980112 - Well folks, today there's going to be a few small pictures directly in the diary. You see I got a question on how people create all those animals from nothing. The answer, of course, is the Summon Creature spell - a nice little 5th circle trick. It's actually fun to cast while sitting in your house waiting for being able to write *another* scroll, the delay is huge. I decided to put up a series of pictures of what I got while casting:

As you might have understood, the Summon Creature spell is somewhat random, but, as I said, quite fun. Casting Blade Spirits *just* outside the city limit is also fun, but that's a completely different story...

I've got an order for my Do-it-yourself transportation kit today, smart man that buyer. Luckily I was prepared and can have the box ready within 48 hours, actually for this first one my biggest problem is finding a gift box. My advanced class in tailoring seems to have gotten peoples attention, I've had quite a few visitors to my site since a couple of UO News Sites actually acknowledged it as good reading material. That's fun, I like visitors. My vendor Dulcie still makes profit for me, so I'll keep him running for the time being. I also met Nerwen, the young elven lady again. She was chased all the way into Vesper by a nasty grizzly. Since she had been attacked outside the city limit and the beast just followed her in, calling the guards availed her not. Finally she managed to shake it. I healed her up a bit, and gave her a magical grizzly of her own to protect her, unfortunately she didn't understand how my pet worked for her and outran that too by mistake. Most pets are slow, you have to wait up a bit for them if you want them to follow and guard you. The *real* grizzly lost interest in fighting and decided to prowl around the neighborhood for a while. No doubt it wandered out again across the town limit eventually.

I seem to get quite weird animals when I do that conjure animals spell. Other tailors at the Spinning Wheel sometimes gets very surprised of what I conjure up. I'm so glad that they don't see *my* face when I suddenly materialize a cow in the middle of the shop. Has anybody else gotten these kinds of strange animals? Other people seem to get wolfs and cougars and similar neat creatures - but a cow? Wow, flashback to Diablo, maybe I should double-click that cow enough times to hear me say "I'm no milkmaid" or "Yep, that's a cow alright". Anyway I practice neat magical tricks at the Spinning Wheel from time to time, I don't just tailor there. Now I'm halfway to a 2-story house, Sandralene's halfway house hmm... Oh dear, setting up this vendor was a kind of setback. I lost valuable time fiddling with him - by the way his name is Dulcie. Come and see him.

I also met a very nice young lady, Nerwen, in the tailor shop. After a while I invited her to my house. While inside, an orc crept up behind the house and tried to attack us. Naturally the foul creature couldn't reach us within the house, and I guard-killed it eventually, but it proves my point - this neighborhood is going down the drain. I got to move out into the untamed wilderness. If I want monsters prowling around my back yard, might just as well then be in an area where I can attack them first. I hope I'm going to meet Nerwen again by the way, she was a really nice person.

980107 - The Vesper zoning board is slow but precise. This morning the tent had been evicted from my front yard. Instead it's situated in my *back* yard. I suppose even tent owners have some rights, within the city-limit mind you, but this particular tent owner, Sister Cesse, is certainly up to no good. While inside my house I could see her from my back window trying to lift a large pile of gold pieces from a customer of one of her vendors. Well, naturally I called down the guards on her, what fun is an unwanted neighbor if you can't guard-kill them every now and then, besides Vesper has *enough* of thieves as it is. I'm still determined on moving to a better neighborhood though, all kind of riff-raff frequents the vicinity and packhorses without masters roam the area. While I was inscribing spells in my home, one of those hungry beasts decided to park itself on my stairs, probably eating all my roses in the process - hmpf! A dishonorable lowlife later tried to tame it, effectively chasing it away from my lawn. Oh well, watching them people go by from my window does give you a certain form of entertainment while I have to look up from my scribe desk and rest occasionally. Scribing spells is a very tedious work, to be compared to tailoring at its worst. By the way, I saw a virtue guard for the first time on Catskills while shopping in the mage store. If I'm not mistaken he was wearing Blackthorn's colors of chaos, a person to be very mindful about in my opinion; chaos is never good for business.

Not at all of my dishonorable neighbors are bad persons though. A fellow up at the bridge who owns a pickpocket training center actually invited me to practice in his hut for free, and, no, he didn't try to steal from me while at it, not that I carry cash while travelling the streets of Vesper anyway. While stealing is a very dishonorable act I would never contemplate using for real, I thought that a few sleight of hand tricks might be convenient to know for a businesswoman as myself. That my dexterity skyrocketed from a few minutes of training didn't make things any less attractive. I was also very pleased that the owner at first refused to accept a token payment of 50 gold pieces I offered him for his hospitality. In fact I had to insist very hard in making him accept my offer, it's such a pleasure doing business with people who, like myself, can be magnanimous about petty cash:)

980105 - Anyone who has played UO and paged for a GM is going to believe that the top story of today is simply a product of too much fine British wine, but, I swear to God, it's true. Entering the world (inside my house) I immediately saw something *very* disturbing. Somebody had put up a tent, one of those blue ones that only the most lowly and ignoble of Vesper's citizens ever would contemplate owning, right outside my door, virtually blocking my porch. I managed to squeeze myself out, and with some surveying I saw that the tent was not only blocking my entrance, it also blocked off most of the road, with two inconveniently placed vendors compounding the problem further. I paged a GM immediately. Now, we all know how fast (or slow) *that* response usually is, if there is any at all, so I figured I spend an hour waiting in the tailor shop doing something productive meanwhile. I hadn't more than entered the Spinning Wheel when a red-robed GM materialized before me. I tell you, the response time was *less* than two minutes!!!!!! After explaining my problem with my unwanted and badly located neighbor for this, very polite, representative of the Vesper zoning board, he replied, "Ok, I'll fix it". Oh, before the GM left he took a jester's cap from one of the tailors and put it on, running around showing off to the other customers, many of which obviously had never seen a red-robed GM before. And if you've ever seen a GM in a jester's cap then you know you've seen something funny:) I regret that I didn't have my screen-shot program running, but who would have expected a GM to act that fast? I'm amazed and impressed. The GMs on Catskills seem to be of a completely different breed than anything I've seen before on other servers. They seem to be polite, helpful and, above all, fast! Though, unfortunately, the tent is still there. As I think about it, maybe it's not such a bad thing after all, it's impossible to invade my house by running in while the tent is located where it is, maybe I was a bit too fast calling for a GM, hmmm....

Speaking about situations that require a GM, my good friend Thrall encountered a very nasty bug that wrecked his entire spell-book. Unfortunately, the GM he managed to call was unable to help him with that problem. I hope my little gift and contribution will make Thrall's comeback somewhat easier, it's a pleasure giving to him, he is always so polite and friendly. I feel almost ashamed that I couldn't give more to a friend who had such a tragic accident, but cash flow has been very negative lately. I've been spending much more money on magic than I have earned from tailoring. I really must pace myself here in my studies. Now, I don't have any creditors out there for the moment, but if I ever should need one, that person should know that Sandralene's easily worth 20 k, probably much more, counting her house, her magic weapons, her armors and piles of reagents. It's just that hard cash, gold pieces, are a bit scarce for the moment. It will change quickly, I assure you. I'm still a good tailor, and I'm not afraid of hard work when need arises. As you see, though solidity is *not* a problem, liquidity is - at the moment. But I'll get on top of the situation pretty soon - I hope:) I mean, one of the fun things you can do in UO, is going in to a bank and shout "Balance" and get the teller to reply "You have 45 367 gold pieces..." just to see the commotion it creates among nearby players. (Other players can see the teller's response). If you do that repeatedly you're soon going to be a highly unpopular person, I assure you :)

I'll be back with more news at the situation warrants. Until next time - stay safe from PK:ers

Even a tailor can walk around semi-nude in UO

/Sincerely