The Three Trials: Design Intervention

The First Trial: "Well Well, Welcome to my lair" "At the Drive Through" "Velvet Crusader"

Akano and his horde of demonic bikers are hurtling down the maw, a giant well that goes all the way to the flaming heart. If he reaches it, all is lost. Objective: Defeat Akano before he can reach the flaming heart.
Objective: Defeat Akano before he can reach the flaming heart.

The Second Trial: "Was it worth finding me?" "Getting animals addicted to gambling" "The world's largest grape"

Inside the Ur-Berry, there are seeds that are so delicious, consuming them will galvanize (H+) you towards consuming more. Watch out for worms, beware the false seeds, and do hurry as you may have some trouble breathing.
Objective: Consume three true seeds between the titan and relentless.

The Third Trial: "Obsessed Fanatic" "Whisper Saloon" "The Library is all out of books"

The Arch-Archives have been besieged! This collection of tomes, possibly the largest in the explored manifold, has been overtaken by an unknown force, spawning strange presences within. The infallible security system has detected, for the first time in the archives' history, three books missing: "The Alm-Herrigan Wild West," "Light and Darkness," and "Volcanoes: Work of the Devil?"
Objective: Rout the incursions and identify and destroy their source.

(by Reece)

Lor, an Aspiring Fascinator, Wolfgang Stormgard, a Thunderbird, and Dominus Imperia Rex, a Beastmaster, port-in upon a large balcony with a titanic gate looming in the distance and three items set on pedestals before them. Lor picks up an emerald and immediately feels dramatically faster, perceiving the world as slowed around her. Wolfgang bites into a mushroom and grows to immense size, towering over the others. Imperia puts on a helmet and immediately vanishes, finding herself teleported to a cushy armchair, now able to see through both Wolfgang’s and Lor’s eyes and communicate with them telepathically. She introduces herself to the other two—who already know one another—though neither reciprocates, leaving her in the dark as to their identities.

A green, glowing gate appears before them, and when Lor & Wolfgang step through, they find themselves stepping into a jet-black void, where a disembodied voice explains to them that the first of their three trials shall be to slay a demon named Akano, who is leading his horde of thousands of demonic bikers down a vertical tunnel called “the Maw” towards a treasure known as “the Flaming Heart”. If Akano reaches it, all will be lost. The voice identifies Akano by his flowing red cloak and estimates that the squad will have roughly ten minutes before Akano makes it to the Heart.

Then they’re teleported again, with the absolute darkness of the void replaced by the almost-absolute darkness of a miles-deep well, and the duo now in free fall. Lor, accelerated by the emerald’s magic, falls far faster than Wolfgang, who slows and steers himself with his magical boots and cloak, playing his guitar to whip up a storm around him. Imperia employs one of her new helmet’s magical powers to port-in her pet giant eagle to aid Lor, but the helm’s unpredictable magic results in its cage appearing far deeper into the passage. As Lor descends further, she reaches the tail of the biker horde, finding that the black-cloaked riders are driving vertically down the walls and that each is armed with a glowing laser sword. Some of the demon bikers swerve around and attempt to intercept her, and a fraction of those collide with others having the same idea, crashing and toppling from their vehicles.

Lor spots a black smoke cloud up ahead and seeing through her eyes, Imperia’s helmet’s second power allows her to retcon into place a gigantic, dozen-bladed, spinning rotor within the smoke cloud, to thin out the numbers of the bikers recklessly driving into it. Lor then fakes her own death, allowing the intercepting demons to believe they’ve slain her by leaving behind a convincing clone, turning invisible, and teleporting away. She appears within the smoke cloud, dodging hidden rotor blades and locating Imperia’s caged eagle, which she frees. The huge bird then flutters over to her, carefully latching onto Lor’s shoulders without piercing their skin with its talons.

Wolfgang’s storm winds then buffet him down the well shaft, launching him like a cannonball at the oncoming bikers, as they rush up to meet him after “killing” the false Lor. He hurls oversized lightning bolts, electrocuting dozens of riders, then turns another pair of bolts into electrified blades to counter their laser swords and unleashes a thunderous blast of sound that tears through their formation, allowing him to pass straight through the mass of bikers, soon reaching the smoke cloud. Wolfgang uses electromagnetic pulses to detect and slow the hidden rotor blades, powering through with only minor cuts. Beyond the smoke, the tunnel narrows and flaming skulls with black cloaks begin swarming the agents. One paralyzes Lor by sweeping its magical cloak over her, but the eagle beats its wings with sufficient force to pull her to safety. Wolfgang fights several with his lightning sabres, but one manages to bite his leg, leaving behind a wound that he’s forced to cauterise before he can lose too much blood.

Still falling rapidly, the agents soon spot in the distance a smaller horde of about three hundred bikers and, at its front, Akano in his red cloak. Lor places a sigil for Imperia, and when that activates, conjuring a sea-griffin, Imperia binds it to Lor’s service. At the same time, she also drops in her golden armour, magically scaled up to triple-size for Wolfgang to don, which he swiftly does, before swatting aside a pair of demons and stealing their rides, using two motorbikes at once in an approximation of roller blades, and skating down the walls after the horde. Lor, the eagle, and the sea-griffin dive after Akano, the latter hurtling into him with enough force to knock him off-balance and almost topple his motorbike, granting Lor an opening to hop aboard. She lashes out at Akano, burning his whip arm with her firebrand, before catching a falling laser blade and cutting through his torso.

The world goes black, and the voice congratulates them on completing the first trial. It then describes the goal of their second trial, before teleporting the two agents into the fleshy interior of a colossal grape, which contains glowing seeds and enormous worms with fanged maws. Some seeds pulse with a peaceful hum, while others are silent. Wolfgang employs a magical, electromagnetic sense to determine that pulsing seeds are the good ones, while the silent sort are explosive. A worm soon proves this point by eating a false seed, triggering a massive blast that maims it and carves an air pocket into the grape. It’s fortunate that they do the latter part, since the agents are currently having to hold their breath, due to grape flesh making a poor substitute for oxygen.

Lor starts heading for a false seed, but after being telepathically warned by Imperia of Wolfgang’s discovery, they change course. Wolfgang, meanwhile, reaches a true seed just ahead of one of the titanic worms, which outscales even him. He hastily consumes the seed, discovering that it tastes better than anything he’s ever experienced before… unfortunately, its insidious magic twists his thoughts, making him desire the seeds more than anything… and from his perspective, every seed now appears to be one of the pulsing ones. Imperia can still distinguish true from false and attempts to guides him, but in his current mindset, Wolfgang is disinclined to listen and instead intends to simply grab whichever seed is closest.

Before he can do so, however, he still has to contend with the worm barreling towards him, furious that he stole its prize. He manages to burrow his way through translucent grape flesh to almost get out of the creature’s way in time, but in passing, it rams him with sufficient force to break a leg, despite his enhanced size. Still, the pain is secondary to the desire for more seeds, so he pauses only long enough to tie his guitar to the affected limb, using its neck as an impromptu splint. Then Wolfgang is off again after the next seed, but Imperia sees that this one is of the explosive variety, so magically hastens the worm, allowing it to snatch the “prize” before him, which detonates in its face with force equating to a dozen kilotons of TNT. It survives.

Lor soon reaches another of the pulsing true seeds but wisely pockets it rather than eating it immediately, avoiding the mental effects plaguing Wolfgang. When another worm threatens to trigger a nearby false seed, she briefly distracts it with her magic fan while Imperia spawns a huge container holding a fighter jet—that being about the upper limit of what her helmet can reliably create—between Lor and the explosive seed. When the worm touches it, the seed goes off, and the resulting blast leaves another breathable cavity in its wake, giving Lor an opportunity to catch their breath.

Wolfgang, still struggling to advance with his crushed leg, makes it to the other air pocket nearby and battles the injured worm there, over another nearby seed, using his lightning bolts, sonic powers, and an electrified shovel. Lor rushes to help and by using both her own magic and Imperia’s they’re able to draw the worm’s attention, confusing it, as it’s torn between wanting to attack Lor and its eternal hunger for more seeds. In the background, Wolfgang crawls along to the glowing seed. The worm spots him and breaks free of Lor’s distraction to give chace once more, but despite his injury, the head start allows Wolfgang to make it there first. He devours that seed and Lor pulls out her own, chowing down on it as well. When the third seed is eaten and with the enraged worm about to swallow Wolfgang whole, the second trial ends. The grape dissolves into blackness, the voice congratulates them again, and Wolfgang’s injuries heal.

After being given the details of their third trial, the two agents are teleported into a seemingly endless archive, where towering bookshelves rise beyond sight. Only to be immediately addressed by a different, mysterious, disembodied voice from the one which has been explaining the trials. This voice claims to have been watching them and learning from their experiences. The duo question it, suspecting that this voice could be responsible for the so-called “incursions” that they’ve been tasked with stopping. It doesn’t provide much information, though, and Imperia teleports her demonic-looking mask to Wolfgang, sized up to fit him, in case he needs to intimidate anyone. He and Lor then search the archive and notice several strange disturbances: darkness in one direction, a faint light in another, and rowdy sounds up ahead.

Following the sound of hooves, Lor and Wolfgang discover a Wild-West-style town hidden between the shelves. Its inhabitants—led by a cowboy named Johnny Guns—treat Wolfgang as a threat and assemble in huge numbers with guns drawn. The agents determine that the town must be tied to one of three books which have recently vanished from the archive, and conclude that the incursions are fictional things being pulled from stories and conjured into the archive. After negotiations with Johnny fail, they leave town to go investigate the bright presence, which seems to now be circling high above the shelves. When the voice grows bored of the lack of action, it sics the light on them, which turns out to be a luminescent dragon. Lor’s enhanced speed allows her to lure the dragon back to town, where the cowboys open fire, though their bullets barely slow it. Imperia uses Lor’s help to compel the dragon toward Johnny Guns, and it immediately devours him. It turns out that the cowboys are pretty outclassed in this matchup.

Whilst it’s distracted by them, Wolfgang manages to ensnare the dragon with a lightning-infused chain and is dragged along behind it as it rises higher into the air. He climbs up his chain and gets onto its back, before manifesting himself a pair of magical shades to deal with the blinding radiance it emits. He also plays his guitar, looking incredibly metal in the process. Meanwhile, Lor employs Imperia’s sigil magic once again, but before the spell can activate and bring forth another helpful monster, Wolfgang’s draconic mount passes by the zone of deep shadow, and a second dragon emerges from the darkness to clash with the light dragon, this one seemingly made of solidified shadows. Wolfgang leaps off and glides to the ground using his cloak, then picks up Imperia’s heraldic beast when it appears. He has to do so without looking at it, though, since this time the one that’s been conjured is a basilisk.

Wolfgang then unceremoniously lobs the ungainly, little chicken-dragon up at the far more imposing dragons overhead. The darkness dragon meets its gaze, turns to stone, and slams into the radiant dragon, bearing its foe down to the ground beneath it. Wolfgang follows-up with a thunderous guitar blast, shattering the stone dragon and leaving the light dragon’s corpse buried in the rubble that was once its mortal enemy. No sooner has the dragon incursion been dealt with, though, than another begins, as a volcano erupts elsewhere in the archive, spewing forth a tide of demons from its fiery depths.

These are not just any demons, though, as the voice admits that when designing this incursion, it decided to get a little creative and incorporate something it just recently witnessed. The agents get to see what this means when they spot a supersized clone of Akano—now matching Wolfgang in scale—leading a horde of demonic bikers down the volcano’s slope and directly towards them. At Imperia’s suggestion, Lor dashes directly towards the onrushing tide of demons, and once she’s close enough, Imperia teleports a cage to her, this time containing her pet lion, magnified to thrice its usual size by her borrowed helmet’s strange powers. Lor wastes no time in freeing the beast then flees at once, as it bursts forth and meets the riders head-on, tearing into their ranks with wild abandon.

Imperia then manages to utilise her helmet to tamper with the archive’s security system, causing whatever arcane formations manage the place to launch mystical tomes from the towering bookcases down upon the encroaching horde, thinning their numbers with arcane explosions. This disrupts the demons’ charge somewhat, but even so, the cowboys’ numbers have been thinned by the dragon attack earlier, so when the bikers reach town, the humans there are swiftly overrun, ending a second incursion.

The agents still have no clue where to look for the source of the mocking voice they’ve been hearing, but in its arrogance, it cannot resist taunting them, claiming to be right behind them. Lor and Wolfgang both have clear line of sight to one another, and there’s clearly no one sneaking up on them, which—unless the speaker is invisible—leaves only one agent they could be behind. Imperia removes her helmet, stands from her comfortable armchair, and turns to face the diminutive man perched upon a stool behind it. He wears a helmet similar to hers, though heavily modified, and doesn’t seem to have realised that she’s onto him, so doesn’t react at all until she yanks off his fancy headgear.

They talk a bit, with the guy proving to be rather timid when he’s in the same room as another person and cannot pretend to be just a disembodied voice, despite Imperia not really appearing particularly imposing without the mask she typically wears. Though his fear may have something to do with the venomous serpent she loops around his neck to ensure he remains on his best behaviour. She also swaps helmets with the man and subsequently discovers that his one includes some nifty bonus features, such as enabling its wearer to compel any creatures conjured by it. She uses this capacity to command the demonic horde to return to the volcano from whence they came.

Most obey, but Akano manages to resist by striking himself in the head. Wolfgang confronts Akano in the wrecked street while Lor supports him from above, Akano attacking with a laser glaive and an explosive whip. Wolfgang quickly plucks an impossibly huge dictionary from a nearby bookshelf and uses that to block the strikes, while Lor drops down onto Akano to impale him with her firebrand. Even the lion joins in, leaping onto the demon lord, clawing and gnawing at his body. As he’s overwhelmed by this combined assault, Imperia figures out a workaround to her magic’s usual limitation of affecting animals only, the modified helmet’s magical properties enabling her to conjure a control collar around Akano’s neck.

Even that isn’t enough to force such a powerful demon to submit entirely, but when Lor taunts him and races off towards the volcano, Akano proves unable to resist her compulsion and chases after, with the lion hot on his heels, alongside some other demons who’ve lingered in the archive. Fortunately, just as they all reach the caldera, Imperia notices a terrain-augmenting feature to the modified helmet and with little time to explore the option in detail, she hastily changes the regular lava into holy lava, which as it transpires, means that it burns only demons and other infernal beings. As Lor and the lion splash down into the syrupy but otherwise harmless (to them) lava, and bikers are burned alive all around them, the agents’ badges start to ping. One-by-one, they all pingout, their mission successful.

• Wolfgang unregistered
• Lor unregistered
• Dominus Imperia Rex unregistered