Okay so, for everyone's information, there was a guy on Frostfell named Nerf Golem. He was a super gamer, and knew how to do things like disconnect his camera from his avatar so as to explore anywhere in the world by having an out of body experience. He also knew how to tap into variables that AC stored in memory so as to predict all kinds of things. When I learned that he had a character named a sorceror that he was macroing in Aerfalle Keep, I kept on asking around about how he managed to refill its components. I eventually learned that if you created a new character, and you didn't walk that character through any purple portals, then you would always summon a portal to your last logoff spot. So through this method Nerf Golem had obtained portal mules which summoned into Aerfalle Keep.
As an aside, I myself had my own tie to somewhere near Aerfalle Keep--the relic bones town where the watchman spawns. This is because when we first performed the quest on Thistledown, after we found the Behemoth of Tenkarradun, Richter and I and whoever else was there (I think it might've been just us, because I remember we were navigating through phyntos wasps to avoid aggroing them in order to reach the Behemoth) decided that we would invite the whole server to attack the Behemoth with us. After the Behemoth was dispatched by Legacy/Seal, and subsequently the hellfire was killed, the Watchman was capable of spawning, but it was still a mystery to everyone on the server that the next step in the quest was causing the watchman to summon a portal. I had heard a rumor that we had to kill relic bones near the undead town, so I was doing that and the watchman summoned a portal, so I linked to it. Weirdly enough, the portal led to the spot where the Watchman spawned, and not to Aerfalle Keep. I immediately went into the chat room and explained this to Jesse (devilmouse), who said that it would have to wait until the next server reset to be fixed.
Why is this relevant to the shard of the herald? Well, because as Stormwaltz pointed out in his AC: 4 years and counting part 2 article, we could never have defended the shard of the herald on Thistledown if it weren't for the portal tie exploit I learned from Nerf Golem. What I did is I created a pledge, which you can still see on the internet archive wayback engine (http://web.archive.org/web/20020119171819/http://www.yourcult.com/chosen/news.htm), which contained the following language:
I swear, upon all that is sacred to me. Upon all holiness, upon my utmost honor, that my intentions are pure.
I come to defend the crystal.
I will not allow Bael'Zharon to be freed.
I will not allow the Hopeslayer to torment our lives.
I will not allow the Shard of the Herald to be broken.
I am a guardian.
This is my choice.
I choose hope. I choose light. I will not bow to the darkness.
My word is my honor; My honor is my life.
My word is spoken and can never be taken back.
My life for this crystal.
My kingdom for this shard.
The hopeslayer will not be freed. Not on my shift.
...I made people copy/paste this from my website onto a parchment which they inscribed and handed to my portal mule in a secluded spot, then I allowed them to portal tie to the mule's portal, which I had anchored to the bottom of the dungeon next to the purple portal leading into the room with Harry, as they called him.
There were problems that arose. Some factions wanted to kill the crystal, and there was a great deal of behind-the-scenes lobbying that went into persuading certain inhabitants of Baishi from npk killing the crystal using their own portal tie exploits. We spent a great deal of time stalling them from getting portal mules at the bottom of the dungeon. There were some critical battles when there were only two of us, Legacy and I, to stop waves of attackers who were portalling in. We were able to make quick work of them though, as we had mapped the dungeon, and Legacy was a super melee and I was the most powerful mage on the server. We would imperil them as they came in and lead them through traps in the dungeon, leaving them debuffed, pull switches that set them back from making progress through the dungeon...there were lots of tactical opportunities in the dungeon and after we had held off waves of scores of attackers and they relented, we realized we needed to setup an around the clock vigil, hence the website I mentioned previously and the ritual involving the parchment.
One time, I was the lone defender early on in the vigil, and the attackers came at 3am and caught me while I was buffing and made quick work of me. I did not have a portal tie into the dungeon, since I had kept my old tie to the outside of Aerfalle Keep. So I logged in Mikey, which was the Thistledown character used by the original person who played the character Blood in the Blood monarchy, I think. He was from the mercs, his name was Mikey. I don't remember exactly how I went from making friends with the mercs to making friends with the keepers of chaos; I didn't really understand darktide politics, but I remember that a guy named Shane, who owned the characters Extra Crispy and Tai Lo Quan on Darktide, let me login his melee guy Yukon Jack, and I gave him a tour of Aerfalle Keep and showed him the macro spots. I also showed Khao the macro spots in the Aerlinthe Foundary, where he macroed. This resulted in the proliferation of khao mages on Darktide and macro chains, prior to the time when the portal tie bug was fixed. Anyways, I logged in Mikey's staff character, which did have a portal tie to the dungeon with the shard, and I was barely able to kill enough of the attackers, with the help of harry, so that the remainder couldn't do enough damage to kill Harry. They were pretty weak. There were other dire moments like the one that Stormwaltz mentioned where Amid was part of the action.
The developers kind of got the list of people who defended the shard wrong. If we had cooperated with each other, I could have given them a list of the players whose names should have gone on the Obelisk by giving them the copies of the parchments that were signed by the people who were allowed to have portals to the region. Communication kind of broke down between myself and the members of the dev team because of personal issues that were going on in my life at the time. In addition to setting up the shard defense in November 2000, I had to deal with my little sister swallowing a bottle of pills and going to the emergency room. In fact it's all a bit blurry to me, but I think the developers might have attacked while I was at her side in the hospital. I don't know because after she did that I sort of lost interest in Asheron's Call. I am kind of an empath, and I passed her room and noticed something was wrong, but didn't attend to it because I was preoccupied with the video game. After realizing that I ignored information material to my family's interests, I remember I was explaining to jesse that nothing that happens in Asheron's Call is important to me anymore, and he asked me why, and I told him that what had happened with my sister, and I think he may have thought that I was making all that up because I was upset about their decision to intervene. That kind of hurt, and communication broke down, and I stopped playing for awhile. I only came back briefly to kill Bael'Zharon and wrap things up with my allegiance.
Because our communication broke down, I never mentioned to the devs that we had parchments with the names of the real defenders of the shard. Many names were omitted, and some peoples names were added who were attackers, and so on.
Oh yeah, the dark masters. I anticipated that the developers would try to use the dark masters as a plot device to free Bael'Zharon. Therefore, I recruited both dark masters as one of my primary goals towards the beginning of setting up the defense. Blackthorn was an old friend, from the pk wars when we fought over crater caves. It was a pity that mages could have no fear of death, but archers couldn't, because after he died a bunch of times in the bottom part of the Aerlinthe resivoir, he stopped exploring with me. He lost his 112% +9% yumi or something, and couldn't make it back to pick it up, along with his leggings, etc. I remember haunting his corpse and figuring out a path to it and trying to cajole him into coming, but he wouldn't. But anyways, he didn't mind laying low and refusing to assist the developers with their scheme to unleash Bael'Zharon.
Vidorian, on the other hand, was more devious. She also agreed to preserve the crystal, and therefore was granted portal access, but later claimed that the promise she swore was sworn by her mage, Vid, but not her archer, Vidorian. I did not make the distinction between Vid/Vidorian as she did. I wasn't there when the developers came, but my lieutenant Black Jack was. I believe he was sworn allegiance to Sinz, who was sworn to Cattz, who was sworn to Richter, who was sworn to me. But I think that after he jumped on Jesse's corpse and became a celebrity he broke off and started his own monarchy for awhile, I don't know, I wasn't keeping track at the time, the event with my sister kind of floored me, and I stopped paying attention to AC.
Anyways I've seen Black Jack's story on the forums; I can't post on the forums because I don't have an AC account anymore, but anyways he captures some of the moments, it's kind of a cool memory we all share.
Mythrandia 17:03, 11 August 2012 (EST)