.. bits and bits ( the long story..)
As far as the original orgins, Hoss was first a guild on Sol Ro formed by a bunch of then Quake and Total Annihilation players, Clan FLAG and Third battalion, maybe a dozen of us hung together when EQ went live, and when guilds became enabled a bit later formed HOSS name totally unplanned and without any set meaning at the time. Lord Insane, LROD, aka Lronius del la mancha (appropriately a rogue) was our first " guild leader " although we really never had formal leaders in practice ...
During these days we were a very small band. Lola the Paladin (yes the only char to survive to this day as a main), Vido the cleric (Vidmer of today), Brunen the Druid (Myztlee), Elyria the Chanter, Mona the Wizzie ( now Cardinal's port bish) and Lronius seemed to be a fairly steady group in the early days, along with a handful of others. There were a number of elite powergamers who somehow managed to tolerate our band and we gradually Borg'd them, of particular note were Alcadizzar (I still can't spell it) the uber ranger and eventually HOSS's go to guy , and Savak (the uber wizzie on Sol Ro). More came into the fold, Aularas (Drood of today..) Lasomb the Large (another wizzie) , Vendel (yet another wizzie ..) and so forth... We grew in reputation as being a very small guild who were able to do alot with far fewer numbers than would be expected. If we ever had more than 20 Hoss on at a time it was a true event !
Fast forward a bit and you come to the first name change, for some unfathomable reason, a GM decided that HOSS was a name in violation of Verants policy and MUST be changed, in someone's infinite wisdom and given 30 sec to come up with a new name, we became " Heroes of the Seven Suns " talk about screen spam. . . . don't ask me how that name came to be, it had even less meaning than HOSS did (thank god we didnt have titles then..). We continued to grow, saddly perhaps too big too fast, some less than desireable types had become guilded, and as has been our curse, we never gave anyone the boot, internal strife led the original HOSS and its core members to form " Forsaken Heroes " . It was easier to reform than to do a wholesale purge....
Sol Ro became massively overpopulated and the server split took place, Forsaken Heroes left for Druzzil, as did a large number from a guild named Phoenix. Once on Druzzil, Verant decided Hoss was not an improper name afterall and behold the guild as you now know it was formed. The Forsaken Heroes formed Hoss, joined quickly by many of the former members of Phoenix.
In the early days of Dru Ro, the massive guilds were Mythic Legion and Seekers of Norath. Hoss was still known as more of a finesse guild. We were but a fraction of the size of the other guilds, but still managed to rack up substantial achievements. Slowly, as people left Seekers, Hoss stealthily scarfed up the ones that fit and grew (or fermented depending on your perspective). As the months past we even let in former ML . . . (although that happened mostly during the period I was in retirement . . .)
Contrary to what most outside of Hoss probably believe, Hoss never has been a guild that pressured its members into unreasonable feats, never threatened people with deguilding unless they raided non-stop 24x7, we are not a jive-talking bunch of pre-pubescent toddlers without jobs or lives ;). I would guess that the average age of Hoss members is higher than people would expect, many of us have real jobs ! wives ! even children!
Oh well... enuf rambling
- Card
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P.S.
Xeet was originally our only warrior (he was originally a DORF) , he subsequently was remade into a Troll shortly after I remade Alkae (then a 45 female Barb shammy) into a Troll (Aalenu musta thought it was a cool thing to do too....) , guess that was 3 months or so pre-Kunark?
... and yes there was a time where you could leave an equipped corpse, delete your char, recreate a new char with your old name, and loot your corpse. Of course you had to be pretty sick to toss all those levels away in order to change races/sex... but it was a rush wandering around Norath as a lvl 1 Troll shaman in full Fear gear with a naggy hammer...... Xeet was a Lusterous russet lvl 1 with a Bladestorm .... funny days ... we were the ultimate twinks!
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