Tue Mar 21 17:18:09 2006

At 11 o'clock AM, Day of the Bull, 1st of the Month of the Dragon
on the Theran calendar Brinrok perished, never to return.

Race:	dwarf
Class:	shaman
Level:	51
Alignment:	Good
Ethos:	Chaotic
Cabal:	FORTRESS, the Fortress of Light
Age:	243
Hours:	288

Mortals, give me a holler, I'll give you a reply, there were so many, and it's been a month, so please send me message, and I'll respond.


Shokai, would you let me know what I did wrong?

Well, I played the biggest zealot ever, completely willing to sacrifice anything to serve his purpose. I didn't care at all about gear, or about dying, and sometimes, when I, as a player wanted to scream after getting full sacced or some such, all I could do with Brinrok was calmly offer redemption to those who had just slain me. Going up through the ranks, I never ranked with a neutral, I never killed neutral mobs, I never cut any corners, I always did the right thing. However, in all of this, I made one mistake. I chose Shokai as my Immortal. It just put too much energy into being absolutely dedicated to him to get nothing in return. I felt like I did all that I should and more, only to get ignored. I prayed well over 200 times, easily, and got one response, for empowerment at 18.

These sum up my interaction with Shokai.
1. Empowered at rank 18 to rank 30, not told that I am empowered to rank 30. Empowerment seems rushed, like he has to be going somewhere in real life.

2. 35ish I kill an AP with an unholy blessed axe, go to his shrine to sacrifice it, tell him about it, he wizi's, no response.

3. Rank 43- I've prayed easily a hundred times in between here, with no response, Alriac lets me know he's talking to Shokai in the Fort, about five minutes after I prayed with no response. Mind you, I'm rank 43 with no sups past 30. Shokai gets done making Alriac Captain, and says his goodbyes, I hastily ask if I can have a moment of his time. I rp tell him that I need more empowerment, he gives me such and departs, with no rp. He gives me some exp bonus, so I start to think maybe I'm not doing a completely bad job.

3. I make a hint at a vis Shokai that I would seek his mark of approval. He responds such might be possible someday, and wizi's.

4. I'm kind of trying to force Shokai into giving me some interaction, so I impose very harsh penalties upon myself for a relatively minor offense, one that I could have blown off. I decide to forgo wearing any clothing, until I recieve the forgiveness of Shokai. After being naked for about 30 hours rl time, I start to decide I've had enough, after probably 30 prays with no response. I catch Shokai vis, and get two sentences off and he tells me he will think about it and goes wizi. After catching him partially willing to speak to me 3 times in 300 hours, and all of them when people have told me he's on, I decide that's enough. I just couldn't see someone as zealous as Brinrok deleting though, so I just let him go.

Thanks to the Imms that made me Maran and gave me a lastname, I thought I had a pretty good role, and did a good job of following it, but it was just putting in too much effort to follow so fervently a god that didn't give 2 craps about you.

Sorry, man. Shokai is a deadbeat dad, yo.

Onto Brinrok...

This character was something of a conundrum for me. I'll evaluate him in two parts:

Solo Brinrok: Did a great job. Solid, competent, dangerous, all-around good.

Grouped up Brinrok: Biggest retard of the year.

I just could not figure it out. One day I'd watch Brinrok solo and he'd be taking names and cleaning #### up. The next day I'd see him grouped with one or more guys, and I swear, it was like his IQ was divided by the square of the total group size.

The thing that really sticks out in my mind is this one time wherein Rialnis lays out this beautiful, elaborate plan to get the Orb back and fight off a very formidable (lesser in number, but all very tough characters) group of Scions, which was supposed to start with Brinrok and Rialnis entering the chasm alone, summoning a certain person, and pulling him to the rest of the group. Brinrok's like, ok! Then promptly ignores all that and charges and murders the Nightwalker without even giving anyone in the group time to cast basic preps. Pretty much everyone on the Fort side died. It was probably the dumbest ####ing thing I ever saw Fortress do, and that's saying something.*

But then the next day I'd catch Brinrok solo again and, you know, just great.

I don't get it, man. Did you play stoned sometimes? I just don't get it.


* Razhalia, earning honorable mention, spent that raid spamming lash on the Nightwalker. But that's beating a dead horse, and she did, eventually, get better.

Razmorthin was around, and I tried to summon a couple of times, and assumed this person had deny summoning up, so decided to scrap the plan, rather than use all my mind on summoning. Is it possible that that was the case in this situation? If Razmorthin wasn't around, I have no idea.

As to other group situations, I learned as a player that there were many times that I was pretty much on my own in a group with many of the Lightwalkers. I would bet at least five or six times, I sat there taking a beating with healers by my side and never got a heal once because they'd already blown all their mana on mass heal before anyone was hurt. I can think of a time where I got knocked all the way from perfect health to dead while fighting a lion with two healers standing next to me. Another time I was getting beaten down by the fort where a healer tried to succor me out of a fight that I wasn't getting beat down in, lost her concentration, and me, expecting a heal died because I didn't word. What I'm trying to say was, I reached a point where I kind of decided that I was going to act as if I was alone, and any benefit I happened to get from my groupmates would just be a bonus, particularly the healers. That may be why you thought I was being retarded, because I'd counted on them to keep me alive too many times, and died because of it. Don't get me wrong, Brinrok didn't mind dying, but he wanted a better chance of taking someone down with him. Maybe this explains the retardness, maybe it doesn't at all, I'd need more details.

If I didn't recall wrongly, it was against, Razmorthin, Vorlan, Millia and one or two other Scions.

n/t

To be fair, there were times when you'd rush things a bit too much. You were a zealot, so I can somewhat understand that. Honestly, I try to not get people killed, however, there were times when it was just unavoidable. That Scion cluster**** was a good example. With only one defender AND a healer, we should have been fine. I admit I walked into the archmage before the healer had sanc'd the warrior, but regardless, that was just embarassing. Catching crap about it afterwards though from you, when I stayed until I had 40 hp left, and hearing you badmouth the scribe newbie healer just got on my nerves however. People die, newbies die, you can't beat them up over it or give everyone else crap about it. Sometimes a lesson can only be learned the hard way, and its not worth stressing out about on an OOC level. When the warrior deleted and implied that the rest of us were newbies, it got on my nerves. I try to heal people, but I'm not a healer. If you can't handle fighting, don't raid.

I'm not a new player, and I rarely die, but often I would rather walk alone than group up, because of situations like that.

Well, I certainly didn't mean to come off that harshly, however, Brinrok was the sort that really didn't care about feelings in that he would say what he was thinking, and it really wasn't in him to be a politician. I apologize if I came off as an ass.

I waltzed right up to the palace, which had no defenders in my range. I had it in my brain that I was going to flash the outer so I wouldn't lose my weapon. Strouth had summoned about 5 or 6 high level mobs to the outer, so I even set my elemental to noarea. They I proceeded to flash anyway (because apparently it was still stuck in my brain), and promptly mob died in one round and didn't get the orb back.

Heh, not that I was trying to do that in any way shape or form, because I think my reasoning was made less stupid in the light that the conjurer was most likely there. So I am at least partially vindicated of my stupidity this one time.

http://www.liquidgeneration.com/content/a55hat.aspx?cid=1786

I thought you played a very solid Shokai shaman. Noone probably remembers him but I think my first Maran was a dwarf shaman by the name of Agaeobab. He was a Vynmylak follower although Vynny kicked the bucket right after I rolled him. I think the moral of the story is: even if you're playing an empowerment class, make your own fun.

All in all it's best for all parties to give your character an avenue to head even if your imm is AWOL for a bit. This can be done with added role entries...or committing yourself to the 'ideals' that Shokai represents rather than the Imm himself. Anyway sort of gone off on a tangent.

So....about Brinrok. Well played! I agree with Nep that you seemed to do a lot better alone than with a few fellow forties, but it's certainly not easy fighting in Fort groups sometimes :p .
Patience is indeed a virtue right?

Anyway, good going and good luck with your next.

Was great running around with you. I always got this great picture in my mind when you would go up against Vorlan of our cat against their cat duking it out. Too bad the Imm thing didn't work out. Thanks for being patient when Brinrok would go off on his fanatical tangents. Good luck with the next one and all that, anyhow, I have to get rolling off to work, but thanks for all the fun interactions.