In a room
The sign reads
"Welcome all new travellers.
To continue you must go through a series of doors.
After going through you will pick a costume. You will then become a half- human and half that creature.
After a week(100 mins a hour,20 hrs a day,10 days a week) has passed you may morph and get another costume. To start of with you will only be able to become 40% human to 60% human.
If you put on a costume you will then become that creature, be teleported to it's home town and have to wait a week before being able to morph.
After 50 costumes you may change into one of your other costumes and become 30% to 70% human. When changing costumes you must wait at least an hour before you can change costumes again.
100 different species/gender costumes allows you to gender-morph and become 20% to 80% human
200 different species costumes allows you to combine costumes and become 10% to 90% human
400 different species costumes allows you to return to your world with no more morphing
And 800 different species costumes makes a polymorph and allows you to morph outside of this world.
Also if you have a costume like a centaur then the human part will always be human and is counted towards the human percentage.
Any gender/species transformation magic of yours can only change your gender(if you have at least 100 costumes) and the animal part to a different animal.
When you change into a different costume (that you already have) you may teleport to that species home town but you will have the week penalty where you have no costume changes.
If you die while wearing a costume you will be reborn at the local inn (or appropriate location ). If you have more then 100 costumes you will lose the costume you had when you died and go to an appropriate place for your next costume.
If you fail to make it out in 100 years(100 weeks in a year) one of your possible forms will be chosen and you will be permanently stuck in that form(apart from magic) until you die. Also there will be no possibility of going back to your world.
Also, one final note: should you take a female form and become pregnant, you won't be able to change your gender until the child is born, though the other aspects of your form may change (the child will change to match.) That is all, and good luck!
You realise that you have to do what the sign said to do and go through the doors and grab a costume.
Alternatively you could use the key system to determine the room
Written by Catprog on 11 February 2004
Normal Land
You go through the door.
All of a sudden it slams shut and with no handle on this side it appears that you are stuck.
There are two more doors however and both of them have a sign on them saying
Costume room for
Element: Land
Type: Normal
Gender: ????
So which door do you want
Written by Catprog on 26 February 2004
Male Normal Land
You go through the door.
All of a sudden it slams shut and with no handle on this side it appears that you are stuck.
There are five costumes in this room, all of them male, all of them are normal land creatures.
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Written by Catprog on 26 February 2004
Snow Leopard
You slipped out of your clothes, into the fur of a fluffy, toothily grinning snow-leopard, and the very moment that the head of the suit had slipped down over your own...
You woke up.
You had been so eager, so desperate to put on the costume, but when you were all wrapped up in its warm synthetic fur, breathing heavily into the head surrounding yours, that began to fade. You found yourself wondering why? Why had you been so eager, so overwhelmingly delighted by the idea of putting on this snow-leopard? Indeed you felt your cheeks beginning to burn. Embarrassed. Frustrated a little by how childish you seemed to have gotten so carried away.
You had a job to do, and this was most definitely not a part of it.
So, you tried to take the head off.
Tried being the operative word.
You felt for the seam, the obvious gap on the fabric between the base of its neck and the top of the bodysuit. You dug your big, padded, fur-enclosed fingers into the fabric, but couldn't find the point where the two items of this costume's main form were connected. It was then your heart rate began to quicken. To race. You tried to flick off the gloves, the paws making it so impossible for you to feel that seam which was obviously still there, how could it not be, after all. But even now, those gloves seemed tighter than you remembered. They didn't slide off with the ease you'd put them on, indeed the more you tried, the more it felt like a futile effort. Like trying to throw aside not a costume or a piece of clothing, but a part of yourself.
It was then that panic truly began to overtake you, as you grasped one hand in the other and pulled, only to draw back your hands with a cry as you realised that you could feel yourself tugging upon the fur. Fur that seemed to be affixed to your own skin. Looking down at the paws before you, they weren't quite as bulky or cartoonishly large as they had been before. They looked more natural now. More real. Only, still belonging to a bipedal, anthropomorphised snow-leopard rather than the human you had been.
No.
No.
Not had been. The human you were. The human you were, dammit!
Your head began to spin as you tried to pull off the costume. To tear it from your body, uncaring now if you damaged any part of it. You grabbed your ears as you felt them begin to twitch. Your tail as it began to flick urgently, nervously from side to side. You clutched at your own muzzle and snarled in pain as you tried to pull your head up and off, fur bristling as your hands instinctively drew back, not wishing to damage the sensitive whiskers protruding from your growling muzzle.
By the time you collapsed to your knees, hyperventilating through a mouth that was not yours mere minutes before, you knew you had to be dreaming. You pinched yourself with clawed fingertips, mewling in frustration and pain but still not waking.
Darkness.
You fell down to all fours, passing out for a moment but lurching back to consciousness just long enough to see trembling grey furred hands resting on the floor beneath your gaze, clenched into tight fists of fear, confusion, dismay.
That was exactly how you felt in that moment, and that was the first time you admitted to yourself what was happening. The first time you allowed yourself to believe.
There was a good reason why those hands looked and felt like they were experiencing the same emotions as you.
Because they were your hands, and this body in which you were trapped and panicking, it wasn't some costume. It wasn't some trick.
This body, this snow-leopard, was you.
Written by Jeeves on 01 September 2017
Footsteps
You hear someone approaching.
Footsteps. Or rather, the padding of bare feet against smooth stone. Dragging yourself to your feet at last, oddly, comfortably balanced even in this unfamiliar body, you feel something moving behind you and turn your head. At first, you panic. Something is attacking you. Biting you, writhing and thrashing against your body as it strikes from behind. But then... then you find yourself practically laughing as you realise the truth. It's a tail. A long, thick, luxurious tail. Your own.
“Good morning.”
Before you can reach back and touch the lush fluffy fur of that new limb however, a voice draws your attention back to the newcomer. You wince slightly as you look at them, the figure holding a flickering, fire-lit torch in one hand. Until now you didn't realise just how dark it was, your vision able to compensate in a manner which never would have been possible in your human form. Now however you can see in the orange-yellow glow, and not only can you see the person addressing you, but the space in which you are being addressed.
She is a wolf. Wrapped in rich white cloth, adorned with bracelets and necklaces and earrings and other jewellery all a rich gold in hue, smooth and simple but obviously of the highest quality. And around her, around both of you... high stone walls. Pillars. Walls inlaid with designs somewhat like ancient hieroglyphs, only even more alien and unfathomable than the most obscure Egyptian text ever would have been to your former eyes. Truly an alien language.
"Your name is Serrin. Do you know this?"
You blink at the wolf as she addresses you, calmly and yet with a curiosity that shows she doesn't entirely expect you to know the answer to that question.
Written by Jeeves on 03 September 2017
Shake your Head
When you shake your head, too stunned and overwhelmed to lie, she smiles. You see something in her eye for a moment. Maybe a flicker of sorrow, of regret. But she hides it well, and you have no idea how you would begin to ask her why she looked that way for even a moment, considering all the other hundreds upon hundreds of questions flooding your head in that instant.
“Then... it has happened again.”
She steps closer to you, and moves as though to reach out and take your hand. When you do not reciprocate her gesture however, she seems to think better of it, withdrawing and giving another momentary glimpse into that more sorrowful, frustrated mindset lying deep within her.
She smiles.
“I am Lira. And this... this is a place where stories tell that our world overlaps with others. It acts as a source of magical ability for our people. A place where one can come to study, to learn, to untangle the secrets of reality itself. Sometimes objects are left here, gifts from other worlds. Sometimes knowledge is imparted to those studying here. And occasionally... the mind, the essence of a person from another world enters the body of one studying here.”
Your head spins, but you try to wrap it around what she is saying. In a voice deeper than you remember, a rumbling purr behind every word, you speak to her.
“So... i-if what you're saying is true, then... the name you said was mine? Serrin?”
You touch a hand to your chest. Strong, firm. Clad in what you look down and realise is the same white robing covering the wolf.
The woman nods.
“The body you now inhabit... it is his. Or, it was. And, it may be again. There are rules. Precepts that we have heard come from the mouths of others who have been transported and transformed over the years and centuries. You are bound to this form for at least two of our weeks. Twenty days. After that, there are... there are ways that you can move on. Other worlds you can explore, if you find another version of whatever it was that led you here.”
Written by Jeeves on 06 September 2017
So many costumes..
You close your eyes for a moment, and picture that factory. Not just one costume lying upon a table, but filled with rows upon rows of costumes almost as far as you could see. If putting on this costume had led you to this world, then... did each costume lead here? Or, to a different realm for each one?
The idea makes you reel. So many realities. So many worlds, all possibly suddenly summoned into existence within your mind.
You stumble.
“Serrin!”
The wolf, Lira, lunges forward to steady you. She cries out with care. With distress. She does not want to see you... or rather, the body you possess, come to harm.
You steady yourself once more, and look at her with a furrowed brow.
“You've told me what this place is. W-what I'm doing here. But... please. If I'm in someone else's body. If I'm living someone else's life, I need to know. W-who... who am I?”
Written by Jeeves on 08 September 2017
Workers
Together the pair of you walk through a courtyard in the midst of the temple building. Lira talks. Tells you of your job. Your life here, back when you were Serrin. But, you only half listen.
“We work here. Serve here, at the pleasure of the people. We guide visitors who wish to learn or grow from the worlds beyond, and in return we ourselves are granted the boons of living in such close proximity to such a powerful arcane source.”
Your eyes are fixed upward. Above the temple walls, staring at the cityscape to the north and west of this location. The temple looks ancient. A mixture of something like ancient Greek and Egyptian combined in design, but despite that and the classical attire in which you are dressed, the city beyond makes clear that this world is anything but backward.
Skyscrapers tower up through the clouds, glimmering in the light of the small but intensely bright sun overhead. At the peak of each one, a spire of some sort of crystal reaches higher still, and a crackling violet lightning arcs between the various rods, causing a shimmering field to cast a faint purple glow over the entirety of the city below. You see shapes darting between the buildings, too small to be aircraft but too large to be any sort of bird life with which you are familiar. Somehow, you can't help shake the feeling that they might be people. Flying, magically imbued people.
Only then do you turn your attention back to Lira, and jump slightly as you look down at where her hands are outstretched before you, a glowing, flickering ball of energy resting several inches over her poised fingertips. An orb of magical light in the shape of a planet. Flickering blue and green over sea and land with swirling white clouds over its surface. You look for familiar landmarks.
Continents you've known since you were a child. But of course, there's nothing remotely like your world.
Written by Jeeves on 11 September 2017