Sunday 12 April 2015

The Final Kings of Spun (not the Kings of Final Spun)

585 days after GigiZen became the 1st Spun King in the EU, JamCar0ne became the 74th and final King of Spun in North America. On that day, or rather at 2 minutes after the start of the following day (according to Pacific Standard Time - the reigning time convention on the West Coast of the  Americas), which happened to be the first day of April, Spunland vanished.

 As did a multitude of other worlds. 

None could say for sure why such a thing had come to pass, but all who cared to notice saw the upheaval that it caused. Some would claim it an apocalypse of sorts, but a thing so vast and wide,  a weave of impossible friendships and glorious shared imaginings, like some raging tropical river - cannot be suddenly stopped. At worst its dammed. The strongest currents will always find a way around the rocks, and a thousand streams be born where previously there was but one, and may yet again rejoin, or spread in countless ways. But still, on that 1st of April, Spunland vanished.



The Killswitch started counting down the final days on January the 1st 2015. Ninety days remained until the looming Great Obstruction. To almost all intents and purposes Spunland EU was deceased before that dark day, or would have been, were it not for the valiant Spunlings from across the Great Atlantic. dxkills16, GreyNeo and JamCar0ne would in traversing the Spun trans-atlantic pipeline become NeoDx_1, VeiledNeo and JamCarToo to compete in each Spun contest, or merely play their part in keeping it alive. The final EU crown was taken by sam_reynolds01, truly the first Knight of Spun, indeed the most convincing contender for the very first crown of Spun. His destiny took him elsewhere for a stretch but spuntastically he returned in time to claim his own. Imhokh also was there to see the final EU contest, thus 2 of the only 3 people to ever bear the 4th July Crown, were there to share the end day’s spun.



On that final day in Spunland NA, the many tribes of Home came out to play, or just to watch and share that most poignant of times. Hammies, Homelings and every stripe between gathered in groups to chat or chased the crown in earnest. Many previous Kings of Spun were spotted among the throng, proudly wearing their crowns or glitching with them in the contest. After thirty frantic minutes JamCar0ne was crowned the final King of Spun.  



Had sam_reynolds01 not won the terminal EU contest, the overall Majesty of Spun would have undoubtedly been dxkills16. Majesty dxkills16, the ultimate happy spunling and like sam before her a true Champion of Spun; many were the times she could have won but instead let another own the glory of the moment. Spunland was proud to have such noble Monarchs. Sam’s EU win brought his total Crowns to 20 (counting both sides of the Great Atlantic) - the very same as dx and so we celebrate them both as our joint Kings of Kings of Spun. All hail.

And so 770 days after the first spunling spawned in Spunland EU, Spunland vanished. We celebrate our final Kings of Spun, but not the Kings of final Spun, for that which vanishes may just as soon return. The spun no longer flows down the pipes that bore the fun, but gathers here and there in pools and burbles. For all who came to see what fun they could make, Spunland thanks you, and bids you mark: the Spun is with you always. #SpunForever.

www.spunland.com

Thursday 19 March 2015

The Unspun Tyranny of Time

And so it came to pass that Spunland entered its final days. The ever diligent reporters of End Times News noted the inexorable progress of the Killswitch countdown; the insatiable appetite of the Unspun Worms, the gradual draining of colour from the land of Spun, the shrinking of the hills and the lethargy of the trees. These were melancholic times, all the moreso as the final coronations would all fall on Spunoween. Was this some strange side effect of the calendrical calculus, that for two whole months in a row Spunoween would fall on a Tuesday, meaning the final Majesties of Spun would all be crowned in a land approaching true darkness, or was it some arch intention of the Architect of Spun?

It has obvious spunprints all over it, cried one enlivened reveller in The Spunner's Arms, I have seen its sort before - those that arrive after the coronation starts will find themselves in Spunland, those before in Spuno'ween - at least on that side of the Great Atlantic it will! Why, what an incredible fact! echoed another equally merry drinker, before the ever-wise landlord poured cold spun ale on their conjectures. If you forget the counting of the clocks that is! On the 8th of March the clocks sprung forwards ha! And I've heard tell Spunland mansions is not as empty as seems - some have seen lights on in the dead of night, and that Flusho in the grounds looks more like a steed than a grazer to me. Last orders gentlmen!

To the crown contenders it mattered not a jot whether it was by coincidence of contrivance, still they arrived to lay claim to the crown, some in Secret Spunland where the hills remained proud and tall, others in the inky blackness of Spunoween where the rabbits were all but invisible. But the wistful nature of the contest was plain to see. For long stretches of time the Crown would float unclaimed, as though too painful too bear. Where once angry words would fire between contenders at the contest's conclusion now apologies did own the air. The Spun family, once divided by competition were now united in melancholy. Who would dare take the crown when the number of heads left to carry it could be counted on one fully fingered hand? But they need not have worried, for it was their love and devotion which stole the bitterness from those sad times.

For some Spun reason the penultimate coronations were to take place at a slightly altered time, why would any risk such confusion at so poignant a date? Tuesday the 24th of March, 8 - 8.30pm GMT Spunland EU, 7.30 - 8pm EDT / 4.30 - 5pm PDT Spunland NA.








Tuesday 17 February 2015

Of Imps and End days


In the time of the Kill Switch, in the end days of Spun, when the Unspun Worms roamed abroad and Spunland Mansions lay empty, with all it's custodians gone, it was left only to spunlings to catalog all that was right or wrong. No one officially noticed events of great import; when dxkills16 became Majesty of Spun on both sides of the Great Atlantic for the third time, where were the heralds to announce her achievement and the choirs to sing her praises? There were none even to question the scurrilous rumors and treasonous talk, that perhaps she was actually the Queen of all things Spun, (come back to save us all?) a conjecture based not only on her spuntastic achievements, but on the generosity of her wisdom and the sharpness of her eye, for it was dxkills16 who noticed that she was spurned by the Spun Imp during the coronations. Why would this be?

Perhaps an answer could be found in the pages of End Time News, a noteworthy journal which in these trying times rose to the challenge of covering the impending apocalypse. Their intrepid journalists were the only ones to record the gradual dissipation of Spun, and even managed to interview a Constructo Spunner, a most remarkable feat given the ghostly state of Spunland Mansions. Some would dispute that a lowly Constructo could shed much light on these terminal events, but none could deny the spun potency of his crudely uttered prophecy: 'One day the Spun Queen will return and the way to Spunland will open again'.

The very existence of ETN ensured that those with an intimate knowledge of Spun, or the unspun desire to claim such, had a worthy transmitter for their erudition, and so it was that an odd letter was received for publication:

"To whom it may concern,

 When we was working for less than peanuts and harder than hercules, mistakes were made, and things ignored that otherwise should have been dealt with. Them that always know best insisted that the we press ahead with the delicate spun engineering to manifest the Spun Imp, even though there was barely the time to complete our maintenance work, nevermind introduce anything new. Not that the Imp really was new anyway - he was there back at the beginning of Spunland, but no many ever saw him. Anyway, the maths were bad and untested - as you can see if you pay close attention. The Imp gets summoned when you reach 2500 spun points, as soon as it's there bobbing on your head it'll attack the hopper if you get close enough (for long enough), and you'll get some points for having it complete its purpose. If you avoid the hopper and score another 2500 points the Imp will morph into a more powerful Imp and grant you even more points for achieving a hopper kill. Beware the hopper for another 2500 points and you'll find yourself with the most powerful Imp. 

Now here's the rub. If for any reason you bank your score, (and so your current score is reduced to nothing) this information is not passed from the Bank of Spun to the Imp's logic, which means the tracking of the points aft goes agley and you can find yourself missing an Imp for quite some time. Normally this wouldn't really matter, but I feel its only right to let folks competing in the Coronations know that this is the case. If you are taking the quest for the Spun Crown seriously you should save your spun points and leave Spunland altogether shortly before the coronation begins, so that when you come back and  join the contest the counting of the score towards your Spun Imp will work correctly. I did try saying at the time that we shouldn't be tinkering with the engineering under the circumstances, but nobody listened.  That's what happens when you don't have a Union.

Anonymous"

Despite the depletion of Spun and the halfway mark of doom having been reached, spunlings kept coming back to compete for the Spun Crown every Tuesday (apparently from 8 - 8.30 pm GMT in Spunland EU and 4 - 4.30pm PST / 7 - 7.30pm EST in Spunland NA). Indeed, there were even rumors that unscheduled coronations had taken place... but who knew how, why or when?


Monday 5 January 2015

The Final Spun Update?

At the stroke of midnight Greenwich Mean Time on the 31st of December, in the year 2014 a low rumble (perceptible only to spun bunnies) sounded from out the Great Spun Pipe at the end of Spunland. If one could only have plunged down the pipe, dodging the Spun Hopper on its wicked way up and followed the groaning to its source - to the great engine room of Spun, where meet the pipes of Spunland, Spunmas and Spun'oween, one would have found a situation most... unspun.

The Clock of Spun Seasons may have chimed the turning of the year, and the Shift Siren blared, but there were no Constructos there. Following a notice of eviction the engineers had all been sacked. None there were to set the dial from Spunmas to Spunland, no one to turn the mighty valve and let the new Spun flow. And so with an ominous shudder the Clock of Spun Seasons stopped and the groaning started as the mighty valve began to turn slowly, all by itself. The dial flicked to Spunland and for the first time ever the Spun Pressure Gauge dropped. With a click and a pop a hatch atop the Great Spun Pipe sprung open and up thrust a new gauge like some unspun jack-in-the-box. This is what it looked like:



Now, if upon witnessing this most unspun occasion one had climbed the ladders, crossed the gantries and wound one's way back up through the great halls of engineering and into the bowels of Spunland Mansions, quiet now and empty, then traced ones route through the echoing halls until one came to Uncle Spun's study wherein all was as he left it, if one had known where to look among his papers a letter dated 20th August 2013 could there be found which may well pertain to such events...

Dear Uncle Spun,

We are happy to inform you that the Great Spun Pipeline is now complete, and you may activate it whenever suits you and yours, however we must warn you that due to the absence of our Queen we must take measures to protect the Spun, projecting it as we are, into an environment of questionable sovereignty. Should the Spun Seasons fail to be observed for any reason whatsoever the Kill Switch will be engaged, whereupon the daily flow of Spun will drop incrementally until it is no more. We need not remind you that aside from many other adverse effects, this will cause the Unspun Worms to wake, so see to it that such a thing never comes to pass. Let flow the Spun!

yours spuntastically,

The Architect

Coronations will continue every Tuesday until the end of the world (which so happens to be a Tuesday). Spunland EU; 8 - 8.30pm GMT, Spunland NA; 4 - 4.30pm PST, 7 - 7.30pm EST

May the Spun be always with you!

www.spunland.com