The forum-lurking half of the Adventure Is Delicious blog team presents "The Continuing Adventures of Bluebell the Snipe". More fanart, screenshots, dev notes, and spiral-spy godliness can be found at spiralsnipes.tumblr.com

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Once upon a time there was a box.

And inside this box there was an egg. Inside this egg was a small pudgy bird. This small pudgy bird had been waiting to hatch for a long, long time. But this was a special kind of egg that required heat and light to germinate. So the egg sat in the box, which sat inside a dome which was fitted between the spokes of a massive brass sprocket. And so time passed, the mighty brass sprocket spinning aimlessly, revolution after revolution, days passing like the steady tock of a grandfather clock.

Until one day, a diminutive knight in blue pigtails came across the box and pragmatically used the corpse of a fallen wolver to bash and prize the box open.

“Well,” said she. “This isn’t a standard loot. Silly red treasure boxes.” Thus saying, she picked up the egg and slid it into her backpack, thinking no more of it until much later, after a giant purple jelly wearing a crown lay in goopy pieces on the floor. After a round of congratulatory butt-smacking within the party, Arcelia (for that was the young knight’s name) returned home. She sat on the steps in front of a fountain and dispensed grouchy gear-related advice to new knights running around in proto and cobalt.

After some time, when she was out of energy and ill-equipped noobs to yell at, she remembered the curious egg that she had found and held it up to the light. Instantly the little bird inside shivered, and Arcelia found herself surrounded by all the snipes in Haven - a corpulent, honking, chirping flock. “Extreme snipe herding!” shouted a noob. “wat that?” said another. “Do u need a man” whispered a third.

She could feel the heartbeat of the small bird inside. Instinctively she knew the small thing would need heat to hatch. And so off she went, down into the Clockworks freezing some mobs and blasting holes in others,ducking swipes and weaving complex trails of fallen ammunition around her doomed foes. A steady stream of suitors joined her and were used as meatshields or tied to rocks as bait, then kicked when they died. Arcelia smiled through the purple haze of cordite and smoke from defeated enemies, and when the noxious smoke had cleared, golden crowns and orbs of heat lay scattered among the corpses of sword-wielding suitors who had charged into battle to impress young Arcelia.

A sparkle-trailing boot crunched down through the helm of a fallen noob, cheap protoplastic shattering under the force. Admittedly the sparkles detracted somewhat from the otherwise dramatic entrance. A knight dressed in the skins of various fallen wolvers and a flamboyant, dull yellow hat went from body to body, pragmatically using his parrying blade to cut the heat cores out from each defeated knight as their essences turned to energy mist and floated back to haven. In place of a sword and shield, he had a clipboard and pencil, noting the various gashes and fractures in armour, apparent breaking point of shields, number of bullets needed to fell a monster, and so on. When the two knights finished cleaning up the battlefield, the two knights had enough heat gathered to make the shadowy wolver’s lair glow a deep crimson.

“This ought to do it, I think,” said Arcelia, and poured liquid heat over the mysterious egg.

The small, cream-coloured egg shone absorbed the heat hungrily, sucking the pulsing orange light in, casting the deserted wolver lair in deep shadow.

The egg itself shone like a miniature sun, crimson and orange streaks pulsing over its surface. Then the light turned a pure, oceanic blue and faded again, leaving the two knights somewhat dazed. Well, Arcelia was dazed at least, for she realized after a few confused moments that Agazide (For that was the name of the obsessively metagaming knight) had been spared the dazzling flash by virtue of having been hiding behind her diminutive frame at the moment, thereby shielding his eyes. So it was he who was first to pick up the small blue bird that lay sticky and wet, amongst the remains of a sea-blue egg.

“This,” said he, “is not something my sources in Development have told me about.” But Arcelia was too busy cooing over the thing’s cuteness to think clearly, lost in a maternal haze of squeeing. And so Agazide threw the two silly things over his shoulder and took the elevator back to Haven.

When Arcelia woke up after her spasm of cute attack, she found the sleeping snipe chick huddled against her bosom. At least the metallic mounds on her armour that denoted the presence of a bosom.

It was some sort of snipe, that much was clear. The fetching corpulence so characteristic of the species was plain enough to see, as well as the complex rotor-wings that the bird would use to fly. But she could see the hint of some sort of pattern on the snipe’s blue feathers reminiscent of armor and seafoam.

The fledgeling snipe pecked Arcelia’s helmet and attempted to fly off the jelly-corpse based couch they were on, straining its wings but finally falling to the ground of the drop pod. The small thing began to roll its way through the complex of fused drop pods that made up Arcelia’s labyrithine home, as if it were a hamster ball and there were an excited rodent inside.

Agazide felt a distinct thump on this flamboyant yellow hat as he took the elevator lift up to Arc’s complex. Taking his hat off to check, he found a blue snipe pecking at the crimson feather sewn into it.

“Do-not-under-any-circumstances-run-into-an-empty-elevator-shaft-particularly-when-you-are-on-the-ground-floor-of-a-complex-that-stretches-three-miles-down-into-emberlight”, said he in reflex, obviously having used this speech before. Mostly to the broken bodies of dead noobs at the bottom of the shaft. Then, also in reflex, “D’awww”

Arc lay on the floor, eyes closed, arms outstretched over the edge of the yawning pit that was the elevator shaft, as if she had missed a diving catch for some falling family heirloom and was trying to pretend the last few seconds hadn’t happened. She had a blank, horrified expression on her face.

“Explain,” said Aga.

“grck” said she.

“The snipe ran off the edge?”, guessed Aga.

“Rolled. Rolled off the edge” was the heartbroken reply.

Aga stepped off the elevator and around the prone figure, plopping his hat upon her outstretched arms.

“The corpulent little bastard nearly knocked my hat off,” said he.”We’re going to have an adventure. It’s time to visit my moles in Dev.”

Arcelia just murred happily over the fledgeling snipe.
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