he concept of Shades of Evil arose in August of 1995, the brainchild of Cyberlich, Thrakhath, and Stealth. The three of them were working together on another MUD, by the name of Unsafe Haven, which at the time was having immortal problems. Cyb, Thrak, and Stealth decided to strike off and have ago at their own mud.
rom the start, it was decided that Shades of Evil would not use the circlemud code that is currently among the more popular codes out there. From Thrakhath's point of view (the Head Coder for Shades of Evil), circlemud is poorly organized, and difficult to modify. The decision was made to go with Merc2.0, another variant of Dikumud, of which circlemud is also a variant. Merc's coding routines, in Thrak's opinion, were organized much better.
hings went well...the team got ahold of Merc2.0, and Thrakhath began modifying it for Shades of Evil. From the start, the Imm Team for SoE had a clear conception of what they wanted SoE to be...multiple classes, multiple races, a really cool remort system, and some other neat stuff :) Thrakhath worked like a dog on the code for about a month, when the Internet site that was lined up for SoE fell through, and the team couldn't find another site. This went on for about a month or so...SoE was for the most part ready, but no site was to be found.
yberlich took it upon himself, at this point, to go find a new site for SoE. He even stooped as low as to do Webcrawler searches on keywords like "dungeon" and "monster"....looking for sites that were into the fantasy-oriented sort of thing, and writing e-mails to the owners of the site, trying to find one who would be interested in sponsoring Shades of Evil.
uring his search, Cyberlich stumbled across a number of interesting things...but two of them of import to Shades of Evil. First, Cyberlich found a guy who goes by the name of Stimpy on the MUDs that he plays. Stimpy is a coder from England. He had run a MUD by the name of Ackmud some time in the past...a Merc2.0 mud code base that he and a guy by the name of Thalen worked hard on for quite a while. Ackmud got to the point where it was generally unrecognizable from the basic Merc2.0. Unfortunately, Stimpy and Thalen ran into site problems as well, and lost their site sometime in November of 1995. When Cyberlich talked with Stimpy, he asked Stimpy if he knew of any sites that were open for a mud, and Stimpy asked Cyberlich if he knew of any Imm Teams who would like to run Ackmud2.0, the new base code that Stimpy had used on his MUD, Ackmud. The two got to talking, and Stimpy brought Ackmud2.0 up on a temporary server for Cyberlich to take a look at...and, the Imm Team for SoE quickly decided to go along with Stimpy, and use his code for SoE :)
he other thing of importance that Cyberlich came across while searching the net for a site was CYBERTOWN. At first, Cyberlich didn't have a MUD for Cybertown in mind...he just thought it was a neat site. He started hanging around there, and applied for an apartment in the Beyond Cybertown Colony...then, he read the bulletin board set up for the users of Cybertown by the Cybertown staff. One of the suggestions on the bulletin board was from a fellow in Great Britain, suggesting that Cybertown look into attaching a mud to the Cybertown server, and, though he didn't know of any currently, that Cybertown should look into it. Cyberlich immediately wrote an e-mail to the Cybertown staff, and offered Shades of Evil, and the Immortal Team, for Cybertown. The response was enthusiastic :)
And the rest is history in the making...*grin*
Kyrie is Cyberlich's wife, a 23 year old former sailor. They've been married for a little over three years now, and have a two year old son. Currently a housewife, Kyrie's interests lie in the field of Accounting, and History, and will soon be going back to school to finish her degree. While in the Navy, Kyrie was a Linguist in the French language...she really wishes that someone who speaks French would log onto Shades of Evil and play, and chat with her in French, so she can keep her language skills up :)
Zenithar is a 27 year old Air Force Captain, a pilot of C-130's in a tactical squadron. He's stationed at Eglin AFB, near Pensacola FL. Zenithar graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1989, with a BS in Computer Science. He's been interested in MUDs for a little over a year. Zenithar and Cyberlich, in real life, are brothers :) On Shades of Evil, Zenithar is both a coder and a builder...dedicating to running around and changing things :) He's real friendly, just drop in and chat with him :)
Stealth is a 27 year old former sailor in the Navy, currently living in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Kris, and their son, Aaron. Stealth and Cyberlich met in 1990 in Rota, Spain, where they were both stationed. From Rota, they both were stationed in Fort Meade, MD, where they carried on their friendship, and discovered muds together. Stealth is currently working as a System Administrator for an un-named company in Texas, making good money, and just generally having a great time :)
Thrakhath is a 15 year old student in England. His interests mainly include MUDs, the Internet, and doing all the evil things that teenagers love to do :) He's been involved in MUDs for the past few years, coding for several, and being on the immortal teams for several others. Thrakhath met Cyberlich and Stealth on a mud called Unsafe Haven about a year and a half ago.
Rhiannon is a twenty something redhead living in the midwest with 2 dogs, 4 cats, a bird and a husband. Currently she lists herself as a professional crazy person. With a lifelong interest in role playing, an Internet account just seemed to lead to mudding. After mudding for several months Rhiannon came to realize she would like to share her personal brand of insanity with the world, so she bugged the creators at SOE to let her build. The world may never be the same.