A brief history of I’m

Everyone face down on the floor and keep your hands where I can see them.

A brief history with many extended digressions.

As far as I can recall I arrived on Calypso on the 11th of August 2006, that was back in the days when colonists were issued with bright orange clothing, when there was only Calypso, Crystal Palace (CP) and what was then called Club NeverDie (CND) but is now called FOMA.

On planet we had teleporters but the only way to get them was to run or walk between them, TP runs were a mainstay of the activity of the first few weeks as vast distances were travelled on foot, often in groups for safety and often travelling far from the ideal line in order avoid the herds that blocked our paths. It took me quite a long while to get all the TPs, I decided there was no real hurry as mobs near many of them were far beyond my ability to hunt.

To get to CP or CND we had to take a space flight, this was fairly basic, pay some PED, go to the pilots hanger and board the ship strap yourself in, wait for others to strap themselves in (it was not a straightforward process, there was a hard to reach button involved) after that you just got off at the destination, all fairly instant.

I spent quite a lot of time in or around Port Atlantis, it looked very different then, most people gathered around the TP which was situated in a square walled enclosure. It was the busiest trading location in game with Twin Peaks taking second place. Who can forget the cry “selling <insert description here> at boxes”?

There were other cool things we could do then, we could sit or lay on the ground, groups of people would  just sit about chilling out and chatting, I miss that, it gave things a much more relaxed feeling, especially at the end of a hunt or a beacon run.

Mining too was different, do you remember getting a strange reading? It meant you had found a robot ship and you had to get to it before anyone else, kill two or three drones and press a button to get your loot, <insert name here> examined robot spacecraft and found something with a value of 50 PED! It was always 50 PED, drones are weird.

But I digress (get used to it). I quickly realised that sweating was not really going to work for me, it was a far more productive use of my time to earn money at work and then deposit, this even when the price was a little over 10PED per 1K, don’t tell the modern day noobs! The first weapon I bought was the TT shortblade, I still have it and I still use it, I tried the sword but I did not like it. I also purchased the TT armour, hey I knew no better but someone lurking in the woods did! That someone was a character by the name of MegaVolt (he had arrived a few weeks before me), at the time he was trading and he sold me a full set of Goblin at a low TT, I got some PED back from selling the TT armour back to where it came from and had better protection. I set about stabbing things around PA, quite often with Mr. Volt providing healing, it never went particularly well but I persevered. Mr. Volt is still on my FL but for some reason I do not often speak with him, I think I should remedy that. Goblin was good protection against the snablesnots so I concentrated on these. At the time sweat central was at Camp Phoenix and by chance so were a lot of snables, thanks in part to my efforts we were not up to our necks in snot!

I remember joining a society called The Swiss Army, I no longer recall why I am not Swiss and would not last a minute in an army but I stuck with it for a few months till it went belly up, the way societies do and once again I was freelance.

I meet a few people in my early days some of them I still know, many have moved on as seems to be the way. I do wonder what some of them are doing now. With the exception of a few scammers I have not met anyone in EU who has not been helpful and pleasant.

One day I was out swunting and mining at the old Camp Phoenix, you remember the one with the wrecked space craft to the south of it. When I was approached by Tiger Master Lee, he had recently started a new society (The Guardian Tigers, which was later renamed to the Divine Tigers) and was looking for recruits. I was dubious but decided to give it a try and I have to say I am extremely glad I did, for me those were the halcyon days on Calypso, we had so much fun together. The core members of “the tigers” were Tiger Master Lee, The Playboy Girl, Karl Pilki01 Pilkington and myself. There were other members who came and went some stayed longer than others and became solid members of the tigers.

Tiger would try to arrange an event of some sort every week initially and in time we all arranged events for the others to participate in about once a month, there was a prize pool and each of us contributed to it what we could. There was also the “Green Beret”, well two actually one was (M) the other (F), the winner of the event got to wear the beret until the next event and received the respect of the other members for that period. We also arranged Snablesnot races, these were great fun, unfortunately pets have not yet been implemented again after a big VU (I think it was the CryEngine VU, possibly VU9). I am looking forward to their return.

Many of the events included blatant cheating by the organiser in order to prevent Tiger from winning, it was accepted practice and I think Tiger enjoyed the victimisation.

I do have posts about these events in my archives and will be releasing them in due course.

As with most people in EU I have taken breaks as have the rest of the Tigers I think my biggest was after the CryEngine update, for me there were so many issues I just found it frustrating and after finding other things to do it took me a while to go back. Possibly my most memorable moment in EU was waiting for Hadeshime to be destroyed by a robot space ship, it was the end of a VU, I was with Karl and Brat, there was genuine emotion and distress being displayed by the crowd who were waiting. In the end all that happened was a disconnect and no way to reconnect, The upgrade took a week and a bit, a very strange experience.

It did take me a long time to go back, I would guess approaching a year but once there and happy that things were working I continued the adventure. I was a lonely Tiger, there were no other society members on line for at least six months and at the end of 2011 I left to become a freelancer, I was soon invited to several other societies, I tried one but did not really feel at home.

Also at this time I made a radical change, I had been using shortblades for my entire existence and had gained “Coolness” through it but they had become hard to get and expensive. I had a long chat with Una Griph Alconbury a long time friend from EUC about economy and he suggested I try pistols, I have been doing this ever since. I have worked my way through the Breer range of pistols mostly hunting drones for the Gazz until that stopped being a loot. I have now switched to mostly Allophyl and Estophyl, I miss shortblades and do plan to go back to it if and when an economical blade becomes available. I also need to increase my range of mobs.

After freelancing for about six months Tiger and PBG came back on line and after some discussion I was invited back in and the Divine Tigers was handed over to me to run, I promptly renamed it to “The Flashing Blade” although that is only a holding name, I expect there will be others before I settle on a name, I do have plans but they depend on an acquisition and acquisitions do not always occur.

That just about brings me up to date (at the start of my blog here), it is a very condensed history and  I am sure I will edit this article as I remember different things. If I do I will make a short post about it.

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