Let me start with a post me p(Stormblast) and Feon p(Olorion) received some 30
mins after the demotion you all know about.

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Mail 1 :  @Feon @Manatark (Dain)
Written on Mon Mar  5 19:57:04 2001

Giving the situation a bit more thought (on the bus on my way home) I
figured it was too harsh to demote you to level 1. Will discuss it a
bit with the other Aratar and get back to you!

- Dain, sorry for being an asshole
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This just about sums it up. Let me tell you what happened. 2 legends got caught
with a minor offense, and were delivered the capital punishment. The executor
understood shortly after the incident that he had overreacted bigtime, even
apologized and in a way promised that he would think this over.

Then the usual thing happens. The management took defensive positions and
started defending Dain's decision with all sorts of logical and unlogical
claims. 
You are all so... loyal and well drilled. Did you for once think to
whose advantage are you doing this, whome you are defending or attacking? Did
you stop for a second to think what would actually be good for the game?
What are you going to do now, write Dain a mail that ends with words "sorry
for making you think it is ok to be an asshole"? Every V I talked to about the
incident finally said "ok, have you taked about this to Dain? He decides." Yes,
he actually would have changed his mind (I don't care what he says now), but
you decided for him with exaggerated and at times ridiculous defense.

There is this hint about past offenses. Stormblast has on his list 2 cases of
sameside eq-trade (from legend to levelling midlevels) and the latest coins'
actionlooting. And the eq-trades certainly mark my first period of serious
playing. Even some V have admitted having cheated in the past, many of us have
done that, but we've learned to respect the game and the game has learned to
respect us. I am not known for notorious cheating in all possible forms, and
these offenses we definately in the past and punished. It is extremely unfair
to bring this up as a justification for insanely harsh punishment. "They had
it coming..." I am sorry, but no they did not. It is just another try to make
Dain's decision look legitimate, while Dain himself had understood it was
wrong. Think about it. BTW I am not 100% sure about the criminal record, for
all the babbling about the issue on the :2 I was refused to see my own offenses
by a V.

When Stormblast and Olorion started fighting, they had no intention to do a
"fixed" fight, none of this was planned offline or by any other medium. It was
just that during the fight we both (not surprisingly) realized that this is
getting us nowhere and decided to go someplace where we could fight to death.
And by the comments of Petrel and other managers it is safe to say that this
is allowed, only if you do it in a RP way. Well we didn't, and some really
nasty moments arose (Olorion lying to sleep with Stormblast in room, Stormblast
in turn not hitting, but resting, then refreshing armour etc). I wouldn't even
want to read it from a log or some other place, I am sure it looks ugly. And at
many points Stormblast (and surely Olorion too) was about to leave. But we
decided to finish what we started and the rest you know.

So the real offense was actually being in same room for a longer period of
time without fighting and non-rp communicating. How many times have you done
that without really feeling like a cheater or someone who is doing harm to the
game and it's players? That is the thing that cost Olorion 46 and Stormblast
40 levels.

There is millions of things that can be said about the case that doesn't favour
the legends involved. Like: this might lead to common duels (which has been
happening for a long time already), they might have exchanged game info and eq
(which we didn't - 2 Valar were snooping the whole time), this might hurt the
game... I am sorry but I LOVE this game, and have proven that with various
contributions, like helping to build some damn nice zones, and yes, playing
fairly with respect to others on this game. Yes we got carried away, yes I am
ready to take punishment for it. But I will not tolerate hints about "known
cheater" or "fair punishment".

Don't you think that verdicts should actually do something for the game? If you
want to make a bloody example of someone, at least do it in a way that will
teach others about the situation so that they will not repeat the mistakes.
Right now you did NOTHING but punishment. The "criminals" were not explained
anything and the other players haven't got a clue, where the official line is
drawn. It would have been SO easy to stop our violation by the snoopers at any
time, but WHAT were you thinking?! Did you look at the progress, thikning: "Oh,
now we can demote 5 levels, les wait some more... WOW, now it is 40 levels...
YESSSS, now we can wipe his account!!!" Why not stop the situaion, explain it,
maybe remove all eq and wps and then let us explain you why such situations
happen in pk and how you could avoid them in the future?! Actually I think that
you all thought you are participating in nuking some 5 levels, all levels came
as quite a surprise, but you really didn't think twice before you started
defending your "own". 
I am not a particulary vindictive person, but I am about to wish that some of
you would act with such disrespect towards others in RL too, and that the RL
would bite you back so hard, that you'll actually remember this case.

None of this matters too much now cause Stormblast will delete next reboot and
I would rather level a new bn than get reimbed some 26 levels and be forced to
show gratitude to people I have lost all respect for.

I will post this on mortal's board too and mume.net - only a few of you would
be patient enough to read it here.

Thank you.