by Winfield, Mayor of PaxLair, December 11, 2000
To put things in perspective a bit about PaxLair, we need to examine what PaxLair has been through since January 1998. PaxLair has passed through many phases of development. As the Realm changes and as people's interests change, PaxLair adapts. The eleven phases of PaxLair's history will hopefully be educational, thought-provoking, and useful to the player towns, guilds, and PaxLair itself.
The definition of the phases of PaxLair development is a work-in-progress as we research past history, time-lines, and cause-and-effect of various efforts in and around PaxLair. This essay may be updated at times to correct or add more information.
PaxLair started as a neutral and peaceful town to have fun. Neutral in the sense that we would respect any type of player in PaxLair. A gathering place, pure and simple--and where people gather, there is always fun with combat, stories, and commercial wheelings and dealings. This was very successful during the dark age of Dreads and Greats. But this waned in interest as well after a few months of monotonous killing between friends and also with unknown people. This brought us to about May 1998.
So, we established a government and the same tenets we started with: Peace and Neutrality. The government was formed quickly during emergency sessions of the first council (mainly TB members) who appointed me, Winfield, as mayor of PaxLair. I was appointed as the town focal point to work with IGMs on experimentation of ideas and features. The Second Chance Provisioner (SCP) was an experimental ground for real-player vendor buildings when the gods were building code for enhancing building security and storage. Many people had interest in the ideas of trying to have a functioning government in the realm that included everything from diplomacy to commerce to guarding. This was successful for the several months as well, and is still a major part of what gives PaxLair the "feel" of a real town.. the governmental structure and presence (except the govt is much smaller now and time constraints has affected many of the govt officials, including myself). This brought us to about Nov 1998 when Lord British visited PaxLair and honored the town.
During the Phase II above, PaxLair entered a parallel phase of a more intense focus on RPing and particularly character and group character development. That is, questing to include lore and legends. This was very successful during a time when evil and good guilds were seriously creating a name for themselves and being quite successful at it, like CoV. Seer quests even took place with "reason" of conflict between good and evil, not a spawn-bash on a regular or predictable basis. Remember Alanna and the Gehenna statue quest? Those were the best days of RPing good and evil in PaxLair. This is also when the first period of the Mazrim quest occurred and ended with the Seer Daemeon's sacrifice. This was also when the ideas of Chaos/Order/Balance became firmly entrenched in PaxLair with the advent of the twin towers; yet the actual quest died due to player-seer time constraints. This was also the phase when the Ladies of the Lair became extremely popular and received recognition by the Seers and IGMs. We also attempted to start the PxE (evil of PaxLair) to offer questing between evil and good (a prelude to more efforts in Phase V). This brought us to about May 1999.
As groups were working on evil and good identities in Phase III, we moved into a phase where PaxLair government spent literally hundreds of hours working on diplomacy with PK groups. The Lupars were a primary group to work with during this phase, along with several others including thief guilds like AT. The focus was to try to rationalize the PK attacks in an RPing manner, and have a realistic reaction from a realistic town. Unfortunately, the town of PaxLair with its tendency towards good (most players in town were of a good alignment) could not bring itself to have a weekly or monthly public sacrifice of a maiden and pay several thousand gold to the Lupars. Diplomacy failed and subsequent actions turned to hatred among friends and other players. We even attempted interaction with the McManus Fiefdom in the neighboring meadow. This brought us to the autumn/winter of 1999.
After the last two phases, we decided to bring more of the inter-group diplomacy functions to a larger governmental group--the second council. This was a year ago (Nov/Dec 1999). We also tried to demonstrate our balanced approach by the appointment of the orc Ruglug to a Chancellor position; one that gained OSI news reporters' attention. We had great ideas for how the council would operate, but the actual work of the council did not last long, a matter of weeks.
This overlapping phase with the two previous ones brought a focus on Taverns and Saloons. The Ladies of the Lair was popular along with the PSS and Saloon. Many people "hung out" in these places and particularly the saloon. This brought on NPKs and grief players before we even knew what grief players were. The Ladies of the Lair was harassed by campers before and after their enhancements, making game-play miserable to many. The PaxLair Saloon remained very popular because of dedicated players being as present as possible within the Saloon. This brought us to about March 2000.
We reacted to the NPK situation with an RP solution which failed. It was an expansion of our government into the area of an RPed justice system. The idea was sound, but the acceptance and understanding by the players was mixed. The justice system became embroiled in a Trek vs Shen case for months which was an out-of-character contest of who killed who, who looted who, and who broke what laws and decrees. During that time, we also encountered increased combat in PaxLair with RPing groups as well as non-RPing groups. I declared the PaxLair stone completely neutral and innocent in May 2000. We then moved through the summer months in anticipation of the opening of Trammel and predicting its effects on PaxLair. This brought us to late summer 2000.
PaxLair was affected tremendously by the creation of Trammel. Trammel drew good talent away from PaxLair; talent that focused on lore, legends, quests, community building, and more. This is not a bad thing really because those who gained some experience in these things over the years in PaxLair were now able to go out on their own and create their own towns. This led to a refocus on PaxLair... to turn PaxLair into a Shard resource, not just a wilderness crossroad. This brought us to autumn 2000.
On Aug 30, 2000, I declared new objectives for PaxLair... that of Inter-City Cooperation, a restatement of neutrality and peace in PaxLair, and an offer to all people to experiment with PaxLair. We continue this phase today as PaxLair continues to be a crossroad and a gathering place in the Realm. We have a strong commitment to community-building and will do all we can to leverage off PaxLair's history to aid player ambitions within the realm. This community-building is more complex now as we all become involved in factions, chaos/order, cross-facet cooperation, and hopefully enhancements by the gods to capabilities of player towns (e.g., town stones). We continue this phase today.
In recognition of the combat nature of Felucca and the PK attacks on PaxLair and other cities, we reformed the guards. But they are not merely guards of a point defense target on Felucca. Strategies are being formed at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of warfare. We are working to apply real-world concepts from Sun Tzu, through Clausewitz and Jomini, and to current day warfare theorists. This is a most robust endeavor and one that will continue to use the Realm as an experimental ground for realistic combat in all levels of warfare, including intelligence and perhaps information warfare (not computer warfare, but possibly psyops). We are still in this phase.
To keep in the tradition of PaxLair's promotion of realistic city governments, we have started the third council based upon the frameworks of the second council. This allows renewed interest in not just PaxLair, but inter-city and inter-guild relations along with using PaxLair as an experimental ground of a mix of buildings and roleplayers. The Bar Association has high possibilities in bringing back that which we encountered in phase VI (Taverns and Saloons). We are still in this phase.
Therefore, PaxLair's current status is in the overlapping phases IX, X, and XI, i.e., inter-city cooperation, guards and combat renewed, and renewed city government and commerce. We are also building Phase XII at this time to launch renewed phases III and V where we work more on lore/legends and balance between evil and good.
In probably short time, we can launch efforts to renew Phase IV, which is diplomacy with PKs and Thieves.
PaxLair goes through phases. It does not die and restart. It adapts to the situations. When things seem to be dormant in PaxLair and few people are present, it typically means we do not have many resident people anymore. This is a fact of life since Trammel opened up. This does not mean, however, that PaxLair is not committed to permanency, experimentation, and openness to new ideas. On the contrary, when PaxLair is dormant, the time is ripe for the most liberal ideas to be supported and carried out.
I hope this offers a little perspective on where PaxLair has been and where it may be going. All is not up to a few people though. It is up to a large number of people to use PaxLair for their own purposes as well as to build PaxLair into what people wish it to become. There is room for any and all ideas as long as they are based upon respect among people, community building, and creating something that people will have fun doing.
Regards,
Winfield, Mayor of PaxLair
Updated on: December 16, 2000
© 2000-2001 by
PaxLair, a Player City on Chesapeake,
Ultima Online