Clandestine MUD

Clandestine is a MUD, a text-based online role-playing game. It was founded by Jason Sebek in August 1997.
Theme
Clandestines large world creates its unique fantasy-setting, blending the themes and elements of fantasy, Asian folklore, anime, science fiction, gothic fiction, Dungeons and Dragons, Ultima Online, fairy tales and many others. The central hub for the game-world is Edge City, though dozens of other city-states and warring factions lie not far from Edge City's walls.
However, Clandestine MUD is most heavily focused on the theme of Religion and Religious Wars, giving the player the ability to join a religion or cult, rise in its ranks if they are able to, and then roleplay, combat, and otherwise interact with other religions.
Gameplay
After going through the creation start-up section of the Game, players will find themselves in a school meant to help ease new players into the world of Clandestine. This school is located within Edge City, the safest area of the player's gaming experience. From there, the player will adventure out to many different regions, undertake quests, hunt artificially intelligent NPC foes, and study the player's class skills.
Mastering multiple classes is optional on Clandestine, up to eight classes. However, only three classes can be used at any time, and the penalty for gaining experience points grows exponentially for the player, per class added. Primary classes are given specific class bonuses and elite skills.
Players on Clandestine are encouraged to join one of thirteen player-run religious organizations. Within each religion, players may opt to follow the path of the Priest (involving administration and roleplay-heavy work) or the Warrior (involving player versus player combat), and gain powers based on their Deity's bonuses and their rank within the religion.
There are 205 "levels of experience" that a player can access as a non-staff member. With the addition of multi-classing, though, the typical goal of most players is to raise three classes up to level 205. At this level, players may travel around the world easily, change items to look like whatever they wish, and use several other "master options".
Many "jobs" and craft-skills are centered around minigames.
The focus of the MUD, beyond the theme of religious war, is on the social interaction (both out-of-character and in-character) between players. Clandestine is an extremely social MUD.
Classes
There are seventeen playable classes on Clandestine.
* Ninjas are hand to hand combatants who rely on speed and trickery.
* Samurai are warriors able to disable foes in several ways.
* Channelers control gateway magic, giving them master of space and movement.
* Liches are powerful death mages, with spells that incapacitate and kill.
* Nightblades specialize in hunting down monsters and the undead using a versatile mixture of skills and magic.
* Conquistadors are a melee combat class with a very balanced set of abilities.
* Crusaders are the tanks of Clandestine, using heavy armor and healing to stand up to powerful enemies.
* Technomancers harness magic into items and weapons, creating magical pills, wands, staves, armor, swords, explosives, and legendary technocrafted equipment for use in player versus player combat.
* Cardinals use white magic, providing unequaled support and healing capabilities along with effective offense.
* The Hunter attunes himself with nature to track foes, trap foes, evade foes, and master beasts, and is an effective archer and melee combatant.
* The Archwizard is the master of magic itself, rather than a particular specialization, offering considerable raw power and customizability.
* Alchemists to create, use, and fight with powerful and versatile potions, and employ potent anti-wizardry spells.
* Necromancers use death magic to control the living dead and incapacitate foes.
* Mindbender is a psionic class with considerable capacity to disable opponents; their highest potential is only seen in player versus player combat.
* Elementalists, a druidic class, provide excellent backup for other spellcasters.
* Thieves have unrivaled stealth, allowing them to launch deadly surprise attacks.
* Soulwalkers are difficult class to play, requiring a tremendous amount of "leveling up" of various "soulgems", which allow the user to utilize many different appearances and class combinations.
History
Clandestine was founded in August 1997, when two of the immortals on the MUD Land of the Lost Unicorn (LUN) felt the vision they had for a MUD could not be realized on LUN. This vision was to create a world where the players' fun was the highest priority, and with many hidden secrets within the game. The MUD was initially named "Reality's Edge" until it was discovered that the name had already been taken. Drawing from the "secret underworld" in the MUD's main area, the name was changed to "Clandestine Realms", or just "Clandestine".
Early developments included the religion spell system, reincarnation, multiclassing, and several immortal utility functions. The MUD officially opened to the public on October 25, 1997 with a player base of 200 (averaging 10-15 online). Much of its early code has gone on to be used as snippets for other MUDs. A key design element was allowing high-level mortals the ability to use skills and commands not normally available until immortality on most MUDs, such as possession of mobiles, powerful spells and stats, and many unique choices of races and classes to allow for maximum roleplay.
Clandestine is currently affiliated with Edge Entertainment and the RhyDin free-form roleplaying community, which originated in the Q-Link setting in 1985 before moving to AOL.
Clandestine programmers have also released two MUD clients associated with Clandestine MUD. ClandestineMUD Client, or "cMud" (not to be confused with Zuggsoft's newer product) was released in 2002, designed for use with Clandestine MUD. Since then, Mart "Leio" Raudsepp, Chris "Arkanes" Mellon, and Gabe "Azuel" Levin have released the beta version of wxMUD in 2006, an attempt to offer a free alternative to other high-performance clients such as zMUD and MUSHClient.
Technical infrastructure
Clandestine is based on the ROM codebase, part of the DikuMUD family.
Reception
Clandestine has won several awards since its creation in 1997, including the Festival of MUD Award of Excellence in 2004 and The Mud Connector's MUD of the Month for December 1998.

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See Also

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