Introduction.txt
Dear candidate:
If you are reading this, it means you have found out how to operate the machine in front of you. Well done! You have passed the first test. We hope it didn't take you too long to figure out how to open a file, because if it did, a lot of ponies are going to die.
We have taken 23 ordinary ponies from their day-to-day life and placed them in an inescapable forest filled with deadly traps and complicated puzzles. Among these ponies are your five best friends and you are the only one that can save their lives.
Using the machine in front of you, you will be able to do two things. Firstly, you will be granted access to a map which will help you keep track of all the ponies in the forest and will show you certain key elements necessary for survival. Secondly, you will be able to access files which contain information that is vital for avoiding the many dangers that the forest has in store for your fellow candidates.
Every hour, starting at one o'clock, an event will occur that will pose a threat either directly, or indirectly to the lives of the candidates in the forest. The files on this machine will tell you what these events are and will sometimes give you hints on how the other candidates can avoid them. There are a few problems though. The files are protected by passwords.
There are two ways you can get the password to a certain file. You can either wait until there's just one hour left before the event described in the file will occur, or you can direct the other candidates to locations in the forest where the passwords can be found. These locations are marked on the map by the number corresponding to the file the password will grant access to.
The brass button pinned to your suit is a teleportation device that allows you to enter the forest for exactly one hour. Use this in dire situations where you have no other method to tell the other candidates what to look out for, but beware: you can only use this device three times and once you're in the forest you cannot go back until your hour has passed.
The device on the table next to you is known as a walkie-talkie, or more formally, a handheld transceiver. If you're lucky the other candidates will find the corresponding device. If they do, you'll be able to use it to talk to them. Simply press and hold the red button, wait for the beeping noise and talk.
Every candidate who is still alive at midnight will be allowed to leave the forest in peace and shall be left alone by us in the future. You can now start by reading the file called '1.txt'. This file does not require a password to open. At one a.m. the events described in this file will occur and you will receive the password for the file called '2.txt'.
From now on, you are on your own. You will be given no further help outside of this file and the fate of 23 ponies now lies in your hooves.
Good luck.
Rainbow dash stared at the machine. She blinked and stared some more. She read the short text three times over with her mouth hanging open in confusion.
She was in a small, black room that was empty aside from the machine, a chair, the table with the 'handheld transceiver' and herself. There were no windows and the only light in the room was coming from the strange machine. Attached to the machine was a small, black device with two buttons. When she moved this device; a small, white arrow moved on what seemed like the main compartment of the machine. Also attached was a large rectangle with a lot of buttons. Some of the buttons on the rectangle had letters on them and some numbers, others had punctuation marks or words.
It had taken her more than half an hour to figure out what to do with the thing. When she woke up in this strange room it was midnight. It had said so in the lower right-hand corner of the machine in the fancy way those new watches told the time. Now, that same corner said 00:37.
Rainbow Dash didn't understand what was going on. She was confused and afraid. If the text could be believed, something very bad was going to happen to her friends in 23 minutes. What could she do about it?
She grabbed the handheld transceiver and pressed her hoof down on the small red button in the corner. At first, she heard something that sounded like the rustling of leaves, but then she heard the beeping noise the text had spoken about.
"Hello?"
There came no answer. What is going on? thought Rainbow Dash. Had they been kidnapped? Why and by whom? And where exactly were her friends?
She moved the small black thing so that the arrow on the machine went over to the big red 'X' in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and pressed the left button. This did exactly what she expected it to do: it closed the text file. Then she moved the arrow over to the bit that said '1.txt' and pressed the left button of the small black thing a few times in rapid succession, as this had worked the last time.
This resulted in another text file popping up.
1.txt
Dear candidate:
At one in the morning, six of your fellow candidates in the forest will be chosen at random to be marked for death. What this means is that from the moment they receive this mark, they'll have exactly one hour left to live. However, if they manage to reach the pool of life in the heart of the forest before that time runs out, the waters will cure them and the mark will be removed. It is up to you to find a way to get every single pony who gets marked to the pool in time.
Good luck.
This small text she also had to read a couple of times over in order to let the meaning get through to her. Six ponies were going to die in a little more than an hour if she didn't tell them what to do. But how could she help them if she wasn't able to talk to them? Desperately, she reached for the transceiver again.
"Hello? Hello! Can anyone hear me?"
Again, there came no answer. She was getting frustrated now. Then she remembered: the brass button. She looked down at the button pinned to the gray and blue stretch suit she had not been aware of wearing. She reached for it with her hoof, then reconsidered.
I can only use this three times, she thought. If I use this now, I'll be stuck in the forest for an hour with knowledge of only one threat. If it's true that something dangerous is going to happen every hour I ought to wait until I get passwords for some more of these texts.
But then again, how was she going to get the passwords in time if she couldn't speak to the others?
Even if I go in there now there's a big chance not everybody will be in the same place. I don't even know where they all are, so how would I ever find them?
She decided that for the time being, it would be better to wait and see if somebody would find the other transceiver. Then, the meaning of her final thought finally hit home.
I don't know where they all are. But I do know that! there should be a map somewhere on this thing!
Rainbow closed the file called '1.txt'. There was a list with lots of text files, but none of them seemed to have anything to do with a map. Rainbow looked at the corner where the big red 'X' should be. The 'X' wasn't there. Instead, there was a white line. She pressed it and the list full of text files disappeared.
There it was, covering the entire screen of the machine. Rainbow counted 23 flashing red dots scattered all over the map. Also scattered across the map were the numbers two through twenty-four, all in seemingly random locations. There was a picture of something Rainbow recognized as a radio tower to the west of the map. To the east was something that looked like a ruined keep, or an abandoned fortress. And in the center of the map was a great, round pool from which dozens of little streams flowed: the pool of life.
Rainbow soon found out that she could zoom in and out using the little wheel on the small black thing which she used to open files. What worried her though, was that none of the little flashing red dots were close together, even when she was fully zoomed out, nor were any of them even remotely close to the big pool in the heart of the forest.
How am I going to tell which ones get the mark? Rainbow thought. I shall have to get them all together and get them to go to the pool as a group.
For a while, Rainbow just sat there, watching the little red dots move around the map. Some of them drew closer together, some of them got further apart. Three of them were moving towards the radio tower and quite a few of them were slowly making their way to the keep, obviously having noted it as a landmark. To the north of the map, two dots met up, and shortly after a third one joined them. To the south-east, four dots had met up and were now moving in the general direction of a fifth.
So this is it then. A devilish game taking shape right before my own eyes. I'm just going to have to sit here and watch how the players slowly meet up with each other, hoping that one of them finds the walkie-talkie thing. If they don't I can tell them about three of the twenty-four things that are going to try and kill them and then I'll be powerless.
Where ever they were going, none of the dots were making any progress to the pool of life. Rainbow looked at the corner of the screen that told the time. '00:59' it said. Rainbow turned her gaze back to the map. Suddenly, six of the twenty-three dots turned purple. One by the radio tower, two by the keep, one of the five dots in the south-east and two dots in the south that were moving as a pair.
So there they are then, though Rainbow. That's them. Six purple dots, marked for death.
She felt sorry for them. She was the one supposed to save their lives and here she was: powerless and desperate. Suddenly, a little box appeared on the screen. '5H8uj' it said. Below this was an 'OK' button. Then she heard the leaf-rustling noises again. They were coming from the transceiver.
