#cognitohazard

Let's start from the beginning (footage 1 & 2) and what we know for sure. d3Lord3 found a pre-created world when he first bought and installed Minecraft. He thought (quite naturally) that this was weird but he didn't worry too much about it. We know that he'd been playing for quite a significant amount of time, considering the items in his inventory and the strip mines (and not to mention the info.pdf that Wifies showed us).

Avery, the successor of the laptop and hence the game and the MC world mentions that he found the laptop in a storage locker and has been using it ever since.

Before I go in further I'd like to point out a few details in d3Lord3's design which I'd like you all to remember:

The skin is that of a knight;

There is no 'face' as such visible under the helmet's design on the Minecraft skin;

The armor's (skin's) design and color is gold or possibly some other yellow metal.

(I think y'all already know where I'm going with this, but hold on...it's probably not gonna be what you think)

One of the main questions I find popping up for this ARG is that, "If d3Lord3 was so smart then why didn't he just shut down the laptop when he figured out that something was off or delete the world or even just nuke the place in creative? It's a game after all, right?" The answer to that part is actually quite simple:

Curiosity.

Basic human curiosity. Something quite inherent in everyone and especially in someone as smart as d3Lord3. Not to mention the teensy bit of ego boost he gets from solving puzzles and 'tricking' the entity following him. But that's not all. There's a second part to this.

Remember how initially back in the caves, d3Lord3 noticed a pair of footsteps following him?

Read that again.

d3Lord3 noticed a pair of footsteps following him.

Noticed.

For those of you unfamiliar with the general lore of the King In Yellow and Hastur, here's the piece for y'all. Hastur does not exist on the same plain of existence (world) as us, and so the only people allowed to 'interact' whatsoever with him are the people he deems worthy enough or those who have received the Yellow Sign.

So yeah, d3Lord3 was already fucked the moment he noticed something following him. His fate was sealed. He stood no chance because his will per se, was no longer his own. His actions might have been his own but his will (unknowingly) belonged to Hastur from that moment forward.

"Man may do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills."

Which would also explain why he didn't destroy the laptop and the footage and instead decide to shove it in a storage locker somewhere. Or even stop progressing. He quite literally couldn't.

Then we come to the cipher above the doors. It goes something like this:

OMCTSTJBHTHHAHUBWLVQCVYOM LPCUIGVITUHQADUSSJHEWWAFABD CVDAVOGHPHAFHHUIGHGHGOOTHI UCCHNEPBGJLHCTAОНТНІJH

Roughly deciphered (parts assumed) and translated, we get this (in a single line but I've broken it down to the actual poetic meter):

Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink behind the lake, The shadows lengthen In Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies, But stranger still is Lost Carcosa. Songs that the Hyades shall sing, Where flap the tatters of the King, Must die unheard in Dim Carcosa. Song of my soul, my voice is dead, Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa.

To those unfamiliar, this is Cassilda's Song from the King In Yellow, Act 1 Scene 2. Also known as "Dim Carcosa". To this whole thing, d3Lord3 says "Nice poem." followed by (my favorite part lmao) "Unfortunately for you, I have a pickaxe."

This is implies that d3Lord3 still thinks that he's in total control of the situation, he knows this is only a game and he can play it as it is so he just mines straight through the door. But here's the fun part; Cassilda's Song in the King In Yellow is bait for the reader to advance to and read Act 2. It's impossible to ignore.

And d3Lord falls for it. Hook, line and sinker. He mines through and finds a strange ruined and abandoned village. Now what I'm guessing is this is supposed to be an imitation of ruined city of Yhtill. Considering the fact that at the edge of this city is the entrance to what I assume is supposed to be a crude depiction of the Palace of Carcosa, the city in which Hastur is supposed to reside in.

"The scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever"

^ Here I believe the "King In Yellow" refers to Hastur himself.

The close proximity of this village and our finale is why I assume this is Yhtill. Not to mention the copious yellow imagery everywhere, plus the fact that Cassilda was in fact, the queen of Yhtill before it was consumed by Carcosa. So I assume the statue at the center with the fountain was supposed to be her.

We can also take a gamble and assume the house to be Cassilda's? Because she was the only person to not be fooled (per se) by the Pallid Mask's promises when they visited Yhtill. For context, the Pallid Mask is the chief servant/emissary of Hastur and they promised the denizens of Yhtill that they could prevent their foretold doom (and ended up causing said doom lol). Hastur seems to enjoy those kinda gimmicks smh.

Then we come to our grand finale. Starting with the latent imagery that yes, d3Lord3 is being closely watched as he approaches his final destination.

Image Credit: @buththefirst on Tumblr

Y'all CANNOT convince me that this DOES NOT look like an eye.

Moving on, we come to our last and final question:

What did d3Lord3 see behind those golden doors?

While somehow the general consensus is that he saw Hastur, the Great Old One known as The King In Yellow (entity) in his true form which gave d3Lord3 omniscience (infinite knowledge) which he TANKED long enough for him to turn back and warn Avery (who he foresaw would inherit his laptop) and edit his footage to censor the cognito hazard, upload it to GDrive and then stash it in a storage locker.

But that's simply not possible. You CANNOT tank infinite knowledge, no one can, no matter how smart/skilled/talented you are. Your brain would quite literally explode or drive you to absolute madness. In the words of H.P. Lovecraft:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."

Human minds quite literally not comprehend infinity whatsoever, no matter for what time. Plus, nowhere does it state that looking at Hastur grants you infinite knowledge, the only possible implication of that is if you believe in the usual "You may not gaze at a deity" rhetoric.

So here's what I think happened.

In the last bit of the footage we see d3Lord3 pause for a good 15+ seconds just staring at the stuff beyond the doors. We see his cursor move from left to right, almost as if he's reading something.

Now remember a little bit before where I mentioned Cassilda's Song is used as bait for someone to read Act 2 of The King In Yellow. Act 2 falls under forbidden knowledge.

Behind the doors at the end of the video, he saw the written second act from the play titled “The King in Yellow”. It’s mentioned that people would start to go insane by reading or watching the second act of the play because the second act is so unforgettably beautiful that people who see it become obsessed with it and it drives them into madness. This would explain why D3rlord3 looked at whatever was behind the doors for 15+ seconds; he was reading.

Hastur is a mysterious otherworldly entity or force that has infinite forbidden knowledge (the literal information of everything), that would collapse the minds of any normal person who inherits it. His influence (the second act of the play) curses whoever has viewed it with similar forbidden knowledge.

Side effects of seeing the second act of the play are:

Madness: A total collapse of sanity. They begin to perceive Carcosa, the Hyades, and Hastur himself bleeding into reality.

Revelation: They see the truth some cosmic or existential reality that humans cannot endure.

Transformation: They may no longer be human in mind or soul. In some interpretations, they become servants or masks of the King.

Despair: A few simply lose all will to live or act, overwhelmed by what they’ve learned.

Perception of Time: Once someone has read the Second Act and survived (at least physically), their perception of time is often described or implied as becoming nonlinear, fractured, or simultaneous. Chambers never directly writes a scene where a character says, “I can see the future now.” But he implies that reading the play breaks the reader’s sense of temporal continuity the normal flow of time that keeps sanity intact. For instance, in “The Repairer of Reputations,” the narrator (Hildred Castaigne) speaks of: “events long past and yet to come, as though they were before me.” He seems to recall the future the way we recall the past, a sign of temporal dislocation or nonlinear awareness.

While d3Lord3 couldn't tank infinite knowledge, he could however tank the side effects of Act 2 (long enough?) due to his massive mental capacity. And he did so not once, but twice.

He ran back, the path somehow magically leading him to his initial mine, and left a warning for Avery, who he knew would inherit his laptop due to his technical future sight. He writes "Whatever you do at the crossroads, don't turn left" followed by "At the crossroads, don't turn left" seven times, the number of times he turned left throughout the footage.

Whatever you do at the crossroads, don't turn left. Don't be fooled. It's listening to you. It's watching you. You can't outsmart it. It's not of this world.

And

23-2 29 2, 24 29 10-2 10-3 4, 19 30-4 15, 6 10-2 10-3 10-2

Which roughly translates to:

Rvn, Avery, its, here.

That's his whole warning because he now knows properly that Hastur is following him. All of it is bleeding into his reality and no matter what he's doing, he also physically can't destroy the laptop and prevent anyone else from coming across it. So he does the only option left to him (or has purposely been left to him because remember when I said that Hastur seems to like these kinds of gimmicks of hopeless attempts?) and censors the script of the second act and stashes away the laptop.

But two questions still remain;

Why was Hastur himself following d3Lord3? And why did d3Lord3 censor his own name?

Image Credit: @mayday-02 on Tumblr

Hastur has never in the mythos directly involved himself, even his methods of luring in people to read the Second Act and hence drive themselves to madness are indirect, so why follow d3Lord3 directly? And why d3Lord3 of all people?

And here we finally come full circle. At the beginning I asked you guys to note some things about d3Lord3's design right? And somewhere up there I believe I mentioned the Pallid Mask.

Now lemme bring some parts up:

The Pallid Mask is an entity that probably serves The King In Yellow as an emissary, and/or the mask worn by such an emissary.

In the King In Yellow, the Stranger (who essentially equates with the Pallid Mask as an entity) is asked to remove his mask and responds by saying that he wears none, to the horrified reaction of the onlooking Camilla.

And finally;

Entity connected with the King In Yellow. (Who)… acts as Hastur's emissary to the city of Yhtill. Sometimes becoming Hastur's vessel itself.

Do y'all get what I'm trying to say here?

Hastur is known as The King In Yellow. Who usually serves a king as his chief servant (per se) and emissary? Who does a king directly interact with?

It's a knight.

d3rLord3's skin is that of a knight.

The Pallid Mask's 'mask' is actually his face. d3Lord3's head in his MC skin is a helmet with shadows beneath it. That gold helmet then, is his face.

DO Y'ALL GET WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY HERE???

Why does Hastur himself follow d3Lord3, makes his presence known to him and drive him to read the Second Act of the play?

Because he's chosen him as his new Pallid Mask, his new prophet.

d3rLord3 is certainly smart enough to fill that role.

Plus (not to sound like a pre-school conspiracy theorist or those anti-vaxxers obsessed with numerology but 😭) d3rLord3 is basically the biggest clue in itself:

d3r - The (German tnsl.) Lord - Ruler/King 3 - The third color of the rainbow is yellow.

AKA; d3rLord3 is The King In Yellow.

And there's even more lol. This part might explain why d3Lord3 is so against Hastur, despite seemingly having his will subsumed by him (unknowingly). The Pallid Mask is also referred to as The Stranger and in the play script given in More Light, the Stranger is stated to be from Aldebaran and—contrary to other interpretations—an enemy of The King In Yellow.

This might probably be why he tried his best to warn Avery.

And finally, if we assume d3rLord3 to be the unwilling Pallid Mask, he probably already knew this and hence censored his own name as well for precaution.

But all his attempts are in probable vain. The video still got out, got millions of views. d3rlord3 is very smart, for a human. Think Sherlock Holmes, Light Yagami, and Batman. But no human, regardless of how smart and perceptive they are, can beat this eldritch deity. How can you beat an omniscient being? Hastur made d3rlord3 think he was winning, but the game that was being played was never d3Lord's to begin with.

dr3Lord3 is the unwilling Pallid Mask. Just as the Pallid Mask was emissary to Yhtill, d3rLord3 is emissary to Avery, and of course, all of us.

What was happening was an old story. And there has never been any other version of that story.

___

JOKE-OGRAPHY: ***𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙽𝙸𝙽𝙶*** 𝚂𝙾𝙼𝙴 𝙿𝙾𝚁𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂 𝙾𝙵 𝚃𝙷𝙸𝚂 𝙳𝙴𝚂𝙲𝚁𝙸𝙿𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽 𝙷𝙰𝚅𝙴 𝙱𝙴𝙴𝙽 𝚁𝙴𝙳𝙰𝙲𝚃𝙴𝙳 𝙵𝙾𝚁 𝙿𝚄𝙱𝙻𝙸𝙲 𝚂𝙰𝙵𝙴𝚃𝚈.

In this Bible passage (Matthew 11:28-30), Jesus shares a gentle invitation to any weary followers, telling them to take His yoke upon them, for His burden is light. A yoke is a wooden frame used to link two draft animals and attach them to equipment so they can pull it with their combined effort. By inviting us to share His yoke, Jesus is inviting us to link our effort, our suffering, and our desire to His, and since His wisdom, power, and glory are infinite, the burden is light for anyone who truly joins Him.

In this cartoon, Jesus starts with His Biblical line about burdens and yokes, but when He says, "My yoke is easy," He adds that one might even say "over easy." "Over easy" describes a style of cooking eggs where the egg is cooked on both sides so the whites are fried but the ████ (the yellow core of the egg) remains soft, unbroken, and runny at the center. Naturally, because "yoke" and "████" are homophones (words that sound the same, regardless of spelling), in the second panel, Jesus continues by saying, "██████████████████!" which is a play on words because, again, "yoke" and "████" sound the same. I'll be honest and say it's probably one of my best puns to date, and with the eye-catching composition, dynamic poses, and perfect expressions in the second panel, I anticipate a lot of people using that panel specifically as a reaction image or a meme template. Viral internet fame, here I come! Because that's what Tomics has always been about. FAME!