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When the world was new, the people were all wimps. Town invasions did not have to sweeping epics of seer creation in order to threaten the very fabric of our fragile civilization. There was, for instance, the first time the undead wandered out of the cemetery and into town. I am not talking about an army of vampires, you understand. It was, if I remember correctly, a skelaton knight. We never discovered what it was that brought him into town. Perhaps it was some tortured half-memory of the simple pleasure of a ham and cheese sandwich and a cold beer from its previous life. Whatever brought it into town, its attitude and behavior upon arrival was cranky and rude.
I believe it attacked Ingot Head first. His blacksmith shop was the one located on the road into Britain from the Northwest. He raised the alarm (from the grave, no doubt) and the loyal citizens of WOD answered the call as quickly as their limited abilities permitted.
Now, when I say we were weak, you must struggle to fully comprehend the extent of that understatement. We were hopelessly overmatched by the skelaton knight. Two whacks from it and our mightiest warrior went down. On the other hand, a furious volley of vicious blows from us scarcely showed a tiny stain of red on our blades (or his healthbar).
Besides Ingot Head and myself, I don't remember the names of the WODians present, although I remember clearly the intoxicating joy we experienced struggling together to defend our little town. I don't think Irish and Spring were around on that particular occasion. Whoever we were, we initially simply took turns getting killed by the knight. A constant parade of ghosts sprinted for the healer hut, while another parade of fearless idgits charged back in the opposite direction, in their uniforms of grey and brandishing their pitiful newbie weapons. Resupply and retraining was not an issue, as our equipment was pretty much irrelevant and the "death tax" was but a half-formed malignant inkling in the back of Dundee's mind.
After twenty minutes or so of this (our minds in those days were also weak- although they have since improved less than our fighting skills) we realized that our strategy of suiciding the creature to death was not achieving positive results. Now, as any of you who are experienced in mass invasions or major quests know, it is impossible to organize a mob of WODians bent on righteous and glorious self-destruction. That was true from the beginning. However, two of us (I think the other was Ingot Head, but I am not sure) developed a strategy of sorts that we began to use with some result. In the more tamed urban world of today, you may not take notice of the various cliffs and ledges around some of the buildings in Britain. We found that these were barriers to the ability of the knight to harm us, but that the knight would not figure this out quickly, and would keep trying to reach an intended victim perched there, until distracted. So we took turns becoming the focus of the knight's anger, and clambering out on one of the ledges hollaring "nya-nya-nya" accompanied by rude gestures and the occasional mooning. Meanwhile, the other member of the team could whack on the knight without getting instantly kilt.
Of course, as soon as the whacker landed a really good blow, the knight would change its focus of attention to that team member, forgetting the decoy on the ledge. The trick, then was for the team members to switch roles without either dying or giving the knight time to heal. It wasn't easy nor perfect, but we began to get it done. Gradually, as we held the knight in one place for a while, the other townsfolk got involved, quickly catching on to the strategy. Now, killing that knight with our newbie weapons was a bit like felling a great oak with a penknife and still took time, but we all could see the progress and it gave us hope. In the end, we were all there together when the knight collapsed in the musical tinkle of collapsing bones. That knight had more killers than Caesar.
Were it not for that brave stand by the poor out-gunned citizens of WOD, the town would probably today belong to the undead, and we would have to do our banking in the cemetery.
You may scoff at the pitiful scope of our victory that day, but I have never felt a greater sense of victory. However, there were a couple of times...
-ahh- another day perhaps.

Ah, to have been here from the beginning...

Thanks Homer!

LOL. Makes me wonder what would happen today if a ten-ton skeleton Knight wandered into town.

What Atei said...hehehe. I'm glad that we started the upstart mages and had a glimpse of this reality. I can only imagine what it would have been like to face a bone knight with only a dagger, shirt, and pants . I had enough trouble with the birds, cats, and dogs of moonglow island.

Thank you Homer