Wrong Way Down - Part 13

Episode 13 is the last episode of Wrong Way Down. Splitsie, Capac, W4stedspace and Texfire are back at the lake with their racers, having reloaded the game from the save point where Capac left last time.

Texfire makes a fake British announcement claiming to be Splitsie -- because Tex is streaming his POV to Splitsie's Twitch channel today for the occasion. Capac faces a new problem in SE - wanting *wood grain* textures to match up on his longboat racer. Texfire misses the Muppets (and the artists behind them) and Capac confuses himself with a vague memory of Big Bird almost dying in a plane crash...? W4sted is bothered by Tex' bad British accent. Splitsie attaches his Lime Lightning (called Xbox Mobile by Chat) to the back of the Bird Eater using his "long piston noodle". ... Everyone giggles and bites their tongue. Tex recommends using a second landing gear to be safe. Splitsie fixes his missing game audio by playing loud cheerful music; they blame MS Windows but they also admit liking MS products... such as... Age of Empires and Crimson Skies! Since the backup save did not include the players' inventories and they needed to restore them, Texfire was accidentally in creative mode, and couldn't hide it because he's streaming. They changed their mind and now they will take the Bird Eater with them, because during the test race last episode they felt the way to the pole was quite long. While the racers are driving along with the Bird Eater, Capac notices he forgot a gyroscope, and Splitsie is struggling to get uphill without destroying his carried racer.

(0:30) On the way south, they discuss cheese. Out of nowhere, the Bird Eater tips and stands on its right wheels at a 45 degree angle. Since the wheels are embedded in the voxels, Splitsie admin-cut&pastes the Bird Eater to free it, which drops the attached Lime Lightning, but it survives and can be reattached. When a drone attacks, they decide to hide the racers under the Bird Eater.

Thanks to donations of community members such as Sijjin, Capac will soon be able to replace his potato computer with a superior vegetable, a sweet potato, and maybe a celery soda; Splitsie sighs and Chat derails, comparing all kinds of vegetable flavoured sweets and cold soups. It's dangerous for the small racers to drive in front, or behind the Bird Eater because the rover is kicking up a lot of trees before finally reaching the treeless polar region. In W4sted's chat's poll "When will we reach the south pole?" the top voted option is now "lol next year". They chat about canned food/MRE and about a live stream showing the last hamburger in Iceland.

(1:00) They are now 122 km away from their start location (measured through the planet "as the bird flies"). They fight off another drone and disarm an Assertive Outpost on foot with Splitsie as helpful decoy, while W4sted complains about the crudely programmed rifles. Splitsie's wheels get stuck in voxels again, Tex's handbrake is uncooperative, and Capac's chat recommends producing infinite power by shining spotlights on solar panels, but at least the next drone has passed without spotting them.

W4sted chats about wanting to play Deceit with Splitsie and Capac. Splitsie and Texfire agree with Shack's opinion to switch off the HUD for immersion but then they can't see the compass. Splitsie admits that in "Find the imposter" type games, he just tries to flush Capac out the airlock, and W4sted considers that a normal element of gameplay. Splitsie complains that his involuntary scouts W4sted and Texfire have led him onto a gully edge and Capac teases it's been pretty smooth where he is. Texfire claims that his vehicle randomly bucks and Splitsie informs him those are the *trees* that Tex is hitting. Capac's Longship is performing surprisingly well.

Officially, the compass will spin to mark the southpole, but Capac expects the south pole to be marked by a barber pole; W4sted expects a flag saying "Wedgie was here!" or Captain Shack, or Top Gear's Clarkson in a deck chair. Splitsie is suspiciously quiet.

They made it! Texfire spots the south pole marker on the horizon; he thinks it's a TannenBOOM, a Christmas tree with warheads as baubles. Splitsie admits that he considered placing a tough hostile base on the south pole, but he's not that mean. At closer inspection, what Tex mistook for warheads are just harmless projector blocks. Capac says it's Yggrasil, but then realises it's a version of the tree from their previous Christmas special. Tex and W4sted hint the next challenge will be to carry the tree to save Christmas...

(1:30) Okay, new plan for the rest of the stream (now that using thrusters is allowed again): Cut down the tree, strap it onto the Bird Eater, and fly back to the north pole. They chat about Christmas food, while Splitsie restarts the game, disables the NPC enemies, and dismantles the turrets and wind turbines. They form two teams, team Lumberjack (Capac and W4sted) will cut down the tree and strap it to the Bird Eater's roof, while the other team (Splitsie and Texfire) strap thrusters to the Bird Eater. Splitsie has experience with ramp jumping rovers into space with large aft thrusters and gyroscopes -- Texfire laughs skeptically.

Splitsie switches his space suit to the Carpet skin because it looks Christmassy and announces their Christmas gift: A Uranium-filled reactor inside the tree. Splitsie mentions that Capac and he are not affected by the summer bushfires in Australia, however, someone from W4sted's community, Frosty, has been evacuated.

Texfire attaches 4 large Hydrogen Thrusters to the back of the Bird Eater and small ones all around, and W4sted builds a swinging rotor arm on vertical pistons to lift the tree. W4sted's plan is to pull the tree up and swing it down into a horizontal orientation, drive the Bird Eater under it, attach the tree to the Bird Eater's roof, ... and then grab the rover by the tree and swing the Bird Eater 90 degrees vertically, so it can lift off to space! Capac cuts the tree and Splitsie converts the static grid to a mobile grid and gets Capac squished. They lift the tree using wobbly pistons while Splitsie sings "Oh noodle tree". Capac makes a heroic effort to bite his tongue and not make piston jokes. They intended to swarm out in their small racers to find Cobalt, but call off the search when Texfire pulls a thousand Metal Grids out of his cargo vehicle's back pocket.

(2:00) W4sted lifts and swings the tree - at first nothing happens and then everything is going very fast. Splitsie builds a more stable leg to hold up the Christmas tree. W4sted and Capac expect to return from typical Christmas tree shopping with a tree stand, tree water, tree lights, tree mat, praying mantisses, and extra vet bills; Splitsie is confused.

Splitsie accidentally dismantles W4sted's pole monument pedestal but builds him a new, better one. W4sted explains to a community member who stepped out for 30 minutes that yes, this is still the same stream. Since Tex is the only one who has turrets left, Splitsie deletes the remaining hostile Observation Posts. They manoeuvre the Bird Eater's roof under the tree and ruin Capac's picknick spot, which is bullying :( and against the Terms of Service. W4sted finally uses modern ladder technology to get up to the Bird Eater. Splitsie almost falls into a mysterious vertical hole -- Capac had been trying to go back to the north pole by drilling straight down but got bored and left the hole. W4sted tries to remember what happened last time when he converted a rover to a rocket.

(2:30) Each one has stories to tell of accidents in SE. Capac refuses to learn Build Planner and W4sted just refuses to watch Splitsie's tutorial on it. They chat about the new Star Wars movies, fandoms, and spoilers. They successfully attach the tree to the roof and Capac straps it down. Having a reactor now, they drill only a bit of ice to fill their hydrogen tanks. W4sted realises that all his arguments why this won't fly apply only to his heavily modded hard mode series, Kerbal Space Engineers, but this is almost vanilla and might just work. They brainstorm about designing a Cube movie-like maze in SE. They notice how the sun has been staying at the horizon all day, because they are at a pole.

(3:00) While discussing snacks and drinks (coffee versus tea), Splitsie adds a speed module to the Assembler so Capac can build them a present. W4sted dances on the original golden stripe on the back of the Bird Eater, looking at the reflections of the Christmas lights, which look more Christmassy than Splitsie's tree itself. They complain about the management's feature creep, because suddenly Splitsie not only wants thrusters, but even parachutes! They take a group pic while the hydrogen tanks fill.

(3:30) In case they don't survive the launch, Capac reveals his "phantabulous" presents for everyone: Inside his large present under the large tree, he placed smaller trees with small presents, what a nice surprise. Capac places a seat under the zenith of the strap that's holding the Christmas tree so he'll have a good view of the launch.

The first launch attempt makes the Bird Eater backflip in mid air and land flat on its nose (and Capac can just step out from his front seat onto the ground). Splitsie blames the wheels and admin-pastes the Bird Eater blueprint for round two. W4sted died so hard it takes 2 min for him to respawn and see the others again. Capac's ping has mysteriously decreased to 31 (which is normal for a networked game, but extremely fast for SE on LAN).

The second launch goes perfectly apart from the fact that Texfire calls the "forward thrusters" "back thrusters" which confuses Splitsie. W4sted is irritated that this was easier than Kerbal and gives purposely irrelevant advice.

They don't have enough materials to build a jump drive, so they just call it a day. They thank the viewers for coming and for the donations. W4sted ends by playing sound clips of Capac and Splitsie saying "Woahwoah" and "Whyyy".

## Vehicle Gallery

Left: Splitsie's Lime Lightning. Right: W4stedspace' speederbike.Capac's LongboatTexfire's CowTexPillar II
## References

1. ↑ Texfire's stream on the Flipsie channel: https://youtu.be/fgYWM2V3gFI?si=g9u34qBiChnZIpH\_
2. ↑ Moldark later helps out by finding the story behind this memory: It was Big Bird's *actor* who had originally been invited to the *Challenger* space shuttle mission! https://www.history.com/news/big-bird-challenger-disaster-nasa-sesame-street
3. ↑ It's not a fever dream, Capac insists, celery soda exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cel-Ray
4. ↑ This series was recorded before the Warfare updates.