Article Written: 24 May 1456
Every active Member with an avatar in the Third Level Society has a "key" to access that avatar when intending to engage the said avatar in a chosen dymensional plane. With present-day technology, the way to use the "key" in order to gain access is to enter through the granular dymensional gate (or the GD gate) by placing the palm of your hand on a panel that reads your hand print, and to activate a special talisman that allows the server to read the "key" off the said talisman. To note, the "key" is a non-acting spellfire script that does not conform to any of the Circlarian Standard Alphabets, and, furthermore, changes every week. Hence, it is extremely difficult for a Member with malicious intent to engage another Member's avatar in order to impersonate that Member and their avatar.
However, it is not impossible.
Over the course of its 200-plus year history, the Third Level Society has been made to address rare cases of such an act, known as "avatar forgery." Usually, this act is committed by someone from one avatar faction intending to have the heisted avatar commit acts such as selling their most valuable tools to put them at a strategic disadvantage, to sabotage themselves or their factions so that the faction of the one carrying out the act of forgery can gain an advantage.
Basically, with respect to the dymensional planes of the Third Level Society, avatar forgery is way to cheat in the act of engagement, and is therefore considered the highest possible offense that a Member can commit. If accused or caught, a Member will face a formal investigation by the Administration of the server impacted, and will then be brought to a formal trial in the Caucus Chamber to be presided over by the Bookkeeper. During such due process, all Members will vote as a Caucus to determine whether or not the suspected Member is guilty of the act. If a guilty verdict is reached, the Bookkeeper will then call for petitions to be submitted by the Caucus and then call upon the petition with the most signatures the corrective action to be carried out against the guilty member. Usually, that corrective action is permanent expulsion from the Society; and in some cases, a criminal complaint may be filed by the Society to the Retunian Federal Government, since avatar forgery is legally considered a form of identification theft.
The John Berreau Scandal of 1453-4
Beginning in January 1453, John Berreau, a long-standing Society Member voicing claims that the Society as an organization was growing too akin to the carrying out of "affirmative action," ran what was called "the boys' campaign" in order to attain the power of Dungeonmaster and to attempt to establish a notion of "permissible traditionalism in leadership." Employing unexpected and surprisingly effective strategies, Berreau won the position of Dungeonmaster in the 1452 organizational elections amid the lowest Caucus vote turnout in the Society's history. In February 1453, the long-standing Bookkeeper, Caleb Marlin, announced retirement; and Berreau appointed Stephen Pezak to the Bookkeeper position. Knowing that his views regarding traditionalism were unpopular in the Society, Dungeonmaster Berreau ran an agenda to establish a "school of strategy" for ambitious Members and their avatars to employ realistic strategies of conduct and trade borrowed from the Society's parent organization, Library of Circlaria, in order to gain measures of success never thought imaginable. This surprisingly gave Berreau an edge and led him to win re-election as Dungeonmaster in 1453.
It was shortly after this, however, that the troubles began. A complaint was made to a Server Administrator by a Member named Alecia Carnish, who claimed that she engaged her avatar, who served as a campaign leader in one of the dymensional planes, and discovered that the avatar's 50'000-gold-piece sword had been sold to someone unknown. She also discovered that other important tools and possessions, many irreplaceable, were sold in a similar fashion, and that seventeen of other Members in her campaign had suffered the same. An investigation was carried out and found that Red Doorman, Berreau's appointed Dungeon-Apprentice, was a central figure involved in what proved to be a notorious act of avatar forgery. Such was the charge that was brought against Doorman when he was brought in front of Bookkeeper Pezak; but, in a surprising turn of events, Pezak denied Carnish's claim and the mounting evidence of the scandal, citing that there was no way to prove that Carnish's avatar possessed the sword in the first place, and tossed out the complaint.
Kerry Harmon, the Head of the Caucus Disciplinary Committee responded to Pezak's decision by citing evidence she found of a close quid-pro-quo network between Doorman, Pezak, and Berreau. She cited that they had private communications around the time that the incident happened, and summoned a Caucus meeting in the absence of Dungeonmaster Berreau, during which they voted to carry out investigations against the three men and bring them to trial.
In January 1454, the trial began, and proceeded until March. In March, verdict was finally reached finding Doorman guilty of avatar forgery, resulting in him being relieved of his position as Dungeon-Apprentice and permanently banned from the Society; and finding Stephen Pezak guilty of "conspiracy to destroy evidence of avatar forgery," resulting in him being relieved of his position as Bookkeeper and banned from the Society for five years. John Berreau was found not to have any direct involvement in the incident. However, amid bolstered speculation that he was aware of the incident and chose to do nothing, Berreau's reputation was severely damaged. In May 1454, hoping to salvage his approval from the Caucus, Berreau appointed Kerry Harmon to the Bookkeeper position. Despite this, however, Berreau lost the Dungeonmaster election of 1454 to none other than Alecia Carnish.