Shattered Kingdoms

Recently I had an item in my inventory just vanish. No it did not crumble into dust, and no it was not stolen by logout thieves and no I did not accidently junk it.
I remember having it until I got the message: A shady character tells you 'You'll never catch me! Ha! This thief really outsmarted you!'

I do not really mind them and I think they usually fail, but when they do succeed, and you chase them down and kill them, the item is simply not there. I had two grandmasters locate it, nowhere to be found.
Now unless a pc rogue stole it and junked it immediately (none were on at the time) This is the only conclusion I can draw.
I mean who else can take your items other than an Imm?
Dunno...again this is what I THINK happened. I have not gone back to do any testing with the rogues.
Anyone else ever have issues with this?

When they steal something, they hide and then flee, so there is a 1 in 4 chance they will run to a road area and 3 in 4 chance they run off of the road. Sometimes they hide again, most times they come out of hiding. Since they spawn while you walk, they also have a timer which will despawn them, so you have a limited time before they wander off to their hideout with your item. When you wander the road, more spawns. When wandering that road, it is best to have everything put away, kill all you find, or don't walk on that road and next to it.

I chase every single one down and kill them when they flee. I know that none got away.
I also had it located with detects up.

If you hunt them down and kill them as soon as they steal from you, you'd get it back.

y u troll me?

Terrus is right. They probably depspawned. It is annoying, but it has happened to everyone. It is part of the "danger" of those roads.

I used to have a theory that the items those shady dudes stole sometimes popped up in a place that sort of made IC sense after a little while. I'm not sure that's the case anymore though.

The stuff doesn't go anywhere. Unless you kill them and then it will disappear.

Jerk building 101.

Nah, that was from the random theft script in Teron.