Trem is sort of my secret obsession.
Not for lack of trying; I’ve shared the game with all of my real-world face-friends and they each gave me a reason why they didn’t like it (“Everything’s so FAST!” “This isn’t as shiny as Blops 2 and therefor unplayable.” “It's cool and all. I just have terrible taste in games and, coincidentally, rather inadequate genitals,” etc.)
I soon realized that if I wanted to share my love of Tremulous with people, you guys were my best bet. Now, even though I rarely have time to even play Trem these days, I’ll still find myself pondering possible base locations and regularly checking the Tremulous.net forums just to see what’s up (also, partly because I’m worried the game is going to vanish if I don’t periodically check in.)
Anyway, the point is:
I’m thinking about writing a Tremulous Creepypasta.
For those who don’t know; a “creepypasta” is essentially a short story that is usually told in some type of internet format (i.e. forum thread, chat-client transcript, etc.) The story's main purpose is to disturb the reader by taking everyday concepts that we all deal with (video-games, cartoons, spy-wear, etc.) and turning them against the main character. One of the most popular off-shoots of the genre is video game-related creepypastas.
What makes Trem such a great candidate is that, even though it’s a real game, not a lot of people have heard of it. Meaning that anyone who reads the Trem creepypasta will probably Google the game just too see if it’s actually real. And after they end up here, they’ll (hopefully) want to try it out for themselves.
And if these new-comers do show up and it's obvious they were led here by the creepypasta story, maybe certain forum-members in on the joke could even start sending them nonsensical PMs about "not asking the devs anything regarding the programmer responsible for designing the Basilik alien-class and who suddenly vanished while 1.1 was still in development."
Unless of course, they want to be threatened with violence and banned from Trem for life. Same goes for not mentioning a player named "Basidick" (guess what class is his favorite...) who randomly shows up on the US1 server and seems impossible to avoid. His k/d is 0/0 because he never actually attacks anyway. Those who say they've personally encountered Basidick all claim to experience the strange events:
1.) He came seemingly out of nowhere, as if was somehow able to clip through walls.
2.) Like a cat toying with a dying mouse, Basidick likes to screw with his victims, suddenly letting them free only to then head-hop onto the escaping human just as they start to sprint away.
What's also kind of strange is that Basidick never talks, not even in response to team-chat. And his ping is always something like "7".
But where things get truly creepy is what happens if you're unable to escape after several rounds of Basidick's cat-and-mouse, apparently he will start to drag the human player away (an ability we're all pretty certain the basilisk class does not, and probably shoucld not, have.)
One person who experience this strange glitch or hack or whatever said he had heard of Basidick and was curious enough about the whole strange phenomenon that he decide to not even try and escape when Basidick made his move.
The map was Tremor and, after dragging this unnamed player down into the lower basement area, Basidick brought him to a section of wall that looked no different from the rest of the basement area. Basidick released it's grip on the human and only then, standing at just the right position and squinting into the darkness between several large pipes, he finally spotted what Basidick had been leading him to...
The unnamed player's (real-life) body was found the next morning, at his computer desk, one eye completely removed from it's socket and a metal potato peeler lodged in the other.
That's just an intro snippet to give you a general idea of what I'm thinking. I have more ideas on the over-all concept of the story but I’ll save those for my reply. First, I’d like to hear what you guys have to say on the subject.
If you’re familiar with the kind of video-game creepypastas that I’m talking about and have any suggestions or ideas about where we could take the story, I’d love to hear them.
