To whom it may concern,

My name is Raltar Creed, I am the final member of a once glorious organization known as The Order of the Golden Shields. Throughout its distinguished history the Golden Shields has been large and powerful, small and determined, cunning and deceitful, even heroic and battle-hardened. But though the guild has changed frequently and greatly down through the years therte is one thing which it has never been: Completely dead. One thing I've learned about the internet is that many people who join and internet gaming guild do so only casually, even those who start their own guilds do so only with the intention of putting the least amount of energy possible into their efforts. When things get difficult or boring guild members and their leaders quickly leave the organization never to return. Thus, I have found that the most important trait any guild member (or leader for that matter) can have is "Sheer bloody-minded determination" as a friend of mone once described it. I personally prefer the term perseverance. That is why I will always be the last member of this guild, because I will NEVER give up on it.

Currently the guild is closed and I am not accepting any new members for the time being. Perhaps this will change when I can find a decent game worth playing and a group of trustworthy individuals who are willing to follow me. That probably won't happen any time soon, however in the meantime the guild website remains online to provide access to our guild history which is broken down into three books:

Book 1: The History of "The Old Guild" which was the original Golden Shields founded by myself and two close friends of mine for the upcoming game Shadowbane. Due to dumbassery on the part of the Shadowbane developers the game was delayed for over two years even after the founding of our guild and we were forced to wait for it. During that time span we had many "interesting" adventures and wild twists and turns. Ironically, Shadowbane itself proved to be far less interesting and actually turned out to be once of the worst MMORPGs of all time, if not THE worst.

Book 2: "The Lost" which tells the tale of how one of the founding members of our guild briefly tried to revive the guild as a "comedy website" and met with massive disaster at every turn. Following this I revived the guild as an actual guild by merging with a small gorup from a terrible browser game called "Zelderex Online" known as the Alchemists.

Book 3: "The Irreverent Ones" which tells the tale of how, after great accomplishments in OGame and Guild Wars, the guild began to have internal problems and it became nessary to shut it down to eject the trouble makers so that a new start could be found and the guild could be rebuilt from scratch (again).

I provide the history of my guild here not only to document our accomplishments but also to pass along the wisdom and lessons I have learned about internet-gaming organizations down through the years. The most important piece of advice I have to pass on is this: When choosing your companions for the journey do not choose them based on talent or availability. Choose them based on Good character.

Guild History

Book I - The History of the Old Guild
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Founders
Chapter 2: Opening Moves
Chapter 3: Ubisoft Strikes Back
Chapter 4: Why Lok-ri needs better passwords
Chapter 5: Dungeon Siege
Chapter 6: The "Grand" Alliance
Chapter 7: Alatar Departs
Chapter 8: Shadowbane
Chapter 9: We rise like the phoenix and we fall like the stone
Epilogue

Book II - The Lost
Introduction
Part I - Crazy Things Happen to Zion
Chapter I: The life and times of Zion "The Book" Cao Cao
Chapter II: E-mail in the Sand
Chapter III: The Notorious Jackson
Chapter IV: The Evil School Itself
Chapter V: Duh's Revenge
Chapter VI: All Good Things Must End
Chapter VII: Slutsky's Big Debut
Chapter VIII: The Revenge of Brian Powers
Chapter IX: On the Fence
Chapter X: Men in White
Chapter XI: The "Comedy" Website
Chapter XII: The End
Summary of Part I: What the hell happened to Zion?
Part II - The Alchemist Clan
Chapter I: The Search
Chapter II: Zelderex
Chapter III: The Knights War
Chapter IV: Entropy
Chapter V: Darkness and Light
Chapter VI: A New Dawn
Chapter VII: The Second Knights War
Chapter VIII: The Legend of Zaidan
Chapter IX: Death of an OGame
Epilogue

Book III - The Irreverent Ones
Introduction
Chapter I: The Abnormally Blank Slate
Chapter II: A Brief Revival
Chapter III: Age of Drama
Chapter IV: Goodbye
Chapter V: Why?
Epilogue

Guild Wars History
Guild Wars PvE Accomplishments
Guild Wars Screen Shots

Miscellaneous History
Heroes of the Golden Shields
Villains of the Golden Shields

Member Submitted Works
Zion's Rebuttal By Zion
Zion's Entry by Zion