Now that I have some spare parts, I'm less worried about getting trashed for a while. Grimal complained mightily about me leaving a centipede in the ceiling with him, but if I leave it on the floir I'm pretty sure one of the others will eat it.

Once I make sure there's no imminent danger from the direction of the jungle, I can sit down and learn some more spells from my loot. I'm very excited.

Still pretty nervous about the antelope-thing on the other side of the barricade, but it doesn't seem like it can cross the barricade.

The jungle, as I arrive and look it over, is absolutely savaged. The spider and I burned a lot more of it than I thought and there's still smoke in the air even though all the fires appear to be out.

Did the fires go out because of a lack of oxygen? Slightly concerning... It's good I don't need to breathe, but everything else does.

For now, I think I will do my part. I don't expect to get into combat soon, so I sit down for a few minutes and grow a few seeds I find into larger plants. I grab a few cuttings off myself and plant them for additional coverage.

I burned this whole area, and it probably was providing oxygen to the residents. Maybe a few more plants will stave off a complete catastrophe.

After a while longer, I manage a small amount of ground cover and leafy bushes. Many places in the soil are still too alkaline to grow plants, but I'm not really sure if it ever rains down here.

Maybe there's a magic doodad that simulates rain - I can't see a jungle flourishing without precipitation after all.

Along the way as I hold very still and painstakingly grow or fail to grow plants, I see quite a few small animals come out of hiding. There's birds, small rodents, larger rodents, and a few snakes.

I don't see any bugs, but they're probably sleeping because of the smoke. Hopefully regrowing this jungle a bit will be enough to help support their lives. I feel bad, but fire is the best weapon available to me. Maybe it's time to come up with a new one.

This jungle is rather large actually, and a good portion of it didn't burn. With a little help from me, everything should be ok, right?

That done, I follow the wall around back, looking for other exits. After some considerable hunting, I find a sliding door made out of rock against the rock wall. It looks just like the wall, but there's 2 visible seams. Nice!

I can't figure out how to get it open though. Theres no handles or mechanisms. After 20 minutes of trying to figure it out, I smash though the door, chewing a large hole through it, and knocking the fragments of the rock door out of the way.

It's a small room full of esoteric machinery. Not really sure what any of this does, but if I take some time, maybe I can figure it out?

Digging to follow some mana linkages from the door leads me to a nearby tree that's actually fake, and has a control panel in a secret compartment revealed by sliding away a fake section of bark.

All right, the buttons are labeled, but I still can't read. let's just actuate them and find out what they do.

The first control is a sliding switch, and when slid to the left the remnants of the door move about like they are trying to open. Oops. Well, I never would have found this otherwise, there's no avoiding it I guess. The second switch has a huge label on it with a lot of words.

I'm not sure what it does, but if someone needed several sentences to describe it, it might be subtle or dangerous. I'll do that one last if the other buttons don't do anything terrible.

All right, next button. Three word description. I press it, and the lights go out. A soft glow, not unlike that of moonlight illuminates everything, but only a little.

Ah, I see. Those are the lights. I press the button again and the lights don't turn back on. Hmmmm.

Maybe the next button is for turning the lights back on?

A press of the next button causes it to start raining.

Additional presses do not make it stop...

Why won't it stop? I mash the button a bit just in case it is broken. Nothing changes.

Great. Well, I'm in this deep, what else can I do?

I press the next button and something falls from the ceiling, making a loud thump. I look towards the direction where the noise originated and press it again. I faintly see something fall from the ceiling. What is that? I press the button again and watch carefully as another thing falls from the ceiling.

Still no idea. Oh well. Next button.

I press on the next button and the sticks and leaves on the ground begin to lift off the ground by themselves and form a large pile nearby. Hmm. Maybe that's for cleaning up the place? An auto rake feature is one I would appreciate.

The next button turns the lights back on, but it's still raining. The last button causes a breeze to pick up, but pressing it again doesn't stop it.

I don't get it. This is a weird control panel.

Let me write down these notes on the buttons for Grimal. I guess I overestimated my ability to puzzle this out. I grab a piece of door and carve an approximation of the letters into it with my mandibles. It takes a ridiculous amount of time.

Finally I'm done, and though the handwriting is bad, I think Grimal will be able to read it.

Let's go find out what fell from the ceiling.

I head in that direction, and soon arrive to find a VERY big snake. I don't mean it's long, or huge, necessarily, though it is pretty large. It is so fat, it looks like it ate something way bigger than it.

Huh. I probe at it mentally and form a link. "Hello?"

I recieve a jumble of anger in response. Hissing emanates from the snake, along with some incoherent territorial thoughts.

It's a regular snake, only 20 feet long.

I decide to kill it and see what it ate, since whatever it is is probably what dropped from the ceiling.

A quick slice and the now headless snake is no longer sending me incoherent thoughts of violence.

Another few slices and I find out what is in the snake. It's two other dead snakes.

I see. The button is a snake dispenser. I have a snake dispenser. Where do the snakes come from?

But first, let's see if there's cores in these. All right, there are, though they're a bit small for such a large snake.

Very strange.