You are standing by a tree
There are 3 paths.
One appears to go to a jungle,
one appears to go to a cave,
one appears to go to a beach,
you could try and climb the tree,
there is a nearby shop you could go in,
or you could do something else.
So what's its going to be?
Written by catprog on 01 April 2003
In the shop
There is a table with a sign saying
<strong>Free Sample:</strong>
Take one
On the table there is a fridge with a range of liquids. Also on the table are various magical trinkets including costumes. What would you like to take, or would you like to buy something?
Written by catprog on 10 April 2003
Other
You decide to get something else. But what?
Written by catprog on 13 December 2005
Play the VR Game
You find a pair of vr googles.
You put them on and you find yourself in a game, but which one?
Written by on 06 August 2005
Adventure Game
For a moment, you sit staring at the computer screen. The game loaded so quickly, that now you’re waiting in of an opening screen. The pixels quickly formulate themselves into the backdrop of an open field on all sides of you. The faintest motion of wind rustling the thick landscape of grasses ripples across your vision, but even as the distant landscape formats with the loading page, nothing but the field is there. You shift your head, turning your gaze within the virtual reality of the game to check to your sides, but find only more of the same rippling landscape there as well. The same, golden shade of grass sprouted up from the Earth on all four sides of your body.
Eyebrows knitting together, you try to figure out what is supposed to be happening. “There’s nothing here” you mutter, considering trying to remove the goggles you’d placed on until you notice a selection screen. “Choose your character” flashed as fading white letters in the distant backdrop of blue sky. You read it, though you’re not sure what character to select or even how to do that.
You eyes scanned over everything again, noticing that a sign had been added to the game off to the left, font sketched into its surface: “Random.”
Written by Picklessauce69 on 08 December 2015
Random
Stepping forward with a shrug, you approach that sign, deciding to make the choice of making no choice. As soon as your foot completes that single step forward in the direction of the sign, the entire game starts to re-pixel and shift around you.
“W-wait, I wonder what the options were? I didn’t even look around!” you think, but even as you try to turn towards the opposite direction, the field scene is rapidly disappearing. The blue of a fresh sky is starting to materialized, but it’s darker with gray clouds seeping across the surface of sight. Then, like bricks, the ground falls into place around you. A dark shade of fog seems to be fading into the landscape, bleeding in from the edges while crisped, faded grass droops off from stalks in front of you, mimicking the same field you had been standing in seconds before but now drastically different.
Instantly, your gaze tries to swing around full circle to see what all there is in the new, materializing world in front of you. The grass spreads out from where you stand, rushing towards the edge of the landscape in the same dulled shades of dead, lifeless plants until at the very edges to your right something new formulates. Stiff, needle-less pine trees edge the circle of the field. You squint, zooming the camera there to where the field melds into the edge of woods. Taking a few, short and tentative steps forward, you examined the line closer to see that the trees were not only bare, but blacked up their entire height. The arms that remained on the dark trunks were cut short, stubby and looked fragmented. The edge of the forest, without the proper filling of trees, looked sparse and naked. Through the space of the trees in the front row, you could see deeper into where the grass ended and a coarse, sandy texture coated the ground.
“What is that?” You wondered, squinting before suddenly it clicked. The black coating on the trees, dead limbs, drooping and crusted grasses; everything was just dead, it’d been burned.
“There’s been a forest fire?” you thought, suddenly feeling an urge to glance over both shoulders to check for any lingering damage. Though, suddenly, when your gaze returned to the tree line, time began to speed up. Before your eyes, you started to feel a tight whoosh as everything fast forwarded. In the vague distance, you could see the rising motion of trees growing, but the patch of forest here remained dead, too dead to flourish again. Instead, you watched a year go by with the barren black forms remaining steady and imposing over the Earth. The sharpness of the black and the ash fade into the landscape though, turning burnt into merely dead as age wore away at the wound.
“What’s happening!?” you thought to yourself, trying to look for any game options. The idea that time was escaping so quickly sent an uneasy tension down your entire frame. You just knew something wasn’t right, but no matter where you looked as everything rushed by, no options presented themselves.
“I’ll just take the goggles off!” you thought, but when you moved your ‘arms’ all that moved were your arms in the game as though real life was just a strange memory... or was it?
Looking at your arms, you suddenly realize the shifting of the time all around you has not left you alone. There’s a strange blur in the formatting of your skin. Everything looked jagged and unsettled as though the pixels aren’t put together, there’s spaces or gaps in the design of your figure.
Then, as you watched agape, your skin began to flake away. The familiar, pale tones of your flesh just dropped from view, in pieces while a dark, hardened brown began to fill in behind. Curved, overlapping pieces began to fill in the gaps on your arm’s shape. Perplexion knit your brows together as both eyes locked onto this transformation as one by one scales began to form on the outer curve of your arm. Then, thick and speckled flesh began to harden over the thin, plush texture of human skin. A reptile-like, hardened shell began to encase your skin, replacing it with an armor sort of finish up the entire length of your arm while the scales continued to work, overlapping step by step.
“A-am I going into battle?” Your eyes searched for some sign of combat, expecting the game to prepare you before something severe occurred. “Maybe it’s just equipping me-”
Your thoughts died when your fingers suddenly began to feel the same hardened, the knuckles seeming to break off the tips of each finger while the nails thickened and curved into black, arched points on the end of each shortened finger.
Claws.
“What is happening?!” you thought to yourself, madly trying to search the landscape for a clue, but no assistance is coming from the blank, dead space while the scales continue up onto your shoulder, forming massive, jutting spikes of the thick texture. The trees at the edge of the forest offer no assistance with their blank, black bark staring back at you- staring up at you.
“Wait-” You look down to see your perspective is rising. Your legs contorted backwards, dropping you over into a four-legged stance while your entire body feels the prickling of the scales dropping into place and seeming to meld into the skin there, thickening and adding to what you already have. At the same time, everything grew. Your eyes were suddenly swimming above tree level while your four legs splayed beneath you, slipping on the cold landscape with this new stance.
Your head still spun with confusion and frustration while a flurry of sensations swarmed your entire body. A sudden, yawning sensation hits your jaw, forcing it to part open wide before it hits your that your entire jaw is stretching until you see a snout jutting out between your eyes. You blink madly, confusion rapidly multiplying while you scuttle on the Earth with claws scraping down into the cold ground. Then, spotting a glossy, half-frozen puddle to your back you spin crazily. Then, angling your face down, you try to capture a glimpse of what’s happening to you.
What looks back at you stops your breath. Gone is your feature-less human form. Gone is the simple, bland stance of your two-legged, two-armed short haired character. Instead, thick slates of armored skin travel up your center between two massive, powerful legs covered in layered, small scales that drop down to the massive claws that you felt crunching into the Earth. Drooping, thick fur tufts out beneath the plates of natural armor down your chest. Massive spikes adourn each shoulder, dark gray against the backdrop of brown that is the rest of your form in varying hues. Then, your face is a lean muzzle of smoothed flesh. An array of scaled texture surrounds each eye, branching off into short antlers before massive horns curve out from around the sprouting appendages. Behind you, down your back, you can briefly can the tufts of similar dark fur and scales down your entire frame before a spiked tail waved behind with a single tuft of flicking, brown fur at the end.
“W-what?!”
“What am I?”
Dragon.
Written by Picklesauce69 on 10 December 2015
Dialog
As you look around you find the menu which pops up in front of you. You find the log out button.
Unfortunately the button has been disabled with a timer over the top.
59:59:999:999
You count
1-mississippi
2-mississippi
3-mississippi
4-mississippi
5-mississippi
6-mississippi
7-mississippi
8-mississippi
9-mississippi
59:59:999:998
So in 9 million seconds the timer will be 59:59:0:0
So 9 million hours till the log off button is available. 2.25 million divided by 6 equals 375 thousand days. So does that mean you are stuck like this for a thousand years?
You bring up the character sheet to find out the details of your new form.
Race:Dragon
Sex:Female
Written by catprog on 11 December 2015
Look over your body
You look over your body. Each limb including the wings is easily controllable, despite the fact that in the real world you are only wearing a set of goggles. If you could only take them off you could escape this game; but each time you try your front legs move instead.
So you’re trapped in this game and, if your calculations are correct, you’re trapped for approximately one thousand years. If that wasn’t bad enough you are neither male nor human. So you had best start learning a bit about the situation.
You open the menu and look through the options until all of a sudden you see the menu replaced with a message: “NPCs are unable to access menus”. The timer for the logout is still counting down but every button has now been greyed out.
Closing the menu you try finding other windows, character and inventory are available. Of course, you no longer have skill points for your character, and no inventory either. It does give you a list of skills you supposedly have: Fire Breath Lv.1 and Flight Lv.1 .
You try the fire breath first and you are soon breathing fire. Quickly though, you run out and have no fire left. Flight is much the same. You can fly for short periods of time but have to rest afterwards.
After getting used to the skills, you head off hoping to find a village of some kind to seek its assistance.
Written by catprog on 14 March 2016
North
Heading north, you soon hit the end of the forest and find a road. Walking through, you set a steady pace. In the distance you spot a cart and you quickly catch up to them. Pulling the cart is a single human. While he is taller than you, it is not by much. If one was to measure you from your nose to your tail you would be the longer one.
Of course with your bulk you are not that stealthy. As you approach, you find him not only aware of you, but also pointing a crossbow at you. “What business have a beast like you in a place such as this, dragon?” he says crossbow shaking slightly.
Written by catprog on 15 March 2016
Try and Talk
You open your mouth to try and talk. “I am lost, can you help me?”
“I can’t understand your words, dragon,” he says, “can you understand mine?”
You nod and he relaxes slightly. “Are you here to hurt me?”
Shaking your head, he responds by putting the crossbow down.
“I will make you a deal” he says. “I am heading to the city. I am sure someone there can understand you. In return will you protect me and my cart?”
Written by catprog on 16 March 2016
Nod
You nod and with a ding, a message box pops up: “ACCEPTED QUEST: Protect the traveling merchant and his goods until he takes you to the city. Reward: Location of the city. Failure: None.”
He nods. “How does Saltra sound as a name? I am sure you have a name in your tongue but, I can’t pronounce it.”
Before you can decide your character sheet pops up with Saltra on the top and you nod. It’s followed by another quest notification.
ACCEPTED QUEST: Get your own name: Find someone who understands you to say your name to. Reward: Set your own name. Failure: Remain named Saltra
He sets off, pulling his cart while you follow him. The pace is much slower and before the sun sets he pulls off the side of the road to set up camp.
Written by catprog on 17 March 2016
Go Hunting
You stomach rumbles and you fly up to go and find something to eat, thinking the merchant will not appreciate the appetite of your body.
You fly off and spot a herd of deer grazing on a field, before you get tired. After a quick rest for it to recharge, you soon are in the sky again. One pounce from above and you have your new meal. You quickly eat your fill before you head back.
On your way back you get a ping.
“SKILL ACQUIRED: Sky pounce Lv.1 Do 1% extra damage when attacking from the sky”
You celebrate not only the lack of hunger but the new skill as well. 1% isn’t the most impressive number you’ve ever seen, and you can’t really think of any situation where a boost that small could make a real difference… But you are grateful that it is a number higher than 0%.
As you celebrate, the quest to protect the merchant starts flashing. Alternatively running and flying, you quickly make your way to where you left him. Surrounding him are a bunch of goblins.
Pouncing from the air you take the first one out. Quickly realising the greater threat the goblins swarm you. Your fire breath is able to take some out before it runs out. The merchant helps as well, using his crossbow to take out more of them. By the end of the battle though you are forced to use your claws.
The goblins are driven out, and by the end of the battle you health is down to half. And you are rewarded with another skill.
“SKILL ACQUIRED: Swarm Armor Lv1. When being attacked by more than 10 creatures, incoming damage is reduced by 1%.”
While you are reading that skill it is followed by another skill
“SKILL ACQUIRED: HP Lv1. Your HP is increased by 1%.”
Looking over the sheet you also notice the other skills have a point to assign as well.
Flight: Maneuverability, Speed or Stamina.
Fire Breath: Damage or Stamina.
How are you going to assign the points??
You weigh the options carefully, flying seems to be your most useful skill so far so this is the one that needs the most thought. Maneuverability seems the most obvious, however being flashy in the air doesn’t mean anything if you’re too slow for it to matter. Speed seems like a good choice as well, but without Stamina you’d just wear yourself out. You think it over very carefully.
Taking to the air with an impressive display of your wings you test out your current flying skills in order to locate the area that needs improving.
Written by catprog on 18 March 2016
Stamina and Stamina
Soon after you start flying you have to land again, this makes your decision easy. Stamina for both options. You make the selections and the window closes.
The merchant smiles “We drove them off. You and me make a good team. Shame that we will part at the city tomorrow.”
The night passes without further incident along with the next day, arriving at the city in the afternoon.
“QUEST COMPLETED: Protect the merchant”
“Well good luck with your journey.” he says heading into the city. You go to follow him before being barred by the guards.
“State your business Dragon.” one of them says.
You go to speak but once again you are unable to speak the same language.
The guard sighs. “Wait here, we will get a translator for you”.
You wait for the translator and soon the guard comes back. With him is what you first think is a human but they shift into a dragon.
“Can you understand me?” he says.
Written by catprog on 19 March 2016