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EVERYONE thinks their game is crap when it's finished.

This is surprisingly true: whenever you look at it you see all the mistakes and missed opportunities instead of the good points.  If it were my game I'd putter at it, trying to make improvements, until I couldn't stand the sight of it any more.  That's when you know it's release time.  

Ponch.

[DoubleThink edited for conspicuous guile]

I agree even more completely with Ponch.  That makes it 3 votes for Ponch, 0 for Baron, and 2 for Ghost.  I too look forward to the results of a clean and untampered voting process. 

Well, I realize we may not yet have seen all the submissions, but for me Ponch's piece demonstrates such a mastery of prose and ideas that I can't help but vote for him.  As I read his work I saw in my mind's eye a city on a mountain where young and old, rich and poor, jive-talkers and straight talkers all pranced about holding hands in one big circle of harmony.  And, in the due course of time, surely those folk in the re-education camps will be doing the same.  Like his mom, bless her unerring line-toeing, I too was moved to shed a single tear of joy at this paragon of literature, this magnus opus, this beautiful world that we can all get to if we just will it to be so.

We can't allow those monocled, high-society types to think that they can just win all the trophies.

You can't stop me thinking that!

[>> Search crates, take bible, appropriate crucifix]

Apparently WHAM can process multi-step commands to speed things along:

>> Search crates, take bible, appropriate crucifix

[CHAPTER 1 -THINGS GO AWRY]

SPOIILER - Read plot outline only if you want to see the ending:

Spoiler

-What if hamburger's ate people?
-People become livestock, herded into feedlots and eventually abattoirs.  Hamburger's grow fatter on the high protein diet while the rainforests are decimated for increased man-pasturage. Eventually the culminating effect of mankind's flatulence is climate change and the doom of hamburger civilization.

[close]

PLANET OF THE BLTS

CHAPTER 1 -THINGS GO AWRY

   Spaceman Scott winced as a blinding flash erupted outside his snazzy space blimp.  At first he thought its (entirely superfluous) hydrogen envelope had  burst into flame, but quickly dismissed the idea due to the chemical absence of an oxidizing agent in space.  Still, the flash had been unnerving, so he decided to turn his craft back towards Earth.
   Strange, he thought.  The perialtimeter is not responding to the satellite link.  Other gauges began to whine one at a time.  Suddenly the NavCom alarm went off, bathing the cockpit in a periodic red glow.  Spaceman Scott stared grimly at the non-responsive control panel in front of him and scratched his manly beard in a manful way.  I'm gonna have to bring this sucker down manually, he decided.
   Landing an eight ton intergalactic brick safely is a hard enough task for a computer; for a human it was like trying to catch a popcorn kernel with your upturned nostril in the dark.  Spaceman Scott furrowed his brow in concentration as the space blimp hit the first turbulence of atmosphere.  The craft shook violently, and the nose in front of him became tinged with the first glint of heat glow.  He closed his eyes and counted slowly: too soon and he wouldn't have enough drag to slow his descent; too late, and the hydrogen in the envelope would ignite and blow the whole craft into more pieces than a jigsaw puzzle convention.
   Eight, nine, ten....  The heat glow became ever more intense, the shaking maddeningly jarring, like the spin-cycle of an unbalanced washing machine in freefall.  Spaceman Scott opened his eyes and pulled the manual envelope release lever.  In an instance the force of the atmosphere ripped it away, leaving only the gondola hurtling towards the puffy cloud tops.  Spaceman Scott opened the ailerons and tilted the nose up in an attempt to slough some speed.  In a moment the craft was engulfed in the veiling mists of the cloud.  We're coming in too hot!
   Peering out the window he could suddenly see the shrouded outlines of a forested mountain.  He heaved on the controls, but it was no use: the gondola smashed into a tree, shearing off the landing gear and half the fuselage.  Moments later he hit another tree which took the right wing, and then the collisions game fast and quick as the craft burrowed through the mossy undergrowth....

        CHAPTER 2 -ENSNAREMENT

   Spaceman Scott opened his eyes.  All was still, but there was the smell of smoke.  Instinctively he unbuckled himself from the pilot's chair and crawled out through the shattered remains of the windshield.  Standing atop what remained of the gondola he could see a swath of burning jungle in his wake.  Being a man's man from Texas all he did was shrug: man dominated nature, hence it was his prerogative to destroy it if it served his purpose.  If he'd had a fat stogie, he'd have lit it up in celebration of his own miraculous survival, then flick the smouldering ash into nature's subservient eye.  Takes a real man to pull off that kind of stunt, he chuckled to himself.
   Spaceman Scott made his way through the thick jungle.  It was hard slogging over rough ground and muddy swamps, and he was about to despair that his heroic landing would go unheralded should he  perish of exposure or starvation when suddenly he was beset upon by some strange horsemen.  They flung a lasso around his neck and pushed a scalding iron rod into the flesh of his left buttock, all before he could get a decent look at them.  Maybe it was the trauma of the smell of his own searing flesh (like bacon after a hangover), or maybe it was the PTSD resurfacing from the crash, but Spaceman Scott blacked out again.

        CHAPTER 3 -THE PASTURE OF PLEASURE

   He woke in a peaceful field, dotted occasionally with great shade-giving trees.  Instinctively he felt at ease in this savannah paradise, much like the environment in which his distant homonid ancestors had evolved.  He pulled himself up onto his feet and limped gingerly towards the nearest tree (his left buttock stung something fierce).  Approaching the tree he could see in the under-shade a small group of people lounging lazily, all of them mouths wagging.  Getting closer still, he could see that they were not talking at all but chewing.  He raised his hand in greeting.
   The folk under the tree eyed him shiftily while continuing to chew.  Spaceman Scott noticed now that they were all women, and that they were all naked.  And at this moment he noticed that he too was naked.  How convenient.
   â€œBetter watch out Big RT, ponchy man,” one of the women warned him.  “We in his herd.”
   Spaceman Scott smiled and reached back into his memory for the pimp-charm he used to be able to turn on like a tap.  Before he could get his groove on, though, he heard the rapid advance of footfalls behind him.  Turning he saw a large-chinned man lowering his head and charging right at him.  In disbelief he stood there, and then BAM!  The man rammed right into him, head first.  The force of the impact sent Ponch, I mean Spaceman Scott, reeling into the long grass.
   â€œWhat the hell did you do that for!?!” he gasped, rubbing his bruised ribs.  “You could have snapped your bloody neck!”
   The man called Big RT righted himself, turned, and pawed the ground with his naked foot.  Spaceman Scott could see his nostrils flaring around an iron nose-ring.  “Big RT herd!” he boomed.  “Take off, eh!”
   Spaceman Scott tried to reason with him, but in vain.  Instead Big RT just charged again.  This time Spaceman Scott had the good sense to dive out of the way at the last moment, sending Big RT head first into the tree trunk and knocking him senseless.
   The women, who had been feigning disinterest in the whole duel up to this point, suddenly perked up.  Still chewing hard with great gaping mouths they circled around him.  “You bull now, ponchy man.  What you name?”
   Now on much friendlier terms, Spaceman Scott was able to interrogate the women.  He didn't really understand what they said, for they spoke a simplified language, but the gist of it was almost too incredible to believe.  They were essentially free-range livestock.  Every year or so the riders would come and cull the herd, taking the young and plump and leaving a rump of the herd to breed.  They were forbidden clothes or any trappings of civilization, for the riders insisted that they themselves were the only truly intelligent beings on the planet.  Surprisingly the folk on the pasture counted themselves lucky here, he discovered, since conditions were much less salubrious elsewhere on this world.  Apparently an electric fence was all that confined them, and he was curious to explore further.  So after an appropriate interlude of accordion music with his hard-won herd Spaceman Scott directed his attention to escaping the pasture and exploring more of this strange planet he had landed on.

        CHAPTER 4 -REVELATIONS

   At length he was able to tunnel his way beneath the fencing and escape.  Unfortunately he immediately bumped into a pair of the creatures that had caught him in the first place, who were out mending fences.  He had just assumed that they were some sort of master race of space aliens who had enslaved humanity, but now in broad daylight he realized that they were really giant talking hamburgers!  Their buns lifted off their patties in astonishment that he was wandering freely down the farm lane, and they rushed to grab their lassos. 
   Fleeing for his life, Spaceman Scott ducked into a nearby barn.  Walking down the aisles he was horrified to discover pen after pen full of lactating women, each strapped up to most uncomfortable looking pumping machines.  “What is all this for?” he demanded of one of them.  She just shrugged.  “Man cheese,” she stated matter of factly, before staring off into space once more.  A commotion at the far end of the barn suggested that the hamburger cowboys were on his trail, so Spaceman Scott slipped through the nearest exit.
   He was in a courtyard, across which stood another barn.  Lacking for any other cover he ran there, easily slipping through the oversized ovoid-shaped door.  Inside he discovered a sea of obese humanity, each yoked head-first through iron-grates over an eating trough.  He tried to ask them what was going on, tried to rally them to rebel with him against their wicked masters, but all he garnered was the occasional snort from men with more food stuck to their flapping jowls than Spaceman Scott habitually ate in a day. 
   He emerged from that second barn into a pen of the fat people, and there he lay low.  Surely an only modestly ponchy fellow such as himself could escape notice in such a churning crush of flab and sweat.  Too late he noticed the open truck doors, and the zapping prods in the hands of the Hamburger cowboys.  He was herded into the truck with all the others, where he discovered a novel version of hell.  The roof dripped with excrement, but it was the smell of fear that most pervaded the tight confines of the cattle trailer.  A chubby boy of no more than 14 eyed him wildly, the terrorized whites of his eyes over his unwiped nose etching themselves indelibly into Spaceman Scott's memory.  At last, when the trailer doors were thrown open again, it seemed like such a relief.  Somehow, however, Spaceman Scott suspected that the worst was yet to come.

         CHAPTER 5 -CHECK MATE

   Ahead of them lay yet another barn, only this one had a rank stench to it.  Spaceman Scott could not place the smell, but he knew foulness when he smelled it, and he knew that no good could come of it.  The others began to fret nervously as well, but they were herded along with the electric prods by their burger keepers. 
   Through the barn doors into the terrible darkness....  He could not see, but he could hear the cries, the screams.  Instinctively he went to ground, and rolled to the side lest he be trampled by his gigantic brethren.  Surprisingly Spaceman Scott was able to roll under the metal barrier that funnelled the river of humanity onward to their doom.  He supposed the hamburgers had not considered that a scrawny runt such as he would ever come to the processing plant.
   Standing in the shadows, his eyes slowly adjusted to the light.  Ahead of him his companions were being fitted with nooses that connected to an overhead conveyor belt.  Thinking quickly, Spaceman Scott flicked the emergency shutoff button on the conveyor belt and fled through the maintenance area of the abattoir.  Someburger spotted him and the hew and cry was raised.  He dashed out yet another door into the blinding light of freedom.
   The fresh air wafted against his face, and the soft sand churned beneath his toes.  He was next to the ocean, he realized.  Behind him there was a posse of hamburgers, all mounted on horseback.  Ahead of him was the vague outline of something familiar....  It looked like....by god, it was!  The tilted ruin of a McDonald's sign.  He was on Earth, and it was now ruled by hamburgers!
   He collapsed to the ground, raising a defiant fist towards the monolithic M.  “You bastards!” he cried.  Muffled giggles interrupted his lament.  He looked up to see a pair of juvenile hamburgers, each with a half-eaten manburger in its hand, sticking out their pickles and laughing at him.  “Nooooooooo!”
   The posse was almost upon him, but then a strange thing happened, and it was the hamburger civilization's undoing.  Decades of human breeding for consumption purposes had led to an explosion in the amount of flatulence that was emitted into the atmosphere.  At that precise moment some fat guy somewhere let a greasy one rip and that small amount of methane was the straw that tipped the scales.  The climate snapped, sending a tidal wave of melted arctic ice onto the beach and over the land.  The hamburgers were wiped out, as was most of humanity except for those freerangers up in the trees.  Perhaps one day they will rise again.

         THE END
         

Spoiler

Or is it....?

[close]

[>>OK, now do a Hitler moustache on the lamp]

>>OK, now do a Hitler moustache on the lamp

EDIT: Oh fine.... +1 Tabatha's ideas.

Maybe L stays for Locations and a P word for society is "populace?"  Either that or maybe L for "Law", which governs society (perhaps a bit of a stretch, depending on precisely what you intend to put under the category).  Other L possibilities could be the vaguely general category of "Life", the specific secular body of the "Laity", or naming society in your game something that starts with L (my preference in this case would be "Lololia").

A direction associated with birds.

Ornithophilia.  Oh wait, a DIRECTION....  No idea.

Do you have drawers and/or cupboards on the other side?

  You just want to see how filthy the rest of the house gets.  Either that or you want to turn this into the amateur carpentry thread (which I'm totally down with ).  Any which way you cut it, I'm a glutton for scrutiny so:



Mostly I just recycled the hardware from the old drawers in the much smaller island that used to stand in this spot (maybe 6 square feet).  I just took apart the crummy laminated particle board, measured the crucial bits that had to fit with the hardware, and built much larger drawers out of plywood (the fronts are some nicer pine).  I actually had to buy the hinges AND a special drill bit for the compost/garbage cupboard, but that shelf is pure recycled panelling that used to be on all the walls.  The plan was (er.... is) to paint the whole thing after patching the nastier bits with wood filler, but we couldn't agree on a colour scheme so just haven't gotten around to it yet.  If only we knew someone local who had a brother who liked to finish things.... 

That vast expanse you see before you is 18 square feet of solid oak.

I'm having a hard time telling if that's actually oak.. especially with the grainy image quality (hoho!). But no, I'm serious.. How do YOU know it's actually oak.
I'm going to have to make a trip over there right this moment to see if it's actually oak. Though, you don't have to clean the counter for me, I don't mind.

Oh, a mother knows!  I built that sucker from the ground up.  Can't you see the (still unpainted) plywood underneath?  You can't buy that kind of quality.  The whole peninsula is less than 1/16 of an inch out of true: it's PERFECT.  And if the bloody floor it's sitting on had been flat, my eggs would stay in place when I'm cooking breakfast....

[>>use ashes from fireplace as warpaint on face]

Close, but it's actually from the King James version (slight variations might be important):

Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up:
It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying,
Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?
                                        Job 4:15-17

Interesting that it's the book of Job.  Wasn't god testing Job?  Are we to be tested?  Of further interest are the lines immediately preceding these verses:

Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine ear received a little thereof.
In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,
Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake
                     Job 4:12-14

Veeeery interesting, given that we slept through the experience.  I think we need to light the candles and meditate for a while with the goal of remembering our dreams from the previous night.

Of further interest is the slash pattern in Tent IV: only a single slice in the middle of the tent, not the shredding we saw back in III.  It's like a bayonette blade more than the frantic clawing we saw before.  It suggests a more precise strike.  The only thing different I can see in this tent is the religious nature of its usage, so we might tentatively conclude that whatever we're dealing with here reacts in a more reserved manner to holy space/symbols/people. 

Plus we now have evidence that someone survived the attack long enough to fondle a bible in a serendipitously apt passage -almost certainly the chaplain.  Since there was no evidence of struggle anywhere else in the camp, I take this to mean that either "holiness" slowed "it" down, or that it can not take or touch certain holy objects (in this case the bible).

In conclusion, I think there's only one rational course of action here:

>>use ashes from fireplace as warpaint on face

I used to be like you, toiling in my own filth, until I lost my back office.  Now I do all my work at the kitchen counter, and I wouldn't go back.  That vast expanse you see before you is 18 square feet of solid oak.  Granted this is the beginning of the evening: I've just finished my cleaning routine and am ready to start some gaming.  By the end of the evening there'll be notes and books strewn about, but I'll have to clear it all off before I leave in the morning so the rest of the household can use the space when they get up.



Er.... Baby.

Wasn't Seth also a son of Adam & Eve?  And Able was hardly a failure.... unless you count being murdered as a failure.

Is it something to do with misogyny?  The two failures are two X chromosomes (X for wrong = failure).  So a woman starts with "two failures", and they bring about two things that a woman has that others might admire....  Anybody got a bead on this?  Ponch?  But it always ends wrong with an old battleaxe harping about your dirty socks on the floor and your toilet aim.  So in the end MAN pays dearly.

+1 examining bible (it might have a pick in it for digging out of prison).

....but first, can we dip our finger tips into the tops of the candles?  It's not just for fun (although that'd surely be reason enough) - if the wax is still warm we'll have an idea of how long ago all this paranormal supernatural omniweirdness went down.

[It]

The riddle could have been asked at any time.  I mean before the time of modern civilization and even most ancient ones.

Setting aside the anachronisms of ancient civilizations being able to comprehend a riddle in modern English, I suppose you mean that the answer is somehow contained within the riddle itself and does not relate to things in the modern world, as such. 

1) Well, let's start with the obvious: THIS = THIS (thus THIS has to pay dearly).  Some of those early riddles are that simple, but surely the answer has to be more clever than that?

2) Two failures might be two minus signs, and the meeting might be the vertical joint used in serif fonts that make the letter "I".  The two they thought others would admire might be the two marks that make the letter "t", implying the possibility that someone, somewhere, for some reason might admire a cross.  Thus we have the word "It", which starts the riddle: "It starts with....    But ending wrong: when I see something wrong I *tsk*, which kind of sounds like "ch".  So the wrong ending of "It" might be "ch", which gives you "Itch", in which case it is your skin that pays dearly with the rashes, and the abrasions, and the blood and the gore and the Moohaven-nyu-hay!

[of]

It starts with the meeting to two failures.
They next bring about two who they thought others would admire.
But ending wrong THIS had to pay dearly.

What is it?

Is this EXACTLY how the riddle is supposed to go, or are you paraphrasing?  For instance, it would seem more correct if it started "with the meeting of two failures" and next they "bring about two whom they thought others would admire."   

Regardless, my guess is the Florida Fertilizer & Agricultural Association.

[>> Goose Step to Tent IV]

OK, here's my perspective.  I know you guys want to hear it from the horse's mouth (er.... sorry WHAM), but the surrealism of our current predicament makes it highly unlikely that any conventional memory of mission facts or personal history is going to help us in any tangible way.  Recall that WHAM is a master story-crafter and puzzle architect.  He's trained at elite adventure academies and at high-level top-secret adventure facilities.  He's like a black-belt flying-ace assassin of adventure design.  Do you think he's stripped to the waist and painted his face just to tell us off the bat that we're some sort of werewolf (my money is actually on "were-mummy")?

"Thinking back, you have vague recollections of scratching behind your ears with your hind paw and licking your unsheathed genitalia."

  Forsooth not!  No, he will conceal the twisted details of what is really going on behind a veil of guile and deception.  We cannot assume the luxury of being a homo economicus who makes only rational decisions based on complete information, but rather that we are the prisoners viewing so many shadows in Plato's cave.  We are meant only to have a vague notion of reality, and on this we must base our decisions.  Thus, I can predict our backstory without even having to ask:

Possibility #1: We don't remember much (probably due to the phenomenon that has allowed us to sleep through a raid on the camp by supernatural forces)

Possibility #2: We remember trivial facts that have little bearing on the task at hand

Possibility #3: We remember vague details about searching for something important to the war effort, probably some sort of super weapon à la Ark of the Covenant

Possibility #4: We misremember stuff, for the same reasons discussed in #1, which will throw us off the scent

     None of which really helps us, since we 1) know little enough already, or 2) already know some trivial facts, or 3) know that there's something powerful out there anyway, or 4) are confused enough already.  I submit that only after unravelling a series of clues, each more devious than the last, will we begin to grasp the weft of WHAM's rich tapestry.  Furthermore, I say that physical evidence trumps murky recollection and that we should continue to look around, or "blunder about" if you will. 

>> Goose Step to Tent IV

Countermand that Alamo remembrance!

We already know Hans' marital and family details (remember the letter???)

And since he knows from experience that the radio is a pain to haul around, we can assume that he is a low ranking grunt that would not be privy to the executive details of the mission.  I say we press on blindly and arrogantly, like at the Alamo!