Dagon The Dark (Skyrim)

DAGON THE DARK (SKYRIM)
=======================

Most people don't see this, but Bethesda put a strange feature in The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Well, it's not really a feature, it's just a thing that happens. You see, when you use the wait feature, you can see the world move around you really fast.

The wait feature works on an hour-by-hour basis. That is, you can choose to wait a certain number of hours of in-game time. This is different from sleeping because it doesn't heal your wounds. It doesn't put you in a bed during those hours, you just stand there. Most people use this feature for little things, like, for example, if you get out of a dungeon or a building and it's night time, and it's hard to see, you might choose to wait till morning.

The thing about the wait feature that differs from previous Elder Scrolls games, such as Oblivion, is that in between the hours passing you can still see the world around you moving, albeit with an extremely modified frame rate.

Mostly, nothing interesting happens. You see the shadows of trees moving through the day, but nothing of real note. One night I came across something strange happening in between the hours.

I had previously assumed that people and living things didn't even render during Wait time, but it would appear I was wrong. It was about 11 pm, and i was drowsy. I was waiting from 3am in-game to 8am in-game, just waiting for the merchants in Whiterun to open. That's when I noticed something strange pass right by me. I saw some kind of shadowy figure dip out of the ground, up so it's head was showing, then fall back in, all within about half a second. I was shocked at first, and I almost jumped out of my seat. I tried to remember, and decided that the figure must have been the model of a dragon, preforming a flying animation a tad bit lower than it should have been, and missing its texture, just appearing as a black model.

I went on the Bethesda forums to ask about the dragon, but in writing my post, I misspelled "dragon" as "dagon", and we all affectionately dubbed the monster as Dagon the Dark. Even with about three people willing to help me speculate, we were clueless. A person under the alias of "Cylinder-dude" pointed out to me that if Dagon were simply missing his texture files, he wouldn't appear all black, he wouldn't appear at all. he'd be invisible. That's something. He told me he'd dig around in the game files for some all-black dragon textures.

I went back to my game and found something horrible had happened-- there were no more dragons in Skyrim. I searched far and wide for some sort of dragon to fight, but for the life of me, I couldn't find one. Over six in-game days of just wandering around, I didn't encounter one dragon. I even tried summoning Odahviin to fight with me, but nothing came. I did the shout successfully, but no dragon came. I figured something was wrong with my save file, but no-- Dragons were now completely gone.

I tried to start a new game, but that's when it got creepy.

Instead of starting out in the opening prisoner sequence and getting the Unbound quest, the game started off in Whiterun, at Dragonsreach. I searched the whole place and the Jarl was missing. All that happened was I appeared in the hall, and I heard the Jarl's voice say, "You have to slay the beast". I remember questioning weather I had actually heard that audio in-game or not. If you stick around in the hall for a while, you can hear him say, "Please", then the music stops until you leave.

I assumed that by "beast", he meant the drgon you meet in the Dragon Rising quest. I went outside and found Irileth and the rest of the guards waiting for me. I tried talking to Irileth, but all she said was "Please slay the beast".

So, I went down to the tower where you fight the dragon, only to find no dragon. The tower was still wrecked, but nothing was on fire like it usually is. I got close, and suddenly I got pulled into a conversation with one of the guards cowering in the tower. He said, again, with dialogue I had never heard in-game before, "Please... you have to kill it... it's only you... you can save us from it... you have to kill it... Please!" I'm pretty sure that wasn't the voice that guard usually talks in too. I got a dialogue choice; Yes or No. I chose yes, eagar to face the dragon and whatever else my clearly fucked-out game could throw at me.

It was then that the guard looked down at me and scared me. He said something, and it was bit louder than usual. My speakers must have messed up the stereo placement. because it sounded like it was coming from behind me. He said, "Don't just stand there!" in a suprisingly convincing dispair. Then, it happened.

Bam. Dagon the dark dove right the fuck out of the tower, this time without wings (a dragon without wings), swallowed up the guard, and dragged his body into the ground. I jumped, because it made this otherworldly, echo-y grunt that made my speakers buzz and my desk vibrate. From there, it became chaos. All the guards and Irileth started scrambling, running faster than they should have been able to, unarmed and hopeless. One by one, Dagon, a wingless ground dragon came up and swallowed up all of the people, one by one, until there was just me left. And then Dagon came up from out of the darkness and swallowed me. My character got sucked down into the ground, and everything was white. I looked down and the worst part happened. I saw dagon's face. My character's model was inside dagon's model, which was white from the inside, and at the bottom were two piercing, small black eyes and a big black mouth; like a dog's. It stared at me and I couldn't look away, which I initially registered to the game's fault, but soon realized was a deeper problem. I actually couldn't move the mouse. I was paralyzed at my desk, looking at this terrible face. This lasted for what seemed like an eternity, and then I woke up near my bed, standing.

It was insane. I just skipped through time to the next morning, completely blanking out on everything that happened that night. I'm really scared at this point, and I go to my computer to consult Cylinder-Dude about it. I find that he's sent me about five "where are you" messages over the night. I inform him of the events that happened the night prior, then he tells me he can't find the face texture or the dagon "wingless dragon" model anywhere in the game's directory.

He asks me to send him a copy of my game directory so he can patch his game with my buggy files and check it out. I send him the files and over the next few weeks, we both experiment with the game.

First, he played my save file again. He played a few times, and turns out the game has rules:

Rule 1: You need to kill Dagon. How exactly you do that is not certain, but Cylinder-Dude (Who has identified his name as Sam) thinks you may need to get an in-game item to kill him.

Rule 2: You can't let Dagon kill you. Now, this seems impossible at first, but me and Sam gradually found out that the thing that triggers Dagon attacking you is Irileth getting eaten. There is, in fact, a way to save Irileth and, by extension, yourself. Dagon makes a sreetching sound about 1 half-second before he attacks Irileth; If you can sucessfully hear that and start a conversation with her in time, you'll save her from getting eaten.

Rule 3: fast travel and Wait are disabled.

The initial plan was to - Get this - Simply run all over every inch of Skyrim's world, all whilst talking to Irileth every five seconds (we'd used the console to make her follow us), and just keep wandering and searching everywhere for this random item that kills Dagon, somehow. It was a crazy and painstaking plan, but noone can obsess over these things like internet losers.

Sam, understanding my concerns with the game after my black-out episode, offered to try it out for me. (I sent him a thank-you e-mail and he said he was going to work.

And that's the last I heard from Cylinder-Dude.

He was gone. No more e-mails. Nothing. I even scanned the forums for his posts, he just dropped off the map. Nonexistent.

I got scared; so scared I didn't even turn on my computer for a while. I scanned the news for mentions of search parties or something, and eventually succeeded in pushing it to the east-back of my mind. I just tried to forget about Sam and his fate. Of course, it didn't work. As soon as i went to sleep, I hovered over my bed and thought about Sam and what happened to him. It ate me up like; well, like a wingless dragon.

Over the course of a week, I gained the drive to try the game again. I decided that the omputer game ouldn't hurt me-- it was nothing more than a few billion lines of code. I started it up to the opening screen.

"Apples."

I swear to christ, they were chanting, "apples". The home screen music had switched to just a chant of "apples". I disregard my insanity and plunge further into my game.

There are approximately just over 4,000 apples in Skyrim, across barrels and other things. One of them is poison. One of them can kill Dagon. One of them can slay the beast.

I manage to save Irileth for the first few times. I walk backwards, keeping the crosshairs on her in case I need to save her, checking the map every so often to make sure I'm walking in the right direction.

I made it from Whiterun to a fort just outside it before I fucked up and let her die. Which means I had to stare into Dagon's piercing eyes again. Which means I blacked out again. I arose, standing in front of my bed. Angry. Violated. Filled with the kind of strange curiosity that created the first pedophiles. Still determined.

So this is what I did every night. Every night, making it a little further, but blacking out a little longer. This went on for about 2 weeks. Then I found what I made.

Sam is dead. I saw the news that his body had been found naked in the woods. His teeth had been ripped out-- and replaced. With a dog's teeth. This was the morning I woke up in front of my closet, not in front of my bed. I opened my closet.

I swear to Jesus H. Christ that for a mere milisecond - Maybe shorter - I saw Dagon's face in my closet. Did I jump? Of course I jumped. The face went away and at least 40 apples - All with a bite out of them - Some rotting, some fresh - fell out of my closet. Right onto my feet. Apples. Apples. Apples.

"Don't just stand there."

Sam was right behind me. It had to be him. I felt that it was him. I felt what I owed him. He was behind me one instant, and gone in the next. I fell into the apples. They ate me.

He died. He died because of me. He said please. I just stood and did nothing.

There are over 2,000 apples in Skyrim.

Don't just stand there.

You can save us. You can slay the beast.

Please.

Apples.

An Oblivion Mod

AN OBLIVION MOD
===============

The first thing that I must point out is that this is NOT for you tl;dr idiots out there. This is, however, a true story about the strangest and probably most demented Oblivion mod I've ever come across. What makes that true is the fact that it's more than just a mod. It's something else. To this day I'm baffled as to what it "really" was, or how the hell most of it was even possible.

It all started about a year ago. After 2 years of playing the shit out of the main quest, guilds, Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine, I finally started filling up on a bunch of mods that even looked slightly appealing to me. Anyways, one day I was browsing through Planet Elder Scrolls and one mod in particular caught my attention, as it had no screenshots and the description simply read: "HIGH LEVEL AND SKILLED ONLY, PLEASE!!" The file itself was a single .esp, only a byte large. I was clueless at to what it could be, which either unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) brought me to give it a whirl.

I downloaded it and opened up Windows Explorer, only to find to my surprise that it had also come with a .txt file. The .txt was named HELP, while the .esp was named him (please don't get confused though, it's not an intentional message saying help him, the names will be explained).

I opened up the .txt file. The only thing in it was a short yet strange message:

"killed him after he killed her, lost game disc, someone else to do it or curse"

I couldn't help but laugh after reading the lack of meaning and grammar in the note. I should have known it was probably just some 10 year old noob modder trying to make a pathetic quest. But I decided to proceed with placing it to my data, as it may have been a foreign uploader and maybe it would be some interesting mystery plot. I checked the .esp and started up the game.

Upon loading my character (A level 71 Imperial knight, named Joe for the hell of it), I immediately spawned in a pitch black cave with no music or typical ambience. Just dead silence. I luckily had a few torches on me, and light one to find that it was actually a cramped straight tunnel with no door behind me. I had no choice but to advance forward.

After about 10 seconds of running, I entered a large chamber with a single small wooden door at the opposite side. There was blood everywhere however, and not like the typical Oblivion decals as you see in the Arena. It looked so... real. It had to be one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen in a game. I was even able to see teeth scattered in some places, along with a few fingers and bones. All of them looked so much more realistic than Oblivion itself. It gave me the shivers, and I hesitated to open the door. But I had no other option. I activated the door...

I was now standing in what looked like a typical fort interior, except for the same blood and gore scattered everywhere. I only took about 5 steps when I suddenly heard a distant voice say: "Welcome... player..."

Now I was annoyed. I had always been a hardcore medieval roleplayer, and breaking the 4th wall like that was enough to make me quit. However, the escape button wasn't working at all. I decided I would attempt to bail out via coc cheating, but the console didn't work either. I couldn't quit, and I couldn't cheat.

I progressed forward without encountering any enemies, traps or containers. Just a straight featureless and very dark tunnel, with no music playing but I heard very faint screams of sort, like tortured souls from hell. I couldn't tell, but I ignored it and just kept looking for something to do in this already abnormal mod. I soon heard the voice again, this time considerably closer and louder:

"Fucking finally, I'm free!"

The screaming souls grew louder, and I started to hear the distant running of someone else coming from the opposite side of the dark hallway...

Soon, the person appeared: A horrifying-looking man, who was only in his underwear, and had 3 rotting gunshot wounds on his torso. His head had also obviously been cracked open, and was decaying as well. The most intimidating thing about him was that he looked just as real as anyone in real life. And he was gripping a machete, and seemed to be full of intense rage.

He charged at me screaming, and I held up my Steel shield. To my surprise though, he instead bent down slightly and started hacking away at my exposed legs. My health started to diminish very quickly, as the man was performing many unorthodox maneuvers to counter the game's combat.

I managed to heal on the couple health potions I had, and finally land a hit on him. He screamed in agony in a demonic sounding voice, as his model got a giant slice across his chest from where I struck, and then seemed to disintegrate that section of his body.

I decided that running and swinging my sword constantly was the best option to avoid his unusual offense, and according to the meter on my crosshair, finally chipped away half of his health. By now his entire body was burnt up, with his skull showing with glowing red eyes.

My armor was starting to break, and my health only had a small fraction remaining. The man was constantly hacking while screaming with insanity, I was lucky to actually deflect any of his attacks with the shield. I finally decided to quit my current strategy, which I knew would get me killed, and did a lunge attack (which at master level was a stab) which completely impaled the man.

Despite having my volume at a reasonable level, his scream was loud enough to hurt my ears as his body soon became engulfed in flames, and burst before he hit the ground. The level was filled with silence yet again, but then I saw that there was now an opening where the man came out of. I walked inside...

The room I entered was very dimly lit, with only a small wooden chair in the center and a straight jacket sitting at the corner. Resting in front of the chair however were somewhat old real newspapers, with the man in them. Apparently, he was insane and was held in an asylum for quite some time until deemed stable and released. Then, I found a photograph of a woman. This made me think back to the HELP note, and I quickly understood everything.

The insane man went to the uploader's house and brutally murdered his wife. The husband quickly responded by shooting him 3 times, which resulted in the attacker busting his head on something behind him when he fell. The husband either contained the insane man's soul in the .esp somehow, or the man haunted it. Either way, since the husband's oblivion game was lost, he had to find someone who could finish the job and destroy his evil soul once and for all, or else allow him to kill even more in spirit form.

I have no idea whether this is true or some really fucked up story, but whatever it is I still have nightmares about that man. Screaming in rage...

JVK1166Z.ESP (Morrowind)

JVK1166Z.ESP
============

Some people might recall some momentary buzz caused a couple of years ago by a particularly odd Morrowind mod. The file name was jvk1166z.esp. It was never posted on any of the larger Elder Scrolls communities, usually just smaller boards and role-playing groups. I know in a few cases rather than being posted it was sent via PM or email to a 'chosen few.' It was only up for a few days, to the best of my knowledge.

It caused a buzz because it was a virus, or seemed to be. If you tried to load the game with the mod active, it would hang at the initial load screen for a full hour and then crash to the desktop. If you let it get that far, your install of Morrowind, along with any save files you had, would become completely corrupted. Nobody could figure out what the mod was trying to do, since it couldn't be opened in the Construction Set. Eventually, warning were distributed not to use it if you found it, and things died down.

About a year later, in a mod board I used to frequent, someone popped up with the mod again. He said he was PMed by a lurker who deleted his account immediately after sending. He also said that the person advised him to try playing the mod through DOSbox. For some reason, this worked...sort of. The game was a bit laggy, and you couldn't get into Options, Load Game, the console, or really anything else, other than the game itself. The QuickSave and QuickLoad hotbuttons worked, but that was it. And the QuickSave file seemed to be just part of the game file, so you couldn't get at it anymore. Some speculated that the changed game used an older graphics renderer, making DOSbox necessary, but it didn't LOOK any different.

This part I can speak about from personal experience. When you start a new game in JVK (as the board came to call it), once you left the starting bit in the Census Office and came into the game proper, the first thing you notice is that the 'prophecy has been severed' box pops up. This is because every single NPC having to do with the main quest is dead, with the sole exception of Yagrum Bagarn, the last of the Dwemer. Their corpses never despawn, so you can go check on all of them. In effect, you begin in a world that is domed to start with.

The second thing you notice is that you're losing health. It's only a bit, but it keeps happening, a little bit at a time. The longer you stay in one place, the quicker it seems to occur. If you let this loss kill you, you'll find the cause: a figure we came to call the Assassin, because he seems to wear a retextured version of the Dark Brotherhood armor from Tribunal, even though the expansions don't work in JVK. It's all black, completely untextured, like he's just a hole in space. The way he moves...he gave me quite a start, the first time I saw him scuttling around my dead body. He crawls inhumanly on his hands and feet, his arms and legs splayed out like a spider. You'd usually only see him after death, crawling around and over your body just before the reload box popped up. Occasionally, you could catch a glimpse of him darting around a corner or crawling on a wall or ceiling. It made the game very difficult to play at night!

Other than that, the only noticeable difference is that at night, at random intervals, every NPC in the game will go outside for a few minutes. During this time, the only thing they will say when hailed is, "Watch the sky." Once they return to their normal behavior they act as normal, though.

After a while, a player on the board discovered a new NPC named Tieras, a male Dunmer in the temple at Ghostgate. Two things are notable about this NPC: first is his robe, a unique article of clothing that was lovingly rendered with twinkling stars all across it, looking like a torn-off chunk of the night sky. The second is that all of his dialogue, in addition to showing up in the dialogue box, is voiced. You can skip it if you wish, but it all sounds like it's in the default male Dunmer voice. Some people said that they thought the voice was "slightly" different, but it was a very, very good imitation.

I won't go into the details, but the questline he sends you on has to do with a dungeon referred to simply as 'The Citadel.' At least, to the point I reached, the quests were all of a fairly generic 'discover the secrets of the ancients' bent. the entrance to this dungeon is on a small island far to the west of Morrowind proper. I eventually discovered that if you used a Scroll of Icarian Flight at the westernmost point on the main landmass and jump directly west, you'd end up almost exactly at the island.

Even though the dungeon is called The Citadel, it goes straight down. It dwarfs any other dungeon, both in size and difficulty. From a natural cave area you'll proceed down into an ancestral tomb looking area, then Daedric ruin area, and then a Dwemer ruin area. I made it down to the Dwemer Ruins before I quit. The creatures here were strong enough that a level 20 character would have to take care, and since you can't use the console in JVK, level 20 take a while to get. Since QuickSave and QuickLoad are your only options, it's all too easy to get yourself into an impossible situation, too. I did, and I just didn't have the energy to start over.

Now what I'm telling you is based on what those few who went further reported. Past the Dwemer Ruins you find yourself in a level like the Dwemer Ruins, but darker. Rather than the usual bronze, all the surfaces, including those of the creatures, are black. The sounds of machinery are loud here, and grow louder still randomly. There's also steam or fog everywhree, limiting your vision to about ten in-game feet or so. If you can make it through all this, you will reach a hall that those who found it called it the Portrait Room.

Like the fire in torches or other effects from early 3D games, this room has picture frames that always face directly at you, no matter how you look at them. The images in the frames were always randomly chosen images from your My Pictures folder. On the board, the ones who got there had some fun posting screenshots of the Portrait Room with various pictures in the frames (Usually porn, of course).

At the end of the hall was a locked door. After admitting defeat and returning to Tieras, everyone just found him saying, "Watch the sky," in his gravelly voice. What's more, nobody else in the game would say ANYTHING. There was just a completely blank dialogue box with no options at all. They wouldn't even rattle off the usual canned audible greetings. The only exception was at night; whenever they'd go out for a few minutes, they'd still repeat it. "Watch the sky." At this point, one of the players - a friend of mine from the board - noticed (and the few others who got this far agreed) that the night sky was no longer the usual night sky of Tamriel; it had changed to a depiction of a real night sky. And it moved.

From this point on, everything is based on what this one person reported. Eventually, he got himself kicked from the board, but I kept in contact with him for as long as he responded. According to him, based on the constellations and planets, the sky started around February 2005. if you died, loaded, or went back into the Citadel, it would start over. When the usual day sky graphics took over, the movement would be suspended until the stars appeared again. In the space of a single night, everything would move about two months worth. Since the timescale of JVK was more or less that of the standard game, that meant that a bit less than an hour was a 24-hour period.

He became convinced that the door would open based on some kind of celestial event. Of course, waiting for that meant leaving the game running. Of course, THAT meant that the game couldn't be left unattended, thanks to our old friend, the Assassin. My friend decided he's hang out for a whole day, just to see if anything happened. That would be about a year's worth of movement. Here's the post he made at the end of this experiment:

"I loaded in Seyda neen, where it all starts. It wasn't too bad, just had to check in now and then to move around and heal to make sure I wasn't dying. But check it out! 24 hours exactly in, and the Assassin learned a new trick! HE SCREAMS!!!! I was reading and all of a sudden, this crazy loud shriek just about makes me crap myself. It's like something out of a horror movie! I look up, and there he is, just crouched down right in front of me. Of course, the second I moved my character, he ran off. When I went back down to the Portrait Room, the door was still locked. Damn it, damn it, damn it!"

A bit later, he came to the decision that he needed to wait three days - three years. The PM advising us to try DOSbox showed up in February of 2008 was his reasoning, anyway.

"After the first shriek, the Assassin stops hitting you out of nowhere. Now he'll shriek, and if you don't move for a few seconds after that he hits you. I think whoever made the mod was trying to help. At night, I've got my headphones on and I was just kind of dozing off...when he wakes me up with a shriek; I jiggle the mouse, and I'm good!"

That post was two days in, from his laptop. Once it was over...

"FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK! FUUUUUUUUUCK! So FUCKING done. So, I wait, the three days, right, and right after the FUCKING Assassin made me jiggle the mouse, he shrieks again. So, I look, and everyone in town is outside. They're all saying, "Watch the sky." I don't see anything, though. But then the game starts getting dark...like REALLY dark. I turn up the brightness all the way on my monitor, and I can still barely see. I can see other people in the game, little figures running around in the distance, just running back and forth. If I try to get close, they run off. Now, I was trying to sleep, so the lights are off, and this is kind of creepy. I don't want to get up to turn on my light because I don't want to miss anything, but NOTHING fucking happens. Eventually I go back to The Citadel...it's still dark, and I gotta swim, and the whole time I can see all these guys swimming all around me, just barely there. I make it to the Citadel, and it's normal light inside, and I get worried. Sure enough, the Portrait Door is STILL FUCKING CLOSED. I go outside and it's ALL STARTING OVER. So that's it. I'm fucking going to bed, and I'm fucking done. The end."

After that, two things happen. first, another of the people who got to the Portrait Room claimed that the Assassin was showing up in his regular Morrowind game. (Quick explanation. If you reinstalled Morrowind to a different fold, you could have a normal Morrowind install along with JVK.) He himself chalked it up to an overactive imagination at first, but he reported a couple of really big scares with the black figure crawling right at him, or seeing it waiting for him just around a corner before scuttling off. Another of those who reached the Portrait Room started a regular Morrowind game, but never for sure saw him; it was just a couple of maybes, late at night, and always at a distance.

The second is that my friend started getting really abusive and short-tempered on the board, though he stopped talking about JVK entirely. It got so back that he was soon kicked off. I didn't hear anything from him for a couple of weeks after that, so I sent him an email. This was part of his reply:

"I know I shouldn't, but with classes out I've got some time, so I started JVK up again. It's almost 2011...and I think I've got the sleep madness! But stuff is happening! It's still dark...once it gets dark, it never gets any lighter. It stays like that. The people moved a few months ago...everyone in Seyda neen just went to that little bandit cave and moved in. They killed the bandits inside, and now they're just standing around inside. They don't say anything anymore; they don't do anything when you click on them. I quicksaved and killed one, and he just stood there until he died without fighting back!

And it's like that everywhere. You have to walk, since the quick travel people are all in caves now, too, but all the cities and towns re just deserted; all the people are in caves and tombs. Everyone in Vivec is down in the sewers. I'm going to Ghostgate next...I want to see if Tieras is still there. I'll tell you what he says when I get there!"

I replied and said i wanted to see what he said, too, and waited a day. When I didn't get a reply, I mailed him again, and a couple of hours later he sent back:

"Sorry, I totally forgot. So it's 2014 now...since it's always night, the stars are always moving. The whole screen is dark, but you can still see the brightest stars moving around. Tieras was gone...everyone in Ghostgate was gone. i don't know where they went. They're not in any of the nearby caves. But there's new stuff...people still don't say anything, but their eyes are bleeding. it's so dark that even with a light spell you have to get right up against them to see, but there they are, little dark streaks coming down from their eyes. I think I gotta be getting close. I know this is stupid, and there's no way the pay off is going to be worth it, but I just want to be able to say I stuck it out!"

I got that one during the day. Later that night, I got a follow up email:

"Some of the planets aren't moving right. It's pissing me off...if this keeps up, I won't be able to keep track anymore. It's almost 2015 now, I think. Fuck. You know, I just now noticed that there aren't any monsters anymore, either. I'm completely alone outside now. The main quest peoples' bodies are still laying around, though. i went to check on them.

I don't need headphones anymore, so I just leave them off. When he shrieks, it's like he's screaming right into my ear. I think I even kind of anticipate it. He's around a lot more now, a lot closer. He's different from the other people who started showing up, remember? They keep running around, just where i can barely see them. I have to admit, it's kind of creepy at night. Sometimes, when I go to the bathroom or whatever, I swear I can see something out of the corner of mye ye. I'm keeping all the lights on now."

I sent him a letter, jokingly telling him to get some real sleep, and left it at that. Two mornings later, I found this in my email. It was the last thing I got from him. After this, he stopped responding completely:

"I just got up from a fucked up dream, I think. The Assassin shrieked at me, and when I opened my eyes, he was right there, crouching over me. His arms and legs were longer, more like a spider's. I tried to push him away, but when I touched him my hands just went inside and I couldn't get them loose again, like he was made of tar or something.

Then I woke up, I thought. he was gone, but when I looked at the monitor I wasn't where I was. I was in the Corprusarium, with Yagrum. For once, the light was okay, and I could see him all bloated on those mechanical spider legs. I sat down at the computer and he started talking to me. Not in a box, but really talking to me,in Tieras' voice. He knew things about me. He told me things that I never told anyone, some things I totally forgot about. He told me that almost nobody had made it this far, and that the door would open up soon. I just had to hang on a little while longer. He said I'd know when it was time. He said I might be the first one to see what was inside.

And then I woke up for real, but I was at the computer. I still wasn't where i was. I'm swimming out to The Citadel Island. And I can hear this tapping. It's at my window. It's over on the left, so I'm sending you this, because I left my laptop by my bed, to the right. Just a little taptaptaptap...like he's knocking his finger against the glass. I might still be dreaming now."

So, I guess that's the end of the story. I know there's a few other stories floating around about the mod, but this is the only I know as true, as far as it goes. I deleted my JVK copy of the game pretty much right after I gave up, but I'd like to get the mod again, if anyone still has a copy of the file. I'd like to see some of this for myself.