Heroes of the Golden Shields
Throughout the history of the Golden Shields there have been a few outstanding individuals whose actions and leadership helped to define the Golden Shields as the institution it is today. Although these individuals are no longer with us, we dedicate this page to their memory and honor.
Zion "The Book" Cao Cao
Zion earned the nickname "The Book" after he started an annoying habit of logging onto AIM and purposely avoiding people or refusing to respond to messages. Sometimes he tuned his away message on which made it more fun than talking to a wall, like talking to a book.
Zion was the first and greatest leader of the Golden Shields. Although he made many mistakes (and would have made many more if not for being held back by his fellow founders and leaders) he also deserves credit as being the driving force behind many of the most memorable moments in the history of the guild. Its even fair to say that without him the guild might never have actually been founded as the other two founding members most likely never would have succeeded in recruiting a single member.
During his time as leader Zion played to his strengths which was his incredible charisma and skill at manipulation. During his time as leader he recruited hundreds of members. On one occasaion he entered a completely random AIM chat room (this was back before 100% of the population of AIM chat rooms consisted of spam bots) full of people who had never heard of Shadowbane or the Golden Shields and he managed to recruit them all. Later Zion devised a scheme to use the ease of cheating in Dungeon Siege to recruit over 50 people from that game. Zion used those same skills to earn the Golden Shields many allies and he even started the "grand" alliance between many of our allies. It isn't his fault at all that those allies betrayed us horribly and turned out to have less honor than a pack of deseased wolves.
Although Zion is mostly remembered by non-guild members for his diplomacy work many people do not know how much luck he had when it came to somewhat less honest means of advancement. In addition to his dumb luck in hacking the Lok-ri chat room, Zion was also the brains behind the Golden Shields somewhat secret spy division, the Shadows of Gold. In addition to maintaining several spy accounts Zion also invented many schemes that resulted in great embarrassment for our enemies on several occasions. Zion was the one who invented the fake guild scheme that allowed us to reveal another fake guild lead by our incompetent arch-nemesis Relic Runeblade. Zion also ran another fake guild called the Merchant Union which allowed us to spy on several other guilds that had "allied" with the merchant union for economic reasons Zion made up. We abandoned the Merchant Union after people began to ask too many questions about why the union was so secretive but I don't beleive anyone ever actually knew the Golden Shields was behind it.
Although we must Remember Zion's mistakes, so that we do not allow history to repeat itself, we must also endeavor to remember his great skill and cunning so that we may learn from that as well.
Shinwa Po
Although this is not a screenshot of Shinwa Po himself we had no choice but to use this picture of another anonymous warrior as all the old screenshots of the actual Shinwa Po have been lost to the ages.
Shinwa Po was never actually a member of the Golden Shields but he was a great warrior, leader and merchant long before the Golden Shields was ever founded. Shinwa Po was the patron of two of the founding members of the guild in Asheron's Call. Alatar and Zule learned most of what they knew about MMOs and guilds from him and from their time spent in Asheron's Call. It is fair to say that without Shinwa Po the guild would not exist today.
For those who have never played Asheron's Call, it had what was called the Allegiance system. Instead of a regular guild system where everyone would agree to follow one leader, the Allegiance system allowed a player to swear loyalty to a patron(another player) and become that patron's vassal. Whenever a vassal gained experience his patron would also gain a smaller amount of bonous experience. This did not cost the vassal anything. In exchange for the free experience, the Patron would help his vassal out, usually with free equipment he needed but also with learning about the game. In a way, a good patron was like a mentor. This made the game very newbie friendly and encouraged social interation, unlike most other games on the market at the time(*cough*Everquest*cough*).
Alatar and Zule met Shinwa Po in the Town of Yanshi after starting their characters at the Yanshi North Outpost shortly after the release of Asheron's call. For the first few months of the game Alatar, Zule, Shinwa Po, Po's other vassals, Po's Patron and Po's Patron's Patron all worked as a team, often traveling to dungeons togeather to hunt, level their characters and collect loot. They often pooled their money and loot togeather and traded it in the city of Qalaba'r for needed equipment and weapons. This was where Shinwa Po really shined as a patron. He could enter Qalaba'r with his character barely able to walk because he was so loaded down with money and then he would leave equally burdened down with some of the best equipment his vassals could possibly use.
Things later took a turn for the worse when the monarch of their allegiance became a vassal of another Monarch named Sin'ath. Sin'ath was a higher level and his allegiance was bigger so this appeared to be a good thing at first. Eventually Sin'ath tried to convert the allegiance into an actual guild and this also appeared to be a good thing at first. The Sinathian Order had its own website, forums and the entire allegiance tree was listed on the site with the ability for people to log in and imput theuir characters levels, skills, picture and so on. But things turned ugly fast and it all started with Sin'ath himself. He was simply a power gamer and not a leader. He spent 24/7 online but never talked to anyone in the guild besides his direct vassals. He would ignore questions sent directly to him and not even respond at all. Eventually his direct vassals ended up running the guild entirely but all they did was give away some free items once a week to show how "generous" they were. That scam was seen through rather quickly and people started to complain. But the complaints were never even acknowledged by Sin'ath. the only thing his vassals ever said to anyone who complained was "STFU noob" and pretty soon people started to get angry.
The main difference between a guild on the internet and a real life job is that people can't quit their real life jobs just because they don't like them. But in a guild on the internet, people CAN and WILL quit the moment they have the slightest excuse to do so. In Asheron's Call when one person quits an allegiance, he takes all his vassals with him too. Within less than a month the Sinathian Order went from over 700 members to less than 100. Shinwa Po was one of the members who left and with his vassals they struck out on their own. Thanks once again to the skills of Shinwa Po they were even more successful than they were with the Sinathian Order. This was also a good lesson that Alatar and Zule later applied to the Golden Shields: The leader is the most important member of a guild. Without him, the guild will fail.
Although Shinwa Po and his vassals continued to enjoy the game for many more months after that, the game itself eventually started to go downhill. Because of a small but vocal group of level 100+ power gamers who constantly complained that the game wasn't "challenging" enough for them. The developers caved and nearly every monthly update added more and more new monsters to existing areas of the game. Eventually every town in the game was besieged by creatures higher in level than the players who used those towns. It was so bad you couldn't even set foot outside of any city without having absurdly powerful debuff spells cast on you by monsters you didn't even know existed. Zule had already kicked around on the Darktide server for awhile and then quit. Alatar eventually got tired of having to teleport directly to dungeons in order to level because the outdoors had become to dangerous to travel though. Alatar ended up taking a break from the game for a month or so and when he returned, Shinwa Po was gone, never to be heard from again.
Although we have no idea where Shinwa Po is today, The Golden Shields wants him to know that we are eternally grateful for all he has done for us, even if he has no idea he did it.