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.
Proclaim yourself to be the pontiff.
>>366
You concede that your companion probably knows better than you do. The two of you quietly traverse the darkening halls, down empty, echoing stairwells. A light wind blows listlessly through the building. You keep going, ever further, ever deeper, into the warren of underground service tunnels. As it is now pitch black, Jack summons a small flame from between her fingers, which she uses to light your path.
Eventually, you settle in a small room of indeterminate function. There are many cables covering one wall, with various fuseboxes and switchboards which you are a little dubious about meddling with. The door has a functioning lock on the inside, which you lock behind you for the night.
>>367
Unnerving as your situation is, it does somewhat arouse the aura of a girls' sleepover, with the associated sharing of intimate secrets. As the two of you settle down next to one another, you go ahead and confide in her everything you remember, hoping she will reciprocate with something which - ideally - might cast light on your own circumstances.
You sumarise waking up without your memory in the small building by the stream, the night of the storm, when Jack vanished, almost drowning in the floodwaters, meeting Rupert, losing Papa, the night you spent alone in the forest, and, finally, your return to the building you are currently in, and your reunion with Theodore. Jack listens patiently, without comment.
You let out a heavy breath. "I feel like..." you struggle for an apt simile, eventually settling for "like a jive-ass honkey, lost in the wrong part of town."
>>368
No, wait, that's a terrible way of putting it! "I mean, I feel like a lilliputian lexovisaurus; like a really small animal in a world of big, threatening things that I should be equal to but am instead scared of." You wish you were better at expressing yourself.
>>369
"You know," Jack begins, "Actually, I know what you mean. Sometimes, I feel l--"
"Ecological character displacement," you interrupt, "is an observed phenomenon in evolutionary biology wherein competition between two species exerts a selective influence favouring the lessening of said competition; that is, evolution of both species towards independent, non-competitive niches. It has been proposed as a mechanism for sympatric speciation - one of the most contentious concepts in the field today..."
You continue in this vein long into the night. Jack is so enraptured that she accidentally falls asleep. You eventually follow suit.
You sleep only fitfully, tossing and turning on the hard floor. The darkness forms a thick, claustrophobic mass all around you, forcing itself into your eyes, your mouth, your lungs, and your every pore. The sound of your own breathing is deafening. At one point you awake with a start, suddenly aware of the sound of something else breathing right next to you, only to find that you have rolled over beside Jack.
You awaken the next morning to find Jack is already up. She rummages around in the front pockets of her lab coat and offers you a sandwich by way of breakfast, which you gratefully accept. The two of you then make your way back upstairs. On the way, Jack talks to you, opening up to you at last. "I knew you before you lost your memory. You and I used to be friends, in fact, and we were... we had something very important we were trying to do."
As you reach the main entrance, on the edge of the plaza, she turns to you and smiles sympathetically. "I wish I could explain it all to you, but it'd take too long. There's something I have to go take care of just now, and there's something I'd like you to do for me while I'm busy. You have to gather together as many people - people, I mean, not just grunts - and bring them to the white building on the opposite side of the river. You're so cute, I bet you'll have no trouble convincing them."
She turns to leave, then looks back and adds, "By the way, you don't have to call me Jack. You can call me Conundrum-chan."
>>370
"You can call me The Pontiff!" you reply.
You find yourself in a small plaza, covered in dismembered bits of grunt. There are two paths leading from the Northern edge; one, rather overgrown, heading Northwest, which Jack has just embarked down. The other, clearer, heading North, bears what your presume to be Rupert's footprints. There are various other confused and overlapping tracks in the mud.
The morning sun is just breaking over the canopy. It looks to be a beautiful day.
Follow Rupert's path
oh shit I'm sorry
>>374
Chin held high, you head after your dearest sauropod. You hum an upbeat tune to yourself, enjoying the cool breeze and the feeling of sunlight on your skin. For a brief while, it feels like all the world is your friend, and everything horrible that has happened until now was no more than a disagreeable dream. You happily let yourself be distracted by the exotic flora and fauna nearby, sniffing brightly coloured flowers, listening to the distant calls of birds of paradise, and examining colourful winged insects.
So caught up in your natural history are you that you fail to pay attention to the path beneath your feet, and nearly trip over something. Looking down, it appears to be a grunt.
>>375
You apologise profusely and somewhat more explicitly than normal, before noticing that the grunt in question is very much dead, with a sizeable portion of his head missing. You also find five or six more of his compatriots - it's hard to tell exactly how many, what with how mangled and dismembered they are - scattered about. They mostly bear crushing injuries, as best you can tell. Many of them are holding crude sharpened sticks or similar implements.
The ground here is badly churned up, with smears of blood mixing with the dirt and small plants. There appear to be many of Rupert's footprints overlapping in the area. His footprints do not then continue along the path, but rather turn off at a ninety degree angle into the thicket. There is a thick band of broken vegetation indicating his path. There are other, curious tracks visible further up the path, now that they are not trampled into oblivion by Rupert. Most notably, you see two thin, straight, parallel depressions running in a straight line.
>>376
You kneel before the dead grunts and mew plaintively, trying to inspire a response. You think about how scared and alone poor Theodore probably is at this moment, and try to bring this into your performance. Your imitation is flawless, and should inflame the emotions of any creature, alive or dead. Nonetheless, the corpses clearly have hearts of stone. You lose. You are the poorest pussy of all.
At that moment you look up to find that you are not alone. There is a rather grim looking girl in a wheelchair in front of you. She is pointing the barrel of a harpoon gun at you. "Don't move an inch, or I'l--" her voice cuts off in mid threat, as her vision flicks suddenly to some point over your shoulder. You instinctively turn to see.
The grunt corpse behind you is slowly pulling itself to its feet, seemingly oblivious of the fact it is missing half of its face. Looking around, the other corpses are each twitching and rising in a most sickening fashion. You are caught right in the centre of them all. Without a word, the girl in the wheelchair turns and begins to propel herself away, apparently leaving you to die.
Invite your new undead friends to start a grimdark black metal band with you.
Set the corpses on fire using pyrokinesis.
>>378
However terrifying the animate cadavers surrounding you may appear, you must not be prejudiced against your new companions. You have faith that the power of music and friendship will iron out any creases in your newly budding relationship. But what sort of music should your soon to be formed band play? The aesthetic seems, you feel, to be perfect for the black/death metal scene.
You begin primly allocating musical roles to each of the shambling corpses in turn. Unfortunately, it seems that the lead guitarist takes offence. Perhaps they consider you a mere poseur, as your lack of mortal wounds and partial decomposition clearly indicate you aren't taking this business as seriously as they are. The corpse in question takes a swipe at you with its right arm. You try to dodge out of the way, but are clipped on the shoulder. The guitarist overbalances and falls on top of you, pinning you to the ground, as your other band members shuffle ever closer.
>>379
Well, this isn't going quite as well as you had hoped. Perhaps a little igneous punishment will put them in their place. Unfortunately, you aren't quite sure how to do pyrokinesis, and this doesn't seem a convenient time to learn.
The guitarist is ineffectually hitting you in the back of the head with his head stump, his cold, dead body still trapping you against the ground. The drummer - despite his right leg being badly mangled - has, meanwhile, crawled his way to you, and is rearing back both hands to strike you. You have no hope of dodging this one.
Behind him, you see a welcome face appear from amidst the foliage. It's Jack! But she's back to wearing a seifuku, rather than a lab coat. She is slightly hunched, and looks hollow-eyed for lack of sleep. There is a severe cut along the side of her face. To your horror, you find she isn't even looking at you; she's distracted by the girl in the wheelchair.
Call out "by the power of Grayskull!"
Duck and tackle the weak-legged zombie's legs, keeping low to the ground.
Extrapolate on a pontifical topic.
Sink into the earth and reappear behind the wheelchair girl
>>381
You must get her attention, your life depends on it! This is too important a situation to use an everyday summons for aid like "help". You must invoke a higher power. Any higher power will do.
You inhale sharply and shout at the top of your lungs, "By the power of Grayskull!" Jack at last notices your plight and, after only a second's hesitation, brandishes her ceremonial stone knife and begins hacking away at the unsuspecting horde. She is truly a sight to behold, dodging swings, spinning about and severing limbs like a murderous whirling dervish. In the midst of this she kicks the guitarist off you, freeing you temporarily.
>>382
Keeping as far out of the way as possible of both your former band members and Jack's knife, you try to do your best to aid the fight. Crouching, you creep around the drummer and grab him by the legs from behind. There is a sickening crunch as you find that his right femur is less solid than you thought. He turns and tries to claw at you, but can't quite reach. You throw all your weight at him, seeking to push him to the ground, but at that moment feel something strike your temple and reflexively let go and try to dodge.
It turns out to have been the severed hand of the lead singer, which simply happened to land on you. You breathe a sigh of relief, before finding that the reanimated corpse you were just trying to incapacitate has now turned and is about to descend upon you. For a moment you are looking right into its cold, unseeing eyes - like those of a blind cave fish - before it is, mercifully, dispatched by your young saviour.
Jack, flecked in blood and breathing heavily, grabs your hand and pulls you away, into the cut in the forest left by Rupert. Looking back, you see a sight of even greater carnage than before - yet the bodies are still writhing and trying to stand and pursue you. You run.
Once out of sight of your aggressors, the two of you stop to catch your breath. Though you were the one who came closer to dying, Jack appears by far the most harrowed of the two of you. She sits on the ground, hugging her legs, shaking slightly, gazing intently at her feet. She is a far cry from the confident, strong willed girl you knew her as.
>>383
Being as you are a good friend and sister to her, you realise that what she truly wants and needs is a suitable distraction, especially a speculative one on matters of papacy. Yes, they don't call you The Pontiff for nothing, after all! You give her a brief overview of the history of the popemobile, and, extending its developments forward, predict the eventual emergence of the popecraft, hoverpopemobile, popemechasuit, popemobilefortress and other such natural progressions in this direction.
Jack looks up at you with dark, sunken eyes, and says "Ariadne... I'm so sorry, this is all my fault. I... I've failed my..." She refuses to say any more, and instead buries her head in her hands and curls up in the foetal position. She does not respond to any further vocal prompts.
>>384
You require level three geokinesis and fifty mana to use the teleportation via earth ability.
It is now late morning. From where you are, you could backtrack and rejoin the path to seek the girl in the wheelchair, risking again the wrath of the undead, or you could follow Rupert's tracks onwards into the forest. Either way, you will have to decide what to do about poor Jack, who does not seem in the mood to travel.
Summarize the plot so far.
Exasperate on a Pontic topic
Exfoliate in a pentagonal tropic
Exacerbate a pantheistic torpor
Be Rupert.
Rampage. Rampage.
Be Jack. Check inventory and skills.
Call the pentagon for support
Call a paragon for moral support.
>>386
Alas, your amnesia means you have somewhat lost the plot, so to speak. You have no idea where you are or why you're here, or if there is even a reason for you to be here at all. In terms of your own internal narrative, so far you have woken up - without your memory - in a small dilapidated building in the middle of a rainforest with your father, Aaron, your sister, Jack, and a cat named Theodore. There was a horrible storm in the night, during which Jack vanished.
In the morning, you and Aaron set off to look for her. The two of you ended up being swept away downstream by a flooded river, coming ashore only to find a brontosaurus, of all things. Aaron ran away into the forest, but you, remaining behind, succeeded in taming the beast, whom you named Rupert. You and Rupert spent the night outdoors - a night that you've been trying your very best to forget about.
In the morning, the two of you embarked southwards, coming across a large building complex centred around a hexagonal atrium. Inside, you found Theodore, and the two of you ascended to the roof, where you were stranded for a while. You were rescued by Jack, but were separated from Theodore in the process. You spent the night with her in the depths of the building. She looked and behaved a little different to how you remember her, and even called herself "Conundrum-chan" instead of Jack. Before leaving, she implored you to gather as many people as possible and bring them to a building on the other side of the river.
You set off northwards again, in search of Rupert and others, only to be threatened by a girl in a wheelchair, ambushed by the undead, and rescued once again by Jack. The two of you are currently recuperating from the fight. Jack seems different again from how you remember her, and also rather troubled by something.
>>387
Why won't Jack simply open up to you? Surely that's what sisters are for! Her seclusive behaviour is really quite exasperating, you find - almost as much so as the Black Sea. I mean, why is it called that, when it's quite clearly not black? It's simply not reasonable.
>>388
Judging by the local climate and ecology, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that you're somewhere in the tropics. But who can say? For all you know, you mightn't even be on Earth. You haven't even seen over the horizon; you could be on a pentagonally shaped planet, that just happens to be superficially similar to the Terran tropics.
While preoccupied with such musings, you absent mindedly pick at the nearby foliage, plucking the odd leaf from the plants.
>>389
Is Jack's lethargy perhaps, you wonder, related to trying to personify the universe itself as some sort of deity? Though the idea is appealing, it simply radiates problems - does one then have to attribute every meaningless event to the intentional action of a god? What about the apparent determinism of so much of the inanimate universe? And how do you worship something which you yourself are a part of?
Well, if this is what is troubling her, then it is your duty as a loving sister to rid her of such troublesome beliefs. Though it pains you, you must intentionally worsen her theological angst in order to demonstrate her beliefs' inconsistency. You invite Jack into various philosophical discussions, questioning the true nature of the universe and god, but she makes no meaningful response.
>>390
You cannot play as Rupert; you can only play as members of your current party.
You stomp around in the undergrowth, taking out your frustrations on the defenceless weeds at your feet. You feel slightly better for it.
>>391
You are now playing as Jack Aaronova. The events of last night have left quite an impression on you, and you feel unable to deal with the endless torrent of existence flowing through you just now. More than anything you'd like a good night's sleep, but you know full well your nightmares were bad enough even before they started bleeding into reality.
You currently possess only the tattered seifuku you are wearing and the bloodied stone dagger in your hand. You have level 7 ailuromancy, and thereby have access to the following skills:
In addition to this, you have two unspent skillpoints - left over from christmas, the night before last - and 210 mana.
>>392
The Pentagon 1024SL can't help you. Nobody can help you now.
>>393
You find yourself in desperate need of some moral support. Ariadne is very dear and all, but she's a little socially inept, and, frankly, you don't really trust her awfully much.
You tilt back your head, look up to the sky and call out for someone to come save you - some perfect paragon of justice, integrity and truth; of everything that's right with the world. As if on cue, there is a rustling in the undergrowth to the west, in the direction you came from. You and Ariadne stare in silence, breath held. C-could it be?
No, never mind, it's just the reanimated bits of grunt, which, displaying abominable tenacity, have followed you all the way here. There are various limbs, partial corpses, disembodied heads and such, crawling or rolling towards you in a way equal parts disturbing and comical.
Test yourself to ensure you haven't caught toxoplasmosis from cat exposure.
Ghost tree and kick the undead asses
hold shift for focused movement
Pompously place 2 points into pontification posthaste.
Mumble unintelligibly about the jews.