World Tree MUSH

    Exploring these other strange new worlds has been... educational, but Nort and Scar have responsibilities back home. Nothing that needs micromanaged, thankfully, but that uppity Timon has been causing trouble out to the East, and there are rumors the north is thawing. It's a good thing that the whole integration with the Tree has thrown lots of other plans off, so everyone else is just as confused.

    Getting back is a pain though, because the nearest vine was some distance away. This leaves the duo looking for a campsite, edging around the long, healthy and abundant waves of... grain? It looks like grain, golden in color, but the two are avoiding it and following the broken remnants of an ancient road, heading for a nearby opening in the trees on the other side of the 'highway' from the strange fields. The terrain here is quite varied, making navigation a little tricky. But the duo isn't really hiding their presence... an armored man astride a giant wolvering tends to dissuade bandits.

Vines do seem to be a rather capricious means of travel. Either they take you where you want to go, or they take you for an unexpected ride. Sometimes it's a bit of both. Today, it's definitely the latter. A Vine opens somewhat near to where the mutant pair are ambling along, and through it is spat...

Not the usual sort of traveler, that's for sure.

What comes out is not a man, or something man-like, but a dolphin, seemingly of the common bottlenose variety. Except not really. It's wearing some kind of shimmering, metallic harness of delicate flat links around its torso. And... it doesn't hit the ground, despite the Vine opening a bit above the ground.

Huh. That's not something you see every day, is it?

The dolphin is actually hovering, and looking around. He moves as though he were in water, twisting first one way and then the other.

Nort's hearing may not be able to detect it, but Scar has the ears of a wild animal. He might pick up on the clicking that emanates from the weird floaty dolphin's melon-shaped brow. When it sweeps over Nort and Scar, the dolphin seems to startle a little, as though he hadn't actually seen them, or maybe because he wasn't expecting a giant mutant wolverine.

A flick of his flukes takes him a little closer, but still close enough that he can dash away if they prove hostile. The dolphin rolls lazily on his axis, eyeing the curious pair and whistling, a high-pitched sound that only gets higher, drifting up and out of human hearing -- a hail. Yet a hail in language, rather than animal sounds.

"Well, this wasn't-t where I was expecting to go. Who are you? Where isss this place?" He chatters, literally as much as figuratively. He's not speaking through his mouth, but through some strange machination of the blowhole -- it's functional but not perfect, to go by the way his consonants stutter and buzz a little.

    That IS odd. And Nort and Scar both pause as the dolphin appears. At once, they murmur, "Bottlenose." An easy identification. And yes, Scar spoke as well, probably thinking Ecco can't hear him yet. That's when both remembers the hearing of a dolphin. Oh well.

    Greeting like that, Nort lifts a hand, easing when the confusion is evident. To show non hostility, he slides off the saddle, even reaching up to remove the helmet of his armor. "Lost, eh? Welcome to Gamma Terra. Not sure what the region is called now... I think it's not too inhabited, but it isn't far from the Delta Fragment. You're in North America, if that means anything to you." Hey it's an earth creature, it might recognize it.

    That's when Nort muses, "Male bottlenose dolphin, right? That tech isn't native, but I know your species."

"I'm always lost-t around here," the dolphin grumps, swinging his head around to look out toward the golden fields. He definitely heard that observation, although he makes no comment on it. "Gamma T-Terra? Never heard of it-t."

"North America?" The young bull spins slowly on his axis, as though he were floating in tropic-clear water instead of the air itself. "That soundssss familiar... I guess I should have paid more attention in my history classes. Yessss, my world has a continent named that."

He gives another flick of his flukes, considering, still clicking compulsively as he does. "No. The t-tech isn't native. I had this made for me by someone I met here in the World T-Tree. Athena, her name wassss. Lets me hover, and keeps me from drying out. I can explore anywhere." Another barrel-roll, and he claps his jaws in an enthusiastic, gunshot-loud affirmative. "Nice, isn't it-t?"

    "Huh. Very nice," Nort admits. "Never met an Athena. Like the goddess? All sorts of strange things out in the World Tree, we're on our way back. This is our world, but we've been out there, know how it is." He steps forward to look over the bull, rubbing his chin, and Scar keeps a respectful distance.

    "Name is Nort, by the way," he says at last. "That big guy over there is Scar. Don't worry, he won't bite if you aren't hostile. I don't see many marine animals out and about here... we're kind of inland, so pardon the curiosity. You ended up in a good place to be a dolphin though. We're just south of Bonapartist territory, they're basically nine-tenths intelligent animals. You'd fit right in."

"Like the goddess, I think-k. I landed in her world by accident-t; a Vine tossed me onto the shore, so she carried me back into the water." The young bull tosses his head. "I've got several hundred poundssss on her, and she still carried me like a ssssack of rice." His tone manages to convey a mild sense of wonder. "So, yeah. Like the goddessss, maybe. Definitely not-t human."

Oh. Names. Right. Blinking and tilting his head a little to one side in what may be an unsettlingly human gesture, the dolphin emits several clicks and an upward-trailing whistle; a seemingly affirmative sound.

"I'm Ecco. Actually, I don't think-k you could actually pronounce my name. Not in my kind's language, anyway! So that-t'ssss the name humanssss call me by. Or would, if there were any..." His flukes droop, just a little. "It'ssss a long story. I can tell it, if you want-t, what happened to my world."

The dolphin looks out to the one he's closer to, which happens to be Scar, dark eye inquisitive. "I'll go with you, wherever you're going. It-t doesn't matter to me. I'll go anywhere. I've got plenty of time. I think-k. It'ssss complicated, but the bottom line is that I'm not in any urgent-t hurry."

    Nort lifts an eyebrow. "I'm not technically human any more either, and I don't mean the cybernetic parts. I'm mutated, just subtly." He doesn't have any shame there. "Just like Scar over there. We don't mind having a travelling companion for a little bit... we're heading north anyway, and we know the territory a few leagues from here a lot better. We can guide you somewhere safe until we can find you another vine."

    He lets Scar wander up again, climbing onto the Saddle. Now Scar starts talking. "Humans are almost extinct here, so any tale you tell will not be surprising. The pure strain humans are a dying breed. Saddening, but perhaps for the better... to make way for something new. It sounds as if you have a less pleasant story."

    Nort settles at the saddle. There's a faint click and hum, as his armor plugs into it and begins charging. "I'd like to hear it a little, if you would. We both are zoologists by training... soldiers now, but we're still interested in any world that has talking dolphins."

The dolphin twists on his axis again, casting an eye toward Nort and studying the man's face. He does appear to be human, although that doesn't mean much in the worlds beyond his own. A perfectly human-looking individual could host dangerous powers far beyond the imagination. One never knows quite what they'll find.

"I guess if you were being t-technical, we dolphinssss are also mutated, but subtly. Gene-crafted, and with different genetic traits from species linessss in different populationssss. As you so acutely pointed out-t, I am bottlenose... but Stenos, too, the deep-diving rough-toothed dolphinssss. Probably a few other speciessss. But there were thingssss added, too. Like the ability to speak-k in human language, as well as our own." He flips his fins, tilting his head to eye Nort. Like the mutant, one wouldn't assume that Ecco wasn't genetically identical to a close bottlenose dolphin unless they were a cetacean expert who studied the subtleties pretty hard. "Improved lung capacity, and a resistance to lung disease and infection."

He flicks his tail, keeping pace easily with Scar. "Similar to many of the modern Earths I've heard about here. Humanssss came to learn about us, and we of them. Our species came together in one society, where man lived on the coast-t. We developed spacefaring technology. Somewhere out-t in the stars, there are dolphin- and man-crewed ships, too. But..."

...This must be where things get bad, to go by the way his flukes droop a little again.

    The duo alongside Ecco listen, and Nort nods now and then, as if mentally taking notes. He probably is doing just that. In fact, he turns his head and notes, "You seem well-versed on at least the general idea of what those are. It is a pity about humans, but at least they live on in the stars. We have no idea what happened to the Warden, and haven't heard anything from our orbital habitats in centuries. I assume they're all gone now as well, but I'm no astrophysicist."

    Scar grunts, "But something happened on Earth there. Just as here, huh? Our war was centuries ago."

"Something happened. Yessss. Earth was attacked by the Foe, an extraterrestrial race. I don't-t know how they managed it, but they managed to break the timestream. Earth's chronology is moot. The last-t five hundred years have been rewritten... without the same relationship-p humanity had with dolphins. They stole from us our Ambition, Courage, Humility, Intelligence, and Wisdom."

He clicks along in time to his speech, and continues to click even between words. It carries differently in air than in water, of course, being much fainter and harder to hear, but it's still audible, if barely, to someone with Scar's range of hearing.

While he flukes along at a lazy pace, he looks this way and that; the stranger, studying the strange land. It's a lot different than what he knows, or so his careful and deliberate study seems to declare.

Fortunately, he can still carry on a conversation at the same time.

"In one future, humanity enslaved us, and we became man's slavessss. We weren't much smarter than animals, than fallow dolphinssss on Earth, those who are not gene-crafted. Smarter than most animals, but-t still animals." He tosses his head in emphatic gesture.

"They're real idiotssss. I call that one Dolphin's Nightmare. Nobody descended from gene-crafted linessss would ever want-t to go back to that-t," he adds, in a tone that suggests he'd shudder if he could. "Then, in the other, I managed to find and return Ambition and Intelligence, and apparently that-t bred a race of monsters. Militaristic xenophobes who aren't-t afraid of a little casual murder. They drove humanity first-t from the waves, and then from the planet. Nassssty fellows. Dangerous lunatics. Man's nightmare, that-t one. Animals smart enough to come out-t on top of them in the food chain."

"Anyway... I have to find the other three traits. They could be anywhere. And I do mean anywhere. I have no reason to believe they might be limited to just-t my Earth." He shakes his head, again an unsettlingly human gesture. "Otherwise, who knows what'll happen? Two dissonant-t futures, and neither of them the real ones. That's got to be unstable, the way I figure it-t. So it's up to me to fix it-t. I'm not sure how, but when the Foe took those traits, it didn't affect me. I guess I was still reeling from the effects of the temporal disruption, or... something." Or maybe he just grew up on too many science fiction stories... hard to say.

Another lazy flick of his tail, and he momentarily shoots ahead of Nort and Scar, slowing until the pair catch up. "So the Foe undid things for the past five centuries, and what I'm seeing is the result of things being disrupted from that specific point. It'ssss pretty ugly. Disturbing, when you think-k about it. Your mom might be some insane militaristic freak-k of nature, orca-lovers, or some witless idiot bleating about how great man is when he enslaved your whole people because they were too stupid to know any better." Ecco gives a blast of breath at that, just as loud as if he were surfacing from the water; an emphatic expression of disgust. "Ugh. It's awful. And here I was all disappointed because my family chose not to board the first joint dolphin-man exploratory vessel for the inner solar system. Booooring, I thought. Nothing's happening on Earth. I might as well die of boredom. And then--" He straightens up into high posture, clapping his jaw in affirmation. "--aliens. And everything's breaking. And now it's in your jaws to fix it. But nothing's screwed. Nooooo." The drawn-out vowel warbles a little. The young bull with the stars on his forehead sighs. "I'll get there. Sometimes it's a little daunting, though."

    Well that is quite a tale, and Nort and Scar both listen with patience... surprisingly so, for Scar. It's a tale that takes some time to get through, after all, and Nort definitely keeps his attention there. He nods now and then to let Ecco know he's listening.

    Finally, he mutters, "Time travel and split dimensions... not really my specialty. Now, I can tell you about the splicing, some, but I'm not a geneticist. I just happen to have picked up some of that because... well, Scar and I are very good at what we do. We've been researching the Alpha Factor for a long, long time, haven't we?" Scar rumbles as Nort pats his neck.

    The matter is pretty serious though. "I don't know how you'd even steal those things. Other worlds have some truly strange rules. We've been cautious about our own... I would bet that a lot of these worlds don't have an Alpha Factor, which could be bad if they meet the wrong thing here."

    Nort looks at Ecco again. "Fortunate. You'll be mistaken as an intelligent mutated animal, not a deliberate genesplice. The military had started doing that sort of thing when the war happened, but never perfected it."

"Not my specialty, either," Ecco offers, with an aggressive slash of his flukes. "I didn't think something like that could be stolen, either, but I guess that's what you get for believing in normal Earth physics."

The dolphin twists to circle back the other way around Nort and Scar, movements fluid despite floating in the air. If he weren't so solid, he might look like some kind of bizarre trick hologram. He's very much real, though, and he's careful not to bump his nose or fins into things.

Clicking issues from the animal, although difficult to hear. It seems a thoughtful cadence of sound. "I don't know what this 'Alpha Factor' is, but it sounds bad."

"Well, I'm not a deliberate genesplice. There were some of those, back on Earth, but they tended to go for things that were useful for their vocation. Like miners 'splicing for a better resistance to toxins, or more strength, that sort of thing. Not as dramatically as the castes, though," he muses, mostly to himself. His attention swings back around to Nort and Scar, sonar sweeping them both, although it's a much fainter sensation out of the water. "So... I guess they stopped, when whatever happened here... happened. Went obsolete, I'm guessing, by how rural things look."

    The closer sonar sweep can probably pick up more of the cybernetic parts... especially Scar's metallic skeleton. That's a big one. Both of them are modified, somewhat severely, and though the parts are obvious they don't readily betray how much is artificial.

    If Nort minds the scan, he doesn't say anything. "It isn't good or bad, it's just a thing," he explains. "It's what allow the locals to develop mutations as a result of exposure to radiation or chemicals. Those with the Alpha Factor mutate. Those without either develop resistance, like the surviving humans, or they sicken and die. Or if they're lucky just mutate in the slower, roundabout way."

    Scar grunts again, and Nort adjusts topics. "Speaking of that, you'd best just pretend your... floating is a mutation. Advanced tech that /works/ is rare and valuable here. Scar and I don't need to worry about it because we're known, but bandits may not be so keen on keeping their distance from you." He stops and considers. "Civilization fell. There was a war. I think aliens were involved. Most of the people surviving now have no idea about space travel... or even how a rifle works, just what it does. A few pockets of civilization have built themselves back up to respectable tech, but they're rare, and not always friendly. We didn't get these robotic parts by choice."

Apparently the sonar sweep is enough to bring Ecco to pause, spraying the dynamic duo with another curious sweep of sound. The pair's cybernetic enhancements ring like a bell, and the dolphin swings the sound-sensitive tip of his lower jaw towards them, listening intently.

"...Fascinating. You both took machine parts. That sort of thing is still mostly experimental in my world. Just the little things; you know, sensory enhancement, or simple assistant-like devices for notetaking or computer interfacing." He clicks his teeth together, before letting his jaw hang and point first toward Nort, and then Scar. "I've never seen anything *this* extensive."

He 'swims' another slow circle around them, clicking as he goes. "Some humans, and some fen â dolphins â too, they go crazy when they get too much tacked on 'em. Lose their mind. Sometimes the humans get violent. Sometimes the fen, too. Never know when the data shock's going to snap someone like fishbone."

Apparently these two are pretty stable, though. Nort's calm behaviour and their generally affable stance suggests they aren't going to fly into a psychotic rage.

That's probably a good thing, right? That massive mustelid looks like he could do some serious damage, and that's just by himself. Nort doesn't look like any sort of slouch.

"Alpha Factor... sounds like a problem." Ecco cocks his head. Pretend like his floating is a mutation? "What a bizarre mutation. Well, if that's better, that's fine with me. But if anyone tries to steal this thing... well." The young bull bares his conical teeth. They look needle-sharp, perfect for catching fish, but also good at putting holes in offending rabble. "Not by choice? What-t, like to ssssave your life or something?"

    Chuckle. Nort nods at Ecco, "It is an unusual mutation, or would be if it were, but not unheard of. Ours are mostly more subtle, except for a few that would be dangerous to demonstrate right here, but many are very obvious." He pauses, and that lets Scar speak.

    "Aside from me being huge, of course."

    Nort chuckles. Then his chuckle fades. "Yes, well. Most cyborgs don't... last long with sanity intact, but I don't think that's part of being a cyborg, just the fact that the Created are lead by an insane man. He... saved our life, thinking we'd be grateful for the new parts. We were not. Well, we were grateful enough that we didn't try to kill him for it. In his own twisted way, he thought he was doing us a favor, but he wants to make the entire world like us. Or even moreso..."

    Nort shakes his head, "But hopefully the frost is keeping him held until he runs out of resources. If you do run into a robot or cyborg in this world, best to assume they are hostile... and powerful. I have no doubt you could hold your own against bandits, but the only robots Quade sends out are assassins, lately."

"I've heard of freak mutations, but I don't think anything like that's ever happened on Earth." Ecco emits a triple upsweep trill; a bizarre, atonal sound evidently meant to suggest both curiosity and the sense of being Really Weirded Out.

He drifts for a few seconds, listening to what each of the bizarre pair has to say.

...Really, he should be a lot more disturbed by the fact that one of his conversation partners is a giant, cybernetically-enhanced, talking wolverine.

"A lunatic with the power to install robot parts in living things. That doesn't sound like a walking horror story at all," the dolphin grumps quietly. "I guess it's a good illustration that things can always be worse. Somewhere. Somehow."

Twisting and turning in on himself to get an eye back on Nort and then Scar, Ecco tosses his head in apparent dolphin affirmative. "I'll keep that-t in mind. But this isn't where I meant to go. I'd better get back-k and make sure nothing's falling apart back in my own world. For now."

He squeee-ees, clapping his jaw as he drifts past Nort's head. "Nice to meet-t you two. Hopefully, we'll cross pathssss again." With one last friendly clap of his jaw, the young bull gives a flick of his flukes, propelling himself onward down the road, so long as his new friends don't call out to stop him.

    Nort and Scar chuckle in unison, but it's a dry one. "Things here aren't so bad, you just happen to be in a contested area. It's more secure than it sounds, and while I think they're wide-eyed idealists, the Restorationists are making some good ground in making the world a safer, better place. It isn't all bad news here."

    Further conversation will have to wait, though. Nort lifts an eyebrow. "I'd be interested in seeing your world. Maybe even lend a hand or paw. But you're right... you need to go where you're needed. I need to stop by the mountain to take care of some things, but travel safe, Ecco. It was a pleasure meeting someone like you from another world."