MapleSAP Special: Hackers
Part 8: The Morals of Training

We boarded the bus leaving Kerning City at 6 in the morning, heading east along the Warning Street Highway through the Swamplands. The freeway is merely a wide boardwalk bridge stretching for nearly 30 miles through swamp and thick bog.
Malon, Cletus and I pondered Alysha Erickson’s legal victory. The court hearing, which lasted about 90 minutes was an emotional experience for all of us.
As dawn comes, a thick fog swallows the bus as it rolls forward. We just passed a sign marking the county line between Kerning County and DG County. DG stands for Dangerous Kroko. The kroko-gators out here are known for their ferocity and viciousness. Upon crossing the county border, we are all aware that we have left the safety zone for hackers. Out here, hackers, both civillian and with any of the four main jobs, are open game to the GMs and vigilantes lurking throughout Victoria.

After we left the swamp, the bus crosses through the Dungeon Crater Mountains and after half of the eight hour journey, we enter the dark forests of Sleepywood. The trees here are at least 500 feet high, with trunks as wide as a house. The dense canopy of leaves, pine needles and other vegitation is thick enough to block out the daylight, and it is as dark as night out here.
Luminescent flowers and bulb plants flourish here, casting rays of gr…een, blue, pink, beige, and white. Giant yellow bulbs and sun flowers hang from their stems 50 feet high, casting bright light around here. The light these flowers emit is as bright as city streetlights during the night.

In the afternoon at three or so, we arrive at Sleepywood Village. Home to about 9000, this town is the center of Sleepywood. And it is home to the entrance of the Dungeon region; and underground system of caverns connecting Sleepywood to the ancient ruins underground.

The inn serves as a busy center for the many Maplers of multiple levels. They come up often to take breaks and replenish their supply of food and fuel.
The local GM was more than happy to talk to us when we asked about the whole hacker issue here.

“This is the Dungeon, it is made up of the Ant Tunnel cave system and the ruins. The giant ants that once roamed here carved a giant complex cavern system stretching hundreds of miles underground roughly about 4000 years ago. Most of the caves they made have collapsed, and these caves here are training grounds. The first few areas are for people training between level 20 and level 30. They get to hunt and pick off the mushrooms and stirge bats that inhabit these caves.”

The GM leads us further down the the caves, passing groups of young magicians, archers, rogues and swordmen, who are too busy shooting away at the mushrooms to pay us much attention. Soon we made it to Ant Tunnel Park.
“Further you go, you see one-eyed lizards; those are fun to kill, and deeper you start to find drakes, and those guys get to be pretty dangerous. Go even further and you’ll find steam vents- hot water or liquid nitrogen. Liquid methane is the worse, has caused gas explosions sometimes, but surprisingly, there’s enough naturally occurring tubes in the ground that deliver oxygen gas from nearby underground deposits, so this place airs out pretty fast. At the ruins, you’ll find the Kargoes- they’ll eat you if you don’t watch it, and even further, you will find the Tauromacies. As for Balrogs, havent seen one here for the last few years…”

People from all levels travel here to train the the caverns, and if purebloods train here, so do hackers.

“Hackers are a constant worry for any of us GMs on patrol in these areas. They are hard to spot as they go in; most of the time hackers are experts at covering their true powers until they get down to the caves where the drakes roam. Before you know it, there will be one to five hackers operating in full swing down there. We usually don’t find out until we get reports from purebloods who discover them….”
The Purebloods, or legits as they are called, are all what it’s all about.
GM Mack begs to differ and continues to call the fight against hackers ‘working in the interest of safety and security.’
“When a hacker is hacking in the caves, they are releasing immense amounts of hackium radiation, even if they are only in god-mode. God-mode is where they have formed a sheild of hack energy around their bodies that will prevent injury. And, no matter what anyone says, they are a threat to every single legit trainer in those caves.

Most of the time, hackers are busy vacking drakes, Cold-Eye lizards, and even giant kargoes in remote areas.
“They will use their power and pull as many animals as they can hold into one tight spot and attack. the grasp range of the vack hack can stretch up to 2.4 Kilofeet (800 metres),
and in the caves, that is a long range. The younger ones who are hunting down mushrooms are constantly seeing them being pulled away into the abyss of the caves. Hell, there’s been incidents where people themselves have been sucked away by the vack.”

And those sucked away end up facing contamination, torture, and even death. Young trainers, expecially swordmen and young archers (not trained in Henesys), have been sucked down into the far more dangerous depths of the caverns and end up in the assembled cluster of animals infront of the hacker. They are unable to escape and are killed along with the rest of the drakes, kargoes, and lizards, if not killed by them first..
GM Mack led us to the entrance of the underground ruins.
“Here’s where we had the worst vack incident. Last year, a powerful hacker came down here and used his powers to kill the monsters by the hundreds. Down here, we are about 4000 feet (over 1 kilometer) directly below Sleepywood, but the walking distance down here is about 30 Kilofeet or more (9.8 km). This hacker had a vack that grabbed anything moving all the way past Ant Tunnel Park. That day, about 15 rogues, swordmen, magicians, and Permanoobs were all swept off their feet and blown down here before they even knew what was happening.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Those who weren’t sucked away ran back up to the surface. Nothing scares the living crap out of an on-duty GM like a screaming mob of panicked trainers stampeding their way out of the cave, running over eachother and the local townsfolk just to get away from the caves. After the cave was evacuated, we blocked off a 100 foot radius of the cave entrance and put the whole town on high alert. Sleepywood was locked down for about five hours until a heavily equipped team arrived. It was the kind of hacker we thought was extremely dangerous.”

The GM is referring to an incident two years ago when Sleepywood’s last killer hacker infiltrated the caves. Nearly 50 people were reported missing; all of them confirmed killed at the hands of the notorius hacker.
Today, signs are posted at every doorway and ladder in the caves and in town warning legits of the signs of vack power.
“It turns out that the first sign that you’re in vack range is the air. It gets a little windy as the power is seeking living objects to grab and pull. That’s the first sign. The second sign is you feel like you are floating off the ground, like there is little or no gravity. Then it gets bad- you are already picked up by the vack power and as you float away- no; you’re not floating, you are being pulled by the hacker’s power towards the hacker, and by then, it’s already too late.”

Evacuation orders are issued when the wind picks up inside the caves or if people or monsters start to move irregularily. Then the GMs move in when the vacking has stopped. Unlike everyone else in the country, the GMs are licensed to carry specialized weapons designed to magnetically destabilize hackium; therefore killing the hacker.
“Our orders are shoot to kill in these situations. If there’s a hacker down there, we’re going in and he or she is gonna be done like dinner!”
Some cocky, rowdy GM soldiers also like to ‘ride the vack’; allowing themselves to be swept down to the hacker, and killing him on contact.

Most of the time, the highest level of hackers or purebloods is in the 6X range (level 60’s), and their vack powers usally only reach an average 600 feet. These hackers seem to present no real danger or threat to the purebloods training above, provided they don’t interfere.
“Most of the time, the hackers are scared. A legit trainer is looking for a place to kill some stuff, and he or she happens to walk on a busy hacker. The hackers usually flee when some one sees them, and some times, they may try to scare the legit person by threatening them or with a show of force.”

But bad evil mean hackers aren’t the only ones training in Sleepywood, or anywhere else for that matter.
“And now this is Kerning City’s Swamp 91.5 ‘s survey of the week: Among you people with the primary jobs, [thief, magician, bowman, warrior]
I ask you this: Who would you rather encounter whilist training: a friendly and helpful hacker or a mean old asshole legit? Call the Swamp Phone at 2080-0915 and voice your opinion!…”
“…it’s Monday morning, 10:15 am, right before we begin another 90 minutes of Swamp-moshing screaming heavy metal music, here’s the results of last weeks poll. Last week,
DJ SkullBangaar asked this question: Who would you prefer to meet on the training grounds anywhere in Victoria? a helpful hacker or an evil legit? Well the results are in:
Out of the 349 girls and guys who called for the poll, only 62% said they would rather meet the asshole legit. That’s 48% who are open minded and tolerant enough to want to meet a hacker out there- nice one that is. Last year when we held the same question, 75% said they did not want to meet the nice hacker. That’s a big improvement, folks, it means we are moving in the right direction..”

Tolerance of non-hostile hackers rose in the last 10 years, despite all the evil things hackers have done. Perhaps it’s not as we thought: while all the good hackers were living in Kerning City and the evil ones were wreaking havoc on us outside, there are a few good hackers out there extending their hands to offer aid, support, and friendship. That’s something if you think about it.

During our adventure, we left Sleepywood and went to the badlands of Perion Domain County. Unlike the confined spaces of the Ant Tunnel, the training grounds here are open, and space is plenty- plenty for hacking.
We went to an area called the Burnt Zone, a small area 18 Kilofeet (3 miles) south of Perion. This land is home to the FireBoar and Drake species. As we looked around at he busy people training, we saw a few new things happening: a fighter or spearman (or spearwoman) would hit one monster, but sparks of raw red energy would hit all of them in a 15 foot radius, and only one person was hitting them.
We decided to talk to one of the young noob rogues and swordmen standing by the benches at the observation deck.
“Hi, can I have a moment of your time?”
“sure.”
“Name’s Mr. Budweiser of MapleSAP Magazine, and this my crew, Malon, and Cletus. We just wanted to ask you a few question, What’s your names?”
These noobs didn’t see any problem with us. The woman busy swinging her sword and casting powerful energy at the drakes continues on working.
“Are you guys just relaxing or watching? You’re too low of level to be out here,” I asked.
“We’re actually in a party,” the noob swordgirl answered.
“With who?”
“Her,” the young girl said, pointing to the spearwoman 10 feet away. Just as she swung her spear again, 10 Fireboars and Drakes all croaked and hit the ground dead.
“Doesn’t she expect you to work at all?”
The swordgirl, Chollain replied, “I wanted to fight the boars, but I almost got killed. One of them ran me over, so that lady said she didn’t want us fighting them,”
“I see,” I replied. “If I may ask, is she a hacker?”
The boy, a level 27 rogue, looked at Chollain with worry.
Chollain didn’t know what to say. She watched as the hacker killed more incoming drakes with one or two swings that belched out red blasts of energy.
“She’s really nice, though. She saved my life!”
“I’m going to ask her some questions,”
“She speaks Spanish, and she doesn’t know English!” Chollain said.
The rogue kid, who did not want to talk to us climbed down a rope ladder and threw a bunch of tobi stars at one of the boars. He had to shoot 10 stars at it before it died.

The hacker talked happily on her messenger, looking up at the young ones every now and then. She saw us and quickly dialed a name on her messenger.
Sure enough more people showed up, bearing the same name tag as her and walked up to us.
“Hablas Espanol?” the guy named PutoMastaX asked us.
“No…” Malon said nervously.
“Okay, yo hablas ingles. Why are you here? You threatening our friends?” Masta asked.
“No no, not at all. We were just curious..”

We had to explain our cause to the guild’s high members. The hacker woman stopped killing monsters and motioned Chollain and the boy to stay with her.
“…I can assure you, senor Budweiser,” Masta said. “That this beautiful lady you see is not harming the kids. She has formed a party with them and she is training them. You see, training is very difficult these days. the level scoring system has gotten worse and worse. If you are level 30 in your abilites, they will only say you are level 25, and so you must work harder and longer. The lady is helping them because, not only that, training is very difficult. When people train, they spend more time haggling for a place against other people than actually training, and young ones always end up hurt. Tu entuendo? You understand?”

This isn’t the only case of hackers training purebloods. They’ve been doing it for years, Some to make money, others doing it to offer goodwill, or to show that hackers can be helpful. It seems to form a thick bond between hackers and their pureblood friends.
GM Mack was pissed when we told him about this…
“If I was on duty up there, I would have shot that hacker, AND those noobs she was training with. She was contaminating them via the party energy channel. When you form a party with people, an energy link is formed, bonding the group of people together. PQ systems require this bond because if it breaks, parties are teleported out of the area, but that’s not the point. The point is that hacker was contaminiating them. The party energy bond is a superconducter of hackim going straight from the hacker to everyone connected!”

GM Mack’s theory goes around well. Hundreds of legits have refused or politely turned down hackers’ offers to train together for fear of contamination; and contamination means the death penalty.
We went around Victoria and asked hacker-tolerant legits how they felt in their approach to hackers.
“What is your preferred method if you wanted to train with a hacker? Is it by entering a party or is it by some other means?”
“Party I guess…”
“See, I dont wan’t to party because energy spreads around everyone. you get hackium like you get AIDS…”
“Party? Yeah right! I’d rather KS them…”
“Kill steal for the win!”
:”KS”
“…ks for sure. And if you ks a hacker, you end up working twice as hard as when you are on your own, so it boosts your productivity level,”
“Kill-steal,”
“Steal their kills, you’ll get stronger.”
“More experience, and faster too.”
“You level up in a day if you did that,”
“Screw it, they’re assholes anyway,”
“It’s like, they don’t even know you’re there. All the hackers I KSed before were in bot mode- it’s like a trance; like theyre hypnotized- Vack, kill, vack, vack, kill. One hacker said to me when you bot, you pass out, like you sleep, and your body does all the work for you!”
“When a hacker bots, its awesome, you can KS the f### out of them all you want, and they won’t know, haha!”
“One time, I found a hacker at the drake caves. He was botting, but he forgot to remember to kill or something because he was just sucking them all up, but not hitting any of the drakes, so came up real close and just swung away at them. I felt like I was ten times stronger when the hacker left. It was awesome!”

So KSing hackers doesnt subject you to the dangerous hackium radiation?

“Not really, I mean its not like its in the vack. They just make a vacuum- like outer space vacuum- and everything gets sucked to that spot. There’s not hack anywhere. All you have to watch out for is the flying monsters!”

GM Mack had his part to say. “KSing hackers is just as dangerous. If you think that you are safe because you are not bonded by a party link, think again! Not only that, but people have been seriously injured and even killed by KSing hackers because the danger from the monsters being sucked to you is overwhelming!”
Annual reports show that least a few hundred people die each year from hacker related training. 30% have died while stealing kills from hackers.
To remedy the situation, the training laws were revised in the summer of 2007. KSing or partying with hackers became an illegal crime called ‘third party hacking,’
Under the law, if you even hit a monster that was being sucked into a vack vortex, you are just as guilty as if you performed the hack yourself, and you will face the electric chair.

“The law was designed to scare people into thinking twice about Ksing or partying hackers,” Mack explained to us. “But also, it was meant to expand the moral coverage over this issue. Now because third party hacking is illegal, more people will not work with hackers than before. Entire guilds will not allow their members to go anywhere near hackers because of this. it’s great.”

But for those training, it’s not as pleasant. Wolfboy188, level 31 bandit used to train with hackers before he was caught by a GM and slapped with a 10 million meso fine.
“This is the ticket saying I gotta pay those stupid donut sucking pigs 10 mil. I don’t even make that much money in a year. How the ### do they expect me to pay for this?”
“What about the training with hackers bit?”
Wolfboy folded the ticket and stuffed it into his pocket. “I don’t see what the big ###king deal is, I mean, we’re not even doing anything. When you try to train on your own, other people come in, steal your space and beat the living crap out of you until you leave. I get KSed all the time if I train in my own. Like one time I was training on the blue slime area, and some damn hermit has to come in and shoot up everything before I can even get my jack-knife out! It sucks!”
“So you think hacker chase off the asshole legits?”
“Yeah, probably. Hell, you don’t even have to train with hackers, you can train all on your own in a place if hackers are near by because those selfish bastard legits who are always trying to keep us down and keep us from advancing beyond the status of ‘stupid noob’ never come around. It’s like protection, too.”
I paused, then asked, “So, Wolfboy, what was your reaction when you heard the news about the new laws?”
“I got a call from my guild boss. She said her friend saw me training with hackers, and she chewed me out on the messenger. She told me to stop, not just because of the law, but also because the GMs are looking to kill entire guilds if they think the guild is letting its people work with hackers.”
“Won’t your guild just expell you?”
“Yeah, but it was like a family….when she told me about the law, I was bloody pissed!”

A good, effective, even positive method of training (or dirty sleazy way of cheating as it is seen by narrow minded conservatives) has been outlawed.
Hundreds of letters were written and addressed to the Orbis Senate requesting the cancelling of the new law, but the request was denied.
The Spanish speaking hacker, Yvete, a member of the MexicanUnion guild, came to us while we were in Perion, accompanied by Masta, the guild leader.
Masta explained to us the relationship between hacker and legit when it came to training, and how it all fell apart when word of law got out.

According to Masta’s story, Yvete had been a hacker for 15 years. When she was 14 years old, she became ill after making her first job advancment. After she was assumed to die within a month, Yvete appealed to the local hackers for help. She reached out, and the hacker cleric used her powers and healed her. In the years following, Yvete used her powers for good and assisted, helped, healed, and trained people in anyway she could. She met several other hackers who had the similar heartwarming relationship between hackers and legits out here. It was like a community. Hackers had camps out in the woods, and pureblood people needing extra food, a place to rest their weary bones, or someone to help them in anyway, they found all those things in the friendly hackers here.
[“When word of law got out, everything changed. Our pureblood friends were scared of us; they wouldn’t even talk to us after all we;ve dont them over the years. They feared if the GM saw them with us, they would be killed. They severed their ties with us and left us.”] (translated from Yvete’s testimomy in Spanish)

It’s not right to say the pureblood trainers were heartless in the big split, they felt the same way. Wolfboy and Chollain told us their side of the story.
“I woke up at the hotel in Perion, and that morning I was excitedly running down the path to the burning zone where Yvete was, then a GM came out of nowhere and stopped us. He said in a loud angry tone, ‘Where do you two noobs think you are going?!’
I said that me and Wolfy were going to Sleepywood, but the GM just sneered and stared us down. He said, ‘Boars##t! Sleepywood’s the other way! And I know you two and so many other noobs around here have been going down to see those vile hacker scum! Don’t deny it!’ he shouted.
I didn’t know what to say. That was the first time I ever heard somebody talk about Yvete or her friends like that. Sure she didn’t speak any english, but she was really nice to us in every way she could show.”
Chollain shed a tear as she told us her story.
“I was mad he said that and he was lying. He then slapped me in the face and I fell down. He then grabbed Wolfy by the neck and put his gun to his face and said he was gonna shoot us if he saw us on that road ever again,”
Over the next few weeks, many legits who trained with hackers left the hacker inhabited regions of Victoria and returned to the so-called proper training grounds, where they were subject to abuse by other Maplers. Many were called hackers themselves and were harassed even beaten by ther own former friends.

The split that resulted from the new laws marked a reversal and significant damage in the progress of toleration we as Maplers have been trying to sew for decades.
The antagonists continue to drive their wrench into the engine and bring all progress to a halt. But who are they?

“The Justice Arrow continues to keep up their evangelical war against the hackers…”
“The Kanzas Church and their supporters are seen on the streets of every major city in MapleWorld denouncing the general public and waving banners that show messages of hate and hostility, messages such as ‘God hates you’ ‘You betrayed God by befriending Hackers’ ‘God is angry with you every day!’ and other racist comments alike targeting hackers, magicians, and noobs…”
“…of J-Camp 2007 all got together and held a massive rally in Orbis outside the Maple Senate building, issuing their religiously charged message of hate and intolerace to hackers, pressuring the government to eliminate the safety zone around Kerning City…”
“It is because of these right-wing religious fanatics the government has ignored public appeal to lighten up on friendly hackers, and continues to keep the rift between us wide open…”
“Sherra Felpsen or Sherfelps101, co-founder of the Kanzas Church, made her views loud and clear during an interview on MapleRadio, saying such nasty things like ‘Thank the Migrator for dead purebloods’, or ‘The killer hackers are the devil’s signs of backlash as he knows he is weak, and he had summoned the killer hackers on us because of all our sins…”
“Today, conservatism has won, and progress of peace has lost. The communites of isloated, outcasted, yet friendly hackers were stripped of their connections and relationships with the only tolerant people willing to reach out to them when the new bill was passed calling anything to do with a hacker ‘Third Party Hacking,’ This act by the senate has clearly showed our efforts are going nowhere near the objective of eliminating the bad guys and sparing the good hackers their bad reputation…”

The news never reached the front pages of major newspapers anywhere in Victoria. If it did hit the media, it was issued in conservative perspective- laced with lies and decietful information making all hackers look like the enemy. The law was a vicious blow to hacker communites everywhere, and people in Kerning City felt the effects too. At Janzsoon Fields, more games involving teams of hackers and purebloods were cancelled every time evangelical maniacs rallied and pressured th city government to take down the safety zone unless the people acted on their own will to isolate hackers.
community bulletin boards were covered in posters and signs saying hackers weren’t welcome. The economic blow was also hard on hackers everywhere.

“Purebloods and hackers who train had a trade agreement- in exchange for hackers’ hospitality and humility, the legits returned their kidness with supplies from the cities and both groups were able to exchange knowledge and educate eachother on many things. The passing of the bill destroyed all that. My fear is that if this crap keeps up, hackers will no longer be able to function, much less survive in this country, and they will resort to drastic measures, and that means more crimes, more terror against the rest of us for sure.”- Al Gackson, Human Relations, MNHR.

As we returned to Kerning City, we pondered what the future would hold for Victoria, if not the southern territories in the country. As Al Gackson put it, if there is to be hacker warfare against us, we’ll know why it’s coming. For the next part in the series, we set out to investigate why everyone hates hacker so much..
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ugh- soo tired