"No, no...no!"

The Storyteller's voice cuts through the inkdrop-dark, frantic and scrambling. A distant blot of campfire gutters in the far distance - far from where you are. The disorientation of the week preceding this one has translated into Mu, and everything is hopelessly out of place. The Storyteller sounds muffled, clearly addressing someone or something else, their voice cushioned by the uniform, void-like night.

"Stop it. Stop it! I wasn't gone for very long at all. You can't behave for two weeks? You have to make it all...all...wrong? I can't keep this up - not with what I've had to do since returning - !"

Gradually, however, the shadowy campsite solidifies into being. Or...a semblance of it does, in any case. Four glistening pyres rear out from the shadows, each glowing a different color. The strange material that domes them almost resembles worked steel, forming different patterns against their multicolored backdrops.

[ ♆ ] The first glows a deep crimson, kicking scarlet embers into the dream-night air. Its pit sphere portrays a crowd of people in silhouette, heads bowed in genuflection - paying homage to some looping, many-coiled shape in the sky above.

[ ♆ ] The second glows a deep orange. Its pit sphere is worked into the shape of a looming mountain, with what might be some sort of village or ruin sprawled at its base.

[ ♆ ] The third's flames are a rich green. Its designs are most abstract; the starburst patterns that swirl across the metallic composition of its fire pit sphere could be explosions, maybe...or something else entirely.

[ ♆ ] The fourth pyre is one bearing host to golden flames, amber sparks sprayed out from behind the shape of a set of scales nestled among a flurry of birdlike shapes.

Beside each pyre is heaped a pile of sticks, colored to correspond to their respective flames. The Storyteller sounds agitated when they manage to speak again:

"Will you let them at least make the choice I left to gave them?" When there is no response, they sigh. "If you can hear me...I can't make it clearer than that, at the moment. Pick one. Pick one, quickly, and try to get out before it decides to make things worse! Just add a stick to whichever one looks best to you!"

Unfortunately, whether you abstain from voting or make your choice, that's not all there is to this night...

( it doesn't matter )

It is a dog that greets you, come the night of the Storytelling. The breed is indiscernible beneath the way the thick ruffs of smoke-black fur hang heavily from their lean frame, the entirety of them as pitch dark as the surrounding, metaphysical night save for the bright pink spot of their hanging tongue.

"I cannot fault you for choosing as you did," they murmur. "We had no way of knowing...we could not have seen what sort of civilization would be involved. If my reach could extend past my home..."

The words seem directed at themself, more than anyone else. With a swift shake of their coat, the dog regards the islanders once more, their eyes glittering in the firelight, rich as garnets.

"Three choices remain. I hope that, for all our sakes, the other islands on the horizon are far kinder than the first. The first will allow access to vegetation. The second, ore. The third, beasts."

There is little point in warnings. After all, it is not as if they predicted the outcome of your first choice - and it is not as though they were pleased to realize what that "civilization" entailed.

( You know what comes next, adventurers. )

Mm, yep. This sure is a tagcloud.