Birth of a Dream: Origin of the Five Tailed Devil
Last time, in the Tale of Pelnar, which is what I’m tagging these stories, I told of the might and beauty of the world’s first true Heavy Vitality Venomancer, but not of her origin. That is what we shall discuss today.
This tale takes place not in EPW, the land of the last tale, but rather the base game that EPW was a private server of. Perfect World International. PWI. This time, we have a pair of low-level Venomancers, Pelnar the Uninitiated, and Mist, both playing as the class is constructed.
This is the tale of two squishy Arcane builds and a five man dungeon rated for a squad of people three levels above them.
The dungeon itself isn’t much of a tale in itself; just being home to a pack of wolves that had been terrorizing the nearby city. This, however, was the third biggest city in the realm, and this wolf-cave was not home to just any pack of wolves.
Imagine, if you will, a nest of kobolds instead of a cave of wolves. Or better yet, imagine a famous cave of Dragon Whelps that a famed brave and foolish Paladin once crashed into. This cave was no cave, it was a veritable hive full of angry, hungry, high attack speed wolves. Hundreds and hundreds of them.
What they lacked in individual power, they made up for with raw numbers, rendering our first assault on them a complete failure. Mist and I were devoured in seconds. After leveling up to three above the wolves (but still three below recommended level for a five man party), we decided to attempt again.
The first room we cleared in three chunks, using only a handful of potions and a lot of luck. There were still five to go.We walk up a small hill, cresting it to peer into the next room, where roughly seventy wolves roamed around.
We stopped for a moment and chattered about how best to divide them up. Mist and I being friends in real life discussed our approach for half an hour, and neither of our pets would be able to tank it without pulling the aggro of the whole room.
So, I looked to my Sister in Arms with a wild glint in my eye and inquired “But Mist, is that a bad thing?” The next, and possibly last words out of my mouth were a simple battle cry, known by adventurers far and wide. I had accepted a new deity as my patron, and his name...
Was Leeroy Jenkins.
With my new God’s name on my lips, I charged, not using my pet to tank, but instead tanking hits myself from a full pack of seventy wolves. I somehow made it to the other side, and just in time for a Parasitic Nova to land around me, stunning every enemy in the room that had crawled to one spot.
“PELNAR WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” Mist called to me, profanity as such being rare to stain her lips, and effortlessly tripping the server’s sensor, clearing the air for a few seconds as I barked back my command to keep going,
I transformed into my True Form, a Fox with enhanced physically defensive skills while the nearby wolves were stunned, queueing up an attack to stun them all again as my own pet caught up to me, unleashing a moderate-powered AoE attack on all the nearby wolves.
The stun cleared and in an instant, my HP dropped to below half. I stunned them in time to heal myself, and then started harassing with everything I had, an AoE defense debuff, a cone attack that dealt little damage but would slow their rapid attacks. Mist’s pet caught up and joined in the AoE just as my own unleashed a stun, chaining onto my previous.
One more stun by Mist’s pet wasn’t quite enough, and I fell to the ground, lifeless, but it was not in vain! Bodies, lifeless corpses, fell around me, and the last lone wolf rushed at Mist, only to be dispatched without much effort. I revived in town, staring deadpan at Mist, the first words from my freshly revived lips: “Mist, I think I found out which one of us is the tank”.
Word of this spread, and few believed it, but Mist and I knew the truth. The Venomancer that tanked Den of Rabid Wolves below recommended level, though an idiot, may have been on to something. Perhaps... Perhaps Venomancers can be more than just squishy casters.
Maybe if we got heavy armor, and specced into Vitality... Nah, that’d never work.
Or would it?
