31

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.