>I read what you wrote below on this and I think your answer
>was a bit facile. "Eriwal had Twist's tattoo; Twist gave
>Eriwal the wolverine." This doesn't really address the truth
>of the situation, which is that there was almost certainly an
>enormous discussion among the imms - or at least the upper
>imms - on this whole topic.

There was a little discussion among a few of us. I wouldn't say enormous. On paper the wolverine didn't look a whole lot better than a ram or lion, and in some ways was worse. I'm not going to deny that it's a good form, but it's not like we thought this was a tactical nuke going out.

>As I recall this was the very
>first quest form ever given.

Might've been... the first four or so went out in pretty close succession and I'm not sure which was first.

>And we both know that Kalvin
>would have discussed it in depth with his closest friends and
>colleagues up there, meaning you and Cador and one or two
>others.

Cador and Twist and I talked about it a bit, yeah. As far as I know, that was it. I get the impression that you think this was a major, momentus decision at the time, and it really wasn't. We figured out which transmuters in the various cabals we liked and thought were cool, and set in motion plans to hook up each of them with one of the first quest forms.

>And, lastly, I am still curious if you happen to remember the
>specific idea that one of if not the biggest roleplay
>justifications for Eriwal's reward was his choice to leave
>parry unpracticed. That was big on the rumor mill for a
>while, and obviously seemed like pretty little when balanced
>against the collossal benefit he received in the wolverine.

It was the quality of the RP of the character in general, of which the sacrifices he made in the form of not practicing most of the combat-y skills was a part. Although that doesn't seem like much for a shifter to lose, factor in that Eriwal was made, caballed, and heroed (if I'm not mixing up my timelines) some time before we even came up with the idea of shifters.

I think he got an edge because we had more meta-knowledge of what the character's roleplay was supposed to be about, definitely, as I've talked about before. While I wouldn't hold Eriwal up to the likes of Harken for RP comparison, I do still think that he was on par with the set of characters given quest forms at that time.