Arelith

Let us all eat some humble pie together and recount our most dunce, dorky, noob, or otherwise ridiculous mistakes or moments in your time on Arelith. Whether you were new to Arelith, Forgotten Realms, both, or just plain miffed up a critical prequisite in a build it took you 6 months to level.

My story comes from the former two: Arelith was my first exposure to Forgotten Realms. FR is big, and six years later I still barely understand a quarter of it. This is actually a painfully true story with minor embellishment.

The Setting

Andunor was about two weeks old. My paladin, having become a very naughty paladin indeed, had become an evil priestess outcast (henceforth EP), and had gone to live in Andunor. Andunor was a city in a cave populated by mean elves and a necromancer, and everyone was very excited to see what this Underdark stuff was.

The Story

EP meets a spooky assassin (henceforth SA) that worships Shar, and they become evil friends very early into Andunor's existence.

One day SA asks, "Hello EP. When you were full of goodness on the surface did you meet any of my Goddess' sworn enemies? I want to kill one as a test of my faith."

"Why yes," EP said, already making the critical mistake yet to be revealed, "I knew one very well and she was my friend, but now that I am not full of goodness I will arrange for you to kill her so I can get evil bonus points."

"Excellent," SA agreed, "Set up the meeting and I will sacrifice her to my spooky Goddess!"

Many weeks pass, full of much RP, and the unrelated discovery that drow and mean elves are two different things. Eventually the meeting is arranged, and the Evil Priestess has lured her old friend into a quiet room in Cordor for the Spooky Assassin to jump out and confront her Goddess' arch nemesis.

But first, the dramatic reveal must be made!

"My old friend," EP said very dramatically, "I was once a very naughty paladin, you know this, but now I am even more mean than that. I am so mean that I have brought with me here a Spooky Assassin of Shar - and she will be super mean because you worship Shar's greatest enemy!"

SA steps from the shadows, "It is true. EP is so mean that she has done this trap to you."

EP's betrayed friend was shocked, but then very confused.

EP's betrayed friend says, "I am very confused. I openly worship Sharess. I like cats and wine and Netflix and chill."

EP nods, "and because Sharress and Shar are such great enemies you must now fight."

EP's betrayed friend and the SA both stare at EP.

"Sharess and Shar are not enemies," they both told the certainly evil but now questionable priestess, "Selune is."

EP was very silent while she referenced the internet, "I see now. My lore skill points have betrayed me."

"No," the Spooky Assassin said, "I have betrayed you," and the SA killed EP instead.

TL;DR - it might not sound like it but Shar and Sharess are completely unrelated.

LMAO, well, to be completely fair, Shar and Sharess SHOULD be enemies. That crazy cat girl is stealing our goth queen's style!

The first story that comes to mind for me is also Shar related, probably to no one's surprise. It was my first character on the server: A drow priestess of Shar who, by some miracle, managed to infiltrate the Temple of Lolth and pass herself off as a follower of Kiaransalee. Soon enough, she was named the High Priestess of the Revenancer! Thing is, I didn't know a single thing about Kiaransalee, or even Lolth for that matter. I banked heavily on the fact that Kiaransalee is kinda obscure and no one seemed to really care about or worship her at the time, and justified my ignorance towards Lolth as "well I'm just so devoted to the Revenancer that I just never really took the time to learn about our queen of spiders, oh but of course I worship and fear and adore her, totally, 100%."

Well, here's the thing. For some reason, when I was picking alignment at character creation, I decided I was going to be Lawful Evil. I didn't know about clerics and their deity alignment restrictions. And I didn't know that CE and NE clerics are supposed to know Abyssal, and only LE clerics know Infernal. Until one day, Ezra Murann - dreaded murderlord of Cyric and reigning Tyrant of the Sharps - took me into a dark alley for some friendly conspiratorial whisperings, and started speaking Abyssal at me. And my idiot little level 10 squish cleric did a hilariously poor job of smiling and nodding along and acting like she had any idea what he was saying.

"Wait. You don't understand me?"

"Uh, haha, nope, that language wasn't part of my temple's teachings."

"...And you're a Lolthite priestess?"

"Oh, yes, definitely, Lloth tlu malla all the way."

".............If you say so."

It was at that moment, I knew I done messed up.

Because of a very silly alignment slip-up I chose offhandedly at character creation, suddenly my undercover Sharran priestess had a glaring weakness in her act, and from then on I had to contrive reasons to suddenly leave the room whenever a conversation came up among the temple clergy in Abyssal. It's by the grace of God alone that I was able to make it through that character's story without getting burned at the stake.

I've certainly watched or had my fair share of little monk builds that forgot to have lawful somewhere in that build sammich. Live an learn.

I would have to recount for myself much earlier in my gameplay having changed from a paladin to a priest character. Followed the remake rules inadvertently while stumbling rather solidly into the muling system (nothing of super value was lost, it was a first character after all.) Then the skies open up and the eye of god DM open up going "what'cha doin" I don't recall which one it was. Live an learn.

But the part that will forever consume me as a total well intentioned dork would've been the drow raid in Cordor's coal mine. I was still I think considering joining the guard even at the time, I think I had just hit the level to raise dead or something along those lines. My bold dumbarse decided, I'll see if I can go talk to them first. CHOMP.
Now I don't advise the following behavior, because I'm more or less self reporting nearly four years after the incident. It should've been a rulebreak even if I dun goofed. But probably everyone realized I wasn't being a shitestirrer and just was trying to save everyone.
I raced back and I knew Jacob Swift and a whole fleet of other high levels were all beating the snark out of each other. Messy messy day but the drow were defeated. I think. It's getting a little fuzzy. But I thought it would feel so bad to have to go through so long of death effects as a high level character so I started raising, raising, and raising. Even the enemy.

They sent me a tell while the roleplay was still happening, because in my derpy roleplay after being chomped I was still even mending the drow feeling bad for them all, but I didn't know to click on portraits to send a tell back. I was manually sifting through the playerlist to answer 'no I didn't take your lense' because instead of thinking about that in a roleplay aspect I thought very literally I couldn't possibly reach into someone's inventory and take it.
So pop off he went.

It was a very silly day. No one seemed angry, just probably.. laughed I'd imagine.

This thread is full of brutality. I'll just say it in one.

I posted 2002 themed teenage girl forum roleplayer emo poetry I wrote on a palemaster on Cordor's main message board.

Skibbles wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 29, 2021 12:47 pm

TL;DR - it might not sound like it but Shar and Sharess are completely unrelated.

I managed to finesse my necromancer sharran spy out of being outed on day one of her time in guldorand because the people investigating her asked her if she was a Sharessian and I had her say "I'm Sembian, not Mulhorandi."

That's a high point, however, not a low point!


My worst moment was probably the build I was making on my first character. I had never seriously built a character in nwn because you can sorta just... slide through the story in most cases. So the character I made was a scythe wielding, deep investment wizard(not spellsword) who only had 18 int and 20 something strength. It was a really, really, really bad build and I thought I was clever.


On an rp level? Probably when I got invited to a big spooky meeting for shadow mages and started wandering around the hub asking people if they were Sharran.

I've been playing since I was 14 back in the early 2010s, so I've got a fair deal of cringe to share.

The worst is probably 'The Memoirs of Cealis Smyth', a cringefest from one of my worst, long-lasting characters of that type. It was an IC forum thread story that a developer thought would be a good idea to put in-game, in the Cordor Archives. I can't go to that minidungeon without cringing.

Additionally, the character was a Unicorn Priest, named Cealis. A cleric of Lurue. I didn't understand the 'pun' until years after.

When I started and, inevitably, died, I had no idea about the Bank. Nor that dying lost all of your gold, so I came to exceedingly poor and rather upset. I then proceeded to march up to some people standing outside of the Nomad and haughtily offered to pay them to help retrieve my own corpse.

For the princely sum of 10 gold pieces.

I can still hear the emoted laughter after more than a decade.

i rp into the dm channel sometimes

When I first joined Arelith I actually had only been playing nwn for about 2 weeks. I did play briefly in about 2008 or so but shelved it completely as the single player campaign was so bad I couldn't finish it (still can't, I've tried again several times). I think GOG was having a winter sale so I grabbed the enhanced edition and decided to dive in online. Outside of a poorly match Mechwarrior game in the late 90's I actually had never played online at all, in any form, and I'm very much an introvert so jumping headfirst into a rp server using software I barely knew - yeah, no idea what I was thinking. Let's just say I could fill a page of awkward moments.

I won't embarrass myself with the entire list, but here's one. I had found a small party to bumble around with and we were over our heads in the Cordor graveyard. My companions were dead, I escaped and ran back to town for help to get them raised. I had caught some minor mummy rot and I had no healing so I ran into the mercantile to buy some from the priestess there. It happened that when I clicked on her she didn't respond, she just stood there and ignored me. I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong and I started running around in circles frantically babbling. The priestess suddenly turned to me, so I ran up to her and I cried "My friend...she's hurt...in the graveyard...and I need healing but nobody will talk to me because I'M DISEASED!!!".

She paused for a moment, dropped a package of bandages in front of her and took a few steps back telling me to stay away. I just thanked her and grabbed the bandages and ran off - a bit puzzled.

Later I realized obviously it wasn't my disease causing the npc not to react but a DM must have already possessed the priestess earlier (didn't even know that was possible) and possibly unpossessed them or had just stepped away. Once an npc is possessed, their normal script doesn't kick in anymore so when I clicked on her to buy bandages the npc just stood there. The DM must have finally noticed my wild running about (and the gathering crowd), took pity and just rolled with it.

Uh... don't think I remember an especially dorky moment in game... but I've never been too good at builds...
Soooo... I think my dorky moments were all while creating chars without planning a single thing.
Recently looked back at my first and longest lasting Arelith char and here are the stats for the shame time:

(bic I found was lvl 27)
15 Str
10 Dex
14 Con
10 Int
13 Wis
21 Cha

OFC not a single point of CC tumble, no expertise... no UMD and full score in Persuade when was useful like a pub with no beer.

No wonder I felt the module was soooo hard playing a melee with no AB nor AC :>

And no... was not even a smiter >.<

BTW I got much better now... I let the cat stroll on the keyboard and lay out builds for me!

When I was learning, I destroyed every fixture in an area with the wrong command. Felt very dorky!

I could never figure out why Faerun was abbreviated to FR.

A few days after starting my first char, a human warlock slave in the Underdark, I was in the sewers doing a writ with a manes in tow. I ran into a hunting party of orog PCs and, assuming that warlock magic was forbidden no-no devilry everywhere you went, desperately unsummoned the manes. Then, because I didn't know how to make the telltale eye glow go away, I emoted covering my eyes with my hands and faced the wall.

The orogs laughed so much I just ran out of the dungeon.

Curse song.

Shut up Kuma.

My first time retrieving a fixture stuck in the wall, I used this horrible -vacuum command and ended up sucking like 100 fixtures into my DM inventory--it was a shared, 4-quarter map in Andunor. It took Hoodoo and Wraith to clean up the mess.

DM Fox wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 04, 2021 4:50 pm

My first time retrieving a fixture stuck in the wall, I used this horrible -vacuum command and ended up sucking like 100 fixtures into my DM inventory--it was a shared, 4-quarter map in Andunor. It took Hoodoo and Wraith to clean up the mess.

I once had a dm accidentally spew items from their inventory or... something into mine. This was back when you needed a request to play PM, and while I did get my palemaster token, I also got a(might have even been keened, but I may be misremembering) blade of the roses and other powerful and rare charisma named items. I promised I'd get rid of them, but then I believe I put them in a paper barrel instead of a trash barrel. Someone got lucky because of my mistake!

Not in arelith, but in another server i played back in 2005/2006, when i barely knew english.

I remember someone asking my party, while we were lvling, "Where are you headed?"
My reply was, of course, "My head is here. Do you have headpack? They are invisible if you dont"

I also remember asking if "indeed" was a type of undead.

Not a native english speaker.

I had a scythe WM and I talked about how it was used to 'sow souls' or w/e - I dropped that line sporadically, but it turns out I used it many times.

I thought 'sow' was 'reap'.

One day someone brought it up IC, and I just didn't know what to say. Damn.

When I joined Arelith around four years ago, my first character wandered over to a row of crafting workstations at the back of the Cordor Bank. I didn't know what [Handle Fixture] meant back then, so I clicked on it and my character picked up a forge. I desperately tried to put it back but I just didn't know how to do it properly. I asked around for help and some good soul eventually fixed its placement for me. Sometime later this player would end up becoming a good friend of mine.

My very first character on Arelith (A paladin of Lathander) somehow ended up in Sencliffe. I don't know how. I genuinely don't. I remember wandering quite a bit, then running, then being straight up terrified at how deadly everything around me was. I have no idea how it happened. I remember asking for directions and fear-sprinting through the forests.

I remember some kindly pirates redirected me to the ferry to Crow's Nest, and I offered them my most expensive posession--an iron dagger--in return. They threw it in the sand.

I also didn't know how fixtures worked, so I ended up securing most of the message boards and signs in the central sencliffe area and carrying them for a truly embarrasingly long time. I was scared I'd get banned or something for having them on me.

I remember I finally dropped one of the sencliffe banners in the Cordor Frontier, and this was interpreted as a snub to Cordor that escalated on the City Boards. All because I was an idiot.

What a strange and magical time being new in Arelith is.

My execution in Cordor for murder and robbery.

The death was so violent that I came back from Kelemvor's wall with scars. I've barely shown my face outside the cliff for months. Oink

A vampiric Half-elf, quarter-demon, quarter dragon.

It was quite the messed up backstory, all ultimately used to justify access to blood-specific magics on a mage, plus age-based immortality in an era where some spells cost years of your life-span. An edgier loner outcast edgelord who brooded on the constant quandary of his birth versus his nature did not exist.

Edit: Arelith specific... I'd never played in the underdark before, and I made a drow. I'm pretty sure I stepped on every single mushroom on my first group trip out of the hub, because I play zoomed all the way out and I didn't realize that every one of them was a proximity death cloud waiting to happen.

Was going to go out and do writs with a bard. She went out first to get, I believe, an Ogrillion Chieften or something along those lines, to mentally dominate it, before coming back to the Hub.

I started warding us all... and then cast mind blank.

Dominate broke and the chieftain just started attacking. It was an awkward couple of minutes watching it and a peacekeeper battle to death.

I mean. I've had many. But one of my dorkiest ones was:

I had an awkward finger spaz and cast harm on the servant of Bane in front of the Church of Bane and all NPCs hostiled me. I ran and panicked then sent a huge apology to the DMs for being a dumb dumb.

Oh right. And that time I held a big Braveheart type speech just before heading into war with the Void Cult and I drank myself to death by accident.

a very unfortunate misclick involving spirited charge and hitting attack on someone in the middle of cordor.
oopsies.