Description: You wake up, startled by some noise. It's coming from just beyond your safe little shelter-- what do you do? This is mostly RP prompt.
Goals:
If you choose to explore the sound, you find that it is one of the escaped tarantulas, and it hat has managed to knock over a display of cardboard onto itself. One of its legs has been crushed already. It is an ugly thing, as big as your hand and covered in hair, but it is a creature trying to struggle and survive, just as you.
It's late, and through the roof the moonlight weakly shines, illuminating it almost mournfully. You could leave it to die. You could put it out of its misery. Or you could let it free, to roam. There's no point in keeping it: there's no way to trap food for it, and it is an apocalypse.
If you choose to save it, know that it will perish within 12 IC hours of natural causes, no matter what you do.
What do you do?
First time doing this quest? Please write a minimum of 200 words for 1 Arcade Token.
Repeating? Minimum word count jumps up to 400 in order to claim your 1 Arcade Token.
Feeling wordy? Go above and beyond the bare minimum for additional tokens! You need to meet this word count while doing the quest, so no going back to pad your quest to claim tokens! These token bonuses do not stack, so you can't write 100 words to claim 1 token, then add 300 words to claim 2 more tokens.
500 words = 2 Arcade Tokens.
600 words = 3 Arcade Tokens.
700 words = 4 Arcade Tokens.
800 words = 5 Arcade Tokens.
Whistle While You Work: Feel free to have this moral dilemma with your friends!
Goals:
If you choose to explore the sound, you find that it is one of the escaped tarantulas, and it hat has managed to knock over a display of cardboard onto itself. One of its legs has been crushed already. It is an ugly thing, as big as your hand and covered in hair, but it is a creature trying to struggle and survive, just as you.
It's late, and through the roof the moonlight weakly shines, illuminating it almost mournfully. You could leave it to die. You could put it out of its misery. Or you could let it free, to roam. There's no point in keeping it: there's no way to trap food for it, and it is an apocalypse.
If you choose to save it, know that it will perish within 12 IC hours of natural causes, no matter what you do.
What do you do?
First time doing this quest? Please write a minimum of 200 words for 1 Arcade Token.
Repeating? Minimum word count jumps up to 400 in order to claim your 1 Arcade Token.
Feeling wordy? Go above and beyond the bare minimum for additional tokens! You need to meet this word count while doing the quest, so no going back to pad your quest to claim tokens! These token bonuses do not stack, so you can't write 100 words to claim 1 token, then add 300 words to claim 2 more tokens.
500 words = 2 Arcade Tokens.
600 words = 3 Arcade Tokens.
700 words = 4 Arcade Tokens.
800 words = 5 Arcade Tokens.
Whistle While You Work: Feel free to have this moral dilemma with your friends!
*thump*.
A sound in the dead of the night awoken Saul from his comfort slumber inside the newly-built shelter. What was that? It sounds like something dropped...or maybe, someone knocked over something not quite heave or not quite high from the ground. Was it someone sleep-walking in the middle of the night? Was it one of the pets, finally returned to their feral instinct because they're truly famished, and chooses to prey on us human?
Whatever it is, now is not the time to continue resting; his pulse quickened and unpleasant sweat started to drip from his receding hairline; it's time to investigate.
-but not before locking the shelter. He don't want to return and found SOMETHING lurking inside; nope, nope.
With solar-powered flashlight on his hand and metal baseball bat grabbed from the sports corner, he slowly walked to the source of noise.
*thump*
There it goes again! This time the sound is even harder than before-and it's accompanied by strange scratching sounds, like something furry brushed against thin-yet rough-material.
What was it, really? His heart's thumping can almost be felt shaking his already sweat-drenched shirt.
"!" There's movement just below him! With quick reflex he kicked that 'thing' across the floor. It landed with a 'squelch' sound, like something has ruptured or alike.
After calming himself down, Saul turned the flashlight on his still-trembling hand to the object. What was it, really?
A clump of brown-colored fur...like thing was spilling strange greenish liquid on the floor. Poking it with the metal bat causes the 'clump' to convulse uncontrollably. Saul jumped back, frightened of a slight, or even minuscule chance that the thing in front of him are a headcrab or facehugger from the franchise he liked. But it was not.
Looking at the cramping creature more closely, he can manage seven hair-covered legs and a rounded stomach. A spider? No, at this size it should be called tarantula, right? He recalled hearing about some petshop manager releases all the creatures inside the store after the first wave-is this one is also one of those swarm?
But then again it has been more than days-no, weeks after the release. How did they still alive without feeding? Or maybe they created a small sustainable ecosystem here, consuming each other to survive? Saul remembered that one of the rules of this Faction is, no eating the animals and if you found one, you should turn them in to someone that can take care of them.
Yet this one is wounded...by yours truly. Or maybe not, since he didn't find the remaining leg. Maybe it was attacked by something before it stumbles into him. If he remembered right, even if a spider lost its legs, they can regrow it just like roaches or lobsters by molting---but can this one even molt properly? His kick earlier apparently damaged the stomach part of the creature, rupturing it.
Small droplets of greenish-colored body liquid continued to turn black, clinging to the brownish hairs on the body. Should he give this one a mercy kill? Another memory from the time he was asked for help tending to a molting tarantula pet was that these creatures are unbelievably strong creature underneath the scary facade. Also, they are quite hard to kill due to the ganglia structure; the best and quickest way to kill them are by drowning.
He looked at his watch. The time is still few more hours before sunrise; the worst time to wander off outside the safety of the Mall's walls. What should he do? No, even if he's killing this creature, there's a risk of contaminating things with...dunno, germs? Although arachnid in general are very, very clean creatures that borne no human-related viruses or bacteria, he can't be perfectly sure that anything that creates undeath won't contaminate them. After all there's some kind of fungi that controlled these very insects and breeds inside them.
Remembering the photos about a fungi-infected tarantula made him shiver. There's always a chance of mutation; cordyceps, the mushroom in question has been valued as multivitamin and experimental drug-that means the chemicals inside them matches quite perfectly with our body's metabolism function.
But take that in reverse; doesn't that mean there's a way for them to invade the living body?
