Greetings from Samhell (a.ka. the Ginger Bread Man), I would just like to clear up a few questions and add a little history to this wonderful thread!
Stormy (Miss Gummy Bear) and I started this server when it was just a few days old. We promptly made our first settlement at what we thought was a long walk from Roanoke and as good a place as any to learn how to play. We erected our leanto's and stockpiled our foraging's into dozens of boxes near our new claim stone. Three days later we met our first visitors, Four mutes who stabbed Miss Gummy Bear in the neck and made off with our valuables and our only backpack! She named all of them, and the one who hit her for 11 dmg went on to become the claim holder of the Russian's coastal raider base just north of Roanoke's town limits. Now I have heard the Russians on this thread mention that they only knew of our place 3 hours before they attacked us, but the very Russian who k.o.'d Stormy was the same Russian who was leveling the ground outside our walls for placing his 200 boundary stones. We lived very close to town and these mute Russians have raided the river lands every week since we have settled, always targeting the newest or the weakest.
Now obviously we had built much too close to town as all the guides had warned against, but we decided what the hell, if we can band together with our neighbors while building stout defenses, then our being so visible may be a boon to civilization and help bring law into a land without any. We slowly built our walls as we heard of our neighbors being robbed multiple times, or mugged by a mute stranger, resulting in most of them quitting. Time and again our little farmstead was passed over for weaker targets,even as we advised newcomers to settle with defense as a priority or to keep moving farther on. On rare occasions our neighbors would report that someone identifying themselves as Russian would ask who lived in our little farmstead, that they had tracked criminals there and that Russians did not attack new players so they had nothing to fear. This of course was a bald faced lie, every word of it...many times I had helped neighbors try and track the Russian criminals but they were so far NW as to be untraceable, although many times we could track the goods to the Russian coastal base just north of Roanoke.
Time passed by and I spent my days building walls and braziers while Stormy raised crops and buildings, even planting a large and marvelous ring of trees outside our walls. We would often travel in search of new lands and new friends.
Then one day a well dressed man stood outside of our doors saying nothing, for 30 minutes he stood there just watching, ignoring our polite inquiries. We both knew what this meant, it was 3 days after the splash damage patch and the Russians had finally summoned up the courage to confront us. All of our neighbors far and wide were known to us, even the Russians in Camelot who keep to themselves. The man before us was a Russian who lived on the edge of darkness, likely plotting his attack. The time to test our 3 months of steadily fortifying was at hand.
Now questions have been raised as to why we did not have a town bell to defend ourselves properly, and the truth of the matter is that we had discussed it and found it cost prohibitive and believed that two people hardly constituted a town. I direct you to Pilgrims and Planters where Stormy had been posting looking for people interested in turning our villa into a village. Up until this point anything extra we had went to our neighbors who were less fortunate than us and every bar of iron smelted went towards brazier building. Timing is everything and Windy showed up a week too early, but that didn't stop me from strolling out of our gates and punching him twice in the nose. My first criminal act. I hit him for 9 when i usually hit for 15, and he hit me for 35 or so. I went back inside. For those of you who don't know VVindy he's kind of a big deal, he told me so himself. He did manage to stomp me down across my gate while i stood there talking too him like a tough guy. He told me for hitting him he would destroy everything i had built, muttered something about taxes and then left.
I had to talk Stormy down after she declared "I would rather die than live under the yolk of the wretched wrussian wraiders!" I agreed that we would not be taken without a fight, it was to be Liberty or Death!
Sure enough the next morning I awoke to Stormy declaring that the Russians were already at work upon our walls while we slept, having knocked out 3 walls and leaving a 4th in the red. I leaped out of bed to find the Russians circling the base attempting to drain braziers, having given up on storming the walls. I wish i had taken a screen shot to illustrate the splash damage, they had come in from the corner-post and knocked out quite a bit of wall in either direction but i was still quite sleepy and didn't think of it. I timed the circling raider and moved outside to repair and rebuild wall sections, they couldn't make a full lap lap around the base with all the braziers firing and had only used up one coal per. They saw us refilling our braziers and said they would sell me coal, but i replied with a "No thanks, full up" at this rate we could last for days with our stockpile on hand.
The trumpets were sounded and friends answered the call, from the Candy Queen herself to folks i knew hardly at all. All day long we fought, as the Russians built fences to splash out our walls we knocked them down and expanded the claim. They were tarried and harried, losing the fight. In frustration they took to chopping down the tree's of the sacred circle, planted so lovingly by Miss Gummy Bear herself. I told them that breaking the sacred circle would bring a curse upon them, but they kept chopping and now maybe only a dozen tree's stand in the shape of a frown.
The Candy Queen informed us the Russians were so mad we would most likely be town-belled, so she opened her treasury to us and we began to build our own town bell. I believe it was simply haste why the Russians built the waste claim, because they saw what we were building in the vault. They finished before us and our town bell could not be completed. As we built simple fences along the edge of my claim they made one last assault and lost a high humored fellow, then got pissed off and left not 5 minutes later.
After much celebration and not a small amount of whiskey I decided that it was time that I should raid the Russian's and see how they liked it, My only breaking and entering experience up to this point had been on expired and abandoned claims. So all by my lonesome after the Russian's were asleep I stumbled up to the coastal raiding base north of Roanoke, burst through the walls in one go and loaded up chests full of goodies into one of the two boats they had brought back empty from the failed raid. I might add that they parked them at the end of the river near my base earlier that day with a guard who was inside of one and carrying another atop his head, I had attempted to kill him but he was impervious to attack which seems like some sort of bug to me but what do i know. Anyway I took about 4 swipes at him with my sword while a friend was taking swipes at him as well (he was standing still at point blank range) but we were chased off before I could try a stomp.
To make a long story short I had black bile on the brain and glanced at my black bar often (something i have struggled with even sober) and thus my green bar expired while carrying out the boat completing my suicide mission. The next day the Russian's Erected town bells and a day after that they finally managed to seize our little home, depositing 6k into Stormy's bank account. The Russian coastal base has since been captured and the bones of my fallen hero are now safe. The Candy Queen has offered to let us stay in one of her many palaces as she entreats us to feasts of lavish treats previously unknown to us, and we have happily pledged to aid her in whatever wonderful endeavors she chooses to pursue.
Oh and Windy is a girls name!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ul7sYUGvbg