Story v1.01b

The town of Cogshire was a thriving gnomish community. Set within the protective confines of a geothermic crater in the shadow of a secluded volcano, the citizens of Cogshire spent their days happily gathering crystals from the rock walls of their not so average home. These crystals however were no ordinary gems. Years prior, the founders of Cogshire had discovered that these crystals could hold energy that they were exposed to. A visionary gnomish inventor Whizzbang Fiddlesprocket, devised a contraption that purified and focused the energy of the sun itself to be used in these crystals, and for decades these powered the myriad devices of Cogshire.

Today however, the thriving town of Cogshire is dying. Our hero enters the town via elevator systems that are running a little too slow and a little too sluggish. He/She finds the townsfolk are scared; their entire way of life is dying, and the only person who can save them, a direct descendant of Fiddlesprocket, Bob, has vanished. Furthermore, the town of Cogshire has been beset by a plague of terrifying nightmares that have made sleep all but impossible for our once happy gnomes. Our hero must question the townspeople which will eventually lead him/her to the mine to investigate Bob’s strange disappearance. Upon arrival at the mine, our hero meets a strange yet helpful witchdoctor, who lives near the mine entrance.

The witchdoctor tells our hero that the mine has been sealed because an aberrant crystal was found inside and when Bob had gone into the mine to investigate it he did not return. Guards were sent in who found that Bob and the aberrant gem had both vanished, and the mine was sealed immediately to prevent further mishaps.

He explains that the town is dying because the machine that Fiddlesprocket invented which is housed in the statue located by the library in the middle of town is slowing down. The only person who can fix it is Bob. He also tells the hero that the crystals in the mine are being corrupted by what he believes to be an imbalance between the planes which started shortly after Bob’s disappearance. Not only is this destroying the gnomes’ entire way of life, these corrupted crystals are radiating some kind of negative energy which has been causing the plague of nightmares to besiege the helpless gnomes.

Our hero is asked to journey to the nightmare realm, with the help of the witchdoctor, to restore the balance and to rescue Bob who can fix the statue and stop Cogshire from plummeting to what the gnomes view as the equivalent of the dark ages.

Once our hero meets with the witchdoctor, he/she is asked to take two crystals to the statue in the middle of town. One is mounted atop some sort of arcane staff of some cryptic significance, the other is the last uncorrupted power crystal in Cogshire. The staff is to be used by the witchdoctor to transport the hero to the nightmare realm. The other is to be used to restore balance to the planes and thus save the mine from complete corruption.

Upon reaching the nightmare plane, our hero finds that he is in an alternate version of Cogshire. Upon heading back toward the town the most notable thing our hero sees is that the statue is not where it is supposed to be. Through exploration and investigation, our hero finds out that Bob has gone mad from being trapped in the nightmarish world he was transported to. He has transformed this plane’s version of the statue into a giant clockwork robot. Also in a botched attempt to create a machine to send him home, Bob has created a machine that is transmitting aspects of this nightmare plane into the material plane. This machine is the source of the nightmares the gnomes are suffering and the corruption of the power crystals as they are beginning to store nightmare energy.

Our hero must defeat the clockwork robot and replace the corrupted crystal in Bob’s machine with the one given to him/her by the witchdoctor. Thus allowing our hero bring himself and Fiddlesprocket’s grandson back to the material plane where his madness can be cured by the witchdoctor and the town of Cogshire can be restored to its prior glory.



(Cogshire, Whizbang Fiddlesprocket, and Bob are just place holder names. These will be changed based on team consensus.)


P.S.
If you haven't already, take a look at the comment I posted on the other story in response to Anthony's feedback. there are a couple of questions in it that i need answers to before we can finalize this story.