Work Text:
From: Izzy Haynes (iykykhyns2000@____.com)
Subject: Documents for the Sean Phillips/Focus Games fundraiser
To: Kimberly Norman (knorman@_____.net)
Attached: ch-letter-23.jpeg ti-letter-24.jpeg ti-archive.zip
Hi Kimberly,
I'm emailing you on behalf of my uncle who was a Trace Italian player from 2007 to 2010. He doesn't want to talk to you directly or even talk about the game that much but he kept all his old gameplay including carbons of his own moves.
Just by the way the reason he doesn't want to talk about the game isn't because of the trial or anything. He told me personal reasons and didn't say anything else. He told me Sean is a really talented guy and he's glad about the fundraiser and hopes the documents help. He's pretty sure he's the only player who ever got a death certificate from Sean but that you probably don't want to include that in the book because of the trial and all that stuff but I scanned it anyways and it's in the zip file.
I don't know how many documents you already have from other players but I bet there's some stuff my uncle has that nobody else has if only because it looks like Sean customized a lot of stuff for my uncle or I guess maybe he did that for everybody you will have to be the judge of that.
You should find attached some sample scans and then the zip file I mentioned with some other stuff. I didn't scan everything because my uncle has like maybe hundreds of pages of this stuff but if it would be helpful he says I can take the documents to you and you can scan what you want. By the way my uncle's name is Chris Haynes but he does not want his name associated again it is just for personal reasons but you can refer to him in the book as CH if you want, that is how he signed his moves. Don't tell him I told you this but I know he loved the game a lot. My dad says I am a lot like my uncle is and so I think I can guess that is probably why he quit playing and does not want to talk about it now because sometimes you love something so much it distracts you from your real life and you have to leave it behind for real life.
Have a blessed day,
Isabella Haynes
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I've been on the road for two turns and I haven't seen anybody, out here sometimes that's good sometimes that's bad, on the one hand not seeing anybody means maybe there isn't anybody on the other hand not seeing anybody doesn't mean anybody hasn't seen me. Thinking about it that way climbing the tower might not make so much sense because climbing the tower might make me more visible to anyone looking who hasn't seen me yet, that is why I wait until nightfall to start climbing, if the moon is out I use the moonlight if it's not I use the starlight that's one thing I'm still not used to after the fallout hit is just how bright it still gets at night but it's bright because of the night sky not city lights or cars or any of that!!! I don't think it's cloudy or raining because in the last move you said it was clear and still here and if a storm was rolling in there would be wind at least. So I climb the tower very slowly and deliberately, every time I get a little higher I am looking down and out over everything around me to see if there is anything or anyone moving, and what I want to do is get all the way to the top of the tower and look around inside the tower before I do anything else then I want to look out and see what it is I have gotten myself into out here, I'm getting a bad feeling about all the quiet, I want to figure out what it is scared everything else off, and also if I'm being honest Sean I am not passing up a chance to see if I can see the Trace Italian from here, here's the thing is I know I won't be able to but I'm going to check anyways the same way every morning I check to see if all this out here after the fallout was some sort of bad dream but you know it wasn't. Okay let's do this
CH
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FOCUS GAMES - TRACE ITALIAN
You climb the water tower. There is a single straight exterior ladder, and you haul yourself up, hand over hand, step after step, pushing yourself over the rungs that look most rusted. The climb itself is a risk. There's no telling what you'll find. But you've come too far to die from a fall; if you must die here, let it be, at least, at a great height.
You reach the exterior platform ringing the great main bulb of the water tower, your hands shaking from the exertion of the climb, the effect of the heights. The tower is decorated with faded graffiti, the almost unreadable names of petty criminals who must have scaled this height before the fallout, leaving to the new world only this trace of themselves. There is a hole in the side of the reservoir. You are alone here, but you are not the first survivor to ascend.
To the north you see empty plains and scrub brush. To the east a thin line of smoke trickles up from a blurred array of ruins. It is choked out quickly. It could be survivors of some terrible raid, trying desperately to avoid further notice; more likely it is raiders. You can't tell from here.
If you could see the Trace it would be north-north-east. Beyond nondescript place on the horizon that looks like every other piece of the horizon its gleaming and unbreached walls rise even higher than the tower. For a moment you wonder if someone living there safe in the bright heart of the Trace might be glancing south-south-west, just in the moment when your eyes scan the right part of the horizon. The idea comforts you.
SEARCH THE WATER TOWER
WAIT A DAY IN THE WATER TOWER TO OBSERVE
LEAVE THE WATER TOWER AND GO NORTH
LEAVE THE WATER TOWER AND GO EAST
FOCUS GAMES - TRACE ITALIAN