Wed Dec 3 15:37:53 2014

At 11 o'clock PM, Day of the Sun, 20th of the Month of the Great Evil
on the Theran calendar Hrakesh perished, never to return.

I created Hrakesh back in May or June 2014 with an old character in mind - Valkyneth, evil arial invoker provost back in 2009. I think Valkyneth was the greatest character I had on CF (both from a fun to play and power perspective) and I wanted to recreate that but with more exploration, so I picked neutral. Unfortunately what happened was that I had very limited exploration done and being neutral I didn't have many natural enemies which led to rather dull sessions.

I ended up with a character that I frequently forgot I was even playing. I don't think I've ever voided out so many times as with Hrakesh, and that's extra bad as a Trib on duty.

That is not to say I didn't have fun playing Hrakesh. I absolutely did, and I've had some brilliant pk fights and interactions with characters along the line the life of this character. More on specific goodbyes further down.

The role: I had a clear idea what I wanted to do from a race/class/cabal perspective but I had no idea how to put that all together into a good role and anyone reading it will likely be stricken by the same thought. I wasn't very pleased with it but inspiration was not with me. Yet I had read Umirons helpfile and I wanted to be a follower and my takeaway was that chaotic mages are the enemy so I figured I would try something along those lines.

On being a Umiron follower: I had a great deal of problems wrapping my head around the religion which in the end I think was just about keeping your head down and working for magic and order and hope for the best? I don't know. I try to make characters that are not dependent on immteraction to work so the two times I did meet with Umiron was a happy bonus (and very cool).

Since I really wanted that sweet tattoo I embraced the magic part of the religion later in the characters life (thinking I had order pretty much under control). So I went all in and tried to study the veil using some of those veil only edges. I have not regretted it since I haven't ever been sure of exactly what it does. It is cool that everyone can participate in strengthening / weakening magic. It is not so cool that it rather quickly shifts back into "default mode". I would write more but I don't want to ruin the mystery.

On the sleek change: I think it is a very good step in the right direction and I wanted to test it with Hrakesh. Old system sleek location would make or break a character and basically you wouldn't know until you hit 40 with a lot of time and energy wasted. The new one fixes that. But that being said, many of the mobs holding sleek blacks are impossible to kill alone. It's all good if you have cabalmates to come help you, but if that luxury is not afforded to you (say - in an evil cabal) then you are excluded from the use of sleeks. I do not envy Scarab mages in that regard.

On playing a svirfenebli invoker: I have been a serial arial invoker player what with the 23 int, flight and easily covered vulns with shields. The nerf to int made me try svirf instead - but at the same time I didn't want to be botting spells forever so I dropped water path which I usually didn't regret - except for when fighting a very specific pesky dwarf hunter!

I think the build is doable from a spellpractice perspective as long as a path is dropped to help with raising affinity. I did end up buying more affinity with edge points at hero just to get absolute zero edge though, but that was when all the practice was done heh. To those of you planning an invoker in the futurue: the requirement for absolute zero is 8 affinity I believe. Check the PBF once it gets up.

Inherited stone skin was good but I do not think it compensates for the blunt vulnerability given that every damnable npc out there uses blunt (or so it feels like). I also picked that svirf only edge that boosts your magic if you are not flying but I have no idea how much it helped.

On being Justiciar: I was curious about the role and I incorrectly read the powers to include bringing special guards outside of cities. If you read the helpfile (or of it's the book in the Spire) it explicity states that you don't get to bring special guards outside town. My idea was to bring guards out of town and still have the ability to make people wanted (that Vindicator loses). I think if I had actually read the helpfile correctly I would have geared the character towards Vindicator/Provost instead of Justiciar/Provost. Oh well. But the role in itself is very cool. But from a powergaming perspective, being a Provincial is better.

Lessons learned:
- If you create a Trib, make it good or evil for additional enemies in outlander downtimes.
- If you make a mage, either have a strong build against npcs or make sure you get into a cabal where people can help you fetch without too much of a hassle
- Absolute Zero edge (which frankly isn't very good, very rarely worked for me) has affinity 8 ice required.

Goodbyes:
Rylium: We had a great time hanging out and talking about the future of the Spire. You were incredibly old and you were a cool cat. You had a way of wanting everyone to hang with you which is very fitting for an elven mage. A leader rather than a boss if you will. That said I think we could have had more Tribunal events where we would have gone exploring or something. CF is only as fun as we make it and as a leader you have an opportunity to do so.

Regrag: We had some good times though we knew both were contestants for Provost. Dwarf healer must have been hell though. Worse than svirf invoker even .

Eletar: I was still rusty in my role as an invoker when we hung out, but man if you had just levelled to 51 we could have built you a weapon!

Soalas & rest of current Magistrates: Hang in there guys, you were all cool. I inducted a handful of tribs as provincial and some were really promising. However they ended up deleted pretty quickly .

Liantae: Enjoyed our fights immensely. Having fought the earlier sunwarden Eialanthius I was keenly aware of disembowel and tried to stay out of its range. That kind of shake it up attitude you brought to the table is what keeps CF going.

Erighan: I loved hating you. I think you represent at least half of all deaths of Hrakesh. Probably more. I would have gotten you eventually but that you were neutral negated protect align damage reduction and then I just didn't have enough to outdamage you. And of course you had some wood weapon affinity so you never charged shield of electricity.

Gougof: Hrakesh' second arch-nemesis. You had an uncanny ability to wait in the forest outside of Outlander cabal when we had finished raiding and were down to 300 hp, insect swarmed with spores and thornheart and all the other maledictions. We could take you down in the beginning but later on you got fully into your class and you were a beast.

Others: I'm sorry for forgetting you - please leave a reply and I will gladly comment!

Thank you everyone for an excellent game.

Kind regards,
Adrigon / Karnif

Nice job with Hrakesh.

Thank you. I had a more ... random sense of humor back then. It's a bit ironic I was probably better at the class there. Now it is more about re-learning heh.

You were the second worst for me to fight! I never got you either, was close a few times... But you had my number.

I hate fighting invokers! Classy stuff, great RP, a real shame to see you auto!