The bunny that roared...
Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2003 5:39 amEliathan sat in his intricately carved reaperwood throne in the large, lavishly decorated crypt he had built in the Vesper graveyard. Dhalia, his new human slave, trembled from her kneeling position in front of him. He gazed down at her with dark, half lidded eyes and admired the delicate bone structure, the full lips and the visible suffusion of human blood that coursed within her body. He reached out with one long finger and traced the contour of her lower lip and then -drew- a bit of her delicious life force into him. She shuddered and collapsed at his feet as he leaned back in the throne, his eyes closing in ecstasy. Ahh, the draining of the tiniest bit of life force was all he really needed to sustain himself. Most vampires he knew raged with unreasoning hunger and killed their victims but Eliathan had learned long ago to treasure the source. This seemingly frail woman was immeasurably full of life and with proper maintenance, she would last a long time.
Suddenly, he sensed the Taint again, the unknown evil that had plagued the World for so long. It was responsible for so many of the humans problems. Of course, Eliathan didn't mind that especially, he just wanted to make sure the effects of the Taint did not wipe out his source of un-life. He focused internally on his core, his center of self, and sent his undead senses ranging wide over the world. Ahhh, the focus was near Britain, a noisy city that Eliathan usually stayed away from. Eliathan sent his astral self upwards and outwards, streaking over a world blanketed in darkest night, his body remaining safely in his hidden crypt. He arced downwards and manifested in the cemetery.
The night was chill and quiet in the Britain graveyard. Overhead, the sky was filled with broken clouds, drifting slowly o'er the landscape. Spectres, zombies and other undead shied away from the unholy power that radiated even from Eliathan's incorporeal form. With dark, spectral eyes, he gazed over the wrought iron gate towards the city to the south. In a clearing, a group of wild rabbits cropped the thick grass and looked about them with frightened eyes. They were used to the undead, who ignored them, but there were always predators in the wild. Overhead, the moon rose and shone through a break in the clouds. The enormous, full globe cast pale light o'er the land and the rabbits eyes suddenly turned red. The dominant buck sat up straight, quivering in every nerve as he stared at the orb above. He threw his head back and opened his mouth, showing daggerlike teeth, and roared!
So began a night of unremitting horror and devastation in the city of Britain. October 10 was the night of the full moon, the night of the lupus. I had been fishing west of Jhelom where I had just purchased a home the day before. Yes, I gave up my idyllic home by the sea in Yew and moved lock, stock and barrel to the southern isle of Jhelom. I had been hunting treasure chests earlier in the day and thought an idle bout of fishing might relax me so I launched my small dragon ship and sailed away, a pack full of fishing nets by my side. As it turned out, it wasn't exactly relaxing. Wave elementals, tentacle beasts and sea serpents seemed unseasonably profuse. I nearly died three or four times during my relaxing sail. I didn't mind tentacle beasties. I could handle two or three of them at a time with no major problem, but when two or three wave elementals would surge up from the sea and into my ship, I was hard put to fight, guzzle potions and bandage myself enough to stay alive. One isn't bad and two are problematical but I had three of them, one sea serpent and a tentacle beast all striving to end my existence. I finally called it a night and sailed back, shaken but able to breathe, at least.
As I sorted my bounty from the sea, I heard Pau Atei's death cry. I msg'd him and he tersely said, "Brit!". I had been msg'ing with Shachiko as she hunted Titans, Ogre Lords and other monstrosities to the right of Wrong...err, you know what I mean, and mentioned that there appeared to be some disturbance in Britain. I quickly woke my blacksmith brother, Shao, and had him repair my blunted mace. Then I headed to Britain to find a swarm of mad, overpowered bunnies terrorizing the town. I don't know who Monty is, but he sure raised some mean bunnies.
Death cries rang out with depressing regularity as I located the combatants. Soon, I joined a group that were battling the fast moving, small but horribly powerful antagonists and swung my mace with deadly intent. It was tough targetting the bunnies because of their size, speed and the obscuring wings of dragonfolk, but I quickly began to call up their names and target the names, rather than the actual bunny. That worked rather well. I don't think I've ever seen the streets of Britain so littered with human corpses as I did tonight. The number of dragon corpses was equally disturbing. The fighters that ran ahead to encounter the foe, died, plain and simple. It required teamwork to defeat these furry little monstrosities.
I won't try to give a blow by blow account because it was too frenzied. The bunnies were numerous, they must breed like rabbits!, and they were deadly. People fought valiantly against nearly hopeless odds and only through perseverence and courage and plain old stubborness, did the bunny tide turn. Soon, we began to sweep the city slowly with some semblance of unity although it was still quite confusing.
At one point, I engaged a bunny with a determined Cathavene standing back, healing me. We had done this before on a bunny so I wasn't exceptionally worried. She could heal like there was no tomorrow. But, another bunny glared at us, wrinkled his nose in a cute manner and started casting horrific spells of death at me! The roaring rabbit that was gnawing through my plate armor and breathing fire, combined with the spells of the other was too much damage, too fast, for Cathavene to keep up with, for I fell lifeless to the ground in mere moments. I checked, and she had been healing me as fast as possible, with my own bandaging and potions kicking in as well. *sigh* As I stood there, colorless, shocked and dead, I watched the cute bunny with the decidedly non-cute spells yoink my corpse. Oooh, it was bad enough that they roared, cast horribly powerful spells, breathed fire, moved so fast you could hardly see them, but they also looted dead bodies!
I eventually got resurrected, recovered my gear, resurrected my dear Darlin, the horsie that has been through so much with me. Someone handed my shield to me, the thing that evil bunny had stolen. I felt satisifed knowing it's little furry butt had been kicked into the seventh circle of hades. However, I realized I had lost an exceptional amount of skills. I sighed internally and just hoped it was just going to be one death tonight. Several people lost their lives multiples of times and I can empathize with the feeling. Here is a list of the participants, in no particular order:
Aislin Darknwald
Iarwain Ben Afar
Komora Darkflame
Sachiko
Belle Remings
Gall
Cathavene
Pau Atei
D'ather Soth
Macitor
Simon van Gothe
Herakles
Nicole
Loakie
Buster (Buster, you should have stayed in Magincia where I gated you to. It was safer. You wouldn't have died again.)
Sao (don't recognize this name, hope it's a human and not a dragon.
)
Herban
If I missed anyone, I do apologize, it was utter confusion most of the time and I was exhausted from a strenuous fishing trip.
The battle continued, shop by shop, street by street, until it was clear. We did discover that dead, evil bunnies float when they fall into the castle moat. I think it looked exceptionally cute there, dead and floating.
I finally went to one of the still living shopkeepers and sold all my loot. After that I went to the bank and handed it along with a magical shield a bunny had been carrying, to Nicole for the split afterwards. I was much too tired to think about staying up although here I am writing this up now.
I did grab gold from my bankbox to pay death taxes before bed, and it cost me about 30K to top things off again. *deeper sigh* I can only imagine what it'll cost Pau and others.
I recalled to my new home in Jhelom and blearily regarded the pallet on the wooden floor I had made. I hadn't gotten around to setting up beds or anything yet so it was a hard pallet or nothing. Regardless, I knew I would sleep soundly this eve.
Suddenly, he sensed the Taint again, the unknown evil that had plagued the World for so long. It was responsible for so many of the humans problems. Of course, Eliathan didn't mind that especially, he just wanted to make sure the effects of the Taint did not wipe out his source of un-life. He focused internally on his core, his center of self, and sent his undead senses ranging wide over the world. Ahhh, the focus was near Britain, a noisy city that Eliathan usually stayed away from. Eliathan sent his astral self upwards and outwards, streaking over a world blanketed in darkest night, his body remaining safely in his hidden crypt. He arced downwards and manifested in the cemetery.
The night was chill and quiet in the Britain graveyard. Overhead, the sky was filled with broken clouds, drifting slowly o'er the landscape. Spectres, zombies and other undead shied away from the unholy power that radiated even from Eliathan's incorporeal form. With dark, spectral eyes, he gazed over the wrought iron gate towards the city to the south. In a clearing, a group of wild rabbits cropped the thick grass and looked about them with frightened eyes. They were used to the undead, who ignored them, but there were always predators in the wild. Overhead, the moon rose and shone through a break in the clouds. The enormous, full globe cast pale light o'er the land and the rabbits eyes suddenly turned red. The dominant buck sat up straight, quivering in every nerve as he stared at the orb above. He threw his head back and opened his mouth, showing daggerlike teeth, and roared!
So began a night of unremitting horror and devastation in the city of Britain. October 10 was the night of the full moon, the night of the lupus. I had been fishing west of Jhelom where I had just purchased a home the day before. Yes, I gave up my idyllic home by the sea in Yew and moved lock, stock and barrel to the southern isle of Jhelom. I had been hunting treasure chests earlier in the day and thought an idle bout of fishing might relax me so I launched my small dragon ship and sailed away, a pack full of fishing nets by my side. As it turned out, it wasn't exactly relaxing. Wave elementals, tentacle beasts and sea serpents seemed unseasonably profuse. I nearly died three or four times during my relaxing sail. I didn't mind tentacle beasties. I could handle two or three of them at a time with no major problem, but when two or three wave elementals would surge up from the sea and into my ship, I was hard put to fight, guzzle potions and bandage myself enough to stay alive. One isn't bad and two are problematical but I had three of them, one sea serpent and a tentacle beast all striving to end my existence. I finally called it a night and sailed back, shaken but able to breathe, at least.
As I sorted my bounty from the sea, I heard Pau Atei's death cry. I msg'd him and he tersely said, "Brit!". I had been msg'ing with Shachiko as she hunted Titans, Ogre Lords and other monstrosities to the right of Wrong...err, you know what I mean, and mentioned that there appeared to be some disturbance in Britain. I quickly woke my blacksmith brother, Shao, and had him repair my blunted mace. Then I headed to Britain to find a swarm of mad, overpowered bunnies terrorizing the town. I don't know who Monty is, but he sure raised some mean bunnies.
Death cries rang out with depressing regularity as I located the combatants. Soon, I joined a group that were battling the fast moving, small but horribly powerful antagonists and swung my mace with deadly intent. It was tough targetting the bunnies because of their size, speed and the obscuring wings of dragonfolk, but I quickly began to call up their names and target the names, rather than the actual bunny. That worked rather well. I don't think I've ever seen the streets of Britain so littered with human corpses as I did tonight. The number of dragon corpses was equally disturbing. The fighters that ran ahead to encounter the foe, died, plain and simple. It required teamwork to defeat these furry little monstrosities.
I won't try to give a blow by blow account because it was too frenzied. The bunnies were numerous, they must breed like rabbits!, and they were deadly. People fought valiantly against nearly hopeless odds and only through perseverence and courage and plain old stubborness, did the bunny tide turn. Soon, we began to sweep the city slowly with some semblance of unity although it was still quite confusing.
At one point, I engaged a bunny with a determined Cathavene standing back, healing me. We had done this before on a bunny so I wasn't exceptionally worried. She could heal like there was no tomorrow. But, another bunny glared at us, wrinkled his nose in a cute manner and started casting horrific spells of death at me! The roaring rabbit that was gnawing through my plate armor and breathing fire, combined with the spells of the other was too much damage, too fast, for Cathavene to keep up with, for I fell lifeless to the ground in mere moments. I checked, and she had been healing me as fast as possible, with my own bandaging and potions kicking in as well. *sigh* As I stood there, colorless, shocked and dead, I watched the cute bunny with the decidedly non-cute spells yoink my corpse. Oooh, it was bad enough that they roared, cast horribly powerful spells, breathed fire, moved so fast you could hardly see them, but they also looted dead bodies!
I eventually got resurrected, recovered my gear, resurrected my dear Darlin, the horsie that has been through so much with me. Someone handed my shield to me, the thing that evil bunny had stolen. I felt satisifed knowing it's little furry butt had been kicked into the seventh circle of hades. However, I realized I had lost an exceptional amount of skills. I sighed internally and just hoped it was just going to be one death tonight. Several people lost their lives multiples of times and I can empathize with the feeling. Here is a list of the participants, in no particular order:
Aislin Darknwald
Iarwain Ben Afar
Komora Darkflame
Sachiko
Belle Remings
Gall
Cathavene
Pau Atei
D'ather Soth
Macitor
Simon van Gothe
Herakles
Nicole
Loakie
Buster (Buster, you should have stayed in Magincia where I gated you to. It was safer. You wouldn't have died again.)
Sao (don't recognize this name, hope it's a human and not a dragon.
)
Herban
If I missed anyone, I do apologize, it was utter confusion most of the time and I was exhausted from a strenuous fishing trip.
The battle continued, shop by shop, street by street, until it was clear. We did discover that dead, evil bunnies float when they fall into the castle moat. I think it looked exceptionally cute there, dead and floating.
I finally went to one of the still living shopkeepers and sold all my loot. After that I went to the bank and handed it along with a magical shield a bunny had been carrying, to Nicole for the split afterwards. I was much too tired to think about staying up although here I am writing this up now.
I did grab gold from my bankbox to pay death taxes before bed, and it cost me about 30K to top things off again. *deeper sigh* I can only imagine what it'll cost Pau and others.
I recalled to my new home in Jhelom and blearily regarded the pallet on the wooden floor I had made. I hadn't gotten around to setting up beds or anything yet so it was a hard pallet or nothing. Regardless, I knew I would sleep soundly this eve.
