A comment on the lore of the new champ spawn
One of the rewards references Ilshenar. "Anilem" is in the older lore of Ilshenar. It means "He Who Destroys" and refers to a being that unleashed great disasters on Ilshenar (Montor in particular). At one point the ancient people of Ilshenar used the term to refer to Mondain. (See this UO Guide page for more: https://www.uoguide.com/BNN:_An_Introduction_to_Ilshenar_-_Part_I.) Most of the storyline/lore of these events seems to be about Relvinian, a mage associated with Britannia, and the Hedge Maze in particular.
So, we have Ilshenar, and we have the Hedge Maze, as locations associated with the lore of current events.
The spawn is in Tokuno.
Comments
I think Ilsh was a complete non-starter given the spawn contains balrons on level 4 and anything spawned in Ilsh has a chance to be a paragon. So it would be like Hythloth dungeon on steroids (and probably some Crack/Speed). Given the numerous threads/posts dedicated to complaining about the paragons in Hythloth, I think it's pretty easy to see why the DEVs didn't want to use Ilsh.
I'd be willing to bet that there would be more people complaining about paragon balrons or having to run around the hedge maze (to keep it true to lore) than the amount of people complaining about it not fitting lore so they picked the lesser of 2 evils.
Sonoma has way too many revenant lions in the middle of it.
At one time my poor pet was surrounded by 5 of them
and they instantly respawn as soon as they die.
And every time they die, I keep getting the message about killing all of that type
Yukio's quest isn't in my quest log any more, but every time one dies
I get that message... its very distracting
Also I heard that there are words when you get a drop from the spawn
other than what I see here. I forget what words the CC user told me that it gives them.
(I do use Pinco's UI & when Mesanna wrote a message
on Sonoma about EM Xanthus, I didn't see it either. don't know if thats the UI
problem or an EC problem)
https://forum.uo.com/discussion/7596/artifact-splash-screen
Maybe this will get picked up as a change to the client.