Secret Santa 2 - Electric Santaloo

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Re: Secret Santa 2 - Electric Santaloo

Postby DinoVader » Thu Dec 25, 2014 12:34 am

I got an amazing gift. It's big and long and it was incredibly satisfying.

Image

But it really was a wonderful gift. I got a really big text adventure from a wonderful Santa who I somehow managed to figure out several days before I got my present because I'm annoying like that. They have been thanked repeatedly, but they deserve more credit, so you should all read it and proclaim how wonderful they are or I'll shiv you in the face:

http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... salamander
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Re: Secret Santa 2 - Electric Santaloo

Postby JamishT » Thu Dec 25, 2014 7:37 am

I got a wonderful little limerick, which warmed my heart!

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Thank you, person. It made me smile.
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Re: Secret Santa 2 - Electric Santaloo

Postby sunglasses » Thu Dec 25, 2014 4:10 pm

This is awesome. I got an amazing script. Someone really put a lot of time into it!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w_C ... 47Tug/edit

I giggled. I cried. I shivered in horror.

I realized that what I made was small potatoes in comparison.
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Re: Secret Santa 2 - Electric Santaloo

Postby 52xMax » Thu Dec 25, 2014 6:45 pm

I got a coupon!
(no points on guessing who it's from)

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Re: Secret Santa 2 - Electric Santaloo

Postby Kate » Thu Dec 25, 2014 9:16 pm

I received this amazing poem! Thank you Santa! ...also I would totally invite you all over.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through TCS,
Not an irregular posted; the forum was commentless.

Anthropomorphized animals slumbered, in beds and in dens,
While monsters and furniture maintained a grim silence.
There were no katzagiggles or strange news from a bear;
No luscious recipes, nor bons mots, from a chair.
There were no feline attacks with titanium teeth,
Nor even one pismire assembling a wreath.
No carps were now harping, nor were there harps carping,
An entity had wrinkled time and was busy larping.
The classy rock giant was silent as stone,
And the dragon made no quiz, no, not even one.
No ambiguous entity roamed the dark night,
And Sca… [Editor’s note: Don’t say it. All right?]
An ebon pisces with his brethren did sleep,
And no baa was baa’d from a half-man or half-sheep.
A once-thought raccoon thing was in a forest, just hiding.
Mecha-, real, or Baidu—no spider was spiding.

This silence was maddening, dull and frustrating;
Still, it was winter, time for hibernating.
Nature is a mother, but Mother knows best.
Perhaps monsters and chairs, too, needed their rest.

What of the people, though, folks without any schtick?
Where were they now? Were they all out sick?
Was a model-enthusiast busily modeling?
Was a Mandarin at home, in pyjamas, dawdling?
Why wouldn’t an average moderator mod?
Why did that one fellow leave blehs all un-blah’d?
Perhaps one T was busy duct-taping his boots,
While another T’d recently gone back to his roots.
A typical guy was atypically silent,
And not even the chief derriere left a comment!
An opiate nun muttered not one line of speech;
Perhaps she and her continent’d gone to the beach.
Why did el grande bandito narrate no crimes?
Why was the power dialed down so many times?

Kate stared and she stared at the active topics screen.
All the threads were inactive. Not one new post was seen.
So she bitterly said, as she thumped her machine,
“This is the deadest the section’s ever been.”

Suddenly, a noise sounded, drawing near from afar,
Until outside her window, there pulled up a small car.
From the car stepped a dread mass, larger than ever dreamed.
It was shrouded in black, and in one hand, something gleamed.
Kate steadily pondered this dread shade of hell.
And she comforted herself that she’d lived her life well.
But then she realized that the shape was not as she’d thought.
The grim specter was none other than Majestic-12 bot.

“Kate,” the bot rumbled, “All those whom you’ve sought
Cannot be found online today. For I’ve brought
You a Christmas gift: ‘tis the greatest gift ever.”

Then it stepped to the car, and it pulled a small lever.
Out from one door, a vast horde tumbled like clowns,
All of them dressed in tuxedos and gowns.
It was all of the members, both those present and past,
And one of them shouted, “Party! Have a blast!”
Night and day they all partied, reveled and cavorted,
Played co-ops and punned. (Some just growled, hissed or snorted.)

Not until Boxing Day morning did the party depart
To go back to posting about movies and art.
The morning was quiet, silent as a mouse.
Yawning, Kate shuffled back into her house,
And she gazed in bemusement at a miserable mess:
A chaos of wreckage, left by TCS.
For though they’d partied heartier than ever’d been seen,
Not one single commenter had stayed to help clean.

So if you’re all alone on this holiday.
Don’t wish for company. It’s better this way.
Visit the site. View the pics. Read the words,
But don’t invite us over. Sometimes we’re just bastards.
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Re: Secret Santa 2 - Electric Santaloo

Postby Edgar Cabrera » Sun Dec 28, 2014 3:03 am

Holy ish!!! This is everything I could've ever asked for!!!

http://towncalledcrow.com/secret-santa.html
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Re: Secret Santa 2 - Electric Santaloo

Postby Jack Road » Sun Dec 28, 2014 9:30 am

Image

Image

I love everything about this :D
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Re: Secret Santa 2 - Electric Santaloo

Postby AboveGL » Fri Jan 02, 2015 1:38 am

Please excuse the tardiness, I've been preoccupied and.. well, lazy. I love everything about this. WHoever wrote this, thanks for taking the time! <3

It's a short story based on my character Jessie Jane from the Western mafia:

Spoiler: show
Above Steampunk Skies

Life in the farm wasn't easy for a girl. Not for Jessie Jane, from the buffalo farm outside Edwood. Rising up before the sun to milk the cattle, collecting eggs, feeding the dogs, making breakfast for her dad, checking the perimeter for any predators, as well as riding the wagon into town every other day to sell her goods at the inn or in the market, which implied dodging stray bullets from the early gunfights and duels. All of that, plus making it back in time to make her father breakfast. And taking care of the sick old man was a full time job in and of itself. To make matters worse, she had to deal with her eyesight problem, and the only damn doctor in town had the nasty habit of working in secrecy under the veil of the night, when she had to stay put in case bandits attacked, as they often did. Still, Jessie managed to pull it together and fulfilling all her duties while remaining a proper lady.

Today, however, Jessie had reasons to be more upbeat than usual, for it was Christmas day. Not that there was anything particularly special about that date, not in that god forsaken town, or on the vast heathen piece of land known as Liefgard, where the only official holiday was in commemoration of the great adventurer for whom the continent was named, which was still a few months away. And although her mom the seamstress had tried to raise her with the traditional values of her ancestors from the motherland, her father's stubbornness and mistrust for any forms of authority, earthly and celestial, had taken stronger roots, so she was not very interested in spiritual matters. Nonetheless, there was something special about Christmas. Mainly the fact that banks, markets and most establishments in town kept on the tradition of drinking all night and sleeping in late, so she was allowed to do the same.

Unfortunately for her, Jessie had not slept well that night despite taking every precaution, including setting up the traps for intruders, doubling the sedative dose for her dad to avoid one of his episodes, and even programming the mechanical rooster to beat up the organic rooster into submission so it would not wake her up. She had been having weird dreams lately, which she had initially attributed to stress, but were growing in frequency and in the level of disturbance it produced in her psyche.

In the beginning she would have this one recurring dream only every other month, and that was tolerable, okay even. Then the dreams started to happen a couple of times a month and she got worried, but still thought nothing of it, until it began occurring almost every week, though she tried hiding it from her father in order not to upset him. The doctor made her a prescription for some new drug which seemed to work for a while, and coupled with her all-nighters looking up for bandits and her early morning runs, the problem seemed to disappear for a while. Until it came back with a vengeance.

The strange thing is that she knew these were no ordinary nightmares. She had this feeling that it was more of a premonition, or at the very least, an omen of things to come, which only made things worse.

In her dreams, Jessie found herself in an indescribable, unfamiliar location, which also happened to change with every episode, and yet remained the same. Her first instinct was running away, as if someone, or something, was after her. She could never turn her back to see what she was running from, but in the dreams she sensed there was something chasing her; something not good, and the second she stopped to catch her breath, that something would catch up on her. She also knew that trying to fight off this thing would do her no good, neither will trying to reason or bargaining with it would work, for whatever this creature was, it was focused in one thing and one thing only, and that was getting her.

So she kept running, even though her legs seemed like they were about to give up at any moment, but she would not stop for she had no say and no choice. There was something predatory and savage about her pursuer, with the determination of someone with a score to settle. She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was she had done, but in the dream, Jessie knew she was, if not solely responsible for its existence, she had been the catalyzer, for setting in motion something that put her on that path. And now the path was about to end, as the thing behind her kept gaining on her, and she knew that whatever it had in mind for her was not going to be anything nice.

So rather than waking up refreshed that morning, she was dealing with shivers and night terror, which developed into an early morning headache. As the dreams became more frequent they also began to be more upsetting, to the point they were taking a toll on her sanity. Growing up in a place infamous for the many bloodsheds and stories about ghosts and curses, Jessie had heard that living there could make a number on people's sanity. She just never imagined herself to become one of those driven mad. At least not by dreams of ghosts, or by old lore. If anything, she thought that it was Edwood itself which pulled a number on the few good people trying to live among the chaos and violence.

Jessie knew she needed to get out of that place and move in to a more peaceful location. She wished she could be in Saint Louis once again, by the calm stream of the Mississippi. Her last visit there had been a couple years ago, when her mother still lived, but she had made good friends there, and people didn't seem so intent on killing each other over livestock or a piece of metal. Even the slaves seemed to be content working in the mills, and singing songs while picking barley on the fields. And all the girls were always properly dressed and never had any need to shovel buffalo shit. Life in the farm wasn't that bad most days, and she even had some nice dresses from her mother, and a few she had made herself to wear on Sundays and special occasions, but nothing she ever did seemed as fancy as the good life in the south. Much better than living outside a town in the middle of nowhere.

As she laid in bed, thinking of a luxurious life with ballrooms and theater plays, waiting for the headache to go away, a knock on the door sent her back to reality. She was not expecting visitors, and most of the people she knew in town were probably either passed out, hung-over or still drunk from the unofficial but mandatory Christmas boozapallooza at the Alibi cantina. "Package for Ms. Jessie Jane", a blonde twenty something wearing a post office uniform said. "Sign here" she continued as she delivered a big round box. "There's also a singing telegram attached to it", and as she played the first note on her tuning whistle, in came jumping from the roof the mechanical rooster, ready to lie a smackdown on any sources of music as it had been programmed to do. Seeing as Jessie had no plans to stop it, the telegram girl had to cut her visit short and ran away leaving the piece of paper behind.

Jessie was still wondering who could have sent her that box, which looked like something rich people used to send gifts to each other and looked so out of place in her humble country house. She was hesitant to open it, for it might have fell off a wagon and was supposed to go to someone with her same name in either San Francisco or New Amsterdam, and she didn't feel like paying for repackaging once the folks at the post office realized their mistake.

After some thinking, she decided to at least take a look at the telegram. It was an ordinary piece of paper from the local office, and the first part of the message was a generic Christmas carol. Not that she or anyone else in town liked singing telegrams, but the practice was pretty standard. It was the sign below which read:

"Merry Christmas, jolly rancher. Yes, this is for you. You were on the nice list. I checked it twice."

That message stroke her as peculiar, but the tone of it also resulted familiar.

With even more questions than before, Jessie thought she might as well open the package and be done with it, but she had a feeling something was off. She checked up on her dad, and once she was reassured he was still under the sedatives from the night before, she felt comfortable enough on her privacy. Inside the box there was the most beautiful dress Jessie had ever seen, complimented with a matching parasol, and even a set of opera glasses. There was also a further note inside the package that said:

"I saw this in Paris and thought of you, Jessie. It's been a while since we last saw each other, dear, so I don't know if I got you the right size, but I'm sure you will tailor it to your needs.

Sending you my love, and kindest of regards,
G.D."

There were many things Jessie Jane was not sure about in this life, like how zeppelins flied, or how the local doctor could sometimes seem to bring up people from the dead but he couldn't cure the common cold. One thing she was definitely sure about was that she did not know anyone from Paris. She probably didn't know anyone who had ever been in Paris, or anywhere else in the old continent. With the exception of that trip to St. Louis, she had never even been out of town... and that's when Jessie started to realize what was going on.

As her astigmatism kicked in, she grabbed the opera glasses inside the box to take a closer look at the note. Neither the package nor the telegram identified who the sender was, but Jessie put the puzzle pieces together as to his identity. Or rather, her identity. G.D. were not the initials of a proper name in the same way, but rather a moniker, for someone she had met once and who also had a moniker for her: the "jolly rancher" the telegram spoke of, or failed to sing off before it was spooked. G.D. had to be someone with the resources to grab an airship to Paris on a whim and buy a fancy dress, but also the smarts and ambition to pull off a spy mission in Europe for a confederate general without raising the slightest of suspicions. The general's daughter.

In her overalls and pigtails, Jessie might not have looked like much, and nobody thought much of her either, but she had a few secrets of her own, and knew way more things about the world at large than people gave her credit for, and that was probably the best weapon in her arsenal. Once she knew what was going on, Jessie knew exactly what to look for. So after a minute or two of fidgeting with the opera glasses she figured out there was more to that gadget than it looked at first sight, Mainly, cleverly concealed lenses inside it that allowed the user to discern hidden patterns, like those drawn all over the insides of the gift box, containing detailed instructions on how to modify that dress so it would unfold into a high tech paraglider, which no doubt would come in handy for the mission.

There was yet another message hidden not in the package, but on the telegram itself. Indicating that someone else in town knew her little secret. Finally all the pieces were coming together. Her old friend Kim had really planned this through, and soon she'd be in town with an advanced cavalry unit to raid up Montezuma's gold wherever it was hidden, and perhaps lead an invasion in town. It made sense that the General would not send a battalion and cause an incident, especially with the Natives and the Republicans being in such close proximity. But that gold would be key to financing a full scale war on all the other factions in the continent. For now, though, a covert team would suffice.

Miss Jessie Jane had no idea what things would await for her in the upcoming weeks or months, but she had just been recruited as a member of an elite rogue cavalry unit, for a vague yet menacing government agency. Life in the farm was not easy for a girl, and sometimes it could also get quite boring. But today it was Christmas day, and as she made a reconnaissance flight above ground level over the clouded skies of Edwood, during those moments she soared with no worries in the world, she didn't think about wars or nightmares about being chased. She was free, and life was good.
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