It was a dark and stormy night outside the gates of the town of WebDiplomacy. The road was deserted – nobody in their right mind would be outside in a storm like this.
Nearly deserted. One lone, hooded figure darted across the road, looking behind him regularly, as if to make sure nobody was following him. He headed directly for an old, disused barn a little way off the path, and entered quickly upon reaching it.
“Sorry I’m late. I had to find an excuse to come off duty.”
“It’s about time. We haven’t seen you in weeks,” came a voice from the shadows. Three figures, also hooded, had been waiting for him.
“I haven’t been able to. After those webDippers failed to stop the Bearnstein multis, everyone on the Mod Team had to work full time getting rid of them. Only just managed to clear it all up, too.”
“Yes, we know about that. It’s a godsend – they were so busy dealing with that and trying to unban everyone those quarantined players ended up banning that they rushed through the RR without checking the code.”
One of the figures who had not yet spoken chimed in.
“The fact that Kestas was banned in the chaos probably had something to do with that.”
“Anyway,” said the one who had been last to arrive, “I’ve made sure everything’s ready. Combined with the code we’ve managed to sneak through with the variants, the code in the RR will make a ‘Wipe’ button appear on your settings pages tomorrow. Only one of us needs to press it, and every user, every game, every forum post, every backup, everything about WebDip will be wiped from the site and transferred to vDip. The URL will redirect there, and even if they notice what’s happened quickly it won’t make a difference – the admin rights will be transferred to whoever clicks the button, so they won’t be able to do anything.”
“Well done. vDip is better than webDip in every respect – more features, more variants… The only thing we’re missing is the playerbase. If this works, we’ll skyrocket to being a real contender for the best Diplomacy site on the web – and at the same time we’ll take out the main competitor.”
The last figure finally spoke.
“We should make ready for tomorrow by taking up lodgings in the town tonight. We will only be able to activate this from there. As soon as the button appears, hit it – I don’t care who does so, but it needs to be done before anyone realises what’s going on.”
“I’ll head back to Mod HQ. You should all head for the hotels in the Forum; people are up there all night arguing so nobody will notice you slip in.”
There was a general murmur of agreement, and the four headed out of the barn and back towards the town.
*******************************************
“…never, never, never again. Do you understand me?”
Goldfinger was speaking to President Eden in the Special Operations room in the Mod HQ. The room was a mess, with bits of paper everywhere, and at least a hundred tabs open on a dozen different computers.
“It wasn’t my idea! I just… errr… Ran it and egged them on a bit… Look, it’s not as bad as it sounds! How was I to know that they would ban everyone except the multi? In any case, it was you who quarantined them all in the first place, and gave them the ability to ban one another. And you were the one who put Kestas and Abge and Jmo in with them.”
“That’s beside the point. You shouldn’t have encouraged it by treating it as if it were a game. Real accounts were at stake here! Anyhow, at least it’s over with now – that was the last of them. I think we can both agree that that was not a good way of banning multis. Next time, let’s keep this within the mod team.”
At this point, a ‘You got mail’ sound came from the computer next to goldfinger. He swivelled his chair around and grabbed the mouse, closing at least fifteen tabs before coming to his email.
“Oh god… Not another crisis! We’ve only just finished with the last one!”
“What is it?” asked PE, glancing at the monitor. Gold didn’t answer. He was already in the corner of the room, banging his head against the wall. The email was from Yebellz, who didn’t often contact the mods, so it must have been important. PE sat down in Gold’s seat and started reading it.
“To Kestas and the Mods,” the email began,
“I am sorry to have to bring this to your attention during what I know is a busy time, but it is important and urgent. I was looking through the RR code yesterday, and it differs significantly from the vDiplomacy version – there are sections of code that appear to do nothing related to the RR, and other sections that contain a huge amount of code for what should be a simple process. I knew when I saw this that something wasn’t right about it, so I decided to look into this.
It was difficult to piece together, but it seems to be some sort of shut down code – it’s not the entirety of it, which is why it was so hard to find out what it did, but the rest is hidden elsewhere in the code (mainly in the variants section). It’s on a timer; tomorrow, a button will appear on several users’ profiles which will activate the shut down if pressed. I haven’t managed to find out exactly what users, but I think I’ve narrowed it down to the following:”
A list of users followed. Upon reading them, PE grabbed a notebook from the side and jotted them all down. He turned towards goldfinger, about to ask a question, when he realised gold had knocked himself out. Instead, he ran out the door and bumped into 2ndWhiteLine.
“Are you off to the lounge? Everyone else has been in there since we got the last Bearnstein multi.”
PE shook his head and explained the situation. 2WL looked downcast.
“Ugh… We’ve spent two weeks working full time already. I thought we would finally get some time off.”
“Maybe we could….” PE replied.
2WL glanced at him, and was instantly aware of what he was suggesting.
“Oh, no. Not again. You know how that went last time.”
“Yeah, but last time they nearly got the last guy and they’ll have learned since then. I’m certain it will be fine, and it means we don’t have to go through the process of removing all the code.”
“Well… Okay. Who do we need to quarantine?”
“I have the list here. We need to round them all up and change their usernames so nobody knows who they are – some of the people on this list are high profile members and we wouldn’t want anyone to panic about them potentially being banned.”
With that, 2WL and PE set to work.
**************************************
Goldfinger woke up in the Mod HQ with a headache. Someone was shaking him awake.
“Gold? Gold?”
Gold looked up. It was Yebellz.
“How did you get in here? You shouldn’t have access.”
“Old key from when I was a mod. Anyhow, there’s more important things going on here. Are you aware PE just quarantined everyone I put on that list?”
This took a second or two to sink in.
“What?! But I told him we were never going to do that again! I need to go and get them out again, so we can deal with this properly.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” Yebellz said, pointing at the clock, “The button will have activated – if you let them out then whoever put it in will click it and bring down the site. You can’t let them out of quarantine.”
“Don’t you have any idea who the perpetrators might be? We’re obviously looking for someone vDip related – it shouldn’t be too hard to find who it is, your list had already narrowed it down to 18 users.”
“There’s a problem with that as well… You see, I analysed the code again when I had the chance, and the users on the list, and I managed to find a couple of things – the first is that there are four people involved in this, and the second is that three of those must be Sleepcap, Fasces349 and Kaner406. It’s obvious when you look at it; these three are majorly vDip players and all of them are currently or have been moderators there. As for the fourth… I’m not sure.”
“Well, we can at least ban those three, right? Then Eden’s quarantine will be much more likely to succeed.”
“There’s a problem there too. Eden decided to make all of his quarantined users anonymous by changing their usernames. I have no idea who these three are now. This also means that I have no idea who the other people on the list are, either, and that’s slightly more worrying.”
“Wait…” Goldfinger tried to recall the contents of the list, “There were mods on there, right? Jmo, Captain and Zultar? And Kestas too? Wait… Has PE locked up Kestas in his quarantine?”
“Yep. And Blankflag too – I think you unbanned him by accident when you were dealing with those last multis, and now we have no idea who he is either.”
“Oh god… I can see how this is going to turn out.”
Goldfinger started to walk towards the door.
“What are you going to do?” Yebellz called after him.
“Well, there’s not much I can do, right? Might as well watch the game. Let’s just hope this doesn’t turn into another huge mess.”
THE GAME HAS STARTED! It is now the first day phase, which will end in 48 hours (8PM Sunday BST).
Synesthesia
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