Solarstream
It's all in the cards
- Location
- Zombie World
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Go to the great caves below and try to extract much Copper from the scraps that remain there, and speak to the trapped Digger one last time before you grow too large to fit.
Golden Treasure: Be The Dragon Quest
- Location
- Leeds
What Philosodragon is evolving?
Congratulations Philosodragon evolved into Mad Science Drake!
keenscythe
No longer NEET
- Location
- WA, USA
[X] Go to the great caves below and try to extract much Copper from the scraps that remain there, and speak to the trapped Digger one last time before you grow too large to fit.
- Location
- Pennslyvania
- Pronouns
- She/They
[X] Go to the great caves below and try to extract much Copper from the scraps that remain there, and speak to the trapped Digger one last time before you grow too large to fit.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
If we are going to the caves below, perhaps it'd be better to pick a herald first, to ensure we don't need to get into another fight with a fellow hatchling again? We can't count on crows to show up to save us again next time.
[X] Seek a Herald from among the Bluewings, to announce to challengers that this territory is claimed and you will return soon, whenever you leave it.
[X] Seek a Herald from among the Bluewings, to announce to challengers that this territory is claimed and you will return soon, whenever you leave it.
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DevilsAdvocate
Always follow the golden rule.
[X] Seek a Herald from among the Bluewings, to announce to challengers that this territory is claimed and you will return soon, whenever you leave it.
ConfusedPotato
Unverified Verifier
- Location
- Australia
[X] Go to the great caves below and try to extract much Copper from the scraps that remain there, and speak to the trapped Digger one last time before you grow too large to fit.
BadAtScreenNames
Killed a man in Reno just to watch him die
- Location
- London
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Go to the great caves below and try to extract much Copper from the scraps that remain there, and speak to the trapped Digger one last time before you grow too large to fit.
Just mainlined this whole quest, and it is AWESOME. Well done, Rockeye!
Just mainlined this whole quest, and it is AWESOME. Well done, Rockeye!
Varder
Tired Cultist
- Location
- Hell
It's a niche story, but it's very good within its niche. So, quite predictable, I believe.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
For what it is worth, I vastly prefer the Industrialiation Quest even though you probably won't be able to tell by my participation. Not that this quest is worse, but the other one really gets my imagination going when I think of future possibilities and developments. Something that is admittedly harder to do in a quest where the world is supposed to be an unknown for us to explore.
Other than that difference, this quest is at its heart a personal story of a dragon growing to adulthood, while the other one is less... focused on character development. I like how you handle small touches when people from different backgrounds and social circles interact in that one, but it is still a story of bringing a vision of the future to the medieval world. The response it elicits is more analytical than emotional.
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- Location
- Virginia
[X] Go to the great caves below and try to extract much Copper from the scraps that remain there, and speak to the trapped Digger one last time before you grow too large to fit.
The fewer readers is probably because this quest has been getting less updates since the Industrialization Quest started, so less people focus on this one.
The fewer readers is probably because this quest has been getting less updates since the Industrialization Quest started, so less people focus on this one.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well xenofiction is generally more niche than uplift stories. I think that also explains why the participants you do get tend to be affected more deeply. Both your stories are good quality. Good uplift stories aren't that rare, but people can get fairly passionate about the splitning itself. Good xenofiction, OTOH, is a bit like an oasis in the desert. It's not where most people look to get their water, but it's a blessing when you find one.
... I think that metaphor got a bit away from me, but I hope it conveys the joy I get from reading this quest. My sporadic voting isn't an indictment of the quest, I just tend to lurk far more than I post.
... I think that metaphor got a bit away from me, but I hope it conveys the joy I get from reading this quest. My sporadic voting isn't an indictment of the quest, I just tend to lurk far more than I post.
Deep thoughts
Rockeye
Plausible Engineer
- Location
- Midwestern U.S.
The darkness of the Below is like home to you. You feel this Truth in your bones, in your core. You know that a Furyclaw or Lumberer or the Bluewings or any number of other creatures would be utterly confused by the yawning blackness, the echoing noises. But you don't need to see light. You don't need to hear the usual sounds of the forest. You don't have the kind of ears that stick out, but your hearing is perfectly fine to track echoes and slow dripping in the stone. Your sense of smell and ability to feel Air's movement is keen enough that you just know where you are, even in the darkness.
And you see the song of the world. It's incredibly faint, the kind of thing you never realized you were experiencing. That 'lifesense', which tells you of other beings near you, exists on a channel that simply does not map to your vision, hearing, or smell, or the feelings of stone against your scales and the breeze pulling at your crest feathers. Only things you have experienced recently truly show you this, the 'taste' of lightning that even now seems like a taste, the 'music' of a sleeping Goodbeast, the 'look' of Stone that now envelops you in a comforting sheltered feeling... It's curious how your Mind so insistently classifies these things as sights or sounds or tastes (or all of those at once), even though they're not really the same.
You're bigger than you were before. The narrowest passages in the twisty, cramped spaces in Earth's body seem narrower still. With patient work by claw and fang you wear away at the stone until it allows you passage, widened just enough to squeeze the bulk of one wing's muscle past as you contort, and the rest of you squirms through easily once the widest bit of you is through. It's a tight fit, and will only get tighter as you keep growing. You wonder if your ability to tunnel will catch up to the speed of your growth eventually... It would be endless days of work to widen this passage another claw-length or two as you are now.
In the darkness Below, your mind turns to the weird and powerful things you experienced upon your re-emergence. Were they the Spirits of Sun and Earth? You can think of no other real explanation. Something so vast and powerful, full of hateful glorious heat that shines and burns, inescapable, wanting and wanting and wanting... And that infinite expanse of churning green, so full of life and emotion - of love and loss and joy and fear and contentment as if everything that ever could exist was shouting all at once, such that it was almost sickening.
That... Sounds like Sun and Earth to you. Vast, powerful beings, touching their True Child... You don't know if that's right. That's a little scary - usually when you think something like this you get a sense of whether it 'feels' right or wrong. You had assumed that it was part of being a Draak. That's absent here. Though you can't think of any other explanation that makes sense, it lacks that strange 'click', the feeling of utter correctness, that you sometime get. Troubling.
If that was the spirit of Earth and Sun, why did the Blackburns want to show you the Sun? Because... They are burned? You don't know. Very little about them made any sense. Ugh. Why was Earth so much more tolerable than Sun, then? Well, it wasn't that tolerable. You were still really confused and overwhelmed after exposure to the Spirit of Earth. It made you MORE in a way you struggle to comprehend. It's something you crave to feel again, but fear the return of just as much because it felt like you were becoming less you. Was it just the different natures of Sun and Earth? Or was it because you are female, a Birther, like the spirit of Earth is - the opposite of Sun?
You don't know. You don't even know if you're clawing at the entirely wrong hole with this 'spirit of Sun and Earth' business. If you were huge and powerful and wise like the Watcher who visited you so long ago (and yet so short a time ago, you haven't even seen a full Year!), perhaps...!
Hmm.
This is getting stressful. You've stopped making your way through the caves. You force your thoughts to still, wandering aimlessly on pleasant things, like tasty meat and the feeling of wind under your wings (even if it can't carry you aloft yet) and your hoard of little shinies and the few more valuable Treasures, too.
The deliberate aimless daydreaming helps calm you adn buys you time as you make your way down the air-passage caves, deeper and deeper towards the Diggers' old home. You progress swiftly through the chambers and paths that seemed so endless the first time you traversed them, because you already know the way and because you don't need to check each small side passage this time. You pause for sleep at the wreck of Volt's former prison, sad molten globs of metal and glass framed by smashed and burned wreckage of what was once a set of powerful machines. It seems like a bit of a shame that Volt just destroyed it all, but you sympathize with the desire to obliterate your eternal prison once finally freed.
You walk eagerly the next day, wanting to see the Digger again. You were just... Overwhelmed and scared and ready to leave last time. You should have spent more time trying to talk with them! The Tailless are supposed to be terrifying, and sure, the craftsmanship, the tools, it makes you shiver to imagine what devastating weapons they could produce, and they are smart enough to use them well... But when he attacked you, he mostly just seemed... Scared.
Soon enough, you return to the collapsed under-city, and immediately something seems off. The array of lights at the far end of the semi-collapsed cavern is ragged, with several holes. The plants are all overgrown or dead. And there's a subtle smell in the air that just seems slightly wrong...
As you approach, the smell becomes clearer. Wormtails, the small, stupid scavenger-rodents. You keep going, curious and slightly worried, and as you get closer you hear the quiet squeaking of a few of them echoing in the distance. The smell is strong and obvious: They have colonized this place.
You are a little nervous, but it's not like they can trap you. In such a vertically-built city, your wings and ability to climb mean you can move to unexpected areas to escape if they get it in their heads to swarm you like the Blackburns did to poor Rockhead. So you investigate closer, ignoring the creatures as they warily watch you in the harsh light of those Tailless devices that are still working.
...The Digger is dead, lying on the bed - yes, that must be a bed, it's sized correctly, even if it's really weird that they put something soft on it. It would be impossible to fall asleep without some nice hard stone or packed dirt under you, pressing against your scales. But the being you hoped to come talk to, the last of an exterminated clan, is gone. And the Wormtails have been eating him (he is mostly just bones by now), as well as all of his food and supplies that remained. They are scavengers, after all. But your mind goes to the carefully-laid bones in the room of graves...
Pick up to eight. The more you pick, the longer you are away from the surface. Remember what happened last time? However, this may be your last chance to visit this place for a while.
Approval & plan voting.
[ ] Speak to and question the Wormtails. What happened? Did they kill him, or did he just... Die?
[ ] Carefully put the Digger's bones and necklace away like the others. You feel like he would have wanted that.
[ ] Go see what is at the very bottom of the chamber, you never went down there last time.
[ ] Memorize as much of the weird markings here and there as you can. Can take up to 2 times. x2.
[ ] Carefully examine the Digger's devices with your new insight into electricity. Can take up to 3 times. x2, x3.
[ ] Look for Treasure, especially copper and magnets, to bring back to the surface. Can take up to 3 times. x2, x3.
And you see the song of the world. It's incredibly faint, the kind of thing you never realized you were experiencing. That 'lifesense', which tells you of other beings near you, exists on a channel that simply does not map to your vision, hearing, or smell, or the feelings of stone against your scales and the breeze pulling at your crest feathers. Only things you have experienced recently truly show you this, the 'taste' of lightning that even now seems like a taste, the 'music' of a sleeping Goodbeast, the 'look' of Stone that now envelops you in a comforting sheltered feeling... It's curious how your Mind so insistently classifies these things as sights or sounds or tastes (or all of those at once), even though they're not really the same.
You're bigger than you were before. The narrowest passages in the twisty, cramped spaces in Earth's body seem narrower still. With patient work by claw and fang you wear away at the stone until it allows you passage, widened just enough to squeeze the bulk of one wing's muscle past as you contort, and the rest of you squirms through easily once the widest bit of you is through. It's a tight fit, and will only get tighter as you keep growing. You wonder if your ability to tunnel will catch up to the speed of your growth eventually... It would be endless days of work to widen this passage another claw-length or two as you are now.
In the darkness Below, your mind turns to the weird and powerful things you experienced upon your re-emergence. Were they the Spirits of Sun and Earth? You can think of no other real explanation. Something so vast and powerful, full of hateful glorious heat that shines and burns, inescapable, wanting and wanting and wanting... And that infinite expanse of churning green, so full of life and emotion - of love and loss and joy and fear and contentment as if everything that ever could exist was shouting all at once, such that it was almost sickening.
That... Sounds like Sun and Earth to you. Vast, powerful beings, touching their True Child... You don't know if that's right. That's a little scary - usually when you think something like this you get a sense of whether it 'feels' right or wrong. You had assumed that it was part of being a Draak. That's absent here. Though you can't think of any other explanation that makes sense, it lacks that strange 'click', the feeling of utter correctness, that you sometime get. Troubling.
If that was the spirit of Earth and Sun, why did the Blackburns want to show you the Sun? Because... They are burned? You don't know. Very little about them made any sense. Ugh. Why was Earth so much more tolerable than Sun, then? Well, it wasn't that tolerable. You were still really confused and overwhelmed after exposure to the Spirit of Earth. It made you MORE in a way you struggle to comprehend. It's something you crave to feel again, but fear the return of just as much because it felt like you were becoming less you. Was it just the different natures of Sun and Earth? Or was it because you are female, a Birther, like the spirit of Earth is - the opposite of Sun?
You don't know. You don't even know if you're clawing at the entirely wrong hole with this 'spirit of Sun and Earth' business. If you were huge and powerful and wise like the Watcher who visited you so long ago (and yet so short a time ago, you haven't even seen a full Year!), perhaps...!
Hmm.
This is getting stressful. You've stopped making your way through the caves. You force your thoughts to still, wandering aimlessly on pleasant things, like tasty meat and the feeling of wind under your wings (even if it can't carry you aloft yet) and your hoard of little shinies and the few more valuable Treasures, too.
The deliberate aimless daydreaming helps calm you adn buys you time as you make your way down the air-passage caves, deeper and deeper towards the Diggers' old home. You progress swiftly through the chambers and paths that seemed so endless the first time you traversed them, because you already know the way and because you don't need to check each small side passage this time. You pause for sleep at the wreck of Volt's former prison, sad molten globs of metal and glass framed by smashed and burned wreckage of what was once a set of powerful machines. It seems like a bit of a shame that Volt just destroyed it all, but you sympathize with the desire to obliterate your eternal prison once finally freed.
You walk eagerly the next day, wanting to see the Digger again. You were just... Overwhelmed and scared and ready to leave last time. You should have spent more time trying to talk with them! The Tailless are supposed to be terrifying, and sure, the craftsmanship, the tools, it makes you shiver to imagine what devastating weapons they could produce, and they are smart enough to use them well... But when he attacked you, he mostly just seemed... Scared.
Soon enough, you return to the collapsed under-city, and immediately something seems off. The array of lights at the far end of the semi-collapsed cavern is ragged, with several holes. The plants are all overgrown or dead. And there's a subtle smell in the air that just seems slightly wrong...
As you approach, the smell becomes clearer. Wormtails, the small, stupid scavenger-rodents. You keep going, curious and slightly worried, and as you get closer you hear the quiet squeaking of a few of them echoing in the distance. The smell is strong and obvious: They have colonized this place.
You are a little nervous, but it's not like they can trap you. In such a vertically-built city, your wings and ability to climb mean you can move to unexpected areas to escape if they get it in their heads to swarm you like the Blackburns did to poor Rockhead. So you investigate closer, ignoring the creatures as they warily watch you in the harsh light of those Tailless devices that are still working.
...The Digger is dead, lying on the bed - yes, that must be a bed, it's sized correctly, even if it's really weird that they put something soft on it. It would be impossible to fall asleep without some nice hard stone or packed dirt under you, pressing against your scales. But the being you hoped to come talk to, the last of an exterminated clan, is gone. And the Wormtails have been eating him (he is mostly just bones by now), as well as all of his food and supplies that remained. They are scavengers, after all. But your mind goes to the carefully-laid bones in the room of graves...
Pick up to eight. The more you pick, the longer you are away from the surface. Remember what happened last time? However, this may be your last chance to visit this place for a while.
Approval & plan voting.
[ ] Speak to and question the Wormtails. What happened? Did they kill him, or did he just... Die?
[ ] Carefully put the Digger's bones and necklace away like the others. You feel like he would have wanted that.
[ ] Go see what is at the very bottom of the chamber, you never went down there last time.
[ ] Memorize as much of the weird markings here and there as you can. Can take up to 2 times. x2.
[ ] Carefully examine the Digger's devices with your new insight into electricity. Can take up to 3 times. x2, x3.
[ ] Look for Treasure, especially copper and magnets, to bring back to the surface. Can take up to 3 times. x2, x3.
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- Location
- Seattle, Washington
Rockeye
Plausible Engineer
- Location
- Midwestern U.S.
Let's say almost two weeks extra, and it took about 3-4 days to get down here
I don't want to get hung up on mechanics and schedules here, for this quest I write best if I'm thinking of the narrative. Please don't comment on how long it will take to do stuff even if it's a bit unrealistic. "oh, it doesn't take two days to talk to some rats", I mean. Don't do that.
Man, I am often torn on vote design on this quest. I think a classic 3-5 option vote is usually best, but I don't really want to spend multiple updates in this cave again so I kinda... Just crammed it all into one big blob.
I don't want to get hung up on mechanics and schedules here, for this quest I write best if I'm thinking of the narrative. Please don't comment on how long it will take to do stuff even if it's a bit unrealistic. "oh, it doesn't take two days to talk to some rats", I mean. Don't do that.
Man, I am often torn on vote design on this quest. I think a classic 3-5 option vote is usually best, but I don't really want to spend multiple updates in this cave again so I kinda... Just crammed it all into one big blob.
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- Location
- Seattle, Washington
[X] Plan Respect and Examinations
-[X] Carefully put the Digger's bones and necklace away like the others. You feel like he would have wanted that.
-[X] Carefully examine the Digger's devices with your new insight into electricity. x2
-[X] Look for Treasure, especially copper and magnets, to bring back to the surface.
Reasoning:
Putting his bones away out of respect for him, he kept going even when it must have seemed hopeless
Our insight with electricity might let us create things in the future, or let us understand tailless devices better
Finding things like magnets and copper might let us create some simple contraptions or something.
I don't think we should pick more than 4 options, we shouldn't spend too much time down here considering what happened last time
I don't see how studying the markings could be useful, the wormtails are stupid so I don't think it worth talking to them.
He died on his bed, so presumably, he either got sick or died in his sleep.
The bottom of the chamber is a mystery box, I don't think it's worth the time compared to examining the devices and looking for magnets and copper.
-[X] Carefully put the Digger's bones and necklace away like the others. You feel like he would have wanted that.
-[X] Carefully examine the Digger's devices with your new insight into electricity. x2
-[X] Look for Treasure, especially copper and magnets, to bring back to the surface.
Reasoning:
Putting his bones away out of respect for him, he kept going even when it must have seemed hopeless
Our insight with electricity might let us create things in the future, or let us understand tailless devices better
Finding things like magnets and copper might let us create some simple contraptions or something.
I don't think we should pick more than 4 options, we shouldn't spend too much time down here considering what happened last time
I don't see how studying the markings could be useful, the wormtails are stupid so I don't think it worth talking to them.
He died on his bed, so presumably, he either got sick or died in his sleep.
The bottom of the chamber is a mystery box, I don't think it's worth the time compared to examining the devices and looking for magnets and copper.
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keenscythe
No longer NEET
- Location
- WA, USA
[X] Plan Respect and Reading.
-[X] Carefully put the Digger's bones and necklace away like the others. You feel like he would have wanted that.
-[X] Carefully examine the Digger's devices with your new insight into electricity. x2
-[x] Memorize as much of the weird markings here and there as you can. X2.
While I agree with the examination and respect I would value trying to puzzle out writing before some treasure or copper. We are more likely to find metal than books in the near future after all.
-[X] Carefully put the Digger's bones and necklace away like the others. You feel like he would have wanted that.
-[X] Carefully examine the Digger's devices with your new insight into electricity. x2
-[x] Memorize as much of the weird markings here and there as you can. X2.
While I agree with the examination and respect I would value trying to puzzle out writing before some treasure or copper. We are more likely to find metal than books in the near future after all.
Solarstream
It's all in the cards
- Location
- Zombie World
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Plan Respect and Reading.