Otjag

Rewritten: 11.06.2022 17:30 CET

Alyra and the Archives

Alyra is connected to the archives and the operator and creator. She is not able to think of new things, essentially making her a search engine for undiscovered should she know enough.

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Argul’s stats were coming along nicely, even though he wasn’t fast by any means.

The next 30 days Argul trained his sense space and worked on his avatar quest. 

During this time slimes managed to spread around the second floor. The cave stalkers and cackle fangs met on the third floor and are regularly fighting each other. 

His worms and crickets discovered the first floor and started to spread there. Following the crickets, the cave stalkers found the Negators difficult targets and left them largely alone.

Argul made a few breakthroughs with his sense space and got +1 Str and +2 Wis as reward.  

He was now able to see how the mana he produced destroyed the outer walls of his prison. For now his prison still regenerated a lot faster than it got damaged, but that was bound to change if Argul didn’t do something against it.

He also had a rough plan for his Avatar spell, but wanted to be level 5 before he tried it out.

As he needed the levels and really wanted to do something else then train Argul started to put the options for his 4th floor in.

Floor 4

• Natural caves
• Cave size: small
• Eternal night
• Temperature: 5°C to -5°C
• Events: 
  • Tunneling
    • Caves form random with a minimum distance of 50m and a maximum distance of 1000m between each other. Each cave has to be at least connected to one other cave.
  • Earthquake
    • There is a chance of 5% of small localized earthquakes to happen each month.
  • Heat wave
    • For 5 to 15 days the temperature will increase to 20°C. This event has a chance of 10% to occur each month.
  • Cold wave
    • For 5 to 15 days the temperature will decrease to -20°C. This event has a chance of 10% to occur each month.
  • Unreliable catastrophic weather
    • For 5 to 20 days, a hot temperature of up to 45°C surges forth from the 5th floor and a cold wave hits the 4th floor at the same time. This causes rapid temperature changes that are seemingly random. Where cold and warm temperatures meet, related weather phenomena will occur, such as fog, mist, wind, storm, and lightning. This event has a 1% chance to happen randomly each year and a 50% chance to happen immediately after a heat or cold wave. After this event no events related to temperature will happen for 15 days.

Argul had already planned to change his entrance option for his first 5 floors once he reached level 5, so that events such as the last one get a bit more punch. He watched his other floors as he waited for his new one to grow enough for his first plant.

Argul wanted his first plant to heat its surroundings to a more acceptable level. The trunk would be surrounded by leaves that looked as if they were stacked in a staggered pattern.

After creating his plant it got the addition of what Argul could only describe as pink hair that floated through the air around the plant. 

As the temperature around it warmed up, drops of water collected on the hair and flowed down to the turquoise trunk and then the ground, making it muddy around the plant. 

Argul named and identified it.

Weeping pink hair

This is a mid-sized plant. This plant grows mostly in cold climates, but can also grow in warm humid climates. It spreads out special leaves in the air that radiate warmth and collect water, which then flows along the leaf to the trunk and then to the ground, making it muddy. This makes it easier for the plant to spread its roots in cold earth as well as ensuring water supply.

Argul watched enamored. 

They were really beautiful and made the caves look more like a coral reef than caves with all the hair leaves floating around in the air. The hairs even had a weak pink glow to them when they heated the air.

Having had one success he hoped that the mushroom he had planned for would be a success too. 

Algur changed to another empty cave and started the ribm process once his mana was at 100. 

The mushrooms he grew were deep violet and had pointed caps. Really small crystals of ice formed around them as if it was snowing.

Frostbite

This is a small plant. This mushroom grows in cold environments, especially cold caves. They pull coldness into their surroundings, making them colder, but the area around their zone of influence warmer.

They absorb so much coldness that when eaten most creatures would get frostbite in their body and would likely die a very slow and painful death.

Argul should really start a list containing all plants he should never eat. 

While his mushrooms might not be the most edible of plants, mana being a thing he could imagine them being a possible ingredient for alchemie. One never knows, but heat resistant potions would be helpful for a lot of things, even smithing.

Argul waited a day to give his two plants time to grow, because his next three plants would have it easier to grow around one of the two. 

He then created his next plant in a batch of frostbites. A few tendrils of what looked a bit like ivy grew throughout the mushrooms. The tendrils had a few flower-like blossoms that glowed in the violet of the mushrooms. The leaves of the plant were deep blue. 

Argul called it Winter-ice ivy.

Winter-ice ivy

This is a mid-sized plant. This ivy grows in cold environments. It absorbs the coldness of the environment and slowly crystallizes itself. The colder the environment and the older the ivy the more crystallized it is, until it is more crystal than plant.

The older the ivy-crystal is, the colder to the touch it becomes, making really old crystals dangerous but also valuable.

Argul wondered how old ivy tendrils would survive if they were more crystal than plant.

Maybe they would have to eat coldness instead of nutrients once they get cold enough? 

Argul changed to a weeping hair batch. There were no mushrooms around them as they didn’t like each other. It also made sense as they were somewhat contrary to each other.

His next plant would be a huge root that grew underground and mostly in the muddy earth around the weeping hair. On the surface you would only see little purple leaves all over the place, that were all connected to the root. It wouldn’t grow blossoms and could just create new offspring. 

Argul finished his ribm process and small violet leaves popped up everywhere.

Bloated mud root

This is a small to large-sized plant. This root grows best in muddy areas. They grow for as long as they live, making old roots really large. The older a root is, the higher the possibility that the root can have one or multiple effects of different strength upon ingesting.

The root forms spaces filled with horrible smelling gas inside itself that often stop animals from eating the whole root.

Argul doubted the effectiveness of the gas to protect the root. 

Sure most animals would likely stop eating and run away, but smarter animals and sapients?

The moment they realize that these roots might have a chance to increase stats permanently the search would start. At least Argul guessed they could have these effects as the possible effects of the root seemed to be random and largely unrestricted.

Once Argul found an empty cave he prepared his last plant. 

While the flower he had in mind would have it a little easier around frostbite mushrooms, he wanted it to grow alone for now. 

The flower would have a more or less normal stalk and a blossom that was a dark blue that got lighter from the inside to the outside. The petals would look like needles and the lighter blue colored parts of them would glow.

Once grown the flower was a bit larger than Argul intended but that was fine. The deep blue stalk opened into leaves that grew in a circular slightly upwards arched manner away from the stalk. In the middle of the leaves the blossom of the flower grew.

Wintercrest

This is a mid-sized plant. This flower grows in cold environments. They collect coldness in their petals, that will glow brighter the more coldness they contain. The flower can shoot magic missiles imbued with the stored coldness to defend itself. 

The petals get harder, the more coldness they store and once they contain enough coldness they will crystallize. The flower will then shoot the petals instead of magic missiles. If the petal penetrates the offender it will then start to freeze it von inside out. On opponents slain in this manner a new Wintercrest will grow.

Somehow Argul’s plants on the fourth floor were a lot more dangerous than on the other floors, it must be because of the harsh event he added. 

The wintercrest flowers looked like they were grown for royalty and handled opponents like royalty would, at least in Argul's opinion. He gave his plants another day before he wanted to start on his animals.

Argul’s first idea for an animal was a kind of sheep. 

It would have a weather sense to protect itself during the catastrophic weather event and would like to eat cold things. 

The sheep he grew had wool of a really light blue color. Their feet and head was black and they had two large horns adorning the sides of their head.

Blue Wolacle

This is a mid-sized animal. This kind of sheep lives in cold environments as they like to eat cold things. Though they are friendly they are wary of other creatures. Their wool might look soft, but is hard to penetrate and they don’t shy away from using their horns.

Wolacle’s have an amazing sense for the weather in the region they live in. If you should ever see a Wolacle running from seemingly nothing it is time to pack your things and follow it, for it will run to a safe spot in the coming storm.

Argul watched his four sheeps as they started to move around and bleated at each other. They stayed together so Argul guessed they were herd animals.

His next animal would be an insect that would have similarities with a butterfly. 

It would live in and feed off the weeping hair plant. Argul still wasn’t sure if it was a flower or a bush or something else entirely. 

The insect he created looked like a butterfly with 6 wings. They were violet and had red spots on their wings. The edge of their wings was black and if they sat on the leaves of the rootes around the weeping hair it looked like red glowing eyes would look at you.

Lunarian red eye

This is a small animal. This animal lives around and feets of pink weeping hair and bloated mud roots. Their larvae grow up in the mud around pink weeping hair.

Lunarian red eyes are poisonous and will do a lot to protect their food source.

They were not that special, but sometimes nature just had to be a bit boring. 

If only he knew…

Argul thought that his creations would be the special ones anyway once his portals were open and he already had a plan for that.

He gave his two new animals 10 days to grow before he created a predator.

His predator looked a bit like a downscaled wolf, just with dark blue fur. They had three tails, the middle one with a red tip and other too with light blue tips. They were really fast and agile, for their small size at least.

Ice howler

This is a mid-sized animal. This type of wolf evolved to be able to live and hunt in small and cold caves. They build burrows for their pack and often form groups of 3 to hunt for prey.

Ice howlers are able to manipulate the temperature around them using their tails. Doing this they are able to create or remove tracks.

Argul again thought he would get something special for his predator, but was somewhat underwhelmed. But then his fourth floor was already dangerous so not having the most dangerous predator might be a good thing.

You finished the floor!

Argul told his floor to continue growing like alway and opened his status.

Status

Otjag

If you wonder where I get my inspiration for plants from, just search for exotic plants on google and look at pictures.