I'm doing this because I realized I wanted to do a Daemonheim fanfic and get to the Mos'le Harmless arc soon, and I realized it was taking too long.
Characters in Haru's party:
*Haru Daniels Nikolaievitch:
Physical description: at least 6 foot 7, white hair with black tips, orange eyes, and tanned skin. Often seen in a long blue coat. Also a werewolf.
Attack style: Anything but summoning.
Skills: Blacksmith, herbalist, fletcher, chef, and forester
*Izzy "Cobblestone Killer" Reckoning
Physical description: Average height, brown hair
Combat style: Magical ranged-using earth spells to pick cobblestones and rocks out of the ground and shoot them at the unheard of rate of 2 per second. Don't tell him his real first name. Ever.
Skills: Runecrafting, cooking, fletching, and farming
*Clement Delarev:
Physical description: Average height, red and black hair
Combat style: Fencing and stabbing
Skills: Biologist, herbalist, slayer.
*Sarah Callista "Cally":
Physical description: five foot nine, messy brown hair
Combat style: She uses a very large hammer.
Skills: Farming, herbalist.
Danielle Nikolaevitch:
Physical description: Haru's twin sister
Combat style: Magical ranged
Skills: Crafting and smithing
Sami Blackwood:
Physical description: Average height, purple hair
Combat style: ranged, and she's currently trying out Keldagrim Gonnes. Not much luck there...
Skills: Fletching and tracking
Other Characters:
Grandspoon Chekhov the Lost:
Physical description: Unknown
Combat style: Unknown
Skills: Forestry and getting lost. The latter was put to great effect when his party left him to make resources while they fought the boss. When his team came out, Grandspoon was lost forever. He's become a legend among Daemonheim explorers...
Well, of course you know this is a Chekhov's gun!
If you would like to submit your own character, let me know!
Oh, and if you know of another Daemonheim fanfic, let me know. I'm amazed at how few I've seen...
...
Haru, Izzy, Clement, Dani, Cally, and Sami stood in front of a massive castle, near many of tents.
"Welcome to hell, friends," Haru lazily said, drinking from a bottle of 'rum'. "Or Daemonheim, as we prefer to call it."
"You're not exactly inspiring confidence…" Clement observed.
"Don't feel bad, I'm already scared here too," Haru replied. "Here we are at Base Camp One, the greatest tent city in Gielinor."
It did*'t look like the greatest tent city in Gielinor, a place even more visited than Pest Control. It looked like a camp full of people barely hanging on. Tents stood in small clusters, around metallic barrels full of fire and ruined collapsed buildings, and battered equipment lay around all over the ground.
"Most of the stuff we find-the logs, the magical equipment, the books-are a little warped, but they're pretty untouched by Daemonheim's sphere of influence," he observed.
"Wait. Sphere of influence?" Sami asked. "And why'd you say We? You don't live here, as far as I know."
"You're right. I live in Mos'le Harmless," Haru agreed. "But I was born into the Fremmenik clan. As to why I don't have a Fremmenik-sounding name, it was some bizarre agreement on the part of my mother Anastasia and my dad Thaddeus… or Thorrak, as his Fremmenik name is. Something to do with my grandmother being from Nippon…"
"Don't ever ask," Cally put in. "It's one of those long, funny stories that's not funny or even really a story."
"I meant sphere of influence," Sami continued.
"It's widely agreed among planar theorists, runecrafters, Fremmeniks, and people who've seen it themselves that something of Daemonheim warps reality around it. Not that cursed edifice up there," Haru pointed to the castle, "But an evil object known as 'rift', said to be the destructive counterpart to the Stone of Jas. It breaks down metals, animals, and plants, and merges them with other metals, often creating unstable hybrids, only a few of which are known to be able to exist in the known world without unpleasant things happening to their molecular structure. Probably not much of a coincidence it's near the Fist of Guthix arena…." He pulled out a book, and flipped through page after page, looking for something. This continued until they walked up to a crumbling building that looked like it had been thrown together from everything on hand.
"Wait, did Haru just give a brief lecture on something educational?" Sami asked.
"Well, I do have a degree in planar theory," Haru replied.
Sami snorted as she realized how improbable that sounded.
They opened the door to the crumbling building, and then walked what seemed like a cellar space. It was full of Fremmeniks laughing and drinking as if it was their last day on this plane. In another corner, however, there was a large grouping of spheres on copper ropes hanging from the ceiling. A tall, skinny man with honey-blond hair, wearing Neitiznot Yak-hide armor and a long, leathery coat held together with some thread, yak-hair rope, and some dagannoth horns, Misthalin beer, and Fremmenik war-axe at his side, was sitting and watching the images on the orbs intently.
There'd be a plip noise, and he'd suddenly stare at a nearby scrying pool he'd set up in a bowl. Then he'd drink some beer, complain about its ****-like quality and how hard it was to find good beer so close to Misthalin, and get back to looking at the orbs.
"Well then, Denvald, that's why I'm glad I'm Fremmenik, that I drink Vodka, and that I have this Guardsman's Stout, I got it at Commander Veldaban's retirement party!" Haru grinned.
"Haru! You brought Callista, Dani, Izzy, and Clement! And that stout you need special training for, and some girl I've never met!"
"As a word from previous new female friend of Haru's to another, expect to be blindsided by Haru's various friends," Cally put in. "It was hard enough with the photocopied memories, but you shouldn't have that problem."
"Photocopied memories?" Sami asked.
"You're better off not knowing," Haru answered. "Sami, this is my old friend Denvald Nonsson, traveling Fremmenik seer, heavy drinker, beserker, Dominic Deegan fan, and infamous dwarf-stepper. Denvald, this is Sami, one of Cally's friends who I've never met. But I saved her life, and…" he shrugged. "Well, you know the saying. If you save someone's life, you are forever responsible for them." There was a pause. "And on that note, I'm responsible for asking you why the hell you're here instead of flinging a knife into some Forgotten Warrior's eyeslit down in Daemonheim?"
"The Fremmeniks called the Moon Clan in, cause someone had to enchant all the rings of kinship," Denvald replied. "I was one of the few seers that could understand the monitoring equipment. But they take me on raids now and then, and call in some other seers.*
*What's the monitoring equipment do?" Sami asked.
"Just what the name implies," Denvald answered. "It's part of an ancient spell dating back to the God Wars, which hones in on the magical energy of the Rings of Kinship, and helps us map out dungeons. It's interesting work, mapping out the known dungeons, and adding to the database of monsters. Also, it makes the function that revives someone at the brink of death more reliable. It picks up anomalous readings on a disturbingly regular basis, though… there's one now.*
Haru concentrated on the sphere Denvald was pointing at. It showed a daemonheim map from the perspective of an adventurer with level 60 dungeoneering. The image became burbly and distorted, then zoomed in back and forth, scrolling down readings of every possible kind except holy at breakneck speed.
Finally, the image zoomed in on a large circle.
"Eh? That's not a dungeon… too deep. Too small, really," Haru observed.
"The Abyss…" Denvald gasped. "I thought it was only a myth! Just a tale made by Fremmeniks that survived Operation First Contact, back in those chaotic days, you couldn't be sure if up was up, right was left, if the adventurers that went in were male when they first came up (Haru broke into a fit of coughing here) how many damn monsters were real and what wasn't just the place warping your mind like… like…"
"Like mad cow disease to your brain, plasmids on your cells, or the effect the Red Marker and the Necromorph Corruption have on your mind?" Izzy suggested, earning him a You took the words right outta my mouth look from Haru.
"I'm not sure I understand the last two, but yes! That'* exactly it! To some people, it happened on their body... but because of it, they developed immunities to Daemonheim. Kind of like you, Haru."
/Who knew lycanthropy could be so handy?/ Haru thought. "The abyss, huh. The legendary Vent, the Bottomless Pit, the eating hole… perhaps we'll find it on our way through," he said.
The six adventurers stood in the foyer of Daemonheim. It gave an impression of darkness somehow, with shadows flitting about. Only Sami had armor on.
"Please tell me that's because it's easy," she groaned.
"No," Haru explained. "Evidently, there's some kind of spell erected around Daemonheim. A working that makes anyone entering Daemonheim be forced to get rid of anything but the Ring of Kinship, by making every other item too heavy to even think of using."
She deposited her armor, and with her friends arms in hand, she followed them into the Dungeons of Daemonheim.