I’ve always liked to read the survivor tales others have shared but haven’t heard any in a while, so hopefully I can get this started again. Please share your survivor’s tales of success, of failures and of their goals and ambitions!
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Danielle Morrissey is an avid backpacker who tried to get out into nature whenever she could, but this last trip is turning out to literally be the trip of her life.
When things started going wrong, like really wrong in her little town, Danielle was out in the forest scavenging for food and firewood. With the power out, what hadn’t spoiled couldn’t be cooked so she set out to pick some greens and get a little bundle of wood for the fireplace. As she was making her way back to town Danielle got her first glimpse of the undead, swarming her neighbor and literally eating him alive. In shock, she dropped her bundle of food, firewood and other scavenged bits and just ran. By the time she breathlessly stopped running through the woods she’d managed to get herself hopelessly lost, but at least the town and all those creatures in it were far, far away. The ground ahead began getting marshy and to her disbelieving eyes, she swore it looked like there were herds of dinosaurs grazing through the reeds.
Watching them was fascinating, but her attention had been so consumed with it that Danielle completely forgot her surroundings and it wasn’t until the ear-splitting roar directly behind her that she realized her mistake. Before she could even turn around, she was struck with such force, like a brick wall hit her, that she was sent flying into a large rock. In her last moment of fading consciousness, an enormous creature lumbered toward her, each step shaking the ground, a thick tail as long as a car slowly snaking side to side through the grass as it approached.
Though dazed and her vision fading, Danielle tried to let out a scream but it barely reached her lips when this impossible beast smashed her with its head once again. This time everything went black before she even landed.
More to come sometime soon
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One of my characters spawned in an evac shelter with an NPC a while ago. I tried to kite a firefighter zombie to him in hopes of getting a fire axe (I had just spawned and didn’t have a weapon).
Obviously the NPC shot me twice in the torso with 00 shot and killed me while trying to shoot the zombie.
My survivor named “Debug McDebug” harnesses her debug powers with terrible efficiency and ruins the world because of this. Teleporting around while possessing Clairvoyance, she found many bugs, both in the literal and software sense.
Her most optimal equipment is the debug pocket universe, a divers watch (for both temperature and time display), a syringe to try out mutagen, wielding an empty corn cob.
I have literally not properly played in months because I am always playtesting or hacking something. My survivor riddled the world with toxic waste map extras (I filed the PR a couple of days ago) to test out if they behave properly. Travelled miles with a superbike in the subway tunnels to get the craters spawning underground to reproduce. Mucked around in the sewers to see if those map extras giving shape to them could potentially have walls, which they could not, unfortunately. Teleported from lab to lab to reproduce a crash, dragging rail carts underground and smashing the disfigured remains to distort reality itself (reproduced a crash).
Despite the lack of actual playing it has been surprisingly fun.
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Consciousness came slowly and painfully for Danielle after being bashed, at least twice that she could remember, by a dinosaur. She slowly opened her eyes and rolled her head from one side to the other, not trying to lift it just yet.
What she saw brought consciousness snapping instantly back. The grass had been trampled flat and a ring of brush around the flattened area kept everything within contained in this nest. There, just beyond her trusty but battered travelpack were - eggs? Four or five oblong eggs, leathery and about the size of a football sat in a small pile rested a little more than arm’s length away from where she lay. The leathery shells were slowly undulating as whatever was within worked to emerge out into the world. Oh God, was she to be the first meal for this brood of soon to be hatchlings?!
That thought was the spark that got her moving. Scrambling up onto her feet in a crouch, Danielle grabbed up her pack, took a quick look around - whatever the mama beast was for these eggs didn’t seem to be immediately nearby, so she took her chance and ran.
Weaving through the swampy ground was frustrating, she couldn’t move as fast as she liked but at least nothing seemed to be pursuing her as she fled. The ground seemed to be getting firmer the further she went, maybe finally she was nearing the edge of this bog. Just beyond a small grove of trees up ahead the terrain opened up into a sprawling, grassy plain. She could lose herself in those woods or at least slow down any giant beasts that might pursue her as they tried to navigate through the copse of trees and briars.
She barely noticed it was much cooler in the shade of the trees, there were more pressing concerns right now. Taking a moment to look back over her shoulder while running, Danielle didn’t notice what the trees were obscuring from her until she literally was knocked off her feet. Looking up in front of her, there stood another large, scaly beast. It was about the size of an elephant but shorter, with a a beak and a thick bony helmet with three long horns protruding from it’s head. My God, was this a triceratops like she read about in school as a kid? The sudden impact initially startled it as much as it did her, but after scrutinizing Danielle for a moment, the beast lost interest and proceeded to go back to lazily grazing on the brush around itself. There were a few other similar beasts around though none of them seemed concerned about her either, all content to pick through the grasses for their morning meal.
Alright, she was safe enough to catch her breath for a moment and could use these triceratops as interference to escape if she had to - she was pretty sure she could outrun this small herd if a predator approached. Taking a cue from the herd around her, Danielle gathered a handful of berries. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate and the juice from the fruits might help wet her dry mouth. Bitter! The berries were full of flavor but that flavor was acrid and almost made the eyes water. Danielle tossed the remainer of the berries on the ground and to her surprise, the triceratops she ran into moments before plodded over and eagerly snapped them up. Finishing the berries in short order, it looked back to Danielle almost expectantly. It wanted more.
The novelty of the moment made her forget about the greater situation and she began looking around for more berries, ferns or anything else beside the plain grass all around. Was this for real? Was she really feeding a dinosaur? A bit of foraging and she had nearly an armful of greens that the scaly beast eyed in anticipation. It approached her and gave a nudge - a nudge that almost took her off her feet, but there didn’t seem to be any aggression in the gesture.
Danielle set the fodder down in a pile and stood between it and the creature. It moved to brush her aside with it’s massive head, but Danielle grabbed hold of one of its horns and pushed back. Pushed back with all her might but it wasn’t enough to move the beast - it did, however, get her message across that the greens weren’t there for the dinosaur’s taking. It tried again, then once more and each time she pushed the giant head back with every bit of force she could muster. Finally, the docile giant just stood there, looking between her and the pile of treats. In an impossible faceoff with a dinosaur, the creature relented and gave out a plaintive bleat as Danielle kept it from it’s prize.
Once she was sure the dinosaur had conceded to her will, Danielle stepped aside to give the animal it’s reward. It lurched forward and gulped down the greens while she moved off to a safe distance to avoid being injured from it’s enthusiastic feasting. When it finished its meal, the dinosaur moved back toward Danielle, looking to her for more. She gathered any other greens she could find into a pile, pushing away as best she could at the dinosaur until it relented and waited for her approval. While keeping an eye on the assortment of foraged greens, ready to reprimand her companion if it began to approach, she pulled some vines down from the nearby trees and quickly worked to twist and weave them together. The result could scarcely be called a rope, but it seemed strong enough and might just serve her purpose.
Stepping back to the pile, Danielle motioned her consent and waved the lumbering animal over to the mound of fodder. While it ate, she thought herself crazy but stepped beside the beast, took a breath to steel her nerves then hopped up, throwing a leg over the back of the triceratops’ neck. It immediately tensed and froze, though gentle words and patting its foreshoulder slowly calmed it enough that it tentatively went back to eating the last of it’s treat. She slipped the makeshift vine rope around the top two horns and gently pulled from one side to the other. The beast responded, turning it’s head the direction of the pull.
She’d done it! She befriended and mounted an actual dinosaur! It’ll take time for both to become comfortable with each other, but now Danielle had a powerful ally to travel with her in this new world.
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