Studying Kobolds Up Close
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My first RP in Narfell was with a barbarian who was going to take wizard levels. He had decent strength, a greataxe and cleave. I had no idea what I was doing and Akragon found me and we went out in a party to hunt goblins and saurus. Thank goodness we had a good healer along. I helped them hack through a lot of goblins and saurus cub slashers (at this time, you had to pass through a map of saurus cub slashers to get to the goblins). Akragon showed me how to cook raw meat and sit by the fire via a lot of tells. It took a while.
Another memorable experience was after the barbarian died, I had just started playing Genzir and he was sitting in the Pelt commons which was pretty active at that time. There were a bunch of people hanging around and chatting and Fool comes along with Eth Visage cast yelling "Blind gnome on fire!" (he was blind at this time) and running around doing his Fool shtick. Not knowing the character at all, I asked if he knew a good song. So he sings the badger song. Then it comes out that Genzir is on an asignment to study goblins and kobolds. So, Fool asks if he can help with that, and if I want to see the depths of the kobold cave. Of course I find this very exciting, so we go to the scalesinger cave sneaking in invisibly. He gave me directions before we went in, I had to hold his hand and lead the way, following those directions. I'm dreadfully nervous at this point that the invisibility will wear off, though of course I know now there was plenty of time left. Then I got to watch him blast the scalesinger chamber, which was great fun, because I was nowhere near being able to cast most of those spells. Then he helped me get a heavy crossbow from some orcs. I came out of the whole adventure with a few kobold moonshines, a heavy crossbow, a scary looking demonwolf tooth, a more detailed knowledge of local kobolds than I expected I would have any time in the next year, and some great ideas for how to use spells.
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Genzir joined the legion pretty early on. I was just then hitting level 5 and realizing the extreme difficulty of finding wizard spells for a non-Spellweaver-member. I asked for suggestions for spells to pick, and they said hold and haste, luckily Genzir is very enchantment-focused so hold was a good fit, so I took that and fireball. So much of Genzir's early days were spent following higher-level legion parties (Lyte was around 8 or 9 at the time), mostly sitting in the back taking potshots with the crossbow, throwing daze spells at enemy archers, and waiting for an orc destroyer so I could throw one of my two hold spells. People are usually pretty grateful when you do this, because nobody wants to melee an orc destroyer. At this time your average Legion party was all these half-orcs, and Lyte, but I tended to be with Lyte, who was leading a lot of lower-level patrols. Genzir was the only (active?) mage in the Legion at that time, so add that to being much lower-level than most of the tanks and it makes things pretty interesting. Genzir also got to run a few laps around Jiyyd, that was part of the Legion experience back then.
Genzir had his little moment of glory one day when he followed that big crew to the orc fortress. That was an epic battle like I haven't seen before or since. We were in multiple groups of 10+, just about every high-level PC that I know on Narfell is there. I'm with the archers. When we finally make it into the fortress, I'm stuck on this hill with the other archers. Problem is my spells are too short-range to do much from that distance, so I'm taking potshots with the crossbow again. Then there is one NPC, Orc Priest, played by LowerDenizen (who had not yet become a DM), running around throwing all his tough cleric spells at us. So I position myself on a ledge and he comes into view and starts casting. I might have run, but I decide to try and blind him anyway, and he fails his save…............ right before a blade barrier goes up under my feet. Truth is, even if I had died, I wouldn't have regretted my little stand. A level 4 wizard doesn't get a whole lot of opportunities like that. But somebody ran over and healed me right away and I lived (ICly; OOCly when you get back up you take damage again, but this is considered a bug and so I was spared the XP loss). We carried a lot of dead bodies and gear back after that attack.
