Newbie tries to find out more so starts with the Subetapedia. Nothing about Neugarten in the holiday section. Gunter is still listed as an Alegarten shopkeeper. His entry says he's gone vegan and "he feels guilty over what happened between him and his brother over the brewery". Nothing about him confessing to his brother's murder or being held in an SAI detention facility. The Bubbles entry doesn't say Gunter murdered him.

Newbie finds the Gunter entry in the Subeta Wiki. They learn that Inspector Thorpe was involved but the article doesn't say that Thorpe was on holiday in Veta at the time. They also learn that rumours were presented as shopkeeper greetings but these are lost forever unless staff made a note of them.

Following the link to Bubbles they learn that - "It was previously thought that the two brothers simply had a falling out, but after a recent battle challenger was added it was revealed that Gunter murdered Bubbles by drowning him in a mash tun in the brewery they formally ran together. " They can also read the conversation reported in the news. There's nothing about the Well Hung Meat battle challenger, though. The description for this challenger is an important part of the story because it reveals Gunter's state of mind when he confessed.

I managed to find two more News posts relating to the story.

Alegarten Updates Gunter explains why he's changing Alegarten to Neugarten. It includes " Ze real time to enjoy a cool crisp beer und a delicious vegan hot dog is in ze summer."

Neugarten, the new Alegarten Gunter says he's turned over a new leaf by going fully vegan.

The comments include this one -

PS: Thorpe's Subetapedia entry doesn't mention Gunter.

Before we move on, I've been waiting to hear if there's any story development from a third source that haven't been covered much yet: the NPCs other than Gunter.

So far, we have info mostly from these two sources, and from the same person with some from Bubbles. I think their reliability may be questionable, and they tend to be in practice.

1. The Nightmare Items and Posts There are many possible hints and details revealed, but did everything actually happen? Is it even the whole dream? (link to Bubbles) (link to Gunter)

2. Gunter's Confession Letter Were all the details and motivations true to the fullest extent and without omission? Gunter's explanation to Anne is missing everything about Oatmeal from his nightmares. url=https://subeta.net/explore/letter.php[/url]

I've been tracking down information from various news posts which can be found through Google. See more about this in my Help Forum topic Need Help With Gunter Story

I've only found two monthly archive pages so far (June and July 2018) so I have no idea how many other relevant bits and pieces might have been scattered around. The announcement about Alegarten being moved is dated 10/1/17 but I don't know if there's anything else between that and Bubbles as a Thursday challenger on 02/8/18. I need to find the monthly archive pages because all the news posts for each month will be listed in date order.

The shopkeeper greetings for the 2018 Neugarten don't seem to be available to read anywhere. If nobody can remember the details of these messages I'll try pinging a staff member and asking if staff have a copy of them,

Gunter's confession shows that he killed his brother before he adopted Oatmeal.

Gunter also says this -

We learned that Gunter wrote the letter in this news post dated 07/7/18 A Grave Confession The Well Hung Meat post is dated 06/25/18. I think this nightmare relates to things being brought to the surface. It reveals Gunter's state of mind but there was no need for him to write an account of his nightmare in his letter to Anne.

PS From Gunter's Nightmare

Unless Gunter has been murdering other people this seems to mean (1) Why is Oatmeal different to the other goats killed for food? (2) Why was his brother like the other goats killed for food?

Just an FYI, all of the monthly archives can be found here (link). It's also linked at the top of the news page.

LOL. I feel stupid now. I never noticed that link at the top of the news page. I only knew about the numbered links at the bottom.

Thank you for pointing it out. It will make life so much easier.

PS: My efforts with google weren't entirely wasted, though, because it's the quickest way of finding posts which mention NPCs. I can then look at the post date and go to the relevant archive page.

No problem! I don't think there is anything more to this story before the NPC & nightmare challenger stuff from last year, but that will make it easier to go through the older months to check, if you want. :)

I think I've discovered why Gunter is still stuck in the SAI.

Friendly Thursday: Gunter dated 06/14/18

It looks like we could visit Gunter at the Brewery for this even though Neugarten didn't start until June 22, 2018. To get him as a challenger now we have to visit him at SAI HQ (see 2018 section)

Gunter doesn't run or own the Brewery any more so players who still need him as a battle challenger can't go there to annoy him. This doesn't mean he shouldn't have a proper trial and sentence, though, as part of the story's conclusion.

There are just so many bits of lore everywhere. Eventually, they need to be sorted chronologically (in addition to their release dates) because order matters to avoid arriving to the wrong conclusion.

Especially confusing is Oatmeal. I have doubts about the Oatmeal nightmare being a factor or just a red herring in Gunter's motives. Oatmeal is very important in the sense that it convinced Gunter to be vegan, but its importance in the murder seems unclear. There were suggestions or rumors that went as far to say that Gunter was protecting Oatmeal, but I'm not fully convinced with very flimsy evidence related to the nightmare. Also, you said Gunter killed his brother before he adopted Oatmeal.

Also, the letter raises many questions. I want to go to SAI and ask Gunter, but he's still not talking after an year lol. Is he hiding something?

According to the Subeta Wiki - (1) The Great Pandemic was 2009 (2) the first Survival festival was 2010 and (3) Oatmeal was introduced as one of the July 2014 Peka-Boo attractions.

I'm trying to find out when Bubbles was introduced as a shopkeeper. The Lost Skeleton was on the site in 2012 and he was the shopkeeper there in Feb 2014 going by the comments for this news post - Infected Vials

I find it very tiring checking through all the posts in the archives if I don't come up with correct search words in Google. If I find anything later on I'll add it as a PS to this post or in a new post if someone has replied to this.

Well Hung Meat - I can only provide my own interpretation of what this description is about.

There's been no indication that the Brewery has a farm with its own slaughterhouse but there will be a slaughterhouse somewhere. The challenger is called Industrial Slaughterhouse which suggests that it's one used for animals from all the farms in the area.

Everything in the nightmare is symbolic. It's not a factual account of what actually happened.

1. Burkhard drowned in a Brewery mash tun. He wasn't killed in a slaughterhouse.

2. Quote

   Somebody is laughing, a deep bellowing laugh that you&;ve heard before, but it hasn&;t been so sinister as this.

The nightmare conjurers up a memory from the past (the sound of Burkhard's laughter) only this time it's sinister as if Burkhard is going to hurt the dream Oatmeal.

3. Quote

   The laughter turns to screams. The fearful bleating of a beloved pet goat, mixed with the screams of man. A man that did not want to die.

Burkhard didn't want to die and he was terrified as he drowned. Dream Oatmeal represents all the animals who ended up as sausages. They didn't want to die either and they would have been terrified as they were led to their deaths in the slaughterhouse.

My conclusion. After Gunter learned to love Oatmeal he started thinking about all the animals who ended up as sausages. He knew he could never eat Oatmeal so he started wondering why it was right to eat other animals. Every time he made sausages he thought of these animals being slaughtered and this was a constant reminder of him killing his brother. He tried to fool himself by thinking that going vegan would atone for killing his brother as well as for eating animals or turning them into food items. It didn't work, though.

Now to your questions. These are just my own ideas, of course. People will have to refer to your post for the context so I don't run into the character limit.

1. "is this is only motive?" I think it's the only motive. Gunter always felt inferior to his brother. When Burkhardt took over the brewery he wasn't very good at running it. Gunter was angry and resented his brother being in charge.

2)"This paragraph (about Gunter's drinking problem) seems out of place as if it was before the murder." Gunter originally thought that his brother was acting irresponsibly but realising that his own drinking problem resulted in acting irresponsibly gave him insight into what happened in the past. Deliberately 'forgetting' to turn on mash tuns out of anger and resentment wasn't responsible behaviour on Gunter's part.

3. "What's the significance with the vermin here?" Burkhardt liked rats and he continued to do so after he became an Unliving. From the Subetapedia Bubbles entry - "Has taken to caring for the rats that hang around his place. He's named them all and is the only one who can tell them all apart." A lot of people like rats and have them as pets but a Brewery isn't a good place to keep them. Gunter, meanwhile, didn't understand why his brother liked them until after he learned to love Oatmeal.

4)"One day, when is that? There's nothing about what happened afterwards with the body. Wouldn't Anne ask about it?" We don't know how Burkhardt became an Unliving yet. Maybe the body got up and walked away before Gunter had a chance to bury it. On the other hand, maybe everyone accepted Gunter's explanation that Burkhardt died in an accident so he had a conventional funeral. Then, one day, people noticed that the grave had been disturbed and the body was missing.

5. "But responsiblity and tireness for the job and murder are two different things. Isn't there a more precise explaination?" The real explanation is in the Well Hung Meat description. Gunter knows that Anne was hurt by her father's death so he didn't put "I had a horrible nightmare about your father screaming in a slaughterhouse" in his letter.

Thank you for your interpretations and explanations.

About why Gunter's stuck at SAI, I wouldn't say that is necessary. He could still move around while the lore is progressing. Right now, you can battle him while he's in custody! Perhaps even if he's banished to the Darkside salt mines. I wouldn't wonder about it too much haha.

I agree, the nightmares are symbolic. However, since the nightmares depicted a murder which did happen, it lured people to create theories using the nightmares as the sole source. So way back to my question "did everything actually happen (in the nightmares)?" I believe the answer would be: "If it happened you won't know for certain just using nightmares as the only source."

I also don't know when Gunter started having the drinking problem. After the murder, he's drunk for sure, as we saw for many years. He didn't say "I always had a problem with drinking" or since xyz. I don't have enough info to deduce it's the root of his problems that made him act irresponsibly. Also just a curiosity, why didn't he try to quit drinking like being vegan if it's bad for him or contributed to bad things in the past?

Someone has to intervene and do the first step of moving the body out of the mash tun. Chances are it's Gunter. Not Anne for sure. She was asking where her father was, for a while at Quick Bites I must add. There may have been a burial, but not a conventional funeral because Anne would have been notified, and wouldn't be asking about his whereabouts until Gunter's letter.

Also maybe I was overthinking about the tiredness. I believe the tiredness is because the guilt never goes away. I don't know if there's a better way to word it.

People came up with theories based on Oatmeal being mentioned in the text with the nightmare, but says in the comments "Bubbles died before Oatmeal came to live with Gunter!" and since she's a staff member I would consider that to be an official source. So any theory that Bubbles was going to kill Oatmeal and that's why Gunter killed him is just misinterpreting the symbolism.

I pretty much agree with 's interpretation above, so I won't repeat all that here lol.

Sometimes Subeta doesn't make sense where gameplay is concerned. From what I remember, Anne, Wesley, Rumi and Shanti were still serving in their own shops at the same time as they were in the Brewery shops. :D

I was thinking in general terms here, though. If Gunter had been taken to an ordinary prison somewhere the staff would have had to provide a prison location link so people could still get him as a challenger. I'm guessing that Lower West Side would be the easiest place to put a prison location because it doesn't have a map yet. It would have been unnecessary work, though, when there was an existing link to the SAI on the main Subeta map.

The word, forgetting, in the first sentence is in quote marks. My own interpretation - it's what's called a Scare Quote

When Gunter had a bad day he ended up thinking something like "Why should I do all the work while Burkhart goofs around?" He then chose not to turn on some of the mash tuns out of pettiness and told Burkhart he'd forgotten to do it.

I'm going to speculate now. Maybe Gunter did try to stop drinking and ended up with a bout of Alcoholic hallucinosis

"Auditory and visual hallucinations, most commonly accusatory or threatening voices" is a good description of Gunter's slaughterhouse nightmare.

We have no idea what happened immediately after Burkhart drowned. Anne says "Where on Subeta is my father?" not "Where on Subeta is my father's body?" We can speculate for fun but we're missing vital information - how Burkhart became a zombie after he was dead. :( As for when he died, it can't have been before 2009 when zombies first appeared (The Great Pandemic).

Anyway back to the murder because I find it very disturbing. When Gunter snapped he didn't pick up something heavy, bash Burkhart over the head and then think "Oh, no. I've killed him" before turning himself in. He pushed his brother into the mash tun, shut the lid and, even though he turned away, he listened to his brother screaming. He didn't come to his senses until the noises stopped and he realised his brother was dead. He then hid his dirty secret for years.

He was still trying to hide his secret at the start of Neugarten on 06/22/18. He had his nightmare on 06/25/18 but he didn't think of confessing until July 7, 2018 after the rumours (whatever they were) had been spreading. Did he suspect that his secret was going to be discovered so decided to confess because he thought it would look better at a trial?

Is there a copy of the shopkeeper greetings/rumours text anywhere?

PS: Bubbles was running The Lost Skeleton in 2012 because we had to visit him for The Shadowglen Underground plot. The shop was called a pub and it seems as though it was only selling drinks then

@ Ciannwn There were earlier posts about Anne throwing the user directly into the middle of the lore without a compass (giving the link to Gunter's confession letter). Anne's dialogue asking about her father's whereabouts is just as confusing, although it shouldn't be.

Anne was asking everybody the same question about her father's whereabouts, even to those who only met her the first time. Why is she assuming that a total stranger can identify him without giving the stranger any hints regardless if Bubbles is zombified?

In addition, there's no way to tell her "Hey, I think this is Bubbles over there" for years before Gunter's letter. If she knows he's been zombified, she would reply "Yes, that's him. Now why did he end up there?"

Also, nobody would ask about the whereabouts of a body who can't move, unless someone stole the corpse. But that would be "Where on Subeta is my father's body?" which she didn't ask.

Even today, Anne still hasn't acknowledged anything about Bubble's identity or his whereabouts.

After reviewing everything so far, this plot hole is so large that Anne could be complicit in the murder and playing games with the public, and that Gunter's confession could be fake. Imagine what a plot twist that would be for something this unexpected!

Anyhow, there's so much room for further development.

Edit: And story progression is held up by NPCs. This is fine for plots which makes you to go step by step to get involved. However, releasing lore in parts should be consistent with the timing of events which are unfolding.

I was hoping that if we didn't get a plot, we would at least get some more information about the story, and I think it would be very useful if the Subetapedia has a huge revamp (Because it really does need one) and had pages about previous plots. That way, newer users and those who have been on a break can find out what various things mean, like with Amy. I was lucky for the news to give a link to the story of the Omen Islands plot in my first year to find out what happened to her, but before that, I was confused over why Sarah said "I help new users like my little sister did" because it did sound as if she died (Which was right).

I know the staff are busy and probably focused more on releasing items and stuff, we have a suggestion thread about which parts of the Subetapedia need updating and some of us suggested that we could write some parts for it that we have enough information about, and then they can add the stuff we don't know about.

Bubbles and The Lost Skeleton (officially a pub which did have food items as well as drinks) were added to the site on 2/21/12. The Shadowglen Underground was a plot which introduced new areas of the Underground.

Going by clues in the plot - in Feb 2012 Bubbles had been in the Underground long enough to settle in, get brewing equipment and ingredients, brew a first stock of drinks. open a pub and become well known. This suggests that Gunter drowned him some time between 6th Feb 2009 and the earlier part of 2011. Everyone thought the first victims of the Pandemic were going down with a fluelike virus on the 6th Feb 2009 so there could have been an incubation period of a couple of weeks before that. We don't know where the infection started but a couple of weeks would be long enough for some of the first people infected to travel to other lands. The biting and scratching didn't start until after the first victims' disease had progressed.

We now know that Bubbles -

1. Still likes rats.

2. Must have vague memories of running the Brewery which also sold food - he brews drinks and runs a pub which sells food.

3. Has vague memories of his death which include an image of Gunter's face. (Mash Tun illustration and description.)

4. Gets very angry if he sees a bottle of Brewery drink. (Player knowledge so far.)

I'm starting to wonder how much of his memory loss is due to zombiefication and how much is due to his not wanting to remember.

I've been imagining fictional people in the fictional Subeta world going into her shop. :D

Customer 1 - I don't have time to read the letter now. I'm on my lunch break. I want a jacket potato with cheese and a strawberry milkshake, please. (Customer leaves Quick Bites thinking "I'm fed up with hearing about her letter every time I come in here.")

Customer 2 - I don't know where your father is. Have you tried reporting him missing to the police or putting a missing person ad in the Subeta Tribune?

(I'm assuming that most lands on Subeta have an ordinary police force .)

The first part of the story was tied in with Neugarten. (Gunter had that nightmare after he went fully vegan and turned Alegarten into a summer vegan festival). The SAI had their eye on Gunter for a while (A Grave Confession) so they don't restrict their investigations to Subeta festivals. (How long is a while, though? Days, weeks, months???) I can't think of any vitally important reason why the story couldn't be concluded in stages throughout the rest of this year. (The staff might have a reason, of course.)

Have now got visions of a future Neugarten. :D :D

Bubbles turns up at the Brewery and tells Anne "I am your father. Well, I think I am. I'm not sure."

Anne (in a confusion of shock, horror and delight) "Daddy! Would you like to read Gunter's letter?"