Congratulations, Professor Xorus!

~Land Pirate Maylan~

<<So glad I was there to witness this! Congratulations and welcome to Everest Base Camp. Coats, climbing tools, and Sherpas are all presently unavailable, but you may enjoy dining on the frozen corpses of your predecessors while proceeding upward.>> - Silvean

Donner, party of 83? Donner? Is there a Donner party? Donner party of 45? (Eat your heart out, Ardo.)

I was glad you were there for that as well. I will use their flesh to reach great and terrible heights.


<<Here's to sticking around for another few decades while you work out how you're going to accomplish all that training, three points at a time.>> - Lylia

This means I get to summon vathors now, right? Right? Guys?

How many demon and necromancy ranks for the necleriine?


<<He's long since been capped in Elanthian lore and history, but tonight, Xorus reached level 100 in the game, too! It's been I don't know precisely how many years (although I'm sure he does), and he deserves all manner of congratulations for it. No one does more to discover hidden lore and preserve the history of the game we all love. You make it better for all of us; thank you.>> - Lylia

Xorus was rolled around 1999 or 2000. He was taking over for another sorcerer rolled around 1998. This really amounted to a name change, having been unavailable before, so it effectively has been twenty years. He went through periods of not hunting on the scale of "long" to "extremely long" times. The last few million experience points were done only in the past year. The GemStone III equivalents of going from Level 100 to Level 160. I'm just glad to not be stuck at Level 126 while there are Level 280 empaths.

There was never really a period I was away from studying the game for its hidden history. It happens that I did not crack a lot of it until (unsurprisingly) the past several years of actively being back in the game itself. The very most recent example is stumbling onto the Rosetta Stone for deciphering the Rift. I have noticed my finger prints show up on new things from sharing this stuff, and that is worth a lot more to me than points and gadgets. But in the end the people (all y'all) are the most important. Thank you.

- Xorus' player

---

I'm given to understand there are some horrors yet to happen, but this was the highlight reel:

(1) Horror #1

A massive portal appears in the center of the area followed by a column of pink kobolds coming out from its depths. Upon their shoulders rests a massive frozen throne with Retser sitting on it. He steps down from the throne and dismisses the kobolds with the throne back into the portal behind him. The portal vanishes with a popping noise leaving only Retser.
>
Lylia clutches her chest in mock horror.
>
Retser hugs you.
>
Lylia's jaw drops.
>
A massive portal appears in the center of the area as a stream of pink kobolds emerge from within. The kobolds quickly race over, carrying a massive frozen throne on their back. Retser climbs upon the throne and leans back casually as the kobolds carry him back through the portal. The portal vanishes with a popping noise behind them.

(2) Horror #2

A bolt of lightning streaks down from the sky and strikes you!
... 7 points of damage!
Visible wisps of electricity shoot up left leg. Youch!
You are stunned for 1 round!

A tremendous crack of thunder follows instantly!

Cruxophim's eyes cloud over with dark shadows as he prepares a spell...
Cruxophim gestures at you.
You are no longer stunned.

A bolt of lightning streaks down from the sky and strikes Cruxophim!
... 20 points of damage!
Painfully bright jolt to neck explodes surrounding skin. Nasty!
He is stunned!

A tremendous crack of thunder follows instantly!

(3) Horror #3

Speaking in Faendryl to you, Dergoatean says, "Looks like you'll live through this."

Dergoatean snaps his fingers.

A bolt of lightning streaks down from the sky and strikes you!
... 50 points of damage!
Electrical shock overloads your nervous system! Quite fatal.

I too enjoy your posts Xorus. You're one of the only people I haven't ignored due to long posts because they're actually worth reading.

<<You seem to have a pretty unique and detailed grasp of game lore and history. I'm curious about the player behind Xorus, and what your background is? Did you study linguistics or any specific subset of linguistics? Analytics? >> - Mikalmas

Physics and math, actually. This kind of pattern matching, inductive leaps, and reading threads through things is almost the opposite of what I was trained to do, which would be trying to falsify through controlled experiments. Xorus being an occultist is also my opposite: He's astral projection, I'm Extrachthonic Cartographer's Guild. The cycle for decrypting this stuff goes from finding the thread if it exists, connect as much as possible, then eventually cut down the things that are probably coincidences.

What it actually is with this is I have an extremely good memory. In Castle Anwyn I will recognize a phrase borrowed from a room in the Graveyard. In Shadow Valley I will notice a phrase taken from "The Call of Cthulhu." That kind of thing. Then the death mechanics messaging will be making references to a few more Lovecraft stories, then it turns out the landscape of the Broken Lands comes from one of those stories, and so on. It only works because designers put interconnected stuff there intentionally.


<<I too enjoy your posts Xorus. You're one of the only people I haven't ignored due to long posts because they're actually worth reading.>> - Veythorne

I try to avoid the mega-posts unless they're dense on content and need to be that long. I'm actually very briefly worded in person and with simple things.


<<Get a name tha rhymes with more stuff yea ruin crawlin, demon worshippin, pointy-eared freak!>> - Starchitin

Hahaha. Thank you.