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I'm still pretty fresh to the cys world and I'm wondering what exactly the "Pit of Shame" is. How do you get out? What are the consequences? I made the mistake of signing up for a contest as my first story game, and I'm starting to think I'll be stuck there.

Any help is appreciated!

There is no help for you once you have fallen into the pit of shame.

Sorry.

Well, I've been down there once, so I can attest that it's unpleasant, to say the least.

The first thing you'll notice as you wake up is the stench of stagnant, disreputable dead noobs. The bodies sort of decay a bit at the bottom there. Oh, and the moaning from the ones still alive. That'll keep you up at night.

I wouldn't be alive now to tell you anything if it weren't for the old hand-crank elevator with its paper and quill, and the burden of my shame driving me along enough to finish the next contest. I don't even know if I remembered to lower the elevator back down.

It took a month for the upper surface to remember me down there. I still feel a little withered, but the doctor says my vitals are fine. The nice thing is you don't immediately decay, you just dilapidate a bit from living in the mud along the bottom. Well, if you get out early enough.

Nobody goes near the pit often, so you probably don't have anything to worry about. Unless, of course, you made some kind of deal and defaulted your end of the bargain; that'd just be foolhardy. So you're probably fine. My advice if you fall down there?

Think warm thoughts, because it's a very cold place.

Thank you so much for the insight, I respect and honor your bravery.

What Nightwatch said, but keep in mind that's only the first layer of the pit. The second layer is similar in some superficial ways, but the bodies have been down there longer. There's still some movement here and there and ghostly flickers of half remembered life, but most of the activity is just rats gnawing at the bones.

It's very dark down there, but enough moonlight filters in on certain nights to theoretically do some writing. Every time a new contest is announced, a rope is lowered down.

Well, I say rope, but it's more a series of used belts hooked together, taken from previous entrants as a money saving initiative. You can successfully climb out, or you can take one of them and...well, they're giving you options, you see.

Because no one ever comes back from the third layer. I don't even know enough to describe it, but watching that swarm of giant centipedes creep up over the ledge to drag away Orange and Bilbo wasn't pretty.

I swear some of their legs even looked disturbingly human

Is there any way of communication while you're in the pit? (Can I still rate/post things on cys)

it's not part of the site itself, but everyone will remember you only for your shame of finishing a contest empty-handed, until you redeem your worth in the next one you enter. There are ramifications to failing 3 times in a row, though I'd hope that waking up in cold mud every day is enough motivation to learn before then.

Y'know, sometimes I forcefully wake myself to walk around a bit, most of the bodies down here have been dead for longer than I have been in CYS.

It's not a bad experience, at times I get to play with Lar and push back my responsibilities to tomorrow, but I would certainly love to be back up.

Next contest, next one!