Quests & Tasks

Quests and Tasks are the main driving force of the story in From the Ground Up. Unlike the randomly generated story events that happen throughout gameplay, Quests and Tasks are actively driven by character wants, needs, and input.

Quests
Quests are longer, more involved storylines that tend to span multiple stages, during which the actions of the character/s involved usually have consequences, though the severity of such varies. The very first string of Quests a player is given at the start of a new game has the player finding a place to make camp (if they do not start with one), gathering loners for a meeting to introduce themselves and their intentions (a la Firestar's Quest), and searching for a Highstones / Moonpool-analogous place for the medicine cat to commune with StarClan (again, if they do not start with one).

Quests are typically given to characters by StarClan, or are otherwise driven by larger-scale environmental factors.

Tasks
Tasks are much smaller than quests, in that they're quite simple, and usually require very little thought or effort to complete. The most common Task is the classic "fetch quest" style objective, whereby a cat will ask another cat for an item, (i.e. a medicine cat asking to be brought a specific herb), however this is not the only kind of Task in game. Other examples include dealing with a predator, investigating an unfamiliar scent, or speaking to another cat on the task-giver's behalf.

Sometimes, completing a certain Task will start another Task or a corresponding Quest. This tends to happen in particular with "unfamiliar scent" tasks, if the scent belongs to something or someone that must be dealt with.