Epic Punch to My Brother's Gut

Vampire Wars was a MUD, which stands for Multi-User Dungeon. It was one of the first ever mediums for owning face 1v1 PVP online. Role players could finally come together in a place online and own eachother up in a murderous, dark environment full of Vampires, sorcery, and intreague.

Unfortunately, it also had no graphical interface. It was a 100% text only game.

This didn't stop my friends and I from enjoying it. This stuff came out pre-Everquest, so it gave us that full-on MMORPG experience before the real contenders even came out. We would cruise around on our Vampires and wreak mayhem and destruction onto the internet world, and then later we could meet up in real life and talk about how awesome it was. We would pour hours into it pumping up our characters and decapitating noobs. We would suck the strength out of other vampires and test it against eachother. We would quest and we would create internet friendships. It was basically everything you could hope for when trying to achieve the MMORPG experience that everybody talks about these days.

A lot of people my generation and younger have trouble imagining why I would have fun spending hours a day with this game. A lot of people who actually looked at the client while I played had little to no idea what was even happening, and were generally unimpressed. I got a lot of flak over the years for playing such a boring looking game, but I loved it and still know people that would recognize me upon login. This was a long time ago, that's saying a lot.

The bulk of the time I was playing this game we had a very slow dsl connection. It was hip at the time, but was still buggy and sluggish compared to what we're used to today. My major problem with it was that it would disconnect the internet for a little while every time somebody messed with the phone. In Vampire Wars, if I was disconnected from the internet, my control over the character would suddenly stop while in game my character would sit still and do nothing. This would leave me vulnerable and easy to kill. With all the time and energy it takes into building my character, taking a hit like getting killed while DC would have caused me ridiculous amounts of angst.

Which explains why I punched my brother.

It's not a valid excuse, which I completely understand now, but I was young and silly. I had been chasing around another player for a couple hours when the incident happened. This player had been coy and cunning, but he was no match against my Vampire's brute strength. It would only be a matter of time before I had claimed his head.

He had been running back and forth from the castle to his guild hall, and I had finally cornered him into a no-escape room. I closed all the doors and turned out the lights and threw myself into combat with him. I watched my Vampire pummel his for round after round as he frantically tried to escape. I knew that he wouldn't get out of it, and I watched it dawn on him as he stopped focusing his efforts on getting away and started to focus on the tiny chance that he might beat me in this encounter.

Futile. I deflected his blows and finally got through the last round of the battle. He was lying there, mortally wounded and completely at my mercy.

I didn't want it to end there. I had been chasing him for hours, he had to pay. Nobody messed with me or any of my crew like that and got away with it. I tied him up and prepared to give him the torso of his life.

That's right, nobody outside of the Godwars community knows what a torso is. Well, a torso is where, when you have an enemy lying mortally wounded in front of you, you tie him, blindfold him, gag him, cut off his arms and legs, break all his ribs, cut out his eyes, snap his spine, and shove a stake through his heart. Doing this doesn't help you whatsoever, but it hinders the crap out of your enemy, who can't get up, can't move, can't even see for hours.

So I torsoed him. Brutally. I laughed as he tried to get away. He was in a no-escape room, there was no getting away. I was midway through the torso when the internet suddenly died.

You know the internet dies because none of the commands you send get through. Suddenly there's just a big red flashing light and a black screen. Well, that and the sinking feeling that something is going to happen to you before you get back online.

I started shaking a little bit. My enemy was about to get up and walk away, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. I ran to the office to try to get the internet back up, and upon entering I saw my little brother dicking around with his friend. I made the judgment as soon as I walked in. He had messed with the phone, killed the internet, and allowed my prey to escape.

I was deep in game mode still, and so my adrenalin filled body basically flew across the room, fist first, into my little brother's stomach.

He was still pretty small at the time, and I feel bad about it now. He doubled over and started crying, and I restarted the router and flew back to my room.

I logged in and prepared for the worst. The worst was presented to me. My enemy had escaped the full torso. He had survived with one arm and one leg, gotten back up, beaten my character within an inch of his life, then cut his head off. It had taken work, determination, and gallons of sweat to get the kills it took me to get there and it had just been stolen from me.

He had logged off already of course. He knew that I would just beat what he had taken from me back out of him. Every time he logged in from that day forward, he checked first to make sure I wasn't online. I wanted retribution. Sadly, I never got it. Instead, I just punched my brother. I don't think he ever even picked up the phone in the first place.