[Atlantic] Old Seer Quest Writeup

[Dryzzid of Atlantic]

Hello all!

I was on a nostalgia trip on Wayback and dug up a gem from 2001 and I thought others may get a kick out of it. At the time I was a member of the Trinsic Council of Honor on Atlantic, which was a collection of RP guilds who formed the government of Trinsic, elected a mayor, and held weekly bazaars outside the east bank. This was at the very tail end of the seer program - they established an adventurer's guild at the New World Order in Minoc. The deco is still there today including the extra sign, armor out front, and the "adventurer's logbook":



I can remember a few things about this time period. For example this was during the period when seer, IGM, and staff names appeared as purple to players. The RPC characters were named Marin Perpil (local noble funding adventures) and the captain of the Minoc Guard Grant Feist. This was after they stopped giving reward items via the seer program so no rewards exist from these quests or that RPC. Some of the quests I can remember being run out of here include a missing miner in the north mines, a rogue water elemental causing havoc, and this event which I summarized on the TCoH website in 2001:

TCoh Stories and Essays

The quest was a simple "find the white hart" type quest where we went to different towns and tried to find clues about the location of the white hart before we finally circled back to the woods near Justice. At the end of the quest we ended up choosing to let it live. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that I wrote up the final part of the quest. In March 2001 I was 15 and had been playing UO for about 11 months or so. The folks I mention in the story are Smogg Azalin of the Cult of Infernal Necromancy which was an evil-aligned RP guild based in the Fel Trinsic swamps, Xanthar (the Xanthar) of Wintermoor and the Museum, and Auren Therion who was a member of Britain's equivalent player government, the Britain Council of Compassion; I think he was mayor at the time.

Chapter 1: At the Minoc Adventurers' Guild Hall (by Dryzzid , added on 11 March 2001 04:03 PM EST)​

My tale begins at the Minoc Adventurers' Guild. Now, some of ye might not of heard of this place, but a grand place it is. With two full suits of beautifully decorated golden armor standing outside its doors, it is hard to miss. I normally make frequent stops to see if there is any activity going on, and to my surprise, it was quite busy that night. Amongst the crowd, I noticed a few familiar faces. Lord Xanthar of the Museum, Lord Smogg Azalin of Ncr, and Mayor Auren Therion. They all sat around the Captain of the Minoc Guard, Grant Feist, listening to his many stories of the troubles in Minoc. Then he mentioned a few of the more recent happenings, the legend of the white stag, a story about a man who haunts the Covetous jail cells, and of a deadly man named Lord Lawrence. First, the legend of the stag. It was told to Grant by his father, that there once lived a ranger, who had nothing but love for the land, and the land loved him back. When he died, his spirit lived on, as the form of glowing stag, who would forever protect the lands he loved. There was also a mention of a treasure trove that appeared when the stag came around. The story of the haunted cells began long ago with a man who saw his parents murdered in front of him, and was accused of the murders himself. He was to be taken to Yew and put on trial, but on the way, his escort was stopped by what appeared to be guards of the throne directly from Britain. The said that they had orders to take him with them, so the escort could do nothing but turn him over. That was the last time anyone had ever seen him again. The final story was about a man named Lord Lawrence. He was leader of many of the brigand forces before he was finally caught, which took the efforts of the Royal Army. Grant was very disturbed that Lord Lawrence was back. We all decided to seek the advice and knowledge of Spencer, a Sage in Cove. So we were off.... Chapter 2: A Visit to the Great Sage of Cove (by Dryzzid , added on 11 March 2001 08:47 PM EST)​ After our chat with Grant, we sought out a sage in Cove by the name of Spencer. After the journey to Cove, we found him in his house doing some research. We asked him about the story of the haunted cells, and he said that he had not found out any new information on it, except that the guards who took the man away were probably not guards at all, but someone else in disguise. We then asked him about the legend of the stag. He seemed to know nothing until we mentioned the Tome of the Forest. He then went back in his house for a few moments, and came back saying that he had researched this book before. He said that his research mentioned Yew quite a few times, and also Yew wood. So we set out to Yew to find a lumberjack...... Chapter 3: The Tale of a Lumberjack (by Dryzzid , added on 16 March 2001 06:02 PM EST)​ As soon as Spencer mentioned Yew and the Yew trees, we were on our way to Yew in search of a bowyer or a lumberjack. We arrived and combed the small town for anyone who could provide us some help with our little dilemma. I ran down around the Southern pathes, checking the bowyer/fletcher, but to no avail. As I returned back to where we gated in, I saw my companions gathered around a rather large, burly man. He introduced himself as Markos, a lumberjack of Yew. We presented our question to him, how can we obtain some wood from a Yew tree. He seemed to be quite overwhelmed with surprise, as we had just jumped at him with our questions and such. He told us that the Yew tree yields the hardest wood of all the other trees in Britannia. Only a man blessed with the strength of gods could chop those trees. But then he spoke of his father, the only man he knows who ever extracted the wood of a Yew tree. He said that his father gave it to a bowyer who moved to the Ranger's Guild in Skara Brae in Trammel some time ago. He said he created a bow so powerful, it would mow down the orcs and ettins that used to plague Yew. We kindly thanked the lumberjack and began the long journey to Skara Brae in Trammel.