Richard Large lives up to his name. He is a colossal dick, and as he stands on top of that stagecoach choking the life out of Iron Marge, I can't deny the raw power in his impressive frame. The coach rushes forward pulling a tail of dust behind it, and Dick sneers as the women in his grasp gurgles and gasps. Dick likes when it takes a while. He never looks away, not until the light fades from their eyes. I've seen him kill npcs, but he enjoys players more, and the one he's got his hands on now is special. It's a woman who has wronged him, in a personal fashion, by snatching away his victims, by giving her children something he can't take away no matter how powerful he is.

His posse calls him Big Dick, and if you asked Richard Large, he'd tell you it was both a nick name and an accurate description. He thinks it's a compliment, but his boys don't follow him because they respect him, or because he's a good leader. They do it because they don't have another choice. Dick entered the game ten years ago, and on the first day he shanked another first level player with a knife he stole, and he aint ever looked back. His sneer when he stands on the stagecoach with Iron Marge's windpipe collapsing between his fingers is his version of a smile of pure joy. Choking that woman is what Richard Large was put in this world for.

Eight years ago, I met that man in Austin. He was on the street shouting, some npc whore dead in the dirt below him, and I had just spent four levels on quick draw. I admit I was feeling a bit full of myself. My britches were tight, if you get my meaning. Dick cussed and called the whole damn town craven. The npc cowered behind barrels and inside shops. Sometimes they fired back at desperados, but Dick hadn't killed enough to set them off. Besides, they always missed.

The npc sheriff stepped out into the street. "Now you look here, Mr. Large," the man said. I was half a newb myself and Dick had a reputation for trouble. My companions urged me to stay put in the saloon, but I was just itching to try out my new skills. Big Dick shot the sheriff dead.

That was when I decided to try myself against Richard Large. I stepped into the street, spurs clacking, head tilted so my hat hid my face, my hands hovering and twitching over my guns.

"Any of you cowards going to come and face me?" Richard Large shouted. His back was to me, and he hadn't noticed me yet, but I wasn't - and I still aint - some craven. Sometimes I think I should have shot him in the back, but I know it wouldn't have made any difference. Dick fired into the air twice. I'd counted, he only had one shot left.

"I will," I said. I sounded braver than I felt. A thrill ran through me, a sense of the imminent danger held in Big Dick's hand. Almost like I could actually die. This was the reason I played these games, and I would remember the moment later fondly.

He turned around and squinted at me. "What, a fucking Mexican?"

"Just you and me, quick draw," I said.

Big Dick smirked. "Naw."

He already had his gun drawn, raised, and aimed at me, and I saw his finger twitch. I drew. Some of it was my own reaction time, most I think was the purchased skill. I fired all six shots from the hip while Big Dick fired once. I still don't know how many times I actually hit him. I didn't fire faster than him, to this day I am convinced that he simply missed, but the result was the same either way. Big Dick fell backwards, arms limp, and his gun flew from his hand. He was as dead as the dirt he fell in, dead before he even hit the ground.

That's when all my trouble with Big Dick began. I'd beaten him, and that wasn't allowed. He found me three months later in a little box canyon near Window Rock. I was up there on some damn collection quest that seems ridiculous to me now. In those days I put up with stupid shit like that mostly because I didn't know any better. By then Big Dick had ingratiated himself to the moderators, but I'll get to that.

He came looking for me, out for revenge. I know this because he said so, shouting it to the hills. He was there to make me pay for killing him, never mind that I had played entirely within the rules of the game. I was a damn cheater, I had to be, there was no other way a dirty Mexican could have defeated him. Thankfully the mods hadn't listened to him, or I might have been banned out of hand before then. I'd heard of worse, at his word or others. In those days, if someone the mods favored branded you a cheater, you laid low until they forgot about you.

I watched him stalk up the canyon. He made no effort to hide himself, shouting as he was, and I decided I was better off taking him from above. Honor be damned. He'd upgraded to dual wielded revolvers, massive ebony things that sounded like canons going off whenever he fired. I lined up my shot across a boulder and waited for the opportune moment. By then I had deadeye as well, and I decided I would wing him. Let him know just what he was dealing with. Maybe he would get the hint and take the chance to back off and leave me alone.

My shot did nothing. Blood spurted from his shoulder, and the big bastard laughed. He turned my way and unloaded his revolvers. Those guns were huge, and their thundering echoed off the walls with enough force to start a minor landslide. I counted twelve of those hammering shots, as they blew chips off the rock I crouched behind, then rose and fired. I know I hit him all five times, from the red rain that burst from his chest and back.

Big Dick laughed. He shot me four times. That's when I learned that his guns were actually eight shooters, and also that the moderators had decided that this asshole was a good candidate to join their ranks.

For Big Dick, it was all about power and becoming a moderator was the logical next step. How he convinced them, I can't say. It had always been about power for him, and I had taken it that day in Austin. He thought he took it back in the box canyon when he killed me, but the fact that I shot first - had he not been literally invulnerable, he would have died that day without giving me a scratch - ate at him. It crawled up inside his mind and enraged him. His power was artificial. He needed me to not just succumb to his power, but to respect him for it, and he knew I never would. No matter how much he lied to himself. I like to think that's why Big Dick showed up in Carson three years after the Developer laid the rune of recall on us all.

Richard Large had never liked Carson, but so long as Iron Marge had the favor of Billy the Doggo, Big Dick left the place alone. He'd gotten wind that I was staying there, and we still had a beef to settle. He risked Doggo's anger to shoot the place up, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to stop him besides take his prize away. Iron Marge told me not to, that there was nothing Big Dick could do, to just ignore him. But I knew what Big Dick intended.

I'd seen it in Jaurez, when he and his Texans slaughtered us, then boarded up our saloon and trapped us inside. They couldn't threaten us - death wasn't much of a problem with the runes in place - and we couldn't starve, so they settled for psychological torture. For confinement. And maybe we can't actually starve, but the sensation sure isn't pleasant. If I tried to hide in Carson, Big Dick would do the same thing here. I didn't think Iron Marge and her children could handle it.

So I went out into the street, spurs clacking, and faced down Big Dick again. "You and me, quick draw," I said, knowing it didn't matter a whit if I shot him first or not.

"Naw," Big Dick drawled. I prepared myself to die, already forming my plan to get past the Texans that would waiting in Jaurez when I respawned. But he went on. "I ain't gonna kill you, spik. You belong in the mine with the rest of your kind."

"What mine?" I asked.

Big Dick snorted. "Gold mine, you yellow idiot. You dig. That's all you're good for."

This was news to me, but I connected the dots. When I had shot my way out of the saloon six months earlier, some of my compatriots - the weaker sort - had been discussing surrender. It had to be better than an eternity trapped in the saloon, they reckoned. At the time I couldn't fathom what the Texans wanted, why they were so keen on confining us. Now I understood - they wanted to break us and enslave us. They denied us the only thing they could actually take away - our freedom. How long would I have lasted trapped in that saloon? Eventually I also would have been willing to go dig in a mine just for the chance to get some fresh air.

I drew and shot Big Dick five times, expecting that, in his anger, he would fire back. I had no such luck. He laughed, same as he had in that box canyon, as if the bullets lancing through his flesh tickled. I tucked my revolver up under my arm, aimed through my ribs, and shot myself in the heart. In that way I beat him again. I stole his prize. It took a long time to die, at least a minute, and let me tell you it hurt like a mother fucking bitch, but I wanted to see his face. I smiled while he ranted and raved and cussed me out as a craven.

Denied his prize, the threat of William the Doggo kept him from doing more to Carson, and as far as I know he hasn't been back. So I beat him three times, and for that he hates me. And Iron Marge beat him too, in a different way, so when he finds his chance to strangle the life out of her, he takes it, nevermind his precarious position or the cliff the stagecoach rushes toward. Big Dick draws one of those massive ebony eight shooters and lets her see it. Her vision isn't quite gone yet. He presses the barrel against her temple, and fires.