HaVE a nICE daY. [Text] [Forward-dated to the evening of the 10th]

[crouching_sin]

[There's an audible chime, like a cheery voicemail tone, from every terminal simultaneously, before text appears on the screen.]

Good afternoon, Tower of Animus. My name is The Observer. I've got a special message for you today, direct from one of our beloved administrators. Please read, listen to, and memorize this message, and reproduce it wherever you can!


Souls in our world are defined as the self. Even those without anything that can be considered a soul in their own worlds would manifest one here. Souls are extremely resilient - they can be torn out of their body and survive provided they are removed in the right manner. But they shouldn't be of course - the side effects might be disastrous in ways we can't quite understand. It's happened here before. Souls can be torn out of this world the same as in any other. Here though they can split - that's extremely important. They can split and merge if you have the right skillset. Never lose your soul in the Tower of Animus. None of yours are yet lost - but never lose it! They won't come back whole if you let her swallow them up. The power must have gone by now - she'll want to restore the tower. Everyone who ended up trapped on their own worlds is now in grave danger! She can't take souls as Zo can, but she can siphon them and she can squeeze all the energy out of them.

As soon as this message is decoded put it in as many places as possible! Put it on the network make copies and plaster them on the walls. Do everything you can so that as many people read this message as possible. There isn't enough energy to erase everyone's memories!

Remember - souls born here can be split and reabsorbed here. A soul born elsewhere can be split there, but there's no way to put it back together unless you can put it back where it's supposed to be.

Not everything is as fake as it seems. Your souls are here and you have all been drugged to keep certain aspects of yourselves contained but every part of you is here. You can use that against them if you can figure out how to unchain yourselves.

I'm afraid you'll have Jason as your first opponent as he's the one with the keys you need. Be careful! There is information everywhere though much of it has been nearly permanently sealed. I can make it possible for you to access it, although you will all have to unlock it.


Wasn't that a special little message? Now, copy it down in your notes so you don't forget it! No matter whom you're allied with, be it Pandora, Ganondorf, your friends from home, or just yourself! There will be a test on this.

And the first section of the test is this - I want you to place at least one copy of this message somewhere in the tower. No points for hiding it! It has to be visible to everyone! In a few days I'll tell you all how you did, and I'll repeat this message for you lazy people who didn't see or hear this today.

That's all for now!

- The Observer

[All characters with mailboxes will find a copy of the message in their mail as of this evening.]

Comments

text;

[ghostytrainer]

any chance you will hand over the keys if we just ask you very, very nicely?
like pretty please with ALL the toppings on top?
sugar, cherries, little rainbow sprinkles, you name it. the toppings are there.

please, jason?

[Sarcasm or seriousness? We just don't know.]

text;

[animusnpcs]

I've no desire to aid you. Even if I did, I've even less of a desire to get eaten.

text;

[ghostytrainer]

i kind of figured that would be the case.
but hey, it was worth a shot!
sometimes the last thing you would think to do is actually the key to accomplishing things.
and i doubt the first thing on most people's minds right now is to ask nicely, all things considered.

we will get them one way or the other though, it is only a matter of time. :)

[Ah, so serious with a slightly sarcastic tone. Mystery solved.]

text;

[animusnpcs]

It's an unusual tone for someone to take with me, I'll admit.

text;

[ghostytrainer]

see? :D
my plan was brilliant except for the part where you don't want to be eaten.
which i can't honestly blame you for, i feel like that would be a terrible experience.
-10/10 would not recommend to anyone. not even you.

text;

[animusnpcs]

It's certainly an experience I'm trying to avoid, yes. In saying that, though, I'm sure at least a handful of people are trying to arrange it.

text;

[ghostytrainer]

well i promise that when i asked you nicely, it's not because i wanted you to get eaten.
even after everything you have done to us, i don't you don't deserve to die.
i might be in a minority there, though.
granted, it doesn't mean i like you i just don't think that anybody really DESERVES to die.

question for you, though, if you are willing to answer.
what did he mean by "souls that were born here"? is that the five of you?
because i can't say i have ever met anybody who didn't come from at least one other world before this.

[animusnpcs]

All of the administrators are native to this world, so I suspect that's what he meant, yes.

[ghostytrainer]

is it just you guys then? or are there others somewhere?
ok, i guess i lied i actually don't have just A question.
more like a few, apparently.

what does it mean you can be split and reabsorbed here?
reabsorbed into the tower itself? like she could use you guys for tower battery soul-juice if she wanted to as well? like the people stuck in their homeworlds?
that whole line just doesn't really make sense to me and i'm not sure if it's because this stuff is just too complicated for me or if it's because i don't have the right information.

[Which someone recently advised him he should look into obtaining more of instead of just making assumptions and letting other people do the info gathering. So sorry, Jason, he's apparently seizing this opportunity to try and get answers to things he doesn't know.]

[animusnpcs]

This information isn't something I was aware of until it showed up here, I'm afraid. Even I don't have all the answers.

[ghostytrainer]

gotcha.
so she keeps you in the dark on some things despite the fact that you're all in this together?
seems a little weird to me, but ok.

why do you listen to her, anyway? all of you.
there's the fear of being eaten, but is that really all the power she has over you guys?
why don't you just eat her first or something? aside from the fact that she probably tastes horrendous.

oh, one other thing too. it's sort of related to this but moreso to something else from the other day which i am guessing you probably saw and had a good chuckle at our expense over.
but anyway, the juice in the collars.
is it what's limiting us? the "chains" that you have the key to?
or is that something else entirely?

[animusnpcs]

Eating the other administrators isn't something in our skillsets--that's Ruana's alone. She's by far the most powerful of all of us.

The collars are mine to worry about, but I haven't given out that information yet and don't plan on giving it away now.

[ghostytrainer]

so that's why you follow her then? because she's the biggest baddie in the skillset brigade?
you know though, wording it like that makes you sound more like ai than people. who refers to their capabilities as a "skillset"?
you ARE real people, aren't you? or is there going to be some kind of plot twist and it turns out we are all in a video game or something?
i mean, with the ssb wireframe stuff it almost wouldn't surprise me.

pretty please? :)
once again: with all the toppings and also this time with a promise not to rat you out to pretty pink cannibal princess?

[animusnpcs]

You're not made of data or in someone's dream or anything like that. I think you've had enough plot twists regarding your status here already, don't you?

[ghostytrainer]

i have, yeah.
so are you telling me we're playing out a straight plot from here on out, no more zany reveals?
also: that didn't answer any of my questions.

[animusnpcs]

There could always be reveals I'm not aware of myself. I'm real, though, as far as I'm aware.

[ghostytrainer]

good to know. so that's a no go on the sweet collar secrets then?

[animusnpcs]

Correct. So I suppose I'll be seeing everyone traipsing about my labs soon.

[ghostytrainer]

so there's absolutely nothing i can do to get you to part with that information in a more peaceful and friendly way than having people break down your door and potentially also your face?

[animusnpcs]

Nothing as far as I'm aware. Though I do wonder if you even know what information you're supposed to be retrieving.

[ghostytrainer]

i haven't the slightest clue, to tell you the truth.
i am just grasping at straw-questions here, trying to get something to at least get us going in the right direction.
because to put it in your terms: i have a pretty useless skillset. but i want to help and you decided to respond to this, so i figure i may as well try and get some info from the source itself.

and i really don't like the idea of killing you, for a number of reasons. but i think that's what everyone is going to try and do.
aside from the fact that you are a human, you are also the one who puts us back in our bodies when we die. (not a question because i am pretty sure that you know that i know that as well as i know now. haha say that three times fast.)
and that's probably something only you can do.
so killing you would be stupid.

[animusnpcs]

Ha, I believe you're the only one that little fact has occurred to. Yes, your little excursions into the bellies of monsters and off the sides of the Tower here would be much more difficult to recover from were I not around.

[ghostytrainer]

...that's really saying something if i am the only one who has realized this.
but you only say it would be difficult, not impossible?

[animusnpcs]

I'm not sure what would happen. I know none of the others are capable of it. Maybe you really would die here. Except it wouldn't be death so much as it would be being trapped in a nonfunctional wireframe construct, unable to move or interact with anything.

[ghostytrainer]

so i guess i should thank you for being so dedicated to your job and not testing that.
because neither of those options sound appealing to me, personally.

so what is it exactly that you do to us once the soul is in a new frame? i didn't really get a good look at it the last time i swung by your place as a breathing entity. and i never really thought about it much.
but now i am kind of curious.
especially after what happened the last two times i wound up there as spare parts.

also, belatedly, do i get a gold star for noticing?