Arcane Odyssey: Valour of Treachery
For fans of Forum Curses (and those who weren’t fans of Forum Curses, or felt neutral about Forum Curses entirely.)
Brief
As the War Seas erupt into further conflict, multiple secret trading organisations begin a race for a selection of magical artefacts with lives, and more, on the line.
Set in the familiar world of Arcane Odyssey, Valour of Treachery is an odd mixture between Forum-Curses-Styled RPG, social deduction game and ARG. You will be assigned a character with abilities, a loosely described personality and loyalties, and given the task of making this character yours, all while solving over forty puzzles, fighting off the dangers of the War Seas, and discovering the enemies amongst you.
You arrive at Sameria, with nothing but a couple coins and a playing card you must guard with your life.
Valour of Treachery is a mixture between tabletop RPG, a social deduction game, and an ARG. You will be given a playing card, which describes the details of your premade character, and have the chance to interact with the world.
Your two goals? Gain artefacts for the ones you are loyal to, and grow your own power.
Oxymoronically, I heavily encourage both deception and teamwork.
Trust who you will and betray the rest.
Rules
I hate to text wall you but here’s the rules. If you don’t want to read, don’t bother - just sign up (and join the discord) anyway, I’m sure these rule things don’t matter.
(Simple Version)
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You will be assigned a character who carries a playing card on them. Do not reveal this card unless you’re really sure you can trust those around you.
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You can choose at the start of the game 5 basic abilities from AO (See exception for Spirit Weapon users who can design their own spirit weapon) which will be usable in combat.
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All actions you take of a reasonable difficulty are defined by a single roll of a d20 (twenty sided die). In combat, you roll a single dice for both hit and damage and I’ll ‘calculate’ (guess a good value) for the damage.
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Lie
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Solve puzzles.
(Long Version)
Full Ruleset (Check the Discord for more details. Best to give these a scan if you're interested. )
Cards
- Once you have signed up for the game, I will DM you an assigned playing card detailing the character you are playing as.
- This card is a physical object your in game character carries on them.
- You are not told what everything on your card means, however in some shape or form, all of it is important.
- Your card may contain different amounts and types of information than other people’s cards.
- You can share the contents of your cards in two ways.
- The first is telling other players the contents of your card. You are encouraged to do this in character. You may, and are largely encouraged, to lie about this.
- The second is having your character (intentionally or not) reveal this card. You cannot lie about this, and if it is revealed to every player, you cannot lie about it anymore.
- You are not given an entire character. You are only given a skeleton, and must flesh out the personality of them yourself.
- Do not reveal the contents of your card carelessly.
- Your name is fine. It’s generally polite to introduce yourself properly… but, your choice.
Actions
- You start at Sameria but may travel around the entire War Seas.
- You may travel around by taking trips on boats, or perhaps even hiring your own as a group if you can put the funds together.
- You have no set inventory, but can use whatever you find, any artefacts in your possession, or your abilities. You have a wallet of 100 Drachma each to start out with.
- For the Bronze and Nimbus Seas, you can only travel to canonical islands, but feel free to make up your own if you stray into Vimir or even beyond.
- I heavily, heavily discourage heading out of the Nimbus Sea until after you unlock your first Custom Ability (See Combat for more info)
- Travel as a group when possible. These seas are dangerous.
- You may do anything that you can do either in game, or in real life. The only exception to this is any action you feel is difficult, in which case roll a D20. You must get a reasonably high score to succeed.
- For example, you might only need a ‘10’ to kick down a weak looking door, however a ‘17’ to pickpocket someone without them noticing.
- Taking actions like this is not the main focus of the game, however it will lead you to find puzzles. I recommend exploring plenty and seeing what you can discover.
Interaction
- You may chat to the other players casually to try and figure out their loyalties, plans and personal goals.
- Your character does not need to be near theirs to interact, but it’s recommended to be so, to make the game more immersive and fun.
Puzzles
- By interacting with the world of the War Seas, you’ll discover Puzzles. These will either be announced to the entire group and a ping sent out in the discord server, or they’ll be privately DMed to individuals.
- Your goal with these puzzles is to either find a keyword or artefact, or another clue to unlock either of those.
- You can submit answers to puzzles by DMing me, in the thread, or in the discord.
- You are limited to a single attempt to submit per day. This will be decreased if there’s not enough active players. You may discuss the puzzles openly in between.
- Puzzles will involve riddles, writing, images, encrypted messages and the like. You can work on them alone, likely with a group, or with every player, but keep in mind that not everyone can be trusted.
- If you find and submit an artefact (Or are the most significant contributor in a group searching for an artefact) you will have the choice to keep the artefact to yourself or give it to the Organisation you are loyal to. Neither option will reveal your specific loyalties.
- You gain both Drachma and secret bonus points for helping with puzzles. Good for you
Combat
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Alright so. You don’t always make friends, and sometimes those not friends attack you. Terrible, right? Luckily you’re in a world of magic, so you have some tools up your sleeve.
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Your card will assign you an ability. This may be a magic, a weapon that you are proficient in, a fighting style or an odd blessing from the Gods.
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After you are assigned a card, you may choose five basic spells/skills/techniques/rites, and upgrade one of those to Ultimate Art.
- For those with Magic, you can select any spell (Which is not classed as a Lost Spell) available within the game or showcased on twitter.
- For those with Weapons, you can select any available skill in game currently or showcased on twitter, except Rising Tide and Aetheral Flash, as long as it makes sense on your weapon.
- For those with Fighting Styles, you can select any technique available in game or showcased on twitter. (Which is not classed as a Lost Technique)
- For those with Spirit Weapons, you can select three of the basic ‘Spirit’ rites from below. If these abilities are not found on twitter, I am not describing them for you, just make it up lol. :
- Spirit Blast
- Spirit Walk
- Spirit Wall
- Spirit Burst
- Spirit Shockwave
- Spirit Rain
- You may also make up two simple spirit rites.
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While in combat, you can roll a D20 to use any of your five abilities. The roll counts for both hit and damage.
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You may occasionally find yourself fighting an extremely strong enemy. Work together.
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Twice in the game, you will unlock a ‘Custom Ability’ which lets you design and create your own spell/skill/technique/rite for your ability. This can be as complex as you want, although it isn’t necessarily stronger than the others.
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You each have 1500 health. I’ll allow this to be increased if your character goes out of their way to purchase armour to wear, although this is completely optional and just for… immersion?
- If some really bad guy is pointing a gun at you, it’s usually helpful to hit them first to prevent health from decreasing as much, as if it hits 0, you’ll be downed and out of the fight unless someone has a healing spell they can revive you with or something.
- Avoid passing away at all costs.
A CONSTANTLY UPDATED LIST OF RULES CAN BE FOUND IN THE DISCORD FOR LATER REFERENCE
Rewards
You aren’t doing this for nothing, fair enough. I heard that these trading organisations have people looking out for you and keeping track of your progress.
Your actions, whether contributing to puzzles, interacting with the world, or fighting enemies, will gain you points.
The rewards will be revealed later, but include a Lost item and some exotic enchant scrolls up for grabs. They’re not much, and not the main focus of the event, but I think it’d be nice to provide compensation for your time.
Example Puzzle
This is an example puzzle and walkthrough.
The only item found near the body was a small wooden box, containing inside it a scrap of paper with a series of nonsensical words and numbers. On the back of the paper, a large number “1” was written.
arcane
Death Curse
Boreas
negotiate
Zion
numb
227
Yield
Step 1: Identify any obvious clues.
The only real stand out clue with this is the number 1, but what exactly could it mean? It could mean the first word, which is “arcane” but then you don’t really have anything to go off of. Alright what if it’s the first letter of each line, an acrostic?
Step 2: Use your first clue
Alright so it’s then ADBNZN2Y, or when capitalised like the original words, aDBnZn2Y.
Step 3: Alright, now what?
That’s a good start, you’ve gotten somewhere. Now although the letters seem random, there’s probably a chance they’re some sort of encrypted message. The difficult part is working out what sort of cipher of encryption it’s using. You could look for clues in the puzzle, but there doesn’t seem to be anything. Luckily there’s already a handy online tool which can help identify ciphers at Dcode, although be warned, puzzles can be designed to be difficult or impossible to identify with this tool, so don’t always trust it.
Decrypt a Message - Cipher Identifier - Online Code Recognizer
Unfortunately, nothing seems to show up as a significant possibility here.
That’s a shame… however it does give you another thing you can try.
Step 4: Pastebin
Now random letters or numbers can be very good for one thing, links. Discord links, forum links, and importantly - pastebin links.
And if you think about it, aDBnZn2Y definitely would fit as a pastebin link…
Alright let’s input it and…
Step 5: Bingo
Bingo, we’ve solved the puzzle and gotten a Keyword to submit, that being “Origin”
Congrats! I solved your first puzzle. You aren’t getting the hints for the rest of them though.
Final Remarks
- This game works on an honour code. For the sake of fun, do not share your character’s details privately with other players in DMs without alerting me.
- Don’t know the answer to a puzzle? Talk! Tell everyone what you see and what you know, none of the puzzles are intended to be solved immediately - they’ll all require a bit of investigation, google or niche knowledge, which means sometimes you’ll have to rely on a teammate.
- Worried about losing out on a prize? Points are given to the most active and interactive players. Contributing whatever even if you aren’t providing the final answer will get you ever closer.
- Have fun! Although I’m cutting back on allowing the somewhat ‘absurdist’ philosophies as seen in Forum Curses, I still want to promote creativity and unique strategy.
DMs and joining the discord
To participate in this event, please join my discord server and ensure your server-specific settings are set to allow me to DM you.
If you, for whatever reason, cannot join the server, you may still participate solely on the forums, however I would like to limit the amount of players doing this for three main reasons:
- Communication via the discord is significantly easier and creates much less text-wall to scroll through. Likewise, limit spamming this topic when possible to make my life easier.
- Discord gives me tools that will allow me to gain a quick overview of the players and let me organise you a bit better. (I promise to post my amazing spreadsheet after the event is over)
- The game is very reliant on DMs to communicate information quickly and privately. The forums rate limit the amount of DMs I can send out, and even then the DM system is significantly poorer than Discord’s.
The game begins now. Here’s an (extra) clue to start you off.
