Everfree Survival Reboot: A Different Start

You are standing on a hill in a vast expanse of green. Far out in the distance, you see two things moving toward you. You feel compelled to approach them. As you get closer, you can see they are horses, but that is some weird fucking horse. Their legs are blocky, their bodies are stocky, and they have wings and horns! And their colors! One is a very pristine white, as if it is bathed in bleach daily. It has a yellow sun on its flank. The other one is a dark blue, like the night sky. It has a black spot and a crescent moon on its flank. That’s just not natural.

Suddenly, the world starts fading away. You realize you’re not standing up at all, but rather lying down on a hard and chilly surface. You try to roll over to get comfortable, but it just makes you more aware of how uninviting the surface is.

Opening your eyes, you have a look around. You find yourself in a large stone room with partially collapsed walls and no ceiling. It's pretty large, and vaguely oval. The ceiling is gone, giving you a great view of the sky. It looks like there used to be several pillars supporting the ceiling, but some of them are broken and the rest have nothing to support.

There are several large windows, through which you can see a large forest surrounding the building. There are large wooden double doors on one of the narrow parts of the oval. The doors are closed. Opposite the doors, through the nonexistent ceiling, you can see a large castle connected to this room through a tower. The castle obscures your view of the sun, though you can still see the sky painted red by its glow. The air is chilly and humid. You find yourself glad to be wearing socks; cold stone is not pleasant to walk on barefoot.

In the middle of the room is a structure with a large stone orb on the top, and five arms each holding a smaller stone orb. The large stone is mossy, but the smaller ones look pristine, with symbols carved on them. It looks like the symbols are meant to represent some geometric shapes; you see a triangle, a square, a diamond, a pentagon, and an octagon.

Fortunately, you’re not naked. Unfortunately, this is not really your style of clothing. Your legs are covered by comfortable black cargo pants. Your torso is covered by a white v-neck t-shirt and a brown tweed jacket, reminding you of your grandfather. He thought it was great formal wear, and even wore it to your uncle’s wedding. Your feet are covered by a pair of socks. You are somewhat thirsty and slightly hungry, but not tired.

Now knowing the basics of your situation, you look out the windows to get a better sense of your surroundings. A large ravine surrounds you on all sides, with a rickety-looking rope bridge crossing it. There is a path leading from the bridge to where you are, but it is mostly overgrown. The forest around this place starts on the other side of the ravine.

Obviously, you’re in an unfamiliar location. The best way to make sense of the situation would be to find other people. With that in mind, you push one of the large wooden doors open, and walk outside.

It would appear that you are in the entryway to a large castle. The main part of the castle is severely damaged, looking like a large meteor struck it in the center and brought most of it down.

You walk around the castle once, coming full circle. It looks like the ravine goes all the way around. There is a set of stairs winding down into darkness on the other side of the ravine, a couple hundred meters counterclockwise from the bridge. Some of the castle towers are still standing, but you don’t know if you’d be able to get into them. Maybe if you had a rope and a grappling hook you could climb up to a tower window, but there’s no telling if the stone would hold your weight. The same would of course apply to free climbing.

Not having seen any obvious entrances to the castle, you make the decision to see where the stairs lead. You make your way across the bridge, carefully to start, but it seems to support your weight… at first. A little after the halfway mark, one of the ropes on the castle side comes off its support, almost sending you plummeting to your doom. Fortunately, you were already holding on to the ropes for balance, and catch yourself before anything bad happens.

Grabbing onto the remaining ropes with your legs, you carefully shimmy the rest of the way. It takes a little effort to get up onto the edge of the ravine, but you manage it without falling, which is a definite plus.

That was a close brush with death. You take a couple minutes of deep breaths to calm your pulse to reasonable levels. Then, you resolve yourself to be more careful with decaying ropes in the future.

Having collected your thoughts, you attempt to see where the path leads in the forest. However, you find that it’s far too dark to make out any details. Instead, you turn and head toward the stairs as originally planned.

Your descent is long and time-consuming. As you get further down, it starts getting darker, but slowly enough that your vision adjusts naturally. Down in the darkness there is no significant flora except for a small bunch of yellowish brown mushrooms with inverted umbrella-shaped caps.

A vague path leads you through the ravine to a crystalline tree-shaped in a small cave. It is about twice your height and has some strangely shaped slots on it. On the trunk is a sun and a moon, and on five of its branches are hexagons. In the center is a star.

What do you do?