Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Packwack

by Spleen

It was a lonely night in Delucia... In Felucca, you don't see too many people looking for a fight. In fact, I saw none. I wasn't exactly looking for a fight either, I was working on a tailoring character I had and wanted to finish, now that all the good armor is made by tailors. It is boring. It consists of killing cows and making armor, repeat. Being on my tailor (named Frank Zappa) I can't really bully people around. The only skills I have in the 90s are tailoring, musicianship, and mining. There is, however, one thing I can kill :

PACKS!

I come across fenril, who has GM magery, taming, lore, mining and smith. Not much different than my Torgo character, actually. He has more motherfucking packhorses than I can count. He was mining just outside of the guard line, loading those packs up with ore. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that. I figure I can maybe kill one or two then sneak off, because after all, this is only my tailor gimp. 

I get the attack on one and press it. Killing the first pack took something like 10 minutes of constant clicking. He was healing, healing healing and meditating. I figured eventually he would run out of regs, which is what must have happened several minutes into it.

For some reason he really wanted to get the loot off of the horse, so he walks back over towards it. As it turns out, this first pack I attacked at random had all his verite and valorite ore. By coming out and trying to get the loot from it, I was able to lace into two or three more packs that followed him out of the guard zone.. When I looked in the pack corpse (hoping for ingots) and saw the good ore, I real crafty-like stashed it in a bag behind a tree while I was whacking on his remaining horses. So there's about 15 seconds where he is trying to figure out what happened to all that ore and I get some free shots at his packs.

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I get the first two down in that first spot, then start in on a third. He rushes into the guard zone and starts yelling for guards and trying to get the horse to follow him into safety. He doesn't want to lose any more than he already has. Notice in the first picture the horse is blue, and in the third one the horse is grey. When I was chopping at the fourth pack he rushes out to right the wrong.

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One of the other packs had all his mining tools, and when I downed that one (the third one I believe) he yet again runs way out to try and loot it, which brings even MORE horses out of guards for me to attack!

So here I am knee-deep in packhorses and he decides to try and hit me with some purple potions. He last targets two purps at me. I waited for just the right time and then jumped back. He did about half of the damage to the four packs I had on me. At this point the packhorses alone had gotten rid of about 1/3rd of my health, and I had no way of healing myself. I drop one more (bringing the score to 4)  and he manages to get the rest (3) into guards.

But guess what? Since he purp'ed me, not only is he grey to me now (aggressor) so I can attack him in town, all of his pets are also grey to me! Much to his amazement, I follow his horses right into town and continue whacking them!

I drop his llama right here by the smith, bringing the score to 5. He is spamming something in Japanese, I think soliciting heals for his horses. With only two surviving and no way of healing them, he starts trying to invis himself. The first time he forgets to toggle combat and I get a hit in on him. He must have had the full 125 strength, because my hits seemed to be doing absolutely nothing.

I knew he would be grey for two whole minutes, so I took that time to polish off his horses before the crowd jumps in and starts healing them. It worked. I got both of his final two packs right there at the blacksmith. Right as the last one died the person there in purple puts a heal up. Too late! The pack score goes up to a full SEVEN.

I am at about half health now, but I press the attack anyway. Fenril doesn't know that I can't heal, but I already know she (meaning : he) can't! I lace into her with my tribal spear and she goes into super stealth mode. I couldn't believe it! First she casts a magical invisibility, then (while invis) uses a magic teleportation item to teleport around the screen invisible. She could teleport FAST too. Also, she was smart enough to toggle combat. So basically, all I see is little white puffs of smoke as she pops around the screen invisible. About 30 seconds go by, and there really isn't anything I can do to make her visible, so I run off screen hoping she will take the bait. Sure enough, she bolts for freedom and I jump right back on the case. I got lucky and hit her a few times with some paralyzing hits, which sealed the deal.

Man down! Man down!

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Here are some pictures of me stashing the packhorses' loot behind trees. I was doing this during the fight! I got clued on that he really wanted the loot by how bad he kept trying to run out and salvage it. I didn't have time to look and see what he wanted, I just started stashing it on principle. Unfortunately for Fenril, Frank Zappa also happens to have 93 mining! Within about a minute, everyone starts following me around and scouting out the whole city trying to find whatever loot he had stashed on the packhorses. When all of the corpses turned up empty, they started following me, figuring I would lead them to it. No sir, I started dropping empty bags and faking them out. I finally dropped 2 ore in a bag behind a tree and made a break for it just fast enough to shake them. I had to then sneak around town with my pack full of his ore and I eventually managed to smelt it all.

That's when Kyrnia found me. This "bad motherfucker" followed me step for step, just waiting for me to go out of town. Every time I went near an exit, he would rush ahead of me and cast an explode, thinking he was off my screen. Like that shit is going to fool me. I stood right there on the guard line for awhile and I could tell he was contemplating taking a shot at me. I backed up off screen a little, testing the guard lines myself. He stood there waiting at the north gate. I think he expected me to go out there and get that hidden valorite and verite, which actually WAS still out there, about a screen behind him.

I haul ass down to the south gate and run around the outskirts of town the long way, stopping by and picking up the last of the valorite ore. I then rush by him running into town from the entrance he was "guarding". 

But here is where things get funny.

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As I rush past him into town, I stop RIGHT on the square I know to be the guard line and drop off my horse. I wanted to make him think I was disconnected. I wasn't sure if he would take a murder hit but I knew damn well he would try and kill my horse. I stood there perfectly still for a few minutes as he walked around me, checking the lines, even casting explodes every now and then, just to see if I would run.

I knew it wouldn't be long. He wanted blood. I had already typed "guards" in and had my finger on the enter key.

Sure enough, he takes the bait and tries to cast on my horse. Connor the guard comes out and introduces him to the dirt. The awesome thing about dying in T2A to guards, you don't keep your shit like you normally would! All of his loot was sitting there on his corpse.

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... and what loot it was. Every piece of armor he had was magic invuln leather. Plenty of gold and regs as well. I bag his shit up and consider heading home, but his stupid pet beetle is sitting there. Now, those things can bite, and they move fast. They have no more hit points than a normal horse, but they could probably kill me in two bites. Pussy tuffguys just love these bright purple beetles, it is just like nightmares when they first came out, everyone has to have one. With no archery or magery, how am I to bring this thing down?

Good ole Wheez, who had just reactivated that day. He runs over to Delucia and drops the beetle with magery, just seconds before Fenril showed back up, after waiting in time out for 30 minutes. (If you die in T2A now, you must wait 30 minutes before you can re-enter it) Fenril shows up with a 'mare, but we both know how to handle that old act. Para it and watch him scratch his head. (I once had a wiseguy magic arrow his own nightmare to unpara it. Hah! You know how that ended up.)

I had to go to sleep at that point, plus I was nearly loaded down with loot with a full bank. I hid and logged off for the night and asked Wheezl to continue in my footsteps. The last thing I saw as I closed up was some poor bastard trying to make it back into town with an angry Wheez on his heels. He told me the next morning he had gotten two or three kills.

The next day, when I went to Delucia as Torgo the smith, some guy ran up to me and asked if I was "Weesl". No idea how he made that connection, seeings how Wheez and Torgo haven't been seen together in nearly two years. But he was still all armored up and guarding the bank, just hoping a Wheez or Frank Zappa would show up and get some justice.

Oh, we will be there.