Deep within a koopa fortress stands a group of seven koopas. Six of them are staring at a lawn mower as it drives in circles around its pen. The seventh koopa is standing behind the other six with a look of frustration.
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A few minutes ago the bookkeeper had told the koopas going on the expedition that he'd wait until they chose the lawn mowers they wanted, all of the time since then had been spent at the first holding pen. The six of them still stood there now, with dumbfounded expressions plastered on their faces. The bookkeeper had lost his patience, he looked down at his pocket watch to see how much time he had left 'I've only got an hour and 45 minutes left until I'm needed elsewhere. They've been staring at a single stock model for almost five minutes now, and we've still got at least 30 more models to go through. I've had enough of this charade!'. He aggressively snapped his pocket watch shut and placed it back into his shell, this got the attention of the group that was just ogling at the lawn mower. "I don't have time for this, you guys have 15 minutes to pick the animals you want. Just go get them yourselves and we'll deal with the prices and bookkeeping on the way to the wagon. Any embark points not spent in the next 15 minutes will be forfeit."
Looks of panic swept across the group, they didn't want to waste their embark points, but 15 minutes wasn't enough time to form a proper plan. Gwolfski looked like he was once again going to call the group into a meeting so they could discuss how to spend their embark points, but the other five koopas made a mad dash out of the lawn mower pen and out into the hall. Even Enemy Post managed to get onto his feet, he then started running back the way the group had came. Gwolfski ran out to try to catch up, but was too reserved to break out into the full panicked sprint that the others were in.
The bookkeeper sighed and sat on a nearby bench, he set a timer on his watch for 15 minutes 'hopefully this will be the end of it, I don't want them asking for any time extensions.' He propped up his head with one of his arms and prepared for a long boring 15 minutes, but was instead approached by one of the lawn mower ranchers. "Hello sir, would you like help selecting lawn mowers today?" the rancher asked with a cheerful yet professional tone. The bookkeeper recognized this one, he would consider him more than a passing acquaintance but not quite a friend "Oh, hi Scarlet_Avenger, I was here to help some idiots pick their animals for their embark, but they were taking forever, so I cut them loose and said 'get what you want and come back here when you're done'. I could use the company though while I wait for them." Scarlet_Avenger looked a little concerned "Are you sure it was a good idea to let some... more troubled koopas, handle their own animals? I mean, you've seen the stuff down here, it's dangerous for anyone to move their own animals."
The bookkeeper continued his expression of 'I don't really care about anything right now', but deep inside he could feel a creeping suspicion that his decision may have been a mistake "Oh come on, there are plenty of trained animal handlers down here that could easily move the 26 mildes they'll probably want to bring. Besides, even these guys wouldn't be stupid enough to try to handle anything dangerous on their own..." A look of fear crossed the bookkeeper's face "Actually, maybe I should go check on them. They ran out in a frenzy that may be impairing their decisions.". Before the bookkeeper could even get up off the bench, a shout of surprise came from down the hall, followed by the sound of something falling into water. A faint sound of a lock being opened and the clink of chains falling onto the ground. 'Please dear gods forgive me for I have made a grave and terrible mistake' the grinding of gears can be heard as two levers are pulled, excited dinosaur shrieks slowly begin to fill the hall.
Scarlet_Avenger now looked really concerned "Yeah, that might be a good idea, the laser ceratosauruses are probably REALLY agitated after having one of their nest boxes removed, I'm not even sure an expert handler could calm them down in this state." the scraping of stone on stone finally stops as the bridge to the laser ceratosaurus pen meets the other side of the moat, a stampede of theropod feet thunders over it. Barely audible under the sudden rush of dinosaurs is a gruff koopa voice and the clinking of chains "NO WAY BUT DINOSAUR WAY". The bookkeeper buries his face in his hands, for he understood what was about to happen. Through the entrance to the pen he could see the fort's entire laser ceratosaurus population storm by, with Enemy Post on one of their backs using the chain that had once been used to bind him as a bridle to guide the laser ceratosaurus under him. As the hoard went, small groups began to break off from the heard to attempt to claw apart other pens so they could eat the animals cowering inside. Scarlet_Avenger rushed out into the hallway to see what was going on, but was scooped up by the mouth of a passing laser ceratosaurus.
The bookkeeper laid down into a fetal position along the length of the bench. Farther down the hallway someone yelled "Quick, before the bob-omb pen is breached activate the emergency seal. We can't afford them blowing up any of the bigger pensssAAHHHHh-" He was cut short by his own scream. At this point many of the smaller animal pens had been opened and the laser ceratosauruses that had stayed behind had lost interest, so many of the pasture's smaller denizens were making an escape. Teehee butterflies flew by, ratata's scurried along the ground, out in the hall way the bookkeeper could see a machop beating the shit out of an unlucky Moo Moo. It was an all out melee in the hallway, anything and everything that wasn't too skittish to run away from a fight was trying to tear apart their neighbor.
An explosion, another explosion, the cracking of stone and the clatter of a wall falling to the ground. Another cry from down the hallway "THEY'RE OUT! THEY'RE LOOSE! RUN! ABANDON SHI-" the sound of a mighty footstep and a simultaneous splat. The laser ceratosauruses that were once rampaging down the hallway were now starting to run back the way they had came, with cries of fear instead of cries of rage. The bookkeeper didn't want to know what it was this time, he curled into a tighter ball on the bench and prayed that it would be over soon. As he did so, he noticed that a cloud drop had floated out of its destroyed cage and was now in front of him, with a look of friendly concern on its face. It almost seemed that the cloud drop could sense how unhappy the bookkeeper was and wanted to make him feel better, because it was soon nuzzling the bookkeeper. The bookkeeper was beyond caring about maintaining his manly image, he drew the cloud drop into a tight hug and forced his eyes shut even tighter.
Outside the lawn mower pen a number of koopas could be seen running away from the new threats that were behind them. The bookkeeper was busy trying to drown out the hell on Earth that was going on outside, so he didn't notice them. A koopa with a large decorative head dress with a chain chomp adorning the center ran by, followed by about 20 sandshrews. Each of them was holding a sandstone ankh with a rendition of the koopa with the headdress's face on it. Behind them was a koopa with horribly bent tail and a red dot painted onto his cheeks. He had a few pichus in his arms, each of them also with red dots painted onto their faces. Next to him ran Urlance Woolsbane with a bandaged Stingpie over his shoulder trying desperately to get out of his grip. Behind them surged an almost literal sea of hundreds of capnaps, each of them seemed to also be trying to get to Stingpie. Occasionally a cross eyed owl or a fungal crow would swoop down to pick off a capnap and carry it away, almost definitely for consumption. A Tyrantrum was along the edge of this sea, frequently bending over to scoop up capnaps into its mouth as it ran.
Even further back there was a koopa wearing a coconut bra. No amount of explanation in the world could accurately say why he was wearing it or what he was doing with it before. Behind this group running in terror came a wave of enormous laser brontosauruses, crushing everything in their way and firing immense lasers at everything around them. The chaos was immeasurable, nothing had any idea what was going on, causing every party involved to fall into the mindset of 'kill everything that isn't you'. It was almost as if the gods had planned a course of events very very carefully and had lain these events like dominoes on a table. These events were long and thorough to ensure that everyone got what they wanted out of them and that everyone ended up with a happy ending. Then, the bookkeeper flicked one of these event dominoes out of the way by sending the party off on its own instead of following standard procedure and accompanying the party as it met the denizens of the pasture.
To further spite the gods, this event domino went flying and knocked over a nearby goblet of godly rawst berry wine also on the table, spilling all over the paper the gods were using to plan out the next line of future events as well as staining the nice white table cloth below. In their rage at having their plan and their table cloth ruined the gods swatted the rest of the event dominoes off of the table, leaving only chaos and pandemonium in the void created. Most of hese flying dominoes missed the bookkeeper, but they brought great pain to the rest of the koopas that were hit. The battle raged outside, worsened by a fire that was starting to rage along with it. Finally, one of these dominoes hit the bookkeeper when a stray rock fired by a graveller that was busy tearing a lion in half struck the bookkeeper in the head. The bookkeeper passed out, and the war outside slowly faded into a numbing darkness.
---
Mottled Petrel stood in front of the bookkeeper that was still passed out on the bench. It looked like he had fallen into a pleasant sleep after cuddling a cloud drop while he was waiting. Mottled Petrel would have normally snickered at this sight, but he was partially responsible for the decimation of the pasture, so he didn't want to push his luck. Out in the hallway death was everywhere. The fire had burned away most of the blood, but there was still a lot of blood dripping from the ceiling from the aerial fight between the swarm of birdemic birds and everything else that had wings. Anything that hadn't been killed had been corralled back into their pens and boarded in with plywood. Doctors were rushing around to treat both the injured koopas and the injured animals, for there was still a chorus of dying wails out in the hallway. These wails echoed a lot more than they usually would have, because most of the plant life had been burned away, returning the once thriving ecosystem to a barren cave.
Fortunately, the gods had gotten a new table cloth, this one stain resistant, and had started placing some new basic events to fill the void and return order. Mottled Petrel stared out at all of the charred, smoldering corpses 'Well, that could have gone better. I was just going to grab 26 mildes and be done with it, how'd it end up like this.' There was the enormous corpse of a laser brontosaurus right outside the door, its neck was dangling over the pen wall. There were several scavenger flowers busy eating the corpse, unsettling most of the onlookers. At some point Enemy Post had been thrown off of his mount and gotten his head knocked against a wall, he lay passed out next to the group and their selected animals. Of the animals they had originally chosen most had died along the way, but the ones they now had behind them included: 1 hint block, 8 trolls, 4 laser ceratosauruses, 6 nipper spores, 2 snow leopards, 2 lawn mowers, 2 thrash doves, 2 ninji, 2 laser compies, 2 helmet snakes, 2 cobrats, 2 frogogs, 2 beanlets, 2 sky blue spinies, 2 bob-ombs, 2 homalocephales, 2 orintholestes, 2 capnaps, and 2 fuzzies.
All of the animals looked like they had been shaken by the horrors they had just witnessed, for they were all frozen in place. The bookkeeper's watch alarm starts going off. Somehow, he hears it through the blunt force trauma and slowly moves to a sitting position and turns off the alarm. He looks around at the group in front of him in confusion, but then glances out into the hallway and remembers what happened. "What the hell did you guys do!" He looked like he was torn between tantruming and crying "I leave you alone for 15 minutes and you destroy the entire pasture and get most of its inhabitants killed!" Mottled Petrel tries to answer that "Don't answer that! Just get out of my sight. If you aren't out of this fort in the next 30 minutes I'm sentencing you all to death!" The whole group and the animals get the point, and immediately rush out of the pen. The bookkeeper keeps yelling behind them "Do you hear me!? DEATH! DEA-" He breaks down crying mid-sentence and returns to his fetal position with the cloud drop still in his arms. He cried for the deaths of his fellow koopas, he cried for the loss of all the potential research that had been missed out on with the destruction of the underground jungle, he cried for the deaths of the hundreds of mostly innocent animals that had been caught in the cross fire, but most of all, he cried because it was going to be a bookkeeping nightmare documenting what had happened. He cried himself back to sleep, the cloud drop looked like it was really enjoying itself.
---
Mottled Petrel ran frantically through the halls of the mountain home, searching desperately for some way up to their wagon. Behind him was a small stampede of animals with four koopas desperately trying to carry the still passed out Enemy Post by his arms and legs. As they went the group pushed everything in their way to the side of the hallway, a few unlucky haulers were trampled.
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Up in the entrance hall sat a wagon, slowly being filled with supplies by a small group of trolls. Next to the wagon were two hammered silver chairs, in those chairs sat the king and his personal squire. The king was leisurely leaning back in his chair and smoking a chopped 1-up mushroom from his mastercraft clear glass gnob. A gnob is comprised of a hollow glass cylinder with a hollow glass bulb at the bottom. On the side of the bulb opposite of the smoker was a metal spigot where the mushrooms were placed and lit. Inside of the bulb was a liquid used to cool the mushroom smoke and add flavor. Most poorer koopas would have just used refreshroom juice for the cave mushroom that they were smoking, but the king was a very affluent smoker who could afford more exotic ingredients, so he used ice flower juice. The squire just sat there, observing the scene in front of him 'I'd call him on his smoking habits if the smoke from those 1-up mushrooms weren't literally healing everything wrong with his body.'.
The king blew out the most recent smoke ring he had been working on, and decided to entertain himself by asking his eager to please squire some things he already knew "How much longer do we have until the expedition is scheduled to be here?". Eager to impress the king, the squire whipped out his folder full of important documents "Hmm... we have about an hour and 20 minutes until the expedition team will be out of the royal pastures, and then two hours for the animals and supplies to be vetted and catalogued, and then you requested an hour for the speech you wanted to give to the expedition and the fort, after that you've reserved the next five hours for the sending away party. So... three hours and twenty minutes until anyone actually gets here... Why are we here so early again?" the king had specified earlier that he wanted to be by the expedition wagon early, but they'd been sitting by the wagon for almost an hour with three hours and twenty minuted left to go until anything actually happened.
The king shrugged and took another deep inhale from his gnob, after a long drawn out exhale he finally replied "I don't know, I didn't have anything scheduled, I guess I just wanted a change of scenery or something. If I wasn't here I'd probably just be doing this somewhere else, might as well make sure the preparations go well while I'm getting stoned out of my mind". For anyone who didn't know the king, it would probably not make sense how such a seemingly laid back koopa became the warlord king of the koopa empire. Besides the fact that he was the only demon koopa in the mountain home (a natural caste of koopa, not an actual demon), when he wasn't stoned he was probably the most iron willed and brutal leader the koopas could have ever asked for. 'Well, I guess that's a good point. If I wasn't here I would probably be next to him in the throne room while he was getting stoned out of his mind' "All right, I guess I'll file some paper work while we're waiting" the squire started filing paper work.
It went on like this for about five more minutes, until the rumble of dozens of footsteps could be heard coming from the main hallway that led deeper into the fort. The king took his face out of his gnob to crane his neck towards the hallway "Hmm... did you plan a surprise before embark party or something?" the king elbowed his squire with a grin. The squire looked frazzled "Wha... no, I'd never do something like that without running it by you first. Maybe there's some peasants who want to get a good seat as well, or something." the excited cries of the laser ceratosauruses could now be heard from the hallway along with the footsteps. The king slumped back in his chair "Maybe they're bringing their pets as well". The squire looked down the hallway 'I don't recall authorizing any laser ceratosauruses as pets'. The hallway was completely empty.
'Oh, there's one of them.' Mottled Petrel turned a corner and spilled out into the hallway 'Wait, isn't that the expedition leader? Why's he up here, why's he running?' Mottled Petrel picked himself up and began sprinting like a madkoopa towards the entrance hall and the wagon. The squire looked really confused, his look of confusion only deepened when an orintholestes and four more koopas also turned the corner, sprinting like there was a pyroclastic flow behind them. The laser ceratosauruses turned the corner as well, it looked like they were trying their best to stay on their best behavior and not kill anything, but the thrill of the chase was starting to get to them. The rest of the animals turned the corner as well, followed by two cap naps trying their best to keep up. The squire elbowed the king "Hey, you might want to get up and sort these guys out. I'm not sure what to make of this.". The king groaned and sunk further in his chair "I'll do it when they get here". The trolls noticed the stampede, and stood out of the way as Mottled Petrel ran up to and jumped into the wagon. He immediately started clumping all of the supplies in the wagon together and wrapping rope around it.
The squire decided to pipe up if the king wasn't going to "Hey, uh, what are you guys doing, you aren't needed up here for another three hours." the other four running koopas made it to the wagon as well, they stopped for a moment before slinging the still passed out Enemy Post into the wagon. They then split up to perform all of the tasks needed to make the wagon ready for departure. "Something's come up, and we need to leave as soon as possible" Mottled Petrel yelled up from his desperate wrangling of the supplies "If you have any papers you need to give to us I'd appreciate it if you could get those out for us now.". The first of the smaller animals had made it to the wagon, Scourge ungracefully picked up the closest frogog and tossed it up into the cart. The squire looked over to his king for guidance, he shrugged "I would have liked to have given my speech, but if they want out of this fort so bad I'm not going to stop them. Give them the map, the fort founding permits, and all the paper work.".
The laser ceratosauruses had made it to the wagon, ZM5 brought them to the front of the wagon and hastily began tying them to the front of it. "Hey, uh" the squire called to ZM5 "We're supplying you with pack animals, there's no need for that.". ZM5 looked up, and then around for the described pack animals. He pointed them out to Derpy Dev, who grabbed the nearest one and hoisted it up into the cart as well. The back of the cart was busy being loaded with other animals by Gwolfski and Scourge, so Derpy Dev lifted his animal up over the side of the wagon. It fell in with a crash. "They aren't going to be fast enough" ZM5 yelled from under the laser ceratosaurus he was busy harnessing "we need to get to where we're going as soon as possible.". Finally, the capnaps had made it to the wagon. Scourge picked one of the up and started to throw it into the cart, but he stopped halfway through, and instead gave the capnap a tender hug. The capnap looked like it appreciated the hug, but then the moment had passed and Scourge tossed it into the cart.
The squire had no idea what to make of the blistering speed of the expedition group "Uh, if you're so keen on leaving this quickly you might want to find your seventh member.". The koopas stopped in their tracks, Mottled Petrel broke the silence "Uhh, who's this seventh member you speak of?". They slowly worked their way up to the pace they were originially at as the squire fished a paper out of his folder "Hmm... a certain Plonoki. But we haven't seen him in days, so chances are he's fled the mountain home by now. Soooo... I'm not sure what we're going to do about that.". He looked around as if his casual look would cause Plonoki to show up, but he did notice another koopa peeking in from the hallway to see what the commotion was. Upon being noticed he tried to back away down the hallway, but was stopped by the squire "HEY! You, what's your name, what is your current job.". The koopa slowly turned to face the squire "My name is bloop_bleep, I have no profession and I am currently hauling." he noticeably had nothing in his hands that he could possibly have been hauling. The squire noticed this too "What are you hauling and to where?". Bloop_bleep looked around for something he could haul, eventually he reached down and took off his right shoe, and then his sock "I'm hauling this fuzzy thread right sock to..." he looked around for a stockpile "this wagon for the expedition.".
'Good enough' the squire thought as he quickly scribbled something and tore it off of its parent paper "That is correct, because for the crime of directly lying to not only the king's squire, but the king himself, you are sentenced to being the seventh member of the Modded Hell expedition". Bloop_bleep looked down and idly kicked a stone "Aw beans", he then sullenly walked over to the wagon and plopped himself down near the front. "All right, I guess that solves the number problem. Here's all the paper work you need, and other than that I guess you guys are okay to leave." he walked over to hand the papers to Mottled Petrel. Mottled Petrel was still frantically tying his supplies together, for whatever reason the squire didn't know. He handed Mottled Petrel the papers, Mottled Petrel didn't even look up. He swiped them out of the squire's hand and stuffed it under an already tied rope in the pile. As far as anyone could tell, all of the supplies, the animals, the koopas, and the trolls had somehow been stuffed into to wagon. Mottled Petrel did a little once over of the wagon before hopping into the diver's seat "Thank you for your help, and thank you too king for leading the empire, but we'll be on our way.". The king blew out a smoke ring from his seat "Bye, have fun you guys. We'll be sending you migrants withing a few days.". With that out of the way, Mottled Petrel raised some extra rope into the air like a whip to strike the laser ceratosauruses in front of the wagon. The squire realized this too late "WAIT! Don-" *crack*, whatever thin veil of restraint the laser ceratosauruses had was torn to shreds by the whip crack. The most rage filled shriek from them yet tore through the entrance hall, and they broke out into a sprint. Dragging the wagon behind it, wildly careening with everything inside sliding from side to side. 'Well I guess that's why they tied everything down' the squire thought as he sat back down in his chair to fill out more paper work. The king offered his gnob to his squire, he didn't usually smoke, but this time the squire took a hearty inhale.
---
They were out of the mountain home and out of danger, but everything in the cart was still in full flight mode. The laser ceratosauruses had thrown all caution to the wind, anything that crossed their path was torn to shreds without even a change of pace. Anything flying above the trail was shot down by lasers, and then torn to shreds. Anyone who didn't already know the path to the fort could have easily followed the path of blood and carnage. The trip would have taken less than a day at a walking pace, but at the break neck speed the wagon was going at they'd probably be there in an hour. 'Wait, I have no idea where we're going' Mottled Petrel turned around "Hey, can one of you hand me the map?". A few moments later a hand gave him a piece of paper that was fluttering violently in the wind. Mottled Petrel tried his best to smooth out the paper with one hand, but could only make out the red X of the mountain home and a bunch of green and yellow. He looked for something that could serve as a marker for the fort location, but the only thing he could make out was a purple triangle to the south west. 'Fuck, we aren't even going in the right direction' he yanked the reigns to turn the wagon in the direction of the purple triangle on the map. No one questioned this call, because they were all preoccupied with a game of 'who can catch the falling bisected winged animal'.
Twenty minutes later the wagon was racing towards a town of some kind, a figure could be seen waving for the wagon to slow down. The figure soon became a cannibal, the cannibal soon became a lump of torn flesh between the jaws of one of the laser ceratosauruses. The wagon tore through the town proper, but the rest of the cannibals were smart enough to get out of the way. "Sorry!" Mottled Petrel yelled as they passed.
More towns, more casualties, more hasty apologies. Fortunately, the wagon was traveling too fast for word to travel faster, so no armed defense forces were met.
Next was desert, empty, empty desert. The laser ceratosauruses made a game out of toppling dry dry cacti as they went.
Mountains looming on the horizon, soon replaced by mountains looming next to them, and then behind them.
After ripping past a few fortresses a large purple cloud can be seen looming in the distance 'guess that's the purple triangle'.
The wagon is now racing past the large purple cloud, Mottled Petrel tries to stop the laser ceratosauruses, and fails. His next attempt is to instead turn the wagon to go towards the mountain with the purple cloud over it, he only succeeds in turning the wagon so fast that it flips over.
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Thirty minutes later the animals have been calmed down and the supplies have been thrown back into a pile near the wagon. Gwolfski lays on the ground picking at his shirt, somewhere along the way of their mad scramble the shells of all of the koopas had been lost "So... what now. This isn't the Waxy Jungles, I can tell you that much.". Mottled Petrel stood up and struck a menacing pose "I'll tell you what we're going to do, we're going to found the best god damn fort this world has ever seen! And then after that, we're going to make some beds, because I for one really need a nap right now!". The rest of the koopas looked at each other "I could go for a nap too" Derpy Dev pitched in. "All right, *yawn*, lets found the fort tomorrow." Gwolfski said as he rolled over in the grass, seemingly to fall asleep. "It's been decided" Motteled Petrel said as he laid back down "*yawn* We'll delve deep and secure lodgings later. We'll strike the Earth soon, yada yada yada. Nap time now.". The koopas cluster together and fall asleep.
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Modded Hell has finally been founded, but sleep has taken priority. Once they wake up what will the plan be? I'll post a screenshot of the land once my computer decides to work.
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Topic: The Resurgence of Modded Hell (Back, Still Broken, Now With Giant Butterflies) (Read 284508 times)