**Your name is ROBOLOOPS. It’s a bit of a weird series of syllables, you’ll admit—way too many O’s. The babies just call you Robo. The ones that can make some effort at speech, that is.
Shit, you mean GRUBS. Not babies. Hard to get the vocab straight sometimes, even after being here for so long. Grubs, wigglers, babies; they’re all synonyms, anyway. Still, you try not to let the b-word slip out around the other AUXILIATRIXES.
Honestly, it’s not like you’re doing a good job hiding that much from them anyway; they just don’t like hearing the wigglers referred to with alien vocabulary. They think it’ll mess with the grub’s developing minds or some shit, being exposed to foreign language. You think the jades are exaggerating. After all, they’re all perfectly fine with a weird ALIEN ROBOT running around raising infant trolls, so the word ‘baby’ should be the least of their worries.
It’s the same thing with the dumb FAKE HORNS you wear—you’re not fooling anyone. You’ve just kind of gotten used to them, is all. Not the word grub, though; you associate that with food too much, and you have NO INTEREST in eating ALIEN BABIES.
You’re getting distracted. Where were we?**
[[>State name and position.]] **Oh, right: Your name is ROBOLOOPS, which is a thing that hasn’t changed. You are a FLAWLESS DIGITIZED MIND contained within and IMPECCABLE STEEL CHASIS, and nearly the entirety of your NIGH-UNLIMITED PROCESSING POWER is dedicated to a singular task: RAISING WIGGLERS. You are an AUXILATRIX on a troll-inhabited planet called SEGUNDIA—which is weird, because you could swear that you used to know planet just like it called ALTERNIA. But that was a long time ago.
You are a part of a large team of auxiliatrixes holed up in the BROODING CAVERNS, but most of them aren’t robots. As mentioned previously, you are supposed to be IN DISGUISE, but a pair of fake horns isn’t fooling any troll with even an eighth of a brain. Even the goddam wigglers can tell your skin is made of sheet metal and your hair out of iron wool.
You tried to stay out of sight for a while when you first got here, but it turned out that the JADEBLOODS were generally pretty accepting. You fear that trolls on the outside of the brooding caverns – like those spooky fucking clown cultists – wouldn’t take so well to you, so hiding away in the brooding caverns raising grubs seemed like a pretty good idea. Besides, it’s not like you’re the only abnormal auxilatrix hanging around here.
And on top of that, the coolest goddamn thing you’ve ever seen is in these caves: the (color: red)[TIMEHOLE]. There’s no way you would give up your post here working with and observing it.
You are currently hanging around at the edge of the (color: red)[TIMEHOLE]: an eldritch vortex of red light and swirling gas, displaced in time and space, unpredictable in nature, yet vital to the functionality of these caverns.
It’s pretty straight-forward: one grub goes in, another comes out. Or an egg or cocoon, you guess. You’re not entirely sure where they go or where they come from, but the running theory is that whatever goes into the (color: red)[TIMEHOLE] is sent careening through time – hence the name – and thrown out at another random point in time, either forward or backwards. You’ve been around long enough to see the evidence—grubs you’d thrown in weeks, months, or even years ago pop back out later, unaged and unchanged.
Okay, that’s not entirely accurate; some of them do change. That’s what you spend most of your time doing, changing the grubs. Some of the other auxilatrixes, too. You’ve got kind of a club going on.
You check your watch, by which you mean you check your perfectly-timed internal clock. You’ve been standing here in front of the (color: red)[TIMEHOLE] for a few minutes now. You threw in a lucky olive-blood runt you’ve had around for a few days into the vortex a little while ago, and nothing's come back out. It’s not unusual for there to be a little bit of a delay, especially if things are a little bit busy inside the hole. You have no idea what that means, exactly, but the trolls who are more inclined to understanding Time tell you that it makes sense. Time was never your wheelhouse.**
[[>RL: Stare into the TIMEHOLE.]]**The whole of your field of vision is overcome in a red light. You’re never sure if it’s because of the ambient glow of the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] or because your eyes are made of shitty red plastic and cheap LED lights. Peering into the swirling chaos of the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] always makes you feel slightly insignificant knowing that something this uncanny, this unpredictable, this //powerful// exists, and then that feeling of insignificance is instantly overcome by your unyieldingly huge ego. The feeling that does stick is that it’s being wasted on glorified babysitting, but you’d never tell the other auxilatrixes that.
You have a lot of questions about the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] that you’ll never get answered, like how the fuck you wound up crawling out of it one day countless sweeps ago. You don’t remember getting into it, so that’s weird. Or at least not this (color:red)[TIMEHOLE]. The Furthest Ring was a weird place to live (mouseover-replace:"The Furthest Ring was a weird place to live")[The Furthest Ring was a [[weird place to live->Furthest Ring Insert]]] before you got here, and physics didn’t ever behave the way you would’ve predicted. You’ve theorized that maybe you fell into some kind of (color:black)+(background:white)[SPACEHOLE], but Space isn’t exactly your expertise either. You do know a guy who's pretty good with it, though. (mouseover-replace: "know a guy")[(link: "know a guy")[(open-url: 'http://www.farragofiction.com/PaldemicSim/?id=35')]]
The churning portal in front of you begins to bubble as if made of liquid. Maybe there is some liquid in there, who could tell. It’s a tell-tale sign that something is about to come out of it. You crouch down to catch the little gremlin when it pops out.
A wiggler flies out of the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] at forty miles per hour.**
[[>RL: Go long!]]**That won’t be necessary. As the grub goes flying across the room, you reach out and stretch your arm out into the air *Space Jam*-style. Just before the grub can slam into a stalactite, you grab it by the scruff of the neck and retract your accordioned robot arm back to a normal length.
This happens all too often; some young punk auxilatrix on the other side of the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] yeets an infant into an otherworldly portal of unexplainable nature completely ignorant of how the troll on the receiving end has to deal with it. Not every auxilatrix here has a great way of dealing with it. Some of them have big butterfly nets, but most of them just have to go long and catch the poor things. After the first few times it happened, you got together some junk metal and built yourself some stretchy arms.**
[[>RL: Observe the new wiggler.]]**//Fuck//.
It’s a fuchsiablood. A little baby heiress that some dweeb somewhere or sometime else didn’t want to deal with. You dearly love every grub you hatch and raise here, but fuchsias can be a little inconvenient. Nobody wants to be the auxilatrix who raises an upstart heiress who goes and inconveniences the Empress, because if that heiress doesn’t succeed the Empress makes sure that the jadeblood who raised her gets offed.**
[[>RL: Deal with this problem.]]
[[>RL: Drop it back in.]]**A less responsible auxilatrix would dump the little fucker right back into the hole, but you’re much smarter than that.
You cradle the grub and rock it gently to sleep as you walk into the caves and towards your LABORATORY. It doubles as your house – or hive or whatever – and is nicely tucked away in the back of the caverns.
The other auxilatrixes make their residences back here, too. There’s a nice little block of doors carved into stone walls or little cube houses built up where they all stay. Your lab is behind a wrought-iron door covered in a comically large number of locks that makes it kind of a chore to get into, but you like to keep stuff locked up.
You step into your lab. It’s complete chaos in here, as always. A small, square room with stone walls and floors with a workbench lining one wall and your charging chamber across from it. The third wall is lined with shelves covered in countless baubles and pieces of junk you’ve collected (mouseover-replace:"countless baubles and pieces of junk you’ve collected")[[[countless baubles and pieces of junk you’ve collected->Hoarding Insert]]], either rooting around in caves or by pulling weird shit out of the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE]. In one corner rests your old metal baseball bat, unused for a long time and covered in rust. A crude weapon from a cruder time in your life. The fourth wall has another door in it, leading deeper into the caverns to a derelict ectobiology lab. You keep some of your belongings back there, but don't often find reason to venture in.
You set the wiggler on the workbench and put your horn hairband on a coat hanger. Time to get to work.**
[[>RL: Get to work.]]**You grab a mason jar of purple liquid off one of your shelves. Editing grubs the old-fashioned way is a bit of a gross process, but you’ve grown used to it. Gotta deal with fuchsias somehow.
Let’s not get too into it. There’s a hypodermic syringe involved, and nobody likes needles. Fuchsia stuff comes out, purple stuff goes in. A bloodswap in the most literal sense. It’s incredible that that’s how troll physiology works.
You have to do the thing pretty fast, but you have fast hands and a very fast brain. When you’re done, the little wiggler starts coming back into consciousness. It has no idea what’s happened, and you doubt it’s cognizant enough to even realize that anything about it has changed at all. But on the outside, the change is obvious: what was once fuchsia is now a beautiful purple.
You have a fondness for the color purple, even if the purple-blooded trolls on the outside freak you the fuck out. You don’t mess with that clown shit. But you bleed purple, so you default to purple when swapping blood colors around.
Your gaze travels to another jar in the room, filled with some writhing grey gunk. You think about adding that stuff to the mix. Your old protocols want to indulge in the roboticization of this grub—it’s what you were made to do, after all.
But you resist. You figure it’s best not to mess too much with one grub. If you wanted to make another robogrub, you’d probably head to the ectobiology lab instead of giving this one a dose of nanobots.**
[[>RL: Leave your lab before you change your mind.]]**You hustle out of your lab, almost forgetting to lock back up. Of course, you would never actually forget, what with the whole “flawless digitized mind” schtick. You make your way back to the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE].
You pass a few of the other auxilatrixes on your way who wave and say hello. A few recognize that the grub you’re carrying now is not the same color as the one you had when you came this way, but they say nothing. You’re not the only one who does this, after all. One of them asks if there’s been another fuchsia infestation. You shake your head and tell them that you don’t know, that you only just pulled out the one.
You get back to the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] soon enough. The grub in your arms has fallen back asleep and has already started honking in its sleep. They change fast, you’ve come to learn.**
[[>RL: Drop.]]**You drop the thing into the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] rather unceremoniously. You do this countless times a day, there’s nothing that special about it.
The wiggler falls into the vortex with a plop. The gasses swirl quicker as the wiggler gets totally engulfed and disappears from sight. You wonder where – or when - it’ll end up, thinking that maybe the aux that threw it in in the first place with get it back, surprised at its new color. There’s never really any way to tell.
You’ve tried trans-(color:red)[TIMEHOLE] communication before, even tried setting up a game of temporal Battleship. It always falls through. Sometimes you get the letters from the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] responding to correspondences you haven’t even sent yet, and then things get weird. You hate time travel. Things made more sense when you lived in the Furthest Ring, somehow.
Nothing pops back out immediately. You take a seat on the ground, waiting for another grub to return, as you’ve done countless times every day for the past few hundred years. But who’s counting, right?**
[[Return to Title Screen.->Title Screen/Character Select]] **{
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}**<center>(t8n:"dissolve")+(color:red)[TALES from the TIMEHOLE.]
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(t8n:"dissolve")[Transmission 1.]
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(t8n:"dissolve")[Select Your Character:]
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(t8n:"dissolve")[[[<img src=https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/585176629966274560/585191786138304515/roboloops-1.png.png alt="Roboloops">->Roboloops Start.]]]
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**Your name is ZIDARN ASHVUN.
It is the 11th of May, 20XX.
You don't know what this means, as Alternia's calendar differs from humanity's alternative.
This is without mentioning the amount of time that you have spent in a zone out of your mental capacity to understand, which has undoubtedly skewered your sense of time itself. Your head constantly begins to SPIN as you wake up every night, and at some points you can feel something clawing its way out of you, but you can never pinpoint what it really is. Your head begins to hurt, again.**
[[>ZA: Remember.]]**Your name is Vimten Ayator. It is a very, very good name if you do say so yourself. And you do. Some might say that you OVEREXAGGERATE and are OVERCONFIDENT. With all of the time you have invested in making sure that you are the very best at verifying, it only makes sense to believe in these abilities yourself. Your blood is a most vivid and verdant JADE, the proper color for any AUXILIATRIX in these here CAVERNS.**
[[>Revise your statement.]] **Not to imply that some of the other auxiliatrices are inherently worse than you! That would be mean. However, you must admit that it is... unnerving to view your once unvarying environment become so diverse. Very well, though. As an up-and-coming STAR, as you consider yourself, both inside and outside the caverns, you certainly have better things to be worrying about than others quite effectively doing their jobs. You have quite a few other INTERESTS, nearly all of them online. On nearly every website, you use the same handle as your tag on Trollian, (color:#008141)[overvividVotive].
Your interests may as well number in the very HUNDREDS. You like to sing, dance, pretend you’re even passable at either, write, draw, read, and prevent yourself from becoming DISTRACTED again because you can be quite the LONG-WINDED girl, if you do say so yourself. Which you do, because it is something you have been thoroughly convinced and are now quite confident of. Once you’re through wasting time on those things for the day, you have a very important task. You consult a very special list.
(color:#008141)[1. Verify that there are no eggs, grubs, or cocoons in your possession.] Up to now, and this time as well, you hatch grubs, spin cocoons, and pupate grubs so diligently throughout the day that you leave no extra tasks for yourself once you wake.
(color:#008141)[2.Purchase 12 eggs to hatch, as your lovely Empress so graciously allows.] As usual, you receive 12 eggs from Anstus and struggle a bit with their unwieldy size and shape as you drag them to an emptier part of the caverns. These eggs are all purple; you tend towards raising HIGHBLOODS, as giving others lowbloods to raise is nearly as bad as depositing FUCHSIAS, in your very measured opinion.
(color:#008141)[3. Trade your eggs with the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] until only the very best wigglers remain.]**
[[>OV: Stare into the TIMEHOLE.]]**It is a veritably wondrous thing. Almost akin to a lake, or even a pool of hot lava, it is filled with swirling fluid that is fiery in visage and demeanor and overall reactive. The (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] gives just a bit of warmth to this cold life you’ve made. It’s almost pretty enough to make you cry, if you were a crying-in-public type of girl. Sometimes, you’re not very confident that you aren’t one. Nearby, two other jadeblood bicker over a strange-looking grub. (mouseover-replace: "a strange-looking grub.")[(link-repeat: "a strange-looking grub.")[(open-url: 'https://mspfa.com/?s=30707&p=1')]] It barely draws your eyes away from the resplendent mass of red light.
Enough gazing, though. There’s a much better reason for you to be here. The eggs that you’ve bought are even showing a bit of their blood color already. It is no major thing to part with them. Gently, though, you roll each egg into the elusive portal that is the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] and deftly catch each egg, wiggler, or cocoon that comes out. The distribution of what you receive from the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] is disappointingly average. Six of your purple eggs came right back to you, and you’ll have to put them in again later. There are four grubs: two teal, one yellow, and one cerulean. Not your personal preference, but certainly workable. These grubs are named and will soon be under your utmost care. There are two issues that you have remaining, which more charitable auxiliatrices may call cocoons. They have fuchsia blood. You do not want a new Empress. You do not want to anger your wonderful, current Empress. You know what to do. First, you quickly make your way to your own quarters.**
[[>OV: Live by the sword.]]**Figuratively, of course. But you do have to admit that beheading is really a proper method of culling, though it would be hard to work out the logistics of it for cocoons. This is not how you get rid of fuchsias, however. You’re not sure if you have the strength for it. Swapping their blood is also out of the question. You do not have the motivation for it, and it strikes you as wrong. Instead, you use your natural abilities to keep the necessary ratio of blood colors for the most valorous empire.
You pride yourself on your wit and chastise yourself for the things which it cannot solve. In those instances, you need good fortune. Both are required in equal measure for the way you cull fuchsias. Confidence, even overconfidence, can also make the entire process much more pleasant.**
[[> OV: Be a cultist.]]**There’s another reason why you love highbloods, purples especially. As an orderly troll, you love their devotion. You loved it from the very first time you snuck out of the caverns to attend a sermon, and they’ve loved you just the same ever since. Subjugglators are wild only in their passion, you muse to yourself quite often. Really, nothing now could stop you from praising the Mirthful Messiahs. Their adherents convinced you so thoroughly about your own abilities, the united abilities of the troll empire, and the miraculous nature of everything.
Such conviction is completely necessary to fulfill your duty to the empire. You have never been more sure of it.**
[[>Grub: Die by the sword.]]**Again, completely figuratively. You take the first cocoon in your arms and slash it open. Most of the grubs (mouseover-replace:"Most of the grubs")[[[Most of the grubs->Cocoon Insert]]] are not conscious in the cocoon, and thankfully, neither is this one. Removing the grub from the cocoon, you hold it in your arms. You squeeze one hand around the base of the grub’s neck and the other around its nymphoid tail. You pull and twist in opposite directions, and the grub’s body loses the last bit of energy it contained.
The process is just as simple for the other cocoon, and you are soon finished. You set the grubs aside so that some heterodox purple can come collect them without disturbing more important items. The frequency at which you do this has decreased the time it takes and your overall emotionality, but it’s still a bit worse than absolutely necessary.**
[[>OV: Make all unfaithful thoughts vanish.]]**After a long argument with a few purples after Church one day, they allow you to drink Fanta instead of Faygo. It’s a bit sweeter, a bit brighter, and the way you mix it, very much stronger. But a very small sip will only make you feel better, not put you out. There’s not anyone else that you trust to watch your grubs. You are simply almost one of the very best there is.
With more pep in your step, you collect the remaining grubs and eggs and walk back to the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE]. It’s easier to raise the grubs near it if you’re going to be trading so much. The trading continues as before after you’ve bought more eggs to replace the fuchsias. Your work is tedious the way you do it; buy eggs, raise grubs, (color:#6C00DA)[take care of fuchsias]--but you wouldn’t have it any other way. Eventually, you end up with twelve nice grubs, and you spin their cocoons all around the same time, which is also a bit tedious. There are certain perks that make the whole thing worthwhile.**
[[>OV: Vivify.]]**You walk back to your hive and throw back half of a small bottle of Fanta. A hard knock at the door lets you know of the arrival of one of your closer acquaintances, a loud purpleblood girl.
Sure enough, once you open the door, it’s her. Her name is not important, but her reason for being here is, if she does say so herself. She does, quite frequently, despite her complete lack of being correct. A civil troll might take the grubs and leave; your acquaintance is not such a troll. Loudly, she inquires about your night. You say it has been okay, but would be a much better night if she would keep it down a little bit. She shyly whispers her agreeance. Maybe one day she’ll get it, you hope.
The girl takes the grubs and finally leaves. How lovely. You’re waiting for a group of more important trolls, who arrive closer to the daytime. You make sure to be ready for them when they come, putting in a great deal of energy to appear fun. Your makeup is done heavily, but well considering your condition, and your hair is parted so that there is no intermingling of the black and the green.
A purpleblood knocks at the door, one of the new auxiliatrices, and he’s brought friends. Their names are unimportant as well. You are all one under the Messiahs.**
[[>OV: Vow.]]**The Fanta mix serves to make you lose time, occasionally. You find yourself sitting by the purplebloods who came to get you in a pew near the back. They’re hooting and hollering, which must have woke you from your trance, and you join in with unveiled vigor. The noisemaking ceased to make way for wild chanting, and that too died down once an extravagantly dressed purpleblood stepped to the pulpit. He was adorned with deep violets and golden jewelry, and in speech too showed the absolute glory of the Angel of Double Death. Angels are amazing. They remind you of stories that other jades told you when you first started grubsitting. You used to tell that blasphemy to poor, innocent grubs. That regretful period is over now.
The impromptu Church session ends as... quickly? Slowly? Normally? It ends the same way it started. Soon enough, you’re back at your hive. You wave your fellow Churchgoers goodbye before you: (color:#008141)[1. Check to make sure your hive hasn’t been disturbed]. It’s completely fine, something which you can rarely say. (color:#008141)[2. Verify that all cocoons are bright and undamaged]. They are. You pupate them and send them off. (color:#008141)[3. Get a good day’s rest].**
[[>OV: State name and position. ]]**Your name is Vimten Ayator, or (color:#008141)[overvividVotive], and you are very sleepy, no over-exaggeration needed. Today was a very good day. You didn’t see too many fuchsias, and you got to go to Church. Everything managed to stay clean in your hive, which you can attribute to you resisting your tendency to overindulge.
What will tomorrow bring? Will you work up the confidence to interact more with the other jades, or even the mutants and aliens? Or will you find yourself in the same position as yesterday, or the day or sweeps before? It is very nearly certain that you know the answer to that question. It is the only thing that you can be sure of.
You have many INTERESTS, such as upholding the empire, supporting the Empress, worshipping the Mirthful Messiahs, and so many other things. Some have told you that you are almost intolerably brief at describing such matters. That is understandable; you trust the judgment of any subjugglator who would condescend to give you any small piece of attention. They are most certainly correct. You have so much faith in them.
You slip into your recuperacoon with more grace than most intoxicated jades would have. It is almost something you can pride yourself on. You shut your eyes and are weakly put to sleep.**
[[Return to Title Screen.->Title Screen/Character Select]][[>State name and position.->>State name and position. (OV)]]{
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(t8n:"dissolve")[Welcome, Observer.]
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(t8n:"dissolve")[Ever wonder what happens to those grubs you throw into the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE]?]
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**Your old place was practically a coffin. A tin can drifting through the Furthest Ring, orbiting just far enough away from (color:green)[the Green Sun] where the light didn't bother you too much.
But you could still see it in all it's magificence. It was //huge//, after all. You could've seen it perfectly clear from a light-year away, you figure. The (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] reminds you of the sun; they must be some kind of opposite entities, one of Space and one of Time, one tucked away in the furthest reaches of nowhere-space and the other innocuously placed in the middle of a brooding cave.
The two of you holed out in that satelite station for far too long. As far as you know, that dickhead is still kicking back by himself in his little "Observatory." You wonder how he's doing, though you hate to admit it. He probably programmed you to miss him, the rat bastard.**
[[Go Back.->>RL: Stare into the TIMEHOLE.]]**(color:red)[What is this?]
This is not a //game//, per se, but rather a collection of small fanfictions about WigglerSim put together by fans of the (link-repeat: "FarragoFiction")[(open-url: 'http://www.farragofiction.com/')] official Discord server. Both WigglerSim and the official Discord can be found on the FarragoFiction website.
As of this build, there are stories about three caretakers: Roboloops, Vimten Ayator, and Zidarn Ashvun. Vimten and Zidarn were written by discord users overvividVotive and acesEight, respectively, while Roboloops was written by me, broonLoops.
Vimten and Zidarn's routes are currently totally linear; Roboloops's contains a few branching paths and "hidden" passages.
This project is not associated with FarragoFiction and is wholly a fanwork.
(color:red)[Can I participate?]
Yes! Join the Discord server and get in contact with the user @broonloops for information on how to get your WigglerSim fanfiction included in (color:red)[TALES from the TIMEHOLE].
(color:red)[What's planned for the future?]
Current plans for (color:red)[TALES from the TIMEHOLE]'s future are not set in stone. The current hope is that more fans will come forward with interest in writing microfiction of their own caretakers to be added in later updates.
There have been plans of adding more "game-like" elements, turning (color:red)[TALES from the TIMEHOLE] into a proper CYOA with multiple endings and tying together multiple caretakers' routes, but this is sort of a pipe dream. In order for that to work, I would have to put together a small team of collaboraters to work on tying things together rather than just collected submitted stories from members of the community.
JR has also bounced around the idea of collecting multiple fanworks and spawning a *Paradox Space* knock-off for FarragoFiction; (color:red)[TALES from the TIMEHOLE] hopes to head in this direction.
(color:red)[Other questoins?]
Check out the official FarragoFiction discord server, linked on the main website, and get in touch with me, broonLoops!**
[[Go Back.->Landing]]
[[Start Game.->Title Screen/Character Select]]**You let go and dump the little fucker right back into the hole. You're typically much more responsible than that; you have ways of dealing with fuschias, usually, but you just weren't feeling it right there. It's this whole gross process with and big needle and spare blood. It's about as weird as it sounds. You're just super not into it right now.
The wiggler drops back into the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] much more gently than how it shot out. The gasses of the vortex swirl quicker as the wiggler gets totally engulfed and disappears from sight. You wonder where – or when - it’ll end up, knowing damn well that it'll probably just get thrown back out at you in a few hours. That's almost always how it works. Hopefully some auxilatrix on the other side will be down to deal with it, or maybe some group of jades in an other era of history or a different timeline altogether are looking to groom a new heiress. The probability of that probably isn't in your favor, though.
It'll only be a few moments until the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] spits a replacement back out at you, you figure.**
[[>RL: Recieve a replacement.]]**A tube of rotten tennis balls. A number of peculiar collector's coins. A VHS tape of //The Wizard of Oz//. Six mugs. A Bowser amiibo. Some spare arms and eyes. A book of Irish aphorisms. A smashed-up GameCube and a working-condition GameCube. Dozens and dozens of bags of dice. A scalemate plush you stole from a baby. Extra sets of fake horns. A hairbrush with metal bristles. A shit-ton of WD-40. Two giant rubberband balls. Tons of old or broken computer modems, printers, keyboards, and junk tech. DVD copies of //WolfCop// and //Super Mario Brothers//, some of the finest cinema ever produced by humanity. A high-quality shield. A glockenspiel and pair of crash cymbals. Two baseballs. A blu-ray copy of //Another WolfCop.// An old transistor radio and a tapedeck, the former borrowed indefinitely from an old friend and the latter lacking any tape collection to make it useful. And that's just the top shelf. (mouseover-replace: "tapedeck")[(link-repeat: "tapedeck")[(open-url: 'http://www.farragofiction.com/AudioLogs')]]
You've been told that you're a bit of a hoarder.**
[[Go Back.->>RL: Deal with this problem.]]**From what your memory can conjure, you have a certain array of INTERESTS. You LOVE making MUSIC, preferably on the guitar, but often find yourself drifting to others because you're "BORED". You used to have a noticeable CHARISMA BOOST, but after appearing in Alternia you can barely hold a stable conversation. The sights of your old ROOM that flash in your brain once and awhile reveal several POSTERS for an artist that simply goes by the name “ZEMNIK.”**
[[>ZA: Observe.]]**After being stuck in what the local JADE-BLOODS call the "BROODING CAVERNS", you have been looking into picking up a GRUB or two to fit in and, maybe, make a FORTUNE or something.
Ever since your first awakening, you've begun to merge the areas around you, which makes FITTING IN with the JADE-BLOODS a little harder. Since then, staying CALM, COLLECTED, and SERIOUS has stopped the strange incidents, one which has gained you the nickname "FALSE-BARD". You don't understand.**
[[>ZA: Obtain Heir.]]**Sneaking through the BROODING CAVERNS while Jades do their things allowed you to slip in what seems to be a MAKESHIFT-SHOP for GRUB EGGS. The shelves are linedwith various labeled as their placement on the BLOOD CASTE of troll culture.**
[[>ZA: Be greeted.]]**Strangely enough, a BURGUNDY-BLOOD wearing a.. tank top of sorts?.. greets you bashfully.
(color: #A10000)[ANSTUS: `[are you just gonna stare? you seem awfully busy, hanging around in the dark all day, sir...]`
ANSTUS: `[apologies if that was.. rude? please buy an egg, sir.. we could always-]`]
(color:purple)[ZIDARN: i’ll uh.. i’ll just take the purple one]
The BURGUNDY-BLOOD eyes you down for a second. Apparently HIGHER BLOODS = HIGHER COST, which now thinking about it makes more sense than whatever was coursing through your head.
(color: #A10000)[ANSTUS: `[yeah.. yeah, sure, that’ll be 190 cae-]`]
Wait, shit. You hadn't thought about that. This is ALTERNIA. You need money. Sweating this fact gets you nowhere, so you dive your shaky hands into your pockets.
A refreshing jingle of CASH greets you like a cool sip of INCA COLA. You smile as you hand over exactly 190 caegars. You're surprised that you had that many, or even the exact amount you needed. A flash of worry washes over your patient persona.**
[[>ZA: Hand over the cash.]]**(color: #A10000)[ANSTUS: `[perfect.. great, okay, good luck. i can't say it's easy for a troll of your.. blood.. but, you seen somewhat desperate. take it.]`]
The BURGUNDY-BLOOD shoves the egg into your arms and pushes you away.**
[[>ZA:Return the heir to your humble abode.]]**Upon returning to your PLAYPEN-AREA you designed yourself, you throw off your PURPLE HOODIE onto the ground and gently place the egg on top. Now sitting cross legged on the floor, you realize this stuff takes TIME and EFFORT, which ruins the mood completely.
You sit in silence for a solid 10 minutes when you decide that a defenseless EGG will learn more from being alone than you bring yourself to admit. This of course is just to reason with yourself, so you can escape the confines of this BABY-ASS PLAY AREA. You sit up, sigh, and walk away to explore the caverns, jacket-less.**
[[Return to Title Screen.->Title Screen/Character Select]] This is a test. (click: "test")[(alert:"This is a test.")]
<img src=https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/585176629966274560/585176665039306752/roboloops.png alt="Roboloops">
<img src=https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/585176629966274560/585177719038410764/zidarn.png alt="Zidarn Ashvun">
<img src=https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/585176629966274560/585177736570732575/vimten.png alt="Vimten Ayator">body, tw-story
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text-color: black
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tw-link
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tw-passage
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**The (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] swirls in front of you. Waiting is never as hassle for you, since you can just go into standby mode until something happens--usually, though, the vortex works pretty instantly. Connection must be down, you guess. You dont' really know what that means.
It takes what you estimate to be 11.30674829 seconds exact, give or take a sextillionth. Not that anyone's counting, except for your flawless internal clock, constantly. You hear the familar blabbering and gibberish baby sounds of a wiggler and look down to see an infant jade crawl slowly out of the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] and climb up your leg. It's adorable beyond belief, even to a cold and heartless automaton. Jeez, you do think about the fact that you're a robot a whole lot.
The grub crawls further up your leg until it clings to your thigh. It's a cute one, and visibly a day or two old--its colors are a bit more filled in. You figure that someone had been raising it for a bit before sending it careening through the timeline.**
[[>RL: Off to the pens.]]**Of course, things won't always go your way. Your wells of luck are verily finite, and have run out on a few occasions. These incidences of such poor luck have taught you a number of things, most imperatively that cocoons are the easiest to deal with. Grubs usually won't stay put for long enough for you to even attempt the process, and you aren't very interested in seeing an underdeveloped grub in a smashed egg one more time. If a purpleblood that is close enough to you puts in a request for an egg, you've not any good reason to deny, but cocoons are the best for your relatively vile modus operandi.
As before, cocoons are less offensive to the vision and the few sensibilities that still lurk somewhere in far within you. The cocoons, once spun, gradually fill with some kind of fluid. It reminds you of sopor slime. And like the viscid substance there, you imagine that the grubs are filled with the tiniest bits of wonder. They are happy in their wonderful rest. They will know no further pain.**
[[Go back.->>Grub: Die by the sword.]] **The only reasonable thing to do with this adorable baby is give it some toys.
You plod back through the caves to one of the larger playpens speckling the place. A few dozen other wigglers are crawling around the place, watched by three caretakers chatting with each other off to the side. One of them sees you from across the cave, catching sight of the grub clinging to your leg and laughing to herself at the visual. You have a bit of a reputation as a recluse and a stick-in-the-mud, so seeing you getting cute with the babies always brings a laugh to the others. Who can blame you? These things are adorable.
You pull the jade baby from your leg with one hand, against its best attemps to keep a grip on you. It looks pretty upset, you notice. Must've really liked your leg for some reason. You gently place the grub on the ground on the other side of the pen, using your accordion-arms to reach across. The wiggler bumps up against the fence and stares at you.
You squat down to get eye level with. It stares into your shitty LED eyes and smiles, clearly entertained by the dim glow of the lights as a goofy grin crosses its face. If you had a mouth, you would smile. Tiny moments like this bring a kind of purpose to your work--you're one of *countless* caretakers in the caverns, and a one of a theoretically infinite amount tending to the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] across eras and universes, so the job can feel pretty insignificant from time to time. Especially since you know you could probably be doing something more than this; you're a self-replicating robot, for crying out loud. You could be building a machine army or some other maniacal shit, you just couldn't be bothered.
But seeing a young grub so happy? It makes it worth it. Dear god, you hope this one survives the brooding caverns. You wish they all could.**
[[>RL: Entertain.]]
**Enough brooding and self-reflection. Time to give this baby some fucking *toys*. You stand back up and walk away from the pen slowly; the jade keeps its eyes tracked on you, its expression slowly turning saddened as you put some distance between it and you. One of the grubs the other auxes had been watching makes its way over to your's, and the two grubs just sort of mindlessly bump into each other and roll over onto their backs. God, alien babies are weird.
You pace on over to that freaky shadow dude that sells toys, who's minding his own business at a toy shop burried in some wet cavern. You've never bothered to look into exactly *what* he is because, hey, he never asks about what your whole deal is. It's a professional relationship.
You ask him if you could buy a pumpkin. He asks what pumpkin? Haha, very funny you say. You wanna buy a goddamn pumpkin. He cuts the shit and tells you that he's out. That's weird, you can't imagine why so many grubsitters would want to buy pumpkins for their grubs. You like getting them because the grubs usually eat them after they get board playing with them, so it saves you from having to buy toys *and* food.
You point up at his shelf to a weird green stuffed bat thing instead. Looks cute, and is the same color as a grub you've got. Marks or caegers, he asks. What? Marks or caegers, he repeats. He says he's asking you how you'll be paying. You've got no clue what a "mark" is, you tell him. Alright, 344 caegers. You cough up the coins and he passes you the freaky plush bat. Pleasure doing business. (mouseover-replace:"his shelf")[[[his shelf->Shelf Insert]]]**
[[>RL: Head on back.]]**You return back to the playpens to find your jade grub in the middle of a fight with a cerulean another aux is watching over. The troll runs a hand through her hair and looks at you apologetically as she cradles a green egg in her other arm. You shrug; the wigglers are just playing, it's no big deal.
You walk up to the fence and wave at the grub. It catches sight of you and smiles, crawling away from the other wiggler that was harassing it. You toss the stuffed bat over the fence to it, and the toy lands neatly in front of its face; the grub beams and blubbers out some weird baby sounds before wrapping its clingy little appendages around the stuffed animal.
The blueblooded grub flashes its teeth and hisses loudly, speed-crawling its way after your little jade. The caretaker curses and turns to you, and passes you her egg. Hold this, she says before jumping over the fence. She lunges at her cerulean, trying to keep it from getting agressive with your jade.
The little fucker hisses at her and starts dashing around in circles as she follows after it. You watch her for a few minutes, entertained by the display. After a while, you feel the egg she passed you begin to shake; you call out ther her, but she's on all fours wrestling with that fiesty baby.
The jade grub looks up from its toy to watch the egg in your hands begin to crack. You hate the weird slime that comes out of these things, but you can't exactly just drop it. The wriggler inside the eggs slowly breaks through the shell, freaky egg slime leaking out onto your arms. As the last of the eggshell cracks off, you examine the newborn you now hold.
You do a double take. Well, fuck, you say, looking between the jade in the playpen and the identical jade in your arms.
You hate time travel.**
[[Return to Title Screen.->Title Screen/Character Select]] **You never did understand why the shadow dude sold *motor oil* as a toy for grubs. Or those green power modems. Really, you don't understand any of the shit he sells. Where does he even get it? Why does his stock barely ever change? How come pumpkins are the only things he ever runs out of?
Too many questions, not enough answers. Everything about this place is fucking weird, from the folks who live here to the (color:red)[TIMEHOLE] itself. Like, yeah, you're never gonna pester Mr. "Nightmare Heir" here about where he came from or what the fuck he even *is*, but you're still curious. And what's even "Segundia?" What happened to this planet being called Alternia back in your universe?
You gave up on trying to get answers about any of the weird shit in these caves a long, *long* time ago, though. You'd much rather just live a quiet and uneventful life as a humble grubsitter than try to unravel the mysteries of this universe.
And also, holy *shit* does that little Mr. T in a jar freak you out.**
[[Go back.->>RL: Entertain.]]