PAXLAIR - July 25, 1999 - Author Unknown

I hear about it all the time, but have never been able to experience it for myself. Actually, I have seen it once, but that was only the aftermath, and I didn't get to stay for a long period of time. You're obviously wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Decaying houses, that's what I'm referring to, houses that are about to collapse. For some reason this sort of thing always stirs up a lot of attention when it's noticed. Perhaps it's the lust for house-placeable land, or perhaps it's the greed for whatever will be up for grabs when the house decays, and perhaps it's a combination or both of those things. Whatever the reason, a house which is about to collapse, and is noticed for that, only means three things: crowds, death, and boredom.

Crowds, and plenty of them. For example, person A in guild A notices a house about to collapse. Person A informs the rest of guild A, so now guild A is waiting by the house for it to fall down. Then person B in guild A informs person C in guild B (still with me? good), person C is now telling the entire population at bank A about the house. So, everyone at the bank now knows about the house, and proceed to wait along with guild A. If you have absolutely no idea what I just said, think of it this way. One person or persons find the house, they tell their friends, their friends tell their friends' friends, their friends' friends tell their friends' friends' friends, and so on and so forth. This all comes down to one basic idea, sooner or later a whole lot of people are going to know about the house, and everyone will join in the celebration when it falls.

Death, sometimes it's real bad, other times there isn't any. This usually happens when large groups of people have conflicting opinions of who gets what, or what house will be placed there afterwards. Other times, it can just happen because two rival guilds end up finding out about the same collapsing house. At any rate, we all know the story of a UO fray. As soon as the first body falls, that person's friends will end up coming on down to avenge their death. When the second body falls, the second person's friends will come on down to avenge their death. One thing leads to another, and you got a full scale war on your hands. At times like these I hide, wait for them to kill eath other, and then see what trouble I can get into. >: )

Boredom, for some reason this seems to come frequently to UO players. It's no surprise to most of us, that standing around doing nothing is boring. That's just what you have to do with a collapsing house. You just have to stand there, for hours, or even days, waiting for the STUPID HOUSE to fall. Minds start wandering, then they get lost, and finally they get bored. At this point at time, most people usually leave, they stop caring about the house, and just hope for the best when they return. 

So, you're wondering about that house I had the chance to see collapse, eh? Oh, your not wondering that huh, well it's not like I care. Anyways, the house was right on the edge of PaxLair. The house was discovered just as the servers went upon July 24th, or the night of July 23rd. In either case, it had been on "about to collapse" for some time already. Nightstorm, of the Ladies of the Lair, was the lucky soul who found it. As explained three paragraphs up, keeping it "hush hush" didn't apparently work. As I would have expected, a large crowd started to gather, then they all got bored and left. This went on for some time, a large crowd would gather, then people would get bored and leave, each sporadically occurring all through the day. Death wasn't a big factor in this case. Most of the people who knew about the house were PaxLair commoners, who happen to be rather nice people.

 I arrive in the middle of the day and there is a good amount of people wandering about. Most of them I already knew, but I also saw some new faces.

 Using my one-of-a-kind detective skills, I surmise that the house belonged to a guild called Souls of Virtue.

I was able to find out that the Souls of Virtue are 'now' based on the Drachenfels shard. It appears they were based on Chesapeake but moved to Drachenfels. This would explain why the house hasn't been refreshed in the first place.

 The crowd slowly starts to become bored. The mages end up casting many a daemon for us to practice.

Looking for other means of entertainment, magic walls for running into are created.
 
Success! We finally step over the line into boredom Ville. By the way, isn't this picture really pretty? :)

Searching for options to make the house fall down, counselors are bribed. They weren't very much help, as all they did was say the house may not fall down for several days. Ha, man's best friend indeed.
 
After a while I decided it was time for me to leave. Around 2 hours later I return, only to find the house fell down! Only more amazing, it only fell down a few seconds before I came back. I had arrived at almost the exact period it fell.

Dude, look at all this loot! Heh, well something like that. The guy in the picture to the left was a player named Cobalt. If you think I was lucky to have gotten to the house right as it fell, Cobalt's house was RIGHT NEXT DOOR! Not only that, but he had logged in right as it fell down, and he never even knew it was about to collapse (I.E. he wasn't one of the people who had been waiting for it to decay all day long).

Cobalt and I were probably the ones who got the most loot from the house. All Cobalt had to do was move the boxes a few steps into his house, and they were his. Since it was that simple for him, of course he had no trouble taking 5 boxes, each of a minimum 300 stones. 

Remember how I said most of the people were PaxLair commoners, and were nice people? Here's proof; Cobalt was so generous, he actually gave out free loot to those who wanted it. Anyone who arrived at his house would be called in one by one to receive their share of the loot. As you saw in the above picture, there was plenty to go around. I for one salute Cobalt, he in no way had to share a dime of his newfound fortune. He  knew this, but shared freely anyways.