Dreams and Swords

Last night, contrary to doing what was sensible, I attended a live-event raid. Logged on Maliar, my level 50 enchanter, for the first time in forever. Someday I'll get around to upgrading her gear to accommodate all the various cool new things she's picked up since the last time I did her gear. Still, she's a force to be reckoned with even without a perfect template.

For this live-event, we had a dev running the battlegroup and a dev playing one of the demon overlords intent on invading Hibernia. Kazimran was the demon's name, and he'd snark at and with us. That was pretty much the saving grace of the event.

The event itself was just tedious. Go here with the battlegroup, kill a bunch of high-red and high-purple mobs until the mini-boss spawns, have Kazimran periodically drop AE insta-death on a section of the raid, kill the million+ hit point mini-boss. Wash, rinse, repeat three times.

Then for the final boss, Arnak resummoned all three mini-bosses again. Who we had to kill first before we could take down the final boss. While the final boss was also running around and DD+snaring us. Frustrating.

So there's this swirl of tanks following the particular mini-boss we're pounding, this swirl of mages, archers, and healers trying to find a place to stand and do their jobs without the mini-bosses or Arnak curbstomping us, and a whole lot of rezzes going down. It reached the point where I was up and down so often I didn't even bother re-summoning my pet.

[Theloving] Maliar, please stop dying.
[Maliar] I'll try.

Maliar was just killed by a Large Demonic Spark!

[Maliar] ...
[Theloving] ...
[Maliar] WELL THEN.

When we finally defeated Arnak, however, I got a cool new title. Plus the battlegroup had a lot of loot to roll for. However, I logged out before rolling for loot because I've already got four staves of which I only use one. (Epic staff, champion staff, dragonslayer staff, and I use my artifact staff.)

Still, this made my night:

[Maliar] You know what this event needs? Vuvuzuelas.
[Kazimran] That idea is too evil for even me to contemplate, Maliar.

So, in Molvik, the Albs have set up some trebuchets to break a hole in the wall of the central keep so they can try to capture it.

Reasons why they're dumb for doing this:
- The side of the wall they're hitting has two places where you can knock a hole in it. One of those places they'd broken a hole in earlier tonight, and it hasn't been fully repaired. It is currently at 68% strength. They are firing their trebuchets on the other place, which was at 100% when they started.

- The main doors to the keep have already been rammed down. If they walked around to another wall of the keep, they could go right into the main courtyard without needing to open a hole in the wall. -_-;;

At least they're hitting a wall piece they can break, I guess. They've been known not to do that, even when you tell them they can't break that piece.

Just spent the last three or four hours in Thidranki, kicking ass and taking names. Logged on my nightshade first, but pickings for an assassin were thin. Especially with the Mids not wanting to get away from the central keep, 'cause they had a healer back there who could keep even the most badly-specced shadowblades alive.

So Thuulstrea went and set up a trebuchet and started putting a hole in the ck wall. That kicked everything else off - Brionwe the vampiir logged on to join me, forgot to turn her /xp off, so she levelled to 25...

Then I logged on my druid to rez and DE logged on her bard to rez. So we all grouped up to get Brionwe back on her feet. We got her up, then I logged off and got on my hero, Sparra.

We just kept acruing people and siege equipment. First was Sililskra the vampiir, then Theovs the other bard. Picked up a mentalist named Mitril along the way. Knocked a hole in the wall, got into the courtyard, and were working on ramming down the inner doors when the Mids managed to force us back out.

So we got more trebuchest, set up on the Mid bridge, and trebbed three more holes in the wall and the inner door down. ^__^

The Mids put up a really stiff defense. Their frostalf shaman, Berylline, did a really good job of keeping us suppressed with her AOE DOTs and AE disease. And she'd jump outside to fire ballista at us, then run back into the keep before, oh, say, the lurikeen with the pointy stick could gut her.

Sparra was very saddened by that.

We captured the keep, and I got to tank the lord. ^__^

After we took the keep, we ran around a lot and swept up Mids and Albs who were thinking that maybe they could get some kills in. But with two full groups of Hibs running around, hungry for RPs, the Albs and Mids just kept dying in sprays of blood.

Major, major fun today. Brionwe wound up at 26th level before she logged out, and we had a beautiful group today. The two bards were well-played, the assorted melee-types kept together instead of running off in all directions, and the menty didn't wander off and die much. It was so awesome having a good group together that knew what it was doing.

Logged out because the Albs and the Mids stopped coming out to play. Ah, well. But, dude, that was an awesome day in Thid!

So, we're experimenting with buffbots on my account so that Angharad and Culliket's players can do some serious RvR. Or, y'know, just be competitive in RvR, in this day and age of bots.

For your edification, the name of our Alb bots:
- Houc
- Mixmeister
- Bonnycrusher
- Langhaul
- Scavvy
- Scraipa
- Oikio

So, what started out as logging on to fiddle with windowed mode settings in my MMORPG-of-choice, Dark Age of Camelot, turned into a four and a half hour Circle of Five raid. A four and a half hour in-character Circle of Five raid. Sure, we mostly devolved into late-night raid silliness after ten or so, but we were still mostly in-character. Even for the discussion about Cirig's ass.

And Cirig and Maliar got to be themselves when trapped in the presence of the other. ^_^

I've fallen out of practice with Maliar. At least twice, I grabbed some aggro by not paying attention to where I was sending my pet to attack. But I mostly got over that by the end of the raid, and I still handled everything else mostly just fine. Also, Bubba continues to kick ass. Go, go, Petzilla!

Got all the credits, two Champion Levels, many artifact levels, and advanced the quest by a step. Did not get any demon remains this time around, but I'll be going back for the next two weeks to see if I can get Malairt's remains. (Because he is the only really nice-looking demon of the bunch.)

The plan is, Cirig's going to run a Co5 raid Wednesday at 8est on Nimue for the next two weeks, then the week after that do a Crom raid. So, Culliket, Angharad, let's get 'em done.

Title: Ways Apart
Day/Theme: Aug. 22, 'Sword tells more truth than books; its parting wisdom from vanity.'
Series: Dark Age of Camelot
Character: Maliar, Celebiar
Rating: G
Summary: Two elven siblings bicker about their future paths.

( Ways Apart )

And this one is set in Midgard rather than Hibernia!

Title: Shield
Day/Theme: July 28 'to go where all the strange ones go'
Series: Dark Age of Camelot
Character/Pairing: Torold Sterkkriger, Kozakang
Rating: G
Summary: Torold sends a new trainee off to practice his techniques and reflects on what the lad's equipment tells of him.

( Shield )

Title: Sunrise
Day/Theme: Mar. 13 'To morning's beautiful friend, twilight'
Series: Dark Age of Camelot
Characters: Celebiar, Maliar
Rating: PG

Notes: Some utter weirdness that will never happen in-game. For those of you in no way familiar with this, Celebiar and Maliar are elven siblings. Maliar has a pair of artifacts called the Belt of the Moon and the Band of Stars, which let her do some interesting things. Celebiar has the Belt of the Sun and the Aten's Shield. (Aten being the Egyptian god of/that was the solar disk.)

( Sunrise )

I finally, finally mailed Puck's Christmas present on Thursday. Now all that's left is Ryuu's package, and then I will be done handling things that I meant to send out in December.

Speaking of Christmasy things, back around then I picked up Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "The Lost Christmas" CD. It took over my mind. Especially the titular song. There was a whole weird music video choreagraphed and rendered in my head. Well, this Monday, I finished one particular scene from that whole set.

Wonder how much work it would be for to animate the whole thing. Probably an evil pain, really, especially with getting the music to fit along with it. My mind stretches and compresses events as it sees fit.

This picture also continues the trend of me not completing Christmas-based artworks until well after Christmas itself.

And my dear, dear little lurikeen champion Smaragaid hit level 40 on Thursday then went on a Master Level 1 and 2 raid on Friday. Why, yes, those two events were connected. The only battlegroup step he missed was the final step in Master Level 2, which I'll try to make up the next time there's an ML2 raid. As it is, he just needs to do two group steps in ML1 to finish that, and do the solo step and chess in ML2 to have everything done but Runihura.

I will have a second 50 sometime in the future! Rawr!

Maliar finally got some more work done on a masterpiece job that's probably been written off as abandoned by now. Oh, well, if that's so, then Maida will have some really awesome boots and gloves for her next suit of armor.

Thuulstrea, my elven nightshade, spent a mostly enjoyable day in Thidranki today. Sure, the Hibs were about as organized as the Armada Decepticons (read: organization? What a cruel, cruel joke). Sure, we fumbled our chance to capture the central keep earlier in the day. Sure, we kept feeding ourselves to the Albs and Mids. But I got to spend time with Culliket and Angharad's stealthers, who I can trust to back me up when bad stuff is going and vice versa. We roamed around and killed people, got killed ourselves, went back out there to kill some more.

One spectacularly fun point was when Alquafea and Nadonn were killing a couple of Alb mages (I'd been injured, so I was swanning around, looking for a place to sit and rest) when someone dropped a mez on the Albs. As Nadonn put it, "Hey, one of our bards finally figured out what he was doing." 'Cept... It wasn't one of our bards. It was a Midgardian healer.

'Least the Albs died first and gave us realm points.

Loosely related to both Dark Age of Camelot and my tendency to internally script music videos... ( Lunatron introduced me to Blind Guardian. )

Deer are, as usual, fiendishly difficult to spot in the woods.

Drove to Tennessee today to spend time with my other set of relatives. Whether or not I'm on AIM will be erratic - Grandma does have it installed, but it's considered nice if I don't hide in here all evening. Other online pursuits cannot be pursued, as my laptop has no internet access up here.

To keep you entertained, here's a little article I wrote about fighting in the Battlegrounds (BGs) in Dark Age of Camelot, oh, about two years ago. Scarily enough, it's still applicable.

( BGs and Smaragaid )