Topics

[SECRET SCHICKSAL FAMILY RECIPE]

This is late to the point of irrelevance, but during my holiday hiatus last December and thereafter I missed my chance to transfer my last pc to EE EFU, so he was forced into retirement. I had a lot of fun with Devin as a RSD, and I wish I could've played him to the end and gave him the wide-eyed, narcotic-induced crashlanding into the fugue he deserved (or permadeath from alchemy), but them's the breaks.

My distant dwarf pc taught me at least one thing: I really suck at playing "brave protector" characters well. So.. I didn't!



Devin liked to keep secrets where he could, specifically of how he once had a finger in almost every pie of Lower, regularly mingling and dealing with all its elements, from Ascensionists, to Hoarans, to slime cultists, to necromancers (so many necromancers), to the occasional goblin - though many of these relations were governed solely through being afraid of them. He'd have betrayed any of them to save his own worthless hide given the chance. He disliked involving himself in the many conflicts between these groups and would've rather got inebriated on the sidelines while enjoying the carnage show, but often enough he found himself caught in them anyway as a working class Lowersman.

Just look at this glowing endorsement from the late BOM!


[hide=backstory]As a thayan wizard's slave, Devin was the product of post-Darkening alchemical experimentation. His master wished to discover the precise causes of growths and mutations in specimens like the Roachmen, and deliberately submitted him to early stages of such transformations. In order to test a possible preventive measure, the wizard perfomed arcanic brain surgery on him to nullify magical influences. It succeeded for the most part (his ear grew an insect antenna out of it and had to be cut and burned off), but consequentially made him resilient to all magic in the process, alongside some horrendous personality side effects and drastically reducing his life expectancy - which spurred his dangerous appetite for narcotics and other artificial ways to soothe his imbalanced cognition.

His magical resilience slackened the inhibition magics put on him by his master and allowed him to escape. In the Underdark he plied alchemical crafts learned from his master, including using potent personal "medications" on himself since his time as a wizard's slave gave him tolerance for the otherwise highly toxic ingredients that were in them. He had a terrific and terrible life of constant anxiety, awful jokes, and wanton teetering towards drug overdose.

tl;dr
Former alchemist slave of a red wizard. Was experimented on by master researching post-Darkening mutations. Magical brain surgery prevented his controlled mutation, but made him magic null and drug dependent for any semblance of mental balance. Uses RSD brews as "medications."[/hide]

[hide=jokes i should've been FD'd for telling]Some logic behind his facepalming comedy.


--


-

-

-

-
Devin tagged along with a necromancer who was on a constant quest for "succor."

-
During a DM event where a bunch of players gathered in a divination circle and could physically not lie when asked questions, Devin used his turn to ask an elven Lower terrorist revolutionist the most imperative of all inquiries.


[hide=Unused jokes]
There's a lot more awful jokes Devin didn't tell more than once, or never at all, which I had lined up for the right opportunities. Read at your own peril.


What is a sorceresses' intuition called?
Intuwitchtion.


What do you call a monk with no arms?
A man of dis'armony.


If clothes could speak, what would they say?
"This socks."


What do you call a Scrappers' crossroad?
A junktion.


What's a positive way to see a cave-in?
A miner problem.


What's an extortionist's preferred armor?
Black mail.


What does an apathetic farmer say?
"Sow what?"


How do you know when you've amused a sea monster?
When you're kraken them up.


Why can't you trust a minotaur?
Because they're unbelievabull.


What accessory would a water elemental wear in daylight?
A rainbow.


How do alcoholics commune with the dead?
They conduct the spirits.


What's the only thing that can make a dwarf sick?
An ale-ment.[/hide][/hide]
[hide=Varad-Azuul Meeting]
Devin worked beneath the prefect of the canal ward for a time, learning alchemy under him and pushing drugs on his behalf. I don't have many pictures from that time, but I do have two from when we got to meet the head of the Varad-Azuul family.


[/hide]
[hide=Adventure time]Two from a long substance-induced BOM quest which originally started out as a simple drug courier job.



Another DM quest into a drow spider hole. We were searching for a weapon that was lodged in the carapace of a spider titan, and the weapon had a history of inducing unbelievable bloodlust. I don't have screenshots of the battle royale that ensued after we killed it unfortunately. I spent most of the adventure uselessly bloated with poison debuffs.


Devin got some tips on the nuanced, delicate art of goblin surgery.


A distant shores quest got botched and we had to abandon it, so we instead went through a long and gruellingly painful DM quest which ended in killing a kua-toa "demigod" after solving a number sequence problem.


With wereboar pc Lars Stimplesinsson. One of our quests was spiced and we killed a "Dread Lord" goblin cooking bacon from a dead wereboar. We had to pull some stops for that fight.
[/hide]
[hide=Miscellaneous Shots]We watched a portal master pc get judged for his crimes against the ooze. He had to choose from +20 portals, of as I loosely quote, "ONE WILL LEAD BACK HOME THE OTHERS.. WILL NOT." Needless to say, he chose one which petrified him.


Devin got kidnapped and robbed by a secretive Spellguard wizard, but in return for "providing" a piece of history (a Mark II baublium bazooka which Devin pinched from a "Safety Engineer Tag" months before), he took Devin to the Red Lantern for some classy drinking.


A couple random shots of the more eccentric company that Devin kept down in Lower.



[/hide]
[hide=Loot]Missing a piece or two, specifically a cool scrapper belt Caster made; it was a "force field generator" that had 1/day ghostly visage on it, even though as RSD I couldn't actually use it.

This came from a DM quest where a bunch of pc's and I had to run through a puzzle of billowing flame obstacles that went off in patterns. Our token curio for not going the way of Johnny Cash.


I don't know if this helm was actually unique, but I got it from an elf who commended Devin on his reckless disregard of personal safety after helping ooze cultist pc's stage a "jail break" on the Watchhouse to rescue one of their members from arrest.


This was from the BOM quest mentioned in the last dropdown. Devin found a hallucination of himself, and tag-teamed his own pc group in a fight with it, and after lucidity returned he found this halberd. A weapon so ridiculously powerful that only my own meta incompetence could still make its application mostly underwhelming.
[/hide]

RSD is a really fun and different way to play a Fighter. It opens up cool concepts if you glance through the brew selections and build around them (Devin was mainly dex boost, Herbalist's Touch, and spell resistance). It's crazy how much utility and possibility there is in this single Fighter perk, and every fellow RSD I met had an interesting take on it.

A very specific thanks to Gracken and his dwarf Geidgier Schicksal who wonderfully played an alchemist tutor, and made me really see the beauty of RP potential in the crafting system on EFU before it (justifiably) got removed. Learning how to craft on an OOC and IC medium under him, and inheriting the SECRET SCHICKSAL FAMILY RECIPE for making junksnuff through alchemy/herbalism so I could sell it to players, was the height of my time on Devin.

As someone who currently plays a grotesque addict, I've always felt that slime-squatting addiction is lackluster in flavor beyond its presumed Covenant benefits.

Maybe some minor (5-10%) acid immunity due to acclimating to ooze corrosion?

It always struck me odd that Azure Drow Wine didn't have text messages like sverblin black coffee and other addictive substances do. It could use blue/cyan text as something like:

[PC drinks down a glowing blue wine.]

Ordinant
Thane of the Spire
Withered Lite
Dwatcher
Huscarl to the Tempering
Seizer of the Destroyer’s Torchblade
Master of Unhelpful 8 Wisdom Grunts




Hagkir never wanted to be Thane, much like Falgrim and probably Madoc, but circumstances saw him in it. And at first, even I as a player didn’t want Hagkir to be Thane, because for over a year previous, I had been playing him as an “ambient” character who although had no real impact on the world or anyone's pc's, was nonetheless regularly in the backdrop. It’s fascinating to simply observe the happenings of an entire year from the perspective of one pc. It fills your character with old superstitions, reminisces, and grand tales to tell for any who ask. The whole server develops its own history in the eyes of your pc.

Although I’ve played for very short amounts of time back in the Mistlocke era, I consider Hagkir to be my first character. And at large, my first pc in NWN multiplayer. I made Hagkir with no idea of what I was doing (from both a roleplay and game mechanic spectrum), but when he joined the Tempering, I was able to piece together something vaguely resembling a proper character, with some small Dwarf Fortress inspirations.

Even though his pseudo-Withering was very enigmatic in nature (and thus I didn't get to play it out as much as I'd have liked), I appreciate having been given the chance of carrying around that dark little secret.

SCREENSHOT TIME.
Some of these are unfortunately before I knew what the Hide UI button was. I had a lot of screenshots, but most of them were poorly taken and/or retrospectively not very interesting to outside perspectives. Here's the better of them.
[hide=Dwarf and Tempered stuff!]My first Tempered moot. We set fire to a bunch of monster loot and trophies atop the Spire.


Some Tempered questing that got spiced. Unfortunately, I don't have any screenshots of the fun tomb crawling that was beyond the portal.


With Maddox Ironhelm and Klaengr Rorikson, in a quest we wiped on. "Fist of Maddox" epic was inspired by this.


Tempered chant origins! Hagkir'd whisper it on occasion, long after the prime of the pc faction.


Kurginshale's ritual moot! Another epic, "Kurginshale's Blood and Wind" was inspired by it.



Meeting the king of the original Dorf Fortress of Tam Khlerau. Dunak called himself a king, but Thormund and Hagkir only recognized him as a Thane.


Aracknar, Groa, and I smashing up the lair that briefly before belonged to Yrashnok. Inspired the "Son of Avarice" epic.


Bringing Vrarikorg's corpse to Tam Khlerau, an ogre who killed Thormund Bjornsson. The procurement was a lot less impressive, though.


Camping with kinnies!


Thane-crowning!

[/hide]
[hide=Watcher and Upper shenanigans]One my earliest moments as a Watcher was publicly beating an Ordinant. It made an appearance in a pro-human pc newspaper, too.


I got to tag along with Edgin Crane for a bit of DM spice, where we found watchers in an illegal beetle fighting ring.


I had plenty of encounters with Gorbengolt, and lots of drug-addled vision quests.




But, most of the time, Hagkir just drank at the ginhouse during patrol breaks. Or drank outside it, after it got destroyed. A pitiful bit of habit.


Couldn't get Vrarikorg's head mantled beside Yrashnok in the Grotto, but Hagkir often stopped by there to make sure Yrasnok didn't get lonely.
[/hide]
[hide=Miscellaneous shots]My very first DM quest ever had much buggy hilarity in it.


Munt events are awesome.


Hernt being his usual heroic self while petrified.


Found some mob called "Bonetacular" dead in the Underdark.


Delving in an old beholder hive with Dorissa.


A Lowerdark march with Paul Weston and people who were foolish enough to join us.



Romps and roves with Bunwhal.



During DM pauses, you get bored enough to look for cool angles.


A sighting of a very beautiful speciman of orc.


Hagkir made a lot of dumb wildling sendings when trying to learn their "code talk."



[/hide]
[hide=Loot]That dinky handaxe Hagkir always used and put alchemist fire on.


I unfortunately don't have a recent shot of the armor, when I redyed it and apped to make it only wearable by dwarves, but here it is when Ulry first "crafted" it. It was just renamed Sanctuary-fitted plate, but I'd have taken that armor to the grave.


Carried lollipops everywhere cooked by the former Dwarf Fortress chef (Samantha Greaves), and Hagkir very vainly tried to unlock the recipe secret to these delicious treats himself. He also put a "mandate" on lollipops in the Dwarf Fortress when he became Thane of it.


I found these potions from a DM quest, and wanted to somehow incorporate it into one of Groa Halle's rituals, but that never happened. I kept one as a souvenir.


Here's my true epic loot. It can be read here.
[/hide]


A very specific, special thanks to Kotenku (Gerhardus Gunnvaldurson), who played the dwarf that originally pointed Hagkir towards becoming Tempered, and throwing me into a long string of fun as a result. I don’t know what would’ve happened if we never met, but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as awesome.

It’s been an insane first impression of EFU, a server I hope to follow for a very long time. And you all, try playing a Watcher if you haven’t. It’s an absurdly fun way to interact with the rest of the playerbase, an easy path towards putting yourself in the tempest of meta-plots, and ripe with potential personalities -- not just law-conscious pc's. Abuse your authority to your own ends and those of your allies, for the greater good, lesser evil, or plainly selfish desires.

I've got a friend who picked up NWN (Diamond Edition, naturally) and we've wanted to play together. Unfortunately, they're not very interested in EFU (or roleplay servers in general) so I wanted to explore the possibility of figuring out how to host the main campaign to play it with them -- or more flavorful modules once I get past the technical barrier. Not a dedicated, persistent server, obviously. Just hosting.

I've never successfully hosted in other games like Minecraft or Terraria before, so even with the power of google, I've been at a loss of how to make something like this happen. A lot of guides and inquiries of NWN hosting specifically seem to revolve around the Gamespy era when it was much easier to do. I've tried simply adding a 5121 port forward to my router and getting my IP address to give to my friend, then loading a campaign through "Load Internet/LAN Game" in the NWN menu, but they still couldn't join.

Is anyone willing to give the very detailed steps to getting a hosted game to work?

For the quest "Explore the Crumbling Ruins" in Lowerdark, nobody in the party could figure out how to get pass the eastern-most door from the starting corridor. No key dropped anywhere in the quest, and although we could damage the door with elemental damage weapons, it wouldn't actually break. There was no getting by it.

I'm unsure if it's relevant, but the quest didn't actually appear in our quest log even though we had it.

I had a pc in shackles, and when I attacked them (once with Sparring mode making them Winded, and again with Subdue mode) while they were shackled, it seems that the shackles' encumbrance effect (and item itself) were removed, yet I still had the shackles key. It disappeared from the shackled pc's inventory -- completely unrecoverable.

I imagine one of the subdual modes wiped the effect accidentally.

In the House of Trade, Dort's that proverbial merchant who's much more lenient about buying random garbage and gemstones. But I imagine that it's unintended that he buys/sells animal venom (and possibly other obvious contraband like arsenic and Animate Dead scrolls) which makes it a bit awkward to check in with him when playing a Watcher pc.

I'd recommend either marking poisons "Stolen" for him, or allowing the Dort smuggling ring to have a bit more subtlety.

A small bug(?) I noticed is that in the illusion (no ring on, naturally), from central Sanctuary there's no transition into the Spellbegger's Lane area of the illusion. However, there is one for vice versa, for going from Spellbegger's Lane illusion into central Sanctuary's illusion.

Whether you couldn't make it work in the long-run, believe the novelty would wear off too quickly for the work it takes, or maybe you simply don't have the confidence to sell the concept. Ideally in the EFU environment, but not limited to it. Try to keep original concepts out, yeah? This isn't a public application thread.

Feel free to give reasons too, if you're feeling particularly wordy.

Personal examples:
-Zimos from Saints Row 3 - animatronic autotune voice emotes would get tiresome.

-John Marston from Red Dead Redemption - could become a haste addict to represent Deadeye, but I don't have enough pvp skillz to play a ranger bounty hunter.

-Jorg Ancrath from Prince of Thorns - I can't make a pc bandit live long enough to ascend full-fledged monarchy.

-Inspector Gadget from what the hell is wrong with your childhood - an overwhelming amount of supplies would be needed for regular shenanigans.