Kyclops Kombat

I am getting a later than normal start this Saturday morning.  Quite honestly I am pretty groggy because it was another “watch the skies” night.  I really did not sleep well at all, for the most part I kept getting woken up by a new round of tornado warnings from about 11pm onwards.  At some point during the night the danger passed and it shifted to infomercials.  I know this because I dreamt about some magical drug that can cook food in only minutes…  I feel as though I maybe got a few things mixed up.

Tornado Alley

For the most part last night was one big near miss.  The storms hit all around the Tulsa area where I live, and instead gave the areas where both of our parents live pure havoc.  Most of the night was watching concerned while texting back and forth with my dad about what was coming towards them.  At one point there were two tornados, on either side of highway 169 roughly 10 miles from my parents house.  But other than a bunch of rain both all three of our sets of parents made it through the night safe.

I feel as though I have to explain something to folks who are not from “Tornado Alley” and even more so not from Oklahoma.  From the time I got home around 4pm until after the time I went to bed around 11:30pm no normal programming was shown at all.  All of that time we have literally the best meteorologists in the country tracking the storms and some of the best storm chasers in the country following them.  The station we watch for example has not one but two helicopters at their disposal, and they are also chasing the storms by the air.

So when storms are a brewing, it becomes this surreal showplace of watching as these giant green, red and yellow blobs inch towards your home and family.  All the while we are seeing live in car video, and tower cam video showing just how bad the storms are.  There were several points during the night when a normally calm broadcast would be interrupted by an excited storm chaser yelling over the weatherman that a tornado was on the ground and this place or that place.  At which point all focus would shift to whatever that crisis was, and putting the other crisii that had not quite happened on the back burner.

Oklahomans have a pervese sense of attraction to Tornados…  it is that whole moth too the flame thing.  Anything that destructive has to be respected and almost admired with a certain kind of majesty.  You can hear this in the storm chasers voice and choice of wording… you know they are out there for a totally different purpose than you the viewer is.  While we are huddled in our homes scared shitless about what might be barreling down on us… they are excited as they see the “best activity all night” while describing a wall cloud.  You can’t take offense to these adrenaline junkies reveling in the fact that they are chasing a storm that spawned a massive tornado.  It is a symbiotic relationship…  without them we would not have nearly the warning that we do.

The biggest take away for the rest of the country is that you should fear and respect tornados.  We Oklahomans have literally grown up with this our entire lives, we have the best possible weather and storm chasers on our side…  yet still as evidenced by last night… people die because they were either caught unaware, or did not respect the fury of the storm.  All of the deaths that happened last night along I-40 were in essence preventable… it is drilled in from our first days in school, that the worst place to be in the case of a tornado is your car on the road.  Yet when the sirens went off, for whatever reason people took to the highways to avoid it…  and instead placing themselves right in the path.  The most tragic of these deaths is the mother and child that were… according to the highway patrol…  sucked out of their car by the storm.

Kyclops Kombat

Before all hell broke loose, early in the evening… I was looking forward to being able to play some Rift.  One of my good friends, Rylacus was planning on playing last night, and as a result I decided to break out my one remaining lowbie while waiting on him to show up.  I have made several attempts at rolling a mage in Rift, and none of them make it terribly far.  The long and short is… that I just do not enjoy “finger wigglers” as I call them.  I need to be smashing into things with a weapon to get that visceral feedback I crave in a combat system.  If forced to, I can usually play a Necromancer type because pet class caster is kind of that hazy middle ground that I can find some enjoyment in… but I had never actually made one past level 20.

When Storm Legion was announced, and they mentioned having a Melee mage… I knew I was all about that.  The Harbinger really is a fun class to play, and for the most part it is essentially the battlemage archetype from other games.  You have a series of spells that essentially summon armor or weapons to suit whatever situation you are in.  Right now I have a sword that procs a dot, axe that procs a heal, physical resist armor and magic resist armor…  all of which are useful in certain situations.  Right now I am mostly playing with the 2 handed healing axe and the physical resist armor, because against quest mobs that seems to be the power combo.

I had only been on playing my mage about thirty minutes or so when another good friend of mine shows up in mumble.  Thalen has been working on his cleric and managed to get him up to level 48.  One of the things you have to know about Thalen, is that he is a rabid completionist.  As a result when he logged in, he was wandering around the droughtlands looking for 5 quests he had missed, that would count towards the droughtland completion achievement.  He mentioned that there were a series of elite quests that he could not quite solo…  so I quickly found myself logging over to Belghast and heading that way.

One of the subplots in the zone is that there is a group of Cyclops that you can earn the respect of by proving your strength.  Thalen had apparently made it all the way to the end of this series and had two quests unfinished.  The first of which was to engage the cyclops in a massive 4 way brawl, and the other was to track down and kill several named cyclops.  I mentored down to 48 and we headed out to the arena.  We started up the battle and I was shocked at just how much damage I was taking.  Moments later I realized that yet again I had rushed off into combat… without throwing any buffs up.

After buffing the combat was pretty easy overall.  While tracking down the various named cyclops my Raredar plugin threw this big green alert over the top of my screen that I have not entirely familiar with seeing.  It seems that it had found a rare named spider, so I tried to keep it busy until Thalen could get back to me.  It dropped a piece of epic currency and a piece of blue armor, which would have been good… were we actually doing this content on level.  We wrapped up the quests and I bowed out of the group, as things were starting to get crazy weather wise.

The sad part is…  Rylacus never showed up during the couple of hours I was playing.  Later on I ended up getting a text about 11 pm from him…  just when the shit was hitting the fan here… saying he was able to log in now.  I texted back saying that unfortunately we were under the gun weather wise, and answered a few of his questions.  I am sure the third text came off extra grumpy, as he seemed to have a way of texting just as I was trying to fall back asleep.  Hopefully we can get meet up another night and run around together.  Would be nice if we could some how engineer both myself, Ry and Thalen being on at the same time.  If that ever happens… we will have to find something epic to do.

Enter the Returners

As things got more dicey outside with the weather, I decided it was time for me to disconnect from anything online involving other people… and switch back to something I could pause.  I picked up my psp and continued on my adventure through Final Fantasy VI.  I have to say I still have a solid dose of nostalgia about this game, but there are little things that annoy me.  For example it feels like it takes far longer between rounds of combat than I remember.  Granted this could just be my impatient self, used to non-turnbased combat…  but it feels like those action bars take for freaking ever to fill.

There will probably be spoilers in the lines ahead… so if you have not played this game you should probably stop reading.  Essentially last night I finally completed the Mog minigame… and escaped Narshe.  The combat there is far rougher than I remember it being before.  It might be that I just suck at final fantasy games nowadays, but it felt like the final guard battle did way more damage than he should have.  It took me a few tries to get past him, one of them involving loading an earlier save… since when you rez back you have 1 hp… and I had next to no potions at that point.

After that I ventured forward to to Figaro, had my first real renin with Kefka…  and still thought it was cool to watch Figaro castle submerge.  I remember back in the 90s, I was not at all expecting that turn of events.  Because of the engine room… and mecha look… I thought maybe it would turn into a robot or an airship…  but submerge was not one of the things I was thinking.  So after thumbing our noses at Kefka we wandered across the desert and went through the cave to South Figaro.

At this point I had enough money to pretty much optimize everyone’s gear… since this is the very first occasion that you have to actually purchase anything.  While I don’t remember thinking this at the time… that is a really really long time to go surviving only on drops and chests.  Nowadays it feels extremely cruel, but at the time I guess it was just par for the course.  After spending some time in town… I couldn’t really remember exactly what I was supposed to do next… and there was not a clear call to action.  This Final Fantasy game seems to do a far worse job at messaging what you are supposed to do than I remember.

Essentially I fell back on my “wander aimlessly” skill and found Sabin’s cabin… at which point we get the “Edgar realizes his brother is still alive and nearby” cut scene.  So now it jogs my memory… that we have to go up Mount Kolts to get to Banon at the returners base.  Bingo! We have a plan now.  So I ascend Mount Kolts, see the spooky shadowy figure following me… remember that it leads in a boss fight.  Sure enough it is Vargas the son of Duncan… who killed his father because he thought Sabin was the chosen one.  We fight Vargas, Sabin jumps in… the game teaches us how to use his freaky Blitz ability… and boom we win the day because pummel apparently is just THAT good.

After that I find my way to the Returners base…  Terra gets all emo because she doesn’t know which path to choose.  You walk around the base talking to people, and finally meet Banon outside.  Does anyone NOT choose to join the Returners?  I mean what happens if you say no… do you just stay there and the game is over?  Far as I know there is not an entire second side of the game where you rejoin the empire and kick returner ass…  so if you say no it essentially has to be a non-choice.  Based on a google search, apparently if you say no… she still agrees to follow them to talk to the Esper in Narshe.  So yeah… sounds like pretty much a non choice… but you have the opportunity to be a dick about it.

Basically I reached the point where my eyes could no longer stay open when we had run away from the Returner base and the game forks.  I figured that was a good time to stop playing, so I had Mog save in the split decision room.  I feel like I will probably pick up and play Locke’s story, as he is probably my favorite character in FFVI.  He is kind of the rogue I judge all other rogues by.  Did I mention that FFVI had a massive impact on me growing up?

Happy Birthday Mom

So I need to wrap up, because well it is 10:30 and I need to call my Mom to figure out what we are doing today.  Today is her Birthday, and while she doesn’t actually read my blog… I figured the sub section title was fitting.  It sounds like we are basically free of Tornados until at least next Tuesday.  I am exhausted from the previous night, so not sure how much oomph I am going to have as the day goes on.  I hope you all have a super enjoyable day, and one that is likely to be more productive than mine.  I may end up having to take a nap before the day is over.