The preshow had, in many ways, felt like a blur for the man at the top of the Syntech food chain. Even with a half dozen of himself tending to the majority of the public functions, Karl Jak had managed to find himself quite literally wrapped up in a handful of other ‘tasks.’
As he finally bid adieu to his preshow party favors, the executive turned his attention to the operation of the game itself. With the convention center just about finished in its conversion from ‘preshow’ to ‘show’, Karl ascended the stairwell that led up to Central Command. The room, for what would likely be the last time for a few days, was relatively calm and quiet, with most of the operators relaxing at their workstations.
“Looks like everything is readied, Sir,” Kevin replied as he glanced up from his clipboard. “That little glitch in the systems was fairly easy to resolve once the techs got around to the power cycling.
“See, Kevin?” Karl said with a grin. “I told you to trust my IT skills.”
“Of course, Sir,” the redhead answered as he holstered his clipboard and retrieved his tablet computer. “Everything is green. Should be initialize the fobs on your go, Mr. Jak? We’ve verified that all the contestants have functioning devices, as well as the device.”
Karl nodded and gestured to one of the techs on the far side of the room. As that young man started to tap away at the keyboard display, the man in purple made his way to his plush chair, dropped himself into the seat, and scooped up the microphone resting on the armrest.
“Hello, Ladies and Gentle-Persons, this is your host, Karl Jak.” The announcement triggered a hush throughout Convention Center-22. “At this time, I would like to invite all of our esteemed guests to shift their focus to one of our many Syntech viewing areas. Whether that be located at your hotel room, rauchous pub, upscale winery, or even somewhere far removed from the lovely confines of our Comet, I want to welcome you all to this installment of Dante’s Abyss.
“At this time, I want to ask all of our contestants to suit up with their gear if they have not already. Each of you has a teleportation fob that I am going to ask you to pick up and activate. It’s quite simple… you just press the button, but I recommend you make sure all your possessions are on your person at the time. The trip is one-way, and we will not forward your belongings to your final destination.”
While some of the contestants were likely ready prior to the announcement and now firmly on their way, Karl knew that not everyone would have been as on the ball. “If you fail to activate your fob within the next … thirty seconds, I just want you to know that it’ll activate for you, but I can’t promise the landing will be as smooth as it would otherwise be.”
With a smile, Karl set the mike down and leaned back as he closed his eyes for a momentary reprieve. He had a handful of silent moments before he started hearing confused murmurings from the crew around him. Slowly, over the next half minute, those murmurs graduated in a full-blown clamor as people started to smack away at their touchscreens and nervously start to examine video feeds and even the wiring on their consoles and machines.
“Something amiss?” Karl asked without opening his eyes as he heard the trademark rapport of Kevin’s cheap sneakers on the metallic floor.
“Sir,” Kevin was standing within arm’s reach of his boss.
Cracking one of his eyes, Karl saw that the mixture on Kevin’s face was one of confusion laced with a cold sass. “We have problems, Sir.” He remarked as he tapped his tablet a few times and turned the display toward his supervisor. “It would appear that there was a malfunction in the new teleportation matrix.”
Karl gasped as he sat up out of his chair and clutched at the tablet. His eyes scanned the screen to try and find some flaw in this shocking news. “It cannot be,” he declared as he turned his open mouth and wide eyes to the rest of the observation crew. “The folks in Engineering told me that the installation was successful?”
Kevin, a scowl still etched on his youthful visage, retrieved his tablet from his boss. “It was some type of software bug, Sir. It would seem that the something or someone altered a line in the coordinates.”
“Did all of the contestants wind up at the same location?” Karl inquired as he turned to what was normally a massive display of the island broken apart into several dozen monitors. Instead of a cast of people rifling through bags and adjusting to their new environments, the various environmentally themed backdrops were devoid of their contestant. “Are they invisible?”
“They were teleported outside of the Comet and her satellites. They were scattered across a small landscape, yes, but it wasn’t on Twenty-Two.”
“Then where?”
Kevin rolled his eyes. “I was hoping, Sir, that in your… infinite wisdom and understanding of information technology, you would be able to help us elucidate that information.”
“Oh my stars,” Karl muttered as he sat up out of his chair and casually summoned another tablet from a nearby workstation. With a simple glance down at it, he turned back to Kevin and chuckled. “Let me handle this one.”
“All you,” Kevin sighed as he walked over to one of the nearby consoles and pretended to make himself busy while his boss sat back down.
“Hello out there,” Karl spoke into the microphone. “I apologize if the volume is too loud, but I have some… unfortunate news for all of our lovely contestants.”
Someone tapped Kevin on the shoulder. “What’s he doing?” The young woman whispered.
“He’s broadcasting from their collars.”
“He can do that?”
“It’s a contingency, yes. It’s in the event that the audio system on the islands ever goes out, or… in the event that our contestants don’t make it to the island in the first place.”
Karl grinned as he glanced at the tablet. “Yes, hello. I regret to inform all of you that the parameters of our contest have… shifted. Fortunately, your tasks will remain the same. A device was teleported with you to your current location, and it’ll be up to one of you to collect a number of necessary implements in order to make this device operational. Whoever achieves that goal will be crowned our Grand Champion.
“As you might have already noticed, you’re not exactly on one of our carefully constructed island planetoids. In fact, my totally vague and completely unplanned estimates place the lot of you within a stretch of land deep, deep, deeeep in the wilderness of Cevanti, far beyond the communication dead zones or the conventional reach of Markov.”
“Cevanti?” Kevin rasped before Karl waved him back down into his seat.
“Yes, it seems like our haywire and one hundred percent faulty technology sent you far away and far outside the reach of mechanized salvation. However, you should know that you are not alone, despite what I just said. After all, you’re actually further into the Unmade wastes of that World than any living being has traveled before, and that means there are limitless monstrosities out there who are more than willing to keep you company! How lovely.
“Now before you go ‘Hey, Karl, those are the bad guys!’, I just want you to know that you’re not wrong. You remember that device I mentioned that will win you the contest? It’s also your best ticket out of this mess, because it’ll usher the Grand Champion back to us in one piece.”
“What about the others?” Kevin inquired.
Karl blew a raspberry at his personal assistant. “Let’s not make promises right now that we can’t keep, young Kevin,” the producer spoke, even as he only loosely held his hand over the microphone. Lifting the device back up to his lips, he smiled once more. “Once we triangulate your position, I’ll send a map of your surroundings to you. That map will update as the surrounding wilderness continues to collapse into unmade corruption. Trust me, you don’t want to wind up in a totally corrupted zone, but on that note, you also might want to double-check who you ally with. There’s not telling who is still the goofy-yet-plucky underdog from the preshow they claim to be and who is secretly an unmade monster!
“Keep your eyes and ears open, and I’ll talk to you all in six hours…
“Ta-ta!”
Turning off the feed, Karl stuck out his lip as he spun to face Kevin and the assorted workers. “I guess when life gives you lemons, right?”
“Right.” Kevin groaned as he tried to sort out this mess of a situation.
Important Notes and Updates
1. Please cross-reference the map to determine your starting point. Please note that any tiles that might look like ‘ocean’ are actually a wholly corrupted wasteland surrounding your current location (aka 'Completely Unmade Zones'). If you’ve started near the perimeter or move their, your character would see that the terrain continues out in this direction but as a nightmarish, unmade nightmare-scape. Be inventive. Or, you know, avoid even going near the edges of the map, because entering an unmade zone willkill unmake your character, causing you to lose control of them for the remainder of the event and possibly loner.
1a. The two shades on the map represent areas that are partially unmade (the pinkish/red) and 'normal' (green). These two types of square will have different ecosystems and landscapes so feel free to, if you haven't already, touch up on the Unmaking and its effects <3
1b. Squares with crossed swords or the little red squiggles are the scene of previous battlefields. Do they hold significance? Who knows.
1c. The icons that look like ... santa hats? Those are semi-active volcanos.
2. Every six hours, the number of unmade zones will increase. I will announce these ahead of time, and like previous events, I’ll likely be kind the first few days of people who don’t necessarily ‘think out’ their moves. If you get a follow-up PM from me that says ‘u sure?’ that’s a sign that you probably want to rethink your movement.
The new Completely Unmade Zones (aka Dead Zones) for tomorrow are: --- Again, these zones will KILL YOUR CHARACTER -- T8, A8
3. The ‘Device’ that must be fixed/completed/whatevered (you’ll figure it out) to ‘win’ is located at Square C4 -- The person who arrives there first will be a special story event (but no ‘in-game’ prize, just to be clear). This square is a ‘safe haven’ which prevents Face to Faces from triggering, even if people want to kill each other.
4. Collar and collar rules still apply (Syntech obviously makes the best technology in the Crossroads #SyntechStrong?).
5. This phase will conclude tomorrow at 10 AM CST. This thread will lock while I process any updates. A new post will include the first item drops, the location of a boss battle, the first Quest Item location, and more(!)
6. I will edit much of this ‘twist’ and the adjustments to language and mechanics into the Rules by the end of tomorrow’s phase, if not sooner.
As he finally bid adieu to his preshow party favors, the executive turned his attention to the operation of the game itself. With the convention center just about finished in its conversion from ‘preshow’ to ‘show’, Karl ascended the stairwell that led up to Central Command. The room, for what would likely be the last time for a few days, was relatively calm and quiet, with most of the operators relaxing at their workstations.
“Looks like everything is readied, Sir,” Kevin replied as he glanced up from his clipboard. “That little glitch in the systems was fairly easy to resolve once the techs got around to the power cycling.
“See, Kevin?” Karl said with a grin. “I told you to trust my IT skills.”
“Of course, Sir,” the redhead answered as he holstered his clipboard and retrieved his tablet computer. “Everything is green. Should be initialize the fobs on your go, Mr. Jak? We’ve verified that all the contestants have functioning devices, as well as the device.”
Karl nodded and gestured to one of the techs on the far side of the room. As that young man started to tap away at the keyboard display, the man in purple made his way to his plush chair, dropped himself into the seat, and scooped up the microphone resting on the armrest.
“Hello, Ladies and Gentle-Persons, this is your host, Karl Jak.” The announcement triggered a hush throughout Convention Center-22. “At this time, I would like to invite all of our esteemed guests to shift their focus to one of our many Syntech viewing areas. Whether that be located at your hotel room, rauchous pub, upscale winery, or even somewhere far removed from the lovely confines of our Comet, I want to welcome you all to this installment of Dante’s Abyss.
“At this time, I want to ask all of our contestants to suit up with their gear if they have not already. Each of you has a teleportation fob that I am going to ask you to pick up and activate. It’s quite simple… you just press the button, but I recommend you make sure all your possessions are on your person at the time. The trip is one-way, and we will not forward your belongings to your final destination.”
While some of the contestants were likely ready prior to the announcement and now firmly on their way, Karl knew that not everyone would have been as on the ball. “If you fail to activate your fob within the next … thirty seconds, I just want you to know that it’ll activate for you, but I can’t promise the landing will be as smooth as it would otherwise be.”
With a smile, Karl set the mike down and leaned back as he closed his eyes for a momentary reprieve. He had a handful of silent moments before he started hearing confused murmurings from the crew around him. Slowly, over the next half minute, those murmurs graduated in a full-blown clamor as people started to smack away at their touchscreens and nervously start to examine video feeds and even the wiring on their consoles and machines.
“Something amiss?” Karl asked without opening his eyes as he heard the trademark rapport of Kevin’s cheap sneakers on the metallic floor.
“Sir,” Kevin was standing within arm’s reach of his boss.
Cracking one of his eyes, Karl saw that the mixture on Kevin’s face was one of confusion laced with a cold sass. “We have problems, Sir.” He remarked as he tapped his tablet a few times and turned the display toward his supervisor. “It would appear that there was a malfunction in the new teleportation matrix.”
Karl gasped as he sat up out of his chair and clutched at the tablet. His eyes scanned the screen to try and find some flaw in this shocking news. “It cannot be,” he declared as he turned his open mouth and wide eyes to the rest of the observation crew. “The folks in Engineering told me that the installation was successful?”
Kevin, a scowl still etched on his youthful visage, retrieved his tablet from his boss. “It was some type of software bug, Sir. It would seem that the something or someone altered a line in the coordinates.”
“Did all of the contestants wind up at the same location?” Karl inquired as he turned to what was normally a massive display of the island broken apart into several dozen monitors. Instead of a cast of people rifling through bags and adjusting to their new environments, the various environmentally themed backdrops were devoid of their contestant. “Are they invisible?”
“They were teleported outside of the Comet and her satellites. They were scattered across a small landscape, yes, but it wasn’t on Twenty-Two.”
“Then where?”
Kevin rolled his eyes. “I was hoping, Sir, that in your… infinite wisdom and understanding of information technology, you would be able to help us elucidate that information.”
“Oh my stars,” Karl muttered as he sat up out of his chair and casually summoned another tablet from a nearby workstation. With a simple glance down at it, he turned back to Kevin and chuckled. “Let me handle this one.”
“All you,” Kevin sighed as he walked over to one of the nearby consoles and pretended to make himself busy while his boss sat back down.
“Hello out there,” Karl spoke into the microphone. “I apologize if the volume is too loud, but I have some… unfortunate news for all of our lovely contestants.”
Someone tapped Kevin on the shoulder. “What’s he doing?” The young woman whispered.
“He’s broadcasting from their collars.”
“He can do that?”
“It’s a contingency, yes. It’s in the event that the audio system on the islands ever goes out, or… in the event that our contestants don’t make it to the island in the first place.”
Karl grinned as he glanced at the tablet. “Yes, hello. I regret to inform all of you that the parameters of our contest have… shifted. Fortunately, your tasks will remain the same. A device was teleported with you to your current location, and it’ll be up to one of you to collect a number of necessary implements in order to make this device operational. Whoever achieves that goal will be crowned our Grand Champion.
“As you might have already noticed, you’re not exactly on one of our carefully constructed island planetoids. In fact, my totally vague and completely unplanned estimates place the lot of you within a stretch of land deep, deep, deeeep in the wilderness of Cevanti, far beyond the communication dead zones or the conventional reach of Markov.”
“Cevanti?” Kevin rasped before Karl waved him back down into his seat.
“Yes, it seems like our haywire and one hundred percent faulty technology sent you far away and far outside the reach of mechanized salvation. However, you should know that you are not alone, despite what I just said. After all, you’re actually further into the Unmade wastes of that World than any living being has traveled before, and that means there are limitless monstrosities out there who are more than willing to keep you company! How lovely.
“Now before you go ‘Hey, Karl, those are the bad guys!’, I just want you to know that you’re not wrong. You remember that device I mentioned that will win you the contest? It’s also your best ticket out of this mess, because it’ll usher the Grand Champion back to us in one piece.”
“What about the others?” Kevin inquired.
Karl blew a raspberry at his personal assistant. “Let’s not make promises right now that we can’t keep, young Kevin,” the producer spoke, even as he only loosely held his hand over the microphone. Lifting the device back up to his lips, he smiled once more. “Once we triangulate your position, I’ll send a map of your surroundings to you. That map will update as the surrounding wilderness continues to collapse into unmade corruption. Trust me, you don’t want to wind up in a totally corrupted zone, but on that note, you also might want to double-check who you ally with. There’s not telling who is still the goofy-yet-plucky underdog from the preshow they claim to be and who is secretly an unmade monster!
“Keep your eyes and ears open, and I’ll talk to you all in six hours…
“Ta-ta!”
Turning off the feed, Karl stuck out his lip as he spun to face Kevin and the assorted workers. “I guess when life gives you lemons, right?”
“Right.” Kevin groaned as he tried to sort out this mess of a situation.
***
Important Notes and Updates
1. Please cross-reference the map to determine your starting point. Please note that any tiles that might look like ‘ocean’ are actually a wholly corrupted wasteland surrounding your current location (aka 'Completely Unmade Zones'). If you’ve started near the perimeter or move their, your character would see that the terrain continues out in this direction but as a nightmarish, unmade nightmare-scape. Be inventive. Or, you know, avoid even going near the edges of the map, because entering an unmade zone will
1a. The two shades on the map represent areas that are partially unmade (the pinkish/red) and 'normal' (green). These two types of square will have different ecosystems and landscapes so feel free to, if you haven't already, touch up on the Unmaking and its effects <3
1b. Squares with crossed swords or the little red squiggles are the scene of previous battlefields. Do they hold significance? Who knows.
1c. The icons that look like ... santa hats? Those are semi-active volcanos.
2. Every six hours, the number of unmade zones will increase. I will announce these ahead of time, and like previous events, I’ll likely be kind the first few days of people who don’t necessarily ‘think out’ their moves. If you get a follow-up PM from me that says ‘u sure?’ that’s a sign that you probably want to rethink your movement.
The new Completely Unmade Zones (aka Dead Zones) for tomorrow are: --- Again, these zones will KILL YOUR CHARACTER -- T8, A8
3. The ‘Device’ that must be fixed/completed/whatevered (you’ll figure it out) to ‘win’ is located at Square C4 -- The person who arrives there first will be a special story event (but no ‘in-game’ prize, just to be clear). This square is a ‘safe haven’ which prevents Face to Faces from triggering, even if people want to kill each other.
4. Collar and collar rules still apply (Syntech obviously makes the best technology in the Crossroads #SyntechStrong?).
5. This phase will conclude tomorrow at 10 AM CST. This thread will lock while I process any updates. A new post will include the first item drops, the location of a boss battle, the first Quest Item location, and more(!)
6. I will edit much of this ‘twist’ and the adjustments to language and mechanics into the Rules by the end of tomorrow’s phase, if not sooner.
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