“Aye, just relax for a minute.” Muse told Callum, trying to make his voice sound calmer and more assuring. “I mean, yeah, that was crazy, but you guys got through it! You shouldn’t need to worry too much about the dangers here. Well, I mean, you should still worry a little — fear evolved for a reason, after all — but at least you’re not defenseless anymore! You guys are like… outdoor cats — you know, with claws! Unlike those de-clawed cats that have to stay indoors because they can’t deal with, like, an encounter with a squirrel or raccoon or something…” Muse then realized he’d rambled on a bit, and tried to bring himself back to the important things at hand. “Are you injured?” he asked Callum. “If it’s something serious, you can probably heal yourself like I did.” he advised. “Just uh… try not to make a habit of that sort of thing. You shouldn’t make yourself seem overpowered.”
While helping Callum, however, Muse found himself interrupted by a suddenly very irate Kole, venting his anger about being left in the dark about so many things — claiming Muse never gave them any good answers, and threatening the being with his phone to get more. “Hey hey, shhh…” Muse spoke quietly and cautiously, appearing to be legitimately a bit frightened by Kole’s threat. “Relax… put the phone down…” he continued to speak, as if he were a policeman negotiating with a gun-wielding criminal. “Now then,” he continued. “What do you mean I’m not giving you any answers? Didn’t I already say that I would tell you anything I-” Muse cut himself off as he looked around the group. A while ago, when he’d started gathering all the roleplayers he could find, he’d told himself that he was their servant — that he was there to help protect them, teach them how to survive here, and answer any questions they had for him. And while it felt like such a thing had only happened a few hours ago, his heart sank as he realized that not a single group member from that moment was still standing in front of him. “Ok… I guess not…” he answered himself solemnly, then unsure where to even begin to explain the situation to everyone present.
“I’ll start at the beginning.” he spoke up, looking each roleplayer in the eye to make sure he had everyone’s attention. “This realm that we’re in right now is, essentially, Roleplayer Guild.” he started slowly, not wanting to lose anyone. “It’s made up of pieces of lots of different roleplays, all sort of jumbled up together in a way that doesn’t always make a ton of sense. Like, this desert area, that’s one roleplay,” he started to explain, before pointing off to a patch of green in the distance. “And that green spot — I think that’s a forest or something — that’s probably a whole different roleplay. …In fact we can probably find better shelter there than we can out here in the desert, especially if this one houses a lot of crazy monsters, but we’ll worry about that in a moment.” he brought himself back on-topic again.
“This place was attacked by a being called the Godmodder. You’ve already met him — he was the obnoxious twerp with the glowey eye and that big green dragon. Recently, he did something, not entirely sure what, but it shook this place hard. In your world, his actions took on the form of weeks upon weeks of downtime for the website, and I think also a forum wipe? Anyway, for a brief time, this place consisted of nothing but that,” he pointed again to another spot in the distance — this time the black wall of void that had been sitting there for quite some time. “And, thankfully, the loyal RPers of RPGuild soon managed to bring this place back to life, at least somewhat. But, it’s still way out of balance, which is why much of the void still remains.” he explained. “Additionally, it seems this Godmodder — or GM as we’ve taken to calling him recently — is up to a lot of absurd shenanigans that even I don’t know the reasoning behind.” he continued, rubbing his forehead in annoyance as if GM was more of a mischievous child than anything else. “Firstly, he’s made the implication that he wants to rebuild this world as something new, which I suppose is why he triggered Guildfall. So, he’s been messing about with some of the RP settings. Most notably, that’s new.” He pointed up at the sky, where the giant floating island had recently been reduced to a black box, and then to a tiny sliver of darkness that almost resembled a portal of some kind.
“And, most critically, he’s the one responsible for bringing all you roleplayers here.” Muse added. “And while I don’t know why he’s doing this, at least we can be thankful that you all still have the reality-bending powers that you all had as roleplayers in the real world — even if it’s a little bit harder for you to get a grasp on, here.” he explained. “Also, now that I think about it, GM made it clear that he knows you guys have those powers… I didn’t think much of it when he said that before, but that is indeed the case. Which, I suppose only makes his endgoal even more mysterious.” Muse sighed. “At any rate, my hope — at least when I started rounding up all you roleplayers — was that we could join forces and defeat GM ourselves! But, having seen how dangerous, not to mention stressful this is for you all, I realize that’s a bit selfish, as well as an extremely difficult challenge.” he scratched the back of his head a bit sheepishly. “So for now, I just wanna help you guys learn to adapt to this place as well as how to use your powers effectively, and maybe find a way home for you at some point? I dunno, everything’s happened really quickly and admittedly I’m feeling a bit scatterbrained about the whole thing.” Muse finished truthfully.
“So…” he took a deep breath. “Any questions…?”
