Two foals set out on an adventure to explore the Naue islands and oceans off the coast of Baltimare. Who knows What strange and interesting places lie beyond the horizon?
Last thread: http://desustorage.org/mlp/thread/25928647
Previously, on Across the Ocean:
>Dawn and Bodi dock on Butt island
>Explore the island
>Oh look, there's a hole in this butt
>Call out to see if anything's inside
>Holy carp there's something in there
>Decide not to explore though as it's really close to dark
>The foals decide to make a note of the area and save exploring for tomorrow
>See a weird storm in the distance on the way home
>Dawn parts ways with Bodi for the night and heads home to plan a little before hitting the hay
It's light outside, and while a tad windy - you left your window slightly open and can feel a nice and steady breeze - it seems that whatever storm system you saw last night kept its distance.
You walk slowly downstairs, pausing at the bottom to rub your eyes a bit before continuing into the kitchen.
"Hello honey!" your mother Heartwine cheerfully calls from the table. She's holding her flower mug in one hoof and reading a gardening magazine, and smiles at you when you enter. Although you're excited to get exploring again, you feel a little tired still and haven't woken up all the way yet.
"You look tired, dear. What time did you get to bed last night?"
"Eh," you say a bit groggily, choosing to save your energy till after breakfast. You head over to the counters and make yourself a nice bowl of wheaty-o's or whatever that bran cereal is called. You don't care, really, so long as it's food.
After waiting a bit for you to wake up, your mom tries to initiate conversation with you again. "So, what's your plan for today, Dawn?"
What do you do?
>>25972459
Do one or two chores for bits, pay back the tab AGAIN but it's fine since it's only 3 bits and spend the rest of the day on butt island.
Mom are you going to the store today? Could you pay my tab so I can explore more?
>>25972621
"Well, Bodi and I need to go pay-" You begin to say that you need to go pay off the tab at Pan's Primitives and Poultices, but you realized that Bodi actually has some bits at home. You think he has about five or so, and the tab from what you remember is only three, so you should be fine as long as you stop by the store before the day's over.
"What was that?" Heartwine asks.
"Oh, nevermind," you reply. "Doesn't matter. Anyway, Bodi and I are gonna go cave exploring!"
"Cave exploring? Ooh, sounds like fun. I didn't know there were any caves nearby, though."
"Yeah we found it last night!"
"Alright. Well, stay safe, dear."
"Yes mommy."
You smile warmly at Heartwine as you finish the last of your breakfast. "Hey mommy, are you going to the store?"
"Um, I don't know yet."
"well, could you pay me and Bodi's tab thing if I give you the bits?"
"I suppose I can," your mom replies with a nod.
"Okay, I'll go get the monies from Bodi!" With that you jump off your chair and race to see if Bodi's still in the same spot.
Sure enough, he's at his usual spot, but he appears to be done meditating, instead doing some weird balancing thing on a short pole. Koko teaches Bodi some weird things sometimes.
"Hey Bodi!" You shout. "Can you go give my mom money for the tab?"
"uh... yeah man. I'll drop it off before we leave."
"Hey, did you tell miss Koko about the storm?"
"Yeah, man." Bodi says with a nod. "She said it's odd that the storms are getting more frequent. She's trying to figure out what's causing them, and she want us to like watch out for them."
You nod before proceeding to skip around the balancing colt. "Soooo, we gonna go back to the buttcave? I wanna see what's in there!"
"Well," Bodi replies. "If you get stuff ready to leave, we can head out soon, man."
Well, explorer, is there anything you wish to bring before you return to the island?
>>25973228
The only new thing I can think of to bring is a paper and pencil so we can make notes of our discoveries like real adventurers.
Let's go give our mom three bits and then go to the island!
>>25973228
We should get some sort of light source.
If we had a unicorn friend that would be useful...
>>25973289
>>25973473
You leave Bodi to finish doing whatever to go see if the raft's all ready to go. Let's see... twine, knife, food stuff... you realize you have the lantern still, so that'll be your light source when you're inside the cave. Still, having a glowing thing or a unicorn friend would be nice. Oh well, too bad you don't have any at the moment. You'll have to make due with just the lantern.
that leaves... oh yeah, paper for a better map. You had to write on cloth last night, and the old map is now almost unreadible from smudging. A quick pit stop to your room however, and you're now equipped with better stuff for map-making.
You don't notice Bodi until he's near you and the raft. "Oh hey!" you say with a chirp. "Did you give mom the bits?"
"Yeah man," Bodi replies. "She's got enough to pay the tab. We should be good to go if you're ready."
You nod. You're ready to go see what's in that cave!
The trip back to butt island goes smoothly, and before long, you're back at the cave entrance.
"Well..." you start. "Ready?"
The two of you manage to wiggle down into the cave entrance, and you realize that it's a bit snug. Whatever is in here must be pretty small, as you have to duck while inside, and you're pretty small yourself.
You can see some sort of fork up ahead in the dim light. It's not a true fork per se, but you see two different pathways up ahead. one goes straight ahead, and the other takes a sharpish turn to the right.
What do you do?
>>25974084
Let's go straight ahead. We can always turn back if we need to.
>>25974084
Check for any markings
>>25974106
>>25974389
You continue down the path ahead of you, making a note to visit the side passage once you're done exploring this route. It seems that the walls are actually getting closer to you, and although you and Bodi were walking single-file before, you're almost at a crawl now. You wonder how much further this path actually goes.
It tapers and twists around a few small bends, and just when you start to wonder if this passage is just going to keep getting more narrow untill you have to start squeezing through, it suddenly opens up to a small room. The overal distance to the room isn't much, but with the crawling you've had to do, it feels like a lot further.
Inside the opened room is a small nestlike pile of layered twigs, cardboard, driftwood and cloth scraps, with a small cloth canopy, it seems. Beside the nest is a chunk of driftwood with some neat bottles lined up, and beside that, another, flatter piece of driftwood with what looks like paper and cloth scraps on it.
You didn't see any markings on the walls on the way here, you think, but there's sure a lot of markings in here... mainly near the nest and on the scraps resting on the flat wood.
Well, What do you do?
>>25974731
This is a surprise.
Let's start to examine some of the markings near the nest and on the flatwood.
Then we leave and go in the other direction.
>>25974731
What is the bong looking thing?
>>25974731
Examine items
>>25974836
>>25975101
>>25975104
((Last one for the evening, fellas. I'll try to start a little earlier tomorrow if I can.))
You decide to examine the weird nestlike thing in the corner. Upon closer inspection, it appears that the markings near the nest are a bunch of doodles of various things like monsters and stick figure ponies with weapons.
"What the heck..." you whisper to Bodi. "What IS all this stuff..."
"Well," Bodi replies, "Something's living here, that's for sure. And it's a pony, too, based on the hoofprint paint marks on that wall."
He points to the doodles near the bed. "Still pretty weird, man."
"I know, right?" You say in return. "This place is kinda cool, but it's also weirding me out a little. I mean whoever lives here had to drag like all this crap in here."
"And look at these, man." Bodi says, pointing to the weird bottles on a piece of driftwood. "Like, I think Koko uses a few bottles like these for making medicines and whatever, but these," He continued as he looked into the necks of the bottles, "are all like empty."
"Are they just for decoration?" You ask.
"I dunno, man." Bodi says with a shrug. "It's weird."
So there's a bed with doodles on the walls, weird bottles that may or may not be for decoration... is there anything else you want to explore here?
>>25975263
I don't see anything else obvious that we should examine to let's leave and then make that right turn we didn't do before.
Whoever lived here might have abandoned this place because we scared them off yesterday.
>>25975263
Maybe we can write them a message.
In normal letters and in pictographs, incase they can't read.
>>25975377
should we draw ourselves waving?
>>25975263
>thumbnail looks like a detailed eyeSleep tight sleepymint.
high adventure!
>>25975263
Is this where a feral foal lives after they were shipwrecked nearby and had to survive on their own with no pony contact?
>>25975377
>>25975408
I don't think we should let them know we were here yet. I think it would be better to stake out the cave entrance and see who shows up. Then we can act once we know what we're dealing with. We don't want to make them feel afraid their home has been compromised and scare them off.
