Volume Four Issue One

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  .../________________/       running on         mud.aus.sig.net 9999
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VOLUME FOUR, ISSUE ONE                                        January 8, 1997
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                        DEPARTMENTAL NEWS AND UPDATES
                                    Coding
                                   Building
                               Player Relations
                                Administration
                                
                                 SOCIAL EVENTS
                         The Legendary Times Personals
                                 On the PK Front
                               
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Please send your responses to articles to the Legendary Times address at
[email protected]. Letters to the editor and submissions are welcomed.
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                       DEPARTMENTAL NEWS AND UPDATES

                                  CODING
                                  
- NEW CODERS!!
    Congratulations to Dominic, Ea!, Tad and Snapper, who were just immorted
    into the Coding Department. Be sure and wish them well! They will be
    working on completing skilltrees. Here is a short bio on each.

Dominic:

    I am an almost 35 year old, 6' tall, 190 pound raving maniac that has
    accepted the challenge of becoming one of the ultimate harried folks of
    Legend, a Coder immort. My first task, after gaining that level that
    Dominic's score has been promising me for over a year now, will be to
    retrain myself in C programming as quickly as inhumanly possible, so that
    the effort towards finishing the skills tree programming will rush to it's
    finality all the more.
    
    After running around the Internet before it was even the Internet (anyone
    ever hear of the ArpaNet?), working with many netgame playtests, playing
    Empire until it almost killed me (even won one game!), I got curious about
    muds again, after dropping out of the testing cycles when muds first got
    started (Genesis mud, NannyMUD), and searched the muds newsgroups for
    likely sites. After wandering just a bit, I logged into Legend, and never
    wandered again.
    
    Fought my way up to the 100M xp mark, and then twiddled, as a germ of an
    idea for a Final Quest sprang up, that then took me more than 6 months of
    RealLife(tm) time to complete. Wound up taking over the leadership of the
    Knights once again, which delayed the completion of the Quest just as it
    was being finished. I hope to have had the chance of completing that Final
    Quest, as the final roleplay for Dominic, as I assume the duties of an
    Assistant Coder, working under the supervision of Gail (Gee, I'm working
    for one of my former Knights!) (No, it's not no purpose, that's just the
    way it worked out, folks)
    
    I'll pending most of my immort time invis, whacking away at the coding
    tasks. I will only promise one thing:  We'lli get it done before the next
    millennium, ok? Refer to the first Lecture of the OOC for chunks of my
    military past. Refer to me for any future zaniness, but be assured that I
    will be spending at least a little time each day as a mortal.

EA!:
    Ea! is a 4th year student at the University of Chicago, majoring in
    Computer Science and minoring in Geophysical Sciences. He also works as a
    Systems Administrator for the University doing various administrative and
    programming tasks. When not mucking around on computers, Ea! enjoys
    reading about Ancient Mesopotamia, watching Dr. Who and cooking
    extravagant meals.

TAD:
    'lo All.  Looks like I'm among the newest litter of LegendMud immorts. I
    suppose this is where I tell you about myself... Well, my name's Rick (not
    that it really matters) and I'm a Junior at Georgia Tech.  I'm studying
    Computer Engineering (and will hopefully get a degree before I'm 50 years
    old). And for anyone who cares (and everyone who doesn't) I'm 22 years old
    come the 20th (not 10, contrary to popular opinion). I'm looking forward
    to my new job as assistant coder, so I can give something back to the mud
    that's entertained me for the last 2 years. Hopefully Gail won't drive me
    TOO hard, so I'll still have time to play some too :). Tanks to e'erone
    for all the fun we hadded afor I died an wented to hevven!

SNAPPER:
    Why did I become a coder? Well I am not into pkill as much... but I still
    like to play legend. I love to code, and would like to see the skill trees
    go in soon. So I decided I should help. Hey maybe now i can explore the
    shadow lands ;) *hehehe*
 
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                                  BUILDING                      
- AREA UPDATES:
    Many small updates have occurred and a new mob has been placed on the Isle
    of Man.

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                              PLAYER RELATIONS           
- PLAYER Q&A
    Spencer will once again be running the Question & Answer sessions in the
    OOC Auditorium, Wednesday evenings at 8:00 pm Central. Bring any questions
    you have about Legend.

- LECTURE SERIES
    The Lecture Series will resume sometime in the near future with a lecture
    from Agrippa on Ancient Religions and Roleplay. Keep an eye out for more
    information on this lecture.
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                              ADMINISTRATION
                                  
There has recently been a lot of debate regarding the deletion of Vial's
characters. Most of this debate arises from posts on the Warboard. The
Warboard is an improper forum for an appeal to the Implementors. Any such
petition of an Administrative Staff decision should be forwarded to
[email protected]. However, in view of the current discussion, this notice
is a clarification of the issues and official statement of the position of the
LegendMUD Administration.

Suffice it to say, that there was an incident in which Vial accused Fatale of
interference in PK. As was determined at the time, Vial's accusation of a
violation against Fatale was a frivolous one. Her actions after the accusation
were not acceptable, which is why she was told to do community service as
well. Both individuals involved had considerable records of infractions
ranging from crossplay to personal attacks and harassment to tellspamming.

- Vial's player has a history of crossplay; he has been accused of it
regularly, and no official action was taken, although crossplaying is frowned
upon in the Player Code of Conduct.

- Vial's player has a history of making major accusations against people he
dislikes (mortals and immortals) which later turn out to be unsubstantiated
allegations. The Player Code of Conduct specifically states that bringing
unfounded accusations against someone can result in punitive measures.

- Vial's player has a history of personal attacks against the players of
characters he dislikes, including posting libelous allegations of sexual
misconduct with minors (with names given!).

- Vial's player has a history of misuse of mud commands in violation of
etiquette, including tellspamming to gain advantages in combat, constant use
of socials that is borderline harassment despite requests to refrain, etc.

According to the Player Code of Conduct, Vial was due to be deleted THEN, and
instead got an extended second chance--and then failed to make proper use of
it. Vial and Fatale's punishment as specifically written on the administrative
record was:

------------------------------------------
...sentenced to community service and must form a newbie helper organization
by two weeks from this date (Dec 3rd) or are under penalty of deletion. They
are also required each to supervise the other. This applies to the PLAYERS who
are under final warning.
------------------------------------------

This punishment was mentioned over chat several times, like all administrative
infractions posted to the admin board, and mentioned in the Legendary Times. 
The result was that Fatale set up and actively supported the Newbie Helpers,
and they have been quite a success thus far, although they seem to have fallen
somewhat idle over the Christmas holidays.

The LegendMUD Administration never received any notice that Vial felt that he
could not comply with this, in full or in part, due to difficulties with
work-related email. Furthermore, we have had no indication that Vial either
attempted to work with Fatale in any capacity, nor that he made any serious
attempt to organize his own group. Vial not only did not participate in the
group, but demanded removal from the planning list without offering
justification, and stated that Ptah had agreed to the justification when such
is not the case.

To Vial's credit, a significant portion of mudmail that has been received by
the Immort Staff has been favorable. However, the mail has been totally in
response to Vial's request, and neither changes the facts of the case nor the
Administration's response to these facts. As it states above, the disciplinary
action called for was against the player, not the character. Vial uses a site
(or sites) also utilized by other longterm LegendMUD players. Siteban is a
last resort, and in this case it was felt it would cause harm to innocents.
Chocorua, as Head of Administration, made a decision based on the situation
and the Player Code of Conduct and the LegendMUD Staff fully supports him in
this decision.                       

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        o O | Wonder what folks are   |
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                       THE LEGENDARY TIMES PERSONALS                            
                             Leila, LT Staff 
 
 - COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS: 
                                                             
    We are saddened to hear of the death of Triangleman, a long-time denizen
    of Legend. We received this note regarding his death from his player:
    
        I decided to Perma Triangleman basically because PKill has gotten out
        of control while I was gone. Since I've been back all I've been
        hearing about is how everyone is looting corpses, and people attacking
        for no RP reason. This happened to me. While I was attacking a mob
        larger than myself, a character who had never spoken to me, and had
        absolutely no reason to attack (he was a rogue) attacked. I didn't
        perma Triangleman because the MUD crashed before I could get my eq and
        save, but because there was absolutely no reason for the attack, and
        the situation with PKill is totally out of control now. As everyone
        knows, I have been involved with PKill and it has all been during RP.
        But when someone comes up and backstabs without ever talking to you
        and while fighting with a larger mob it gets stupid. Also when the
        player says that they PKill only because they like it, and not for RP
        reasons, its time to step away. Hopefully others will read this and
        change the way PKill is done. Until then TriangleMan is gone and will
        not be back.

- ENGAGEMENTS:
    Rakal and Ryssa do hereby announce their intent to be married.

- RUMORS:

    We have heard that Dusty, while embarked on a ship sailing for Gibraltar,
    in search of some great treasure rumored to be hidden in the Rock, was
    caught in a storm. Her ship has not been seen since. We are afraid the
    brave lass may not be able to respond to McDougan's offer of marriage.

                                   \|/ \|/ \|/

ON THE PK FRONT:
                                
                         Some History From Sir Dominic:
                          
    I started Dominic in Kleinstadt, not really knowing what I was doing, what
    start towns gave you what skills, and promptly started dying like mad. I
    think I was the first player to die at least 50 times before reaching
    level 10 (without doing it on purpose). Since my main roleplaying
    character in AD&D is Sir Dominic the Paladin, Dom on Legend of course
    sought to be a Knight. After watching me die 18 times at level 10, a
    kindly Knight by the name of Sir Matrix took me under his wing, and got me
    off that hellacious level, and my career as a Knight was off. I clanned at
    the absolute minimum level, 12th, and promptly got embroiled in the
    role-playing pkill.

    At that period of Legends history, almost every pkill was totally
    roleplayed, from the background history to the actual fighting. Revenant,
    Deathstalker, Mercenary in his younger days, and many other characters,
    all revolved around stylized playing/fighting/killing. Yes, there was some
    blindsided attacks, but even they were roleplayed, and very few and far
    apart, by that very silent clan, the Assassins. The Secretives were almost
    unheard of, which wasn't surprising, they were so secret. The
    Anti-Paladins followed their Great Guppy, The Hermetics searched far and
    wide for new spellwords, the Order of the Scroll (Bards) sang frequent
    tunes, ballads, and a rare ribald tune (POKE DUSTY), and the Knights were
    frequent targets for the start of storylines, rescuing newbies stuck in
    deadends, making corpse retrievals, and generally trying to be gallant.
    The days when we had more than 20 people on at the same time was an
    astounding event, and the mud ran on little tiny machines, and on faith,
    perseverance, and the stamina of Ptah and Kaige. Lotsa weird bugs existed,
    including the missing file pointer, which got Ptah and Kaige's phone
    ringing at odd hours of the night, and the Knightly night watchman called
    in with frequent reports. :))
    
    I wound up first as the Recruiter for the Knights, then as the Acting
    Master, standing in for Sir Khelleck. In this period rose up the Kiera
    Wars, which I think is the best RP war Legend has ever had. Started
    somehow with Kiera mad at the Bards (OTS), and killing them left and
    right. Sir Khelleck had made an agreement some time before that the
    Knights would support and assist the Bards as needed. Since Sir Khelleck
    was unavailable, I threw in the Knights in support of the Bards against
    this murderous, but lovable rogue. I had just one, ensy tinsy problem. I
    was too high a level to actually fight Kiera! At this time, Sir Crowe and
    Sir Tempus were the main people engaging Kiera in the name of the Knights,
    with assists from Lady Birdy, Lady Tiger, and others, but mainly the first
    two. I then proceeded to watch them die, and die, and die. There were a
    lot of very good characters involved in this war, from time to time, and
    most of them have drifted into the grey halls of time, never to be seen
    again.
    
    The Kiera War was finally ended when first the Bards paid Kiera the sum
    of 3 MILLION in gold, then the Knights paid her the same sum. I will point
    out that after that point, Kiera ALMOST NEVER killed either a Bard or a
    Knight again. Oh, a little, in friendly competition, but not the concerted
    effort she made during the wild melee.

                                   \|/ \|/ \|/              
ROLEPLAY SCENARIOS:

                             A Dangerous Exploration
                          by CLeo of the "Circle of Angels"

    Ryssa and CLeo went on a journey into the Pyrenees a while ago, looking
    for rare herbs and such.  The weather had been good for a few days, and
    the storms that passed over the Pyrenees were gone.  The perfect time to
    go about and explore... or perhaps not...

                                      ****

    The sun was shining brightly throughout the mountains. The two explorers
    found themselves near a wide crevasse near the face of one of the
    mountains in which was growing fragile and rare plants that survived the
    bitter cold of the snow. As they started to carefully pick some of them,
    CLeo thought he heard someone whispering nearby...  Ryssa listened
    carefully but she did not hear a thing. They both went on to the next
    crevasse, only a few minutes from where they were. CLeo suddenly stopped
    Ryssa, bothered by something...

        - 'Ryssa...', not finishing what he wanted to say.
        - She looked at him curiously, 'What?'.   She was really puzzled and
          asked him what was wrong, but he only replied that it was probably
          nothing.

    As Ryssa started to walk toward the crevasse, CLeo turned his head and
    took a long look, trying to find something that would explain the feeling
    that they were being followed... but he found nothing.

    Then, out of nowhere, clouds started covering up the sky, wind blowing
    strongly from everywhere, as if directed at them. Ryssa started to scream
    in distress as snow started to rumble down the mountains. They heard a
    loud crack, a low rumble, and suddenly a sound like thunder!
    AVALANCHE!!!!!  CLeo and Ryssa got caught in the river of snow and ice
    losing sight of each other...

                                     ****

    After what seemed to be hours, but was only a couple of minutes, CLeo woke
    up, his left leg hurting badly. He made it to where Ryssa lay on the
    ground.  She was unconscious and her face was bruised.

[Chat] CLeo: NOOOOO!!! Ryssa's been injured.. She's unconscious...!
[Chat] Jezerael: Eek!
[Chat] Kall: Wake her up then
[Chat] Terrizano: *gasp* where.
[Chat] Linda: Eek!
[Chat] CLeo: Linda Can you come and help me!
[Chat] Cinco: Gasp
[Chat] Linda: Where are you?
[Chat] CLeo: In the Pyrenees, near the Nevada.
[Chat] WhiteRose: Ryssa's a Dr.. she'll know how to care for herself
once she is conscious again...
[Chat] CLeo: *starts to pray*  Oh angels, high above, help Ryssa!

    CLeo tried to wake up Ryssa but was unsuccessful in doing so... 'Please wake
    up Ryssa!'  He gently put a blanket on her to keep her warm... but as he
    approached her head...

[Chat] CLeo: Oh god!  Blood!  She seem to have a fracture on the back of
her head!
[Chat] Machismo: What fiend caused it?
[Chat] Terrizano: Yes, who *snarls*
[Chat] CLeo: We were trying to find some rare flowers and herbs and got
lost in the mountains...
[Chat] CLeo: and we got caught up in an avalanche...
[Chat] Machismo: Awful!
[Chat] Cinco: How terrible!
[Chat] CLeo: She is badly hurt and I can't seem to be able to wake
her up!

    Linda arrived shortly, carrying some extra clothing and blankets... After a
    couple of minutes, Linda succeeded in awaking Ryssa.

        - CLeo said, looking concerned,  'Are you ok?'.
        - Dazedly, Ryssa replied, 'What happened? Who are you?'.
        - 'Well.. I'm CLeo...' he replied somewhat puzzled at her questions...
        - 'I'm your friendly neighborhood old lady,' Linda said, hoping she
           would recognize her.

    CLeo asked Ryssa if she was allright...  But she did not recognize her own
    name. She started asking questions...  who was she...  where were they...
    Linda and CLeo decided to take her to an Inn as fast as they could...  and
    they did.

                                      ****

        - 'You don,t remember a thing?', CLeo anxiously said to Ryssa.
        - 'Uh? What happened???', Ryssa said, starting to cry.

    Linda did not know what to do... She decided to ask her husband to take a
    look at Ryssa. As they waited for Farnsworth to arrive, CLeo waved his
    hands in the air, creating a magical window showing her some of her own
    memories...  But it did not help.  Ryssa still did not remember a thing.

        - 'My head hurts,sir,' Ryssa said to Farnsworth.
        - 'Lay down here on this table and let me have a good look at you'.

    Farnsworth found signs of concussion and applied new bandages to her wound
    on the back of her head.

        - 'Why won't anybody tell me where I am?' Ryssa said looking lost.
        - 'You are in Sherwood in a land called Legend,' said Farnsworth. 'Do
          you remember one who always called you little one?'
        - 'Was it you?' Ryssa anxiously said.
        - 'Yes it was,' Farnsworth replied.  'You have amnesia, you must learn
          not to worry.'
        - Looking at everyone, then at Farnsworth, she said, 'But I can't
          remember ANYTHING! When will I remember?'
        - 'It is normal,' CLeo told her, trying to comfort her. 'It will take
          time...'.
        - 'Sadness will make it harder for you to recover and worry will block
          your memories. Promise me you will try to have happy thoughts.'
        - 'I'll try...' said Ryssa.
        - 'Your memories will come when you least expect them to. A scent will
          make you remember something from your past or the way a shadow falls,'
          said Farnsworth, with his reassuring voice.

    Ryssa seemed somewhat reassured, although still questioning everyone who
    passed about who she was... if they knew her...

                                    ****

    Days... Weeks passed by since then.  Her memory has almost returned
    completely. Something good came out of this...  She met a very special
    person whom she felt in love with...  Rakal. They instantly fell in love.
    But one thing remains unclear...  Who was following Ryssa and CLeo in the
    Pyrenees? And why did they cause the avalanche to hurt them...

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Legendary Times is published by the gods of LegendMUD. Please send all
replies/additions to to our address at [email protected] for inclusion in the
next edition. We, however, reserve the right to moderate this discussion, and
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