Welcome to the Top 20, a regular round up of the mortals with the highest scores who have played within the past 7 days at Viktor Toth's MUD2 site.

	8 July 1998
	1.      Mithriel    2.        Toto    3.        Lanfear    4.        Damned    5.        Sirkilalot    6.        Poledra    7.        Belgarath    8.        Livnletdie    9.        Hawumph   10.        Angelmist   11.        Orbit   12.        Sherlock   13.        Tethys   14.        Slasher   15.        Merlin   16.        Cylon   17.        Laura   18.        Zalagar   19.        Fujiyama   20.        Talen
Next update: 15 July 1998 Previous update: 1 July 1998

Toto, despite valiant efforts, has lost his grip on the top slot this week. He slips one place, down to number 2. What upstart usurped Toto from the top? Mithriel, himself a previous highest new entry, did so by displaying plenty of drive and talent. Mithriel and Toto have had a tough week, with what must surely be an unprecedented number (at least in recent history) of failed skirmishes with The Land's more difficult creatures. At one point, Mercury was within 10,000 points of attaining immortality, but now is at least 3 times that figure short of the goal. Good luck to the both of you!

With Lanfear making a brief visit to The Land earlier this week, Damned (a record holder for mapping the swamp in the fastest time) is pushed down 1 place to number 4. Sirkilalot also visited this week, and still holds the same number 5 spot as when he last stepped into the tearoom more than a month ago.

Poledra rockets up 10 places from last week's 16 to this week's number 6 and in the process becomes the Fastest Climber. There were no spectacular slips on the chart this week, although there have been a couple of disappearances. Both Polgara and Loser, last week at numbers 17 and 18, don't feature in this week's chart. Loser was wiped out by an invisible rice flail wielding foe.

For the first time, after 4 months of the Top 20 chart, there are no new entries. Rainbow would have featured strongly as a high re-entry had it not been for the ram bringing an end to his rapid rise. Unlike Rainbow, seven other personae did manage to re-enter the chart after varying length breaks. Not only did Sirkilalot and Lanfear both make a brief return, but also Slasher, Merlin, Fujiyama, Talen and Zalagar are back in at the lower end of the chart. Merlin's return to the Top 20 is after an absence of 12 weeks! Zalagar, back after losing a mage 3 weeks ago, was unexpectedly pounced on by another mage this week. This time she survived the attack. Can we expect more of this necromancess bashing? You can just picture in your mind's eye what plans a couple of desperate mages might hatch if they were up against the wall...

The RNG doesn't seem to be swinging entirely against mortals this week though. After an impromptu mobile bash on Saturday morning the touchstone bestowed magic on an unusually high number of personae, with no casualties! Hopefully we'll see the first of these new magic users making New entries into the Top 20 next week.