Contract Contest #12 Round 1 - Vote 1 (Patreon)

Contract 1: “The Serpent’s Embrace”

By: Cosmic Echo

Mila catches word of a secluded village that has been mysteriously abandoned, with whispers that the villagers were taken by a creature known as the Serpent of Silvershade Grove. When Mila ventures into the grove, she encounters Rowan, a fierce but hesitant alchemist who is searching for her mentor, who vanished while studying the magical flora in the area. Rowan, skilled in concocting potions and wielding a unique explosive magic, agrees to join Mila, seeing an opportunity to rescue her mentor and uncover the truth behind the disappearances. As they delve deeper into the dense, misty forest, they come face-to-face with Zarynthia, a monstrous lamia with a snake’s tail and a mesmerizing beauty. Zarynthia has been luring villagers into her grove, slowly transforming them into mindless servants under her control, and she’s fascinated by Mila’s vampiric nature, believing it could strengthen her own venomous powers.

In the true ending, Mila and Rowan fight together to overpower Zarynthia, resisting her hypnotic gaze and breaking the curse over the villagers. Zarynthia is defeated, and as she crumbles, Rowan’s mentor and the surviving villagers are freed from her control. Rowan, impressed by Mila’s bravery and sensing a kindred spirit, chooses to follow Mila on her journey, bringing her alchemical talents and fiery combat skills to the party. In the alternate ending, if Mila is defeated by Zarynthia, the lamia entwines her in her coils, injecting her with a venom that warps Mila’s mind and binds her to Zarynthia’s will. This results in Mila becoming Zarynthia’s vampiric slave, luring more victims to the Serpent’s Grove.

Contract 2: “Subterranean Sabotage”

By: BlackRoseDragon 

Mila receives a summons from a self-important local vampire “baron” who treats her Dracul status with icy disdain—until she strong-arms him into upping her reward. He claims the Knights of Friedrich are launching a major strike on the Lamia in the Lingrave Wastelands, yet every ghoul and the vampire mercenary he sent has vanished. At the necromancer’s ruined home, Mila finds a Knights’ camp, defeats a lone hunter guarding a cave, and watches in confusion as panicked knights flee past her rather than save their comrade. Inside, she finds corpses and ghoul ash with no signs of Lamia combat, while the few Lamias she encounters bolt in terror instead of attacking.

Deeper in, Mila is snared by a trap—unless Clover or Liora spots it first—and is freed by the very mercenary who’d gone missing. Before they can regroup, something massive tunnels toward them; they hide and watch as a Lamia is cornered by a towering shadowy creature that thrusts something into her, instantly pacifying her into a docile servant. The mercenary explains this monster is the true cause of the Wasteland’s unrest, powerful enough that the Knights collapsed the cave entrance to contain it. Forced to fight their way through patrolling Lamias who cannot safely be turned without exposing them to the lurking horror, Mila and the mercenary are eventually ambushed. The creature bursts from the earth, revealed as a terrifying manticore—half human, half scorpion—whose body shrugs off the mercenary’s desperate vampiric bite. Mila escapes in the chaos; the mercenary does not.

Mila awakens in a Lamia den, face-to-face with Kathali, a proud descendant of an ancient Lamia ruling line tied to the Tumwih stones. Kathali reveals the manticore, Derra, has stolen and poisoned these ancestral gems with its own venom, using them to enslave Lamias and twist the mercenary into a vampire–Lamia hybrid thrall. Hunting Derra through its lair, Mila finds the corrupted mercenary and the chamber where the Tumwih stones are kept. Derra offers to transform Mila into a Lamia and make her its second-in-command. In the bad ending, if Mila falls to Derra or any Lamia, she’s coiled, bitten, and remade as a vampire–Lamia hybrid under Derra’s control, forced to help conquer the remaining Lamias. In the good ending, Mila defeats Derra; as the manticore staggers and mocks her inability to infect it, Kathali drops a boulder to crush its tail. With its main weapon destroyed, the free Lamias swarm and tear Derra apart. Grateful, Kathali pledges her tribe’s aid, and the Lamias forge a unique manticore-themed weapon or piece of gear for Mila, imbued with potent poison.