EXPLODING BEARS

by Spleen

This one is about a year old, but was never published on my old site, so very few have seen it.

I run into this newbie tamer mofo named Vertumnus, obviously new to the wonderful world of UO. Hes parked at the bridge to the minoc mines (my stomping grounds) trying to sell these 3 dumb bears to miners as protection. He had been there for 2 or 3 hours trying to sell them for 50g each, to EVERYone that walked by. I was interested, but I kept telling him they looked sick, so I had to test them. My plan was to get him to "test drive" one by me going grey and having him order it to attack me, thereby making him grey to me so I could promptly wack him. He was acting interested until some newbies (one pictured in white) actually became interested in buying his bears. My next plan was to sneak up and flamestrike them from just offscreen, and I did so PEFECTLY to the first one. Unfortunatly the spell hits offscreen so I cant cap that, but its an amusing sound. He starts running around trying to figure out whats up, when I walk up (and load hypsnap) and pretend to buy bears again, but I ask some hardhitting questions.

He has NO idea what happened, when much to my amusement the other newbie said something about "a pet disease has been going around here lately", missed that cap... But I agree with the newbie, after examining the corpse.

I agree with the newbie, but im cautious, saying theres definitely a disease going around. A disease that makes NPC pets burst into flames?? he bought it too!

Right after that the interested newbie decides he doesn't want sick bears that will burst into flames at a moments notice to guard him, and leaves. I then try to flamestrike the next bear, but he follows me a bit and sees "Kal Vas Flam" on the edge of his screen! He asks what it means and we have a nice little chat.

He somehow knew "Kal Vas Flam" was not spanish though. After this I burned down his second bear, got guardkilled that time by a sneaky NPC thief, and he stabled bear #3. My fun was over... I had some friends over watching me play while we gulped down beer before the nights festivities, and we ALL got a hearty laugh from this. I hope you also enjoy my fine tale of gimping.