Sat Jul 3 11:02:50 2021

At 2 o'clock AM, Day of the Great Gods, 5th of the Month of the Ancient Darkness
on the Theran calendar Miraja perished, never to return.

I understand the frustration with Outlanders, but as Alendross would say "All are free to hunt as they choose." You were one of the toughest hunts Alendross has encountered. I feel like I tried to give you fights whether you were coming to me or not. I remember trying to kill that imp relentlessly against you, narzas, and vizgrathol a couple of weeks ago. Alen really really wanted to set you free. I even went to the witches library to look for books on conjuration and had zigglebert make me manuscripts of the books in the lyceum. Sadly nothing I found would break your binding. May you enjoy the freedom you have finally been given. PS. The last time we spoke, you referenced something that intrigued me. Were you meant to be an azuretouched? GLWYN.

Sadly the rest can't be said of the tree which is why if there was a horde of you on, I wasn't coming anymore. I did enjoy our fights

I had a really neat idea of how to end Miraja if you were online which is why I waited until this morning hoping to catch you. I was going to offer to you a deal: if you did one thing for Azvameth, he was going to depart Thera forever and leave Miraja alone. The act? I was going to say you had to beat her to death with your bare hands while she wasn't controlled I wanted to see how far you'd go to get rid of a nemesis.

Read the role when the PBF comes up. Miraja was an azure-touched who got tricked into thinking she could become a conjurer, but its forbidden, so the familiar spell could be twisted by "draining" her connection to the Azure Plains. I originally wanted an azure betrayer but the Imms wouldn't budge.

n/t

As you didn't seem to care to uncover anything about Kaloura despite my many attempts to engage in conversation with you. Only the Sunwarden took time, while the entire rest of the tree wouldn't know how to carry any conversation or interest besides murder.

I was embroiled in things with other characters and fighting a lot during the timeline I remember Kaloura being around. I didn't mean to overlook your attempts and sour your experience. I did inquire about you to other people, just didn't talk directly to you very much.

Going through my logs and can only find two times we spoke. There's too many active characters to post the whole log, but this was the end of one of the biggest discussions.

You tell Umbrand 'the golden one was fidgeting in it's sleep. Perhaps look after it with your words
you have grown so famous for.'

Umbrand tells you 'Thank you for the concern, Alendross. i will.'

asd

This one is going to be long since it is more than just a character death but a full 'au revoir' to playing CF for 25+ years.

So why'd I make Miraja?

Well when I was talked into coming back to CF, one of the selling points was I had never been to the Shadow Plane and there was a new character challenge going on - so I made Theorendus and had lots of fun despite my story partner disappearing. I was eventually kicked from the Fortress and made neutral for Plane searching for centaurs so then I made Haelior, my first necro in 20+ years, for the 2nd character challenge. Haelior kind of got the #### end of the stick in many ways and the challenge really wasn't that great for me round #2 (sorry Rahs) but I did have fun with one aspect of Haelior = having minions to roleplay with.

See, I've always had good luck with roleplaying with other things over the decades:
-Mubs, a cloud villager who talked with and through his pet squirrel
-Abelmon, AP whose sister's soul was trapped in a child's doll
-Haelior, his undead he used as furniture or as "fans"
-Corzu, through his spirit animals
-and especially, Danjuh and Lona, the two-headed fire giant

And I still hadn't cracked the Plane. I firmly believe it's just not finished but who ####ing knows, I've spent several hundred hours there and taken at least 25+ people there and I'm tired of slamming my head into a wall. Long gone are the days when Sacer would take people in character to give hints or answer emails about bugs/problems in the zone. I think I've accomplished more than any there but my only last thought was to get contact the planes... didn't really help overall but it gave me the inspiration for a better character than Haelior to end with: a talking evil familiar who took over an azure (which are forbidden to be conjurers).

I originally emailed the immortals asking for a conjurer who started with one of the talking familiars (usually not wanted) and to get an azure betrayer/align changed because I didn't want to massacre people over and over sub-17 but no love. So I made Aniela, then I made Aniela, then Laile, then Leidina, then Dinalei, Azvameth and then finally Miraja and got my first talking familiar. To all the people I killed at the low ranks, sorry, but the fact you still have to murder a lot of people in a small playerbase for Murderous Reputation sucks. I thought I did a good job with Miraja and glad this will be my last. I rp'd my heart out, got made an early Scion for impressing Tristhana and winning her "contest", and tried to play a nice evil entertaining guy. Got another RC win (the quest imp), got tattooed out of the blue (thanks Skreenak = your no-interaction style is foreign to me, I almost switched Imms when you gave me that tattoo) so things went well... but I already hit old age, was probably never getting leader and was getting incredibly bored.

Looking over the conjurers of old, most people always focused on devils at hero. I wanted a character that focused on maximizing demons to see how crazy they are.... and wow they are brutal when capped. Add a familiar that can very easily get a/b/s and nothing really stops the demon train. I'd raid and take items from 3-4+ defenders, I'd obliterate unprepared heroes in 1-2 rounds regularly, but I was pretty ballsy and dove at people against the odds all the time because if I didn't no one would ever fight. Probably just shy of 100 pks and I had 13 con at 300 hours after training it a lot (those 1-2 round demons can also kill you easily). I'll post some logs, like the arena competition I won, so you can see what it was like and it was fun but man are people toxic these days. 90% of the time I just took gold and nothing else and people would bitch, rant, taunt, logoff immediately, threaten to full sac you, say "they'd #### your woman slave" and more. It was pretty disgusting and it just killed a lot of the game for me. One special salty thing was "gear lockers" would horde conjurer items and never login or logout the moment I connected...would have been nice to see those but I could literally never have gotten them in the 4 months. Oh well.

Few specific goodbyes:
1) Outlanders, it is really boring the style of play you drag the MUD through. When I login I would see 9 of 18 with detect invis/hidden, so I locate you all and yet you still stay hiding for 30+ hours before I talk to Alendross not realizing I can locate all of you. When I did try and retrieve against 4-5 of you together at the Tree, knowing I'm walking into cutoff, insects, bash (with no protective shield), the Hunt and more, all of this being basically a guaranteed death, you'd all loot and #### talk. All across the board, lame. At least imperials, fortress and even villagers actually fought.
2) On the reverse, in 300 hours I was raided exactly twice even when 5-7+ enemies were online. The whole mud in general just needs to grow some balls and fight more = so many people wouldn't even defend and instead would start hitting the outer nightwalker when it was 1v3. My favorite log I'll post soon, I retrieved against the village with 3 outlanders hiding at the giant, 2 villagers trying to run back to get me and I made it out with sub 100hp because no one worked together and the moment the giant died, everyone teleported/left at near full health when I was exactly a single hit from death = really pathetic.
3) I'm gonna miss hanging out with the Mephit, Narzas, Viz, Cali, Kira, and Zod. It was fun running around together although it rarely happened.
4) Morius, avoiding me for 2+ months of praying, leaving gifts and sending notes, I could only assume it was personal. There hasn't been a Chancellor in ages and I thought I was doing good but I can guess why it was silence.

I made Miraja to be my last character though for a few reasons:
-I only really came back during the pandemic because I had more free time (wasn't flying around for my job) and I've got a new job starting which means I won't have time for CF. My kids are also becoming teenagers and I'd rather play games with them (no way I'm teaching them this drug).
-This game is inherently negative and it wears on you over time. Over this long span of time I've had 10+ close friends play, had 6 become Imms and get chewed up and spit out by those in control, seen close friendships get ruined over drama, seen lots of people quit lately all because the negativity of this game is just endless. It doesn't help there's a cancer of assholes (yeah I mean you Jalim) that ruin the game when it is a small userbase. Hearing "TLB" jokes for 25+ years gets old, I'll probably always be bitter over what was done to my friends or special characters like Loshnak... just eats away at you.
-The nail in the coffin was the convo with Ishuli on discord. Talking bad about one of my friends, when you used to be a friend of ours and the three of us would talk every day about random books/anime/####, just made me realize that the good things that come from CF are smothered by the bad. I was always searching for nostalgia and it rarely wasn't tainted. I'm the last of our friends to play and well, its time to hang up the hat - quarter of a century gone, end of an era.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my little obituary. I thought Miraja was a good note to end on. I'll post logs soon. CF changed my life with all the good, the bad, the ugly. In the words of one of my favorite movies: "In case I don't see you... good afternoon, good evening and good night."

Cheers,
Sand, Torak, Aether, TLB and whatever else you want to call me is out.

i quit reading after the first line, I don't know how many aurevoirs I've read from you over the years but it's at least 10 too many. #### off

Shoot. I kept carrying those orbs to get you to show me just Miraja without the imp around!

I was trying to find an IC way to tell you that I too think that is all there is to it in the Shadow Plane but it went a bit against my vibe. If there is more to it, I think it is too convoluted for my mind to unravel anyhow.

Great interactions all around and I am sorry to see you go. Miraja was a delight.

You were really scary. But even with that, every time I heard your RP in action I was really interested to hear more and what I had heard from Alendross as our times lately did not really meet up (and I wish they had because I wanted to know more) was awesome. Sorry I didn't fight you much but Delkinen is not the fighting type. I'm much more of a "help out people if I can without getting into a huge rumble" type of character but the times I did fight you were, as I said above, scary. I get the going on an extended, possibly permanent hiatus and I hope that it all works out for you in the real life section. Good luck!

Nt

didn't read lol

I usually love Torak characters but this one seemed very power gamey and eq hungry. And if I'm being perfectly honest, the 'master' roleplay has been done to death and kinda made my eyes bleed every time I saw it.

Maybe a break will be good for you. Come back feeling refreshed.

All the best buddy!

I deleted my own conjurer Arthrax due to lack of time. Our first 2 or 3 fights I was completely confident you were zero threat to me and I sent you running pretty easily. But the fights were FUN. I tried to RP with you, but I had a hard time finding ways to approach you that didn't seem lame. Learning the story of your familiar was the path I tried to work my RP with you from. Then our last fight before my playtimes vanished, you absolutely destroyed me. You adjusted your tactics, made sure you occupied my archon and engaged me very quickly to make sure I couldn't flee to heal, killed it, and just smashed me. At that moment I realized that you had reached a power level where outside of a dismissal game I don't think I could have beat you, your demon was flat stronger than my 1400 mana archons with cherub boosting them. (I always had anchor up against you, I assume you did the same so I only ever dismissed your nightwalker or elemental).

I would have never guessed this was you. I actually had fun with our fights, the player in me wanted to brawl with you all the time, but I was playing a relatively pacifist sphere healing acolyte role that didn't really call for hunting you down. I had a little role wiggle room for fighting against evil mages, but usually I waited for you to find and engage me. I was usually just hanging around somewhere unless I was waiting to conjure.

I would say good luck with the next, but if you say you're done, it was a long run. Enjoy gaming with the kids.

Why suicide on the village before deleting? Why not just...delete?

gotta drag out the circlejerk bro

He loves the dramallamadindong. If you've ever seen any of his previous goodbyes you'd know this is his typical MO.

http://www.qhcf.net/phorum/read.php?3,1126826,1126826#msg-1126826

So I gave it to the one villager who fought regularly

nt

Re: raiding scion, it's not so much any particular character (though that matters, of course). It's more the cabal power: nobody wants to go raid scion when there is a defender who calls mobs who steal all your ####, which you can't get back. I've said for years that power should be changed. But nobody listens. Losing your inventory, and not being able to get it back (say, for example, when you kill the little shadow thing that steals, you get it back), is just stupid, and drains all desire to raid scion.

I have no sympathy for scions given how broken the cabal is. Easy to be "pretty ballsy" when you're fighting with close to 3k "effective" HP, and your comments about other characters being cowards are funny when we all know you're no shamanman yourself. The drama and oh-poor-me attitude is ofc to be expected. You've got a chip on your shoulder that after all these years you still haven't managed to lose.

Miraja was a great concept and your RP can be top notch. Thanks for playin'.