::[ Tarsakh 26th : Year 166 : 1388 DR ]::

Todark, the restored Commander Rhiannon Kingsley and a party of former Society Ordinants led a mob into the Public Housing Vaults and purged it of monsters and aberrants. A trickle of monsters escaped into the Underdark, but the majority of monsters and freaks in the Vaults were put to the sword or burned alive.

This tiny remnant of the Society of the Ordered Mind now stands watch in the Vaults. There are calls for Rhiannon to assume the position of Mayor of Sanctuary, but it is said that her physical condition has deteriorated since she was cleansed of enthrallment. Some say that she can barely stand after exerting herself to lead the purge and cut down the Emissary of the Exile Collective. Nevertheless, the old Sanctuary is rearing its head amidst the dark and chaotic times. Monsters and freaks find that they are no longer welcome.

However, despite the loss of the Knights of the New Path, the Exile Collective cell native to Sanctuary - the rebellious illithid and their followers are not dead. Talk among informed patrons of the Sleeping Pyrimo suggests that a number of mutants have found their last hope lies in the eccentric Intryzz.

Meanwhile, Lower Sanctuary has slain and expelled the drow that occupied the Fortress. Yet the Covenant of the Pure lives on as well, amidst the rise of the Man in the Mask and his plots. There is talk around the Dark Lake of unusual movements and gurglings in the waters.

v4_2161

Added ability to customise your PC's model size between 90% and 110%.

Available in OOC Welcome area only.

??

 ::[ Nightal 13th : Year 165 : 1387 DR ]::

Todark, a most strange event occurred in Upper Sanctuary. The former Director Roaldhe Gould slipped down from the Gould Estate in a sleepwalk...

At first he rambled incoherently and wandered. Rumours tell that he spoke against Finn Mouldercrest, rambled about the other Directors of his time, talked about Dendar the Night Serpent, about light, uttered some words about Bresley, and boomed madly about his nightmares.
Then he fell to the ground dead, clutching his chest, in the middle of Freedom Square.

Some say Gould's words were those of a madman, clearly coming from spending years in terrifying nightmares. Others believe there was something prophetic to what he was saying.

One consequence of Gould's public demise is the crystal clear revelation of Mouldercrest's guilt. Already there are moves afoot among the industrial circles of Sanctuary to destroy Mr Finn Mouldercrest, whose fortunes have taken a grim turn of late. A race is on to take full control of Gould's property.

Another current of thought regards Gould's final words as a vindication of Ascensionist creeds. His awed words of a snake, of light, of a nightmare ending, and of Bresley, all contrast with the man's past tyrannical and imperial deeds. For the first time in a long time, there is a stirring of talk about Frederick Bresley, and what the legendary explorer would have done in the bizarre times that Sanctuary now finds itself in.

 ::[ Nightal 5th : Year 165 : 1387 DR ]::

Gossip spreads of a very public dispute between Finn Mouldercrest and his wife Alicia Gould. Theirs was a political marriage that secured an alliance between the industrial and business interests of Roaldhe Gould and Finn Mouldercrest.

Once Sanctuary's greatest power couple with - some say - the greatest prospects for dynastic power since the Bresleys, Mouldercrest today was left dumbfounded and crying in Freedom Square. His wife screamed that she wanted a divorce.

The usual know-it-alls and experts-in-hindsight are saying that the marriage was doomed long ago by the long sickness or slumber of Roaldhe Gould. For its part, Gould's estate maintains that the man is not truly dead and is receiving the greatest care possible in his situation.

v4_2078

- All quest related NPCs and placeables are now color coded in orange
- Various bug fixes and suggestions addressed

::[ Marpenoth 26th : Year 165 : 1387 DR ]::

The distant drow settlement of Nyxae is no more.

The rumour spreads quickly across the Dark Lake that this refuge of traditional Lolth worshipping drow was recently attacked by an overwhelming Ghaunadauran assault led by none other than Temrariel the Slime Lich. Slaves and dark elves from Nyxae fled the city as it dissolved.

One strange twist in the tale goes that a significant war party of Lolth loyalists was able to escape, and has disappeared into the Underdark under the leadership of a warlord, a priestess, and a demon. Dark elf pirates on the Dark Lake claim that the war party is seeking the site of ancient Illythiiri Ruins where the drow of Traensyr are said to have descended to the Underdark many years ago. Or other ways to the surface world. To what end, no one knows.

Stories begin to circulate again and again about the complete abandonment of other Lolth holdouts in the Underdark. Some attacked by Ghaunadaurans, but others voluntarily relinquished in the name of some mysterious pilgrimage.

Meanwhile, Sanctuary takes in a trickle of slaves hailing from Nyxae. And the Reformed Order of the Spellguard recently celebrated receiving a large shipment of baublium.

v4_2003

Changed how Lower Sanctuary rentable areas work. All current owners are still owners.

- Lower Sanctuary rentable areas no longer need you to spend any gold to claim or keep them.
- Just log on regularly and use the area and your claim will autorenew.
- If you are away for over a week, your claim will autoexpire and someone else can take the area from you.
- Other PCs can PvP you, steal your key, and claim the rentable for themselves.
- Placeables to claim the areas are located outside each area.
- Non-covenant PCs can claim them.

Please also make sure to post any bugs and suggestions about the forums as we work through the growing pains.

Thanks. :)

And thanks to deltaTime, Halfbrood, gracken, and Gentleman for their assistance. And to the rest of the DM team too, who will be working hard to fix things up and help fine tune everything.

The forum migration is now complete. We are now using Simple Machines Forum, or SMF. It is considerably leaner than vBulletin, doing the job of a forum and not a lot else (thankfully).

With different forum software comes different functionality. Some of this will be exciting, enabling us to do things we want to do. Other observations will be disappointing, because much-loved features of vBulletin will no longer be available. On the whole though, this change will enable us and unleash us more than it will hold us back. The state of our vBulletin forum was causing the DM team and some players a lot of grief. With any luck, things are going to be a lot easier and faster with this forum.

Here are just some of the nice things that will come out of this change:

QuoteForum management improvements, better experience in Minor/Plot factions

We had quite a lot of challenges creating and managing boards on the previous forum. No longer. Now small factions and plot-based factions will have a better experienced, more connected to other players and DMs. Now we can feel in control of our forums again.

Leaner, faster. Less unnecessary feature bloat. More customisable.

Player faction forums
Now that we have left vBulletin, player faction forums can be requested again. As before, you will need to nominate at least 3 player faction members to get a player faction forum set up.

Faster application turnaround, nicer application process
It should be easier for DMs to manage some administrative aspects of applications now. We will also try out using a form for applications, to make things a bit easier and a bit less nebulous and intimidating for people approaching apps.

A sexy new look. (Also mobile responsive.)

Probably a lot more...

As with any significant shift, there will be a little bit of pain as we adjust. Here's what you need to know:

QuoteHow do I get access to the new forum?

If you used the old forum, then all your accounts were migrated to the new forum. However, passwords are handled differently on this forum. Because of this, to regain access to your account, you will need to use the "Forgot My Password" functionality on the new forum. Unfortunately, some email addresses (notably hotmail/live/outlook/etc) may not be reachable by the "forgot my password" email function as is. Therefore, if you are unable to recover your account through the "forgot my password" function, you should contact a DM to get access to your account. You can do this on IRC or in the old forum. DMs can give you a temporary password to access your new forum account, delivering it by private message on the old forum, or by email to your user's email address.

How do I get my faction forum access back?
Permissions are also handled differently on the new forum and were not migrated across. To get your access back, simply request forum access again from the DM team using the forum request "helpdesk". Create a ticket there and just describe the access you need.

What happened to my avatar/PMs/signature?
Most content and users have been preserved, with some exceptions such as private messages, signatures, avatars, and perhaps more. This was a manual process, so I focused on the necessities and I did not see the value in migrating some things. Please take the time to retrieve anything you want to keep from the old forum, or take this as an opportunity to change things up.

How do applications and private boards (reporting exploits, private suggestions, private discussions) work on the new forum?
The new forum uses a helpdesk/ticket system to handle applications and other private boards. This is because the forum's permission system does not (by itself) give enough fine control to handle these. Applications will work much the same as they have always done, though.

Players will be able to fill out their application as normal, generating a 'ticket' which DMs then administrate in a private DM forum. Then once a vote has occurred, application results will be delivered back to the player.

Where are my Player Character Notes (PCNs)?
Because forum permissions deliver less fine control on SMF, we can no longer support ongoing or new PCNs in a satisfying manner. But we will try to use the ticket system for this as well, and see how it goes.

If you want to retrieve your PCNs for existing or past characters, feel free to request this from a DM.

Help! Alt accounts don't work on the new forum!
On the new forum, you cannot reuse the same email address for multiple accounts. If you want to make an alternative account, you must use an alternative or dummy email address to sign up to the forum. The email address doesn't need to be real.

This place is a mess! What's with the weird code and bad formatting?
Moving from one forum to another can create formatting issues. You will see some of this throughout some threads and posts. You can expect that important threads and new forum content will look just fine moving forward. But some archived content will look a little odd. It is probable that we can find solutions to this, so no need to worry.

Welcome to our new forums!

Brace yourselves everyone.

We are imminently migrating most of our existing vBulletin content and users to a new forum. All going well, there will be little disruption and we will have a nice new forum.

While this is occurring, the forums will be inaccessible. Please cease using the forum. Within 15 minutes, the forum will be shut down so the migration can take place.

Because this will be a manual migration and will involve some reconfiguration due to differences between the forum software, it might take up to a few hours.

More details and instructions to come.

I am sorry to report that we experienced an attack on the EFU web server earlier this month by an unknown malicious party.

For safety's sake, I have forcefully reset EFUSL passwords for all players as a security measure. Apologies for this inconvenience.

Please note that it is important that all players use unique passwords for anything related to EFU. You should never recycle the same password for multiple things anyway, but please definitely don't for EFUSL or our forums. If you have reused passwords for our forums or EFUSL, please take this as an opportunity to change them. You may also like to check out https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and consider adopting a password manager.

You can reset your EFUSL password by going in-game and typing /c password your_unique_password_here

I encourage you to change your forum password as well.

If anyone has information about anything relating to this attack, please do email me (anonymously or otherwise) at sc.efupw@gmail.com

The best way we can deal with this kind of event is to ensure that it doesn't happen again, make sure everyone is safe, and also to not allow the perpetrators to dissuade us from forging ahead and having fun on EFU. It is not apparent that any major damage has been done and the vulnerability has been closed, so consider these measures as a precaution.

Finally, I want you to know that among the cool things planned for EFU as we move forward, are some much needed upgrades to our web presence.

::[ Ches 13th : Year 165 : 1387 DR ]::

Word has spread of late that the obscure divine power known as Ulutiu has met its end at the hands of invaders of its glacial domain. The giants and tribes that once worshipped Ulutiu are all but gone, and the prayers murmured to the slumbering deity are naught but air.

It was a mission to the surface world, requested from the Mayor by the Jergali Scriveners of Doom that determined this... along with a party of plucky adventurers, Councilors, and rising stars of Sanctuary.

There are rumours about that the Jergali are on heightened alert or interest regarding divine developments, with some whisper of an omen, a prophecy, or perhaps a mere severe commandment handed down by the reclusive First Scrivener.