Chapter IV: Why Lok-ri needs better passwords
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"We have been called Roleplaying Carebears with no grasp of game mechanics, forever doomed to be irrelevant because of our guild makeup. We've been referred to as Developer Suckups and accused of getting free handouts on the sly. We were accused of being pretentious assholes who took the game entirely too seriously, using our Lore as an excuse to be bullies."
-Vorgen, leader of Lok-ri

That Vorgen is still out there somewhere, dressed like this, really creeps me out...

Zion downloaded an IRC client and signed on to the server used by most other Shadowbane guilds and proceeded to set up our forum. After he was done he checked to make sure he had spent about five minutes on the whole process so he could say he had done all the guild work he had time to do that day and then he proceeded to mess around for a few hours. First he went off to a chat room for a totally random (and mostly dead) guild that was so small I don't even remember the name of it now. When there wasn't anyone there he got bored rather quickly and decided he would need to stir up some trouble. First he changed his name to something that wouldn't be attached to the Golden Shields and then he joined the Lok-ri Chat.

I had been on IRC once and had, mostly to see what would happen, joined the Lok-ri chat. I, unlike Zion, was using my Golden Shields name at the time and everyone instantly stopped talking and started talking to me which was sort of creepy. Apparently when Zion entered the room as some totally unknown guy nobody gave him a second glance and to the best of my knowledge Zion never said a word. But even with the ability to watch the activities of the most hated guild in the Shadowbane community Zion was getting bored again and decided, mostly because he is an idiot, that he was going to "hack" into the chat and kick someone out. The only reason Zion thinks he is a hacker is because, as I said, he is an idiot. Amazingly enough however the guy who set up Lok-ri's forums was an even bigger idiot than Zion was (which is actually quite amazing) and he had picked quite possibly the worst password any elven guild could have. The password was ELVES. Zion guessed it on the first try.

Zion may be an idiot who thinks he is a hacker but he hadn't actually expected to get access. Now that he did have access he remembered that he had never actually given any real thought to what he was going to do if he did get access. The funny (and retarded) thing about IRC is that when someone has "operator" access to a chat room everyone can see it. But when someone has Admin access nobody can tell. So while Zion was pondering his next move things were going on as they always went on in the Lok-ri chat. This means the guild leader was spouting some sort of crazy "Pro-Elf Anti-everyone else" nonsense that was completely nerdy and retarded. Zion couldn't stand that for too long so finally he booted the guy with a funny message. So what all the Lok-ri members saw was something like this:

"(name of guild leader) was kicked for reason: BeCaUsE YoU aN ELF!!!"

At first everyone thought it was kind of funny. I mean, even the members of this guild can only listen to that bullshit for so long and not want to see the guy get kicked out of the chat. But after a few minutes people started to wonder who did it, why the leader hadn't come back yet and most of all they were wondering why other things were being changed to make fun of elves like the name of the chat and the topic. As people started to panic little by little Zion started to get bored again and finally he kicked about half of the chat room at once just so he could watch the other half squirm.

At least one person in the chat kept a clear head and managed to call what Zion described as an "IRC cop" when he relayed this story to me later. I'm almost 100% sure that wasn't what this guys actual title was. He was probably a mod or admin for this IRC server. For whatever reason, the person calling the "IRC cop" announced in the chat he was doing so and Zion saw it. This you would think is the point where Zion would just pat himself on the back for a job well done and leave before anything else went wrong. But we are talking about Zion here so he stayed in the chat to see this IRC cop for himself.

Once the cop got there it only took him a few minutes to identify the problem, unban all the banned people and explain to everyone "that random guy over there has admin access to this chat and he did all this stuff" and by itself that wouldn't have been a big deal. But once the leaders were back in the chat and understood that "that random guy over there" did everything they started to ask questions. Once the cop realized that Zion wasn't supposed to have admin access and nobody in the chat knew who he was he did a common WHOIS search to see what other chats Zion was in at the time. Zion didn't even know such a command existed or that it was available to anyone, not just IRC cops. Of course, he had been in only the Golden Shields room and that other random guilds chat room. Right away half the members of Lok-ri wanted to kill the Golden Shields and the other half wanted to kill the random guild AND the Golden Shields.

This is the point where I should mention Zion's personal favorite part of this story. One of the members of Lok-ri actually suggested that they transform their guild into a band of traveling assassins who would hunt down every member of the Golden Shields, not just across multiple Shadowbane servers, but even into other games. A large majority of Lok-ri members in the chat liked this idea allot, which should show you exactly what kind of people Lok-ri really are, despite their obviously false denials that they don't just exploit their lore to grief other players.

Again, Zion failed to make a run for the hills at this point and continued to stay and listen to the conversation. The leaders weren't convinced the Golden Shields or the other guild had done anything but they still had an issue that had to be taken care of first. The IRC cop could only give the new password for the chat to the real admin. For whatever reason he had to tell the leaders of Lok-ri this out loud rather than in a private message or email so Zion overheard the name of the person and that Lok-ri was going to email him and tell him to come to the chat right away. So Zion left the chat, changed his name again to match the name of the proper admin and rejoined the chat. IRC cop guy gives Zion the password and leaves again. Once again, Zion's dumb luck prevails over people who were just plain dumb.

Finally Zion decided to take a break for awhile and try to come up with a plan of what to do now and figure out how he was going to set it up so the Golden Shields wouldn't be blamed. But he couldn't think of anything so he emailed me a log of the chat and asked me to come up with one. It took me about five minutes. I picked out a guild I knew Lok-ri hated called "Aurora" which as a small ARAC guild that made no attempt to get along with the role players at all. They had become inactive after the Ubisoft incident so I knew they wouldn't mind if we borrowed their guild for awhile. I told Zion that the next time he "hacked" the chat he was going to tell Lok-ri that he was a super hacker from Aurora and that he could hack their chat any time he wanted to. This would piss them off allot and direct the blame on Aurora but as a bonus I told Zion to say that he was going to keep hacking the chat every day until all the elven guilds stopped acting like jerks on the forum.

Somehow, Zion pulled it off. He went back the next day at almost the same time that the legit chat admin was entering to find out why he had been emailed and told to visit the chat right away. I don't remember if Zion banned him or not but he sure banned allot of people and pretty much repeated the chaos from the day before. After that he had a private chat with the leader of Lok-ri and said what I told him to say.

After that Lok-ri started using the chat that belonged to another Elven guild which was invite only. They also quieted down on the forums a bit but that didn't last long. Lok-ri were born jerks and will likely die jerks, spamming forums with posts about how superior Blade Weavers are compared to Blade Masters with their dying breath.

Go on to the Next Chapter: Dungeon Siege