Joran, Davian and I are going to buy a Large Forge and make it public. Joran wants to be able to have his own forge/anvil, and I want to have Best Dressed Britannian. So we will have a forge with a scissors-sign on the outside. A compromise. However, it still doesn't seem like much of a compromise... since he makes way more money than I do... so he is paying for most of the house... and I get to pick the location of said house ("Number one rule in sales: Location, location, location!" I told him), and I get to name it. So the least I could do would be to have the type of building that he wanted.

Another good thing about sharing with Joran/Davian is that I will be able to sell bags of *whole* outfits - even with *armor* ... which will be nice. It will be a better service for people. It will even be *nicer* once smiths can make colored armor. And wouldn't colored weapons be neat?! A Golden Exceptionial Sword Crafted By Joran. (In Realm, you could dye your sword/shield any color you wanted. You could also Name your weapons. I used to dye Buster's maul pastel pink and name it "Buster's Q-Tip." He didn't think it was very funny... but I did!)

Even though Davian is paying for most of our building, he says I still have to Do My Part. I have been trying to make 5k/day killing animals and making bras from their hides. When I really try, I can make that much money. I could power-tailor, but it is soooooo boring. At least killing animals is somewhat interesting, since it varies. There is only one way to make a fancy shirt. What type of animal I kill.. how I kill it... how long it takes me to make the kill... those things all vary when I hunt animals. Sometimes, when I see animals that I don't want to let get away (great harts, mountain goats, etc), I will attack three or four of them at the same
time and let them all beat on me while I pick them off, one by one. At least their hides won't leave the screen that way.

I miss the vendors. It makes it very hard to buy GH potions. I decided to learn the GH spell, but I fizzle. A Lot. There was a vendor on The Finger that had 10 GH potions, 2 str potions, and a dex potion inside backpacks for 400 gps. That was a good deal. I bought a few potions from Medicine Man, but went through them like they were water. Then Apocolypse made me 100 ginsengs worth, but those didn't last long either. DuPont was nice enough to meet me at the Skara bank and spam us with his mortar and pestle. But I gave all of those to Davian, who was having a hard time finding potions, too.

Without the vendors, I have to chop wood to make shafts. I don't want to chop trees. I don't like to chop trees. I thought I would, when I started, but I changed my mind. I wanted to be Janey the Woodswoman, who made her own bows and arrows. Now I want to be Janey the Woodswoman, who buys her own bows and shafts and kills her own birds and makes her own arrows.

Lumberjacking is a skill that I don't need, but I have to have, without the vendors. I don't mind paying 3 gp per shaft to someone else to have them make the shafts. Once, from one of the vendors, I bought 1000 shafts for 800 gps. What a steal! I easily go through 300 arrows per night... maybe 500 depending on where we go and how many trips we make. Also, without the vendors, it is difficult for me to find Grandmaster-crafted bows. Keith's vendor is gone. I sporadically see William Abayra. And Woody Chopper... while he is hard to ignore while he is in the vicinity, is hardly ever in the same vacinity as me.

Since my dexterity is pretty high now (strength and dexterity have been out of control lately... I keep getting dumber and dumber every day... which is not what I want, because I'd like to be able to cast GH 5 times in a row without running out of mana), and Exceptional Bows are difficult to find without the vendors, and I have been inadvertantly collecting Magic Crossbows, I decided to try them out. I don't like them. Crossbows are way too slow, and I miss *way* too much. I had my 'in between time' worked out perfectly with the bow... so I could run away from the Big Thing That Was Chasing Me for a couple of steps... then shoot... then run around some more... then shoot... etc, and hardly get touched. I never get it timed right with the xbow. And the extra amount of damage it does simply isn't
worth it.

When I logged onto Lake Superior last night to do a little more hide-hunting, my toon was out in the woods, north of Rivendell. I guess that's where I had left it, but I really don't remember. I was killing a bear when a harpy came up and started bothering me. Bear was dead, working on the harpy, and a troll walks up and decides he wants some too. Dead bear, dead harpy, working on the troll... and a guy in silver plate armor and a red cloak runs by and says, "Help please." There was a grunt orc chasing him. I thought it was a little strange that a guy in plate would need help with a Grunt Orc, but whatever. I said "Okay" ... and he ran off. The orc wandered into a tent.

I finished off the troll, and the guy came back. His name was Greg. I said, "Your orc is in the tent." He said, "hehe" I went into the tent to get it, and let it follow me to the outside so this guy (who I had decided was a plate-wearing newbie) could kill it, with me helping. Instead, I killed the Orc, with no help from him. Greg looted the Orc. I picked up the boots. Somehow, Greg had turned gray. I said, "You do realize you're gray, yes?" "You see Greg trying to steal 2 kindling from you!" Kindling and newbie stuff was all I had in the top level of my pack. I said, "Oh. I guess so."

An Orc Lord came from out of nowhere and started attacking me. An Ettin was following the Orc Lord. I did a quick bolt count; I had 57 bolts. *Maybe* enough to kill the Orc and the Ettin, if I was careful, and picked up my bolts as they fell. I walked and shot... walked and shot... walked and shot... with Greg in tow, obviously trying to steal from me. I said, "Greg. Go away." He says, "No i think ill stay right here." I rolled my eyes and thought: "Oh fine. Idiot. I'm an *archer* ... I don't stay still for long. Which means you'll have an awfully hard time stealing from me." So I went about my business. The worst part about it, was that I was out of bandages, had less than 57 bolts, and was horribly lagged.

Greg found another (melee-weapon carrying) victim. He stayed with the new victim while I walked on. I killed the Orc Lord. His body was behind a big stone building and i couldn't see it to loot it while I was also trying to kill the Ettin. Greg had come back to bother me... and he looted the Orc Lord corpse for me. So I walked on with the Ettin, trying to kill it.

I had the Ettin down to about half health. I was running out of patience with Greg, who was still zipping in an out of steal-range. Out of nowhere... a Wisp (yes, a wisp) started attacking me. Kaboom! Fireball. I started running, shocked that a *wisp* was attacking me. Kaboom! Magic Arrow. Kaboom! Fireball. I heard bard music somewhere. Was somebody *provoking* this wisp on me?!? Kaboom! OtherSpellICouldn'tIdentify. I started running away from the Wisp. Greg ran after me. I could hardly run, I was so laggy. I figured I was dead, but kept going anyway. It only had me down to 80 hps. Good thing I had faked Magic Resist last weekend (what the hell kind of skill is Magic Resist, anyway?? Magic resist should be no more of a skill than AR should be). I pulled the wisp's status bar out... I had it down to 3/4 health. I thought about sticking around and trying to kill it. Then I remembered I had no bandages... and no GH potions. I decided not to.

I got out of there, and ran down towards skara. A guy in plate said, "Yo" but at that point, I wasn't going to stop for anybody who greeted me with a "Yo." I went to the Skara bank to get more bolts. Dundee was there. By this time I was so irritated that I did something I've never done before. I said, "Hey. Dundee. Wanna kill a thief?" He said sure. So I looked in my bank box. I had no more bolts. I put the magic crossbow away and armed myself with my Katana. I put some other miscellaneous stuff in the bank box because I figured I was going to die. I should have put the Monroe Green cloak and baldric away, too... but was too mad to think about it.

We picked up two others at the Skara Dock.. Julian Asher and Fyral. More came with us, but I can't remember their names at the moment. I said, "Target's name is Greg. Silver plate, red cloak. The little [s-word] was stealing/harassing me." We walked up towards Rivendell. I was leading a Lootless lynch mob. I was going to wait until Greg was in a pickle, and do the exact same thing to him that he had done to me, and The Lootless Army was coming to help me.

I was going to do something that I had never wanted to do before. I was going to get revenge.

I'm not a pvp person. I never have been. But dammit... Greg wasn't pickpocketing me... he was harassing me. Look, I don't mind the random snoop or steal. The try once or twice and skeedaddle. Greg had snooped/attempted to steal from me quite a few times when I asked him to leave. If he was a good thief (i don't mean alignment-good, I mean decent-player good) he would have left me alone at that point and found a new victim. But to follow me for at least ten minutes... when I am *obviously* busy with other things (like *helping him out* fer crying out loud!)... that is too much. And Greg would *always* wait until I was in a pickle to bother me.

There was a rule in Realm... that you couldn't pickpocket the same person more than 3 three times in a row, or else it was considered harassment. You could /complain on that person and have the last 100 lines in your text box get sent to TPTB and get the harasser suspended. Last night, I kept typing "/complain greg" and then erasing it, remembering that UO does not have that same function.

The Lootless Army and I walked way north, and then walked back south. We couldn't find Greg. It was probably a good thing, because I might have ripped his heart out and stuck it up his... nose. Julian Asher, Fyral and I decided to walk back to the Skara Rangers. We had lost the others.

Dundee later told me... that they found Greg without me. I don't think they killed him... but they had fun trying. The Lootless Army was accused of being PKs and started healing Greg. I think TLA needs to advertise a little more... so that people will know... that they're not Pkers.

I can't believe somebody provoked a wisp on me. How Freaking *Rude.*

I never left the towns for the rest of the night.

I am bogged down by thread now; I have decided to power tailor.

I wonder when the Rocky Mountain shard will come.

    - Janey the Newbie.