What follows is an endgame quest chain that I drafted for a narrative design submission.
We were given a game world and assigned a city hub to develop quests for.
I have a lot of experience playing MMORPGs and decided to put that experience to work in this piece.
It was a lot of fun writing the character dialogue. I liked the challenge of trying to make them sound like two distinct characters.
Working collaboratively with the other people assigned to my city hub was a good experience. We worked together to interlink all our content and managed to create a cool bit of content.
St.Petersburg Quest Chain
Players will be able to side with one of the factions in St.Petersburg. These are the Merchant Guild, that currently runs the city, or a rebel group of Nonregs (unregistered magic users) looking to wrest control from them, known as the Children of Ved’ma.
Here we will go through the quest chain that comes from the player siding with the Children of Ved’ma.
These quests will be endgame content for max level players. Players will be able to earn the trust of the CoV by completing repeatable quests scattered in and around St.Petersburg, reaching milestone levels of trust will unlock the next main quest that will progress the story.
Main Quest Chain Structure:
-Trust Level: 0-
Q1. A Strange Encounter (Meet “The Old Woman”)
Q2. That’s Not Regulation! (First act of rebellion)
Unlocks Repeat Quests
-Trust Level: 100-
Q3. Arcano-worries (Heisting funds)
Q4. Spirited Away (Free nonreg prisoners)
Q5. Meeting Ved’ma (Ved’ma identity revealed)
-Trust Level: 500-
Q6. Disenchanted Lullaby (Eliminate lower ranking merchants of The Guild and destroy their stocks of disenchanters)
Q7. Season of the Witch (Assassinate The Guild leader)
-Trust Level: 1000 (Max)-
Q8. It’s a Kind of Magic (Establish the CoV as the new leaders)
Quest Info:
Q1. A Strange Encounter
Once they have reached max level a player entering St.Petersburg will see two quest markers, one for each of the factions.
The quest giver for this introductory quest is an old, hunched over woman.
Quest Dialogue:
-The old woman is being harassed by city guards and the player will intervene and send them off-
“Oh! Thank you! If only we had more people like you in this place... I know it’s not much but let me buy you a hot meal and a stiff drink. There’s a cosy place just around the corner.”
The player follows the old woman to a bar with a locked door. She raps her knuckles sharply on the door in a strange rhythm and sigils flare opening the door. She beckons the player to enter.
Once inside the player will be introduced to a roguish looking man that approaches the table wanting to speak to the old woman. They whisper together and then the man asks you to the bar with him.
“Not a fan of The Guild, are you? Neither am I. You look like a capable fellow, fancy making some coin? It’s the least I can do to repay you for helping mum back there.”
This will trigger the second quest.
Q2 That’s Not Regulation!
The man, Black Phillip, details his “Job” to the player.
“Jobs pretty simple, smash and grab. A Guild caravan is about to roll into town, I want you to make sure that doesn’t happen and see to it that the contents find their way back to little old me. You will be handsomely compensated, of course.”
The player will leave the city and ambush the caravan which will be heavily guarded by guild soldiers.
They will find that the caravan is loaded with Disenchanters. Seeing as these are heavily regulated items and with their narrative implications of suppressing magic users, this cargo will signal to the player that this was not a simple “smash and grab” job.
Returning the cargo to Black Phillip results in the player being taken into a backroom where it is revealed that Phillip is a member of the Children of Ved’ma.
“You’ve probably seen The Guild propaganda, labelling us terrorists and Nonreg sympathisers. At least the stupid gits got it half right. What we really are is a network to support the Gifted in this city and we also serve as a reminder for those bureaucrats in The Guild to sleep with one eye open.”
“We need people like you to help strengthen our foothold on The Burg. I’ve never seen a shipment of disenchanter as large as the haul you brought in and I’ve been doing this for years. The Guild is planning something big and I want you to help us find out what that is.”
Upon handing in the quest to Phillip, players will receive 100 arcanocurrency and a piece of gear for their class.
This will also unlock repeatable quests for the player to do that will increase their trust level with the Children of Ved’ma. Each quest will give +15 trust.
These quests will include spreading pro-CoV propaganda, ambushing Guild caravans, stopping guards harassing or arresting Nonregs or other gifted on the street or selling disenchanters to the CoV.
The increasing trust will be shown in gameplay by the escalation of action against The Guild during quests as the player gets in deep with the CoV and proves their loyalty.
As the players trust level increases they will not only gain access to further story quests but they will also unlock more lore on the CoV from patrons of the bar, including Phillip and the Old Woman.
This lore will fill out the history of the CoV and their eponymous leader, Ved’ma.
Ved’ma is a powerful Gifted that leads their children in rebellion from the shadows. Yet no member can say for sure that they have met this Ved’ma as their identity is kept a deadly secret from all.
Ved’ma is actually the old woman who recruited the player. She recruits all of her “Children” personally, so that she can vet their potential first hand.
Her Gift allows her to change her appearance and form. This allows her to be a crooked hag one second and a radiant songbird the next one. She has used this ability to evade capture and form her secret network of Gifted throughout the city.
The gift manifested when she was a child completely changing her overnight, so much so, that her parents shunned her and forced her out into the wilds. Instead of letting bitterness and hatred overcome her she works instead to ensure that no other child must face the harshness that she did even if that means taking every Gifted on the planet under her wing.
In the brief period before becoming a revolutionary figure in the city, Ved’ma was married to Aleksandr Stepanychev. This was an attempt to get closer to important governmental figures and assume their forms if she could. The marriage ended after Stepanychev turned out to be a lost cause, Ved’ma faked her own death and took her rebellion to the streets.
Q3 Arcano-worries
Once the player reaches a Trust Level of 100 with the CoV they will get a quest marker pointing them towards Phillip in the bar.
“There’s no easy way to put it but we’re going broke. We’ve got no arcanocurrency left, our servers have dried up. Lucky for us, seeking fortune comes easily to me, especially with the promise of an empty stomach on the horizon.”
“The Guild has batches of servers hidden throughout the city and my nose may have sniffed out a target for us. Under what remains of the Faberge Museum those Guild hobbledehoys mine a living out of thin air and fuel the subjugation of my friends, what say you to putting a stop to their little operation and helping ourselves to enough arcano to fund a small army?”
The player will head to the ruins of the Faberge Museum and break into the arcano mining facility disguised as a cleaning crew and sabotage the facility and pocket the currency.
As the player robs the servers they will find communications showing that The Guild are planning to perform mass arrests and suppression of Nonregs and even registered Gifted in order to put a stranglehold on the magic community in St.Petersburg.
Completing this quest will give the player 500 AC and another piece of class specific gear.
Q4 Spirited Away
After a few in-game days, this quest will unlock and be available from Phillip at the bar.
“They’re onto us… they’ve started the arrests already. We’ve got to do something soon or there won’t be much of a resistance left.”
“We have to hit them fast and hard, there’s no two ways about it. We have to get our brothers and sisters back before they suppress them… or worse.”
The player must then break into a gulag that has been repurposed for the containment of Gifted. Once incarcerated, Gifted wait until they are disenchanted or die of any number of the abuses they face at the hands of The Guild soldiers.
After freeing the prisoners, the player must distract The Guild soldiers while Phillip loads prisoners onto transport to take them out of the city and into relative safety.
Completing this quest will give the player 500 AC and another piece of class specific gear.
Q5 Meeting Ved’ma
Once the rescue effort is over the player will be receive a new quest available at the bar. Upon entering they will see the old woman.
“I really can’t thank you enough, I knew from the moment we met that you were special. You have helped my children gain their freedom from under the heel of The Guild and made the Children of Ved’ma a source of hope for all those subjugated.”
She changes her form to that of a younger woman.
“Yes”, she chuckles, “I am Ved’ma. My shifter gift has allowed me to remain hidden, but the time of cloak and dagger is coming to an end thanks to you, there is but one final phase to the plan and I am afraid I must ask your help once again.”
“You must disrupt Guild activity and keep them in disarray while we locate their ranking members and then we will strike and sever the head of this serpent once and for all.”
Completing this quest unlocks a new tier of repeatable quest that offer better loot and show an escalation of force against The Guild.
These quests will include assassinating elite Guild soldiers, destroying arms depots and raiding prison transports.
Q6 Disenchanted Lullaby
Once the player has reached a Trust Level of 500 the next story quest will unlock, showing a new quest at the bar available from Ved’ma.
“Thanks to your efforts in harrying The Guild we have managed to intercept communications from lower level members of The Guild Council and have leads on their locations. I know it is no easy task to order death, it is one thing to kill a soldier, but you have witnessed the horrors that these fiends have levelled at us first hand and eliminating these individuals could flush out the Chancellor.”
The player will track down the leads and assassinate the 3 low ranking members of The Guild council in their compounds.
The last member they kill will drop a communique detailing the location of a huge stockpile of Disenchanter, more than the CoV could ever hope to move. They resolve to go and destroy it in a large explosion.
Handing in this quest will give the player 500 AC and another piece of class specific gear. It will also unlock the next quest.
Q7 Season of the Witch
Ved’ma will be in the bar to meet the player upon their return.
“Time is of the essence, we have the Chancellor, but he is already on the move. As we speak he is on route to his private airship, we must strike now and strike decisively. Make haste or all we have wrought will be for nothing.”
The player rushes to the airship as it finishes preparations for take-off, making it on with only seconds to spare.
Once on board they must battle the Chancellor’s elite guards and have a final showdown with the Chancellor, who is a powerful fighter in his own right accompanied by indentured Gifted.
As the battle ends the explosive magics unleashed by the Chancellor’s Gifted have caused the airship to start plummeting to the earth. The player races to an escape glider to make it off just in time before a cutscene shows the ship ploughing into the ground and detonating showering the landscape with shimmering magical residue.
This quest ends just after the cutscene giving the player 500 AC and another piece of class specific gear.
The player will also receive enough Trust to maximise their gauge as it should nearly be full by this point anyway.
Q8 It’s a Kind of the Magic
After surviving the final battle, the player heads to the bar one last time to meet with Ved’ma and Phillip.
Phillip and Ved’ma congratulate the player.
“You’ve really outdone yourself on this one, almost as good as if I’d done it myself”, he laughs.
“We cannot understate how thankful we are to you, my friend. The Gifted of St.Petersburg can rest easily tonight.” She adds.
A cutscene will play where Ved’ma is shown addressing the public in various areas of the city and the various Guild adornments on buildings fade away and are replaced with new CoV ones.
Her voiceover is played over the scene.
“My children, long have we dwelt in the shadows and made a living from the gutter for fear of The Guild and their Disenchanters. Those days are at an end now, thanks to the few brave and willing enough to take a stand. No longer do we have to hide what we are, who we are. Make no mistake, dark times are yet to come but take heart and embrace your Gifts and we will yet see the dawn.”
For completing this quest line, the player will receive 1000 AC and a Children of Ved’ma mount.
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