Thread: Task of the Year for 2012

Last night I completed the Sputnik 1 task and the Mount St. Helen task. I even did a task of the month. It was a very busy, fun, intense, and successful night.

Spoiler for Sputnik 1 task:

Sputnik TOTY and Advanced TOTM

The earliest thing I can remember is falling out of a portal and flipping onto my back. I landed in the middle of a forest on the grassy floor. My dream guide Krystal then hopped out of the portal and landed next to me. Portals, Krystal, and a forest were enough to convince me I was dreaming. I got up off the ground and asked her, "Where are we?".

"Russia," she said.

"Soviet Russia?" I asked jokingly.

"Yes, and you'll be going to space," she said seriously.

"Wait, what?" I said confused.

She guided me through the trees to an opening in the forest. There was a launch pad located there. On top of the launch pad I could see some sort of pod or satellite that looked like a lot like Sputnik. Off in the distance I could see a couple towers. I was assuming the people in the towers were the ones who would launch Sputnik and observe it. Krystal climbed up a ladder to the top of the launch pad and I followed her.

We walked under Sputnik and she stopped to give me instructions. "There is a certain book I need you to find that can only be found on an alien planet. The book will be marked with the symbol of a circle and a plus sign on the left side of the circle. This satellite will take you to that planet," she said.

"Isn't this a little much for for a book?" I asked.

"It's a very valuable and ancient book, so please do this for me," she said.

"Fine, help me get into this thing," I said.

She pressed a red button on the bottom of the Sputnik. A hole in the pod above my head then opened up. She lifted me up into the hole and I climbed in. It was a tight space full of wires, buttons, and screens. Krystal then summoned my cat and tossed him up through the hole. I caught him and he started purring.

"Your cat is too much trouble, so he's going with you," she said.

My cat hissed at her and she growled back at him before closing the door. After 10 seconds or so the Sputnik started vibrating and I knew it was about to launch. I held on tightly to my cat as I felt the G forces on us increase. It stopped after a few seconds and I had a feeling I was in space. I looked at one of the screens and it was showing what was outside of the satellite.

We appeared to be revolving around the Earth pretty fast although I couldn't feel it. The sputnik flew out of orbit and started moving towards another planet that looked kind of like Earth. After a couple minutes we entered this new planet's atmosphere and fell towards the ground. As I started to fear a crash landing, I looked around for a landing button. I took a guess and pressed a yellow a button. The speed of the Sputnik slowed down a lot until it landed lightly on the ground.

Now that I had landed I wanted to get outside and look around. I couldn't figure out how to open the door again though. The door then opened seemingly on its own and I fell out of it with my cat. I looked up to see that a girl had pressed the button on the outside of the Sputnik. She looked similar to a human, but there were a few differences. Her skin was a kind of pinkish purplish color. Her hair was a dark blue color and she had pointed ears like an elf. The girl also had a tail.

"Hello?" I said to her confused.

"Hi! Are you an alien?" she asked curiously.

"Yeah I guess I am," I said.

"That's so cool! But why are you here?" she asked.

"I'm looking for an ancient book with a circle plus pattern on it. Can you help me find it?" I asked her.

"I'll help you if you take me to the festival this afternoon," she said winking at me.

I had a feeling she was hinting a date to me. I then remembered that one of the tasks of the month was to go on a date with an alien. So of course I agreed to go on a date with her.

"Sure, I'll go with you," I said to her.

She smiled and helped me get up off the ground. I looked around and realized I was in a forest. These trees weren't like Earth's though. They were full of all kinds of different colors and held many strange fruits. I won't go into detail though because unfortunately I can't remember them in detail. It would probably take me a long time to finish talking about them if I could anyways.

My cat soon jumped on top of me and rested on my head. The girl then guided me through the forest and the dream scene skipped after about 10 seconds. We were now inside a town walking down main street together. The town looked very similar to Loudonville during the time of the fair. There were many people walking around and enjoying themselves at the festival. The women on this planet all had characteristics like the girl I was on a date with. The men were also similar, but they had blue skin and red hair.

There were different kinds of vendors set up on both sides of the street. Carnival rides and games were stationed around town. There was a lot of confetti and balloons floating around in the air.

We visited a food vendor that was serving a weird pink goo in a cup. I have no idea what it was called because their written language was different. The sign had 2 small circles with a triangle above them. I bought each of us a cup, even the cat. I pulled a silver coin out my pocket and handed it to the man. I'm used to buying things with silver or gold coins in my dreams.

"What's this?" the man asked.

"That's a silver coin. Silver and gold are very valuable where I come from," I said.

"I'll keep it as a souvenir to remember this year's festival!" He said.

We started walking down the street again while eating the pink goo. It tasted like cherry and it was a bit sour. We talked about some things, but I forgot most of what was was said. I do remember that she told me her name was Stella though. She also said she would now show me where I could find the book I was looking for. She walked inside a building that I assumed was some sort of library. She quickly came back out with a large brown book that had the circle plus symbol on the front. She handed it to me and I slipped it into a backpack I just noticed I was carrying.

To be fair with her, I continued the date we were having. It was pretty fun. We walked farther down the street, we came to an intersection. A parade was taking place there. A lot of exotic music was playing as they went by. After about a minute though, one of the marchers saw me. He realized I was an alien and apparently he doesn't like them.

"Alien!" He shouted and pointed at me.

Everyone in the parade then stopped and stared at me. They too started shouting "alien!" and gave me angry looks. I had a feeling I wasn't welcomed by them and that they might turn hostile.

"It was nice meeting you. You might want to run now," she whispered to me.

I took her advice, held onto my cat, and started running back up the street. The parade chased right after me when I ran of course. I ran away a pretty good distance from them before my cat jumped out of my arms. He ran over to some girl who seemed to be taking in the scenery. The odd thing was, this girl was a normal human girl. She crouched down to pet him and he was happy about it. I wasn't too happy about it though because we still had to run. After calling him a few times he came back to me. I remember I ran back towards the forest, but the dream faded away after that.

Spoiler for Mount St. Helen's eruption task:

Helen's Eruption TOTY

I was walking down a dark tunnel with an orange glow at the end. I walked closer and closer to the light until I came into an opening. I was inside a cave where in front of me lied a lake of lava. Some distance into the lake I could see a large piece of land above the lava like an island. This certainly wasn't an everyday thing and it caused me to wonder if I could be dreaming. I used my personal reality check where I simply try to feel whether I'm in a dream or not.It was successful of course and I became lucid.

I activated my dragon sight ability to zoom in and look at it in more detail. Over there I saw a pink dragon sleeping next to a large treasure chest. She was only about 2 times my dragon size, so I assumed she was still young. There were many large crystal formations growing out of the ground on the island. I saw a man who appeared to be some old sage or wizard resting against a large crystal too.

Past experience has told me it's not a good idea to mess with a dragon who's guarding treasure, let alone a sleeping dragon. I still found that island to be the most interesting thing in my dream however. Despite the dangers of it, I decided I would attempt to go over there and have a look around. I leaped forward over the edge of the cliff and transformed into a purple dragon. I then flapped my wings and started flying over the lava. I was aiming to simply turn into a black dragon, but I turned into a purple one with little effort somehow. I'm more powerful as a purple dragon though, so that's good.

I flew over to the island and quietly landed behind a crystal structure. I wanted to be very stealthy as long as I was hanging around a sleeping dragon. When I stepped back out into the open, the dragon quickly awakened even though I didn't make a sound. She opened her eyes and stood up, looking down on me. The sage also awoke and he approached me.

"What are you doing in my volcano?" the dragon asked me.

"Just looking around and exploring the world I guess," I said to her.

She growled at me and apparently didn't trust me at all. Probably a wise choice since I have the habit of stealing treasure. The sage then placed his hand in front of her to make her back off.

"Helen, where are your manners? Hello, I am the great sage of this volcano. This is Helen, my dragon friend who is the guardian of the mountain."

"I'm just a wandering dragonborn. It's nice to meet you," I said to him.

He then came closer and whispered to me, "She's not the type to let you out without a fight. Look for a powerful orange crystal hidden in caves. It will make you powerful enough to defend yourself."

He said this with the intention of helping me of course and to keep Helen from killing me. Helen has very keen hearing however and seemed to have heard every word of it.

"Like I would ever give you the chance of defeating me!" she yelled.

The crystals around the island started to glow brightly. Helen was clearly absorbing their power and planning to attack. Helen charged up her attack and then released a beam of energy from her mouth towards me. I quickly dove to the right and rolled out of the way. The energy beam appeared to be made out of plasma or lava. Very fitting for a dragon who lives in a volcano I suppose.

Helen flew up above the island and started shooting more lasers at me. I was just barely able to dodge them and I was having a hard time planning my next move. Then out from behind a crystal structure my dream guide Krystal ran out into the open. She had two clones that she had made with her on each side. The two clones jumped up into the air and kicked and punched the dragon. The real Krystal ran towards me while Helen was distracted.

"You do not know anything about stealth!" she yelled at me.

"Sorry, I'm clearly not as good as you." I said.

Helen swiped the two clones with her claws and they disappeared in a cloud of black smoke. I grabbed onto Krystal and started flying away from the island with her. Meanwhile, Helen started controlling the lava around the island and sent a large wave of it towards us. When I landed back on the mainland of the volcano, I quickly turned left and ran into a tunnel with Krystal. The lava started flowing into the tunnel so we kept running. After exiting the tunnel I noticed another tunnel higher above the ground with an orange glow. I grabbed onto Krystal again and flew up there to get away from the lava.

We took a moment to rest in that cave. As we were resting I remembered that there was an orange glow in there. I looked around and found the orange crystal that the sage was talking about. I grabbed the crystal and absorbed its power. I felt a lot of energy inside me and felt confident that I could defeat Helen.

"I'm going back to fight Helen. You should be able to find a side tunnel out of the volcano while I'm distracting her," I said.

"Alright, I can sense light up ahead, so I should be able to find a way out. Please try not to die when you fight her," she said.

"I'll do my best," I said.

I ran back the direction we came from and Krystal ran further down the tunnel. I came back to the lake and quickly flew over it back towards the island. Helen was already expecting me and started shooting lasers again. It was a bit easier to dodge her attacks now that I had the freedom of flight. When I came to the island, I landed on it to dodge one of her lasers. I ran across the island towards her. She aimed another laser at me, but I countered it with a powerful ice breath. The collision created an explosion. I jumped through it while focusing all of the crystal energy I gathered into my fist. I punched Helen with an explosive force and she was launched into the wall of the volcano.

It definitely wasn't enough to kill her, but she was dazed by the attack. This bought me some time to escape. I realized that the main exit of the volcano (the top) was actually right above the island. I started flying straight up above the island as fast as I could before Helen could get another chance to attack. Suddenly the volcano started to erupt and I still had a great distance to fly before I would reach the top. I soon did reach the top though and I climbed up onto the snowy summit.

Just as I was starting to slide down the mountain, I noticed a very large bulge in the side of it. The snow started melting away over it and I realized I wasn't in a good position. I quickly surrounded myself with a shield of fury energy as bulge exploded. The shield protected me from most of the explosion, but the blast sent me flying down towards the forest below. I braced myself for impact and put all of my energy into defense and shielding. I crashed through a tree and hit the ground hard before sliding through the forest and knocking down several more trees.

When I finally stopped rolling and sliding across the ground, I took a moment to regather my thoughts on what just happened. I slowly got up off the ground in pain, wondering how the hell I survived that. I was bleeding in several places and aching all over. I didn't die though, so I was happy for that. I looked back up towards the volcano and realized that it was Mount St. Helen. Everything suddenly made sense after that. I even started laughing because I thought that was kind of funny.

I leaned back up against the tree and started healing my wounds. My vision was already getting blurry by this point though. I knew I would wake up very soon.