PRIVATE MESSAGES
From: Guest1007443
To: Binary_Arcana
Subject: Ready to Move
The Pale Regiment is finally creeping around the Glens. It’s mostly small scouting teams who are mapping the place and checking for movement. They’re testing everything before they commit real numbers.
My people can handle the scouts. As long as your info about their supply lines is solid, we should be able to bloody them before they realize what’s happening. Your information is solid, right? Because I gotta tell you, I really don’t like surprises unless I'm the one handing them out.
From: Binary_Arcana
To: Guest1007443
Subject: Re: Ready to Move
My information is always good. You gave me the geography of your particular game and I gave you the Pale Regiment’s operational habits. That was the deal.
Since we’re talking about deals, let me ask you something. Why are you still coming to me for this? Why me specifically?
From: Guest1007443
To: Binary_Arcana
Subject: ?
What kind of question is that? Have you forgotten our agreement already? I told you that we’re partners. That little piss-ant screwed us both over. You wanna ruin his story, I wanna settle accounts. It’s a simple arrangement and I thought we understood each other.
From: Binary_Arcana
To: Guest1007443
Subject: Cut the shit
Don’t play dumb with me. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The articles have dropped and suddenly you’re some kind of internet cryptid celebrity. You got what you wanted.
From: Guest1007443
To: Binary_Arcana
Subject: Re: Cut the shit
I have no clue what article you’re talking about.
From: Binary_Arcana
To: Guest1007443
Subject: Re: Re: Cut the shit
[“Why the Fracture-verse is Suddenly Everywhere Again”]
There. Read it.
There are dozens more like it now. Everyone’s talking about “Z3ke” and the forum and the fanfic that resurrected a dead franchise. You’re everywhere now. Hundreds of people have come back and are posting theories again. The lore channels are back and people are digging through decade-old assets. You’ve got tourists flooding the boards every hour asking where to start.
They’re literally calling you the reason the fandom came back. So explain something to me. Why are you still coming to me for ideas for your fanfic when you’ve got an entire internet fandom doing unpaid brainstorming for you?
From: Guest1007443
To: Binary_Arcana
Subject: Couple things
Couple things here. First, I can’t read the articles because, like I already told you, I can’t open websites outside the forum.
Second, I ain’t Zeke. I thought I made that pretty clear already. Hell, I figured the kidnapping thing would’ve tipped you off. You don’t usually kidnap yourself unless you’ve got serious self-esteem issues. Trust me, that little bastard’s got problems, but not that one.
From: Binary_Arcana
To: Guest1007443
Subject: Re: Couple things
Right. I’m sure that was all part of the immersive storytelling experience too.
From: Guest1007443
To: Binary_Arcana
Subject: What is up with you?
You’re getting weirdly hostile all of a sudden. Aren’t we both getting what we want here? You feed me information. I feed you opportunities to make his life worse. As far as I can tell, this arrangement was working out just fine.
From: Binary_Arcana
To: Guest1007443
Subject: Re: What is up with you?
I’m “weirdly hostile” because I’m starting to realize what this is. You’re pretending to not be Zeke so you can crowdsource ideas from your fanfic from me, and I get nothing out of it.
You’re mining the forum for content. You get free theories and ideas to implement in your fanfic because you’re running out of creative juices. Everybody’s dumb enough to hand it to you because they think they’re participating in something larger than them.
Answer the question I asked. Why keep coming back to me? You’ve got thousands of people hanging on your every update. Why bother talking to the one guy everyone on this forum hates?
Whenever I post now, people either tell me to shut the hell up or accuse me of trying to get Zeke killed. So what exactly do I get out of helping you?
From: Guest1007443
To: Binary_Arcana
Subject: What you get
You get the same thing I promised from the start. You get to ruin Zeke’s story. And you get to matter.
Most people go their whole lives without leaving a mark on anything. Nobody remembers them. Nobody listens to them. Nobody gives a damn what they think.
Now, every time that boy changes directions, every time he walks into another disaster, and every time he gets the shit kicked out of him, little pieces of that belong to you.
That’s why you’re pissed, isn’t it? You think that I’m Zeke and you still want to matter so you lick my bootheels and you do what I tell you and you offer yourself up like a two-penny whore. All on the off-hand chance that you can feel like you actually matter. All on the chance that you can shape the one thing that this forum - which you have devoted your life to - has decided is important.
If you were really mad about our little arrangement, you wouldn’t be giving me info. You would have told me to fuck off as soon as I messaged you. But you’re not going to do that. You’re going to keep feeding me information, and I’m going to use that information to finally put Zeke in the ground. And you get to feel good about yourself.
***
VantaBlackout
Now that the Janus Storm is dead (as well as the Second Fracture) and assuming that Zeke survived and isn’t currently bleeding out in a ditch somewhere, I think we need to ask the obvious question. Who’s the next Primary?
Frontiers feels done. There’s still loose ends everywhere, but it feels like Zeke’s already uncovered all the biggest secrets the game has to offer. Anything more, we can always just use the Witness Chambers to check for ourselves.
Think about everything that he’s already found and done. He found the Witness Chambers chair and plugged Patch into it. He went inside the Janus Storm pod and found the history of the Fracture as well as a Second Fracture. He killed both the pod and the Janus Storm and doomed the entire Deadlands to a slow death.
Every faction in the region now either hates him, fears him, wants to use him, or wants to kill him. So what’s even left for him to do in Frontiers? At this point, he should probably move to another region and start uncovering lore there.
Who is the next Primary? And where should Zeke go next?
Maeve&Akane
Emberveil is the obvious answer. We’ve spent years arguing about how magic actually works in that setting, and you just know that Zeke is going to “accidentally” uncover some horrifying truth about it within the first two weeks.
I want to see him poking around ritual magic, dream systems, the Lantern Saints, and everything to do with vampires. Frontiers gave us biological horror, which I’m not really a big fan of. Emberveil would give us metaphysical horror which would be amazeballs.
SignalLoss
Please no. The last thing that Emberveil needs is Zeke stumbling into some ancient blood ritual while he is blasting Kansas from his guitar. I liked Supernatural just as much as the next guy…but you know if he heads to Emberveil that’s what it’s going to turn into.
BobaFettaCheese
If we’re talking about games, he’s got to go to Null Protocol. It’s the best game in the franchise and anyone who says differently is wrong and dumb and can fight me.
It had everything. There were corporate wars, weird timeline corruption, hypercapitalist megacities, and like six different hidden conspiracies buried in item descriptions. The amount of lore that still hasn’t been uncovered is absolutely ridiculous. Let’s sic Zeke on it.
He would uncover lore AND he’d find the Rank 11 stuff and discover the meaning behind its Fracture.
CigaretteBurns
You’re all insane if you’re thinking Zeke should be immediately jetting off to another region. The guy is exhausted. Also, you’re all forgetting the pattern that he’s established for his fic.
Zeke does something catastrophically stupid that he barely survives. He crawls back to the Roaring Drake and updates us and drinks himself unconscious. Then he waits for everything to cool down while building up for the next terrible decision.
That’s the whole structure to his fanfic. The MIZ is basically his home base at this point, and he should return to it.
Kite-and-Key
| And where should Zeke go next? |
Frontiers still has so much stuff to explore though. It’s not like killing the Second Fracture completed the map. The Deadlands are MORE dangerous now than ever before.
That means more anomalies, more ecosystem collapse, more weird Fracture behavior, and more weird everything else. Zeke should stay and check it all out.
AnywayHeresWonderwall
| The guy is exhausted. |
Before he goes and does anything else, he should regroup, restock, rebuild, reconnect with Patch.
I agree that The MIZ is going to be dangerous. But everywhere he goes is going to be dangerous now. He shouldn’t just sprint to the next big thing. He should take five minutes to recover and relax first.
Judas_Cradle
| The MIZ is basically his home base at this point. |
Uh…are you forgetting the whole kidnapping thing that started all this? Remember him getting jumped by a bunch of randos who hauled him off to the Black Teeth? That story thread still hasn’t resolved itself.
Now you add on the fact he pissed off the Black Teeth by breaking their Chapel Pit, he pissed off the Shard Choir by breaking their storm god, and he pissed off the kidnappers by escaping. You just know that everyone is going to be putting bounties out on him.
He’s become internet famous for real now, and the second he walks back into The MIZ every gang is going to be hunting him.
StoryLeech
^Judas
The Storm dying is going to completely mess up the region and everyone is going to be blaming him. Which…is kind of fair. He did break it. What exactly is left for him to do in The MIZ?
SableDreams
| Which…is kind of fair. He did break it. |
BECAUSE WE TOLD HIM TO!!!
Man. Y’all are dicks for putting all the consequences on him. ReCoil sent him off to kill the Deadlands and he did it and now you all want to just let him sit with that.
You know what you all are? You’re mob wives. You look down on Zeke and his ways, but you’re perfectly happy with wearing the mink coat that falls off the back of the truck.
I really wish I could find the Modern Family scene that the quote is from but YouTube is being a dick about it. So just imagine it instead.
ClickWhirr
You all just want him leaving Frontiers because it’s becoming depressing as hell. Fair. But from a narrative standpoint, going back to The MIZ makes the most sense first.
Patch is there. The Roaring Drake is there. Most of his contacts are there. If the Deadlands really is going to be destabilizing, The MIZ is where everyone is going to be fleeing towards.
That means there’s going to be refugee problems, faction wars, resource shortages, and plenty of opportunists. That’s story fuel is what it is.
CrushDaddyXx
Everyone who didn’t say The Shatterlands is wrong.
You’re worried about people chasing him? The Shatterlands. It’s filled with fragmented gangs and there is no authority there. If he’s trying to hide away, it’s literally the perfect place.
You want some story? The Shatterlands. He can carve out territory for himself and become a tiny wasteland king. He can call himself “the Guitar Tyrant.” That would be awesome.
You want him heading to a different region? The Shatterlands. There’s plenty of unexplored lore around it.
Plus, he gets to fight more, which is always a good time.
DataDatum
STOP TRYING TO TURN HIM INTO MAD MAX.
ReCoil44 (Primary)
You are all thinking far too linearly. The question is not: where should Zeke go? The question is, where is the narrative pressure accumulating next?
Frontiers is not finished. It is merely transitioning from a state of revelations to one of consequences. The setting doesn’t cease to matter simply because the central mystery of it has been uncovered. Quite the opposite. The aftermath of the revelations is where the best stories emerge.
Fortunately, I have already begun constructing a solution for this little problem. There are several vectors that Zeke can choose to chase. I am currently refining a route that would allow him to transition naturally into the next phase of escalation without abandoning Frontiers entirely.
StoryLeech
Translation: ReCoil wants to stay Primary.
NubaReyes
Wait. What’s a Primary?
ArtooDeetoa
JEEZUS!!! Grave, the nubcakes are back.
C0da_Creator
100%, no way Gravemind can deal with this solo. He’s going to have to recruit more mods, if only temporarily.
RedCarpetManiac
What can the mods even do about it though? You can stop people from showing up. The article happened and now the forums are getting flooded.
C0da_Creator
You could have a “newbies only” subforum/thread. That way, we can see what kind of new people are joining/what they’re discussing, but also keeping the majority of the forum “clean” from the invasion.
They can only join the rest of the forum after a few weeks/a month.
Quantum_Amelia
Now that this is getting attention from those outside the forums, we should really keep an eye on Horizon Entertainment. What if they think Z3ke is a former dev breaking an NDA? How would they prove it? If they do prove it, how would they enforce it? I doubt even potential legal trouble would get Z3ke to stop roleplaying.
Hambones
Horizon Entertainment isn’t gonna do shit. They probably forgot the franchise even existed years ago.
7Spirals
They’ll remember if somebody starts making money off it. Corporations always have a sense of when money is involved.
Plethora
Frankly, neither ReCoil nor CrushDaddyXx should be allowed within ten miles of steering Zeke anywhere ever again.
MushroomCleric
PLETHORA!?!?!!?!?
YOU’RE ALIVE?!?!?
GravemindLegacy (MOD)
Good to see you back Plethora. It’s been a while.
Plethora
Yea. I decided to pop back in after a friend linked me the article and told me that the old forum was alive again. I expected maybe a few new theories or someone discovered some unused dev assets. Instead I find a man allegedly trapped inside Frontiers, posting survival updates while half of you argue over whether he’s a prophet, a roleplayer, or a former dev.
I’ve got to admit that I’ve been reading his stuff over the past two days and I’m enjoying it. But good lord, you all have been giving that boy some truly awful advice.
CrushDaddyXx
Uhhhhh…why am I getting singled out? My run as Primary was one of the most successful ones Zeke ever had.
MushroomCleric
Normally I would argue that it was our run as Primary (Crush, 7Spirals and me) but now that Plethora is back and yelling at people like a disappointed dad, I’m just going to remain quiet.
Plethora
| My run as Primary was one of the most successful ones Zeke ever had. |
Was it? Do you really want to try and defend that position? It seems you’ve all forgotten the key theme in Frontiers. It wasn’t ever a story about heroes and villains. The whole thing was built around competing catastrophes. You venture out into the Deadlands and you have the Black Teeth, the Shard Choir, whatever the Pale Regiment are, a bunch of mutated demon dogs, and the Janus Storm itself. Everyone in the setting is trying to survive something bigger than themselves. There is no “good” in The MIZ. It’s like that one line from Cyberpunk 2077.
A happy ending? For folks like us? Wrong city. Wrong people.
Plethora
Let me explain where both you and ReCoil went wrong.
The pod in the Janus Storm was monstrous. I don’t think any reasonable person would argue otherwise. It was sucking up people and turning them into a goop that was birthing a Second Fracture. BUT, and here’s the part that people are skipping over, it was also stopping the spread of the alien virus that had caused the original Fracture. The same virus that had created all the monsters in the Deadlands. The same virus that would have happily consumed everything if left unchecked.
Now let’s talk about the Reclaimer, who you are so proud of siccing Zeke after. It wasn’t some oversized boss monster wandering around the Under MIZ waiting to drop crafting materials. It was placed there by the devs on purpose. It was a repair system. Its entire focus was rebuilding the ecology of the Under MIZ. That thing was practically built to combat the exact problem caused by the Janus Storm.
And what did you all have Zeke do?
Cringelord
…wait, the MIZ knew about the Fracture early. Was the Reclaimer their counter to the pod? A secondary janitor to the malfunctioning alien one?
Plethora
DING DING DING.
You’ve got two things trying to do the same thing: repair and reshape the ecosystem of the Deadlands. Then along comes Zeke.
Crush sent him out to kill one of the only entities in the setting potentially able to repair the damage caused by the alien virus. What did he get from killing it? He traded its corpse for a single elixir.
If that wasn’t bad enough, ReCoil then comes along and convinces him to destroy the only other thing that could repair the damage caused by the alien virus. What did he get from killing it? He got a boost to his Instrument Mastery.
I’ve got to say that I’m genuinely impressed. Between the pair of them, they managed to remove every known thing that could prevent a total ecological collapse. You managed to turn Zeke into a doomsday agent. That level of efficiency usually requires a LOT of planning.
StoryLeech
HAHAHAHAHAHAH
Plethora
What fascinates me most about the fanfic and where we are right now isn’t all the bad decisions that Zeke has been making. For one, I don’t blame him at all. Of course he was going to make bad decision.
The entire premise of his story is that he’s never played these games. He’s exhausted, terrified, and he is listening to poor advice. Mistakes are inevitable. Whenever a complicated problem comes around, the response from everyone on the forum is “go kill it.”
What interests me is how enthusiastically you all pushed him towards the next thing WITHOUT asking yourselves “what comes next?” None of you asked whether these things you’re sending him out to kill could be understood or studied or controlled.
The Reclaimer should have been studied. The Reclaimer should have been controlled. The pod should have been studied. The pod should have been controlled.
SoluneX
??
He only had two options. Kill the pod or allow the Second Fracture to kill everyone. He chose the least bad one.
Nudvik
| He only had two options. |
I still like the idea of crashing the Janus Storm into the Citadel, creating a mushroom cloud that would spread alien killing dust over the entire Deadlands. It could’ve completely solved the Frontiers Fracture. Plus, you can never have enough explosions!
Plethora
You’re all making my point for me. This forum has become so focused on the dramatic solutions that they stop looking at the tools sitting right in front of them. OR, we get people like Nudvik who probably didn’t voice his opinion until it was too late.
Elterrible00
| didn’t voice his opinion until it was too late. |
That’s happened a lot in my fanfics too. People don’t subscribe to my patreon and they’re always a week and a half too late to the story.
GravemindLegacy (MOD)
El, you have been warned about pushing your patreon on this forum. You are now temporarily banned for 24 hours.
Plethora
??
Not going to touch any of that. But what I will say is that Zeke already handed you a possible answer to the conundrum he faced. None of you noticed because you were all too busy cheering whenever he blew something up.
Remember when the Black Teeth were chasing him, firing grenades at him while he was racing through the Janus Storm? The grenades exploded with a blue dust, which was obviously Veylstone. Do you all remember what happened when one exploded near the Storm? It disrupted it and shut off whatever was controlling it.
Imagine if Zeke had seized control of the pod and redirected it towards the Chapel Pit. Imagine if he had wiped out a majority of the Black Teeth while simultaneously scooping up enough Veylstone to cripple the alien virus and weakening the storm.
Would it have worked? Maybe. Maybe not. But it would have possibly destabilized the Janus Storm safely, killed the Second Fracture, and wiped out a majority of the alien virus which would have allowed the Deadlands to slowly recover over time.
ReCoil44 (Primary)
That is an extraordinarily reductive interpretation. You are looking at the situation with the benefit of hindsight and assuming Zeke possessed knowledge he simply didn’t have.
The pod represented an existential thread. Allowing it to survive indefinitely in the hopes that some theoretical solution might have emerged would have been a catastrophic gamble.
Plethora
There he is…still talking like a graduate thesis became sentient.
The Fracture-verse is built on understanding. It’s what has driven the games and turned them into one of the best series ever produced.
Both you and Crush looked at two things that were dangerous and assumed the only option was to kill them. Now the Deadlands are dying because two “clever” men convinced themselves that killing a problem was the same thing as solving it.
7Spirals
Ooo…nobody tell Zeke.
CrushDaddyXx
That elixir was important and I stand by it. Besides, it was all ReCoil’s fault for Zeke killing the pod.
***
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Okay, what the actual hell guys? Why do I have all these PMs? What happened?
MushroomCleric
Hey Zeke. Welcome back.
Sooooo…things got weird. A gaming website wrote an article about you and the fanfic and now the forum is getting absolutely swarmed with new users. Grave’s working on it and you should stop getting PMs soon. Probably.
ShivSays
Z3KE!!! What’ve you been up to? Are you alive? Are you safe?
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Uh. Yea. We’re okay. Mostly. So I don’t need to worry about the PMs then? Because that giant red number is just glaring at me and it’s kinda intimidating. It feels like I’m getting yelled at.
NullSigil
Ignore the nubcakes Zeke. It’s their fault for not following this story since the beginning.
StoryLeech
| Uh. Yea. We’re okay. |
Dood. You can’t just disappear for a few days after killing a storm and come back with “we’re okay.” What happened?
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Nothing really. The Janus Storm died and Jackie drove and that was basically it. After the sky dumped about a million pounds of sand on us and we got through the worst of it, Jackie kept driving until we found this little rocky crevice tucked between two ridges.
It wasn’t much but it gave us shelter from the wind and the sun. We parked and the three of us almost immediately passed out. We’d been running on empty for a while at that point. Jackie was still half-panicked from everything, Elnor was barely conscious, and I was beaten all to hell.
We slept and when we finally all woke up we realized how hungry and thirsty we all were. I passed out some rations and cooked us a meal and we’ve mostly been spending the last day or so eating, drinking, sleeping, and trying to remember how to be functional human beings again.
I also took a break from the forum which, looking at my inbox, was probably a mistake.
We’re also kinda screwed right now because none of us know where we are or how to get to somewhere safe, and I don’t have a whole lot of food and water left. It’s not like I packed for an extended expedition or anything.
When we got into the pod and parked, the Janus Storm was still moving around and the pod was sitting inside the eye of the storm and moving with it. By the time we killed the thing and the storm collapsed and we got dumped back outside, we weren’t anywhere near where we thought we’d be.
Most of the surrounding landmarks are gone. The storm flattened out most everything. Even if the landmarks were still there, none of us really know enough about the Deadlands to be able to navigate around. My only experience with this place is coming out here with Cole and Corva and the others. Elnor and Jackie both lived most of their lives in The MIZ.
We’ve spent most of the day just driving around trying to figure out where we are. Which is another problem because it’s not like we got infinite gas or anything and none of us wants to be stuck walking around out here. The Deadlands feel meaner now, and it’s just lucky that we’ve got a jeep.
I don’t really know a better way to describe it. When I was out here before, I knew that the Deadlands were dangerous. But you could still navigate the place. It was a danger that I could understand. But now, everything feels so much more desperate and tense and jumpy.
While we were driving, Jackie spotted a couple ambushes and that was…something. We didn’t get close to them. Thankfully Jackie saw them as they were building and she turned the jeep the other way and just gunned it. I don’t know if it’s the Black Teeth or scavengers or opportunists or whoever. I don’t even know if we’re being chased right now.
We did find something that looks vaguely familiar and we’re heading towards it now to see if I’m right.
Do you all remember the train from back when I was escaping the Glens and headed towards The MIZ? I told you all that it derailed and a bunch of bandits came and attacked it and it’s where I was forced to kill two people? Yea. I think we found it. Well, maybe.
It’s kinda far away and we can barely make out the place and the train itself is gone. Someone must have picked the area clean. But the land around it looks somewhat familiar. There’s a huge furrow carved into the ground from where the train was derailed.
I could be wrong though. Plus there’s the other problems. For one, our water situation is becoming an issue. It’s not so bad that we’re going to die tomorrow, but it’s definitely something we want to solve before it becomes a bigger problem down the line. We’ve got enough water to keep moving but not enough to be wandering around aimlessly for the next few days.
The other issue is that I can’t remember how long it took me to get to The MIZ from here the last time. Most of my memories from that time are a blur. I was dehydrated and being hunted by the Eaters and I was panicking and trying not to get murdered.
I remember getting on a bike I took from the bandits and I remember riding for what felt like forever. I remember the bike running out of fuel and then me walking a ton. But that’s about it.
I made the mistake of telling Jackie and Elnor that I might know where we are. That got them asking questions about everything and I started telling them that I’d been around here after coming from the House of Seasons. They asked what that was and I, foolishly, told them. Now both of them are pushing me to guide us back there.
Jackie is saying that we need water and I mentioned getting some when I was at the House. She said that if there is snow, we can use it to make water. That’s our most pressing concern and we’d be stupid not to address it.
Elnor made the same argument but with a bunch more words. He said that we need supplies and shelter and a fixed point that we can use to reorient ourselves. When I told them about the Blooming Witch, hoping to bring up the idea of an entity that could wipe out all three of us with a blink of her eyes, they seemed to think that was great. They said that since I’d solved her problems before, she would be excited to see me.
For the record, I really don’t want to go back there. The House still creeps me out and, just because I earned my dimensional storage from it and the Blooming Witch let me go, doesn’t mean I really want to wander back and talk with her. Sure, she was nice when I met her. But I also remember all of you bitching at me that she was a dangerous end-game boss who could melt faces.
But Jackie keeps bringing up the water situation and Elnor keeps agreeing with her and unfortunately they’re both making sense which is incredibly annoying. Unless we stumble across something better in the next few hours, I think we’re heading back to the House of Seasons.
I hope that the Blooming Witch doesn’t mind unexpected visitors and I’m hoping that I’m remembering where it is. If I’m not, I’m going to look incredibly stupid.