I spoke with my good friend, Pat Middleton, who graduated from Cabotton last year, and explained to him all of yesterday's events. He told me to "stop and write out the events as though I were writing a story," thus doing so would allow me to make good judgements. So as promised, here is my story, written to the best of my ability.
***
My avatar, a man very much like myself and, like myself, named Nix, had become a well-seasoned avatar with a well-advanced spaceship earned through hard work and merit. A few months ago, I, through this avatar, joined an Arturian trade organization known as the Black Key Federation, founded in our year, 1336, and headquartered on the Arturian Multiverse planet: Cresca Minor LX. And I still think now as I thought then that this place was perfectly appropriate to house such a Headquarters, for Cresca Minor LX is very much a boring planet, very much like our own in the real world.
The Black Key Federation, by this time, expanded to include numerous bases in the Cresca, Parradin, and Marlen Sectors...and even a couple of bases in the Galacia Sector. The Federation specialized strictly in the trade of copper, silver, gold, and diamonds. And at the time my avatar joined, the Federation was looking very much into the expansion of trade in the Galacia Sector of these four commodities, a trade very much lucrative here since the Galacian authorities have outlawed the free trade of such, in order to secure these resources as stable bases for monetary currency.
This agenda sparked growing resentment within the Federation, especially from a faction known as the Red Priesthood. The Red Priesthood was a special collection of Quest Leaders on behalf of the Black Key Federation dedicated to such an expansion of trade for the emerging Galacia Chapters. The Commander-General of the Federation at the time, the very same Pat Middleton, had allowed the Red Priests to dictate the terms of dispersement of the rewards gained from such a black market trade. But this past Spring, following Pat's graduation, an obvious vacancy was created. I vowed to run for the position, which was elected by Federation members; and Ron Glen, my roommate from the beginning of my time here at Cabotton University, initially supported me. But then, for reasons unknown, he had his avatar turn against me. And, with incredible persuasion, defeated me to become Governor-General, himself. Glen then proceeded to have the black market revenues be dispersed evenly throughout the Federation, leaving me and many of the Red Priests feeling short-changed.
And I know this was only a part of politics within the questing planes. But nevertheless, that was my first sense of betrayal from the parties involved. The second came with Helen Nichols.
Nichols is a Cabotton student, one year older than me. She was my orientation mentor, as every Freshman is assigned one in the beginning, and served as a phenomenal resource helping me to navigate life at Cabotton for the first couple of weeks. During that time, we discovered that we had a lot in common. There were a lot of aspects about her that were very appealing to me; and I sensed that she felt the same. Though the connection was not intentionally romantic from the outset, this, combined with her physical attractiveness, was, I will admit, what led me to falling strongly in love with her in the beginning.
My hopes for her grew, as I encouraged her to join the Third Level Society and afterward mentored her based on my few weeks' experience thus far. This was something that did not catch her initially, but most definitely grew on her as time went on. It was my mentoring, I believe she may have forgotten now, that led her to being the passionate Member she is today.
Earlier this spring, I asked her on a date with myself, to which she said yes. For the occasion, we had a romantic dinner aboard the Flying Diner, a restaurant aboard an airship that flew for a couple hours at a time around Gentry County Airfield and involved a flyby of the University Campus. After that dinner, and shortly before the landing, I asked her for a long-term relationship. She replied to me that though she enjoyed the experience, she wanted to wait until the following Fall Semester to consider. I was a tad let down at the moment, but did not dare show it to her. Instead, I expressed my understanding, with the incentive in my mind, her word was to be trusted.
As it turned out, that trust was in vain.
She was originally going to venture back to her home in Pimdan, near what I believe was called the Lake Paron region, in order to do seasonal summer work. However, she met my roommate, Ron Glen, and fell madly in love with him. Unknown to me, she decided to stay. And I would not find out about any of this until I discovered Ron Glen had turned his support against me and vowed to usurp my campaign for the Governor-General position, which he won with Helen at his side.
Needless to say, being not only that my avatar was to remain Lieutenant-Admiral status but also that Helen and Ron were together, I was very disgruntled.
And it was in desiring to respond to such an act of betrayal that I saw an opportunity with the Red Priests. I rallied with them, avatars and daemons alike, and organized to have them form an insurgent group known as the Red-Keyers and to coup against the top leadership of the Black Key Federation. The first part of this agenda of mine was to begin with some of the Red Priests starting up minor but numerous conflicts upon the remotely-managed planets of the Galacia Sector, not enough to guarantee retaliation from the super-authoritarian Galacian regime but enough to make Glen and Nichols uncomfortable about this sort of thing. Glen, as planned, dispatched a bulk of Black Key Federation forces toward this distraction.
But that was only a small portion of the forces I had at my disposal. The remaining bulk of them, while Glen and Nichols were distracted, launched an armada which succeeded in sacking Federation Headquarters on Cresca Minor LX, a critical blow.
Up to this point, Glen was not aware that I was behind the "crisis." So my expectation, since he still showed respect for me even though I was getting the short-end of the stick, was to call on me for help. My response to that would be to dispatch my battalion of fighters, the ones Glen had assigned to me that is, to defeat the insurgents. Thus, it was the idea that I would get credit for resolving the crisis and, perhaps, gain a better standing in Black Key Federation leadership, if not actually win the Commander-General title myself.
But Glen's call for help never came. And after a great deal of waiting, I became impatient and took matters into my own hands. I took my battalion to Cresca Minor LX and discovered that the Red-Keyer insurgents had made a peace deal with Helen Nichol's battalion.
I was outraged over this. So I decided to cloak myself and join forces with those remaining Red-Keyers still loyal to me. Together, we attacked the planet again with the hope to sabotage the situation. This was a mistake though, for within my reformed attack force were, I believe, one or two avatars who snitched on me. Glen and Nichols made a joint call for the Red-Key insurgents to renounce themselves and become loyal stewards of the original Black Key Federation, and to have the Black Key Federation vote my avatar out completely. This matter succeeded; thus, I was kicked out of the Black Key Federation.
The worst part was that I did not realize any of this was happening at the time. Not the vote-out nor even the initial snitching. I was actually on a weekend visit to my parents' house when the decisions were made. And it was only after I returned to Cabotton and attempted to have my avatar engage his spaceship, only to find it locked down, that I noticed something was unusual. My suspicions increased when I had resolved that a new spaceship was needed from the Federation Repository, and discovered that I was locked out of said Repository. I contacted Ron Glen regarding the issue to which he responded that I was no longer a Federation Member.
That was yesterday morning. And Ron had broken the news to me at the time in the form of direct messaging. That evening, as in last night, I confronted Ron, who was alone at the time, just leaving our suite to go meet Helen at the Slack, and told him that there appeared to be a mistake.
"I meant what I said, Nix," Ron said, stiffly, to me at that moment. "You were being dishonest for personal gain. Helen agrees and so does the majority of Federation Members."
"This is ridiculous," I said angrily, throwing my hands in the air.
"Indeed it is...due to you."
"How about we see what the Server Administrator and the Prefects have to say about this."
Ron chuckled a little. "Good luck with that."
I grabbed Ron by the shirt. "Or how about I dispatch a clenched fist to your face!?"
"Woah!" Ron threw his hands in the air. "Fine. Go ahead and try but I wouldn't risk the Campus Watch and a trip to University Affairs if I were you."
And I did the only thing I could do at that time. I let go of Ron and I stormed off.
***
"And what you did was precisely the right thing to do in the end," Pat Middleton told me tonight. "...with only one caveat: do not end up like Albin Gene."
"Who is that?" I asked.
Pat leaned back, cringing into his hands. Then he explained:
"Albin Gene was a student here between five and seven years ago. He was a Member of the Third Level Society. He was convinced that he 'had a higher calling,' and that he was 'the chosen one,' whatever that meant. This, of course, kicked up a lot of dust between himself and other Society Members. He joined the Pagewriter Guild at some point, and later thought that qualified him for the Dungeonmaster position. Needless to say, he lost that election...and I think that was back in the fall of 1335. He was rather disgruntled by the setback and unjoined the Society, vowing to focus all of his attention on the Guild. That following spring though, the Guild kicked him out...he apparently gained a notorious reputation of some sort there as well.
"Where he is now," Pat concluded, placing a hand on my knee. "No one really knows. All I hope is that he never comes back and that you never meet him. And promise never to be like him!"
"You have my word," I said, shaking his hand.
Shortly after I left, curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to check the Society OCEA Newsfeeds. Apparently, Helen's avatar ousted Ron's as Commander-General, which gave me a bit of a chuckle. I'm sure that Ron is gutted, but, with their relationship as strong as it is, I am sure it will be a short time before they console with each other.
Regardless, I have resolved to have my avatar start over, questing first in Rope World on a random Arturian planet. My hope is that I will gain enough Arturian Credits and rise up to Space World again, perhaps to form my own Federation or Guild.