Your name is Dirk Strider, and you've just been told a story which sounds grade-A psycho. You should close the window, laugh off these sorry trolls, and forget that any of this ever happened.

You don't. In fact, you think you might be starting to believe this bullshit. It doesn't help when Aradia says things like:

?AA: even though all of this sounds crazy youll probably find that you believe it anyway!

?AA: the universe spends years preparing you to accept the game!

?TA: yeah, you were pretty much screwed 0ver from the start.

But you still have one problem with all of this.

CTT: So if I believe what you're saying, I'm fated to play a game which will simultaneously destroy and save the world, and everything is going to go down in about a year.

?AA: pretty much!

CTT: So what the fuck am I supposed to be doing in the meantime?

They go silent for a minute, and you suspect they've opened up a private chat to work out how best to phrase "hell if we know."

?AA: there are a lot of things you can do to prepare for the game!

?AA: the most important of which is

?AA: WAKE UP

CTT: rrtfghyu7ji


Your name is Dirk Strider and your room just turned red. Also, you teleported to the bed and found yourself wearing some pretty snazzy purple duds.

Well, fuck. Look's like Aradia was telling the truth. You're on Derse.

You fly outside. The streets are pretty much empty, but you find a piece of paper on the ground – scratch that, it's a whole newspaper. Looks like a fairly typical sleazy tabloid, but you flick through anyway.

You encounter a picture of yourself.

The page is called "Tower Watch," and the caption next to your sleeping mug reads "Prince of Heart slumbers on." This is a sub-point to the main story – "Rogue of Void vanishes" – but the only image there is of an empty tower.

Well, that's all kinds of interesting, but right now you reckon it's time to head back to the real world. You return to your room and lie down. Right, time to wake up.

Wait, how do you –


No problem.

Unfortunately, your unplanned nap has left you with a face full of keyboard, and Pesterchum has signed you out due to inactivity. The last couple of lines after your keyboard smash read:

?AA: good night dirk!

?TA: i can't believe that w0rked.

You log back in, but the pair of them have gone offline. You check the clock – three am. Striders don't keep anyone's schedule, but it's too long since you've had a sleep you planned on getting.

You can deal with this in the morning.