The following was written by one of our guild’s founders over 9 years ago. Although we left UO a long time ago, it is still remembered to this day as one of the greatest games of all times. So for nostolgia, here is…
In late September spellweaver and Venger had begun UO playing for about a month ,and they were playing mainly to acquire treasure and get their stats up. Balinor came in the picture a month later and joined them. The three wore orange robes and black aprons and were un-officially called the Hell-o-Ween clan. Venger and spellweaver focused mostly on Magery while Balinor focused more on Swordsmanship and some Magery. All of us were either Noble Lords or Great Lords and we would constantly fight with the OoC (Order of Chaos). We actually asked if we could get into the OoC, but Lucenthawk denied us, so they became our main enemies. In OoC at the time were members such as: Lucenthawk, Darlock, Gorechild, Ice, Kahn, Coby-Mac, Cylore and others.
A day came in early November when Balinor noticed a large gathering of players all dressed in yellow gathered at the Vesper bank. They were all Darklords. I asked what they were up to, and they said they were creating a PK group. Being bored of UO already by this time, I asked if I could join them. The group was headed by two guys, Lord Sengir and Lord Baron. They laughed saying “You are a Noble Lord.” They wouldn’t give me dyes, so I bought my own yellow dyes and just joined them anyway. There was about 14 of us in all. We ran to the entrance of covetous dungeon and everyone pulled out halberds. I was like what the fuck is this? It seems none of them had any Magery talent at all. As soon as we saw the first guy, I paralyzed him and they all surrounded him and beat him into the ground. This went on for a while, as paralyze lasted for long time and I didn’t lose notoriety for casting it. Pretty soon I was casting lightening bolts on people and was doing tremendous damage. It wasn’t long before Baron and Sengir realized I was kicking ass and keeping them alive with heals. They let me in pretty damn fast, and I was a Dread Lord by then. I told them about spellweaver and Venger, saying how they were way better mages than myself. Spellweaver jumped into the action right away, while Venger told us we just ruined our characters. Balinor and spellweaver were now filthy rich while Venger was still battling ratmen for 15 gold apiece. Over the next couple days spellweaver met a Noble Lord by the name of Zen. Zen and his friend Brian wanted to join up with spellweaver and myself on our slaying spree. We quickly abandon the group of dreads in yellow as they fell apart in about 3 days. As Zen, spellweaver and Balinor were out killing and making a fortune, Venger met up with a guy named Eagle. Eagle had his own guild and Venger was admitted. Other members were Copland, Wolfpacks, Konan-NWO. Together the 5 of them would continue to battle the OoC. After about a week or so, probably around the second week of November, Venger realized going dread was the way to go. He was sick of fighting and not getting cash while spellweaver, Zen and I were like Dragons hoarding loot. Finally Eagle’s whole band all went dread. We would constantly meet up with them and ravage the dungeons Covetous and Wrong. Eagle was one of the leader types, and that didn’t go over too well with Zen, spellweaver, and Balinor. We had been doing just fine, and now we had this guy with us telling whose turn it was to loot and crap. So Venger joined back up with us and it was just the 4 of us for about two weeks. Venger turned into one of the most blood thirsty Dread Lords I had ever seen. During that two weeks we killed more people than I can count, and I am still living off the cash I made from that time. We started putting houses up everywhere: Bucs-Den, Trinsic Jungles, the Swamps, and near Wrong. We had bags just piled up with loot inside bags piled up with loot, as we were four freelance PK’s that would easily take out groups of up to 12 guys. We were quickly making names for ourselves. We kept in touch with Eagle’s guild and would PK with them from time to time.
In late November we met up with Borric Lord Crydee. He told us about his ideas for organization and his web-site at www.sarth.com and thus LoD was born. We were re-united with Eagle’s group, and we all pitched in for a tower which was placed on the Beach of Vesper. We became officially known as the Lords of Death. Everywhere we went we killed people and told them to visit our site at sarth. Soon we were getting all kinds of hilarious posts form our angry victims, and this helped promote LoD on the Baja shard. We would still battle with OoC, but by this time there were losing some members to new servers. We added a few new members in our two week stay on Vesper beach. Among them were goody, ZEB, Dustin, and Mutiey. After our whole guild was slaughtered many times by a wandering guard, our tower was moved to just south of a bridge between Vesper and Britain.
This is where I remember first meeting Milamber. I believe he was of good notoriety when I first met him. I then remember seeing an hour later and he was a Dread Lord. Milamber was added to our ranks with no questions asked; He then got his friend Godsmistake, who was working on a GM lock-picker at that time, into LoD as well. Other dreads came and went, but these two were dedicated members. The LoD tower became a hot spot for anti’s from all around and we had our first “guild” wars there. These included wars between us and IceCold and his friends, Belgarion and his crew of Lord Noise, The Lucky One and Soth to name a few. Besides the wars we would pretty much fight anyone that would come within the proximity of our tower. LoD existed like this for about a month. Our tower was replaced by a castle, thanks to a generous donation by Garthog Von Twink. At this time somewhere in late December or early January there was a falling out period. Konan-NWO no longer wanted to be a Dreadlord. Eagle, Wolfpacks and Copland all disappeared from the game. Dread Lords began sprouting up everywhere. Castrator abandoned fighting against us and formed the Warlocks. Cromwell, IceCold, Galderon and Lan Mandragoran also gave up fighting with us and also formed a PK guild, we referred to as “Cromwell’s Gang.” Raistlin, Bob and Dalamar were already established PK’s around Despise and their group was getting bigger and stronger. The Elves were around and would primarily patrol near covetous, Vesper crossroads and Minoc. Many OoC players will still around but by this time the guild had been pretty much disbanded. With the departure of Eagle, Copland and Wolfpacks, LoD left the castle behind and retreated to a small house in the Trinsic Jungles that I had maintained. The house became a meeting point for LoD and was soon named the “pk house”. Again LoD went back to pure Pking staking out dungeons. This caught the attention of some of the former OoC members and KAHN joined up with us. Spellweaver met a player named Max and soon became his mentor. Spellweaver patiently trained Max who soon became a full LoD member and coined the phrase “LoD-4-Life.” LoD mainly consisted of spellweaver, Venger, Zen, Milamber, Godsmistake, goody, Mutiey, Balinor, KAHN, Borric Lord Crydee, Max. There were a few straggler members such as ZEB and Dustin but we did not see them very often. Within a month or two we began talks with Lucenthawk. He, Darlock and Gorechild all joined LoD. KAHN had moved off to another server after being hit hard by the new bounty system. There were many guys that hung around the “pk house” such as Luke the First, TYER SWORD and ShadowWeaver. They were sort of like unofficial LoD members.
We became allies with the Warlocks in their wars versus Razors Edge, as well as allies with Cromwell’s gang. We would sometimes hook up with other PK guilds or just meet them along the way. I remember many occasions hooking up with Ronald McDonald,Grimace and Mark in the dungeon Wrong a weird guy named GURU in Despise, or even BLooD and JAEGER outside of covetous. Many times we would meet with the Warlocks in front of Acacia’s house near the Chaos Shrine to form large PK hunting packs. We met with the Devil’ee who were just forming and began warring with them. To support our allies we also began warring with Razor’s Edge (Members: King MegaByte, Royal Guard and others) who were also starting to make a name for themselves. The Anti-PK resistance was growing fast and soon groups were rising up that matched the skills of the PK’s. KoJ, The Knights of Justice became our number one enemy. KoJ boasted members such as: Rahl, Borric, Simon, Amadeaus, Chaos, Obadiah Kahn and often traveled with Lord Soth and Pearl. They put up serious resistance and would often raid the “pk house.” The DP also put up slight resistance, but even with their large numbers most of their members simply lacked PvP skill. Never the less they displayed courage and often fought to the end. Notable members being Moonblade and Moose-a-Lini. We also chased one fast fucker around covetous all the time: Smeagol. For one night all the PK’s of the Baja shard put aside their differences to gather together for the “Be All, End All” war between the Anti-PK’s in Destard. Although it was hard to organize this effort, the PK’s had a rather good showing, of at least 60 members. Battles raged on two fronts, one in front of the dungeon entrance and one near the stairs between level 2 and 3. To the best of my memory, the PK’s had killed more of the Anti’s and managed to hold their ground for two hours, before they were finally overwhelmed by the Anti forces. The Anti forces which finally flushed out the remaining Dread Lords was once again led by Borric of KoJ and Lord Soth. The Lords of the Dead soon joined the scene and competition between our guilds soon resulted in battles. They brought a new form of organization to the shard, and some of LoD admired it. The few formal confrontations LoD had with LotD were filled with dishonorable acts, which fueled our feud with them. LoD continued to grow in strength, especially with the additions of Lucenthawk, Darlock and Gorechild. All the members threw in what money they could and we bought a Keep and placed it west of Wrong. LoD began to organize. Straggling members were tossed out, and LoD formed a five member high council consisting of spellweaver, Lucenthawk, Borric Lord Crydee, Gorechild and Balinor. The other remaining members were Darlock, Milamber, Godsmistake, Mutiey, Max, goody, Venger and Zen all equally powerful to any council member. LoD was small but strong, as opposed to our allies the Warlocks which were growing in size and power. The high council really didn’t have a role in leading the guild; although that was the purpose for them, it just wasn’t consistent with LoD’s ways. After a couple weeks LoD added two new members by the names of Vashna and Lady Kerval. Somewhere in this time Murdock appeared, who played Max from time to time, and was added amongst the LoD ranks. Gorechild started to become the ambassador for LoD. He together with the leaders of other major PK guilds formed the PKC (Player Killer Circle). Gore was primarily responsible for uniting the PK guilds in an attempt to destroy any Anti-PK resistance. The PKC consisted of: The Lords of Death, The Lords of the Dead, The Warlocks, The Elves, The Devil’ee and for a while the Fifth element. By this time Cromwell had left the game and his gang was pretty much gone. The PKC members were to stop all wars with each other and come to the aid of a fellow PKC guild if they needed help. In addition large PK hunting parties were formed that would attack a dungeon from all sides to make sure the only escape was recall. Again, LoD decided to reorganize the High Council and it then consisted of Gorechild, Borric Lord Crydee, and Lucenthawk. This disturbed many of the LoD longtime members to see new members in positions of leadership, as rules were never liked by LoD members. LoD all gathered and held a vote to elect a supreme leader and spellweaver was voted into that position by the LoD members. Borric Lord Crydee and Lucenthawk had different plans for guild operations and thus departed LoD to form the Order of Tith Onanka.
For this period in time Baja was know as the Dark Shard. The only light came from the KoJ, who fought fiercely, but often were overwhelmed but the sheer power and numbers they faced in fighting the PKC. Yet, both guilds, LoD and KoJ, grew stronger with each battle, learning new tactics and battle plans form one another. However, it wasn’t long before some of the Anti-PK’s grew bored with the game and converted over to the dark side. Soon Xander, Pearl and informally Soth (now known as Caramon) all dedicated themselves to LoD. After about month Soth and Kerval left the game not to be heard from again. LoD’s official members at this time were: Balinor, spellweaver, Venger, Zen, Max, Murdock, goody, Mutiey, Darlock, Gorechild, Milamber, Godsmistake, Vashna, Pearl, Xander. LoD remained this way through the reputation patch. Through the thick and thin of UO LoD has been there always adapting yet never wavering. LoD-4-Life.
-Balinor