Bane was founded prior to the launch of EQ2 through the use of the eqgaymer boards which were sponsored by the leaders of Nameless Love from EQ1 at the time. Through board postings and communication the much anticipated release of server names for EQ2 launch was awaited, and awaited and awaited. When it became clear server names were not going to be made public - or we just didn't have the right inside sources a decision was made by the gay gaming community to meet on the 4th server down the list alphabetically at launch. Various guilds were formed and internal chat correspondence was set up. Bane had voted on a guild name prior to launch through the eqgaymer boards and feedback, and established the Bane channel for those wishing to join. Hellion a sk kitty was Bane's first leader and instrumental in all the pre-launch coordination through the boards.  The establishment of the /join eqgaymer channel became live about 1 week after launch so all glbt folks could communicate, group invite and chat regardless of what guild they landed in.

Forming a guild cost 60 silver and for those that weren't around for launch well 60 silver was a hell of a alot back then when everyone was tyring to learn a game, outfit their brand new toons etc. It took us about 24 hours to pool together the 60 silver and made us I believe the 65th guild formed on the server. Trivia item - Elysium was the first guild formed on this server at that time. I don't believe in the new guild system the display for creation ranks shows so going off memory here, but I do know that Bane was the first gay guild to acutally form officially, based on the creation ranking system that used to exist.

We used to be able to hand down gear (there was no such thing as attuning) and one distinct pair of pants from hellion circulated to I know 5 different toons as they leveled.  They were like the ultimate guild pants with everyone wearing them till they outgrew and then passing them along.  This happened with alot of gear, but this one pair of pants sticks in my mind so vividly!

Another clever idea Bane came up with during launch for tradeskillers was the idea of working together.  During launch every tradeskill class was dependent on other ones.  Thing such as WORTS (washes, oiles resins and tempers were required by all classes - made by alchemist only) which controlled how high you could level your crafter became a hinderance.  So bane decided we needed to pick one location to tradeskill so we could exchange goods so all could level.  That place became Nepeta Cataria, located in Stonestair Byway,  which actually means catnip in modern dialect.  Many evil toons in bane still solely craft there for old times sake even though the interdependency is gone and the need to be evil to be in Bane has been dismissed as well.

Bane started out with alot of members from Mississippi during launch, some folks from Nameless love and later got a huge contingent of Seattle boys who basically shaped the guild until level 35 or so. We have seen our share of hard times, ghost town logins etc, but the same is true of any guild that has been in existence for as long. Its just the mechanics of a mmorpg, people flitter about looking for greener grass, find other things to occupy their time (bf's and gf's) or just grow away from the game. For a non-raiding guild Bane earned the respect of many raiding guilds, because of player presence, knowledge and well frankly some very loud mouths. We became the defenders in the channels of gay bashing which had been pretty much squashed until the merger with Innothule where the good fight had to be fought yet again with a bunch of no class homophobes and juveniles.

Slowly but surely tolerance is starting to exist again on Crushbone, but at times we do more damage to our own community than others do to us. This has now become critical to the mission of Bane.