* The Basic Set *

Even though you had only one person vote in the previous chapter, that was enough for a decision, and here are the results.

1: Will you begin as a herbivore or carnivore?
1a: Herbivore.
2: Which of the five available planets do you pick?
2d: Green Land, Azure Seas, Azure Sky.
3: What Difficulty Do You Set The Game At?
3a: Easy.
4: What 'Cell' Template Do You Pick?
4c: Cheating Carl.
5: What Do You Name Your Home Planet?
5f: Fuckistan.

Now for the explanation...!

You go through the step-by-step process of choices for starting SPORE, picking a planet, (You decide to go with the most Earth-like one available,) then choosing the Cell Stage since that's the only one available right now, and then pick out the creature that you want to play. You chose Herbivore, going for the eventual slide over to carnivorous and then back into Omnivorous where you will remain for the rest of the game.

Out of idle curiosity, you click the template button when you get to the Cell choice screen and are shocked to discover that there are several possible creatures to pick from! You take a quick look and do some math in your head, finding that the creature which gives you the highest starting DNA is the Minno:

...with its five eyes at 5 DNA a piece, so that's the one you grab.

You then are prompted to name your creature, which is weird because that normally only happens when you first enter the Creature Creator. You chose to name it "Carl", for whatever reason. Going back to the normal order of things you then are prompted to pick a difficulty and select "Easy", this is supposed to be a casual diversion. Next, it asks you to select a name for your planet and in a moment of perverse amusement, you type "Fuckistan".

All that done you press confirm, and the intro movie plays...

You start in deep space, with a large chunk of rock, dust, and ice hurtling toward a yellow/white sun. As it approaches it is giving off a stream of small particles like a comet. It passes very near to the sun, flying between the solar surface and a plasma streamer. Then the camera goes black for a second.

Next, you see the comet, (much reduced in size,) flying towards a world with green lands and azure seas. The comet breaks apart as it enters the atmosphere, flying over a land covered with strange gear like sculptures, then disappearing over the horizon. A moment later there is a flash of light and bits of debris come flying out, to land in the ocean of this world... The camera goes black for a moment again and you follow a tiny chunk of rock down into the depths, where it hits another rock on the sea-bed and breaks apart, revealing your creature...

This is when an unexpected journey begins: a vortex of energy emerges from the screen of your computer and you are sucked into the game itself!

You wake up feeling confused and frightened: and having way more eyes than you really ought to. Your body is also missing its hands and other limbs, you only have a whiplike tail, a small tentacle mouth, and all these eyes...