Myrddyn

"Yes... I told you about the quest we took to rescue the children in the academy, didn't I? Some of the people there seemed completely mad as well. And that's just the most recent example of strangeness I've seen. Those Crimson Crown people are bonkers too... Hard to believe, indeed... Tell me, were these strange paladins from around Eubric? It's almost as if some of these people have been put under a spell, or drugged, or something, to make 'em mad, for some reason. But... that'd take a lot of resources, to influence the minds of so many people." "Eh? I didn't mean it was for sale, just that Mr Rone seems like a nice guy. I don't know him too well, and he just gives me a fancy gem like this. But... if you're after one, I'll part with it. 80 gold sounds fine."

"Ah, one of those 'sign up as a group' things, is it? Good luck with that. Looks like you've got a good team. I got this aquamarine here from Mr Rone, actually.""No, after that business at the academy I'm taking a vacation. There's a lot of Uland I've never seen, and what I have has mostly been while on a quest, so I didn't usually have time to admire the scenery." "Cleric is useful, but I'm really finding myself missing some of the damage I used to be able to do as a barbarian."

Erik makes his way downstairs from the library, where he'd been looking through maps and guidebooks of the island. He'd been living in Eubric for a while, but hadn't seen much of the place besides where various quests had taken him. He sees Monk Pretzel standing with Mr Gibbin, Mr Rone and Miss (Or perhaps Mrs) Uq, as well as a dwarf Erik hadn't met. Wandering over, he nods to the group. "Off to catch a pirate, eh?"

Haha, I've got some commitments at the moment, so I don't want to start a quest and not be available enough to finish it, but yeah, I'm still here.

"Wow, thanks." Erik accepts the Aquamarine.

"Well, I suppose I'll go to 725 gold then, and you can buy the helmet if you want to go higher."

"I don't believe Sorrow's that concerned about money right at the moment, and I think you're getting his bow as well. Plus you've already got a nice hat. But certainly, I'll bid 500 gold."

Erik wanders over, hearing a discussion about Sorrow's helmet. "Mind if I make a bid? This Gold Statuette (useless, worth 100 gold) for the helmet?"

Erik looks up from his drinking and applauds the Sand Queen's speech. Erik then signs up for the lottery.

Deus gets up to go to the quest board, and Erik sighs and drinks some of his ale. Quests. How much good do they really do, once the dust's settled? Maybe I'll take a break from Heroing and go somewhere interesting. He thinks to himself. The ranger returns and tells Erik he's leaving, and Erik waves. "Good luck." He picks up the bottle and pours himself another drink.

"Congrashulations. Did it take you anywhere interesting?" Erik replies, pouring ale into the other cup for himself, and placing the bottle on the table between himself and Deus. He decides to put his cup down without drinking from it as he sees a Progg wander in, argue with some heroes, set itself on fire, and turn into smoke.

Erik nods to Pretzel as he passes by. "Yeah. Figured you were busy talking to Karie, but I'd like to find out what exactly happened back there at some point."

Grabbing a bottle of whisky from the bar, Erik turns to see a dark-clothed ranger, his face concealed by a bandanna, and a scruffy tricorne perched on his head, sitting not far from where he'd left his equipment. Erik shrugs, and grabs a pair of cups. He steps forward, but reconsiders, and replaces the whisky, instead selecting an ale. The slightly inebriated barbarian takes a seat across the table from the ranger, pours ale into a cup, and offers it to Deus. "Don't think we've met. I'm Erik. Just back from a quest?"

Erik watches a somber figure in green enter the hall and chat to some heroes. Probably off on some quest. He thinks to himself. His guess seems to be confirmed, as Heckz and Thalion group together with the hatted fellow, and Pretzel seems to be wrapping up his conversation with the other old guy. The barbarian raises his drink to his lips, but finds it empty. He eyes the bottle suspiciously. Wow, all gone? "What was Pretzel asking about those Crimson Crown guys for, anyway?" He mutters to himself, standing up and staggering slightly as he heads to the bar to get another drink.

Could a character refuse to accept this blessing, perhaps viewing it as a sign of weakness?Is the blessing only in effect while the character is working towards the success of their quest - would it have been temporarily revoked in #84, for example, when some heroes chose to work against their employers? Shouldn't be too hard to copy the current pages on potions into one page. And I think we should still list special items like playthings, but link to their page if they have one.EDIT: There's really not much information on some of these pages. I put up a battle actions page, and a stats category, by the way. I can merge all the stats into one page if you want, but perhaps the weapon power page should be made into a weapon page, rather than being merged with stats? Gah, writing stuff isn't too hard, but deciding where to put the information is confusing. I'll leave that to the more experienced members of the community.

Erik remains quiet as Heckz boasts of "his" success against the demons. Then the little orange progg comes over to Karie, and he scowls, remembering how he'd killed similar proggs back in that damn vault. The ranger walks over to join them, and for a moment, with that hair, the crown symbol on his armour, and that damn crossbow he'd always carried around, he looks just like Daxus. Erik blinks, and turns back to Pretzel, his memory of the event in question likely sharper than the monks, as he'd just missed the past six months."Just the quest with Karie and the demons." "Aye, I remember the Crimson Crown. Couldn't work out what they wanted, but how could I forget? We finished the quest, came down the stairs, and there they were, tryin' to kill Borris and the bartender for some reason, said we'd made fun of 'em somehow?" Erik chuckles. "I think they'd gone mad from all those poisons and potions they were playin' with. Or maybe they couldn't see out their masks and mistook us for someone else. That'd explain their aim with those cannons, too."

"You got that right." Erik mutters, finishing his drink and throwing a last bit of armour into his pack. He looks at the bottle in his hand, considers going to get another, but instead waits in case Pretzel says more.

Arthur bought it for him.

Erik staggers into the hall, passing the bar to grab something strong, and sits down near Heckz and Monk Pretzel. He accepts the Darkstar Wand from Heckz. "One afternoon in the void, and it turns out it was 6 months in the real world." Erik mutters, unbuckling bits of armour and stuffing them into his pack. "I don't even know what day it is."

"You lying bitch!" Erik yells, running towards the genie, but he finds himself unable to prevent her from leaving. "Hmph." He waves to Guinevere, watching as she flies away into the distance, and remains standing there even after she has flown out of sight. After a minute, he turns to see most of the rest of the party members leaving. "I need some more pipe-weed." He mutters, and walks off to find some before he heads back to the hall.

Quest 93. In a sentence, it was a reasonably good quest that went on far too long. I suspect if everyone had written reviews halfway through, those reviews would have been far more positive. I suppose I'll start at the beginning. The first page or two was, probably similar to most quests, working out what exactly we were meant to do, meeting the rest of the party, et cetera. Working out how to get into the Academy was a bit of fun there. The next ~3 pages was the fight with all the taxidermy animals. That was really good - 21 different enemies with varying levels and stats against 6 heroes (plus a low-level NPC) makes for a great battle. It went on for 7 rounds, but every round some damage would be taken or effects would be inflicted, and we'd have to review our actions and battle order. It really kept things interesting, and it didn't have confusing special rules. I would strongly recommend this to any QM trying to make an interesting battle. (Link) Simple enemy variation is vastly underrated. Then we met Professor Watt and fought the Reaper. That was a nice puzzle. Watt was fun. We spent some time dealing with the kids factions, and at this point it was a nice challenge working everything out. The Rafflesia was on page 16. Hits instead of hitpoints on the vines, sucking health from the students - this was a fun battle. Met Professor Hawke, he seemed cool. Shame he died. We went back to Ixion's corpse, and met Senor Calacas, the bonecrafter. Then we tried to get into the dark corridor, before meeting Sorsha and the Bohring statue. This bit was fun as well. Sidequest. This was great. Although I felt a bit like Erik was the center of attention with his diplomacy, Amorith seemed to have stuff to do as well. Saga fight, page 23, about 3 months in. This was pretty good, but all the opponents having ranged attacks was a bit annoying, as it took some of the strategy out and meant few people could survive attacking Saga. The books respawning came as an annoying surprise as well, and meant we'd wasted a Pumpkin Bomb. Ghost fight. Short and fun. Wyrdfire. Fun again, three sided battle, had to keep the kids alive. Lantern puzzle and crazy girls. They were nice puzzles, but by this point, about 4 months in, the student factions puzzle had definitely become annoying. Aureole. Admittedly we probably shouldn't have murdered the professor, but that battle wasn't the best. The kids with planets on their heads were fun, but beyond that, Aureola took far too long to kill and had a really nasty special that was also used on free hits. Then the secret passage to the secret room with Bohring's ghost. This was really good - it gave us a break from the students, and it was a nice surprise that gave us useful information. Rusalka. This was another fun battle. The armour. :thumbup: I'd normally be annoyed at missing out on loot, but this was still a really great gimmick. Cacophonia. This battle was hard, and would have been even harder if we hadn't been lucky with Sorrow assassinating Saxaphone. Darkness battle. Erik didn't participate in that, so I didn't pay much attention. Rogues and Dean Morrible, then we found a bunch more students, picked up Watt's artifact, and fought the Demon Door. I don't know what to say about the rogues; It was a good puzzle getting them out, but I'm surprised that a) students would actually try to ransom/kill a teacher in cold blood, and b) that, especially after feeling so strongly that the Dean was "evil" for his actions a few years before, so many characters, PC's and NPC's, had no problem with the actions of the students, solely because the students were (barely) under 18. Boss fight. I get that the enemies were all mirrors of the heroes, but the AOE, ranged special damages were too much. Especially Drucilla's, which was also used as a free hit. Beyond that, though, it was a good battle. I think a lot of the problems people had with the quest would have been lessened considerably if it hadn't gone on so long. 7 months is a long time for "Search the building, rescue the children". Plotwise, it was similar to #32, which lasted for almost exactly 1 month.

"Thanks sir." Erik takes the lamp, rubs it, and wishes for Experience. Then he hands the lamp back to Amorith.

Erik thanks all the groups giving them money, and then thanks Heckz for giving him some of it. He frowns as some of his fellow heroes accuse the Provost of... something. "Sorrow is right about the students - they would often refuse to be sent to safety if that meant they had to go with students from a different group. But I'm sure there are many duties you have as Provost that would have taken you away from the academy at the time."

Erik smiles and nods to the procession of people parading by. After Malastor Eldritch leaves, he turns to Heckz. "He really did have a big staff, didn't he? I wonder what the skull came from. And I'm surprised he didn't have something on the bottom, to balance it out." He sees Amorith having difficulties with the genie. "Hmph, maybe give me that lamp back and we'll see if I can still get the Experience wish. If that doesn't work, I'll see if she has another wish for me to fulfill."

"Hmph. I guess I'll side with the Shadeaux. We were split up at the time, so I wasn't actually involved in saving Lyren."