Hello Peas! The Dark Dimension has officially ended. We are saying farewell to this hunt, and thanks to everyone who made this hunt possible. On October 6th, MadPea presented you with the Dark Dimension hunt, which came after a long Halloween Writing Contest Search. The Winner was Telestoi Weissmann. Once again Congratulations.
Many of you began your investigations on the day of, and became our top 5 first hunters to finish, Congratulations as well. At some point we all began our investigations by talking to the different NPCs throughout the town. This hunt kept many of us busy, busy, busy. It took some people longer than others, but whether alone or in the company of friends, you investigated the strange occurrences on Death Row Island. Thank you Jaimy Hancroft!
In the end, we prevailed and banished those demons.
We'd like to thank you all who participated. This was a challenging hunt! We look forward in seeing you very soon. We have a lot of things planned which include our next MadPea hunt!
We have included in this post a special treat, please read Telestoi Weissmann's winning story.
The Lost and the Damned
by Telestoi Weissmann (Second Life username)
When the Blue Sky Corporation bought the ruined prison complex grounds and started to build a theme park and shopping center complex, it had at first seemed like a slam dunk, a buckets of money in the shareholder's pockets idea. Cheap land, subsidized taxes, and the new highways brought the people of two cities right to the front door. Money should have been pouring into the corp coffers, bonuses and promotions for everybody.
But, then the troubles started. Construction workers were injured in mysterious accidents - saying they were pushed, or saw something black that made them fall, or crush a hand, or lose an eye. Then, after a rash of accidents, a construction worker would vanish without a trace from one of the more isolated corners of the site. The accidents would end for a few days, then the cycle would start again, with uglier accidents each time, and stranger vanishings.
As the accidents and vanishings increased these tough men in iron toed boots started refusing to spend an hour more on the site. First one company then another took on the job - and quit, preferring to pay the cancellation fee rather than continue. Each new contractor wanted more and more money as word got out that it was a cursed jobsite - and more workers ended up mangled and screaming in ways that just did not make sense, or strangely much worse, just disappeared as if they had never been.
Massively overbudget, the complex finally started to come online, and the major stores and boutiques started to fill with fine clothes and luxury items. Workers were hired, happy to find jobs in such an upscale, but uniquely interesting place. The tourism and entertainment staffs opened the clubs and the doors and the guided tours.
The day after the Grand Opening a strange new type of terror came to Death Row Island, and the horrible injuries and sporadic vanishings of the construction workers seemed like the good old days in comparison.
The first reports were of more and more disappearances. Store managers, shopgirls, delivery drivers - vanishing without a trace, computers still on their desktops with their last email half written, trucks left running at the delivery docks, a store suddenly empty, the once perfectly reliable salesgirl not there, and never returned home, and not seen again.
Whatever was causing the vanishings had gotten better at it, and was doing them more quickly.
Workers whispered in the lunchrooms, managers worried at their desks, and the bosses at corporate headquarters made angry phone calls about books dripping in red ink. Then, for the first time, someone saw one of the "vanishings".
From the biggest shop at the top of the hill, it’s brand new manager (a replacement for one who had left claiming mental disturbance and nervous breakdown) was watching out the window, thinking about how to get his sudden responsibility out of it's ugly financial mess, and from there he saw a kind of cloud of dust, a growing vortex of dirty smoke and dark shapes and an ugly yellow light, swirl into existence a hundred yards away from his office. It started as a wisp, then congealed in seconds into a violently slashing and flashing mass three times the height of a tall man..
As if it were alive, it attacked the neighboring shop below, slamming aside the heavy steel and glass front doors like tissue, pulling itself inside the store like an octopus. Flashes of yellow and red lit it up for a few seconds. Then, it was gone. Not faded away, just not there. As if it had never been there at all.
And so was the manager of that store. This time the security cams, which had been increased in number when the disappearances started, caught a view. The cloud had shot a spear of filthy black and gray vapor into the managers mouth the instant it entered - then the bugeyed victim walked into the vortex, his body operated like a jerky puppet, unable to scream, but with a face so distorted with pain and terror that none who watched that video doubted that they were seeing someone who was inwardly wishing, praying, screaming for the agony to stop..
He walked into the vortex - and the vortex “sucked” itself into nonexistence, taking the manager with it. Not a thing in the store was left disturbed, despite the violent dirtiness of the thing, not a spot of dirt, not a tag on a dress, not a sign that anything had happened there at all.
Now they knew how the disappearances happened. But why? And how? And how could they be stopped?
