Sat Nov 6 18:56:04 2010

At 2 o'clock AM, Day of Thunder, 10th of the Month of the Old Forces
on the Theran calendar Cardum perished, never to return.

If you read the role, you will see that I had wanted to join Battle from an early age. So for 200 hours I played without so much as the detect invisible supplication. I attacked mages everywhere, got cursed at by squires and scribes, defended the village the few times I was lucky enough to find attackers, earned a few recommendations, and died a lot. I had a riot. I think I trained con back to maximum 9 times or so, mostly using the practices I would have spent on supplications.

Around this time this wonderful immortal Thror takes me aside and informs me that he would love for me to hold a hut, but that it will not be allowed. And I can understand why. Despite trying to fight any mage that moved, I could not kill anything. Additionally, intensify would have given me three unblockable attacks, and although some people have had the opportunity to abuse the heck out of game mechanics before they get nerfed, I've never been so fortunate. Such is life.

By the time Thror and I had this talk, I had been granted two virtues, which I largely could not use because they are for the most part supplications. I was given 10 practices, had 10 others left over, and so I went through and judiciously chose a handful of supplications. These made me more survivable, but I still didn't use magic items, and as it turned out, I was not going to kill anyone who didn't have a death wish.

The goals of this experiment were initially:
1. Get a monk to hero
2. See how dwarven monks fared compared to the other monks we've seen
3. Get Thror's tattoo.
4. Get into battle.

Three out of four isn't bad. I also learned that the temperance virtue makes it so monk defenses are tolerable. On the downside, dwarven int and wisdom makes dwarves the last choice I would ever play for a monk even with just the bare handful of supplications I used. Ugh. And FYI Counterstrike never went off. Not once.

Thror - thank you, thank you, thank you. This was my first follower, and I loved every scrap of it.

Ohbehb - My commander. So many times I was told that 'Ohbehb was on Eastern' and my internal response was, 'Let us go learn from the master.' I never did learn to see a red aura, but that was because it doesn't take a supplication to discover whether someone was a mage or not. Keep on stomping.

As for the haters, thanks for the fun!

I had fun both fighting at your side, and trying to keep mages with me alive when you went for them. Had I known you never managed to kill any magi, I'd probably have stood aside and let you try.

Anyway, well role-played. Nice concept, and I am surprised you didn't actually make it 4 out of 4!

I killed one mage.

One for sure, anyway. Shield bash ftw!

Ugh. That's a little disheartening. I was trying to come up with more creative ways to reward you so the character could be somewhat salvageable. Though to say the least, you were the epitome of a Thror follower with what was a near impossible task. For this purpose alone, you wore my Mark. I'll be the first to say - this character was the first one to stump me in terms of how I could properly reward them for their dedication to role and commitment to religion. I felt like my hands were mostly tied with you.

The risk you run, when playing an out-of-the-box type of character like Cardum, is that you may go your character's entire life never reaching your goal. You easily stood out to me, but at most, I could only reward you with role-fitting things that didn't bring you any closer to joining Battle.

You had a very poor grasp on my faith in the beginning. I felt this was part of the role because you easily grew into the faith through life's lessons. Ultimately, you were preaching it with little prompting and proved to me that your conviction was sound. You had plenty of life left in you, which is why this is disheartening - but I honestly expected a delete back at 210 hours!

Anyhow - thanks for following me. I really enjoyed the character and think you have the ability to make a very large impact on players with your style of roleplay. I hope to see you in the fields again soon!

I was surprised to have received virtues: usually the characters that get the phat accolades are killing people left and right. All I really had was my rp, as messed up as it was. BUT, that role was a lot of fun, when I could share it with people.

In the end, what killed this character was that by failing to get into Battle, the social aspect of the game was missing from this character. The closest thing I had to friends were Lasentia and Ohbehb, but they were both in worlds I could never be part of, associating with people I could not. In the end, no friends to talk to, lots of enemies, but none I could kill. And after every fight, regardless of the outcome, I had to sleep. And sleep. And sleep some more. That makes for 'bleh' logins.

"Dat fargin syphilitic orc can heal himsef up faster dan I can! Hells! "

Thanks again.

and had a similar idea to you but figured it would end the way yours did.


The whole sleeping after every fight was a pain in the ass but at least I could use slow preps to speed up recovery.

I was your enemy with this character and I am still laying so wont say who I am but you attacked me, I was shocked, I swatted you about and pursued you and just as I was about to finish you off you sent an IC tell about being lagged but not actually using the word, was something like bad head or connection issues. My character wanted to finish you off despite it but as a player who has suffered at the hands of lag or disconnects I let you off. Interesting balance of magic hatred and being a paladin.

GLWYN

I do have a slow and spotty connection, though, so I it is possible that I said something to you after I -THOUGHT- I was safe. Regardless, thanks for the mercy in that spot, and I apologize for my apparent slip into ooc.

I had thought that the dwarven hps would make up for having poor mana, but that just meant that I couldn't spam wrath. Respond was great but taxing, and I generally kept avoid up: charge with a polearm, slice if they let me, then either hope they would disarm or I would remove it and intensify.

This would be a great specialization for group fights, but for solo fights, I couldn't really make it work.

Damn!!!!!

I absolutely loved this character and the resilience you showed every day just plugging along. Wished there was something I coukd have done to reward you in some way shape or form but my hands were tied (in hindsight I should have just inducted you into battle and dealt with the concequences but Im pretty sure its hardcoded that you couldn't of been inducted)

The one thing I really regretted having to do was tell you not to heal the giant and threaten to fight you if you did it again... and not because i secretly wanted you healing the giant but because it felt like i was punishing a great character by telling you not to help as much as you could.

One other thing that really stands out about Cardum was having fresh villagers always warning over cb about you being close. It was always fun laying into them and letting them know that you have fought for the village long before them and challenging them to show even a half od the stubborn steadfast loyalty that you showed.

Very memorable character, keep them coming!

Laying hands is a skill, which is why I had been doing it, but a good soldier does what his commander does even if he thinks the commander is being an idiot. I didn't bat an eye when you told me to quit laying hands on the giant, because I viewed it as being taken to the circle--I saw your threat as being treated as you would have treated anyone holding a hut.

I had never heard about you chewing out Battle members regarding Cardum. That earns a sincere thank you from me.