An endless sea of trees basks in the blue light of Skaia, cut here and there by the shimmering crests of crystal mountain ranges. The black, gnarled peak of a seamount jutting up from a broad clearing is the only jarring note in the symphony of colour that is Land of Trees and Crystal. Zooming in closer on that clearing, you might catch the moment when a little grey dot comes face-to-face with some rather larger reddish-brown ones.

Urdra is outside placing motion sensors in a perimeter around the station. She's got good at squishing Imps with her newly-made Iron Obliterator, but she still isn't prepared for the moment when five Clay Ogres abruptly spawn into the game right in front of her. Hearts pounding, she raises the war-hammer….

…and suddenly she's stood there looking a pile of huge Grist crystals, a massive haul of un-earned game loot. Something has taken a chip out of the nearby rock-face, too. Not again!

-Urdra opened Spritelog-

URDRA: Did you see what just happened?!
SQUIDDLETIGERSPRITE: Yes, we fought them! I was very fierce, but you were even fiercer!

She sighs. No doubt she panicked, screamed and threw her hammer feebly at the ogres. Somehow, her Mysterious Guardian is in the game. And somehow, even her sprite can't see him. She plods the rest of the way round the crag to place the last couple of sensors, then heads home to make some more stuff with her new Grist. She's still figuring out the new machine Jovall just added, the "Punch Designix". At least the name of this one kind of makes sense.

Inside, she settles down with a nice lukewarm cup of kokoa and the gameFAQ chapter on "Alchemiterising and Inventory Recombination." She pulls all sixty-three of the remaining empty captchalogue cards from her Fractal Reticule – finally, that odd religious obligation to keep a stash of blank inventory cards makes sense! It feels very odd to hold the cards in her hands as physical objects. She tries out a couple of the punch codes listed in the appendices. The first produces a small wooden flute; the second proves to be too expensive to actually make yet. It appears to be a large hollow bust of a Human stuffed with pieces of candy. Well, OK then.

She gets distracted by the sight of the fishtank in the corner. Not much to see yet, just water and sludge. She hopes the eggs hatch soon. They don't usually thrive in captivity, but the lady from Mission Control hinted that Urdra should try this experiment once she's in the game. OK, she didn't "hint", she outright ordered her. Several times. That's why Urdra remembered to do it.

Thinking of Mission Control reminds her of the first time the Mysterious Guardian manifested himself, two orbits ago. They'd summoned her to the nearest large town, Egberton, for a week of training. The first day was just medical tests and some rather tedious conversations with her handler, that lady who was so keen about the egg thing. On the second day, the taxi to the Mission Control branch office never turned up. She ran all the way there, arriving breathless to find the whole building shuttered up, all dark, grimy and cobwebbed as if it had been closed for years.

She assumed she must have got turned around somehow, but after a couple of days searching and messaging in vain, she gave up. She was ambushed while collecting her speeder from the hotel car-park. She'd never thought to fear violence from another madrigog – outside of Formal War Zones, that just does not happen! When four masked figures emerged from the shadows and ran at her, she froze in a way she never had when confronted with a cranky shark-tiger or a nest of hungry brain-crabs. They were all much taller than her – journeymen, or even Masters. The terror-white cloth stretched across their faces was marked with an incongruously relaxed green sun logo. The nearest attacker reached her and took her arm in a painful grip. Another advanced on her holding a strange, stubby little rifle.

Then she blinked and her assailants were down. Three of them groaning in agony, the fourth… not groaning. Unlikely to ever make a sound again, in fact. She straddled her speeder and gunned the engine, zooming back to the sticks like a dartfly out of Hell. Vowing never to visit the big city again.

The feeling of "lost time" was worse after that first incident than any of the later ones. Floating around her station in a daze, she somehow lost track of several days and ruined a couple of ongoing experiments as a result. Trying to make sense of it all, she figured Mission Control had decided she was too ditzy to train, and had given her a secret bodyguard to keep her out of trouble. She'd often felt sorry for the poor schlub, hidden out on the ice keeping watch over her. But how can he be in the game with her, and invisible? It doesn't add up. Maybe there's another explanation -

Urdra jolts awake. She's completely lost her train of thought, and now she's spilt kokoa all over her captchalogue cards! While she's cleaning them up, she happens to notice something scrawled across a GameFAQ printout. It looks a bit like her own handwriting, but much messier. The note just says: "TRAINING".

Verthandi leads her Rosesprite out into the less secret passageways of The Rose. She'd expected her sprite to be a stern and terrifying prophet, but instead she appears to be quite friendly and down-to-Khthonn. A bit complicated, though. There's a constant sense of communication gone slightly awry between them. Maybe it's down to some whacked-out alien biology, in which case Urdra might be able to make more sense of her than Verthandi can.

Rosesprite still has the tiara on her head and the sword stuck right through her, but her face is softer and more organic now. The blank ovals of glass have been replaced by a pair of rather disconcerting eyes, keen and slightly sly. She's taller and less baby-faced than her statue was.

"You appear to have an imp infestation. Want me to deal with them?"

Verthandi tears her eyes away from the enigmatic alien sprite, and sees a pair of imps busy climbing on the tables in the refectory. "No thanks, I've got this." She summons her broom and struts towards them. The creatures look like they are carved from living marble. Clawed hands, random body-tentacles, glass-eyed faces just like the Oracle robot. They both charge her at once but they don't stand a chance. She feints right, then ducks to the left and sweeps the nearest imp's legs out from under it with the broom-head. It knocks the other one flying, and she dispatches them both with overhand blows from the handle. Just like in the simulations.

"Is that really your strife specibus? Broomkind?" asks the sprite.
"I'm a nun. I can't go about wielding a sword, can I?"
"I guess I'm hardly one to talk, what with my weaponised knitting needles…. It feels like we've been walking for hours. I'm surprised S'Burb took this entire building through into the Medium."
"The Rose is my home, and now that the other nuns have left, all of it is officially my home. I think there was some kind of legal shenanigans to make it happen. Come on, through here."

The refectory is windowless, lit mainly via the tinted glass roof. However, there is a wide balcony outside where the Abbess used to dine with important guests. Verthandi unlocks the double doors with a silver key and throws them wide. "Let's take a look at our new planet!"

She stops at the balustrade and stares, awestruck. It is beautiful, but she does not understand what she's looking at. They're at sea, that much is obvious, but what are those things on the water? They are green and circular, and dead level with the waterline. The nearest one looks almost a quarter of a mile across. Really flat islands, maybe, but how come they haven't flooded? Their surfaces are slightly ridged and irregular, making them look almost alive. There is a slightly raised rim around the edges.

Between the flat green islands stand more vast structures that remind Verthandi of The Rose, only these ones are dazzling white. They also seem to have splayed themselves wider, somehow. Verthandi pictures the abbey levering itself open, spreading its arched roofs like the searching tentacles of a hungry polyp. Rose joins her at the railing.

"Oh, wow, giant waterlilies! I wasn't expecting that."
"What's a waterlily?"
"A kind of aquatic flower."
"What's a flower?"
"Well, I guess those white things are, though normally they're smaller. A lot smaller. The green things are lily-pads. I'd love to see the frog that sits on those!"

They enjoy the view in silence for a while. Then something disturbs the water. Out past the nearest "lily-pad," a long, dark back breaches the surface. It must be huge, but it is dwarfed by the gargantuan plants. A fountain of air and water sprays up from one end with a sound like a giant sneeze.

"Now, that I do know. It's a whale," Verthandi says.
"Yes, whales do seem to be a universal."
"So this world is what, Land of Waterlilies and Whales?"
"Land of Whales and Lilies would be better. A planet name needs a certain lilt to it. Though waterlilies are technically from an entirely different botanical group to true lilies."
"You should talk to Urdra, she's a huge nerd for all that stuff."
"I'd like to."
"Land of Whales and Waterlilies, that doesn't sound too bad, right? I'd hate for Urdra to yell at us for being scientifically inaccurate."
"LOWAW it is, boss." Rose shakes her head. "Just when you think you've seen everything…. I think I'm going to enjoy this."