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Haha, the mighty Tas does not give up!!

Tas became the sworn enemy of Merlin already after playing 15 minutes. Being
level 1, Tas asked Merlin, who at that time was level 13, and had a griffon
pet (these were incredible powerful, they did massacre hits and would devour
the old occam trainers alive, which was quite a feat, considering these
trainers were designed never to die), when he met him in a bar, you know,
bars were plentiful at that time also. Erh,..yes! Tas said: "Give me money".
Merlin, as the obvious wise man he was answered: Walk out in the world young
man, and you will find riches yourself. Whereupon I, erh, Tas, answered with
"kick", "give me money!". Merlin gave me 500 gold, but he never forgot.

Raistlin I first met in Olantea inn, which also was quite different at the
time. I could not open the door, which happened to be green. It didnt come
to mind to try "open green door". As most wizards may know, Raistlin was the
maker of The Rod of Alternation, which by its fancy setup, putting the room
info inside """'s, happened to save a few bytes of memory. At that time DT
had 12 Mb of momory, so this was quite a feat. Somehow I ended up screaming
for more help after he opened the door, cause I had lost all my feet and
arms. I guess Raistlin proved his mean streak even on a newborn adventurer.

Beldin? Beldin was the most clever of all the wizards, and he also made some
of the areas which still hold (I hope) I interest for adventurers. Let me
tell you Beldin was mr cold-heart-objective creator. At least when I joined
the world. Beforehand he had created the city of Beldinstown, and Beldins
Guild, hehe, so I think maybe he was a bit pumpous in the beginning. But
that soon wore off. Beldins guild had more or less it all, but I never knew
the details. . He was the best coder of them all also. This was indeed
anathema for Tas the Great Adventurer!! So suffice to say that Beldin and
Merlin formed the Anti-Tas axis of what was to become MudWar 1. Not that it
could be called a true war, I was level 700, they were level 20.000 added
up.

Let me add inn here that Coydt never was good for nothing. She or he, I
never found out, never did a good job coding. I am not even sure I remember
she made anything. Hold on, she made a city below the world east of halfling
town, I think it was removed eventally. Haldayne the champion and so on. She
also cheated her way to wizhood past Priapus, Xotai and me, going from level
14 to 20 (wiz) in a matter of a weekend. But that is the way it is with
locals. Never mind, its part of the game. I think that she did it by
stealing some very expensive items, which at that time gave exp per value of
the item.

But back to the MUD life!

The heart of the mud was always the guilds. Beldin and Merlin were
guildmasters, and did a good job. Merlin at that time peaked in
creativeness, and created the new sorcerers guild, and remade Oleantea. He
really did a very good job.

At that time, all guilds used CON points to do damage. Graduating into
Wiz-hood, I gained access to Knights guild, and started my happy work there.
As far as I recall, GORTH the Impaler, 666, Demigod, created both the
mercenaries guild and the knights guilds before going back to his blissfull
sleep, in which he played Warhammer 40.000 in RL most of the time I think. A
very nice fellow. He was always on the side of the other wizards, and even
the council, but since he got the thing rolling together with Kickaha, he
was above the law in a sense. Not that it mattered, his active days were
more or less over. He created the Recruits of these 2 guilds, which you
could hire to help you fight. Quite a nice feature, which was later removed
by the Dubious Duo.

My old friend Xotai, which together with Priapus and me made up the THIRD
GENERATION wizards (1st was kickaha, gorth, beldin raistlin, Oleorin,
Ulrich, second generation was Merlin all in himself, that is how good his
impact on the mud was).
Priapus made the monks guild, I had knights, and Xotai did mercenaries.

I hated monks guild. Here Beldin himself razed Beldinstown, and renamed it
as per Tolkien, and then a MONKS guild was allowed into the game. Priapus
had a heart of good, never a mean word from that fellow to anybody. He was
not a good coder, which by the way I wasn't either really, cause we did not
have the experience either, but he put in a lot of good work for the mud. He
remade Tweeple.

4th generation was Qrok and 2-3 other danish coders. I do not recall too
much of that day, I was fading a bit a the time I think.

Relgar and Colarian was the 5th generation. They were good coders. I still
cannot understand how Colarion was allowed to set up a training camp in
Occam, replacing the old, which in its form was true evil, cutting up elves
and so on. Pathetic! And this being made by a jew from Israel, you would
think they had learned a bit from WW2 history.

Colerian made the evil priest guild, based on Gorths Church of Melkor. Yet
another guild not very well balanced at the time. Hehe.

The first version of knights guild had the following:
- a 2h rather good sword (i cant say the WC i guess), with +5 dex bonus.
Usable from lvl 14
- an ac 6 chainmail.

Thats it..you could still hire the guys to help you but they were so weak..

Now, take a look at the game engine in DT. You got 6 limbs. If you loose
head or torso, your dead. The chance to hit torso is lets say 33% to take a
figure. Lets assume that you die from torso hits most of the time. That
means that the mob needs to do 300% damage to you, before one third of those
kill your torso.

Beldin and Merlin never understood this fact. They had taken the mudlib from
Genesis in Sweden, where you did not have a body part system.

So my knights hit with a 2h weapon, hitting 6 body parts, while a spell
caster could dump 50 con and do 100 damage. Melee had to dish 600 damage to
do the same. It still makes me laugh to think about it again.

Beldin was furious with the dex bonus of my swords, they had to go. I was
ordered to make my knights with con attacks. So I did. I made power gloves.
Quite a nice feature. Basically a pair of gauntlets the knight could
enchant, so that they held his power. Release 50 con from them, and do about
75 damage.

Beldin never understood the best facet with this item. It allowed the knight
to store mana at full mana. In combat, this has no use. but inbetween, it
adds to total mana production and utilization.  It also made it possible to
kill monks in duels. My champion Dune killed the monk Gil in a famous duel.
Gil was the best PK the world has seen. His trophy room up on Granyak had
ALL mobs you could think of. Quite a player! A pompus ass he was, and a
cheater, I guess that is the way of most good PKers.

In the end my knights had healing (50 hp for 100 con fex), holy frenzy
(added double attack), some kind of entangling web which was rather good, I
dont remember what it did :), and I think some weapon enchantments. I was
content., and the guild was good. I think the guild more or less stayed the
same years after. Each power had drawbacks. Knights with low alignment
fought very weakly, as should be. You could not stop the frenzy, and you
could not do any commands in frenzy mode.

No more time to write, I never got to the interesting parts :) Me and Xotai
made a battlefield, with 20-30 live monsters on each side. You could join
the fight, and do dynamic fighting. For each mob you killed, you could
return to your castle and get a reward. Xotai btw made an amulet with
invilnerability for half a minute, but it was never used I think by players,
once a thief found it but did not know the trick of reading backwards the
inscription. haha!

I also created a great artifact based SP system. It had 20 different room
types you could build, each for a cost, and golems could be hired to guard
your place. you could build siege engines, and towers to protect the castle.
in the middle of the castle you had the trophy room, where your artifacts
were held. These had tremendous power. If they were stolen by other SPs you
lost the power. It is fun to see that that new MMORPG with Midgard and 2
other realms actually have the same theme. you also had a room in the castle
wher eyou could monitor all mobs in the castle, nomatter size.

We used the siege engines to fight as with tanks in mazes, great fun.

I made Happenings, where monsters invaded tweeple, and all the players ran
from side to side to defend it. I remember a lvl 10 died 4 times in one
night, but he said it was the experiece of his life.

I made a chest system, you could buy a treasrure chest and dig it down in
ANY outside locaion in the game, and put your gear inside. Anybody could
find it and dig it up. Great fun! We arranged digging contests, with a
Dragonslayer as reward. The fart Beldin later recoded this system into the
storage room in Granyauk. Hehe. Wherer did the randomness go? The excitement
when you dug for your chest and maybe missed a room or 2 befor eyou got it
right?!

We recoded the merchant system. I invented that silver skull that sucks up
corpses. The merchant system sucked. Nobody bothered to carry corpses
around. That little skull created a booming economy in 2 weeks time! You can
call that one my Colombus egg!

The bad parts you say? What parts?? Tas was always a rebel, doing his own
things his own way, never a supporter of established society. Tas went down
with the flags unfurled, the day after screaming to Priapus on wiz chat that
he was a lazy bugger who didn't know a thing. After making a player headbang
about 100 times in 10 seconds, after complaining about something for about
an hour. Hahaha!

Finally; The coziest place on mud earth was Kickaha's study. It had a nice
fire burning on the hearth, with a big red button above it, saying "ALARM".
Tas never got his fingers on that one.