8/13 Update - The Predecessor

The Predecessor


Synopsis

Sarah - having defeated and absorbed the second Moon Child - makes her way towards Great Bay as the cartridge continues to deteriorate. Items, objects, and monsters continue to appear in the wrong places and the environment itself begins to glitch in and out of existence. Fortunately, The Owl's wisdom continues to prove true as the items she obtained in Snowhead allow her to access the fenced off area of Great Bay Coast. Once more, she cannot help but have the uneasy feeling that something is following her as she stares up at the moon. 

Finding that even the ocean itself has glitched out, Sarah is able to walk through the body of water and explore the coastal floor. After brief encounter with a strange ghost, she eventually navigates herself to Pinnacle Rock where the third Moon Child awaits. Seemingly learning from the failures of the previous two Moon Children, the third Moon Child that represents Gyorg opts for a more calculating approach - to trap Sarah indefinitely in an unwinnable situation. Despite thinking that he could easily kill her in this state, the Moon Child remains wary - it wasn't too long ago that the Moon Children representing Goht and Odolwa thought the same thing. Curiously enough, he lets slip that even the Moon Children themselves are not sure what would happen if the anomaly were to die. 

Instead, he opts to make Sarah invulnerable - using similar powers that Rosa had over the virtual world - and send her to the deepest depths of Pinnacle Rock, where he can then force her to run out the clock until the 3 day cycle is over. Sarah, trapped in a body of water in a pit too deep to swim out of, is unable to combat Gyorg. She can do little else but weather his attacks as the giant fish continually devours her and spits her back out.

Pinnacle Rock is littered with little alcoves with various Sea Vipers nesting in the original game, and by a stroke of luck they remain intact here as well. During one of its attacks, Sarah is unintentionally thrown from the jaws of the beast into one of these alcoves, allowing her to briefly be on land again. With time passing quickly and unable to damage the monster, she begins to hatch a plan. If she can continue to get thrown from the beast into higher and higher ledges, eventually she'll be able to make her way out of the pit altogether. Meanwhile, Rosa desperately attempts to grant Sarah an item to help her, but finds that she is unable to. It appears that someone else in the game world is currently using the item that she needs.

Through sheer attrition, Sarah's plan is successful and eventually the thrashing jaws of the massive fish throw her clear of the pit. Unable to fight Gyorg in her current form, she has no choice but to flee. Making it to the exit in time, Sarah successfully escapes from the third Moon Child leaving it bewildered. Much to the dismay of Rosa and The Owl however, she doesn't end up back in Great Bay. Thanks to the continued degradation of the game itself, she's somehow ended up in the space between the code where she encounters what can only be subscribed as a paradox.

Just 24 hours remain now.

Patreon Rewards

Most of you have been contacted by me via PM on Patreon at this point if you are eligible (as of July 31st 2020) for the BEN tier of rewards. If you have pledged after July 31st - don't fret! - pledges don't get charged until the end of the month, so once your card is charged at the end of August I'll be reaching out to you to get some information for you for your rewards.

If for some reason you pledged before August and haven't been contacted by the messaging system here on Patreon, please reach out to be via Twitter. Again, so far only the people eligible for the BEN tier rewards have been contacted - those eligible for the Exalted, Neologist, and Exceptional Supporter tiers haven't been reached out to yet (with a few exceptions).

Behind the Scenes 

Several astute viewers have noticed that the Methods of Revolution website has closed and is now under construction. Rest assured, you will know when it's ready.

As I mentioned in the last update, this weekend is my birthday weekend and I'm taking some time off to catch up on the workload. Creating these lengthy videos take a large time commitment and numerous late nights to script, program, film, and put together. While there is a ton of documentation on Ocarina of Time programming, there is not as much on Majora's Mask so some of this stuff I'm having to do completely on my own.  I've opted to take some time to recharge myself and get ahead of the workload before continuing. That, and I wanted some extra time to start including something that a lot of people enjoyed earlier this year. Stay tuned. 

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes on Twitter. I've really been floored at how many people have reached out to me on and are enjoying the story. I never imagined that ten years after the fact it would get this popular and be enjoyed by so many awesome people. You guys are the greatest and I'm incredibly lucky to have such awesome support from my fans.

NEW PLAYERS

This past video saw our biggest premiere yet (...again!) and welcomed a lot of new players into the story. For any first-timers, welcome! This story has been ongoing since March of this year and is a continuation of the original BEN Drowned story creepypasta. Since March,  it has been told through a variety of different mediums - hidden text  logs, encrypted websites, and found footage - with the players  themselves interacting with the story and voting on the direction it  takes (what character to talk to, which place to visit, what items to  take with you, etc). This is typically referred to as a transmedia narrative - a story told through multiple mediums of entertainment - or an ARG.  

Because of this, it can sometimes be a little overwhelming for new players to get "caught up". So there are a few ways  you can simplify this process and get only the necessary information to  be up to date with current events. A lot of players here have a passion  for the haunted videogame cartridge story-line, so we'll focus on that.  

Here are two easy options:

1. You can start from the Methods of Revolution [Day 21] update and use the Next Chapter/Previous Chapter  links at the bottom of each Patreon update page to navigate in getting  caught up. Each update page has a link to a Youtube video to watch and a  description of the events that occurred. You will be missing some  backstory on what happened in March-May in the hotel phase of the story,  but if your primary concern is just continuing the BEN Drowned  story-line you can start from here. All you need to know is that a girl  wakes up in a mysterious hotel and is given the original haunted  Majora's Mask cartridge to play as an "experiment" by a mysterious man named Abel. Here is the same playlist of videos on Youtube. 

2. If you want to go at your own pace, there is a comprehensive wiki that  chronicles everything from 2010 to 2020 about the story, with in depth  articles on specific characters, videos, clues, and even old cached websites (that were used as 'online scavenger hunts' to find more  information during current arcs). It has information on everything from  the latest video to a timeline of events as they occurred in the past.  
If you have any questions you can always head to the discord and ask - we  have a community of great people here that are willing to answer and help out newer players:  
discord.gg/bendrowned




In Closing

The reaction videos for The Dying World and The Predecessor will be released next week (for real this time!). Unfortunately as I mentioned in the last update, the release schedule has been altered a bit due to The Dying World's reaction video was being delayed because of difficulty in obtaining the reaction footage and audio. Apologies for that, but rest assured they are coming - anyone who is a patron regardless of tier will get access to these a day early, so be sure to look for that email notification. Their release schedule will return to normal with the next video.

As always if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter.






Next Chapter: The Showdown 

Previous Chapter:  The Dying World