Forum RPG: The Valley of Time

If you wish to play, you are the grown grandchild of a woman named, or titled, Venerable Mother of All People. Nobody knows if she has another name. Nobody knows if her husband was the only man who created babies with her. Nobody is even sure who the mother of her husband was but it is whispered it was one of her own children. She is an enigma.

All you know is that she is amazingly beautiful and brilliant, and that she bore many, many children, who themselves bore you.

Your people are the ancient ancestors of the San people of east Africa. The year is 200,000 BCE, though you don't know anything about that. By modern standards you are small, lightly built, with African textured hair and medium brown skin tone. You are nomadic gatherers who like to eat meat when you can get it.

There is technology. There is magic. There is no understanding that they aren't the same thing. None of you know any magic or technology but you know that Venerable Mother of All People can teach such things.

Recently, you fell into a strange valley bordered by unclimbable cliffs. Venerable Mother of All People is sitting with you in a corner of the valley. The valley is square. I will be using a chessboard to make maps.

You are in square A1 which is where the foothills of a volcano meet the valley corner. The volcano is in the northwest part of the valley.

We will use forum names.

Venerable Mother of All People smiles at you.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
If you wish to play, you are the grown grandchild of a woman named, or titled, Venerable Mother of All People. Nobody knows if she has another name. Nobody knows if her husband was the only man who created babies with her. Nobody is even sure who the mother of her husband was but it is whispered it was one of her own children. She is an enigma.

of the valley.

We will use forum names.

Venerable Mother of All People smiles at you.

In the square H8 a flyer from the future has lost his aircraft and he was transported to the Venerable Mother's time and has parachuted into the valley on the opposite side, of course knowing nothing of the Venerable Mother or her grandchildren.

He has a few survival effects with him in a backpack, a gun with a few hundred bullets, a compass (which may or may not point to the same magnetic north he knew), a Bowie knife, a fire starting flint, a magnifying glass, a fishing line with a few hooks, a sleeping bag, some spare bits of clothing, some K rations, enough for a few weeks but no more, and a pair of binoculars and some medical supplies like antibiotic pills and bandages. That's about it for our prisoner of another time. His parachute can help him made a small tent so he can keep out the rains and so forth but he has no idea where he is or the fact he is 200,000 years in his own past.

He is now on a new life path unbeknownst to him.

Originally posted by sonhouse
In the square H8 a flyer from the future has lost his aircraft and he was transported to the Venerable Mother's time and has parachuted into the valley on the opposite side, of course knowing nothing of the Venerable Mother or her grandchildren.

He has a few survival effects with him in a backpack, a gun with a few hundred bullets, a compass (which may ...[text shortened]... fact he is 200,000 years in his own past.

He is now on a new life path unbeknownst to him.

He is naked and has no equipment.

Square H8 is in the northeast corner of a square valley. It is a smelly Dagobah-style marsh fed by a lake in the center of the valley. To the far west is a smoking volcano.

There is a frog staring at sonhouse.

I cannot see my own fen so I am having trouble making maps. I probably have to update Java or get IE8 or something.

He found some of his equipment, his magnifying glass and a few fishing hooks and line. The rest has disappeared in the huge rainstorm last night. He hopes to find more of his stuff later but now he is in a desperate fight for sheer survival. He needs protean and calories very soon, his carefully selected K rations gone in the storm. He spies a slow moving lizard and carefully takes aim with a large rock.....

Originally posted by sonhouse
He found some of his equipment, his magnifying glass and a few fishing hooks and line. The rest has disappeared in the huge rainstorm last night. He hopes to find more of his stuff later but now he is in a desperate fight for sheer survival. He needs protean and calories very soon, his carefully selected K rations gone in the storm. He spies a slow moving lizard and carefully takes aim with a large rock.....

OMG NO EQUIPMENT.

But the lizard is an easy kill. Yum lizard meat. Gonna eat it raw while leeches nibble at your buttocks?

There is a really, really, big frog staring at sonhouse. Its eyes are the size of soccer balls. other than the top of its head it is submerged. It just rose out of the water a moment ago.

There is a short earthquake that throws sonhouse off balance into the muck. The small frog jumps in the water. The big frog is still staring at sonhouse.

Far off to the west the volcano is puffing forth more smoke than it was a moment ago.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
There is a short earthquake that throws sonhouse off balance into the muck. The small frog jumps in the water. The big frog is still staring at sonhouse.

Far off to the west the volcano is puffing forth more smoke than it was a moment ago.

The large frog staring at sonhouse starts speaking.
Don't you remember me? I used to be a princess till you kissed me.

Sonhouse asks the frog if it was once a princess he had kissed. The frog rises up out of the water looking something like the frog footman in Alice and Wonderland would if he were naked:

http://www.photographersdirect.com/buyers/stockphoto.asp?imageid=2720532

Four more frogs of similar size rise up, grab sonhouse and drag him under water just as the volcano has another mild eruption in the distance!

Sonhouse is held under until he is mentally hazy from oxygen deprivation, then dragged through the muck at the bottom of the pond and then up into what appears to be a small wooden hut with an underwater entrance.

A beaver-person is sitting there.

The frog-men make croaking and clicking noises at the beaver-person and then kowtow along the edges of the hut toward him/her. Two are blocking the pool of water that is the exit.

The beaver-person clicks and makes beaver noises and then looks at sonhouse quizzically, as though expecting an answer.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Sonhouse asks the frog if it was once a princess he had kissed. The frog rises up out of the water looking something like the frog footman in Alice and Wonderland would if he were naked:

http://www.photographersdirect.com/buyers/stockphoto.asp?imageid=2720532

Four more frogs of similar size rise up, grab sonhouse and drag him under water just a ...[text shortened]... s and makes beaver noises and then looks at sonhouse quizzically, as though expecting an answer.

Sonhouse says "Oh no, Not again?" "Look, it was an accident, I didn't know it was your mother! I was on a raft of logs trying to escape a bunch of rabid apes and I am so sorry the logs destroyed your mom's house'. "Look, I'll make it up to you, I'll help you rebuild it all, ok?"

The beaver-person stands to it's full height - which isn't that tall, maybe five feet - and points at the little beaver-hut walls. It snarls and clicks then points to its' sharp front teeth and glares at sonhouse fiercely. It gestures to where the branches have been cut and then back to it's tooth.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
The beaver-person stands to it's full height - which isn't that tall, maybe five feet - and points at the little beaver-hut walls. It snarls and clicks then points to its' sharp front teeth and glares at sonhouse fiercely. It gestures to where the branches have been cut and then back to it's tooth.

Sonhouse begins with his bowie knife he just recovered and starts helping the beaver redo his mom's house. A bit of camaraderie ensues and they happily start chopping wood, teeth against bowie knife. Sonhouse is laughing so hard he falls off the log he is busily chopping into smaller twigs, falls into the water and much hilarity commences.

I see I am a much better swimmer than you the beaver said, finally revealing he could speak.

Yeah but I bet you don't play chess!

Ah, what is chess?

So Sonhouse proceeds to carve out chess pieces much to the amazement of the beaver, puts together a chess board and starts to teach the beaver the basics of the game.

See, there is this trick called 'space points' Sonhouse starts out, showing the beaver where the pieces move.

The beaver gets interested and finds he has a talent for chess.

He says, wow, looks like I am carving a new frontier!

Sonhouse is learning how hard it is when you can't find your fancy manufactured devices. No bowie knife.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Sonhouse is learning how hard it is when you can't find your fancy manufactured devices. No bowie knife.

Losing the Bowie knife was devastating. No longer superior to the local life forms, Sonhouse starts the work of making tools with flint and obsidian he finds in abundance. He studied the ways of the ancients and their ability making tools from bare rock. He knew burning rock in a fire makes the rock more able to be flaked so set about making a fire with a couple of sticks and bits of dried moss.

He finds a nice piece of wood, small enough to carry, finds a rock with a pointy edge, drills a beveled hole in the wood about a half centimeter deep and then with a carefully selected hardwood branch and some vines he used as twine, puts a rock in his hand and uses the twine wrapped around the stick like a violin bow and begins the spinning of the stick with a lot of pressure on the rock, with moss around the small hole in the wood, the wood starts smoking and soon the moss is glowing. He has prepared a pile of kindling and carefully blows on the glowing moss and it soon is flaming, then puts the moss into the kindling and soon has a fire going.

Then he gathers rocks, flint and obsidian and starts heating them up and then strikes them in the ancient manner and soon has arrowheads and hammers and other manner of tools.

With renewed spirit and overcoming the loss of his equipment he starts a new phase of his perilous existence.