Storyverse 69 ~ Visuals & Errata

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Insights, secrets and meanderings spilled over from Skype. For Storyverse 69 souls.

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A few of the brave souls...

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Shrue the Diabolist


Gilgad the Disturbing

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Battle in the air with a gargoyle...


Into the Tower of Yag...


Beware the spider...


Elephantine strangeness...

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The creature of Yag tells its story...


The heart of Yag-Kosha...


Guarding Yara's study...


Coming up the stairs...


Yara's fate within the gem...


The end...

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Puppeteer by day, Ambassador of Chaos by night: Tatterdemallion


There is no north, all is Chaos...


The Court of Chaos is in session...


Magog the Merciless...


Klarvogorok the All-Seeing


Dzzhali the Hanged Bride


Noohl the Faceless


Hekanhoda of Deformed Perfection

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Court of Chaos...



Taurziel the Lawful Ox...


Challenges in the Cataphract...


Strange effects...


Prism Sentinel...

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Back to Vancia...

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Happenings in Seraf...

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Entrance


Half-Realized Poorly Conceived Terror


Blasphemous Wyrm


Map Thus Far

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On the altar...


Forbidden knowledge unfolds in Willius' uber-id...

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The region


WTF?!


The final insult


The cover of the infamous module...

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Through the valley and into the woods...


Summoned to help, the Hound of Tindalos turns on its summoner...

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Chapter 72 - Veils of Reality

Earth VI, 2.4.2750, Gygax Syndicate, Storyverse 69 Data Files

Impacted Personnel:

Justin Cloud - graduate student, temporal sciences (Marcanus)
Thomas Rexx - interworld delivery serviceman (Willius)
Jason Douglas - general contractor, meta-structure maintenance (Barm)
Jake Green - chemist, artificial reality (Tania)

Continued degradation of Storyverse 69 programming and corporate takeover efforts by Chaos Theory, Inc., resulted in mid-story recall of key personnel to assist in True World efforts to stop acquisition assault. Above-mentioned personnel now possess dual awareness of Storyverse characters and real life owner status. This meta-awareness enables these Gygax Syndicate personnel unique access to Storyverse universes, empowering them to uniquely aid the Gygax Syndicate in its survival.
New Mission: Reprogram character selves (i.e. XP adjustment in Storyverse 69), re-engage in necessary Storyverse universes to both defend and take offensive action against Chaos Theory. Storyverse actions have True World ramifications, and vice versa. More information forthcoming from the Gygax Syndicate.

Meta-Awareness Realizations:

- The fundamental laws of physics are actually the laws of narrative - specifically, of fantasy and science fantasy narrative. The Storyverse reality is a vast multiverse in which individual universes, and parts of universes, behave like stories from different sub-genres of fantasy and science fiction. This can all be described quantitatively. It is possible to quantify the extent to which a given person is a "protagonist" or a "hero," for instance. These are called levels of Storyverse character development.

- Storyverse characters actually move back and forth through the life narrative inside their True World owner’s own head, because life narrative has combined with others to form a navigable fantasy universe, also called a story space, through which you may freely roam via a grammar-drive built on a quad-core physics engine, which features an applied temporal-linguistics architecture allowing for free-form navigation within the rendered environment.

- The brewing war of Law vs. Chaos in the Realms (aka Storyverse 69) represents the corporate takeover efforts of Chaos Theory against the Gygax Syndicate. Chaos Theory CEO William Brecht is known to be a player in this war, though has not established contact with Impacted Gygax Syndicate Personnel (hereafter called “the party.”)

- Alcastra is the Storyverse Character of Denise Arneson, a board member of the Gygax Syndicate. Her dreams to the party are translations of encrypted communications across the network. Arneson of the Silver Robes was related to Denise.

- Deteriorating Physics of Storyverse 69 represent the successful corporate maneuverings of Chaos Theory in their acquisition attempt.

- The party’s possession of “second souls” are reflections of Chaos Theory corporate entities attempting to buy out Gygax Syndicate. The Soul Gem repository of “souls” is Chaos Theory’s True World bank account, paying out Gygax Syndicate shareholders (i.e. acquiring Realm characters souls.)

- Willius' uber-mind is a defective direct link from Storyverse 69 to the True World network of the Gygax Syndicate.

Program Clarifications:

Given meta-awareness status of the party, a review of the heretofore provided information regarding the Ilheidron Book may be viewed in a new light.

Following is the narrative text:

The Ilheidron Book is a large tome, exceeding 500 pages, and unusual in appearance. It is bound in hardcover stiff thick paper with uniform printing on the cover itself, as opposed to the traditional leather bound. The writing appears startlingly uniform, almost all in stamps you would surmise, or by some strange Write Magic spell, instead of written by hand. The paper itself is a type you’ve never seen; it is not parchment or vellum. It is remarkably white and cut straight at the edges. There are, however, individual pages and sections made of traditional parchment and hand written. These pages are scattered throughout in an added-in, inserted manner, not part of the original binding. There are many mathematical equations and line drawings of an incomprehensible nature.
The travel back to Alcastra’s Tower provides you with the opportunity to perform Detect Magic and Read Magic on the book. The results are unusual. The book overall is not magical, except those added-in pages in parchment. Such pages are spells, however they rely on and are referring back to the non-magical pages and hence you cannot fully understand the spell.
By comparing languages known among all party members, you together collaborate on trying to figure out the language. By interpretation, inference, deduction, induction, elements of Common language roots, high elven dialecticals, combined with Read Magic for parchment pages, yields with some uncertainty and margin of linguistic error, the following...

“… By Thomas Ilheidron, with contributions by Anthony Stark IV, Andrew Steven Jackson, Gerald Gygax III, Denise Arneson…”

“…Storyverse 69 was slightly damaged during its construction and, as a result, the builder-developer who owns the rights abandoned the original plans for the space… the Gygax syndicate interceded to…”

“…At the moment work was halted, physics was only 93 percent installed, and thus you may find that it can be a bit unpredictable in places…”

“…Reality represents 13 percent of the total surface area and 17 percent of the total volume of Storyverse 69. The remainder consists of standard composite fantasy (F) and science fiction (SF) base substrate…”

“…in terms of topology, the reality portions of 69 are concentrated in an inner core, with F & SF wrapped around it… while it was long thought that reality was simply a special case of F and/or SF (i.e. the QoE factor = 1, i.e. the strangeness of experience is no greater or less than intuitive notions of how things should be), it is now believed that, in some geological sense, the F & SF layers are structurally supported by the non-SF core of “reality,” and researchers have recently begun to conduct experiments to study what they suspect may be an invisible, microscopic, but highly dynamic exchange of materials at the thin permeable boundary layer between the two regions…”

“…Inhabitants of Storyverse 69 are separated into two categories, protagonists and back office… protagonist may choose from any available genre. Currently, there are openings in Steampunk… back office support workers must choose between retcon, accounting, human resources, time machine repair or janitorial…”

“…In order to qualify as a protagonist, a human must be able to demonstrate an attachment coefficient of at least 0.75. A coefficient of 1.00 or above is required in order to be a hero. Factors used in calculating the coefficient include…”

Much of the above conceptual framework is taken from Charles Wu's How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe.

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Kaystar Saru, Melnibonean Anti-Paladin


Ilcastra the Vain, Lover of Kaystar Saru