This was not of course the VAX on which MUD ran, but the ancient machine by which I first connected.
For some reason I was reading newsgroups about muds in general and I came across an advert for a mud called Mud 2 left by the Archwiz Dextrous. He sold it as a free beta test of the update of the very first mud ever.
This ran on Almac which was based in Scotland, though despite this it was pretty laggy.
The beginning was a confusing and marvellous time of Free mud. The world was very empty but there were characters who left their marks on my memory.
Firstly there was Dextrous the Archwizard. He rose through a black whirlpool in the floor and departed the same way. This was mightily impressive! He was a fearsome wiz who delighted in threatening to fod anything that moved.
Then there was Harvey the jolly wizard, who in demonstrating the power of the pillar accidentally boosted me several times leaving me feeling immortal for the rest of the reset. I constantly harrassed him with questions about the secrets of the land to which he made noncommital and misleading replies in turn to my amused frustration. He was very patient and friendly.
I learnt much about the hidden side of the land from one Belgarath. My equal in ignorance was Thom with whom I realised the use a chalice might be put to. My pride in working out a secret all by myself!
In the beginning I used many names. Cloud, Storm, Wednesday, Luke, Lancelot, Catriona, Dragoon, Ash. But a player who has many names is one who dies often and is not remembered. When I lost a necromancer I decided never to die again and CAT was born- and promptly died a few times, but the name was mine and I kept it.
The land then was a place of discovery and delight, when suddenly a dark cloud filled our hearts. A new player called Ug appeared. His pleasure was to kill the Ogre for its club, shout the word UG and then attack anyone he could reach...I fled him so many times...
A less powerful but maybe more annoying player was called IGGY. He would attack at the most inconvenient times with a hero waving the tomahawk around his head and yelling 'IGGY IGGY IGGY!!!'
In the light of all this evil Dextrous the Archwizard set up a board for those good and true players who swore themselves to fight together against killers whenever they found them. This band was called AKPL The Anti-Killer Protection League, and it soon swelled to contain many players...the board was a secret one and so the membership was supposed to be.
But we were infiltrated! Possibly from the very start. A killer called Angelique learned of the AKPL and tried to gain admittance. I blackballed her membership and she later quoted my words against me. We questioned everyone but to no avail. Voices raised dark suspicions against the wizards, but they could not possibly be true.
Happily I later killed her Lady though her death was not to last:)
Then one day I came back from a holiday to find that mud was no more. I telephoned Almac who said Dextrous and Harvey had disappeared and that they had no idea where they were. Mud had gone and I thought it was lost forever.