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History of an Angel

I started visiting Caesar 3 Heaven back in December 1998.

Angel Alexander I, who at that time worked for the same company lent me his Caesar 3 CD and said:
"Have a look at Heaven."

I spent some time playing the game, wondered at stories of people like Marty Party, Reckless Rodent, and quite a few others. I got involved in some discussions about housing layout and created a set of glyphs to make this easier. You can click on the little legionair to go to the housing pages C3 Housing Blocks.

Shortly after that work returned with a vengeance and I fell out of the forums. This must have been early January 1999.

About a month later, Alexander came over again and said:
"I really enjoyed you're Egyptian travelogue. It felt almost as if I was reading an Agatha Christie mystery. We have opened a new bit of Heaven, called Pharaoh Heaven. Have a look and tell us what you think."

So I fired up my browser, late in February and was lost. I've always loved Egypt, much more than this Roman age and in a forum that was virtually my own I felt extremely comfortable.

Most people here were cherubs and angels from Pharaoh. Cherubs Mouse, Abelius, and Et Flavius. Angels Reckless Rodent and a few guest appearances from Alexander I, Draco and the like. They, yours truly and a few stray non-angelic beings discussed the possiblilities, disected the bits of information and screenshots Impressions fed us and prayed fervently for a wonderful game.

During this time I got involved in Caesar 3 Heaven again and spent most of my time there in the various story threads. These were wonderful and I thouroughly enjoyed stories like the Roman Civil War, Story Thread 3, diverse parties and other mind-expanding activities.

Back at Pharaoh Heaven I started enjoying myself with digging out links to Egyptian history, myth and some plain sillyness. Stories were started, the Pyramid Party and the Nile Cruise and early May I got an email from Angel Reckless Rodent:

Angel Reckless Rodent from Pharaoh Heaven here...I was just wondering if you'd like to join the PH team as a Cherub? We could use your knowledge of and clear enthusiasm for Egypt on the team.
It wouldn't involve anything more than what you're doing at the moment - just carry on posting in the forum as you are at the moment, enlightening us all with you web-related discoveries about ancient Egypt

I thought about it for a day and decided to accept the honours. I then started hoping for a better connection than the 14K4 modem I had at the time.

Two weeks later I got promoted to Angel and started working on the Caesar 3 news.

In the mean time I'd bought a house and my girlfriend moved in with me. We were going to move early August and I went offline for the last two weeks of July and the first of August.
When I came back to the office I found out that people were actually missing me. This felt wonderful...

The stories went on, the Nile Cruise in Pharaoh and something involving a captured angel on Caesar 3. I was lucky enough to be involved in the Pharaoh beta-testing and spent hours on line talking with some of my fellow testers.

Pharaoh was released and Pharaoh Heaven exploded. I got promoted to Seraph, Cherub ET was elevated to Angel to assist on Caesar 3 and Gustavia became the first Pharaoh 'born' Cherub. A lot of the Caesar 3 regulars started showing up at Pharaoh Heaven and we thought the old place would grow stale and musty and die a slow death.

Nothing proved to be more wrong as Caesar 3 Heaven keeps active, almost as much as ever. A whole new group of people has settled in the forums, together with some of the elders.

[2001.08.17 Yikes a year has passed and I haven't updated this at all]

Well, as Pharaoh grew rumours started to get out on a new Impressions city builder game. At the same time we heard about an expansion for Pharaoh. Not too much later I was busy testing Cleopatra, which Impressions had farmed out to a company called Breakaway. It featured tombs and lots more monuments, completing history all the way up to Cleopatra.

The site was expanded and Gustavia got bigger wings. We actually commemorated that event in the then running story: Scarab of Ra. Somewhat later we held the Pharaolympics a contest remeniscent of the Caesar 3 Olympics.

The new Impressions game turned out to be Zeus and I had a lot of frustrating hours beta testing it and a lot of fun adding content to the site. The Zeus forums were included in the Caesar 3 ones, with plans to add Pharaoh at a later date.

Half a year later Draco convinced the Halo to add a site for Age of Wonders, a game I enjoyed playing as well, so I ended up giving him a hand here and there. Impressions came with the Zeus expansion: Poseidon and I made a major mess out of that beta test, as my IDSN was ripped up to get me on ADSL which didn't work all through the (rather short) beta.
However, new rumours are afloat for a new Impressions product to come up in the near future.

Early 2001 I hit the incredible heights of 10,000 posts over on City Builder Heavens.

Forum wise, I was lured over to the Age of Kings: History forums and from there I spread my wings over the OD forum and the Mythology section in the upcoming Age of Magic. Of course I spend way too much time there in in the last 6 months have racked up close to 3000 posts.

Update: April 2002

Stronghold did indeed become a Heavengames site and and it was a pleasant surprise to be accepted as it's Seraph.
Okay, I nagged the Halo to accept me as such.

We opened our gates in November and have since seen more than 80,000 visitors pass the front door. I recruited a bunch of bright-eyed cherubs and we've been busy expanding Stronghold Heaven in to one of the best Stronghold sites around.

A new Heaven is already peeking over the horizon, but which one it will be I will leave to your imagination.

 

Angel Jayhawk