User:Zzo38/GURPS1

Link to first chapter (or use Fossil to download the wiki). Ongoing. A Fossil repository is used to record it. Select "Tickets" to add comments (you must first log in, although you do not need an account in order to do so; the user name and password to use are mentioned in the login form). This is to record the events of the game, but can also make a story; we can correct it (adding details, moving stuff to/from footnotes, etc) if necessary. This is public domain (both the story and this article about it). (And if you think I am wrong (which I probably am), complain (perhaps with an indented point, or using the talk page for more elaborate discussions). If you are sufficiently certain I am wrong, just change it please!) (Once fixed up a bit, and considered good enough to move to main space, you might do so.)

List of tropes:

• A Dog Named "Dog": The bat is just called "bat". Whether it is due to it is their proper name or not, is not currently known (fix this, perhaps with a spoiler tag, if it becomes known later). Also true of otyugh.
• Aerith and Bob: They do mix strange names with ordinary ones such as Bob, although this is usually due to because the characters with strange name is monsters characters, so probably it is supposed to be like that, anyways.
• Alternative Calendar: Sort of. The zero reference is the last leap year on or before the events of the story. However, this is used only in the description of the story itself, not by the characters of the story (which use a calendar which is not described).
  • Maybe it doesn't apply to meta-calendars?
• Altum Videtur: Chapter IX does have some Latin text. (The author translated the English that the inscription on the box is supposed to mean, into Latin.)
• Anachronism Stew: There are leper windows, like some churches actually had in medieval times. But there is also coffee, which they didn't have at the medieval England (and this is mentioned in a footnote).
• Anonymous Benefactor: Someone gave the spell book to Ziveruskex, since he might need it later for the quest. Well, so he study just a little bit, but is mostly interested in mathematics and other stuff instead. The spell book is later lost anyways, although he and others find some other magic items that may be of use, some of which are single use items.
• Artistic License Geography: In this story, there isn't water immediately to the east of England; instead there is a maze of canyons and then another country (called Quan Ma), and then the water.
• Attack of the Killer Whatever: The evil comb, perhaps.
• Bigger on the Inside: A wizard in a tower has several boxes that are varying amounts of bigger inside.
• Bookworm: Ziveruskex will read any book (or, at least, will try; some are in obscure hieroglyphics).
• Calling Me a Logarithm: A rabbit calls another character a "complex gaussian integral". The other character does not understand what that means, even though he is a mathematician, because the word "complex gaussian integral" has not been invented yet.
• Captain Color Beard: Although it is a colour and the beard is not mentioned, there is Captain Black, although perhaps he should really be called Admiral Black.
• Cast From Hit Points: Some of Ziveruskex's magic spells require minor harm to himself. (Others use mana crystals.) (He is not a mage and therefore requires magic items to do any magic spells, and sometimes they have other requirements.)
• Celibate Eccentric Genius: See the next one.
• Celibate Hero: Ziveruskex. Simply doesn't want to (and that remaining celibate hopefully to be a better philosopher, which seems to be working), rather than for religious reasons. (It is, however, still a vow (but a secret one).)
• Chronoscope: A variant, where at one point, a spell allows entering a copy of the past in the form of a (somewhat larger than usual) insect, which is capable of affecting the copy but any changes made do not affect the present time because it is an alternate timeline which happens to be the same as the present except for the presence of that insect.
• The Conspiracy: When Temple of Worm secretly tries to start a war.
  • The organization itself isn't secret, nor is it so secret that they are bad, but their plans are secret; it was originally only expected they only stole people and tried to force priests to convert.
• Damsel in Distress: The princess wanders off, and gets in trouble. The main characters at first want to save the princess (since that is what the king asked them to do), but later the situations comes that they try to kill the princess (they believe this to be justified due to the circumstances), and then later again try to save her, but a stone from a collapsing tower kills her, and then whoever was trying to save her don't care anymore. (Kjugobe only intended to save the princess because the king requested it, and didn't have anything more important to do, and has nothing against saving the princess. Then he finds out that actually he does have something more important to do, although saving the princess turns out to be a part of it.)
• Dream Weaver: One character goes in someone else's dream, and then later the second one manages to wilfully control his dream (despite not being skilled at doing so) to see what the first one was talking about.
• Dressing as the Enemy: When we find guard uniforms in a bedroom, and three of us can wear the uniforms to be disguised as guards (the other four are two monsters, a dwarf, and a man who is slightly too short to be one of the temple guards). However, eventually the men in the war room figure us out.
• Empathic Healer: Ziveruskex once cast a healing spell on someone that took more injury onto himself than that he healed. The case of healing someone with potentially fatal injuries was solved by the use of parallel natural healing; fortunately, the spell worked; if it didn't, it could cause even more problems.
• Eternal English: Although their English language should not be the same as our current English, they are treated as though it is because the author(s) doesn't know any better.
  • Such things as Caesar ciphers are made using modern language.
  • Other times, the difference between early Old English and early Middle English is handled properly.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Driver, king, wizard, etc.
• Everything's Better with Bob: Note also that "bob" is also a slang term for shillings (a kind of old English money).
• Extra Eyes: Strixan and Ziveruskex (each having five eyes), due to their species.
• Fake King: In one town, the king started to do bad things, such as ban priests and semi-humans and monsters, setting up guards all over the place (a police state), setting up martial law, and were allegedly going to expand their empire and take over the town where Ziveruskex lives too, killing all of them. Actually the king was a fake; the actual king was made sick and kept sleeping, using a magical device to let a clay golem set up by a wizard to impersonate whoever the device is touching.
• Fakin' MacGuffin: The heroes actually decide to make multiple fakes. In this example, the audience does know ahead of time. The first time the bad guy tried to steal the fake one, it was only a projection of the bad guy so he could not actually steal anything, but he tried anyways and got angry when he missed.
• Familiar: Ziveruskex's magical bat familiar. Not the source of any powers (it is more the other way around); the type of bond is that Ziv can summon the bat (from a magic realm, presumably; also, it isn't always reliable) and that harm to one also affects the other, and they are more intelligent than most bats (but still cannot speak).
• Fantastic Racism: A man who is neither a passenger nor the driver (nor any kind of authority related to the situation) refuses to let Ziveruskex onto a carriage, because he "doesn't let ugly monsters in this carriage". (It has later been asked by people outside of the story: Do they let beautiful monsters in this carriage?) Later, a fake king hates all semi-humans and monsters, and also priests (even if they are human).
• Fantasy Gun Control: Averted. There are guns and explosives, both mundane (of the kinds found in the Middle Ages) and magical. A character asks for a cannon to be mounted on a horse-drawn wagon at one point, but the cannon cannot be mounted on the wagon. Then they request a hand cannon (a old kind of gun with long readying time and low reliability), but the place from where they are requesting it does not have any. The ships do have cannons, and they are fired sometimes.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: There are some Greek monsters even in England. This is explained by saying that it is the Greeks who mainly wrote about them, because those were the ones common in Greece at the time; some might have come to England since then, or maybe they were just not well known in England that they would have been written. (And yet, one hydra can speak Chinese!!!)
• Fictional Colour: Strixan and Ziveruskex can see five colours rather than three like human can see. Although such character is fiction, seeing more colours is not really fictional because the spectrum of electromagnetic lights is more than three colours and some animal (and some cameras) can see more than three colours.
• Fictional Country: Quan Ma, which is to the east of England with a small amount of water and a maze in between.
• Fish People: Kuo-tuo who could not speak unless under water, and were trying to prevent us from entering the wizard's island.
• Flight: Ziveruskex and Strixan can fly. However, they cannot easily carry another humanoid through the air; together they could sometimes carry them a short distance, but it takes too much effort to do it any more.
• Footnote Fever: Notes about the story/game, clarifications, recursive footnotes, a footnote deliberately left unreferenced, Microsoft ("Where do you want to go today?"), comments, strange comments, references to other television shows, footnotes with something irrelevant to the context, music notes, etymology, spelling, anachronism, physics, the "Jabberwocky" poem, strangely numbered footnotes, geography, etc.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Ziveruskex and Strixan, although the human characters have five fingers.
• Global Currency: Averted. England uses different money than Quan Ma, so currency exchange is necessary. (Most of the story is in England though, so English money is used. But also see "Weird Currency" below.)
• Good with Numbers: Ziveruskex.
• GURPS: The game system we are using.
• Hostage for Macguffin: The bad guy claims to be doing this. The main character does not know whether or not it is true, or even if the character he claims to be keeping hostage ever existed. The good guys refuse to go along with it, so the bad guys try other things which also don't work. (As of this writing, I do not know yet what it actually is.)
• Humans Are Ugly: Ziveruskex does not like to watch humans eating and finds it ugly.
• Instant Sedation: Strixan and Ziveruskex can spit poison that can cause the target to sleep (normally for a few minutes at most). Can be used for defense, or make it easier to eat their blood when they are not running away or fighting back, or for both purposes.
  • Or, in one case, used on an ally in order to break a spell.
• Involuntary Shapeshifter: Kjugobe involuntarily shapeshifts into being like Ebogujk at one point. This causes Kjugobe's equipment to fall off. They also switch places, although this is not immediately apparent to the viewer. They learn how to control this power later, though.
• Join or Die: Temple of Worm did so to the priests they have stolen from Temple of Sun.
• Keep the Reward: In chapter XL, there is a lesser form of this. Due to saving the world, the king offers money and a magic item for each of us. Kjugobe requests nothing. Ziv dosen't want a magic item; he wants a (non-magical) book instead (which he later intends to return, after making a copy). Ziv is not really that interested in a reward; he just likes to read a book.
• Last-Name Basis: Iuckqlwviv Kjugobe.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Subverted. Some gnolls are going along the same path as the main characters party. At first, the character who sees them thinks they are neutral, but wants to be prepared for the other two possibilities. And then they attack, and our party is prepared to fight, but one character thinks that the Black Hand may have tricked them into fighting us, so he mentions that, and it turns out that works; now they are friends.
• Literal Surveillance Bug: See "Chronoscope" above. Surveillance of the past is done as the form of an insect.
• Living Lie Detector: A hydra once asks a question to a psychic (Kjugobe, whose head is on the altar) and somehow one of the hydra's heads has the power to realize they are telling the truth, but at a cost of who they are doing it to, almost losing their mind (this isn't certain, but this time that is what almost happened).
• Load-Bearing Boss: Once the man in black is defeated, the tower falls apart and the timeline is restored; in the restored timeline, it would seem that the tower has actually fallen apart a thousand years ago.
• Locked Door: They turn the wood door into metal so that you can't break it.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: A reverse variant occurs here. After the heroes broke everything in the treasure room and then left the treasure alone (despite opening it without a key and without triggering one of the traps, there are too many stone statues guarding it, that they could not pass), the bad guy steals it in order to hide it somewhere else. Unknown to the guy who took it, the heroes were secretly following them, and then after entering a secret room (that could only be entered by teleportation) to give to the guy inside there, distracted them to lose it in a pool, where the heroes arrived to ambush him and could more easily defeat him since now the guy who is guarding the treasure is outnumbered, and they were able to set up the situation to gain a greater advantage.
• MacGuffin Guardian: Multiple guardians were guarding a magic gem. A hydra was convinced to let us pass, a summoning trap was disabled (by the protagonists who did not even know what it was), and it was later moved by someone else, to be guarded by a demon, who was then tricked; and then it was guarded by the king, who hid it in an unknown location...
• Magic Wand: Bob has one, but its effects are unpredictable. Once it turned himself invisible (while attempting to use it on a rock), once it turned a beast into a rabbit, once it caused money to fall out of his ears (while trying to use the wand to attack someone), etc.
• Medieval European Fantasy
• Merged Reality: At one point, the bad people are trying to merge the different realities (at least three of them), and the heroes are trying to prevent it, and at the same time save the princess, by means of attacking the princess.
• Morphic Resonance: Invoked by external tampering. Ziveruskex suspects a big snail may be a shapeshifter, and writes "X" its shell, and surely enough it works: now we can recognize who the fake is because their forehead is marked with "X".
• Mushroom Man: There are talking mushrooms in chapter XIX.
• No Pronunciation Guide: It goes both ways. Many names have no mention of how to be pronounced, although some words mention the way they are pronounced in footnotes.
• No Title (at least for now)
• Noble Shoplifter: At one point, they go in the night time to exchange money in secret, putting 2 pounds into their safe and taking 500 qed in exchange. However, they are caught, and the money changer confronts them due to not having paid the transaction fee.
• Non-Idle Rich: Bob, who is rich but still goes on the same quest with those he has hired.
• Non-Mammalian Hair: Ziveruskex and Strixan are not mammals and do not have hair. Nevertheless, the king ordered them to get a haircut anyways. There is an actual reason for this; something is going on there and Ziveruskex, Strixan, and Bob should investigate; they don't actually need a haircut.
• Old British Money: This is the money used in the story.
• Once For Yes, Twice For No: Because a bat cannot talk, this is asked of them once.
• Pay Evil Unto Evil: Someone stole goats from a woman. When they are stolen back, those who take them back steal wheelbarrows from the original thief too. (However, this is because we need the wheelbarrows to carry the goats back.) Stealing wheelbarrows is done again a later time, and for a similar reason, but this time Ziv told the armourer to return the wheelbarrow.
• Place Worse Than Death: The Sun Town. The people who live there seem to (and probably do) like it (and are unaware of any other place), but at one o'clock everyone falls asleep and won't wake up until 12:00 the next day. You cannot escape by walking (regardless of what direction you go, you end up in the same place), flying (there is some sort of heavy gravity in the sky which makes it too difficult to fly), or teleportation (the teleportation will succeed, but you will just end up in the same place, just as though you walk the same distance).
• Plot Coupon: The gold bracelet with a ruby. Maybe.
• Religion of Evil: The Temple of Worm.
• Reverse Psychology: Someone tells someone else not to open a box, fully expecting that they will do so anyways, and they do. They do not remove the contents though, allegedly since their actual leader commanded them not to touch it.
• Riddle Me This: Boggle says he will ask the party a question, but refuses to say the question unless we agree and says if we answer it incorrectly then we will have to pay him £10. The party does not have enough money and refuses.
• Save This Person, Save the World: At one point they have to save a timeline and save the princess. The two are actually independent tasks, although the way things are set up, both things are done together; thet method of doing so ends up with both. Or, so it might seem at first...actually, it is more complicated: We are trying to save the princess by means of attacking her; the man in black is trying to kill the princess by means of healing her. Eveually, we do manage to save the world, but we do not have time to heal the princess, and while we are escaping from the collapsing tower, a stone falls on her and kills her.
• Sdrawkcab Name: One character (who used to be Kjugobe's pet leech) is named Ebogujk, and is capable of switching places with Kjugobe by teleportation. (Neither of them know how this happened, but it probably had something to do with partially merging times.)
• Shapeshifting: A guide (hired to guide someone through a cave) transforms from a elf into a minotaur. The guide called it a curse because elves generally hate minotaurs, although it is actually voluntary, but changing from elf to minotaur requires a trigger condition (although even if the condition is met, it is still voluntary) but the other way around does not require a condition. This was done in order to more easily navigate a maze.
• Shoot the Dog: At one point, a character attacks a princess who he was ordered (by the king) to protect, in order to prevent the bad guy from drawing power from her. They intend to heal the princess afterward. It does delay him, but after the bad guy is defeated, the princess is killed by the collapsing building before they have a chance to protect her.
• Shown Their Work: At least in some cases.
• Smart People Know Latin: Ziveruskex (but only to read/write; he does not know how to actually speak Latin). (Ziv knows Greek as well, again only to read/write and not speech).
• Smoke Out: A man uses smoke to (apparently) teleport.
• Spell Book: Ziv's spell book not only has the spells written in it, but he is not a mage, only the book is a mage, so he need to hold the book in order to cast spells from it.
• Strange Syntax Speaker: Boggle speaks with usually verbs in the end.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Not as specific as the other examples, but: Someone buys a wooden box and some glue, and says that they are being used for purposes that are totally unrelated. (They are actually being used together; he is lying saying they aren't. He is telling the truth that the box is being used for secure transportation of an object and is being truthful about the recipient as well.)
• Technical Pacifist: Ziveruskex refuses to use sufficiently harmful attacks on living horrific monsters (especially if sapient) (but sometimes he and everyone else sometimes ignore the principles anyways).
• The Hidden Hour: One town inverts this trope; there is only one hour that is not hidden (although all twelve hours are displayed on the sundial, and the people who live there do not know what the other numbers on the sundial are for).
• This Is Not a Floor: Occurs in one place where someone tries to read a stone and almost falls in but flies out in time. Also occurs inverted in another case, where there seems to be no room there and only a hole, but the characters present there manage to see it once they remember something written on a sign previously.
• Totem Pole Trench: At one point two short people disguise themself as one tall person.
• Trapped in Another World
• True Companions: Ziveruskex and Strixan, probably.
• Trust Password: In one instance, a character says that he will say "you can come out now" and they should not come out until that happens, but one of the other characters who he is saying this to insists on a secondary password as well, which turns out to be helpful. Another character then mimics the voice of the first to trick the people searching for those who are hidden.
• Turtle Island
• Ugly Hero, Good-Looking Villain: Sometimes (although who considers someone else "ugly" can also differ).
• Unpredictable Results: Varying amounts. Sometimes, some spells are available and others are unavailable (or more difficult to cast), usually for unknown reasons. Sometimes, the spell has random effects when used (e.g. the Wand of Wonder). Sometimes they can be used more predictably, though.
• Weapon of Choice: Bob uses sword and dagger. Domag uses sword. Strixan uses whip, crossbow, breath attack, and bite. Ziveruskex uses shield (to bash as well as defend), breath attack, claws, and bite. Dritz uses two swords. Kjugobe uses a quarterstaff (exchanged for a magic quarterstaff for the duration of a quest; eventually it is exchanged back), tentacles, and psychic blast. Erik Sharphammer uses a axe that is retained even after it is thrown.
• Weird Currency: Some people underground use hair as money and do not believe when Ziv tells them that the hair is not used as money above ground and that there are ways to take people's hair without killing them.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In chapter XXIV when Ziveruskex and Strixan spit poison at a man and eat all of his blood and take his medallion (and refuse to take his money or any of his other possessions), and Galan asks, what did he do to deserve that? Ziv explains, but Galan thinks this philosophy is strange.
• With a Friend and a Stranger: At first, that is what happened. Ziveruskex came in and Bob (an employer, and they are strangers to each other), and then Strixan arrives soon afterward (Ziv's friend).
• Wreathed in Flames: Ziveruskex inadvertently acquires such a power, but cannot use it all the time, and eventually it will run out. Anyways, anything you carry/wear will be burned when you activate this power.
• You Are Too Late: Reversed; the bad guy is too late because the heroes can fly and block the chimney, it takes the other guys much too longer to correct the problem; during this time we can go inside and look around and move things. Type II. Afterward when we try to block the chimney again, we find the chimney is now guarded.
  • Reversed again (in a different way) later when the main characters arrive too early in a room where the bad guy is, so the bad guy reverses time in order to get more time in an attempt to make the main characters late, but it doesn't help much.