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[IronyOwl]

Seeing as we seem to be running out of meaningful contributions and observances on both the game as it went (with new insight) and our responses and observances, I'm going to guess this won't be lasting very long either. It does leave me a little disappointed, but I doubt we can change that sufficiently to allow it to remain interesting for all parties.

Well, he could skip or condense some of the more mundane/samey stuff and get straight to the more interesting, meaningful, or novel bits. Ep 4 was fairly short, for instance, because there just wasn't a whole lot to talk about. Skipping it entirely or rolling it up with some other episodes might have maintained a better effort:discussion ratio.

I remember it being said he alread finished the first twenty though, so, those could just be posted even if there's no interest in editing them to make a bit more sense.

Something like that sounds familiar, but I suspect it wasn't that he prewrote all of these and has them sitting there with images and all ready to go.

[gordy]

I'm still interested to see this concluded even if I can only echo sentiments from Irony and Sparksol.

[LordBucket]

it is also possible that our power was increasing the awareness of the NPCs around us instead, especially since we were treating the world as more real, it may have been becoming more "real" by our apparent wish that it was so.

Sort of. Remember that the game is a hyperdimensional structure existing across many universes, and that those "instances" of itself in each universe were routinely interacting with each other just like you/Michael were the same entity also interacting with other-universe instances of itself.

 * In the universe that was Morrowind on my PC, "the PC" being (played by me/ directed by you) was the point of greatest intelligence and awareness. The game npcs were automatons. "Michael" was intelligently directed.

 * In the universe that was Marooned in Morrowind being played on the bay12 web forum, the capability of "npcs" to act with self direction was bottlenecked by you/our focus on them. Prior to coming into contact with any given npc, their basically existed in an uncollapsed waevform. Once they were interacted with...well, as an observer from this universe, it's difficult for me to know whether they had existence outside my observation of them. For example, it wasn't until somebody noticed/observed (forgive me if I don't track down the post) that it was odd that npcs stood aroun and did nothing until you walked up, that they gained the ability to "act" outside of your interactions with them. And in general they only did after your interaction with them. For example, the guy in Seyda Neen who left Morrowind after you bought his ring. Or Draren. Even major npcs like Yagrum and Divayth by all indicators sat around not doing anything until you met them. Were they acting autonomously apart from your interaction with them? Again, from the point of view of this universe, I can't know. But they certainly appeared to not be doing anything until an interaction with Michael. Look at Cinia. She had an extensive backstory of how she got to Tel yr and why she was there, and yet nevertheless she "just happened" to be in exactly the place that she's found in game at the time Michael first encountered her? I suggest that she as existing as a quantum superposition until she was observed, and only after that that exchange did she begin galivanting across the world.

 * In the universe where Morrowind was a spell that had grown self aware, being played in Equestria, "reality" is difficult to convey via this medium, but in general: like the hyperentity that is you/Michael/etc "your" collective awareness of your unified self was incomplete. Similarly, the "entire spell" that is (Morrowind, the spell cast by Celestia) was not completely self aware of its entirety. "The Michael" was more or less the focal point, but "Michael" was not the spell, and the spell was not "Michael." What you perceived as an interaction between two separate and distinct entities, like Michael and an NPC, in that universe that interaction was the spell being aware of itself. Michael/spell was the observer. Npc/spell was the observed. And in the act of observation, observer and observed became a single phenomenon known as an event.

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/CHIM

"...is a state that exists beyond mortal death in which one can break free of all known laws and corruptions of the gods. It allows for the user to...manipulate the Aurbis how they please"

"...is normally recognized by a "Crowned Tower that threatens to break apart at the slightest break in concentration"

"...can only be achieved by viewing the Tower, which encompasses the universe, yet keeping your own individuality in its presence"

Where the spell observed itself, it was able to act, free of the deterministic limitations of the gamecode/spell. Where it stopped observing itself, those unobserved portions ceased to act free of determinism. In all universes, the degree of awareness of all entities, "npc" or not, was a function of the degree to which awareness was being experienced by them.

Remember Clover's surprise that Michael was able to do the simple thing of following Awesomicus back to Pelagiad? To their experience, that wasn't a behavior the npcs of their spell exhibited. The "PC gamey aura" wasn't an effect local to the "PCs." It was the default nature of all not-conscious parts of the spell acting deterministically according to its "spell programming." Just like the not-conscious npcs in the universe of the game being played on my computer.

It would have been very interesting had there been any meaningful interactions with three parties: a pony, Michael and an "other" that you would consider an npc. Clover might have been very surprised to see what "npcs" in the presence of Michael were capable of.

So we did what we always did, which was two or three things at once poorly for something like eight different reasons. The crossover did have some advantages, but I still feel like picking one or the other likely would have had better results. I just have no idea which of those was the right path to pick and stay on, though.

Like you said a couple days ago, probably any path would have been ok if you'd simply stuck with it. If you're a farmer planting crops, it doesn't matter all that much whether you plant corn or potatoes, so long as you pick one and stick with it. You guys had an unfortunate tendency to plant corn, then dig it up and plant potatoes, then dig those up and plant something else. Very few of your actions were given enough time and attention to come to fruition.

On the game side of the issue, I'm not entirely sold on the completely open world thing. I feel like the utterly scatterbrained approach we had was somewhat predictable for a pure democracy thing, and that some GM forethought and guidance might have resulted in a better product. Admittedly, that would have more or less ruined the premise and run the risk of turning the game into Legion Quest or something instead, but I suspect there may have been some middle ground in there somewhere.

Admittedly, it's been a problem in some of my previous games, perhaps more than once, that I've given players too long a rope. Give people a choice of A, B or C, and they can usually pick one. Say "anything is possible! Do what you will!" and some people stumble on that. Which is unfortunate, because I strongly prefer that sort of game myself, and Morrowind is exactly that sort of game. And the very premise here, growing self awareness and enlightenment...yeah, making you choose from canned potions was contrary to the spirit of what this was about. "Literally, anything" was possible as a fundamental premise of the game. Coralling you into specific choices just didn't fit very well with that.

Maybe I misjudged how cohesive you guys could realistically be. But you did so well in the beginning. Skipping ahead to Vivec was a stroke of genius I hadn't expected, and it completely worked out for you. I didn't know how you were going to convince him to open the door, and you figured that out very easily.

If you collectively could simply have continue with the same level of cohesion and insight that you demonstrated early on, this game would have ended like two years ago. BUt from my point o view, it seemed like after Vivec, collectively you guys just fell apart.

What happened?

[Putnam]

elder scrolls wikia's pretty bad

...but all the stuff you quoted AFAIK is pasted straight from Vehk's Teachings, so whatever

[LordBucket]

MST3K Episode 5
Episode 5: The plot thickens

It opens, and a female Dunmer steps out brandishing a knife.

: "Woot! Introducing Luna!"

: "Silence, thou knave! We can introduce Ourselves."

*ahem*

"We now introduce Ourselves, the Princess of the Night, Princess Luna of Equestria, known to thee as HotFlank!"

: "..."

: "Thou mayest continue."

Fun fact #1

: "In the actual save file I used to create the screenshots, Luna's character name was HotFlank. But eventually I decided that was too obvious and changed her character name in the forum version of the game to SexyWithersXOXOXO."

: "WHAT?!!?!?"

: "I thought that was still kind of obvious, but apparently nobody knew what withers are. Incidentally, this was one of many...MANY things in the game that would have given you guys major clues if you' simply taken 10 seconds to google it:"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withers

"The withers is the ridge between the shoulder blades of a four-legged mammal. In many species it is the tallest point of the body, and in horses and dogs it is the standard place to measure the animal's height"



: "Or to put it another way, it's the part of female horse that a male horse is more or less looking at-"

: "-once he has mounted her! Hast no truly no respect for Our Royal Personage? We agree that HotFlank was perhaps a touch racy, but SexyWithers? 'Tis risque to the point of impropriety!"

: "Not in this universe, it isn't. Amazing how long it took anyone to notice the 'withers' connection. I really thought I was handing you guys that one. Another cookie for IronyOwl for being the one to finally notice."

Fun fact #2

: "There was no way for you guys to know this at the time it happened, but Luna actually killed you right here. She saw you, started dialogue, but you didn't say anything very interesting, didn't issue any quests or anything so she flat out killed you. Because sociopathic PC."

: "Twas a most disappointing encounter. We received not one single point of experience from it."

: "But, and this is HUGELY significant: Because Celestia recognized the growing sentience of her spell, she marked its avatar, the later-to-become-Michael, as a plot critical PC to protect him."

: "As did I, place my mark upon you in the universe I watched over"

: "And so did I. All three of us did. You guys of course remember this from MUCH later in the game. You were marked as plot critical, just like Divayth, Yagrum and a few others. And so after killing you, Luna in her universe saw a great big one of these:



: "So Luna, seeing that, restored the game to her previous save and when she ran into you again, simply ignored you and kept going. This is why from your point of view:"

...she brushes right past you and takes off through the town running and jumping with every step.

: "Hey!"

She ignores you and keeps run/jumping.

: "Of COURSE, 'Luna' didn't just run past the interesting, out-of-place person wearing a Rainbow Dash 20% cooler t-shirt that she obviously recognized. You simply have no memory of that conversation because the game was restored to a previous save. And Michael was, at that time as we'll explain in a moment, not entirely 'with it' yet. Notice that every time he died, what happened was different, and each time he had a little bit more memory and control than the last. Not because him dying helped him, but simply because as time progressed the 'you' entity, and sentient-spellform in particular, was learning more, growing, and becoming increasingly self aware. Michael's death...'personally' was actually not a huge inconvenience. The spellform itself was aware, you the players were aware, other-universe-instances of the you, were aware and still functioning and learning and growing and interacting with each other. 'You' were not the avatar. Neither was Michael. "

"But, nevertheless, early on, that awareness was extremely limited. As again, we'll address in more detail in a  moment. Point here, is that if you read over the deaths in game, you'll see a trend of increasing conscoiusness and awareness during those death events. Butthat trend actually began with so little awareness that you, the players here, actually didn't notice the first time it happened at all."

"Truly, I am not making this up after the fact. Luna 'killed' you, but you hadn't yet grown to the point where you could remember it. And that's why from your point of view she ran past the super-interesting person wearing a Rainbow Dash t-shirt. From her point of view, she had a long conversation with you, killed you and saw the 'don't kill important npcs game over' screen and restore to a previous save, then simply ran past you the second time rather than waste her time talking to somebody who didn't have anything interesting to say."

: "Indeed. Twas a dull affair."

: "As an aside, your death by Luna and subsequent restoration via 'spell/game restore' was referenced much later during the third dream:"

You lay down and fall asleep.

You are walking through a town, with wooden and stone buildings all around you but no people besides yourself. In the distance you see a massive set of scales in the shape of a woman dressed in white, with outstretched arms hanging from the sky and a bright yellow and orange sun on one side and a white, pockmarked crescent moon on the other. Curious, you approach. For several minutes you walk in the direction of the celestial scales, but they don't appear to be getting any closer.

Suddenly the crescent moon bounds from its side of the scale and towards you, causing the side with the sun not to fall down, but to rise up into the sky where it blazes with blinding light. You hold a hand over your face to keep from being blinded but the light passes through your hand as easily as through the air, and you see that your hand is made of the same light as that passes through it. The moon, never stopping, bounces towards you and pierces your chest with the pointy end of its crescent, passing cleanly through your body and leaving a gaping hole.

You then watch as light from the sun fills the hole in your chest and restores the flesh as if you'd never been injured at all. You anticipate a sense of deja vu, but it never comes.

You are walking through a town, with wooden and stone buildings all around you but no people besides yourself. In the distance you see-

: "You guys attempted a fair amount of dream interpretation, but for some reason you usually favored interpreting dreams as things that would happen later, or things that you were supposed to do in the future. But that's not usually how dreams in Morrowind work. The vast majority of the time Morrowind in-game reams are about things that have already happened. Contract vampirism? You dream about it after you contract it, not before. The ashlander woman who dreams of the white guar? She dreams about seeing it where it is / where it's been, not about seeing you encounter it in the future. There are a couple of cases where dreams are about things happening  'right now,' but these all seem to be 'real time' conversations from another entity talking to you in that dream. Like Hircine after becoming a werewolf. Most of the time, Morrowind dreams are prompted by an about things that have already happened. I kept with that. So the dreams in Marooned in Morrowind, just like in the game, were generally about things that have already happened, not me trying to advise you for what to do in the future. Although I believe Celestia did speak to you in real time during one of the dreams. We'll get to that eventually."

Fun fact #3

: "This was actually a hugely significant event in terms of the Tomato in the Mirror Mindscrew, because from a LINEAR TIME point of view, as of this moment in the narrative, 'originally,' Michael was not yet a self aware entity".

"It wasn't until Michael's conversation with Vivec that Michael became self aware. An event that was simultaneous with your collective realization that he was aware of you. You and Michael are the same entity. You became aware of your other selves in the same instant, and that event created forward and backwards ripples in causality. So much changed with that conversation, and in fact, what really, actually happened...was described very nicely in this post by Nivim:

The potential of this writing style has completely flown over your heads; getting all caught up in meta or trying to dismiss it. :]

Not just that; also breaking the arbitrary divisions of identity or 'Self', space, and time. Considering the sword lesson it looks like our brony does not actually understand CHIM very well yet, and he probably can't really use it until he both finishes his thoughts on free agency, and figures out what Vivec was trying to help him understand about the ultimate continuity and division of spacetime. Maybe the intuition corresponding to calculus would've helped.

>Now I hear there are a few things that have disconcerted you, brony;
1. You lack a name.
2. You lack a past worth of memories.
3. You lack a lot preferences and skills normally gained from those memories.
 But just as this is a lack, it is also an opportunity, because just as you can expand freely forward in time, you may also expand freely back in time. Every time you learn something new, go somewhere new, think something new, or decide something different, you can remember something new, too. You already invoked this power when you remembered how you played those games, so long ago, by seeing a being related to them now. Invoke it again now to remember your name, even a name you wouldn't expect a parent to ever name their child, and from that remember your parents, and then as you adventure, your entire life will fall together.

: "Nivim totally understood what was going here, and it's really unfortunate that he left the game. That stuff he said about the backwards time travel? Totally nailed it. This was a huge gamble that I took when I started this whole thing, started with an unnamed protagonist...I completely intended for Michael to, during the game, become self aware, and for that event to ripple backwards in time."

"Because of the "event" of Michael becoming self aware during his conversation with Vivec, he retroactively influenced both past and future from that point. He was not "remembering" that his name was Michael. He was at time T, CAUSING his name at time T-1 to have been Michael, as well as all other points. All of that stuff from Vivec about the sword, and discussion of his nature of self? All of that was driving home the N-dimensional nature of reality this game intended to work with. This is exactly the kind of thing I intended this game to bring out, an I was thrilled and delighted that it played out the way it did. Congrats, Nivum. You totally got it. Great big cookie for you."

"Unfortunately, as it eventually became clear, a lot of what was going on here went way over some of your heads. Some of you even pointed it out:

This was already going wa-a-ay over my head. Now its going wa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ay over my head.

: "...and that's ok. We ended up having a good, fun (and surprisingly long) game because of it. Though I might have liked to have spent more time than we did on the philosophy and a bit less than we did running in circles in the Legion. But yeah. This game was absolutely intended from its inception to be a massive Tomato in the Mirror mindscrew, playing games with non-linear time and n-dimensional hyperentities existing over multiple universes. You were obviously going to meet up with Luna, and so much save/load "time travel" shenanigans might have ensued. This isn't the first game I've run where players have used time travel as an in-game gimmick. Alas, it was not to be, and a couple reverts was all we saw here."

You step through the next door, wishing, hoping, praying both to Celestia and Azura that there's a dagger and lockpick waiting for you.

: "Michael did this from time to time. And yet still people were shocked that ponies might be involved somehow..."

: "...as if that wasn't enough."

"Damn it. She looted everything."

: "So, yeah. Luna looted everything. As of this point in the game, Awesomicus and Clover hadn't even been conceived of, you and Luna were the only 'players' involved, and it was supposed to evolve into a psuedo-contest between the two of you, racing for artifacts and competing with each other for things. But for some reason that didn't happen...at all. After she left Seya Neen...

She's crossing the bridge by the time you collapse in the middle of the roadway from exhaustion, and you watch her make a right in the direction of the stilt strider.

: "...she headed straight to Balmora. I completely expected that you'd follow and head to Balmora too. I mean, that's kind of where EVERY Morrowind player goes first after leaving Seya Neen. I completely expected that you'd meet up with her pretty much right away, talk to her, discover the discrepancy between her memory of your first encounter and your own, maybe not quite figure out what was going on, but running off of the 'she's a PC' theory I figured you'd end up either teaming up, or competing, or trying to keep her in the dark about yourselves and manipulate her, or something. Anything."

"It never occurred to me when I started this that you would ignore that lead and go off an do something totally else."

"And, I mean...that's ok. I said 'no railroading' and I meant it. WOW did I mean it. But yeah, I handed you guys a MASSIVE 'something is going on here' and you completely ignored it and went somewhere else. To Vivec. And that did turn out very well, granted. In fact, out of everything you did the entire game, deciding to talk to Vivec was probably the best, most productive action you ever took. And you took ownership of it. You decided to do a thing, and you did it. Splendidly."

"But it was completely NOT what I expected. I expected that you'd go meet up with Luna, pretty much first thing."

[Sparksol]

"We now introduce Ourselves, the Princess of the Night, Princess Luna of Equestria, known to thee as HotFlank!"

Well, that's not a name I was expecting.

"But, and this is HUGELY significant: Because Celestia recognized the growing sentience of her spell, she marked its avatar, the later-to-become-Michael, as a plot critical PC to protect him."

Now that explains something I was definitely wondering about. (Three of you marking him as the same thing, on the other hand, seems slightly redundant.) I guess we're lucky that Luna decided to try and play the game without breaking it and thereby leaving us for dead.

"Truly, I am not making this up after the fact. Luna 'killed' you, but you hadn't yet grown to the point where you could remember it. And that's why from your point of view she ran past the super-interesting person wearing a Rainbow Dash t-shirt. From her point of view, she had a long conversation with you, killed you and saw the 'don't kill important npcs game over' screen and restore to a previous save, then simply ran past you the second time rather than waste her time talking to somebody who didn't have anything interesting to say."

This was a thing I'd wondered about at the time I read it, but neglected to write down. And then never got back to it.

The potential of this writing style has completely flown over your heads; getting all caught up in meta or trying to dismiss it. :]

: "Nivim totally understood what was going here, and it's really unfortunate that he left the game. That stuff he said about the backwards time travel? Totally nailed it. This was a huge gamble that I took when I started this whole thing, started with an unnamed protagonist...I completely intended for Michael to, during the game, become self aware, and for that event to ripple backwards in time."
"Unfortunately, as it eventually became clear, a lot of what was going on here went way over some of your heads. Some of you even pointed it out:

This was already going wa-a-ay over my head. Now its going wa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ay over my head.

It's so rare that people will play a game and consider the fact that they might also be being played (for a given value of "play" that is.)

"It never occurred to me when I started this that you would ignore that lead and go off an do something totally else."

"And, I mean...that's ok. I said 'no railroading' and I meant it. WOW did I mean it. But yeah, I handed you guys a MASSIVE 'something is going on here' and you completely ignored it and went somewhere else. To Vivec. And that did turn out very well, granted. In fact, out of everything you did the entire game, deciding to talk to Vivec was probably the best, most productive action you ever took. And you took ownership of it. You decided to do a thing, and you did it. Splendidly."

Which should make a nice little lesson (or reminder) for you (and anyone else willing to take the lesson) for future freeform games, especially if you should find yourself running a tabletop RPG:
Unless you know the specific players involved and how their minds work, don't make any solid plans for where the players will take you.
(Admittedly, I probably wouldn't have picked Vivec myself, CHIM or no. (Although it does make him the best candidate.) I've got no concrete reasons for that I can properly explain, but something about V I just don't entirely trust.)

[IronyOwl]

Forgot to mention it earlier, but:

* In the universe that was Marooned in Morrowind being played on the bay12 web forum, the capability of "npcs" to act with self direction was bottlenecked by you/our focus on them. Prior to coming into contact with any given npc, their basically existed in an uncollapsed waevform. Once they were interacted with...well, as an observer from this universe, it's difficult for me to know whether they had existence outside my observation of them. For example, it wasn't until somebody noticed/observed (forgive me if I don't track down the post) that it was odd that npcs stood aroun and did nothing until you walked up, that they gained the ability to "act" outside of your interactions with them. And in general they only did after your interaction with them. For example, the guy in Seyda Neen who left Morrowind after you bought his ring. Or Draren. Even major npcs like Yagrum and Divayth by all indicators sat around not doing anything until you met them. Were they acting autonomously apart from your interaction with them? Again, from the point of view of this universe, I can't know. But they certainly appeared to not be doing anything until an interaction with Michael. Look at Cinia. She had an extensive backstory of how she got to Tel yr and why she was there, and yet nevertheless she "just happened" to be in exactly the place that she's found in game at the time Michael first encountered her? I suggest that she as existing as a quantum superposition until she was observed, and only after that that exchange did she begin galivanting across the world.

 * In the universe where Morrowind was a spell that had grown self aware, being played in Equestria, "reality" is difficult to convey via this medium, but in general: like the hyperentity that is you/Michael/etc "your" collective awareness of your unified self was incomplete. Similarly, the "entire spell" that is (Morrowind, the spell cast by Celestia) was not completely self aware of its entirety. "The Michael" was more or less the focal point, but "Michael" was not the spell, and the spell was not "Michael." What you perceived as an interaction between two separate and distinct entities, like Michael and an NPC, in that universe that interaction was the spell being aware of itself. Michael/spell was the observer. Npc/spell was the observed. And in the act of observation, observer and observed became a single phenomenon known as an event.


Remember Clover's surprise that Michael was able to do the simple thing of following Awesomicus back to Pelagiad? To their experience, that wasn't a behavior the npcs of their spell exhibited. The "PC gamey aura" wasn't an effect local to the "PCs." It was the default nature of all not-conscious parts of the spell acting deterministically according to its "spell programming." Just like the not-conscious npcs in the universe of the game being played on my computer.

It would have been very interesting had there been any meaningful interactions with three parties: a pony, Michael and an "other" that you would consider an npc. Clover might have been very surprised to see what "npcs" in the presence of Michael were capable of.

Hah, that's awesome. Does this also mean Adorabella's rise through the mages guild would have been considerably easier had we not tagged Ranis? Was that one reason why everybody was a Great House landholder?

As another question, though: Doesn't this mean NPCs were gaining in awareness all the time? What did the PCs think of this? The Ranis duel is the most obvious example, but more generally this must have created a somewhat uneven landscape of mindless drones and fully aware individuals, right?

Finally, what did the NPCs think of this? You had, say, Nalcarya wandering around Balmora chatting with scripted drones after some point, right?

Maybe I misjudged how cohesive you guys could realistically be. But you did so well in the beginning. Skipping ahead to Vivec was a stroke of genius I hadn't expected, and it completely worked out for you. I didn't know how you were going to convince him to open the door, and you figured that out very easily.

If you collectively could simply have continue with the same level of cohesion and insight that you demonstrated early on, this game would have ended like two years ago. BUt from my point o view, it seemed like after Vivec, collectively you guys just fell apart.

What happened?

Wasn't there at the time, so couldn't say. But my guess would be that other than Nivm, who apparently achieved CHIM and ascended from the game, nobody fully understood what Vivec was trying to tell us, so our stroke of genius turned into kind of a dead end. You might notice that a lot of the reasons for meeting with Vivec involved Dagoth Ur and other material concerns rather than metaphysical enlightenment, and that one of our last actions in Vivec's presence was to ask for phat lewt. We may never have been quite as (intentionally) close to the truth as it looked like.

As an addendum to that, I recall there was a fair amount of mention of CHIM, but usually not in an especially enlightened context. Again, Nivm appears to be the transcendent sage exception here, but most of the CHIM talk I noticed was about, say, unlocking the console, not deciding our own destiny and attributes via being truly self aware. I almost suspect a lot of the game's premise fell flat because the players were aware of it but treating it like something else, akin to a warlord trying to gain the "enlightenment" superpower to crush his enemies with. He's aware of it, he wants it, he knows vaguely what it does, but he tries grabbing it and it doesn't grab so he assumes it's unavailable.

: "There was no way for you guys to know this at the time it happened, but Luna actually killed you right here. She saw you, started dialogue, but you didn't say anything very interesting, didn't issue any quests or anything so she flat out killed you. Because sociopathic PC."

: "Twas a most disappointing encounter. We received not one single point of experience from it."

So what you're saying is that having some witty pickup lines prepared could have changed everything. Be prepared!

"Because of the "event" of Michael becoming self aware during his conversation with Vivec, he retroactively influenced both past and future from that point. He was not "remembering" that his name was Michael. He was at time T, CAUSING his name at time T-1 to have been Michael, as well as all other points. All of that stuff from Vivec about the sword, and discussion of his nature of self? All of that was driving home the N-dimensional nature of reality this game intended to work with. This is exactly the kind of thing I intended this game to bring out, an I was thrilled and delighted that it played out the way it did. Congrats, Nivum. You totally got it. Great big cookie for you."

I never did figure this out or come even close, but your "You guys have more information on this than you realize" quote haunted me. I knew it was a bad sign that we apparently knew where his name came from but didn't.

: "...she headed straight to Balmora. I completely expected that you'd follow and head to Balmora too. I mean, that's kind of where EVERY Morrowind player goes first after leaving Seya Neen. I completely expected that you'd meet up with her pretty much right away, talk to her, discover the discrepancy between her memory of your first encounter and your own, maybe not quite figure out what was going on, but running off of the 'she's a PC' theory I figured you'd end up either teaming up, or competing, or trying to keep her in the dark about yourselves and manipulate her, or something. Anything."

"It never occurred to me when I started this that you would ignore that lead and go off an do something totally else."

Wasn't there, but if I had to guess, "you're panting and can't run anymore and she's still going strong" might have implied that continuing to chase her wasn't likely to work, and that heading to Balmora wouldn't let us meet her unless we could time travel. Ignoring us the first time probably didn't help either.

That said, the biggest obstacle to going to Balmora was probably going to Vivec. Better plans are usually more important than flaws in the current plan.

[LordBucket]

(Three of you marking him as the same thing, on the other hand, seems slightly redundant.)

: "I am Ra."

: "I am Celestia."

: "I am Amaterasu."

: "I am Azura."

: "We...

: "...are...

: "...One. Remember, you and Michael are a single entity that spans over multiple universes. "

: "Most men, confronted with their true selves, run away, screaming! ...'neverending story...aha...hahaha...aaahhaaaa....'"

: "Celestia did mark her spell. Azura did mark her chosen champion. I did mark Michael. But this was the act of a singular hyperdimensional entity looking out for a single other hyperdimensional entity developing into awareness of its true self. As phrased by IronyOwl:"

"Vivec" is aware of being some kind of... "hivemind" probably isn't the word. Almost the reverse, a one-ish mind or whatever spread out over a large patch of what appear to be discrete entities in their respective dimensions

: "Remember:"

: "You will NOT understand this game if you think of it as simply "one" game, or of Michael defnitely being X. The multidimensional nature of things was THE premise

We're All The Tomato."

Which should make a nice little lesson (or reminder) for you (and anyone else willing to take the lesson) for future freeform games, especially if you should find yourself running a tabletop RPG:

: "Back when I used to run D&D games I had a standard policy that at all times I had a wilderness adventure, a dungeon adventure, a city adventure and a water adventure all ready to go, in addition to whatever I had planned for the night. Players are notorious for looking at the obvious quest hook and deciding instead to go traipsing off in some random direction. I have quite a few years tabletop GMing experience dealing with that, to the point that 'go off and do something totally else' is a default expectation. In fact, I've run games where I have no plot hook at all, but instead simply create a world, drop players in it and let them figure out what they want to do. I pointed out a couple of times in the comments that 'I'm just the GM.' It's not up to me to decide what you guys do."

"Which is completely appropriate for a game of Morrowind. Morrowind is all about freeform 'do what you want.' But like IronyOwl has pointed out, without any leash at all, it seems at least a couple players had difficulty deciding what to do."

As another question, though: Doesn't this mean NPCs were gaining in awareness all the time?

: "Yes. It was slightly difficult for you to observe that, because you were the focal point. There wasn't any way for you to directly observer the mindless npcs, because they stopped being mindless by virtue of the fact, and to the extent of...your interaction with them. But there were clues. You guys were talking about 'PC gamey aura' effects very early on, for example. But that wasn't NPCs being 'dumbed down.' It was conscious entities acting with automatons, and then those automatons gaining some measure of self awareness after the fact. That was all about you, not ponies. And you had plenty of opportunity to notice that everybody always seemed to just be standing around...UNTIL you interacted with them, at which point they suddenly became able to act with autonomy. That happened lots of times. I remember somebody even pointing it out with Cinia, for example, that despite all the peculiarity of her situation, she was nevertheless exactly where she was scripted to be when you swam up to her."

"Though there were also some ripple effects. For example, the Legion as a whole became considerably more active and General Darius and others you interacted with were able to direct other Legionnaires, even if those Legionnaires they were directing weren't directly NPCs you'd personally interacted with. There are probably other examples of this happening, but that's the big one. In spellform universe, all of those NPCs were a collective entity growing into self awareness. There were effects going on that you weren't really in a position to observe, just like spellform universe wasn't able to observe what was going on on bay12. But there was nevertheless bleedthrough back and forth."

What did the PCs think of this?

: "Well, notice Clover's extrme reaction to Michael's behavior in Episode 66. But aside from that one incident, for the most part they hadn't noticed. Awesomicus was the one most able to observe it, and basically Rainbow Dash wasn't smart enough to realize anything was amiss. Clover/Twilight was the most able to put the pieces together, but she was was too busy doing other things to notice. Adorabella/Rarity didn't have a suitable basis of comparison to see the data and come to meaningful conclusions from it."

"And Luna was having too much fun to care."

"It could have played out very interestingly. But the game happened not to go in that direction. If you'd teamed up with SexyWithers early on, at some point Luna probably would have realized something was going on. It would have depended on how you presented yourself. Like I said a couple posts ago, that was what I expected to happen. You'd team up with Luna and both of you would be simultaneously figuring out what was going on. That didn't happen. The opportunity for something similar came up again after Awesomicus brought you back to life and there was discussion of teaming up with ponies. Twilight was extremely curious about your 'anamalous behavior' and would have looked into it. The chaos hyperentity, in fact, was looking out for you when Discord distracted Twilight from looking up Michael's command console information. Though pony-universe Discord hadn't been fully informed by his 'higher hyperdimensional self: Chaos' what exactly was going on."

"But point being, regular contact with you and Team Pony would very probably have resulted in revelations in both universes. Sadly, you alienated Rainbow Dash into ragequitting, Twilight was distracted by Discord, and when you met Discord, well...the game ended."

The Ranis duel is the most obvious example, but more generally this must have created a somewhat uneven landscape of mindless drones and fully aware individuals, right?

: "That landscape was incredibly uneven, yes. There were npcs who were mindless drones sitting in one spot doing nothing for the entire game. And there were autonomous entities living their lives, and having, at least from the point of view of the bay12 universe, larger effects on 'the world' than you guys were. And some in the middle. "

The Ranis duel is the most obvious example

: "A few other examples:"

 * Your adventuring buddy, Draren
 * Cinia
 * Fast Eddie
 * The guy in Seyda Neen who left Morrowind after you bought his ring
 * General Darius contacting the mainland and bringing in an army
 * Some actually very interesting things were going on with Caius that unfortunately never saw publication. At the time the game ended, a heavily traumatized Caius Cosades was actually on his way back from the capitol after having come to some horrifying realizations about all the 'mindless zombies' in Cyrodiil and the rest of the world. I was looking forward to that reunion conversation. Pity it never happened.

: "Related, some very interesting things might have happened if you'd 'woken up' one of the more ambitious Telvanni Councilors. Aryon, for example. Divayth's wakeup was ironically, hd very little impact, because he was so focused on curing corprus, and generally uninterested in 'the petty squabbles' of the world. Darius probably had the biggest effects on the world at large. Also, to anticipate the question: Vivec was not a mindless automaton at game start. He was a conscious hyperentity, just like Azura, Dagoth Ur, and a few others. They weren't 'mere components of spellform.' They were legitimate dimensional bleedthroughs, just like your collective actions from bay12 bled through into those other universes."

Does this also mean Adorabella's rise through the mages guild would have been considerably easier had we not tagged Ranis?

: "Yes. You had a lot of contact with Ranis. She was a meaningful focal point."

Was that one reason why everybody was a Great House landholder?

: "...no, that particular detail was simply something that evolved. The ponies weren't NPCs. In pony-universe they were conscious entities playing a game. Each of them pursued their own interests. The spread was a natural result. Notice that Twilight and Fluttershy never became landholders. And Applejack, in fact, was never in the game at all. She was too busy 'in real life' to play stupid games. Speaking of joining Great Houses, here's a fun fact-"

: "I joined House Dagoth!"

: "Yes. Pinkie joined the Sixth House. That was why Caius wasn't able to get much information on her stronghold. The others were legally approved by Duke Dren. It was a simple inquiry to find out about them. Pinkie's stronghold was a covert operation."

: "I did say I was super sneaky, didn't I? Sneak, sneak SNEAK! I'M SNEAKING!!!! HEY CAN YOU HEAR ME SNEAKING?!?!?"

Finally, what did the NPCs think of this? You had, say, Nalcarya wandering around Balmora chatting with scripted drones after some point, right?

: "It's difficult to answer that. What you, in this universe, perceived as "npcs plural" was from the perspective of the spellform, its own developing mind. To it, the NPCs weren't 'others.' They were more like your left earlobe. You weren't thinking about it just now, were you? You know it's there, you're not really paying attention to it, but you agree that it's part of you, yes? The NPCs were like that. Now, what does your left earlobe think about you? Well, on a cellular level, probably a great deal. There are all sorts of chemical and nutrient exchanges taking place. Your left earlobe does have some awareness on a cellular level of the exchanges taking place between it and the rest of your body. But the nature of that awareness is probably very different from the macroscopic awareness 'you / your self awareness' has of your earlobe. The NPCs capacity for 'thinking about' what a relatively intelligent entity like Nalcarya or Cinia, was about on the level of your earlobes capacity to understand algebra, whereas a part of you like 'your brain' has no difficulty understanding algebra."

Nivm, who apparently achieved CHIM and ascended from the game

: "That interpretation pleases me. "

As an addendum to that, I recall there was a fair amount of mention of CHIM, but usually not in an especially enlightened context. Again, Nivm appears to be the transcendent sage exception here, but most of the CHIM talk I noticed was about, say, unlocking the console, not deciding our own destiny and attributes via being truly self aware. I almost suspect a lot of the game's premise fell flat because the players were aware of it but treating it like something else, akin to a warlord trying to gain the "enlightenment" superpower to crush his enemies with. He's aware of it, he wants it, he knows vaguely what it does, but he tries grabbing it and it doesn't grab so he assumes it's unavailable.

: "Sadly, yes. This game was all about CHIM. But, actually CHIM, and the concept that CHIM actually is. Not merely playing lip service to it as a game mechanic, or a cute little fourth wall breaking reference in a book."

Wasn't there, but if I had to guess, "you're panting and can't run anymore and she's still going strong" might have implied that continuing to chase her wasn't likely to work, and that heading to Balmora wouldn't let us meet her unless we could time travel.

: "The relevant section:"

You freeze for just a moment in shock, during which she brushes right past you and takes off through the town running and jumping with every step.

: "Hey!"

She ignores you and keeps run/jumping. You try to give chase but she's much faster than you are.

: "Come back!"

No good. She's crossing the bridge by the time you collapse in the middle of the roadway from exhaustion, and you watch her make a right in the direction of the stilt strider.

: "It was simply that her speed stat was better than yours. There was no way you could catch her before she arrived at the silt strider. But the bigger problem would have been the silt strider itself: she took it. If you'd given chase you'd probably have run up to the dock in time to see it walking away. And at that time, that such a thing as the silt strider leaving the dock was a thing that could happen would have been a useful piece of information."

"But she spent a good deal of time in Balmora, joining guilds, talking to people, accepting quests, etc. If you'd have given chase, she'd still have been there by the time you arrived."

[IronyOwl]

* Some actually very interesting things were going on with Caius that unfortunately never saw publication. At the time the game ended, a heavily traumatized Caius Cosades was actually on his way back from the capitol after having come to some horrifying realizations about all the 'mindless zombies' in Cyrodiil and the rest of the world. I was looking forward to that reunion conversation. Pity it never happened.

Aw man. That would have been hilarious.

: "I joined House Dagoth!"

God damn it. Of course.

[Sparksol]

* Some actually very interesting things were going on with Caius that unfortunately never saw publication. At the time the game ended, a heavily traumatized Caius Cosades was actually on his way back from the capitol after having come to some horrifying realizations about all the 'mindless zombies' in Cyrodiil and the rest of the world. I was looking forward to that reunion conversation. Pity it never happened.

Aw man. That would have been hilarious.

Not only that, but it also would have alerted several of the less observant that it was really all about us, and actually not about ponies once and for all.

On the other hand...there would also have been people who would suddenly want to go around talking to every NPC on Nirn just to "wake them up" - and probably a few who would want the opposite - and we'd have those two additional objectives to collectively distract us.

I'm regretting more and more we didn't get to Dagoth Ur now. That would have been a hoot. (And not just because of Pinkie.)

(Sorry this one is so short; so-called RL has been nasty lately.)

[IronyOwl]

Not only that, but it also would have alerted several of the less observant that it was really all about us, and actually not about ponies once and for all.

I dunno. It would have alerted us that something was going on, but would we have gotten it right away?

Caius: "Oh gods, oh gods... the whole world, everywhere but here... it's nothing but mindless zombies!"
Players: "Huh, weird. Guess the game is about Morrowind so no place else matters?"

Now, if Caius had continued investigating it, this might have produced interesting results, because at some point it might have dawned on him that only people who could confirm meeting this Michael character were not zombies. But, that'd likely have taken a long time, if he still had the will for it at all, and still probably wouldn't have been a slam dunk.

I'm regretting more and more we didn't get to Dagoth Ur now. That would have been a hoot. (And not just because of Pinkie.)

Yeah. In our defense, though, we had no idea what we would find, including whether that included "a way back out."

[LordBucket]

MST3K Episode 6
Episode 6: On to Vivec

: "I was actually pretty pleased you guys decided to go to Vivec. It really was a huge shortcut to all the deep philosophical stuff I intended, but that I figured would take a while to work in. Talking to Vivec, you were able to confront it immediately."

You walk out from between the buildings to see the sun will be setting soon.

: 15

2

You've only been here, what...10 minutes and the sun is already setting?

: 16

you head to Fargoth's hiding spot.

It's empty.

Wait...that's right. There a prerequisite for that, isn't there? Something to do with Hrisskar? That dunmer you saw leaving the census office took the note. You're not sure if you can meet the prerequisite quest triggers without it, and even if you can simply by talking to Hrisskar, it's possible you might have to wait until sundown for Fargoth to actually hide his stuff.

Then you remember how Tarhiel never landed. It's possible quest triggers don't even work at all here. Or maybe this is earlier or later in the timeline? Have these quests already been completed?

: "Again, the 'no quest triggers' thing that was eventually abandoned. That was originally intended to have been a significant game mechanic, but it just didn't work out."

There's nothing in the tree stump right now, and the sun is going down.

: 17

you might have to wait until sundown for Fargoth to actually hide his stuff.

: 18

the sun is going down

: 19

By the time you reach the silt strider the sun doesn't look like it's any lower than it was

: 20

the sun was moving across the sky

: 21

: "When I wrote this chapter, I was very aware of the fact that there hadn't been any sun references in the previous two chapters, and there were supposed to be sun references EVERY chapter, so I kind of went a little overboard here to make up for it. Still, nobody noticed."

: "What if...what happens, say... if two striders arrive at one place at the same time? Or if you arrive at a dock and there's nobody there?"

: "I had fun with the conversation with Darvame. I was trying to make the world 'real' and Michael asked some very sensible questions about things that just wouldn't make sense without arbitrary game physics. But I wanted to avoid that, and so I came up with what I thought were sensible answers to obvious questions."

"It actually turned out to be very easy to do, and this became a trend that was repeated throughout the game, with recall mechanics, alchemy, potion bottles...a lot of the 'silly game physics' stuff ended up making a great deal of sense. So much so, in fact, that there were a couple times over the course of the game there were quite a few moments of frustration because people kept wanting to exploit things that were obviously weird gamey quirks that wouldn't be exploitable. Like that whole recurring deal where you guys kept trying to talk npcs into buying alchemy alchemy tools for you and then paying you for the privilege. I never did understand why any of you thought that would work, and you kept seeming surprised when it didn't and trying again on somebody else. NPCs aren't idiots here, and the things they do make sense. Darvame was one of the earliest examples of this, and I found myself liking her character and hoping you'd team up with her or something, but it ended up being a long time before you realized that teaming up with npcs was even an option. Though you did end up talking to her several times. "

: it's very rare for me to see as much as one passenger per week. Usually newlyweds, or the occasional outlander like yourself. Today's been a very good day for me. "

: "Everyone see the implication of what she's saying? Darvame is saying it's rare for her to get even one passenger a week and that today's been really good...because you're her second customer...TODAY. Luna was her first. In the previous episode you'd seen crazy nutcase knife-wielding dunmer chick-

: "We object. We didst not play as a baby birdling."

: "...ok, you'd seen the crazy nutcase knife-wielding dunmer female, heading for the silt strider. So I completely expected you guys would want to go talk the silt strider driver about her. It was a perfect opportunity to find out more about the major anomaly you'd just encountered. But nobody suggested it, and it seemed really weird to me that nobody wanted to do the obvious thing to go find out about 'the PC.' So I dropped the above clue, expecting a swarm of posts saying 'Oh! Of course! We totally need to go back to Darvame and ask her about that crazy knife wielding Dunmer!" From my point of view it was a huge clue drop to go do the obvious thing, and yet still somehow nobody thought to do that.

"You guys missed deliberate clue drops pretty often."

:Oh! Like in Episode 42 when I said to say hi to Fast Eddie for me! Even though I couldn't possibly have known you'd met him because you never mentioned him!"

: "Yeah, I'm really not sure how you guys missed that one."

"It might not seem glamorous to you, but it's a better life than I'd have in the Ashlands, or working a kwama mine. I'm a free woman. I'm not beholden to anyone. No slavemasters to grovel for, no Telvanni mage lords to worry about, no foreign empire company hounding me over their bottom line. Just me, my strider, and the wind in my hair. I can live with that. But, if you'll excuse me sera, we've arrived. Thank you for you business."

: "Again, I enjoyed writing Darvame. I'm glad you went back to speak to her again after Twilight and Rainbow Dash passed through. Also, here was the chance to use some in-game idioms. "Sera," and so forth. I tried to give every character a unique voice. If you read Darvame and compare to any other random dunmer, I'd like to think they each felt unique."

"That conversation was also notable as early indicator of how the economy here works. This came up again several times over the course of the game. Though I was always a bit surprised you somehow never managed to make your way over to Ebonheart. The East Empire Company could have been a major player in this game, things never moved in that direction. Kind of surprised slavery didn't ever really come up either. Morrowind has a lot of quests that relate to slavery, both freeing and/or enslaving or executing them. The whole Twin Lamps arc, and a bunch of stuff for the Telvanni. Related, I'm really surprised you guys never joined a Great House. Though I do remember some discussion and the consensus seemed to be that if you were going to join one, House Telvanni was the one to join, but it was would be super dangerous since they'd probably actually BE treacherous back-stabbing psychopaths instead of merely playing lip service to do the idea like they do in the game. Reality probably would have been somewhere in the middle. I think I mentioned in an earlier MST3K, we had several Telvanni mods installed. There was some fun stuff to play with that never saw the light of day."

You dismount and check your cellphone. The trip took 4 minutes, and you were able to watch the sun visibly set during that time. First you remember checking the time after your arrival in Morrowind, it was 1:17 and the sun was a bit off of center directly above you. But you don't know if it was before or after "noon" local time. It's now 1:32 and the sun set a couple minutes ago. So...a day in Morrowind is probably about 45 minutes to an hour? No wonder vendors stay at their shops throughout the night. It must be normal to be awake for days...no, weeks at a time, here. Or do sleep cycles happen more often? It's been half a day local time, but you still don't feel hungry or tired at all.

: "Actually, a day in Morrowind is 48 minutes. And yes, the whole food and sleep thing was another thing established early on, but I went to some lengths to have it not be 'obvious' until discovered."

you were able to watch the sun visibly set

: 22

it was 1:17 and the sun was a bit off of center directly above you

: 23

the sun set a couple minutes ago.

: 24

: "So that's 9 mentions plus a picture in this episode."

you watch as Darvame undocks her silt strider and begins her trip back to Seyda Neen. Only then does it occur to you that she must have taken that female dunmer you saw earlier somewhere too, and then returned to Seyda Neen just before arrived at her station. That's what she meant by today being a very good day for business. You facepalm briefly, as you realize that if it had occurred to you, you could have asked her about her passenger, and maybe got a name...almost definitely you could have asked where she was delivered to.

: "Again, here I am really trying to drive home 'hey guys! Opportunity to learn about the PC!!!!' No subtlety here. Read the quote. I straight out told you there was a chance to learn more here, but nobody seemed to want to do anything with it."

: "Some of the early screenshots were terribly dark."

Fun fact:: I manually edited gamma values for (almost all) backgroudn images using GIMP version 2, and did cropping and resizing in windows paintbrush. Printscreen, paste into paint, reduce to 50%, then trim horizontal to 344 pixels to crop the in-game HUD out of the images, since Michael couldn't see them, and it was very established that he couldn't see them. So they couldn't be in the screenshots. For a while i was even manually editing out the crosshairs until I realize I could turn them off in-game.

: "But yeah, the gamma values were kind of an issue throughout the game. It took me a long time to get those right, and if you compare avatars for some even very significant characters like Cinia, who has an awful avatar that's hard to see, to some even very minor chracters like Fargoth, there was sometimes a huge difference in image quality. Morrowind is very dark and the raw screenshots were often difficult to see."

As you cross the bridge into the city of Vivec, it starts raining.

: "It actually started raining in game. That was neat timing."

[LordBucket]

MST3K Episode 7
Episode 7: Funding the trip to nowhere

With a potentially dangerous player in the game, you decide the best course of action is to go straight to Vivec.

: "Luna and Vivec both set a lot of precendents in the early game. The whole "who's a PC?" was a significant point of discussion throughout the first third of the game. It wasn't precisely what was going on, but it was certainly close enough. From her universe, that's exactly what Luna was. So I generally went with it."

It's a really long way to the top.

: "...yeah. That was actually a problem for me at times. Michale's speed was very low, and he had very little endurance. Usually when you play Morrowind you run everywhere, but he wasn't physically capable. Walking at normal speed up that ramp was painful, and at the time I was manually stopping to rest to avoid passing out. I'm kind of fuzzy of this now, but I'd thought that in Morrowind if you ever let your fatigue drop to zero, you passed out and lost 8 hours. It doesn't seem to do that like I remember though, and I'm not sure if that was an original version 1 Morrowind 'feature' that was patched out, or if I was remembering that from Daggerfall and assumed Morrowind was the same. I played a lot of Daggerfall."

: "Ondusi's Unhinging. Do you have any in stock?"

She rolls her eyes.

: "Yes, it's a very popular choice among law-abiding, upstanding citizens who accidentally leave possessions that definitely belong to them in magically locked chests that they own and most certainly didn't steal because stealing is wrong."

: "Had a lot of fun writing Janand's dialogue too. She was a good source of comedy in nearly every appearance she made."

: "You could have "bunnies are fluffy and cute" be the trigger for a fireball if you wanted."

: "Again, enjoyed writing her. And also there were some significant world mechanics established in this episode about how scrolls worked. You guys had a 60 page notebook. I completely expected that you would make use of it somehow, but it only ever came up a couple times."

: "Whoa! You're not seriously planning on looting the guild are you? I'm right here you know."

: "Uhhh...why, no. Of course not. I was just...going to talk to Trebonius about joining the guild. "

: "Again, NPCs are not idiots."

You find 22 gold, two elongated greenish crystals that you're pretty sure are soulgems, some assorted alchemical ingredients, some junk tableware, and....SCORE! Two potions.

On your way back out though, you notice that the guild equipment chest is hidden away in a corner by the entrance without anyone nearby.

Jackpot!

: "Not really sure why you guys skipped all the priceless artifacts and random dedric gear strewn all over the world in favor of looting cheap junk from ceramic jugs...but this particular episode did give you some basic money to work with. I remember when did this episode I was really looking around for stuff to steal. There wasn't a lot, but you managed. Kind of. Again, the money issue was a huge problem for a long time. I never expected it to be such a problem."

Still, for all that weight, it was really volume that prevented you from taking the rest of what was in the chest. Regardless of weight, you can only fit so much in your backpack. Volume was never an issue in game, but clearly it is an issue here.

: "Again a  reminder of the volume issue. Though curiously it was never much of an issue again after this except when it came to alchemy tools. You did have some issues with the gear you stashed with Caius and Three-Toes. That was a surprise too. Never understood why you guys didn't just establish a base somewhere. "

"Actually, yeah, I'd like to ask: why didn't you guys ever establish a base? That's something every player of Morrowind, pretty much ever, always does. They pick a place to put the extra loot they don't want to carry. And you had extra incentive to do it here, because alchemy tools turned out to be too big to carry. You had plenty of opportunity. Why did you guys never pick a place and call it home?"

And that introduces a new problem. Coins have weight. Each septim is about the size of a penny, but they're kind of heavy. You're guessing they're really gold.

Spoiler: math (click to show/hide)

A penny is .36 cubic centimeters.
Gold weighs 19.32 grams per CC

One gold septime therefore weighs 19.32 / (1 / .36) = 6.955 grams which is .0153 pounds

Rounding for simplicity, 65 septims weighs one pound

Your pile of coins is small enough to fit in one hand, but it weighs nearly 4 pounds. There's going to be a very real upper limit to what you can carry.

: "I was anticipating that the tens of thousands of gold you'd inevitably end up having but couldn't possibly carry would be a major issue and that you'd need to find ways to deal with that. I gave you the math an the links to back it up in the spoiler because I was letting you know that this was a serious thing and that the weight of all that gold would definitely become an issue that you needed to be aware of."

"Clearly that never became the problem I expected."

: ""This isn't a a max level unlock scroll."

: "...what?"

: "Ondusi's Unhinding only provides a very medium level of unlocking power. If you need to open a max level lock, that's Ekash's Locksplitter. I don't carry those, and I don't know anyone who does. People who accidentally leave things that they own because stealing is wrong in chests that they also own because stealing chests would also be wrong don't usually use master grade alteration spells when they accidentally lock them."

: "Janand was so awesome. She was even more fun to write than Darvame."

"Also, I was trying to help you out there. You guys specifically asked for a scroll type by name that wouldn't do what you wanted it to do."

[LordBucket]

MST3K Episode 8

Episode 8: Dark night of the soul

Episode 8: Dark Night of the soul

: "Episode title, of course, is a reference to:"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul

"Saint John of the Cross' poem narrates the journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God. The journey is called "The Dark Night", because darkness represents the hardships and difficulties the soul meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union with the Creator. "

: "Which is...exactly what this whole game was about. The 'Light' Hyperentity was 'the Creator.' LordBucket created this game, Celestia created her spell, Azura is the narrator//inceptor/primary actor behind the game Morrowind, and the hyperentity that is our collective higher self was, as stated prevously, acting out this entire experience played out in each universe, and manifest here in this universe as the game 'Marooned in Morrowind' for the purpose of en-LIGHT-enment of the you/Michael/hyperentity, with the game itself basically being the dark and difficult time immediately preceding that en-light-enment."

"This whole game was about enlightenment and ascension. the spell growing to become self aware. Michael growing to be self aware. You, the players, coming to be aware that you and Michael were the same being, and collectively each of you coming to 'See the Light' and know thyself. The Dark Night of the Soul is the time of difficulty immediately preceding 'touching the light' that is God. In this case, played somewhat metaphorically by the Tribunal god Vivec, rather than the more literal creator Azura the inceptor of Morroind, or Celestia the creator of the spell, or me the creator of this forum game. Each 'Creator Gods of the game' in our respective universes. Though Vivec did certainly fill his role well in assisting with your enlightenment."

"Pity nobody recognized the reference. I suppose it is a fairly obscure piece of 1600s literature, but I thought it was part of the standard tvtropes: Small Reference Pool that everybody has by default. The expression is certainly use often enough in film and literature."

almost like a moth drawn to light

: "Yes, with some literary indulgences to drive the metaphor home."

...usually, in game, you'd jump over that edge and then hug the wall mid-fall to avoid falling damage. You decide to take the long way down instead. It's a long way down.

: "Yeah, I actually do that in-game. I assume most people do. But if I were there in person...no way. It's a scary looking drop. I actually kind of look forward to trying out Morrowind in VR once headsets become commercially available in the next few months. And I bet that drop will be scary."

The Ministry of Truth. According to lore, it was an asteroid that fell from the sky. Vivec caught it with his magic and suspended it in the air. The temple later turned it into a floating prison. It's a massive rock, and the sight of it fills you with dread. You can't even begin to guess how heavy it must be, suspended hundreds of feet in the sky. Just...sitting there.

Looking up at the massive impossibility above you, it all hits you. Magic is real. Gods are real. This is all real. There are creatures here with such power that they can casually catch thousands of ton asteroids and hang them in the sky. Not as a testament to their power. Not to impress anyone. Not to make a lasting monument. But just because it was the most convenient thing to do.

: "How would you react to seeing thousands of tons of rock casually hanging in the air?"

A bolt of sheer terror passes through you as for a moment your brain processes that massive rock as "down" and you're overwhelmed with a feeling of vertigo and fear at the thought of falling those hundreds of feet. You close your eyes and only then do you notice that you're hyperventilating. You step away, trying to calm yourself.

"...it's ok," you tell yourself through clenched teeth, "...everything will be...ok."

You manage to take control of your breathing, but the painful knot in your stomach won't go away. It's like stage fright, you insist. It's bad now, but as soon as you get on stage, everything will be fine.

"Just need to talk to Vivec, and everything will be ok."

: "This chapter was fun to write. Totally playing with the needless dread and terror here, and yet it all made sense for what he was seeing. This entire chapter was setting the mood. All the pictures are dark, it's raining, it's gloomy...really trying to drive home the emotional dread that comes before the peace. I really enjoyed writing this episode. It has incredible emotional depth."

Miraculously, shortly after you leave the tunnel and approach the final stairs leading up to Vivec's Palace, the first light of the morning sun begins to poke out from over the horizon, and the rain stops.

: "Like the rain when it started, this actually happened in game. I didn't script it. I didn't sneakily time the screenshots. I mean, I would have...but the sun actually came up and the rain stopped right as you left that tunnel to see Vivec's Palace come into view. It so completely worked and fit everything that was going on. Also..."

25

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul
"...the soul meets in detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union..."

: "And so with the rising of the sun, did the nameless entity proceed unto Vivec, where he and his other selves came to know that they were One. And thus, were they enlightened."

[Putnam]

your choice in stopping point has given me half-gold-half-blueballs