Unearthing the Char Accords
An anthropological investigation of a dead, pandemic-era Discord server
Portrait by Nick Verrelli
If I had a nickel for every Discord bot I have programmed, I would have two nickels.
The first was Verrelli Bot. Inspired by the bot work of Dom in our QCompSci messenger group chats, Verrelli Bot posted Markov-chains of Nick’s scraped (and now deleted) Twitter account. Good for a couple laughs and even as inspiration for a few tweets.
The second, Verrelli Bot 2, was my Javascript magnum opus.
What started as a replacement for the dogshit ranking system of MEE6 bot, soon spiralled into a full-blown economic and political model, spanning several eras and dynasties. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was December 2020 to March 2021; and deep in the midst of an international lockdown, we had nothing better to do than log onto Discord every day. The whole period was a blur to me. I can’t remember doing much except sitting in my basement office, my remote work on one screen and Discord open on my Lenovo gaming laptop¹.
At the core of Verrelli Bot 2 was NoahCoin – the digital upgrade of my fiat, Dollar Store brand currency, NoahBuck. In the beginning, it only had a few commands. v-mine was utilized to gain a small, random amount of NoahCoin. v-transfer would send NoahCoin to another person. v-slots would gamble a choice number of NoahCoin in the emoji casino. This was enough to kickstart a grand economic rat race and a bot project ending with dozens of commands.
Recounting each server event that took place in the three months between the introduction of Verrelli Bot 2.0 (December 29th, 2020) and the end of the server (March 11th, 2021) would be as futile as it would be boring. But I would like to present an anthropological, archeological, and sociological analysis of one of the recovered artifacts from the server: The infamous decree which became known as The Char Accords.
NOTE: From here onward, “Verrelli Bot” and “v-bot” will be used interchangeably, referring to the Verrelli Bot 2.0 (and all subsequent versions).
The Accords
On January 22nd 2021, Char ascended to the role of sole ruler of the server, and pronounced his decree. The full text is featured below and was later reprinted in the Nick York Times issue of that same day.
Upon further analysis within its original cultural context, the Char Accords reveal a great amount of detail regarding day-to-day life within Discordian society under the Machine Age of Verrelli Bot.
1. Rather than Charcord, the city as a whole will establish the new name of the discord to promote democracy.
The First Accord reveals that democracy and democratic values were at the forefront of the public discourse on server ownership. The server, up until this point, was filled with backstabbing tyranny over the digital throne. Everyone wanted to be the king, and no one trusted anyone.
This raises the question: How did one become the server ruler?
If their NNCBC (National Noahcord Bank of Commerce) account equaled or surpassed one million NoahCoins (held in NNCBC accounts by v-bot), their account would be reset back to zero and they would be granted the ‘Supreme Chancellor’ role, replacing whoever held it last. With the Chancellor role, they would be able to access specific v-bot commands that others could not: v-decree, v-tax, v-gag, and v-deputy – to name a few.
Originally, the Supreme Chancellor role would be given to whoever had the most NoahCoins. However, this led to extreme NoahCoin wealth disparity, with some users ranking in the millions while some only had hundreds. To solve both the inequality and rising NoahCoin inflation, the Verrelli Bot 2.5 [Definitive Golden Edition] update came with an economic overhaul that would both even the playing field and remove excess NoahCoins from circulation.
In this text, Char is referring to v-name, a command that allowed the Chancellor to rename the server. Of course, they could do it manually with the Supreme Chancellor role, but there was greater fanfare in having the bot do it publicly.
By not immediately renaming the server to “Charcord”, Char attempted to distance himself from the narcissistic regimes that came before him – including his own previous Charcord.
Ancient Discordian professor and scholar Dr. Nicholas commented, “The Chancellor was so desperate to distance himself from his past self that he claimed it was a divergent personality responsible; a Dark Char, if you will.”
2. Curfew has been lifted.
The “curfew” was the NoahCoin Farming Curfew imposed by the prior Jagcord Administration. Notoriously unpopular among the general populace, it banned the use of the v-farm command between the hours of 8pm and 11am.
An explanation of the v-farm command from the Verrelli Bot 2.5 [Definitive Golden Edition] patchnotes (published January 11th, 2021) can be found below:
This v-farm command became a very popular alternative to the widely used v-mine. Though slower (the cool-down on v-mining changed from time to time, but generally remained around 5 minutes), the profit was worth the risk of others potentially stealing your hard-earned crops².
The curfew that the Jag Regime had imposed was to stop so-called “overnight tryhards” who clogged up everyone’s notifications with 3am v-farm and v-mine attempts.
When asked for a comment on the curfew, Jag said “You can call them tryhards, I call them bots. I couldn’t escape Alex and Nick’s partnership. They had a strong bond. This was my wrench.”
By undoing the curfew, Char made himself friendly to the average farming citizen, as well as the aforementioned Bambino-Nicholas Alliance.
3. V-Tax, following an inauguration taxation, has been abolished.
v-tax was one of the most contentious v-bot commands that a Chancellor could use. Once daily, a Chancellor could type v-tax [integer between 1 and 5] to withdraw that percentage from every active NoahBank account and place it within their own account. Universally despised, it was still used by almost every Chancellor to keep their pockets stuffed. Anything less than v-tax 5 was seldom used.
Even Char couldn’t escape the allure of one final tax payout.
As Nick adds, “The hypocrisy of final taxation did not do much to ingratiate the new Chancellor to his citizens and was met with bipartisan uproar.”
4. I will be launching v-grant, a system which grants 10,000 NoahCoin to the citizens of the cord.
v-grant was added to solve a particular problem in the server at the time – there wasn’t much to do once you ran out of NoahCoin. This was a common problem, given that many vagrants gambled away their life savings in the v-casino on the v-slots.
v-mine, which users could do once every 5-10 minutes, took too long and produced little gain. v-daily and v-startup were recently banned following an Anti-Communism Committee investigation.
Char attempted to make himself a provider, a saviour of the people, doling out free money day-by-day, granted that you keep him in power.
Bambino in Growing Up in Kaitcord: Life as a V-Farmer sarcastically comments, “The irony in watching later Chancellors start each morning with v-grant and then v-tax 5…”
5. V-Request abolished, to prevent those from sneakily peaking at opposing parties balances.
To become Chancellor, your NNCBC account had to equal or surpass one million. This would empty your account and give you the Supreme Chancellor role with all its admin privileges. This economic overhaul from the 2.5 update also spawned a new host of strategies designed to take control of the server. To start was the obvious: political factions would form and donate money to a single person, allowing them to become the leader. The donors would normally be granted some high ranking role in the new society, generally the Sheriff position.
There were more advanced tactics too. The Bambino-Nicholas alliance was notorious for offloading hundreds of thousands of NoahCoins into ‘offshore’, inactive member accounts, to be later v-heisted back.
Another common tactic was ‘Pushing over’, whereby rival factions would push an enemy bank account over the one million mark, zeroing out the account, and then immediately pushing an allied account over the million mark to snatch away the throne.
For example: Account A has 700,000 NoahCoin Account B has 800,000 NoahCoin Account C has 900,000 NoahCoin
Account A and B are allied against Account C. They could easily combine funds and take the Chancellor role. However, they want to make sure Account C has no easy way to stop their new rule. Account B first v-transfers 100,000 NoahCoin to Account C. Account C passes hits one million, becomes Chancellor, and their balance is back to 0.
Account A has 700,000 NoahCoin Account B has 700,000 NoahCoin Account C has 0 NoahCoin
Now, Account B v-transfers 300,000 NoahCoin to Account A, making them the new Chancellor, with their political rival now bankrupt.
These strategies heavily relied on knowing how much each person had in their bank account. Originally, users could see their balance with v-balance or v-bal. Eventually, it had to be patched in to allow privately messaging Verrelli Bot this command, as users would check their balance in chat and immediately delete it, leaving a string of empty Discord notifications.
Evenso, a loophole was found with the command v-request. This command was used to request money from someone else on the server. If the requested account did not have available funds, the request was automatically – and publicly – cancelled with an error message.
By sending varying v-request amounts, users could check which requests went through and which produced insufficient fund errors. This allowed the attacker to estimate within precise amounts the exact bank balance of their target.
With the Fifth Accord, Char aimed to nullify this tactic entirely.
6. V-transfers must now be accepted to prevent forceful overthrowing.
See Section 5 for the “pushing over” political strategies.
This Accord was never implemented due to the cultural significance of v-transfer politics.
“We had more NoahCoin than we knew what to do with. We couldn't fit all our cash under our own mattresses safely – so we did the next best thing, we hid it under our neighbor's mattress. Of course, we never told them about it. There were risks, but it was the secret that allowed us to ensure the safety of our dynasties. Who doesn't stash away a little cash for a rainy day?” – Nick, on offshoring NoahCoin in inactive accounts
7. V-trial in place, launching a jury system which will democractically [sic] vote for a punishment rather than imprisonment without trial.
Culturally, the Supreme Chancellor was not the only bot role. The other was “Sheriff”, which could be granted to any user by the Chancellor (including themselves) by using the v-deputy command. The Sheriff had access to v-imprison and v-release. V-imprison stripped a user of all their roles and banned access to all voice calls and chats except one: Prison Yard.
This power was abused. Many mass imprisonments followed regime changes. Sometimes, though, the Sheriff used their power for good, imprisoning those who stole v-farm crops or other such crimes (which varied from one ruler to the next).
In later versions of the prison, timeouts could be set on prisoners' chats. One message per hour, or even per day. Some prisoners used their one message to petition for release. Others used it for a rebellious v-mine command.
Due to technical limitations, this Accord was never implemented. Yet it was, in the opinion of the author, by far the most progressive of all the Accords – trying to put an end to the often dual tyrannies of Chancellor and Sheriff.
8. To prevent citizens to overwhelm [sic] the farm sites, a minimum of 1000 NoahCoin must be used to purchase seeds.
v-farm was the main alternative to gain NoahCoins, aside from v-mine. Even within this system, there were strategies to keep money in your account and out of your enemies. There were ten virtual farm “plots” which could be filled by using v-farm. People who were rich and wanted to keep others from gaining money filled all those farms with v-farm 1, ensuring that for the next hour no one could farm and the resulting harvest would only be between 0 and 10 NoahCoins. See Section 2 for further explanation on the mechanics of v-farming.
Char aimed to put an end to this practice and leave the farms open for those with a genuine seed investment.
9. Nick News will continue to come out daily. V-Pay will be used to pay workers for their piece, 20k a news article, to promote creativity. Minimum requirements determined by the editor. This balance will not be taken from anyone's wallet.
The support of “Nick News” came to the Discord server as a surprise. One week earlier (decades in Discord time), Char had actually banned Nick’s Discord newspaper, The Nick York Times, under suspicion of Anti-Char and Pro-Communist propaganda. By the time that the Char Accords rolled around, it was evident that he was desperate to undo the actions of his past and set himself up as a new man in the eyes of the public.
The Nick York Times is a topic for its own Printhouse article, but must be mentioned here. Started by Nick while v-imprisoned under the Jagcord Regime, it was his series of plaintext articles on Discordian news, culture, and the NoahCoin economy. It grew in popularity, eventually having its own v-bot command (v-news) and a series of writers. It also spawned the widely acclaimed “wa wa wee wa” strip series by Bambino. A true testament to the free time many had under lockdown, publishing nearly daily editions for multiple weeks.
“Like any journalist publication, it was both loved and hated. I like to think we did a lot of good work in those days. We brought people news that mattered to them as it happened, just barely keeping ahead of the daily grind required to run a paper. I’m proud to say we had quite the diversity of columnists, and I was just happy to see people expressing themselves in the art of writing. Of course, like any paper, we had a political leaning...” – Nick, Editor-in-Chief of the Nick York Times
10. ENJOY!
Suspiciously, this 10th Accord was absent in the Nick York Times version printed the same day.
The Aftermath
Not even 24 hours had passed before Nick, the newly appointed Sheriff under Char, v-transferred Bambino enough NoahCoins to make him the new Chancellor.
The Char Accords had only just begun their implementation before a Caesarean betrayal shot Char back down to nothing. He all but removed himself from the political sphere of the server afterwards.
A Snapshot in Time
This was only the tip of the iceberg. Not mentioned here are the v-lotteries, v-mines closing due to auto-miners, the v-duels (and the infamous PANSHOT! bug), the v-slots odds update controversy, v-dawg (the server pet), v-prison break by suicide technique, the earth being mined dry, and of course, The Nat Job.
Of all these, The Char Accords remain one of the most intriguing relics to survive the Discordian Bot era. Scholars today still debate on the cultural impact of the Accords and what may have happened if they fully went into effect.
“It would have been a utopia if it happened.” – Char
The server itself persisted for another two months, with countless unrecorded political upheavals, purges, and revolutions. V-bot continued to be upgraded, until version 2.8 [THE LAST COMETH], which ironically finally re-implemented the Twitter Markov chains that the original v-bot was known for.
On March 11th, 2021, by collective user action, all NoahCoins were v-incinerate’d. This fulfilled the prerequisite conditions for v-killswitch. The killswitch was activated. The server logs were dumped and Verrelli Bot kicked all users, forever fossilizing the server in 2021.
All this is to say,
We don’t have roles or bots in our Discord servers anymore.
Everybody had their hands out,
Everything was for the taking,
Now it’s all over.
Stay frosty, Noah
Thanks to Nick, Jag, Char, and Alex for all the commentary. And special thanks to Kaitlyn for the proofread and revisions.
¹ The Lenovo gaming laptop which was running 24/7 on a wall socket to host the bot
² “I’m not ashamed to say it: back in my day, in my youth before Kaitcord, I was a notorious crop thief. I would monitor my Discord notifications for others v-farming, and would set a timer on my phone to remind me when their crops were ready for harvest. I would swoop in and rob them blind. It wasn’t an honest living, but a girl’s gotta eat.” – Kaitlyn, The Last Supreme Chancellor before Fossilization