Brenna was my very first character in Ultima Online.  She was the first to make the heart-stopping run from Yew (where I started her) to Britain (where my other friends had gone), sneaking past monsters, other players, and a forest full of houses and tents.  Once in Britain, she became a miner while I figured out what the hell I was doing.

The first several months weren’t terribly exciting from a roleplaying aspect, simply because I hadn’t discovered it yet.  But once I got my hands on some of the fiction that other players had written… my curiosity was overwhelming.  I made a point of putting Brenna on paths most likely to cross with people in that crowd.  Sadly, I have no logs or stories from those earliest days.  I have no idea if the file was lost or if I simply never turned on the option to record.  I know we had a lot of game issues with the logs off and on over the years.  So I can only go by memory, and the few screenshots I have left.

I also used Brenna to introduce non-roleplayers to what Catskills had to offer, working through UO Stratics at the time.  I hosted a few events, such as hunting trips down into Wrong, and a tour of the roleplaying centers that I knew of at the time.  From the screenshots I have, I know we went through the Heroes’ Tavern, the Jolly Roger, the Mage Tower in Moonglow, Necropolis, the Shadowclan Orc Fort (or as close at they would allow us!), the Yew Community Center, and a few other sites.

But on the roleplaying track, around June of 99, the Silver League (guild project a friend and I ran) was developing good ties with Virtue Village through the Unsung Heroes.  Brenna had gotten to know Kyle Duskwalker well, and the League shared quite a few adventures with Sten Surepath, Sax, Baley, and the other Heroes.  In their company, she spent a lot of time in the Village, eventually securing permission to build a library there – which had gotten to be a passion of mine in-game.  Brenna sort of wove in and out of their storylines, usually as a peripheral participant.  But eventually, a storyline got underway with her and Kyle being struck by similar illnesses carried by the undead.  That launched a completely different direction for me as a player and Brenna as a character.