Warehouse 23

Here's a game I first found over at the Sluggy Freelance forums. Basic plot - you / a character/ etc is trapped inside an absolutely enormous, oddly ethereal abandoned warehouse, packed to the brim with boxes full of the strange and mystical, and has no recourse but to wander around keep opening boxes in order to find a way out, and avoid the really dangerous stuff.

Basically, the person above you gives what the box contains, and you give a description of what it does / really is / what happens when it opens/ etc, and afterwards you open another box, and tell what's inside it.

For example:

• Previous poster: You open a box. Inside is a U.S. penny from 1905
• 'You: As you take a closer look at this probably very valuable coin, you notice the face on the face isn't of any president you've ever heard of. Suddenly, it winks at you, and then ducks off the copper somehow. You decide to wait until the mysterious face returns to figure it out, and in the meantime you decide to open a tiny brown box on a large stack. Inside is, impossibly, an entire hippo.
• Next Poster: Before you can think about the many laws of physics broken by this, the hippo yell "PUT ME DOWN" and you immediately drop the box. Rattled, you opt to look elsewhere. Eventually, you settle on a long blue box. Inside is ______.
• Next: Yadda Yadda

Pretty fun, since inevitably you get wide-arching storylines as the things inside the boxes get more and more strange and powerful but deceptively normal.

Anyway, here we go:

Distracted by a horrible storm, an unlucky traveller finds himself forced to stop his car in front of the first place he sees before he crashes somewhere. Eventually find an enormous building in the middle of nowhere, he stops his car and rushes inside to avoid the thundering storm, only for the doors to shut and lock behind him.

He finds himself in a warehouse that seems to be much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and there are boxes of every color and size on shelves and littered all over the floor.

Unable to curb his curiosity, and figuring that one of the boxes might have a way he could get out, he reaches for the nearest box and opens it. Inside is a bright yellow pin.

The pin then suddenly stabs him, somehow. Dropping it, he runs towards a box. Inside is a Stepladder.

edited 3rd Oct '10 9:34:28 PM by RocketDude

The step ladder emits a strange blue glow. You feel tingly when you get near it. You decide it's best not to mess with it, and open another box. Inside is a Mackeral wrapped in a newspaper

In case anyone was wondering, the game this is based on was most likely inspired by this.

Unwrapping the newspaper, the mackerel starts singing. Quickly wrapping it back up, he goes towards another box and opens it. Inside is an unopened bottle of soda.

He opens it and takes a sip, and promptly gains 25 points worth of physical advantages. He moves to the next box, and pulls out a pack of starburst.

edited 4th Oct '10 12:05:46 AM by rumetzen

The Starburst tastes like flavors that are not offered and give him a small high. Putting them down, he moves to another box and pulls out a gold-plated Beretta 92FS.

edited 4th Oct '10 12:07:24 AM by RocketDude

The Beretta is actually an ornamental Pez dispenser. After eating all the Pez, he runs over to another box and finds a manhole cover in the bottom.

The manhole cover pops open to reveal a cat in nothing but a yellow helmet. He exclaims, "Are you the–"

Before the cat can finish, he drops the box with a thud and runs off. The man picks up a green box and finds a plate of salad in there.

You find that you cannot eat salad without croutons and move along until you are whacked in the head by a purple box that falls out of the ceiling. It contains three purple eggs.

edited 4th Oct '10 6:55:46 AM by BlaineTheM0n0

Cracking one egg open, he finds that the yolk is also purple. Suddenly, the other two hatch into small purple chicks. Gently putting the hatched chicks down, he goes over to another box. Inside is a pair of pants.

Once buttoned, the pants instantly and painlessly reverse the wearer's gender. The effect ends once the pants are unbuttoned.

After briefly getting in touch with his feminine side, the man drops trou, puts his old pair back on and discovers that a tiny box has been slipped into his pocket. Inside the box is a small white lab rat, seemingly in a catatonic state.

The white lab rat had clearly been disected for study, and by the looks of things, it had been cut open whilst alive. The man/woman couldn't help him/herself, and promptly threw up.

He threw up a small black capsule with a blue light at one end, blinking in sync with a faint beeping sound - a tracking device?

Stomping it under his heel, he runs over to another box, opens it and finds it full of pickling jars.

Upon closer inspection, he finds each of these jars contains a human brain. Resisting the urge to find one labelled "Abby Normal," he moves to put the brains back, only for a small note to fall off one of the jars, reading: "you're next."

Thoroughly freaked out, he wanders around the warehouse for a while too scared to open any boxes, before he can't resist and opens a tiny one on the floor. Inside is an ornate compact mirror.

edited 6th Oct '10 12:14:11 AM by KnownUnknown

As he continues staring at it, wondering what it does, he sees an oddly familiar, yet unfamiliar face pop up and waves at him. The man screams and flings the mirror like a frisbee away.

It hits a box of styrofoam, and a black box tumbles out. He opens it, and peers in to see a quadratic graph.

The y-axis of the graph is labeled from 0 to a number somewhere over six billion; the x-axis from 1947 to 2012. The curve is labeled "Assimilation Rate", and is set to reach the top of the graph within...oh God, it looks like months!

Staggered by this discovery, he races over to a bathroom door (that conspicuously wasn't there five minutes ago) and finds himself staring in the mirror.

His reflection winks at him before smiling eerily. He screams and smashes the mirror with his now-bloodied fist. He turns on the sink and a glowing liquid comes out.

The liquid globs together and becomes... OH NO GRAY GOO (So it wasn't liquid at all)! It absorbs the sink. The man runs out of the restroom, slamming the door behind him. Looking for protection, he looks into a box and finds a hamster ball.

edited 7th Oct '10 4:55:04 PM by Reecer6

The ball contains a hamster who has been enhanced through genetic manipulation. It incinerates the Grey Goo WITH ITS EYEBALLS! and nearly incinerates him, before he has the good sense to stuff it back in its box.

The box promptly explodes, sending a much smaller box flying out of the wreckage. He opens it and finds a top hat.

He puts on the hat, causing him to suddenly sprout a goatee and handlebar mustache. He yanks off the hat, causing the hair to fall off.

He opens another box, and finds a globe.

It's fairly big, but otherwise a pretty average globe, with one major exception: there's a model replica of what looks like the warehouse on top, geographically correct and everything.

Smiling at the quaintness, he reaches out to pick up the model and get a closer look, and the moment he touched it suddenly the whole building shuddered as if hit by tornado. Scared, he draws his hand back, and then, with the inquisitiveness of your average fool, decides to test things out again.

Reaching out, he gently puts pressure he tiny model with his finger - which causes the warehouse to shift as though pushed from one side. He looks closer at the model, and on closer inspection he can even make out a intricately accurate replica of the warehouse window, and inside the window he can even see imitations of the shelves and boxes littered throughout the gargantuan building.

Or maybe not imitations - looking through the window further he can see what look like miniature people in the warehouse. Not very many, and all in farthest reaches, but interesting nonetheless. There's even one that looks like him... staring at an odd looking globe with a model on the top... shocked, he takes a errant step back (as does his counterpart in the model), but in his haste his arm hits the globe, which falls to the floor and starts rolling full speed down the hallway.

At this, the ground starts violently quaking, but, luckily, the building isn't being smashed between the Earth and some enormous cosmic hallway tile just yet. Racing off after the runaway planet, he's grabs a random box in hopes of finding something to help him.

Inside is a cheap plastic bead necklace, labelled "El Dorado."

He notices that there are traces of gold dust on his hands. It didn't come off the necklace - rather, the necklace has turned a layer of his epidermis into gold, and it flakes off onto the floor. Everything the necklace touches turns to gold, at least superficially, with potentially hazardous effects on repeated exposure.

At any rate, it doesn't help him. He tosses it to the floor (which now has a small ring of gold dust on it directly under the necklace) and reaches into another box. There is a piece of rope inside - could this help?

He pulls the rope vigorously - planning to use it to use it to lasso the dangerous model - and nearly falls on his behind. The rope came out very quickly, and, as he pulls, he notices there's much more rope than he thought: instead of being wrapped up it's piled on top of itself, and while it comes easily he could pull and pull without there ever coming to the end.

Feeling much like a magician pulling a scarf out of his pocket, he keeps pulling trying to get to the end of the rope - all the while the earthquakes are getting stronger and stronger - foot after foot after foot, more and more and more, with no end in sight, still pulling and pulling and pulling, until...

"OW!"

The rope suddenly went taut, and there came a loud shriek from the box. There was the sound of someone with heavy feet walking up stairs, then the creak of a door... and then, impossibly, a head much bigger than the box itself popped out - the head of an enormous woman with an extremely long braid... uh oh.

"HEY!" said the head in a booming voice, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY ATTIC?" She pulled herself out of the box, revealing herself to be at least fifteen feet tall. "HEY, THIS ISN'T MY ATTIC! WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON? WHY IS THE EARTH SHAKING?"

Trying hard not to freak out, our hero looks around for yet another box in order to solve this new calamity (as well as the old one still imperiling everyone), finally grabbing for one shaped like a megaphone. Inside, there's a bright purple book.

edited 20th Oct '10 11:05:00 AM by KnownUnknown

As the hero opens the book, he hears a roar. He looks up and sees Cthulhu. He quickly closes the book, and Cthulhu dissapears. He looks in another crate and finds a can of Dr. Pepper.

Angered by the lack of an efficient method to stop the runaway globe, he smashes the can against the ground. It explodes, spraying an impossibly large amount of soda on the large lady. She falls back down into her box, and causes a teal colored box to fall from up high.

He opens it, and inside is an extra-stinky durian.