DEAD CENTER OF THE PLOT

Once again, the Book has been opened. Time is a flat circle.

And the Houston Spies have received Strike One.

History Repeats Itself

filed by Agent O

The Book opened.

Of course it did.

What showed up on the site was not an emblem of a god. Not exactly. It was four umpire masks with the eye-holes filled with pure white, each with a halo of a different color: blue, white, yellow, red. According to them, play is now “UNDER REVIEW” (remember, the ILB’s 24 teams all gained the Under Review modification at the beginning of season 24) – and a power vacuum is present.

The Book has a provision for this turn of events, apparently: according to Section 6 rules G, H, and I, “A TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS SHALL BE CALLED / TO NAME A NEW ACE / AND CLAIM THE MOUND.” This tournament is to be heralded by umpires; and a team must hold a golden record to participate. Remember, the Shoe Thieves received a golden record yesterday.

And with a final menacing

MORE TO COME.

The election results became visible, though initially poorly formatted with overlapping text.

The Book Falls

Consequences for our actions are thus:

A solar eclipse.

Umpires’ eyes have turned white.

But instead of incinerating a star player, like last time, we have had four star players targeted for various fates:

Anastasia Isarobot, the Mexico City Wild Wings’ ace pitcher, was incinerated. Göran Ndoye – Anastasia’s replacement – is not nearly as good.

The Book fell on our very own Terrell Bradley, calling his Alternate. His Alternate is well below average in batting but actually has any fielding aptitude, like, at all. It remains to be seen what this means for our performance, though it’s unlikely to be good.

A third star player, Zephyr McCloud, has been Cursed with “EYES CLEAR. HEART FILLS. THEY CAN’T LOSE.” This is a reference to “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose”, a quote from a sports movie of some sort called Friday Night Lights. (After the Miami Dale got their hands on this phrase, though, memetic mutation evolved it into “CLEAR FLESH CAN’T LOSE MAX VELOCITY BOAT RAMP”.) The modification Zephyr has received, “Can’t Lose”, is… a strange name for a curse. Perhaps if he is on a losing team, he’s forced to switch teams to be on the winning one? Does it hurt or kill him if he loses? Or perhaps it has to do with championships…

And the fourth, Simon Haley, “SWEARS IN. THEY EMBARK ON A SIDE QUEST IN THE SHADOWS.” They have been given the modification “Knighted”, described only as being “on a Quest”, and have been replaced with Pixie Carberry.

“BRECKENRIDGE BREAKS” – leaving them now the Broken Ridge Jazz Hands.

And finally, in a fancy font with a crown:

THE CORONATION ERA BEGINS.

The others are going to cover the Blessings while I get into my stock of red string, so I’ll be back after these messages.

Blessings

filed by agent kit

• NEW Steal Best Batter went to the Baltimore Crabs, who stole Tiera Wigdoubt from the Laredo Excavators – verifying that the Prehistory teams remain in the Black Hole. …However, on the relevant Player page Tiera still appears as being on said Excavators, with the modification “In The Field”. Whatever that means.
• NEW Max Out Pitcher went to the Canada Moist Talkers, with the flavor text “Abner Pothos’ Zone heats up. It’s Red Hot!” Similarly, the Tokyo Lift maxed out batter Gumdrop Che Amran, whose zone is likewise “Red Hot”. Is this similar to Magmatic? Spicy? Fire pitches?
• NEW Randomize Players was won by the Miami Dale, and they alternated the following players:
  • Eddie Mulberry
  • Una Manhattan
  • Edric Tosser
  • Serge Shortvat
  • Eddie Mulberry
  Yes, Eddie Mulberry is on that list twice; players to randomize are picked one at a time, as we know from the time Marco Escobar thrice got hit by Summoning Circle.
• Shadow Play replaced the Mexico City Wild Wings’ Yusef Puddles, who had played half a game, with James Boy. However, James Boy was not the best player in their Shadows.
• The Hawaii Fridays Shore Up (Svetlana Dickens).
• NEW Team Boost grows the Boston Flowers by half a star.
• The Charleston Shoe Thieves stole a player from the Black Hole (NEW Steal Best Pitcher). They received Derrick Krueger, of Garages ballad fame. Who was previously dead.
• The Core Mechanics win Strong Start, which optimizes their lineup by batting.
• Strike Zero goes to…

Oh.

Oh no.

Strike One

filed by the Morale Officer

The Plan has taken a peculiar turn. We received the Strike Zero blessing with 2% of the vote.

An experimental activation of a strike cannon on our moon base (as you know, the moon is in the black hole) appears to have activated a necromancy circle that Marco Escobar left lying around, as one does (moon haunted), causing an incinerated player to come back to life and shoot directly where the cannon-and-circle assemblage was pointed. Fortunately, Mohammed Picklestein had ensured that the strike cannon was pointed to where any accidental incendiaries would do the least damage, the location with the greatest concentration of Firefighters. We’re sure that Shaquille Torres is excited to be back alive and also back home (assuming they are, of course, from Chicago).

Furthermore, we have been granted Strike One. It is visible as a modification on our team page. As the Ticker once said, “SPIES ON STRIKE? IT’S IN THEIR BLOOD”.

We may have obtained a strike for necromancy, or in belated recognition of Operation Nullpark, or for beating the Ohio Peanuts. Agent Roamer has put forth the theory that it is to our advantage as a team to reach three (or four) strikes as soon as possible, as once we are struck out, we will, of course, be redacted.

I look forward to seeing the consequences of our actions!

Red String

also filed by Agent O

Right. Time for the wild speculation part.

The new Forbidden Book is, if anything, even more unreadable than the last one. There are only two readable lines, 1D and 1E, and “readable” is really stretching it for 1D:

d. Blaseball is [REDACTED] sport [REDACTED] horror [REDACTED]
e. This Book defines the Rules of Blaseball.

Not even the section 6 rules G, H, and I – which had just been brought up in the Umpires’ monologue – were visible. Guess there’s nothing to be gained here.

This being said, I’d like to mention 6G: “A TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS SHALL BE CALLED / TO NAME A NEW ACE / AND CLAIM THE MOUND.” Remember, the Coin was what we smashed into when we “charged the mound”. So the mound is empty, now. There are no gods there. What if they’re going to make a god out of us, or our players? What happens to our dedication, as a fanbase, to Kill All Gods then?

Here’s one more bit of red string: the name “The Coronation Age” is not just about crowning champions (although it is certainly about that).

The solar corona is the outermost layer of a star’s “atmosphere”, a wispy layer of plasma only visible during a total solar eclipse. (It is called a corona because “corona” is the Latin word for “crown”.) The umpire masks that showed up during the Emergency Alert had halos behind them – but, upon closer examination, the halos have black circles inside them, making them the coronas of a solar eclipse.

A Target Painted On Our Backs

We are unused to attention. Our team has always been good, but not good enough. Operation Nullpark fizzled out. For much of the Expansion Era we had an “avoid plot until our team wins a championship” policy, one we only discarded after how season 20’s championships went.

But between Terrell Bradley and Strike Zero, we no longer have a choice. We are dead center of the plot whether we like it or not.

So here’s the real question:

What do we do about it?