Number 1 here, it's been nearly six months by this point and we have made some definite progress. After the last update we had dug further into the mountain and found a cave system but it hasn’t been all great, we've had some close calls.
I was working with number 15, a member of the foraging team when we came across a borrow underneath the roots of a large tree.
“Look, a burrow.” “Yea I’ve seen those around but they are nocturnal as far as we can tell.”
“What’s it like?” “Weeeell, think of a sloth but with brown fur, red eyes and a very rotten smell.”
“Rotten?” “Yea, we think it brings its prey into its nest and then over time lets it… ferment a little. 12 and 16 think that having it ferment might make it easier to break down? I don’t know.”
Number 12 is the current head of the foraging and fauna/flora research up here with 15 and 16, so far they have been slowly cataloguing the different plants and animals that might be edible to supplement the food replicator.
As we stand around talking 15 and I use some long sticks to bump off some of the lower hanging fruits, they have the shape of a mango but taste more like a pineapple/banana hybrid?
As these fruits land on the ground with a thump, thump, thump I hear a slight scratching. Thump, thump, thump the fruit lands. 15 jumps up to grab one before it lands on a rock and then from the burrow we hear a scream.
Sloth thing has gotten angry and scurries out of the burrow, it moves quick out of its burrow and runs full speed toward us. 15 did not mention its massive teeth!
As it runs towards 15 it jumps and scratches him up, tearing his clothes up but otherwise no damage other than the HP going down. As I start to laugh a little 15 screams ”Help! HP is going down fast!”
Stopping I punch forward and a blast of air pushes against the sloth, with no purchase in flesh it flies away before landing hard against a tree trunk a few metres away, the air also blowing off quite a few other fruits as well.
It is only then that the both of us collectively notice two things. #1. There are more burrows surrounding us. #2. We just woke them up.
The Murder Sloths as they will now be called from this day onwards start galloping out of their burrows in droves, ten or twelve adults run out and start running towards us. As we run away toward the lake I yell to 15.
“How much HP did that take?” “Almost all of it! I am about 100 HP away from getting my ass handed to me!”
Each of us has about 523 HP points thanks to ol Original so for that thing to eat through nearly 400 points in about four seconds is mad! What are those claws made of!
We run for almost 30 minutes before the lake comes into sight, as we run into the water we use Elemental Avatar to bring the water up to our legs, spinning the water around we create a waterspout each and bring ourselves up to 5 metres in height.
The Murder Sloths have stopped and are screeching at us from the waters edge, I don’t think they can swim?
“Ok” I reply out of breath, “let's move out to one of the far shores. We might lose them.”
Lose them we did not, they must have one hell of a sense of smell as they followed us along the waters edge the entire day, and then when we ran out of MP and we’re treading water in the middle of the lake we could still hear them.
“Ahh!” yells 15. “What is it!”, “I think something brushed against me!”, “Oh come on what kind of cliche is this!”
Slowly we swim from the middle of the lake and head to the opposite shore, the entire time dreading that some large monster might eat us. Soon we arrive at the opposite shore, our HP having slowly withered away trying to prevent hypothermia. Looks like HP also slightly protects against environmental damages.
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It takes us all night beneath a cloudy sky to reach the far shore, opposite to where we left the Murder Sloths. Out of breath, tired, wet, cold, thirsty of all things and did I mention tired?
As we rest along the rocky gravel of a beach we hear a dreadful sound…They are coming.
After four days of running, tunnelling, and listening to the pleading of 15 begging not to kill off the indigenous population of MURDER SLOTHS we finally make it back to base. Looks like they gave up the night before and we have slowly walked back to base.
Once we are back we are greeted by the other clones. “Uh, are you guys ok?” Asks number 5 “You’ve been away for ages, and you look like hell. What happened?”
“Murder Sloths” we reply. “Bath and food please” “Yea, mostly food please.” I and 15 ask. We spent a long, long time sleeping. That was close.
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Number 7 here, as you may remember in our last report we had started a main hall project that would not look out of place in the grand hall of Erebor, think The Hobbit and the massive underground palace and that’s what we were going for.
We have refined our method of extracting rock by pulling thin pillars of stone horizontally out of the rock face and then working like a conveyor moving the whole pillar out in one go. About ten metres at a time.
A team working behind us then fortifies the stone around us to ensure that it doesn't cave in. We’ve so far cleared about 10% of the total complex we want to create but it's slow going.
As I move a pillar of stone high above my head it suddenly ends, did we reach a cave system?
I raise a pillar of stone under my feat upward and look into the hole, yeap looks like a pit of darkness. I am about to generate some fire to see before I start to feel dizzy. Poisonous air!
I fall down backwards and get caught by number 8 behind me while number 9 seals it back up again. I try to pull up my Interface. I’m down from 523 HP to 398 and ticking down steadily.
Dragging me back into the open air I exhale again and again trying to get the poison air out of my system. It’s not doing too much good but I am slowly getting better, the HP starts to tick down less and less.
Over the rest of the day I continue to exhale while the rest of the mining team think of what to do. We have to be careful as for all we know this is a pocket of natural gas and we might explode.
Once I am back on my feet we created a system of air bending using Elemental Avatar from the possible cave into a box of stone we created with a hole in the top. As 8 pulls the rock away from the face we air bend the poison air into the stone box, slowly filling it before plugging it with a stick and mud which we solidify by turning the water to ice.
We take it outside and jerry rig a flame outside of the corked hole, as the stick is removed the air escapes and the fire goes out. No explosion of natural gas, no fire just the flame going out.
We had been on a caving expedition once when we were in Scouts, well I say we. I mean the Original Michael, and that’s Boy Scouts for you Americans.
We had learnt that stale air is a thing where there is just not enough oxygen in these places as they have been blocked off from the outside world or just so far underground that the air becomes stale.
I don’t know how it fix it but maybe we can pump it out of the cave in a series of stone pipes, leading somewhere away from the Oasis? Yet another thing we need to worry about resource wise, we have too much gravel and too much toxic air. I just hope we don’t run into more of those pockets of air, I went down to 60 HP before it started ticking back up again.
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Number 11 here, I’ve become head of the cooking team along with 13 and 14. We’ve found some things out about the food replicator we didn’t expect to see. For one it can generate food from memory.
Now that was a surprise for the fellas, one day it's some Upni Steak with local veggies from the foraging team and next thing you know you’re getting mum’s home-cooked lasagna.
We did find that it takes up a fair bit more MP to generate these things so we use it sparingly but I have seen number 14 create a few bottles of booze, I’m keeping quiet about it as I think it's supposed to be a surprise.
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Number 7 here again along with 8, 9 and 10. After the whole fiasco with the Murder Sloths and the toxic air, number 1 decided to see what else we can get in trouble with. So he’s sent us to have a look at the abandoned village area on the opposite side of this massive oval Oasis. It's a two day trek and we are about to head out, I just hope we don’t end up finding another animal who wants to eat us.
End of Report.
^ Number 1’s idea, thinks it looks more professional lol. “End of Report”, makes us sound like we know what we’re doing!