After some quick mental arithmetic, \"perhaps 5 hours\" Rakeleer said.

\"Would have been less, but your sword was cleverly disguised as part of your shoulder.\"

Rakeleer opened his other eye.

\"And I needed my beauty sleep.\"

He stopped smirking long enough to look concerned.

\"I wasn\'t sure...  How bad is it?\"

Rakeleer cursed and cursed again.

After rummaging through the rest of the equipment in his belt, desperately searching for something to save the day, or inspire him to save the day, Rakeleer came up with:

A shuriken of some strange ghostly metal

Two otterhide belts

A half eaten meat pie

A spool of yarn

and several other odds and ends.

Panicking now, Rakeleer tied one end of the yarn to the beasts corpse, and tore down the caves.

In moments he was in near darkness, running with one hand on the wall and one loosley holding the spool.

He ran until his breath was ragged and his muscles burning, and it only got darker.

    Then he stopped, arms flailing.  Something suspiciously like spider web were binding his arms and legs.  Looping the yarn into his belt, and acutely aware of the sklittering screeching coming from somehwere in the darkness, Rakeleer drew his rapier and gave the command word to activate it\'s enchantment.

 \"Redeemed!\"

   The metal began to crawl with wispy blue flames.

    \"Odd.  What happened to the red glow?\"

    But no matter.  He could now see the giant spider\'s web, or what he thought were spider webs that were entangling him.

   From the darkness, Rakeleer watched as the strange green creatures that he supposed might be the web spinners crawled back into the shadows.

    \"Yes...\"  He examined the webbing.  It was quite thick.  And he only managed to free himself with the edge of his blade.

  After gathering as much of the subtsance as he could, he race dback along the yarns path, one hand on the wall.

 \"Hold on, lady.  Hold on!\"

    He cut a small length of the webbing and set it aside.  The rest he quickly (over the course of the next half hour) braided into a very crude rope.

 That done, he threw one end around a jutting stalagtite, and the other he cinched around the end of the beast that pointed toward the water.

    Several running starts and an extremely tired rogue later, the beast was moved, and Valfaran\'s unmoving body was revealed.

   He checked her form for obvious injury, and found little that would cause her condition.

    \"Head wound\" he guessed.  Perhaps from the fall.

  But she was alive.

  He gathered some of the water in his skin and trickled some on her feline lips.

 \"Well if help won\'t come to us, we\'ll go to help.\"

  Taking the length of webbing he had set aside, and two of the now-rigid dismembered legs of the beast, Rakeleer crafted a rough gurney.

 It took almost as long to get Valfaran\'s body onto the gurney as it did to move the monster\'s.

    Moments later, Rakeleer started down the passage, back toward the civilization he had met the Enkidukai near, but this time dragging his guide behind him.

Nitpicker -- for polite company. hehe

rar
--- Vampire_Pie is now known as performs
--- performs is now known as Ampire_Pie
--- Ampire_Pie is now known as Vampire_Pie
gah
* Vampire_Pie performs Bite \'n Suck on WerePasty
blahahahahaha
* WerePasty counters with Incredibly Dry Crust
* Vampire_Pie swallows Pasty blood in delight
* Vampire_Pie stumbles back
* WerePasty whips out Fear my Filling
* Vampire_Pie counters with Tin throw
* WerePasty is cut in half.
* Vampire_Pie Blocks with Bloodberries
* WerePasty struggles to regenerate fruity wholesomeness.
GROWR!
* Vampire_Pie sucks fruity wholesomeness
* Vampire_Pie draws Pasty innards into pie
* WerePasty dies.
--- You are now known as Rakeleer
--- Vampire_Pie is now known as FyreBlade
So once again, Pasty is defeated by Pie.
aye
* Metria takes a slice of Vampire_Pie
and pie is, in the end, consumed by me.

Rakeleer rolled across the floor, inches away from the thrashing beast that was now quite obviously enraged.

\"I forgot to ask about dangerous creatures,\" he yelled over the screeching of the giant crawly.

As he came up, soaked and dripping, he drew his rapier in his right hand and a thick glowing dirk in his left.

I hope these things still work, he thought.

I hope Miss Kitty knows how to stop this thing from mulching us, he thought.

The thing, missing two limbs and bleeding some kind of orange ichor, lurched toward the duo in the water, intent on taking its revenge for what was taken from it.

In the instant Valfaran\'s speech failed, Rakeleer ducked low and flipped back the throwing dagger in his hand.

From the darkness of the passageway an enourmous beast charged.  It had many legs, more than Rakeleer could count, and it\'s head sported huge, hard black eyes - like stones in a river.

It\'s mandibles clacked with what Rake presumed was hunger as it charged into the light.

As it threw it\'s body around the room, Rakeleer felt the air move like a great wind.

One, two, three daggers sought the eyes of the beast, and for a split second Rakeleer thought it was finished, as its millipede-like form crashed to the earth, juicing the phosphorescant fungi beneath it.

But a breath later it was up, it was angry, and it was coming for him.

\"Uh oh\"

Pheonix\'s point in one of those threads was, that without any balancing factor, in a skill based system, everyone will be a thief because it\'s a major advantage (nevermind that you can\'t steal from players in a game that allows no PvP).

In that case, I\'d suggest the penalty for being a thief....

Perma death.

If you are a known criminal, and you are caught and killed, you don\'t come back.

Something like EQ\'s original \'Dischord\' system would be good.

Scenario:

I am a rogue.  I decide to steal from a player.
After toggling the \"Do you know what you\'re doing\" notice off, I do the dirty deed.

I am not caught.

An hour later, the player realizes something was stolen from him.  A great wailing and gnashing of teeth is heard in the Stone Labyrinth.

I steal from another player, but this time, I\'m caught.  The game brands me somehow as a \'criminal\'.

From that time forward, I can be attacked be anyone, and if I die, death is permenant, and my corpse will be lootable.


Of course, there are multitudes of problems with that system, but it would certainly be a deterrant to casual thieves.

A karma system would be good too.

B ut honestly, all this code for something the devs don\'t seem to want in the first place?  I don\'t see it happening, so I won\'t waste anymore thought on it.

Oh, and I won\'t be playing an impotent rogue, either.