Zekiran_Immortal

Used to play a home-brew Call of Cthulhu game with friends every week, it's where some of my most precious characters come from.

Originally though, we were playing in D&D's "Gothic Earth" rules. So the characters were pretty much Victorian adventurers, done up as level 1 D&D folk.

The cast: myself as Istvan, the "Scientist, comma, mad" inventor; and friends as Reginald the .... well, he wasn't REALLY a thief, but everyone assumed he was; Les the Great White Hunter type; and Mordechai the mortician.

Our GM was running us through the standard CoC premade "The House" adventure. If you've ever played CoC you know what this is about. We're called in to investigate a 'haunting'. Being the scientific minded type, Istvan is like, "fff, let's blow it up." but then as we get there things do seem a little odd. Place has had several families either go missing or insane, murders in the place, whatever. Istvan still thinks it's maybe gasses or something.

So eventually we head into the house full on. There's a long hallway with doors coming off the left and right walls, at reasonably normal spaces. Right side door, storage room. Left side was like a library or some other dusty spot.

Istvan started writing up his "rules of adventuring", after surviving this, which start off with "Research Research Research." Second is "Never Split From The Group."

While Les, Mord and Reg are off in the storage room up at the front of the house, somehow Istvan gets a little farther into the next room. It's a dining room - and then there's no opening behind him back to the other room... DUN DUN DUNNNN...

The knives, forks and such begin dancing about on the table, it's been set up and has a soup tureen and all. I managed to duck as most of the silverware throws itself at full speed at my head, only getting hit once by a fork that lodges into my shoulder and starts doing a spaghetti twirl.

I bolt - past the soup tureen which explodes rotten rice soup at me... COVERED in ick, which is another of the later additions to Istvan's List, "Everything Icky Happens To Istvan".

I made it into the next room which was a pantry kitchen area. I manage to calm down a teensy bit until I notice there is some kind of slender tentacle thing trying to creep up my leg, and more things probably waiting to gnaw on me. I scream, tear the fork out of my arm - it was the only weapon around, after all - and start stabbing *the potato that had grown wild after several months in an unused house*... Then I get up and run still screaming down the main hall and back toward the other guys.

... Change of pace.

The GM turns from me, and back to the other guys. And says, "you hear a wailing, shrieking madman, he's coming at you with a bloody weapon in his hand! What do you do!!"

It was so hilarious, because the guy playing Les really didn't want to shoot my character, but even I was all, "dude, you have NO idea it's me under all that crap and screaming and bloody, AND you're a first-level D&D character. You can't hit the broad side of a barn with that gun yet! Go ahead and shoot!"

It was probably one of the funniest moments in gaming history... and we played the same adventure at least once more, with our character's kids on a holiday adventure...

Istvan eventually became infected with a shapeshifting curse, a cheetah-morph, lost his old religion and became a priest of Bast in order to stop changing under the moon's influence and more or less under his own. Les ... helped do that, because... um, he managed to shoot the shapeshifter in the head *right where Istvan was standing* ... they'd already been fighting, so there was PLENTY of blood-to-blood contact. B'blam.

Reg became a bit of a mage, but we shifted player groups after a while, so we lost him and added Nadine, a refugee from a Deadlands campaign, and Mbolawe, a Kenyan and very impressive shaman type, as well as others along the way... It was such a great group.

All the freaking time.

Last night, for instance. Inspired by a piece of art by imagesbyalex when he was on for the freekend, I misread one of the words in his comment as "Fire Blender" instead of "Fire Bender" and... yes, I had to make Fire Blender, a fire/kin tank.

There are doubtless dozens of others on my accounts, oh - oh yeah, my favorite icky one, "Screaming Meatsack" which was another Deviantartists' description of their new nephew.

It was not an issue for me, but I live in California. However, over on the Steam forums there was at least one person who received his email about the event *after it finished*, and thus wasn't even aware of it let alone being able to participate. :/ I feel really bad for folks who aren't necessarily checking back all the time for their COH fix, if they've deactivated for whatever reason. And it definitely sucks that someone, somewhere, even in Canada, isn't able to come around for the free days.

Yay, I love the Halloween events. And FINALLY the chance to use that new costume slot, on my Praetorian, without having to leave Praetoria...

Yeee! Happy birthday Trick!

/e confetti
/e booze and party hats

I think we need to reinstate the star system for you, and you alone, because you'd have 10 or 20 of them out of 5.

I don't do numbers.

But I'm sure there are folks who'll be able to help you tweak your builds. I think a lot of us are going to be doing this, you're way more prepared than me that's for sure

1. Are you male or female?
Female

2. What ATs do you mostly play, and for what reason(s)?
Controllers - I like being able to stop anything from getting near me, while I dot them down...
Tanks - when I first ventured into the realm of melee, I chose a fire/fire tank and enjoyed it a lot. Beating on things is sometimes very helpful.

3. Redside, blueside, purpleside, or any combination of the above?
Generally blue side, but I am madly in love with Praetoria. I don't like redside that much, though the stories are really good ( much better than blue) I just don't like the dark atmosphere. I am a hero at heart.

4. What are your favorite story arcs?
Freakolympics, that one with the Seer and Ghost Widow which I have only done once and can't remember the name of, most if not all of the Praetorian missions.

5. What makes you like this game?
Everything. It's like a second home to me. I love the visuals, the ambient sounds, the music, and of course being a hero. I love the costume generator, and have many characters that I made purely to see my old creations from other pen and paper games come to life.

6. What other games do you play?
Half life 1 and 2, Portal, L4d, many stupid online flash games, recently got into knights of the old republic.

7. How long have you been playing?
Since July of 04, daily, except for a break without money for a few months earlier this year.

8. How many alts do you have, what is the average level range, and how many are level 50?
I have 4 fifties, and I have well over 200 characters spread across 4 accounts. Only one account is active, it's the only one with the 50s. Most of my characters are under level 10, though many on Protector on my main account are in the 20-40 range now.

9. Do you bother with softcaps, set bonuses, and all that numerical stuff? What difficulty settings to you normally use?
I only look at set bonuses if they are already on sets that I need the raw effects from. I typically fight as either +1 level or +2 heroes, with bosses, no AVs (because I generally solo), though sometimes that's too much for a character I'll drop it back to normal.

lol Okay that's just pure awesome though.

>_> This means I must choose red or blue for my Praetorian.... since she can't participate until she's out of her beautiful city! Unless I'm mistaken and Praetorians can access Pocket D now?

Oh man that's sad. I don't know whether I'd ever teamed with her, but it's never good to hear that a player has gone. :/ Do pass our wishes on to her family.

After he beats the bad guy in the last installment, that will be all there is to tell. She's not returning to the stories, as far as I know. She's just as tired of this as some of you guys are.

Personally I can't wait to see how this all looks. Grim, big battles. Wonder if they will put the fanservice epilogue at the end?

I loved the panning down from the bright Magisterium tower down into the sewers. That was beautiful!!

Well worth it!

And, definitely the "most interesting man in Praetoria" sounds like fun!

Happy birthday MI!!

Aww, well PK it was fun while it all lasted!

Yer stuff will still be here, don't forget to check up for freebie weekends.

I love Primus. They ride the line between absolute crap and fantastic musical genius. I think it's the bass that really pushes it toward genius.

It looks so awesome.


On another note, I love your avatar.

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Be with her, tell her we feel for her.

While on the subject of donations, sign up for the Bone Marrow list too. So easy, so important.

I know that Paragon needs another full time mod, poor Ocho was so overworked. Avatea is essentially the only other full time one they have so far as I know. It's far too big of a job for just one person, or even two or three. These forums are huge, and old, and have a LOT of activity. It's true that they're much tamer than other game forums or forums in general out there in the big wide world web.... but still, it's a job.

I'd love to do it if I didn't have to move to San Jose. :/