Aw, thank you! I think the other reason it got out of hand is that I haven’t talked to my usual infodump person for like a year and I think it boiled over. (Calling her soon tho!)

It was an award-winning info dump and I kinda fell in love a little bit. XD

Totally fair, and honestly it did get away from me. If I’d typed this out all at once, I probably wouldn’t have posted it.

The plot you mentioned is (allegedly) something that happened- it’s the main storyline in High Crimes. However, guide and Sherpa are not interchangeable, and honestly that’s the main reason I started posting- When you’re writing about a different culture, it’s worth knowing some cultural context. And this isn’t just sherpa the job, it’s Sherpa the people, and honestly I get really angry about the cost they pay for other people to climb.

That, and I figured people reading the prompts might want to know more about Everest. Nothing against OP, they seem perfectly lovey. I just wanted to add some context, and it spiraled. Sorry to you as well.

Dude, what. Why go to all that bother, what did OP do to you?

Also, most of what you were saying about moving the bodies and hiding the evidence I think is massively off base to what was intended. I thought the idea of the prompt was "work as a seemingly legitimate guide then bump them off and make it look like an accident".

Sherpa is both a specific name for an ethnic and language group, and a general job title. However, the two are wrapped up in each other in really fraught ways that I (not Nepali, not a Sherpa) am gonna try to be really careful about, and still probably make mistakes.

Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary were the first people to climb Everest. Norgay was a Sherpa. Climbing Everest requires a lot of support, and because of Norgay and Sherpa’s familiarity with Everest, foreign climbers overwhelming preferred hiring Sherpas to be high-altitude guides and porters. This kind of continued to this day, to the extent that non-ethnically Sherpa Nepali will try to pass as Sherpa to employers and even coworkers.

However. Your serial killer would have to be at least Nepali, and possibly actually Sherpa, to pass as a high-altitude porter.

There’s not a lot of sustainable jobs in Nepal. Being a mountain guide is unspeakably dangerous and demanding. It also pays a lot. There’s a lot of complicated feelings around the work. But the fact remains that because of the money, and the opportunities, it’s still dominated by big-s Sherpas. (And from what I can read there’s some tension between Sherpas and other Nepali ethnic groups because of this. Low altitude porters get paid very little for supplying the camps/ the trek to Everest base camp, and those jobs are usually held by Tamang and Rai people, who don’t have access to the same mountain economy, and often aren’t allowed to sleep in the tea houses.) (This article again).

Speaking of the base camp trek… unfortunately, there’s a lot of other places in Nepal where serial killers can hide bodies.

So that’s where it’s at. It’s big and complicated and makes me really sad a lot of the time.

More resources:

Sherpa- an incredible documentary about a recent tragedy and it’s repercussions.

Sherpa Conversation and Basic Words- a phrasebook

Buried in the Sky- about K2, but incredible read and a lot of information, both about death in the Himalayas and the lives of people who work in them.

Just for fun:

I have… complicated feelings about people traveling to Everest to climb it. It’s framed as heroic a lot of the time, and I own that it’s difficult, but… well.

That said, Half the Sky is a musical about just that, and the soundtrack is beautiful and currently costs $0. Think of it as a palate cleanser.

Final thoughts

Thanks for anyone who has read this far. Thank you for your prompt, OP- and sorry again.

Pease don’t climb Everest.

Let’s talk about how people die on Everest.

Because there have (allegedly) been murders on Everest, but it’s not the sort of thing you can be charged for. High Crimes by Michael Kodas is a really heartbreaking account of the ways people can die and be killed.

The deadliest part of Everest is the icefall. The place where most people die is the descent. There’s something called “summit fever” that kills a lot of climbers. It’s not a physical thing- it’s the desire to keep going, even though you know you should turn back. Climbing Everest is incredibly expensive, and requires so much time and effort. For a lot of people, it’s a lifelong dream. And to give up on it when the top’s right there… well.

A lot of the injustices described in High Crimes are driven by summit fever. So remember how I said high-altitude porters take everything up to the higher camps? One of the items they bring is supplemental oxygen. Some climbers use oxygen, others don’t, but it dramatically increases your rate of survival. If a person makes it to the higher camps using oxygen and suddenly runs out , they have an even higher chance of dying than someone who has never used it while acclimating.

Did I mention the porters set up camp with all the supplies and then come back down? They have to, the human body starts to decay if you live any higher than base camp.

So oxygen goes missing. Sleeping bags go missing. So does good, although that matters less.

And sometimes people who could’ve been saved are left to die, because helping someone unprepared or unlucky means you won’t go to the summit.

Don’t get me wrong, there are so many heroes on Everest. But there’s also monsters of a very different source than serial killers. That’s how you get bodies on Everest. That, and because Everest is fundamentally, heartbreakingly, dangerous, and sometimes you do everything right and still die.

Last cont, I hope. Let’s talk about Sherpas real quick.

The first place on Mt Everest where a body can plausibly disappear is the Khumbu icefall. It is on the Nepal side of Everest, and is the first and and most deadly obstacles climbers pass.

The icefall is always moving. It’s worse in the day, when it’s melting, but even at night, there’s a high risk of avalanches, there are massive crevasses that you cross by, I shit you not, aluminum ladders laid on their side. The ground might look firm, and be firm for a while, but secretly be a snow bridge with a pocket of air under it. It’s frankly terrifying.

(For the record, Sherpas climb the icefall at a much, much higher rate than clients. First, the icefall doctors map the route and lay the ladders. Then, high altitude porters carry all the supplies up for the higher camps. Only then do the clients go, accompanied by Sherpa guides. It is incredibly unjust, in a way that I don’t think most climbers realize, because the icefall is a number’s game. The more times you cross it, the more likely you are to die. A lot of deaths in Everest are avoidable. Icefall deaths are not.)

So our killer needs to carry a body on their back up to the icefall, at night, when no other climbers are going, dump the body in a crevasse, and come back.

Did I mention you have to use lights? And that people are watching all the time, trying to see if the weather/ conditions are ok for groups to go up? And that the whole icefall is visible from camp?

And for the record, the icefall is where most of the bodies at the Nepal base camp come from. Avalanches from the icefall have hit base camp before. Sometimes… parts… come down, especially as Everest gets warmer and the icefall becomes even more dangerous.

(Cont.)

Ok. So.

I know this prompt is just for fun, and I love me a good mountaineering mystery. Heck, I found a lot of this information out ‘cause I’m trying to write one. Buuut… death on Everest is a bit complicated, and while this premise is cool, I don’t think it’s practical.

(Not trying to be rude, or like an “um, actually” guy or anything. I just have really visceral reactions to the bodies on Everest, and a lot of respect for labor rights of its workers. So this is a favorite rabbit hole of mine, and I hope sharing a bit of it is helpful and/or inspirational to people too? Sorry OP).

So— geography. Everest can be climbed from the Nepal or Tibet side (south col or north). I know more about Nepal, and it is currently the more popular route, although that might change. Both sides have several base camps. Anyone who does on the lowest one can count as a “body on Mt Everest”.

Problem is, getting to base camp in Nepal is a pain. The trek to base camp is popular with hikers- it’s long, and people have died from altitude sickness on the way to Everest. It’s rare for people to even carry their own bags— everything is brought in by low altitude porters (who are Nepali but never Sherpas.)

How about Tibet? That’s easier for our killer, cause there’s a road to base camp. It’s harder, because there’s also a police station.

See, bodies kind of can’t go missing in the lowest parts of Everest. They show up at base camp, sure, especially in Nepal. (I’ll get to why). But base camp is an expensive, long term, hurry-up-and-wait situation. Nepal especially keeps an incredibly close eye on base camp’s population— because literally every grain of rice is carried up the whole trail by a lowland porter. It’s not somewhere you can stay for long at all without being noticed. Tibet, a little easier, cause road, but let’s face it, a body’s gonna be noticed there too.

So that involves taking the body up the mountain (or preying on climbers+ expedition workers exclusively, but I’ll get to that later too).

You are not taking the body up the mountain.

(Cont.)

Lol if Jesus is southern then Satan must be from the Bronx

Love the light hearted comical take. Kinda gives me dogma vibes.

Those adorations mounted on every church wall and displayed in cheap frames on every Catholic retiree's credenza next to the family porcelain collection, actually got his look spot on. Gaunt, bearded, Kurt Cobain hair but darker. Pictures of Jesus the world over seemed...accurate.

But the most shocking thing about Jesus, who sat there in front of me, surrounded by people hanging on his every word, was that he was white.

Whiter than me and I'm from Minnesota and have Scotish roots. If I run outside naked on a snowy Christmas morning I'll be invisible. I'd only just arrived but before I stumbled upon this scene I was the odd man out (even having accounted for the era and come dressed to blend in). Everyone else: the Romans, the Middle Easterners, were all darker-skinned. I thought that my time machine journey to Jerusalem would have at least proven out the obvious: that Jesus was white-washed over two millennia.

Not true.

There he sat. And there I stood. Confounded.

When my initial shock started to wane that's when I became aware of the fact that Jesus himself, messiah and savior of all mankind, so I read... was staring me down with a rageful resolve that I'd only ever seen from my son when I'd take away a toy as punishment. I grimmaced, but his hard glaring eyes didn't break. Then I picked up on a twitch of his head. An indication to meet.

I walked behind the bazaar wall where he'd been, I don't know, holding court? I don't know how to describe the market-sized adulation. Somehow though he'd placated them to occupy themselves and had escaped. This I knew because now we were alone. He still held that rageful look, and I was still its target.

"What are you doing here, goddamn it?" he hissed, suddenly.

"Goddamn it? That's... out of character. How the hell? You speak English?"

"Ya damn right. I know the noggin' of an American in any century. Just what in tarnation are you doin' here?"

"Are you... are you southern? Wait... I have questions--"

"You better saddle up back on whatever time funky horse you rode in on and get back to your age, or you'll have us both caught out!"

"You're not Jesus you're some guy from... from Texas?"

"I am Jesus, you goddamn neophyte!" He caught himself and continued at a lower volume. "You need to leave here."

"Tennessee? Georgia? I think I can place Alabama and Louisiana but my ear isn't that trained. You're an American, that's clear to me."

"Why are you here?"

"I built a time machine. I wanted to see Jesus. Wasn't planning on talking to him. In English. In American."

He was muttering under his breath. "First time this has happened..."

"What?"

"You gotta go. Not the time, not the place."

"Do you speak the languages here? How do they not know you're foreign... and... timeless?"

"You want answers, partner? I ain't got 'em, Sam Hill."

"Tarnation? Sam Hill? Man, what year are you from? Are you Jesus Jesus or have I stumbled into some off-putting parallel dimension where you've found yourself comically replacing him? But then how can you speak Aramaic?"

"I'm busy saving the world, fella. There's your answer, now skeedattle!"

"But wait--!"

He'd given me once last hard glare before he turned and shuffled back out into the bazaar.

I had to sit down. I sat on an old basket full of soddy woolen sheets. A million questions still rolled around my head. But the questions were so non-sensical, the situation so bizarre, that my brain couldn't do anything. I could hear myself laughing, and I floated up into a morbid out of body experience, observing myself sitting there in the dark, a time traveler in the midst of discovery.

After ten minutes of this, I came to my senses. I went back to my time machine and initiated the return trip. A flash of light, and I was back in 2022, in Foley, Minnesota.

Everything looked the same. Same furniture, same house, same doting family. Same Netflix line-up, same neighbors and cars. I drove around. Same town. Same church. I should've been glad that I hadn't irreversibly changed anything, but all I could think was... what the Sam Hill is going on?

I had to go back. Because, honestly... wtf.

​

/r/velabasstuff

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Good story mate. It was a really fun take on the prompt.

Or a useful shield the player can still fight through

racks shotgun and levels it at the intruder

Who THE F*** are you!? I think you’re in the WRONG house mate.

That was a very casual quest haha.

[Exposition: Cool]

"Protect me from what?" Leah forced the question out even as the strange teenager made himself comfortable on her couch. The past few minutes had been a whirlwind of emotions and events; and, she was determined to not let get herself swept up in everything. She was still in her own house. The pale, athletic, blue-haired teen looked at her from the couch with a confused look on his face.

"Wait, did you just ask me something?" he asked. Leah couldn't help but laugh at his nerve.

"WHAT?" her voice came out loud between her obnoxious chuckles. "You're a stranger that comes into my house from god-knows-where and you say, 'I'll protect you', and make yourself at home?? Of course I have questions," she said. "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU???"

"Oh nooooo...," the teen shut his eyes tight as if he were doing complex math in his mind. He was obviously debating something and Leah found it curious that she was willing to let him. She wanted to grab him, shake him and toss him out onto the lawn for stepping into her house uninvited. But, as she stood there, the motivation to do anything dissolved as soon as she decided on it. It couldn't have been a coincidence that she got a death-threat tossed through the window minutes before she found the stranger in her house. But, as confident as she was that the two incidents were related somehow, she felt that he was trustworthy deep down in her soul. Then, he opened his eyes suddenly and smiled.

"Nothing's changed," he said. He looked up at her from the couch. "What's your favorite number?" he asked.

"One!" Lean blurted the answer out. The teen nodded to reaffirm himself. He patted the couch next to himself to invite her to sit on her own couch. "I get credit for completing the quest as long as you survive, even if you're Awake," he said.

"What are you talking about?" Leah asked as she sat next to him.

"My name's Frost by the way," he introduced himself by extending his hand.

"Leah," she shook it briefly, then let go of his surprisingly chilly hand.

"So, let's start knocking out those questions," Frost grinned. He raised his left hand upward and frigid white mist began flowing out of his palm. Leah felt a chill run down her spine as the air around them began to crystallize. Then, she felt cool air around her feet too. She leaned forward and realized that Frost was sealing them inside a sphere of snow. White frosty walls were rising from the ground and closing from above them. It only took seconds before they were comfortably sealed inside.

"First of all, I don't really know what I'm protecting you from. The quest generates random monsters every time," he said.

"Why do you keep calling it a quest?" she asked him. Despite being surrounded by ice, Leah still felt comfortable.

"'Cause it's a quest," Frost shrugged. "I'm playing a game and I need to protect you to get a Paladin ability," he replied.

"What?" Leah was stunned by his casual reply. "You're playing a game and you need to protect me.... what does that make me?" she asked. Frost chuckled.

"Well, until recently, you were just an NPC," he said. "Now, you're not. After I get credit for the quest I'll take you to Mundo; he'll explain everything I can't." The crashing sound of glass sounded on the other side of the ice wall; then, it was followed by a roar. Soon, pounding began on the snow sphere.

"Don't worry, they can't break through," Frost said. Leah believed him; but, she wasn't sure if it mattered either way.

"I'm an NPC....?" she mumbled the question to herself.

"You were," Frost replied. "But now you can choose what you want to do instead of getting protected from assassinations all the time. The best part is you can make your own character now," he added. Leah perked up at that. Games had always been a hobby of hers; at least, she felt like they were. She understood what an NPC was and the thought that she was ever one left her unsettled. But, things were different now. If she understood him correctly, that meant she could play the game from the other side now.

"I can make my own character??" she asked. She scooted closer to Frost and found it easier to block out the pounding and screeching happening outside the frosty ball. "What are my choices?"

"Uhh, it's kind of involved," Frost said. "There are 25 classes, 25 races, and 10 souls."

"Oooh! That's a lot of options," Leah's inner gamer peeked out some more. "So, I pick a race and a class... what are the souls for?"

"Kind of the same thing," Frost nodded. "Your race choice consists of two parts; Body and Soul. So, you get to choose two races. You can choose any of the 25 races for the body; but, the Soul options have an extra 10 choices."

"Huh?" Leah asked. "You get to be two races?"

"Well, let me just explain what I am," Frost replied.

"My class is: Paladin. I picked Diamond Elemental for my body...," as he said it, his pale skin and insides turned translucent. Leah found herself chatting with a clear, crystalline mannequin for a moment before he took on his normal pale color again. It happened so fast and naturally that it didn't even occur to Leah to be surprised. He'd already proven he was capable of amazing things and she hoped he was telling the truth about everything.

"...I also picked Vampire for my soul," he said. "Diamond Elemental gives me access to certain abilities and Vampire soul lets me equip some other ones. It really lets me customize how I want to play; and that's not even getting into the class specializations."

"Whoooaaa...," Leah was struck quiet with awe as her mind filled with combinations. She didn't know all 25 classes and 35 souls available; but, she imagined a lot of them to be standard fantasy classes and races. It was in the silence that she realized there were no more sounds coming from outside the snowglobe. Then, Frost chuckled as the sphere began to disintegrate around them.

"Congratulations, you survived," he said. She was only worried for a moment before the sphere fell away completely and she could see the rest of her house. She imagined it to be a mess; but, it was perfect and pristine as she left it. As it always was. "Ready to go meet Mundo and make your character?" he asked as he stood from the couch.

"Yeah....," Leah nodded as she rose to her feet too. She was relieved when her house wasn't destroyed; but, the more she thought about it, the more she realized she wasn't a particularly neat person. She'd never put any effort into cleaning the house. Somehow, it was always just clean. That realization unsettled her the most. As she studied the immaculate, too-large-for-one-person home she decided something. If what Frost was about to show her was as magical as she hoped, she'd never see this house again.

"...I'm ready to create the new me."

***
Thank you for reading! I’m responding to prompts every day. This is story #1788 in a row. (Story #343 in year five.). This story is part of an ongoing saga that takes place at a high school in my universe. It began on August 22nd and I will be adding to it with prompts every day until May 26th. They are all collected in order at this link.

Personally, I would want to preserve the original me alongside cybernetic me so that we can split up our tasks and I can update my memories with his so i would have the memories of two people. If there’s a problem with memory capacity, I would just keep the technical knowledge of anything me #1 is able to learn

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Woah! Love that twist.. what are they hiding?

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