Where The Lonely Ones Roam [Tehm, Arrasi, Metro]

[Eadon]

Today. Today was going to be special for Eadon. For the first time in what felt like forever, he was going to get out of the city and away from a forge, and actually go and do some adventuring and some leveling, out in the wilderness surrounding London. Truth be told, Eadon had been too much obsessed with making things the last few weeks to actually get out and go explore, like he had intended to do when he had first arrived in Elder Tale. It was ironic really, as all things considered he was very much an outdoors type guy - the type who would actually rather be out exploring some dingy swamp, instead of indoors studying. Like he had been. Not that black smithing was necessarily study, per se, but the point stood. He needed to get out and get some fresh air. maybe try out a few of the funky new skills he had picked up recently, to see just what he could do. He had been working on a new style, practicing at his whole spellsword build - but actually going out and finding some monsters to beat up on seemed the best idea for leveling and progressing further along his chosen path. Not that all the individual training and theory crafting he had done was useless necessarily, but every theory needed to be tested in reality before it could actually prove itself as viable in combat situations. The last time he had been out and used some of his fighting techniques had almost resulted in a trip to the cathedral, after all. Eadon cringed a little, remembering how much he had embarrassed himself on that last outing. Sure, it had resulted in him making his first ever friend, but the redheaded sorcerer hadn't spoken to Endrin since. He was really glad to have met him, but at the same time... He was a little bit nervous about running into the Guardian again. He had made a complete fool of himself, after all. If he met him again, no doubt he would do so once more and further cement his image in the older adventurers mind as a complete klutz who couldn't defend himself. At least, he was fairly sure that is what Endrin thought of him. Hence why he had been avoiding the guy. "Ahh, stop thinking about. Don't let getting embarrassed one time stop you from going out and adventuring again, idiot," Eadon told himself, tapping his shiny new rapier against the tip of his boot idly, while glancing around looking for a monster to slay. He had managed to find himself in a kind of gross swamp, of all places. The smell alone here was almost enough to make him gag, and the thick branches of the trees here blocked out the rays of the sun far overhead. As a result, it was dark and murky and... well gross. The sorcerer had no idea what kind of horrible things were lurking out there just waiting for a chance to try and kill and eat him. Not that they would necessarily have much to eat... He would die and turn to magical light before they could actually digest his body. Spotting something in the distance, Eadon smiled. "Alright, I found a monster! Let's get this party started." Sword in hand, he made his way in that direction, examining the thing closely. It was then that he realised his problem. Wha he had thought was just the one enemy was actually... Several. It appaeared that he had stumbled across an entire... mob? Of snails in the marsh. At least most of them seemed to be fairly low in the level range. Well, most of them except one. A big snaithat was looking at him angrily, and that the game declared to be a level 10 Enraged Snail. This could prove trickier than he had thought, especially alone...

WORDS: 652 TAGS: Eadon, metroexibit, Arrasi, tehm SONG: Where The Lonely Ones Roam NOTES: Look, a thread! Quick, someone jump on it.

Template by Eadon of Log Horizon

[metroexibit]

Metro sat on his bed in his hotel room. It had been one hell of a day. First he went to the local fruit vendor and he didn't have any pears left then he went to find a blacksmith and couldn't. After walking all over town metro has pretty much given up on the thought of doing anything productive today. It was pretty early in the afternoon still and he didn't feel like sleeping the day away so he got up and left. He walked out the door and down the hall. Then he went down the stairs, said hi to the old man behind the front desk and went outside. It was a rather cool afternoon, it made metro feel better about his day if only a little. He started to walk toward the west-side arch when he heard a voice in the back of his mind. “What do you think you are doing? If you have forgotten today's a rest day, if you fight today it'll mess our whole schedule up.” Blue eyes spoke with his usually calm tone but metro knew there was annoyance in his voice as well. He knew red eyes wouldn't mind them going hunting since it was his idea to try and hunt everyday all week, every week. “Stop your worrying okay? I don’t plan on fighting today, I just want to go for a walk.” He said knowing full well he expected combat as soon as he left the town limits. It was a given seeing as how he had been attacked at least twice a week now. “They sure were getting persistent” he thought, the people who have been attacking him for some reason have decided that anyone with plans to take over this virtual world needs to be disposed off. Seeing as how people cant actually die it seems kind of redundant. Well its ether that or there upset that he keeps killing them every time they come at him. Its not his fault they send grunts to do there dirty work. If they sent some of there top dogs then maybe they would prove to be a challenge but only sending two guys at a time who are three levels below him is a bit more then tedious and down right annoying.  

He walked through the town arch and continued down the path toward the forest. He looked around and didn't see anyone suspicious lurking around. He remembered the days when this wasn't just a game anymore. How the fields outside of London were full of newbie kids trying to make it big, doing everything they could to get stronger. It made him smile thinking about all those strong willed players. Then he thought back to all the other players who were still in town during this, crying and mopping around about how they no longer have a “real life” what they didn't understand is that this was the most amazing thing that could have ever happened to him. His old life was useless and had no end purpose. It was almost the equivalent of a slow death, but now he had a goal. He was going to rule this world one day. To sit at the throne looking down on the world like a god was his one true desire. Nothing else mattered but that one dream. Of course he would be a merciful over-lord. He would listen to complaints and fix them to only occasionally execute a bad egg to make an example. Other then that he really did care for people. He hated to admit it but he does, just because he got bullied by a few idiots doesn't mean there all bad. Since then he had actually made some friends and over-come his own mental disorder. He remembered when red and blue eyes held such a grip over his life, but now he earned there respect and leave him to make his own decisions. He knew they only did it because they cared about him and wanted what was best for him.  

He walked through the forest and into the swamp he noticed a figure in the distance. He only saw him due to the thick forest blocking his view, but as he approached he realized the man had aggravated about 10 snails! He figured the man should be able to get himself out of situations like this. He would only help if he was asked. So he made sure he walked into the mans view and sat down on the ground.   

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+Battle Perception +Drunk Monkey -[BLIND]

This was not going as expected.

Although finding the first sapling had taken a full three days, tehm had felt sure that if he just returned to the location of the first he should be able to find others. That was two weeks ago.

Tehm knew that his lack of eyesight was limiting him, but what was causing the most frustration was an in game system known as 'Perception Range'. This wasn't something that should apply in a world where he was as flesh and blood as he was on earth, yet like his inhuman endurance and agility provided by the 'stat system', it did.

For characters within the game of Elder Tales, 'Perception Range' was a single scalar, a distance at which enemies were rendered and beyond which, they were not. Individual skills such as sneak could remove the noise a character made, but this did not affect 'Perception Range', it was simply a flag in a database checked via algorithms to determine whether another character had perception enough to ignore it, or not. Although there were other means, the primary means of extending 'Perception Range' in this game of 1's and 0's had been the pathfinder subjob--A job devoted to scouting and exploration. This is how the game had been designed. This was how it had been implemented for over 20 years.

This, however, was no longer a game.

Tehm did not have one 'perception range', he had two. His hearing was near supernatural in this world, the reason being that 'Battle Perception' extended his normal hearing range beyond that of a normal adventurer, a level already better than that found on earth. The second 'perception range' was his sight. Having no eyes, his visible range should be 0, yet because 'Battle Perception' proffered a +10' bonus to this range, it was not. He still could not "see". Color, contrast, reflectivity, incandescence; these were meaningless concepts to tehm. He could, however, sense almost as if by echolocation, the outline of objects, their density, position, and velocity.

The problem was the range. Twenty feet is a tremendously small bubble with which to fully map a forest.

The monsters weren't helping either. He'd yet to fight any of them, relying on his hearing to help him avoid such encounters, but constantly having to skirt away from danger seemed to take more time than the surveyal was taking.


Continuing on towards new and unexplored territory in what could only really be described as a swamp, tehm ceased his canvasing and begin walking quickly forward through the zone.

(I'm looking for conifers, wherever the hell they are, it's not in a swamp.)

Although it was impossible to walk a totally straight line, the dense vegetation and monsters made sure of that, the going was still much faster than attempting to survey every inch of a several square mile forest.

After a few hours, tehm heard something he had never heard in all of his exploration. He quietly approached, being careful not to make any sound.

Cocking his head to the side, tehm strained to hear any detail that could confirm or deny his suspicions.

After a moment, he steeled his nerve and begin cautiously approaching what he was now sure was a battle. Until he got within 10' he would be unable to get any real details, close enough that many classes could strike him down at once, but tehm had to know.

(How does combat work now?)

With great trepidation, tehm carefully moved closer towards the battlefield.

Word Count: 586

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.

[Arrasi]

UNKNOWN SONGS THAT TRAVELERS SING THEY SOUND FAMILIAR TO ME

This was bad. Arrasi knew this Courier mission was going to be tricky, but she didn't think it would be this hard. She pulled out her map again just as her live checkpoint marker disappeared again. Whoever she was supposed to be delivering the package to kept moving out of her range. The blinking dot of his location on her map kept moving frantically all over the place. Couldn't he just stay in one spot for five minutes? It was hard enough for Arrasi to navigate outside London by herself: to have her target running around like a chicken with its head cut off only made her mission more tedious than it needed to be. She silently cursed the player that had given her the mission in the first place. He had been a much higher level than her, far more suited to handling the wilderness than she was. Maybe he was one of those awful troll players who got a kick out of watching low-level players suffer. Either way, Arrasi was going to get her mission done, because “fast and reliable service” was the motto she always lived up to. She shoved the map back into her bag and headed in the direction she had last seen the pillar of light. Her target was still around in that area, so soon enough she would be in checkpoint range again. She'd just have to make sure she made a mad dash for the pillar of light this time before he got away again. If only she had the next skill that came along with the class – being able to run faster would have certainly made this mission easier. Now that she was navigating through a swamp, everything seemed too slow to her. The checkpoint light lit up in front of her again just as she stepped into visible range of a group of other players. She stopped as soon as she saw him, losing her checkpoint light and her target once again. Now that she was in the midst of this scene, though, she knew it could wait. If her target was so desperate for whatever it was she was delivering, then maybe he would finally be smart enough to stop so that she could find him. For now, she was more interested in the scene in front of her: a sorcerer fighting a snail mob, an assassin just sitting around, and a....a monk stumbling about with a blindfold on. Arrasi cocked her head to the side in confusion. What kind of scene had she just walked in on? They certainly weren't a guild party or anything considering how lackluster their performance was against the snails already. The sorcerer was going to be pummeled if the assassin didn't step in anytime soon, and the monk was, well....Arrasi couldn't even begin to figure out what he was trying to do, but he was only a few steps away from stumbling head first into the snails. She pulled her flute out of her bag so she could do her usual trick of knocking out the enemy into dreamland, but paused before she could hit the skill on her menu. It wasn't going to be much help at the moment, so she decided to do something else. ”You should probably stop,” Arrasi said to the monk, a statement that was nearly useless as she reached out to grab his arm and halt him herself. Words: 571

MADE BY MINNIE OF FTS & GANGNAM STYLE

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+Battle Perception +Drunken Monkey -[BLIND]

"It's ok, use your song.", tehm said quietly, extending a hand out behind him, palm extended, towards the small bard; beckoning her to stay back.

"Watch them closely. They aren't fast, but your rapier could break if it hits the shell. Avoid the big one at all costs."

Now that he could clearly detect how the monsters in this world reacted to adventurers, combat seemed far less scary than it had when he had imagined it in his mind. He still had no idea how he would begin to deal damage effectively to an overgrown snail, but it had become obvious to him that the normal monsters of this land had not inherited the intelligence that the people of the land had.

These creatures still obeyed the logic of an mmorpg. The sorcerer had aggroed all of the snails to begin with and until tehm did something to provoke hate on one of the snails, none of them would seek to attack him.

Tehm knew that he needed to help the sorcerer; <Eadon> was level 13, much higher than himself or the snails, however, he could not fend off all of the attackers at once. If the new arrival had taken "Sleep" then this fight would be a cinch, but since she had hesitated in using her song, it was more likely that she had taken another skill.

Tehm realized that he needed to "peel" the level 1 snails off of Eadon, one by one, if only to prevent them from interrupting the casting of the higher leveled sorcerer, but he had no idea how he was supposed to do this without a servicable weapon.

(How the hell am I supposed to punch a snail?)

Cursing softly under his breath, tehm shifted his weight low, just touching his hands to the ground, and quickly scampered a few wide steps in an arc around the snails encircling Eadon.

Tehm struck out with his walking stick like a spear at the fleshy body of one of the level one snails, then rolled backwards as soon as he connected in preparation for the snail moving towards him when he jumped onto its aggro table.

Word Count: 367

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.

[Eadon]

It was actually somewhat... ironic in a way... that the only times Eadon ever seemed to run into large groups of monsters was when a bunch of other adventurers were conveniently close enough to help out with the ensuing fight. It was also a rather interesting thing to think about. Perhaps Elder Tales had an in built scaling system, by which more monsters would spawn when more adventurers were around to fight them. it was entirely possible. It most definitely wasn't a new or novel concept in the world of MMO's, having content scale in difficulty depending on how many players were nearby to deal with it. One other game he had heard of had had something similar to it... Dynamic events, or something if he remembered right. Whatever, now wasn't the time to be thinking about why there was a tonne of snails out to kill him. Now was the time to be killing said tonne of snails. Well, you know. At least trying his best not to get swarmed and killed by the snails in question. Because that seemed the more likely scenario right now... "Hey, idiots!" Eadon yelled out at the other adventurers who seemed intent on just standing around and watching him get killed, "Pick a snail or two and fight them, instead of standing there and gaping like a fish. It's not that freaking hard!" Listening to his own advice, and hoping he hadn't come across as too much of a douche, Eadon watched as the monk quickly drew the aggro of one of the snails. Most of the snails here were of roughly the same level as the other adventurers - low first level things. That big one, though... If he was right about scaling, it had spawned because he was here in this low leveled zone. The big snail was much higher level, and could easily kill the others if given half a chance. he would need to focus on keeping that ones aggro locked onto him, while also diminishing the size of the snail horde. Struck by an idea, Eadon grinned, before quickly taking up an en garde stance. "Come get me, you big ugly snail! Fragarach Arms!" On the last two words, the sorcerers rapier started to glow with an eery green light. Eadon smiled happily. So the new skill he had taken worked... He had also taken the liberty of having an item made - one which would make this particular skill even more powerful. Glancing briefly at the bracelet, Eadon was pleased to note that the Celtic knot accessory was also glowing with that same green light. This should be interesting. Watching as the huge snail charged at him, Eadon timed his swing just right, waiting for the snail to come within reach of his blade. Swinging the sword forwards, he caught the beast on one of its antennae, slicing the appendage off . That was not the only damage done to the huge snail, however. A blast of powerful wind emanated from the blade, sending it flying backwards - away from him, and away from his ad hoc party members. Taking advantage of the primary enemies temporarily stunned state, Eadon quickly triggered his Inferno Strike skill, before thrusting his rapier into the soft underside of one of the lower leveled snails that had snuck too close to him. The sharp blade of the rapier sunk all the way into its gloopy flesh, before igniting and literally roasting the snail alive in a firey inferno of death. The red heads eyes widened in surprise. He was higher level, sure.... But it was still a bit of a shock to see that he could one shot some of these enemies with his higher level gear and skills. Whatever the case. That was one down, and one major threat distracted. Only nine more low level snails to go... Not to mention somehow defeating that monster snail, as well. The situation was salvageable, but he would have to rely on his new found... allies... in order for them to get out of here alive.  That in mind, Eadon quickly opened up his menu and sent each an invite. "Accept the party invite, so we can read each others status. Let's kill these low life snails!"

WORDS: 713 TAGS: Eadon, metroexibit, Arrasi, tehm SONG: Where The Lonely Ones Roam NOTES: Mwahahahaha. OP rapier and sorcerer skills are OP. I love my spellsword build way too much.

Template by Eadon of Log Horizon

[metroexibit]

Metro chucked at the sight of them all. He noticed the stumbling of the monk who was most likely ether blind or drunk, probably both for all he knew. The bard was hesitant and squirrelly at best. They were both level one so they would be more or less cannon fodder. Metro himself was level 13 with a level 9 hunter subclass so at this point killing level one snail with a basic attack was over kill. The bigger one however seemed to represent more of a challenge but seeing as how this sorcerer seemed more then capable of dealing with something like this why should he exert himself. This was the saddest bunch of adventurers he had ever met. Then he felt blue eyes scold him in the back of his mind. “Alright, alright ill help them. Just don’t come crying to me when I end up taking all the glory from them.” He thought as he noticed the party invite. He slowly got to his feet and accepted it. He started to walk toward the group of snails then it slowly turned into a jog then a run to a full on sprint. He pulled out his short sword and held it with both hands at his side. He focused on one of the snails and within seconds leaped at abnormally fast speed, striking upward. He then looked at one of the other snails and used his <shadow bind> ability by extending his arm toward the snail he opened his palm in its direction then closed his hand to lock it in place. Its shadow was quickly wrapped in dark tentacles in which prevented any kind of movement. He then ran over to it, jumping in the air and impaling the shell of the creature with his sword. One of the other snails jumped at him as he pulled out his sword. He used his <hide walk> ability in order to disappear from the things sight long enough to step to the side and grab the thing by its eye stocks in mid air. He then proceeded to stab the thing and kill it also.

He now turned his attention to the giant snail that was now recovering from the sorcerers attack. He ran over to it and using up the last of his remaining mana he activated the skill <accel dance> by running up to the snail, leaping into the air while spinning. He slashed down on the snail then proceeded to dance around it, slashing and stabbing at the snail. His attacking speed increasing with each attack, this was going to be a piece of cake he thought.

[Arrasi]

UNKNOWN SONGS THAT TRAVELERS SING THEY SOUND FAMILIAR TO ME

The Monk, however crazy he appeared to be (seriously, who chose those appearance settings on an avatar?) had a point, although it was kind of redundant for her to use a sleeping spell on a bunch of snails. Weren't they slow enough already? Not really, considering how easily they were overtaking the other players. This was...weird to say the least. Her flute was out of her inventory, just idly waiting in her hand, but she was hesitant until she heard the Sorcerer shouting at her. She made a small squeak, slightly frightened that he had called her out on her inaction, but finally she pulled up the skills section on her menu. There it was, the only Bard skill she had at the moment: that stupid lullaby melody. She was growing tired of its ineffectiveness on the larger monsters she had come across. Most of the time it would just make them dizzy, but other monsters around her level seemed to respond appropriately. She activated the skill and let the melody begin to work its magic. Within a few seconds, the snails closest to her began to slow down as their eyes closed and drooped to the sides. The other ones, especially the big one that occupied Eadon, were not affected in the least. They were distracted by the increasing amount of aggro that the other players were accruing from them anyway. Now that there were some easy targets, Arrasi pulled her rapier from her inventory and gripped it in her right hand. It felt awkward to hold such a weapon in a physical format. As she took a moment to inspect the graphics of the blade, the party invite blinked in front of her. She didn't even have to think twice before accepting the offer. Associating herself with a group was going to be majorly helpful, especially now that she could see what kind of stats they had running. The higher-leveled ones seemed to be doing okay, but the Monk had a slew of status problems that made Arrasi wonder how he even managed to function in the game world. She took a deep breath in order to make herself focus again. There were two sleeping snails in front of her. The sleeping effect wouldn't last for too long, so she had to take advantage of the moment while she could. Holding her rapier in the best way she could manage, she began to swing at the monsters, taking extra care not to hit their shells. The blade didn't do much damage, but it was already wearing away at her first enemy. Words: 433

MADE BY MINNIE OF FTS &amp;amp; GANGNAM STYLE

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+Battle Perception +Drunken Monkey -[BLIND] -[DRUNK]

Six level 1 snails remained, along with the area boss.

Three of the trash mobs had been dealt with summarily by the assassin, but his focus was now on the boss. The young bard, as it turned out, had chosen sleep as her initial skill; this meant that there were now only three level 1 snails standing between the sorcerer and an easy end to this fiasco. The solution was obvious.

Although this new world seemed just as real as earth, it was still an mmorpg, with mobs that obeyed, essentially, the same logic as the mobs in elder tales had. This meant that as reluctant as his body was to do it, there was but one correct course of action for tehm to take.

(Damn it all...)

Leaping to his left, tehm slashed at the eyestalk of another snail before quickly scampering behind Eadon. Without waiting for the second snail to switch targets, tehm stabbed out at yet another snail before sprinting at full speed to kick the fourth.

Pausing momentarily to make sure that the four snails were turning to follow him, tehm began scampering in a large circle around the clearing in the dense swamp; as he ran he accepted the party invite extended by the sorcerer, <Eadon>.

(God, I must look insane. A grown man acting like a monkey and trying to lead a parade of snails through a swamp. It's almost as ridiculous as being trapped in an mmorpg for real...)

Tehm would have smiled at his own private joke had the punchline not hit so close to home. The fact was, they were trapped in a video game and the actions he was taking, no matter how silly they looked, had been tried and tested for years.

What tehm was attempting was a strategy known as "kite-tanking". Situations in which there was one major "boss" and a swarm of smaller "trash mobs" were a common feature of raids and dungeons in most mmorpgs. Perhaps the most common way of dealing with these types of encounters involved the use of one "main tank" who would draw the attention of the boss, while the rest of the group attempted to keep him alive or damage the enemy, and an "off-tank" who would be responsible for collecting up all of the additional mobs and forcing them to harmlessly follow him around the area so that they could not attack the rest of the group while they dealt with the main boss.

As foolish as he felt running in circles parading these snails around the swamp, tehm was performing the best role he knew how for this encounter; that of the off-tank. The role for which monk had been designed.

Word Count: 452

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.