Plurk paste

Richtofen's floor will be structured like a Zombies map. The exploration thread will take the form of a game of Zombies, in which the goal will be to find a way to turn up the lights and expose Richtofen while avoiding all of the monsters he's controlling.

The zombies will start out slow, and they'll get faster as time goes on. For the first little while, they'll just be normal zombies, not recognizable at all. Then, gradually, they'll start to look like friends and loved ones of the characters on Richtofen's floor, screaming things like "Help" and whatnot. The zombies will get more and more numerous, until eventually the characters will have to find a way to group all of the zombies together at the risk of being overrun by them. (This is a tactic often used by Zombies players, where they get all of the zombies to chase them as they run laps around the map. This way, they can avoid zombies cutting off their path while they're trying to run.)

Every once in a while, when all of the zombies on the floor have been killed, Richtofen will summon hellhounds. They won't be made out of just fire like the Tower's version of hellhounds, so the characters will be able to kill them normally. However, they're stronger than normal zombies.

After a while of killing normal zombies, Richtofen will start to add Nova gas zombies to the mix. They'll follow the characters and attack them as usual, but when they die, they'll explode into a cloud of toxic gas that eats away at the characters' nervous systems. The gas disperses after a few seconds. If a zombie happens to be close enough to a Nova zombie's corpse when it explodes, the zombie will take damage, too.

In addition to all of this, Richtofen has put in place two other measures to help/harm the characters. The first is the Mystery Box. It's a long box with glowing question marks on the top, and when it opens, it cycles through weapons randomly until it finally gives one to the player. These weapons can be good or bad, and sometimes, the Mystery Box will give you a teddy bear. If you get the teddy bear, Richtofen will laugh, say "Bye-bye," and the box will move to another location on the floor.

He's also placed something that looks like a soda machine on the floor. In Zombies, there are different machines for different sodas (called perk-a-colas, as their primary function is to give the player new advantages for a price), but on Richtofen's floor, there will be one machine that gives out different sodas. The soda machine will only operate if the character trying to use it has killed a certain amount of zombies.

Of course, since Richtofen won't want to give a bunch of people who already have powers more advantage than they need, these sodas will cause both positive and negative things to happen. Here's what I have:

Stamin-Up: The character will get a mega speed boost and be able to recharge their energy faster, but the more they make use of this speed, the more they will tear their muscles from over-use.
Juggernog: The character will be able to withstand more attacks from zombies, but the pain when they are hit will be excruciating, even if they had a natural resistance to pain before.
Quick Revive: The character who drinks this will gain the ability to repair damage another character has taken just by touching them. However, doing so means that they will take all the damage themselves.
PhD Flopper: The character will take no damage from jumping or falling from a height, and when they do jump or fall, a small explosion will surround them that will kill all the zombies (or allies) in the area. The more they use this ability, the more they will feel like their insides are on fire.
Deadshot Daquiri: All of the characters' attacks will automatically lock onto the nearest zombie's head, even if they'd been aiming for their feet before. However, it's also possible to lock onto allies this way. If the character goes for too long without attacking something, they'll feel a growing urge to attack their own head.

Ultimately, the goal will be for the characters to find a switch at the far end of the floor. That switch will allow gas to flow into the furnaces in the floor, which can then be turned up until the fires light up the place. Once this happens, Richtofen will be unable to turn invisible and intangible, and then the thread will move to the boss fight. The boss fight will consist of Richtofen continuing to send all his monsters for the characters and shooting them with magical energy, while occasionally changing the field to different parts of the Dark World.

And then he'll die. LOL!