Plot Summary
Town History
Updated June 11th, 2011.
Season One
A group of people from different universes unexpectedly found themselves in the town of Luministi. Their first days in town were peaceful, giving them a chance to explore, meet each other, and meet the citizens of the town. Unfortunately, they also had the opportunity to discover that any attempt to leave the town only brought them back into another part of it. There was no way out.
Their arrival in the town also gave them another mystery to solve. The Town Crier, by the name of Verita, made an announcement just after their arrival. Every resident was invited to see her in order to obtain a clue--a riddle which would lead them on a hunt through their new town in order to obtain an unknown reward that turned out to be a gold coin.
A week later, residents received their first message from the Mayor since their arrival. He announced that the town's up-to-the-minute weather predicting software was ready for a test run. Unfortunately, after this announcement, residents found that they would encounter different (and typically unpleasant) weather conditions every time they went outdoors. Even worse, the weather was inexplicably personalized for each individual.
A week after that, the CATs came on seemingly by themselves to show the residents a strange box. Moments afterwards, Audrey the barlady made a broadcast on the Mayor's behalf to announce the grand reopening of the botanical gardens. Suddenly the residents could access vast gardens that did not exist before. However, once they went in, they quickly found that there was no way back out! But some residents were able to find that strange box within the garden, where they received both a strange message and the method of escaping the gardens.
The following week, an injured Verita made another broadcast, announcing that the town was about to be invaded by aliens. Residents didn't observe anything strange coming from the skies, but those still trapped in the gardens were freed, and everyone found that the gardens' statues and topiary animals seemed to have taken over the town. They were moving on their own, attacking buildings and people alike, and plants were growing rampant. Almost all of the town's original residents vacated it during the crisis. The new residents, however, had no choice but to stay. Those who went back into the gardens were able to find safety there--as well as a warning on the pedestals left behind by the missing statues. The others could only defend themselves as best they could.
Without any warning, all the residents were forced to sleep for a minute, and when they awoke, the town was back to the way it was before the invasion--and just in time too! Mayor Caligin announced that the town was beginning its celebration of the 700th Luministi Founder's Day festival a little early this year, with festivities lasting the entire week. A flyer was sent to all residents advertising what was in store for them. This included a special event held on the actual Founder's Day for all the new residents in the newly opened treehouse restaurant, The Chrysalis.
The festivities abruptly ended four days later, accompanied by an announcement from Doctor Resarci, informing residents that, at the opening of The Chrysalis, all the food and drink had been poisoned. Residents were given a clue to the antidote from the perpetrators and four days of progressively deteriorating health in which to solve the mystery.
Thankfully though, the antidote was found just in the nick of time! Unfortunately, Doctor Resarci also delivered the news that the poison wasn't a poison but nanobots tailored to make the victim sick. The antidote found had nanobots that could neutralize the ones in everyone who'd fallen ill, and everyone lived.
However, because of the poisoning incident, Mayor Caligin instated a town-wide curfew until the perpetrators had been found. Any caught breaking curfew would spend the night in jail and have their line of credit frozen. And that wasn't all. All residents received a text message from an unknown CAT device telling them to go to a phone booth that had suddenly made its way into town and wait for a message warning them of the dangers yet to come.
Then even worse news came, this time from the newly-reinsitated Sheriff Iussus. The current sheriff, Teger, had been brutally murdered right outside the mysterious phone booth, and that wasn't the end of the bloodshed. Several days later, the butcher turned up dead, too. Iussus himself was baffled by the murders, and he asked for the residents' help in passing any information they had to him. Those residents who offered their help found themselves bitten by a fly and suffered from strange effects. Soon after, Andre the bartender was murdered as well, and that made even Verita want to get in on solving the murders. With the help of the new residents, she was convinced that Doctor Resarci was the murderer.
The murders stopped then, and Sheriff Iussus used the evidence to accuse and lock up Deputy Drew. Verita announced that as usual, but then she sent out a special announcement to the new residents only, informing them that she agreed with them--and also that Doctor Resarci had informed her of a gas leak in town. Unfortunately, the residents soon succumbed to the gas and lost large portions of their memories. At the same time, some of their personal possessions mysteriously went missing.
The mayor soon made an announcement on Verita's behalf, indicating that Doctor Resarci was on a leave of absence and that Deputy Drew had been executed for the murders. His transmission, however, was interrupted by another transmission from a very disheveled mayor. In this one, the mayor was clutching a ragdoll and bemoaning something that had happened to his little girl. He indicated a desire to find the culprit. Another interruption then showed the residents a series of grab machines and instructed them to find them.
After that transmission, all the town's residents quickly discovered that, in order to enter or exit any building, they would be required to play a game. Losing these games would mean being slowly turned into dolls. Surprisingly, the regular residents were also experiencing these games and their penalties, for the first time affected by the events in town. In addition, the new residents found their lost items being held in the grab machines. Upon retrieving them, they were awarded another gold coin--or two, if they had won one when they first arrived.
Soon after, they received another mysterious transmission. This one showed them a view finder in town and encouraged them to go to it to see the truth. The residents were able to use those gold coins to get a look through the viewfinder at several strange sights...
Those sights hinted at the true nature of the town, but before anything could be done, the residents were knocked out for a minute and found themselves returned to normal just in time for Mayor Caligin's joyous announcement! In honor of the impending wedding, the major opened his home to everyone with the promise of officiating the ceremony himself. But the choice of going or not was not given to the residents--including the "bride" and "groom"--as they were dragged to the mayoral residence via the silver lions paperweights they received upon arrival to the town. When they turned up at the mansion, however, they found that they could not leave, but were able to talk to four important figures in the town: Ms. Osculia, Audrey Ardes, Verita, and Sheriff Iussus.
During their time there, however, there was one room the residents couldn't enter, but after two weeks of being trapped there, a single message was sent to them over their CATs: " Come in! Please wait inside until you are called." When they entered the vast room, they heard voices belonging to Mayor Caligin and Dr. Resarci, who had not fled town after all, arguing about something but the music within drowned out any discernible words.
From there, the residents only had a short while to wait until they could finally meet Mayor Caligin, who truly existed in greyscale, in a grand hall completely decorated for the wedding ceremony--until Caligin revealed that he had to say good-bye and the wedding facade faded to show thousands of screens monitoring every part of town.
But that was the first of many revelations. Caligin wished to speak to the residents before he did anything (i.e. initiate a security protocol under Resarci's recommendation), and he revealed that everything--the town and the different events that tested the residents both physically and mentally--had all been a project of Caligin's making. He had lost someone close to him, his father, and wished to bring him back using the funding offered to him from Ernesto Resarci, an old family friend. He also revealed that the last few rounds of tests had been initiated to smoke out the mole, but had only resulted in Caligin's daughter getting caught up in the fray. So, Caligin felt that he had no other choice but to initiate a security protocol that would, in essence, reset the entire project so they could start all over again.
However, after lengthy discussions with all the town residents, Caligin decided he wouldn't go through with it after all, and got into a fight with Resarci that ends in both men getting shot by Audrey. (She was revealed to have been the one of the moles in addition to proving Resarci's guilt; he really had murdered her brother.) Resarci hadn't been killed, but Caligin had, or rather, the double of Caligin had. After Sheriff Iussus headed off with Resarci and Ms. Osculia escorted Verita from the room, Audrey apologized for being unable to help the residents escape the project sooner, but with everything revealed about Resarci's intentions and misdeeds, it had been enough to close down the project.
And finally, it was time to go home. Audrey led the residents out beyond the security room, and for the first time, the residents learned that Luministi was held within the Luministi Research Labs located on a spacestation. The real Dr. Caligin was waiting for them in the Lab #3, and before he sent everyone home, he apologized again for everything, and once everyone had said their good-byes, they were sent back to their own places and time.
Season Two
The seemingly frozen and stagnant town of Luministi suddenly found itself alive and thriving again with the arrival of some new and old faces. Mayor Caligin, Verita, and the others who had been with the returning citizens at the end had, unfortunately, forgotten everything that had happened--unlike the returning citizens who suddenly got back their memories of their time in the town. But all the residents quickly learned that things were even stranger than they appeared. They began to hear music following them and exaggerated sound effects accenting their actions. And never mind the copious amounts of security cameras...
A week later when the film festival was in full swing, the citizens were stirred into comedic hijinks when tables of respawning pies appeared in the town square, along with other slapstick paraphernalia. Unfortunately, it only added to the nonsensical misery the residents were being subjected to.
But thankfully, after another week of pie fights and spilled creme and fruit fillings all over town, the music and sound effects went away--and everything was cleaned up in a snap! Well, almost. Between the (briefly) incomplete clean-up process and the vidscreens being shut down for maintenance, it seemed as though those were the only things in need of repair. Unfortunately, as the residents quickly found out, their CATs were also malfunctioning and caused rather...interesting...side effects.
Suddenly, a stranger appeared in silhouette over the CATs for a brief moment before the transmission was cut. However, this interruption only opened the way for visitors to get a peek at the town via temporary CAT devices, but whether any of them turn up in the town, well, only time will tell. The visitors were only around for a day before connections with them were lost and the CATs continued to malfunction.
A week after the disruption, the town clock tolled the hour and the CATs finally shut off, but not before a snippet of a conversation between two other strangers leaked out in an audio transmission. Soon after, the residents were given letters apologizing for the downed communications systems, as well as a small card that either instilled or resisted paranoid delusions and the like. Someone or some persons' hand is at work...
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