Placeholder: This is where links for the probably eventual MST3000 version of this story will go.
Episode 1: IntroductionYou're a freshman liberal arts student at your local community college. You're an average student, and you don't do sports. No real hobbies except the internet, games, watching My Little Pony and reading the occasional fanfic on Equestria Daily.
You just got home from a terribly dull basic algebra class. You're not sure why you were placed in it. You already know the material, but it's your first year, and that's where the matriculation tests put you. At least the homework is easy.
"Anyone home?" No answer.
"Mom? Dad?"Looks like nobody's home but you at the moment. With no particular plans, you head to your room. You sit down at your computer, turn it on and pull your college textbooks from your backpack while you wait for windows to load. It's slow. You could really use a faster computer.
Eventually windows comes up and you're staring at your favorite desktop wallpaper: an adorable picture of princesses Celestia and Luna nuzzling together before a glorious sunset. It warms your heart, but your mind is restless. What are you going to do? Homework? No...you can do it later. Maybe a game? Yeah, sure. You open up your start menu and...
...mumble...mumble...shall We...mumble...You look around. You could of sworn you just heard a voice. You listen carefully, but you don't hear anything. Shrugging, you go back to your start menu and begin browsing though-
...but We're out of...mumble...Your heart skips a beat. You
totally heard someone talking. A female voice. You strain to hear, but all you hear is the sound of your own heartbeat. It's kind of creepy. You glance at your computer and notice that the speakers are powered on. Instantly you relax and giggle the anxiety away. Obviously your speakers were just picking up radio interference. Probably just a ham radio operator passing through the-
...mumble...what about this...mumble...That's totally not coming from your speakers. At least you don't think it is. Curious, you reach to turn up the speaker volume when suddenly your chair drops out from beneath you and you feel yourself falling backwards. You see a blur, then sunlight in your eyes, then.
SPLASH!You land in a murky pool of gross green swamp water.
A moment later something lands on your head. You leap to your feet, scrambling to get away...and then realize it's your backpack. You drag yourself out of the waist-deep swampwater and up the embankment to a dirt road with fencing that has a familiar look to it. You take off your shirt, shoes and socks to try to squeeze out as much water as possible while looking around to take in your surroundings. You almost think that this looks like....nah, couldn't be.
You put your wet clothes back on, sling your backpack over your shoulder and start walking, taking in as much of the scenery as you can. The more your eyes take in, the more familiar everything seems. The trees, the dirt road you're walking on, the sky, the...is that a mudcrab?
Yeah. No sense denying it. You're in Morrowind.
You take a quick inventory. You have your denim pants, tennis shoes, a "20% cooler" Rainbow Dash t-shirt, a wallet with picture ID and some presumably worthless cash, your cellphone, and your backpack with nothing but a yellow notepad with 60 pages left and a pen. You check your phone, and sure enough: a couple bars of power left, but no connectivity.
Not much to work with, but you can't help but feel a smile on your face as you consider the possibilities. You
know this game! You've played it all the way through a couple times. You know what the goal is, you know all about the heart of Lorkhan, and Sunder and Keening. You know where the Morag Tong guildhall is. You know where fully a third of the artifacts in the game are just off the top of your head. You know how to get Eltonbrand, you know how to get both the left and right handed versions of Wraithguard, you know how to get Azura's Star, you know how to...
Huh.
"Hey, Sheogorath," you say out loud.
"Did you do this? Did you bring me here?" No answer. You glance down at your Rainbow Dash t-shirt and try another possibility.
"Discord, maybe?" Still no answer.
"Q?" Nothing.
Hmm. Well, however you got here, you know all about this game and you're pretty confidant that you can
totally exploit that knowledge to get ahead. If you're stuck here...well, at least your life will be more interesting than it would otherwise have been.
Experimenting, you reach out with your hand into the empty air and press with your middle finger trying to right click. Nothing happens.
"Right click," you say. Nothing happens.
"Escape?" Still, nothing happens.
"Xyzzy?" Sure enough, nothing happens.
Well, you're
in Morrowind, but hint of unease creeps through you as you consider the circumstances. You arrived in the middle of a swamp, not on a boat. Are you the Nerevarine? Do you have a star sign? I mean, sure you're a Taurus, but...do you, you know? For that matter, you're a human. Can you even cast spells? If you're arrested, will you have to actually sit and wait for weeks to be released? What's it like to be permanently afflicted with corprus disease? If you...
die, will you be able to restore from a previous save? How do you save? Can you? Or will you just be dead?
You don't know.
At first you were feeling pretty optimistic about this, but now that you think about it, you're not sure you want to be here after all. How did you get here, anyway? Is it possible to get back home? Do you really want to? Which version of the game is this? Is this vanilla, or are there mods installed? Does it even work that way?
You don't know any of that either.
What do you do?