Thryzn

This bitch is literally what you see on /r/DnD 'Here's my new Tiefling OC'.

I played in the Masterless for about two months and the Thryzn were our closest allies. We interacted with them regularly and were, to my knowledge, their only real source of everyday social roleplay. I'm not aware of any other groups that they could just go and hang out with. Here were my observations:

There appeared to be three or maybe four Thryzn PCs, and only one of them seemed to come out of their lands with any real regularity. Another one would occasionally visit us, like once every couple of weeks. The last one or two I saw literally only once, for the RPT where we accidentally killed Bebop's templar. From what I could tell, Grudash was the only one who didn't live in 100% utter isolation from the rest of the game, and even then, he mostly just interacted with the Masterless and possibly the occasional elf.

They were really boring. Anytime I interacted with them, there was this total lack of general vitality to them. Barely any emotes beyond very generic "flicks her tail" or "nods his scaled head," and I can't remember one single time that any of them actually said anything that was interesting. Incredibly bland, one-note characters. In some way, I guess it did really feel like interacting with an alien race whose expressions you can't even detect... but not in any good way. They appeared to have no personalities whatsoever.

Grudash was an omegatwink. He would visit and spar with Three Howling Gortoks on a regular basis, and the two of them would spar literally for entire in-game days. Like spar, rest, spar, rest, over and over for two hours straight, barely exchanging a word the entire time. "Ready?" Nods. "Defending." Two hours of that. I have never seen skill-grinding this egregious before. It was balls-to-the-walls unapologetic megatwinking, and they had no shame about doing it in front of others. If you showed up, they would deign to give you a round or two, but it was clear that the two of them had one shared mission: max out each other's combat skills by whatever means necessary.

They apparently have a unique type of magick, like steam elementalism or something. I never saw it used, just heard it described by others from my clan. Supposed to be a mix of Krathis and Vivaduans. They also have their own special mounts. Can't remember what the actual name for them was, but the Thryzn usually called them 'war-bulls.'

They were building a stall in the mul outpost. Construction on it began somewhere around the beginning of the year. When I quit playing over a month later, it still hadn't been finished. For at least two RL weeks, they were saying it's almost done. Looked like a staff issue, not the fault of the players. It was weird to see these two NPC builders standing there 'working on a stall' for like an in-game year, possibly longer if it still isn't done.

They live in some hills between the Mantis Valley and the Canyons of Waste. There's not much else there except gith. No particular reason to go there. They have like a longhouse that you can't get into without clanned access, so you can't really fuck with them. The area around it is otherwise freely accessible, and pretty featureless.

No idea what kind of stat adjustments they get. From watching one of them spar a bunch, there was no visible sign of any unusually high stats. Kinda hard to say with a sample size of one, they could have dwarf strength but the guy just didn't prioritize it. Dunno. If I had to hazard a guess, their physical features suggest high endurance and a modest strength boost.

I wrote a much longer post about the Bebop incident elsewhere, but to sum it up: we (Masterless+Thryzn) wanted to attack a caravan of slaves being transported to the new mine north of Luir's. We planned the RPT and got the go-ahead from staff and everything. On the day, we went to the North Road and there simply was no caravan, nor any indication that staff had planned anything at all. After standing around for like an hour, suddenly Bebop's templar comes walking down the road with a few PCs/NPCs and a couple of units. Grudash, Three Howling Gortoks and this terrible idiot HG called Jumbo all promptly attacked her without delay and she died in a literal instant.

It does actually serve a purpose. The chance to gain offense/defense is incredibly small, like in the neighborhood of 1-2% per fail (it varies by class). Weapon skills are more like 10%. Normal people will spar enough to feel like they probably raised their weapon skill and then they'll stop because it feels ridiculous to keep going. Such characters will end up with way less off/def than the rest of their skills. By and large, PCs have far less off/def than people tend to think--like, you might have 60-70 in weapon skills but half that in off/def, if you play the "normal" way. But if you spar for hours on end, you're very likely to raise off/def in each session.

These days, with the increasingly prohibitive obstacles they've put in the way of combat skillgains, it's pretty much the only way to get really good. If you spar like a sane person, i.e. just until you/they have to rest and then maybe a second round again afterwards, you will never become seriously skilled. Like the kind of skilled where you will dodge the vast majority of attacks by a dwarf with maxed bludgeoning and AI strength, exceptional agility, and enforcer's boosted offense gains. Those two are that skilled.

If I had to guess, I'd assume they probably have like 70ish defense. Normally, a PC starts to seem really badass when they approach 40ish.

Yeah. THG at least did other things as well, and put some characterization into his PC (even if his emotes were quite lazy). Grudash, the main Thryzn, could have been somebody's first PC if you didn't know better. There was literally nothing to that character besides the very rare and ultra-generic 'I am Thryzn, rawr' utterance, and his obscene combat skills.

Most, if not all the Thryzn were pretty damn dry from what I recall of my sparse interaction with them. There was one decent RPer but I totally forgot his name.

First things first, I think I know who you played Lechuck, and from what I saw, 'grunts and hmph' was your a-typical standard dwarven roleplay. Boring.

Secondly, don't assume. You don't know the characters thinks, feels. You don't know what they do outside of sparring. And that's apparently all you saw, was sparring.

Thirdly, you yourself said they are forced to train to get gains essentially. At a certain point, we all plateau, and not much can be done about it. I've witnesse them spar, and considering you easily spar twice in the byn, doesn't make a third time that far fetched. It happens all the time. Is it twinky? A little bit. But is it game breaking or immersion breaking? No. Just imagine Spartans sparring. You think their schedule was merciful? Let them train. IF they are willing to put the work in, power to them. We all know it takes an arm and a leg to get gains in combat, and I've never seen them spar for hour(s), only an hour. Which, again, is not different from a byn training schedule.

Fourthly, my interactions with the thryzn have been great. Every PC I've met has a personality and layers. Layers you may not see if you are a stranger to them, even if you're a closest ally, I'm sure folk had different experiences with each thryzn.

Fifthly, you're being harsh on Grudash. Don't base what you know of a PC from a sparring session. Sparring isnt fun, we all know it. It's boring and tedious. You said THG did things other than spar, well, how would you know what Grudash does outside of sparring? Did you interact with him daily? Were you involved in thryzn plots? Probably not.

Sixthly, I am sure they have alot of history. We already know thryzn have existed since the early days of Arm, they have a backstory. Maybe play one and find out, if you can.

Seventhly, you sound a bit butthurt your AI str, exceptional agi, enforcer boosted dwarf wasn't the biggest bad in the room. And if I'm right, in identifying your PC, you trained too. So that's hypocritical.

From what I have seen, thryzn are re-skinned humans. I've fought them, and no bonker dmg was delivered. 


Also, in-game, they have proven to hate sorcerors, so the myth behind if they got buffed by loonsh's sorceror PC, (which never happened btw, I knew Loonsh's noble and he wasn't a sorceror, still bad he was playing a noble but, he wasn't a sorceror so lets get that straight), for the attack on tuluk, is simply false. I was there, in the masterless. They were outnumbered, 3 tuluk pcs vs 2 thryzn, and 12 masterless pcs. Also, Grudash, did not focus the templar. I had brief combat on and I watched, he went straight for the soldiers. I don't remember if he even went for the templar, but if he did, it would have been after the soldiers were dropped. He didn't kill the Templar, the masterless did, and considering how buff Grudash is according to you, that templar would have dropped near instantly. 

You don't know the tribe, you don't know what secrets they have, you don't interact with them, and didn't outside of one of them sparring with Three Howling Gortoks, which he elaborated why with IG reasoning, it wasn't even his idea to train with THG. 

My interactions with the Thryzn have been what's expected. Varying degrees of roleplay, and obvious emphasis of their tails, but not all of them have them either. You don't expect a HG to emote paragraphs, why would you expect a thryzn to? There's alot that goes on off the visibility line, and just assuming based off SPARRING SESSIONS, is laughable.