by Zang

All text in green is taken directly from message board posts that were written just after these events occured in-game.

The Peacekeepers always remained solidly Anti-PK, fighting to carve out an oasis of Law and Good in the harsh and chaotic frontier that is Darktide. This is their story....

The Underground City

The guild got it's start in the Underground City, on the Isle of Tears. Ironically, the UC was where the Human armies had hidden while plotting to overthrow the Olthoi, and it became a refuge for Anti-PKs gathering to strike back at the random murderers who ran rampant throughout the land.

At first, it was a loose coalition between three Monarchs (Gidion, Blue Scorpian, and General Zang), with a sprinkling of un-guilded and a few strays from other Anti-PK groups. The group would stage Anti-PK sweeps of nearby Cragstone and Hebian-To, making the towns safe for a few hours at least.

The Breakup of the Guild

The three-way coalition became strained when two of the three Monarchs swore allegiance to Ghareb al Jamal. It soon became clear that this new Monarch's goals were not so much Anti-PK, but simply about acquiring a huge number of vassals in a short time-span and reaping the benefits of a huge flow of experience.

The Underground City soon became crowded with dozens of new low-level Ghareb al Jamal vassals recruited directly from places like Shoushi and Holtburg. What had been a strong Anti-PK community began to slide rapidly towards nuetrality or worse....

Betrayal from within:

A relatively routine trip by six or seven of our younger guild members to Cragstone turned into a slaughter. A dozen members of the Mercs had descended on the town. Our patrol valiantly struck back, eager to take a few Mercs with them to the grave.

The patrol regrouped at the lifestone and made thier way back to our base in the UC. Frost Gunner, my 2nd in Command, was in charge of the base defenses in my absense.

He immediately went to the special room in our base, where an odd flaw in space allows people in that room to overhear conversations taking place near the armorer shop in the nearest town. What he heard chilled his blood...the Mercs had been told the location of our base, and were planning a raid into the very heart of our guild!

Frost Gunner quickly rallied the defenses of our base, assisted by our guild's Archmage, Gidion.

The war-mages and archers were placed in areas that overlooked the main hall, accessible only by long circuitous routes thru the back corridors. They could fire downward from there without fear of melee attack. The melee-ers and life-mages were placed surrounding the portal drop-off point...waiting to give a 'special' welcome to anyone portalling into our base.

A tense hour passed as Frost Gunner and the Peacekeepers waited for an assault by far far superior foes. Frost listened in from the special room as the would-be invaders argued over whether or not and how to assault our home. Finally, the invaders were called off to somewhere else to battle another PK guild.

The question remained: How did they find out about our base?, and how could we organize a 24 hour defense? Could a life mage and mellee-er be next to the portal drop off at all times?

The answer to at least one of these questions came the next day: My very good and close personal friend, Mulik al-Zang, was wandering into the nearest town to get a feel for things. Since he's only 4th level, he's certain to find out if there are Random PKs in town, and I usually go help him out if he calls for help.

So, Mulik al-Zang wandered into town and went within hearing range of the armory. To his suprise, he saw several members of The Mercs, having a conversation with several of the Peacekeepers new recruits, all sworn under Ghareb al Jamal.

Seeing an opportunity to learn more about our betrayal, Mulik walked in closer.

"Sup", Mulik said, starting the conversation off on the right foot. Everyone chatted happilly, the mass-mudering scum and the new supposedly Anti-PK recruits, and Mulik al-Zang (my close friend). The main topic of conversation seemed to be what times the main Peacekeepers were around, and what types of treasure the indigenous inhabitants of our base possesed.

Mulik passed news of this incident on to me almost instantly, and I had some tough decisions to make: Could we defend our base 24/7? What could we do to weed out the corruption that now existed within our own ranks?

The old Peacekeepers have been disbanded, and the new Peacekeepers have been formed. I and Frost Gunner have taken our allegiance away into the wilderness to Stonehold. I am taking many of the former core members of the old Peacekeepers into my personal allegiance tree, and bringing them with us to our new home.

Our guild was torn apart and we left many old friends behind. Weeks later we learned that Ghareb al Jamal and his entire guild went Random PK, and later most were assimilated into the PK guild under Loch.

The Great Trek North

Frost Gunner, Ravage Galson, and myself had scouted the Northwest a few days before. We'd found two thriving Anti-PK communities, one at the Plateau, and one at Stonehold.

We decided on Stonehold as our new home, and spent two days escorting small groups of our younger members on foot through the hazardous wilderness. Shadows were everywhere, and each expedition North left corpses on the trail.

But finally, we were settled in. Welcomed by the locals, we breathed a sigh of relief that we'd found a new home where our younger members could grow in peace.

Two days later the Azilites invaded.

The Azilite Invasion

Azile was the leader of the Alliance of Darkness, a Chaotic Evil guild based out of Dryreach. With over 100 crazed members, her cult had held Dryreach for months. Then, the Dryreach lifestone had been destroyed. They poured through summoned portals and descended on Stonehold, intent on making it thier own.....

The First Day:

My evening started as I woke up on the third floor of the armory in Stonehold, and barely had time to throw on my armor before being hit with a lightning vulnerability spell. As I digesting this bit of information, four archers charge up the stairs and into my bedroom, and as I leap and dodge amongst the crowd of archers and hail of arrows, I notice that they're all Azilites...the foul minions of darkness from Dryreach.

I make it down the stairs without being hit once, dodge the fifth archer on the ground floor and leap out into a milling crowd of five or six Azilite mages gathered in the town square. Still groggy from having just woken, I dodge and weave among the barage of spells and arrows until finding myself waking up a second time that day.......at my lifestone.

I tried to peace everything together in my mind, Azilites in force at Stonehold? An invasion? Who among my people was reachable? Then, I received the tell from Druez Traceless (the war leader of the Danciy Dynae group). "Azile has invaded Stonehold. We're gathering at [coordinates] to mount a counter-attack.", he said."I'm on my way.", I replied instantly, and started at my fastest run towards the rally point.

I recieved a barage of tells from my followers....Peacekeepers had been massacred as they arose from thier beds. I vowed that somebody was going to pay, and pay dearly. I gathered Bou and Light of Leagon, and we three ran to the rondevous. There we encountered the hastily gathered forces of Stonehold.

Druez Traceless (war leader for Danciy Dynae) took charge and organized the band into a strike force. There were members of CeD, CoA, FSS(Danciy Dynae), Peacekeepers, Volnair, and even a representative from Already Dead....who had come to set aside the squabbles among good guilds to fight the common evil foe. We divided into two fellowships.

Druez Traceless led the first fellowship....thier goal was to find Azile and kill her first, then slaughter the next highest Azilite and so on. I led the second fellowship....the mellee-ers...and our goal was to keep the enemy archers and mages too busy with us in thier faces to interfere with the first fellowship's mission.We charged into town and chaos ensued.

My view of the battle largely consisted of chasing after fleeing mages and archers and getting the constant nagging feeling that I'd charged too far. I found Ghost al-Fan, fleeing the battle. I chased, and he turned to face me with magic after feeling my lightning nekode in his back. "Whack!", and a spell slammed into me. "Gulp", and I downed a potion. "Thuck, thuck", and I slashed him twice. "Whack!", and another spell slammed into me. "Gulp", another potion.....Then I felt the presense of Aztec behind me...largely because he was busy draining my life away with his death magic. Just then, two of the other mellee-ers arrived to help with Aztec, while one of our archers took aim at Ghost al-Fan. Aztec and Ghost both portalled out within moments, leaving me alive after being sandwiched between a war mage and a death mage.

The battle finally died down. The defenders, roused from thier beds, unaware, unprepared.....had beaten back an Azilite invasion!

We gathered in the town square, certain a second attack would come, and it did. The second attack was longer, and a lightning arrow in the back sent me to the lifestone for a second time that day....but in the end, the Azilite assault was broken and the Azilite survivors portalled away (again).

We held the town square with our main force, while I went with a smaller group to persue and punish Aztec, Chastity and Pyrochick who were reportedly portal-tied at the Pit. What followed there was largely a lesson in feeling that you've charged too far while running in circles after mages...except that we managed to kill one with melee weapons and forced Aztec to portal out (again) by using archery.

Our group returned to the town square, and the mood was elated and grim at the same time. Elated because we'd managed to stop cold a total surprise attack and drive the invaders off. Grim, because we knew that this was only the beginning.

But, we hadn't driven them off for long. The Azilites again siezed the town the next day, and a horrific slaughter began........

The Second Day:

Exhausted, and clad in the unfamiliar leathery sort of armor that a dead Azilite no longer had a need for, I sat down at my watchfire on a bluff overlooking Stonehold.

My normal armor of solid steel was long gone, looted after a lightning-induced trip to the lifestone earlier in the day. My weapon was unfamiliar as well, having also come from a dead Azilite to replace my favorite acid nekode that I'd lost on my third, or was it my fourth?, trip to the lifestone that day.

I paused to consider the events of the day, but they were largely a blur of attack after attack, and swirling melees thru the town. I attacked countless Azilites and thier allies, but only was able to personally deliver the deathblow to two of those foul invaders. Shayla Shayla died by my hand early in the first or second counter-attack.

We'd held the town until the afternoon, when Azile, Aztek, thier ally Alice-te-Katrina and countless Azilites attacked our town. The rain of greater lightning quarrels from Alice-te-Katrina's Yumi caught many of the valiant defenders completely by surprise, and we were forced to retreat into the surrounding hills.

As he had the day before, Druez Traceless (war leader of FSS) gathered the defenders of Stonehold, and organized the counterattack. We swept back into the town, and the town was soon littered with bodies of foul Azilites as well as defending Stoneholders. The tide of the battle then started to turn sharply against us, and we were pushed back into the hills.

We repeated our assault a second time, and were again driven back with heavy losses.

And then...the reinforcements arrived. Ravage Galson and Gidion arrived from the south, along with three of KV the Anti's men, and a half dozen or so others from smaller, newer guilds.

Now with our larger force, we swept back into Stonehold for a third time...and this time it was the Azilites who fled into the hills. We gathered in the town square and looked suspiciously at the shopkeepers, who hadn't fled the town with the rest of us Stoneholders. But, the Azilites attacked less than an hour later and drove us into the hills for a third time.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth assaults on the Azilites became one long blur of carnage and death. The defenders of Stonehold would sweep into town and drive the invaders away, only to have the Azilites sweep back into town a short while later. It was during the sixth assualt that I was forced to leap thru the heartlands portal, blood streaming from near-fatal wounds.

By the time I returned on foot to Stonehold, a little before midnight, the battle was over. We held the town, and no other Azilite attacks had materialized. The surrounding hills were searched, but it appeared the invaders had truly fled once again.

At the end of the day, as I sat on the bluff overlooking the town, and watched the peacefull town square below, I vowed to the Peacekeepers that we would continue to fight and repel the Azilites for as long as it took for them to realize that they had picked the wrong town.

Just then, a messenger arrived.

"Letter for you Sir," he said.

I opened the letter, and read it. Then I read it again to be sure I hadn't misread it. I smirked. Then I laughed.

"It's a letter from an Azilite ally", I announced to the group, "He says that if we stop defending Stonehold against Azile, that he'll see if he can convince her to let us leave in peace."

It was hilarious. Everyone burst into laughter. The laughter was long and loud....perhaps even loud enough to be heard far out into the hills away from the town...perhaps the laughter was even loud enough to be heard by the Azilites skulking out in the wilderness.

The battles raged for another week, but none were as horrible as the second day. With the much-needed help from several outside enemies of Alice-te-Katrina, the Azilites were pushed away from Stonehold. Azile's Alliance of Darkness was left without a home, and disbanded.

The FSS and Betrayal by Druez

The largest guild in the Northlands was the Family of the Silver Serpent. Both Druez Traceless who was the FSS War Leader, and Keldarin Ta'Kier who was the FSS Head of Court, had both played a prominent role in fighting the Azilite invaders.

I decided to swear fealty to Danciy Dynae, and have the Peacekeepers become a guild within the FSS. I had hoped that this would lead to the other Anti-PK guilds in the Northlands joining the FSS as well, and creating a single strong Anti-PK Kingdom to rule over Stonehold.

The decision to swear to Danciy Dynae was not an easy one, and the consequences were immediate. Many of the Peacekeepers quit rather than become merged into the FSS, and even the most loyal Peacekeepers questioned the idea of joining a larger group...especially with the whole Ghareb al Jamal incident being so fresh in everyone's mind.

It turns out that they were right.

The FSS turned out to be less the 'Family' we were told it was, and more a dictatorship run by the Queen's psychotic lover Druez Traceless. Most of the FSS guild leadership including myself, Keldarin Ta'Kier, Aytalya, Zatara, Shiro Amano, and others tried to rein Druez in. Unfortunately, we failed and Druez began attacking FSS allies in Stonehold and making strange proclamations in the Queen's name. At one point Druez Traceless joined Loch (a notorious ex-Merc murderer) and raided Stonehold to "punish the traitors", as he called it.

After a brief cival war in Stonehold, the FSS was disbanded. Only Druez Traceless, his puppet Queen, and Shira remained. The rest of the 120 members of the FSS joined other Good and Anti-PK guilds, and the Peacekeepers were once again a small Anti-PK group.

Defending Stonehold

The residents of Stonehold formed a loose coalition of guilds and continued to hold the town for the cause of Good. Although sometimes there were disagreements over the best course of action for the defense of town....

PK Execution At Stonehold:

My name is Zang. General Zang. Being a Peacekeeper isn't always easy, but it's what I do.

The incident started last night, as I was on the 12th sub-level of the Pit with my friend Ravage Galson. We'd just finished removing the "un" from some unruly undead, when we got the call..."PKer at Stonehold, named Sun Tsu, HELP!".

We'd been completely debuffed by the now-departed Lich Lords, and with weakness IV thrown on us we were definately feeling the overburdening weight of our backpacks. But, being Peackeepers, we did what had to be done: we recalled back to Stonehold instantly.

I threw my backpack down on the ground, grabbed a dangerous pice of cutlery from my collection and ran full tilt into the town, with Ravage Galson a half-pace behind.

As quick as we'd been however, it was over by the time we got there. About six or seven other residents of Stonehold had got to the Pker before us, and an archer named Quickshot had claimed the kill. The "wages of sin" in this case appeared appeared to be steep: The corpse of the evil Pker was stripped of his Mattekar Robe and his greater mana stones by Quickshot.

The incident apparently being over, I ran back to grab my backback from where I'd dropped it at the lifestone. Stoneholders being honest folks, it was still right where I'd left it. After selling the various junk that I'd stripped from the Lich Lord, I headed through the Heartlands portal to hunt in the Southlands for a while.

Twenty minutes later, I got another call.."Come back to Stonehold! Sun Tsu is in town again!". The doomed herd of beasts ringing me in a snarling crowd futiley attempting to score a bite through my armor of solid steel were granted a reprieve; I grabed my Orb and portaled back to Stonehold instantly.

I paused a moment to throw on my collection of anti-lightning magical devices, and sprinted into the town. There were 7 or 8 local residents in the town square when I arrived, so I foolishly assumed the evil PK had been dealt with before I could arrive.

"Who got him this time?", I asked the crowd.

"Nobody.", came the reply."He's still in the area. He made a deal with Quickshot."

"What??", I sputtered, unbelievingly."A PK comes to town, kills a few people, then comes back a half-hour later...but it's okay??? He made a deal? With some archer from a Southlander Allegiance?"

"Sun Tsu came under peace to get his Mattekar Robe back! It's ok!", Quickshot shouted from the mage shop.

I ran to the mage shop, threw open the door and barged in. There was the PK Sun Tsu, evil emanating from him like a perverse aura, casually chatting with 2 or 3 Stoneholders.

The first and second thrusts of my katar barely pierced his ensorceled robe, and he lept for the doorway. I lept after him, and found myself blocked as the door was slammed shut in my face by an accomplice to evil.

I ripped the door open, dropped the katar, drew my shining nekode of death and ran after the fleeing murderer.

"NO! STOP!", shouted Quickshot,"You don't know what you're doing!"

Oh yes, I knew what I was doing. Cleansing our town of murderous vermin who prey on the weak with evil joy, but who are quick to say "peace" when they're outnumbered or unsure of easy victory...only to stab you in the back the moment you're wounded.

"Wait! Stop!", came Quickshot's voice in my head, "If I give him his robe, he won't bother me at my hunting grounds." But Quickshot's voice in my head was faint and weak compared to the thunder of the many cries of the innocent demanding justice.

The evil PK Sun Tsu foolishly chose that moment to turn to face me. I lept upon him, nekode flashing brightly, and began to exact justice. I felt my life begin to drain from me, as the foul minion of evil began to use the hated death magic upon me. I stood my ground, hacking away, with the lifeforce draining rapidly from me.

The enemy was only half-dead, and my life had all but drained away, when suddenly I felt healing magic cast upon me. My follower Hellspawn had caught up with us and began to heal me as rapidly as the evil Sun Tsu could drain me. I could see in his eyes that Sun Tsu realized at that moment that he was going to die.

He turned to flee, and I struck once more. A mighty blow from my nekode split him in two...taking him from half-dead to fully dead in the blink of an eye.

Shouts of "No! Stop!" still reverberated in my ears as I striped the cooling corpse of Sun Tsu. The odd magical helmet I gave to Ranger Scout, a friendly monarch. The green mire curiass I gave to the vassal of Volnair who it had been taken from earlier. The greater mana stones I kept for myself, as they might come in usefull. I didn't know what to do with the second helmet he'd had; it was the ugliest helmet I'd ever seen...it was bright purple and looked like it had been carved from an Olthoi head. It was much too ugly to actually wear in public, so I gave it to my good and close friend Mulik al-Zang. He likes flashy things like that.

Justice had been served after all, and I thanked my follower Hellspawn for his swift action in my defense. If it had not been for his healing, I might have myself fallen victim to foul death magic before cleansing our fair town of the evil PK Sun Tsu.

For a few weeks, the guilds and Monarchies defending Stonehold began to settle on some basic ground rules for the town, but the relative cooperation was to be shattered by repeated FSS assualts on Stonehold. Betrayal and treachery followed, and the FSS serpent emerged reborn and more malignant than before.

The Peacekeepers were driven into the forests to wage a guerilla war on the hated FSS, and the conflict that followed soon encompased the length and bredth of Darktide. One guild would emerge triumphant as the standard-bearers of Good, and the other would be beaten and broken and trampled underfoot like the serpents that they were.

But that story must wait.......

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