Buzzwhistle Blackgear was a dark gnome of simple tastes. He always kept his home and work area tidy. He enjoyed cooking, especially with a mug or two of fizzy cider. His favorite evening pastime was to relax on his apartment balcony and listen to the music wafting up from the tavern below. Most of all, he loved his job. He truly enjoyed his life as a tenth generation minion in the dungeon of Deep Thousand. His family was traditionally responsible for maintaining some of the more complex traps between the 350th and 410th levels. Even though he was not following in the family’s footsteps, leaving that to his brothers and sisters, he still did his best to serve in the name of His Supreme Magnificence; he worked as an alchemist and healer in Deep Town, the subterranean city in which all of Deep Thousand’s sentient minions lived during their off hours.

Deep Town, despite its humble start as a dungeon barracks turned residential sector, was now a thriving meropolis filled with many nonhuman species, and had an official population count of just above two million residents. It was the best kept secret of the nonhuman world.

Buzzwhistle, Buzz for short, was proud that his job contributed directly to the wellbeing and comfort of those who worked openly in the dungeon’s floors during their off hours, as they held a stressful job. While Buzz would be thrilled to serve Deep Thousand in any capacity, the thought of being bludgeoned, stabbed, burned or frozen to the brink of death before being whisked away and healed by the dungeon’s magic was abjectly terrifying to him. That these brave soldiers continued to do their job every day was a testament to their fierce loyalty, as well as the quality of care they received from the best therapeutic mind mages in the world.

Buzz was packing up his work area, done with his shift for the day, and already imagining heading to his favorite tavern, 300 Deep, and pounding back a few mugs of fizzy cider. Maybe today he’d muster up the courage to buy Crystalcog Springlever a drink. Maybe slip a little something into the drink and bring her back to his place. She had no family, after all, and such smooth skin and her voice was so clear and perfect. He could just imagine her melodic screams as he removed her skin. Lost in his sudden pleasant daydreaming, Buzz jumped when he realized someone had entered his work area. Towering over him, as most humanoid races do, was a Doppelganger.

Buzz was overawed. The Doppelgangers were famous in Deep Town. Rumors had been going around that Shifty, the leader of the Doppelgangers, had been personally sent on a mission by His Terrible Majesty himself!

A lamprey like mouth opened up in the smooth face beneath the Doppelganger’s sulfur yellow eyes, and it spoke in a silky smooth baritone voice that was like butter to Buzz’s ears. Buzz concluded that he could listen to this Doppelganger narrate the inventory of the city’s food stores and be fully captivated the entire time. He wondered how the Doppelganger’s screams would sound. Buzz shook his head, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, what? I didn’t catch that.”

The Doppelganger sighed. “Buzzwhistle Blackgear, you have received an assignment. You are to test out a new human magic item, called a Virmo. You will be working together with two other members of this dungeon, and two unsuspecting humans, within the Otherworld of the Virmo game.” Buzz started to drift off again, enraptured by the velvety smooth voice with a stupid grin on his face. “Fuck it, take this, it’s your mission instructions and the Virmo crystal.” The Doppelganger tossed a silken bag at the gnome, and he barely managed to catch it as it bounced off his chest.

“Fucking creepy ass gnome,” the Doppelganger muttered as he stalked off.

Buzz, however, paid no attention to the insult as the Doppelganger’s words began to sink in. An assignment? This was amazing! Special assignments only came directly from one source, the Overseer of Eons himself!

Morphiest frowned in displeasure as the ogre, Chunk, prostrated himself before her. Why couldn’t she be the one to carry out the will of His Overwhelming Grace?

“Chunk do job! Chunk smash good! Chunk best at smashing!”

“Okay, whatever, just read this and follow the instructions.”

“Uh…” The ogre scratched his head and looked embarrassed.

“What?”

“Chunk not read.”

“You can’t read?”

“Chunk smash good. Chunk not know squigglies.”

A savage grin split Morphiest’s face, literally. She ran her tentacle-like tongue over her sharp, conical teeth in anticipation. It would seem that Morphiest would need to step in to prevent this assignment from becoming a total ruin due to the incompetence of a certain ogre. An ogre that, she had no doubt, had been picked by Shifty from the personnel records. Maybe when her deeds finally came forward, she would even be able to take over Shifty’s position. The thought of usurping her mentor’s position filled her with a pleasure that was almost sexual. “But… it says in your file that you can read. Oh, my. Did you lie to His Insatiableness? Oh, my… That… That’s not good, Chunk. Really not good.”

“Chunk not lie! Chunk just… not say right answer…”

“Oh, no, I’m obligated to report this, you know. You might lose your minion contract over this. There’s nothing I can do… Well, except, maybe…”

The Doppelganger leered at the ogre, who began smashing his head into the floor, hard enough to send rock chips and droplets of blood flying.

“Chunk do anything! Chunk love job! Chunk love smash humans! Chunk not want Boss to fire Chunk!”

“I don’t know…” Abyss, this is too easy, she thought.

“Anything! Chunk beg!”

“Well, I suppose I could do this assignment for you as a favor, I mean, since we’re such good friends and all…” Morphiest had only ever been in the same room as Chunk twice, and passed him on the streets of Deep Town once. This was, in fact, the first time she’d ever spoken to the easily misled brute. However, her over the top acting was really doing a number on the simple Chunk, so she just couldn’t resist hamming it up even more. “But this is really straining the limits of generosity, Chunk. You’d owe me. A lot.”

Tears of relief streamed down the ogre’s craggy face. “Chunk be slave when not work. Chunk do anything to keep job!”

“Alright, but this is a really big deal. It’s going to take a long time to repay me, you know.” Morphiest withheld a chuckle as the ogre prostrated himself once more, thanking her profusely. This was for the best, really. Anything to be closer to the Overlord of Incomparable Infernos.

Stefano Mayers blanched as his subordinate brought him the news. “Counterfeits? Already? You’re sure.”

The aide nodded. “Yes, Mr. Mayers, three counterfeits have connected to the Ciro Server. It’s… well, it’s worse than just that. As soon as the alerts triggered, we pulled up the account information and all support tickets related to the copied crystal — he didn’t change the connection identifier at all, so it was easy enough to find.”

“He? So we already know who is behind this? Then why aren’t we just sending a contract over to the Quiet Hand? Let them do what they do best?”

“Well, sir, that’s the thing. I don’t think there’s enough gold in the world to pay the Quiet Hand to take this contract. According to the account information, the owner is a dragon. One Kragathor Tenset Malevolous. The support ticket created during his first login supports that. He triggered an error and an automatic support ticket for exceeding player mesh file size — the mesh that’s used to give them a familiar body during character creation — and identified himself to the support agent, one Oren Steelshod, as a 2900 foot ancient dragon. Further, the connection traces to coordinates a few miles under the Austland city of Millen, which is where Deep Thousand is located. The account was logged in for about six hours earlier this afternoon, and the counterfeits connected to the server about thirty minutes after the account logged off. Aside from that, further scrying and divinations turn up a total blank.”

Stefano remained silent for several moments, digesting the information he’d just received. This was bad. Very bad. Maybe even catastrophically so.

“And why am I just hearing about this now, rather than when that first support ticket was submitted?”

“Uh, his direct supervisor, who received the escalation with requests for more generous compensation had the employee put on leave, pending testing for Pixie Dust abuse.”

“Ugh. And the developer ticket?”

“Well, they’ve got a huge backlog, and even high priority tickets are taking a full day or more to get around to addressing. And the support agent’s supervisor lowered the priority of the developer ticket from high to normal…”

Stefano rested his head in his hands, squeezed his eyes shut tight and rubbed his temples with his thumbs. “I want that supervisor gone. Now. He may have killed us all. Get that original support agent —Steelshod— back, and grill him for everything. I want to know every nuance of that conversation. Actually, get his consent for a Memory Play, if you can. Feel free to ply him with bonuses to his salary or even a promotion. Abyss, get him a gaggle of whores if you need to. Dwarves love to carouse, don’t they?”

“Yes, sir. Should I arrange a meeting between the supervisor and the Quiet Hand?”

“Hmm, not yet. Just put a contingency contract out. If we all die, its only fitting he goes with us, right?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Call a board meeting. I’m going to need the rest of the team in on this. Do we have any information on his avatar, at least?”

“No, sir. The original privacy directives established by the board only allow us to monitor the account itself, and not its activities once manifested in the Otherworld. Our abilities to directly contact or monitor the end user are accordingly rather limited at this time. I already consulted with Wizzlefidget from DevOps, she says they would have to bring the server down for days to rework it enchantments to allow anything close to that. While keeping it up? Maybe a week and we’ll be able to intercept a login with a support ticket.”

“Double damned abyss. Right, hire some investigators and historians to dig into this, and to find any information we have on that name, Craggy-Sore-whatever, and any connections it has to Deep Thousand. If this is truly legitimate, we need a way to contact him and placate him.”

“Right away, sir.”

As the aide left the room, Stefano reached into his desk and pulled out a bottle of 21 year old Forge Starter Single Malt. A few moments after pouring in a single finger of the amber liquid, he added a second, then a third. He raised the glass to the painting of his late brother that adorned his office wall and drank the fiery liquid in a single, heroic gulp. “It had to be a fucking dragon. Fucking abyss,” he muttered.