(Update + RnR rant) [2/2/25]

 

 -UPDATE-

Brooklet Avenue had me in a chokehold these past couple of months lol

-Risks and Rules-

“What do I want? I want to get my power back so I can take the ability of the strongest Endurian, and then leave this existential-crisis-inducing dimension for good!” -Mistress

***

The name “Risks and Rules” is not only a play on words (the two original main characters were Risk and Rue Becka) but is also supposed to represent the risks the characters take to break the rules.

It is famously known in my mind for existing for a long time with only one of the characters ever being drawn (that being Risk) meaning I literally only have one drawing for it.

Despite this I do have somewhat of an idea of what some of the characters look like (such as Odette) and one thing of concept art for Rue Becka. However my lack of artwork for this story does kind of bum me out because I like pairing visuals with my rants.

I shall start with a simple description of the story:

Risks and Rules is a tragic story made mostly to explain lore for Endurance, it is where you would learn a lot of important information that would spin a whole other tale than what you would first be led to believe. It follows four characters as they follow their goal of shutting down the company that took over the planet, where the main purpose of the company is to create super soldiers, and has eight different laboratories, each meant to work towards that goal.

RnR follows four main characters: 

Risk, a plant based puppet soldier, Rue Becka, a dangerous experiment who is actually just a child, Odette, a technician and mechanic who works under her mother, and Kallen, a vengeful villager bent on destroying the laboratories (this description doesn’t really make him sound nice, but he is a nice guy haha). There are eight other important characters, those being the seven other puppets, and The Enforcer.

A noticeable reference is that each of the laboratories (excluding Risk’s laboratory) is based on the Seven Deadly Sins, meaning each puppet soldier stationed there is also based around this concept (mind you quite roughly), hence why I call them “The Seven Deadly Puppets,” just to give them a name for concept purposes.

pride (#1) [19], greed (#2) [18], lust (#3) [18], envy (#4) [18], gluttony (#5) [16], wrath (#6) [16], and sloth (#7) [14]

And “Risk,” “the original” #8

(  ) = Lab number

[  ] = Age

Laboratory 008 is the only lab that conducts experiments on humanoid species, however they are also the lab that created all eight puppets, (“Sloth”) being the most recent.

Kallen gets Rue, Risk, and Odette to help him destroy the labs. Risk has the knowledge of the other labs, and after being deactivated and released from her previous programming thanks to Odette, she is free from her need to be at the lab and can share the information freely. Odette is one of few people who has the ability to deactivate the puppets, because of this she’s very crucial to the mission. Rue is a big help as she is a very powerful fighter. They first go to Lab 007, which is primarily empty aside from some scientists working on various sleeping gases and tinkering with some type of black ink. This is the place they meet [renamed], the newest puppet.

Lab 007: experiments with sleeping gas and the research from Project Blackout

Lab 006: experiments with fighting techniques and weaponry

Lab 005: experiments with different types of poison

Lab 004: experiments with different types of cloaking and disguises

Lab 003: experiments with healing techniques

Lab 002: experiments with hacking techniques and robotics

Lab 001: experiments with… [Classified]

Character Notes:

———

Rue Becka

Experiment #17-008

Monarch Cloaking

Age: 15 (Shomeir age system)

Mbti: ISFP

•Is like a little sister to Risk

•While Risk was (presumably) created within the lab, most experiments are taken from other planets, Rue Becka is one such experiment

———

Risk

Experiment #3-008

Technological Nature Puppet

Age: 20 (Shomeir age system) 

(I genuinely thought she was 18?? I’ll have to revisit this later lol)

Mbti: INFJ

•Risk has a key to something important, which is why they kept her

•Risk was the first breakthrough, and they use her almost as a battery, using her life force to power the laboratory’s equipment

•Risk has a built in security system, she holds all the information about the company and is programmed to protect the information, as well as the other experiments. This means if someone were to try to take her or any of the experiments, she is programmed to fight back, if anything happens she’s programmed to send the information to the higher-ups before self destructing.

Rue and Risk are both from a laboratory called Laboratory 008, a lab where they conduct experiments for a company that designs “super soldiers.” This same company sponsored Project Blackout, as they were intrigued by the possibilities the project could introduce.

———

Kallen

Age: 28 (Shomeir age system)

Mbti: ENTJ

A villager, whose little sister was taken by the company 11 years prior, found the Laboratory after years of searching. He raided the Lab with several other family members of abducted relatives, however his little sister was Experiment 6-008, and has been long dead. Despite the grief of his search coming to an end with hardly the result he wanted, he decided he would rescue all the other experiments, and vowed to put an end to the company and all the laboratories as revenge for killing his sister.

———

Buttercup (roughly based on gluttony)

Experiment #6-005

Technological puppet soldier

Age: 17 (Shomeir age system)

Mbti:

(While I don’t have notes mentioning this, most laboratories are decently separated, but Lab 005 and 006 are neighboring Labs, sitting directly next to each other, because of this “Buttercup” (gluttony) and “Atlas” (wrath) are portrayed as twins and often work together to defend their labs)

———

[*Renamed] (roughly based on sloth)

(*His old name was Scilis, but I used that name for another Endurance character and don’t care much for the idea of having two Endurance characters with the same name)

Experiment #1-007

Technological puppet soldier

Age: 14 (Shomeir age system)

Mbti: INFP

[renamed] is from the newest lab, as the story goes on the timeline, it has been around for two months, [renamed]’s puppet has been around for 14 years, but was just recently stationed at Laboratory 007, where the first experiment took place two months too late for Risk to stop it.

As per being the newest lab, the company repurposed the Project Blackout research and tested it out on [renamed], because of this, [renamed] can control black ink similarly to the past test subjects.

———

(Unnamed) (roughly based on greed)

Experiment #14-002

Technological puppet soldier

Age: 18 (Shomeir age system)

Mbti:

•He often hacks into smaller robots, sometimes even small puppet robots, and interferes with the group

A puppet starts moving “Hello eve-“ Rue Becka doesn’t hesitate to whack the puppet into the nearest wall “Haha, ow!” “That’s a very impolite way to greet someone” Risk steps forward “What are you here for _____”

*************

Risk’s Story:

The gist of Risk’s situation is that she was a kid who was one of the first experiments, the step the scientists made during her experimentation was considered a big risk. They were trying to figure out a way to make super soldiers that couldn’t be killed, could be electronically controlled, and easily fixed but disposable if needed. They created a body of a electronic puppet, and found a girl whose species contained the perfect ability to make the experiment work. After the experiment proved to be a success, they took what they needed from the girl to use for the rest of the soldiers, and left her as a security system for the lab she was created in, where she would sit in the same spot, powering the lab and watching over the other experiments. Eventually another girl would come in, not as an experiment, but as a technician. She was brought to the lab with her mother, who was a scientist, and was going to work on the technology in the lab, which included Risk. Every now and then the girl, Odette, would give Risk a check up to make sure she was functioning properly, and during that time Odette would try to engage in small talk with the silent puppet. As time passed on, Odette would learn that there was someone inside of Risk, that she was more than just a puppet. Odette got closer and closer with Risk, she felt bad that Risk was immobile but never knew what to do about the situation. Little by little Odette would find ways to get Risk to be able to move again, she found out that the reason Risk was stuck in place was because of internal programming that only allowed her to move if there was a security risk, and she was able to override the programming for little bits at a time. During that time Risk would be able to actually interact with some of the other experiments, which is when she would get closer with Rue Becka, a powerful little girl who had gained genes from a Hohkey after experimentation. Years later a group of townspeople would break into the lab, and Risk’s security programming would finally spring into action, closing down the lab and attacking the townspeople. After years of slowly building up information on how the puppet soldiers programming works, Odette was able to fully override Risk’s security program, giving her control over herself. This is when Risk, Odette, and Rue Becka would meet a vengeful townsperson, Kallen. With Risk, someone with important knowledge on the laboratories and the company, and Odette, someone who could deactivate the puppet soldiers protecting the labs, Kallen could shut down the labs much easier than if he were to try himself. Risk and Odette had their own reasons for wanting the labs gone, so they agreed to help him, and Rue Becka wouldn’t let them leave her behind with the townspeople, so she proved her worth and went with them.

**********

The “Important Lore” (or “Existential stuff” as I like to call it in my notes):

(Not everything is fully fleshed out, and some stuff may use terminology I may not be fully versed in, just bare with me)

(These are plucked directly from my notes lol)

•Enn-Durance is an Electronically Altered Dimension, or E.D. for short, the only two who may be able to figure this out is Marbles and Mistress, Mistress being the only one to hint at it.

•The basic gist is that Enn-Durance is being used as an experiment to see if Fabricated Dimensions (which is what I’m calling dimensions like Enn-Durance and The Land of Odd) can be altered without being damaged.

•Fabricated Dimensions are dimensions brought into existence through creative thinking for the purpose of escapism. Example: The Land of Odd came to be because a little girl became so absorbed in the story she made while playing toys that it became real, trapping her in it as one of the characters. (That’s some lore for you right there)

The Enforcer-

•The Enforcer was the person in charge of the laboratories, and was the previous Spectator

•He is simply known in my brain as being the main antagonist in RnR, and for the quote “Don’t you see? Endurance is the biggest experiment of them all!”

Risk-

•Risk ends up becoming a “Spectator,” someone with the sole purpose of watching and listening, however the previous Spectator broke his rule of not getting involved. Before he died, he inserted Risk with a chip, exposing the truth to her, and making her, by default, the new Spectator.

•Z-Corp. comes in at the end of RnR, they “clean up the mess” so to speak, but takes multiple people out of the picture as a “reset,” meaning Odette (and the others) is practically deleted from the universe, and Risk is back to blindly following programming. She then begins looking for the Moderators and the Endurer to begin her Spectating.

********

The story is supposed to be a tragedy in a sense, but because I apparently suck at sticking with tragedies, I’m currently working on the concept for a future Endurance story where Risk ends up happy. What can I say, I’m an optimist, I see the option to make my characters happy and I take it. Some might call me a good OC parent :) (in other words, I just can’t write tragedies apparently, I feel too bad for the characters lol)

Since it has Risk involved, here’s some concept art for that conceptual future:

*****

And lastly, here’s Risks and Rules’ playlist :)

Risks and Rules Playlist

(This story has existed for quite a while now, but because I know what I need to for the other Endurance plots to continue I don’t often come back to this story. Because of this the story is quite spotty so I don’t see the point in giving it an actual post, but I felt like getting the story out so here we are)