Aggroedius the Lightbringer claps your hand. "I trust you know what you're doing. Killing (insert your name here, destroyer of worlds) won't be easy. She can infect your mind with nightmares. She'll claw at your flesh. And beware her offspring. They're small, but their venom can turn your veins dark as night." Something about how he said it makes your skin crawl for just a second.

Another man would balk at this task, but you've trained for this. You're ready for this. And you're not alone. You look over your shoulder and see 10 of the finest warriors in the realm ready to lend shield, blade, and rod to your aid. These summoners can fight!

In your heart you know this evil must be rooted out. Children are dying as she feeds at night. You know what you have to do. You raise your fist to the sky and shout "the Howlright Protectors are ready to serve the realm! We shall be VICTORIOUS!" Your clan cheers banging the tables and clanking their weapons!

Aggroedius wishes you best fortune and you and your crew begin the steady march to Acid Lake and prepare to bring the beast to it's end. You're haunted by this coming combat, but more haunted by a touch of bloodlust you saw in the eyes of Aggroedius... is he infected with the Burn?

---

Steem Monsters is auctioning off getting placed in the game as a Boss in a Boss Fight

You can read more about this below, but the game will feature guilds and guilds can cooperate in PVP and PVE events. PVP events include guild tournaments where guilds fight one another for glory and riches. We'll also include PVE events where we'll provide challenges beyond Legendary cards that will take a whole guild of leveled bad asses to defeat. These are Heroic Boss Monsters!

We want this game to be crafted not only with the players in mind, but with the actual players. @berniesanders aka @nextgencrypto was the first to build the entire alpha set of cards. We're going to put in an achievement into the game for folks who get every alpha card and call it "Feed the Burn!" This is a pun that's both a reference to the desire to collect cards and also an homage to his nickname Bernie.

@reseller was the first that I know of to assemble a max level Summoner (possibly max level anything). His Discord handle is reseller of souls. I'm planning on making the zippy 1-liner for Zintar "Reseller of Souls." What characters do in the game I will do my best to keep track of and keep building into the lore of the game. You'll be etched into Steem Monsters immutably on the block.

We're looking for a total Boss!

These guilds are going to need an epic challenge to face. We want it to be you! We're putting together an auction now so that you can be put into the game as the first Boss in the first Guild Boss fights. We suspect that fighting itself will start in September. Boss fights and guild fights may take longer. That's also a product road map and it's in no way a product guarantee. What is a promise is that we'll build you into the game, but the timeline is not completely known. I'm betting it's done before December.

Anyway, I'm going to accept a starting bid of 100 Steem to be put into the game as the very first Boss. Every single guild is highly likely to fight your character many times over the coming years. The highest bid at the end of payout on this post will win the auction. Money will go to @steemmonsters to fund development and tournament payouts. In the event someone pledges more than they can pay or fails to pay their bid from the auction it will then proceed to the next highest bid. If you're deliberately putting in bids you can't pay you'll be blacklisted from the game.

We'll work with you on designing a character backstory, a fight where you're the centerpiece, an image of what the fight looks like, an image of you, and what kind of monster and ability set you want to have to kill all the newbs that dare to face you! It's likely we'll try to build some comics and possibly some animations around this thing too. You're going to feel like a heroic boss when the platform is all talking about you and how to defeat you!

This auction will result in some back and forth between me and the winner. The text at the top of this post is simply a brief first pass to wet your appetite for what we have in mind. We want you to bid, but we hope that you'll be a good partner in designing your character with us and not just send us money and a name and call it quits.

There will be other auctions for cool stuff in the game, and you'll be able to get built in for doing epic things like being the first guild to kill this Boss. There's going to be other opportunities to get in... but there can only be one first Boss Fight in the game. Will it be you?

Bidders start your engines you have until Post Payout!

What is Steem Monsters?

Steem Monsters is a collectible trading card drafting game with RPG elements based on the Steem Blockchain. That's a mouthful... Let's break it down.

Collectible trading card - The game is currently in alpha and combat and auctions don't function yet, but we're working furiously to get there. In the mean time you can get a feel for where we're taking this game. You purchase the starter pack with 30 cards for $5 (this price will rise as we get more of the game developed). It contains summoners who can summon monsters, and monsters that can fight for you.

Drafting- The way the game is played is that you're choosing a summoner, using their mana to summon monsters of a certain mana cost, and those monsters will fight their opponents. This game does not play like hearthstone or MTG where it's a card turn by turn. It's more like a drafting system, like an NFL draft, where you're picking a team that you think will be victorious out of your roster versus teams of other summoners and monsters picked from their roster.

RPG elements- All of the cards in the game will have the ability to level up as they gain experience. Every fight they enter will award them one experience. In a tournament they could win more than one experience by advancing rounds and entering new fights. As the cards fight they will gain experience, which will lead to levels which will grant higher stats and greater abilities.

The cards have a level cap based on rarity. Commons can go up to level 10 and take a total of 378 cards to get there. Rares can reach level 8 and take a combined 85 cards to get there. Epics can go to level 6 and take a combined 31 cards to get there, and LEGENDARY cards take 7 cards to reach max level 4. You can pay money to buy decks and speed up getting to max level... but you can't pass max level!

(Numbers were edited to reflect actual values, I had previous published just the number required for the last level)

Modes of Play

The game is in alpha. The whole thing doesn't work yet. This is a product road map so you can see where we're going.

Dailies. We envision a number of relatively easy daily quests that you can fight that will slowly earn you free packs for your daily commitment to play the game.
Story line. We imagine that you'll fight along a preset path of set opponents to earn packs and gear. The combats will get progressively harder requiring better monsters and better strategy.
PVP. We'll offer two types of fighting here. Free PVP and paid PVP. Free PVP will be a steemmonsters sponsered tournament. We'l take money you give us for cards and put it into reward pools for the tournaments. The first one in Beta I promise to make worth 1000 SBD to victors. I'll try to make more and grow the prize pool over time. We'll also offer paid PVP tournaments where like in poker you'll have a buy in and those who place will receive the combined pot as their winnings.
Guilds. We'll offer PVP and PVE. You'll get together in groups (currently planning on 11 fighters) and you'll either smash other guilds in tournaments or smash preset bosses in boss fights. Your guild will earn glory and riches for slaying one another or Heroic Boss Monsters.

Fighting is simulated

I just want to stress that this game does not play like MTG or Hearthstone. It's a drafting game. Those games are beyond the scope for the moment. This is a game where you pick the team and the computer will simulate the fights in the tournament and spit out winners. The game is highly strategic because it's all about the choices you make and how you equip your summoners and monsters and how you react to the meta (choices that your peers are consistently making).

Story in the game

There will be some main story arcs and some fun story archs. As the Legendary and epic cards level and significant events and achievements happen for you we'll reveal more of the central story. As your other cards level we'll reveal some personal details and give you flavor for the monsters. You won't get all stories at level 1. We'll build it so that as you level more and more details will be revealed about your monsters and about the whole story to the realm.

If you're writing stories for the game we'll build them into the game and we'll attribute your work and make sure that clickable links will bring people to your profile page! Be sure to check out @steemmonsters for contests that are starting up and pop into submissions in the Discord to let us see or use your work.

Success so far

We've sold over 10k booster packs and made over $30k dollars. The announcement post hasn't even paid out yet. This game is going to go insanely viral. I'm daunted and excited to deal with that. You're gonna have fun. You're gonna have people to play with. Your cards will retain their value. You're gonna want to be a part of this... maybe you'll be a Heroic Boss Monster!