True Sosarian Stories, Part I

Welcome to the first continuation of the post I made over the weekend about Old School UO Nostalgia. For those of you who played Ultima Online, you’ll probably get a little kick out of the stories within. For those who didn’t, you may or may not. Within you will find stories, a new musical selection from UO, and a screenshot of Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn. I love these journeys down memory lane.

We’ll begin with today’s song, entitled Linelle’s Theme. It’s one I remember hearing very often while playing, and brings back almost as many memories as the first song. While you listen to that song, go ahead and delve into the following stories of the wonderful world that was old school UO.

When a Russian (we assumed, maybe it was German. Point is, they didn’t speak English) guild built a castle in “our” North Minoc clearing, it was all out war. After Hiding by their door, running in when someone opened it, and immediately marking a rune to their courtyard, I was able to get back inside during a guild meeting of theirs via Recall, and single-handedly take out the entire guild at a doorway. After that, they were doomed. My entire band of thugs had runes to the courtyard, and we kept it on guard until they finally fled for good.

We found a cave in North Minoc (an area where a lot of our shenanigans took place) that we could Teleport into and still attack from, which later became an entrance to the Second Age. We placed houses in all the prime real estate locations we could find, and sometimes sold them to other players (we usually took them back by force with our main characters after selling them with alts).

Sometimes we’d tame a dragon, take him to the inside of one of our keeps, leave it there until it became untamed, and gate unsuspecting people into its deathly lair. After killing a number of poor souls, we’d go back to the keep and either tame or kill the dragon ourselves, then grab all the wonderful loot, hack the bodies to pieces, and place their heads on display at the main castle.

Maybe we would instead build an elaborate maze of tables with only one path through, position two people near each other (hidden), and wait for the person to go through the first before appearing. At that point, the victim couldn’t pass through the second avatar because his stamina would go down, and we’d demand payment or death. We called it the Toll Booth. We had a more permanent variation on the Northwest Coast north of Minoc that used the mountain, the sea, and a strategically placed small house for the same effect.

And now for the promised screenshot of Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn, which I will undoubtedly check out when it surfaces: