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
Journey Into The Sands
You have just put on your virtual reality headset in order to play the new hit game, Journey Into The Sands. It is supposed to have a vast array of characters to choose from and very detailed graphics. When you first look around, you notice that you seem to be standing in a ruined temple. The options detailing what characters you can choose from are floating just in front of you.
There are highly customizable human characters, but you decided it would be boring to play as you always are. The sheer variety is astounding, but you end up choosing the Sphinx character because it seems like the most practical for this type of adventure. As interesting as it would be to select randomly, you don’t think much good could come of it, so you reach forward and select the Sphinx. It should come in both male and female form, so you won’t have a problem.
Your body begins to transform instantly, starting at your feet. They form into paws and fur sprouts out of your skin like wild grass, moving up your legs quickly. While it doesn’t hurt when your bones reshape themselves, it is still an odd feeling when that forces you onto all fours. Your hands have become paws too, sharp claws protruding out of them, making it difficult to grab onto anything. Wings force their way out of your back and then rest by your side while a long tail grows out from your lower back. Every part of you is covered in fur except for your face, although your scalp is still covered in regular human hair, it seems longer than normal. Despite all the other changes, the most odd sensation is around your chest. The only way to describe it is that it feels heavier than it usually does, and you can feel it more clearly than your new limbs.
With the current state of your body, it is immensely difficult to look down at yourself, but a short walk through the temple leads you to a small pool filled with water clear enough for you to view yourself. You are shocked to see that despite the fact that you are a male in real life, the body you are now in has a far more feminine appearance. While it is covered in cloth resembling ancient Greek garments, your chest protrudes further than possible unless you now have breasts. You look at your face next and notice that your nose has become more slender, your cheekbones higher, and your lips more full. Even your skin seems different, more smooth and flawless than you ever thought possible. Hair falls down past your shoulders in beautiful curls that match the color your hair has always been and while you could appreciate this on anyone else, it is not how you are supposed to look.
You gasp aloud from shock only to realize that even your voice has changed. It sounds higher pitched than normal, an even somewhat musical. The fact that every aspect of you has changed is not something that you had prepared yourself for. Sure, you had experimented with female bodies in other virtual reality games before, but it had never been so realistic.
In a fit of panic, you reach up to pull off your VR headset, but it doesn’t budge at all. You look around and see that all traces of buttons similar to the options menu you saw before are gone, so there is nothing to get you out of here. Nothing could have ever prepared you for this situation, making you feel incredibly trapped and vulnerable here. You look back into the water, taking in the fact that this is what you will look like until you get out of this game.
Written by Quuentong on 05 September 2018
Get moving
It takes you an hour of searching the hall where you had spawned to come to terms with the fact that you will be stuck here for awhile. Now that you think of it, this experience has also been far more realistic than any other virtual reality game that you have played in the past. Never before have you been able to really feel the texture of the stone ground beneath your feet or the way a soft breeze blows through your hair. In other circumstances, this experience would be truly marvelous.
Deciding that there might be answers outside of this area, you venture out of the crumbling temple and see high dunes of sand surrounding you. True to its name, the game has placed you in the middle of a desert with no clear end. You think that it would be the best to climb one of the dunes to see if you can spot any nearby landmarks that you can travel towards.
You attempt to test out your wings by flying over the dunes before you realize that you have no idea of how to use them. A few efforts get them to flutter a bit, but you are nowhere near strong enough to lift yourself up yet. Hopefully, you will be able to get better at flying with some practice.
The first welcome discovery you make since your arrival here is that your paws make climbing the scorching sand easier and more bearable than it would have been with regular feet. Once you reach the top of the dune, you are taken aback by just how far the sand stretches. Fortunately, the vague outline of a city can be seen on the horizon. You might even be able to make it there before the sun sets if you move quickly.
Written by Quuentong on 08 September 2018
To the city
You quickly begin to race down the other side of the dune and weave your way towards the city, checking to make sure that you are on the right track every now and then. About halfway through your journey, you come across a scorpion the size of a small dog. It seems hostile and your suspicions are quickly confirmed when it rushes towards you. Without even thinking, you smash it down with your paw before it can reach and then pick it up with your mouth, crushing it.
Disgusted with the bitter taste, you drop the remains onto the ground and to your amazement, watch it turn into a small pile of gold coins. You had almost forgotten that this was still a video game because of how realistic everything had been up until now. Before you have a chance to attempt to pick up the coins, they float to your side and found their way into a small leather satchel that you didn’t notice earlier. In the air in front of you, some text appeared, reading ‘+ 7G’. You assume this means that you had gained seven golden coins. A bar appears at the top of your field of you and fills up halfway with a blue light. Perhaps it is a tracker for your experience points?
This encounter does bring up some new questions though. What would have happened if it had actually managed to hurt you? Or if you had come across a larger enemy instead? You can’t be sure that dying in the game will release you. Perhaps you would just start in the same place as before. And as cliche as it is, what if dying in the game means dying in real life? As improbable as it seems, you can’t seem to shake the thought of it happening.
You are so lost in thought that you barely notice when the sand beneath your feet becomes cobblestone. Once you register the change, you look up and notice that you have finally arrived in the city. All the walking has exhausted you, but fortunately, there is an inn down the street. The sun has nearly set, so it seems like this will be your best option for rest.
Written by Quuentong on 12 September 2018
The Inn
The light illuminating the sign of the inn, which you find out is also a tavern, is cast by a torch that seems to be close to burning out. You push on the door and walk in, gaining the attention of a tired looking woman behind the front desk. She appears to be human but doesn’t care one bit about you being a Sphinx.
“Hey, um, I’m interested in renting a room,” you say, putting your front paws up onto the desk to reach eye level with her.
“I’d be concerned if you were here without that being your intention,” the woman sighs. “As the owner of this inn, I’ll give you a room for five coins.”
Two buttons appear before your face, one saying yes and the other no. Hesitantly, you select yes to see what will happen. Five of the golden coins you collected earlier now float back out of your satchel and into the innkeeper's hand. She nods at you and grabs a key from her desk, presumably to guide you to your room.
When the woman moves, you realize that it isn’t like a human would normally walk, and once she moves away from the desk you see why. The top half of the innkeeper appears to be like any woman would, but her bottom half is that of a large serpent. You recall that this creature, a Lamia, was one of the options on the character selection screen.
She waits for you to follow her and then slithers down a hall on the left side of you. The snake woman stops near the end of the hallway and unlocks a door. Without a word, she makes her way back to the front desk. The key floats out of the lock and into your bag, leaving you to enter the room and take a look around. You hope that you won’t need to unlock the door by yourself because the paws you have would most likely make that impossible.
The room contains a comfortable bed with many pillows and silk blankets. Hopefully, your claws won’t tear through them. There is also a chest of drawers, a bedside table, and a closet, but you have nothing to put in them. The exhaustion has caught up with you completely now, so you decide to sleep and attempt to figure out your situation in the morning.
Written by Quuentong on 15 September 2018
The City
Your sleep is dreamless and over almost immediately, or at least that is what it feels like to you. You feel rested and not at all sore despite all of the walking that you did yesterday. Because you have no real idea of what to do, you decide to roam through the town today and see if you can earn any more of the golden coins. You will need more money if you want to spend the night here again, that much is for sure.
On the way out of the inn, you thank the woman behind the front desk. She smiles at you and then looks at a stack of paper in front of her as if you were no longer there. You figure that this is probably because she is just an NPC in your experience.
Now that the entire town is lit up in the light of day, you can see how much detail has been put into it. The cobblestone that you are standing on has fine cracks that are filled with sand and pebbles. There is a large fountain in the town square with clear, flowing water that contains coins as if the people living here had tossed them in to make all of their wishes come true. Each store has its own, original sign and contains useful and luxurious products of all kinds.
There are many people in the town too, although not all of them can really be described as people. You see some other Sphinxes and Lamia, but now there are also Centaurs and smaller humanoids covered entirely in scales. Some of the beings do appear to be entirely human, but they are few and far in between.
You start your tour of the town by walking past all of the store windows and gazing at the vast variety of products. You can barely afford any of it, but seeing the food makes you realize how hungry you are. You hadn’t eaten in nearly a day now which made you feel weak and tired now that you paid attention to it.
Thinking about this made you worry. Was this how you felt in real life? Were you starving because you couldn’t move your body in order to nourish it? Were the events of the game happening in real time? All of these questions strike fear into your heart, making you freeze in the middle of the plaza. The only thought that eventually calms you down is that you are wasting time by panicking and can’t change your current situation like this anyway.
Your journey through the town continues, although at a much quicker pace. A few streets from your starting point you find yourself drawn down a dimly lit alley. At the end of it, you find another store but it doesn’t seem to be selling the same things as the other places. The sign above the door reads ‘Quests’. You can practically feel your heart flutter in your chest when you read it. Perhaps this is a step in the right direction!
Written by Quuentong on 17 September 2018
First Quest
You give the door a firm push to open it and you are greeted by a fairly simple interior. A burly man stands behind the counter stacked nearly to the ceiling with scrolls. Large, black horns protrude from his bald head, and a thin, leathery tail flicks through the air behind him. Each of the scrolls is tied shut with a colored ribbon. You assume that the different colors have a meaning, but there is no way to be sure without asking.
Without hesitation, you walk up to the counter and put your paws on it to attract the attention of the man behind it. He seems very focused on the scroll that he’s reading, so you speak up.
“Excuse me. I’m here to start a quest.” You sound slightly uncertain, but perhaps that is because your voice sounds so foreign to you. You still haven’t gotten used to your feminine aspects.
“Really? We don’t get many of your kind willing to pull your own weight,” the man says with a skeptical look, probably sizing you up. You aren’t sure if he is referring to the Sphinx part of you or the fact that you are female. Perhaps you should have done some more research on this game before jumping into it.
“I am entirely serious. Please, just give me something to do,” you reply, trying not to let your mild annoyance show.
He shrugs and pulls a scroll out of the stack. It is tied shut with a light green ribbon that disappears into golden dust when he removes it. “This is the easiest quest I have available for you, but even that might be a bit difficult.” He notices the heavy frown on your face and sighs. “Look, I’ll do you a favor. Take this armor to protect yourself.”
A leathery garment appears on the counter that looks like it could fit you. There are metal pads on the shoulders and small iron spikes lining the spine. A pop-up appears before you to ask if you want to accept this trade. You agree and suddenly you are wearing the armor instead of the Greek styled robes that you spawned with. It’s far heavier, but not uncomfortably so.
The next pop up to appear is the scroll which details the goals of your quest. You are to find a cave just outside of the town and clear it of several small enemies and a boss monster. While you don’t have a weapon, it still seems like a fairly easy task. The reward for your efforts will be twenty gold coins according to the bottom of the scroll. That should be enough for a few more nights at the inn, so you head out to complete the job.
Written by Quuentong on 19 September 2018
Cave
You don’t have a map to guide you to where you should go like most games do, but a feeling in your gut pulls you into the right direction. Just before you hit the outskirts of town, you walk past a cafe with delicious aromas emanating from inside. Your stomach growls to remind you of your intense hunger and before you know it, you walked inside to see what they have for sale. A pastry with a meat filling catches your eye and you see that it only costs two coins, the exact amount that you have left. You purchase it and scarf it down quickly before continuing to your destination.
Half an hour later, you are standing at the entrance of the cave, preparing yourself to complete the quest. It should be easy enough, or at least that is what you tell yourself. The cave seems like a dark maw, hungry for everything that dares to come in. You aren’t sure how you will be able to see your enemies once you enter the darkness, but your first step forward gives you the answer.
Torches on the wall light themselves as if by magic as you walk past them. Even then, the cave is only dimly lit at best with long shadows flickering on the walls. On multiple occasions, you almost mistake them for enemies only to laugh at yourself quietly.
At a sharp turn, you encounter a little spider. You don’t like those in real life and definitely not in virtual form, so you quickly squish it beneath your paw. A little bit more XP appears in the bar above you, but not as much as you got from killing the desert scorpion.
What you see as you turn around the corner is something that no amount of foreshadowing could have prepared you for. Spiders are streaming out of every crack in the wall and rushing towards you. While they are easy to kill, there is an incredible amount of them. You manage to kill about fifteen of them before one manages to bite you, causing a red bar to appear beneath the blue one. It is mostly full, but after a second bite, a small chunk of the red glow disappears. You quickly realize that this is your HP bar, and you don’t want to find out what happens when it is empty.
You’re filled with something that isn’t exactly courage, but enough to keep you from being overwhelmed by the spiders. After killing approximately thirty more, you finally level up. To your joy, you realize that you regain all the health that you have lost when you do so.
Written by Quuentong on 21 September 2018
Boss
Once the last of the spiders are gone, you take a few deep breaths and realize that something is wrong. You recall that the scroll said something about a boss monster. Just as the thought crosses your mind, you see her.
A woman that is a normal lady from the waist up and completely arachnid from below, walks out from the shadows. Everything about her gives off a dark, ominous vibe. She continues to advance until you feel the need to back up. Because of the fact that you are standing on all fours, she’s much taller than you, which only makes her more intimidating.
As much as you want to run as far away from this cave as you can right now, you need to complete this quest. You doubt that the guy from the shop will pay you for a job you left unfinished, so you see no choice but to attack her. With a sharp inhale, you leap at her before she has time to react. You manage to strike her chest and leave angry, bleeding claw marks in your wake, but unlike the other monsters, she does not die in one hit.
You jump back quickly, but not before she reaches forward and scratches your arm. The wound stings and a little bit of health drains from your bar, but to your surprise, the area on your bar turns green. She must have poisoned you! The scratch begins to hurt more and more, making the spider woman smirk at you. You can guess that if she gets in a few more attacks, you may die.
Winning the fight and getting back to town quickly is now your only hope. Mustering up more energy than you can recall having in real life, you leap at the woman and instinctually bite her neck as if you were an animal attacking another creature. As you pull away, you see that her face has morphed from a confident grin to horror. Her warm blood is on your face and that once again makes you marvel at how real this all feels, but this time you feel more afraid than amazed.
Moments later, she disappears as all the monsters before have. You are relieved that she is dead and your quest is over, but now your health bar is filled with green almost to the halfway mark. Hopefully, the guy at the quest shop will be able to heal you quickly before something bad happens.
It’s hard to walk quickly with the painful gashes on your arm, but you make it back to town before the sun even sets. You can’t remember exactly where the quest store is located, but that feeling in your gut guides you right back to the door.
Written by Quuentong on 23 September 2018
Health
“There, I completed the job,” you exclaim upon your entry. “Can I please get paid now?”
The man looks at you with mild amusement and then pulls out a small sack of coins. Once he opens it, they all float into your satchel and you turn to leave, but something stops you. The man is looking at your wound and frowning, which is very unexpected. You didn’t think the NPCs could even notice something like that.
“There is an infirmary two streets over. The medics there will be able to heal you. I would suggest that you don’t waste any time.” With that advice, he turns back to the scroll and ignores you as you walk out.
While you hope that it won’t be too expensive, getting help still seems more appealing than waiting to see what happens when you run out of health. The infirmary is easy to find because it has a large sign hanging above it that depicts a large red cross like most hospitals in the real world have. You walk in and find that the interior of it is very clean and like all the other buildings you have been in, it has a clerk waiting for you behind a counter.
The nurse there takes one look at your arm and then points to a door to her right. You want to ask her how much this will cost but before you can even open your mouth, a wave of pain more powerful than any previous sensations courses through you. That is more than enough to convince you to walk through the door and get treatment.
As soon as you walk in, you find yourself walking back out into the waiting area. When you look at where the cuts were before, you see that your arm has returned to normal. Well, normal for the game, anyway. You cannot remember undergoing any form of treatment, but because you are healed, you assume that this is just how the game works.
There is no pop-up that asks you to pay for whatever has just happened, meaning that it must be free. Those are good news for you since you still don’t have a lot of money.
Written by Quuentong on 25 September 2018
Inn
This entire day has been nothing other than exhausting, so you decide to return to the inn and go to sleep. When you walk through the door, you notice something that hadn’t caught your attention the night before. The sound of people talking and laughing can be heard from a room opposite of the hall that leads to the guest rooms. You recall that the sign outside said this place was also a tavern, so you decide to check out that area before heading to bed.
What awaits you on the other side of the door is like any bar scene in a fantasy movie. The tavern is filled with creatures and people of all shapes and sizes that all seem to be getting along with each other well. You don’t want to bother anyone, so you just go to the bar and order yourself a bowl of water. Drinking anything out of a glass is near impossible in your current state and it would be beyond awkward to ask someone to hold the glass for you.
Only when you take a drink do you realize how parched you are. The bowl is quickly emptied and you order another one. Fortunately, the water is free. After you enjoy your fill, you remain seated at the bar and stare at your reflection in the water. You wish that you could admire your gorgeous face instead of hating it for belonging to the body you are trapped in. None of this is you and you just want to get out of here and never return.
“You don’t belong here, do you? I can tell.”
You are ripped out of your thoughts by a smooth voice coming from beside you. When you turn, you see one of the only complete humans that you have encountered so far. His clothes are far nicer than any of what most of the other patrons of the tavern are wearing, which definitely catches your attention.
Written by Quuentong on 27 September 2018