There was another components shop in the shadow wizards tower and it was again randomized what things it sold. Isaiah still didn’t have any level 3 spells. He could cast them if he had them but his level was way ahead of his spellbook’s content. So he decided to go back to the goblin’s stronghold and kill the witch and mage a few more times. Dryzil was in a different room then the other times he went there being annoying and offering things.
He got 2 scrolls then killed some goblins farming the experience and a little gold. He didn’t collect their gear this time because it filled up his inventory too quickly and he wanted to head back to town flush with scrolls.
It was then that he noticed the world wide notification.
The grim reaper cackles with glee as it accepts Tanis’s soul.
Tanis (OOC): Well there is 4 million gold down the drain
(OOC) Tanis sighs.
Soth (OOC): Ouch
Someone (OOC): Not something for the lines.
Isaiah’s player boggled at this. His character has around 40,000 experience points right now. At what level would a death take 4 million? That would mean he had 40 Million experience points. Killing goblins was giving him a few hundred experience points here and there. It seems like a little less than at lower level levels. It looks like outleveling a place is still a thing. He’ll have to go check out that map in shadow and find another area to adventure soon. He decided after he got all the scrolls he could get from those goblin casters it was time to move on.
Isaiah’s player was going on muscle memory moving back and forth between the two monsters. He just had to type east twice to get to one. Then he had to type west twice to get back to the other one; the rooms just needed about 15 minutes to reset. It gave him a little bit of time to use the annoying heal skill to top off Isaiah's hit points.
East east, kill, west west kill, heal, wait.
He repeated the cadence.
East east, kill, west west kill, heal, wait.
One of the nice things about mudclents is that there is a feature that can repeat the last command by just mashing the enter key. It takes 4 keystrokes to type west. But one keystroke to hit enter. This feature was useful going down longer roads like inside of shadow between shops or the trek west to the goblin stronghold. It was somewhat dangerous to use when there were aggressive monsters around though. If every adjacent room had monsters that would attack as soon as a player entered then instead of going to a spot to stop and heal it would be a spot where a monster was there to finish said character off. Isaiah normally played it safe in the goblin stronghold and did the exits one at a time. But he decided to get cocky when farming the scrolls the goblins dropped to see how quickly he could get from one fight to the next.
That is how it led to him mashing east one too many times. Instead of getting the default ‘you cannot go that way’ when he typed a bad direction he found a hidden room. It was called ‘lair of the goblin assassin.’
Someone whispers to you: “Just like you kill my kin I will slay you!”
Someone stabs you in the back!
HP: 5/35
Goblin assassin appears from the shadows.
Goblin assassin misses you.
You slash goblin in the right arm with sword of insanity.
Isaiah’s player freaked out at the near one shot and frantically typed west to get out of there. He did it quick enough to get out of there before another round passed. Isaiah’s player’s cheeks were pinched and he jumped in his seat. That text scrolling down a screen could cause such a jump scare was a testament of how attached he was to his character’s well being.
One room away from that nasty goblin wasn’t enough. Also if the goblin witch respawned he could be in trouble. He retreated to the middle room. He was met with a not nice sight. Dryzil was there cackling like he normally did and offering all the items (not that there was anything) in the room as lightning bolts crashed down.
Isaiah really needed to heal but he was shaken. He felt vulnerable with such low hit points and having some high level assassin cackling in the same room didn’t help. So, he bee-lined it out of the goblin stronghold. The goblin king attacked him but he was quick enough to not get a single round in, same with some of the other goblins and finally he flew past the gate guards and out into the road west of shadow.
He remember his chance encounter with Gabrielle there. She had healed him completely with one spell. It sure would be nice if she could do that again right now. The heal skill sucked. Cleric’s were awesome. Healing spells were awesome. Even that cure light wounds spell he had before he recreated was better than the heal skill that healed single digits...sometimes.. And had a big cooldown. He wished he had some money to buy potions but they were not cheap. Gabrielle healed him for free. Maybe he should seek her out. No No No! Don’t think like that. She’s the follower of loviatar the goddess of torture. Can a goddess of torture have clergy that are not evil? Isaiah is lawful good,thank you very much. In a way Gabrielle had a lot going for her. She was beautiful and dangerous. That made her incredibly sexy. Ack! Stop, no more of that line of thought. Focus on something else.
Isaiah had six scrolls in his inventory. He started transcribing them between heals.
One of them was a duplicate so he would sell that at the general store. The spells he transcribed were:
Chill Touch
Identify
Monster Summoning 1
darkness
Ray of Enfeeblement
Chill touch, ray of enfeeblement and Darkness didn’t need components. Darkness was level 2. Chill touch was level 1. It was a necromancy spell. Identify was level 1 and it needed components. Identify needed a pearl and an owl feather. Monster summoning 1 needed a tiny bag and a small candle.
Identify and Monster summoning were likely to be the most useful for him. Fodder was always useful provided it could stay alive for a while. Chill touch could miss but it lowered strength a little bit if they failed a saving throw. Ray of Enfeeblement didn’t do any damage but it lowered strength a lot. Like chill touch it could miss if the target had too good of an armor class for Isaiah to hit it.
Isaiah healed up and went back to lathander’s temple to see if anyone was there. He decided to advance both his classes because he had the experience needed to advance. However, it errored out.
You need to write a description for your character to advance. Do so by using the describe command.
Oh, having a description is a requirement. I suppose the wizards at this place take rollplay seriously. Isaiah thought back to the wall of faithless souls he saw the last time he died. He wondered how serious that cutscene actually was. If the roleplay was that serious he’d be in trouble if he didn’t pick something soon. Dying and losing your character would make this game not have any players right? No one could be that masochistic. He only knew the location of 2 temples. Lathander’s and Mystra’s. Mystra’s was right next to Shadow on the way to the goblin stronghold while lathander’s was past it on that quiet forest road. The only clergy he knew were of Lathander and Loviatar. Hmm, choices are hard.
Isaiah’s player wrote up a simple description so that he could advance to level 6.
Isaiah seems plain looking for an elf. He has sharp features, a slim build
and is in good shape. He has observant amber eyes and bright hair of
Silver.
He had some goals. His first goal at the moment was to advance Isaiah. He accomplished this right after writing that three sentence description. Some characters had a small essay written for their character’s description with colored text describing birthmarks, scars and the clothing they wore. Having clothing in a description seemed like a poor choice to him because changing gear would make it so the description clashes when what was actually equipped. That was not a big thing but it would bug him if he noticed.
Anyway, now Isaiah was a level 7/6 Fighter / mage. He could still only cast up to level 3 spells. Of which he had exactly zero. But at level 7 mage he could cast level 4 spells. Also there was the fact he had zero level 4 spells in his spellbook too. He also had 45 hit points now too with the levels. He almost had 100,000 experience points though. If he died not without banking some more experience would he lose a level? Regardless, little by little Isaiah was getting stronger.
Someone (OOC): I hate you all!
A bolt of lightning strikes finbar from the heavens leaving well.. Not much.
Raveena (OOC): huh?
Someone (OOC): Say goodbye to a dirty abusive cheater.
Someone (OOC): See rid board for more info.
Isaiah’s player wondered what this was about.
Isaiah (OOC): Where is this rid board?
Someone (OOC): It is under MAH
Isaiah (OOC): Thank you
Isaiah’s player had to do a double take. The gods of this realm, the developers, would personally delete player characters. This wasn’t like a console game where someone could exploit the hell out of a trick they found. Well, they could exploit the hell out of something but if they got caught or did something that angered the people running this game enough it could result in rather permanent consequences. Whatever this Finbar guy did it was likely very bad.
Isaiah bowed to the altar in the temple of Lathander and headed to where the rid board was. It was a room that was set up like a formless void. Lost souls were flying around suffering for eternity. There was a board and it had 15 or so posts. Some of the people rid were for cheating a surprising number were for disrespecting an immortal.
The latest entry was the Finbar character. Isaiah had never interacted with him. He didn’t even see him online when he last checked the ‘who list’. The entry was just one sentence, ‘Rid for abusing a spell and being a general asshole.’ Well, whatever he did, the immortals were really vague about what it was.
Would this finbar come back? Can someone make a new character after being ‘rid’? Isaiah’s player guessed being ‘rid’ wasn’t the same as a site ban. The game ran on telnet so unless the server blocked a certain IP number then someone could just recreate a new character. Isaiah’s player thought the offending person would have to have a lot of gaul to reuse the name finbar. If it happened to him he’d start over with a new name.
These were dark musing and so Isaiah left this room filled with lost souls. He had questions but worried the immortal who hated them all would just use that ‘rid’ hammer on him because someone asking about admin abilities might be considered a hacker.
However, these big thoughts were beyond Isaiah’s player. Deity choice can wait. How to deal with immortal wizards can wait. He decided that he should focus on something he could do. Getting revenge on that stinking goblin that stabbed him in the back. With his 45 HP he could take that stab and let his sword of insanity do the talking.
After leaving a wake of dead goblins Isaiah found that hidden exit. He of course collected the scrolls that the goblin mage and goblin witch dropped but sadly they were duplicates of what he already had. It wasn’t a total waste of time though because he could sell them for a few hundred gold. He needed gold badly. Those spell components were not going to pay for themselves.
Here it goes:
Someone whispers to you: “Just like you kill my kin I will slay you!”
Someone stabs you in the back!
HP: 20/45
Goblin assassin appears from the shadows.
Goblin assassin pokes you in the right leg.
HP: 15/45
You slash goblin in the right arm with sword of insanity.
Sword of insanity tells you: “What’s this do?”
Mana falls from heaven
You slash goblin in the torso with sword of insanity.
Goblin missed you.
You slash goblin in the head with sword of insanity.
You slash goblin in the left foot with sword of insanity.
Goblin drops dead before you.
Isaiah ate the mana that was sitting on the ground.
HP: 17/45
Thank you sword of insanity for free healing even if it is only 2 HP.
The loot the goblin dropped was a handful of silver, copper and gold coins. It also dropped a bone knife. The bone knife was a basic thing except for some glowing runes carved into it. This seemed to hit it might be magical. Isaiah cast detect magic.
Bone knife(glowing slightly)
Bingo, magical weapon acquired! He could actually use it too. Two swords of insanity would be awesome. However, Isaiah wasn’t a ranger. Only rangers could wield two medium sized weapons. As a fighter though he could wield a medium and a small sized weapon. He went to wield the bone knife in his off hand. A costly mistake was almost repeated. The sneaky bone knife might be cursed. Isaiah typed to cast his new spell ‘Identify’ on it.
You do not have the components to cast this spell.
Dang it… that stupid fail message. Where was that component shop? Isaiah needs some components. His components bag has exactly zero things in it.
