In The Endless Roads - Part One

Storyteller

In this thread, we'll see the current progress of our player Entity through the Endless Road that has been created with it.

That's an odd sentence because it's an odd situation.

Storyteller

There is a room.

Until very recently, there was not a room; now, there is only a room. That’s the nature of the microcosm that the entity finds itself existing within. In almost all times and spaces, it is nothing. It creates itself only when necessary. And now, the entity knows, without knowing how it knows it, it is necessary. There is a threat, somewhere, something that could cause some untold destruction. The entity exists to counter it. And this room – this place in the microcosm – exists to give the entity the means to counter it.

Though possibly not easily. That’s how the Endless Roads work.

Our entity is our main character thus far. It will drive the creation and assimilation of further characters and further stories. Since it’s an everything-from-nothing sort of dealie here, the part of the roleplay in the Endless Roads will be run with the Roll For Shoes engine. Which means our entity’s character sheet so far is pretty simple.

The Entity
Skills
Do Anything: 1

So there is a room, and in this room there is an entity, and… what else?

As it turns out, a great deal of ‘else’. There are objects through the room, a few mundane, a few incredible. All of them are suspended… and not merely in space. They float unaided, tied by no strings, no ropes, and they don’t bob, or sink, or move in any way. They’re at a single position in space and a single position in time.

All of them are also, in some way, available. If an item has a handle, it’s directed towards the entity. If an item needs to be treated in some special way to make it safe, it’s treated thusly. The entire place feels like a place of offering, full of gifts. Although, as the entity drifts – moving without quite knowing how it is moving – towards one of them, there’s a growing air of danger. There’s a test to every gift. If it’s the wrong choice, or taken wrongly, there’s some sort of punishment for failure.

There are swords, guns, living fire, intricate machines. There are spoons and sticks and patches of fabric. The entity, however, finds itself drawn to one particular object; a goblet with two intertwined snakes depicted on its rim. It’s not clear whether there’s anything in the cup. Maybe, but the cup’s the important part, and it’s just out of reach. Whatever reach turns out to be. An arm? A tendril? An aura? A gravity? The entity honestly doesn’t know, but it pushes itself a little, makes a strain to try to take the cup.

First roll! If our entity succeeds, it retrieves the cup and takes its first step in the long journey to vanquish whatever threat it was generated to vanquish. If our entity doesn’t succeed, it still gets the cup, but it also triggers whatever response ‘Justice’ symbolises. We’ll be kind – it’s all alone and it was literally created a few minutes ago – and set the difficulty to 3.

The entity rolls Do Anything. Its result is… 6! This not only succeeds, but gets it a new skill from what it was doing! We’ll take “Reach”, allowing it to manipulate things at a distance further than it usually would. Its character sheet thusly updates to:

The Entity
Skills
Do Anything 1, Reach 2

At first it seems a world away, but as soon as the entity strains itself a little, the cup almost seems to fall into its grasp. The cup is solid, weighty, well made, and capable of holding a great deal; there’s clearly more to it than its physical properties, though, probably something to do with those intertwined snakes. It rattles a little as the entity takes it, and the entity looks inside, finding a key that…

1 – has a hooded skull for its bow, and when it rattles, it makes the sound of swords swung through the air, and fire burning.
2 – has a clenched fist for its bow, and when it rattles, the sound is reminiscent of a frantic, high-octane brawl, interspersed with martial ki-ais.
3 – has what feels like a rabbit’s tail for its bow, and when it rattles it’s the sound of claws digging frantically in dirt, the buzz of insects and the rush of water.
4 – has a starship for its bow, and its rattle is engine roar and laser fire.

Which, dear reader, is where you come in! Pick one and make it apparent to me in some method – we’ll probably get on a forum before too long – and the most votes will be how the key ends up!

Unless no one votes, or there’s, like, four votes and they’re tied. Then I’ll roll a d4.

Storyteller

A reminder, or rather an attempt to make clear what has been unclear before: whenever you see a list of items in bold text, that is a choice you can make! Ideally, you’ll cast your vote as a response to the thread in which the choice is presented; if that’s difficult, uncomfortable, or impossible for you for whatever reason, talk to me in any other channel, and I’ll tally up your decision. That is also why you may see results that change from the votes you’ve seen! That or I’m cheating. I might cheat. But I probably won’t.

The key has what looks like a rabbit’s tail for its bow, and when it rattles around in the cup, the echoes of the noise are claws digging in the dirt, the hot breath of desperation, the buzz of small, flying insects, and somewhere in the distance, the rush of water gurgling and babbling as it makes its way down its predetermined path. The teeth look sometimes organic, like claws and paws and teeth, and sometimes like they’re formed of earth, dirt piles that yield to gravity.

The entity picks the key out of the cup. It’s small, but almost impossibly solid. A brief pressing at each side of it gives the distinct impression that it could withstand incredible pressure before warping, let alone breaking. The most interesting part of the key, of course, is that apparent rabbit tail at the bow. It’s short and stumpy, the fur luxurious and soft to the touch of the…

1 – finger
2 – claw
3 – pincer
4 – tendril
5 – wing-tip

The sudden shock of revelation. The entity hadn’t been paying attention to itself, and even when it had, any actual aspect of itself had been bizarrely veiled, and impossible to properly discern. But after a moment’s petting and toying with the key, the entity could tell the thing it was using to touch the fur. It wasn’t much of an identity, but it was something, and something was more than nothing.

Something worth celebrating. The entity’s focus sharpened.

There were light sources in the gifts that had been presented through the room – torches, both electric and flaming, lanterns of the same kinds, and any number of magic items with their own soft glow – but the light throughout the room was fairly even and softly suffused. That suggested, the entity knew without knowing how it knew, a source of natural light from the roof.

The entity had taken its gift; the cup, and the key within. Looking for another seemed somewhat greedy. But, perhaps, there could be another use to the suspended gifts. Piece by piece, the entity shifted them into position. One a little higher than another, one a little higher again. They could be used to climb out of here.

Here is a roll! We will allow the entity to use Reach for this, since the climb will be using its reach, especially when it tries to reach the exit in the ceiling, right? Either way, we have to let it out of here, because if it’s stuck here the story stops; so, for one thing, we’ll make it an easy 3 difficulty, and for another, if it fails (by rolling a 2 on its 2d6, so unlikely) it’ll get out slowly, and with the cuts and bruises of a few falls, while a success will get it out quickly.

A 2d6 roll: 3! You cut it pretty close, entity.

Making the climb is more difficult than it expected. None of these things were meant to be footrests, and the difference between the kind of pull that should move an object and the kind of step that should keep it solid is not exactly clear. The entity nearly falls a couple of times, but in the end, it finds a perfectly square hole in the rocky ceiling of the room, and reaches out to take hold, pull itself up, and find the outside.

It settles itself down to rest, and to take stock. This is the first time it’s ever been outside the room, though this outside feels no less and no more artificial. The outside and the inside were both made for the entity, after all, and for the Endless Road, and for the same eventual purpose.

To almost all sides, the expanse is plain and featureless. The sheer breadth of the flat land would be uncanny to anyone who had any experience in what nature is like. The entity doesn’t, and so notices no uncanniness. And then, to one side, is what a person of our world would perceive as an actual road.

Indeed, it’s a highway. Down three of its lanes, cars and trucks barrel one direction at amazing speed; up the other three, a similar assortment speed the other direction. A close look would show no drivers, no passengers, no cargo, and, indeed, no working parts besides the wheels. These are the approximations of machines, not real ones, but being hit by one would be just as fatal. For the most part, the traffic has no gaps. Where there’s two car lengths between the vehicles in one lane, the next lane has a fully-laden semi-trailer. On the side of each cargo container is an image, the only decoration on these juggernauts; a patch of black and midnight blue, speckled with white spots, resting between a pair of silver wings. Under that design is the word COSMOS.

The entity looks up at that prompting. It is, indeed, night time. The sky is midnight black, apart from the points of starlight; either they or the headlights of the vehicles are enough to illuminate the land. A more experienced creature would note, and likely shudder at, the fact that the stars aren’t randomly cast over the sky, forming patches and constellations – they all appear regular, almost a grid. Again, the entity is not that experienced creature.

A little down the way, there is a large gantry over the highway, hosting large, green traffic signs. Along the other way, another gantry of the same kind. All of the traffic signs are blank.

Beside the entity, a small hole erupts from the ground, no bigger than a human fist. A little mole scurries its way out of the hole, takes two steps towards the entity and almost companionably bumps its head against the entity’s lower side. That done, it seems to take notice of the speeding hulks on the highway, and with that, retreats down into its burrow again.

For one brief moment, there’s a gap in the traffic, and the entity can see through the cars. On the other side, a snapshot with perfect clarity, is a small pool with a waterfall feeding into it from a short cliff. Beside the pool on one side is a little wooden hut, small but inviting. On another side, there’s an octagonal pillar of about a metre in height, and at the top… a keyhole. There’s absolutely no way to know that the keyhole will accept the key the entity has. The entity knows it perfectly well regardless.

How will the entity cross the highway? Or will it do something else?

Cascade

I would like to vote for one pincer, please! 🦀
And I would like to also propose using aforementioned pincer to climb the gantry and cross over the highway!

Yutikyis

I will vote for pincer and investigate the hut.

Storyteller

Click. Two pincers. Like a crab, a beetle, a scorpion – three kinds of animal the entity had never seen. But like itself, at least, and now it knew something about itself. It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t nothing. The entity clicked its pincers, left twice, right twice, setting the cup and the key on the ground as it experimented. One side was blunted, and if the entity angled its pincers that way, it could hold on to things. The other was strong and sharp, and if the entity angled its pincers that way, it could shear through what was between them. How perfect. How versatile. It spent a moment glorying in its own form, or at least the little it knew of them.

But then there was another glimpse through the traffic – another sight of the little stop on the other side of the highway, the pool, the hut, and the keyhole – and it found its resolve strengthened. Those were the things that existed, that were real, that could be the next step on its Road. The hut, in particular, drew its attention. It had to get there. And since it wasn’t as small as the little mole, the mole’s burrow wasn’t an option. It would have to climb the gantry, and go over those road signs – over the speeding vehicles below. There was so much danger. There wasn’t much hope. There wasn’t a choice.

It began to climb.

I think we could justify using Reach, but I also think we could justify not using Reach, and the Storyteller’s word goes, and I say our entity has to use Do Anything. This time it’s a little trickier – it would be a difficulty of 5, but with the unanimous faith of the collective unconsciousness in its clever pincers, we’ll knock it down to 4. That means there’s a 50% chance of a safe journey across the gantry, and a 50% chance of falling and being hit. On a 6, a new skill! On a 3 or less… Well, let’s just hope for a 4 or more, shall we?

...And it’s a 6! Our favourite entity gets Climb 2!

It should have been terrifying. The rush of the cars, the whistle of the wind, the creaking of the gantry with each new movement along it, it should have been unbearable. But… if anything, it was exciting, and the parts that weren’t exciting were simply too easy to excite. It was as safe up here as it was on the ground. It could take another ten trips back and forth with ease. The entity wanted to laugh for the sheer joy of it. And then, it touched down on the other side.

The hut was calling to it. It made its way past the pool, but stopped at the keyhole. Yes, it wanted to investigate the hut, but first… it wouldn’t do to let the thing go untouched. The entity took the key out of the cup – something it hadn’t been holding in its clever pincers while it travelled, so presumably it had somewhere to keep it – and set it into place, and turned it. There was a gravity to the motion, a heaviness, and the sound of a ga-chunk as if it had turned a massive lever and not such a small key. And as the pillar with the keyhole on it descended into the ground, another quest was set in motion.

The entity blinked. It was still here, in its Road. And yet, a part of it was there, too, with the Landsport warren's rabbits, running for their lives from the invaders to their warren. It knew them better than it knew itself – it knew they were rabbits, it knew their names, it knew their desperation to live and survive. Were they a part of it now? Did it share their lapine aspect?

It wanted them to succeed, because it knew without knowing that their success was a part of its own success. But it also wanted them to succeed because it wanted them to succeed. That kind of sympathy was new. At the same time as it had learned that other beings existed, the entity had learned that it loved them.

As the pillar receded completely, a part of the entity’s name came to it. A single letter. N.

At any point, you may submit a guess as to the entity’s name. Any answer that I think is particularly good gets canonised. Might be worth waiting for more letters, though.

Its name is not N Tity, Entity McEntityface, or Natural Harmonia Gropius.

It moved again. The door to the hut opened easily.

the three of cups!

The little pub was packed full of people, cheerful and rowdy in the way of a group long familiar with one another, where everyone had known everyone since forever and no quarrel could be particularly vicious because everyone would have to see each other again the next day, week, month, year. The worst incident that there’d ever been here was when…

But a name didn’t come up. Because these weren’t people, any more than the driverless, engineless automatons that had run down the highway were cars. For now, and from the outside, they seemed real enough. They had personalities, histories, lives, dreams. But there was no inwardness to them, no true nature, no soul. If the entity was no longer among them, then they would no longer be.

Even their unreality, though, was welcoming and worthy.

“Evening, stranger. Sit down, sit down,” the barkeep said, chivvying the entity along the floor. The inn was bigger on the inside. Obviously. The fire was warm and a woman was playing a guitar in the corner, and both of those things felt right, and like belonging. The barkeep was a massive man with flowers tied through his beard and a long floral dress that nearly touched the ground. Part of the entity wished he was real, and marvelled at the fact that it wished anything at all. It sat down at a table with grace. “Welcome to the Cosmos. Can I get you…

1 – something to drink?
2 – Something to eat?
3 – Or do you need a room for the night?"

Yutikyis

N (to be determined) needs a nappy. They've had a big day.

Cascade

I agree they need a nappy. But something about all these cups, maybe they could use a drink too? How about a night cap?

Twig

A room for the night. Are there any bar snacks?

Storyteller

The entity was about to answer, and then it ran up against a wall in its own thinking. Did it need to eat, or drink? It felt that it could certainly consume food or drink, but did that mean it would get hungry, or thirsty? It hadn’t eaten anything since it began to exist. Was that enough time? Would eating or drinking be somehow bad for it? For that matter, how would it answer? Does it speak? Can it speak?

Why does it have to ask for something in particular to eat when there are salty starchy things in bowls along the bar?

“Room for the night, right,” the barkeep said. Had the entity asked? It didn’t know. It had thought the intention, but… It rose from the table, and followed the man to the row of rooms behind the bar. It would learn more about its nature as it progressed down its Road. The threat it had to face wasn’t imminent. There was time. Indeed, in the Roads, time had a tendency to have mercy on its subjects.

The barkeep gestured through one of the doors, and inside, a plain but comfortable looking bed, a muted oil lantern, a collection of books, a table, and a chair. The entity was suddenly very aware that it did sleep, and indeed that it needed sleep, because the sight of the bed was the most inviting thing it had ever experienced.

To be fair there was very little competition.

“Spiced apple juice,” the barkeep said, unprompted, and the entity turned to see him set an opaque bottle on the table. “Valerian and lavender, and a touch of lemon. Will fill you up and help you sleep. Compliments of the house. We know what you’re working for.”

The entity recalled, all at once, and it sat down on the bed, and set down the cup with the winding snakes on the table. Levering the top off the bottle – a little ungracefully, as it wasn’t made for pincers – it poured the cloudy juice into the cup, raised it, and then thought, and offered it to the barkeep.

“Oh, no,” the barkeep said, shaking his head with a light laugh. He sat down in the chair beside the bed. “That’s not a cup to share with just anybody. Sharing that cup is a rite, you understand? It’s a ritual. It makes things happen, puts law down on the world. And if you work that rite with something that isn’t real, it’ll mess up your bonds and change your fate for the worse. Only real people drink from that cup with you, all right?”

The entity looked down into the cup, and saw no reflection in it. It knew the other man wasn’t real. That was understandable, that was a known fact. Reality in the Endless Roads was a malleable thing, and sometimes things which weren’t real could be helpful. But knowing so little about itself brought up an unpleasant question. Was it real? Would it have an effect on those around it? If it did bind itself to something real, would it drag their bonds and fate down with it?

“Now, we won’t be here when you wake up,” the barkeep said. “By then you’ll have moved down the Road from here. So we’ll set you a bag here.” He gestured to the door of the room. “It’ll have things you’ll want on your journey. Some things you’ll know you need, some things you’ll not. And one of these books. That’s not something you’ll need, but it’s important that you have it. ...Might as well pick it now, if you don’t feel the need to think on it long. Each is as good as any other.”

The entity looked over the collection. Just four. Not much of a library, but then, why make the choice difficult? It hovered its pincer over them, and made its choice.

1 - Powerchord Bloodstrosity Triumphant
2 - To Break The Grip Of Death
3 - The Artemis Scenario
4 - Sanctum X Rebellion: Her And Their Opposition

It tapped one of its pincers to demonstrate, and the barkeep nodded. “Good ch… well, I can’t say “good choice” if I’ve just said they’re each as good as any other, can I? But they’re all good choices.” He took the chosen book. “Well. Sleep well, friend. I won’t see you again, but I’ll hope for the best for you.”

He wasn’t going to last, the entity knew. The barkeep wasn’t real, after all, just an illusion to further its Road, and so he wouldn’t be there long after the entity was gone. Still, it felt some kind of link to him, some kind of relationship, or communication. It only had one part of its name, but it had to communicate it, so it focused on that letter “N” and…

1 – said it.
2 – thought it.
3 – wrote it.
4 – signed it.
5 – displayed it.

And the barkeep smiled. “Hope you find the rest of your name, N.”

With that, he shut the door. He would not open it again.

It was a while before the entity realised why it had felt that connection, that longing, and even that brief regret after last speaking to the barkeep. He was the first creature – or creature-like projection, at least – that the entity had ever communicated with.

Holding on the melancholy of that thought, it drank down the spiced apple juice, pulled the sheet over itself, and slept.

In its dreams, it was in a place of learning and worship, all white pillars, fountains, domes. People were reading and discussing with one another; one person was lecturing to a group of children. It was the most speech it had ever heard, and it was in a dream.

Which was odd to think about. In the Endless Road, its interactions weren’t real. Here, its interactions weren’t real. What was the dividing line? Or, for that matter, what made the Endless Road more than a dream?

“You have questions,” a voice said.

The entity turned around, and saw sound descending from a tree, landing on the grass, where flowers bloomed.

“I can give you one answer,” the voice continued. “Choose your question.”

1 – Where should I go next?
2 – What do I most need?
3 – What is the nature of reality, as it relates to me?
4 – What is the nature of the threat I need to face?
5 – If I were a worm, would I be a sexy worm? To other worms, I mean. Or not?
6 – I don’t feel like asking you a question.

Cascade

4: Sanctum X Rebellion! -- forbidden love in a time of war (or whatever it actually is)

I'm split on N's communication method, leaning towards "signed" or "displayed" for the silent protagonist energy.

5: Feeling introspective and existential. Also, who are you? Wait, only one answer. Never mind. (edit: I meant 3, not 5!)

Yutikyis

The Artemis Scenario sounds coolest to me!

I am going with 'displayed.' I like to imagine what that is.

Might as well get a firm grasp on reality! I need that on some days.

Twig

I like 1. It sounds like a grand sophomore album.

I also like 'displayed,' however that works.

Absolutely 5.

Storyteller

Votes:
Book: rolled 1d4, with votes in chronological order and a 'reroll'. Got a 3, Powerchord Bloodstrosity Triumphant.
Method of communication: unanimous "displayed".
Question: "Reality" wins with 2 votes. Presumably it just thought the worm one.

The entity tapped its chest, almost by instinct, and as a response, text glowed into existence on the flat screen there. It hadn’t predicted that would happen, but after it did, the entity was entirely unsurprised. That made sense. Of course that made sense. “What is the nature of reality, as it relates to me?” it displayed.

The sound-flowers didn’t respond for a moment, and then, suddenly, burst open in a spiral throughout the temple-academy. “To be real is to exist even without any external assistance,” said one colour, spiralling out around its fellows. “Not necessarily to thrive, but to exist,” another added. “If no other perceives you, and yet you are, then you are real,” said a third.

Suddenly, the world dropped away, leaving only the spiral of the flowers, surrounding the tree at their centre. “You are real, though recent,” the flowers said. “Your Road is not. But a thing that is not real can affect a thing that is real; real people are driven by unreal ideas. Thus, unreality makes its mark, and reality is changed by unreality.” The flowers became stars, the spiral of a galaxy beneath and around the entity. “In that respect, your reality, though certain, is also unnecessary. If you can destroy your enemy, it does not matter whether you exist when the world closes its eye.”

And with that, the spiral opened like eyelids, and there was, indeed, one great eye beneath, perceiving only the entity. The voice came again, this time from a different direction – where a mouth would be in relation to that huge eye. “But then, you are dreaming. You can’t get any information from this that you don’t already know.”

The eye closed again, and the entity fell into the nothingness beneath, falling through layers of existence and nonexistence, all unsure of how many were real, and which were perception…

It became clear when the entity woke. All of them had been unreal. After all, it had been dreaming.

At the door to the inn was a small backpack – the supplies the innkeeper had promised. The entity went to it, searched through it with its pincers to see what was there.

The bag was packed for a long hike. There were two wrapped packages of food, one containing strips of jerky, the other containing hardtack. There were three glass bottles, wrapped in straw, containing water. With them was the cup emblazoned with the twisting snakes. There was a needle, a pair of shears, and a ball of thread. There was a compass, the needle spinning wildly, never pointing anywhere; in that case, perhaps it was the thought that counted. There was even a straw panama hat with a chin strap to keep it secure. And there was the book, the lurid cover showing a minotaur smashing uniformed skeletons with a massive hammer, the title splashed over it “Powerchord Bloodstrosity Triumphant”.

Of the two unusual items, one was strapped to the side of the pack; a sword, seventy centimetres in length, its hilt designed to be held with pincers. The other was a small music player, considerably more advanced technologically than anything around it.

The entity picked it up, and clicked play, and heard a high voice speaking: “There is a room. Until very recently, there was not a room; now, there is only a room. That’s the nature of the microcosm that the entity…”

It clicked forward several tracks, and heard “Of the two unusual items, one was strapped to the side of the pack; a sword, seventy centimetres in length, its hilt designed to be held with pincers. The other was a small music player…”

With a sense of possible dread, it clicked forward again… and was repaid with the first narration again. Up to the minute, but no further.

Unusual.

Resolving to think about it later, the entity set the hat on its head and the backpack on its back, and opened the door. The inn was gone. The door opened onto a blasted wasteland, all sand and sun and howling wind, and a vaguely defined path perpendicular to the door; the Road.

In one direction, the Road became more clear, more defined, and then developed from sand to asphalt, and then to a starting grid. The grid was set up with machines that could be called “cars” the same way a four hundred kilogram smilodon could be called a “cat” – technically accurate but entirely unsatisfactory. These vehicles had been designed over decades to be incredibly, impossibly fast, to turn in fractions of a second, and as a result to be uncontrollable by anyone but a dedicated specialist. They already seemed to be going far, far too fast; they were, in fact, stock still.

In another direction, there was a mountain. The Road led up one slope of it, but couldn’t climb as fast as the slope rose. Instead, it wove around the mountain, spiralling up to the top, where the living summit of the mountain was carved into a building. It wasn’t exactly the building the entity had seen in its dreams, but it wasn’t exactly not that building, either. It certainly could be the dream building, and if so, which had come first? On one side, a huge gate opened to the Road that led up to it, and on the other side, a bridge went out in to the fog.

The entity took its first step forward from the door, and the sand rose in its footsteps, as if to welcome it. It wrapped around

1) both of
2) all four of
3) all six of
4) all eight of
5) the innumerable mass of protrusions that served as

the entity’s legs, and… held. There wasn’t much resistance, but there was some. And as the entity kept walking, the resistance became greater. The sand tried to hold it in place.

And so, the entity:

1) walked straight out from the door to find the source of the gripping tendrils of sand.
2) walked straight out from the door to find the source of the gripping tendrils of sand, with its new sword drawn.
3) ignored the sand and headed to the raceway.
4) ignored the sand and headed to the mountain.

Twig

Surreal. I love it.

Well, Slepnir has eight so I guess I'll say eight. More seems like it might get confusing, but I could be convinced.
like a heavy metal album cover. I am also not committed to this choice because the raceway and the mountain also sound excellent.

Yutikyis

I'll say 4. 4 legs is a good number. Two legs is boring but not so many legs you scuttle.

#2, the New Sword Drawn, just sounds so cool. So let's do that!

Cascade

I guess I'm ambivalent on number of legs. If we have four, combined with our pincers, we could be like... a horseshoe crab (I'm sorry). But whatever's fine.

Seems like we need to deal with the tendrils before we can go anywhere, sword or not, so I'll vote 1 or 2.

Storyteller

Since we have one vote for 8, one vote for 4, and one for “ambivalent but mentions 4”, I’m going to treat it as having no clear decision and roll a d4, with 1 as 8, 2-3 as 4, and 4 as reroll. After four rerolls I am not even kidding, the d4 reluctantly yielded a 1. We have a multi-limbed entity.

The raceway beckoned one way, the mountain another, but every step the entity took, the sand encircled its many legs, one after another; first grabbing like tendrils, and then pulling down, forming dense and slippery quicksand to draw it deeper and deeper down. How long that would last, the entity wasn’t sure, and as the intensity of the resistance seemed to grow only greater with each step, something had to be done. Almost without thinking, the entity reached behind it, took the sword from the sheath-like loop that held it to its backpack, and drew it in a simple arc. The sun caught the edge and ran down it like liquid fire, blazing out with a light that could surely be seen for miles around. That was a decision.

Whichever way it went, the sand dragged its legs down the same amount… but a few exploratory steps showed that there was a source direction from which the sand rose into the air. With its new sword drawn, the entity walked in that direction, looking through heat haze and dust clouds to see what it could find.

But does the entity manage to push through this resistance to get to its opponent with the upper hand? It’ll need a 5 on its Do Anything roll, and as such, it probably won’t! It got a three! It won’t!

Each step was harder. Each time it moved, it had to pull itself up higher, farther. It took more and more to even get to zero. And with each step it took, it felt itself growing heavier, physically, mentally. What was the point of continuing?

And then, suddenly, a blast of sand from the dust clouds, catching it directly on the face.

Our entity takes 1 Damage. It can take a certain amount of Damage before being put down. It does not know how much Damage that is. Now, being a concept created by a basic force of existence, if it goes down, it’ll probably get back up, but that’ll all take up time during which bad things might happen!

Each pain took focus from the other, as if flashing between cards – now the abrasions on the face, now the choking in the throat, back again, back again. The entity couldn’t focus on either, struggling forward towards the figure in the sand. And then, as if in response to a nonexistent wind, the dust clouds blew clear for a moment, and the entity stopped in its tracks.

It didn’t recognise the creature, slightly humanoid, slightly insectoid. What struck it was a sudden wave of… meaning. “Are you” it displayed for a moment, and then, as the possibility struck, the last word glowed in: “real?”

The question was answered as soon as it was asked, though. Something about it felt real, suggested reality, but didn’t rise to the definition the entity had. This was another half-built illusion, like any creation of the Road, but it had traces on it. It had interacted with something real. Something real had touched it and left the lingering residue of reality.

“Dessicate,” the creature said, its voice crackling. “Choke and die.” It pointed one of its own pincers at the entity, and fired off another blast of sand.

The entity’s going to try a few basic attacks here, because it’s a featureless desert for hundreds of metres around it, visibility is down to about two metres but its enemy seems able to see through that, the sand-grab aura limits any mobility, and it doesn’t have any special skills that seem viable here, all of which mean that its tactical kit comprises the following action menu.

The entity will take Damage after a number of misses, and needs to deal Damage a number of times, neither of which it knows. Target number is 5. First roll… is a six! The entity cheerfully notes down Fight 2. It’s a natural.

The entity heard the imprecation not only for what the creature was saying, but what the creature didn’t intend to say, and it was moving before its enemy had even finished raising its own arm. It ducked, came in under the blast of sand, and came up with the sword flashing in the sunlight again, cutting into the other creature and sending it stumbling back.

Capitalise! Capitalise! Follow up! The entity rolls a 7.

With the creature stumbling, the grip around the entity’s legs weakened, and it almost overcorrected as it stepped forward, putting it closer into the enemy’s face. It controlled the sword, caught it at the height of its momentum and snapped it back, cutting down with another blow.

And can it do one final hit? ...In fact it can get a TWELVE on one final hit. The entity notes down Jodan-no-kamae 3.

The creature sneered up at the entity and set its pincer out to another attack, but the entity was already moving for its coup de grace. It raised its sword high above its head, catching the light one last time in a river of fire, and brought it down in a whistling arc, a helm-splitter blow that caught its enemy’s head and cut it open. The promised blast of sand never came, and the enemy collapsed.

Did you know that despite being made for dungeon crawls, Roll For Shoes doesn’t have a set combat system?

The entity knelt beside its victim, taking a moment to scour the blood from its sword in the sand. It was a good thing, it thought to itself, as it compared its pincers to the enemy’s – they weren’t the same, a similar cast but not identical – that the other being hadn’t actually been real. Because if it had, the entity would have to reckon with having taken a life.

It might have to do that eventually. After all, its task, and the reason for its existence, as to stop a threat. Would it be able to do that without killing? Did it want to? Was a reluctance to kill virtuous?

Impossible to know without instruction. The Road was meant to shape it by putting it through challenges. Perhaps some of those would be moral challenges, and would shape its ideology. Who knew? The entity certainly didn’t.

The sun was beating down, more than just a light following the edge of its sword, and while the dust in the air refracted the worst of the glare away, it didn’t make the heat any less parching. The entity pulled one of the bottles from its backpack, began drinking, and surprised itself with its sudden dire thirst. It had the entire bottle down in a matter of moments. It looked at the empty for a moment – a third of its water ration, already gone. Clearly it would have to make its next stop soon. With a moment’s whimsy, that might have felt strangely out of place so soon after bloodshed, the entity raised the bottle to one of its eyes and looked through it like a telescope.

Two of the cars from the raceway, burning rubber over what, under the heat haze, must have been asphalt. Rubber flayed from their tires as they bumped at each other, feather-light touches that nonetheless hit like hammers at the speeds they were moving. The entity must have come closer to the raceway than the mountain when it moved to engage the creature it had fought. Well, then, that made its next move. There would be time to visit the mountain afterwards.

...Or would there? The tavern hadn’t existed after it had spent the night. How heavy were these choices?

Not to interrupt the flow too much, but I didn’t want to go back to the choice of raceway or mountain at the end of this post, because that would feel like we hadn’t advanced.

The walk to the starting grid was easy enough; the entity simply followed the roar of the engines and the scream of the tires, and each was difficult to miss. Two stands of bench seats appeared from the dust, at least a dozen layers of them, and crash barriers made of tires on either side of the black snake of road. In the close distance was a visible pit lane, and down there, a set of garages, each providing a certain amount of protection from the desert. There were more buildings beyond those – more stands, food trucks, temporary huts and brick buildings, and imperious skyboxes with plate-glass walls from which people watched the race. Or, at least, they had watched the race; as the entity reached the seats near the starting grid, a cacophony of engines and streaks of colour blazed by it, and an announcer shouted something over the speakers built into the seats. The entity didn’t understand a word, but it sounded like someone had won.

Still, there was no time to take in the victory, because the cars had barely passed the finish line before a new set was driven out from the pits, moving into positions on the starting grid while the previous race’s tire tracks were still warm. Racers, too, were emerging from the pits and from other buildings, flame-resistant outfits and mirror helmets eclipsing any sight of their features; they went to the cockpits of their cars as the mechanics who’d driven them out retreated. A woman with a clipboard at her waist came up to the entity’s side, taking it by one of its pincers. “Good, good, you’re here,” she said. “We’re almost ready to start. Remember, we need a podium finish – bronze is good as gold, but we need you on the podium.” She gestured towards the starting grid, towards the cars.

The entity, appropriately, leapt into…

1 – the car blazoned with four red hornets.
2 – the car blazoned with a green and black shield.
3 – the car blazoned with a bat over its bonnet.
4 – the car blazoned with three crowns.
5 – a dead sprint over the road and onto the buildings on the other side, because frankly, the refreshments stations seemed more apropos than one of these death machines.

Yutikyis

4 - 3 Crowns. That's at least a winning jackpot!