Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-29355202-20171127230930/@comment-29355202-20171127235306

CHAPTER 1:

Picture this: you just got home from a long and exhausting day at school/work, so you sit down and rest in the only way you know how: conversing and gaming. This was practically how I felt the week of midterms. It was December 19th, 2019, and I come home to the usual chatter. However, the moment I opened my laptop was when things became more so unusual.



Typically, when I am done with a long school day, I use Skype to calm my nerves. The only problem: there was no one out there to calm me, as every single person on Skype was gone! At first I thought it wasn’t a big deal, so I scrolled up to see that the last thing that was sent was a link. I disregarded it for now, as it didn’t seem relevant at the time. Of course, that all changed over time.



Next I went to check the Discord, since there were people on there that weren’t on the Skype. However, when I checked the status of everyone, I was the only one online. I was given @Scientist  status in hopes to keep the Discord alive (although I knew jackshit about running a server). What shocked me is that in the channel #lighthouse-announcements , there was the exact same link as before. Once again, I disregarded it, as there was still one place for me to check:



The Pastel Forums! Last I checked, there were over 200 people on this talk page, so surely, I thought to myself, there should be someone that I can ask what the fuck was going on. There was only one person apart from me that was on the forums: Mateusz Skutnik. The last thing that was posted on the forums was by him, and it was the same exact link on the Skype and Discord. I was convinced that the reason that everyone left was because of this link. I left 3 messages on the Forum for Mateusz, all of which were answered one after another:



<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">What is this game?

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:right;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">It isn’t a game.

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:right;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Why has it caused so many people, including LT, Ant, and even Apoc to leave?

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:right;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The real question is “Why are you still in this realm?”

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:right;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">That isn’t the issue! The issue is that everyone is gone. Why?

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<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:right;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Play for yourself and find out…

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:right;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">-Mur

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:right;">

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;text-align:justify;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The “Mur” in that final post told me everything: This was not truly Mateusz I was talking to. I was talking to Murtaugh! If it were Mateusz, he would have just used “m”. Many thoughts flooded into my mind, but the main one was this: “what did Murtaugh do this time?” I was determined to figure this out. Even if death was a possibility, it was a risk I had to take. My determination led to clicking that link, but little did I know that one click would lead to a world of hell.