Fist de Yuma - October 19, 2004

That was close I was really tired, and I had a busy day planned for the next day. Normally I would be going to bed early anyway, as Wednesday is a bike ride day. Instead of riding that morning, I was going to pick up my new street bike. I really cannot afford it, and my wife is not fully for getting it, but it is a great deal. We are also getting one year, same as cash, on the loan. So I have year to raise the money. I was just about to drift off to sleep, when it hit me! Tomorrow was patch day, and I still had a bunch of players to get the xp reward with. One of the key players is my tradesman, and he had not gotten it yet. My intent was to level Cliff Bowman one more time, but real life interfered with that plan. I was under the impression that patch day would be Thursday, but the back of my mind said Wednesday. So I got up and hit the Turbine site. Sure enough, the patch was only hours away. I quickly logged Mage, who has a portal to the town, and sent the players who had not got the reward on their way. That was close. About time I logged on this morning to check the patch status. We were heading out for breakfast and getting my new bike shortly. One of the problems with patch day was logging into the zone. It would send me to a "cannot load error" after trying one time, and not even loading the log in page after that. This had been going on for almost a year now. I had gotten around it by using a different screen to log into the zone, and spending some time going back and forth between pages, before I finally would get the AC log in page loaded. I use a launcher to get into AC, but need to load the page once a month for the zone downloads. Today was different. I hit the link, hit the log in, and everything worked. Now I have done some updates to Windows, but I think the fix was on MS's end. All I can say is, about time! Strange quest You cannot say that Turbine does not have a sense of humor. While I was not one of those who grew up watching 50's detective movies, I had seen a few in my time. I recognized the tone of the story right off, and had trouble believing what I was seeing. I'll pick up the story as it unfolds. I have no idea were I'm going, but I'll write up each part as I do it. I'm in the middle of this, but will stop to write about what is going on, so I don't miss anything. Fortunately, I can log off and write without interfering with the adventure. It started out as gathering information. (How else should a detective story start?) I have our allegiance bound to Tou-Tou. I like it because of all the places you can go from there. I had forgotten where the apartment portals went, so I jumped in to reacquire that information. I saw that there is a portal to Uziz and Lytelthorpe. That is good information, as Uziz has the 60+ matron, and you can buy good scrolls there. I have been using my AB lifestone to get to Uziz, but I do not have that on the other servers. It had been some time since I had been in Lytelthorpe. I jumped in that portal to see if the town had anything interesting going on. Of course it was dead, as most towns are, but I noted a guard in front of the fortress. That was new. The guard directed me to some lady. I saw her inside the fortress. This is where it got strange. It started doing auto e-motes with Fist, and showing me what I was thinking. The lady was talking but I was only seeing my thoughts. It seemed I was too bored to listen. She gave me some hints as to my next stop, and gave me a towel. I ended up agreeing to find something in a tree grove north of Nanto. I was sure I knew the grove, as I had been there many times. I even collected apples off the ground to sell for armor at the start of the game. My armor was on a body up the road. I got to the grove, but did not see anything out of the ordinary. It was clear that this was not the right grove. So I returned to Nanto, and this time ran north. After a few clicks, I came to a grove. I hit the "[" key, trying to find something, and it hit on the trees themselves. I clicked on one and got some text about playing with the trees. I kept at it, until one knocked me out, and ported me to a house, in who knows where. In the house was a journal. The journal said that this was a trap to kidnap people, but they had made a mistake with me. (g) Given this is Fist, it is a big mistake. Now I need to track down whoever is running this little kidnapping scheme. The journal also said I was on the Vesayen Islands. I stepped out and looked around. I saw a guy whose name did not look like a vendor's, so he seemed like a good person to start with. He started crying about how he had gotten got caught up with a bad crowd. He gives me a touch and portal gem. It seems I will not need a weapon for this, or will have to fight blind if I do. He also gives me a confession. The confession raised alarm. (Ok, I'm getting caught up in it.) It seems there is a plot on the Queens life. While I'm not one to follow politics in the game, murder of royalty will hurt our battle with known and unknown monster plots. So I'm loyal, if not a blind follower of the Queen. The gem put me into a room with no doors. There was a bookcase, and clicking on that created a doorway. I found that I could see without the torch, but decided to use it anyway. I did buff it with VII's, just in case. (g) That led to a maze. I tend to follow a right wall when searching a maze. After a few side trips, I ended up at a jump. It seemed like a big jump, not a worry for me but I had a feeling this quest was for lower levels as well. A long jump did not seem to fit that image. I was surprised to see that, while it seemed like a big jump, I did not fall far, and took no damage. There was an exit that led to another room, with no doors. There was an idol on the far wall. The idol ported me to a cell. Fortunately, there was a fishing pole in the cell, just long enough to let me grab the keys to the cell. The quest seemed to have alternate paths, so I'm betting I could have picked the lock if I tried. If I ever do this again, I'll try to pick the lock, just to see of it would work. I found a bandit mask on the floor, several torches on the walls and a door. The door did not open, so I started pulling torches. One of them opened the door. From there I found several rooms with sleeping bandits. Rather poor chaps, nothing in any of the chests. Sound sleepers as well. It looked like I could attack them if I wanted to. I have a feeling that would raise an alarm and cause a big fight. Next time I go, I'll check out that theory. I found a big room. I searched the room, and did not find anything of value in it. I followed a hallway, and found a guard. After roughing him up a bit, he opened a door to a treasure room. I found out later that I could also bribe him. Inside this room I found a lot of gold piles, but none I could pick up. There was also a scroll case. I needed to use the towel I was given to get it clean enough to pick up. From there I hit the portal in the room. That brought me back to Lytelthorpe. Giving the scroll case to the lady got me a useless item. I gave her the other items I had collected, and got a nice looking set of clothes. I had seen the clothes before, but never bothered to find out what the quest was about. Funny that I just sort of fell into it. This seemed incomplete. What about the plot on the Queen's life? Who are the Bandits? What the heck was this all about? Figuring there had to me more, I clicked on the lady again. The message seemed to say I there was more, but I had to wait before doing it. I'll check back from time to time and see what the next step in this adventure is. Most likely that will just restart the quest, but I'll see. Non-AC stuff Well, after a lot of working out finances, Rosa let me get my new street bike. I got a good deal on it, $900, and it retails for $1300. I knew there is a road club in the Foothills. I also knew that there was no way I could stay up with them without a good street bike. I've been riding a converted mountain bike on the street for a while now. While it works, it is nowhere near as a fast as a good street bike. I got up at 6am the next morning for my ride. I went outside to get something, and found it was blowing hard. It looked like a 20 to 30 mph wind. It is not pleasant riding in even light wind, so I decided to put off the ride until the next day. By late afternoon the wind had died, and it was not to hot, only in the mid 90's. Well, not hot for Yuma anyway. I decided to take my 11-mile loop. I knew this was going to be faster on a real street bike. I hit my first time check at 11.5 minutes. Normal is 14 minutes. I had never hit the turn at the end of a long road in less that 23, I hit it in 19. My record for the next turn was 33, and I hit it in 27 minutes. At that point I found I had a tail wind for much of the ride, and had to fight a head wind for the rest. Still, I finished the ride in 40 minutes. My record had been 48, and this ride was in the heat. Two days later I headed out again. This time I intended to ride my loop twice, for about 20 miles. As I hit the 10 mile mark, I rode over to a bike store to check when the Foothills bike club was having their next ride. To my surprise, they were meeting then and there. I talked to them for a bit, with the intent to just finish my ride after they left. I found out that there were two groups. The group I had seen were riding 50 miles, and doing it rather fast. The other group is made up of people more my age and shape. They jokingly call themselves Group B. Just for grins, I decided to go with Group B for a short time. They were starting out riding to where a lady rider was killed by a car a month or so back. I found that they were riding away from my house, but I figured they would turn around soon, so I kept going with them. At the next turn, they headed into town. I should have gotten the hint there, and turned around, but I stuck with them. The next thing I knew, we were riding many miles away from the Foothills, halfway to town. One said they had planned to stop for breakfast near the college. I did not have any money, but they said they would loan me some. I did have our cell phone, so I could call Rosa. I would hate to have her worry, as I had already been gone a lot longer than I planned. After eating we road through the college, and started back towards the Foothills. We went into some housing, doing our best to avoid the well-traveled routes. It was damn scary the few times we were on the road with the cars. I had no trouble keeping up, to my surprise. The leaders dropped me on a hill, but I had no trouble catching up. After dropping off two riders at their house, the others said they wanted to do a total of 30 miles. As I already had 10 miles before we started, that would mean 40 for me. I decided to take the first turn home. (g) I rode with them until they turned into away from my route home. I said I would meet up with them for the Tuesday ride, and headed home. My bike computer said I had rode 31 miles in two hours. To say I was tired, is to understate my feelings. I ate like a 20 year old for the rest of the day, and was always hungry. While that may not be the best way to lose weight, it sure felt good. I was very surprised to find how much easer it is to ride in a group. The few miles I rode alone seemed much harder. Of course, I was very tired by then, but I think it is more than that. Drafting is a big help. During the ride I joked how I was going much faster when drafting them. He joked back that I would be leading the pack soon, and had the perfect body for them to draft behind. Now I don't think I'm that wide, but I could be wrong. (g)