World of Warcraft!

In World of Warcraft, this evening, I had an exciting experience, that pleased me enormously!

First, some backstory: In the latest expansion, Cataclysm, all of Azeroth was remade. The old quests were mostly thrown out and replaced with new ones.

For those who had played the game before the great cataclysm, there was nothing odd in finding a character called First Mate Fitzsimmons in a flooded town on the coast.

He was involved in a storyline that consisted of the player bringing him some mead, then hearing his tale; how the fleet he was sailing with was ambushed by dragons and sunk, but the sailors were doomed to forever walk the earth as ghosts, because of an artifact called the Cursed Eye of Paleth, that was carried by one of the ships.

The player then retrieved the eye, and gave it to a priest who cleansed it, thus supposedly lifting the curse.

But still, after the great cataclysm, the player would find Fitzsimmons asking for help. He said he had given up drinking, but he was itching for another drink, so you were told to fetch some from a keg in the cellar of the local inn. The keg was dusty and had clearly been left alone for a long time.

When given the drink, Fitzsimmons told of the curse, and how his shipmates were doomed to haunt their sunken vessels. Then, he sent the player to put them to rest, and recover the Cursed Eye of Paleth, so that it might be cleansed.

It's worth noting that, for any player of World of Warcraft, doing a quest that has been completed before by other characters is nothing out of the ordinary.

Anyway, the player retrieves the Eye and brings it to the priest.

But, dear reader, when you hand it over, the priest, at first, doesn't know what you are talking about.

Then, he tells you that the Cursed Eye of Paleth was retrieved and cleansed by an adventurer several years ago.

Stranger still, Fitzsimmons died not long after...

The priest says said that, from time to time, adventurers had said they had talked to him, and been asked to recover the Eye.

So, it would seem Fitzsimmons couldn't escape the curse after all...

He will forever be sitting outside that inn, waiting to talk to another adventurer...

Perhaps you'll see him there some day...

And he'll say "I gave up drinking long ago..."