Thu Jan 30 22:13:53 2020

At 6 o'clock PM, Day of the Moon, 35th of the Month of the Long Shadows
on the Theran calendar Bulonk perished, never to return.

Up a Tree
You scramble up into the branches of this tree and look down on the
forest floor below. The neighboring trees seem near, but there are no
close branches that you can climb to. The bark of the tree is covered
with pine sap and sticks to your clothing, but at least you are safe
from the attacks of the wolves for a short time.


Bulonk is here.

Bulonk tells the group 'Bulonk and Piddlewink, sitting in a tree.'

Bulonk tells the group 'R.e.s.t.i.n.g.'


Good times exploring with you, man! I think I pissed off other forties when you'd bring me around sometimes, but you seemed to put up with me well.

Keep the morts coming! I've thoroughly enjoyed playing with/against you in the many incarnations over the past 20 odd years and look forward to more.

See you in the fields!

Bulonk came about from two things I wanted to accomplish:

1. Make something that was somewhat scary for Aztezul to face.
2. Play Fortress now that there is such a huge scrutiny on good-align-mob kills.

Got to hero, fought Aztezul like 3 times, then he stopped showing up due to RL stuff.

Hokay, on to item 2 I guess?

And really it wasn't that bad. I made 200 hours and never killed any good-align mobs. I got flagged a few times (mostly pre-joining Fortress but once or twice after) and was able to avoid killing goodie guards - sometimes by wielding an axe if I knew guards would be nearby.

Ironically I ended up being the goto (as Cardinal) for Squires who DID kill a goodie mob accidentally, and ended up working with 4 or 5 of them through their grief and repentance yadda yadda. And honestly doing that didn't really make me feel better about the scrutiny-factor. Like one guy was killing an evil mob in FoN and a tiny forest guardian assisted the evil mob and he killed it in one hit. Meh.

In the end, my playtimes were such that I was always facing the same two or three foes, and both sides knew enough about the other that it was largely a stalemate.

I still think that retrieving from Orcs should count the same as retrieving from a cabal - if you're opposed it should count as a +1 toward your retrieval total for edgepoint calculation.

Goodbyes:
Korsgaard - I enjoyed trying out your religion. You're an interesting god to follow. Not sure if I lived up to your expectations but I felt like you must have been moderately happy with me. I didn't really expect a second virtue - at least not at the juncture when you gave it to me - but I did appreciate it. I don't think I've ever had Hope before and it was fun learning about the utility of it. Made me a better group leader with the ability to give the group sanc and do mass-word, so that was cool. A very good interaction to get it, also. One quibble though - despite what you said on the Gameplay forum, you absolutely told Zdrostal and me that Pathfinders do.not.follow. Ever. Maybe not what you meant. But that's what you said. I asked for clarification several times, because I was like "He can't really mean I should never follow anyone else to lead me, should I?" But each time you reiterated that no, a true Pathfinder never follows.

Padwei - Thanks for the induct, thanks for Acolyte, thanks for Cardinal! Also thanks for the discussion at your shrine. It was fun learning a bit more about your religion from the mortal's-eye-view.

Nalasul - Thanks for running that "two truths and a lie" event, even if it got me in trouble to be participating in an event that involved lying as a Paladin.

Unknown Imm that was helping evilshifter#18237 taunt a paladin with a situation that the paladin can't do anything about (flyto shifter going to random location and killing random goodie mob and then taunting a PC about it isn't really great RP IMO, it's just being a nuisance). If he had been taunting with the intent of luring me into a trap or killing me himself, sure. But all he did was fly/word away when I arrived. So your little echoes and giving him a title over it was extremely meh, on the whole.

Fortress:
Pretty much all cool to be around. Some vets, some very inexperienced players. I tried to be as helpful as possible for all of you (some of you simply didn't need any help at all though ).

Empire:
Mostly all good enemies that were fun to fight.

Scion:
Well, it started out kinda cool but then kinda fizzled. At least during my playtimes.

Outlander:
Only attacked by a few of you, and only a few times. Didn't really interact very much. If I wanted to cooperate with your (non-evil) members, I always tried to have someone else in Fortress contact you, so you weren't "working with a paladin."

Tribunal:
Aside from the assorted times I was WANTED I got along pretty well with most of you.

Battle:
Your evil members avoided me (which is good RP by them, IMO) for the most part. There was one duergar who tried to gank me with Tegerek though, and that bugged me. But I think that guy had some sort of deception-ish role. So eh.

Orcs:
Dhrak, I think I got you once, maybe another time? Tegerek I never did manage I don't think. Close, but that skill you have that breaks you out of lag always saved your hash when I was close. Boo. Always good fights, and when I died you never took anything you didn't need (and even returned disarmed "toofpicks" when you could) so that made fighting you even more fun.


In the end, storm champion isn't as lagtastic as I thought it would be (or as I remembered it being to my chars). Possibly I was just unlucky, but also enemies learned really quickly not to attack me at huge odds because fend would pretty much put them into command denial pretty hard. Bat, for me, seemed to not delay anyone really at all (which I expected, based on the helpfile). On the flipside, though, once I got weapons that were not easy to disarm, I felt like I could wade into just about anything and at least get away, if not force a lot of enemies to flee. So it's good that I WASN'T able to permalag like I'd remembered, because that combination of nigh-unkillable and able to lag like crazy would have been really bleh.

Mana was really a killer for me. By the time I would prep up fully I'd be down to about 50% mana and then throw a call to arms, marshall rally and maybe a holy word/wrath into the mix and I'd be down to like 25% for a full-on fight. Sometimes I had to bail because I was down to like 50 mana and the choice was one heal or word.

Overall pretty fun, but it was starting to feel like a chore to login, so time to pull the plug.

saw you using a staff in one log, I couldn't imagine ever using a staff as storm champ. kinda broke my heart.

Orcs don't learn staff...?

yea but you tank so much better with distance, I think champions get a bonus + giant size + enlarge, you just don't get hit in melee.

My problem wasn't ever defense it was offense. Unless I got disarmed. So having a cursed staff that was non-physical was a pretty good deal. Only cursed polearm is a physical attack so I found it lacking for offense.

yea, fortitude solves so many problems, I was spoiled.

That's pretty cool!

On the topic of following, I try not to get into specifics to save some for the shrine, but if you want further clarity on exactly what I was trying to say to you and Zdrostal, I'll let you know!

Overall, you played a great Acolyte! I know why most people do not go the Acolyte route because it's often not the playstyle for melee types, but you did it justice!


I keep telling folks, if you wanna fight the undead, gotta try out a lifes champion shammy! That's where the action is!


GLWYN!

gr

I liked you. A lot.

Great character, great presence. Was always happy to see you log on! The first few weeks when I heroed were really fun.

Have to say that a little Maran bled through the Acolyte

You were a really great Cardinal. Thanks for all the talks. Glad we had a playtime that meshed up often. The Fort will miss Cardinal Bulonk.

I know if I was alone with a few enemies out there and you logged in that the tide was going to turn very quickly. It was always exciting to hear you log in announced. I appreciate the in game advice you gave too with various other things like tactics and items.

One minor amusing story I can tell you is that potion you gave me I accidentally gave away. Apparently one of its keywords in “wrath”. I took a bloodstone ring off Ysforgul and gave him the lions Wrath ring I replaced it with. I typed “give wrath Ysf” and much to my surprise I handed over that fancy potion you had just given me! Haha. Damnit.

The goodie kill thing can be a challenge. Most of the danger comes from either being wanted or being careless with area type attacks. And, obviously, if you’re grouped with people who fit into these categories.

I kind of wish fort powers let you see gold auras. I think that might go a long way to help people be more careful. Maybe I can lobby IC for this?

Hey, very well done (of course).

I really liked the travel we had in the beginning and then in the end, after we very briefly reminisced about different careers and paths. In my mind, that was exactly how the two adventurers would have talked, if they looked over their different lives/paths. I had that feeling of immersion that I don't often get from the PCs.

Although my exposure to Bulonk was limited, I really liked what I saw. I'll echo Jhyrbian's thoughts though: I thought you were getting hit a bit more than I'd expect from a Champion, when I saw you in action at hero levels. Then again, it didn't seem to bother you that much.