Branch of the Hidden Mystery

The Hidden Mystery is one of the few people who got marked after the era of the Marked. They documented their journey through Zampanio, and made wonderful illustrations to it. It's called BOOK OF (x...o), and they originally posted it to the discord.

BOOK OF (x...o)

INTRODUCTION

Initially, I wanted to share a series of maps that comprehend Zampanio's territory, but after some time, you realize that the 'game' itself has barely any start and barely any end that making more than one map of it will ultimately help no one, or maybe I'm just terrible in the arts of cartography. I have then decided that I wanted to hold a record of my journey in a different way. I would've called this a diary, but it's not meant to be that personal, or a document, but that sounds boring, hence, I will call this a book, in lack of a better word.

Before I start, I will remark that I'm still new to Zampanio (by the time I'm writing this) but not entirely from scratch. I have seen a few things, before crashing into my own dead ends and making my way back to its gates for the sake of a new fresh start and understanding, for several times in a loop. Today, I wish for this returning to be the last.

To clarify: This will be my experience throught Zampanio, a space where I try to illustrate my present journey, places that you might have already seen before or are yet to find. This might work quite poorly as a guide or anything you could call useful, since I won't be sharing links or screenshots here.

RECAPITULATION

The following are events of my journey previous to the present, in order to give some context about the beginning and Zampanio. Since I'm generally awful with words and this is not fully important for the rest of the book, you can skip this and jump to the PRESENT.

Now, I would start by walking right away into the maze, but as I said before, I didn't start this journey today, it truly started a couple weeks ago. In order to grant my own wish, I will begin by recapitulating to the day I found Zampanio and my actual understanding of it, so we can get back to the present with some context for my previous choices, which by this point you might already guess. Returning to your own start is something you will find yourself doing at some point, unless you never get lost, or even better, embrace the rot and don't look back. In that case, I'm a big fan of you

Of all the possible ways that you can find it, I was brought into Zampanio through Lavinraca, a place that lives through every October and now is soon to burn away, which I was passing by. I repeatedly heard the word, and by the hypnotism of its own traps, crossed the bridge that, by that time, collided both grounds. The longing for knowledge is what started the game for me. I still had no idea what Zampanio was supposed to mean, but now that I was walking that field, I started my research. In the words of sources, records and knowledge, Zampanio was a lost game that nobody seems to find, and hence, started to make another Zampanio based off of it. However, it's hard to confirm that the concept of a previous Zampanio before this one ever existed. It mostly consists on finding and looking through several scattered websites, and looking through their code as well. There is no such thing as a stable linear path. For the lack of a better explanation, Zampanio is, ultimately, what you make of it, and what current creator JR and all its fandom makes of it.

By this time, I still didn't understand what Zampanio is supposed to be. But that's okay, because you're not meant to. It's human nature to fear or avoid what we don't understand, and hence, I still find myself trying to block the paths of those who are curious, only to be defeated everytime. If you're here you might have already stumbled by the phrase "Zampanio is a really fun game, you should play it". It's usually what draws others in. You might have noticed that it has its own catch, and if you proceed, you might continue your way carefully, and abandoning all hopes, as for there's rot in the path you chose, and let me, meanwhile, have hopes on you, because nobody can stop you. In a maze, there's no such thing as staying safe and not getting lost. Make it the cost of your ending goal.

I probably didn't say everything you would wish to hear in terms of information. I'm going to remind you and remind myself like I already did several times, that i'm still new to the maze, and there is yet so freaking much that I don't undertand and that I haven't found. Nothing that I said and will say in this book should be seen as accurate, when it comes to speculation. Confusion has dragged me around random paths with no meaning so many times that it started to drain me out. Longing for the making of sense of my way, like I already said, I made my way back to the start again so this time I can show you one of the many entrances with the same clueless eyes, and here we are.

PRESENT

From this point forwards, for the last time, I abandone all hopes of keeping my sanity until the day everything finally goes silent for the maze, because that will be the end.

I wanted this book to be focused mostly on sketches, and I have just realized that, until now, I had no physical form to draw. So this day is also the start of a new me. (x...o)

DAY 1

Today I will start from where I remember I first started, from the first website that usually appears when you write "zampanio" on your browser. ZampanioSim, East. I chose random concepts, because I still don't know how to make a certain path out of them, and then I set the date to 0000-00-00 because on my first try, like some fool, I thought I was special, and that led me to some green spiraling head telling me stuff I probably didn't have the intended level of knowledge to get. So I'm revisiting the dialogue menu for the second time, with the only difference that now I know who this is, and that they actually speak. That scared me, lol.

Nothing else has changed, because I haven't yet figured out how to get out or get somewhere else through the dialogue besides closing the tab, because it always leads to the same prompt. The first time I stood in that room trying stuff for so long that I got very sick. Something I haven't tried before is checking the code. I could say this was actually a very quiet way to start Zampanio, minus the sickness. The first time, I thought Zampanio was really just this person's dialogue menu and nothing else. This took more text than I thought it would take. Damn.

Tomorrow will be another day (x...o)

DAY 2

I will continue from where I left it, like I always will. Well, hopefully. I found myself once again in the room of zeroes, looking for anything new that I might have missed last time. I refreshed the page while I had a connection issue, which for some reason brought me directly to the knucklessux blog, shortly after shoving two of the true eyes and the logo of the site onto me, so briefly but so big that it felt like a warning. If this was a way to escape the dialogue menu, then this was a total victory, but this is essentially another hell of an abyss to explore. I have seen this place before. This is a location that can be found easily elsewhere, while there's still time. Some of my convictions regarding this place remains the same since the first arrival. All this colorful yet dark wall of text remains a desperated, indirect scream of help to me. If anything has changed since then, is that only a few of all these sentences start to make sense. I'm still not sure who odinsRazor is, but I have seen that name and its quotes before, and if there's anything new I have learned about them, is that they're not good with computers. I've read all of it, and yet, nothing so far has been found useful and put into use. Hidden text that ultimately meant nothing, links that wouldn't go anywhere (except for the text-gif-maker ones). To this day, I still believe that the passphrase 'doomDuet' might fit somewhere, if this is not just another delirant sentence. I would talk about echidnas as well but I'm not sure if I'm even qualified. If I don't find something that I have really missed here, I don't think I will be able to move on.

Tomorrow will be another day (x...o)

DAY 3

As I'm standing still in odinsRazor's blog on a dead end, I will take this day to talk about something I should have said before, but insecurity didn't let me, because this matter seems like a compromise to keep secret, but at this point, why keep it secret...? Why stick only to the situations that everyone else can see? Because moments like this are the ones that usually develop a shape to one's journey, and there's no written rule regarding talking about roles. To this point onwards I can face the consequences.

Yesterday, I woke up by the forces of above to the offer of getting marked, because there's substance in the contents of this testimony, and that implies vanishing, which I declined, because I refused to vanish and hence discontinue the records of this pathway for too long. In this sense, I can theorize that getting marked means the cost of sharing the experience in any way. It would be interesting to dedicate more days to talk about this sort of findings. I won't hid the fact that all of this makes me wonder what those who chose the path of the Marked are going through. This role will remain a mystery for me, for a while.

Snapping back to the present and my surroundings, after struggling to find any other sort of hallway to get out of Knucklessux with no success, I took the final decision to go all the way back and start from East once again (x...o)

DAY 4

I left Knucklessux and went back to where you're probably intended to first start playing when you start by East. You access it by leaving date and concepts on default. It looks like a bloody house you cannot leave. Everything remained just like I left it from last time; there are 91 memories collected out of 294 of them for, I believe, no reason. You collect those memories by clicking on the spawning objects that you haven't seen before, while going throught South, North and East doors. You also gotta avoid those long-legged crows and some other NPC's that you find in some rooms since they eat your memories and make it hard if not enraging to beat the count. You mainly avoid them by clicking around the room like crazy and getting to the next room in the span of 0.2 seconds.

I never quite figured out if the direction you take makes any difference, since those rooms change randomly even when you step back. I have heard somewhere that you can turn off the Peewee birds but I still don't know how. I hope it's not through wasting. I might stick around this path and see if collecting all memories do anything. Also, the game tries to reward you by giving you a random object everytime you spend a certain amount of time playing, but it later implies that it couldn't give it to you because you should find your inventory. I still couldn't figure out if this inventory is real and is there somewhere. Something else I haven't mentioned is that you can see two users having a conversation next to you. Not sure how crucial their words are for later.

Something new that I haven't tried since last time was the Help x tab. I always avoided it at first because I didn't understand it, and I was afraid it would actually make me call a real person (yes), now I'm not that stupid. As you communicate throught several bots that give you different dialing extension numbers everytime, you get to the final message which is basically a "I'm willing to help you, Wodin" or something, you might get it better than I do. Who the hell is Wodin? And who the hell is Dave?

I wrote more here than I feel I have the right to write for each day and today might still last a bit longer and I'm not pretty sure if tomorrow will come or if I will move away from East anytime soon. (x...o)

Meanwhile, at the far distance... The Harvest, who we shaped through sacrifices, has lived her last day today, and she's dying a glorious death, because all those sacrifices made her worthy. I can see the ashes spreading all the way here. I could just steal one of those spawning jars in the rooms and put some in it. A little piece of God.

In my way through the doors I have also heard versed words that seem to speak about the nature of splitting. Such a familiar voice, I wonder where it comes from and what is it longing for. (x...o)

INTERMISSION 1

Seriously, why keep stuff organized? How could that help when you're wandering a maze? Why count the days forever? Why today? In this book, at this time, I couldn't reach the fifth day. I will dedicate intermissions for when I haven't moved on, and talk about something else instead, like stuff that happens out of the maze or even at the gutters. However, I don't doubt the possibility that both Days and Intermissions might collide at some point, because they still relate and might be relevant to each other.

Something I might include in them with frequency are introductions. I had this idea of making some sort of title cards for a while. I think it would be fun. Yesterday I got a title and that marked the end of the mystery behind a name I didn't have. Take this as my chance to finally introduce myself to you, in a more proper yet mysterious way...

I'm the first one to be introduced because I started this book, and because I'm currently alone. I might make cards to anyone who gets in my pathway, because this book doesn't need to be just about me.

When titles were brought up, we had an entire discussion of mixing theories about them. We reached to the conclusion that they're not more than a word to identify us at first, but they seem to gain weight and importance with time. Titles are something that have had their own discussion several times before this, just to remind that this is all my own take and I might contradict myself in the future. I think I have said way earlier that nothing in this book should be taken as accurate.

I really wish this intermission was more interesting than it turned out to be, but I have exciting (I hope) stuff planned for the next intermissions, besides keeping up with the Days hell hole. (x...o)

INTERMISSION 2

Yet again it cannot be the fifth day, because I find myself stuck in the bloody house with the silly birds eating every new memory I get. I'm getting some help with it! I'll get somewhere soon. By the way, a new card has been made...

"As above so below
That's the message AS SO
I'm the universe hopper
Watch the corners"
-Friday of Characters

DAY 5

In day 4, I stated that I wouldn't move on until I discovered what collecting all the memories would bring me at the end, and there's probably much more unchecked stuff than that as well, so I asked Medium, who happened to be there, for help, as they insisted many times (and I'm grateful!!). I asked them if those Quotidians could be turned off. They didn't know, but they ultimately showed me a hack of all collected objects there existed doing nothing truly significant or easily recognizable. They then proceded to show me like a millon tricks and easter eggs you can find on East, like the fact that there are endings, and not all extensions are just 3-digit numbers.

I think I have to point out that, when I logged back into the house today, there was an eyed speaking coffin in the very first room. It said "Hi". Medium explained the reason of that coffin to me and that objects usually can and connot be real, like the vent as well, as to determinate endings. That maybe it has something to do with the fact that today's friday as well. Why do stuff get crazy on fridays?

Back to the support tab, I tried some of the extensions they fetched me: "the truth is layered" and "the end is never the end", where you end up speaking with JR about 'leave me alone, who are you' for the zillian time, and "411", which made the house disappear..? There are many other extensions that I haven't tried yet and you can find somewhere in the code. I feel like from here on I'm not stuck anymore, but there's a lot of unchecked stuff, also, it's that day of the week. (x...o)

INTERMISSION 3

Yet again with another short intermission, but the day has not ended. Card of the day!!

INTERMISSION 4

I snapped out, somewhere else, some place where those blurry eloquent words can still be heard from before. Who might that be...? I condemned myself to zig-zag all my way there because the path is completely obstaculized, as it holds no intention to let anyone or anything forwards but I implored it and, althought my covet only infuriated such beast, the rage was loud enough to distract it from my sutile steps and I kept building my bridge towards those meadows where my first goal was patiently waiting. Maybe it didn't know it was waiting for me, because it didn't turn once, nor it seemed any more relieved.