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You know why I'm asking.
What was he doing in Russia? He mentioned a secret mission, and he was searching for someone. Who could it be?
(I kind of hoped he'd leave an echo. )

Come to think of it, what was he doing in a place like that? Too bad the only people who could answer that one were either refictionalized or silenced by an Elder God, huh?

It's plausible that...no. Possible. Not plausible.

Well what I mean is...if you can find any old Pheeble chats...who knows what they were talking about? You'd have to get preeeeetty lucky, though. Who knows if they ever even mentioned it?

Oh come on, now you're just getting his hopes up. What are the chances of that?

Very small, assuredly.

You're right. What was I thinking?

I don't know, Dana. I really, really, don't know =/

Steinitz wrote:You are to go to Russia to get in personal contact with an influential individual there. He has been skeptical of the cabal so far, but you did not tarnish your image in his eyes with letter-writing, and so forth...

So, what was the intention? Have a friendly chat over a bottle of rum? Kill me, steal my password from the cookies and impersonate me? Take me hostage?

"Influential individual". Heh. ^__^

Well, the suggestion that was being made was that Long John never gave you a reason to distrust him, so the Cabal could have used you to rally more support if you could be convinced to join.

Of course, it helps if LJS has an address...

So, wait, could he have been more successful if we/Dryu had been more forceful about helping him find what he was looking for? Or was he doomed to not-finding Dryu because he, y'know, logged out before the Cabal could give him specifics? Because I'm pretty sure if he'd given him a private means of communication, Dryu would have given LJS his address.

The Cabal never had the specifics, and never intended for LJS to actually GO to Russia. They wanted him to like...email the mods, and get them on the Cabal's side. LJS going to Russia was actually not their plan, but a result of LJS's enthusiasm. His lack of preparation was...entirely his own fault.

That said, we did think about how to get him to interact once we got there. We realized that we would need him for the Sherlock/Moriarty story, though, and had to pull him out of Russia in order to play his part in that.

We tried to figure out an interaction we could pull off in Russia. Briefly, we considered if there was any way we could use Val's knowledge of Russian to design a puzzle only you could have solved.

I contemplated putting a Russian layer into the recently-solved cryptopuzzle (a substitution cipher with more than 26 letters--you would have eventually figured it out) but by the time the puzzle was ready, it was too late in the game. And once the game was over, I just wanted to push that puzzle out the door as quickly as possible.

In the end, the Witch's brief trip to Brazil, her stay in Mexico, and LJS's sojourn to Russia were homages to locales that were otherwise not used in the story, but were home to some of our players. They were intended to make up for things we can't change about Layar availability, or where we live affecting where we can make drops. We figured the next best thing was to acknowledge other countries' existence.

Tom wrote:In the end, the Witch's brief trip to Brazil, her stay in Mexico, and LJS's sojourn to Russia were homages to locales that were otherwise not used in the story, but were home to some of our players. They were intended to make up for things we can't change about Layar availability, or where we live affecting where we can make drops. We figured the next best thing was to acknowledge other countries' existence.

You were right.

At least on my opinion, it was a really good nod to us, considering all the limitations from Layar and physical reach. I remember I briefly flipped out due to the "Americans can't differentiate portuguese from spanish" stereotype and thought that she was actually still in Brazil before reading the post a second time.

Just a note that I didn't think you guys would be like that, just that the witch might or might not be played as such. And a fun fact: after that during our search for the symbols in the Cthulhu Sparking App I was the one to mistake Italian for Spanish.

...There was Italian on that app?

No, it was just that looking for the source of the symbols, we found the bottom right one in an Italian page, I saw Blur online and asked him if he could translate it, as I don't know spanish and mistook it to be that. xD

Pixelmage wrote:No, it was just that looking for the source of the symbols, we found the bottom right one in an Italian page, I saw Blur online and asked him if he could translate it, as I don't know spanish and mistook it to be that. xD

If it helps any, Adell said that if this were NOT real then the symbols would be mostly arbitary and picked at random so there's no shame in getting s wee bit confused about languages, Pix

Also, as Qara pointed out to me in chat, Pratchett always said that 'symbols mean whatever you want them to mean'. So our case, the symbols meanings might as well have all been variations on ' Dear Cthulhu, kindly f**k right off, signed the Metaguards.' Whatever the case, they served their purpose very well

Tom wrote:We tried to figure out an interaction we could pull off in Russia. Briefly, we considered if there was any way we could use Val's knowledge of Russian to design a puzzle only you could have solved.

Aaaaw, that's so nice of you!

We honestly felt bad that we couldn't do more than a shout-out for you (and several others). Part of the process of such a game is the frustrating realization that resources limit the number of cool things you can do for players. The most I can do is offer my heartfelt apology for that.

Pixelmage wrote:No, it was just that looking for the source of the symbols, we found the bottom right one in an Italian page, I saw Blur online and asked him if he could translate it, as I don't know spanish and mistook it to be that. xD

If it makes you feel better, Witch, I mistook that same Italian for Portuguese, on the basis of "it looks like Spanish but isn't because I can't read it." When you asked for a translation, I figured by process of elimination it was probably Italian, and quickly backtracked.

Pixelmage wrote:At least on my opinion, it was a really good nod to us, considering all the limitations from Layar and physical reach. I remember I briefly flipped out due to the "Americans can't differentiate portuguese from spanish" stereotype and thought that she was actually still in Brazil before reading the post a second time.

My best friend is Brazilian (from São Paulo, actually) and would have had my hide if I thought Brazilians were supposed to speak Spanish.

Nice.

Though it's like I said, I didn't actually think you guys would think that. It's just that it's a very widespread idea, at least here (and a quite demeaning one, to be honest ) so I thought that the Witch could be played as that for comedic value or something. But in the end, I'm glad it was not the case.

And hindsight shows it was stupid to think you guys would write a character like that, you've been so awesome all the time that I should have realized more quickly that you'd not do that.

Pixelmage wrote:Nice.

Though it's like I said, I didn't actually think you guys would think that. It's just that it's a very widespread idea, at least here (and a quite demeaning one, to be honest ) so I thought that the Witch could be played as that for comedic value or something. But in the end, I'm glad it was not the case.

And hindsight shows it was stupid to think you guys would write a character like that, you've been so awesome all the time that I should have realized more quickly that you'd not do that.

Bloody Treaty of Tortedesillas.

Pixelmage wrote:No, it was just that looking for the source of the symbols, we found the bottom right one in an Italian page, I saw Blur online and asked him if he could translate it, as I don't know spanish and mistook it to be that. xD

Oh, okay, makes sense.