Far North Beta 0 (Carnivores Creepypasta)

I used to be a big fan of Carnivores mods. I had a lot of fun playing the many little games people had made from the Carnivores games, and out of all of them my favorite had to have been Carnivores: Far North. It was such a great reimagining of the Ice Age games, which in my own personal opinion had been a bit lackluster, but that’s just my own opinion. I was always such a big fan of the mod, and had always awaited new releases and looked at the frequent updates on the Carnivores Saga Official Discord. That is, until a few nights ago. It was a summer Saturday night, and I had been playing a couple of Carnivores mods throughout the night. I was hopping through a couple different mods, Triassic, Mandibles, Divergent, Migration, and of course Far North. I was having such a good time playing them that I didn’t realize how late it was until I looked, it was almost 3 AM. I decided to check the Moddb page of Far North one last time before I hit the hay, just in case there were any new updates. To my surprise, there was an update. But it wasn’t just the usual new images I expected, it was much more.

When I loaded up the moddb page, I was greeted with an entirely new download of Carnivores: Far North. This was weird, since I had heard nothing about a new download being released anytime soon. The title was simple, “Carnivores: Far North Beta Zero”. This confused me, why was it titled Beta Zero if there had already been multiple betas? Whatever the reason, I downloaded the file immediately and decided to check the Carnivores Discord for more information. I looked around and found no new messages in the Carnivores: Far North channel. I asked about the new download, but people seemed confused and asked what I was talking about. It was when people started saying they couldn’t see the download either that I realized something was wrong. I checked back on the moddb page to find what I downloaded, but I couldn’t. I checked all over the page, and I found no trace of the download, as if it had simply disappeared. I even checked my history, and there was nothing there. Could I have just imagined the page? I had only looked at it for less than a minute, maybe I had just imagined the page from being so tired. I decided to do one last hunt in a Carnivores mod, and then go to sleep. I checked my browser to pick a mod, when I noticed something I haven’t forgotten to this day.

In the middle of my desktop was a link to a mod I had never seen before. It was titled simply, “Far North - Beta Zero”. What was really unusual about how it looked was the icon, which had the Hyaenodon replaced with the Sarkastodon. The Sarkastodon model had only been slightly teased on the discord, and didn’t even have animations at the time this happened, so I thought it was really strange to make it the flagship animal. If only I knew what I do now. As I looked at the icon, I realized something that perplexed me. For all Carnivores mods, you’d have to unzip the file and manually add a shortcut in order to get such an icon on your browser. I had done none of these steps, and the mod had seemingly done it all on its own. I began rationalizing this as a new coding innovation for how the files worked, as I had seen how Jurassic Park Revolution downloaded like a real 90s game, but I still felt... uneasy. Something about this file gave me a sense of imminent dread, but I decided to check it out before going to bed. I clicked on the icon. Everything was normal until I reached the main menu. The Hyaenodon that used to be there had been replaced by a Sarkastodon. Again, I thought this was an unusual choice for a flagship, but even stranger was how it looked. It stood rigidly, with its face turned directly at the viewer, in this case me. At the time I thought I was crazy, but I felt the eyes were staring directly into my very soul. THat might sound dramatic, but they way the thing looked really made me uneasy. I clicked on the hunt menu soon after, but I wish I hadn’t.

The hunt menu was drastically different from anything I had ever seen in a Carnivores mod, I have trouble as to how I know to and where to even start. The first thing I noticed were the maps. All of the maps were replaced with glitched text I couldn’t select, except for one called “Memory’s Sorrow”. Its description said something about not entering the location and the menu image looked corrupted. I thought the name was kind of stupid, but in a way it felt foreboding. Overall I just laughed that part off, but I couldn’t ignore the huntable roster. It was the same situation there, with everything being glitched text and unelectable, except for one animal. The spot where the Hyaenodon should have been was replaced with something else, the “Sarkastodon”. I was confused, until I moused over the name. The menu image for the Sarkastodon popped up, and I was shocked by what I saw. The Sarkastodon didn’t look like the normal one, but instead was colored blood red and had piercing black eyes. The scariest thing about it was that the blood looked very realistic, almost like it was really real. The description for it said nothing. After I laid eyes on the creature, I had an overwhelming urge to exit the game, delete the file, and never think about Far North Beta Zero ever again… but my curiosity got the best of me. I picked a random gun, but couldn’t take any accessories because they were all glitched too. I took one last look at the Sarkastodon, took a deep breath, and pressed “HUNT”.

As soon as the map loaded up, I wanted to exit right away. The landscape was unlike anything I had ever seen in a Carnivores game. The sky was the first thing that stood out to me. The sky was completely black, except for a few blood red clouds. Somehow, this made the rest of the landscape darker, as if the sun had just set. When I saw the ground, I was very frightened. The ground was colored blood red, and the blood looked almost real… no… more than real. There were no trees in sight, just a rugged, bloody landscape. Strangest of all, I could hear no sounds on the map, it was completely silent. As I looked at my screen, I began to overcome my nerves and started moving around. The map looked the same wherever I went, bloody hills under a black sky. Soon I realized I had no idea where I was going, and opened the map. As I did this, I discovered the map was shaped like a screaming face, with black eyes that seemed to stare into me. The water surrounding it was blacker than black. I immediately closed the map when I noticed the face began slowly growing in size, seeming to come even closer to me. I had no idea how something like that could ever be done in a Carnivores mod, but I rationalized it by thinking it was just an optical illusion I had imagined, though I didn’t have the nerve to reopen the map. As I wandered, I began to wonder why on earth Ophious, the creator of Carnivores: Far North, would upload something like this in the middle of the night and then delete it soon after. It just didn’t make any sense to me, which put me even more on edge.

I continued walking aimlessly until I saw something that stopped me dead in my tracks. In the distance, A temple had appeared out of the darkness. It was a large temple, around the same size as the Pyramids in Shmu-Hadron. It looked egyptian in style, but it wasn’t a pyramid, being more rectangular in shape. As I walked toward the temple, I began hearing quiet sounds. They were almost silent whispers, and they were the first noise I had heard on the map besides my footsteps. As I walked closer and closer to the temple, the whispers grew louder and louder. When I reached the entrance of the temple, the whispers suddenly completely stopped. I looked up and saw a symbol above the temple door, a screaming face similar to the one I had seen on the map. I looked into the temple and saw nothing but pitch black from within. I took another deep breath and walked blindly into the temple. It felt like an eternity of walking through complete darkness, but it probably only took 15 seconds for something to happen. And what did happen made me regret everything.

In a split second, the temple was filled with a bright light, illuminating everything within. What I saw terrified me. Covering the walls of the temple were hunters, who were seemingly impaled on spikes sticking out of the walls. Immediately the sounds of screaming filled the room. Besides being impaled, the hunters were covered in wounds that were obviously delivered by teeth and claws, and it was then I realized no human could have done this… this had to have been an animal. In my fright, I pressed shift and ran out of the temple as fast as I could move. Once I was outside, the screaming stopped. I was once again alone… until I saw a shape in the distance begin to come over the hills.

The shape was far away, but there were some features I could still make out despite the darkness. It was colored red, it had a bulky frame, it ran on four legs, and was coming straight for me. As the creature approached, I realized exactly what it was. The Blood Red Sarkastodon. I pulled out my gun and began to shoot at it, but both the darkness or the distance made me miss almost every shot. As the monster came closer I could easily recognize its features. Its dripping blood red fur, teeth as sharp as knives, and piercing black eyes were all noticeable, and they were all headed straight for me. I kept shooting, but every shot that hit did nothing to slow down the Blood Red Sarkastodon. I kept shooting, but it was no use. the Blood Red Sarkastodon lunged at me, and it got me. I sat staring at the dead hunter, with the Blood Red Sarkastodon looming over it. But instead of the usual screen spinning while the carnivore fed on the hunter you’d normally see in a Carnivores death screen, neither of these things happened. The screen stood completely still in front of the Sarkastodon, which stared directly at me with its black eyes. It must have sat there, just staring at me, for over a minute. Then, instead of the “Continue?” screen popping up, a different message was shown, reading “I WILL GET YOU”. Suddenly, the Blood Red Sarkastodon lunged towards the screen. This scared me so badly that I fell out of my chair and hit my head on the floor, knocking me out cold.

I woke up the next morning with a pain in my head and back from the fall. I immediately tried to find the mod I just played, but I couldn’t. Far North Beta Zero was nowhere to be found on my computer, and I checked everywhere. It had simply vanish from my hard drive, as if it had never been there in the first place. I checked the Carnivores: Far North moddb page again, nothing new there. I asked on the discord again, no one had heard anything about a “Far North Beta Zero” or a “Blood Red Sarkastodon”. I even asked Ophious himself. He thought I was joking when I first brought it up and just sent back “Sarkastodon is the Big Chungus of the Far North” jokes, but as he realized I was being sincere he denied ever uploading a Beta Zero or even having any knowledge of its existence. He even confirmed that the Sarkastodon was, at the time, still unanimated. This lack of any evidence for what I saw made me fearful that perhaps I had just imagined or dreamed the whole thing up… but I know that can’t be true. I know what I saw was really there, and the pain from hitting my head is my own proof. Later, I tried to brush off what happened. I wanted to enjoy Carnivores: Far North without being afraid something would appear. But as I was doing a normal hunt on the Far North Beta 2.1, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. For a split second, I saw those familiar black eyes once again on the corner of my screen. I know I could just be seeing things, but I’m not that kind of person and it all feels so real. I feel that It WILL get me. Let this be a warning to anyone who may read this, If you see a strange download for a nonexistent beta on the Far North mod at 3 AM, do not download it. I’m not sure what will happen to me, if anything, but I don’t want anyone else to have to see what I did. Please, or it will get you.