PHASE I [ 9 00 ] You open your eyes, and there is a chicken pecking at your face. It's not a very happy chicken, either, but if you can manage to fend it off, then it will be clear that you are in a village. It is... medieval-esque, in that video game sort of way; the details don’t seem too clear, but if you look to your left, there’s a cow! And to your right, a well! Ignore the clear evidence of modern technology in the buildings such as lights, gas, and 21st century plumbing; CERES is dedicated to authenticity.
Looks like the new ViViD level has finally been released, and everyone is invited to play, whether they want to or not.
The game (because this time, that's surely what it is) will start simple. Everyone begins in the same place and every NPC villager will say the same thing: to get out of here, you have to go through the caves. They’ll shove a stick at you (“take this, it’s dangerous to go alone”) and off you go, into the caves… !
Which are full of tiny rats and more chickens. They will try to fight you, but it’s really not very effective when they’re perfectly small and average (especially when everyone still has their typical powers and abilities -- CERES didn't mess with those at all this time). The caves are winding and circular and maze-like, and to make matters even worse, the only ones around are the other poor saps stuck in this situation.
But if you kill enough of the rats, you’ll get to hear the satisfying level up jingle. Congratulations! You are now level 2. It's probably satisfying just for a minute or so until you finally find your way out of those maze like caves and -- You're back in the village again. Great.
PHASE II [ 930 ] You’re carrying a bag. No matter what you do, you can’t take it off, either; it’s stuck with you through thick and thin. But it is awfully heavy. Maybe you should actually open it and see what’s inside?
The problem is, it’s going to take a while.
The bag has clearly tapped into its true hammerspace nature; there are items for days in there, and they’re all very, very strange. You might end up covered in hats of all sorts, buried in logs as you pull out one after another, or look like you have an odd fetish for pickaxes.
Maybe there’s 1/3rd of an evil turnip, half a piece of pie and an egg.
Geez, what in the world are you supposed to do with all of that?
PHASE III [ 1200 ] Eventually, you make it out of the caves the right way despite the harassment of the rats and chickens and the fact you'll keep perpetually getting lost. Hooray! You come out into a large, peaceful, scenic meadow, with a small river bubbling off to one side, and a house.
You'll immediately notice that there’s a bridge to cross the river, but there’s someone standing in the way of that bridge. When you approach to go past him, no matter what you try to do, you won't be able to. Asking him why he won't move will only get one thing in response -- “Bring me a fish. Cooked.”
Then he’ll shove a fishing rod at you and expect you to get to it. You can’t attack him, you can’t get past him -- looks like the only thing to do is to catch and cook that fish. Time to sit back, relax, and get to work. Or maybe you’ll team up with someone else and be the person in the house making sure that the fish gets cooked properly. For some reason, if you leave it too long it turns right into a pile of ashes.
Weirdly though, no matter how good you are at cooking or fishing usually, it’s as if you’re right back at the metaphorical level one. Any sort of seasoning or effort to cook it faster falls flat and in the end you'll only be able to place the fish in the pan and set it on the stove, whole. This may take awhile.
And if you try to cross the river itself, well... no, really, don’t try to cross the river.
At least if you get eaten, you’ll just respawn back in the village, but do have fun traveling through the caves again!
PHASE IV [ 1430 ] You made it through the caves. You made it across the river (with a slightly burnt fish). You’ve made it to the wide open world, and you can finally adventure to your heart’s content. You take a step forward on the road and --
A message pops up, bright red and in your face.
[ Restricted Area: Members Only ]
No matter what you do, you can’t go past that point. In fact, if you’re not careful and you’re going too fast, you might run face-first into it like it’s an invisible wall (which it is).
Then, just like that, you're back in the village. Again. Only this time, there's a nice, blinking message -- Pay a small subscription fee to access member's content. Oh well. No big deal, you can just start again.
Except then you see a cool sword and when you try to pick it up, you'll get that same message, and end up transported back to the village yet again. And again, with some shiny new armor. And again, with that attention-grabbing NPC over there. Looks like you're caught in an infinite loop here but no matter how much you inspect the pop up, there's no... actual way to pay the subscription fee (and why would you want to?). But at least you have company, because you can't be the only person who thought that sword was cool.
(It was really, really cool.)
BONUS [ xxxx ] What’s that on the ground in front of you? It looks like… some bunny ears? Or maybe it’s a chicken head, or a pumpkin head. Either way, the moment you touch it, you have a strong need to put it on your head -- and once it’s on, it’s not coming off.
To make matters worse, each hat has an effect associated with it; the bunny ears will, in fact, randomly turn you into a cute fluffy bunny for anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour before you pop right back to yourself, whereas the pumpkin hat will, in a complete reversal, turn you into Cinderella for a bit -- complete with beautiful ball gown and the ability to talk to all of those cute fluffy bunnies.
Also the rats will love you, so maybe you should go back to the caves again.
Meanwhile, the chicken hat won't transform you into any odd creature, but it will inspire in the people wearing them a very real, persistent desire to build a nest. This will involve picking up twigs, trash, shiny things and whatever else catches your eye to try to build a nest out of it. You'll also try to pick up whatever food you find on the ground to eat, have the weirdest desire to lay an egg, and basically have all sorts of odd chicken-like instincts inflicted upon you.
At least you look festive!
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III - nope I can't resist
[ Not unless he wants to find out what it's like for fish to have human breath. Not that Flashpoint wants to know what either is like; she's had a close enough encounter with fish/robot variety thank you very much!
She's hunkered down against the rear of the little house, balefully staring at the river like it's a thing of great offense. Which it fraggin' is! Especially judging but the gouges and scrapes across her plating and the gradual seep of glowy pink energon from where the damage reaches deepest. She's even missing half her spoiler!
Yeah, Flashpoint looks a little like she's clawed her way out of a shark's mouth, a shark big enough to try and swallow a 17 ft robot. But she is not, however, sulking! Just for the record. The hunch of those spaulders and the surly expression is just her thinking face. Probably not happy thoughts. ]
Unless you wanna experience uncomfortable amounts of role reversal.
[ UNCOMFORTABLE AMOUNTS. ]
no subject
I'm marking this down as one of the top ten things I didn't actually expect to find in a fantasy game.
[He has to say that flippantly. Otherwise, he might reveal how startled he was by her.]
So you tried to go swimming? [He looks back over his shoulder at the water, which looks completely calm.] And you made a new friend. Figures.
[Tony moves toward Flashpoint, taking damage readings (even though it's questionable what good that will do) and folds his arms.]
At least you survived.
BTW is Tony in his suit?
[Fantasy genre: not really her jam. Stealth ops though? Totally! Especially when nursing a battered ego after getting owned by a giant fish. She's not about to let some other poor sod make the same mistake though.]
It's deeper than it looks. And friendlier. If by friendly you count swallowing whole as some aquatic version aggressively of affectionate hugs.
[Her own dry commentary has to hide the fact that yeah: she didn't come out unscathed. Flashpoint probably has her size and melee skills to thank for that. Her heavy armor took the brunt of it in most places, certainly uncomfortable and gnarly to look at, but the internals are still safe enough. Except that gash in her mid-section, where there's more articulation and the armor is not as dense. Bright energon--clearly an energy source--seeps down her side and the area is warm, nanite auto-repair active as it tries to seal the fuel lines. Hers has always been glitchy though; her altmode for a welding torch and some patch tape.]
Heh. Should see the other guy. He's way uglier now.
[Okay. So she poked him in the eye and ran, shut up!]
Yup, he is! Sorry about being slow.
You look like you could use some help.
[He seems to decide that as he says it, noticing that the repair job isn't going quite as well as it could. Call it his engineer instincts, but she must have been sitting there for a few minutes at least. The progress should be further along.]
So swimming isn't an option. At least, not without a fight. Maybe we can fight our way past.
[That would count as an alternate route, right? Tony thinks it should.]
No worries, happens to us all!
[ The vivid designers are disturbingly accurate as far as anatomy goes; Flashpoint is pretty sure she doesn't want to think about the full implications of that. Or maybe it's her own expectations generating a lot of this, and the implications of that she likes even less. Get out of her head, weirdos!
She does her own cursory assessment of the newcomer, a sensor sweep quickly ruling out other mechanical life forms. Humanoids in suits aren't unusual in her experience, just, none this flashy. Not that she disapproves! Kicking ass in style? Feels damn nice, no lie. ]
I could handle it... [Except she's not, which someone should really get on her case about. Flashpoint shifts, glancing at the wound, covering a wince. The small pool of energon on the ground isn't an alarming size but it's certainly inconvenient and uncomfortable.] Just be easier if I had my kit. You...think you can do somethin' about this?
[ She's peering at you warily, humanperson with a deco Rodimus would approve of. She's met both the good and bad version of humans, with a good and BAD interest in robots. ]
no subject
[He's far too ready to try this rule-breaking thing. To be fair, Tony has never been into the whole survival and camping thing, so he would try to approach the challenge from the tech side.
The readings she gets from him are probably interesting. A man in a powered suit, yeah, but also one that has something more going on in his physiology. Re-writing his body to accept technical code and make him a strange cross between human and machine tends to make normal humans uncomfortable, but she's a big robot, right? No problem.]
I know I can.
[Better watch that arrogance, Stark. But he justifies it as being honest. He's Tony Stark and writing self-repair code is practically second nature to him at this point. He taps the big robot arm with his gauntlet-covered finger lightly, grinning to himself. She can probably hear it when he talks.]
Do you trust me?