Yes, yes, I'm sorry. My parents departed yesterday, leaving me virtually home alone, and my mind was full of do's, don't's and don't-forget-to's. All that was left for my inspiration was a dark corner where it cried itself to sleep.
But you don't want excuses, you want a turn. Here we go.
World difficulty: 97You are standing on an asteroid about one km across. The rock is, of course, completely barren. You see
a rather bright star a beginning supernova relatively nearby, and a few dark planets around it.
Trade the wood and alien branches for some influence, then go out and mine the asteroid for the rock itself.
Before you depart, you drop off all the wood you had in the group inventory. A machine next to the entrance buzzes and beeps, and then prints a voucher for 60 influence. As soon as you take it, it burns up, and you feel a lot more influential.
Attempt: 88 + 1
Quality: 10
Quantity: 99 (9)Stone is easy to find on an asteroid. You start a strip mine just outside the Aglaia, and after a lot of hacking, picking, assaulting, destroying, and gathering rock, you find yourself with nine basketball-sized rocks. Your steel man carries them back to the ship, while its colleague does the Macarena. Somehow, it all fits together perfectly.
+44 Gather XP
+ 9 Boring Rocks (I: 2 each)Fun times. Alright, stage 2. This time we want the opposite. Gather Darkness
Attempt: 20You decide to redo the trick with the mirrors. You close the blinds of your viewing port, and quickly raise two mirrors when the room goes completely dark. You encapsulate the mirrors in a light-blocking forcefield, but only then you realize you did not capture darkness - you just captured an absence of light. What
is darkness, anyway? If it exists only as an absence of light, you're afraid you can't use it. But then again, you're godly! There must be a way. You spend the rest of the day philosophizing about darkness and light and photons and whatnot, but you can't come to an answer.
+10 Gather XPRip out the planet's core if the core is metal! And the Mantel and other layers of core! LEAVE IT AS AN ASTEROID OF PURE STONE!
Attempt: 37You start to dig a tunnel towards the asteroid core. And what a tunnel it is. A masterpiece of architecture, in a perfect pentagonal shape, just because you can. Not a single twist, going straight for the center without so much as a millimeter of deviation. The walls as smooth as polished steel, the corners sharp as a knife, and each wall exactly the same size.
You rock. And rock is exactly what you find. There is no metal in the core, not even a single patch of rust. Disappointed, you return to the ship.
+19 Gather XPMix the stardust with the dark liquid. It might be interesting...
Attempt: 44 + 5You put the stardust into the liquid, and watches as the vial, part of the table around it, freeze instantly. You guess this must be a heavily endothermic reaction, you need more heat! You concentrate all your power in heating the vial, and when that doesn't work, you get everything that burns stuff from the toolshed. Tons and tons of propane and oxyacetylene are soon stacked in your workplace, all connected to sturdy tubing, pointing at the orb of frozen air on your table, ready to bathe the vial in flames.
As soon as you release the gas, an inferno of flames blasts forth from a few dozen valves. The orb starts melting very, very slowly, releasing liquid air, which evaporates as soon as it touches the table. The orb keeps shrinking, until finally, after a few hours of burning, you can see the vial, the stardust already settled on the bottom of the dark liquid.
And then the fire stops. You're out of gas. You realize the reaction would need more heat, but you're spent. You quickly throw up a barrier between the dust and the liquid, you'll clean this mess tomorrow. Exhausted, you go to bed. You're asleep even before you hit the bunk.
+22 Alchemy XPCollect shiny stone thing. Sparkling/glittering specifically.
Attempt: 69
Quality: 24
Quantity: 62 (4)You need shiny. Lot's of shiny. Preferably sparkly. Should be easy to notice on an asteroid, shouldn't it?
It shouldn't. The asteroid is still covered in glittering stardust, and you can hardly see the rock beneath it, let alone any sparkly stones. Well, you don't want to dig, that's too tiresome, so you decide to pay a visit to Taric's small strip mine. Here, the rock is cleared of stardust, and you have a neat, flat surface to search on. You get on your hands and nees, take a magnifying glass out of a pocket, and start looking.
You don't notice anything shiny for the first few hours, but just as you're about to give up, you notice a blueish hue between the gray. You quickly mine out the surrounding stone, and find four small lapis lazuli's, of disappointing quality. Weird, these shouldn't even be here. Anyway, it's something, and it's slightly shinier than normal rock.
+35 Gather XP
+4 Lapis Lazuli's (I: 6 each)Collect large amounts of the nova
Attempt: 41 + 1You start approaching the nova, your anti-light screens covering your body, especially your eyes. As you get closer and closer, your shields get taxed more and more, but you are confident you can hold out. When you are only a few minutes away from the nova, however, a minor explosion spews an enormous amount of hot star matter in all directions - including yours, and when it impacts your shields, you feel your power burning up together with the forcefield.
You blast the hot dust away, but feel it's too late - your powers won't hold this heat for much longer, so you hightail it back to the ship.
+22 Gather XP (Level up!)Group inventory
5 oak logs. (25 each)
2 blocks of white stone. (50 each)
1 reddish-yellow metal bar. (100)
1 animal skull (possibly feline) (150)
1 Heavy Metal Rhino (I: 193)
1 Anger Spear (I: 95)
5 Unspecified Brand Building Bricks (I: 10 each)
5 Wax Cylinders (I: 11 each)
1 Vial of Energy Stuff (I: 78)
6 Pieces of Wood (I: 7 each)
6 Alien Branches (I: 3 each)
Ochita
Influence: 304
Stonecrafting: 5
Cooking: 0 (48/100)
Gathering: 2 (17/100)
1 Big Bag of Stardust (I: 120)
Reisen
Influence: 140
Alchemy: 5 (65/100)
Gathering: 2 (27/100)
3 Vials of Dark Liquid (I: 24 each)
3 Alien Rocks (I: 2 each)
1 Potion of Rocketeering (I: 380)
1 Bag of Stardust (I: 72)
Taric
Influence: 70
Robotics: 7 (58/100)
Fusion: 0 (6/100)
Gathering: 1 (77/100)
1 Man of Steel (I: 222)
1 Random Quantum Robot (I: 106)
1 Multi-functional Robot (I: 132)
Charles Witticker
Influence: 100
Gathering: 0 (62/100)
Voodoodollology: 5
4 Big Walnut Branches (I: 8 each)
4 Lapis Lazuli's (I: 6 each)
Unekaru
Influence: 80
Gem Elemancing: 5
Gathering: 0 (37/100)
2 Beams of Light (I: 9 each)
1 liter of pure water (I: 11)
Neco Ferratum
Influence: 100
Metallurgy: 5
Gathering: 0 (37/100)