Sat Sep 12 11:40:54 2015

At 6 o'clock PM, Day of the Bull, 8th of the Month of the Old Forces
on the Theran calendar Varaez perished, never to return.

Race:	dark-elf
Class:	warrior
Level:	51
Alignment:	Evil
Ethos:	Chaotic
Cabal:	BATTLE, the BattleRagers, Haters of Magic
Age:	264
Hours:	224

I really liked this build while playing with and against all various builds as Kregan one thing that really stood out to me is that axes and daggers could be a leathal combination. I know we spoke about this IC and cheers for the duel it was as I thought if that happened at 200 hrs vs 600+ I would have been mince meat it was as tough as I thought but I do wonder what one small tweak in the legacy choice would do. Might try that myself one day 😀

I also enjoyed our interactions it's a pity you lost a bit of steam. Either way another in a line of quality chars.

GLWYN

If you were having bad day, it bled through occasionally, however..

I maintain (as I do with that entire generation of Battle) that you guys tended to mix it up and take on the odds. Overall, I liked you, and I think this was a successful character that you should be proud of.

Good luck with future characters..

(PS: Death tells you, 'DISEMBOWEL IS ####!')

As I said to others, when I started to log in with a chip on my shoulder routinely - it was time to throw in the towel. I enjoyed this character for the most part, and I do consider it a success. Thank you for your feedback!

Loved to see you around, those times you were countering retrievals with Varnon from imperial/nexus hordes were close to epic. And too bad you quit that only time when I've managed to stalk you to ten, that would've made our mutual experience much more interesting.

Well done!

First and foremost, if I have left you off of the list I apologize. I interacted with a large amount of folks throughout the life of this character. Most of my interactions were positive, especially those within my cabal.

Unfortunately, over time I became very very jaded to enemies. This is due to the near constant complaining when it came to everything village (IC tells along the lines of "you only beat me because of your legacy/cabal/etc/yap") Or, people trying to rat out applicants left and right. As a result, after a while my default stance to pretty much any enemy except a select few which I had developed a good repertoire with became "#### you". I recognized this as an issue - but was unable to curb it. The char/class/cabal combo became unfun as a result. I will add that Parity is not something for people OUTSIDE of battle to enforce - period. I myself have fallen into 'scolding' a villager over it but never will again. Parity is also not a 'weapon' to be used against a villager - I hit you first and some 3rd party jumped in and I didn't back off and I pressed for the kill and got it? - that's CF. Don't come crying to me about Parity. Parity != Honor.

Goodbyes:

IMM:

Verathi: Thanks so much for the interactions. I often wished our playtimes would mesh together more - but alas we are both very busy adults. I still have about half of that assignment written if you want it - I lost steam following my vacation. If I had it to do over again, I would've picked sphere victory - less writing homework ;). That said, you were very fair and always a class act.

Destuvious: This time around you left a very very sour taste in my mouth. Please clean up your "own back yard" as it were before policing battle. Your cabal seems to be a rotating door for the same "perma" people have been complaining about for a while now.

Friends:

Varnon - Keep trucking, you are a great commander. You helped me hero, and I think I saved your life a few times. I always enjoyed yelling at you folks for 'dying quietly' as compared to letting me patch you up.

Tiissana - Damn, I had no idea your build was that potent - you sure as #### surprised me!

Gogoth - To this day I still think you got a bit of an unfair rub.

Ahjevhil - I got to play alongside you as both an enemy (kobuk) and as a friend. I have to say I completely understand why I had two vastly different experiences. Hard not to end up extremely bitter at the end of the day playing a successful battle char.

Knul - I hope you are still around, and still playing. I liked you a good bit but I did not see you often.

Enemies:

Gaspare - You are a class act. I am happy that I was able to get you once or twice, very slippery. I really enjoyed our #### talk wherin I said I was using the codex for TP and you said "I'll wash it off with your tears" - well done!

Caecilius - Awesome shadow lord hands down what a shadow lord should be! I really liked you, and our talks.

Sodsob - I wish you were not such a scaredy cat ALL the time. popping return wands at >80% health? Not much "dread" imposed there.

Hitrilipimi - Liked you, another class act enemy who was as fun to talk to as fight.

Valdifer - Good to talk to, wish we had gotten to mix it up in combat more often.

Kowelu - If I had set my wimpy to 0% I would've disemboweled your manticore. Damned wimpy F'ing me up.

Eliara - You gave me a really hard time in my younger years - I eventually learned to fight a monk paladin quite well.

Luthantulas - Enjoyed our fights - enjoy being a HeroIMM

Eleri - The one person who liked fighting as much as I seemed to. I enjoyed our fights, even if they were a bit one sided. You had my # that one time you caught me resting in that shrine though.

Anyone I forgot: sorry.

That being said, there is no empire perma. This is my first imperial leader in years and knowing the interior of the council I can tell you there is certainly not a perma.

GLWYN!

I loved traveling with you. So wish you did not lose the drive for the character, but when you are done you are done.

GLWYN

Sure speaks highly of your pride as a villager that you're willing to accept the assisted kill instead of considering it a disgrace to press for the kill in that situation.

But then again ambiguous word != other ambiguous word.

I say all this having had no interactions with the character.

Somehow I missed this potshot you felt the need to take at me, so I guess sorry for the delay in a response...

As with all things relating to a rules violation, or a potential perma group, feel free to shoot an email to either, or both, imms@carrionfields.com or imps@carrionfields.com with whatever information you can provide.

Simply saying "We think there is a perma!" over and over again does no good for anyone.

I would also love to see a situation where there are IC breeches of cabal dogma from Imperials that were ignored recently, since you are asking me to "police my own cabal." If you are annoyed about things unrelated to IC cabal issues then I don't really know what to tell you.

I didn't think anyone would care who mattered, but there is one high ranked Imperial right now who pretty consistently attacks me in town.

via the media pointed above. Also make sure you understand imperial law and its difference from tribunal law, much like those criticizing ragers should make sure they understand battle dogma.

Also remember sect law varies and sometimes for some people it is overlooked.

I tried to edit that comment out, I realized it was a low blow and I would've done away with it had the forum allowed me to.

Frankly, it really got under my nerves that Gogoth got nailed the way he did in regards to Fessara.

In my experience, Fessara would forego any raid/counter raid situation to stalk stalk stalk. no defense, no retrieval and frankly as a character who has sworn a 'blood oath' that is complete garbage.

What it boils down to for me is that both battle and imperials swear an Oath. If IMM's (and you) are going to demand that battle players stick to their oaths, then imperials sure as #### had better be giving their "lives" for the empire.

I've had good experiences with imperials, and bad - that comment came from the latter.

Roam inside the shadow sect hall and check the laws. It's nowhere near "proud and fair", really. And quoting your own words about parity criticism ;)

My point is, don't come down on someone in a different cabal, when you have people doing things that were criticized HEAVILY in the past:

I present to you: Kjrorh who might as well have been Fessara's carbon copy:

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=31&topic_id=25582&mesg_id=25582&page=1

check out those IMM comments - holding a leadership position in a cabal comes with responsibility - like giving a #### when you're being raided, and trying to actually recover your item when you can.

# of times they retrieved their cabal item 106

As far as I know you are in that serial battle player category, just as I am. The reason why I say this is you did not come off to me as someone who was used to some of the challenges that go along with playing a BattleRager.

Before I get into the meat of my comments I will commend you on playing one tough ass character. There is no taking that away from you and you deserve congratulations on that. It could have been much better thought without the attitude, and I think you acknowledge that by admitting to your jadedness towards enemies.

I will agree with you that it is frustrating when other players try to tell you how to play your Battlerager when it comes to parity. But, that comment coming from you struck me as odd because there were a number of times where you griped at me for how I chose to fight you.

I shouldn't feel like I need to point out to you that I was a Nexus assassin and that allows me to do the following, but, I will:

-I can chose my allies however I see fit so long as it does not go against the balance.
-I have no restrictions on ganging outside of what I chose to impose on myself (RP, religion, etc) but that shouldn't matter to you as you saying something to me about it would be akin to me telling you about parity.
-I am going to use the element of surprise where ever possible.
-You, being a Village leader, are nearly always an enemy, and will also nearly always cause the Veil to be thick. Taking the head away or keeping it away from you will nearly always be at the top of my priority list, even balance wise.

So consider how miffed I was when you started bitching at me at the end every time I attacked you around the Empire. Especially when you went so far as to complain that I was ganging you. I even had to remind you one time that I was not beholden to your parity rules. I rarely even outright ganged you down (when I say outright I'm talking outside of the Destructor etc), and trust me, I had plenty of opportunities.

For a guy who plays a lot of Battle, and understands the cabal well, I can just say I was blown away that these kinds of comments were coming from the Drillmaster. I'll bet if I had the logs I could dig out some of the conversations we had and replace our names and people would have a hard time telling who the Villager was and who the Nexun was.

It really is one of the truisms about Battle that you just have to expect your enemies are going to do whatever they can to kill you, and you have restrictions on how you go about killing them. This quite often puts you on the wrong side of the numbers game. That's CF, to use your phrase :)

If it weren't for those situations I would have respected the hell out of Varaez. I think we had a good enemy to enemy relationship up until that point.

Whatever the reason was for the behavior, whether its RL stuff bleeding in game or IC stuff getting too much to handle, I hope it passes for you and you can go back to enjoying the game because while it is present, you aren't the only person it's making the game less fun for.

So back to my original statement. I was surprised it was you. For as much as I can remember I've always had good opinions of your characters.

And this: is a big part of why I deleted. In the end, I simply dislike the new battle "meta" completely. Most of my prior ragers had huge mage kill #'s. I rarely got to fight a mage with Varaez, I'll wager maybe 20% of my total kills were actually mages. To top that off, the old Thror definition of parity is out the window, and the new 'hotness' seems to accept enemies using parity as a weapon. It just became absolutely frustrating.

I also dislike the new rager/empire dynamic. Granted, the cabals have always been at war. However, with a reduced player base 5 characters in a single cabal working in tandem with leader powers is a bit over the top. Which in essence, is why I'd get bent about getting jumped in the lands retrieving headless vs a ton of opposition. I generally made off with the head in the end.

I apologize for my handling of you, once I saw who you were I felt like an ass - I should have probably felt like an ass prior. But, I will tell you that for the crap I gave you - I took 10x in return. very souring experience.

I'm playing a new char and having a blast though. I hope you are as well.

I'm real happy to hear you're enjoying your new char. I debated making my response to your death thread because I didn't want to get confrontational with you or start a flame war. In the end I just felt like I needed to clear the air. No hard feelings for it and I understand that the things you are talking about are tough to deal with.

In hindsight, what you have said here makes a lot of sense. Our log ins hadn't really been coinciding at the end and so, when we did log in together it just happened to be coincidence that Empire was involved. Or at least I want to say it was coincidence, even though the way things were going it was a good probability Empire was involved. It's just that they were short and that's all we knew.

You are absolutely correct that it's becoming harder and harder to land MPKs. I'm sure you were watching the Village's mage count and if I were a betting man I'd say that a bunch of Villagers stayed "blooded" for a very long time. I honestly think that not having despoiled Scions running around kicking everyone's ass is kind of bad for the Village. There aren't all that many mage players that want to bother consistently giving a Villager a fight. The Village could use a mage heavy cabal to fight instead of the Empire, that seems to be the default now and is only a small percentage mage.

I haven't rolled yet myself but I have 4 or 5 builds I want to try. Two of the top ones are a mage and a Villager, hah. Maybe when I get around to it I'll try the mage and check it out from the otherside. Maybe there's a reason mages don't want to bother fighting Villagers.

Made me think of a few years ago (Crraya timeframe) when I was playing back to back Imperials who were not mages and continuously getting curb stomped by the village. The thought I was having at the time was if I was playing something like an outlander mage, I would not have to fight villagers. So as it stands right now, Empire and Nexus (all what is it 7 members?) are really the only cabal that have a compelling reason to fight battle most days.

Honestly, it's no wonder why the Battle - Tribunal war started. I'd probably go blind with boredom or mad with frustration playing battle right now as you either have to constantly retrieve against non-mage imperials or sit idle. Well maybe I'm exaggerating here. I love the cabal too much :)

Having just finished playing Nexun I can say that I spent about 50% of the time in the cabal alone. If not more. While there are mage characters in Nexus that I loved, there just isn't enough of them around consistently to give Battle a challenge. Part of this is the low playerbase numbers, I concede.

As you pointed out, hunting Outlander mages is very difficult as a Villager. Fortress mages just avoid you for the most part unless you are evil, and alot of times even then, unless they are a bad matchup for you or they have backup.

The cabal system is really the catalyst behind a lot of PK action. Not having a cabal that's designed to counterbalance Battle is bad for Battle in my opinion. At least when Scion was around it did somewhat fill that void. It's already been said that Nexus wasn't designed to consider Battle an outright enemy. It just so happens to work out that way most of the time with the balance.

Battle is by far my favorite cabal in this game and I'd hate to see it leave the game. In theory it can exist the way it does because there will always be mages/magic in Thera and the players like to play it, but, in reality it's become more of a secondary thing to do for orcs & imperials when their main enemies aren't around to oppose them.

Once I came back, for the most part I usually had something to fight that actually was my enemy, so that kinda limited our opportunities. Once you had hero'd it was a pretty one sided fight anyway, but we did have some good ones early on.

I enjoyed our fights and our interaction. I knew the frustration you were having with monks when I was stomping you at first, that's why I gave some pointers. I wanted us to keep fighting. Both IC and OOC I didn't want someone avoiding a fight with me. By the end of it I knew I had a task ahead of me when I fought you - the ring aside. I can't tell you how many times you caught me stupidly chilling on the Eastern Road.

I guess I should apologize to Eliara for teaching you how to fight monks. ;-)

I am excited about being a HeroIMM, thanks!

GLWYN

We had some decent fights, you were a slippery one. A pleasure to mix it up with.

For some reason or another, we didn't seem to run together much, but what I saw was a very competent defender. Too bad it didn't work out for you the way you planned. At least I hope I gave you something to think about towards the end. :) GLWYN!

You were a tough and annoying sod. Always fast enough to not let me kill you which usually resulted in my protections falling and having to run away. I was looking forward to some more drag out brawls but that just isn't in the cards. Luck to you with whatever is next.