise, it was an eldritch song that drove the Jester temporarily nuts and let him massacre the whole court before he could sever himself from its power.
* The Occultist wanted to gain as much power as possible from the deep mysteries of the world. He found that such power comes at a price, like the lives of all his friends as his astral projection fought a Shambler to steal it's his power. He was forced to burn out compassion and morality from his mind to properly get into the mindset, and decided to destroy the evil for the good of all. And so that others are spared the depths of the eldritch nightmare he walked straight into out of arrogance.
* The Vestal was a highly sheltered orphan being raised as a nun who failed to tend to the temple's flame out of hormonal desire to look at a couple who were having sex in the courtyard. For this, she was locked away and horrifically tortured for weeks. She found enlightenment in the torture, broke free, realized that the Church of the Light are a bunch of corrupt bastards, got divine powers, killed the temple's elders and [[Grimdark|found that she was literally hours too late to save the other orphans, who were mortally wounded and locked in a room to die]].