Fake End Landing

The **fake end landing** ("*the end landing was a lie*") was a series of clues set up in various places on the server which were originally assumed to be part of the Octangula ARG. They were, however, part of a separate easter egg intended for Michaelmcchill regarding the End raid. This entire easter egg can be seen on Michael's stream, though it seems to have no connection to the larger ARG.

## First Clue

The fan discord server had found two anomalies on the SMPEarth Dynmap, particularly in the northern Arctic icy region:

* In the northwest corner of the map, a random cactus farm was build of unknown origin at the exact coordinate of X: 100, Z: 100. GrunksPromise and Chip were found to be idle in the spot for some time, seen live on the Dynmap. IAmSp00n went to check it but found nothing of importance over there.

* In the northeast corner of the map, the numbers 3834 & 4753 were visible in the vicinity of the Northeast Octangula. Fans deduced that the numbers represented a coordinate X: 3834, Z: 4753 which corresponds to a lake in an unclaimed portion of land between KaraCorvus' Corvarian Empire and CaptainSparklez's Kingdom of Jordan. It appeared that a chest was located at the heart of the lake.

## Exploration

### Day 7

Sp00n was given the coordinates and asked to explore the lake in hope of some additional clues or hidden structures that could further the ARG. Initially, he was interested to participate in the ARG, but decided to contact Jordan as he was much closer to the lake than he was, almost on the opposite side of the world in Arkansonia. In the midst of the conversation, Kara joined in and sent a Twitter direct message (DM) to Sp00n. The content of said DM was unknown but it made Sp00n to redirect the quest to Michaelmcchill as he said "it was meant for him" and "it would be a better gift for Michael than it is for [him]".

In the midst of cave-mining, Michael was given the coordinates and agreed to fly from Packle all the way to the Middle East region where the coordinates was. Surprisingly, another player was present on the suspicious lake: RoastedJames. Claiming to be the "gatekeeper", James had built an outpost to "protect" the underwater chest for the ARG.

Sp00n and AntVenom joined in voice chat (VC) to listen the commotion. Sp00n gave Michael some background information as to the nature of the ARG, while AntVenom kept urging and questioning Michael to tell them the truth of the ARG and finished the quest to "save the world".

Before allowing Michael to reach the chest, James asked him a riddle: "Where do cows go to dance?" with 3 attempts to answer. These were Michael's attempts:

* Attempt #1: "Your mom"
* Attempt #2: "Discow"
* Attempt #3: "Meatball" (this was accepted as the answer since James found it hilarious and Michael was given access to the chest)

### The Book

Michael was able to retrieve an unsigned book and quill from the underwater chest, with a list of words as followed:

* *Orange*

* *Highland*

* *McCadden*

* *Las Palmas*

* *Cherokee*

* *Whitley*

* *Hudson*

* *Wilcox*

* *Cahuenga*

* *Ivar*

* *Vine*

Michael and Sp00n deduced that these words refer to the name of streets in Los Angeles and presumably, the next clue lied somewhere within the Southern California region. Michaelmcchill was killed by a creeper and spawned back at his faction base, saving him the flight back home.

Googling these words led to Hollywood Boulevard as the most common result. At one point of the quest when it seemed to be a dead end, AntVenom chuckled and said "What's there to keep track of? ... The wiki writers are like: "What do we do?!". Guided by the community and Kara, who then joined in VC, he ventured the vicious land of Southern California in search of something whilst evading hostile mobs.

### The End Studio

After a while, Michael found an acacia door blocked with a stone slab placed on a dirt block, with two signs at each side saying "*The End Landing was a lie*". He broke the dirt block on top of the door and entered into a staircase that went down to an underground room filled with what seems to be a miniature scale of the End central island.

The centerpiece of the room is an endstone platform with 6 obsidian pillars of varying heights and 4 torches placed on a stone lock in the middle, similar to an end exit portal/fountain. On the ceiling, there were two grindstones and 3 glowstones held in place by a wooden fence, suggesting a lighting set up akin to a filming studio.

A chest was also discovered at the right corner of the room from the staircase which contained another unsigned book and quill that listed down all the items and their respective costs.

* *Dragon Prop: $1550*
* *Replica Endstone: $1967*
* *Obsidian Pillars: $4599*
* *Lights: $755*
* *Camera: $10,233*
* *Location Rental: $362*

This suggested the End raid done by Kara, Jordan, and Sp00n was secretly filmed in a studio (an easter egg to the controversial theory that the moon landing was fake).

## Aftermath

Kara clarified that she, Jordan, and Sp00n signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and "resurrected Stanley Kubrick, [they] got him to direct" the End raid on day 5. They faked the End landing because they wanted to be the first players to reach the End dimension and kill the end dragon.

It was obvious that this entire quest from the lake to the bunker was planted and set up for Michael (and to a certain extent, the fan community who has spent hours diligently scanning the map and watching streams to find the missing pieces of the ARG) to disprove their End raid on day 5, possibly after receiving mixed reactions from both players and fans for multiple reasons:

* the End dimension was reached earlier than expected,
* the End dimension was accessed from the claimed base of the Antarctic Empire,
* some players thought reaching the End and killing the Ender dragon would be a server-wide event.

Kara even informed the ARG community in the fan discord that this is "part of the server lore" and defended that "it [isn't] a meme, [it's] literally planned lore". It is interesting to note that Kara's stream for that day was entitled "*The End landing was 100% real, don't believe the lies*".

However, the whole easter egg seemed to not have any connection to the greater Octangula ARG. Some hypothesized that this was done to retcon and reset the End so it may still fit to ARG storyline; RoastedJames confirmed that this was done to provide better contents for the server, and Kara also confimed her part in setting up the clues in one of her recent streams (retrieving the archived files). Despite its irrelevance to the ARG, credits had to be given to those who helped set up the convincing and somewhat well-planned trails that led to a wild goose chase with a shocking twist in the end.