Thu Sep 29 19:33:23 2011

At 9 o'clock PM, Day of Deception, 9th of the Month of the Shadows
on the Theran calendar Tavlin perished, never to return.

Race:	mummy
Class:	necromancer
Level:	51
Alignment:	Evil
Ethos:	Neutral
Cabal:	SCION, the Scions of Eternal Night
Age:	91
Hours:	610

Asked in log boards, but seems it's not going to pop-up there.

I've seen you used numbing grip a lot of times (especially in the log where Vinq was sleeping before centurions). Why this spell? Does it lags, or what?

Your post: http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=53&topic_id=2638&mesg_id=2677&page=

My Reply: http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=53&topic_id=2638&mesg_id=2680&page=

Thought there was some trick. You never used crushing hand wands?

But, what is the lag from crushing (on you and on opponent)? AFAIK, it can't permalag (there is no chance that it will lag you for, say, 2 rounds and opponent for 3 rounds)?

They'll never be lagged longer than you, and if they can make the saving throw they won't be lagged at all.

And cool that you were an evil leader in a non-abusive way. The threat of being trampled by unicorns was enough to instill fear in anyone...

But then you got Mummy and there just wasn't a way to finish you off anymore...

I enjoyed our interactions for what it is worth, except when you called in douchebag human scion dagger warrior (I can't remember the name) to gang me in Arkham.... Not because he looted or Olum died or whatever, but rather just because you made me interact with him in any way and that was a pain way worse than death.

...at that stage of the game, there had been more than a few accidents where I was fighting more than one Villager. And with you slept, it wouldn't even be considered accidental, it'd be downright fair game.

Also I couldn't land a damn spell on you to save my life. I was out of mana or nearly when we finally attacked. Damn save vs. spell. :P

But not that it actually happened, or at least that it actually happened with Olum directly involved. Perhaps your definition of "fighting" is different than mine, but as I said, no hard feeling either way, I just didn't want to have to deal with that douchebag...

I definitely felt little to no fear from direct damage spells as Olum... spellbane + assorted edges + resist magic is a potent combination.

I've been away, with limited access to these forums, and I don't have the energy right now to read this entire thread, but I'm going to weigh in with my thoughts.

I can't imagine that anyone didn't know this was Twist. Powerful characters this classy only come in a few colors.

Knowing that this was Twist I can't believe that there was even a single accusation of cheating. What the ####?

I think it boils down to the question of "Was Tavlin OP." Of course he was, but I promise you that in my hands (with the same rewards) he would not have been. Once we start decrying certain players as being overpowered we go down a road that ends at "Harrison Bergeron." Screw that.

All in all, I loved fighting Tavlin as Shinju, even though I considered myself lucky to survive the plague/scourge and had exactly a .001% chance of killing you during any given encounter (I figure there was a .001% chance that you would be felled by a congenital heart defect during the fight.)

I also really dug the thing with the chicken.

I assumed I had more time to do some fun stuff with you, but ah well.

Can't say I'm shocked to find out who this player is. As soon as you told me your story I started running through a short list of names that would be able to rattle off those First Age names you so casually discussed. Although, I suppose an astute player could have just grabbed some names from Balator/Lyceum and made up stories, but I didn't think anyone but a true old-schooler would have found it particularly fun to do so.

I always want to thank the folks with good stories and interesting things to say for including Heralds in their roleplaying fun. I'm sad though, that the hell trip you mentioned never happened (or if it did, that it didn't end up including me.)

And, of course, there WILL be a Post article about Tavlin. I'm already having fun interviewing folks who have come up with very distinctly different stories/theories about what they think happened to Tavlin. :)

Oh, and I wasn't just being cheap about that information about the undead. I had already put my feelers out to the Outlanders/Fortress and had come up with what I believed was most of the information you would have given me anyways. (Which still wasn't enough to write a real article about the new undead. Ah well.)

By the time I made that offer, I'd found 3 of the 4 and had a good idea from seeing them fight what they could do. I was going to detail that all out for you. And where to buy the elixir deal and what it really did.

Ah well.

The Hell trip did happen, you weren't around and I invited Allysia but she declined because it was a suicide trip (which was sorta true but I got what I wanted and the two who did go with each got something pretty decent IIRC in terms of gear. I know one did, not sure if both did.)

Doh! You *told* me you had two, and Outlanders had told me about one and someone else had told me about another. I also already learned about the elixir and where to buy it and how to use it so I figured there was a good chance I'd be paying for nothing or almost nothing.

I was tempted to pay anyways.. I should have!

Sorry I wasn't around for the Hell trip. Due to my arrangement of an almost risk-free PK situation, I've plenty of con and am usually up for anything suicidal exploration-wise, if I have the time for it (which is unfortunately rare.)

For while I was a bit annoyed at you, since you blew me off once or twice, but then you eventually gave me a very quick and painless induction, which was nice.

We did not get to interact very much, since we'd both be out killing people when we were on, but you always felt, to me, like someone powerful and badass, but approachable. Definitely a good thing, in my opinion. You made it seem like everyone was just throwing themselves at you, though, while I am out scouring the world for someone, which made me jealous. :)

I am very disappointed the ritual never happened, at least the one I was around for. I had something pretty cool planned for it.

You mentioned you found a use for dissolution. Could you explain?

>For while I was a bit annoyed at you, since you blew me off
>once or twice, but then you eventually gave me a very quick
>and painless induction, which was nice.

Yeah I think we were full when you first caught my eye, but then when we had an opening I could never find you, our playtimes just didn't match up. And I was saving a spot for you.

>We did not get to interact very much, since we'd both be out
>killing people when we were on, but you always felt, to me,
>like someone powerful and badass, but approachable.
>Definitely a good thing, in my opinion. You made it seem like
>everyone was just throwing themselves at you, though, while I
>am out scouring the world for someone, which made me jealous.
>:)

Sometimes it seemed that way. :)

>I am very disappointed the ritual never happened, at least the
>one I was around for. I had something pretty cool planned for
>it.

Yeah I ended up doing it with 1 Scion and 2 apps (who both made it in due to the fact that we had 2 openings and they showed up and performed admirably).

>You mentioned you found a use for dissolution. Could you
>explain?

I cast it in a room full of mutual enemies who were already fighting each other, ala a bard singing grand nocturne at market square. Was fun.

Thanks for letting me into Scion. I was super-not-deathful for a Scion but I did manage to protect the scepter a lot and aid in a number of raids.

I really enjoyed the trip to get the mask.

I think this is the first character of yours I knowingly interacted with. You were really fun to be around, you have a great sense of humor and the character was well role-played.

I also appreciate you showing me around so much. You really taught me a lot. Wish I knew what half that gear you were wearing was though :) Dunno if you knew it was me or not. I tend to think I show through in my characters :(

Thanks again, good luck on the next.
Haeg/Rade

I know you weren't deathful (something I got some crap for, inducting someone not deathful), but god dammit you had gumption. And good RP. And it wasn't like you were leaving piles of Haeg corpses lying around. You just didn't kill like Mharlndarn. Or, you know, Brom. 20-4 Brom or whatever his record was. :P

But you rocked the house when it came to that Hell trip. RP on the way, yet no screwups, did everything exactly right...

I was disappointed when you deleted. :(

Thanks. That means a lot. I often logged in about an hour before you. Dunno if you ever snooped me as Twist but I tried to be aggressive and would often run up against Cotzibue and crew without you.

I'm working on that whole "actually killing someone" part. I tend to do pretty well with combat classes through the mid-ranks but I have a hard time with muters (the only thing I've heroed). Oh well, hopefully it'll go better next time.

You're right that one day we sure tore it up. I figured this was you a few momths ago due your hours and overall badassery. I generally tried to avoid associating with you at all in the beginning due to Lisos being a bit of a loner. I would let you know where people were or i would call on you if i knew i couldn't handle someone i had garrotted alone.

Im pretty sure you know who the player is here. The two of us together always end up to be a near unstoppable team. Running with you the other night while we were outnumbered reminded me if ozr empire days.

Can't wait for your next.

...but in Scion it seems like if there are two of you, that's a gang of another cabal, so being a loner really works there.

Every character you have ever made seems to be on the opposite align/ethos spectrum as whatever I have at the time.

I wanted to interact more with this character, but I'm glad we at least had a few decent battles. I was going to make a role entry all about you, actually, as you were a ready-made, perfect target for Ozrek's hatred of necromancy.

About that little dance in the desert with Llarilin and Vallinane: All of us really thought you were going down. The timing was perfect, as Llarilin had just lagged you with vibrato, then Vallinane came and tripped a round later. It was all just staggering lag at that point, but I suspect the anti-gang code probably would have saved you!

For those few who ever reach the level of power you had with Tavlin, I say just stick it out. The natural cycle of the game will take its course and eventually, with luck, you will go down in a blaze of glory. I truly think it would happen this way but for one thing: the continued popularity of neutral characters, such as gnome shifters. If everyone had to pick good or evil, man...what fun we'd have!

from the time you helped me with roriack to Goratha you were helpful and fun. You seemed to not even fear fighting me. You were kinda like oh its a villager lets try and kill him without my army. Then some assassin came and you just came and destroyed me. I wish i could of helped you more with Roriack though. Quick question does Twist hate scions?

He just doesn't trust them and won't associate with them.

Thanks for the RP you sent my way. And I really love "information" act. I think you got 3-4 kills out of that. Thank you once again.



GLWYN

And I'm pretty sure the main reason was because I never bugged you about it after I pledged. Rasay was meant to explore, and pledging Scion was a whimsy. Didn't have a roll to speak of and from the Imm comment on my PBF they got it right. However being in Scion, the times we got to run around together, and the times I got to run around with others of the Chasm made Rasay my most favorite character. I deleted because my play times got lowered and really wanted to see Scion do good with more active players.

Thanks for the induct and GLWYN

You were always on, as an applicant, and you never pestered me. So when we had an opening I decided to talk to you and you didn't suck so in you went.

I don't think any other character has made me chuckle as many times as you did. I wish I could remember specific instances as examples, but I know many a time over CB you'd comment on something and it would crack me up.

Man I hope you enjoyed how many times I just walked right into you and died. I had NO idea how to beat you. THe only time I came close, I think you had just gotten Mummy and I had a healer with me and we got you to run. I thought for a few minutes that I might be able to take you as the mummy. Man was I ever wrong.

Oh and the whole fleeing with Eyes thing, I knew that before you used it on me, so I wasn't about to stick around and let you kill me with it. At least that one didn't work. not that you needed it on me.

Overall, I think Tavlin was a good character, but Man I just didn't know how to beat you. Even if we tried to gang, it just never worked.

And for the Record, I have a log somewhere of killing those zombies from HLK. 3000+ HP's on them makes it just this side of impossible for a 1v1 battle to be successful for me. Hope you have fun with whaterver you do next and don't listen to the haters.

I look up to just about every character you play with admiration. This one bled IMM like it was going out of style. I didn't feel like Scion was a huge impact on Thera, but rather Tavlin was a huge impact on anyone to get in his way. I know you have a reputation to uphold, but this one really rubbed me the wrong way. I don't know why, I can't put my finger on it, but I felt like the sheep in wolves clothing was about to shed and turn into Cabdru. I was waiting for the moment you emerge from a journey with an IMM mob holding your hand and donning a charge building neck piece.

It all felt like this was more about numbers and rubbing our faces in it it, but that's just me.

I really do like everything you do, don't get me wrong. Tavlin was great on paper and I acknowledge that, but I didn't like it. The Zune is not for me, but it works great I hear.

Is that why you and each of your alts that I kill send me borderline offensive OOC tells afterward? Even if I didn't already know that they were your alts, your post-death tells SCREAMED it.

Oy.

I felt abused.

Looking back, it was borderline psychotic to take a game that seriously, but I hate what I'm playing right now. It upsets me how ####ty the characters are and it bleeds through. Whether people think the roles are good, but ruined by the player *me*.

I'm sorry for saying what I did. Verbal abuse is never the answer and it was an immature thing to do.

Being called a skull####er as a necro is almost IC, heh.

I'm only playing what I am now for exploration, or the hope of exploration. But it's really not for me.

Again, sorry for acting like a child.

Good luck with your next, kind sir.

When you raided I would rather strike at the nightwalker just because I knew if I did not I would not be able to do so in a day or so due to the maledictions.
When you defended I knew that going inn was a 20/80 chance without protective wands. A 50/50 chance with protective wands due to pwk and random stuff from the "army".

As for taking down a mummy as a shapeshifter, Id say that is pretty much a one way street. One drain mana halfs the time you can be in form, one scourge ensures that the shapeshifter has to withdraw when he/she has around 300 mana left or risk being "forgotten" and is then stuck in form until Death. And the army ensures that you cannot out damage you. Sort of a no win street. Sadly.

I must say I did enjoy your attempted interactions as difficult they are when dealing with shapeshifters. Its one of the things I find frustrating with shapeshifters is all the non-communication.

As a balancing act for mummies however you could remove Word of recall, you are now after all "cursed with undeath" and as with any curse it could have the consequence of not being able to recall. Still teleport but it would sufficiently decrease the mobility of a mummy/lich and make them more managable. Just a thought.

Great to see imms playing Mortals. Been a fan since 95-96 I think. So many years and breaks.! Well played char!

Cheers Umnys.

I, for the life of me... can't fathom how you escaped the two of us
except for the best luck I've ever seen. I failed my misdirect and I
was following Telax, you fled, he walked east, and I typed it at the
same time. With the misdirect lag I overshot you, after what I thought
was you dying, and couldn't come back to attack you fast enough. I
don't know if you remember the fight, but tell me... were you close to
death there?

Me=Kelarix

...and I just did. See for yourself. :)

So many people talk about how strong certain chars are and I'll admit
that at times... it sure is annoying to see them that way. But I'm
always reminded of the Lich Faq, by Zorz, who I used to fight back in
the day, saying something about... is the player of the lich really that
good, and he said, No, they are really just that bad. If I had landed
that kill, I would have been one of the High points of Kelarix life, but
even so.. It was still a fond memory, of the time that the big one got

Away.

IMO, Ignore the flack, only a few people can make a char that everyone
wants a piece of, and even fewer can take them down, and that is one of
the best things about this game.

ps.
212... from 2200+... FML!

Well when I log in to play for a couple hours I always stay, I appreciate you not multi killing me the few times you could have hehehehe.

And dang it that was a lucky tick for you at the Big D, I waited till after you rescued then got the entwine off and got you all the way down to writhing/convulsing (though that was still probably like 600hp) and i was like HELL YEAH I ALMOST BEAT TAVLIN. Then you proceeded to take like 2-3 con from me over the next week ehheheh.

You were an overall scary beast to deal with, even If I did get a pull off you always seemed to flee just the right way and come back with the zombie army...that time in galadon when you summoned me into the locked room with no zombies i should have given it a go but was a few seconds to slow.

Well don't let the haters get you down I think the problem now with a char like this is that there is not 40 people online in the hero pk to pool together and take you down like with istendil and the others so its just hard to play when you know for sure you will loose the fight...plus the anti-ganging code, Oh well sometimes you just WIN at cf and that is all there is to it.

Tontik

p.s. Make a villager next...no worrying about zombies, wand locations, wording while cursed......nothing but non prepping goodness ahahahahhahha

Over several characters, all below level 30, you initiated conversations with them in a very well-played manner. Even today or yesterday when my newbie was trying to flee past the warg in the weald...way to go dude, stuff like that is what makes CF.

You generally deserve the rewards you get, namely for the fact that you play the game for fun, play your roles extremely well, and usually wind up as a major presence.

Balrahd might be my favorite player, probably just because we go way back, but you're quickly becoming 1b.

Can't wait for the next!

I was like "####, would Tavlin really vamp this warg that is tracking a newbie? Seems awful paladin-y."

But then I'm like "Yeah but that newbie might be a true noob and decide CF sucks and never come back, so maybe I can spin saving his ass with something about how the yelling of that beast was irritating or something..."

(If I had known it was you I might have just let it eat you. Nothing personal, I just know you wouldn't let that sour you on CF. :P )

Because I was at work on Isildur's freeshell unix account porting over to the mud on telnet - basically, telnet plus bad lag.

So, essentially, you did keep someone from being soured. :P

But still, well played re: roleplay.

I absolutely LOVED every single second of roleplaying with Tavlin.

I also absolutely hated every single fight that we ever had. I stood no chance, but my rp was to try it alone, to best you by myself if I could, which I couldn't.

But man, the RP was awesome.

Play a Herald. That way no one will hate you.

>Play a Herald. That way no one will hate you.

Goddamn it is SO unfair that some characters get LOADED UP on mudsexx0r skills! How can I compete with Looopydoodle the Herald when Iunna hacked his pfile and gave him a 20 inch superphallus with regeneration?

I hate this game!

NT

bummer.

Could you give me some tips and pointers as to what my build (my favorite paladin build) can possibly do against liches/mummies? You just steamrolled the #### out of me, not just on this paladin but the one before it, and if you connected the dots with your interactions with Caerdryn I am sure you can guess who that was.

My only tactic at the time I fought you was simply to charge as fully protected as I could be. I had no idea what would work and what wouldn't so I tried all out assault first. One time it worked, when you weren't fully prepared, but you still came right back around and stomped me into the ground within minutes of the initial assault.

After an agonizing six to ten attempts and different tactics I ran out of ideas.

So, any advice?

If you want a necro to leave his zombies out of the fight, switch to striking them with your uber-wrath skills. Yes, you'll end up having to run because you can't take 7 undead with a necro casting at you, but you might kill one or make it really wounded, and if you get out after doing so, you "win" that round.

Whenever people realized that, I generally would leave the zombies at home and fight them straight up.

Also save vs. spell. :)

Tried that a few times, you always brought the boys anyway. The tough part was trying to figure out what songs would work on you and what wouldn't. Fiend seemed to be my only trump card because Echoes and str/dex stuff didn't seem to work. Amazed how many big fiends I got off on you, did you have low int/wis? I was proud that I got you twice with help and up until a few days ago you never got one of your PWK or sleeps off on me.

Actually most of your songs work on undead, AFAIK.

As for the "kill the zombies" that isn't the recommendation I'd make to the Zaan. It was the recommendation I'd make to Fort Paladin who is rocking lots of stuff zombies are vuln to.

My int and wis were at their racial max, which was better than when I was human. Keep in mind that I really had no way to get resist mental unless I wanted to remove supergroovymask. And screw that, I'll deal with a fiend now and then to avoid thieves making that target number one. :P

> Keep in mind that I really had no way to get resist mental

Potion.

And if you say I could've used abstraction to don flesh and then quaff a potion I'll bonk you. :P

Didn't know mummies couldn't quaff. Knew they couldn't eat or drink.

Lag too bad when donning flesh?

You cast abstraction, and then have to vamp (I think) an amount of damage equal to your hp - i.e. you have to suck flesh off your victims and onto you.

And then you can be knocked out, poisoned, etc. for like 80 ticks or something. And have to eat/drink.

So yeah, I used abstraction only a few times, and almost every time was so I could enter Organia. :P

When you have abstraction, and plagued/scourged, you cannot heal it in temples or via pills. They just do not work. So you can get uncuring plage for 50+ hours.

You used to do this to me as Brom and it drove me nuts!

Wondered if anyone did it back to you lol

...but keep in mind a mummy has a few more tricks to make it not work. The best trick, for me, was to find where they were summoning them to and go there and kill them.

If nothing else, to damage his army and/or make the army flee.

I realize most of this is simply my explanation or refuting of things people believe, and it won't likely change the minds of the rabid. But I can't control that.

Original FB Post:
Time to roll up a necro? the Archmage of Eternal Night: The Omens foretell the dark horror of the grave. The next Advisor will be a necromancer, but there are none that have pledged themselves to our cause of that guild. Be watchful for signs, my scholars.

Like • • Reshare • March 15 at 11:14am2 people like this..

Euan Cathro Well, most of it depends is Mharlndarn's player is having a drunk day or not. They might get inducted quick or they might get the quick boot!
March 15 at 12:09pm • Like.

Graham Cameron twist is rolling a necro?
March 15 at 3:26pm • Like.

Michael Cherry Sounds like a good time for Palan to come out of retirement
March 15 at 5:53pm • Like.

Robbie Bobbie Moonshine My immediate thought to seeing this is I like the idea but unless you remove the chancellor its a lost cause
March 16 at 7:06am • Like.

Tim Friese There is no reason for that low of numbers. I can't believe an imm hasn't pressed harder or appointed an advisor already that can induct.


*** Heh. I didn't even notice Graham's comment until I went back to dig up this post. That's funny. ***


FB Post when I got Advisor'd
What's going on in the world of CF? Scion has a new leader, that's what! A big congrats to: (28 Human Nec) Tavlin the Apprentice Summoner, Advisor to the Chancellor

Euan Cathro Poor sod, I have seen many a corpse of his lying about.
April 12 at 6:03am • Like • 1 person.

Rob Lighthall ‎28? Methinks that this leader will have a hell of a time trying to rank with those laurels hanging around his shoulders.
April 12 at 8:49am • Like • 1 person.

Billy Vanderbrook Grats Tavlin.
April 12 at 10:44am • Like.

James A Flatt Quite a niche he has carved for himself.
April 12 at 4:34pm • Like.


*** Hah I wouldn't say MANY, Abernyte. But plenty, for me. :P I hadn't played a necro since Golibedadi, 10 years or more ago. Took me a while to get a feel. ***


Cheating insinuations and accusations:

"Unfair early rewards." - I admit freely that I didn't expect to be inducted into Scion as early as I was. I figured I'd have to prove myself a bit, first. Possibly if I'd rolled Tavlin up immediately after the FB post, I would have. But it was a month later, and poor Reksah *still* didn't have anyone rolling anything up for him. I had deleted Brom, was deciding what to roll next, and went for it.

Other than the early induct and early Advisordom, I didn't get early rewards.

As for other rewards this character got:
1. RC 1st place winner prize was 2 edges. One I could have picked myself, one a cabal edge.
2. Reksah tattoo which was nice but definitely not OP compared to other tattoos I've had. Maybe it does more and Reksah never clued Tavlin in on how to activate it.
3. RoC from Davarrah (covered above).
4. Title, long description.
5. Role xp, and some xp for roleplay with Zosi I think.

To ORB: That talisman has the same prog it always has. It has always had a chance to rarely blind or soften on acid, cause immolate on fire, and freeze on ice. It was extremely rare for me to see it happen also. Plus, I don't think you see the blinding when it hits your own victim - there isn't an echo to the caster. Looking at that Mubs log from my end, I didn't notice it blind him.

Akith'weh is a great replacement for ghoul. But it is quite a bit weaker and hits less strongly. And of course doesn't freeze people when you fight them. I can't believe you complained about getting spores on a cloud giant rager. Who fled with 333 mana, crimson scourge, and 55 hp. Really? Spores?

Ritual of Abominations probably wouldn't even work on a mummy. Ritual of Cannabalia is intended for use on both liches and mummies. It does not give phylacteries. It has a small chance to increase your CON by 1 point. Tavlin gained 2 or 3 CON through it while getting about 20 PKwins or so. This raised him from 16 (with eq to take him to max) to 19 (with the same eq, so still max). At the time I gained RoC, I still had 31 practices saved up in case I started hemmorhaging CON. It didn't ever happen.

Tavlin payed 2,000 gold to get the ritual from Davarrah. Cotzibue got it for free. Cotzibue needed it far more desperately. For Tavlin it was essentially a RP device, if a dangerous one. The lag on RoC is about 12 rounds, it seems, though it seems longer when you're sitting there and notice your wraithform just dropped and you're in a locked room in Galadon with a paladin in PK who has Defiance and passdoor potions.

For all of you gibberlings who thought I had phylacteries because I had hidden zombies, help UMBRA.

Game crash. That log makes it look like I somehow crashed the mud to avoid dying.
At that point in the fight I had well over 1000hp left, I believe full ABS, and had entered "c word" immediately after failing to flee due to Ozrek's STSF. Dying would've been quite unlikely (but not impossible). However, no way in hell would I ever crash the mud to avoid such. Even if I WERE powergamer/cheatz0rr ultraextreme (I'm not), I wouldn't ever risk losing ALL my eq by having the crash happen after I died or something similar. Stupid. I was actually swearing when it crashed because I lost 4-5 of my charmie army to it (they save across crashes, but only if you are in the same room as them) and it was the third time it had happened recently. Oh and on a side note, to those speculating whether or not an IMP COULD cause a crash, yes, we can. Just logging onto the box and killing the CF process. However, this would be logged.

Mask of Anazu: I tried to get the Mask by myself 4 times, I think. I "escaped" a few of those times (fleeing past Styx Devils into the tower and even getting to die to the Furies once) but it became clear via those tries exactly what I would need, to win. I needed bigger zombies than I had been making, which required a transmuter to make them translucent, I needed invoker shields for them all (and me), and I needed Anazu to be softened and decalcified. All of that just to have a chance. I don't want to give EVERYTHING away, but I will say that I had a way to inflict decent damage that didn't require being able to cast, and that really made the difference between winning and having to flee. Also we got the mask and then I managed to accidentally fall into a deathtrap, so yeah I rock. :P

Oh I never meant that you had some secret word to make it do that or something. I just thought it was super rare because Mubs was complaining about it like it did it all the time.

And you're right, it is rare - it involves failing a save that I think is pretty easy to save against.

But to be fair, like I said, you the person with the amulet don't actually see when you get the blind/soften/immolate/frozen affect. You see the effects of it after (like running around on fire, or you notice you're suddenly doing more damage, or whatever) but not the echo that it happened.

So it may have happened more times than you realized. Or not!

It's kind of a pain when the only real way I could cure your scourge was with my own poultice, that despite being cabal edged never freaking worked. Being so close to a certain shrine and not being to use it to cure your scourge...arg! Spores eating away 50+ mana a tick and poultice failing quite a bit with my feeble cloud brain...I got I think two tries before I died. So yeah, spores did actually end it for me (I could heal with berserk/warcry pretty decently and probably could have ran back to the village but I had no mana to do either or poultice anymore).

I can understand a new pet doing something cool being nice but spores is one of the core abilities of another class. It just seemed a bit much to add in another way to "drain". Its really a personal gripe that as more and more new stuff gets added to the game that the power level of chars gets stronger and stronger. Think of things like Silent Tower and how it made the top tier chars that much more deadly - giving a mummy a way to fear or get spores just made you that more scary and you really don't need to be :)

As I said in my goodbye, I really hope it didn't come across as that big of a rant. It was just a ####ty day for me and dying so fast and seeing ritual made me get a bit caustic. Sorry about that.

...I've been in those moods myself.

As for the fight in particular, I was surprised you didn't thirst and run for the border, especially since I was manacled and wouldn't have been able to chase very well. Esp. once you were blinded by the amulet - that should have been a saving grace for you, not a downside - you're skilled enough to run from Aryth Ocean to the Village blind.

One, scourge from a level 51 necro is nigh impossible to cure. With anything other than healing sleep. Seriously, I burned through 24 gold once when Tavlin scourged me, and I have horrid memories of failing about 90 com 'cure disease' from Nysrogh's scourges.

And two, I'm 90% positive mummies can get a fear affect from one of their core class skills/spells.

nt

>One, scourge from a level 51 necro is nigh impossible to
>cure. With anything other than healing sleep. Seriously, I
>burned through 24 gold once when Tavlin scourged me, and I
>have horrid memories of failing about 90 com 'cure disease'
>from Nysrogh's scourges.
>

With Nererial (drow shaman), I could almost always cure lich scourge before my mana ran out, and that was before I got the edge to help it. After getting the edge, I could normally cure it in a few attempts at most.

I've found that it is hard to cure it at a healer, but it seems to make a noticeable difference which healer you go to. But also, I guess I consider 24 gold to cure lich scourge as "not that bad". It definitely beats not being able to cure it at all.

And there are paladins who can pretty much remove it at will. My last one could, for example. It was what made a virtue I thought was weak, actually pretty cool.

If I'm not playing a villager or someone that can cure disease, my normal tactic is to hole up somewhere safe from scions and keep my hp up, rather than go for the cure. i.e. Wait it out.

>And two, I'm 90% positive mummies can get a fear affect from
>one of their core class skills/spells.

...it was quite frustrating actually. :P

>With Nererial (drow shaman), I could almost always cure lich
>scourge before my mana ran out

Not everybody's a shaman.

>I've found that it is hard to cure it at a healer, but it
>seems to make a noticeable difference which healer you go to.

Agreed. I found one that was "great". Other than that one, the next best batch took 10-12 attempts before they could cure it. The really bad ones were totally worthless.

>If I'm not playing a villager or someone that can cure
>disease, my normal tactic is to hole up somewhere safe from
>scions and keep my hp up, rather than go for the cure.

Sight of the Damned FTW, no? Keeping your hp up also requires the ability to heal yourself and/or mana. Or, failing those, the ability to cure blindness. And - oh yeah - level 51 blindness is really hard to cure as well. Even more annoyingly so if you're evil since the optimal cure blindness preps are off limits or exceedingly hard to get.

>Sight of the Damned FTW, no?

You should read help sight of the damned to get a very good hint as to how to avoid being found by it. Or maybe you already know, but if so I can't think you'd use this argument...?

Doesn't tell me anything other than "don't be around the accursed". Maybe don't be in civilized areas, but that's a total guess.

There's also the issue that when you teleport from a necromancer you're at the mercy of teleport and the number of potions you're carrying. Or, alternately, the number of times you can cast the spell before running out of mana (if you remember how to cast spells).

...and we have as many areas as we do, you have really good odds that you'll be somewhere that doesn't have ANYONE near you, let alone someone who is accursed.

It doesn't work that often, even with the cabal edge that boosts it.

And there are plenty of ways to make sure that even if it works, there's little most scions can do. If they see I'm in a cave, or in a hallway... it's not that helpful. The added bonus is that some caves and hallways are in places you can't gate or tess to, or spot from the air.

Also, if you reread the post I reply to, his statement was that only healing sleep could do anything about it. A shaman was simply one counterexample. A paladin was another.

Then I mentioned the hp thing. And since I mentioned "not a villager" the ability to heal yourself isn't major. It does rely on you curing blind (which several other characters can do -- via cancellation, say). Also, having one healing potion in your inventory can buy you some extra time to wait out the blindness. After that it's a few speckled pills or some equivalent for those with no magic or supps whatsoever.

Overall, I would say that more than 50% of characters should be able to survive a scourge more than 90% of the time. That's a far cry from "only healing sleep".

I'd put the number lower than that, but yeah- it's better than "only healing sleep".

When I got slept it was curse, blind, plague, poison, scourge then wait for those to whittle down hp. By the time I'd teleport away I'd have half health. Bind wounds would cure the plague, but that would still leave me blind, cursed and with poison and scourge. If my cure blindness potions worked then I was golden, since I carried pills. If not then I was screwed.

Said healing sleep was the best way to cure it.

I haven't died to scourge since Kruuank.

>So yeah, spores did actually end it for me (I
>could heal with berserk/warcry pretty decently and probably
>could have ran back to the village but I had no mana to do
>either or poultice anymore).

Well, look at it this way: would, say, half a dozen rounds of lag instead of the spores have ended it for you? If so, you're not really worse off than a ghoul would be.

There's also a couple limitations to the Akith Weh (which might not have helped you in this case) that I think will be discovered over time.

...greater undead on Gameplay.

Have difficulties finding them? Was Ghoul a better option than most?

Maybe just a few that day I located. I was actually ranking with you and considered you a friend with an offense/air shifter who's name I cannot even remember as I lost interest when I could never find Mharlndarn about and by the time you were advisor and a high enough rank, there were loads of scions apparently and I could never find them online to kill them and gain greater favour. I had the lynx and shikra forms and later at 43 I rolled jaguar for grizzly bear. Still can't remember the name!

Deathful as ####, dressed to the ####, you were a scary ass mofo. I'm glad when I had Urushugol I got to be on your side. It's crazy the difference of toughness between you and Cotzibue even when she was dread lady.

Anyways, fun character, funny yet evil RP. Quite a memorable one.

I'm deleting partly due to the angst I seem to be causing to the playerbase and partly because I was growing tired of the character. I try to play my mortals not just for my fun (and it has been fun), but for others to enjoy them as well. I think some of you still enjoyed Tavlin, but enough of you seemed to be put out about his "massive cheating" (see below) that I decided to give in to the fact that I was starting to contemplate deletion anyways. I had a goal in mind of breaking Hunsobo's PKwin count of 386 (or even Mharlndarn's maybe?) but it seems like it is time for Tavlin to go.

Tavlin's role was originally intended as a conjurer one - his being transported here due to a weird tesseract - but then I realized that's stupid, conjurers didn't exist in the First Age (only "mages"). So necro made as much sense as conjurer.

The general gist was a guy who was at the top of his power level in the First Age who tries a ritual to give him even more power and extend his life and somehow ends up in the Fifth Age as a weakling with no power who is young again. He decides to try to figure out what happened and maybe even get back to his former Age (and power level). The rest is in his role, and was written as things happened to him in-game. I knew that the knowledge Tavlin had of the First Age would be like a giant (IMM) flag, but I decided "Screw it, I don't care, it is a role I think would be fun to play." So I did. And it was fun. Thanks to everyone who made it so.

Re: Mummy Quest: I was originally trying for a Lich quest. I tried for roughly 2 weeks, I think. But by that time, I believe Reksah had an inkling (or downright knew) that I was Twist, and was hesitant to give me one. Also having never done one probably didn't help, as well as being busy. Also to do one you need to have help from one of the higher level imms. After a while I decided it would be better for everyone (including me, re: accusations) if I just used the automated undeath method, despite it being "weaker."

In the end, I agree with what Daevryn told me long ago - Mummy recovers from death a lot better than Lich, but Lich can become a big unkillable machine. Honestly I'd probably have deleted Tavlin earlier than this if he were a Lich - if he were more powerful than he already was, people would be even more angsty about it by now.

I'll agree with Cotzibue - 47 Necro to Hero Mummy is a huge power jump. It made the pain and agony of 47 Necro with no allies to speak of worth it.

Goodbyes:

Reksah - Thanks for everything, esp. at the start of Tavlin's life. Seems like you got really busy over the summer, so the interactions dropped off considerably, but honestly you gave me plenty so no regrets there. Hope my deletion doesn't let you down, but Obregon is awesome and I think you've got some strong presences in Scion now anyways.

Thror - Thanks for the RC rewards. Glad you enjoyed the role.

Scarabaeus - Thanks for RoC. I was tempted to say no, to avoid further controversy, but I figured that isn't what *Tavlin* would do - the guy who covets Knowledge above all else turning down an offer to buy a secret ritual? Meh. Plus, I knew it wouldn't really affect anything, power-game-wise.

Other Imms - It may sound self-serving to thank you all for everything you do for CF, but it really isn't. I'm not talking about what *I* do, I'm talking about you all. You guys are great to work with and even if we have our differences about some things, at the end of the day I know I'm not the only one who appreciates each of you.

Mharlndarn - Thanks for the stuff you gave me at various times. People who said you didn't take chances are idiots, IMO. You don't get over 400 pkwins without taking a lot of chances.

Obregon - You're rocking as Advisor from what I've seen, even if our playtimes rarely aligned. Keep it up.

Other Scions - I inducted all of you but Volker, and none of you have made me regret it. Others have (I'm looking at you, Hayooi).

Rhone - You suck. That is all. :P

Gurzgred - See Rhone.

Eachainn - You're doing well - one of few to actually come at me. You had a lot better chance to kill/bother me than a lot of others, because of that.

Garwern - See Eachainn.

Ozrek/Llarilin/Vallinane - I'm lumping you three elves together because you are all A: annoying to try to fight, B: smart enough to generally not stay and fight alone against me, and C: doing well as steadfast Fort-dudes.

Angynn - Class act, keep up the good work.

Other Fort - I generally saw nothing bad about any of you and quite a number of good things. :)

Mubs - You had a rough time against me. A surprising number of spells managed to get through your spellbane as compared to other ragers I fought. Yet you were generally not afraid to fight me one v. one. Respect.

Tontik - See Mubs, except for my spells getting through to you.

Other Battle - I typically didn't see much of any of you. A few here and there.

Sivyh - You weren't the only one that Tavlin gave advice to. It was something he did as part of his "evil scholar" bit - try to create a bit of dissension amongst his enemies.
I doubt it worked on anyone, including you.

Otuerghad - You deserved Shadow Lord a long time ago, IMO, if only due to your constant presence. And constant offering of the Oath.

Lohoq - Assassinated me twice. Bastard. It was good to have you on my side, if only for a short bit.

Zaanzorbarus - I was pretty happy to finally get the amulet from you. That amulet is a lot more nasty on a char with 2300hp than one with 1300. :)

Cotzibue - I kinda felt like you were a little too obsessed with proving you were just as badass as Tavlin. Tavlin IC found it mildly amusing with a bit of irritating. Once
you got Anathed, I pretty much just left you alone - you had enough enemies at that point. :P

Other Imperials - Generally a good job being all Imperial at me. I definitely had to avoid the horde a few times.

Ghuanrrak - You mentioned in your goodbyes that you could handle my army but not my spells. I can't remember ever actually fighting you, though.

Zosi - You rock. Great banter back and forth.

Rasst - You're scary. That is all.

Other Outlanders - For a guy who could see hidden and invis and track down people pretty well via a cabal power, you guys were generally not worth the trouble when you had powers. Seeing me enter the area, you'd generally become the only people in the game that I couldn't see. :( I would do the same thing in your position.

Hwelntook - Very horrible timing. Enjoy the sword. :P

Jitleph - You should let them make you a Provincial. Or you should demand Vindicator as the guy who took down Tavlin once (even if Hwelntook got the last hit because I worded from you with 15 hp left).

Other Tribs - I almost never hunted Tribs unless I was WANTED. I tried to make it just as much (or more) of a pain for you when I was wanted as it was for me.

Puhguly/Zenze/Allysia - We generally arrived at a form of agreement by the end, there, and it was mostly mutually beneficial.

Other Nexuns - I didn't hunt Nexuns unless they had attacked me or the Chasm. I treated it almost like a wanted flag - if you attacked me, I hunted you until I killed you and then dropped it. It didn't always work out that way, but mostly.

Skeeta - Keep rocking the Heraldic Post. You're awesome. Hopefully I make the next issue. :P

Lisos - It was fun running with you. That one evening we really were inspiring some dread, despite being heavily outnumbered to begin with. Rock on.

Dvalygg - Good luck with the thing in the place with the stuff. You know what I mean.

Others - I know there are probably 100 characters that I interacted with in some shape or form that were not specifically called out here. Sorry. Many it isn't that I forgot, it's just simply that I had to try to keep this from being ridiculously long. Post if you'd like and I will reply.

I had some thoughts to take you down. The closest I got I think was in Hamsah, you were mid-writhing and I was very hurt(when we were bouncing around the towers.)

And yeah, you were totally right when you called me out on that one thing. Thanks for being cool about it.

Regardless, I'm sure you know that I held you in high regard as an enemy and all my dwarven ire was good natured. Excellent job, excellent character. Though I honestly wish you didn't delete. Light is too powerful right now.

I liked Tavlin alot. Scary, yet somewhat restrained when you could have killed people and didn't. Definately rolled with some smooth rp which I appreciated.

On a side note I posted as my name and not my character even though I had the Anon field set with my characters name. Would be nice if updating the message fixed that.

>I'm deleting partly due to the angst I seem to be causing to
>the playerbase and partly because I was growing tired of the
>character. I try to play my mortals not just for my fun (and
>it has been fun), but for others to enjoy them as well. I
>think some of you still enjoyed Tavlin, but enough of you
>seemed to be put out about his "massive cheating" (see below)
>that I decided to give in to the fact that I was starting to
>contemplate deletion anyways.

Its a sad day when the crybabies can make yet another great character go away. Valg said it best in Zorszaul's deletion thread and I think it is still true.

"There is a small, yet vocal minority of our playerbase who has trouble congratulating the guy who just slammed home the winning basket for the other team".

As a player I am sad to see this deletion and even more sad because the peer group of CF complainers seemed to have a hand in this.

From a char standpoint...I saw you moving up the ranks with Uhariz and I knew I wanted to befriend you IC. Then I saw you much later with another character and you still had the domed skull brooch! The irony of this is that I was hooking Tavlin up with Uhariz (Not that you needed it) only to have to fight you every damned day with Kharvud :(

My last character also had a huge reason to befriend you as well though I feel you still owe said character a story and with that said you have an idea who it was.


Great char. Make another, make ten of them, and don't let the crybaby haters get you down.

He's an evil bastard, that prick. Tried going back to his own Age and renigged on his debt. I'm pretty sure he failed and died horribly though.

But seriously thanks for that and the stuff you did with the various chars I interacted with!

....you're like... the one of the biggest crybabies ever. Ever. When did you become normal? I like it.

You know, if you hadn't brushed me off as Uhariz, you probably would have been Reksah's first avatar. :)

You did a great job with this character. I enjoyed traveling with you. I just wish I was not so lazy and had better roleplay myself.

I enjoyed you with Illeryia and my current.

Well done as always.

Not everyone around is a hater. The game needs power characters to shot for. Makes the game more fun.

I liked this character a lot from an RP stand point and our banter, from a PK you became very hard to face, and I even took zombie fighter just to fight you. Sadly with those beastly hasted zombies it didn't do much.

On the other stuff, you are probably one of the best players still around if not thee. You bring a ton to the game and are a great presence however sometimes It can feel to the rest of us like you are the older brother stealing all the power ups in Mario bros. before we can get to them. I know it's not your fault you are better and that the other Imms subconsciously might be more apt to throw something your way, but to the people on the other side of it, can be a bit meh. I know when I saw you walk in the Mummy who has been Scion leader since his 30's and the first to discover a new cool God with their tat, whatever cool things you got from winning the role contest, fancy new undead and the mask I was just about to lead a trip to get before ya nabbed it(by yourself?), and your cool custom desc and what I thought was ritual of abominations(guess I was wrong some other perk) and the Imm is offering you a tour of that unnamed place right after the chasm gets first crack at that other thing in the works, I was like this is getting a little Monty Hall. Anyway I really did like Tavlin even if I was jealous, GLWYN and come Imperial we could definitely use then help.

"On the accusations".

One thing I didn't mention in that post is being offered a tour - just FYI, other chars have already gone there, some told Tavlin about it over a month ago. So not really anything new.

I don't know what "other thing in the works" the chasm was getting first crack at, unless it had to do with the circumstances of Tavlin getting RoC.

You bastard, you took the easy way out!

I rolled my current simply to take you down and I didn't even get the chance to fight you once...

You were so freaking Cabdru-esk (can I coin that?) in that the moment you logged on, the entire landscape of the mud changed. And it always seemed to change just for you! Allies would make excuses and log off in fear of the majestic Unicorn army marching hidden down eastern road, all you could hear was their hooves beating to the tune of impending doom.

I had this pegged as you from the start, then you started to steam roll everyone as a necromancer (not very twisty :P) and your description written in that format... started believing the rumors about Tavlin being Nep. Either way you were a freaking force, and your rp was pristine.

No more deleting characters, only age and con dieing from now on despite the nay-sayers.

p.s. No more rebooting cf either! (I kid I kid!)

People didn't seem to understand a few things about necros, and zombies in particular, that I meant to clear up with my goodbye post.

1. You can generally pick up an embalmed corpse that is from a mob that was human sized or smaller. They typically weigh about 45 pounds. Then you can identify the corpse. That tells you what level it is.

2. Zombie power is based SOLELY ON THE LEVEL OF THE CORPSE. The factors that change are number of hp and dam/hitrolls. Maybe other things like saves I'm not sure, but definitely the first two. So a corpse from a level 63 unicorn is always better than a corpse from a level 57 Elite Storm Giant. Even though the giant's zombie is a size larger. (Unless you take things like parry/dodge/etc. maybe being affected by size).

Personally I liked human-size zombies because the giant ones kept failing to follow me through human-sized doors like on the way to the Village. :P

3. You can stick embalmed corpses into a container if it is big enough and you can carry the weight. These corpses remain with you through logout/login (as does anything embalmed) with the timer at the same point as when you logged out.

4. If you're REALLY quick, you can login, get 3.corpse girdle, drop corpse, c 'animate dead' corpse, and then do the 2.corpse 24 ticks later, and then do the 1.corpse 24 ticks after that, JUST before it crumbles.

5. Items 3 and 4 above meant that when I logged in, while everyone hunting me went straight to HLK, I calmly made a lesser/greater undead and zombie and started doing what needed done. Then I'd make another zombie, THEN head to HLK. Sometimes. I tried to mix it up.

Cotzibue told me this same thing...

But as Uhariz with the master animator edge I saw DIFFERENT level zombies, so I am going to have to disagree because with that edge I saw different zombie levels from the exact same corpses...





cons zo
Your best guess is that he is a zombie.
A zombie of an elite storm giant soldier shows you his razor-sharp teeth.
A zombie of an elite storm giant soldier is much larger than you.
He grins evilly with you.

(prompt) civilized graveyard indoor waning 8 PM cons 2.zo
Your best guess is that he is a zombie.
A few lucky blows would kill him.
A zombie of an elite storm giant soldier is much larger than you.
He grins evilly with you.

(prompt) civilized graveyard indoor waning 8 PM cons 3.zo
Your best guess is that he is a zombie.
An ominous, hooded figure waits patiently nearby.
A burnt zombie of an elite storm giant soldier is much larger than you.
He grins evilly with you.

A zombie from a level 65 mob will always give you a better starting point than a zombie from a level 60 mob.

The master animator edge gives you a better chance of having your zombie rise AT or only slightly BELOW the level of the corpse.

Without the master animator edge, you're guaranteed to (I think) never reach the level of the corpse.

Yes you'll get varying degrees still, so for instance if I animated 5 unicorns, I might see level 60, 59, 60, 61, and 58. But I always stand a better chance than a lower level corpse.

After I deleted I thought back, and knowing what I knew about Tavlin and Twist the player, I put 2 and 2 together.

Was funny, looking back. Your RP was really the best I've seen from any of your chars in the last couple years. A shame you let some speculation mess with you.

...I played under the assumption that most vets knew that by about 2 months ago or so.

What bothered me enough to follow through on deleting (and let me be clear - deleting was something I'd been considering for a while, so this isn't a sob story about how the playerbase made me delete boo hoo) was that it wasn't fair to the Imms who gave me rewards.

Nobody would've really batted an eye at the rewards I got if it were their own character. In fact some players I know would have likely bitched and deleted after "only" getting two edges for taking 1st place in the RC.

But since Tavlin was played by an Imm, and a lot of folks knew/guessed it, ANYthing that ANY imm did for him was clearly cheating, and that just wasn't cool, to me.

Even before I knew it was you.

I mean, honestly, you had a really good hook with your story. And the knowledge/skill to pull it off.

And yes, it's not fair to the IMMs. But that's the culture that CF currently exists in. You have a vocal minority of the playerbase that believe many of the current IMMs play for themselves and cheat/build their characters to dominate. These players also have the tendency to play only for themselves.

I'm not sure what a solution to this is.

PS I'm almost positive you weren't the first to use those zombies, either. Can't remember who else did, but I swear someone else did.

PPS You boob. Seriously though, you didn't tell me one dirty joke during my IC rants at you. I'm disappointed.

PPPS I'm proud to declare you gained another victory over one of my chars. That makes you roughly 2192929129-1 against me (rough estimates).

>PPS You boob. Seriously though, you didn't tell me one dirty
>joke during my IC rants at you. I'm disappointed.

Possibly the most difficult thing about playing Tavlin. Tavlin was the anti-Dupmasione. No dirty jokes, no innuendos. Do you have any idea how many Scions say something like "I will join you once I find my rod."? Argh. Resisting any comment to that was harder than trying to jump 3 RBW's on Eastern.

Ahahah you got one on me. It seemed uncharacteristic, and I tried to get more out of you. But after I raided and passed you on eastern I said 'I got your stick'.

You replied with, 'Wanna know where you can shove it?'

...but that was something I could see Tavlin actually saying. :P

As a slight aside, I'm not sure if I covered it in my own BF thread but I thoroughly enjoyed Tavlin, having fought him up through the ranks.
You're a joy to play with, friend or foe. I was also Reksah's Shaman, Erzgarn. And you were just really, really fun to play with.

>Was funny, looking back. Your RP was really the best I've
>seen from any of your chars in the last couple years. A shame
>you let some speculation mess with you.

I agree with that. Tavlin is my favorite of Twist's that I know of in recent memory.

My plot to take you down, by the way, was to camp in the wooded spot on eastern and get Empire minions to play cat and mouse with you on the road while I stalked. Then I was going to have one of them stand just north of me and let himself get slept. Was going to order him not to flee and let himself be killed, after which you'd most likely guard his corpse. More stalking. Then when he showed up on the road as a ghost I'd go north and attempt.

btw, the constant advice on what to do re: Empire made me pretty certain this was you.

and felt twitchy a couple times on the road. I was tempted to just hang around and throw a portal and some druk'trar to force you out, but then I was like eh, let's just go spend some time in a desert area, I feel like I'm being played.


A small part of what I'd tell you re: Empire was true and meant to be semi-helpful re: guys who logged off at bad odds or whatever. But I didn't ever tell you which part was true and which part was sabotage/propaganda. :)

"Jitleph - You should let them make you a Provincial. Or you should demand Vindicator as the guy who took down Tavlin once (even if Hwelntook got the last hit because I worded from you with 15 hp left)."

Only 15hp? *mutters* Your death should have been MINE! Same thing happened with Cotzibue when I got her to convulsing although it was me who ran from her then Nirilas walks in with his guards and bam, she dies. Should be on my grave "Here lies Jitleph, almost slew two mummies and all he got was this stupid badge."

I must admit, seeing you on with a wanted flag made my sphincter pucker up something fierce. I knew it was going to be "fight, run, prep, fight, scourge, revert, teleport, wear it off, where, where, where, oh #### theres Tavlin tracking me, c tel or word if I had the power or pill.

Actually winning that fight that led to your demise felt damn good. As it should against a decidedly more powerful foe. But that's the way it goes. It sucked fighting you, because you were so powerful, however, to win against you even once made me feel like king of the world. At least until Mubs came along and ruined it. heh.

I wonder sometimes if the ability to become such 'power characters' shouldn't be squelched a bit, but the fact that just once, I got the best of you, shows that given enough times and willingness, anyone can be brought down by just about anyone else.

From an RP standpoint I really enjoyed Tavlin. You had that cold, calculated evil down which is so hard for most to pull off without being a douche in the process. So again, Well done, don't let the complainers get to you, and come back with another stellar character.

btw, your welcome for me convincing Hwelntook to give your mask back.

that stopped me from deleting that night.

It wouldn't have been rage (though it would've shown up as a rage delete), it would have been "Ok, I've been pondering deletion, and now I'm assassinbait again after having not been for about 250 hours or so. Do I really want to go through that?"

But yes, thank you for that.

When I feel like doing the log-posting bit, you getting me close enough to death that Hwelntook's guards hitting me once for the kill will be one of the first ones I post.

In hindsight, wouldn't you have been happier if I'd managed to stick around longer? C'mon, admit it!

I had no idea this was you. I knew it was "someone" just based on the skillz and the fact you wouldn't post on Battlefield, but really didn't pick this out as you or Nep. And when I surfaced for air from my life and started reading the forums, and saw people complaining about you, I was 15% tempted to roll another character and tangle with Tavlin again :)

My most vivid memory of Tavlin was when I found you with your army in the Balator Fields, turned on eyes, and ran up spamming pillar. After a couple rounds you teleported and sent me a tell,

"Well aren't you Superwizard."

Heh. That still cracks me up. I wish that could have been Rhone's title :(

Well done, obviously.

That was RL irritation at losing big zombie army to a guy who didn't really face any danger from them coming out in an almost OOC tell. Meh. Glad I managed to keep it IC enough to be funny instead of jarring.


I had a plan for you but it never worked. The plan was to get you to fight me with eyes, when I had a big zombie army, and you were alone. Then I would flee, return, flee, return, etc. since each time eyes fires, it lags you for a round like murder, and you would be pwnt by your own cabal power.

Not so much (though I did use this method to some effect with other maran, via summoning them when they were convulsing or running into them in the city and having them die in a round and that sort of thing).

God damn your PWK's
The first time I can appreciate I was geared like a gimp and level 43, The second time I thought I was prepped and had enough saves, the Third time I was near -100svs (maybe some stuff dropped) but I was really looking forward to the that fight with Maravon on my heels. And Bam! :P You were always super classy about gear, and the one time you died in Whistlewood and I located your corpse and went for a wander I decided I didnt really feel like having you perma mad at me any more than you were normally. It was funny to see whole ranges shift night after night, and I'd be quietly happy at surviving another night without being Tavlinated.

I hated you when you were wanted, as it made me spend the majority of the time flitting from guild to guild, or trying to summon one back people before you initiated. I knew this had to be either nep or twist, oddly my money was on you for another char, time will tell though :P Not because of the First Age rp, although most lichs would of pwk my goodie in the Inn I always appreciated the restraint, it had an almost orderly feel to it. I'd of campaigned to make you vindicator I'd be working on a range of wanted, and they'd all be dead... t dude Hey what happened? the dude tells you 'tavlinated'. Not because of the custom long, me getting one was a joke, and you should of had it sooner :P It was clear who you could be on Pure deadliness alone, Cotz was scary, but made many more mistakes. Even fighting you was pointless, but still seemed like it was the in char thing to do :)

I had a thing about examining corpses for cause of death, kind of csi galadon, and I liked the fact you'd be staring out from the corpse or having a look at it for your nefarious purposes.

I cant believe you deleted such an awesome character, even if you played less, people wouldnt have complained, its so great to have something out there, that almost never loses, especially when they arent aging fast and can kill you with a word. You presented the opportunity to fight Anazu to every player in your pk range, arguably a more difficult fight, but the level of trepidation is the same. I dont know maybe you burned out on the char idea, or just didnt like the contraversy more than you are saying, awesome deathly classyness.

>Re: Mummy Quest: I was originally trying for a Lich quest. I
>tried for roughly 2 weeks, I think. But by that time, I
>believe Reksah had an inkling (or downright knew) that I was
>Twist, and was hesitant to give me one. Also having never done
>one probably didn't help, as well as being busy. Also to do
>one you need to have help from one of the higher level imms.
>After a while I decided it would be better for everyone
>(including me, re: accusations) if I just used the automated
>undeath method, despite it being "weaker."
>
>
>Reksah - Thanks for everything, esp. at the start of Tavlin's
>life. Seems like you got really busy over the summer, so the
>interactions dropped off considerably, but honestly you gave
>me plenty so no regrets there. Hope my deletion doesn't let
>you down, but Obregon is awesome and I think you've got some
>strong presences in Scion now anyways.

For many of the reasons you identify in your posts, I don't feel that let down by your deletion. I did get very busy this summer, but it's also doesn't do much for one's enthusiasm to have to deal with a lot of snide comments. Anyway, I think you said things better than I could.

After a very long period of Scion languishing, you built it up into a very strong group in both mechanical and roleplaying skill. You also started (or restarted) some things in there that I want to become tradition. Other than what I thought were some weak choices early on, I've felt very happy that I didn't feel the need to babysit the cabal so much while you were a leader.

Yes, my tattoo is not very powerful. I don't want it to be. I think you went 150 hours with it before I gave you the bottom tier power. There is a top tier power that is really neat (if still not uber-powerful), but it's a part of my nature to want it to be somebody else that gets that for the first time.

You did do a good job of crafting something coherent out of the amorphous philosophy my religion had. Future necro followers of mine will be very well served by reading your role for one possible approach to the religion.

Lets be honest. I cringed when you were coming at me sometimes. You were an unstoppable machine to my build, especially at the D or out of the wilds. But ill give you credit, you might be the only person that ever had the balls to come at me in a cave, risk of death or not. I thought Tavlin was extremely well spoken, well played, and well done. If I made any comments to make you think otherwise, that was Nuk speaking, not the player. Once you find out who I am playing you might be surprised, but I've always loved me some Twist mortals, and I can say I got a good idea this was you. Very few characters can be as deathful as you, and still be loved by anyone that they interact with. Plus, the Anazu mask, as cool as it is, is a dead giveaway sometimes. Anything from hell really, as only a handful of people can get/go after the gear. Sometimes I came at you knowing I was dead just to try and be a good rager. I tried in general to show up whenever you came.

I'll seriously miss the rush of adrenaline I got when I knew I had to face you. Catching you that one time with the village bard was the highlight of Nuks life so far, no questions asked. Made all the fights after intense because while I knew you were dope, I knew you would take the risk even when hurt most of the time.

Many many many Kudos for this one. Super impressed and loved me some Tavlin.

I also generally work very hard not to let it bias me pro or con.

Nuk is a good character. I'm glad we came to the agreement we did about fear. :P

Thanks for the kind words. I really didn't want anyone saying I never took risks (yet someone still managed to on Dio's, saying I always was fully prepped - hah! I say.)

I was really lucky with that death to get out of the Village and word so I could reclaim my phat lootz0rrz. I really should've gotten out two ticks earlier.

No message

I hope they didn't factor too much into your decision to delete. I didn't get to interact with Tavlin as much as I would have liked, but what little I saw was just great. I had a few different plans to take you down, all of questionable efficacy, but the theory-crafting is the fun, right? At least I'll save a few edge points I can spend somewhere else now.

IC, of course, Oryn is breathing a sigh of relief, but as a player I like having big, bad bogeymen out there. I'm always glad to see you guys down in the sandbox, getting dirty and having fun with the rest of us. And screw what the whiners say, they'll always find something to complain about. Both times you got me were interesting, relevantly enjoyable interactions, after the you killing my poor cloud giant face part was over.

GLWYN

I remember Tavlin the specter, and I actually shrugged him off as not really a threat, but after you became a mummy that all changed and you became someone that was certainly on my do not F*** with list. Bu I also had to avoid helping you since Tavlin almost always shifted the balance immediately. There would be four or five fort on, then you and sivyh log on, and darkness swayed. That just told me how much influence you had. Shame though, I always wanted to travel some with Tavlin, but balance pretty much never allowed it.

Generally the arrangement was mutually beneficial, and since Tavlin never bothered us unless we poked him, generally my notion was don't poke the guy that can wipe me out, plus four of my cabal mates.

We gave it a few tries, and they all failed. Can't believe we screwed up in high lords, probably one of our only real chances to get you. But when you didn't run immediately, I realized something bad was about to happen, and yeah, I was amazed I survived that.

Well done, as always.

But the thing about an ambush is, if someone who can summon knows it is coming, and that same someone can call a forsaken portal, beckon druk'trar, and has all the keys before the ambushers get there...it can be bad for the ambushers.

You guys really went back on my good list when we retrieved the Scepter and wiped out the defenders for good measure, though. So yay for that. :)

Do you still have fun killing your playerbase over and over again with all your chars? Too bad you mob died after getting the mask, was hoping to check things out down there.

Over and over? No. That's partly why Tavlin tried to never fight anyone he'd killed that day. I mean I took it to ridiculous extremes. I killed Caerdryn, for instance, and then he unghosted and was coming at me again on Eastern. I told him "Go away." and made a sharp turn toward Voralia or something and he kept chasing me. I finally stopped in Voralian figuring maybe he wouldn't attack in town, but he did, so I think I just did like a blindness or something and made him flee. I might have killed him, though, I haven't reviewed the log.

That's one example. I generally would tell someone who was in the same area as me that I had already killed that day something like "I have already sampled your memories this day, and have no desire to do so again."

As for "all my chars" I'll remind you that I've had other chars besides the Hunsobos/Woldruns/etc. They just generally don't last as long and/or aren't memorable. Take Balthudar, for instance. "Balthudar who?" Exactly.

And yeah it is too bad I screwed that up. I really did intend to reward you two (that was you, eh? Cool.) for bearing with the long wait to raise 5 greater bearded devil zombies by trying to get as much eq and poking-around as I could. Then I boned up bigtime. :(

It's not surprising the chars with 200+ pks are the ones that get noticed. You're a monster. You should force yourself to keep playing those less optimal chars, I'm sure they would still be memorable. Good job as always.

Cheers,

See my response to Caerdryn about what to expect from me next. :P

Never enter hell without one! :)

At the next beareded devil, bare left!

Classic.

I still remember the day you were heading to Thar Acacacacacaia, after you had landed a kill on me. I was heading there to help a friend out, and you just happened to find me, and told me you didn't want to kill me again so soon. Well of course since you were heading right for my friend, I didn't stand down and the predictable happened. Hardly your fault though that my RP forced me into a fight I wasn't prepared for.

...I was there to buy the snazzy blue scrolls! You'll have to go figure out why a mummy wanted blue scrolls from Thar-Acacia yourself, though. :)


But yeah when you yelled "Let's do this." I was like uh ok. :P

You had difficult black rod or what?

But since you can stick those scrolls in a container, if you remember to use them at the right time, it is kinda like having one extra sleek silver staff, black rod, amber rod, sienna rod, or any other talisman/wand that you find valuable - and carrying 10 or so means having 10 extra. :)

.

Once I got in range, I ate some deaths to Tavlin, but it never seemed like he really hunted me except for the time I summoned a sleeping Sivyh away. Seemed to me like he was pretty good about not slaughtering people over and over...though he was a one man wrecking ball.

I don't mean specifically just with Tavlin, but with the low playerbase and his ability to put up insane PK numbers(on most of his chars) you just know the CF playerbase gets bent over by his chars on the regular.

I hated seeing you on, and I'm going to miss you. 1. I had a good idea you were an imm 2. I didn't care. Having a bogey-man out there, having a really good reason to talk to my mortal enemies, having a just out-of-reach treasure trove of all the best gear in the game (with an army of undead unicorns)... that's the cool stuff that makes this game so unique and fun.

So, I guess I'm saying thanks for being such a big cheater and poop-head. And now I'm doubly glad I got to hear the back-story.

See you in the fields.

I still have nightmares about Woldrun with two mithril swords flurrying Kassibaz's face off, this time around I had my revenge!

But seriously, I stumbled upon a weapon I had never seen before, figured out what it did and thought "hmm might be great on a mummy", low and behold 2 assassinations (one at the nightwalker was so damn lucky) and I was cackling with glee. Then the overthrow failed (that was my favorite time on Lohoq, plotting with you if things went awry).

Then you made me poop my pants when you tried to PWK me WHILE i was hiding.

Can I ask from your perspective (Tavlin) and also the perspective of Twist what you thought of going from Anathema to Scion?

Anyways, I can see why people get pissed, I for one have experienced that several times fighting you. At some point certain players need to realize, there will always be someone who just utterly rapes people, what makes this game amazing is the time you get lucky or set the perfect trap and kill them. I remember having a shot at Cabdru and totally blowing it a long time ago as well as Lerimos.

Anyway, Tavlin was an all around stellar char, sorry you had to delete early.

Lohoq was the only one who had a chance at getting into Scion via Tavlin. That was because you solo killed me at hero which I don't think anyone else had done at that point (I could be completely wrong here). Then you *did it again* so Tavlin was like "I need this guy on my side."

You completed your quest (albeit in an unorthodox way) so in you came.

As for my Imm perspective I don't really have a problem with it, RP-wise, especially if the RP is revenge-driven. I actually have more of a problem with a Scion leader if they "accept the scraps of the Empire" but like I said, Tavlin felt that you were kind of the cream of the crop as opposed to the scraps - anathema'd for all the "right" reasons, not weakness.

I know it's not easy to deal with constant crap though.

I just picked up a couple of edges to help me against undead
and cot and you are gone. :( It's up to Dvalygg now for me
to try them out I guess Hehe.

Favorite Tavlin moment:
When I had gone for so long without dying I forgot to put avoid
up after I died. Everything was kicking my ass (I thought I had
pissed off Padwei) So I run in hit you with the curse and damned
if my HP didn't dissappear like a rock dropped on a lake.
You were... upset by me hitting and fleeing nearly instantly and
expressed that. I remember telling you that I HAD to run and what
were you feeding those zombies anyway for them to be so mean or
something like that.

Almost instantly:
Tavlin tells you "Paladins"

Dude, I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair.

Earlier times: I would just get beat on, then I started actually
figuring out my virtues and what they can be used for, THEN I got
where I could survive the scourge. Next I got to where I KNEW it
wouldn't get me, and finally I was fairly sure I could get rid of
it on just about anyone that got hit by you AND not have to heal
it myself. (Altruism was a last resort there.)

In the future even if I play a class that can't do squat against
scourge I have alternative methods of surviving so thanks!

In the end you did as you say you like to do. Except for kicking
myself for dying when I know I shouldn't have, every interaction
ADDED fun for me. You'll be missed you evil bastard, even though
Angynn will be glad you are no more.

...of how I *tried* to "not be a ####" in terms of Tavlin being powerful.

I was taking the Orb because you had been dodging/escaping me all night (or so it seemed - probably not really the case) and I was getting all YOU DARE?!!? and stuff.

You show up to defend and you're making a pretty damn good stand. Monks with that avoid stuff really were tough for me to deal with if I couldn't just have an army beat them down (tough to do at the Watcher).

Finally I got you scourged, got an energy drain off on you, and just kept summoning you away from the Watcher so you couldn't heal, so you teleported.

You must have moved around a little because I got reports of you being here or there. Since I knew you were "on the move" I decided to just finish taking the Orb. Then I caught sight of you somewhere and moved in for the kill, and you must have been out of mana/moves/gold by then.

So, I finish you off, and decide you know what, he came to defend. He didn't commit suicide, he tried to get out. Good for him. Let's leave the Orb here.

Babysitting cabal items as a necro kinda sucks. :P Maybe it is better with Centurions. :)

That bit made it into my role somewhere btw. It came off as pretty
classy of you, at the same time as I am evil and powerful and you
can't stop me anyway neener neener neener. :)

I sensed evil JUST before you got there and was in heal "lag"
I hit my spiffy alt-a (Get transportation @ container;quaff
transportation) and it was too late.

You monster. :) See ya another time around, most of your morts
are awesome Keep it up.

I thought it had to be Twist. Some players have your degree of skill/knowledge, but there's a certain sense of decency about Tavlin which made me think of Isildur or Twist. I figured Isildur wouldn't know all that many super-secret things, so Twist.

I was very sorry I did not have to time to play much, or I would have made the attempt for Chancellor. It would have been fun to be Chancellor alongside such an excellent Advisor.

I don't think I've ever played alongside Twist before! I've still got to wait for the privilege...

Logs for Twist's log board please!

IIRC you helped me gather one of my mummyquest items and you straight up told me where the one I didn't know was. Which is funny because it was totally the easiest to gather.

Volker was always a struggle for me - here you have this guy who is actually a way better Scion than I am in terms of knowing the Scionic lore and the names of all the nightwalkers and stuff, but I *never see him*. Meanwhile I've got some worthwhile applicants who are knocking on the door and always around when I am.

I pondered asking for your removal a few times but always decided against it. Not sure if it would've happened anyways, Reksah can be fickle at times. :P

I would not have been upset if you had removed me from Scion. There was a period of time I was logging in so infrequently that I could not use Legendary or some Famous items simply because they would disappear due to anti-hoarding code. Unfortunately, the exigencies of day-to-day life prevented me from playing as often as I should have.

Re: Scion lore - a lot of it can be read within the Chasm itself. That said, the player behind Volker does have prior experience with Scion. Given the fact that you're Twist, you probably know the player! (Suggestion: Allow players to add to the Scion library of texts, maybe with IMM approval of the contents - it seems in keeping with the scholar-ish RP of the typical Scion mage.)

There are other things I want to say, but I can't say it while Volker is still active. When Tavlin was inducted and made Advisor, I was somewhat doubtful about his worthiness. However, any doubts I had were quickly dispelled when I played with you at hero.

Can't wait to see your PBF!

Jesus christ man, I agree with Isildur. With anazu, you became a dozen times more ####ing more terrifying than any pally with defiance or whatever.

One of the reasons I decided to bring out defiance to multiple paladins so early was for the simple reason that I knew I had no chance of killing you directly, so I figured I might as well power up some people who stood a better chance. I'm sure the defiance pallies came a LOT closer to killing you than I ever did.

I loved -RPing- with Tavlin, but I felt like you suffered from Ahtieli syndrome. You were so ####ing terrifying that your presence alone changed everything, and I don't even know what could kill you after a certain point.

The only plan I could reasonably come up with is having everyone running away, doing the healing dance, and waiting for your goddamn wraithform to fall. But that's a mistake that takes a LOT of luck to capitalize on, and is easily remedied by half a second of effort on your part.

Honestly? I never thought you were cheating in the least. With that sort of longevity and consistent logins, it'd be ####ing stupid if you didn't get a ton of rewards.

My big sadface mostly came from the fact that there was absolutely nothing my build could do against you - all my most powerful abilities you were rendered completely immune to with undispellable wraithform, mask of anazu, and mummy bonuses.

Fighting you at any point was a huge gamble with zero chance to payoff, especially with my ####ty connection. In fact, staying online at all against you and Lisos was basically a count for how long it'd take for me to d/c in a bad place and get instantly killed. Every time I lagged even the SLIGHTEST bit in the wrong place, I was guaranteed death.

It was really zero fun, because there was absolutely nothing I could do against you guys, and everything you guys could do against me basically guaranteed my death if I was the tiniest bit sloppy or if my connection decided to fizz out at that moment.

I know you've probably been in worse situations, but trust me that was a pretty low point in Vallinane's life. For that entire login, I felt like I was basically feeding Tavlin CON, as if he really needed it. At least when other people kill me, I could say, oh, I had a chance to kill him or get away and I ####ed it up. Against Tavlin, it was more like, if I don't teleport right away I got nothing, just going to take another gamble on saving against sleep or power word kill with no chance of it paying off at all.

But anyway, I don't think that's in any way your fault, and I probably would have done the same in your place.

One last thing. That ONE lonely chance we had of killing you, when your wraithform was down and I got you tripped with Ozrek and Llarilin in the same room able to lag you and then the game crashed right at that second? Holy #### I almost threw my laptop at the wall. So ####ing sad man.

As Vhenylos, we had a few good fights (especially at the Watcher).

Only annoying thing I could say was you tended to "ring the doorbell" a lot, when you didn't have any intention of actually raiding. I mean, it was cool that you were eager for a fight on unfriendly territory but it was frustrating when I needed to gather preps or gold, or actually do something productive, but I kept getting dragged back to the Fort to fight a nearly unwinnable fight.

A small criticism though, because even when it seemed like I could do nothing against you, the fights and interactions were always fun.

I was really hoping to get the retribution virtue, so I'd have a few options behind wrath/turn undead to use against you. It seemed like most of the time, all I could hope to do was whittle away your zombies and frustrate you into leaving. I don't think I ever got you below about 40-50% hp. Not for a lack of trying though.

I'll post a log or two, once I dig them out and clean them up. We had some good fights that I remember.

I actually tried to avoid doing this because it is annoying.

That said, the Maran Tara'bal was a GREAT way for me to heal up from like 500 hp to 2000+ hp pretty quick. Way quicker than c sum cloud giant lumberjack, c vamp cloud, rinse repeat. So if I was in the area I'd swing in and do so.

I would actually tell people at times "Do not bother coming to defend your precious Tara'bal's life - I am merely draining his essence. I will be gone before you arrive." or something like that.

On the other side of things, actually raiding for the Orb as a necro sucks. Your logs illustrate why. I spend an hour making full zombie army and the Watcher blasts the hell out of them in 6 rounds. And for what? So the paladin who makes a defense can flee/teleport at gushing? So a lowbie Squire can retrieve without opposition?

Toward the end I started just leaving the horde at the Chasm and taking the Orb myself. It took a lot longer but there was nothing to lose if it was easily retrieved. Of course this made fighting actual defenders all the more dangerous, but eh.

Because honestly, defending the Fort against you + full horde made me look like a complete badass.

Granted, the thing an Elf Paladin is best at is staying alive, it was a really unfair fight for you at the Watcher. All I had to do was stay alive as you slowly lost zombie after zombie to the Watcher (plus whatever I was able to do while trying to not die).

It made me look good, even in death, and for that I thank you.






Also.... if feels like I can type really really fast when I'm drunk. Is that just me? I should do this when I play more often.

... But he had gotten to that level of evolution of his role yet. But man was I looking forward to see what you were about, heard so much about you and all mummies I've RPed with have been awesome...

I think it's a huge shame that the rants even had the slightest impact on you chosing to delete. But then again, perhaps the answer is within what you wrote yourself. You said you had a feeling that Tavlin would smell IMM to the other IMMs and I guess that's not good.

Still it's a shame, I've always been a fan of your chars, this is most likely the first in the past 6 years that I haven't interacted with.

I loved interacting with you on Nirilas. You had that cool, creepy, arrogant demeanor going on Tavlin. Very neat and appropriate for a Chancellor. I wish you had accepted my offer to come in and turn yourself in for a handsome sum of gold. Good work.

P.S.: I greatly enjoy all your characters. (I think my favorite is Hunsobo - but I think that's because that was my first time interacting with you on my very own first character.)

>Re: Mummy Quest: I was originally trying for a Lich quest. I
>tried for roughly 2 weeks, I think. But by that time, I
>believe Reksah had an inkling (or downright knew) that I was
>Twist, and was hesitant to give me one. Also having never done
>one probably didn't help, as well as being busy. Also to do
>one you need to have help from one of the higher level imms.
>After a while I decided it would be better for everyone
>(including me, re: accusations) if I just used the automated
>undeath method, despite it being "weaker."

If a character with Tavlin's qualifications by that point (solid in PK, solid in RP, cabal leader, role contest winner, etc.) had been played by anyone else I would have pushed for a lich quest for them. Maybe I'd have even, god forbid, written it myself.

But: by that time I pretty well knew who you were, and I knew there would be just so much drama over it if I did, so I didn't.

I'm honestly not sure if there's any way for us as imms to "win" there. You received serious anti-favoritism right there and people were/are still bitching.

To begin, I don't really recall seeing anyone complaining about Tavlin. I see lots more complaints about other characters, and I generally always chalk it up to people pissed cause somebody just beat them down too easily.

Everyone that complained about Tavlin should play a necro and see what it takes to even get there, and then once they do see how easy it is to amass what Tavlin did. Even with Twist's skill he died a lot pre mummy (at least for a Twist char)

Have people forgotten about what it was like fighting with Ahtiehli or Satebos. Ahtiehli, I think, would have shredded Tavlin just cause of phylacteries. You had about a 1 - 1000 chance of beating either of those liches solo. Tavlin was almost tame by comparison. Tavlin the lich would have been much scarier. But even had he gotten the quest, it would have been hard to argue Tavlin was not the most deserving necromancer of the fifth age to get a lich quest.

Tavlin really was not something special in terms of an Imm favored way from what I saw. Everyone knew Reksah wanted a necro in scion, anyone could have made a necro char and probably got the advisor spot. Nobody took advantage of the opportunity, so they should not complain because someone else did. Even if it was Twist.

Tavlin was a mummy chancellor with a great set played by one of Cf's truly skilled players. Most any vet can amass a nice gear set, and that has nothing to do with Imm love. He had a tatoo as well. Anyone can get a tattoo, but again, you have to put the work into getting one. He won an RC, again available to all. I generally fail to see how Tavlin really got any favored treatment at all. If anything I think he worked harder for less, and so it's hard to hold anything against Twist for him actually putting real effort into his chars and getting any level of rewards, especially when lots of players in his shoes would probably complain they weren't getting enough rewards for all they did and how bad ass they were.

And I enjoy knowing there are those types out there for one. They make the game interesting.

I wish more imms played more mortal characters personally.
I always did want to see a Zulgh or Daev played mort.

At least, I hope they do. I don't think I'd want to be an IMM if I couldn't play mortals. How do you test all the stuff you just spent hundreds of hours working on? How do you interact with the new class/race/area you just put in?

Nep admits a character here and there from time to time. He usually doesn't play longer than 140-180 hrs though. Typical Nep char will go 50-1 or something in 100 hrs, kill some tough characters, explore a ####load (that's really the tell via PBF's...in the world of CF explorers, there's Nep, and Dwoggurd....and then everybody else).

Zulg I am positive has played at least two shapeshifters in the last two years. I'd imagine Zulg's a guy who'll play a char infrequently over the course of 3 months for like 100 hrs, not be high profile, etc etc etc.

Twist plays more mortals than he logs on Twist the IMM. I love that fact (except when I'm playing a Twist follower whom he ignores). Twist thrives with powerful builds more than anyone else I've seen on CF (a close second is Beront). Twist also can do a less than optimal build with varying success (great-Faolai, middle-Balthudar, bad-Didn't Twist have an assassin recently....?).

Valg is a robot.

Kastellyn got lost at sea or decided he has a family and CF is the Devil. It's really one of the two.

Sebeok...not really sure about him. Believe he's still around to code but he's probably in the Shokai group of IMM/players.

>Nep admits a character here and there from time to time. He
>usually doesn't play longer than 140-180 hrs though. Typical
>Nep char will go 50-1 or something in 100 hrs, kill some tough
>characters, explore a ####load (that's really the tell via
>PBF's...in the world of CF explorers, there's Nep, and
>Dwoggurd....and then everybody else).

Iunna gave me crap because I gave myself away to her at like level 26 when I went to Hell. Not my fault! I found a bagful of Obuli in the Jade Mountains, inexplicably (still had like 7 of them in my girdle when I deleted), and during some ghost time after one of many pkdeaths one night I decided to run to Charon and go in. Managed to make it to death via Styx Devil which was pretty cool (ridiculous lucky flees in the 2nd Circle, IIRC). So yeah Nep explores, but I wouldn't call it to a ridiculous level :P.

>Zulg I am positive has played at least two shapeshifters in
>the last two years. I'd imagine Zulg's a guy who'll play a
>char infrequently over the course of 3 months for like 100
>hrs, not be high profile, etc etc etc.

I'm pretty sure this is incorrect, though Zulg doesn't tell me all his chars. The last Zulg char I KNOW of was a fire giant of moderate success in Empire under War Master Hunsobo. He fought some other hero fire giant for the last Elite spot and lost. I think his name started with a T.

>Twist plays more mortals than he logs on Twist the IMM. I
>love that fact (except when I'm playing a Twist follower whom
>he ignores). Twist thrives with powerful builds more than
>anyone else I've seen on CF (a close second is Beront). Twist
>also can do a less than optimal build with varying success
>(great-Faolai, middle-Balthudar, bad-Didn't Twist have an
>assassin recently....?).

That assassin was many years ago, though Isildur keeps bringing it up as an example of me sucking. :P I've had plenty of sucky chars since then but I generally don't stick with them for long once I've decided they suck (for me). The funny thing is I see other guys kicking ass with nearly identical builds. For instance, pre-Brom I tried an elf paladin Trib app. That guy got crapped on by Sherys, then further crapped on by Marcatis who hated my elf's note to Tribunal. So yeah he deleted at like 20 hours. Just as an example.

>Valg is a robot.

It's true.

>Kastellyn got lost at sea or decided he has a family and CF is
>the Devil. It's really one of the two.

Kasty makes a triumphant return to his home digs in a week, I think, after serving his country like a god damn hero for a year or so. Not sure if that'll mean insta-Kasty on CF - I imagine not - but it'll be great to have him back whenever he wants to be.

>Sebeok...not really sure about him. Believe he's still around
>to code but he's probably in the Shokai group of IMM/players.

I haven't seen Sebeok on CF (or coding) since pre-purge. I believe his last big coding project was the Arena and fixes to it after it went live. Miss him. :)

That anyone actually argued that Twist didn't deserve all those rewards. Honestly, listening to his list of major rewards I thought they were pretty light relative to how long Tavlin was around and how much of a presence he was.

And I actually think that the level of "bitching" was pretty light, for how incredibly powerful Tavlin was. Most really mechanically strong characters receive a ton of criticism from their embittered victims. Tavlin's feedback in the other boards was almost uniformly positive, with only a couple of people resignedly noting that he was such a wrecking ball, he totally didn't need more questy love.

I know most of the really strong a-ps and liches comparable to Tavlin attracted tons more controversy, whether they were imm-played or not. This happens with almost every really overpowered character. Honestly, I thought that Tavlin was pretty unique in how positive everyone has been.

As much as it sucks, you were probably right not to give Twist the lich quest.

Is that wrong? Yes, yes it is. But that's just the way things are. It's a situation that I don't think has an easy solution. Regardless of whether or not it is fair, you'll always have a small faction of the playerbase that sees every perk an IMM gets as something they only got because they were an IMM.

What cracks me up about that type of mentality is that usually these are the same players who have no problems hooking up their boys...leading me to believe the reason they are so mad is because of jealousy?

PS Palan still got boned the worst on Lich quests (well, him and that dude who had to get the item that was literally impossible to get). I still feel bad for that dude, because he does/did necro's so well...(character I am speaking about is Isabeaux, Trib Necro from 2007-2008 era).

NVM

I had finally figured out exactly how to fight you, as was evidenced by our last 1v1 out at the High Lords keep. I had a plan after that fight for precisely how I was going to take you down, then never got a chance to implement it. Le sigh.

Awesome character. Really just class all the way. We were enemies, and fought each other quite a bit, but we still had some entertaining conversations. It's really great when you can have someone who you are opposed to so strongly, in so many ways, but you both can go "Ehh, but it's not PERSONAL, so no reason to be ####ty about it".

I have a deep-seeded hatred of you and want you to die. But nothing PERSONAL about it. Heh. Sounds funny but very accurate. :)

Gramma had problems.

Nice job. My characters interacted with you in a few ways and I have to say that I did not recognize that this character was Twist in any way. However, I don't ever really think about who is playing whom.

I kept waiting for someone (I was really hoping for Kanye) to post this, but since nobody did, I'll do it myself:

Yo Tavlin I'm real happy for you an' Imma let you finish. Imma let you finish, but Palmer was the scariest and most unpredictable mummy of all TIME! ALL TIME!

Lol. Man you come up with some of the funniest stuff. Too hip for these cats!