Issue 13

A Winton W. Wishtar Tract

Burn, Consume, Disintegrate, or Destroy after Reading

My fellow Exile, step back from this sinister machine! Better yet, cut it down and disintegrate it, for it puts your mind and very soul in grave peril. I, Winton W. Wishtar, know first-hand the evil of the so-called "Bounty Board." And now I share this information with you, for the betterment of all.

You may think I'm crazy. I don't blame you. I questioned my sanity at first too. All I ask is that you keep an open mind while I tell my story. Decide for yourself what is true.

I was once an explorer, and money and glory were the things that got me out of my bedroll every morning. Where else to find copious amounts of both? The Bounty Board! I brought down target after target, and reaped the poisonous rewards.

Then the headaches started. It was like a line of fire cutting my head in half. I saw medics and alchemists but they couldn't help. Psychosomatic, they said. I couldn't work, couldn't sleep, couldn't explore, all I could do is cower in a dark cargo container and pray the pain would go away. I'm not ashamed that I gave serious thought to stepping off Thayd's highest wall to make it stop.

One day, shuffling through Spaceport Horizon in a red, pain-tinged haze, I felt a moment's relief. As I passed a kiosk offering work to adventurers for hire, the molten spike from between my eyes went away. I looked around for an explanation, but there was none. Then I moved away, and almost collapsed as the pain came pounding back. It was the board! Something about the board gave me relief, and not just that one. With careful experimentation, I found that Bounty Boards all over Nexus have the same effect. If I took a bounty, the pain would go away for a longer time.

I came to realize I was a slave of the boards. As I took bounty after bounty, I looked into who and what was behind the Bounty Board system. I found this to be more difficult than it should be.

Everyone assumes they are made by Protostar, but no one's sure. Distributors were hidden behind corporate shell companies. No one's ever seen one being installed. For all I could tell they just appear, in all their seductive, blinky, blinking glory.

This is what I can tell you: the original investment came from a loan Serrik Brightland made to Phineas T. Rotostar way, way back. The first Boards were built by Protostar, but in factories owned by the Dominion Emperor Myrcalus. The weird thing is that while Boards were being built years and years ago, no one remembers seeing any UNTIL WE ARRIVED ON NEXUS!

I don't know what all this means, but it has to mean something. It has to! Could I have invented all of this? Could I just have made this up on the spot? ANYTHING is possible, friends... but can you take that chance, no matter how insane this tale seems? YOU CANNOT!

So beware the Board, friends. Beware the Board!