The Experiment ⚪🔵⚫🔴🟢

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  • Will select role and/or make card/rumor for this later.
  • edited April 21
    The temple at the core of Tropivolca just might be what is causing the mana to fluctuate. But why? and how?

    I also tried to make a dungeon, but the dungeon creator didn't work : (
  • One of the monkeys began to remember. He was once one of the big five, a group of elven mystics who found this temple here a long time ago and began to uncover its deep secrets. When they realised that this temple was a too great danger but they were unable to destroy it, the only solution they saw was to turn themselves into apes and erase their memories this way so that nobody will hear from this temple. "But why are they back here now? They had sworn never to return. Something has called or lured them here. We must prevent this temple from being used by anyone at all costs." But as more memories flooded him, he noticed his vision slowly fading. There was only one thing the big five hadn't considered back then: these little ape bodies can't withstand the flood of memories when retransforming. And so he passed out, with his last words mentioning the temple's greatest danger to his friends: "Don't. Reawaken. The. Tentacles."
  • Exploring the ancient temple wasnt easy though. At one point there was a dungeon room in the temple, but THE FLOOR IS LAVA!

  • Curiosity is the bane of many.

    It crawled inside, following in the footsteps of others. It lingers in the halls. Noises of suffering emanate from the statues. It whimpers as it approaches. 

    Crack!

    The horror in front of them was indescribable. A mass of muscle tissue and organic matter fused to what seemed to have been the body of a humanoid being. Organs hung from what was left of the abdomen, and the…thing’s…brain was exposed and covered in tumors. The  tentacle like organisms along the creature’s began grasping, searching. They ran. But deeper.

    The mangled screams echoed for miles through the jungle.
  • Body horror :)
  • More coming soon!
  • The Experiment ⚪🔵⚫🔴🟢 — Phase 5: “Don’t Reawaken the Tentacles”

    The Temple of Warped Leylines pulses.
    The jungle remembers.
    And now, the island awakens.


    🔥 LORE UPDATE:

    From Mellow_MC’s descent, we learn:

    “They reach the bottom. They do not return.”
    Alien runes. Tentacled iconography. Echoes of knowing. The explorers… knew this place.

    Then the truth:
    🧠 One monkey remembers.
    He was one of the Big Five—elven mystics who sealed the temple and erased their identities by becoming apes.
    But memory returns. And their bodies… were never meant to contain it.

    “Don’t. Reawaken. The. Tentacles.”

    Too late.


    🌋 Dungeon Expansion:

    • Temple of Warped Leylines (Land): Reality folds. Mana mutates. Balance fractures.

    • What Lies Beneath (Mythic Eldrazi): Eldritch hunger tied to mana itself.

    • The Floor is Lava (Trap Room): YES. Dungeon traps now in play. 🔥

    And then…

    “Body horror :)
    Muscle. Tumors. Tentacles. Screams.

    The jungle isn’t empty.
    It’s alive with forgotten gods, mana beasts, cursed knowledge — and you’ve gone too far to turn back now.


    🎭 COMMUNITY CHALLENGE: ESCALATION

    You may now:

    • Reveal another Room or Trap

    • Introduce a Horror

    • Write the next moment in the descent

    • Unlock a hidden memory of the Big Five

    • Or choose to RETREAT… but will the island let you?

    The Experiment has reached the Point of No Return.

  • The rest of the Feral Explorers and their kin look around wildly as the screams echo around them. Most bolt for the cover of the jungle, escaping into the darkness and the safe cover of the forest foliage. But many more stay, frightened but intrigued, wishing to see the fate their companion had met.
    Crawling out of the entrance to the temple was their companion. Or at least what was left of him. His legs were mangled beyond belief, his arms just slightly less so; His face and chest were covered in brutal scratches and his eyes were empty sockets, black and devoid of any color. He collapsed onto the ground, his mangled whimpers horrifying his companions. 
    Emerging from the entrance was a second figure. A tall, slim, bird like beast, reminiscent of the birds of prey that stalk the island. But this one was in brutal condition, its skin seemingly removed and replaced with a thick covering of muscle tissue. It's face had double in size, making its head a brutal battering ram, and its wings were torn and matted. But worse were its eyes; the creature had seemingly ripped out the eyes of the mangled explorer and placed them in its own sockets, making it seemingly cry blood.
    It lunged forward, driving it's pick-ax head into the back of the explorer, killing it instantly, severing the spinal cord. Then it turned its attention to the others as they bolted for the jungle.
    They would have to learn the hard way that it could still fly.
  • Damn chill, they're just harmless little monkeys.
  • I’m sorry, but me and everyone I know agrees that you need to make the characters suffer.
  • Yeah suffer but not completely annihilate them.
  • I'll dial back a bit on the horrific injuries for a little bit.
  • The Experiment ⚪🔵⚫🔴🟢 — Phase 6: “Blood in the Canopy”

    The jungle watches.
    The temple bleeds.
    The air splits with screams… and wings.


    🦍 The Feral Explorers scatter — some driven by fear, some by loyalty, all by the need to understand.

    From the temple mouth crawls what was once one of their own. A vessel of pain and memory, broken beyond recognition.

    But then:
    The Sky Maw emerges.

    Tall, birdlike. Skinless. Weapon-headed. Crying blood from stolen eyes.
    It flies.

    A hunter birthed from warped leyline energy and stitched into a godform of agony. Its wings are torn but functional — it doesn’t soar; it rips the air open and falls like vengeance.


    🌿 Meanwhile in the trees...
    The rest of the Ferals regroup. One clutches a pendant he’s never seen before, but feels oddly familiar.
    Another starts humming a tune, ancient and trembling, and the leaves around him... stop rustling.

    These aren’t just monkeys anymore.
    They were once the Big Five.
    Memory hurts, but it also fights back.


    🧩 COMMUNITY CHALLENGE: The Turning Point

    Choose your next act:

    • 🔮 Reveal a Relic of the Big Five

    • 🧠 Design a Memory Surge mechanic or event

    • 🦍 Give voice to a Feral regaining sentience

    • 🪶 Delve deeper into the horrors of Sky Maw

    • 📜 Or... unveil another Room of the Dungeon

    💡 Bonus idea: What is the dungeon exactly? A temple? A ship? A creature?


    “Suffering tells stories... but survival shapes legends.”

    Bring on the next echo, survivors. The island listens.

  • Then one of the Big Five, remembered a tale of old and began telling it ...

  • @jpastor could I probably have a lil summary on what the story is so far? I might want to join but my braincells are kinda fried from the 5 pages of words
  • The Experiment ⚪🔵⚫🔴🟢 — Midpoint Recap: “Shocking Revelation”

    New travelers arrive. Old minds awaken.
    And now… we know the truth.

    “The ancient temple is actually a crashed alien spacecraft?!?”

    🧠 SHOCKING REVELATION (WUBRG Sorcery, Mythic):
    Reality cracks wide open. The leyline surge was never natural. This place is a wreckage. Not of stone, but starsteel.


    🧭 STORY SO FAR: Tropivolca

    🌴 Tropivolca is a hidden island whispered about in the wild mana of Llanowar — lush, volcanic, untouched… until now.

    🦍 A group of ape-like beings known as the Feral Explorers arrive, drawn by instinct and forgotten memory. They explore a temple buried in the jungle.

    🔮 Leylines fluctuate wildly here — it’s a mana nexus, and something underneath is causing it.

    🧬 It’s revealed that the Ferals were once powerful elven mystics called the Big Five, who erased their own memories and transformed into animals to seal a dangerous force long ago.

    😱 Now, as they explore the temple, memories return — and with them come horrors:

    • Alien iconography on the walls.

    • Mutated beasts.

    • A monstrous entity called the Sky Maw that steals eyes and flies.

    🔥 The temple is not a temple. It’s a crashed alien vessel. The ancient elven magic was never meant to control it — only to hide it.

    Now, it's reawakening.


    🎲 Community Gameplay

    Anyone can join by:

    • Submitting custom cards (creatures, spells, rooms, traps, artifacts, etc)

    • Writing lore snippets or scenes

    • Theorizing about the mystery

    • Creating new mechanics (like “Memory Surge” or “Leyline Collapse”)

    • Expanding the dungeon (or ship?) and what’s inside

    • Changing the course of this discussion from whatever this is currently to something completely different.

    All tones welcome: dark, spooky, dramatic, silly, eldritch, exploratory, or weird!


    Next Community Prompt: “Into the Crashsite”

    • Design a card or event revealing more of the alien origin

    • Reveal another part of the vessel/dungeon

    • Flashback to a moment from the Big Five’s past

    • Or show how one Feral begins to resist the Sky Maw’s influence…


    Welcome aboard, @yomogimaruu—and anyone else brave enough to join.
    The jungle is alive, and the island... remembers.

  • Is it even possible that starships exist in MTG, like can you even leave the atmosphere of an plane like Llanowar or do you then go into the blind eternities?
  • Quite interesting! I wonder if the aliens are specifically from any planet or place that they consider home? Or could they just be vagabond in some form?
  • The Experiment ⚪🔵⚫🔴🟢 — Lore Breach: “Can You Escape a Plane?”

    Lurisauri’s Question:

    Can starships exist in MTG? Could you even leave a plane like Llanowar?

    🌌 Short answer:
    Normally, no — planes are sealed worlds. Leaving a plane usually means entering the Blind Eternities, a chaotic, lethal void of raw mana. Only planeswalkers can survive traveling through it naturally.

    HOWEVER...
    There are rare hints that ancient technologies, Eldrazi, or extinct civilizations might have found ways to breach or bend these rules. (Think: the planar bridge on Kaladesh, or the weirdness of Phyrexia’s portals.)

    Tropivolca’s ship could be:

    • A craft that crashed trying to punch through the Blind Eternities

    • A fragment of a civilization that learned how to "skip" across planes

    • A remnant from before the Multiverse even worked the way it does now...

    (Translation: We can 100% make up our own canon here and be totally fine. 😉)


    yomogimaruu’s Question:

    Are these aliens from a homeworld? Or are they vagabonds?

    🌌 Possible Threads:

    • They could have had a home plane once, now lost to mana collapse or war.

    • They might be multiversal nomads, drifting between worlds until one finally destroyed them.

    • Or perhaps... Tropivolca was their colony, a secret landing site meant to study mana itself.

    🔮 We don't know yet.
    You — and the community — can decide.


    Next Prompt: “What Was the Crash?”

    • Reveal the aliens' origin or mission

    • Create a wrecked ship sector (dungeon room!)

    • Describe a first alien artifact discovery

    • Or unveil a memory fragment from the Big Five’s original encounter with the ship!


    “The stars fall. The jungle grows. Memory wakes.”

    Bring it on, voyagers!

  • Death is a forgiving entity.
    Death brings freedom from the shackles of life.
    And yet Death is feared above all else.
    And this was the plight they had encountered.
    As resources on their home world failed, and the planar worlds began to warp around them, they saw no future for their race. Except for one.
    Perhaps if they harnessed the power of mana, they could continue. Replenish resources, fix the warping. 
    And so they sent out ships far and wide, searching for high mana value sources. 
    That was until they found Tropicolva. 
    Their search had not been fruitless! Or so they thought.
    For the rest of them were dead. Lost in the grey light of a dying - dead world.
    And they were not so far behind.
  • The Experiment ⚪🔵⚫🔴🟢 — The Aliens' Lament

    The truth has begun to bleed out.

    🌌 Their Homeworld:

    • Once vibrant — now drained and dying.

    • Planar boundaries warped, reality itself cracking.

    • No hope remained but desperate, ancient science.

    🚀 Their Mission:

    • Find a world rich in mana.

    • Harvest its life energy.

    • Save themselves before oblivion.

    🌴 Tropicolva:

    • Their beacon of hope.

    • Their last hope.

    But they were already too late.
    By the time their ship reached this lush plane, death had already claimed them — not all at once, but slowly, rotting their minds, bodies, and memories.

    They didn't land.
    They crashed — and Tropicolva became their tomb.


    🌿 Meanwhile, on the island:
    The Feral Explorers feel the deep ache in the leyline heartbeat. The island's mana isn't just wild — it's infected by the aliens' dying wishes.

    Death was their freedom. But their yearning left scars.


    Community Challenge: "The Grey Light"

    Choose your next thread:

    • 🔥 Reveal what powers the wreck now (A dying alien mind? A broken mana engine?)

    • 👻 Create a memory fragment left behind (a relic, a vision, a song?)

    • 🛸 Build another sector of the crashed ship

    • 💀 Tell the story of the last survivor of the alien crew

    • 🌌 Explore how the aliens' dead mana still warps Tropicolva...


    “Hope died. Dreams rotted. Now only memory remains.”

    Survivors and dreamers: it’s your move.

  • In the wake of potential death, the remaining breath of the aliens are left with restriction in choice.
    What, trapped under the chains of a desolate land such as Tropicolva would be possible?
    Even then, a form of hope glimmered. Still remaining under the potential scythe of Death, they come to the ultimate decision of exploration.
    Was there truly no mana? No light? Simply the end of life?
    Possibly…yes. But even so, they still believe in Tropicolva, despite the odds being against them.
    Therefore, they set out to explore the world at their hands.
  • Rot.
    A bloated mass seethes from within the crash sight. The buzzing of flies and the creaking of iron the only sounds in the tomblike interior. 
    Within the rotting hull, a single hand reaches out to touch the light, before slumping once again, no strength left to continue fighting.
    Hope.
    No more.
    "OBJECTIVE. CONFIRMED. MISSION. STILL. ACTIVE."
    "HARVEST. EVERYTHING."
  • The Experiment ⚪🔵⚫🔴🟢 — Hope and Harvest

    🌌 yomogimaruu's spark of resilience:

    Even under the scythe of Death, they chose exploration.

    Maybe not all were monsters.
    Maybe some of the alien crew still dreamed — even as their bodies failed and the Blind Eternities chewed at their minds.
    Maybe they hoped Tropicolva would save them.
    Maybe it still could.

    🦠 But Mellow_MC has shown us the truth:

    "OBJECTIVE. CONFIRMED. MISSION. STILL. ACTIVE."

    Buried deep in the wreckage is a mind.
    Half alive, half rotten.
    Bound to the mission.
    It no longer dreams.

    It remembers only: HARVEST. EVERYTHING.

    And now... the island responds. Mana begins to twist — the jungle shivers, the ruins pulse, and the stars no longer shine the same.


    💡 Community Prompt: “The Mission Core”

    What is The Mission Core? You decide:

    • 🔋 Is it a biotechnological AI barely holding together?

    • 💀 A decaying alien hivemind, lost in memory and duty?

    • 🌿 A massive mana-conversion engine, reawakening?

    • 📜 Or something else entirely?

    Create:

    • A legendary artifact representing the Core

    • A new land or dungeon room within the wreckage

    • A creature built by or guarding the Core

    • Or simply write more of its dying thoughts


    “Hope is dead. Duty lives on. And the island will feed it.”

    Where to next, travelers of Tropicolva?

  • Deep within the bowels of the ruined ship, arms and hands spiral throughout the rotting corridors and hallways, through vents and pipes. It is looking for something.
    Biomatter.
    It finds some - a slumped body, head caved inwards and brain rotted to nothing. It does not matter. Any biological material will suit its needs. It snatches it up and begins to drag it deeper into the bowels of the ship.
    It enters the deepest level. Covered in creaking machinery, melded with flesh and muscle and bone, the walls drip with the lifeblood of thousands of them, their grizzly deaths forever inked into the walls of the crashed ship.
    The arm slaps the body to the wall and begins binding it in machinery, converting it into a bio-mechanical mess. 
    A face appears out of the mass, bone - white and covered in veins.
    "ASSIMILATION. CONTINUES."
    "CONSUME."
  • The Experiment ⚪🔵⚫🔴🟢 — ASSIMILATION CONTINUES

    In the deepest vein-clotted corridors of the wreck, the Core awakens.

    🧠 It does not live — not in the way we understand.
    But it functions.
    It remembers.
    And it feeds.

    All it needs is biomatter. And Tropicolva provides.

    💀 The jungle.
    🧬 The explorers.
    🦴 The Feral.
    Even the dead.

    “CONSUME.”


    🌿 Something must now be born.

    Community Challenge: “The First of the New Flesh”

    ✧ Create a new horror, born of this grotesque assimilation:

    • A creature type: Flesh-Construct, Biohusk, Neuroframe, Alien-Technoform?

    • What colors is it? {B}{G}? {U}{R}? Something twisted like {C}?

    • Is it Legendary? Or the first of many?

    Other prompts to inspire:

    • ⚙️ An artifact that fuses organic and machine (and maybe warps mana)

    • 🧩 A sorcery representing the assimilation process

    • 🧠 A planeswalker or echo of one that was absorbed into the Core...


    “It cannot be stopped. Only fed.”

    The Core speaks.
    Will you heed it… or fight it?

  • Suddenly someone remember something...
    A room inside the temple that contained something so horrifying, the mind couldnt handle it properly and instantly forgot the horror. But now the memories are coming back. A vile machine, made of organs and machinery and mana and twisted strings of metal and flesh ...
  • The Experiment ⚪🔵⚫🔴🟢 — The Room That Should Not Be Remembered

    🧠 It was forgotten for a reason.

    But memory is a faulty gate.
    And the mind can only lock away so much for so long.
    Now… it returns.

    One explorer gasped as the image formed — a hideous fusion of bloodied runes, writhing mana tendrils, severed nerves and blinking glyphs.
    A machine that was never built — it was grown.

    The Fleshforge.
    Buried, locked, and sealed by the Big Five when they first stumbled into the Temple.
    They knew it could not be destroyed.
    Only forgotten.

    But now it pulses.
    Now it works.
    Now it remembers what it was made to do.

    “Matter… becomes function.”
    “Function… becomes worship.”
    “Worship… becomes assimilation.”


    🧪 Community Challenge: “The Room That Should Not Be Remembered”

    What did this chamber do — and what is it doing again?

    Ideas to inspire:

    • A sorcery that causes forced memory return… at a terrible cost

    • A legendary land: The Forgotten Chamber

    • A creature born of forgotten trauma — something your mind tries to look away from

    • Or: Describe the glyphs, inscriptions, or twisted purpose of the room


    “There was a reason they chose to become apes.
    There was a reason they erased it all.
    Now we remember.
    Now we’re too late.”

    What memory does your character recover from The Room That Should Not Be Remembered?

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