Colour Blind (Pokemon)

Colour Blind
============

Endless stories seem to present themselves of hacked games and such. Some more believable than others, some leave you questioning who would go out of their way to edit their own version of a game, just to spook a few unfortunate victims who happen to come to possess one. I've never made an attempt to acquire one myself, however what I am about to tell you all is the story of how one game, managed to find it's way into my hands.

I had decided to purchase one of the original Blue/Red/Yellow cartridges to play purely for the Nostalgic side of pleasure, so I made my way to the city, and found myself at the closest game shop I could find, Toy World.

Toy World outlets aren't dedicated to selling gaming merchandise, but I did recall seeing them sell games in the past. After a good browse of the shop, I found nothing, leaving with nothing in hand but some minor information which I acquired from one of the Shop clerks, who informed me that I would have better luck finding older games at GameTraders.

So I made my way there, obvious patience in my stride, I was feeling confident that I would find what I so desired with every step. I arrived at GameTraders, a very small shop in comparison to Toy World, for that I found myself feeling grateful. I felt excitement kick in when I spotted a Pokémon cartridge case, only to find out it was a copy of Silver, with no other Pokémon related GameBoy Colour cartridges in sight. My search spanned over most of the day, being informed one way, only to be sent another.

Patience wore thin, til I decided to head home with no spoils of hard searching. I arrived home, disappointed after all the effort, so I gave in to online purchasing. I lucked out with finding a copy of Yellow being sold 3 blocks away from my home. I got hold of the owner, who was a girl who sounded no older than myself, 17-18. I practically ran out the door, hopped on my pushbike and made haste to the address.

When I arrived, I knocked on the door, to be answered by a relatively attractive girl,her only flaws seemed to be her unkept appearance. Bed hair, with clothes that crossed the borderline of being considered home-comfort to homeless rags, but it did not matter. I gave her the money, she gave me the game. Something felt eerie from how silent she was, vocally and physically. As I walked away after giving thanks, she mumbled out "You won't save him". I paused, confused at her implication, then left with another praise of thanks.

I arrived home, still curious as to what she meant by "You won't save him", it made me feel uneasy. But, nonetheless, I immediately started up Yellow on my trusty GameBoy Advance SP. That's when things got interesting. Normal titles appeared in their very nostalgic order, but the intro did not play. It went straight to the menu, which simply had the Games title, with no Pikachu in sight, only a boy with black hair, crouched with his arms extended, face hidden in shadow, facial features unable to be made out.

I instantly found disappointment. A hacked game, presumably one made to creep the victim out. But, I had gained no other copy of the game, I paid for this, and I was curious as to how this version was laid out. Hitting start, the basic title came up, except continue was the only available option of gameplay. Naturally, I hit continue. The game faded in to the lead characters bedroom, where the trainer was seated, staring amongst paintings and a map on the wall.

I decided to check out this playthrough's spoils of gameplay, so I brought up the start menu, and noticed the name. "Dain". A nice name, I admit, not a cliched name such as Red, or Yellow in this case. Moving on, I checked my trainer card, starting trainer cash, zero badges, everything seemed at norm, except for the portrait of the trainer.

As mentioned earlier on, a black hair boy, a very defined Japanese hairstyle, swept over to a side, all spiky and awesome, I found it to be in my favor. He was expressionless. No smile, a bare featured face, with dark eyes, and a stare that left you curious to his story. I found myself wanting to play through this hack, wanting to explore the unexplored, based in a childhood game.

I proceeded to check my Pokémon team, naturally finding a level 5 Pikachu, nicknamed "Ladie". I found that interesting, but she was a standard, level 5 Pikachu. After I was downstairs, I spotted my mother, who had a different hairstyle to the preset version, but seemed all the same, with dialogue etc. etc. I left the house, which was the house on the left, and Pallet town seemed to be normal. So I explored, my rivals house first, which was set-up as a normal NPC house, no rival sign out the front, but after speaking with the mother, it seemed Dain was a friend to the girl who lived here, named "Delia". I went upstairs, walked over and started a conversation with Delia. She seemed glad to see Dain, ranting on about how cute Ladie was.

She then prompted me a question, "Do you think I should get a Pokemon too? Become traveling partners, wouldn't it be fun?"

I chose yes, then shortly after her immediate ecstatic reaction, SNAP! The power turns off on the GameBoy. Frustration and confusion hit me at the same time, but I stubbornly turned the game back on. It jumped directly to the menu screen, with the title, and Dain standing with Delia, showing a small smile upon his face, which in turn made me smile. It seemed I lucked out on a hacked game with a luring progressive character storyline! I knew this game had me, I was hooked, I spent hours over the next few days traveling and collecting badges, all the while with Delia as company!

The storyline was laid out exactly the same as the default storyline, however fame of Dains battling efforts seemed to grow. Every NPC seemed to recognize him! I loved that Dain would occasionally speak, a rare feat in Pokémon games, almost a childhood dream in fact. He progressively got happier as I pushed him through the game, the occasional change of face on his trainer card, and his relationship with Delia seemed to grow more in depth after every gym. I made Ladie strong. She was by all rights my main,and was ahead the rest of my party, which only featured the obtainable free Charmander/Bulbasaur/Squirtle through the game.

I continued on, pushing through, until I arrived at Victory Road, where Delia asked to meet up later, as she wished to visit a friend in Viridian. I decided to see what would happen if I said no, so no I said. She seemed down at the reply, and asked if I wished to go with her. So I did, I wanted to get more in depth with Delia's storyline as well as Dain's. So we arrived at the house with basic NPC's, which made no special dialogue with me, so I left, and decided to give Viridian gym a look around, seeing as it was the final gym I had yet to conquer, and noticeably the one I had to forgot to challenge in my haste to the Elite Four.

That's when I was prompted by a caretaker of the Gym. "Do you wish to hold a strong position in Viridian? Possibly as Viridians Gym Leader? Viridian City lost it's previous Gym leader several years ago, he passed on, may he rest in peace. But nonetheless we require a new Gym Leader. You have grown renown Dain, word of your strength has reached nearly all of Kanto. It is only natural that the title of Viridian Gym Leader be given to someone of your attire?"

I said yes. Good God I said yes, I had never felt excited as I did at that moment. I had always wondered what being a Gym Leader would be like in one of these games. Ignoring all remarks I've heard over the years that all you would do is stand aimlessly waiting for the odd trainer to challenge you. Then, without warning, SNAP! Off went the power once more. Seeming less surprised than the first time it had happened, I turned on the console, and was directed to the menu.

There stood Dain, in a completely new attire, a dark grey outfit, suited to the Gym of Ground of course, I liked the look of it. Dain was also surrounded by a new party. Rhydon, Graveller, Kangaskhan, a very fitting party. However Ladie remained there, by Dains leg. But she looked...sullen. Sad, perhaps sad to the change? By then it dawned on me that Delia was missing from the image. In fact Dain's expression showed a weak smile. Something must have happened between the two when I accepted the role as a Gym Leader, so I hastily clicked continue. It faded in to the Gym, Dain standing there in all his glory, however I had no control over him. Then I realized this was a cinematic. It faded in, and out of countless battles, seemingly depressing 8-bit music playing in the meanwhile. Eventually, it faded to a black screen altogether, and a "One year later" appeared on the screen.

Then, vision of the game faded in, to nothing more than Lavender Towns Pokémon Tower, where Dain stood in front of a tombstone, Delia standing behind him, a step to the right. "I am so sorry Dain... she must've been everything to you.."

It was then it hit me. "Her". I think I knew exactly who had died in the passing year. Subsequent to the change of life, it would only make sense. I was give control once more, and I hesitantly clicked on the tombstone. "Here lies Ladie. Kanto's little flash of yellow, loved by all, fathered by Dain. Rest in peace". I was so in depth in the game at that moment that it was the soaked screen that snapped me out of it. I was crying, crying so hard over the loss over the Pokémon I had trained from the start. It was my fault it had died, I made those stupid decisions to completely change Ladie's life by becoming a Gym Leader, knowing that Ladie wouldn't be fit for the Gym. Guilt-written, I turned off the game, hoping to find a possible way to alter the storyline.

I arrived at the menu once more. No Pokémon stood with me. No Delia to comfort the loneliness. Just Dain, standing there. In all his.. "Glory". Tears had begun to run dry by this point, looking upon Dain's face, only to find an even more ominous shadowed face than when I first began. I clicked Continue, to instantly be shown a cinematic between Dain and Delia. Delia was crying, Dain arguing. It seemed Delia decided to comfort Dain with her presence after Ladie died, as he had given up on everything.

Then she left. With nothing but "I thought I could save you". I couldn't believe it. The previous owner of this game's warning entered my head. She warned me. Even now I brushed it off. I had just ruined Dain's last chance of friendship, all of it, my fault. I gained control once more, and I decided to check my menu. No Pokémon. Then, the trainer card. There it was. The original crouched position Dain was in when I first started. I wanted to strangle the person who made this by now, searching for an excuse that all this wasn't my fault.

Dialogue broke me out of the menu, surprising to say the least.

Dain: Ladie... gone. Delia... I'm sorry..

SNAP!

Ominous silence crept into the fray of my room. I felt continued disappointment. I sullenly paused at restarting the game. Asking myself if it was worth it. I might as well, I don't think I could get any more depressed at my vain efforts of getting Dain back on track, so I turned it back on. Usual lack of intro, but this time it went straight to the save file. Dain was standing out the front of his house, speaking to Delia. I almost yelped in delight there and then. Things possibly might have gone back on track. But the dialogue that followed, proved that hope wrong.

Dain: Keep the house, Mum would've liked you to have it anyway.

Delia: .. and where will you go? Don't do this Dain, you'll be a father soon..

Dain: I'd make a bad father anyway, I've already lost one child. She was all I had.

A father? That I was not expecting. This story was so intriguing. The implied child was obviously Ladie. But I was moreso interested that Delia would be staying in Dain's house, and where would he be going? The cinematic came to a fade, leaving Dain departing from Pallet. Dain appeared in Viridian City, standing outside the Gym. He silently trodded off, at half pace. Dialogue kicked in.

Dain: ... I know Ladie can't come back. Nor will any Pokémon fill the gap she left. But that won't stop me from acquiring one..

This world is cruel, undeserving of such Pokemon.

A villainous plot. How predictable and cliched. I didn't complain though, I moved on, and continued on. I gained control over Dain, and did the usual check of his status. A ground type party. The original party I was given when I accepted the role as a Gym Leader. Interesting. I check the trainer card. Dain is wearing a striped suit. His facial features much more defined and mature, Dain looked an adult now. I exited the menu, and instantly lost control, as Dain started a long journey through Kanto.

He walked, through Pewter, to Celadon, through Saffron, until he arrives in Lavender. Of course, a final farewell to Ladie before he sets off to a new life. He entered the Pokémon Tower, made his way to Ladie's tombstone, and gave me control to interact with it.

Dain: Here lies Ladie. My little flash of Yellow. You were my love to Delia, my Ladie.

I will never find another you, but a Pikachu I will find. I have lost strength to travel Kanto again, so I will form an organization to purge Kanto for me. I came in here as Dain, but I will leave as another, to start anew. As in depth as I was at this point, it was obviously noticeable of the layout of "Delia" and "Ladie". Same letters, spelt out differently. It seemed Ladie was Dain's way of showing his compassion to Delia in physical form. His love and strength, dedicated to a single person through his beloved Pokémon. Dain began walking amongst the other tombstones. Curiously, I attempted to press A, which started a minor dialogue.

Dain: I must find a name appropriate to depart with...Then he stopped at one. A tombstone singled out from the rest. I clicked on it, nerves settling in from what was about to appear.

"Here lies Giovanni."

---

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.