**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 92.08.02 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> HIDDEN POCKETS (is that an object in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?) You know what it's like. The cry goes up: "Has anyone seen the LV?" You've just found it, but you've got about 15 minutes more trading to do before you can afford to use it. You don't want to give it up, but you know that if anyone sees you carrying it they'll be nagging you to surrender it, maybe offering you a bribe, perhaps even threatening you! If only you could prevent people from seeing what you are carrying... Well now you can. Bella has stitched a secret pocket into the clothes of each and every one of you - even those who don't wear clothes have had a pouch attached to your skin (or equivalent). You can stuff it full of objects, and although people will see that the pocket contains something, they won't be able to tell what it is. The command is , and you must be holding the object in question. The object will remain hidden until you drop it or give it to someone else. **>> COMING SOON... Bella is cogitating. She working out what will happen when someone actually solves the Duke puzzle, and how the remaining few ranks in the game will work. Dukes and Privy Councillors will be part of the Senate, and from their ranks the Emperor will be elected. The larger the duchy they control, the more votes they will be able to cast. Part of their power base will be formed by ship registrations. Every time someone buys a ship, their vessel will be registered to the system on which they purchase. Ships purchased on Earth will be registered out of Panama. Duchies will be able to put trade embargos on goods from certain other duchies, and make tax concessions to goods from within the duchy. As part of this, cargo handling will be improved: your cargo lists will show where the goods were purchased, and how much you paid. As Bella works out her ideas for the remainder of the game, we will print them here in future News Bulletins. **>> DUKE PUZZLE NEWS Oddball is STILL the only person able to to Horsell! The other Barons are really lagging behind. And after several weeks of frustration, Odd has finally made a bit of progress - he's discovered one of the things he has to do on Horsell. Of course, this just leads to further complications, so we doubt he will become a Duke soon! The number of Poor People who have been given free trips through time increases, and most of them have been brought back safely. However, Occy is definitely paranoid that Oddball will drag her off to Horsell and abandon her there! He's already kidnapped Krell and marooned her in the past, hoping to use her in solving the puzzle. He had planned to sell her to the Martians as a love slave once he had finished with her, but she managed to escape from his evil clutches, and cobbled together a cryogenic unit which put her into suspended animation until she reached the present again. Visitors to Horsell have been surprised to find that they can communicate with the rest of Fed Data Space - comm messages are somehow transmitted through time. The pub in Horsell also has a working electronic message board, which seems quite out of place given the technology level of the rest of this loophole in time! Oddball was rather upset to see that Hazed has been promoted to Duchesse. She can now spy on his rather uncoordinated attempts to discover what's going on back in time. However, we can assure him that he hasn't been upstaged by her promotion: Hazed didn't solve the puzzle, she just offered certain sexual favours to Bella, who was only too pleased to find someone willing to cater to her somewhat unusual tastes! **>> CONFERENCES IN AUGUST Krell will be running two RTCs in August, in the MPGames Conference area. Sunday August 16th will be for Explorers, talking about designing and building a planet, and managing the economy once it is in the game. Sunday August 30th will cater for Beginners, a chance for newbods to ask all those silly (and not-so-silly) questions without smartarses sending them misleading comms messages! **>> WELCOME BACK... Lock up your daughters! Hide the drugs! Make sure your weapons are primed! Logan is back! Or is he...? Well, yes he is, but someone has stolen his name, so he has been forced to assume the identity of Lore, Logan's evil twin. (More evil than Logan? Can it be possible?) Krell has been wandering around with a homicidal glint in her eyes, looking forward to resuming one of her favorite hobbies - killing Logan! Remember when Mirth got married recently, and his wife Buskirk immediately vanished? She has returned, and the happy couple are reunited. But only briefly, because they want a divorce! They applied to Rezrov, who presided over their nuptials, and he has granted them a separation. He says that as soon as the details are printed in the news, they could consider themselves split asunder. This proves that we are the Official Organ of the Galactic Administration! The Vile Cryptosporidium had better dust off its chastity belt, because another returnee is Maxis - and he's still in love with the amorphous blob! His absence obviously hasn't cured his insanity. **>> POWER MAD - OR JUST PLAIN MAD? YOU DECIDE! The Dark Side still have plans to take over the Universe, but the members cannot decide which of their plans to put into action. They apparently spend every meeting bickering over which of them will be Emperor when the revolution comes! I don't think the Galactic Administration need worry about them just yet... **>> WHAT CAN IT MEAN? Here at the H-by-A offices, we frequently receive anonymous contributions which we are expected to include in these news bulletins. Yesterday, while we were hard at work, a rock was thrown through our window. Attached to the rock was a piece of paper, and on the paper was typed: "Dyars said to tell you the sheep consented... really." We don't know who sent this, or what they meant. Can anyone throw any light on this puzzling message? **>> HUNKS AND STUNNERS Many moons ago, Hazed started a topic in the MPGames BBS asking you to name the sexiest Fedders. Many people have contributed, but few have given the matter quite as much thought as Bart. He's decided to conduct a scientific test to find the best lover in Fed. He's not bothering with an appointments system, he's just fitting people in as he gets the chance. Once he has "test-driven" each of the females in Fed, he will render his judgement. We sneaked a look at his results so far, and it looks like Krell is way out in front! But it is early days yet, and Bart has a lot of work to do before his research is complete. So many women, so little time... **>> BAD LUCK... OR IS IT? Brawn was recently promoted to JP, and is now attempting the rather more difficult GM puzzle. But he's come across a little problem... every time he collects together the objects he needs (or at least, the ones he -thinks- he needs) and prepares to have a go, he gets dumped out of the game and loses whatever he is carrying! The first few times this happened, he put it down to a noisy telephone line. After that, he thought he was having extraordinarily bad luck. But when it continued to happen, he wondered if there were more sinister forces at work. He asked us to investigate. We sent one of our secret under-cover research droids to watch what happened when Brawn prepared to do the puzzle. And we found that it wasn't line noise that was knocking him offline - it was electronic interference from the DNI computer on Earth! For some reason, the Galactic Navy is interfering with his attempts to solve the puzzle! Our curiosity was now aroused. We wanted to know why Naval Intelligence has it in for this seemingly mild-mannered player. What had Brawn done to deserve this? Hiring the best computer experts available, we hacked into the DNI computer and searched through the data files for some reference to Brawn. After many days, our techies had drawn a blank, and were about to give up, when they discovered a well-hidden file, encrypted and protected by a multi-layer security system, with the codename "Vendetta". Using their expertise, they were able to crack the security and unencrypt the file. They now know why the Navy wants to prevent Brawn from becoming a GM! Unfortunately, they have refused to tell us unless we pay them a vast amount of groats, far more than we can afford to pay, even if we drained all our slush funds dry. So we've just referred them to Brawn himself. It is up to him - he can pay them for the information if he wishes. If he does, we hope he will pass it on to us for publication. **>> RE-RE-TRACTION Two weeks ago, our News Bulletin included the following piece: Dyars and Kittycat appear to no longer be a couple - but it is unclear who is deserting whom. We know that Dyars intends to be away from Fed Data Space for some time, so maybe he has left her - but she was seen spending the whole night talking to Mirth recently, so perhaps she's the unfaithful one. At least she hasn't returned to Bochiman! Last week, we printed this: In last week's news we reported the break-up of Kittycat and Dyars, one of the happy young couples that grace Fed Data Space. We are pleased to say that they did not, in fact, break up; they are, in fact, still very much together. The informant who fed us this misinformation has been hunted down and shot, and the newsdroid which failed to research the facts properly has been turned into an ashtray. This week, we have received five separate reports that Dyars and Kittycat have, in fact broken up. Their romance is over. They are definitely no longer a couple. We have been unable to contact Dyars to ask him for his comments, but we did speak to Kittycat, and she confimed that she has left Dyars. We have resurrected the informant that we shot last week, and told him to apply to Dyars for damages. There's nothing we can do about the ashtray that used to be a newsdroid, but there's plenty more newsdroids out there so it really doesn't matter. **>>CONTACTS The following information will appear at the end of every News Bulletin, so you don't have to read it if you already know it. In the event of a problem or question, you can: * talk to Hazed or Bella in the game * leave a message in the game log * a message to Hazed or Bella * send GEnie mail with the Federation Feedback option from the main menu You can order a copy of the unexpurgated printed Idiot's Guide to Federation by typing ORDER at any GEnie menu. Cost - a mere $12.95. (New edition will be available shortly!) Federation has several categories in the new MPGames RT. To get there, type M1045,1 from any menu prompt and SET category 13 (for information, instructions, questions and answers) or 14 (for general chat and discussions). The Federation Leader in the bulletin board is Krell (Mail ID: K.HILLYER). There are also private categories for Explorers, run by Krell, and for the Conclave run by Oddball (Mail ID: D.STALZLE). The MPGames RT also has a Federation library in the files area, Library 5. Library 18 holds the Federation News Archives. **>> BULLETIN ENDS