State of Bedlam

Silent Hill 2, finished a few days ago. And Silent Hill 3, a week before that. I've wanted to for a long, long time, but I finally took the initiative because of the Silent Hill DLC announcement for Dead by Daylight.

With 4 and a half days left (at the time of posting), itch.io is offering 743 games for $5.00 (normally priced at $3,452 collectively). Link here Ordinarily I wouldn't consider a game deal worth making a post here, but this one is so extreme I feel it's worth sharing. I'm hoping this gets Ross's attention before the offer expires. EDIT: "Buy 1,637 items for $5 Regularly ~$9,083 Save 99%!" I guess they actually added games and I didn't notice. The information I gave on the number of games and total value was accurate when there were 10 days left of the offer.

Guild power struggles? Political drama? That is what I am all about. When you said that, I knew I had to make an account immediately. Chapter 1 I joined Runescape in early 2006 (I think February) with the username "Invader 50" when I was 13. Runescape looked the way the "Old School Runescape" servers look now. I liked the game so much I got my mom to start paying for membership, unlocking the rest of the game's content and the other half of the world map. This was probably in June, maybe July. It was after the Construction skill and player-owned houses were released, and not terribly long after the Falador Massacre (which was on 6/6/06. I was vacationing in Europe that day). I considered myself a follower of the chaos god Zamorak, so I walked around wearing the Zamorak robe set. (The cheap one, not the vestamant set). I ran into another player wearing Zamorak robes outside a bank in the city Varrock. He invited me to join his Zamorak clan. In runescape, that's the equivalent of a guild. At the time they were completely player-made social constructs and there was nothing official supporting them. He didn't exactly invite me to join it either, because I think I was his first recruit and the clan didn't even exist until that moment. When we recruited a few more members it was time to think of a name for our clan. I suggested the Mighty Brotherhood of Zamorak (or MBZ for short). Our leader, who I will name Fortunato because I do not remember his username, liked the name well enough to use it. Now we were MBZ and we had a decent sized group, but I began to dislike ol' Fortunato. Here are the three strikes against him. Firstly, there was a potential recruit I was chatting with. I told him we were the MBZ. Then I either told him it stood for Mighty Brotherhood of Zamorak or asked if he wanted to know what it stood for, but Fortunato said "Don't tell him." I think he just liked us being mysterious (it wasn't any secret that we were a Zamorakian group), but for 13-year-old me this was quite irritating. I came up with the name, so I should get to tell people what it was. I couldn't get a satisfactory answer from Fortunato for why I shouldn't. Secondly, we attended a group combat event called Castle Wars as a clan. It's organized so that you can join the team waiting room for Saradomin ("god of order") or for Zamorak. Or the balance god Guthix's portal could sort you into whichever room was emptier. We were in the Zamorak waiting room when a poisoned player came in asking for help. I had some anti-poison potion in my bank, so I said I'd go get it for him. While I was heading to the exit portal, Fortunato told me not to help him. I asked him why. He said "It will be funny." While I debated whether to disobey orders or let this stranger die*, someone else provided their own anti-poison potion. Crisis averted, but my view of Fortunato dropped sharply. Thirdly, we held a clan meeting at a player-owned house. I don't remember much about the meeting. It may have even been my own house (since I remember that was something I took pride in and proposed be used as a clan meeting place my entire Runescape career). What I do remember was that suddenly Fortunato decided to set a combat level limit for clan membership (which two of us - I and a player I'll call "Brutus" - did not meet). He gave us an ultimatum: if we didn't reach that level within a certain amount of time, we were out. I don't remember the combat levels involved, but I do remember that Brutus was our lowest level member, I was the second lowest, and Fortunato was the third lowest. All three of us were quite low level but he conveniently cut it off only below himself. And let me tell you, getting your skills up in Runescape is a griiiiiiiiind. You can't do anything in the game without grinding, grinding, grinding, and more grinding. It wasn't worth it to me to get up to that level until I was ready, but I realized this was my opportunity to start plotting against our leader. As Brutus and I left the meeting, I had a chat with him because I realized were both dissatisfied with Fortunato. I considered Brutus a bit dim (he was probably just a younger kid than I was), but I told him I wanted to overthrow Fortunato and I agreed to let him be second in command. From there I privately spoke to every other member of the group except Fortunato and convinced all of them to join in my plot to overthrow him. It turned out he wasn't a popular guy. Overthrowing him would be as simple as sloughing him off our collective shoulders. At least it should have been. For some reason I decided to mess with him a bit in a completely boneheaded way. I told Fortunato there was a rumor of a plot against him to test his reaction. He asked me who told me this. I... had not thought that far ahead. So, in a panic, I privately messaged one of my co-conspirators and convinced him to take the heat. And then while Fortunato was interrogating that guy I got another co-conspirator to take the heat for him. I think I maybe even got a third guy in on it. Somehow Fortunato was satisfied with whatever I told the last guy to give as an excuse. I should've told him to say I said it to him so it'd be a weird continuous loop with no discernible origin. From there we began divvying up ranks, but I was on the fence about retaining Brutus in the second command position I promised him. There were more capable people vying for the position and Brutus wasn't satisfied with my uncertainty. I only discovered the severity of my folly when Fortunato asked me to meet him "in person" (at a player-owned house, as opposed to over private messaging). Standing in his garden, he revealed to me what Brutus had told him. Brutus has spilled the whole bag of beans. Fortunato knew the entire clan was conspiring against him. And... he was surprisingly chill about it. He was happy to step down as leader. He only wanted it to be remembered that he was the founder. I was happy to make that concession. With our conflicts basically resolved, did the clan move on to a glorious new future? No, it just sort of petered out. We never even got to officially stage the coup (which I think we were still doing for some reason even though Fortunato was on board with it) and set me up as leader. People, including me, just lost interest. However, in Chapter 2 I'll tell you about my first plan to recruit spies and anonymously infiltrate and conquer other clans. *The only penalty for death is losing all but three of the items you're carrying (unless you're "skulled," which happens when you attack a player in the Wilderness. If you die while skulled you lose all items. Being skulled wears off after awhile). You respawn in Lumbridge (or possibly another city if you've done certain quests) with the three items the game thinks are most valuable. Since there was a bank chest nearby I don't know/remember why he didn't just put all his items in the chest and wait to die. Maybe his bank was full? More likely he just didn't know better.