Zepher

OoC: Have fun, Sandy! As a US citizen I feel I can finally hold my head a little bit higher on that front today, so I'm glad you're off to celebrate. A lot of my friends here are off to the city for parades as well! More in relationship to the Quest, Eric gave the Dr. the key to the library! Boomingham chuckles as the birds fly at them. "Chaps!" he calls to the were-lions. "You're making a ruckus that we're cleaning up! Don't tell me you can't fight your own battles!" He glances at Eric. "I'm assuming these are our fellow treasure hunters? Don't seem half bad other than their cowardliness. Rex, it's up to you a who you want to hit, my friend. Any one of these beasties should be cleaved in two by you easy enough." Boomingham steps forward and, drawing his Frozen saber, takes a mighty swing at Servine A. Rex charges forward and strikes at Servine B.

Glad you know what you're in for at this point. I do want to let you know - and I know you recognize this but it's always fun to let you know what you've done - Samuel, for example, exists solely because of you. If you hadn't beheaded Raguel, I would have never bothered with his apprentice. Then in 102 it became apparent to me that Samuel would play a part in this quest, because of what you were saying to him. What you said to him made the difference as to if you would face him as a foe, or as not a foe. And sure, it wouldn't have changed the quest a ton (significantly, but not a ton) but it would have changed him and Nerwen, which matters more to me then the "plotting". You better see them again. You need to come on my finale. Not need to. But you should. Nerwen will probably be the only character who knows all the parties at play in the finale at this point. Yes, it's not ideal. I am away from my bricks most of the time when I host, which DOES limit me in many ways I wish it didn't. The party split had to be that way. It had to be done before hand. BUT, it is what it is. I think that my next few quests will attempt to remedy situations like this, if not perfectly, at least to improve. Like I said of Pala before, it's always best when I can get a character and player to feel the same. I'm glad Gocklo got to you. He likes Nerwen! I addressed your notes on Marcellus and Morta above. Mitchell as well. I will try to show better what the Golden Crusade does about his death. That's a great note! Notes like this (and Pala's realization that Marcellus was mostly there so Oko didn't catch on to anything fishy) makes me happy to play with players like you. You understand things that aren't stated, but are informing characters. It's grew tho see people recognize that characters have had different histories leading up to the quest, and it affects their actions. Yu Shu knew she would have to kill her brother, or at least that she had lost him completely already. It's cool that you can pick up on that. And I love hosting you! like I said, I think it's good for us to take a break, but I hope you'll be back! So, my final act (before posting those sidequests): Nerwen: I have hosted Nerwen so many times, I'll just keep this short and sweet. I like how she makes friends with NPCs. I always had this issue when I hosted Nyx too… it's less dynamic if my affection for a character bleeds through and all my NPCs end up liking them too. I'm afraid that sometimes happens with Nerwen. But she's got so many attributes that my characters would admire. She's fierce and brave, a leader, determined, and principled (something Deborah AND Yu Shu ended up respecting). She's understanding and fair. She's stubborn as hell. I've said it before - I respect two strong choices with Nerwen. a) I love that her good traits are often also her bad traits, and b) I love the way you've viewed old age. I see often in fantasy ageless old characters are very "stuck in their ways". You play Nerwen as if she has eventually discovered that change is the only constant, and she's come to terms with that. Perhaps it's my fascination with Zen and Tao, but I think it's a superb and intriguing direction to go. It is certainly something I've adopted for the Witches. You're also fantastic at considering the character history, which is radically important. Pretzel: Lots of similar notes. Pretzel has grown a lot since we've met him. I wish, sometimes, that he retained a bit MORE of his argumentative nature and independent streak. He's gotten almost "too good" for me. But, still, I love him. He's pragmatic, and powerful, and battle hardened. I loved his interactions with Gocklo and Marcellus - his view on "inferior" races has become more playful, which makes it almost more dastardly. I love that. Him and Marcellus and Gocklo were a great weird trio. I like how he and Avery got along really well too, near the end. Or at least she liked him. I agree with Chrome a bit - pick what you want to mean "old age" to mean to you and play it up, because we've sort of lost that fun side of him. Grimwald: Grimwald was a bit of a toss up character for me. He faded to the back a little near the end, which was disappointing. Like I said earlier, I really loved his talks with Pretzel and Oko at the beginning, and I really loved him killing Mitchell. He's old too, but a different old than the other two characters above. He's probably near the end of his life, and it shows through with his tired practicality - I think it'd be fun to push. He also… is he the character who was a barber before joining? I LOVED that character trait. Play it up a little. Regardless of if I'm wrong about that, what was his job before hand? Working class, right? I feel like that could be a great character. It shines through in his happiness at the new and fantastic but his world-weary ways, but I'd push that even more. Kiray: I like Kiray. She's been on some interesting quests and we've learned a lot about her in that time. I was extremely excited to host you after reading you playing in 104. I loved her friendship with Oko, and I hope to see how it affects her in the future. Same with Abel - glad she was able to have him stand down, because you could tell it mattered to her. You've laid an appropriate amount of ground for her past, and what I think would be best would be if she started to pretty heavily react to the previous quests. We saw it a bit with her bringing up Diana at the beginning of this quest, but I'd like to see it even more. She's been through some tough situations for a "younger" hero and I'd like to see how it starts to seriously affects her. Now my final act is to get up those side quests so people know what the hell we're talking about.

Bobby runs to the edge of the boat, ready to dive into the sea after the were-racoon before he sees the crashing waves and remembers he's not a particularly good swimmer... Instead he turns around and whips Octopial Grenius from the back row!

"Looks like we're going to meet some treasure hunters and see if we can't convince them to share with us," Boomingham grins wolfishly. "And maybe fight some iggly biggles who've got some venom I could sell. So, you'll see, in some regards my heart and the gold are in the same place."

"Yo, shiz is getting cray! These crazy mo-fos have the little raccoon dude and they're b*tchin' about the stone and whatever. We gotta get to it. I dunno what we're gonna do!" Bobby grabs Polly's hand and leads her back to the rest of the party.

Oh, I see the confusion now haha - stupid early morning mis-spellings.

Why have a four legged mech when you can have a two legged mech. Besides, hasn't Mister S ever seen Star Wars? What if someone gets their hands on a snow speeder.

Yeah the curved wall is incredibly cool! I agree that it feels very Kawashita. Love the huge blocks of red, and love that they're receded too. The weapons are great… and I love the little buggy (have we seen it before?). The story is also superb. Glad to see that Mister S is being pushed to be the best he can be! Laughing at it, in fact - the center mech is an awesome build but is, in fact, sort of impractical.

"Sounds good to me. I was hoping to get to the bog anyway." Boomingham turns to the Peri. "Sarge will make sure that Heckz doesn't pull his normal shenanigans. He's a military man. He'd never stand to see a lady dis-respected. Isn't that right, Peg-Leg?"

Alright, let's finish this up! Side Quest: It was over-all… good, at the beginning, at least. I'm glad you got to know more about Gocklo and Mitchell, though it felt a little forced - I had Deborah stupidly say that Gocklo didn't really say much about his past, and she's been working with him for years, and then two strange heroes come by and he spills all the beans. Weird choice on my part, but perhaps she was just being protective and didn't want to tell his story for him. I think it's a little bit of that, and I think he does genuinely really like Nerwen, and he knew that he'd be crossing her at some point (if not as early as he did) and he wanted her to understand. Mitchell likewise was fun to flesh out a little. When he appeared way back in 84 (told you the Golden Crusade has been around for a while! and heck look right there are already Warrior Priests, Golden Crusade and Witches all in the same room!) he wasn't particularly full in my mind yet. But then Sandy created the Darkland mutants and that seemed a good original home for him. And then the witches. Yes, there were two. Nona sort of hinted that both her sisters were missing in 123, though she only mentioned Morta specifically. It was a bit of a cheap trick on my part, yes. Why would the Order Imperial need two witches (well, they tried to get all three… again evidenced by 123). But it let you fulfill your requirements while still allowing Gocklo some revenge. I was a little surprised you didn't chase after him more, I had a bit of story for that, but that was fine. Anyway, I hope his betrayal made sense in some regard, and in fairness I think Simon was making some good points. Simon and Nerwen had a nice talk, and I worked hard to paint him as a villain with a honorable if incredibly perverse and corrupted code. He genuinely believed everything he said, which I think is important for a religious fanatic. I pitied him a little. Anyway, Gocklo flips, things go downhill, Mitchell and you fight until Bernard shows up - I was happy with that mechanic, and it allowed me to weaken you and your ally before throwing you into the real fight, which I think was fun and unpredictable for me - how weak would you guys make each other? I think it also highlighted Mitchell's ideals - he was covering Gocklo's retreat, not being just nasty. There'd be no good way to make that honest without showing it. Mitchell's death was a bit sad, to me, because I could tell you were both frustrated with the RP element of it. I should have put in a better explanation. If you HAD carried him, he could have been revived later on, but there was no real way for me to tell you that without making it an incredibly easy choice. I think it was cool that Grimwald was the one to land the killing blow… don't know why he did it, really, but we'll discuss that when we get to characters a bit more. Still liked it. The Gustav part was… weak. I wanted to show that an Order Imperial would live to tell the tale, for Kintober's Order Imperial story, and I wanted to include someone from the first Order Imperial Quest so they weren't all my own characters, and I was happy that Grimwald would see someone he recognized, since he and Kiray didn't have the same people to latch on to as Nerwen and to a lesser extent Pretzel. But no one really talked to him - both on me and on you, I think - what would you have said to him, really? Still, disappointed, but perhaps a mis-step. That fight worked fine, I thought. Then we get to the maze. Bleh. Sorry about this. Totally my fault, and not even with planning this portion of the quest, it's really just a direct result of Bella's fight being poorly planned - had to give you a way to kill time, and it just felt like a dungeon crawl, which I hated. I mean, it WAS a dungeon crawl. But I couldn't think of anything on the fly, since pretty much all the other characters were tied up. Totally my bad. It did let me show off some of Morta's power… and, something no one commented on, but it did allow me to show that Morta was willing to take steps to defend Marcellus for all of everyone's talk. I'll address most notes later on, but I want to touch on one of Chrome's that I agreed with at first glance while running the quest, but felt differently towards around this point. You say Marcellus was undermined by not needing to save Morta, and I think that's slightly true, but not in a detrimental way. I think it was an interesting highlight to their relationship, which surely must be different than we can imagine. Actually, Nerwen has been some inspiration for the witches - they're old, and the way you play old is so different and powerful… I've just pushed that to the extreme. So, yes, she didn't NEED to be saved in the sense that she wasn't in danger, and she didn't mind captivity. But she has lived an eternity, so she could have spent a century in that cell without batting an eye. Marcellus, on the other hand, knows he is a mortal. He likely knew she wasn't in any danger of death, but he did know if he sat by he could potentially never see her again. So THAT's what he was fighting against. Morta, on the other hand, for all the insistences that he is her servant or pet, was happy to let him walk free and lead his own life, but did defend him once harm came to him. It's subtle, but I think it was there, and I think with that information the things that happen between them in the future will be even more interesting. It's certainly factoring into parts of my final quest. Often times after playing a character I find out that they feel differently than I thought, and I have to change future outlines. This is one of those cases. I also discovered that Morta likes pushing buttons. Originally she and Deborah would serve as the straight people in their Order who would explain what was going on. Earlier I said how I couldn't figure out how to reveal the Golden Crusade's manifesto, and then I realized just put their straight shooting members alone and they'd just tell someone! I felt the same could be done with Morta… but then found out after putting her in the story that Nona was more the character who would do that, not Morta. But she did, eventually. I think just for fun. Sorry for having her rub Nerwen the wrong way so much. I think it was fun to see Nerwen finally interact with someone and something hauteur and older than herself. It's so rare, and she's so gentle to younger creatures it was fun to see her bristle when something threatened her authority a little. It felt in character, but still new. The parties re-unite, we fight Simon's bodyguard and re-met Deborah, who again is important to see again because it proves that while the Golden Crusade has anterior motives, they really did intend to wipe the floor with the Order Imperial. It stands with their concept of forward movement, so I wanted to make them out to have been pretty genuine at the forefront. Glad Nerwen got to used that Essence of Sorrow, and even more glad it worked, would have been a shame if the item went to waste. 50/50 items are scary that way. Then they meet Simon finally. Great talks from all. That battle was well crafted, I felt, though Grimwald broke it a little (to balance that he did get just awful rolls… I'm sorry about that. Like, absurdly bad rolls. Could have used that for RP, a bit, LotN). Nerwen did, in this battle and last battle, get to be a little "this is the battle list and all he actions" which I don't like personally ,and you could see other players having an easier time than ever saying "repeat" etc. The whole end of the quest felt like it lost serious steam. I think it was just fatigue on all ends, both mind and the players, from again the breaks my travel created, and from a bit of a longer quest than it should have been, especially after the Bella/Maze battles. But I think this helped allow players be lulled to sleep as opposed to step up, and its's something to watch. It's tough - Boomingham is a bossy character too so I understand it - even just giving the suggestions as "commands" by shouting at the characters gives them a little bit more to play off of. Pretzel's ending with Simon was well-played. I enjoyed it, Pala, and was happy to offer you a final thing to do. I'll post all the side quests as soon as possible - either later today or within about 24 hours of now. The farewells to characters were a little sad and tired… but I felt that's the way it should be. What was there to say? They'd gone in, nearly every "party" or agency had lost someone… so you go home, right? I tried to add the bit about Abel and Yu Shu, but again at the end of the day I think Yu Shu was too tired to argue, and if it came to blows she couldn't do anything. I think it will influence her future, though. I imagine her considering ordering Avery kill him on the ship, but she wouldn't. That's not honorable. I'll edit in responses to the notes and post character thoughts in a bit! Or, in two weeks, Pala.

Boomingham stands up and dusts himself off. "Fine. Let's make some gold. Everyone in this city is hostile as Hel until you have some. But after that I'm calling a shot or two. We've hardly gotten anything done here. I left Eubric so that I'd stop running errands, not so that I could run more." He sighs. "I'm tired of the boy-o too. Next time we split, someone else has to look after him. Where'd he get off to?"

Bobby nods his head vigorously at Miderun's orders as she whips by. He stumbles towards the tripod. "Yo! Polly, where you at?! You okay?!"

I'll get it up tomorrow - I closed shop today and open tomorrow with only a seven hour turn around time… but does mean I get off at a reasonable hour tomorrow and will be heavily caffeinated when I do, so writing the rest of my thoughts should be a breeze.

Boomingham watches as his companions recover the key, while still waiting for the woman he addressed to answer him.

Kawashita has been boxed in by competitors. Now is our time to shine.

A fantastic showing from everyone! Congrats!

(Were the dragon smilies not a big enough hint? )

Who knows?

I'll see who signs up. This late into the story I am sort of looking for returning Questees, but that's never a requirement. There's just so much history at this point that it's fun to see people return to locales.

Oh, yay, it's posted! Yeah, it's the conclusion to the Guffington Arc! I hate to spoil things, but people from the Wren Saga would probably want to sign up too. Lots of returning faces... and my last quest before my finale (probably... I sometimes have ideas for new ones... ). Which is absurd, because I've been telling this story for years upon years.

I feel a little bit like there's too many colors in the rock work - perhaps doing some less square transitions would have helped with that. Little 1x1 tiles scattered through might make them look like they bleed into each other more. Great lava though, and you're one of the only people who actually found the gold.

Hurts my eyes in the best way! Great build!

Awesome work! Simple and elegant, feels like a real control room. Love the monitors!

Awesome build! As the others have said, you balanced beautiful and deadly well, and those colors...

Both powerful artifacts, but very cool. I like that the cloak has a down-side, but I think the belt would need to be balanced with a downside as well (especially if it could be used out of battle, people would just always buff the cleric and then have him/her cure everyone outside of combat to all get all the positive effects). In general I'd like to advocate for artifacts that include both a good and bad effect, since they help make the classes more specialized without needing new classes. The Cursed Cloak of Contagions is a great example of that.