Pre-entry Activities

[infinityAlternator]

This is a place to post about your characters actions before entering the Medium. Upon entering the medium, switch to the topic for your planet.

(I am not sure if I am doing this right, so let me know if this format isn't good)

[candidLiar]

==> Be Eiko Hayashi
You are sitting on your computer, not doing anything of interest, when you receive an email notification. When you go to your inbox, you find 4 nearly identical messages from the same address, and you start to grin. You DID get all 4 copies of the sburb beta you signed up for, so now all you have to hope for is that your friends will actually want to play it with you. So, deciding that there is nothing better to do, you invite them all to a memo.

Show Pesterlog:

Deciding that the memo could have been a much larger disaster, you get up from your computer for a moment to check that your box of voodoo-related items is as far back under the bed as possible. Knowing what your sister would do if she found it, you give it one more shove to ensure its placement in the corner before grabbing a can of energy drink and sitting back down in front of your computer to contact IA about what info he got from Dev.

Show Pesterlog:

While that conversation was weird, you can’t deny that you believe what IA said. You don’t know why you believe it, but something in your head is just telling you that you have to if you want to survive. And while this freaks you out quite a lot, you try to keep calm as you take a voodoo book with a fake cover reading, “The history of Heavy Metal,” and plop down on your bed with it. After all, it’s only 11 o’clock where you are, and that’s far too early to go to sleep.

[infinityAlternator]

IA: Join the memo

You are sitting in your room. The main reason is because you have nothing better to do. You have been exhausting your mental and physical energy trying to learn how to fight using a staff, but it has not gone well. Your internet is far to slow for images, let alone instructional videos, so you are stuck reading people's long explanations with no visual reference point. At this point, you just want to go to sleep, but you know that would only give you more to do and think about. It is times like this when you wish you had never woken up on that garish moon.

You expect that someone will need some help with something soon enough, so you decide to wait at your computer. In the meantime, you run one of your many strange programs. This one is supposed to play music, but it does not work as well as you want it to. Suddenly, your Pesterchum window moves to the front of the screen. It seems you were right. Someone wants to talk to you.

Show Pesterlog:

Of course, CL wants more info as usual. You are not going to get out of this, which means you will probably end up sounding like a liar. Luckily, your guardian, Dev, has finally fixed up the sendificator. Hopefully, Eiko will give you her GPS coordinates.

Show Pesterlog:

That went well. You do hope that she goes to sleep soon. Her constant state of tiredness could get her killed if she is not careful. Still, you do expect that things will go well tomorrow. In the meantime, you have some proof to get and send. It will take more than a single night, but hopefully you can get it done with two or three.

IA: Begin the game

Finally the game is starting. This is the beginning of your grand adventure. It is going to be so fun. CL show contact you any moment. You downloaded the server program as soon as you got the email, although it took nearly 10 hours to complete the download. You are so glad that the game has its own network. Today, you might finally see your friend for the first time.

On schedule, you see the Pesterchum window flash. It is time to begin.

Show Pesterlog:

Your connection suddenly cuts out as CL does some kind of voodoo magic. You hypothesize that the internet drop is a result of the voodoo, which would mean that you can reconnect now. You do that.

Show Pesterlog:

After that fun adventure, you feel quite prepared to take on this game as a client. You quickly grab CL's box and minifridge up to her temporary room. Hopefully she will stay inside and wait for her energy drink crash to wear off. Just in case, you put a lock on the door, copied from her garage door opener. It should not be hard for her to figure out that the code is the same as the one on her garage, but she would not be able to do that until she is well rested enough to think clearly. If nothing else, she will contact you if she cannot figure it out. You also take the time to carve "I'm sorry" under you message to Eiko's Sis. You don't want to be mean. You grab some food and put it in the small room you built. There is not enough room for a bed, so you put a bunch of pillows on the floor. Finally, you get up from your computer and get to work on a new staff. You are going to need it soon.

[chaoticTrickster]

Be CT

It has been a long day, and yet you feel as though there is still so much time left. After all, what is the night for, other than walking the city streets and getting into trouble. Unfortunately, that isn't an option right now. After a series of unfortunate events, you are under a form of self imposed "house arrest", if you will, due to your fragile standing among the street rats you normally run with. This means you are currently involved with your computer, watching your online "friends", whom you have been careful to keep separate from your street "friends" for just this reason. You recently noticed some intriguing activity on a certain friends accounts, involving the acquisition four betas to the same game. As you currently don't have anything to do, other than watch people, which is boring (it's much more fun to make them do or thing what you want), you start to think of a way to get CL to include you in her plans, whatever they may be. No sooner have you decided this than you are invited to a memo on PesterChum by CL, along with two other people.

Open pesterChum

It seems as though you will no longer have a need to work yourself into CL's plans. You are a bit disappointed that you got in so easily, but you suppose it should have been expected, considering CL considers you to be a close friend most of the time. You weren't lying when you said it was getting kinda late, but you have no intention of going to sleep, however you do take a quick shower. When you get back to your computer, you draw up CL's logs. As you expected, she has been talking more with IA. Since this is to be your only engagement for the next few weeks, you decide to invest as much attention as possible in it, and begin going over what they have discussed. No use in them making plans without you knowing. After all, this is just a game. Why not work it in your favor?

[candidLiar]

==> Be Eiko

Eiko: Enter the game

After having stayed up through the night and the morning testing various potions and recording your research, you log onto pesterchum and download Sburb. You begin messaging IA as soon as the installation finishes and enter the game.

Pesterlog:

After you close out of pesterchum, you collapse on the bed IA placed in your temporary “room,” especially exhausted due to your desperate use of voodoo. Kalasprite floats over to the bed and lays a blanket over you, and you feel your eyes getting heavy. As you fall asleep, you find yourself surrounded by shadows of purple, hearing nothing but faint whispers in the distance." />

[primordialSasquatch]

==> Be PS
It’s already pretty late when Eiko invites you to a memo, but you’re still wide awake, thinking. Your neighbors often leave their dog outdoors chained to their house because they work all day and don’t want to leave him alone indoors, but this often invites kids to rile him up, and sometimes adults on their way home from work. Today, you saw a group of high school students, probably seniors, sneak through the back alleyway behind the house, acting obviously suspicious. You were quick to recognize what they were holding paintball guns, whose ammunition can be poisonous to dogs. You feared for the dog’s life, and shot at their feet with your own pellet gun, dicking behind the windowsill and muttering swear words at yourself when you actually grazed a hit on one of their legs. You immediately felt terrible for it, but were glad that it made them leave. It was honestly quite lucky that you were looking out the window right at that time, but you wonder what you'd do if they came back. You've been thinking about that for a while now.
Opening the memo, Eiko tells you and two others you don't really know well about a game. The tutorial she shows you sounds a bit worrisome, but the others seem to brush it off quickly enough, so you think it should be fine. As long as you can have fun with them, it doesn't sound like a bad idea. Before you know it it's already 4am, way too late, and you quickly hurry on off to bed. You probably won't remember much of the game on awakening.

[infinityAlternator]

IA: Get ready for bed

You look at your pile of cylinders, returning a small cylindrical pen to the pile. From steel and copper piping and wooden dowel rods to aluminum throwing disks and inflatable rafts, you have collected cylinders of varied dimensions in an attempt to convert your childhood choice of staffkind to a more flexible cylinderkind. It hasn’t worked... yet. It’s time to pick up your staffs and get back to coding. Unfortunately, your rudely interrupted by 10:00. As much as you’d like to spend the night coding and be ready to send the proof as soon as possible... you really need your sleep, especially with Eiko already in the game. You turn on your Augmented Reality modus to alert you if any of the other players need to contact you. Until then, you rest.

Continue to IA: Collect evidence

[infinityAlternator]

From IA: Collect evidence

IA: Return to the land of the awoken

After a nearly perfect night of dream-filled sleep, you wake up, only minutes before you had planned to. Eiko has awoken and wants to talk to you.

Show Pesterlog:

After such a successful conversation, you decide to finish your coding project. It’s a fairly simple piece of code that lets you watch Earth time while on Prospit and watch Prospit time while on Earth. It should also work for everyone’s lands, but you haven’t gotten the chance to try that yet. As you type away, you keep an eye on Pesterchum, waiting for CL’s friend to come online. After a half an hour, you finally finish the “Sburb world clock”. As you prepare to go to sleep, you see twineCucurbita come online.

[twineCucurbita]

==> Be the manipulative lass.

==> Ella: Answer your chum.

SHOW PESTERLOG:

Well, you deem that conversation stupid but not a complete waste of time. At least now you know of this game that's going on.

[infinityAlternator]

IA: Recruit new hero

You click on TC’s name, initiating a  conversation.

Show Pesterlog:

After that successful recruitment, you feel pretty confident in the team’s ability to survive the next few hours. You go to sleep confident that you will have time to finish your proof before you are interrupted.

Continue to IA: Complete proof

[candidLiar]

==> Be Eiko
Eiko: Get up
You wake up to a not so little Kalasprite. In fact, Kalasprite is now a woman with a serpent tail, and you nearly jump out of your bed when you see her.

Show Spritelog:

You stare after Kalasprite as she floats away, following her snake tail – sprite tail? – which swishes from side to side as she retreats to the other side of your “room.” You find her tail fascinating, and you can’t say that she isn’t unpleasant to look at, but the snake eyes and tail do make her seem a bit creepy.

After you finally manage to tear your eyes away from her, you pull out your tablet and open pesterchum, where you proceed to open a chatlog with Amit.

Show Pesterlog:

You put your tablet in your sylladex and quickly slide down the ladder, knocking off quite a few imps. They seem very unhappy before hitting the ground and exploding into piles of grist everywhere. You let out a small laugh as one of them tries to cling onto the ladder comically before falling, snake tail thrashing in distress.

[infinityAlternator]

IA: Respond to memo

After a morning of continuing to set up defenses around Eiko’s house and an afternoon of continuing your preparations for your own entry, it is finally time for a strategy session. You wait for Eiko to start the memo.

“Show Pesterlog”:

Your pesterchum client suddenly dies. This happens fairly often, but it is even more annoying now. At this point, you just reopen the program and continue.

“Show Pesterlog:

That went pretty well. You worry that you sounded a bit too leader-like. If there is anything your stories have taught you, it is that leadership is hard and should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

Either way, you have a game to begin.

IA: Begin the games

You open a chat with primordialSasquatch. Luckily, your entry has been well planned. With the pre-drawn guidelines and clear labels, PS should have no problem getting you ready. It is a bit unfortunate that you spent so many days with only Eiko in the game, but you are going to make the best of the situation. If you can get everyone ready to enter the moment you do, you might be able to win.

”Show Pesterlog”:

”Show Pesterlog”:

You think back to the stories you grew up with, the future you read and saw, and you steel yourself. It is time to play this game. You lock your door and lay down.

Continue to: IA: Distribute Proof

[twineCucurbita]

==> Ella: Join memo with your friends.

What memo? Oh yes, the one flashing on your Pesterchum screen. You've been biding your time in hopes of getting involved in the session soon enough. It's probably more useless information that can be passed over, but you check it out for yourself.

Show Pesterlog:

That was... mildly less boring than you thought it would be. At least they seem to be getting down to business. It's about time. Not even a few minutes later, IA starts something with you. What does he want?

SHOW PESTERLOG:

Informative and worth your time. Just the way you like it. Now to see to PS like you said you had been doing all along.

SHOW PESTERLOG:

Now that. That was surprising. It was entirely different seeing it with your own eyes. But now you know how this entering process works, so something good came of it. After a moment, you grow bored watching PS gallivanting around on his planet and turn to the most important matter at hand: your own success.

A soft sigh escapes your lips, one of the few sounds in the otherwise quiet, cluttered place you call home. Socrates flaps around like a doofus, obviously trying to overcome his broken wing. You don't have the heart to stop him.

Instead, you begin to devise a plan: where your server player should place the machines, what should be cleared away, and what you will do with the glowing ball once it is freed. You have a feeling this game has something to do with the frog-headed temple in the middle of your lake, but you can't be certain. After all, some information is better left to remain voided.

[twineCucurbita]

==> Ella: Remain patient.

How can you do that? You've received no information for at least an hour, but the meteors are picking up into more of a constant drizzle now. There's little time left to waste. Where's your knight in shining armor now? Psh. Only now do you get pestered. What does this guy want.

SHOW PESTERLOG:

That wasn't so bad, you guess. Now you know what that one is up to, at least. But having to wait to enter the Medium will be difficult. You don't like waiting for what you want. That's how you kept faith in your Ant until all hope was abandoned, distrust in its place. You're glad she's gone. The meteors can have at that good-for-nothing excuse of a guardian. Speaking of, you need to get to work cleaning up the mess around the house. Who knows? Some of it may be useful.

==> Ella: Reduce time spent to a montage.

Too late. You're already done with the piles you deemed important in entering the Medium, though there's still much that can be done. What you chose to keep has been moved to your sylladex, outfitted with the practical Deque Modus. You found: (1) MAGIC CUE BALL, (1) WORN CLOAK, and some other junk not worth mentioning. What you already have includes: (1) BALL OF TWINE, (1) STACK OF BOOKS, (1) MYSTERIOUS GOURD, and (2) EXTRA PISTOLS, just in case.

Oh look, you were so busy taking inventory you didn't notice your chum messaging you. Let's see here...

SHOW PESTERLOG:

That was useless. You'll just check your computer more often. Maybe turn up the notification volume. But other than that, just wait. You'll have to hold off on exploring the temple or anything else vaguely interesting until you have fewer distractions. Time to get some lunch, for you and Socrates.

[infinityAlternator]

IA: Inform the others of your new plan

You wake up in your room again. You need to let everyone know about the most recent versions of you plans for this game, especially the part about your dreamself-prototyping. TC is the first to come online.

Spoiler:

You wait a while longer, working on some more designs for staffs. It’s mostly just fiddling with previous ones, but you manage to create one that changes from a not a cylinder to a cylinder. Maybe that will let you change your specibus? After nearly 3 hours, Eiko comes online. Before you even notice, she messages you.

”Show Pesterlog”:

You take a minute to calm down and a minute to think of a few ways to combine codes.

”Show Pesterlog”:

[infinityAlternator]

IA: Play your role

It is time to step up to your role as second in command, even if there are only four of you total. You start pestering people to get ready.

”Show Pesterlog”:

”Show Pesterlog”:

You feel about ready to enter...or, at least, to start your entry process.

[infinityAlternator]

IA: Attempt the rare and dangerous 2x entry combo

It is about time to enter. Everyone seems to be online, so you want to start getting stuff done right away. You start by pestering PS.

”Show Pesterlog”:

”Show Memo Pesterlog”:

Technically speaking, your entry is perfect. Everyone got what they wanted; everyone remains unharmed; everyone entered successfully. At the same time, you really need to talk to Eiko. You remember letting her know, and you go through the logs to make sure. Still, Eiko is under a lot of stress, so it’s better to just go with it for now. Your really more worried that she’s snapping than anything else.

”Show Pesterlog”:

Suddenly, you realize the problem. Eiko’s dreamself is still out with the horrorterrors. You decide it is time to take drastic action. After all, you are Eiko’s advisor and her friend. You can’t let her keep going the way she is.

”Show Pesterlog”:

At the same time, you ask TC for some help. You’re pretty sure she’s the other Derse dreamer, so she should be a lot closer to Eiko once she wakes up.

”Show Pesterlog”:

You’re glad everyone’s calmed down. Hopefully, Eiko will come to you for help now and TC should be able to fix the horrorterror situation. Your next step should be to wake up PS, but you really want to get started with this game. You grab one of your simpler staffs, a straightforward cylinder with a small disk-shaped weight at each end, and head out.

[Sponsored content]