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
Air Creatures
You find yourself in what appears to be a glass room suspended high in the sky.
The stairs are blocked by a force field.
You realise you have to go through one of the three sky blue doors numbed 1,2 & 3.
What door do you want?
Written by Catprog on 11 February 2004
Myth Air
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: Air
Type: Myth
Gender: ????
So which door do you want
Written by Catprog on 26 February 2004
Female Myth Air
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 female, all of them are myth air creatures.
Written by Catprog on 26 February 2004
Wings and Hooves 'N Stuff
The room is painted with a rocky, craggy path seemingly leading off around a corner of dark and jagged stone, but it is an illusion; you touch the wall with your hands when you try to follow. It's cold, here; snow falls from the very ceiling; not flakes of ice that a man-made machine would spit out, but crystalline flakes. Suddenly, it occurs to you that this whole insane scenario might be far more real than it seemed when you arrived.
Re-viewing the little golden female symbol above the door, you scowl. Who cares that much about gender, other than fetishists? Then you think, maybe this place was *built* by fetishists, and you shudder in dread.
You pick up the costumes and riffle through the pieces. Which one? Why? And did they really mean you'd have to be a girl? Ugh... Finally, you opt for a silky white fursuit with a pair of stuffed, gold spray-painted wings on the back.
You zip up the cold zipper. The suit comes up to your neck, so from the neck up you're human- GREAT SCOT! The suit latches to your flesh and squeezes! Your hooves pop out and clatter upon the ground as your new hairy tail follows suit, swatting snow out of the air like sub-zero flies! Heat on your neck marks the crawling advance of the suit as your ears stiffen and migrate, and your face cracks and snaps out into a wide-nostriled mare's!
"REE-HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE!" You whinny! Wings erupt from your back like violent petals. In the snow, you shake your flanks off as the world goes slowly white...
The white clears, revealing an idyllic meadow leading to a green mountainside. Up on a hill some five miles hence, a Greek-style temple is perched. So, what... is this Ancient Greece?
Modern Greece? Fictional Greece? Is it Greece at all? Staggering around on your two hooves, flexing your "hands" idly, you realize that in this hodgepodge of madness you've landed in, you'll have to make a strong decision to make heads or hooves of it.
Written by Mr.Peaches on 31 May 2007
You're a pegasus, and you're walking?
You decide to (hehe) hoof it to the temple on the hill. You'd rather not try the whole flying thing, as that can't end well when you've just been turned into a winged flying horse-chick...thingy. To kill time as you walk, you ponder...who would have built a creepy manor full of magical...or perhaps nanotechnological...or just weird costumes. And all those RULES! You have to spend a week in every costume, or something like that, and if you spend more than a thousand ten-day weeks in the world you get pregnant with a polymorph and die or...something like that. Looking back, you really wish you hadn't skimmed the rules.
Your delightful train of thought is quickly interrupted.
You've completely lost track of your surroundings, and as you walked in an introspective daze, you've been surrounded by women in black robes carrying ropes,
nets, halters, bridles, and whips. Yep, you think, This place was definitely built by fetishists. The apparent leader of the group speaks first: "She's a fine beast. Persephone will be most pleased."
Persephone...
Persephone...
Persephone...
Persephone.....you search your databanks for that name.
Let's see...you're in some sort of pseudo Greece. So Persephone must be Greek...AND it hits you! Perseophone was the wife of Hades, king of the underworld, daughter of Demeter...or was it Artemis? Or Ceres? No, Ceres was Roman...or was that Circe. Circe! That reminds you... You've been turned into an anthropomorphic pegasus thing. That snaps you back to reality, or at least the reality you're inhabiting. The leader of the group of women is pulling something out of a satchel...a syringe--horse tranquilizer! Now, something is clearly wrong with this scenario. The temple on the hill is in good condition. The women are wearing ancient Greek outfit. And yet here's a syringe full of tranquilizer, and it's being jabbed into you.
In your delirium, you are restrained and led down the hill to a small shrine. The leader opens the door, and inside you see a creepy dark stairwell. The women lead you down the dark stairs. Dark...slippery...impossibly long stairs. And you've been tranked. You're being led down dark, slippery, long, dark, stairs in a stupor. Long...dark...stairs.
Which are, in addition to being long and dark, are slippery. This is not a metaphor for anything, by the way, you simply have a lot of vertical distance to cover in the downward direction.
You spend what feels like an eternity on the stairs, but eventually, the flight levels off. You're deep underground. There's a faint green light emanating from somewhere. You try to take stock of your surroundings, but the women seem intent on getting you somewhere. Eventually, the forced march ends. When it does, you are...
Written by Zodiac on 27 June 2007
Pay the Boatman
You find yourself on the shore of an eerie greenish river, flowing in a circle. On your side are shadowy, vaguely human figures. On the opposite side, the black sillouette of a massive castle. So...this is the Underworld. And you're going to be presented as a gift to the queen. However, the tranquilizer seems to be wearing off...maybe you could make a break for it. The women are blocking the stairs, but maybe you could get across the river. OR, maybe you should stick around. Something about that river doesn't seem quite right. So...what do you do?
Written by Zodiac on 28 June 2007
The River Styx
You decide to stay with the women. It seems like they know what they're doing better than you do. One of them goes to the edge of the river and hands a sack of coins to a hooded figure in a little black boat. As she bends down to give them to him, you notice something odd...could that be a tail peeking out from under her robes. It seems improbable, but then, so does being turned into a Pegasus.
The hooded creature counts the coins carefully then stows them in his robes. He then nods to the woman, who waves the rest of the group over, with you in tow. The hooded figure speaks. You're not sure if it's the sound of his voice, or just a long-dead memory reawakaning, but somehow you know that he's Charon, boatman of the dead. It's not the slapdash, halfway knowledge that told you that Persephone's mother wasn't Ceres. No, this is absolute certainty, just like you'd be able to recognize the president or your old grade school. It's almost as if the suit knew, and you know because the suit knows. Charon's voice is hollow and old, like a dying wind: "I can only take one at a time."
The leader snaps back, in a relatively sharp tone, "That's a rather inneficient operation now, isn't it?"
To which Charon replies, "The dead can wait. The dead can wait." It isn't a reply so much as a mantra.
The group leader appears ready to pitch Charon into the river and pilot the boat herself, but another member of the group speaks first:"I'll go first," she says. She steps toward the boat, and her face is awash in the green light emanating from the river.
She appears to be covered with fur. It's odd that you never noticed this before. Must've been the tranks. She continues, "I'll meet our prisoner on the other side and take her to Persephone." The woman who paid Charon speaks up now, sounding irate: "We shall ALL deliver the beast, so we shall all recieve our due payment." She steps into the boat without another word, and the ferryman takes her away, laboriously slowly.
The River Styx is an impossibly wide river. You also have no way of knowing if Charon drops passengers directly on the other side, or if there's a certain point on the huge island where the incoming dead are dropped. To pass the time, you look over your captors. The leader has green eyes with slits for pupils and claws. Another one is sporting a unicorn horn and tail. Another one has tiger-striped skin, and the one who originally offered to cross first is an
anthropomorphic housecat. Then it dawns on you: everyone here has been changed by a costume. Maybe this entire pseudo-Greek Mythology universe is populated by victims of that creepy costume maze. Charon could be some poor sap who happened upon a Charon costume back in the maze. The shadowy people on the riverbank, too.
At first you thought they were the dead, but then you realize: nobody stays dead in this universe, they just get reborn in the local inn. So they're not real
shades, they're people in shade costumes.
Suddenly, this whole adventure feels less like a horrible nightmare and more like a play, or Halloween. You laugh at the thought of these women asking Persephone for candy when they deliver you. Except that the laugh comes out as a high pitched whinny. Come to think of it, you're not sure you can speak.
You test it out with a simple "Hello, can you undertand me?" All you hear is a high-pitched whinny, but the woman with the unicorn horn whinnies back. Oddly enough, you understand it as, "I can understand you. Any horse morph will. But my companions are all cat morphs, and just think we're making noises."
The leader, evidently, did not understand you, because she simply snaps, "Shut up," and commences licking the back of her hand daintily.
Time is a funny thing in Hades. There's no sun, no rose-fingered dawn, so you have nothing to mark the passage of time. Maybe time doesn't pass at all. That would stink, since you have to stay a pegasus for at least a week. In time, or perhaps not, Charon appears back on the shore. The leader hastily shoves you into the boat and you set off. More time, or less, or no time passes at all, and you are deposited on the opposite side of the river. The woman there takes ahold of your reins and waits...
and waits...
and waits...
Eventually, every last member of the group is on the opposite shore, and the leader again takes ahold of you. You are led to the looming castle, and the leader pounds on a set of huge double doors. They swing open slowly and, apparently, automatically.
The group heads down winding corridor after winding corridor, up one set of steep, unsafe stairs after another, all the while you struggle to keep your balance while being dragged along. Finally, the group arives at a small door on the top of a tower. The leader again knocks. This time, a dainty voice answers: "Enter."
The leader pushes the door open and on the other side you find...
Written by Zodiac on 01 July 2007
Persephone
The room on the other side is unlike anything you'd expect to find in the Underworld. There's a cheery yellow computer with a pink iPod plugged into it, sitting on a desk matching the computer. There's a small couch next to a bookshelf, both pink, and posters. At first you think they're boy bands or actors you've never heard of, until you read the names--Ajax, Perseus, Odysseus, Menelaus--these are heroes from Greek mythology, although they're all part animal. The room seems furnished like the bedroom of a teenage girl.
In fact, it is the bedroom of a teenage girl. There, lying on the fluffy pink canopy bed, is a girl of about sixteen. Persephone. She's also the only light in the room--yes, she's glowing brightly enough to make any other lamps unnecessary. You surmise that gods glow, although you'd never met one before.
"Persephone," the leader says, bowing low. The others follow suit, and you try, clumsy as you are in your odd horse body. She continues, "we've brought you a pet. Isn't this nice? Isn't it nice to have companionship from the upper world?" For all the bowing, the leader is really talking down to Persephone. Persephone perks up when she sees you.
"Oooh," she squeals, "a pegasus! She's pretty! You girls deserve a reward for your work.
Do you want...jewels?" She looks like offering jewels is a mildly clever joke. The group does not respond but smiles, obviously in on the joke. She goes on: "Or...gold? Or how'bout...COSTUMES!" At this the group nods eagerly. Persephone opens up a drawer in her desk and pulls out what looks like a dog collar made of iron. The group gasps in horror and shies away from it as one.
"Not a keeper, eh?" Persephone says. She pulls out a bodysuit. Whatever it's made of bears a very close resemblance to stone. The group has the same reaction.
Finally, she takes out what look like dresses made of leaves. "Alright," she says good-naturedly, "you can be nymphs." The group eagerly grabs the nymph costumes and leaves.
Persephone turns to you, suddenly very serious. "You aren't a real pegasus," she says, staring into your eyes. You have a soul. Tell me, what were you before you came here?" You try to answer, but all that comes out are more horse noises. Persephone pulls out a handful of herbs and a bowl from her desk drawer. She breaks the herbs up and mixes them with a bottle of water. "Here," she says, "Drink this." You lap the concoction eagerly. You hadn't realized it before, but you're incredibly hungry. The herbs are spicy, though. Really spicy! Your throat starts burning painfully. You sweat. Really, those were some nasty herbs.
"What IS that? I'm burning!" You scream. Persephone just laughs, and pours you a bowl of regular water, which soothes the burning.
"It may be nasty, but it works like a charm," she laughs. "You can talk now, but I'm afraid I can't make you human again, or make you a man again." It's a little scary, how much this young goddess knows about you. "So," she continues, "I guess you're my pet now. It's amazing what people will do to get costumes. They're basically the currency around here, since you need to collect so many of them to get out of here. Me, I think I'll stay Persephone for a while, though. The Makers of the realm needed to make the gods worthy of being worshiped, otherwise the whole fake Greek mythology would work out. So, they give us extra costumes to give out to our followers. It's a nice gig. Other than that, though, I'm not really a god. I'm just an unfortunate human who found a costume. It's nice, though, since I didn't have to change too much."
"You're glowing," you point out. "Is that part of being a god?"
"This?" she says, pulling a necklace out from under her robe. "Apollo gave it to me. It's so I can keep track of the days while I'm down here." The necklace is some sort of miniature sun, but you can't look at it to be sure. Persephone, though, seems to have no trouble staring into it. She, in fact, seems to enjoy it. "I'll give you a costume too if you like, after you finish out the week." Finish out the week? You remember that you've had no way of keeping track of time down here...until now.
"How long has it been?" you ask.
"Let's see," Persephone says, still staring at the little sun. "It would have taken four days to get that whole group across the river one by one. This new Charon is so lazy. Then, the journey to Hades from the surface world would take another three days. So seven days, plus whatever time you spent up above."
"None, then," you reply, "I was captured the day I transformed."
"Pity," she answers.
"Well then, you've got three days to run an errand for me, and then I'll give you a costume."
"What's the costume," you ask.
"That'll depend," she says. "If you do a good job, I'll give you a more powerful creature. If you fail, I might just have to turn you into a shade. So...will you do it?"
Written by Zodiac on 01 July 2007