Fri Feb 1 07:57:53 2008

At 5 o'clock PM, Day of the Moon, 14th of the Month of Nature
on the Theran calendar Desabarun perished, never to return.

Race:	elf
Class:	bard
Level:	51
Alignment:	Good
Ethos:	Chaotic
Cabal:	None, None
Age:	494
Hours:	216

im currious did you like the coffee and the elven wine? ;)

Coffee is bad for the voice!

But thanks for the wine. :)

You just seemed to have lost interest right after you 'lost' your instrument to me. I mean, until that moment you logged on regularly, and after that well, I think I saw you twice more.

Somehow.. well.. I didn't like you. Not because you made me 'the other one' (elven bard), but .. there was something about you that rubbed the wrong way. Perhaps it was the way you were constantly bragging about how you'd be getting that superpotion or that uberstaff. Or how you nearly won this fight or that one. You always seemed to be in some kind of contest where you had to be the best. Even without the bragging you seemed to know what you were doing, I could tell that. It's a pity we didn't travel together more, since I really think I could have learned from you, and vice versa. Anyways, good luck with the next one.

Ok, not mentioning your name...

Actually I discovered that the unlimited guitar worked a lot better for me than the lyre of light.

Plus I had been told by Danrae and some of the others that we'd go to hell when I was on and get me an instrument from there, that suits the repertoire.

However, I would, of course, have immediately lost it as soon as I was away for over a week again (thus rendering its acquisition relatively pointless).

I probably rubbed you up the wrong way because I was a little suspicious about how the enemy got hold of my stuff, and then it wouldn't repop for me, whether I tried repeatedly, or tried after reboots, but would be on you 2 days later.

As far as "bragging" about getting rare potions etc. It wasn't bragging. It was explaining what the hell was taking me so long! And sorry if sharing close successes offends you. Would you be interested to know that I often didn't report fights that I did win (because I didn't want the dead guy to get looted to nothing)?

Looks like we both rubbed each other the wrong way. I can, however, point to extremely humble characters I've played (e.g. Mallias), and my behaviour towards those that I respected (e.g. Kiraan, who killed me, or Rywald, who I killed), as evidence that I didn't feel the need to be the best.

That said, I will not claim that this was a well role-played character. As stated before, I never really got into his role, and thus it is very likely that my ooc suspicions of you manifested in his rp, for which I apologise. But then, you clearly have similar ooc suspicions if you think that I wasn't on much after you got the lyre of light, especially as it was not the most effective instrument for me.

I thought this was another solid effort from you, Bern. You were way more gung-ho than I was, and I thought it balanced well. Thanks for all the help when I was being a pretty weak Harbinger.

I would have stepped down earlier if not for you.

Folsa

I could tell there were certain things you deemed beyond you, but I think you'd have found that bard resist + healing, symphonic echoes on the enemy, lightning resist (from bard staff), all make some stuff infinitely more survivable. Especially when the bard can recall you if you aren't cursed.

I definitely wish my current character had that kind of back-up!

Desabarun was one of those characters who just oozed competence.

I had a plan involving you and a foe of ours, but unfortunately it never came to fruition.

You seemed a little detached in your RP, and while we exchanged some good natured banter, I kept the goading reasonably low key, because otherwise it would be unfair towards you. The non-leader has to deal with the risk of getting uninducted, putting a natural damper on things.

Anyway, it felt like it was just easier and more worthwhile working together. Maybe I am just imagining things, but I guess the frustrating RP coupled with a lack of enemies (at least when we shared playing times) is plenty of reason for autoing.

As an aside, that time you and Dejek came to blows. Did you turn off both trustcabal and trustgroup? Or weren't you grouped? It was odd that your songs didn't work.

Hope you enjoy your next more.

Thanks.

I liked Throkk, and after a while it felt acceptable for us to fight alongside each other. Not sure if you noticed but I tended to avoid the other fire giants in outlander. In particular I'd do raids without telling them what I was up to.

As I said in Rywald's farewell thread, I never got into this character's role, so you hit the nail on the head there. I kind of hoped to take a shot at leader when I rolled him up, but after about 80 hours I realised that the character was never going to be a quality one in terms of rp. He was basically the definition of a "human in elf suit" unfortunately.

That, coupled with the numbers we had, meant I ditched him. Also I was getting tired of having to regear every time I played because of hoarding code. Trips to Africa, massive projects at work, and hunting for a different job are all time munchers.

My current character is way more enjoyable to play because I love the role I've got. And he's something of an underdog!

I learnt a lot with Desabarun though, mainly about nifty scrolls, like high level blind, scourge, fumble, curse, poison etc. Bards are pretty sick with all that, especially when I could load on insane amounts of damage reduction with it. So I think my competence with the class was a gradually increasing thing. This was my first bard that I've heroed, which was one of my last goals. I do like the class a lot, but I think I'd tone down fiend so that it can't actually finish people off.

My goal with this character was to pit myself against Ravon, but I only got one decent opportunity (first attempt, in fact, as he wasn't expecting it) and somehow he survived with a fiend on him and convulsing, even after his cloak of displacement kicked in -- the cloak lags you when it does that). Every other time (bar one, when he chased me away from ranking on sahuagin) he had others with him and normally those others were a handful on their own. Ravon was actually one of the easiest scions to handle. I think it was because he didn't prep with resist mental as much as the rest of them did, and I had an edge to overcome high int.

The outlander cabal left me with mixed feelings. I did like Dejek (and actually liked the fact that he attacked me). I switched off trustcabal, but as the leader of the group was not with us during the fight, we stayed grouped and my songs didn't affect him.

Speaking of attacking... did you pincer me on purpose when we were retrieving from the nightwalker that time? I would have attacked you for that too, except, again, I had no idea how to make my songs affect my own cabal.

All in all, not a character I'm particularly proud of. But feign weakness edge is amazing. If anyone commented on how close they came to killing me... well, it probably wasn't as close as you thought.

Should probably mention it was me.

Daurwyn/Incognito.

I can't believe I survived those few times I did, especially the one where we were trying to retrieve and I was snared, slept, insected, fiended and with fantasia of illusion, running back to chasm with 4 outlanders pursuiting. Bard sleep is really rough, I think the duration on it could be looked at, especially considering how easy elf bards land it. Perhaps it was just good instrument, your edge or bad luck, but I can't ever remember you failing.

I don't think I ever really came close to killing you. If you had fantasia on you, you probably ran off thinking you were close to death, but actually you were not even covered in wounds!

It was frustrating how many times I put you to sleep only to find myself unable to land anything else significant on you. Or to distort you only to find that you landed iceneedles with ease afterwards anyway.

You were probably in the top 3 characters in terms of difficulty for me to fight. The others were that orangutan shifter and Pissudin. Both basically tore through me whilst I sang songs that didn't work at all. In your case, some songs landed but I still ended up lagged by lightning and struggling to heal fast enough to compensate for the damage it did, even when I used resist lightning.

I had a lot of respect for you though, not because you were tough (because in my opinion that was largely down to abs etc), but because you were deadly, which was down to you using novel tactics (won't spoil them for you here) that I'd never seen before. I think I described you as the most skilled invoker that I'd ever seen, and I don't thing I've changed my mind about that. Sadly, the tactics you started are now starting to become standard for other invokers, and thus the less interesting for it.

>My current character is way more enjoyable to play because I
>love the role I've got. And he's something of an underdog!

That's cool! If I am lucky, I get to fight him some time.

>Speaking of attacking... did you pincer me on purpose when we
>were retrieving from the nightwalker that time? I would have
>attacked you for that too, except, again, I had no idea how to
>make my songs affect my own cabal.

I don't mind a little random edge, but that was in fact an honest mistake. I did consider making more of it, but I couldn't come up with anything fast.

Doing "mistakes" is too subtle for Throkk, and he had a lot of reasons not to dislike Desa: I hadn't really paid attention to Desa before hero range, but just after you hit that you were fighting a dwarf. Yeah!
Desa didn't mouth off. Just a little bit about fire.
Desa kicked ass.
Oh, I liked that you were scouting too and noticing patterns amongst the enemies.


>All in all, not a character I'm particularly proud of. But
>feign weakness edge is amazing.

Yeah, I would pick that too. I think it worked well for Bink too.