Official Road to Purgatory-Beta Forum

Kelphram, confirmed Beta-Account

Before I forget it, disclaimer. There will be cursing in this thread.

With that out of the way, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! When did Road to Purgatory become the latest survival-horror with monsters stalking the world and fucking you up in ways that I don’t even want to think about?

I mean, there were early clips of some fucked up shit but I thought those were promo-material, not something that actually happened to players.

Want to know what I mean? Well, take a look.

horrorschau.avi

For a moment, there is only blackness with soft noises barely audible, making you try to listen more closely, just to find out what they are. But, with a few switches from light and darkness, as eyelids blink open and close, the dying remains of a campfire come into view. The focus shifts for a moment and the debuff-display comes into focus, informing that the recording character is restrained and gagged, something that becomes obvious as the being starts looking around. Three centaurs are visible nearby, all forced to their knees and bound in strangely translucent chains that give off a bit of a sparkle in the firelight. In addition, the same material encases their jaws, gagging them with only tiny holes allowing some airflow. The movement shows that the one recording is a centaur as well and that the debuffs are caused by the chains.

A small, slender figure, looking like a black spectre in the flickering light becomes visible and a calm, casual voice breaks the silence. “Good Evening and congratulations. You’ve been chosen, it is a great honour, you know? Not everyone gets such a noble purpose in life.”

It is clearly a female voice and the collected way of speaking makes it even more scary. There are no emotions, no excitement in the voice, it almost sounds bored.

But the actions of the dark figure were far from the casual commentary, drawing a blade from the same material that is used to bind the centaurs and starting to slowly and methodically stripping the clothes from the upper body of one of the centaurs, even as the voice continues to talk.

“You will be allowed to assist me in my research and believe me, it is fascinating. Also, experimental but hey, that’s what research is for, am I right?” the voice asks, almost sounding as if making a joke, but the flat tone calls even that into question.

“Let’s get going.” the voice announces, stepping towards one of the now naked centaurs, drawing a slender, yet very ornate knife from a sheath on her belt.

“You know, if you are supposed to keep watch, watching the surroundings and making sure that nothing sneaks up on you is the important part. Not watching the merrily burning fire.” the voice explains, sounding almost disappointed.

Without further words or any hesitation, the slender figure grabs on of the centaurs arms, the strange translucent material moving with the arm, forcing it into a different position and allowing her easy access and preventing the centaur from easily moving away. Suddenly, the centaur starts to groan and grunt in obvious pain, muffled by the gag while the figure is slowly and carefully cutting into his flesh, while a strange, crimson glow pulses around the blade in a rapid beat.

As the figure is cutting, the centaur starts to writhe more and more frantically, trying to get away, until he manages to twist his torso in such a way that gets him away from the blade, if only just.

“Now, see what you made me do? I need to start over, you bloody fool.” the voice snarls her anger clear. But, instead of continuing to talk, the figure stops and, after drawing some strange, silvery-glowing symbols into the air, the figure has a spike, made from the translucent material she seems to favour, in her hand. There is a moment of pause, right before she stabs the spike into the centaurs back, somewhere between his shoulder blades. The stabbing motion is repeated a few times, slowly wandering upwards along the spine and finally, the figure is just below the neck when she suddenly stops, casually tossing the spike behind her, while smiling widely.

“Aren’t I kind?” the figure asks, who she is addressing, nobody knows, “No more pain, you see?” she adds and, if one looks closely, the centaur has mostly stopped moving, merely the head is still a bit mobile.

Without further words, the figure steps back to her original position, taking the arm again and cutting some more into it, this time focusing on the forearm, instead of the upper arm. Suddenly, the cutting stops and the figure seems to observe the arm, and her work, closely before swiftly taking a few steps back and, with just the wave of a hand, a translucent wall appeared between her and the centaur.

For a few minutes, nothing happens, the dark figure stands behind the wall, watching the Centaur, when suddenly, he gave a strange sound of pain causing the camera to focus on him. Just in time, too, right after the camera focused on the centaur, the arm the figure had been working on burst in a shower of gore and blood, splattering the clearing and the kneeling centaurs.

A blue window appears, right in the middle of the screen.

Log-Out begun.

Warning, you are currently restrained. Your Avatar will remain on Mundus until you are no longer restrained and a short period has passed. Continue to Log-out?

There are two buttons and the “Yes” button flashes, right before the screen goes black again and the voice is heard again, muttering, “Now, that was unexpected.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

end horrorschau.avi

To give a little background: Been playing for a little over a month, did the starting-zone and teamed up with a few native Centaurs, forming a hunting-party. Normal stuff, really, and tonight, when we were camping, that happened. We were nowhere near some sort of danger-zone, we were just doing our thing and now, I’m most likely sent to respawn, the others are just dead. Did the ganking of new players start already, before the game even launched? I know that it has been part of gaming since the beginning but come on.

Harms, confirmed Beta-Account

Anyone else recognise the voice? I sure do.

You’ve been Morgana’d.

Didn’t she mention at some point that she had “investigated how Centaur bodies work”? Seems she’s not done with that, yet.

In other words, you’ve been geeked by a high-level player, sucks to be you, but shit happens.

Heracles, Official Pantheon Moderator

Our mystical apparatus flagged this thread for repeated cursing.

After looking at the video - Curse away, I can understand the sentiment, I’ll just add a warning-label.

Gloinar, confirmed Beta-Account

Yeah, that looks like Morgana to me.

And it looks like something you’d find on r/canwenotmeet

Ghostblade, confirmed Beta-Account

Yeah, that’s Morgana, up to her tricks, killing new players for shits and giggles.

Howardlight, confirmed Beta-Account

Can you DM me where you were attacked?

Such cowardly actions need to be redressed!

Jeanyra, confirmed Beta-Account

More Ice-Magic but I’d love to know what she was trying to accomplish. If it was merely about killing people, there are easier ways, even if whatever destroyed that arm looked nasty.

Palda Hengar, confirmed Beta-Account

Looks like our glorious dark fairy is into Bondage...

Ruvas, confirmed Beta-Account

Holy crud...

That looks like a hard no for me!

[...]

Kelphram, confirmed Beta-Account

So, I was just able to respawn and my eyes just fell about out of my skull.

My Astral Power is permanently reduced to zero and my max-health is reduced to roughly two-thirds of its original value. I asked the local healer and all he could tell me was that the strange scars, which look just like what Morgana did to Maeru, the one you see in the video, just that they are on both my arms and one on my back.

Am I getting fucked over even after death? Or is that some fucked up bug?

Support-ticket is written but I thought I ask here as well.

Gloinar, confirmed Beta-Account

That sounds seriously bad.

Harms, confirmed Beta-Account

Sounds bad and wasn’t there an incident when Morgana did something to kill another player from an insane distance? Maybe she upgraded and now can curse you even beyond death.

Heracles, Official Pantheon Moderator

Peculiar. I have no idea what is going on there, but then, I’m just the guy who’s keeping the forum clean.

Morgana, confirmed Beta-Account

I guess I should add my two cents in here.

Why you were attacked, let’s just call it a combination of bad luck on your part and annoyance on my part. A particular clan of centaurs has been getting on my nerves for about a month, ingame. You remember those puppies from my last video? Those centaurs also ended their lives. As you can imagine, centaurs are not very popular with me right now. We just happened to stumble over your party just as I needed some subjects to perform some magical exprimentation on, wel,.you can guess what happened. So, yeah, wrong place, wrong time, nothing more than that.

I’d say my bad, but that would be a lie.

On the other hand, the attribute-reduction is something I can at least give you and the devs a hint where to start looking. What I did was experiment with a way to change part of a bodies Astral Power into a permanent, magical effect. For example, one of the ideas I had was a constant, low-powered regeneration-effect.

Obviously, the concept is a little untested as you saw on the video when I made a small mistake but such mistakes are why we experiment. As you can see from the fact that you didn’t get ripped to shreds by unstable magic, I learned from my mistake.

The problem is that the magic used to strengthen you is still cast by you, even if not consciously, so it draws on your resources. But what, to me, is a simple cantrip drains all your resources, putting you into the state you are in.

When it comes to persisting after death, I’ll assume that somewhere in the system’s code is a function that differentiates from your equipment and everything else, as in, things that go with you when you die and things that don’t. Otherwise, you would lose your weapon, if you let go of it when you die. Or you might respawn with the arrow that killed you, still lodged into your chest. I think you get what I mean.

Now, the problem here is that, at its core, I was studying a way to permanently strengthen someone, almost like a new piece of equipment. The equipment is just too heavy for you.

And that’s all I’ll tell you about it, can’t give away all my secrets now, can I?

-Vulcanar, Official Pantheon Development Team

I was made aware of the problem by Heracles and we are looking into it. From what Morgana describes here, I can see where the problem comes from and we’ll think of a solution.

Kelphram, confirmed Beta-Account

Wrong place, wrong time?! Well, fuck you very much!

Heracles, Official Pantheon Moderator

Please keep it somewhat civil. While I can understand that emotions might run high, keep it on Mundus.