Webcomic / Dive Quest

When I was very young, I asked my mother what I would have grown up to be, if I were not the Prince.
She told me, "Muschio. Whatever you desire, that you shall have tenfold. If you want to be a soldier, you will become a general. If you want to be a monk, you shall become pope."
I wanted to be a villain.
And I do not intend to stop until I have become the Devil.

An imageboard-based Forum Quest by "Weaver", the same creator of Ruby Quest.

It starts off with a Volto ex-prince named Muschio Malto going on a "dive" in Red Fang's Dungeon. He ultimately succeeds in killing him and claiming Fang's dungeon for himself, using it as his base of operations as he strives to complete his goal of becoming the greatest villain the world has ever known.

The chapters can be easily accessed here. It shares a universe with Knight Blades.

There is also a flash version in progress, which can be found here.

The same artist that made the Ruby Quest Fan Soundtrack is working on Dive Quest too.

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This game provides examples of:

• Affably Evil: Muschio, though he believes himself to be pure evil but his actual place on the morality scale shifts often. K'miele, however, believes he is a good man (er, volto) at heart.
• Afraid of Blood: Pendel is not fond of scenes of violence. Ona explains the aspects of a young woman's murder in detail, CSI style, and he appears quite woozy afterwards.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • Chapters 9 (where you control Finesse's father), 10 (told through Charmedfrightened Tislomer's point of view, chapter 17 (told through Babrakus's point of view), and chapter 21, set in the past and told through the point of view of a poetic outlaw, which of whom is in search of a rare artifact—this man seems to be the mysterious assailant/thief from chapter 16 and also seems to have know a young Tislomer.
  • The team finds a way to inject themselves with the McGuffin that allows them to talk to the audience. So now the character in focus can invoke this, transferring point-of-view to the connected person of choice. And occasionally the audience talks to someone who is not connected and not in the same time period.
• Artifact Title: The quest began with Muschio doing a dungeon dive, hence the name. He's moved on to much bigger things since then. Though it gets a Title Drop when Muschio dives to save Finesse from the Assassin's destructive spell.
• Art Shift:
  • PINCH◊ (Knight Blades is done in a similar style to this)
  • The style occasionally changes when controlling Muschio's different minions, like Ashedel and Babrakus but especially the chapter set in the point of view of Tislomer.
• Atomic F-Bomb: This◊ is what finally happens after Muschio's finished examining both maps.
• Big Bad: Muschio. Again, we hope.
• The Big Guy: Dompag, who's an ogre or something. Can hit people real hard and eat lava.
• Black Comedy Rape: Ona's anxieties and delusions contain this.
• Brainwashed: Everyone who wore a mind control bra at Salamander's Tower.
• Brick Joke: The dick-punching battering ram
• Buried Alive: Muschio does this to a person who teased him a long time ago. Turns out Muschio only buried him under about a foot of dirt. The guy escapes, comes back to Muschio, and thanks him for the new perspective on life.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Nino, the neurotic fish-man working for the High Roller in the beginning becomes a ship captain and helps Muschio sneak into Tela Cruz in the later chapters.
• Chivalrous Pervert: In spite of the trope below, Dompag is pretty gentlemanly around women and doesn't rush toward sex.
• The Collector: Dompag's goal is to have sex with as many "weird" women as possible.
• Deus Sex Machina:
  • There's only one cure for Nymph's Jinx . . .
  • Anonymous also tries to force the characters into coitus at every conceivable and improbably instance, though Muschio and the others just shrug it off (most of the time).
  • This was also believed to be the way the divided Red Mesa kingdom could be reunited.
• Disaster Dominoes: More or less the only way Muschio succeeds at anything. In Chapter 13, Muschio gets milk thrown at him whilst in a bar. This leads to him attracting lots of cats while he's in a store. Out of anger, Muschio throws a jar of perfume down on the ground. Then he steals some items and takes a klutzy bow which knocks over some incense. The incense hitting the perfume causes the store to go up in flames. The cats catch on fire as well. One such cat goes into the bar Muschio was in. Someone tries chasing Muschio, yelling that he was the one that started the fire. Muschio fires a hidden mini-crossbow at the chaser. The chaser kills himself by slashing himself in the throat while deflecting the arrow. Where does the arrow land? In the church's priest, of course! He slumps over when he's dead, breaking his oil container and catching himself on fire.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: Inverted. The Orb automatically heals damage to itself, allowing shards to be broken off and implanted in infinite numbers of Muschio's employees.
• Disproportionate Retribution: See Buried Alive above. Muschio also got his girlfriend locked up away from humanity.
• Dramatic Irony: Knight Blades is a parallel quest involving one of the knights of the fallen Lord Malto. He fights evil, such as this "Boss" character who seems to be making such a fuss. No one has told him.
• Evil Laugh: Muschio is good at it.◊ So is Finesse.◊
• The Evil Prince: Muschio, the heir to the extinct throne of North Piacevole.
• Expressive Accessory : The skull on Ona's hat usually mirrors her facial expressions.
• Fallen Hero: Lord Malto, which led to his son wanting to become the devil.
• Freudian Threat: "I WILL TEAR HIS FUCKING NIPPLES OFF WITH MY BARE HANDS" and "I WILL CUT YOUR DICK OFF AND BITE OUT YOUR ORGANS".
• Full-Frontal Assault: Arabella tears off her clothes so she can rampage unhindered against the onslaught of the sprites at Salamander's Tower.
• Funetik Aksent: Dompag. He's damn near impossible to decipher when he initially starts talking to the players; when he notices they're having trouble, he suggests some of the various personalities he affects depending on the situation; first the Hulk Speak big dumb ogre act, then a refined gentleman. By the time he goes to talk to Finesse and Tislomer, he settles on a much more casual one, heavy on contractions but otherwise legible.
• Gratuitous Italian: Muschio Malto (Moss Malt), Iniziare Città (Begin City), Piacevole (Pleasant), Timore (Apprehension)...
• Groin Attack: Female version: "AAAAAAAHHH! OH GOD! RIGHT IN THE TACO! HNNNNGH!"
• Hot Springs Episode: Chapter 15◊
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl:
  • Finesse was propositioned by Dompag, an ogre three times her size.
  • Dompag protests to the reader that he absolutely knows how to handle a girl he could accidentally swallow (hopefully he means with great, great care).
• Hurricane of Puns: Chapter 12 has a "Carpenter's Pun-Off".
• If you can read this, please reload the spear trap
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Chapter 12. A friendly Sprite in Tela Cruz also makes one of these.
• Interspecies Romance: Muschio is a Volto and Finesse is a goblin. Also, Tislomer (a kobold) went on a date with a human and Muschio had sex with both Ashedel (a Nedynvor) and Arabella (an orc).
• Intoxication Ensues: "Why does everything taste soft all of a sudden"
• Lampshade Hanging:
  Who on earth would put any manner key inside a can and seal it? What sense does that possibly stand to make?
• Lava Adds Awesome: We haven't seen it yet—well, he has eaten fire—but Dompag claims to be able to eat lava.
• Little Brother Worship Geppa, aka Gray Fang, adores her honorary little brother Dompag to no end.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Dompag. Though his thoughtfulness actually outweighs his libido most of the time.
• Meaningful Name: Sir Ridder, the knight. The Dutch word for knight is ridder.
• Mood Whiplash: Happens somewhat often, even from characters that aren't taking orders from twenty different people at once.
• Noodle Incident:
  >How the hell do you know what an automatic vendor is?
  >Or cardboard?
  Those dwarves, my friend.
  Those dwarves.
• Nosebleed: Muschio gets one in Chapter 14. But it turns out not to be the arousal kind . . .
• Nothing Is Scarier: Muschio arrives back at his lair, and none of his minions can be found. He eventually stabs water from a well out of paranoia.
• Not So Stoic: When Muschio flips out, he really flips out.
  Muschio: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!
• Overly Long Gag: Muschio's just about to visit Ridder's base. Then a Denling enters the room and gives Muschio a map to where his enemy resides. Cue Muschio thinking it over for about half the chapter.
• Papa Wolf: Muschio takes his duty to his subjects very seriously:
  Muschio:: Understand that I have dealt with abominable wretches and criminals. I have allied with monsters. Some parts of me wanted to offer you amnesty. Even employment. Maybe I even could have forgiven that you intruded into my mind.
  But you shackled Pendle. You tried to kill Ona. And Wes.
  You came for MY people. MY subjects. Under MY PROTECTION.
  THE ONLY PATH FOR YOU NOW IS ANNIHILATION!
• Punny Name: Princess Vittima (Victim)
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Muschio is red. Ridder (of Knight Blades, a parallel quest), is blue.
• Red Right Hand: Or rather, Giant Right Hand, in Finesse's case.
• Running Gag: Muschio wearing hats.
• Shared Universe:
  • With Knight Blades, leading to a crossover in both of their Hot Springs Episode. Interestingly, the characters are portrayed with different art styles in each quest, even when they're in the same scene.
  • There have also been slight hints that the Rubyverse may be the future of Diveverse, such as the painting (and cross-peg) from the High Roller's house which resembles the one from Ruby Quest. When asked about it, the High Roller explained that it "was salvaged from the Cult of the Barbed Wheel in the Southeast, before their altar sank into the sea and they vanished from the face of the earth".
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Muschio. Not so much recently, though. Maybe the poison got to him.
  • As of Chapter 20, it's back with a vengeance. Maybe the breakfast did him some good.
• Shout-Out: One of your first foes is a children's author named Mabel Syrup, who sics "Commander Corriander" on you. That's right, a reference to a single throwaway gag from Calvin and Hobbes.
  • The title of Chapter 17 is a reference to a song by the Dropkick Murphys, which gets a few lines sung by Tislomer and Babrakus.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: The goblin servant Grek from chapter 19, who says "feck" almost continuously. She's altogether pretty rude. Ona also has her moments, but Geppa is a serious potty-mouth.
• Smoking Hot Sex: Muschio and Ashedel.
• Soap Opera Disease: Nymph's Jinx.
• Strip Poker: Ashedel does this with Muschio to get his guard down.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: Muschio has some trouble with this when trying to cure Arabella's Nymph's Jinx.
• Those Two Guys That Guy and Girl: Tislomer and Babrakus were formerly this (especially because everyone though Tislomer was a dude). Now subverted, as both have recieved character development... As well as a Relationship Upgrade.
• Through The Eyes Of Cloudcuckoolanderness: Chapter 10, where the viewpoint shifts to Charmedfrightened Tislomer. It seems she has a very loose grasp on reality.
  • To the point that commentors weren't aware until after the chapter was over that it was related to Dive Quest at all!
    • There's a couple of hints if you're looking careful. Tislomer refers to "Finnie" (Finesse) and "the big boobied bird lady" (Ashedel). There's also the three "dolls" that "Big Boss" throws into the "swirly thing" (Muschio got three Odd mannikins from Commander Salamander).
• Villain Protagonist: All of the main characters, but Muschio really stands out. This is a guy who accidentally burned a city to the ground and was very pleased about it.
• Yandere: Finesse has some shades of this, what with faking a disease to get Muschio to have sex with her and trying to slip him an aphrodisiac. Of course that second one backfired horribly . . .
  • She seems to have pulled back a bit after the accidental poisoning.
• Your Head A-Splode: Muschio throws an explosive potion at a monster. Guess what happens.

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