This was the first character I bothered to put any effort into in a very long time. I sort of dropped off the face of CF for a variety of reasons: terrible breakup, moving to a new apartment, getting a new job with ####ty hours from hell. After all that I found CF oddly lacking in ability to hold my attention, then came City of Heroes and WoW.

At the beginning, I never really had any intentions for Etielise other than wanting to test out having an odd, quirky, improbable role and seeing if the character could get close enough to any other characters to let spill what she was. Herald sort of just happened when I was in the Inn at random one night and saw Iunna induct somebody. And I'm like, "#### yeah. I'm a perma-Herald and I'm totally okay with that. It's on!" All of a sudden I'm adding this deep and meaningful Heraldy chapter to my role and writing a Herald app. Then all of a sudden I'm a Herald. THEN all of a sudden I'm High Herald. It sucked pretty hard to be the ONLY mortal Herald around for such a long time, but I hope I was able to revive the cabal somewhat. I noticed it seems a lot harder these days to find active, dedicated Heralds, but the few I did manage to induct really helped to breathe life into the cabal AND into my character as well.

My stick-aroundy-ness was almost certainly sealed when I won the role contest. The hummingbird, I thought, was highly appropriate, and it came in pretty handy. I remember a couple people I was ranking with saying that it dodged better than a mongoose? I'm personally not sure how accurate that is, mostly because Etielise is the first shifter I've ever played to hero. First magic class of any sort that I've ever played past the 30's ranks, actually, and I think I might actually like shifters more than bards (!!!). All I know is I was tanking on Calandaryl at level 40 with the hummingbird and I felt awesome. Anyway, thank you (Daevryn, Baerinika) for the wonderful extra form.

I like to think I improved a great deal in role writing and keeping up with events in this character's life than I have with past ones. It gave me a bit of a challenge to have to keep thinking, okay, what would Etielise do if she was a real person? This ended up with a lot of results that were a little crazy, which I had a hard time justifying in a role written in first person because my character really wouldn't be aware of that about herself. She wasn't raised as an Elf. She really wasn't *raised* at all, and maybe it made her a little bonkers, or maybe it was the fact that she could tank Calandaryl at level 40.

Eventually, though, and I hope it didn't show too much... I noticed my hours getting up toward the seven, then eight hundreds and I was like, okay--die. Every logon, I was expecting it, so I ended up doing a lot of Inn-sitting and feeling a little bored because Herald's weak right now, not for lack of trying. I inducted a few decent new Heralds, and if they'd just log in more, things would be dandy.

Goodbyes:

Thanks to various immortals:

Iunna: Thank you for the induct, the High Heralding, and for just general be-there-ness. In a lot of ways, I have you in particular to thank for how much I enjoyed this character. There's five imaginary bucks in it for you if you pretend that, "death to Satebos because I was too stupid to try and op n, op s, op e, op w," never happened. Once I figured out I was being watched a lot more often than I ever imagined I might've been with other characters, I decided I'd try and really be gung-ho with my role and age die, and just see where that would get me in the end. I hope I outdid all my others. I also hope I played out the tattoo thing in the direction you were trying to take me. I tried a Shazirah follower before with Ioniyeh and you just intimidated the hell out of me (nothing personal--all imms did at that point, and maybe they still kinda do) so I kind of shut off and didn't try to explore the religion. With this, I looked up the old Shaz helpfile on Dios and tried to sound like I sort of knew what was going on via whispers of the past and such.

Beroxxus: Being tortured by you actually gave me a way to seek out the Monarch/mirage/Shaz thing when I found myself in the confusing spot of, "okay, what do I do to RP this mystery religion thing out now?" Getting messed up and having my spirit crushed, especially after what I'd done to try and save Celenai (the humming to her part) really gave me what I think was a neat angle to approach the butterfly/mystery tattoo immteraction scenario further with, even if Neltouda did come in and fix it all with her magical violin.

Lyristeon: Thanks for the sweet loot. Nearly cried when I lost it, but I'm glad I could help in my own little non-fibbing way. Old Etie had a special place in her heart for mischief, maybe that's why she did it. Oh, and the debate was fun, too, but you have a filthy mouth.

Neltouda: NEAT! Thank you for giving attention to my plight! I'm really glad you're so active. I just know a more visible Imm presence is going to help the Heralds out a lot. And your religion is massively cool. I'm definitely going to have a follower some day. Who knows, maybe I can come up with a decently applicable role for my next one! I've been completely re-addicted, and I can only hope at having such a cool experience in the characters that follow.

As for mortal goodbyes, there are kind of a lot of you to remember and I have a few written, so I'll reply to whoever posts or post whatever I come up with in the next couple days.