ELABORATED HISTORY OF KYAN MEHWULFE

The First Days of Tristram

I started as a lone hunter in Diablo. Soon after I started a clan called the Zwolfekuten Cadre, a bounty hunters guild, with another hunter whos name I can't remember exactly, I believe it was Vincent. The clan itself never lasted long at all. We had a few apprenctices, few members, but it was a very new and casual thing to everyone it seemed. A couple joined other clans like changing television channels, some used cheat programs without any care. The general theme behind the Zwolfekuten Cadre stayed with me into the years though and is applied even today to my idea of the outpost Huntusk.

The Kha'khan

After Diablo my next serious online game was Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. For a long time my online interest revolved around www.ageofkings.net, Heaven Gaming's AOE2 site, and specifically their gameplay and history boards. Not yet attached to my persona of Kyan Mehwulfe, I took on the suiting name Kushik Khan to match my prefered civilization, the Mongols. I spent many months in this community and on The Zone and established a couple massive strategy discussion topics on Mongol strategy and myself as a top Mongol gamer online.

The Rogue

With the approach of Diablo II, I returned to the name Kyan Mehwulfe for good, unknown to me at the same. The game itself was a far way away and I anticipated the game on the official boards as well as the DiabloII.net boards. My first concern was finding myself into a group of likeminded gamers and thus after a few turns of events, I found myself frequenting the Inferno board, a player-killer clan of Diablo I notoriety in Tristram and on Blizzard's Ogden's Tavern forum (I've heard someone from Blizzard once joked about renaming it to Inferno's Tavern). My second concern was prospering. I set out to create a number of fake moles and establish them all in actice guilds anticipating Diablo II. Why? Guild Halls were still planned and I had no qualms about emptying the vaults of guilds foolish enough to give me access based on pre-game interaction. I don't consider myself a grief player or a cheater but I hold no reservation of doing what I can to increase my own strength and wealth. What I'll do varies from game to game, I won't sacrifice my reputuation for minor gain, nor will I sacrifice large wealth of a faction mate for minor gain on my own part. But at the core, I am my own concern and if it's all gain and no loss in any manner, reputation or faction included, I don't hestitate.

Few months into the process I came across Inferno. Though I still had my targets set on them as with various other clans, I had thourough interest in them as a group too. After interacting with various members on forums as myself, not a mole, I started to frequent their forum a little and become friends with their member Kao. By then having stopped playing AOE2 completely, I was messing around with a bit of Diablo, as were some of those members. One game I entered with Kao and two other Inferno members were in there, their leader Peg Leg Boy and someone else. Peg Leg showed off an ear he had taken from the head of a known friendly clan on the boards, ALE. A couple days later, I mentioned the ear randomly on their board. Soon after, I was banned from their boards. Peg Leg had only remember one other person who showed the ear too besides his clanmates, a new applicant by another name he was already suspicious of. Having seen me mention it, he took no risks and had my IP banned. On top of that, in hindsight being my error, info on my mole operations into another clan (ICE) that was quite extensive (was appointed Lore Master after two months) were revealed on their board by an Inferno member named Prefontaine. ICE soon found out and within a week my relation with two guilds was ruined. Though the matter was soon moot with the cancelation of the Guild Hall features, it was a lesson hard learned and the topic of trust is something I've taken much more serious of the years. Live and learn.

Within a week the whole deal with Inferno was cleared up and until the Diablo II stress test beta started, I simply frequented their boards. Once that phase of beta started, most of us all had accounts within a week. We established a small group of killers that hung out in channel Hostile. Inferno members like Peg Leg and Kao, new friends like Fortuna/Kilese, Warriv, eA, Gurgi, and Foof. Most of the stress test we spent time gaining notoriety for killing the top ladder characters with characters of our own that were much lower level but far effective design templates, or stealing items. We weren't cheaters but there wasn't anything unlegit about exploiting the trust of other people, the weakness of their greed, and intended game features. From simply tricking people into letting us loot their equipment when offering to teach them to "dupe" or exploding corpses, we considered ourselves the first real thieves of the Rogue Encampment and were through experience the top duelers in beta. Often we were called cheaters though for very few people understood how item bursting worked in D2 yet or how attributes and stats worked and how mid teen barbarian could have over 400 health.

The Thief

Come release I played on USWest server. Most of Inferno was inactive in beta and that held true into release and most games over the years. Some may of played the game casually or by themselves but only a few of us played together at release. Most notably was Supernaut, gamer who eventually became one of my better friends online, and Gurgi. Peg Leg also played for a fair while too. We also met Thon. The group of us made a number of excellent characters. First and foremost is when Thon and I invented what we termed "teletrading". Unknown to us, some were using it to follow other players in Hell mode and steal their items, close friend Fortuna included, but our approach was unique. Nearing sunset after a long night of playing, teleporting in town dawned on us. I can't remember why, it was a useless though whatever it was, but it spawned the idea of checking out Telekinesis in town. It worked. So we both set out that early morning with the goal of stealing items with Telekinesis in town. Few hours later, we literally had a couple hundred dollars of real currency worth of uniques. Thon never pursued teletrading much but I kept at it for weeks until it no longer tricked anyone.

My standard approach was to look trade channels for highly desired uniques like Ume's Lament, Iceblink, Stone of Jordan, and more. Back at launch, these were some of the top items. I'd meet in a game with my prey and let my faked charisma do the rest, convincing them to see things my way. Simply put, I'd convince them to put the item on the ground and I'd steal it with telekinesis. Convincing them to do that when I could technically pick it up myself was hard and often failed, but not always. Common support was that I had seen a unique wand drop in game and someone picked it up before I could. I never got the chance to read the name text, just see the gold text. I did however see the want hand a blueish tint on it's model when laying on the ground. I'd try to convince them I wanted that bluish wand, as it was the first I ever had drop for me. With a strong offering of items for trade, often Stones of Jorden, sometimes even layed on the ground beside me, I'd eventually get some of them to put their item on the ground. Usually with a barrier between us like a campfire to force me to go around something, giving them more time to pick the item up. Basically to make them feel safer. Soon as the item hit the ground though, it was in my inventory. They never knew what happened, a "useless" low level skill like telekinesis never dawned on many people. And thus for much of that summer, I stole vault after vault worth of some of the best items on the USWest server.

It never lasted forever, people naturally got smarter, and while my sorceress was very rich, the time invested into her lifestyle hindred her leveling. I grew bored with her though and having quite a lot of success with coming up with great PvP templates thus far into D2 beta and launch, Supernaut and I decided to create a new template, one that would eventually become very well known: the Hammerdin, Bless Hammer Paladin. Based on our brainstorming and testing, and his leveling, our Hammerdin Malignicron become a very successful dueler. Later my own version of Malignicron on USEast Hardcore proved no less successful.

The Murderer

In between the two I ventured over to USEast to join old friend Fortuna on his server but I veered into Hardcore mode. Very few were playing it yet and the highest level was only in his 50s I believe at the time. Permadeath was too tempting. My first character choice was obvious, a barbarian. Whirlwind was not yet popular, most everyone went after the abilities that looked best on paper, highest damage bonuses, etc. Few of us knew better though and my barbarian was a highly successful player kill. Soon after I created my two beloved Paladin templates. Many of these were made over the months as death was inevitable. Always the same skills and items though. My Lv17 Chargedin with Might and a Bonesnap maul, or my Lv27 with a Pike. Iceblink armor always, Khalim's Will for very fast leveling. Killed hundreds of other gamers with those two templates. I distinctly remember one Sunday in fact where I killed 43 in one long day. Few of us gained quite the reputation for killing ladder characters. A caster twice our level could still be killed quite fast with a massive strength two-handed Paladin using Charge. And back then in D2, there were no Lv90s in Hardcore mode yet. Very few Lv80s at that even. So when a Lv60 and Lv70 was killed but someone in his Lv20s or Lv30s, people took notice. Countless other conflicts with clans like JFA or other duelers sprang forth regularly but we slaughtered most who opposed us.

That winter a number of D2 bugs were fixed, including suffixes on bows, so I joined Fortuna back on the regular USEast server. Our amazons slaughtered our way through duels, his being one of the first to wear speed gear and my own being a rare template of pure dexterity, and being the only archer around with over 500 of the stat. We casually played D2 for much of the year while anticipating Shadowbane. With Summer came the Diablo II expansion pack and we both hit the ladder hard. Our leveling team revolved around Fortuna's assassin Natalya using traps and corpse explosion, my own or Foof's Firewall sorceress, and Lyzic's "Shaman" barbarian concentrating solely on shouts. With our unique team, for the time, we were only also one of the very first groups doing Cow runs. Literally only a few other people were doing them, even the other top ladder characters were still just doing Act 5. Fortuna's assassin Natalya was competiting mainly with one other assassin for "first in the world to Lv99", a character we assumed was being played by multiple people named of_Matriarch. This character was also doing most just Act 5 for most of the race and through knowledge and execution, not playtime, Natalya reached Lv99 first. Soon after we all grew bored of D2 LOD though and I left to play Anarchy Online.

Organizing an Army

During that year I played Diablo II, though I never played with most Inferno, I still frequented the board. I would for a time to come to and still consider it my original gaming home. Shadowbane took our interest, as it did for a lot of gamers. With Peg Leg and Supernaut, the three of us formed the Hostile Network, spawned of our old D2 channel "Hostile". It was designed as a hub for player killers. A clan known as The Wolfpack, whom many will later come to know as The DarkWolves, had joined the network. I had known GiantKiller since early Diablo II and also became friends with DarkWalker and DarkKnight. Perhaps their most infamous member, Narnar, was originally someone who started to hang around us (Inferno) in the D2 beta. We had a fairly good group of gamers and were aiming well for Shadowbane. We needed a game to play though and Peg Leg suggested Dark Age of Camelot. We were actually a topic of discussion presented by Mark Jacobs himself, "Should the Hostile Network be allowed in beta?". That topic is actually when I created my Vault Network account to reply. Into the spring we had a few members testing the game and by the summer we had a handful. Few of us opted to play another game for the summer though, including myself, which was Anarchy Online. For most of the summer, my agent played the game as did Supernaut, Free, and Lyzic.

Sniper of Omni-Tek

We all played seperately though with our varying schedules and my agent leveled much faster than everyone elses characters. Though he was not a top-curve character, he was among the gap of characters below that. There were a handful of beta testers who exploited bugs for gain experience very fast. So as an example, when a bunch of us were all playing constantly and were Lv70, there were a handful of exploiters all around Lv110-120. The exploiting was one reason I eventually quit, as it's disheartening to invest a ton of time leveling legitly, only to have someone progress much faster through an exploit, and having nothing done against them. None the less, my agent did very well. Notably I thouroughly enjoyed rough housing the hippies of Baboon's Nightclub. A popular roleplaying spot, and being an avid roleplayer in AO myself, my Omni-pol sniper would regularly visit and lecture the bums on their lack of contribution to society, and terrorist Clanner friends. When they'd give lip, I'd kill the NPC bartenders they loved (the ability to do that was removed two weeks later). Damon "Kyan" Vallegos also had a younger brother, an engineer aptly named Sid Vallegos (took forever to get that random FF reference), who'd roleplay an apprentice and 'call' his older brother when the hippes thought they were tough. There were many events hosted by FunCom, which I wish more developers would do. One specifically that comes to mind was a Clanner raid on Two-Holes. A number of GMs were there, all Neutral. For some reason or another, one mistakingly was a Clanner too. So a group of us, Lv80-150, got together and killed her. The uproar from Clanners and the GMs themselves was around the server and a few message boards for the following week. As said above though, the game took it's toll on me and early that autumn, I quit and set my sights on Dark Age of Camelot.

Odin's Lance, Bane of Sauvage

Now I had my eyes watching the game since Spring, as our group of gamers were involved in the beta process. They did quite well too. The DarkWolves as they're known now have atleast one journal from the beta which tells of an interesting story. Beta is where we made a few new friends too, among them a new member to the Hostile Network and one of the best skalds on Merlin at release, Thrain, and another good friend to some of our members, Plow or McBain of PRX. There was already some strife between the Inferno and DarkWolf members of Hostile Network from beta, based on some things I won't say and some issues with clan tags in beta.

None the less, we all hit Merlin at launch as members of Hostile Network. We did quite well during the first few weeks. During the third week of Dark Age of Camelot on Merlin at release, I was Lv29 at the time, Lv31 by the, spent solid five days simply living in Forest Sauvage. Highest on our server were around Lv36 I think. However, never saw my first yellow-con Albion until late that week. Most were grey-con, with a few green the odd blue cons. Many of them died. In general I just loved the atmosphere of not only raiding an unexplored and dangerous enemy territory, but being one of the very first to do it. I still remember specific battles too. Sitting behind one tree below that first road bend and watching two solid groups of grey cons fighting treants. Can only imagine their suprise when for the first time, they met someone from Midgard, and were greeted by 12 massive flaming sprears impaling them from the sky. God I wish I had an Albion bot to record the death spam and their reaction back around the realm. Another fight I remember had me being chased by a group of green Albions, all decorated in bright colors with their torches left on. My kobold in dark grey (black was too expensive!) cloth eluded them for about half an hour, and I slowly picked up most of the group. Here and there, a straggler would seperate and I'd quickly drop him with a runemaster bolt. Was a ton of fun, the atmosphere was pretty killer and sneaking around that region was a ton of fun. Used to say something a lot, the sneakiest DAOC characters weren't rogues and hunters with invisibily prancing through open Emain, but lone and fragile mages covered in greens and blacks, darting between trees.

Soon after some of us joined PRX and Conquest to capture the first Keep ever and later the first succesful (up until the bugged relic) Relic keep raid. That experience was very memorable, capturing my first dynamic PvP world object before. We layed seiged to the keep and it was now ours. I spent the entire night solo outside of that keep solo'ing pigs for crap XP, but I had a blast. I was totally immersed into the game. Patrolling the region around our recently captured keep, scouting the roads ahead, keeping the fields near by safe of hostile animals. The night was lost in dreams of patrol caravans coming from the portal keep, hiring new NPCs, building seige on the walls, and much more.

Our group though, the Hostile Network slowly died off. The DarkWolves disbanded and gave their own guild it's own tag in game. Peg Leg quit the game out of disinterest since getting a group as a Runemaster for both us basically came down to one of our friends in another guild giving us a shout. Most other Inferno never played and the few others like Supernaut, Thon, and Gurgi all tagged under the DarkWolves. Though it had pretty much started to happen far sooner, Thon and Narnar also joined the DarkWolves. Some Inferno played with the DarkWolves a bit over the next year, some stayed with them. I myself quit Dark Age of Camelot before snow hit the ground that year end, sadly mainly for technical reasons relating to my sole ISP, going link dead, and pathetic packet loss. While it was not the final time I played with a handful of my old Inferno friends, the end of the Hostile Network in Dark Age of Camelot was also the beginning of the end of my time spent part of Inferno. Since then, Inferno and the DarkWolves, along with other groups and friends from back in Diablo and Ultima Online, have been had conflict on and off, but I consider myself neutral to both parts. I don't blame the DarkWolves one bit for leaving the Hostile Network. In fact, while how we game is somewhat different now, I still consider GiantKiller and DarkWalker to be old friends that I'd trust in a hostile situaton and regardless of vast majority of mmorgamers think they know about them, they're damn good gamers. Likewise with Inferno, I don't really keep in touch but I talk with a few old friends now and again and would never deny that Inferno was once my home.

TO BE CONTINUED (Battle Realms, giving DAOC a few more chances, WC3X beta and hype for WoW, SWG, FFXI, and WoW beta

NOTE: That's it for now. I will continue to add more history eventually, though it may be a while or may be a few days, when I feel like it. This burst of page updates came at a whim so I make no predictions.