The Pyroto Observer
an entirely unofficial take on current events in the land of Pyroto
Admin Note
Sorry this edition is a few days late and slightly thrown together -- I dared to venture away from my computer over the long weekend, and a few articles I had hoped would help take up some of the slack never materialized. The next edition should still be out on 5600. I hope wizards on Pyroto, Restlech and Broppsfar will also forgive this edition's focus on Imaz, but that's where all the action has been in the past week.
Note that wizards' names won't be appearing in colour this week: it's too difficult to keep track of who's on what level at what hour.
Restlech wizard Wyldman has quite independently created a new Ether Channel called "The Pyroto Observer"; I like the name, so I'll probably use that channel occasionally to post updates to or about this newsletter.The Imaz Revolution: Battle
Naturally, there is only one possible lead story this week: the 5586 bloodbath on Imaz Mountain.
The roots of the fight are fairly clear, at least on the surface. When top-level wizards ("rankers," to use the Imaz vernacular) Nimby and Kirin stood united in their punishments of mid-level cheater MasterGenao, a cluster of people Nimby and Kirin had annoyed over several months fell to plotting and enlisting the Kamikaze'ing services of several non-participating ne'er-do-wells.
On 5586, they struck: after receiving a 48-level boost from big brother LordGenao, MasterGenao kamikaze'd Kirin successfully, costing him 160 levels. After buying a 102-level promotion from DoomBringer, recent immigrant Kraken kamikaze'd Nimby very successfully, costing her 208 levels. After receiving a 151-level boost from LordGenao, unknown entity Driven4Life kamikaze'd Kirin again, costing him a further 90 levels. (According to Driven4Life, there were quite a few further kamikaze's which failed entirely and were not reported to the Observe log.)
DoomBringer, LordGenao and Punky then collaborated in jumping on the corpses, demoting Nimby and Kirin to the bottom of the mountain and putting them in negative. An unknown entity named Blackcat also popped in to demote Kirin a fair bit.
As a confusing sideline to the main attack, at about this time, a Restlech wizard with a whopping one post to his name called Trizkit migrated to Imaz to kamikaze AmbushBug; immediately thereafter Pyroto Indigo Dark Heron demoted AmbushBug a further 60 levels, quite out of the blue. AmbushBug managed to retaliate slightly by promoting Kirin 40 levels before being thoroughly drained into negative by Cjilgott. (This whole sideline seems only slightly less confusing when one pieces together that Trizkit received virtually all his levels from Cjilgott-pawn Trawarzer and that Dark Heron is Cjilgott's girlfriend.)
At about this time, the non-aggressive majority on Imaz started slowly clueing in to the slaughter. A few of Kirin and Nimby's former friends and allies mumbled their displeasure with the whole affair, but lacked either the will or the nerve to translate their thoughts to actions. Only one other wizard had the nerve to fight back: UniqueCrash4 promoted Kirin 50 times before kamikaze'ing LordGenao (thereby becoming the first wizard on web Pyroto to use actually use kamikaze as a "noble sacrifice"). UniqueCrash4 was then assailed by the aggressors.
(For further discussion of the mechanics of the largest-scale attack web Pyroto has seen so far, refer to the "War Room" Ether channel.)The Imaz Revolution: Aftermath
The spoils don't always fall to the victors.
As Nimby, Kirin, AmbushBug and UniqueCrash4 were on their way down, their assailants were running out of manna, and those who used kamikaze were running out of levels and esteem as well.
Somewhere in the midst of this, Mr.Gene managed to buy a 75-level promotion off of Souldance. Mr.Gene suddenly shed his normally aggressive posture to become the personification of blandness, while Dilerium whispered sweet nothings about the battle being the will of Imaz, and Souldance struggled to choke down her indignation about the attack while figuring out where the chips would fall. The new rankers appointed Elgjeff "mountain secretary," and then, once they were relatively confident that their position as top dogs wasn't threatened by kamikazes from below or external attacks, the three promoted three further Imazians to help replenish the mountain's upper ranks: Mr.Paul, Cjilgott and DejUhlVek (whose whopping 39 esteem points make Pyroto's Zelda look like a role model for Magenta wizards.)
Annoyance with the constant bickering, disgust with high-level hypocrisy, and frustration at watching multiple wizards get promoted past them have inspired a snowballing exodus from Imaz: Maya, Prometheus119, Myriad, GurnB, Acapellican and Tsmaster have recently migrated to Restlech, and Jemalas and Lord WarWizard (renamed SpiritMetari) have recently emigrated to Pyroto. Several others are considering a move.
So, the end result for the Imaz revolutionaries -- aside from Cjilgott -- seems to be a legacy of distrust, and a smaller relative slice of a far less attractive pie.
(For further discussion of the causes and effects of the war, refer to the "Mountain Politics" Ether channel.)No More Imaz Knights
Another result of the Imaz Revolution is the apparent breakup of the Imaz Knights. The Knights were created on approximately 5530 by then-Imazian Andreus, who wrote up the original manifesto: "The Imaz Knights are sworn to making Imaz mountain an peaceful and honorable mountain. This will be accomplished by promoting or accepting new members into the clan that show imagination, creativity and honor in their characters and messages. Establishing a sense of community by mentoring lower ranked wizards and teaching them there is more to this game then reaching the top...."
Though the group seemed to have some lofty goals, the members failed to ever act in concert with one another, and several members became more intimately involved with other associations. Since one knight (Lord Cajigas) was banished for cheating, and since at least two knights (LordGenao and Cjilgott) participated in the recent shady takedown on Imaz, it would appear the group failed in at least some of its aims. Now that Andreus has been told that he is unwelcome on Imaz, and has officially hung up his "Lord" title, it appears the group is truly dead.
(Tune into the "Imaz Knights" Ether channel for more info.)Ask Miss Manna
Dear Miss Manna,
I recently began drinking. Should I bring my alcohol-induced insights to Pyroto?
Signed,
Vitriolic Near VermontGentle Wizard,
Logging on to Pyroto in the wee hours of the morn after having consumed large quantities of liquor in order to better "speak one's mind" is the wizard's equivalent of placing the weeping, 3:00 a.m. phone call to the ex. If there are wizards with whom you have issues, it is more likely that you'll be able to argue more soundly with them when you are sober -- and also more likely that you'll be able to engender (or keep) the trust of those wizards whose alliance you may want.Please send your Pyroto etiquette questions to Miss Manna care of TPO.
Servants With a Smile
Tombo, Servant of TSOTL sent through this message about how Pyroto is staffed:
"At this time, there currently is no one dedicated to Pyroto Mountain full-time. When the system was being coded, which took about 10 months, we had a full-time programmer, Mojo.
"Right now, all of us are part-time. There's myself, Tombo, and Wizzy, Mojo and Tim. We shift in and out depending on other project workloads. Tim and I are on heavy Pyroto Mountain rotation at the moment. That means about 40 hours a week for me and about the same for Tim. That's 40 hours on top of my regular job. Tim writes/sells/markets shareware the rest of the time. I'm busy managing teams that create web sites."
TPO happily notes that Wizzy has been busy fixing bugs for a week or so now, and that the Ether now seems to be more or less stable.
(Tune into the "Pyroto: Ideas/Alerts" Ether channel for the latest news on bugs and fixes.)Disappearing Ether Channels
On a related note, a new policy has been introduced whereby any Ether channel which lies dormant for seven days in a row is simply zapped, in an attempt to clean up the ever-increasing multitude of "ghost channels" in the Ether. If a particular channel is dear to you, you may want to make a note to give it a helpful prod every now and then.Meet Your Overlords...
...will return on 5600.Plea For Submissions
As before, if you'd like to contribute a news item, a commentary or even a regular column to TPO, please send a contact message to Ninjalicious so we can talk it over. I'm especially eager to recruit some wizards from Imaz, Restlech and Broppsfar, so this newsletter doesn't wind up being too Pyroto-centric.