The TNWP Symbol
The North Woods Project, otherwise known as AlexHenderson100, is a Fear Mythos Vlog / Alternate Reality Game that takes place entirely within an Architect Verse, an Open Source collection of universes. More specifically, it takes place in Architect-Verse / Kryesor, a hostile universe holding strong connections to the Candleverse. The series is spread out on both YouTube and Twitter, also spanning several crossover with multiple series.
Fans can also fund the series to access continuous rewards on The North Woods Project's Patreon.
Summary[]
The story follows Alex Henderson, Robert Chriss, and Tyler Carwile's school project, originally intended as a way to preserve nature and help the environment, but has since become a personal channel for Alex to post his encounters with the Slender Man, the Archangel, the Plague Doctor, the Architect, and the Sentience, a religious order, originally an obscure branch of the Timberwolves, that has since grown into its own organization that rivals the Timberwolves and worships the Slender Man as a deity. Several occurrences in Alex's life end up having him to spiral into insanity, causing himself to fend for himself in the hellish reality he calls home.
Plot[]
Season 1[]
As an assignment for Ms. Gulliver's Environmental Science class, Robert Chriss, the director and producer, Alex Henderson, the cameraman and assistant director, and Tyler Carwile, the group's location scout, create the North Woods Project, a channel dedicated to "nature, wildlife, and how to protect it". During production, strange events start to occur, such as an interview with the cast showing Tyler remembering and contemplating a recurring dream of a tall, dark figure looming over him, with its arms becoming longer and longer, until he wakes up, and strange footage, filmed by someone other than the cast, found on the camera and posted to the channel.
Later, while filming the project, the boys notice a ripped, tattered notebook, an SD card, and a cardboard box with the Twin Triangles hidden in a tunnel that Tyler heard noises coming from earlier that night, as well as several scattered pages of cryptic messages hung up on trees, showing drawings of the Operator Symbol and the Archangel. The SD card contained a small video clip entitled "binge.avi" (an anagram for begin), showing a dead body encased in a hooded jacket, footage of Robert trying to catch an unseen entity (presumed to be the Archangel), and the Operator Symbol flashing throughout, suggesting that Alex will see the maker(s) of the video soon.
Afterwards, Robert requests for Alex to look through some old footage, dating back to 2011, to find anything "unusual". He finds a clip from the overwritten footage, taken late at night, of an unknown person being haunted by the Architect. Alex makes a video stating that the project has already been turned in several months ago, albeit unfinished, and that this will be his personal channel from now on. He also tells the audience that he's found a missing person's report for Tyler, who has not been seen for two weeks, and that he is worried for his safety. A video is posted onto the channel one day later by a member of the Sentience, saying that they have abducted Tyler and has added him to their "collection". A message shown in the video, "Ray sends his regards", leads to a small crossover between Project Natural (also connected to a Twitter account), in which a conversation reveals that they've been having similar problems, and that they will stay in touch.
In a video uploaded by the Sentience, Alex receives a CD sleeve with the TNWP symbol, a triforce with the Operator symbol branching out through the middle, written on the front, and a binary message on the back. He goes into the woods, looking for the one responsible, where he is confronted by the Archangel. After being chased down and being fought to the ground, it pretends to be knocked unconscious by Alex, so that it may spring up unexpectedly and continuously teleport him through a hellish environment, where it reveals that a brutally beaten Tyler has become a member of the Sentience. After being teleported through several corridors, the Approved, an elite group of Proxies that were chosen from the Sentience by the Slender Man, capture Alex, wipe his memory, and put him in stasis until he is of use to them again.
The last video posted shows Alex going to Tyler's house, where Capper, a strange figure seeming to be connected to the Slender Man, and the Archangel capture Tyler. Alex runs away, abandoning Tyler to his doom. The text shown throughout the video suggests that Alex has known about Tyler's disappearance since the incident occurred, and has been hiding it.
Season 2[]
The North Woods Project Season Two Trailer
Trailer for Season 2 of The North Woods Project
A video posted by Alex shows him waking up from a daze with little to no memory of the events in the last three videos, or uploading them onto the YouTube account. After watching them, Alex slowly recalls the events in question, conforming Tyler's apparent death. While posting the video, Capper records over the footage with videos of him smashing in a Sentience member's skull with a hammer, torturing Tyler with a number of tools, and Alex trapped in a purgatory-like state, as well as footage recorded by Alex himself. Alex states over Twitter that he will continue to search for Tyler to uncover the truth.
Alex states later that he has been having several hallucinations and nervous breakdowns in the past several weeks, and that he does not remember ever having parents or having to use wifi or phone service to post videos or receive texts. He later gets a large box on his doorstep, with the TNWP symbol and Twin Triangles on the front, with the phrase "TIME'S COMING NEAR" under it. After opening the box, Alex finds several cryptic messages, a gun, hints that something will happen to him in three hours, and another tape that dates back to 2011. At the end of the video, footage overwritten by the Sentience shows a woman with a bag covering her face held at gunpoint, in which the video abruptly ends.
After reviewing the third 2011 tape, it is revealed that Tyler has been having dreams about the Slender Man for several years. Alex mentions that he has had a dream about seeing the girl previously shown at the end of the video. After seeing her in his dream, he runs, eventually falling outside the universe and into Bliss, where he was grabbed by "freaking messed up hands", until he wakes up in a cold sweat. After hearing footsteps, Tyler and Alex are forced to investigate, where they find the Plague Doctor. After sprinting away from him, Alex finds himself blacked out on a sidewalk. After several more cryptic posts are made via Twitter by the Sentience, Alex confirms that nothing has happened in "well passed three hours", and that he will continue to investigate Tyler and Robert's whereabouts.
After five days, Alex states on his Twitter that his weekend had almost been proven fatal, and that a video would be posted to the channel that weekend. However, during the weekend, no videos were posted, though during the weekend, a conversation between Alex and Robert took place over Alex's Twitter account, confirming that Robert is still alive and well. Robert sends a clip to Alex via wireless feed, and hurries away, telling Alex to meet with him at the house they had first started filming in.
Alex states on Twitter that he is trying to come to terms with the haunting past, and that everything will be explained in a matter of time. Days later, a video posted by Alex details the events that took place when visiting the abandoned house. He finds Tyler's body, ice cold and dead, as it appeared in "One", with a silver, skull-like mask strapped around his face. As he quietly tries to escape, the door slams behind him, trapping him in the room with no means of escape. The Archangel emerges from the darkness, appearing to stab Alex in the stomach, and slowly walks away. Alex notices that Tyler has vanished from where he was lying, causing him to panic, in which the video ends abruptly.
In a video uploaded the next day by the Sentience, several Sentience members are encircling the same girl shown in "One", and mentioned in "2011 Footage: Tape 3". Muffled screams can be heard, as each member present is holding a firearm. The TNWP symbol is displayed over the victim's head, and a strange code is shown under the frame. An image of the Slender Man flashes quickly across the screen, and the text appearing in the video suggests that Alex has forgotten several crucial events occurring throughout the plot.
After several cryptic tweets revolving around the same code shown in "PANTHEON" are made by the Sentience, Alex posts a video on his channel showing him finding a paper bag containing an SD card and a tape belonging to a Super 8mm camera. After reviewing the tape, the video reveals Alex and Robert being ambushed by a Sentience member, eventually resorting to burning the person alive, in which the footage abruptly ends. Alex states that the footage was taken over 20 years ago, yet shows a contemporary version of him, causing him much confusion.
Several tweets made by an unknown source suggest that three subjects have been chosen for a vague experiment of some sort. Later, a video posted on the channel Jeff Woods shows the main character finding a note written by the Sentience in his house, with the message "TURN AROUND" written on the back. After being tortured, teleported, and otherwise beaten across several different places by the Slender Man, Jeff falls to the ground, screaming, and is dragged away, in which the video ends.
The next video posted on Jeff's channel shows Alex getting a call from Jeff late at night, with Jeff begging for his help, and suddenly snapping into insanity, ending the call prematurely. Alex turns around, only to find Jeff standing in his room, in which he tackles Alex. The video cuts to a sane and content Jeff, telling the viewer that he has been seeing the Archangel outside his house for a long while, and showing another card he received prior to the events in "Virus.avi" from the Sentience.
The camera cuts to Jeff lying on the ground in a coughing fit, in which he runs to call Alex, giving him the same beg for help shown previously. Jeff then gets dragged away and kidnapped by the Sentience, claiming that he is strong enough to become a member of the Approved. After stating that death is mandatory to join, Jeff refuses, causing the Sentience to send him back with a pumpkin covered in laughter, notes suggesting that he might die, and that he may have a "HAPPY HALLOWEEN", even though Jeff claimed that it wasn't even close to October. Jeff then looks around his house, resulting him in getting beaten down to the ground, when the video ends.
In a video posted on Alex's channel, the same footage of him being attacked by Jeff is posted, along with new footage of Alex getting beaten by a screaming Jeff. A picture flashes, showing a full-body Capper, with the phrase "Open the Gate" written under it. Shortly after, it is revealed that Alex hasn't been posting on his channel or Twitter for an elongated amount of time, and that it was, in reality, a person masquerading as him. The culprits turn out to be the Enlightened, who have kidnapped Alex for an unknown amount of time, pretending to be him, and threaten that they will kill him unless the fans are forced to solve two riddles in three days.
After the first code is revealed instantaneously to be "The Lost Prophet is a false one", the fans must decipher a riddle that goes through binary, Morse code, universal Cyrillic, Base64, Augustus's Code, and is backwards, while combining the code in reverse order. Pictures of Alex's bloody, beaten face are posted. During the race for the answer to the code, a video uploaded by the Glitch, spoken in a monotone robot voice, reveals that it will stop at nothing to ensure Alex's safety, and that he is somehow under the Architect's control. The Glitch advises all Marked to film themselves, and that Alex's Architect Verse is soon going to be consumed by Rapture, before abruptly disappearing.
Four minutes after the deadline to save Alex, it is revealed that the code was "Mongrel", the Enlightened's term for the Archangel. After the Sentience post pictures of themselves in a battle formation, trying to threaten the Enlightened, a video is posted by Capper, where Alex is beaten with a glass bottle, before revealing that Robert was, in fact, a member of the Enlightened the entire time. Robert pulls out a gun, calmly making small talk with him, before shooting Alex in the head several times, pulling the trigger on himself soon after. Capper calls all the Marked to arms, and after contact with Gabriel from The Mayhem Theory, reveals that his plan is to stop the Enlightened at all costs, and that he will reveal his identity in time.
Soon after, a video is shown of Alex taking on last look at the world through a dead man's eyes, still being followed close behind by the Archangel, as he is shown next to a Crucifix, is which he disappears, presumably into Bliss. Capper soon after posts a video showing him donning a winter coat and heading out to avenge Alex's death.A video posted on Christmas day then shows Capper sharpening a knife, and heading out to shoot an Enlightened member in the head, and blow apart an entire condo in which an Enlightened member lives in, effectively murdering several members to avenge Alex, then leading into footage shown in a later video crossover with Jeff Woods and Sirens in the Night.
After several full-length in-depth conversations with Gabriel, yet another video is posted by the Pawns,showing more footage from 2011, in which Alex and Tyler are attacked by a Pawn. the footage then cuts to show a Pawn standing in front of the Gate, saying that they have pulled strings at Gabriel's life, and that the Manipulator is not the only one to do so. Threatening to see Gabriel soon, the Pawns end their video message to Gabriel with an unknown person reciting the Architect's Phrase of Fear.
Footage from before Alex was kidnapped by the Enlightened is shown days later. The Pawns, under the Architect's influence, say that Alex knew the truth of Capper's identity, and that he must take off his mask in order to save Gabriel. Later, a video is posted showing the Pawns kidnapping Gabriel.