The Hysteria Project

The Hysteria Project: Hystory

Corwin

Part I: Out with the Old, in with the New

I was addicted to mudding for a good two years before I ever came to Hysteria. I'd run on Northern Lights for what felt like forever. I had a couple of wizards, a customized homeroom, many friends (including at least one weird stalkery-type who I avoided), and I'd written a very unique zone and quest for the mud. My zone was based on Animaniacs, and I'd been extremely inspired to write it. I'd downloaded NL's tutorial instruction thing on how to write zones and I'd even made many, many notes on actual paper! The ironing-out process was extremely frustrating, though. Vitastjern was nice, but she wasn't around too much, and when she was, she'd idle. Then, when she was around, she'd have a lot of criticism about my zone. Her criticism almost certainly helped me to become a better zonewriter, but at the time, as I said, it was frustrating. Even after my zone was FINALLY put in, running on a stock aber with hardly anything new was beginning to lose its appeal. Sure, I had a Pinky and the Brain zone attachment in the works, but Vita's critique of this one was harsher than the last, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to make her "corrections."

I'd been very helpful to Vita and her mud, as had my friend Og. We were doing what we could to help the mud, including suggesting new ideas and running on their testmud, which was pretty exclusive. Og and I would discuss new ideas and what we'd do if Vita ever made us archwizards, and hoped that some day our efforts would be given that sort of recognition.

After a while, if Og weren't there to talk to, NL was no longer fun to just hang around on. I almost exclusively logged in invisible, to avoid the stalker, and that rendered my being there pretty pointless. Running had lost all of its appeal at this point, too. The population of the mud was dwindling. I hoped for some kind of cool change that would make the mud good again. Nothing came.

Then one day, Og told me about a cool mud he'd discovered. He didn't think the powers liked him, though, because he'd gotten yelled at about his name (and possibly for abusing a bug, I'm not really sure). The mud was called Hysteria, and it sounded like there were some really cool features. Og excitedly explained to me that there was player-killing (something we desperately longed for in the tranquil setting of Nothern Lights), guilds that came with their own powers, and even stored equipment! It sounded very cool, so I agreed to log in, along with Og, though still feeling somewhat mistrustful of other muds. Og logged in as Anderson, me with my old standby, Laertes.

In one of my initial sessions (can't really remember if it was the very first or not), I still didn't really know the system. I'd been given some starting eq by Og, and was just beginning to explore. Then, suddenly, this guy named QJAXX came out of nowhere and jumped me! As I was a newbie, and unused to pkilling at that, he practically mowed me down! By the time I knew what the hell was going, I'd already been killed. Not to mention that all my new starting eq was gone, because back in those days looting meant taking EVERYTHING from someone's corpse.

After that, I promised myself I'd get revenge. I desperately wanted QJAXX dead. I made it something of a hobby that I'd just keep slowly working on. (And, trust me, it did not go well for a long time.) This turned out to be one of the driving forces that kept me coming back. I have no idea if I would have continued logging into Hysteria if I hadn't been ambushed that day. So I should probably be grateful to Veggeto for having jumped me like that. Fucker.

I quickly was able to join a guild called Fallen Angels. All you needed was like 5 quests, many of which were the same as NL's, and to have won a pfight. Og and I had fought just to practice it, and I'd won at least once. FA had awesome features. There were good angels and evil angels, and they had varying spells. I chose evil, because Og told me I'd get this great spell where you could summon a demon and sic him on people. This was exactly how it worked, and it seemed an ingenious feature to me after having been mired in the hackneyed mundanity of Northern Lights. As Laertes, I quickly ascended the ranks, and got a wizard right away. I wanted to try out other guilds to see what they were like, so I created a character named Bleys.

After several session of introducing me to Hyseria, as he'd predicted, Og got yelled at by the powers again. This time, because his name wasn't RP enough, because it was very similar to 'a last name.' The powers already didn't like him, and he argued with them. So they kicked him off, and probably even balefired him. Whether or not he was banned, I can't remember. He now hated Fulk and would not return to Hysteria.

I, however, was really getting into it. I still didn't really know how to pkill yet, but I was learning. Or, I was failing and then bitching about being killed. One of those. Maybe both. With Laertes I'd been lucky and just avoided most confrontations. Thus, with Bleys, I was subsequently murdered over and over again by QJAXX, Ashram, and even Fulk and Sampras (though I can't remember what names they'd used at the time). Fulk told me much later that they even used to say things like, "Wow, Bleys just logged on! Easy meat! Let's log on our pkillers!"