A Beginner's Guide to The Crucible

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS! PLEASE HELP FINISH IT, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! EVEN A LITTLE HELP WOULD GO A LONG WAY!
So you're new to The Crucible. You missed out on all the stuff before CRUX's games, thinking that nothing would happen, or maybe oblivious to the fact that this even existed. Well, a lot happened in that time. By a lot, I mean, a lot.

Don't fear though! We're here to help catch you up, and make sure we're all on a level playing field. With everything being so fast paced, there may be a few blank spots, but hopefully you'll be up there and knowledgeable about this as the rest of us.

A Summary of Events So Far...
On the 13th of September, various people from across the internet recieved an e-mail from someone calling themselves 'CRUX Crucible', who invited them to play a game. When people responded, they were sent a message with the details to be filled in, with the games begining on October 1st. After coresponding with participants over e-mail, CRUX reveals various details, including the fact he knows of 'The Slender Man'. He also gave links to his Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook profile. After a handful more people join his games, he begins issuing practice challanges to particpants.

Later, two more parties made their presence known. The first was D (Dante Niccals), who claimed that CRUX wasn't all he appeared to be, and was reaserching him to prove this point. The second was ARC_Providence, who held some kind of hated toward CRUX, but refused to elabourate. By this point, the Mebbit Chatroom appeared, and particpants began to speak to CRUX. The particpants and CRUX quickly became friends, and bountiful mirth filled the chat. D even changed his tune somewhat, and became more relaxed. But then the weird stuff began to happen...

~

The Story So Far [CRUX's Recap]
"Your story so far, as best I can tell it.

Some time ago, (but a drop in the pool of time, really, but quite a while to us mortals) there was formed a group called CATALYST, and their job was to investigate the paranormal, and stage rescues when necessary. After their initial formation they got a bit of a name change, becoming the CATALYST Paranormal Investigative and Rescue Association. They did good work, over the years. They employed many people who would not trade their time there for all the riches in the world. I am one of those people.

During my time in CPIRA, I was Operative 10528 and my codename was CRUX. This is a moniker I’ve been loath to give up, even after my discharge from the company. It’s like that nickname your friends gave you in highschool that has a special meaning just for you, and you just don’t want to have to give it up. It’s that name that you give when you say “Hi, I’m so-and-so, but my friends call me…” But, I digress. When I was an operative with CPIRA, my jurisdiction was “Crucible,” meaning that I dealt paranormal entities that played games and issued challenges. I can’t discuss any specific contracts I worked on, but I can give you an example of such a creature from mythology; consider the riddle of the Sphinx.

I’ve been discharged from my service with CPIRA for three years now, since an incident where I was badly injured in the line of duty. I’ve gotten… bored. I work at a Cracker Barrel as a prep cook, and my life is almost entirely normal. This was nice, at first, but compared to the life I led before, it’s horribly boring. I missed my games, my puzzles, my challenges, my Crucibles. And so I decided I would make a game of my own. And that’s what you’re all here for, is to play my game and relieve our collective boredom.

When I started this game, I looked for people I knew it would appeal to. I began by selecting a few from a site I lurk frequently, the Slender Nation forums. Having contacted all of them that I could, I moved on to tumblr. Chances are, if you’re here, you heard from me because of one of those sites, or by word of mouth from one of the other lovely players of my game. Shortly after I sent out the first emails, a fellow going by the pseudonym “D” started to observe me, recording his findings on his Tumblr blog, Tofindthetruthalways.

It wasn’t long after D’s appearance in my game that he began to experience some odd phenomena around his home in Barrow, Alaska. He sent his wife, Rebecca, to stay with her parents, to keep her safe. He had several visits from both the Rake and a strange creature that inhabited his window. A window that may or may not only exist in an alternate dimension. He also receives a visit from a fellow known as Trickster, who records video of D’s house while he is in the shower.

After the window creature incident (I’ve taken to affectionately referring to the thing as “Windowlicker”), D, who we now know to be Dante Niccals, moved across the continent to Rivesville, West Virginia and into a vacant house owned by his cousin, Coal Niccals. Not long after his relocation, Dante’s house is invaded while he is away, purportedly by our friend known as Trickster, who likes to cause trouble in our Mibbit chat. Dante’s wife goes missing suddenly around this same time. He is unable to contact her.

Shortly following these events, I was supposedly kidnapped by a stalker of mine named Daft. I have no recollection of these events, so you are best off reading the summary from the wiki and/or contacting the players who were in the chat when all of this was happening. A few days after that, I was temporarily possessed by the Fear known as EAT. My memories of the event are pretty hazy, and I did/said some things during that time that I regret and don’t really want to discuss, so I’ll leave you to research that incident on your own as well. The same night as my EAT possession, Dante finally got a call from his wife, only to discover that she was never really missing at all. She’d been cheating on him. The bitch.

A few days later, I had another encounter with my little friend Daft. I managed to convince him that I need rest before work, and the next thing I knew I woke up from a nap and he was gone. No explanation for this. Trickster posted a download link for a video (which is also a terrible virus, so don’t download it) on Dante’s Tumblr. Player and Tumblr user zandertekashi posted the video so that no one else would have to become infected by Trickster’s virus. We also meet the CPIRA operative known as COSM this day. COSM does some digging for information on the player known as Pryex, and threatens everyone in the chat to keep the information from him.

I foolishly didn’t take COSM’s warnings nearly as seriously as I should have (which I still feel horrible for, by the way). I wasn’t concerned for my own safety, and I didn’t want to leave Pryex in the dark, so I told him. COSM found out it was me and, knowing he likely couldn’t hurt me directly, decided to take it out on one of my players in order to “teach me a lesson.” This player was Singerofthelost, because I had mentioned that she was submitting my favorite challenge responses. He told me he was going to issue a series of tasks for me to complete to save her, and she disappeared shortly afterward. She was gone for several days, supposedly in a deep sleep. We were all terribly worried about her because she’s a joy to be around and we all love her dearly, and I am still so sorry for putting everyone through all of that. You can find my responses to his tasks in my archive. Task three was given to my players to complete, due to a Trickster experience I had while all of this was going which landed me in the hospital with foot injuries.

While all of this is going on, player Pseudomuse is being stalked by a (surprisingly likeable) fellow named RedRage. RedRage seems to be a proxy of the Slenderman, whom he calls the PALE. The way he explains it is that the PALE comes from the TREE, and he is a BRANCH of the TREE. He seems to want to play a game with Pseudomuse. This game proves to be much more dangerous than you would imagine, because it winds up with Pseudomuse being taken to the Empty City to see the TREE. RedRage, at some point during this time, gives way to an alternate personality known as RED, who was a CPIRA operative at one point in time. He can’t wrest complete control from RedRage at that point in time, but he knew Dante from their time in CPIRA together and the two of them plot to rescue all parties involved from the Empty City.

Dante departs abruptly for the City without telling me that he’s going, much to my chagrin. I had every intention of accompanying him, but he’s rather fond of me now, to say the least, and I guess he wanted to protect me from that horrid place. The accounts of what happened while they were in the City are somewhat disjointed and told from multiple perspectives, and I wasn’t there for a lot of this going on, but I’ll do my best to describe it.

Dante found Pseudomuse, and both of them saw the TREE. During the panic induced by seeing such an abomination, Dante shot RedRage, who apparently died and released RED. Pseudo ran away from them upon seeing the TREE, and all three of them were separated by the ever-shifting labyrinth. Dante escaped the city first, aided by his cousin (revealed to be CPIRA operative SERCH) and an operative we know only as ODYS. Red contacts the chat, but is unable to see the replies of any players. We are updated with periodic posts from him. Dante perceives his time in the Empty City to have only been an hour, but Russel was in there for days. Time is funny in the City, it’s said. I unfortunately can’t give you any further information about RED, but you’re more than welcome to come asking around the chat if you want the rest of the story.

Pseudomuse escapes the Empty City a bit later, but is… different, somehow. He now uses the pseudonym Blackmuse, and apparently has several alternate personalities. One of these personalities is The Messenger, who informed us that Blackmuse is a BRANCH who has been broken from the TREE. He seems to be trying to find his purpose.

COSM is discharged from CPIRA during the Singerofthelost event, and declares Vendetta against the organization. He has Dante’s cousin Coal, the operative SERCH, killed. ODYS, his lover, vows revenge and leaves for England to hunt COSM down. COSM drops his CPIRA title and now enters the chat as DEAN. His full name is James Dean, and I have oh-so-affectionately nicknamed him Jimmy Dean Sausage. Some players also like to call him Miss American Pie. Take your pick, as both are acceptable. Should ODYS fail to kill him, God forbid, I certainly will finish the job for her. He’s put us all through too much pain and torment to be allowed to live.

And now we come to October the first, the beginning of the game proper. I issued the first challenge this day, as well as writing my post welcoming you all to the game. This also marked the closing of applications to join, though I do still encourage newcomers to join in the chat. If you’ve not figured it out already, interesting things happen there.

October second, a lot of things happened. With Singerofthelost safely back, we all believed that things would be quieting down for a while. Unfortunately that was not to be the case. Trickster overtook both my and Dante’s computers. While unable to access the chat, I received a horrifying visit from The Cold Boy, and was unable to get any sort of communication. I’m sure you can find logs of the incident somewhere on the Wiki, but I would much rather forget the entire thing. During these events, the only person whose responses I could see in the chat were Dante’s, and they were being altered by the Choir.

Plenty has happened since then, as well, but I think that’s enough to get you mostly caught up. I need some time to sort through the events of the last few days, myself, but I’ll be sure to update this for all of you. Hope it was helpful."

Important Resources
Various resources have been employed so far, and the list is continually expanding. The resources page offers a fuller list, but this is only going to go into the main things you'll need to keep track of.

CRUX's Tumblr
This is the main source of info on and from CRUX. It is regularly updated, and several key things have occured on it's pages. It has also been jacked a few times by various outside parties such as Trickster and COSM, as well as practice challanges issued from it.

Mibbit Chat
This is where all the important stuff goes down. All the conversations, events, moments. This is where it happens. Join in. We don't bite. A large porion of the times is simply talking while waiting for the next big thing, but it will possibly become a more important meeting place in the future when the games begin.

Other Things of Note
Everything is hectic, but lend a hend when you can.