Full Immersion [for what it's worth]

Lick him from behind!~

>Continue watching him without making yourself noticeable.

Ah, okay. In that case I'd suggest gathering more information before acting, so when we eventually capture him we have something to cross reference any statements with. Or maybe we just figure out wtf he's doing and we'd be able to kill him without losing that information. So basically I'd like to keep watching for a bit.

Just keep watching for now. Pay close attention.

WHO NEEDS SHOVELS WHEN YOU HAVE SUPER STRENGTH? PUNCH HIM THROUGH THE HEAD!

No.

Kick him in the balls and Punch him in the head hard enough to knock him out. Make sure not to kill him.

Super Tackle Hug Pounce!

Yes.

> Help him dig. Use your bare hands if you have to, with your Strength it should be easy enough.

Jarod tries to just watch patiently, but he starts feeling nervous and twitchy. Maybe that coffee wasn't the best idea, or maybe it's something else, but at any rate he's only able to sit still and watch the man work, slowly cutting probably the neck of the corpse, for another minute or so before he abruptly stands up and takes off at a run.

He jumps at the man, intending some kind of tackling hug, and completely misses, rolling on the ground a foot or so and sitting up, coughing. The noise does more than enough to get the man's attention, at any rate. Jarod recovers and stands up just as the gravedigger gets over his confusion enough to ask "...What are you doing here?" His voice sounds..old, for lack of a better word.

"Well, uh, uh, i-i-t looked lick--like you were working rather hard wwwwwwwwwwwwwith whatever that is, and I was wondering if you could use a p-p-punch to the--I mean, some help." Jarod shakes his head, wondering where all those wrong words are coming from.

"Are you..quite alright?" asks the man.
The wolf-man shakes his head. "No, yes, I-I'm fine. I've been, I've just awake--rrgh!" Jarod pauses, sucks in some breath and says, "I've just. been. Awake. a little t-too long, is all. I can't not be right now. I'm sorry, I'm not m-making a lot of sense, am I?"
"A little.."
"What I mean is, uh, I'm wondering what you need a dead p-p-person's head for?"
"Ahm..well, I don't need just any head. The point is that this one is rather, um.." He waves vaguely into the grave. "..intact."

>

SpoilerShow

Sincerely sorry for the (very) long wait on this one. Math is HARD, and while that probably doesn't mean exactly what you think it does coming from me, I think it adequately communicates why I haven't had time to write anything that wasn't a proof for the last two weeks or so.

Why is that odd? Are sheep just as odd? Odd like the Ood~?

Ya' know people have been getting in trouble for doing whatcha doing there.

Oh? Why does that matter?

ask him why he cant use his own.

> Nod understandingly. Ask him why he couldn't get a suitable head through the official channels though?

"S-so, I guess it's something you can't use your own for, but can't you just legally get b-bodies in this country anyway?"
"There are two problems with that--the bodies that would be useful to me from those channels all go to the Necromancer, capital 'N'..And, well, they only give those bodies to necromancers."
"That would make you..n-not a necromancer, then?"
The man shakes his head. "Now, I can't let this go to waste." He starts cutting the body's neck again.
"S-so, necromancers need fresh bodies b-because, why, because they want them to st-stay together longer, right? Wh-what do you need an in-in-intact head for?"
He stops, giving a sigh that is half deep-breath-from effort, and says, "Young man, if you're really interested in my research, I can show it to you once this lady's head is ready to go back to the lab."
"So you d-do want me to help, then?"
"Well, I wouldn't turn down a volunteer at this juncture. But you've got to be careful with how you sever the nerves.."

>

You're jittery as hell from all that coffee. Don't touch the body.

"Careful.." Jarod takes a moment to look at his hands, which are still shaking a little bit. "U-um, I'm not sure whether I can do c-careful, but..maybe it would--I could hold or carry some things?"
"..That's fine, I suppose." The man hands Jarod the bag he got the saw-thing and metal sheets out of, which to be fair is fairly heavy.

While he works, Jarod looks briefly inside of the bag; the man doesn't even seem to notice this, much less mind. There are more of what seem to be cutting and digging tools in there, not really anything that makes it clear what the man's goal is.

Before long, the man digs around in the bag for a long, ladle-like thing with a much larger "bowl" part than normal, and pokes it down into the hole he's made to get the head out. Once the head comes out, he briefly looks at Jarod before leaning it against a nearby gravestone with the head still in it. It is definitely a woman's head, apparently very human-like with pointed ears, and it is fresh enough to almost look alive, not accounting for its smell.

The man pulls the sheets back out of the ground, causing most of the earth around them to fall back into the narrow hole, and puts them and the saw back into the bag. Then he gently prods the rest of the dirt from his hole back in place, takes his shovel and packs it carefully, ending up with an apparently undisturbed grave.

This takes a fairly long time, long enough for Jarod to finally stop shaking and calm down a bit. "Well," says the man, putting the shovel back into the bag, "you've patience, at least. Or you're just that curious."
"A little of both, I th-think."
"All right. Well, hang on to that and follow me, then. I'll show you what I've been working on." The older man takes the thing with the elf's head on it and starts leading the way, Jarod following.

>

SpoilerShow

This is update #100! WOO!



I've had remarkably bad luck with adventures that reach this many updates in the past, so I'm crossing fingers and knocking wood that I haven't lost everyone who used to suggest by the unwanted hiatus. Speaking of: I'm very sorry I haven't been writing for such a long time, I had some kind of mental exhaustion after a 2-3 weeks long homework panic. I don't really consider that an excuse, but I do consider this an apology.

Also, is this scene dragging on too long (update schedule aside), or should we stick with these two for a bit longer?

>Follow the man~!

>Ask the man if he is planning to create an abomination of science by making new life from the dead. And no, not undead. You would have said undead if that's what you meant.

> Ask him if he likes bananas, then uppercut him as hard as you can.

Jarod has an idea. "Do you like bananas?" he says, and then does a mental double-take, the old man along with him.
"Excuse me?" he says, stopping momentarily in his tracks.
The wolf-man shakes his head. "S-sorry, I don't think I've sh-shaken off all of the crazy yet. I h-have a guess what you're doing."
"Go on," says the man, starting to walk again.
"I-if I understand correctly, undead aren't exactly people. L-like, it's okay to use them for manual labor b-because whoever the bodies used to belong to..a-aren't there anymore, right?"
"Yes."
"B-but, you're no necromancer. You're t-trying to, actually, bring people back to life somehow. R-right?"
"Indeed." The man sounds very pleased.

By now they've reached a house that to Jarod seems fairly small, but must be about average for the setting. The most noticable quality of the house, even in the middle of the night, is a tall, somewhat crude spire of metal on top of it. The man opens his door and leads the way inside, saying, "I'd love to show you how."
They go through an entry room into a cramped library, full of books. The man walks to one of the few vacant spots in the wall and pushes in the brick, causing the nearest shelf to turn about 45 degrees and reveal a passageway. At first it's quite dark, but after a few seconds a mild humming begins, and Jarod is somewhat surprised to see some apparently modified lampstands holding what look to be primitive light bulbs.
As they head inside of the passageway, which quickly turns into a spiral staircase downward, the man says, "Ahh, yes. I didn't invent those devices, but I'm very proud of having understood their design enough to replicate it without a sample. And the person who did invent them couldn't find a way to make them practical."

At the bottom of the stairs is a wooden door with a very conspicuous lock to it; the man reaches somewhere in his robes and gets out a key, which seems to have a symbol on it that's glowing faintly blue. The key works as intended in the lock, and the door swings inward to reveal what is almost certainly a mad scientist's laboratory.

The bulbs hanging on the walls here are not terribly efficient at making light, giving more than enough to read by but leaving a kind of dramatic darkness over the whole space. There are two large cabinets on the wall across from the door and a metal table in the middle of the room with something human-body-shaped underneath a big white sheet on it. The rest of the room is quite disorganized, with fragments of weapons and armor, tangled wires and tubes made of who-knows-what, and what strike Jarod as partially-built steampunk robot parts, each in separate piles scattered all over the place.

The old man makes a few steps aside to as near a corner of the room he can, seemingly to give Jarod a full view of the place, and folds his arms, giving the kind of sigh a person gives on coming home after months abroad--tired yet satisfied, and a touch proud. "This is where I get my work done," he says.

>

[ERROR-3 MONTH WRITER'S BLOCK]

[REBOOTING]

Auleoris wakes up lying face-down, head-sideways, and opens her eyes to see a small room with some white walls, and no people immediately visible. She pushes up and moves around to a sitting position, noticing some slight soreness along the way and then wincing at a few particularly sharp jabs of pain from her wings. On closer inspection, the room looks like a low-tech approximation of a hospital room, with a window, a bucket of water presumably for washing things, a few..well, they don't look like real medical tools but some kind of tools on a table off to one side. Someone's changed her clothes to a knee-length plain white gown.

The winged woman takes a moment to look through her menu, and notes that the skill screen has indeed added "Fire Breath" as a spell she can learn now; it's a level 2 spell. Also, she has what looks like a ridiculous amount of skill points from that fight..enough to get Learn level 3 and Mixture Magic to level 2, but that wouldn't leave anything for learning fire breath or any mixtures of that with the other spells she already knows. She then notices a level 4 spell has been added, too--"Mend", apparently a high-level healing spell.

Auleoris gives a slow sigh and mutters, "So I guess killing the snake from the inside was your idea, right? Thanks for that."

>

SpoilerShow

I'm really sorry, but for whatever reason I can't get that scene to work at all. Your guesses were basically right about what the old guy's trying to do.

I kind of knew what this scene would be like, or at least I feel able to write it. I'll try to go back to Jarod once I'm not stuck with it anymore, which is much easier to be when it doesn't feel like the only way to keep updating this.

>Well, there are three things to say about that. 1: It worked didn't it? 2: That was probably the most metal fucking thing you have ever done in your life. 3: At least you got it out of the way now on a relatively lower level monster, and have called "not it". You could have had to do this against a dragon. How much would that have sucked?

Also that plan was originally for somebody more robust than you... but more pressingly, you have skill points now!

Get that healing spell.

Actually get all the available spells.

Check available skills.

> Learn Mend and Mixture Magic lvl. 2

"Um..did you forget how my skill tree works? I can't learn that Mend spell until I learn Learn level 4--ugh, there's gotta be a better way to phrase that...anyway, I still can't afford that much."
Before she can do anything else with the skill tree, the screen makes a small 'ping' sound and she jumps back, not expecting it to have made any sound at all. A screen of achievements pops up, saying:

Achievement unlocked: Beginner's Luck--Get through your first fateful encounter with all involved players still alive.
Achievement unlocked: Seriously Metal #4663--Have a moment in battle involving a giant snake, tentacles, fire, and lightning all at once.

"Menu screen agrees with you, annd I guess this game has achievements. 'Cause every game needs achievements. Also, this means there are more than four and a half thousand achievements called 'seriously metal'. Okay then."
She goes ahead and takes Learn and Mixture Magic level 2, since the latter is pointless without the former and it's at least a step in the right direction.

>

SpoilerShow

Fun fact: These two achievements have been sitting in my events-archive file since last October. So I'm glad I'm not the only person who thought that whole scene was pretty metal.

Retrieve arms Get dressed and look for allies.

"Well, my armor or whatever isn't in here, so I guess I should see if I'm well enough to walk."

Auleoris stands up with relative ease and tries to stretch, but winces at the continued pain in her wings. It doesn't make it any harder to walk, though, so she heads over to the door and opens it up to find one of those wolf-people that live in this town directly in front of the doorway, in a position that suggests she was just about to open the door herself.
"Oh! Good, I was just going to try and wake you, but now I don't have to," says the woman, cheerfully. "My name's Lysandra," she says, offering a hand.
"Uh, Auleoris, nice to meet you," the other responds, taking it for a slight shake.
"How are you feeling?"
"Mostly okay..a little sore. My wings hurt, though."

"..Yyyeah," says Lysandra, nervously wringing her hands a bit. "They were burned pretty bad. I did the best I could without using the, uh, more invasive sort of magic that risks harm if one isn't familiar enough with the anatomy. The truth is, I-I have literally no experience with Florians, the closest I've come is looking at the wing structure in a textbook. I tried consulting a few vets, but your wings are still a little different from what they're used to. Um..." She looks almost terrified to say this, "I don't know if I could recommend trying to fly with them in that state, at least not until you've had someone with a little more experience take a look at them."
"Oh, okay. But..other than that I'm basically healed, right?"
Lysandra nods, but looks a little shellshocked by the nonchalant reaction. "Uh, I can have your things brought in if you want, s-so you can change before heading out.."
"Sure."
She goes halfway out the door and yells at (probably the equivalent of) an orderly, then closes the door and moves around the room to get out of Auleoris' personal space.

"Anything...uh, anything I can answer for you while we wait?" asks the healer.

>

"What are you so nervous about?"
"Err, it's just, I just thought you'd be more upset about not being able to fly for a while."
The winged one shrugs. "I sorta..." the sense of having roleplayed poorly starts to dawn on her before she can finish, but then she has an idea of how to make it all work. "Well, I was actually raised by humans, see."
"Really?"
"Yeah. When I was little I was found by, well, my parents, but not the ones I was born to, and raised in a human village. So most of the people I know can't fly, and walking feels pretty normal to me. I mean, I know how to fly instinctively, but I'm honestly still pretty terrible at landings."
"Oh, I see," says Lysandra, apparently finding this story to make sense.

>You could ask if there are any spells she would be willing to cast on you. Having more possible spells is probably a good thing, and you most likely won't be limited by hit points in regards to healing, buff, or utility spells. You could also ask about the Florians (possibly your race) if you offer up that you can't remember much about the world.

Explain that you can learn spells that are cast on you as well.

Presumably her healing is how we unlocked the ability to learn mend.
> Ask if she can bring you to someone with more experience dealing with Florians.

It might be too late to pretend to have amnesia. But that's not a bad idea..

"Hmm..speaking of, I guess a, uh, Florian city would be a good place to find someone who knows how to heal my wings. I'm not exactly from around here, so.."
"Oh! Well, there's a city on the cliffs above these very caves, actually," says Lysandra. "All else being equal, I would've assumed you were from there to begin with. It's an awful climb, I hear; they don't exactly maintain the stairs...though, if you can get their attention you might be able to convince someone to just carry you up, in light of the injury."

"By the way, I have sort of an odd request..."
"Hm?"
"Well, I have a bit of a knack for learning spells that have been cast on me. If you know any simple sorts of remedy or healing spells, and it's not too much trouble.."
The woman seems a little surprised by this. "You can learn a spell after seeing it just once?"
"Ssssort of. I have to be the one hit by the spell, and I don't learn it right away. It's hard to explain, and probably more a power I have than my own knowledge, but once a spell's been cast on me I can go back and study how it works well enough to imitate it. It's harder to do the better the spell is. But I only know like, one very weak healing spell right now, and something slightly better would be a lot of help on the road."
"Well, I don't see any harm in helping you learn something that you might help someone else with, then."

The wolf-woman casts what she describes as a 'very basic' and 'somewhat harder' healing spell, as well as a 'painkiller' spell (which reduces the pain in Auleoris' wings a bit) and a couple of spells that she says are supposed to be remedies for weak poisons or minor infections, but they don't have any obvious effect at the moment. Somewhere in the middle the winged woman asks, "Say, the giant snake did die for good, right? No more mutating into something worse?"
"Oh, definitely not. They said that the magic causing it to change the first time was completely gone."

After that, a knock on the door heralds the return of the winged woman's usual equipment, but with a particular addition: The big sword she'd used before, cleaned off but still smelling faintly of mustard, on top of the pile.
"Huh, I thought this was that orc's."
"Well, she said it was yours," says Lysandra, handing the whole pile over. "She and the, uh, green elf you fought with are out in the lobby, so you can dispute it with her yourself once you get changed."
"Alright, thanks."

Changing is somewhat more difficult with burned wings. They seem to move instinctively around the leather tunic thing's top to slot themselves through the built-in holes, which suggests it wouldn't be hard at all if it didn't hurt so much whenever the wings come into contact with the material. The gown she'd been wearing appears to have had its wing-holes cut a bit roughly out of the back.

After changing, Auleoris manages to stow the sword into the game's inventory system, and opens the door again, offering the gown to Lysandra. "Oh, uh...you can keep that, or throw it away if you want. Follow me, please."
They wander through a small labyrinth of hallways, eventually down some stairs and around into some sort of reception room, where the two green-skinned players are waiting, Anansi sitting on a couch with Neyla standing up in front of him.

>

Ask about the sword.

>This may be a wonderful time to introduce yourselves when there's not something about to kill you. Except the dude might try to kill you, he's kind of a priest of chaos. And the girl is deaf, so yeah, speak clearly at a regular pace while looking at her so she can read your lips easily.

> Also the deaf girl is another "player" like you but as far as I know you're the only one able to hear us directly.

Must be some kind of super special add-on only you've got. Mentioning us is up to you.

Um, what dude? The only guy here is the green elf guy who's actually one of those tentacle aliens, and he never said anything about being a priest of chaos...
Auleoris heads over to them. "Hey."
"Good morning," says Anansi.
"Morning? So I guess I was out all night."
"Yes. Neyla here is another of yours--a player. I have caught up on what I told you."

"Oh, cool. Hey, I'm...Well, my real name is Claire, but I'm calling myself Auleoris." She offers a hand, and the orc shakes.
Once her hand is free again, the orc signs, "Good to meet you...your wings look very hurt."
She scratches the back of her head a bit. "Yyyeah, maybe spreading them out to block the fire breath was a bad idea. They don't hurt all that much unless I rub them against something, though. Anyway, I can handle a little pain. My granddad once had a root canal without any anaesthesia, and he got so bored he fell asleep on his own." She looks at Anansi for a second, thinking. "Hey, speaking of pain, how does that work here? If I break a leg or something is it gonna hurt like a real broken leg?"
The elf stands up. "The amount of pain felt for pain is a changeable game setting, usually placed along a scale," he says. "Small pain needs to be the same as normal so nobody itches and cannot feel a scratch, but not the game nor the test it is used for is intend to be a torture, so greater injuries are highly dulled. We should go; the captain guard wanted to speak once with you were awake."
The Florian nods, and the two follow him out.

The hospital (or whatever they call it) is in the same section of the caves as the giant snake had been, practically next door to the huge temple. There's a fair amount of visible damage from the snake's attack, but very little of it is to the buildings themselves. Whatever process carved them out of the cave walls apparently left them unusually sturdy.

"Hey, Neyla...odd question. Are you, deaf?"
"I have been since birth," signs the orc, "but I have come to the conclusion that I am hearing now. I was unsure what it was at first. Is this a normal property of the game?"
"More related to the translating program, which the game employs,"[color] says Anansi. [color=green]"It uses psionic..."[color=green] He seems to attempt to say something, but has trouble doing so. [color=green]"...The word does not translate, it seems. Ahm...the behavior is based on one's brain. Since you are able to perceive hearing, your brain is likely capable of it, but not your hearing organs. But I assume you perceive meaning differently?"
"It is a strange experience. I have the idea of seeing someone signing to me at the same time as your speech, which I do not actually understand...but I can still see what is in front of me."
He nods. "The translation attempts to communicate meaning of other words in whatever way one's brain understands it. I am not historian, but believe it may have begun, before contact with extrastellar people, as an attempt to help perceptually disabled with communication."

"I should tell you about your sword," says Neyla.
"Mine? I thought it was yours."
"It was made at my request, but cost me nothing. I have a spear, and the skill to fight well with it. They were even able to easily give it a powerful enchantment because it was steeped in the blood of the monster."
"Oh, that's a pretty cool mechanic. So...I know it has some kind of increased-gravity-while-falling thing, and it can split into two different swords..."
"It fires lasers from the tip every few strikes, produces the scent of catnip and can toast bread."
Auleoris isn't sure how to respond to that; she tries thrice to ask a question, but fails each time.
"I was trying to convince a priest of chaos to have it made for me. Or at least...I think I was. I am not entirely sure where the ideas came from."

>

>Us. It came from us. And I guess the chaos priest isn't here right now. But more importantly, maybe you should decide what you want to do. We know where a few of the other players are if that's what you want to do, but they're split up. One of them is about to fight a dragon in a Florian city, and the other is making friends with a mad scientist. The other two are on an escort quest together. Any way you go, you might want to power up for a while.

Infodump.

> Tell her about us.

"..Oh. Well, that makes sense I guess."
"It does?" asks Neyla.
"Anansi, you didn't say anything to her about the Input or whatever, did you?"
He shakes his head.

"Well, at least according to him the game does something to get humans from another dimension to send us ideas. I can actually sort of 'hear' what they're saying, but most other players can't. I'd guess if you have any ideas that don't seem like normal ones for you to have, it's probably them."
Neyla nods. "I suppose it makes as much sense as anything else."

They reach the guardhouse and head inside. A particularly tall man waves at them from an open doorway next to the front desk. "Ah, good morning. I hope you're well?" He offers a handshake to each of them in turn.
"I've been better, but yeah."
"Well, allow me to properly introduce myself. I'm Jeremiah, guard captain here for the moment. Please, come inside." He leads them through the door into what is unmistakeably his office.

On the way to his desk, he gestures at a few chairs in front of it. Once everyone is seated, he leans forward. "Well, first of all I wanted to thank you three for your help with the, ah, giant snake situation. It was a disaster, but it really could have been much worse."
Neyla signs, "I could not allow it to hurt people while I ran away. Also, I know where it came from."
"You do?" he asks, surprised.
"I entered this town with a man calling himself either Jacob or Magether who claimed to be a priest of chaos. He seems to have captured the monster somehow, and then released it once in town."
"What were you doing with a priest of chaos?" says Jeremiah, suspicious.
"He seemed mostly harmless at the time, and said that his god was dead."
"Liremska is...? That is very bad news. I'll have to tell...well, a lot of people if it's actually true. But, at any rate, Laerta owes you a great deal. If there's anything, you know, not illegal or morally questionable we can do for you, let us know. Speaking of which."

The guard captain digs around in his desk and eventually finds a piece of paper. Looking up from it at Auleoris and Anansi in particular he says, "Green-skinned elves are rare in this country, so I have to ask whether you were recently in the dead forest to the northwest of here. If you were, don't worry, you're not really in trouble."
"Yeah...I'm not sure what possessed me to go in there," says the winged woman. "He basically just helped me get back out again after I got hopelessly lost."
Jeremiah nods. "I'm assuming you're from another country, so I'll tell you about it.

"In addition to being highly dangerous due to the large quantities of undead there, the forest is legally off-limits due to an edict from the queen herself. People are supposed to be prosecuted as trespassers for entering, but if you didn't know about it beforehand the law can't do anything more than give you a stern warning."
"You sound it as if the queen is not interested only in well-being of would-be visitors," says Anansi.
"Indeed," says Jeremiah. "The dead forest is home to the Necromancer. She's been there for a long time, and the...previous dynasty of kings repeatedly tried to remove her, with no success. However, the present queen is rumored to be friends with her. At the very least she doesn't see necromancy as evil the way a lot of us do, and has declared those lands to be effectively the Necromancer's private property."

>

SpoilerShow

One should notice that Neyla is not telling the whole truth.

> Ah. Apologize for your transgression, and ask: Why does the Necromancer live out in the dangerous dead forest if what he's doing is legal, and even has the queen's blessing? Surely a mansion in one of the big cities would be just as suitable, and we hear they get a regular supply of high-quality corpses anyway.

>It wasn't until recently that he was "okay"

"Well, we're sorry about the trespassing anyway, if only since it gave you more work. But, if the Necromancer is the queen's friend why would she stay in a dangerous place like that?"
"The dead forest only became that way after she moved in," he says, a bit sourly. "I think even she knows people don't like the idea of someone who habitually does that living in their city. Anyway, she made all of those undead, so they're not dangerous to her."
"That many of them? Where did all the bodies come from?"
"I've heard it said that before that forest was dead, it grew up over the site of a great battleground. Though, I don't think anyone remembers what specifically that battle was about."

"Um..I've been told that there's a Florian city up above, and they might be able to fix my wings up a little better--no offense to your healers, they did a great job, and it's not fair to expect them to know how to heal a race that hardly even shows up down here. But, out of curiosity, what sort of relationship does Laerta have with them?"
Jeremiah shrugs. "We're technically allies under the banner of the queen, but they don't care much for us personally. Mostly we just leave each other alone. They may be in trouble if the god of chaos truly died, though, so we'll probably send them some kind of warning about it soon."
"Is there specific a reason why they would be danger?" asks Anansi. "Other than the more general chaos promised on a dead diety."
"Well, as far as I understand, there are a few dragons around who've been sleeping or at least dormant for a long time. If anything can disturb a dragon enough to leave their lair, it's...well, first of all a stupid thief walking in and taking something. But other than that, massive disruptions in magic. Which they say is exactly what happens when a god dies. And, since they live in a highly visible place that's easy to reach from the air..."
"Dragon city," says Auleoris. Maybe you can get whoever's about to fight a dragon in the Florian city to warn them there might be more on the way. Assuming they survive the first one.
He nods. "I suppose I can assume you're not from there."
"No, I was raised by humans. Long story."

After saying goodbye, the three walk out of the guardhouse. "So what do you think we should do now?" signs Neyla.
"Hmm..we could look for some art supplies to try and draw a picture of the other alien player we're supposed to be looking for, figure out who it is..."
"I am not sure we need to," says Anansi. "I believe it is their queen."
"What, really?"
He nods. "She is evidently responsible for serious political upheaval, and abundant rumors of her unusual behavior, as well as untold powers. The player we seek would still have all skills gained in their game, and has had time to become still more power since then, so it would not be surprising."

"What should we do then," asks Neyla, "walk into the capital and ask to speak to the ruler?"
"Well, going to the capital might be a start," says Auleoris. "But if we end up having to fight her to get her to leave, if she's that overpowered we need a bigger party at least. The input people told me on the way to the guardhouse what some of the other human players were doing, but not where they are, except one of them is in the Florian city above, I think..."

>

>So, right now it seems like going to the Florian city might be simultaneously your best and most dangerous option. You'll possibly/probably meet up with another player, have access to somebody that can actually heal your wings, and gain some renown for going in and warning them of more dragons. On the other hand, dragons. At least if somebody has to jump inside one of their mouths you already had your turn.
Besides the player in the city above there are also two currently planning on gong to Laerta from Haestros, and the other one is on a mission from Queen Tipota at the capital. He made friends with a mad scientist!

Share info on your interfaces and split up. Wing one and green elf go to the Florian city. Orc, make your way to a town called Haestros in search of a cat man.

> Dance the dance of the bloodsnorters.

The winged woman appears to think for a moment or so. "...Right. One of them is in the city above, which would be a convenient place for me to go at least to get my wings fixed, and maybe warn them about the possibility of more dragons. But it's sort of dangerous, what with the dragons. And...two of them are on their way here? This place is called Laerta, right?"
Anansi nods.
"And, they said one of the other players is actually working for the queen? Something about a mad scientist..."
"That seems like it may be a problem," signs Neyla.
"Not perhaps," says the elf, "My understanding of the locations is that capital is a long distance east from this city. She may actually trust that player by when we are able to reach them, and if they could be persuaded to help us it would be good."
"Hmm.

"...Do you think we should split up? I mean, to get the two people heading here in the loop, and make sure we catch the player up in the Florian city before they go somewhere else as well."
The orc signs, "It is a good plan, but we need a place to meet afterward, assuming there is not some way to use the game menu's message system to contact each other."
"It is not intended to that," says Anansi, "being largely for ship-to-crew messages in case of a need during a long space travel. But I think the version for the test has an, ahh, a provision to use your civilization's persistent-data electronic messaging system to contact those you know outside. This means it should have an address for that system assigned to each of us, so that the messaging system could be indirectly used to contact itself, but I do not know what any of them are."
"You mean like, e-mail?" says Auleoris, scratching her head. "I guess I could send one to my parents or something, and ask them to send back a reply saying what address the email came from, but it could be a while before they check it and answer back."
"We should probably both do that for future use. But in the interest of time, we should just set a meeting place for now," signs Neyla in conclusion. "In front of the large temple there seems conspicuous enough," she adds, pointing at Laerta's temple of La Lune.

"And...since there's no telling how long it'll take to do what we need to at the Florian city, we should plan on just going there around noon every day until everyone's together at once," says Auleoris. "So who's going up there and who's staying here? I need to go up to get my wings healed."
"I should stay here," says Anansi. "If I remember the mapping rightly, it should be that one of the players who began near Haestros has met before me, so we would recognize."
"I think you are more likely to need my help than he is," signs the orc, "especially if the F-L-O...winged people are not kind enough to carry you up and we must climb."
"Okay. And we just try to be in front of that temple around noon any day we're in the city."

Auleoris offers Anansi a hand to shake, and says, "See you in a few days. And, thanks for helping us out."
He shakes her hand, evidently familiar with the custom. "No trouble. I believe you humans are worthy, and I am willing to help prove it."
Neyla signs "Goodbye," and shakes Anansi's hand as well, and then they head out, leaving the green-elf-alien in Laerta for the time being.

Near the exit of the cave that is Laerta, the two women pause for a brief rest. "By the way, where are you from?" asks Auleoris.
"South Africa."
"Oh yeah, Nelson Mandela and all that. Cool." Neyla folds her arms and glares a little bit. "Yyyeah I actually have no idea what I'm talking about. Sorry. I'm from Canada. No one ever makes a movie about Canada."
"That may be a good thing."

---

[<|<|]

Jin "Link" Grayheart stands several meters from the cliff's edge, using what is best described as a low-tech hand telescope to look off in the distance. "Yeah, that...sure is a dragon, all right," he says. It reminds him of Smaug from the movies: Very "stereotypical red fire-breathing dragon", but also much bigger than one can have a proper appreciation for without either seeing a human next to it for scale or, say, being physically in the same world as it.
"Right," says an armored Florian woman nearby (lieutenant, sargeant...something like that? He's sort of forgotten). "We'll be trying to hit its wings and force it to the ground. You watch its mouth and try to get its attention by hitting close to the eyes when it looks like it's going to spew fire. The idea is to get the fire going down toward you, but be careful not to actually get hit by it."
"So wait, you want me to get it to burn the trees and grass around here?" he asks.
"Better them than our soldiers. If we're successful landing it, the next goal is to drive it off the cliff. It's a long way down and there's no civilization down there to worry about. At that point your part will be done. Our plan is to keep hitting it any time it starts climbing, hopefully give it the idea that attacking our city is far more trouble than it's worth."
"You're not gonna try to kill it?"

She stifles a laugh. "Sorry...right, Janus mentioned you don't know much about dragons. Listen, we'll be trying to kill it the whole time, but this thing's taken far worse hits than our bows are capable of dishing out, and far more of them than we've got arrows."
"But surely someone's tried to ground it before, and it's still flying. How do you know you'll be able to injure its wings enough to matter?"
"Dragon wings are vulnerable, but they heal notoriously fast and well. Would that our wings had whatever theirs do."
"Scales?" She gives him an 'are-you-serious' look. "I'm kidding, I know what you mean."
"So you understand what you need to do, then?"
"Yeah, no problem."
"Good. I need to get in formation." She runs and jumps off the cliff, flapping her way up into the air.

The three-tailed fox-boy takes a deep breath. He is playing an unimaginably advanced game and his current quest is to occasionally distract a dragon. This should be interesting.

>

>Look around the area for multiple locations you could use for cover. If one place is no longer safe head to another.

He got the skill that lets him effect the time of his arrows, right? If so I can think of a couple of things we can do with that.

"No one ever makes a movie about Canada."
> False, Scott Pilgrim vs The World

> Jin: Review Skills, see if you can get anything that pierces armor.

Jin takes a moment to review his skill tree, especially which ones he already knows: Time Arrow, Arrow Recovery, Bow Mastery Level 2..hey, there are some points that weren't there before.

Clicking around, he finds that these are Provisional skill points that can only be applied to regular bow skills, not any of the magic-based ones. Must be because I learned from a master or whatever, he thinks to himself. The provisional points would be enough to learn Double Shot but not enough for upgrading Bow Mastery or Arrow Recovery, or getting the next one down from there.

While thinking about that, he looks around again, taking careful stock of the available cover. Trees, buildings...Lots of very flammable-looking things. They didn't exactly prepare their city for a dragon attack, but really how does one do that without cyber-space-future technology? He'll run out of viable places pretty fast unless the dragon moves farther inland.

When Link looks back up, he sees that the dragon is moving faster than he thought it was. It's a growing red speck on the horizon.

>

>Take double shot, probably couldn't hurt... on second thought see exactly what it does as well. If it seems like too much of a hassle for not enough reward just save the points for later.

Looking back down again, Jin sees that double shot is a pretty simple skill. It's always physically possible to nock two arrows into the bow and then try to fire them both at the same target or at least general area; using Double Shot just makes doing that way more likely to be accurate. The skill details suggest that each arrow is somewhat less likely to be accurate than a single-shot arrow, but taken together, the probability of hitting with at least one arrow is better than a normal single shot, plus it has that chance of doing double damage. The only true drawback is that it does use up two arrows.

He goes ahead and takes it, before looking up again. He can make out the dragon's head at this point. A small group of the bird-people fly out toward the dragon in a V formation, and then scatter off in every direction (really, every direction; they're not shy about moving in 3d space) when it shoots a gigantic fireball at them. Jin draws an arrow and gets ready to do something with it. It isn't time quite yet, but the sight of the giant scaly beast getting closer is making him almost instinctively antsy.

The Florians gave him as many arrows as he could fit in his quiver, and then some more that he put into his vague gameplay "inventory" when they weren't looking. All told, 41 of them. He hasn't really physically counted them but the number sticks in his head in such a strong way whenever he considers doing so that he thinks it might be a game mechanic thing.

The advance group have already started flying around the dragon and firing at its wings. It dives around in the air to avoid some of the arrows but refuses to turn aside or backwards, apparently dead set on heading toward the plateau. The fireball from earlier sails overhead and keeps going; who knows where that's gonna land.

>

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I'm always really happy when I decide to try updating something I haven't in a long while and find that someone is actually still reading. :)

I do hope there's more than one, though.

The dragon makes a sudden dive, much faster than it seems like something that big should be able to move. It caught a couple of Florians who were below it by surprised, too, just straight-up slamming into them, and afterward they seem to be flying about as well as rocks. Another of the advance bunch dives in their direction to try and do something about that, but can't catch up.

> See if you can wring what your effective range is out of the game mechanicy stuff in your head, start firing when you have a 50% chance to hit.

Start Dual Firing Time Arrows and speed them up just before they hit.

I was thinking Link could continuously dual fire time arrows and slow them down as much as possible until the dragon comes within range, then bring all of them to normal or faster speed for a one man volley. I'd recommend doing it when there's more of a chance of the shots being effective though.

This is a great idea, except that there is no way to aim that far in advance. He would either aim them all in one general direction and risk the dragon never even flying into their path, or fire at a wide area and waist the majority of his arrows. This is some thing we should remember though, it'd make a great combo move with Louis (the guy with the portal sword).

Waiting around to do something is making the fox-boy twitchy. He tries making some plans. Can he double-shoot time arrows? Should he fire a bunch, slow them down, and wait for the dragon to fly into their paths? How likely is it to do that?

He looks directly up, at the sky, and quickly runs some mental calculations. Probability of a hit based on the size of the sky above him versus how much of it the dragon will take up once it's there versus where its purported weak spots are (wings, eyes, mouth? tongue? anywhere on the underbelly? no no no he resembles Smaug but isn't likely to have the same weakness) versus the size of a single arrow--no, the size of 41 arrows, all of them--and...wow, that's a distressingly low number.

If I could guarantee the dragon would move in a certain direction at a certain point in time I could spear its wing with a sudden acceleration. Right? Wait I'm supposed to be drawing its attention. Would that much speed break the arrow like hitting a wall or would it do its job first? The physics are fuzzy when you try and factor in an actually increased time scale instead of a simple increase in velocity. Does the game's systems know what a strong augmented time scale would do or do they just do some assumption-based simulation that monkeys around with percentages of a given base velocity that is based on normal physics to get what the effective velocity is? That's probably what I would do in absence of any experimental data on the effects of extreme time dilation.

Is the arrow going to rot and rust if I speed it up too much? No, the skill has an upper limit, it must, it would have an effective close-to-light speed well before it could do that and a baseball moving at a speed like that would blow up everything and turn the dragon into a radioactive crater. Far beyond overpowered for a level-one skill.

Yes, he can double-shoot time arrows, whatever good that would do. He looks forward again; the dragon is a ways off still. How many arrows could he actually keep suspended at once? There's no immediate internal snap 'yes' or 'no' like the double shot question, he'd probably need to experiment to find that out and there just isn't time for that. How long after being fired can an arrow's time-scale be altered? 'Until it hits something' comes another snap answer. Does it have to come from his bow or could he toss it in the air? 'Yes; no'. Of course, that would be too easy.

The dragon looks pretty close. Is it close enough to shoot yet? 'Maybe'. What is maybe, fifty percent chance to hit? 'Maybe'. That isn't helpful. And now he's more likely to hit the massive swarm of Florians that just started on their way out from above the plateau right now. The swarm makes a hole for another fireball to go through, and he can barely make out the dragon but it's still approaching, arrows raining down from its body as most of them apparently just clink off of its scales like it was made of titanium.

>

The important question is not "will the arrow shatter?", it is "will the arrow do damage?". Retrieving arrows is a tertiary concern in a fight with a dragon, unless they're special arrows or you need more shots than you have arrows to accomplish your objective. The primary concern is of course not dying.

I think in this particular circumstance using double shot will not be advisable, at least beyond the opening phase. We need as much precision as we can get to hit those wonderful vital areas so that the dragon will actually pay attention to us. It might be quite helpful as an initial volley to grab it's attention in the first place, but afterwards it would be more economical to fire single arrows. Say we invest 10-20 arrows into a time arrow volley to get the dragon's attention: then we could either have 10-15 double shots and one regular shot's duration to hold the dragon's attention, or 21-31 regular shot's duration to hold the dragon's attention.

>Link: You could try using a volley of time arrows to initially grab the dragon's attention, then switch to single shots aimed at vital areas to keep it occupied on you. Just wait for a good opportunity before firing. You don't have to actually do damage, but it would probably help.

>That dragon is moving rather fast. Unless the arrows immediately return to normal time upon striking something, it might be more damaging to bring arrows that the dragon will collide with to a dead stop. Things that are not moving in time are utterly immobile and punch holes in whatever strikes them hard enough. The reverse of air resistance stopping your arrows if they go too fast.

Jin opens fire, placing three arrows into the air and stopping them right away. This isn't too hard to maintain; it feels like having them all the same speed is easier--requires less concentration.

After what seems like ages of watching more of the fight, the dragon makes a sudden charge forward. Link winces, seeing it slam straight through a collection of some Florians who spray out away from him like a handful of rocks. It's just about to be above the plateau, and the area ahead of it's clear...

He speeds the arrows up; they were all on a pretty steep slant, and he near-pauses them again near the peak. And then two time arrows at once, as fast as he can make them, straight at the dragon. One of them hits it right in the left nostril as it flies in above him, and it pauses its flight, shaking its head slightly in mild irritation.

Jin fires another shot, making it as fast as he can and trying to land about at the dragon's mouth as it opens it up, taking in air for another fireball. This one makes its mark too, and even though it's maybe the size of a toothpick to the giant flying lizard it still has a sharp end embedded in the inside of the mouth.

His enemy seems to perceive that the source of its annoyance is below, and looks that way. Jin waves at it, wondering briefly whether a high charisma score makes getting even a dragon's attention easier somehow before realizing that it's still prepping a fire breath.

Keeping those few arrows in place, Jin starts running. This is less a giant ball and more a streaming, continuous gout of combustion straight at the land behind him. He dives a last few feet forward, rolls on the ground, and gets back up again, and the back tip of one of his tails hurts, likely singed but somehow not yet on fire. The dragon, practically ignoring all the Florians' arrows around it, is looking down to see if it got him.

Thinking quickly, Jin moves over to the side a bit, adjusting himself to place the first few arrows between himself and the giant beast. He isn't entirely sure if this will work, but it seems like it's worth a try. One more sped-up arrow to the nostril and the dragon roars, diving down at him, and catches the arrows square in its upper belly. They tear gashes along the dragon's forward momentum but quickly break off into head and sticks, the heads burying themselves in while the sticks fall harmlessly off.

The pain is apparently enough for the dragon to try and turn its momentum back upward mid-dive, an awkward maneuver that doesn't sit well with whatever aerodynamics let something that big fly in the first place. It goes spiraling to one side and crashes to the ground a few yards off from Jin, the remaining Florians hurrying after it.

>

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Did I say 'tomorrow'? Apparently I meant "next Thursday". Whoops.

>Link: You grabbed his attention, now you just need to survive. Look at what the Florians are doing and think about where you can be most effective.

"a few yards off". How big is this dragon? Is Jin in danger of being accidentally crushed? Also this is totally the wrong moment for Jin to be thinking about this, but do the magical alterations only affect the arrows, or whatever is fired from the bow and/or things that are attached to the arrows? Because if the latter then once he has upgraded to be able to bring his arrows to a complete (rather than near) stop, a thread trailing from an arrow could cut things in half with their own momentum. Things that are not moving in time, period, cannot move in space, period. They are invincible and inviolable.
(Yes I like time-stop applications.)
Seconding mA's suggestion.

The Florians swarm down at the dragon, some of them taking up melee weapons to start hacking at it when it seems relatively safe. Thankfully, this grabs the dragon's attention quickly enough that it doesn't immediately hit Jin in a rage and he can get a bit farther off, especially since all the Florians are putting themselves either between him and the dragon or a bit to the side. It seems they're still going with the original plan outlined: Drive it off a cliff. So they're actually placing themselves so the dragon is between them and the cliffs. But its wings aren't damaged enough that it can't fly yet, aerodynamics just told it to go take a hike. Some of them are aiming for the wings still.

At the same time as all that, he tries to make sense of what happened exactly with the timestopped arrows. It seems like he lost control of them as soon as they "hit" the dragon (or the dragon hit them, whichever), but they didn't go back to normal time right away, instead accelerating fairly quickly (whatever it means to accelerate timescales in the first place) but still doing some of the time-stop-like damage on the way. Just like with trying to get near-light speed, this seems like a balancing act to make the level one power useful in the way it seems like it should be, but not too useful.

The dragon is backing up. It's not clear whether he still needs to run distraction, but throwing the dragon off the cliff won't do what they were hoping it would if its wings still work.

>

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Adventure gaining momentum? Maybe??? Hopefully???????

RE: How big dragon--Referring to this chart, the dragon we're dealing with here is bigger than Alduin, but closer to Aludin's size than it is to Smaug's. The short answer is that yes, it could probably step on any human-sized creature.

>Try and damage one of it's wings. Focus on the one you and/or the Florians have the highest chance of rendering useless for flight.

>Run to the other side of the dragon (between it and the cliff) so that you have a clear shot. This may delay the dragon going off the cliff until enough damage has been done, and the Florians should be able to keep it on the ground. But be ready to run out of the way again.

Link still wants to get some more shots on the dragon, particularly in its right wing, which looks slightly more injured than the other one, but there are too many Florians in the way. His probability calculation for hitting one of them when trying to hit that wing from here just gives up and outputs 1 every time.

So he starts running toward the dragon's side, and beyond, to a place where there are no Florians in the way at all. Behind the dragon, behind its flailing tail, on a fairly small and decreasing strip of partially-on-fire land with a cliff at his back. This isn't a good idea safety-wise, but it seems like the only place to get a clear shot.

The fox-boy draws back his bow, aims, fires, repeats. To enhance the chances of success a bit he just arbitrarily hyperspeeds his shots. He doesn't take time between shots to assess damage because there just isn't time for that, but he can see the effects as he goes. First shot glances off and splinters as the wing moves. Second shot pierces straight in--good! Third shot scrapes across the top of the wing, draws some blood. It's hard to keep reacting mentally to the shots on an individual basis, but on average the wing damage per shot seems pretty good. Ten shots are out before the tail starts getting too close and he has to unequip/store-in-inventory the bow to move out of the way fast enough.

He does it again. Ten shots, average pretty decent, straight at the wing. The most important point is that none of them hit his allies, even though they're around, more of them starting to focus on this wing than the other though some have to stay on the other side so the dragon can't change its course. He turns back this time to run away from the tail only to find far too little of the cliff left, and immediately change course to the side, off to the dragon's right as it gets closer.

After making it clear of the fire-breathing mythical megabeast, Jin realizes he's breathing very heavily, sore, maybe burned in a couple more places. He hadn't exactly been paying attention to just how on fire the area around he was just standing was, it's lucky he didn't get hit more. Which immediately raises the question to him of whether luck plays a part here.

Looking back up: Its wing looks pretty bad by now; there's at least one entire hole in it that wasn't there before. Surely that's enough, right? Apparently even main characters don't get unlimited endurance in this game, and he's not sure he can draw back a bow at this point. So he carefully moves toward a part of the land that isn't on fire, and watches the Florians drive the dragon the rest of the way back, until the cliff under it just isn't enough to support its weight.

They scatter away as the ground collapses under the dragon; it opens its wings and tries to take flight, but fails, twisting awkwardly in the air briefly before spiraling downward. There's a good few seconds or so before the ground around Jin shakes from the impact.

There are a couple more distant sounds from below. The dragon roars in rage, and then...another rumble? It hit the ground again, just as hard as the last time. But...physics suggest it shouldn't hit the ground just as hard from attempting to fly again as it did from terminal velocity, and..well, the dragon can't be stupid enough to try to fly again. What just happened?

---

An orc and a Florian, both women, sit on one of the relatively stable platforms between steps, about halfway up a cliff. The latter is saying, "I dunno, sometimes they just go quiet for a while. So far they always start chiming in when something important happens, though."
"What about all the noise up there?" signs the orc, a voice speaking the words for her as she does so.
"Maybe it's not--"

The conversation is interrupted by a very big, very loud dragon falling a few feet away from them, taking a fair chunk of earth and rock with it. The orc reflexively holds up a hand and causes a small bluish-transluscent dome to appear around the pair, which the few rocks that would have hit them bounce harmlessly off of. With a loud rumbling and a slight shaking of the ground, the dragon lands.

Aureolis is about to say something when the dragon comes back up into sight, surrounded by a strange purpleish glow that seems to be responsible for holding it up somehow. And then it goes back down and hits the ground again, just as hard, and stops obscuring the view so the pair can see someone in the distance been behind the dragon being held up by the same sort of glow.

It's hard to make out many distinct features, but the person has very long, voluminous black hair and their eyes have a bright purple glow that seems to stream out to the sides of the face, flickering and moving like fire. They look to be in a more natural standing position, at least before angling and flying downward on a path toward where the dragon just landed for a second time.

"...Was that...?"

>

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I can't remember whether this plataueiaueu is actually supposed to be taller than any on Earth, but at any rate, dragons in this world are definitely no joke.

The winged woman pauses briefly.

>Auleoris: Yep, that was the dragon that attacked the florian city. And yes, that is the Queen coming to probably kill said dragon. In light of her power, you should really not try to fight her. You can talk to her, though. She is intelligent, rational, and friendly.

> Kick back, relax, and watch the dragon get it's ass handed to it.

"Oh, they're back. Apparently that was the person we're supposed to be getting out of here. And also the queen.
...They think we should talk to her instead of fighting."
"I would not be inclined to fight someone introduced to me this way," signs Neyla.

For a dragon-on-psion fight, it's awfully quiet down below. After a moment, Auleoris risks a peek over the cliff. The dragon's still there, but seems to be standing on its own power. The Queen is floating a few feet away from its head, and the dragon is still exhaling smoke but isn't breathing any fire on her. "I think..she's talking to it? Or doing a psychic thing at it, at least."
Soon, the dragon seems to nod and start walking away from the cliff, the floating girl flying up a bit to be out of its path. Auleoris leans back to a more stable sitting position again.

There is a second or two of restful silence between the two before...

"Hey!" The Florian visibly jumps, while Neyla manages to remain calm. Zettai (though neither of them know that name yet) is floating a few feet off from the edge. Her eyes and outline aren't glowing anymore, so it just looks like she's standing on thin air.
Auleoris blinks a couple of times. "Oh, uh. Hi."
Zettai gives a friendly wave. "Need a lift?"

>

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I'm going to just note here that expected suggestions at this point include things to say (or at least try to say) to Zettai on the way up.

>You should say hi to the nice lady that can literally kill you all with a thought. Also her name is Zettai and she gives out missions.

>Accept the offer for a lift,and you can try to find out why she stays here instead of returning

> Accept, of course. Get introductions out of the way.

"Uh, w-well sure. I mean if you don't mind," says the Florian.
The Queen chuckles. "They're just messing with you, y'know. But that is my name all right."
The pair on the platform stand up, and the orc signs "What is--?" before pausing at a slight disorientation from being gently lifted off the ground and gently moved toward the cliff.
"Zettai, sorry. Thought you could both hear it."
After placing the three of them far enough away from the cliff that going up won't bump anyone's head, Zettai starts on the way up.

"Are you..probing our minds or something?" asks Aulerois.
"No, I have a passive that picks up sensory input from nearby creatures. I'd turn it off if I could, honestly, and I'm not sure how the Input qualifies as sensory in the first place. So you're more players, huh? What's your world like?"
Neyla signs, "It has large oceans, many plants an animals, one sapient species. Seems okay. We don't exactly have many points of reference."
"Well, it's probably a lot nicer than SET at least."

> Ask how she got the dragon to leave peacefully like that.

Auleoris speaks up again. "How did you--"
"Dragons in this world are sapient but only respect beings able to fight on their level," Zettai interrupts, anticipating her question. "Once it knew who it was dealing with it was easy to convince it to leave 'my territory' alone and go bug someone else. I just made sure it knows where my territory is.
..Sorry, it's like listening to an echo. They probably haven't caught up yet."

> We are ... familiar with her species. So, crash course part one. You are a human, she is a troll. Her home planet is known as Alternia. It has two moons, one pink and one green (no idea why). Sunlight on Alternia is dangerously intense, so trolls are nocturnal. Troll society is organized by caste. There are twelve castes, determined by the color of their blood. In order, from lowest caste/most common/shortest lifespan to highest caste/least common/longest lifespan, there are rust bloods, brown bloods, yellow bloods, lime bloods, jade bloods, olive bloods, turquoise bloods, cerulean bloods, indigo bloods, purple bloods, violet bloods, and fuchsia bloods. The troll in front of you has blue blood, making her nobility and meaning she has a lifespan of probably a couple millennia. Troll culture is generally very violent (not their fault; they are being manipulated into it), but Zettai is an exception.
> Ask what kind of lusus she has. After she tells you, ask what a lusus is.
> Ask what she thinks of being outside in the daytime.

The Florian looks vaguely dazed, while Zettai tilts her head slightly. "That's, uh...well, it's wrong but it's too similar to what's right to be a coincidence, either. Weird."
"Could you let me in on this conversation?" says Neyla.
"Your Input knows a lot about my people, but..doesn't. I can tell you what's right from that if it won't bore you too much."
"Uh, go ahead. I've never met a real space alien before," blurts Auleoris. And immediately corrects: "Well, I mean--there were those tentacled things and one of them is--but, well, not before all this at least. Wait, was that offensive?"
Zettai shrugs. "Not really.

"So, maybe it was a translation error but we call ourselves Numerals. Did that sound like the same word?"
"Not exactly. They sorta almost rhyme, though?"
"Anyway, I've never heard of this 'Alternia'. Most of us including me were raised on UNDETERMINED, I was moved to SET. There's also, like, GROUP, RING, TOP, a bunch of other ones... The stuff about blood color was, uhm, half-right, I dunno about violent though..manipulated by who?"
"You are losing me again," signs the orc.
"They said they have different blood colors, with different lifespans and they're assigned to castes based on them? And then just a long list of colors I've mostly already forgotten.

"..Err, no offense."
"None taken. The part about lifespans was right but I dunno about castes? I mean, we're really divided up by, usefulness." She seems visibly uncomfortable with this subject, but presses on anyway. "I guess it does mostly end up following that order, though. The later colors in their list are always stronger, live longer, and usually have better powers. I'm sure it would look like that from outside."

Neyla, who has had an increasingly consternated look on her face since getting an answer, starts to sign something and then stops, and repeats this a couple of times before apparently giving up and dropping her hands back to her sides.

"So--what is a lusus?" says Auleoris, attempting to steer the subject away from this social order business.
"Semi-intelligent beast-like things mass produced to keep young Numerals safe. Well..mostly. Mine was a giant spider that ate children, so I killed it."

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Numerals ("NumeROLLS"?): A skewed version of trolls I've had in my head for a while. Their social organization has kind of a stark utilitarian-ness to it, which is in some sense more egalitarian and yet possibly worse to live in than Alternia's, and doesn't have the specific goal of being good at the universe-making game ("SGRUB", "SBURB", etc.). They have names of planets, personal symbols, etc. related to math ideas. Fun times.

> That info was from another OTHER universe, so don't worry about it too much. And pay very close attention to this part: Atthay asway otnay ustjay emay essingmay ithway ouyay, atthay asway emay ivinggay ouyay oncisecay etailsday aboutway ethay ersonpay inway ontfray ofway ouyay ANDWAY essingmay ithway ouyay. Ownay I'mway eeingsay ifway eshay ancay understandway igpay atinlay. But besides that there is a foxy archer from Pallete Town where that dragon just came from you're probably going to want to meet.

"Uh..." Auleoris makes a face as she attempts to understand something.
Zettai looks curious. "What was all that in the middle?"
"Pig latin. Um..kind of a mixed up version of the language I'm speaking, I guess. It all kind of hit me at once though and I didn't pick up most of it, but I guess the universal translator they have in this game didn't understand it either."
"Your language doesn't sound too different from mine, based on the phonemes."

> So yeah, that was info on what I guess is was an alternate universal variant of what Zettai's race is for the most part.

"Yeah, another-other universe. What's wrong, exactly?" asks the Numeral to Neyla.
"I--..

"I am trying to make sense of how a V-I-A-...working species can have different blood colors, and failing."
Zettai shrugs.

>Apparently the chaos god dying woke all the dragons, and the nearby ones will probably come here.

"I know about Liremska already," she says, "I have some possible solutions to that in progress, even."

> So uh, Zettai. The aliens in charge of the simulation would like you to meet up with their representative in the game world. IIRC-and not gonna go through logs at the moment-they want to talk about how you managed to stay in the simulation and maybe disconnect you if they can. Whether or not you want to meet with him is up to you, just letting you know what's up. I also don't remember if he's nearby or not.

Zettai frowns and rolls her eyes. "I didn't really 'manage to stay', I ignored their requests to leave and the world changed. It was weird. I thought they would have given up by now, but apparently not."
"Why did you ignore them in the first place?" says Auleoris.
"I was moping, and didn't wanna be bothered, so I turned off my screen's messaging alerts for a while. I finally saw the messages after the world started closing up, and then when I tried to leave it said I couldn't, something about an 'unstable state'."
"I think you should be able to leave now," signs Neyla.
"But I don't want to!" she seems a touch angry, a new emotion for the pair to see from her. "The people of this world need me. You know what would've happened if I hadn't stopped that dragon just then? Anyway, the queen can't just disappear, the power vacuum would--"
"But these people aren't real," says the winged woman.

"What do you mean, 'not real'!?" She starts waving her arms around, though thankfully this has no effect on the people currently being psionically held up in the air by her. "They look real enough to me. They talk and think and have emotions just like I do!" It's possible this may have touched a nerve. "I'm friends with several of them. Trust me, I've seen simulation AI before, and these people..they're not like that at all."

Zettai pauses, looking up, and the other two follow suit. "Oh, looks like we're pretty close to the top.

"I'm just gonna put you two up on the last couple steps and you can go up like you climbed the whole way. Say you saw someone you didn't recognize beat up the dragon, I don't really want to be the 'feared' kind of ruler, you know?"
Neyla signs, "So we are dropping the subject of your returning to the real world."
Zettai places them on the step as advertised, and sighs. "Look, whatever kind of contest this is, we--my people--lost. The world I grew up in--the only one I ever knew--is gone. This is my world now, and I'm doing all I can to make it better. And--I want to help you win, too, if I can, but don't try to take that away from me, too." She glances up and back down again, and waves cheerfully. "See ya!" And then flies off away from them.

> There's also a kitsune player up at the top of the cliffs if you wanna meet him.
> From here I guess you guys can really just do whatever you want... so what DO you want to do?

The Florian looks a little confused.
"What?"
"Uh...I guess they still haven't caught up yet. She looked a little..healthier than her real body, didn't she?"
Neyla nods. "I imagine that on long space-flights, the creators of this system come out periodically to eat normal food and exercise. Muscle atrophy seems an obvious risk to pods like the ones we are in."

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>Lateness of inputs aside, the last question stands. What do you wanna do from here? And I wouldn't recommend trying to climb, I hear it's quite an ordeal and the person up top is probably coming down soon anyways.

We're like three steps from the top. Also, wings? Still hurt.
Auleoris looks at Neyla, who nods, and they start the last bit of the climb.

>Zettai said that her world is gone. But the word Anansi used was "reorganization". Get clarification when you have the chance.

"Hmm..yeah.."
"What?" Neyla signs.
"She said her world was 'gone'. What exactly do they do to worlds they don't approve of?"
"A-N--our squid friend did not say?"
"Not specifically. He said they had been..reorganized. Whatever that means."
"We should ask him."

Finally atop the plateau, the two can see the damage the dragon did to the place before falling off. The cliffside the stairs were built into is sturdy rock, but there was a section jutting out just next to it that fell off, by the looks of things. The area nearby looks like the aftermath of a forest fire: Dead plants, ash, and smouldering around, but no proper fires anymore.

A fair number of Florians are buzzing around the area, most of the relatively healthy ones engaged in carrying those too injured to walk or worse away from the cliffs, presumably toward somewhere more capable of tending the injured. One person seems out of place here: A bright-red-haired guy with fox ears and at least two matching tails leaning against the trunk of what used to be a tree with his eyes closed.

"What are you still doing here?!" The Florian woman's taking in of this scene is interrupted by a much taller woman in leather armor with a spear hung diagonally over the back, wearing a fierce expression somewhat intensified by the fact that the left half of her face is covered in recent-looking burns. "Get back to--wait, who are you?" she interrupts herself, having apparently just now noticed she was speaking to an unfamiliar face and/or Neyla.

"Uh..Auleoris. Just got here. Um.."
"We were hoping to find a healer for her wings, but it seems we chose a bad time," signs Neyla.
"..You can say that again, orc." The way she says the word 'orc' seems just slightly derogatory. As if she doesn't mean it offensively but has never heard anyone say it in any other tone of voice. "You a hired guard or something?"
"Just a friend. We also bear a message from Laerta, preferably given to someone in charge."
"Well, it must be urgent if they've spared us a thought. I can take you to someone, I suppose. First, though--you saw the dragon go down, right? You must have seen that from the steps. Where did it go?"

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Recalling Zettai's request from a moment ago, what you choose to say about the dragon's disappearance is Important.

Just discovered that I accidentally copied the previous update over the event log/relevant info text file I had been using to keep up with a bunch of terminology, etc. Thankfully I posted it once some two years ago in the thread, so I guess I can recover it from there and add back to it or whatever...yay.

>We're getting a prompt to tell you what to tell them, but fuck that you're a big girl and can make your own decisions. I will say that if you want to be non-committal you can just say that a dragon fell out of the fucking sky and you promptly went for cover as any sane person is liable to do, so you wouldn't have gotten a good look at where it went. Also that fox dude you noticed sounds to be one of the other players. You should probably say hi.

>Your other options are to describe what you could have plausibly seen from the top of the cliff, or to tell the full story, reason for the queen not showing herself here and all. Again, your choice.

Just tell them you didn't recognize her. That way if they find out, you have plausible deniability. After all in a pre-internet civilization, you can't expect everyone to know what the queen looks like.

> Say that as soon as it fell you turned and ran. Seems like it got taken care of though considering that it fled.

"Uhh.." Auleoris visibly locks up for a couple of seconds. "W-well, I didn't exactly, I mean, mostly-wewere-trying-notto-get-hitbyrocks-or noticedbythe dragon, I, uh, turnedaround at theeee, thecliffwall and, then, bythetimeI-looked-back and--I mean, it was going...umm...off the other way! Uh, away from the cliff. Right?" She looks nervously at her companion.
"...More or less. I did look at the right time. Someone--I could not tell who at this distance--struck the dragon, and then stood before it a moment before moving aside to allow it to leave. Away from the cliff."
"Hmm..Sounds like someone earned its respect and told it to leave. That's good, as long as that person doesn't turn around and invite it back later."

The Florian with burned wings looks between the other two a couple of times, and then to the orc again. "Uh..Maybe you should handle our message. I just saw someone over there I have to talk to." And then starts off in the direction of the Keino leaning against a burned trunk.
Neyla shrugs. "Just don't forget about your wings before we leave."

Auleoris stops a few paces off from the stranger. It's not entirely clear whether he's heard her yet or not. Hey..did you catch his name or something?

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Missing spaces and added hyphens intended to indicate an irregular but much faster than usual pace of speech. Hope it reads the way I intended it to.

P.S., somebody finally posted a suggestion in Odd One Out and I replied with an update! I really wish more people read that one, I went back and re-read the old work in preparation for said update and I honestly feel I did a better job there than here in some respects.

> His name is Jin and his nickname is Link. Not sure what he's going by here, though.

"Hey, uh..Jin?"
"Hm?" The fox-boy opens his eye and looks up. "Yeah, what is it? I'm just taking a nap, after distracting a dragon and all."
Auleoris realizes he probably thinks she's one of the Florians from this town, and thinks through a few options to let on she's a player before just saying, "You're from Earth, right?"
"Yeah, totally. Are you a space alien?"
"No, but there is one in the game with us. Did you catch any of what they said we were supposed to be doing?"
He gets a look of recognition. "Ohh, that Earth. I guess this place wouldn't be called Earth, would it. Anyway, yeah, they said we had to win the game or whatever. I've already got started on being a big hero and stuff." He stands up and holds out a hand. "Real name's Dean Satori-Smith. I guess you got my character name from some of the NPCs or whatever?"
"Nnnnot exactly." She shakes the offered hand. "Uh, Claire Janson. But call me Auleoris."
"That rolls right off the tongue," he says with a grin. "How did you find out, then?"

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> Best to be honest with other players.

>Oh! Quote the sixth sense! It'll be hilarious!

"Well, uh..I see dead people."
Jin gives a slight headtilt. "What, like as some kind of class ability?"
"No, I just thought that sounded more plausible than what's actually going on.

"Supposedly a bunch of people from an alternate dimension's Earth are giving us pointers or something, and I can actually understand their words whereas most people just feel like they should do what they suggest doing."
"Huh." In thinking for a moment, Jin happens to look up enough to see the Florian woman's wings. "Hey, are your wings supposed to look like that?"
"No. I came up here originally to get them healed by someone who knows the right biology or whatever. Not sure if there's anyone not busy with dragon attack victims right now, though."
"I bet I can get them to help you out. Right this-a way." He starts leading the way more inland, to the main town, and she follows about next to him.

"So, who told you all that?"
"One of the aliens, who's a player in the game too. Uh--not the ones running the game, but the same species. He's calling himself Anansi and says he wants to help us win."
"Hmm.

"To play devil's advocate, what if they're really just more fictitious people made up for the game like the NPCs all over the place?"
Auleoris shrugs. "At that point, I'm not even sure I'm real. They're definitely aware of a lot of what's going on, though, and I've met at least one other player who's definitely had them suggest things to her."

The burned forest gives way to some more pristine nature. The trees are still sparse enough to easily walk through, and while there's no path per se, the grass seems very well-groomed, enough to act as a kind of natural carpet.

"Well, where is this guy? I have a ton of questions about how this game was coded...not to overshadow the excitement of getting an interview with a real live extraterrestrial in the first place."
"He's back in Laerta, which is a city in a cave below us. Two more players are headed toward that town, at least according to the alternate-Earth people. Who haven't exactly been wrong yet, but they have trolled me once or twice."
"Is that how we're supposed to win? Get everyone in one place?"
"I don't think so, but it can't hurt, right?"
Link grins wide again. "Yeah, a bigger party is better in your average RPG."

The nature gives way to what could actually be called a town. The buildings here are built of stone and brick, and many of them seem to have preferred vertical expansion to horizontal. The place is busy with people walking in and out or being carried to a few particular buildings near the center, one of which has a clearly hospital-like sign to it but the others apparently having been commandeered as extra infirmaries in the wake of an overflow of patients.

"I'm..not sure I'm comfortable demanding someone heal me with things like this," says Auleoris, noticing an abundance of severe burns and limbs turned very clearly the wrong way.
"Aww c'mon, you're a Main Character, you get priority. Besides, you're not hurt too bad, right? It'd probably just take a few seconds to fix you up. I have crazy high charisma, too, so I guarantee you I can convince someone to do it without making them even feel like they'd been inconvenienced."
"I dunno..It could wait until things calm down..."

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