Space Opera - The Drip Chronicles

Space Opera - The Drip Chronicles is an MSPA Forum Adventure Space Opera created by thriggle. Featuring full color pages, some animations, and several lovable sidekicks, this adventure follows the exploits of the ever intrepid Space Explorer Bob the Drip. Thriggle uses irony to produce humor: the planet onto which Bob crash-lands is clearly hosts an advanced civilization, yet Bob (and the narrator) believe its inhabitants to be savages, and treat them accordingly.
== Plot ==
The adventure begins with Bob the Drip crash-landing on a strange alien planet, his trusty spaceship a wreck leaking Noxious Mercury. Upon exiting, he encounters a hostile Savage Foliage, which, despite Bob's attempt at a touching embrace, swallows him. Bob wakes to find the Foliage burned to death due to him zapping it, leaving behind only a Savage Sapling. Easy to forgive and forget, Bob makes use of his Hug Analogue to cause the Savage Sapling to grow a Friendship Blossom. After naming the Sapling Nigel, Bob, while trying to examine the wreckage of his spaceship, manages to get Noxious Mercury in his eyes. A Savage Native exploring the wreckage accidentally causes it to fall on the intrepid explorer and his new sidekick. Nigel, employing his new Turgor Pressure Action Trait, manages to lift the ship off the ground and throw it away, inadvertently smashing a large Enraged Native and sundering Bob's. Nigel's Friendship Blossom flees in terror of Bob's Intimidate Ability.
Accidentally triggering his Space Suit's Rocket Boots, Bob is sent flying into a small alleyway of the nearby Native City. Nigel, left rooted to the ground, suffers from mixed feelings of misplaced anger and resentment (mostly due to the loss of his Friendship Blossom). He becomes Feral, and changes his name to Wesley. In the alleyway, Bob encounters and confronts a terrible Beast-of-Burden. However, being outmatched, he flees using his Rocket Boots.
Meanwhile, Nigel (now Feral Wesley), after growing both a Dread and Lure Blossom, observes several Native Savages investigating the fallen spacecraft. Employing some Noxious Mercury from the spaceship, Wesley attempts to agress some of the locals, but they outmatch the poor plant. Desperate, Wesley creates a Thornberry, called (by default) Nigel's Thornberry, to do some remote espionage. Wesley enters a dormant state, recuperating energy, and Nigel's Thornberry sneaks onto a Native's hat to get a better view. The small Thornberry, which presently takes a nap, wakes later in a completely different location. Upon some exploring, he finds himself quickly propelled to the roof of the new building, and proceeds to encounter some Weird Puzzle Shit, which he solves with the help of a nearby Small Piece of Rubble. Unfortunately, shortly after the puzzle is solved, some Natives capture Nigel's Thornberry, who ends up placed in a Berry Proof Prison.
In the meantime, Bob finds himself chased by a Savage Flying Machine. He escapes by crash landing into a building, but he could not escape unscathed, and finds himself punctured with a Strange Red Dart. He shortly suffers Space Madness, which gives him vivid hallucinations of Horrifying Creepy Space Bug Creatures and their secret organization. He wakes up bound to a Metal Surface, confronted with a Barbaric Witch Doctor and its Cannibal Apprentice. However, through clever use of his (newly regained) Transmogrify and Intimidate skills, he escapes, scare off the Cannibal Apprentice, and neutralize the Barbaric Witch Doctor (with another Strange Red Dart). He then transmogrifies himself into the Witch Doctor's form and exits the room in which he was kept. After a brief scuffle, Bob stumbles upon a Primitive Armory and new equipment, including a Tendrilled Spear, an Unfinished Helmet, and a Porous War-Cube.
Using his new weapons (and an impromptu gas grenade created by Nigel's Thornberry's ripening in the Berry Proof Prison), Bob is able to obtain his trusty Zap Gun back. Unfortunately, he attempts to transmogrify and winds up liquefied and absorbed by the Porous War-Cube. After attempting several awesome but impractical forms, including the dreaded Porous War-Cube Octopus, Bob tears the War-Cube into shreds from the inside. Meanwhile, the events inside the War-Cube caused the Universal Mistranslator previously embedded in Bob's brain to fall to the floor. Bob's rival, Steve John the Drop, bursts into the room with a gun-wielding Savage, who fires another red dart at Bob.
== Characters ==
Space Opera makes use of a wide array of colorful characters.
* Bob the Drip
Simultaneously renowned for his tenacity, friendliness, and oblivious nature, Bob is the protagonist of Space Opera. While quick to initiate his Hug Analogue: Playful Footsie, Bob also clearly displays the qualities of ignorance - automatically assuming that the Natives of the planet he crash landed on are savages. Bob is a Drip - a species with a circular body, two feet, eyes, and no mouth. He has proven himself capable of escaping threatening scenarios, but also has a clumsy side to him - an aspect of his nature that, more often than not, leads to injury.
* Nigel (Wesley)
The sapling that came to be called Nigel originated from the burnt remains of what once was a Savage Foliage. Quickly growing a Friendship Blossom and a single eye, Nigel happily became Bob's sidekick for an all-too-short period of time. After being flattened by Bob's teetering spacecraft, Nigel's Friendship Blossom fell off, only to be intimidated by Bob, fleeing into the distance. When Bob accidentally triggered his Space Suit's Rocket Boots and sent himself hurling backwards into the horizon, Nigel, with nothing left to connect himself to Bob, became Feral. After growing several blossoms, renaming himself Wesley, and doing battle with several Native Savages, he created a Thornberry, and entered a dormant state to heal his battle wounds.
* Nigel's Thornberry
A Thornberry created by the Feral Nigel, then called Wesley, Nigel's Thornberry takes the form of a small fruit with a stem, stubby limbs, a single eye, and a mouth. It is fond of sleeping, dancing, singing, and attempting cartwheels. It seems to have also acquired Bob's natural friendliness, choosing to jump on and hug the limb on a Native that was not paying attention. 
* Native Savages
The 'Native Savages' are the indigenous people of the planet on which Bob has crash landed. Much of the humor of the Adventure derives from Bob's assumptions that the 'Savages' are incompetent beasts, when in actuality they seem to be fairly technologically advanced - having hospitals, helicopters, and other mechanical objects that display their obvious levels of higher intelligence. They are circular creatures with only one eye, and two long legs that comprise most of their height. Size can vary from one barely taller than Bob to one tall enough to step on the drip to neutralize him.
* Horrifying Creepy Space Bug Creatures
Little is known about these bugs, except that they appear to have the ability to talk, have some sort of secret organization, and are exceptionally frightening to those succumbing to space madness. Also, they are somewhat fragile - Bob has accidentally smashed one when trying to engage it in Playful Footsie.
* Small Piece of Rubble
When Nigel's Thornberry first found himself on the roof of a Savage Building, he made use of a small piece of rubble to smash the light behind a green button he had pulled off a machine. Finding that the button did not fit on his head due to his Problematic Stem, he gave the button to the gravel to use as a hat. Not satisfied, he scrawled a crude smiling face on the gravel, and recruited it as an inanimate member of his espionage team.
== Tropes Used ==
* Arson And Ingestion
* Color By Technicolor
* Dashing Sidekick
* If You Insist
* Just Add Anthropomorphism
* Lick The Shadows
* Red Darts
* Ride Adventure Like A Mechanical Bull
*That NOUN Looks IMPORTANT
* Trusty Paddle
* You Are Now This Guy
Category:Adventures
Category:thriggle Adventures
Category:Sci-fi
Category:MSPAFA Award Nominees
Category:Adventures
Category:thriggle Adventures
Category:Sci-fi
Category:MSPAFA Award Nominees