[TCPDEX] TCP Research Initiative

[RibbonCharm]

Research Topic SP-1-1: Where are the local spawn points.

Greetings, Michelle here. Everything has been going well with Tremor so far. He's been giving me lessons every day, to prepare me for when I get to work with his patients, and he's very patient with me. My only gripe so far is that besides my room, everything is complex-sized, but Tremor usually carries me around on his shoulder, so that makes it a little better.

Once I got this letter, I decided to ask Tremor about the local spawn points. He said the only ones he knows of were always outside the town, which I learned is called Ichor. In the graveyard or in the woods, for example. It's actually more or less considered a right of passage for an outsider to make it to the town alive, especially if you're a TCP. Tremor says there's...things lurking out there. Things that he's not ready to tell me. And I don't think I'm ready to find out.

I decided to take a trip up to the places around Ichor today after my lessons, with Tremor coming along to protect me, just in case. Ichor itself is...actually pretty small, I'd describe it as more like a village, or a hamlet. I only got to see the outskirts though, as the spawn point Tremor wanted to show me was just outside it.



The graveyard is a terribly lonely place, hidden by the trees in such a way that it's almost completed isolated from the nearby hamlet. Tremor told me that this one was fairly "new," built a couple of dozen years ago before an incident happened in their masoleum, forcing them to seal it off.

There's already so many Morbitians buried here... There's even a few TCP-sized graves. The sight almost made me want to turn around and head back to the lab, but I was stopped by a trio of brood types, who didn't even so much as flinch when they saw me. They said they've seen worse, I'm not sure if I should take that as a compliment.

They were happy to answer my questions, and this is what I was able to gather: A few yeard after the graveyard was constructed, TCPs began to spawn on top of it, and has provided a steady supply of them ever since. The hamlet isn't easily visible from here, so many of them often wander off into the woods, where either another cat eventually finds them, or they're devoured by the creatures roaming behind the trees. The brood types are actually a trio of scouts from a nearby TCP settlement called Pace, heading out three times a day to comb the woods for new cats. A few even spawned deeper within the woods, but rarely ever make it to the settlement. These spots are usually marked by weapons, supplies, and directions to Pace and Ichor that the cats from Pace left for them. It's the most they can do when they're not there to defend the new cats.

One of the brood types also offered an interesting tidbit: He believes almost every cat from the graveyard corresponds to a trait of someone buried there. For example, he spawned on top of the grave of someone who he later learned was a bird tamer, and Pace has a cake type that spawned on the grave of a baker. I feel like this could be useful to help determine what exactly makes a spawn point, if it's not all up to chance.

This is all I have for now. I wanted to go explore the woods to find the spawn points there, but Tremor said that it'd be best if we hold off on that for now. He's mostly just worried about stepping on any cats from Pace, or me. The package containing my scrap equipment arrived shortly after I sent this, and I'm going to take some time to test it out before reporting my findings. You'll hear from me again soon enough.