I've written this in response to Anna's Friday 500 post over on Too Many Annas. This is the first time I've attempted something like this and the first time I've written any fiction/roleplayed in years. Was a lot of fun though, especially as its not too serious. At the very least its something a bit different. Here it is then. ;)
---
"...in five hundred words or less." completed Zignab.
"What?"
"I thought it was perfectly clear." sighed the demon, "From henceforth all requests for demonic assistance must be composed-"
"Yes, I heard you." I growled, "But I can't help but feel you're not comprehending the gravity of the situation. I command. You follow. Otherwise..." I left the threat hanging.
"Yes, yes, yes." Said the imp starting to look a little uncomfortable. "And as ever I'm more than happy to serve but its - well - ever since little Zignab Jr came along, its getting to be a bit inconvinent."
"Inconvenient?" I hissed.
"Ummm...yes...well, its like last week, I was giving the little git his maggots for lunch and before I knew it I was yanked away and you were only collecting some herbs! You didn't even need me!"
"Listen-" I started.
"And the wife, she found him outside playing with the ponies. With the ponies!" He continued, heedless of my growing anger. "She said to me, 'No imp of mine is growing up to be a goody two-shoes.' And the names she called me, well, they'd have made even you blush."
"Damnit!" I muttered under my breath. My assailant was back, looking somewhat more irritated than he had when I last seen him. Demanding gold from me was no way to get in my good books though. I swiftly murmured the incantations and took a few moments of pleasure from watching him convulse in pain before the terror took him and sent him fleeing out of the alley screaming for the second time in as many minutes. I turned my attention back to the imp only to find him whimpering and crying little tears of fire. The situation was getting out of control. "Snap out of it!" I shouted, exerting my will. The imp twitched momentarily before reluctantly responding.
"Can't we all just get along?", he implored.
"No. But we can certainly make me feel much better.", I replied grinning as we set off in pursuit.
Monday 26 January 2009
Wednesday 7 January 2009
Necro this!
The UK is in the midst of a particularly cold spell at the moment - the kind of cold where its on every news broadcast. Its hardly the end of the world but it is mighty cold. Suits me though, more of an excuse to hide indoors and set myself up in front of the PC for hours on end.
Last night my EQ2 adventuring took me to the Lair of the Necromancer. A small solo instance in the Nektulos Forest zone. As you can imagine the small underground crypt featured plenty of undead and concludes with an encounter with a necromancer. The instance also features a fair amount of spiders - irritating, evil spiders. 1 on 1, provided I got the jump on them, I could take out a spider with little trouble. However, caught unaware at the wrong time the spiders proved to be a major irritation. The key problem being that their early attack is a root and this pretty much instantly counters my standard root, run away, nuke, repeat strategy - it quickly became root, stand still, nuke, die. So a couple of times death ensued when a wandering spider caught me just after a fight or, worse, joined in a fight already in progress. However, soon enough I figured out the route to take and got lucky enough to take out the rare spider spawn a couple of times as I made my way through. The boss, however, also proved to be a bit thorny. Towards the end of the instance there is a set of double doors that open out into a small square chamber. In the middle of the chamber are four unattackable fanatics conducting some sort of ritual. In each corner of the room is a skeleton - taking out the skeletons is a relatively simple task and once all 4 are down the fanatics become attackable. The fanatics are grouped up as an encounter and although I was initially concerned that 4 of them might wipe me out, judicious use of encounter and AOE spells took all 4 out quick enough. Once they were dead the final boss spawns with his pet. Again, I'm slightly concerned that I'm going to get overwhelmed - however, I figured if I kept the boss at range I'd hopefully be able to withstand enough of the hits from the pet whilst nuking the boss down and once the boss was dead the pet would die instantly too. And it worked just fine. Except I didn't know that the boss summons 2 skeletons just before it dies. So while I could finish off the boss no problem with a sliver of health left, the skeletons pretty swiftly finished me off. Twice. However, on the third try I was a bit smarter with my roots and nukes and managed to take out the boss with plenty of health to spare. I was then able to clean up on the summoned skeletons and that was that, instance complete!
For my troubles I got 4 or 5 skill book drops and a few items which I couldn't use and probably a level and half's worth of experience. And a whole lot of fun. It was really nice to have a bit of challenge that for my level was balanced just right - it was neither so easy that I could breeze through it or so difficult that it was obvious that I was never going to do it.
Last night my EQ2 adventuring took me to the Lair of the Necromancer. A small solo instance in the Nektulos Forest zone. As you can imagine the small underground crypt featured plenty of undead and concludes with an encounter with a necromancer. The instance also features a fair amount of spiders - irritating, evil spiders. 1 on 1, provided I got the jump on them, I could take out a spider with little trouble. However, caught unaware at the wrong time the spiders proved to be a major irritation. The key problem being that their early attack is a root and this pretty much instantly counters my standard root, run away, nuke, repeat strategy - it quickly became root, stand still, nuke, die. So a couple of times death ensued when a wandering spider caught me just after a fight or, worse, joined in a fight already in progress. However, soon enough I figured out the route to take and got lucky enough to take out the rare spider spawn a couple of times as I made my way through. The boss, however, also proved to be a bit thorny. Towards the end of the instance there is a set of double doors that open out into a small square chamber. In the middle of the chamber are four unattackable fanatics conducting some sort of ritual. In each corner of the room is a skeleton - taking out the skeletons is a relatively simple task and once all 4 are down the fanatics become attackable. The fanatics are grouped up as an encounter and although I was initially concerned that 4 of them might wipe me out, judicious use of encounter and AOE spells took all 4 out quick enough. Once they were dead the final boss spawns with his pet. Again, I'm slightly concerned that I'm going to get overwhelmed - however, I figured if I kept the boss at range I'd hopefully be able to withstand enough of the hits from the pet whilst nuking the boss down and once the boss was dead the pet would die instantly too. And it worked just fine. Except I didn't know that the boss summons 2 skeletons just before it dies. So while I could finish off the boss no problem with a sliver of health left, the skeletons pretty swiftly finished me off. Twice. However, on the third try I was a bit smarter with my roots and nukes and managed to take out the boss with plenty of health to spare. I was then able to clean up on the summoned skeletons and that was that, instance complete!
For my troubles I got 4 or 5 skill book drops and a few items which I couldn't use and probably a level and half's worth of experience. And a whole lot of fun. It was really nice to have a bit of challenge that for my level was balanced just right - it was neither so easy that I could breeze through it or so difficult that it was obvious that I was never going to do it.
Monday 5 January 2009
New year, new post
I thought it might be time that I put finger (well, fingers) to keyboard and tapped out a new post. December came and went with the usual fuss and bother, fun, food and presents. A lot of my spare time went missing and as the year drew closer to a close my batteries were pretty much hitting empty. So it was good to take a break for a while, enjoy the holidays and then return ready and revitalised for 2009.
So here I am, with only slight progress having been made in some ways but lots of progress in other ways.
WoW - So right up front, let's get it out of the way - I'm not 80 yet. My 'lock is sat happily (or as happy as 'locks get) at mid-75. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that while I'm looking forward to doing heroics at 80 that's probably about as far as I'm willing to take things. I will probably run Naxx a few times just to say I've done it but once that's done I think I'll be more inclined to level up another character than run raids constantly. With that I realised that there really wasn't any rush to 80 for me - the content that I'll be experiencing at 80 is likely to remain pretty much constant from now till when the next expansion launches. :) In that spirit I've started a Paladin, been levelling my Shammy and I'm considering starting a Death Knight pretty soon as well. In other words, I've had a bit of a dose of alt-itis. :) I'm also considering transferring my hunter over to my main server - just can't get it out of my mind that £15 is just a little too expensive though, nearly 2 months subs...we'll see...
EQ2 - My monk hit 42 or 43, I think. However, I found out that one of the guys I work with plays on the same server as me and so I started a Wizard and joined his guild - which, oddly, turned out to be the same guild that I used to belong too about a year ago before I had to stop playing the game for a bit. So it was really nice to rejoin and say hello again - they're a really friendly and helpful bunch. I've been enjoying it so much that my Wizard has become my main and is now sitting at 28 as of last night.
EVE - A new addition to the list, a few other guys at work had picked it up and started playing again and I was feeling tempted because of that and then CCP sealed the deal by offering a chunk of free play time. That was all I needed to cave in and sign up again. I'm still finding my feet somewhat in the deep deep pool that is EVE but I'm having fun learning new things and approaching the game from a industrial angle rather than the usual pew pew.
Other stuff - I've been trying out a bunch of free to play MMOs - just to see what they were like, I'll right a fully featured post when I've got time but suffice to say there were a few pleasant surprises in there. Nothing ground breaking but given the appropriate expectations there is more fun to be found here than you might expect. :) I'm also considering moving the blog from its current home and actually doing things properly using Wordpress - I'm not sure yet what that entails and what it might cost but it does seem that almost all the other blogs out there use it and they look great and way better than mine. Plus I'm hoping that there might be a way there to better join in the community. If anyone has any advice on this it'd be muchly appreciated.
So here I am, with only slight progress having been made in some ways but lots of progress in other ways.
WoW - So right up front, let's get it out of the way - I'm not 80 yet. My 'lock is sat happily (or as happy as 'locks get) at mid-75. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that while I'm looking forward to doing heroics at 80 that's probably about as far as I'm willing to take things. I will probably run Naxx a few times just to say I've done it but once that's done I think I'll be more inclined to level up another character than run raids constantly. With that I realised that there really wasn't any rush to 80 for me - the content that I'll be experiencing at 80 is likely to remain pretty much constant from now till when the next expansion launches. :) In that spirit I've started a Paladin, been levelling my Shammy and I'm considering starting a Death Knight pretty soon as well. In other words, I've had a bit of a dose of alt-itis. :) I'm also considering transferring my hunter over to my main server - just can't get it out of my mind that £15 is just a little too expensive though, nearly 2 months subs...we'll see...
EQ2 - My monk hit 42 or 43, I think. However, I found out that one of the guys I work with plays on the same server as me and so I started a Wizard and joined his guild - which, oddly, turned out to be the same guild that I used to belong too about a year ago before I had to stop playing the game for a bit. So it was really nice to rejoin and say hello again - they're a really friendly and helpful bunch. I've been enjoying it so much that my Wizard has become my main and is now sitting at 28 as of last night.
EVE - A new addition to the list, a few other guys at work had picked it up and started playing again and I was feeling tempted because of that and then CCP sealed the deal by offering a chunk of free play time. That was all I needed to cave in and sign up again. I'm still finding my feet somewhat in the deep deep pool that is EVE but I'm having fun learning new things and approaching the game from a industrial angle rather than the usual pew pew.
Other stuff - I've been trying out a bunch of free to play MMOs - just to see what they were like, I'll right a fully featured post when I've got time but suffice to say there were a few pleasant surprises in there. Nothing ground breaking but given the appropriate expectations there is more fun to be found here than you might expect. :) I'm also considering moving the blog from its current home and actually doing things properly using Wordpress - I'm not sure yet what that entails and what it might cost but it does seem that almost all the other blogs out there use it and they look great and way better than mine. Plus I'm hoping that there might be a way there to better join in the community. If anyone has any advice on this it'd be muchly appreciated.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)