The Return of Dr. Sloth

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"No one seems to realize that something evil is coming..."

The Return of Dr. Sloth was a plot set on Kreludor and the Virtupets Space Station, featuring Dr. Sloth. It was first slated for release in 2004 in conjunction with its trading card game expansion, but was shelved in favour of the Hannah and the Ice Caves plot due to artist scheduling conflict. It was finally revived four years later, beginning on 29 January 2008 and concluding on 15 March.

The plot follows Gorix, a member of a secret society known as the Resistance, and Cylara, a tourist who becomes separated from her family, as they struggle to foil Dr. Sloth's plan to conquer Neopia.

Story

While in a closet within the Space Station, Gorix is contacted by a Green Ixi and told to meet with "the Scout", a female Cybunny spy who had information vital to their cause. Agreeing to the task, Gorix takes off his janitor jumpsuit and walks out to find her. Meanwhile, the Cybunny is being chased by a dark figure - Ylana Skyfire - under laser fire. She barely escapes, and sneaks into the crowd of the Space Station. Needing to quickly get to Grundos Cafe and meet with the spy without being seen, Gorix travels through the maintenance tunnels, risking death by being sucked out through an air lock or attack by a maintenance robot. After passing through the tunnels, he goes to Grundos Cafe to meet with the spy.

Meanwhile, Cylara was being given a tour of the Space Station with her parents, who were impressed with the technology on board. At that moment the station's alarm goes off and Commander Garoo enters, flanked by armoured Blumaroo elite soldiers, declaring that the Station is now under the control of Dr. Sloth. The guards start rounding up the Neopets on board, causing chaos, and Cylara is separated from her parents. The Scout, who has been hidden and watching, is found by one of the soldiers and conceals her identity by pretending to be Cylara. Cylara herself is found by Gorix and mistaken for the Scout, to Cylara's confusion. They are spotted by the soldiers and Gorix drags Cylara away to make their escape. As they are surrounded Cylara thinks on her feet and smashes a fire extinguisher to conceal their escape. Only then is she able to reveal to Gorix that she is not the contact he was expecting, much to his horror.

Cylara revealed that she saw a Cybunny about her age pretend to be her when Garoo's soldiers entered, and Gorix realised it must have be the one he was looking for. Gorix explained that they would need help from The Resistance to save both the Scout and Cylara's parents, and takes her inside their head quarters.

Upon their entry, the Green Ixi was surprised to see Cylara instead of the Scout, and Gorix explained the Scout was detained by soldiers from Garoo's raid, but was seen mingling with Cylara's parents. The Ixi, realising that this was Dr. Sloth's return, ordered Gorix to rescue the scout, while they would dispatch "the girl" to a place of safety.

Angry at being called a child, Cylara said that she can help, and Gorix noted that she had helped him escape the raid and was the one who revealed where the Scout was. The Ixi agreed to her help, providing that she could keep up with the rest of them. Frustrated at still being talked over, Cylara asks what The Resistance was, and the Ixi explained: The Resistance was an organization created after the events of Arrival of Virtupets in order to prepare for the eventual return of Dr. Sloth, which was happening as they spoke.

He also mentioned some more contemporary affairs - the Space Faerie was away to another galaxy, investigating a disturbance which The Resistance presently suspected was likely a ploy by Dr. Sloth, because she was not responding to their communications. Gorix and Cylara moved out to intercept the Scout, and find out what she knows about Dr. Sloth's return.

The civilian prisoners - including the Scout and Cylara's parents, who were covering the Scout's presence in return for her promise to help find their daughter - were under guard by Garoo's Blumaroo soldiers, waiting to be loaded aboard transport shuttles. Garoo radioed Commander Gormos, who passed on the news of the Space Station's capture to Dr. Sloth. Pleased that this time had come at last, Dr. Sloth ordered the initiation of "Phase 2".

Ylana told Garoo, who had just begun to usher the prisoners onto the shuttles, that she was looking for a "certain Cybunny" - the Scout - that Dr. Sloth was eager to see. Garoo let her inspect the prisoners, but warned her not to take too long. From the grate behind the Acara, Cylara and The Resistance looked out across the hall. Gorix sent a team, lead by Xaner, to take out the guards, and Conicks and two others to reprogramme the shuttles' computers to fly to a safe place on Neopia instead of their intended destination. To Cylara, who had spotted her family, he merely said, "It's time to rescue your parents." Ylana Skyfire meanwhile finally tracked down the Scout, and Cylara stayed behind to defend her.

Gorix, the Scout and Cylara returned to the Resistance Headquarters, where the Scout relayed her intelligence. She claimed that a Sloth spy had caused the factions of Grundos on the moon of Kreludor to fight amongst themselves, allowing Sloth access to the Kreludite mines below the surface. Sloth's plan soon became clear, to use the radioactive properties of Kreludite to mutate the population of Neopia. As the Resistance mounted an effort to retake the station, Gorix and Cylara set off to Kreludor in the hopes of putting an end to Sloth's plans.

Gorix and Cylara were soon captured on the moon by a faction of Grundos led by Xarthab. Gorix recognised one of Xarthab's aids - Parlax, a traitor working for Dr. Sloth. As Parlax was taken away, Xarthab and his brother Zorlix were united at last. Unfortunately, Dr. Sloth decided to turn his full military might on the moon, and with the Space Faerie away in a distant galaxy, it seemed there was little hope. The Space Faerie did have one suggestion: Sloth was in possession of her magic token, and its abilities would be able to stop the fleet.

As the Grundos on Kreludor began to prepare their weapons, Parlax escaped. Gorix and Cylara made their way straight for Sloth's mothership in the hopes of finding the Space Faerie's Token, and on the Space Station, Valka and the Scout launched an attack on the remaining soldiers of Sloth's Empire. As the battle turned against Commander Garoo, another bounty hunter, Sophix II, arrived with an army of robotic Grundos that evened the odds.

Onboard Sloth's mothership, Gorix and Cylara sorted through various duplicate tokens until they located the real version, guarded by the Yurbot. In the bowels of the ship, they encountered a disgruntled Commander Gormos, who out of anger at Dr. Sloth, allowed them to pass. Gorix and Cylara then continued to Sloth's chamber. There, Gorix fought Parlax while Cylara prepared the chant to activate the Space Faerie's Token. The magic soon had an effect, sucking in Sloth and trapping him within. In his last act before disappearing, Sloth activated the mothership's self-destruct. Gorix and Cylara fled just in time, though Parlax also managed to escape. With Sloth seemingly destroyed, the rest of his troops gave themselves up, with Ylana escaping the space station before the Scout could apprehend her.

After the battle, Commander Gormos reached Kreludor, hoping to take it over and create his own empire of evil, only to find that the Grundos had heard of his actions onboard the mothership and hailed him as a hero.

Meanwhile, the Space Faerie Token had survived the explosion of the mothership, and floated malevolently in space...

Participation

The entrance to the Maintenance Section.

A Series of Tubes

Following the first comic's release, the Space Station was updated with an image link to the Maintenance Section. This link led to a cross-section of corridors, with the far left door open. Through this door, the user reached the maintenance tunnels and was required to guide Gorix through five different map puzzles. Open air locks prevented safe travel through the tunnels, requiring the user to position the gravity generators correctly and closing every pressure door before moving to the exit or Gorix would die, resulting in the puzzle resetting. Some of the levels contained maintenance robots (specifically the Robot Petpet Buzzler), which would also kill Gorix if he came into contact with them.

In each puzzle, every pressure door must have been passed through (by Gorix or by a robot) in order to close it, which would open the gate to the next puzzle. Once closed, a pressure door could not be passed through again. Gorix was guided by the use of gravity generators which changed his direction at cross-sections. One of the four ports onto the generator was marked with an arrow Gorix would follow down a corridor. Every time a generator was walked over (by Gorix or by a robot), it would rotate ninety degrees clockwise. Generators could be set up to point in a specific direction at the beginning of each level by clicking on them with the mouse to cycle through the different orientations.

Breaking the Code

The Virtupets Space Station Computer System interface.

Players were next asked to help decode a message intercepted by the Resistance from Commander Garoo at a DOS-like terminal. There were many messages, but there was no way of telling which one was the message they needed.

Each message came with a key made from seven cryptic characters - in fact the symbols from the basic Codestones. In order to decrypt the message, the player had to find the correct modifiers to change that key to a target key. Each modifier was a string of alien characters of the same length, and like a maths sum, the characters of the key and modifier were combined in each column to make a different character: each symbol corresponded to a number from one to seven, and for each column, the numbers corresponding to the symbols in the key and the modifiers were added up (rolling over after seven) to work out which new symbol was generated.

The correct modifiers had to be inserted to produce the target sequence from the message key. Once decoded, Commander Garoo's message read:

My lord,

We've begun moving the civilians to the transport shuttles as planned. The public decks are all secure although we've had some trouble finding our way around the maintenance levels; there could still be traitors hiding in that maze. Nonetheless, the shuttles should be ready to launch shortly, and then we won't have to worry about the civilians any more.

- Commander Garoo

Shuttle Bay Rescue

One of the shuttle bay rooms.

The player had to help Cylara get across the Shuttle Bay, through five rooms, to reach her family and the Cybunny Scout. Each room was arranged like a grid, and each turn, the player could move Cylara one step in this grid, and Garoo's guards moved a step as well, at random. The guards would catch Cylara if they saw her - that is, if they were facing in her direction in the same row or column. Cylara could hide behind the civilians - she has to be in direct line of sight to be caught.

If Cylara is caught, the player had to start the level over.

The game plays out similarly to Escape to Kreludor.

Battledome

...to be added...

652,491,337 Tokens

To access this step, the player had to click on Gorix's space ship, found on the Kreludor map page.

Arriving on Dr. Sloth's ship, Cylara and Gorix had to try and find the real Space Faerie Token amongst the millions of duplicates Dr. Sloth had made, trying (and failing) to duplicate its power. This was a communal step, where players had to work in collaboration with each other to test each token to find the real one.

Each testing station held a token which had to be correctly subjected to three tests, an acid test, a gravitational stress test, and a heat test. Testing took place in collaboration with four other players within Flash applets. Additionally, the player could gather materials to perform these tasks on their own.

Some guidance in these tasks was given by Yurbot.

Heat test

The furnace had a capacity for 10 kg of scrap metal.

The heat test was performed with heat generated from a nuclear control rod the player had to manufacture from scrap metal.

To make a control rod, the player had to melt down three pieces of scrap metal from a selection of ten - in each selection of ten there was at least one group of three that would work. For each piece of scrap metal, the player was told a mass and a percentage purity of each metal it was composed of - from this they could work out the actual mass of the metals in the scrap. A control rod had to be made of a certain mass of one type of metal, which differed depending on which type of metal it was made from. The three pieces of scrap the player melted down had to contain a quantity of metal equal to this mass. No more than ten kilos could fit in the furnace at a time - putting more in would temporarily break the furnace.

To test a token, it had to be exposed to high temperatures from a plasma field. Four control rods were used to contain the plasma around the token, but they had to be positioned manually by the four players. They had to be correctly placed for three rounds of heating in a row - if one player made an error with their rod's position, the heat test would have to start over again.

Both the control rod and the plasma arc it contained had to be positioned at the same point on a 1 to 100 scale, with 1 being furthest away from the token and 100 being closest - e.g. if the plasma arc was at position 50, halfway between its most proximal and most distal positions, the control rod also had to be set (and locked in) to position fifty. However, the player could only see the numerical value for their control rod and had to estimate the arc's position. This was complicated as the arc's distance was not on the same scale as the control rod's.

Acid test

The acidifier is a delicate machine, prone to overloading if improperly used.

For this test, the players attempted to dissolve one of the tokens in acid.

To create the acid, the player was given a cylinder of metal and told its dimensions and its density. They then had to calculate how long to soak it in a "dissolution solution" to produce the acid. This calculation was based on the mass of the metal - which could be worked out as the product of its density and its volume. Its volume could be worked out from the dimensions given. The proportion of mass to time immersed was different for each type of metal, however. To successfully make an acid, this time had to be correct to ±1%. The formulas for converting mass into required time soaking had to be worked out by the community by trial and error.

The group of four players at a testing station had to produce a certain volume of an acid solution in litres. Each player was told to add a volume of an acid in millilitres to make it up to a certain percentage in the final solution. To complicated matters, the stock solutions weren't labelled: the players had to figure out which acid was which by trial and error or by remembering the icons from the acid synthesis step. All four players had to get this right to correctly test the token.

Gravitic test

Black hole farming is fraught with unique challenges.

This test was performed using the gravitational pull of singularities the player retrieved from a singularity farm.

In order to retrieve a black hole, the player had to click on a completely black image (the Juppie Oaks Singularity Farms® Singrowlarity®-brand singularity-generation field, a black hole farm). There was a 50% chance that the player would be sucked through a wormhole and dropped somewhere else on Neopia, a 30% chance that the player would be crushed by tidal forces and could not return to the farm for three minutes, and only a 20% chance that they would successfully retrieve a black hole.

To test a token, the four players had to correctly position their singularities around it on a grid. There were three rounds of placing, where each person places one singularity per round - only the third round counted, where all four players had to put their singularity in the correct place to successfully test the token. The first two rounds were used to triangulate the correct position for round three: after placing their token, they would be told how far away it was from the correct co-ordinates, but not in which direction. Placing two singularities in different locations gives two values of displacement, and the correct position of the singularity is narrowed down to where the loci of the distance displaced for the first two singularities intersect, a maximum of two points.

Prizes

Prizes for this plot were released on 1 April 2008. Players can redeem the points they were awarded for participating at Jorax's Discount Space Prize Emporium. Visiting the shop also rewards participants with a site theme and a trophy.

Leftover Scrap Metal - 5 Points Series of Tubes - 10 Points Duplicate Space Faerie Token Keyring - 25 Points The Sounds of Vacuum - 50 Points Code Symbol Dice Set - 100 Points Garoo Elite Patrol Handbook - 500 Points Space Faerie Lip Balm - 500 Points Hydroslothic Acid Toothpaste - 795 Points E-Z® Brand Acidifier Play Set™ - 999 Points Singularity Plushie - 1000 Points Sightseeing on the Virtupets Space Station - 1000 Points Yurbot Bobblehead - 1000 Points Singrowlarity® Brand Singularity Farm for Kids - 1200 Points Fire Extinguisher of Diversion - 1500 Points Evil Genius Portrait Kit - 1500 Points Xarthab and Zorlix Bobblehead - 1500 Points

The Art of Grundo Diplomacy - 2000 Points Garoo Elite Wind-Up Toy - 2000 Points Commander Valka Plushie - 2000 Points Ylana Skyfire Action Figure - 3000 Points Miniature Gorix Spaceship - 3000 Points Parlax Plushie - 4000 Points How to Break Codes and Influence Plot Events - 4000 Points Control Rod Apparatus - 5000 Points Resistance Honour Badge - 5000 Points Resistance Headquarters Background - 6000 Points Melting Test Station Background - 8000 Points Resistance Battle Visor - 10000 Points Exceptionally Tiny Laser Cannon - 12500 Points Buzzler - 20000 Points Ylana's Blaster - 25000 Points One-Use Robotification Zappermajig - 45000 Points

2004 cancellation

The Return of Dr. Sloth TCG expansion logo.

The 2004 version of The Return of Dr. Sloth was cancelled before any plot comics or storyline were released. However, tie-in flash games and Gallery of Heroes entries were slowly released following its cancellation anyway.

Dr. Sloth took over New Features on 18 November 2004 in order to vent his frustration at Hannah and the Ice Caves being chosen of his plot, and a mock ending to the plot appeared for a short period of time where Sloth mutated Hannah in revenge.

Trivia

• The first puzzle "A Series of Tubes" is a reference to a speech made by U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, in which he states the Internet is "not a dump truck, but a series of tubes".
• The decoding puzzle step is reminiscent of a step in the Neopet Version 2 puzzle.

External links

• Plot Info: The Return of Dr. Sloth (comic), Maintenance Section, A Series of Tubes, Resistance Headquarters, Shuttle Bay
• Neopets TCG: Return of Dr. Sloth
• Caption Competition: #490, #665
• Selected Petpages: Renjiroe's In-Depth Dr. Sloth Plot Guide, SlothyPlot's guide, KyootestLenny's Puzzle #2 guide
• Selected Fansites: Sunnyneo - The Return of Dr. Sloth Plot