A boy stands in his ballroom, inspecting a large item of gold-plated plumbing that has just appeared on the dancefloor. His name is Juvall. He is dressed in the formal blue-and-gold court robes of a Junior Barristocrat, as is his due. His tentacles are exquisitely powdered with pearl dust. He'll change into something more practical later, but as the first madrigog into the mysterious world of the Medium he feels the need to represent, dash it. He fires up his trusty necklace computer.

GaudyUmpire [GU] began festering AnchoressUnbound [AU] at 11:57

GU: Vertie?

GU: I say, Vertie.

AU: Busy.

GU: Verthaaaaaandiiiiii….

AU: what.

GU: Far be it from me to question the divinely inspired wisdom of my fair server player,

GU: but

GU: why is there a feculence-chute in the middle of my ballroom?

AU: Tradition.

GU: Hm?

AU: In every game we have records for, the first player's feculence-chute gets moved somewhere inappropriate by their server. No-one knows why, and I'm not about to meddle with it in case it's a mission-critical move.

GU: That sounds about right.

AU: Plus, it's hilarious.

GU: If you say so. 'Scuse me a sec.

He's just heard something moving. It can't be the staff, he sent them all home. According to his notes, any extra people who get swept into the Medium along with a player's home typically don't survive long, and he doesn't need his robes ironed that badly. Now, when the glowing "kernelsprite" thingumajig popped out of the "cruxtruder" contraption earlier, Juvall "prototyped" it by throwing the preserved exoskeleton of his uncle's faithful crayhound into the hovering circle of light. If he's understood the peculiar mechanics of this game, both his spirit guide and all the game adversaries should now have grown some –

There! Two long threadlike antennae give away the Imp's position behind a pillar. With surprising speed, Juvall pelts across the hall and lunges with his mollusca cane. The Pearl Imp throws up its pincer hands, but the electrified tip of the cane beans it squarely on the noggin. It vanishes, leaving behind a single pearl and one of those disturbingly gummy polyhedrons that count as XP points around here. There is a loud thud on the other side of the room. A huge, crudely-pixelated green cursor has just dropped a statue on a second Imp.

AU: You're welcome.

GU: By Jurve, it really does feel like I'm in a game! With shoddy graphics, to boot. This "Medium" really is a rum place. If anything, it's less slick than our simulations of it.

AU: Whatever. UG and CU still aren't answering, so let's go to Plan B7. I'll enter the game next, followed by UC. She'll be my "server player," and you'll be hers.

GU: So I get to play with dear, sweet, precious, dear Urdra?

AU: Behave. Or else.

GU: What about the other three?

AU: I'll get UA to sort that out. She may be clinically paranoid, but she's resourceful.

AU: On second thoughts, you'd better tell her, not me. She doesn't like nuns.

GU: Your wish is my command!

GaudyUmpire stopped festering AnchoressUnbound

GaudyUmpire [GU] started festering Uncanny Ally [UA] at 12.01

GU: Plan B7 is go, repeat go.

GU: I take it you know what that means?

UA: Roger wilco over and out.

UncannyAlly stopped festering GaudyUmpire

Juvall finds his sprite in the cloakroom, a ghostly bluish-white crayhound skittering nervously in circles. It clatters its claws at him and whines. Well, hopefully it should be more talkative soon. Juvall reaches into his Tesseract Stacks sylladex and pulls out a blue rag doll. He hesitates.

The Blue Doll doesn't look like much, but it's the most valuable item in his collection. Harvested from the rubble of a dead world in another Universe, yet curiously new-looking. Dark blue dress and button-eyes; pale blue arms, legs and face. A mass of strange ropy tentacles grows from the top and back of its head, not from the face. It has that whole ugly-cute thing going on. Like a little madrigog-anime squishie of a Human, all the grossness stylised away. Seems harmless, but Juvall gets a deep throbbing pain behind his eyeballs when he looks at the thing too long.

Mission Control had dropped hints, in their usual arms-length approach to dealing with the young Players. It might be interesting, said the dapper older gent at the auction house, to involve a certain kind of artefact in a certain game. Ignoring the fact that some random stranger shouldn't have known about his Player status, Juvall asked what kind, exactly? Something vaguely madrigog-shaped, but other, the gent replied. Mysteriously well-preserved. Distinctive colour scheme, perhaps. But not, repeat not this happy little fellow. And he'd shown Juvall a picture of a strange pink-skinned puppet in a green suit, its obscenely visible alien jaw hinged wide open.

(By madrigog standards, this little exchange was the height of subtle discretion.)

It's tempting to ignore the hint and play a "vanilla" game. No toying with arcane alien forces - just play, win, make a new Universe. Simple. It's not like anyone from back home can interfere now. But Mission Control's shadowy masters want more than that, and who is he to gainsay them? Juvall throws the doll into the glowing Crayhoundsprite and prays to the Horrorterrors for strength to face the abomination he's creating.