Hook and Eye

When Midnight Ocean opened, Winter Solstice was owned by the Vilya flag (the game developers themselves) and the tailor Hook and Eye was owned and run by Artemis, an Ocean Master.

After the initial shop auctions, Cleaver in his wisdom decided to rent out a number of shops for a short time, including Hook and Eye, and the Card Sharks (total crew members: 2, Hogwash and son Erdnase), who had been unsuccessful bidders in the shop auctions, were lucky enough to be selected.

We took over the shop on 23rd November 2003, for an initial period of one month at 45,000 poe rental. This was subsequently extended for a further month, at the same monthly rental.

It wasn't easy to compete with the other tailor on the island, which remained owned and run by an Ocean Master, especially as we had very few resources at our disposal. But we worked hard, and managed to build up stocks of cloth and commodities and an excellent workforce. Our policy was always to obtain cloth at the cheapest prices, and pass on the savings to our customers.

Over this period, we made many friends, including new players having their first experience of the game. Many are still playing, and some are now captains of their own crews, and even flag monarchs.

In January 2004, there were further shop auctions on the island. At that time, Hook and Eye was not included, and we shut temporarily in the uncertainty of what would happen to the shop.

However, to our great joy, we were then given the option to purchase the shop for the sum of 750,000 poe. It was extremely hard to find the money, but we sold all our stock and pillaged hard and finally came up with the pieces of eight. By the way, the initial weekly taxes, when introduced, were over 21,000 poe.

As soon as we had restocked, and raised sufficient money, we upgraded the tailor to a Fine shoppe, costing us a further 122,000 poe. Stalls were then immediately introduced and our workforce dropped by half. It has never recovered and is now a third of its former size, dropping again with the introduction of housing and furniture in August 2005.

We have enjoyed every minute of our time running Hook and Eye, despite the many and varied problems it has posed over the time of our ownership. The shop makes little profit these days, but we still stick by our policy of providing the widest possible range of affordable clothing. Our rack is one of the best in the ocean.

Do drop in and say hello to Hogwash.