980103 - Today was a *good* day, one of those days I can cherish for a long time if, or should I say when, times get worse. And times can get worse in UO, that much I know from Chesapeake. But today is a day of celebrations, let me tell you why. First of all, I started out by doing that normal recall trip to the tanner shop, to see if I could pick up at least some lousy piece of hide that some power-gamer had scorned. Naturally the tanner in Vesper had none for sale, but there was a small pile of hides on the floor. Carefully, so as not to try to steal anything unnecessarily, I lifted it up. Six of them for free - Yes - And no owner. But what's that under the pile - a bag? I lifted up the bag as well and immediately got severely overloaded. At this point I became very curious and opened the bag - and wouldn't you know - 25 - yes, you read it correctly - twenty-five full suits of female plate armor. I figured someone must have run out of reagents to his or her recall spell so I, honorable as I am, waited around the tanner shop for ten minutes waiting for an owner to show up (and for the tanner to respawn his goods). Neither respawn nor the arrival of any rightful owner occurred so eventually I recalled back to the bank and deposited the goods into my overflowing account, together with a very, very nice magical sword with a lot of goodies on it that I picked up at a reasonable price at the Vesper armory shop.

Now 25 suits of, albeit skimpy, plate armor will sell for, let's see, where's my abacus, 25 times 125 gold pieces, hey, don't rush me, I'm a seamstress - not a mathematician, there we go, it should give a total of 3125 gold pieces if I sold them to a dealer. Now, since dealers will charge you 250 for a set, I plan to sell those outfits for 150 myself, increasing my expected profit even more, but my head hurts with all this numbers, and I figured it would be better being fully rested before starting my magic practice session. From the bank I went across the town square to the mage guild to pick up spell reagents and for once the shop was full of all the things a witch wants to buy. I saw four bodies on the floor as well, all from the same character, a *very* persistent thief I thought, and a stupid one to all that. Why not let a healer do the resurrection, then he might actually get to keep some of those thieving-skills he might have acquired? I suspected he would try again, and right I was, I hadn't more than addressed the guild-wizard in charge of selling, when I got a notice that the thief was trying to steal from me. A quick call for a conveniently placed guard terminated the scoundrels attempt. Now, five times pretty much exhausts your ability to resurrect within a given time limit, and to my, and other paying customers', joy the (visible) ghost of the unskilled thief ran around in the shop oooOOOOooo-ing all the way. The only downside is that my ghost-speaking skill probably improved from that, darned, shouldn't get distracted from magic studies and tailoring like that. But don't we all get a kind of morbid joy from seeing other players dying, and if you do so too, and liked this, you're going to *love* the next part.

Out in the woods between Vesper and Covetous I met several friendly people. One bowyer, I've forgotten his name unfortunately, was a particularly good role-player and I enjoyed our conversation fully while I was conjuring. Suddenly, a person with newbie equipment rushes into our screen from the West, screaming *PK:ers - HELP !!*. Now that's the direction Covetous is in from where I was standing, and the PK:ers that hang out there are usually quite tough, so I prepared every defense spell I had available, anticipating a terrible magical onslaught. To my big surprise, following the distressed man, there came two other newbies, both reading red on my screen, with swords and shields in their hands. Five seconds later one of them went down in a cloud of smoke from my fireballs while the other turned and ran from whence he came. I chased the other culprit around for a while, but my tracking is not very good and eventually I lost him. Walking back to the dead body of the other PK:er, I saw him (probably insta-resurrected) standing beside his intended victim and the bowyer, yelling at the top of his lungs "Give meee back mah stuuuuf!!!!". A newbie PK *and* a whiner???? I walked towards him calmly, saying, "You better run home to your mother while you can, or I'll kill you again". His reply to me was a series of words that came out on my screen as %!&$#. I didn't hesitate one second to shove another fireball down his throat at close range, I mean come on, how stupid can you get? Did he think I was out of reagents, mana and scrolls or what? After killing that scoundrel a second time, I did bid the two other persons goodbye with the words "Please, keep anything you found on this nerd's body" and headed back for Vesper (walking for once), whistling a happy tune. I've never imagined that PK:ing was *this* fun. By the way, the moron I killed twice is called Aspen, rest assured that I'll kill him many more times if I ever find him outside the safety of the city again, hey, he's Dastardly. I actually benefit from killing him, with this weird notoriety-system OSI has given us to work with.

980102 - I'll start with the bad news today. Somebody pushed himself inside my house while I was opening the door, and stole my bags of clothing. Now those clothes aren't worth very much, for some reason plain dresses are much more expensive than fancy ones, but anyway. I tried to make him a very reasonable offer to buy back my clothes but he didn't say one word, he just raffled through my armories and left, what a lamer. I've got his name and from his looks and equipment he was a newbie (and - yes - he is Dastardly) so if we meet up in the woods while I'm practicing magic, well I guess you all know what's going to happen. Well, never mind that, I've already recuperated my losses.

My spell-book is nearly complete. Can't wait to try out all those fancy high-level incantations. If there is a master mage with good inscription rating out there, I'd pay top money for that Summon Air Elemental scroll, do you hear? Hunting for hides was a bit slow today. I met (and killed) a lot of animals but very few of them was of the types which have hides. Why can't you make anything of those furs? Is OSI being overly politically correct or what?

980101 - Happy New Year everybody! Only played UO for a short while today, things are *still* going excellent, though I got killed by a monster for the first time. An orc mage was sneaking up on me while I was (stupidly) deep within my Macro-box in the wilderness. Well, wouldn't you know, the only thing that orc mage took was my old, battered homemade leather armor. I could have sworn he should go for my reagents - but no. There was a healer nearby and I didn't get looted by any player so I just have to credit that death on my stupidity-account and go on and, hey, I've got a dozen more of those armors in my bank-box:)

My own financial status continues to improve. Hey, I'm rich. Soon I can buy a second house if I should feel so inclined, hmm, Sandralene City, nah, nice thought but too much tedious work. A more probable cause of action will be to squander it all away on my magic studies. I can't seem to find hides in town for sale - ever. There seems to be some weirdoes hanging around the tanner-shop 24 hours a day, buying every piece of hide there is. I always seem to have to go get hides myself in the wilderness, this is not good for my proposed scheme to open a Lingerie shop. I really need those female armors to sell - but I'm going to put every effort to manufacture a couple of dozen of them over the next days. We'll just have to see how it all turns out, but I really like the idea - I don't think anybody else has done that in UO yet - creating an exclusive shop for discerning female adventurers. Until next time - stay safe from orc mages - and please do fiddle with your Macros *within* the safety of the city-limits:)

971229 - Wow, things are going splendid in UO at the moment. My tailoring skill is good enough to make female armor almost flawlessly, I'm seriously considering hiring a vendor and rename my house "Sandralene's House of Lingerie" and try to sell all of those skimpy armors I manufactured. My fighting skills are rising like you've never seen, and, with some healing magic thrown in, I easily take out a grizzly bear nowadays, and lesser wildlife go down around me at an alarming rate. I hope I'm not depleting the forests of animals here, I've stopped attacking things like rabbits and sheep, graciously leaving those to newbies who try to build up their skills. Seems like I'm developing a tank-mage rapidly here, without having any intention doing so in the first place:)

I performed my first heroic act recently. A poor newbie was about to get killed by a sheep, but (after asking if he needed help) I stepped in to save the day. Now this newbie was not the most intelligent person in the world, since he, after thanking me, proceeded by attacking a nearby bunny. Hadn't I cast a timely Healing spell on him, he would have gone down, already seriously hurt as he was. Naturally he got a long lecture from me about "safety first" in the woods afterwards. God, I *love* lecturing like that :) Got menaced by a would-be-PK too. After I cast my first bolt on him, followed by the "say"-macro "Vas Flam on you too, homeboy", he ran like you've never seen. (Yes I *do* keep some snide "say"-macros handy whenever I prowl the forests of Britannia). I laughed all the way back to Vesper, my puny bolt *really* did hurt him, oh dear me, I mean if one of *my* bolts hurt you, then don't PK at all... No, I didn't push the attack, satisfied with the knowledge that this little PK learned a nasty lesson, namely that "Your opponent *can* remove that shield and sword and start casting spells at you":)

And finally some really good news, that foul, large smithy I told you about yesterday, well, only an hour after I'd written about it here, it had moved further north. Obviously the GMs on Catskills are doing a great job enforcing the "no houses on roads" rule. Thank you GMs - keep up that good job. I'm beginning to accumulate serious wealth in my bank-box by the way, and I don't even know what to do with the money, maybe I buy a yacht or two, since Vesper's magic shop keeps running out of reagents and scrolls annoyingly often.

971228 - Finally I've decorated my house in an acceptable manner, and manufactured a wardrobe that will last *at least* until New Years Eve (meaning approximately 30 fancy dresses with matching accessories). I've even managed to get my inscribe skill up to an acceptable manner. Now improving all in Dex and Int is O.K. to begin with for an apprentice mage but what about that Str? There are, of course, many ways of improving your strength, but after having spent enough hours sewing and inscribing, I simply didn't want to go woodcutting or any other menial task. So off I went to buy a reasonable armor, well at least the pieces I can't sew myself, like a chain-mail coif and a shield - it *is* very tricky to sew a shield - you'll have to trust me on this.

Going around the forest between Vesper and Minoc used to be like visiting a wasteland, not a monster in sight only occasional Grand Master PK: ing Tank-mages. But, wouldn't you know, on Catskills the woods were filled with creatures. I saw several grizzlies and cougars, all of which I gave a wide berth, in search of small farmyard animals. My first victim was a cat strolling peacefully along the shoreline. For a moment I considered trying to tame it as pet, but only for a moment. Down the kitten went in a pool of blood while I smirked over my easy victory. I felt too certain with myself, only moments later (yes really - there *are* plenty of animals out there) a *much* more fearsome opponent appeared - a pig!

Now, killing a pig while being a newbie with only nominal fighting skills and lousy armor rating, is a lot more difficult than it seems at first. You Grand Master Swordsmen out there, maybe you don't remember *your* first fight with such a ferocious animal as a common pig, but this was a scary encounter, I promise you. When I was down to one-figure hit-points the pig finally turned and fled with me in hot pursuit. It's not very easy pursuing an adversary when you are that hurt that much, but, after several minutes of chasing, I finally struck the beast its deathblow.

After all this excitement I had to go back to my house in Vesper to rest, only to find that some idiot had put a large smithy across the road to my house. I thought building on roads was supposed to be impossible nowadays, but anyway I'm not hurt by this half as bad as my nearest neighbor - I doubt that he can even get into his house with this monstrosity blocking his front porch. Building on roads has to stop, and if it was up to me, large smithy-shops have to go as well from the game, they are just huge and unsightly shacks.

I will get back to you with photos from inside the house as soon as I can earn some more money - it's quite difficult to access the bank in Vesper on the Catskills server - the tellers seem to wander around more than what's good for them. Maybe they too want to watch all the semi-nude Santa Clauses, who are spread around town and, blissfully ignorant of their lack of clothing, continue to ho-ho-ho at all passersby? Anyway - now I do have a home - a very own house not shared with anybody - and it feels real good. Oh my, I'm getting to be real egoist - am I not - well that's how it is to be one of the rich and famous...

971222 - I decided to re-open my account yesterday, having heard persistent rumors that things had changed considerably in Britannia. Since my old avatar got completely destroyed by a bug, I figured it would be nice to try out something different for a change. So I re-incarnated as a tailor in Vesper. I was surprised to see that lag was quite reasonable (for UO) and that PKs seemed to be very scarce. Not that I left Vesper much anyway, bent on making money and everything, but a trip to Minoc and back and out in the surroundings gave no evidence of the existence of hordes of nasty Player-Killers as had been common-place a month ago. I didn't see any monsters either however, but snow occasionally fell from nowhere.

I still reside on the Chesapeake server, and if tailoring makes this kind of money (2.500 g.p. on 3 hours), I doubt that you'll meet me anywhere else but in the tailor-shop in Vesper in the near future. I don't think it will take very long until I've saved up enough money to buy a little Sanctuary somewhere. By the way, building something, that might be harder than it seems mainly for the reason that houses are *everywhere* nowadays. I counted 16 small buildings and tents clustering around the tailor-shop, might be tricky finding space for a house...

I'll be back with more news at the situation warrants. Until next time - Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Even a tailor can walk around semi-nude in UO

/Sincerely