Hail Legends.
As those who attended my last event know, I am departing from the EM program. My first Legends event was on March 29th 2016, and that puts me at a mere ~3.75 years in the program, which is a little disappointing to be honest, as I wish I could have continued doing this for several more years. However, the reason that I am leaving has mainly to do with a desire to spend more time towards a few other projects I’d like to pursue. Being an EM can be a very rewarding and creative pursuit, but it is also a job, and one which consumes a fair bit of my time. I am quite thankful to Mesanna for giving me the opportunity to put on the robe and to play UO in a way I never really thought I’d get to see. I am also grateful to have been given Legends which has a lot of fantastic people.
I do wish to thank everyone that came to my events and put up with the death and chaos. In particular I’d like to thank my regulars who came along and participated in the stories and roleplay events as well. There’s no point to doing events without players that are interested, and for that reason I am very grateful to all the players that came along and made all of the time and effort completely worth it.
That about covers it. I’m still subscribed to UO and continue to play, so I’ll still be around in some form or another. If anyone wishes to contact me, I can still be reached at emerebus at gmail dot com.
I’ll see you all in Britannia.
-Erebus
[BCOLOR=#e3b200][/BCOLOR]
A moment later, tired eyes slowly opened.
The boat gently swayed like a cradle as it quietly floated down the shallow stream, the silence occasionally interrupted by the soft splashing of the oarsman’s pole as he pushed the boat along through a dark cavern. The passenger, laying at the front of the boat with his arm wrapped around the bow, began to shift slightly as his consciousness awakened from its dreamy slumber, and his brow tightened as memories flashed across the peripheral of his mind’s eye like an unfamiliar procession of images that seemed to linger hazily behind a fog. Memories of events that may have happened. Memories of people he must have known. Yet these supposed memories seemed to remain, frustratingly, beyond his mind’s reach. Suddenly, he began to wonder who he himself even was. The thoughts of those strange memories dissipated like smoke as the revelation startled him awake, and he turned over onto his back.
The passenger looked down upon himself, seeing that he was dressed in an old, white, hooded death robe stained with dirt from a long but unfamiliar journey. Beyond, the oarsman stood at the stern. The tall, pale figure dressed in little more than a tattered pair of pants and a blindfold that masked his eyes. A large, heavy keychain hung from a rope tied around his waist. Despite his blindness, he seemed to look upon the passenger, waiting for the question he knew he was about to be asked.
The passenger looked down. “Who… am I?” Further down the cavern, the distant light of fires cast a soft light on the walls around them. Somewhere, they could hear screams of anguish echoing from beyond.
The oarsman replied, “Everyone always ask that. In time, however, everyone comes to find that the answer never truly mattered. Before, you were were an EM. Your name was Erebus. And now, you are merely a nameless soul that was once an EM.”
The passenger tilted his head as he attempted to process the cryptic response. “E…M…?”
“Think of it as something like a god,” the oarsman remarked.
The notion was too much to comprehend. “I… was… a god?”
The oarsman looked back to the passenger and quickly replied, “I said something like a god, if at all. But don’t let it go to your head. Being a god is not even as great as it sounds. It’s nothing but work, work, work, and no play. Sometimes even being a man is a bit much. If I could choose, I’d much prefer to be a maggot.”
The passenger began to ask, “What happened to m–“, but was interrupted by the sudden awareness of frantic screaming nearby. The passenger looked forward, seeing great fires in the waters to their port and starboard, and within the flames burned other pitiful souls, each dressed in robes like his own. His eyes grew wide as he observed the terrifying scene. “What is that??” he exclaimed.
“Ah,” the oarsman said, not bothering to turn his head. “They were EMs like yourself. They are burning alive in the flames of crimson dragons which they so zealously overused, in perpetuity.”
“But..” the passenger began, as the glint of a memory briefly shined in his mind, “..they had the best loot of all the beasts we could summon..”
The oarsman chuckled softly. “They always say that.” As he spoke the boat left the cavernous corridor and entered into a massive chasm. Overhead a loud rumbling startled the passenger, catching his attention. He turned then to see a ledge over the corridor which they had just come out of, and atop it a party of former EMs, armed with clubs and wooden shields, fleeing a pre-nerf tormented minotaur that pursued them relentlessly, each step of her hooves pounding the floor with fiery fury and sending several former EMs toppling down into the waters below. Only, when they crashed into the water, they thrashed about wildly in a cloud of hissing smoke as their robes and weapons were eaten away. Just what kind of water was this? The passenger leaned slightly forward, pointing a finger towards the liquid upon which they floated.
“Careful,” said the oarsman, “That is not water, but the acid of an interred grizzle. It’s for EMs that should have known better.”
Shadows and light shifted throughout the entirety of the chasm, and looking up, the passenger could now see, beyond the haze, a form which filled him with terror. Rising above the howls of cacophony, the oppressive fumes of the interred grizzle acid, and incessant chivalry spell spam, a form stood tall, looming over the chasm itself. The Queen of the Damned – the darkened, obscured form of the Dark Lady Mesanna gazed upon all through eyes of smoldering fire. In a slow and steady motion, she lifted a behemoth bow as her hands tightened upon the grip, firing a great arrow as large as a galleon at a pair of former EMs attempting to escape in a hot-air balloon – ripping the balloon itself into pieces and sending them barreling downwards into a canyon filled with executioner-brigands and valorite elementals.
“Don’t stare,” warned the oarsman. “She also kills for the sheer pleasure of it.”
Still further the boat traveled towards a shadowy structure in the distance as the passenger gazed upon the terrifying wonders around them. Several small islands could be observed nearby, each one occupied by a former EM, some trapped beneath the weight of a great dragon, while yet others unseen were pursued relentlessly by a crowd of flapping gargoyles.
The oarsman grunted. “Hmph. Cursed to be suffocated beneath dragons and gargoyle wings in tight spaces. It could have been avoided with better planning, don’t you agree?”
“But, the story..” the passenger began, yet his troubled memory could only produce a dull soreness, causing him to grip his head. His counterargument remained unspoken.
Yet another sight caught the passenger’s eye. Beyond the great lake was a field of molten rock. Across these rocks only a few lonesome EMs tread, each one carrying on their hunched-over backs an immense stone surface, upon which was collected towering mounds of gold. With each step their bare feet would slightly sink into the scalding magma, the intense pain affecting the balance of their gold, never failing to send a few coins falling from their hoard. And every time, they slowly squatted down to pick up each and every coin, their quivering legs almost seeming to buckle beneath the unbearable weight of the gold as the excruciating pain and searing fumes of the magma broiled their souls. The oarsman narrowed his eyes.
“The corrupt ones,” he stated bitterly, “Cursed to carry their riches across the fields of molten rock, but not allowed to lose even a single coin. For their greed, they shall be chasing their wealth until the end of days.”
By now, the once obscured structure which had been their destination was now in view. A mighty castle towered above them. Yet, on a single distant wall, through the haze of that place, the passenger was able to barely notice another soul, steadily teleporting across a wall one tile at a time, with each motion laying a single brick. The passenger began to sweat a little. Was this the fate that awaited him, building overly elaborate structures tile by tile for all of eternity?
Nevertheless, the passenger and the oarsman disembarked as the boat reached the land. They both gazed upon the great, imposing doors of the castle creakily opening before them, revealing a vast, dimly-lit great hall. Rows and rows of work benches lined either side with former EMs by the hundreds working feverishly, hunched over piles of plain white cloth painstakingly sewing together death robes with calloused hands scarred and bleeding from pricks of their needles. The passenger could only gaze in utter shock.
“What?” the oarsman wondered aloud, “You didn’t think all of those death robes manifested out of thin air, did you? Someone has to make them…”
The pair traveled through the hall of robe-makers, entering now into “The Choir Room”, the sign read. Here, in separate cells, the pair could behold former EMs standing before “choirs” of NPCs, teaching them the words that they must recite. Long rolls of scripted text unfurled over piles of other discarded scripts sprawled at their feet. The mass confusion in the air was palpable as the former EMs assigned words to the NPCs one line at a time. The passenger’s whole body seemed to convulse involuntarily as a sharp pang of anxiety fired through his entire being. Anything… anything but this! he foolishly thought.
But still, the pair continued, moving through the choir room and into an immense library. Countless bookcases towered above, disappearing into darkness above where no ceiling could be seen, filled with old books and forgotten tomes, many of them already half-eaten by bugs. On the ground, the passenger beheld long lines of writing desks, each of them manned by former EMs hunched over their never-ending work. Some wrote, scribbling away with quills that never held enough ink to write, while others merely read, the pupils of their eyes occasionally dilating as they struggled to retain their focus. Yet all would bear the strained expressions bestowed upon them by their heavy burden. The passenger noticed a sign hanging above their path, engraved: “The Great Library of Fan-Fiction”.
The oarsman could not help but shake his head. “Made to read and write fan-fiction from now until the end of time. I wonder, is there any worse fate?” For a moment, the passenger’s legs trembled uncontrollably, nearly buckling. Could this be it…?
Only, his grim fate awaited elsewhere. Now the passenger and the oarsman walked long flights of steps, descending into the depths of a dungeon with a quietly ominous air, a silence so severe that each step of the pair, no matter how soft, produced a sound that seemed like it could be heard by every inhabitant. Still, the pair descended further into this shadowy crypt, at last entering into a short corridor lined with solid iron doors behind which unseen souls quietly endured a mysterious fate. The oarsman and the passenger quietly and reverently passed one cell after another, the passenger’s curiosity deepening as his anxiety sharpened, wondering what kind of punishment these souls were cursed to endure, after everything else he had seen. Finally, the two arrived at the cell that would be his.
With one of the keys on the ring fastened to his belt, the oarsman opened the iron cell door. The passenger entered. At the opposite end of the room was a large, thick pane of glass, nearly as big as the wall itself, the image contained within it seeming to cast a soft, pale violet glow on this otherwise small, darkened room. The passenger stepped forward slowly, his gaze transfixed upon what he beheld beyond the viewing window. He could see… everything. The whole of Sosaria spread before his very eyes – the shards of this shattered and broken world floating among a sea of stars and other worlds. Stationed most prominently before the others, the shard of Legends. He could see it clearly, the land, the people, the stories. A rush of familiarity coursed through his mind, bringing temporary form to the memories he had struggled to retain as they yet continued to fade as if like waking from a dream; forms without faces, feelings without shapes. A dream that seemed as if someone else’s memories – the memories of one who no longer was. The shard of Legends glimmered brightly as he approached, the brilliant vision of Sosaria filling his eyes, and he reached out to it, instinctively desiring to return to it. Unable to look away, his sight and mind was captivated by the images in the window, and he drew closer and closer to the world that beckoned to him.. until his hand knocked against the glass. Once more, he reached for that familiar land, his hand pressing against the glass, tears welling in the eyes of this nameless soul as the cell door quietly closed behind him, followed by the soft click of the oarsman’s key.
“Your fate..” spoke the oarsman forlornly as he departed alone, “To forever watch the story of Sosaria continue to be told…
..without you.”
Continue reading...
As those who attended my last event know, I am departing from the EM program. My first Legends event was on March 29th 2016, and that puts me at a mere ~3.75 years in the program, which is a little disappointing to be honest, as I wish I could have continued doing this for several more years. However, the reason that I am leaving has mainly to do with a desire to spend more time towards a few other projects I’d like to pursue. Being an EM can be a very rewarding and creative pursuit, but it is also a job, and one which consumes a fair bit of my time. I am quite thankful to Mesanna for giving me the opportunity to put on the robe and to play UO in a way I never really thought I’d get to see. I am also grateful to have been given Legends which has a lot of fantastic people.
I do wish to thank everyone that came to my events and put up with the death and chaos. In particular I’d like to thank my regulars who came along and participated in the stories and roleplay events as well. There’s no point to doing events without players that are interested, and for that reason I am very grateful to all the players that came along and made all of the time and effort completely worth it.
That about covers it. I’m still subscribed to UO and continue to play, so I’ll still be around in some form or another. If anyone wishes to contact me, I can still be reached at emerebus at gmail dot com.
I’ll see you all in Britannia.
-Erebus
[BCOLOR=#e3b200][/BCOLOR]
A moment later, tired eyes slowly opened.
The boat gently swayed like a cradle as it quietly floated down the shallow stream, the silence occasionally interrupted by the soft splashing of the oarsman’s pole as he pushed the boat along through a dark cavern. The passenger, laying at the front of the boat with his arm wrapped around the bow, began to shift slightly as his consciousness awakened from its dreamy slumber, and his brow tightened as memories flashed across the peripheral of his mind’s eye like an unfamiliar procession of images that seemed to linger hazily behind a fog. Memories of events that may have happened. Memories of people he must have known. Yet these supposed memories seemed to remain, frustratingly, beyond his mind’s reach. Suddenly, he began to wonder who he himself even was. The thoughts of those strange memories dissipated like smoke as the revelation startled him awake, and he turned over onto his back.
The passenger looked down upon himself, seeing that he was dressed in an old, white, hooded death robe stained with dirt from a long but unfamiliar journey. Beyond, the oarsman stood at the stern. The tall, pale figure dressed in little more than a tattered pair of pants and a blindfold that masked his eyes. A large, heavy keychain hung from a rope tied around his waist. Despite his blindness, he seemed to look upon the passenger, waiting for the question he knew he was about to be asked.
The passenger looked down. “Who… am I?” Further down the cavern, the distant light of fires cast a soft light on the walls around them. Somewhere, they could hear screams of anguish echoing from beyond.
The oarsman replied, “Everyone always ask that. In time, however, everyone comes to find that the answer never truly mattered. Before, you were were an EM. Your name was Erebus. And now, you are merely a nameless soul that was once an EM.”
The passenger tilted his head as he attempted to process the cryptic response. “E…M…?”
“Think of it as something like a god,” the oarsman remarked.
The notion was too much to comprehend. “I… was… a god?”
The oarsman looked back to the passenger and quickly replied, “I said something like a god, if at all. But don’t let it go to your head. Being a god is not even as great as it sounds. It’s nothing but work, work, work, and no play. Sometimes even being a man is a bit much. If I could choose, I’d much prefer to be a maggot.”
The passenger began to ask, “What happened to m–“, but was interrupted by the sudden awareness of frantic screaming nearby. The passenger looked forward, seeing great fires in the waters to their port and starboard, and within the flames burned other pitiful souls, each dressed in robes like his own. His eyes grew wide as he observed the terrifying scene. “What is that??” he exclaimed.
“Ah,” the oarsman said, not bothering to turn his head. “They were EMs like yourself. They are burning alive in the flames of crimson dragons which they so zealously overused, in perpetuity.”
“But..” the passenger began, as the glint of a memory briefly shined in his mind, “..they had the best loot of all the beasts we could summon..”
The oarsman chuckled softly. “They always say that.” As he spoke the boat left the cavernous corridor and entered into a massive chasm. Overhead a loud rumbling startled the passenger, catching his attention. He turned then to see a ledge over the corridor which they had just come out of, and atop it a party of former EMs, armed with clubs and wooden shields, fleeing a pre-nerf tormented minotaur that pursued them relentlessly, each step of her hooves pounding the floor with fiery fury and sending several former EMs toppling down into the waters below. Only, when they crashed into the water, they thrashed about wildly in a cloud of hissing smoke as their robes and weapons were eaten away. Just what kind of water was this? The passenger leaned slightly forward, pointing a finger towards the liquid upon which they floated.
“Careful,” said the oarsman, “That is not water, but the acid of an interred grizzle. It’s for EMs that should have known better.”
Shadows and light shifted throughout the entirety of the chasm, and looking up, the passenger could now see, beyond the haze, a form which filled him with terror. Rising above the howls of cacophony, the oppressive fumes of the interred grizzle acid, and incessant chivalry spell spam, a form stood tall, looming over the chasm itself. The Queen of the Damned – the darkened, obscured form of the Dark Lady Mesanna gazed upon all through eyes of smoldering fire. In a slow and steady motion, she lifted a behemoth bow as her hands tightened upon the grip, firing a great arrow as large as a galleon at a pair of former EMs attempting to escape in a hot-air balloon – ripping the balloon itself into pieces and sending them barreling downwards into a canyon filled with executioner-brigands and valorite elementals.
“Don’t stare,” warned the oarsman. “She also kills for the sheer pleasure of it.”
Still further the boat traveled towards a shadowy structure in the distance as the passenger gazed upon the terrifying wonders around them. Several small islands could be observed nearby, each one occupied by a former EM, some trapped beneath the weight of a great dragon, while yet others unseen were pursued relentlessly by a crowd of flapping gargoyles.
The oarsman grunted. “Hmph. Cursed to be suffocated beneath dragons and gargoyle wings in tight spaces. It could have been avoided with better planning, don’t you agree?”
“But, the story..” the passenger began, yet his troubled memory could only produce a dull soreness, causing him to grip his head. His counterargument remained unspoken.
Yet another sight caught the passenger’s eye. Beyond the great lake was a field of molten rock. Across these rocks only a few lonesome EMs tread, each one carrying on their hunched-over backs an immense stone surface, upon which was collected towering mounds of gold. With each step their bare feet would slightly sink into the scalding magma, the intense pain affecting the balance of their gold, never failing to send a few coins falling from their hoard. And every time, they slowly squatted down to pick up each and every coin, their quivering legs almost seeming to buckle beneath the unbearable weight of the gold as the excruciating pain and searing fumes of the magma broiled their souls. The oarsman narrowed his eyes.
“The corrupt ones,” he stated bitterly, “Cursed to carry their riches across the fields of molten rock, but not allowed to lose even a single coin. For their greed, they shall be chasing their wealth until the end of days.”
By now, the once obscured structure which had been their destination was now in view. A mighty castle towered above them. Yet, on a single distant wall, through the haze of that place, the passenger was able to barely notice another soul, steadily teleporting across a wall one tile at a time, with each motion laying a single brick. The passenger began to sweat a little. Was this the fate that awaited him, building overly elaborate structures tile by tile for all of eternity?
Nevertheless, the passenger and the oarsman disembarked as the boat reached the land. They both gazed upon the great, imposing doors of the castle creakily opening before them, revealing a vast, dimly-lit great hall. Rows and rows of work benches lined either side with former EMs by the hundreds working feverishly, hunched over piles of plain white cloth painstakingly sewing together death robes with calloused hands scarred and bleeding from pricks of their needles. The passenger could only gaze in utter shock.
“What?” the oarsman wondered aloud, “You didn’t think all of those death robes manifested out of thin air, did you? Someone has to make them…”
The pair traveled through the hall of robe-makers, entering now into “The Choir Room”, the sign read. Here, in separate cells, the pair could behold former EMs standing before “choirs” of NPCs, teaching them the words that they must recite. Long rolls of scripted text unfurled over piles of other discarded scripts sprawled at their feet. The mass confusion in the air was palpable as the former EMs assigned words to the NPCs one line at a time. The passenger’s whole body seemed to convulse involuntarily as a sharp pang of anxiety fired through his entire being. Anything… anything but this! he foolishly thought.
But still, the pair continued, moving through the choir room and into an immense library. Countless bookcases towered above, disappearing into darkness above where no ceiling could be seen, filled with old books and forgotten tomes, many of them already half-eaten by bugs. On the ground, the passenger beheld long lines of writing desks, each of them manned by former EMs hunched over their never-ending work. Some wrote, scribbling away with quills that never held enough ink to write, while others merely read, the pupils of their eyes occasionally dilating as they struggled to retain their focus. Yet all would bear the strained expressions bestowed upon them by their heavy burden. The passenger noticed a sign hanging above their path, engraved: “The Great Library of Fan-Fiction”.
The oarsman could not help but shake his head. “Made to read and write fan-fiction from now until the end of time. I wonder, is there any worse fate?” For a moment, the passenger’s legs trembled uncontrollably, nearly buckling. Could this be it…?
Only, his grim fate awaited elsewhere. Now the passenger and the oarsman walked long flights of steps, descending into the depths of a dungeon with a quietly ominous air, a silence so severe that each step of the pair, no matter how soft, produced a sound that seemed like it could be heard by every inhabitant. Still, the pair descended further into this shadowy crypt, at last entering into a short corridor lined with solid iron doors behind which unseen souls quietly endured a mysterious fate. The oarsman and the passenger quietly and reverently passed one cell after another, the passenger’s curiosity deepening as his anxiety sharpened, wondering what kind of punishment these souls were cursed to endure, after everything else he had seen. Finally, the two arrived at the cell that would be his.
With one of the keys on the ring fastened to his belt, the oarsman opened the iron cell door. The passenger entered. At the opposite end of the room was a large, thick pane of glass, nearly as big as the wall itself, the image contained within it seeming to cast a soft, pale violet glow on this otherwise small, darkened room. The passenger stepped forward slowly, his gaze transfixed upon what he beheld beyond the viewing window. He could see… everything. The whole of Sosaria spread before his very eyes – the shards of this shattered and broken world floating among a sea of stars and other worlds. Stationed most prominently before the others, the shard of Legends. He could see it clearly, the land, the people, the stories. A rush of familiarity coursed through his mind, bringing temporary form to the memories he had struggled to retain as they yet continued to fade as if like waking from a dream; forms without faces, feelings without shapes. A dream that seemed as if someone else’s memories – the memories of one who no longer was. The shard of Legends glimmered brightly as he approached, the brilliant vision of Sosaria filling his eyes, and he reached out to it, instinctively desiring to return to it. Unable to look away, his sight and mind was captivated by the images in the window, and he drew closer and closer to the world that beckoned to him.. until his hand knocked against the glass. Once more, he reached for that familiar land, his hand pressing against the glass, tears welling in the eyes of this nameless soul as the cell door quietly closed behind him, followed by the soft click of the oarsman’s key.
“Your fate..” spoke the oarsman forlornly as he departed alone, “To forever watch the story of Sosaria continue to be told…
..without you.”
Continue reading...
