Alright, so I decided to split this update into a smaller part so we can get some debate going and it isn't just everyone waiting for me to get you the details.
For reference
Deep in a Koopa fortress walk two koopas. One is signifigantly more muscular that the other, who is being led by a steel chain around his hands by the first. The second, smaller one is deep in thought as he is being led to the fort's bookkeeper and the royal stock room.
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'Wow, my own fort. Well, is it really going to be my own? Or am I just going to act as a political figure head or something? Still, political immunity and the ability to ask for a mastercraft jewel spiked steel shell whenever I want is pretty cool, but I think I'd prefer to be the one designing the living spaces and eventual magma moat. I should probably ask this guy, I don't remember his name, but I'm sure it will be fine because he can't remember anyone's name.'
Mottled Petrel turns to the head brute beside him, whose scowl deepens as he senses the imminent pestering for details. Instead of letting him pick away for the duration of the walk the head brute decides to just tell Mottled Petrel what he had been told by the king. "Tomorrow, or the next day depending on how long this takes, you're shipping out to a nice glade somewhere in the waxy jungles. Your mission is to survive long enough to convince the surrounding empires that we control the whole strech of land between the Trussed Horns and The Ocean of Prisons. We'll handle all the diplomacy and play it up like we've got more sites being founded there. Once we've deemed that the show has effectively stopped most enemy movement through this crucial pass we'll send over some some people who actually know what they're doing and take the place off your hands. If things go well and there's a good amount of your people still alive, we'll let you found another fort and maybe even a port on the coast of The Ocean of Prisons to further support our claim on the area. After that, we'll let you retire with a reasonable healthcare plan and a small pension for service to the king. To make sure you aren't mauled by coyotes or something, we're going to be sending you out with some proper gear, and some animals. At the moment, our store rooms are kinda filled with junk and our ranches are full of animals too stupid to be put to work, so really you can just take what you want. Not stuff of actual value though, that's reserved for the follow up team that will take your place. Please, don't ask me any questions."
Silence for all but two seconds. "I have oooonnne." A sigh is heard that could easily have swept away a desert with its strength "you get one, make it count." 'Don't ask for a glass of water. Don't ask for a glass of water. Don't ask for a glass of water.' "Can I have a gla- er... Who am I going to be sent out with?" "Eh, I don't remember, they were all equally untalented vagabonds who didn't want to learn how to do anything productive. There are six of them, one of them was a... ZN7 or 8... an... enigma poster, or something. If you hadn't noticed yet, I can't really do names. Except when I'm taking the names of my fallen enemies, even then I can't even remotely remember any of them. That's why I have my second in command keep a written list for me. I've got my most recent copy right here."
The head brute reaches into his first shell pocket to pull out the described list. He pulls out a hand that looks like it would be holding said list if her actually had it in his pocket. Expecting to see a look of awe from Mottled Petrel he looks at his hand when he is met with a look of confusion. "Well fuck. Guess I'll have to get him to make me another one. Maybe this time I'll get him to write in red ink on a parchment soaked in the blood of my latest enemy!" Silence for another five seconds. "I don't think you'd be able to read it if-" "Shut up, it sounded cool before I said it." Thankfully, the two reach the royal store room before Mottled Petrel questions the subject more than would be safe.
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Ahhh, the royal store room, so marked by the statue outside the entrance. A giant platinum statue of a koopa lording over a pile of collected stuff, sorta like a dragon defending its pile of gold, except with more lightning being spit. Once the two were close enough to see through the porthole in the door it was pretty obvious that the statue's meaning was more literal than metaphorical.
The royal store room was a literal mound of belongings in a giant vaulted room. What made the resemblance even stronger to the dragon sleeping on his pile of wealth were the tens of koopa guards climbing around in all the stuff heaped into piles. This was because in order to maximize usage of space no places were left for walkways, that, and there was a rumor going around that there was an entire kobold den living inside the pile. This could very well be true, for there were things constantly being lost from their 'assigned piles'. But most likely it was the complete lack of organization and utter disregard for the use of bins.
As the head brute opened the door the edge of the pile that was leaning against the door fell out into the hallway. Most other forts in the world would have been appalled by such a breach of security, but to a koopa it felt just like home. The koopas resigned to hauling around and 'reorganizing' the fort's goods were among the happiest haulers on the continent. A lot of koopas would spend their leisure time rolling around in their own personal items, or the goods in the public store rooms. In the end, it was probably this desire to get assigned to hauling that led to the high peasant rate that got the fort into its current unemployment problem in the first place. Ironically, a few such peasants hoping to become haulers fell out into the hallway along with the pile of goods.
"HEY! What are you three doing rolling around in here. You're supposed to be in the meeting hall getting ready to ship out to Modded Hell. Well, while you're here you might as well meet your expedition leader and help him pick out the supplies. I already forgot your names, so you four go through the rounds, I'll swimming through the main pile with the bookkeeper until you're ready. Clean this mess up before you leave." With that the head brute leaped head long into the room, not realizing that the latest pile reorganization had moved the knife pile right in front of the door. Luckily the shell took most of the damage, and being a shell of steel not much damage was done. It looked like he was about to yell out something like 'I'm okay', but then probably realized that that would draw more attention to the issue than he would have liked.
'Well all right, these are three of the six koopas I'm going to spend the better part of the rest of my life with. Hopefully we all live long enough to swim through our own collective stock pile. But oh well, I've got to botch this first meeting before I can fix it later.' With that he turned to the three koopas who were still smiling and picking themselves up out of the items that had spilled into the hallway. The leftmost one was a tall, lanky individual. He looked like he was continuously bursting with excitement and in a perpetual state of bouncing up and down because he couldn't contain it. He had a thick grey mustache and the beginnings of a beard. The rightmost one was more average sized, and looked like a deep thinker. Not really deep thinker as scholarly thinking, but more like someone who had a full 10 minute debate with themselves over whether to go to the west dining room or the virtually identical east dining room. He had a head of naturally spiky, flowing read hair with nothing on his face. It almost looked like the hair style of the mythical Bowser koopa. Actually, it looked like that was exactly the look he was going for. 'I'll have to ask him if he was inspired to pick such a hair style. My own hair is much more of a rust color and flows down to meet my modest facial hair.' The middle, and final koopa was also more average sized, except that most of the length of his body came from his arms and legs and not his torso. It actually looked like existing was uncomfortable for him, but that's besides the point. He had the look of someone who wanted to conquer the world, but had the demeanor of someone who'd be lucky if they were motivated enough to take over the outhouse. He was completely devoid of hair, facial or otherwise. By the way the scales on his head shined it would appear that he was quite proud of that fact. Finally, his beak had a serious hook to it. A hook that converged to such a sharpened point that it looked like it was made to tear flesh. This all combined with the shiftiness of his eyes made him the most likely candidate for psychopathy if anyone had ever seen one.
"Well hello everyone, I'm Mottled Petrel. Apparently I'll be the expedition leader and overseer of Modded Hell. I was hoping I could address you all by name when I eventually met you, but that head brute over there couldn't remember the name of his own mother if his life depended on it." He then tried to extend three of his arms to shake hands with them, only to be reminded that his hands were still tied up with the steel chain he was being led by. "Oh, well I guess I'll start with you. It's a pleasure to meet you, what is your name?" He extended all six of his arms to have the leftmost koopa shake his tied together ball of hands.
"My name's Derpy Dev. I'm so so SO happy to finally meet you. Is it true we're going to the Waxy Jungles? I've always wanted to go there! I've heard that the bird watching there is great. I've been dying to see an archaeopteryx since I was a hatchling! I can't wait to spend all my time out there looking, because when I set my mind to something I-" "All right, we've still got things to do to ensure that we make it there safe. You can tell me all this when we're making the journey-" "YES SIR" Derpy Dev explodes, so loud that most of the koopas in the royal store room stop climbing through the piles to look at the spectacle. Seeing that it was only Derpy Dev, again, they went back to what they were doing.
"Well..." Mottled Petrel turns to the koopa on his right "Hello, who would you be". The rightmost koopa breaks his thousand yard stare to notice that the introductions have started. "They call me Scourge. I..." his face scrunches up as if he's thinking incredibly hard about what he was going to say next to make sure it was exactly correct "I'm glad to see we have a leader to get us to Modded Hell safely." He stopped there, either because of a personal 'less is more' policy, or because he wanted to carefully think about how he wanted to go about the next things he wanted to say. The face scrunch wasn't there, so Mottled Petrel moved onto the middle koopa.
Mottled Petrel was definitely getting some less than positive vibes from this one, but he didn't want to judge him too early. "Hello, nice to-" "
This wasn't where I wanted to end up," he said quietly to himself "
that move should have ended me up in unskilled mining or milling. They should have at least made me a fish cleaner, but this... I gotta rethink my strategy." The koopa broods to himself for a few seconds, and then notices that the other three koopas with him were staring. "Excuse me, where are my manners. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is ZM5. Great, great grandson of the legendary Koopa baron Zemithulus Matrida, they called him ZM for short. Unfortunately, his great lineage has come to this, a dirty peasant being shipped out to the middle of nowhere. But! I say my fellow peasants, let's not let it be so! I say we make this fort the best fort the Ageless Planets has ever seen! Who's with me!" And with that, all four break out into a patriotic war cry as they raise their right upper arms into the air in a fist. They run, still yelling, into the store room to choose the supplies that would hopefully secure their future.
(I'm going to try to compile a list of the available animals that I think are of importance. It's stupid long, so it may not be tonight. Most of them are pokemon, so really you can just name a pokemon and chances are we have access to it.)
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Topic: The Resurgence of Modded Hell (Back, Still Broken, Now With Giant Butterflies) (Read 301304 times)