Episode 5
Both Gollum and his bootlegged CTHULHU DAGGER existed only on Will’s personal computer, which had been masked, disguised, and rerouted so his location could only be narrowed to Dunwich campus. DCC refused to shut down their network without proper legal procedure. Short of finding Gollum the Goblin and “physically” killing the PC, moderators had almost no hope of ending the MERC’s career.
Was it chance or fate
that brought Gollum the Goblin to the hands of Andy McCarthy and Duke at
a dockside tavern in Corinth? Gollum was delivering an artifact known
as LAPIS EXILIS that he took from a tribe of Fire Ogres in the
Salamander Desert to the east. Will had been paid $30 to collect the
item for a dwarf named Balin played by a girl named Lilly Kat. Will
detected Duke and his White Knights approaching on the OverWorld, and
was in the process of slipping out the back door.
King Dagon ruined
everything. Just as Gollum the Goblin stepped into the back alley
leading to the main road out of Corinth, King Dagon surged from the
ocean, tossing aside three docks, toppling a dozen ships, permanently
ending the lives of 42 PC’s, and flattening the sword shop next to the
tavern. The alley filled with rubble, causing 74 points of damage to
Gollum the Goblin, and cut off Will's escape route.
Andy McCarthy was as
surprised as anyone to see King Dagon, but that wasn’t enough to waver
from his prize. Being a designer to the game meant Duke could not find a
death as permanent as that of other PC’s stomped to goo by King Dagon.
Gollum the Goblin was a much more appetizing target.
DUKE: You are guilty of mercenary action, punishable by termination. Surrender peacefully.
GOLLUM THE GOBLIN: fight
Neither
White Knights or Imperial Soldiers were impervious to the CTHULHU
DAGGER. Will killed two of Duke's guard before Gollum the Goblin was
surrounded. Gollum fought valiantly, but was horribly outnumbered and
unequipped for face-to-face melee. Andy
McCarthy and Duke stood back and watched as the most notorious MERC in
the TAO world was cut down. All Gollum’s weapons and armor were left in a
spinning backpack floating above the cobblestone.
King Dagon was paying attention. It ran “MERC”
through the Sephiroth search engine. Then King Dagon searched
“real-world money.” Then “Real World.” A subsequent search for “money”
came up with practical personal finance advice, calculators and
investing tips with business news, stock quotes, and financial market
coverage, effectively showing the monster the heartbeat of this
new-found “real-world.” For the first time, the monster came to
understand the difference between what happened inside TAO, and its
connection to everything else across the Internet.
The average person
could not use a simple web-search as a jumping-off point to hijack the
global economy, but King Dagon was different. Being itself a computer
program, the monster was able to follow other paths and avenues through
the digital world and slide it’s tendrils into banks and financial
institutions. Only a few hours were required before King Dagon was able
to route all money in the “real-world” through TAO to a series of
SpectraCom bank accounts.
Great. I'm glad you're writing more to this.
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