Tuesday, November 18, 2014

CYOA brainstorming: Otherworldly Land

What is this about?

You awoke in: Deep space
Its two hazards are: Unstable ground and anomalies
Your boon is: The nanite cloud
Its malfunction is: Diabolus ex machina
Your friends are: Automatons
Your two enemies are: Ascendants and cultists
Your escape plan is: Get to the exit
The problem is: Upheaval

Our protagonist awoke in a space station of some sort. A sprawling affair that seems to go on forever. Physical laws are prone to being bent or even broken here, and the superstructure is beginning to decay, so that floors may suddenly give out, walls collapse, or doors jam.


Slowly our protagonist remembers being sent as part of a scientific survey team. To the space station. Which, ze begins to recall, is larger than most of the planets in this solar system.

But hey. The ship is here. Somewhere. And slowly our protagonist begins to figure out how to get there. But the station is populated...

...By the rest of the survey team. There are noises aboard the ship, phantom sounds that shouldn't be here. Sometimes they shouldn't even be possible, like voices ringing out through pure vacuum. And while the sounds are still indistinct for our protagonist, ze begins to remember the survey team falling prey to them, one by one, hearing the voices clearly and succumbing.

...By things, like a Lovecraftian cyber-immune system, made of flesh and steel, growing and dividing. They ignore the madmen, but not so for our protagonist.

And the station is shifting, the corridors and layout changing sometimes before our protagonist's eyes.

Zir only hope is part of the station's system itself, now somehow integrated to zir body. The particles are mobile, possibly self-aware, and able to carry out manipulate physical objects or consume them in order to reproduce more mass.

With that one weapon, perhaps our protagonist stands a chance.

Except no, no ze doesn't. Our protagonist is the station, prior to millions of years of further development and eventual decay both physical and mental. The voices are zir own, and the things are remnants of the survey team, spreading biologically and mechanically like a carefully-directed cancer.

Even if our protagonist gets out, ze's seen what's coming.

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