Radish of the Damned

- Revived for the Revival Contest -

Update 1:

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Before the beginning, before time or space or life, there was the Void. It was nothing and nowhere, and consequently everything everywhere. There is no way to say how long this went on for, as duration requires time; it was simply a nonexistent eternity of the Void.


At the end of that eternity (or perhaps the middle or even beginning; such words mean next to nothing), the Void spoke. It was one, simple statement. It was the Word.


And from the Word formed everything. The sky poured forth and filled itself with stars; time and space flowed out, and the first seconds of creation ticked by.


And around the Word, the world formed, and on it, life burst forth. The Word had brought forth everything that was, and began to fade from hearing.


But as the word disappeared, the Language formed in its wake. Words not of the unfathomable power of being that the Word contained, but words enough to represent everything that was or could be. They were words that could manipulate the world around them, a Language that those who knew it could use to change and perfect their existence.


People could use simple phrases to effect great change, the same combination of words creating radically different effects based on the will of the speaker. Anyone could, with effort, use the Language, and for a time, prosperity, health, and happiness were available to all.


But the nature of life is that of avarice, ambition, and lust. While even the simplest phrases could change the world, there were those who dedicated their lives to perfecting their mastery of the Language, composing great sentences, paragraphs, and even speeches entirely with the words of power. And where power exists, there are those who would seek to exploit it, for their families, their governments, or their own selfish desires.

Wars erupted, and reality itself was both the weapon and the victim. Powerful speakers tore apart the land and sky, and the world itself threatened to shatter.


The Void saw what was happening to its creation, and it was furious. In its rage, it stripped the Language from the world and sealed each word into a physical object so that no word could be used without possession of the object it was sealed in.


It divided the objects among the hosts of Heaven and Hell so that the objects could not find their way into mortal hands and commanded that they separate and hide their charges. It demanded that no two objects be brought into contact with each other and that neither group tell the other where their objects were hidden. Satisfied that its world had been protected, the Void retreated once more.


But as is the nature of devils, the contract was eventually breached. Some minor fiend carefully laid plans, and as such, one day two of the least-heavily-guarded objects were brought together.

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You awoke. It was the first time you had ever done so, or in fact done anything. You've never had awareness before.

You are a radish. You know implicitly that you are one of the objects the Void confined a word to all hose ages ago. You are Plant. Oddly, though, you also know that you are Move. You'd blink and shake your head if you could, but...

Time passes. You don't know how much, but as it does, you reason a few things out: first, someone brought the radish containing Plant and the wheel containing Move together; that probably caused the explosion you reckon is the cause of the crater in the wall and the fiend bits across the room. Second, you now contain both the words Move and Plant, and the wheel was either destroyed or absorbed in the process of bringing the two of you together. Third, you desire to find the other objects. It's not something you can deny; it's a burning, all-consuming need. You will assemble all the words; you WILL become the Language.

Fourth, you're going to have to leave this dinky little stone room to do it. Without limbs, you suppose you'll be relying on what bits of the Language you have for pretty much everything.

Around you is a nondescript stone room with one slightly-ajar wooden door. A symbol is chalked roughly on two of the walls, and behind you is a stone thing that might have been a pillar or pedestal before the explosion you assume occurred, complete with a crater in the wall behind it. As mentioned, there are a few smears of blood and bits of devil at the far side, near the door.

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Suggestions should typically start with what words you want to use, then an explanation of how you want to use them, like so:

>Move Plant

Hover yourself out the door.

Words can mean lots of different things depending on how you interpret them: Move Plant could be used to send a tomato flying across the room, rearrange a topiary bush, send a wooden chair galloping, or even teleport a tree across the planet. Once you get more words, you'll be able to add prepositions and the like to alter the meaning further, like Transform Water into Fire or Move Body through Earth. It should be pretty freeform and adaptable!

Update 2:

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>Move

See if you can pick up that broken pillar/pedestal-thingy behind you.

>Plant
Let's see if we can grow a bit.

Unfortunately, you can't use a noun without a verb (or vice versa, for that matter). A complete spell/sentence needs a subject and a verb, object optional. Additionally, the pillar is made of stone so you can't use your Language on it, and you can't balance it on top of yourself to move it.

>Grow plant
Grow legs, grow big.

You don't have the verb "grow".

>Plant plant.
Hey, let's plant a tree! Plant is a verb, right? And for that matter:
>Plant move.
I wonder if RPG abstractions will grow in this soil....

In English, plant is a verb and a noun; in the Language, it's just a noun and specifically refers to things that are members of the plant and fungus kingdoms (as well as a few protists if you want to be really technical about it); it cannot be used to refer to things like power plants or false evidence or the act of placing something in the soil.

>Move Plant

Hover and investigate the room.

It's pretty small and unfurnished; there's not even a light source save for the light coming in from the open door. The wall opposite the one with the symbol on it has another copy of the same symbol, as well as a small crack where a piece of rubble presumably hit and bounced off.


The wall with the door has pretty much just that. There's also a few smears of demonic ichors, which are dissolving into the aether along with the few solid bits that remained of the devil you suppose is responsible for your sentience and motility. The ceiling is completely flat and blank, and doesn't warrant more than a glance.

>Move Plant
Then let's see if we can get out of here.

The door is more than open enough to allow you to leave, and you hover through the crack. Outside is a three-way intersection of blank stony hallways: the one directly in front of you continues for a distance but ends in two doors on either side; the ones to your right and left branch and continue.

On the walls are a few more chalked symbols similar to the ones in your room. There is one that looks like some sort of stylized quadruped, a blue circle with three circles taken out of it, and three purple circles arranged in a triangle.

Update 3:

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>move plant

Try and float into one of the symbols, and see what happens

You raise a few puffs of chalk dust from the impact, but there is otherwise no real effect.

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Update 4:

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>Move plant

Hover into the middle corridor.

The corridor is pretty long but largely empty; you pass a few light fixtures and nothing more until you come to the end. There, there are a pair of doors, each with a chalk symbol beside them. The door on the right has the circle-with-circles-missing one.


The one on the left sports the quadruped-thing.

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>Move plant.
Enter the quadruped-thing drawing door.

You bounce off the door as you try to enter it. There's no latch or other mechanism, so you assume you just don't have the mass to push it open. You'd prefer not to splatter yourself across it by using more force to push, so this will require a different tack.

>Move Plant
Rip the doors off their hinges and smack them together.

With a flair for the dramatic, you opt to use your powers in the most blunt manner possible: by simply ripping the doors off their hinges. You move into a position where you're not likely to crush yourself with flying doors and start pulling.


Before they actually come out of their frames, the doors swing open; you're not done yet, though, and keep up the force.


The doors snap off their hinges at about the same time, crashing into each other perpendicularly. The left door snaps the right one in half, sending pieces of wood and splinters flying before you let go and drop both sundered slabs of wood fall to the ground.

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>Move plant.
Teleport a tree from somewhere into the room.

You could totally do this!

If you had any idea of where a tree might be.

Move Plant.

Make the wooden fragments grow roots or shoots or something so they can trot along after you.

Unfortunately, making them grow or change (since the fragments don't have roots or shoots) falls outside the abilities of Move.

>Move Plant
Fling everything remotely plant like into the center of the hallway, excluding yourself.

The force compresses and breaks the doors even more, resulting in a large pile of shards, splinters, fragments, and wood fibers. The only other thing attracted by your efforts is a small pile of fungus that was growing in a corner of the ceiling.

>Move Plant: After doing the above, take two long sticks and some dry leaves, rubbing them together as fast as you can in order to start a fire.

You don't have any leaves, but after a long and tedious process involving trial and error, some time, and a lot of rubbing, you end up with something resembling a workable torch. It should burn for a good few minutes before it's reduced to not-really-a-plant-anymore ash.

>Move Plant
Go through the left door

You float in, bringing your light with you. It's fairly dim, and there are what appear to be enormous cobwebs, thick and coated with dust, lining the walls and hanging from the ceiling.



Everywhere you turn, it's the same: huge and apparently-ancient cobwebs are everywhere, obscuring vision, blocking your way, and generally being an unpleasant omen. Still...

The instant you entered this room, you felt it: there is a Word in here.

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>Move plant. Use the torch to burn the cobwebs.

The cobwebs don't really burn. They sort of shrivel up and scorch near the fire, but it doesn't spread and only the cobwebs that are practically touching the fire are affected.



About a minute of frenzied swinging of your torch later, you haven't really accomplished much. Clearly a different tack is in order.

>Move plant

Fire burning splinters along the entire corridor, hitting everything hiding in the cobwebs.

There are more than enough splinters and tiny fragments of wood out in the hallway to make this happen.



And while your torch is burning out a bit, it doesn't take much to light them.



No one splinter can burn for long, but they don't have to.



When the smoke and webs clear, all that's left in the room is a large quantity of soot and, at the far end of it, a very small and very surprised spider.

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Move Plant: Move your torch around to try and communicate. Think sign-language or flag waving.

In a surprising turn of events, it turns out you are extremely familiar with flag semaphore. You grab a second torch and spell out a helpful and friendly message for the spider before remembering that arachnids use the Japanese system! Rats, that would have been so easy.

Also you don't know flag semaphore because that would be silly and none of this happened. If you really want to communicate with the spider, you're going to need to be more specific. Limbs or the ability to speak would be nice too, but you've got to work with what you've got. Still, as you think about it, you remember that before you got merged with Move, you were a pretty typical radish in terms of cognitive ability; it seems like a pretty reasonable assumption that the spider would be the same, but you can't be sure.

>Move Plant

Head towards the spider and check it for Wordiness.

Is the spider the Word?

Yes, it must be. The closer you get, the more certain you are. You can feel it in every literal and figurative fiber of your being. You must absorb it!

>Move Plant
Merge with spider! MERGE! MEEEEEEERRRGE!

Move Plant: Throw yourself at the spider.

Wow, that thing is amazingly fast. Maybe that whole "typical spider" thing needs to be rethought. Just launching yourself at it is probably not going to work.

Update 9:

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>Move plant

launch torch at spider

This accomplishes very little, as the spider is easily able to dodge it.

Move Plant: Herd it into a corner with torches, then pounce!

Move Plant:
Use the pile of wood, or whatevers left of it, to create a cage and trap the spider.

You decide now would be a good time for more subtlety than you usually employ: you swing repeatedly at the spider, gradually herding it into a corner while taking pains to make your attacks seem random in case it is cleverer than you give it credit for; at the same time, you stealthily bring in three of the largest remaining pieces of door to trap it once you get it where you want it.



Before long, your plan comes to fruition. The spider could easily dodge you, even in the corner, if you simply launched yourself at it again, but you create a makeshift box with your wood and block off its escape routes. After savoring your victory for a moment, you phase through your walls and touch the spider with a leaf.



The world goes white, and you lose consciousness.



When you come to, the spider is gone, your box has been destroyed, and there are a few cracks in the nearby walls. Your torch has gone out too, but you'd already known it didn't have long.

More importantly, you can feel that you now contain the word "Animal".

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As with Plant, Animal refers specifically to literal animals and pays less attention to taxonomy than it does to the idea of the word animal. Thus, you can apply Animal to most any real animal or animal-like monster, but not to humans or humanoid supernatural beings like angels and demons.

Also, for your convenience, here's a simple map of what you've seen so far:

Update 10:

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let's check the other door. Right across this one.

> MOVE PLANT

Move yourself through the other door you ripped apart

You head back out of the spider room and across the hall. You make note, as you pass, of the fact that you are rapidly running out of smashed-door wood.



Through the other portal is a short corridor that turns right; as you enter, you again get the feeling that there is a Word nearby. This time it feels farther away, though, and somehow... muffled. You move along the hall, intending to follow it until something interesting appears.



As you reach the bend, you collide with something and bounce off. What the hell?

Update 11:

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>Move animals

For some reason I think the thing you bumped into is alive, try and use you powers on the empty space to see if the hunch is right, if it is, just flail it around.

No amount of exercising your new power seems to do anything. As far as you can tell, whatever is in your way is neither animal nor plant.

> Move plant, throw little chunks of smashed-door wood at the invisible obstacle.

Even battering the area with wood fragments doesn't seem to accomplish anything, and whatever's in the way appears to be blocking the whole corridor; there are no open spots.

>

>Move Plant:
Rub some wood together to make another torch, if you can. Then try setting the invisible thing on fire.

If that doesn't work:
>Move Plant yourself back to the hallway and try one of the other corridors.

Looks like there isn't a way past.

>Move Plant

Retrace your steps back the way you came, and try another route as per depth first search.

Move Plant!
Turn around and try the door with the blue symbol!

> Move Plant

Tear the broken door wood into splinters (I would have made the condition not to use up all the wood this way, but there is another door as yet untouched from the room we originally came from so if you need to use all of the broken door wood use it all).

then

> Move Plant

Spread the splinters out so that they form a loose wall of splinters that takes up the entire breadth and height of the hallway, and then propel them forwards.

By doing this you may be able to find a spot where the invisible thing does not protect, or if it is some kind of shield overwhelm it by forcing it to try to protect a large surface area at once.

> Move Plant

Teleport some splinters to the other side of the barrier. If they make it safely...

> Move Plant

Teleport yourself over as well.

>Move plant
try going down the other corridor.