The Spore Game: New Life on Planet Agaman

[TravelLog]

Fourth. Run like the wind!

[Cealocanth]

The name Horrorlurk matches this creature well, and as you watch the remains of your pack of Naargal brutally slaughtered by the gargantuan beast, you reverse your jets quickly and begin to dart away from the Horrorlurk, as fast as a microscopic armored tank can go.

You achieve some distance from the creature before you find a large stone wall in the pitch darkness. As you continue to struggle, turning left and right to find an exit, you find that the only escape is upward, and you are not well adapted to vertical movement. Your time comes too soon when you are bathed in blue light.

You see the Horrorlurk begin to claw it's way toward you, digging up the stone beneath it with many large claws and dragging it's enormous body forward. Your comrades still hang off it's rubbery, resin-filled lure tentacle as it's gaze focuses on you.

The chemical that your body registers as fear fills your digestive system. All you can do is sit and watch the massive creature slowly drag itself to you. It freezes suddenly, and you notice long black tentacles begin to leave the body of the creature in a wide arc, and they whip around as if searching for you.

You have 5 Health

You have 4 Stomach

You have 6 Endurance

You have 6 DNA

[TravelLog]

We're cornered, weak, and hungry. We only have one option.

Use our jets to rocket underneath the Horrorlurk, then take advantage of it's confusion to bite as hard as possible, trying to rip an opening in it's underbelly. At that point, burrow inside and kill it from the inside out.

[Kuma Da]

Every attempt to hurt this thing so far has resulted in us losing Nargaal.

Look for a gap in the wall and burrow away from the Horrorlurk, hoping that it won't be able to sense us in a little side-tunnel.

[Kazyan]

Originally Posted by Kuma Da

Every attempt to hurt this thing so far has resulted in us losing Nargaal.

Look for a gap in the wall and burrow away from the Horrorlurk, hoping that it won't be able to sense us in a little side-tunnel.

Seconding. If we can get into a burrow, it can't eat us, and if it tries to pull us out, we can get all stabby on whatever touches us.

[C'nor]

Originally Posted by Kuma Da

Every attempt to hurt this thing so far has resulted in us losing Nargaal.

Look for a gap in the wall and burrow away from the Horrorlurk, hoping that it won't be able to sense us in a little side-tunnel.

Originally Posted by Kazyan

Seconding. If we can get into a burrow, it can't eat us, and if it tries to pull us out, we can get all stabby on whatever touches us.

Thirding.

(Yes! Continue in subverting Kuma Da's goal to be overruled! )

[Cealocanth]

Sorry about the lack of posts last week. It appears that the post I sent a few days ago didn't go through.

Using your tentacles, you dash around the cavern as the massive creature turns and turns, failing to catch up to you and your incredible speed. You search the walls of the cavern and find that each crevice in the wall, if it exsists at all, is filled with a thick weblike goop, making it sticky and extremely difficult to burrow through.

You estimate that by the time you have made a dent in this thick slippery coating you will already be within the creature. You frantically scrape at the lower walls of the cavern, and eventually give up, seeing that you are sealed in this creature's lair.

Suddenly, a loud snapping sound releases from the creature, and you see a wide stream of webbing begin to lash out toward you. Using your jets, you attempt to avoid the webbing.

Swimming away from the webbing is becoming harder and harder, and as you strain against the stream, you realize that the moving webbing is creating a sucking current around it, making water based travel away from it virtually impossible.

No food, no Naargal, no travel method, and no escape. Your species is certainly caught in a major evolutionary challenge.

You have 5 Health

You have 3 Stomach

You have 3 Endurance

You have 6 DNA

[TravelLog]

Originally Posted by TravelLog

We're cornered, weak, and hungry. We only have one option.

Use our jets to rocket underneath the Horrorlurk, then take advantage of it's confusion to bite as hard as possible, trying to rip an opening in it's underbelly. At that point, burrow inside and kill it from the inside out.

Reiterating this as our only chance. It may be armored, but most such creatures do have weak underbellies for purposes of mobility. Otherwise they could not sit of lay down as the armor would prevent inward leg movement and joint rotation.

[Kuma Da]

Seconding TravelLog.

[Cealocanth]

This may count as a subversion of your rule, Kuma Da.

As you struggle against the webbing's current, you quickly whip around, using the current's inward pull to pull you underneath it, and hunkering down to lower your center of gravity. Soon the web stream ends, as the confused Horrorlurk searches for where you were captured.

It shines it's blue light, and clearly illuminates you. Suddenly, a set of large black tentacles shoot towards you, only to miss as you jet toward the clawing creature. As fast as you can carry yourself, you dash underneath the creature.

It's underbelly is an off grey, and is unarmored. It's covered in small specked warts, that secrete a similar fluid that makes movement more streamlined. Soon, the Horrorlurk feels your presence, and begins to lash tentacles toward you. In a flurry of fear, you thrust your facial weaponry upward, pierce the membrane of the creature, and enter it's body.

Darkness closes around you, and disgusting cytoplasmic fluid fills your gills and digestive system. Still, you use your tentacles and thrash around, tearing the dark innards of the Horrorlurk to a thick paste. Before you suffocate within the creature, you leave to find the creature lay to rest on it's side and exposing the underbelly to the water.

A cloud of cytoplasm follows as you exit the Horrorlurk, and the faint blue light of the luring sphere begins to fade, as the Horrorlurk dies. The cavern remains un-escapable, but now you have a chance to rest within the dead creature, and possibly evolve an escape method.

You have 5 Health

You have 3 Stomach

You have 1 Endurance

You have 12 DNA


New Evolutions

Air Bladder: 4 DNA (Allows you to set your elevation under water. (Requires Gills/Lungs))

Generate Slime: 3 DNA (Makes you unappetizing to predators)

Spit: 2 DNA (allows you to propel body fluids far distances. Requires Mouth and Generate Slime.)

Glue: 6 DNA (You can produce a sticky adhesive that can be used to repair shells and the like.

Spit Poison/Acid/Healing/Glue/Slaiva/Puke/etc.: 4 DNA (You can spit great distances something you already have, such as poison or glue. +1 Attack when used against enemies. Requires Spit.)

[C'nor]

Spit, Air Bladder and Spit Acid.

We can use the acid to get through the walls, but we need spit. Also, Air Bladder combined with acid might let us get out the way we got in, by spitting through the blockage the Horrorlurk set up, and then simply floating back to the top.

[TravelLog]

Victory. Rely on knowledge to win, and you almost always will.

(To get acid, we need to generate slime)

Eat and sleep. Once fed and rested, examine the cave in it's entirety and take stock of available resources. Evolve to generate slime and become poisonous, as we don't want a repeat of this. At that point, new evolutions and options will become available, to be decided at that juncture.

[Kuma Da]

Generate slime, evolve air bladder, become poisonous.

12 DNA used.

I'd also consider a prehensile tentacles/generate slime for 11 DNA, which gives us an extra attack, but it'd only work if it looks like we could jet-assisted grapple-climb our way out.

[Cealocanth]

I'd also consider a prehensile tentacles/generate slime for 11 DNA, which gives us an extra attack, but it'd only work if it looks like we could jet-assisted grapple-climb our way out.

You descended on a series of webbing nets. Long enough tentacles, like those of the Horrorlurk, could be used to climb out, if you so desire.

[Cealocanth]

Your silence is staggering.

Exhausted and starving from the battle, you fashion a small nest from the carcass of the Horrorlurk, nestle in, and rest. While your body recovers from the exhaustion and wounds, your evolutionary chemicals begins to manufacture the absorbed DNA, transforming you into a creature capable of taking to the skies, more or less.

Your cytoplasm thickens into a thick purple blood-like substance. It's new viscosity makes it's, now useless, ability to absorb food molecules moot, and acts as a layer between your exoskeleton and organs. Attaching to your gills soon grows a fairly large organ that quickly begins to filter oxygen out of the water and fill, causing your weight to fall significantly. The last development is that your blood soon fills with toxic substances, making you dangerous to consume by most creatures.

When you wake, you find that you are firmly planted on the ground, but feel that you are now capable of changing you elevation for a short time by using Endurance. You begin to dart around the cave.

Besides the thick layer of webbing on the walls, they are constructed of hardened sandstone. No plant life is able to break the seal, and besides the (edible and tasty) corpses of partially absorbed Naargal and a massive Horrorlurk corpse that has been formed into a nest, the cavern is fairly empty. Darkness consumes the cavern, and the incredibly dim light source of the entrance to the hole only shines enough to show you the now accessible way out.

You have 5 Health

You have 2 Stomach

You have 10 Endurance

You have 0 DNA

Kuma Da, it's not that I like your evolution suggestions more than everyone else, it's that your suggestions succeeded in a vote over other suggestions.

[Kuma Da]

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Cannibalize Nargaal corpses. Mitosis into more Nargaal.

[TravelLog]

Originally Posted by Kuma Da

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Cannibalize Nargaal corpses. Mitosis into more Nargaal.

Seconded. We need to get back to full strength.

[C'nor]

Thirded. Though didn't you have some sort of objection to cannibalism a page or two ago?

[Kuma Da]

Originally Posted by C'nor

Thirded. Though didn't you have some sort of objection to cannibalism a page or two ago?

Yes, and I'm sure it was very articulate, but back then we weren't close to starving in a Horrorlurk lair. Also, I think I might have been against depleting the supply of presently available Nargaal. Right now we're just making good use of proper environmental resources (and we won't be able to do it in the future, since I don't think our metabolism is adapted to the new Nargaal toxin yet.)

[Cealocanth]

Hungrily, you swim up to the partially absorbed bodies of your now deceased Naargal allies and begin to consume them. Where the large tentacle connects with their bodies, it overcomes their exoskeleton and moves through them. Outside of the tentacle, however, their exoskeletons easily break under your horn and you consume the delicious cytoplasmic fluid within their body.

Once you consume the bodies of the Naargal, you use the excess material to split twice, creating two more small, adolescent Naargal that immediately take to you as a caretaker. You fill yourself with the remains of the deceased, and the adolescents do the same.

Once you are well rested and with a filled Stomach the path out of the
Horrorlurk's layer becomes clear, as nets of webbing scale the walls of the lair. You use the webbing as a cushion, similar to how you descended. You utilize your new found Air bladder and scale the cavern. Soon you find yourself at the entrance to the, and you hear the familiar sound of a swarm of Aquapede in the darkness around you.

You have 5 Health

You have 8 Stomach

You have 8 Endurance

You have 8 DNA

[Kuma Da]

We have 8 DNA. We can rest for prehensile tentacles and an attack boost before clearing out the burrow of aquapedes, and we can do so in a structurally safe area (the cleaned out horrorlurk lair.)

Descend back into the Horrorlurk cavern and evolve prehensile tentacles.

[C'nor]

Seconding Kuma Da.

*Shrugs.*

What? He makes good plans.

[TravelLog]

Third

Solid plan.

[Cealocanth]

A realization of being ill prepared for the oncoming swarm of Aquapede, you descend down into the vacant Horrorlurk nest, which has quickly been adapted to nesting Naargal. You lay down in your nest for a short rest, and use the recycled DNA of the Naargal before you to change again.

Within your exoskeleton, your nucleus begins to send out more veins and shoots into each of your arrays of tentacles. It seizes direct control, and the tentacles not only begin to move in tandem, but also begin to move to your will, making them extremely useful.

When you wake, the adolescent Naargal around you appear to have gained the same development, and with your DNA well spent, you ascend the Webbing quickly using your prehensile tentacles and air bladder, and find yourself at the top of the lair again.

The passageway that the lair rested in was forked, one path going into the lair, and one going further down into the nest. Now that the Horrorlurk has been slain, you have a choice. Do you descend into the Aquapede nest, or do you flee the nest in search of your own, unoccupied nesting ground.

You have 5 Health

You have 7 Stomach

You have 10 Endurance

You have 8 DNA

[Kuma Da]

Descend into the nest nothing. Those aquapedes are gonna come to us.

Advance to the mouth of the tunnel leading deeper into the nest and get several of the Nargaal to drum on the walls and floor with their new tentacles.

This should draw the aquapedes out slowly, rather then confronting them en mass in their lair.

[TravelLog]

Originally Posted by Kuma Da

Descend into the nest nothing. Those aquapedes are gonna come to us.

Advance to the mouth of the tunnel leading deeper into the nest and get several of the Nargaal to drum on the walls and floor with their new tentacles.

This should draw the aquapedes out slowly, rather then confronting them en mass in their lair.

Seconded, with the addenda that we use our new ability to generate slime to thin the corridor as much as possible by blocking the sides with slime. Ideally, this will force the aquapedes to approach us in single file (or something close to it), making it far easier for us to achieve victory.

[Kuma Da]

Originally Posted by TravelLog

Seconded, with the addenda that we use our new ability to generate slime to thin the corridor as much as possible by blocking the sides with slime. Ideally, this will force the aquapedes to approach us in single file (or something close to it), making it far easier for us to achieve victory.

Hells yes. Double-seconded.

[C'nor]

Originally Posted by TravelLog

Seconded, with the addenda that we use our new ability to generate slime to thin the corridor as much as possible by blocking the sides with slime. Ideally, this will force the aquapedes to approach us in single file (or something close to it), making it far easier for us to achieve victory.

Thirded, with the addenda that at least one of the other Nargaal should be on repair duty, in case the Aquapedes damage the slime blockage.

[Cealocanth]

You issue your first order to the newly formed Naargal, and after a moment's hesitation in understanding your command, they soon get to work. Each of the Naargal begin to excrete slimy cytoplasmic fluid out of their orfaces and spread it onto the walls of the fork where the Aquapede nest resides. Although making it slightly difficult to escape once placed, you utelize your tentacles and together thin out the passageway so barely one Aquapede could travel through. The hallway glistens with your hardened purple slime.

You send one of your Naargal to continue to rebuild the walls in case of damage, and the other mimics your actions, drumming on the ground and walls. The cavern fills with a repetitive reverberating sound that shakes the ceiling and creates a small drizzle of brown dust.

As if to investigate, the Aquapede begin to move in, filing into your thinned out passageway in a straight conga line of death. After the call, you attack the Aquapede, charging at them and skewering their exoskeleton, then using your tentacles to tear the remains of their bodies off your facial weaponry. The walls paint with the blood of the Aquapede.

The defeat of the Horrorlurk allowed you to evolve far beyond the specrtum of the Aquapede, and as the final of eight Aquapede are mercilessly slain under your strategy and dominion, you issue an order and trail the remaining Naargal into the nest of the Aquapede.

Within the nest, the full grown Aquapede are all but extinct, their cytoplasmic fluid painted on the very walls. Exploring the cavern reveals what could possibly be the few remaining Aquapede. Small, barely developed adolescent worms curl in the center of the cavern, too scared to even cry out for help.

You have 4 Health

You have 6 Stomach

You have 6 Endurance

You have (some amount of) DNA

You are nearing a turning point, your DNA level will be determined as you reach the point.

[C'nor]

Let's try capturing the young Aquapedes, and raising them as cannon fodder/food/manual labor. Considering how easily we killed the adults, we should be safe even if it doesn't work.

Also, since the only way we got out of the Horrorlurk chamber was with tentacles and an air bladder, we should probably keep them in there, just as an extra precaution.