Acheron Pre-Launch: Las Vegas, NV

Attendees of the recent ARGFest-O-Con in Las Vegas found themselves in the midst of a scavenger hunt of sorts, which ended up with the discovery of Acheron, a new Alternate Reality Game, shceduled out this summer.

Upon check-in at their hotel, numerous people discovered packages waiting for them. Each package contained one of the following:

An ad for Kinkos
A map to various Kinkos stores in the Las Vegas area, plus $6.00 cash.
A business card for Stephen Lake (pictured at right) with the letters FOIA handwritten on the back.
A stack of business cards with "GB's @ 3:00 pm" written on the back of each.
A letter from Stephen Lake, inviting everyone to meet him for drinks the next day at Gordon Biersch restaurant, 3:00 pm.

The next day at the appointed time, the group headed over to Gordon Biersch for their rendezvous. Unfortunately, it seems Mr. Lake was unable to attend, but had arranged for a round of drinks on him, which was nice. Mr. Lake also left a cryptic message: NEON NOTE @ LVCC.

After much heated speculation, everyone decided that the message meant that a neon note was to be found at either the Las Vegas Convention Center or the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. Having two cars, the group split up, staying in touch with each other via cellphone.

The group that went to the convention center hit paydirt when they found the neon note on a wall. The note said "YIM LLL_PLLC (pictured at right). It seemed apparent that this note was referring to a Yahoo user account. Heading to the Kinkos, the group bought some time online. They discovered that there was indeed a user account for LLL_PLLC. They tried to Instant Message him, but he wasn't online. They then tried to get into his email and messenger accounts, using FOIA as the password, but no luck. After trying numerous ways to log in, the group had to give up, as they were running out of time and needed to be at the Hard Rock Hotel at 5:00 pm for the beginning of the ARGFest-O-Con party.

So, both groups converged on the Hard Rock Cafe (after completing an unrelated set of puzzles to get them there). During dinner, the waiter came up to the table and asked if we knew who Stephen Lake was, and that he had a message for us. After getting over the shock, the group said yes, and the waiter then instructed them to show a Stephen Lake business card to the concierge at the Hard Rock Hotel, who had a package waiting for them. Interesting that someone had somehow tracked the group to their secret party location.

After dinner, the group rushed over to the HRH concierge and retrieved their package. Finally! Inside the envelope, they found a letter from Stephen Lake, apologizing for being called out of town suddenly, and about 20 mini CD's. On the CD were found two video trailers and a directory with various utilities. The contents of the CD (minus the trailers) can be downloaded here. Included in this directory is some sort of login puzzle that has yet to be solved.

One of the trailers finally gave players the name of the game, which players had previously dubbed L³ for lack of anything else. The game is called Acheron, and a little online search yielded the homepage for the game at www.acheron.us. In addition, a link at the LLL_PLLC Yahoo profile page yields a link to this blog, which seems to give us a little backstory to the game.

So, quite a bit of fun for some unsuspecting partygoers! Acheron is set to launch this summer, and discussion can be found at the unfiction Acheron forum. Stay tuned.