RuneScape Forum Archive | X-Void: 6 Years Later

[#4KM850FMO]

Forum Moderator Posts: 521 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Hey all,

About a year ago, I wrote a series of stories. This takes place about six years after the last one of them ended. Older story board participant will remember: X-Void: Conspiracy, X-Void: Conflict, and X-Void: Maelstorm. This story takes place with a new generation of players, well after all of the previous characters quit the game.
But, some events that will occur do require a basic knowledge of previous stories, so here's the summary of the first three installments:

A fully interactive, virtual reality version of Runescape was realeased, and was instantly bought in massed by the public. However, unknown to the world, several mind-altering and threatening glitched existed in the game. One player, named Zert became the most prominent of victims of these glitches. He was put into a coma in the real world, after his mind was altered by a severe in-game "glitch." However, his unconscious mind continued to live on inside of the game. His goal: to free himself and be able to log out once more. Over the next hundred or so pages of the story, Zert met many people and made many allies. Together, they discovered a conspiracy, far deeper than the original "glitch." A program existed in Runescape, installed by a very creative young hacker, to cause such Chaos, in hopes of harvesting more important data inside of the complicated coding.
In the end, the program was defeated, and Zert freed. However, that was hardly the end of the story. Zert than sought after the one who caused the mayhem in the first place: The hacker nicknamed Oart. However, when Zert finally cought up to him, the program had already been sold to someone else. And, as events in the virtual world continued to worsen, it became apparent that whoever had bought the program was using it to his full advantage. (continued...)

09-Jun-2006 05:30:16

[#4KM850FMO]

Forum Moderator Posts: 521 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Oart eventually decided to aid Zert in tracking down the program, though he had his own agenda all the way. As the story came to its conclusion, the broken alliance that once existed around Zert raced to find the new core of the Program, which seemed to have taken on a mind of its own, no longer being controlled by the outside world. Zert was first to arrive, with Oart shortly behind him. After a lengthy fight, Oart's character data was destroyed by the program, and he was literally killed in the real world. Zert managed to defeat the program, due to Oart's sacrifice. Zert attempted to tell Virtue Co. (the company that bought out Jagex three years prior to the events) to shut down the game, but he was ignored and pushed aside. So, for the next year, Zert found himself dealing with Oart's relatives, and any remnants of the program he could find, in order to keep everyone else who played the game safe. But, as he turned 18, he found less time for games, and eventually quit. Not long after, most of his former allies quit as well.

6 years after those events, the game is still in a somewhat distraught state, yet slightly less chaotic than before. Virtue Co. hired a team of the ten best players in the game to further track down any severe glitches or potentially hazardous exploits. The ten were given godlike powers within the game, to further aid their investigative efforts.
At this point, however, more and more games with this same virtual technology are being released, and Virtue Co. is becoming desparate to stay on top of things. As their position on the gaming ladder falls from numbe 1, to number 5 within a week, it becomes painfully obvious that something must be done to restore popularity to the game. But what lengths will they go to?

That is where this story begins.

09-Jun-2006 05:38:08

[#4KM850FMO]

Forum Moderator Posts: 521 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Bradin McGee woke up early that Saturday morning. His Junior year of highschool had ended, and he had a massive hangover from the night before. He had been out till well past 2 A.M, at Sober Graduation for the leaving class of 2030. It had been quite the party, and he was very glad not to have school for the next three months.
It was his hope, in fact, that he could satisfy his addiction to Runescape in those three months off. The prvious month, he had been dubbed an "Investigative Moderator." The powers granted to him added a whole new level to the game. Those powers are what made the game still bearable to him. He had already maxed out all but one stat in his course of playing Runescape, and was well acquainted with PKing. Though, he PKing with his new Godpowers was strongly discourage.
Bradin stretched out, and rubbed the sleep from his eye. He looked over his shoulder at the digital clock on his bedstand. At first, he found it hard to read the numbers through the sunlight pouring in through the window on the opposite side of the room. Then, as his vision cleared slightly, the numbers appeared to read: 5:30. It looked as though he had barely gotten three hours of sleep. He wanted to lay back down and forget about his now aching head in a blissful slumber, yet the urge to play Runescape before his parents awoke was overwhelming. He figured if he started now, he would have about four hours of uninterrupted gameplay before he would have to do chores around the house.
Lazily, he threw the covers off of his bed, and slowy allowed himself to stand up. About four feet from his bead was the Virtual Helmet. It was a half sphere, with Red and Black colors. On one side, the word: Runescape was written in gold script. On the other, Virtue Co. was written in blue block letters. He had become all too accustomed to the new method of logging into his character, nicknamed "Jay."

09-Jun-2006 05:48:17 - Last edited on 11-Jun-2006 03:59:59 by [#4KM850FMO]

Ashenmoor V

Posts: 2,723 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Good old X-Void.

~PD~

09-Jun-2006 06:01:09

[#4KM850FMO]

Forum Moderator Posts: 521 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

As Bradin adorned the helmet, he saw the familiar black, blank screen before his eyes. As he reached up with his left hand to flick the "on" switch just above the golden R in Runescape, a bright blue light flashed before his eyes, It was the built-in retina scanner- new age anti-hacking technology. Then, a soothing female voice chimed in, "Welcome to Runescape, Jay." Then, the real world faded out around him.

Within seconds, Bradin found himself readjusting his senses. Now, he was his ingame character: Jay. No matter how many times he had logged in, he had never become accustomed to the new senses that seemed to be given to him in the game. Besides making your body numb in the real world, the helmet sent powerful brain waves through several sensors in it's interior, which allowed one to literally become one with the game world.

Jay fought off the last bit of drowsiness that had carried over from the real world, and remembered what he had been doing last time he had logged off. Looking around his surroundings, he saw the familiar and comforting White City, formerly known as Falador. It had been renamed five years previous, and adorned with new statues for undisclosed reasons.
The name, however, fit the city perfectly. Every brick of every building was made out of perfect white marble, shining in the virutal sun. Behind him, was the glorious White Knight Castle, a tribute to the fictional order of Knights established in the White City. It was huge, at least one hundred feet tall in comparison to Jay. In front of him, was the General Store, perfectly arranged in white marble, save for the roof, which was made out of impecable Mahogony.
As Jay took in his new surroundings, he heard the same female voice from earlier, somewhere inside his subconscious mind, "New message from Staff is now available."

09-Jun-2006 06:02:34 - Last edited on 11-Jun-2006 04:02:06 by [#4KM850FMO]

[#4KM850FMO]

Forum Moderator Posts: 521 Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Jay thought about opening the message, which did just that.
Before his eyes, words materialized. On top of the words, were two swords, both pointing towards one other. The hilts of the swords bore the official Virtue Co. Seal: a blue gem, engraved with a VC. The first line of the message read:
"The following message contents are confidential, meant only for the eyes of Investigative Moderators."
Jay read on:

"As an update to last week's incident, every player involved in the hacking ring was given a permanent ban, and will not be returning to the game. All valuable's were returned to the players involved. You all played your parts perfectly in order to find the leader of this syndicate, and brought him down with fine precision. You all performed perfectly on your test run.

Now, however, you have a new assignment, one that could be far more involving and dangerous than the last."

Jay paused for a moment. Their last assignment had involved Jay going deep within a hacker organization. He was forced to "work" his way to the top, at which point he was able to identify the leader of the group. Not long after, the Syndicatehad been removed from the game.
Now, he read on in anticipation:

"Over the last week, several signs of major exploits have been showing up throughout the world. High level boss creatures have been disappearing, then reappearing hours later with glitched data. Several areas have been constantly disconnecting players, resulting in some rare occasions in temporary unconsciousness. We suspect a smaller, more devious hacking group is involved. They are most likely much smaller, and will be much harder to find. Begin your investigation into this matter immediately. Further updates into this assignment will be given as the situation plays out.

-John"

Halfway across the U.S., at that very moment, Josh Blue prepared to log on to his Runescape account, unaware of the obstalces set out for him.

09-Jun-2006 06:12:56