AIN SOPH Part 1

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.

The Internet learned greed.

Part 2