I was playing Realm on a slow weekend not too long ago, since I had finished (most) of my homework and didn’t really feel like making art for once. It was a pretty chill session, just rushing dungeons on a Rogue for some pots when I suddenly got disconnected from the server.
Now, everyone knows how crap the game’s server-client connections are, so I would have just brushed it off and changed servers or restarted the game as normal. But my disconnect message was odd because… there was no message. Just a blank box.
This was honestly pretty creepy to see, especially since it was getting late at the time and I was planning on sleeping after a couple more dungeons, but I just dismissed it as the game’s text getting mixed up with itself, like when people’s addresses got leaked in chat once. I clicked “OK” and expected to reload back in my server at the time, USEast, but when I loaded in, the Nexus was completely empty of players. I don’t mean in the funny “player count dying” way, I mean there were literally no other players on that server. Not even any bot accounts.
The server might have just had really few players, so I typed in /server to check, but the name given was some numbers instead of the usual formatted name. “5311.” There wasn’t even a shorthand for a country attached with it, like with USEast or EUNorth. I then thought that the game must have loaded me into something like a private testing server meant for devs to mess around on without affecting production or test builds. I’ve heard of someone who accidentally got loaded into another player’s vault once, so a server mismatch was very possible. Maybe the number represented the version number of this server. I didn’t leave right away though. I mean, I had access to a whole hidden server that no one other than DECA might’ve known about! Maybe I could’ve found some unused content that the wiki hadn’t logged yet.
I walked around the map to explore. It was Oryxmas themed even though it was already February, but DECA’s always been slow on updating map themes. What caught my attention more were the lack of interactive items. Stuff like shop items, NPC’s, and even portals to the Realm, Pet Yard, Grand Bazaar, Daily Tinkerer, and Vault. The only portal that remained was the Guild Hall, but I wasn’t in any guild at the time. However, when I checked the portal, rather than the red text saying that I wasn’t in a guild like I expected, instead the portal was completely functional. This should have been impossible, but it also could’ve been the devs removing that requirement in order to easily enter the Guild Hall for testing purposes. I’m not sure why they would remove every single other portal though, especially portals to the Realm and Vault since those areas were more likely to have more bugs to discover and patch.
After looking around just a bit more to see if I missed any other interactive stuff, I finally entered the portal to the Guild Hall, and I immediately regretted it. The brown wooden tiles and walls of the Guild Hall were instead tarry stone bricks like the ones in the Parasite Chambers. The Guild Hall was also much more of a hallway this time, since looking at the mini-map, I was apparently at the bottom of a long corridor that led straight up. Without anywhere else to go other than back to an empty Nexus, I decided to keep moving forward. As I proceeded, I noticed more and more weird details, like some tiles being dark red instead of black, or brown loot bags that were empty yet hadn’t despawned. I kept moving forward for a few minutes until I eventually reached what I could only describe as some kind of sick joke.
A concerningly detailed sprite of a headless Guill was laid before me on the ground, a bloodied tile underneath it. Further up was a gory sprite of Guill’s decapitated head atop a black pike, and in between the head and body was a bloodied guillotine. I’m not a stranger to disturbing things in Realm (asides from weirdoes in the chat) since the Parasite Chambers was itself a disturbing concept, but I never expected to see such a graphic scene sprited with so much detail in-game. I almost quit the game on the spot just to relieve myself, but I was curious and wanted to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything. I couldn’t interact with either Guill’s head or torso, but I did notice an interactive sign on the far back wall, which read like a mocking gravestone.
“Here lies the bastard who thought he was above us. His head got too big, so we had to cut it off.”
My stomach dropped after reading this. What kind of sicko tried to visualize such a violent scene in this game of all places?! One of the devs or UGC or whoever was behind this shit show was clearly not sane, and I doubt that anyone else knew about this. If I could’ve found a name, or some more concrete information on the server itself, or anything, I would’ve taken it, but before I could, Guill’s torso started moving. It wasn’t animated moving either, it just starting moving toward me like an enemy. It didn’t swerve around in place like older RotMG enemies either, it beelined straight for me. I didn’t want to die in this server of all places and somehow risk getting trapped here forever, so I slammed my S key like a car pedal. I tried to press R to Nexus instantly, but an error message said that I couldn’t at the moment. I thought shit like that was just a bug in old Shatters! I didn’t have time to think more about it, so I just kept holding down S and hoped that I could outrun that thing. Right as I got to the Nexus portal with just two tiles between me and that thing, I slammed my space key and got the fuck out of there. I was relieved to find myself back in USEast, with bot accounts and random red stars trading. I never wanted to go back to whatever that was ever again. Although, that small window of time where I exited through the Nexus portal was just enough for the game to generate a message from an enemy.
[Guill Otine]: “Slaughter the founder, slaughter the king. Kill so the people may cry and sing.”
I didn’t want to think about what I had just seen that day, so I closed the game and tried to sleep. I’m more comfortable right now which is why I’m able to write this, but nothing will ever compare to the fear and disgust that I felt on that day, seeing that bloody scene and that damned guillotine.