Plot:
The game began with a cryptic email to tallerbird of the Unfiction forums. It led to the 13 Crystal Skulls homepage, where the playerbase was informed that they had to gather the 13 Crystal Skulls of Mayan legend in order to save the world from certain doom. On Jan. 1, 2007, the game launched by revealing a puzzle on the 13 Crystal Skulls homepage, which led the players to the first ‘Chosen,’ one of four regular people selected by the Skulls to aid in the ‘gathering’ process.The Chosen led the players to the websites of the Skulls, which included Frappr, MySpace, and Craigslist. Each Skull would challenge the players with puzzles. When the players solved the puzzles, that Skull would join the gathering—and the world would be one step closer to being saved. Or so the players thought.
About halfway through the game, after finding all four of the Chosen and gathering about half of the Skulls, the players were introduced to a man named Ted Allen, who claimed the Skulls were evil. At first, he was dismissed as a lunatic, by characters and players alike. After all, the Skulls were warning of a traitor.
However, soon afterwards, the uncle of one of the Chosen passed away in a car accident. His name? Ted Allen. The players were led to his private website, which revealed his impressive credentials and his Skull-tracking efforts. Along with a post on the 13 Crystal Skulls homepage that mentioned a ‘renewal,’ the players and Chosen were convinced that the Skulls had been deceiving them all from the beginning.
After bringing the final Chosen over to the players’ side to fight against the Skulls, a plan was formulated. The players would gather the last Skull—then, one of the Chosen would hack the 13 Crystal Skulls webpage and rip the Skulls, one by one, from the gathering. That Chosen then emailed the ripped files to various players and characters, who were instructed to take them offline (on a CD or floppy disk) and destroy them. After all the Skulls had been destroyed, the game concluded; the Crystal Skulls had been stopped, and the world was saved.
