Q - What are the advantages of joining the Ordo Sylvanus, or a similar style guild?
A - It depends on what you wannt to do in UO. We are always in need of and usually welcome merchants, either developed or in training. The advantage for merchants are multiple locations where one might set up a vendor as well as help from guild members to procure raw materials. Those who prefer battle can learn a well established form of group combat as described in the Ordo Tacticum.

Q - What do members of your guild usually do?
A - That depends greatly on thhe current situation in Britannia. At the time of this writing, our guild is very much involved in defending the lands from the Power Generators that are spawning throughout Britannia, but such scenarios are common for guilds to get involved with. We also spend a great deal of time training ourselves. More experienced members of our guild help not only newer members but also strangers we meet in our travels. Many of our members also spend a lot of time either manufacturing or looking for items to give away (Glacial Staffs, Armour, Weapons, Statues, Runebooks and Spellbooks, and even Houses come to mind), but this is a not a requirement of our guild. Probably the single most important thing that we do is character development, not only of stats and skills, which is important, but of the personality and knowledge required for a person to do well without the help of others.

Q - How do I know if I would appreciate being in the Ordo Sylvanus?
A - Generally speaking, those people who spend more time working towards and for ideals instead of for rewards are the ones who feel most at home within our guild. From this logic and our experience, those people who are happiest not being in mainstream guilds and rather spend their time helping strangers have been the individuals who have stayed for long periods of time and most are still with us today, continuing to help strangers and looking for new friends.

Q - Why is the Ordo Sylvanus such a relatively small guild?
A - Many of the the members off Ordo Sylvanus who have spent a lot of time on UO have been in much larger guilds and have even tried to create and manage large guilds, but have never been as satisfied with the atmosphere of so many people with so many personal agendas as with what a small guild like the Ordo Sylvanus has managed to attain. Our small size also has several advantages including:

Q - When and where are guild meetings? May I watch? How do I get there? How long is a meeting?
A - Guild meetings are held att the Ordo Sylvanus Guild Tower west of Trinsic in Sonoma Trammel at 8pm Pacific time on Mondays. A second meeting for those unable to attend the Monday meetings are usually help on Tuesdays 10am Pacific time. We are usually open to visitors and can usually pick up people wishing to attend but do not know where the tower is. Lothar (Guildmaster) may be reached at ICQ #77929131 (named Genjuro) for more information. Guild meetings generally last no longer than one hour, and most take much less time. However, most if not all meetings will lead into a hunt or some other activity that may last another hour or two.

Q - How do I join?
A - There are generally two waays for someone to join our guild. The first is when one of our members finds someone that we think would be suitable as a member and that person is interested in joining us. The second is when someone is interested in joining a guild like ours and contacts one of us through ICQ. Either way, any prospective member must spend time as a recruit while he or she is evaluated by the existing members of our guild, especially by the council members and the guildmaster. After a suitable amount of time has passed, those members who have the most experience observing and adventuring with the prospective member meet to discuss if we agree if the recruit is ready to join, if he or she needs to be observed further, or if we believe such a person would not be suitable for our guild. This latter case is actually very rare, but we usually offer suggestions in such a case for an alternative guild that would be better suited to accept the individual.

Q - How long is this "recruitment" phase?
A - The amount of time needed to observe and evaluate a potential member varies with the individual, the amount of actual online time spent together doing something productive and how the individual and our guild adapt and get along with each other. It can be as short as a few days to as long as a few months. As we do not enjoy kicking anybody out of the guild, we are usually very selective in accepting people into the guild.

Q - I looked at your Guild Roster and saw warriors, mages, merchants, and a couple of bards, thieves and treasure hunters but no tamers. Do you discriminate against these templates?
A - The reason that no tamers and other such classes are currently in our guild is because such character templates usually do not mesh well with our fighting system or our concepts of how to appreciate UO. That does not mean that we will not accept a tamer into our guild, but it does mean that any combat type character that we are looking to recruit should be able to work within the ideas of combat as detailed within the Ordo Tacticum. Generally speaking, someone bringing a Dragon, White Wyrm and a Nightmare into a place like Shame Lvl 1 usually cannot adopt to this style of teamwork.

Q - I sent an e-mail to the guildmaster but he hasn't responded. Am I being ignored?
A - To be honest, he is just aa very busy man and only checks e-mail infrequently. To give you an idea of his workload, he spends up to 10 hours a day in-game as well as being very active on UO Stratics, especially on the Sonoma Forum (as Hecubus). This is in addition to his personal life, including work and wife. The best way to get in contact with him or to send him a file is through ICQ.

Q - Why does the website look so plain and why is it updated so infrequently?
A - The site is written in strrict html code at home using Netscape Composer 4.7 allowing me to keep an untainted original copy of the site before uploading. Javascript is added for the advertisement in the upper right-hand corner by the Geocities website server, but that is unavoidable. It should be noted that all artwork found on this site with the exception of the UO and Sonoma logos (since we are promoting an OSI product, I don't see a problem using these two logos) are original and were drawn within Microsoft Paint (you know, the one that comes with Windows) by Crackhead Bob. In most cases, I have touched up the artwork using Micrografx Picture Publisher LE (no longer available). The artist, guildmaster and myself have found that the relatively simple style that we are currently using for the site has a much cleaner appearance than what we have experimented with before. As far as updating the site, I have been trying to become more active and update every few days but daily updates will probably never happen. It should also be noted that if the only update is the Guild Roster, I will often not note it on the updates page.