A hounded curiosity (Story)

[polygone]

Let me start with a little introduction explaining what this is/such:

 

            Hiya! I'm Poly, I'm a mod maker for DST and like to write stories and characters and such so I've come up with a sort of lore for each mod I make. That's all well and good enough, but I have a tendency to mix and relate different things I make and keep a network of lore that makes sense across all content I generate for this that or the other thing, so of course I've come up with a sort of meta-lore that spans across (most of) my mods.

 

            So that's what this story is about, sharing some of the lore I've come up with about why my mods are and what they are and what's going on in the world I've created. Specifically, the two I'm focused on are my Hound Companion mod and Polygone Character mod. Essentially it's going to be written from Poly's perspective as he discovers more about these strange inter-dimensional hounds. So if you want to check either of those out, you can do so at the following links, though keep in mind the images for Poly are a WIP, and will be updated eventually.

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=440357000

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=391057471

 

 

Oh, and the beginning section of it is a lot of background story setting the stage for the actual hound companion mod, so it'll reference things from the original Don't Starve until it shifts over to Don't Starve Together. So, yeah~

 

~~~~~

 

            Hello. My name is Polygone, and if you're reading this then you're probably either the librarian, the king, or a variant like myself. So congrats on being one of the few people capable of reading a book. I've been trapped in this loop for some years now, and...well there's a lot going on so I guess I should probably explain some of what this world is in case you can't remember the worlds before, and I'm sure that you've had some.

 

            This place is a giant game, a sort of deadly chess game played by some beings I've only heard referred to as "them". For the purposes of this little report document I'll just call them the watchers. This world is only one of thousands, possibly even millions, that the watchers have set up to see us run around and try and survive. It's...strange. Some worlds are cruel, brimming with spiders and clockwork monstrosities; but other worlds can be quite tame and fit for surviving years into. Most don't even last the one year, from what I can tell. We live hopping from world to world, should we die we simply wake up again at the next with little to no supplies, each person with a different set of gear to help them along.

 

            So we have watchers and the worlds they make, and then the creatures within it that they play with to try and kill or save us depending on their mood. It's simple enough if you leave it at that, but there's also the king to wonder about. He sits on his throne and has a hand in controlling it all, but mainly the world through that wicked looking portal. I don't suppose you remember it from before the craziness happened, so I won't bother detailing it as that isn't particularly important in this report.

 

            Science. We all know how to make a science machine, and then an alchemy engine. When near it you get all sorts of blueprints chalked up in your mind, and if you leave without building one you forget what it was you were going to make and how to make it. Infernal devices are just play toys of the watchers, along with the ones of magic. Assuming you're the librarian, you probably already knew how to make the alchemy engine when you first woke up. But do you remember what came before that? Do you remember how you got here? In all likely hood, probably not. And if you're a variant it'll be even more confusing, since we tend to come from all sorts of crazy places.

 

            On the topic of craziness, I can move onto the magic of the world. Ah, progress. I fell in love with the magic when I first came across it, and happily searched for the gems to create my mystical constructs. But there's a limit. You still don't know everything, even with the shadow manipulator. Gems only go so far, and you only have so much. This is where the caves come in, and where my research truly begins.

 

            In case you're a variant who was brought after the makeshift portals or if you simply can't remember, the caves were generally regarded as a horrible place where it was always night, with monsters that were different than the surface. Spiders had armor and could spit web at you, giant bunny men lived in carrot houses, and giant tentacles stretched up to the ceiling. But for me, it was home. I am very aware of the dangers down there. No touch stones and no sun, it's a brutal landscape. But I was never bothered as much by the darkness, and the spiders are so adorable I just...well...suffice to say it reminded me of where I came from, before being brought here by the watchers.

 

            Let's go a level deeper, into the ruins below the cave. These ruins were built be the ancient ones, the same people who had initially build the clockworks and used magic like there was no tomorrow. But they all disappeared. All that is left are some broken walls and clockworks, some statues, and a mysterious altar that glows in the dark. This altar was my savior. It bestowed upon me knowledge I couldn't even dream of without it. I learned to make staves that were more accurate than a simple telestaff, and amulets that could pick up items around me or let me glow in the dark. But no matter what I made, the knowledge of how always left me when I went away from the altar. So I cleared a path, killing countless clockworks to make a safe way to the altar. The gems I got from the ceiling, the occasional cave-ins dropping all sorts of minerals around me so long as I avoided getting hit myself.

 

            So I continued surviving in the caves, and exploring down in the ruins whenever I could. The splumonkeys and slurpers down there made it relatively difficult, but I managed. Splumonkeys are nasty monkeys that liked to steal items from you or throw poop, and slurpers would jump on your head and suck food right out of your belly. Their eyes were strangely see through and provided light though, so that was a fairly useful thing now and then to take advantage of.

 

            Right. Magic. I built everything I could using the altar, and even then I wasn't completely satisfied. I still forgot how whenever I left the altar, and the thing was so massive that there was no way I could have moved it if I wanted to. So I studied the rest of the ruins. You see, the ruins were constantly in a state of flux. It slowly becomes more and more crazy, peaks, and then winds back down to becoming relatively normal. The ancients had built these nightmare lights that access something from deep underground, letting the shadow creatures roam free regardless of the sanity of anyone nearby. Lucky for me I actually love being around such creatures regardless of their intent, so I could freely roam around down there without fear of becoming insane like many must have.

 

            On studying these lights, I've come up with several theories as to their mechanisms, and I've also studied the statues to see if I could understand what happened way back when. But I just couldn't fully understand them. I did manage to repair a few of the broken piles of clockworks and turn them friendly, but otherwise I only had theories and no solid evidence. On a whim, I decided to return to the surface after a year or so underground.

 

            The sun hurt my eyes. I spent far too long underground, and adjusting to the light outside was no easy task. I wandered about and found my old base, rummaging around I found most of the things to build a teleportato when it hit me that I didn't know how to actually build a teleportato, or how it worked. I just knew I had to collect all four parts and put them on a wooden thing somewhere. So that's what I set out to do. I grabbed my backpack and some supplies and set out to research this portal to the next world...right, we don't have those anymore. You see, before the makeshift portal existed we used to have to build this giant portal out of four things and a wooden thing, and then we pulled a lever to go to the next world while keeping our inventory and recipe knowledge. Strange, isn't it? We also had to do it all alone, so that sucked.

 

            Anyways, I gathered all of the parts and found the wooden thing, and killed it's guardians. But I didn't complete the thing. I sat down and looked at the parts I had collected: A ring, a box, a lever, and a metal potato...thing. I decided to try and take apart the box to see what was inside, but I couldn't get it open. Next up, the ring. The ring was a lot easier to get apart. Inside I found a bunch of wiring and electrical doodads that seemed to hook up a certain way. So I tinkered with it. It was probably an extremely stupid idea, but I rewired the ring thing and hooked it up to the lever and box to see if I could get a reaction. Amazingly enough, it kind of worked. The inside of the ring sparked and I briefly saw into another world before it turned itself off again and gave me a nice zap...that actually hurt quite a lot so I was lucky to have brought some healing salves.

 

            On further experimentation, I've discerned the box as a sort of power source for the ring. I eventually managed to get a stable portal working, but it appeared as if the world I was looking into wasn't very different from the one I was currently in. I wanted to find the way home.

 

            Using flint, nitre, wood, a green gem and some nightmare fuel I managed to set up a fairly crazy fuel source that could keep the portal open for a while until the wood and nightmare fuel burned out. I was on my way to creating stable portals without the need for the other things. Also as it turns out, things placed on the wooden thing don't come off. I found that out the hard way by setting the potato on the center of the wooden thing, which is why I couldn't do any experiments with it.

 

            I eventually ended up with a careful blend of various ingredients that wouldn't burn out and could fit within the ring itself, but it took weeks of trying to reach that point and winter had fallen leaving me to retreat back underground to my cave base where I performed the rest of my experiments.

 

            At this point I was set up to world hop with ease. All I have to do was find a ring thing and I could move onto the next world without worrying about the rest of the things or playing their games. I turned off the ring and rewired it, trying to find out where home was. I ended up opening a portal to the wrong place. A different world, similar to ours, but the hounds were everywhere. I could see them through the portal, and before I could close it one got through. Unfortunately, it was so big it broke the ring thing coming through, and the shattered pieces of the thing disappeared in a puff of smoke. I was surprised at having a hound suddenly be in my face, and quickly fumbled around to grab my spear. But it's odd, this hound didn't try to bite me. Actually it seemed just as confused by me as I was by it.

 

            I ended up naming him Kiwi, and he's since been my companion through these worlds. I spent a little while messing with the box thing again, and ended up successfully breaking it open after quite a few tries. Big mistake. It opened up a rift and both me and Kiwi were sucked through it. I can't remember much of the actual trip, but I landed in this shattered world with a chessboard floor and these strange burning lights. This fragmented reality was home to a nightmare king, he attacked me and I had to fight him off with my thulecite bat and crown. He had a strange staff that could summon these explosive meteors similar to what happens in rocky biomes now but far deadlier, these meteors were exploding on impact.

 

            I won the fight, and was rewarded with a strange portal. I explored around to find a skull chest with some basic gear, and the world wasn't particularly large. I even found a shadow phonograph, which played some strange clicking that I can only assume was morse code. Being ever curious, I poked at the phonograph and tried to take it apart, and in the middle of doing so the shadow hands came up and dragged me down back to a normal world. But this time was different. When I woke up I had a ring thing on me, but it's tougher and couldn't be opened like the other one. I ended up tossing it on the ground as useless, and sure enough Kiwi burst forth ready to follow me. Not sure how I knew it was the same hound, but it definitely was and is. I still have him around, and if he ever dies he'll just show up again at the next world I end up at.

 

            But things get...strange...in this world. I didn't end up there by the teleportato, but I still remembered what happened in the other worlds I'd been to. I guess I broke something, I don't really know. I was surviving, building back up my supplies to re-enter the caves and return home when I felt the world shaking and the sun suddenly disappeared. A minute later it came back, and after another minute of spazzing out everything went dark. When I came to I was walking out of my first makeshift portal and into the sight of a strange scientist with some really pointy hair. That scientist was named Wilson, and he's the one who first built the makeshift portal, or at least he claims to have.

 

~End of part 1~

[polygone]

            I...didn't trust him. Something about him just seemed...cold. I'm not quite sure what it was, maybe the hair or the clothes he was wearing. But he's the first humanoid other than the pigs that hasn't attacked me on sight, though the rabbit creatures only seemed to do so when I had meat. Plus, he actually spoke decent English, and could even do science. Maybe that was it, or perhaps the giant beard reminded me of the rabbits in my darkest times. Whatever it was, he proved trustworthy enough.

 

            He led me to his base where I met one of his friends, Wendy. Strange girl. I do like her though, pretty instantly too. She's just as comfortable in the dark as I am, and her outlook on the place is refreshingly grim. Plus her sister Abigail is cute too, too bad that she can't be revived like the others. Still not sure why though, Wendy never would tell me. Anyways, I'm getting a bit distracted. Point is, Wilson is apparently a scientist who lived alone fighting against Maxwell and eventually came up with that portal...thing.

 

            It was a decent base, I'll give them that. Crock pots, two fridges, a ton of chests. It even had an alchemy machine and shadow manipulator, which of course I was immediately drawn to. I spent the next couple of days wandering around the immediate area and getting myself set up with a backpack, helmet, and other basic supplies. You probably know the drill by now. I even met a couple other of our companions, Wickerbottom and Wolfgang. In fact, if you can read this you might just be Wickerbottom, given she's one of the few who can typically decipher written text anymore. As for Wolfgang he's...a bit more dense. Hungry too. Sometimes he's a big tough guy, sometimes he's thinner than even Wendy. He's always complaining about some guy named Webber or something like that...not the best conversationalist in the world.

 

            One discovery I made about this world is that there were no things, no adventure portal, and no caves. The touchstones were still limited in supply, but we could craft these strange beating hearts to revive our fallen comrades. It's...odd, to say the least. Unfortunately, they had not camped near much in the way of 'evil' totems, so I found myself going mad by the third or fourth day, despite getting a top hat on the second. The others began to question how to help me, and Wickerbottom decided to show me to an old clockwork camp I could set up at to help with the sanity issue, after I explained my need.

 

            So I lived alone again. At least, for the most part. I'd spend night after night at my base, and go to the main camp when I needed to craft something or store stuff in a chest. One day, I accidentally dropped Kiwi's collar onto the ground, and it broke in a flash leaving my faithful pet there. Everyone was stunned and confused, Wolfgang being the first to call out monster before he started stuffing his face with soup. Of course I defended him and warned them he was my friend, as Abigail is to Wendy and eventually we came to an understanding.

 

            The Bearger was a sight. I was told to stay out of the way with Wendy, so I got to watch Wolfgang and Wilson fight off the beast together, as Wendy hits too weak and Wickerbottom was out collecting reeds in the swamp. It was definitely a sight to behold. But it got me curious. Day to day, I rely on Kiwi to help distract and damage my enemies while I run in and out to deal damage when I can. How these guys get by without a companion such as mine I simply didn't get, though I used to do it as well. So I set about trying to re-create the collar to allow the others to gain access to the hound world.

 

            I succeeded. Apparently Glommer was hidden away somewhere for 'safety' reasons, but I was trusted enough to be shown it and was allowed to take the goop for my experiments. It took weeks, and Winter had just ended when I successfully recreated my first working collar. I gathered the others one night to show them my invention around the fire pit, but the chaos that came after is a problem I still can't seem to solve.

 

            You see, my four companions apparently aren't the only ones in the world. There exists another camp far away, where lives some more...sinister characters. That night, they were desperate enough on food to decide to fight us. The first thing I saw was this bright glow quickly speeding towards us, and the next Wickerbottom was on fire and running off to avoid catching the base alight. Next up this metal...thing...ran in with a ham bat and armor and started wailing on Wilson. By this time the others were quickly dawning armor themselves and getting ready for the fight, Wolfgang yelling for me to get up and fight now.

 

            I barely had time to switch to my logsuit before a strange spider man (whom I've now come to know as the "Webber" fellow Wolfgang doesn't like) jabbed me in the back, followed by a horde of angry spiders from behind him. He wasn't ready for Kiwi however, and the dog quickly chased him down and was dealing a fair amount of damage I assume. Wolfgang helped me clear the spiders, and we were about to go after Webber when suddenly our chests caught fire, a strange animate teddy bear dancing in front of the pyre. The firestarter, Willow, had arrived.

 

            It was pure chaos. Next thing I know Wilson bumps into me while running from that soulless automaton, and I dropped the collar. I can only image the confusion that hound must have had. It lived it's whole life in another world, and suddenly it's brought into a place of fire and combat. The first person it saw was Wickerbottom fighting Willow through the fire and flames, and it decided to start attacking the firestarter. Between the two, it didn't take long for her to go down and her teddy bear dropped uselessly to the ground immediately after.

 

            At this point we all turned on the robot, who's chosen me as it's next target. It hit pretty damn hard, I have to say. But we took him down with the help of both Kiwi and the unnamed hound. Things changed when Webber came back with what appeared to be a Viking, along with a new wave of spider minions. There was so much fighting, the hound ended up finding Wolfgang to be a threat, and to his dismay began to fight for our enemies instead. The strong man went down, and we were having trouble taking out the spiders with that Viking on the loose.

 

            It started raining. Hard. Luck had it that a random lightning bolt took down Webber, but then his spiders just started attacking everyone. (The fire had burned our lightning rod, as fate would have it...) So we all had a new problem. Charlie. The beast of the darkness, the one thing even the King is afraid of. Poor Wickerbottom died to the spiders, and Wilson didn't have a torch to stave off the impending darkness. Luckily I was ready, and I had a torch. I managed to escape with Wendy, Abigail keeping the chasing spiders from ever making it to us. We ran over to my base, and quickly lit the fire. After we finished off the remaining chasing spiders, we were left alone for the last hour of the night. Suddenly we heard several lightning strikes in the distance, and something in the air told us that Wickerbottom had slain that Viking somehow.

 

            On morning, we went looking for her. We found her hanging out around Glommer, badly injured and shivering from the cold. Her Winter supplies were in her backpack in the fire apparently, and that hound I summoned ended up dying in that final desperate flee. The base is gone, but we had won. The three of us set about scavenging what we could from the remains of the base, picking away at the charcoal and skeletons that dotted the landscape.

 

            It...wasn't pleasant. And I realized, I hadn't seen anyone's ghost throughout the fight. I asked the others and they said the same. Our friends were just gone. And to top it off, we were soaking wet. The whole situation just sucked. We decided to go explore for a new camp site, Wickerbottom bringing Glommer along with her, apparently Chester was taken by the others at some point, so he was probably at the other base somewhere.

 

            We settled down in a pig town near a desert. We spent Spring getting our base put together and getting ice hats for Summer, and when the time came for the uhhh...Goose? Moose? Yeah that whatever-it-is showed up we took it out quickly so that it couldn't lay it's electric eggs. For a while, things were fairly normal. Then a new face walked up to our camp...

~End of part 2~
 

[ShnarfBird]

How interesting! I always like stories written from an in-character perspective.