I’ve put off responding to anything… everything… for a long time now. I wanted to leave it all behind, forget about it, and move on with my life. But the nagging feeling of wrongness would not go away, and I realized my silence was protecting the wrong people. So… here we go.

I was Maelstrom. Hired the same time Reverberate and Discordia were; a mere few months before this thread was created in January 2023. Fired in September of 2025… we’ll get to that. I’ve seen a lot of shit. I know some of you here. Many of you probably never heard of me because this game burned you before I was around. Either way, this is a message.

Zephyr, I was wrong. I’m sorry.

I believed all the shit Cujo and Hadrix said about you. I believed it because, as many have said already, they are both great at masking themselves – at first. It took me too long to realize my friendships with both Cujo and Hadrix were one-sided and toxic.

With Hadrix, it was also abusive as fuck. Insults, gaslighting, love-bombing… you name it. And, when I finally did walk away from that farce of a friendship for good? Like so many others, I became another name on his enemy list. I did my best to remain cordial as we were both still staff, but I was quite aware of his smear campaign in the background. Informing Cujo did no good.

Speaking of Cujo. When I became staff, his mask slipped. Or maybe it was never there to begin with. His worst traits are reserved for the Admin channel where he spews anti-women, anti-player, narrow-minded bile. It was so hard for me to accept that the man I thought I knew, who presented himself as a reasonable and fun guy, was closed-minded, aloof, and dismissive. I was in denial; tried to pass it off as edgy humor or just a few bad days. But no. I came to the crushing realization that -is- who he is, just as many others have said.

Long story short: I was ignorant of everything and took their claims at face-value. I failed to do a better job investigating further.

Zephyr, I can corroborate everything you’ve said about your time on AoA, especially as a staffer and a woman. I have seen the awful, toxic things said on the Admin channel. The sniping of players behind their backs. The misogyny and hand waving of problematic lanes of thought and action. And I -did- push against it. I thought, like you, that if I could just do or say the right thing to make Cujo understand what was harming the game and, more importantly, the players, that I could make some kind of positive changes.

I am the staffer who pushed for clarity on what harassment was. I was the staffer whom players would go to when they couldn’t trust the others. I was the one bringing ‘bad news’ to Cujo in the form of legitimate issues (often Hadrix/Reverberate) and, summarily, I was the one he labeled as ‘Difficult to talk to’ or ‘Too emotional’. A stone’s-throw away from ‘hysterical broad’.

The worst part is that I was doing what Cujo asked me to do. He admitted directly numerous times that he knows Hadrix is a problem. Though that was often followed up with “Ugh… but he DOES SO MUCH.”

Cujo told me to keep my ear to the ground for rumblings. I took that to mean he wanted me to let him know when something needed to be nipped in the bud. Instead, it meant something he would have to get ahead of to defend against. When I would bring him reports of player complaints and concerns – even with screenshots of the offense – Cujo would rebuff me for ‘just not liking Hadrix’ and shut me out.

I was gone for nearly the entire year of 2024 because of Hadrix. I told Cujo what was happening, what the line crossed was, and was met with dead silence. One year later, nothing had changed, but I thought… I thought I could change things. I thought I could make it better. I was wrong.

Ultimately, I was fired the same way you were: while I was offline and via @mail. Not for pushing against the abuses I witnessed, but because my OC was hanging around an FC too much. Yes, that was me. How dare, I know. When Cujo tried to grandfather some unspoken rule about OCs being untouchables for ‘reasons he can’t control’ (yet reasons and rules he made up), Ben Solo’s player and I called out the bullshit and hypocrisy. This led to my firing and Ben Solo being retired to NPC status.

I defended Cujo so much in the past that I am embarrassed. I was there when AoA opened. When he and Halcyon migrated from Wing Commander to build it, me and a few others came with them. I guess I thought that would mean something more to him than it did. I had tried to be the staffer that the game needed: one Cujo could trust who also genuinely wanted the game to succeed. And I was. I was that staffer. But what the game needs in a staffer is not at all what Cujo wants.

As for why I defended Hadrix… well. I just wanted to be a good friend. It took a long time to realize I wasn’t getting a good friend in return. The way he trash-talked all his other friends to me in private should’ve been a big clue he was doing the same to me towards them. I was the proverbial frog in the boiling pot. His mask-slip is less of a shocking revelation and more me hopping out of the water. Still sucked to go through as dealing with him legitimately gave me dread and anxiety but hey. Life is full of hard lessons, and I consider my history with him as one that taught me to never let myself be treated like that again.

All in all, I genuinely loved that game. I loved the new friends I had made, and I lament the ones I lost. I put in so, so much effort building, running plots, and recruiting good players. Now? Well, let’s just say that one can only read so much '<insert female name> hates Star Wars" or “<insert female name> is just a whore.” and other nasty, anti-women crap that it’s hard to even enjoy the IP as a whole. And I don’t. I’ve left the Star Wars fandom, having seen the worst in the brand of fans it puts out.

Hadrix’s abuses and Cujo’s insistence in enabling it has me walking away from MUSHing again. The hobby grows ever smaller because of toxic people like this. Yet here I am, making a comment on a thread I swore I would never directly engage in. I need to make right -my- personal fuck-ups, and I come forward with all this in one final attempt to make some positive change. To protect current and future players, and validate past victims.

Cujo and Hadrix will never admit fault let alone apologize, but I’m not them. I can admit to being wrong. I can admit to failing.

To everyone: I’m sorry. You deserve to be treated better than you were. You deserve respect. You deserve a safe place to play and engage, and to be heard when you are wronged. We all deserve to be treated like people and not toys to be used and discarded. You were right. The others were right.

Despite my best efforts, AoA is not safe. I won’t tell anyone not to play there, but do so with caution. I worry for the remaining playerbase, and that concern has motivated pretty much everything I’ve done: staying there longer than I wanted to, and coming forward now to face whatever judgement of my peers.

Coming forward is not easy. Admitting my faults and foolishness is not easy, either. None of this is easy. Did I defend Cujo and Hadrix in my ignorance? I did. Was I complicit to the game’s survival? Yeah. Did I try to fix things? Absolutely. Did I fail? Oh, boy, did I ever.

I opted to try to stay because I thought it was a chance to make the improvements the game desperately needed. By doing so, I perpetuated the lies. I learned much too late that such beneficial changes require a Head Wiz who wants to make them.

What started as a letter to Zephyr has become a missive to former, present, and future players. You deserve better. Never, ever settle for anything less than mutual, earned respect.

I hope things have been much, much better for you all. Be kind to one another.

Thank you for hearing me out.

I’ve put off responding to anything… everything… for a long time now. I wanted to leave it all behind, forget about it, and move on with my life. But the nagging feeling of wrongness would not go away, and I realized my silence was protecting the wrong people. So… here we go.

I was Maelstrom. Hired the same time Reverberate and Discordia were; a mere few months before this thread was created in January 2023. Fired in September of 2025… we’ll get to that. I’ve seen a lot of shit. I know some of you here. Many of you probably never heard of me because this game burned you before I was around. Either way, this is a message.

Zephyr, I was wrong. I’m sorry.

I believed all the shit Cujo and Hadrix said about you. I believed it because, as many have said already, they are both great at masking themselves – at first. It took me too long to realize my friendships with both Cujo and Hadrix were one-sided and toxic.

With Hadrix, it was also abusive as fuck. Insults, gaslighting, love-bombing… you name it. And, when I finally did walk away from that farce of a friendship for good? Like so many others, I became another name on his enemy list. I did my best to remain cordial as we were both still staff, but I was quite aware of his smear campaign in the background. Informing Cujo did no good.

Speaking of Cujo. When I became staff, his mask slipped. Or maybe it was never there to begin with. His worst traits are reserved for the Admin channel where he spews anti-women, anti-player, narrow-minded bile. It was so hard for me to accept that the man I thought I knew, who presented himself as a reasonable and fun guy, was closed-minded, aloof, and dismissive. I was in denial; tried to pass it off as edgy humor or just a few bad days. But no. I came to the crushing realization that -is- who he is, just as many others have said.

Long story short: I was ignorant of everything and took their claims at face-value. I failed to do a better job investigating further.

Zephyr, I can corroborate everything you’ve said about your time on AoA, especially as a staffer and a woman. I have seen the awful, toxic things said on the Admin channel. The sniping of players behind their backs. The misogyny and hand waving of problematic lanes of thought and action. And I -did- push against it. I thought, like you, that if I could just do or say the right thing to make Cujo understand what was harming the game and, more importantly, the players, that I could make some kind of positive changes.

I am the staffer who pushed for clarity on what harassment was. I was the staffer whom players would go to when they couldn’t trust the others. I was the one bringing ‘bad news’ to Cujo in the form of legitimate issues (often Hadrix/Reverberate) and, summarily, I was the one he labeled as ‘Difficult to talk to’ or ‘Too emotional’. A stone’s-throw away from ‘hysterical broad’.

The worst part is that I was doing what Cujo asked me to do. He admitted directly numerous times that he knows Hadrix is a problem. Though that was often followed up with “Ugh… but he DOES SO MUCH.”

Cujo told me to keep my ear to the ground for rumblings. I took that to mean he wanted me to let him know when something needed to be nipped in the bud. Instead, it meant something he would have to get ahead of to defend against. When I would bring him reports of player complaints and concerns – even with screenshots of the offense – Cujo would rebuff me for ‘just not liking Hadrix’ and shut me out.

I was gone for nearly the entire year of 2024 because of Hadrix. I told Cujo what was happening, what the line crossed was, and was met with dead silence. One year later, nothing had changed, but I thought… I thought I could change things. I thought I could make it better. I was wrong.

Ultimately, I was fired the same way you were: while I was offline and via @mail. Not for pushing against the abuses I witnessed, but because my OC was hanging around an FC too much. Yes, that was me. How dare, I know. When Cujo tried to grandfather some unspoken rule about OCs being untouchables for ‘reasons he can’t control’ (yet reasons and rules he made up), Ben Solo’s player and I called out the bullshit and hypocrisy. This led to my firing and Ben Solo being retired to NPC status.

I defended Cujo so much in the past that I am embarrassed. I was there when AoA opened. When he and Halcyon migrated from Wing Commander to build it, me and a few others came with them. I guess I thought that would mean something more to him than it did. I had tried to be the staffer that the game needed: one Cujo could trust who also genuinely wanted the game to succeed. And I was. I was that staffer. But what the game needs in a staffer is not at all what Cujo wants.

As for why I defended Hadrix… well. I just wanted to be a good friend. It took a long time to realize I wasn’t getting a good friend in return. The way he trash-talked all his other friends to me in private should’ve been a big clue he was doing the same to me towards them. I was the proverbial frog in the boiling pot. His mask-slip is less of a shocking revelation and more me hopping out of the water. Still sucked to go through as dealing with him legitimately gave me dread and anxiety but hey. Life is full of hard lessons, and I consider my history with him as one that taught me to never let myself be treated like that again.

All in all, I genuinely loved that game. I loved the new friends I had made, and I lament the ones I lost. I put in so, so much effort building, running plots, and recruiting good players. Now? Well, let’s just say that one can only read so much '<insert female name> hates Star Wars" or “<insert female name> is just a whore.” and other nasty, anti-women crap that it’s hard to even enjoy the IP as a whole. And I don’t. I’ve left the Star Wars fandom, having seen the worst in the brand of fans it puts out.

Hadrix’s abuses and Cujo’s insistence in enabling it has me walking away from MUSHing again. The hobby grows ever smaller because of toxic people like this. Yet here I am, making a comment on a thread I swore I would never directly engage in. I need to make right -my- personal fuck-ups, and I come forward with all this in one final attempt to make some positive change. To protect current and future players, and validate past victims.

Cujo and Hadrix will never admit fault let alone apologize, but I’m not them. I can admit to being wrong. I can admit to failing.

To everyone: I’m sorry. You deserve to be treated better than you were. You deserve respect. You deserve a safe place to play and engage, and to be heard when you are wronged. We all deserve to be treated like people and not toys to be used and discarded. You were right. The others were right.

Despite my best efforts, AoA is not safe. I won’t tell anyone not to play there, but do so with caution. I worry for the remaining playerbase, and that concern has motivated pretty much everything I’ve done: staying there longer than I wanted to, and coming forward now to face whatever judgement of my peers.

Coming forward is not easy. Admitting my faults and foolishness is not easy, either. None of this is easy. Did I defend Cujo and Hadrix in my ignorance? I did. Was I complicit to the game’s survival? Yeah. Did I try to fix things? Absolutely. Did I fail? Oh, boy, did I ever.

I opted to try to stay because I thought it was a chance to make the improvements the game desperately needed. By doing so, I perpetuated the lies. I learned much too late that such beneficial changes require a Head Wiz who wants to make them.

What started as a letter to Zephyr has become a missive to former, present, and future players. You deserve better. Never, ever settle for anything less than mutual, earned respect.

I hope things have been much, much better for you all. Be kind to one another.

Thank you for hearing me out.