Acropolis

Posted by brilokuloj on Jul 10, 2024

With New Haven thoroughly explored, it’s about time we start actually getting into the meat of Furcadia: the hubs where users could upload their own player-made maps.

Acropolis, sadly, is not a great example of one of those. But it was my personal favorite, and it was ostensibly supposed to be Furcadia’s “main” socializing area, so I’m covering it now.

Also featuring: a lot of really weird worldbuilding!

Entrance

According to the map’s code from 2001, this map’s landing pad is actually roughly near the center, but I always remember it being this little area. Maybe it got changed later?

Here’s my first opportunity to talk about player-made maps, and in my opinion, this is where the game really opens up. Acropolis did not have many popular maps to speak of, but the regulars it did have were memorable in their own ways.

For one, the portal to The Anime Club was almost always hosted here. I visited it periodically, but I remember nothing about it except for some massive posters of anime I did not recognize.

This area was also the home of Furtropolis, a map that aimed to recreate a lived-in city, complete with cars and buses. I never saw any other users in this map, and true to life, I just sat on the swing or the seesaw until I got bored.

Emerald City and the Storyteller’s Circle

In the middle of the map is “Emerald City”, named perhaps for being green, but hardly a city at all. The key – and in fact, only – feature of this “city” is the Storyteller’s Circle, almost always abandoned except for exceedingly rare staff events. Perhaps it is because of its reputation as a staff area that people never use it for socializing.

Surrounding the Emerald City are the 4 “zoomgates”, tunnels that teleport you to the far corners of the map. At the tip of each corner is a portal to a different map. Clockwise from top-left, that’s Furcadia Con 1, Meovanni, Vinca, and Furrabian Nights.

Wedding Chapel

I have never seen anyone get married here, ever. This is exceptional because I actually have witnessed my fair share of in-game character weddings, on Furcadia and otherwise, but Acropolis is just… not a nice venue for it.

I mean, look at it. There’s 21 tightly-packed chairs, a piano that does nothing, and some potted plants behind the building.

The Graveyard

In the top-left corner of the map is the graveyard, enclosed by skulls on stakes. At the front of this structure is a gateway blocked by 8 pink pillars.

I had taken for granted that this gate is closed by default. In my experience, it was almost always open; when it was closed, I assumed it was tied to a timer. But no, as I learned through researching for this article, there is actually a puzzle to unlock the gate. The only hint to this is a riddle contained as a comment within the map’s code.

AN ACROPOLIS BY TALZHEMIR

THE OBELISKS OF DUSK-TO-DAWN

Beyond the bright Acropolis,
Sealed by pillars tall and pink
There rots a dry Necropolis,
Jujinka’s mark holds tight the graves.

And he who would unleash the Unclean,
Seeks out Wyrmme Ruins to the south,
Dark Primes’ gift can still be seen
Sorcery scribed by loathsome slaves.

Then follow cruel Theseus’s tracks
Where poor Minotaur, he slays,
The key to the City of the Dead
Is the center of the Maze.

So travel near, and travel far,
Make use of what you do not have.
Midian is where the monsters are
And in this bar, they raise a “bier”.

They fear Jujinka’s green and wholesome sward,
And sunrise leaves by Vinca’s light made green.
For in the jungle stands a hidden shrine,
That closes tight again the Gate of Fear.

Jujinka, within Furcadia’s story, is the deity of love and the creator of plants. She’s also an itty-bitty fox with butterfly wings and she was definitely my favorite. I know it’s some character designer’s excuse to put their micro fetish in here, okay, it’s still cute.

Anyway let’s try to solve the puzzle in order:

Wyrmme Ruins

All the way on the south edge of the map is the Wyrmme Ruins, a cluster of broken-up walls. Pressing the Use key while standing on the magic circle will turn the pink pillars into black pillars – still closed. This step seems to exist entirely as padding.

No, there’s nothing in the poem suggesting to press the Use key. It’s just kind of what you do in this game if anything looks conspicuous, since it’s your only means of interacting with the environment other than bumping into stuff.

There’s a lot of lore packed into this vacant space! Wyrmmes are the Furcadian version of what you would probably think of as kobolds; they’re non-winged descendants of The Dragon, the main deity of the setting. They are also evil. This is because they were originally good, but then the gods fucked up and accidentally killed them, and some of the gods – the ones that liked the original Wyrmmes very much – decided to become evil themselves and take the remade race for their own.

The “Dark Primes”, as the new faction would be called, made the dark and evil (and uncomfortably racially-coded) world of Drakoria; it exists in contrast to Kasuria, the world that the actual game of Furcadia takes place in. They made Drakoria specifically to keep the Wyrmmes in, so I’m not so sure why they happen to have a building here in Acropolis!

None of this is communicated in-game. Absolutely none of it. From Sippy’s perspective, this is a random house that kind of sucks.

Daedalus’ Retreat

Within the script, this is labeled “Daedalus’ Retreat”, but I only ever saw it called the maze. Some of the walls can be passed through, and by doing so you can make your way to the center of the maze, where pressing the Use key will unlock the graveyard (as long as you’ve gone to Wyrmme Ruins first).

There’s also a magic lamp in the corner of the maze, but as far as I know it does absolutely nothing.

The titular Daedalus refers to the creator of the Labyrinth. I don’t understand this choice as anything other than laziness, as Greek mythology does not exist in Kasuria.

Pratchett’s Jungle

Finally, if you want to make things difficult for everyone, you can go here to lock the place back up again.

I am not convinced that a single player knew any of these names, not even the staff who named them. It’s cool to know this map had some intention of a story behind it, but it’s also baffling because Acropolis is one of the few places in the game where even casual roleplaying is forbidden. Help. Why.

Well, apparently someone must have known about this puzzle, because the gate was almost always unlocked.

By the way, Pratchett isn’t a character in the lore. My best guess is it’s a reference to Terry, but hell if I know why.

Club Dusk 2 Dawn

All of that nonsense unlocks access to Club Dusk 2 Dawn, the original dark and edgy 16+ area before Hawthorn upstaged it. I’ll cover that in another article, but the room itself is a nice chill spot. It also has The Chasm.

The Chasm

If you go into the corner of the Club room, you will find yourself in an inexplicable dark pit. I only learned just now that this is called the chasm, because my entire life I had been calling it “the sewers”. Okay, maybe it isn’t realistic for the sewer system to connect to the graveyard, but we also have magic here, right?

Jennivere’s Assamite Oubliette

This is the name of a single room that you can find by going down a drain. I’m not taking a picture of it because it’s a single tiny room and they somehow arranged the chairs to look exactly like a swastika.

Google is telling me that Assamites are from Vampire: The Masquerade, which is only making Furcadia’s lore even more confusing for me.

One true story

Nobody was ever, ever here. This was a source of agony for me, because Acropolis was actually my second favorite map in the whole game, at least for hanging out and chillin’ in. There were tons of individual numbered “rooms” to talk in, always empty. Once in a blue moon someone would be here, but they would have already been AFK for half an hour.

I tried convincing friends to move from Allegria Island to here, but it just didn’t happen. There was no point to uploading your map here when nobody went here in the first place. In many ways, the things that made Furcadia so appealing for me (its vastness of scale, its ambition of lore) were the very same things that made it crash and burn.

Also, I once sent a swarm of “hey how are you doing? I miss you!” messages to the wrong Dizzy from Guilty Gear roleplayer idling in Acropolis – because I thought the character was a friend’s OC. Sorry to that person.

Categories: gaming virtual worlds

Tagged: furcadia

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