INTRO
My very first experience of the internet (lucky for me!) was of playing Meat-Mud! I stumbled upon it via Turbogopher during an extremely crappy computer class that I had to sit out in my first year of university, 1994. People on Meat always were just great friendly people, and extremely helpful. This was when and where I learned all about netspeak and netiquette.
As for my playing skills, I was a great navigator, and great at teaching the basics to other new players. But I sucked at developing my own character, and had no concept of stuff like what equipment to wear, or anything like that. Dozens of players I helped as newbies soared past me in a matter of weeks. The mud was single-class with hero at level 51 then, and I probably came to a rest in my 30s, and stopped playing maybe halfway through 1994.
Now cut to 1997. I had the internet at home. I chased up Meat-MUD anew, made this wonderful friend on there in the first few days named Glesin, and then with her haphazard tuition I suddenly learned how to play.
BLOOMER
With my new start in 1997, Bloomer was my first character, a cleric. As for his name, it's half from the Nirvana (my fave band) track 'In Bloom', and half from a horror film I made at uni called 'Bloom'. Bloomer made True Hero at xmas time that year, and in late 1999 graduated to become a lesser immortal.
OBSIDIAN
The original idea for Obsidian was that he was supposed to be a nasty warrior and a huge contrast to Bloomer. The meaning of his name is a kind of ultrablack stone, or merely the colour. After making True Hero, he joined the then-fairly-new Assassins Guild, because I was curious to find out what that was like. I believe he was also the first Warrior of multiclass Meat to cultivate both enormous hp And mana. Like most assassins, he became typically 'unpopular'. Thus near the end of Meat's run I didn't play him much visibly, though I did have some cool skirmishes in those crazy assassin wars. Obsidian also covertly assisted Bloomer with immortal-related biz.
DIVE
Dive was my first magic-user, named after one of my favourite Nirvana songs. After previously showing a very low respect for the magic-user class, I had to change my tune after I got around to playing one! Dive became my best multi-purpose juggernaut -- though he was at least equalled by Romana in the end -- and I believe that Dive's soloing of the mighty beholder in 41 minutes with no immortal sanc spells or any other aid, either natural or unnatural, remains the world record.
CROW
Crow the Thief was originally Glesin's character. Glesin almost heroed Crow, then began to play a new mage character of hers. I had the password for emergency use, so one day as a joke I fronted up to Glesin as Crow. Okay, this is controversy land! Password sharing is tremendously frowned upon by implementors of Meat, so do not do it, blah blah blah. Anyway, my understanding was Glesin was giving up Crow for her mage, so I adopted Crow. Crow eventually completed a collection of one of every backstab weapon which popped on the mud, though she got most of the forged weapons as well.
TENEBRAE
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This movie poster reveals the origins of Tenebrae, my 2nd cleric. Tenebrae is a 1982 Italian horror film by one of my favourite directors in the world, Dario Argento. My character Tenebrae holds a crystal peacock tailfeather dagger, which is an important artefact from another Dario Argento film, Suspiria (1977). In the film, the dagger is used to kill the leader of the witches. So Tenebrae has much witch-related imagery around him. The reason for me creating a 2nd cleric was because I was starting to think about Bloomer becoming an immortal at the time, in which case I still wanted to have a mortal cleric to play. I heroed Tenebrae in 18 real hours... probably by following heroes around and killing morted mobs, but a crapload of knowing-what-I-was-doing didn't hurt at this point, either.
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ROMANA
Romana my 2nd magic-user was inspired by one of my favourite characters in Dr. Who - the Time Lady Romana (full name Romanadvoratrelundar). Specificially, Romana II as played by Lalla Ward, since she was the Romana I grew up watching. Here are a couple of photos of Romana II in action:
ARDEN
Arden was my 2nd warrior and the character I was working on when Meat closed. What levels did he make it to in the end? It's tragic but I can't remember, and now I have no way of knowing since he was the only character I couldn't get a log for. I think he was closing in on True Hero.
Arden had a false start as a guildless character and got to about level 30 in that state. I don't know why I tried that when I hate guildless so much... probably just good old fashioned hypocricy. Just ask Vill, I think I was yelling at him all the time about his stupid guildless idea :P So anyway, I axed that Arden, and recreated as a warrior. The name Arden comes from a Playstation game Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi, where there's an incredibly mean woman who wields an ancient droid arm called Arden Lyn. I figured the name was androgynous enough that it could make a guy. Teras Kasi is, like The Force, a combination of weird martial arts and supernatural powers.
Thanks to Romana who made a marathon effort in Norse, endlessly cycling the gods until the 30th adamantium chunk popped off Hel, Arden finally became the owner of an Adamantium Maul. Acquiring that weapon was a fun ultimate accomplishment in the game.
