| ‘Those who can not swim should not stay near rivers.’ Isaiah teaches us a lesson on the hubris of the living condition. Self-control and true self-love are interwoven roots that hold a tree above themselves steady and strong. A person who claims to love themself, but who has no control over their own actions and emotional state, is simply playing a game of self-deceit. Learning about your feelings and your pains to their deepest core and why you act on them in such self-destructive ways is the metaphorical act of swimming through life. Self-love is the river. It is dangerous to indulge in the latter, without understanding the former. A river is deadly if you can not swim. Self-love is poison if you are intent on loving self-destructiveness. Learn to swim. |
~ Draft from the Gospel of Isaiah, page eighteen - Rorate
Isaiah wanders through the graveyard, looking around at the ornate, intricate markers that designate each and every place of burial. All of them are expertly and lovingly crafted by the uthra, despite the almost mechanical processing of lost life they are used to signify.
Before the ‘mercy’ ability had become unlocked, the progress and safety of the tower was bought with blood.
| ~ [Prayers] ~ |
| Prayers have reached the tower! |
| +5 EXP |
| EXP: 151/4000 |
The entity bends down, wiping off a stone that flower pollen and leaves had begun to rest on top of. It examines the marker, realizing that it belongs to a member of the first inspection team.
Isaiah turns its head, looking at the other graves that mourning spirits hover around, wailing in their tormented laments.
These first inspectors were not meant to die. Neither would it have wished the second team to die either, if it could have been avoided.
| ~ [Pilgrimage] ~ |
| A pilgrim has arrived at the tower! |
| +37 EXP |
| EXP: 188/4000 |
But this is perhaps simply the nature of life. Co-existing forever with every creature is impossible. Perhaps living entities are things that move in parallel along the same road through their days and, in this process, it is simply unavoidable that they bump into one another now and then in the diverging swaying and wandering of their mortal gestalts.
It knows as much. But it would still hope for the opposite. If this world, this metaphorical-road, is too small for all of them. Then why not use the energy of the living to expand this pathway, rather than to force others off of it?
The gods will be made aware of their lacking presence down here on this world. It will return them to their task. Isaiah doesn’t know quite how to do that just yet. But the tower is growing higher, faster. Floor one-hundred will be here soon and it grows in strength as the tower grows in power, as its name and presence spreads far across the landscape.
But is this enough to reach the gods? Is it enough to make them listen?
Isaiah rises to its feet, turning to the side. The monk of the second inspection team is sitting out in the graveyard, near a collection of stones that she meditates at.
It tilts its head.
– Is its strength enough to force them to listen, if they are not willing to comply? The gods?
These incursions have been fantastic for its experience-points. As have been the prayers, the pilgrims and the spreading of its name to further places. The passive experience-point generation system is working exquisitely.
But how strong is a god? How strong do you need to be to challenge one? To challenge all of them?
Isaiah looks at its hands and talons and then over to the monk, who sits amidst the graves of her companions in silent meditation. The presence of their tombs does not seem to bother her. Living in the place they died, living under the being that was responsible, in a sense, these do not bother her.
It is a strength that Isaiah would very much like to learn. It itself is strong now. But it needs to be stronger. It needs to find ways to become far, far, far more powerful and perhaps quickly, even.
The dungeon-core wanders over towards the monk and then sits down across from her, copying her pose and posture as it tries to learn what she has to show.
The gods neglect their children and in doing so, they not only harm them, but they also harm themselves. Children can have many things to teach those who are willing to pay them some mind.
The monk says nothing. But she, without opening her eyes, makes an exaggeration of her breathing, to show the technique.
Isaiah follows.
| ~ [Rorate] ~ |
| Dark-Elf, Female, Fighter |
| Location: Floor three of the tower of Isaiah, [The Prayer Hall] |
Rorate sits hunched over on floor three of the tower, the prayer hall and writes into a book of notes.
The gospel is… incomplete. It’s a work in progress, continually changing and adapting. She spends her days considering the events that have happened to her here and then speaks with the others, interviewing them for their stories. She wanders the tower and the grounds, watching and listening to the adventurers outside for their whispers of newly birthing legends.
Stories are growing and as people pass them on to each other, they become more and more exaggerated. The stories of Isaiah’s presence and acts have become so wild, that she’s sure that by the time they reach the nearby city, they will be unrecognizable. That is why it’s important for her to write this. There needs to be a proper account of the events and intentions behind them here, otherwise, people will make up their own versions of the stories.
Isaiah had protected her. So this is her way of giving back.
– Some footsteps wander up the staircase from floor two. Rorate blinks and closes her ledger, lifting up the hood of her robe as some adventurers walk in from below.
Time to make a sell.
“Welcome!” greets Rorate, walking towards the altar.
| ~ [Amble] ~ |
| Dwarf, Male, Archer Sub-class - Crossbowman |
| Location: Floor thirteen of the tower of Isaiah, [The Ritual Smoke Chamber] |
Serenity surrounds him on all sides, both on the inside of the physical realm and the spiritual. His steps ring out all around Amble as he walks, his crossbow held up high at the ready to shoot at anything that might leap out of the smoke towards him.
Cinders and ash nest in his scraggly beard, but do little to avert his eyes from down the sights of his weapon. Herbal smoke fills the chamber, pouring up from hot metal grates in the floors beneath his creaking boots.
There is an oddly familiar smell in the air. It is the smell of lilac perfume. It, oddly enough, reminds him of when he was a child, back before he became an adventurer. His mother had wanted him to become a scholar. But he wanted to buy her a house to retire in. These things conflict with one another and he won out in the end. Scholars don’t get paid that well.
– Something moves in the smoke.
He turns, spinning quickly to the side and pressing the trigger on his crossbow. The bolt flies out in an instant, striking against a massive, horrific face just before himself.
The bolt then breaks, clattering uselessly to the ground.
Amble exhales, lowering his weapon to look at the face. It’s just a carving, a statue of a grim expression of some tormented entity, hewn into the walls and obscured by the smoke. He wipes his forehead, loading a new bolt into his crossbow.
| Room Effect: [Ritual Smoke Chamber] restored +3 SOUL to (Amble) |
The room seems to have some kind of restorative effect on his soul-points, which is useful at least. He’s pretty strong himself. 'Crossbowman' is one of the stronger classes there is, if you start the job at a low level. But crossbows are expensive, so most people can’t go down that route until they have the money at a much higher level. But by then, dropping their ‘archer’ class to switch to ‘crossbowman’ is a huge investment for small gain.
He got lucky that he pulled this thing off of some dead noble guardsman years ago. It’s what let him take this class at a very low level and become one of the rare full-class, non-noble blooded crossbowmen.
It’s an interesting class. Whereas archers get a variety of elemental attributed enchantments for their arrows, things like ‘ice arrows’ or ‘explosive arrows’, crossbowmen instead get a variety of physical abilities instead. Abilities that allow an extremely rapid rate of fire, for example. Or ones that allow the bolts an extreme amount of piercing energy, allowing them to blast through multiple enemies at once.
– He sniffs the air.
There hasn’t been a single monster on this floor yet.
The smell is getting to him though. It sounds odd, in a place like this. But it’s making him nostalgic.
“Amble…” whispers a voice behind him. It sounds like his mother.
Amble spins around, pulling the trigger immediately.
The bolt flies into the smoke, striking uselessly against a wall in the far off distance.
Amble looks around himself, not sure if the eyes that he sees belong to the many stone faces, carved into the walls, or something else entirely.
Tentatively, he grabs another bolt to load into the weapon.
There’s something about this place, this tower… There’s something about it that he can’t quite put his finger on.
The smell of an old, familiar memory lingers in his mind’s eye.
The dwarf, not a religious person, nonetheless, says a quiet prayer as he makes his way down the room by himself.
| ~ [Salvator] ~ |
| Human, Male, Wizard (Wind) |
| Location: Floor twenty-one of the tower of Isaiah, [The Judging Loom] |
Salvator covers his face, pulling his scarf up from the folds of his baggy robe. It’s a cruel contrast. Floors ten to twenty were full of a smoldering, infernal heat, the likes of which he has never seen before, even in the great desert to the east.
But now, right after the literal oven that was the fight with the phoenix on floor twenty, floor twenty-one is the exact opposite.
Strands of thin ice span across the room in every which way, as if they were thin threads of spider’s silk, caught in the midst of a harsh winter. A large bridge spans the room from one side to the other. It is not well fastened and sturdily built. Instead, it is precariously balanced on a massive crystal of ice. Along the strings of frozen ice that span the air just above the bridge, hang weapons, items, potions, coins. Loot and treasures of various nature hang over the bridge, as if hung out to dry on a laundry line in the snow.
His wet clothes, soaked full of sweat from their prior completion of the fire floors, crunch as he moves, as his damp coat and pants freeze stiff.
Noli, one of his party members, taps a foot against the bridge.
Like an unbalanced scale, it immediately tips towards her. Not enough to fall from its perch, but certainly enough to unnerve anyone trying to step onto it.
“Hey, check out that sword,” says Quare, their party tank. He follows the man’s finger, pointing to a sword that is dangling above the bridge, well within reach of anyone standing on it. It’s hard to say from back here, but from the distance, it certainly looks like a powerful weapon of some kind.
“Leave it,” says Salvator, shaking his head. He walks on, pulling his party-member Noli back before stepping onto the bridge himself. “If you touch anything, you’ll knock the bridge off balance.” He walks out onto it, feeling the construction sway unnervingly beneath his feet. He knows that he can’t die here in the tower, but… still… That human instinct of self-preservation is very hard to beat sometimes. “We can’t waste today’s run. We need to get to twenty-five, or the others are gonna leave us in the dust.”
As he walks out onto it by himself, Salvator holds his hands out at his sides, despite the fact that the bridge is already very wide and that he himself isn’t at risk of falling off. It just feels safer this way.
He looks up at a sack of coins, hanging right above his head from a strand of ice. They’re within reach of his fingertips.
The man exhales, lowering his gaze back forward to cross the bridge, untempted.
As he reaches the other side, he waves to his party-members for the next one to cross, hoping that they keep the same level of resolve.
| ~ [Cardinal Schweig] ~ |
| Human, Male, Cardinal |
“Brothers, sisters!” calls the cardinal from the north, Schweig, looking down over the balcony of the cathedral, down towards the market-square where hundreds of people have gathered. Citizens, adventurers, wanderers. Prominent politicians from the region and from the other cities. Mothers and fathers herd their children together into groups. The tradespeople of the city stop their crafts. The merchants stop their businesses as all eyes wander towards the man in red. Everyone knows what the topic of this spontaneous speech is going to be. There is only one thing it could be.
The tower.
“For weeks, we have been living in the shadow of a monstrosity!” he calls, lifting a hand. The crowd murmurs. Their faces, while somewhat indistinguishable to his old eyes, are painted clear with the expressions of concern. Given the destruction of the lands just outside of the city, given the horrified tales of villagers who were thrown from their homes to their deaths, mixed in with the literal shadow of the tower that looms over the city itself, people are more than on edge.
They’re past simply being tense. They’re a hair away from exploding violently because of their anxieties, and if these aren’t redirected somewhere else, they will explode here, inside of the walls of this city and then cascade. Similar bouts of social unrest will start in the other cities as well. This is the south and so, it's only to his benefit if things go wrong here. But he can't have the social unrest start, because that wild-fire will spread.
Besides. The tower, as a friendly dungeon, is a boon of incredible prosperty to his southern neighbors. He can't allow his city to be out-competed because of this thing.
It has to go.
He continues his speech.
| ~ [Isaiah] ~ |
| ~ [Grand Icon] ~ |
| The name of Isaiah has been uttered. |
| +380 EXP |
| EXP: 568/4000 |
Wow.
This was a big one.
Isaiah looks at the window that had appeared. It must be getting popular, for people to be talking about it this much.
Razmatazz
-) ඞ amoogilus
-) The Ritual Smoke chamber was first mentioned in chapter 27
-) Floor 21 has made its first appearance today! =)
| ‘Those who can not swim should not stay near rivers.’ Isaiah teaches us a lesson on the hubris of the living condition. Self-control and true self-love are interwoven roots that hold a tree above themselves steady and strong. A person who claims to love themself, but who has no control over their own actions and emotional state, is simply playing a game of self-deceit. Learning about your feelings and your pains to their deepest core and why you act on them in such self-destructive ways is the metaphorical act of swimming through life. Self-love is the river. It is dangerous to indulge in the latter, without understanding the former. A river is deadly if you can not swim. Self-love is poison if you are intent on loving self-destructiveness. Learn to swim. |
~ Draft from the Gospel of Isaiah, page eighteen - Rorate
Isaiah wanders through the graveyard, looking around at the ornate, intricate markers that designate each and every place of burial. All of them are expertly and lovingly crafted by the uthra, despite the almost mechanical processing of lost life they are used to signify.
Before the ‘mercy’ ability had become unlocked, the progress and safety of the tower was bought with blood.
| ~ [Prayers] ~ |
| Prayers have reached the tower! |
| +5 EXP |
| EXP: 151/4000 |
The entity bends down, wiping off a stone that flower pollen and leaves had begun to rest on top of. It examines the marker, realizing that it belongs to a member of the first inspection team.
Isaiah turns its head, looking at the other graves that mourning spirits hover around, wailing in their tormented laments.
These first inspectors were not meant to die. Neither would it have wished the second team to die either, if it could have been avoided.
| ~ [Pilgrimage] ~ |
| A pilgrim has arrived at the tower! |
| +37 EXP |
| EXP: 188/4000 |
But this is perhaps simply the nature of life. Co-existing forever with every creature is impossible. Perhaps living entities are things that move in parallel along the same road through their days and, in this process, it is simply unavoidable that they bump into one another now and then in the diverging swaying and wandering of their mortal gestalts.
It knows as much. But it would still hope for the opposite. If this world, this metaphorical-road, is too small for all of them. Then why not use the energy of the living to expand this pathway, rather than to force others off of it?
The gods will be made aware of their lacking presence down here on this world. It will return them to their task. Isaiah doesn’t know quite how to do that just yet. But the tower is growing higher, faster. Floor one-hundred will be here soon and it grows in strength as the tower grows in power, as its name and presence spreads far across the landscape.
But is this enough to reach the gods? Is it enough to make them listen?
Isaiah rises to its feet, turning to the side. The monk of the second inspection team is sitting out in the graveyard, near a collection of stones that she meditates at.
It tilts its head.
– Is its strength enough to force them to listen, if they are not willing to comply? The gods?
These incursions have been fantastic for its experience-points. As have been the prayers, the pilgrims and the spreading of its name to further places. The passive experience-point generation system is working exquisitely.
But how strong is a god? How strong do you need to be to challenge one? To challenge all of them?
Isaiah looks at its hands and talons and then over to the monk, who sits amidst the graves of her companions in silent meditation. The presence of their tombs does not seem to bother her. Living in the place they died, living under the being that was responsible, in a sense, these do not bother her.
It is a strength that Isaiah would very much like to learn. It itself is strong now. But it needs to be stronger. It needs to find ways to become far, far, far more powerful and perhaps quickly, even.
The dungeon-core wanders over towards the monk and then sits down across from her, copying her pose and posture as it tries to learn what she has to show.
The gods neglect their children and in doing so, they not only harm them, but they also harm themselves. Children can have many things to teach those who are willing to pay them some mind.
The monk says nothing. But she, without opening her eyes, makes an exaggeration of her breathing, to show the technique.
Isaiah follows.
| ~ [Rorate] ~ |
| Dark-Elf, Female, Fighter |
| Location: Floor three of the tower of Isaiah, [The Prayer Hall] |
Rorate sits hunched over on floor three of the tower, the prayer hall and writes into a book of notes.
The gospel is… incomplete. It’s a work in progress, continually changing and adapting. She spends her days considering the events that have happened to her here and then speaks with the others, interviewing them for their stories. She wanders the tower and the grounds, watching and listening to the adventurers outside for their whispers of newly birthing legends.
Stories are growing and as people pass them on to each other, they become more and more exaggerated. The stories of Isaiah’s presence and acts have become so wild, that she’s sure that by the time they reach the nearby city, they will be unrecognizable. That is why it’s important for her to write this. There needs to be a proper account of the events and intentions behind them here, otherwise, people will make up their own versions of the stories.
Isaiah had protected her. So this is her way of giving back.
– Some footsteps wander up the staircase from floor two. Rorate blinks and closes her ledger, lifting up the hood of her robe as some adventurers walk in from below.
Time to make a sell.
“Welcome!” greets Rorate, walking towards the altar.
| ~ [Amble] ~ |
| Dwarf, Male, Archer Sub-class - Crossbowman |
| Location: Floor thirteen of the tower of Isaiah, [The Ritual Smoke Chamber] |
Serenity surrounds him on all sides, both on the inside of the physical realm and the spiritual. His steps ring out all around Amble as he walks, his crossbow held up high at the ready to shoot at anything that might leap out of the smoke towards him.
Cinders and ash nest in his scraggly beard, but do little to avert his eyes from down the sights of his weapon. Herbal smoke fills the chamber, pouring up from hot metal grates in the floors beneath his creaking boots.
There is an oddly familiar smell in the air. It is the smell of lilac perfume. It, oddly enough, reminds him of when he was a child, back before he became an adventurer. His mother had wanted him to become a scholar. But he wanted to buy her a house to retire in. These things conflict with one another and he won out in the end. Scholars don’t get paid that well.
– Something moves in the smoke.
He turns, spinning quickly to the side and pressing the trigger on his crossbow. The bolt flies out in an instant, striking against a massive, horrific face just before himself.
The bolt then breaks, clattering uselessly to the ground.
Amble exhales, lowering his weapon to look at the face. It’s just a carving, a statue of a grim expression of some tormented entity, hewn into the walls and obscured by the smoke. He wipes his forehead, loading a new bolt into his crossbow.
| Room Effect: [Ritual Smoke Chamber] restored +3 SOUL to (Amble) |
The room seems to have some kind of restorative effect on his soul-points, which is useful at least. He’s pretty strong himself. 'Crossbowman' is one of the stronger classes there is, if you start the job at a low level. But crossbows are expensive, so most people can’t go down that route until they have the money at a much higher level. But by then, dropping their ‘archer’ class to switch to ‘crossbowman’ is a huge investment for small gain.
He got lucky that he pulled this thing off of some dead noble guardsman years ago. It’s what let him take this class at a very low level and become one of the rare full-class, non-noble blooded crossbowmen.
It’s an interesting class. Whereas archers get a variety of elemental attributed enchantments for their arrows, things like ‘ice arrows’ or ‘explosive arrows’, crossbowmen instead get a variety of physical abilities instead. Abilities that allow an extremely rapid rate of fire, for example. Or ones that allow the bolts an extreme amount of piercing energy, allowing them to blast through multiple enemies at once.
– He sniffs the air.
There hasn’t been a single monster on this floor yet.
The smell is getting to him though. It sounds odd, in a place like this. But it’s making him nostalgic.
“Amble…” whispers a voice behind him. It sounds like his mother.
Amble spins around, pulling the trigger immediately.
The bolt flies into the smoke, striking uselessly against a wall in the far off distance.
Amble looks around himself, not sure if the eyes that he sees belong to the many stone faces, carved into the walls, or something else entirely.
Tentatively, he grabs another bolt to load into the weapon.
There’s something about this place, this tower… There’s something about it that he can’t quite put his finger on.
The smell of an old, familiar memory lingers in his mind’s eye.
The dwarf, not a religious person, nonetheless, says a quiet prayer as he makes his way down the room by himself.
| ~ [Salvator] ~ |
| Human, Male, Wizard (Wind) |
| Location: Floor twenty-one of the tower of Isaiah, [The Judging Loom] |
Salvator covers his face, pulling his scarf up from the folds of his baggy robe. It’s a cruel contrast. Floors ten to twenty were full of a smoldering, infernal heat, the likes of which he has never seen before, even in the great desert to the east.
But now, right after the literal oven that was the fight with the phoenix on floor twenty, floor twenty-one is the exact opposite.
Strands of thin ice span across the room in every which way, as if they were thin threads of spider’s silk, caught in the midst of a harsh winter. A large bridge spans the room from one side to the other. It is not well fastened and sturdily built. Instead, it is precariously balanced on a massive crystal of ice. Along the strings of frozen ice that span the air just above the bridge, hang weapons, items, potions, coins. Loot and treasures of various nature hang over the bridge, as if hung out to dry on a laundry line in the snow.
His wet clothes, soaked full of sweat from their prior completion of the fire floors, crunch as he moves, as his damp coat and pants freeze stiff.
Noli, one of his party members, taps a foot against the bridge.
Like an unbalanced scale, it immediately tips towards her. Not enough to fall from its perch, but certainly enough to unnerve anyone trying to step onto it.
“Hey, check out that sword,” says Quare, their party tank. He follows the man’s finger, pointing to a sword that is dangling above the bridge, well within reach of anyone standing on it. It’s hard to say from back here, but from the distance, it certainly looks like a powerful weapon of some kind.
“Leave it,” says Salvator, shaking his head. He walks on, pulling his party-member Noli back before stepping onto the bridge himself. “If you touch anything, you’ll knock the bridge off balance.” He walks out onto it, feeling the construction sway unnervingly beneath his feet. He knows that he can’t die here in the tower, but… still… That human instinct of self-preservation is very hard to beat sometimes. “We can’t waste today’s run. We need to get to twenty-five, or the others are gonna leave us in the dust.”
As he walks out onto it by himself, Salvator holds his hands out at his sides, despite the fact that the bridge is already very wide and that he himself isn’t at risk of falling off. It just feels safer this way.
He looks up at a sack of coins, hanging right above his head from a strand of ice. They’re within reach of his fingertips.
The man exhales, lowering his gaze back forward to cross the bridge, untempted.
As he reaches the other side, he waves to his party-members for the next one to cross, hoping that they keep the same level of resolve.
| ~ [Cardinal Schweig] ~ |
| Human, Male, Cardinal |
“Brothers, sisters!” calls the cardinal from the north, Schweig, looking down over the balcony of the cathedral, down towards the market-square where hundreds of people have gathered. Citizens, adventurers, wanderers. Prominent politicians from the region and from the other cities. Mothers and fathers herd their children together into groups. The tradespeople of the city stop their crafts. The merchants stop their businesses as all eyes wander towards the man in red. Everyone knows what the topic of this spontaneous speech is going to be. There is only one thing it could be.
The tower.
“For weeks, we have been living in the shadow of a monstrosity!” he calls, lifting a hand. The crowd murmurs. Their faces, while somewhat indistinguishable to his old eyes, are painted clear with the expressions of concern. Given the destruction of the lands just outside of the city, given the horrified tales of villagers who were thrown from their homes to their deaths, mixed in with the literal shadow of the tower that looms over the city itself, people are more than on edge.
They’re past simply being tense. They’re a hair away from exploding violently because of their anxieties, and if these aren’t redirected somewhere else, they will explode here, inside of the walls of this city and then cascade. Similar bouts of social unrest will start in the other cities as well. This is the south and so, it's only to his benefit if things go wrong here. But he can't have the social unrest start, because that wild-fire will spread.
Besides. The tower, as a friendly dungeon, is a boon of incredible prosperty to his southern neighbors. He can't allow his city to be out-competed because of this thing.
It has to go.
He continues his speech.
| ~ [Isaiah] ~ |
| ~ [Grand Icon] ~ |
| The name of Isaiah has been uttered. |
| +380 EXP |
| EXP: 568/4000 |
Wow.
This was a big one.
Isaiah looks at the window that had appeared. It must be getting popular, for people to be talking about it this much.
Razmatazz
-) ඞ amoogilus
-) The Ritual Smoke chamber was first mentioned in chapter 27
-) Floor 21 has made its first appearance today! =)
