Tower History

The White Tower of Legends celebrated its first birthday on May 28th 2002, and I believe a fitting tribute would be a comprehensive and definite History of the Tower. Over the course of a year, much has happened in the great Tower. Leaders were born, others fell. Friends were formed, and enemies were as well. Brilliant decisions were made, and so were dismal mistakes. However, one thing remains constant, and that is the White Tower will remain strong, and will outlast the game of Legends itself.

first era, a second beginning [5-28-01 until 6-21-01]

This era was our shortest era, which began with our founding in the Legends of Might and Magic Demo and ended with the release of the full version of Legends of Might and Magic.

Much happened during this first month of our history, including the recruitment of our first members. These members soon recruited more members, and so on. Many of our current clanmates are people recruited by these charter members.

At the time, the White Tower made one ally, a clan called the Kin, headed by Egwene and Phoenix (Later renamed Adrian.) As counterbalance, an enmity was formed between tWt and AIS. AIS was an unusual clan in that they had no real leader, no website, and most of their members didn’t even know their clanmates nor what their name meant. However, most of them seemed to have a hatred of tWt and a mean attitude. The clan never survived the transition from the Legends Demo to the full version.

Our first clan match was played against our allies, the Kin, and we won. A later match against Seven Deadly Sins (SDS) was cancelled. This was the first in a long, long line of matches that were cancelled, causing much discontent among clan members.

Veera Anlai was Amyrlin during this age, and Kedric Haelseth was the Master Gaidin. Kedric elected to have Drizzt as his Teacher of the Swords, but Veera deigned it best to wait until there was a full Aes Sedai in the clan before choosing her Keeper.

second era, the golden age [6-21-01 until 12-01-01]

This era began with the release of the full version and ended with the leaving of Drizzt.

During this Era, the Tower remained undefeated in all of our matches, until we matched TooL. Our first match with TooL was very close, and in the end, the results could’ve swung either way. Later matches against TooL have yielded similar results. In the Golden Age, the Tower was well- respected among the Legends of Might and Magic community, and our list of applicants was getting extremely long. Sadly, many applicants just couldn’t be accepted due to a lack of space.

I’m getting ahead of myself… This era began with an ill-fated match against the Warriors of Chaos. The match, scheduled for weeks, was about to culminate on July 20th. Just minutes before the match was to begin, the leader of the WoC dissolved the clan. There were plenty of hard feelings in members of both clans.

An alliance was formed between the Tower and the Shadow Stalkers, a clan headed by Aislynn Rain. Although the bond between the clans was close, when Aislynn stepped down as leader and BloodyHonor took over, the alliance dissolved rapidly. The Kin, our other ally, also dissolved during this era despite Phoenix’s valiant efforts to save it. In compassion, the Tower offered many members of the Kin membership in the clan, which proved to be a mistake.

The Hall was finally formed, allowing a second branch of the Tower Government to form to counter the Amyrlin and Master Gaidin’s decisions. In this branch of the Tower, the Amyrlin and MG do not have complete control, but are required to accede to the Hall’s wishes. In most cases… The Hall’s original members were Telaris, Smuggler, Drizzt, and Pardu Edwin (Formerly known as Arc the Lad.) Dartaniun was later added to the Hall, but became inactive soon after. Also, we began the process of testing for promotions, rather than doling them out at the leaders’ discretion. A new policy for recruiting members was created, which still exists in the Tower, in a slightly modified form.
A conflict began between the White Tower and ShmuK, which continues to this day. One of our Hall Members gave ShmuK permission to join the clan, despite the fact that most members of the clan disliked him. After we told him that he was not in the clan, he became extremely upset. Even now, he always impersonates Tower members and slings mud whenever he can. This incident caused a rewrite of our recruiting policy.

lloth (Ywhtptgtfo) was accepted into the clan for a short time, but was later removed after incidents involving aliases and disregard for clan law. He moved on to join TooL, and continues a hatred campaign against the White Tower.

The era ended when one of our original members, Drizzt, left the clan to join TooL. Drizzt was arguably our best player in the clan, and one of our most respected leaders. His leaving to join TooL left many hard feelings, since TooL is the Tower’s greatest rival, and he left soon after receiving the title of Teacher of the Swords. Drizzt was not added to the Honored Member list of the clan, reserved for former members who left the clan in good standing, but that was recently changed, almost six months later.

Gwenevere joined the White Tower during this era, and this is important, for she later was raised to the Amyrlin Seat.

Evil Solo joined the clan, but became inactive towards the end of this era.

HugMe joined the Tower and became the first person in all of Legends to discover a way to create maps for the game. Unfortunately, later conflicts forced her resignation from the clan.

Nerseus joined the Tower, and he became invaluable as a programmer to the Legends Community.

Crimson Lonewolf became our first European member.

Aislynn joined the White Tower after resigning as leader of the Shadow Stalkers. She continues to be one of our clan’s most important and loyal members. At the end of the era, she was raised to Keeper of the Chronicles, And Later was raised to the Amyrlin Seat as well.

Pardu Edwin resigned from the clan… Sort of.

third era, a masquerade party [12-01-01 until 2-11-02]

This era began with the retiring of Drizzt, and ended when Veera Anlai stepped down as Amyrlin Seat.

The Third Era was marked when many lies and untruths became revealed. It was learned that Pardu Edwin and LdyHawke were the same person, at least for a short time. By this time, Pardu Edwin had already left the clan, but it placed much suspicion on Hawke. Later, LdyHawke changed her name to Arwen, and then a new admission came out, and she stated that ‘Arwen’ was actually Pardu Edwin. Finally, after much investigation, it became known that Arwen, LdyHawke, Pardu Edwin, and Arc the lad were all the same person, and not four different people like he/she claimed. The person was removed from the clan, and later went off to start his own clan. Rumors have it that all the members of the new clan are the same person…

Nerseus also revealed his own untruth… There was no HugMe in the clan! HugMe was just one of Nerseus’s aliases that he created for sympathy. He figured that female gamers received free stuff from fellow players, like in Everquest. Go figure. This didn’t cause nearly as much a scandal as the LdyHawke/ Pardu thing, but it did have relevance later in the clan’s history, for Nerseus only told members inside the clan of who HugMe really was.

Both of these events caused a marked increase in suspicion and security in the Tower, and regular IP checks and logging of emails and such became normal.

A European branch of the clan was started to allow us to compete against other European clans. To get the branch off the ground, a more lax recruiting method was created for the European branch, which would prove to be the branches demise later, when almost all the members of the clan recruited with this method left. The branch was headed by Crimson Lonewolf, and was named the Wolf Pack.

Evil Solo became a Blademaster, and then became inactive in the clan very soon after. This caused some conflict later in the Fourth Era, when he became an active member of the clan again.

Avylen was also raised to the Hall during this period.

Veera became inactive for most of this era, and towards the end, eventually vacated the position of Amyrlin Seat, since she believed another person could maintain the position better. She settled for a rank as Yellow Sitter.

fourth era, degeneration [2-11-02 until 4-30-02]

This Era began with the induction of Gwenevere as Amyrlin Seat, and continued until the end of the War against the Children of Light. Some feel this is when the degeneration began, others believe it began long before this time, for each member they have their own tale to tell of this era.

After Veera stepped down as Amyrlin Seat, Kedric was quick to replace her with Gwenevere. Although who would be leader at the time was a foregone conclusion, some of the Hall was resentful that Kedric made a decision that was supposed to be within their hands.

About one month afterwards, Kedric retired from the Tower, and Sinistrad was raised to Master Gaidin. Strangely enough, even though Kedric was officially no longer in the clan, he still had access to the Hall, and made his opinions known. When Kedric made a demand that a certain member be removed from the clan, the Amyrlin and the Master Gaidin grew angry, and revoked his access. Some members of the clan disagreed with this decision.

A couple weeks after Sinistrad became Master Gaidin, Crimson Lonewolf decided to leave the clan. He had been considering this for a long time, due to timezones that didn’t allow him to play with other clanmates, and due to increasing pressure from other clans. Sadly, his retirement caused a domino effect within the Tower, and almost all of our European members left the clan as well, many to join the ranks of a new clan. Nuno was asked to take over the European branch of the Tower, but when he declined, the decision was made to dissolve the branch.

During this era, Aislynn and Galahad were raised to the Hall. Aislynn was chosen as Keeper of Chronicles and Galahad was chosen as the new Teacher of Swords due to SmugglerQ's inactivity up to that point as previous Teacher of Swords..

Towards the end of this era, a new clan formed in Legends with an unfortunate name… Children of the Light. Some members of the hall viewed this as a possible threat against the tower due to the name happened to be the same as tWt's long time rival in WoT and assumed they were formed as enemies of the tower. A terrible overreaction by some of our members caused incredible strife between the two clans, and the Amyrlin Gwenevere declared war on the clan. Many other clans in Legends became angry at the Tower for picking on the new guy simply because of a name, and because some former Tower members were in the clan. Some of the Hall members became angry, for the decision to declare war must be made by the Hall, and not by the Amyrlin. After three days of this, the Tower nullified its war declaration and humbly apologized. However, the Hall was still up in arms, and it wouldn’t take long for matters to bubble over once again…

fifth era, the breaking and reformation of the tower [4-30-02 until 5-28-02]

This era began with the end of the war against CoL and continues until the present.

This era has been wholly dominated by one single conflict; the attempt to depose the Amyrlin Gwenevere. From the beginning of her reign, when Kedric appointed her as Amyrlin without the Hall’s consent, there has been dissent against Gwenevere. Eventually, this came to a head when Smuggler led an attempt in the Hall to vote Gwenevere out of the Amyrlin Seat. According to the laws of the Tower, replacing the Amyrlin requires a two-thirds majority. At the end of the vote, the decision to depose the Amyrlin was lost by a single vote, and Gwenevere stayed on as the Amyrlin seat. Immediately after, Smuggler, EvilSolo, and Trolltooth left the clan, and Avylen left soon after. Only Veera, Aislynn, Galahad, and Dartaniun remained in the Hall.

Just before the attempted coup, Evil Solo had been raised back to the Hall after a very long absence, with only one Hall member dissenting. The vote to depose Gwenevere took place the very next day, some say Solo's resurfacing in tWt was for the sole purpose of an extra voice in the hall to unseat the Amyrlin and he became bitter when his plan failed.
Evil Solo began a new clan called Tower Fall. So far, the entire premise of the clan was to mock and insult the White Tower, and the entire premise met with scorn from most of the Legends community. The clan dissolved soon after its founding.

Due to real life and clan troubles, Gwenevere stepped down as Amyrlin. A race ensued between Veera Anlai and Aislynn Rain for the Amyrlin Seat, and when the Hall vote ended as a tie, Sinistrad was left to choose the next Amyrlin. In the end, he chose Aislynn to sit on the seat with one stipulation; he was to have a one month period in which to review Aislynn's skills as leader and, if necessary, remove her from the Amyrlin Seat.
A recent match with WAR left a rather large controversy in the clan. Apparently, a former member of WAR who had a grudge to settle impersonated a tWt member and joined the match to fight on our side. When the real member joined the match, we unknowingly kicked him from the game, thinking him an imposter. The consequences of this match were a strained relationship between some of our high-ranking Aes Sedai and a bitter argument that almost cost us three of our members.

Fortunately, the tension is winding down now.

Back in the Tower, we are attempting to rebuild after all these crises. However, if there’s one thing that the Tower has been able to do, that has been to weather a crisis, and we’re proud to say that almost no clan in any game could every hold on to survival like we have. Even now, we have an influx of recruits who will more than adequately replace the members we have lost. A smaller Hall will be able to work more trustingly with each other, and a newfound faith in our abilities will help all of our members to play strong and work well. The Tower will survive. We always have.

 **Added note** since this has been written, even more changes have occured in the tower... Aislynn retired from the clan and reformed Shadow Stalkers once more, Veera resumed the Amyrlin Seat at that point. Later Veera decided she could not be active enough in the clan to keep the position and Aislynn disbanded the Shadow Stalkers once more to try to take over position as Amyrlin. The Hall had become dormant and was dismantled as well as many of the rules of tWt were released when she took over the reigns. Only a mere two weeks came to pass before she decided she could not take on the tasks of Amyrlin Seat and Gwenevere was once more called to duty to try to restore the clan with Sinistrad to its former Glory.