Good times. Achieved most of the things I wanted, and had fun. Lots and lots of haters I see though, and really it's unwarranted. I'll explain why of course.

Even more than some of my characters in the past, this one proves how much greater perception is over fact. People seem to think they are entitled to talk to anyone they want, and have them respond like your cousin in cleveland, catching up, telling your life story, making plans to see a movie when you're in town. It's ridiculous, particularly when, as here, you're talking about mortal enemies. Take Khalla for instance. You want to make me look bad by talking about using ignore, but I ignored you - in the normal use of that word - for days but you kept pestering and sending tells and obviously trying in fact to be a real griefer, so I finally just told you to shut up and stop talking to me, which you paid no attention to, and so I "ignored" you by using the command. Yet you want to pretend that somehow I've done something wrong, that I'm being cheap by putting you on ignore. Ridiculous. And I only use you as an example, there are many like you, many who took pot shots at the char over its life. I created the role specifically so I wouldn't have to participate in such conversations, it's in the role, and yet people want to complain that they couldn't get to talk to me and that when I did, it was full of hate. Well fancy that, someone who continues to talk to you despite being told not to, and who hates you, and whose whole life was dedicated to killing you, isn't going to be sweet to you. It boggles my mind that people think something's wrong there.

And let's be clear, other than once or twice, I don't think I ever initiated a conversation with a mageclass character. I didn't seek out opportunities to talk #### to them. And every time one of them sent me tells I tried to ignore them (again, meaning the real word itself, simply not responding) or responded by telling them not to talk to me, in lovely colorful language. People who insisted on trying to talk to me, despite being told not to, why is it wrong to repeat the instruction not to talk to me, with greater invective, and then to ignore when they don't comply yet again? Explain to me why I should have to listen to tells from people I don't want to, and that were not invited in any way? Most of which were complaints or insults to me anyway?

So to the person below who posted that they felt real hate from this char, then I say thanks, that means I succeeded. Any enemy was supposed to feel hated and despised to their very core. I the player don't hate you, hell I'm thankful you and the rest are here; if you weren't, with whom would I play? Who would I pk?

The other side of course was that the first half of her life (and there's a role entry about when it changed I think) she was damaged goods. Not really ready to be friendly with anyone, which was part of why she was so excited (role) to learn to kill from the shadows. Just her and just her prey, nobody else, nobody to bother with, nobody to have to worry about, nothing but her strength and skill against the enemy's. I'm sure nobody noticed, but I never used the smile or laugh or any similar emote until about halfway through her life, at which point she felt sufficiently at home in the village to start thinking of them as her family. As her role makes clear, family was a big source of anger and pain for her, and even thinking of it made her crazy, until she aged enough to move on. At which point she was more congenial to her villager brothers and sisters. Would laugh and smile and make jokes and such. Like I said, I doubt anyone noticed it really, at least not consciously, but there you have it, I did it.

Along those lines she was very, very, very touchy about being called "him", being mistaken for a man. I cut a bit of slack if it was from someone who never saw me visible, but honestly it happened most with people standing right there while I was visible, or from people in tells who obviously could see me to speak to me and so should have known she was female. That's often what she meant when she said to someone they were blind, because they'd call her a man to her face. Imagine calling a woman a man while standing right next to her. I doubt any of you can honestly fault a less than pleasant response.

Also, people really wanted to lump her with berserkers. I suspect because she was so successful in the pre-assassinate levels and so they wanted to be able to say "well, she's a berserker, so I can blame my loss on that". To the point where people would post logs of her, call her a berserker, but never see deathblow or thirst. It obviously annoyed me but what can you do. Later, I think they used it as an excuse to gang her, though at that point I have to assume they knew she was a scout and just did it anyway.

Speaking of gangs, that brings me to the looting thing. Again, perception and lies trumps truth and fact. I rarely took more than two or three things from any corpse I made, often taking absolutely nothing at all (other than coins, of course). When she did take things it was to wear herself, to give to another villager, or to give to Tahren. I don't think people pay enough attention to the concept of giving magic items to Tahren to strengthen the veil. The game mechanics are set up for it, but people seem to think that if a person you kill has it, it's off limits from taking to give to Tahren. I totally disagree with this. Obviously I didn't take everything or even most things, but if I saw a particularly powerful item (an orb, a breastplate of dwarven ribcage, scream of the damned, whatever) then I'd take that one magic item in particular to give to Tahren. Even with that, if I took more than two or three things from most people I killed, it was unusual.

But then there were the people who decided that they wanted to gang her. Or people that full or near full looted her. Well, she prized strength. If people fought her alone, she at least gave props for that. But she viewed gangs as the epitome of weakness, and if you came at her in a gang, when you could have come at her alone, then she saw no reason to make it easier for you next time so she would take more. Same if you took most or all of her things when she did fall to your gang. Perfect examples here are my wins over Mirfalaus early and late. I rarely took anything at all from his corpses (I beat him all the time when we were around the same level, then when he was six or seven levels older, and thus had skills - owaza in particular - that I didn't, he kicked my ass, then when I leveled up again I kicked his ass) and that's because "mageslave scum" though he was, he would at least fight his own fights. Conversely, the last time I killed Sulzaen for example, I took half the things in the corpse, because he and Lirieleth killed me together, and they took most of my things. Turnabout is fair play, and neither had ever killed me alone (I'd killed Sulzaen alone twice before and taken very little.)

And if anyone doubts my looting claims, I have virtually all of my kills logged and I can post them, showing the kill and the looting, or lack thereof. Like me or don't like me the logs don't lie, and neither do I.

Then it seems there were complaints about her fighting. Similar to people thinking her to be a berserker, people thought to treat her the same as they would a berserker, or more importantly, a warrior. She wasn't. She was an assassin. And unlike, say, my last hero assassin Loborguz, Susu was an assassinate-y assassin, not a warrior-y assassin. Sure she fought regular combat and did well, but that wasn't her goal, and given the choice she always tried the assassinate option first. This seems to upset people. In one instance, referred to below, a villager went to the giant and defended against people while I waited. What is conveniently left out is my saying, BEFORE that villager went to the giant, that I was going to study one of them and not fight at the giant yet, and that I wouldn't be there, and so he should wait too, or at least know I wouldn't be there fighting as well. This person decided to go anyway, and then later complains. I knew they wouldn't be able to finish the giant in one go around, and I was right, and they went to the blackclaw healer, and I assassinated the mage. Exactly as I said I would, before that villager got killed. I am sorry he got killed, but please let's not try to blame it on me. Warriors fight like warriors. Assassinating assassins fight like assassinating assassins.

Oh, speaking of assassinating, let me mention one thing: the absolute, one hundred percent, no doubt, no two ways about it BEST and most useful rager power for assassinate? Not resist. Not spellbane. No, it's spell evasion. That ability ####ing rocks. Once it got to the mid-80s it was amazingly reliable. I recall sitting through not one, not two, not five, not ten but thirteen - 13!! - faerie fogs at the maran, evading each one, time after time. I could sit there while antipaladins and invokers fireballed, conjurers flashed, muters fogged, all of it. Only healers with that suffusion or whatever thing got me reliably, so of course I hated that. But really, I'm telling you, the one thing that being a rager gave me to help in the assassinating was evasion, and it's almost reason enough to make another rager assassin.

Almost, but not quite. Because while spell evasion was great, being a rager made it so much harder to assassinate. I could have perfected it and had many, many more assassinations if I were anything else, or nothing at all. I'm sure many of you will be surprised, and wouldn't have thought of it, but the single biggest bar to getting assssinations? Other ragers. I can't tell you how many times I'd be stalking someone and some other rager would find them, not see me hiding of course, and just walk up and attack, more often than not letting them get away with word or teleport. Sometimes I said something but more often than not I just grimaced, did a fistshake emote, and moved on. Also, being a rager means I had to walk everywhere, and back. I routinely checked most of the ranking spots (people were safe from me in water spots, she hated water, though I did check ruins of the deep prety often), and walked from Calandryl to Ceawlin and Aturi, Barovia and the Dale to Mal'trakis and Whistlewood. And let me tell you, stalking someone for a few hours in Seantryn only to have them recall and then go somewhere else was very frustrating. If I were a non-rager I could simply recall too, and have a high likelihood of finding them. But as a rager I had to walk all the way back and try to find the trail. Not impossible, and I did it a few times, but much harder. And of course I didn't have friends with gate, or teleport, or word of recall, or tesseract or any of that to help me check lots of areas.

And, finally, being a rager meant I didn't have ragers to assassinate. Ragers are by far the easiset targets, even with someone like me to keep them aware when online. They have only one exit from the cabal, and they must use it. Contrast that with every other cabal where I could stalk someone and they would just teleport or word out rather than walk out, and there's nothing I could do about it. (And of course that was smart of them, I'm not saying they did anything wrong.) Ragers are generally predictable, generally available, and completely incapable of getting away from you other than simple walking. An assassin's wet dream. I'm actually surprised at how infrequent ragers are assassinated.

Next, one of the funniest things posted below was the comment on imm love, because Daevryn and Iunna are right, I got next to no imm love all the way through. A few examples. Use the search tool and look at the past drillmasters. They got con and xp when drillmastering. I got neither. Look at people who participated in big two month quests. They got all sorts of stuff. Hell, Azilaph got two legacies and a buttload of immxp. Susu, who used up three or four con on the quest, got 2 con as her reward. That's it. I think at one point during the middle part of the quest there was 1k in immxp given to the group who was there, so that too I suppose. But at the end? Two con. Less than she lost during the quest. The tattoo, as Yean mentioned, was really just a nod to longevity. The only other imm reward I got in almost six hundred hours were the role contest rewards, and that's not a show of imm love for the char. That's it. I have my suspicions why things went this way, but at this point it doesn't matter. In truth there's really only one thing left and we'll see how that goes. Empirically it's a no-brainer, but we don't live in that world so other things get tacked on to the considerations and might change the result. I remain hopeful.

As to the class, it's great fun. I had some frustrations with skill failure rate - and evidently the pfile was screwed up from the start, skills that shouldn't fail did (according to Zulgh, I'm not making this up) and nobody could figure out why. I have a few logs of missing kanset more than 10 times in a row, both before and after taking the kanset edge.

Also, there was a thread a while back about second and third and fourth attacks. I recall taking the imm side and saying that it's rare but it happens. Well, until my five hundred and fiftieth hour, I never once, not once, had more than four attacks in one round. I now go to the other side and say something's up there. I never got third attack in both weapons, or even third attack in one and second in the other. Whether dual wielding weapons or hands, it was always two and two or three and one (or fewer of course, got plenty of 2 and 1 or even 1 and 1 or even just plain 1 and 0). I recommend someone looking at that because it doesn't seem to make sense that it would never work at all. Rare is one thing, but this was cra-zy.

Hrm, what else. Oh, yes, someone accused me of not fighting people or logging off to avoid people. Simply untrue. Just because you didn't see me walk up and start attacking you, like a warrior, doesn't mean I wasn't trying to kill you, or that I was avoiding you. See my paragraph above about assassins not being the same as warriors, and assassinate-y assassins even less so. The perfect example here is Ahtieli. Theoretically if I were going to avoid someone, she would be near or at the top of that list, right? Except I tried to kill her, and stayed to fight, even when I didn't have the head. That's right, no resist, no spellbane, no critical hit, nothing. And when she came in a gang, I went out with Selene against her and her two or three cronies there. I figured out how to assassinate her but she never came alone again and I never got the chance to try. Sorry Daev, I tried. I would have loved to do it!

I avoided nobody, ever. Hell, as I mentioned above as well, once Mirfalaus and Porenn leveled up and were six or seven or eight or nine levels above me, they owned me, using owaza and doublespin kick, neither of which I had yet. I fought them repeatedly, as my pbf shows, dying to each more than once. But I fought them. I took the shot.

Shalsad, he owned me when he had the scales and I was wanted with shackles and guards and his forms. But I didn't avoid him and he got me.

The point is, her goal from the very beginning was to assassinate. Be the silent killer people feared. I succeeded in that. So if I didn't come running to fight someone in the open like a warrior berserker would, don't flatter yourself into thinking it was for any other reason than that.

What else, what else. Doing this sorta freeform. Oh, yes, the Tabius and related accusations. First, kicking him was 100% the right thing to do, as he himself admitted after all that drama. Maybe he told Woldrun and Yean about his personal history with Jedidiah, but not Susu, not when she asked him, and he didn't even know the plaque. I really should have kicked Kalderseg, too, the day before yesterday. Hell, he did something worse on top of it, lying to her. But in the end I decided he had more of a history in the cabal, so he'd earned more credit, and also having him send that note meant I could at least make it a learning experience for everyone, which being Yean follower meant a lot fo Susu. Don't mess up again Kald!

Second, the ancillary comments about Susu having done the same thing Tabius did. Wrong. Someone mentioned something about "constantly attacking the healer" or some such. Uh, ####. I attacked that elf healer Lonkamas or whatever his name is twice. And for specific reasons. And all around the time it happened. Why? Some ranger came to the ruins and camped at the grass path out. The ranger attacked me (I did not attack first, remember that). I of course fought back. Lornkamas sanc'd and healed the ranger as we fought. Now Lornk had protected people against me before, but always when I attacked them first, often when they were grouped exploring or leveling or what have you. I would fight the healer during those fights (dirt in the eyes to prevent healing, of course) but never pursued the healer after. Here though, the healer helped in an attack against me. I warned but it continued. So, I targetted twice in the next two days, just to send the lesson home. Never again after that - even though I found them in organia and yet again the healer saved the mage companion. Another example is Arrna. I didn't hunt or kill until the incident attacking the giant. There was one kill. And the warning not to do it again. And I never attacked Arrna again. And then there's Nacklewig. Nacklewig constantly helped scions and empire against us, healing them, sanc'ing them, doing whatever else. Nacklewig was warned. Once. Twice. Three times. Finally I followed through with the warning and assassinated, after it had been going on for weeks. Once. Never attacked again.

These are the only people I know of that were not enemies or who didn't make themselves enemies that I killed, so I don't know why people are complaining, and those that are, are obviously trying to create drama where there was none, just to smear my character. It happens, but it's still annoying. Hell, ask Jedidiah, I walked by him over and over and over, even when I was flagged, because he wasn't a mage or a mageslave. Did I want to punk his sorry ass? Of course. But I didn't.

Happiest kills: Victacar, Sulzaen, Sisawat. God I enjoyed those. Sulzaen because assassinating a competent, duo-happy scion transmuter is one of the harder things to do. Victacar because he constantly talked smack, constantly tried to pretend he played some sort of middle ground but really was just gaming the system, stealing and fighting against villagers that couldn't see him, but making nice talk with those that could, and he needed a major beat down. So he got it. Also, he'd jumped on my kills several times, including one in particular which had great village significance, I was fighting the Hildebran mob. Sisawat because he thought he could loot my corpses with impunity, like he did everyone else's. He couldn't.

Assassin edges: smoke and mirrors is a must. Having two bukis has ruined me for future assassins though, I'm not sure I could enjoy martial trance anymore without both. They totally rocked, and made that Victacar kill possible. Once I got that Zo Buki he was toast. The backfist edge was pretty good, I saw a definite upgrade in the number of backfists. Not a crazy amount, but at least one or two more in a fight than I would have had, I think. Exploit vulnerability didn't seem to do anything, to my anecdotal eyes. For example I got the same damage using the same wrath weapons against duerg before and after taking the edge. Both buki edges rocked. Rocked. I can't imagine the others being as good, but if they are that's impressive. The Ehren soul edges seemed to work pretty well, it's hard to know what's anti-gang code and what's edge, but whatever it was I saw several benefits. The master of kyusho-jitsu and then kanset edge both disappointed me. It's possible I don't understand exactly what they're supposed to do, but I thought the first was to be a bit of a boost to landing a kot or kans (as opposed to just missing outright) and a small increase in the -stats, meaning if normal kan would give you -6str now you'd get -7 or -8str. I think it probably worked out to be the latter, but not the former, because I certainly completely missed a lot. The latter edge, the kanset adept edge, was supposed to make hitting the full kanset, the screaming in pain one, more likely. I definitely didn't see that, in fact I really had the feeling I hit it *less* than I did before! I'm sure I'll be told that's not true but it really did feel that way, and I can show hours of fighting without hitting kanset at all, and of getting just a regular kanset, not the full screaming one. Remain conscious is hard to gauge as you don't know what would have happened without it, but I credit at least one failed blackjack after which I killed Damenous to the edge, and that alone made it worth it to me. Evasive, again, hard to gauge, but like Ehren edges I felt like I got a solid bonus and would take it again. Finally, it's the little ones that always matter in the end. Seasoned traveller. I took it late but just in time. I was fighting Gzurweeg and Veleknoss and they plagued me and I couldn't make it to the destructor. I had like 185hp and -80 or so mvs. But rather than come finish me, they took an hour or two one room away (they'd already killed the giant) to heal up and use preps. Well, my bindwounds cured the plague and having that one tick to rest got my moves up enough to get to the destructor, all because of Seasoned Traveler. You never know what's going to come in handy one day! Dispelling critical was fun to have, but really didn't work that often. For every time it dispelled one or two things, there were about a score or more where it dispelled nothing. But even having the chance was cool, and made people nervous. Though making them nervous probably worked against me either by having them bring more people or just not fighting at all. And it did add a bunch of spam to my screen seeing all the affects being unaffected. But whatever, it was cool.

I think that's it for topics. As for people, I'll echo what others have been saying, people whine way too much about any looting, at all, and part of the problem frankly is having people who think they can tell others that they're better just because they don't loot. I had someone say to me they wish I would take the high road, that I wouldn't be petty about looting, as though not looting is morally better, or somehow not petty. There is no such thing. One is not any morally better than the other. Worse, Gahdak for example once said that ragers shouldn't be looting enemy corpses, that it's not a rager thing to do, it's against village tradition and such. And that it makes it harder for other villagers. He tried to tell people not to loot at all. Ridiculous.

Oh, I forgot, the level sitting charges. People who think an arial assassin sitting in the high 30s is somehow gaming the system are just fools. Exp penalty means my enemies were mostly above me in level, not below. My targets had all or virtually all of their class abilities. Final forms. Full invoker shields. Second legacies. Etc. More, while in the 36-42 range I had the absolute widest possible range of targets. By hero I had the fewest. Hell, I couldn't fight level 46 people when I was level 51. But I could when I was level 37.

Plus, I routinely got complaints about how it was "cheap" to assassinate, that it's "weak" and "why don't I fight for real?" crap, and that I'm a "coward" for assassinating and not just fighting out in the open. All of that's obviously wrong, but it's the last that I really don't get. One example really illuminates it well. I assassinated Senket while he was leveling in the Loch. He was with two others, Khaan and Eronolian, both of whom I could fight. Khaan of course is a giant basher and Eron was a bard. All imperials. If I missed the assassinate, I was dead. There's big lag when you assassinate, and I'd have two warriors and a bard fighting me. Yet I'm the coward for doing it? I don't think so. Rather, I think it takes some serious sack to do it. You go ahead and try and then tell me about it.

I rolled the character knowing from day 1 I wanted to perfect assassinate and be an assassinate-y assassin. I didn't come up with it late in her life as some sort of excuse not to fight or anything like that, I put it in my role right from the start. And that's what I did. It took that long to master assassinate, and not for lack of trying. As I mention above, I don't think anyone who hasn't tried it has any idea how hard it is to do as a rager.

Finally, really, the time. I left my last job on Friday, April 3rd. I rolled up Susu the next day. I don't start a new job until the end of the year so I've got nothing but time and I am using it to do things I enjoy. I see my friends when they aren't working, my girlfriend and I went away for two weekends, and I see movies and read and hear bands and all that. But I have all day, every day, and all night, every night, to fill, and I enjoyed the character, so I played like a madman. And I'll probably do that with the next until I start working again. So that's why it went the way it did, timewise.

I've already written more than I should obviously and I doubt people will even read all this, but that's their problem, it's here and if they want to read it, there you go. I'll respond to people individually if they want. I had a lot of fun for the most part with the char, and I like most of the ragers I interacted with (if you weren't a rager she didn't like you much, makes a nice easy black and white world for her). See you in the fields!