UO Thief | About Me
About Me
About Me
Getting into Ultima Online
I first logged onto Ultima Online in the twilight hours of The Second Age and made my home on the shard of Napa Valley.
I want to say it was the end of 1999 when I joined, but don't quote me. These were exciting times. These were the days
when you would walk around Britannia and everything was new to you and equally new to everyone else around you.
I may have begun playing during T2A, but I was following it's progress from the start. I remember reading an article in a
magazine (I forget which), in which they described a number of features of the game, two of which stand out to me now.
First, they had a paragraph describing the different types of people you're meet. A few of these people were more noble
than others. And through this, they gave a bit of advise to keep an eye on your wallet even when you were in town at the
bank -- you never knew if there was a thief around.
The second was a feature in a magazine that was completely misleading. It dealt with monster behavior, specifically the behavior of a
dragon who made a mountain its home. They described the interaction between the dragon, the surrounded population of deer,
and you, the player. They said the interaction between them all was so dynamic that if players were to hunt the deer
excessively, the dragon would come down the mountain and increase the amount of territory in which it lived. You see, the
dragon needs to eat too (at least in concept), and if the deer population began to thin, it would have to travel farther
out in which to feed.
I was blown away by that idea. If they spent so much attention to detail for that, imagine how much else they packed into
every other aspect of the game.
I came into UO hearing stories (from people I knew in real life) of a guild of rogues on Atlantic who would steal house
keys and completely loot other people's houses for their own personal gain. I'd hear stories of them befriending other
players for months, only to betray them and take everything they owned, which was their intention from the start. Before
coming into the game I had already read about the early exploits of The WTF Men (Ronald McDonald, Greybeard, and
Nighthawk). I came into the game, learning about the game through the mages and thieves who posted on Stratics. I was
mining my first ore in Minoc and selling my first 1000 iron ingots to blacksmiths while reading about S|S and Crazy Joe's
adventures -- and that's how UO started for me.
The Road to Thievery
My first character was a miner/blacksmith/carpenter/vendor named Special SixtyNyn. I made my first fortune with her and
ran a successful vendor shop out of a small marble workshop in the fields of North Minoc. (She would eventually be randomly
paged on by Lady Reba of EoF five years after creation for having an inappropriate name.) My second character was a thief
named Poet. The THIEF guild may have only been created in 2006, but I was stealing on Napa Valley from the start, beginning
in 1999. I tried a number of different templates but ultimately ended up with a 7x GM, short spear wielding, thug thief: Stealing,
Snooping, Hiding, Stealth, Fencing, Tactics, and Anatomy. In the early days I was never a particularly good thief and I
doubt many players remember him or remember me. My biggest steal was a pair of silver swords of power. My second biggest
steal was an anvil deed. (You get the idea.) But I still had my fun. The idea of the thug thief is to steal an item from a
player (usually black pearl, mandrake root, or bandages), wait for them to attack you (flagging them grey), take out your
weapon and beat them senseless. (Thieves can't fight back after all, right?) My favorite form of entertainment was to
equip a full set of ringmail, a GM short spear, 10 greater heal potions, and 5 greater cure potions, and head to the
moongates. If I couldn't find ringmail on a local vendor, I'd settle for an archer suit instead. (The term "archer suit"
is antiquated these days but was commonly known and consisted of a ringmail tunic, close helm, and studded leather arms,
legs, gorget, and gloves. You could mix some bone armor in there as well. Some bone pieces had superior negative DEX to
AR rating ratios among armor.) At the moongates I'd pick a fight and see what happened... and it usually resulted in my
death.
Over time, Poet eventually became my PvP mage after a lot of skill swapping and juggling. I needed a new thief and
that's where Chad Sexington came along and it's at this time that I was introduced to the Adventures of Adam Ant. His
style of storytelling was more RP than anything else I've read. But unlike all the other RP lore out there, as a pk, it
was about PvP and not about fighting emotionless, predictable monsters. Chad was the third character I ever made, but
I only played him casually for years. It was only when I quit PvP for good (and needed another thief) when I began
playing Chad full time.
I know of at least two other "Chad Sexington" characters on other shards who have played at one time or another.
Contrary to common belief, we all got the name from The Simpsons. As far as UO goes, I'm the most famous
so... I win. All the others are just wannabes. ^_^
I loved PvP but the day I got Energy Bolted and double Flamestriked -- before I was able to cast a single Greater Heal on
myself -- was the day I gave it up for good. The last time I PvP'd was in December of 2005. It also didn't help that this
player could run twice as fast as me. Cheaters and speeders are so rampant in today's UO and I want nothing to do with it.
Between Lady Reba ruining my crafter and speeders ruining PvP, I thought about quitting UO once and for all. Up until this
point I had always been an on and off player. I'd play for 3-6 months and quit for 6 months - 1 year. If you've been
following to rate at which I post my mis-adventures, you'd know this to be true to this day. But this time it might have
been for good.
There were three things in UO that I loved: Crafting, PvP, and Stealing.
(Stealing it is.)
The Mis-adventures
I've always said that Adam Ant was the reason I began the mis-adventures, Crazy Joe was the reason I decided to do it as a
thief, and The WTF Men (Nighthawk, Grey Beard, and Ronald McDonald) showed me that it was okay (and often hilarious) to be evil.
Even the name, "The Mis-adventures of Chad Sexington" is an intentional homage to the "Adventures of Adam Ant." I wasn't interested in strictly telling
RP stories, so it became the "Mis-adventures" instead. The pink recruitment robes I used on Napa and
the yellow recruitment robes I used on Siege Perilous are an homage to the pinkies of S|S. I'd like to think that
the mis-adventures began as a direct result of mixing both Adam Ant's and Crazy Joe's adventures (with a hint of WTF), while
injecting my own style of storytelling. I'd also like to think that over the years I've shed
the shadow of them all and the mis-adventures has become something much more and entirely new.
I'd continue this story, but episode 001 of Mis-adventures begins right here and I've already told that story... with hilarious consequences.
Thanks for reading because like I always say, there's no point in writing it all if no one ever reads.
-Chad Sexington
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