Rune Artisem
Visitor
Greetings all!
Old timers of Atlantic likely will remember the Order of the Ebon Skull (OES), a guild that was first active from 1997-2003, and then later recreated during the mid-2000s for some time.
OES was one of the major guilds involved in the early role-playing community and a key player in the whole "evil roleplay" scene. At its height, the first iteration of OES had a massive chunk of northern Ice Island (Felucca, of course) that was ran as the player-city of Caina. The central guild building of Caina was a large tower known as Golgotha, which, to my knowledge, was placed in late 1997. It stood until 2004 when the entire city was deactivated due to internal issues within the guild.
Several years ago, I was exploring my old haunts (I was active in the role-playing community from 1998-2003, and was a part of OES for most of that time) and came across the area where Golgotha once stood - I was shocked to see that it was vacant land. I quickly placed a tower there with the hopes of reconstructing Golgotha as a place for old timers like myself as well as to recreate what was a historic, important building for the Atlantic community in UO's early years.
Long story short, my job and family keep me busier than I would like and I have interests all over the place. I have worked on reconstructing Golgotha here and there over the years, as close as possible, only just, finally, finishing this an hour ago. But now it is done, and I would like to invite anyone with an interest in Atlantic's history to check out this link to the past. Please check out the attached pictures.
A few comments here before ending this post:
There are very little available documents for OES that remain online. Two of the most helpful were two pages on Stratics (see below). One is an older page highlighting Caina, and showing the first level of Golgotha. This is dated January 2000 and is what I used to verify the location of the original Golgotha.
The other historical Stratics page I used is not dated, but I believe from either 2002 or 2003 by evidence of some of the decor. Notice the power crystals and granite-colored furniture - if memory serves me correctly, those were items that were introduced by the scenarios from the Lord Blackthorn's Revenge expansion. More importantly, this page provided level-by-level screenshots of Golgotha at this time. The original Golgotha went through several decorative renovations during OES's first iteration, but this is the only source that I could find that had a complete level-by-level shot of the tower from any given point in time - pictures of earlier decorative renovations of the entire tower simply weren't available (and trust me, I looked and talked to former guild members to see if anyone still had anything) or might not even exist anymore.
Finally, there are a very few minor "modern" additions I have made to the tower myself. One is the inclusion of a bulletin board on the first level for former guild members to leave their memories of OES and Caina. Another is a statue of the guild's founder, Azalin, on the third level (Azalin was not just a key player in OES, but the entire Atlantic RP community for over seven years). I also placed a recall rune to Charnel Hill (an area near Umbra) which is where the second iteration of OES was centered, to link the two together. While these were not present in the original Golgotha, I nonetheless feel that their inclusion compliments the rebuilt Golgotha as a historical reconstruction in a positive way.
The historical Stratics links are:
UO Stratics - Atlantic - Caina
UO Stratics - Famous Houses of Britannia - Golgotha
Old timers of Atlantic likely will remember the Order of the Ebon Skull (OES), a guild that was first active from 1997-2003, and then later recreated during the mid-2000s for some time.
OES was one of the major guilds involved in the early role-playing community and a key player in the whole "evil roleplay" scene. At its height, the first iteration of OES had a massive chunk of northern Ice Island (Felucca, of course) that was ran as the player-city of Caina. The central guild building of Caina was a large tower known as Golgotha, which, to my knowledge, was placed in late 1997. It stood until 2004 when the entire city was deactivated due to internal issues within the guild.
Several years ago, I was exploring my old haunts (I was active in the role-playing community from 1998-2003, and was a part of OES for most of that time) and came across the area where Golgotha once stood - I was shocked to see that it was vacant land. I quickly placed a tower there with the hopes of reconstructing Golgotha as a place for old timers like myself as well as to recreate what was a historic, important building for the Atlantic community in UO's early years.
Long story short, my job and family keep me busier than I would like and I have interests all over the place. I have worked on reconstructing Golgotha here and there over the years, as close as possible, only just, finally, finishing this an hour ago. But now it is done, and I would like to invite anyone with an interest in Atlantic's history to check out this link to the past. Please check out the attached pictures.
A few comments here before ending this post:
There are very little available documents for OES that remain online. Two of the most helpful were two pages on Stratics (see below). One is an older page highlighting Caina, and showing the first level of Golgotha. This is dated January 2000 and is what I used to verify the location of the original Golgotha.
The other historical Stratics page I used is not dated, but I believe from either 2002 or 2003 by evidence of some of the decor. Notice the power crystals and granite-colored furniture - if memory serves me correctly, those were items that were introduced by the scenarios from the Lord Blackthorn's Revenge expansion. More importantly, this page provided level-by-level screenshots of Golgotha at this time. The original Golgotha went through several decorative renovations during OES's first iteration, but this is the only source that I could find that had a complete level-by-level shot of the tower from any given point in time - pictures of earlier decorative renovations of the entire tower simply weren't available (and trust me, I looked and talked to former guild members to see if anyone still had anything) or might not even exist anymore.
Finally, there are a very few minor "modern" additions I have made to the tower myself. One is the inclusion of a bulletin board on the first level for former guild members to leave their memories of OES and Caina. Another is a statue of the guild's founder, Azalin, on the third level (Azalin was not just a key player in OES, but the entire Atlantic RP community for over seven years). I also placed a recall rune to Charnel Hill (an area near Umbra) which is where the second iteration of OES was centered, to link the two together. While these were not present in the original Golgotha, I nonetheless feel that their inclusion compliments the rebuilt Golgotha as a historical reconstruction in a positive way.
The historical Stratics links are:
UO Stratics - Atlantic - Caina
UO Stratics - Famous Houses of Britannia - Golgotha
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