Side-Write: History Lesson

Project Wild One is finally almost ready to ship v0.01! This should be the last side-write for this particular setting for a little while, and once again I was having a little trouble since this game is less story-oriented, but I took this chance to think more over what this world will have to be like by necessity.

I've touched on this a few times in the past, but the fact that this is a world where death isn't "a big deal" does create a lot of interesting implications. As soon as that known element was in place, a lot of other things gradually became clearer around it, and this month I tried exploring how that alters civilized culture and how we perceive the world a little. Obviously there are still gonna be a lot of even stranger implications for things like keeping secrets, murder cases, and the nature of war, but for this one I stuck to the lighter stuff.

That said, this does end up going in a direction that makes me feel a little embarrassed. I know that only a small portion of you are particularly interested in vore, and I don't want to alienate everyone else from this game or my content. So far I think the game is shaping up pretty well to work just fine with no vore if that's your preference, without even feeling like "a game with a big component obviously missing," but it does get harder to talk about the game in a more static medium like this without mentioning such things. I guess what I've learned from this free-write is that to create a world where "death isn't a big deal" and carnivores and such are still practical, practices like vore technically sort of happen naturally on their own, at least to some extent. I guess for those who aren't interested in such practice, you can see it as "one more weird quirk of this world"?

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A long, long time ago, our ancestors could only die one time. If they died, their body stayed there and would eventually rot away, like old trees. It was the same for all the creatures of the wilds! They say that back then, though, there were almost no monsters that preyed on us, so our ancestors could live a much longer time without dying at all. Those were very peaceful times! Some scholars even say we used to build much larger buildings and have strange, advanced technologies. We've even found proof we used to live in massive towns that could support many thousands of people all squished in together! Doesn't that sound amazing?

Back in those days, if a wolf was hungry and wanted protein, he could kill a small animal, then cut its flesh from its bones and bite it off in chunks. This was very natural back then! That's why so many of us have sharp, slicing teeth! Who here has fangs? Say "ahhhh." Lots of fangs! Your distant ancestors used to survive by biting off chunks of flesh to swallow in bits! I know, it sounds awful. But it was easier to digest, and it even let many people eat from one animal. They say some people used to do that for a job: they would buy animals, kill them, and cut them into chunks they could sell to many other people. Those people could take the chunks home and eat them whenever they wanted, or even cook them, same as eggs and vegetables!

So, who knows what happened after that? Yes, the gods fought. Some brought new monsters to our world that would prey on us, and others wanted to protect us. But they couldn't get rid of the monsters, so they changed the rules. Suddenly, when someone was killed, their body disappeared, and they came back whole and healthy somewhere else, a safe distance away. All the people and all the animals, and even all the monsters would disappear and come back until they had led long, full lives. That must have been very confusing at first, huh? "Hey! We just killed that monster, but now it's back again! And there's Michael, the monster had eaten him last time!" They thought that anyone that died would stay that way forever, and they'd never meet them again. They must have been so lonely back then, huh?

Who here has died at least once? Raise your paws! ...Andrea, you haven't died? Not even once? ...No, don't tease her. That's good! If we had all been around before the gods had mercy on us, then out of all of us, she'd be the only one that was still around! We'd all just be... gone. ...Spooky, right?

I've died more than a dozen times myself. I went out in the wilds a lot when I was younger. I had a lot of close calls with getting seriously crippled but not dying, it was very scary. Remember, never go out in the wilds on your own. Always bring a friend! If things get bad, you can kill each other and try to make it back to safety. Of course, it's better not to go out there at all, but I know it's hard to spend your whole life behind the walls. So if you do go out, just be sure to go prepared, and bring a friend, okay?

Okay! So! Who can tell me when we can die and never come back? ...Old age, yes, of course. ...Yes, disease can make us disappear forever. ...Right, starvation. ...Anything else? What's real similar to starvation? Right! Dehydration! If you don't have enough water or enough food, you can die forever. Make sure to drink lots of water! And if you get so sick you might die, make sure someone kills you first. Just remember, make sure someone else does it, never kill yourself! You might come back as something else, with a much shorter life span!

Now. Can anyone tell me what happens when we're eaten? We still come back, right? Right. But what about whatever ate us?

...Who's got all fangs and no molars? No teeth that are flat, for crushing vegetation. Right. You have a hard time with vegetables, right? Even if they're processed, like bread, it's not very good for you to eat. Your ancestors used to get by ONLY eating bits of flesh from animals. Your stomachs are meant for flesh and don't know what to do with vegetables and the like, so it can give you a tummy ache. You mostly eat a lot of eggs, right? Has anyone eaten an animal before?

Tobias! What did you eat? ...A rat! That had to tickle going down. How did that go? What happened? Mm hmm. Hmm. Right! So obviously it was living when he swallowed it, but eventually it died inside him. Does anyone know what happened next? Susan.

...Correct! The gods had mercy on the carnivores and allowed them a way to still gain nourishment from other animals. If any of us, or any animal, or even any monster dies in the belly of another, we still come back elsewhere, but we leave a body behind-- a body that softens into a nutritious sort of goop that's much easier to digest. Remember, we were originally meant to eat little bits of meat if any at all, so we'd have a really hard time with whole bodies otherwise. Especially the bones! But it's much better this way, don't you think? Now we can eat and get protein from other living things, but they don't have to be gone forever. It must have been very scary to only eat meat back before the mercy of the gods. Every time you needed food, something else had to die forever! Doesn't that sound awful?

But today, most of us get by on meat at some point or another. Even if you only have flat teeth, when you swallow someone, you can digest the paste that's left behind well enough. If you're ever in a situation where you're out in the wilds with a friend and you're both starving, you can even eat each other to survive! It's very difficult to eat someone else close to your own size, and not everyone can do it, but it can be a very helpful life skill. That's why, today, we're going to practice stretching to swallow larger objects! This is a very important life skill, so do your best, but don't hurt yourself, alright? We'll be taking it slow and trying this again once a week, and hopefully before long any of you will be ready to swallow, say, Peter here if you had to.

Now! Who wants to come up here and demonstrate with me?