Eldritch Errors: The Basics
During the initial pilot, we were purposefully mysterious about exactly what Eldritch Errors was. Most of our need to define it initially was motivated by making sure that fictional threats weren't mistaken for real threats. Now our need is motivated by helping new participants and the press make sense of what Eldritch Errors is, which requires a little more finesse and a little less mystery. The first 8 questions in the new "frequently asked questions" list we're building focus on the basics:
1. What is Eldritch Errors?
Eldritch Errors is an immersive narrative experience playing out in real-time through atoms in the physical world, bits in the digital world, and symbolism in the dream world. Weaving together elements from weird fiction and the techno-thriller, Gothic horror and today's news, Eldritch Errors asks you to step inside the story and become part of a group exploring the shadowy world where technological security and the occult mix together. That story happens in an alternate world that includes everything in the world around you ... plus some things that aren't (we hope!) You inhabit that fictional world along with both real and fictional participants, and your actions have an impact on that reality.
2. How do you participate in Eldritch?
Jump right into the action by joining the Sentry Outpost as the Sentries continue to unravel the mysteries -- while much of it happens online, much of it also happens in the real world, perhaps even somewhere near you. Don't be surprised if the other Sentries you meet act as if everything is real: that's part of the fun of Eldritch. You can also step just slightly outside of the story and get a bird's eye of what's come before at EldritchErrors.com. You'll also find participants discussing Eldritch in other places, like Unfiction.com or Yog-Sothoth.com, while here at Schmeldritch.com we give participants a peek behind the scenes.
3. How does Eldritch play out in the digital world?
Hopefully, in any fashion that you already use the digital world. In the pilot, that meant portions of the story took place on Craigslist, while participants worked in collaboration with fictional characters in a discussion board. It also meant decompiling threatening looking malware, port scanning machines in different parts of the country and even having participant's websites "hacked" by fictional enemies.
4. How does Eldritch play out in the physical world?
Hopefully, in ways much more creepy than the way you already interact with the world around you. In the pilot, that included strange dire packages arriving unannounced, trips to retrieve strange artifacts from sketchy psychics, the interruption of occult rituals in a storage garage, and the recovery of strange hard drives of data. We're just getting started: we've got even creepier plans ahead.
5. How does Eldritch play out in the dream world?
We're only half-joking, but there are some people who (from time to time) continue to participate in Eldritch, even though they are asleep and dreaming. There are others that might just be pretending to share in the same nightmares as others. Dreams and nightmares are a big part of what is happening to B.A. Saint-Feline, so it might have been inevitible that it would happen to some of you as well ... or maybe you're the only one having nightmares, and everyone else is just playing along.
6. Is Eldritch Errors like alternate reality gaming (ARG) or live-action roleplaying (LARP)?
If you are familiar with ARGs or LARPs, the experience of Eldritch Errors will certainly seem a little less strange or unusual. LARPs, though, tend to have a formal rule structures (which Eldritch doesn't), while ARGs tend to have more explicit puzzles (which Eldritch tends to substitute with other kinds of activities.) It would be just as easy for someone else to point out the similarities (and not just with Eldritch, also between ARGing and LARPing themselves.) We prefer to think of Eldritch as the dangerously in-bred cousin of ARGers and LARPers that people don't talk about in polite company.
7. Is This Lovecraftian?
The works of weird fiction master H.P. Lovecraft are one of the central starting points of the Eldritch Errors series, especially the period of his work generally described as the Mythos. There are large communities of Lovecraft advocates, though, that deserve a more specific response: Eldritch Errors is inspired by original Mythos (the works of Lovecraft himself), not by the work of the many talented writers since Lovecraft who's work together is typically considered "Mythos canon." That's because our inspiration stems as much from the biographical detail of Lovecraft, and his personal letters of the period, as it is by the works he wrote: it is his lens on science and change, hopelessness and the alien that we find most fascinating (and that we're trying to hold most true to.)
8. Why Computer Security?
The Internet might be the biggest Pandora's Box in human history, an irresistable array of both the laudable and the horrible -- a hyperbole that might be topped only by the next wave of science, say quantum mechanics (which, very specifically, was a science that gave Lovecraft nightmares in the early 20th century.) Eldritch Errors is, in part, a purposeful hyperbole on the dangerous war that has already been waging on the Internet for more than a decade ... by upping the stakes to the unthinkable.