Tag: nations

A wrap up to the Olympics

by Tharius

Well the Olympics have come and gone and I had a great time.  Here’s a wrap up to the event.

I said in my last post that I hoped that it would be more than a tele-scan but less than a full fledged scavenger hunt and that’s right where I think the event fell.  You did a traditional tele-scan to find letters and then used your letters to build words off a prescribed Nation themed list.  The more letters you were able to use in words, the better you finished.  The half-elves took first in this event, Gagnon was able to split off early and start unscrambling words rather than tele-scan on his mage which gave us a great advantage.  A few small nits to pick, nothing serious … I’d put it in the feed back department.  The unusable characters and the wildcards were a bit frustrating.  In an event like this I’d rather the luck be in the finding the letters and the skill in the word assembly, wildcards take away from that.  Additionally the wildcard letters were in fact just re-purposed unusable letters, and not all of them, which made it one more complication to try to keep straight while looking at the jumble.  Other than that I think the event was a challenge and a lot of fun.  I hope that if this sort of event becomes more common then the people deciding how many of each letter to scatter look at the letter frequency within the words they select rather than looking at standard English letter distributions as we have some things that skew the results (for example H is far more common in the race names due to the word “Half” all over the place than it is otherwise in standard English).

The final event was the Pkill, where I expected to be splattered quickly and often.  As it turned out, the event was a King of the Hill event where you earned points by staying in the designated room.  If every team had strategized to stay in the room as long as possible by not attacking anyone we would have had a terribly boring tie but thankfully that didn’t happen.  Of course, fleeing and returning quickly were vital to a good strategy.  If you killed a PK then trying to keep them from CRing was useful, but if it took you out of the room to do it, then you were only trading off them for you and at no net gain.  PFs didn’t need to cr or even respell, so it was just rush back.  PKs had some advantages like being able to shove people out of the room, but it really wasn’t a deciding factor.  I was taking 2-3 people pretty routinely and it wasn’t until Ceir started bashing me that I was having trouble at all … I mean a pk circle causes you to flee and return, but oh well 🙂  All in all a lot of fun, I killed Creemore just because he figured he’d get picked on, so I didn’t want to let him down.  A lot of the TSers present seemed to attach each other with great relish, perhaps a little pent up frustration from many long meetings!! 🙂

Congratulations to everyone who participated, and thanks again to all the immortals who invested time in preparation for this event, particularly Eisengrim and Gonnil who hosted events and managed the herd admirably.

The Nations Olympics

by Tharius

As we head into weekend 2 I thought I’d take a minute to say that I’ve been enjoying the events that the immortal community has worked hard to prepare for us.

In the quest for the torch (a little quest for fire?) our team did fairly well until the last clue … the solution to that clue was “Tayalardian Rangelands” an area that our group was pretty unfamiliar with.  That clue held us up for the better part of an hour I’m guessing and certainly dropped us in position.  Grats to everyone questing on a thief who stood at DH[] peeking the inventory of other questors as they ran by!! 🙂  I’ll admit, I checked ‘locate object’ 🙂  You should always use whatever your class has to offer, and keep quest items in containers or use config +cloak! 🙂  An unimpressive 6th place for us, but we did our best and discovered a blind spot in our realms-ucation 🙂

The second event was mob kill … well.. it was… the mobs killed 🙂  I insisted on questing on Tharius, which means dealing with his inherent bad stats and for some reason got all buggered up while tanking and ended up splattered before I should have.  No good reason … full stomach and didn’t see it because I was distracted trying to fix a missed wear/wield.  Awell.  The team did well, taking 3rd overall.

Third we had the flee event.  To be fair this is a mostly random event since you have no control over your flee direction.  Still it was a ton of fun, you gotta stay on the ball and not waste any time, we took 3rd in this event by 1 second… yep, 1 second *fshake*!  We had 2 heats, in the first one I couldn’t get the right flee to save my life and in the 2nd one I was through in no time at all.  Maybe averaging the two runs might have been fairer, but all in all a good event.

Today is the item find, I have no idea if I’ll have time to do this or not, I’m hoping that it’s more than a tele-scan but maybe not a full fledged scavenger hunt; people seem to feel obliged to make scavenger hunt clues as obscure as possible.  I’m sure it’ll be well thought out regardless.  If I have time I’ll be there, it’s been a rough day, had to put down my kitty Cooper this morning, poor guy had a brain tumour that started to really impact his quality of life, so I don’t feel up to much.

Will try though, and if not, I’ll try to be around to die in the Olympic Pkill!

There and back again and again and again :)

by Tharius

It’s been a while since I made a post here, sorry to anyone who follows the blog 🙂  There has been a TON of stuff going on both on and off Realms and I have been very negligent in updating realmsofdespair.info.

When I returned to Realms I decided I would see what the RP community on Realms is doing.  By and large the answer is nothing.  I tried to start some threads and find out what had been going on from older players but by and large my efforts have been met with the response “Hold off, there’s a big quest to shuffle the story lines coming”.  So I’ve held off.  I expressed interest in becoming the Half-Elf Nation Leader (currently vacant) and earned the support of some former leaders … but again, hold off for the quest where I’ll have an opportunity to step forward.  Unfortunately I’ve held off quite some time and still haven’t seen the quest materialize.  This apparently all extends back to story lines began in the Nations Olympics around August 2012… this amounts to 5,000 Realms years?  It’s tough to maintain an interest when notes appear roughly quarterly.  The Nations were supposed to be mortal driven initiatives, yet mortal initiatives are being stifled?

With that said, there’s at least one person who, if they read this blog, is probably annoyed with what I’m saying.  I’m sorry if I offended you, but this is my outsider opinion as a player who tried to become active in RP on Realms and who still is interested in participating.  I’m demanding nothing, but asking you to consider that introducing a story line that is inconsistent with the past but is active is perhaps better than absolutely no visible activity.  As an aside I have worked hard to ensure Tharius’ story lines have deliberately made him look ignorant of the history of the Elohai nation to allow any old story thread to be resurrected and blindside him.

Well, I suppose this turned into a little bit of an RP rant, sorry everyone, I’ll wrap this up with the history of Tharius I wrote in May.  I tried to put it into an in character description of my journey on the Realms of Despair from Tharius’ point of view.  The beauty of it is that if I’ve forgotten something, it’s Tharius’ poor memory not mine and of course, leaves room for others to have differing opinions of events that occurred.

 

It has been many years since I have set quill to parchment to relate my
personal history. Perhaps it is long past due … I relate this to you, for I
suppose few remember … One day perhaps we will sit and relate more tales of
the past but for today …

I am the only child of Wayrrm and Lomyre, half-elves, undistinguished
merchants who traded simple goods from the various lands long before the
Shattering changed the face of the Realms. I spent many years cataloging the
particulars of this potion or that wand so that we could obtain more if the
demand arose. I traveled most of the lands of the Realms with them, meeting
many people of all races.

On one of our final tours I met with an old ranger, Daltorak Astoras, who told
me of his adventures and his life in Darkhaven. Enchanted with thoughts of
dragon slaying, treasures hidden away and carried forth in my hands, at 17 I
journeyed to Darkhaven myself where I learned quickly to fend for myself.

I explored the surrounding hills and forests but quickly found myself alone.
Desiring the company of others I joined the Guild of Rangers where I learned
much about the world of adventure that I had volunteered for. Many of those
names still ring in my memory … indeed many of them went on to great renown,
even answering the call to join Thoric’s immortals. I made many friends and
true, indeed in short time I took a bride and we took the name Dawnbreaker for
our own.

Others flocked to my banner, healers like Yardan the Wise, the wizard Shantir
and even those like Thavius who could steal the eyes out of your head while
you blinked and not be caught! Indeed, through Yardan I reached out for more
power and became Dragonslayer. Bitter are my memories of my departure from
the Guild, for in my blind ambition and through harsh and careless words I
offended and hurt many. I turned my back on them all and lost a wife to
neglect.

Still, though I often sought glory and riches I was often to be found aiding
those new to our land … many was the year that I spent with a Councillor’s
Badge of Honour around my neck. It was in the council headquarters I became
aware that I had fallen victim to a curse I would wish on no mortal … I fell
in love with a Goddess … She was beautiful and terrible … gentle with
innocents yet the enslaver of some of the most vicious demons I have yet
witnessed.

It pleased her to walk the Realms in mortal form from time to time and for
reasons I will never know she agreed to become my bride. The goddess Sarah
wed me to Darmha and to this day she haunts me for we were not wed long before
her immortal form fell from the Heavens and has not been seen again in these
Realms. The shade of her mortal form lingers on, beautiful and deadly, but
the light in those eyes is gone. I have long quested to discover what
transpired but that is another tale.

Shattered I withdrew into Blackraven Citadel, leaving only for adventure and
blood lust or to take part in councils to help shape our great land. Truly I
tell you that when you stare into the blackness of oblivion it stares back at
you. I threw myself into slaughter. In the lands of La Chute, where I heard
her name whispered in the stones, I endlessly traveled … and in La Chute I
fell, mortally stricken. As I fell from the mountain, wind whistling in my
hair, the screams of my comrades in my ears as they fell along side me, I felt
a cold calm I have never felt before or since… for a moment things became
still …

… and as I hit the ground, I fell through it into the cupped hands of the
Immortal Edmond. The power the crackled about him cannot be conveyed to you
now and I have no record of the words that passed between us but when I again
opened my eyes upon the Realms, it was with a holy light shining behind them
… I had ascended and joined Thoric’s immortals.

My time in the heavens was brief … the pride and ambition which had driven
me into battle after battle overrode even the clarity and joy of the heavens.
When the demon’s slavering teeth came and tore me into oblivion I hoped for
the end, yet there was no end for me. Reformed in a new body I returned to
the Citadel cold and alone.

In time I returned to my searching. I sought out others to help me invade the
land of the Ancients. Though many came for the bounty, true and close friends
joined me, the druid Turlough and the druidess Raemakion took the name
Dawnbreaker and joined my cause. Ahh, not since the early days in Darkhaven
did I revel in companionship the way I did with these druids … and slowly a
part of the darkness cracked and fell away.

In my travels, always at my side was Aurale. Though her tale is not mine to
tell, it suffice to say we were inseparable though we often disagreed. Though
we never wed, we were kindred spirits and soothed the hurts the world had
given us.

There came a day however, when we chose to part. In that parting, in that
rage, grief … I turned my back on the Realms and walked away. No more would
I seek the glory and adventure, instead, I would discover new lands but only
journey through them. Homeless … alone.

Much of what transpired would make little sense here. Indeed, much of it is
strange to me now. On another plane of existence I battled against mighty
devils and demons and within me awoke a desire to return to these lands. I
left much undone when I left these lands … and though while I have been gone
Ages have risen and fallen, over 40,000 years have passed, I still have my
youth and vigor.

My travels have changed me greatly. While I still set my own goals I no
longer crave power and adulation. The darkness gave way to a new light, long
ago. Indeed I set foot again in Darkhaven with only the urge to excel against
my own achievements. I have left the days of Dragonslaying behind me and
forsaken the ancient oath of enmity against the Inconnu. I will join those
who seek excellence, no matter where I find them.

I have spent the last 100 years learning much of how this land has changed,
wandering the pathways and roads, seeing the new villages … learning of
the wars that have ravaged the nations. I have not set foot again in La Chute
but it seems to me that before long I must go there. There are mysteries in
my past which I must solve lest they consume me. Perhaps we shall share in
these mysteries together, my friends.

My fingers cramp from holding this quill, my friends, and surely you tire of
my tale … but this is but a start. From here we write a new chapter.

Tharius Dawnbreaker, Elohai

(sealed in forest green wax, the seal a crown atop an apsen)