Sat Oct 17 16:16:53 2009

At 4 o'clock AM, Day of Deception, 30th of the Month of Nature
on the Theran calendar Balten perished, never to return.

I made Balten on a dare. It wasn't a dare aimed at me, mind you. Someone was bitching about Fortress on the forums, again, and Nep responded "How about you age die a Fortress character and maybe then we'll listen to you?"

I realized Fortress was one of the few cabals I've never played seriously, and I've never age died a guy despite playing this game for 15 years on and off. And I have a LOT to say about the game, so I'll give it a shot!

My rules for Balten were pretty simple. I'm a coder at heart so I never refered to him as having a role, more like an instruction set.

1) Defend, with my life preferably, any light walker including the cabal guardians who needs it, if at all possible.
2) Assist any light walker with whatever their own goals are, raiding, gathering, listening to, etc.
3) Never, ever, kill anyone unless it's absolutely necessary and there's no other way possible. I slipped on this one a bunch of times, but to my credit I can guarentee I could have had another 10-20 pk's from people I knew I could sleep/fiend real easy that I just walked away from.
4) If there's no one to help for instuctions 1 and 2, sit on my ass and wait to age die.

If you didn't meet rules 1 or 2, meaning I couldn't help you, or defend someone from you, I really didn't care about you. No offense. Lots of people who struck me up with random conversations probably found me abrupt. Sorry about that.

I would have made it to age death too, if not for those meddling kids. I had a weeks vacation, then two days later found out I had to go to Atlanta to arrange a funeral, then a week later got married, then work kicked my ass from all sides.

When I got back, cabal membership was down almost 40% everywhere, instead of 2-4 applicants on all the time, it was mostly zero now. Padwei's semi-dormant, my imm-connection seemed semi-dormant, some friends passed on. I could have just sat there in some corner of Thera with a book and age died in another 120 hours but really, that's not how I want to spend the rest of my free time right now. So figured I'd go out with my head held mostly high.

Dupmasione and Lorn, you two were what were making the last logins worthwhile. Everyone else I liked was gone, and it was hard for me to get attached to any of the new people. You two were great people who made the game worth playing.

This is my third hero bard actually. The other two were non caballed just to test out the class. Playing a good aligned bard by my rules was really hard for me. Every means of self defense is an aoe and since I didn't want to hit any good aligned mobs that might be near and be forced to kill them, I ate a few deaths basically standing there hoping I could flee/teleport rather then actually fight. That kinda sucked and rubbed me the wrong way because I actually like the pk alot, but I had to stick to my rules as best I could.

I have so much more to say about everything, but since I didn't age die, I'll save you all from that burden of a wall of text. You're welcome.

Good char!

We had couple nice conversations, and a really good one when I was an applicant. You was the only one who seems to understood my jokes and I was one who understood yours.

I saw that you distanced yourself from the youngsters like me, and I know this feeling, when all your friends deleted and you dont really want to make new, this kills desire to play. Hopefully I'll evade such trap!

Good char all around, and nice Cardinal.

Good luck with next!

I really enjoyed that talk when you were an applicant and needed help writing the application letter. I was just chuckling away the entire time.

Thanks for the kind words, good luck yourself!

As you probably know from the PBF, I was the one who threw the whole
Raisa thing at you, and I'm sorry for falling off the face of the earth after
the fact. I didn't really have a game plan, but I thought you were deserving
of more kudos, and there you go. A shame to see you leave so soon, but
I understand how it goes. Good luck with the next!

Talking to Katrice was easily the highlight of all my time in CF. It was perfect because I got to talk to an imm without, IC, actually talking to an Imm. I knew after my role entry about wanting to change my sphere this was probably just about that, and when we kept talking I figured there was no 'end game' to all this and just enjoyed each interaction as it came.

I mostly figured it was you, because the time you made me Cardinal after I had the tattoo you referenced it, but didn't ask me anything about it. So I figured either you were watching the whole thing or were just trying to keep an RP dividing line between the two roles which I understood.

It's amusing because I was so enamored with the fact I had that tattoo, it was like 4 weeks later I realized my sphere had been changed. So thanks for that as well.

Hands down your my favorite Imm in the game today. If you come back, I might even try this whole empowerment thing.

Thanks for everything!

Hey, where'd you get all these spells?

Level 11 purge poison 89%
Level 15 inspiration 95%
Level 15 minor malison 76%
Level 36 bless water 72%

I think one of those comes as acolyte leader, but the others? There aren't any entries in your imm comments or anything else to explain them. How'd a bard get so many spells?

Only had a few minor interactions with you, but as you said, I now see was deliberate as dictated by your role. You were polite though, and while seeming aloof, never in a overbearing way.

I got purge poison, inspiration and minor malison for winning a role contest. Also, 2 edges, Altruistic Reputation and Pupil of Corallian. Also +1 Char which played in nicely with my Swashbuckler edge I took at the end.

It seems like a lot, I guess, but everything except for minor malison (which I never did figure out what it did because Balten couldn't just say to a friend 'Here, let me hurt you and tell me what it does') really fit in with my role and purpose well. Almost all of them defensive in nature or aiding me in healing so I don't think I could do too much with it.

I was blown away to win. Thanks Imms for that, by the way!

A dear friend and a competent RPer and bard. I knew you could have torn across Thera with me in the "Acolyte Death Squad" as I believe Dupmasione once put it, but, you stuck to your code. Still, you made things possible, kept enemies at bay and were funny. Well done.

I really really enjoyed Balten! Kickass! Seemed somewhat... Inexperieced at first, but you really picked up your game!

Heh, did I now? Yeah, playing a bard kinda sucks on some levels. I know some of the times you were talking about. Times I looked like I was fumbling around.

If anyone wants to know what playing a bard is like imagine this: You're standing on eastern road and you see someone running towards you. You start spamming 'murder X' or 'Cranial X' or 'trip X' or whatever. Now, if you're a bard instead of just seeing

'They're not here' two hundred times until you actually hit them instead each time the game said 'You try to trip soandso...but they're not here and you throw yourself off balance!'...and now you're lagged for 2-3 rounds. Oh and it takes mana, every time.

I remember one fight we were in, you kept driving people out of the room just as I'd sing, I'd be lagged for 2 rounds, you'd drive them back in just as I'm running into the other room, lag myself for 2 rounds again. I remember thinking "He must think I'm the biggest moron in the world right now."

I'll take somewhat... inexperienced as a compliment

Really enjoyed you Arrna. Congrats on the kid starting to walk, too!