The Chained Watcher

In which something has happened

Grian skimmed through the newsletter he got from the hub. These things were a rather recent development, and usually reported on the going ons of the larger public servers. Occasionally, they would ask private server owners if they could visit for a special edition of the newsletter, and Hermitcraft had been visited a couple of times by now. 

The huge amount of builds bigger than most servers had built in twice as long was a tempting topic to cover, and there was talk of dedicating an actual team of their reporters to just staying up-to-date on Hermitcraft's shenanigans. The projected team name was "Hermitcraft Recap" if he recalled correctly.

Further down the page, there were rumors of a group of hostile admins -labeled hackers- causing problems in various popular servers. They had apparently started with just minor things, like walking faster than they should be able to or duplicating some items, but were starting to get more violent. Hijacking a server's magic to guide their strikes, ensuring they never missed. Flickering into intangibility, again by tapping into the server's magic, to pass through walls or weapons. 

It was getting to the point where some of the bolder ones had started threatening to destabilize respawn, though some other hackers had immediately distanced themselves after that. Needless to say, that was the final straw. A massive manhunt was being carried out, with the goal of finding and capturing the hackers. Server magic was also being reinforced against being hijacked like this, but most of the focus was on keeping the respawn mechanic safe and stable.

The newsletter segment on hackers ended with a warning/request. "If you see a hacker, please notify the proper authorities immediately. Do not engage the hacker. They will not fight on your terms, you will be fighting on theirs." Well that's not ominous. It seems like their targets were the larger servers, and the public ones were the easiest to get into. 

Luckily for Hermitcraft though, whitelisting had been discovered a while ago, as had blacklisting. For whitelisting, an admin has to key in each player's unique magic signature before they could join, so unless the hackers found a way to bypass the restrictions, Hermitcraft should be fine. Blacklisting was the opposite, and an extra layer of security against known hackers. The magic of the server itself is set to reject anyone blacklisted with much prejudice, usually resulting in a blacklisted player being violently thrown away from the portal.

Over in the distance, Grian spotted FalseSymmetry, or False, flying in what seemed oddly reminiscent of a search pattern. Well that's a bit weird, and rather concerning. She spots him sitting on his base, and spams rockets to get there faster. That's even more concerning.

False landed next to Grian, asking worriedly, "Grian, have you seen Scar recently? None of us have seen him in several days, and Xisuma can't find him using the server's magic." Scar was missing? And the server magic couldn't locate him? He thought back to when he had last seen Scar. He had been gathering resources from the nether for building his base, nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe he wasn't on the server? But the whitelisting tracked when people entered and left, so...

False was waiting for an answer. "I haven't seen him since a couple days ago, and he was mining in the nether for resources. Did X check the magic for if Scar left? He does sometimes neglect to say where he's gone." Please let this just be a misunderstanding. False shakes her head.

"That was one of the first things Xisuma did, check the whitelist's log." So much for that hope. "If he left the server, it wasn't through normal methods." Well no duh. But what reason would Scar have to find his way around the whitelist? It's not like he's not allowed to leave.

How could Scar have left then? Grian's drifting gaze fell on the newsletter. Oh. Oh please be wrong. He picked it up. "Hey False, has X checked the magic for any... outside interference?"

She looks confused, "No, but what outside interference could have-" He held up the newsletter, the article on hackers facing her. "-oh." She took it from him, skimming through with an increasingly concerned gaze. "We need to go tell Xisuma. Even if this is only a possibility..." she trailed off. No need to finish, he understood exactly what this would imply. That Scar could have been kidnapped.

~~~

Ten minutes later, they found themselves at Xisuma's base, where the worried admin was searching for Scar using the server magic. He looked up hopefully before seeing their faces. They landed in front of X, and False handed the newsletter over while asking a tense question, "Can you check to see if the server magic itself got messed with?" 

Xisuma looks at the article, before paling. He started rapidly moving his hands around himself, tapping at seemingly arbitrary points in the air. This is what it looked like to most players when an admin was checking on the magic of a server, but Grian could see the other side of the actions. Multi-colored magic with an opalescent sheen to it twitched and rippled with each touch, sending out probes to the rest of the server. 

Xisuma paled even further, looking scared. He spoke. "Something used the magic." Oh no. "Something used the server magic to bypass the whitelisting, both on the way in, and the way out." Oh if this was what Grian was thinking it was, someone was going to get stabbed. "I think... someone might have kidnapped Scar." 

There was silence after that statement, before Xisuma started tapping on his communicator. The server-wide message pinged everyone's communicators.

<ServerAnnouncement>: Server meeting, ten minutes. At the Shopping District.

Several questions started appearing in chat as those who didn't yet know about Scar being missing tried to find out what was so urgent as to call an emergency meeting, but none of the three answered, being too busy spamming rockets to get to the shopping district faster.