Ants Building a Nest in a Rain Spout

My character Nikomiros was yet another autistic dwarf (YAAD). Although for the sake of people reading this that haven't played in a while, I'll point out that dwarves have gotten a lot better than they used to. There was this guy in game recently known as the Shield Wall Dwarf who was probably the best dwarf the game has known.

What I found interesting about Nikomiros was that his motives were a set of Russian Dolls. Not necessarily complex, but nested. For example he had a focus but I'm ashamed to admit that I don't know what it was. Slightly distracting from that focus was the fact that he had a hobby. Nikomiros loved poaching. Because poaching wasn't really a full time job, he did a bit of smuggling to keep his bills payed and to take him through territory where he'd have some opportunity to poach.

And because most of the his smuggling routes passed at some point through the Gol Krathu, his cover story was that he was a witch hunter. When he advised the Southern Templarate that this was the cover he was using and in fact he was willing to fight mages, they became much more interested in this than in anthing else about him. Nikomiros was stuid and he gleefully abosrbed much of the southern religious propaganda and became something of a zealot.

My character was sung in Allanak (by the Templarate at least), in Red Storm (where he was known as a dude crazy enough to smuggle a brick of spice into anywhere) and in Tuluk. Staff animated a couple of Northie Templars to come pat little Nikomiros on the back.

The game atmosphere at the time was most curious. People say that player counts are low now, but I can tell you that the game certainly felt empty after the start of the pandemic, back when Tuluk was closed.

A fair amount of metagaming went on, which resulted in the somewhat cheezy situation of everybody outside of Allanak playing their character as being against Allanak in general and the Templarate in specific. You had a small cluster of PC's (mostly closet mages and other outcasts) lurking around Morin's. I tended to think of them as the Mors group. Mors was a poison dealer of bad reputation with a host of enemies. Nikomiros fit right in, at least at first. Battles between Nikomiros and several mage PC's followed.

But the Mors circle and your local powergamer/Soh Lana Ka were allied with them (I think?) against the Templarate, and the crooks in the 'Rinth were allied with them, as were nearly all of the locals in Red Storm. Eventually Nikomiros' shameless fanfares to the Templarate complicated his friendship with most of this group, except for one poor soul who was running an Elf gang in Allanak. That guy was awesome and deserves a better tale than I'm able to spin for him here. PinkErdlu's character was a hang-around of the Mors Circle, and did his best to get this lesbian witch to facesit him.
At this point it was Allanak, (one mercenary in House Borsail that rode around trouncing noobs) vs. ROW.

Staff got on my case for something trivial, and so I stopped playing for a year. Ha hah. I mean this days I like staff, but I think looking back that particular staff member must be eating crow.

Mors was cool and was the predominant blademaster of the era. Nikomiros was arguably his top student. So when I came back to the game after my absence, obviously no one was left alive that I had adventured with. None of my foes were either, so I was looking forward to presenting the spectacle of being a piece of living history.

The Southern Templarate didn't seem to known, as in the case of John Lackland, what to do with their little returning crusader so one of them stationed me in Red Storm. Faced with the real life problem of having forgotten most of the game map, I hired this little dwarf babe as a tour guide. The rest of the story you knew, you made the inference that my character was Templar's man and so you and Dwarf Cutie set me up.

For the benefit of any noobs reading this, Nile is an elite PK. At the point where he killed my character, he had made sure that I as a player knew that he was going to do this, he made sure at the moment of exeuction that I as a player knew why he was doing it. Rather than rely upon cheesy tactical code abuse or something to kill my character, he used another warrior(ess) to set me up and execute the coup de grâce.

Well, I'd have to supose that I am a sucker for a pretty face. Anyways well played. I have to admit it was kind of fun writing this. Does anyone know how comrades Thrax or Mors fell?

Edit:  There was a female templar in Allanak at the time who was simply awesome and wanted to play her character as something of what I would understand to be like a....Suffi Mistress?  I really wanted to explore whataver plots or atmospheres she was hatching, the problem was that it was just so antithetical to what my character would have wanted to do.  I hope she realizes that I thought she was great.

Additional Edit:  Hello out there (former Den of Wonders Employee) Mook!  Your character was such a good friend to Wagonwheel.  Sorry that we dragged you into our weirdo clan.

Even More Edits:  We totally shared an Armageddon moment together in the fact that Nikomiros was an important ally of the Two Moons during the clan's seminary and blossoming.  Of course my character was taken out by an upstart Two Moons!  ha ha!

Edit:  No way!  Did I leave out the part where Nikomiros was in the Crimson Wind and was Amon-Ra's right hand stud?