Well, I got bored playing Bottom. No, that’s not entirely true – he’s still fun and all, but Yellow Rat Bastard and I are trying to figure out what we want to play when Mordred opens up. I mean, it’s probably not gonna make much of a difference – I’ll still die in like one hit, the only difference will be what I’m wearing when I die, I suspect.
But to this end, YRB and I moved over to Merlin and started out in the Midgard realm. This was a pretty new thing for us; normally we play humans, because – well, that’s all there is in Albion. But now we were presented with a veritable CORNUCOPIA of choices! A PLETHORA, even!
And of course, we both settled on dwarves. I suppose it has something to do with our perceptions of ourselves as little, angry and spiteful men. Well, -I’m- a man. That freak chose to be a women (and what that says about his perception of himself, I shudder to think!). Yeah – so if you happen across Kwipster and Yellowrat and you start flirting with Yellowrat and you see Kwipster begin puking; well, now you know why.
Anyway, YRB wants to play a Skald. I don’t know anything about any of the races, but I figure I like playing support characters so I’ll give a Healer a try. YRB’s had some time to level, so he’s up to like 7th already. He gets me to his town, Fort Atla, and then tells me to start trying to level. His advice? Quests. Okay, I’m game for that – they usually are fun, and will hopefully teach me a bit about the lay of this wacky land.
So the first thing my trainer tells me to do is see this chick, Amora (or something like that). Yeah, okay, helping the damsel in distress! I’m all about that! I charge my stubby little legs over to their house. There’s Amora, and her daughter, Magnild. Now, I’m not the greatest Healer in the world, I’ll admit; but it seems to me if this girl was so sick, she should be lying down in bed!
You say, “Hey, you should be lying down in bed!”
Magnild says, “I don’t feel so well.”
You say, “Well no crap you don’t feel so well! Lie down!”
Magnild says, “I don’t feel so well.”
You say, “Uh, right. Lie down? Please?”
Magnild says, “I don’t feel so well.”
You say, “Right, so you’re not really -sick-, per se; more like stupid, eh?”
Well, let’s see what the mother has to say…
Amora says, “Oh, please help me Kwipster! My daughter’s been poisoned by the bite of the water snakes outside of town! The healer tells me he can prepare an antidote, but she needs the venom of five of the snakes! Will you help me?”
You say, “Uh…”
You say, “You know, I’m not sure snake venom’s gonna make your daughter any less stupid.”
Amora says, “Will you help me?”
You say, “Hello? Snake venom? Versus stupid? Not much help?”
Amora says, “Will you help me?”
You say, “Right, double dose, coming right up.”
Sigh. So off I go to get some snake venom (stupid juice). I’m not really confident this stuff is gonna do much good. Again, novice healer that I am, it always seemed to me that helping stupid people involved doing things like putting their hands in fire and screaming ‘BAD’ in their ears repeatedly until they stopped playing with the damn lighter. Then again, making them drink poison sounded awfully appealing to me. This is, after all, the dark ages. Maybe this was something like leeching. For those of you that don’t know, in medieval times healers used to put leeches on the bodies of the ill people. This didn’t really help the ill people, but they pretty quickly learned to stop going on sick call for every friggin’ bang and bellyache they suffered. That’s why there grew to be such a problem with gangreen back then.
“Bob, your arm’s rotting off! Go see the healer and let him put some leeches on your face and genitals!”
“Nah, thanks, I’ll just wait a bit till it falls off, thanks.”
Back to our story…I run out front of the fort, and sure enough, there’s lots of those little snakes out here. I mean, like all OVER the place. And they’re about as easy to kill as… as…
You have died!
Well, as me, it turns out.
But after a bit of trickery, I manage to get five snakes to give up their juice. It involved some cigarettes and some dirty magazines. If you’ve never seen snake pr0n, count yourself lucky.
I trudge happily back in town to get the antidote, but dig this: our master Healer bimbo has to brew this stuff up! Oh, okay, fine. Just throw it in the microwave for 30 seconds and we’re set, right? Wrong.
IT TOOK FOUR DAYS.
FOUR…DAYS.
Yeah, I pretty much got up to level five while I’m waiting for this stupid stuff to be finished. And you can BET I didn’t do any more quests for the idjit’s in this place. I was sure my next task was going to be trimming someone’s toenails or something equally enjoyable.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe there’s like my quests, and everyone else gets something else.
“Oh, my son got his head stuck in the railing! We need the toenail from a hobgoblin to craft a Hammer of Freeing to pound his head out from between the rail…oh, sorry, thought you were Kwip. Here, could you run this bag over to the armorer? I’ll give you phat xp and whatever I can convince Kwip to give me.”
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