Book Eight, Chapter 64: The Adventurer

“It makes sense, after all,” Camden said as we slowly moved down the river. “Why else would you have a Choice Phase? Why wouldn’t Omen just go directly to Party Phase? There’s a whole class of tropes that deal exclusively with the choice, drawing it out and letting you modify the story, but they’re all high-level, which is why we don’t have any.”

He didn’t even have to consult the Atlas to talk on the subject. He had been through it a time or two.

“You know, I imagine that the Homibride had one of those,” I said, “how she could take parts of this storyline and fold them into her own. Now that I think of it, it was actually a Film Buff trope she was using.”

“Yeah, that sort of thing,” Camden said. “And of course some storylines have longer choice phases than others, but I don’t remember any of them lasting too long or being that meaningful. Do you guys?”

I racked my brain, trying to remember any storylines we had played through where the choice phase wasn’t just an instant blip on the plot cycle that got passed over on the way to the party phase. I seemed to remember at least once where the choice phase lasted for a while, but I couldn’t remember if it was meaningful.

Antoine was operating the boat and thinking solemnly. I didn’t know if he was even listening. The news that we were headed toward Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle had affected him deeply, but he had yet to tell us why.

The marshland had given way for a time to a savannah, but we could see a jungle in the distance. We knew for a fact that the Sunken Cradle took place in a jungle. It seemed a bit too easy. Were we really headed directly to our destination without any more turbulence or storylines? I assumed we’d have to run three or four storylines to get to Ramona and the others, but if the dark jungle ahead was any indication, we were almost there.

“So you’re saying that maybe one of the bad guys in this storyline has a trope that works in the choice phase?” Anna asked.

We didn’t make her ride on the top deck again. It seemed a bit cruel in hindsight.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Camden said. “It has to do with enemy tropes. That’s my bet.”

What kind of trope would allow a bad guy to take in players without actually triggering his storyline, and to what end? Attracting even more players? It would make a great trap.

“You know,” I said, “if this enemy can trap players in a storyline without actually triggering the story and postering them, that means he can attract rescuers, but they wouldn’t be able to use a rescue trope.”

I had thought about that before, but I didn’t realize that maybe that was the entire purpose of the trope. Some sort of sadistic enemy who wanted more carnage while also taking the tools that the players would need most away from them.

“On the bright side, we don’t need to worry about spoilers,” I said, “since Antoine has already played it. It’s not like we’re going in blind anyway.”

“We still might be,” Antoine said, breaking his silence.

The river was running slowly, so the engines were down low, and there was a silence as we all waited for Antoine to finish his thought.

“I don’t think that we ran the version of the story Carousel wanted us to,” he said eventually. “There was this entity, this feeling, this aura over the story, and Bobby said that whatever we did, we should try to avoid finding out what was causing it, and that’s what we did. We played it out like a straight adventure, lost treasure, swinging from vines, and stuff like that, fighting against another adventurer in the climax. I decided not to venture further, not to find out what the source of the evil was. I even blew up the tunnel that was supposed to lead toward whatever it was. I bet you money we’re not going to be able to do that again, so there may still be some rewards in this, because I can’t spoil what the story was actually about because I only know a piece.”

He never turned his eyes away from the distance as he steered the boat. He never looked at us, but as he spoke, I could tell he was doing his best not to show emotion, and he was failing. There was fear in his voice.

Most of what I knew about Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle came from the trailer I saw for it. While no new trailer had triggered when Ramona and the others got captured, the old one from back when Antoine ran it was still available to me.

It was a classic adventure into an ancient abandoned place, and Antoine Stone, the character, was forced to go there after vowing never to return. It was a big thing in the trailer.

I wondered how the plot would play out this time.

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“Well, you know,” I said, “you are an adventurer this time, so probably going to have a bit stronger footing on the whole thing.”

“I’ve got two tropes,” he said. “I don’t know how much of a difference that’s going to make, but it can’t hurt.”

“Actually, you have three tropes available to you,” I said.

He would be able to use his athlete tropes just fine. His original archetype didn’t go away just because he was using an advanced archetype, and while it was true that he only received two adventurer tropes, that wasn’t the extent of what was available.

I reached into my pocket and pulled a trope from thin air.

It was one of the tropes that had been used to communicate with me by the insider, or our friends in high places, as we called them back then.