Character

Winter grew up in a small family of just herself and her two parents, Jana and Devin. They named their daughter Winter because of her pale skin that just seemed to be that way from birth. Growing up, Winter was happy and somewhat outgoing, making some friends with a couple of neighbor kids that would every once in a while come to the Smithe's door and ask if Winter could come out and play.

As time continued, however, the kids stopped coming around as much. Winter always felt nervous about possibly going to their houses and asking if they wanted to play, and that fear just continued to grow the older she became. She started secluding herself more and more in her room, despite the attempts at getting their daughter at least somewhat out of the house and on to the bench just on the porch of their house. Winter's already pale skin became stark white by the time she graduated high school, having finished her degree just by herself and online courses. Though she missed the application period for college, Winter truly loves learning and wants to learn as much as she can, but the idea of college, even online, is pretty daunting. Maybe a year off would help...

In her free time, Winter would play games of all sorts. RPGs, MMOs, Strategy, FPS, Simulators, pretty much any genre would pique her interest. While playing in an MMO a few years ago, she started encountering rumors about a game that could only be accessed by a QR code floating around. She tried finding out more about it, but the rumors quickly died down, the last mention of the game being 'the government is trying to get rid of it'.

Just recently, the rumors of the game being just an urban legend were brought up every once in a while, but in the beginnings of an FPS game, right when everyone is choosing their characters, one of the randoms in Winter's lobby started talking about another rumor, a different rumor: "There's talk about T-Star starting up again. Getting the QR for it is a pain in the a** though since they're still trying to hide it, but my brother said he got one and-- Oh sh**!" before getting cut out.

The mention of the QR code tickled the memory of the game from years ago, and intrigued, Winter started looking into it again. After a couple of weeks of following rumors and attempting to gather the courage to start talking to some of the people in forums who have mentioned the mysterious game, Winter just about gave up. She decided to follow one last thread on a forum, one last link, and...nothing.

Nothing, that is, until a chat bubble in the bottom right of her screen popped up with a little red '1' in the corner. Having never talked to anyone in the forums she'd visited, she figured it was a spam chat thing, but wanting to clear it from her sight before delving into a different thread and getting her mind off of her disappointment, she opened it. There were no words, oddly enough, but there was one thing: a weird QR code...