With a fanfare of horns, the Great Hunt to celebrate the 12th-year
anniversary of the Iron Realms has kicked off! And when I say 12th-year
anniversary of the Iron Realms, I also mean the 12th-year anniversary of
Achaea, of course, because as most of you know, the Iron Realms first
began 12 years ago with a humble little MUD named Achaea.

Yes, close your eyes and just imagine those glorious beginning days,
Achaea bravely running on a personal computer in a dark studio apartment
somewhere in California belonging to a man named Matt Mihaly, surrounded
by heaps of empty Mountain Dew cans, crumpled up bags of Cheetos, and
delivery pizza boxes. Ah, the halcyon days of yore. Achaea and IRE,
you've come a long way. (I imagine there are still pizza boxes and
Mountain Dew cans involved, but at least these days the servers are
being kept somewhere where they're not in danger of spillage from errant
cans!)

The top ten scorers of the Great Hunt will receive credit prizes in
these amounts: 500 credits for 1st place, 450 credits for 2nd place, 400
credits for 3rd place, and so on down to 50 credits for 10th place. We
will also be running spontaneous games with various gold and other
prizes throughout the weekend, so be on the lookout! It's a double XP
weekend as well, so really, what excuse do you have to do anything but
play Achaea while drinking Mountain Dew and eating Cheetos and pizza?

The Great Hunt ends on Sunday at midnight GMT. Enjoy, and thank you all
for being here with us.

PS. Is that the jolly laughter of a certain famous Dwarf that I hear?

Penned by My hand on the 12th of Valnuary, in the year 518 AF.