A brief manual to Elendor MUSH
By Duraglar.
Version
1.2 19-01-00
Revision by Idhrendae
1.3 06-03
Welcome to Elendor MUSH! In this manual you will find everything to get started in Middle-Earth. It was meant as a beginner's guide, but also as an aid to those longer online who have weak memories (like me)
Elendor MUSH, the oldest and biggest Tolkien based MUSH on the internet, was inspired by the book "the Lord of the Rings" by the great J.R.R. Tolkien. While it is not strictly needed to read this book, it certainly is recommendable, not in the least because it's a lovely book.
This manual mostly focusses on commands actually used in roleplay. For more in-depth and technical information I would like to point to the online help files and also Lukthil's exellent and very extensive MUSH Help Manual.
There are several ways to get online help, the most important of which are:
+help, HELP, +news newbie help, and the Newbie Com Channel.
All together an awful lot of help, and if you get confused by all this, feel free to page a helper. Type +helpers to get a list of helpers in your culture.
Get yourself a nice MUSH client, like SimpleMU or TinyFUGUE or else just use ethernet. (see: 6.1 Useful Links, Software) Connect to Mush.elendor.net, port 1893. The adventure has begun! You can sign in as Nomad, password Nomad if you just want to look around. If you want to stay make up a name and a password, and don´t worry too much, it can all be changed later. Elendor will now lead you trough a couple of rooms to help you choose your species, sex and race. Read the instructions carefully. When you come out of the birth rooms you are left in the Recruiting room, where you can choose a culture to join. And please don´t be afraid to ask for help.
The Recruiting room is part of the Out Of Character (OOC) complex. This is a group of rooms of general nature placed outside of Middle Earth. There is no roleplaying in the OOC complex.
Once your character is created you can apply to be accepted as a member of a culture. But before you can start roleplaying there are a few things you will have to sort out: you will have to describe your character in several ways.
2.0 Elendor Out of Character: How to communicate.
There are several ways to communicate “OOC” on Elendor. You can talk to a person separately (page) or to a com channel. You can also communicate OOC to a person in the same room as you.
New players are automaticaly put in the Newbie Com channel. Once you join a culture, you will be added to the Com belonging to that culture. When you want to join the conversation on the com channels you can use the following commands:
+com/on shows you which channels you are currently on.
+com/list shows you which channels are available
+com/join (name of channel) makes you join a channel, so you can hear what is said on it.
+com/leave (name of channel) makes you leave the channel.
+com/default (name of channel) sets your default channel.
+com/who (name of channel) lists those who are currently listening to a channel.
+com/haven will make you leave all your channels so you will be able to roleplay uninterupted. Type +com/haven again to undo it.
Talk on default Com when you want to send a message to the com simply put an = in front of it. The message will be sent to your standard com channel.
(example) =hello!Will look like:
Pose to default Com (=:) = when you want to pose to a com channel you use the command =:
(example) =:hugs you all! Will look like
Talk to other than standard com channel= use the +com command here, and add the name of the channel. Of course, you must have +com/join’ed the channel first.
(example) +com (name of channel)=message.
Or use (example) ,channelname message.
2.2 Speak to a person in the same room as you, OOC’ly
(+os)= It can sometimes be useful to do some Out of Character to a person(s) in the same room as you. In order to avoid confusion you can use the +os command.
(example) +os hey, who was next again? Will look like this:
You can also pose like this, the syntax will be: +os: (pose)
WHO will give you the names of all those online, plus their connection times, and idle times. It will also give you their taglines.
Above the list is the Poll Line, a comment every Elendor player can set by typing +poll(message) Be careful when doing this, all online will see it, and it will cost you 300 "OOCcredits" to set!
The tagline behind your name you can set with the command @doing (text). This is fun, and *free*!
+who tells you who are online, but also their status, IC/OOC status, species, culture and location.
+finger (name of person) will give you additional information about a specific person.
+admins will get you the administrators currently online.
+localadmins gets you all local administrators.
+locals will get you the administrators of your culture.
Elendor has many commands that are connected to a certain area of can only be used by members of certain Cultures. This is not the place to discuss them all. For local commands, ask your local administrators for the relevant HELP file. Must cultures keep lists of local commands on their websites. See 6.0 Useful URLs for a list of websites.
3.0 Going in and out of character
Going Into Character (+set IC)3.1 Speaking to those in the same room as you.
Speak (say or ")When you find yourself in a room, you can look at it and its contents by typing "L". the description of the room will now show. Under “contents” loose objects and player characters can be found.
(example) L
Little white beds are neatly lined up and filled with happy little hobbits.
Contents:
Cupboard
Herb rack
Big Orc
Obvious Exits:
Wooden Door, Window, Chimney.
When you want to have a closer look at the objects or people you use the L command, followed by the name of the object you want to look at:
(example) L Big Orc
A big hairy smelly Orc with real bad breath, dressed in a tux.
Carrying: flower basket
To complicate matters, it is also possible to look at an object carried by an object/person. The syntax here is:
(example) L Big Orc’s flower basket
A frilly pink affair with a rather tasteless arrangement of petunias and daffodils.
+inspect
Sometimes the +inspect command brings out some additional information about the object.
(example) +inspect Big Orc
On closer inspection you notice that this orc has a large axe hidden under his tuxedo.
Moving around in Elendor is fairly simple. Just look (L) at the room, and the exits will be shown. Type the name of the exit you want to use to go there.
(example) L
INFIRMARY
Little white beds are neatly lined up and filled with happy little hobbits.
Obvious Exits=Wooden Door, Window, Chimney.
So, to leave this room you can type either Wooden Door, Window or Chimney.
Note: Exits can be locked, but a room can also have secret exits, that are only shown to certain people.
Unfortunately there aren´t many loose objects in Elendor, this due to lack of diskspace at the moment. Should you encounter a loose object, you can use the following basic commands. There are more, see the HELP files for more info.
4.0 getting mail and messages from bulletinboards.
For longer messages and messages to persons not online Elendor has a Mail and Bulletinboard system. Both work in much the same way.
When you receive mail you will be notified of this when you come online. To look in your mailbox, type +skim
You will now see a list of mails. To open one of them, remember the number in front of it (let´s say you want to read mail number 4) and type:
+read 4
the message will now display.
To read messages on a bulletinboard you have to specify the name of the bulletinboard in question (there are quite a few). For the "imladris" bulletinboard the commands will look like this:
+skim imladris
+read imladris (number of message to display)
to get a list of all available bulletinboards type +bblist or +bblist all.
4.1 sending mail and messages to bulletinboards.
In order to send mail to a person or a bulletinboard you can use the following commands:
To start a message:
+mail (name(s) of recipient)=(title of message)
(example) +mail Big Orc=hugs for da Orc
The recipient can be a bulletinboard:
(example) +mail imladris=Info on Flower Baskets
To write the text of your message, start with a "–message"
(example) -this is the text of the message.
Notes: You can´t use a normal return. If you want to insert a return in your message use "%r" instead. If you want a tab, just put "%t" in its place. And if you happen to need a % symbol, you will have to type it 4 times. (%%%%)
Yup. I know it´s confusing, but get used to it.
To send a message type "--" (two of them) and then hit return.
(example) +mail Big Orc=Some news about daffodils.
-Dear Big Orc,%r%tDid you know that some dwarfs are allergic to daffodils?%r%rYours truly, Aiwe.- -
The finished message will look like this:
Elendor MUSH may be a game, but the people you will meet on it are real flesh and blood persons. So please, threat them like you would like to be treated yourself. Rude language, spamming, abuse of commands and so on are not good for the atmosphere, and won´t be allowed. With a bit of common sense and good manners we can all have a good time! *Duraglar hugs you!*
A complete listing of culture webpages is always located at http://www.elendor.net/cultures.php.