I think we're all aware by now of the conspiracy that's building in the background of 2077. Most of us know about the mysterious Blue Eyes who appears in The Sun ending to the game. He operates as The Stinger of sorts for (that) ending of the game; He and V discuss a job vaguely alluded to through out the ending sequence and then the ending cuts to V in space charging off towards The Crystal Palace. Cue DLC Hook and credits.
But, let's go back here. This is only the tail end of the conspiracy and where it actually intersects with V's story. Blue Eyes (and some connections to him) crop up multiple times through out the game and, when pieced together, start building a larger picture that runs deeper into Night City than the pockets of most corporats.
I've finished my second playthrough of the game and I've been drafting this post as I play and find more clues. I doubt I'll find everything or might completely dismiss some, but I want to be on the front lines of uncovering this mystery, especially if this will be our Gaunter O'Dim for Cyberpunk 2077. I apologize for the length of this post ahead of time, but I need to summarize a bunch of lore and at least 4 major side-quests; "I Fought The Law", "Dream On", "Full Disclosure", and "The Prophet's Song".
Here's a long essay incoming, but I hope you chooms enjoy and I hope you read through to the end because, oh boy, I uncovered some cool shit!
So, who is Blue Eyes? Who are his contacts? What is his role in the ecosystem of this city?
"I FOUGHT THE LAW"
Let's start with where he most appears in the game; Jefferson and Elizabeth Peralez, political family in the running for Night City's first family. Which I kinda have to summarize their questlines, including the first one which Blue Eyes never appears in. But I'd prefer to go in chronological order and not jump around, so stick with me.
Elizabeth first contacts you for the job "I Fought The Law". It's fairly basic, but the quest tells us she convinced her husband to hire V to look into the recent death of Mayor Rhyne. We get a BD of a cyberpsycho attack by Peter Horvath on Mayor Rhyne. Weldon Holt leaves the room before the attack and then the security gate crashes right before Peter walks in with billions of eddies worth of chrome. The attack is unsuccessful and stopped by Detective River Ward, who was only there because Peter went missing internally at the NCPD and he knew where Peter would go.
When investigating Peter Horvath, his previous boss describes him as paranoid that "probably thought Mayor Rhyne talked to him through the TV" and that the world was out to fuck him. She then mentions that someone "finally saw what he was worth" which cues into how Peter was thrown into this attack in the first place; he had a patron who funded his chrome and the attempt on Rhyne's life. Tellingly, River than goes into a little talk about how clues rarely make sense until put into the larger context, much like we're doing right now.
V goes to the club Rhyne died in; The Red Queen's Race. V sneaks through, takes out some Animals, and can investigate what actually happened to Rhyne. If we read the emails on the office terminal, we know that Weldon Holt arranged for Rhyne to be there. He initially mentioned this to Rhyne during the first BD; Rhyne asked Holt directly to arrange his usual room at the club. So, this doesn't inherently look too suspicious on it's own, but Holt knew where Rhyne would be. We also find out via the Animals Boss there that Weldon Holt is the one who hired them to smash up the club and they're currently waiting around for payment. Further, you can go to the room Rhyne died in, find the BD headset, and put it on... which INSTANTLY knocks V out and they need to be rescued by River (who, btw, takes out any Animals on the property you didn't get to! Ty bro!). They surmise that Rhyne was killed by a virus in the headset. Lastly, we find footage of Detective Han (River's partner) covering up the death of Rhyne. They confront Han, V goes off to the Peralezs, and quest ends.
Of note, finding the BD set is a hidden dialogue option with the Peralezes suggesting, yes, that's the correct deduction to make. You don't get that option otherwise. And V never actually comes to any real conclusion to what happened to Rhyne.
So, let's summarize what we know about the death of our Mayor. Peter Horvath was hired by an unknown Patron who spent a ton of money to turn him into a suicide bomb against Rhyne. They have connections internally to the corrupt NCPD which allowed Horvath to get access to Rhyne, both from escaping NCPD custody and for the security to give him access to Rhyne's conference room. That fails so our mastermind instead assassinates Rhyne at his usual sex club, one that we know for sure Holt knew about. Rhyne is assassinated via malware in a BD porno headset, NCPD comes in an Detective Han cleans it up. Later, Holt hires the Animals to take claim to the club and fuck it up.
Holt is looking suspicious AF rn, but we also don't have any direct evidence and V says as much if you accuse him. Personally, I think it's a little too clumsy if it's him. Holt leaves the room just as an assassination attempt goes down, sets up a sex club appointment for the Mayor where he's successfully assassinated, NCPD covers it up... and then he hires a gang to cover it up more? Something doesn't fit here.
My theory is Holt is innocent. He's a scum bag, but not the culprit here. Why would you EVER give your identity to the Animals you hired to cover up an assassination? The big dumb brutes of the underworld? A name they give up with almost no fight? No, I think someone hired them under Holt's name. And I think they hired them because they KNEW the BD Headset was left behind; Han dismissed it entirely as Rhyne dying of a heart attack brought on during sex. They needed that destroyed to cover the final footprints. It's the only piece of evidence that doesn't have Holt or NCPD's name on it and doesn't fit the narrative that both are pushing. If they're covering NCPD or Holt's tracks, why not delete the emails or footage of Han? And if Holt or Han were trying to push this false narrative, why leave the headset right there the first time?
And, while I have no evidence of this assertion, the Animals are only still there because they're waiting for payment to come in... I think our employer never intended to pay them and left them in the path of V, who is likely to shoot them and tie up the loose end for our mysterious entity. Animals destroy the BD set, V shoots the animals, no trace. And, even if he doesn't, Animals will point V to the wrong person.
No, we've got a third party here. But let's continue so we can finally let our lead actor take center stage.
"DREAM ON"
"Dream On" starts when Jefferson calls V and asks them to help in another case. Long and Short; Jefferson woke up in the night and found a man in a mask (or an implant) standing over him. Jefferson shot the man, only for his head to fry and knock him out. Coming to, he's back in bed with no evidence it ever happened. SSI, their private security, insists that there was nothing on the cameras, no evidence, and nothing happened. Elizabeth claims she slept through the whole thing event.
V investigates the apartment, with Elizabeth giving the tour, and finds a lot of evidence. Elizabeth is kinda dismissive at first thinking V won't find much. First small stuff leading into larger reveals. Let's start small and work our way up.
First room Liz takes us to is the campaign room. She talks about running the campaign entirely out of pocket and having to keep most of their supplies at the Penthouse; "It's cheaper that way". You find a picture of their daughter on the wall and Liz explains that she's off at university in Europe while Jefferson is running for office; "It's easier that way" she says. That phrasing again.
EDIT: A redditor in the comments pointed out that the Peralez are being controlled via drugs in their food as part of the tech. They mention they've been eating fast food lately, explaining why Jefferson was lucid enough to catch the agent and shoot him.
V can look at Jefferson's emails (which Liz slightly discourages them, saying there's nothing there) which reveals a bit more about their campaign. There's a video of the iconic commercial and poster of Jefferson pulling out a gun and shooting a bunch of paperwork. In the email, Jefferson HATES this commercial, but his assistant, Lea Patel, insists on it as it will air in television time slots with action-drama series and catch the attention of voters. Further emails have Eric Boucher, Jefferson's Campaign Partner (Manager?), saying Jefferson has been acting unpredictably lately; presumably referencing one of the next emails. Boucher is confused because they fired Lea Patel together, only for her to continue working and sent him a new ad for approval. When emailed, Jefferson is confused about Lea being fired at all and doesn't remember the event ever happening, even telling Boucher to be honest if he has some issue with her. A final email is from SSI Chief of Security, Wallace, discussing Jefferson's intent to hire a merc to look into Rhyne's death ("Dream On") and they suggest Jefferson drop it or have NCPD or themselves look into it. Private Security just... offering to investigate the former mayor's death? Huh... sounds more like they want to squash the issue to me.
We should now talk about the Peralez's campaign. As you explore the apartment, Liz explains that they're running on a corp free campaign; they want to get Night City out of the control of the corps and do so without ever owing any favors to them. She specifically cites "Night Corp, Militech, and Petrochem" as ones they've denied. Militech and Petrochem come up a few times in other quests but Night Corp is relatively obscure. And they choose that corp to be the first one she mentions? Stands out to me. It also isn't lost on me that we're talking about running a campaign out of pocket and refusing corp assistance... while walking on the fancy ass balcony of a penthouse in Charter Hill- North Oak.
Next room, we find Jefferson's office. Elizabeth and Jefferson both graduated with law degrees from Asukaga University in Berkley. V points out it would be extremely expensive for them both, but Elizabeth says that both got full ride scholarships from the Richard Night Foundation, run by Night Corp. To further fucking cement this moment, there's a Richard Night biography shard on the desk. But we'll drop this for now because I want to get to Night Corp a bit later.
The computer on the office desk has some emails on it sent by Elizabeth. One is between her and Judy where she's asking Judy for help on the original "I Fought The Law" quest and Judy is the one who gave her your contact in the first place. Another is from their daughter kinda asserting the same thing earlier; safer for her in Europe so she's not a target on the campaign trail. And here's the interesting one; Boucher emailed Elizabeth asking why Jefferson changed his mind on Lea Patel. Elizabth says Jefferson explained it to her that it "slipped his mind" and "circumstances changed in Lea's favor" and she asks him to drop the whole thing. She's dismissive and gives extremely vague details.
Next room, Bedroom. Elziabeth's gun is on the table. It's the one Jefferson claimed he fired and scanning it tells us that it has been fired recently. We also find the wedding photo of Jefferson and Elizabeth where she fondly talks about having blue roses because she loves them so much... except the photo's roses are red and V says as much. Elizabeth quietly corrects herself that they only had red roses instead and moves on.
In the hall, we find the blood trail and gun shots in the wall; both covered up hastily. Following the trail, we enter a tv room. The Smart Glass isn't working and Elizabeth says it stopped working recently; not like they use it much anyway. Passing a Tech Check lets us try and fix it... only to be quickly blacked out by it so hard Johnny felt it too. V asks Elizabeth about it but she doesn't know what V is talking about despite having been standing right there. We also find a hidden door in the wall. Unlike earlier, Liz is actually confused by the door but demands V try and open it.
Downstairs we have the security room. Liz says that it used to be her place but "Security had to set up somewhere" and that she had to make sacrifices for this campaign; "it wasn't the first nor will it be the last". One computer has a Welcome email from SSI to new recruits. It details that they have access to all areas except Section Zero, which is reserved for Blue or Black agents and that, should the encounter a Blue or Black Agent (SPECIFICALLY "in the night"), do not interact or acknowledge them. The next email from Wallace mentions an accident where there was a "behavioral anomaly" and "ALPHA" injured a Blue Agent (BLUE-66M) who is in critical and the SSI head is requesting access to Sector Zero to give medical aid. SSI gives Wallace the code to Sector Zero and sends a team to aid. SSI knew about the accident and lied. You go to the second computer, unlock it, and can unlock the upstairs door. On that terminal is a bunch of deleted files (presumably the security footage from that night) and emails discussing "normal maintenance procedure" and further informing security that ALPHA (Jefferson) hired a merc (V) and, should security encounter them, do not interact with them.
Small thing I found interesting, a shard called "You Are What You Slot" is found down here too. It details a fictional assassin who kills and then steals the identity of her victims. Small and doesn't mean much on it's own, but the shards are hinting at the story here; one of false identities and manipulation.
Now, let's get to the main event; the secret room. Inside is a control center. Elizabeth is horrified and feels violated. She shouts that she's not letting SSI anywhere near them, only for her head to start hurting and she tells V to do what he needs to do. She leaves him. Inside the control room is a box of bloody medical supplies. The computer discusses "behavioral norms" for ALPHA (Jefferson) and suggests amplifying "neural dampening". It discusses things similar to Wallace's terminal, but from the other side; ALPHA is displaying odd behavior by hiring a merc, the SSI teams avoided meeting the merc, and then the actual accident that occurred injuring BLUE-66M during regular 'maintenance'. The other side of the room also has another data shard, "Rewriting Synaptic Pathways", basically talking about using tech to rewire the brain a bit.
Following some wires from the control room to the roof, we find a signal dish. Johnny (replacing Elizabeth for conversation now that she's gone), joins in that the tech looks prehistoric but functional and that Militech used it in the war; it requires line of sight to transmit data but otherwise can't be intercepted. We can see the tower and go to investigate. V tells Liz the whole deal; V can suggest that the Van near the tower could be SSIs or that it might not be due to unconventional tech. Liz then itterates twice that it's a stressful campaign time for Jefferson and V should talk to her, NOT him. "Sure, whatever" V and the player dismiss.
(I SWEAR WE'RE ALMOST DONE WITH THE SUMMARIZING FOR DREAM ON, I'M SO SORRY.)
We drive after the van, Johnny is suddenly excited for smashing a corpo conspiracy and iterates that citizens do not choose their representatives, instead they're chosen by "key players" who watch the Peralezes for weaknesses or blackmail material. We arrive at the facility patrolled by Maelstrom and the occupants of our van park, get out, and climb ladders to the roof where they get into an AV that is cloaked to be near invisible (as shown in a couple of vids on YouTube and this subreddit).
At the place, Maelstom is explained; "UNKNOWN USER" contacted them while driving the van for protection to take care of V and then destroy the van. Van's data makes it pretty clear; the Peralezs' minds are being manipulated, new neural pathways are being created, and their memories are being created, changed, or erased. There are also a couple of other names of other test subjects. The data is then erased. We do see an almost flower like symbol before the data is destroyed.
The agents on the cloaked AV CAN be killed and do drop a shard, thought it doesn’t have many more details, merely that they’re contacting HQ to arrange extraction and that the Van’s data should be destroyed and echoing the arrangement with Maelstrom mentioned earlier in their shards.
V calls Liz, Liz wants to meet in person instead of over holo and send him to a Japantown Raman shop (same one that used to be Rainbow Cadenza, coincidentally). Odd choice for an upstanding congresswoman. She says her nerves are shot, the ramen shop is a quieter place to meet than the apartment, and she needs a moment to gather herself since she last saw V, with V even asking if something has happened since they last saw each other. Of note, Liz is stress smoking the entire scene, something she hasn't done until now. She then explains, no, it's been over a longer period of time. She's been watching her husband change and act differently for awhile; he stopped reading, his taste changed, and he even insisted he was an only child and never had a bother when Liz asks about visiting the grave. Of note, yes, Antonio Peralez has a Columbarium Vault, which proves Liz is correct on this. She confesses that she herself has been told by others she's been acting strangely. V says she knew what V would find and she asserts that she doesn't know the who, how, or why, but "they're changing us". Jefferson apparently went on in great detail about a trip she swears they never went on, but she doesn't know if the vacation is a fake memory or if she's the one that doesn't remember.
She saw a stranger in their apartment tinkering with a monitor, only for him to be missing when it was reported to SSI and they looked at the feeds. The next day, she got a phone call from a stranger (whom she refers to by "he") saying that she's walking on thin ice and Jefferson could have an accident. They later erased all data that the phone call had happened. Elizabeth claims she's terrified for herself and her husband's safety and doesn't want V to reveal the truth. V points out "they" could be telling her to say that but it doesn't really change how she feels since she just wants Jefferson to be safe. She tells V to tell Jefferson it was SSI spying for Holt. She asserts she wants SSI out of her roof if they're spying on their sleep. She will take responsibility for firing SSI, but wants Jefferson to be safe and out of that fight. She adds a meeting with Jefferson to his calendar at Reconciliation Park. But, ultimately it's V's choice (especially since she has no idea if she'll remember the conversation) and leaves. Johnny jumps and and talks and mentions that there were talks like this back in his day and worrying about the damage a puppet mayor could do.
V heads to Reconciliation Park to meet with Jefferson. Entering, V is called by an Unknown Number which blacks out V's optics. They claim to know who V is, *what* V is, and what V wants. It doesn't matter what V tells Jefferson, but "don't dare cross that line" and "you're playing with fire". Its a garbled male robo voice, so safe to say it's irrelevant to the owner.
Enter Stage Right, our missing lead; Mr. Blue Eyes. He is standing on a balcony watching the place where we meet Jefferson. In the Scanner, he is labeled "Mr. Blue Eyes", has no known affiliation, is wanted for "SC 370", and is wanted for "Classified". His eyes are electronically glowing blue you can even see from several yards away. You cannot injure him as grenades do nothing and you can't aim at him. Of small note, and I don't know if this ACTUALLY means anything, but his hair style asset is referred to as Morgan Blackhand in the files, but could mean nothing if this hair is actually used by other NPCs. MOST LIKELY THIS IS NOTHING UNLESS SOMEONE HAS FURTHER INFO.
(Plot twist: It meant something. But we'll get there.)
V sits with Jefferson and can reveal the truth; "SSI is on the take from an unknown group to control your lives". V can even point out the absurdity of Peralez being as successful of a politician as he is without any corp sponsors. "They want you to be *their* mayor. Molding you like clay". You can tell Jefferson how to proceed and additional details, but it doesn't matter. Later, Jefferson will send a text and delete your number and so will Elizabeth, who will call you out for telling Jeff. In the end credits voicemails, Jefferson has decended into paranoia about some vitamins Liz gave him which he didn't trust so he sent them to the lab, only to then not trust the lab results saying they're fine. Jefferson Peralez is confirmed the new mayor during Late Act 2 and the major difference is his state of mind at the end game; either hiring V to be on his security staff or descending into absolute paranoia over everything in his life.
Lastly, Johnny appears and cryptically talks about back in his day when they'd talk about rogue AIs. Personally... I kinda completely dismiss this? It comes out of nowhere, Johnny cites NOTHING for why he'd bring this up in relation to the case, and I can't fathom a motive. I’d also point out that this isn’t the only time Johnny is outright wrong. In fact, he’s wrong A LOT in the game. For example, he criticizes V for listening to the Netwatch Agent and that he’s bullshitting you. Except, the agent is 100% correct that VDB did spike V as a suicide virus and Johnny is actually wrong. He also claims he doesn’t know what happened with Thompson after Never Fade Away, but this is a lie because Thompson is flying the AV Johnny takes to Arasaka in 2023. The only connection I can find is "Who is controlling Blue-Eyes" which might make Johnny correct, if just not in the way 'Rogue AIs' initially implies.
So, what actually has happened?
The Peralez family has been molded for a very long time into being the perfect political couple. They got scholarships from the Night Foundation for two fancy law degrees, have successful political careers, and Jefferson is running for Mayor on an anti-corp platform, an insanity for Night City. And he's actually successful at it. During a maintenance service at night on the Peralez's apartment, Jefferson woke up and shot an SSI/Unknown agent making repairs. The Control Booth knocked Jefferson out and they pulled the agent out of the apartment into the secret room. SSI put the Peralezes back into bed and hastily cleaned up everything, but the damage was done and Peralez hired V who uncovered mostly everything.
Elizabeth seems to be initially very upset by the discovery, but wants V off the trail when we meet her next. However, she's not in on it as she's equally a victim to the brainwashing/gaslighting and that's for certain. I think she's a pawn who is either too scared or too programmed to break the rules of movement on this chessboard. It's worth noting that, while the unknown entity threatens Jefferson's life and V's well being, they do not make due on either of these threats. I call their bluff. They have put too much work into Jefferson to abandon or kill him.
But, where else have we heard of this gaslighting brainwash process before?
"FULL DISCLOSURE"
Ok, we're on the shorter end so I don't have to actually explain this quest in full. Sandra Dorsett is a netrunner and a very skilled on at that, actually collecting data from Night Corp. She was kidnapped by the savs we rescued her from at the beginning of the game shortly AFTER she stole this data, suggesting Night Corp was behind it. This data is on the shard she asks you to collect during the aforementioned quest. V has full ability to NOT read it, but let's look at it; "Operation Carpe Noctem" ("Seize The Night" in Latin)
Described in it is an experiment on Night Corp's own employees where they are quietly brainwashing them and getting them to do whatever they want. They specifically cite an empathetic and calm employee who they got to fight a co-worker and then jump from a 16th floor window. The shard ends on mentioning that they're ready to install CN-07 on "our actual target".
I think multiple quests discussing brainwashing and gaslighting is too coincidental to be utterly unrelated to each other. I think Night Corp's actual target mentioned here is Peralez.
So, what is Night Corp?
Night Corp is the most mysterious of the corps in Night City. It currently operates to better Night City via philanthropic ventures, fundraising, community support, and city infrastructure. Basically, while Militech and Arasaka and the others operate in the city, Night Corp basically RUNS the actual city. They're also noteworthy for the level of security they have that even the best netrunners can't get much from them and, since they keep to themselves and seemingly just do city infrastructure stuff, no one really super bothers them. It has been run by Miriam Night, wife of late-Richard Night, until recently and we currently don’t actually know who runs NightCorp.
Originally, they were the Night Foundation, but that requires explaining Richard Night... oh boy, Lore Drop. I'll make it quick as possible.
Richard Night is the founder of Night City. He started as a partner of a firm, but his ambitions grew beyond that to founding "Night International" to build his dream; a city that would be so grand it would make all other cities pale by comparison, Coronado City. A capitalist mecha of opportunity, Night City would be run by corporations and have next to no anti-business policies on the books. Arasaka, EMB, and Petrochem were his first backers and he came into claim of land on the central-California coast; Del Coronado Bay and Morro Bay would be the location of his dream city.
(BTW, irl, Morro Bay, California is a real place. Been there, have family there, go there regularly, kinda cool!).
Despite being a capitalist mecca city and run by corps, Richard Night also dreamed it to be "A sprawling metropolis, free of crime, of poverty, of debt. A place where people could live safely, peacefully, without having to worry about the dire situations that were growing around the world at the time".
However, due to the design plans, Night didn't employ local contractors and instead got expensive architects and builders from all over the world. Local builders didn't like that, they had mob connections, bloodshed started. And soon Richard Night was murdered by an unknown assassin, presumably a mob hitman. The city was renamed Night City in his honor and his dream utopia became to embody everything that was destroying the world. Mob took control and corps didn't give a fuck since it didn't hurt them any until they eventually had to take out the mob gangs, but not in any favor to Night’s dream either.
Miriam Night, Richard's Widow, founded the Night Foundation (later Night Corp) to stick to Richard's Ideal dreams of what he wanted the city to be. They invest heavily in ecological research, alt power sources, civic infrastructure, public works, and charities and scholarships for Night City youth. "They've even managed to stay out of the normal corporate power struggles which tend to plague every other corporation, both inside the city and out. Even the shadowy corporate rumors about them, like having underwater bases in the bay or access to orbital satellites, remain unsubstantiated despite extensive investigation."
So, where does this put us now? We have ONE last quest...
"THE PROPHET'S SONG"
Garry The Prophet is our local crazy man. He spouts off insanities to anyone who will listen near Misty's Esoterica in Kabuki. However, some of his ideas aren't quite as much off the mark as one might think. There ain't no technonecromancers from Alpha Centuri (or Spanish Inquisition) nor is Saburo Arasaka an immortal vampire, but he was correct that Saburo wasn't dead and in fact immortal; via Mikoshi and The Relic.
He send you on a quest to investigate a meeting; he says that his ripper mistuned some cyberware in his head and he can hear their communications. You show up to a meeting between corps and Maelstrom. They say some nonsense phrases and transfer a data shard. Reading it ("Destroy After Reading") it seems like nonsense. But does include the line "The cages of men melt as night descends". You can decode it via a Null Cipher; first letter of every line: “Project Oracle Command Execute Plans”.
We don’t know what Project Oracle is. In real life, secret project or operation names actually tend to be chosen at random and are unrelated to the actual project (you can google funny stories about names that ended up awkward to the actual project), so this could mean nothing. But, narratives tend to give meaning to everything. Oracles are mythical in references and could predict the future or see the unseen. Perhaps perfect prediction via behind the scenes manipulations? Not sure we’ll get answers on this one for now.
Going back to Garry, he's been kidnapped. His protoge is screaming he's been kidnapped "Black suits came by - blue eyes and all". Blue Eyes huh? Further, she claims that they threw him into an invisible AV... Huh, like the one we saw back during "Dream On"? "Night's comin... The eternal night"
So, it’s time to jump us to the final step in our Fool’s Journey: The Sun.
“THE SUN”
The Sun ending has V wake up in their new penthouse apartment (with their love interest if they have one). Checking the computer, we see emails from our dear Mr. Blue Eyes. He wants an answer from V as to the job to the Crystal Palace he has planned and that they’re on a tight schedule for “obvious reasons”. We meet with him at the Afterlife and he talks about the job; Casino security is going into maintenance and V mentions giving him the casino client list. V also asks him to “hold up your end of the bargain”. They never discuss eddies or payment. It’s all in such vague terms. “Your end” or “Obvious reasons”. Smaller point but an email from Vik on the space shuttle also tells us that he’s asked around about Blue Eyes and has nothing; either he works with people WAY above Vik’s paygrade or he’s shady as hell… or both.
I think Blue Eyes knows V is dying (the obvious reasons) and I think the unspecified payment is V’s survival. V always says that they want to come back to their love interest so it’s not a mindless suicide run and I don’t think V would risk it all for nothing but eddies; especially not after Reaper (both versions) paint suicide runs as a horrible terrible thing. To then glorify it in another ending… no, the game is smarter than that.
Your love interest doesn’t seem to be too upset about the situation either. Panam and Judy leave V in The Sun due to their lives taking different directions, but it seems mostly amicable and understanding. They even express desire to see V again because they know V needs to do this job. Kerry, who stays with V in The Sun and expresses worry and also a desire to settle down with V, also seems mostly understanding that V needs to go on this quest. I don’t think they’d be so calm and loving and understanding if this were a suicide run. They know more than the player does.
Further, I think Blue Eyes isn’t after the casino aspect of the Crystal Palace at all. While that’s the major commercial aspect of the station as marketed to the citizen world, the station also has embassies from every nation on earth, facilities from all the major corporations, and is pretty much THE place where all the dark corporate espionage goes down. There’s so much more to this location than ‘casino resort’. *EVERY* corp has space stations and hideaways in space because the Crystal Palace offers it’s own legalities and opportunities that are not allowed within Earth’s terms and conditions. If they want to do some research that would be frowned upon elsewhere and get up to some Top Secret shit, it’ll be in outer space. Night City is controlled by corps and has lax laws, but outer space’s are even more so.
I think the cure V wants is not only on the station, I think it’s what Blue Eyes himself is after, but I’ll get there when it’s time to theory craft about the future.
I think it’s worth noting; Blue Eyes IS IN THE TRAILER FOR THE GAME. Yeah, anyone remember that shot on a shuttle with a guy being burned out from the inside? Yeah, he’s there. In the foreground. *Smirking*. The shuttle also seems like they’re in space.
These events leading to the Crystal Palace and the conspiracy with Blue Eyes are blatant DLC Hooks for the future and suggest a post-game DLC. This isn’t the first CDPR has done so either; Blood and Wine takes place after the story of Witcher 3 and is explicitly incompatible with the worst endings of that game. I think, conceivably, other endings where V is still alive could be roped into this adventure; Blue Eyes merely needs to hire them with the same offer of survival. While The Star takes V to Arizona and away from Night City, I think that choice of location is appropriate as, to even get to space for The Crystal Palace, citizens go from LAX to Arizona for a space port to launch them off Earth’s surface. They could have chosen anywhere else to send Panam and V, but they choose Arizona, huh. I do think Reaper, Temperance, and Devil will be locked out of this future, however, as all make any point of Blue Eyes hiring V irrelevant; there’s no V left to hire/save. MAYBE a rejected Devil ending, but I wouldn’t blame them for not continuing that conclusion either as Devil is one of the bad endings.
So, it’s finally time to really compile a lot of this information into where I think this is going in the next comment below

Magic items. Objects imbued with magic in order to make them better, or even gain a completely different function. But apparently the only places they exist are in monster hoards and adventurers' backpacks.
Realistically however, everyone wants things that are better at what they do. And eventually, people get what they want.
Today i will go over some objects that are useful outside of the context of adventuring, as well as how they might change the world around them. I will not mention artifacts, since those are one-of-a-kind objects with pre-established locations, usage, etc.
While the topic has always existed, Tasha's Cauldron has added a few interesting toys to our proverbial tool box, which makes this as good a time as any to take a look and
Much like in the Spells and Society post, the rarer an item the more amazingly powerful it must be to be worthy of mention. Actually i recommend reading that post before this one. Since a lot of magic items just allow you to cast spells for free, knowing which spells alter the world gives a good idea of which items can do the same.

Uncommon

+1 tools.
That's right, +1 tools. Not +1 weapons.
Consider a guard. How much of his time is actually spent fighting? A minute every other day? That's not getting a lot of use out of his sword. Even a soldier spends weeks marching, or months guarding a fort, and then only fights for a few minutes or hours. Even if a guard has a superb weapon that doubles his combat effectiveness, it only makes him 1% or 2% better at being a guard[1]. Given a choice of uncommon item, any guard and most soldiers would rather have a Weapon of Warning to prevent being backstabbed, ambushed or caught off-guard.
Now consider a lumberjack or miner. They spend several hours a day hitting trees and rocks. An enchanted axe, saw or pickaxe would see continuous use in their hands. Not only that, magic items are also described as being "at least as durable as a nonmagical item of its kind. Most magic items, other than potions and scrolls, have resistance to all damage". This means the +1 pickaxe would be far, far more resilient to wear and tear than a mundane one, potentially being passed down for generations. And with your miners and lumberjacks being more efficient, you need less of them. Which in turn means you get to have more guards.
Another noteworthy thing here is adamantine items. They deal automatic critical damage to objects and are much harder to destroy. In other words, they're great at chopping trees and ores, bending hot metal, cutting cloth, plowing a field, etc. All while having a fraction of the wear and tear.
​
Bags of Holding, Handy Haversacks and Portable Holes.
AKA your transporty boyes.
The bag of holding is an old favorite among players, and the reason is obvious: it has a million uses.
Most adventurers use it for carrying all their junk. The bad guys in the original Baldurs Gate game used bags of holding to smuggle whole shipments to and from their iron mine base with just one guy. One of my players once put a huge boulder in it, then flew up and dropped the boulder on an enemy transport ship. And let us not forget the classic Arrowhead of Total Destruction.
All of these are perfectly valid uses. Smuggling a small object is easier than smuggling a large object. Dropping huge objects from a high place turns anything that flies into a siege weapon. And the Arrowhead, while expensive, can deal with very large threats that could level a city.
But honestly, every merchant is a smuggler at heart. After all, as long as brigands roam the roads, there will always be a need to hide your valuables in an extraplanar space small enough to fit any orifice. Not only that, the bag allows you to dump a cart entirely and just ride to your destination much faster (and therefore, more safely).
Of course not every merchant can afford a bag of holding, so this brings about an interesting topic of inequality in your campaign. Some merchants can go from A to B faster and more safely on a horse, while the majority must go with a bull-drawn cart that is slow and vulnerable. And bags of holding don't even require attunement, so once you have one and your income soars you can get another, and another... Its a serious rich-get-richer situation, and you risk running all the mundane merchants out of business.
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Broom of Flying.
I'm gonna start this one with saying that brooms of flying and carpets of flying are overpowered. They are consistently better than items of similar rarity that provide the same benefit, like boots and wings of flying. The reason here is, in my humble opinion, the same reason why Fireball deals more damage than any 3rd level spell and most 5th level ones: its iconic.
As for the item itself, its pretty much a permanent flying speed of 50 while carrying up to 200lbs, or 30ft. speed while carrying 201-400lbs. Its a deliveryboy's dream... except not.
You see, the broom of flying isn't just a hoverbike, its also a drone. You say the command word, and it flies up to a mile a way. Say it again, it comes back. In other words, the crazy wizard in his tower can just tie some money and a note on the broom and send it to a shop, then call it back once the shopkeeper has tied the groceries to it. Poor delivery boy just lost his job.
But wait, there's more! If the broom can fly on its own, can it plow a field? Can it spin an "animal" traction mill? The answer is: yes. But there's no reason to use magic where a common animal would do, unless its a crazy high magic setting or something.
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Decanter of Endless Water
I think anyone can see how infinite water is broken as fuck[2]. But that's not all. By speaking the command word and pulling the lid, you can cause 30 gallons (136.4 litres) of water to pour out with enough force to push a 200 pound object 15 feet. This action can be repeated every turn (6 seconds), since a decanter of endless water has no limit on how often it can be used.
So a decanter is not just infinite water, but also infinite energy provided you have enough technology to build a mill. Even more energy if you activate the decanter in a high place and use gravity to give those 30 gallons even more potential.
Do keep in mind however that in 5e there must be someone using their action to activate it every turn. In previous editions however one could leave the decanter open and it would pour water constantly.
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Hat of Disguise
This wee cap is not game-breaking for its great usefulness, but rather for its ability to fuck the world up. Any charlatan with a Hat of Disguise can walk into a bank, guild, ship, etc. and pretend to be anyone. Sure it doesn't happen often, but when it happens the crime spree is enormous. And while there are ways to work around disguised criminals, the fact people have to work around it is an issue in and of itself.
Societies based on trust pretty much can't function. Does everyone sign everything? Do people start using IDs? Do organizations start using items or employing animals that can see through illusions? Is there an industry for door frames that detect illusions?
Even without the hat, Disguise Self is still a 1st level spell. Yet somehow the sourcebooks have no mention of how the world might adapt to the idea that you can't trust people to be who they seem to be. And if anyone with access to 1st-level spells can walk up to the king without difficulties, you wont have kings for long.
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Ring of Mind Shielding
A great item, if you're an asshole. Keeps people from sensing your evil alignment, keeps them from reading your evil thoughts, keeps pesky zones of truth from sensing your lies, and it even makes itself invisible so nobody can notice you're wearing the "i am evil" ring. It even keeps your immortal soul from going into eternal damnation!
One thing i always think of soul-trapping items is that they're a good way for evil people to avoid the afterlife. If you're good, you want to go to Celestia, Elysium, Arborea or Ysgard. Yet if you're evil, being stuck in a ring and talking to its wearer might be better than Baator, Carceri or the Abyss.
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Sending Stones
Another classic, unfortunately the stones were nerfed and now can only Send to each other once a day.
Still, long range communication is nothing to scoff at. And while hiring someone to Send for you is cheaper, the stones provide more privacy and can be sent to far off corners of the world where you can't afford to station a caster full time.
Expect each mayor or baron to have one of these, while someone in the capital answers their "calls". Something of a royal secretary if you will. While magic items are expensive, shaving days off of your disaster response time can be the difference between having a kingdom and having ruins.

Rare

Bag of Beans
An often overlooked item, the BoB is crazy powerful. It has 3d4 beans, each of which can trigger a random effect. Notably they have a 10% chance of creating a random potion that lasts 30 days, a 10% chance of creating 1d4+3 eggs that can permanently raise an attribute by 1[3], a 9% chance of spawning a full on pyramid with a mummy lord and appropriate loot[4], and a 1% chance of leading anywhere.
Why bother with tomes when you can get twice as many stats from a bag of beans?
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Helm of Teleportation.
1d3 castings of Teleport every day, plain and simple. That means 9 people can travel about 14 times in a week[5].
That's a lot of potential trading to be had for sure, but why stop there?
Say your kingdom spent tons of time and money training and equipping an elite unit. You wouldn't want them to spend 80% of their time on the road and 20% solving issues right? One rare item can make your 9-men unit five times more efficient.
Adventurers are in much the same boat: small group, lots of capital invested into their gear and training, yet they somehow spend most of their time going back and forth between adventures (until level 9 if they have a bard, sorcerer or wizard in the party, past 9 if they don't). It honestly amazes me that the Helm of Teleportation is not listed more often as a must-have party item.
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Manuals/Tomes
For those unaware: there are 3 manuals and 3 tomes in the game, each increases an attribute by 2 when used and then loses its magic for 100 years.
The #1 item on any adventurer's to-get list, the existence of the tomes raises far more questions than answers. Who makes these? Why are they not mass produced? Can i get a magically accelerated demiplane, throw the books in and recharge them in a fraction of the time? Why do people not abuse the f*** out of them?
And when i mean abuse, i mean make smart use of them. Say a kingdom has, over the course of generations, acquired 5 or so tomes. Then the ruler reads them and becomes super smart/wise/popular. That sounds like the sort of thing that would make the whole realm prosper. Do it on an elven/dwarven kingdom and the ruler can read his tomes multiple times, granting him a godlike mind.
And that's without considering the idea of immortals. Or even high level druids. Any lich or vampire could become insanely powerful, not only from being able to use each tome a dozen times, but also from having eons to look for more or even craft them[6].
One thing i really like about tomes is watching the party decide what to do with them after spending the magic. Do they auction the books? Trade with some elf for favors? Give it to a friendly vampire?

Very rare

Candle of Invocation
For 4 hours clerics and druid of the proper alignment within 30ft can cast 1st level spells without using spell slots. In other words, crazy amounts of healing. Pop one after a battle and in a few minutes your whole army will be ready for more. Or pop it during a battle, and have the Healing Word the crap out of your troops from a safe-ish distance.
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Carpet of flying, Peregrine Mask
Carpets of flying function much like brooms of flying, except they are faster or carry more weight (depending on size). They would be a strict upgrade, except they lack the drone function the broom has.
A peregrine mask provides a flying speed of 60, but has no carrying capacity. That means if you have a Powerful Build or a similar feature it can actually carry more than the carpets.
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Cauldron of Rebirth
If there's one thing Tasha's Cauldron has brought us, its this cauldron.
It has some minor uses for scrying making potions, but here's the deal breaker: you put a corpse in the cauldron, fill it with 10gp worth of salt (200lbs.) and it casts Raise Dead on the creature.
Resurrection normally costs 500gp. worth of diamonds. With the cauldron it costs 10gp worth of salt. Sure there's a one week cooldown, but who cares? I see two scenarios here: either a resurrection every week is more than the local demand, or less than the local demand.
If its more than the demand, that means everyone who dies of unnatural causes and has 10gp to spare gets resurrected.
If its less than the demand, that means you're raising one person every 7 days. Depending on how high the demand is you could be making as much as 500gp a week, or 26k a year. Considering that the DMG says a Very Rare magic item costs 10.000-50.000 gold, the cauldron can pay for itself in under two years. Even if the math is way off for some reason, it is still crazy strong.
Honestly, this should be an artifact. Or at least have some heavy downside. The idea that someone over at Wizards of the Coast read this and said "Ah yes, 10gp resurrection, perfectly fine" simply boggles the mind.
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Crystalline Chronicle
Speaking of items that make things cheap, 1d3 times a day this spellbook allows you to cast a wizard spell without material components of up to 100gp.
That means two spells on average, so let's take a look at a few good options: Continual Flame[7], Magic Circle (exactly 100!), Stoneskin (100!), Teleportation Circle and Astral Projection.
The ones that stand out here are Continual Flame and Teleportation Circle. Both cost 50 and have a huge demand in the world. Where a permanent TP circle would normally consume 18.250gp worth of materials over a year, it will now cost nothing[8].

Legendary

Staff of the Magi
This is, i think, the most powerful item in the game.
Has a bunch of charges, yadda yadda, here's the important part:

1. When someone else casts a spell on you, you can use a reaction to absorb the spell. The staff then gains charges equal to the level of the spell it just ate.
   
2. It can cast Plane Shift for 7 charges.
   

This means on an average day you get 16 charges, or two Plane Shifts, from the natural charge generation. But what if you could have someone cast spells on you without spending spell slots?
There are several monsters who can cast spells at will, too many to list. But there are also a few ways for players to do it. The first that comes to mind is the level 18 Wizard feature Spell Mastery, allowing any 2nd level spell. There's also the level 15 invocation Shroud of Shadow that allows infinite casts of Invisibility. Either case allows a duo to have infinite Plane Shifts a day, which is really powerful.
As usual, trade comes to mind. But with infinite charges you might as well start a tourism agency or a hotel and/or casino that brings in people from all planes. Yet what few people realize is that Plane Shift can be used offensively in order to permanently banish anyone to any plane. Infinite save-or-die effects.
You could also just settle for a fuckton of Shifts instead of infinite, and use a warlock or four-elements monk to convert their short rest resources into charges for the staff.
Now think of the possibilities and plot hooks. Mad king banishing dissidents, Red Queen style. Alternative death sentence. A high level wizard/warlock stranded somewhere because the guy who was attuned to the staff died or got separated from him. Random archdemon bringing an army to the Material Plane a couple demons a minute.

Notable mentions

These are items i left out, but which i will get yelled at in the comments if i "forget" about them.
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Anything that creates energy
The truth is that a lot of magic items can do that. Fire for heating things, wind or water for pushing things, etc. For an energy source to be noteworthy it has to provide a considerable amount of continuous energy, without charges or daily limitations. Otherwise you might as well just use a regular water mill or a bull.
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Alchemy Jug (uncommon)
It creates an amount of a liquid (beer, honey, etc) every day. It does nothing that cannot be done by an amount of workers, and for it to be world-altering we'd have to go into a lengthy math argument of how many labor hours of a bee farmer are needed to make a gallon of honey, and how that compares to the initial investment of hiring a wizard to make the item.
As a general rule, if something can be done mundanely it will be done mundanely. Let the casters focus on stuff where they have an infinite comparative advantage, like flying stuff, teleportation, resurrection, etc.
​
Cap of Water Breathing (uncommon)
It allows you to breathe underwater indefinitely. Can be great if you have important stuff to do underwater, and might enable interaction with sentient water folk. But in and of itself, not a world-altering item.
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Horseshoes of Speed (rare)
Essentially +30 speed for hooved creatures, without requiring attunement. Honestly this item does not really fit this list, but i just thought the idea of pegasi flying real fast with these was worth mentioning. Sure a helm of teleportation outclasses it entirely for travel, but that's not useful in combat.
And i really want to play a centaur monk with these some day. Unfortunately the item description specifically says you have to have four equipped to benefit, so don't even think about it you satyrs and tieflings out there.
​
Lyre of Building (rare)
At a glance this looks like a regular magic items, with nothing too weird about it. Until you look at its spell selection and notice you can cast them as an action.
Mending normally takes a minute to cast, with the lyre its an action, and you can do it at will even without knowing the spell.
Fabricate takes ten minutes to cast, with the lyre its an action. That means once a day you can turn the ground under an enemy into a spiky cage, his sword into sword parts, etc. Until the lyre came about the only way to instantly cast fabricate was with a Wish, and that is a pretty good combat use of the 9th level spell.

Conclusion

To be quite frank, a lot of these item uses are a little niche and wont work in every setting. Then again, that that is never the goal with these posts. I hope i have provided you with at least a few interesting plot hooks and other crazy ideas, whether to amaze your players or ruin your DM's plans.

Notes

[1] There is a notable exception however. If your kingdom has a group dedicated to fighting monsters, some of which are resistant to nonmagic damage, then those guys should be prioritized. Not only does the +1 weapon double their damage output in this scenario, it also prevents your kingdom from losing special soldiers that are very expensive to train and replace.
[2] Stuff like constant abuse of Decanters of Endless Water are why in my setting there is a doomsayer cult that believes the world will be flooded some day. As they say it, every time someone activates a decanter, magically creates water, creates food and water, opens a portal to the Plane of Water, etc; the amount of water in the world rises just a bit. Given enough time, everything will be flooded by it. Unless someone like, puts a Sphere of Annihilation by the shore or something. But nobody said the cult has to be right.
[3] The bag has 3d4 beans. Each bean has a 10% chance of spawning 1d4+3 eggs. That means 7.5*0.1*5.5 = 4.125 raised stats, on average. Sure I'm assuming you'll pass the DC20 save every time, but with proper preparation its quite doable. Be near a paladin, get bardicly inspired, have someone cast Resistance, find ways to reroll a failed save, etc. Since the eggs last forever, you have all the time in the world to stack the saving throw in your favor. Or just use Portents.
[4] The mummy lord could have anything, even another bag of beans!
[5] Someone will say "but what about the chance of going off target? What if nobody has teleportation circles?" To that person i say: associated object. Get a pebble every time you're in a region, and you wont need a circle. Buy a bit of silk and you can teleport to any place along the silk road. Buy a used horseshoe and you can go all over the country. Now I'm just imagining this badass-looking special-ops soldier, clad in the finest plate, wielding a blazing blade, his cloak cackling thunder... and with a rusty-ass horseshoe tied to his helmet.
[6] And thus is born the legend of Swolomon the Buff. He was once a base vampire, who got stuck in a tomb for 4000 years with nothing but a Manual of Bodily Health and a Manual of Gainly Exercise. Now he's... selling supplements or something.
[7] See On Spells and Society linked at the top for why there's a near infinite demand for Continual Flame.
[8] You can even make two circles at a time, but there's some math about it. You have 3 charges, use 2, so you should always be with one to spare. Until you roll a 1 on the d3, and then its gone. After that whenever you roll a 1 without first rolling a 3 you'll have to pay the 50gp or let the circle go to waste. In other words, you'd be paying roughly 1/6 of the regular cost.

“...and walk away with a trip to beautiful Las Vegas Nevada! Enjoy a complimentary 5 day 4 night stay at any MGM casino resort all on us! No nonsense, no gimmicks. Just a bit of your precious time! Call today!”
Yes. A vacation extravaganza all on the arm. Courtesy of the Hibou Timeshare Corporation. All it cost was your time and cooperation for a timeshare presentation. Simple enough yes? I wish I would have realized how much better a couple of overtimes would have served me, than taking myself to that horrid building.
I was living in Phoenix AZ with my parents. Still half way bullshitting my final semester at college. I’ve got to be honest, I was checked out. It was summer..I was going to graduate and I had these final two classes in the bag. I could have failed my finals and still walked out with a C. Yes but that kind of luxury came at a price. My social life was the casualty in all of this. While I did have a tight knit of pals, my attendance to social gatherings were...well..less than punctual. I was usually doing work for one of my advanced classes. If not that, then I was pulling a shift at either of my jobs. Yeah..you could say I gave up the glamour of late night pizzas, puking in my friends car and hooking up with a random ASU frat sluts for a heavier wallet...except I was paying everything out of my own pocket. My gas, insurance, cell, college. I wasn't exactly hiding cash in the walls. My parents worked hard but..never did make a living to give me and my siblings an extravagant lifestyle. We were grateful though.
So when I heard that AD of how I could get a long needed vacation to party central Las Vegas, all for watching some BS timeshare I knew I wasn’t going to buy into, you bet your ass off I made that call. The phone only rang once before I got an answer,
“Thank you for calling the Hibou Timeshare Corporation, how can we help you?” a voice rang through the phone. The voice sounded shrill and sickly.
“Hi, I'm calling about the vacation in Vegas? Says that you need people for a presen..”
“Yeessss.” the voice interrupted “The timeshare presentation, well...we would be so honored to have you”
“Uhh..yeah...anyway I’d like to sign up? Is there a form online or do you take the information here?” I said..now feeling a bit tense.
“Well I'll tell you what...pack your things for the vacation. When we are finished presenting..we can send you on our way to Vegas. We just need..a bit of your time.”
That was that. He gave me the address, date and time of the meeting. The area was in a place called Amargosa Valley in Nevada. Luckily it was just about an hour away from Vegas. Before we parted ways on the phone, the operator said something...he said something that should have been a MAJOR red flag.
“Okay then, you’re all set...we will see you July 28th at 4:30pm. Not a moment later” he laughed
“Oh..and..one more thing, if you have some more specimens like yourself that might be interested in the free vacation...bring them along. They’ll all receive the same prize and you will receive $100 cash for every person you bring. We look forward to presenting you, Austin. Good day.”
I never gave him my name.
Still, my young dumb brain didn’t hear anything past $100 dollars. So I rounded up a few of my best pals and we were set to meet the reps over at the timeshare. The days leading up to the trip I couldn't get a hold of myself. It was so exciting. My first real vacation in...i couldn't remember how long. I longed for this type of adventure with my friends. We packed a truck full and set off to Amargosa Valley.
I brought Luke, Larry and Adam. We’d been friends since the 3rd grade. We all moved to AZ from different parts of the country that summer, so being new kids we naturally ganged up together. Luke was from Texas..we called him Tex. Real big guy. Loved to work out but definitely was a bit of a boozebag. Larry was from Ohio. Quiet in public but probably the loudest of us all. Always had some political conspiracy to talk about. Then Adam..Adam was interesting. He was from Florida...or Georgia...or Nebraska. Adam never could keep it straight about where he was from. He always had some sort of story and backtrack about where he’d come from. I personally thought he was probably from another part of AZ and just wanted to fit in...so we humor him and let him be the nomad of our group. I myself was originally from California...things got pricey so we made the move to blistering AZ.
That was my crew. No matter how long it had been, we were always as tight as ever. The ride was filled with laughing and gags. Stops at fast food joints and all around bullshitting. Yes it was an amazing time just driving there, we couldn't wait to get on with the meeting and head down to Boozeville USA. As we approached our destination...something felt off. Amargosa Valley had been a bit of a ghost town the whole drive. A gas station here. A small outlet there...but otherwise unpopulated. When we hit our destination we were met by a Chrome building. Smack center in the middle of the highway. As we parked at the only stall..we all took a look at each other.
“Well this is...odd.” Luke said plainly.
“Yeah man...are we really going there?” Adam shook out. Barely containing his fear.
“Look guys, I know it looks weird. This place is really clean and bright in the middle of a dusty desert but c’mon. It's like what...an hour of our time? Within 2 hours we’ll be on our way to the dopest guys trip ever.” I said...selfishly.
The guys all agreed. We got out, locked the car up and walked in through the sliding glass doors. The cool air hit us like a wave. Each of us breathing in the refreshingly cold air. The inside of this lobby..was also immaculate. Chrome everywhere. Right down to the sofas and chairs. A woman came from around the front desk.
“You must be here to be presented. I see you brought more specimens! What a joy! Will you gentlemen please follow me?” She said.
Specimens. Ugh. Her tone. That word still makes me shutter.
Me and the boys looked at each other..all with the same should we do it look on our faces. Maybe it was the cold air enticing our sweaty brows. We’d been a poorly AC’D truck for a couple hours. Or maybe it was the ice cold drinks she presented in front of us. Whatever the case we followed her through a door behind the front desk and were met with a grand auditorium. It looked as if it could hold maybe 50 people. And all they had was me and my knucklehead friends. As we sat down, sucking down sodas and waters, a mans voice came over the intercom.
“Welcome my friends to the Hibou Timeshare Corporation presentation. Today you will be examining the lifetime of these vessels. Determine whether or not you think they are a smart investment and make a choice if you would like to partake!” I recognized the voice. It was the same shrill tone that I set up the appointment with.
“Now my dear friends, it's time to sit back with your favorite drink...and listen..”
With that, a large projector screen came down from the celine. An old timey countdown began winding down.
BEEP3...BEEP2...BEEP1
From what I can remember, I heard the screams of something...unnatural. A scream so high tone that I felt as if my ears would burst with blood. I tried clasping my hands over my ears but to no avail. The screams were too overpowering. As soon as it started, I passed out.
I awoke looking at the lights on the celine. Unable to sit up. I could tell I was bareass naked on a metal table. I moved my head, the little that i could to see Adam next to me on another table. Naked as the day we were born. He was encased in what looked like a light purple energy field. Looking more in depth, I too had this field in front of me. Before I could speak the tables raised up. Bringing me upright. Bringing me face to face with Tex. To the left of me..Larry. “My friends, I present to you: Terramite 99-0 specimens.” a voice rang out. The same voice from the auditorium.
“They are..of the male species. Strong. Cunning and above all loyal...if raised properly.”
“HEY, you bastards. WTF is this! LET US GO!” Tex cried out. Before he could continue, the energy field tightened around him. Tex let out a scream that will haunt me for the rest of my life. The smell of burned flesh and hair filled the area. I would have puked had the horror of seeing my best friend being burned alive wasn't keeping my attention away from the smell. When the field lifted, Tex was stripped down to the muscle fibers. Hair burned down to the scalp. Tex convulsed until he finally relaxed into a hanging position on the table.
“Now see..specimen is now sedated. Reduced to a weaker position. With the energy field keeping him contained and the Auto-Reversal Time Warp engaging, we can have this specimen back into working shape immediately.”
There was an electrical hum in the air. As before my eyes, Tex’s skin began to heal. His hair growing back. And all burns subsiding. It was as if nothing had happened to him. He still hung in limbo, but we could see the breath return to his chest.The rest of us let out bits of gasps of horror and astonishment.
I could see Adam crying a bit in the corner of my eyes.
A figure appeared from behind me. A tentacle graced my shoulder, not even phased by the force field. I caught sight of the creature. It stood around 7foot tall. Skin that looked human but a head that was elongated. No nose. And eyes that were black as coal. It had two tentacles for hands. I could not see its feet, as it was covered by a long gown.
Larry screamed in anger. “Your...your...a...a…” he managed to get out before the creature silenced him.
“Shhhh….I am...a salesman is all. Now my friends I will demonstrate the life cycle of the Terramite 99-0’s.”
With that, Larry's forcefield began to hum. Right before my eyes Larry began to get...smaller. Not in stature necessarily, no, but in age. He went from being a young man..to a teenager..to that kid i met in 3rd grade..to an infant. His cries were extremely loud. Unaware of the horrors around him. At that moment I could hear Adam's field begin to hum.
“Please no! Please!” Adam begged.
“If you will direct your attention to our third pod:”
Adam then began to scream as he went from a young man..to middle aged man...to retirement age and finally...to a decrepit old man. Hair as white as snow. Wrinkled beyond recognition. Each breath looking to nearly be his last.
“From birth to the declining ages of 70 and beyond the Auto-Reversal Time Warp pods are the perfect tool to use when training your armys, your children, your slaves. Imagine...never having to replace workers. Never worrying if your training methods or punishments might go too far. Never losing a prisoner to death. And though the Terramites look to be difficult to control, I can guarantee their cooperation once put through the proper training.” The creature said. Full of glee in his dead eyes.
Between the crying of baby larry and incoherent babbling of old man adam, the room felt like it was spinning. Just when I thought things couldn't get any stranger, the rest of the lights came to life. The room we were in were surrounded by seats, similar to the ones we sat in. However, sitting in these seats were ghastly creatures of different varieties. Some looked like the salesman creature. Others were ogreish. Large bodied creatures covered in a film of slime. Some of them even looked human. It was the eyes though...their eyes were a teal color with white pupils. Many many creatures looked up me and my friends. All of them began clapping their hands and cheering in unison. The claps were deafening. The cries of the baby felt as if a baseball bat was ramming my head. Adams babbling was terrifyingly disturbing. And Tex...hanging there. Eyes rolled back into his skull. I couldnt imagine the hell he began to feel. At this point I wondered what awaited my fate. The clapping stopped abruptly.
“Oh...Austin...yes, well if you want to know what fate awaits you just shut your eyes. Shut your eyes and quietly count back from 3.” the creature said...was he reading my mind?
Suddenly the urge to close my eyes overtook me. Almost as if I had no choice, I began counting down. 3….2….1….
Everything went black. I wasn't sure if i was alive or dead...or somewhere in between. I saw nothing but black for what felt like a lifetime. And in an instant...I heard that same shrill scream. Only this time I could not cover my ears. I couldn’t feel my body but I felt an unimaginable amount of pain. As the scream grew to its peak, I slammed my eyes open. Trying to catch my breath.
I was back in the car...we were all back in the car. The engine was on. Shitty ac blasting. The others were still out. I sat up in my seat. Not wanting to move too suddenly. The sun was beating down on us. I looked over at the time on the dash…July 28th 4:34 pm. I reached into my shirt pocket and I found several vouchers for the MGM hotels in Vegas along with $300 dollars. I also found a card that simply read “Hibou Timeshare Corp. would like to thank you for a bit of your time”
The boys came too. All feeling rather groggy.
“We all fell asleep huh?” Adam laughed. “We here?”
They didn't remember a thing. Not one thing. Not going in...not the reception area...not the freaky timeshare presentation...not one bit. I lied...i told them that while they were sound asleep, we arrived a little earlier than expected. The presenter had an emergency and left our vouchers at the front desk and apologized profusely.
“Wow, what a gentleman!” Tex laughed. “We definitely owe it to him to sit through another timeshare, probono.” Larry added.
I think it's safe to say that I will not be returning to this or any other timeshare. As I drove away I could see the building disappear in the rear view mirror.
So if you’re traveling deep within the southwest of the United States and hear an ad for a free vacation that's too good to be true...do yourself a favor..turn off the radio, call into work and ask for some overtime..because nothing is ever given for free.

9.
As they turned 16 years old, the cousins heard much from and about a new upstart in competition named Monty whose last name was Montalvo and from whom many foul rumors concerning the cousins had originated. Ana and her antics had alienated enough of their customer base that they sided with Monty and laughed as they shared the insulting falsehoods to each other about Juan and Ana.
Some said that Ana was, in fact, not attracted to men at all and was, indeed, a closet lesbian. This was, according to Monty and those who spread his gossip, the reason that she could never be found with any boy other than her cousin and why she had been so effective selling cocaine, for even her connection, according to the rumors, was a manly, shorthaired Mexican woman who worked for the cartels and from whom Ana enjoyed great favor as the stud woman’s much younger and beautiful lover.
There was hearsay, also from Monty, that contradicted this. It implied that the cousins’ relationship was more than familial. Versions of this varied depending on who told it. Some said that secretly they’d attempted to get married and made no mention of a child. Others never said anything about a marriage but proclaimed that when Juan and Ana were still 13 years old, they’d had a child together. And this child was taken from them by the state being the result of their incestuous love affair. Still, some versions of the bruit said that the child was never taken by the state at all. They said it was born a mangled mess of twisted limbs and a misshaped head, a result of the inbreeding, and had died the very night it was born. Some whispered that the infant’s remains were buried by Juan and Ana in the forest around Valle Escondido.
For Ana, the must grotesque and insufferable of all the lies coming from their competitor said that she only wore skirts to hide the fact that she’d been born with male genitalia. It was purported that she’d been born a hermaphrodite. And as if such vulgar conjecture weren’t horrible enough, there were multiple standing bets among Monty’s minions which speculated not only about the existence of such testicles, but their size and shape and even the odor they emanated.
Many of the cousins’ customers and cohorts knew better. For Taos is small, and there is no way that such things could be hidden among the native-born, but this Monty had only moved to town from Colorado Springs the summer before. His brother was a police officer named Jose Montalvo, and a week after Juan and Ana had someone call Monty to meet by the Old Blinking Light and the cousins shot up his car in the darkness, Officer J. Montalvo pulled the cousins over. They were at the northside Allsup’s getting some chimichangas. Juan’s orange soda had just exploded as he opened it when the red and blue lights flashed behind them.
They pulled over in the Kit Carson Trailer Park. It was lucky for them that they were not out doing business, so nothing could be found, no gun, no drugs, nothing. Monty’s older brother made it clear who he was and why he had stopped them.
“Next time, I’ll call the dogs. And next time, you’ll be in possession. My brother says hello.” He said, flashing his light in their eyes and laughing and leaving back to his car.
On a Sunday at 1 a.m. and the Monday night following at 11:52, gun shots blasted from the dirt driveway up to Cherry’s trailer. A bullet shattered Ana’s window and thudded in the wall above her head. Another put a hole in her bedroom door. Other of the projectiles deflated the tires of their trusty Pontiac and shattered its windows and busted the radiator.
Cherry kicked them out. They purchased another vehicle—a wood-paneled van—and holed up at a bed and breakfast owned by a white hippy lady in Sipapu. From their room, Ana made plans to thwart the territorial advances of Monty and the help he was getting from his brother. It was told her that Jose Montalvo drove a yellow Datsun and rented an apartment behind the northside Guadalajara Grille, so she prepackaged a sandwich bag full of smaller bagged increments of the powder and visited the Datsun under cover of a frozen night and stuffed the bags of drugs into the small, shelved space under the driver seat. After that, she and Juan drove to Santa Fe, where they found and rented a trailer on Cerrillos in an immigrant trailer park.
They would start anew in Santa Fe, and after a week of being there, Ana called her old relative—the detective Gilbert Sandoval—and told him over the payphone receiver that she was the worried older sister of a young boy who’d been caught up in the world of drugs. She said she knew that her little brother’s supplier sold cocaine and kept a cache of drugs hidden under the front seat of his yellow Datsun which he kept parked in front of a small, squatty apartment behind the northside Guadalajara Grille. Old Gilbert spoke sincerely saying that he would do his best to find out what was going on, and in another week, Ana and Juan heard from one of their old customers that drug dogs had been walked behind the vehicle and signaled and a warranted was executed on the vehicle. The news even showed up in the Santa Fe paper. It said the investigation was ongoing and other parties were expected to be involved in a drug ring.
As that January ended, Juan and Ana became desperate. Sales were way down, and except for a few faithful customers with whom they corresponded over their newly purchased Nokia cellphone and met in Pojoaque and at the Camel Rock Casino. Sometimes, Juan goaded Ana to suck it up and ask Michael or Antonia for help up in Chimayo, but she always responded the same.
“Juan, this only works the way it does, because it is this way. We can’t go sit on top of him and Antonia’s man’s business in Española, que no?”
“Yeah. You’re right. You’re right,” Juan responded, but both of them could not ignore the depleted income and struggle to feel good about their time in Santa Fe.
“We’ll get back to Taos, eventually. I promise. We just have to wait till things blow over, until our boy is arrested and put away. Then, we’ll return to get our glory, cousin. I promise.”
And so, they sat outside of bars in their van and solicited the young white and well-to-do artsy types downtown, standing in the snow and smoking cigarettes and pot in their leather shoes. Some of the men had twirly mustaches, and some of the women wore rings in their noses and had hair in their armpits. They reeked of patchouli and burnt sage.
Others, though, were richer and lived on their daddy’s money or trust funds. They were dropouts from universities in places like Tempe, Arizona or Boulder, Colorado. And it wasn’t long before a tall, black-haired girl with big blue eyes and an even bigger nose parked her car outside of their trailer and slept in Juan’s bed and lay around lazily all day. Sometimes, Tiffy—as she called herself and short for Tiffany—helped them sell their product, and other times, she used the money her father sent her to buy it herself. Other times, she earned her stash of cocaine from Juan with her strange white flesh. But still, times were hard. Sales were down.
A connection they’d made through Tiffy had connected them to another buyer who went by the name Scratch or Scratchy. He was reliably in need of an ounce or more toward the end of every work week when he came up from Albuquerque. In many ways, this guy seemed a godsend, but as they met him more and more, Ana became leery of him. She’d had a nightmare about him, and in her own mind, she silently called him ‘The Worm.’ There was something about him that scared her, though she couldn’t place it.
He had creases in his face and was short with wild looking eyes and strong teeth and hands. They met him at night in the snow on the side of the road in Bernalillo or in the afternoon in Dollar Store parking lots. He only talked to Juan, but long after they’d left him, his looks and stares would stay with Ana who kept her hand on a pistol in the front seat at every deal they did. On a few occasions, Juan relayed messages back to Ana from the man about how pretty she looked and that if she was ever hungry for an expensive dinner, he’d be happy to take her out.
One day, Juan jumped back into the front seat of their van, and Ana asked,
“Got the cash or what?”
“Got the feria right here, cousin!”
And shook her head and pulled her lip back in disgusted uncertainty, watching Scratch’s taillights pulling out of the parking lot and driving off into the sunset.
“What, Ana? Ain’t this cherry?”
“It’s cherry… but…”
“But what?”
“But… I don’t know about this guy.”
“Don’t know about him?”
“Yeah, Juan. Why’s he so splotchy? Huh? Why’s he look so crazy?”
“He’s a whiteboy, Ana. C’mon. You know that.”
“I see a lot of whiteboys. None of them look like him. He looks like a worm to me.”
“A la verga!” Juan drew the words out in exaggeration.
“What?”
“You like the money or what?”
“Doesn’t matter if I like it. We need it.”
“Exactly.”
“What did he say?”
“What did he say? Oh cousin, I see what’s going on here.”
“What?”
“You want to know what he said? A la verga! You’re a funny one, cousin.”
“Okay. So, he didn’t say anything.”
“Well, if you hate him so much, then what you wanna know what he says for?”
Ana shrugged, understanding that she was showing Juan a hand she didn’t know she held. Juan went on,
“He asked what kind of gun you were holding onto and said for you not to shoot him.”
Ana laughed loudly and asked,
“Well, what did you say?”
“I told him it was just a nine.”
“Funny,” she said and touched her lips for a moment. She looked through the window as they drove north to Santa Fe.
“Yeah, Ana. Better get a grip on yourself.”
“Pshh… whatever.” But what she had just revealed to Juan was also just revealed to her at that same moment. Ana didn’t know what her feelings were until Juan saw it. Then, she knew. Then, she understood what she was experiencing, and now, as they drove, she pressed her toes through her shoes and into the floorboard. Her knees bounced. Her cheeks pulled the corners of her mouth up into a smile that she couldn’t help, and in spite of all her giddiness, she said what she still thought, “Yeah, Juan. But I still think he’s gross. I still think he’s a worm.”

Since I'm probably going to abandon my save file due to an unfortunate event, I thought I just post the story of it here. Obviously this will end up in a very extreme wall of text - but if you are interested in such stories feel free to continue reading.
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1.0. The Preparation

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Last year in august I was planning on playing Elona(+) again, since it was around 9 years ago when I played vanilla Elona on its latest stable version. In 2010 I never made it far into the game, I wasn't even close to anywhere to 3 digit stats - but I was able to at least survive basic stuff and advanced very slowly until I stopped playing at some point. What I do not like if you can things permanently mess up which was one of the reasons I decided to play Elona+ instead of Elona this time as it appears Elona+ tries to avoid/reduce such things. I always went out without any pets 9 years ago as I think they pretty immediately died for me - and so I went on another petless journey again. My choice fell on an Eulderna Warmage since at the time I created the character it seemed to be the best choice for me with the extra magic resistance while not having any specific disadvantages. As feats I choosed some resistances and Exorcist to nullify being cursed on dreams as I remember 9 years ago on vanilla Elona this was a significant threat to me (however, now I would not choose this feat anymore since cursing items later in the game can be quite important - I wished this feat would just add a toggle special action like Dupli-Cane and Advanced Casting so you could enabled/disable this at any time).
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1.1. The Beginnings

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I started the game pretty casually on Essential Mode (I would have preferred a harder mode but I dislike loosing life/mana when the game/system crashes by accident) with the intention not to savescum. I was entering the wilderness around my house to improve my stats until I could survive basic enemies like a kobold. My playstyle mostly reflects of going melee-only and I'm not sure why I choosed a Warmage at this time - possibly I have read before that magic is pretty strong and decided to give it a try later - but I don't fully remember. I was exited about simple stuff like identifying things to permanently unlock their basic selling values to make more money. After around 1-2 hours it was time for looting the Puppy Cave to make more money and progress even further. I tried to improve my gear by getting some resistances and preferring glass gear for more speed. At some point I entered a pretty low danger level dungeon which was at this time pretty high for me. At the end was a level 8 or 9 Grudge which I don't remember anymore if I defeated him or not - but slowly I begun to get stronger. Progressing on this low level went a while while I was also using the Wiki on Fandom all the time to check all the details for the game mechanics out. At some point later I also gave magic a try. Seeing how the damage of a magic dart increased quite fast with its dices and damage value I thought at this time that magic is pretty overpowered and will easily outclass any melee.
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1.2. The first accident

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After some casual playing I achieved significant progress when I got enough medals to buy some artifacts in Miral and Garok's Workshop. With the I was able to do moderate amounts of damage (around ~200 at this time) and with the I had no issues with upcomming invisible creatures. Ironically I still had both items around the 800+ hours mark, since artifact items are usually pretty strong (especially in this game) even compared to random godly items and over the course of time you usually rarely progress with new random equipment in this game. At the end I was able to blast even level 50000+ monsters away with moderate ease which are all capped with all stats at 2000 - but more to my endgame build and what I all did later in this post. The next step was to progress with the story so I went for the 3 magic stones. When I approached Wynan on his chessboard he crushed 1 or 2 walls which stressed me out (which also happened later on some other locations) since on trying to fix this later it turned out this is not possible - as placing wall tiles with the Wall Creation spell or removing them to fix floor tiles will always result in a default wall/floor tile - making it impossible to create specific ones as I really wanted to preserve all the static areas in the game. I was a bit sad about it and hoped that in the future there would be a way to fix this - like a way to choose which wall/floor tiles to place; a janitor set that allows you to actually also design some static areas at some point; or some other solution. My savefile was now slighly messed up and I just continued - always hoping that I can just fix all messed up floors in the future but also knowing that this is extremely unlikely to happen.
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1.3. Careful grinding

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Meanwhile I also grinded for more Little Sisters and got more Hero Cheese to improve survivability - which was a slight mistake at this point since I was still in act 1 (as I planned later to add additional body parts). Farming for Little Sisters was quite a serious task too since I wanted to avoid killing a single one to avoid reducing the spawn rate of Big Daddies. As far as I know this is another thing where you can permanently mess your save file up if you make a mistake so initially I did always fully clear a floor before approaching a Big Daddy and then even walling him in with enough distance to avoid him smashing the walls as enemies can still spawn randomly if enough turns pass - eventually an enemy would have appeared otherwise exactly in the turn when the Little Sister spawns just to kill her and mess my save file up (when I was much stronger I did not wall them in anymore and from the ~350 Little Sisters that spawned not a single one died during my whole playtime). When I also progressed more in the story and met Alsapia in Lesimas floor 30 I think I had around 300 hit points but still died on my first try against her. The neverending progression just continued until I was strong enough to finish act 1. But before defeating Zeome I also wanted to finish some side quests which lead to an interetsing experience. Ungaga in the Minotaur's Nest did land a critical hit on me with his first strike, probably with a very high roll and I lost around 700 hit points and died. He never did any damage this close to me again on my future attempt so I guess I was just extremely unlucky here.
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1.4. The museum and its difficulties

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One thing until this point that bothered me a bit was the museum. I wanted to collect all cards and statues to show them in my museum but anyone who tried to seriously fill a museum probably knows the troubles. There is not enough space to place them all even if you extend the default floor and additional floors can't be created. Also there is no sane way to track which statues/cards you already have in your museum so I decided to just collect the statues/cards from unique NPC's and very later on I even begun to remove some cards as space still became very limited (if you want to make your museum look halfway good and not to fill every single possible tile). At the end this is good enough to reach rank 1 and get all the points to get more platinum coins but I think this is something that could get enhanced. Especially since adding support for multiple floors and linking them to the ranking is not difficult.
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2.0. Getting strong

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One of my goals was to get new body parts as fast as possible from doctor Gavela as I wanted to avoid loosing more life as neccessary from early farmed Hero Cheese (I think I only lost 1 extra life due to this but it was still a bit annoying). I got 2 additional hands and my setup (either it was a sword and shield or already dual-wielding) changed to quad-wielding with a living weapon (lightsabre), , and . I think at this time I did roughly around 1000 damage per hit - which didn't progress too significantly for me anymore over the course of the next few hundred hours. Also I did experiment with my living weapon a bit and did reset it a few times at Maile - but was a bit annoyed that instead of being a reset for its level/gained attributes instead all attributes that were even before leveling it up got deleted too (e.g. if you get a living weapon with a good invoke and want to reset its level the invoke will be gone forever). At least the attributes from the material kit could have been kept as for example in my case the lightning resistance from being a diamond lightsabre got deleted too - while it was still made of diamond after resetting. Reapplying another material kit (even if the same) fixes this issue but it still feels a bit annoying. One thing that I got curious later on was why all enemies got in some cases just 1 damage no matter what. It turned out that the chain intervalls the weapons do are actually a nerf for cases when enemies can't do something on too many turns of the player (like perma-stunning them and stopping the time too often). Once it reaches 200 all enemies are getting just 1 damage from any source - limiting the combination of dual-wielding and time-stopping (this is also one reason why you want to avoid spreading too much different damage types on weapons as every damage type counts as its own attack and adds 1 to the chain interval - making the enemies just faster resistant to your damage). At the end I went full darkness damage on my living weapon since it seems the most useful - it mostly prevents any physical and magical threats, is very easy to apply to any regular enemy that is not immune to blindness or has innate superb resistance to darkness (even capped out enemies), according to the wiki sticks usually a bit longer than confusion from mind or sound damage (and confusion has the disadvantage that enemies could spawn other enemies if they fail to cast a spell) and does not stunlock the enemy to avoid high chain intervalls.
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2.1. Common work

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Nothing too spectacular happened from here except casual grinding and when blewing up Palmia for the side-quest I forgot to check for other adventures - and of course pissed some of. I was now curious if they would ever come to my home and trying to burn it but this did never happen. Meanwhile I had a ranch with a fairy to get more Secret Experiences of Kumiromi - which did net me the one and other a few times during my gameplay. If I would have found them as often as Happy Beds dropped for me I would have possibly already nearly capped out all my feats - those beds really dropped like biscuits for me. I also had a shop and did put all the cooked food I got from killed enemies there. I also did sell miracle and godly equipment there that I found but had no use for it. Since I played this game casually and in a more or less RPG-like manner Isca was the shopkeeper. I also intentionally wasted a rod of wishing to give her the negotiation skill as I had not much interest to dig into gene engineering yet. As shop feats I choosed Asthetic Sense to get more money and Proprietary Sales to get even more money. I still assume the latter is responsible for a display bug: Every time the day ends and the summary is shown the first message is partially duplicated with some nonsense. It sorts of depends of the last tiles you have somehow encountered - but I do not know the exact details. It is kind of funny when the message claims Isca has put Palmia into my shop storage^^
Also I had a farm with nothing spectacular in it. Mainly I did put fruit trees in there that I sto... borrowed. I also had a bigger tree farm in my house which I used to produce juice so I had not to go to Noyel anymore every once in a while to farm some snow.
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2.2. Making money

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My Win-LVL increased while I played more - without knowing what this actually meant. Later on I figured out the number there (in the current version of Elona+ shown as "Proper" in your character sheet) is just the highest level of a dungeon boss you killed. It seems to affect the danger level of newly generated dungeons and quests. Additionaly the highest danger level you entered/cleared or such seems to also affect this (and can be reset at Maile while the first can't). I got into the ranges of level 150-200 dungeons and things begun to get harder. And some point (possibly a bit earlier or maybe even shortly after act 2 - I don't remember exactly when) I noticed all enemies have now a gauge bar. I had around 3000 hit points and a Flash Wyvern could remove half of them when its gauge bar got full. Also the god enemies like Atlas begun to show up. I remember that I killed an early one with several magic darts from the distance but it was still pretty dangerous. However, at this point I got quite some extra money as the gold piles are in the 5 digit ranges here. Later I noticed that it seems to cap at 50000 and even much higher dungeons seem on average to yield even less money. It sort of felt like the money values are sort of overflowing and thus lowering the average a bit until some even more higher danger levels again. If I was wrong or what exactly was going on here is still unknown to me. But with the extra money and the sold cooked food I was able to increase my Investment skill more and more - as it levels pretty fast. It was also my first skill that reached level 2000 and thus requiring me only a bit over 50000 gold to invest 50 more ranks on a shopkeeper. At the end of my gameplay my blackmarket shopkeeper is now rank 66000 - but it feels not better than like rank 5000. Either the improvement is here extremely slow, maybe with diminishing returns or I did already hit the softcap and there is no point in investing here anymore.
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2.3. The AP-system

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One thing I was already concerned when I was still in act 1 and that influenced my gameplay heavily was the AP mechanic as I think it can sort of mess up your save file too. Currently after 966 hours my AP are 2500 (8500) which is the highest minimum value for my build when you buy only the skills and prepare to swap to any skill without wanting to increase your AP further. If I would have gone for additional speed/life my AP value would now be even higher - while I can achieve those values even without investing the AP. This has the theoretical advantage that I'm as best as possible prepared if updates of Elona+ add stuff to the AP mechanic. Players who instead capped out their AP wouldn't be able to get any more of them and potentially locking out from new stuff and thus messing up their save file. Also the AP system favors to save your Speed Upper potions/Hermes Blood, etc. ideally after you have capped out the related stats with AP which I also disliked. I think a better approach to this part of the AP system would be to not bind the stat increases to the base stats - but instead applying them as an invisible buff. This way it would solve the problems above (but also result in a bit higher stats on endgame builds). It probably sounds stupid to many who read this - but whatever, I just progress without the stat increases and the journey continued.
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2.4. Rejected from some gods

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Additionally I also went every year to the Truce Ground and temporarily worshipped another god to make them spawn in november and getting the specific training-related artifact. Unfortunately there is a bug that prevented me to do this a few times. Even having more than just enough favor and praying at the Truce Ground resulted in around half of all cases the related god to not appear. I don't know what exactly causes this issue but my guess is that switching to a god too late might have an impact on this issue. Also I remember that I have seen another user here in the past that has claimed about this issue. I guess it is just rare and since the exact conditions are unknown I expect it not to be fixed soon - if at any point at all. My current approach was to not switch to a god later than september and so far my last summoning in november was successfull but I would have to test this further.
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2.5. Improving my gear

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Via the course of this grinding I also improved my gear. While randomly generated equipment very rarely improved my current equipment and too often even very early artifacts were very superior, all my equipment was hardened to +10 via a blacksmith and to +15 via stardusts. The new improvement was reforging their type and applying a more effective material kit on them. Since I wanted to balance stuff out most of my armor got a Dragon Scale material kit as it has a good improvement to DV and PV while also providing fire and cold resistance which is quite important to avoid item destruction in tricky cases ( I always carry a fireproof and coldproof blanket with me just in case. Too bad filling charges seems to be limited (even accross other items I think) to lower values than you can potentially buy (13 charges in case of blankets). Maybe it would be better if the cap of filling charges would be dependent on your Magic Device level - this would also make this skill a bit more useful. Also: Needs coldproof liquids!).
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3.0. Becomming healthy

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I finished act 2 at some point and got to a point where I noticed a significant EXP increase from enemies (panic/challenge quests; dungeon bosses; enemies in the Void floor 200+). For example a random spider in the Void floor 200+ gave me around 4 million EXP per kill. Since the EXP cap for levels is 100 million and every level gave me some hit points (in newer versions of Elona+ I now get hit points only every 4 levels - but around 4 times higher than before). My stats slowly crawled up - I think to around 300 - 400 on all main stats, ~100+ on most skills mostly due to travelling except the 2000 in Investment and some hundred levels in Lockpicking since I noticed troubles opening all those chests, safes and treasure balls on higher danger levels. However, the contents never seemed to get any better anymore despite requiring a more and more higher Lockpicking skill. I remember having seen the Skeleton Key once in the log after casting Oracle but unfortunately it was generated in the Void and the floor was already gone for a while. In all those 966 hours sadly I have never seen another generated Skeleton Key anymore (but tons of s - which unfortunately have no effect on Dimension Fishing - while it does even increase the Fishing skill, argh!). Much earlier I planned to keep all my spells up with my chacacter level - but stopped this approach on level 115. My main skills I used at this time (Magic Dart, Cure of Eris or Jua, Speed, Attribution Shield, Feather, Holy Shield, Holy Veil, Vanquish Hex), were around level 200+ - 300+. Too bad some spells do not increase with higher levels (except the spell stock cost reduction up to level 300) while still increasing in mana points. For example my Magic Map spell (on hour 966 with level 623) has never improved in revealing the map more with a single cast. I continued to farm some more levels to get more hit points and to get some more stat increases from some Ether Diseases I currently intentionally had (like hooves and feathers for more speed). My hit points reached values around 15000 - 30000 and my speed got around to a buffed value of 1100+ and my Win-LVL was around 1000.
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3.1. A laboratory for all your plushies

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From this point nothing too spectacular happened anymore. I slowly advanced in the Void, farmed Little Sisters and also fame in dungeons to make panic/challenge quests more worth, I did party time quests to get Music Tickets as well as hopefully finding a godly Casino Table and Pachisuro Machine. Also I advanced Leold's side quest in killing higher level monsters for even more music tickets and invested them into Hero Cheese for even more hit points. I also slowly killed more and more unique NPC's to get their statues for my museum. At some point I got tired power leveling my spells after I slept enough times so I decided to make my life a bit easier. I designed my dungeon to be a laboratory with cells for different types of enemies. One of the cells contains 2 Meshera Deltas, which do cast Silence on me all the time from their cell while I'm outside and out of their pyhsical reach. That process speeds up spell leveling very much as there are now no spell animations anymore. A bit earlier when I tried to get some Asuras in a cell I noticed later they were all gone. To solve the issue with depsawning monsters I just sandbaged them and only release them when I need them for training (and sandbag them again once I'm done).
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3.2. Facing Death's aspirant

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After this the progression went pretty fast. Mainly because I actually invested now platinum coins to train offensive skills (mainly Tactics, Dual Wield, Eye of Mind and Long Sword) to get much higher than the ~150+ skill levels they had. I also got additional levels from killing monsters - usually now 12 million - 13 million EXP per kill resulting in more hit points and some Hero Cheese from music tickets for even more hit points again. Around that time I also leveled 5 living weapons to level 10 with applying strength to them so I could temporary buff my strength to 1000+ as I wanted to get 1 of every altar in my home. Slowly my offensive skills evolved and I had around 60000 - 70000 hit points. Around this time I tried to kill Amurdad to get the as I planned to advance some stats later with a farm full of herbs. My first try on killing Amurdad resulted in that I could not get past his Super Regene healing and he drained my stamina up to a point where he could easily kill me. The grinding continued and my stats got higher, up to around 300+ - 400+ in said offensive skills and 150000+ hit points. That was sufficient enough to finally beat Amurdad to get the scissors. Now I have a farm with a Statue of Kumiromi, 72 planted herbs and 8 Kumiromi's Gem Stone of Rejuvenation. At this point Quad-Wielding with time-stopping felt very lacking as I had usually very high chain intervalls, too often now over 200 forcing me to wait a few turns. Since at this point I pretty much studied most of the Wiki on Fandom I wanted to try something else. The idea was 3 living weapons (all lightsabres (I think 1 was reforged) since living weapons at this stage of gameplay are pretty common) while leveling the first 2 lightsabres with nether damage up to level 10 and the last one to darkness damage up to level 10 and a shield for more defense. I also made the 2 lightsabres with nether damage super heavy (250s each) to cap out the critical damage even if the enemies wear heavy equipment. This turned out to be super useful as I did around 10000 - 15000 nether damage on most enemies per hit per sword which also healed me for this amount - around half the amount my Cure of Jua spell heals. A bit later I had also buffed around 1300 PV but the enemies still hit for 15000 - 30000 damage. I advanced my equipment to have a bit higher magic resistance and spellcasters barely were a threat now with the few thousand damage they did. The exception are water spells as they ignore any resistances causing also to do around 15000 - 30000 damage per hit. However, protecting against spellcasters was much more easy than protecting against physical attacks (mainly due to bosses you barely can blind). But I also had not actively trained Evasion yet - I planned this once I have more sandbags for Asuras.
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3.3. The Escalation

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Then the update happened that brought a cap of 100 to platinum coins and skill/spell points. Since I had accumulated over 3000 skill and spell points I waited for a specific training day and used Advanced Casting and then burned all my points into Swimming and... Wishing! Now with an equipped magaqua (as I never used one before as I wanted to train Swimming over time) and a Swimming skill quite over 1000 I achieved a buffed speed of around 2000 (while still having ~600 base speed). With my Gamma Shift Core I wished earlier for it is even around 2500 speed. My Traveling skill is only around 200 but this together makes me fast enough that it is not too hard capping out skill and spell points in a single ingame day - which is quite tricky since I want to use them only if I'm on a specific day to optimally boost my skills which requires me often to skip some days. At this point I wish I could just use the over 1000 Small Medals I have to just upgrade my "Magic Bag" to fit in more skill and spell points and platinum coins as at this stage of gameplay it is sort of required to play effectively. I got stronger and stronger and the enemies began to cap out their stats slowly at 2000. Every few enemies I have killed achieved the next goal of Leold's side quest and switching continents all the time, going to Leold, teleporting to the Craddle of Chaos, reading a Scroll of Escape and switching continents again was quite annoying. If doctor Gavela could borrow Leold and me just a Mobile Communication Equipment with integrated fax - then Leold could just fax me those Music Tickets every time I advance in the quest!^^
Since capped out enemies were less and less a threat I begun to beat higher dungeon bosses and getting a higher Win-LVL until I noticed bosses won't go here over level 8332. But there seem to be some exceptions. Once a Shade generated as dungeon boss and it was only level 6666 (I think it was not even generated as boss type) and at some point I got unnoticed a Win-LVL of 11110. I guess there is an exception that generates something at level 11110 - maybe it was the Putit Tank I encountered but I don't know. After this point the danger levels incremented about several thousands once I did beat a new higher one. Currently the highest danger levels I see are a bit over 100000. The mechanics in them are also quite interesting: It seems hidden passages (blocked by wall tiles) still scale in this high levels. When I just use 1 skill point to bring my Detection skill from 0% potential to 20% potential I get 20 levels at once (and 0% potential again) with one revealed hidden path. No matter how many more potential I put into (even 400%) I never get more than 20 levels at once - I guess this is the cap how many skill levels in general you can get at once. Luckily revealing a hidden path is still easy with 1000+ Detection on those high danger levels so it is not much of an issue. But my 100+ Disarm Trap skill has basically no effect anymore and so I trigger every trap I step on. Also opening up chests/safes/treasure balls with 1200+ Lock Picking results most in the time that the lock is beyond my skill. Too bad the loot in those containers seems to have already capped out around danger levels of 100+ and they are not more worth later on (but still much more difficult to open). I fear if danger levels have no cap and continue to grow exponentially I will see at some point a crash every time a dungeon with a too high danger level is being generated. Nice side-effects are that the gained fame is based on the danger level and your current fame causing me to get easily over 20000 fame per cleared dungeon (I'm currently around 700000 fame) and the panic/challenge quests cause now to generate monster levels around the danger levels I see resulting in getting over 60 million EXP per kill (I think I'm on the cap of 640000080 EXP).
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3.4. An unfortunate event

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However, today something bad happened. When I was creating some Cure Crystals on the Pot for Fusion to easily remove single Ether Diseases (since I want to keep some other) I did create 3 * 10 of them. This resulted in 30 Cure Crystals but only 19 Empty Bottles instead of the expected 30. Later I noticed that sadly some items in my house were gone. So I did hit the cap of 400 items and the creation of new items has caused a deletion. I actually thought the cap of 400 items is a soft cap and specific game mechanics can go temporary over them without causing troubles - I guess I was wrong. Too bad that actual item deletion this way is possible - and that the Cure Crystals and Empty Bottles have not been stacked. Initially I planned to stop continuing playing my save file due to this accident and just writing the story of my playthrough somewhere in hope it improves stuff (ideally this would reach out to Ano somehow but I doubt it). But on making a second look it looks like there is a specific pattern to the item deletion. All items that I confirm being gone had a very low base value and the important stuff seems to be still there. I just hope the stack of my current 114 artifact equipments has not been affected as checking and recovering them could be quite some work.
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Future plans

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Thats pretty much the story. I have a few plans what to do next once I should find the motivation to continue. One thing I noticed is that Yacatect's Banks are not a global storage - they are local on their own. And since it seems you get 10% interest after every 2400 hours the amount of gold would escalate at some point (up to the cap). It seems they are an easy way to get nearly an endless source of money if you setup your own terra-cotta armee with them. I'm also trying to figure out a way to mitigate Brainwashing as this is still a very significant threat. My hope is that enough mind resistance would make you immune against it. Another thing I experiemented with is trying out cursed equipment as an alternative but one piece causes already a huge health loss every few turns. Also I'm curious if enough magic resistance can make you immune to any hex from enemies with 2000+ casting. To test some of this stuff I probably would have to dig more into the artifact fusion system. I think if a randomly found item (like a godly one) has too many and too strong stats it counts more towards the artifact power - making it ironically more difficult to apply the wanted attributes later on it. This might be a reason why Ehekatls passive feat you can obtain might be counter-productive here and possibly needs another toggle. Also if my Casting/Literacy/Memorization skill is high enough I would consider reading some/all of my wishing spell books that I found and kept during the entire playthrough (I found 5 but read (and failed) 1 by accident when I spammed reading on all common books I found) to summon all gods and killing them. I also wanted to figure out if all the ...borrowed Holy Wells could be useful in the future too since it seems they still regenerate their charges. At least they are useful ranking up at the Thieves Guild really fast (with a sell value of over 60000). Werewolves are quite a problem too and I'm not sure if some towns just bugged out. Even killing all werewolves I found and duelling all werewolve detectives caused them to respawn (I have some towns with 2 detectives). I'm unsure how to fix this but my current plan was getting more s from going deeper into the Void (as duelling in Amur-Cage never dropped any more s for me) and then checking every person if they are still a werewolf.
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Progress on hour 966

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At the end I'm now on level 1121 with ~350000 HP and ~150000 MP. My main stats are around 600+ - 700+ with speed buffed to 2000+. The offensive skills like Tactics, Long Sword, etc. are around 500 - 800 and my current damage multiplier for every of my lightsabres is 71.5. Some stats posted earlier and the order of the story might be slightly inaccurate since this happened all over the course of a year and my memory is not perfect but mostly it should be pretty fine.
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Some suggestions

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The only thing I could list now would be a few things I would like to get enhanced in this game:
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- Obviously the item deletion issue that eventually caused me to delete my save file.
- A way to better fix static areas as mentioned earlier above.
- Other fixes to prevent messing up a save file, partially mentioned above too. Additionally for example if you kill all Old humankinds there seems to be no way to get them later. I'm also unsure where to recruit a if both in Rehmido have been destroyed.
- I/O performance improvements. The overhead seems to be very high and is noticeable especially on a HDD. Examples of issues are frequent opening of menus (like opening gambling chests) and the Appearance selection menu.
- Fixing the broken viewport (that on some resolutions some columns/rows can't be (partially) seen). For me if an enemy is on the top row I can't see him including his important gauge bar - which is quite an issue.
- Better view on enemy bars. If they are behind a wall the gauge bar is not visible anymore which is also a big issue.
- Support for user paths. It would be nice if the configuration file and save files would be saved into the user directory so upgrading the game would be possible in a more uncomplicated way.
- Translations.
- Fixing items not being liftable if your inventory is full even if the exact same item is in your inventory (e.g. you have an unidentified Scroll of Curse in all 3 variants in your inventory (blessed, normal, cursed) but you can't now pickup any other unidentified Scroll of Curse you find on the ground).
- Better stacking support of items. For example catching Stray Cats with Monster Balls of different levels will prevent them being stackable (while the Monster Ball levels apparently play no role anymore). Items from vendors with different selling prices can't be stacked too since the price is determined due to the different base value. In this case it would be better if those items would have the same base value and instead get a (higher) buying multiplier directly from the vendor (even while this would have the disadvatage of lower (the normal ones) selling values of those items). The same material kits you get from Garok can't be stacked too for some reason (even if the color is reverted to the default with a bottle of dye #0). Debris of the same level can't be always stacked too as they generate with different colors (but applying a bottle of dye #0 can workaround this in that case). Also when Monster Balls capped out at level 200 in the past it was easy to stack them for example for catching all the Stray Cats and enemies Arasiel wants. Now it is harder to get Monster Balls of the same level for easy stacking.
- A way to easily reduce stats even more (the might not be good enough anymore if you reach 2000 Traveling). Eventually it might make sense if you could somehow get negative stats too via the artifact fusion system (for example if the Scroll of Gain Attribute is cursed).
- Immediate sprite update once you get brainwashed.
- Stopping spammed idle actions (numpad 5) when you receive damage (like starving). In some other cases the game already stops some spammed actions so it would be more consistent.
- If all windows would behave like Stained Glass Windows requiring you to put them into the wall tile instead. This would allow you to put 3 instead of only 2 items before the window before they turn into a bag and also it would avoid hovering the items up.
- Fixing the bug that item sprites sometimes change temporary if you talk to somebody (e.g. a pile of items from a past quest reward sometimes turns into a bag when you talk to somebody and reverts back when you stop talking to somebody).
- Named fruit trees so they are more easily distinguishable.
- All the other things already mentioned in the story.
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There is probably so much more that I don't remember now but those should be the most important things I would like to get fixed/changed. But as sayed somewhere before: I doubt this will happen but at least I gave it a try and posted all my experiences with the game even if this post required quite many hours to create and check (I think around 6+ and now I'm tired, hopefully I did not miss too many gramatical spelling errors and typos).
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Edit: Fixed some typos and added headings for easier reading.

“...and walk away with a trip to beautiful Las Vegas Nevada! Enjoy a complimentary 5 day 4 night stay at any MGM casino resort all on us! No nonsense, no gimmicks. Just a bit of your precious time! Call today!”
Yes. A vacation extravaganza all on the arm. Courtesy of the Hibou Timeshare Corporation. All it cost was your time and cooperation for a timeshare presentation. Simple enough yes? I wish I would have realized how much better a couple of overtimes would have served me, than taking myself to that horrid building.
I was living in Phoenix AZ with my parents. Still half way bullshitting my final semester at college. I’ve got to be honest, I was checked out. It was summer..I was going to graduate and I had these final two classes in the bag. I could have failed my finals and still walked out with a C. Yes but that kind of luxury came at a price. My social life was the casualty in all of this. While I did have a tight knit of pals, my attendance to social gatherings were...well..less than punctual. I was usually doing work for one of my advanced classes. If not that, then I was pulling a shift at either of my jobs. Yeah..you could say I gave up the glamour of late night pizzas, puking in my friends car and hooking up with a random ASU frat sluts for a heavier wallet...except I was paying everything out of my own pocket. My gas, insurance, cell, college. I wasn't exactly hiding cash in the walls. My parents worked hard but..never did make a living to give me and my siblings an extravagant lifestyle. We were grateful though.
So when I heard that AD of how I could get a long needed vacation to party central Las Vegas, all for watching some BS timeshare I knew I wasn’t going to buy into, you bet your ass off I made that call. The phone only rang once before I got an answer,
“Thank you for calling the Hibou Timeshare Corporation, how can we help you?” a voice rang through the phone. The voice sounded shrill and sickly.
“Hi, I'm calling about the vacation in Vegas? Says that you need people for a presen..”
“Yeessss.” the voice interrupted “The timeshare presentation, well...we would be so honored to have you”
“Uhh..yeah...anyway I’d like to sign up? Is there a form online or do you take the information here?” I said..now feeling a bit tense.
“Well I'll tell you what...pack your things for the vacation. When we are finished presenting..we can send you on our way to Vegas. We just need..a bit of your time.”
That was that. He gave me the address, date and time of the meeting. The area was in a place called Amargosa Valley in Nevada. Luckily it was just about an hour away from Vegas. Before we parted ways on the phone, the operator said something...he said something that should have been a MAJOR red flag.
“Okay then, you’re all set...we will see you July 28th at 4:30pm. Not a moment later” he laughed
“Oh..and..one more thing, if you have some more specimens like yourself that might be interested in the free vacation...bring them along. They’ll all receive the same prize and you will receive $100 cash for every person you bring. We look forward to presenting you, Austin. Good day.”
I never gave him my name.
Still, my young dumb brain didn’t hear anything past $100 dollars. So I rounded up a few of my best pals and we were set to meet the reps over at the timeshare. The days leading up to the trip I couldn't get a hold of myself. It was so exciting. My first real vacation in...i couldn't remember how long. I longed for this type of adventure with my friends. We packed a truck full and set off to Amargosa Valley.
I brought Luke, Larry and Adam. We’d been friends since the 3rd grade. We all moved to AZ from different parts of the country that summer, so being new kids we naturally ganged up together. Luke was from Texas..we called him Tex. Real big guy. Loved to work out but definitely was a bit of a boozebag. Larry was from Ohio. Quiet in public but probably the loudest of us all. Always had some political conspiracy to talk about. Then Adam..Adam was interesting. He was from Florida...or Georgia...or Nebraska. Adam never could keep it straight about where he was from. He always had some sort of story and backtrack about where he’d come from. I personally thought he was probably from another part of AZ and just wanted to fit in...so we humor him and let him be the nomad of our group. I myself was originally from California...things got pricey so we made the move to blistering AZ.
That was my crew. No matter how long it had been, we were always as tight as ever. The ride was filled with laughing and gags. Stops at fast food joints and all around bullshitting. Yes it was an amazing time just driving there, we couldn't wait to get on with the meeting and head down to Boozeville USA. As we approached our destination...something felt off. Amargosa Valley had been a bit of a ghost town the whole drive. A gas station here. A small outlet there...but otherwise unpopulated. When we hit our destination we were met by a Chrome building. Smack center in the middle of the highway. As we parked at the only stall..we all took a look at each other.
“Well this is...odd.” Luke said plainly.
“Yeah man...are we really going there?” Adam shook out. Barely containing his fear.
“Look guys, I know it looks weird. This place is really clean and bright in the middle of a dusty desert but c’mon. It's like what...an hour of our time? Within 2 hours we’ll be on our way to the dopest guys trip ever.” I said...selfishly.
The guys all agreed. We got out, locked the car up and walked in through the sliding glass doors. The cool air hit us like a wave. Each of us breathing in the refreshingly cold air. The inside of this lobby..was also immaculate. Chrome everywhere. Right down to the sofas and chairs. A woman came from around the front desk.
“You must be here to be presented. I see you brought more specimens! What a joy! Will you gentlemen please follow me?” She said.
Specimens. Ugh. Her tone. That word still makes me shutter.
Me and the boys looked at each other..all with the same should we do it look on our faces. Maybe it was the cold air enticing our sweaty brows. We’d been a poorly AC’D truck for a couple hours. Or maybe it was the ice cold drinks she presented in front of us. Whatever the case we followed her through a door behind the front desk and were met with a grand auditorium. It looked as if it could hold maybe 50 people. And all they had was me and my knucklehead friends. As we sat down, sucking down sodas and waters, a mans voice came over the intercom.
“Welcome my friends to the Hibou Timeshare Corporation presentation. Today you will be examining the lifetime of these vessels. Determine whether or not you think they are a smart investment and make a choice if you would like to partake!” I recognized the voice. It was the same shrill tone that I set up the appointment with.
“Now my dear friends, it's time to sit back with your favorite drink...and listen..”
With that, a large projector screen came down from the celine. An old timey countdown began winding down.
BEEP3...BEEP2...BEEP1
From what I can remember, I heard the screams of something...unnatural. A scream so high tone that I felt as if my ears would burst with blood. I tried clasping my hands over my ears but to no avail. The screams were too overpowering. As soon as it started, I passed out.
I awoke looking at the lights on the celine. Unable to sit up. I could tell I was bareass naked on a metal table. I moved my head, the little that i could to see Adam next to me on another table. Naked as the day we were born. He was encased in what looked like a light purple energy field. Looking more in depth, I too had this field in front of me. Before I could speak the tables raised up. Bringing me upright. Bringing me face to face with Tex. To the left of me..Larry. “My friends, I present to you: Terramite 99-0 specimens.” a voice rang out. The same voice from the auditorium.
“They are..of the male species. Strong. Cunning and above all loyal...if raised properly.”
“HEY, you bastards. WTF is this! LET US GO!” Tex cried out. Before he could continue, the energy field tightened around him. Tex let out a scream that will haunt me for the rest of my life. The smell of burned flesh and hair filled the area. I would have puked had the horror of seeing my best friend being burned alive wasn't keeping my attention away from the smell. When the field lifted, Tex was stripped down to the muscle fibers. Hair burned down to the scalp. Tex convulsed until he finally relaxed into a hanging position on the table.
“Now see..specimen is now sedated. Relaxed into a weaker position. With the energy field keeping him contained and the Auto-Reversal Time Warp engaging, we can have this specimen back into working shape immediately.”
There was an electrical hum in the air. As before my eyes, Tex’s skin began to heal. His hair growing back. And all burns subsiding. It was as if nothing had happened to him. He still hung in limbo, but we could see the breath return to his chest.The rest of us let out bits of gasps of horror and astonishment.
I could see Adam crying a bit in the corner of my eyes.
A figure appeared from behind me. A tentacle graced my shoulder, not even phased by the force field. I caught sight of the creature. It stood around 7foot tall. Skin that looked human but a head that was elongated. No nose. And eyes that were black as coal. It had two tentacles for hands. I could not see its feet, as it was covered by a long gown.
Larry screamed in anger. “Your...your...a...a…” he managed to get out before the creature silenced him.
“Shhhh….I am...a salesman is all. Now my friends I will demonstrate the life cycle of the Terramite 99-0’s.”
With that, Larry's forcefield began to hum. Right before my eyes Larry began to get...smaller. Not in stature necessarily, no, but in age. He went from being a young man..to a teenager..to that kid i met in 3rd grade..to an infant. His cries were extremely loud. Unaware of the horrors around him. At that moment I could hear Adam's field begin to hum.
“Please no! Please!” Adam begged.
“If you will direct your attention to our third pod:”
Adam then began to scream as he went from a young man..to middle aged man...to retirement age and finally...to a decrepit old man. Hair as white as snow. Wrinkled beyond recognition. Each breath looking to nearly be his last.
“From birth to the declining ages of 70 to 100 Terran years…the Auto-Reversal Time Warp pods are the perfect tool to use when training your armys, your children, your slaves. Imagine...never having to replace workers. Never worrying if your training methods or punishments might go too far. Never losing a prisoner to death.” The creature said. Full of glee in his dead eyes.
Between the crying of baby larry and incoherent babbling of old man adam, the room felt like it was spinning. Just when I thought things couldn't get any stranger, the rest of the lights came to life. The room we were in were surrounded by seats, similar to the ones we sat in. However, sitting in these seats were ghastly creatures of different varieties. Some looked like the salesman creature. Others were ogreish. Large bodied creatures covered in a film of slime. Some of them even looked human. It was the eyes though...their eyes were a teal color with white pupils. Many many creatures looked up me and my friends. All of them began clapping their hands in unison. The claps were deafening. The cries of the baby felt as if a baseball bat was connecting with my head every second. Adams babbling was terrifyingly disturbing. And Tex...hanging there. Eyes rolled back into his skull. I couldnt imagine the hell he began to feel. At this point I wondered what awaited my fate. The clapping stopped abruptly.
“Oh...Austin...yes, well if you want to know what fate awaits you just shut your eyes. Shut your eyes and quietly count back from 3.” the creature said...was he reading my mind?
Suddenly the urge to close my eyes overtook me. Almost as if I had no choice, I began counting down. 3….2….1….
Everything went black. I wasn't sure if i was alive or dead...or somewhere in between. I saw nothing but black for what felt like a lifetime. And in an instant...I heard that same shrill scream. Only this time I could not cover my ears. I couldn’t feel my body but I felt an unimaginable amount of pain. As the scream grew to its peak, I slammed my eyes open. Trying to catch my breath.
I was back in the car...we were all back in the car. The engine was on. Shitty ac blasting. The others were still out. I sat up in my seat. Not wanting to move too suddenly. The sun was beating down on us. I looked over at the time on the dash…July 28th 4:34 pm. I reached into my shirt pocket and I found several vouchers for the MGM hotels in Vegas along with $300 dollars. I also found a card that simply read “Hibou Timeshare Corp. would like to thank you for a bit of your time”
The boys came too. All feeling rather groggy.
“We all fell asleep huh?” Adam laughed. “We here?”
They didn't remember a thing. Not one thing. Not going in...not the reception area...not the freaky timeshare presentation...not one bit. I lied...i told them that while they were sound asleep, we arrived a little earlier than expected. The presenter had an emergency and left our vouchers at the front desk and apologized profusely.
“Wow, what a gentleman!” Tex laughed. “We definitely owe it to him to sit through another timeshare, probono.” Larry added.
I think it's safe to say that I will not be returning to this or any other timeshare. As I drove away I could see the building disappear in the rear view mirror.
So if you’re traveling deep within the southwest of the United States and hear an ad for a free vacation that's too good to be true...do yourself a favor..turn off the radio, call into work and ask for some overtime..because nothing is ever given for free.