This will definitely be a bit of a rambling post and may require more than one page. Please do read to the bottom to make sure that I have put Post Concluded before you reply.


Quests

Totally like the quests.

But the quest journal is inadequate. I really just cannot keep track of 40 quests and their multiple objectives. Although I play several hours a day myself, not everyone does. Not everyone can even play on every consecutive, or even every second, day. Reminding players in detail of what they need to to complete a quest is essential if you want to keep players interested in Planeshift in the longer term.


Combat

So far I perceive it as being fairly seriously imbalanced. You cannot necessarily say that axe, sword, dagger or fist is better than the other.

Each has advantages and disadvantages. Some will be supreme against some adversaries or at similar level whilst being inferior against other opponents or at other levels of skill.


Magic

This seems to work in its basics but there are clearly areas which do are not as completely coded as others and there has also, clearly, been no great attempt to systematise magic in general.

An example of this is that, if I train Charisma, my healing spells become more powerful. If I train Will, it has no impact on the Red Way spell Electrotouch.

I do think that, for example, Life Infusion appropriately reflects higher Charisma. However, higher levels of magic skill (very hard to tell because I only have 7 in this) do not seem to be markedly reflected in comparison to stat level.

I do not think that increased skill seems to be properly reflected. I would expect higher rank in skill to be, normally, more important than its supporting stat.

I would expect something very crudely like:

Base spell effect * level * stat/100

In other words, a vastly charismatic Crystal or Dark Way mage, with 200 in the primary stat of Charisma, would always cast twice better than someone with 100 (base damage for the level) in that stat.

I feel that each level should add about 5% impact onto the previous level. This is an exponential gain in impact that should be paralled with exponential cost in raising that skill. For magic I would say at least +20% in tria and pp at each level. Magic is a special thing.

At present I have about rank 5 in each way. I feel that that has been too easy to achieve, though it is nice to be able to experiment at the lower levels while you are learning what is possible.

To make that make sense in the context of game mechanics, I would have an overall skill of 'Glyphic Affinity' (call it whatever) that would limit how many ranks you could put into magic skills in general.


Reward Balancing

This is honestly very random and chaotic seeming, which is very good in a way. After all different people have different values and pay accordingly.

But, that said, some quests clearly pay far too much or too little, in comparison to others, for the amount of effort required.

I would suggest closely examining the faction system, revising and systemetising it, and using faction reward points as a base for calculating maximum and minimum reasonable cash and pp rewards from a quest.

With careful examination and restructuring of the faction system you would be able to assign theoretical levels and absolute prerequisites for every quest and automatically enforce reasonable minimums and maximums accordingly.

Daily quests should be instituted as a minimal faction requirement, low faction reward means of correcting errors in quest choices that have lowered faction for a character.

I dont see any inherent point or long term usefulness in capping faction point rewards. This game is in its youth and trying to cap faction ratings at 100 is short sighted. It would be much better to increase faction caps by a set amount every time you add a substantial amount of game content.


Earning PP and Cash

This is currently annoyingly slow. As either dedicated or casual player , I honestly do not want to spend more than 2 hours of my evening grinding for pp or tria. This is boring and totally contrary to the whole point that - this is a game that is meant to be an enjoyable leisure passtime.


Diversity

So far I have been able to quest or mine or craft with equal sense of reward for the time I spend doing each.

This is very good and, while I appreciate the fact that it takes a long time to create new content, I do think that it is critically important that you continue to develop the game in a way that sustains that level of satisfaction.

That said, I have the presentiment that it will not be long before I run out of quests to explore and, at the same time, out of that source of both cash and pleasant passing of time.

So, to restate the above, I feel that it is imperative that you not force the player into a situation where they feel that they are spending their time grinding.


Conclusion

I recently read that you feel that the overall engine is now stable enough that it provides a good foundation for future development.

I tend to agree with that. Planeshift has progressed incredibly well since I last played.

However, I think your hope that you can use that to start developing new features is foolish and shortsighted.

In my opinion you should use the consolidation and reliability of the game engine to consolidate and review the game system.

As you said, you now have a stable game engine to use as a platform for future development, but you must also have a stable game system so that, once that is consolidated, you can focus on being creative for a while and not worrry about problems you would otherwise inherit from the past, ie from now.

Far too much focus on specific details here.

Planeshift development is incredibly slow as is and excessive focus on detail, ratherthan reliable general mechanic, is probably one of the reasons why. Genericise this whole discussion and all underlying issues and you can rapidly move this game forward leaps and bounds.


Obvious important issue is, what does faction actually mean? 10 points equals how much standing with that faction? 50 points equals how much? How hard is it to get 10 points from 0 or 10 points from 90 to 100? So .. convert the numbers into a social, human context before you even start to think about this .. then convert them back into numbers.

What is a reward worth? What is the point in saying "oh at 50 points we will give you a shiny new longsword". That means nothing to a Dark Way mage. Find some way to define values in the context of the character, not the context of that individual system or what you think is specifically reasonable.

As a coder you also have to be able to RP what you write! To do that you must have a clear definition of what each faction stands for and how they interact with each other in an RP context before you can even begin to think about the code.

You want factions to be real, to be realistic?

What are the socio-politico-economic implications of being a member of, for example, the Red Way? You need your settings team to flesh out a human description of all of that before you even think about putting into coded arithmetic. AFIAK, you dont have that, though maybe you do.

Apart from that? Well, hell, in all fairness, this game, so far, is still developing the noob areas - so implementing factions is slightly premature.

OOC: in the middle of the EBD quests, I am just beginning to feel that I have an appreciation of the game, its possibilities, and the possibilities for my character's future development.

Before you start on implementing factions, I honestly feel that you need to implement quest lines for each likely faction and note down what ideas you have as you do so that might flesh out and humanise the idea of what that faction is and represents.


All that said, here is a very simple way of implementing factions with respect to individual characters:

Character does something for some faction and gets X faction points. The game looks up a table and says ok that means he also got Y +ve faction here and Z -ve faction here.

Kind of obviously, getting faction with Good will affect many things and getting faction with Evil will affect many things. Getting faction with the Red Way may not affect that much. Good and Evil are big, the Red Way is only one facet of either, or maybe, both of them.

But .. what is Good in Ylakium? What is Evil in Ylakium? Start to answer those great big general questions, to define the answers, and then work down through progressive levels.

For me, I would say: Good, Neutral or Chaos, and Evil.

Good promotes social structure, it is in the best interests of as many as possible.
Evil opposes social structure, it is in the best intersts of only the individual pursuing it.
Neutral refuses to participate in Good or Evil, yet incorporates both in an attempt to find the most balanced path between one and all.
Chaos is like normal individual human opinion, it picks and chooses according to what it thinks is best.


I continually see Ynnwyn classified as Evil ingame. Is this correct? Are they genuinely destructive of the social fabric of Ylakium or are they merely more self oriented?

Is Zak so evil? He is a thief, a rogue, but has a mother and is social enough that he is willing to help Rinna despite her being 'marked'

You have to define, in the context of the world of Ylakium, what people living there consider to be good or evil. Then you need to work down from that to define what proportion Chaos and Neutral have of each of Good and Evil. Then you have to define every other faction in the context of those four easily graspible terms.

Once you define all that, then you can begin to define how each faction actually relates to each other faction.

At tha point you have the foundations for writing quests that are intensely complex, interms of the underlying numbers, but which are simple and easy to grasp, in the context of the human playing the game.

At present I do not think you have more than a handful of quests that you can easily associate that sort of faction to, not without the risk of players inadvertently making decisions that they really did not mean to make.

Well, Earowo, try learning the martial arts. Even after only one year, I could do a lot more damage with one well directed punch than some frenzied ned (Scottish word for a thug) in the street could with a knife or a stick.

Not because my hands are necessarily more damaging than a knife or a stick, but because I know how to use them.

At least, I think it was about 3 years ago that I last played.

Anyway, I thought I would post my impressions in the hope that they might be useful.

Quests

Well, I was delighted to see so many quests in the game.

These definitely made my first few steps an awful lot easier than they had been previously. No more farming rats in the cellar for a couple of days just to make some cash.

The ingame quest interface seems a bit quirky and it was easy in a few of them to feel that the quest was bugged, though this generally turned out to be my mistake. That said, its much better than having to figure out some obscure line of chat.

A big improvement, though, would be better game kept notes. I dont know how many quests I had in total but it was a lot and trying to remember even at the start that Brado wanted 5 mugs and not 4 or 6 was not really that easy.

As for the quest content, well its pretty good. The quests generally had a nice 'human' touch that came across as being realistic and plausible.

Big thumbs up to the settings team on coming up with better than the usual kill 10 rats on every second quest. Street perfomers needing a PR man (or lizard in my case) and finding out about a lost husband who has somehow ended up in jail. Really nice to see such good material.

As I said though, a better journal would be a big help and it would be much easier to appreciate the quality of the quests if you did not feel so lost in all the objectives. At the moment, its a bit like reading a good book but being distracted every half page or so. The book remains good but full appreciation gets lost in the distractions.

It would be nice to see a few quests that flesh out the underlying setting a little more. Politics, economy, geography could all be filled in a bit by way of passing remarks made by quest givers.

People & Roleplay

I was impressed with the effort that most people seemed to make to rolepplay their characters. I have not met that many yet, but those that I have or have overheard are clearly putting in the effort to making their characters seem real.

The fact that they do that says a lot for the community team and the standard of the players themselves. Seeing such a strong level of commitment made me actually enjoy ropleplaying with them.

Gear

My leather armour lasted fairly well though I was a little nervous at first, before I realised that the quests gave plenty of cash for replacing it with.

No daggers? Ouch and ow! My character comes with roguish skills and I guess that backstab may require a dagger or similar pointy weapon. Even if not, my image of the character includes weilding a dagger not a sword. Inability to get a dagger is my main complaint at the moment.

Sword, I did buy a sword from Harnquist and I immediately noticed two serious problems:

At 0 skill, I did the same damage with the sword as I did with level 6 or 7 Melee. This, to me does not make sense. I killed at the same speed, did the same damage. I dont remember noticing missing much with the sword.

Fair enough, a sword when it hits is going to do a lot of damage, but its going to be slower than limbs. I would definitely expect a proficient fist fighter or martial artist to do more damage faster than a completely inexperienced swordsman.

Maybe the sword was poor quality, I did not think to check, but it was at 40/50 after just a couple of fights which seemed excessive.

Spells

In all honesty, I did not really read the guide on magic but I did get that you need to Purify a glyph before you can use it. I could not work out how to do that.

Admitting that I should really have gone back and read the guide properly, this does raise the thought that ingame help attached to the magic book would be a nice idea.

Monsters

Zero aggro? Some monsters are clearly kinda big and scary and I was a bit disappointed that they made no effort to attack. At the same time I remember how frustrating the death realm was so I am also kinda glad that I have not died yet.

Skills

I think I found trainers for just about every skill but some of them I think maybe I cannot actually use yet?
If I can use them, it would be nice to see a few of the trainers have info on how to get started.

Mining

Would be really nice to have some visual indication of ore veins.

Conclusion

All in all I have quite enjoyed my time so far. The game has clearly progressed in many ways and that has to be a big credit to the various facets of the development and community teams.

"What is your name, little girl?"

"Umm ... umm ... ... I forgot!"

The point being that, just because 99% of Klyros females in Hydlaa would know their name, not necessarily all would.

So .. if you are going to have a table of questions that all NPC's can answer, you should be able to cause any particular NPC or group of NPC's not to know that >specific< answer.

Obvious things every NPC would be likely to know ... (seem to remember categorised knowledge bases being mentioned before)

Global geographical knowledge
Local geographical knowledge

Geography = geography, climate, flora, fauna, landmarks, districts, streets, general businesses

Global social knowledge
Local social knowledge

Social = politicians, leaders, criminals, neighbours, business people

General racial knowledge
Gender specific racial knowledge

Racial = physiology, culture, inherent talents & limitations, enmities & affiliations

General skill knowledge
Specific skill (relevant to personal accomplishment) knowledge

Skill (any ingame skill, coded or otherwise) = overview, mechanics of practice, specific techniques


Local, racial, gender and age related extensions/restrictions should be applied to each general category to get the RP immersion that PS has been aiming at


I dont know what improvements have been made to the Quest development interface and the underlying code that supports it, so please forgive any redundancy in the suggestions below ...


All knowledge base information should be organised, preferably within a hierarchy of categories, with values associated with each item of knowledge which reflects the general likelihood that that information would be known to a character of average knowledge in that particular area.

For example:

An NPC in Hydlaa could be assumed to have average knowledge of geography in Hydlaa and would have a +0 modifier to their likelihood of knowing/recalling some piece of information.

However, an NPC with a geographer tag might have +40 to know that information, but, being only 10 and not really a geographer but only the child of one, they might have -40 for their age and +5 for being the child of a geographer. So .. +40 -40 +5 = the kid has a +5% chance to know/remember that piece of information.

Each new character would have to have certain tags set, eg Age, Gender, Race, District, Area, Profession, Skills etc. These tags would result in a default set of offsets to their probability of knowing anty particular bit of information.

When a member of the Settings team creates a character, they would specify the tags and the character (unless the creator specifies otherwise) would inherit all knowledge in every knowledge base but also the default offsets according to the characters tags.

Additionally, the creator could tweak the knowledge base offsets individually andor decide that certain questions would or would not be within the NPC's area of knowledge.

Over and above that, the creator could specify character specific overrides on the answers to certain questions. IE the questions that the creator specifically allocates offsets and answes to on that character's definityion should generally come before all inherited knowledge base answers.

Yep, I know, you cant be assed But if you work that way you will save yourselves a lot of time and effort.



Okay, beyond that you have the annoying problem, if the quest designer is roughly the same as it was three years ago, that any attitudes you want an NPC to reflect are really going to have to be put in by hand.

Thats obviously always going to be the best option when you go for a method that is more or less one question one answer (or one question select from a number of answers with the same meaning).

But think about the fact that people from different countries have different expressions for things with basicaly the same meaning, eg Goddamnit! ~ Zut alors!

It is the different way of saying it brings the character to life. So suppose you have something like this ..

Categories: 10 years, male, Klyros, Slum, Hydlaa

Conversational Tone: Discontented Agreement

Perhaps the character creator chooses the Conversational Tone based on specific criteria or perhaps that is automatically selected by the game according to some aspect or another of the player character.

Each age, gender, race, location etc would have its own configuration of conversational interjection for each of the keywords in the 'sentence' below according to the tone of the NPC's conversation.

For example: [Expletive] [Augmentative] [Preamble] [Content]

"[May the wings of the blue one be clipped!] [It is a dismal day] [that my feathers brush your brows]. [content->] I have heard that Councilllor Yfelgroen may be [feathering his nest with down from the breast of] Lady Swift Aloft!

In the tone of Discontented Agreement, in the context of a middle aged Kyros slum dweller in Hydlaa, the emboldened phrases are filled in depending on the tags for the NPC.

[Comment] is defined as:

I have heard that Councilllor Yfelgroen may be [selfishly appropriative of] Lady Swift Aloft!


To get an atmospheric response, each element in [] is repeatedly processed (according to the NPC's tags) until the final dialog is created.


Yep .. I know .. you dont want to do all the work that is involved in creating something so elegant. But if you took a few months to set up something as infinitely expandable as that, then your next 10 years would be 10 times more productive.

Consider what you would achieve if you had someone assigned to creating dialog for each race according to location, gender and age!

Sorry people but the following documentation link is likely to drop in the next few weeks, so if you need it grab it now!

http://www.aerig.plus.com/planeshift/ps_dev_doc.zip

The webconsole gives them a quick and easy access.   The web pages can also be developed more quickly ( I hope ) than an in game interface or a seperate client.

There is a possible misconception here I think. The webconsole is not for game admin. It is for quest data entry.

As last I saw it, the console was quite a far ranging and complex entity to use. There were more than a handful of data entry section and, as I mentioned above, there was little or no verification that interrelated entities, such as quests, quest givers and quest objectives actually existed in the game.

The reason I felt that it would be important to have that sort of data verification is because, unless you are running your own local server, which might mean going through all the hassle of downloading the source and installing a development environment (I was using MingW which was a pita to set up well), then you have the problem of not knowing if any quest development that you have been doing on the console is going to have integrity ingame.

IE you wont be able to check if any quest-data-submission verification code that you write is worth a damn and that sort of code was urgently required when I last saw the console.

Also, the console was at last sight a very complicated entity with several sections and subsections and not very easy to use for actually creating quests, though that was partly because it was incomplete and quite a few important database fields had to be filled in manually.

The result of that was that anyone using the quest console almost had to be a PHP programmer just to be able to understand what data to fill in, how to do that, and what table t hand edit so that submitted quest data woud have integrity wrt to those database fields that it did not allow the user to fill in. That may have changed.

Because of that, another important priority, should really be the reorganisation of how the console functions are presented. They were not, at that time, presented in a way that would be intuitive to the Quest Design team, who are responsible for actually populating the quest database with quest data.

What I mean by that is that the console used to be oriented toward data entry with the table structure more in mind that a quest designers perception of the fantasy world that they were populating. Thus, adding a quest involved navigating through several subsections within the console to populate the tables that each of those subsections were oriented toward.

What should really have been happening is that the console should have subdivided the world into areas that were logical from the perspective of someone populating the world with lgical entities.

EG define a Quest name, indicate the quest origins, indicate quest fulfillment targets. Then check the database to find out if the referred to entities exist and prompt the designer to define them as required. As was, the designer had to keep mental track of all the entities involved in their quests, which would inevitably result in quest design being a needlessly painstaking process.

The point I am making is that, when you take on the task of renovating the console (assuming it is roughly as was two years ago) then you should be someone who has insight into how someone populating a world will perceive that process as well as being able to follow how the table structures actually work.

One reason that I am wary of offering outright to work on the console is the fact that previously it took me two weeks to install MingW, CrystalSpace and the PlaneShift source code just so that I could compile a local server to check out the quest console.

For that reason I think it would be a good idea if anyone working on the console were given a private download address for a precompiled, preconfigured server so that they could test their work without going through all that hassle.

I hope my comments are useful and help whoever does this job pick up the background on it more rapidly. If I am provided with a logon to a dummy console, ie the code sitting on top of a defaultly populated set of tables, then I would be happy enough to spend some time taking a fresh look at it and make any constructive comments that seem relevant.

Subsequent to that I might also feel that I would be able to take some time to work on the code but that, as I say, is something that atm is subject to quite a heavy workload otherwise.

Conversation  

Inside the house, glowing Suilcathrite the hall and Glaur\'s carvings with a pristine white light that had a crystalline quality that made the very air seem to sparkle.

In spite of a burgeoning sense of triumph, Elbe felt somewhat timid at the thought of meeting the Liss right at that moment, the prospect of meeting all of them at once somewhat intimidating. So instead of heading for Glaur\'s workshop, where he expected them to be, he moved toward the kitchen, the idea of the strange Liss food unappetising, but the appeal of the quiet kitchen strong.

He stopped shot at its door thought, finding out hen that all four Liss were sitting around a hinged flap that they had raised from the wall to serve as a table. Each had a bowl of the gruel like substance on the table before them. Elbe fetched himself a bowl and drew himself off its measure from the same barrel spigot as before.

He looked around the room and, spotting a line of stools where they nestled under a shelf along the wall by the door, drew one over to the table flap and sat at an unoccupied space between Eargh and Shadhoe.


Eargh spoke almost immediately, perhaps intending to allay any discomfiture that Elbe might be feeling and definitely doing so. His large golden amber eyes focussed on Elbe with what Elbe thought might be an expression of kindness, as he asked,

\"Are you alright, Elbe. You seemed to sit outside very still for a long time and we thought that perhaps we had erred in our belief that you would like being here. If that is the case, you should not worry as you will return to your world before morning.\"

Elbe thought deeply, considering all he had thought and felt since leaping through his living room window into this world, especially the  thoughts he had had sitting outside.

Unexpectedly, even to himself he asked in response,

\"What will happen to my body if I stay here? I\'m not really here physically am I?\"

Eargh paused seeming to start to think about the issue, then looked in appeal at Shadhoe, who said,

\"I am not best equipped amongst the Liss to deal with your kind directly, but I have spent some time studying these matters, so Eargh asks me to answer your question.\"

\"The answer is no and yes. Your body as such is not presently here. From what we know of the way these things happen, you are still where you are, having what seems to other a deep dreaming sleep from which they cannot wake you.\"

\"Should you decide to return they will put that down to exhaustion or any other plausible reason you may give for that.\"

\"However, the answer is also yes because if you stay, that is what the case will be.\"

\"Sometimes, we have heard, those who stay here live still in there own world, their bodies and minds living out the spiritless type of existence that often seems to provoke their unexpected entry to Liss. To all around them, much as they were.\"

\"Sometimes though, your people disappear from your world entirely, no longer there physically, but completely here.\"

\"If you choose to stay here, it will make little difference to you excepting that, if your body remains in your world also, you will occasionally dream of your former world, aware of its events and happenings almost as though you had actually returned there.\"

Elbe listened quietly and said,

\"I asked out of curiosity and on the spur of the moment. I have already decided that, if you can help me to understand this world, how it works and how I might fit in here, then I will stay.\"

\"I think I would stay even if you could not. Something about Liss is very beautiful and holds a strong appeal to me and you Liss yourselves are very different and interesting.\"

Glomhna softly interjected,

\"We were worried. Sometimes your people arrive here and are very strange to start with. Other times they become strange soon after they arrive. Yet other times they become very strange after they have lived here for a while.\"

\"We always welcome you for the same difference and richness that you feel about us, but times your folk also become hostile when they become strange, accusing us of doing something to them for reasons that make no sense.\"

\"For that reason we always make clear that, while we welcome people from you world when they want to stay here, we will not allow you to harm our folk or property.\"

\"I think that when you sat in the yard you fought this strangeness. And now I think you have overcome it. You have the light in your eyes that many of your people do not find until they have been here some time, often years.\"

\"We are glad of that, because those of your people whose eyes shine with that light never become strange in that way and our people get on better with them for that, more able to help them find a place for themselves in Liss.\"

\"Eargh has suggested that, as the Liss most able to relate to your people and help you settle here, that if that was your choice you should spend most time with me.\"

\"Under current circumstances that is also the most practical arrangement for us. But you should not feel that there is any reason to avoid the others of us, Glaur having said that your conversation was brief and unobtrusive.\"

\"Because of that he has said that if you would like to sit and watch as he works, asking occasional questions about his work or anything else about Lish that he might be able to answer, he will not find you distracting.\"

\"Shadhoe and Eargh both have many responsibilities and duties and while they do not mind spending some time helping you adjust to living in our world, they cannot devote much time to that specifically.\"

\"But. I, Shadhoe and Eargh are going to the local community tomorrow and Shadhoe suggested that, if you are still here, you might like to come along and see how other Liss live, thinking that perhaps that might yield you some ideas as to what you yourself might occupy yourself with.\"

\"Unfortunately their are none of your folk living in our closest community so you will not be able to ask any of those who live amongst us for advice or help.\"

Elbe shook his head vigourously at that,

\"I\'m not all that bothered about that. To start with, I learn better by watching what goes on around me and, also, I think I will probably learn to accept being here and understand your folk better if I do not have other people of my own kind to rely on.\"

Glomhna\'s eyes flickered in, what Elbe took for disturbance, as he spoke the word accept. Half seeming to refer to her previous knowledge and half wondering if her interpretation was correct, she asked,

\"I have noticed that your folk sometimes seem not to have accepted something even while they have accepted the same thing. In this you sometimes seem very strange to us. Is my understanding correct when I think that you have decided to stay here, but that when you say you still have things to accept about that, that you really mean you desire to have a greater understanding of all the small things that that involves? That without experience and understanding of the fact of that, that you somehow feel that you have not accepted things fully?\"

Elbe looked into the surface of the table flap for a moment, brows drawn together as he realised that the Liss perspective would raise many issues that he had often taken for granted about his own manner of existence.

\"Some of that is accurate, maybe more accurate than I would normally think. But, as well as that, I think people often make a decision that is not completely wholehearted, though very much so, but limited by the extent to which they feel their understanding of situations is.\"

Glomhna smiled at that, a strange flicking of her reptilian tongue that Elbe had learned to understand as satisfaction and rose from the table.

\"Follow me and I\'ll show you your room. You needn\'t sleep yet if you coose not to, but it will save you asking later.\"

She led Elbe through a door beside Glaur\'s workroom and along a short corridor at the furter end of which a tight, fairly steep ramp led up to the upper floor of the buuilding. As she tread the ramp the elegant lizard lady explained,

\"We all sleep upramp, so if you need anything during the night just knock one of the other doors. Some of the rroms are empty, but one of us will most likely here you anyway.\"

As she talked, Glomhna opened a room door and let Elbe precede her as they walked inside. Elbe galnced around the room and immediately noticed the difference from a human sleeping space.

The bed was at floor level, surrounded by a smoothly curved wooden ring about six inches high. Inside the ring the floor was covered by a thin padded, burgundy mat of some rubbery material similar to that of the mats he would expect to find in a gym. Several
Sturdy cushions occupied the space. Elbe assumed these paralleled rocks that a lizard might huddle against for warmth and were a psychological aspect of a Liss sleeping space there for emotional comfort rather than out of necessity, several wool-like blankets giving more substantial source of warnth.

As he reached out for a closer inspection he was surprised to find that the material was not at all like wool and would have hold very little heat. As he frowned at this, Glomna indicated a cage-like structure on one side of te sleeping pit.

\"The creatures in the box have an affinity for Liss, cleaning our scales and warming us as we sleep. They don\'t find the same occupation with humans, but they seem to like something about your people and provide warmth. If you are cold, open the box and they will sleep over you keeping you warm in the same way as they do ourselves.\"

Elbe looked closely into the box and saw several furry, puppy-sized creatures that creatures that resembled squirrels in the bushiness of their tales but had squarish boxlike bodies, like small cows. Their multifaceted eyes lent them a spiderish aspect and they moved quickly, close to the ground in a way that was also spiderish, or perhaps more similar to the low bellied slink of a hunting fox. They had small cone shaped, beak like mouths with longish tongues similar to those of anteaters, though possibly more delicate.
Elbe looked round at Glomhna,

\"I think I might as well turn in now. To be honest, its been a longer day than I expected at the start of it.\"