NOVEL NEXT Foreword
Welcome to Worthy Core! Now that the story has a few chapters under its belt and can't be entirely consumed in ten minutes, I thought it might be helpful to have a little foreword describing what sort of story it is, what it isn't, and what my goals for the story are. In my experience one of the most common causes of upset comments and reviews is people going into a story thinking it's something it isn't, and since you can only fit so many descriptions and disclaimers into a blurb, it seemed useful to have something a bit more long-form. Also, sometimes I just like to get long-winded about my stuff, feel free to bail out and start the story at any time if this gets boring. I may edit this further in the future depending on what questions and concerns may come up.
So, let's start with the basics! Worthy Core is a story in the 'Dungeon Core' genre, wherein a sapient soul (often an isekai'd reincarnator) finds themselves in charge of designing a classic Dungeons & Dragons-style dungeon, in which their goal is to defeat adventurers, usually in a fatal fashion. I read a fair number of Dungeon Core stories before starting WC, and it informed a lot of what I wanted to do in my own story. That being said, it's not necessary to be Dungeon Core genre savvy, I believe I've managed to avoid using too many in-jokes and obscure tropes and whatnot.
What separates WC from other Core stories? While there's a large variety of Core stories and plotlines and it may be that nothing is entirely unique, here's a short list of guiding principles I used in establishing this story.
1. Vulnerability and continual challenges: A common trope in Core stories is various rules to keep the dungeon 'fair' for adventurers, such as core accessibility, mana limits, available monsters and traps, and so on. A number of stories I've found will establish these rules and then immediately have their protagonist set about breaking them, which I feel misses the point. The rules don't exist to save the lives of adventurers, they exist to make the story interesting. If a core immediately buries itself under a mile of rock, well done, your protagonist is invincible, now what? An important principle for me then is that Xenia Worthy will never be allowed to rest on her laurels. There will always be tougher adventurers, there will always be risks her defenses will struggle to defeat. If there comes a time when no one can beat her, that will probably be my sign that it's time to wrap the story up.
2. Character relationships/POV: Many Core stories by their nature are hyper-focused on a single character, the core. After all, when a character lives in a cave 24-7 and can never leave, it's natural that there's not gonna be a lot of people to talk to. Personally I find that stories are most interesting when characters are allowed to bounce off of each other, and so that will not be the case in WC. Not only will Xenia not live all alone in her cave, but the story will often shift POV, including within chapters. Some of the supporting cast will change from storyarc to storyarc, so I'm not labeling this a multi-lead story, but it is certainly an ensemble cast.
3. 'Game Mechanics': There's a lot of variety in how different settings handle their progression. Worthy Core does contain a 'System', an in-world game-like interface which allows for the management of spells and such, but unlike many settings this System is only available to the Dungeon Cores. The adventurers deal with things in a much more traditional manner, which you'll see in the story. Also, WC does not go very hard on crunchy numbers. For the most part, Xenia's options fall into categories of Low/Average/High Quality/etc, or F/D-/D/D+/C-... and so on. There will be Boxes, particularly after significant 'intrusion' chapters, but I won't be posting huge stat sheets every chapter or anything like that.
4. Genre: Okay, this one is just a pet peeve of mine but I keep seeing it happen in stories and I feel the need to make a promise concerning it. Worthy Core is a magical fantasy story. I one hundred percent promise to you it will not turn out to be a science fiction story in disguise in the last ten percent of the story.
Beyond that, there's probably two important tone-setting topics that need to be discussed: The Sex and The Violence. I'll state up front that this is a story intended for adults, and furthermore, neither The Sex nor The Violence in this story will involve children. There will be no fifteen-year-old heroes getting crushed by traps in this story. To go into more detail, let's start with:
The Violence: It will literally be Xenia's job in this story to kill at least some of the people she meets, and she's not a stranger to getting her hands dirty. That said, as a character Xenia is not a sociopath. How well she handles the violence and how willing she is to dish it out may vary from situation to situation. Still, in the end, folks are gonna die, and some of it could be bloody. I've seen comments from people on a variety of stories who seem to be genuinely surprised when characters feel pain and mental distress from killing people, and whether the victims of said violence deserved it or not...honestly, y'all need therapy.
The Sex: This is neither a harem nor a romance story. Neither will smut be the focus of the plot, however there will definitely be smut. Why? Because I like writing smut. Additionally, I prefer for all of my sex scenes to be fun, lighthearted, and fully consensual. There will not be a lot of slow-burn romantic relations, but there will be quite a bit of horny. You can expect there to be a fair bit of variety as to the kinds you'll find: I am a bi male, Xenia is a bi woman, and some scenes won't even feature Xenia at all. That said, while the horny in general may often break containment, the outright explicit chapters will be self-contained and will generally have little important plot development. If there are important plot details to take away from an Explicit chapter, they'll be noted in the pre-chapter note at the top.
And finally, a general statement about my meta-goals for the story. I have a full-time job which does not involve writing, and additionally I already have an unrelated Patreon project that takes up quite a bit of my free time. Therefore unless this seriously takes off I currently have no intentions of setting up anything financial-wise for this project. I really don't have it in me to run two Patreons at once, let alone pursue publishing. My minimum goal is to post two ~2kish-word chapters per week while maintaining an eight chapter stockpile, but as I like posting chapters and seeing my numbers go up, I will be pushing to post more often than that when I can (four a week is probably my maximum). If you'd like to support the project, I accept tips in the form of ratings, reviews, favorites, comments, and so on in order to pursue my ultimate goal of making the numbers go up.
I may add more here or a FAQ as time goes on, so feel free to add comments or questions somewhere if you feel something belongs here. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the story!
- Scooter/DaScoot
5/17/2024 - Worthy Core now has a Discord server available here!