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Debriefings

HEATING UP

Season 23 Sunday: A Roamless Crate. A new god. History is repeating itself, and teams are going to burn.

filed by Agents O and NamedElemental

A new god has emerged. The flames beckon. Our Plan, whatever it is, continues to succeed. The detailed movements of the Plan remain beyond my reach, but I am assured that this is true.

Well…

We have, as per usual, not gotten any worse. This is because we have received nothing, at least not directly.

Well, not quite nothing. We did get our Roamless Crate. (89% of all our votes, by the way. I salute your voting discipline.)

We had a plurality of votes on our second chance at Uncle Indemnity. And yet, presumably according to plan, a replica of Uncle Plasma went to the Kansas City Breath Mints instead.

We are hoping that Roamless will protect both us and the rest of the League, preventing Parker from showing up and thus by definition preventing him from roaming away to leave instability.

We also benefitted from the divisional blessing Walk in the Park, thanks to the Hellmouth Sunbeams winning it. We didn’t get Hitting Flotation Bubble, but congrats to Wild High for getting it – they’ve needed some help for a while now.

…Despite the blessing text saying that Walk in the Park would be a seasonal mod, it appears to be permanent.

Surveillance

Some highlights from elsewhere in the league.

All other teams in the Wild League have also received a Roamless Crate, with the exception of the Hades Tigers, who are of course already fireproof. The Mild League, however, has opted to diversify. The Seattle Garages and the Charleston Shoe Thieves have received Containment Crates, while the Philly Pies and Hawai’i Fridays have received Avoidance and Squiddish Crates Respectively.

The Canada Moist Talkers have won their third championship, and have thus evolved. The team now has the Flood Bath modification, which causes players to become slippery after they are washed off base in Flooding weather. As of writing, we do not know what this mod does, or if Flooding weather will even occur next season.

The LA Unlimited Tacos won the Gachapon blessing. Agents Malik Romayne and Math Velazquez have been selected for this undercover mission. Math of course has been recently undercover with the Miami Dale since the 62nd day of the season. We presume both have gone to the Infinite Cities in order to investigate the Los Angeli and their relationship to alternate universes.

In other undercover agent news, The San Francisco Lovers have won the Targeted Evolution blessing, causing Mint Shupe and Agent Karato Bean to evolve. Relatedly, why is there a rumor going around that Karato’s hair has suddenly become golden curls, and/or that they have sprouted tiny wings?

In the realm of necromancy, the Philly Pies have brought back Niq Nyong’o, a former player for the Atlantis Georgias, by way of the Lottery Pick blessing. This may or may not be related to their Tarot Card changing from the Hermit to XIII.

The Boston Flowers did a Vault Swap, sending Glabe Moon to eternity in exchange for Sutton Bishop.

The Weirdest Typing Quirk

The Coin appeared before the election, spoke about staying the course and facing another crisis, and then was interrupted by –

A video of flames, turned upside-down?

This turned out to be a new god, speaking in mirror-inverted orange text. All present immediately deduced that this was Namerifeht, forger of the Sun(s). Since that text style may have been difficult to parse, instead of paraphrasing its statement, I will transcribe the whole thing here:

Credit Denied
Service Suspended
Balance Outstanding
Assets Underwater
Bridges Burned
Final Notice
Fire Sale

Then the Coin yanked control of the website back, with “We will Win. We always Win.”

Hey, that’s our schtick! You don’t get to claim that you’re winning, or that disasters and events are unexpected. Especially because it’s pretty clear by this point that your plan involves causing disasters, squeezing everything you can out of the League, and then running off.

Then, the black-and-white text that we typically associate with “automated” messages such as the “Please wait…” text said something strange:

EMERGENCY ALERT
EXECUTIVE ACTION
THE COIN FLIPS
OVER OVER
UNDER UNDER

So remember when the arrival of the breach teams was heralded with “THE COIN FLIPS/OVER UNDER/UNDER OVER”? Remember that this made directionality lose all meaning?

Everything’s been put back. Up is up again, and down is down again. Well, almost everything. Turntables are still there. But let’s just say I’m pretty sure Turntables won’t be there anymore by the end of this season.

Ominous

The subtitle of this season is “Fire Sale”.

If you check the Shop now, the Sundaes have melted. Their payout has been slashed by an order of magnitude. Presumably this is to prevent the impending increase in incinerations from breaking the economy. Gee, I wonder why that’s a concern.

The Reader, with the comment “scoring play”, has put our team (as well as every other team) “Under Review”, an unknown modification with unknown effects.

The Depth chart has been flipped. The Consumers now come from above. Our position in the middle of the chart is actually favorable to us, as we do not need to execute a U-turn in either direction to prevent ourselves from being eaten alive.

Oh, and Parker MacMillan Roamed out of the Vault onto the Hawaii Fridays, leaving everyone in the Vault unstable.

A Tale Older Than Time

Yesterday, Crates said: “A Trade-Off/A Traitor/A Repetition”.

Again, New Megan Ito has stolen the Force Field off Parker MacMillan.

Again, Parker MacMillan is roaming.

Again, Parker MacMillan is leaving instability in his wake.

It’s just that this time, we are the ones who are facing that instability down.

We can only trust in the Plan, and hope.

And if the whole team is incinerated – well, we’re the Spies. The players could easily have faked their own deaths. As for us the fans, Decentral Command, the sideserver, will remain open regardless. Even if you decide to go to another team because of the heartbreak, once a Spy, always a Spy: no matter where you go, there will be a part of this team in your heart, always.

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