[Fuglee]

It was the Kunark era and Epic quests had been out for a few months.

There I was, a level 53 Iksar Monk and a college student. I knew that I would never have the time to do all the sash/headband quests and camp the hellish Raster. That, coupled with the fact that I was guildless, meant that I had written off ever getting my Celestial Fists.

That was until one of my RL friends mentioned that one of his guildies had quit the game. She was a monk with decent gear and he had her account info. If we ever wanted to play her, just let him know. When I asked about her gear, he mentioned that she had a Robe of the Whistling Fist.

You might see where this is headed...

I asked him about the possibility of using her robe to multi-quest my epic.

His response was: "Fuck her, dude. She quit. Here's her info. "

Needless to say, I had a bit of a moral dilemma on my hands.

"She quit. She won't come back." That's what I kept repeating to myself as I logged her character in the next evening. After having dreams of my epic all night long, I couldn't resist. I logged in to find out that she was the guild's Nagafen checker. I slapped on /anon and /afk and started out towards the way off oasis in Timorous Deep.

The fire giants to the oasis in Timorous Deep is one hell of a run/swim. My nerves were wrecked the entire time as I was reading their guild chat, absolutely paranoid that they would notice her character online and start asking questions. I envisioned myself being banned for stealing an account; I almost turned around and abandoned the mission quite a few times. I finally made it to the spot without dying or being found out. I then had to get my monk to the same spot as he happened to be in Sol B as well.

I only had one computer and this was before the days of multi-boxing, so I logged her in, turned in her robe that she'd worked so hard for, then logged her out. I came back on and finished the turn-in with my character and received the quest piece.

I then ran her back to the fire giants and logged her out in the exact spot that I'd found her. I think the entire journey with both characters took about 3 hours.

After I had that part of the quest finished (which is, by far, the longest part) it only took me about 2 weeks to join a guild, fight 4 easy bosses, and be "awarded" with my Celestial Fists. Things were great for about 3 weeks until I got a call from my friend.

"Dude, she came back", he said.

"What?! You said she quit!", I said.

"Well, she's back. And she's fucking pissed! They're contacting the GMs right now because she thinks her robe just poofed."

"You're not going to tell her what happened, are you?", I said.

"Nah. Don't worry about it. Even the GMs probably can't track down what happened. "

Needless to say, the next few days were extremely nerve-wracking.

The clamor in his guild eventually died down and no one ever contacted me about the theft. Things went back to normal and I was thoroughly enjoying my epic. My guilt subsided.

It came crashing back a few weeks later however because I somehow ended up in her group in Karnor's. She did not have her epic or a Whistling Fist robe, obviously, and was using an Imbued Fighters Staff. We were grouped together for about 2 hours and it was the most awkward group I've ever been in. I felt like I had raped her toon and she had no idea.

...And that's how I stole an epic.

I felt way worse than the time I stole the Ancient Cyclops kill from a necro. All 30 people in the Ocean of Tears were spamming me with hate tells so I set my AFK message to: "Wallibus begins to walk faster."


Wow. I was kinda a dick back then...