Temple Quest part 4: Save the World (in NYC?!)

Ok, so I gotta admit. I don’t have much of a clue what’s going on with this one. I’ll fill in the details here once it goes down, but I can only imagine that it’s gonna be totally Amazing – with a capital A, see.

Here’s what I know:
The Sainted One recovers from her visit inside the temple and makes her way to the drummer. They get into it because, apparently, something is “out there” that could make the “world fall apart” and, seeing as how she’s beelined to New York, that something that is out there must be there.

Now, rumor is, this something is a cylinder (or possibly a tin can) and some guy (or possibly goat) named Art has his hands on it. He’s gonna be hanging out at the Eagles & Prey statue in Central Park at 10:00 AM on Friday (as in tomorrow!!!). I don’t know all that much about this Art guy, but I do know that The Sainted One isn’t doing so hot these days and could use all the help she could get. So, if you’re going to be in the area, I might suggest you head on over there and keep you eye out for a guy that looks like this and a really hot goth chick about this high with long dark hair.

And please everyone, do the Sainted One a favor and leave all the techy toys at home. (you’ll be doing yourself a favor, too… if she gets excited, zap! there goes the hard drive). Oh, and unless you want her worrying about you all day, bring a pair of extra socks. Looks like we’re in for some crappy weather. Sucks.

If you know more, throw it in the comments and I’ll update the post as necessary.

The Temple Quest

• The Temple Quest: Introduction
• Temple Quest Part 1: Find the Key
• Temple Quest Part 2: Find the Temple
• Temple Quest Part 3: Complete the Ritual
• Temple Quest Part 4: Save the World in NYC?! (you’re reading this one!)

Temple Quest part 3: Complete the Ritual

This is pretty easy after finding the temple but it’s anything but a let down. The cutscene for this one has gotta be amazing. Loads of effects, graphics that are beyond anything you’ve ever seen. The whole thing’s gotta be that way cause that was a huge part of it – you just wanted to look at everything but you couldn’t for fear that it would kill you. Crazy.

Now, the real tricky part with this one is that you gotta get get eight clannies to do some crazy stuff while you get eight dudes from some other clan to do some other crazy stuff and you all gotta do it at the same time and hope that the drummer is drumming his drums – which he almost always is, so you pretty much luck out on that gimme.

So, here’s the set up. The Sainted One is hanging out at the temple getting the ass kicked out of her while she waits for everything to go down just as it’s s’posed to go down. On top of that, she’s got all these dumb ass cats (sorry guys, but wtf where you hanging out there for?) nearly defenseless against a load of the mad freaks. And, while she’s doing all of that, she’s gotta hold on to the key.

The door won’t open until two clans perform a ritual along at the same time. In this case, we needed to do the hoo hoo routine. This is pretty easy and makes you feel really stupid, which is probably the point. You hold a piece of paper over your head and go hoo hoo, hoo hoo, hoo hoo, hoo hoo, hoo hoo, hoo hoo, hoo hoo, hoo hoo. Note: there are eight hoo hoos. I dunno if this is important, but eight seems to be a theme and it works for me so why not. At the same time the dudes from the other clan whistle and the drummer drums his, uh, drums.

Now, if we wanna make folks make fools out of themselves, the game’s gonna have to be set up to work with a mic and a camera – webcam? eyetoy?. The mic picks up eight whistles from eight dudes from the other clan and the eight hoo hooers. The camera picks up the symbol from the piece of paper that the hoo hooers are holding over the head. That symbol looks something like:

So, once everyone does that and if the timing is just right, the temple doors open. Oh! And this part is tricky. The hoohooers, I suppose to save their butts from the crowd o’ freaks, aren’t on the map yet. Once they hoo hoo, they get dropped into the map right outside the temple – on the temple path, but not in the lake o’ loonies. Now, the temple door opening or maybe the ritual, I dunno, cause I was a hoohooer, calmed the maniacs down so it’s not all that dangerous to come in right there, but it could be made so that it is. Course, The Sainted One by this time is making her way into the temple, so she’s not there to save their sorry butts. Tough call.

The temple door opens and The Sainted One walks in with the key. It’s a pretty intense looking place – lots to look at but the players and The Sainted one have got to stay focused. Now, there wasn’t all that much action and I can’t really tell you what all happened, but it was amazing.

The Sainted One walked past this huge crazy ass looking statue and as soon as she does, there’s this huge blast o energy. Knocked a bunch of us out – some say they got thrown outside of the temple. At the end, there’s this massive wall or altar or something – it must be an altar. And The Sainted One goes up to it how is beyond me because the energy coming through that place is pretty damn strong and places the key there. And then the light starts and it’s huge and blue – this insanely bright blue that’s so intense it just about blinds you. And then there’s this huge crack of electricity and The Sainted One screams and that’s when I got knocked out along with most of the rest.

Note: We gotta increase the agency cause there’s just no way to make it intense enough, visually, that you really get the feel of the place. I dunno if we want some old temple baddie that we gotta fight off so The Sainted One can put the key on the alter, but if we do, the statue’d be it, cause that thing was freakin’ huge and scary looking. It’d definitely be worthy of bosshood. So, we got the clannies fighting off the baddie statue while The Sainted One makes her way to the altar.

The Temple Quest

• The Temple Quest: Introduction
• Temple Quest Part 1: Find the Key
• Temple Quest Part 2: Find the Temple
• Temple Quest Part 3: Complete the Ritual (you’re reading this one!)
• Temple Quest Part 4: Save the World in NYC?!

Temple Quest part 2: Find The Temple

This opens with a cutscene of The Sainted One standing at the drummer. She’s fighting with him because she brought him the metal disk which is what he asked for. So all should be good but he’s all noooo you gotta find a temple and she’s all shut up jerk. It should be something like this only with kick ass graphics and not just sound.

Now I didn’t really have a clue what was going down until someone called in to Nightmare Confessions and was all “OMG! SAINT FELINE’S LOOKING FOR A TEMPLE! I DUNNO WHERE THE TEMPLE IS? YOU KNOW WERE THE TEMPLE IS?!” And so then it was OMG WE GOTTA FIND A TEMPLE!

So then Mapmaker and I started going through all the nightmare confessions calls that had come in the day before (December 8 & 9] and we started to realize that there was someplace suspicious. Here’s the map we came up with.  So I jumped in and started checking the place out and good thing I did cause I had all this OMG FREAKS THERE DO NOT GO! knowledge that others didn’t plus none of the folks that were looking for the temple, not even The Sainted One, had a clue where the temple might be – they were looking all over the place.

The map was pretty dead on, but I’ve made a couple changes and added a bunch of the freaks and stuff.  See…

SOMEPLACE SUSPICIOUS

So, see that area in the center – that’s Someplace Suspicious. It’s hard as hell to get to the temple what with all the fiendy fiends hanging around ready to kill and eat you, so you gotta have The Sainted One with you. We knew that the alley by the drugstore was a dead end , but checked it out to be sure and yeah, don’t go down there – there’s no way out and if some freaks come in you’re screwed. But the alley by the museum seemed like a good bet.  I mean dark doesn’t kill you, right? Right. But it’s totally filled with things that will, which sucks. Also checked out the alley in between the buildings with the water tower, but yeah, they were right  – totally filled with freaks.

But! There was a way in… which is obvious if you’ve looked at the map a couple paragraphs up and traced the yellow line. See, we wanted to check out what must be a fourth alley, but we couldn’t get down the street. The drummer dude was surrounded by a mob and, sure, they were all into him, but he gets em all worked up. So that was a no go for us. I mean one cat might get by without being noticed but like twenty? Not a chance. We had to work our way around to this coffee shop that The Sainted One likes and came up with a plan to head down that alley and try to find a way to cut across. We went through the alley by the library and ran into a mess of people and long story super short, I’m lucky to have any fur left but it was so worth seeing the look on the freak’s face when my claw caught him in the eye. So we checked out this other alley that was freak free. There were a couple of houses there and one didn’t have a door anymore so we cut through. Not the smartest of moves cause we got trapped by a couple loonies hanging out in the place and had to down these stairs and make our way to a window that wasn’t totally broken but we were able to push it open and get out.

So we ditched across the street and cut through this old house figuring the alley behind it was our last best chance. I mean if the nutters couldn’t see it to get to it, it’d probably be pretty safe, right? Right! A couple of em had wandered over from the park, but one or two of em aren’t bad if you can get by before they get all freaked out drawing attention to them and you. It went right to the square path with the statues on the corners (well, a couple of em were more big pile o rock than statue, but they were statues before the hell that is this place got to em).

Things got a bit tricky here. We had to cut our way about three quarters of the way around the path. On the one side was a whole mess of folks hanging out in what musta at some point been a shallow little pond. That made it a bit easier cause they were sort of in a divot in the ground but it wasn’t like it was hard for them to get out if they saw us. Plus, on the other side were random freaks. We lucked out at this one place cause there was big arch thing that had sort of crumbed down enough for us to climb up and over. They couldn’t reach us there, but it’s not like they didn’t try and I thought at one point the whole thing was gonna come crashing down with about 8 of us up there. That would have sucked.

So we get around to the temple and it’s crazy. I mean it’s not like you’d ever see this place as some huge mysterious wonder. When you’re not looking at it really it just looks like some falling down old building but when you look at it, I mean really look at it, you see it for what it is or was. And right on the outside, there’s a big arch that’s just like the one on the other side or close enough but this one is built into the temple. And under it is what you have to assume is a door but you’d never think that it was one unless you were looking for it. And so you just keep looking at it all trying to soak it all in and while you do, these loonies of the lake start running up after you cause, well, you’re just standing there staring at this building like a dumbass with a target on your back.

The Sainted One is there to help you fight em off, but it’s not like she can do much against like a hundred of the dudes. Plus she’s gotta get inside. Which she can’t… until a bunch of us complete some sort of ritual.

Notes: We could totally beef this up by making it much more of a maze to get into and also by forcing them to find The Sainted One first – I mean they need her to fend off the freaks, right? So if they get to Someplace Suspicious without her, they’re fucked. Also, not sure how to have people figure out where the temple is. For me, it came in via phone calls. I’m thinking, though, there could be some sort of mechanism where clannies have to explore the city a bit and over time, this part of the map is revealed. The Wall could be a good place to have the map come together – maybe there’s a map on The Wall that updates with places a player has visited and if they spend enough time or get enough of  em out exploring, the Someplace Suspicious will be revealed. We can also have clues and shit dropped by some NPCs about what’s going on.

The Temple Quest

• The Temple Quest: Introduction
• Temple Quest Part 1: Find the Key
• Temple Quest Part 2: Find the Temple (you’re reading this one!)
• Temple Quest Part 3: Complete the Ritual
• Temple Quest Part 4: Save the World in NYC?!

Temple Quest part 1: Find The Key

So, the other day, I’s minding my own business when a couple of people were all, “yeah, you know how when you’re Sploity McChickenshit in your nightmares and you go and hide under that rock? Well hahaha there’s a centipede there that’s gonna go CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP and eat you.” Like I’d let that happen but I kinda wanted to make sure. So, I made myself some warm milk (60 seconds in the nuker) and laid down on the couch and away we went…

I made my way up to the woods, err, ancient wood and, like a good little sploit,  avoided all the freaks and beasts in my way. I headed straight towards my rock aka slab o’ rock n’ marble (which would be like rock n’ roll if these were the marbles made out of glass, but it’s more like the marble that is a big rock). I’m poking around for the centipede or python or  centipython knowing it’s not there but holding back ’cause, I mean, what if they were right? That’d be bad.

So as I’m looking around, I notice a couple funky old etchings and, more importantly, this really cool metal circle that looks like I could pop it out which is, of course, what I wanted to do. Now, since I dream that I’m a cat, I had a bit of difficulty with this. After I wore the last claw down to a stump, I got an idea. The Sainted One, the beautiful Ms. St. Feline, has been hanging out in these very woods. If I could find her, maybe, just maybe, I could get her to help a guy out.

Lucky for me, I think, I find her like right away. I lick my paws and straighten the hair around my face (hey, I may be a cat, but I still wanna look sharp!), and wrap myself around her legs until she can’t ignore me any longer. Ok, so I may have jumped up and down and gotten all in her face, but let’s go with me being sweet and charming. It sounds better and would make momma proud.

So, she starts following me to see what’s gotten me all excited and I take her to the slab and I jump up by the really cool metal disk. See, tell me this doesn’t look cool as hell…

You want it, don’t you. Cool, ain’t it. Who wouldn’t want it? Not The Sainted One, that’s for sure. Just listen to her get all excited!

See, I kinda think I heard her first OH MY GOD! But after that – yeah, nothin’. Seems like she got more than a little wound up and, well, she’s not someone you wanna be around when that happens.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAPPPPPP!

I dunno what it is about that chick, but damn if she doesn’t know how to stop a guy’s heart. Literally.

So, some time passes. Apparently. Cause the next thing I know, I’ve been left for dead in the cemetery and I wake up with a bunch of cats staring down at me like I’m some sort of twisted zombie cat coming to kill em.

Note: This happened to me fully by accident, which was nice. I had no idea that I was looking for something and no idea that it had any real meaning and I definitely had no idea that I’d find myself left for dead in a cemetery. It pissed me off but worked so I think it should play out that way. Players explore the ancient woods and happen upon the metal disk and upon removing it The Sainted One comes running. We may have to add some sort of special effects – removing the disk causes some sort of blue light to shine up from the ancient stone slab which draws The Sainted One to the area cause if they don’t know it has meaning they might not think to go to her to get her to get it out. So then she comes and sees it and gets excited, knocks you out, steals the disk, and leaves you for dead in the cemetery. When you wake up with cats staring at you, you learn that she has taken the disk to the drummer who has sent her to the temple.

The Temple Quest

• The Temple Quest: Introduction
• Temple Quest Part 1: Find the Key (you’re reading this one!)
• Temple Quest Part 2: Find the Temple
• Temple Quest Part 3: Complete the Ritual
• Temple Quest Part 4: Save the World in NYC?!

The Temple Quest

Every good game* has a temple quest and the Madlands MMO is no different. In fact, I’ve already played it – kinda. Yep. It was another one of those dreams.

It all begins when you discover a mysterious metal disk in the ancient wood. You know the woods are ancient because as you explore, you discover a number of ancient ruins. Now, you might be thinking that the mere presence of ancient ruins does not mean that the woods aren’t ancient and you would be correct. However, calling a map the not-so-ancient woods is more fitting of a spoof than an actual horror title. And this ain’t no spoof.

No, this is as scary as it gets and the only thing that keeps you from hiding under your covers and closing your eyes is the knowledge that if you do that, you’ll fall asleep and find yourself right back where you started. Oh, also, you have things to do and if you don’t do them something horrific will happen – though you don’t know what.

*ok, not every good game and many many not so good ones
** one of these days! I swear it! I will make a game out of this nightmare

The quest has four parts:

• Temple Quest Part 1: Find the Key
• Temple Quest Part 2: Find the Temple
• Temple Quest Part 3: Complete the Ritual
• Temple Quest Part 4: Save the World in NYC?!