(Created by: Tom Beliech <badmoon@southeast.net>)
RogueLdr wrote:
> Wizards of the Coast is buying out TSR! I just heard today, maybe I'm behind the times. I just can't wait to see Monstrous Manual Third Edition featuring Plague Rats and Benalish Heroes. If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go play in traffic.
> -Rogue, He Who Likes the Motto "Save Role-Playing, Kill A Magic Player Today!"
Okay, I can't resist this any longer...
Wahtsi is an Impudite Knight of Influence in the service of Nybbas, and has only received his word within the last 5 years or so. He was originally sent to earth when Nybbas, monitoring his own word, began to notice how the Media portrayed "gamers" as being in the service of demons; Nybbas was suprised by this, never having realized that he had a "closet" set of humans that were ripe for violating (hey, even Nybbas is surprised by the Human Media every now and then!), he sent Wahtsi and a few others to monitor the extent of the "corruption" of "Dungeons and Dragons." Finding more hype than support for the causes of hell, Nybbas was going to recall these servants back to talk-show duty when the enterprising Wahtsi, who had served Marc as recently as two centuries ago before falling, noticed some potential in the "gaming" industry for disrupting the work of his former Archangel. Intrigued by his servant's initiative (and wondering just what the heck he was up to), Nybbas gave Wahtsi the chance to put his plan into action.
The Impudite servitor wasted no time. He met up with some gamer-type humans, and put the idea in their head to create what he called a "collectible card game" - a game in which one paid lots of money to get mere cards which could be used to play a game. The catch was, one did NOT know which cards one was getting with each purchase (unlike all previous card games, like poker, or even the popular UNO), and if one wanted a certain card (naturally, all the "good" cards were extremely rare and required a hefty monetary investment to get), one had to either keep blindly buying cards in the hopes of getting the desired one, of trade off the good cards they DID find to others who were caught up in the game. The company was named "Wizards of the Coast" by its human founders, with the not-so-incidental feature that it's acronym, WotC, was another way of spelling the pronunciation of the demon's name.
The plot worked better that Wahtsi's wildest dreams could have come up with (even with Beleth's help!), and Nybbas, gleeful over another victory over Marc, immediately promoted Wahtsi to Knight status. The market for these "CCG's" (getting an abbreviation is always a sign of success when one works for Nybbas) skyrocketed, with each new company striving to find ways to separate former roleplayers from money thatwould otherwise have been spent on books (Nybbas HATES books!), and do so as thoroughly as possible. Marc's servitors seem not to have caught on yet, or else they have bigger issues to deal with.
In the meantime, Wahtsi is gunning for Captain status. If he can manage to get his games advertised on National Television, Nybbas may just grant that status...
--Tom Beliech (who knows the perils of the CCG)