If you want to avoid "spoilers" and experience touch messages through on-camera touchings, feel free to not click them! They're here for posterity and the unfortunate chance that a candidate may not get to have a touching scene!
A Land Overrun Egg
From afar, this egg is a chaos of mess and color. Viewed at a distance, it looks completely random and haphazard, with the blacks splashed over the reds, and the greens muddied with browns and dark purples. Grey juts up sharply against cream, shards of color piercing the purer hue. However, the closer you get the more you can see the intricacies and detail of this shell. Colors have purpose, and their placement is designed. There are patterns in the greens and browns, and the purple is actually a dark blue tinged with red. The red flows from beneath the blackness into the blue, and the cream is built symmetrically on the banks. It looks as if there is an underlying order, but chaos and dissent have risen and nearly overtaken the entire shell.
Potions in the Blood seep into your thoughts, and the first thing you notice is a feeling of discomfort. It’s not pain, really, but a general unease. A sort of deep-seeded anxiety, an “otherness”. Things are just not quite right. Not how they should be. Your hearing is ever so slightly distorted. So is your vision. Your hand against the egg’s shell seems different, somehow, even though your eyes are telling you it’s your hand and it hasn’t changed. Yet something is…different. Off-kilter. Not quite right. Something within you has changed, altering all of your perceptions of the outside world. Within the egg’s shell all you sense is a similar “otherness”.
Potions in the Blood continue to give you that odd, “otherness” sensation. There is definitely something different with your vision. It’s sharper, and more clear. You look around the caverns and see colors you’ve never seen before. Your heart rate slows. You flex your hand and feel unusual strength. Of course it’s all in your head, right? The growing dragon inside of the egg is impassive to your reactions, distant and simply there.
Potions in the Blood begin to recede, just as you might have been getting used to these new sensations and senses. You feel your vision returning to normal, your heart rate picking up again, and your perceived strength being sapped from your body. The dragon within the shell retreats from your mind, but not before giving you a parting gift - a sharp pain in your upper right arm, which can linger long after the touching.
Spice is Life Egg
Brown. That's the uniform color of this egg, though it shades from the lightest of dust to darkest chestnut across its surface. Near the top is a ragged circle of darker hues that seem to make up a mountain range in umber, while the rest lies in dunes, ever-changing to the whisper of winds that seem to move over the surface. Sometimes, out of the corner of your eye, it may seem as if a trail worms it's way along, pushing the sandy color upwards before disappearing again, a mere ripple spied briefly.
The Awakened One slowly grows to awareness within your mind. It's there, right there. Already that budding consciousness knows that it's first training is how to learn. And the first lesson of all it will know of is the basic trust that it COULD learn. In all the touches, all the candidates it's felt, it's shocking to find how many of you all do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. This budding life knows that every experience carries its own lesson and it will learn. Will you now? With that challenge, that awareness disappears from your mind, leaving you alone.
The Awakened One is quicker now to take hold in your mind, it's consciousness still curious, still learning. Surely by now, you wish to attempt an understanding of the dragon within? But can you without really seeing it? Without truly being bonded to it? It is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be. At least not right now. It has much to think upon, and so, it pulls away, leaving you to your own thoughts.
The Awakened One is there with barely a divide between you, growing stronger, making the connection deeper yet. The sands are no more, only you and it in a black world of possibilities. It has come to realize that a world is supported by four things; the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. And yet, it knows as well, that surely, all those are nothing without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Do you not agree? And as quickly as it came, that presence is gone again.
Till All Are One Egg
Rust colored browns and coppers make up most of the surface of this egg stretching out in vast canyons and valleys. Though it looks like it was machined together it is in fact solidly one piece. Looking closer what looks like roads could be seen stretching out connecting the vast lighted cities of circular iridescent blues that are smattered a crossed the landscape as if the egg itself is powered by something other than the spark of dragonic life. It is clear there is more to this egg than might be at first glance.
Last of Its Make brushes against your thoughts. It is cold here, your feet aren’t on sand but rust and metal. Look around you… This was once a great place. Mountains and valleys made from metal stretch as far as your eyes can see. Rivers of iridescence water like energy flow into lakes and then underground. They were once a proud race… Are you the one to save them?
Last of Its Make presses further into your thoughts. The horizon tilts, like you are flying, now falling down a deep crevasse. Giant metal like bodies on spikes whiz by you as you free fall deeper and deeper into the ground. There is a heavy and low buzzing sound, almost like a generator that makes your hair stand on end. War kills all, and yet even instruments of destruction can be used to create new life. A hot updraft blows against you, filling your senses with the smell of burnt oil and ozone. That little brush stops you from a very squishy death but you still hit hard on metal ground. As you look up there is a sleeping Giant before you. To change or to destroy. What is your answer?
Last of Its Make continues to push against your mind. The cavern is older than the rest of the metal world you have been exploring, and this giant is older still. It waits for your choice. Unity or Conquest. There is a rumbling now, metal rocks fall as the world quakes and plates shift. Blue-green jets of flame sprout from the walls and floor, driving you back towards the entrance. Till all are one.
Vorbarr Sultana Egg
Albeit one of the smaller eggs in the clutch, there is a general sense of power somehow emanating from this egg. Its underlying color is a deep, dark green, almost reminding one of the water in the deepest part of Fort's lakes. The tip is capped with crystalline white, while its middle is dappled with a variety of elements, fading each from one to the next: broad, vast beiges, vibrant reds and browns blended with the occasional verdant forest-green, sweeping and curving lines of blue like a river flowing.
Interstellar Imperium starts simple - with trees. Yes. Trees. You thought you were on the sands, but everywhere around you there are red and brown trees popping up into your space. They grow at a logical but sped up rate - one that looked like a tiny sapling does reach its full (massive) height, but you can be sure you saw the entire thing grow. Amongst the leaves, there are whispers - unmistakably there but impossible to understand. Unlike some of the other eggs, the only real emotion this one conveys is life - it is there, it is alive, it is something and becoming more, and you're along for the ride.
Interstellar Imperium expands, as a society is wont to do: the trees are all still there, but they seem to be breaking into small groups, with tiny little buildings rising up around them. Off in the distance you could swear you hear — and see — two ocean tides, competing to be in the center of attention. Those whispers become louder, whispers into patchy speech into the cacophony of a crowded room filled with many conversations. Still, there is no pointed acknowledgement - the egg knows you're there, for certain, but is only showing rather than feeling. Maybe it's important for you to see.
Interstellar Imperium lets you blink, and in that time, you missed it: there was a forest, and trees, and whispers and tides that turned into oceans and voices and now there are trees and oceans and voices … and tall, impressive structures of the like Pern has never seen. Sparkling tall structures that reflect light and may come close to blinding you: people and animals walking, the sounds of engines and rain and progress. And within all of that, pride. The dragon inside is an innovator: are you?
Home Sweet Hive Egg
Any hope of color on the shell of this large egg is lost. Muted greens and greys cover it from one end to the other and where light fails to shine, the hues look almost pitch black. Oddly, the combination gives the egg the illusion of being visibly damp and lustrous in spots, as if constructed of a peculiar material — not unlike resin. Closer inspection will reveal subtle variations and what look to be the yawning, opening maw of various sized corridors and tunnels — a literal webbed hive.
Unnatural Predator enters your mind with quiet ease and perhaps so unsettling with how seamless the transition is. One moment you are on the sands, staring at its shell and then it's as though you’re there. Gloom hangs heavy in a barren landscape, a ground level fog making it difficult to discern many details. Nothing moves, though there’s the faint impression that there is water here, as the odd material that makes this ‘landscape’ appears damp and the dry heat you once felt is now almost oppressively humid. Is it curiosity that lures you forwards? Or the instinct that standing still is unwise? Regardless of the case, be you the adventurous type or not, there is definitely a presence lurking on the fringes of your awareness but it prefers to watch and observe… for now.
Unnatural Predator draws you back right where you’d left off, as if you’d never even escaped. Now you are drawn deeper and deeper into the recesses of the peculiar maze it has constructed. Disorientating, but that’s not the focus here. It’s relying on your ingrained sense of exploration. Still the adventurous type? Or are you starting to feel the warning calls that prey must feel when they’re about to cross that invisible point of no return? It feels no threat from you, though the feeling may not be mutual by this point. Life’s goals are simple, are they not? Eliminate threats and propagate the species. Basic instincts can benefit all… and by now you may be fighting the urge to turn tail and run from whatever lurks in the depths.
Unnatural Predator would coldly admire your ambitious and reckless nature… if it could feel. Emotions are as alien to it as it is to you, but there is one thing it does understand; instinct and drive. You’re overwhelmed with the sense that something is following you and closing in. That nagging, pit in your stomach, hair raising sensation of wrong and run but it’s too late. Suddenly you feel some invisible force clamp down over your face, smothering you and cutting off your air supply. The more you struggle against it, the tighter it’s possessive grip becomes. Don’t fight it now! Be proud that you’ll sacrifice yourself for the future progeny! What else is there worth in life? Just when panic may begin to set it, it releases you and you’re forcefully shoved back to reality. The shell beneath you is silent and slumbering… and awaiting the next victim.
Look Around You, Now Back to Me Egg
This egg seems familiar. Like…really familiar. That jutted slash of muddied brown, isn’t that Red Butte? And the curve of that stroke of blue, isn’t that the Nerat Bay? If you tilt your head and squint just a bit, the vivid greens, the browns, the blues seem to take the shape of a map of the very planet you’re standing on. That’s rather odd, isn’t it? Must be a coincidence, or else some cartographer came in here during their off time and painted a plain white egg to look like Pern. Now that /would/ be odd. Maybe you should ask someone about it.
Hello, Candidate. Look at those eggs, now back to me. Now back at those eggs, now back to me. Sadly, those aren’t me. But if they stopped being buried in the sand and laid there proudly they could look like me. Look down, back up. Where are you? You’re on the Sands. With the egg those other eggs wish they looked like. What’s in your hand? Back at me. I have it. It’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again. The tickets are now diamonds. Anything is possible when your egg looks like me and not those other eggs. I’m on a runner. (Brief whistling interlude)
Hello, Candidate. How are you? Fantastic. Do those eggs look like me? No. Can they look like me? No. Do you like the look and the smell of adventure? Do you want an egg that looks like it can bake you a gourmet cake in the dream kitchen it built you with its own hands? Of course you do. Swan dive! Into the best night of your life. So, Candidate, do those eggs look like they can do all that? You tell me. (Brief whistling interlude)
Hello, Candidate. Did you know other Candidates prefer me one bajillion times more than all those other eggs? Did you know that I’m riding this runner backwards? Hee-yah! (Brief whistling interlude)