Tribble

Artifacts of Godville

Tribble
A cute baby Truffle!
Type	🧷Normal
Value	Unsellable
Description	Cute, but cumbersome.
v · t

A tribble is a small, furry creature that reproduces at an incredible rate; it's born pregnant. Although adorable, its ability to multiply (and the amount of food it eats) makes it indirectly very dangerous.

The tribble is a special artifact that cannot be sold, dropped, crafted or used for any purpose. Once a tribble finds its way into a hero's inventory, it will hog the space for a good while. The only way to get rid of them involves death.

Usually they come in pairs or threes at the beginning, but overtime the hero's loot bag will fill up with more of them until his inventory is almost full.

There are two kinds: Regular tribbles, and Hungry tribbles.

History

For a brief period during April Fool's Day 2013, a wormhole opened between the Godville and Star Trek universes. A few tribbles slipped through, and they've been making a home in loot bags, Mystery boxes, and the like ever since.

On the Halloween 2019 update, a new side job was introduced that - among others - would involve to 'breed a tribble.' It is considered complete once another tribble gets added to the hero's inventory.

Acquiring

There are a few ways of obtaining these living artifacts:

• Opening a treasure box artifact (bag of trophies, orange box, etc.) obtained from a point of interest or by the end of fishing (either regular or hungry)
• Opening a black box artifact (mystery box, deus ex machina, etc.) (3 at a time, regular only)
• Defeating a Boss-monster that happens to have a couple in its inventory (hungry only)

Note that there's a higher chance of encountering tribbles if the Daily Forecast in the Godville Times mention a sudden increase of alien lifeforms.

If at any point both regular tribbles and hungry tribbles co-exist in the hero's inventory, then after about 15 minutes, the regular tribbles will get "assimilated" to become hungry tribbles instead.

!Hero's Diary↻ ↑

The box with a question mark suddenly fell apart. Three tribbles living inside it immediately moved into my backpack. Oh, god…

Behavior

The anatomy of one of these creatures.

While not in an adventure, the tribbles will occasionally multiply to fill up the hero's loot bag, preventing them from carrying more valuable treasures and resorting to return to town more often to try and sell them. While this is happening, an existing artifact might be consumed - replaced by another tribble, though not always.

Because no trader - hero-trader, roadside, or otherwise - wants to be overburdened with tribbles in their inventories, the hero will have great difficulty selling them, ending up stuck with an increasingly full loot bag for some time.

After several fruitless hours and up to about a day - depending on the inventory's capacity, usually if a little above half of the inventory are tribbles - the hero will finally find someone who would graciously buy his tribbles, but it's rarely worth the loss of inventory space in the meantime. Rates go at about 250-500 gold per tribble just as the hero starts the selling phase while in town.

!Hero's Diary↻ ↑

Peeked into my loot bag just in time to see a furry ball making purr and divided into two pieces.

!Hero's Diary↻ ↑

Found even more furry tribbles in my inventory. Where did they come from?

!Hero's Diary↻ ↑

Finally found an upholsterer willing to take these tribbles off my hands for 7292 gold coins. Lucky for me, unlucky for the tribbles.

Hungry Tribbles

Troubling indeed.

A hungry tribble is an alternate variant of the tribble that behaves much similarly to their regular lineage.

However, unlike those regular ones, the hungry tribbles take on a more active role by being ferocious to both the hero and the monster he had defeated, and reproducing at an even faster rate by devouring most slain monsters - including their gold, loot, and perhaps even experience (although the latter is unconfirmed.)

The hero will occasionally remark in his diary that the hungry tribbles would hurt the hero slightly by nibbling his ear with their sharp teeth, or the fact that they'd leave nothing but a single bone for him in place of the monster's corpse.

In addition, once the hero's loot bag had reached a critical mass of hungry tribbles containing ~75% of inventory space, they will evacuate all at once and flee to see the world - presumably on a family vacation. Upon doing so, the hungry tribbles typically leave large sums of gold - perhaps more per tribble than regular ones - most likely as overdue rent.

Given this, while ordinary tribbles are almost always a burden on the hero, the gold received from carrying hungry tribbles may very well make it a worthwhile venture. Of course, the fact that these hungry tribbles also consume potential items and gold from defeated monsters may leave the answer of this debate to each their own opinion.

!Hero's Diary↻ ↑

The tribe of tribbles reached its critical mass and loudly transformed into something that immediately ran off into the forest. It left 15305 gold coins and a few bold things in my bag.

Assorted diary entries

!Hero's Diary↻ ↑

Notes from the battlefield: Beepocles is defeated. El Cannabis got 5058 gold coins. El Cannabis put a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble, a tribble and Beepocles' dog tag into his bag.

!Hero's Diary↻ ↑

A soft tribble went to my hand. It wheezed and purred and made me feel better and healthier.

!Hero's Diary↻ ↑

Used my loot bag as a pillow while resting. It was unusually soft... I guess there is something good in these tribbles.

!Hero's Diary↻ ↑

Tried to get rid of all these tribbles, but they bluntly refused to come out of my loot bag.

!Hero's Diary↻ ↑

Darn tribbles won't leave my loot bag! I think they've already built a habitat.