This post was created at 2025-10-28 01:09:11.387047 +0000 UTC, 1 months, 19 days and 15 hours ago. It is part of a series of posts called INTERLOPER: Half-Life 2's Greatest Unsolved Mystery.

Rewatching INTERLOPER: Half-Life 2's Greatest Unsolved Mystery

On October 25th, 2022 a video was uploaded to Youtube.

INTERLOPER: Half-Life 2's Greatest Unsolved Mystery.

A mystery that has remained unsolved for 16 years. We take a deep dive into the deepening rabbit hole of the Interlopers.

I was lucky enough that my youtube recommendations were so finely tuned that, despite never hearing of Anomidae before, I was recommended the video on that same night. The video was fascinating and intriguing, but I didn't expect it would get any follow up. I assumed it was just a one-off piece, shared it with a friend who I thought would find it interesting, and moved on.

October 25th, 2025. The 15th and final installment of the Interloper series was uploaded to Anomidae's channel. I've not watched it yet, I'm watching it tomorrow with the same friend I sent the first video too. Today, I want to re-watch Interloper 1-14, or as much as I can anyway. I want to refresh myself on the lore and the mystery and see how we went from a strange command in the game half life 2 to, whatever the fuck seems to be going on later in the series.

I'm going to be following this playlist since it seems to have all of the second channel videos in the correct order as well as some community made videos covering the more ARG elements that I've not seen.

Time to get started.

INTERLOPER: Half-Life 2's Greatest Unsolved Mystery.

In the game "HALF-LIFE 2" there exists an ongoing mystery that has never been solved.

The INTERLOPER Mystery.

The earliest mention of interloper is from halflife2.net back in 2005. A strange graffiti in an alleyway in Ravenholm. It looks like a variant of the usual "Umbrella Man" graffito you can find in the game, but with the colours inverted and strangely low to the ground. It obscures some broken data in the texture. The corruption is caused by a strange text message inserted into the binary data of the image

FOR J.J

console: INTERLOPE

>>"Unknown Command: INTERLOPE"

console: get s.interlope.pull:27015

the forum members and Anomi identify them as console commands for the source engine. Running them nets us this message.

getting socket for s.interlope.pull...

extracting data from terminal

submitting envelope

recieved

request from archive submitted

message from server administrator : CONGRATULATIONS AND WELCOME PLEASE ENTER WITH CAUTION YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.

Although Anomi doesn't acknowledge that text, but is instead focused on the visual effects. It seems to force half life to generate a demo[^1] file. Granted, it's very short and confusing. The camera is just spun around at a random point on a random map. The demo is saved to Anomi's computer, though. He runs it a few more times, although the message from the server administrator is different each time.

> COMMITTED 10-08-08
> COMMITTED 11-12-11
> COMMITTED 09-10-08
> COMMITTED 21-12-12
> COMMITTED 10-10-05
> COMMITTED 30-03-15
> COMMITTED 11-02-18
> COMMITTED 13-10-13
> COMMITTED 12-10-20
> COMMITTED 02-11-11

Well, at least we can establish this is DAY-MONTH-YEAR format, at the very least. But why does this command seem to download demo files submitted to some server anywhere from nearly two decade ago to in the last 2 years? We also see some demos that aren't just random and intense movement, we see one where the camera appears to be stuck out of bounds. The next one is random and poor gameplay from the opening of half life 2.

Anomie then demonstrates that the interlope command works in other source engine games by performing it in team fortress 2. The same is repeated in CSS[^2], but with very unexpected results. We see a handful of the random motion, some stuck out of bounds, nothing new until the very last one.

We seem to be watching a character animated using very exaggerated VR-like movements. They're detached from their character model to some extent, we see their arm and weapon model[^3] before walking through it, but we see them carrying their weapon still. They're walking around bomb site B on dedust2, paranoid and clearing corners for some reason. Eventually a chime plays and they see _it. The umbrella man from the graffiti that started it all. Our hero fires at it with his rifle but it's no use. He gets picked up and quickly dragged out of bounds from the map. The demo ends with them struggling to move.

This is referred to as a "type 5" demo. There are recordings of a two others from the hl2.net forums, but they seem to be lost.

SPOOKYCOAST.mov
Misty.wmv

Anomi recorded one other type 5 demo as well, this one in team fortress 2. It's just as hard to interpret really. A scout is spying on a heavy until it turns around to face them.

At 6am, the interloper commands stopped working. Anomi had run the command 85 times by then. The graffiti that lead to everything, back in that alleyway in Ravenholm, was now gone.

The video ends and quickly begins again. Anomi has found a copy of SPOOKYCOST.mov.

SPOOKYCOST.mov

The same strange VR-like motion. Our character sees a pair of darkly lit half life 2 civilians dancing in a house(?). They walk around observing the pair. Looking in one doorway however, one of them turns to look at him with glowing white eyes and the same jingle from the CSS video playing again.They lunge at him and knock him off the balcony and into the water below. As they drown, what appears to be five umbrella men loom over their sinking body.

The video ends properly.

INTERLOPER 2: SOURCE ENGINE MYSTERY

Video 2 comes less then a month later. November 20th, 2022.

Things are gonna change up now, I'm not doing more play by plays and I'm gonna stick to new/important information. First of which is while playing on Ravenholm, Anomi's game lags for a moment and we hear the sound of Dr Klein say

ohhhh, Fiddlesticks!

This is a source engine error sound, essentially. It means a sound couldn't be found/loaded/whatever. I remember this showing up again later on.

It also heralds that almost a year after the first upload was recorded, the graffiti in Ravenholm is back.

Anomi's worked out how long he has to record demos. 5 hours 55ish minutes? Or more precisely, until 6am. He gets straight to work recording demos.

Anomi explains the different types of demos, 1-5.

Intense and random movement. Over 80% generated are tis tye.
Player is stuck out of bounds before shortly dying
Random gameplay, wandering. Potentially lines up with another map>
Actual gameplay demos. THe level is being correctly played. Specifically common in Portal 2.
Strange VR-like movement. Extremely rare.

Type 5s can't be replayed. They're broken. Anomi has released the demo files for the type 5s he encountered.

We have it explained that type 5s are unlikely to be VR, since they seem to be fully physics based. I recall a piece of trivia about the gold source engine. Something about how originally they tried to create characters that had fully physics based locomotion[^4]. We're shown an image of the "DM Editor", a program that could be used for creating them but that is likely a hoax according to Anomi.

We see some attempts at running commands in other games.

Half life: Episode 1
Half Life: Episode 2
Counterstrike: Global Offensive.
Day of Defeat: Source.
Dota 2 (fails to produce a demo on source 2, but succeeds on original source build)
Garry's Mod (fails on retail, succeeds on garry's mod 9)

At the end of the night, Anomi was generating a final demo when the timer ran out.

COMMITTED 01-99-22

I guess the committed values aren't dates then, unless they're in a very peculiar format / calender system.

Once the timer hits 0, things get a bit unusual. There are messages posted in chat

CONNECTION LOST

RE ATTEMPTING CONNECTION

ERROR 405 (error reason text)

Additionally, Anomi seems to gain some amount of control over the camera and the character. Clicking with a mouse they're able to place a "Hint Node", a white cube with the words "Hint Node" written on it. He can make the character crouch as well, and freecam outside the character. The model he was controlling is doing a weird little idle dance, but his model seems to be the playermodel placeholder model from half life 2. After investigating for a little bit, we hear the jingle noise once again.

Then, while Anomi is typing in the console, the umbrella man clips through the wall. A horrifying noise plays as it rushes the camera and crashes the game. Seemingly destroying Anomi's portal install, but in an unusual way. They're stuck on a checkerboard plane with a single red light. They can move around but there's no indication anything is out there.

INTERLOPER 3: The Ever Deepening Source Mystery

Video 3. February third, 2023. Two months after the previous one.

The opening is different this time around.

the interloper files

part 3

EIDA-M0NA presents...

the ghosts of city 17

Eidamona. Anomidae. Anagrams. Interesting.

Anomi steps back in and pauses the video. This was uploaded in november of 2011. We're coming back to this later.

dust2

We're getting some analysis of the two demo files that were made public last time. The maps are not perfect copies of the maps they appear to be on. Missing boundaries, extra models. There are two "dynamic props" representing Umbrella men in the dust2 map. Opening the map in the hammer editor[^5] both have world models called "CAPTURE_" with a random selection of characters after. The main character we saw the demo as is named "dmnpc_capture_pawn". He's set to play out an animation called "capture".

2fort

The skybox is missing. This is kinda interesting, since interloper is part of a series called "Project SKYBOX." Anomi heads down into the red team base to where the demo occurred. Getting too close causes his game to crash. It flashes a lot of images in the top left corner first, similar to baking a series of cube maps[^6]. If I remember correctly, this will come up again.

We see some text made out of brushes that spell out "FSKY". Getting too close replays the demo. "Fsky" is also mentioned in the counterstrike map too. "FSKY_SVR_GEN".

Anomi goes looking for leads on fsky and finds one. [ReUpload] Re-UpLoad 2005 FSKY Forum Ad 2014.7.12 Uploaded by Eida Machinima - Video Archive.

[ReUpload] Interloper Episode 3 The Ghosts of City 17 2011.21.11

A previous investigation into interloper, originally uploaded in November of 2011. Only 3 videos were currently uploaded to the channel, but we're going to focus on this video.

The video opens with a disclaimer from Eida. Since the first episode of his investigation, he's been seeing "interloper ghosts" show up in his usual gameplay. He zooms in on some screenshots to highlight the supposed ghosts, but it's not at all clear what they are.

This episode seems to be about "communicating" with the "ghosts". Eida has apparently got some way to force a demo to be generated on a specific map, although it takes all night. He builds a ouija board style map to try and talk to the ghosts.

Question: What is your name?

Answer:

Interaction	Value
Shooting	W V H*
Walking	WNDC BAJ KLVWM

*H - The ghost fired once and then spam fired into the H.

Nothing particularly helpful. Eida concludes they either can't or wont communicate by spelling. He tries again with a binary yes or no answer with hallways they can walk into.

Question: Can you feel pain?

Answer: The ghost first walked into the Yes corridor, fired and jumped up and down before leaving and entering the no corridor

Eida is shaken by the answer.

Question: Are you human?

Answer: The ghost walks directly into the no column and hits the wall with a weapon

Eida is freaked out again, before stating

Though to be fair I still don't know if this is just one ghost many ghosts or even demons we really don't know anything about this Half-Life Purgatory

It's unclear exactly what he means by this, but he definitely seems to believe whatever Interloper is some kind of supernatural phenomena, perhaps one that allows him to communicate with the dead. I've got to say, if I was picking an afterlife I would not go for being a half life NPC.

Question: Are you trapped?

Answer: There is a ragdoll weighed by a literal brick, spasaming and trying to move in the "Yes" direction. The camera then moved through the "No" wall before traveling through the void for 2 hours. Before the demo ended we see the distant structure of an unknown map.

Eida is disturbed again and concludes this may be where whatever he is communicating with lives.

The video ends.

Anomi's analysis

Anomidae discloses that he does not believe he has witnessed any of the supposed "interloper ghosts" Eida believes are haunting him. He is also unsure what the screenshots are trying to show.

While looking at the map setup for the Ouija board, Anomidae makes this comment.

I can't read exactly what the mystery enttity is, but according to L it's not related to the "Ouija Board" logic he built here.

Who the fuck is L?

I'm not the only person who thought that. But this is about a different instance of someone called L, back during episode 2 in the broken type 5. If we inspect the transcript/subtitles we can see the other half of the conversation anomi was having.

[Anomi] You think this one's gonna be able to solve it?

[L] I don't have any faith in the bots 'no more.

Now, this isn't conclusive but the subtitles for interloper 2 are styled, meaning they have deliberately set colours. In the subtitles, L is highlighted Yellow, but in Anomi's comment that prompted this, L is Blue. Again, not exactly conclusive. But even if it was, that doesn't help us out at all. From context, I think L should be Eida?

According to L it's not related to the logic he built.

But why would Anomi call Eida L? From later uploads we learn Eida's name is Jan and beyond that Anomi wouldn't know it anyway. L might refer to Yellow L and it's just a bit confusing, perhaps they're able to tell visually that it's not connected to any of the logic in Hammer?

For now, I'm going to keep this in mind but assume blue L is yellow L. Too many fucking Ls running around.

Back on the analysis

Anomi picks up on something I genuinely missed.

Asking these questions takes a lot of time

Mainly because I need to sift through the trash to find the meaningful demos.

He's cherry picking the results he wants. The overnight process produces many demos but he's only showing the ones that support his theories. We know Eida picks and chooses with his data later on, so this is in character.

PORTAL

Anomi realizes he can work with portal RTX without it crashing. Maybe he can explore whatever space he's trapped in.

[ReUpload] Garrysmod Zombie Slayer 2007.30.10

Eida Machinima - Video Archive's first upload. This is the first time we hear about "Mona". She seems to just be a character in one of EidaMona's videos so far, but that won't last I guess. I have no emotional connection with the song Blow Me Away or Breaking Benjamin, for me the anthem of old youtube will always be Trance - 009 Sound System Dreamscape or Drowning pool - Bodies.

LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR

[ReUpload] Dr Breen in the Machine 2010.13.2

Nothing much new information wise. Although it's sorta horrifying really.

[ReUpload] I'm Done. Goodbye 2014.11.21

Originally uploaded near the end of 2014, this is the last video in Eida's timeline (at least until he resurfaces in Anomi's discord later on).

Eida crumbles under pressure from (most likely) viewers. He's shutting everything down including "deleting" the "mona".

We see what is probably the DM editor, where he spawns an error entity that takes and deletes the Mona statue in the middle of the scene. The location it's in looks similar to where Anomi's portal is currently stuck. It plays the same bubble noise that the umbrella men do when they take someone.

[ReUpload] gary man eats tacos and DIES 2007.7.7

I think this is the first time we learn Eida's name is Jan.

[Full VOD] [4] INTERLOPER: The Live Investigation

This is an hour and a half long livestream soooo we're gonna skip over it to

INTERLOPER 4: The Live Investigation

This is a cut down summary of the livestream that highlights the important parts. I'm trusting this wiki page that it's more or less accurate and isn't hiding anything.

Portal RTX seems to be serving as a server of some kind that enables Anomi to use the interlope commands. Perfectly sensible.

There's text put in the chat of the portal RTX stream while Anomi generates demos.

Server cvar "sv_cheats' changed to 1

:connecting to socket.fsky.org:27015[^7]

:connection successful

WARNING: no serial key detected! Please enter a valid sourceBox serial key!

authenticating key...

:Connected to sourceBox

:Launching NULL

First time we see a mention of source box. Also the first time we've heard of fsky in a while.

We see some Left 4 Dead 2 demos, including the "Hanging" type 3 subtype. Especially common in Left 4 Dead 2. Eventually we get a type 5 known as 'elliscrawl'. When it plays, the portal rtx window changes. The camera pings off into the distance and is now standing in the darkness. Anomi also realizes he can't get the demo files for anything he generated this livestream.

Portal 2 is similar to the original portal. Lots of type 4s for some reason. A weird demo occurs where the player stops in midair and is able to move freely, and this causes the portal RTX scene to change again. Theres a flashing light and we can see a shadow being cast by something. In the next, the player drops into a strange maze not present in the test chamber and begins navigating. Lots of very strange musical cues. RTX looks like it has a CRT style visual effect going on.

At a critical moment the RTX player starts moving forward towards some kind of lit gateway. Right before they pass through it the portal player falls into a hole and starts to bake cubemaps, resulting in a crash in both games. The stream also crashes, but Anomi doesn't realize for 20 minutes and so the next section is unrecorded.

All of Anomi's source games are now broken and loading them dump him into the RTX void.

Anomi also thought he was being hacked so he killed the stream and shut everything down.

[ReUpload] Funny Ragdoll Glitch! Garrymans episode 4 behind the scenes 2008.9.6

Not a lot here.

[ReUpload] Re-UpLoad makeface demo 2014.7.13

This one is weird. Makeface seems to be some kind of source tool to do what it says on the tin. It creates a rather rough approximation of a face. I don't know if this was made by Eida though. The description says they downloaded it from "the website" so it could just be anyone.

That texture is called olive.vtf. That's interesting. Also checkered floors again.

[ReUpload] Weird Crash on TF2 2012.4.1

Some kind of unknown entity is haunting Eida during a tf2 game. It has a username but it's too low quality to read it. It's making weird animated poses and shit while looking at him. It flies off into the skybox and seemingly crashes Eida's PC. There's also a map at the end that somehow confirms a theory Eida has, but I've got no ideas.

It's Inside my Computer here's proof 2014.11.22

Not uploaded to youtube by Edia but was sent to his gaming buddy. We get a co-ordinate in the description. Something is apparantly at this coordinate and Eida wants to make sure it's gone.

X	Y	Z
01F00F6010	20E0EAF120	0009670113

The date on this also puts the video a single day after Eida decided to quit youtube.

INTERLOPER 5: Searching In the Dark

We're starting out with a video from someone else again. We're learning about a glitch called 'Flashlight Nuke'. Through a series of komani-code esq button inputs and then random input smashing you can cause Wild and Unpredictable effects in half life, apparantly. The glitch seems to only exist in the version of half life 2 released for the original xbox, not the xbox 360.

We see another type 5 demo that was created in the original forum thread, this time on Day of Defeat. There's a 3d axis, Hint nodes, a weird flashing light. Theres also a default playermodel flying around, similar to the one we observed in Interloper 2 when Anomie's timer ran out, although it quickly flies off.

Portal RTX seems to create a player in the server it runs. It can be walked around seemingly.

Anomi discovers he can send demos to portal RTX. He can somehow manipulate them to loop indefinitly, I think? He also tries falling through the void and eventually discovers there is some kind of landmass in the void.

Anomi talks a bit about his emotional connection to gm_construct. I don't remember this from before but from some minor spoilers I've seen that may be important for Interloper F? He uses it as a place to launch all of his 'void expeditions' and starts finding sites/zones out in the void. Places with geometry and that in some cases seem to be completely seperate maps.

We also see a higher res version of a video Eida uploaded. It's inside my computer here's proof. Anomi highlights an umbrella man in the background of the video.

INTERLOPER 6: Misty Has Been Found

Short one. misty.wmv has been found. This one is a bit freakier then other type 5s. The player bashes a speaking body with cinder blocks until it stops speaking. The jingle is heard and then they're taken. We hear the "Oh Fiddlesticks" voice clip repeatedly before a group of umbrella men show up to take the player.

This is also the first time we see the project skybox website URL.

INTERLOPER 7: Following the Light in Source

First video narrated by someone other then Anomi or Eida. psb.lucy, apparantly also not yellow L?

They've started using probes constructed in gmod to explore the void, and are exploring in the direction Eid'a map suggested. It leads to a large, hollow cube containing text

HLEM

and a basin.of some kind. They move a player into it for further examination and immediately get jumped by an error message that will be nicknamed "VRAD[^8]-OR entity". This also seems to have released the entity, because now it can get them in other places, like in gm_construct. They start to image the source void using pinhole cameras constructed in hammer.

We also see that void sites aren't static, there is seemingly some amount of movement going on out there, other then us.

[ReUpload] TOP 5 PS3 GAMES 2007.7.1

Nothing that seems important in this one?

[ReUpload] Interloper Episode 8 Entity Capture 2013.6.2

Another part of Eida's investigation. We're introduced to a new tool Eida's found, "box rocket[^10]". He's used it to capture one of his "ghosts". He's developing his theory of how the "ghosts" relate to us, being that they can be either "entity spirits" or "human spirits". Where entity spirits are like "unborn human spirits".

He takes another shot at the ouija board type stuff, except this time the entity starts rearranging the letters.

Question: What is your name? Answer: Mona*.

* We'll come back to this later.

Eida then says something a bit concerning.

We know that trigger_hurt[^9] seems to make them more active

So to be safe, we set it to one damage and left it alone for a few days to see if we get any results.

There wasn't a question this time, just an objective.

"See if it speaks."

It makes strange squeaking noises while it's arm spasms.

We then see this random and non-conerning question

Does heaven and hell exist?

Followed by

I don't think I contained it properly.

Eida seems to think it jumped him in half life. Something crashed his game and made him bake cubemaps.

INTERLOPER 8: The Tuesday Incident

Another hour+ livestream followed by a shorter follow up. From what I understand from the wiki there is some inconsistencies in the starting gameplay and regular baseline half life that are unexplained. We're gonna see a bunch of automatically generated interlope demos.

We're going to get to see some 'demos' generated from source filmmaker as well, which is interesting.

We get a new type 5 demos, higuy. He's a guy and he says hi. It crashed stream when it ended but demo generation kept going. 465 demos and 14 maps in one 'manifestation' as Anomi puts it. I think his idea that this is AI and not paranormal is breaking down a bit, if you consider that phrasing. But I think me and my friend were also starting to think that.

The collection got published and uploaded to Anomi's discord server.

Portal fixed itself with no sign of what happened.

The last demo Team Fortress 2 generated included chat messages strangely.

Anomi: BYE BYE

Followed by something new. A supposed "type 6" demo, characterized by the player teleeporting / moving fast and inspecting the scene.

Correcting the record 2013.1.2

This is the full unedited and uncut version of asking the captured ghost their name from [ReUpload] Interloper Episode 8 Entity Capture 2013.6.2. This version shows the entity quite clearly spell out "Olive". The same name as the texture in [ReUpload] Re-UpLoad makeface demo 2014.7.13.

INTERLOPER 9: Something Under the Skybox

Running the interlope command in SFM causes unusual behaviour in other games that are interloping.

Project skybox has captured an entity entirely by accident. Stuck in the psb.Lucy model. We can see it's head move to follow Anomi. Skyghost. A lot of the demos from the previous dump are very unusual. Lots of one of unique demos.

SFM seems to generate type 6 demos exclusively, and always for different games.

We also see more hidden messages in the generated maps. They seem to be annotations added by fksy employees to communicate with eachother.

I think mapgen started learning how to type.

FOR A.Y

FOR ALL

SERVER MESSAGE 4/7

...

The whole thing is borderline unrecognizable lol. I thought about fixing it but I'm almost more curious to just leave it be and check in every 5-10 years to see what the hell it's doing

Anomi and project skybox seemed to think all hope is lost, except for skyghost. Anomi starts thinking about copying one of Eida's ideas. Specifically.

We know that trigger_hurt[^9] seems to make them more active

Eventually he drops it in the river and leaves it there. Checking on it in there later, it's dancing?

We see that music played over voice chat (specifically the radio music) also seems to provoke them.

INTERLOPER A: Ghosts in the Data

Skyghost is floating. They're a lot more active. It can be used for a 'Cubemap exam'.

Build cubemaps in project skybox while a demo is playing. Then render in Source filmmaker. This starts producing some weird bullshit.

Anomi plays the umbrella man jingle for skyghost and it panics and runs away. Anomi dies and his player model seems to become possessed. We see a group of them on a rooftop, they look similar to the umbrella men seen as a part of Interloper.

[ReUpload] only footages I can find online of gris 2014.7.15

Not a lot to say. Seems like a map editor?

[ReUpload] Garrymans Episode 4: Stop the Darkmans 2008.9.9

Old machinima by Eida. He seems to be trying to protect Mona from a zombie invasion. There is a group called the "darkmans" who want to kill the NPCs that they have to escape.

[ReUpload] half life 2 is not a good game 2014.11.3

I'd actually suggest that you do not view this video under any circumstances, there's nothing of value here.

This was the 4th or 5th "mona" video uploaded by Eida. It is an hour long video of hum attacking a can in city 17 with a crowbar. Eventually, he hits the can and the world seems to end. The lighting starts flashing red and he gets attacked by a spasaming ragdoll of the mona.

INTERLOPER B: We Were Wrong

There is a code in this, but it's seemingly unsolved and it's a bit too late in the day for me to start trying to get mathematical. Sorry weird al, I know I'm a wanna be hacker, code cracker, slacker.

We see a demo file submission from a discord user called "jstal1994." The demo is of the first video uploaded to the Eida Machinima archive, [ReUpload] Garrysmod Zombie Slayer 2007.30.10. Eida seems to still be alive, at least.

One of the demos that gets a cubemap exam seems to show one of the supposed "interloper ghosts" Eida was seeing in his 3rd investigation video. It looks like a fucking grey alien.

Next spits out some numbers. 527 7777.

We also see the exams can be carried out on non-interloper demos. Somehow.

Anomi sees an invisible anomi character in tf2. He tabs into project skybox and sees his character there. He disconnects and is quickly yanked out.

INTERLOPER C: The Sky Crash Incident

Shit is getting weird, props are flying off into the sky for no reason. 48 hours later we get Skycrash. Pressing F11 fucked everything, except emulating half life 2 for the original xbox.

Eida then proves that the emulated half life 2 is linked to the source void, somehow penetrating the emulation layer. They're not just linked to the source void, but actively standing "on" a map loaded in dota 2. Anomi then revives himself using a defiblerator from left 4 dead. Naturally, he then proceeds to get an engineer from tf2 and teleport to tf_upward. There are floating objects in the void surrounding the map. He keeps finding characters embedded in walls with their faces staring out.

We see an umbrella man show up and terminate the portal 2 player character. TF2 also got got. All of the floating props have been coalescing at project skybox. They're orbiting it like a debris field. It looks like something is building a giant spire into the sky. All the other source games have crashed, and now a distorted umbrella man is approaching the skyghost player. This one is missing it's texture and it's limbs are stretched.

Anomi starts running from it by jumping off maps, since it's the only way to outrun it.

One of the things anomi finds while falling is a giant missing textured entity[^11] that helps him continue downwards and directs him towards a strange piece of geometry.

Anomi gets stuck on a map called rp_christmastown. Anomi plans to try flashnuking the umbrella man, but before he can, a player(?) shows up. It sends messages in chat

oh Hi hello :D

very very good morning!

spave

are you a live?

are you player?

please go away

fuck you fuck your self fuck

and then it throws Anomi back into the source void, letting him land on the checkerboard tiled area.

Skyghost starts pointing Anomi in a direction. They find a model that looks similar to The Monda in it's last video, and it turns into a glowing doorway. Right before they can pass through, the game crashes due to vrad.

[ReUpload] Saxxy Awards 2012 - the scout on the empty server and the strange dreams door 2012.7.8

Not a lot here. This was probably mainly to hint to the server for interloper D.

INTERLOPER D: The Dead End

Also not a lot. This was just a trail head to get people onto the kulcs map.

KULCS

I don't particularly want to just, wholesale copy chunks from their wiki onto here. I also didn't really keep up with Kulcs super well. I'm shy so I don't join discord servers and shit.

So I'm just gonna, read this on my own for a little bit, and join back for the rest.

Phase 0 seemed to just entirely be about finding the server. Phase 1 is exploring the server itself.

I did know that some of the maps lead to a lot of the strange, Mona torture videos. I think we're gonna skip over those, since there wasn't much beyond Eida torturing the Mona.

I forgot that one of the videos recovered from the server was a copy of the original interloper video that started it all.

I think after reading all 4 phases, I am now deeply confused and possibly understand less then when I started.

INTERLOPER E: ENTITY DEATH

Alright alright alright. We're almost fucking done! By the end of Phase 3, we had unlocked source box? This takes place before ordinance.

Anomi got access to the server's FTP credentials and started looting. The server was recording everyone constantly it seems. He's also withholding a lot of information for 'security' reasons. It's unclear what exactly it is.

Anomi recovered a program called "sourcebox" on the ftp server. It seems like this is the kinda, ultimate goal of everything? It leads Anomi to needing to be lead blind through a maze by the community.

We get another fakeout ending. Anomi manages to finally get the key in the door and it unlocks sourcebox. Granted, that doesn't help too much since we have no idea what it does.

REST OF IT IM TIRED AND STOPPING NOW

We see the Spise tests, the archivist doesn't upload the last one and then it's just the stream and interloper F.

[^1]: In source engines a demo file is a recording of gameplay (not as a video file but a series of inputs, game state, etc) that can be played back at a later time. [^2]: Counterstrike: Source. [^3]: In game development it's not unusual for the model of a character viewable from first person to be separate from the full body model shown to other players, and to only consist of arms and the equipped weapon. This is for performance reasons and to prevent clipping when a player stands too close to a wall or some such. [^4]: I can't find a source for this. Physics based locomotion in this case meaning that a character pressing their leg into the ground moves them forward as opposed to playing a walking animation while the game moves them forward. [^5]: The hammer editor is the official map editor for the source engine. [^6]: Cube mapping is the process the source engine uses for reflections. You can read more about it here. [^7]: fsky.org isn't a related website, unless this series has something to do with China that is gonna come up in Interloper F. [^8]: VRAD calculates the realistic lighting of a source engine map [^9]: trigger_hurt is an area that can be added to a map in hammer where being inside of it causes an entity to take damage every half second. [^10]: According to this wiki page, "Boxrocket" was the codename for Source Filmmaker (AKA SFM) prior to release. [^11]: According to the wiki, this is commonly called Angel.