SBURG - Round 2 Sign-ups

There are other excuses besides sleeping in. Alys, if I recall, was hanging out with her LARP group for most of the morning.

I've got your excuse right here. I was working on a sprite and IC bio when I realized that this isn't the MSPA forum and we don't need either, silly me.

TLDR PART

NAME: Hali Burton
GENDER: Female
APPEARANCE: Girl dressed in black pants, white dress shirt, and a red velvet vest; the sort of thing a casino dealer would wear. Makes herself as presentable as possible while avoiding being attractive. Brown hair tied into a bun, always wears sunglasses to cover her eyes. Fair skinned, tall.
PERSONALITY: Gambling is natural for her and she's quite good at taking calculated risks. She's not impulsive, she's actually quite cold, calculating, and conniving. She likes playing with anything that she feels is a risk, and cares little for anything else besides high stakes affairs. She's a skilled dancer and musician however, and bonds with people genuinely if they share that interest.
HISTORY: Hali has no parents as far as she is aware and was raised by fosters. She was raised by doting fosters, who were so doting she never grew up with certain bits of common sense- the need to avoid danger and the need to treat others well. Due to her innate ability to play the odds, she has yet to get herself killed in her extreme games. SBURB is the logical end point of this increasingly self destructive lifestyle.
CLASS: Thief of Heart
LAND: Land of Velvet and Roulettes
FETCH MODUS: Cage Modus, to retrieve an item, she must win sufficient chips through a set of gambling minigames to earn sufficient chips to turn in for an item.
STRIFE SPECIBUS: Shoekind. Does not use shoes as a weapon, but refers to the device used in blackjack to store decks of cards. Hali uses dangerously sharp and aerodynamic playing cards as her weapons.
CONSORTS: Antpersons who have very little regard for their own lives
PESTERCHUM HANDLE: croupierFold
TYPING QUIRK: Randomly has spoken in the wrong verb tense because she will have hooked her pesterchum through a probability matrix.

edited 5th Nov '11 8:19:21 PM by Bassetete

Ummm. That might need to change a fair bit. It's very similar to the GM's character, Eric. Read his character profile to see what I mean.

Indeed. Hali is certainly an interesting character, and her personality works very well. However, the absurdly-rich-kid thing was already done by Eric. If you tone that bit of your character down (making it so that she hasn't got there yet, but is trying to work her way there, perhaps), you're in.

I totally glazed over that, sorry. Fixed by changing her to a gambler type instead.

edited 5th Nov '11 8:19:45 PM by Bassetete

That's quite all right. The changes are fine, so you're in!

And with that, I must regretfully announce that sign-ups are CLOSED.

You can scratch that, I'll have to rescind my attempt to join up.

That sucks.. Mind if I ask why?

...Dang... Late to the party. Unless I can have Bassetete's spot, by any chance? :)

...Worth a shot. Would someone be kind enough to let me know if a third round happens?

Don't give up just yet. We're busy people. You can probably still get in.

Yes, you can definitely still sign-up (sorry about late response, by the way). Seeing as Bassetete dropped out, we have one space still available, and it will remain available until Eric Enters (which is a ways off yet).

(Incidentally, if we reach a point where the window of signup opportunity has almost passed and still the slot remains open, then do you think I could have another character? We could have an even twelve, and I have this great concept just lying around.)

Personally, I'd say I trust you enough to give you a second character, but we'll have to wait and see.

All right... Sorry for not checking back.

I'll read everyone's profile and put together my own character this weekend.

Right now I'm busy battling some annoying malware that got into my system by looking like a virus protection notification and tricking me into clicking on the button.

Are signups still happening?

• NAME: Luke Castle
• GENDER: Male
• APPEARANCE: You are a MUSCLEBOUND FELLA, who is PERPETUALLY COVERED IN GREASE. You are rarely seen without your SWEET CAP, and you seem to have an AVERSION TO SLEEVES. Your hair is UNKEMPT so you keep it SHORT and HIDE IT UNDER YOUR HAT. You own many different colors and styles of JEANS.
• PERSONALITY: You are very GRUFF and FOCUSED. You lack tact, so you tend to SAY WHATEVER YOU ARE THINKING. You will not hesitate to TELL PEOPLE THEY ANNOY YOU, so you HAVE TROUBLE WITH PEOPLE. You have no patience with OVERDRAMATICS, preferring people SPEAK STRAIGHT.

You love to BUILD and FIX, especially MOTOR VEHICLES and PRACTICAL STRUCTURES. You are not a sculptor, you are a BUILDER. You also have an unhealthy obsession with TERRIBLE REALITY TV. You are quietly ASHAMED of this, and HIDE IT WHENEVER POSSIBLE. You would love to OWN A DOG. A big one. You are truly MANLY.

• HISTORY: You have learned all that you know from a LOVING FATHER, who gave you your love of building things. Your room is essentially one huge GARAGE where you can BUILD THINGS.

• CLASS: Knight of Craft
• LAND: Land of Grease and Steel
• FETCH MODUS: Blueprint Modus: everything that is placed in your modus is stripped down to blueprints and must be rebuilt upon fetching. Not ENTIRELY from scratch, but still.
• STRIFE SPECIBUS: Wrenchkind, with a 2x Wrenchkind variant.
• CONSORTS: Tiny kangaroos that are many shades of brown, with one gigantic rhino-esque horn on their nose.
• SPRITES/PROTOTYPINGS: TBD
• PESTERCHUM HANDLE: ironMachinist
• TYPING QUIRK: Y'tend t'slur yer words a bit, with a little bit of a Southern bend to yer speakin', but ya type with proper grammar an' punctuation.
• OTHER DETAILS: Left-handed.

edited 18th Nov '11 2:26:30 PM by spiralalg

... Eeg. Sorry I forgot to check back on the thread, guys. I figured I wouldn't actually get a chance, so...

I'll read everyone's profiles and put a character of my own together this weekend. I would have said something earlier today, but I got into a fifteen-round fight with one of those fake antivirus malware things.

spiralalg, just a minor point: we already have elephant consorts.

Normally I'd accept you and close sign-ups, but considering that Scrounge already expressed interest, I'm going to withhold judgement until he can post a sign-up, since it wouldn't really be fair to him not to. Once his post is up, I'll decide what I'm going to do.

I can edit mine. ^_^; Sorry about that.

Yeah, I totally understand.

Thank you for your patience. I hope this profile meets with your approval.

• NAME: Viktor Mauskreig
• GENDER: Male
• APPEARANCE: Over in a corner where he hopes nobody is looking sits a YOUNG, MOUSY TEEN with LARGE EARS, BEADY GRAY EYES, GLASSES, FRECKLES, and MESSY BROWN HAIR. He seems a bit JITTERY, like he might JUMP AT ANY LOUD NOISE. His clothes are unremarkable, a GRAY T-SHIRT and BLACK JEANS, but it bears noting that his POSTURE is TERRIBLE. Seriously, if there were a DEJECTED SLOUCH-OFF, this guy would be MOPING OVER A GOLD MEDAL. He wears a LENGTH OF CHAIN around his waist in lieu of a belt, but his PANTS SEEM TO STAY ON JUST FINE.
• PERSONALITY: The name of VIKTOR MASUKREIG suggests a titan of a man with indomitable will... As such it must be some sort of COSMIC JOKE that the name landed on THIS GUY. Vik is NERVOUS and BASHFUL, with POOR SELF-ESTEEM, and is generally DEPRESSED ABOUT SOMETHING. He is fairly intelligent, but a bit SCATTERBRAINED and EASILY DISTRACTED. As such, it's no surprise that he's EASILY STARTLED and OFTEN SLIGHTLY DEPRESSED. His personality is generally somewhat SUBDUED, but is prone to the occasional OUTBURST when OVERWHELMED BY EMOTION.

He is FOND of a wide variety of cartoons, including, somewhat embarrassingly, the latest SQUIDDLES series, which he insists is one of the funniest things on television. He also shares a fondness for TRANSFORMING ROBOTS with one of his flatmates, though due to his SHYNESS, it is likely NEITHER KNOWS of this SHARED PASSION. He has also had A VARIETY OF OTHER INTERESTS, in which he has since LOST INTEREST. In particular, he has A LARGE NUMBER OF CARDS from a TRADING CARD GAME at which he was SPECTACULARLY INEPT.

He is ACTUALLY REASONABLY INTELLIGENT, and occasionally ODDLY PHILOSPHICAL. However, he is a also a PESSIMIST.

• HISTORY: Nobody else is QUITE SURE of how you would up as their FLATMATE. You have mostly KEPT TO YOURSELF, and have had trouble MEETING THEIR GAZE. As such NOBODY'S GOTTEN TO KNOW YOU. But you PAY RENT RELIABLY and CAUSE NO PROBLEMS, and are generally just thought of as THE QUIET ONE. You have been SHY AND MEEK for all of your life, which TEASING and BEING STUCK WITH A NAME THAT BELONGS ON A MAN MADE OF TWO OF YOU have NOT HELPED AT ALL. When you heard about SBURG, you decided it might be a good way for you and your flatmates to GET TO KNOW ONE ANOTHER without the TREPIDATION that comes from BEING IN THE SAME ROOM AS ANOTHER HUMAN BEING.
• CLASS: Fool of Fear
• LAND: Land of Walls and Cheeses.
• FETCH MODUS: HEAP MODUS. Places items in a "pile", which can be rearranged or browsed through, with the newest items always placed on top. However, only items on top of the pile are visible, and the inventory must be rummaged through like the big pile of junk it is to find items that may have been buried near the bottom (sometimes literally, requiring the ejection of the entire inventory to find the item), assuming you haven't forgotten what's down there entirely.
• STRIFE SPECIBUS: chainKind, useful in whipping, binding, or strangling foes. An intimidating weapon, easily passed off as a fashion statement.
• CONSORTS: Mice, of course! Sizes and colors vary, but none are over three feet.
• SPRITES/PROTOTYPINGS: None yet.
• PESTERCHUM HANDLE: nervousWrecker
• TYPING QUIRK: very careful about punctuation, but never uses capital letters, unless talking about Other People, in which case he may use caps when none are necessary. however, when startled, upset, or otherwise agitated into an emotional outburst THE CAPS COME OUT, AND HE GETS TAKES ON A WAY MORE AGGRESSIVE TONE, COMPLETE WITH GRATUITOUS EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!
• OTHER DETAILS: He can come off as a bit CREEPY, and may even occasionally play it up if he's trying to frighten you off, but he's MORE SCARED OF YOU THAN YOU ARE OF HIM. Vik is a bit SNARKY, but this being HOMESTUCK, this is not out of the ordinary. His class seems to be an ironic sort of joke at his expense, as his fear often makes a fool of him, but it's possible there's more to it than that...

edited 14th Jan '12 4:11:27 PM by Scrounge

Okay, having gone over the sign-ups, those are both great, and I'm going to let you both in. As a result the sign-up is now [CLOSED]!

Oh my god, yay!

So should we just jump in? After reading what's happened so far, of course.

Yep, that's perfectly acceptable.

Thank you!

I'll be getting caught up and jumping in too.

Hopefully it won't take me too long!

> Axes: Recap!

Right, this is the recap for Act 1 - Rapid Succession Movement.

Pages 1-15

The game starts with Eric Donovan, the young and ludicrously wealthy landlord of an apartment block/mansion, heading downstairs to distribute a number of SBURG Beta keys to his tenants, having acquired them as part of a reward for being on-time with their rent. He enters the kitchen and begins to distribute the keys to his tenants.

Two of them, Mike Vallance and Tom Ambrose, set up the start of the server-client chain, with Tom as the server. Likewise Alexandra Jones and May Brown arrange to have May server for Alexandra. Meanwhile Robin DuMonte sets up a server connection with Renner Thorton. All of the pairs start preparing their clients to enter, despite being awestruck by the implications of the game.

Tom asks Eric for advice as to how to open the Cruxtruder, and Eric cautions Tom over pesterchum that he is being held accountable for any damage done to the mansion, and threatens to stab him with a spoon if his property is damaged. Tom pops the lid using Eric tertiary back-up safe and Mike prototypes a stuffed eagle. Robin damages Renner’s prized black dragon figurine by accident, and apologizes. Another tenant, the method-acting LARPer Alyss Fletcher, begins looking for a server but fails to find one at first.

Mike enters first, by downing a cruxite bottle’s worth of milk, and enters the Medium in the Land of Bells and Poison and almost immediately initiates a Strife with an imp. Both Alyss and the legally-blind, anxious tenant named Steve Augure contact Eric in order to find a server and then bump into each other, with Steve servering for Alyss. In the Medium, Mike second-tier prototypes his sprite with a suit of armour, and Tom asks Eric to check out Mike’s room on earth. On the way there, Eric’s PDA crashes, leaving him incommunicado until he can get his laptop. Eric discovers, to his dismay, that everything inside has been burnt to cinders. Outraged, he vows to get vengeance on Tom, but waits for the right moment to get back at him.

Mike’s suddenly-helpful sprite directs him to the roof, and Tom helps him build up to his Gate as he cuts through a swathe of imps, having attracted a large horde of them when Tom tried to weaponise a piano . This means Tom has to turn down the offer of being client player to newcomer Beat Skeptic, a cheerful amateur musician, which later costs him dear. Beat instead servers for May. Renner prototypes his broken dragon figurine, whereas Alexandra prototypes with a copy of The Legend Of Zelda, turning her kernel into a Navisprite.

Renner creates his artefact, a d20, and starts rolling it, but nothing appears to happen. Alexandra creates a cruxite pistol, but find that she cannot seem to fire it at anything. May prototypes a fern and creates cruxite bubble-wrap, which is far simpler to use, and Enters into the Land of Jungles And Rain. Eric returns to his room and collects his things, warning the house that Mike has disappeared. Alexandra gives up on her artefact and starts servering for Robin. Robin prototypes a one-eyed fairy doll and opens his Cruxite Lock, entering into the Land of Cities and Fog. He is accosted by a cunning imp who disappears before he can be properly fought. Meanwhile, Renner also enters, having finally rolled the correct result on his d20 (a 13), depositing him in the Land of Glass And Clockwork. However, through a stunning lack of perception and living in the basement, Renner doesn’t realise this and stays in his room.

Cheerful scissor enthusiast Nita Pears contacts Eric about playing, but he directs her away and tells her to get hedge clippers from the shed in order to make her Scissorkind specibus more formidable. Instead, he links up with Tom as his server, and starts screwing with him by tearing up his room and throwing his prized console out a window as a method of petty revenge.

Alexandra returns to her room and realises that she has to shoot herself just in time to avoid being killed. As a result she enters the Land of Springs and Pathways. Nita finally links up with Beat and they engage in casual banter. Beat prototypes a bat and then breaks his artefact, a goblet, by singing to enter the Land of Brass and Wind. Tom and Eric argue and Tom prototypes his SNES, giving the enemies a degree of pixellisation. Robin continues to fight imps, although his original attacker eludes him and begins commanding the other imps around. Tom eventually alchemizes a syringe and injects himself to enter the Land of Storms and Silver.

The new entrants, save for Renner who is still hiding in the basement, begin fighting off imps. The head imp in Robin’s house names himself Wilt Chamberlain Norton III and declares himself Emperor of the Land of Cities and Fog. Eric starts distributing Gristtorrent and siphons enough Shale Grist from Mike to start building a Punch Designix. This leads to a string of alchemization sprees amongst the players. Most importantly, Tom creates a Healing Shiv which starts him on his class quest as the Mage of Life. Tom prototypes a sockpuppet to make his sprite more helpful. This results in Socky the Destroyer, a monstrous, screaming sockpuppet who talks entirely in angrish and video game dialogue. Robin helps Nita with using the desiginix, and Eric takes time out of helping Tom and Socky with a horde of imps to explain the game to Steve. The revelation that Alyss could die if he makes a mistake (although Eric was at that point joking) leads to Steve having a panic attack. He goes to his ‘happy place’ and awakes as his dreamself of Prospit. He has visited it many times before, but has no prophetic powers because his astrophobia prevents him from looking up at Skaia.

Meanwhile, everyone makes progress. Mike kills an Ogre with the help of his sprite, and the others start cutting through groups of imps. After dispatching a particularly large mob, Tom takes a pricelss Ming vase hostage, leading to Eric and Tom declaring a ceasefire. Tom interrogates his sprite and works out the basic plot of the game. Robin shows a measure of restraint by allowing an imp to escape with it’s life on the terms that it tells everyone to stay out of his way. Emperor Norton, having none of that, orders in an Ogre from a flustered Draconian Dignitary.

On Prospit, Steve encounters a Friendly Well-Wisher, a massive Prospitian Agent tasked with guarding the player’s dream rooms. The Well-Wisher shows Steve the clouds of Skaia and is shown an undetermined prophecy which assuages his fears and brings him back into the real world.

Beat prototypes his sprite again with a poster of Ella Fitzgerald, resulting in a sprite which can only speak in scat and is therefore useless. Mike reaches his gate, but it is blocked by a pair of Ogres, and Tom steps in to help as a server. Robin encounters an Ogre and is forced to resort to underhand tactics to fight it off, resulting in him gaining a new Wrath Gambit, that of the Wicked Rapscallion. Robin is horrified by this acquisition, as it reminds of someone he knows who was horribly cruel to him, and he has a minor mental breakdown over it. Robin’s sprite reveals that it is the first of a series of choices that will define the success of the session. Robin head to his bedroom and falls asleep (though he doesn’t awake on Prospit). A Sburg discussion memo is set up on pesterchum to distribute info about the game. Nita also starts a memo to keep track of prototyping. Meanwhile, Alyss prototypes with a D&D figurine of an illithid warlock.

A future version of Eric, revealed to be the Prince of Time, travels back from a doomed timeline where one of the players went insane and killed all the dreamselves in order to prevent it. Having saved the timeline, he flies to Alexandra’s house and prototypes with her sprite, becoming Ericsprite. He then explains the situation to her, and agrees to help her reach the first gate.

Pages 16-30

Ericsprite converses with Alexandra and helps her streamline the alchemization process, which she posts in the discussion memo to help others. Mike kills the ogres, with Tom’s help, and enters his first gate. Beat tries to converse with his own sprite, but can’t understand what it says. Robin wakes from a nightmare of being attacked by someone in a garage and declares that he will continue to repress the memories.

Mike arrives on the surface of the Land of Bells and Poison and is immediately contacted by his exile, who insists they are not friends and lays out ‘ground rules’ for their partnership. Tom moves towards his own gate, muttering a quick prayer to Murphy, the god of bad luck, who sics an ogre and a few imps on him for offending him. Socksprite engages an imp who turns out to be a SEGA Genesis fan, result in a bloody and brutal brawl between the two of them.

Alyss arranges to server for Nita, and accidentally kills her pet hamster, Dowells, within a few seconds. Nita double-prototypes her sprite with Dowells’ body and a dog body pillow, creating Dowellsprite.

Despite the obstacles, Robin alchemizes a better weapon and heads to his Gate, Emperor Norton having withdrawn his troops after a crisis of consciousness about sending his troops against a clearly superior enemy. However, only moments from the gate, Norton steals the alchemiter and hastily builds his own weaponry and challenges Robin to a duel. Robin initially tries to reason with him, but due to a mistake about which Wrath Gambit he has equipped, he finds he lacks to necessary charisma to convince Norton, resulting in a short and swift battle where Norton temporarily blinds Robin and cuts off his hand. Robin switches back to Wicked Rapscallion and maims Norton in a blind rage.

Nita enters the Land of Insanity and Tundra by cutting the heart out of a figurine of herself and is horrified by her land hallucinatory nature. On Derse, Jack Noir observes her prototyping and grumbles to himself about life. Nita falls unconscious and wakes upon Derse, where Jack sends Courtyard Droll to act as a tour guide. She immediately falls unconscious again, however, and wakes up in her land.

Ericsprite and Alexandra fight off a massive horde of imps, and Ericsprite tells her to check up on Robin. Discovering he is now an amputee, Alexandra comforts him over pesterchum and helps him to bandage the wound, averting a doomed timeline where Robin died. This causes Robin to pass his First Trial, a series of challenges related to his class quest.

Socksprite and Tom triumph, and Tom enters his first gate, emerging in the Land of Storms and Silver where he is confronted by his consorts, oversized grey toads. The toad, Scavenger Copperyes, informs him that he is the Mage of Life and guides him to the toad village. Robin alchemizes a replacement hand and heads through his gate to the Land of Cities and Fog proper. On Derse, Jack Noir hears about Emperor Norton, declares him a rebel, and sends a battleship to the Land of Cities and Fog, helmed by the Authority Regulator, in order to apprehend him.

Mike begins to server for Steve, but accidentally throws his Pre-punched card out the window. Nita fights her way through waves of enemies, but is nearly killed by ogre which slices her sprite in half. She is contacted by her Exile who, along with Alyss, helps her kill it.

The final tenant, meek and dejected Viktor Mauskrieg, wakes up and asks Eric for information about the game. He is then contacted by an unknown party named ‘paramiltaryBastion’ over pesterchum, who leaves a bunch of cryptic and derogatory messages for him before Eric bans him from the chat.

Renner finally gets out of the basement and fights an imp. Tom finds the consort village under siege and fights off a basilisk, as well as freeing the consorts’ leader, Longseer Goldtongue.

Alexandra enters her first gate and reaches the Land of Springs and Pathways. Ericsprite, his spritely duties fulfilled, goes off to rendezvous with an unknown party. The person in question is revealed to be Galloway, the spectral leader of the tarot-themed Hand (this session’s Felt analogue) who used his powers to travel from the doomed timeline into the alpha. He reveals that the pair of them struck a deal, and that his Alpha incarnation is Mike’s exile. He gives Ericsprite an undefined object and tells him to deliver it to Tom’s house.

Beat is haunted by the screams of the damned and fails to kill an imp because he freaks out over it. Viktor tries to contact Renner to find a server, but Renner is strifing and cannot respond. Viktor fears for Renner’s safety and contacts Eric for help. Eric cannot contact Renner or his server (Robin is also strifing) and so starts messing with Viktor instead.

Viktor reconnects to paramilitaryBastion, who tells him the game is pointless and reveals he isn’t from Prospit, but is on the player’s side. Renner finishes his strife and returns to help Viktor as a server. PB disappears, claiming he is being watched.

Alexandra meets her consorts (bird-men) and is directed to their Temple. She is revealed to be the Maid of Hope. Steve heads down to the garden to get the pre-punched card, but it is stolen by a squirrel. He then follows it to the park and strifes against the Woodland Crew, a quartet of adorable forest creatures. Robin meets his consorts, a bunch of ghosts, and helps one escape to the catacombs under the city.

Tom fights the basilisk, unlocking his first Fraymotif. Nita also fights a (headless) undead basilisk and is knocked out. Her sprite saves her and she wakes up on Derse, where the Droll gives her a proper tour. Alexandra strifes against a lich which teleports away. Tom kills his basilisk but falls unconscious and wakes on Derse at the same time.

Robin heads into the catacombs and discovers a Weary Missionary, who tells him about Skaia, Derse, Prospit, and his role as the Witch of Mind. WM imparts that Norton as never supposed to happen and that Prospit needs to be informed. Robin goes to sleep and wakes up on Prospit.

On Derse, Nita and Droll bump into the Black Queen, who intimidates her and then leaves. Nita learns she is the Host of Heart. Eric is pestered by a crazy man with an illegible typing quirk, but brushes his commands to kill Mike off. Jack realises he has to take Tom on a guided tour, since the other agents are busy, and begrudgingly shows him the sights in-between death threats.

Meanwhile, an unknown person named clockworkUniversalist contacts Beat and tells him he cannot proceed through his gate. The crazy man who contacted Eric is revealed to be a man named Dr. Grey, and Mike’s (probable) father. He enlists the help of a PI to break into the house and steal a letter from Mike’s adoptive family which allows him to forge adoption papers. Jack rants at Tom about Derse and the Black Queen before Tom recognizes that he’s sleep-deprived and lets him leave to get some rest. Alexandra reaches the temple, which contains a carved statue apparently depicting her. She is then ambushed- the head of the temple has betrayed her to Derse. Imps, lead by the lich from earlier, attack. Dr. Grey forges the adoption papers, allowing him to Enter the medium as Mike’s Guardian.

Nita and Tom meet on Derse and talk to each other about their experiences on the planet. Grey tries to contact Tom, but is insulted and blocked. With no-one else to talk to about finding Mike (whom Grey intends to kill) the Doctor plans out his next move.

Ericsprite arrives from the future and reveals (via internal monologue) that Galloway has set him three tasks, which are enforced using the power of another Hand member, Scratch. Ericsprite has already completed the first (the delivery) and arrived to complete the second. Ericsprite and Grey fight, with Ericsprite emerging the winner. Ericsprite tells Grey how to find Mike, then departs.

Tom wakes up in the Land of Storms and Silver. Goldtongue informs him that he needs to head underneath the land’s largest mountain to fulfil his quest. In order to do that, he needs a key from a distant tower, which can only be accessed from the air.

clockworkUniversalist warns Beat of an Ogre behind him, which attacks. Beat’s Duke of Souls powers manifest, and he is possessed by an entity called the chorale, which kills the ogre. Steve fights off the Woodland Crew and climbs a tree to reach his card, only to fall and knock himself unconscious.

Eric discovers that the game is tied to meteor strikes by watching the news, and then finds out from Mike that Steve is injured. Confused and distraught, Eric heads to the park to help him. In the park, a tall, headless man in a white suit appears to collect Steve and hands him over the Eric. Eric is confused and terrified, but the creature claims to be an ally and gives teleports them back to Eric’s room, wiping their memories. His appearance is heralded by Mike’s server screen glitching, so Mike sets off to make progress in his own quest.

Mike encounters his first consort, a monkey. He is told that her family have been enslaved and is asked to free them from a slave caravan. He also learns that he is the Scribe of Doom. Viktor prototypes a ninja and enters the Land of Walls and Cheeses by breaking a pair of handcuffs. Nita goes through her First Gate and encounters Envoy Rosetusk, a pink elephant. Eric wakes Steve up and builds Tom a jetpack, which the toads deliver by way of artillery gun. He then connects to Viktor and starts preparing to enter. Renner heads upstairs finally in order to refill on coffee, but encounters resistance. Rosetusk brings Nita to the Tuskmeet, a massive pavilion where the elephants live.

Alexandra and the lich duel in the rafters of the temple, and she nearly falls to her death before the birdmen intervene, saving her life and seriously wounding the underling. This causes a rebellion and the birdmen throw the attackers out of the temple.

Nita meets with the King of the elephants, Haathi, who explains her role and the nature of her Denizen, Eris, to her. Eris is seemingly immortal, and only three people know how to kill her. One of them is on Derse, and he suggests speaking to a group of Dersite rebels in order to find out if they know anything. He also hints at the existence of a ‘Great Library’ in the Land of Cities and Fog that might hold the information.

Alexandra kills her lich and forgives the birdmen their treachery. The new leader of the birdmen tells her to head for the Sacred Isle to the east, where angels apparently reside. Mike attacks the slave caravan, making short work of the imps before a basilisk sets the forest he is using for cover on fire.

Eric starts making the preparations to enter, and Tom receives his jetpack. He flies to the tower and heads inside, finding a book detailing his role in toad mythology, and maps of the Medium and the caverns inside the mountain. Beat regains control of himself and talks to the Chorale, who are very vague and annoying, before being contacted by clockworkUniversalist again.

Pages 31-32

Eric prototypes his Kernelsprite with a robotic butler. This backfires when the butler goes haywire and punches him out of a window. He is then saved by his real butler, Winston. Winston leaves and lets him continue with his work. Alexandra is told she must reach the Sacred Isle by air, but decides to rest before she tries to do so. She wakes up on Prospit. Nita departs the Tuskmeet.

Viktor, hearing enemies at the door, prototypes a Sensei card to make his sprite capable of speech, then attacks them ,apologizing to Eric for abandoning him and narrowly missing seeing Eric get punched out a window. Tom heads downstairs and finds a mural of himself. He discovers that the key is inside a capsule surrounded by dead wood, and can’t be reached. The mural implies that Tom must revive the plant life in the room to get the key. Tom is staggered by the enormity of this task, and can’t pull it off.

In the future, Jack Noir, as the exile Scurrilous Straggler, wanders the desert of post-apocalyptic earth before finding an exile base. Inside he finds a note from Draconian Dignitary, telling him that Dignitary is going to come back for him and that they’ll get ‘payback’ together. Jack sees Tom on screen and instructs him on how to use his powers, allowing him to ‘do the lifey thing’ and retrieve the key.

Eric creates a cruxite coin, and flips it to enter the Land of Circuitry and Neon. He alchemizes some gear, including a clockwork disc that Ericsprite used. Tom collects his key, and narrowly escapes from it’s guardian (a Shoggoth) by flying out a window, only to crash through a window in the Toad village. Nita reaches the Dersite camp and meets with a Turncoat Operative, a paraplegic rebel who leads the defectors, and Clubs Deuce tries furiously to recall when the last time he saw so many Dersites was. Beat's conversation with the Chorale is interrupted when clockworkUniversalist hacks his pesterchum channel and kicks the unidentified entity out of the system. Viktor encounters a lich, and is warned by PB that it will kill him in a single hit. Viktor engages in a brief debate on the nature of heroes with the underling, and then absconds.

Steve, alone and with meteors approaching, creates his cruxite artefact, a massive Cruxite Planet. Initially confused by how it works, his sprite indicates to him to head to the roof. Steve Ascends to the Top of the Building, rolling his artefact up the stairs.

Steve's sprite drops the globe on his shoulders, ushering in the start of the End of Act post ([S] Cataclysm, set to Terraform from Homestuck Volume 8). Steve struggles to hold it aloft with meteors raining down around him, but doesn't drop the heavy planet. The Man in White watches from afar.

Alexandra leaves her tower, only to encounter both the Fearless Warden and then his superior, the Ardent Proselyte and Archagent named Jane Blanche.

Alyss fights off imps in front of her First Gate with the help of her Illithidsprite, but is overwhelmed when five ogres attack. With her sprite holding them off, Alyss quickly absconds through the Gate and emerges on the Land of Dungeons and Dragons.

The lich begins breaking down the door to Viktor's room as he hurriedly tries to contact Renner.

Turncoat Operative explains that he knows why Nita has come to meet with him, and that he knows how to find the information necessary to kill Eris. However, he reveals, he will require Nita to perform a favour for him befoer he is willing to divulge his knowledge.

ClockworkUniversalist talks with Beat, revealing that he isn't form Earth and that the problem with Beat's Gate is a symptom of a glitch in the session's coding and that the entire game universe has a crippling technical glitch in it's software.

Steve's strength and determination allows him to hold the planet up long enough for the artefact to trigger and enter him into the Medium, arriving in the Land of Meteors and Frogs. The mansion on Earth is teleported with him. The Man in White watches and muses on humanity's tenacity and determination before exiting stage left.

With Steve safely in the Medium, and after 32 pages and 788 posts, Act 1 ends.

edited 12th Jan '12 10:13:54 AM by MadeOfAxes

You have no clue how bad I feel for not joining this because I thought it would die like round one.

NO

CLUE