PHASE I [ 6 30 ] You really have arrived, finally.
Too bad the welcome isn’t so great.
Upon arrival, you will literally be dropped out of the sky.
You may land in the lake (watch out for the fish). You may land on the roofs of the buildings in the town (watch out for the spires). Or you may be unlucky, and fall all the way from the sky to the ground, at which point you die and lose a life already.
Don’t worry, you’ll respawn in the air and you can try again.
Good luck this time!
If you do manage to finally land in a way that doesn’t break your spine and/or drown you, you’ll find that if you’re a newcomer, you’ll have some strange words hovering over your head. They seem to be a set of your name, a level, a class and a quest, something like --
Ima Adventurerer Lv. 9000
Class: Dragon Slayer
Current Quest: Slay every dragon
-- but aside from existing, they don't seem to have any actual impact on your abilities or requirements. But you can do the quests if you really want to. Everyone will clap politely for you if you do. There might be confetti, even.
They would appear to coincide with a scroll or two posted up in the middle of town for everyone to see.
At least it’s easy to tell who’s new this round.
PHASE II [ 745 ] Once you’re safely on the ground (hopefully no broken bones!), it’s time to get a feel for the game. As free range as it seems to be, you have all sorts of choices in where to go and what to do. You could take on some quests! You could go hunt down monsters! You could...pick up that fancy looking armor over there!
Except you may not actually want to do so. As soon as you touch that armor, it will equip itself, no ifs, ands or buts. Of course, it isn’t so bad, at least, not for the ladies. For the men who equip the armor, they may find it to be a little breezy. In many different variations.
To make matters worse, be careful what you touch in your inventory, unless you want to equip a fish instead of your sword, or whatever the hell this is instead of your cool, awesome, special weapon. Good luck.
And the only way to unequip it is to find something else to equip. There’s motivation for some questing, at least.
PHASE III [ 1000 ] Eventually, you have to venture out of the town, however. There are NPCs ushering you to quest onwards, and there’s nothing in the town worth poking your nose into; none of the doors open, and all of the NPCs say the same, looping lines in a creepy monotone.
There are quests to be done outside of the town, they say, over and over.
So, off you go. However, the moment you step out of the town, you’re…somewhere else entirely. Look behind you, and the town is gone. Look around you, and there’s nothing but flowers, fields and the other people who have stepped out of the town themselves, looking equally confused. The bizarre armor is now gone, and you're back in your proper clothing; the strange floating titles and levels and the like are also gone. Otherwise, it is silent; there isn’t a single other soul. No bird song, no buzzing of bees -- just silence.
Of course, it won’t last. Soon, the monsters show up...but strangely, they seem to be monsters from your world, if your world had monsters. If your world had animals, they are those, or robots, or any number of combinations. But they seem...different. They’re meaner, larger, nastier, and all dark colors and bloody, dripping claws and fangs.
It seems everything’s been a little corrupted here -- even things from your own worlds.
PHASE IV [ 1400 ] If you persevere through the monster-infested fields, trampling your way through flowers which did nothing at all to you, you’ll eventually find yourself at a still, still lake. It’s a beautiful place, quiet and hushed and untouched, and totally monster-free; it might be a good place to take a breather.
But if you look into the lake, even for a brief moment, you’ll see whatever it is you want most in the world. Whether it’s a person (dead or alive), a thing, a title… it doesn’t matter; the lake will show it, tantalizing and right there, so close to being in your grasp.
If you don’t pull away immediately, you might find that it’s hypnotizing, in fact; you’ll feel the need to go closer and closer, even if it means wading into the lake to get closer to that goal. Just...don’t go too far. Something is waiting for you.
If you touch someone to try to help them, you’ll see what they are also seeing in the lake, for better or for worse. It might be a good chance to get to know them, if you weren’t, you know, in danger of being eaten.
Thankfully, with some perseverance and good friends, the hypnotism can be broken. You do have friends, right?
If you survive all of that, you can finally log out and join Cerealia proper -- hooray!
BONUS [ xxxx ] There sure are a lot of flowers in this field of flowers. There are flowers everywhere. Which isn’t a bad thing, unless you’re allergic to flowers (if you are allergic to flowers, CERES apologizes and suggests you take their special, patented ClariCERESclear to clear that right up). Except...the longer you’re in said field of flowers, the more you may notice that things are a little...strange.
Some of the pollen of the flowers has some strange effects on your bodies, it would seem. You could stumble across any of these (or none at all), and they could last anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour or two, depending on how much of that pollen you breathe in.
The effects are as follows:
➟ The urge to princess-carry the nearest person
➟ The urge to serenade the nearest person, regardless of your singing ability
➟ An awakened urge to be really aggressive towards the nearest person, even to the point of fighting (it's time to pvp)
➟ Uncontrollable crying
➟ An uncontrollable urge to make flower crowns and place them on peoples' heads (which thus further spreads the other effects).
Don’t trust the flowers.
[ Remember to apply proper warnings on threads with sensitive or inappropriate material and do let a mod know if your thread careens off into maiming or canoodling so we can lock the log. ] |
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Athena
[He opens his mouth to protest that he's not a dork--then just sighs and rubs at his forehead. This isn't the time and place, and he gets the feeling his words won't make a difference anyway.]
So how long have you been...here? [Apollo's hand gestures, indicating the village.] When I saw the powerpoint presentation, I kind of assumed the colony would be more modern, not like this.
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[ don't be doodoo, apollo! this is just a video game. ]
If you log out, I can show you around. I've been here for almost half a year now, after all.
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[Hand dropping back to his side, Apollo looks at Athena.]
A tour around the colony would be great. Thanks. It's a lot to take in at once.
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[ she nods. ]
Anyway, there are different games you can play on ViViD, so that's probably why? [ except she doesn't know what he's talking about. oh well! whatever. ]
Take off your headset, and I'll meet you in the colony itself.
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I'm not wearing a headset. Is there another way to log out?
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He closes his eyes and tries to connect with his real body, but no matter how hard he concentrates, nothing seems to happen. He opens his eyes again, frowning.] I don't think it's working.
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Maybe you'll be stuck here forever.
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This sounds like a plot straight out of a sci-fi movie.
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Yup. There's aliens too, so it's definitely sci-fi and stuff.
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Oh. [He frowns at the reminder.] The--Flamines, right? So it's true that everything's gone now.
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No way. The Flamines? [ she laughs. ] There's no proof that they exist. I'm talking about the other ones who are stuck here with us - there's aliens, too. Ones that don't look human and everything.
[ a beat. ]
But some monster aliens visit the place sometimes, too. It gets dangerous when that happens.
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He shakes his head.]
Let me get this straight. There are aliens living in the colony, and they're peaceful. The ones who show up now and then aren't? [Apollo's frown deepens.] What's with the powerpoint presentation about the Flamines, then? They must have had a reason for showing us that.
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[ she starts to poke at her earring. ]
I used to believe the Flamines were real, but I haven't heard anything about them after the presentation.
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If they were really worried about the Flamines as much as they implied, we'd be hearing warnings about them all the time.
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That's why I don't believe in them anymore.
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Well, it's not a case or anything like it, but it'd be remiss of us not to look into what's going on at this company, don't you think?
[They aren't nosy as heck for nothing.]
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I would be extra careful when doing that, if I were you.
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That doesn't sound good. Did something happen?
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Oh, nothing... Not to me, anyway.
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Something tells me that isn't true.
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[ right, apollo can figure things out just with the slightest of twitches. athena forgot about that. ]
Um... really, it's nothing?
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I doubt that's the case. You wouldn't have lied about it if you thought it was nothing.
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[ she pauses as she rocks her heels, not really sure where to begin. ]
But I've been arrested here before. It wasn't the best experience. [ and softly: ] We were tortured.
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What? [Oops. Chords of Steel. He lowers his voice to an acceptable volume.] Sorry--what? How many people know about this?
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