Anvil

This story’s format was a roll-based interactive.

The rompts defined the personalities/alignments.

The rolls of people in the audience directly influenced how the character behaved by skewing the character’s alignment to a specific one based on the pre-determined number ranges below.

Number ranges and their alignments

1-24 Chaotic Good

25-49 Neutral Good-Helpful personality but heavily sarcastic to dumb

50-74 lawful evil-follows rules but twists to their benefit

75-100 clumsy and totally oblivious to it

Argelin was on a tram when the world turned dark. The magnetically-levitating tram suddenly slammed down onto the tracks. An ear-piercing screech echoed through the cart as people stumbled, struggling to stay upright and scrambling for something, or someone, to hold on to.

As expected, in a situation so unexpected, very few managed to remain standing. Argelin fell on top of someone, and their elbow hit him hard in the ribs. Chaos soared through his mind.

Screams.

Panic.

Lights flickered, struggling in a futile attempt to regain their stability, but failed. Someone else had collapsed on top of Argelin. A pained shriek echoed through the cart as the distressed and perplexed crowd scrambled about in the dark cart. As Argelin managed to peel himself off the poor creature he found himself atop of, after whoever squished him down had managed to do the same, he glanced out the window to see chaos unlike any he had ever seen before. Personal flying transports came crashing down, spiraling out of control, and crashing into buildings. The world had plunged into chaos.

‘What the hell happened?’ Argeling pondered.

The tram rolled slightly to the side as the majority of the crowd had now shifted to stare out the window, throwing the balance of the mag-lev mono-rail off. His thoughts jumbled.

… rolls a 8 (out of 100).

… rolls a 26 (out of 100).

… rolls a 100 (out of 100).

… rolls a 54 (out of 100).

… rolls a 15 (out of 100).

… rolls a 276.

… rolls a 26 (out of 100).

… rolls a 11 (out of 100).

… rolls a 31 (out of 100).

… rolls a 18 (out of 100).

AVG 32–NEUTRAL GOOD

Argelin quickly tapped himself up and down, checking for any serious injuries. Nothing appeared to be broken, just a few bruises. He glanced down to see a Vyreth person, a different species from humans. They were bulkier, somewhat resembling a seal in shape and appearance. Surprisingly soft, except for the sharp elbow that jabbed him during the fall. He held his hand out.

“You alright?” Argelin asked.

The Vyreth person bobbed their head at him. “Pleasantly surprised. Thank you human, we are okay.”

Argelin nodded confidently after helping them up. The chaos continued to unfold, and the cart shifted yet again. His thoughts jumbled once more. Argelin’s gaze darted to the nearest emergency exit.

‘Could jump out and make a run for it? Could try to calm the crowd and tell them to balance the weight.’

Amidst the panic only a few people seem to have realized that the weight imbalance will likely lead to a catastrophe.

… rolls a 27 (out of 100).

… rolls a 35 (out of 100).

… rolls a 90 (out of 100).

… rolls a 14 (out of 100).

… rolls a 29 (out of 100).

… rolls a 74 (out of 100).

… rolls a 62 (out of 100).

… rolls a 68 (out of 100).

… rolls a 49 (out of 100).

avg 50 lawful evil

‘I should run,’ he thought to himself.

“LISTEN! LISTEN!” Argelin shouted through the chaos, “The monorail is off balance because of you all herding at the window. Spread-out! Spread your weight.”

A few people of different species heeded his warning; the majority ignored him despite his best attempt to spread awareness. His warning was just enough for people to start dragging others away from the window.

“Deeply surprised. Humans are usually selfish,” spoke the Vyreth upon whom Argelin landed initially.

Argelin shrugged, “Don’t judge so soon,” he sneered, before darting for the emergency exit and leaping out of the tilted tram while the others were too distracted by their distress.

When Argelin leapt out of the tram, he swung himself over the door’s frame and landed atop the cabin.

On this world, the gravity was lower than on earth, and though Argelin was native-born here, his body allowed him more mobility and agility than many other species had here.

He glanced ahead, in the direction of his job, then glanced behind in the direction of his home and the city’s center. Chaos continued to unfold around him. Another monorail, about fifty meters ahead of his, tilted hard on its side. Windows shattered, and fearful screams shrieked through the air like whistling arrows. Fear welled up inside him. He had to get off this cart fast, but he wasn’t sure if he should proceed to the job-site or head back home to safety.

… rolls a 48 (out of 100).

… rolls a 83 (out of 100).

… rolls a 55 (out of 100).

… rolls a 93 (out of 100).

… rolls a 25 (out of 100).

… rolls a 4 (out of 100).

… rolls a 83 (out of 100).

… rolls a 62 (out of 100).

… rolls a 7 (out of 100).

Neutral Good

‘Can’t leave him, he was a good one,’ his jumbled thoughts whisper to him. ‘I shouldn’t care, I should run,’ his inner thoughts battled his decision, but Argelin ignored the internal conflict; he crouched down and peeked inside the cart from above.

“STOP SHEEPING AROUND,” he barked into the cart.

“Spread your weight, balance out, then wait for rescue.”

The panic-stricken crowd began to quiet down. As the chaos in the cart settled, Argelin whispered, “Vyrethian, come with,” holding his hand out for the bloated new friend to grab.

Contrary to popular belief, Vyreth people, while ‘ large’ in appearance, were actually quite lightweight. The majority of their weight is porous fatty tissues, due to their native planet’s habitat being harsh, cold weather.

The Vyrethian glared around before taking Argelin’s hand.

They made their escape swiftly, finding shelter at the nearby station where Argelin promptly reported the crashed maglevs, one that tilted, from which people fell out of, and the other where the crowd stabilized it with their weights but were in distress. To his surprise, there was minimal presence of rescuers. As it turned out, when all transportation is disabled and power is out, first responders weren’t as swift since they had to travel on foot.

Leaving behind his new acquaintance, Argelin made it to the surface, where chaos soared like a hellish flame. People ran around, distressed. Buildings burned, and wrecks littered the normally empty streets. To Argelin, who knew nothing but peace since birth, these events were like gates of hell unleashed upon his paradise. Their lives were simple and stress-free, rid of all difficult decisions that’d induce stress; upon coming of age, the young people were assigned a duty in the community. The duty assignment could change as their personality and body aged and matured. For instance, someone who was assigned construction as a duty would find themselves as drone operators or architects as they grew older.

Argelin was a novice power grid mechanic; his primary duty was setting up the infrastructure of the power grid. An outage of this scale was unprecedented, and the only thing that came to his mind was a powerful electromagnetic interference on a cosmic level—a massive solar flare. He shuddered as a chill ran down his spine. An event such as that would explain this chaos.

Chaos that no one was prepared for.

… rolls a 19 (out of 100).

… rolls a 93 (out of 100).

… rolls a 40 (out of 100).

… rolls a 37 (out of 100).

… rolls a 42 (out of 100).

… rolls a 89 (out of 100).

… rolls a 33 (out of 100).

50 lawful evil

His head spun—dizzy and panic-stricken, he wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was, but his mind fixated on ‘Survival and safety first.’

In a world of technology, very few things remained physical and mechanical.

He brought his hand up and rolled up his sleeve, staring at the passing seconds of his mechanical clock. The simple, yet precise mechanism had always brought joy to him. Every cog doing what it should and nothing else.

“Duty,” Argelin mumbled to himself as he began to walk fast in the direction of the nearest substation. The power grid might be down for the majority, but the substations and power stations had redundancies in place for emergencies such as this.

‘It’d be safe there.’

Safe, warm, and familiar.

And such it was.

The substation’s quarters were lit up by the backup power. Paper maps lined the tables and walls as the older folks in charge, who had been with the job since they became of age, marked the locations of likely damaged infrastructure and organized the inventory availability.

His work boots thudded against the metal floor. He registered himself as available workforce in the system upon throwing on a spare uniform he found at this substation’s lockers.

Familiarity was comforting and reassuring.

A gentle ping echoed through the office.

He was now available and awaiting orders.

“Good,” he uttered to himself. His mind was sorting itself out slowly. ‘Being registered means no accusations of failing to report for my assigned duty in the time of an emergency. This was good.’

As Argelin sat, awaiting impatiently, his mind flickered like ripped wires. Each thought sparking brighter than the previous. ‘Outside is dangerous. Going out is a threat. Unfamiliar threat. Crashes, burning, distressed people.’ He swallowed audibly as anxiety pressured him to seek a way out of a potential thr eat.

… rolls a 79 (out of 100).

… rolls a 97 (out of 100).

CLUMSY NEUTRAL

Just as Argelin tried desperately to come up with a means of staying at the substation, plotting to volunteer for inventory checks and local infrastructure work, a shout came from the door. It was loud, harsh, and sudden, like a jolt of electricity, scrambling his thoughts and focus.

“We need someone for sector-two-twelve! NOW!”

Startled, Argelin jumped up and jerked his head in the direction of the shout, perplexed.

“Good! You, with me, now!” The voice shouted from the door.

“Huh? Me?”

Dumbfounded, he pointed at himself.

“Who else!? Get your gear, let’s go.” The voice ordered.

Argelin swallowed. ‘Why did I do that?’ he wondered, questioning himself and his decisions. ‘Stupid stupid stupid, shouldn’t have heeded him any attention. Outside is a threat, who knows what else could go wrong?’

But it was too late. Heavy bags and equipment were loaded onto the trunk. The doors slammed shut.

“Will it work?” Argelin mumbled to himself.

“This puppy is purely mechanical! Old school tech from way back before even my generation,” grinned the engineer as he pressed a button.

The old motor screeched and howled with each rotation. Forced into action after years of storage, but at last, the engine roared to life.

“Whoa,” Argelin marveled.

The road was a nightmare. Hanging wires and burning wrecks littered the streets. Fortunately, enough time had passed since the event that all aerial vehicles, manned and unmanned, have crashed down by now, so there was no longer a threat of a drone falling on your head. It did, however, mean that they had to witness the horrors of disabled power drives in aerial vehicles and the horrible crash sites that followed.

Argelin’s stomach churned as they drove past a wreck, a public transport, hover-bus, lying on its roof. A dozen people of various species rested on the street not far from it, injured severely, bleeding, awaiting aid that was nowhere in sight.

“What happened?” Argelin muttered at last.

“Flare, a really bad solar flare. Nobody saw it coming,” the engineer replied. His voice was heavy with remorse.

The truck jerked suddenly to the right as the engineer avoided a distressed person who ran out to the street in hopes of stopping them, in hopes that they were first responders. Which, in a sense, they were, just not for the civilians but for the power grid, the lifeline for all.

Off in the distance, Argelin could see a hospital; its sign was flickering as the backup power system was struggling. Each flicker was like a heartbeat of the generators.

… rolls a 19 (out of 100).

… rolls a 54 (out of 100).

36 avg> Neutral Good

Argelin sank deeper into his seat, rolling his shoulders higher as though to hide behind them.

“We are doing our best, right? How fast do you think we can restore it?” Argelin queries softly.

The engineer clicked his tongue, veering around the next few wrecks. One of which was burning. The mono-core of it exposed, humming amidst the raging flames, but the vehicle appeared empty on the inside. Argelin let out a relieved sigh.

“A lot of critical infrastructure is damaged, but a lot of brave ones, like you, reported for duty rather than hiding at home and waiting it out. Bold move, kid, and thanks to that courage, everything will be fine, you’ll see.” The engineer bobbed his head at a scene ahead—a couple of Taly people were helping a Vyrethian out of a partly collapsed building.

Their slender figures with four legs and four arms made for a great physique as rescuers. One of them wore a bright yellow uniform, indicating him as a rescue team; the other of the Taly wore civilian clothes, but helped out nonetheless.

“See? This is what matters,” commented the engineer.

Argelin clenched his trembling fist and responded with a silent nod. His mind was still at disarray as his consciousness battled itself. He felt guilty for wanting to hide and stay where safety was, but at the same time, he felt even more guilty that he so much as considered running back home and waiting out the chaos.

Life here was meant to be stress-free and simple, though hardly anything ever in life goes as planned.

… rolls a 52 (out of 100).

… rolls a 66 (out of 100).

59> Lawful Evil

A manual override tower still works, but must be reset from outside in a high-danger zone. Argelin gets

“Volunteered” via a rules loophole.

The old, mechanical brakes screeched painfully as the truck came to a halt.

“See? Great stuff isn’t it? They don’t teach you, folks, on these nowadays?” The engineer asked.

Argelin glanced anxiously at the engineer, “Maybe the field techs? I’m just the infrastructures guy, I just lay the stuff out and connect it, I don’t deal with emergency repairs.”

The engineer grinned, “Well, now you do.”

His gaze darted to the buzzing and glowing tower in front of them. Doors slammed behind as they gathered their tools.

“I assume you know these things quite well?”

Argelin nodded. “Relay filter tower. It filters and stabilizes the core’s output and delivers a filtered, stable signal.”

He shuddered at the fact that the tower was glowing. Heat haze rose from the metallic carcass of the tower.

“Get to the control panel, identify the fault and we’ll begin our work,” the engineer commanded.

Argelin obeyed without hesitation, though a thought echoed through his mind that he should just avoid interacting with it; but a sense of justice pushed him forth.

As they worked on bringing the tower under control, the core power facility worked on stabilizing the core at the same time.

The two had to work in perfect unison for the city’s power grid to be stabilized. While other crews worked on bringing the substations and local relays back online, it would be all for nought without the RTF relay filter tower filtering out and stabilizing the power.

Hours passed as beads of sweat dripped from their foreheads; every person did their part in circumventing the unfolding chaos. The tower’s ground cable was repaired, and the relay—disconnected. Burned-out capacitors and filtering bands had been replaced, and just as the dawn began to set, a light signal came from the core facility.

Argelin watched anxiously as the power facility signaled stability.

There was but one issue at hand.

To bring back the power, the core’s output and the tower had to be synchronized—a feat that would normally be easily done, but one that now, with electronics gone and thrown off, would prove to be a lot harder. The core facilities’ backup systems should’ve kept the clocks ticking just fine, but the tower had no means of being synchronized.

Argelin sighed, rolled up his sleeves, and stared intently at the mechanical watch on his wrist. The familiar brass shape ticked softly with precision and stability. The kind of precision they needed right about now. The gentle twitches of the second’s handle cut through the tension like a knife.

Only the core facility would have the precise time. Only them, and this mechanical watch.

“Is that—accurate?” The engineer scrambled for words.

“Should be,” Argelin responded without a second thought.

“BINGO! That’s it,” The engineer exclaimed.

Argelin, startled, shook his head.

“That’s what?” Argelin asked, perplexed by the engineer’s claim.

“This! The watch! The time!” The engineer continued excitedly.

Argelin gasped, “We can synchronize the activation!”

“YES! Time?” The engineer queried.

“Uh, 8-43,” Argelin stuttered.

“I’ll get to the facility, tell them to power on at 9: 00 flat! You stay here, activate the tower, on the second!” The engineer said, already rushing to the car.

Argelin nodded, “Yeah, yeah! Hurry!”

Tires screeched as the engineer rushed off.

Minutes trickled like grains of sand in an hourglass.

“Three… two…” Argelin counted anxiously, staring at his watch, with his hand on the tower’s lever, ready to pull it at a second’s notice.

“One,” he gulped, swallowing the knot that he felt in his throat. His only thoughts were prayers that his clock remained true and precise over the years. The tower hummed as the core’s power undulated through it.

Off in the distance, something sparked, a local relay likely blew, but it was a concern for later. With each wave of power hitting the tower, the filters charged and did their job. A stable flow through the wires. The city came back to life within seconds. A wave of heat washed over him as the tower stabilized completely. The air around him buzzed with static charge as he distanced himself from any metal.

“It—it worked? It worked!” Argelin rejoiced.

But his joy was cut short, as he found himself in front of the Grand Assignment Council. The polished stone of the floors and ceilings reflected the light as he gazed up at the council.

They each stood behind elevated podiums, looking down at the man before them.

“Argelin L.,” the councilor at the center began, his voice echoing through the grand hall.

“Step forth.”

Argelin swallowed hard, taking a hesitant step forward. His legs felt weak, like wet, soggy noodles. He tried desperately to hold his balance, but his shakiness was obvious.

“Your actions in sector two-twelve were crucial to restoring order and life to our city. You prevented the deaths of countless. We have received multiple commendations of your actions.”

Argelin gulped anxiously, “C-commendations? B-but, I,” he stuttered, but was silenced.

“Additionally, the council received commendations of your actions at the mag-lev tram. Saving dozens there too. Commendable actions.” Spoke another councilor.

“As such, the council decided—effective immediately, you are reassigned from infrastructure apprentice to tier-one field technician.”

Argelin choked on his own breath, “Te-technician? O-outside? In the-the—” the central councilor raised his hand.

“Congratulations. We thank you for your display of courage and composure amidst the chaos and look forward to your service to the community.”

And just like that, Argelin found himself staring at a sparking and smoking fuse box at a small residence relay station, a heavy sigh escaped his lips as he held a wrench in a trembling hand.

“Damn you, my good consciousness….”

THE END