Legacy of the Forgotten Ground (Original)

[siflux]

Votes have already been left hanging because I haven't wanted to agree right out or felt like a big debate or like tying up the vote pointlessly.

Click to shrink...

Just putting in my two cents as QM here: I'm writing this quest with a non-blank-slate protagonist, who interprets votes through his own whims and interpretation of the world around him. I read the comments as much as I do the final vote to get an understanding of the players' goals and desires in going for an action, and try to take that all into account. A split vote is meaningful, especially when it comes with discussion attached. As your only window into the world is what I write, you're necessarily going off of incomplete information. Sometimes, I can correct information the protagonist knows is wrong. In this case, you don't really have any insight into the local culture, and the protagonist is just as in the dark as the players are.

Anyway, I guess my point is that even if you don't make a final vote, what you post influences the protagonist's goals; even if you lose a vote, getting more votes for your choice increases the influence the losing choice has on the story. Winning a vote has the greatest influence on immediate and exclusive choices, like spending XP/Mana or where to go.

If you do decide to go quiet, I hope you at least keep reading. I thrive on likes, and if the story goes in a direction you don't want it to, I hope I at least continue writing it in an amusing enough manner that it's worth continuing to read.

Is this the same MP we gain from killing stuff and spend to upgrade the body?

Click to shrink...

Terminology clarification:

MP: magic points, regenerated mostly by resting. Spent to cast utility spells and to enhance attacks with elemental powers. Easy come, easy go. <MP Regeneration> will be useful in fights to increase sustain on stronger attacks.

Mana: Soul-stuff. Gained mostly through consuming other souls. Stronger things provide more of this when eaten. Monsters like you can solidify this power into strengthening their bodies. Due to ancient artifacts, you can also use it to make simple objects at the lab if you have/make blueprints for them.

illusionist is ?

Click to shrink...

Mostly, I don't have mechanics properly in place for illusions yet. Which is no good, because this is very much a non-binary ability and as players you need to be able to judge how much you need to buy for your plans. Unfortunately, I don't see an easy way to solve this without fully designing the non-combat magic system. I think I know what stuff I'm going to crib for it, so go ahead and push for this if you want it and I'll make a post with relevant systems information.

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan Scout and Farm

[x] Ignore the local people, while hunting monsters until you have 12,000 Mana.
-[x] Transmigrate into Floofball (150 MP)
-[x] Upgrade Beast @soul to level 5
-[x] Evolve into Fluffy Fox
-[x] Upgrade Mage Initiate @soul to level 10
-[x] Evolve into One-Tail Kitsune
-[x] Learn new trait Illusionist @soul
-[x] Spend 10,000 Mana fixing up the lab as best as you can

[BESTIARY] Two-Tail Kitsune

Come morning, you're tempted to just take what you want. You're well-rested now. You want to get revenge and learn the language of the vandals. You're a freaking dragon. Why not just capture one of them and force them to teach you?

Because that's dumb, that's why. You don't know enough about this island to do so safely, but you do know they have the infrastructure and training to field anti-air cannons. Primitive ones compared to what humans could do, sure, but if you do decide that your pride is worth giving up on trying for peaceful relations? You have another island worth of targets that don't have that kind of infrastructure. And you'd still rather not go to war with these people, anyway.

It's not like you can't understand where they were coming from. Most monsters are mindlessly violent, and you didn't have a chance to show these people the triangles and squares. They didn't attack a person they didn't recognize; they attacked the incoming freaking dragon.

Well, if they're going to judge based on appearances, you can just change how you look by transmigrating into something humanoid. Wait, no. You don't have the flight capability to make it out here in any of the humanoid forms you know yet, and you need the equipment in the lab to transmigrate. You're not sure if anything off the Raptor line goes humanoid, and humanoid dragons tend to be pretty strong and expensive. You could train up your ability to fly more permanently, so you could make the trip in any form, but that would take at least a few days of farming for XP.

Another option occurs to you: fake it. You can become a Kitsune and figure out how to make magical illusions. Of course, that still runs into the same transmigration and transportation issues. You rumble in frustration.

No matter what you do, you need a better picture of this island and more XP and Mana. You'll deal with that first. Things involving non-sapients are so much simpler. Maybe the local monster population will be strong enough to be able to afford proper repairs for your lab! That would be nice.

And so you hunt. Were you any less mighty, the Butterfly Kings and Purple Papillons here might give you pause. But you're cautious enough to keep taking them by surprise, and a single blast of flaming Dragonbreath is enough to instantly cook both kinds of bug.

Spoiler: Purple Papillon solo farm test, free MP expenditure only, using Flight advantage for Atk

Deal (1564 Dmg + 107 Fire) * 178 Atk / 110 Def = 2703 Damage.
Instakill. Safe to farm.

Spoiler: Butterfly King solo farm test, free MP expenditure only, using Flight advantage for Atk

Deal (1564 Dmg + 107 Fire) * 178 Atk / 160 Def = 1858 Damage.
234 Fire is required for instakill. Within Max MP expenditure. Spending 127 MP for the fight, which fully recovers in under 10 minutes at an MP regeneration rate of 2 even without active rest. Safe to farm.

This lets you focus on getting the lay of the land. You'd already figured out that this island was bigger than Lab Island, but you hadn't realized how much so. And the shape is weird, too. The main body of the island is round, and at least three times as long across as Lab Island. But there's a giant hole in the middle, and at the Northwest edge of island, a pair of spurs jut off, one to the North and one to the West.

You stay well away from towns, but that turns out to be harder than expected. Not only is there the metal fortress that shot at you on the island's Southeast edge, but there's a population center on each of the Northeast peninsulae, and another on the Eastern border of the hole. In the new day's light, you're also able to spot a pair of additional islands.

Sky Atlas updated

The island's misty evergreen forests hold one more surprise for you when you come in for a landing and get attacked by the trees.

Spoiler: Rabid Redwood solo farm test, free MP expenditure only, using Flight advantage for Atk

Receive (500 Dmg + 300 Fire) * 150 Atk / 210 Def - 8 DR - 70 Fire Resist = 493 Damage.
Deal (1564 Dmg + 107 Fire) * 178 Atk / 400 Def - 50 DR - 60 Fire Resist = 633 Damage.
At max fire damage (still slightly more than using Light or Dark, even with his resist):
Deal (1564 Dmg + 490 Fire) * 178 Atk / 400 Def - 50 DR - 60 Fire Resist = 804 Damage.
Battle of attrition won. Unsafe to farm, but not a solo threat.

After you limp away from that fight the victor, you're a lot more cautious. The monster trees blend in with the surrounding forest, but your nose knows the difference.

+11728 mana
+155250 xp

END DAY 11

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

 

[siflux]

The remainder of the plan was not implemented for a few reasons.

1) Uncertainty regarding final implementation, as covered in the story post. The plan would have left you stuck on Lab Island again in the immediate term, and I wasn't certain whether that was the desired end state, since I thought the purpose of going for illusions was to social better.

2) Since you now know more about North Island and have additional islands in the Sky Atlas, you may want to do something different. Or not, whatever. You're free to re-vote the rest of the plan.

There is now an XP formula: (value of highest-level trait)^2.

XP/Mana Farming accomplished in above post: 9 hours mixed bugs, 1 hour healing up from getting into a war of attrition with a flaming tree.

 

[mrttao]

Come morning, you're tempted to just take what you want. You're well-rested now. You want to get revenge and learn the language of the vandals. You're a freaking dragon. Why not just capture one of them and force them to teach you?

Click to shrink...

The idea was not to force them to teach over a prolonged period of time, just capture, show we some math symbols and that are not going to kill them even when given the opportunity, and then release. The entire thing would be a few minutes only. I am starting to think I phrased it in an unclear manner.

Anyways, the illusion idea is better

1) Uncertainty regarding final implementation, as covered in the story post. The plan would have left you stuck on Lab Island again in the immediate term, and I wasn't certain whether that was the desired end state, since I thought the purpose of going for illusions was to social better.

Click to shrink...

That was the intent. the next step would have been farming illusion on soul until it was high enough to appear like a different species than we are, then turning back into a dragon and flying over to the eastern island. landing, disguising self as a humanoid, and walking into town.

Actually, can you just give me a ballpark of how much illusion we need for such a thing? so I can incorporate it into the plan?

---
I had an idea for vulnerability. Since we discussed that a hit that deals 1 damage then blooms into 30 damage due to vulnerability is a bit absurd...

What if the mechanic is that vulnerability points act as bonus damage that has to be taken advantage of at a rate of 1:1?
That is, lets say you have vulnerability 30. Someone hits you for 1 damage, you take 2 damage. they hit you for 10, you take 20 damage. they hit you for 30, you take 60...
but if they hit you for 40, you only take 70 (40 + 30 bonus from vulnerability)

 

[siflux]

ballpark of how much illusion we need for such a thing? so I can incorporate it into the plan?

Click to shrink...

Current prototype on utility magic: level in the trait determines how many points of effect you can use with it. More effect points used means higher cost to maintain it. A continuous visual illusion of self as one of the people would probably only be something like 5 effect points, for a tentative cost of 50 MP/round. With your current MP pool and <MP Regeneration>, that would last you a little under 5 minutes. Additionally, this is for an illusion that doesn't mask non-visual senses, anything that can has the supernatural capability to distinguish monsters from non-monsters (such as other monsters) could still tell you were a monster, and the illusion turns off while you sleep. Getting full-sensory spectrum illusions is not likely to be in your skill level in the near future.

In other words, you probably don't need a heavy investment into <Illusionist> -- One-Tail alone has enough skill, and is already sufficiently humanoid that you could likely get by without use of illusions at all as one, assuming you invested heavily enough in flight to make the hop in that body. But if you are going to be relying on utility magic like illusions, you're going to want to invest a lot more heavily into having more MP and regen to pay for the upkeep.

 

[mrttao]

[x] Plan infiltrate
-[x] Transmigrate into Floofball (150 MP)
-[x] Upgrade Beast @soul to level 5
-[x] Evolve into Fluffy Fox
-[x] Upgrade Mage Initiate @soul to level 10
-[x] Evolve into One-Tail Kitsune
-[x] Learn new trait Illusionist @soul
-[x] Spend 10,000 Mana fixing up the lab as best as you can
-[x] From now on keep 2000 mana in reserve.
-[x] Add wings, flight, and dragonflight to body. upgrade each of them to level 15
-[x] Upgrade wings, flight, and dragonflight on soul to level 20 each
-[x] Design clothes and a weapon based on those you have seen the vandals wearing for your new kitsune body.
-[x] Upgrade illusion @ soul to level 10
-[x] Fly over to pink flower island, using your animal-humanoid form to blend in alongside your illusion skills if needed. Speaking in the language of humans from your time and try to get along enough to learn their language. Also try to learn how they travel between different islands, history, etc.
[BESTIARY] Kitsune evolution

Also, how visible is the lab? can we mostly bury it so that the only way into it would be to pass through a hidden cave system as well as clearing some dirt to reach it?
I am assuming earth elementalism gives us some measure of control over earth that is and that we can use that to mask the lab's presence.

 

[siflux]

Also, how visible is the lab? can we mostly bury it so that the only way into it would be to pass through a hidden cave system as well as clearing some dirt to reach it?

Click to shrink...

The lab has one story above ground, with a footprint of a few hundred square meters. The terrain around it is flat and sufficiently covered in plant life that you're going to need a plan slightly more complex than 'bury it in dirt' to not leave it obvious that there's something buried there. You also don't currently have any major force multipliers for reshaping terrain, so that kind of project would take a non-trivial amount of time to implement right now.

I am assuming earth elementalism gives us some measure of control over earth that is and that we can use that to mask the lab's presence.

Click to shrink...

The basic <{Element}> traits are more about attuning yourself to the element in the first place, which can be used as a foundation to improve later skills. With nothing else, you can better resist the element and apply more of it to your attacks (and are more vulnerable to that element's weaknesses!). Something with the complexity and utility or reshaping dirt and stone would require a different trait. Maybe something you'd find on an elemental (Devil family).

 

[mrttao]

Alright, thanks for the info.. something for later then. when we actually do have access to being an earth elemental.

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan Infiltrate

[x] Plan infiltrate
-[x] Transmigrate into Floofball (150 MP)
-[x] Upgrade Beast @soul to level 5
-[x] Evolve into Fluffy Fox
-[x] Upgrade Mage Initiate @soul to level 10
-[x] Evolve into One-Tail Kitsune
-[x] Learn new trait Illusionist @soul
-[x] Spend 10,000 Mana fixing up the lab as best as you can
-[x] From now on keep 2000 mana in reserve.
-[x] Add wings, flight, and dragonflight to body. upgrade each of them to level 15
-[x] Upgrade wings, flight, and dragonflight on soul to level 20 each
-[x] Design clothes and a weapon based on those you have seen the vandals wearing for your new kitsune body.
-[x] Upgrade illusion @ soul to level 10
-[x] Fly over to pink flower island, using your animal-humanoid form to blend in alongside your illusion skills if needed. Speaking in the language of humans from your time and try to get along enough to learn their language. Also try to learn how they travel between different islands, history, etc.

[BESTIARY] Three-Tail Kitsune

-(1400+5190+128=6718) XP <Beast 1 → 5>, <Mage Initiate 1 → 10>, <Illusionist 0 → 1>
-150 MP Transmigrated to Floofball

You're covered in fur today. There's no point investigating this island's civilization when they're going to attack you on sight, and between the length of the flight back home and the fact you're planning on transmigrating to learn new traits anyway, there's no reason not to just abandon your glorious dragon body for the quick respawn.

So you're briefly a Floofball, before your limbs grow out and your tail reappears and your nose grows more sensitive. You memorize your body's instinctive insights into the ebb and flow of the power within and around you. You stand, knees reversing as you do and paws flatten into feet and hands. Your tail elongates further, growing ever fluffier as you lose the rest of your fur to your new humanoid shape.

And something's wrong. There's an unfamiliar scent in the air. Something has been in your lab. Recently. You see no fresh damage, but by the smell of it something spent the night here, fleeing when the Biomass Shaper started operating.

You race out of your lab, slamming the sliding door open as you chase after the scent trail. It goes behind a bush, doubles back, up that tree, back down to the ground, then… up the lab's outer wall and onto the roof?

You leap up, channeling your draconic nature into what would be flight if it covered more than just a few meters vertically. And there you find your intruder. Ears flat to its head, tail swinging back and forth violently, the Fluffy Fox yips at you.

"My spot! I thought of using the dragon's lair first!"
Still morning Day 11
[ ] [SQUATTER] What to do about the Fluffy Fox?

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)
-[X] Continue Plan Infiltrate (DEFAULT)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

 

[kinglugia]

[X] [SQUATTER] Pay rent, then we'll talk.

 

[mrttao]

[X] [SQUATTER] Pay rent, then we'll talk.

Click to shrink...

speaking of rent... what if we get them to act as a guard when we are not here? and stay out of certain areas?

My main concern is that monsters are said to not have society as they all try to eat each other. But on the other hand the fact QM is having us talk to them instead of auto kill them, and QM said kitsune are his favorite suggests that this might be an exception.

 

[siflux]

My main concern is that monsters are said to not have society as they all try to eat each other.

Click to shrink...

Sauce?

But more seriously, monsters have an inherent trust dilemma because they are all made out of delicious food. Trust is a risk that could leave you backstabbed in a moment of weakness.

This is not helped by how the supermajority of all monsters are non-sapient. There's an instinctive monster language, but most monsters don't speak *anything*. If you meet another monster, it's almost always just going to be a mindless killing machine. Empathy is counterproductive to a monster's normal dietary habits. Unlike humanity, monsters do not have a predisposition towards forming intimate small tribes.

This does not make alliances and cooperation any less potentially useful. Eating other monsters is incredibly wasteful, Mana-wise. Comparative Advantage still holds that working with someone who is in every way inferior to you is better than doing it all yourself. It's just a risk.

Monsters don't have any known large collective societies in the model of human governments, but individual sapient monsters may well cooperate and trust each other.

QM is having us talk to them instead of auto kill them,

Click to shrink...

Technically, you haven't talked to them. They've talked at you.

Sapient monsters are rare enough that this is an unusual situation worth player interference to see how you want to deal with the situation, hence the interrupt.

QM said kitsune are his favorite

Click to shrink...

I assure you that nothing bad will happen as a result of eating the fox. Doing so is a zero-risk action that is guaranteed to be successful.

That the first sapient monster encounter was a proto-kitsune rather than something else entirely is due to authorial preference, though.

 

[mrttao]

Sauce?

Click to shrink...

I seem to have missed/forgotten about the word most

Mana is gained primarily from killing things. All that matters is getting the finishing blow. Other methods of gaining Mana exist, but as a monster murder will likely remain your best source of Mana. Fortunately, other monsters make just as good a source of Mana as humans do -- better in some ways, as most monsters neither participate in any form of society nor care about their offspring, so nobody will mind if you kill most monsters.

Click to shrink...

so, my bad there.

[x] Try to cut a deal, you will allow it to stay in your domain if it guards your place. Some areas are off limits though.

 

[siflux]

"Rent," you announce. "If you want to stay in my lab, pay for the privilege."

"Mine!" The Fluffy Fox repeats. "I'm not giving it up! You can't stay here too or the dragon might notice."

"I am the dragon!" You roar.

The fox sniffs. "No you aren't. You don't smell like it."

This is going nowhere. You could explain how you can transmigrate and show off a dragon body, but frankly, why bother? "Believe what you want. I'm fixing my lab. If you manage to get in without a key afterward, I won't be so forgiving."

You drop back down from the roof. You've got work to do.

-10,000 Mana

The place looks a lot nicer with carbon fullerene doors matching the walls. You also ran a few gallons of patching gel off the Biomass Shaper. Slap some in the gouges on the walls and floors, squeegee off the extra, stick some of the sticky paper over it to keep it in, and wait. At some point the fox came in to watch. You pretend not to notice it while you work.

Finally, you're done. You've peeled off all the patch covers, verified that the locks work with the new doors, and generally admired the smooth, utilitarian look of your repaired home. Fido's remains get swept into a corner of the room with the Biomass Shaper for now. You're not ready to give up on fixing your guard robot yet.

So it's time to get back to your squatter problem.

"Rent, leave, or die," you tender your ultimatum.

The Fluffy Fox grumbles, but ultimately submits. "What's rent?"

"Pray. I want a full sacrifice of HP any day I'm around to receive it. When I'm not around, you're responsible for anything that gets damaged. And even if you can find a way though the locked doors, you stay out of those three rooms," you indicate the sealed pathways to the Mana tanks, your hibernation tube, and the Biomass Shaper.

"That's it?"

"You guard my stuff and pay me tribute, you can hide in my halls."

"Fine," it agrees.

You wait, staring expectantly at your new tenant.

"Oh!" The fox realizes. It concentrates, and you can feel a tiny fraction of its soul pass to you.

+0 Mana (1% of 1000 HP @ 1% transfer efficiency)

Eh, even if it's less than a single point right now, it'll be more if you improve <Cultivore> and if your boarder gets stronger.

"Good," you accept the rent. "I'll be right back with your key."

You grab one of the spare card keys and set it for visitor access, double checking that doesn't include your facilities. Moments later, you come back out of the room with your tube and the computer.

"Here's how the key works," you demonstrate, handing it over afterwards. "Lights and locks don't work at night right now. In or out, the place seals when it's dark. Any questions?"

The fox shakes its head.

"I'll be heading out tomorrow. If you need anything before then, feel free to bring it up." You head back into the hibernate room, letting the door seal behind you. Hopefully this won't end up biting you in the tail.

END DAY 12

 

[mrttao]

Hmm, I like how it went... and yea, hopefully it won't

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan Infiltrate, Continued

[x] Plan infiltrate
-[x] Transmigrate into Floofball (150 MP)
-[x] Upgrade Beast @soul to level 5
-[x] Evolve into Fluffy Fox
-[x] Upgrade Mage Initiate @soul to level 10
-[x] Evolve into One-Tail Kitsune
-[x] Learn new trait Illusionist @soul
-[x] Spend 10,000 Mana fixing up the lab as best as you can
-[x] From now on keep 2000 mana in reserve.
-[x] Add wings, flight, and dragonflight to body. upgrade each of them to level 15
-[x] Upgrade wings, flight, and dragonflight on soul to level 20 each
-[x] Design clothes and a weapon based on those you have seen the vandals wearing for your new kitsune body.
-[x] Upgrade illusion @ soul to level 10
-[x] Fly over to pink flower island, using your animal-humanoid form to blend in alongside your illusion skills if needed. Speaking in the language of humans from your time and try to get along enough to learn their language. Also try to learn how they travel between different islands, history, etc.

-3600 Mana: <Winged 0 → 15>, <Flight 0 → 15>, <Dragonflight 0 → 15>
-(19802+19802+19005=58609) XP: <Winged 3 → 20>, <Flight 3 → 20>, <Dragonflight 5 → 20>

"Morning," you announce, stumbling out from the hibernation lab into the foyer.

There's no response, but there is a scent trail leading to the now-functional front airlock. You must have just missed your tenant. You proceed to the printer room, grabbing your axe en route for disguise purposes. You're not really sure how to make clothing that looks good, so you just run off a set of minimalist armor in cloth. Good enough, you guess.

-10 Mana (1DR 'clothing' armor)

You cycle the interior door, walking blindly into a room full of panicking fur.

"Don't let it close we're going to be trapped forever noooooo," the fox scrabbles at the rapidly sealing door behind you.

You watch in bemusement as the younger monster gives up, staring at you with tear-streaked eyes. "What are we going to do now?" It asks despairingly.

"You are going to cover rent. Then I am going to teach you what an airlock is," you tell it.

It immediately bows its head in supplication. The same insignificantly thin stream of Mana from yesterday flows between you.

+0 Mana (1% of 1000 HP @ 1% transfer efficiency)

"An airlock is a chamber used to allow travel between two environments without letting one interact with the other. Now that it works again, only one door will open at a time, and both doors need to be closed for a bit before either will open. Try opening one of the doors now."

The Fluffy Fox pulls the keycard you gave it out of somewhere in its fluff and holds it up to the outer door, which obligingly slides open. The two of you step outside, and the door closes again behind you.

"...Huh," the fox comments. It turns back to the door, experimentally reopening it. "Thanks."

You unfurl your wings and kick off the ground. "Get stronger. I want to get more Mana out of you," you call dismissively, skimming forward on the prowl for a quick snack before your long flight.

Spoiler: Farming Test, One-Tailed Body vs Armoredillo; Max Power

(351 Damage + 351 Fire) * (125 Atk + 87 Flight) / 100 Def = 1488 Damage
400 Damage * 50 Atk / 76 Def = 263 Damage
2HKO; spending MP beyond base recovery rate not helpful. Roughly 5 minutes (no resting) to recover HP cost of fight. Safe to farm.

Spoiler: Farming Test, One-Tailed Body vs Red Raptor; Max Power

(351 Damage + 351 Fire) * (125 Atk + 7 Flight) / 59 Def = 1570 Damage
OHKO. Safe to farm.

+2311 Mana (Two Hours Hunting)
+50322 XP (Two Hours Hunting)
-5208 XP: <Illusionist 1 → 10>

You miss the power of your dragon body, but you can still handle even the recently improved monster life safely. Being able to slam down in a dive, flaming axehead first, counts for a lot. You could win a battle of attrition, but your aerobatics keep your fights fast so you can stay on the prowl instead of having to rest and recover like your first few days out. After two hours, you're forced to head out if you want to make it across tonight. It's time for a long, boring day…

EVENING DAY 13

 

[mrttao]

very nice

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan Infiltrate, Concluded?

[x] Plan infiltrate
-[x] Transmigrate into Floofball (150 MP)
-[x] Upgrade Beast @soul to level 5
-[x] Evolve into Fluffy Fox
-[x] Upgrade Mage Initiate @soul to level 10
-[x] Evolve into One-Tail Kitsune
-[x] Learn new trait Illusionist @soul
-[x] Spend 10,000 Mana fixing up the lab as best as you can
-[x] From now on keep 2000 mana in reserve.
-[x] Add wings, flight, and dragonflight to body. upgrade each of them to level 15
-[x] Upgrade wings, flight, and dragonflight on soul to level 20 each
-[x] Design clothes and a weapon based on those you have seen the vandals wearing for your new kitsune body.
-[x] Upgrade illusion @ soul to level 10
-[x] Fly over to pink flower island, using your animal-humanoid form to blend in alongside your illusion skills if needed. Speaking in the language of humans from your time and try to get along enough to learn their language. Also try to learn how they travel between different islands, history, etc.

You land on the island with the pink flowers late in the afternoon. You don't have long before sunset, and while you don't know of anything on the island that's a serious threat to you, you'd prefer not to risk having to go bodiless for the night if something does go horribly wrong. It's not like they shot cannons at you here.

You walk through the chest-high flowers towards the village, axe slung lazily across your shoulder. It takes you a good ten minutes to come across the gatherers, putting you in sight of the village walls. You wave your free hand as you continue your approach. The humanoid waves back, takes in your weapon and strange garb, and then more or less ignores you. At least he isn't panicking this time.

Finally, you're within a few meters of the worker. Comfortable speaking range. "Hello. Can you understand anything I'm saying?" You try.

He responds with something you don't understand. Given the context, it's probably something like 'I can't understand you' or 'can you repeat that'.

"I'm speaking Human. It would be really useful if you understood that."

He doesn't, apparently. Or at the very least, he doesn't speak Human, and can't convey any useful information to you. Unsurprising, unfortunately. You stick around as he wraps up the day's labor and follow him back to the village.

"Can any of you understand me?" You try again as he meets up with the other elements of the gathering and monster slaying villagers. "I don't yet know your language."

No, apparently, but they're not turning you away or treating you like a ravening terror-beast, so that's progress at least. Racists. Humanoid body plan monsters can be just as non-sapient as those of any other shape.

One of the villagers puts a hand on your arm. He's big; both wide and tall, and much of it muscle. You think he was on overwatch out in the field. He's not attacking, though, so you let him get away with it. He motions towards the center of the village, letting go of you and leading onwards in that direction. You stay in his wake as he proceeds to a two-story wooden building near the middle of town, just outside the big empty field. There, he hands you off to another villager, who sits behind a wooden bar. A pair of long tables take up most of the floor, each surrounded with benches, plus there's a few tall chairs in front of the bar. You guide ditches you, leaving you with the new villager.

"I don't suppose you speak Human," you try once more.

He says something back to you. Clearly not.

You pass a few mutually unintelligible sentences back and forth. Then he pulls out a metal disc from behind the counter. You examine it to find a head inscribed into it, and some kind of runes on the reverse. Oh, a coin! He must want payment of some sort. You don't exactly have anything like that. You secure your battleaxe to the side of your waist, freeing up both hands, which you place in front of you, palms up. You'd turn out your pockets too if you had any. You can fix that next time you make clothing, you guess.

The important thing is that you possess little of material wealth right now. You didn't think it would be important, since you don't need to buy food or drink. You drop your hands back to your side, tapping your axe a few times to indicate it. You can kill things. That's what you're good at.

He points out the door. You look in that direction, but don't see anything. He pushes, gently enough not to force anything, but forceful enough to clearly indicate that he wants you to move. Obligingly, you leave. You're here to make friends, so it's better not to force your way around for now.

You launch yourself skyward, landing on the sloped roof. Folding your hands behind your head, you people-watch as the sun sets. A handful of men and women enter the establishment below you. You do your best to listen in, but with no visual cues it's tough to pick out any meaning. Any exposure helps, though. Eventually, the people leave. You close your eyes, falling asleep unnoticed.

+3 Language (3/1000, Level 0)

END DAY 13FOR REAL THIS TIME

[ ] Plan?
-[X] Stick around, keep learning the language (DEFAULT)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan Language (Default)

[X] Stick around, keep learning the language (DEFAULT)

You're woken by the morning bustle of life in the village around you. People are already hard at work with subsistence farming. Probably with gathering flowers too, but you can't see through walls to confirm it. You slide off the roof, casually landing on your feet, and look for someone to talk to.

Your first thought is one of the farmers. The gatherers will be too busy worrying about monster attacks to give you the focus you need. You wander up to someone planting seeds.

"Hello. Please talk at me," you tell him.

He says something back. Success! You don't know what it means, but you've opened a dialogue!

"I come from the West," you point towards your island.

He points in the same direction as you and says something else. Hopefully there were some useful words there.

Something tugs at your culet. You turn around to see someone even smaller than you. The kid says something, pulling at your arm this time. Well, they're a dedicated conversation partner. Why not?

+73 Language (2d100 = 47, 26) (76/1000, Level 0)
END DAY 14

The kid finds you again the next morning. After a lot of pointing and repeating, you're almost able to understand maybe one word in ten.

"You. Place," you struggle out in the native tongue. Well, you think. You don't have a good enough grasp on the language to confirm whether you've got the words right.

"There. Sky," you catch out of his excited speech. He eagerly climbs a house wall from the outside, using his prehensile tail to keep stable as he scrambles up.

You watch from below until he makes it to the roof before making your own way up in a single <Dragonflight>-enhanced leap. From up here, you can see off the edge of the island, though still not much past the walls looking inland.

Your companion points at a dark dot, jabbering animatedly and waving his limbs at it.

"What 'airship'" You dumbly do your best to ask for the definition of a new word.

+75 Language (1d100 = 75) (151/1000, Level 1)

Airship. Some total madman has apparently decided the best way to get around between islands is flying boats. And this is normal enough that there's a word for it and children know that word. There is a brig sailing slowly in your direction, leaving you at a loss for how they're generating enough lift to avoid falling out of the sky. A pair of long runners along the bottom explain how they expect to land at least, but do these people have no concept of aerodynamics? This is not an efficient way to fly! Not to mention how the design leaves them completely helpless to attacks from below.

You fume at the nonsensical choices as the skyboat grows ever closer, eventually dropping vertically into a landing in the cleared space in the middle of the village.

And that's when you get your first glimpse of the occupants. Bat wings. Curved horns. A leonine mane. You have business with those people…
MIDDAY DAY 15
ADVENTURER INTERRUPT! REVENGE TIME?

[ ] Plan?

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

 

[Stelarwand030]

[X] Plan Making friends
-[X] see if you can learn anything about/from your new "friends."
-[X] see if we can get anything from them on how the airship works. its better than flying with our own wings everywhere.
-[X] Considering all that potentially happened during our sleep its better to see what is what before we get our "Vengeance!".
-[X] Be ready to book it in case speaking human causes a lethal reaction from "adventurers".



Also just found this and I love it.

 

[mrttao]

[X] Plan Making friends
-[X] see if you can learn anything about/from your new "friends."
-[X] see if we can get anything from them on how the airship works. its better than flying with our own wings everywhere.
-[X] Considering all that potentially happened during our sleep its better to see what is what before we get our "Vengeance!".
-[X] Be ready to book it in case speaking human causes a lethal reaction from "adventurers".

Revenge can wait, also, it should happen discreetly (like catch them after they leave). Rather than right now

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan Making Friends

[X] Plan Making friends
-[X] see if you can learn anything about/from your new "friends."
-[X] see if we can get anything from them on how the airship works. its better than flying with our own wings everywhere.
-[X] Considering all that potentially happened during our sleep its better to see what is what before we get our "Vengeance!".
-[X] Be ready to book it in case speaking human causes a lethal reaction from "adventurers".

...But your business can wait. Regardless of what you ultimately do to these people, the villagers are receiving them in a friendly manner, and you don't want to annoy your hosts. At least, not until you've mastered the language. And just because these jerks with the flying boat killed Fido and hacked up your lab doesn't mean you have to take violent revenge. It just means that they owe you.

It's hard to follow a full-speed conversation, but you catch a number of words you can translate: 'Dragon', 'log', 'sky', 'basket'. An wrinkly, grey-haired man with mouselike round ears leads the visitors away from the boat. You follow at a distance, your simian friend running ahead to stay next to the excitement.

Oh hey, that's your right triangle proof! You don't need it anymore, since people are willing to talk to you now. You could tell them you made it, but that doesn't seem helpful. People fled from and attacked your awesome dragon-body on sight. Also, 'could' may not be accurate. You're still not particularly fluent. Unless they speak Human. You should check.

"Can any of you understand me?" You call out in Human from behind the group.

They turn to face you. "Aaah!" The bat-winged one points at you and shouts. "{Untranslated} axe!" Oh, she's pointing at the weapon at your waist, not at you.

"No. Me axe," you grind out in your awful, broken speech.

"{Untranslated} it {untranslated}!" She demands.

Great, you understood none of that except the pronoun. "Me axe," you insist, leaving it holstered. If someone's gonna smash up your place with a weapon and then leave it behind, it's now yours.

You fold forward at the stomach around something solid, knocking the air out of your lungs. It's a good thing you don't need to breathe to do anything other than talk or you'd be stunned, rather than just surprised by the torso full of ballistic bat-person you just took. She moves fast. You roll off her to the side, twisting forward through the air around her on the power of your <Dragonflight>. You go up. She spins, following your movement, then jumps up after you, her wings snapping open to catch the air. Looks like those aren't just for show.

Fast as she is, she doesn't have your aerial mobility or speed, even with your wings still tucked inside your cloth armor. You dive under her rising body, jetting for the town buildings. You need to block her line of sight on you for long enough to get her to give up on the chase.

She catches on quickly, but that isn't enough. You spin around the side of a house, coming to a dead halt. You twist your magic around yourself in a pattern you only recently learned, altering your face, height, and build with <Illusionist>. You even mask the axe inside the borders of your illusory larger body.

The bat-person flies around the corner, looking around for you wildly. You casually saunter by, seen but unnoticed.

Well, talking seems to have been a bust for now. Guess you'll check out the stupid flying boat next. While everyone's distracted, you walk back to the maddening craft and up the gangplank. Fortunately, the doors aren't locked, so you're able to slip under the deck without issue. There, you drop your disguise. You couldn't have maintained it much longer anyway. The MP cost was really getting to you.

Okay, so you're looking for a source of lift, and lots of it. The sails can provide thrust, but the boat isn't anywhere close to aerodynamic enough for that to translate into not falling out of the sky like it would for an airplane. You didn't see anything external on the way in, and there isn't enough room here for a big bag of gas to make this a lighter-than-air craft, so it's probably magical in nature. That means probably some kind of crystal. Like that thumb-sized one there. Or the crystals a decimeter along the underdeck in either direction from it. Or all the other ones here.

You pinch your fingers around one of the crystals and pull. There's a slight tug back, lessening quickly, as it cleanly comes out of a recessed socket. You channel a few MP into it and immediately feel an upward pull from it. You drop the expenditure and place it back in the wall, the tugging force reseating it in its socket as if you'd never taken it.

That explains how they get lift. The only problem is that there's got to be thousands of these things throughout the boat. How can they possibly afford the MP cost?

You glance out the porthole to check on the people from the boat. Looks like they're heading back now. This is your chance to escape unseen, assuming you want to. You still want to learn how they're getting the MP to stay aloft. You could let yourself be caught learning immediately, or just be a stowaway until they next leave the ship.
STILL MIDDAY DAY 15
[ ] Plan?

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

 

[kinglugia]

[X] Just leave.

 

[Stelarwand030]

[X] leave the ship and try and stay out of sight.
-[X] if they leave try to stay invisible and cling to the underside of the ship. See if you can find out how they have the MP to run the ship.

 

[mrttao]

[x] Stowaway
[x] [BESTIARY] Dragon slime (or at least work towards it)

Here is our chance for revenge. as well as knowledge, as well as loot. Oh, also stealing the ship itself! It will certainly be easier to travel between islands with one of those airships

And when we next come to the village, we make the excuse that we ran away and hid when these people were here.

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Hybrid Plan - Leave but Follow

[X] leave the ship
-[X] if they leave cling to the underside of the ship
-[X] See if you can find out how they have the MP to run the ship.

[BESTIARY] Drake Slime

You'd rather not get chased around by the bat-person again. You can out-fly her, but that initial tackle still showed her as stronger than you'd want to fight, and that's without her using a weapon. Not to mention how the other two are probably about as strong. No, it's better to stay subtle for now. You're interested in seeing where they go and what they do next, and in learning more about their stupid, stupid flying boat, but in the meantime it's better not to be locked down with waiting and hiding.

You slip over the far side of the ship, using its bulk to hide you from the returning travelers. You can't afford to disguise yourself again right now, but you don't need to if you're not noticed in the first place. For now, you try to listen in once the three get back on the boat.

"…Here…"

"…Northwest…"

This conversation would be a lot easier to follow if you knew more words.

"…Wood…"

The talking stops. Footsteps sound from the gangplank. The talking starts again, but with one of the voices gone.

"…Axe…"

"…Replacement…"

"…That…"

The talking stops again. You hear the clomp of feet on wood, but nobody else leaves the boat.

A few minutes later, whoever left returns. Faintly at first, then quickly louder, the crackling of a fire comes from the back of the ship. Then, the ship starts to rise. You grab on to the side, using your <Dragonflight> to push up and into the ship for an easier ride. The improbable flying machine accelerates slowly, turning to the Northwest as it slips out into open sky.

You crawl along the side of the ship until it blocks more of the wind. Unfortunately, you can't hear anything over the roar of air whooshing by.

---

On the bright side, nobody shoots at you as your ride approaches the island. You throw up an illusion to make yourself look like part of the boat as you head back over land, where you might be spotted clinging like a limpet to the stern of the ship.

Past the metal wall, what you see shocks you. Not the houses, larger and more densely packed than on Pink Flower Island. Not the bustling streets, with a mix of hand-drawn and self-powered carts. No, what surprises you is the picturesque and completely out-of-place tower in the middle of a paved field, itself and the buildings at its base clearly made out of the same palette of materials as your lab.

The flying sailboat lands at the ancient human airport.

END DAY 15

[ ] Plan?

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)