Land of Crypts and Frogs (Ron) [Sburb Beta 0.1.2.]

Unbridled Originality

Unbridled Originality

Stole your Sweetroll
Spring peepers. Spring peepers and crickets. The sound of them is almost deafening. It sounds like you're in a goddamned bayou glee club, for fuck's sake. The smell of mold and standing water pervades everything, and you can see water start to seep in through the door that the deer broke. NATURE!


Kalelsprite hovers nearby, looking bad-ass as usual. Man, you can't get over what a super-awesome idea it was to prototype Supes. Everyone else is gonna be pretty jelly, you think.


Something is watching you, out in the swamp. You brain subconsciously adds the banjo riff from "



"
 
LM: Hey!


LM: Did you make it in on time?


LM: Be careful, you're going to have to fight some minions with the powers of what everybody prototyped, though depending on what you prototyped, your sprite might help you.


LM: Speaking of sprites, I finally found mine. He's so adorable. I'm naming him Lenny.
 
A swamp.


Uh.


Interesting? You guess? You're way, way more worried about the death-monsters waiting for you. No time like the present, you suppose, might as well get this over with.


You grab a towel from the nearby bathroom and plug up the leak, then equip your hockey stick and stop short of the front door. Leaning against the frame dramatically, you give a complicated series of Navy Seals-esque hand signals to Superman, then kick out the door and leap forward, ready for a fight.
 
> Ron: Aggri-WHOOPS


You leap forward...and into open air, having a few Wiley E. Coyote-esque moments of air-running hangtime before gravity takes over. You splash into deep, stagnant water, and when you manage to fight your way back to the surface and regard your surroundings, treading water, a lilypad adorns your head. A small frog, frightened by its suddenly elevated vantage point, croaks and leaps into the water with a splash, spraying swamp water into your mouth and eyes.


The water stretches as far as you can see, though you can make out what might be the shadow of land on the far horizon, through the mists.


Your body levitates out of the water and is placed safely back on dry land, courtesy of Kalelsprite's telekinetic powers. You don't remember him having that particular power, which is pretty weird, since he's had just about every other one at some point during his run.
 
> Ione: Respond to messages

SS: [^o'] Sorry about earlier. Hope you're okay.
 
Fucking fantastic, you got the swamp level. You dry off, but will probably still stink of stagnant water for a while. Well, that was a great idea. Maybe it would be best to take things a little slower.


CS: yeah, i'm alright.


CS: got a little wet out here in the bayou but whatever, i can take it


CS: frogs and shit as far as the eye can see, my house is


CS: wait, hold on


A thought strikes you: if the swamp is mostly water, and the nearest land's not for miles, then what the hell is the house on top of? You lay on your belly, leaning over the doorstep to look beneath the house.
 
An enormous pair of eyes atop a pointed beak regard you passively. From your vantage point, you can just make out the edge of a huge, spiny shell.
 
You hoist yourself up and sit leaning against the doorframe.


Huh.


So that's...


Yeah.


CS: are there supposed to be, like, npcs in this game?


CS: not everything's a poison hydra monster ready to murder us all, right?


CS: cuz i got a turtle the size of my car chillin under my house.


CS: so


CS: uh


CS: please advise?
 
SS: [^o'] Not sure if anyone else has made it out their house yet.


SS: [^o'] I don't think anyone prototyped a turtle, so it could be an NPC? Careful, some turtles can bite.


SS: [^o'] Also, the monsters aren't poisonous. They have eye beams now though.
 
CS: eyebeams.


CS: wow.


CS: that's


CS: that's great.


CS: i think i'm going to talk to the turtle instead if you don't mind


CS: hopefully don't get my head blown off of my shoulders by laser vision.


CS: neck stump doesn't go too well with the popped collar, know what i mean?


CS: brb i guess


With plenty of trepidation, you again lean your head below the doorstep, still-damp hair dangling perilously back towards the water. You put on your best winning smile, which you hope doesn't look too forced with confusion and fear.


so.


uh.


turtle.


bro.


turtlebro.


my man.


what is up, here in, uh, the swamp.


you doin good?


[dice]647[/dice]
 
The ground shakes under you, and it takes a moment to realize that this sensation is, in fact, the turtle rising. Brackish swamp water pours out every door of your house, and after a moment or so, only the damp is left behind as the turtle fully surfaces. He cranes his neck, regarding you as best as he can with one baleful eye, then speaks.


"Go away."


Some reception.
 
Alright, cool, cool. You can handle this. You can handle giant talking turtles. This is, like, video games 101 here. Your level has grouchy animal NPCs, that's a thing, they can probably sell you items and shit later on in little shops. You got this.


First, though? Land.


It takes a little bit of searching, but you grab that mahi-mahi you bought a few days ago out of your fridge and your roommate's fishing pole. A little bit of duct tape later, and you dangle the hooked raw fish out the door by the fishing line, pointing in the direction of that tiny island you saw earlier. Oh yeah, you are going to Flintstones this shit all the way to glory.
 
The turtle looks at you, then at the fish. Back to you, and back to the fish. Finally, it heaves an enormous sigh, its whole body shaking and setting your house aquiver. "I will eat this," it says, "but I am VERY offended by it. You could have just OFFERED me the food, you know."


With that, it sets off towards the shadow that you saw on the horizon, grumbling about rudeness.


You successfully enslaved a sentient animal to your whims! Your Grist Cache fills with 15 ONYX GRIST and 15 BUILD GRIST, though with your social skills, who's gonna need THAT shit?


You also climb to the next rung of your ECHELADDER, eschewing the lowly BRODIN in favor of becoming the SINGER OF THE BROHEMIAN RHAPBRODY.
 
LH: So it occurs to me that I may have made a big oversight.


LH: It um...it kinda never came up before, but now that I have a moment to collapse before sleeping...I realized something.


LH: I have no idea what your name is.


LH: I guess...um. Anyway.


LH: Wanted to ask. Mine's Iris, by the way.


LH: Oh...and the imps and stuff are apparently sapient. And I think they're able to be reasoned with. So...yeah.
 
CS: hey iris


CS: ron here


CS: yeah, i found out about the npcs.


CS: currently milking this one like a chump as we speak, which is totally fuckin off the hook


CS: you guys have been, like


CS: WAY overreacting about these things, though.


CS: fucking cakewalk, is what i'm saying.


CS: still, better start getting ready for when i hit land


CS: unless it's, like, turtles everywhere, in which case i am set for life.


This is kind of nice, actually. No more heinous fire from the sky bullshit anymore, at least. In the downtime, you survey your situation.


You've got food for a couple of days, which is good, but you're completely out of booze, which is terrible. First order of business is to find some pseudo-Louisiana hicks in this swamp and see if they're brewing up moonshine, which might not even exist, because what the fuck even is the ESRB rating on this piece of shit? E for Everyone my ass, unless that E is for "Everyone You Know Is Murderered". For Everyone. You feel me? Holla. Your inventory is full of miscellaneous valuables, which you collected when you thought that you couldn't bring it with you. Given that your entire house came along for the ride, maybe you should start putting it back. You've got your weaponized hockey stick, ready to bodycheck some motherfuckers into the plexiglass, along with your completely swag slotted shades and a pair of vintage Air Jordans (90's kids forever, dawg). You've got your remaining non-ruined comics stash, various cracked and broken pieces of furniture, your laptop, your phone, and a possibly ruined flatscreen TV.


...But is that all you have? Your roomies probably have- uh, had a ton of shit in their rooms. Still, maybe you ought to wait more than 20 minutes before looting the possessions of the dead. That probably sounds like a karmically-sound strategy. Man, you have had a long day. Gettin' tired already, too. You hope your little NPC destination will have an Inn or something to fullheal in. Is that a thing? You hope that's a thing.
 
After a few hours of travel, the turtle makes landfall at a hump of ground dotted by sparse trees. A small stream trickles into the huge body of water that you just left, and scrub brush is everywhere. You take a step onto this brave new world, only to sink to your knees in a bog. Awesome. You scramble onto dry land, and take in the rest of your surroundings. Beyond the stream lies a cluster of huts, built on stilts above the swamp. All around, rocks carved in a familiar, somewhat ominous shape jut from the terrain at irregular angles, and stone buildings half-sunken into the marsh stand like sentinels against the ravages of time. The sound of frogs, which had almost become background noise by this point, intensifies.


It takes a moment to realize why those shapes are so familiar. They're headstones, and the buildings are mausoleums. You are standing in a giant graveyard.


LoCaF.png



A gnat flies into your open mouth, and tries to hurl itself down your throat.
 
Oh man.


Oh shit, man.


Damn, you were joking about the Louisiana thing, but just-


Yeah.


Uh,


so,


no little npc shopkeepers, then?


You turn around back to the giant house-turtle.


so is everybody dead, or something?
 
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The turtle gives you a half-annoyed, half-pitying look that one would normally reserve for a small, stupid animal chewing through an electrical cord. He heaves another sigh, your house shaking on his back.


"No. The crypts have always been here. They predate all of us. Now, I'm going to take a nap, but I really suggest asking any and all of your further questions in the village over there. They have much more patience for inanity than I do."


Apparently worn out by the longest sentence he had yet uttered, he settles down in the mud of the shoreline and begins to snore almost immediately.
 
'inanity'?


hey, man, if i knew what that meant, would i be offended?


ah, hell, he's asleep.


i'll be mad just in case.


asshole.


Wiping the bog mud as best you can off of your pants, you double check your inventory and set off further into the island, making sure not to step on anything too dead or ancient or sacred on the way. Village, villages are good. Hopefully not full of assholes.
 
LH: What? You mean no one's tried to kill one another and/or you yet?


LH: Weird. You didn't leave CoD in your machine did you?


LH: It's not secretly giving you the Easy difficulty mode is it?


LH: I'm apparently on Cathedral Planet.


LH: Where everything and everyone is trying to kill everything and everyone else.


LH: So basically I'm in Dark Souls, but slightly nicer. So far. LH: Don't suppose you've fallen asleep since you got in game?


LH: I was sent to this purple planet or black chessmen.


LH: And apparently I'm supposed to be the go-between for these Cthulhoid quasi-deific figures. Who apparently want to help us...but also a favor.


LH: And there were these big stone slabs in the middle of the purple planet. One was brown and bloody, another was black with a white swirl on it, the other was a couple of different shades of teal with this like curvy starburst thing on it.
 
CS: oh man


CS: prophecy dreams, really?


CS: this is going to be that kind of rpg?


CS: i don't truck with that jrpg anime bullshit.


CS: cathedrals sound cool, though.


CS: i've got some sort of swamp-planet, lots of gravestones and shit


CS: turtles with attitude


CS: and not the cool ninja kind either i don't think.


CS: i'm heading towards, let's call it civilization


CS: although by everything so far it'll either be hicks or crazy cultists.


CS: so i got that to look forward to.


CS: oh, one sec.


You switch over to pestering Tim for a moment.
 
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LH: Um...I don't think they were prophecy dreams.


LH: Just a chat with some Cthulhoid monsters on this big purple moon. Had a name that was an anagram for deers. Reeds? Derse? Something like that.


LH: I...I think Jasper might've been there too.


LH: He'd been telling me about a similar dream some time before I went to sleep.


LH: I doubt the dream was prophetic. I did kind of promise to bring the not-Lovecraftian Horrors into a new universe we're supposedly going to make


LH: Not entirely sure whether that's a game-thing, a weird dream-logic thing, or just actually what's going to happen. But if you run into Cthulhoid creatures...play nice. They're supposed to be helping us.
 
Upon entering what could generously be referred to as the village square, you are immediately aware that you are being watched. You wheel around to see a small pink face peering over a bit of underbrush. Realizing that it's been spotted, it immediately pops back down below the bushes where you can't see it.
 
LH: But whatever you do, don't trust them.


LH: At least, not until I figure out what our best option in this Fraampt vs Kaathe conflict they just set up for me between them and my Stheno, my Denizen.


LH: Because I don't know why they'd want us to succeed, but they seem to want to.


LH: Yet they're telling me my in-game mythology is trying to deceive me.


LH: So...yeah.


LM: Oh...enjoy your new duds and say hi to the turtles for me.


LM: Found this stained glass of you (process of elimination says it's you) in my cute little skinks' cathedral:


tumblr_maeh0pM3IG1ry98zwo1_400.png



LM: Hope you can pull off the short pantaloon-shorts, Ron. Because you're apparently gonna be rockin' 'em.


LM: Also, I think we might be these little dudes' gods. Just...throwing that out there.
 
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LM: Um...and sorry in advance if I make the game unwinnable.


LM: Not my goal.


LM: But it's sorta been implied that's on the table if I go with my instincts.
 
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