Lord of Evil

Deep Ground Online (Hiatus)

<Snipped quote by Lord of Evil>

It's all over the news at this point.

@TheWindel

I kinda figured, but the question is how much is known and how much isn't. Basically, how much work Thomas doesn't have to do and how far he needs to be digging.

Deep Ground Online (Hiatus)

Alright, so, I may as well ask this now before it's too late.

How much of the corpse collector events (including the manhunt started by the black king) is common knowledge?

Deep Ground Online (Hiatus)

Thomas Green

The automatic doors opened to reveal the busy mall. Sights and sounds fought for his attention but his eyes caught an unexpected sight.
That's him. Thomas thought.
Aaron Fletcher. Carefully, Thomas took his phone out tucking his book under his arm. He brought up the picture and discreetly peeked at the target.
"Definitely."

Thomas shrugged and put his phone away before following the seemingly distressed Aaron at a distance. He must have dropped everything and went straight here. Thomas walked along at a nonchalant but quick pace, shadowing the idol. He knew where he would be going so he didn't rush.

As he walked to the food court, he browsed the forums on his phone for any mention of the Eclipse Princess. He was quite sure he'd seen what he was looking before so all he had to do was find it again. Before long he found the princess's email to all of the sweepers. It didn't look like a hoax and the personality matched what he'd observed. It was signed by Eris Reinhardt, and that was a name that he hadn't heard of. One quick google search later, however, and he found everything he needed to know.

Thomas looked up to see that they were pretty much at the food court. Relaxing on a nearby pillar he briefly scanned the area. Aaron arrived ahead of him but he didn't see Eris. He didn't know what the other sweeper looked like so he waited. Leaning back against the pillar he browsed the forums on his phone, pretending to wait for a friend. He'd received a message from Alicia and quickly tapped out a response.

To: Thomas Green
From Alicia Lyra
Subject: Espionage
Watched the sweepers for a little while, nothing really significant. Picked up your weapons. They went further in the black city. Should I follow?

To: Alicia Lyra
From: Thomas Green
Subject: Espionage
If you want to. I have enough on the black city to right about. Use your discretion. Don't get caught.

Once again Thomas scanned his surroundings before suddenly spotting Eris Reinhardt herself, accompanied by a red haired girl, entering a relatively well known cafe.
"Cassandra then." Thomas mused.
Eris clearly trusted the girl by her side and Thomas couldn't imagine it would be anyone else, judging by the email he'd found on the forums.

Thomas sighed softly before putting his phone away and walking into the cafe Eris had entered.
"One ice tea and a danish, please." He told the cashier.
His order was soon finished and he handed over the cash. Grasping the tea bottle with his book hand he balanced the danish plate on the other. Walking back towards the tables, he swept his eyes around for a vacant table somewhere close to Eris. He found a table roughly to the left of Eris's table with its back to the wall. Setting down his goods he pulled out the chair facing away from the wall and sat down. He took a bite of his danish and opened his book to a random position and began pretending to read.

He could still see Eris and Cassandra out of the corner of his eye, and on the other side he could see the entrance. A perfect position for espionage. Soon a suspect boy with an eye patch accompanied by another girl.
"Shiro Kawabata..." Thomas thought to himself as the boy introduced himself. "The other sweeper then?"
He wasn't entirely sure. He didn't really know what the other girl was doing here though. Perhaps she was a sweeper.

Nevertheless, all of his quarries were here. He wasn't entirely sure what he would gain and he was also not entirely sure that he should be there. But he was there, and he wanted to know. That was all he needed.

Thomas turned to the next page.

---

Because it seems I must,
@KoL@Mega Birb@Kimiyosis@Caits@Jedly. Is that everyone?

Deep Ground Online (Hiatus)

@KoL Don't worry, I'm saving a philosophical trump card for an IC post that may never happen.

On a side note, does everyone here live in the northern hemisphere or something? I swear that everytime I wake up I gotta go through 2 pages of ooc. Either that or y'all have really bad night habits.

Deep Ground Online (Hiatus)

Alright, time for a little more philosophy. The concept of Deep Ground was created some time in the near future (Let's say 2020, give or take a year) as a last resort to determine the best canidates for jobs. I'm sure everyone knows that it's steadily becoming harder to find a job in modern parts of the world as it sits, but what will it be like in thirty or forty years from the current time? Simply put, Deep Ground was born out of necessity and reflects the true, cutthroat nature of humanity. The strong survive, and the weak fall behind. Exactly like reality, if you think about it.

@Mega Birb

Sorta. If you really want to really look at the symbolism, you could look at it like this: In a way, deep ground is a metaphor for human survival in the sense that it strips living down to its bare essentials, fighting for survival. It sort of tugs at the human instinct to fight and come out on top, to the fairly primal survival stuff, since the system is based around killing stuff.

The problem with deep ground is that it seems to promote a cut-throat nature, cooperating for mutual gain and also resorting to backstabs if it works for you, basically being extremely selfish in order to become successful (though that isn't really how it turned out I guess)

Technically speaking though, Deep Ground is also a good indication of cooperative play because you need other people working together to beat really tough content and having people watch your back is pretty essential in a cut throat industry.

It's sort of like the old strength to smarts debate (sort of). Which one is stronger, the guy who lifts 50 kg everyday or the guy that made the theory of relativity? The thing is, both can beat the other one way or another, or that's how it should be. The problem people have in Deep Ground is that, in theory, the guy who lifts 50 kg everyday will come out ahead of the relativity guy, though it was explicitly stated that a level 1 guy can beat a level 9 guy if he had advantages.

I don't actually know where I'm going with this, but I got to say that I agree with you. Deep Ground does represent the dog-eat-dog mentality of real life but the fact that you can succeed by getting carried by your high-level friends or wreck a dude several levels higher than you by using your brain also represents real life in that doing weird shit sometimes also gets you places.

Deep Ground Online (Hiatus)

@Lord of Evil You know, it wouldn't be hard for you to figure out Eris’s true identity. The email she sent to Arms Slave and his crew was practically plastered all over the web after one of his friends got it.

@Lucius Cypher

Honestly, I kinda figured. :\

I was gonna work it in the next post though, so thanks.

Deep Ground Online (Hiatus)

Puppet master

Thomas recorded the entire thing, quietly deciding never to use it. The Eclipse Princess's speech had the air that it was revealed to the people she wanted to say it to - Thomas knew that it shouldn't go any farther. It was like she was declaring the 2 she addressed as her enemies, perhaps 3 including the arms slave, though he also knew it wasn't as simple as that. The fact of matter was that, while the speech revealed quite a lot, he didn't have enough to form his own conclusions. He was missing something important to the Eclipse Princess, something that happened perhaps a long time ago.

Regardless of what the princess's speech could've meant, Thomas had a few options.

What he did understand from the princess's one-man raid against the sweepers was that the sweepers were somewhat affiliated with the black guild, though he couldn't guess to what extent that was true. The Eclipse princess had also more or less confirmed the activities of the sweepers, though he could've guessed that much. So, Thomas could do 1 of 2 things. He could stick around and watch what the sweepers do, or he could go for the morally dubious route, spy in on the eclipse princess.

Not only was the last option morally dubious, it was also fairly difficult. He had no idea what the Eclipse Princess or the blond haired avatar looked like in real life. However, he was aware of that he could know what the other avatar looked like, since he had fan club and he was sure that he'd revealed himself to them or something. He was sure there was a forum post floating around somewhere there.

At any rate, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that it was likely a personal vendetta. Did Thomas have any business showing up to a party he wasn't invited for? Most importantly, if he did show up, wouldn't that make him kind of a dick? He certainly couldn't do both at the same time either, not by himself.

Thomas's mind churned for a little while, but he made his decision. Thomas logged out of deep ground.

---

Thomas Green

Thomas opened his eyes to meet his empty ceiling. Groaning as he got up he cupped his hand over his face to stifle the oncoming yawn.
"New message." He muttered tiredly.
The blue mail interface appeared next to him and he began typing with his free hand as he wiped the tiredness out of his eyes.

To: Alicia Lyra
From: Thomas Green
Subject: Espionage
Found a possible lead in DGO. Need you to track sweeper activity in the black city, I'm chasing the lead in real life. You're the only one that can do this. Be careful.

That was all he needed to say. He knew that his cousin would understand.

Sending the message, Thomas slid off of his bed and to his meager wardrobe. The advantage of a forgettable face was that he could wear almost anything and not stand out. He picked clothes that fit and a plain hoodie that made them not matter before putting on nondescript sneakers and picking out a book and a notepad. A normal student reading a book for a book report seemed like a good enough cover. But before he left, he had one more thing to do.

"Open forums." Thomas said.
He found the identity of the masked avatar: Aaron Fletcher. He stared at his quarry for a moment before downloading the student's picture to his phone, he was ready to head out. Exiting his apartment with a light jog, he headed in the direction of Purple Ground's mall. He needed to get there quickly, before his quarries, if he wanted any chance of getting decent closure. He might have had time. The exchange had been fairly emotional and he was fairly close to the mall. They would perhaps need time to prepare, Thomas had taken a few minutes at most. And even if he was coming uninvited, he was sure that there were others who would also gate crash. If that was so, he would need to get there before they did, and before the anti-interference measures were put into place.

@Whoever this affects, I guess, so...
@Jedly@KoL@Mega Birb

Deep Ground Online (Hiatus)

<Snipped quote by Lord of Evil>

They shouldn't keep materialized while you are logged out. It would qualify them as bots and these are illegal.

@KoL

Alright, I can work around it.

Deep Ground Online (Hiatus)

Say, do autonomous summons still obey commands after the user logs out?

Deep Ground Online (Hiatus)

Across the desolate plains, seen by few, 2 featureless metal men ran, both lightly armed. Black spires loomed ahead and soon the black city was in their view. As the 2 metal men crested a hill, they slowed down and prepared to stop. Corpses were piled high close to the entrance and it seemed that 2 avatars were squaring up to fight each other. The 2 metal men slowly walked down the hill and came closer to the source of the commotion.

As the commotion grew into a duel the metal men got close enough to listen to the chatter but were careful not to be seen. Flitting through abandoned buildings they quickly found a suitable one and entered. Ascending to the third floor, one metal man stared out the window at the crowd while the other hid in the shadows. He'd come late, but he got the gist of it. A sweeper against a high-level relatively infamous user, Eclipse Princess. The other combatant had a unique avatar with 4 arms. Thomas was sure that he'd heard of the 4 armed man before, possibly in connection with the sweepers.

As the metal man watched, another combatant joined the fray. With plenty of time to think, Thomas deduced that the new combatant must've been a sweeper ally of the 4 armed avatar. As more and more people turned up to watch, including an avatar with an entire fan club around them, it was clear that Thomas's gamble had payed of. He'd assumed that going to the black city would give him something interesting to see and it turned out that he was correct. This was definitely news material, though he was sure he was missing a few links.

One avatar - possibly linked to the sweepers, with a distinctive mop of blond hair - called out and confirmed his suspicions. There was clearly something going on with the Eclipse Princess, but Thomas couldn't figure it out just yet.
"Later." The puppet master muttered. "This is worth watching in its entirety."

Thomas recorded what he'd seen, he'd need to after all. This was a large story for sure but there was a high chance that it was linked to another bigger story. One that Thomas just had to find out about.