Halloween 2005

**Halloween 2005** started on *Friday, 28th October 2005.* The event started with Bucho posting an announcement about a party in honor of the late Johnny Gambino. to be held at the Gambino's Mansion on the Isle de Gambino. Simultaneously, a manga was released that showed Gino contemplating his father's fate. As the manga progressed, it showed Gino explaining to Ian and Sasha how he was continuing his father's vision by recreating G-Corp's Underground Test Facility, under the supervision of LabTech 123. 123 created the G-Virus all over again, from a DNA sample taken from Grunny. As he was celebrating his moment of victory, however, LabTechX came and cut power to the Grunny containment cages, releasing a flood of Grunnies into the Gaian forums. The Grunnies infected the party attendees, infecting them and parasitically growing within them. Posting brought on the infection, with a user's "Grunny Count" going up with every Grunny caught. There were five stages of infection, occurring at 15, 35, 175, 350, and 500 Grunnies, from lowest to highest.

On Sunday, the 30th of October, the event ended with a closing manga which showed Gino and Sasha dining at the mansion. Gino became aware that the mansion was on fire, and attempted to get Sasha out of the building. The pair were trapped by the flames, and the roof gave way on top of them. With superhuman strength, Gino stopped a rafter from crushing Sasha, becoming trapped under it. Ian came in intending to unmask something about Gino, but quickly changed his course of action and rescued Sasha from the building. As the building collapsed, an ElfTech was seen picking up a discarded vial from the G CORP facility, walking off into the night. The event ended there, with Gambino's mansion burning on the map. Later, it collapsed into a cloud of rubble, which is where it remains as of this editing.

### **Other Happenings**

Shortly after the fire ended the mansion chaos, Jack appeared, making his usual rounds. Ten pieces of candy from the shopkeepers earned you one of ten sequential grab bags. Jack also granted grab bags through Towns for the first time, shocking many users with his enormous size, and demanding one-hundred candies for a bag, as houses with candy were prevalent. Shopkeepers this year were dressed in Refurbished Sheets, screenshots will be available on Shopkeeper pages.

### **Social Impact of the Event**

During the event, the only way to gain levels was to post, and you gained grunnies more quickly if you posted under someone else with a high grunny count. This led, at first, to threads where people congregated with others to gain grunnies, and tried to ask for those of the same level. Once the true extent of the grunny leveling system became known, however, and people realized how hard it was going to be to make level five, they started what became known as "Enforcing", or banning people from their thread if they didn't have enough grunnies. This was seen by some as necessary, and by some as reprehensible, although there are convincing arguments on both sides. VO posted later, saying that he hadn't anticipated the sheer competitive furor and negative emotion that would result from this, and that the admins were surprised at how the event was proceeding. Many feared that it would strain relations between Gaians, and create huge ignore lists that were never cleared. It remains to be seen whether or not this event had long-lasting implications due to the highly competitive nature of the grunny count threads.