Planetary Rundown: The Jungle

[hadrielmods]

It's time for our last city move - well, probably last, unless things go horribly wrong. You were asked to choose a planet to face the Null on, and you almost overwhelmingly chose the jungle planet, an excellent place to hide and marshal your resources before the Null's final attack.

THE ARRIVAL

First things first: make sure you've done everything you want to before the city moves. Any last minute expeditions can be submitted here, while any host captures can be submitted here. It won't be impossible to visit the ice planet again, but it won't be easy, so get what you need done while you can!

On March 28th the city will move. The transfer is almost instantaneous. For extremely sensitive characters, there may be a very brief moment of disorientation, but most people won't notice anything. This time, thankfully, all the gods are transported along with the city - you won't arrive completely alone and with few defenses. Yay!

The city will be moved entirely intact. Everything within the city will be moved, from houses to people to anything else that might be inside the city limits. If your character is outside the city when it is moved, be aware that this will likely amount to a drop - unless you really want to play your character alone on an ice planet with no food and shelter for a few weeks before Fear can come pick you up. For everyone within the city, look forward to a huge change in scenery.

THE JUNGLE

Before the move, the land around the city was mainly clear fields, with ice and snow optional depending on how the weather was at the time. After the move, expect trees. Lots of trees. The city is now surrounded by a dense, difficult to penetrate tropical forest. You can push into the forest if you want to, but there aren't really any paths, and if you get too far away it'll become much harder to find your way back. Luckily those phones still have a GPS!

The jungle presses in around the edges of the city, and in order to increase its camouflage, the gods will be encouraging trees and bushes to grow within the city, as well. This will never be anywhere near as thick as the forest - the streets will still be mostly clear, houses won't be overgrown - but after a couple weeks, trees will start shading the streets, and bushes will cluster up against walls. This will help the city blend into the jungle around it, though it'll also make things a little wilder.

The climate is pretty much what you'd expect from a tropical forest - and, needless to say, a huge change from the ice planet we've all just moved from. It's hot, usually around 70-80 degrees, and very humid. It rains almost every day, in quick hard bursts of warm rain that are there and gone again within a half hour. Things are often wet. You will often be sweaty. When it doesn't rain, it'll be cloudy sometimes, but the sun is out a lot of the time. Luckily, the trees provide shade from the worst of the sun, meaning it's humidity rather than heat that will annoy you.

This planet has one moon with an orbit of 17 days. However, because of all the trees, it's often hard to spot the moon - so if you need direct moonlight for any reason, good luck.

THE CREATURES

Needless to say, among the many things you can find on this world, the most common is plants. Trees, bushes, vines - the undergrowth is thick, and the trees cluster tightly. There are thousands of varieties, some similar to plants on Earth and some very different. And of course, there are plenty of brightly-colored flowers, some of which smell nice and some of which... really do not. Naturally, where there are flowers there is also fruit. Remember those strange-looking fruits that sometimes turn up in the shops? Well, this is where they come from. Many of them are edible, none of them look like anything but the oddest sort of Earth fruits. But be careful - if you've never seen it in the shops before, that might be because it's not actually edible.

This jungle is just as rich in life as any rainforest. Most of the creatures will be hard to find - this is their natural environment, after all. There's a huge variety, but some of the most common near the city are:

• a deer-like creature with spidery, gripping limbs that climbs through the trees


• a small, scuttling ground mammal with six legs and a venomous bite, about the size of a rabbit


• a brightly-colored species of lizard no bigger than a deck of cards that is extremely poisonous if eaten


• a crocodile-like predator that lives near bodies of water and hides in the undergrowth, ready to burst out and attack


• a creature that resembles a species of large cat, speckled brown and gray, which spits a form of acid that eats through flesh

...and many more!

In particular, when we say 'many more', we mean birds, fish, and insects. You'd better get used to waking up to the sounds of birdsong (some of which is not pleasant-sounding at all)! The river and lake will quickly fill with strange varieties of fish, most of them edible. And insects... well, let's hope you're not scared of them, because in this heat and humidity they seem to end up everywhere. Beetles, ants, gnats - not exactly those, of course, but close enough that the resemblance in clear.

This rich, exotic world is a big change, but its diversity and thick foliage will also help keep the city hidden. It'll give everyone a little more time to prepare for the inevitable attack, even if there isn't much beyond natural resources here. At least you're warm again!