In the history of humankind, war has been a constant. Over resources, land or ideology, warfare has been the front at which humanity found itself time and time again. When dozens of atomic bombs peppered the United States of America in atomic hellfire more than 200 years ago, the world as it once was ended. Society and order ceased to exist, and anarchy reigned supreme. Some sheltered in Vaults, spared the worst of the suffering deep underground… or exposed to an entirely unprecedented form of it. In the ashes of the old world, a new one was born. The fledglings of humanity survived and forged a new world with brutal, unforgiving rules.
Raiding. Murder. Theft. Destruction. But also, hope. Hope that things could return to how they once were, or move in a new direction entirely, casting off the shackles of folly that led America to ruin. But with hope came fear and conflict, discontent and brutality. Every step taken was taken with bloody footprints. Because war… war never changes.
==============================
It’s no secret to anybody that the landscape of America changed dramatically after the Great War. New creatures emerged from the irradiated wastes, the land shifted and became filled with new plant life twisted and bent into strange shapes. Even the ground itself was altered in many places. In one such case, the Outer Banks of North Carolina became the shattered, flooded Broken Banks. Flotsam and wreckage littered amidst drenched islands and raft-masses, while the mainland’s coast was filled with all manner of blasted boardwalks, trading posts and shantytowns. The further south a soul travels, the more flooded the land becomes. South Carolina is a mired, messy swamp patrolled only by the grandest of mirelurks and the most savage of tribes, while the untamed wilds of Florida boast drenchghoul cults and radgators of truly epic proportions. All in all, a severely inhospitable section of the wasteland.
The snow continues to fall, but less and less as the weeks go by. The icy waters of the Great Lake slowly thaws as spring's getting closer. It's still ways away and your tribe's running out of food though. In the snowy tundra a small group of hunters slowly moves tracking a herd of raindeer. The strong wind bites at your face as you grip your stone tipped spear, trying to ignore your sweaty palms. You have to bring meat to the tribe or die together.
What's your age, gender and name?
Who are your people?
>Long-men Long Men are Homo sapiens sapiens, meaning they belong to our human species, in a slightly more archaic version that is usually referred to as Cro Magnon. They are from the Aurignacian culture and their craftsmanship is refined. Their stone, bone, and skin craft shows a great level of precision. They live in semi-nomadic settlements, in large, elaborate and comfortable huts that protect them from the harsh conditions of the ice age.These humans are robust and tall: 1m80 (men) and 1m65 (women). Most of the men and women of this people have come to live in the Tribe lands from the far lands of the rising sun, beyond the Icy Mountains, which is why their complexion usually goes from tanned to dark, their hair is black, and their eyes brown, black, or dark blue. These humans usually live in clans of 20 to 40 individuals.
Key Strengths of the Long Men: Choose either Hand of the Ancestors or Speed of the Horse.
>Bear-men Bear Men are Homo sapiens neandertalensis, also called Neanderthal Men. The Long Men of the ice age world sometimes call them Trolls. These humans are very robust. Their bones are thick and they possess a great physical strength due to muscle joints that sometimes differ from ours. They are small, the average male size being roughly 1m65, the average female 1m55. They have unusual facial features: powerful jaws with no chin, a long and wide nose, and a supraorbital torus forming an impressive brow ridge above the eyes. Built to whistand the cold climate of the Tribe Lands, these men and women have an exceptional resistance to the harsh conditions.
Key Strengths of the Bear-men: Choose either Strength of the Bear or Heart of Ice.
Lastly choose two additional Strenght's: > Hand of the Ancestors > Majesty of the Aurochs > Secret of the Bear > Strength of the Bear > Knowledge of the Beaver > Might of the Bison > Song of the Blackbird > Flight of the Crow > Rise of the Eagle > Breath of the Giant Stag > Speed of the Horse > Agility of the Ibex > Heart of Ice > Fury of the Lion > Reflexes of the Lynx > Softness of the Otter > Sight of the Owl > Wisdom of the Mammoth > Eye of the Panther > Magic of the Rhinoceros > Inspiration of the Rocks > Flame of the Salamander > Fins of the Salmon > Grace of the Swan > Venom of the Viper > Protection of the Vixen > Cunning of the Weasel > Nose of the Wolf
You are Booba Fett. You don't know anything at all about where the name came from, someone just called you that once and it stuck. You live in a post apocaliptic wasteland. The nukes went off and history finally ended.
You live in a Pueblo called San Björn. There is radioactive desert in all directions. Forty people live there, most of them Redskins.
The people there share what they get and are used to doing long fasts. Maybe that's why they survived this long. They built a wall with scraps and car parts, and the settlement been holding.
The village has a well, but it isn't very deep. It works more as a water storage than a water source. There is an old abandoned well ten miles to the north, deep enough to draw brackish water from. The village has a bunch of solar stills, and people often go to the abandoned well with bikewagons and jerrycans to fetch the saltwater. Could we dig a deep enough well? Maybe. But so far it proved elusive and too labor intensive to attempt. Should we move to the other site with the well? Well, genius, this was proposed many times, but the point is the damn place is built on top of rock. Nothing grows there.
What takes us to our little garden. We plant some stuff, mainly squash. It looks weird, and tastes weirder, but is good enough to feed us.
For meat, we have a pigsty. Our pigs are slightly mutated due to all the radiation, but no one complains.
Most people in the village have some kind of mutation. In your case, you just got a bunch of extra toes, abnormaly large breasts and a fucked up face. You wear a helmet you found to hide the radiation damage in your head.
Radiation also gave you a small boon:
> Fast Reflexes. You can react faster than regular humans. It is almost catlike. > Regeneration. Your flesh regrows at an astounding rate - provided you eat enough protein. Can even regrow lost limbs, but it won't fix your fucked up face. If you're not well fed, you can't regenerate at all. > Psychic Burst. You can subvocalize a screech that gives instant headache to everyone who can hear it. They can't actually hear it. May cause internal bleeding in their heads. Occasionally lethal. People consider you a witch. > Write in
You are Charlotte Fawkins, Herald and heroine. With the power of your positive spirit, you have overcome deceit, defeat, and divine possession, and now you are going to save the world. First, though, you need to relocate to Earl's place, lest Lucky track you down and arrest you.
Rallying Earl and Gil is easy. Rallying a sleepy, cranky Claudia is harder: on your first attempt, she flips over and shoves her face into the settee, and you have to get Gil to coax her out. Why does she listen to Gil and not you? "She knows me," Gil mumbles, and it might help that he didn't violently absorb her. Even though he might've, if he were God and not you. It's harder than it sounds.
Earl pats you on the shoulder and says he'll wake up Branwen, who emerges, hair frizzled, and grunts when you say you have to go. "Suit yerself."
Gil clears his throat. "Er, i-it was really nice of you to let us stay here, and, uh—"
"Yeah, yeah. Jes' doing the sound thing to do. Won't tell them Courters shit, given I can help it. Fawkins."
"Huh?" She's looking straight at you.
"Don't git killed out there."
"Oh! I won't! Don't worry!" Not before you're God, anyhow. It just wouldn't work. "...Um, thanks, too. I meant to say that before he did. Thanks."
"Mm-hm. Git moving." She jerks her head toward the door. "Seeya around, Toothless."
"Hey, thanks! Seeya, Morris!"
Earl herds you, Claudia, and Gil out into the early morning darkness. Feeling sluggish, you exit last. It would be easy to blame on the odd hour, your lack of sleep, but as Earl counsels the three of you on nighttime safety measures (eyes <span class="mu-i">forward!</span> stay <span class="mu-i">together!</span> mind on the <span class="mu-i">destination!</span>), the feeling doesn't lift. When you get moving, it gets worse. Something about you is slow. Something about you is <span class="mu-i">heavy.</span>
«Your mass has increased.»
What? No it hasn't. (You prod surreptitiously around your waist.) Yeah! You're not any bigger. Did you bite your lip in your sleep? Maybe you're half-paralyzed? Could Richard please purge your blood of any—
«I said nothing about size. Your physical size is the same.»
'For now,' he'll say ominously. You're onto him.
«Yes. For now.» «But right now, you take up the same amount of space you always have. It's just that there's... more of you in it. You are experiencing difficulty moving that increased mass, which is only natural. You are now more strongly rooted to the ground.»
Where the Wyrm is.
«Yes.» «I take it that last night was a success.»
Yes. Something like that. Could he...?
«Anything for you, Charlie.»
>[-2 ID: 13/15]
You shiver as Richard's whatever-it-is crackles up your spine— does he use special equipment for this too? It really isn't magyck? He sits at his snake desk and pushes a snake button and some machine is able to...
Timeless and terrible, they shaped the void with thought and gave it order through song. Where their voices harmonized, land rose from the deep. Where their wills diverged, seas churned and the stars cracked. And when they had made a world fit for beauty and pain alike, they wove beings from golden light and named them the High Men.
These radiant children were not like the lesser beasts. They were given form eternal, bodies immune to time, and minds sharp as the storm’s edge. For thousands of years, the High Men built cities of living marble and floating stone, where music never ceased and sorrow was but a word in ancient texts. They learned to speak to fire and command the tides, and they dwelt close to the gods, basking in divine favor.
But nothing perfect lasts.
No one remembers precisely what shattered the age of glory. Some say the gods quarreled and turned their faces from the world. Others claim a great wrong was done by one of the High Men—a theft, or a murder, or a forbidden love. Whatever the truth, the Cataclysm came. Mountains split. Rivers turned to acid. The sky wept ash for a hundred years. And immortality cracked like fragile glass.
The High Men died in droves. Their shining cities fell into the sea or were swallowed by the earth. Some of the survivors pleaded with the gods for mercy. None answered. In desperation, a few turned elsewhere—to older powers, darker names carved into the bones of the world. They drank blood. They swore oaths. They became Vampires, no longer truly alive, but no longer dying. They fed on others’ lifeforce to survive, trading sunlight for eternity.
A cure was eventually discovered. It burned the curse from their veins—but not without cost. Those who took it became known as the Primeval, their skin forever marked with a bluish hue, their hunger undiminished, though no longer for blood. Their bodies healed fast, sometimes too fast. They were changed, and their children were born changed too. Neither god nor man would claim them. So they claimed nothing—and no one.
In the thousand years since, the world has shifted again. The High Men, though fewer and mortal now, have rebuilt some of their ancient halls. The Vampires brood in hidden places, fractured into cults and courts. The Primeval wander or form enclaves where the wild grows thick. And outside these crumbling legacies, the world keeps birthing the strange.
The Barbarians of the far west, unmarked by old glories, have come raiding, wielding iron and prophecy. The Aberrations, born of warped magic and cataclysmic exposure, slither in the forgotten reaches of the world—each one a living riddle. And the Witches, those rare few who have found power not from gods or curses, but from within—walk the line between reverence and exile, their fingers stained with the threads of fate.
Things were about to get really dicey. You had to act with utmost caution. What you were about to do was extremely risky, failure meant death but success...success meant so much more. Capturing a covenant ship intact, this early in the war, would be an immense victory for humanity's war effort and understanding of her genocidal foes. You laid out the framework of a plan, to ensure the safety of your squad as you attempted to reason with the kind of AI employed by a society of genocidal zealots
"Proceed with setting the Charges, rendezvous with the rest of the squad at the provided NAV-Marker. Shouldn't be any resistance left in your way" You say, putting on the airs of a confident and assured officer commanding something so easy it might as well be shore leave "We've secured a way out of here, hurry to evac location and salvage whatever enemy equipment you can carry, and prepare for extraction"
You snap your fingers and motion towards Vinh and Shika, feeling better and more positive about your incredibly risky plan by the second.
"Shika, Vinh, sweep the bridge, take those rifles and anything that looks valuable or important, along with our prisoner. Grab any weapon you can from our previous engagements, and make sure Wick's gets home. Hold the escape pod and keep it warm for John and Co's arrival" You order as you approach the largest and most important looking console screen on the covenant vessel's bridge "I'm going to do something that's either going to win me a promotion or earn me the Butt Chewing of a lifetime"
"What are you doing?" Vinh asked, as nervous as a Spartan could be, watching the three minute timer tick down in the corner of her HUD
"Sven stuff" Shika answered with a shrug "Just go along with it"
"Seeing if the AI on board is more polite than its crew" You answer, and crease your brow as you realize immediately you have no way of contacting it through the bridge's terminal. You and no other human has any idea how to make a Covenant Computer interface work.
But there is a universal language, that you're confident the artificial intelligence or intelligences would understand and notice. Binary. The Covenant's computing systems might not be constructed from ones and zeroes, but any software should understand a message delivered in that format. Cont
Jail Quest: a text adventure occasionally illustrated.
A night of drinking and a failed attempt to cheat on cards had landed you the strangest job slash community service sentence you've ever had: ensuring Gongalla Gaol survives the reality storm called Singularity.
Now you travel around with your employer and a handpicked crew to survey the four Reality Anchors. Hey, beats being tarred and feathered, right?
You are Rosa Montagni, once again on the road towards the north of North. After that successful raid on the Singularity cultist cave, you've returned back to Pinewatch to tie up loose ends - one of which involves a bit of child actor kidnapping. Hey, he's affiliated with the cultists anyways, luring kids into the hands of the cultists. The other loose end is the 'sleeper' cultists still in town - but you captured them with the assistance of the burlesque theatre girls, whom you worked together to set a trap in a play they've always wanted. Cultists apprehended and delivered to the guildhall, Jed Stuart gives you the reward you seek - directions towards the North's reality anchor. Jed's info is way more detailed than Hammy's vague directions - and so you once again charter Lightning Ling's autowagon services. Which brings you to your current situation...
"There is a post on about a giveaway of games, but in order to participate, you need to solve a code. The code is always 5 characters long, and you need to enter it into a field that will take you to the next game. The first code is located on the site that you’re redirected to when you click on the list of games. Help me find all the codes." https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/ZhZFE/11th-factory-day-community-puzzle-for-clair-obscure-lvl-1-5-ends-2706
<span class="mu-i">"I took my first breaths long before there was rain."</span> -Unknown source, possibly an Astropath attached to the <span class="mu-i">Xi-40 Explorator Fleet</span>
This shouldn't be working. It's impossible for it to be working.
You possess an amount of Strain equal to your Conditioning score. When attempting actions beyond your current capacity, you gain a point of Strain. Attempting to Strain while at maximum Strain will result in a Strain Check. During a Strain Check, roll 1d10 for every point of the relevant Parameter. Results that are 6 or above count as one success. Results of 10 count as two successes. Three successes must be rolled to avert a critical failure. Fail or pass, after a Strain Check, you cannot Strain again until you restore your Strain by seeking shelter.
<span class="mu-s">This quest allows you to designate a second-choice vote on decisions with three or more options before Write-Ins.</span> When votes are totaled, the option with the least votes for it will be removed, with votes for that option instead being changed to the second-choice of those voters. Second-choice votes are also used to break ties. This helps increase the accuracy of votes, but is not mandatory. Please specifically mark your second-choice as such if you do so.
Vote stay open for a minimum of six hours, but will usually take longer.
A note: My writing style is pretty dry, but don't mistake that for it being serious.
