People

Dentin would be a good place to start. You know, I've known Dentin about fifteen years. In some ways, it seems like he's always been the same. Dentin is six years older than I am (and his birthday is the day after mine, so I never forget), and when I first got to know him, I got definitely felt a cool-college-kid vibe coming off of him. He's always had a highly analytical mind, and I've always respected his intellect. He's got a soft spot for college students. He's friendly and insightful, and he's tolerant of people that aren't like him, save the willfully ignorant.

A few things about Dentin have changed subtly throughtout the years, however. He's gone from being agnostic to completely atheistic. He's definitely more cautious now, and he's also a lot more organized. Dentin has also become a lot more comfortable offering criticism and delegating task with respect to the game.

I remember back when Void first started coding for Dentin, and back then they were trying to keep it a secret. I figured it out, though, and I gave EvilMasterRob my C language primer from college. They were quite surprised; I guess Dentin was expecting me to be jealous or something, but that's not really in my nature. Dentin knows better now.

My bport builder was frozen once by Dentin. Early in 2001, I was at Joliet Junior College's computer lab with my brother and Pinky. We were all students there. We met in order to mud together, and Pinky was showing me some pictures of her and her friend, Sadie/Sunday. Sadie was Pinky's friend from judo class back when she lived in Oklahoma who also played on the mud for while. I was commenting on her photos via imm channel and told her how fat I thought she and Sadie were. When Dentin saw that, he thought I was acting out of character and that my builder may have been compromised, so he froze me. It wasn't for long, because no sooner had he done so, Draak and Schlyne explained to Dentin that I really was me, and he thawed me. It was an unfortunate misunderstanding. Dentin and the other gods figured that my comments were grossly insensitive, but what was actually happening was me experiencing culture shock. I had very recently returned from living in Venezuela, and Venezuelans are much less sensitive about body weight jokes than people in the United States.

Dentin quotes are spread out throughout this entire article, but here's a few miscellaneous ones:

Gdentin says, 'Islaine is like a smart version of Ranko'

Dentin tells you, 'you are broken'
(Heh, that was the time my skill table got screwed up, as explained at the end of this article.)

[ CREATOR ] Dentin kills goddesses and hits on mobs

Gisco gossips, 'the truth is like an elephant'
Dentin gossips, 'it's big and gray and can squash you flat'

I first met Dennis and Amy irl in 1998. They were making a cross-country trip and were stopping to see Tom (Dowart), who lived in Peoria. So, Scott and I drove two hours down to see them. We arrived early at the rendezvous point: Dowart's high school (he was a sophomore at the time). Even though it was summer, the school was bustling with activity. I saw they had a barbeque outside full of ashes; they must had been cooking food. I was pretty hungry so, I decided to infiltrate. Scott was too chicken to come with me. I walked in like I owned the place and came to find out it was a party for the drama club, who had been rehearsing a play. After bluffing my way past a couple of teachers, I loaded up two plates of food and brought them out to the car. Scott was too chicken to eat the plate that I made for him, so I ate that, too.

Dowart replies to you, 'that day you stole all that food was hilarious'

They showed up not longer afterward. We hung out and got pizza and talked about the mud. It was pretty rockin'. Dowart had to run home early. Anyway, Dentin gave Scott and I a priceless treasure: a grid map of the labyrinth, with every single room and portal labeled. I let Scott keep it; he promised me he would make me a copy. He never did.

Back when she was Dentin's girl, Wyvren was pretty cool to hang out with. I even played on Banished Lands for while, back she actually maintained it and it didn't completely suck. (I had two characters on BL: Antidentin and Ironfist. Antidentin's name particularly amused her.) Since she and Dentin broke up, though, Wyvren has gotten progressively weirder and weirder. I remember this one time when she set every room on the mud to Void's ownership number. It wasn't long afterward that her god was archived. Still, Amy lingers on as her mortal, Prism, noisely cyberstalking her ex-boyfriend until the end of times.

Anyway, here's some Wyvren quotes:

Wyvren tells the group, 'I think Dentin is growing a garden in his car'

**Wyvren: gawd I'm thirsty
You give Wyvren a can of creme soda.
Wyvren tells you, 'hey thanks'
Wyvren tells you, 'wait a minute, how did you do that?'
You reply to Wyvren, 'at wyvren give can wyvren'
Wyvren replies to you, 'since when did you become a mport god'
You reply to Wyvren, 'since about five years ago'

[doom] Prism: I'm about to become a Prism of Fear in about ten seconds

The old gods always told me what a nice guy Kenai was irl. Too bad I never really got to see that side of him. He was foul-mouthed jerk with a chip on his shoulder the size of Alaska as far as I could tell. He killed Darklord using his god at least twice -- once while puppeting Thantos and another time by dropping the Greater Pit Fiend on me while I was asleep, preceded by:

Kenai tells you, 'hold still this won't hurt a bit'

He did transfer me into his inventory once for a party, so I guess he wasn't all bad; however, it isn't hard to imagine why Dentin ended up having to put him down. His terrible attitude and flagarant abuse of god power just got out of hand.

One more story about Kenai: one early Saturday morning, Gisco was in Unholy sorting equipment, and this happened:

Kenai gossips, 'nothing but bots on'
You gossip, '?'
Kenai says, 'hi'
You say, 'hi'
Kenai says, 'kill thantos'
You say, 'I don't think I can'
Kenai says, 'sure you can'
You are surrounded by a strong force field.
Your form shifts slightly, then separates from where your body actually is.
You feel someone watching over you.
Your skin turns to a stone like substance.
You are protected by a magical film of ice.
You are surrounded by a white aura.
You get a rune-etched black knife from an anti-time distortion.
You wield a rune-etched black knife and prepare for battle.
You place a rune-etched black knife in the back of Thantos the Executioner, resulting in lots of blood.
Your blood freezes as you hear Thantos the Executioner's death cry!
Thantos the Executioner is DEAD!

Gisco thinks he set Thantos to 1 hit point. Heh.

Here's a story about my first encounter with the gods. I was helping a new player find Trinsic, kind of speedwalking through the forest north of the town. While on our way there, there was a system send announcing an impending reboot. I decided to try and finish up showing guy how to get there so he could get on his own after the boot, but, lo and behold, we passed Dentin and Vember a couple rooms north of town. I actually walked past them and backtracked to see what they were doing.

Dentin says, 'hi'
You say, 'um, you're not going to smite me, right?'
Vember says, 'nah'
Dentin says, 'you ought to recall so we can reboot'
You say, 'ok'

I never was sure what they were doing out there. Anyway, here's another cute quote from Vember:

Vember says, 'it's nice to have an intellignet conversation about root beer once in a while'

Vember was a funny, silly goddess who brought unbridled joy to the mud for many years. She was a patient teacher on bport and helped me to learn how to map out areas. She was always so proud to know what kappa (the mobs north of Daigaku-Tatami) were. Apparently, she learned the word from the third Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle move (the one where they go back in time).

Eventually her attitude soured. After she broke up with Talos and her father died, she was never quite the same. I remember this one time, back when she pretty much ran bport because no one else would, presumably. Vember decreed that builders were no longer allowed to disconnect and idle, because they didn't send a logon/logoff notify and it was an usurpation of her authority somehow. I was one of the people who had grown accustomed to doing this, and, around Christmastime of 2003, she caught me idling and discoed on bport, and, as punishment, changed my password. I didn't get my builder back until a week later, first approaching her on bport via Sephiroth (the fact that I had access to another builder infuriated her) then bringing the issue to Dentin's attention. After getting the password changed to what I wanted, she took it upon herself to change it again, stating that the password I had chosen was too simple. She just sort of faded away after that.

Heart was one of the first gods to take an interest in me building. He showed me a trick or two on bport, and I used to run with him playing as Gollum. We got to be so friendly that he gave a clan kindred key as a gift. (I later gave the key to Kralen because he lost his.) Unfortunately, as time marched on and the ranks of deities thinned, he turned into a troll. I remember when we were building Natchsburg, we had a war unicorn. It was going to be part of a quest to return it back to the Elwood, but at that time we hadn't made the quest yet. Heart came through to inspect the area, and when he saw the war unicorn, he freaked out. He deleted the mob. Then, he got on the god board and posted rants about how unicorns were awesome and how Draak and I were ruining the game. (This became the unicorn quest in West Naginag later.)

It sort of a surreal experience watching him essentially be destroyed by Samon. In 2007, he was at the height of his power. He was the second highest-level god. He was the most worshipped deity and had the most god power, and yet, he could not stand being verbally challenged by Samon. It got to the point where he was crying foul on the god board and demanding Samon be punished. (Samon actually was silenced by Heart several times, and Draak repeatedly unsilenced him.) But, Samon would not back down and continued to call Heart out on his foolishness and abuse of power (or as Samon put it, "Kenai-like" behavior). Heart finally resorted to illegally pkilling Samon and his supporters, thus cementing his complete and utter downfall. Dentin archived him.

Strangely enough, Heart has returned under the nomme de plume of Scribe. He rewrote the Stone Giant Invasion area and released it last December; whether he is here to stay, however, remains yet to be seen. Many a god now has come back claiming to be reformed and ready to work for the betterment of the game only to fall short of the task. Vember, Grimflame, Leah, and Shrew come to mind.

It is too bad none of the other original immortals are working on the game presently, but I suppose that Dentin had to cope with the awful realization that his buddies from college probably weren't the best people to be administrating the game. They just didn't share his vision, and they thought they were entitled to everything, but things were different for me. I didn't start out with a god; I had to earn one through merit and perseverance. I had released a dozen areas, more than any one other god at that time save Dentin, before I got on mport as a god. It seemed like the the old gods pretty much had their own clan kindred clique and didn't want some upstart Lawful Evil gods upsetting them.

When Taran was being considered for a main port god, I remembered what it was like for me being on the outside looking in, and I empathized with him. Sure, he had some attitude, but the old gods probably thought that I had an attitude, too. I figured that he was an experienced player who could contribute a lot to the game. As a matter of fact, I took a break from own projects to help Taran finish his swamp dwarves area in the summer of 2009. I was hoping he might want to build an area with me when he was done. Only after his area was implemented, I came to discover that he had been slandering me behind my back the whole time. I tried to help him, and he rewarded my generosity by being a total jerkwad. Then he crossed Dentin, so now he's on ice. Oh, and Taran followers, take the hint: he is never, ever coming back. Ever. Enjoy your twinked-out holy weapons while you can.

Byung is a popular goddess despite hardly ever playing anymore. Unfortunately, her eyesight and general health are declining despite her being about my age. For those who do know her, we find her bubbly personality to be intoxicating. "Byung" is actually her real life middle name. She is all into vampires and whatnot (I hate that junk). She and Darksoul were an item for an awful long time, but surprisingly she ended up marrying Doa of all people. That didn't last, though.

Byung gossips, 'people are like jellybeans, they may be different colors on the outside but everyone is sweet and gooey on the inside'

When asked why she is so popular, one of her followers has this to say:

[blood] Lokar: Byung is a weapon of mass seduction

Sauron is the only player iirc that has had a two-line ground string. I remember when he still ran xp. He got up to 30/30/30/23 and stayed there. Later, he got a god called Tempus and was the only god in clan dragon for the longest time, as opposed to the many clan kindred gods. He built Hartmur and the Si'nari Valley, and for their time they were pretty awesome areas.

Evilavatar tells the clan, 'back when I was a newbie, the only area I knew how to get to was the orc village'
Evilavatar tells the clan, 'this char had a good alignment until I discovered the fishing village north of Ralnoth'
Evilavatar tells the clan, 'heh, people kept making fun of my name because of the alignment/name mismatch'
Evilavatar tells the clan, 'Sauron called me Holyavatar'

You say, 'remember when you used to run exp? for fun?'
Sauron says, 'yeah'
Sauron says, 'now I'm waiting for the age inducded hp regen to kill me for fun'

Ashton accomplished what Sauron did not: become the first quad-30 player. He had a cool ground string "Ashton the furnace cleaner stands here covered in ashes."

[30 30 30 30] Ashton will bite your ear off -K-

Kralen was one of several players from Cornwall, NY. He was my bro, my friend, my confidant. The kind of guy you could tell anything. We'd talk about everything from the newest Xanth novels to current events to girls. He had a slew of multis...so many that I couldn't possibly remember them all, but I'll try a few. The twins: Sapphire and Ruby, Crayon, and Iam, his Lawful Evil multi. I'm not sure how it got started, but people liked to call him a kender (presumably because his primary was thief). Here's some krazy kralen quotes in no particular order:

Kralen systems: so basically what you're telling me is that Pinky is the "cute asian girl" type?
You system: well, reality can't possibly be as good as yer fantasies
(heh we used system to talk on bport)

Kralen tells you, 'hymn books should be worn on head'

Gerard gossips, 'I found a Leprechaun on the Southern Road, where'd it come from?'
Gerard gossips, 'ugh it killed me'
Crab gossips, 'we have lerpechauns?'
Sapphire gossips, 'not until recently'
Sapphire gossips, 'you see, a pixie and a halfing loved each other very much and. . .they made a babies'
Sapphire gossips, 'and those babies made babies and so on until we have leprechauns as we know them'
Crab gossips, 'so leprechauns are the incestuous illegitimate offspring of fairies and hobbits?'
Gerard gossips, 'those bastards'

You say, 'here's another typo'
Kralen says, 'who is the greater fool: he who utters folly or he who wastes time trying to correct the former?'
You say, 'this is why we don't build together'

Kralen says, 'pizza is the perfect food, it has all four food groups appetizingly rolled up into one delicious bundle'

You tell the group, 'oh i spilled hawaiian punch all over my desk'
Kralen tells the group, 'I feel bad for you going through all that'
You tell the group, 'i needed to save yer corpse from the aztecs'
Kralen tells the group, 'you'll want to soak your pants because khaki stains easily'
You tell the group, 'i'll see if my boss will let me walk home and get a fresh pair of pants'
You tell the group, 'hold'
Kralen tells the group, 'yes?'
You tell the group, 'HOW DID YOU KNOW I WAS WEARING KHAKI!?'

Iam says, 'Luke'
Iam your father, Luke.

Crayon says, 'more innuendo, please'

Gismo gossips, '1 day I will rule all of caanada'
Kralen gossips, 'just as soon as he learns how to spell it'

Chia tells the group, 'are you going to the volleyball game, kenderpoo?'
Kralen tells the group, 'no, there's something about watching a bunch of prepubescent girls playing with balls that doesn't quite sit right with me'
Kralen tells the group, 'that came out dirtier then I intended it to'

Kralen tells the group, 'I've never seen the color of her panties'
(heh, he's referring to the title of a book)

Iam tells the group, 'slumber party is a bit of misnomer'
Iam tells the group, 'there really isn't any slumbering going on'
Iam tells the group, 'girls just stay up all night having pillow fights and trying to steal each others panties'
Izakari tells the group, 'is that really what you think we do?'
Iam tells the group, 'well yes, that's what I THINK that you do'

Kralen says, 'so the gypsies came by again'
Kralen says, 'they wanted to paint my old treehouse'
You say, 'hold, the one that fell on you when you were a kid?'
Kralen says, 'oh I rebuilt it'
Kralen says, 'duct tape, man, duct tape'
Kralen says, 'they were pretty crummy gypsies though'
Kralen says, 'they didn't even offer to fix our pots and pans'
You say, 'You gain knowledge of stereotyping!'

Kralen says, 'oh man, this one time I made a lawn chair out of duct tape'
Kralen says, 'I saw it on the Red Green show'
You say, 'did it actually work?'
Kralen says, 'yeah, it actually did, until the first time it rained'
You say, 'the rain ruined the tape?'
Kralen says, 'no, dude'
Kralen says, 'the ducttape got really tight when it dried out'
Kralen says, 'bent the metal frame'

Chia utters the words, 'faerie fire'
Chia is surrounded by a happy pink fuzz.
Chia tells the group, 'so why doesn't the happy pink fuzz actually make me happy?'
Kralen tells the group, 'the crappier armor class makes your enemies happy, not you, silly'

And a link to board 10 about duct tape.

I last saw him in 2001 or 2002 when he came to visit EvilMasterRob. He and Byung watched me SAVE THE UNIVERSE. (Actually, they stayed up all night watching me play Dynasty Warriors 2 all the way through with Zhang Jiao, which is ridicuously hard.) I never heard from him again.

I remember when Ashor was Jason, and Jason was Gamlin. Once upon a time, Gamlin was really cool. He ran a clan called smiley face, and I had a key to their clan area until Dentin made the clan changes last year and it disappeared. I actually had a few clan keys as keepsakes that also disappeared. I had a red knights, falconhand, turtleheads and wolfpack key, and, my personal favorite, a clan deltan key called 'a tricordor'. Their Star Trek-themed clan area was the best.

Btw, if you ever need a good reminder of what Gamlin is, or you just need a good laugh, try the MAGE board. I remember when Ghoul was Vivi, when Vivi was Rydia, and Rydia was a high school-aged girl. S/he was also a shameless flirt. Also, this.

I remember when Cu Chulainn was Calina, and he was a she. I still slip sometimes and call him Calina. Old habits are hard to break.

Sailor/Ranko was an infamous character of times past who liked to find and exploit game bugs big time.

You say, 'you don't think a middle-aged asian male masquerading as a dozen adolescent white females is a bit weird?'
Ranko says, 'it's multitasking at its finest'

Sailor says, 'Darklord tells you, 'so which sailor scout are you impersonating today?''

Such was his infamy that a social was invented in honor of his memory. I can tell the story behind a few of the lines.

I was present when Ranko made his corpse negative weight once. We had just killed the Beast and were trying to figure out how to get its plasma cannon, which has an absurdly high weight. What we ended up doing was running a whole of bunch of worm's hungers (negative 100 weight) and giving them to the Beast to bring his weight down very low but not negative. After killing him in that state, his corpse could then be picked up. Ranko put on some plus size eq, picked it up and then picked me up, and I emptied the corpse in his inventory. Ranko now had a plasma cannon, which was level 35 and required 50 strength to use; however, it gave his an idea to get another piece of equipment that he had wanted (I can't remember what it was), so he looted all of the worm's hungers out of the Beast's corpse, giving him stupidly low negative weight. The plan was for his to wait in a room with a scavenger mob and wait to be picked up while I fought it. It was something pretty powerful, because, whatever it was, it killed us both fairly quickly. We went back to get the corpses, and mine was there (in the mob's inventory) but not his. Needless to say, since this was still the era when players left behind all of their equipment upon dying, he was livid.

A stylized recounting of titanium duping can be found here.

Ranko had a clan called "bishoujo senshi" ("pretty warrior" in Japanese), and he had a lot of players in it at one point. He even tried to get me to not only join his clan but merge Lawful Evil with his and bring everyone with me. He offered me insane amounts of gold, but I rejected him.

Ruin was dead, but now he's not. Allegedly. I'm still not sure what's going on there. Ruin was pretty cool back in the day, though, and I've got some old quotes from him in my logs:

Tarrant tells the group, 'I'll give you 10k if you go ppk right now'
Twilight tells the group, 'I'm not so sure about that'
Ruin tells the group, 'I'll give you 20k'
Twilight tells the group, 'I don't think so, it's a big decision'
You tell the group, 'i'll give you a cookie'
Twilight tells the group, 'now you're talking!'

Funk says, 'Am I retarded or am I just talking to myself?'
Ruin says, 'c) All of the above'

Ruin gossips, 'Hey Dentin, can my fight string be (killer)Ruin?'
You tell the group, 'did it work?'
(idiot)Ruin tells the group, 'hehe'
You gossip, 'there's an idiot flag, too, dentin'
(idiot)Ruin tells the group, 'Now don't give him any ideas'

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Gar/Funk. He wasn't the greatest mudder, but he was a funny guy and the perfect foil for Ruin. You might notice a god item that Draak and I wear named after him: the Spork of the Gar. (It gives us level maximum cast level.)

Riona/Eilonwy has been a good friend. I got to first meet her irl back in 2000. She was living in the St. Louis area, so I was going to sleep at her house on my way back to Illionis for Christmas. The weather was terrible, though, and I drove about 20 hours at a snail's pace through a blizzard to get there. It was so bad that most of the exits were closed on the way there so I couldn't even stop to rest. I've seen her a couple times since then, but she's mostly stopped visiting the mud because she's busy playing World of Warcraft with her husband.

I'm a big fan of Locane. I love how ethusiatic he is about everything he does. He just cracks me up, and I respect his coding abilities. Here's a funny quote from when we were running Olympus one time:

Males aren't allowed in there.
Locane utters the words, 'identify'
Locane says, 'you're male'
You say, 'i see you have a firm grasp of the blatantly obvious :P'

I remember this one time, long before he was a god, we were on bport together, trying to crash the mud. (That was a popular pastime for bport builders.) Eventually we tried using to chain charm and possess, and, with some trial and error, stumbled upon the right combination that let you permanently control a mob after all of the spells wore off, prompting this quote:

Dentin says, 'as if being a mob wasn't funny enough'
Dentin says, 'I've perma-possessed a mob named 'Dentin''


We reported it to Dentin, and he fixed it soon thereafter. Later, we found another bug where you could chain possession twice, dispel the player and then the second possessed mob, leaving you in control of the first possessed mob. It took Dentin years to fix that bug. One time, I managed to do it with Thantos! I possessed Thantos, and then I quickly ran down and possessed the knight templar with Thantos and had Pinky dispel me and...

Thantos the Executioner says, 'no you really don't understand'
Thantos the Executioner says, 'i _am_ thantos!'


So, what did I do while I was Thantos? Killed stuff, of course! I've still got Goldmoon's staff, a philosopher's stone and some other random junk from killing everybody's priest.

I remember this other time I managed to perma-possess Rialt. I decided to execute a little vigilante justice against a particular evil-doer...

Dentin replies to you, 'possessing a mob, using parsed attacks against a player and leveling it for the sole purpose of being able to cast fireweb at aforementioned player'
Dentin replies to you, 'were it anyone but gamlin, you'd be frozen'

Teehee.