These celebrations were yet another way for the game’s manufacturer to replace real life and keep people logged on. In World of Warcraft, Blizzard had devised a game with no end.
It took Anders a little over six months of full-time playing to become the leader of the Virtue guild, which did its raiding on the European server Nordrasil.
Anders had been awarded the title Justitiarius. It was a title that took a long time and a lot of killing to achieve.
When Anders was on a raid, he was not to be disturbed on any account. Virtue had decided to mount its raids and conquests between seven and eleven o’clock in the evenings. Everyone was expected to take part. Most members of the guild played for around twelve hours a day, and a raid required a great deal of planning. They had to lay in provisions and make sure they had enough ammunition and weaponry. The better equipped they were, the greater their chances of beating other guilds in the battle to find the treasure or kill the vampires.
Andersnordic was good at motivating others and often got his fellow players to carry on performing even when they were getting tired and fed up. A bit longer, just a bit longer; he was known for never giving up.
‘We’ve just got to finish this off, then we can get to bed,’ he would say.
Sometimes the game came into conflict with real life, or the other way round.
One February morning in 2007, a letter came for him. He had been admitted to the First Degree of the St John Lodge and was invited to his first meeting at the Freemasons’ headquarters. His mother was delighted.
The sponsor question had been solved. Wenche’s second cousin would be his main sponsor, with primary responsibility for making a good Freemason of the boy. A secretary from the Pillars Lodge had undertaken to be his second sponsor.
Anders hadn’t got time. He really hadn’t got time.
It seemed so long ago. The admission interview in the vaults beneath the Armigeral Hall a year earlier was merely a faint memory.
But he couldn’t say no to this. Good heavens, he’d been accepted as a Freemason!
Had it just been a question of logging off for a few hours and attending the meeting… But no, he had to kit himself out in full evening dress with a black waistcoat. That was the dress code for the initiation ceremony. He had to arrange all that and make an effort with his appearance before he could go out among people.
It was usual for the sponsor to come and collect the new member to take him to the solemn occasion, and the evening after his twenty-eighth birthday, which he had celebrated in World of Warcraft, Anders was called for by his mother’s second cousin.
Anders got into the car. Andersnordic had made his excuses for the evening.
On the way to the Freemasons’ headquarters, Anders started talking about the investitures of knights, about guilds and fraternities.
His relative was rather taken aback. Freemasonry was all about perfecting your own qualities, he explained.
Anders went quiet.
The Freemasons’ headquarters was right by the parliament building. Inside the doors they were received by a Master of Ceremonies in a formal hat and white gloves, with a big sword hanging at his hip. In his hand he held a large staff, blue and black with a silver tip at each end.
Anders was the only one being admitted to the lodge that evening. Quite a number of brothers had come along to attend the ceremony. They greeted each other in accordance with the rituals they had all had to learn. Some wore rings to indicate which degree they belonged to, while others wore chains and crosses round their necks.
He was taken into a big room and the ceremony began. First, the Master of Ceremonies turned to Anders’s two sponsors: My brethren. On behalf of the lodge I am to convey to you its thanks for bringing this stranger to us, and accompanying him to the door of the lodge.
Anders had to sign a document stating that he professed himself to the Christian faith and would never reveal the secrets of Freemasonry. Then he had a strip of cloth wound round his head. Now blindfolded, he had to repeat after the Master of Ceremonies:
Should I act against this my given Promise
I agree that my head be struck from my shoulders.
My heart expelled, my Tongue and Intestines torn out,
and all be thrown into the Depths of the Sea,
that my Body be burnt,
and its ashes scattered to the Air.
He was led round the room until he lost his sense of direction, then along corridors and down some steps. A door was opened and he was asked to sit down. The blindfold was removed, and he found himself alone in a tiny room that was painted black. In front of him was a table with a skull and crossbones on it. He was left there alone until someone came in and asked him several questions. Then he was blindfolded again and taken back to the big room, where he went through the rest of the initiation rituals.
He was a Brother of the First Degree.
Inside, but on the bottom rung.
All he wanted was to go home.
By the time he was dropped off at Hoffsveien, he was too late to join the raid. But there was still time to log on.
His mother’s cousin had told him that the Pillars met every Wednesday and he would be happy to give him a lift. A sponsor had to make sure that the new member he had invited in attended meetings and study groups and took on guard duties.
Anders nodded. But he only attended one ordinary meeting in the course of the spring, and there he did nothing but crow. After the meeting, he remarked on a newcomer’s behaviour and how poorly the initiate fitted in. And it had all been going so slowly, he moaned.
Jan Behring eventually stopped ringing Anders, even though Wenche asked him to persevere.
‘He never goes out, just sits in his room on that internet thing,’ she complained.
The goal for the spring was to be the top guild on the server, to lead the guild that succeeded in killing every monster the game could generate.
The guild members were located all over Europe and they played in English. As guild leader, Anders had a lot of responsibility. He had to make sure the players had the equipment they needed: provisions, swords, axes and shields. He had to make tactical choices and come up with battle strategies, but he also had to listen and be responsive to the other players’ ideas.
In the course of that spring, Andersnordic grew less tolerant. He didn’t care if he hurt people’s feelings. When the game did not go his way, he was churlish. He would push, harry and nag.
This occasionally led to open dissent. One player thought he was taking the law into his own hands, calling him a bully and a control freak. Anders removed the player from the forum.
Some left of their own accord because he was too hardcore. He couldn’t bear slackers, he said, and had no scruples about ejecting players if he didn’t like them or thought they didn’t work within the team. A player who dropped in on a Friday night with a glass of wine beside the keyboard and accidentally went down the wrong hill was not anyone he would want to take along on a raid.
Andersnordic preferred to throw people out late at night when the others were offline and could not protest. When the outcast logged back in, access to Virtue would be denied. Sometimes the other players would speak up for those who had been ousted, but the guild leader was implacable: this was serious, you couldn’t just drop in for fun now and then. Players who had been involved since way before Andersnordic first logged in suddenly found themselves abandoned.