filed by Agent Pony
Greetings again Agents. In the last unknowable unit of time I have been extremely preoccupied with helping sort out the Archives here, as our rather excellent resident archivist and pitcher, Plums Blather, is in Kansas City for the unforeseeable future and someone had to pick up the slack. During the better part of the offseason, it has been silent… except for the once-daily voice of the crew of Umpires waking me up at Very Specific Times. It’s fine. The Agency’s coffee is very good.
Initially, right after the Season N1 elections, The Book was 99.9% covered in black bars. They unredact when the crew of Umpires take over the site for a few minutes every Material Plane day to BEHOLD them. We then have to scramble to keep up.
The New Book seems to be wildly different from The Book that we see in Beta and by extension, the Short Circuits, including our oldest copy of it (which is dated around season beta 3, as any earlier copies seem to have either been lost to time or in the deep depths of this Archive.)
I will be going through all the sections in order of declassification. We have a lot to get through today.
Section 2: The League
This section essentially establishes what The League is and what its Teams and Players are composed of. You know, the normal stuff. “Plasma”, “Spirit”, “Soul”. Uhhhh, maybe that isn’t normal stuff?
Section 3: The Seasons
This one details the Blaseball schedule for each season and postseason, as the regular season now contains 90 games per regular season instead of 99 games back in beta. It also details qualification for Party Time and how the Postseason is scheduled and set up in quite extensive detail in fact. Then it mentions the Offseason in Rule T, which is mostly redacted except for the words “reflect”, “also” and “occasional”. The most curious part is Rule I, which only mentions a “Tribunal” surrounded by black bars. A tribunal is a type of court of law, or sometimes the people in that court, or sometimes the place where that court meets.
Section 4: The Game
The Game details what can happen in each Blaseball game, including some details about defense, weather events, stealing being forbidden unless stated otherwise, the mechanic for Shame, and the usuals like how a Run is scored, the Pitcher must Throw the Ball, etc. It’s nice to see that Crying in Blaseball is still redacted.
An interesting thing to note, that I’ve noticed both in this Book and the one from the Short Circuits, is the change of “Splortsmanship” to “Sportsmanship”. It is currently unknown what caused this change.
Section 5: Fandom
This… Was a surprising choice of a section name, for sure. This details the Activities that the Fans can do and the influence they have on Blaseball, mainly the Election process with Decrees and Blessings, in fact, I believe that they changed it so only one Blessing may be granted per team. There is still one more election option that Fans can place their votes on, other than Decrees and Blessings, which we have not seen yet. Personally, my wild guess is the Amplifications from what we saw in the various Short Circuits.
Rule F details what happens should the Fans elect to Open the Forbidden Book, which amongst the black bars, mentions “suffering” yeah, been there done that. But interestingly, it has accounted for us doing it again, which only details “Judgement”. This only brings me horrible flashbacks of a certain game character yelling “JUDGMENT” right before drop-kicking the player character as one of their attacks.
Then it details the intricacies of Betting and earning Chips for Votes, including the daily Universal Bets and Influence. Following that and a couple of redacted rules, it mentions Posting, a feature that we cannot yet, as of this writing, use. Essentially Posting, along with the Mobile App, still needs more time from the devs. We will provide more details in a future debriefing, once they exist.
Section 6: League Management
Well… These next two sections are quite a doozy, especially for me. Here’s to hoping my brain can wrap around these relatively unscathed.
This section has direct ties to the predicament the entire League is in right now and is the probable premise of this so-called “Coronation Era”. Management of the League is overseen by the Ace, and judging from the events of season 24, that Ace most likely used to be The Coin. There’s a mention of an “Usurper”, but with no further detail of the sorts. A Power Vacuum would form when the Ace is “Deposed” which probably means overthrowing them, or in our case, melting her into worthless slag.
Rule G onwards contains what the Crew of Umpires said during the Election, but with further detail on how this “Tournament of Champions” will function. Something to note here is the mention of “Rendered” upon entry to the Tournament in Rule J.
There’s some speculation on what they meant by that, one can interpret this as a “snapshot” of the Season Champion’s roster at the time it is taken and is entered in the Tournament. In this interpretation, a Team that already won a season can win again and have that iteration of the Team possibly face off a previous iteration of the same team. So for example, using teams that won in beta, we can have a set of games where The Philly Pies from season b1 can face off against The Philly Pies from season b2.
So we can have games where teams can “technically” face off themselves, and have it not horribly break unlike the Midseason Fiesta in the last Short Circuit.
On the other hand, “rendered” is also something you can do to fat from meat. With fire.
Section 7: The Immaterial Plane
This one, by far, is the most redacted section of The Book as it vaguely details, well, the Immaterial Plane. Oh dear.
It re-establishes the Fans being an integral part of Blaseball. But then the next thing that caught my eye is Rule M, which says:
[…] may achieve Apotheosis.
There are a couple meanings of Apotheosis. One is the perfect form or example of something. Another similar one is the highest or best part of something. But the one that feels more like it is applicable to here is elevation to a divine status, better known as deification, becoming a god.
Agent O’s hunch about it in their previous debrief says the same thing. I personally have Zero Ideas of what else to make of this.
Moving on, since of course that was not the end of it, it mentions that Umpires normally work in Crews. This sure has implications on what made the Umpires of Beta past Rogue. Then it details some of the responsibilities of A Commissioner, which isn’t presently limited to just acting as the League’s legal Notary, and details on what would happen should the Commissioner Abdicate their title or be Deposed which is, surprise! Still redacted! and is concluded with, “The Commissioner […] a great job.”
Wait, the Commissioner can just quit? They can leave???
Processing Thoughts
Something that I can’t get out of my mind is the mention of Apotheosis, and specifically, the rule right underneath it, Section 7, Rule N – it mentions “Players, Teams, Fans, Umpires and Commissioners.” This reminds me of the Coin’s own melting words, “We’re Fans / Just like you”. Unsettling.
Nobody in the Debriefings office has any idea on what will happen once a team wins the Tournament of Champions, but I do have a hunch. Whichever team wins this Tournament will not only become the Ace, but will also become a Deity itself or have an Entity created in their image to represent itself.
(Which somewhat aligns to how some teams including our own having or had something akin to an Entity in their Team lore.) I’m going to stop here, the coffee is starting to wear off and I still have to figure out what this handwriting means.
Oh, and by the way, unlike in Beta: this version of the Book is currently signed by absolutely no one.