.

[B100] The Long and Short, The Medium too.

I may have been a bit hasty in advising you not to bother with the prototyping process. If I spared any detail, it was only to optimize your chances of survival. And if you find yourself begrudging the absence of certain instructions, which if followed would have resulted in your demise, then I guess that makes two of us.

Otherwise you're welcome.

But the fact appears to be that prototyping the Kernelsprite before making your getaway may offer the only opportunity to exercise control over your new environment, a place known as The Medium. Also, if prototyped with one (or two) sufficiently – albeit loosely – humanoid and/or sentient element/s (living or otherwise), it offers the chance to have all this explained to you by an apparitional guide through whatever sort of cryptic, sketchy doublespeak your choice of prototyping element/s engender/s. In lieu of this, you may be forced to settle for my clear, thorough explanations and assiduous dissection of raw data.

Again, don't mention it.

If you have made it to The Medium with an unmolested Vanillasprite, well, I've already covered the bad news about this "missed opportunity", and I will go into this further soon. Though to what extent this actually is bad news, I'm not sure. I know only the result of my co-player's current configuration, wherein the sprite was prototyped once before the departure, and once after. Which brings us to the good news, which is that you can still prototype after your departure, and salvage the massively rewarding experience of haggling with an exposition-slinging guide, so long as you avoid prototyping with terribly inert items, such as a brass doorknocker and your father's pornography collection.

Actually, that might be interesting. If you are struck by the spirit of such experimentation, please don't hesitate to contact me about it.

So, yes, you can enhance your sprite in this way, but doing so after your departure will no longer induce this "effect" on The Medium I alluded to. That can only be accomplish with one or more pre-departure prototypings. In fact, we can extrapolate there are only so many ways to prototype a sprite.

Tiers of prototyping in relation to departure:
- Both before
- One before, one after
- Both after
- Only one, either before or after
- None

Those occurring before will affect The Medium through the kernel's "hatching" process, and your guide i.e. the sprite. Those occurring after will only affect the sprite.

The effects this process has on The Medium, or more globally, The Incipisphere, are still vague to me. They have to do with flavoring the forces you will struggle against, and generally, all forces at odds with each other in this realm. It has given me some insight into the nature of this game, which I again derive through extrapolation. We appear to be engaging an instance of dimension with a highly flexible set parameters, and a series of objectives surrounding an equally flexible mythological framework. This framework seems to begin as a sort of blank template, and evolves with the players' actions, and likely further evolves with the addition of more host/client connections, and thus more prototyped kernels.

I regret to say I can't be much more specific than that, without loosely extrapolating further. There are plenty of questions that have occurred to me, however. Questions concerning the Kernelsprite, which I've raised implicitly already, such as what is the effect of an un-prototyped kernel on The Medium? Or a doubly-prototyped kernel, for that matter? And even more salient are questions about this dimension itself. Do all players world-wide make it to this dimension if they successfully complete their departure? Or is a unique "blank" instance of the dimension created for each player? I have no evidence, but instinct tells me it is closer to the latter situation. There is no indication of any other players present in this realm. Alterations in the realm are singularly centered on the actions of my co-player and myself. If I had to stake anything on it, I would guess every separate client/server pair activates its own fresh copy of an Incipisphere, or a unique "session", if you will.

But the quantity of players is a further complication which invites more questions. It seems the game was designed to suit two players most naturally, the server and the client. But through a mishap, my co-player and I have slipped out of the obvious tandem arrangement, and the only logical course of action to continue playing is to string a daisy-chain of server/client connections together, until presumably the chain is complete. Theoretically, we could complete this chain with only one other player, functioning as the server to my client, and the client to my current co-player's server (assuming he can recover it).

The strange thing is though, in our instance of this dimension, there are four recepticles for divided kernels, not three. Does this mean we are "destined" to have a four player chain? How could the game "know" such a thing?

Perhaps it does, and if this proves to be the case, I trust I will be sufficiently numbed to the realization. [I can consider nothing about this game surprising at this point, and in fact from the first moments of play, it managed to deviate so far from my expectations that I completely forgot what my original purpose with it was. I had some chances to test information I obtained on good authority during the prototyping phases, but it completely slipped my mind. Instead, the game's catacombs securing the dark paths to necromancy were blundered into rather on accident.

But perhaps you don't need to know any of this.]

[rethink organization? lead may be waist deep logorrheic sludge. trim down. bleh]

Rose closed her eyes in concentration. She wasn't finished with this walkthrough yet, and needed to be cut some slack.

Maybe we should go check on someone somewhere else for a while? Or at the very least, somewhen else.

Months in the past, but not many…it was a crisp winter day in the state of New York, and snow was piling up at the LaLonde house.

Rose sat at her desk on her laptop, with an empty blue box and brand new knitting kit sitting to her right.

On Pesterchum, she spoke with one of her friends.

GG: hi happy birthday rose! x3
TT: Hello, and thanks.
GG: did you get johns present yet?
TT: I just opened it this very moment. What a stunning coincidence you would ask about it now. I am stunned.
GG: yeah i know!
GG: what will you make with it?
TT: And who said it was something from which something else could be made?
GG: well john did tell me what it was duh...
TT: I suppose I'll take a stab at learning the craft.
TT: It's the least I can do in response to the subtle dig concealed in his gesture.
TT: He often tells me I "need a new hobby" when I make perfectly reasonable analytical remarks.
GG: oh but rose i dont think he meant anything like that by it!
GG: you see not everybody always means the opposite of what they say the way you and dave always do
TT: Maybe.
TT: His birthday is in a few months, isn't it?
GG: yep!
GG: i finally finished a present for him
GG: ive been working on it for years!
TT: Years?
TT: It's so hard to tell when you're joking.
TT: Or if you're even capable of it.
GG: heheheh... :)
GG: i just mailed it too so it is sure to get there on time
GG: mail takes a while to get anywhere from here!
TT: I'll probably craft something with strong sentimental value.
TT: That should burn him.
GG: i dont think you really mean that!
TT: I guess not.
TT: So, shall I expect a green package dropped to my house via airmail from whatever screwball cranny of the globe you're tucked into?
GG: err...
GG: no :(
GG: sorry but you are sort of hard shop for ._.
GG: besides i have something for you today that i think you will like better than some thing in a box!
TT: Oh?
GG: it is a tip!
TT: This is already intriguing enough to compensate for the grave scarcity of lavish gifts parachuting from the sky. Please go on.
GG: did you have a pet a long time ago that died?
TT: Yes.
GG: ok well how did you feel about your cat, did you love him a lot?
TT: "ok well", I didn't mention it was a cat, or that it was a male. Let's pretend I'm surprised and you're embarrassed and move on.
TT: To answer your question, I would describe my feelings toward the animal as lukewarm.
GG: ummmmm ok...
GG: thats fine!
GG: it doesnt really matter i think, just...
GG: what if someone told you you could play a game that would bring him back to life?
TT: If someone told me that, I would regard the remark with a great deal of skepticism.
TT: If that someone was you, on the other hand, then I would have to ask preemptively:
TT: Is that someone you?
GG: yes that someone is me!
GG: i just thought you might find it interesting
TT: So what is this game?
GG: oh i dont know
GG: im just saying is all
GG: i think youll hear about it later and maybe you can talk to john and dave about it
GG: they are way more into all that stuff than i am!
TT: I'll see what the word on the street is about it. In due time.
TT: For now I should probably order a copy of Knitting for Assholes. It would be a shame if I ran late with John's present.