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
Sphinx
"Great" you think to yourself looking around at various feminine outfits and costumes all over the wall. "How did I end up in the female room?"
You recall the sign at the start of the complex, and with the only way out is too wear one of the costumes and become the creature. Which means you are now destined to be a girl and some animal like creature.
So what are your options?
A pegasus , a griffon , a phoenix although that one looks like it might burn you before you get it on. A dragon, correction a dragoness, female room after all.
The last one however is the one that strikes your fancy, a sphinx. This one at least is partially human. Still you have no idea how you will fill out the 8 limbs including the wings with just your four.
You reach up and take the costume off the hanger, the other costumes rotating behind the wall , although you suspect if you returned your current one they would return to allow you to make a new choice.
Now how to put the costume on. The zipper runs along the spine of the costume. The open limbs seem to be the arms and legs of the costume.
"Well here goes nothing" you say to the empty air as your legs slip into the empty legs of the costume. Your feet being pulled up by the shape of the paws, leaving you standing on your toes.
The fake front legs of the costume dangle down as you place your arms into the costume as well. You turn behind to see the zipper moving by itself, slowly but not stopping, sealing your body into the costume.
The head is the other part of the costume that needs to go on, standing on a pedestal, mouth open showing of her teeth. You walk over , already feeling like your paws are part of your body, your movement as natural as if you were born with them.
You look into the mirror fearful that this will be the last time you see your face for a long time before putting the head over the top of yours. As the parts meet you feel and hear the seal form.
Pain, that is the first sensation when the changes begin. Your spine feels like it is being pushed down hard, the front legs providing support as you fall forward onto them. The wings burrow into your body new nerves sending messages straight to your brain, every feather feeling the wind as it rushes through them.
Wind? In a sealed room?
You look around and try to move to trace the source of the wind but the front legs are not yet ‘real’ and remain fixed to the floor. However you see the walls of the room fading. The wind seems to be only on your wings though.
The front of the costume begins to hurt quite a bit as you feel bones solidifying in the leg area, the legs becoming long and stiff, unable to be moved until the nerves set in. It is a painful process as each nerve seems to light up as they come into existence.
You feel the costume attach itself around the groin area pushing into you as the change you knew was coming since the moment you stepped into the room and saw the costumes that awaited you.
The opposite is occurring in your chest, your skin is being pulled out into the two balloons on your chest.
Written by on 14 December 2014
Plateau
The room fades and you find yourself on top of a plateau.
You don't give yourself time to think about it; you just run, hurling yourself off the edge of the plateau. You plummet like a boulder... until your wings open with a loud flap-ping noise. After that, you're not falling any more. After that...
...you're flying.
Flight under your own power: It's everything you dreamed it could be. The experience is euphoric, even intoxicating, and for the next while, you lose yourself in the sheer joy of flying.
You eventually glide back to the plateau and find... you're not sure what that structure is, but in some ways it reminds you of an ancient temple. Whatever it is, its architecture is peculiar; it has Greek-style columns, but its main body is more of a step pyramid such as might be found in Central America. You have no idea how these disparate design elements ever got together. You also notice Egyptian-looking hieroglyphs, and, surprisingly, you can actually read them! It's anybody's guess which is more disorienting: The fact that there's some force or entity capable of transforming you into a sphinx-like creature, or the fact that new information/knowledge could be inserted into your mind without your even being aware of it. What other bits of your mind and personality might have been altered..?
You read the hieroglyphs: "Welcome, player of my little game, to your new home for the next two weeks. I hope you enjoy your time in your new form. You should find you have enough new hunting skills to feed yourself for your time here."
Hunting skills? you think to yourself. But I don't have any... And then you realize that yes, you do have a pretty good idea of what to do with your new claws and fangs---fangs!? when did you---wait, it must have happened when you put the costume on. You run your tongue over them, feeling just how different your mouth is now. And you know how to hunt the same way you can understand a written language you never did before today, most likely. More mind-meddling... you shudder at the thought.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 01 September 2010
In the temple
You approach the temple and the stones reshape into a doorway. You go through and find a well lit bedroom. You hear the stone reshape itself behind you. You turn your head to look behind you, just in time to see the living rock fuse itself back into a wall; well, if whatever-it-is can reshape living flesh the way it did your body, you suppose it's not that much of a stretch to think they (he? it? she?) can remodel inert matter, too.
You take a step forward and watch it open back out. "At least I can get out again" you think. You then turn back to look inside the bedroom. Like the temple itself, this room is a peculiar mixture of styles -- and they're all Earthly styles, at that. Which is actually a little bit strange itself, now that you think of it; given the sort of power whoever-it-is has displayed, why couldn't it just as easily steal designs from other planets or other Universes?
Your tummy then rumbles. All the changes and the flying must have taken a lot of mass and now you have to make it up—which means hunting. Or at least, that's what the hieroglyphs said... And suddenly you realize: You're naked. This doesn't matter so much for the bits of you that are covered by your built-in fur coat. but you do have some bits of bare skin left, and you're not sure you want to risk coming down with a cold or something. And... sure enough, the bedroom has a door which (something in your mind tells you) leads to a closet. You open that door and, yes, it is a closet. And you find a few unfamiliar-looking bundles of folded cloth which you (somehow) know are clothes for your new form. Reluctantly trusting your newfound instincts, you pick out the sky-blue one; unfolding it, you discover that it's intended to cover your entire body, from neck to forepaws to hind legs. And it's fastened onto your body with straps and buckles.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 02 September 2010
The hunt
You put the thing over your back... or should that be "backs", since you've just added a lion-like back to your human back? ... anyway, you drape it over yourself and start on the frontmost buckles. Happily, you find that your waist—the bit where your human torso meets the lion neck and shoulders—is very flexible, so much so that you have no trouble reaching down to fasten the buckles at your flanks. Sides? No, 'flanks' is probably the better word, now. Anyway, you get the sides buckled, and swivel your human torso 180 degrees to get a good look at your backside. You wonder how you'll be able to get the very hindmost buckles... and then you see the hindmost straps and buckles fasten themselves, as if by magic. You blink in surprise for a moment, before another piece of that weird, implanted 'instinctual' knowledge comes to mind: You have the power of mind over matter, telekinesis. Of course, you think; I'm a flying creature now. But my wings just aren't big enough to carry my weight without some sort of extra 'oomph'—and I guess that means telekinesis. You're not sure how far you can trust this 'instinct', but it surely feels right, doesn't it?
Your ruminations are interrupted by another, more insistent, tummy-rumble. And now you know what you're wearing, and why your instincts chose it: It's a hunting outfit, and the blue color is for camouflage against the open sky! You go outside and take flight to look for prey.
As you fly up you see the walking path that spirals around the mountain. Looking at it you are glad for your new wings. If you had to walk down you belive it would take you 1 maybe even 2 days and you could slip and fall. You dive down going faster and faster and pull out just above the ground, adrenaline racing.
You take off and keep a look out for your prey. You spot a deer and your instincts take over; you dive down, grabbing its head in your forepaws and catching its flanks with your hindpaws, and its neck breaks instantly with a smooth jerking motion as you rise. You start eating when you notice a bunch of humans coming toward you with nets. you take off quickly carrying your prize.
The humans throw a bunch of spears but you quickly fly up out of range. You then head back towards the temple. "I guess it is home for now" you think "I'll have to do something about those pesky humans though. Wait where did THAT thought come from."
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 03 September 2010
Clean and freak out
You land next to the temple. Now that you are no longer hungry you are starting to freak out about killing the deer and thinking of taking the care of the humans. And you ate the deer raw... somehow, thinking of your latest meal as 'deer sushi' just doesn't help settle your nerves any. You go inside the temple and look for a bathroom. It's obviously meant for you to live in, right? So it's got to have some place to wash blood off. Unless whoever's in charge of the craziness thinks sphinxes like the aroma and feel of blood in their fur...
While you attempt (without success) to avoid thinking about... terrible things, your four paws lead you to a chamber whose floor is half taken up by a nicely deep pool of water. There is a 2-meter-wide mirror that stretches from floor to ceiling; you look in it, and don't recognise yourself. Not just because of the sphinx bits; no, even your remaining human bits are different from what you remember. The olive skin and black hair are fairly attractive, to be sure... but the face you see is the face of a stranger! You wish you could be surprised to see yourself covered in the deer's blood. With a convulsive twitch, you tear yourself away from that appalling image and hurl yourself into the pool for a very thorough washing-up.
The water feels good against your skin... and hide... so you do your best to just enjoy the sensation, and not think about any part of the massive weirdness you've been drenched in today. As you scrub down your thoughts turn to the troubling things of the hieroglyphics reading, the hunting, the blood and your thought about the humans and you start freaking out.
You scrub and scrub and only stop when you yelp and see your own blood flowing from your hide. You look on the brush and see pieces of your hide hanging from it.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 04 September 2010
The libary
You get out and lay out the outfit to dry and look for something, anything to cover up the wound and before you relise it you are licking it clean and stop with a sense of horror of just how much you have been changed by the costume mentally. God, what you wouldn't give to have a cranky computer network to deal with right now, a problem that's nice and mundane and (above all) human...
Wait a second: You were a sysadmin—information-handling machinery was your job. And sphinxes are all about information, too! So maybe you can put your new sphinx-instincts to work for you? Sure; you want to be rather more human than you are, so what can a sphinx do to solve that problem? Yes, you ought to have some scrolls, a library, somewhere around this place!
As you look around you notice a doorway you have not been through. When you go through it you find yourself on a balcony and below that are many shelves of scrolls. You eyes light up and you stroll around looking for any information that can help you. You let your instincts guide you and you find a diary of a old wizard who specialised in Transformation! And even better, it's close by—only a few hours away, by air! "Maybe he has something in his tower to get me back human" you think quite happily.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 05 September 2010
At the Tower.
You go back up, put your hunting outfit on and are about to go outside when your instincts stop you. You go back to the closet and find some saddle bags. You chuckle "I might need these, if i get a lot of artifacts from the tower" optimistactly.
You take off hoping that your magic door only opens for you. There is no key or anything you have seen to stop others from entering. You run off the plateau and jump.
You catch a convenient thermal updraft, and from your new-found vantage point, compare what you see to the descriptions of terrain in the diary; then you set off in what you believe to be the correct direction. "What ever else has happened the flying make up for a big part of it you think" as you settle in to your flight.
As the sun sets you notice the large tower in front of you and beyond that you catch a glimpse of a clear blue ocean. You keep your eye on the ocean to try and get a better look and OOFF. You crash into an invisible barrier that seems to surround the tower.
You land and your tummy rumbles lets you know you need to go hunting again. Maybe you ought to have checked your 'house' to see if you had anything stored in a pantry or smoke-house... well, too late for that now.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 06 September 2010
The hunt
You catch a deer quickly. Its coat is odd—the fur is a rich, dark blue—but for all you know, blue deer are perfectly normal around here, so you don't worry about it and just sink your fangs into the succulent meat. Once you've finished eating, you sigh as you look at the blood you have gotten over everything again and look for somewhere nearby to clean yourself. You go over to the river and as you start washing you start to turn invisible! Fortunately, the unseen bits of you fade back into view as soon as they dry off. "OK" you think, "there is a lot of magic around the tower itself, so it makes sense that the land would have been affected by that magic." Unfortunately, the formerly-unseen bits come back a familiar shade of blue...
You turn to look at the tower which almost seems like it could fall down. It's easy to trace the barrier; you lope around the tower and tap on empty air, and soon you find a tunnel leading to the front door. But by the time you locate this entrance, you find that you're blue all over, skin and hair and fur alike. Even your claws are blue! You hope you don't acquire any other traits from your recent meal... and you also hope you won't need to eat again while you're close to the tower.
You open the door and immediately cough as a cloud of dust comes out. You look inside and see everything covered in a thick layer of dust. It looks like the wizard has not been here for a while. You think he would of had a spell to clean everything so this would not happen. Then again, maybe he did and the spell stopped working after he died? Of course there is the main barrier spell which is still working... Well, nobody ever said magic had to be logical.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 07 September 2010
What do you find.
You start brushing the dust off shelves and cabinets, looking for usefull items. You find a book of spells but you can't understand most of them but one is all about changing your colour. This one might be worth keeping if you stay blue; you put it in your saddlebags.
You turn around to see all the dust is concentrating on one point, as if it's being sucked into a hose or something. You go to it and find a gem in the floor that seems to be collecting dust. A few seconds' observation tells you that this gem functions as if it were a dust magnet; it draws dust in towards itself, and that's all it does. Well, that could be helpful to any home, couldn't it? Picking this gem off the floor, you put it in your saddlebags, next to the book. You then watch as dust starts collecting on the outisde of the bag.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 08 September 2010
And in the room
You find the stairs and after a bit of working out how to do so you start climbing them. You find a door and inside is a very pretty necklace that captures the last rays of sunlight and reflects a pretty pattern onto the wall which fades soon after you see it as the sun finally sets. There is even a mirror so you could see what it looks like on you; well, why not? You pick up the necklace, then tak-tak-tak over to the mirror and hold it up against your chest.
It looks almost like it was designed for you and your purr in delight at the look... hold on a second. You've manoeuvred yourself around to get different angles on how it looks, and your 'footsteps' don't sound the same? Looking down to check, you find that your claws aren't there any more! They've been replaced by hooves. Blue, deer-like hooves. And as you watch, you see your legs reshape themselves, shifting away from a leonine configuration! It must have been the deer that you ate, it is changing you... into a new deer, to replace what you killed?
You notice the skin around the necklace seems to be your normal sphinx skin.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 09 September 2010
Wearing the necklace
Well, if the thing protects against turning into a deer, you'll be better off wearing it... right? You tie the thread together, hoping you will turn back to a more leonine form. The results are immediate: Your legs revert back to their former lion-like state. The fur is still blue, but at least the deer stuff isn't there any more!
To your shock the lion fur is growing up your torso. You go to untie it and find that your hands have disappeared and your arms are also shrinking. You look down and notice your torso is being sucked up by your body. You look inn the mirror to see a normal sphinx (well with blue fur). "Great now what" you think. And what are you going to do without hands? Well, maybe you can pull the necklace off with your forepaws; with any luck, that will undo the changes it put on you when you put it on. This prove to be quite difficult and you only managed to get your paw up to the necklace and no where near where you could pull it off. You can catch the necklace on a claw, but the chain is too tough—it simply will not break, no matter how hard you try to snap it or cut it! Would you have been any worse off if you'd allowed the deer transformation to run its course, rather than using the magic necklace?
You bow your head to let the necklase slip off of you, but it might as well be glued to your hide; it will not come off.
Well... you did come here in hopes of finding a way to assume a more-human form than you had... and if the necklace means anything, this tower clearly contains magic that can effect physical changes in its users. So you can still work towards your goal, right?
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 10 September 2010
Escaped
"Of course you still have to get out of the room" you think as you look at the firmly shut door. "Clever" you think "Trap anyone in here and then only he would be able to turn them back"
There's a knob on the door; you place your forepaws around it, one on each side, and find that you can't pull the thing open. Unfortunately, your paws just can't get a firm-enough grip on the thing to turn it... Another idea comes to mind: The knob is small enough to fit in your mouth, so you could bite into it and turn it by moving your head. You try this, and...
...it works! The door slips open and you escape. You look up the winding staircase and back down trying to decide between the two. What the heck; you're here, so you may as well keep looking for something that can re-humanize you. And now that you know you can open the door, you go back into the room so you can give it a nice, thorough search...
This thought is interrupted by a long yawn. Well you have had a big day and this appears to be a good place to sleep. You curl up on the floor and close your eyes...
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 11 September 2010
A secret room?
You rise with the Sun, and get started on the search you tabled last night; your belly is still comfortably full from your last meal, so no need for breakfast. You start tapping the walls and are shocked when you hear a hollow sound you could swear was an outside wall. After a few seconds' pondering the seemingly-blank wall, you decide to try breaking in, so you slash into the wall with your foreclaws. It turns out to be a paper-thin imitation rock, and you slice right through it!
Beyond the false wall, you find a room of about the same size as the one you're in. But you thought the other room was all that could fit into the tower..? "Never mind, it's magic," you tell yourself. This room seems to be a number of cells, each with its own sheaf of parchment sheets tied together by leather thongs. You step into this 'new' room, padding as softly as the cat-thing you are, and take a closer look at the nearest sheaf of parchments. There's writing on the sheets. It seems to be a description of an experiment to turn a human into a ordinary house cat and what effect it has on the subject's behaviour. Curious, you scan the cell where that experiment was presumably conducted. That cell is empty, not even a bed, the subject appears to have been moved a long time ago. The other cells revealing similar results but with dogs,cows and pigs. Hmmm... in the cell which was used for the cow experiment, you see a primitive machine which has a few hoses and cups... right, a milking machine. But it's rather different from any milking machines you've seen or heard of back home!
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 12 September 2010
Oops
Sphinxes being part-cat, it's hardly unexpected that curiosity spurs you to pad on over to examine the odd milking machine more closely. But the moment you step into its cell, it activates! The hoses reach for your belly, where your udder would be if you were a cow, and you flap away. Of cause this is right into the roof. you are stunned and crash partially through the wall.
When you recover you notice your front legs are now looking a lot more eagle like and your hair—what was left of it, on your head—has been replaced by feathers. And the hoses are still coming for you!
Luckily this time you are able to run out of the reach and avoid them. The hoses stretch out as if they could still sense you but they cannot reach outside the cell and you breath a sigh of relief.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 13 September 2010
Back on the ground?
You pad on out and back to the stairs and start going up hoping for better luck on the next level. This level does not have a door just the outside walls and a large window to an ocean. Funny; you don't recall seeing an ocean when you were outside. Turning around you see the door outside and ground just outside? You stand there, blinking, in mild shock. You had been on the ground, and then you went up two flights of stairs, and you're back on the ground? You aren't at all sure you want to know how that works...
You look out and are surprised to see what looks like roofs in the middle of the ocean. You almost gag on a horrible smell -- the place is heavily infested with mildew! But wait, you can't see any mildew growing... The wallpaper is clearly water-stained, and much of it is peeling off the walls; there's a lot of furniture piled up near the stairs going down. It looks like this room must have been flooded at one point; as for the stench, perhaps you just have a more-acute nose, now that you're a sphinx-creature.
Unfortunately there is nothing here to help you on your quest for greater humanity. You shudder a little and climb up the stairs again. The next landing opens up into what looks like a library; at least, the walls are lined with shelves filled with scrolls and books, and there are a number of free-standing shelves in the middle of this room. A mage's library...
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 13 September 2010
In the Libary
You smile and your sphinx instincts also agree with you. Perhaps there is something here that could turn you human. Hey you'll settle for what you were when you set off. Now, how would I organise my library if I were a wizard? you ask yourself as you enter the chamber, the clicking of your front talons on the stone floor comfortably similar to that of your rear paws.
As you enter, a disembodied voice cries, "State request!"
It's magic, you tell yourself. Don't panic, it's magic. "Ah... I want to be human," you reply, and you don't care for the raucous undertone your voice has acquired somewhere along the way.
"Human Transformation spells. Last shelf" the voice replies.
"Thanks," you say as you start off to...
Where is the 'last shelf', anyway?
"Go forward until you hit the wall and turn right" the voice says—and something in your sphinx instincts agrees. Right; forward to the wall, and turn, um, right. You follow these directions, and just before the stairs up you find the shelf. Very few of the books have a spine, or at least not a spine like the books you knew back home and you can't even read most of the contents of them.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 14 September 2010
A Spelle By Whych A Familliare Maye Open a Potion Bottel
Well, 'most' isn't 'all', so you scan the few titles that you can understand --- aha! A Spelle By Whych A Familliare Maye Open a Potion Bottel! That spell must give its target hands, so...
Hold it.
"Voice?" you ask. "Have I reached the section on human transformations yet?"
"Human Transformation spells. Last shelf" the voice replies.
"Tell me when I get there, please." And with those words, you keep going. You hold the "Familliare' spellbook in the talons of one foreleg, so your gait isn't as steady as it ought to be, but that's just a temporary handicap. You look to the left and right as you walk, your remarkably keen eyesight picking up on every visible detail of the magical tomes on each side. This chamber is a lot bigger than it has any right to be, but before long, you spy a likely title: A Compenndium of Fysickal Alterations at Hand. Excellent! It's on the topmost shelf, but you can easily reach it with your free talon when you rear up on your hind legs. Standing up like that, you're no more stable than any other quadruped, but strategic wing-flaps are an immense help.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 15 September 2010
Got the book
It's the work of a moment for your talons to extract the book from its shelf... now you need to figure out how to carry your prizes. With one book in each foreleg... And then, smiling at your silliness, you recall your saddlebags; you deposit your books in them, and that's that.
For a moment, you curse your stupidity: You don't know how to cast spells—you've never even had a chance to learn how! But... you're a sphinx, now. Complete with the instincts of a sphinx. And right now, those instincts are telling you that you can indeed cast spells. Of course, you also didn't used to know how to read heiroglyphs, did you? So yes, yes, you can cast spells. All you need is somewhere suitable to cast them: "Voice, where can I cast a spell?"
It responds with "upstairs or downstatirs there is a large room to cast in." Well you know about the bottom one but "Voice what about the top one?"
"The top one is smaller then the bottom one but is enclosed"
You listen to your instincts and they are telling you to check out the top room.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 16 September 2010
Casting
You go up; once inside this spell-testing chamber, you extract the Spelle By Whych A Familliare Maye Open a Potion Bottel from your saddlebags, then find a stand to put it on, and you begin reading. The archaic language is strange, even with the new knowledge you acquired when you put your sphinxtaur costume on, but you still manage to make sense of it: The spell transmutes one appendage of the target into a state wherein said appendage becomes capable of fine manipulatory tasks. Why couldn't the author have just said "it gives hands to a creature which didn't used to have them"? you think, wondering about the necessary thought processes.
You start the incantation. At first you're worried about the gestures --- you don't have hands yet, after all! --- but it seems that your talons are dexterous enough to make the necessary gestures, and you feel the arcane power build up in you. Your tail seems to be getting most of the attention, though.
As you finish the spell you feal a tingle in your tail and turn to see it growing but not into a hand like you hoped. It seems to have changed into a long tentacle!
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 17 September 2010
Just remove it
You stare at the unnatural limb for several long moments... and then you decide it doesn't matter. As long as the damn thing can pull the damn necklace off of you, you don't care. Fortunately, you can and do get a good, solid grip on the necklace, after which you pull it off over your head.
The result is immediate; your torso starts returning, along with your hands (which feel odd, but—) and arms and antlers and your hind hooves. "Hang on What?" and then you remember why you put the necklace on in the first place. Yes, you're definitely more of a deer-thing than a cat-thing now; your hands have two thick fingers apiece, and your fingernails are so thick and clunky that they might as well be hooves. In fact... if you let your fingers fall into a resting position, it's awfully hard to tell that they're not hooves...
Focus. You need to focus. You're looking for information on how to regain your humanity; there will be time enough later to research other topics. You look in the book titled A Compenndium of Fysickal Alterations at Hand. and find most of the spells again are too complex for you -- even your instincts are silent when you read those pages. Then again, one of the spells which does seem like it's within your skill, allows you to dive underwater with a bubble of air. It is only enough for 10 minutes, but good for looking around the shoreline—no! focus!
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 18 September 2010
More Books.
Apparently, sphinxes are very curious beasts indeed... you're going to have to make sure you don't lose track of your purpose while scouring these stacks of books. Speaking of which, it's about time you got back in the library! Hooves and talons tapping as you move, you return to that dangerously enticing chamber.
"Where is the last shelf, voice?"
"In front of you." it responds and you look at the shelf full of books you can't read. Aaargh! You're a sysadmin; you should be able to read this stuff, by Bast! You pick one of the blank-spined tomes at random, and page through it. It must have been mis-shelved, as it's a history of the tower rather then a spell book. It seems that the ocean room was connected down in the village until a storm forced the wizard to take it up to the hill. Hmmm... according to this, the ocean rose up to to submerge that village---
Suddenly, you realize that you're holding the book off to one side, not in front of you… and you're having no difficulty whatsoever reading it! More, your field of view seems to be much, much wider than it was before --- you can practically see directly behind yourself without turning your head! Tracing the shape of your face with your hoofy hands, you confirm your suspicion: You now have the head of a deer.
There was a mirror by the stairs; looking in it, you're shocked to see your sphinx-taur body, rather then the deer-eagle thing you are now. But you have a deer-muzzle---you can feel it protruding forward… The mirror must see through spells! But why did it not show you as a human in that case? Well, you're in a mage's library, so it should be easy to find out---
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 19 September 2010
Distrability
Damnit! What's with the scatterbrain bit? You take a deep breath, close your eyes, and return to something like a calm state. Clearly, you're still feeling the after-effects of having eaten that blue deer. At this point, it looks like those after-effects aren't going to stop until you end up as a deer! And what if your current... distractability... means that you'll have the mind of a deer, not just the body of one? Not good! The necklace could stop the changes, but you don't really want to wear that thing again; you like your arms too much.
Maybe if you could dispel all the spells? There has to be something here that could do that right? Tilting your head so one eye is aimed to the ceiling, you say, "Voice, where are the books on cancelling magic?"
"1st shelf. By the stairs down"
You move over to there and find a book for dispelling spells. You quickly go down and find a stand. You make the gestures and the incantation ignoring the feelings of your body changing. You watch as you field of vision narrows and your hands regain their usual number of fingers. You look down and you see that you are a sphinx-taur again. And, even better, your head clears with each new body part that return to its 'original' form; apparently, being part-eagle and part-deer meant you had the corresponding instincts, over and above your sphinx instincts, which is why you were having trouble staying on track.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 20 September 2010
More Spells
You look over your body. Well if that spell couldn't return you to human, then you don't have much of a chance of finding a spell to make you human, by Bast.
"By Bast"? Since when... ah. The sphinx instincts, no doubt. Tabling that thought (and by Bast, it feels good to know that you can table a distracting thought!), you ponder what you're going to do... If you can't become fully human, maybe it's possible for you to change yourself so that your body is closer to the human form? "Voice," you say, "where are the body alteration spells?"
"2nd cabinet. 1st shelf from the floor."
The voice is still annoying, but you seem to be getting the hang of its directions now. You quickly find the cabinet; a book entitled Alterations Animalian looks promising. Yes... it's a collection of body-changing spells that focus on addition or removal of animal traits. These spells fall into three main classes; centauric (which is what your body is now), anthropomorphic (anthro for short---just like Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse), and feral (bodies without any human traits at all). The anthro spells look promising---but their duration seems to be rather short. The longest-lasting one is only good for 1 hour!
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 21 September 2010
Anthro Time
Still, an hour in a humanoid form is better then no time at all. And you can always re-cast the spell as you feel like it.
You cast the spell and your forelegs disappear; your human and lioness torsos retract into one another, leaving you with only one torso, of more or less human size. You retain your wings, but as for the rest, you are an anthropomorphic lioness. However, the spell seems to have taken a bit out of you; you're as tired as if you'd just finished running a mile. You probably don't want to cast spells that powerful more then once or twice a day. Mental note: Find a way to increase the duration of this spell, you think to yourself. But for now, rest and enjoy the scenery.
The tower is in a place of great natural beauty; to the west, back the way you originally flew in here, you have a breathtaking view of a mountain pass. To the south and east, you can actually see the ocean! It's a good deal further away here than it was when you saw it from that room a couple of floors down... hmm...
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 22 September 2010
Compare the views
You pad downstairs on your two feline feet. And sure enough, when you compare the two ocean views, the shadows are at significantly different angles! There must be a portal somewhere between the ocean views! Now, why would the wizard who built this tower have gone to the trouble of setting that up? You happen to have a book of local history in your saddlebags—no, the bags became a backpack when you turned yourself anthro. Either way, you've got the book, so you find a place in the sun to read it.
You find out he had a marketplace selling items in many villages but most of them got flooded by the ocean and he finally gave up moving and retired. And looking out over the downstairs view, you can see a cluster of old, weathered wooden structures, just barely sticking up out of the water... the roofs of the drowned village?
Why would this world's mages have allowed a village to be flooded out? The book you're reading doesn't provide anything more than mysterious hints; the author seems to have thought that all of their readers would be aware of the relevant facts, so they didn't go into any great detail about this catastrophe. You get up and stretch some kinks out of your back, then return to the library.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 23 September 2010
Library
"Voice, I want to learn more about that flooding which drowned that village," you say to the air.
"History," the voice replies. "Twelve steps forward. Turn left. Second cabinet. Turn right. 85 steps. Turn right."
You follow the voice's directions and find a shelf of books all describing the history of the world, the tower or the wizard. Let's see, now... A Discourse Upon Ye Sybject Of Ye Layte Fluddynge The Whych Hath Afflyckted Many Rejions With Drownynge, that sounds like it might be worth a read.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 24 September 2010
Warming!
It seems like a lot of coastal areas have been flooded. Recalling the global warming from your own world, you go looking for temperature records; that data should be in the history section, too. Pausing only to ask yourself if this world has ice caps like your home did, you scan the history stacks and soon find a shelf full of weather records. Fortunately, the instinctive knowledge which came with your wings includes familiarity with this world's measurement systems; without that familiarity, you'd have a good deal of trouble trying to unriddle these records. And when you do, it's pretty clear that this world has been growing steadily hotter, at a rate of (you find it easy to convert the figures in your head) about a quarter of a degree Celsius per year, for the past decade or so! This is decidedly not good.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 25 September 2010
Theories
"So what could be causing this?" you think and try and come up with a list of possibilities and a way of testing them. If it's carbon dioxide, you're doomed to remain clueless; this world doesn't even know about the stuff, let alone keep track of it. Natural causes, well seems quite an extreme change and there should be legends about massive climate shifts. These people would know about volcanoes; they wouldn't have records of the CO2 emissions from volcanic eruptions, of course, but if volcanic activity had recently increased, that increase would be recorded. And methane, that's another greenhouse gas, which comes from the gut of pretty much every mammalian creature. So does anyone keep an eye on cattle and horse ownership? Does this world have the kind of bureaucratic record-kee—"Aaaahh!"
Yours is a shout of surprise, not pain; the spell which kept you in humanoid shape just ran out, quite without warning. Your forelegs flowed out of you like an irresistible tide, just in time to catch you when the return of your lioness-body forced you to fall forward. The worst part of it all is that you were just between two closely-spaced bookshelves... and you're wedged in there too tight to move!
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 26 September 2010
Re Casting
You growl in annoyance before you re-cast the anthropomorphising spell from Alterations Animalian. Fortunately, it doesn't tax your energy as heavily as it had the first time; only as much as running a kilometre, maybe just a half-mile. You are quite hungry, though... and the thought of hunting makes your mouth water. Just have to avoid blue deer. Mind you, that deer did taste pretty good—and with the magic-cancelling spell, why not?
You pad outside and are quickly aloft, scanning your surroundings for your next meal... there! Some movement—rabbit-sized—you swoop down and snatch it as you zoom by. It turns out to be a bear, just an very small one with two tails. You gobble it down, unconcerned about getting blood on your fur. It made a good appetiser; you lick your lips as you gain altitude, looking for the main course. And after several pleasant minutes of cruising…
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 27 September 2010
Giant Deer
…you see it! It's as big as a horse; you powerdive down upon it, pleased at how easily your anthropomorphic form slips between trees. You catch its neck in your jaws and hands, and strain your wings to pull up, but it's too heavy! You feel a short, sharp shock rattle up through your arms and face—broke its neck, most likely—and then you slam to the ground, rolling over and over, with your prey half-wrapped around you.
Once you come to rest, you get a clear look at your quarry: It's a deer. Brown-furred, this time. But its torso is about three times longer than any normal deer, and it's got eight legs! And for the next while, you gorge yourself on the plentiful carcass. By the time you finish, you aren't just full, you're massively overstuffed! Your belly's circumference is a good two-three times greater now than it was when you woke up; during your after-feeding stretch, all that meat shifts, pleasantly and ponderously, in your stomach.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 28 September 2010
Sleep time
Now for somewhere to sleep it all off. The tower would be nice… but no, your distended midsection is just too big and heavy; best to find a closer spot. Looking around, you see a good, thick tree in the sun; you waddle over to it, not bothering to stifle your yawns. Slowly, laboriously, you claw your way up its trunk to a wide, sturdy branch about 20 feet up. And after you arrange yourself on that branch, in a posture carefully calculated to intercept every available sunbeam, you zone out…
You are woken up when you hit the ground after changing back to the taur form some time in your sleep. Luckily your cat instincts have made you land on your feet and no major damage has been done. Hmph, so bulky and clumsy! Fortunately, you have a cure for that.
The anthropomorphising spell: This third casting is the easiest yet. Next time, you'll have to try it without looking at the book it's in! You smile at the familiar feelings as you stand upright again.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 29 September 2010
Back to the tower
Well back to the tower and try and find out why the world is heating and how to stop it. Back to the tower you go; all the books are where you left them, and you exactly recall your trains of thought, so you have no difficulty in picking up where you left off yesterday. There's no chance that you'll be able to find records of the actual levels of greenhouse gases; the best you can hope for, is to maybe find information about 'proxy indicators' -- cattle sales as a proxy for methane, for instance.
Maybe.
Try looking at the problem from a different angle: The rising water. How long has sea-level been going up? How fast is it happening? To find out you need to get a timeline of the villages that have gone under. This shouldn't be a problem, at least not if this world has as many seafaring cultures as Earth does; sailors definitely want to keep track of high-water marks!
You find a book in the shelf with the high water marks and find... hmmm... it seems to have begun about eight years ago. In that year, there was 1 cm. or so rise in sea-level; if you're reading these records properly, it looks like the sea is rising faster every year. Last year's rise works out to about two cm, as best you can tell! This is bad enough for places with normal tides; it could be disastrous for areas which have exceptionally large tides. And, yes, the records say that drowned village happens to be in one such area...
You'd like to be wrong about all this—the thought of a whole planet drowning by slow degrees is not pleasant—but the data, and that water-covered village, say otherwise.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 30 September 2010
Water creating items?
The question now is, what are you going to do about it? Can you do something about it? It's not like you can make the problem go away by magic... or is it..? Wait—this is a world with magic in it. If magic could solve the problem, surely some of the wizards would have at least tried to do that, wouldn't they? On your request, the library's disembodied Voice directs you to a shelf full of tomes which describe large-scale magical projects. You scan the first few pages of each, discarding the ones which were apparently never put into practice, and sorting the rest according to when they were implemented.
You find a book descibing a drought and a large amount of water creating items produced to combat it. So lot of water being created and a rise in sea water... Interesting: Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, isn't it? And more water means more evaporation means more water vapor in the air means more greenhouse effect means more heat means... You shake your head, cutting off that circular logic loop. Still, the chain of reasoning feels right; maybe that's because sphinxes have an affinity for riddles, and you're working on a very big riddle. Magically-enhanced reasoning?
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 01 October 2010
More Details
You read over this book carefully, re-reading as necessary: The 'water-creating items' don't actually create water, they're little gateways which spew liquid forever thanks to being connected to the Elemental Plane of Water. You can control the flow rate; anything from stopping it entirely up to, hm, it looks like two and a half gallons per minute? But the drought covered most (if not all) of this world's inhabited regions, so one such gateway would be a pointless, futile gesture. You'd need lots of them, it's hard to say how many, but 'millions' seems like a good guess. And how do you create millions of dimensional-gate artifacts in a magic-based, pre-industrial civilization? The book provides the answer: Using a variation on the magic that golems are based on, a team of wizards created what amounts to a magical assembly line. The resulting artifact could turn out gateways at a rate of... convert to more-familiar units... about five of them every four minutes.
Okay: One-and-a-quarter gateway produced per minute, starting (you check one page) ten years ago, equals, about six and a half million gateways, by now, plus just under another two-thirds of a million every year until the assembly line is turned off. And if all six-and-a-half-million gateways run full blast for a solid year, they produce, hm, sixteen and a half million gallons, or... a tiny fraction of a cubic kilometer of water? But that would mean the gateways can't be what's causing sea-level to rise! But your instincts, your intuition, everything says the gateways are the root of the problem! You growl in frustation at this paradox.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 02 October 2010
Bigger Hole
Maybe they are only part of the problem? You review the documentation of the 'water gateway' project. Nothing stands out as a reason for it to have gone wrong... wait. There's a passage about how this is completely unprecedented—never before has there been this many dimensional gateways, all connected to the same destination, all working at the same time! So: What happens when millions of identical spells are all working simultaneously? Could there be any unintended side-effects? If there are, those side-effects would never have been able to occur before, because this is the first time it's ever happened...
That many holes between the worlds in one place. Could they open an even bigger hole? You aren't entirely sure of the details, but it sounds right to your instincts. So the gateway devices are, collectively, bringing down much more water than they were ever meant to.
Written by Catprog + Cubist on 03 October 2010
Should I fix it?
So now you have to find the factory. Shut it down, and get all the water back to where it should be. Or this world is going to flood quite badly. But how can you fix the problem? For that matter, do you even want to try? You're only visiting this world for a couple of weeks; nothing's going to happen while you're here. As for the inhabitants, well, the first and only time you saw any, they tried to kill you! Once you leave this world, you're probably never going to see it again, and good riddance. And honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that sphinxes just love riddles, how much would you care about this world's impending doom?
Still if the world flooded, all the books and the knowledge inside would be lost. Now, that is a good reason to solve this riddle!
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 04 October 2010
Look for clues
So if there is a lot of water coming from a factory then there would be a river that appeared in the last 10 years. You just need to find it. "Voice", you say, "I want the cartography... mmmrrowr!" For that is when your quadrupedal form returns to you. You shake your head; not even bothering to dig your spellbook out of your saddlebags, you cast the anthro spell from memory. It goes smoothly—too smoothly. In fact, you barely notice any expenditure of energy at all; this is probably because you're still a four-legged sphinxtaur!
"Pfssst!" you snarl, angry at your failure. That'll teach you to try a spell from memory when you don't really know it that well! Right: You retrieve Alterations Animalian from your bags, review the anthropomorphizing spell, and finally re-cast it. This time, it doesn't go quite as smoothly; the spell burns your energy like a blowtorch.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 05 October 2010
Mishaps
You smile as your behind is sucked up but frown when you look at your hands. They are not quite hands; they only have 3 fingers and a thumb, each of them shorter , wider and clumsier than your real fingers! If you didn't know better, you would swear you had forepaws now. You stand up (funny, you don't remember falling down)... and avoid collapsing to the floor only by grabbing onto a convenient shelf. Yes, that dratted spell consumed a lot of your energy! You're going to need food... and when last you saw the carcass of that multi-legged deer freak, it still had plenty of meat on its bones.
You pause to let your head clear. Yes, going for that carcass is best, it's already dead so you won't have to tire yourself out any further by chasing down live prey. You're certainly not going to be flying! You think you can walk; you push off from the shelf and step carefully towards the exit. To no availe .you find yourself falling over again. Very well: If you can't walk on two legs, try going on all fours! Fortunately, this works. You don't crawl particularly fast, but at least you are moving, and your head doesn't spin nearly as bad when it's down here closer to the ground... At least these paw-hands are good for something. You don't think you'd want to crawl on your real hands!
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 06 October 2010
More Consequences
You are vaguely aware that you're not heading for the tower, or even a well-lit tree. However, there is an enticing scent up ahead, a scent which draws you forward; you don't even want to go anywhere else. Somewhere in the back of your mind, part of you questions what you're doing, but it's very easy to ignore that part of you. Whatever rational aspects of your mind managed to avoid succumbing to the 'meat-drunkenness', that wonderful, glorious scent smothers them all! Time passes without your being particularly aware of it; eventually (a minute later? an hour? who can say?) you find the source of that aroma. It's a cat, and (your nose leaves you in no doubt whatsoever) it's very, very male. And it's looking for a mate.
If you were in your right mind, you might recognize it as a feline in the cougar family. As it stands, you don't recognize much of anything but pure animal pleasure... because thanks to your miscast spells, you, too, are in heat. And both you and the male do what comes naturally in such situations.
Time loses all meaning...
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 07 October 2010
More Consequences Again
When you come to your senses, you're quite shocked to see the sun quite low on the horizen. You must have been out of it for most of the day! What in Bast's name happened to you!? You're also in your centauric form again—not a surprise, given how much time has passed. There is a cougar sleeping near you and it seems to have a lot of your scent on it. For that matter, you have a lot of its scent on you...
You didn't do what you think you did... did you? Thinking back on it, yes, you most certainly did have sex with an animal! And what's worse... you don't feel especially bad about it. Rather, you feel... mild distaste; not really an emotional reaction, but more the memory of an emotional reaction. You're far more concerned about the fact that your sky-blue hunting suit is hanging in rags off of your backs! There's probably a spell to mend torn clothes—but since you don't know that spell, you use your claws to trim off the shredded parts of the suit. WHat's left a sort of jacket with a ragged lower hem, but it covers your furless upper body, so you're satisfied.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 08 October 2010
Answers.
You've gone through some massive changes, from the costume to the blue deer to the anthropomorphizing spell... Could all of that magic have somehow damaged your mind? This is a worrisome thought; if your mind gets warped too much, you might not be able to work on solving this world's flooding problem, let alone move on to the next world when your next costume shows up! You rise up and stretch in silence, then quietly pad on back to the tower's library.
There are a few relatively slim tomes specifically devoted to harmful side-effects of magic; there are also occasional passages scattered randomly through every book that deals with magic. You page rapidly through a few dozen books on magic, scanning for specific terms related to magical side-effects. As you scan the books, you get the idea that the wizard who built this tower was heavily into experiments on animal subjects. Reducing minds to an animal state didn't seem to be on his agenda, but various notes suggest that that sort of thing could easily happen to anybody who was foolish enough to mis-cast his spells! And you did mis-cast the anthropomorphizing spell, didn't you?
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 09 October 2010
recasting.
The answer is obvious: Don't screw up when casting any spells created by this wizard.
You also, in a different tome, find a spell to identify different flavours of magic so you can tell who cast spells or if there are from the same phenomenon.
And now that that diversion is over and done, you return to your interrupted task. You were a bit leery of casting that anthropomorphizing spell... but considering how big your centauric form is, and how closely spaced the shelves are, it's a practical necessity. And this time, reading from the spellbook itself, the spell goes off without a hitch; practice is making perfect, it seems.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 10 October 2010
Find it and prepare
So now to look for the maps. The Voice's directions are clear, and it's not long until you've gathered a number of maps and atlases, some of them more than a hundred years old, others as young as four years. Now all you need to do is look for a very large river which didn't exist until just a few years ago; anything which is on the youngest maps but not found on older ones.
There it is: You see a large river on the later maps. And is 3, no 4, days flying time away. A good, long distance; however, you're pretty sure you can catch your own meals along the way, so you won't need to carry any supplies. What else might you need... there are books in your temple/home which could be useful, but that's a 100-mile detour; you decide to just grab books here at the tower, and be done with it. You can read them while you're in the air; there are few enough flying creatures your size that it would take a preposterous stroke of bad luck for you to collide with any of them in mid-air. So you collect tomes on the lands you'll be passing through, and on the problem you're trying to solve, and some introductory texts on magic... you reluctantly stop gathering books before the load is great enough to reduce your airspeed. You do find a compass while prowling the shelves, a magical compass which points directly towards any location you can specify. That should be useful; you keep it.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 11 October 2010
Leaving
The sun is already below the horizon when you're finished. Even if you weren't tired, you wouldn't want to fly at night, so this is an excellent time to sleep.
You sleep soundly and when you wake up you have gone back to your tauric form. You don't bother with the anthropomorphizing spell; you're going to be flying and hunting out in the open, after all. If you see any natives you want to talk to, it will be time enough to cast that spell; and if not, there's no point in it. You set your compass for the source of the river you're now investigating. Then you pad outside; sprint in the direction of that river; spread your wings... and fly!
You quickly climb to an altitude of a thousand feet; that should be high enough that there's nothing else to collide with. And after consulting your compass, you extract an atlas from your saddlebags and begin to read.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 12 October 2010
In the Air
You read about your path. It seems like their is quite a few interesting features on the way there. such as the waterfall whose catch basin extends deep into the ground, all the way to where it connects directly with the ocean and the nose mountain
Your tummy rumbles and you see a flock of birds. "what luck' you think "I won't need to land". This turns out to be premature when the amount of effect for a single bird is too much for the amount you get. So it is back down to the ground to hunt.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 13 October 2010
A Village
You look down and see a large expanse of bare sand... ah, there's a large patch of green!. Gliding closer in, you see lush fields and humans planting. You also see a city, or perhaps it's a large village, with many buildings that seem a lot newer then the others. This is a good opportunity to see if everybody on this planet wants to kill sphinxes on sight; you start your descent, drifting down in a slow, wide, spiral, so that everyone who lives in this place will be able to see you clearly. If they're hostile, they'll fire crossbows or something, and you can fly safely away, right?
The humans notice you and one runs off but the others keep looking at you. Interesting, but not conclusive; will that one person come back with friends? And if so, will the friends be armed? You bid your time, circling overhead.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 14 October 2010
In the Village
You keep circling and soon he come back and is carring what looks like an food offering along with other people carying food as well. Well, now: Either they're sneaky enough to try to make you lower your guard, or they're genuinely friendly. Checking on your last circuit over the village, you don't see anybody aiming missile weapons at you; that's what makes up your mind
As you land you hear 'Oh great sphinx, we beseech you to grant us the benefit of your wisdom!' A puzzle to solve? You're already interested! And they're properly respectful, too. The idiots who kept making messes of the computers you were in charge of never called you 'great one'—but they damn well should have!
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 15 October 2010
Eat the food
All the food you saw being carried out is then placed at your feet. and it is smoked to last for a while too. No need to hunt… but you might anyway, just to keep in practice. However, for now, you'll gladly accept this tribute as your just due.
After picking up a particularly nice-smelling haunch of meat, you nod and graciously ask, "What seems to be the problem?" Just from looking at these people, you can see one possibility; this village seems to be afflicted with an epidemic of minor deformities, webbed fingers being perhaps most prominent among them. Still, it won't hurt to let them state the problem in their own words.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 16 October 2010
Listen to the people
Someone who's dressed more formally than the rest speaks: "It began about 7 years ago, as near as we can tell. Some of our people found themselves growing webbed fingers and toes." Here he raises his own hand; its webbing is nearly complete, reaching from the palm to midway into each finger's third segment. YAs he prattles on, you consume your meat; it tastes like buffalo with a strong garlic sauce. Not bad at all. "As time went on, other… alterations… have made themselves known; patches of scaly skin, unblinking eyes which nevertheless do not dry out, peculiar growths on our necks, and clumsy tail-like growths on our backsides. During the first several years, none of these these marks, shall we say, were anything more than trivial curiosities; they did not interfere with anyone's ability to go about their business. However, as the years passed, these marks became ever more common, affecting ever more of us. As well, the marks became stronger—scales covered more of the skin, or the tail grew longer and thicker, and so on—and some of us who were previously marked have even acquired second and third marks!"
Given the description of what's going on, you naturally suspect that these 'marks' are the external symptoms of a slow, ongoing transformation which will eventually convert its victims entirely into fish. Can these people have failed to make that deduction? Or is it fear which keeps them from speaking of it?
"Of course, great one, you cannot have failed to percieve that we are in the middle of a large, harsh desert. Know that it was not always thus; the drought of ten years past has only intensified, and the land has become hotter and drier, until it reached the state you see here today. At one time there were a number of other villages in the vicinity, but they have all been abandoned, and their former inhabitants moved here. We seem to have the only source of water for tens of miles around, and as the surrounding lands sink deeper into the grip of arid sand, our wells only become more productive! Surely we are blessed! And yet, the marks do endure, and grow, upon our very bodies. Even those who came here when their own villages faded and dried up carry these marks!"
Having finished your first helping, you pick up another chunk of meat—this one the size of your human ribcage—and get to work on it. "And now-" bite "-the marks are strong enough-" munch munch, swallow, munch "-that some of your people-" bite munch munch "-have been crippled-" swallow munch munch "-by their marks."
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 17 October 2010
Look into It
The speaker nods. "Truly you are wise," he says, "as, indeed, are all of sphinxkind. We cannot divine the cause of these marks, and we cannot tell how many of us will eventually be crippled by theirs. Thus, we throw ourselves upon your mercy, great one, in hopes that you will find our poor troubles to be a puzzle worthy of your abilities."
The speaker waits for you with no evidence of impatience, as you swallow a particularly delectable chunk of meat, then thoroughly lick your face and hands and arms clean, before you reply: "I will look into this matter. I shall begin by speaking to those of your people who are marked, starting with those whose marks are the strongest."
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 18 October 2010
Fish Person
The speaker's face lights up when you agree to help; he frowns when you state your plan. "My apologies, great one, but… the most strongly marked among us… are unable to move freely. I am not even sure we can-"
You interrupt, stifling his words: "Do not concern yourself. If they cannot come to me, I will come to them." As you spoke, you retrieved Alterations Animalian from your saddlebags. And after a comprehensive review of the anthropomorphizing spell… you cast it.
The magic washes over you in a pleasant tide, reshaping your body into a bipedal form. When it runs its course, you find that you stand about two heads taller than the average person hereabouts. As it has done before, the spell burned a goodly amount of your energy, leaving you hungry and a bit tired; pausing only long enough to put the spellbook safely back into your pack, you grab and eat another chunk of meat.
You look over the food. It would be such a bother to carry it too the houses and you are hungry so you just can't leave it here. The solution is obvious: You gesture at some nearby humans who look decently strong, and say, "You will carry my lunch for me." Then, to the human in charge: "Guide me to the ones I wish to examine."
The human bows, saying "Of course, great one." He takes you inside a hut and motions for you to go inside. "Do you think you won't catch it from close contact?"
"Not if your description of the effects was accurate," you reply. Since these people have been affected over a period of years, you deem it highly unlikely that you'll be affected by a mere few minutes or hours of exposure. You step in... swallow to clear your mouth of the saliva which just appeared in it the instant you caught scent of the thick aroma of fish... and scan the hut's interior. The source of the fishy odor turns out to be a person whose entire body is covered with shining scales, whose legs are mostly fused together into a makeshift fish-tail; you gesture for a foodbearer to come in, and snatch a smoked leg off of him before he's cleared the door. It would be bad form to drool over a human, after all.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 19 October 2010
More Details
You look at the human. Yep he or even she you can't tell is very much nearly a fish. The question is, is the mind affected as well or just the body… well, an easy question first: "Do you know what I am?"
The… semi-human creature… tilts its head to aim one lidless eye at you. While waiting for the creature to speak, you start munching on your smoked leg. You only manage to chew and swallow one good bite before it replies: "No, I have not seen anything like you before"
Interesting. "I am an anthropomorphized sphinx," you explain. "And I am investigating the marks which have appeared on you, and many others. Tell me of your condition, starting at its very inception."
"it started with a patch of scales on my hand and contiuned up and then across to the other hand. It also spread down and up at the same time."
"And when did the first-" munch, munch "-patch of scales appear?"
"a long time ago. probably 6 or 7 years maybe"
"Describe anything-" swallow, bite, munch munch "-you recall as having changed-" munch "-or first appeared, in or around your home-" munch, munch "-7 or 8 years ago."
"That was when the wells started flowing, and there has been less rain. which is quite good for our crops..."
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 20 October 2010
More People
You continue eating as the creature speaks, asking questions when appropriate; the whole conversation only takes a quarter-hour or so. When you're finished, you and your food-bearer exit the hut, and the village's speaker guides you to the next mark-victim. This one has four tentacles sprouting from her sides, and her arms and legs hang bonelessly down. A half-hour of chatting and chewing later, you aren't properly hungry any more, but it would be wise to 'top off' your 'fuel tank' anyway, so you do not dismiss your food-bearers. Oh, and you also learn that her condition, like the half-fish's, started a few weeks after the wells began to flow.
The next one is quite different. He has fur, for one thing; great swatches of sleek, oiled fur. And his arms and legs are of drastically different lengths, so that it's difficult for him to move around very quickly. In the twenty minutes or so it takes you to extract his story in between bites of delicious meat, you discover that this man had been a miner, and his first patch of fur sprouted last year, while he was digging a shaft through a very damp vein of ore. His condition progressed more rapidly than those of the first two people you interrogated, with a final 'growth spurt' last month which left him in his current state just after a cave-in that trapped him in an underground river for four full days before he was rescued.
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 21 October 2010
More People Again
<br/>"So everyone else can get to me right?" you ask and when you get the confirmation "Good. I'll be at the rest of the food and they can come to me." Which is exactly what happens; you lounge on the ground, scarfing down meat as and when you feel like it, and oh yes, interviewing deformed humans. <br/> <br/>You don't get any more relevant details from the lesser affected people, however.Just more data points to confirm what you already suspected: There's something in the water these people are pumping up from their wells, and whatever it is, it's changing them into different creatures, ones that are well-adapted to aquatic existence. Could it be a natural phenomenon—okay, as natural as magic ever gets? While that's obviously possible, it also seems unlikely. On the other hand, who would go to the trouble of infecting a major aquifer with this sort of spell? What's their goal? Why are they bothering? Perhaps it could be a spell gone wrong, a mistake—but if so, what kind of magic would produce these kinds of results when it was miscast? At least you have a spell to tell you the flavour of the spell, so if you find something similar you will know if it is the same as this or from a different source. <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 21 October 2010
Sleep in the village
<br/>By the end of the day, you're quite thoroughly stuffed -- with meat and with information both. Just as well that the sun set when it did; it was getting harder and harder for you to pay attention to the deformed humans, especially once you realised that the humans had run out of interesting new data to offer. <br/> <br/>You follow the villagers and are quite annoyed when they offer you a stable—a stable, for the love of Bast!—to sleep in. Stupid humans, why can't they have a proper bed for you? You almost re-cast the anthropomorphising spell so you can sleep under a proper roof—until you remember that the spell's duration is much too short. You'd change back to centauric form before the night was a third over; not a good thing to do in a human-style bed! <br/> <br/>You look over the horses and glare at the human who guided you here. "I hope you don't expect me to share with the animals," <br/> <br/>The human looks mortified. "O-of course not, great one! Allow me to rectify our error." And with that, the human leads the lesser creatures off to Bast knows where; you certainly don't care, other than that they're not going to be sleeping in the same building as you. The meat-drunkenness is strong in you, so it's easy for you to just lie down and lose consciousness... <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 22 October 2010
In the morning
<br/>In the morning, you rise with the Sun. You have vague memories of your dreams... something about flying, a white slash of claws... nothing you can clearly remember, just an unfocused feeling of contentment. You yawn mightily, and stretch every last one of the kinks out of your back. Yum! <br/> <br/>Well you can't solve their problem but you can tell them why and you can cast that spell if you can find it again in another place. <br/> <br/>The village's speaker -- no, wait, it's the mayor, isn't it? -- anyway, he meets you looking hopefull that you could solve the problem. "I have identified the root cause of the marks you are concerned with," you state. The speaker begins to say thank-you-great-one, but you talk over him: "That cause is the water you pump up from deep underground." <br/> <br/>"And what do we do about it?"
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 22 October 2010
"I would suggest you exploit it"
<br/>You give the human a skewed look. "I would suggest you exploit it. Your people are clearly being adapted to live in and around water, so I recommend that you hire them out for aquatic tasks. The money they shall thereby earn will go a long way towards making their condition acceptable to normal humans." <br/> <br/>"But there is not any open water within a month travel" <br/> <br/>"What of it? My first interview was clearly on their way to becoming a fish; my third, an otter. They will need increasing amounts of wetness, the fish in particular, in order to maintain their health." <br/> <br/>"How do we get there? And can't you stop it?" <br/> <br/>"While I have identified the particular magic which is responsible for these transmutations, I do not know their source. As to how you get there, I presume it would be the same way as you'd travel any other similar distance. At present, there is nothing I can do to erase the marks on your people; all I can do is advise you how best to accommodate this uncomfortable fact. Your people are becoming aquatic creatures—that is a fact. How you choose to respond to that fact is your own business; all I can do is advise you on the wisest course of action." <br/> <br/>"I though sphinxes were suppose to be all knowing" <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 23 October 2010
"We are, collectively,"
<br/>"We are, collectively," you say, and the words feel so very right. "I will investigate this peculiar magic further. Until such time as I determine the answers you seek, I would recommend that you follow my advice, and exploit the alterations in your people. Speak of it not as a crippling ailment; rather, refer to it as an opportunity for only the elite among you. Get your people to regard these marks as positive advantages—say that it is the best or most blessed among you who become fully water-adapted. Your only alternative is for people to regard your village as a monstrosity-ridden hellhole, and what's to become of your prosperity then?" <br/> <br/>"Well... thank you for looking into it." <br/> <br/>"Of course," you reply. It annoys you that he has stopped calling you 'great one'... but you have more important matters to deal with than some foolish human's disrespect. "And now I must go." And with those words, you trot away from this village, picking up speed until you're aloft and once again flying towards your destination. <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 23 October 2010
Human Hang Gliders
<br/>You see a mountain up ahead—its peak is very high, certainly much greater than the altitude you're flying at—and things flying around it. When you get close enough you see... humans in hang gliders? How is this possible? Back home, hang gliders didn't—couldn't—exist until just a few decades ago; how could the people of this primitive world have managed to come up with the necessary ideas and technology? Then you chide yourself for overlooking the obvious: You know of hang gliders, and you surely aren't the first person from offworld. <br/> <br/>You circle around above them and are quite surprised by a line of people bringing up stones and putting them in a pit at the top of the launching ramp. And they seem to be filling bags with the stones and going flying with them... Your first guess is that they may be gathering rocks for the gliders to drop on enemies? <br/> <br/> <br/>Suddenly a horn is blown and they all take off in formation. You follow them and see them start to drop rocks on an approaching group of people who scatter. This is still going on an hour or so later, when you decide you've wasted enough time here, and resume your interrupted journey. You are curious to know what's going on, of course, but... well, they're only humans. So it hardly makes any real difference; you quickly leave them behind, and the whole encounter leaves little impression in your memory. <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 24 October 2010
To the Factory
<br/>By now you are quite hungry and catch a meal and are back flying without anything major happening. You then spend the next 2 days travelling to the factory, getting more of your reading out of the way... Or where it was. When you arrive there is a large lake there. Of course: You were looking for a sort of assembly line which turned out magical artefacts that produce endless amounts of water... and the wizards have all gone away, it seems, so there would be nobody to keep an eye on the mechanisms, nobody to intervene if something went wrong. So if something had gone wrong... well, you'd be lucky if you only ended up with a lake, wouldn't you? Still, you have the water breathing spell to go under and see if you can stop the factory. <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 24 October 2010
Under the lake
<br/>Reviewing the spell in the book, you confirm that it forms a bubble of air around you for a couple of hours. It does not replenish the oxygen you breathe, however, so you'll need to return to the surface... every twenty minutes or so, it would seem... so that you don't suffocate rather than drown. <br/> <br/>You cast the spell and stick a paw in the water to see what appears to be a force field around it keeping the water away. Nodding, you take the plunge (literally), and swim through the water you aren't actually touching. Which is rather a neat trick, come to think of it. Why can't the spell be adapted to let you swim through the air? It's an interesting thought—which you put aside to concentrate on the task at hand: Namely, locating that magical assembly line. It can't have been under water for as long as ten years; how hard could it be to find the thing? <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 25 October 2010
Very Hard
<br/>The answer to that question comes to you fourteen minutes later: Plenty hard. Swimming around and scanning everything you can, you have not managed to spy anything which looks like it might have been a building. Well... you had speculated that there might be some unusual side-effects from millions and millions of water-gateways all running at the same time... maybe one of those side-effects was making water plants grow much faster than normal? <br/> <br/>You keep searching below the surface. After the third time coming up for air, you notice an odd-looking part of the lake bed; a sort of steep-sided hill whose overall shape is fairly close to rectangular. Could it be..? Maybe, maybe not. You replenish your air supply, dog-paddle (or should that be 'lion-paddle'?) to directly above that rectangle-ish feature, and dive straight down! <br/> <br/>At this point, the lake bed is four minutes down from the surface. And when you get there, you find that the hill, if it is one, is certainly large enough that it could be what you're looking for. So the question is—is it? <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 25 October 2010
Scrub the plants
<br/>You start scrubbing the plants and you soon hit a flat stone surface. Could it be part of the factory's roof? Perhaps; perhaps not. Sometimes rocks just end up flat naturally. But if it is the factory... it should contain Bast knows how many million gateway-gadgets, spewing out Bast knows how many millions of gallons of water per minute, all together. So there should be currents (one big current, or a lot of smaller flows? you're not sure) of water flowing out of it. The obvious next step: Swim around the hill, looking for strong currents down here. <br/> <br/>You find a current, which seems like it could come from a hole in the lake bed. But if there is a hole, it's overgrown with plant life. So you clear the plants away, revealing what turns out to be a rather large hole—and suddunly a lot of hard objects spring out from that hole and donk you on the noggen! <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 26 October 2010
When your head clears
<br/>When your head clears, you find that you've lost track of the time. Just how many minutes has it been since the last time you replenished your air? And then your head clears the rest of the way: You aren't under water. <br/> <br/>Looking around, you discover that you're is what seems to be a storeroom -- lots of half-empty shelves. And something is moving. Looking closer you see what could of been at one stage human but now is a mixture of various aquatic animals and human. The creature has no neck; it's hard to tell where its head ends and its torso begins. It has a limb on its left side that's thicker and more substantial than a fish's fin, but doesn't look sturdy enough to be anything else; on its right side, it has an arm with deeply webbed fingers. <br/> <br/>It starts speaking "Are you here to close the portal?" <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 26 October 2010
"Which portal are you talking about?"
<br/>'The' portal? As far as you know, there are millions of them, each one pouring out water! "I... don't know," you say. "Which portal are you talking about?" <br/> <br/>"The one that is putting out lots of water and turned me into this!" <br/> <br/>"I don't think it's just one portal," you reply. Seeing the creature, you have a very good idea of why that village's well-water is magically contaminated. "I think that... what happened to you... is a consequence of millions of portals, all feeding off of the same dimension at the same time." The creature does not reply... so you decide to use your analysis spell, to confirm your suspicions about the water. <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 27 October 2010
"Why did you think it was just one portal?"
<br/>And yep it is the same signature as the village—although much, MUCH stronger. "I was right," you murmur. The creature hasn't moved; it's still there, just staring at you with its rigid, glassy eyes. "Why did you think it was just one portal?" you ask it. <br/> <br/>"I saw it with my own eyes" <br/> <br/>"Can you show it to me now?" <br/> <br/>"Do you need to recast your breathing spell?" <br/> <br/>"Will I need to?" you ask. <br/> <br/>"Yes," it replies. "The portal is under water." <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 27 October 2010
Re-cast the spell
<br/>Nodding, you re-cast your spell. The creature twitches, but does not do anything else. "Now, show me where it is." <br/> <br/>It shuffles along on its misshapen leg and tail and opens a door and you see a flooded room. It then dives into the water. You do likewise... and immediately notice that something is different about the water-breathing spell, this time: Where is your air-bubble? And immediately after that, another revelation: You don't need the bubble—you're breathing the water just fine without it! <br/> <br/>The creature swims around you (it's much more dexterous and coordinated in the water than in air), gestures with its half-good arm for you to follow, and darts away. You swim after it as quickly as you can; it outdistances you without any trouble. However, it soon returns to you, and it stays very close, directing you as you cruise through the water. Fortunately, you actually swim a bit faster as you continue. Your companion becomes agitated when it notices this; could there be some sort of hazard in this lake which affects fast-moving objects? You slow down—but no, your companion is even more agitated. Make up your mind, you think at it. But of course it does not hear your thoughts, so you speed up again. <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 28 October 2010
At the portal
<br/>Before long, you see what looks like an underwater cyclone -- a dark, swirling funnel. As you get nearer, you can see more and more details... and you also notice that you're in a current that flows towards the funnel. Closer and closer you go; the nearer you are, the stronger the current. You stop at what you believe to be a safe distance, and examine it carefully: The funnel is dark because it's full of displaced mud and rocks and Bast only knows what else. As well, there's some sort of light-show at the very bottom of the funnel, where its 'stem' meets the lake bed. <br/> <br/>You also look on the other side and see a stream of bottles being sucked into the funnel. There's something odd about them... right. From the way they disturb the mud as they move along the lakebed, each bottle is emitting a stream of water. These, then, must be the water-gateways that are the root cause of the problems! But it looks like their is a lot more then just the gateways wrong here. You look closer and as each bottle reaches the funnel it is sucked down and into the portal with a flash of light. Well, now you know where the light show comes from. <br/> <br/>You swim completely around the funnel, getting a good look at it from all directions—and also casting your Detect/Analyze Magic spell as you go. Spellcasting feels somewhat different underwater; but after the first botched attempt, the rest worked fine, just needing a bit more care in the casting. You are not surprised at all to find that the readings you get match up perfectly with the reading you took of the transforming village's water supply. <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 28 October 2010
Swimming in the same water?
<br/>A thought then occurs to you: You're swimming in the same water that caued the transformations. In fact, you've been completely immersed in the stuff for—your water-breathing spell! Fearing the worst, you probe gently at your neck... and yes, you have gills. <br/> <br/>What else has changed? Never mind that—not right now, at least. Best to get out of the water as quickly as possible, to minimise the effects, and then worry about becoming less of a sphinx. You take off like a nuclear-powered torpedo; your one-time rescuer actually has trouble keeping up with you! <br/> <br/>You go back to the room from before and cancel the water-breathing spell. Then you examine yourself in the open air. Well the first thing you notice is you still have the gills. Next, your fur; it's shiny from all the oil in it, also fairly short. The digits on your hindpaws are about six inches long and fully webbed. And your tail is no longer the slim, sleek, and sinuous thing you've come to love; while it's about the same length as before, it's also much thicker, much closer to the tail of a fish. Well... it could be worse, all in all. <br/> <br/>Still you have to go back through the water to get out. And that will change you even more. Unless you can figure out why your water-breathing spell went wrong; it was supposed to put a bubble of air around you so that you never actually touched the evil stuff! <br/> <br/>You then slap yourself. you can just dispell these changes like before. you cast the spell but unfortunatly for you nothing happens. The creature then speaks "yeah, I couldn't dispell either" Perhaps you two should compare notes? <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 29 October 2010
Comparing notes
<br/>The creature is agreeable; unfortunately, its mind has decayed greatly. You aren't sure if the mental damage is from its transformation into a semi-aquatic monstrosity, or from the years and years it's spent underwater, isolated from any and all sentient contact. Either way, you learn nothing from the creature that might assist you in discovering how the water-gateway magic interferes with other spells. <br/> <br/>On a hunch you cast the detect spell again and you see a faint trace of the portal. It seems to be coming in through the wall rather then from anything in the room. Pointing in the direction of the strongest trace, you ask the creature, "What's beyond that wall?" <br/> <br/>"The portal" <br/> <br/>"THE portal? The one at the bottom of the funnel? It's THAT strong, that I can detect it from this distance!?" <br/> <br/>"Yes." <br/> <br/>You ponder this information. Whatever's happening in and around that big portal, it's clearly spewing out lots of magical energies, which can mess up other spells. You decide to cast a series of minor spells, the better to find out what kind of spells are or are not messed up; you don't want to think about the possible consequences if any messed-up spell alters you further, but at the same time you also need to find out more about the big portal and its associated side-effects! <br/> <br/>
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Written by Catprog & Cubist on 29 October 2010
