I'm bored so I will share another story.
Once when Locke was in the T'zai Byn as a Sergeant there was a Kadian First Hunter who came to another Sergeant around that time and wanted to be taken out to find and fight an ankheg. As best I could tell, the entire reason for going was that this Kadian warrior wanted to "see if he could kill an ankheg". It was a warrior 'glory/honor' sort of thing.
If this guy had approached Locke, he would have turned it down. However, by the time Locke learned of the contract, another Sergeant had already agreed to it. What Locke did manage to do was get this other Sergeant to go back to the guy and raise the price significantly on the job.
The guy still agreed, so, now we are locked in and have to go.
Locke agreed to lead the contract as the senior officer even though he didn't negotiate it. My plan was always to go in, put on a good show of doing our best to try and take this ankheg down, and then get out quick if we had to.
Locke had no interest in getting any of his people killed for what he saw as an idiot's quest for meaningless glory.
Locke and his people came in with two Sergeants, a few Troopers, and a handful of Runners. We were probably 10 strong for this job in total.
Kadius came with "The Brainless Wonder", as we referred to him secretly (I can't remember his real name), and two Kadian half-giants that were pretty amusing actually.
So we get to these underground caves where an ankheg is rumored to be. We get within sight of the thing and attempt to shoot it with arrows as a precursor to letting our "heavies" charge in. (This was pretty standard for our tactics at the time. It allowed rangers/archers to feel useful, and let warriors also do their warrior thing up close. It was about realistic tactics as much as it was about making sure everyone had fun which is why I designed a lot of Locke's tactics this way.)
Well, we quickly discover that the ankheg in question is coded to be immune to arrows. I had at least two master archers with me, and arrows could not hit this thing. (I know staff can code things to be immune to arrows. It appears this one was setup this way for us to keep us from "arrowing" it down. Which is fine, but it did stink for my rangers/scouts in terms of participation.)
So, we do the only thing we CAN do at this point, and charge in with our three half-giants (two Kadian, one Byn) leading the way.
Nobody can hit this ankheg. We have between 13 and 15 people, a few deep-end veteran warriors all swinging at this ankheg and nobody can land a SINGLE BLOW.
The two Kadian half-giants that are leading the fight are taking some serious damage.
The ONLY blow landed in this entire fight against this ankheg was landed by one of my assassin Runners named Silence using a backstab. This was kind of funny since he couldn't fight worth a damn yet, but he literally was the only one to take off a single HP because of the way the backstab code works heh.
Heejo almost lost his foot in this fight after roleplaying a devastating bite from this massive ankheg. He roleplayed this injury out very well over a good long while.
Anyhow, I'm getting ready to sound the retreat because the Kadian giants are in serious trouble and nobody can hit this thing. I don't remember if they died just before or just after this happened, but, this was the HOLY SHIT GET OUT moment.
We got a room echo that was something like:
*A deep rumbling can be heard overhead.*
Then...
A dark-shelled ankheg crashes in through the ceiling from above!
They had a second ankheg actually tunnel into the cavern we were in from the ceiling above and start messing us up.
I sound the retreat and we all manage to barely escape.
Both of the Kadian giants were killed.
The Kadian "Brainless Wonder" survived, along with all of the T'zai Byn.
We kept him alive, so, we still got paid the full contract price which was the agreement. We weren't there to kill an ankheg, we were there to escort him and help him fight an ankheg for his "glory", and we did.
WELL, come to find out Kadius had no idea this First Hunter of theirs was taking two of their half-giants out on this glory-battle run.
They came back and tried to give the T'zai Byn shit for taking the job. We managed to keep out of trouble, but just barely.
As I recall Kadius demoted this first hunter back down to the lowest rank they could and I had a Kadian family member I made friends with later tell me, "He would never be promoted beyond his current rank for the rest of his life no matter what.". I assumed that happened. Pretty fitting in Locke's mind.
Fast forward several IC years:
Locke has been out of the T'zai Byn for a while now and is doing his own thing with his own private enterprise. I have a staff-ran Lieutenant that has called a meeting with Locke that I'm speaking with in a tavern.
We are coming to terms on what Locke's group will and will not be able to do etc. I remind them that in my entire career I never once did them wrong, nor failed a single contract, so there really isn't any need for animosity.
They come back with, "Well Locke, I seem to recall an issue with a contract where two Kadian gaints died and Kadius got angry with us.".
This poor poor staffer.
I reply with, "Well, I seem to recall I didn't negotiate that job, and advised against it. My only part was making sure we got more money for it, and leading it to make sure all of our people got out alive. Which I will note, they did, and we also got paid. My only participation was saying we shouldn't do it, and giving the best possible outcome when we did.".
That shut down their entire argument. They obviously planned to use that to try and get an edge on Locke in the discussion, but, that was a fail.
Locke ended up getting all of the terms he wanted and they stayed in place for about four IC years.
During this time the T'zai Byn staff had a rotation. This means a new staffer came in for the T'zai Byn. A staffer unaware of previous agreements obviously.
I get the same Lieutneant NPC in my head asking me why Locke and his group are doing certain things. I remind them that we are doing them because they agreed we could and I was following those terms.
The staffer was obviously lost but didn't want to admit they were wrong so they just said something like, "You misunderstood, stop doing it.".
I was OOC'ly annoyed at that point and just agreed and moved on. I was already so tired of dealing with staff at this point I couldn't be bothered to make it an issue.
Anyhow, that is the story of the great ankheg fiasco. It was a good time.
