Chương 70: 2.28 Little Dark Age - MGMT (4:59)

PRIVATE MESSAGES From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: Your reaction Zeke, I am not going to waste your time and dance around this. What happened in your thread, and how you reacted to it, is entirely understandable. Binary was acting in bad faith. He took on the role of being your primary and he abused that position. He misrepresented the risk of what he wanted you to do, withheld critical information, and pushed your character towards something that he knew would go very wrong.

You have every reason to be angry about that. Given the circumstances, your response was not surprising. That said, I do need to draw a line somewhere. The way things escalated with personal attacks and blanket hostility towards everyone on the forum is not something that I can allow to stand without comment. I am not saying that you do not have a reason to be angry. I am saying that the fallout went wider than it needed to. You were wronged. That is clear.

Yet not everyone on the forum is complicit with what happened between you and Binary. I can understand why you feel that way, but it is not accurate. MushroomCleric, for example, did try to intervene. Once he realized what Binary was trying to do, he attempted to warn you and shut it down. The problem was timing. Binary did not post the actual instructions for reaching the Witness Chambers until after you had already gone missing for four days.

That delay was long enough that MushroomCleric's warning came too late to matter. From: Z3ke To: GravemindLegacy (MOD) Subject: Re: Your reaction Wow. That really clears things up. Seriously, such a load off my mind. It's a huge relief that one guy almost helped me and failed while everyone else just sat back and watched and laughed. Is that supposed to make it all better? From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: Re: Re: Your reaction No. It is not meant to make you feel better. It is meant to be accurate.

There is a difference between negligence, ignorance, and malice. Most of what you have seen from the forum has been a combination of the first two. Binary crossed into the third. That distinction doesn't change what happened to you, but it should help you decide who you are actually angry at. It would behoove you to know that not everyone on the forum feels the same way that Binary feels. In fact, most of them jumped to your defense when Binary delivered his monologue decrying your fanfiction.

You've also gained more fans on the forum when FopperyandWhim explained how to unlock Corva in Shards of Time. For what it's worth, I should have stepped in sooner. I was about to message you privately before your post claiming to have returned went up. I have been following your thread more closely than most people. I have been reading your posts with more attention than the average spectator.

Because of that, I made the assumption that you already knew about the Witness Chambers, what it was, how it worked, and how to get out of it. I acknowledge my mistake in not stepping in sooner to rein in Binary, but there issomething I want to be clear about. I don't moderate creative direction conflicts. That is a conscious decision on my part. This forum operates in a strange space. It is part discussion board, part collaborative fiction, and part spectator event.

People argue about lore interpretation, about what should happen next, and about how things should be interpreted. That friction is what keeps this place alive and I do not intend to interfere with that. If I step in and start controlling that, that would fundamentally change what this place is. Let me be clear. I do not control the debate, I do not dictate the lore, and I do not shut down disagreements about the Fracture-verse.

But I do step in when it crosses into harassment or when someone is clearly acting in bad faith to harm another participant of the forum. Binary crossed that line. From: Z3ke To: GravemindLegacy (MOD) Subject: Thanks /s And you stepped in long after all the damage was done. It was really helpful. Thanks for all that. Thanks for warning me before I stepped foot in a death trap. Look, I don't really get why you're messaging me. I thought I made it pretty clear when I told this forum to go fuck itself.

I'm done with this place. From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: Re: Thanks /s You are not wrong when saying that my timing could have been better. But like I said before, I have been reading your story with more attention than most. After you fought the Hemocyte Swarm, I assumed that you were entirely safe from the Witness Chambers. As for why I am reaching out: consider it a course correction for both you and this forum. I do not have an issue with what you are doing.

Contrary to what most on this forum like to argue, I do not think that fanfiction "ruins" anything. The developers never thought that either. They have always encouraged people to dig into the world, build on it, and play around with it. The creators of the game loved this kind of engagement, and have always been eager to see people build onto their setting.

There have been devs on this forum before, quietly contributing to posts, leaving lore fragments in threads, and nudging discussions towards secrets yet to be uncovered. They enjoy seeing people interact with what they built. So no, I'm not here to shut you down. My role is not to control your story nor is it to nudge you in certain directions. Think of me more like a referee. I let the game play out and only step in when it devolves into something more destructive.

From: Z3ke To: GravemindLegacy (MOD) Subject: Ya failed! You consider yourself a ref? Because, if so you're a pretty shit one. You might want to work on that part of your job because you kinda fucked it up, didn't you? Look, I don't care about your policies or how you split hairs between harassment and debate. I don't care about any of that shit. I've already said what I needed to say, which is that this forum is completely useless for me. Ban me. Don't ban me. I don't give a shit.

I'm not coming back and I'm not taking advice and I'm not playing along with this anymore. From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: Re: Ya failed! I will say this once and then we can drop it. I respect what you have been doing with your fanfic. You have put more effort into your story than most who attempt to run something like this in the forum. Your consistency, your attention to detail, and your ability to adapt to the thread in real time are all notable. It is, by any reasonable standard, well executed.

However, I will not pretend that I believe you have actually been isekai'd into the setting. Nothing you say is likely to convince me that you have been, and I have no interest in relitigating the point. It would not be a productive use of either of our time. That said, I am interested in something from you. To satiate my own curiosity, I would like to propose a small exercise. There is another location in The MIZ that I can point you towards. I would like you to visit it and report back on what you find.

From: Z3ke To: GravemindLegacy (MOD) Subject: Re: Re: Ya failed! No. Absolutely not. What part of "fuck this forum" don't you understand. I'm not doing another test for you people. The last time I followed the directions given by this forum I ended up trapped in a room that Binary thought would kill me. That room was supposed to be a dev sandbox too, remember? From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: Re: Re: Re: Ya failed! Again, your reaction is entirely understandable.

But contrary to what Binary believed, the Witness Chambers was not, and has never been, a development sandbox. It was not an abandoned testing space or a piece of unused content left behind in error. It is part of the game world proper and integrated into its system and its lore. In fact, it is somewhat ironic that Binary_Arcana - who prides himself on his understanding of the lore - failed to recognize the location for what it is: the legitimate resting place of the Unfed Witness.

What I am pointing you towards is something fundamentally different. It is an actual developers sandbox room. This one does NOT have any traps, it won't lock you in, and you won't have to fight or negotiate with any hostile entities. It is precisely what the term implies: a controlled space used for testing. From: Z3ke To: GravemindLegacy (MOD) Subject: Unfed Witness I never shared what the Witness called itself. How do you know about that? And if you knew about it, why not share it with the forum yourself?

All of y'all are so obsessed with hidden lore and secrets and everything, and yet it sounds like you're keeping that little tidbit to yourself. How come you haven't popped onto the forum and told anyone how to get out of that room? How come you haven't give anyone hints on what to do to find the Witness? From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: Re: Unfed Witness We all have our secrets.

And I would remind you of something I said earlier: I do not involve myself in steering the direction of discourse on this forum. It is not my role to inject answers or guide the forum towards specific conclusions, even when I have access to them. What I am offering you is a controlled risk for you. The location I have in mind is within The MIZ proper. You will not have to descend into the Under-MIZ or place yourself in any meaningful danger. You enter the room, you look around, and then you leave. That is all.

I want to see if you can find something there that shouldn't be accessible under normal conditions. That is what interests me. From: Z3ke To: GravemindLegacy (MOD) Subject: Still no. You're really not getting it. I'm done playing along with this stuff. I've got enough money now that I can be comfortable in The MIZ and figure everything out on my own. I'll get back home my own way and not have to rely on the absolute sociopaths that live on this forum.

From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: A reason Then let me give you a reason to go. If you choose to visit the sandbox room, I will make it worth your time. You may select one of the following: I will provide you with a piece of undiscovered lore that nobody on this forum has found and documented. OR I will owe you a favor. You can make a single request, within reason, to be called upon at a time of your choosing. So, you can walk away right now as you have indicated you intend to do.

Or you can spend a few minutes investigating a location that poses no threat to you, and then walk away with something of value.

PaperSnakes Soooo… nobody gonna talk about the elephant in the room? Zeke just straight up booked it out of here and said he's done with the story. So, is that it? This fic dead now? Surprise. Just joined to have Z3ke curse me out, what great timing… SIGH. KickInator Welcome to the forum bro. Ch3micalBurst93 | just joined to have Z3ke curse me out. | LMAO. I didn't even think about all the new readers just catching up on the fic. Imagine bingeing this whole thing only to slam fast-first into the meltdown arc.

We should put a warning on this and tell people not to start it because Zeke is just going to rage-quit halfway through it. DataDatum He'll be back. Give it a week or two to let him cool off. Then he'll realize he still wants to tell his story and we'll get a post like nothing happened. HonoredBibliophile I get Zeke's response, and refusing to explain the room and the Witness is definitely the right call to prevent the same thing from happening in the future.

But cutting off the entire forum is basically the same as shooting himself in the face, because that's the only equalizer he has in the world. I'm not trying to victim blame Zeke here, but I think he's deliberately ignoring just how much he has been relying on the forums just for basic survival. He used the forums to survive and escape the Glens, get an in with Patch, and find places to get good gear.

He shits on Crush for putting him in danger, but the fact is that the plan WORKED, and that without it he would just be relying on small jobs to stay afloat. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Honestly, I expect him to cut himself off from the forum for a good amount of time and just try to survive on his own and find a way back home, only for him to struggle to accomplish much without the cheat-level information hes had so far.

Considering how pissed and stubborn he is, we probably won't be hearing from Zeke for a while until he faces an obstacle he can't overcome on his own. Guess we just have to rely on Foppery and the other Shards players for lore and good stories until then. StoryLeech I'm not so sure. That didn't feel like a "see you in a week" type of an exit. The guy burnt bridges, salted the earth, flipped the table, and cursed everyone out. https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=z0aF9kSLpeY MushroomCleric Nah, he'll be back.

He still hasn't heard my best material yet. I'm just getting warmed up. Fillask Know that I shall make a good effort in attempting to fuck my own face to appease the almighty Z3ke. Binary_Arcana The guy just couldn't handle constructive criticism. If he actually cared about the Fracture-verse, he'd be open to people pushing back on his story. Besides, risk and consequences are a vital part of the narrative. I was doing him a favor. If he removed the risk, he would have removed the tension.

Look at how well everyone is treating his fic now that I introduced tension. CrushDaddyXx Binary… ARE YOU FUCKIN' KIDDING ME! Grave, you might as well get your ban hammer ready again because I'm about to go off. Binary, I'd say you have some balls coming back on this thread but I imagine they're teeny-tiny ones. You do NOT get to stroll back in here and act like this was some kind of creative disagreement.

The Primary system assumes good faith for being part of this story, but you held back information and pushed Zeke into a situation that you "knew" would kill him. You tried to sabotage his fic, but since that didn't work you're trying to come in here and lay claim to making it better? What bosheet. Don't even get me started on all the other shit you pulled. You are trying to stalk the man IRL and blow up his shit. You don't get to stand on a soapbox and talk about respecting the lore after all that.

Foppery came out of nowhere, called your entire read on Corva wrong, backed it up with evidence, and suddenly we find out that Zeke has been right this whole time. Now you're trying to waltz back into this thread and act like he's the problem? Zeke called it. You're a colossal dick. If him walking away from this story means that you never get the answer to how he escaped the Witness Chambers, then I applaud him, even if it means this fic is dead. GravemindLegacy (MOD) Binary_Arcana.

You have already been warned regarding your conduct in this thread. You have now been temorarily banned from posting for 24-hours. GravemindLegacy (MOD) CrushDaddyXx. I understand your frustration, however this is a formal warning. Do not escalate into direct personal attacks. Further violations will result in a temporary suspension. If this thread cannot comport themselves, I will have no choice but to lock it. Keep the discussion focused on the topic, not the individual. InkWell Okay…

setting aside that whole mess for a second, someone earlier in the thread floated an idea that might fix everything. You'd have a Primary and a Proctor. The Primary would stay the same and still do Primary things. They'd guide the narrative and suggest actions that Zeke could take. But the Proctor would be a new and separate role whose only responsibility is to protect Zeke. They'd step in and push back on the advice given to by the Primary if they deem it too dangerous.

Fateweaver I feel like Binary villain ranting about ruining Z3ke's story in defense of the site's lore only to immediately get the biggest egg on his face is the best karmic retribution imaginable. To think that he was ranting so hard about Corva only to find out Z3ke was right all along, and now being irrevocably branded with the reputation of nuking other people's discoveries for the sake of his own ego. Chef's kiss. MushroomCleric | You'd have a primary AND a proctor. | Oooo. I like it.

You've have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. ArtooDeetoa It would've stopped the Witness Chambers situation. If Mushroom or Story had been given the same info that Zeke had, they could have gone into the chambers and warned him that there wasn't a way out. ClickWhirr I don't like it and, frankly, I don't think the fic needs it. If you've got the Proctor there, you'd lose the entire Witness Chambers arc. All that tension and mystery and stakes would be gone.

What would have happened with Crush's decision to send Zeke after the Reclaimer? Let's be honest, that was a terrible idea from a survival standpoint. A Proctor would have, rightfully, shut that down instantly. Yet that was one of the best arcs in the entire story. PLUS, it was the arc that best helped out Zeke. He managed to score an elixir, a bunch of books, a ton of money, and that nifty little knife that he doesn't know how to use cause his melee skill is still 2.

If Zeke had a Proctor at that time, he would have argued against sending Zeke into the Under-MIZ and would have just had him hang around the city and practice with guns or melee weapons or his voice. It would have been BORING. PaperSnakes | Yet that was one of the best arcs in the entire story. | Yea. And it was also the arc where he almost died like… five times. CrushDaddyXx That's what made it so good.

HandsWithoutArms There's a key difference between Crush sending Zeke after the Reclaimer, and Binary sending Zeke into a situation where he "knew" that he was going to die. Binary tried to sabotage Zeke. Crush just tried to get him to fight. Deatstroke Binary got humbled, some rando got the spotlight for the biggest discovery of the year and the community has entertainment. Man I love happy endings. ShivSays | some rando got the spotlight | Put some respect on my man Foppery's name. He didn't doubt for a second.

SlugerdErmine1 I've gotta say though, Binary was rightfully pissed off for at least half his argument being that Zeke is pretending to be an actual missing person, even linking the case file to the thread. Nobody seems to be talking about it at all now so I'm wondering if that's just being brushed over. DeconstructedAntlers No. I want to know about that too. It's pretty ghoulish when you think about it; taking a missing person and putting them in your fic. Unfortunately we can't ask him about it until he returns.

Of course, that might be the reason that he left in the first place. He wanted to shut down that line of questioning because he doesn't have a good answer for it. 10161066 For everyone saying that a proctor would mess up the story and make it too safe… if that's what it takes to get Zeke back than I'll take a slightly more boring story than no story at all. Hambone Samesies. I want more lore.

I want to know what the hell the deal is with the Witness and I want Zeke to drop more info like Corva and the House of Seasons. We're not getting any of that if he just quits his fic. Y_Ddraig_Goch So Zeke's 3 for 3 on lore now, I think. Weird painting in the Glens (Check, found in old Glen videos) House of Seasons (Check, verified a thousand fold, reproducible) Corva, the Body Snatcher (Check, he's doing it in Shards.) Snypehuntee007 Problem with Vash and the Glens is that the confirmation for both seems to only be in Syndicate's. So, while certain members of this forum might take it as gospel considering the recent revelations, they aren't actually confirmed. Bilbo Bro needs to grow up. Would he jump off a building if we told him to? No, because he is a grown ass person capable of and culpable for making his own decisions. You got owned by Binary, stop crying about it.

Daniel"Quit being a little bitch to a guy who just tried to kill you and a forum who didn't stop it." Saltmines Yeaaaa. I don't think that's gonna get him back. CaptPuffnstuff What, so we cripple the forum's participation in the story to appease Zeke? That's some bosheet. InkWell Uh, the format clearly has a flaw in it that went unnoticed by all of us. Hope everyone behaves isn't the best way to design a system. CrushDaddyXx But the chaos is the point.

All the bad calls and all the risky plays and all the moments where Zeke is fending for his life is what makes the fic so fun. If you add a proctor, then everything gets filtered through "is this safe" and it all becomes so interminably boring. StoryLeech You know what is even more boring than that? A dead fic. If adding a proctor to the whole system gives us a chance of him coming back, then it's worth a try. MushroomCleric Brb. Gotta come up with another joke to tell in the middle of the thread.

My last one summoned him, so maybe another will summon him again. DataDatum Please don't.

From: Z3ke To: GravemindLegacy (MOD) Subject: What the hell? Wow. Good prank dude. I thought you said there was something in it for me. I went to the room you told me about and you were right when saying there weren't any traps or enemies. That's because there was absolutely nothing there at all. The only thing in the room was a table, a few chairs, and a note. The note was addressed to a woman named Marianne.

The guy writing it said that he was a coward and he couldn't say what he wanted to her face so instead he was writing it down and hiding it where she'd never even see it. He was too scared that she'd reject his feelings or, worse, that if they got together it wouldn't last. She'd be with him and maybe they'd be happy for a while, but eventually she'd see him for the mess that he is and then she'd leave and everything would go back to the way it was before. So that was it? That was your verification test?

Explain to me how that fits into anything that the forum has been talking about? From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: Re: What the hell? Mark? Is that you? From: Z3ke To: GravemindLegacy (MOD) Subject: Re: Re: What the hell? Uh. No. This is Zeke. From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: Clarification Let me rephrase that. What, exactly, is your relationship to Severance Systems and the Fracture-verse? The room that you just described should not be accessible under current conditions.

From: Z3ke To: GravemindLegacy (MOD) Subject: Re: Clarification No. You don't get to dodge the question and pivot to some weird question. You told me that there'd be something there. I went and found it, now explain why the hell it matters. You had me check out some guy's… breakup letter? Confession? Whatever it was. So what does that mean? From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: Re: Re: Clarification I am not dodging the question, I am simply adjusting to new information.

The sandbox room that I directed to you exists only within the Syndicate's servers. Those servers have all been offline for years and are inaccessible through standard means. Yet you entered one of its internal testing spaces and found an object from it. I have a working theory about who you are.

You're either a) a former developer who has retained access to a private environment, or b) someone with enough technical proficiency, and fixation, to have spun up a private server before the shutdowns were fully enforced. The last part seems to be the most likely considering when your IP address is pinged it gives a different answer each time, telling MODs that you are not able to be found. Whatever the case, either scenario would explain how you're doing what you're doing.

It would also explain the level of detail in your posts, the consistency, and your apparent ability to access locations that should no longer exist. Regardless of which explanation is correct, I want to make one thing clear. I am not interested in exposing you. If you are operating on a private server, that is not my concern and I have no intention of reporting it. However, I will warn you to exercise caution.

If you are a developer who helped work on Syndicate's, you should know about the strict NDAs that everyone was forced to sign. That means that, with everything you've written about in your fic, you are treading on territory that could have legal consequences. From: Z3ke To: GravemindLegacy (MOD) Subject: Still not answering You really want me to ignore that note, huh? You sent me in there for a reason, so either that letter meant something or it was just you screwing with me. Which is it?

From: GravemindLegacy (MOD) To: Z3ke Subject: Re: Still not answering I did not send you there for the note. I sent you there to see if you could reach it. The contents of the note are incidental to the question that I was asking, and I'd appreciate it if you dropped it. If you would still like your compensation, the offer stands. Undiscovered lore, or the favor.

Also, while I won't beg you to come back to the forum, you should know that several posters have been attempting to change the rules around the Primary system to ensure your protection. If you continue to write your story, I am sure that the forum would appreciate it. And after discovering how you were telling the truth about Corva, anyone who would attempt to sabotage your story would be dealt with by the readers.

SignalLoss You know… we've been arguing about the Primary and Proctor system a lot, but I think we're all missing something even more basic. Zeke is clearly roleplaying. At the end of the day, he's presenting himself as someone who's been isekai'd into the game world. Now, I don't believe that's literally what happened, but maybe we should treat the scenario more consistently. When he first popped onto the forum he asked what we all would do if we'd been isekai'd into the world.

Nobody was paying attention until Gravemind jumped in and told him to add more to his question. Thank god he did because we've all gotten so much more lore out of it now. So… let's treat this whole thing like Zeke has been isekai'd. And if you can't wrap your head around that and enjoy his RP, treat this like someone playing a Zeke-run of the games. I'm sure we've all jumped into one of those threads before, but if you haven't, it's all about playing the games while pretending that you are actually the character.

You live within the constraints of what you would actually be comfortable with. NullSigil Hmmm. Stop trying to kill Zeke for content? That's a bold new direction. There's a problem with your premise though Signal. Crush, would you have gone after the Reclaimer back when you first became Primary? CrushDaddyXx Absolutely I would have. HandsWithoutArms OMG, he is the worst possible control group for this experiment. PaperSnakes What, so we do a Zeke-run etiquette type of a thing?

Armo Putting myself in Zeke's shoes, if we assume he's unironically telling the straight truth and got isekai'd, I would hate everyone on this forum with a passion. All the people not on board with treating this like a real situation should agree to leave the thread. I understand this forum doesn't believe in RP. But if you all want more lore, you're gonna have to RP. It's not even hard! You're literally just entertaining a hypothetical, and responding accordingly.

Try it, it will be fun if you have a spark of joy in your soul (so for everyone but Binary). I still don't understand how so many fucking nerds refuse to engage with RP here. Also, people already know they don't need to read the thread if they think fanfic is cringe or whatever. Let me rephrase this - whoever you are and whatever you are reading: don't engage if you're not willing to engage constructively and substantively.

It's high time mods made that a thread rule and threadbanned people accordingly, or at least let Zeke do it. Hambone | So… let's treat this whole thing like Zeke has been isekai'd. | I don't think we need to go that far. Maybe just follow the golden rule of "don't be a dick." Also, maybe the two leads in each arc should RP a little bit. As much as you're comfortable. RedMonty ^ Hambone.

Those acting as Primary and Proctor have to treat this as a serious situation and RP because a real person's life hangs in the balance here. So seriously, now I volunteer as Tribute. Grave, do the transformation sequence thingy. Make me beautiful and covered in lace and ribbons. Caboodle Z3ke, if you're listening, we promise to only lightly endanger you if you give us another chance. ClickWhirr Jeezus… this fic is going to turn to shit. Calling it right now.

Not only is Z3ke not going to return, but when he does it's going to be nothing but hand holding and back pats. I think I'm just going to check out now. GravemindLegacy (MOD) This thread has gone well beyond what I am willing to tolerate. Let me be very clear moving forward: what happened with Binary_Arcana will not be repeated. Criticism of the story is allowed. Disagreement about direction, lore interpretation, and mechanics is what this forum is built on. What is not allowed is bad-faith participation.

Deliberately misleading a participant and attempting to sabotage the progression of Z3ke's story is not acceptable. Secondly, the level of hostility in this thread has escalated to the point where it is not productive. Personal attacks, insults, and outright hostility towards other users or towards Z3ke himself will be moderated much more heavily going forward. If you want to argue, insult, or tear apart the premise of what Z3ke is doing, you are free to do so in another thread outside my moderation.

If Z3ke chooses to return, this space should be one where he can reasonably engage without being subjected to what has occurred over the past several days. StoryLeech Ooo. Dad's home. MushroomCleric I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.