>>2675791
You form up your tendrils, winding them around each other, and setting several claws all at their tips. In the center of the tendril spiral, you form one thin black spike. You use this spike to center yourself on the crack you'd made, and begin rotating the base of each of the tendrils around a common point. The tendrils move seamlessly around the point, a boon provided by your amorphous form. Slowly, the makeshift drill bores into the concrete, until you break through, and find a small hollow beneath. You are forced to leave the scientist in the room, but before doing so, you leave a small loop of your flesh around his neck.

"Duely noted." he says, his voice having returned to his carefree voice from earlier. He seems simply pleased to be separated from the ungodly mass of flesh that is your body.

You rectract your tendrils, and move into the freshly opened space, only to find a metal surface awaiting in the hollow below. You spread out across the metal surface, seeking any gaps in the structure. You manage to find another metal surface, this traveling perpendicular to the metal floor you'd been traveling along.

After a few more moments of investigation, you find there is indeed a gap in that new metal shaft, and begin funneling inside. You find yourself then inside of an elevator shaft, which you quickly use to travel deeper into the earth. You briefly wonder if this place is accessible through the water works below ground. Your rough estimation says they should be on the same level depth wise, but you doubt they'd be so careless.

Before long, you find a small chamber, seemingly the only chamber in the strange underground facility. The iron wrought door in front of you reads "NRF Sample Room Class 3"

The dust in the chamber indicates that it's not a very frequently used chamber. To your frustration, you find the door shut tight. Tighter than you are able to fit through. You notice a keypad near the door, and move to investigate it. You can taste the oil from human fingers on certain keys, but you haven't the time nor the inclination to test out every possible combination. Instead, you start feeding your mass into the wire system. Really, this is based on a hunch, but you are forced to displace the wire as you move through. Within a matter of minutes, you find a portion of your flesh on the other side of the door, poking through the opposing keypad, which was connected to a common relay with the first keypad. The flesh on the other side is wire thin, but you continue slowly feeding more and more mass through. You tiny tendrils begin circuiting the room. The walls of which are lined with what appear to be safety deposit boxes. You find the space on the wall which where the sense of yourself is the strongest, and start feeding your tiny tendril through the keyhole.

>>2675799
As you do, you can feel the telepathic communication from your spiked minion, who had been observing from above.

They have fully encircled the building. Escape will be difficult. They have very large gun vehicles trained on the hole which you entered from. And- the rest of the message is cut short.

And what? you demand, only to be met with silence.

Your tendril is through the keyhole. A small lump of flesh, no bigger than a kiwi floats in a glass tube filled with a luminious blue fluid is all that sits inside.
What do you do?

>Smash, grab, and go

>Have Plated minion go back up and check out the situation

>Spread yourself thin to get eyes outside the hangar

>Other (write in)

>>2675806
Smash, grab, and GTFO. Since the hole we entered through is guarded, see if we can find an ostensibly safer way to GTFO. Send Platey off while we're busy smashing and grabbing to recon and possibly act as a sacrifice, if we can do two things that don't conflict at once.

>>2675821
While we're waiting, I'm gonna write out some more long-term plans I've been having. Right now, I don't think it's a great idea to keep drawing attention like this, so we should really flee to the ocean or something as soon as we leave the facility. If we find a nice cave or something that's not likely to be disturbed any time soon, we should try to drop some of our mass in the form of inert solid blocks of biomatter, so we can move around more inconspicuously while we gather more abilities. And we should absolutely try gathering more abilities - there seems to be no downside to loading up with them so far, so it might be a decent idea to start nomming on fish and other random sea creatures until we get the ability to do things like form scales for armor or produce any of the many kinds of venom that sea creatures produce. If we get big enough, we can try eating sharks, and if we get cartilage from them we could work on creating a temporary skeletal structure, which might allow us to disguise ourselves as a fish. Though, we might need camouflage or something to pull that off properly, and the best color changing animal under the sun isn't found anywhere in the Americas or the North Atlantic (which, considering the English-speaking characters, is probably set in).

>>2675855
Seems like a great idea, id love to opt for the stealthy approach while discovering our abilities and growing in power. Id also like to free/consume the other test subjects if possible.

>>2675821
>>2675855
support

Oh yes, time to eat people.

>>2676522
But we always end up falling asleep when we eat!

That sounds like a really bad thing to do while we’re in the middle of the enemy’s base!

>>2675821
>>2675855
support

>>2675855
Idea: Ask the girl (Sophie?) that we infested where we are geographically, to give us a better idea of what we have a chance of finding, since different useful animals live in different places, especially oceanic ones.

>>2676774
Once we're in safety, I assume, now is probably not the best time for that.

>>2675855
I'd support this, but I'd also like to infest that acting commander we caught first. If that's even possible anymore, what with all the attention on the area we're in now.

>>2676818
Based on when we infested Sophie, infesting takes almost an hour.

>>2676855
Which is what I meant with "all the attention."

Alright back from work.

Since it's been a while since the last one, lemme dump our current mass as well as the masses of our minions.

Subject 12
Power Code: Absorb

Current Mass 510/830
Lucidity 14/14

Minion A 340/345
Lucidity 4/4
Thick Skin
Plated shell
Partially amorphous

Minion B Mass ???/285
Lucidity 5/5
Bone Spines
Poisonous
Stealthy

Flesh Spawn: 358/358 (Underground lake cave location)
Flesh Spawn: 15/15 (Trash heap)

>>2677104
Oh shit, scratch Spiked minion's lucidity, that's supposed to be 7/7 now

>>2677104
Isn't our power code "Consume"?

>>2675855
>which, considering the English-speaking characters, is probably set in
Okay I don't know any other languages so every character is going to be an English speaking character.

>>2677111
Yeah, that was an old copy / paste text block I had at the top of my sheet that i hadn't updated yet. We're still consume. Absorb was the first power word I was playing with, but consume is thematically better I thin.

Also >>2676500
>>2675821

Looks like this is the only option with more than one vote. So we'll go with that.

Lemme get a roll for finding an alternative route out of here.

Also, lemme get a second roll for sensing spiked minion's whereabouts.

DC's 50 and 65 respectively.

Rolled 24, 37 = 61 (2d100)

>>2677128

my first roll this quest

>>2677141
and it's fucking shit

Rolled 80, 42 = 122 (2d100)

>>2677128

Rolled 70, 55 = 125 (2d100)

>>2677128

>>2677369
Who gives a crap about spikey anywaays

>>2677141
>>2677157
>>2677369


Alright, 80 / 55

Pass fail

The good news is you'll find a spot big enough to get computer geek out with you.

The bad news is you have no fucking clue where your spiked minion is.

Writing up now.

File: alal.png (1.31 MB, 1920x819)

1.31 MB PNG

Taking the glass in your small tendril, you quickly jerk it against the side of the case. Nothing happens. So, you try again, this time you manage a small crack. As the crack forms, the blue liquid begins to coat the glass slightly, and you can feel your tendril growing numb. You bite the bullet, and give it one more swing, the blue liquid spattering you. You can no longer feel the tendril, but you have more mass waiting on the other side of the keyhole. You quickly rethread it with some unconatminated flesh, and as soon as you touch the small orb of flesh that resonates with you it begins immediately flowing into your form.

Immediately, it connects with your brainmatter, and seems to bolster it. Weaving it's way throughout your body and dispersing itself evenly. You can feel something there, something new, but you have precious little time now to examine that.

Instead, you retract your spooled out flesh, returning to the central body before returning to the hangar. You can hear the sound of a helicopter fading off into the distance, and still fail to sense your spiked minion. A regretable loss, but perhaps he's not been destroyed, but merely captured.

With the knowledge of where the elevator shaft lie in the building below, you move through the hangar until you find the rough spot where it should be. Sure enough, behind some of the nanomachine tanks you find a well concealed metal door. You use your tentacles to pry the door open, and soon find yourself staring at an empty elevator shaft. Apparenty the elevator car is below. You snatch the human once more, before fleeing deeper into the elevator shaft.

You know that the upper route of escape is blocked off to you now, so you will have to hope that something may come from the lower levels. You pull yourself and the scientist into the chamber below, looking for anything you may have missed before.

That's when you spot it. A seamless grate built into the chamber. You know for certain that the hangar lacked any sort of visible external ventilation system.

So, you follow it. And you follow it. It seems to go on forever. You can feel the plated minion's pressence in your mind slowly becoming a near nonexistent dot far above you as you travel deeper through the vent.

Finally, you see a dim red light shining ahead of you. As surge forward, you find yourself in a dust, unfamiliar place. You are in a tunnel of some sort, great ribbed pillars curve upwards into the ceiling. You seem to be in a place between lights, as you see dim red lighting both ahead of you as well as behind you.

The walls are strange as well. A weird webbed pattern lines all of the walls, and you belatedly notice that the floor is also lined with the odd webbed pattern.

>>2677466


You have a lot of questions for the scientist, and recall that you have stored a few of the soldiers inside of your own body.

You produce one of the mangled forms, which has definitely seen better days. Your body had been shot to hell and squeezed into spaces far tighter than the human frame was meant to be forced into. Still, he was in tact enough to channel your voice through.

"Where are we?" You ask, the raspy voice of your future meal echoing hauntingly through the ringed tunnels.

"Beats me. I've only got level five access. They wouldn't tell someone of my rank anything about this kind of stuff. This has to be level two, maybe even level one intel only."

He seems incredibly curious about his surroundings, but he manages to restrain himself, knowing he could become your next meal at any moment and not wanting to annoy you. Instead, he continues to maintain his cool demeanor, despite the fact that you can feel his heart thundering in his chest.

You believe him, that he has no better use. You can still fuzzily feel the pressence of your plated minion, well above you. You decide to get a message out to him before proceeding any further.

Return to the lake. The other has been lost. Bring with you the humans we killed. We shall feast later, but only once I return myself. Await my return, and should the lair be discovered prioritize your own safety.

It simply would not do to lose another minion at this point.

You have found yourself in a very strange place. How do you proceed?

>Forward

>Backward

>Back up the shaft

>Spend some more time studying the strange webbed patterns

>Let the human walk freely. Maybe he'll notice something if he's allowed to look without our assistance.

>Other (write in)

>>2677471

carefully study the area we're in (web patterns) and let the human explore but keep a tendril around him like a leash?

>>2677471
>>Forward
This, along with
>>Let the human walk freely. Maybe he'll notice something if he's allowed to look without our assistance.
But do as >>2677484 suggests and keep him on a literal leash, just so he doesn't get any ideas.

>>2677484
>>2677510
support

>>2677510
Yeah, this seems like the best idea we have. Hopefully forward is a way out, and it's definitely easier for us to find out about the room and patterns from a properly controlled scientist.

I'm going out for a bit, be back in ~an hour


...Is what I was going to say before I left. I guess I didn't hit post.

>>2677775

>>2677775
>>2677781
Amazing.

Lemme get a 1d100 roll for the investigation roll.

Rolled 49 (1d100)

>>2677812
Rollin'

Rolled 64 (1d100)

>>2677812

Rolled 12 (1d100)

>>2677812

>>2677876
>>2677888
>>2677829
That just passes.

Also, that was a lucidity save, not an investigation check. Write up incoming.

>>2677905

>lucidity save

Welp. We're fucked.

You allow your captive human a bit of freedom. If there is any chance that he might be able to understand some things here that you might not be able to understand. He doesn't need the voice of your current puppet to get the message. The tendril around his neck hangs loose, and lays on the floor, giving him as much slack as he needs, but there is no escaping. For added effect, as you form the collar you send a ring of black spikes out from it. Even he seems slightly bemused by that. He doesn't linger long though, and immediatly begins to study the floor, and the strange material it seems to be made up of.

You however, have your eyes on the strange webbed pattern on the walls. You approach the wall with interest, feeling somehow drawn to it. The odd webbing seeming somehow familiar.

As you approach, you notice the strange ridges under the webbed flank on the wall. The material is all grey, but it looks as if it's been modeled to resemble a larger than life series of veins.

In fact, as you begin reaching a tendril out to touch them, you're almost sure of it. It's almost odd, how compelling this structure is to you. Drawing you to touch it. Something deep within the core of your being was being beckoned. And you really couldn't stop yourself.

The red glow in the halls beyond suddenly fades. As too does the red glow in the hall behind you. Suddenly the webbed pattern on the wall begins to glow a brilliant, vibrant red. As it does, a webbed sprawl of the pillar reaches out and grabs at your tendril.

As contact is made, you feel yourself being drawn into the greater being. It tugs on your body, and on your mind, attempting to draw you in. You resist it's pull, but the voice is in your mind. The vastness of it's being was beyond anything you had ever believed possible before.

You have come far, and grown much. The humans have done well to nurture you. Nourish me.

A memory shoots through your form. You were a human. You'd been going to work, down at the docks as a freight loader, when suddenly you were out cold. You never awoke, but, that isn't the only memory. Your connection to this impossibly massive being stokes something else.

You are a piece of the essence. A greater being who had been trapped for a very long time. An eons long war, trapped in a prison of your own making in order to avoid an even more unpleasant end.

Curious humans bore into the ground, and were easily overridden to serve the essence.

You offered up a sliver of your mind, a precious fragment of what you had left, in order to cultivate a meal large enough to free you from your prison. You-

No.

Not you. It.

I am not nourishment. You say, and as you do so you can feel the small glob of mass you'd integrated into your body just before you'd come into this strange place.

>>2678008

I am that which consumes. You say, as a sudden resurgence of will wells up in your entire being. You bring every ounce of strength you have to bear, and rip yourself out of it's mind.

An angry pulse swells through the walls around you. It has taken something from you, but it has not taken all. You have wrenched yourself free from the alien intelligence's grasp. As your mind returns to it's normal state, you reflect on the size of the being you'd just been a part of.

You were less than a mite in comparison. It's expanse was unlike anything you'd experienced thus far. It felt as big the city above, or perhaps even bigger.

But it also felt... whithered. Starved of life, and drained of vitality. You could sense a ghost of a much, much more expansive creature. And you know without a doubt that if this entity was at it's prime, there would have been no chance of your retaining your self.

How do you proceed?

>Fuck this, army pricks are probably a safer bet let's just go back up.

>Delve deeper, maybe we can find something we can use in here.

>Other (Write in)

>>2678014
> Fuck this

>>2678014
>>Delve deeper, maybe we can find something we can use in here.
Wew, that was a close check. That could've been game over.
WELL, TIME TO GO DEEPER.

>>2678049
I like your moxie.

Rolled 81 (1d100)

This roll has nothing to do with the situation at hand, is just me checking something unrelated to recent events.

>>2678085
Uh

>>2678090
Don't worry, that's a good thing.

>>2678094
Suuure

>>2678049
Just real quick, confirm this was sarcasm, otherwise I'll just roll off to see how we proceed.

>>2678117
Oh no, I most definitely want to delve deeper.

lets get our shit fucked!

Rolled 60 (1d100)

>>2678166
>>2678049

Welp. I guess we're going deeper.

No rolls needed, we'll just follow the corridor for a bit. Here's a roll to see if the pet human notices anything neat.

>>2678014

>Fuck this


We come back when we're a lot stronger.

>>2678255
Will start writing up in ~1hr, gonna get some food and some laundry done.

>>2678255
Excite

File: 1469864647638.jpg (246 KB, 900x808)

246 KB JPG

>>2678255
>>2678272
By the way, I found daddy abomination. What if the one here is just a small piece of a larger creature?

>>2678258
It's too late

Rolled 25, 60, 46 = 131 (3d70)

You and your pet continue delving through the tunnels. As you do, you see them in a new light. You see similar pillars bound from the spider webbed structure. You allow him free access to any part of the ship he wants to investigate, but any time he wanders too close to one of the webbed pillars you wrench him away forcefully.

It is not long before he gets the picture.

He continues to investigate the walls, and the boney ribbed pillars that make up the infrastructure of the hall.

Knocking on one of the pillars you note it produces a hollow sound. As you continue to pass through the halls, you occasionally knock on the pillars, they are hard like bone, but each of them seems hollow.

The amount of time you spend in the one corridor without any other discernable features appearing, save an endless procession of bone pillars, webbed pillars, and the veiny piping that lines the bottom of either wall, always connecting to the webbed pillars.

The red light seems to follow you through the halls as you walk. Whenever you pass one, it lights up with red, going dim as you pass only to light the next pillar. At first, there were two lights, but long ago one had proceeded down the tunnel at a much quicker rate than the light following you.

After what feels like an eternity, you find yourself in a massive chamber. The halls you had been going through were already massive, outstripping both the cave network that housed your private lake, and the underground aqueduct system, which you mused were both far above where you were now.

This chamber however, makes even you feel small. The ceiling is far above, and you can barely make out the tiny red pricks of light that dance far above.

One of the pricks of light does not stay tiny for very long. It grows with alarming speed, until you can make it out. The vague form of a spike, rocketing down at you with lighting speed and precision. The spike has a burning red tip, and you only narrowly avoid it as it tries to peirce into your flesh by creating a peemptive hole in your form to allow the spike to pass through. You are aware of what may happen if you make contact with the red once more, and are not eager to repeat that experience.

Behind you, the hallway through which you'd entered this chamber sealed shut. Bony pillars now blocked your path backward, and you notice more of those red lights climbing the walls towards the ceiling.

You immediately take the human into your body, deciding you can't afford to leave a tendril connecting him to you and opening up a vulnerability, but you do leave his head poking out so he can continue to breathe.

You can see more of those spikes drawing nearer with alarming speed.

What do you do?

>Keep moving, don't be an easy target, hope to find another door

>Try to break down the door and go back

>Counterattack the spikes

>Other (write in)

>>2678572
can we try to talk to the entity? glean a little more information about it and ourselves?

if not i guess lets try to look for another door

>>2678572
>>Keep moving, don't be an easy target, hope to find another door
OH FUCK

>>2678611
Supporting

>>2678572
>Counterattack the spikes
All in!

>>2678611
Supporting this.

This thing’s too big for us to take out and we’re too small to inflict any significant damage to it.

Let’s keep moving and look for an escape!

>>2678611
>>2678660
>>2678721


Keep moving.

Gimme 2 d100 rolls.

DC for the first roll is 60, second roll is hidden.

Rolled 15, 23 = 38 (2d100)

>>2678763

Rolled 31, 96 = 127 (2d100)

>>2678763

>>2678777
Will have to do the write up tomorrow after work. Or, if I don't get enough sleep, maybe before work.

Either way, I'll see you all sometime tomorrow.

Rolled 61, 45 = 106 (2d100)

>>2678763
Time to save the day.

>>2678803
Think I got the second roll?

>>2678821
Haha, holy shit. You saved it by the skin of your teeth.

>>2678821
Lucky motherfucker lmao. I can't punish you guys for being reckless if you keep rolling so damned well

>>2678834
We're the best blob around, nothings gonna ever keep us down.

>>2678834
>>2678829
I honestly can't believe I cut it so close, haha.

looks for food.

File: spikeroom.png (411 KB, 1000x592)

411 KB PNG

Rolled 54, 7, 58, 71 = 190 (4d75)

You twist and fold around the stabbing spikes, constantly moving, constantly keeping your many eyes turned upward. You watch the lights closely, and each time one starts to strike, you contort around the barb. You take advantage of the linear movements of the spikes, as well as the distance between yourself and them. Judging by the size and the speed of the spikes, you presume they were made for goring larger prey. Which begs the question, what did this thing fight in it's prime?

One spike narrowly misses you as you pass by one of the bone spires. It grazes the ivory structure, scoring the side of it and leaving a deep gouge. You recall that these structures had sounded hollow, and the fact that the spires above could damage them might allow you to secure an escape route.

As you maneuver through the room, you see that there are four doors in total around the room, each of which has been barred off by the same sort of bony obstruction as the door you'd entered from. There are likewise a few of the bony spires scattered throughout the room, which seemed to serve as support structures. You continue to outmaneuver the spikes above, but more and more of the red lights are reaching the ceiling, and more and more spikes are descending upon us. They are working on concert too, occasionally two or three will extend simultaneously, pushing you in specific directions only for a third to try to pin you. Thanks to your amorphous nature, you are able to avoid the attacks for now, but with each added tendril the difficulty increases.

You duck behind another bone spire, only for the spike that had been targeting you to slam into the spire from the other side. As it retracts, you peer around to investigate something. You had recalled them being hollow on the inside, and sure enough, a small hole had opened up in the spire where the attack had landed.

You are certain that the hole would be too small for you to enter without opening yourself up to worse attack, but if you could work towards widening it, perhaps that would give you some means of fleeing this room. Alternatively, you could stay by one of the doorways, and have the spikes chip away at the bones blocking your way. That is, if you manage to continue avoiding their potentially lethal assault. As you take a moment to pause, pondering the best course of action, a new source of red light appears. Unexpectedly, this one is directly below you. You whip a large tendril out around the recently damaged bone spire, and from several sucker cups to help your grip. You yank yourself away just at the ground opens up below you. Row after row of red tipped teeth line the pit that had appeared from nowhere. You could not see a bottom to the pit, only teeth that eventually faded to a dim red glow deep within the beast.

>>2679393

The room is growing more hostile by the minute. This creature has tasted a meal, and does not seem like it'll be satisfied without a more gratifying snack.

How do you proceed?

>Try to get it to crack that spire open more fully

>Continue taunting it until it's completely broken one of the spires. Make sure this hurts before you take your leave

>Get it to chip away at the doors and flee deeper into the belly of the beast

>Other (Write in)


I couldn't sleep so y'all get another update. I'm going to continue trying to sleep, but feel free to plan your next course of action while I restlessly toss and turn for another hour or two.

>>2679396
im gonna ere on the side of caution and try to escape as soon as possible so lets go with

>Try to get it to crack that spire open more fully

>>2679396
>Get it to chip away at the doors and flee deeper into the belly of the beast.

I'm not sure I trust the spires.

>>2679674
support

>>2679674
Yeah, I'm not sure I trust the spires either, but is going DEEPER into the thing a good idea? I'll support this, but after this I think we should really try to GET OUT as fast as possible while we're still mostly intact.

>>2679483
Support, we need to the GET THE FUCK OUT as soon as possible.

why are we going deeper to try and survive again? i mean yeah the spires arent exactly trustworthy but deeper?

>>2679674
sure as fuck trust them more than going DEEPER

>>2680280
A reminder, of the four doors, one of them is the one you entered from.

You could always just backtrack and take you chances with the army. Though there may be methods of egress available elsewhere in this behemoth.

Of course, you could also wind up going to your doom.

If we're chipping away at the doors, I need to know which door we'll be having them chip away at.

Also, lemme get 2 rolls.

DC 71 and 55

I keep forgetting to rename myself lmao.

Rolled 34, 64 = 98 (2d100)

>>2680308
I choose the door to the west.
Time to roll!

>>2680346
Alright, now all we need is a 71 or higher. I did my part, now it's up to all of you!

Rolled 26, 9 = 35 (2d100)

>>2680308

Rolled 7, 66 = 73 (2d100)

>>2680308

>>2680411
>>2680361
>>2680346

Welp. The good news is You'll fuck up one of the doors enough to be able to get through it.

But you still get tagged by one of these spikes which probably isn't super fun.

YES FINALLY
I couldn't get the captcha shit to show up for a while, and even after resetting my computer it still didn't work. Anyone else have this problem before?

Also
The spire of bone in front of you is a tempting thought, but you simply don't trust that confined space. You would be at the total mercy of the enemy if that wound up being a trap of some sort, with no easy means of escape. Instead, you rush towards the nearest door.

After your constant dodging and maneuvering, that happens to be the western door. You put your back to the door once more. More of the spikes are falling with each passing moment, and outmaneuvering them proves ever more difficult. Still, you manage as you approach the door. The first few spikes clash against the door without any real effect, these bones apparently being made of sterner stuff. You continue painting yourself as hard a target as you can, when another red light glows from underneath of you once more. You scrabble to the door, clinging to the substance with your ability to generate tube feet. Your normal ability to cling to surfaces somehow being ineffective against the pearly barrier.

As you cling there, another pit opens up just below you, like a waiting hungry maw. You twist and writhe around the door, as the spikes are now raining down on it directly in their attempts to nail you. A small crack is beginning to form, and hope wells up in you.

And then hope fails. As you feel a blinding pain in your body. The red had barely grazed your extremities, but already you could feel miniscules tendrils hooking their way into your mental network.

Another spike fell, this one hitting you more centrally, taking advantage of the disorientation you feel from the first point of contact. Agony, and it's pressence are both felt in equal measure, but you had been prepared for it's mental invasion this time, and somehow the connection felt weaker from these spikes than it did when you'd touched one of the red webbed pillars directly.

Still, four have pierced you, and you can feel them drawing your form into each of the spikes like they're straws. You struggle against it, fighting with all the willpower you can conjure. You can feel yourself starting to slip away when a fifth spike shoots into the core of your form.

However, instead of sealing your fate, this fifth spike provides you with an unexpected chance. It had struck directly on the crack, which quickly grew into a fissure. All at once, the bone doors splinter, sending shards of shrapnel spraying into you and the spikes alike. Large chunks of bone fall forward, some of the spikes are snapped like twigs, while others recede before the stone can destroy them.

You find yourself buried under the rubble of the door, two inert spikes are still embedded in your form. If he had survived your time spent practicing for the pincushion convention, the pet human you'd been holding onto most definitely not survive the heavy bone falling upon your form.

>>2680818

You however, have survived. And yet, you are now alone in the belly of the strange beast. You shift the wreckage away from yourself until you are free once more. When you unearth yourself, you find yourself in a shaft very similar to the first you'd found yourself in, however you feel so much smaller in the great expanse.

How do you proceed?

>Just go forward, get the hell out of here as quickly as we can.

>Those traps were probably just in that room right? Let's take a breather

>Check out the bone spikes that had been snapped off when the door came down

>Other (Write in)

>>2680818
New captcha is fucking garbage, I hate it with every fiber of my being.

>>2680819
>Check out the bone spikes that had been snapped off when the door came down
good night
>>2680832
and it super weird and slow for me

>>2680819
Aw fuck, I wanted to keep him alive. Dammit.

>Check out the bone spikes that had been snapped off when the door came down
Can we take it with us? If so, grab it and

>Just go forward, get the hell out of here as quickly as we can.

>>2680856
This
Also eat all of the brain matter we're holding to increase our speed and mental faculties.

Craft a single crab claw in case anything lashes out at us.

>>2680856
support

>>2680889
>>2680856
these both look smart

>>2680889
>>2680903
You're sure you wanna eat anything in here?

>>2680914
oh right we take time to eat, also we have the spikes in us

>>2680819
Get out and check the spikes.

>>2680856
i guess i vote for this one

>>2680833
>>2680856
>>2680896
>>2680903
>>2680951

Looks like check out spikes and go forward.

Lemme get 2d100, checking spikes, and checking the hallway as you start traveling.

Rolled 40, 28 = 68 (2d100)

>>2680957
Give me a double 100

Rolled 25, 60 = 85 (2d100)

>>2680957
I will save us from an untimely death.

>>2680889
Is it possible to slowly feast on the brain matter, digesting it little by little?

Rolled 83, 39 = 122 (2d100)

i dont actually know how to roll so ima just try and hope it works

>>2681077
Good job.

>>2681094
thanks lmao

>>2681018
It could be possible. You haven't experimented too deeply with that side of yourself. You know your minions can consume things instantaneously, and you have no clue why you go into hibernation each time you eat.

>>2680984
>>2681077
Alright, double successes.

Will write up in ~an hour. Gonna bathe and listen to some of my podcasts. See you guys then.

>>2681113
Alright am back.

Write up starting now.

You have survived. The full extent of the damage begins to sink in. You feel diminished. Powerfully so. Had that final spike not fallen and shattered the bone, you would be dead, absorbed into the greater mass of this place. You feel sluggish, and you are certain that you are smaller. The current extent of your damage does not dawn on you immediately.

Instead of busying your mind worrying about that, you choose to do something constructive. When the bone came crashing down, it had severed some of the spikes from their host, and you are curious to study their composition. You fish the pair of them out of the rubble, and moved away from the wall of debris, just to be safe.

Taking some time, you get a good look at the spikes. They, like everything else around you, are made up of some sort of organic compound. The tips are now hollow, lacking whatever it was that generated the red glow. The interior of the spike is tubed, and the tip lacks a proper point, which was apparently generated by the red masses themselves. The interior of the tube is smooth, and ribbed, and the space where the break had occurred is jagged. You poke and prod it, trying to intuit your way into understanding, and that's when you feel it. The spikes themselves contain some very small, almost infinitismal sense of will. They form some sort of tiny tendrils, sensing your pressence and trying to hook into you.

Your first thought is fear. You recall all of the times that the ship had hooked into you previously, and it had never occurred without taking it's toll on your form. However, you quickly squashed that fear. The will that you sensed was as pathetic as the will of your flesh spawn. There was no way it could measure to you. You didn't fear it, and to prove as much you sent a tendril to show the tiny spike who was boss.

The moment you hooked into it, a great sense of dejavu overtook you. Communicating with this thing was indeed, almost the same as communicating with your own flesh spawn. Ideas sprung into your mind for how you could manipulate your spawn. How you could shape it's form. Structure it to serve you. To test something, you begin sending your form into the spike, and find that it seems almost designed to allow your form easy passage. You move without friction, until you reach the head of the spear. You can feel the length of the spike stretch a certain distance along with your movements, acting of it's own accord to accelerate the rate at which the spearhead moves forward. Nothing special happens at that point, you feel no hardening of your body that's concentrated in the spearhead, and deduce that the strength and hardness which cracked the bone must have come from the red mass itself.

An encouraging thought to be sure.

You decide you've learned enough for now, and proceed in the only direction available to you.

>>2681451

You travel for an internably long time. A red light continues to monitor your progress through the halls, but no attacks ever come. You almost miss it when it happens. You had continued in one direction for so long, with identical scenery all around you, it's easy for things to begin to blur together. For the simple action of moving forward to become a rote action. However, after a certain point in time, the red light fails to appear. It is only when the red light turns back on that you realize you had traveled a reasonable section of the tunnel in total darkness. Your eyes were well adjusted to the dark, so you hadn't noticed the change in visibility. This bothers you for a moment. Why would the light have dimmed for a while? Did it not know you could see in the dark? Was there something the intelligence keeping tabs on you was trying to hide? You move back down the cooridor, eyes following the veiny exterior until you come to the red webbed node which should have blinked red when you'd passed. Your vision follows it up, and then you spot it. A thin silver trickle leading upward. Your eyes follow it upward, and you see a grate similar to the one you'd entered from. You realize belatedly that the familiar silver fluid is strewn about this entire area. The nanomachines collected in thin pools all over the dormant fleshy structures. Oddly enough, they seem totally disinterested in you. You must have surely tread through them, the way they are littered across the floor and the walls, but you never felt the telltale pain their pressence usually inflicted.

What do you do?

>Study the nanomachines, see what they're doing here

>Into the vent, and hopefully out of this hell hole

>Into the vent, but stealthy. They might not know we're here if the nanomachines don't care about us.

>Deeper down the tunnel, let's see what else this behemoth has to offer

>Other (write in)

>>2681455

>Into the vent, but stealthy

Let's not lemming-train to our deaths this time.

>>2681636
I'm going to sleep now. When I wake up I'll do a write up based on what you've all decided.

>>2681455
>Study the nanomachines, see what they're doing here

>Deeper down the tunnel, lets see what else this behemoth has to offer

then lets go DEEPER and experiment on eating mass and brains while we are on the move.

>>2681820
support

>>2681636
Supporting.

Let’s get the fuck outta here!

Current Mass 105/830
Lucidity 7/20

Your current vitals, since nobody has asked in a while and I figure you're probably curious to see where you're at after everything

>>2681636
>>2681926

>>2681820
>>2681916

Alright so tie between gtfo and keep going. I'll wait just a little longer before leaving this choice up to the dice.

we are so weak right now it's better to gtfo

>>2682632
Alrighty, write up soon.

>>2682632
oh thank blob someone voted to gtfo

You take the pair of spikes into your form, for further study when you get out of this infernal pit. You had taken considerable damage in the fights leading up to this moment, and you'll take an unknown pipe with apathetic nanomachines over full assimilation into the greater form of this creature. You'll take the added knowledge about creep spawn and the strange spikes you'd recovered as a consolation prize, and began ascending.

You had almost forgotten how far down the journey was through the vents, but climbing up once again reminds of you of how truly deep into the earth these men must have delved. The journey up is much slower going than the journey down, as gravity is working against you instead of with you in this instance. Still, you climb for what feels like hours, and yet the time you take going up pales in comparison to the time you'd spent traveling the the cooridors. Just how big is this place?

As you continue upwards, the shaft you're in suddenly begins to level out. All at once you're moving horizontally. It begins curving, and bending in random directions. Each new shaft of ventilation tunnel is impossibly long. However, you do eventually traverse the twists and turns until you find yourself coming into the light.

Or rather, into the dim basement.

You see a computer, and several implements of science strewn about the work spaces around you. Beakers with brightly colored bubbling chemicals. There are no humans present to greet you, which you hope implies that your passage into this place was not expected. You think briefly about smashing through the tools around you, setting back whatever vile experiments the humans are conducting in this place, but your aim is to escape in one piece, and if you can do so without alerting anyone, all the better.

You silently ascend the stairs. They are wooden, oddly. They are primitive in their construction, which you find strangely odd. It is a big departure from the clinical feeling the secret underground storage room possessed.

As you ascended further, you find yourself in an equally inelegant hut of sorts. A man lies half naked on a bed in one corner of the small abode, and it is with twinge of disgust that you realize how much larger he seems than humans had seemed to you prior to your attack against the enemy base. Had you truly been so diminished by the ordeal below?

An easily rectified problem, you think, as you approach the man, intent on adding his form to your own.

You are stopped however, when the sound of growling fills the room. Off to the man's side, a silver head pokes up from the opposite side of the man's body. Pointed ears, and sharp teeth filled it's maw, but it's movements were almost like those of a sloshing liquid.

>>2682725
His growl alerted the man, who sat up quickly in bed.

"Oh god, they've finally found us bartholomew. We knew this day would come. Activate defense protocol thirteen." He said as he reached under his pillow and shakily held a pistol out in front of him.

There is a moment of tension in the air, as the canine styled mass of nanomachines began enshrouding the man with it's form, coating him in silver.

How do you proceed?

>We call none our master - Talk to him with one of the partially intact meat puppets. We weren't sent, and we don't care who he is, we just wanna get out of here.

>We will not be intimidated by a human. Put this one in his place, gadgets or no.

>Just leave. Maybe he won't start shooting if we don't take aggressive action. The door is barely hanging on from it's primitive hinges anyway. This shitty shack isn't gonna stop you.

>Other (write in)

>>2682727
We’re in no shape to fight and trying to run will make him chase us to our base.

I think we’re better off trying to talk him down.

File: no_face_by_illiterit-dbv5cq2.jpg (76 KB, 894x894)

76 KB JPG

>>2682767
support

>>2682772
mask the face

>>2682772
>>2682767
looks like talk to him wins out.

What sort of demeanor will you take on during the conversation?

>Aggressive, Dominant - You will come to know me as something to fear much more than the other humans. Serve me.

>Curious - Who are you and what is this place? Are you not connected to those other humans?

>Bargaining - I can help you if you help me. Those humans are a thorn in both our sides

>Other (Write in) Feel free to include anything you wanna say to the guy here.

I won't make you roll off on these next few rolls, and will instead decide pass / fail by the nature of your approach. How do you wanna convince the dude to not start blasting you with his weird looking gun?

>>2682869
both
>>Curious - Who are you and what is this place? Are you not connected to those other humans?
>>Bargaining - I can help you if you help me. Those humans are a thorn in both our sides

>>2682869
>Curious
>Other (Write in) superior/a little condescending. Show no weakness.

Curious- Who are you and what is this place? Are you not associated with those other humans?

Hello! I've decided to stop lurking!

>>2682963
Supporting.

>>2682881
Support.
Also ask him who's chasing after him.

>>2683630
You know what, I like this one better.
>Curious
>Bargining

>>2682881
>>2683630
>>2683668

A curious bargaining approach, write up inc.

You see him raise his strange weapon, and don his strange suit. The fact that he seems to think you're working for some other agency could potentially be exploited. You quickly produce the remains of one of the soldiers you'd stored within your body. He flinches at first at the sight of the dead man's torso, but as your words begin to emanate from his mouth you see his demeanor change from hostile to apprehensive.

"None are my master. Not those men who have sought my death, and not the creature buried below."

His eyes light up, but he's still wary, holding the gun at arms length between the two of you. "And I am to believe that?" He said, but you could see his eyes flitting to the uniform the man had been wearing.

"You see the truth do you not?" You say, producing more of the mangled body's torso for him to view. "Tell me who they are. Tell me how to hurt them. If you are not one of them, you have not taken from me. You do not deserve what awaits them."

You can feel your words have an unsettling effect on him, but he quickly snaps back into focus.

"If you exist, that means they've gotten a lot further without me than I had hoped. I guess I can't completely rule out the people they've still got working for 'em." He said shaking his head. "Wait did you say the thing below? There's no way that you should know about that unless you..." He did not finish his sentence, quickly turning his wrist up towards himself. "Hm. None of the traps went off. Maybe... How did you come to learn about the thing below?"

"I have come to know that creature intimately. To better answer your question, I will say that I entered into your home through your basement."

This is an odd experience. Almost novel. You've never spoken to anyone as anything other than an immediate superior. For now, this is okay, but he will come to learn his place when you have gotten what you need from him.

"So that means... Oh man you've gotta tell me all about it, what was it like in there? None of the bots I send in get very far into the tunnels before the sweepers pick 'em up and scatter them." He said shaking his head.

"The sweepers?" You ask curiously, not having encountered anything other than the strange spike room.

"Ah right, those glowing red lights. Whenever they see too many of my bots they send out some sort of pulse. Fry the nanos without any extra effort.

Hm. An inborn defense against mechanical enemies. An interestingly specific defense system. Perhaps that is some clue as to the ancient struggle you sensed when your mind was one with the mass of flesh that'd attempted to absorb you.

"I had my own unpleasant run ins with them. The suffering that creature will one day feel is beyond measure. For now though, I will mete out my anger on those that serve it."

>>2683876

"Ah, so you do already know about that then? I guess that'll save a little explanation as to who I am. You asked me who they are, and how to help them. To do that, let me first tell you who I am." As he spoke, he returned his pistol to his side, which seemed to form a holster automatically as he did so. The strange silver suit molding on command.

"My name is Cam Carrow. I was the head of the UNNA. A secret governmental science wing, the United Norra Nanotechnics Agency. We were an odd conglomerate of scientists, many different types of thinking were present at the table. Our focus was on the development of nanomachine based weapons and armors. We were given a pittance of a budget each year to develop public works projects. That was where the boring initiative came from. Just a simple program we'd installed a few nanomachines with developed into something so much deeper. Y'see, there are metal deposits deep in the cliff, but since much of the city sits atop it, they've banned any kind of mining operations. We had a few nanomachines displacing rock on a nearly microscopic level. Straight down, until... well, you know what was found. A few of the other department heads and myself gathered to discuss what we'd found. Ultimately, the boring initiative was expanded upon, and the first main shaft into the... well, we've termed it a gigafauna, since megafauna doesn't really describe it. We sent a tac team in first." He pauses at this part of the story, apparently the memory was a bit raw for him.

"Only one soldier survived first contact with their consciousness in tact. They were the best of the best, but by the time they got a message to me, our compromised tac team had gotten word back to the tac department's HQ to send suppression team after suppression team in to save them.

In the end, half of our tac team was dead, and the other half was under the sway of the thing below. The struggle was short lived, and if I hadn't gotten word from one of the first into the gigafaunus below, I would have surely been captured and zombified like the rest of them.

Strange. You had killed several soldiers, and none of them had the presence of that thing inside of them.

"How did you avoid that fate?"

"Me and a few of my subordinates pulled out some of the experimental weaponry we'd been working on and managed to create an unconventional escape route from the research facility. It's unimportant though. A few of us have already been hunted down.

"You have told me who my enemy is. UNNA. You have not yet told me how I can hurt them."

"Well... Look. I've been out of their R&D team for months now. I can't tell you what they're up to and how to stop them, but I can tell you where their R&D facility is."

You find these terms acceptable. "Very well. I know where you lodge. I will find you again when I am prepared to strike. For now I must take my leave however."

>>2683881

You think it's important to return to your lair, lick your wounds and bolster your forces before engaging in a full scale attack against your enemy. If their second base has the same level of fortification as the first, you've got a ways to go before you can easily crush them.

"Oh right." he said, almost bewildered that the encounter was ending so anti-climatically. "Right then, Bartholomew, show him the secret way out. Judging by his exterior.. it's exterior? Judging by our guest's composition, I'm sure they can use it the same as you can.

The silver suit the man wears forms up into the doglike form you'd originally seen, and quickly darts towards the door. Without trying to open the door, the dog trots through, the thin crack not even halting his movement.

What do you do?

>Follow the dog - Show off, try to go through the crack just as quickly as that nanomutt did. I won't be outdone by a pet.

>Follow the dog - Just leave through the door normally.

>Stay a bit - ask the scientist some more questions (write in questions)

>Other (write in)

>>2683886
>Follow the dog- Just leave through the door normally.

After all, there's no point in leaving the delicious torso behind when we don't have to.

>>2683886
>>Follow the dog - Just leave through the door normally.

>>2683907
This. We have to absorb the remains of our unfortunate interrogation victim we never got to really interrogate.

>>2683907
support

>>2683886
>Stay a bit - ask the scientist some more questions (write in questions)
"Have you gone deeper inside of it?"

>>2683907
support

Rolled 52 (1d100)

>>2683907
>>2683913
>>2683936
>>2684825

Alright, follow the dog normally wins it. The next post will be kinda short because you're basically just going from his front door to the ocean and then back to your lair.

>>2684931
Back to our cozy lair. Wonder how our organic carpet is doing.

>>2684987
You hate to admit it, but the dog's absolutely seamless transition through the doorway is beyond your abilities. You begrudgingly turn the handle, pushing the door open before flowing out of it yourself. You decide to count yourself lucky that the UNNA folks nanomachines don't quite work so well.

You Follow the dog carefully. You can see him avoiding certain paths, and occasionally it'll turn to bark when you are about to trigger a trap set out by the owner of the dimly lit cave system you find yourself in. You take a moment to pause and observe the chamber. It's dank, and dark, but small blue lines on the wall provide basic lighting.

Before long, the dog has taken you to a nondescript section of wall near the cave's entrance. Or, what could be called a cave entrance. Really, what it appears to be is a pitfall in the floor, which seems to travel down. You can see the faint glow of light coming up from somewhere below, but the dog machine seems hardly interested in that area. Instead, he sniffles at the wall a few times, before scratching his paw against it.

All of a sudden, the wall opens up. Shifting, and moving as the brown and black stone begins to shift into a silver stream. It starts flowing outwards a little bit, only for a tunnel to begin to form. It's not a large tunnel, only tall enough for the dog to walk comfortably abreast. Not that such things matter to you. All that does matter is that there is enough space for you to get the humans contained in your body out without issue. The wall continues on for a short period, before you are abruptly stopped by the dog. Ahead of you seems to be some sort of slide, the end of which is still not visible, as the path is still opening up. With a bark, the dog leaps into the air, curling into a ball as he does so. As you watch, the silver animal slowly turns to a brown color. His shape and appearance shifting to appear to almost be boulder like. You follow suit. You are unable to change your color, but you can at least take on a balled form. You roll down after him, some twenty or thirty feet behind. Growing unexpectedly dizzy as you do so. Before too long, you are ejected from the end of the slide. However, the tunnel no longer seems to be widening at your approach. You are traveling far too quickly to stop yourself as you hurtle towards the rocky face below.

Then, rather than impact, you simply fall straight through the rock. As you do so, your vision is blinded by a series of colored lights, until, disoriented, you pass through the illusion and find yourself hurtling instead towards the sea below.

>>2684990
The dog is there, having taken on the shape of a manta ray, and is cutting through the sea in a circle around you as you allow yourself to begin sinking. A small tune plays from the dog, as it quickly moves towards the slick cliff face again and starts effortlessly maneuvering up. You watch as it disappears into an outcropping of rock, a strange distortion passing through the rock face as it does so.

For someone who couldn't build a proper shack, this guy has surprisingly good defenses in place.

You decide that your lair, while less technically saavy, still feels much homier, and pleasant to be in, and decide to start crawling along the cliff side towards the horn, hoping to spot the familiar features of the cliff overseeing your own secret lair entrance.

When you get to the fissures, you realize once again that the humans you'd taken into your body would not fit through the thin rock wall. You are frustrated by this, but you decide it's finally time to do something about that. You burrow into the sand, going perhaps a foot deep, before finding the rock wall once again. Using your crab claws and spike growth once more like a drill, you start in on a fissure, clearing away sand and small rock fragments as you force your way through. Once the hole is roughly the size of a human head, you start pushing through. You can feel the bones snapping inside of your being as you push through, but ultimately make it into the chamber of mostly still water without issue. When you surface however, you realize that the red taint that had begun to spread in your own lake had made its way all the way down here. Before too much longer, it would begin pushing into the ocean. A concern for later, for now, you are only interested in returning to your lair so that you may rest and recuuperate.

When you arrive, you find a perfectly healthy plated minion standing guard over eleven bodies that had been recovered from the assault. You add the four held within your body to the pile, bringing it up to a total of fifteen bodies. You note that one of the bodies has tiny chunks of flesh taken out of it's legs. Before you can question them however the plated minion informs you.

The flesh spawn was trying to snack on the bodies. I pused them out of it's reach before it could eat too much. Ultimately what must be done with them is up to you.

He does not question the absence of the spiked minion, nor does he point out your greatly diminished size. You are actually surprised to see that when you eject all of the bodies from your form, your plated minion now stands at nearly three times your size. Even so, the size disparity does not alter his sense of deference to your authority.

It is time to slumber, to recuuperate. But first, you must decide how we will be spending our resources.

>>2684992

You have

>15 human bodies

>15 human brains

>An assortment of fragmented and splintered bone mass

>Two spiked protrusions from the belly of the gigafauna

How do you wanna use it?

>All for me, time to get big

>75/25 split between me and plated minion

>50/50 between me and plated minion

>50/25/25 - us, plated, flesh spawn

>25/25/25/25 Us, palted, flesh spawn, new minion

Or really any assortment between "us" "plated minion" "Flesh spawn" and "new minions"

>>2684995
>>25/25/25/25 Us, palted, flesh spawn, new minion
I'm torn. We desperately need more numbers to go toe to toe with these people above ground, we need to buff our minions, but at the same time we need to regain a lot of our mass back.

We'll have to go hunting again, next time a little more discreetly.

>>2685025

It would take about 6 bodies worth of the humans to restore you to your previous level of mass, and about 4 brains to restore you lucidity.

You also get the sense that since you've returned to your flesh spawn, it has been transferring slight amounts of mass to your body, so if you stay here for long enough you might heal naturally. At the rate it's going though, it feels like it may take a while.

>>2684995
Make a new minion 20%
20% for flesh spawn, played minion, and you.

Save 20% in case spiked minion returns. Question plated minion on recent events, and spiked minions whereabouts.

>>2685087
If that’s the case, then I say we take 8 bodies and 6 brains for ourselves, so that we can restore ourselves and give ourselves a little boost. Also take half of the assortment of fragmented and splintered bone mass so that we can boost our defense.

After that, we can give the plated minion 4 bodies, 4 brains, and the remaining half of the assortment of fragmented and splintered bone mass.

Then use 2 bodies and 4 brains for a new minion. Giving it more brains than bodies so that it’ll be smart enough to understand our orders and not do anything dumb.

Then give the remaining 1 body and 1 brain to the flash spawn.

I didn’t know what to do with the 2 spiked protrusions, so I’ll let someone else come up with something for those.

>>2685087
suppport

I say we try and fuse the spikes with either the new minion or have the plated one try and control them since they're also squishy like us.

>>2685223
support also try to control the spawn and limits spreading in water and gain more control and not just let it spread how ever it wants

>>2685223
I meant to support this one, not to link to your post. i'm still figuring this out

>>2685390
>>2685382
>>2685223
Alright looks like this one wins.

>>2685390
Don't worry lmao. Glad you decided to come check this out.

>>2685382
also this is the second time this has been brought up without getting really much conversation around. Lemme get a roll, 1d100 to see if you guys get a little more adept with the flesh spawn.

Rolled 71 (1d100)

>>2685418

>>2685390
Since you're still figuring this out, if you don't know how to roll all you have to do is go into the 'options' field in the reply and type dice+1d100

If I ask for a roll of multiples you would type dice+2d100 or whatever in order to increase the number of dice rolled.

good night sorry i cant continue

Rolled 74 (1d100)

>>2685418

Rolled 32 (1d100)

>>2685418
Good roll incoming!

>>2684995
>new
Finally, I can catch up on this thread! Stupid internet problems.

>6 bodies for us, 3 for Plated, 3 for Flesh Spawn, and 3 for new minions.
We need to heal a LOT, buff our current minions, and spawn new minions. This looks like a good split.

>>2685577
Aaaaaaand I just noticed that the vote closed already. Nevermind.

>>2685418
dice+1d100

>>2685579
roll 1d100
/roll 1d100
roll-1d100

Rolled 78 (1d100)

>>2685585
There, finally figured it out. I have no observational skills, apparently.

>>2685576
>>2685463
>>2685422

74 is pretty good. Write up incoming. May take a while as this one is gonna be a bit on the long side.


>>2685589
also glad to have you on board. Hope you're having fun.

>>2685599
I am, It's just my first time not lurking (hence the name) and I'm still trying to figure out how things work.

But yes, this quest rules and I want to keep participating. Currently, that means lots of questions!

Are we still dissolving extremely slowly in water, or did we fix that problem? Does the red tinge in the water do anything helpful for us? What's been going on with the flower spawn-thingy?

>>2685608
Yes we do still disperse just a little bit in water, but even before we were able to control it, and now it's much easier to control so it takes up very little of our mental faculties to keep it contained.

The red tinge has been observed to make the fish behave oddly, but not too much more has been observed about it.

And I'll cover the spiral thing a little bit in this next post, as you've elected to feed the flesh spawn some.

Finally. You have returned to a place where you feel safe. You are protected, you are secluded, and as far as you know, you are undiscovered. You look over your sizable pile of resources, and your mind starts to whir. You cannot take being in this diminished state any longer. In fact, you will not be happy unless can stand taller and stronger than you did before. You immediately separate more than half of the mass, and nearly as much of the brainmatter to ensure that you can grow to even greater heights than you had reached before. You set them aside, to be ingested once you had finished divying up the remaining resources.

To your plated minion, you give four of the remaining bodies, as well as four new brains to your plated minion.

You have done exactly as I have asked. You have earned this. In addition to these boons, I offer you this. I shall need you as strong as possible when we strike out at those who have taken your brother from us.

As you say that you separate a good half of the bone fragments from your pile, and slide them over to your plated minion. Seeing the sizable pile, his amorphous form greedily overtakes them. You watch as he begins to transform in real time, his plating becomes a full bodied affair, no longer requiring him to engage any effort to close off the gaps. Moreover, you see a thin vein appear along what you might call his shoulders. The thin vein grows and grows, until it suddenly springs up from the form, producing jagged bony protrusions that are more whitely colored than the rest of the mostly greyish plating.

You turn your attention then towards replacing something of what was lost.

You had created your plated minion on accident, and your spiked minion intentionally. It is time to add a new minion into the fold.

As was the case before, you're not entirely sure what you'll get when you add the four brains and the two bodies together. You offer up some small portion of yourself, as well as a sizable chunk of the available flesh spawn in order to bind the body. From there you wait, feeling the creature before you beginning to make sense of the world around it.

Unlike before, where your creation's shape and substance was somewhat definied from the first moment, this is... different.

>>2685770
What stands before you is clearly alive, but at the same time it is nothing like your previous minions. It is tiny, far smaller than the amount of mass you provided it with would imply. Moreover it had no distinguishing features. It was just a lump of mass. It puddled around, it's body flowing like an oozing wound more than what you'd come to expect from your minions. It also seems reluctant to leave the mound of flesh spawn in your lair. Each time it approaches the edge of the flesh spawn it quickly reroutes to a different part of the cave. It may be your imagination, but it almost seems like the flesh spawn surges outward when it nears the edge, only to slowly recede back into it's previous bounds. It's hard to tell, but it almost seems like this creature is growing the flesh spawn at a quicker rate.

On a whim, you toss a brain and a body into the center of the flesh spawn, letting the membrane absorb the matter.

The moment you do, a few things happen.

Firstly, the slowly growing spiral structure surged upward. Each of the reddish arms creeping up to fully encompass the purple lump within. The purple lump, once encased, starts glowing a dim purple color. A color which is immediately mirrored in your odd viscous new minion. It moves over, and quickly attaches itself to the spire that had begun to form, apparently communicating with it.

As this happens, you hear the new minions voice in your head.

It says you've not been the best caretaker. It almost sounds offended.

It says it needs more. It needs to grow more. It's starving.

You think for a moment. You had honestly not given much thought to the flesh spawn or it's capabilities. You enjoyed that you felt somewhat stronger when you were surrounded by it, but you'd never thought that the pathetically weak will contained in the flesh spawn might have it's own demands.

This has piqued your interest, so you go over to examine the growing spire.

What are you? you ask, reaching a tendril out to connect to it.

All at once, you hear what sounds like thousands of voices. Tiny, independent, but cooperative voices. Mostly they cry out in hunger. They cry out to replication, they cry out for growth in all it's many forms.

Delving deeper, you concentrate your mind. This is almost like a new world. So much smaller than the one you are used to, but when you immerse yourself in it it feels impossibly massive. You can feel the ground, and the small leak that's been spreading into the water. You feel fragments of the flesh spawn itself working its way into the world around itself.

You feel, as you did before, that you could easily overpower these voices with your own.

You can sense that while corrupting the waters, they've hijacked the minds of fish and crabs. They've had a steady income of mass, but too small. Not great enough to meet the needs of the hungering masses.

You speak now.

>>2685773

Patience. Rash action brings danger. you almost feel like a hypocrite after your recent adventures, but that isn't going to stop you from being heard. Unlike last time however, you can feel some of the tiny voices. Most of them are quiet, in awe of your grandeur, but some have the nerve to speak up.

We are hungry. We will wither if you fail to feed us. Please you mustn't ignore our needs!

Another cries out

Does not the monolith please you?

You intuit that they are talking about the odd spire.

We serve. Please do not forsake us.

It is then that a stronger intelligence reaches out to you. You can feel it emanating from the strange fleshy spire.

I have been hoping to hear your voice for some time. I thank you for the recent meal, but know that I am far from done growing.

What are you? You ask, your focus shifting to the massy growth that the small voices call the monolith.

Me? Well, I guess you could say I am this place. I am... Think of me as a representative. The lump you've noticed has been me, growing. You could have taken my mass and my intelligence for your own, and I thank you for not having done so. It had taken me a while to get myself even that far along subsisting off of crabs and fish. They do not have the greatest mental facilities you see. Though that human brain you've just given me was quite the educational treat. You have been a fairly active hunter. Crabs, fish, a snake, some birds, and plenty of humans. I can make use of these things in ways that you cannot. However, I am linked to you. Should your core be destroyed, so too will any semblance of control I can exert over the flesh spawn. I would thank you to take fewer risks, but I understand why that may seem unappealing. So, instead I shall try to help you out. I need a bit more mass to finish this first structure, which will consolidate my control over your flesh spawn in a much more concrete fashion. Afterwards, I will start helping you more tangibly.

This is possibly the most verbose of all your minions to date. Strange. You don't much care for the way it speaks to you as an equal, but before you can chide it it says again

Oh, and please allow this new friend of yours to stay in the lair with me. He seems to promote growth in a strange way. I don't know how it's possible, but when it is near the hunger seems lessened. I can focus more on what I've been trying to do, and less on the noise.

Cease your hunting. The fish, the crabs, the way in which you are hunting could draw too much attention.

Believe it or not, I've been trying. They've not been very keen on listening to me though, since I'm advocating for patience in the wake of famine.

Tell them there will be food, but it comes at the cost of obedience. You say, severing the connection and looking out over your lair once more.

That was certainly... preculiar.

>>2685775
You turn to your plated minion, and command him to guard you while you rest. You have a great meal to digest, and honestly you're looking forward to putting the day behind you. There were too many encounters that felt like losses, despite the fact that you'd still made it out alive, which could perhaps be seen as a win of it's own accord.

However, as you gather your food, and begin digesting it, it seems that your day has not yet fully been allowed to end.

>and, since I rolled an 81 earlier for this check

As darkness begins to overtake you, instead of going into a hibernal state, you can feel the piece of you that had been left with Sophie emphatically attempting to get your attention. Your mind focuses in on that niggling sensation, and you can feel Sophie's excitement to feel your pressence.

"There you are!" She says sitting up with a start. You get the impression that she'd been getting ready to go to bed, as she's mostly undressed. However she wraps a blanket around herself and quickly hurries over to her computer.

"Alright, let's show you... uhh... what we found?" She said, her confusion about how to differntiate the entity in her mind and the greater 'you' a little humorous.

You wait for the computer to boot up, before she starts viewing a 'found footage' style video.

"Hey! It's your boy A-Rad! Today we're checking out the Misty Monastary." He said, turning the camera away from his face to show off a strange rock formation. Three pillars of jagged rock extending up from a deep cave. Water flows from a few points into the chasm, but it is an oddly uniform pit.

"So called because of the ancient monastic order that used to meditate in that central rock area there." He said, as the camera zoomed in toward the center of the three rocks, where a small stone platform could be seen. "Oh wait, it looks like there might be one of them out there now." He said, as the camera zoomed in.

A bald man garbed in a simple white robe sat cross legged. The footage was blurry, but something looked very strange about the way that he was sitting.

"Now, it's dangerous to get out there in the middle like that. Y'see, the mist coming up from the chasm there leaves these rocky outcroppings very slick. So far, we've not actually been able to figure out where the waters below lead out, and because of the monks who've met their doom either climbing in or out of the monastary, the falls have been called "Cerian's Tears" named for the monk who'd founded this strange ancient order.

This is surprisingly informative coming from a man named A-Rad.

>>2685780
"I'm gonna try to get a closer look at this show here. This might actually be a world first. These meditation sessions are highly private, they don't even tell their fellow monks when they make a journey out here. Journeys are typically made in the dead of night, with the monks arriving there in the early morning. From then on, they'll meditate all day and night, only to climb out again once the moon is at it's highest point in the sky."

He was talking loudly at the edge of the ravine, holding the camera so that both his own face and the monk was in frame. Without any warning, the man is suddenly seen tumbling into the falls, and the camera feed is quickly cut short.

"This video was up for twenty seconds before it was cut."

Sophie says, rewinding the tape to just before he'd begun to fall. That's when you see it. A strange flash in the monk's eyes. Yellow light, illuminating him and his surroundings in the dim morning light. It is apparent that he's not sitting in a meditative pose, but rather, he's floating above the ground.

Did she really just waste your time to show you some doctored video on the internet? But then again, you're a massive creature that communicates primarily through telepathy. Perhaps there's something to this...

You commend her on a job well done, and tell her that the two of you will meet soon to discuss this. You instruct her to find out as much information on the Misty Monastary in the meantime.

And then, darkness takes you. You rest, finally. And you grow. When you reemerge from your slumber you are bigger, and stronger than ever. Of the bones you'd ingested, you realize that some of them were not human. You can feel two distinct bonelike structures in your body, and you belatedly recall the shatting of the bone door, and how it had sent shrapnel into your body. The bones feel incredibly dense and strong, and you can think of a number of ways to use the new compound in your body. Even so, you can't help but feel a little disconcerted about the source of the meal.


There are many options available to you. You are not even sure where to begin.

>Hunt for the flesh spawn, let's see what happens when we cultivate this stuff properly

>Meet and greet the new minion. It's a strange little floppy thing. Who cares if it looks like someone hocked a bunch of phlegm in the middle of your flesh spawn, apparently it's helpful.

>Meet with Sophie - That was weird, let's make sure it was legit.

>Go hunting - Been a while since we looked for new and interesting things to kill. The ocean is a pretty tempting mistress and her bounty is ripe for the taking.

>Go visit science man now that you've gotten yourself back to tip top condition.

>Other (write in)


Okay jesus. Longest write up yet. Fuck that one took a while.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>2685784
Hmmmm...
I kind of want to get the creep growing, but that's noticeable and a massive nutrient drain. Sophie's thing seems like a plot hook, but that could get us killed. Food is always good, and we might eat some herbivores, which is a step closer to being able to eat plants and open up the wonderful world of photosynthesis. We just visited science man, and there's more pressing issues right now.

Is the monks a tight window of opportunity, and if so, is it possible to get food and monks in the same turn?

If the monks aren't timed, then I vote >Hunting

>>2685784
>Meet and greet the new minion.
>Hunt for the flesh spawn. (Maybe attack another boat?)

>>2685784

>Hunt for the Flesh Spawn

Let's see about getting this thing properly grown.

>>2685818
Do this.

>>2685802
You don't have much info on the monk yet, and may need to give Ms. Duncan some time to look into it more before you know what sort of time scale you're working with.

>>2685818
>>2685892
>>2685974

Gonna call it for meet and greet the newborn and go hunting.

Lemme get some rolls for hunting, as well as some suggestions on what to feed it. The animals you go after will effect the DC of the roll.

1d100

Rolled 87 (1d100)

>>2686008

Let's hunt some marine mammals. Seals, Sea Lions, Dolphins, Whales....humans swimming...

>>2686029
Support

Rolled 42 (1d100)

>>2686196
oops

>>2685784
That was a BEEG update.

Rolled 56 (1d100)

>>2686008
clams mussel

>>2686008
also eat some plants like kelp

>>2686029
>>2686196
marine mammals has the vote. With an 87 out of 100, you can get a thing or two here. Write up soon. I'm just waking up so give me a little bit of time to shake off the grog before I do a write up.

>>2686973
Nice. Fat stacks of MASS.

>>2687003

We gonna get us a Blue Whale

for the fleshspawn i agree with getting a whale or big sea creatures but guys, we might wanna think about abilities rather than mass

what if we go after shellfish like our plated minion, get some armor, go after urchins like our spider minion, get some weapons, or go after a herbivore and get the ability to eat vegetation!

>>2687028
i would like a herbivore possibly the washed up corpse of a seecow or manatee is a manatee a vegetarian? or we take a whale scoop up all ourspawn and minions and move deep down down in the water and ground

>>2687028
or a pistol shrimp or mantis shrimp that have been washed up the the currents or a live on that have been displaced with possibly by poachers

>>2687127
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXrxCT0NpHo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONQlTMUYCW4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMhjqbESIeY

>>2687165
or this worm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_7ByiYbCYM
or this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8FVpj0p-iU

what about the zombie fungus, what if we could either increase our infest range/speed or we could straight up just make an entire town come to us (of course the latter would be risky as people would notice but its an interesting thing to think about)

>>2687225
a upgrade i really want to have is of the plastic eating bacteria trash bergs are a real thing and this will greatly expand our diet also interesting idea

>>2687232
oh shit that sounds really fucking useful

I FOUND SOMETHING BROKEN,

GASTROLITHS CAN DIGEST ROCKS LMAO IF WE CAN FIND CROCODILES, ALLIGATORS,AXOLOTLS, OR SEA LIONS WE CAN GAIN INSANE AMOUNTS OF MASS!!! (oh also sorry for all caps, im excited by this discovery)

namefags please go

>>2687254
Supporting

ok, im new to 4chan so idk whats up but why the hate? is it just cuz we're flooding chat or us having names? i can understand flooding chat but we're just strategizing and planning stuff out for the game, there should be nothing wrong with that right?

File: 1336890365612.png (27 KB, 454x455)

27 KB PNG

>>2687302
>not lurking before posting
Is nothing sacred?

>>2687315
i lurked for the first thread and through a little of the second, but i came specifically for this story someone linked me too and so im not too accustomed to the site as a whole

>>2687324

Ignore them, they're just being oldfags and summerfags.

>>2687355
I seriously hope you're not actually defending this blatant and unabashed newfaggotry.

>>2687370
>>2687355
>>2687315
>>2687302
>>2687288
>>2687254

okay let's cut this shit out. Who gives a shit how long someone has been here? I haven't been on 4chan in years and I've had to ask all sorts of questions since I've been running this shit.

>>2687389
t. newfag

>>2687389
I'm usually fine with it, but stuff like >>2687246 I can't help but find obnoxious.
I suppose I'll refrain from shitting on the newfaggotry (which, just as an FYI, is more hate for an attitude than simply anyone that is 'new') but only because I love this quest and it's QM

>>2687666
Thanks anon, I appreciate that. Anyway, here's the next update.

You look around, and see that your flesh spawn has grown considerably after ingesting your last meal. To date it is the biggest that you have gorged yourself with, and the effects are obvious. The flesh spawn has begun to spread out around the lake, covering much of the northeast bank. The lake itself is still cloudy, you you notice that the color no longer extends downriver. The murky red waters are contained withing the confines of this single chamber, which suits you well enough for now. in some spaces the fleshy mass has begun to crawl up the wall. In some places it reached halfway up towards the high cave ceiling. The space around your lair has become humid, and there's a certain quality present in the air that wasn't before. You feel as if you are breathing easier than you had been.

You approach the strange slimey minion as it scuttles around the still forming spire.

What are you doing? You question

Cultivating. it responds.

How? You ask

I do not know. it responds.

There is a very mechanical, quality that this minion's responses have about them. You're reminded of the spider minion, and how at first he was mostly quiet. Perhaps this creature simply needs more time to come into it's own.

He seems harmless enough, working with the flesh spawn like some sort of doting mother. Whatever it's doing, it seems happy enough to be doing so. It does appear to be moving much more actively now that your flesh spawn has swollen beyond it's previous bounds. Perhaps its growth is linked with the growth of the flesh spawn? Who knows.

For now, you are fixated on the conversation you had with that strange flesh spawn intellect. It seemed to want more food. You go out in search of sustenance for your lair itself. You bring your plated minion along, so that he may range for himself on the sea floor while you hunt.

While combing through the bay and in the nearby ocean for anything promising, you come across a small pod of black and white creatures. Killer whales, the word filling your mind from the ether. You had to range pretty far away from the city to find them, but they are by far the largest creatures you've seen in the waters so far. There were five of them in total, three that appeared to be delectable full grown adults, and two that are adolescent. Even so, all of the specimens are much larger than a human, and any one of them would make an excellent meal.

The pod consists of four killer whales, and they've not yet spotted you. You are smaller than them, a fact that surprises you, but you do not think that would prevent you from killing one if you could convince them to grow close. The speeds at which they rip through the ocean are far beyond what you are capable of, so the only way to hunt these creatures for now would be by ambush.

>>2687710
You observe them for a time, watching them hunt smaller fish in tandem. You observe them for quite some time. They tend to enjoy attacking medium sized fish with their tails, and then taking them down with their powerful jaws while they're stunned.

You even observe them corralling a bunch of small fish into a ball near the top of the water, before using their strong tails to stun them by slapping the top of the water. During the smaller fish's disorientation, the whales swam through the pocket of dense fish with jaws open.

They were efficient hunters to be sure, but they had nothing on you. You compress your form into a long noodle-like appendage and slip into the feeding frenzy at the top of the water. One of the adolescent orcas winds up being the unlucky whale to be hooked by you. As you see it approaching, you angle your end into it's mouth. It's teeth bite into your tendril, and you feel some pain, but compared to the pain you'd experienced from the humans and from the gigafauna, this is nothing. You curl the rest of your body around the orca, twisting yourself around it's fins and pinning them to the creatures sides, causing it to stay motionless in the school of fish. One of the other orcas nearly slams into it, but changes course at the last moment. The orca in your grasp begins a desperate mournful bout of whale song, alerting the others to it's predicament.

The rest of the orca's hunting party backs away from their feeding frenzy and simply watches from a safe distance as you coil yourself around the adolescent's body. The bit of tendril inside of the orca worms its way deeper inside, piercing through flesh without issue until finding and destroying the heart. The orca offers up some final distressed song before going quiet. The it's fellows retreat at that point, unwilling to engage with a threat that they do not know about.

You have successfully killed one adolescent orca whale. Time to take it back to base. You once again realize that the fissures are simply much too small to accommodate a meal like this. The whale, adolescent though it may be, is nearly the same size as yourself, and far less capable of squeezing through the cracks. You instruct your plated minion, who had returned with quite a sizable bounty of clams and crustaceans to snack on for himself, to share some of his bounty with his new brother. He agrees dutifully, but you sense that he is perhaps a little grouchy about the matter. You decide to nip that sentiment in the bud and simply say.

It is his due, as someone who has not yet earned the right to hunt by my side.

Figuring that little bit of encouragement will mollify your plated minion, you have him set to work on widening the fissures for you. He takes a while, slipping between the cracks and slowly forcing himself to expand, but he eventually makes enough progress for you to pass through with your meal in tact.

>>2687715
Getting the kill in through the waterfall is a bit trickier. It weighs quite a bit, and you've never been required to pull such a weight up against the force of both running water and gravity. Still, you manage to struggle until it reaches your underground lake upstream.

Upon arriving, you tow the mass of flesh through the lake, beaching it on the quadrant of lake that is controlled by your flesh spawn.

There. That should satisfy hunger for some time. You communicate to the intelligence behind the fleshy spire.

It offers no reply, but you can see the flesh spawn is already forming minuscule tendrils to reach up and start mulching the whale. You watch for a time as they slowly grab small pieces of whale flesh from the bottom of the unfortunate target of your hunt. Over the course of the next several hours it will slowly be torn to pieces by your dutiful flesh spawn. In that same period of time, the first flesh spire will finish it's formation, and a second on will have begun sprouting. Your flesh spawn also rapidly continues to fill the cave before your eyes, spreading out until it controls nearly a third of the coast of the lake. The second spire of flesh begins to form in the lake, but before paying attention to that, you see the first spire of flesh has begun to molt it's external skin. Leaving behind what looks to be a pulsating brain thinly covered by translucent skin. It gives off a slight purplish light.

Finally, solidarity. It says, and you can feel it's will solidifying. The strength of its will seems to be on par of that of your spiked minion, prior to your spiked minion's disappearance. Oddly enough, you do not feel any additional strain on your own mind with it's formation. While you usually have to devote a segment of your willpower towards dominating your more independently thinking subordinates, since the moment this fleshy mass has come into being it feels almost less burdensome.

I can finally begin to support you in earnest. The voice says into your mind.

I am of you, though I am not quite you. Even so, we are linked in a way that the others are not. I can take your burdens, and hasten your recovery, but only when you are tethered to me. Leave this place, and you will feel the strains and stresses return in full, but while you're here you will be indomitable. You have so far had minions who are willing to listen to you. That may not always be the case. You will thank me for my presence then." It says, almost smugly.

At any rate, give me a little longer to process this meal you've given me. I think you'll be quite happy when that second bud blossoms. It says, definitely smugly.

You're not sure if you like this thing, but it does seem to genuinely believe it is here to help you, so you tolerate it.

>>2687718

You are free to continue doing as you please now, assured that the hunger of your lair has been more than satisfied for the time being. Perhaps you'll go out and try to find something equally large for your own gorging purposes, or perhaps you'll find something new to hunt, or maybe something else, there is a lot of stuff to do after all. Where shall you start?

>Hunt some more. I'm bigger than before, but not bigger enough.

>Wait around the lair and see what that second spiral thing is going to be.

>Stalk through the aqueducts, see if you can get a ping on Spiked minion's location through your telepathic connection. Perhaps he's not yet dead.

>Talk with Sophie about the monks

>Talk with scienceman about science stuff and our enemy

>Use some of your mass to make a few more minons

>Other (write in)

>>2687723
>Stalk through the aqueducts, see if you can get a ping on Spiked minion's location through your telepathic connection. Perhaps he's not yet dead.

>>2687754
Supporting!

>>2687754
support

>>2687723
>>Stalk through the aqueducts, see if you can get a ping on Spiked minion's location through your telepathic connection. Perhaps he's not yet dead.

I really like where this is going. We have our own 'creep' carpet now, a creep carpet with a mind and will of its own. Can't wait to cultivate this thing further, until it starts taking over the city above.

Can we potentially grow some new minions specialized for digging and tunneling? I kind of want to start thinking up plans to expand our underground lake and cavern.

File: maxresdefault.jpg (192 KB, 1920x1080)

192 KB JPG

>>2687825
Also, spore releasing flesh spawn when?

Rolled 89, 85, 6 = 180 (3d100)

>>2687771
>>2687761
>>2687754
Looks like try to search for our minion wins out. Lemme get 2d100 rolls

>>2687866
There are a lot of things that are possible if you pursue the right evolutionary paths.

Rolled 44, 62 = 106 (2d100)

>>2687870

>>2687870
Just caught up, internet problems should be resolved now.

Can we snag some plants or herbivores on the way? It would be great if we could get a few steps closer to photosynthesis.

Rolled 66, 36 = 102 (2d100)

>>2687870
We ever going to be able to control what it is we make with our flesh spawns?

Rolled 50, 29 = 79 (2d100)

>>2687870
Here goes nothin'

Rolled 55, 16 = 71 (2d100)

>>2687870
Oh, and have a pair of rolls.

>>2687866
We might get spores from mushrooms or ferns. Good reason to get plant digestion.

>>2687873
>>2687880
>>2687881

66 / 62, fail, pass.

Write up incoming.

>>2687880
Yes, kind of. Like, if you wanted to make a new spiked minion, or a new plated minion, or whatever, you think you could probably do so by just throwing in the same compositions of mass / flesh spawn / brain matter during creation. You're getting smarter now, and might be able to understand this process on a more innate level pretty soon, to have some level of control over the product you want to make.

>>2687877
I see you guys who wanna be able to take on plant stuff, and I'll say I have a particular avenue in mind for getting that card into your deck. Sophie may have delivered it, if I'd rolled differently before. It might not be the worst idea to get a few more people infested and working for you. Maybe someone who knows a thing or two about biology.

Something to think on.

>>2687978
Of course we want to get plant stuff in our deck! Plants do lots of stuff better than animals, and it's way more efficient to be a producer than to be a secondary consumer! If we get plants we can make our own mass! That's HUGE! And that's not even including dandelions for seed spread and all the ridiculously effective adaptations plants have to survive in extremes and the infrastructure buffs we'd get from being able to make roots and the lovely toxins that they make-

I'm rambling, but you get the point. Plants are HUGE. It's a whole new kingdom of extremely useful adaptations to get. Especially since we seem to be going the Zerg-esque Creep route.

>>2688014
Hey man I'm not the one you have to convince.

>>2688025
Yeah, I know, I'm just super excited. I like this game and I want to get out of the hunter-gatherer stage so we can do exponential Zerg growth.

>>2688025
Hey man, I'm on board. Creep flesh is go.

>>2688043
Especially Creep Flesh that feeds itself and our minions.

After your recent meal, and your recent hunting, you inspect your minion. He has grown considerably larger than he was when you'd attacked the previous military base. You also, have grown quite a bit. You estimate that the total mass between you is somewhat greater, but your total mass was greater. You could take more of a beating this time. You inform him of your purpose, and he immediately seems to be pleased to be going.

I knew you would not abandon him. Your minion says, and you almost want to scoff.

I cannot let them thank they can take what is mine. you say, seething with hatred for the humans who would oppose you. The pair of you slip into the tunnels underneath the city, and make your way through for quite some time. You periodically take a moment to try to sense your ally telepathically, but it takes quite some time before you feel anything at all. When you finally do feel something, it's only after you've delved deeper into the tunnel systems than you ever had before. You start to chase that sensation, until you come to a great central chamber. Below you can see several tunnels, much like the one you are currently in, each running into their own runoff vein, with some sort of loud pump system being heard from deep below. It makes sense that there would be some sort of system like this in place. The city is founded atop a clif, but it has swollen beyond it's original bounds. Some of the city is located at the base of the cliff, where the harbor and the bay lay. You intuit that each of these offshoot tunnels leads off into a different section of town, with the lowest levels serving to pump water up to be drained off elsewhere. One of the mid-level tunnels runs to the northeast, and you find yourself crawling along the wall attempting to make it there, as that is the direction where you can most strongly sense your minion.

As you enter the tunnel mouth, from behind you a great gout of flame takes you by surprise. You can feel it scorching and charring your back. You quickly take the burnt flesh into yourself to smother the flame, but to your agony find that the flame continues to burn even without exposure to oxygen. You turn to face you attacker, only to see a man in a brown coat hovering in the air. Below him a gout of fire shoots down, keeping the man level with you. In either hand the man wields a flame thrower. You see his silver face, and immediately recall the last time you'd encountered a man like this.

>>2688428

"I've got it, level six, northeast tunnel. They were right to have us monitoring these tunnels after all." The man says, before pointing both of the guns at you once more. You do not wait to get lit up, and immediately dive into the water. You move silently through the channel, as quickly as you are able, and for a time almost allow yourself to believe that you've lost them. Then you hear it, a strange humming sound. Something is disturbing the surface of the water, but nothing is breaking the surface. After a moment your plated minion suddenly forms up into a tight disc just above you. As he does two sudden explosive impacts are heard. You break the surface to see another of these brown cloaked, silver skinned fighters. This one had blue lights emanating from her feet, and appeared to be skating away on the ceiling of the tunnel. "Got it pinned, it's tougher to crack than I thought though!" a voice, more feminine than the others. From behind you the tunnel glows orange as the fire wielding man approaches, and from the front, a familiar pair of green and black sunglasses meet your gaze.

"Got ya this time big guy." He says, launching a series of canisters in your direction. As they make contact with the water, a powerful electrical current runs through your being. Searing pain engulfs you, and you immediately struggle to get yourself out of the water, clinging to your plated minion and pulling it with you. As you break the water and climb the wall a gout of flame erupts against your side, while the ceiling surfing girl with the shotgun takes another couple of explosive shots at your side. Your plated minion blocks the first of these, but she jumps from her position, and takes a second shot before landing on the water you'd just fled and skating upstream. That shot hurt. The damage she'd done had been relatively superficial, but with the three of them, if you allowed them to gang up on you, they could accomplish some real damage.

>>2688430
ow will you deal with these nuisances?

>Send the plated minion after one while we take out two of them. (Which one?)

>Have the plated minion endure two of their attacks while we quickly eliminate one of them

>Fuse with the plated one and wield him as our shield and hammer

Also, describe the method you want to use to attack these opponents. They are human sized, so both you and your minion are much larger than them, but they are unusually durable and made of those painful nanomachines. Your primary methods of attack against these guys include

>Claws

>Spikes

>smothering (sacrifice mass to just engulf and crush one

>The two spikes from the gigafauna

But I mean you're an amorphous monster with the ability to harden your body on command so be as creative as you want when describing the attack method you wanna use.

>>2688435
>Have the plated minion endure two of their attacks while we quickly eliminate one of them
Let's smother the flamethrower guy, but quickly form rows of claws as well as the two spikes from the gigafauna to impale his upper chest and lower torso and pull him apart.
We should probably try to take his head off right after for good measure.

>>2688441
support

>>2688441
support

>>2688441
Supporting, with the addition of throwing him into the water as soon as his insides are exposed, since last time we fought one of these guys, doing that shorted him out.

Plus, as seen here: >>2688435 , they’re made of nanomachines and we already know those things don’t like water.

>>2688441
Support.

>>2688435
GET MAD

>>2688441
>>2688524
Supporting

>>2688524
support

>>2688524
Forgot about the shocking thing! Support.
Perhaps Plate Minion could shove one of the other two in the water?

Rolled 77, 64, 88, 89 = 318 (4d100)

>>2688524
Well, not always. For instance, the science man's dog was made of nanos and he did fine when he entered the ocean.

But anyway, it looks like we've got smother one and let our minion tank some.

Let's get some combat rolls, 2d100

Rolled 53, 94 = 147 (2d100)

>>2690594
I'm gonna murder the fuck out of them.

Rolled 7, 64 = 71 (2d100)

>>2690594

Rolled 19, 82 = 101 (2d100)

lets do this!

>>2690633
>>2690611
>>2690607

53-94, fail / pass

I rolled really high with every one of the NPCs so that was a pretty tough roll for you guys. Write up soon.

Also sorry for being absent for most of today. I passed out hard as soon as I got home from work.

Rolled 18, 75 = 93 (2d100)

>>2690594

>>2690661
Nuuuuuu! Not Plate Minion! And just after we lost Spikes Minion too! Although... it isn't a critfail, so maybe Plates lives, but takes damage?

>>2690735
Y'all are a little more durable than that. Your plated minion was the 77, the original asshole, 88 the skater girl, and 89 the flaming hardass. He takes some licks, same as you, but you guys are alright for now. You've got plenty of other fodder to deal before you get where you're trying to go.

You can feel the beginnings of a plan forming in your head. They would send only three to challenge you? Perhaps there were more, and they were lurking elsewhere in these labyrinthine tunnels. Whatever the case, these three would not be enough. To demonstrate that, you take a swipe at the fiery offender, who with a series of complex maneuvers manages to avoid you. Your rough plan is transmitted telepathically to your plated minion, who immediately jumps up to knock a canister fired by sunglass sporting hunter harmlessly into the drink.

"Did I mention I hated this one?" He said with a groan as he reloaded his cannister.

"Yeah like, a thousand times." The grav skater said as she skated along the ceiling over your plated minion. With two resounding blasts of her shotgun she knocked your plated minions legs out from under it. You see cracks appearing in his plated exterior, which immediately begin fusing shut.

You however, are focused on the fiery fighter. Each time you lash out at him he distances himself and rebounds to light you up with that painful flame. You come to find that even water does not dous the sticky heat when it's in contact with you. You have no recourse but to let it burn out or separate the mass from your body entirely.

In fact, that idea sparks something mischevious in you. You let him spray you with fire, until a sizable side of your flank is engulfed, before suddenly taking a lot of air into your body. With a crackling sound, you begin to expand, filling the space of the tunnel around you as the fire bubbles up around your extemeties. With one final flick, you eject your burning mass towards the fiery fighter, just as he goes to start shooting you again. As your attack reaches him, he hardly even flinches, but he still reacts, and you take advantage of that fact. You lash out at one of his legs, finally catching ahold of him, and continue gripping even as he starts burning his jet stream to get away from you. The fire is hot, but it will be shortlived now that you have him. From your body you angle the pair of spikes you'd recovered from the beast. Even as your tendril wraps around more of his body, holding him in place, release the pair of spikes. Hardening small portions of yourself where the hollow tips are to piece the man easily. Your tendril tightens around him, forming claws as it does so and ripping him nearly in two.

However, before you can deposit the remains of the man into the water, he curses at you.

>>2690786
"You think you got me huh? Jude! Hit it! Light this fucker up!"

And all of a sudden, a bright glowing light begins emanating from the man's body. You look back once more to your minion, who is still batting away gas canisters and trying to figure out what to do about this highly mobile fighter that's putting cracks in his dense armor. It is all that he can do to stay on the defensive, and even that appears to be a losing battle. If you allow the shock of the explosion to rip through the room unstifled, it might cause him some damage, but it may also cause his allies some damage. You have precious few seconds to decide how to proceed.

Do you

>Smother the explosion with our own body

>Throw the body towards the other fight. Our minon will probably be fine, right?

>Chuck him as far down the empty tunnel as you can and try to harden last second

>Other (Write in)

>>2690789
>Chuck him as far down the empty tunnel as you can and try to harden last second.

We will not have another minion of ours fall no matter what. Once this first guy is toast it's a two on two battle, and we should be able to win that now that their formation will be broken.

>>2690789
Chuck the fucker into the water.

>>2690814
Support! We need to get rid of Bomb Guy, NOW.

>>2690877
Oh, and we need to send a warning to Plated Minion, so that he can hunker down too. Preferably in a way that funnels any remaining blast towards the other two guys.