Page 11 of Looking for Group

It was touch and go a couple of times, and Prospero got swarmed by spiderlings when the boss was at about five percent health, leading to a mad DPS race against Ella’s dwindling health and Solace’s dwindling mana pool.

Drew’s heart was racing as he blew as many cooldowns as he could and pounded his rotation like he was actually hammering a giant spider goddess.

When she dropped, there was stunned silence and then an eardrum-exploding roar across Mumble.

He thought he heard Bjorn actually singing.

“Fucking well done team.” Morag.

“We are awe- some .” Bjorn, still in singsong mode.

Ialdir seemed to be breathing for the first time in ten minutes. “Oh man, when Prosp went down, I was like new pants for table five.”

“Um,” said Prospero, “I’m still kind of dead over here.”

Morag hustled over the many spider corpses and shattered egg bits to Prospero’s body and began to channel the divine energies that would bring him back from the dead. On the other side of the room, Ignatius was doing the same for Caius.

[Raid][Prospero]: Quality healing, Sol

[Raid][Solace]: *blushes* Thanks. Ella’s easy to heal

[Raid][Jargogle]: Well he is the best geared tank on the server

[Raid][Orcarella]:

“Can’t believe we didn’t wipe.” Someone? Caius or Prospero?

“Yeah,” agreed Morag. “It’s gone smoother, but the important thing is we kept it together.”

“And we had some really terrible luck.” Drew was pretty sure that was Ialdir—as the only American in the raid, he was easy to recognise. “That egg sac on the first Sentinel phase really sucked.”

“And somebody chained poison through the melee,” said Bjorn in his stern voice. “I’ve checked the logs and you know who you are, but there’s no point naming names, and it wouldn’t have happened if you’d all been properly positioned.”

Jargogle’s stern voice was way sterner than Bjorn’s. “Now listen here, young man. It’s all very well for you and your fire-flinging friends, but when four of you attack a tiny egg sac you stand close together.”

“Okay, guys,” interrupted Morag. “It was a difficult situation but there’s things we can learn from this. Melee, you do need to pay more attention to the venom, and Bjorn, you have to stop talking like a primary school teacher.”

“All right, message received. Now anybody who wants loot put their hand up.”

There was nothing Ella needed from Arachnia, so Drew opened a window and got himself another glass of Dr Pepper.

Anni had basically got that fight down a few months ago and anyone who chained poison through anything would have been reamed out by the raid leader.

On the other hand, as Morag had said, they’d pulled through pretty impressively, and it had actually been fun in a slightly knuckle-whitening way.

One of the problems with raiding was that, after a while, it began to be a chore rather than a challenge. These fights had become so routine to him, they’d stopped being interesting. But learning to work with a whole new team made them come alive again. 6

Morag jumped up and down for attention. “Okay guys, it’s half nine. We can call it here if you like, but we’ve got plenty of time to take a couple of cracks at Vilicus. We probably won’t get him down this evening, but we might as well get some practice in.”

“I’m game,” said Ialdir, “but I need to help Stefan put the kids to bed.”

Bjorn sneered down Mumble. “This is so typical of you, Jacob. Having a family and a life and priorities outside raiding. Such a liability.”

[Raid][Ialdir]: brb

[Raid][Morag]: Okay everyone, back in 20 minutes. Or else.

[Raid][Caius]: Grabbing a cuppa

[Raid][Prospero]: Two sugars for me

[Raid][Dave]: bio break

[Morag] whispers: Doing okay?

To [Morag]: yeah, having fun

[Morag] whispers: It’s really good to have you along

To [Morag]: thx

Drew took a sip of his Dr Pepper. He wasn’t used to being checked in on.

It was, well, it was nice. Normally he’d have spent this time browsing the forums and reading tanking blogs to keep up on the latest strats, but he didn’t want to miss any chat, so he found himself glancing round the raid group to see what everyone else was doing.

Solace had run up one of the sheets of webbing and was balanced precariously at the top, her wings shimmering in the deep blue-green light. Ella ran up to join her.

To [Solace]: hi

[Solace] whispers: we have to stop meeting like this

To [Solace]: you mean at the top of arachnia’s web in the middle of CoT?

[Solace] whispers: hee

To [Solace]: enjoying the view?

[Solace] whispers: I suddenly realised I’d never been up here

Drew zoomed in and out and spun his camera around.

He’d never been up here either. Now he came to look at it, someone had put a lot of love into this place.

Arachnia’s chamber was a tall dome like the inside of a pepperpot, the walls crisscrossed with webbing as intricate as old lace.

Cocooned bodies were strung in spirals from floor to ceiling.

To [Solace]: omg, there’s a dead kobold up there.

To [Solace]: look at its little feet poking out

Drew put his head in his hands. That had been about as suave as one of the suave options in Alpha Protocol 7 . Here he was, with a cute girl at the top of an enormous spiderweb, talking about dead kobolds.

[Solace] whispers: Ohmigod, kobold feets!

[Solace] whispers: Is it wrong I find that cute?

To [Solace]: probably

[Solace] whispers: hee

At dead-on twenty minutes, Morag called the raid together and they climbed out of Arachnia’s domain and into the Halls of the Torturer.

[Yell][Tortured Victim]: AHHHH! NO! MAKE IT STOP!

[Yell][Vilicus]: Be grateful. To live is to suffer. To suffer is to live.

They passed beneath another archway of thorns and roses into a fairly generic tower of crumbling stone, and fought their way through Vilicus’s twisted, tortured guards.

“You know what I don’t get?” mused Dave.

Magda: “I keep thinking I do, but there always turns out to be something else.”

“What I don’t get,” Dave continued, unperturbed, “is what this big stone tower is doing in the middle of a hedge maze.”

Ialdir: “No, no, this is really cool.”

[Raid][Prospero]: Oh God, you’ve started him

[Raid][Ignatius]: Run awaaaaaaaay!

“About two-thirds of the way into Legend II ,” Ialdir—or Jacob, Drew still wasn’t sure which he preferred to be called—began, “Raziel goes to speak to this man named Vilicus, who studied the secrets of immortality with the dark elves. And this is basically the tower he hangs out in.”

“Yes,” added Bjorn, “if you played the original games, which you wouldn’t because you were a foetus, there’s lots of things you’d recognise.”

“Yeah, but why is it in a maze.” Dave still didn’t sound convinced.

Ialdir sighed. “Because Vilicus betrayed Raziel, which meant the Ritual of Torment Raziel was using to try and save his homeland went wrong, and they all got sucked down into the underworld.”

“Oh right. But why is it in a maze?”

“Because,” growled Bjorn, “it will allow us to get phat loots. Now shut up and hit things.”

They shut up and hit things, and finally arrived at Vilicus’s torture chamber. It was a vast, circular room with grooves cut into the bloodstained floor, chains hanging from the walls and ceiling, and gruesome, improbable-looking torture devices scattered around like socks on laundry day.

Vilicus himself was a tall, dark-haired man in a blood-red robe. Drew knew that up close his face was a horrible patchwork of scars.

[Yell][Vilicus]: Immortality is found through pain. Come, friends, and I will make you immortal.

Morag sighed. “Okay, so Vilicus is a three-phase fight. I don’t know how you did it in Anni, Drew, but we normally three-heal this one. We only need one tank, so I’m going to go Endurance. Everyone give me a tick while I switch specs and change into my healing pants.”

Anni’d had Vilicus on farm for the last couple of months.

They’d taken to using this really cheesy strat where they’d had one healer, one tank, and everyone else on DPS to grab the damage buff and burn him down as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, you could only get away with that if you were already ridiculously overgeared.

Drew had sort of forgotten how to do the fight properly and, in a way, was looking forward to trying, because while it was a total pig, it was also one of the most interesting fights in the dungeon.

Morag had swapped her platemail for slightly different-looking platemail and a slightly gentler-looking sword.

“Right. So, in phase one, Drew, can you tank him in a circle so Tainted Blood doesn’t spread too far?

Melee DPS, seriously don’t stand in the shit.

If you get Curse of Blood, run the fuck away.

If you get Curse of Flesh stand the fuck still and let everyone stack on you.

If someone gets Curse of Bone, all deeps on them, and get them out again.

Phase two, same, but don’t stand in blades.

Phase three, all that stuff, but we need to get him down before we get too many Tormented Spirits.

Bjorn and Jargogle, you’re our top DPS, so run to the torture equipment and grab Glory Through Pain ASAP. ”

“I’ll hop on the rack,” said Bjorn. “You get in the iron maiden.”

“If either of them go down, then prio is: Ignatius, Caius, Dave, Ialdir.”

[Raid][Ialdir]: ?

Bjorn snorted. “Dude, that’s what you get for playing a pet class.” 8

[Raid][Solace]: Morag’s on Ella, but if you could help out with Glory Through Pain, that’d be great.

[Raid][Solace]: I’ll prio Bjorn and Magda, and prop up the raid.

[Raid][Prospero]: And I’ll heal every-fucking-body.

[Raid][Solace]: I’ll play it by ear, but if the damage from Glory gets too high I’ll be purging at about 40%