World of Monsters CYOA (Part I)

Decades ago, the appearance of gorgeous and dangerous demons signaled an invasion of the human world. Though humanity greatly outnumbered the demon forces, the invaders created artificial lifeforms to deal with them. Part human, part monster, these monster girls could assimilate humans into their ranks to grow their race. From there it was inevitable that the conquest of much of the world by monster girls occurred as the demons oversaw the invasion from Eldria, the once great capital of humanity now turned into a corrupt citadel of evil.

Years have past since then, and humanity continues it's desperate fight with the demons and their creations. The majority of humanity has gather together and formed Sacrima, a small country filled with those who wish to fight back against the monsters or want the protection of such people. Other humans remain in parts of the world outside of the safety of Sacrima, either fighting back or just trying to survive. As many fight for and against corruption, the war continues...

-

"Another empty one." a woman said with a sigh as she cleared a doorway of rubble only to find nothing but a dusty and partly destroyed room. "There has to be at least one left." she added, looking around to make sure there weren't any uninvited guests as she continued.

This place was a shrine, once a place of worship to a goddess that held holy items within it. Items that couldn't be touched by the monsters, which meant that so long as bandits didn't go snooping around the ruined place too thoroughly the woman believed she would find what she wanted.

The sun shined down through cracks in the ceiling on the woman, her skin tan and her hair a short and tidy white. She wore a fancy and fairly concealing black and green outfit, partly armored in places along with a cape, boots and gloves of similar design. She was Celtica Arven, a woman skilled in battle who could stand the constant tales of enslavement and corruption no longer. If others would sit still, then she would make it her quest to stop the demons who held the world hostage.

Another room, nothing. This was the sixth on this floor and this was the last floor left to check. At least of the parts of the shrine that were anything but a mass of rubble. But Celtica was nothing if not determined. She scouted out the floor again looking for anything she missed and at last got a lead. A door hidden behind a statue of the goddess, a beautiful winged woman.

Pushing it out of the way and opening the large stone doors led to a small shrine with exactly what she was searching for on it. A great silver sword, large like a claymore and brimming with holy energy. It would be a perfect weapon for monster hunting. "That's more like it." Celtica said with a smile as her golden eyes stared at the blade she now held in her hands. Exiting the room she looked to the goddess statue. "If I manage to succeed, I'll bring this back."

It wasn't a far trip from the ruins of the shrine to the next village. She already packed plenty of money for herself as well. She wasn't intending to return to her home until she had completed her mission. "Hmmm, this village should be...Aidola Village..." she said to herself as she walked with a map in her hands. A short trip was indeed all it took to reach the rather simple looking village, and lucky too since her searching had taken up more of the day than she expected.

Reaching Aidola, Celtica paid for a room at the inn and contemplated her next move as she looked at her map. She was in the southern region of Sacrima right now, and she knew that it would be foolish to try and attack the demon capital at her current state. A smaller target would be smarter to hit first in the long run. Would it perhaps be better to continue south and try to deal with army of the Sand Queen Isis in the Southern Desert? There is also the mountains to the north, but to get to them would require either passing through the Forest of Beasts, or going around via boats on the western shore which has it's own fair share of issues. "Hmmmm, figuring things out was so much easier when I was just training." the tanned beauty said with a sigh.

"I probably shouldn't do this alone either..." she thought. The village's pub might have people who would want to help her, but it might be a waste of time as well and there was no telling if they would be trustworthy. They could slow her down as well, did she have time for that when the slower she went the more monsters would certainly block her path? She wasn't even sure if she should rest for the night or take the more dangerous route of moving through the dark.

A. Look for allies in the pub.
B. Go to sleep, head out in the morning (If chosen, select Port, Desert or Forest as destination).
C. Get a head start and head out tonight (If chosen, select Port, Desert or Forest as destination).

-

Welcome to the World of Monsters Choose Your Own Adventure, where I finally decide to stop merely having ideas and instead act on one! So then, let's explain stuff with the intro post complete. You will choose the actions for Celtica Arven, a woman on a quest to save the world and defeat the monsters and demons who invaded it. Through your choices, you will influence where she goes, what she does, and whether she will succeed or succumb to her opponents. You can recruit other allies along the way too, who will widely be made up off canon characters from other series. I'll have a pastebin in this with the stats of Celtica and any party members who may join her but here let's go over stuff about stats.

There are 6 stats: Physical, Skill, Agility, Magical, Charisma and Will. Physical represents how much damage you can give and take. Skill is the character's finesse, how effective and precise they are. Agility is about dodging and reaction time. Magical is how potent their magic is, and how much they are effected by magic. Charisma is their ability to befriend and barter. Will is the ability to resist the charms of others and defy mental abilities that come at them. Along with that, there is MP and Skills. Many active skills use a certain amount of MP, and MP does not refill without either a rest or item use.

By taking the stats of a character into account, you can decide what the best course of action in battle is to help them defeat their foes (or if you don't want that, which options will best help their foes get closer to corrupting them).

Updates will occur after the current choice has a certain number of votes in. How many? I don't know, as I don't know how many people will actually be interested in this. But please, make your voices heard if you want this to be a thing! Can't really do a CYOA if no one is choosing things after all.
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Celtica and Party Stat Sheet: https://pastebin.com/SXnXLf8B
Suzuka's Notebook: https://pastebin.com/DG5kbSuE

I'll bite; sounds like fun

A. Look for allies in the pub.

This needs to be a thing as it has a lot of promise.
A is where its at, find allies means more to corrupt..... er I mean help in her quest.

Oooh, a CYOA. I love CYOAs!

I'm with everybody else so far on finding allies, as that can only be a good thing.

Seems like we've got a consensus, ally recruiting it is!

-

Celtica shook her head. It would be reckless to head out alone, especially doing it tonight. She couldn't be hasty with this, she had seen people turned into monsters. One blunder and you would end up as a part of their ranks. "If nothing else I should at least plan to make it out of my first week at this." she said to herself as she walked out the doors of her inn room and down the stairs, intending to reach the pub.

It seemed that she was in luck as the place itself was pretty active. A variety of colorful figures sat and stood inside the establishment, a blonde haired bartender managing people's drinks. "Hello, looking to order?" the bartender said with a wave.

"Still deciding." was Celtica's reply as her golden eyes scanned the room for people of interest. At one of the tables was a rather depressed looking red haired woman slumped down onto the table. Another woman resting her back against a support pillar of the pub has tan skin and short white hair that reminded Celtica of her own look, though the scar on this woman's face and her rather revealing bottom half made them easy to distinguish. Her eyes were closed and it looked like she was deep in thought. The third girl that caught her eye did so for a different reason, a cute young blonde haired girl who was drinking something non-alcoholic. She was alone though, and she certainly didn't look strong enough to be able to travel alone.

A. Talk to the bartender.
B. Talk to the red haired woman.
C. Talk to the tan woman.
D. Talk to the blonde haired girl.

-

And a picture of each woman, in order-

Girls in the Pub:

B. Talk to the *coughflattycough* red haired woman.

Gotta agree with B.

Hard choice, but D has good corruption value.

-Rainday

Hmm i'm gonna have to go with D as well. Though i'd love to chat each of them up time permitting.

You will have the chance to talk to multiple people in the pub, but time will pass with each person you talk to.

I say we talk to D.

D first then B, gotta share the adventure with many.

The woman's eyes settle on the rather innocent looking blonde as she walked over to where she was sitting. "Hello there, mind if I sit with you for a little while?" Celtica asked, and the girl was happy to oblige. "Oh, sure thing!" she said with a cheerful smile.

Before she asked her main question Celtica was curious about the girl in general. She was small, looked rather soft soft and didn't even seem to have a weapon on her. "My name is Celtica Arven. I guess you could say I'm a traveling monster slayer. You certainly don't look like a fighter though, who are you?" she asked, hoping to not come off as rude for that fighter comment. The girl didn't seem to mind it though. "I'm Asia Argento, a cleric of the church. I'm also traveling, moving from village to village as a healer." the sweet girl told her.

"Alone?" Celtica wondered and Asia nodded her head. "That's correct. I didn't think it would be right to ask any of the other church members to join me. This is a personal mission of mine, I want to help people in need beyond the main cities protected by the Knights of Sacrima." she explained.

Having a healer along for the journey would be very useful but Celtica knew she might not always be able to protect this girl. Even so, she respected the conviction she saw in Asia's eyes.

"I am on a quest to slay the powerful demons and monsters that terrorize the world. I'll be travelling to places completely conquered by monsters, where the remaining humans would need more help than anyone." Celtica explained. "And I'm looking for people willing to accompany me."

Though she didn't specifically ask, Asia got the message. "My desire is to help those in need. I know that I'm no fighter, and I won't be of much help in defeating monsters, but I would like to accompany you!" she said with conviction. "The church does it's best to help people, but it's limited to Sacrima itself. If I was able to help people across the world. Well, I think that would be a wonderful thing."

"There may be times I won't be able to protect you." Celtica told her.

"That's fine." was the response she got from Asia. "I'll do my best!"

Celtica respected her enthusiasm towards doing good. "Then welcome aboard Miss Argento. We leave tomorrow morning, meet me outside of the inn." Celtica told her, shaking her hand as she did. It wasn't long after that Asia left the pub to get some rest for her journey. Celtica wasn't done here though, another girl caught her eye when she was looking and she was interested in speaking with her.

"Grrr...didn't know...flammable...money...why..." she could hear some vague depressed grumbling coming from another table, a red haired woman slouched over being the source.

"Miss, are you alright?" Celtica asked, causing the woman to instantly straighten up and look her way. "Huh? Oh, yeah, totally fine here. What do you need?" she asked in response.

Much like with Asia, Celtica explained her situation of desiring to save people by slaying the high ranking monsters and demons who dominated the world. "Jeez, that's one lofty goal you've got there." the girl said to Celtica, though her eyes were being drawn more towards the large sword on Celtica's back. She then smirked, "Luckily you've come to the right place, the famous Lina Inverse is exceptional at slaying monsters! That's me, by the way." she said proudly.

"Should I know who you are?" Celtica asked, and that pride faded. "Seriously? If not famous I should at least be infamous..." Lina said with a sigh. "Well whatever, what matters is that my magic is the real deal and I would certainly be willing to offer it up to help you...for a price. That's a holy sword you've got on your back, right?" she asked, her intent clear.

Celtica was quick to respond. "No way." She had spent far too much time looking for this weapon to give it up to some stranger. "Yeah I kind of expected that response. But you do look pretty wealthy. How about a one time payment of 200 coins! That obviously isn't too much for someone of my magical aptitude!" she said, going right back to sounding proud.

200 coins was a pretty big amount to hire one person. Celtica had seen pretty competent mercenaries accept missions for 45 coins easy. Of course, this was more than a simple mission. If nothing else, this Lina seemed to believe her own hype.

A. Pay the coins
B. Refuse to pay

-

And stat pastebin updated with our new party member. As you might see with Asia, not all Passive Skills are purely beneficial. Some have negative parts to their effects as well that make the character more susceptible to certain types of corruption.

Hmm our Cha is a little meh, so haggling might not work.
Option A, another sword between us and whatever the dungeon has to throw at us

Oh quick question - i noticed on the pastebin we have an MP stat but no HP stat. Will HP not be a factor?

HP isn't a specific stat, nah. I wanted to make it less about numbers and more about using stats as guidance for decision making. Also, I imagine most characters would end up corrupted before their HP ran out anyways.

Gotcha, i had a feeling about the 'corruption' angle but wanted to be sure

I reckon we should pay her. We have the cash, and a mage helping us out would be pretty useful.

A, we got a good amount of cash and Lina is OP.

Oh, what's the level of violence we're looking at? Light(no wounds, attacks drain stamina/cloth breaking leading to knock outs or surrenders), medium(cuts and bruises, battles end in monsters fading away/disappearing in a flash), heavy(dismemberment and gore), or somewhere inbetween?

Ranging within Light-Medium, depending on the opponent.

Definetly A.

Rainday wrote:A, we got a good amount of cash and Lina is OP.

Oh, what's the level of violence we're looking at? Light(no wounds, attacks drain stamina/cloth breaking leading to knock outs or surrenders), medium(cuts and bruises, battles end in monsters fading away/disappearing in a flash), heavy(dismemberment and gore), or somewhere inbetween?

Well I would hope/like the second one.
No fan of gore, but a little realism is absolutely appreciated.

Pay the cash, all good.

"Very well. I'll pay you the coins if you accompany us on this quest." Celtica said, a phrase that slightly surprised Lina. She hadn't actually expected the woman to accept the deal but she certainly wasn't complaining.

"Excellent! Don't you worry, I really am an expert mage. No monsters can stand in the way of my spells!" she said with a smile. With how badly she bungled things in that other village she really needed some cheering up (and money), and 200 coins for some monster slaying was more than she could have hoped.

"Welcome aboard Miss Inverse, tomorrow I want you to show me that you aren't just talk." Celtica told her.

"Like I said, you came to the right place if you wanted some monster slaying. In fact, I have something that may be of interest to you." Lina said as she pulled out a damaged looking book. It was red and gold with a black jewel on it, but it looked like it had gone through more than a couple battles and it didn't exactly look filled with pages. "This here is Suzuka's Notebook, I'd been keeping my eye out for it for a while. In case you don't know, Suzuka was a crazy strong mage who went out to study the monsters and record everything within a notebook. Suzuka herself dissapeared about a year ago, but a few weeks ago I managed to find this!"

"It looks a little empty." Celtica said, which made Lina laugh nervously. "Hehe, yeah, whatever it went through to get here ended up costing it most of it's pages. There's only four entries left right now. But hey, better than nothing right?"

Any information on monsters and more importantly how to fight them was important, Celtica certainly agreed with Lina there. And perhaps they would be able to locate more pages later. "I thank you for whatever help you can give. You should get some rest, tomorrow is a busy day."

"Oh don't worry, I can take care of myself...wait, I actually have money for a nice bed now! Oh second thought, see ya tomorrow!" Lina said with a grin as she went off to get herself a room. It was getting pretty late and many of the patrons had left by now.

A. Talk to the tan woman
B. Talk to the bartender
C. Get to bed early

-

With Lina came a new item, which will have a space right below the stats pastebin. Suzuka's Notebook can give you hints not only to monster girls that the party may encounter, but how to beat them, and more pages are scattered around. Another thing unrelated to that is that some might notice that Lina is missing a fair amount of her spells. Winning battles will increase the power of your party, and unlock them new abilities. So say a group of monsters is defeated and Lina might get access to Ragna Blade, for example.

Nice touch on Dragon Slave, hehehe. Also, very nifty notebook.

Also, I move to choose A, because more lovely dark skin women is never a bad thing.

Awesome, we got the Pokedex! And yeah, let's speak with the bartender. Even if she's not into joining up with us, she's bound to have some useful information to share.

Also, I have to hand it to you on the monstergirls, especially the mimic. The golden skin and decoration with jewelry is something I haven't seen, and there method of spreading sounds very cool too. Also like how the gargoyles turn girls, works well with a technique that usually just means the end.