Now that the auction for the freshly palced fortress is over, it seems I promised a story that reaches back nearly 5 years. Feel free to scroll ahead thrugh the slow parts. Friends who were there may help clear mymemory with details they know from that time to this. In 2013, after playing on a shard that shall not be named here for about 3 years, I started to sour on the community there and seeing it fall apart was heart breaking. I and other from the House of Oor'Tael never expected such a sharp decline. I was one of the first to start looking at other servers. I fell upon UOR and instantly felt it was a place I could set my feet on. The community on the forums and IRC were great (still are). I started to split time between my duties with H*O on that shard and training on UOR to make sure that my initial observations of UOR were true. The more I played here, the less I liked it there. Being fairly astute at PvE, I quickly earned enough coin to buy a small house and the first place I scouted for housing spots, was between Vesper and Minoc. H*O had a small village in the simialr location on that other shard and so it felt right to look there. As fortune would have it, Iw as able to place a home there. I was elated to say the least. As 2013 was coming to a close, I joined the forums officially. I knew my time was coming to a close on the other shard. I asked our guild founder and House Master, Lord Cullinarn, if I could start a 2nd chapter of H*O on UOR. Cullinarn was not as quick to leave our old home, but he honored my wish to leave that shard and plant roots in UOR. I was able to convince one of my best recruits to make the jump with me. Jack had been a long time friend and always gave freely of his accumulation of wealth. He has always been very good at it and still is to this day. I continued to build here on UOR in quiet and kept houdning my old shardmembers that it was a dying place and to come to UOR. Reluctantly, @Cullinarn came over and then others began to straggle along to UOR. We made our break from that shard in early 2014. As we began to add some small properties in the area I placed the small, we noticed a structure that would go idoc soon (I don't think there were organized idocers at that time). We only had one competitor for the spot. He was very persistent in the hours leading up to the idoc structure. My memory is a little vague on the details of the action. I was not on at the time of the idoc. I believe Jack was able to procure the spot and we soon placed a small keep there. Then an L shape to the east. A patio to the south a tower or two to the north. Jack had a tower a litle futher north. At one point along the green stretch in the center of the map, we owned everything, but a fortress owned by Bart and a few small structures to the south nearest the road. We were happy to have a guild village again and lived happily for years. in the spots. Cullinarn soon got busy with real life and so I began to consolidate the guild into a tighter bunch of properties with the keep, l-shape and a tower. We had palced a coupel fo logs in front of the keep for guild members from the other shard, but they didnt play much. We eventually let them fall and placed a patio. I spaced things out to have open yards around the patio, moved the two towers back to their maximum distances to maintain blocking ( a decision that would come to bless me). I sold the 2nd furthest tower to a guild member. I ended up selling the tower behind the keep publicly. An owner of a large brick in front of our guild patio gave it to Jack and he gave it to me. I began to think it was time to downsize the guild. H*O is not very active. I thought I would sell the keep, move the guild into the brick and keep the patio for a tavern type structure, Cullinarns long time dream. Unfortunately, we were having guildstone issues and Culinarn had all but become engulfed in the real world. We made a switch one evening and the next day I was not the gm again, but he was. We had not been able to get him back on to make the change and we were afraid that something would go amiss with the stone. We asked Telemon to help with the stone leadership, but there was no easy backdoor control he could do that would keep me GM of the stone. Also he was busy with the upcoming eater event patch so we agreed to wait until he was done with that. The delay in waiting for Telamon to help us opened the door to another blessing. I was all but ready to list the keep for sale at the going rates, 5-8 mil seemed likely. I was certain only 3 of us had runes to the courtyard and I could use it as a selling point. I felt like I and the others had good reputations as honest folk. As I spoke to Jack about selling the property, he made a comment that people have mentioned about wanting to try to place a fortress here. I had surveyed the land when moving things around a couple of years ago and it seemed impossbile to move more than a tile or two each way. There seemed to be some rolling tiles near the front of it that would have prevented placement. In fact, in front of the keep, to the west, you could not place because of uneven ground. As we were texting back and forth, I jumped on to test and began trying to place a fortress. I did this for about 10 minutes, slowly working the grid of tiles. Each time the location was blocked. I was growing more certain that it was not possible and then BAM!!! the fortress appears on my screen. I message Jack the quick news that a fortress in fact does fit. Where we have our properties, it is only one place to fit. There is no forgiveness. So now I am sitting with the knowledge that I can place a new fortress on the shard and it would have a clear courtyard. In my fortress listing, I mentioned either someone quite mad or an evil genius might have a rune. Remember above the persistent player we beat out for the spot. He would be the only one that could have marked in some areas 4.5 or so years ago. No idea if that player still plays here or not. If he was mad then, I could only imagine his feelings now. So now I have to bug Telamon to get my temp control of the guildstone to move it off the keep roof into a new place. He finally has time and gives me access to move the stone. I must move quickly. Easter bunnies, Fluffy's and leprachuans are watching. Those that are hunting the event could pass by any time looking for overworld spawm, but I am too excited to care and I have a short window with the guild stone in my control. I have it all planned out. Which toons needs to do what and to place which structure back. I drop the patio, because I need the front space. Swtich screens to the owner of the keep and drop it. My heart is racing, hoping that no birds swoop into the open green grass area looking for food. I quickly double tap the deed and deflty place the fortress the first click (I had ionly practiced placing the thing a 100 times on test, so I should have gotten it the first time). I switch screens again and drop the brick and then place a tower with green space to spare between both forts. I sit on the fort for a couple of weeks deciding do I want to keep it and use it or sell it. We know the final decision to that laboring question. Thanks @Ahirman So you see, I almost sold a property and I would have kep the other properties around it never knowing a fort was possible. I had already spent 4+ years in my blindness to what was i front of me all this time. A fortress that almost wasn't...
