The Mods were looking for an excuse to shut the game down
Even the mods were sick of Xer0's (and, probably, most everyone else's) bullshit, and were just looking for a reason to shut down the game and stop dealing with it. Initially, because of pressure from Xer0 and his posse, they try and hinder or destroy Edgardo and A Guy Called Squid, but eventually just stop paying attention to them completely, to the point of allowing them to cross a very dangerous area almost completely unmolested. Seeing where Edgardo and Squid were going and what they likely had planned, the mods decided to just let the drama unfold. When Edgardo delivered his unavoidably-fatal attack to Xer0 and the forum outrage exploded, the mods knew they had their chance to shut the game down completely with no repercussions.- Alternatively, Xer0 might have been buddies with the site admin and/or owner, and simply got them to pull the plug on the entire service with a well-placed temper tantrum.
- Combine these two theories and it would explain why the moderators went from being antagonistic but fair to a conspicuous non-factor. Moderators on these types of sites tend to be pillars of the community who have been there for a very long time and they may, like Goldnharl, have grown sick of the direction the roleplay was taking. But if Xer0 was friends with their boss then they couldn't do anything about it no matter how much they might have hated the guy. This would also explain why the dangerous path to Haven somehow had no random encounters - The moderators saw what was coming and chose to let it happen, knowing it would lead to an epic conclusion to a story they had grown to hate when Xer0 realized nothing could save him short of the forum being shut down.
- Anyone who has watched an entire RP community implode upon itself for almost exactly the same reason, albeit sadly in not such cinematic a fashion as Edgardo, can definitely claim it was likely both of these factors which contributed. It's also a valid guess that not long after the forum shut down, Xer0 lost any friends he had among the former mods.
