Flax

When I first started mudding, well, I was a total and utter newbie. Never mudded before in my life. When I finally hit level 5, I was confronted with the decision of what guild to join. Yes, like so many others, I too shouted: `What guild should I join?' Laugh.

So anyways, it was a toss-up between animals, witches, bards or clerics. A player named Djun came to my aid. He slowly but surely trashed all the other guilds, silencing the witch I was talking to and then wall of thorning everyone into the pub. He told me how he hit badass then healed himself up to 150% of his hp the same round. Well, the next at least. I studied the facts, and figured that a combat cleric would be the best selection for me.

So I was recruited to the cleric guild by Djun.

Back then, the top cleric was Fellow. Mosiah was second and Glaebor a close third. Keeble and Nightshade were wizards already and were on their way to being Lords. Other familiar names were Seklos, Hawk, Rumos, Cyrus, Zeus, Steamer, Seartoo. Others came in afterwards, like Aa, Asdf, Ryft, Horny, Boner. And I'm sure that I'm missing some that I will mention later. So anyways, when I first became a cleric I partied with my newbie friends. Soon, they began to fall behind and I began partying with clerics, since morale was better and I really didn't know anyone else. Polanna had wizzed by then, leaving me all alone in Big Bad Pinnacle. Anyways, I think at this point I should talk a little bit about the guild itself back then. We didn't have call lightning or neutralize poision or earthquake; we were allowed to cast spells in the guild, we could solife other players, protection didn't exist, wall of fire was a flat cost, mana regen BLEW more than you can IMAGINE because at MOST we had morale 3. That's right. 3. We had, if we were lucky, about 6 or 7 clerics on when we were maxxed. I always looked up to Fellow and Mosiah and Glaebor thinking those guys must be the baddest asses in the whole 3 Kingdoms.

So anyways, there were other smaller level clerics like Virulent, Cyrus, Overlord, and all of us used to get together and go SMURF KILLING! It was THE biggest pastime at my level. When Djun took me there, I had a blast and leveled like a rocket. The experience was great, and back then, there weren't as many places to go yet. Only needed 550 qp to HM or wiz. I remember one day, no deaths on me yet, I was helping Djun scrap Tracker Smurf. He told me to be careful but I was full of the guild spirit and over-confident and in one damn shot I died. 180 hp gone like that. Bam! And then Djun, in a valiant effort to get my equipment, bit the bullet as well. One right after the other. We got up, bristled and bitter, and rushed back to get our equipment and to teach Tracker a lesson, but it turned out that we were to be students as we found ourselves in the death room AGAIN! Blam. No deaths until I met Tracker Smurf. All in all, I died four times, three to Tracker and one to a spider in Gargamel's castle after wimpying off Azreal. Like I said, I went into smurf land a LOT. We'd get four to six clerics in a party and right rock the place.

Clerics back then were the envy of the mud, ripping through area after area like they were nothing. In the arena, even though I was level 25 or so, level 40's meant nothing to me. I could take down a level 35 without blinking and a level 40 if I manamed. Needless to say, downgrades were on their way. Nearing the end of my career, I started to get a little sillier. We would have games of tag that would include the entire guild, running around like fools. I was up to level 28 then, levels being much much harder to come by what with the 17k exp limit on mobs, and Keeble's new area was my playground. I would run through there, not even stopping to take a breath, killing everything that got in the way. And I was one of the first to solve Perplexus. Flex.

Anyways, I used to smack everything. The first day I finally partied with Fellow, Mosiah, Glaebor, and Steel I knew I was in. I was part of the gang, the old crew, the heads. And then I was made AGM. Faith three. Faith was given out VERY rarely back then.

Pretty soon after that, April came around (I started in February) and (aside: this tells you how hard it was to advance. I advanced QUICKLY in the mind of everyone else, and I was only level 28 after TWO MONTHS of playing.) I decided that it was time I wizzed. I talked with Keeble, and then went for it. I figured I could always get another player character (*Grin*, which I'm still waiting for). I quested my butt off for days and days. Glaebor and I did Body Quest, I remember keeping him up till four am, him saying: `No really Flax, I gotta go to bed, I am wiped' and me keeping him up all hours. Finally I achieved 550 qp. Time to wiz. Doh! I'm still only level 28! So I rushed off to Keeble's area and in no time (6 hours) I was level 30. Screw raising stats. Grin. With 17k monsters it just took too damn long. At 200k per stat? Forget it. So, just before I wizzed, I gave away my money, and Steel came up to me and said it would be cool if we wizzed at the same time. So we did.

That ended my player history with the Cleric guild. I wasn't allowed as WGM until this year, and didn't start coding for it until January or so. Hopefully, the end won't come soon, and I will complete the priest guild and bring it in smoothly. I don't see the priest guild as ending the cleric guild. It's just another chapter in a long, varied and glorious history of the most interesting guild on Three Kingdoms.

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Inscribed by: Flaxen -- October 2, 1995