Would you like to play a game?
— CRUX
On September 13th, 2011, an email was sent to several members of Slender Nation inviting them to play a game. The sender, CRUX_crucible said the game would begin on October 1st, and encouraged those who received the email to spread the word. A thread was posted about it on Slender Nation, and several members agreed to join.
Shortly after, someone named D started a blog vowing to find out about CRUX and to stop his games, and a mysterious third party, ARC, who seems to have a connection to CRUX, revealed himself.
Then some shit went down, and the rest is merely an issue of who is dead, and who becomes the next servant of the TREE.
(Also contains demon gods.)
Not to be confused with The Crucible.
Contains examples of:
- Anyone Can Die: Even the Players. Especially the Players.
- Arc Words"Every dog shall have its day."
- Break the Cutie: Gorger going after Allison sends Steph off into the deep end.
- Bullying a Dragon: Otherwise known as "poking the bear", which has become a favorite pass-time of Players. Unfortunately this tends to backfire really horribly.
- Childhood Friends: Dante and Allison. Although due to reasons Allison would rather not get into they have agreed to be Just Friends.
- Continuity Nod: Sarah returns for a brief moment after breaking up with RED to be screwed by Blackmuse (AKA, the Duke).
- Cryptic Conversation: Almost every conversation with a plot device.
- Curiosity Causes Conversion: Because let's face it, looking for the TREE on purpose is just asking for trouble.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Zander did this to Gorger in the form of a parody of Erasure's "Always"
. He also literally flipped off Dean (formerly COSM) at the end of a challenge. - Deal with the Devil: The Sins are fond of this.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: CRUX's and Near's dreams.
- Dull Surprise: Surprisingly subverted, especially with the number of Genre Savvy players.
- Eldritch Abomination: The TREE. Anyone who looks at it goes crazy and gains a Split Personality.
- Epiphany Therapy: This is the reason why people become Branches to the TREE.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: As if the Slender Man and the Fears weren't enough to deal with. The monsters involved also include Skinwalkers, something akin to angels, and Demonic Gods of the Seven Deadly Sins.
- Figure It Out Yourself: Every major plot device. It doesn't matter how much you prod a character either.
- "I/We cannot confirm or deny." is pretty much a stock phrase.
- Foreshadowing
- Each of the practice challenges plus the first three challenges of round 1 represent a seven deadly sin. It is assumed that for every round, there will be a challenge that corresponds with at least one deadly sin.
- Genre Blindness: A number of characters are guilty of this. Most notably RED and CRUX.
- You can also add Dean to that list.
- Go Mad from the Revelation:
- What happens when you look at the TREE.
- Also, anytime somebody mentions to a character that they have a split personality.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Has become very common once Gorger appeared.
- Hidden Purpose Test: The game.
- Hypocrisy Nod: When a Player sacrificed herself for the sake of everyone she loved after promising not to, she was rather quick to admit it.
- If You Ever Do Anything To Hurt Her/Him: So far CRUX's audio recorded threat against Dean takes the cake for being the most downright disturbing.
- Meaningful Name: Both the CPIRA agents' code names and the names of the Sins.
- Red Rage's nicknames for the Players.
- The Men in Black: CPIRA
- Not a Game: A mantra of the Crucible, which many of the Players knew from the beginning.
- Not Himself: Anyone with an alter ego.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Happens more often than one can realize.
- Politeness Judo: A skill you need to have in order to find anything out that's of the remote importance. See Figure It Out Yourself.
- Poor Communication Kills: CPIRA's fatal flaw. And they wonder why they lose so many members.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: CPIRA full stop. They are ridiculously understaffed, and whenever you need them they're usually dealing with problems of their own or simply not available.
- Riddle Me This: Some of CRUX's challenges started out like this.
- Rule of Drama: Played for laughs.
- Sanity Slippage: It's either this or you die.
- Seven Deadly Sins: There's a Fear for every one of them.
- Shout-Out
- CPIRA's logo is the Swollen Eyeball from Invader Zim.
- "Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
- Trickster acts a wee bit similar to The Joker from Batman.
- A document from Arkham Asylum also happened to arrive in Dante's mail one day.
- Along with a version of the Necronomicon.
- The Zalgo Virus which forces its victim to type in Zalgo text.
- The objects that some Players choose to hold on to in order to produce some form of solidarity are referred to as The Pieces of Eight.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Everyone whenever Dean is on. One player even found a song for the occasion.
- So What Do We Do Now?: After every major plot point.
- Split Personality: Everyone who has seen the TREE has one.
- Split-Personality Takeover: So far Blackmuse/Pseudomuse, and Trickster/Daft, although Civil/CRUX is well on his way.
- Surveillance as the Plot Demands: CPIRA and Trickster respectively.
- Survivor Guilt: Almost everyone who's still alive.
- Tempting Fate: Anytime somebody mentions how quiet it's been. It's gotten to a point where players have to knock on wood afterwards.
- To the Pain: Whenever a victim is being tortured, it's almost guaranteed that you will hear about it while it happens.
- The Plan: CPIRA's plan to save CRUX from himself.
- The Call Knows Where You Live: Or at least what websites you frequent.
- Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Anything that crawls around inside the Empty City will do.
- Weirdness Magnet: The game itself.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The Skinwalker hasn't been mentioned again ever since its first appearance.
