Intro
The aliens gave us 10,000 years to live. Then, we would be eliminated. It was the year 2832 when NASA had detected a foreign aircraft approaching Earth. The military sent a message to the aircraft warning them that if they refused to respond, they would be deemed a threat, and therefore shot down. NASA surprisingly received a response in perfect English. No one, except the high-ranking officials of the U.S., knew the context of that message. We suspected it was something along the lines of, “Hey peeps of this planet. Here’s an impossible challenge! If you can complete it, you’ll survive! You’ve got 10,000 years. K bye.” At least, that was our guess because of the challenge that followed. Shortly after officials received the challenge, the U.S. military sent missiles towards the spacecraft. As the missiles quickly approached the spacecraft at record speed, they suddenly stopped, as if frozen in time. The missiles turned around and shot back towards Earth. Shortly thereafter, the aliens retaliated, shooting missiles back towards Earth; one for every missile the military shot at them. With their advanced technology, the damage left by their missiles was far greater than we could have imagined. The military didn’t shoot anymore missiles after that.
A day after their arrival, the world was introduced to the very first alien technology. They resembled hearing aids, and were free for anyone who wanted them. There were various sizes for all ages. Scientists had tried to break apart the technology in hopes of arming it against the aliens, but they had no luck. Anytime you managed to break something off of the earpiece, it would slide right back into place like a magnet. It was almost sentient. If you separated the two pieces with a block of wood, the piece would maneuver around the wood. If you placed it in a box, it would seem as if the piece just disappeared! However, on a microscopic level, the atoms from the earpiece moved around the atoms of the box until it was inside and reunited with the other piece. The earpiece was your key into the game. It pricked your ear, and took your DNA. It linked your DNA to your own personal account. This made it so no one could ever create multiple accounts or have multiple users. The earpiece would place the user’s mind into a stasis, almost like a sleep mode. When your body was in sleep mode, your brain would tell the device what you wanted to do in the game. Your brainwaves would be sent into the device and turned into electromagnetic waves. When the aliens had first arrived, they had set a worldwide server into Earth’s orbit. This server controlled every action done in the game. The electromagnetic waves would be sent from the earpiece to the server, which would activate the request. All of these processes happened instantaneously after you thought of what you wanted to do. Of course, there were limitations to what an avatar could do. You couldn’t just fly without learning a flying spell or without using some kind of magic item. You could do anything within your character’s and the game’s restrictions. Teleportation was free. Since the planet was so big, chances were, you could find a mission on one side of the planet and need to teleport all the way across the world to complete it! It wouldn’t be fair to charge for a teleportation that far. It would cost a fortune! Therefore, all teleportation was free. The device could also mimic senses such as the sweet smell of a rose, the warmth of a hug, the buzzing of a bee, or the taste of a warm apple pie. Most of these senses, such as taste or touch, could be toggled on or off by the player, but smell was mandatory. Taste or touch could be toggled off for something like a boss battle. Who would want to feel all the pain from all of those hits? No thanks! Taste sensors could be turned off for gross challenges like food eating contests. I once witnessed a food eating contest in which the contestants ate bowls of clipped toenails. I figured all of them must’ve had their taste buds shut off. The aroma that came out of their bowls suggested they might’ve been troll toenail clippings. These sensory benefits allowed a more realistic experience in the game.
We soon learned that the challenge was to complete the game within 10,000 years. Every quest had to be completed- and there were roughly 25,000,000 that had been discovered. There could've been even more than this, but only around 25-million were confirmed. Most challenges were given by NPCs, but some could be found pinned to signposts and posted on buildings. In the game menu, hints were given to help users find the quest locations. The game took place on a digital planet called Retromania. With all of the different sectors, quests, and places, the planet was roughly a million times the size of Earth’s sun. Information about how a quest was solved or what happened during a quest was forbidden to be talked about outside of a party. This means that if you were outside of the virtual world, any brain waves connected to a quest or mission from Retromania would cause the earpiece to send waves that blocked your mouth from speaking the words. Instead, you’d make an incoherent sound like “Bllllkdhhiooierhgloklbvnqe.” People liked to call it the verbal key smash.
However, while logged into Retromania, you could talk about any information that was quest-related to fellow party members. There could’ve been a loophole where people who wanted to share quest solutions could join parties and then leave. However, this was not possible. You were only allowed to join one party for LIFE. The party you chose had better be a good one. You did, however, have the option to meet the party members before you chose to join. Most people joined parties based on skill level. You could wait to join a party until you’re a high level, or you could join a noob-ish party with other beginners, and advance skills collectively. This could be beneficial as each member could acquire a different set of skills and abilities in order to benefit the team as a whole. If you opted to advance independently, you run the risk of being turned down by advanced teams that strategically acquired their skills for the good of the team. This is how some users ended up on their own; some by choice, and others not so much.
Parties were only allowed to have up to 5 players. To join Retromania, you had to be 13 years of age to create an account. When setting up an account, you had to choose between 5 different types of avatars: werebeast, mage, elf, assassin, and warrior. Once you picked your avatar type, you could never change it. You could never create a new account and pick a new avatar type, because the system would immediately recognize your DNA.
Throughout Retromania, there were millions of different sectors. Some sectors had thousands of quests. Some had none. No single sector was completely the same. There could be two seemingly identical mall sectors with only one different store. Some quests were like an 80’s arcade game, while others were like a dating simulator. The game would automatically save after a quest is completed. Each player had 3 lives. When you died, you would respawn at your last checkpoint with one less life. When you ran out of lives, the quest would be failed. If you failed a quest, you would then have to find the quest again to retry it. The lower the rarity of a quest, the easier it is for your character to find it again. Usually, a quest can be found exactly where you originally found it. However, with higher rarity quests, it is unlikely that you will find it in the same place.
Some challenges could be completed in a matter of minutes, while others could take years. A rumor once spread that a man spent his whole life dedicated to completing Retromania. People say he spent 15 years of his life searching for a quest that he had failed. A rumor had spread that the quest was called “Golden Scales.” They say the furthest he ever made it in the game was around 12,850,000 quests completed. He would have completed the game if he had actually started a party and hadn’t tried to complete it on his own. Instead, he chose to play the game solo. Everyone completed quests how they thought they were supposed to be done. Perhaps that’s why it took everyone so long to complete certain quests.
