My avatar, Captain Bornan, was reassigned to command the Airship Slayvon deep in the Kingdom of Prestia, based out of a secret location near the royal capital Mathena, unknown to the Prestian Crown. And the assignment last week was to escort a certain person from the stateless city of Mareglacei to the stateless city of Novatrivis.

Novatrivis has been a stateless city governed mutually by ambassadors from each of the Five Nations; thus the reason I emphatically led the quest against the White Lothar a number of weeks ago. However, recently, a powerful figure named Carneman staged a successful coup and became King over a large portion of the city. However, Novatrivis is not the agenda. This up and rising King is bent on overtaking the Crown of Prestia. While that violates the Stateless City agreement and the law under the Kingdom of Prestia, the Order I serve actually backs this rise to power because Carneman is of the Secularist Bloc. Our Order, meanwhile, runs our respective Temples in Vera and Sterran headed by human deity-equivalents; we do not trust the return to power of the original Five Deities, an agenda pursued by the Kingdoms of Prestia and Marlen.

I would also like to mention that King Carmenan supports turning Prestia, effectively, into a democracy.

There have been concerns with this, however. The population of Prestia, consisting of numerous Members' avatars and their daemons, is divided evenly over the issue. There has also been word that the Kingdom of Marlen in the North is sending an assassin to end King Carmenan. While Carmenan could effectively respawn, the time it would take to do so and recover the backing of the coup would be enough time for the original establishment to bolster forces to bring back the status quo. Furthermore, faith would be lost among the supporters of that quest. Basically, once our overtake is lost, it is lost for awhile. The concern with the assassin has been the basis for the assignment taken by my avatar: Captain Bornan. The job for Bronan was to command a hidden fleet of airships to deliver a counter-assassin to Novatravis in order to stop the assassination.

The Kingdom of Marlen was aware of our plot. However, they expected us to fly our fleet over the Magnamont-Mathenan Mountain pass, across the Southeastern Arturian Sea, and through the mountain pass on the other side Southeast to Trivis; and they planned to strike somewhere along this route. Meanwhile, our mission anticipated this by drawing a route, instead, to fly West from Mathena and stop in the city of Sterran, where our ships will fuel and pick up the remainder of the crew needed for the mission. We then planned to continue West from this point, where we would cross over the Western edge of the Arturian Realm, which, by algorithm structure, would instantly loop us to the same latitudinal point on the Eastern edge, thus simulating our dymensional plane equivalent of traveling around a globe. Once entering off the Eastern edge, our fleet planned to discreetly land at a secret airfield built by one of our allies. The counter-assassin would then go to a nearby train station and take the train into the centre of Novatrivis, reporting to the King for service.

So Friday night, we carried out the plan. My airship, The Slayvon, left the secret base in Mathena along with the four other airships: The Marq, The Forren, The Qoph, and The Merlin. And to note, it was The Merlin that was concealed, carrying the counter-assassin.

All went to plan accordingly until we arrived just outside the city gates of Sterran, where we saw what appeared to be three suns in the sky. Suddenly and unexpectedly, we were hit by a flurry of cannonfire, which downed The Marq, The Forren, and The Qoph, all in a matter of moments. Then, The Slayvon was hit; thus, we all had to abandon ship. My avatar, Captain Bornan, went aboard an escape aeroplane which launched from the crashing vessel and did a forward-left-down-dive maneuver.

I was dismayed at what happened next. While I was pulling this maneuver, a mysterious enemy aircraft followed me, shooting at my plane and doing significant damage. I typed in a forward-right-up-shoot command through my console, but yet I was still pursued with precision. I executed several more maneuvers in quick form, and had the same result. This time, my plane was shot down, and my avatar, Captain Bornan, died as a result, being forced to respawn from his point of origin many weeks away.

Even tonight, I cannot figure how my opponent on the dymensional plane was able to predict my specific maneuvers. I understand that there are conditional scripts that Members can type scripts into their consoles to have avatars react accordingly to how other avatars act. But first, that is actually against Society rules; second, it is almost impossible to set up a script like that when you are in a situation where the avatar is controlling an aircraft or some sort of machine.

This, of course, led me to my most important question: Who was the enemy in question?

On Saturday night, I met with Alex Cromme and Cray Fenton in the Library.

"Did The Merlin make it at least?" I asked Fenton, for he was the one whose avatar, Fencrae, is serving as the counter-assassin.

"We didn't even take a shot," he said. "And my avatar is safe and sound. I just don't know how we should proceed with that sort of treachery afoot."

"I just heard earlier today that Sari's 'Progressive' camp is blaming Captain Bornan for not staying aboard until everyone else on the airship was evacuated," Cromme said.

"Very interesting how they would chime in," replied Fenton. "Especially since I heard from a few sources that Sari, or a friend of hers, is using some sort of console enhancement so that you don't require your commands to be typed in."

I had announced earlier this year that I would be running for the Dungeonmaster position, since Breen made it known that he would be stepping down at the end of this year. Sari Frame had announced her candidacy, but I know that the Society would render itself dysfunctional under her tenure. I, very recently, made my candidacy official across the Society Ticketer, over which Fenton publicly made his support for me. We have been running our campaign for a couple weeks now, with Cromme assisting by mostly typing the Ticketer messages while I did my quests. It was part of an agreement, since Cromme had been out of practice with his questing.

With that noted, I responded to Fenton's speculation over the console enhancement with, "Let's not run a campaign on false conspiracy theories." Fenton seemed a bit embarrassed when he responded: "Right." He understood though. And he is not the kind to have hang-ups when he is corrected.

"What do we do though?" Cromme asked.

"Obviously Breen and his Prefects aren't the answer," Fenton said.

That reminded me of their intervention at Novapax last month. I was tempted to fly into a rage over that, but things have been getting political.

"We will meet at a later time over the campaign and politics outside the Arturian Realm," I said. "In the meantime, let's focus on the counter-assassin quest."