You use the look command to see what objects look like in Shambala. If you type it by itself:

look

You will see the description of the room in which you are currently. If you were in Town Square, you might see:

Town Square It's always a clear and sunny Spring day out in town square. Songbirds flit about between the lush green trees, and the air is filled with the sweet smell of honeysuckle. The square is lined with quaint wooden benches surrounding an open grassy area, in the middle of which is a fountain that spouts crystal clear water into the air. Contents: Amity soccer ball rubber ball Obvious exits: Uptown <U>  Downtown <D>  The Park <P>

You will notice that when you look in the room, you get a list of the rooms contents, and any exits in the room. The contents list shows you the players and things that are in the room with you. You can use the look command to see the descriptions of the players and things. If you wanted to see what Amity, a player, looks like, you could type:

look Amity

And you might see:

You see a Caucasian woman in her early thirties. Her frame is short and slim, with subtle curves. She has straight honey-blond hair that is tied back in a short ponytail, and a round face with grey eyes. She is wearing an open black and white tweed jacket over a light gray button-up shirt with a crewneck collar. Her black pants fit her snugly, and she has black flats on her feet. Carrying: dice

You'll notice that Amity is carrying a thing called dice. You can look at what Amity is carrying, too. So if you want to see her dice, type:

look Amity's dice

And you might see:

A small pair of Monolopy dice.

You don't always have to type the whole name of the thing you're looking at to see it. Remember the soccer ball in the room? If you wanted to look at that, you could just type:

look soccer

And you might see:

A regulation size soccer ball, autographed by Brandi Chastain.

You do have to type enough, though, so the MUSH recognizes what you want to see. Since there is both a soccer ball and a rubber ball, if you were to type:

look ball

The MUSH would tell you:

I don't know which one you mean!

Of course, other people can look at you, too. You can see what they see when looking at you by looking at yourself. Just type:

look me

But if you haven't set your description with the @desc command, you will see:

You see nothing special.

You can look at the room's exits, too. If you wanted to look at the Downtown exit, type:

look downtown

You would see:

This road leads you toward Downtown.

If you tried to look at an object that is not in the room, such as:

look Flipper

The MUSH will tell you:

I don't see that here.

[ Back to look ]

This command is a flexible and powerful command, with many uses and variants. All of those uses will not be covered here- only the minimum basics that are used most frequently.

A lock will prevent a player from doing something, unless he or she can bypass the lock with the lock's key. The key is most often a database number or a player. The syntax for the command is:

@lock <object>=<key>

A lock set on a player or a thing will prevent other players, who don't match the key, from picking up the locked object with the get command. A lock set on an exit will prevent other players, who don't match the key, from passing through the exit.

Common examples of a <key> are:

Let's look at a few examples using that information. If you wanted to prevent yourself from being picked up, you could type:

@lock me=me

Only you would be able to pick yourself up - and you can't pick yourself up. If you just created a purse, and you want to be sure no one but you can pick it up if you leave it somewhere, you could type:

@lock purse=me

If only we could do that in real life! If you have just built your house, which people can enter though an exit called front door, but you wanted to lock it up so only you could enter it, you could type:

@lock front door=me

What if you are going to rent out a room in your house to Megan, which could be entered though an exit called bedroom door. Megan would want to be able to go through her bedroom door, but wouldn't want you to be able to. You could lock her door to her by typing:

@lock bedroom door=*Megan

Now, if Megan is renting a room in your house, she will want to be able to get through the front door too. You can put multiple keys on an object. To do so, you separate the keys with the pipe character: |

So, to lock that front door so only you and Megan could go through it, you would type:

@lock front door=me|*Megan

What if you wanted to lock your front door so everyone can get in, except for one person? You can do that too. If you start the <key> with an exlamation point (!), then to pass through the exit or pick up the thing, the player has to not be <key>. So, if your wanted everyone except Rasputin to come through the front door, you could use:

@lock front door=!*Rasputin

When you decide you want Rasputin to be able to come to your house too, you can remove all the locks with the @unlock command:

@unlock front door

[ Back to @lock ]

The mail command allows you to compose and send mail on the MUSH to any player you choose. You can send a quick mail as follows:

@mail/quick <player>/<subject>=<subject>

where <player> is the person to whom you want to send mail, <subject> is the subject of your message, and <subject> is the text of your message. So, let's say you want to inform Juliet that you will be in Shambala tomorrow night. You could type:

@mail/quick Juliet/tomorrow night=I'll be around at five o'clock tomorrow night.

You will see a confirmation:

MAIL: You sent your message to Juilet.

When Juliet logs in next, she will see:

MAIL: 1 messages in folder 0 [unnamed] (1 unread, 0 cleared).

She can then read your message by typing: @mail 1

-------------------------------------------------------- From   : John           At:     Sun Aug  3 15:23:37 2003 Fldr   : 0              Status: Unread To     : Juliet Subject: tomorrow night -------------------------------------------------------- I'll be around at five o'clock tomorrow night. --------------------------------------------------------

Using mail in this way doesn't give you much of an opportunity to write and edit longer letters. You can have more control over your mail if you don't use the /quick option. So, if you want to write a longer letter, you may start with:

@mail Juliet=tomorrow night

You will see:

MAIL: You are sending mail to 'Juliet'.

To write your message, simply start your message with a dash ( - ). For example:

-I'll be around at five o'clock tomorrow night.

And you will see:

46/8000 characters added.

If you want to add more, you can keep adding lines just like you added the first line.

-I hope to see you then.

70/8000 characters added.

When you're statisfied with your mail, you can send it with @send.

@send

You will see:

MAIL: You sent your message to Juliet.

To check your mail, simply type:

@mail

And you will see a list of the mail in your folder.

-------------------------------------------------------- [N------] 1  ( 21) From: Juliet  Sub: Re: tomorrow night --------------------------------------------------------

You can read the first message in your mail folder by typing:

@mail 1

And you will see:

-------------------------------------------------------- From   : Juliet        At:     Sun Aug  3 19:52:48 2003 Fldr   : 0              Status: Unread To     : Juliet Subject: Re: tomorrow night -------------------------------------------------------- I will see you then. --------------------------------------------------------

There are many options to help you compose and send mail. You can read the help file to learn more.

help @mail

The +map command gives you a general map of places on Shambala. Just type:

+map

And you will see:

UPTOWN Friendly Apartments Galleria Shambala University Law Offices ___ THE NEIGHBORHOOD Player Houses Shambala High School | | | | FOREST Crystal Falls ___ TOWN SQUARE Homeless Shelter ___ THE PARK Playground Pond Pool | | THE PROJECTS Player Building ___ DOWNTOWN Absolutely 80s! The Pyramid ___ RED LIGHT DISTRICT Dominique's Porn Store

The move command takes you from one room to another through an exit connecting the two rooms. There's a much easier shortcut for move, but let's start with the full command. Let's say you are in the Park:

The park is a lightly wooded area with many small paths that wind and twist their way through the trees. At points along the paths are open areas, some with picnic tables, where people can relax and enjoy the outdoors. The sun streams past the leaves and warms teh ground, and an occasional soft breeze passes through the trees. Now and again there is the faint laughter of children as they play in the grass. Obvious exits: Playground <PG>  Pond <PO>

There are three ways you can go through the exit called Pond which, you can presume, will take you to the Pond. The first is to use:

move <exit>

Where <exit> is the name of the exit through which you want to go. So to go to the Pond, type:

move pond

There's a shortcut for the move command, though. You can completely leave out "move" and type only the exit name, and that will take you to the pond too:

pond

You don't even have to type that much, though. The Pond exit has an alias, which was indicated in the <> after it's name. Remember the <PO> after Pond? That means you only have to type the alias to move through the exit:

po

[ Back to move ]

This commands gives you a list of informational text files for Shambala. Even though it's called news, the information usually doesn't change over time, and it includes things like Shambala's rules. If you type news by itself:

news

You'll see something like:

Topics: ADULT   Adult areas +HELP   Help on additional commands NEWBIE  So you're a newbie - you can start here RULES   Shambala rules - ignorance is no excuse! To see news on a particular topic, type: news <topic> For example, to see the newbie file, type: news newbie

If you wanted to see the rules file then, you would type:

news rules

[ Back to news ]

You use this command to send a private message to someone else logged into Shambala. That person does not need to be in the same room with you, and can be anywhere on Shambala. The syntax of the command is:

page <name>=<message>

Where <name> is the name of the person to whom you want to send a message, and <message> is the message. So, if you log on, use the WHO command to see that Amity is logged in, and you want to say hi to her without moving all the way to her house, you could type:

page Amity=Hi there. How's it going?

You would see:

You paged Amity with 'Hi there. How's it going?'.

And Amity would see (if your name were John):

John pages: Hi there. How's it going?

If you use page without specifying a message, you will just notify the other person of your current location. If you type:

page Amity

You will see:

You notified Amity of your location.

And Amity would see (if your name were John and you were in Town Square):

You sense that John is looking for you in Town Square.

It's also possible to send poses over the page. Do this by using the : shortcut for pose. So if you wanted to wave to Amity over the page, you could type:

page Amity=:gives you a wave.

You would see (if your name were John):

Long distance to Amity: John gives you a wave.

And Amity would see:

From afar, John gives you a wave.

You shouldn't rely on paging for socializing. It's a lot more fun for people to gather together in rooms rather than page each other from isolation.

Some people will log on, see who else is on, and start paging strangers. This is usually considered rude- paging is a little bit intrusive. Generally, you should only page those you know.

On the other hand, if you're a newbie and you need help with something, you might try paging someone you don't know and asking if he or she has the time to help you. Most of Shambala's inhabitants are friendly and willing to help someone new.

[ Back to page ]

This command is similar to say, but instead of saying something you use it to do something. What you do is up to you. The syntax is:

pose <text>

Where <text> is a description of what you want to do. For example, if you want to jump up and down, you could type:

pose jumps up and down.

Everyone in the same room with you would see (if your name were John):

John jumps up and down.

Pose has a shortcut. Instead of typing out pose, you can instead use a colon: :

So to jump up and down, you could type:

:jumps up and down.

Everyone in the same room with you would see (if your name were John):

John jumps up and down.

There is another variation of pose that you can use. Instead of typing pose, you can type a semi-colon: ;

The difference between the colon and the semi-colon is that when you use the semi-colon, the resulting message everyone sees will not have a space between your name and <text>. If you type:

;'s leg starts shaking uncontrollably.

Everyone else in your room will see (if your name were John):

John's leg starts shaking uncontrollably.

[ Back to pose ]

This command logs you out of Shambala. It is case-sensitive, so you need to type it in all capital letters. To use it, simply type:

QUIT

You can use this command at the connect screen as well as within the Shambala.

[ Back to QUIT ]