Jack: Ask Erin if she wants to play tea party.
check new party member Erin's inventory and skills
>>269
"I'm your father," you explain. You neglect to mention that you mean adoptive father. She appears quite taken aback, as one probably would in her position. "And your name is Erin." you continue. She puts one finger to her chin, thinking, then replies "No, I don't think that's quite right. My name is... my name is... I think it was Penelope, or was it Ariadne? Yes... yes, that's right! It was Ariadne. I'm pretty sure, anyway."
>>270
You are now playing as Jack Aaronova.
Though you may be a murderous savage, you don't want to be seen to appear entirely uncultured. Plus, naturally, you wish to lull the girl into a false sense of security to render her docile, after which you can decide what to do with her at your leisure. That's why you propose a tea party. Not because you want to make friends with her or anything - how preposterous!
Poor Ariadne looks quite lost, in more ways than one. Upon your suggestion she breaks into a smile, but expresses concern at the lack of necessary tea making paraphernalia. The two of you have to make pretend, using cans of meat instead of cups and slices of sausage instead of biscuits. Aaron joins in as well, and the three of you quite enjoy yourself, momentarily able to forget the wailing tempest outside and the vacuous nature of your very existence.
Without warning, Ariadne gives a loud squeal of distress. She rushes over to the doorway, where Theodore has reappeared, fur completely soaked and sticking to his skin in a most unflattering manner. Ariadne coos over the poor creature and dries him off as best she can with the front of her dress. Theodore maintains a cold stare towards Aaron throughout the entire exchange.
>>271
You are now playing as Ariadne Aaronova.
You look over your possessions, seeing them almost for the first time. You are currently wearing an elaborate frilly lilac dress. You cannot tell what material it is made of, but it is soft to the touch and extraordinarily comfortable. You are also wearing several layers of underwear; you aren't sure why. Theodore is currently lying curled up in your lap.
You have a purple cloth handbag hanging over your left shoulder. You lift the outer flap and investigate the contents, but within the opening is simply a black void. You cannot see anything at all. Feeling about inside, your hand doesn't encounter anything - not even the walls of the bag, even when you put your arm in up to the shoulder. How odd.
You're sure you have some sort of "skills" or something like that, but you just can't quite remember what they are.
Sleep until stamina is regained. Sleep close together for warmth. Except for Aaron, who has to sleep away from the cat.
Aaron: be a gentleman for once and stand watch while the two girls are sleeping.
Aaron: Stop caring about material things, like a social status. Look forward to procuring four walls and adobe slabs for your girls, with heart, on your father's grave.
yeah
>>273
All these tea parties and amnesia have gotten you quite exhausted. You happily curl up in a quiet corner of the room, Theodore wrapped in your warm embrace, and invite your dear sister (but not father; think of poor little Theodore) to join you. Jack lies stiffly beside you, not quite cold enough to overcome her awkward detachment. You roll over, cat and all, reach out and draw Jack closer to you. As she does not resist, you pull yourself closer and nuzzle your head into the crook of her neck, and, finally, she reciprocates and pulls closer to you.
The storm outside continues unabated into the looming eventide. You, Jack and Theodore, meanwhile, form one oblivious, snoozing mass of warmth and comfort.
>>274
You are now playing as Aaron Aaronovitch Aaronov.
You're quite certain you've been nothing but an exemplary gentleman and scholar, but to remain the noble, stoic figure that your dear daughters require, you must forgo your own rest to ensure their safety. You stand by the doorway, like a soldier standing to attention, unwilling to let even a shadow pass in without your notice.
Darkness falls. It is a thick, pervasive sort of darkness, banished at irregular intervals by flashes of lightning, but somehow all the darker for it. The wind moans and wails, as though screaming in defiance of the ageostrophy that birthed it. Raindrops whip by like bullets. This ungodly sight is more than unsettling enough already, even before you catch sight of it.
You first see it as a very faint reddish light in the distance, which seems to split into two, then three, meandering through the air like hitodama. A flash of light at that moment reveals, between them, a vaguely humanoid figure - but of absurd proportions; the forest canopy, itself many metres tall, barely reaches its knees. As it is lit from behind you see it only as a silhouette. Its outline seems fuzzy, as though it is not quite sure where it ends and the rest of the universe begins. Somehow you can tell it is staring straight at you.
You feel a tap on your shoulder and scream in surprise, turning suddenly to defend yourself and almost striking Jack in the process. She says that she has to return to her tribe, and that christmas must go on. She has an odd glint in her eye.
>>275
Jack's social status as a high priestess is clearly of immense value to her, though you have to confess that you care more about her being your daughter than any religious position she may occupy. You are proud to have found shelter for your two young charges, though the concrete is not particularly aesthetically pleasing. You prefer the warm earthy tones that only an adobe abode can provide. You vow on the name of your father, who may or may be not dead, but is, at the very least, absent, that you will someday procure this.
But still this does not solve your present dilemma. Do you allow your dear daughter to risk her life crossing the unquestionably dangerous forest, probably in order to commit an act of ritualistic murder - especially knowing that thing, whatever it was, is out there? It clearly means a lot to her, but is it really okay to allow her out, without at least escorting her yourself?
>>276
"Yeah, sure. Go ahead." you say. Jack nods firmly, passes the threshold and is immediately swallowed into the omnipresent darkness.
Forget about Jack and get some shut-eye.
>>278
Upon reflection, perhaps it is for the best that Jack has run off to a near certain death. She seemed to lack the necessary self-preservation to continue to exist in this harsh and terrifying world. Also, she may or may not have tried to kill you, and cruelly hit you in the face when you tried to give her a friendly spinebuster. Also, you have to admit, she was nowhere near as cute as your other adoptive daughter.
With one last sideways glance into the maelstrom, you turn your back and walk away, curl up in one corner of the room and try to ignore the cacophonous wind and thunder long enough to fall asleep.
You are woken the next morning by Ariadne tugging urgently at your sleeve. "Papa! Wake up, Papa!" she implores, "Jack is gone! We have to go find her." She looks on the verge of tears. You get up and look around, bleary eyed and underslept, dragged around by your remaining daughter.
By daylight, the full devastation of the storm becomes apparent. The vegetation has been destroyed almost beyond recognition, especially near the path. Not only have large branches been torn off, but entire trees have been deracinated and dragged across the ground. The path is still visible, but is covered in a non-negligible amount of plant matter. More troublingly, the gentle brook at the bottom of the hill has swelled well out of its banks to become an unstoppable torrent of floodwater. It is at least four metres across and muddy brown and opaque, concealing its true depth. The current is strong enough to carry whole trees like so much flotsam.
To attempt a crossing here would be recklessly, unimaginably stupid. There is no other clear path leading to or from the building, but you could conceivably travel up or downstream, or wander into the unexplored jungle to the East.
You can't get rid of me that easily
>>108
I went on it yesterday or the day before and it was the boat. So very very recently.
take the boat from the 4-ch homepage across
Fashion a long rope out of vines. Tie one end to something sturdy and have Ariadne float across the river with the other end. Tightrope-walk across the vine to the other side.
>>282
Beforehand, using our advantage point look if there's a place where for river braids or divisions, this is the most shallow point. Grab a stick from one of the fallen branches and use it to measure the depth of the water and find a shallow path through the river braids. If we can easily walk across i.e. the water's not waist deep, do so, facing the current at a 45 degree angle. To assist Ariadne, grab one of the fallen branches and make Ariadne hold the other end, though if Ariadne lacks the height, take off our pants, tie off the cuffs, open the waistband and fill the pants legs with air to use as a flotation device for Ariadne. Tie her to ourselves using a vine.
>>280
A faint voice resounds in the back of your head. A familiar, but unplaceable voice. It seems like something you have tried to forget, to leave behind, but never quite managed. Who, or what is this? Is it a god, or a demon? Is it the subhuman cry of your id, or some piece of knowledge so horrifying it had to be suppressed? And, whatever it is, why does it remind you of boats?
>>281
You aren't sure you'd brave rapids like that even with a boat - even less so with a virtual one, which would be no more durable than a pile of origami cranes.
>>282,283
You head a short way up and downstream, but find nowhere that looks obviously fordable. The walls of the valley are steep, and the river completely fills the space between its banks. The area where the path was seems like the shallowest part, but it's still less than ideal. Probing carefully with a suitable stick, you find that you can safely wade in about a quarter of the way, at which point it passes waist height.
You take off your full-body grey jumpsuit, tie off the arms and legs, and wave it around to inflate it. You hand it to Ariadne, along with a makeshift staff, but she looks, if anything, more dubious about the endeavour than before. "I... Actually, I, um, I can't swim..." she stammers shyly. You wave away her objections blithely.
It takes a while to find some vines that are sturdy enough to take any weight, and longer still to weave them into a rope. You tie it about your waist and Ariadne's, leaving about three metres of slack between the two of you. Upon telling Ariadne to cross the river, she laughs, then, realising you weren't joking, looks at you as though you've gone mad.
Despite her fervent protestations, you force her into the river to make you a tightrope. She is immediately dragged away by the current, screaming for help until her head falls under the water. As you are tied together, you are pulled into the stream as well. You are at the whim of the eddies and flow for thirty seconds or so - though it seems much longer - until you manage to pull yourself ashore on the inside of a shallow bend in the river. Using the vine, you pull Ariadne to safety. All loose items in your inventory, with the exception of the nail file and a single sausage, have been washed away.
You find yourself in a small clearing. On close inspection, there are signs of former inhabitation: a ring of stones in the centre, which probably once formed a campfire, various waterlogged pieces of paper scattered about, and a pile of sticks within which you find two cans of meat, one rather damp and unappetising loaf of bread, a sausage and various fine china.
Ariadne is lying on the bank, unconscious. She has lost hold of her stick, her handbag and your jumpsuit. Perched on a branch nearby, you see a large red bird, seemingly watching over her.
Give her mouth to mouth. You know, we wouldn't want our dear daughter to drown.
Use tongue.
Feed her whichever sausage looks best.
eat all the plants
>>285
Grasping at faint threads of memory in the back of your head, you vaguely recall something about CPR and reviving unconscious people. But how many chest compressions were you supposed to do per rescue breath again? And what position do the arms go in for the recovery position? You are almost paralysed by uncertainty, before remembering about that "kiss of life" business.
You fill your lungs with air, awkwardly clamp your lips onto hers and tip her head back to open her airway. Her skin is damp, cold and pale. You exhale as hard as you can, and are rewarded by seeing her little chest rise a little, like some sort of accelerated thelarche. You repeat this twice more, after which you pull back and find that she is breathing - albeit shallowly - unaided. You breathe a sigh of relief.
>>286
You feel that your poor tongue has gone unused and unloved for too long now. You use your tongue to lick the back of your hand, appreciating the slightly salty taste of the sweat. You also using your tongue to taste a sausage and to lap some water from the river. You hope your tongue appreciates this humble gesture.
>>287
The sausage you saved from the river is the téliszalámi you received back at >>205, in addition to which you have located a bratwurst in the pile of loose sticks. Unfortunately, both have been badly soaked; one by immersion in a river, the other from prolonged exposure to rain. You visually appreciate the unusual texture and colouration of the téliszalámi, deciding it to be the one that looks best. You carefully saw a slice or two off using your nail file and offer them to Ariadne, but she remains obstinately unconscious.
>>288
Being surrounded by so much greenery suddenly makes you see red. This accursed vegetation has foiled you at every turn, and it needs to be shown a lesson. As you well know, the one thing that strikes fear in to the heart of any plant fears is being eaten. Not just the fruit - the stem, leaves, roots, everything. You take a deep breath and condemn yourself to becoming a monster, a bringer of death to all Viridiplantae.
You begin by masticating a few nearby leaves. They are waxy and bitter; not a good start. You happen to notice, concealed behind it, a few bunches of bright red berries. Well, if you're going to eat all the plants, you may as well start with some which look reasonably edible, you decide. A vagrant thought stays your hand - aren't bright red things usually poisonous? You shrug it off and gleefully stuff your cheeks with berries, chewing and swallowing as fast as possible.
Unfortunately for you, it seems they were exhibiting Müllerian mimicry, not Batesian. You feel a piercing pain in your abdomen, followed by a constriction of the throat. You collapse to the ground in the grips of a seizure, foaming from the mouth. The world reels away from you in a darkening blur of pain and uneaten foliage.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 9
(Continuing from most recently saved game: >>289)
Having successfully resuscitated your beloved daughter, you sit down for a rest on the riverbank. It is roughly midday, and the sky is slowly clouding over, though not threatening any further rain just yet. The red bird has flown across to the opposite end of the clearing from the river, where there is a thick band of torn and uprooted trees leading to the Northwest.
All is peaceful for a moment, quiet but for the call of the stream behind you. Just as Ariadne is beginning to stir, you become aware of a rhythmic thumping noise, and the telltale cracking sound of tree trunks being split asunder. You look to the Northwest, seeking the source, only to find a large, greenish brown sauropod has appeared at the edge of the clearing. It is enormous; at least four metres tall at the shoulder, and more than twenty metres from head to tail. It stares at you indifferently, chewing on the foliage from a nearby tree. The red bird is perched right on top of its head.
You're no expert on the subject, but you believe it to be a brontosaurus.
Ask him about the sound of one hand clapping.
Remember that there is no such thing as a brontosaurus, therefore the creature is impossible and we must be living in a false reality.
achieve Satori
Get it on with Satorin.
>>290
You aren't sure of the gender of either the bird or the brontosaurus, so you go ahead and broach the question that happens to be on your mind to both of them. The bird cocks its head curiously but remains silent, whilst its companion studiously ignores you and continues chewing away. You'd be better off asking someone else, you reflect, considering that neither of them even has hands.
Ariadne groans, sits up and coughs a little, looking rather sorry for herself. You consider asking your newly awakened pentadactyl companion for her insight into the conundrum, but think better of it.
>>291
What were you thinking? Of course it isn't an apatosaurus; apatosauruses are just fairy tales made up to scare children. Ariadne catches sight of the non-brontosaurus, screams in terror and clings to your arm, illustrating your point perfectly. Anyway, you're sure it's just a trick of the light, or a strangely shaped tree, or something like that. Or maybe everything you thought was real is just fantasy, and you're actually living a dream. That would explain some things.
>>292
For too long have you striven against the way of things, accomplishing nothing and bringing nothing but suffering upon yourself and others. In a moment of clarity, you choose to take your first step on the path towards nirvana. First, you must learn to see reality as it truly is, without being waylaid by absurdities like phantom dinosaurs. It is not uncommon for this transcendental understanding to require decades to obtain - especially when attempting mushi-dokugo, as in your case - so the sooner you start the better.
You settle into a state of silent meditation. Just as you feel you making some progress towards kenshou, however, you are dragged back into samsara by a forceful tug at your arm. "Papa! Papa, wake up! T-there's a huge scary monster over there and we have t-- oh no! I-it's coming this way! Papa, help!"
Sure enough, the creature is lumbering towards the two of you, tail swaying from side to side. You find that the two of you are pinned against a crook in the river, with no easy escape route.
>>293
Try as you might, you cannot find any Satorin.
Throw Ariadne at the monster and run.
Escape from reality
Throw ourselves at the monster and run.
Declare a song thread and link quotes to a number of future posts.
Dubs.
>>295
So, it's come to this, you think to yourself. Like some contrived thought experiment, you are forced to decide between your own or your daughter's safety. Your garden variety psychologist - precisely the sort who would come up with this ridiculous situation - would expect you to commit the ultimate act of altruism, laying down your own life that your genes may live on in your daughter, and so on and so forth.
Just to spite them, you grab Ariadne by the waist and toss her as hard as you can into the maw of the approaching behemoth. The creature reels backwards slightly, but has difficulty dealing with its own immense inertia. Ariadne screams. Her scream is cut short. You don't stick around to see the results of your handiwork, but instead sprint away as hard as you can into the sheltering vegetation to the South.
>>296
After a few minutes you collapse from over-exertion. You sit against the trunk of a nearby tree for a few moments, chest heaving, unable even to think. Finally, the enormity of what you have done settles upon you. You stare at the palms of your hands. What have you done? You have left both your daughters to die. Even if they survive, are you fit to call yourself their father any more? Were you ever?
But wait! You already established, right about when the brontosaurus showed up, that none of this is real anyway, so it doesn't count. Or does it? Is committing an atrocity in a false reality that you believe to be real at the time - as you did when you abandoned Jack to the night - really, morally any different from doing so in reality? You bury your head in your hands, trying to force the rainforest around you and the mud under you and the sky above you and the damp, humid air all around and inside you to cease to exist by sheer force of will. You fail.
>>297
You try to throw yourself at the monster, but you are the monster now. You cannot run from what you have done.
You try to run anyway, for lack of anything else to do with yourself. The ground here is almost completely waterlogged from the torrential rain earlier, and the thick, black soil pulls your ankles in, like the souls of the dead begging for you to join them. You are almost sucked into the quagmire on several occasions, and have to use the wiry, twisted trees to pull yourself out and onwards. You continue to run, as best you can, through the thorny undergrowth. You almost - but not quite - succeed in forgetting what you are running from.
Hours later, you emerge, breathless and plastered in mud and minor injuries, onto a fairly well beaten track. The damage of last night's storm is evident, with fallen boughs and tree trunks scattered about, but nonetheless you recognise it as the same path you were on back at >>164.
>>298
Words begin to spill from your mouth, unbidden. "Title: >>301", you say. "First verse: >>298,312,333,369." What are you saying? "Chorus: >>354,372,321,93." What does this mean? "Second verse: >>303,399,296,378." You clamp your hands over your mouth, suddenly terrified by these bizarre verbal explosions. Is this aphasia? Or mind control? However hard you try to hold it in, however, one last phrase leaks from your mouth. "Last line: >>400." Then, all is silent.
>>299
You cannot find any synchronised translation versions of foreign media in your vicinity.
Be a big fat butt.
>>301
You continue to castigate yourself. You are worthless, you tell yourself. You are nothing but detritus; the butt of a cigarette, having wrought your ills on your victim's lungs, now discarded and burnt out. Yes, you may be a little larger, a little rounder, but that's what you are: a butt. And just like a cigarette butt, it would be best for everyone if you just rot away here, as you are, and let your biomass crawl its way back up through the food web from the bottom up; through the detritivores and into the heterotrophs. Perhaps then you can provide sustenance to something good and wholesome, and, eventually, prove a sufficient force of good in the world to offset your cowardly double infanticide.
Perhaps.
Time to return to camp hooray!
Sit there like a dead duck spitting out pieces of my broken luck.
Find redemption through faith and hard work.
>>303
Hooray! You casually declare yourself strong enough to horribly murder everyone, in keeping with your vow taken back at >>163, and saunter off towards where you remember the camp being. As you round the last corner in the path, however, you are confronted by a sight most horrifying. Dismembered corpses of grunts are strewn hither and thither across the plaza. You're no expert in forensics, but judging by the size and extent of the sprays of dried blood, and the fact that various body parts are entirely detached and metres away from their original bodies, it seems they were murdered rather violently, with a sharp impliment.
Beyond the carnage, the double doors leading to the camp proper are still open. The various colourful chalk murals still stand, as starkly oblivious of their grim surroundings as the late grunts were of theirs. In the corridor you see a girl seated in a wheelchair. Similar to your first daughter, she is wearing the threadbare remains of a seifuku. There is a backpack slung over the back of her wheelchair, with various unidentifiable things sticking out of it. She has a harpoon gun in her lap, which, as soon as she catches sight of you, she raises and aims at you.
She appears to be in very poor shape, physically. Her skin is deathly pale, her eyes hollow and her hair wiry and dishevelled. There is a large reddish black patch at her breast centred around what appears to be a severe, potentially fatal puncture wound. Her legs, from the knees down, are mangled almost beyond recognition, with splinters of bone breaking clean through the skin. Her wounds are dressed in copious amounts of congealed blood. Her face bears a look of depthless Weltschmerz.
"Christ, not you again." she mutters to herself, "You'd sodding well better have brought some food."
>>304
You stare gormlessly at her, your two hard earned sausages hanging at your side. She gestures at them and demands that you hand them over. You instead spit out some comment about how lucky you were to be blessed with two beautiful daughters, and how foolish you are to have cast aside this providence.
>>305
"I'm sorry!" you exclaim, suddenly returning to your senses, tossing your sausages at the girl. "I have faith in you! I'll work hard for you, I promise!" With a facial expression like a stone wall, she rolls over to the meat products and tucks them into her backpack. She stares at you a few seconds, sighs and vaguely accepts your aid.
"Well," she begins, "I suppose you're wondering about all the mutilated corpses? The camp was attacked last night, by a single person. They killed eleven of our number, but ran off when I confronted them. It was dark, and I only saw them briefly," a shadow of doubt flashes across her face, as she continues, "but I could've sworn it was... a girl I used to know."
The corners of her lips rise in some unconvincing mimicry of a smile, and she says sardonically "Well, it's that many fewer mouths to feed, isn't it?"
>>306
In lieu of a response, you get to your knees and start striking yourself in the back with the nail file you happen to be holding, it being the closest you have to a whip. You grit your teeth and nobly bear the pain, knowing that every lashing is one step closer to salvation. The girl looks on disdainfully, then makes her way back indoors, calling out obliquely over her shoulder "Whenever you're done there, come join me in the atrium."
Take as many severed limbs as we can carry, then join the girl in the atrium.
Take a young bull and two rams without defect. And from the finest wheat flour make round loaves without yeast, thick loaves without yeast and with olive oil mixed in, and thin loaves without yeast and brushed with olive oil. Put them in a basket and present them along with the bull and the two rams. Then bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance to the tent of meeting and wash them with water. Take the garments and dress Aaron with the tunic, the robe of the ephod, the ephod itself and the breastpiece. Fasten the ephod on him by its skillfully woven waistband. Put the turban on his head and attach the sacred emblem to the turban. Take the anointing oil and anoint him by pouring it on his head. Bring his sons and dress them in tunics and fasten caps on them. Then tie sashes on Aaron and his sons.
If I want all I want, and most acutlly I love you. In August, a month like a good movie.
Lick all visible metal surfaces
La La La La La La Zingen Zingen Kleine Vlinders
La La La La La La Zingen Vlinders La La
>>308
You tuck various dismembered pieces of anatomy under your armpits, balanced on your shoulders, under your chin and in your arms. Two left hands, one right arm, one left foot, one right foot, one ear, one thumb and two severed heads have been added to your inventory.
You walk boldly into the building - or as boldly as one can, with so much carrion precariously balanced on oneself - and every grunt you pass on the way wails in horror at the sight of you, variously cringing, bursting into tears or curling up into the foetal position. By the time you reach the large hexagonal central room, the air is thick with lamentations.
There are two figures sitting beside the campfire. One is the girl in the wheelchair, the other is a tall, androgynous looking person, dressed in close-fitting white clothing. Their hair is just one unrealistically uniform light grey mass. They are staring at you with lidless blue eyes and a completely placid expression. The girl, meanwhile, is slicing off pieces of one of the sausages you gave her and eating them one by one.
She glares at you and mutters something inaudible under her breath.
>>309
You cannot locate any ungulates, defective or otherwise. You enquire as to how the food situation is, and whether you could perchance bake some nice bread. The girl sighs and admits that the food situation is better than it has been in a while, with two entire sausages and fewer to feed than ever - but no chance of bread. Your desires further diverge from cruel reality, when you find that you have no baskets, no sons, no tents, no tunics, no robes, no ephods, no breastpieces, no turbans, no sacred emblems, no anointing oil, nor even any sashes. How disappointing.
>>310
Do you truly want all these things, though? What you want most acutely, you find, is to declare your tender, parental love for the poor girl in the wheelchair. Now, being monsoon season, it is a beautifully cinematic time for it, you think. Nonetheless, she bluntly rebuffs your heartfelt advances.
>>311
There are metal frames on the skylight directly above you, but there's no way you could possibly reach those. The only other metalliferous objects you can locate are all in the possession of the young lady before you. You begin by bending down, dropping a foot and an ear in the process, and trying to lick the spokes of her wheelchair. The girl proves too fast for you, however, and is already well out of tongue range and pointing a harpoon gun at your head before you can do anything. "Get up, you piece of shit." she says through downturned lips. You crawl over, tongue extended, to taste the weapon, only to find it discharged directly into your face. You are killed instantly.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 10
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>313)
>>312
You sing a little ditty to better ingratiate yourself into the group. The girl, predictably enough, is not amused; the strange androgynous person cocks their head but otherwise makes no response; and the grunts simply continue to wail and cower from you. Taking charge of the situation, the girl then declares that the camp is no longer safe, and that everyone must gather their belongings and prepare to leave. She also mentions that there used to be another two camp members - a married couple, or something like that - who went missing recently, and that a secondary objective is to find them.
It has been decided that you will leave first thing in the morning. The sun is already beginning to set, and you have only a short period of daylight left before night falls.
Make a bed out of limbs and sleep on it.
>>314
As the sun is silently buried in the thick convective clouds on the horizon, you spend the last hour of sunlight ferrying bits of dead grunt from the plaza outside into the atrium, where you pile them into a rough, flattish cuboid shape. As you are doing this, you pass the other two non-grunt members of the camp several times. The girl in the wheelchair is ordering around the poor androgynous person with blunt, laconic commands, mostly involving moving things in preparation for tomorrow's departure. They don't seem to mind in the slightest. The grunts, meanwhile, alternate between standing around picking their noses and cowering in terror at the sight of you.
As night falls, a thick blanket of silence smothers the camp. Even the grunts stop sobbing as they curl up in odd corners to sleep. You lie on your back atop your pile of gore, shifting back and forth in the hopes of finding a comfortable position. Eventually you fall asleep, only to be plagued by dreams of fear and powerlessness, in which every shape and object seems like a malicious force.
You are woken by an urgent tug at your arm. You can just about make out the androgynous person standing over you. As soon as you open your eyes, however, they turn and leave in one fluid movement. Blood chilling screams echo from the North. You scramble to your feet, grasping your only weapon - your trusty nail file.
Various grunts run in screaming from the Northward corridor, lit from behind by firelight. One trips and falls, and is immediately descended upon and slain by a lithe, feline shape. With one sharp movement and a spray of blood, their head is severed and rolls to your feet. In front of you you find three grunts - but unlike the docile, benign denizens of this camp, they are wild eyed and have brightly coloured angular patterns painted onto their faces and bodies. Two are carrying flaming torches, and all three have makeshift wooden spears. They bay at you hungrily, ready to charge.
In their midst, crouching over the freshly decapitated corpse, is your former daughter, Jack. She is gripping a stone knife tightly in one hand, and looking at you with an unreadable expression.
Give Jack a hug and tell her how glad we are to see her alive!
Be Jack.
Stop Christmas forever and start celebrating Valentine's.
Merry Christmas! :D
marry Christmas
>>316
Your first daughter is alive and well, thank goodness! Relief washes over your shoulders like a nice warm shower after a long winter's day. You rush over towards your prodigal daughter, arms spread ready to embrace her. Rather than reciprocate, however, she scowls, hisses and shoulder barges you. While you are still off balance, she follows up with a wide slash towards your vulnerable cephalic region.
You hear an animalistic scream and feel horrible lacerations tear into the flesh of your face. You fall backwards onto your bed of corpses, the sensation clinging to you through your descent. Why has your daughter betrayed you thus? Why did you betray her earlier? Isn't this, ultimately, your fault? You are so caught up in this vortex of self-hatred that you fail to notice that the injuries you've sustain have nothing to do with Jack's knife.
Clinging to your face, screaming and clawing away, is Theodore. His all-consuming desire to inflict pain upon you, combined with some unlikely timing, threw you out of the path of Jack's christmas tidings and thereby saved your life. You are almost relieved enough to forget the pain.
>>317
You are now playing as Jack Aaronova.
You have already celebrated christmas three times now, and it has consistently proven itself to be nothing but a sickening, bloody orgy of gratuitous violence. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but, you reflect, perhaps you should move on to greener pastures. You could replace it with an even more violent, sadistic ritual, with more painful sacrifice of innocents. You could call it Valentine's.
>>318
A thought crosses your mind. What if you were to have a happy, merry christmas? I mean, it seems quite absurd, what with christmas naturally being a horrible process fit to cast fear into the hearts of even the most hardened of warriors, but what if? You take a moment to contemplate the logistics, while your father/unwilling sacrifice is being mauled by your loyal war cat. You conclude that a "merry christmas" is a contradiction in terms, and completely impossible in this world or any other.
>>319
This contemplation has brought home to you just how much christmas means to you. This newfangled "Valentine's" pales in comparison to the noble, time-honoured practice of christmas. You take a vow to remain loyal to celebrating christmas until death do you part, and thereby declare yourself celibate with respect to other religious festivals.
Aaron, meanwhile, successfully escapes the grip of Theodore and dives into a conveniently placed pile of dismembered limbs. Two of your fellow tribesmen charge and stab their spears into where they think he is, but he proves too well hidden due to the darkness and many decoy body parts. At that moment, at the other side of the large, open room, you see a flash of light. Illuminated in the beam of an electric torch is an oddly expressionless androgynous looking person. A woman's voice calls from the source of the beam, saying, bluntly, "Leave him, he's already dead. We have to go." The beam vanishes and you hear the sound of movement away from you. Your tribesmen seem lost as to whether to continue to hunt their current prey or go after the new targets, and look to you for guidance.
You note in passing that you happen to have accumulated three unspent skillpoints and 235 mana.
It's time to gamble, time to call Lady Luck
Put all skillpoints into ailuromancy, then use it to figure out what the tribesmen should do
>>321
Ah, that's right! Why, it's quite obvious to all who that voice in the darkness is. It's clearly a living anthropomorphism of the concept of chance or luck. "Wait, Fortuna!" you call out to her, "Come back! I want to gamble!" Displaying her infamous capriciousness, however, she ignores your cries and vanishes into the darkness, along with that suspicious looking person she was with.
>>322
You assign all three available skillpoints to the most unambiguously useful choice, which, it goes without saying, is ailuromancy. The following skills are now available to you:
Whilst these are all immensely useful abilities to have at your disposal, it's not immediately obvious how they aid your current predicament. You elect to employ feline communication (passive skill), which you gained earlier, to consult Theodore on the topic. Through a serious of hisses and howls, he informs you, in no uncertain terms, that Aaron's very continued existence is an affront to all catkind and he must be destroyed.
You and your tribesmen surround the dismembered corpse pile, while Theodore dives straight into its heart, hunting his quarry. Aaron cries out in pain and pops up from near the centre, slashing about his feet with a nail file. Looking around, he realises he is surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered. He raises his arms into the air and surrenders unconditionally, even as Theodore claws his calves to shreds. As the three tribesmen draw closer, spears at the ready, he looks pleadingly into your eyes, soliciting your mercy.
Spare Theodore and order the tribesmen to kill the cat, while casting Inverse ailuromantic weather prediction to bring deadly weather upon our fleeing foes.
possess nearest cat
be cat
do cat stuff
Take a nap.
Meow meeow
Allocate 1 skillpoint to aerokinesis.
Check if anything in the room is edible and to your taste.
Beware the long head of pink goats which doth slumber in cute fur-ghosts.
>>331
You don't know much about human concepts like "skillpoints" or "allocating", but you nonetheless manage to increase your aerokinesis level to one. You thereby gain the following skill:
>>332
You locate a discarded slice of sausage near the remains of the campfire in the centre of the room. Disappointingly, it doesn't put up much of a fight when you pounce on it, but the taste is still quite agreeable.
>>333
You pause where you are, ears pointed, whiskers twitching slightly. Something isn't right. Your instinct wills you to stand and fight or run away, but you aren't even sure what from. It takes you a moment to realise that the beast that threatens you lurks within - adorable, furry, and possessing of ghostlike agility as you are. Finally it dawns upon you that you are afraid of your own indwelling uncatlike behaviour. What were you thinking, dabbling in magic? And what are you doing questioning your own conduct? Cats aren't supposed to doubt themselves. If you are a cat, then why are you behaving like this? And if you aren't a cat, then what are you but a discoloured, deformed mammal?
Displaying eminent self discipline, you shake off the nascent existential crisis. Just as you are relaxing, however, an enormous animal's head, on a long, snaking neck like that of a rokurokubi, snakes its way into the room from the North. Composure shattered, you cower in abject terror, ready to flee at any moment. You have never seen an animal like this in your life. Next to it, however, is a creature even more terrifying: an all too familiar young girl in an overdecorated frilled lilac dress. Upon sighting you her face lights up in unabashed delight. "Theodore!" she cries affectionately, "Thank goodness you're alright!" She rushes towards you, completely unheeding the incredible amount of gore and carnage all around, arms spread ready to clasp you in a tight embrace.
Play hard to get
>>335
Naturally, it would be unbecoming of a creature of your stature to be seen to simply accept such affection. You try to run away, leading the girl on a wild cat chase, but unfortunately find yourself still in the grips of the strange malaise of your prior uncatlike musings. An all too human part of you almost feels like it wants to be embraced and loved unconditionally, instead of perpetuating this pointless artifice. This profound internal conflict leads to your front legs trying to run one way and your back legs another, leaving you sprawled inelegantly on the floor.
Ariadne descends upon you like a hawk upon a baby rabbit and scoops you into her arms. You are powerless to do anything as you are petted and fussed over to within an inch of your life. Eventually, she pauses to introduces you to the bizarre, Brobdingnagian long-necked monster, its head still poked nonchalantly through the doorway, staring at you with vast, empty eyes.
"This is Rupert," she states matter-of-factly, "He's a brontosaurus. I found him in the forest, and he's really quite friendly when you get to know him. Aren't you?" At this, she rubs the creature's snout and makes cooing noises. You feel terrified and slightly jealous.
Pretend to be nice to Rupert while plotting his Denise. I mean demise.
Pretend to be Rupert while plotting his demesne.
Say "brontosaurus" over and over because you think it sounds funny.
In fact, make it "Brobdingnagian brontosaurus" because that sounds even funnier.
>>337
Rupert's head retracts through the doorway, out of the building, and back to his absurdly proportioned body. Ariadne leads you outside, following him. The weather is unusual: there is an extremely strong northerly wind blowing, almost uniformly, without gusts. The tops of the trees are pulled downwind as though there were invisible giants trying to uproot each of them. Small grey torn looking clouds sweep overhead, like shreds of cotton wool. The ground is slightly damp, and there is a litter of hailstones covering the plaza.
Now that you see the full extent of him, you see that Rupert is truly a monstrous creature indeed. His tail alone is at least twenty times the size of you. Such a dangerous being cannot be allowed to live; he might turn upon you at any moment. You must betray him before he can betray you. You nuzzle against Rupert's right foreleg so as to lull him into a false sense of security. Against all the odds, however, he ignores your perfidious advances.
>>338
As Rupert's enormously oversized back is turned, you mock him by stomping around heavily and clumsily, whilst stretching your neck out as far as you can. How silly he looks! Why, if owned an area of private land surrounding a manor in a feudal society, it'd probably be just as brutish and inelegantly designed.
>>339
"Meooow", you say. "Meooow, meooow, meooow". You find that your rough tongue, though far superior for grooming purposes, is not well suited to voicing that preposterous human language.
Ariadne claps twice and says "Rupert, upsies!" The creature obligingly stretches its tail out behind to touch the ground and its neck diagonally upwards to the top of the building. He then stays perfectly still as Ariadne climbs up his tail, along his back and up his neck onto the roof. You follow cautiously. Once the two of you are on the roof, she turns and pats him on the head, saying "Good boy, Rupert".
The roof is an ugly, greyish affair, much like the rest of the building. The wind here is substantially stronger than at ground level. Though you are quite alright, Ariadne's dress flutters and fans out in the wind like a little parachute. She has to lean into the wind to walk, and eventually concedes and just sits down where she is. The clouds are darkening, and the wind is now accompanied by a few small raindrops.
>>341
"Meeo-ow meooow, meeo-ow meooow, meeo-ow meoow" you say. This seems to evoke some strange pathos in Ariadne, as she grasps you and presses you to her breast dramatically, saying "There there, it's okay Theodore, I miss Papa and Jack just as much as you do. We'll find them, I promise." She looks around from her vantage point, apparently looking for signs of those insufferable other human beings, but to no avail. She turns to you, exasperated, and says, "Perhaps it's silly to ask you, but I'm all out of ideas. What should we do now, Theodore?"
Fall asleep somewhere really inconvenient and then look offended when someone moves us.
Be Ariadne, take Theodore and get back inside before the storm kills us all.
Pirouette
Be Rupert. Expel the gaseous waste products that have no doubt been building up in your gigantic herbivorous digestive system.
Be Rupert. Wonder why we haven't died of asphyxiation with atmospheric oxygen levels being several times lower than the late Jurrasic period.
Be Rupert again. Take a dump.
>>342
You climb onto Ariadne's lap, curl up and close your eyes contentedly. You know how susceptible this particular human is to your feline wiles, and you're quite confident she will be unable to move for the foreseeable future. The front of her dress is soft and warm, and smells faintly of lavender.
Shockingly, however, she doesn't understand that she's supposed to just act as a bed for now, and instead starts stroking you (which you can tolerate) and talking at you (which you cannot). "Oh Theodore," she begins, "I don't know why I thought you might be able to help. I just don't know what to do any more." She sighs heavily and continues, falteringly. "I... It's just... I feel like I don't understand anything any more, Theodore. I don't know where we are, or who I really am. I know I lost my memory a few days ago, and though I've tried my very best to be brave, it really is scary not to remember anything, you know."
She stares off into the distance for a minute or so. The wind continues unabated, a constant faint roar, lulling you into sleep. Just as you are about to succumb, however, she starts talking again. "I... I don't know what it is, but there's something not right, Theodore. This world doesn't add up somehow. I haven't told anyone about this, but... yesterday, after Papa disappeared, I was left alone with Rupert. I spent too long making friends with him and couldn't find anywhere safe in time afterwards, so I ended up spending the night with him in the middle of the forest."
Her voice takes on a low, hollow tone. She speaks slowly and deliberately. "I saw... no, I didn't see; more like, I felt some things there. Things which don't make sense. Now that I know it, I can sort of feel the same things now. It feels like somebody's coloured in reality with the wrong colours, and it only looks right now because you know what colour it's supposed to be and that's how you see it. There's something really wrong, Theodore, and I'm scared because I don't understand what's going on at all. It could all just fall apart at any moment and there'd be nothing we could do."
You have no idea what she hopes to accomplish by trying to emotionally move you with her tale of woe, but you wish she'd just shut up and let you sleep. You put on your most indignant face but she fails to take the hint.
>>343
You are now playing as Ariadne Aaronova. You pick up your beloved companion and cautiously walk over to the edge of the roof, only to find that Rupert has moved out of position, and is instead sampling the nearby foliage. You call to him to tell him it's time for "upsies" again, but he is quite some way upwind and your voice simply doesn't reach.
There are no other obvious ways down - other than the one very obvious one, but it's a three storey drop to the ground. The rooftop is quite expansive but featureless aside from a few vents, too small for you to fit into, some aerials, a satellite dish, and a large hexagonal pyramidal skylight overlooking that atrium where you found Theodore earlier.
>>344
You try to spin around on the spot, but are blown over by the wind and end up landing on top of poor Theodore. He is not amused.
>>345
You cannot play as Rupert; you can only play as members of your current party.
Being, as you are, a cute little girl, you have never - and could never - do anything so vile and uncouth as pass wind.
>>346
Try as you might, you still cannot play as Rupert; you can only play as members of your current party.
You have no idea what the current oxygen level is. The fact that Rupert is currently blithely chewing on leaves instead of lying on the ground gasping his final breaths rather suggests that whatever the oxygen content of the atmosphere is, it's comfortably enough to support him.
>>347
Useful as it would be in your current predicament, you still cannot play as Rupert; you can only play as members of your current party.
You cannot locate any dumps in your vicinity. You're not sure you'd be able to carry one anyway.
just be ourself
explore the secret darkness in your heart
trust in the heart of the cards
interpret the card of the hearts
>>349
You continue to play as Ariadne Aaronova. But who, precisely, are you?
Retrograde amnesia is a confusing and frightening thing indeed. What sort of person were you before you lost your memory, you wonder? Were you a kind, loving person as you are now, or were you full of spite and vitriol? Either way, does it affect who you are now? If your every experience and memory has been erased like equations from a blackboard, you cannot help but wonder what exactly is left behind. The most troubling part is that you don't know what of yourself - of your patterns of thought, your desires, relationships with others, and so on - is leftover from your previous life, and what is simply an artefact of your recent circumstances.
You wish you could just be yourself, but sometimes life isn't so simple.
>>350
In search of the truth, you delve into the dark waters of introspection. Surely, you assert, there must be some fragment of your former self, still locked away in the obscure recesses of your subconscious. You begin by extrapolation from your current position. You try to recall your childhood, presumably being brought up by the kind and loving Aaron, along side your little sister Jack. You don't think you grew up in this jungle. Try as you might, however, no image comes to mind - and worse, you find the thought of all those precious memories now gone forever is almost more than you can bear.
You press on ever deeper, through the pain and darkness, seeking something, anything, that you can grasp and feel. At last you find some small kernel of substance. It is nothing so concrete as a memory; it is something primordial and animalistic. It is a feeling, fundamentally, of hate - specifically, of disdain, of hatred for the way of things. It is the feeling of one who knows too much. You recoil, feeling all at once as though the feeling may overwhelm and become you. Well, you think to yourself, that was horrible.
>>351
You find yourself quite sick of feeling like the epitomic Alice lost in a wonderland she doesn't understand. Perhaps, you think, you should trust in the Queen of Hearts' solution of choice. You crawl over to the edge of the roof, point at Rupert and shout at the top of your lungs, "Off with his head!"
>>352
You attempt to interpret the phrase "the card of the hearts". Well, card could refer to a greeting card, or a playing card, or cardboard, or... or... um, in which case... You're just not sure. You're not sure of anything any more.
While you've been cogitating, the weather has taken a turn for the worse. Not only is the wind strengthening, but the clouds which earlier were just torn and amorphous have begun to accumulate into vast, looming structures, of a fuliginous colour. All of a sudden, you are caught in a hail of hailstones. Each is the size of a marble; enough to hurt, but not enough to injure. Theodore burrows into your skirts for shelter. Rupert, meanwhile, is still indifferently browsing the trees below.
Change your name to Zoosmell Pooplord.
Don't think, just feel.
Save game, then roll off of the roof.
Watch some VSauce.
cough then fall over dead
tell her how you feel
>>354
Your name is now Zoosmell Pooplord. You immediately find yourself stricken by a fit of giggling. "Hehehe, ehehehe!" you titter. What a silly name! The more you think about it, the funnier it gets. You laugh until you are bent double, tears streaming from your eyes. You didn't think yourself so emotionally labile. The laughter explodes out of you, leaving you completely unable to draw breath. Your mirth turns to panic. Your lungs burn, but the thought that you're about to asphyxiate due solely to your new alias is so absurd it overpowers your last shreds of self restraint.
You collapse to the ground, dead, in mid laugh.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 11
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>353)
>>355
You feel that you have spent far too long troubling yourself with meaningless abstractions. You let your thoughts peel away from you like dandruff.
>>356
(Game saved)
You relax, abandon yourself to intuition, and let yourself simply do whatever comes naturally. In this case, that entails lying down, rolling over the lip of the roof and falling down the other side. You feel an exhilarating rush of air through your hair and frilled garments, and see the paved plaza inflating to fill your vision.
Your terminal descent is interrupted by your left ankle catching on something. You find yourself dangling upside down, just below the top floor. You are pulled back upwards by something tightly clasped about your foot, through an open window, and into the quiet darkness of the building. Your foot is released, and you get to your feet unsteadily.
Jack is here, wearing a lab coat for some reason. She appears to have saved you by grabbing you mid-fall. "There you are! I've been looking all over for you." she says, embracing you warmly. Looking around, the room you are in appears to be a former laboratory of some description. There are various benches, cupboards and shelves about, but almost no loose items; everything that wasn't bolted down has been removed. There are even marks on the floor near the doorway to indicate that something rather heavy has been relocated. There is also a large red bird perched on one bench, casually watching over the two of you.
>>357
"I... um, do you know where I could find some vee source?" you ask Jack. Her smile dissolves and she looks at you with a concerned, almost slightly repulsed look.
>>358
Oh, how embarrassing! What have you said? You blush like an overripe nectarine. Your shame is so great you wish you could just drop dead as you are, so as not to have to live with the consequences of this monumental faux pas. You cough dramatically, fall to the floor and close your eyes, but, alas, find that you cannot die on command.
In the tense silence that ensues, you hear the storm outside take a sudden turn for the worse. A vicious barrage of hailstones assaults the building and the surrounding rainforest. You hear a faint yelp from above - poor Theodore! He must still be up on the roof, exposed to the elements - followed by a defiant meow. You look up to see Theodore flash by the open window at high speed, having apparently flung himself after you to escape his pain and solitude. Abandoning the whole dying business for now, you rush over and look out, to see he has landed safely on the plaza below.
"Raining cats and dogs, isn't it?" quips Jack. "Anyway, listen here; I've a lot to tell you. First of all, I managed to locate the cloning facilities and get them operational. Initialisation took forever, and there were no reserves, so we won't have any usable substrates ready for a few days yet. The facilities are in a white building over on the other side of the river. I'll take you there later."
A lopsided smile infects her lips, as she continues, "As for our... main project, well, we can tick Jacqueline off the list. I managed to get her by surprise. Almost got Alexei at the same time, but the bastard gave me the slip. Oh, and Stove Stove is... well, the situation is a little complicated, but suffice to say he won't be a problem. Oh! Also, seems like some of the others were here recently; we'll have to see if we can track them down."
You feel in your gut that something is wrong. This isn't the Jack you knew. You nod cautiously, trying your best not to arouse suspicion. Jack continues, "We've only got a few hours until sunset, so we'd better get somewhere safe. You weren't kidding when you said the... the "phenomenon", as you put it, would be stronger at night."
>>359
"Oh Jack," you implore, with a hint of desperation, "I feel so confused, and scared! Please, help me."
She stares at you with an indecipherable look, then says to herself, "You aren't really Cassandra, are you? Who are you then?"
Say "Brobdingnagian Brontosaurus."
Very briefly lift skirt while pulling down panties to give Jack a flash of our crotch, to prove our identity.
Invite Jack to co-author a crossover fanfic with you involving an epic battle between Strong Bad and Captain Manlove.
>>362
Oh no, she's on to you! You have to throw her off the scent. In response to her questioning, you try to assume the identity of the first person who comes to mind - who happens to be Rupert. "I-I'm a Brobdingnagian brontosaurus." you say, voice faltering. Jack raises her eyebrows in mock seriousness, and replies "Are you now? You don't look particularly large or reptilian to me."
There's no backing down now. You get down on all fours, straighten your back, extend your neck as far as you can, and let out a roar. "Rrrraaaargh!" you say, "I'm a big scary dinosaur!" Jack is shocked into incredulous silence for a second or two, then erupts into peals of unrestrained laughter. She howls with cachinnation until you simply cannot bear it any more.
>>363
This is agony. You've never been so mortified. There's no way you can possibly recover this situation, you decide; you may as well just do something so embarrassing that you pass out and/or die from it. Exposing your most private body parts to her ought to do the trick.
As you lift aside your garments, however, Jack suddenly sobers up, a look of genuine fear crossing her face. "No, stop!" she exclaims, too late, whilst simultaneously averting her gaze, screwing her eyes tightly shut, and countering by flashing her own crotch. Knowing no better, you look straight into the void between her thighs. The world around you desaturates and falls away. Nothing exists any more but the void and you. The void calls out seductively, enticing you to become one with it. You comply.
You are swallowed whole by Jack's crotch, vanishing forever from this universe.
GAME OVER
Deaths: 12
(Continuing from most recent saved game: >>361)
>>364
Oh no, she's on to you! You have to throw her off the scent. You employ your every skill in misdirection and say, jovially and flippantly, "Haha, don't worry about that; wouldn't you rather write a Strong Bad vs Captain Manlove fanfiction with me?" Jack narrows her eyes, appraising the situation carefully, and, at last, replies "Only if I get to do Strong Bad's dialogue."
The two of you settle down to business, planning out the plot in meticulous detail. Strong Bad and Manlove meet on the border of the proud nation of Strong Badia. What begins as harmless bantering escalates into spirited enmity, then into an outright vendetta. Manlove bullheadedly sticks to his principles of justice, integrity and truth, even in the face of appalling disingenuousness on the part of Strong Bad and the Cheat. He suffers crippling, emasculating losses, until at last his morality is utterly eroded. He abandons his every principle to ensure his own success.
Honorary Captain Manlove is the eventual victor, but at what cost? Strong Badia lies in ruins, collateral casualties are without number, and, when the bloodlust at last leaves his veins, he finds himself to be a mere shadow of his former self. The story ends with Manlove walking away into the sunset, doomed to know that however hard he may try to run from his past, he can never escape what he has become.
Hours pass. Before you know it, darkness is falling. You are quite happy to spend the night where you are, but Jack suggests that she would prefer finding somewhere further indoors, out of sight of the forest.
Go as far underground as possible.
Calmly explain the situation to Jack. Shoehorn in the phrase "jive-ass honkey".
Say "Lilliputian lexovisaurus"
Pontificate on an esoteric topic.