From Everything Shii Knows, the only reliable source

Zybourne Clock: the only actual summary of this on the Internet! Go me!

Some people on the Something Awful Forums thought it would be a good idea to make their own "steampunk" RPG with no gaming experience at all. Then everyone else mocked them ruthlessly for over two years.

The following headings are listed in order of relevance to the meme.

Prelude

(This was supposed to be an actual script for the gameplay)

Rough draft. Not for public consumption

PRELUDE

At the end of a long room filled with whispers and handshakes sits a man fondling a small, dark object. The ancient wooden benches along the room's perimeter are full, mostly of women and children, leaving the men to mingle. The man sits firmly offering avoiding eye contact which could be misinterpreted as an offer of his seat. He clutches the object nervously. Through a forrest of arms, legs, and coattails a small child wanders towards the man, drawn by curiousity and free of her unattentive mother's eye.

"What you got there, mister?", queries the girl.

He pauses for a moment, considering plots which might've employed this child as a spy, paid in food, to inquire. Exhausted and drawn to the child's innocence, the walls of secrecy melt for a moment.

"This, my darling, is a device. A device many men and many women have died to see, to understand, and to own. In many ways it is like one of your toys, but a toy for adults. This, darling, is The Zybourne Clock."

Suddenly, barely visible in the dim light, the child's eyes change. The hazelnut brown tones are ungluing into silver, melting into swirls of pearl and mechanical shades. Her body loses its shy posture and rapidly conforms to a rigid, upright stance. Her mouth opens slightly and with programmed precision, she moves her wrist slowly towards her tiny lips.

"Orange Fox to Deitrus. Orange Fox to Deitrus. The Golden Egg has been located. I repeat, we've got it. Over".

Frozen with guilt, the man slowly begins to run through the crowd. The girl screams, "Rape! Rape! He tried to touch me! Help!".

For Dirk McLauren, Wedesnday January 19 2381 has begun very poorly.

Time

(This was also real)

We had all the main logistics points of our projects hammered out and our prototype built, but there was a few more things to

be decided. What would this clock do when it gets back in time besides gather energy? The answer came to me while reading an

article out of a Science magazine that I had picked up about 2 years ago. The article basically summarized how the planet got

to its current point in its evolutionary cycle and where it had started. It compared key points of life over 20 millenia and

now. I sat there in and thought about the article for a good 3 hours. If we could subtely alter the cycle at which the

planet terraforms and speed up human evolution, we could, possibly make humanity advance far past wars in a few millenia's

time. My heart jumped into my throat as I ran through the bay doors to tell my colleagues that I had finally found a safe way

to alter the way the timeline to such a degree as to not rip a hole in time itself.

As I looked around the room, my excitement faded. All of them looked as if they had just became very ill.

"Doctor, you understand if we do this, We will fade from existance as the timeline corrects itself." One of my colleagues

said in the grimest manner I had ever heard him speak before.

I began to turn pale, and dizzy. I quickly found a chair and used the magazine (that I was subsequently still clutching) to

fan myself.

"Well, there must be a way around this. There must be." I said, even though I knew I was lying to myself.

We sat up that night and discuss ideas on how to develope a new one. What we came up with was grim. We theorized that when

you send an object through time, it does not create a new timeline that overrides the current like we had originally thought.

When the object enters the timestream, time begins to correct itself. Let me use this example: Imagine four balls on the edge

of a cliff. Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the cliff is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of

the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls off the cliff.

Time works the same way.

"Pension"

Most likely real

[Sylus removes his ear from the door and Turns to Alex]

Sylus: Watch me work.

Alex: You always had a pension for the dramatic.

[Sylus slips on what looks like a brass knuckle, and lunges for the door. Right as his knuckle is about to connect a blue

light shoots out of it, distegrating the door]

Alex: Come on, haven't you ever heard of stealth? Sylus: Nope.

[Sylus takes off his knuckle, slicks his hair back and enters the room.]

Organization of the project

It was expected that the entire game would be completed in less than a year. The deadlines are listed here.

Only one person on the team had previous game development experience; he was a professional developer. He was banned from the project for criticizing it.

Johnny.jpg and so forth

(Actual character designs. Done by an unknown SA user)

Fan art by Sparr

Thanks to SA for correcting this.

Apparently one of the villains was the evil Väundermaüse.

The map

"CITY5" CONFLAGRATION

"Dude it is an epic 100 hour story, im sure City5 'CONFLAGRATION' has lots of charming locals just waiting to have thier backstories fleshed out" --Meme Emulator

OVERTURE

THE CLOCK

This was the good map. There was also a bad map, which is unfortunately no longer extant.

Here is the original idea for the city map.

Here is the final city map where most of the action took place, complete with a front porch (?) and helpful urban planning for the slums.

"I'm sure those from Uptown will be happy to walk through the military district and past the slums to go to the shops." --SA user

Suggested power bars

(This was how character moods were to be determined)

Okay, now that we have that down, there is another thing that I should point out. Some enemies will have immunities to

certain moods during points in the battle. Look at the battle flow chart. You see where you used moodskills, and where he

attacked you, where you attacked him, and now where he is about to use the Moodskill rage and during the turn he will be

immune to the emotion anger.

That means that Sylus's strenghtMAX skill will be negated and his attack rating will return back to normal for this turn, but

the negative effect of the skill will remain on him, so it is best to defend to make up for lost defense points on this turn.

Okay, so the battle menu opens, select defense please!

On to Alex! She is unaffected by the anger immunity because she is tense! So you can attack with her!

Good!

Next few things I want to cover. The change mood command will change the selected characters mood at random. It can only be

used once in battle. You can also use an item to change a characters mood by using an item or by seeing a Psychologist. Okay,

Ill let you do the rest! Look forward to our next and final installment of tutorials, Timesynch!

Oh yeah one more thing.

Anger <---> Hurt

Tense <---> Nervous

Happy <---> Sad

Fan fiction

This is not real storyboard but a parody by Ingwit.

Johnny Fiveaces powered down the magnabike with a not quite unhearble hum and checked his chronometer. “Damn.” he hissed threw his clinched teeth which were surrounded by the stubble of five days where in he had not shaven himself at all. It was almost chromodawn at Clashpoint. Alreddy the sun was sitting Walliston’s Hill ah blaze like so much molten meddle or a coin, gyreating in the air, tossed there by the uncaring hand of an imaginary god that doesn’t exist, borne from the interior minds of the hobbled masses. The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel that was orange. Damn, he, Johnny, thought. We thought we were opening a new beginning with our mad dreams of time travail but ironically the only time now is the time of which we’re out of. It’s almost humorous. Yeah, I could almost laugh, if I hadn’t cried that part of me away when my parents were maccasared by Dr. Malaprop and the government sanctioned murderers of “CAPITAL”.

He lit a Nicosheen brand swaggerette and took a dip drag, sinking farther into his inferior horologue. He thought of Nina and her mellifluous buttocks that he used to love to bang. Even now his nano enhanced hearing could almost hear her vagina lips quivering with moisture and also pleasure, like a slice of synth-ham being tongued by one of Malaprop’s slamhounds. When he got back to City5, he was going to do some sex, no doubt about that. “That’s right doll” he said to nobody and the wind. They were going to do it hard. He smiled, blowing smoke from his nostrils. They were going to do it cyber hard.

And... the fan art.

Less commonly known excerpts

The timeline

During the biggest Something Awful thread one of the original Zybourne Clock artists came in and posted this. He quit the project before the "developers" decided to include it, but consensus says it is definitely canon.

Fan art by Sparr

Good enough to be the real thing

Shameful path

"A shameful path" etc. was on the "artist"'s stationery

External links