Sat Dec 29 17:00:17 2012

At 12 o'clock AM, Day of the Moon, 7th of the Month of the Dragon
on the Theran calendar Grippledank perished, never to return.

On Transmuter
I had played a couple of scion drow transmuters before and they were about as tough as wet noodles. I had read a number of logs of muters doing insane melee damage and decided to try my hand at a muter that geared for damage instead of HP. I have to say that I was really pleased with the results. I was certainly a glass cannon but the muter has the tools in its arsenal to bring that to bear to good effect and avoid the downsides. I found my amber in the second spot I looked but then never found my sienna or black. I felt that the class was also very capable of pking from level 11 all the way to 51

On Outlander
I have had a handful of outlanders before but nothing that really stood out. When I rolled up Outlander had been in the crapper for a long time, there hadn't even been a single evil in the cabal for almost a month. Everytime I logged in at the mid ranks the fetish was in the spire or it was taken while I stood by and could do nothing except talk poopy on hero tribs. Eventually I got in and eventually I got reaver and my goal was to build up the tree. I think I did an ok job of that. There certainly are bodies in the tree now in all the branches, it would be cool if they stopped playing a bunch of alts though. Ohh and Gripple didn't believe in gray areas so thieves/assassins/paladins were defilers alongside necromancers/AP's/Dwarves/etc. to him (and he projected this belief on others in the tree)



Individual Goodbyes
OUTLANDER
Jawn: Those early days were rough and it was fun to have you on my side (especially after your hunt/gank combo with Oshui against my necro, I was surprised to not see this combo with air shifters inside the refuge). You have been trucking along for months now and I don't know how you keep it up, good luck going forward!

Orynthor: You are a rather elusive person to track down but your outlander RP is top notch. I was hoping that there could be something to bring us into direct conflict and I figured that one topic I wrote a note about could be the spark for that fire but it did not come to pass

Nyst: Good luck as nightreaver. When you refused to do the flower picking quest I was content to just let you remain an applicant forever (at the time immduction was just never going to happen, and gripple would have tossed you for going around him anyway). You kept at it though and eventually (just a couple days) I inducted you and Kekwr and I was really pleased with what you guys brought to the branch. Keep filling the twitter feed with defiler kills!

Auldra: I had induct Auldra none typed into my client a half dozen times. It was actually an RP failing on my part to not abuse my power as nightreaver(to which I would fully have expected to lose nightreaver) and just get rid of you. I suspect you got sunwarden because you did what I was jabbering at goodie outlanders to do all along (stand up to me). You have a lot of energy and hopefully Amaranthe can work with you to turn that into positive contributions. Keep in mind that what you do as a leader can negativly impact the experience of other players (this is why I just threatened a lot instead of taking action)

TRIBUNAL
Perr: You got me the most of any trib, damn you for taking advantage of my total lack of gearing for saves with your 6 hour immolates and then me getting tripped up by manacles all those times. Seriously I don't know why they make manacles such a god awful hinderance for mages and such a non factor for everyone else (they literally do NOTHING to priests and everyone else can gear for stat loss). You are a great pick for vindi, keep it up.

Purmodin: How did I kill you so much dude? Most of the times you died to me you had no protections up and a treasure trove of wands in your corpse! If you just pressed with lion there was almost nothing I could do against you. You have been trucking along a very very long time and totally earned both provost and justiciar (I think you only attacked me in town when I wasn't wanted like 2 times don't worry just about every trib leader did it a few times)

Saml: Man were you always down to fight. Lots of heart. Hope whatever you rolled up you are enjoying.

FORTRESS
*All of the full loots/attemps I ate were at the hands of or heavily involved members of fort(and only 1 of those times did fort kill me). You guys should be proud to represent the forces of greed and corruption in Thera.

Paladins: I lump you all together because I couldn't really distinguish you guys from one another. Unless I caught you guys with sanc down I would mostly run out of mana long before you guys ran out of HP, and wrath ganks were ohh so annoying.

Andrira: Log on when you don't have a cabal full of people backing you, then feel free to talk poopy.

Oshui: You obviously know what you are doing in a fight but your actual picking fights skills leave a lot to be desired. My formula for you was, Oh he is attacking, look, does he have barrier up? yes (always) c word;c teleport. I wasn't even bothering to waste my very limited preps against someone who was drastically overprepping against me. Thankfully you also attacked the instant you saw me so I never had to worry about it being when I was low on hp (you should learn from Buerenus he was super good at picking his moments to swoop in and was way more of a threat using just his vulture then you and your offense/quest forms)

EMPIRE

Didn't really get to know any of you since the cabal was dead almost the whole time. I enjoyed hunting Dhavid (without success) and the new high priest finally got me with a rot (I was sweting bullets everytime I attacked a shaman since I didn't have a rot kit and was at 5 con for most of them).

SCION

Zamieda: I was always looking for a window of opportunity to jump you, it never happened (man volley is such an annoying skill as a low hp transmuter)

Haphellna: I take the deafen edge just for you and those annoying scrolls (which by the way would likely do nothing to help in the middle of an actual fight) and then you stop using them! We had a lot of good scraps.

Buerenus: I can't believe I never killed you, I was so close a number of time! And you certainly did an amazing job of timing when it came to jumping me. Did you have the quest skill manacle-sense? And that one time I was teleporting away from the vulture and landed on the ocean where you were sitting with your eel... ouchie

HERALD

Thieves: I wanted to get you all! Hope you enjoyed someone throwing a little element of chaos into your lives.

Well I was around a long time and missed a bunch of you, feel free to respond and I will as well!

I'm not sure if you know how down in the dumps The Tree was before you showed up. Most log-ins for me were frustrating as hell, and I think I may have even openly complained to you (IC) when you were a lowbie about ridiculous it was.

But then you quickly powered up to hero and it was a total game-changer. You were one of those characters that I know kept your enemies pinned in their cabals (I know, because I could see them from the air) because odds were if they stepped out they'd be dead. And you did it without an air form, nightgaunt, scrying or any of the other things that make finding prey easier.

Bad ass. I was a fan. I liked your RP, too and once I picked up on how you were rolling only ever referred to you as The Flame.

Thanks for making the game a better place.

>And you did it without an air form,
>nightgaunt, scrying or any of the other things that make
>finding prey easier.

Never underestimate the power of "locate object".

I didn't use locate object very much. Mostly to check on location of corpses when someone dropped out of pk and to see if people were ranking in Aran'Gird (which never happened)

Very well played!, Im sad to see you go, I liked your character, and It was impressive to watch you fight. I usually didn’t want to speak with you for obvious reason IC, but it would be nice to see you back, even as a reaver again :p… good luck and see you in the fields

I just have to comment on what everyone else has said, Well Played. It seemed every Magistrate that could harm you was scared of you. When you can bring that much fear, and actually back it up, its truly an amazing character. I wished we'd been able to tangle more, from both a skill set and also roleplay set. Unfortunately, you were just jumping up there faster then I could, then I lost connection for a month and come back to see you at the top. Course you'd also pretty much destroyed the Spire by that time as well!

And I was glad to see you at that final moment. I was surprised you still remember that day in Hamsah fighting the lowly Cloud Giant while an auction was taking place. It was a defining moment in Hilamar's roleplay, as will this death be. Thank you for bringing so much to the game.

It seemed so very non-outlander I was stumped.

I really don't know how you would think collecting plants ir killing defilers would not be outlanderish. Personally I spent like 40 hours and 100 prays looking for a chance to be inducted so if you couldn't take 45 minutes to do a scavenger hunt then #### you.

#### you right back.

No one cares how many prays and hours you spent, it's irrelevant to my or any others character, and picking flowers is not a scavanger hunt and neither did it involve any defiler killing.

You suck.

Without taking anyone's side:

The best part about being a chaotic evil Outlander is that, within some fairly broad boundaries that avoid getting the Ancients pissed off at you, you can do any number of cruel and capricious things.

The worst part about being an evil Outlander is: if you're not the Nightreaver, you have a boss with the same set of restrictions.

I was a serious pushover when it came to inductions. The only people not to get in were the ones who when they heard the scavenger hunt threw their hands up in the air and quit on trying. Which was silly because I don't think it took more then 2 hours for anyone who actually tried it. Even the newbie seeming people usually did it in 45 minutes.

It is annoying when people try to join a cabal and they think if they speak like they have a clue they are a shoe in. I hate that crap. Don't give me a "I have been in this cabal before and I know more about the philosophy than you do" speech and act like I HAVE to induct you or else you'll tell on me and get me in trouble. I had a leader in outlander before, and one of things I made people do before even coming to speak to me was be able to find 10 sources of food and 10 sources of clean water in the wilderness. I had a few rangers TELL me they don't need to do that because they can make steaks and find water. One even said he was going to tell the ancients to have me removed from the tree for making him scavange for things he did not need. Talk about missing the point entirely.

The rangers kinda have a point. It's basically busywork for them. But yeah, mouthing off to the cabal leader about how you're going to whine to the imms and have him punished is pretty damn stupid.

Maybe modify it so rangers have them find return and/or teleport potions and/or sources of detect invis.

I had apps make sure they knew where to find the preps you mentioned. Those they always had on hand and everyone knew multiple locations. But I wanted to throw something in there for RP. I made everyone do it and none of the druids said no because they had forage. Most people could list off 10 sources easily without having to do any work, and as they listed things off it would often spark up tangent conversations that were always really fun. It was mostly the serious pk focused rangers that just want you to stfu, give them beast call, and get out of their way. That attitude was really off putting.

fwiw I'm not sure I could name ten sources off the top of my head. I'm sure I could figure out enough in an hour or two, but if I had that question sprung on me in an interview I'd probably have to "get back to you" with an answer.

I made 10 the minimum because I figured most people would have to do some exploring to find at least 10 different foods. I was very surprised when most people just fired off ten food you can pick up in the wilds. Nobody could name off 10 drinking spots without some extra looking around, but some people got close just thinking really hard and racking their brains. The point aside from a chance to spark up some rp conversation was to nudge people new to the cabal in the exploring direction, which is important to outlanders HINT HINT

Actually. I think it wasnt the scavenger hunt that bothered my outlander app. (I just didnt know enough plant locations to find that many of them without spending hours scavenging.) I liked the idea. But perhaps lowering the amount required would have been nice. However, I didnt have time to really play so it didnt really matter for me. I could find 4 out of five in every category but couldnt find five in all of them. Just my two cents. Loved the character otherwise.

... And when I did... I was surprised how well I did against you. But then, when we did meet, I was decked out and you were in mostly outfi-gear.

Anyway, interacted with you as another enemy AND an ally as well and I have only good things to say! Great interactions! Great PKing and a great attitude!

I spent so long hunting you. Getting you twice was pretty satisfying. Good job man, come make a rager now!

I liked you a lot even though you rubbed me completely the wrong way at the beginning. My take on Outlander is one of *extreme freedom*, and taking
orders or being bossed around doesn't fit into that very well.

So when you came up with that flower gathering strategy for induction,
and insisted on it, I couldn't wait to rank up and kill you

I tried to work around it with you, trying to steer you into telling me to go kill xx enemies or attack spire (something i'd have gladly done) and eventually that sort of worked with intervention by others but maybe I should have RPed that more directly, earlier.

Later on, I forgot about all of that and you were extremely solid, RP-wise, as leader of the pack. You seemed kind of new in the Cabal and I saw you die in situations that could have easily been avoided or even turned around to your benefit, but live and learn I guess.

Thanks for the induct and glwyn.

So a lot of outlanders go with the ultimate freedom route... Gripple wasn't against that but he waxed evil more than Outlander and he was fine with everyone doing their own thing as long as they didn't do things he didn't like. He viewed himself as an alpha male and expected a certain level of submisiveness to be displayed towards him.

You are right that I don't know a lot of outlander dogma, so I just made up my own stuff and ran with it. I hope you guys liked my attempts to differentiate the reavers from harbringers. I really wanted it to be more then just not grouping with goodies.

I see you got the mantle, I think you will do a great job. Good luck with it, I hear there are some challenges facing the outlanders in the days ahead that might keep you on your toes.

I think of reaver as a collective of chaotic individuals, where the strong thrive and the weak 'get strong' or destroyed. They are all joined together by the cabal directives but there isn't a single line to toe, and the way things play out can be extremely unpredictable.

So, if someone does something you don't like (besides going against cabal dogma), you should feel free to kill him in order to teach him a lesson and maybe he will heed that lesson in the future or not..

And you should feel free to influence the other reavers, but without the dogmatism/absolutism that one finds in Empire.

Also, you should definitely play another reaver in the future, judging from your PBF there are some things left for you to discover ^^

Well done.

=w=

I fealt a little bad going in and hanging out for ten minutes in your shrine waiting to try and cheap shot Mylene. But I didn't want to get smited for trying to kill him in your shrine

You little Dink! I knew it was coming but wanted to try and help to see if you would realize that not everyone was out to get you. We always had some fun conversations even after that little cheap shot.

I thought you played a crazy outlander perfectly and enjoyed out interactions.

On another note I wish I could get neuro to work for me like it has for you.

--Mylene

Thanks, I enjoyed our talk. At the end of the day I was evil and a slave to my desires so I always took the shortsighted route with things.

So here is basically how neuro works. You want to fight solo, be the tank, and your enemy to be over 50% hp. If you have that you can get reliable violents. If you are ganking the chance to get a slight goes way way up (and violent dies not lag as long). I also got more mileage because I did as much damage with my weapon each round as a disrupt (which is why I tended to dominate muter vs muter fights even when getting totally lagged out)

Bad on my part for not noticing that Gripple was that low on con. I have been so content with the evils and so focused in rallying the goods, I completely left you on auto-pilot. Oops!

I'm hoping since I didn't see any attempts to request a con quest that you were content to go out in a blaze of glory and ready to move on? Hopefully, that's the case, and it wasn't just me being unobservant.

Solid Nightreaver that kept the Reavers going strong! Know that I *was* aware of your pissing on the parade of some of the good Outlanders, and did not at all object. Good job!

Hope to see you back in the 'fields soon!

>Know that I *was* aware of your pissing on the parade of some of
>the good Outlanders, and did not at all object. Good job!

From the amount of whining I heard from when he did it and then rewarding the player who whined, it looked like the other way around.

Everything had gotten really stale with Gripple, I pretty much gave up on looking for imm involvement before getting inducted and just decided to go out and do stuff on my own. Thanks for giving me space to take the reavers in the direction I did, I hope I left behind some fiery lore for you guys to use in the future.

If that was you with the fire ancient interaction... that was really spiffy, so was the luthein interaction. I really appreciated whoever took the time to do that with me. But a part of me can't help but wonder, How did I not get the ignite cabal edge?

Glad to see you have gotten a sun warden, he is certainly going to be interesting in the role.

Hurm, if I had thought of it, I totally would have given it to you. Again, oops! I can only speak for me - I was only responsible for some of the interactions - someone else was working with you, too.

Unfortunately I'm just too bogged down with other things to consistently stay on top of everything (and sometimes *anything*) I'd like to with the MUD. It doesn't help that at the moment I'm really the only imm active on Outlander duty (trying to work on changing that.) When I do get time, I try to fly in and just look into/snoop/make sure the three leader spots are filled if at all possible, and do the interactions that are necessary to make that happen.

I feel bad, because I know my mortals (Outlanders or those trying to follow me) do rarely get the love they deserve - I try to make up for it in quality when I do make the time, but I know it's too few and far between. I am always blown away when I see a character and wonder if it's time for some love and I notice they have 200-300 hours and it just *snuck* up on me!

Right now the holiday time off has given me a momentum boost, which is part of why I had the negative reaction to the con loss - there was some stuff I had in mind for you, though, you had a long run and I'm sure my plans will be enjoyed by Nyst and some of the other evil Outlanders, instead.

In reading Grips PDF you made a comment regarding him asking IC for a hint regarding his wands?

What is wrong with asking IC to a powerful deity, (if you are struggling with an aspect of the game)?

Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.

In certain contexts, that might be ok. Evils asking Amaranthe for magical favors (especially when Amaranthe *just gave you a big boon* not 30 seconds prior) not so much.

A glance at the helpfile will show that Amaranthe is neutral with good tendencies, and has a very fragile tolerance of evil. And certainly she has virtually nothing to do with magic. The interaction with Gripple at the time should have (at least I think it did) communicated a calloused, matter-of-fact reception. It just was not the time, place, or deity to ask, and it came off as borderline OOC to me. It wasn't enough for me to punish him or anything, but enough where I thought the feedback on PBF would be appropriate.

Thank you for being open to offer such explanations.

I def picked up on the cold shoulder/hostility vibe. I realized it was a stretch but there was a couple of things at play.

1.) Outlander/me were so drastically attention starved on Imm love front I thought you might make an exception
2.) I was aware of other imms doing it in the last 24 hours for buddies of mine (in an IC way). As well as rumors that some... souped up players as well. I was hoping for a balance to the CF arms race (not that I technically needed it to compete but do you have any idea what kind of tactical avenues having endless barrier would have opened up? I could finally have used the full court press on scions!)


And as far as giving a boon... Gripple didn't see it as giving, it was him taking what was his. If someone else had been made nightreaver then I would have set myself to running them out of con (alpha male yo).

I have to admit I hated you ... for 3 characters in a row, but when you were ghostly and finished I said something and you replied with BURN! which made me laugh my ass off. Right to the end playing 'that guy' Good job. I failed every time I tried to immolate you and tell YOU to burn though so I'm still glad you are dead! GLWYN.

Big thumbs up, nice char. Looking forward to the next.