[ Branch Notes, a la carte ]

A few small notes to condiment -- compliment this branch since, as presented by the first chapter, it's going to probably be a bit different. And weird. That said, I felt it would be beneficial to declare a few things at the start.

Primarily, in this prompt for stories of building dungeons, it's worth noting that the Hat will not have a dungeon to build for some time. It will get its Claimant Crystal, I can promise that, but until then the story will explore and interact with existing Claimants in a different way. The theme will remain a major part of the plot, even if the Hat itself isn't at the Building aspect yet.

Second, if you're here for the weird kinky sex a top hat mimic will get into, I've got you covered: Chapter 5 ends with foreplay, Chapter 6 is where things get it on. This is my first foray in to properly committing to an H-Story, so when things get steamy, take it with grains of salt. If things don't land, I hope to provide an engaging story around the sex. Otherwise, I more than happily point to the other branches of this prompt; so please, give them a shot as well!

To those curious, the Skills of this branch are based off of Pathfinder2e, since I'm learning the system. Which means, why yes! Lore -- Legal is a Skill in P2e! I personally find that hilarious. The specific crafting skills of the story I added on for more specific, well, crafting characters are to use since P2e kinda just lumps them together.

The story will update when I am confident that the chapter-to-post meshes well with the buffer chapters I have, or (as it has been recently due ye olde daily grind) I just need to be done and move on with things.

As the plot progresses, I'll add character sheets of major characters here, along with supplemental material I feel would be good to add (story spoilers marked accordingly). As things progress and you notice that one or two things in various character sheets look out-of-place, it's more-likely-than-not intentional. Unless it's non-consistent inventory weights. I've caught one continuity error on that already, and it most likely won't be the last.

Feel free to field a questions here as well. I appreciate you all giving this crazy idea a shot.

On Tables...

A heads up! I use Markdown when writing, and this site supports all it's features -- which is fantastic. Sure, bold and italics are there, but so are header sizes, links if I need them, block quotes, nested block quotes, line breaks, lists, etc.

Markdown also has a very handy table feature, excellent for presenting things like, say, the stat array of a character. The only downside is... well... let me give you an example:

*
Maybe it's my own browser, but it's hard to tell that the cell bellow "Table!" starts with the '6'. The '5' is not in the same cell, yet reads as if it is. What there should be is a vertical line dividing the cells, but there strangely is not. To get around this, I try to do this:

*
Where the '/' tries to show where the column begins and your eye can better trace down the rows with it. The pipe character "|" is reserved for the table formatting itself, and the way to include them is something I know I'll mess up and we'll end up with some confusing typo or a character code that didn't translate correctly.

I'm still experimenting with how best to present tables. At some point I'll settle on something readable that doesn't look like a mess and go back and fix all the previous chapters with them.

I also don't know why the text lines after the tables are immediately below it, with no empty line despite there being one (or several!) in the text editor. (The * are used for spacing here. Chapters usually have a header immediately follow a table, though this does explain what's going on the one case where I don't... Hm.)

Some minor spoilery stuff below, but some extended auhtor's nose on things that deserve to be here in the main Notes area.

On the Hat

This is going to sound a bit weird but keep with me: I, the Author, will always refer to the Hat as an 'it' -- at least, here at the start of the story. This is due to the Hat itself perceiving itself, and similar hat mimics, as an 'it'. I don't want to cause confusion saying 'He will get his Claimant Crystal at some point'.
(An admission: this specific characterization of the Hat is a recent decision on my part, having had to stepped away from the story for about a week or two and getting back to it with a few new ideas; I have gone through and edited the Hat's inner monologue on the other (originally referred to as female) hat mimic accordingly).

As per why the Hat thinks of itself as an 'it', it begins the story not with a proper name, but one that is just a label of an item. It's not the only Homberg's [Hat] of Aggregation out there, and the ones it met are just as smug and self-righteous as it is, and it knows that. It just looks like a Top Hat (a Gibus) in its case, but has the same short-sighted goal of finding a host, eat their items, be passed on to a new host, and do the same, all while not being caught -- and if they are, well back to square one to do it all over again. It is, as it later notes to itself, a parasite, and has never had aspirations to be anything more than a parasite.

Already, it questions the "parasite" aspect of itself, and at some point during the story, the Hat will think differently about the whole 'it' label.

Until then, it'll do what it always has done: Curse the Developer Gods, because blame is easier than growth.

On Pre-Ruination Ironteak

What Ironteak exactly is now and how it interferes and interacts with the characters is a mystery that the Hat and its allies will need to figure out. But, to better expand on what the Hat in the second chapter of this branch rolls its eyes at here's a quick, low-spoiler overview on what Ironteak was:

Ironteak, before the Ruination patch, was one of the largest cities in the game, established way, way back when the game itself was in early beta -- which was chronologically after the Hat had "vanished". It was very much your standard fantasy castle city: walls, castle, shops, houses you couldn't actually go into, the whole shebang. It wasn't the first city the Players went to, but it was in the low 10's level range with one or three higher level quest lines, where the design of its quests were more urban-focused. It's Dungeons were things like thieves dens and catacombs that went deep under the city streets and similar, along with an experimental part of the town that was instanced to be under the various influences of some evil warlock or similar (the Devs always had issues with this quest and kept swapping it out for different content under the in-game lore explanation of some comical hand-wavey event like, "That incompetent baker NPC you Players all find endearing had the brilliant idea of 'self-delivering muffins'... that exploded. And destroyed that part of town. Again. Oops! Good thing the Ironteak Builders Association works so quickly and efficiently! On an unrelated note, City Guards now have grenade-like magic orbs that coincidentally look like muffins but are not. How curious. Incidentally, the Guard Captain's has asked that the repeated thefts of her hat are stopped....")

Ironteak also had the first iteration of player housing, outside of the city's walls and into the countryside beyond. Though, it was as simple as "here plot, buy plot, make house, put stuff in house, yay house". Players got creative and made their own neighborhoods, with Player-run shops and businesses. Ironteak, effectively, grew into the massive city from this sort of creative use of the game mechanics. Level-capped players, having exhausted the game's content, sold their crafting skills, or just ambled around for the social aspect. The Devs added a few more quests targeting these high-level Players, which were greatly appreciated. The Developers "filled in" the gaps between these Player-towns with generic building assets -- the plot of land they sat on were still open for Players to use, of course, but the result is that Ironteak sprawled. And, honestly, Players at the time thought that, in a game with otherwise mediocre content, it was one of the best things about the game. After the weirdly sexual subsystems, of course.

Then the world grew larger with new updates. Different biomes; other more diverse towns and cities with interesting layouts and architecture; an ocean with islands above, temples below, and new continents across with even more cultures and quests. The level cap was raised higher and higher. The game improved, was rebalanced once or twice, and the Devs overall just got better at what they were doing. As one update put it, "Before, the Horizon was just draw distance. Now, the world is big enough that it curves."

Players began to leave Ironteak, seeking the new content, and the "suburbs" slowly emptied out into ghost towns. By then, systems were in play so that monsters would eventually move into the abandoned housing. This was originally intended for areas way out in the woods, for example. The Devs didn't think that it would affect Ironteak, but it did, the monster raids putting pressure on the remaining Player communities that, after realizing the Devs weren't going to fix the issue for one reason or another, just left themselves.

After an ungodly long "beta", the game finally launched to minimal fanfare, a dying Player count, and a near Player-less Ironteak.

There were, of course, various things going on in-game that prompted the decision, but the Devs (now no longer a scrappy small team futzing around and instead a proper developer house) decided to do something drastic, something they knew that would get the attention of old Players: They nuked the whole goddamn city from orbit and turned the both the old city and the abandoned Player housing area into one huge freaking Player-verses-Player zone, with a huge '-verses-Environment' asterisk on the end that the Hat and its allies will be discovering and dealing with.

Though there are unintended in-game side-effects (that the Hat will also discover), the worst thing about the Ruination is that the Dev's ploy worked. Players old and new are, indeed, returning, spurred by various game-news sites freaking out over the possibility to play what is essentially 'Fallout-but-fantasy' in a zone that not only operates under its own rules independently from the rest of the game, but was of a respectable size in and of itself.

It only took killing off an entire city and its surrounding area's NPC and monster population. But hey, it's just a game, one built upon five-plus years of code and assets. What could possible go wrong?

[[Edit: Fixed the chapter numbers for the foreplay/sex scene; technically they're 4 and 5 respectively of this branch -- but overall are numbered 5 and 6. I forgot the prompt is counted as Chapter 1. Also added a note on character sheet inconsistencies, the monologue on tables, a note on the Hat, and some Ironteak lore.
Character sheets will come in once the Hat gains a few levels and it's just more than the Hat itself and one or two characters. The Second Character has a... complex one, sure, but most of it is used as narrative (it'll make sense when read) and the Hat thinks too much, it'll bring up what is needed when it is needed]]