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A SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS

The fictional Lord Cyric had become popular among gamers and geeks in the 1980s and early 1990s. He was a self-appointed deity who haunted The Forgotten Realms, a godforsaken fantasy world where warriors roamed to seek out treasure and dark secrets while vanquishing creatures with magical powers and destructive urges. The Realms became a favourite territory for gamers to explore once they had assumed a fantasy role in a team of adventurers playing Dungeons and Dragons. Subsequently, these Badlands of a sub-Tolkienian world appeared in a variety of computer games, including the hugely popular Baldur's Gate.

They were also described in many novels that were inspired in equal measure by Dungeons and Dragons and the Lord of the Rings. The figure of Lord Cyric had a crucial part to play in the mythology of the Forgotten Realms - in addition to being a god, he was thoroughly evil. More importantly for the world of carding and DarkMarket, Cyric was known inter alia as the Prince of Lies, whose satanic powers included a mastery of deception and illusion as well as the ability to promote strife and intrigue.

Whoever lay behind the avatar in CardersMarket, DarkMarket and elsewhere, he or she wanted to project the concept of what Dungeons and Dragons gamers refer to as 'chaotic evil', implying that the character scatters the seeds of mayhem and despair arbitrarily wherever he or she may roam. That certainly fitted DarkMarket's Lord Cyric as snugly as his penchant for deception, illusion, strife and intrigue. Few carders generated as much hostility in the community as this character did. His speciality was to spread accusations through rumour and innuendo.

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