This is not a factually accurate account of every single thing to do with Drogor, just a collection of notes from me and my character's perspective. I thought it would help out anyone wondering how to get involved, how to get noticed by GMs and do cool stuff to affect the game world. It may or may not be helpful, it's not really a How To guide... just mostly a series of blunders, some wonderful, some stinky. I've tried to arrange all the bits in the order they happened, but I'm sure I mixed things up.
I've tried to mix links to logs in, but I can't seem to find some of the older stuff.
To start with, here's some of Zhirrisk's backstory: He grew up in the orphanage in the middens, where he was the creepy nerdy kid who ate boogers and worms and was picked on by bigger kids. He was adopted 5 times, and each time returned to the orphanage after his new parents died (One was an empath, second were two rich elven traders that let him get fat on chocolate and treated him like a pet cat, third was a single Prydaen moon mage, fourth were two dwarven warrior mages, and fifth were a more traditional Prydaen couple, who were also messed up in the head from witnessing Lyras's destruction.) The dwarves drowned in the Faldesu while "fishing"—they were casting electric spells to zap the fish and scoop them up. As Zhirrisk remembers it, an albatross settled on the edge of their little boat and tipped it over, and he was able to cling onto the hull until he was rescued, while they both were unable to swim. Whether this was an actual act of god (Lemicus) punishing them or just a wild fantasy of a disturbed kid, we'll never know.
Now, I've never told a GM this backstory, but Zhirrisk has told a few characters, so maybe a GM was listening in one day. Either way, without outright telling this, I stayed true to it throughout the following events. I figured Zhirrisk sided with Drogor mainly out of hatred for Lemicus, ("Lemicus killed my parents.") and to revel in seeing the destruction going on. I find the first verse of the Scarlet Pimpernel musical to be very fitting to what he was feeling:
>I know the gutter and I know the stink of the street
>Kicked like a dog, I have spat out the bile of defeat
>All you beauties who towered above me
>You who gave me the smack of your rod
>Now I give you the gutter
>I give you the judgement of God!
On to it then...
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HOLLOW'S EVE 414
Zhirrisk goes to Eluned's shrine in the Eyes of the Thirteen and prays for understanding for what's going on. I stayed around for hours over several days, and there wasn't ever really a response. At some points, he gwethed his frustrations at trying to understand the gods, pleading with them to show him something, and quite a few people told him to shut up. There might have been a gwethsmash, I don't remember by now. Nothing else came of it at first, but Whiteburn and Zhirrisk spent a few days bonding during invasions, hiding out from the over-leveled critters.
While hunting blood wolves in Langenfirth, jellyfish suddenly rained down. Zhirrisk muttered some annoyances to himself, when Drogor suddenly spoke to him. He stopped hunting and went to Theren Keep, but couldn't find anyone at first. A bard, Azkaban, showed up, just as eels and sharks started to invade. Drogor kept speaking to Zhirrisk, who got very confused and decided to join in with the sharks. He got his head cut off. After departing, he went back for his dropped weapon, and when Azkaban had cleared the Keep, they talked some on the road. Zhirrisk reached out to Whiteburn, who had logged in by then, and she traveled and talked with us as well. Eluned spoke to all three of us, and thus began the Teaching of the Lesson.
While not an event Zhirrisk was part of, its one of the cooler things that happened: Whiteburn and Nakori ran into Guyatheas while Suw Bizar were invading Shard. They convinced him to stop attacking and instead tried to barter with the creatures. After offering bloodwine, which the Suw Bizar liked a lot, they started offering their own blood, and the Suw Bizar left peacefully. During a later invasion in Crossing, they were unsuccessful in getting people to stop attacking, and nothing interesting happened that time.
A new player!, Walfire, was buying a bow when Drogor spoke to him. A few people brought him to Eluned's shrine, where shark-tooth arrows appeared on Drogor's altar. My memory is very hazy, but I think someone reached out to Zhirrisk to come see what was going on, and Zhirrisk came and did his best to help them teach Walfire about Drogor and everything. Walfire was very excited and became a staunch supporter of Drogor after that. Sadly, I believe he stopped playing sometime around the last guildfest. He was always excited to share his poems on the gweth, and he is still missed.
During one invasion, we discovered that having Drogor's favour allowed us to not be attacked by the sharks and eels. Lots of fun to be had standing by watching the carnage and cheering it on. Zhirrisk used this opportunity to drag a few bodies. Whiteburn kicked them. Lots of angry people disbelieved us and claimed we were lying or using some other trick, demanded proof that we were being spared. Kasto attacked Whiteburn from hiding at one point, but that might have been during a different invasion. By now, she was actively preaching during invasions, and getting gwethsmashed half the time. I kept my mental mouth shut so I could keep hearing what was going on and fill her in. (This kind of gwethsmashing, while very possibly in-character, remains the most frustrating of all, when your ability to interact with people on a wide scale is shut down during an event that you are very keen on paricipating in. Becoming not only muted, but deafened, and cut off from private contact with friends, puts a huge damper on one's ability to find and respond to roleplaying opportunities.)
During one time at Eluned's shrine, we were given visions that led us to the crater outside the North gate. Sharks had been appearing there for a while, spawning for people to hunt when there were no invasions. We left a gold-etched box of fish and foodstuff there as an offering for the sharks. The visions led us to believe something interesting would happen, but nothing more came of it after that day. We came back several times, to no avail.
I found a neat bug with the Genie client where when you observe the sky while riding a ferry, the room window changed to "The Heavens". It freaked me out and I thought maybe the gods were teleporting Zhirrisk somewhere, so when he got off the ferry and realised nothing was happening, he tentatively called out, "Drogor? Are you there?" ...and to my surprise, Drogor replied. Zhirrisk flounced off on his way to do whatever he was planning to do, it was just a neat moment.
Klines and Kintryn were doing investigating of their own, though my memory of them is very foggy now. I wish I could say more about what they were doing, as they later became part of our little gang and would hang out and chat with us about stuff, though eventually they dispersed to take breaks from DR.
I don't remember exactly when, but one time while hanging out in Eluned's shrine, Eluned and Lemicus and Drogor all spoke to us. Zhirrisk particularly liked Eluned's mothering feelings, the warmth of her voice, as it was the thing he grew up without and wanted more than anything. He raged against Lemicus a bit, but eventually found some sort of peace, and it was a very touching and beautiful moment. Although once in a while he will still go back and leave a dead rat or something on Lemicus's altar. The way a teasing brother might. Zhirrisk does somewhat believe that Eluned is his mother now, in fact (loony lunar wizard...)
A few other people I haven't mentioned yet are Krononzeck and Oachs (and maybe others I forgot, sorry). They would come hang out with us at Eluned's shrine sometimes, and were there with Walfire. Krononzeck got a fair few visions as a cleric himself, and was a big part of the finale, where we begged Drogor for a little more time to spread the Lesson before the Kraken attacked. (I'm not sure if I was there for the begging, I think Whiteburn told me about it on AIM. She then went to sleep, as did I. I woke up a little later, unable to keep sleeping, and when I logged back in, the time of mercy was already passed, and Whiteburn missed out on the finale.) Krononzeck led the final prayer, where the people of Crossing gathered to pray the Kraken away. Zhirrisk threw a fit when it worked because he wanted Crossing to be utterly destroyed. Klines and Kintryn were very disapproving.
Whiteburn eventually returned to the crater and did some ritual that caused the sharks to stop spawning, returning them to their master's domain? This was not related to the other visions we had about the crater, though.
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CHILDREN OF ELUNED
Before HE 414 wrapped up entirely, Whiteburn and Zhirrisk were sneaking into the Keep to leave shark teeth and ominous notes on various surfaces, or in gold-etched boxes for the Guard to find. This got the attention of a few people. Zhirrisk was hunting crocodiles in the swamp by the Faldesu when a few of the Guard came to find him and question him. He played innocent, even offered to help them figure out what was going on. Earlier, we had snuck to Aesry and left a note on an altar in Eluned's temple signed "CE", and the note was discovered by a group of other people who, if I remember, scheduled an event where they had a pilgramage to Aesry. The event also included some visions for those on the ship (maybe?) and, I think, the first sighting of the Kraken in the sea.
Despite Whiteburn and Zhirrisk being the main suspects, we were left mostly alone to continue what we were doing. We tried a few different things, some better than others. Some joke notes were thrown in, and weren't appreciated much. The notes ranged from fevered Mars Volta lyric-esque warnings of doom, to ranting sermons. I'm sorry to say a few notes got unecessarily mean and vicious in insulting the Theren Guard.
When the Guard discovered OOC that was us, we got the feeling that they were disappointed that there was no GM involved, and interest in our antics seemed to fade somewhat. We were in talks with some of them to try to escalate the situation, but lacking circles and powerful friends, we weren't able to make it interesting for them. Depression also hit me hard during this time, and I lost the will to continue doing much with the Guard. Among the things we tried: Whiteburn left clues that she'd poisoned the Keep's pantries. Zhirrisk kidnapped an NPC guard and moongated him away, leaving behind only a chopped-off hand. (I started to write a short story to go along with this, but lost the will to continue it. Even though no one in the Guard took this seriously, I still maintain that it happened, and that Zhirrisk had the guard locked up in a cabin somewhere. Stockholm syndrom set in, the guard quit to become a cobbler, and Zhirrisk sometimes visits him to play chess.)
Zhirrisk applied to the Theren Guard, but several of their leaders vanished shortly after, and his application fell through between the change in leadership. I was at one point blamed for not following through, which still makes me mad, since back then I was logging in every day to do stuff, and waiting for them to come back around and get back to me. He was also ticked off by one of the Guards being very nasty to him while he was harmlessly climbing a tree while invisible. I ended up giving up on joining them, which is about when the notes I wrote got especially frustrated and cruel. Most of the notes were uring the Therengian government to construct an altar, so the people of their land could worship Drogor. That was our big thing.
Zhirrisk once took Qij and Crofic into the Keep to muck around, and we got out just before being caught. That was fun. We were able to kiiind of recruit Crofic to help attack the Keep, but we lost him when energy ran out and lack of plans happened. He eventually betrayed us or something, I'm not really sure what happened. He used to say "Hey, what's up?" by stabbing me while hiding. I feel like one of my finer moments was Zhirrisk talking Crofic out of murdering him.
Whiteburn got an urn from Beyond the Barrier and used it to capture Drogorian creatures. We released a shark to much amusement in one moon mage visions meeting. Since it was a peaceful area, nothing happened. (Urns were then updated so you can't release a sea creature on dry land.) She caught something else, a skeleton of some kind, and released it during one of Liurilias's talks in the Riverhaven temple. It was dispatched without anyone being hurt. (Although I thought this was clever at the time, I now realise it was super rude of us to try to interrupt his event like that. Luckily we're all pals now.) During another gathering, we released an ice adder in the Baron's booby-trapped chambers in the Keep. We talked Khaelyn into helping us with this one, convincing the Theren Guard to come check it out. I got to dance with the adder to keep it from despawning, while helping Whiteburn get in and out of the Keep with moongates, and it was awesome. But again, I feel bad for disrupting the gathering that was planned...
Eventually we ran out of things to leave around the Keep, and more and more surfaces became unavailable to put things on. We had a plot to steal the book from the chapel, but that never came around, as by then everyone was too tired and irritable to see anything through. Much of the guard had changed by now, and had lost interest in persuing us.
Meeting at the old pier in Crossing one day, we felt Drogor's presence, and saw the Kraken breach the water. We gwethed a bit, but I don't remember if anyone was interested in coming to see.
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OUTLAWED FROM the Keep
Eventually Whiteburn's talks with Liurilias grew to us admitting to him that the Children of Eluned was basically just us two messing about. He became our contact with the GM in charge of Theren stuff, and let us know when the Baron was doing meet-the-public type events. Whiteburn got banned from the Keep, while Zhirrisk was only kicked off the dias for trying to cast Refractive Field in a vialant attempt to kick the Baron after the meeting was over.
Whiteburn hosted a number of rememberances. Drogor's presence was felt during one of them, again at the old pier. Whiteburn and Zhirrisk cut their hands off and bled into the water, but by then I think the GM had vanished, leaving us kind of floundering without much response after the initial twinges. We again visited the crater, I remember Marssi was there, and she stuck around to the very end, which I really appreciated. And the healing. A few others stayed around as well. One moon mage kept calling Whiteburn a false priestess, her name was A-something, she was the one who liked to have parties on Aesry's beaches... that was kind of off-putting, to be called false after all the effort we put in. I don't really remember how Whiteburn handled that, but I think eventually she proved her worth? Or else the moon mage just ignored us.
We got attacked by one of the Guard, Kargarth, while sitting on the road just north of El'Bains, picking boxes after hunting. It sucked. He didn't really attempt to RP with us, he just pointed at us and began chucking his spear around. We died. It was about at this point that I realised DR didn't really need any more villains. Zhirrisk began to try to do good things, helping those in need, in some weird attempt to out-Paladin the Theren Guard.
We got lucky and were in Riverhaven when Asketi's Ride began. Zhirrisk got gored by a steed and it was great. I think he died. We got a few souviniers, Whiteburn did her preaching and was probably gwethsmashed again. Zhirrisk admired Whiteburn's zeal, and began to follow Asketi as well, and ever since then we've been going to Asketi's mountain around the new years to do little offerings. We missed the time before last, however.
With the Children of Eluned revealed, things kind of got boring for me for a while. Zhirrisk began to persue his love life, Whiteburn continued to be devoted and awesome. We met with the Baron again, and again asked him directly about constructing an altar for Drogor. He kept saying No, but maybe when the new temple in Therenborough is constructed. For a while it seemed all we could do was wait on this and hope we didn't mess it up by asking for it and not getting one out of spite.
I kept wanting to do some kind of fund-raising event, logging around Langenfirth to get wood, putting our collection of gold-etched boxes around as donation boxes to help fund a new altar or temple, but I never got around to it. By this time I was severely depressed, and had very little energy for starting mischief or anything else. I'd still like to see someone take that idea and start stock-piling lumber to build a better gondola or bridge in Mistwood forest...
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WHITEBURN'S BIRTHDAY
Whiteburn's IC birthday rolled around, and not knowing what to do for her, Zhirrisk took her to Riverhaven. It was a silly whim. Without any training in Engineering, I bought the tools and book, and bought some wood from Riverhaven, and we picked the bridge outside the east gate. Not exactly our first choice--I always wanted one around Langenfirth, as a kind of flipped bird to Lemicus (goddess of lakes). But the more we thought about it, the more Riverhaven made sense. It was closest to the sea... In retrospect, doing it on the opposite side of the river would have been better for F2P characters, but would make less IC sense, considering the point was to make it easily accessable to the NPC population of Therengia.
So Zhirrisk put together this shoddy, junky table, and Whiteburn blessed it. We gwethed a bit, I think, or else some Therengia people just happened by while we were doing it and started to mess with us. Korutu dragged it into the river, Zhirrisk dragged it back out, him and Whiteburn sat there and peacefully defended their silly little thing, and I was 100% certain that next time I logged in it would be gone forever and we'd be made fun of and called out as not having the backing of our god. It was a huge gamble, but I wanted to do it anyway. I was ready to accept that fate, and though Whiteburn was upset at the futility of it all, she went along with it. We both went to bed feeling pretty crummy at our inability to do anything meaningful, both worrying that we'd just screwed our characters up. If our altar vanished, that would mean Drogor didn't want it there, right? (Maybe we could have spun it as some other god not wanting it, but that kind of doesn't mesh with what we learned about the gods from 414's Hollow's Eve festival.)
LOGS!
Part 1: http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Events%20and%20Happenings%20in%20DragonRealms'%20Elanthia/In-Character%20Event%20discussions./thread/1779436?get_newest=true
Part 2 http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Events%20and%20Happenings%20in%20DragonRealms'%20Elanthia/In-Character%20Event%20discussions./thread/1780972?get_newest=true
Except then we woke up and it was REAL. And Therengian nobles were ticked off and the Theren Guard were angry and trying to break it apart only to get smote by Drogor and it was so awesome! Eventually they got some visions from Chadatru that this altar was just fine and to leave it be, and things calmed down a bit. Whiteburn stuck around the altar for a while, protecting it, getting very little training done. Therengian nobles would come and yell at her, and eventually she was put on trial. Whiteburn and I both emailed the GM responsible for making our altar real, thanking them for it.
The cool thing about this trial was that Quarrel actually reached out to her to ask her what day would be best for her. I really wish more GMs would do that for people. Or maybe they do and no one talks about it. Which is why I'm writing this, because I wanted to talk about it, all of it.
At the trial, Whiteburn got banned from Therengia entirely, save for the altar, so that she could continue to tend to it. Zhirrisk was able to get Liurilias to ask the Baron to lessen the punishment and allow Whiteburn into the swamp as well, as she had a home there at the time, plus I wanted to make sure she could help other clerics out with quests there, and just generally do cleric things in the area plagued with evil undead stuff. Again, Zhirrisk's part in it all was entirely glossed over and ignored... which hurt a lot. In-Character, he's fine with it. Consequence-free, woo! But as a player? Yeah, it sucks to be ignored for your part in something so cool, especially when it was your idea to begin with.
The Trial! http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Events%20and%20Happenings%20in%20DragonRealms'%20Elanthia/Therengia%20Events/thread/1805888?get_newest=true
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AFTERWARDS
Whiteburn hosted another rememberance event, making little origami ships to put in the water, as well as using an expensive kitten home shaped like a ship to put people's offerings into. It got interrupted by someone triggering an auto-invasion, which I personally feel was on purpose, but maybe I'm just paranoid. If it was on purpose, they had a huge amount of luck getting it to happen right then, and having it happen at that particular gate. But people had fun fighting the invasion off, and the event proceeded as planned, more or less.
Though I don't play as much anymore, I got to have one last hurrah with Drogor. I was hunting in Rossman's when sharks and things were attacking Crossing, and Whiteburn wasn't around to do her preaching, so I stepped in for her and did a silly little gweth telling people to go pray. They of course did not go pray. I stopped hunting early and went back to Crossing, went back to Eluned's shrine, and cleaned the altars. I felt a strange stirring, sea-breeze whispers, and sent a thought to Navesi to come check it out. I knew people wouldn't listen to me anymore, but I knew people trusted her. She showed up with a few folk, and the odd feelings came back, and some stuff happened.
Whiteburn came around at this point, and was able to start leading prayers properly. The invasion in Crossing wrapped up, but then Zhirrisk got a moon mage vision of a cog getting sunk by a wave off Ratha. Before he could spit out what he saw, people on Ratha were gwething about sharks attacking. He figured the attack on Ratha was the REAL Drogor, and that the attack on Crossing was just Harawep doing a puppet thing, or whatever was going on (I'm still not sure, as I kind of didn't follow this year's event very closely.) Whiteburn left to Ratha to partake of the destruction and try to figure out what to do--join in attacking people or help raise them--and Zhirrisk and Navesi stayed to relax in Eluned's Shrine.
Then we did the latest visit to Asketi's mountain, and I helped calculate the best time to do it, and Whiteburn did the rest. And after reading the discussion that happened in her announcement thread, I thought it might be helpful for people to have some insight, to see if sharing my experiences will be any use.
I've done things I never expected to get a GM response to, and got one anyway.
I've done things I expected to get a response to, and got none.
I've done things I expected to get a response to, and got responses I wasn't quite expecting, and some that I was.
But usually I just kept to myself and my character's family, and nothing happened to us while big things happened to other people, and we lived safe, semi-happy little lives trying to keep out of the way.
In my two and a half years playing, I've had some terrible experiences, I've caused some terrible experiences, and I've had some awesome ones, and I've caused some awesome ones. Oh, and I've fallen in love twice. You can, too. Maybe not the love part, but it happens. Just focus on the RP maybe.
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