Wolfermyth

I haven't given a spoiler alert in a while, but the Wildermyth quest The Scattered Self is a bit of a WTF? moment you should probably experience for the first time yourself.

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My most burning question once I encountered the physical transformations in Wildermyth became whether these include... y'know... the main one. The classic one. The me one. Cue Chayven Teelfletch the warrior, henceforth my favorite character. Once upon a time (I believe it was turn 26?) Chayven's party stepped into a glade favored by the wolf god, and with a resounding "Hell Yes!" piously accepted the wisdom of fang and fuzz.

Much of the time it's hard taking seriously the output of a game randomizing character names, traits, events, rewards, skill-ups, pretty much everything except the font. Still, when it works, it works wonders. Thanks to Chayven's other feats as he leveled up, he became a teleporting bruiser with multiple types of multiple attacks and my lynchpin for all the hardest fights. But that wasn't the spiciest bit.

 

First off, yes, our heroes' names are Chayven and Jaymnen. They eventually had a daughter. Her name is Chaynen. Randomizers are fuynen. The waterling says it's a very earthy name. Moving on. Time passes.

 

Now, keep in mind everything that follows is technically unrelated to the character's wolfishness, stemming from a completely different random trait. Including the first line.

Thus begins the quest The Scattered Self, which even for a fairly whimsical fairytale setting, gets a bit... trippy. You wander aimlessly until somehow stumbling by forest paths into the quester's own body, wherein awaits the personification of your body's defenses: a pig.

And yes, you can indeed go mano a mano with the swarm of parasites invading your body... or side with them, for sheer love of all that lives, forcing you to physically beat your manifested immune system into submission so it'll let them stay. We round out the whole shroomy affair back at home for another quiet domestic scene. 

Wherein our hero reassures his love (whose body he explicitly placed off limits to the parasites per article 5, paragraph 2 of the peace treaty) that he's all the better off now that he's eating for a hundred thousand.

 

Ta-daaaah! Love thy very close neighbour.

 

While I might normally chide such writing for straining too hard at creativity, having this trigger, of all my characters, on the party's werewolf, now that was just the icing on the cake. Because, yes, of course, who else would be more biologically malleable? And how much funnier is it for this to happen to the wer-wolfe who keeps calling love mind control, slavery and parasitism on his blog? Hm. You know... from this angle, I kinda get it.