Futuristic ARK: Survival of the Fittest (Closed)

[Deadwood Deer]

Early morning rose on the Island. Triceratops and dodo birds wandered the beach, munching through bushes and muscling their way through trees for food. The beach was littered with the usual debris that appeared. Small stones, seashells, driftwood, and seaweed washed ashore last night.

As the morning sun illuminated further along the beach, three strange pieces of debris. They looked like small, hairless gigantopitheci to the dodos waddling around them, picking at the sand around their heads in search of edible bits of debris.

Humans, a species not seen on the Island for some time, three of them. Two men and a woman, by the shape of their bodies. As they rose up from their slumber, the bright sun stung their unadjusted eyes, making them look anywhere but at the sky, and coincidentally down at their left arms, where a shiny black diamond-shaped object was poking out of raw flesh in their wrists. It didn’t hurt when prodded at, but could not be removed, and did not feel like it was a natural part of them.

Soon after seeing that thing, and arriving at the conclusion that messing with it further might be a bad idea, the three humans noticed each other. They were each barely clothed, in just what their predecessors back when humans were common on the island might call underwear.

Back when humans had a solid hold on the island, there might have been someone waiting for them to wake up with a ride and clothes. Wherever the survivors came from when they washed up on the beach, it wasn’t interested in giving them any protection from the elements. But these three were the first humans to appear in some time, and the only thing waiting for them was the burning sun and sand.

One of the humans, the largest of the three, looked around very confused as he got to his feet. “Do I know you two?”, he asked as he brushed sand off of his shoulders. Jack was the name the other two could see floating over his head if they looked closely, in bright green letters. Oddly, none of them knew how they could read those letters, or remember anything before just now.

Such lettering was present over other creatures in the area, the dodos pecking at the ground around them had words over their heads that said they were a wild male or female dodo. The birds didn’t seem too concerned with creatures much bigger than themselves getting up and moving around.

 

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Natalia looked around and began to freak out, she had no idea what to do so she scratched at her arm. When Natalia saw Jack, she ran. Natalia was fast, and she knew it. Natalia was not having a good time. Natalia runs into the forest, she climbed up a large tree and hides.
(I don't really know what more to add, I mean, there isn't much more than the fact that she runs away.)

 

[Silverwings]

Roan stood, brushing the sand off his legs. Looking around he tried to make sense of his surroundings, "Where are we?"

He hummed a bit, not caring for the lack of memories, "We.. We should start trying to make a shelter.. Right?"

Seeing the girl run away, Roan cringed a bit, "Wait! There could be dangerous.. things.. out there..."

He really didn't know what to even expect, or if there was anything dangerous at all. But running alone likely wasn't a good idea. Roan looked to the other man, as if asking for an idea of how they should respond. Should they follow after her? Or should they just wait and get their bearings straight? Maybe they should try and get supplies to defend themselves before they try running after the girl.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Jack squinted at the words over Natalia's head as she bolted. "Natalia?" He glanced back at Roan, sounding out his name. "Roan..." The girl running off seemed like it was a bad idea, but Jack hadn't seen where she'd gone, she'd vanished to his eyes when she passed through the bushes.

Shelter, shelter, that did seem like a good idea, but out of what? They didn't have anything to build it out of, and Jack didn't know how to build that, either. He looked down at the thing in his wrist again, scratching his chin. "Should we go after her?", he asked Roan.

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Around the tree Natalia had climbed, which was fortunately able to support her weight much better than the palms along the beach, her screaming run was attracting attention. It had scared off the small dodos, they were easy to frighten. But it had also attracted small creatures, which Natalia could see in the yellow writing over their heads were called "compy". They jumped and squeaked, trying unsuccessfully to get at Natalia. The sound of the compies attracted larger predators, which had "Dilophosaurus" floating above their heads.

 

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Natalia screamed "Help! Help!" She tried to throw leaves and such from the tree to no avail, Natalia was trapped and she was clearly struggling. Natalia couldn't process what was happening, and she fainted, falling out of the tree.
Natalia would be easy to reach, just just lying in the grass.

 

[Silverwings]

Hearing the screams for help, Roan looked to the larger man, "Think you can take on whatever is after her?"

He could probably get the attention of whatever the creatures were and outrun them, but that didn't mean they would keep their attention on him long. He hummed, making a jog in the direction of the screaming. Sure enough, there were a few creatures at the base of the tree surrounding the girl. He gave a whistle, gaining their attention before darting off, getting them to follow him. Running around trees and bushes, Roan eventually found himself at a cliff, looking down there were many creatures below him. Parasaurs, triceratops, and carbonemys.

"Please be harmless." He muttered, jumping down. Stumbling as he landed, Roan rolled as he hit the ground, letting out a grunt as he did, "Ow."

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Maybe?", Jack looked down at his hands, "I don't know." Presumably larger meant stronger, and he was certainly the largest of the three by a wide margin. This also meant he didn't walk through the brush so much as run it over as he followed the sound of screaming. Compies and dilos, seeing Roan was possibly a threat to their being able to fight over who got to eat Natalie, hissed and a group broke off to go chase him.

Jack picked up a rock, seeing as he might need something for a weapon in this instance as he entered the area. Compies jumped on this new threat, charging at Jack. Being significantly larger than the compies, they had much trouble doing damage to him, but Jack quickly learned of the venom of these tiny beasts used that gave them the courage to attack foes larger than themselves. Their heads were easy to bash in, soon there were only bodies, but all the bite marks from Jack's knees down said they'd gotten something done, and Jack was woozy very quickly. He was unconscious from compy venom before Natalia woke up

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Down at the bottom of the cliff, most of the large dinosaurs down there were not at all interested in Roan. he was smalller than they. The parasaurs panicked as a dilo, failing to catch itself before running off the edge, fell and impaled itself on the nose of a triceratops, agitating the herd when the compies found a better way down, smelling fresh blood much closer than the meal they'd left behind.

 

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Natalia wakes up and sees Jack, she begins looking around to make sure she was safe, when she sees that she is, she grabs some fallen palm leaves and wraps them around Jacks wounds, she then begins to look for a stick or a rock she could use to defend herself. She's scared of being attacked, she realizes the other human is missing and she begins to look around, but makes sure not to take Jack out of her line of sight.

 

[Silverwings]

Roan slowly got up, dizzy from his fall. After a moment to get his wits together, Roan looked around, seeing the dead dino and the approaching. He was cornered now. He thought for a moment before picking the dead creature up. He might be able to use it as a distraction. He cautiously backed up to the cliff, holding the dead creature out. The compies stood, heads tilted, waiting for some of the meat.

"Here.." He said, tearing a chunk of meat off the bone and holding out to them. One by one, the compies took bites out of the meat. Doing this a few times, Roan noticed the compies taking a liking to him. Soon their names turned from yellow to green, "Huh? Green.. So then.."

He reached out, touching the compies and petting them. Roan laughed, "I guess you need names. How about... Leo, Reba... and... Max."

With that said, he threw the rest of the carcass onto his shoulder and made with way back to where he left the other two. As he came back, he saw Natalia and Jack, "You're ok."

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Natalie was indeed okay for the most part, some scrapes from her fall and running through the brush, but not otherwise injured. Jack on the other hand was definitely unconscious, but breathing, and surrounded by dead compies that had their skulls crushed.

 

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"Am I? What do you define 'ok' as?" Natalia begins to think on the question before realizing it isn't important. "Do you think think he'll be alright? Also, what's with these things in our wrists?" She motions to hers.

 

[Silverwings]

"You're alive and not dying so.. I would think you're ok." Roan said before looking at Jack, " Is he?"

He knelt be the bigger man and gently shook the man, reading the name finally, "Jack... Jack? Wake up man."

He looked to Natalia when she asked about the thing on their wrists, "Um.. No idea. But it's not hurting us so.. I guess we will be ok."

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Jack did not rouse at Roan's shaking. In front of his face, whatever was letting them see each other's names and the lettering around them had projected a purple bar, labeled "Unconscious", which was steadily going down. After a few moments, the bar hit zero and Jack sneezed awake. "Wha...?" He laid eyes on Roan's compies and reached for his rock, back on his feet very quickly.

 

[Silverwings]

Roan quickly put hands out, protecting the compies, "No no! They're friends. They're... pets.. They won't hurt you now."

Moving, he showed the bigger man by tearing off another piece of meat from the carcass and held it out for the compies. One by one, they each took a piece, not harming Roan as they ate, "See? They're not going to hurt us."

 

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(Sorry, I got no notifications)
"This feels like a bad idea." Natalia goes for a rock similar to Jacks, and tries to lift it, failing miserably and falling back. "ow...Fine we can keep them."

Natalia sits up and stares at the compies. "What are they though?" She begins to analyze them.

 

[Silverwings]

"Compies? I don't know what they are exactly.. but they seem to have knocked him out," Roan said and gestured to Jack, "Maybe they could protect us."

He turned, looking at the dinosaurs. they were small, but they were vicious. They could take on larger creatures by working together.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Dangerous is what they are," Jack muttered, poking one with a stick. "Give me a reason, I dare you," he grunted at the tiny lizard." He looked back up at Roan, "You said something about shelter earlier, where do you think that's a good idea?", he gestured around them at the jungle, "Those compy things are everywhere in here, who knows what else is?"

 

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"We should stick to the beach, it's flat and empty, we can see anything coming for us"
Natalia looks around for any natural shelter, or materials they could use., she strays from the group a tiny bit. Natalia lets her guard down as she walks around.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

As the group was discussing this, they felt a buzzing in their wrists with the implants. When they held up their hands to inspect, the implants lit up, projecting a screen in front of the survivors. Each had their own screen, with tabs on it. One tab had an image of the survivor in question's face, next to a bunch of words and numbers like "Health", "Stamina", "Oxygen", and other things. This tab had glowing plus-signs next to those words and numbers, and the bars behind them, and they were prompted that they had one point to put into one of those. Once that point was assigned, they were brought to another screen, labeled Engrams.

Jack put his point into Melee Damage. Hitting things really hard seemed to have gotten the job done so far. Each of the survivors found on their Engrams screen that they had twenty-three points to spend on unlocking crafting recipes. "You guys are seeing this, right?", Jack asked as he put six of his points into the Spear, Hatchet, and Campfire recipes, those were self explanatory, he'd sit down to look into the others when they weren't in danger. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to make those, but he'd figure it out.

Once the survivors had spent their points, and moved away from the Engrams screen, they came to another, labelled Inventory, which had two tabs within that tab. One was labeled Inventory, which they were on. No one had much, but if they picked something up and held it in front of the screen, it vanished and appeared as an icon on the Inventory tab, and could be pulled out by dragging that icon onto another that looked like a hand. The second tab on that page was labeled Crafting, which had icons for all the recipes that they had just unlocked.

 

[Silverwings]

"Natalia has a point," Roan said before their implants got their attention. Roan opted to put his point into fortitude, figuring it wouldn't be useless if it was there. In their engrams, Roan chose the basics, deciding they should each have those things.

"I'm seeing it." Roan replied, "This is... Weird..."

 

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"It seems to be a compact piece of technology that is implanted into us, it's clearly not natural." Natalia begins to think on this, Natalia puts her point into crafting skill, as she thinks she'll use it more. Natalia chooses waterskin, as well as all of the articles of cloth clothing.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

Jack just shook his head, "Whatever it is, it's useful," he decided, picking up some more rocks to put into his inventory. He might need them to smack something's head in, or to make something better suited to that end later.

"Let's get back to the beach," he pointed at the trail of bowled over plants and small trees he'd left coming to get Natalia. "That leads straight back to the beach."

 

[Silverwings]

Following Jack's lead, Roan began picking up stones as well as berries and plant fibers. Who knows how those may be helpful. Leading the way back, Roan picked up stones and plants along the way to the beach.

 

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Natalia followed the trend, though she quickly discovered that carrying too much will slow you down, so she put down a few rocks. Natalia made her way to the beach and began to look for a flat area. "Perhaps...No that's stupid..." She ignored her idea and continued looking.

 

[Deadwood Deer]

"Most of these recipes need wood," Jack scratched his chin as he looked at what he could craft. A spear and a campfire would be really useful, something to stab and something to cook the meat on. He got the feeling eating raw meat was a bad idea, and fire would help with that. "How do you get wood?" Stone you could get just walking around, but wood? He looked over at the trees, maybe he had to break one down? He pulled out one of his rocks and started bashing at a section of the tree. His engram lit up to tell him that a bunch of thatch and a couple pieces of wood had been added, until the tree fell over and was no more.

"Interesting," Jack scratched his chin again, "What can I... What's a pickaxe?" He didn't wait for an answer before crafting one and dragging it down to the hand so he could hold it. "Oh, that's useful," he nodded, giving it a few swings in the air.