“Alright, we’ve got popcorn, some Fizz-Blast, and your gross cran-grape juice.” Corrin snorts at Rick’s mocking of his favorite drink, grabbing a handful of buttery popcorn to snack on. “Oh you say that, but your fizzy drink feels like drinking acid.” “Bah! You just have a wimpy throat.” Rick waves off his comeback, taking a gulp of his awful bubbling tar-totally not Corrin being biased, not at all-while gesturing for him to continue.
Sighing dramatically, Corrin thinks about what to name the Warg/Goblin duo. After a quick search for a good name variation, he decides to have the goblin woman named Ulkmerge, and the warg named Fen. “There we go. Since we’ve got movie-watching snacks and drinks, might as well make this like one. Eva, could you go through the rest of the monsters on the list, just one after another?” “Right away, sir.”
[Begin Transmission]
When he woke up, it was to the disorienting feeling of having more limbs than he thought he would have. He isn’t sure why he thought he should have 2 arms rather than 4, but that feeling went away pretty quickly as he got used to moving them all at the same time. He noticed that he wasn’t alone in this, several other goblins nearby had the same four-armed mutation, but there were other goblins nearby that had two arms instead.
It started with an honest mistake, one of his fellow four-arms accidentally smacked one of the two-arms in the back of the head while she was trying to get used to moving them. Just that one mistake and suddenly everyone was at each other's throats, four-arms verses two-arms. Seeing that things were going to come to blows if he didn’t stop things, he harnessed the tense aura surrounding the group and roared.
There was something there in that roar, though he wasn’t sure what exactly that was. An almost visible wave of...not quite force, it’s not like anyone got pushed away by the power of his voice, but it got people’s attention enough that he decided he liked it and roared again.
With a few chest-thumps and another roar or two, everyone else was sufficiently quiet for him to feel like he could speak without being challenged. “We shouldn’t be fighting, it’ll be hard enough surviving without having injured to take care of! Since us four-arms obviously aren’t welcome, we’ll just leave. Come on!” He starts walking away from the group, whether his fellow four-arms come with him or not is up to them.
They did. All of them, in fact, and though the wolves that had spawned near them hesitated, some of them followed too. Over the next days he set himself up as the leader of their smaller group, though he only used his odd shout on their prey and attacking predators. He didn’t really like using it on his fellows, leading by fear and submission wouldn’t really get him any good graces after all. He found that he could do more with his hands at the same time compared to his brethren, oddly enough, though they all slowly caught up to him over time.
[Next Transmission]
Waking up to the sounds of the forest around him, he stretched and yawned lazily, slowly opening his eyes in a daze before realizing that he and the group of goblins and wolves around him were in the middle of a dense jungle, which probably is something that needs to be addressed. Some other goblin seemed to be taking charge, getting the others to group up so that they could figure out what they needed to do and who would be doing what. He personally just climbed a tree and lazed about on a branch above the group meeting.
It was only when the group leader yelled at him that he came back to the ground, practically gliding down the tree before taking a little hop from the lowest branch and hitting the soft dirt like nothing happened. When the leader demanded to know how he managed to do that, he couldn’t really give them an answer. Shouldn’t they all be able to do it?
Anyways, that’s how he got appointed the lead scout of the group. He got the wolf that seemed the most comfortable with the jungle and started looking around the area that he and the rest of the group found themselves in, though his wolf ended up having to motivate(read: snap at his feet to get him to move) so that he didn’t spend his scouting time napping in a tree.
The days passed and he slowly started mapping out the area around them, pointing out rivers and ponds, the animal trails that are the most often used, things like that. Oh, he also found this really cool tree, it came in these spiky pieces of bark, like the tree was a giant pinecone. It made climbing so easy he could do it in his sleep, but he personally liked snapping off a piece of the bark and carving it into a mask.
[Next Transmission]
It formed in a moment, in a flood of others just like it. It slid across the ground, chasing the trails of shadow around it, desperate to find something living before it could dissipate. The long, spindly shadows were ok, but had very little energy to them, at least not the kind of energy it could use. Eventually, it finally found a jumpy-fast shadow, one that was attached to a living thing. In an excited rush, it took to the living thing’s shadow and twisted, ending the living thing in a rush of energy.
The energy was delicious, it nearly doubled its size...but it didn’t feel right. Feel? That’s...something new. It didn’t feel good to do that. It didn’t know why, but it didn’t want to do it again, even with the rush of energy it knew it would get. It slinked along once more, slower now despite its new energy. Eventually it found another jumpy-fast shadow, and it latched onto it, but it didn’t twist this time. The instinct was there, definitely, but it could ignore it now that it was aware it could do otherwise.
Sitting there in its jumpy-fast’s shadow, just soaking in the situation, it started to notice a few things. The first was that, even though it wasn’t getting nearly as much as before, it was gaining energy constantly. It was almost more satisfying than that big burst of energy from before. It was also slowly able to sense more about its host as it stayed with it, as well as the area around them.
It’s host was a rabbit, with a grayish-back mottled coat of fur. It was thin and lithe, and very fast, even compared to others like it. It noticed that it was female, and seemed surprisingly teritorial, chasing off others of its kind in it’s own little area of the forest around them. Something odd that it noticed as well was about how it could move and interact with the area around them.
Before, it was in too much of a rush to really notice while trying to find a host/prey, but with a constant source of energy it could now take in little details like this. As it turns out, depending on the time of day, some things were easier for it. When it was dark and the border of shadows was weak and blurred, it was much easier to move around and sense things through the shadows. When it was light out and the border between shadows was strong, interacting with things through their shadows became much easier while moving was much harder.
Things stayed pretty much the same as light and dark made their cycles, until one time of dark in particular. Its rabbit host was sleeping, as she usually would do at this time, when one of the other animals that lived in the woods came stalking into her territory. It was one of the sneaky-pounce shadows, the ones that howled when they were in groups, and it was obviously hungry for its host.
Despite the time it had spent with its host, it had yet to be able to really communicate with her. It could only flit about its host, trying and trying again to get her to wake up as the predator approached, but to no avail. In a desperate last attempt to do something, it reaches into its hosts shadow, but instead of twisting it pulls.
Suddenly the world outside of shadows feels more there, and for the first time in its existence, it could lift itself off of the surface its inanimate cousins were stuck to. It formed writhing tendrils of darkness, covered in eyes and maws that chittered and clacked and growled, wrapping protectively around its host. The predator...didn’t stay around long. It couldn’t keep this form up long, slowly dissipating back into a simple shadow, but it was satisfied with this outcome. Now it could protect its host when it needed to.
[Next Transmission]
Internal Composition: Stephanite. Electrical Storage Capacity: 80%. Current Time: 00:00:37 after formation. Current Objectives: Gain more electricity, defend against threats, consume material and grow larger.
They eventually rouse from their daze, going over their objectives once more before taking in their surroundings. Within view, there were 37 crystalline anemone trees, 14 other crystal spiderlings, 23 roller-bugs, and 205 indeterminate crystalline creatures under the size of 16 cubic inches. The rock they were attached to was made of some kind of pumice-like stone, an easy form of traction for them, and the sky below them was perfectly stormy. The ozone in the air hinted at ample lightning, which is perfect for them.
They scurried around the area, taking in the geography and where potential resources laid. Eventually they settled on making a nest in the roots of a crystalling anemone tree, spinning threads of a silver alloy in little tripwires across the area, all leading back to their nest. The nest itself was made from silver thread as well, but the bulk of the material was actually taken off of the anemone tree’s branches. They needed to save on material after all.
One other thing they did that they thought was quite smart was to wind its silver threads over the crystal anemone tree’s trunk and branches. That way the tree would be more likely to be struck by lightning, which would feed both it and them through the threads. Whenever lightning struck, it sent a pleasant hum through their body, and soon enough they were at 100% Electrical Capacity pretty consistently, and they never went below 85% again.
For material, they simply had to wait for something to touch one of its outward-trailing silver threads. Once something did, they would feel the disturbance, and they would send a shock of electricity down the wire. Since most creatures that touched the wires were the small crystal creatures, they quickly were overloaded and stunned by the comparatively large amount of energy, and the wire would wind around them like a net to keep them from falling. Then they just had to wind the thread back in and enjoy their meal.
[Next Transmission]
She noticed quite quickly that she was hot. Frankly everything was hot, not just her, but she was especially so. She appeared to be on the lip of a mountain, with a large bowl filled with lava in the middle, and all around the lip were lizards like her, in various shades of red, orange, and yellow. She specifically was a very bright, almost white yellow.
She noticed that where the lizards around her were only as hot as their surroundings, she was actually making her surroundings even more hot. She would have thought that the smaller lizards nearby would have flocked to stick near her thanks to that, but she figured out why soon enough. One of the tiny lizards tried to jump onto her back, and immediately burst into flames.
As it turns out, anything organic that touched her mucusy skin immediately lit on fire, which was somewhat unfortunate but also comforting since there’s little chance of anything trying to kill her. Actually, why does she have mucus? Isn’t she a lizard? No, now that she’s actually paying attention to it, the lizards around her have tough, scaly hides, but while her hide was tough it didn’t have scales.
It was odd, but it didn’t bother her that much. After all, the world around her was much more interesting. There were black versions of her lizard brethren further down the volcano, who seemed more bulky and tough compared to the colored ones around her. In the mouth of the volcano, where the lava was fresh and in the open, there were odd living flames that moved around and seemed to be...caring for the tiny lizards? Fascinating.
Eventually she got more curious and wandered down into the mouth of the volcano. Not too far, but she wanted to get a closer look at the lava and see what her own bodily reactions would be to it. As it turns out, not only is she immune to its intense heat, it’s actually delicious. Yes, she did drink lava. No, she did not do so before she found out she could touch it. Did she dive right into it to find that out?...Maybe.
[Next Transmission]
She woke up hungry and thirsty, and she knew instinctively that only specific things would sate her. Blood and flesh. It did not take her long to gather her people together under her own banner and organize a hunt on their wolf steeds. The woods were black and spindly, filled with ghouls and undead as much as real animals.
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Their hunts were vicious, both for them and for their prey, but they stood strong at the end. They all filled up on the meat of their prey, which was satisfying, but for her the blood was thrilling. She wasn’t sure what it was, but drinking blood gave her new power. Suddenly she could sense more, fight more, do more. The rush only lasted for a few minutes, but she knew exactly what she wanted from now on. They had started using small hollowed out gourds to carry water while they rode their wolves, and she made sure to keep at least one gourd filled with fresh blood when she could, just in case she needed the boost in a fight.
She noticed another odd thing about blood not too much later, her own blood specifically. A wild wolf, not one of the pure black ones her people rode, managed to bite her arm, nearly tore it off in fact. While she escaped and drank her blood gourd-that was another fun thing, drinking blood made her heal faster-the wolf seemed to just...drop. Then it writhed in place, thin glowing veins spreading across its fur, before she felt a connection between them.
Whereas the connections between her and the others in her tribe felt like a pair of hands clasped in friendship, this felt like a chain and collar, with her as the master. She wasn’t sure how long this connection would last, but she would use it with the same efficiency that she did her unique affinity for drinking blood.
[Next Transmission]
Being able to breathe both air and water is a surprisingly useful skill, especially when you wake up nestled in a small coral cave beneath the waves. Thankfully she had just the skill for that, considering she had long slits in between her ribs that opened up when she breathed in water. It was kind of like gulping a lot of water all at once, but into your lungs instead of into your stomach.
She gave the closest thing to a yawn she could, stretched a bit, then slipped out of her little hollow and swam around to take a look at her new home. You would think that with her big, bulky plates that she would be a slow swimmer, but they were made specifically to be as smooth and silky as possible on the surface to let water flow over them quite nicely.
There was, as she had mentioned, a lot of coral around, along with seaweed and tons of little fishes and crustaceans and all sorts of other little creatures. Her little slice of the ocean was up against a cliff from the looks of it, and a lot of little clam-like creatures were glued up against the rock, using the danger of being slammed against the stone thanks to the current to dissuade predators.
Guess they weren’t ready for her, huh? These plates aren’t for nothing, after all. She swam up to the rock face, gripping the jagged rocks with her hands while the waves smacked her against the stone. With her armored exterior it did little to her, and she spent the time leisurely breaking the clams open and eating the morsels inside. Turns out she’s surprisingly good at climbing around even with the currents against her.
Nice and full, she felt a bit of a playful mood come over her, and she started swimming around to see what she could do for fun. She played various pranks on the wildlife around her that, as she thought about it in hindsight, probably shouldn’t have worked as well as it had.
She managed to get two crabs to fight each other just by teasing one into clacking its claw at her tail, and leading it until it accidentally snipped at its fellow crab’s shell. She got a pod of fish to swarm a lobster just by throwing a tiny piece of clam meat on its back. Heck, she even got this big millipede thing to chase off a group of sand sharks by baiting them into trying to bite the giant crustacean.
It was a bit odd how easy it was to manipulate the creatures around her to play along with her pranks, but why should she complain? It’s fun, and she knows not to do any pranks that are all that dangerous. So she spends most of her days simply playing around and eating clams. Then, she finds another otter like her. Well, kind of. She saw them from below, since this other otter didn’t seem to have those rib-slits like she did. Other than that though they looked surprisingly similar, she was maybe a bit larger overall but other than that not much.
It seems like they couldn’t breathe water, but they must have had some powerful lungs because when they dived under to crack at the cliff clams, they were able to go at it for a good few minutes. She observed them from a distance, waiting until they swam back up to the surface and followed them to shore. When she did, she found that there was a whole little lodge of otters, building a communal home in a small cavern just above the shore line.
She had to take a minute to learn how to breath just air and get the water out of her lungs. As it turns out, the slits in her ribs seal up when outside of the water, nearly becoming invisible, so she pretty much had to hack the water already in her lungs out so that she could start breathing again.
And wow breathing air is weird after so many days doing so with water. It was easier, and almost made her feel lightheaded from just how much oxygen she was getting, but at the same time it felt like it didn’t have enough substance to it. She felt jittery and full of energy, and moving through air is much easier than moving through water, so she spends a little bit just romping around, rolling through the tough grass growing along the small ledge leading up to the cavern/lodge, and generally having a good time.
It wasn’t until one of the other otters spot her and walk over, chattering at her worriedly, that she actually pays attention to what’s going on around her again. Rolling back to her feet, she shrugs off their concerns and scampers over to the others. It doesn’t take long for them all to welcome her into their little community. In fact, it’s a little too easy, if it weren’t for the fact that she likes the water as much as the land, and figured they’d benefit from her ability to not drown to get more clams, they probably would have been fine with her just laying around and not doing anything.
[Next Transmission]
The water was cold, black, and heavy. Despite that, it felt like he’d been born for these abyssal waters. Tiny creatures flitted about in the space around him, insignificant in their purpose but interesting to watch nonetheless. Translucent barracuda creatures, something similar to a jellyfish but in the shape of a spiraling cone, various hard-shelled crustaceans like inferior versions of himself, all of those and more. The majority of them glowed in various colors, adapted to the inky darkness around them.
As beautiful as the sight was, he could not really pay much attention to it all. It knew things that it should not know, and in that knowledge it noticed something. Beyond the walls of information about Evolution and magic, there was structure. It was rapidly receding from his mind, but its influence could still be felt. Now that he could recognize that influence, he could feel it everywhere around him, in the water, in the other animals, in his own mind and body.
With this new sense of how the world worked, he stared not into the abyss around him, but instead into the abyss beyond the abyss, the disparate world beyond his world of information and data, made of the same two symbols repeated ad infinitum, stretching out through the world in a way that boggles the mind. He turned to look at a specific stretch of symbols, that for him was structured like a massive version of one of his own eyes, and-
[Final Transmission]
He awoke to twilight on the horizon of his desert kingdom, the sky filled with a collage of purples, pinks, and oranges, the shadows long and crisp on the sandy ground. He yawned as he stood up, gazing around at the group of other wargs around him. He noticed a distinct difference between himself and the others as they began to wake up themselves. While most of the wargs had short, dense fur and a build that wouldn’t be far off from a dingo except for the size difference, his fur was sleek and black, a build of sharp angles and dense, wiry muscles.
He wasn’t sure exactly why, but he knew he was meant to lead. How could he not? Looking over these ragamuffins that he was already thinking of as his packmates, he couldn’t help the protective urges overrunning him. He would make them the most powerful warg pack in the desert they called home, even if it took him his whole life! It didn’t take long for his pack to accept him as leader, he did stand nearly half a meter taller than the next largest warg after all.
Leading them through the chill night air, they spent the night examining their immediate surroundings. Although most of their territory was comprised of sandy plains, to the south there was a cluster of plateaus, reaching up into the sky like sheer cliffs, with only narrow crack-like valleys separating them from each other. To the far north-east, far beyond the reach of their territory for now, there was a huge river, bands of lush green crowding its borders.
They discovered other things in their sandy kingdom than just some odd landmarks though. They found odd glass-like crystal formations, which seemed to be able to condense the moonlight into beams of light, scorching the fur on a few of the more curious of his pack before they scampered away. He shuddered to think of what they could do in the light of the day. Something else that he personally discovered was that he could ‘see’ undead in a way that his packmates couldn’t. It was like an aura of darkness around them that stood out starkly to him, even in the dark of the night, very helpful for avoiding them.
One other thing that they found that was of note were the small packs of large lizards they found. The seemed to be more comfortable with the day, seeing as they were sleeping when his pack came across them. They were whip-fast things too, darting off into the night as soon as one of them noticed he and his pack were there. Soon enough the first light of dawn was fast approaching, and he lead his pack to the plateaus of the south, finding a decent cave in the maze-like cracks for them to spend the sweltering day in. He would continue investigating his new territory, and he would make it theirs, so that everyone would know his pack ruled the sands.
[Transmission Complete]
“Well, that was interesting.” The snacks had been eaten, the drinks were gone, and Rick had understated something once again. Corrin had mostly gone silent as the mini-movie progressed, making a little notebook of things to ask and potential names for each of the creatures as they went on. With all the views done, he went with his most pressing concern first.
“Alright, so I would have just gone from the top down, but I’ve got to ask. What the heck happened with the Eldritch Crustacean? And why did the feed just cut out like that?” Eva brought up an image of the creature in question, who immediately focused on the camera view. “As it turns out, its Subspecies of Eldritch One allowed it to gain insight into the programming of the world. It can see functions that I use as they form and work. My guess is that it’s a way of making them seem all-knowing and all that to the other denizens. Don’t worry about the self-awareness though, apparently it happens more often than you’d think.”
Relaxing a little now that he knew he hadn’t just broken his brand new game, he goes back to his list and starts from the top. “For the four-armed goblin leader, let’s call him Oni. And can you see if you can get him to use his intimidation roars in conjunction with musical instruments once they get to the stage of making them? I had a hilarious idea of death metal bards shouting their enemies into submission.”
“Pfft, yeah that’s a must!” Rick snickers at the idea, leaning over Corrin’s shoulder to look at his notes. He gives Corrin a deadpan stare at the name choice for the next creature on the list. “You want to name the lazy elf-goblin Artemis? Greek nerd much?” The new dungeon master pushes his friend away, holding him off with a hand on his face while pointedly ignoring him. “I’m thinking Artemis for the slim goblin you showed us, because it’s a perfectly good name and anyone who disagrees can shove it.”
Eva simply giggles as she makes her own notes, adding the names to the proper monsters on her own list as Corrin continues. “For the living shadow, let’s name them Oculus, what with all the eyes, and do what you can to make sure they spread. Creepy but loyal shadow demons are cute. For the crystal spider, let’s name them Stephanie for the crystal they’re made of, same spreading order. Cinder for the salamander, and maybe push her to explore the inner parts of the volcano more. I think it could be interesting to see what interactions she’ll have with the shadow flames.”
Rick finally stops pretending to struggle against Corrin’s hand, leaning back to dramatically shiver. “Wait, you mean you want one of the shadow flames to do that adapting thing to a giant fire-skinned lizard? That’s devious my friend, I love it!” Before Corrin can try to fend him off even more, Darwin pops up next to Rick, showing a little messaging screen with an opaque background, which Rick immediately angles away from him with a devious smile. Corrin simply rolls his eyes at the scene.
“Fine then, keep your secrets. Back on topic, for the bloodthirsty goblinette, let’s name her Vampira, because I couldn’t think of anything better. Just let her do her own thing for now, I’m interested in seeing if she could lead a kind of ‘the bigger evil’ force for the rest of the world to fight. For the otter, name her Ariel, because I’m getting kind of mermaid-y vibes from them. Actually, yeah, let’s treat them like a proto-mermaid/siren template, for the long term have that as their predicted evolution paths unless something else interesting pops up for them. For mister ‘I can see everything’, let’s call him Yog, since he can see behind space and time and all that. For the Anubis warg, the obvious name is just Anubis, for the egyptian god. He seems to have things down to pat, but maybe encourage innovation and creativity with him and his pack, there’s some interesting things in that desert-”
He suddenly finds himself beset by extra popcorn kernels from Rick, and simply glares at him for the affront. The man has the audacity to grin at him after knocking him out of his thoughts like that, too! “Now that I’ve got your attention, leave the rest to Eve! Having some healthy natural simulation will do the world good, and everyone wants to go out and celebrate the fact that you finally joined the rest of the modern world.”
Corrin grumbles a little under his breath before turning back to Eve, looking at the world map as he speaks. “Do you have everything under wraps Eve? I can stay if you want-” Eve flashes in front of him, leaving him face-to-face with her avatar rather than looking at the game world. “Oh no, you’re going to go out and have fun! Don’t worry, I’ve got this, my whole job is to watch over the world while you do regular human things. Go on, shoo!”
Corrin just sighs and stands up, heading to his room as he complains. “First ya’ll want me to get the game and now I’m not allowed to play it? Fine, I’ll go do the hooman things if it will get you off my back about it.” Despite his grouching, he is glad for the chance to get the gang back together, it’s been a while since they had such an occasion. Behind his back, Eve, Darwin, and Rick all share an evil laugh before shutting down the world map, Eve still running the game in the background as they plan.