Chapter 0: Arrival

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[] Social: Follow the elves

A few elves escaped into the woods to the west. Elves are big on nature and helping small, defenseless creatures, right? You could follow after them and hope they'll help.

A few elves escaped into the woods to the west. Elves are big on nature and helping small, defenseless creatures, right? You could follow after them and hope they'll help. [] Social: Follow the ogres

Maybe the ogres would be a better choice? You've got no problem eating carrion, and there's bound to be a lot of that wherever they go.

Maybe the ogres would be a better choice? You've got no problem eating carrion, and there's bound to be a lot of that wherever they go. [] Free Action: Head back into the woods, stay away from anything that goes on two legs

[] Free Action: Investigate the dragon

[] Write in

Hunt: Cap of 1 food. {Note: eat the corpses first!} Social: Go talk to the squirrels Research: invent fire Free Action: investigate the dragon

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You were barely a week hatched when the planeswalkers burned your hive.Your mother came into the creche chamber, her once-gleaming spines broken and covered in soot. She gathered you tenderly in her bladed claws and rubbed her scaled head delicately across your cheek.she thought-sent sadly. Off in the distance a muffled boom shook the creche chamber; dust fell from the ceiling far above.She lowered you gently to the soft sand and traced a ritual circle around you with a few deft claw-strokes. She stepped back and raised her claws in invocation; mana flowed from the walls in twisting fire, all five colors uniting into a towering funnel of power so intense it warped the ground she stood on.The spell was only half complete when the wall behind her exploded, fragments of rock blasting into her and making her stagger. The complex spell she was weaving shuddered, trails of mana slipping out of the vortex and running wild throughout the cavern. An instant later half a dozen planeswalkers rushed in, swatting aside the last few sliver warriors that tried desperately to stop them. Your mother's despair burned sharp in your mind as she struggled to complete the spell before the combined power of some of the multiverse's most powerful beings destroyed her.Spells flew thick and fast; creatures appeared and were swatted aside by your mother's claws. Lightning and fire, water and air, even the very earth rose up to crush her, but she endured. Were she not trapped in the middle of casting a mighty ritual she could have rushed in, torn her enemies apart from close range where they couldn't use their full power without endangering one another. Instead she must simply stand and accept the blows, struggling to hold her focus long enough to complete the spell.Names and concepts flitted across your mind, traces of your mother's unshielded thoughts echoing across the link to you. From these thoughts you knew that it was Tawnos who drove his winged blade home in her throat a bare instant before she could shout the final words of the transport spell.The matrix of the spell shattered and mana ran wild through the room, vortices of power smashing everything around you. Planeswalkers were crushed, melted, and banished from existence, the roof was broken in a ragged circle that reached all the way to the ground far above. The very air burned...yet, throughout it all, you stayed safe in the shielded center of the ritual circle.The planeswalkers fought back, bending power sufficient to create and destroy worlds to the single task of containing your mother's broken ritual. It was too much for any one of them; the ritual was built with every scrap of mana from every mana bond your mother ever forged as her children spread across a thousand worlds. Wizards, magi, and warrior lords exploded from the overload. The survivors fled, each in their own way. Jace shimmered across the planar boundaries as black fire consumed his hands. Urza leapt astride a summoned ornithoper and hurled himself into the sky, pure chaos dissolving the construct's wings even as it spiralled up. Baron Sengir shapeshifted to his bat form, but was struck by holy lightning before he made it ten meters. The ogre mage Hidetsugu turned to run back down the tunnel but a spear of rock took him in the head, killing him instantly.The last thing you saw as you vanished across the planar boundary was your mother's lifeless body crashing to the dirt.The spell was intended to send you across the planes to a hive hidden in a forgotten and uninteresting world at the farthest reaches of your mother's vast empire. Incomplete and broken, the magic ran wild and hurled you through the matrix in which the planes themselves were embedded.You tumbled out onto a grassy hilltop, sticks and small rocks jabbing painfully into your still-soft hide as you rolled down to fetch up against the trunk of a fallen tree. With a high-pitched groan you pulled yourself up onto your tentacles and looked around.You stood in the border zone where thick forest trailed off into grassy plains. The plains lay to your north with forest stretching as far as you could see everywhere else. Far to the east, a range of grey mountains towered like the gods' own fence and to the west the angry red-orange sun was setting; it seemed brighter and redder than the one you had seen in your mother's memories of the creche world.At the base of your hill, where the last of the trees met the first of the grasses, a very strange three-way battle was in progress.Charging in from the east came a horde of greenskinned ogres. Their weapons and armor were primitive but their immense physical strength made up for it. They charged forward from the woods in an undisciplined horde, ready to smash their opponents flat.Their target was a boxy green-and-brown metal dragon squatting at the edge of the woods. A pair of large tree trunks hemmed it in, front and back; the stumps were shattered, not cut--clearly, the dragon had been running for the open ground of the plains when one of the enemies trapped it here in the close quarters of the forest.The dragon was very strange; its legs had hundreds of joints and were twisted back on themselves in a circle. A man sat on its back--no, not on,! There was a hole in the back of the dragon, and a human sat inside it! He tugged on two semicircular horns, swinging the dragon's head back and forth across the battlefield. Short jets of fire flashed from its long, thin nose, each flash accompanied by a ripping thunder. Four more humans in green and brown crouch around the dragon's flanks, each holding a small metal tube that spat flame and made noise just like the dragon, only less so.Just southwest of the dragon a cluster of elves had taken shelter behind trees. Each had a curved shortsword at his side and a bow in hand. A few elvish arrows were stuck in the dragon's leg joints, suggesting that the dragon men and the elves had been fighting up until the greenskins arrived. Now they were allies; the elves fired frantically, killing enemies in droves, but they couldn't stem the tide.The human on--in--the dragon's back shouted to his comrades. The words were unfamiliar, but the sense of the words in the man's mind echoed clearly:[Pomorski{identity-impression}, grenade{???} stonk! Keep 'em off the blondies{contempt/anger/pragmatism}!]One of the men crouched beside the dragon dropped his weapon and snatched another off the ground beside him. This one was larger and stubbier than the one he had previously held; he sighted down the long part and swept it from right to left. There was a series of loudnoises and explosions walked down the ogre lines, cutting the greenskins' legs out from under them.The human commander tugged on the dragon's horns, slewing his mount's head from side to side. A dozen ogres dropped, blood spraying everywhere as an invisible force killed them instantly. Elvish arrows took another rank of ogres, but the rest charged on until they were in contact with the elves.The elves slung their bows and drew their swords, linking together into a defensive front before the ogres arrived. The elvish blades spun in graceful arcs and a dozen ogres dropped, but the rest smashed through by dint of sheer mass. Once they were among the elves the slaughter was horrible; the ogres were larger, stronger, and more numerous. The elves were swifter and had better equipment, but that counted for little in a close quarters brawl. A few elves escaped into the woods but the majority died where they stood.Once the outcome with the elves was no longer in doubt, a group of ogres split off and went for the dragon. The beast's minions pointed their strange weapons and ogres died, but whatever magic powered the tubes needed to be refreshed every few seconds. The dragon's fire, however, had no such limit and it hit much harder. The ogres were nearly cut in half by the power of the dragon's invisible breath.It wasn't quite enough. The dragon and its warriors took a horrific toll, but the ogres carried through their charge. Once they reached the dragon it was over in seconds, the dragon warriors crushed beneath the hammers of their attackers. With their death the dragon went silent, obviously unwilling to do battle further now that its attendants were dead.The ogres picked over the bodies of the dead for a time, taking trophies as they went--a head of silver-white elven hair, a green metal helmet from the dragon warriors, swords, a few shiny trinkets here and there--and then retreated in the direction they'd come from, taking their dead with them.What's your name?What do you do now? (Don't forget to hunt!) As part of your plan you may choose to do the following:I use approval voting, so you may vote for as many plans as you wish. Votes should be of the following format:[X] Build a fireThis is a vote to build a fire.[-] Build a fireThis cancels your earlier vote for firebuilding.Here's an example plan:[X] Example planPeople could then vote for this plan by saying:[X] Example planThere can't be anything except whitespace before the [X] or your vote won't be counted.NOTE: SV's standard first-past-the-post tallybots allow you to vote for a plan by the author's name, e.g. "[x] EagleJarl". Youvote that way under approval voting, because the user might have more than one plan extant, or might add another one after you vote.Please do not retcon your votes. If you want to change your vote, issue a cancel and a new vote. Don't go back and change an earlier post.