Hmmm, tell me what you think of this for the beginning of a game (rpg to be specific). 210 years ago, a vampire demon by the name of Belial fled into the world to escape from a higher one. Being part vampire and part demon gave his life force strange attributes that effectively made him immortal. He craved more than anything human life force, and soon set to work devouring the world. The greatest warriors and wizards of the time combined their forces to defeat him, but they couldn''t slay him due to his immortality. He was sealed away instead in a cube covered with runes. Flanella, the most powerful nation of the time took charge of maintaining the seal, and took vast amounts of tribute from the surrounding lesser nations to finance the effort. Several generations later, a skeptical prince suddenly becomes the new king of Flanella when his father is mysteriously murdered. Believing the belial cube to be nothing more than a resource wasting superstition, he does away with the tribute tax and stops pouring energy into the cube. Soon afterwards the cube shatters and Belial is released into the world in a famished state and starts devouring nearby villages. The Flanella army is extremely powerful however, and are able to hold Belial at bay. The runic knowledge needed to reseal him is long gone however. More and more soldiers are killed every day suppressing Belial, and soon they grow weary of it. Indeed, Belial also wishes not to fight, as it wastes his strength that could be used absorbing more human lifeforce. A dark treaty is struck between Belial and Flanella. Flanella''s military will leave him alone completely, and in exchange Belial will not target anyone from Flanella. The weaker surrounding nations are horrified at this treaty, but lack the power to do anything to stop it. However, there are three individuals who might just have the power to stop Belial and change the era. In the town of Munvilla, Flanella, a young man''s father returns from battling Belial. He refuses to tell even his own son what happened, and there is no sign of celebration of Belial''s defeat, nor the hopeless despair of the army being wiped out. Curious, this young man sneaks into the nearby outpost to spy and find out what happened with Belial. What he will learn will send him on a journey far from home and around the world. In the village of Rainskell, Ukataite, the desperate and frightened villagers have consulted an expert on the undead, the powerful and wise spectre, the Dread Knight. Under his guidance, they are preparing to try to appease Belial before he attacks with an offering of human sacrifices. A young woman with attributes that Belial favors is selected. Can she escape her own village and stop all of the madness? Her actions will help determine the fate of the world. And in the ruins of Generalli, Takion, despair looms as the undead armies of Belial capture any living human they come across. A brother and sister watch in horror as their father sacrifices his own life to save his children. Taking with them only their father''s holy sword, the two must brave the undead and fight their way to an escape from Belial. But can they really hope to escape when they have both been marked by Belial with a rune of tracking? Well anyway, obviously these 4 are the main characters, and they would end up meeting each other at some point and joining forces. The Flanella boy would be the "easy" start, the Ukataite girl would be "medium" and the Takion twins would be "hard" start. I''d probably allow you to pick your main character at the beginning, and then you recruit the others as secondary characters (so the ending would depend on who you picked as the main character). So what do you think. Is it too cliche anywhere?

Sounds good for the most part. I dunno though, the first thing I thought of when you talked about belial being trapped was diablo. But as I read, you started to diverge from that theme a little. I think what you do with the rest of the story will determine if its cliche or not.

quote: Original post by Furion
I didn''t even read the story, but the name "Belial" is from Diablo (not the game though, the book, "Legacy of Blood.") You shouldn''t use that name

if you ask me, thats a pretty anal criticism...
but anybody who would read a book based on the diablo game series
could be considered anal enough to pass that kind of judgement

seriously though, i''m sure the guys who wrote that book got it
from somewhere else, who got it from somewhere before that...ect
i think its a good name for his story

-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

Do NOT let Dr. Mario touch your genitals. He is not a real doctor!

Jeez, doesn''t anybody read the classics anymore? Belial is a demon from the Hebrew/biblical tradition and appears in literature as old as Milton''s _Paradise Lost_. A Belial is also a bad guy in Jordan''s _Wheel of Time_.


Entivore - As for the question of whether the idea is too cliche anywhere, well... the team of kids defeating the ultimate evil has kind of been done a lot. And armies of zombies are rather stock... I would kind of like to know about the king who lets the seal get broken though. He seems to be unusually well intentioned, returning the tribute rather than keeping it and using it for some other project. What''s he like?

What are your goals in creating a game story? Tell us fore about what you ideally want your story to be and maybe we can make some better suggestions.

Yeah, I suppose you''re right about the kids thing, but it''s really hard to envision how adults could suddenly turn from worthless peons to great heros, unless they were having a mid life crisis or something. A child on the other hand is still in the process of growing (both body and personality). I might change it though, the young part isn''t really key to the story.

As for my goals, well, the thing is I am working on an RPG called KJK. In KJK''s plot (which I wrote I might add), several references were made to events that happened in the past. I''ve always hated self contradiction and self correction later on in a series (So it wasn''t meteors that destroyed planet vegeta? So Kaou Sama could have "zapped" goku back to earth with instant transmission?) DBZ was particularly bad about this, possibly because it was being written as they went along. Naturally whenever I see something in another work I don''t like, I avoid doing it myself. I''m writing this in the form of a plot for an rpg in case I want to do a prequel to KJK, which I do want to do eventually when I have the resources (and KJK is finished)

One of the villians in the later part of KJK is a revived vampire demon Belial who then proceeds to attack Takion, Ukataite, and Axeinhed (Flanella in this story) with molten metal elementals of copper, iron, and silver, materials that came from the upper world originally. It basically explains why copper is only found in axeinhed and nowhere else, etc. So that''s one thing I have to use in this story somewhere along the line (and have them defeated at the convient spots). Well anyway, this story occurs in the year 25,000 PA (Phoenix Awakening), which is exactly 7000 years before KJK, and 3000 years before the birth of the first KJK characters (other than Phoenix and Belial). I''ve already written a mini-plot for the events that happen in 29,000 PA, so this will be my 3rd rpg worthy plot. Yay.

I suppose the best way to tell more about the king is to write more of the plot and develop him some. For readibility sake I''ll end this post here and double post (Hope you don''t mind)

First some history of the beginning.

In the year of awakening, all was ashes. All was darkness. A great bird of flames arose from the ashes to find the world in ruins. He wandered the burned world and eventually stumbled across the starving remnants of civilization on the continent that is now known as Flanella. Phoenix fell in love with these humans and used his majestic powers to help them build and expand and soon one would never know the world used to be in ashes.

Noone knew where they or Phoenix came from, not even Phoenix himself. The only clue was a strange fireproof scroll. It contained a prophecy of three evils that would destroy the world. After reading it, Phoenix vowed that nothing would ever destroy the world again and he would make sure of it. After centuries of painstaking research and work, Phoenix created sky palace, an invincible floating fortress in the sky, where he could keep watch of the world.

Over the centuries humans expanded their skills and numbers and soon left Flanella and established many smaller nations nearby. Most notable of these are Takion on the eastern continent, and Ukataite on the northern continent.

Now, Belial''s entrance into the world.

In the year 24790 a mysterious portal from a higher world opened up. From out of the portal a frantic figure emerged. This is the vampire demon Belial. Belial had escaped some unknown threat in the upper world and was quite content to live out his days in this world. The only problem was Belial had an insatiable thirst for human life force. Belial''s power was strong, but not unstoppable, and the armies of the world combined their might to defeat him time and again. Unfortunantly Belial was immortal and no amount of pummeling could end his terror. Phoenix realized that if they couldn''t destroy him they would have to contain him, and so used his powers to create a powerful sealing cube, marked with many powerful runes. After one final bloody battle, Belial was defeated and before he could recover, cast into the cube by the wizards of the world.

Phoenix appointed the royal family of Flanella, the Kelvins to maintain the seal over Belial and gave them instructions on how to charge the cube with ether. Then Phoenix declared Flanella to be the absolute authority among the world''s nations and returned to Sky Palace to rest for a few centuries.

Belial''s Return.

Prince Twell Kelvin grew up surrounding by hateful subjects. His father, King Kelvin was quite the tyrant, and prone to beheading anyone who offended him in a rage. Twell always felt ashamed of his father''s actions and wished he could do something about it. Although he probably would have kept that wish to himself if he knew what would happen. Twell often went to visit the graves of those his father had beheaded, and one day was surprised when a grave talked back to him! One of the victims of the beheading was a knight from Ukataite. This knight had developed his magic powers and even after being killed managed to maintain a physical presance as an undead spectre.

Twell would often come to visit this spectre and shamefully spell out the latest absurdity of his father. One day Twell confided in the spectre that he wished he could make his father just stop and never do anything harmful to the people again. The spectre told Twell that it could be arranged. Twell asked what he meant but the spectre just vanished.

When Twell returned to the castle, it was a ghastly site. Dead and mutilated guards lay everywhere, and the king? Dead and marked with a rune of torture and a rune of revenge. Twell never did meet that spectre again, and never found out for sure, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the undead knight from Ukataite had assassinated his father.

Twell felt relief that his father had died, and he felt shame as well. The shame of finding pleasure in the death of his own father. He needed a way to right that shame, to prove to himself that he wasn''t horrible. He saw the way.

One of the things the people most resented about his father was the great tax and tribute being paid by the people, including those of the other nations. Phoenix had never visited in his generation, nor his fathers, nor his father''s fathers. Twell didn''t believe Phoenix existed at all. Yet, year in and year out his father had collected obscene amounts of resources and wealth to produce ether to feed into a small cube. Twell had always thought it was ridiculous. He decided to once and for all are stop collecting this tribute, and stop wasting all these resources.

Then, in the year 25,002 it happened. The cube finally shattered under the pressures of containing Belial. He had returned. Twell was shocked, the legends were true. Immediately Twell led his army personally to engage Belial. They defeated him. Then he reappeared. They once again defeated him. No matter how many times they defeated him, he kept coming back. Twell was in disbelief and would not give in, ordering attack after attack. Finally Twell noticed Belial had a strong aversion to pain. He was a wimp. Twell decided to meet with Belial without fighting. Belial and Twell negotiated. Twell asked why Belial harmed his people. Belial explaned that without human life force he suffers, and that taking life force from humans was no more wrong than taking meat from beasts. During the discussions Belial learned that Flanella was the only country with a powerful army. Belial agreed to not hunt Flanella people in exchange for not being fought by the Flanella army. Twell, eager to protect his people from his mistake accepted. Belial was now free to stalk the other nations without interference.

After Belial left Twell realized what a grave mistake he had made. He had completely devalued the importance of the lives of the people who happened to live in the other nations. But it was too late. Twell was already bound by his word to not interfere. After suffering a two day conscious headache, Twell decided it would be best to stop off all travel to the outside world and not tell the people what had happened. Meanwhile, Twell started up another project, to try and find a way to reach Sky Palace and awaken Phoenix, the ruler god who had found a way to stop Belial before. Unfortunantly, the task was easier said than done. Even if they could find a way to fly, they had no idea where to locate Sky Palace.

what was Belial escaping from? you said something to the effect of: he came from an upper world, escaping something. You also said that he needs human life force to sustain himself. Were there humans where he came from? If so...were they chasing him, and can they defeat him with ease? Or did they just shove they''re problem onto a lower world just to get Belial off their hands?