MapleSAP Special: Hackers
Part Nine: Big Fat History Lesson

The one common question you hear from many people is “Where on the planet did these hackers come from?”
Many of the hacker horror films proposed that hackers are aliens from outer space, or that they were the product of a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong.
In the 1988 movie ‘Ellinia Underground,’ the story tells us that the people in Ellinia secretly harbored and nurtured a hacker population that threatens to take over Victoria.
A theory proposed by mentally defunct scientist Ash Woodstock claims that hackers where flawed magicians expelled from their communities, and to increase their powers, they electrocuted themselves.
And of course, all the people who are religiously insane say that hackers (and magicians too) are abominations– the devil’s scouts injected into this world from hell.

It’s been a month since we went to 7ung Hwang and toured Victoria investigating the tense hacker-pureblood relationships. We spent the weekend in Ellinia, walking around asking people asking them about hackers, and about hacker origin theories. Some of them were still angry about Ellinia Underground, even 20 years later.
“That movie put a bad scar not only on Ellinia’s reputation, but on the reputations of magicians everywhere,” said a woman.
“That film wasn’t the only scathing thing to come out of studios! They made countless documentaries and TV shows that spread lies and more lies about us,”
So we went to look for the truth. We found it in the historic archives of the Ellinia Library, a massive holding center of books and reading materials dating back hundreds of years.
There we spent over six hours reading books, and reports. To summarize it all: in all of the years since the humans re-founded Ellinia in the 1700s, there wasn’t a single thing about hackers; not even in today’s books. There were no records of hackium or hacker discoveries anywhere around here.
For decades people thought hackium was in the misty swamps below Ellinia at the roots of the giant trees. More than 23 research reports have confirmed that the heavy magic saturated water and vegetation contained absolutely no hackium at all.
“Magic levels down there are high and too dangerous for any one, even a powerful mage, you wouldn’t last an hour down there without the proper equipment, and the magic radiation will eventually penetrate whatever protection you have on. Any hackium down there can’t withstand the intense magic. The magic energy will eventually break it down.
There is work in progress for a potential treatment program for hackers…”

So, Ellinia is clean, and the movie was just as phony as we thought. We left town on Monday and boarded the ship that will take us to Orbis, the national capital.

Orbis is home to the Maple National Archives, a huge plain building that stores all of the national records. The sheer size of the place is bigger than two football fields side to side.
To get in, we all had to pay 500K for a two day pass, and we had to be with a supervisor at all times.
When we asked for articles on hackers, we were directed to the storage room containing the books and papers on hacker-related laws dating back to the late 1950’s. When we asked about the 1963 hacker uprising, we were denied any information. The officers supervising us also refused to grant us access to any information about the many bomb raids in the western SEA Lands.
In short, the government denied us any historical information on the hackers. We left Orbis and returned to Kerning City, which also has a historical archives center.
Cletus, Malon, and I all split up and searched the place. Unlike at the MNA where everything is restricted or controlled, visitors are allowed to use the index system to find the desired articles.
Jim Petrie, the chief administrator of the place was happy to point us in the direction of the hacker history books and papers.

“This place was built back in 1962 so they could take all this stuff out of the Kerning Regional library, and use their shelf space for more books. People come here all the time, whether its some students doing research, or a construction company needing a geo report on the ground of their site, its all here. We even include past medical reports, safety reports of all kinds; employee records of every place you an think of; police records; its all here. We even have stuff that the Sino Army left when they retreated. Upstairs, you’ll find Genral Hun’s private journal he wrote during their invasion.
Basically, the city wants this place open to the public; its the council’s idea of being honest and open.”
I asked, “Are you aware that the history archives at Orbis is restricted and heavily secured?”
“I’ve heard, yes. And they do that so the government can keep whatever secrets hidden away. I figure they don’t want you people snooping over the hacker history files there, because they want to keep this country hating hackers, and you are looking to undo all that,”

Mr. Petrie was right on the money about that. Which is why we came here.
“We got all kinds of stuff, from newspaper articles, old military reports, personal diaries, letters in English, Mandarin, Singlish, Malay, Viet, Thai; it’s all there.”
We all spent days looking over everything the Kerning City Archives had. As we read over every single page, scroll, newspaper article, and as we spent hours watching old video memory crystals, the truth that is so well hidden unfolded in front of us like chained dragon suddenly set free.

The story which we have built from everything we read spreads out over a 40 year period, and covers many incidents of horror, and terror.
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It began in the late 1930’s. The People’s Territory of Zhonguo [China], then a colony belonging to the Sino Empire,
had suffered years of ongoing crisis, such as economic downfalls, food shortages, etc. The colony’s population had well over half a billion people, way more people than what the land could provide for. As the situation deteriorated in Zhonguo, the Sino Empire staked claims in Victoria and the land east of the Peking [Sinorean] Mountains in 1938.
At this time the SEA Lands were largely unoccupied, with a few colonies from the SEA Union of nations dotted around.
Such fertile and rich forested land was the target for colonization by many countries such as Ivalice, Azeroth, Midgar, Japan, Korea (they already established the Korean Lands in 1918), and to a lesser extend, East India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Australia. In the Kashkun region Tibet and Ivalice had already established settlements.
For years the Sino Imperial diplomats argued intensly, fighting with words for control of the lad, while the people in China began migrating over the Peking Mountains and began establishing new cities in the new land.

In 1939 when the founding committee began its work in establishing a country, they issued a final denial against the Sino Empire claiming new land, and instead gave it to the S.E.A. union, who were quick to inhabit the region. furthermore, the SE was stripped of its authority and control over the 9,0000 people who did make it over the Peking Mountains.

In November of 1939, the Sino Empire launched a military assault against the non- Zhongese settlements. During the winter months of warfare, the Sino Army obliterated hundreds of settlemets, especially those build by people who left Zhonguo. The Azerothan Alliance colony New Stormwind was destroyed and all of the settlers were killed. As a result, Azeroth, already on the brink of civil war (between the Alliance and Horde factions), was force to withdraw its land claim.
In the spring of 1940, the Sino Army’s armadas of tanks, planes, ATV’s and other heavy mobile equipment was moving in and the campaign expanded eastward as a show of force to stop the S.E.A. from sending new settlers.
At this time, deep in the Peking Mountains, an epidemic occurred in the isolated mining region of
WeiPan.
The WeiPan mines have had decades of prosperity, digging up thousands of tons of gold, silver, coal, among other valuable or useful natural resources. At the mine called WeiPan Wu (WP5), miners unearthed an new and unknown mineral. As they mined more and smelted the black metallic substance, many fell ill with radiation sickness or cancer like in the Jiana mines where they unearthed uranium ore.
As the disaster unfolded and plagued local villages, the Sino Army looked on only with interest; what everyone viewed as the shiny rock that kills people, they saw a weapon. The substance was first nicknamed ‘hack’ because people who fell sick often coughed and choked a lot, making ‘hacking’ noises.

In 1941, the Sino Army was ordered to withdraw and head south towards the South Peking Mountains near Victoria.
That summer, after a year of intense work and development, MapleWorld’s first dirty bomb was built. It wasn’t a nuclear weapon that could destroy 50 square miles of turf, but one that spread radioactive crap everywhere.
In July the Sino Army used nuclear bombs (hydrogen bombs) and dropped them on the cities and towns in a bitter effort to destroy the land they could not have. The first bomb was dropped on August 1 over the city of New Auckland.
In secret, after each H-bomb was detonated, hackium dirty bombs were dropped.
In 1942, while the armies already invaded Victoria and were occupying over half of that continent,
the first hackium nukes began dropping on settlements in the Kashkun region. Entire cities, each holding populations of 50,000 or more were blasted off the map. For the most part, however, it was little dirty bombs that were dropped the most, especially in the south western SEA Lands, in the valleys up against the mountains.

[The Rise of Hackers]
This campaign of terror continued until 1945 when the Sino Army called it quits and surrendered.
Words can’t describe the impact on the people and environment in these regions, especially the densely populated Kashkun area.
The descendants of survivors were born with deformities and mutations. Others exhibited strange and frightening powers. Many wee put to death as a way to combat the crisis. Others who seemed unaffected left Kashkun and traveled to other areas in the SEA Lands, carnying in their bodies the dreaded hackium.
The epedemic lasted over 20 years, despite the government’s programs that sent thousands of people to the south west regions. The other areas that the Sino Army bombed were declared off limits due to radiation hazards.

by the mid 1960’s, it was obvious that there were people walking around, exhibiting powers; such as flying, moving objects with simple waves of their hands, reading other people’s minds, healing instantly, and such. These people, many of them children of the children of survivors. Others were purebloods sent here and acquired hackium unknowingly by breathing the air around a hidden hackium deposit, or through a long list of other means.
As these hackers, as they were called, became more powerful, the purebloods began to shun them and abuse them.
the people of villages and towns would expel hackers or kill them. They were deemed low class people and restricted from shool, good jobs, travel, etc.

in 1967, the federal government in Orbis decided that the 2 million hackers living in the SEA Lands were dangerous and ordered military groups to destroy them. The first attack began in Pachaya City (Mount Paluka, 315 miles northeast of the SEA Lands-Victoria border) on May 21.
The hackers fought back and defeated the military groups in what was called the Hacker Uprising. Hackers everywhere declared war on their enemies and vowed to kill anyone to point a weapon at them.
The Hacker Uprising triggered the extremely violent Forest War that lasted until 1978.

|||||||The Forest War [1967-1978]|||||||||||||
After the Hacker Uprising of 67, Orbis declared war not only on the hackers themselves, but all of the communities that housed them.
The hackers in turn, enlisted tens of thousands of SEA Landers for the war.
In the first few years of the war, the hackers were pushed deeper and deeper into the thick forests and up into the mountains as their home towns and villages were razed to the ground. The newly established Maple Peace Corps army was a more organized, powerful and deadlier foe than what the hackers faced before.

Seeking Refuge
While thousands put their lives on the line everyday to combat the the enemy, thousands more SEA Landers and hackers retreated even further into the mountains during the summer months and crossed the Corazon Canyon at the old Cold Death Pass that the Sino Army built 28 years before. The refugees were civilians fleeing persecution and war. They marched accross the frigid Croazon and Perion badlands.
The people of Perion rejected them and so they sought refuge in the city to the west: Kerning.

[Home Base]
The Kerning Regional Agricultural Zone at the time was not farmland at all. 75% of the land was still a forest, and the 25% was converted into an airstrip and military base.
The Naples Valley MPC base proved the only available runways and fields needed to launch and land aircraft.
Military planes borrowed from the Amerikan armed forces, while many more planes were built in haste to meet the demand for air support in the SEA Lands. Every day planes and zeppelins took off from the airfield equipped with bombs of all kinds. Secret investigations turned up that Sino Army carriers flew to Kerning and delivered loads of hackium dirty bombs. The Zhong Territory’s government assured the MPC bombers that these weapons were only chemical, and magical bombs. And so the MPC continued their reign of terror, and unknowingle dropped hundreds of hackium bombs on the forests below.

As the war raged on hundreds of miles away, the refugees kept coming to Kerning, and established 7ung Hwang City on the northern side of Mount. Kankoku. The new metropolis took in at least 50-500 people a day.

The city government was ordered to issue a draft- all young men and women who were level 20 and above and had any of the four jobs, or were Permanoob, were ordered to fight. Civilians were sometimes recruited themselves.
They formed the 152 KC regiments that fought the ground war against the hackers, who had taken to occupying new villages and towns as the Forest War became uglier and more complicated.
By the 1970’s, the base expanded, and became the South’s major support center for the war. Planes were constantly coming and going every day.
The Justice Arrow regiments (KC 117th – 175th Regiments) were dispatched as well. While the federal history record shows that the Justice Arrow re-emerged in 1983, they really re-expanded during the Forest War.

By the mid 1970’s, Kerning City became a target of bomb raids as the rebels and hackers acquired some planes and bombs via secret deals and corrupt people. Most of the bombing was focused on the base.

The Forest War ended in 1978 when the MPC pulled out. Political turmoil in Orbis, and financial disputes cut the support for the Maple Peace Corps and they lost their advantages in the war. As the hackers and rebels re-emerged with a thirst for vengeance, the MPC withdrew frantically, often abandoning some of their soldiers in enemy territory.
The sudden pullout came as a complete shock in Kerning City and everywhere else, and a real reason was never provided for the abrupt end. On the good side, the bomb raids against Kerning came to an end.
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[The last 20 Years]
From the 1960’s to the 1980’s, Kerning City absorbed more than two million SEA Landers and hackers. Most of them continue to live in Yazhou County today, and have contributed everything they had to the Kerning City Historical Society and the Regional Archives.
Despite the federal government’s intent to remain stagnant and ignorant of the civilian hacker population, they did, however pass a bill in 1984 declaring Kering City to be a safety zone for hackers. Today, the negative attitudes towards hackers is breaking down slowly, but there is still progress to be made.
Many psychologists, GMs, police officers, and others who have encountered evil hackers all believe that hackers become that way due to society’s hostility.
Today, there are still at least 30,000 hackers living in camps in the Sleepywood mountains, training, and living off the land, waiting for us to stop thinking they are the enemy.
As history has told us, there are both good purebloods and bad purebloods; and there are good hackers and bad hackers. Stop hating all hackers because one has comitted a crime. This history lesson shows their origins, and how they came into existence. They will not go away, they are here to stay, and it is time for every one of us to come out of the closet and accept them with open arms. Surely the hackers will do the same for us..
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if this is boring i dont blame ya.
i try to wrap this series up in the next 1 or 2 chapters. i wanna go on to something else -_-