The planet Beaumai (pronounced Bo-My) is a planet of amazing sights, bright vibrant colours, cute creatures and inhabitants, and has a whimsical feel. However despite it's beauty it is the harshest planet in the galaxy where almost everything can, and will, try to kill, maim or eat you. A constant threat to all inhabitants are the rainbows, which cause untold destruction to anything it touches. The only defence against the rainbows are prism shields located in the settlements, or living on the clouds, which brings the added danger of false clouds which you can fall through, or Cumulorbs (pronounced Cue-mew-lorbs), creatures that look like clouds, but when you stand on them, they will pull you into themselves like quicksand and slowly dissolve you.

Chopping down a tree for wood to build things is also a risky prospect as the tree will spread it's roots just under the surface and hollow out a small pockets under the earth about a foot and a half in diameter and a foot deep. It basically creates a minefield of holes around itself and if an unfortunate victim should step on the pocket, the ground will give way and the roots will wrap around the foot, holding it in place while it grows up and over the captured prey, creating a new tree complete with a face in the trunk.

The largest settlement in all the land is Bravalia, the nearby prism mountains known as Arcus-Obex (rainbow barrier in Latin) protect the village from the deadly rainbows and provides most of the planets prism shields which are mined from the mountain by Bravalia and sold to other villages. Mining of the prism mountains is a very controlled affair, mining the wrong area could collapse a portion of the mountain leaving the village vulnerable to the destructive power of the rainbows.

Like everyone and their mothers, I am in for The Elder Scrolls Anthology, but If I don't have the most "whatever these are being ranked on" planet/land, I could be persuaded to pick NVN or even any of the prizes.

This is another great GA with a very inventive game. +1 and read my little story below.

I am interested your prizes in the following order (I own the ones not listed):

GOG:
Spellforce Platinum+Myst 2: Riven
Thief 2+3 (no 1, sorry)
Steam:
The Void+The Cat Lady+Closure
Mixed:
Plantetary Annihilation (Steam)+Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri(GOG)

1) A planet recently colonised by humans -- a barren place filled with deserts and tundra.

2) Apart from a human colony, there is at least one other city. Seemingly abandoned, it is surrounded by a high electrified fence and no vegetation grows within its borders. Grey and dark green pyramid buildings are laid out in geometric patterns, interrupted by a rectangular building here and there. Inside, they are bare and spartan, possibly having been looted or cleaned out by the previous inhabitants. Strange alien carvings and symbols run along dusty walls, but no machinery can be seen. At night, the city lights up, powered by an unknown alien power source.

3) A millipede-like animal with a tough shiny black skin that grows to be up to 9 feet (2,7 meters) long. They are mainly carrion-eaters, but they also like to burrow into the earth to ambush smaller animals. Relatively dormant at daytime, they get more active and aggressive at night.

4) A deep gash splits the earth, as if a god had reached out and dragged a claw across the planet's surface. It's large enough to be seen from space.


In for the Elder Scrolls pack.

Out of curiosity, will this be a random.org draw or "Based on my preferences" sort of draw?

Oh Man did I really write that. Maybe I should have went to bed earlier haha.

I may have goofed too if that makes you feel any better. I wrote my thing focusing on a singular island rather than a planet, I hope it still counts though.

I actually have Morrowind and Oblivion on disk but my CD's are somewhat delicate at the moment because the GOTY case doesn't hold it properly, so I kind of see this as a way to get back-ups and have Skyrim on reserve for a couple years until I get a more game-worthy machine.

It'll be a preference thing. I personally prefer not going random, as it encourages the entrants to try harder. Also, it doesn't have to be an actual planet. That would probably result in everybody choosing sci-fi anyway.

I guess that means my island entry will work fine. Thanks for the heads up.

What is it like on the surface?

This world is covered in vibrant jungles, rivers, swamps and wetlands. Insects are the dominant life form, filling every ecological niche and sometimes growing to enormous sizes. Great hives and nests of all conceivable manner teem with activity across the humid dampness of the planets surface. The sun is closer to the planet and dawns omnipresent and blood-red in the sky.

Many of the plants that populate the great forests and jungles are very active predators, killing formidable insects either in self defense, or to consume for nourishment. Steam rises from the jungle floors that are so dangerous, many of its inhabitants live exclusively in the canvas above.

The largest feature of the world are its oceans, vast and similarly teeming with life and dangerous predators. Anything even living near the coast may have cause to fear the tentacled horrors that can reach from the deep, or the sudden migrations of broad-winged stingrays.

What kinds of dangerous creatures are there?

Terror Worm
This monstrosity is a giant blubberous red-veined worm, covered in wriggling, lashing tentacles and capped by a cone shaped circle of teeth. It is capable of moving rapidly and completely underground in its native environment, emerging only to surprise prey. When attacking, it uses its many tentacles to grab anything that might be food and swallows it whole with great zeal, a dull roaring sound emerging from its fearsome maw. This creature often carries active subdermal larvae, which can emerge if the parent becomes injured. These small juveniles, in a different part of their life cycle, have hard shells and somewhat resemble trilobites or hermit crabs. They are capable of leaping far distances and latching onto living creatures. Once attached, they use their mandible like proto-jaws to slowly burrow inside the victim, feasting on their flesh.

The worm and its young are vulnerable to fire, while the rubbery tentacles and hide of the adult can be easily severed with slashing weapons. Anyone who has been swallowed whole by the creature is trapped - there are backward facing teeth spiraling all down the creatures throat - however it can take a long time for victims to die and be digested, so if the creature is killed, these victims can be freed by cutting the worm open from the outside.

Will-swallower Plant
A man-sized carnivorous pitcher plant that attracts prey through psychic manipulation. Some animals are compelled to walk into the plants acid pool to be digested, but others are kept alive to serve as the plants protectors. These drooling 'psychic zombies' slowly become covered in fungus, insects and filth as they lurk near the plant. When threatened, the plant directs them to suicidally attack intruders. The plant will also seed these protectors with its own spores, so they can be carried to other areas and enable it to spread.

The plants thralls can only be released if the plant is destroyed, but depending on how long they have been kept, they may immediately die, become thoroughly insane, recover somewhat but are never the same, or recover completely.

The most common victims are large creatures with simple minds, who can provide a lot of protection and are easily dominated.

Is there any intelligent life?

There was once a race of intelligent humanoids who prospered, and built great cities in the trees and canvas above the jungles of the world. The cities were and remain feats of architectural wonder, with webs of foot bridges spanning the branches and lightweight dwellings that made ingenious use of materials and space honeycombing everywhere. They lived in harmony with the forests; domesticating what insects they could, raising crops and using the carnivorous plants around them for their own gain.

Their golden age ended when a migration of beetle-parasites began, darkening the skies with their numbers. These hard shelled insects attached themselves to the humanoid bodies of the city dwellers, and were able to control their minds even as they fed upon them. Those who were under the influence of the parasites became bestial and ravenous, consuming anything they could get their hands on. In one generation, all individuals had become infested with a beetle parasite. Their cities were abandoned, and fell into ruins over the course of time.

As the years marched by, the few surviving humanoids lived on only as hosts to the beetles. They lived in squalor and behaved like lowly insects, breeding crudely, murdering one another and feasting on raw flesh. The beetles who used them as easy sources of energy slowly began to depend on their hosts for survival.

Eventually, as they evolved together, the biological balance between the two creatures shifted, the neurological control of the beetles eased and some of the rational humanoid intelligence began to re-emerge. They once again discovered fire, learned how to live in groups and grow food.

This new, symbiotic being is the only intelligent life remaining on the planet. Each parasite and host is a single organism, at once rational and curious as well as violent and paranoid. Small groups now live in primitive settlements near the decaying remnants of their old cities, locked in a stone-aged religious awe of the miraculous structures their fore-bearers built.

What is a must-see location?

The ancient civilization that once existed on this world constructed a mighty statue to their goddess. The statue depicts the great deity as a beautiful woman in flowing robes, unleashing the stars in the night sky with her glittering net. She is carved from a lightweight crystalline material and inlaid with marvelous gems; her form appears to rise out of the very top of the tallest city-tree. This goddess to a lost people reflects the sun, moon and stars in brilliant patterns as the day cycles through to night, shining a beacon for a great city that is no more.

There were once many such carvings, each one situated on top of an enormous, city-bearing tree. As the rest crumbled from neglect and time, the goddess remained pure in her beauty. Now she is all that remains, a symbol of loneliness - her brethren gone, her builders long dead and even her name long forgotten.

I'm in for the Morrowind GOTY+Oblivion GOTY+Skyrim Legendary anthology.

Thanks for the giveaway, makes for some interesting reading. Good luck to all!

I just can't get any momentum to write something decent. So...

BUMP... for now.

Thanks for your generosity, nightrunner!

I'm working on what I expect will be an interesting entry, but I won't be able to post it until Monday...

I use public Internet, so I haven't access on weekends. :(

Hope the contest will be open until then? If that isn't possible, please, disregard this post. ;)

Im in for

Morrowind GOTY+Oblivion GOTY+Skyrim Legendary (my recent Anthology edition purchase)

or

Plantetary Annihilation (Steam)+Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri(GOG)

in this order.

Here is my world:

1) The general setting. Is it high fantasy on a floating Island in the sky? Or is it a dark, oppressive world where the very air is tainted with poisonous miasma, forcing everyone to live underground?

My world is a fantasy world mixed with steampunk. The setting is dark, there are very few but big cities in my world. The streets are very dirty, the factories use coal to create energy as there is no electicity in my world. You can´t see far away because the air is so dirty. The inhabitants are mainly humans. Dwarfs also live in this world, they are the main source of coal and metal as they are the best miners in the world. In the few remaining woods there areliving some elves, but they are poor.

2) At least 1 city/settlement in your world. What kind of place do the citizens of your world live? Are there even citizens there to build a civilization?

In the cities the humans live in small shanties, most of them are slaves. There are some slavers, all human, which own the factories. They are controlling everything in the city. The dwarfes live in a specail quater of the city but are also slaves. They are uses as a leverage to controll the mining dwarfes. The slavers live in castles which are so high that a part of the building is above the smog.

3) At least one creature. Allows more creativity than Spore ever did.

There is a creature named Dragonling. It is a corrupted dragon which have to live in the smog. He cannot breath fresh air, there are too few dirty particels in it. He needs the dirt as a catalyst to breath fire. If the Dragonlin doe not do this every day he will explode because he produces a burnable fluid inside him. If he do not burn this gas he will explode.

4) At least 1 major natural landmark. What location captures the imagination of every being in your world?

In my world there is one big mountain. He stands in a great plane and is the only place where it is possible to see snow. The slavers will take a vaccation there to compensate their hard work (they think they do it :-) ).

I hope you do not want to live in this world. :D

Ok here is my entry.

Its earth after a nukeluar Apocalypse. Instead of turning the world into a giant desert it made it snowy and ice like.
Although its snowing a lot and blizzards are common it never goes below -25 f unless its one of the cold regions(Russia, the antarctic, the south pole and some parts of norther canada.). Freezing to death is a constant concern and most transpiration is done by tracked vehicles like snow mobiles or snowplows.No one know if the nukes exactly caused it but either way it seems something created a second global ice age. Biotech and genetic enhancement was being experimented before it happened. To this day it unclear if it was the war that finally went hot or some malishous hacker who wanted to show the world how powerful he can be but took it too far. Due to a binding dna chemical discovered in 2019 or three years before the bombing.The dna was suppose to meld limbs and can even minipulate dna from its own by inserting diffrent stands into it. Not much else is know about the element call object 67-b. The element causing all the binding dna is rare.

Settlement example

Bald hill
This settlement is made out of several stores around the area. Though heating is a constant problem portable generators are being used and solar power when the suns out and when the winds wont damage the panels.
The bestbuy serves as one of the two housing area's(The other is a sams club). There is an olive garden that serves as a city hall of sorts and general meeting place along with savers. The nearby home depo used to be safe before feaal bears made a nest in the area(feral bears discribed in the creature section). The settlement uses many outposts and stays in connection to mall town but its been lost to what the mall was orgirnaly called. There is also a college near by but most of the departments are tribes and fight ammong them selfs neglecting outsiders.There is also a tribe consisting mostly of parrents and children called the toyland and they are hosted out in the old toys r us.

Creature
Feral bears: These are black bears that appear to be overly aggressive and have thick white fur. There claws are very dangerous due to they go though light metals and even wood in some cases. Due to the radiation they seem to attack humans and non bear like creatures.

Fire wolf's:Some pretty shady experiments by mixing fire ant dna and the ability of diffrent pathogens created a sixlegged giant ant that looks like a wolf and breaths fire. every six months they go into matting season and hide in there nests.

Land mark in the area

There is a down passenger aircraft on the highway near the colege and its accompnayed by tones of crashed cars. ITs known by all as the snow crash yet it somehow keeps itself from getting covered in snow that a tribe call the toyland worships it.

I am in for Morrowind GOTY+Oblivion GOTY+Skyrim Legendary but i will also accept plannetary annilation+alpha centari if the first price is not avaible and thanks for the giviway.