#beheaded's printing even in au's is all caps

[senselessalchemist]

semi-final roleswap au beheaded concept (aka 'the merchant'). this took a stupidly long time. (also i had Plans to do a very sketchy comic but my hand is killing me so not today)

readmore for very vague ideas and game spoilers

something something the king working more directly/intimately with the alchemist. ostensibly trying to help find a cure/treatment/whatnot but also trying to find a way to save himself/loved ones. ends up going too far and getting... well... beheaded-ified. unsure if homunculi-fied or not.

something something before that point the alchemist (in this universe, more principled and less "ends justify the means") refuses to continue various lines of research on moral grounds and stops working with the king, who decides to go ahead anyway because desperation and etc.

but doesn't have the knowledge/training to address the problem he's created, and the alchemist will not aide him (sacrifice too great, innocent people hurt, maybe is pursuing something he considers promising) and things fall apart.

timeline/events fuzzy but basically i think the idea is that cells are the answer/an answer -> the person who has the know-how to actually do the thing is the alchemist -> the king does something to affect the alchemist's memories -> alchemist ends up in similarly "dumped into events of game" situation -> runs into a friendly merchant whose goals are A) cells and B) to befriend the alchemist (in order to obtain his help) -> [various game events, also finding own journals/etc., start to piece together some stuff, maybe start to mistrust the merchant, info from bosses, etc.] -> final boss fight where the merchant requests help, alchemist probably refuses based on gathered info (or maybe a choice? iunno) and something like "if you won't help me then i'll just kill you"

and there could be some fun angst re: "we used to be friends or at least circumstances forced us to work closely together in an extremely stressful situation and we know a lot about each other and also we maybe became friends a second time throughout this journey but then i found out you caused my problems in the first place and just wanted to use me for my knowledge and that's a lot to deal with and now i'm fuckin' pissed and i really kind of want to kill you" from the alchemist and "we used to be friends or at least you helped me but then you refused when it mattered most (and i probably don't deal well with rejection) and i had to do all of this shit for the possibility of your help and you still won't just fucking help me even now and if that's the case you might as well just die (but also i probably feel conflicted because even though it was on false pretenses we did become friends)" from the king and then they kiss

problem is of course you probably don't want to cause memory issues for the one person who has the knowledge that you need but maybe it's a "i have no other choice" kind of situation for the king (maybe alchemist threatened something drastic?) and it was that or nothing.

obviously there's issues with this in a gameplay sense as well but then there's issues in regular vanilla dead cells as well going from 5bc to anything else so fuck it, who cares. narrative and gameplay don't necessarily match up well. (i really don't know why i'm structuring this around gameplay when it's an au and i could just do whatever but i guess that's just how it be in my brain.)

speaking of gameplay. while it could be restrictive compared to the range of weapons you get normally i do like the idea of roleswap au!collector's moveset being based on his boss moveset, but with some expansions. so you'd start off with super basic like syringe 3-hit light-light-heavy attack pattern and maybe the ability to throw fireballs or something. you would upgrade the syringe using cells (maybe could do like one of three paths mimicking the brutality/tactics/survival split) and also your magic skills, allowing the laser attack, summoning mobs, etc. also might could change the element of the magic, have fire as the default but also have options to switch to poison or electric or ice or something. also i'd limit it to 2 of the however many "magic" things he can do (lumping everything that's not basically "stab with the syringe" into one category here), so you could do like fireballs and mob summoning but not laser, or whatever.

completely ??? about how the respawn mechanic would work. very rough ideas include some sort of memory collection (of course injected into a body -- new body? -- via syringe because that would be thematically appropriate and i have been listening to the new season of dungeons and daddies, but otherwise i got nothin'. except that maybe the tutorial knight would be the one to resurrect you each time.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(apparently i spent roughly 45 minutes writing this up, good lord, why did it take so long)