Catskills
From MoongatesWiki
'Catskills is the name of a Ultima Online shard known to have given birth to role-playing in Ultima Online and such memorable guilds as The Shadowclan Orcs.
Notable Founding Role-Playing Guilds
- Shadowclan Orcs (Orc) — Probably the biggest guild in UO, spanning across multiple guild stones, housing hundreds of characters. The Orcs made their home at the Yew Orc Fort.
- Kinship Village (Kinship) — One of the oldest Catskills guilds, which established their presence on mainland Skara Brae. Kinship village was famous for its tavern. The tavern and surroundings got special care by OSI's GMs, who placed out a small park and kept decorating the tavern itself with many rare items which were not available to normal players until the recent expansions.
- The Picts (Pict) — One of the oldest and most original guilds on Catskills based in Yew. The Picts were savages who lived in tune with nature (Gaia). Picts were all named after animals and had to have the title Pict in their name – e.g. Pict Fox, Pict Lynx, Pict Wolf. The Picts had a special made up language, where all vocals were replaced with the letters x,y or z (with a few exceptions). "Hyl! Lxng lyvz thz Picts!"
- Kingdom of Winterfell (KoW) (new site) — Based loosely on the novels of George R.R. Martin this guild was one of the most long lived in Catskill's history.
- The Black Rose Society (BRS) — A Mercenary Society inspired the the books of the "Black Company" series.
- The Rangers of the Heart — Another old guild, originally based in the Skara Brae area. The Rangers maintained Que's Tavern, a meeting place for many years. The Rangers recently made a return to the Catskills shard.
- The Paladins of Trinsic (Tri) — A Paladin, masonic order located in Trinsic.
- The Shadow Rangers (SR) — The Shadow Rangers (SR). A band of Rangers based in Yew. When moving to Trammel facet the Rangers founded their own town Shadowmoor, which housed one of the largest ingame libraries of Catskills.
- Dark Rychen (DR) — One of the first Drow guilds on Catskills. For staying in-character, DR used to attack every character who was not a drow – no matter if RPer or not.
- The Veldrin Shyline (DRX) drow — The Hidden Empire: Successor of DR. They were a moderate Drow guild, with the focus on being manipulative, secretive as opposed to the PvP heaviness of Dark Rychen's RP.
- The Undead (UD) — Eternal Allies of Shadowclan and The Crimson Alliance. Together with the Alliance the Undead made Necropolis their home. Necropolis is located north east of the Orc Fort and features the Undead's GM-decorated keep.
- The Crimson Alliance (CA) — One of the oldest guilds in Catskills, the Alliance made their home in Necropolis and was home to many evil aligned races and characters, such as drow, vampires and demons.
- Dragons Claw (VvV)
- The Covenant of Blood (CvB) — A Vampire Guild headed by the famous Mycah Vodyanoy. The guild was manipulative and secretive. If possible PvP was avoided in favour of other dark and more secret schemes to achieve power. For a long time the Covenant directly influenced the Kingdom of Winterfell's politics.
- The Emerald Empire (EE) — Another well-known guild, making their home in Trinsic.
- The Knights of Yew (KoY)
- The Celts (Clt) — A guild of scottish, celtic and irish influenced characters based in Yew.
- The Glamervelt Elven Republic (Elf) — A pure elf guild based in Yew
Most of those "founding" guilds of Catskills roleplaying have now disappeared. A few of them continue in one form or another when they were restarted by former members. Some of them moved on to different MMOs.
Current Catskills RPing Scene
Info about the current Catskills role-playing scene can be found on their current community website.
