Druid Hits 70

At 4 minutes to midnight I finally got my 2nd character to level 70!

All thats left for tomorrow after work is a massive 185 consortium rep for honoured, so I can get a better shot at gems that being only friendly. A collection I have to do tomorrow as its the last day this month, miss it and I lose em. Then the harder task of getting nearly 5000 lower city rep, clear the group quests and an instance or two will hopefully be enough. Once thats done its bye bye 5000g and hello quest chain for my epic farm form.

Wisp

Exalted Nr 32 - And the Moon!

Last night I got my 32nd faction upto exalted while in Black Temple. The means that I have every TBC faction that requires a raid group complete. This makes me very happy as any other gaps I can fill in myself even if its after WotLK has come out!

And I got to see the moon in shadow moon valley from the domain of Illidan as well. You have to agree is looks damn good!

Wisp

The Orders

Ok, so the setting of my current campaign has several orders of mages living within it. While some things are fundamentally the same across them all, others are radically different.

The current orders are: -

• The White Sun,
  
• The Black Moon,
  
• The Orange Flame,
  
• The Blue Wave,
  
• The Golden Sword,
  
• The Purple Dream
  

You will notice a lack of The Crimson Soul, this is because the rest of the magical world doesn’t know they are back yet! Well lets now have a quick run down of the character of each of these orders.

The White Sun.
This is the order with the most members, its also one of the most powerful. The White Sun are the self appointed police of the magical world. They believe, fanatically, that they have the right to punish those breaking the laws. Laws which they themselves impose. The order of the White Sun was responsible for the destruction of the Crimson Soul in 1782.

The Black Moon.
This order is small in size, but the members are some of the most powerful mages in existence making its power on a par with the White Sun. The order itself is matriarchal in structure as well as being two tiered in ranking – those born within the order above those who have joined from outside. Fortunately for many the Black Moon doesn’t really give a damn about any one else and keep themselves to themselves.

The Golden Sword.
Crusaders is a good way to describe this group. They hold themselves to a higher purpose and laws than those of the mundane world. Many members of this group have made agreements with the Angelic and its even rumoured that divine blood run in their veins.

The Orange Flame.
Almost all members of the orange flame have skills in the Elementalist discipline which is appropriate as there main dealings are with Elementals. Members of the Orange Flame bind elementals of fire & earth to their service as well as make bargains with the greater elemental beings of fire.

The Blue Wave.
This order is the counter and balance to the Orange Flame. Again most members will have some skill as Elementalists, but its is water & air that is bound to their service. The bargains and pacts of the Blue Wave are with the powerful entities of water.

The Purple Dream
The strangest order of them all. The members of the purple dream have abilities beyond all others when it comes to the human racial sub consciousness. They can call into reality things from man’s greatest fears and desires. The rumours go that the more powerful members of this order can even travel into the group mind of non human creatures both mundane and supernatural.

So that is an overview of the magical orders in my game. In my next post on the chronicle I will go over the main supernatural entities that exist within the setting.

Wisp

Magic of the Orders

This is my first post on the system & setting i'm using in my Chronicles of the Crimson Soul campaign.

Magic.
In this setting there are two primary forms of magic, The Disciplines & Invocation. The first is only accessable to those with true magical power, while the later can be used to some extent by anyone. These abilities control what someone can do.
There are two other stats that are important for the use of magic, Magical Strength being the first. The form and source of this power can be manyfold but for the characters and all other members of the Crimson Soul this stat is called Inheritance. It is combined with a discipline or invocation to form the dice pool. When the effect of a discipline is maintained the effective Magical Strength drops by one.
The last magical stat important for the system is Magical Power. When an ability is used points are spent from this pool. For disciplines they are regained every 5 rounds at a rate equal to your Magical Strength. For invocations the points are locked up until its duration expires.

Ok now that the base is explained we will move onto the actual disciplines themselfs. There are 4 disciplines of magic each of which is broken down into two specialities. Its the specialities that a character has dots in.

True Seer

• Oracle - Abilities to see distant places, the past and possible future.
• Dark Seer - Abilities to see the hiden world, things and creatures hidden from mundane sight.
  

Elementalist

• Sorcerer - Can maninpulate elemental forces in coincidental ways, such as making a computer short circuit or a flame just across a gap.
• Conjurer - Can directly create elemental forces from nothing, flinging fireballs and making walls of stone.
  

Blade Mage

• Mystic - Just think of kung fu films and the almost impossible things the characters can do, run upwalls, move incredibly fast, kick someone standing on the other side of a room.
• Artificer - Can make weapons & martial equipement out of nothing. Imbuing them with power.
  

Soul Mage

• Body Mage - The power to alter your own and other peoples bodies, from harder skin to extra limbs to mind influencing pheremones.
• Mind Dancer - Reading of minds, entering peoples dreams and leaving lasting changes on their psyche.

There is one other thing about the disciplines that is very important to know! They leave marks on those who know them. Every character has mystical tattoos on them. A character has three colours, the first represents the disciplines and the other two each represent a specialism in each discipline. So a character with only one specialism in a discipline has a two colour tattoo, with both its three colours. Each discipline marks a certain part of the body and when powers are used at high levels or for extended periods they glow and become noticable even under clothing.

• True Seer - Marks around and between the eyes.
• Elementalist - Marks around the upper arms and legs.
• Blade Mage - Marks on the hands and wrists.
• Soul Mage - Marks across the chest and back.
  

Next the power of Invocations. These come in two types, those that have to be learned and those that can be performed from guideance such a book. To make use of the learned types you must have an invocation skill of at least its level. For the others no invocation skill is needed but to have it would help with reliability.

An invocation takes a number of hours equal to its level to perform and if a duration is not stated lasts for 24 hours. To perform an invocation successfully a number of points of Magical Power must be spent equal to its level. These are then locked up until the ritual ends. I did say that non-magically gifted people can perform rituals, but they are without Magical Power. For them the answer is sacrifice, a route also available to those with power if they should so choose. For an idea of the value of a sacrifice heres a quick chart.

1. Sacrificing a small mammal such as a rat or chicken. Losing a finger or toe. Giving up something of great value to you - like permantly breaking all contact with a loved one.
2. Sacrificing a larger mammal such as a cat or dog. Lossing a hand or eye.
3. Sacrificing a human. Lossing an arm or leg. Giving up every think you have and own.
4. Sacrificing your own life.
5. .....
   

As you can see the more powerful the invocation the more is needed and the cost increase is not linear! There is a way around the great cost though and thats to cast the invocation as a group. Each mumber making there own contribution to the total power of the invocation.

And that is the overview of the magic of my campaign. In the next article I shall go into an overview of the organisations of the world.

Wisp

Reorganising Tags

I fell like adjusting the tags attached to my posts. Basically I've added an "Online Games" tag to all posts about World of Warcraft and Blogshares. It'll also be added to any future game I may talk about.
And for the all the posts currently tagged as "Roleplay" there will also be an extra tag based on the campaign or system I'm mumbling on about.

Wisp

So Whats Been Happening? Part 4

Roleplay

Because of the number of TCG events i've been to on sundays and the unavailability of the rest on other sundays I have not done much of my sunday games this year.

But I have been running a game when I go to see friends outside the hell hole that is Milton Keynes. For mechanics i'm using White Wolfs old world of darkness system, but the game setting is, like a lot of my games these days, my own. The game is called "Chronicles of the Crimson Soul."

In this game the character possess magical abilities in one or more of four disciplines. The use of this power is very free form with the characters skills applying a limit on the effect. They had been taught by a now dead relative and warned to "Beware the Orders".
The game had started with them receiving a mysterious letter telling them the time had come to reform the order of their ancesters destroyed hundreds of years ago. So the characters come together and then set out to find the three parts of the shattered Heart Stone and by reforming it recreate the order of the Crimson Soul.
Now the characters are hunting down the other magically empowered decendants of the old order. I think i'll post most about the setting and system in future posts.

Wisp

So Whats Been Happening? Part 3

Online Games

On blog shares I’ve sort of only stating paying attention to it again in the last couple of weeks, so not a huge amount to say. I am still working on getting ideas in every industry and every artefact.
Did find one industry I’d brought 1000 or so ideas in relatively cheaply that was now worth orders of magnitude more! So sold all but one and jumped from B$25 Billion to B$225 billion cash in hand! Dumped 75 of that into my investment in the Blogshares Bears Corp leaving me with 150 Billion there and the same as free capitol. Another nice thing to come back to is the rise in value of some ideas has made me a trillionaire.

At the start of the year I spent some time messing around on a game called Duels, there is a link in the side bar. It’s an amusing time killer but has too much luck involved to keep me interested for long periods of time. Basically you fight other players and bots. Use special moves and different equipment. But it’s a case of set your character up and let it go. As I said it kills time every now and then.

The other game I’ve have been playing, a very recent discovery is PoxNora. Its interesting, basically a “Collectable Turn Base Strategy Game”. You buy “Packs” of runes and then use your collection to assemble a 20 rune “Deck” which is used to play the game. A nice touch is that the Champion runes (the characters as opposed to Spell, Equipment & Relic runes) gain experience during each battle that can be used to upgrade them. There is a sample set for each of the 8 faction you can use to play and I think I’ll use them till I have learnt how to play and stand a chance of winning this game or get bored! Before I sink any real money into packs.

Wisp

So Whats Been Happening? Part 2

WoW TCG

Servents of the Betrayer, set #5, is now out with some interesting cards! Survival hunter can finally move properly into the solo field! Like I orginally tried a year ago when through the dark portal came out. I've so far only really tried out one new deck idea, and have more in my head I need to start working out. The deck i've been using is a Horde Traitor Druid build.

"Traitor Druid?" I imagine hearing you ask! whats that?

Well Traitor heros are new to this set, in most regards they are just like normal heros who took a different path.

"Different Path?" you might say if you actually existed!

Yup, different path, take as an example Morn Walks-the-Path. He is an upstanding cow hunter in the rabble... erm I mean Horde and the traitor horde hunter is Morn Salts-the-Land. Notice the similarity? well this may help as well

 

Basically they are the same "Cow" but having taken different paths in life. This concept is the same for all the traitor heros. And whats nice is the flips, in most cases the traitor flip is a twisted varient on the "loyal" flip. The benefit for being a traitor hero? You get access to some SICK traitor only abilities and allies. The cost is the loss of any talent ability cards.

"I understand now, thank you O great one" you would say I'm sure!

Anyway my first SotB deck is: -

Desecrator Stormclaw

Abilities [30]
4x Form of the Serpent
4x The Natural Order
4x Cyclone
4x Tainted Earth
4x War Stomp
4x Moonfire
3x Tranquility
3x Chew Toy

Allies [8]
3x Magister Ashi
3x Pathaleon the Calculator
2x Warlord Kalithresh

Equipments [8]
4x Wastewalker Helm
4x Wastewalker Leggings

Quests [14]
4x Deep Sea Salvage
4x Information Gathering
3x Manaforge B'naar
3x Dr. Boom!

Things of interest in this deck:

• The Wastewalker lock down. Basically when the helm is out any ally that is exhausted that my hero deals damage to gets destroyed. The leggins deal 1 damage to any opposing ally or hero that becomes exhausted. One both are out my opponent can no longer attack, protect or use tap abilities on there allies without them immediatly getting destroyed.
  

• Tainted Earth. Want to use your quests? well its going to cost you health! sure you want to complete it?
  

• Form of the Serpent. This card gives my druid an attack form that grows in size, with the option of resetting its counter to do damage to an pposing ally. which also works with Wastewalker helm of course.
  

• Mana Forge Ba'nar & Warstomp. Both are for use with the wastewalker lockdown to force opposing allies to become exhausted and therefore destroyed.
  

And in the side deck! Illusionary Rods. The cheap counter to discard decks! ubre tech!

Wisp

So Whats Been Happening? Part 1

World of Warcraft

I will start with my main hobby. Prometheous officially stopped raiding soon after my last post in January and I was left with no idea what I was going to do. After a couple of weeks I had more or less decided to play much more casually and level my alts while waiting to see what Wrath of the Lich Kings brings. Some friends have now stopped playing, one just totally disappered :(, another made a server transfer to try a fresh start and has since moved all her alts over as well.

One friend got me into DICE, he’s yet another one who has since quit his subscription, who where just about to start on MH & BT raiding. (I had to suffer a few weeks of SSC & TK raids but I survived!) So in the last three months I've seen every boss in MH & BT fall except for Illidan, and as this is the first week we shall make serious tries on him I sure he will also drop soon.

In other news there has been a major content patch (2.4) with a new quest area, new faction, loads of new daily quests, a new five man instance and a new 25 man raid. I'm exalted with the new faction, Shattered Sun Offensive, and along with Scale of the Sands (mount hyjal) I am upto 31 exalteds, with the 32nd coming after the next BT raid. I like the new 5 man, its quick and entertaining. While learning it I'd suggest 2 or 3 Crowd Controllers, especially on heroic. This is less important with better gear and I've done a heroic with me being the only CC'er - that was amusing!

The new daily quests generate a lot of netherweave. The best way of disposing of this stuff is to turn it into netherweave bracers and disenchant them. From a sample of about 100 bracers I was looking at an average increase in value of 150% from the value of the cloth on the AH.
Well.... that used to be the best way, several of the new daily quests give a shattered sun supplies as a reward, inside every one is a green item. Imagine a large chunk of the alliance population getting 4-5 green items of junk every day... with me so far? What do you do with this junk? answer you get it de'd and sell the enchanting mats on the AH. Result? the value of Arcane Dust (the most common result of this process) has collapsed. So now the best way to dispose of my mountain of cloth is to turn it all into heavy bandages and vender them, 3g a stack of cloth.

Enough of that for now. My druid is now level 68 and the proud owner of "Farm Form". Which is as awsome for herbalism and mining as I expected it to be! Just two more levels and 3000 gold away from doing the quest chain to get "Epic Farm Form". At which point I can stop spending a fortune on the AH for Wisp's raiding supplies! Once the druid is done attention turns to the mage, currently 56. Once its upto 70, I'll not only be able to get all my herb requirements farmed myself, I'll be able to produce all my potion/flask needs myself.

And Finally, one of my alts has its own guild "Wisp Inc". We a not recruiting and have a guild tabbard and a four slot guild vault.

Wisp

3 Months to Long!

Its been over three months since I have typed nonsence for my imaginary readership to read!
Well tomorrow that changes. And I start to post again. I sort of feel like my life is on hold atm, think its been that way for years so time to start moving once again!

Back Tomorrow!

Wisp