A World, A Part

"I feel sticky and sick to whatever I use as a stumpic just looking at this place... But the weirdest thing is the lack of anything but candy plant life so far. That is distrubing me a tad." Dynamo comments after Vinnie crashed into the golem.

Kyath was irritated at how both himself and the group had gotten so completely distracted by the fact this land was candified that they stopped searching for anything that might grant them material.

Do we plan to actually accomplish something during our time here?

Fallen Arches snaps out of his daze, "Good Point! We must be able to harvest something out of this place, maybe horror or something!"

Personalty network, repaired. Standard personality restored and updated. Reinstalling.
Vinnie stops moving for a second as the damage done by the sugary environment is repaired.
"Sorry about that. That sugar did quite the number on my systems.
I'm back on track now. "
He pauses for another moment
"Agreed, we should probably focus on what we can learn or recover from this place. Though honestly, I don't see much I would find appealing to gather for a new world."

Meanwhile, standing absolutely immobile back at the entrance portal, Gnarl...

...well, stood.

Like a tree.

Several more seconds of silence passed as Gnarl continued not to realize that the entirety of the group had left him behind. He also did not realize that nearby sections of the candied forest were currently on fire, though admittedly it is doubtful that he would have cared all that much if he had noticed - despite his inherent treeness, he was (as he said) fireproof. He noticed neither of these things because he was too busy being stupefied.

"...the stalk is this place?" he finally managed.

"Ok... I really, really, really, wish we could get some lifeforms we could talk to with here. That'd be really nice... I don't think it'd be right to try and take from this realm without an ok by somebody." Dynamo mutters, mostly to herself.

((OOC: *hint, hint*))

Dynamo is suddenly reminded, by her robo-brain through her robo-eyes, that there is a road right the heck there. And then remembers what roads imply. I hope.

Then Dynamo facehooves, feeling so dumb at not having noticed said road until right now... "Oh yes... A Road... Let's follow that... Find some locals, then wing it from there." She said, mostly to herself then started to run off down said road.

skill check:

The Reaper dramatically points in the direction of the road with it's impaled shrub before following Dynamo at it's own pace.

Gnarl moved, startled. For once, the movement he made was very un-treelike. Considering how startled he was, and how slowly trees move, this was hopefully understandable.

After that split second (which the barkworn old tree was very grateful nobody saw), Gnarl settled down, having been snapped rather inelegantly out of his reverie. A quick roll of the shoulders that sounded suspiciously like timber falling, and Gnarl strode forth, stretching his limbs perhaps a branch further than usual in order to make up for lost time, something he normally wasn't fond of doing.

After a few giant steps, the tree stopped and looked backwards. A few moment's pause, and the tree reached out his wooden hand and placed it gently as possible onto one of the candy cane trees. Though of course he had no idea what a candy cane was, besides sticky. And not sticky as in "comprised of sticks", either. That would be a tree. And Gnarl knows trees.

Even if they're made of candy canes, Gnarl knows trees.

Spoiler:

Gnarl blinked once, then nodded. A smidgen more understanding. A tree is a tree, even if it is strange.

A creaking turn of the neck to face the road. "And a sprout is a sprout," Gnarl murmured to himself, moving towards the road. "You can't leave 'em on their own too long or they'll wither right up."

Gnarl gets a sense that this place is dubbed "Candyland", though he also gets the feeling this is a somewhat common name for places such as this. He gets a general sense that there are some definite major powers with a connection to that land and the sense of one is twisted and wrong (according the trees' perception) and he recoils away from the sensation, severing his connection to the trees.

Insufficient information. Acquiring data.
As he follows the his companions, Vinnie separates a mouse sized globule of 'bots off from the main swarm, programmed with a low-level scouting AI.
The bots quickly spread out across the environment, wafting away on the wind, staying just close enough together to keep up communications with each other.
Once enough data has been gathered, they reform and transmit their findings back to the main body, before digging in to the soil and going dormant.

Spoiler:

It appears to be 100% candy, and that's really all you get. (Though you can say you got the same information minus the creepy things that Gnarl got if you have an excuse for that.)

Dynamo just hoped to find some people to chat with asap as she ran...

Fallen Arches trots down the road after Dynamo, calling out ahead of him"Wait, what if we find these inhabitants and they think we're food?!" He stops for a moment to wrack his brain and see if there's anything about a place like this.

Spoiler:

"We'll just kick their flank till they speak with us... And act like we aren't food..." Dynamo replied with a shrug having nothing better to answer that possibility, but still not stoping one bit on her quest for some fellow people to chat with.

"Food seems to be abundant here. I doubt we'll have to worry about being eaten. According to my scouters, the whole world looks like this."
Vinnie says, catching up with the others.
"By the way, why are we running? Did you absorb too much sugar as well?"

"More I just wanta get to talking to somebody sooner rather then later... And being around just candy plants is really just weriding me out. Unless my sensors have been acting up, again, I've not noticed ANY signs of wildlife in this realm. I don't like that one bit... Feels so wrong..." Dynamo explains. "So the sooner we chat with some locals, get something of an approval to take from this realm's resources, and/or if we're lucky, maybe even get some advice on how to build our realm... It'd be the sooner we'll leave and look for a hopefully better realm then this one. This one's just... It's too cheery here... It's a realm that looks so happy to the point of it being creepy..."

Jingle snapped out of her candy-induced trance and looked around for a moment. "Oh. Yeah. This thing. Not Candyland. Shoot." She hopped into the air and followed alongside the group.

The party all joined up sooner or later once somepony convinced Dynamo to slow down and let Gnarl catch up. They traveled along the strange rainbow colored road that crunched and clacked under them (well not the Reaper). After a while they saw up ahead a small town that was set upon a crossroads. Coming closer they saw the buildings to be made from any variety of things. From gingerbread houses, to jello cube stores, and even a chocolate bar windmill. As they got closer still they could see that the populace was made up of gummy ponies, marshmallow sheep, striped (white with blue, green, or red) mintotaurs, and the occasional mousse moose or mousse mouse.

"I don't know why I am so surprised...." Dynamo mutters to herself at seeing the Candy-People. Then after a sigh she tries to ask around trying to the leader of this settlement... Also taking note of how these candy-people take to the oddness of their non-candyness...

streetsmarts check:

Fallen Arches trots behind Dynamo, "So, how do you know they actually have a leader? Judging by the mismatched appearance of them and their homes, they may be some form of anarchistic government, or perhaps they live in a anarcho-syndicalist commune where they have some form of temporary governing body. Honestly, these people and their weird land with it's four greater powers of some sort, it's enough to make a pony go a little batty... It must be the sweetness..."