Information
Spider
Legacy Name: Spider
The
Nightmare JollinOwner:
KRONOSAge: 15 years, 9 months, 1 week
Born: July 17th, 2008
Adopted: 8 years, 3 months, 1 week ago
Adopted: January 20th, 2016
Statistics
- Level: 42
- Strength: 107
- Defense: 103
- Speed: 101
- Health: 100
- HP: 100/100
- Intelligence: 46
- Books Read: 46
- Food Eaten: 0
- Job: Unemployed
;________; lies down and cries THANK YOU SO MUC
video-game dystopian verse.
it's 2052. dirt-streaked cities sprawl, like disjointed ruins, over gritty, polluted soil. the air is thick with smog and heavy with smoke. machines glint in sleek, streamlined shells, their metallic interfaces glowing in the soft blue light of holographic screens. there are beggars in the streets and filth in the slums.
video games and AIs are all the rage.
there is one game, in particular, that has the entire populace captivated. the game is notoriously hard, and no one has ever beaten it.
the game is invite-only. the City offers obscene sums of money to players as they clear levels and tiers; the winner's jackpot still remains unclaimed. and yet, people crowd dirty pubs and taverns to watch holoscreens flash in gaudy lettering.
they place bets. hundreds and thousands of dollars in bets, on who will clear the next tier, who will first slay the bosses, and who will finally win the game.
the game's called arachnid. it lets you select from hundreds of different character presets and can be very lucrative if you're good at video games. but here's the catch: the characters in the game are preset for a reason -- because in arachnid, the characters you control are real people. they can die in game.
listen. you need to keep overpopulation in check in the slums. you need to keep the filth under control without inciting rebellion, and you need to keep the other classes distracted, too.
there are also strange creatures that roam the Waste beyond the walls of the city -- part animal, but mostly machine, with spindly, sharp legs of warped scrap metal, slick with black oil and rust.
clack, clack, clack, the machines of the Waste go. the way they move makes you uneasy -- erratic, unpredictable, uncanny. they remind you of scuttling spiders.
you want to take back the Waste, extend the borders of the city. but you remember the video feeds of the first, second, fourth, tenth expeditions you have sent out to reclaim the Waste: clack, clack, clack; incoherent, panicked yelling and the sick slide of flesh crushed by metal; endless, gray static.
the machines of the Waste are hostile, a nuisance -- and quite frankly, they are in your way.
.
you make a drug, and you ban it. you distribute it to the vermin in the slums under cover of the black market, and watch as they inject it in blissful abandon. you don't tell them that the drug emptying into their brittle veins is insidious -- that it settles into their very bones, their nervous system. you don't tell them that the drug is responsive to magnetic fields. that it's a form of invasive control over someone else's body.
you sell consoles that emit an electromagnetic pulse. you set the game in the heart of the Catacombs, a labyrinthine ruin that you have discovered to be the creatures' nest. you make gaming into a fad and a mob sensation -- the perfect distraction for the restless middle class -- and pay the general populace to eliminate the vermin and the creatures for you.
the general populace doesn't know. they have no idea.
your name is spider. it's just a pseudonym -- an alias, if you will -- that you use, for the world on the web is but an insect in the palm of your hands. your fingers fly over the keys with the speed of an upturned beetle's legs, and you are powerful here -- it is where you belong: behind a screen, pulling the strings. you can crack the locks of high security financial corporations, sinking into little keyholes and walking through vaults of steel, as if they are nothing.
you are a hacker, and you are brilliant at what you do.
you first hear of arachnid when you are fifteen. the game is young, new. you aren't as skilled as you are today with a computer, with a machine. but you watch arachnid and the gameplay anyway. you watch players try, and try, and try to beat it. no one ever does.
you are twenty-two when you receive a flashing mail on your holoscreen inviting you to join. a dark console is sent to you later that night.
a hacker with the alias of spider takes up the game arachnid, and in the process finds out that the characters you control are real people. he hacks the system so that he can communicate with his character, whose name is valen. spider calls him val because he knows valen hates it.
he helps valen navigate the game in an attempt to escape. they assume that the only way out is winning the game; they don't have much to go on except for that.
spider and valen make it further than any other team in arachnid.
(spider and scorpion, they're called. arachnids.)
the two begin to garner the attention of betters in seedy taverns. people root for them. people notice them. they see a boy beating back the impossible, and they begin to get ideas -- revolutionary ones.
the powerful corporates in the upper City, the very ones behind the game, begin to take notice. they realize that their plan to control the filth and the vermin below them has backfired. they realize its potential role in the destruction of their social hierarchy, and the danger they face if spider succeeds in clearing the game.
in the end, spider is able to help valen escape, and by doing so, leaks/reveals the dark truth of arachnid to the people.
the government comes for spider; they plan on imprisoning him for life, torturing him, beating him, and broadcasting it on every holoscreen to make an example of him to the revolutionaries.
it's valen's turn to track spider down and save him.
they first meet in person after valen has shot up all the corrupt officials behind the game and all the people holding him hostage.
spider's real name is sei.