Lagumbay.com Reflections on Love, Rage, and Fear

A small but noticeable grin reflected against the blue glow of a dimly lit terminal screen. Somewhere in Los Angeles, a gateway translated zeros and ones into coherent instructions which it then sent through seemingly countless bounces, finally arriving at its intended destination. This time, the chosen destination was the International Crime Database.

Fred didn’t have a cool hacker name like “El Techno” or “Digital Mage.” He didn’t need one. He was happy being Fred of the Uplink Corporation. He was happier with the steady flow of cash infusions willingly transferred by other corporations into his account for what he calls “subcontracting” gigs. Fred enjoyed his gigs very much, and he enjoyed this batch of gigs in particular.

Corporations who need to appear wholesome to the public sometimes require Fred’s confidential industrial services. That is, industrial espionage, sabotage, creating and falsifying identities, and making certain individuals’ lives miserable. From the list of jobs in Uplink’s internal services machine, he had gathered a list of names that needed police attention. Well, they would need police attention after he was done altering their records, anyway.

ElTechno was deemed too much of a renegade to hang with The Renegades so without consulting a dictionary, Dear Leader decided it was best for ElTechno to be on his way.  Finding himself once more without a guild, he began to wonder about the most peculiar things, like why his clothes didn’t fit anymore.

Yes, seriously, why does some equipment have a guild level requirement?  This belt is really members-only?  Is DDO run like my old high school with its own clothing police?  No sports-related clothes, no hats (I’ve got the hat bug so none of my hats are visible), and apparently they’ll need to see my ASB card if I want to keep wearing my crafted belt.

The problem was that I was quite fond of my gear.  The same went for Eberlinz Evil Twin and Estocean.  The easiest solution to the issue was to create my own guild.  Without any fanfare, the Guild of Estoceans was born with barely any members and hardly any renown.  We are nothing like The Renegades.  We are nothing like the Fabulous Killjoys.  For one thing, we can’t stand in V formation.  However, on occasion, I may hum the Batman theme while descending upon an unsuspecting mob and disposing of them with a wand of blasting.

Let’s talk about arts and crafts.  You see these hands?  They spent years of training in both spell-casting and rapier-based combat.  With a touch, I could draw the life force out of a creature within arm’s length.  For those further away, my hand can shoot necrotic bolts, fire, lightning, acid, or ice with similar results.  When I feel the need to see some blood, I draw my rapier and carve my way through opposition.  These are dirty, bloodied, calloused, warrior hands.

To show my more sensitive side, however, today we are using these same hands to knit a cozy cloak for Eberlinz Evil Twin.  You see, Ebbie’s a human ranger with a little bit of a problem staying on his feet.  He wields twin khopesh blades (also designed by yours truly), which I’m sure he’d love to swing around and hurt people with if only he weren’t so easily tripped by his enemies.  Because of this little issue, he asked if I could make him some sort of Cloak of Balancing.  “Sure can,” I enthusiastically exclaimed, “I just need to gather some materials.”

The first step is to decide on exactly what we’re going to make.  For Eberlinz, I wanted to give him something a little extra so today we’re crafting him an Unbalancing Cloak of Balance which not only makes him more surefooted; the cloak is so awesome it has a chance to knock enemies off their feet.  After deciding on that, we gather the necessary essences and collectible items to create the magical shards that would go into the cloak.  For our purposes, we have created an unbalancing shard and a shard of balance.

Shards in hand, now we look for a used cloak.  It is a good idea to keep a few old cloaks around just for crafting purposes.  Any will do, really.  We take the cloak, find the designer tag, rip said tag, and replace it with “Hecho De ElTechno.”  We then use a hot glue gun to secure the shards into place.  A little bit of cleanup and here we have a lovely cloak, hand-made and ready for the rigors of combat.

Up on the mast, there’s a lonely mote herd…

When people think of the Risia Ice Games, they think of sliding gracefully down icy slopes and gliding through the air through low-gravity jumps in search of assorted colored winter coins. They think of fighting fire elementals and renting ice skates. They think of the poetic snowfall in Stormreach Harbor the likes of which hadn’t been seen since a dragon terrorized Korthos.

Well, realistically, a lot of people ignore the ice games entirely, and for the longest time, I was one of those people. That was until I became involved in an obsessive-compulsive hunt for eternal wands. The basic idea is as follows: during the Ice Games, a character collects assorted coins, which gets redeemed for random items. Some of those random items happen to be crafting materials which when placed in the Risian Altar along with other ingredients, create or imbue weapons with icy properties. One of these possible creations is an Eternal Wand of Ray of Frost.

There was ElTechno’s wraith form and extended versions of “Jump” and “Expeditious Retreat” spells standing on a docked ship’s mast deciding on the best path to collect as many blue coins as possible in one leap. There was ElTechno cursing as his footing slipped, gliding back down to the dock and jumping back up to the boathouse roof for another try at a precision landing onto the ship’s mast. A successful jump netted three blue coins and a switch to another instance in the multiverse for an attempt at three more. This was repeated countless times to gather materials for him, and for members of the guild.

Thusly he herded the motes of winter, crafting recipes, an assortment of icy potions, and candy canes which he used as unexpected presents for guild and party members. After crafting the eternal wand, he embraced his jumping proficiency and continued herding motes of winter for various other recipes. He gave quite a few of the materials away and to those who were interested, he taught his methods of coin farming.

All of this was strange to the Drow rogue wizard who had lived a borderline sociopathic life.