The New Game Master

There was no action on Last Chaos at all until lunchtime was getting relatively near, when I logged in MistressDomino and RedRyder, so that MD could get Red's recent loot for resale, and take over the white horse. Then ColonelScarlet passed the level 37 pale blue horse over to Red, for her to mount and set up with the "horse buff" skills. MD's hatchling was only on level 10, so it seemed like a good idea to pass it over to the Colonel so that he could train it up a few levels for her - so we did that, and then ColonelScarlet headed down into Mrerac to visit the berserkers and bandits.

So that she still has a hatchling, meanwhile, to pick up loot, MistressDomino then went to Lorraine and Jajan to get a drake egg transformed into a new hatchling, before riding down to the Colonel to pass over a few items that he is usually the holder of, such as transformation scrolls and quest items. On the way there I noticed a group of Cerebrii in the main clearing, so someone must have killed the Grand Red Dragon there fairly recently, without bothering to tidy up afterwards.

In the afternoon I managed to give Kaerella, Katar version, a double session with the orc soldiers - two hours, each using a pssp. The first hour I had the place to myself, and managed exactly 300 skill points, while going up by 3.37%; the second hour wasn't so easy, though, first there was a healer called pveronica who tried to use my central room a little, and then went to the next room along, so that I could no longer attack the soldiers there when I ran out of others; she stayed for perhaps half an hour. And then a knight called GranTarian reached level 22 and decided he wanted to fight soldiers, and went to the corridor outside my axeman and sergeant "back room", which stopped me using the three of four soldiers at my end of that corridor. And there was another knight called PaTo who took over the room pveronica had been using. All in all, I was a bit squashed, so getting another 286 skill points, while going up by 3.19%, was the best I could have hoped for. That got Kaerella to 60% of the way through level 29, so there ought to be room for about a dozen more one-hour pssp sessions there before level 30 is reached.

Strangely, according to the Last Chaos website Auzura was due to have both its weekly Mad Monster Spawn, and today's "Epic Event", set in Strayana, at the same time. To keep up to date with any announcements about that, I logged on to Auzura after my food break, with Rage paying a short visit to the Temple of Forgetfulness, to try and start getting back the lost skill points from a few days ago

At about twenty to six, UK time, we got an unusual GM announcement: "The mage [GM]Valsharyn has perceived a strange magical vortex near Juno! Gather at 453.290 on Auzura-1! She is sure that the invisible vortex will spit out monsters in 15 minutes! Ascertain the monsters' deaths and [GM]Valsharyn will reward you!" ColonelScarlet, over on Katar-4, only got the second half of that, so people outside the Auzura server will generally have been a bit puzzled. Auzura later got "The monsters will arrive near Juno at 453.290 on Auzura-1 in 10 minutes!" - so Rage logged out from the Forgotten Temple, and, in case things got a bit dangerous, RedRider, my level 26 rogue, logged in on Auzura-1, and headed for the Mad Monster Spawn location.

We soon got announcements for the Epic Event as well, but somehow the MMS seemed a better bet than wandering around Strayana, especially on the loot side, And so it proved! I had slight misgivings about it being held on a PvP-enabled sub-server, but there didn't seem to be anything in the way of player-killing going on, I only ever saw a couple of people with PvP switched on. The event was slightly different from the traditional MMS, in that there were a few monsters one doesn't usually see there, but otherwise it was the business, as usual.

Since we didn't have a huge turnout, as other people will have gone to Strayana, things did go a bit slowly - and I think my character died more often than ever before, but that only cost me a few health pots, and the memory scrolls to get back to the MMS location. It must have been gone half past seven by the time we finished off the last Patriarch Botis, but the whole thing was fun, especially because the new game master, [GM]Valsharyn, did respond to players, and jokingly interact; she did some fighting too, though not using skills - she probably doesn't actually have skills sorted out, a GM's ability to level themself up wouldn't automatically give her the skill points to go with it.

Despite really taking twice as long as we should, we did get the reward of plenty more hands of the guard, bravery, and protection, after the last Botises and Flutons had been laboriously dealt with. And there were one or two people there who sulked rather vocally about all the experience and skill points they'd lost, and shouldn't they have a bit more loot to compensate; our hard-boiled, long-serving GMs would have dropped a few blue dragons on everyone's heads for that, but, since it was her first outing, Valsharyn was kind enough to give us an extra spawning of loot. As a number of people had left by then, that really helped fill RedRider's inventory, which ended up seriously overweight... and a rough calculation I made suggests that Red picked up at least 50 million's worth of goodies.

People lingered even after that, and Valsharyn continued to chat to people - I do like it when a GM gets involved like that. So, I lost any chance to go to even the second of the Strayana Epic Events, over on Katar. I was in time for the Cariae one, though; I arrived at five past eight, UK time, and found [GM]Kali and [GM]Krash outside Randol's north gate, and hardly anyone else. Then an announcement came up that things would start in five minutes. I had gone along initially as Barbarienne, but, with the time to spare, decided that maybe my level 27 rogue Karella would be a better bet, or at least a less risky one.

I don't think there can have been more than a couple of dozen people who took up the challenge, and some of them, or course, were more Karella's level than the high level you really need to stay alive in Strayana. Since just spawning extra monsters and leaving us to get on with it, as in Velpist and Prokion temples, wouldn't work with a whole outdoor map, [GM]Krash was the group leader, really; I don't think Kali did anything. He led us along the route we needed to take, but of course we were a bit slow, and a number of people who weren't used to Strayana tended to attack the local wildlife, even though it is generally non-aggressive and would have left us in peace, and that slowed us down too.

So, I guess that Krash did slightly lose patience with us - and of course there was another server for him to move on to. I didn't notice him logging out, but, while we were busy fighting our latest bunch of level 140 stuff, the announcement came up that the Epic Event was over, thank you for playing. So, no drops for us, and another unfinished Event - but we kept fighting for a little while, until Karella got killed for a second time, and was back in town.

A level 102 archer called Ariania had kindly recruited Karella, and a level 25 rogue called MySurvior, into her party, along with a level 99 titan called TheBourg; she had Recall, too, which was useful when one of us died and ended up back in town. She got called away at the end, though, so after Karella's second death, a return to where the few remaining people were still fighting didn't seem practical. There was some cash picked up along the way, and I got a piece of armour too - "Noticeable Stinger Pants", a level 91 item for a night shadow.

ColonelScarlet had kept busy, meanwhile - a repeat ks-er, the knight "huxy", did work his mischief, but the Colonel wasn't out of action for long, and MistressDomino's hatchling zoomed up from level 10 to level 16. Six levels in one day, starting just before lunch, can't be bad.