The ambition of the game of WAR was not one for creating amusement, or commercial prosperity, or of gaining political sovereignty - it was rather to form an anti-world where the demons would be masters over mortals - meeting them with a mask of normalcy, within an inhuman neutral void. There they would perform acts of violence repeatedly - shedding their energy, concentration and desire, into combat and fantasy - rewarded for killing, and excited to do so.
This was a venue where unsuspecting mortals interacted openly in communication with unseen aliens - never realising who they were connecting with in the cyberspace realm they played in.
These alien key players who controlled the game, did not belong in any way either to the kingdoms of our planet.
It was twelve days since the team had penetrated their online foes and raised an army of more than thirty million Punks - crashing the game's servers indefinitely. At the web address was a short line of apology saying that they were undergoing maintenance and were soon to release WAR Version 2 - check back later for updates.....
Nervina and the technical crew were now working on the P2s (Punks version 2) enhancing their strengths and powers, modifying and improving their movements, as well as adding a few comedic features, in the hope that Puck would approve of when he finally woke up.
The social calamity in the material world was already growing due to the downtime. Prices and finances were dropping considerably, as the WAR currency was being traded for gold. Rumours were that people believed that the empire was finished. Everyone had seen the Punks take control - what else was there to know? ... Game over.
The Fey could not understand why the mortal world puts so much faith and measure into exterior veneers and the pageants of facade.
However, the mind of the game-world is a place where Mortals invest and project much thought and energy into something that has no parent life behind its imaginations.
It is an activity that is shielded and concealing their inner works so effectively that it cannot be esoterically penetrated by the spiritual beings that look try to look in.
They view the images of the characters in the virtual games as discreetly separated, almost spectre-like, from the real people controlling them.
The membrane of the game veils the connection. The Fey cannot penetrate what lies behind the true and false realities of virtual life and this bothers them terribly - just as a ghost in our world frightens us when it lacks soul.
They are so perplexed and vexed by this 'hollow world' that the beings of the Plant Kingdom would ordinarily have nothing to do with the virtual world whatsoever. Their natures are dismissive of its activity and this therefore was a very rare occurrence for Puck and his team to have become involved at all.
The virtual world was entirely abstract to Puck and his kind. Interactions were nonsensical and incomprehensible to these reality-based beings.
For it is that they hold the vision to perceive things as they are, and meet with them according to the spirit within.
Although it is known that things are not always as they seem, their gift of perception esoterically can divine what something, or someone, is or isn't. In their eyes, appearance is life's artistry, and clothes the spirit within.
The ways in which the outer appearances can change and present differently, do not count as being important to the intrinsic reality at all. They expect variance, and read the unseen most naturally.
The plan was to infiltrate the game, implanting their own Avatars who could morph the Pukes into characters of their own. Very soon the Pukes became Punks and the millions cloned an army, overtaking the entire WAR format.
Marsden could not stop this advance, as each Punk was created with a slight variance to his own code, and as soon as a player hit one he regenerated two or more of the same, and this process repeated endlessly.
In no time at all the game of WAR was filled with the Elvish Avatars who wore a halo of light about them and the crest of a flaming golden tree upon their armoured breasts.
