Today is the last day of the month of May in the Common Circlarian Calendar. I just completed a rather simple quest with my avatar, Captain Bornan, involving The Slayvon, ten fellow Members, and each of us casting 100 daemons; so over 500 in all. We captured a rogue sea ship and took a share of the spoils after negotiating a peace treaty with the enemy. It was simple and took no time at all.

All the while, I marvel at the Third Level Society and what it has accomplished thus far since its foundation over ten years ago. Many who are Members now once in the past looked to various TableQuest sessions for fellowship as well as the dynamic array of possible opportunities to gain treasure. The playing of the old game of TableQuest presented a thrill that many simply could not find elsewhere. But TableQuest also meant encountering avatars whose identities of those real people who cast them were hidden, meaning you never really knew who you were dealing with. In other words, you very well may have tangled yourself with someone having bad intent. Darkfire dealers and other outlaws, after all, hid themselves within the darkened ranks of TableQuest players, intent on gaining wealth and credit at whatever cost.

And real wealth was placed on the table in these sessions, with such wealth being wagered upon the outcome of a given quest or agenda. Sometimes the resulting politics turned ugly, manifesting in murders, theft, rape, and other forms of evil. To enter a TableQuest session for the thrill meant risking the treachery involved.

The Third Level Society put an end to that danger by presenting a formidible alternative. With rules in place mandating a registry of avatar identity to Member identity, and policy to forbid the wager of true items of wealth, questing here presented the satisfaction without the corruption that comes with it. And with the Arturian Realm cast as a continuously-running and multi-faceted dymensional plane striving to achieve as close to a resemblence to the real world as possible without sacrificing the dynamics necessary for the satisfaction one gets through questing, the Society has been drawing attention from figures in the field of education and research.

I just hope the Third Level Society can survive Cray Fenton.

Fenton started off his tenure as Dungeonmaster by making a bold call upon the Caucus to repeal the Organizational Prefect Code of Conduct. The Caucus failed to do exactly that, but by the end of January, they did manage to repeal most of the amendments, many of which I felt were unreasonable.

That same month, Fenton unveiled his ambitious and well-planned agenda for the deployment of the Jon Beyon Consoles. January would be the month for the Caucus to formulate the plans for the funds needed to build the large number of Jon Beyon Consoles required to cover every Member by the end of the year, and also for certain Members currently taking part in the pilot experiments.

February would be the month that we implement the fundraiser agenda. And then between March and October, we would build the Jon Beyon Consoles on a steady schedule.

November and December would be the period of transition for the Caucus in terms of the Consoles used. Jon Beyon would be expected to train the Quest Leaders and Administrators on his model in the first week of November; the Quest Leaders and Administrators train the Veteran Members in the second week; and the Veteran Members train the Freshmen Members in the third week. In the first week of December, the Freshmen Members would be made to retire the old type-out consoles and switch to the Jon Beyon Consoles for good; the second week of the month, the Veteran Members would do the same; and the third month, the Quest Leaders and Administrators would make the switch. By January 1255, every Member would have a Jon Beyon Console.

All throughout January, I was actually in high spirits, anticipating the implementation of this agenda. I witnessed Traya Meris introduce the Jon Beyon's Console model to her class of subservient Members on a particular quest she was leading along the warm Arturian Coastline near Parradin. These Members were nothing short of ecstatic over the newfound power and control they had over their avatars. I, myself, took part in getting the Caucus to vote on fundraising. Although the idea was Fenton's, I was the one to propose this fundraising idea to the Chamber on the evening of January 13. We held several special sessions through the rest of that week; and, on Friday January 15, the Caucus voted passed the fundraiser plan. Fenton quickly approved it; and the plan started at the beginning of February.

By late February, it became apparent that fundraising well-surpassed the amount needed to build Jon Beyon Consoles for the 631 Members that we counted in January.

In early March, though, we factored in the current Membership registry again and realized that number jumped up to 647, which meant that additional fundraising was needed. The other issue was that there was a backlog of orders in the business from which we ordered the metal parts needed to construct the Consoles. So Fenton put an immediate stop to everything in the Jon Beyon Project, including the pilot experiments.

"I understand if we need to delay the Console construction, but wear and tear should not be a concern with the devices we're already using," I told Fenton late one night in a meeting with him in his Dungeonmaster's Office, which I noticed was adorned more heavily with the crow-and-hawk of the Society. "Jon has proven that they are built to last."

"I'm not concerned about wear-and-tear," Fenton replied. "I'm concerned about adding fuel to Sari Frame's sentiment. If this backlog doesn't clear and we continue doing pilot groups, it will be a matter of time before an insider takes this to her and she starts building her own brand."

"The backlog will clear out soon enough," I said. "And I don't see how Sari could carry out a conspiracy like that."

I had spoken my mind when I told him that. It was true that, after Fenton accepted the Dungeonmaster nomination, Sari alleged that there was a certain number of Members who had been discouraged from casting a Caucus vote, on the presumption that they would all vote for Frame. But when no one took to this claim, and it became apparent that most had accepted that Fenton, though having won by a small margin, secured the position fairly after all, Frame had since stood down and remained silent.

Now Alex Cromme had brought up numerous times between me and Fenton that he thought he had heard some of those Members, who were friends with Sari, fantasizing over the notion of stealing the idea of Jon Beyon, who has been in league with us by the way, and developing a transition in a quicker fashion than ours. Of course, this alleged conversation took place at the Slack, where things get noisy and things are said that are never meant in serious fashion. So the matter was speculative.

Nevertheless, Fenton had been taking no chances in this regard, an approach I found a bit irrational, I have to admit. I understand that the Dungeonmaster position, with all its daunting administrative duties, can present an opportunity to withdraw into a state of sick paranoia. But one must exercise caution in that regard so that such anxiety does not manifest into a power-grab, intentional or unintentional. And I believe that by early March, Fenton was showing the first signs of this struggle.

I will also admit that between January and now, I had largely taken a break from questing due to the combination of the tiring work I had from my administrative duties under Fenton and my own academic studies; after all, I have been pursuing a graduate study of lightfire on behalf of a program based out of the Linbrae Royal College, which agreed to establish me as a resident here at Cabotton University. So I did not keep too closely in touch with Society politics, despite working so closely with Fenton.

And I should have known better.

In the first week of April, Dungeonmaster Fenton summoned both me and Jon Beyon to his Office, where we found the Dungeonmaster joined by Alex Cromme. Indicating that Cromme told him of this, Fenton proceeded to explain that someone, though unknown in terms of identity, was using an unauthorized trigger-mechanism to enhance Jon Beyon's invention in an attempt to overthrow the fair balance that the entire Arturian Realm strives to achieve. The organization in question carrying out this corrupt agenda was known as the Shadow of Myrst.

To my shock and dismay, Fenton informed us that Traya Meris was the primary suspect.

He then gave us an assignment. Jon Beyon, who Meris saw as a close friend, was to convince Meris to share her supposed secret with him without being suspicious of him; Beyon was then to secretly report what she said back to Fenton. Meanwhile, I was to go on a broad but secret survey of as many questing Arturian entities as I could to collect information on the agenda suspected by Fenton.

The Dungeonmaster ended the meeting by saying that the Jon Beyon Project was postponed indefinitely until he could find the Member responsible and expel that Member from the Society.

Again, that was the first week of April, more specifically the evening of April 6, if I remember correctly. It was at this point that I felt that Fenton's paranoia was growing out of control. True, there was an entity known as the Shadow of Myrst, existing as a mysterious force setting out to throw off the political balance of the Realm through a winner-take-all strategy. And it reminded me of the days of the Crimson Lion a few years back. But Fenton had no rational reason to suspect Meris as a player, let alone a leader in an agenda involving trigger-spells.

In fact, this may very well have been Fenton taking an opportunity to retaliate against Meris over an event that happened in late February.

On February 23, we met on forming a micro-detailed plan to spend the funds we accrued for the month for the Jon Beyon Project. Meris had proposed a spending alternative that involved building the Consoles at a slightly slower pace but with higher quality, going against Fenton's idea of building as quickly and cheaply as possible. Fenton had been pushing that as a last-minute change to the agenda up to that point, reasoning that we needed to save funds for repair costs.

Fenton could have taken her argument into consideration, favoring the parts he favored and questioning the parts that he deemed questionable in the hopes that he and Meris would come to a consensus. Instead, he ridiculed her idea as being "a creative way to squander the Society's precious funds in meaningless ways," and going so far as to question why she would study entrepreneurship at Cabotton University if she was going to "make such reckless decisions." For context, entrepreneurship was, in fact, her academic reason for attending Cabotton University in the first place.

I had been shocked with his outburst, but remained silent out of respect for the Dungeonmaster. In contrast, Meris was honest.

"Just because you're the Dungeonmaster doesn't mean you know more about my field of study than I do," she said.

In hindsight, I admire her for taking that brave stand.

Ever since, Fenton would not speak directly with her. And every time she came up in conversation between me and him in her absence, Fenton always emphasized that he questioned her loyalty.

After the more recent meeting in early April, the one aforementioned where Fenton asked Beyon to spy on Meris, I began to reflect on my own standing in the Society and where I stood with Fenton. It was at this point that I first admitted to myself that I felt too uncomfortable to even be around Fenton, let alone work with him. Again, Beyon and Meris had been close friends. And Fenton was exploiting this to get information out of Meris while risking to have Beyon and Meris turn on each other, which I believe was not unintentional at this point.

During the second week of April, Fenton summoned me to his Office again. I had submitted a request back in January for him to appoint me as the Administrator over the Galacia Sector of the Arturian Realm, of which I had good knowledge based on past experience. Since the recent turn of politics having intervened, I had all but forgotten this request; but Fenton reminded me of it when he informed me that he could not appoint me for Caucus approval on this because of how, combined with my role in the survey I was supposed to secretly carry out against Members who might be part of the Myrst conspiracy, that would make Fenton look in his stance against that conspiracy, should my spy attempts be found out.

Fenton also informed me during this meetup that he had begun to lose trust in Jon Beyon, himself, thinking now that Beyon and Meris were joining forces against him.

"They are still close friends after all," Fenton said. "That hasn't changed a bit."

He then asked me to turn my effort away from the secret survey, to which I contributed little by the way, and instead spy on Beyon and Meris.

"I'll see what I can do," I managed to say as an acceptable response to Dungeonmaster Fenton. But at this point, I concluded silently to myself that Fenton had simply gone too far. Later that very evening, I met with Meris and Beyon, where I quite simply told them Fenton's honest sentiment. To my surprise, they both expressed how much they had been anticipating this. They called over Carly McNauten, to whom I explained everything again. Carly responded by complaining about Fenton's "overdrama" over the Ticketer Public Section, especially when it came to Fenton always blaming and harassing Sari Frame over the Myrst issue.

So the four of us spoke at length about all of this. In the end, we came to a point of discord between the notion of breaking away from the Fenton-Frame conflict and just becoming independent Quest Leaders forming some sort of an independent faction within the Society, and the notion of joining Frame to lead a resistance against Fenton. Our talk lasted until well past midnight, at which point we all decided to continue our discussion at a later time, making a mutual promise not to make any mention of our talk to the Society or the public just yet.

We met again a couple nights later and determined to implement both strategies consecutively, with the notion of forming an independent faction from the Progressivist and Traditionalist camps serving as the first plan. As a segue into this, Meris and Beyon would silently disengage from the Society while I stayed with Fenton to handle any drama regarding these two friends. By that point, with the semester's end approaching and the onset of final exams, I would take an indefinite leave, myself.

So Meris and Beyon made their temporary departure from the Society in the final week of April, to which Fenton, surprisingly, gave no notice. However, on May 1, before I implemented my own disengagement plan, I received a private message on the Ticketer from the Bookkeeper that I, along with Beyon and Meris, had been named in a conspiracy to overthrow Fenton, and that Fenton had our Memberships suspended pending trial for permanent expulsion.

Meris and Beyon met with me at my house, where we noticed that Carly was not with us. We had messaged her but received no response. Thus, remembering her intense banter toward Fenton, we began to speculate at the possible notion of Carly having actually feigned support in the name of leveraging important information. It is a theme very much present in the medieval history of Remikra, carried out on behalf of tyrants and brutal warlords in order to consolidate power, but can also be carried out on a much smaller scale, especially in the world of business; any organization, for the matter.

Such suspicion of Carly was dashed, though, when ten days later, Carly, herself approached me and explained that her partner, Richard Brent, whom she thought she could trust, had turned out to be the suspected insider doing favors for Dungeonmaster Fenton. In the moment she informed me of this, Carly may have seen my look of distrust, and went on to assert that she had not only terminated their mutual romance, but that she had all but excommunicated him from her life, both personal and in terms of Member-to-Member diplomacy.

That encounter was one day after news broke that Meris, Beyon, and I were re-admitted into the Society, our suspensions completely lifted. It had become apparent that the majority of the Caucus was very much against Fenton's accusations; and no Bookkeeper case ever materialized. After news of this came to pass, Richard Brent confirmed what Carly said to me, and declared her as a "fellow conspirator" over the Public Section; for though the Bookkeeper denied Fenton the power to have us expelled, he was still very much under the impression that we were conspiring to drive him out. Fenton responded to this by appointing Brent to the Administrator position over Galacia.

So that is where we stand to this day. Meris, Beyon, and I have been careful to go questing separately, pursuing quests like my avatar, Captain Bornan, capturing that rogue ship as he did tonight. I was careful not to pair with either Meris or Beyon, just in case that rogue ship was powered by a Society Member loyal to Fenton and a quest success subject to the possibility of being used by Fenton to justify his theory of conspiracy.

Our plan of disengagement and faction-building is shelved for now. We are trying to ensure that stability within the Society is not threatened by any frayed paranoia coming from Fenton as a result of sudden action. But we are still talking together when we are not questing separately.