Legacy of the Forgotten Ground (Original)

siflux · Dec 20, 2017

The words you groggily hear as you struggle to consciousness do not fill you with confidence.

Systems Damage Critical. Activating Emergency Deployment.

Something’s wrong. Beyond what the alarm is blaring through your tank, you mean. You feel significantly weaker than you expected.

Mana Tank Offline. Mana Collector Destroyed. Biomass Shaper Offline. Transmigration Error.

Oh. Not only are you stuck in your current body, but without the mana collector the whole experience was pointless.

Beginning Resucitat--

The sound abruptly cuts off, allowing you to hear what it was masking. That’s talking. You can’t understand the language, but that’s definitely talking you’re hearing. You force open your eyes, giving you a glimpse of the chatterers. Three humanoids, but there’s something wrong with them. Apart from you, monsters aren’t supposed to be sapient. Experiments started after your long sleep began? But then why are they speaking some gibberish tongue? It has the cadence and intonation of proper speech.

Regardless, if they’ve spotted you, they don’t seem to be reacting your presence, unless that’s what they’re discussing right now. Maybe they just don’t think you’re important while you’re still your tank. Maybe they just don’t think your current limbless, amorphous body is a threat. The initiative is yours to seize.

[ ] Stay motionless in your tank until they leave. You think you can repair some of the equipment if you’re given time to work.
[ ] Whatever they are, they must have destroyed the lab’s self-defense systems. With the Mana Collector destroyed, you’ll need to gather enough power to do your job the hard way, and that means revenging yourself on these interlopers and consuming their souls.
[ ] You’re outnumbered, and they’re bound to find you if they’re being thorough. With the Biomass Shaper unavailable, your slime-body may not be able to defeat them, and the lab can’t build you another replacement body right now. Let discretion be the better part of valor and sneak away to rebuild your strength.
[ ] You’re panicking. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. The first options that come to mind are not the full world of possibilities open to you. You’ll… (Write-in)

siflux · Dec 22, 2017

[x] Stay motionless in your tank until they leave. You think you can repair some of the equipment if you’re given time to work.

You hold yourself motionless, closing your eyes to avoid any involuntary movements giving yourself away. Smashing and crashing noises come from the room with the humanoids, then more talking. It gets quieter and quieter, until it’s silent. Still, you wait a little longer before daring to open your eyes again.

They’re gone now. You hit the emergency release button on the inside of the tank to get out.

Nothing happens. Power must be out. Explains why the alarm cut off. With a frustrated sigh, you begin the much longer process of manually getting out of the tank without destroying it. Most of the difficulty comes from the fact that you currently lack hands, or in fact any manipulator limbs, so you’re forced to wrap your entire body around things to grab them.Twist this valve, pull this floor lever, open the drain here, then push the whole thing sideways. Stupid human-centric designs. Hydraulic hinges gently catch the tube before it hits the floor, leaving you open to air.

Okay, so no power. Deal with that first. Primary backup power should have turned itself on, but since nothing’s on, it clearly didn’t. Secondary backup is manual-activation. Fortunately, you were taught how to handle this before you were put into hibernation.

Geothermal: ERROR TIMED OUT
Solar: 80% Nominal Capacity. Check For Physical Damage.
Fuel: 2% Fuel Remaining. Generator Functional.
Accumulator: 10% Nominal Capacity. Check For Physical Damage.

That’s… good? You review generation versus output while the computer boots and runs system diagnostics. You think solar can run the Biomass Shaper and connected mana systems indefinitely during the day, but you’ll need to see about repairing another power system if you want to transmigrate to a new body at night. Sufficient for now.

A much bigger problem is that, like the geothermal generator, the Biomass Shaper and the Mana Tanks are simply not responding to ping. You’ll need to physically check them next. Worse, the Mana Collector array is responding, and it’s physically destroyed. There’s no way you’re fixing that, which means hibernation is pointless.

You finally notice something that you should have seen earlier: system time says you’ve been out for two and a half millennia. You were told that the charge cycle was only supposed to take eight hundred years! What happened?

That settles it. Mana tanks next. They should have filled three times over by now! You hop out of the room at top speed, jarring to an abrupt halt when you see what those vandals have wrought.

‘Fido’ was a robotic drone, programmed to protect the main lab and the experiments. Fido has huge gashes rent through it. Fido has been hacked into four pieces of varying sizes, plus a mess of small debris. Fido’s lights are off. No part of it moves.

You force yourself to calm down. You can’t do anything about it right now. Revenge later. Seeing how well you can do your job comes first. You hop over to the Mana Tank room.

It doesn’t look like there’s any physical damage on the tanks, but readouts say they’re all but empty. How? Did the Mana Collector not work properly even before it was destroyed? Has it been broken for even longer than whatever triggered your emergency deployment? Are the tanks leaky? Fortunately, you’re able to find the reason the tanks are offline: a freaking battleaxe sticks out of the wall, going right through some power lines. You may not be a technician or even someone with an understanding of the technology involved, but you do know how to reconnect two split cable ends. You manage to twist the wire ends around each other. A generous coating of electrical tape even stops the sparks! Good enough, especially for a freaking blob of gel.

This lack of limbs is really getting out of hand. There better be enough left in the tanks to print a better body.

Feeling more confident, you hop over to the body printing room. Yeesh, there’s even more damage here. Freaking luddites. No actual weaponry lying around, but plenty of signs of it being used. The Shaper has some superficial damage, but not enough to prevent it from being able to print replacement parts to upgrade it back to body-replacement capability. Unfortunately, that drains the last of what’s in the Mana Tank.

You mull over the situation as you head back to check out the completed diagnostics, which confirm that the Mana Tank and Biomass Shaper are properly functional. The lab is still properly synchronized to you, so you can remotely collect Mana yourself and the tanks will store it just fine. If your body takes enough damage that your soul detaches, you’ll be pulled back here where another replacement emergency Slime body will be printed off, at least assuming there’s enough Mana for that. Which there currently isn’t. Also, no power at night, so don’t die then. And those weird, nonhuman barbarians who killed Fido and smashed up the lab also need to be dealt with eventually. You’ve got your work cut out for you before you can fix everything.

First up, you’re going to:
[ ] Get some Mana, and you know what that means: killing stuff. Whether you’re going to Transmigrate into a less useless body or just make sure you have a safety net in case you die, you need more mana
[ ] Track down those savages who broke your stuff. You haven’t quite decided what you’re going to do when you find them, but you’re leaning towards ‘turn them into Mana’.
[ ] See what you can do about the power systems. Your knowledge on replacing damaged stuff may be limited to ‘print out spare parts’ which requires Mana that you don’t currently have, but geothermal had a different error message and you can probably find fuel somewhere.
[ ] Explore. It’s been well over a thousand years since you were initially projected to wake up, and even in the best case you were hibernating through an apocalypse. You need to get your bearings outside the lab and see if rebuilding a biosphere is going to be as tough as expected.
[ ] Do something else (Write-in)

siflux · Jan 6, 2018

[X] Get some Mana, and you know what that means: killing stuff. Whether you’re going to Transmigrate into a less useless body or just make sure you have a safety net in case you die, you need more mana.

You’re too angry to focus right now. Fortunately, you have a way of blowing off steam that’s both productive and unambiguously good: wanton violence.

Sapient or not, you’re still a monster. By definition, that means you naturally consume the soul of anything you kill, turning it into Mana. Like all monsters, you can use Mana to spackle over the gaps in your abilities, allowing you to prematurely advance into a stronger body. Unlike most monsters, you have access to a machine that lets you swap your soul into entire other monster families and build less developed bodies that can develop in totally different ways. You rather doubt all monsterkind has gone extinct, so you can probably find some of your non-sapient cousins to destroy. Should be good practice getting the hang of your current body too.

Sun’s about halfway down. Sky is blue, with white clouds. No sign of the toxic, irradiated mist you were expecting outside. It has been a few centuries. Maybe it cleared up on its own. Maybe one of the other anti-apocalypse projects worked. Maybe there’s a good reason the lab is now only a few hundred meters from the edge of a cliff.

No, wait, there’s the death clouds. At the bottom of the sky. Easily a klick of empty air lies beneath you, just ahead. This was... probably intentional? It doesn’t really fix the problem, but at least this area isn’t inside the miasma. You hop away from the abyss in search of monsters to harvest.

Round 1:
Deal 52 Dmg * 60 Atk / 10 Def = 312 Damage.
Floofball is killed with no chance to attack!

First thing you run into is a Floofball, the weakest of monsters in the Beast family. You launch yourself bodily at it, slamming into it with your gooey body. You may be just a lowly Slime, but you’re a Slime with the soul of a dragon. With the power you retained from your first life, this battle is trivial, rather than suicidal. It dies immediately, and you can tell why as soon as you absorb it.

One measly Mana? What was it, newborn? Grumbling, you search for more victims.

Your inauspicious start proves prophetic. Excepting yourself, you can’t find anything on this island that grants you more than five Mana. You’d normally expect to see stronger monsters simply due to them fighting each other, especially after so long. Something must be eliminating any strong monsters. Something not thorough enough to completely wipe out all monster life. As you’re still weak, this works to your immediate advantage, but it also means farming for Mana like this will be an arduous process.

You commit to harvesting until nightfall, consuming a total of 106 Mana over the course of the intervening 5 hours. That leaves you with enough to rebuild an emergency Slime body (100 Mana), but not to swap into something more comfortable like your original Dragon body (1000 Mana). The original plan was to directly build a body that had the <Dragon of Rebirth> Trait, but the cheapest such body weighs in at a cool billion Mana. You may be able to develop the Trait yourself, but that’s not going to be cheap without switching back to a Dragon body. Heck, even with doing that.

+106 Mana
+1176 XP

You have a safety net now, but murdering monsters is not a viable long-term solution to your problems. Humanity’s original planned shortcut for you to gain power has failed, backfiring so badly it stole centuries from you that you could have used to try to solve things on your own. You’re going to need to think up a plan of your own to fix everything…

END DAY ONE

[ ] Write-in

siflux · Jan 6, 2018

[x] Plan economy rough draft
-[x] Spend 100XP scribing Adaptability 1 unto your soul
-[x] Keep hunting until you have 300 mana, and then switch to Seed body.
-[x] Start eating plants to see the efficiency of mana it generates. Then spend 100XP each to scribe Plant 1 and Herbivore 1 into our soul. This would raise our effective level in both to 2, which we should test to see how raising said levels affects the generation of mana and calculate how much it is worth investing into said abilities in the future,
-[x] Once sufficient mana has been generated from herbivore, switch to foofball for the bioweapon trait (makes future body upgrades cheaper). Scribe both traits, then switch to imp. Scribe devil and cultivore. And start upgrading body with the purpose of eventually starting our own cult.

If you’re going to have to learn a bunch of intermediate traits to unlock <Dragon of Rebirth>, might as well invest immediately into making them cheaper. Not that XP is your limiting factor right now, but that’ll change quickly as you need higher-level traits to make stronger forms available. No, your current problem is Mana generation. This area lacks strong enemies to harvest, but some monster families have alternate means of gaining the stuff.

Today, you hunt once more.

-90 XP (100XP base cost, no penalty due to trait already on body, 10% discount for trait on body 1-9 levels higher than on soul): Gained <Adaptability 0 → 1>

Yesterday, nothing around here was a threat to you. Today, that’s no longer true. Whatever was preventing the local Floofballs from getting stronger no longer seems to be in effect. They’ve already begun advancing into Horned Bunnies and Brown Raptors. You can’t outdamage either of them, but your <Dragon> soul enhancing your <Dragonscale> and sheer bulk means you can take either monster in a one-on-one fight. Fortunately, that’s still possible, as all the monsters you encounter are acting in a fiercely territorial manner. Any given fight against one of the stronger monsters takes out about a third to half your health, but you’re smart enough to rest up between hunts.

Round 1:
Deal 52 Dmg * 60 Atk / 15 Def = 208 Damage.
Receive 250 Dmg * 50 Atk / 44 Def = 284 Damage.

Round 1:
Deal 52 Dmg * 60 Atk / 20 Def = 156 Damage.
Brown Raptor uses its Flight advantage to dive for extra damage.
Receive 211 Dmg * 40 Atk / 44 Def = 191 Damage.

Bestiary Updated! Horned Bunny and Brown Raptor added.

With your self-enforced downtime between fights, you explore along the cliff edge near the lab. Your lab is near the southwest edge of -- you’re honestly not sure if this is a mesa or a flying island. If it was an island, how would it stay aloft? Humanity probably could have pulled this off, somehow, but you can’t help but feel like a giant pillar of rock would be an easier and cheaper way to keep an entire small island aloft.

Whatever. Sky mesa or sky island, you can’t get off it without flying or descending vertically into the death zone either way. The place is roughly circular in shape, and more than a few kilometers around the edge. You don’t feel comfortable going deep enough afield to get a full perimeter, and judging distance without tools is hard. Hills prevent you from being able to tell if the land goes to the horizon or not. You can climb them tomorrow, see if that’ll get you vision to the horizon.

+292 Mana
+2447 XP

You still managed to find enough Floofballs to kill and get enough extra Mana and XP from eating Horned Bunnies and Brown Raptors that today was more productive per hour than yesterday, plus you spent twice as long out there, but you’re definitely unsatisfied with how much you were slowed down by having to avoid serious fights for hours at a time as you healed up. Fortunately, you’re already planning on transmigrating into a more combat-capable body before you next go slaying, and the power of your soul already puts you on par with everything you fought today even before factoring in your body’s instincts.
No vote, current plan still being executed
END DAY TWO

siflux · Jan 7, 2018

[x] Plan economy rough draft
-[x] Spend 100XP scribing Adaptability 1 unto your soul
-[x] Keep hunting until you have 300 mana, and then switch to Seed body.
-[x] Start eating plants to see the efficiency of mana it generates. Then spend 100XP each to scribe Plant 1 and Herbivore 1 into our soul. This would raise our effective level in both to 2, which we should test to see how raising said levels affects the generation of mana and calculate how much it is worth investing into said abilities in the future,
-[x] Once sufficient mana has been generated from herbivore, switch to foofball for the bioweapon trait (makes future body upgrades cheaper). Scribe both traits, then switch to imp. Scribe devil and cultivore. And start upgrading body with the purpose of eventually starting our own cult.

-200 Mana: Transmigration to Seed

Never before in your life has an apple tasted so good.

You grab another and eagerly devour it, seeds and all. You’ve eaten fruit before, of course, but until now it didn’t taste of souls. It’s thinner than a fresh kill, especially of something strong like another monster, but now that you understand how to draw it out it’s definitely there. It’s fading fast, though. Like any other kill, you’ll need to eat your plants fresh to get Mana out of them.

-180 XP: <Plant 0 → 1>, <Herbivore 0 → 1>

You much a leaf, then an entire branch, then some grass. All good, with a bitter, twangy aftertaste. You could get used to this. And will, since you now permanently understand a little about what it’s like to be a Plant family monster.

Alright, enough of that. Time to transmigrate into something a little more combat-capable.

-150 Mana: Transmigration to Floofball
-180 XP: <Beast 0 → 1>, <Bioweapon 0 → 1>

Sadly, being a Floofball is a significant upgrade over your hibernatory Slime body. Solidly twice as damaging just due to having actual claws again rather than being forced to smash things with a gooey surface that absorbs half the blow. You weren’t originally planning on spending much time in this body, but it would have taken you… two mana an hour, two hundred mana deficit… about four days without sleep of continuous grazing to make up the difference on <Herbivore> alone as a Seed. More realistically, something like a week to a week and a half including sleep. <Herbivore> isn’t enough to work as a primary source of Mana without a lot more investment in it.

Fortunately, you already had an activity planned for today. You’re going to climb the highest hill around and confirm whether you’re on a peninsula or an island. Mesa. Whatever, it’s effectively the same thing if you can’t get off it. You need to find out whether you’re trapped by an ocean of air and the miasma you’ve been tasked with eliminating, or if there’s something else out there. You’ll kill whatever monsters you find on the way for Mana, and if you spot those non-human, non-monster vandals who messed up your lab and killed your dog you’ll decide what to do about them then.

Deal 100 Dmg * 68 Atk / 15 Def = 453 Damage.
Receive 250 Dmg * 50 Atk / 45 Def - 1 = 276 Damage.

Deal 100 Dmg * 68 Atk / 20 Def = 340 Damage.
Brown Raptor uses its Flight advantage to dive for extra damage.
Receive 211 Dmg * 40 Atk / 45 Def - 1= 186 Damage.

Now that’s more like it! The claws hiding in your adorable floof are able to destroy Horned Bunnies and Brown Raptors in two hits, leaving them only one to hurt you. And their development seems to have plateaued for now. No new monsters out in the wild today, although there are notably fewer Floofballs around. You grab grass and shrubbery by the clawful between fights and munch on them as you go.

Something in the neighborhood of two hours later, you’re on top of a hill. It actually isn’t the highest one around, but it’s close and you can see enough around the next hill over to be reasonably certain: you’re on an island. A sky island. In an ocean of air. Land ends something like a tenth of the distance out to the horizon away from your position.

There’s a pair of other landmasses visible out there too, not connected to yours. Each is somewhere in the neighborhood of halfway out to the horizon. One lies roughly to the North, and the other in a generally Easterly direction of you. You can’t really make out any details from this distance except that they exist, though.

Just to be completely sure, and also because you don’t have anything other on your immediate to-do list except killing more monsters, you climb the actual tallest hill around. It just confirms what you saw a few hours prior. Apart from your lab and the wild monsters, your island is completely uninhabited.

+330 + 10 Mana (killing + grazing)
+2069 XP

You head home, then Transmigrate one last time before sleeping. You don’t know anyone yet, but the jerks who broke your stuff acted sapient. That implies more sapients out there who you don’t want revenge on. Could form the base of a cult. More Mana. You need more Mana...

-250 Mana: Transmigration to Imp
-180 XP: <Devil 0 → 1>, <Cultivore 0 → 1>

END DAY 3

[ ] Write-in

siflux · Jan 9, 2018

[x] Plan need answers 3
-[x] Upgrade adaptability to level 3. (costs 500 XP. 5562 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe regeneration with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 5392 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe wings with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 5222 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe flight with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 5052 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe venomous with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 4882 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe undead with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 4712 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe bug with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 4542 XP remaining)
-[x] Upgrade wings to level 3 on soul. (costs 500 XP. 4042 XP remaining)
-[x] Upgrade flight to level 3 on soul. (costs 500 XP. 3542 XP remaining)
-[x] Try to locate the vandals from before, you owe them.
-[x] Explore further now that you have wings and flight.
-[x] Transmigrate to Dragon when 1300 mana is accumulated (1000 for the transmigration, 300 to revive us if we get killed)

-2520 XP: <Adaptability 1 → 3>, <Regeneration 0 → 1>, <Winged 0 → 3>, <Flight 0 → 3>, <Venomous 0 → 1>, <Undead 0 → 1>, <Bug 0 → 1>

Soon, you will be a dragon once more. Not today, though. You don’t have the Mana for it. It’s a serious problem for you, and the local monster population forms a frustrating mix of just strong enough that you can’t hunt them continuously and still weak enough not to give you as much Mana as you’d like.

So you’ll deal with something else entirely. As a (former) dragon, you’ve always wanted to fly, but with the humans running the lab caring for you, you had no need to learn. You push with your soul, straining flesh until--

*CRUNCH*

New bones coalesce out of nothing. Skin creeps out of the holes on your back, coating the new handlike shapes. Muscles and tendons connect underneath. Nerves grow in, giving you sensation in your new limbs. Finally, your magical system extends through your wings, providing the lift that biology never could. You flap once, twice, and you’re aloft.

Flying comes naturally enough to you. You spiral upwards, circling the lab, until you feel yourself straining to gain more height. Then, you unfurl your wings and glide across the island.

Well, you try to get across the island. By the time you’re above the central ridge and the tallest hill, you’re straining to keep yourself in the air. You’re forced to come to a landing and rest your new organs. If you can’t even make it across this island in one go, you don’t like your odds of getting to another one altogether without being a stronger flier. Take the relative distances to the horizon of the edge of this island from the middle versus the neighboring islands, use some of the math the humans taught you… You should be able to make it safely across if you can circle the rim of this island. Which would involve flying more than six times as far as you currently can. Even splitting the cost between <Winged> and <Flight>, that’ll be expensive.

Right. Middle of island, back near the good vantage point. You didn’t see any indication of civilization apart from your lab yesterday. That means those vandals who woke you up either came from some kind of hidden village or had a way to come from another island. And the only place to hide something like that on an island with so little cover would be underground. Which doesn’t really help you, because you have no good way to search underground and you already failed to see any kind of surface entrance or other non-human, non-monster humanoid freaks running around. You still trek the rest of the way up the hill to take another look, eating what monsters you find on the way up and grazing as you go.

Yeah, if there’s anything out here it’s beyond your ability to find it right now. This plan’s a bust. You can’t find the jerks on this island and you can’t yet get to another. There’s still one area you can explore, though.

You launch off the hillside, heading back to the lab. You’re forced land once more before you make it all the way back, but it still shaves off a lot of the travel time. Gives you the chance to rest up for what’s next.

You jump off the edge of the world.

Rock, dirt, stone, boring… Finally, open air. You swoop under the bottom of the island, checking for anything of interest. All you find is confirmation that this definitely isn’t a mesa. Bleah. You didn’t expect to find anything down here, but you were hopeful. Today feels like an almost complete waste of time so far. You fly back up and land on a large, flat area on the lab roof. You can still get plenty more done today, you’re just not sure what the most productive course of action is.

+317 Mana (some killing, some grazing)
+1411 XP (said killing)

If you can boost your derived Flight enough, you can make it to one of the neighboring islands. The XP or Mana cost is on that is prohibitive with just <Winged> and <Flight>, so you’ll need to either farm for weeks or figure out some new traits that can boost your derived Flight or at least your range. Or just meet the minimum requirements for a body that’s good enough at flight to make it across. Brown Raptors aren’t strong enough, but they naturally have <Winged> and <Flight> so they likely can advance into something even better at flying. Or something flight-capable in another family altogether.
It’s still day 4
[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

Secondary vote: While new stuff can still be added to the Bestiary by request, I also want to start adding entries to it regularly. You can vote the name of an existing monster in the Bestiary, in which case a new option for it to advance into will be added. You can describe a monster (with words, please don’t stat new entries), in which case an entry will be added for either that monster or for something that an existing entry can become which can lead towards it (For example, you could vote for ‘Ancient Dragon’, in which case an entry for ‘Very Young Dragon’ would be added off of ‘Wyrmling’). Finally, you can describe the effects of a trait you want to see made available. Again, either a new child node will be added to the existing bestiary for a monster whose body has that trait, or at least something leading towards such a monster
[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Jan 10, 2018

[x] Plan killing machine
-[x] Increase Regeneration @soul to level 5. 1400 XP cost, 1753 remaining.
-[x] Increase Plant @soul to level 5. 1400 XP cost, 353 remaining.
-[x] Check what kind of weapons and armor you can make using the bioprinter

[BESTIARY] Dragon: Heavenly Hatchling

-2800 XP: <Regeneration 1 → 5>, <Plant 1 → 5>

You’ve been an Imp all morning, and your body’s instincts are telling you something. They’re telling you that you really ought to be using equipment. This body can headbutt things ably enough, but it can be so much more damaging with a little artifice. And artificer you may not be, but how hard could it be to make the Biomass Printer output a sharpened slab of metal or a pole with a pointy end?

Harder than you expected, it turns out. Your lab’s computers don’t have premade designs for any weapons or armor, and while you have instinctual knowledge telling you how to use simple gear, you don’t have instinctual visualizations of them like you do for most kinds of monsters. There’s probably some kind of trait to make this easier.

Sword and spear transfer from your mind into blueprints, but the pictures onscreen look, well, lame. Not sharp enough. Kind of off. You try again, using what the screen shows as a visual aid. It’s an improvement, but you think you can do better. And that shaped tin can you imagined a stronger Devil wearing looks like it needs joints. And...

Gained <Bladesmith 1>, <Armourer 1>. Refer to Mechanics post for Mana cost of equipment creation on the Biomass Shaper.

...And you don’t realize how much time has passed until you notice that it’s getting dimmer out. You think you can print off some equipment for a humanoid body plan that’ll be better than just goring things. You’ll need to put a lot more thought into shaping armor for anything non-humanoid, or how to make weaponry fit for anything other than a human’s hand with opposable thumb, but that’s fine for most Devil monsters. Probably a lot of Undead too, come to think of it.

You’re definitely not going to be able to make any of the really cool human weapons, though. You’re not even entirely sure how their non-magical energy beams work, and while you understand the idea of ‘explosion propels slug’, you don’t know how to make that into a viable weapon with the kind of excruciating detail these systems need. Likewise, you know humans had amazing designs for armor, but your limit is ‘physical barrier material cannot be cut because it’s stronger than skin or scale’. Too bad you don’t have any human textbooks on the subject. Or even just premade blueprints to directly print off some of the stuff.

END DAY 4

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Jan 11, 2018

[x] Plan Dragon 2
-[x] Hunt until you have 1150 mp and then transmigrate into dragon wyrmling (keep 150 mp in reserve in case we die and need a replacement body)
-[x] Continue hunting for an additional 1090 mp is acquired (1240 total MP if you consider that we always keep 150 MP in reserve), spend them on:
--[x] 50MP for dragon@body to level 3
--[x] 160MP for dragonbreath@body to level 5
--[x] 160MP for light@body to level 5
--[x] 160MP for dark@body to level 5
--[x] 560MP for fire@body to level 10
-[x] Once all of the above purchases are made, we meet the prerequisites for heavenly hatchling, evolve to Heavenly Hatchling.
-[x] Once evolved to heavenly hatchling, spend XP to buy
--[x] dragonbreath@soul to level 5
--[x] light@soul to level 5
--[x] dark@soul to level 5
--[x] fire@soul to level 10
--[x] dragon@soul to level 14
--[x] dragonflight@soul to level 5
--[x] earth, ice, and air @soul to level 1

[BESTIARY] Beast: Fluffy Fox

Yesterday was not the day to finally be a dragon once more. Today, on the other hand, is. You’ve gotten a lot stronger in a hurry, and you’re going to use that to hunt your way back to the top of the food chain. Maybe even become an even better dragon. You’ll see how much you can kill today.

First up, time to be clever. You don’t have the Mana to burn on actually printing out a weapon, but there is that battleaxe you pulled out of the wall when you were fixing things. It’s serviceable, and if unremarkable compared to the kind of quality you know is possible, it’s at least sharper than any horns, teeth, or claws you can bring to bear right now. Trace amounts of Devilish instinct flow through you as you step outside and give the weapon a practice swing. It’s huge compared to your Imp body, but you have the raw strength to control it anyway.

Deal 352 Dmg * 70 Atk / 15 Def = 1642 Damage.
Horned Bunny is killed with no chance to attack!

Deal 352 Dmg * 70 Atk / 20 Def = 1232 Damage.
Brown Raptor is killed with no chance to attack!

Your vorpal axe goes snicker-snack. Your prey doesn’t stand a chance. Ah, it’s like hunting Floofballs all over again. You eat on the move, munching leaves as you search for prey to slaughter and then promptly do so.

+2230 Mana
+10,970 XP

It takes you all day, but by the time you retire back to your lab you have enough Mana to outgrow your brief home. Ordinary this axe may be, but it was still a vital tool in your ascendancy. Gently, almost reverently, you lean it against a sturdy metal… something. It’s solid, so you’re not sure what’s inside it. Doesn’t look structural. Lab system casing?

Whatever. Time to become better.

Like you have so many times these past few days, you let your soul drift out of your body. With no more ontological force maintaining it, the Imp shell rapidly breaks down. Meanwhilst, the Biomass Shaper is already hard at work solidifying Mana into a glorious shape, clawed and scaled. For all that you can be anything, this is what you truly are.

You are a dragon.

-1000 Mana (Transmigration to Wyrmling)
+10,000 XP (Achievement: Wyrmling Reborn)

But that’s not enough. When you were young, before you first Transmigrated with the help of humans, you thought that the part of you that would outlast your bodies was more important than improving any individual body. You have since come to realize that while that isn’t wrong, it’s a lot easier to improve quickly when you go for the easy prey. A trivial amount of Mana lends your body the understanding it needs to continue growing. More reinforces your lungs, letting you draw forth raw power into devastating blasts. A primal understanding of Fire, hot and destructive infuses your claws, your lungs, your fangs. Following it, Light, dazzling and brilliant. And in antipodal lockstep, gnawing and blinding Dark.

-1080 Mana (Dragon, Dragonbreath, Fire, Light, Dark)

Your body stretches, elongating as it struggles to contain the new and exciting powers with which you’re infusing it. And you let it, until you’re as long as your Imp-self was tall, but so much bulkier. And dense with might.

Finally, a body worthy of your glory. Like this, you could fly all the way to those other islands. You could track down those vandals, assuming they were on one of those islands. See if there’s some kind of civilization out there. Maybe learn their language and start a cult. Find more human artifacts like your lab.

Can’t get too full of yourself, though. You aren’t even one percent of one percent of the way to completing your great task. To living up to what humanity thought you were capable of accomplishing, and begged you to do even if they wouldn’t survive to see it.

Tomorrow. It’s late now, and you’re tired. Tomorrow, you leave the nest that is this island.

-1200 XP <Dragonbreath 0 → 5>
-1620 XP <Dragon 12 → 14>
-1350 XP <Dragonflight 0 → 5>
-3600 XP <Fire 0 → 10>
-1090 XP <Light 0 → 5>
-190 XP <Air 0 → 1>
-218 XP <Ice 0 → 1>
-1234 XP <Dark 0 → 5>
-192 XP <Earth 0 → 1>

END DAY 5

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Jan 12, 2018

[x] Plan peace of mind 2
-[x] Hunt for mana, from now on keep 1000 MP in reserve in case you die. (so all the expenditure plans below should be done once you have their cost +1000 MP).
-[x] Perform experiment: add bug, beast, devil, plant, slime, and undead at level 1 to our dragon body. (using 10MP each). And see if there are any conflicts or issues on the body from doing as such. Don't be inside the lab when doing so. Worse case your body explodes and we print a replacement in the lab. (that is why we saved all that MP). If there are no issues that crop up with this then continue with plan
-[x] Add Herbivore @body and raise to level 20. costs 2100 MP
-[x] Raise herbivore @soul from 1 to 10. costs 4320 XP
-[x] Add Scent Tracker @body and raise to level 10. costs 560 MP
-[x] Scribe Scent Tracker @soul and upgrade to level 10. costs 4950 XP
-[x] Raise bug @body to level 10. costs 540 MP
-[x] Raise bug @soul to level 10. costs 4860 XP
-[x] Spend 1,000 MP setting emergency barricades on the lab to make further intrusion into it difficult.
-[x] Explore beyond our island now that our flight is good enough.
-[x] Hunt in whichever island its more efficient to and gather 10,000 MP to performing what limited repairs and cleanup you can on the lab. (estimated 5 days if hunting on our island)

[BESTIARY] Dragon Elementalist

For all that you want to explore the neighboring islands, you want to avoid being forced into not being a dragon again. It’s not that the experience of being a plethora of different monster families was bad; it’s that you couldn’t go back to being a dragon when you wanted. And those were all baby monsters forms. No Drakeslime or Dragon Cactus or any of those other hybrids you’ve always wanted to try out. You know, just to see what they’re like. Based on your experiences with those families, probably not too fundamentally different from any other monster.

Point is, you’re fine with choosing to not be a dragon. You’re not fine with being prevented from being a dragon. And while you’re the strongest thing on your island, you’re far from the strongest thing in existence. You’re probably going to lose a body in combat sooner or later. You won’t be caught again without the spare Mana to rebuild a dragon body.

+2350 Mana: Lab Island Mana Farming, Day 6
+10,352 XP: Lab Island XP Farming, Day 6
-2100 Mana: <Herbivore 0 → 20>
-4320 XP: <Herbivore 1 → 10>

+2996 Mana: Lab Island Mana Farming, Day 7
+10,503 XP: Lab Island XP Farming, Day 7
-560 Mana: <Scent Tracker 0 → 10>
-4950 XP: <Scent Tracker 0 → 10>
-100 Mana: <Beast 0 → 1>, <Devil 0 → 1>, <Plant 0 → 1>, <Slime 0 → 1>, <Undead 0 → 1>
-560 Mana: <Bug 0 → 10>
-4860 XP: <Bug 1 → 10>
-1000 Mana: Lab Emergency Emergency Barricades

Oh, and while you’re at it, you print some boards off the Biomass Shaper and slap them up over all the windows and over the bottom half of the doorways with missing doors. The entrance gets a little more work: a handle and a a wooden track for a door to slide open. Your handiwork is out of place compared to construction of the rest of the lab, but it’s more than enough to keep out dumb wild monsters while also communicating to anything smarter that someone sapient lives here. At the very least, you hope beings like those vandals would hesitate before breaking into a building that looks inhabited rather than looking like ruins that have been abandoned for centuries.

You’re finally about to fly off to one of the neighboring islands for the first time when you spot something new on your island: A flash of brilliant red slamming into a Horned Bunny and flying off with it. Looks like the local monsters have finally gotten strong enough to unlock newer forms on their own.

Bestiary Updated! Armoredillo and Red Raptor added.

Remaining (un-bolded) plan canceled due to Interesting thing interrupt. Also, if you’re going to visit one of the two neighboring islands (North or East), please specify which one; arrival there will also almost definitely prompt another interrupt if more exploration is listed after it.

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Jan 14, 2018

[x] Plan Sunrise
-[x] Buy @body Armored Level 1. Costs 20MP
-[x] Buy @body Dragonmagic Level 1. Costs 20MP
-[x] Buy @body MP Regeneration Level 1. Costs 20MP
-[x] Buy @body Mage Initiate Level 1. Costs 20MP
-[x] Buy @soul Armored Level 1. Costs 90XP
-[x] Buy @soul Dragonmagic Level 1. Costs 90XP
-[x] Buy @soul MP Regeneration Level 1. Costs 90XP
-[x] Buy @soul Mage Initiate Level 1. Costs 90XP
-[x] Explore the island to the east

[BESTIARY] Sky Dragon Sorcerer
[BESTIARY] {Elemental} Slime

-80 Mana: <Armored 0 → 1>, <Dragonmagic 0 → 1>, <Mage Initiate 0 → 1>, <MP Regeneration 0 → 1>
-360 XP: <Armored 0 → 1>, <Dragonmagic 0 → 1>, <Mage Initiate 0 → 1>, <MP Regeneration 0 → 1>

Enough dawdling. You were going to check out one of the neighboring islands today, and your local monsters hitting a new stage isn’t enough to distract you from it. It’s not like they’re any more of a threat to your draconic splendor.

You kick off the ground, launching yourself sunwards. Up and East, towards the island halfway to the horizon.

…

The sun is is almost straight overhead, and all you’ve been able to think about for a while now is how much of a mistake this was. You aren’t tired, but you’re bored out of your mind. Your destination looks bigger than when you first set out, but it’s been growing in your vision so slowly that it’s hard to see any change. It’s just you and the empty sky. Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh. Nothing to eat, nothing to fight, nothing to do but just keep pushing forward.

…

Finally, you make it across. You blow past the edge of the island, continuing inwards as you scan the ground below you for things of interest. The first thing you see is pink. Pink everywhere. You slow down enough to determine that this part of the island appears to be carpeted in flowers.

Whatever. Not interesting to you. Much more interesting: that palisade. Artifice! Wood, which means it can’t be too old or it would have rotted away! Limited height and no roof, so the native monsters probably aren’t strong flyers! Buildings inside! People!

Wait, no, it’s just more of those weird non-human non-monster humanoids. Eh, they’re clearly sapient, ‘people’ is reasonable enough to refer to them.

You continue on your flyover, deciding to loop back around after you map out the rest of the island. The island is pretty flat, and apart from the space cleared out inside the walls, almost completely covered in those pink flowers. You don’t fly over any other settlements. The island is about as wide across at its widest as your home island, but it’s roughly rectangular, and only about a quarter the size in the other direction. There’s a lot more land cleared inside the palisade than is needed for just housing: farmland, and an empty field in the middle of the village. Water-wise, there’s a large pond or small lake (you’ve never been entirely certain what the difference is between the two) just inside the walls feeding the irrigation system. Most of the people you see are working the fields, but you spy a fair number outside the walls, harvesting flowers or the sparse trees, or protecting the others from monsters.

In total, you’d say there’s something like a thousand people living here. Their technology is piteously primitive compared to what you remember of humanity. No engines, no electricity, no guns. Impressive physical strength on some of them -- you notice one person driving a plow at a light jog. Crystals dot the three-meter fence and the tamped dirt paths with a frequency implying magical lighting.

As for the local monsters, the villagers must keep the population aggressively under control. You spot a Bloody Begonia chewing up a Slime Sapling, only to get a hatchet through it. You haven’t been attacked yet, but the natives may not take your presence so kindly if you get too close.
It’s mid-afternoon Day 8
[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Jan 15, 2018

-[x] Approach someone alone in a non threatening manner and try to talk to them.

[BESTIARY] One-Tail Kitsune

You flumph out of the sky, landing as hard as you can in the flowers. Your dull golden scales stand out against the pink and green below you and blues of the sky above. Even with your small stature, there’s no he can’t see you. You’re right in front of him and only a few dozen meters away.

He legs it, screaming.

“WAIT! I JUST WANT TO KNOW IF YOU SPEAK HUMAN!” You shout after him, to no avail. If he heard and understood you, he wasn’t acting like it.

You patiently hold your position, watching as he flees towards one of the guards. He points at you, waving his other arm emphatically. The guard calls something out. The remaining villagers cluster together, eyeing you in terror. Their attention is on you and only you as they collectively retreat behind the safety of their walls.

On the bright side, they didn’t attack you. But they still may not be aware that you are a thinking being who isn’t about to kill them all. They may think you’re just scared of their numbers.

Fortunately, this is not the first time you’ve made contact with people who don’t understand monster speech. You’ll just play this like you did when you first approached humans. Which actually went a lot like this so far, come to think of it.

You scurry towards the village, but stop almost immediately as you notice something. Your ovine target abandoned his basket when he fled. It’s about half-full of the pink flowers. You take it with you. If you’re helpful, maybe they’ll recognize it.

You approach the wall a goodly distance from the sole gate. The wall is too tall for them to attack you over it, and you’re going to need a little time to finish writing stuff in case they try chasing you off. You do, in fact, share one language with these weirdos. Not monster speech, not the Human tongue, but math. One claw extended, you carefully inscribe a right triangle into one of the wall’s logs. Three dots by the shortest side, four dots on the middle one, five on the hypotenuse. Even without a different set of symbols, they should be able to count.

But you’re not finished yet. You move a few logs over. You inscribe a square, then a diamond inside. On the next log from that, another square the same size, but subdivided internally with a pair of perpendicular lines into four rectangles, then two of those rectangles divided with a diagonal into two pairs of triangles.

Shoot, you’re running out of time. There’s a whole bunch of them coming out the gate, armed haphazardly. The longspear, sword, and hatchet won’t pose you much of a threat if you just stay high, but pair of bowman could pose a threat. They nock, and you retreat obligingly, leaving the flower basket at the site of your diagrams.

They creep forward, putting you back in range. You fly a little higher, a little further back. Again, and then they pull back towards the village.

No, no, this won’t do! They need to understand! You glide back towards them, and they obligingly center their aim on you.

This dance repeats itself for the next hour before you finally give up on it for the night. They refuse to pull far enough out to see your attempt at communication.

You curl up to sleep in the flower fields, well away from town. You may actually be small enough for them to miss you at this distance.

…END DAY 8

The problem with yesterday’s plan was that they refused to look. Well, you can make them look. You can fly, and they have no roof on their fortifications. You grab yourself a nice, thick slice of tree and get carving. Then, just in case, you redraw everything on the reverse side as well.

Bombs away! Heh, look at them run. You float lazily over your drop site: the non-farmland field in the middle of the town. A crowd slowly gathers, peeking out of doors and windows at your terrifying presence overhead and the present you left behind. Eventually, the hatchet guard cautiously approaches your triangle carvings, the bowmen covering him. He stands over it for a few minutes. Then he rolls it out of the field, leaving it at the corner of one the farm sites. The village guards watch you, and the flower gatherers don’t leave the village, but the adults are working their farms again by midday.

Ugh, what else can you do? They’re still acting like you’re a threat. Oh wait, the basket. You left that by your original math carvings. They never did take it back. You don’t need to point that out anymore, so might as well deliver it by claw.

You leave the basket just outside the gate. No need to take it inside, where you might get shot. Even if it doesn’t hurt, they’ll probably think less positively of you once they’ve loosed an attack.

They’re a lot more fearful than your humans were. This is much slower going, and you still haven’t managed to get any one-on-one time with any of them. You’ve done all you can think of to at least demonstrate that you’re not unthinking. Other than just spending enough time around them that they get used to your presence and stop fearing you, you aren’t sure what else to do. And at a bare minimum, that could take days.
AFTERNOON DAY 9
[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Jan 17, 2018

[X] Plan Benevolent Distance fixed
-[X] Spend a couple hours clearing out monsters around the village since they've been busy holing up in terror
-[X] Explore the island north of the lab

[BESTIARY] Devil: Esh

At this point, your only remaining idea to show the villagers that you’re friendly is to help them out by killing some monsters. It probably won’t help, and they’ll probably think you’re just doing it for yourself, but it’s not like you have anything better to do. Apart from these people, this island is devoid of interesting things, and it’s too late to fly to another island today.
END DAY 9
+1851 Mana
+4034 XP

Your flight Northwest to the other island you haven’t explored is even longer and more uneventful than the one to Pink Flower Island. And then you get close to your destination.

Your first indication that something’s different is when you’re still an hour out from the island. There’s a metallic grey blob that looks increasingly like a wall as you get closer and your vision sharpens up. Then you get within a few kilometers and hear an almighty BOOM from dead ahead. A black dot arcs towards you.

Wait, is that a cannonball? That’s a cannonball!

You fall into a panicked forward dive. There’s another explosion behind you, and your back is peppered in shrapnel. There’s no turning back for you, though. After flying all day, you’re too exhausted to make it back to Lab Island. You’re either landing up ahead or losing this body trying. And you’d rather not burn the Mana if you can avoid it.

You continue diving, aiming to get below the line of fire. Another BOOM resounds from forwards and above, but you don’t feel the sting of flak on your serpentine body. The gunner must not be pull in his aim fast enough. You hear another two shots before you reach the shadow of the flying island.

You fly on, rock above you and death below. You trace the perimeter of the island until you’re all but completely exhausted. Then, it’s out and up, hugging the clifflike rim and hoping there’s nothing up top. When hit topside, you dash for cover. Fortunately, it’s plentiful. You came up to a coniferous forest. You slither up a tree, coiling around the trunk halfway up. You relax as you aren’t attacked, either by people or monsters, and slowly fall asleep.

You’re not sure how threatening those cannons are, but after Pink Flower Island you didn’t expect to encounter them at all. The metal city that fired on you is about a Lab Island radius-length away, and this place looks bigger than Lab Island, though you can’t tell how much so without a little exploration, and you’re just too tired to take that flight right now. You’ll need to discover what the local monster population is like too. As soon as you wake up…

END DAY 10

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Jan 23, 2018

[x] Ignore the local people, while hunting monsters until you have 12,000 Mana.
-[x] Transmigrate into Floofball (150 MP)
-[x] Upgrade Beast @soul to level 5
-[x] Evolve into Fluffy Fox
-[x] Upgrade Mage Initiate @soul to level 10
-[x] Evolve into One-Tail Kitsune
-[x] Learn new trait Illusionist @soul
-[x] Spend 10,000 Mana fixing up the lab as best as you can

[BESTIARY] Two-Tail Kitsune

Come morning, you’re tempted to just take what you want. You’re well-rested now. You want to get revenge and learn the language of the vandals. You’re a freaking dragon. Why not just capture one of them and force them to teach you?

Because that’s dumb, that’s why. You don’t know enough about this island to do so safely, but you do know they have the infrastructure and training to field anti-air cannons. Primitive ones compared to what humans could do, sure, but if you do decide that your pride is worth giving up on trying for peaceful relations? You have another island worth of targets that don’t have that kind of infrastructure. And you’d still rather not go to war with these people, anyway.

It’s not like you can’t understand where they were coming from. Most monsters are mindlessly violent, and you didn’t have a chance to show these people the triangles and squares. They didn’t attack a person they didn’t recognize; they attacked the incoming freaking dragon.

Well, if they’re going to judge based on appearances, you can just change how you look by transmigrating into something humanoid. Wait, no. You don’t have the flight capability to make it out here in any of the humanoid forms you know yet, and you need the equipment in the lab to transmigrate. You’re not sure if anything off the Raptor line goes humanoid, and humanoid dragons tend to be pretty strong and expensive. You could train up your ability to fly more permanently, so you could make the trip in any form, but that would take at least a few days of farming for XP.

Another option occurs to you: fake it. You can become a Kitsune and figure out how to make magical illusions. Of course, that still runs into the same transmigration and transportation issues. You rumble in frustration.

No matter what you do, you need a better picture of this island and more XP and Mana. You’ll deal with that first. Things involving non-sapients are so much simpler. Maybe the local monster population will be strong enough to be able to afford proper repairs for your lab! That would be nice.

And so you hunt. Were you any less mighty, the Butterfly Kings and Purple Papillons here might give you pause. But you’re cautious enough to keep taking them by surprise, and a single blast of flaming Dragonbreath is enough to instantly cook both kinds of bug.

Deal (1564 Dmg + 107 Fire) * 178 Atk / 110 Def = 2703 Damage.
Instakill. Safe to farm.

Deal (1564 Dmg + 107 Fire) * 178 Atk / 160 Def = 1858 Damage.
234 Fire is required for instakill. Within Max MP expenditure. Spending 127 MP for the fight, which fully recovers in under 10 minutes at an MP regeneration rate of 2 even without active rest. Safe to farm.

This lets you focus on getting the lay of the land. You’d already figured out that this island was bigger than Lab Island, but you hadn’t realized how much so. And the shape is weird, too. The main body of the island is round, and at least three times as long across as Lab Island. But there’s a giant hole in the middle, and at the Northwest edge of island, a pair of spurs jut off, one to the North and one to the West.

You stay well away from towns, but that turns out to be harder than expected. Not only is there the metal fortress that shot at you on the island’s Southeast edge, but there’s a population center on each of the Northeast peninsulae, and another on the Eastern border of the hole. In the new day’s light, you’re also able to spot a pair of additional islands.

Sky Atlas updated

The island’s misty evergreen forests hold one more surprise for you when you come in for a landing and get attacked by the trees.

Receive (500 Dmg + 300 Fire) * 150 Atk / 210 Def - 8 DR - 70 Fire Resist = 493 Damage.
Deal (1564 Dmg + 107 Fire) * 178 Atk / 400 Def - 50 DR - 60 Fire Resist = 633 Damage.
At max fire damage (still slightly more than using Light or Dark, even with his resist):
Deal (1564 Dmg + 490 Fire) * 178 Atk / 400 Def - 50 DR - 60 Fire Resist = 804 Damage.
Battle of attrition won. Unsafe to farm, but not a solo threat.

After you limp away from that fight the victor, you’re a lot more cautious. The monster trees blend in with the surrounding forest, but your nose knows the difference.

+11728 mana
+155250 xp

END DAY 11

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Jan 26, 2018

[x] Plan infiltrate
-[x] Transmigrate into Floofball (150 MP)
-[x] Upgrade Beast @soul to level 5
-[x] Evolve into Fluffy Fox
-[x] Upgrade Mage Initiate @soul to level 10
-[x] Evolve into One-Tail Kitsune
-[x] Learn new trait Illusionist @soul
-[x] Spend 10,000 Mana fixing up the lab as best as you can
-[x] From now on keep 2000 mana in reserve.
-[x] Add wings, flight, and dragonflight to body. upgrade each of them to level 15
-[x] Upgrade wings, flight, and dragonflight on soul to level 20 each
-[x] Design clothes and a weapon based on those you have seen the vandals wearing for your new kitsune body.
-[x] Upgrade illusion @ soul to level 10
-[x] Fly over to pink flower island, using your animal-humanoid form to blend in alongside your illusion skills if needed. Speaking in the language of humans from your time and try to get along enough to learn their language. Also try to learn how they travel between different islands, history, etc.

[BESTIARY] Three-Tail Kitsune

-(1400+5190+128=6718) XP <Beast 1 → 5>, <Mage Initiate 1 → 10>, <Illusionist 0 → 1>
-150 MP Transmigrated to Floofball

You’re covered in fur today. There’s no point investigating this island’s civilization when they’re going to attack you on sight, and between the length of the flight back home and the fact you’re planning on transmigrating to learn new traits anyway, there’s no reason not to just abandon your glorious dragon body for the quick respawn.

So you’re briefly a Floofball, before your limbs grow out and your tail reappears and your nose grows more sensitive. You memorize your body’s instinctive insights into the ebb and flow of the power within and around you. You stand, knees reversing as you do and paws flatten into feet and hands. Your tail elongates further, growing ever fluffier as you lose the rest of your fur to your new humanoid shape.

And something’s wrong. There’s an unfamiliar scent in the air. Something has been in your lab. Recently. You see no fresh damage, but by the smell of it something spent the night here, fleeing when the Biomass Shaper started operating.

You race out of your lab, slamming the sliding door open as you chase after the scent trail. It goes behind a bush, doubles back, up that tree, back down to the ground, then… up the lab’s outer wall and onto the roof?

You leap up, channeling your draconic nature into what would be flight if it covered more than just a few meters vertically. And there you find your intruder. Ears flat to its head, tail swinging back and forth violently, the Fluffy Fox yips at you.

“My spot! I thought of using the dragon’s lair first!”
Still morning Day 11
[ ] [SQUATTER] What to do about the Fluffy Fox?

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)
-[X] Continue Plan Infiltrate (DEFAULT)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Jan 27, 2018

“Rent,” you announce. “If you want to stay in my lab, pay for the privilege.”

“Mine!” The Fluffy Fox repeats. “I'm not giving it up! You can't stay here too or the dragon might notice.”

“I am the dragon!” You roar.

The fox sniffs. “No you aren't. You don't smell like it.”

This is going nowhere. You could explain how you can transmigrate and show off a dragon body, but frankly, why bother? “Believe what you want. I'm fixing my lab. If you manage to get in without a key afterward, I won't be so forgiving.”

You drop back down from the roof. You've got work to do.

-10,000 Mana

The place looks a lot nicer with carbon fullerene doors matching the walls. You also ran a few gallons of patching gel off the Biomass Shaper. Slap some in the gouges on the walls and floors, squeegee off the extra, stick some of the sticky paper over it to keep it in, and wait. At some point the fox came in to watch. You pretend not to notice it while you work.

Finally, you're done. You've peeled off all the patch covers, verified that the locks work with the new doors, and generally admired the smooth, utilitarian look of your repaired home. Fido’s remains get swept into a corner of the room with the Biomass Shaper for now. You're not ready to give up on fixing your guard robot yet.

So it's time to get back to your squatter problem.

“Rent, leave, or die,” you tender your ultimatum.

The Fluffy Fox grumbles, but ultimately submits. “What's rent?”

“Pray. I want a full sacrifice of HP any day I'm around to receive it. When I'm not around, you're responsible for anything that gets damaged. And even if you can find a way though the locked doors, you stay out of those three rooms,” you indicate the sealed pathways to the Mana tanks, your hibernation tube, and the Biomass Shaper.

“That's it?”

“You guard my stuff and pay me tribute, you can hide in my halls.”

“Fine,” it agrees.

You wait, staring expectantly at your new tenant.

“Oh!” The fox realizes. It concentrates, and you can feel a tiny fraction of its soul pass to you.

+0 Mana (1% of 1000 HP @ 1% transfer efficiency)

Eh, even if it's less than a single point right now, it'll be more if you improve <Cultivore> and if your boarder gets stronger.

“Good,” you accept the rent. “I'll be right back with your key.”

You grab one of the spare card keys and set it for visitor access, double checking that doesn't include your facilities. Moments later, you come back out of the room with your tube and the computer.

“Here's how the key works,” you demonstrate, handing it over afterwards. “Lights and locks don't work at night right now. In or out, the place seals when it's dark. Any questions?”

The fox shakes its head.

“I'll be heading out tomorrow. If you need anything before then, feel free to bring it up.” You head back into the hibernate room, letting the door seal behind you. Hopefully this won't end up biting you in the tail.

END DAY 12

siflux · Jan 30, 2018

[x] Plan infiltrate
-[x] Transmigrate into Floofball (150 MP)
-[x] Upgrade Beast @soul to level 5
-[x] Evolve into Fluffy Fox
-[x] Upgrade Mage Initiate @soul to level 10
-[x] Evolve into One-Tail Kitsune
-[x] Learn new trait Illusionist @soul
-[x] Spend 10,000 Mana fixing up the lab as best as you can
-[x] From now on keep 2000 mana in reserve.
-[x] Add wings, flight, and dragonflight to body. upgrade each of them to level 15
-[x] Upgrade wings, flight, and dragonflight on soul to level 20 each
-[x] Design clothes and a weapon based on those you have seen the vandals wearing for your new kitsune body.
-[x] Upgrade illusion @ soul to level 10
-[x] Fly over to pink flower island, using your animal-humanoid form to blend in alongside your illusion skills if needed. Speaking in the language of humans from your time and try to get along enough to learn their language. Also try to learn how they travel between different islands, history, etc.

-3600 Mana: <Winged 0 → 15>, <Flight 0 → 15>, <Dragonflight 0 → 15>
-(19802+19802+19005=58609) XP: <Winged 3 → 20>, <Flight 3 → 20>, <Dragonflight 5 → 20>

“Morning,” you announce, stumbling out from the hibernation lab into the foyer.

There's no response, but there is a scent trail leading to the now-functional front airlock. You must have just missed your tenant. You proceed to the printer room, grabbing your axe en route for disguise purposes. You're not really sure how to make clothing that looks good, so you just run off a set of minimalist armor in cloth. Good enough, you guess.

-10 Mana (1DR ‘clothing’ armor)

You cycle the interior door, walking blindly into a room full of panicking fur.

“Don't let it close we're going to be trapped forever noooooo,” the fox scrabbles at the rapidly sealing door behind you.

You watch in bemusement as the younger monster gives up, staring at you with tear-streaked eyes. “What are we going to do now?” It asks despairingly.

“You are going to cover rent. Then I am going to teach you what an airlock is,” you tell it.

It immediately bows its head in supplication. The same insignificantly thin stream of Mana from yesterday flows between you.

+0 Mana (1% of 1000 HP @ 1% transfer efficiency)

“An airlock is a chamber used to allow travel between two environments without letting one interact with the other. Now that it works again, only one door will open at a time, and both doors need to be closed for a bit before either will open. Try opening one of the doors now.”

The Fluffy Fox pulls the keycard you gave it out of somewhere in its fluff and holds it up to the outer door, which obligingly slides open. The two of you step outside, and the door closes again behind you.

“...Huh,” the fox comments. It turns back to the door, experimentally reopening it. “Thanks.”

You unfurl your wings and kick off the ground. “Get stronger. I want to get more Mana out of you,” you call dismissively, skimming forward on the prowl for a quick snack before your long flight.

(351 Damage + 351 Fire) * (125 Atk + 87 Flight) / 100 Def = 1488 Damage
400 Damage * 50 Atk / 76 Def = 263 Damage
2HKO; spending MP beyond base recovery rate not helpful. Roughly 5 minutes (no resting) to recover HP cost of fight. Safe to farm.

(351 Damage + 351 Fire) * (125 Atk + 7 Flight) / 59 Def = 1570 Damage
OHKO. Safe to farm.

+2311 Mana (Two Hours Hunting)
+50322 XP (Two Hours Hunting)
-5208 XP: <Illusionist 1 → 10>

You miss the power of your dragon body, but you can still handle even the recently improved monster life safely. Being able to slam down in a dive, flaming axehead first, counts for a lot. You could win a battle of attrition, but your aerobatics keep your fights fast so you can stay on the prowl instead of having to rest and recover like your first few days out. After two hours, you’re forced to head out if you want to make it across tonight. It’s time for a long, boring day…

EVENING DAY 13

siflux · Jan 30, 2018

[x] Plan infiltrate
-[x] Transmigrate into Floofball (150 MP)
-[x] Upgrade Beast @soul to level 5
-[x] Evolve into Fluffy Fox
-[x] Upgrade Mage Initiate @soul to level 10
-[x] Evolve into One-Tail Kitsune
-[x] Learn new trait Illusionist @soul
-[x] Spend 10,000 Mana fixing up the lab as best as you can
-[x] From now on keep 2000 mana in reserve.
-[x] Add wings, flight, and dragonflight to body. upgrade each of them to level 15
-[x] Upgrade wings, flight, and dragonflight on soul to level 20 each
-[x] Design clothes and a weapon based on those you have seen the vandals wearing for your new kitsune body.
-[x] Upgrade illusion @ soul to level 10
-[x] Fly over to pink flower island, using your animal-humanoid form to blend in alongside your illusion skills if needed. Speaking in the language of humans from your time and try to get along enough to learn their language. Also try to learn how they travel between different islands, history, etc.

You land on the island with the pink flowers late in the afternoon. You don’t have long before sunset, and while you don’t know of anything on the island that’s a serious threat to you, you’d prefer not to risk having to go bodiless for the night if something does go horribly wrong. It’s not like they shot cannons at you here.

You walk through the chest-high flowers towards the village, axe slung lazily across your shoulder. It takes you a good ten minutes to come across the gatherers, putting you in sight of the village walls. You wave your free hand as you continue your approach. The humanoid waves back, takes in your weapon and strange garb, and then more or less ignores you. At least he isn’t panicking this time.

Finally, you’re within a few meters of the worker. Comfortable speaking range. “Hello. Can you understand anything I’m saying?” You try.

He responds with something you don’t understand. Given the context, it’s probably something like ‘I can’t understand you’ or ‘can you repeat that’.

“I’m speaking Human. It would be really useful if you understood that.”

He doesn’t, apparently. Or at the very least, he doesn’t speak Human, and can’t convey any useful information to you. Unsurprising, unfortunately. You stick around as he wraps up the day’s labor and follow him back to the village.

“Can any of you understand me?” You try again as he meets up with the other elements of the gathering and monster slaying villagers. “I don’t yet know your language.”

No, apparently, but they’re not turning you away or treating you like a ravening terror-beast, so that’s progress at least. Racists. Humanoid body plan monsters can be just as non-sapient as those of any other shape.

One of the villagers puts a hand on your arm. He’s big; both wide and tall, and much of it muscle. You think he was on overwatch out in the field. He’s not attacking, though, so you let him get away with it. He motions towards the center of the village, letting go of you and leading onwards in that direction. You stay in his wake as he proceeds to a two-story wooden building near the middle of town, just outside the big empty field. There, he hands you off to another villager, who sits behind a wooden bar. A pair of long tables take up most of the floor, each surrounded with benches, plus there’s a few tall chairs in front of the bar. You guide ditches you, leaving you with the new villager.

“I don’t suppose you speak Human,” you try once more.

He says something back to you. Clearly not.

You pass a few mutually unintelligible sentences back and forth. Then he pulls out a metal disc from behind the counter. You examine it to find a head inscribed into it, and some kind of runes on the reverse. Oh, a coin! He must want payment of some sort. You don’t exactly have anything like that. You secure your battleaxe to the side of your waist, freeing up both hands, which you place in front of you, palms up. You’d turn out your pockets too if you had any. You can fix that next time you make clothing, you guess.

The important thing is that you possess little of material wealth right now. You didn’t think it would be important, since you don’t need to buy food or drink. You drop your hands back to your side, tapping your axe a few times to indicate it. You can kill things. That’s what you’re good at.

He points out the door. You look in that direction, but don’t see anything. He pushes, gently enough not to force anything, but forceful enough to clearly indicate that he wants you to move. Obligingly, you leave. You’re here to make friends, so it’s better not to force your way around for now.

You launch yourself skyward, landing on the sloped roof. Folding your hands behind your head, you people-watch as the sun sets. A handful of men and women enter the establishment below you. You do your best to listen in, but with no visual cues it’s tough to pick out any meaning. Any exposure helps, though. Eventually, the people leave. You close your eyes, falling asleep unnoticed.

+3 Language (3/1000, Level 0)

END DAY 13FOR REAL THIS TIME

[ ] Plan?
-[X] Stick around, keep learning the language (DEFAULT)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Feb 2, 2018

[X] Stick around, keep learning the language (DEFAULT)

You’re woken by the morning bustle of life in the village around you. People are already hard at work with subsistence farming. Probably with gathering flowers too, but you can’t see through walls to confirm it. You slide off the roof, casually landing on your feet, and look for someone to talk to.

Your first thought is one of the farmers. The gatherers will be too busy worrying about monster attacks to give you the focus you need. You wander up to someone planting seeds.

“Hello. Please talk at me,” you tell him.

He says something back. Success! You don’t know what it means, but you’ve opened a dialogue!

“I come from the West,” you point towards your island.

He points in the same direction as you and says something else. Hopefully there were some useful words there.

Something tugs at your culet. You turn around to see someone even smaller than you. The kid says something, pulling at your arm this time. Well, they’re a dedicated conversation partner. Why not?

+73 Language (2d100 = 47, 26) (76/1000, Level 0)
END DAY 14

The kid finds you again the next morning. After a lot of pointing and repeating, you’re almost able to understand maybe one word in ten.

“You. Place,” you struggle out in the native tongue. Well, you think. You don’t have a good enough grasp on the language to confirm whether you’ve got the words right.

“There. Sky,” you catch out of his excited speech. He eagerly climbs a house wall from the outside, using his prehensile tail to keep stable as he scrambles up.

You watch from below until he makes it to the roof before making your own way up in a single <Dragonflight>-enhanced leap. From up here, you can see off the edge of the island, though still not much past the walls looking inland.

Your companion points at a dark dot, jabbering animatedly and waving his limbs at it.

“What ‘airship’” You dumbly do your best to ask for the definition of a new word.

+75 Language (1d100 = 75) (151/1000, Level 1)

Airship. Some total madman has apparently decided the best way to get around between islands is flying boats. And this is normal enough that there’s a word for it and children know that word. There is a brig sailing slowly in your direction, leaving you at a loss for how they’re generating enough lift to avoid falling out of the sky. A pair of long runners along the bottom explain how they expect to land at least, but do these people have no concept of aerodynamics? This is not an efficient way to fly! Not to mention how the design leaves them completely helpless to attacks from below.

You fume at the nonsensical choices as the skyboat grows ever closer, eventually dropping vertically into a landing in the cleared space in the middle of the village.

And that’s when you get your first glimpse of the occupants. Bat wings. Curved horns. A leonine mane. You have business with those people…
MIDDAY DAY 15
ADVENTURER INTERRUPT! REVENGE TIME?

[ ] Plan?

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Feb 6, 2018

[X] Plan Making friends
-[X] see if you can learn anything about/from your new "friends."
-[X] see if we can get anything from them on how the airship works. its better than flying with our own wings everywhere.
-[X] Considering all that potentially happened during our sleep its better to see what is what before we get our "Vengeance!".
-[X] Be ready to book it in case speaking human causes a lethal reaction from "adventurers".

...But your business can wait. Regardless of what you ultimately do to these people, the villagers are receiving them in a friendly manner, and you don’t want to annoy your hosts. At least, not until you’ve mastered the language. And just because these jerks with the flying boat killed Fido and hacked up your lab doesn’t mean you have to take violent revenge. It just means that they owe you.

It’s hard to follow a full-speed conversation, but you catch a number of words you can translate: ‘Dragon’, ‘log’, ‘sky’, ‘basket’. An wrinkly, grey-haired man with mouselike round ears leads the visitors away from the boat. You follow at a distance, your simian friend running ahead to stay next to the excitement.

Oh hey, that’s your right triangle proof! You don’t need it anymore, since people are willing to talk to you now. You could tell them you made it, but that doesn’t seem helpful. People fled from and attacked your awesome dragon-body on sight. Also, ‘could’ may not be accurate. You’re still not particularly fluent. Unless they speak Human. You should check.

“Can any of you understand me?” You call out in Human from behind the group.

They turn to face you. “Aaah!” The bat-winged one points at you and shouts. “{Untranslated} axe!” Oh, she’s pointing at the weapon at your waist, not at you.

“No. Me axe,” you grind out in your awful, broken speech.

“{Untranslated} it {untranslated}!” She demands.

Great, you understood none of that except the pronoun. “Me axe,” you insist, leaving it holstered. If someone’s gonna smash up your place with a weapon and then leave it behind, it’s now yours.

You fold forward at the stomach around something solid, knocking the air out of your lungs. It’s a good thing you don’t need to breathe to do anything other than talk or you’d be stunned, rather than just surprised by the torso full of ballistic bat-person you just took. She moves fast. You roll off her to the side, twisting forward through the air around her on the power of your <Dragonflight>. You go up. She spins, following your movement, then jumps up after you, her wings snapping open to catch the air. Looks like those aren’t just for show.

Fast as she is, she doesn’t have your aerial mobility or speed, even with your wings still tucked inside your cloth armor. You dive under her rising body, jetting for the town buildings. You need to block her line of sight on you for long enough to get her to give up on the chase.

She catches on quickly, but that isn’t enough. You spin around the side of a house, coming to a dead halt. You twist your magic around yourself in a pattern you only recently learned, altering your face, height, and build with <Illusionist>. You even mask the axe inside the borders of your illusory larger body.

The bat-person flies around the corner, looking around for you wildly. You casually saunter by, seen but unnoticed.

Well, talking seems to have been a bust for now. Guess you’ll check out the stupid flying boat next. While everyone’s distracted, you walk back to the maddening craft and up the gangplank. Fortunately, the doors aren’t locked, so you’re able to slip under the deck without issue. There, you drop your disguise. You couldn’t have maintained it much longer anyway. The MP cost was really getting to you.

Okay, so you’re looking for a source of lift, and lots of it. The sails can provide thrust, but the boat isn’t anywhere close to aerodynamic enough for that to translate into not falling out of the sky like it would for an airplane. You didn’t see anything external on the way in, and there isn’t enough room here for a big bag of gas to make this a lighter-than-air craft, so it’s probably magical in nature. That means probably some kind of crystal. Like that thumb-sized one there. Or the crystals a decimeter along the underdeck in either direction from it. Or all the other ones here.

You pinch your fingers around one of the crystals and pull. There’s a slight tug back, lessening quickly, as it cleanly comes out of a recessed socket. You channel a few MP into it and immediately feel an upward pull from it. You drop the expenditure and place it back in the wall, the tugging force reseating it in its socket as if you’d never taken it.

That explains how they get lift. The only problem is that there’s got to be thousands of these things throughout the boat. How can they possibly afford the MP cost?

You glance out the porthole to check on the people from the boat. Looks like they’re heading back now. This is your chance to escape unseen, assuming you want to. You still want to learn how they’re getting the MP to stay aloft. You could let yourself be caught learning immediately, or just be a stowaway until they next leave the ship.
STILL MIDDAY DAY 15
[ ] Plan?

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

siflux · Feb 8, 2018

[X] leave the ship
-[X] if they leave cling to the underside of the ship
-[X] See if you can find out how they have the MP to run the ship.

[BESTIARY] Drake Slime

You’d rather not get chased around by the bat-person again. You can out-fly her, but that initial tackle still showed her as stronger than you’d want to fight, and that’s without her using a weapon. Not to mention how the other two are probably about as strong. No, it’s better to stay subtle for now. You’re interested in seeing where they go and what they do next, and in learning more about their stupid, stupid flying boat, but in the meantime it’s better not to be locked down with waiting and hiding.

You slip over the far side of the ship, using its bulk to hide you from the returning travelers. You can’t afford to disguise yourself again right now, but you don’t need to if you’re not noticed in the first place. For now, you try to listen in once the three get back on the boat.

“…Here…”

“…Northwest…”

This conversation would be a lot easier to follow if you knew more words.

“…Wood…”

The talking stops. Footsteps sound from the gangplank. The talking starts again, but with one of the voices gone.

“…Axe…”

“…Replacement…”

“…That…”

The talking stops again. You hear the clomp of feet on wood, but nobody else leaves the boat.

A few minutes later, whoever left returns. Faintly at first, then quickly louder, the crackling of a fire comes from the back of the ship. Then, the ship starts to rise. You grab on to the side, using your <Dragonflight> to push up and into the ship for an easier ride. The improbable flying machine accelerates slowly, turning to the Northwest as it slips out into open sky.

You crawl along the side of the ship until it blocks more of the wind. Unfortunately, you can’t hear anything over the roar of air whooshing by.

---

On the bright side, nobody shoots at you as your ride approaches the island. You throw up an illusion to make yourself look like part of the boat as you head back over land, where you might be spotted clinging like a limpet to the stern of the ship.

Past the metal wall, what you see shocks you. Not the houses, larger and more densely packed than on Pink Flower Island. Not the bustling streets, with a mix of hand-drawn and self-powered carts. No, what surprises you is the picturesque and completely out-of-place tower in the middle of a paved field, itself and the buildings at its base clearly made out of the same palette of materials as your lab.

The flying sailboat lands at the ancient human airport.

END DAY 15

[ ] Plan?

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

Log in or Sign up

Legacy of the Forgotten Ground (Original)

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

Log in or Sign up

Useful Searches

Legacy of the Forgotten Ground (Original)

Most recent threadmarks:

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

siflux Lurker

Most recent threadmarks: