What are people's first memories of CF?

Mine is wandering through galadon, and suddenly some crazy stuff starts happening. An arbiter is fighting an invoker and annihilates are flying everywhere. I was brand new to mudding and had no idea about the PK range so I was sure I was about to get completely splattered, and I had no idea how I survived all those fireballs that were blowing everything up.

1997, with my second character I was exploring the HTOS when I kinda sorta angered the Archmage. She tracked me to Galadon market square where there were at least 20 players chatting. She threw a spell and killed all but the hero who was standing there. I felt a little bad about it watching all the ghosts trying grab their gear and getting someone else's instead.....ok... so maybe I laughed my ass off even though I got whacked too.

I remember when me and Snarf decided it would be awesome to "power level" some drow mages. So Snarf made his drow conjurer, and I made a drow transmuter. Deletion came pretty soon after Langston blasted Snarf in a single round with this mithril axe wielding giant.

I also remember making numerous neutral warriors who would end up taking the Oath and deleting after I forgot each time that I lost my specs.

Oh and for funnsies, I partially remember making a Arbiter and somehow thinking setting up a trigger on the who list to want everyone online was a good idea. Promptly getting everyone who played at our bachelor pad sitebanned, and then completely regretting ever having the idea.

He pked the majority of his range with Ihlrath.

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

You need to shoot me an email man.

Ah miss me some Hrugald/Kruuank battles. Ugh, that was so one-sided.

nt

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

Getting con killed at level 1 by the Arkham healer. We had set Arkham as our home towns, were grouped, and I don't recall how but ended up in combat with the healer. One of us would die, and autoassist would put us right back into combat with the healer, who would one shot us. Back and forth we died until we ran out of con.

nt

This thread got me to thinking, and I've been trying to figure out how I actually found out about CF. The guy who originally got me into mudding doesn't remember who actually told him about it, so I've been digging through old emails from the 1994/1995 time frame.

Two of the host names I found were:

bluto.cd.com 34412

which then changed to

tp.rfsi.com 9999

Supposedly this one was gone by October 1995 if my emails are to be believed. A second friend then recommended:

conan.ids.net 9999

Not sure if I ever played on that one, but it was Merc/Diku.

Subsequent emails indicate I was on CF by July 1996. Here are a couple that should be good for a laugh. Emphasis added after the fact.

Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 09:36:31 -0500 (CDT)

I just got caught multi-charing on Carrion Fields. Whatever imm it was
wiped all three of my characters and threatened to ban my site of origin
if I broke the rules again. :) I thought it was funny.

That mud is really alot tougher than the other one we used to play. For
instance, you can't quit just anywhere - you have to be in a "safe zone",
i.e. a town. Also, every third time you die, you lose 1 CON. Plus, it
doesn't tell you your exact stats. My strength was "Strong", my wisdom
"wise", etc.

Anyway...I dunno if you're interested (probably not), but if so - I still
have 3 chars left that are decent. Well...not really - they're still
low level, but they have some eq they probably shouldn't have. :)

Then again...maybe I should take this as a sign and stop playing. It was
starting to take up alot of time again...like last summer.


Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 09:14:50 -0500 (CDT)

> How you were multi-charing anyway? Four chars logged on from the
> same terminal or something?

Any number of ways. I wasn't very careful about it - I never thought
anyone would check. First of all, I left two characters by the healer
for a while "dormant" while one of my other guys went to get items back
from his corpse. Also, they all had the same password. :) Plus they
were all logged in from the same terminal. If you want to play one of
the guys I have on there already, we'll have to change the password so
they won't think I'm multi-charing again.

I have a lvl4 human thief, a lvl2 Drow Necromancer, and a lvl2 Gnome
Transmuter. (there is no generic "mage" class).

In any case...I don't plan to spend much time with this...just thought it
might be fun every once in a while.

nt

nt

My first was a dark-elf necromancer doomed to fail from the start. I had played other non-RP muds like Shadows of the Mind. I thought it was awesome when some other dark-elf gave me a dagger called Mesdoqdusque or something that was dark-elf only and RP'd with me a little bit. Then some random thief I met in the academy dragged me along at lightning speed through this strange place called the kobold caves and was giving me all this stuff to wear and power ranked us to 11. He then proceeded to rip some hero off for a dagger of death in Galadon, then we went to elemental valley to buy invis potions and we got Pk'd on the way by these imperials and the thief deleted because he said he didn't hit hard enough and left me stranded with no idea of how to get back to my body, I had no idea it would appear back at the pit. So I deleted and rolled the first of a series of like 6 fire giant AP's named Thragg.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

I think I rolled an ap on my first login. I used to play on a mud that only opened up pvp for like a day every few months. After that I was hooked on it so I went looking for a pvp mud and came across CF. I remember logging in and with a minute or so I was walking out of the ap's guild as a chorus of "Help! Detlef is attacking me!" rang out. That guy was destroying everyone in Galadon and I sat and watched in awe. It was then I was like.. villager it is. So I rolled up Hasdrof which was my first cabaled char. Cloud giant villager... back before specs were even around.

I'm lost in Galadon, can't find the academy, and a helpful invisible friend gave me a potion.

Power word kill.

I didn't try CF again for three years.

I can't remember if that mud was CF or not, but it had to be cause I can't remember playing any other ones. It's just the time-line seems kinda funny cause I remember playing CF in 95 cause that's when I moved and when we'd come back for church I'd sneak out of church and turn on the old 2400 modem on my rockin fast 286 that had a grand total of 4 megabytes of memory and play CF. Then we moved back into that house and that's when me and my friend would bring our computers together at my house cause I had two phone lines and we'd perma like crazy till he finally got a dial-up he could use out at his place.

BUT... before all of that I DO remember playing a few screw around characters and not being able to figure out how to move and some guy helping me cause I started yelling cause I heard other people yelling and I figured that'd be a good way to get started. I remember being able to choose giant and mage, although since I couldn't type I couldn't play a mage. Too hard to fingerpeck those rediculously long names out. ! worked if you had someone else leading. I remember the arial city being above midgaard and I rememebr thinking Painkillers and bastard swords from Arkham were the ####! I remember my first PK in the area between Midgaard and the Emerald forest when a guy started talking to me and telling me what to do. It was a bash kill! Woo! Then I remember getting my ass handed to me by this anti-paladin in Arkham and I thought it was a win when I disarmed his weapon and he ran off and I held my beloved bastard sword in my hands.

Then I rolled up some stupid mage named Indigo (which apparently wasn't a good name to pick) who ended up being a master and people would give me #### about the name and all Pico said was "you shouldn't have chosen that name" without telling me why. I KNOW now... it wasn't until 2000 that I figured out there once was a leader of battle that had the same name. Go figure. After Indigo is when the clear memories start. I had about six storm giant warriors, one which got frozen by Pico cause I was being a typical 12 year old ass and having fun at other people's expense... namely his. That's when Drakenhoffen was born -- storm giant trouper tatted by Shokai, was a hero when specs came out -- who was followed by Dhavishan D'Shantai -- First warrior with specs, a storm giant trouper who wrote that poem that they later used when they updated the bard songs that makes you not able to see HP . Which by the way I'm mortified at the quality of the poem now... I've got to write an update to that thing

Basically I remember the first and second ages, just not that well. Memories become real clear when the giant race was split and the 3rd age began. By 96, 2 or 3 years of mudding had made it so I was the fastest typer in the entire school district (secretaries included) and once I learned the homerow I could zip along at 90+ words a minute with a damn fine accuracy. I owe that to CF. Thanks guys!

I remember:

Drinking Killians Red.

Dragon turtles in MS.

Killing smurfs.

Going south of Galadon to kill dark stalkers for the Uber swords.

Getting on the test server and praying "Lvl me please" and watching you gain 51 levels in 2 seconds and then all of us running around trying to PK each other.

Going all north and getting massive XP on White wyrms,

Sometimes seeing this annoying blob that messed up my character whenever I came in the room as I was going to kill white wyrms.

Getting pissed and deciding to kill the annoying thing.

Consequently dying to the entropy outer since it considered so low.

Hearing auctioning of armor and weapons all the time in galadon/midgard "(G)(H) Glamdring PST for offer

Mixing potions in Masters with all kinds of trash. LOVED that stupid spell.

My first real character was a giant warrior that got into sylvan and got Raisa's tattoo. Had no idea what to do with it or if it did anything, just thought it was cool.

Casting scourge at the outer against seven ragers and just watching the damage fly by.

When the Imm on the mud I was playing Life after Death(bad copy of CF) used the global channel gossip to tell everyone that he finally heroed a character.

When I finally came over to play CF instead of LAD and Prophecy I hated that Midgaard didn't look like the standard ROM and kept getting lost. Took me a long long time before I made it past level 20.

My first memory was my Goodie Assassin who eventually got into Knights. At the ripe rank of 11, an anti-paladin asked me to group. Go me, for not putting two and two together at that time cause I did... committed the big "no, no" to follow him right away once I met him at Market Square.

As you can expect, the next thing I knew he had taken me into the house or possibly the Inn, into a closed room and proceeded to kill me dead. As much as it sucked... a great foreshadow to not be so trusting in the future

Exlynix was my assassin's name. Think he only made it to level 43 before I auto/deleted.

I had an assassin in Knights at one point in the 90s I think. I got uninducted for not responding to a raid while I was lost in Dol Guldur.

"Phage" was the name. Yay for lame names.

n/t

It was supposed to be "phage" as in "bacteriophage". From the Greek φᾰγεῖν meaning "to eat".

The first 'phage' that comes to my mind is 'coprophage.'

I summarily got my newb-ass handed to me by everyone going!

-----Abernyte

I guess it was too early to drink more beer so we logged on a friend's computer. I made a gnome warrior, ranked a bit, then died to two dudes somewhere in Balator in the blink of an eye.

Forsakenz

My older brothers learned about MUDs in college. After trying one for a few months it finally died when they did a big update and I took a break while my brothers played another one that didn't appeal to me very much. Sometime later they got me to try out CF. "Play a giant warrior, it should be easiest. Just make him neutral." Then the first age ended and giants were split up. "What should I make?" "Make a giant again." "There are no more giants." So he glanced over them before telling me to go with cloud giant. I know, my story sucks. It's about the only thing I can remember when I first started out. Oh, I remember thinking earthen gear was awesome because it compared better than anything else I could find. I remember being in love with nightmare blades. Those were the best.

And the guy named "Trusty" was not to be trusted. I miss pking with my level 6 fire giant warriors, Havok and Havoc.

Hutto, the Sleepy Nitpicker

I was ranking in Calandaryl with one of my first char, def/off shifter.

Dude with me, also shifter, suddenly reverted and said:
####ing ####! My house caught fire, hold on I'll call firefighters.
two minutes later:
Okey, they are coming now, lets continue!

... A RL friend told me about CF and how cool the enforced RP idea was and the stuff about age-death and con-death.

So I rolled up a storm warrior and got myself to lvl 38. For some reason I almost ONLY fought nexuns or whatever they were called. (They had some rift up near some harpies or something.) For some reason my bad english made me think of it as a RAFT andn not RIFT.

Then when I found myself in a gigantic xp hole (Like 800000xp tnlvl) I decided to roll Amberion, storm giant paladin, shokai follower.

I still hadn't really understood how important it was to stay IC. So I permad A LOT with my RL buddy who had an elf paladin. And we used to talk swedish over tells and in group-tell when running around. Saying stuff in swedish like: I've got 5 more mins, then I need to go to class etc.

And I couldn't for the life of me why Shokai didn't want to make me a Maran. (He did however empower me.) I should also add that my english was really bad, and my RP was minimal when I was TRYING.

After 250ish hours or so some gnome shifter showed me a certain box inscribed with some words. Thanks to my bad english I wasn't sure what the words meant except that the box in itself was evil. So I tried to RP off that I was going to protect the world from the box and figure out it secrets, after all I was protected by Shokai I thought. That ended up with making Amberion chaotic evil from lawful good. I trucked around for another 30-50 hours as an evil, first seeking redemption then trying to join the Scarabs. Had a really nice chat with Scarabeus since I was SO impressed with the Cabal and it's current leader Drycurus (Man I miss that guy!)

After that I took a 8 year long hiatus... CF is awesome!

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

Eventually i got turned evil too, was pretty fun being an evil gnome healer though. Not sure I would have given the box to you if i knew you werent a native english speaker, but sometimes its hard to tell that in game.


Who cares anyways, look how good at cf you got. A far cry from what amberion was

I remember this paladin named Heh who was pretty cool about showing me around. He showed my how to get to Ofcol from Midgard. The claymore from those guards that had the brass eq was my first favorite weapon.

This was back in the day when there was no dual wield so a two handed weapon was great, not to mention you could also carry something in your "held" slot.

I remember Ulaekon taking my storm shaman (I call him my first character, but my real first one was some felar ranger that lasted all of a day or two) all the way to Mortorn to show me how to get the supremely OP saddle bags. It was so far off the beaten path that I was nervous the whole time about some random mob killing me...remember, this was during the time when the blue dragon would often storm into galadon and blaze a path of lowbie corpses in his wake.

Anyway it was awesome. Then, much later, Vella gave me a wide copper bracelet and I was blown away. I mean it was just. so. shiny!

That would be so cool to have dragons storming into Galadon now and then. That sort of thing is almost like a non-imm powered quest. Of course I say this until a dragon burns down my lowbie.

Haha, my first character, an elf paladin. I completely went against everything my friend who got me into CF said and tried to get empowered. I think Shokai ended up giving me a pitty empowerment. Thanks dude! Then rubbing it in my friends face. Look! I've got a white aura! Hah!

Bryan

I got a pity empowerment from Balgrimnr with my first (or at least first memorable) char. Fell in love with paladins almost instantly.

I was so excited, cause I'd just discovered one of the now-dead forums, and people were saying empowerment sucked. So I thought I must just be THAT much better than them.

10 or so years later, I still love paladins, people still say empowerment sucks, and I still think I'm THAT much better than them.

I remember someone showing me the ropes, reaching lvl 11, explaining to me that now they could fight other people, then shouting at market square that if anyone messed with them, they'd be dead. Immediately, someone showed up and killed them. I couldn't stop laughing.

I also remember the Guard Captain of Galadon leading a rag tag group of adventurers in defending against the Goblin King and his minions in the Silverwood Forest.

I remember coveting the horns of capricorn. Also remember trying to kill stuff in Olympus and getting totally smeared. I think Apollo had a weapon or something that I thought would be super-cool to have.

Also, I remember some guy yelling about Captain Canuck. I then told him how hilariously lame I found the idea of a Canadian Super-Hero named "Captain Canuck". At which point he PK'd me and laughed in my face. Was probably Jhyrb.

...for Ghostrider.

He'd attack Ra, then flee, then lead him to the various other Olympians. Ra did an area lightning breath that (back then) brought mobs into combat against him. Others did the same. He'd get them all in the same room, then flee and close the door, then go finish off the (almost dead) one that was left.

Which I think was usually Ra.

Yeah, I wasn't that l33t.

I do remember getting busted for trying to pass a mithril chaymore from...that area with the lamias whose name I forget...that I'd enchanted with one character over to another character.

The imm who busted me was like, "Really? You cheated for THIS?!?"

And if he punctuated it like that, there's a good chance that was me busting you.

I rolled a druid and found out that there is some 'empowerment system' and I have to find my God somehow. I failed. But I travelled with some pally who were going to follow Shokai. So I rolled a Shokai pally. This time I even found the shrine and prayed. Failed again.

Rolled halfie ap and joined newborn Empire. Jeez, I sucked greatly! I had no idea about sleeks and even about preps at all, so everyone kicked my ass all around Thera. I did not know about unholy and charges as well. Not that it would matter, since I was a champion in dying in stupid ways

Hanging out with Sarmgu the Arial Ninja from the Masters Cabal while I was the self-proclaimed leader of Shadow (I'm not sure why Loki from the Entropy cabal kept granting me, just to be chaotic I guess). We would take turns trying to assassinate the Midgaard healer to get some of that 100k+ gold payout. We made sure to try to assassinate bare-handed, because wielding weapons at the Midgaard pit was a crime!

Eventually Red Baron got sick of seeing us attack the healer over and over and wanted us both. It turned into kind of a big deal between the Justice cabal, Shadow and Masters and many people died. But it was all in good fun. I think Admiral made a few appearances and one-shotted me with one of his backstabs during the battle.

Sarmgu was in love with Bitch, the former leader of Shadow who had the uber-powerful "the Something" weapon, which did obliterates at a minimum. Bitch ended up marrying Morgath, which explained the buffed weapon, but Bitch got killed at her wedding by MrWhite who took "the Something" and became defacto leader. I had to mediate between the two and it was an awkward situation for what was supposed to be a sneaky, evil cabal. In the end, I ended up stealing leadership from them both but still came out looking like the good guy. I was, after all, a dark-elf ninja with Cador's Honorbound tattoo, so who couldn't trust me?

Man, the drama today doesn't hold a candle to back then.

I don't remember too much about the earliest days because they blend in a bit with ROM which I'd been playing when Matt first started developing CF and I think I started a character the first or second day it'd been open. I do remember making a ranger named Truck (bad play on the idea of a Ford Ranger pickup which I've never owned) and having a crapload of fun with the ranger skills and call bears.

And I recall killing one or two gnolls in the swamp southwest of the city with some strange mage......

And then I've got a ton of memories playing Trouble and annoying the crap out of countless mortals with Entropy I spent way too much time playing CF when I should've been finishing my dissertation (which did finally get defended).

We'd be trucking along killing those two gnolls, then the green dragon, OVER AND OVER AND OVER, and getting good xp, when Truck (our tank) would say he had to leave because of homework. And I'd go "awww".

I got stuck in the area that used to be west of Galadon and I think I thought Pray was an emote. Anyway he appeared in a swirl of light and IC'ly said you're ####ed. lol

Conversly, the worse experience I had was with Balgrimnr, who was until then my most favorite persona.

So I started one here:
http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=7&topic_id=619&mesg_id=619&page=

After I had finally got my green spikey gear (because it was awesome I heard) and two opal rings, I saw Scarabaeus was on (and Shadow still existed - 2nd age) and I randomnly started talking to him about it. He basically said that it was a particularly bad time to talk about such and that I should be patient to see what would transpire.

Only a few minutes go by and the second age ends (the gigantic immortal battle, end of Shadow, etc). I remember thinking "Holy crap this place is awesome?!" and at the same time "I better still have my spikey green gear damnt, I had to bribe someone to get that for me".

Ignorance is bliss.

Trying to find my way around Galadon, when Tenfan swings by and hands me a guardian sword from Arkham.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

I remember getting lost in the Galadon sewers and coming across a cache of stuff. I thought it was really bad ass that I had serpent-scale bracers. They just sounded really cool to me.

I'm really disappointed that these bracers fail as a regear option these days, because of the +5 save vs spell.

Your first memories of CF were post Midgaard? Or is that what you meant?

n/t

So long, and thanks for all the fish!