RazHaunt

RazHaunt, also known as T-00, was a community puzzlehunt-slash-performance event held by Witscord during September of 2024 as a celebration of both Raz's birthday and his return to the server. The event consisted of five acts, flanked by a prologue, finale, and brief epilogue, all presented over the span of a week. The main coordinators included unsus and sus.

Plot Overview (not remanaged yet

The event as a whole was based heavily off of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Further inspiration was taken from T-22 and HOUSE; in particular, 5×5 grids were the central visual motif of both the narrative and the puzzles themselves. Each act revolved around a different Witscorder suddenly becoming possessed by one such grid, as indicated by their pfp changing and their messages becoming corrupted in some way. The player (Raz) was then tasked with solving the corresponding puzzle to learn a five-letter Swedish word that, when spoken, would dispel the spirits and return the affected Witscorder to normal.

Act I

"Old cat, new tongue."

(jony, fullest)

Act II

"Synesthesia."

(staz, unsus)

Act III

"Stories for no-one."

(octa, sus)

Act IV

"Lamps aflicker."

(lav, joe)

Act V

(jxck, non)

References & Trivia

Lorelei and The Laser Eyes ^{is this even a good way to organize it} _{i guess so}

The possession of Witscorders, especially by means of their pfps changing into grids, was heavily inspired by the Mazemen, whose heads are replaced with floating square quadrants of a labyrinth design.

As a generality, the visual identity of the project was largely black and white, with bright carmine as an occasional accent color.

Throughout the event, a disembodied voice (played by concerned_third_party, and referentially dubbed The Minotaur in its roles) spoke to Raz, often using modified quotes from the game's own lore and dialogue and in an animated typeface similar to the one used during cutscenes. Raz was even referred to as "Lorelei" in the final message legible.

Crude pixelation and corrupted graphics are also used throughout, bearing similarities to various retro and glitch effects used in-game—though this may have been due in part to sus' general fondness of such styles.

The center of the T-00 logo forms an eye shape, an accidentally-created-but-intentionally-sustained reference to the Laser Eyes iconography.

Each act's puzzle was supplied with an individual thread for discussion, named "Utfrågning #". This name references the "Befragungsräume" ("interrogation rooms") you are taken to by the Mazemen, but in Swedish instead of German.

"Stories for no-one", the flavortext for Utfrågning 3, references the various anti-audience philosophies held by Renzo or The Third Eye or whatever.

Miscellaneous Trivia

Two different group chats were used during development: the main Project T-00 chat, which consisted of the five puzzle makers (Fullest, unsus, sus, Joe, and non) and was used for initial discussions of the overall design of the event, and later the larger Theatre Backstage chat, which added the five actors (jony, staz, octa, lav, and Jxck) and was originally used to coordinate their performances, but soon became the new hub for general discussion of logistics and what remained of the art direction.

Throughout development, many announcements seeking volunteers were sent out in #server-meta, which then needed to be removed so as not to spoil any plans when Raz arrived. The resulting message feed appears very surreal.

The poem read in the ritual video is 16 lines long; Raz's favorite number.

Raz once had the revelation that the grid demons ought to be called "rasters", complimenting it as a very clever implied joke. Sus to this day has no idea what he meant by this.

Similarly, Raz expressed awe that the T-00 logo exactly matched the struck-circle symbols for "Salt" (ⴱ) and "Sun" (ⵀ) he envisioned in a brief spiritual moment about a year prior, with the initial frame of the ritual also displaying the third and final symbol of "Moon" (ⵁ). Although he had discussed these symbols publicly, any relation is entirely coincidental.

In the original After Effects file for the finale sequence, the fractal noise animations comprising the backgrounds have the randomization seeds of 1847, 22, 369, 44, and 5.

In the time leading up to the finale, Raz cycled his pfp through a sequence of 8^(?) struck-circle symbols, one for every combination of the three.

During the finale, staz was asleep and thus could not be there to say his lines. As a last-minute contingency, sus took his place, as he was the only person who knew the procedure well enough and did not otherwise have any lines of his own to read. Since each participant was to change their pfp and nickname anyway, the switch was more or less undetectable aside from the color of his name, which he had the power to grant to himself. Given he had about 30 seconds to procure it, the red color was actually from the now-deprecated KING OF WITSCORD role as opposed to a direct match.

Sus' original demonstration puzzle when pitching the meta consisted of the feeders PHONY, ALIBI, PANDA, TRUTH, and HOARY. The answer phrase is 4 words long :).

It is left ambiguous what exactly the grid monsters are. Demons? Ghosts? Ghouls? Zombies? Rabies?

the thing about the draft

when	where	what	who
12	smeta	intro vid	etc
12	casual	act I	jony (fullest)
13	cas2	act II	staz (unsus)
14	puz et al	act III	octa (sus)
15	botspam	act IV	lav (joe)
16	purg	act V	jxck (non)
17		break day
18	smeta	FINALE	etc
19	smeta/cas	epilogue	joe/sus(unsus)

old cat, new tongue

synesthesia

stories for no-one (lorelei)

lamps aflicker (witness)

destruction breeds creation (isaac)

the ground shifts beneath your feet