Sunday April 22 - Five Minutes of PeaceFollow

My Friends of Norrath

A (very) long time ago in Ultima, a single gamer passed away; this person was well known on our server, and I cannot remember what the circumstances of the passing were. What I do remember vividly was what the response of the people on our server was.

This person's guild petitioned a GM to place a monument to this individual within the virtual world. As part of this, a server-wide vigil was held. Life literally stopped on the server for a brief time (with almost no exceptions).

As most of you know, a tragedy occurred in Virginia this week that took the lives of many sons, daughters and faculty members of Virginia Tech. While I had no family or friends there, I found the pictures of medical personnel and law officers carrying these children from the buildings to be particularly painful. This is the second time in the near past where our children have been thoughtlessly taken away from us in a senseless act of violence. It seems we are in violent times, as our children our being taken by wars abroad, and senseless violence at home.

Sanctus Covenir will hold a non-denominational vigil, guild-wide, to recognize not only these children and the faculty, but all of our children everywhere who are perishing due to war and violence on Sunday April 22 at 8:00pm EST. We will sponsor five minutes of peace on the Unrest server at the Keep of the Ardent Needle in Antonica to honor these children, the faculty, and our soldiers abroad (who are also our children) who are surrendering their lives to this trend of violence.

I recognize that this is but a small token gesture, but our history has proven that a small token gesture can change our future. Had Rosa Parks shown apathy and refused to leave her seat on that bus so long ago as was the culture at the time, who knows what we may have missed; a small act on her part that changed our history forever. If for no other reason, if what we do by this token act is to let one person who was hurt by this senseless event know that we care, then it will have been a success. The MMO world is strange place; we do not know who sits behind the keyboard, controlling the avatar that we see. It could be that one of those people you interact with could be a friend, parent, girlfriend or boyfriend of someone who was injured or was killed.

I had hoped that we could gather enough people to make a difference; to perhaps show one person that was hurt by this tragedy that is sitting behind a keyboard somewhere in Norrath that this community does care. Maybe that is not possible, but on Unrest, I know that at least a few people will be at the Keep of the Ardent Needle Sunday evening at 8:00pm EST. Whatever you decide to do is up to you; and I would fight to the death to defend your right to your perspective on this, regardless of what I feel. That is what democracy is all about. I do appreciate the time you folks have taken in reading this post.

I ask that each of you consider this, and perhaps speak with your guilds to support this effort Norrath wide. I have posted a note about this on the SoE forums (Newbie Area) and on the SoE Server Board for Unrest. I do ask that if you do not agree with this, to please just vote with your feet and not show up. I have been flamed enough over the last few days to last a lifetime. I know that there will be varying opinions on this, and I respect that you may not agree with it.

Safe travels my friends.

PS: Links to other threads

SoE Board
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=357406

Unrest Server Board
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=357405


Edited, Apr 19th 2007 8:23am by jjnichols

Stu,

Stop with the introspective. Make with the good morning post!

Oh..and good luck with the vigil.

Vote for Pedro!

What? Too soon?