Beasty

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Revision as of 10:31, 2 August 2009

Tribute to the Drake Rangers

Sung to the tune of It's A Long Way To Tipperary

It's a long way,
to get to Hero
And Legend's further still

But with Drakes as
our familiars,
We rangers have the skills!

To the newbies, we'll assist you
To Twilight we owe praise!

To other rangers
we applaud you
IT'S TO DRAKES A BEER WE RAISE!

The Latest Chronicles of the Drake Ranger Beasty

My father had never spoken to me about my mother or the circumstances of her death. However, as he lay on his death-pyre, my ailing father decided to unburden himself and relate his saddest memories as his last gift to me.

When I was merely a small phaetling, my parents used to take great joy in travelling to one remote Tenochlan village. There they would sit on the local store's verandah and slowly sip on their Lantern Oil wine and stare across the broad jungle canopy.

They spent many days in this quiet solitude, but one day their peace was disturbed when terror suddenly tore through air. The smell of burning flesh and sounds of panic-striken villagers announced the arrival of an unspeakable horror - a round, floating monstrosity with a tooth-filled maw and one blue eye surrounded by stalks that fired fire and lightning.

My parents were experienced defenders of their homeland, and were confident that their combined breathe weapons would save them. Terror gripped my father as they discovered that their defences had been rendered useless by the creature's mere presence!

Despite his preternatural speed and agility, a beam from one of the creature's stalks struck him and he inexplicably lost control of his own body. He watched helplessly as the monster razed the village to the ground. He himself would have died that day had it not been forced to retreat when it's eye was pierced by a villager's spear.

***

Life has never been overly serious for this particular Pheathon. Don't get me wrong; I am not reckless with my body and have no issue with running away from any situation that looks fatal. It's just that I have a intense desire to explore as much of the universe as Phaethally possible, and if that entails a few mortal encounters in exchange for knowledge - so be it.

As I write this, Billebowkwathaan'xia (or Bill for short) is resting peacefully after a good meal. Our bond, forged upon my allegiance to the rangers, is deep indeed. In fact, my link with Bill was forged long ago as inseperable companions during my childhood in Tenochlan. We explored the depths of the Demonad jungle, visited the Dwarvish halls of Banir Lok, and even dared to through stones at the windows of Shadow Tower.

My forced departure from Tenochlan left a deep rift in both our souls, and Bill found the courage to strike out in search of me. After wandering for many months we were reunited with the assistance of Prince Gavadel. One day perhaps our bond will allow us to communicate as the equals we are rather than as Master and Follower.

Since then we have been through many adventures together including the watery kingdom of Et'zlaerhi, the madness that is R'lhey and the cold stone tunnels of Scyros. Once we even fell into the depths of oblivion where only the goodwill of DEVoted watchers known as Elronuan and Chaos allowed us to live and fight again another day. It will take a lifetime to rebalance the scales of Karma for their favours.

Each one of these explorations have gained us valuable knowledge, and even the most fatal of encounters yield gems of truth. I am thankful for the spiritual renewal that being a ranger familiar imparts to Bill, but I am nonetheless tormented with the knowledge that my leadership brought her to such an end.

The latest such trauma came at the fangs of the gargantuan spiders of Spiderwood. Fortunately I had managed to join forces with a truly unique entity known as Arc. His skill with the fiery blade was matched only by the eldritch powers granted by his master Ahrikol. Soon after, Bill rejoined us and we were exacting vengeance on the swarm that had killed Bill. It was then that Arc drew upon a power so dark and evil that it drew the very life out of the horde one spider at a time. I have heard of such forbidden arts and even dared to whisper its name - necromancy. But it is a very different experience to witness its vile effects first hand. I could not help but back away from Arc after our victory, and I can say I am ashamed to have done so.

There are some truly evil beings in this world, but condemning someone as evil for using forbidding knowledge is to perpetuate ignorance. It does not become seekers of knowledge to judge such an honourable person as being unworthy of my gratitude. I can only hope that we meet again so I can properly thank him for his assistance.

... and the Out of Character contents starts here

Background

After searching the wilderness for an extended time, I stumbled across Lost Souls as a multi-user dungeon game. I was a veteran of console RPG games and was worried that I was starting to suffer withdraw symptoms for my level-advancement gaming addiction.

My initial formulation of Beasty used the default character at the time ie. a Losthavener half-elf. I managed to get him into rangers after a few days of rat-killing and took on a bear as a familiar. Plague was not a feature at the time and the biggest things I could handle were wolves. Soon I was managed to kill a bear but not after suffering a few deaths.

I soon discovered the shortcomings of the default character and it was my adventures in the Demonad jungle with Tessit that showed me that there were places in LS where this character could be caught in a fatal dead-end. I decided to start over to explore some of the more interesting races on Lost Souls. Thus the birth of the current Beasty as a pheathon and started playing him as a serious character on November 2008.

My female Yellow Drake, Bill, was furnished by Gavadel and I bonded with her as a familiar very early on - certainly before I was level 5. I believe she was level 21 at the time, and we had several adventures together including our exploration of Rh'ley, the 8th/9th floor of Shadow Tower, Storm Rock, Tethys and the Exoma.

After a lot of exploring and the accompanying deaths, I reached Hero in March 2009.

Current Exploits

There are sooo many facets of this character I would like to focus on:

Continue improving as an Eructant Weapon user to make a bigger impact
Continue to improve Channeling and Centering to allow me to be a better user of all these skills
Improve as a Fire Affinate so I can wear the flamra tressards without assistance
To make better use of flux weapons and try to convince a dev to open psycholeptesis for me
Continue to improve as a dagger user
To be as close to 100% bonding with Bill as possible

Acheived Exploits...

I can now take on Stormwalker without dying so easily
I have improved as an Eructant Weapon user to make a bigger impact
As a Fixer, I have manged improve matrices using multiple rounds of fixing
I've explored Planeswalking and established that travelling around the Exoma is impractical
I was specializing as a Tanner to be able to make exquisite armour, but subsequently undid the specialization in order to concentrate on joining the Wandslingers

And so on...

What's on my mind right now - or at least when I last updated...

Now that i've reached hero, my goal is to climb up the XP mountain and get to Legend. It's going to be a slow slog as some other players have pointed out - ranger is one of the slowest guilds to level in. As with everything else in life, you end up doing what best suits your own personal ethos - I'm not in it purely for levels... the world of LS is so large that exploration is half the fun.

However, I'm finding there are aspects of this environment that one cannot fully explore without being at a certain level or ability. For example, I certainly would like to see what improved quickness would do for my familiar - especially as my bond strength with her increases. But it turns out I will need a huge amount of KA (something like 200) to get Quickness access, and I seem to be accumulating the stuff at a very slow rate. There are some things best attempted early in the lower levels, and I'll have to keep that in mind on my next real character.

Acknowledgements

This MUD is just too absorbing that it's difficult for me to tear myself away from my awful MUDclient to writing anything of consequence.

However, I will attempt to keep a log of the kindness of strangers I encounter

I had been visiting my supposed home town of Tlaxcala when I was wiped out by some Hyperion(I think) guys at the top of the temple. After they kept killing me upon recorporealization, Dyne was nice enough to come and wipe them out in return. After tracking down and returning my preferred weapons (sunfury sai), I developed the fine art of kicking corpses for therapy. Not very effective in the game but very useful for my family life.

I had taken to hanging around Mycenae and taking on the minotaurs. Very risky, but effective because they just keep coming. This has led to many messy demises but many thanks to Dyne for collecting my remains

My Drake, Bill, was at death's door recently and Gavadel was kind enough to heal him. I thank him on her behalf (Yup, Bill's a female but I just live for Cognitive Dissonance...)

Fire Affinity is something that Phaethons should come by honestly. However, in my ignorance I had decreased affinity preference to fire resistance. Bad move, since I now need to work towards a fifth degree specialty just to wear these damned flamra tressards

Retrieved from "http://wiki.lostsouls.org/Beasty"

Beasty

From LSWiki

Revision as of 10:31, 2 August 2009

Tribute to the Drake Rangers

The Latest Chronicles of the Drake Ranger Beasty

... and the Out of Character contents starts here

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 == The Latest Chronicles of the Drake Ranger Beasty ==
+My father had never spoken to me about my mother or the circumstances of her death. However, as he lay on his death-pyre, my ailing father decided to unburden himself and relate his saddest memories as his last gift to me.
+When I was merely a small phaetling, my parents used to take great joy in travelling to one remote Tenochlan village. There they would sit on the local store's verandah and slowly sip on their Lantern Oil wine and stare across the broad jungle canopy.
+They spent many days in this quiet solitude, but one day their peace was disturbed when terror suddenly tore through air.  The smell of burning flesh and sounds of panic-striken villagers announced the arrival of an unspeakable horror - a round, floating monstrosity with a tooth-filled maw and one blue eye surrounded by stalks that fired fire and lightning.
+My parents were experienced defenders of their homeland, and were confident that their combined breathe weapons would save them. Terror gripped my father as they discovered that their defences had been rendered useless by the creature's mere presence!
+Despite his preternatural speed and agility, a beam from one of the creature's stalks struck him and he inexplicably lost control of his own body. He watched helplessly as the monster razed the village to the ground. He himself would have died that day had it not been forced to retreat when it's eye was pierced by a villager's spear.
+ ***
 Life has never been overly serious for this particular Pheathon. Don't get me wrong; I am not reckless with my body and have no issue with running away from any situation that looks fatal. It's just that I have a intense desire to explore as much of the universe as Phaethally possible, and if that entails a few mortal encounters in exchange for knowledge - so be it.