We’ve all seen more than our fair share of ‘I was a scammer. Then I got frozen. Now I’m sorry.’ Well, my story is slightly different, and much more common. I thought some people could profit from reading how a straitlaced guild leader could slip into the recesses of pet trading and conning, loose everything several times, and come out of it with her head high. I am highly ashamed of everything I did, but I want to make my story known. Let the film roll…
The whole thing began in the summer of ’02, roughly a full year after I had started playing. I had 6 pets on two accounts, five painted, one a Poogle. My guild, which shall be known as ‘The Lillipadd’, had about 150 members. Yes, I was at a decent place in Neopia, with almost 700,000 neopoints. Only, I was bored. I had nothing to do, my friends were all at camp, and me, I had the chicken pox for the first time. Grumpy and contagious, I settled down into my bed with my sister’s laptop to use Tombola.
‘YES!’ I shouted. ‘I won!’. And before my eyes was 176 neopoints and a Nerkmid. I jetted to the Fruit Wheel, and…
‘YES!!’ I shrieked. ‘I won!’ Because I had just received a glowing paintbrush along with 10,000 neopoints. I rushed to Coltzan’s Shrine, and do I really need to tell you that my favorite pet got raised a level? Such luck! I wish I could play Tombola and Fruit Wheel again. Wait a minute, I had another account! Surely they couldn’t catch me if I only did it ONCE. There are millions of people on eopets, what’s the big deal if one of them breaks a rule? But what if they did catch me? I’d be crushed.
My shoulder angel battled my shoulder devil, until I realized I had to go over to my other account anyway, to feed my two pets. When I did get over there, instead of feeding, I found myself at the Tombola, winning a faerie. Wow!
I barely slept at all that night. What if I got frozen? What if my guild got deleted? What if my pets starved? What if I never got to get to 1,000,000 neopoints? What if I kept what if’ing all night long???
But when I awoke, nothing was frozen. My guild was there. My pets (except the two I forgot to feed) were full, and I was well on my way to the first million. Yes. Sly, sly, Stormy. In my mind, I had instantly become that villain in a cat suit, with diamonds in her hair. Rich, dangerous, and bad. That was me – Stormy Theif.
I kept confidently doing Tombola on two accounts for a week or so, then three, then four, and pretty soon it had snowballed into sixteen accounts on two computers, all sharing the same email. I had well surpassed the million mark, at 1,400,000. Yep, Stormy Theif had done it again, no monitor can catch her, no good guy can stop her. Until that fateful day, a month after I had started. Stormy Thief was frozen. It was all gone.
You know that stuff about cheaters never being sad when they get frozen? B.S. I cried for nearly five minutes, then created a new account with a red Usul named Sasetta. Instead of cheating again, I vowed to be that law abiding neopian again. But once a super-villian-in-a-cat-suit, always a super-villian-in-a-catsuit.
Next, the whole ordeal with Veen happened. You can read about in in “You Filthy, Little, Brat”, my other PPT story.
After that, I wanted revenge. Stormy Theif strikes again, this time siding with another person quite like Veen – a guy named Byrne, who was another con artist. I wanted to be one too. I wanted baby pets and endless cash. I wanted to be not a super-villan-in-a-catsuit, but a mafia-superstar-in-fishnets-and-fedora. Yeah, baby. I stayed in my guild, and (here’s the part I am really ashamed of) started collecting painted pets to sell with Byrne. He taught me how to write a really good request, then “loose” the pet in the pound, while really he collected it to sell to the people that want a cheap Krawk or Draik. I became real good, real fast, working under 13 different accounts known as respectable guild members.
Read, Stormy: mafia-superstar-in-fishnets-and-fedora. I had amassed near 2 mill on my favorite account, which I won’t name. I knew how to price a pet by stats, species, color, and name, like the back of my hand. Being a mafia-superstar-in-fishnets-and-fedora was fun, I felt slick, in a 50’s Vegas, shotgun twirler sort of way. But those who twirl shotguns sometimes shoot themselves. Like I did. Byrne took our whole account for himself, leaving me without any neopoints or an account, in the winter of 02. I didn’t have any pets, he took the three babies I had, all of our neopoints (a huge sum of 5 million), and my book collection.
Stormy mafia-superstar-in-fishnets-and-fedora had gotten herself shot in the feet. My other accounts were all taken by Byrne too. He is still on them, though I have reported all several times. I felt horrible, for being such a scummy neopian. Forget the cat suit, loose the fedora (keep the fishnets though, they are quite stylish), and give me a new account.
I kept up a great account called koko2paris all of 03. I did nothing illegal, I was a semi-active guild member, and I donated regularly to the money tree. My four pets were all adopted, three painted, all loved IMMENSELY. Until today.
Yesterday I got a neomail from Byrne, saying, in part, “I’d get a new account if I was you.”
I couldn’t log on today. It wouldn’t let me. I figured I must have gotten a new password and forgotten, so I tried to request it. It wouldn’t let me. I got into my new account, and looked it up to find this: ‘Buh-Bye Stormy! xox, Byrne’
Luckily, I had put one of my pets (Faunna the white Aisha) over onto the new account, username superstite, which means Survivor in Italian. Now I have Faunna. But I lost my three other pets, and a lot more, to Byrne. It sickens me to think that I was once in cahoots with him. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Keep your boots laced straight.
Wow. o___o