This portal is unstable. It is open from October 6, 2020 to November 30, 2020.

This challenge will offer brief story prompts instead of lore prompts in order to give you an opportunity to integrate your character into this spooky event!

The beeping and hissing of computers and equipment sound in your ears as you step forward into a new and terrifying reality…

Rewards

For participating in this challenge

• You earn 80 XP
• You earn a Random Drop
• You earn an Evil Eye
• Your character earns 7 AP
• Your character earns the Laboratory portal badge

Challenge Requirements

For our Halloween ARPG Portal Challenge, you will be taking your very own original character on an adventure to a new world. You will be using the character you registered in our Character Creation Challenge. If you haven’t registered a character yet, follow that link to do so!

Pick one of the prompts below and draw or write your registered character in this new world!

• If you are submitting art, it should be a full color piece that shows at least half of your character’s body and a background that matches the prompt you have chosen. Shading is optional.
• If you are submitting writing, your registered character should be the focus of the piece. The piece should be at least 1000 words and it must match the content of the prompt you have chosen.
• Submit your work to the queue at the bottom of this page. Copy paste the prompt you selected into the submission description. An admin from our team will process your request and grant your rewards. You'll receive a private message when the process is complete.

Prompts

Prompt #1 - Escaped Experiment

Fluorescent lights hang from the ceiling, half snapped off their moorings. Sparks skitter and flash from exposed wire, jumping across the ground like startled animals. Through the uncertain glow of the emergency lighting, you can see a pod lit up at the end of the room. It’s smashed open from the inside, thick glass scattered everywhere and suspension liquid dripping slowly from the wreckage.

Something moves in the corner of your vision.

You whirl around to face it, but by the time you do it’s gone.

Maybe it was just a trick of the broken lights. Maybe it was your overactive imagination.

You know it wasn’t.

Draw or write your character hiding from or hunting the escaped creature. Your submission must include your character in a laboratory setting, as well as some indication of the creature. It can be a tail, a claw, a shadow, or even the entire beast itself. What the creature looks like is up to you.

Prompt #2 - A Questionable Collaboration...

The portal snaps closed behind you. You’re surrounded by interfaces you can barely make out-- screens crowded with lightning quick flashes of data. Beakers hiss and steam across the tables against the far wall.

Was this… the right portal?

“Aaahh, you must be the new assistant,” A voice intones from deeper in the room. It has a mechanical buzz around the edges of it.

A thick, heavy sliding sound heralds the arrival of the speaker. A tangle of wires sprout from ports down their spine. The wires trail to the ground and branch off, disappearing behind the many displays.

“Good. We will start right away.”

Draw or write your character assisting (or sabotaging?) the cyborg scientist. Your submission must include your character in a laboratory setting. The cyborg scientist must be at least marginally present, a mention or depiction of their wiring at minimum. How exactly they look is up to you. Your character should be handling the equipment in the laboratory-- you can choose if it’s beakers, display screens, or something else you might find there.

Prompt #3 - Stasis

You step onto the balcony, careful not to trip over the mess of wires running across the floor.

Not one single person arrived to greet you when you first came through the portal. You haven’t seen a soul for hours. Everything seems to be in working order-- computers humming away and all the lights on. If this place was abandoned, it was abandoned recently.

You look out through the viewing window.

It takes you a long moment to decipher what you’re seeing.

Electricity crackles across a massive form, stasis keeping it captive and half suspended in midair. It hardly fits in the multistory room it's enclosed in. You can’t even tell how they got it in there in the first place.

Then its eye opens.

One word draws out of the creature’s mouth, low and echoing. It vibrates through you as if it wasn’t only just sound.

It’s your name.

Draw or write your character’s response to the captive alien. Your submission must include your character in a laboratory setting. The submission must also include a massive alien creature… but it doesn’t have to be in stasis.

Prompt #4 - Test Subject

Muttered words and clipboards, white lab coats scurrying around outside. Indecipherable noises, maybe from other test subjects. Odd equipment around you. How long have you been here? Just hours? Forever?
What do they want from you? What do they want you to do?

Show your character as a test subject in the lab. Your piece must include your character in a laboratory setting and participating in experiments– or refusing to.

Edits

• Article mistakenly contained content under the heading "discarded prompts." This has been removed.
• XP reward has increased from 60 to 80.
• Link for Character Creation Challenge was corrected to point to the public Character Creation blog post.
• AP reward has been increased from 5 to 7.
• 9/11/2021 - Gold reward has been replaced by a Random Drop reward.
• 10/22/2022 - updates to instructions and wiki links
• 1/18/2023 - Added guaranteed drop and 4th prompt.

Challenge written by Shyftlock. Art by BogusRed.