Fragment Ten

**Fragment Ten: Gladitor**

## Overview

After a blast from the past in Fragment Nine, another familiar face came to The Mountaineers at the start of fragment ten. Curious about the origins of The Cagliostro's email server, Martin Rank had decided to do an investigation of the company who hosted it - Kemetic Solutions. Through some clever digging, he was able to acquire the address for the company and decided to pay them a visit. Although he was turned away at the entrance, he did manage to get three photos, which he posted on the Basecamp 33 Forum.

Marty's photos led to a rabbit-hole like no other. Strangely enough, the photos were filled with strange distortions, odd static-y bits that Marty had never seen before, even on his ancient camera. Hidden inside was the symbol for the element aether and the words K.S., and recruits realized this pointed to a url - kemetic.solutions. The site lead to a landing page with the Kemetic Solutions logo, butterflies floating out of the logo in an infinite loop. However, Kemetic Solution's site wasn't the only secret the photos were hiding - one of the images was a gif that held a password-protected file named patience. Using the word aether as the password, recruits unlocked the file and found the words "63 minutes." Combining their two discoveries, recruits waited on Kemetic Solution's homepage for the set time, finding an internal promotional video at the end of their long wait. The video held a creepy, culty vibe that concerned many of the recruits.

After recruits were done being thoroughly creeped out by Kemetic Solutions' video, they soon noticed a new presence on the forums. A user named xxxxaetherxxxx was modifying posts in the thread, using dates and times to point to older posts all over the forum. Using numbers formed from the dates of the edits, it became clear something was happening on Monday, April 3 at 5:30. When the time came, recruits realized somethign strange with the recruitment video - there were now strange flashes of a man speaking to someone named Aether, asking him to perform magiq. Hidden in the memories were pleas to help, the words "therearenoconstance", "Find her", and "sTumbled."

Taking the strange capitalization on the word sTumbled, recruits were lead to a Tumblr page of a girl named Constance. She refused to speak to the Mounties at first, requiring the forums to be protected by a safeguard before she would discuss Aether. Using her membership to a magical library, however, she was willing to provide Mounties with the tools to protect their site, in the form of the Joradian Safeguard spell. After recruits successfully performed the Joradian Safeguard Spell on Google Hangouts, Constance joined the site and explained Aether's story. Aether was a magiqally adept boy who held the gift of technology manipulation. He was her best friend, but he had suddenly disappeared one day and she was desperate to find him. In the days before his disappearance, he had been contacted by a man claiming he could help him, and Constance suspected this was no mere coincidence. After a thorough questioning of Constance, she was able to provide recruits with Aether's Tumblr blog, soon realizing that his once empty account now had a single video - a livestream set for five days in the future. With this, the Mounties were once again playing the waiting game.

Five days later, Mounties joined the livestream and spoke to Aether himself. He was being held in an underground facility, forced to undergo experiments testing his magiqal abilities. Two others were being held against their will, a Mountaineer and a young girl, and they were all being used in an attempt to open a door that could help them escape the forest. However, Aether had a plan. Using his technological powers, he was going to break into Kemetic Solutions databases and free his mind. Aether warned the Mounties of the storm to come, telling them he trusted them to save him from Kemetic Solutions. Saying their farewells to Aether, they realized that the images flashing throughout the livestream held a secret - a constellation known as Gladitor. The tenth fragment had finally been found.