A question about our lovely DecendTale boys, how would they react to Halloween? A bunch of kids and teens dressed as "monsters", galavanting around at night?
(I’m late for Halloween, but we’re gonna ignore that asdfjkl)
Bram (Descendtale Papyrus) is delighted! How wonderful to have so many new little friends coming over to visit! He may get off on the wrong foot with parents and chaperones by trying to invite the trick-or-treaters to come inside for more candy and refreshments—but of course the guardians are invited too, so he’s not quite sure why no one wants to come in… Still, he’ll get the hang of the human’s nuances sooner or later, and in the meantime he’s happy to go all-in on decorations and send the youths away with plenty of treats and maybe even some small toys, because if his house is The Good House, he’ll get plenty more coming by! It’s all very fun!
Kohl (Descendtale Sans) is…decidedly less delighted about this. He doesn’t want anybody coming by and nighttime is usually when he’s least likely to have to deal with any humans—now even the little ones are out and knocking on the door, ringing the bell, trying to get free candy from them… If he had his way, there’d either be no decorations outside, or the kind that send the youngest kids running scared before they get to the door, and a lazy ‘Take One’ bowl set out to appease those who brave it, probably one of the ones with the animatronic hand that comes down when you try to grab candy from it. Still…his brother’s happy about it and has made it very clear that he will not tolerate any shenanigans that blacklist their home from the neighborhood for Halloween so…
They compromise—Kohl handles the tricks and makes sure the youths are suitably spooked (“WITHIN REASON, SANS, DO NOT RUIN THIS FOR ME!”), while Bram supplies the treats and keeps everybody coming through happy (“not too happy, they’re not staying, keep ‘em movin…”).
I would like more details on ocean boys plz. More Descendtale for us?
Descendtale
A human falls to the Underground.
They’re merciful…mostly.
But maybe not merciful enough.
They make friends with many monsters on their way through the Underground.
They kill some others.
Nobody important, none of the real friends they’d made along the way—just a handful of annoying ones who kept getting in their way, surprising them with Encounters when they were busy on their very important quest to escape the Underground and go back home.
When they leave, they put their fun fantasy adventure behind them, eager to get back to their real life.
They never come back.
The monster ‘friends’ they left behind do their best to move on.
Asgore is gone, and so are the six human souls they’d collected, so close to finally being free.
Toriel has returned, which is something, a comfort of familiarity at least to have a ruler who knows what she’s doing when hope is falling and…other things are starting to go wrong.
The Royal Guard has been disbanded, what with the queen’s mandate that humans falling down should be welcomed as friends. Which is fine, most of them all knew the most recent human as a friend, but…it does leave quite a few dogs and a fish and a few other animals out of a job and consequently, out of a driving purpose in their lives.
A handful of monsters have also gone missing. Not Fallen Down, or moved away, just…gone, without a word or a call or a note. No one really knows what happened, though there’s theories, nobody seems to know anything for sure and the unsubstantiated rumors, ranging from wild to tame, are a little bit scary.
And…the Underground’s resources are dwindling. They have been for a long time, but some of those monsters that disappeared—farmers, couriers, suppliers—their absence has unbalanced the food supply chain just a little more, and what they do have is taking longer to get to the populated areas, costing more, creating uncertainty.
In essence, monsters are getting nervous and losing hope.
Many of these problems have no clear solution, but Toriel tasks the Royal Scientist to one it might be possible for her to solve: the food issue.
After all, it may only be a mild concern now, but with the human souls gone, with how long it took to gather so many to begin with, how unlikely it is for more humans to fall down anytime soon—and to be treated as guests, even if they do fall…
It’s going to be quite some time before monsterkind has any real chance to be free.
They need to survive.
They need to be able to weather the long winter that’s to come, to remain strong and keep from falling to despair.
Certainty that they won’t starve to death in subterranean ignominy is a solid step towards that.
Alphys, happy to have been kept on after her last boss…uh. Well, she throws herself into the assignment, feeling that this is her chance to really do something great, worthy of her title.
The way she sees it, they need some kind of a staple crop, something they can produce in excess without exhausting their resources in the process.
She sets her eyes on the echo flower.
Echo flowers are hardy plants and grow well in any dark environment, in all but the driest of soils, already proliferating wildly in the Underground without any influence and thriving for a long, long, long time. Their petals have been known to make a soothing tea, but the root of the plant—a thick black rhizome—is edible, too.
It hasn’t been actually eaten very much, historically, being that the taste is…not great, a little sour and a lot bitter, no matter how you prepare it.
But it is edible, full of nutrients and ambient magic to keep a monster fed and healthy so long as you don’t mind the taste.
And…can they really afford to mind the taste, at this stage?
Toriel agrees with Alphys’ assessment. The artificial light cycles that simulate day and night are ceased and echo flowers are planted anywhere and everywhere they’ll take, roots harvested and incorporated into monsters’ diets. At first, the farming is only to supplement the scarcity of other foods, but as time goes by and most of those all but disappear, the root eventually begins replacing them almost entirely.
It takes awhile for anyone to notice the changes.
Before necessity, no monster ate or even used enough echo flower root to realize that it had preservative properties.
When monsters begin to notice they’re not aging nearly as fast as they should be, a whole host of other side-effects have started to make themselves known, all dutifully assessed and catalogued by Alphys.
Monsters who consume the echo flower root consistently, at volume, can expect to see many of the following changes in their bodies:
Light sensitivity
Darkening of the extremities
Extended periods of low activity (similar to hibernation)
Lack of appetite
Bioluminescence
Reduced metabolism
Sharpening of preexisting teeth, or growth of new ones
Heightened senses (predominantly hearing sight, and smell)
Decreased sensitivity to touch
Increased physical durability
Thorn-like growths or protrusions
Mental changes and personality drift
In addition to these is something monsters colloquially start to refer to as The Withering, when bodies begin to look thin, gnarled and frail but with no attached physical ailments.
The monsters so afflicted by their new condition…
Accept it.
There’s little else they can do, as reliant on their new food source as they are by this point, and quite frankly, none of the changes seem all that bad.
They have food, they have each other, and most importantly, they have time.
It’s all a little different, of course, but monsters are nothing if not adaptable, every bit the survivors the Queen knew they could be.
The worst thing to come out of it all is that brightness of Hotland and New Home poses a bit of discomfort to most of those who’d settled there, but Toriel oversees a mass migration back to Home and renovation of the Ruins there to make them a far more pleasant place to live.
And naturally, along the way are Waterfall, blissfully dark, and Snowdin, delightfully cold—both equally appealing neighborhoods to move into, with monsters’ new taste for such things.
Life goes on for monsterkind, still trapped in their deep cavern but now…kind of thriving in it.
The next human to fall will be faced with a very different sort of Underground than the one the last human left, darker and colder to be sure, filled with monsters who want to be their friend but are maybe…a little rusty at it.
But there should be plenty of time for them to get used to it.
Kohl (Descendtale Sans)
Not so friendly with regards to humans, these days. He knows for a fact what that last one did to a handful of innocent monsters, and has a pretty strong hunch that they could’ve undone it, or at least come back to free their so-called ‘friends’ after the dust settled…but they didn’t. Despite everything, they were no better than any other human who touched the lives of monsters, and he’s all out of belief and hope and second chances for any of their ilk
Something of a new lease on life, or at least a stubborn determination to live, in spite of monsters’ most likely fate after their abandonment—the influence of the echo flower root has made a lot of his favorite creature-comfort-type experiences (eating, sleeping, savoring warmth) more difficult to enjoy, but he refuses to let that stop him
A slight mean-streak, fond of creeping up on people, unnerving them, enjoying a bit of schadenfreude now and then… but at the same time very defensive of anyone he considers part of his in-group (monsters only for now)
Mostly drifts around his usual haunts, Grillby’s, his place, his sentry station—even though the Guard isn’t a thing and he’s not technically a sentry anymore. He still likes to keep an eye-socket out, and if a human manages to slip out of the Ruins without being caught, or if they come in the back way, he’d really like to be there to give them a good scare, and remind them that he’s watching
A little chilly, a bit avoidant, and with a tendency to push peoples’ buttons to see what they do (…well, he’s always done that one), he’s not the easiest person to get along with but… Well, there is no ‘but,’ that’s the end of the sentence.
Bram (Descendtale Papyrus)
Very, very, very eager to make new friends—yes, even human ones! He befriended the last one, but…maybe he didn’t do it right, because…they left…and never came back…and if his brother is to be believed, they may have also murdered a few monsters before that… That’s probably not his fault. But he can do better! He can be a great friend! The best friend, he just needs another chance!
In the process of reinventing himself, just a bit. With the Royal Guard disbanded, that dream is dead, but the Great Papyrus doesn’t need a dream to be great! He’s working on himself right now, trying new hobbies, exploring new styles, reaching out…reaching out a lot, it’s…it’s very hard to get a call back these days, with everything going on…
Some difficulty with emotional regulation, he can go from feeling not much of anything at all, to feeling one emotion very strongly, which can lead to embarrassing outbursts from time to time. He's managing it, or trying to!
Still patrols around Snowdin regularly, even though he’s not a sentry anymore. He likes to see everyone—all the new and old faces—and it wouldn’t do to leave all his traps and puzzles to fall into disrepair, not when he has so many ideas for how to make them more difficult, challenging enough that even the craftiest human might really need to think on
A little bit scattered, a pinch forgetful, and somewhat prone to saying vaguely unsettling things without realizing they are unsettling (…well, he’s always done that one), but mostly he’s harmless! Just seeking a bit of earnest connection and people to have in his life that won’t leave
