Community Spotlight – July 2023
It’s been a while since our last Community Spotlight, so before we get started we’d like to touch on a few things regarding its return.
We believe the spotlight is an efficient way to praise members who have created exciting and community driven content, and to also highlight exactly what makes DayzUnderground unique. With this return, we can share our best content with newcomers and encourage them to get involved with the creation of stories and content that add to an immersive and unique experience for everyone involved. Along with the return of Community Spotlight, we’ve taken the decision to host it on our website. We want the website to be the main platform for public sharing of DUG-related content and lore, and this will include the new Wiki when it is completed.
Hopefully you’re as excited as we are for the return of the Community Spotlight! Today we’re taking it back a few weeks to revisit some of the stories and videos that we believe are worthy of recognition.
“Something Awful” By Stephen
As you may remember, a few weeks ago an announcement was made congratulating Stephen on cracking a code that was 7 years old. This is his story following that, and it’s well worth the read!
Something awful had happened.
Stephen was lying on the floor, shaking uncontrollably. One second, he would feel boiling hot. The next second he’d feel as if he was freezing to death. Whenever he tried to stand, he would gag and vomit. He’d been in this state of torment for a whole hour. Or was it two hours…? Maybe more…?
Numbers chimed in his head.
Fourteen…twenty six…nineteen…zero…six…
Across the room on the desk sat an old, battered cassette player. There were depleted batteries scattered all over the floor. The trash can was full of crumpled papers and shattered pencils. Stephen had spent weeks decrypting the mysterious message on that damned cassette tape. What had it done to him? He had only been curious!
…zero…four…twelve…sixteen…fifteen…
Stephen recalled the moment of satisfaction he’d felt when he had realized that he was making progress in unlocking the code. Had he known what he was getting into, he would have curbed his curiosity and thrown the tape into the ocean.
…ten…fifteen…zero…eight…ten…
Something had spiked itself deep in Stephen’s head. Something old and foul. Like water with a thin layer of rancid oil lying atop, a certain degree of darkness had indirectly remained alive within the coded message.
…twenty…zero…two…twenty one…zero…
When Stephen had decrypted that message, he’d caught a glimpse of that darkness. He’d experienced a small taste of that residual evil, and while not potent enough to kill a person, it was just powerful enough to serve as a reminder of a malevolence from stories long concluded.
Nine…zero…two…fifteen…five…
He needed to hear it again. He needed to hear it one last time. Once more wouldn’t hurt, right? Stephen struggled to his feet, fought off the wave of nausea, and limped over to the desk. With a shaking hand, he grabbed the cassette player and pressed the play button. As the encrypted sounds washed over him, his torment subsided. No more nausea. No more pain.
Something wonderful had happened.
“An Enduring Nightmare” By Akim The Revelator
As usual, Akim has produced a beautifully written story with excellent details really bringing the story to life. This is a must-read for fans of The Cult of Papa.
The first breath forced my eyes open. It was shallow, painful, and the salty sea water rushed over my body like an icy blanket. I had sunken into the beach like a heavy stone, embedded in the sand and rocky shoreline of this forsaken place. I had become the scenery or, rather, something more akin to the sound of far off conversation around a dim fireplace. Audible, but only just so that the words were broken and incoherent. Incomprehensible but always lurking out just beyond the trees. I stared at the sky, and found myself submerged in a small swell from the ocean.
I stared up through the murky waters with blood shot, stinging eyes and lifted my arms out of the sand. A layer of rock and sand filtered off either side of my limbs as they rose from the foamy water and fell back in. I braced them on stones embedded in the beach and lifted my upper body out of the icy waters to gasp in another breath. My teeth chattered and my entire body shook from the cold, but I rose from the watery grave.
Breath, a temporary white cloud served to reinforce that I live. How? I don’t know, this was not the first time I had dragged myself out of some pit to suffer again at the constraints of this world. I dragged my legs out of the sediment, and out from the frigid grasp of the roaring ocean waters, until I laid on dry grass and dirt. The night sky was fading quickly, replaced with a blazing red and orange glow. A cleansing fire, rising from the horizon and seeming to be birthed from the same rage that shook my body to life, swept over me and the tainted land upon which I found myself.
The biting cold penetrated my bones and flesh, integrating itself deep into the being that had been spat back from the deep dark of the other side. Respawned and reinvigorated with a heartless, soulless form. I had no recollection of my old lives, no sense of what great beasts had sired me nor what my purpose was in regaining breath. I could feel it, though, a fantastic passion beginning to burn inside me as bright as the black sun that rose over the endless dark waters that licked at my feet like the tongue of a great behemoth.
I laid there, breathing and feeling the horrors that were still to come at my hands. I could see my own eyes reflecting back from the dark sky. A sinful glee in the tortured, wrinkled skin that formed the face of the body I was thrust into by whatever great force had drawn me to be. I rolled over onto my elbows and dragged myself further from the coast. The muscles of my legs began to ease toward movement and soon I crawled forth as a beast on four limbs. I was overcome with a savagery and wicked desire to consume the life of this land, and all who inhabit it.
But, again, I do not know why nor how I came to be. Only that I Am. With no direction home, and only a long road before me, I crawled into the morning sun along the warming pavement that scratched at my skin and broke fingernails. Wet clothes turned to ruin and absorbed the filth of the ground. I bled and groaned and yet nothing within me said to stop – only to go forward toward light in the dead end.
“Looting boots in DAYZ is NOT worth it!” By Matt
Matt spots something atop a tower, and decides to brave the climb to investigate. He is met with an interesting interaction!
Video by Legit-POP!
“Evil Creates Evil” By Harvey
And finally, rounding out this month’s spotlight is a cinematic story created by Harvey; the community’s reception to this video was very positive and we think it definitely deserves to be included. This is the origin story of one of DUG’s most infamous antagonists, Harvey, and how he came to be the leader of the infamous apocalypse gang.
Video by ThatDAMNHarvey
Thanks for Reading!
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