The Samsara Project - Past is Prologue

Where we’ve come from, and where we’re going.

Preamble

I plan to do this document all in one take. No revisions or do-overs. It’s meant to be the final bullet in the head of something that writhes and festers despite how much we have tried to dispose of it. And so it will read like an incoherent stream of consciousness at times; the ramblings of man intoxicated on his own self-importance and the imagined magnitude of his own words. I urge you - despite that - to bear with me.

As is only right I must justify this document’s existence. Writing must be done with a clear purpose set out in mind, and the purpose of this one is to serve as a book-end; a checkpoint between an aging yesterday and an indeterminate tomorrow. This document is both a beginning an end. It is cyclical, looping back in on itself as it purpose requires seeing both the beginning of what it ends and the beginning of what it… begins. That is indeed a sentence of all time.

Let us begin with where we’ve come from.

Where We’ve Come From

‘Sb://Shinycord’ or ‘SbShinycord’ or ‘The Shinycord Lore’ or ‘SBL1’ as it will henceforth be referred to, is and was an experiment in unchained ambition. I posses many notable powers ranging from that of the Time’s Vengeance, granted to me by the Vex of the Vault of Glass, to powers of mass group suggestion, formed, honed and perfected by years of lying on a stage to three generations of Pentecostal Christians. None of these, however, rival my power to commit to a bit. To risk it for the biscuit. To do it - as it were - for the meme.

And so SBL1 came into existence, suggested primarily by a figure that for lore reasons we shall refer to as VIP1. It was a fairly easy start. I was on the tail-end of another project that was twelve thousand words deep, all of it built on an unstable foundation that - as is accurate to my character - I dealt with by ignoring it. Something fresh was needed, and so I began with SBL1 in stride, drafting, completing and releasing the legendary Phase 1 on (Date)

I’d like to say something dramatic here, like ‘and this was the beginning of the end’, but it would simply be untrue. I shall continue.

The initial allure of SBL1 wasn’t the promise of some earth-shattering narrative, though that was promised. The entire allure was that us, the Shinies, would be in it. It was much like going to see a play but only because a relative was in it, and not because you awoke on day with a craving for Peter Pan.

As an aside, I’ve only viewed two plays in my life. I remember one, Alice in Wonderland, with the very cleverly (and I insist it is) performed size change sequences done by bamboozling us with rainbow lights while differently sized actors waltzed on and off the stage. I do not remember the second play, as I had a phone then, and no literary creation of last century could possibly outdo Minecraft, Pocket Edition.

Phase 1 was a single entry, five thousand words long. It caused a considerable stir. Mari read it on stream. Everyone busied themselves with solving the puzzle it came with, a lightning bolt of an idea I had to drive further engagement with it. I probably needn’t have bothered; it was new, it was a creation of a server member, and it featured other server members. It got eyes. It felt good. There was a path forward.

I will speed-run the rest as it became fairly routine. After Phase One and the puzzle solving, I now had four entries to write; the actual ‘Main Line’ plot, and the three ‘Character Entries’. Those, plus another Puzzle, made up Phase 2, also received very well. Phase One was one beginning, Phase Two was three more beginnings. I would say that as of Phase Two’s launch, there was still some somewhat concrete direction. Phase Two had a puzzle, and it was solved - by three different people than those who solved Phase One’s Puzzle. Phase Three was going to be large, but writing a lot has never been an issue for me. Head down, put on the post rock, proc the shower buffs I can do anything.

Phase Three was a herculean undertaking, and perhaps where we can trace the first of many hairline fractures. Advancement of the Main Line by a third Chapter, three new character stories, and two entries that immortalized themselves; Anti-Academy Propaganda, and Internal Document 14-0043 “The Clocker Collective”. What made these documents particularly notable was that they seemingly only connected to the character story of VIP1, an ominous though light on details entry under a ‘Doctor Hex’, and nothing else. It seemed like right in the middle of the story, I began yet another story, connected in seemingly no way to the initial. A section after here will delve further into a phase-by-phase analysis of the narrative, but let us continue onto the legendary Phase Four.

Phase Four is very special to me. Allow me to set the stage. Post Phase Three I was forced to confront an unfortunate inevitability; interest among the wider population of the server had flagged. It was something that (due to my power of Time’s Vengeance) I knew would happen eventually. It’s like knowing a week in advance you’re going to get a needle at the doctors office. It doesn’t matter how many needles you’ve gotten before or how much time you have to do breathing exercises, that drive to the office will still have your heart in your throat. That waiting in the office will still feel like time itself has stopped. And most of all, the needle will still fucking hurt. It is what it is. The issue was exacerbated by the fact the Phase Three puzzle (the QR code one) was a failure.

Considering this is my piece to write, I could easily choose to get messy. I could point fingers and name names and assign blame and wrongdoing. I could talk about how I expected it to happen but wish it didn’t, and how the people I knew could’ve alleviated the issue chose not to do so for reasons I have no right to criticize or decry, but that will all be a waste of time, and serve only to kick dead horses. It is, as I conclude, what it is.

With this backdrop fully established I set out to write a Phase Four that would shake the very roots of the world. A fifteen thousand word long Main Line chapter advancing three character stories. A decrypted entry hidden behind a puzzle that made readers aware of some secret order of mages , fighters and explorers. Four character chapters advancing two plotlines and beginning a third. And then I doubled all that and wrote Panopticon Breach, five more chapters, a puzzle and three secret chapters. All accomplished in under a month.

And nothing really happened.

There is a kind of man that laughs when stabbed. I am that kind of man. It is a good thing I am because I would’ve declared Scenario 10 and ended SBL1 right there. In ways that I will explain later, I more or less did. But in the moment, I’ll admit, it was crushing.

So I resolved to write Phase 5.

There is saying that doing the same thing and expecting different results is madness. I agree with it, mostly. But I agreed with it enough to realize that I had to change things if I wanted to continue in any regard. At this time, SBL1 exceeded eighty thousand words. I estimated that Phase Five could be anything between twenty and thirty thousand more words. Either way, it triggered Scenario 3, ‘Sandbox Overflow’.

Around the time of writing Phase Two, I created the Scenario Codes. They were a list of cool sounding (essential) protocols that would be followed when certain events I predicted could happen, would happen. I might publish the document some day, but it would be enough of an insight into my mind that would allow a bad actor to develop a memetic kill agent designed specifically to target me. I will simply say that Scenario 5 - the protocol for bringing on a second writer - being called ‘Two-Ply Toilet Paper’ is indeed one of the things I have ever done.

Scenario 3 specifically is triggered when written plus speculative word count reaches and exceeds one hundred thousand words. The method of resolving this is a full reevaluation of the entire SBL1 ‘universe’. Eighty thousand words of muck and slop to wade through. I set about doing it, and was forced to confront a most unfortunate though expected truth.

It was shit.

A jury of my peers would eagerly proclaim me too harsh. They might even be right. SBL1 isn’t wholly shit, but much like a chocolate cake iced in shit, enough of it is shit that any nuance you apply is out of sympathy to the creator and not out of obligation to the work. This is what is true, and I say so because it is a fact I lived with for close to a year. Perhaps your rebuttal to this is that you enjoyed it. Part of me is glad you did. Most of me however, needs you to know that what you enjoyed lacked depth and direction. It was pure fanfare. A military parade in literary form. You are less critical - if at all critical - of it because it is made by someone you know, and who you know put a considerable amount of effort in it. It is appreciated. It is also not deserved.

Subsequently I invoked Scenario 7, the ‘Phoenician Book Burning’. Retcons and rewrites were needed. I tried to keep these to a minimum however, but that was unfeasible. I invoked 7-1 ‘Book Singeing’ and set about preparing for major rewrites. I reached the end of my plans and they stared me most accusingly in the face. I invoked 7-3, ‘Ashen Wake’, and condemned everything.

It was most liberating.

What Went Wrong

We can begin with the nineteen formative years I was subjected to before I put finger to keyboard and wrote the first bits of Phase 1. Those familiar with the Cryo Lore will know that I have had a most turbulent journey from cradle to where I am now. The result of it all is my most patent flaw, ambition. What I want to do and what can feasibly be done are often in disharmony. This will be further elaborated upon later.

Perhaps one of the core issues of SBL1 was that with every entry I wrote, new paths would open up that ran perpendicular to old ones, such that we were making much sideways progress, but very little forward. Imagine walking around the side of a mountain but never ascending it, burning energy and resources as you do. With each Phase came a new direction I wanted to take the story, and instead of choosing one and running with it, I simply wrote all paths forward and hoped I’d strike some means to reconcile them later. It simply proved impossible. Maybe a more skilled writer could have pulled it off, but a more skilled writer would never have been in this scenario.

Another issue was fragmentation. By the end of Phase three I had seven distinct plotlines I was supposed to advance. At least two more were planned. Unchecked ambition. It was and is simply not something you can realistically pull of with any amount of depth, or within a reasonable timeframe. What I was attempting to do was better handled by an entire narrative team for triple-A game development studio. Unchecked ambition. What prompted the fragmentation? I was inspired by other media and storytelling works, most significantly the idea of using fragmented entries that would then all be assembled to produce a somewhat understandable, if not coherent narrative.

The actual result of this was dozens of plot threads and twice as many plot holes. You’d follow a thread and hit a wall. A character would appear somewhere, encounter a thing, and it would have seemingly no connection with any of the events before or after it. It was a spider web. A clusterfuck.

It would be irresponsible of me to not also mention the conflicts created by having characters be representative of real life people. I warned I would take artistic liberties. I did very little of the sort. I was always held back by the fact that people will see themselves in these characters, and so I am somewhat obligated to portray them well. Perhaps no one would have actually cared. Too late for that now.

What else? Nothing was written down. Yes I had notes, but they were sparse and disjointed. Mostly they were nifty snap-thoughts I had, blipped to my head from another timeline. Most of SBL1 was written entirely from my head. It was cloud-hosted literature. It was grossly handled.

There are probably a half dozen other little thins that could’ve been done better. I reckon the above captures the bulk of it.

As an aside, I believe it’s why Panopticon Breach is so dear to me. I planned the hell out of it. It told a coherent story from beginning to end. It had few characters and developed them well. All of SBL1 up until Panopticon Breach is nothing compared to it. Panopticon Breach was something I remember saying repeatedly was an experiment, and it paid off. It reminded me how writing worked. I’d bet my left arm it’s what truly prompted me to scrap everything before it.

Where We Were Supposed To Go

I dedicate this section to a person; VIP 1. I didn’t plan to write it, but I feel I owe it to them after all their investment into a project that ultimately, crashed and burned. I will speak more on VIP 1 later.

This section will be hazy, confusing, and filled with abject nonsense. It is all what SBL1 should have, maybe could have, become had I been good in what I attempted to do. It delves into narrative that I and you most likely have forgotten, and narrative that never made it to paper. This section can honestly be skipped, but if you choose to humor yourself, you have my thanks.

SBL1 had two distinct ‘realms’ in which storytelling was taking place; Discord, the barely-crafted fantasy-adjacent world, and the Switchboard, which you can view as actual reality. Discord existed in a box. This box was a science project under development by the character of VIP 1, called the Many Worlds Project. The ultimate aim of the Many Worlds Project was generating infinite numbers of universes and harnessing the raw information they expelled to power something. I never decided what that something was, just that it was going to be big.

VIP 1 and Adven Ventura were Operators, and Operators are Striders who work for the Academy. The Academy is a placeholder for any fictitious organization that deals with the barely real. It’s the SCP Foundation but bad. Striders themselves use a power called the ‘Strider Protocol’ that allows for - most simply put - near light speed as well as trans-dimensional travel. It is how Adven Ventura and VIP 1 spent an afternoon drinking tea on another planet in the entry ‘Binary Sunset’.

Discord is a world in a box but it’s inhabitants do not know this, expectedly. Most of the plot for Discord would be gradually working towards discovering the world was in a box, and working towards escaping this. It was gonna be a whole thing. Panopticon Breach was an experimental kind of ‘mini-phase’ I called an ‘SBL Tales’, and there was going to be another one called ‘Apotheosis’ where the character of Pyre did a thing in one of the Pyramids of Soleisal to breach the walls of the box Discord was in.

Let me pivot to Soleisal. Actually not yet. In maybe the the first character chapter of Beck Winterherald and later on in the Decrypted Entry for Phase Two, we are introduced to the concept of Codefall. That summarized was a method of interacting with the box-worlds similar to Discord, by adding a ‘thing’ to them that would prevent the world from reaching a ‘wall’. The wall in this case was a narrative full stop. Imagine if a box-world achieved world peace, Codefall was meant to stop that and keep worlds progressing. The first instance of Codefall was done in Beck’s chapter to summon her sword that she uses in the Mainline, Graviton Subjugation. Beck’s story was meant to be a sort of prologue that deals with the war in the south known as the Four Spires Conflict or Incident (I forget the exact word), and would end with her acquiring the actual sword that she uses in the Mainline (and going through this thing where she becomes evil for a while. I forget).

Now we pivot to Soleisal. The idea was that Soleisal in the east acquired an artifact placed there by the owner of the Discord box (VIP 1), and this artifact allowed triggering Codefall events from within the box-world when typically they would have been done by the person outside the box-world. This sequence actually is written; reread Pyre’s first (and only) chapter. The one with the Seekers of Soleisal. If you reread Decrypted Entry Four that talks about the Autonomous Terrain Generation Protocol and the random rant about Pyramids, you’ll piece even more of it together. The long and short of it was that Soleisal, via Codefall, was summoning Pyramids from outside the Discord box-world to crash-land in their desert, and their entire society was built around a caste/order of ‘Seekers’ who’d plunder these pyramids for the extra-terrestrial artifacts within. Eventually Pyre, in an SBL Tales I planned to call ‘The Nomad Kings’ (which would serve as a prologue to Apotheosis) would discover, via interacting with these Pyramids, that their world wasn’t all there is and there was more to it, lurking on the outside. He would then escape to the outside world using something called the ‘Ley Keys’, which I will expand upon later.

Let’s talk about VIP 1’s character and the Spider. VIP 1 is from outside Discord and was your every-day reality-eater. The Spider using his magic imprisoned her. The character known as the Sundowned kidnapped the Spider because VIP 1 spoke to them in a dream about being his goddess and needing to be freed. What was the character of the Spider supposed to be? A lot of hardship and betrayal. I told his story exclusively through flashbacks to his youth where he was an apprentice mage in the Rose Staff. This was the high school AU we could’ve gotten. The ultimate purpose of Spider’s character was working towards a similar goal to Pyre, finding a way out of the Discord box-world. We see him actually do something close to this in Record 4, where he - in the most cringe line I have written in my entire life and I have written literal attack helicopter jokes to get a laugh out of a homophobic church audience - proclaims that he is real. Spider’s story is a low point of SBL1 and a low point of my existence in general.

Raindance and the Clandestins. SBL1 had a church so naturally it needs redditors to oppose it. The endgame of the Clandestins is that they are a shadow organization trying to learn the truth and nature of all things. The plans for them was they were a foreign pseudo-terrorist cell working for the West (which contained like, an entire fucking city that literally went to war with Radiantcord in Discord history) and they were working to find out what was hidden in the hedge mage’s jungle that housed the imprisoned character of VIP 1. The idea was that meeting someone from outside Discord would… do something. Again, I don’t think I thought this far, and if I did, I’ve forgotten it.

Let’s talk about Raindance’s entry in Record 4. That was a piece of literature that simply should not have existed. I’ll explain further when we get to the character that was Doctor Hex.

Now for Dahlia, or Mari. Dahlia was Radiantcord royalty. Her story was meant to truly begin in another SBL Tales known as ‘Leyden Dance’. Let’s talk about Leyden Dance because it was what almost made me write a Phase 5. Leyden Dance was meant to be a series of entries that ‘mirrored each other’ in that events going on in Discord somewhat ran parallel to events in the Switchboard above it.

The idea for Leyden Dance was something I’ve wanted to write for a while now as it had a somewhat romantic undertone to it. The main characters were meant to be Dahlia and Raindance, and would serve as something close to a backstory. The idea was nothing particularly novel; Dahlia being royalty and having a forbidden love interest in the form of Raindance, who’d do forbidden love interest things such as sending letters and crawling through the window at twilight hours. The core of the story of Leyden Dance was the literal Leyden Dance, a Radiantcord festival held by the Radiant Family to celebrate the harvest or something rural and familial like that. Dahlia has no interest in the dance but it is obligated to be a centerpiece of it by her princess status. There was going to be a lot of pining after Raindance, a whole lot of royal court nonsense, probably someone dying to poisoned wine or a hidden blade, the whole nine yards.

The last act of Leyden Dance was to be a scene that I still curse myself for not writing. Dahlia in her room, unable to sleep as there would be a full moon outside filling her room with light, and as she descends further into melancholy, a shadow of a figure is cast in her room. Out of her window she peers, and there is her Raindance on the castle wall, the moon her backdrop, in full dance attire, casting a shadow of herself into Dahlia’s room. Despite being separated by all manner of royal court nonsense, Dahlia would have her own ‘Leyden Dance’ in her room, dancing with the shadow of Raindance, their moves in perfect lockstep.

Leyden Dance was a story about yearning to be free.

The final entry of Leyden Dance was meant to be a declassified Academy document authored by someone working on the Many Worlds Project. It was a warning, a warning of the dangers of simulating beings in boxes because human nature is to seek freedom. He warned of a phenomena known as the ‘Ley Keys’, which would have the power to breach all barriers, just like the love shared between our two protagonists above. These Ley Keys are what would be used by Pyre in Apotheosis to escape Discord, entering the Switchboard, and triggering a ‘Ley Keys Manifestation’ event, and event that I - quite literally - made an analogue horror-style video to tie into it. Patrons will be able to view it.

What’s next? Let’s talk about Doctor Hex. Doctor Hex is an Overclocker, a somewhat high-up official in a group known as the Clocker Collective. The Clocker Collective is introduced to us in the ‘Internal Document 14-0043’ entry, Hex’s ‘hello_you.txt’ entry and Record Three. At their core, they oppose the Academy for reasons outlined in the ‘Praxis’ entry of Panopticon Breach. The Clocker Collective sought to breach the Many Worlds Project’s box-worlds because they believed (correctly? again, didn’t think this through) that the Academy was using the information harvest from those boxes to become all-powerful (in some way). They planned to do this via the Vault of the Worldline, which we are introduced to in Record 3, as well as the custodian of it, Convergence.

I admit - without an ounce of shame - that the Vault, Convergence, the observers, simulators and eradicators, all of it is an extremely long, hardly subtle Destiny 2 reference. I admitted it myself. The Vault is the Vault of Glass, Convergence is Atheon. He’s literally called Time’s Conflux. I was not being subtle. I am also unrepentant.

The Vault raiding thing is another ambitious plotline I really couldn’t take anywhere, and just as worse is how Raindance in Record 4 also accessed the Vault and even worse is that the Clandestins who - just above - I said are working for the West, actually oppose them here. The grand reveal was that West and whatever and whoever it is I planned to put there, had already figured out they were in a box-world and additionally had found a way to contact the outside world. Why? How? I genuinely cannot say. One of my ideas was that they used Switchboard tech procured through the Vault to basically cheat-code their way to advanced civilization, and maintained control over the Vault via the strike team Raindance fought in Record 4. And there was this thing where Raindance works some kind of mental magic to turn Dahlia into an alternate(???) character called Princesa, which was Raindance’s way of shielding Dahlia from knowledge of the true nature of the world (conveniently flying in the face of all the Clandestins stood for). And after brawling with what was effectively an SCP mobile task force, she says ‘screw the already barely elaborated upon plotline where we’re chasing the hedge mages, we’re heading west to chase an even more nonsensical plotline’ and then the chapter ends.

And I wrote an nsfw alt of this chapter too. I have no idea what I was thinking if I even was. This chapter probably singlehandedly killed SBL1. I owe it my life.

What do I even want to talk about next? What can I? Maybe I can talk about the fact I actually wrote some entries for Phase 5. Or let’s do something else. Panopticon Breach had three additional entries you’d get access to once you cracked the puzzle it came with in all three ways it could be solved. They were called the ‘cipher entries’. The first was written by Hex. In the ‘Field Trial’ entry starring VIP 1, Adven Ventura and the MTF Zeta-99 ‘Shattered Pocketwatch’, they use VIP 1’s powers to confront and defeat a Clocker in combat, something that was said to be hard to do, but never actually shown. Cipher One is Hex promising vengeance. The plan was for Hex to send three teams of Clockers into the Vault, and this would then tie into a server event, where we’d form teams and solve puzzles I’d design and have a hand in directing the plot. That never took off.

Cipher Two is another VIP 1 entry. The story of Adven Ventura and VIP is a story of the Switchboard above, and you assemble knowledge of what kind of world it is from the VIP 1 entries, Anti-Academy Propaganda, some of Clocker Hex’s entries, and this. It serves as a capstone to the events that begun and somewhat concluded in Field Trial. I won’t reiterate the exact contents, but it was one of my smarter chapters, designed most of all to provoke thought.

And then Cipher Three. Cipher Three was designed to do one thing, tease an end-of-story scenario. It was purely to dredge hype from thin air. It introduces a shadowy character that moves in-between the events that happened before this, while keeping them shadowy without mentioning the character’s name. This entry is not a smart one. It’s downright plagiarism from the collective body of knowledge that is all of human history. It’s like if I tried to fake vanilla ice-cream and simply gave you a pile of amorphous white. No substance or depth. I do not want to talk about this one any longer.

Let’s talk about what was about to become Phase Five. Phase Five was going to feature mass restructuring; elimination of individual character stories, opting instead to compress them all down to stories that are grouped somewhat by ‘region’ (for example, Raindance, Spider and Dahlia would have all been one category as they are all related to Radiantcord in some way). It was also going to introduce another Shinycord member, advance the Adven Ventura and VIP 1 plotline, and do some other things I’ll elaborate upon further below.

How far did I get? I began writing the first of the VIP 1 entries, got fairly deep into the chapter that would introduce the eighth Shiny, and then I informally binned the project. Disgraceful.

What was planned? Interactions with Ventura and VIP 1 post-Panopticon Breach, as Ventura had become somewhat disillusioned with the Academy after speaking to Clocker Hex. I planned that they’d go ‘outside the Switchboard’ (the details of what ‘outside the Switchboard’ is is another tangent that can be summarized by ‘this is why you write shit down’) and meet with a retired Strider who’d take interest in VIP 1’s ability to Stride, as well as converse with Ventura over what they earned about the Academy from Clocker Hex. There would also be talk of Rosemary Lia (from Anti-Academy Propaganda) and her foundation.

What was gonna happen on the Discord front? A Pyre chapter that would serve as a prologue (or a part of one) leading up to the planned Nomad Kings SBL Tales. A Spider chapter with another flashback to the high school AU, this time interrupted by VIP 1.

Back to the Switchboard. Try and observe something.

The Eighth Shiny would begin their story in the Panopticon where Panopticon Breach took place. The Panopticon that exists in the Switchboard.

There was an entry that would follow up on the raid on the Vault in Record Three by Clocker Hex. It was done in the form of a document leaked by Hex themselves, an internal Academy report that mention the Academy’s dealings with a corporation known as Valkyjria, a contractor who develops weapons for them. The document talks about an event in Switchboard history known as the ‘Mysticism’, and how it was a major catastrophe, averted by the efforts of a division known as ‘Anti-Arcana’, who served to arm an MTF Pi-92 ‘Witch Hunters’ with a weapon called ‘Instrument Six’, whose sole purpose is to fight Striders, users of the Strider Protocol.

The entry goes into further detail, talking about how Academy brass asked their own internal weapons division to resurrect the defunct Anti-Arcana program and begin manufacture of Instrument Six again, which leads the reader to conclude that once again, Striders will be taking up arms against other Striders. This entry was actually written, which I don’t believe I mentioned above.

Another entry was planned concerning Ventura, talking about where he served and who he was before he became an Operator working for the Academy. It involved something called the ‘Sojourner Program’ and the entry was a long spiel about space travel, humanity and it’s pursuit of knowledge and the Switchboard. When questioned about his personal life, Ventura would decline comment.

Then there would be Leyden Dance, described above.

And in addition to the Switchboard Entry part of Leyden Dance would be a discussion of the Mysticism, the dangers of the Many Worlds Program and the consequences of ‘tampering with the Switchboard’ as the Academy was supposedly said to be doing by Clocker Hex in Panopticon Breach. Something else about the Ley Keys being ‘blades’. I think I just wanted the super-powered world-altering artifacts to also be weapons.

Even the first draft for the leaked memo by Clocker Hex was going to be more vague, instead being told by a newspaper excerpt describing a worker’s strike by staff of Valkyjria, talking about how the strike would affect production of very specialized weaponry that only has applications to organizations like the Academy, and appended to the newspaper excerpt would be a much shorter memo saying something like ‘this will disrupt our plans concerning Instrument Six’.

In case it wasn’t obvious, what I wanted you to observe was that most of Phase Five is wholly based in the Switchboard. Very little happens in Discord. I think realizing this was the final nail in the coffin for SBL1; I no longer wanted to tell the half of the story that the entire story actually began with. It was most unfortunate.

It is what it is.

So, how was it all going to end?

Probably unsatisfyingly. Or rather I have an answer to that question, but because it relates to what comes after this lengthy section, I won’t tell it. The end would, however, revolve around Adven Ventura, VIP 1, and a third character; the one mentioned in Cipher 3 at the end of Panopticon Breach.

There’s probably a lot I’ve forgotten and a little I haven’t mentioned. There was going to be a war arc; it was teased in Cipher 3 even. The rest I’ve forgotten because it was probably nonsense. This section has been most tiring. Onwards to something important.

VIP 1

This section is one that I probably shouldn’t write, as it dredges up old drama and reopens old wounds. It’s even possible to do this section without doing that, as I can simply just send this section to the addressed directly. But that would be cowardice. It’s probably worse cowardice to say my piece here where I cannot be countered and held responsible in real time, but I still feel obligated to write this. The purpose of this entire spiel is to end all that came before it, and drag a new dawn from murky depths. My words will be the last spoken on this issue.

I owe all of SBL to VIP 1.

Of course I did all the work. But it would not exist had VIP 1 not seeded the idea. VIP 1 seeded the idea and most of all, watched it grow, followed it every step of the way, even up until now. This is probably how they’re finding out their vision is somewhat dead. I sympathize. I also hope that having made it this far, they think similarly as I do, and acknowledge that this was inevitable.

No one followed up on this quite like VIP 1 did. No one showed as much interest, or engaged as eagerly or as consistently as they did. It was nigh daily that they were posing questions, theorizing, wanting to know more, prodding and poking, downright attempting to manipulate some information out of me. At first it was horribly validating, then amusing, and eventually, as awful as it is to admit - tiring.

VIP 1 is and wasn’t without flaws. They were an inverted narcissist; they hated themselves with a depth and fury that trying to drag them out of it nearly consumed me. It did not stop me from trying, and I don’t know if I’ve even succeeded. But they are still here, with us, and doing better than they probably ever have. They made plenty of mistakes and caused people to cut them off. I hold no ill-will towards those parties; they merely acted out of self-preservation. Would I have preferred that more had been done? Of course, but that is me being selfish. I do not have that sense of self-preservation, and so I stayed.

Was that the only reason? Probably not. My intentions and motives can hardly be called pure. They were self-serving; I didn’t want further blood on my hands. I wanted to be there for who was basically a number one fan. But they were more than that, they were and still are a friend. And even though we went a full year chasing this dragon that was SBL1 just to watch it vanish into smoke, the only thing that I regret was that I wasn’t there for them more.

What is my final regret for SBL1? Letting persons who hadn’t shown a tenth of the dedication to what I was building that VIP 1 did and still does convince me that they needed to be removed because of infractions against them. Granted, everything was already on the copping block, the retcons and rewrites were already guaranteed, but I let these people cloud my thinking, and it caused me to act against the person who was there for me at the beginning, there for me in the middle when nearly no one else was, and I know is there for me even at the end of it all. A person whose name I cannot even mention because it might drag a bitter taste into the mouths of others who read this.

An apology is something that would only serve to alleviate my own bitterness. It is worthless, and so I will not give one. Instead I dedicate this burning pile of waste to them, all of it, tangible and intangible, dreams and reality.

You have my deepest thanks.

I will not acknowledge or honor any further words spoken on this issue. I have pulled it from it’s resting place to kill it one final time - the right way - and in a way that I can be satisfied with. I have said my piece.

Where We’re Going

So why is this document called the ‘Samsara Proposal’? Where has this word even been used? What does this have to do with SBL?

To know where we’re going, we must first know where we’re coming from, but this is a little different. Allow me to tell you a story.

The first thing I ever truly wrote was ten, maybe eleven years ago. I was in fifth grade. It was a comic, the contents and nature of it so vast and deep in its cringe that I will never state in any scenario other than at gunpoint, being promised immense financial compensation, or maybe on my wedding day. Optimistic of me, I know. But it was the first thing I wrote. I was no artist. No writer either. I barely consider it writing. It had the impression of narrative. It’s like treating the smell of a meal as a meal itself.

It was, most importantly however, a start. My mother destroyed it. She called it a distraction from the life-deciding thing that elementary school supposedly is. She’ll color a lot of this story from here on out.

It gets a little hazy from then on out. Scattered projects whose size correlates seemingly with how large a place they took in my mind. Then there was another major comic project. This one was long as hell, very ambitious. My skill grew in real time. This one had narrative. It also crashed and burned. It was similar to SBL in that regard.

I got tired of drawing at some point and tried at only writing. The change was one of pure efficiency. It was easier to learn how to be good at using words than it was to learn how to draw, and I could get more story done in less time and notebook space. I also coincidentally lost all of my audience. Wasn’t an issue at the time as I barely had one to begin with. Writing became a very solitary pursuit for me. Still is.

I wrote something and put it on Wattpad. I won’t dignify it with a name. It was abject garbage. I killed it very quickly and with no regrets.

And then I wrote the work that would define every introduction to every social circle I was ever invited to be in for years to come; The Alchemaster. This I will dignify with a name, though I have not spared it a bullet.

The Alchemaster is something I have spoken very liberally about because it is a defined part of my character. I am glad it is too, it’s a concrete baseline from which I can only do better. The Alchemaster is an amalgamation of many, many things, haphazardly tossed together, spanning more than a hundred and fifty thousand words. It took three, maybe four years to write, huge breaks taken in-between key moments. You could say maybe three, four different Cryogens wrote it. It’s terrible as a result. It probably would still be terrible if one Cryo wrote it start to finish. For the longest time it defined me, and now it is remarkably easy to denounce it for what it is.

So what is it? Ultimately, a proof of concept. A deep, murky well. An experiment. A long journey with a not particularly noteworthy origin and destination. The Alchemaster is what this document is, a bookend. A checkpoint between a yesterday and a tomorrow. And it is dead, so that greater things may live.

Allow me to share with you, the nature of Samsara.

Samsara is a Sanskrit word. It means ‘world’. It refers to a fundamental belief of most Indian religions, that of death, rebirth and cyclicality of all life, matter, existence. It is the endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth into reincarnation. It means wandering, aimlessly. Flowing without care or direction. Simple movement, constantly, because there can be no stagnancy.

I feel this describes many things about many things. I applied it to my writing. Everything built upon the things that came before it. Names, concepts, ideas, places, things, characters, starts, middles and ends, they move from one of my works to the next, and the next, and the next. I did not particularly notice this, I merely assumed it to be an inevitability. But awareness has made me strong.

SBL2 does not exist. I don’t think it ever has. I am detaching myself from a concept that is not my creation. Shinycord is not my creation, I merely borrow the name. What I am creating is different in that it is wholly mine.

The Samsara Proposal is a document that will begin my next work; Project Samsara.

All power in Heaven and on Earth has been given unto me.

What is the nature of Project Samsara? The first work under it’s belt has many names, but internally I call it Ven-2. It crawls from the grave of SBL1, The Alchemaster, and the dozens of things that came before it. It will be radiant. It will be mighty. It will be my greatest work yet. All past mistakes will not be repeated. We are going full throttle. And we do it not because it is easy, but because it is hard. I owe it to myself, and to all of you, to see what we began more than a year ago through.

Project Samsara will solidify my name as ‘the Scribe’.

What We’re Doing Now

I thank you for making it this far. It has been a long walk to get here.

What is coming? The October Expansion for one. It contains the first few documents for Ven-2. Pure worldbuilding. Pure doctrine. It will be on my Patreon; the story begun here continues there. I appreciate all the support I’ve received up until now, and all further support that is to come.

SBL1, as of now, is dead. It has been a long run. Maybe even a good one. I am glad that it is over. I will be providing the entirety of the SBL1 as a downloadable archive of pdfs, as well as other things like the art and my random scribblings.

The unreleased Phase 5 documents will be for Patrons however. Everything else that has reached publishing will be freely available.

SBL1 will also be taken down from my site. This document and the archive download will take its place.

Perhaps most noteworthy is what I plan to do for Ven-2. This October Expansion caps off one stage of Ven-2’s development. There will be another stage that features more release of documents for public viewing, a stage that won’t be released as it will be work on pure narrative, as opposed to the documents in stages one and two that are only worldbuilding. Before, during or after Stage 3 however, I will be releasing a Ven-2 ‘Proof of Concept’; a collection of maybe five to six entries that serves as a teaser trailer.

And then I will settle down to months of immense, rigorous work.

There is no timeline for Ven-2 in particular. I will work at my own pace, but we will go hard i the paint. That I promise.

Closing Remarks

Here we are, at the end. Has it been fun? Were you entertained?

Probably not. If you read this all in one sitting come join me in writing Ven-2, I could use someone who hates themselves that much.

This is a conclusion, I’ll keep it brief.

The past is prologue. The show must go on.

It’s been a pleasure,

• Cryogen, Shattered Scribe