Sword and Dagger

Vacations are wonderful things, they allow you to take a breather from the hectic life Vana'diel throws upon you, and enjoy the beaches and mountains without the pressure to defeat any monsters along the paths. That being said, mine was wonderful, but now it's time for duty to return and for my own desires to take a backseat...well, at least partially, I admit I was actually looking forward to returning for more than one reason!

I didn't do much on getting back, just went out with GYS to do ... something? and then I split off to go skill with Verrick for a bit in The Boyhada Tree. Went RDM/NIN with his BRD/NIN and it was fun fighting the Steelshells there. Sword ended up at 239.3, and Dagger at 228.7. So, when he got sleepy, I decided to log there and use the next night for soloing towards finishing up my skilling goals for a while, and sure enough, surpassed the levels needed for Savage Blade and Evisceration.

Last night, I went to PL a friend in the dunes, and figured we'd go near where the Valkurm Emperor pops so I could finish out my 100 kills without getting the hairpin. >.> Eckardt came out after a bit (I think they did Assault first?), and after I was 0/1 invited me to a party and was like "Guess what I got?" and as I ran over, the emperor died again, and Ta-Da!!! Another insect wing. -.- That went very much like the other 1-98, keke. So we're still out camping and PL'ing, and Doc sends me a tell to see how long I'll be on, and I told him I'm gonna kill the 100th VE and then log for the night. So Veme kills the crab, and as I loop, I see VE in the NW corner, and Dia claim as there were a couple others hunting. Gravity on it, and I bring it back, where Eck and I proceed to poke it to death, and true to comic form... 1% = Empress Hairpin (1/100, FINALLY! hehe) And again a big thanks to Eck for being the photographer of history! Hehe.

First there is the capture of the 100th bug, and then, the irony of the item FINALLY dropping. It was a long affair, thanks for at least leaving me in your will, Empress :P

Not quite Red Bull, but it works!

Yes, I have sky access now, and it is a nice zone, the floors intrigue me with the shining steps, though I guess it wasn't as "OMG what a cool place" since I've already seen the wonders of the sea, which is absolutely beautiful. That notwithstanding the sky has a lot of wonders to see! On LoH, our shell leader, Lorddocster (You may recall his mention a few times back), asked me if I was going to farm gods with them that night. You see, he's getting old, and his memory slips him that I still don't have access yet. So I reply, "Sorry, I'm unable to make it due to not having access, unless you're about to do a run?" And well, Doc mentions there's a certain monkey that needs access too (Snowape), and it's time to roll!

On that note, our adventure began...so I changed from where I was leveling my little puppet, as I got the little guy a RNG frame now... Bah, I'll jump topic for a moment for this -- I've been guiding Serenade along with the help of Malumake, a friend from GYS, whose hat fight we did just the other night as well, and was quite fun, actually. I have to send out my congrats to him, as he actually resurrected my interest in PUP, which I'd given up as a dead job prior to duoing with him a bit!

Ah, but back to the original topic, eh? Doc's favorite term came into play at that point, time to 'rally the troops!' And well, soon after that, we were on our way to the headstone fights with the following group: Snowape (NIN), Eckardt (BLM), Dwayna (WHM), Fullen (WAR), Nojoke (THF), and myself (RDM). All of the fights went down without a hitch, but Dwayna had to leave after the 2nd in Yuhtunga Jungle, and Eck after the last one, so I changed to WHM and did the tele thing. Much to my amusement, I changed back to RDM in Rabao for the run through the caves helping Snow get the non-NM fight ones, and conveniently didn't have a way to tele us to the next point. *coughoopsycough* So we warped back to HP (Mijin Gakure + Warp ftw), and I just stayed WHM/BLM through the other ones, teleing whenever he grabbed the headstone, and dropping him off at Vahzl before taking a moment to prep for the following rush of the events that would come.**

((**Note: By 'prep' I mean capture 3 SoBe No Fears, and cook some sausage, eggs, and grits. This time for LoH EU core was around 1PM, so for me it was getting started at 7AM before I'd been to sleep - ouch. This day, for the record, was one of 37 hours straight awakeness starting with a workday, but thankfully, the next was my one day off, so I said heck with it!))

Next up, a few ants...no biggie, elemental seal sleepga, and keep 'em napping while we picked them off one-by-one. First fight went smoothly, and when we did it again for Sly and Akira, it was smooth too until one part when I let Snow's Haste slip (yes, I got carried away over-debuffing), and the RNG woke up in time to feed him a EES while the shadows were down. Orz ><; I'm trying to get lolRDM to match my WHM? O.o Oy. But we finished them off, and Snow got an R3, and wasn't upset about it. I was, nonetheless....still am :P So then we have a fight that might ruin a bit of plot for you, but Vlacatocc, the Galkan BLM of Doooooom stepped up and joined us, lending some nuking might to our charge, and soon the foe fell flat and we realized who was running things behind the scenes.

We continued on, and come to the pots battle in QSC, where we buffed up, a pot spawned, I braced, knowing their magics, and....we quite literally broke it to tiny shards, and took the papyrus back to the Mithra. It was so much easier than I was expecting...and all because of the great group of friends that made the travel with me, thank you all! Ever time I step into the clouds, I will remember our travels. /bow

MAJOR THANKS: Lorddocster, Snowape, Eckardt, Fullen, Dwayna, Nojoke, Hewison, Slykoontz, Akiracobalt, Vlacatocc, Legos, and any others that I might have forgotten during that long night where I managed not to fall out from exhaustion during the run: THANK YOU! It was great fun farming, and glad we got a pop item on my first trip pretty quickly, that was a blast! :)

And to any of you kids out there looking to head to the clouds, just know this: It's a lot easier to fly than it is to descend to the depths of the waters! CoP > Zilart xD