Bob had been quietly lurking in the 1551 Discord for exactly the wrong amount of time when he found the thread about Blooms.
He did not know who Blooms was. He did not know what a voidstar was, or why Miranda kept accusing Xylo of running three separate VIP12 accounts, or why everyone kept typing "dick riding" like it was a strategic term. But Bob had scrolled far enough to catch the part that mattered:
Xylo: If you think hes a real player i want you to meet my prince from a neighboring kingdom that has an inheritance in gold to transfer to you. He just needs your SS number, dob, and location so he can send it to you
Bob read this three times. Then he sat up very straight.
"Bob," he announced to an empty room, "would like to meet this prince."
He typed it into the channel before anyone could stop him: "Bob accepts. Where does Bob send his location."
There was a pause in the chat that, had Bob been capable of reading tone through text, he would have recognized as horror.
Miranda: wait Miranda: Bob no Xylo: Bob that was a joke Xylo: that's a scam bit, my guy, nobody actually— Bob: Bob does not "joke" about inheritances.
By the time Miranda got a follow-up message typed, Bob had already left the channel. He had gone looking for the prince himself, on the very reasonable assumption that royalty this generous would surely be easy to find.
He found someone within the hour. A stranger in a neighboring kingdom's overflow chat, going by "PrinceFaisal_Real," who — remarkably — also claimed to have a large sum of gold with nowhere to put it, and who was extremely interested in Bob's Governor ID, his home coordinates, and, for reasons Bob did not question even slightly, his entire stockpile of speedups.
"Bob has been chosen," Bob told his empty room again, with tremendous solemnity, and sent everything.
The confirmation message came back almost instantly: "Transfer complete. Have a blessed day." Then PrinceFaisal_Real left the server.
Bob returned to 1551 general-chat aglow with success.
Bob: Bob has claimed the inheritance. Bob: Bob would like it known that Bob was chosen. Miranda: claimed WHAT Xylo: oh no Xylo: oh no oh no Bob what did you send him
By the time the full accounting was done — three stacks of speedups, a small mountain of resources, and, inexplicably, a screenshot of Bob's own castle "for verification purposes" — Miranda had put her head in her hands and Xylo had stopped typing entirely for a full two minutes, which for Xylo was basically mourning.
"Bob," Miranda finally typed, "that wasn't a real prince. There is no prince. It was a bit about people falling for a whale account. You just — you just did the bit. For real. With real speedups."
"The prince said Bob was chosen," Bob replied, unbothered. "Bob does not turn his back on destiny."
"The prince took your stuff and left, Bob. That's it. That's the whole story. He's not coming back."
"He is processing."
Xylo: there is no processing Bob Xylo: i made him up Xylo: i made him up as a JOKE about Blooms Bob: Then it is very impressive that he was real all along.
Nobody had an answer for that. Xylo typed something, deleted it, typed something else, and eventually just sent a single skull emoji, which felt like the only appropriate closing statement available in the entire Discord client.
Bob, for his part, considered the matter fully resolved. He informed RIP that he had entered into a diplomatic gold arrangement with a neighboring royal house, that the funds were "in transit," and that anyone who doubted him was welcome to explain why a real prince would bother scamming someone as important as Bob specifically.
Three days later, he was still checking his in-game mail every morning. Four days after that, he had upgraded his theory to "the prince is testing Bob's patience as a final trial of worthiness." Miranda gave up correcting him somewhere around day six and instead started a betting pool in general-chat on how long it would take Bob to notice the gold was never coming — current odds: never.
Xylo, to his credit, never made another joke about the prince again. He didn't need to. Bob had already turned it into gospel.