EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

June 11, 2015

This Friday, get ready for a heavy dose of EpicDuel lore! Guest Writers Silver Sky Magician, One Winged Angel, and Ranloth have crafted several harrowing mission chains focusing on some of EpicDuel's more obscure characters: Mort, Anya, and Zedmyr!

In addition to new missions offering killer rewards, you'll be able to unlock 4 new achievements for defeating Mort, Zedmyr, Anya, and Mirv. If you're really persistent, you'll be able to claim Zedmyr and Mort's rifles for your very own!

Now, I'd like to leave you with a lovely bit of prose created by Guest Writer Silver Sky Magician. Enjoy!

Zedmyr's Story

The world never changes.

It was all a lie. Delta V was never a paradise, not before the Banishment, not before the Uprising, not even before Baelius. Just ask a Marauder – it was always hell here. A little more contained, perhaps, a little more out-of-sight, but this fear, this despair, this cruelty – it was here from the very beginning.

Before Baelius, there were the natives. The ones I lived with were the Sae’ilians. Children of the sky, in their language, for their rich blue skin. Of course, back then the sky was actually blue...but I digress. The Sae’ilians were beautiful people, their voices music, their gaits a dance. Their paintings and sculptures so stirring and exquisite that thousands flocked to Delta V just to see them. Flowers even bloomed where they walked – no, really. They planted seeds everywhere. If you were an immigrant back then you’d have thought you’d died and went to heaven.

Then there was us. Those who weren’t fit to enter heaven. The dirt under the carpet – the disabled, the discoloured, the disfigured. Abandoned from birth into the underbelly of society. Well, not entirely. They couldn’t let us run amok, could they? Who knows what sorts of heinous crimes we could commit! Or worse, we might show our mugs in public. So we were forced to do the tasks too inelegant for normal people. Throwing out the trash. Maintaining the sewers. Cleaning up after the dogs. And in exchange we got the leftovers from their tables.

Some treated us as mysterious invisible forces who could compel them to move far away. Some – typically the children who hadn’t learnt such sophistication – preferred abuse. Jeering at us, their voices music. Kicking our ribs, their gaits a dance. We couldn’t strike back, of course. Everyone suddenly saw us then. Quite a few of us endured it with shame. When beauty is a virtue, ugliness becomes a vice. Who could protest against the actions of angels? The rest of us, though, were only too happy to follow the flip side of the Sae’ilians’ logic. If we were born irredeemable criminals, why, should we not strive to achieve our manifest destiny?

I came onto their radar when I killed my parents and my lovely little sister one fine cloudless day. Or at least, I think I did. Couldn’t really be sure who my folks were. Anyway, they hunted me down pretty quickly, but I escaped into the sewers. They didn’t even try to follow me down. Too scared of the filth. So they sent the slaves after me, half of whom punched me in the arm with stupid grins. The rest pretended that they couldn’t spot a hunchbacked shadow the size of three men. I went on the run after that, into the underworld where the real baddies thrived. Bashed my way up the ranks and made my name as a premium black market dealer. Added some melee weaponry and guns and sweet bazookas to my arsenal. But nothing could beat a brawl.

Then Baelius started tightening his fist around the planet. I was classified as a Marauder, to differentiate my kind from the hundreds of other categories of outlaws, like Rebel, or Bounty Hunter, or Artist. Bah, bureaucracy. Soon the Uprising was in full swing. Legionnaires torturing us, mowing us down. Exiles avoiding us like nuclear waste. Same old, same old, though it was a good deal more annoying this time. Never could sleep for long before a bullet buzzed past my ear. Soldiers smashed themselves into my fists like mosquitoes. All the fault of that Legion General, Kojimura or something. But that cursed lizard almost made up for all that with the greatest spectacle I’ve ever seen. Incinerated the Flatlands, ha ha ha, burnt up all the villages! Exposed it for what it really was – a hollow wasteland. I’d give him a friendly smack on the neck if Slayer hadn’t already done it.

Most of the people escaped somehow. A flood of refugees, unused to anything but extravagance. The black market swelled and business boomed. Shoes that’ll last more than a week? Ten thousand credits! A gun to protect your family? Fifteen thousand! Bullets sold separately, heh heh heh. Diapers? You’re out of your mind, a hundred thousand if I ever come across one! Crime was no longer our exclusive domain – it surged out into the open like a plague. Neighbours tearing the clothes off each other’s backs. Marauders competing through stabbing sprees. A Sae’ilian eating her pretty child, mouth stained an ugly purple.

I was an emperor and my kingdom was a junkyard.

Then he came, conviction in his stride and a man in an iron mask by his side. Walked straight up to me and offered to be partners in business. “I have secured a steady food supply to some refugees,” he said. “But it will not last long. And food is not enough – we need medical supplies, radiation-protective gear, toiletries, shelters, security...we need your help. Your experience and influence in black market dealings. Your knowledge of the supply routes. Your combat skills for fending off Marauders. Together we can establish a safe haven, lead the way out of this hell. The Barrens will never again see its former glory while the war rages, but we can restore a spark of hope, a semblance of home. The Bazaar.”

I don’t remember having laughed so hard before. “Just what do I get out of this?”

“A new world.” My smile faded and I fingered my gun.

“How do I know that I can trust you?”

His eyes flashed. “My family was killed by Marauders. And here I am, asking to work with you, and coming clean on top of that. That’s the kind of trust I’m putting on the table. How much will you give?”

I gave him all of it there and then. It takes a madman to change a mad world.

Things improved beyond our wildest dreams. Within months the Bazaar was set up and the refugees had basic amenities. We even got electricity and water running – Ulysses, the masked man, could work magic with machines. The Marauders tried to wreak havoc, of course, but there was no one in the Barrens who could get past me. And that man, the new director of the Bazaar, made it all possible. People began calling him a god. He didn’t like that at all, but the name stuck. Thousands flocked to him for a miracle.

The pressure got to him, and he started hiding away in Kojimura’s fallen airship. Obsessed with bodyguards, even though he had me. Scrambled to accommodate the demands, the new refugees. He failed, of course, and commanded me to stand guard, keep them out of the Bazaar. Left on the edge of heaven by the man who saw I had a soul. I started killing more refugees than Marauders. Sometimes hundreds at once, when they tried a riot. But I stood firm and refused to stop believing. Not even when the saved stopped smiling. Not even when Ulysses left. Not until he told me to sell weapons to the Legion who expelled his family, so that they wouldn’t interfere with the trade.

Business boomed. The refugees kept coming. Blood roiled like clouds in a thunderstorm.

The world never changes.

Tags: Nightwraith