Looking for Group

by Alexis Hall

  [Hecuba] says: We are the betrayers

  [Lauriel] says: And the betrayed

  [Cressida] says: And you will know our suffering.

  As Morag charged at Cressida, her shield glowing with righteous golden light, Ella ran up to Lauriel and whacked her in the face with the Inexorable Axe. As Drew began drawing her back behind the statue of her evil husband, so her AoE wouldn’t hit too much of the raid, he saw Ialdir somersaulting away from Hecuba, peppering her with arrows.

  This was Drew’s least favourite fight in the instance. It had a lot of fiddly little things to keep track of, and it was really easy for one mistake to kick the raid into a death spiral, but it was actually pretty dull to tank. He just had to make sure he wasn’t letting his debuff stack too high and to stay alert for the switch. Basically, he felt there wasn’t a lot he could do to help the fight go smoothly, but if he lost concentration, he’d screw it up abominably.

  They wiped three times in quite small, annoying ways, once because Cressida went down too quickly and the other two Hysteria-ed out and killed everyone, once because of a really badly timed Lamentation, and once because they let the bosses get too close on a switch, nuking the raid. And then they wiped again because Bjorn over-aggro-ed Hecuba, got himself stone-gazed, and everyone was too busy laughing and taking screenies to pay attention so everything fell apart.

  “Okay.” Morag sounded a bit more cheerful. “We’re losing focus here. Let’s take five.”

  Bjorn was uncharacteristically silent.

  Guild Message of the day is now: Do not ask Bjorn about Council of Tears.

  [Raid][Solace]: I know we all hate this fight, but I really like this part of the maze.

  Drew mouse-looked round, being careful not to accidentally trigger the fight. It was a bit like the high elf areas, except it was crumbled and corrupted, with the occasional bloody rose forcing its way through the cracks.

  [Raid][Orcarella]: dude your just really into wrecked shit

  [Raid][Solace]: Hehe

  [Raid][Solace]: I guess I am

  [Raid][Dave]: emoooooooooooo

  [Raid][Solace]: I’m not being emo. Ruins are not just about loss, they’re about time

  [Raid][Solace]: You’ve got things that used to be something

  [Raid][Solace]: And now they’re something else

  [Raid][Solace]: I find it kind of hopeful

  [Raid][Dave]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xilOgjeEwPg

  [Raid][Orcarella]: It’s not emo to like stuff.

  [Raid][Dave]: lol

  [Raid][Ialdir]: I totally get it, Kit.

  [Raid][Ialdir]: You get a real sense of history

  [Raid][Mordant]: made up history

  [Raid][Ialdir]: In some ways, that’s even cooler.

  [Raid][Morag]: Yeah, man, anything can be real history.

  [Raid][Ialdir]: And it’s not just about the lore. I’ve been playing these games for nearly twenty years so it’s kind of my history too.

  [Raid][Jargogle]: Some of us actually have history, children.

  [Raid][Ialdir]: It was right after Desert Storm and I was stuck in this crappy army base in the middle of nowhere, and all I had was a battered old IBM, and a copy of Legends I, Pirates Gold, and fucking Myst.

  [Raid][Ialdir]: And we were still under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

  [Raid][Ialdir]: So basically it was the most miserable time I’ve had in my entire life

  [Raid][Dave]: soz man

  [Raid][Solace]: *hugs*

  [Raid][Ialdir]: Anthariel was one of the major quest givers in L1 and she used to hang out in this rose garden with her own theme tune.

  [Raid][Ialdir]: I hadn’t seen roses in a year

  [Raid][Ialdir]: And Raziel’s sort of falling in love with her

  [Raid][Ialdir]: I’d never seen something like that in a game before

  [Raid][Ialdir]: And it reminded me that there was more to life than being shot at in a desert.

  [Raid][Ialdir]: This garden we’re in now is that garden.

  [Raid][Ialdir]: So that’s important to me.

  “That’s a lovely story, Jacob,” said Bjorn. “But perhaps we can do the fight now.”

  [Raid][Jargogle]: I am Bjorn’s complete lack of sensitivity.

  [Raid][Ialdir]: I’m good, let’s raid.

  Things finally came together and the Council of Tears went down.

  “Okay—” Bjorn crackled over Mumble “—and first up is the Bewailing Breeches.”

  [Raid][Heurodis]: [Bewailing Breeches]

  Drew let the looting go on around him. He manoeuvred Ella to go stand next to Solace. Their shoulder pads clipped through each other, which was probably the closest you could get to holding hands in an MMO. Solace bounced up and down on the spot. That made Drew smile.

  [Solace] whispers: Hey you

  To [Solace]: hey you back

  [Solace] whispers: <3

  To [Solace]: :)

  Next up was Lady Bloodrose. She was a pretty familiar sight to Drew these days—one of Tempest’s many not-quite-naked-enough-to-get-the-game-an-R-rating women, wrapped in a few strategically placed climbing roses as she hovered over a dark pit in the middle of the final chamber.

  High Theurist Venric had somehow managed to get ahead of them and was standing there, waiting politely for the party to give him permission to have an angsty conversation with his ex-girlfriend. Heurodis sprinted over and got him started while the rest of the party renewed their buffs and sat down to eat their fish.

  [Raid][Heurodis]: starting HTV off now because this speech is really fricking long

  [Raid][Morag]: Do you want to do the tacs for this one, Bjorn?

  [Raid][Heurodis]: a rare display of intelligence undoubtedly fleeting

  [Raid][Ialdir]: you know Dave wasn’t born when that game came out

  [Raid][Jargoggle]: Stop giving Bjorn responsibility. It goes to his head.

  [High Theurgist Venric] says: Anthariel! It is not too late. I have forgiven you for your betrayal, as I have forgiven Raziel for his. Turn back to the Light, and you yet may be redeemed.

  [Raid][Morag]: Oh man, High Theurgist Venric got friend-zoned.

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: I have been lost in the dark so long. Come, my love, that I may look upon your face again.

  [Raid][Mordant]: ITS A TRAP!!!

  [Raid][Dave]: wait what game

  “Anyway,” interrupted Bjorn, “while High Theurgist Venric, who presumably holds a position of authority in Whitepeak, walks slowly to his doom like a total noob-basket, we should run down the tacs for this fight.”

  [High Theurgist Venric] says: Anthariel . . .

  [Raid][Dave]: hey what game

  “So like all good boss fights, Lady Bloodrose is in three phases. In the first phase, she will hover over the pit and send her briars to tear the raid to pieces. The briars come in four kinds, Thorned, Barbed, Entrancing, and Entangling. Thorned Briars are large and hit heavily in melee, so they need to be tanked or killed by ranged. Barbed are smaller and faster, but stack Heartsblood on you. Various things in this fight will hit you with Heartsblood, and if it reaches a hundred stacks, you become some kind of slave zombie thing under the control of Lady Bloodrose. If you let this happen, you are a noob and a scrub, and you will need to feel very bad about yourself.”

  Bjorn sounded like he was really enjoying himself. He reminded Drew a lot of Anni in some ways, but in other ways he really, really didn’t. It was like he used all the same words, but they didn’t mean the same things.

  “The Barbed Briars should be prio-ed by ranged, always. Entrancing Briars will have little white flowers on them, and they will randomly mind-control people. You will stay MCed until the briar is killed. Melee can attack Entrancing Briars safely. Please do so. Finally, Entangling Briars will wander around and grab people. When somebody gets grabbed, DPS them out of it. Also spawning in phase one are the Veiled Attendants. These are the spooky cultist people who come out of the doors in the northeast, northwest, southeast, and sou
thwest of the chamber. They will make a beeline for the nearest pillar, where they will activate its special power.”

  [Raid][Jargogle]: Tell us about the special powers, Uncle Bjorn

  [Raid][Dave]: seriously what game came out before I was born

  “Any game worth playing, David.” Bjorn took a deep breath. “So these powers—thank you, Magda—include massively increasing the spawn rate of briars, massively reducing the healing output of the party, massively increasingly the damage dealt by everything, and sticking Heartsblood on the whole raid every few seconds until we all die. If an attendant starts channelling, it must be interrupted and then the tanks should pick them up and pull them away from the pillars. During this phase, ranged DPS will be expected to switch between Lady Bloodrose, the briars, and whatever else needs killing. The phase will end when her health drops to seventy percent. There is a lot that can go wrong in this phase, but I get very depressed when we don’t make it out of it.”

  [High Theurgist Venric] says: Aaaaagh!

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: So trusting, Venric. A pity to come all this way and then to fall so easily.

  [Raid][Ialdir]: Baldur’s Gate 1

  [High Theurgist Venric] says: You . . . are . . . no . . . longer . . . Anthariel.

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Not for many years, but do not worry, my love, I will not let you die . . . yet.

  [Raid][Ialdir]: There’s an enhanced edition out. You should definitely play it.

  [High Theurgist Venric] says: Strike now my friends, while I still have strength to aid you!

  [Raid][Ialdir]: In a minute, dude, we’re still doing the tacs.

  [Raid][Morag]: That’s what you get for pulling without the tank.

  “In phase two,” Bjorn went on, “Lady Bloodrose will come down from the ceiling and start to activate the pillars herself. There is nothing we can do about that except DPS her to make her switch. We want her travelling for as much of the fight as possible. There will still be briars, but if we have not cocked everything up, the Veiled Attendants should all be dead. Instead she will open Nether Portals—”

  There was a snigger across Mumble.

  “David, I am doing the tacs. You can laugh at the word nether in your own time. The Nether Portals will spit out adds, and expand until they fill the entire room and kill everybody. Our portal team, consisting of Magda, Morag, Prospero, and Dave—”

  “Woo. Nether Duty.”

  “—will dive through the portal and destroy the Realm Heart. The rest of us will be dealing with the adds and DPSing our hearts out. At thirty percent she will go into the final phase, where she explodes into this enormous plant-monster thing and sits in the middle of the room. Then we burn her down really, really fast before we get completely overwhelmed by the buffs from the pillars, which will all be active at this point. Remember, if you are having trouble controlling your Heartsblood stacks, stand near the high theurgist when he puts golden light on the ground, and it will reduce your debuff by 20. Of course, this will also lose you precious DPS time, so it is better to just do things right to begin with.”

  A readycheck popped up, and when the signal was given, Ella ran towards the middle of the room, triggering the fight.

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Come, pierce yourself upon me.

  “Oh man,” sighed Dave, “that just sounds so wrong.”

  “You know what else is wrong,” said Bjorn, fifty seconds later, “how quickly we screwed that up.”

  It had not been a good attempt. There’d been so much going on, and the chamber was sufficiently large and full of particle effects, that the raid just hadn’t coordinated properly. Nothing had gone down fast enough and they’d been overwhelmed by briars.

  [Solace] whispers: You okay?

  To [Solace]: yeah that was faster than i expected

  [Solace] whispers: :(

  [Solace] whispers: Honestly, we’ve only beaten this fight once and that was with a different comp

  To [Solace]: oh

  [Solace] whispers: But we didn’t have the best geared tank on the server :)

  The second run was only marginally better. For Drew, this was where you really saw the difference between a casual guild and a hard-core one. Anni had flailed around like this the first time they’d done the fight, but they’d got over it quickly. It was complicated enough that you never really had it on farm, but they could pretty much guarantee that if they wiped, it was because something specific had gone wrong rather than because nothing had gone right.

  To [Solace]: ffs

  [Solace] whispers: This is really bugging you, isn’t it?

  To [Solace]: kinda

  To [Solace]: i don’t mind wiping but i like to feel we’re making progress

  [Solace] whispers: We are. It just takes a little to see it.

  To [Solace]: there you go being zen again

  [Solace] whispers: You like that, though

  To [Solace]: i guess i do <3

  [Solace] whispers: Seriously, we’ll get it. We kind of go through a flailing stage, then a learning stage, and then it comes together.

  To [Solace]: kk

  To [Solace]: sorry i didn’t mean to be an elitist dick

  [Solace] whispers: No, it’s cool. I suppose you’re used to things being different.

  Kit was right, and pissing on other people’s learning curves wasn’t going to help anybody. So Drew got himself a second can of Dr Pepper and settled down for a long evening of wiping.

  “Okay guys,” came Morag’s voice. “This isn’t really coming together for us. I know it’s the end of the night and the final boss, but we need to stay focused and work together, or we’re just going to be banging our heads against a brick wall.”

  Of course, the other difference between SCDD and Anni was they had none of the recriminations and bullshit. After two wipes like this, Anni would have dissolved into finger-pointing and epeening.

  “I don’t think we’re doing anything particularly wrong, I just think we need to be a little bit sharper and a little bit more responsive. Ranged, I think you’re spending too much time on Bloodrose and not enough helping the melee. Melee, I know you’ve got a lot of running around to do, but you need to keep on your toes and get where you need to be when you need to be there. This is a control fight, not a DPS race, so it’s better to do it right than to do it quickly. Let’s fish up, and try again.”

  This time round they got to phase two, but the portal team was slow off the mark, so the area filled up with purple death fire and swarming minions. In Anni, they’d sent a seriously tooled-up assassin into the portals solo, and relied on stuns, invisibility, and smoke clouds to keep the portal guardians at bay while he destroyed the Realm Heart. Drew thought about suggesting it, but while he thought Jargogle knew her stuff, she probably wasn’t quite geared enough. It was sort of the weird paradox of hard-core guilds, that you were good enough at the game it allowed you to do things the easy way. Which, in turn, sort of took the fun out of it after a little while. Although, for Anni, first had been more important than fun.

  [Solace] whispers: You’re not hating this too much, are you?

  To [Solace]: i’m honestly good now

  [Solace] whispers: Think of it as more time spent with me :)

  To [Solace]: dude i really like raiding but if i had to pick a way to spend time with you it wouldn’t include bjorn yelling in my ears

  [Solace] whispers: <3

  [Solace] whispers: Maybe we can talk about that later :D

  Attempt four, they lost too many people to Heartsblood, so they didn’t have the DPS to get through the final phase. The mood in the raid was better than Drew would have expected it to be. Every try had been better than the last, so there was a real “we’ll do it this time” vibe, even though it was getting on for half ten, or half eleven for Ialdir, Magda, and Bjorn.

  As they were rebuffing, Bjorn took control of Mumble.

  “All right, you noobs, it is time for Uncle Bjorn’s Awesome Pep Talk. This will be our last attempt. If w
e fail because we suck, I will be putting a poll on the forum to see if people want to come back and try this on Friday instead of going to Greyhallow Hall to do the opera event. But by far the best scenario here is that we kick butt now and go to the opera on Friday.”

  [Raid][Mordant]: is that it?

  “Do not question the glory of the pep talk.”

  Nobody else questioned the glory of the pep talk, so Ella pulled out her axes and charged Lady Bloodrose for the fifth time. Phase one went pretty smoothly. Ella basically spent her time jogging round the central pit, picking up Veiled Attendants before they could activate the ritual pillars. She was occasionally grabbed by an Entangling Briar, but the DPS got her out of them pretty sharpish.

  Morag: “Careful, attendant wave in five, don’t push her over yet.”

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Enough of this. Fall before the legions of the Netherworld.

  “Well, crap,” sighed Morag. “Next time, less DoTs.”

  “I’m on it. Slow DPS on the adds please.” Drew picked up the first attendant and sprinted back across the chamber towards the Pillar of Death, where the second one was channelling a beam of purple energy that would give every enemy in the room a massive damage boost.

  “Portal team in. Rest of you, on the attendants.”

  “Shit shit shit.” That sounded like Bjorn.

  They managed to burn the two attendants down fairly quickly, but while Drew was maintaining aggro, Netherworld Minions were swarming out of the still-open portal.

  “Adds in the ranged.”

  Ella scuttled backwards round the pit, throwing a taunt at the armour-plated insect demon thing that was presently chewing on Small Mangy Owl.

  “Pet tanking for the win,” said Ialdir, as Drew began whaling on the monster with his axes.

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Blood of my blood.

  That was bad.

  “Pillar of blood up,” called Bjorn. “All deeps on the boss. Watch your stacks, and get in the light if you need it.”

  Drew was doing okay for Heartsblood, and he didn’t want to a drag a pile of enemies over to where the raid was stacking to rid itself of the fallen elf’s malicious influence.

  For most of phase two they were playing catch-up, and Drew was beginning to feel the pressure. Because of the attendants, they’d been slow on the portals, and because they were slow on the portals, there were lots of adds to control, and Bloodrose was looking healthier than she should have at this stage in the fight. The RNG Gods had also decided to screw them, and she kept drifting towards the Pillar of Blood, which was the least dealable-with of the debuffs.