The Beribboned Door - Part Three

By the time I start pushing for information on the decline and disappearance of the game, I've been a regular on the forums and IRC channels for two months. I'm very much part of the scenery now. When I start asking about where it went, D'mon61 sends me a private message with his phone number. I called him one rainy March afternoon.

His name is David. He's retired, a grandfather of three, and his name appears in the credits for a few impressive titles from the 90s. He loves his dogs, he loves The Dallas Mavericks, and he loves the The Beribboned Door Wiki.

We talk for an hour before we talk about the game. I like him instantly. His voice is just as I imagined it would be.

“One thing you have to understand,” he tells me, “is that we were obsessed.”

“You still are!” I joke, but he doesn't laugh.

“We were more than obsessed back then,” he corrects himself. “We were addicted. For a while there was all this crap about how you could win, and when you did you'd get this special code that you could hand to the staff and they'd write you a cheque for 50 million bucks on the spot. We knew that was all crap, but still, we wanted to win. Time between expos and cons or whatever, stretched out like torture. Aside from my wedding day, and the birth of my kids and grandchildren, I've never been as happy or excited as the days leading up to each convention. So you can understand the problem.”

He says nothing more. He's waiting for me to push further.

“"What problem?” I ask.

“The problem of whether or not to play properly, to explore, to immerse ourselves in the game and likely get Game Over, or to try new things, to rebel and experiment in an attempt to win, knowing this would likely limit how much we got to see.”

I take my chance and push my luck a little, figuring he might answer my question over the phone.

“David, I have to ask, man, how much money do you think you spent in playing this game? The cons you wouldn't have attended if it wasn't there, the flights, hotel rooms, all of it?”

At first I think he's quietly contemplating the question, but then I hear husky laughter.

“I could probably sit down and work it out,” he says, “but honestly? I'm happier not knowing. If my wife found out she'd kill me, and that's all these years later!”

We talk some more about the game and the community that rose up around it. I get David talking about his favourite parts of The Beribboned Door, his favourite elements, his favourite game.

“I went to New York one year,” he says. “It wasn't too far, so I took a bus. Before I tell you this, I want you to know that I don't think there was anything funny going on here. I just think it was a big coincidence. Anyway, a few weeks before, my father had passed away during a minor surgery. I get in the pyramid and I start the game up and it tells me about the cosmic blink and so on, and then the game starts and it tells me I'm in a hospital room. That my father is in the bed before me. It tells me he's sick and he's not getting better. Normally I'm an 'explorer', that's what we call the kind of player who likes the 'move' from location to location. I like getting deep into the world. Well with this game I just sat there, and I talked to the father in the bed. Each time I say something, the game tells me that he reacts in these little ways. It was probably a twenty five minute game in all. Eventually, the father passes away and I get the Game Over screen. 'Even pillars of stone someday crumble to dust. The stone is strong, but the dust is free. Game Over.' And I just sat there in that chair and thought about my real father, you know? I had never got a chance to say goodbye, and the game had given me one.”

We talk for hours, David and I, and I eventually bring the conversation round to the entire reason he had sent me his phone number in the first place.

“What happened to The Beribboned Door?” I ask him.

“Okay, so,” he says, and I can tell he is excited. “There was the thing with Ithbal, the thing with Simon Lieber, and the thing on the BBS board.”

Ithbal the red spectre was a recurring character in The Beribboned Door. In a game of strange occurrences and bizarre twists, she was perhaps the strangest and most bizarre. Scrolling through the pages and pages and pages of notes from the old BBS days, the first mention of her is from a 'game report' in December of '91. The game reports were incredibly popular – the place where players shared their experiences in as structured a format as possible. Where was the convention? What did they enter their name as? What time and date? Did it match the real time and date? What happened in their game? When did they think they went wrong? What was their Game Over message? Their code? The post is signed 'Rainergrad' and is entirely unremarkable aside from the mention of Ithbal at the end of the report.

“Found the baby and took outside. Went back and found daughter and took outside. Firemen turned up. Wouldn't let me back in building. Tried back but I hadn't taken the back-door key earlier. Fireman would not let me inside. Thought letting kid burn would lead to GO so picked up fire-axe and attacked fireman. Went inside. Found son in kitchen. As I go back outside: “You feel the shadow of the red spectre. Ithbal follows you...”. House kept burning. Took children next door. Firemen try to stop me because I killed the guy. I run east. The fire spreads down the street. I'm not sure what to do, so I try to go back to children. After about thirty turns: “Ithbal follows you...”. Children lead me to underground cave in woods. Son puts baby on stone alter. Tells me to pray to The Hunting God. I figure it will be a GO, so I say no. Game ends suddenly. “You are ensnared by Ithbal. Her red winter scorches the earth. Game Over.”

However, whilst Rainergrad is the first person to mention Ithbal, she was not the first person to recognise her importance. In her TBDwiki page (one of the longest on the entire site), her unique nature is first noted by a player whose name has been lost in various copy+pastings.

“Typical castle weird game. Begin in hedge maze. I am being directed by The Black Velvet King who keeps steering me into dead ends. About fifty turns in, I get the message “You feel the shadow of the red spectre. Ithbal follows you...” Haven't done anything to encounter her prior to that. Game progresses and I get out of hedgemaze but King insists that I dine with the princess. I find my way to banquet room but the people in the castle avoid me. “The Black Velvet Princess fears you.” We eat and she asks me to uncover who in the castle is plotting rebellion. Approximately every 30 turns, the Ithbal message comes up. As we finish eating I get GO and “You are ensnared by Ithbal. Her red winter scorches the earth. Game Over.”

What was important about this sighting of Ithbal was that the player in question had encountered her in a previous game. At this point, the community were already aware of the fact that Ithbal tended to appear after acts of unprompted violence. This was the first time a player was recorded as having encountered her without such an act. The verdict was universal – whilst other elements featured in multiple games, Ithbal was the one constant between games. She was the one counter that did not reset at the Game Over screen. This was confirmed when other players were able to recreate similar events.

Many players began to theorise that she was the key to completing the game. The wiki page lists three possible interactions with her.

The command “Look at Ithbal” returns: “The red spectre looks back at you...”

The command “Talk to Ithbal” returns: “The red spectre speaks through winter...”

The command “Flee Ithbal” returns: “All things flee Ithbal...”

Any other attempt to interact with the red spectre is met with the reply: “She invalidates your actions.”

Convinced that Ithbal held the key to the game, players began committing violence as quickly as possible. However, the curse of Ithbal was worse than they expected. Each game, her appearance came earlier. Eventually, players found “You feel the shadow of the red spectre. Ithbal follows you...” were the opening lines of their game. They would have one turn and then Game Over from red winter. A large chunk of the most fanatical playerbase, were left unable to play the game. More and more of the regulars found themselves flying out to conventions in order to take just one turn. However, not everyone believed Ithbal was the answer, and many experienced players avoided her. Players like Simon Lieber.

In 1994, Simon Lieber was a programmer living in Chicago and working freelance for a number of respectable companies. He was a bright, shy young man, who excelled in a number of fields. His parents claimed he could have been a mathematician or a medical doctor, but instead fell in love with electronics in college. He had been part of the The Beribboned Door scene from its earliest days, and many of the regulars recall seeing him at expos.
“He was this quiet kid,” David tells me. “We'd get to know each other at these expos, we'd drink a lot and hang out. It was a social thing, you know. Simon would always be there, and he seemed to have a good time, but he was never centre of attention. He loved the game. More than anyone else.”

Simon's love for The Beribboned Door stemmed not just from its mystery, but from the technical aspects.

“He wanted to get inside the machine. He wanted to see how it worked. Text adventure games were not new, but this was so vast and elaborate, that he couldn't get his brain around how all the pieces could fit together. He would write math to work out how many people it would take, and how long it would take them to write and code each game. He took a load of the quotes from the forums to a professor of linguistics or something down at his university. He wanted the guy to read pages and pages and pages of this fantasy bullcrap that would mean nothing to him, then tell Simon how many different voices he could detect, how many authors he believed were responsible. As the rest of us became obsessed with completing The Beribboned Door, he became obsessed with learning its secrets.”

In 1994, at The Philadelphia Expo Centre, Simon arrived to meet the regulars with a smug and confident new attitude. He told them he had solved the game. People were, understandably sceptical, but he was well liked and the majority of the group played along.

“I knew he had been talking a lot with the guys who thought the solution was external to the game. By this point Ithbal had thinned a lot of the player base, but Simon had never encountered her in all of his games.” David stops talking for a while and I hear him breathing heavily. “I don't think they set him up to it. I honestly don't. Simon was just a poor kid with a messed up head and he interpreted what they said the wrong way. It was a White Album, Manson Family sort of thing.”

At 2pm on the first day of the expo proper, Simon Lieber walked down to the The Beribboned Door booth wearing a black t-shirt with the words “Ithbal follows you...” across the chest. David happened to be in line when Simon appeared.

“He walked past me and I kind of tapped him on the arm. He wasn't the first person to make a t-shirt like that, we all had them. People offered to get them printed in bulk, so a lot of us would wear them. I asked if he'd played yet. He told me he was just about to. I was confused, because the line was crazy long that day. I told him good luck, and that I hoped his plan would work. I was kind of disappointed to be honest, because I was convinced it was going to involve invoking (a term used to describe summoning Ithbal for the first time through an act of violence). He was one of the few serious players who actually seemed to enjoy the game, who hadn't invoked yet.”

The security video no longer exists in its entirety, but an edited version that was shown on news stations was uploaded to Youtube in 2010. At 14:15, Simon walks to the front of the queue and draws a gun from the back of his jeans. There is a moment of frozen panic in the line. A few people awkwardly pace back, raising their hands. The security guards can be seen glancing to one another. None of them have firearms. A heavyset man with a grey ponytail steps into frame from the direction of the pyramid. David tells me this is The Fat Man. Simon's body language is calm, perhaps even cheerful. He gestures to the pyramid a couple of times. The Fat Man says something and then Simon fires three shots. It's not visible on the recording, but two hit The Fat Man and one hits the pyramid. The fragile frozen horror breaks and people begin running. One security guard draws a baton and makes a move towards Simon. Simon aims his gun vaguely in his direction and the guard backs off. The pyramid door opens an inch, then slams shut. Simon goes over, leaving the frame for several seconds. When he returns, he has a female hostage and is dragging her by the collar of her jacket. The pyramid opens and a young man (the player at the time) steps out. Simon aims his gun for The Quiet Man who is just visible inside the pyramid. He allows the hostage and the player to leave. Then he steps inside and closes the door. Security guards swoop in, as do several other players. The tape ends there, though a second recording from ten minutes later, shows The Quiet Man exit, his clothes drenched in blood.

“None of use really know for sure exactly what happened in the pyramid,” David sighs. “It's cruel in a way. Simon set out to solve the mystery, and ended up as part of it. Some of it came out in court of course, but the judge had no interest in the specifics of the game. This was 5 years before Columbine, but the idea of the awkward nerd losing his mind and acting out violent fantasies was common even then. The official record states that Simon entered the pyramid and forced The Quiet Man into conversation about the game and its origins. When Simon asked him his real name and he refused to give it, Simon struck him with his gun twice across the face. He demanded that The Quiet Man open the desk up to reveal the innards of the machine, but he was unable to do so as it required multiple keys. To this, Simon responded either “following me is a bad idea” or “the following is a bad idea.” He then started playing. He entered his password as normal. He entered his name as “Son of Ithbal”, a name he had never used before on the BBS board or anywhere else. He entered the date as 02.23.2005 and the time as 20:03.”

When I ask David if there is any relevance to these numbers he laughs bitterly.

“What do you think I've spent the last 20 years trying to decode?” he says.

The Quiet Man watched Simon play for 6 minutes. In that time he did nothing out of the ordinary, but kept a grip on the gun and monitored The Quiet Man. After 6 minutes, Simon became mildly frustrated, though not angry, according to records. He stood up, tucked the chair under the desk, and commanded The Quiet Man to turn and face the wall. The Quiet Man refused, believing he was about to be executed. At this, Simon shrugged, then lifted the gun to his own head and shot himself fatally through the temple. He was dead long before paramedics arrived.

The final nail in the coffin of The Beribboned Door came in the form of a message on the most popular forum of the time, the forum which became where I first met David. At the time, traffic was waning and so too was interest in the game. Technical advances in graphics, sound and gameplay had left the strange and unique text adventure in the dust. A new generation of gamers had arisen, a generation which expected frequent updates and constant improvement. With no sign of real progress, The Beribboned Door booth continued to attend conventions, but the interest was no longer there for all but the regulars.

Then, unexpectedly, a message appeared on the forum which had replaced the original popular BBS board.

“Dear Players,

After many years and many thousands of games, it is my sad duty to report that The Beribboned Door will no longer be making public appearances at any upcoming events. We thank you for your years of investment.

Yours Sincerely,

Deep Ocean Manta”

The forums, the chatrooms, and fans all over the world went crazy. Europeans were woken by international phone calls from their cohorts in the States. There had been similar claims made before, but the sheet brevity of the message and the lack of any twist or poetic reference rendered it somehow shocking, if not believable.

Responses were swift and ran from humorous to violently outraged. Three hours later, a second message was posted.

“Dear Players,

Part of what made The Beribboned Door such a rewarding experience was the passion and commitment of you, the players. We hope you enjoyed your time contributing to The Beribboned Door, and understand your disappointment in learning that time has come to an end. We wish all our players good fortune in the new millennium.

It would greatly sadden us if our last interactions were unpleasant, so let us rejoice in the good times of The Beribboned Door and talk about some of our favourite experiences.

Yours Sincerely,

Deep Ocean Manta”

This message was seemingly less convincing than the first. Players alternated between declaring the message a complete hoax, and threatening its author. The final message left by Deep Ocean Manta is like so much of the The Beribboned Door story. It is ambiguous and infuriating. It is confusing and misleading. It is 'complicated', 'brilliant', 'kafkaesque', 'frustrating', 'art', 'surreal', 'pointless', 'deranged', 'future', 'upsetting' and 'bizarre'.

“Dear Players,

The Beribboned Door was an experience like no other. It was a glance into the depths of the human experience. It was an engine for the psyche. It was a limitless simulator. We provided a field of

potential, and that infinite energy was almost overwhelmingly warped towards selfish ends.

We alone know how many players issued the command to hurt.

We alone know how many players issued the command to kill.

We alone know how many players issued the command to murder.

There were worse commands made than even these. Players used our engine as an instrument to render their cruel and perverse psycho-sexual desires. Players used our engine as tools with which to enact the cheapest of pathetic fantasies. Players did things which, were we to publish the play-logs, would lead to our prosecution in most nations.

The Beribboned Door was an attempt to capture an instant, to envelop a moment, to encapsulate the briefest unit of time. What we captured was horror, what we enveloped was filth, what was encapsulated was the darkest side of the human condition.

When unprovoked, when bored, when confused, when lost, when ignored by the game, players turned to acts of violence and selfish desire. When provided with a rich, detailed, dynamic world, players chose to focus in on their own egocentric existences. It is for this reason above all others, that we have decided to withdraw the pyramid.

Rest assured, for those who took the game seriously, the quest continues. The seventeen wardens still go about their business. The Skeleton of Hasta still sleeps beneath the forests waiting for the keys to arrive. Jennifer is still haunted by The Ghost Who Walks Wires. The Kingdom of Allbreach still rises from the ashes every twenty seven days. The Lord of Birds and The Black Velvet King still reside over their respective courts, waging their war. Smiling Halloween still moves through dreams towards The Infinite Green.

The Beribboned Door will no longer appear at shows, but the game theoretically continues. Each game was possible to complete, though it was a feat never achieved. Theoretically, it is still possible to escape Ithbal and take your rightful place as key to The Beribboned Door.

Yours Sincerely,

Deep Ocean Manta”