It has been awhile since I wrote. The Spring Semester ended awhile back, but I decided to stay the summer at the University for a couple important reasons.

First, my role in serving a balance of power for the Arturian Realm by leading the Physterrian Fleet, quite a powerful force now, through its many agendas could not be abandoned. This, of course, leads to my second reason: I am working with the other Members to have my leadership succeeded by another avatar in the case that I become the next Dungeonmaster. There have been numerous, overwhelming calls from various Members for myself to run as the next Dungeonmaster; and I have decided to answer.

In the meantime, there is a pressing issue with the Arturian Realm. Traditionally, the Realm is divided into a warm zone in its middle, two temperate zones on either side of that, and two arctic zones on the North and South ends. I had returned to the Physterrian Fleet, initially, to take on a quest to a regional port over in the Marlen Kingdom, where a small independent maritime guild consisting of a fleet of about three to five ships had a merchant-captain rebel and heist several ships from other guilds stationed at the port's Fifth Pier. They had boarded these ships, killed the crews aboard, forcing their avatars to have to ressurect, and then sent two of those commandeered ships to attack reinforcements that arrived. These pirates took over the Pier and had been putting up a fierce resistance that required outside help to overcome.

That is where my Physterrian Fleet came in. We attacked and quite easily put down the insurgency. However, as we were promised whatever wealth was aboard the flagship of the invading pirates, we boarded that vessel and discovered a locked chest. One of my top fighters went to open it, and picked the lock successfully. But it was a trap.

The trap was a Frost Spell, which froze to death all of my avatars aboard my ship, forcing them to respawn. But the frost spell was a chain reaction quite unstoppable. It not only froze the entire Fifth Pier and the entire harbor, it spread across the entire section of Arturian Sea surrounding the Marlen Kingdom, then spread South to Prestia, then West across Cresca to Parradin and Galacia. Before long, the entire Realm, including the warm zone, was hopelessly locked in a hard and permanent winter, the entire Realm a frozen wasteland.

To this day, the Arturian Realm remains as such. With one of our core principles mandating all of us to preserve a "balance in dynamics," this presents some obvious shortcomings. Yet we are at a loss for how to address the Big Freeze. What we do know is that this was meant to only affect either just the port or the Fifth Pier; the design of the Frost Spell trap was faulty in failing to prevent the catastrophic chain reaction that ensued. What we do not know is what that design was precisely, in other words, the pseudo-scripting used. The only way, at this point, is to find out the Member and avatar responsible. And we do not know that either. It is either someone who wished malicious intent against us or someone who floundered royally to cause this crisis and is now quite embarrassed to show face.

I was initially never in lieu with Dungeonmaster Landon or the Administrators. When the crisis happened, I respawned my avatar and begun converting my Physterrian Fleet from a group of ships to a group of traveling caravans, since I came to realize that the entire Arturian Sea was frozen over. I will say that this problem did create some interesting dynamics within the politics of questing and diplomacy between the Arturian entities. But it is now becoming apparent that Members are feeling discouraged, for to fix this issue will be quite costly if we do not get to the bottom of this.

I do not intend to brag but I do have a bit of a scholarly background in attempting to decipher, or even reverse-engineer, scripts used in spells already cast in real life. I took an elective course with Zachary Landon on this subject matter last fall. It dealt primarily with spells used in real life, not pseudo-spells used in the Arturian Realm. But nonetheless, since Landon did count on me as a study partner to get through the class (and not to discredit Landon; the course is not a fit for everyone), Landon made a phone call to me late on the night of May 14, or early morning of May 15, about three days after the beginning of the crisis, asking me to join him and the Administrators for the investigation.

Thus far, I have discovered the chain reaction pattern and am on the cusp of discovering the avatar responsible. I hope it is not who I think it is.