I was trying to get a decent screen shot of my new Frostfell quest armor when Buddy brutally attacked! One of Dora’s final tasks when she betrayed to Freeport was to befriend Buddy, and then take evil delight in killing him. But Dora used her new necromantic powers to bring him back. Somehow she brought him back ‘wrong’ and he grew to enormous size. He’s now the guardian of the guild hall…

But sometimes… when CERTAIN people forget to FEED the dog… he can be vicious.

Maybe it was the new wings that set him off. I didn’t feel like my wings matched the armor at all, so I wondered if that gnomish barber in West Freeport could fix that. And for a single gold piece, he could!

I didn’t think that a new wing design would set Buddy off, but I guess all he can really see of me is my wings.

Someone PLEASE call him off and feed him! I’m tired of hiding here under the woodworking table!

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If you’d been following Twitter yesterday, you’d have seen the drama as Nostalgia worked crafting writs so the guild could reach level 30 and be allowed to buy the smallest, cheapest guild hall. Even the smallest, cheapest guild hall is pretty expensive and perhaps 5-6x larger than the largest house you can buy. There is nothing small about any guild hall. They really are, large, stupid large, and omg wtf I need a map large.

Due to the heroic efforts of the Nostalgia crafters, the guild dinged 30 JUST before I got home. This was my first time home this week before 6:30; I’ve been trying to catch up with work and coming home later. The guild was parked in front of the guild hall, waiting for me :)

Since Dina doesn’t have good enough faction to purchase her loom, I had to switch to Dora, who has max faction with Freeport’s crafter society, to buy it.

We all donated status and some of us, coin, to pay for and maintain the hall. A couple of folks with too much status came by and donated some, and we now have enough status to keep the hall going for a very long time. Stargrace bought five amenities — NPCs and other features you can add to the guild hall. Five is all we’re allowed, for now. We got the druid who opens portals for you to any druid ring, an attuner that grants you a spell to port back to the guild hall, a fuel merchant, a rush order crafting writ giver, and a banker.

Because we are, after all, largely a guild of crafters, we went for the crafting things first.

I decorated my tailoring area a little; why not? After resizing the loom down to halfling size, I added a wardrobe for storing work in progress, a chair for when I get tired of standing, and a skull with a sword stuck in it resting on a small table because… well, because why not?

This is Buddy, the giant dog who roams our hall, keeping it prowler free. I wasn’t sure if he was really there or just my imagination, so I sat him right behind Stargrace as she was arranging books in the guild library. Her scream woke up people three guild halls away :) She said, “I was arranging the books when I heard some barking, and I thought someone had let their dog in here. Then I turned around and AGH!”.

Good times :)

Earlier, I’d been packing up Dora’s room when that STUPID FRIGGIN ZOMBIE jumped out at me from nowhere, so I’d already gotten my scream in. I need some Zombie Spray to keep those zombies away. Thank God my son wasn’t home to hear.

My guild room looks like front row center at a Spinal Tap concert. It needs a lot of work. I want to get a dungeon-y feel to it. Giant flaming pig heads are an interesting choice for any modern bedroom…

The hall is still pretty barren, but if I know Stargrace, it’s going to be something special in a little bit. You’re all invited to the open house, when we have one :)

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Five hours. Multiple trips into the pre-expansion EQ2′s end game zone. And more kindness and generosity than I had any right to expect.

And yet I encounter that time and time again in EQ2. I belong to a no-name guild, driftwood they acquired when Eternal Carnage merged with them, and everyone but me left again. I don’t have a base of guildies from which to draw to do quests and raids and stuff, so I rely on the pickup raiders.

In fact I was harvesting (which, since my push into tradeskills post-Live Update 24, has become as compulsive as foraging was when I was an EQ1 druid) – I was harvesting when someone called a raid on Maiden’s Gulch in Lavastorm to start the “Speaks as a Dragon” quest – the first in a quest line that leads to prismatic weapons. I joined, but there were only three of us. It seemed people who had done this before had no desire to do it again…

You zone in, kill a drakota or two, talk to this guy, done! Right? Laughs. Oh yes, that’s all there is to it…

Eventually enough people offered to help out to make a raid, and we zoned in, killed a drakota or two, talked to this guy and then…

And then… the next five hours. Fighting down to talk to Lord Nagafen; but (we were informed by a giant servant) he will not talk to mere mortals in anything but the Ancient Draconic tongue, a language long lost and even the fragments found, hidden away and themselves relost.

26 runes to gather – one for each letter. Half in easy zones. The other half…

We lost people as the night wore on, and we ran from zone to zone, gathering runes. Snuck into Qeynos for that one, danced in the streets of Freeport as the Qeynosians snuck in for the one there. Runnyeye and Rivervale, Befallen (er, Stormhold) and Fallen Gate, Permafrost and Cazic-Thule, Freeport… and the Obelisk of Lost Souls…

A year and a half ago, I’d lucked into a wonderful guild called Paradox. Pacific time and Freeport-based. I had a real incentive to level, and got a few good levels outside the Obelisk. I never did finish the access quest… last night, I did. But two of the three runes we needed to gather were hidden behind a locked door that needed a seperate access quest. We were stopped… but a friend of one of the team (we were down to three by then, me (59 troubador), a 70 swashbuckler and a 70 fury) had access and let us in.

The Obelisk is a pretty amazing zone. Most of it was gray. Except for the part I fell into and was instantly swarmed. Just happened to be the room with the last rune we needed. The others saved me. It wouldn’t be the last time.

I wish I’d taken some screenies of the deepest interior of the Obelisk. The place is bizarre. Odd flying things; scampering bits of animate night; a dungeon taken from the more twisted creatures of an early Final Fantasy game.

The last two runes were deep within Solusek’s Eye. Now, a level 70 character can stroll where they like throughout this amazingly large, astoundingly deep zone. Nothing will aggro them. Everything aggros a level 59. And everything sees through invisibility.

I expected them to ask me to hire a mage to summon me to the proper areas; but no, the others, who could have done this in five minutes without me, fought and killed all the hundred creatures in the way to get the final two runes. Back to Antonica to have the runes translated and learn the language. And then fight all the way to Nagafen once more – this time, just me and the swashbuckler. Ten minutes and he would have been done! And yet he babysat me the entire way.

I felt incredibly guilty that I had been doing crafting and the new betrayal quest instead of leveling up and saving them all this bother. They never said a word about my level aside from noting they’d have to fight down.

I am still shocked and forever grateful. Naggy wants me to summon his dead partner Lady Vox’s spirit back from the netherworld. How could I refuse?

Laolthias, I owe you a big one. And Amberstone. And Nalas. I never met any of you before, you didn’t know me, and yet you took a good chunk of time to show kindness. Never saw that in WoW – everyone was so focused on themselves.

And that’s not even the only example. I was harvesting (again; still) with LFG up. A level 70 mystic asks if I want to go to the Roost and farm some nameds. Okay! We go in there, we do this – he doing the bulk of the work – and he lets me have the best stuff. What is wrong with these people?

And Dorah found Buddy again. She thought Buddy was dead at her hand when she betrayed, but the Tanglewood clan nursed him back to health. Matthias Siegemaker is no fool, and Dorah knows he knows… but the leaders of Freeport like having a little something to use against you if they need to, and so they are satisfied with this leverage. Dorah is just glad to see Buddy alive, even if he has to be confined to the apartment.

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Freeport loves that whole “I am the MASTER, you must OBEY!” vibe, and to show me what that meant, they had me train a war dog captured from a Qeynos soldier. His name was Buddy; he was the cutest thing. I had to feed him and pet him maybe a hundred times before he would trust me, and then patiently teach him to sit and play dead. He was the best dog EVER! But Matthias made me give him to a lonely orphan, who promised to take good care of him. I showed the little tyke that one spot on Buddy’s neck that he really liked to get scratched. With a tear in my eye, I bid Buddy farewell, but I knew he would be happy in his new home. At peace forever.

Qeynos insurgents had been spotted in Freeport. They even suspected me! The only way I could prove I was no Qeynos agent would be to search out the insurgent stronghold in Antonica and kill them all.

The leader had a half dozen squires with her, and she came at me with elemental summonses and finally, she herself changed to a magical form and attacked, but my worm, Busby, along with my magic, made short work of them all.

I gated to Haven one last time and rushed to the Commonlands, killing the local wildlife until I made my 21st level on my way to the city. Well, on my way home, I guess. I’d passed all their tests –

All but one. I had to give up the powers of a Conjurer. They don’t allow Conjurers in Freeport. The necromancer trainer was very firm – nothing of what I was would remain. I didn’t think long on it. I didn’t come this far only to turn back.

The pain was excrutiating. My life was ripped in two and half discarded. My love for harmony and family were torn asunder; and I was remade a necromancer. My hair lost its bright color and became stringy and gray. My new pet – a spider – glowered menacingly at me. But my family came by… Dina had a bed for me in her huge apartment, and my mom, Etha, had made all new spells for me.

So; Freeport… home… I feel both empty and expectant, as if I’m on the verge of something great. I’ve already been told that the best kind of halfling pie is the kind with halfling as the main ingredient.

I killed them.

It felt good.

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