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Another very popular wiz command is
FORCE. If you SHOUT in MUD all the
other players see what you're saying on
their screens. So if you type Force Asterix:
shout I am a total wally, everyone gets the
message Asterix shouts 'I am a total
wally'!

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10

DAEMONS

Many times during a game of MUD, strange and inexplicable events occur. Known to the game's authors as daemons, these events are triggered off by some specific event. Some take quite a while to take effect, the longest being nearly half an hour from the initial action to the end result. During the delay, play continues in the normal fashion. For example, if your persona comes across a bottle of rum and drinks it, nothing will happen, not to start with anyway. After a few minutes, however, you'll find your persona is falling asleep, stumbling backwards and basically tripping over its own feet like any inebriated adventurer. There are two ways to recover from this, one of which is to leave the game. The other is a little quicker, if more gruesome, and I'll let you discover that for yourself.

Daemons are not rarities that crop up once in a while, they appear in every area of the game. When you wave the bow and baton and are magically teleported, that is a daemon. When you ZAP a monster with the wand, or fire a cannon and destroy a door, that is a daemon. Daemons are used to make things happen in MUD. When you type OPEN the door, a daemon in MUD will open the door in question, but the more memorable daemons are usually very surprising, in that certain actions generate results that are far from predictable. Daemons can be hilarious, uncanny or downright deadly.

The item which has the most daemons associated with it is the wand, and many, many weird things can happen if you use it improperly, or in unusual circum- stances. If you wave the wand, while carrying the marble pillar, be prepared for a humorous (if painful) example of a daemon. Snake poison is a daemon which t~kes a good deal of time to run its course. If you fail to counteract it, it will kill you (not permanently though). Before you pass away, you will begin to feel ill, get dizzy and your vision will blur. In other words your persona will begin to feel very, very sick.

Not all daemons are harmful or inconvenient, sometimes they are used by MUD to bestow points on players for doing the right thing at the right time. If you manage to repair the sundial and get it to tell you the time, a surprising sequence of events will ensue that will leave you with about fifty more points than before. Or, more impressively, there is the hidden fountain, which if found and swum in, will bestow upwards of a thousand points on you.

Basically daemons account for everything that happens in a game of MUD. Mastery of the game requires that you learn about them, how to activate them and what they do. Soon daemons will no longer come as complete surprises, and you'll be able to use them to your advantage in the game, thus increasing your chances of success (and dazzling the other players as well). A hint for you: the dragon is killed via a daemon, and knowledgeable players can easily do away with it.