A Stricken Beauty

[salientStrategist]

You take your place as THIEF OF TIME in the LAND OF CORUSCATION AND TEN IMMENSE OPULENT NEWFOUNDLANDS. You don't know how you know this, but you do know that saying the LAND OF CORUSCATION AND TEN IMMENSE OPULENT NEWFOUNDLANDS is going to get annoying so you shorten it to LOCATION. Weird how that worked out so well.

You are still holding a cold little green baby nutbeast. Odd, you have a feeling it should have disappeared when you entered the Medium. The mist-y eggshell thing is gone though. You also have a feeling your environment has changed, judging by the dry air that was blowing through the open door. It smelled of bare stone and cold, not like warmth and earth as it would in a forest. You would investigate.

On the porch, you gazed quietly out into the emptiness. It was dark, very very dark. It was also extremely cold, and the wind was unwavering in its easterly course. What you could see was grim; petrified trees stood in a facsimile of a living forest, with not a bird or beast or even a leaf in sight. A dust swirled in the air.

But it wasn't all bad: your breath woke the dust and made it flash and shine like sparks. If a mote touched you, it twinkled and rose for a moment before dying again. Warmth made this world glitter.

A movement in the corner of your eye. You crossed to the other side of the porch, leaning out to see what it was. You were startled when the small branch that made the railing of porch was cold and lifeless rather than textured and bark-like. Even your hive-tree had been turned to stone. You inspected the petrified wood. Just like the dust, the stone began to glimmer and give forth light when warmed. You saw that the branch was formed of different crystals that shone slightly different colors with the heat of your hands.

But a rushing sound returned your attention to the sky where you had seen the movement. Something really, really big and black was hurtling through the sky toward the hive. A little too surprised to do anything, you simply stared as a mind-bogglingly huge dogbeast landed in front of you, then gathered itself for another mighty leap. All around it, the dust flared, making the beast look like a sparkling comet. And it was gone, sailing over your hive.

You are thinking how awesome all this cool dust stuff is when you realize two things: there was an unsightly creature standing next to the totem lathe, and that with each breath, you sent out a huge beacon to anything that might want to attack you.

Unusually fast, the ugly thing came rushing toward you, baring its ridiculously fearsome and awesomely sharp claws at you.

But hey, your reflexes were trained by the very same nutbeast this vile creature had taken the qualities of. No base derivative could hope to match the speed and efficiency of Nutty himself.

So you bonked it on the head with your staff and watched it collapse. A glance confirmed something you had suspected: this thing did not make the dust glow. You had a feeling that it was evil if it did not make the dust glow.

SPRITELOG
Nuttysprite: IT ISN'T DEAD YET!!!! KILL IT DEAD!!!
Kyanas: Fine. Do yyou know the quuickest wayy?
Nuttysprite: Strike it here. REALLY HARD!!!

Nutty indicated a spot on the creature's torso. With a quick blow, it was done.

SPRITELOG
Nuttysprite: Now I'm suupposed to tell yyou that yyou kill these things to get experience and currencyy and whatnot. But I'm not. YYou know that alreadyy.
Kyanas: I'd figured, yyeah.
Nuttysprite: AND THAT'S WHY YOU ARE THE BEST!!!
Kyanas: Thanks, yyou balmyy old nutter.

You never could resist the nut jokes around your lusus. And he really was balmy, it was true. You accepted a hug anyway.

SPRITELOG
Kyanas: So are there anyy other pressuure points on these things?
Nuttysprite: Suure there are. Theyy are called imps, byy the wayy. Also yyou will encounter basiilisks, liches, ogres, and some other things that are big and frightening. Standard fare, yyou see. The creators of this game were not particularlyy creative.

You see, Nutty stopped yelling when he was saying something important. Good old balmy nutter. He showed you a few more, and also went through the major ones on the basilisks and ogres.

SPRITELOG
Nuttysprite: Also, collect grist.
Kyanas: I knew that one alreadyy.
Nuttysprite: YOU ARE A SMART ONE!!
Kyanas: Thanks. Byy the wayy, what am I suupposed to do with this thing?

You show Nutty the little green nutbeast.

SPRITELOG
Nuttysprite: YYou aren't suupposed to keep it, but I don't see anyy harm in it. It ought to have dissolved.
Kyanas: Well then it's alright if I keep it?
Nuttysprite: DON'T SEE WHY NOT!! IT'S CUTE!!!!

Well then, that's good. You have a feeling it will come in handy, somehow. You sure have been getting an awful lot of vague feelings in the past few minutes. Maybe it is the new title. You don't think your title matters quite yet anyway.

---

Excellent, you've acclimated to your new place and now you should do something.

[Quakerlol]

==> Go make a dust angel and gaze at the sparkles.

OR

==> Check in on your client player

[salientStrategist]

==> Go make a dust angel and gaze at the sparkles.


You decide not to do this, since it would attract more of the imps. However, you cannot keep yourself from gazing momentarily out into the empty air and watching your breath make sparklies in the air. As you are doing so, you think that you might have seen a darker shadow against the black sky, but it was unclear. You are troubled by this, but figure you are safe as long as you stayed in the house.

Instead, you investigate the two pyramid-ish things that the imp left behind when it died. They were shaped almost like candy, and seemed rather inportant. As you went to pick one up, it dissolved as soon as it touched you. Vaguely aware of some shift in resources, you thought that maybe this stuff was the physical form of the grist that was to be collected. Anyway, you receive 17 bg.

And jegus, there was another imp coming over the railing. With a poke and a sideways smack you cracked his cranium (insofar as carapaced creatures have craniums) and he left more grist. This time, there was one of the blue grist and two of some other type, this one purple. You touch them all and receive 4 bg and 9 shale (sl).

You espy quite a few more of the buggers climbing up your tree. You have a feeling it will be a while before you have any peace and quiet. You stand resolute waiting for the rest of the climbers to make it to your porch, allowing them to stand on the porch so that you would have a good surface to attack from.

After a boring and short fight scene, there is one imp cowering in the corner, one almost dead in front of you, and a small pile of multiple different grists lying around. You are studying the physiology of the imp in front of you. You can distinctly see large, blunt and powerful claws on it's feet; long, sharp nutbeast's claws on its fingers; things that look like filters on its face; and lastly what seems to be a random assortment of other characteristics, including gills. A quick glance at the other imp reveals that his random assortment was indeed different, as well as lacking the sharp claws. He had a large snout and beady eyes instead.

You are forced to conclude that each prototyping gave certain characteristics to the demons of this realm. Putting the poor imp out of his misery (since he could hardly live with two fractured kneecaps), you let the other beast escape.

You have a feeling you incurred at least two or three, or possibly more levels in this process. You are now an UPSTART PADAWAN.

---

What will you do now that you have figured out the most basic part of the game?

[Quakerlol]

==> Contact your server player for a GRIST PARTY!!!

Or

==> Contact your client player and check in on her.

[salientStrategist]

==> Contact your client player and check in on her.


This seems like an acceptable plan.

But first, you are going to see what that Gristtorrent thing you downloaded is all about.

It's already been installed on your machine, but you haven't run it yet. Clicking on the little green icon pulls up yet another interface. You have a feeling you will become sick of interfaces by the end of this game.

Well, it was obviously a torrenting program; the 'seeding' and 'leeching' labels gave it away if the name didn't do it for you. Already, the spirograph next to your name was green and spinning, obviously active. Lerena's and Aruale's were spinning as well. They seemed to match one's text color. Isaard, Stebia, and Kratus's were grayed out.

Oh! No, there came Isaard. So that was mostly everyone. Glancing down at his total grist, you were astonished to find he had an extremely large amount. Flipping back to yours, you saw you had a little over 2,000 bg and 11 sl. You had enough to buy a designix! If you could catch Isaard's attention to deploy it...

Ah well. If this was a torrenting program, perhaps you could send him some sl so he could get a designix immediately. After fiddling around a bit, you deduced that one could send whatever amount of grist one wanted to whomever one wanted whenever one chose. You swiftly sent 4 sl over to Isaard.

Since you felt Isaard had plenty of bg, you decided to leech some off of him. Sadly, the download speed was only 2 bg a second. Torrenting large amounts of grist at one time seemed to only be possible if one gifted grist.

Hmm. You should talk to Isaard and get him to download the program so that he could send people grist if he so chose. In fact, you should probably send everyone the program. You will start with Lerena, since she is your client and you probably need to check on her anyway.

herobound.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pester2&action=display&thread=66

That was sorted out then. You feel a bit bad you forgot you could send her the requisite grists. Anyhow, you had been curious to see what weapons she used.

How is it that she 'knew things'? It was ridiculous. You should have taken her up on her offer to explain the punch designix to you. Ah well.

---

Well that is that, you suppose. Perhaps Isaard should get online so you can talk to him.

[Quakerlol]

==> YEAH PERHAPS HE SHOULD WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE WADE GET YOUR BUTT ONLINE.

[Shipfish]

==> Pester Isaard and get a designix.


What a lovely idea. Pity Isaard isn't on yet, you would have loved to talk to him. In the meantime, you ought to do something. Hmm, why not pester Aruale?

herobound.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pester2&action=display&thread=71

You got her Gristtorrent, so she can use that whenever she wishes now. But what to do? With a glance around, you realize not much.

So you stalk Gristtorrent. You again find the function for sending grist, and leeching it. Many things could be done with this program! But it wasn't very exciting once you got past that. You look up from your screen, wondering what you could possibly do next. You set Pesterchum to beep if any of your friends come online, and get up and stretch.

Mmm, that felt good. You unconsciously flow through a few wide defensive stances from your hand-to-hand combat sweeps. Speeding up a bit, you begin an attack sequence, culminating in a jump-kick. You land a bit awkwardly, twisting an ankle a bit. You find yourself near the railing again, and look over, waiting for your ankle to quit its whining. So quiet, this place. It was peaceful. The only sound was the constant rasp of dust hitting the trees, and even it was soothing. You tire of looking at the ground and instead focus on the sky.

Low on the eastern horizon (might as well call it east, it seemed to be rising from that direction), and about the size Alternia's small purple moon, Clytemnestra, sat a blue sphere. Large white clouds drifted across its face, and it seemed to have a golden satellite. It was the only source of illumination in this whole place. Looking at your own skin, you saw it had a different cast to than you were accustomed, brighter. Now that you thought about it, you would miss the twin shadows. Even now the light was too diffuse to cast much of a shadow.

Hmm. Maybe that blue thing was not the only thing in the sky. Leaning outward, you saw a bright green speck that vacillated oddly against the black. Ah, you had the perfect thing for this. Inside one of the cases in the front room, behind the totem lathe, was an antique spyglass you had picked up from the market because it was cheap and the merchant had no idea how valuable it was. You had figured you would sell it eventually, but you became attached to it. It was useful for looking at far-away things, like that green speck happened to be.

We shall skip the montage of dragging the totem lathe around to reach the case, but the good news is that the spyglass is now in your hand. You again lean backwards over the railing, and extend the spyglass, to bring the speck into focus. It was another of those spirographs, the same as in Gristtorrent and the sprites, before they were prototyped. Though you could be wrong, the fact that the speck was in your blood color suggested it was a goal of some sort. Snapping the spyglass closed with a satisfying snick, you checked on your computer. Isaard was online! Brilliant!

herobound.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pester2&action=display&thread=75

The boy was still upset over Lerena. He did have a point with the bit about destroying the troll race, but to be honest you didn't know if it was truly her fault. You thought it was rather more likely that she had used the game to save herself and Aruale, and by extension yourself, Stebia, Isaard, and Kratus from the impending doom of the meteors. A sickening feeling was brewing in the pit of your stomach. Perhaps Lerena had meant to kill everyone. You sincerely hoped not, elsewise you might have to incapacitate her for the good of the group.

But the good news is that you now have a punch designix, finally. You can't wait to figure out what it does.

---

So what does it do?

[Quakerlol]

==> Use logic to figure it out!

OR

==> Pester someone who knows

[Shipfish]

==> Use logic to figure it out.


This seems like an acceptable plan.

The object in question was quite plain. It was vaguely desk shaped, or perhaps a miniature piano. A keyboard was present on the device, and a slot. You reflected a bit on the name of the object. A punch designix... Could it have something to with the prepunched card you received? Well, you supposed, you could try putting a captchalogue card in there and see.

You see what unimportant item you can find in your modus. There, that was a very shabby looking army, it probably did not contain anything important. With a few quick moves, you kill it off and out pops a stick from your sylladex. Lovely. You always had plenty of sticks in there, one never knew when the forceful ejection of a stick could save your life from a rampaging maulbeast.

Glancing at the code on the back (you assume code must be typed in in order to punch the card) you see that it is a vaguely punny word. Why were they always cute? It wasn't like anyone looked at them ever. You slid the card into the slot, typed in the code, and with a sound like a three-hole punch, out slides a card that has many holes in it, keeping the stick inside from being accessed. It wasn't like you needed it, but the inability to get it back still stung.

You grabbed a violently green cruxite dowel to use in the lathe. Waiting for the thing to finish, you glance at the nearest case. You had been collecting odd bits for a while now, often in the hopes to sell them, though some you simply could not sell because you became attached to them. These particular items were supposed to be magic stones of some power, although at the moment the black rocks were all touching an opaline stone to cancel the inherent magic. The dealer thought they were cursed, but they weren't. You were reasonably sure they were used to cast communication spells, although with what sort of being it was unclear. It was all quackery anyway, why you bothered keeping them you don't know.

Ah, the lathe was done. Taking the completed totem to the alchimiter, you fired everything up. My, this was rather exciting. Out came... a stick. And the denoument was rather less exciting than the rising action.

Well, you could now make as many sticks as you required. You quickly make a half-dozen or so, with only a negligible tax on your resources according to Gristtorrent. This was rather boring. You stomp back to the punch designix and prepare to type in another code. This time, perhaps that other shabby army that had been lurking in the Carpathian mountains the last time you had checked up on them.

Surrounding their hastily-fortified camp was a breeze, and you only lost a few dumb archers getting into the compound. You had been meaning to fire them anyway and get some new ones. Excellent, this one contained another mostly useless item, an old shirt.

Not even thinking, you punch the code in for the shirt while the stick card it still in the machine. You get out a card that looks to be more holes than matrix. Well that was a bit of a mistake. Oh well, you will make a totem for it anyway.

This is boring. Anyway, the end result of the merger was a stick shaped thing made of shirt material. That was essentially useless, though it brought up the interesting possiblity of combining items. Perhaps you could combine other items this way...

So what happened while the command console was not paying attention is that you got all the important stuff out of your inventory, including a highly guarded blank captchalogue card. Those things used to be sort of prized, but now that you have about a zillion of them you don't think they will be worth even a single unit of infantry. It was always nice to find a lone infantry-man wandering the plains of Elphondrath and kill him for a speck of dust or whatever you had accidentally captchalogued once upon a time.

Oh, and you thought of overlapping the cards rather than double-punching them. When you tried it with the stick and shirt, you got a shirt made of wood, which you promptly broke up and made into a lovely sort of pile-sculpture.

---

Unless you can think of some good items to combine, this is going to get rather boring. Don't forget the unnamed items in the cases.

[Quakerlol]

==> Make a more portable computer, as well as a bunch of other cool stuff.

[Shipfish]

==> Make a more portable computer, as well as a bunch of other cool stuff.


You could do that you guess. You try to think of a way to combine the items at your disposal to create a more portable computing device. Well, you had a pane of glass right here, from that time Nutty busted a window. You had your computer, of course, and the solar charger. You punch the codes for all three onto blank cards, laughing a bit at each slightly funny code.

First you && the charger and the computer. The end result was a charger-shaped computer that was absolutely useless. Trying an || combination, you get a computer that was scaled with solar cells. It had some cutesy name but you didn't care. You immediately combined it && style with the glass pane and get out...

A SLEEK SCIFI-STYLE TABLET. This is going to be epic to use. It seems to have quite a few new programs on it, possibly resulting from the added utility of being able to frame things with the slightly transparent screen. Besides, it was a little smaller than your old thing, and quite a bit lighter.

You get over how cool this new toy is very quickly. Your mind turns to other things to combine. Perhaps you should make a better light, your lantern was not very bright. Though, when it came down to it, you couldn't think of anything better to combine the lantern with. You look over the rest of your itemage.

You remembered that tiny cold statuette. It was in one of your pockets, right? Yes, it's there. It was still rather chilly, despite having been next to your body heat for a decent amount of time. You captchalogue it, and retrieve its code from a surprisingly strong multiple-army setup. WiTH th3 cl0cK, it said. Welp. You couldn't ignore a message from the universe, could you?

You grab the old timekeeping device from the mantle (it had been broken for some sweeps, and the sound it used to strike the hour was simply atrocious) and quickly && it with the statuette and out comes...

The SINGULARITY? It was a spot of extremely bright light, but somehow it was light that didn't cast shadows. It was simultaneously a star and a speck and the eye of a nutbeast, a baby or an adult or an ancient wizened one. It was at once there and not there, as if the space at which it existed was a combination of all times, even the ones at which point it did not exist. You couldn't think of any sort of use for it, other than as a source of illumination for your lantern.

Glancing at the Gristtorrent interface, you saw that that alchemization had cost you a significant portion of your grist. You frowned. You simply must keep a tight lid on those things, never know when you would get a chance to kill imps again.

You || the SINGULARITY with your lantern. The combination did not cost too much grist, thankfully. Something vague warned you not to open it and shine it on anything yet. These vague sort of feelings were getting really old.

Besides the point, you had decided you were going to alchemize one additional thing before going out to find more imps and kill them for their grist. Looking around, you couldn't think of anything more important to combine. How about something frivolous then? You think about it a bit, and snatch a random movie from the other room (one about a telekinetic guy who may or may not actually have a father, and may have instead been fathered by an ephemeral force, but this particular installment was more about his mentor, who travels around in space looking for bad guys who are against his religion/philosophy whilst riding on a ferocious blue lizard whom you adore and wielding a contradiction of physics) and a relic from your by-gone days of actually caring about games and such (one about capturing and enslaving adorable small animals and making them fight for you before putting them back into tiny spherical cages until you wished to fight with them again) and ||'d them.

You got a WORKING POKEBALL. Rather exciting, you suppose, although you have no idea if it actually works, or if it is of any use at all against the beasts of this place.

---

Ok, that much is finished. You said you were going to kill more imps but you are a little lazy. What should you do now?

[Quakerlol]

==> Kill more imps, get more grist!

OR

==> Talk to someone!

OR

==> Figure out how to get up to your gate!

[Radiodragon]

==> I agree with the other command user, it's high time you went through your gate.

[Shipfish]

==> Kill more imps, get more grist!


This seems to be in order. You captchalogue your Pokeball and the tablet, and hold the lantern in your hand because it seems very important and difficult to retrieve from your modus.

Speaking of which, the time until reset was dwindling. The RISK modus was an absolute breeze most of the time, but twice a perigee it reset the status of your armies so that it became sort of difficult to defeat even a shabby band of hedge knights. It looked like you had a little more than 37 hours until reset time, so you would make sure to keep all the important items out of the sylladex for the time it took to hire and train a more competent force.

But you were still not quite ready. In the kitchen, you grabbed the little metal hook that you could attach to the top of your staff so you could carry the lantern higher. Traveling downstairs, into your lusus' den/ storage area, you grabbed some rope and a few packaged protein items. You decided putting them in a bag was too much work so you just put them in your sylladex.

With another strand of rope to complete the set, you trooped up to the porch and tied a strong knot so you could ascend without using the pre-made rope ladder or the somewhat rickety board-ladder nailed to the tree. You had been meaning to install some stairs, but you never got around to it since no one ever visited your hive and you didn't care.

But one last thing.

SPRITELOG:
Kyanas: Heyy, Nuttyy.
Nuttysprite: YES? WHAT IS IT? IS IT EXCITING?!
Kyanas: No, no, just wanted to ask yyou if yyou would keep imps and stuff awayy from the hive if I went down to find more grist.
Nuttysprite: I will. I'm not suure yyou are suuposed to go down there yyet, but if yyou stayy on the plateau I think it's fine.
Kyanas: There's a plateau?
Nuttysprite: The game has to keep the reallyy big monsters awayy from yyou somehow, doesn't it?
Kyanas: Interesting wayy to do that. Well, byye I guess. See yyou again in an hour or something.
Nuttysprite: BYE!! GET LOTS OF SPARKLY GRIST!!!

You shimmied down the rope as quickly as you could, and Nuttysprite phased through the railing to watch you descend.

You saw that it was a good thing you had dropped the rope instead of trying to go down the board-ladder. Though identical in all other ways to your hive-tree, this new one was a good deal taller, and the board-ladder ended ten or fifteen feet above the ground.

As your feet touched the ground, the omnipresent dust stirred into sparkling puffs and spirals. Kicking at it produced a plume of scintillating grains that took many seconds to drift down into darkness again. A part of yourself delighted in the show of lights, but a more practical part thought that is was a spectacular way to show off your position.

You knotted the rope so that it didn't touch the ground, using your staff to push it up out of the reach of the imps. Thus finished, you turn to survey your possible routes.

---

Where will you go?

[Quakerlol]

==> Wander off of the path and get eaten by a grue

OR

==> Go east!

OR

==> Kick up a bunch more sparklies and let the imps come to you. No sense in giving up your position.