Lorddstead has existed for only about four or five days and was founded mostly by two hearthlings who settled after seeing a vision on the heavenly tubes. We both read the wiki and the Sevenless guide and felt we took every reasonable precaution - we built back from the river, beelined for the palisade tech and built it all in one go, sealed the vulnerable posts and generally tried to maintain good discipline with the key (which is why we still have it and why I suppose "raided" is probably a better term than "sacked" come to think of it...). The raider ambushed us while the palisade was open for logistics - we were both online at the time but had no way to defend ourselves.
The perpetrator could not be recognized in the time we had to respond (which was no time at all, obviously). He wore a bear hat is about all we could see. I saw some damage numbers and they were around 90-130. We were unarmored near starting characters with all stats well below 20. I tried to make to make an alt (called Key Alt more or less) to lure him off but he could not be dissuaded from slowly murdering the fallen.
The murderer did not say anything nor took anything, simply killed us, then chased the false alt upon which he was promptly locked back out of the palisade by the real key alt having taken smelly clothes and four rabbits for his trouble. We have been falling a strict policy of isolation and had not previously encountered any actual live players before this. We took care to avoid touching anything that wasn't ours, including obviously abandoned objects out in the wild and had crime turned off at all times so as far as we understand the crime system, we did not do anything to provoke the hostility nor were warned or otherwise informed by the attacker of any such.
Our coordinates on the map were roughly (-50,4): http://sabinati.com/HavenMap/
The sleepers are partners who didn't wind up liking Haven & Hearth. They weren't killed either.
We've decided even though materially we kept almost everything, that the location is no longer secure and are restarting elsewhere. My key alt will shortly open the gates and drown herself and then I'll release claim. Anyone who comes to investigate can help themselves to what they like (though there isn't anything really - our most valuable object is literally a spider). Hopefully, someone can bring the murderer to justice.
