Queen Ready, Almost...

So, tonight is the eagerly awaited Demon Queen raid some of us have been working rather intently to get our characters ready for. According to my records, this will be the first raid formally hosted by Stonehands (Bashal). But, with so many officers and veteran players in the group, it can hardly be the level of challenge a group leader might face with a PUG (Pick-Up Group) adventure party.

(It's nice to have a guild raid or, in this case, an allied-guild raid, for the first raid party you have the honor to lead. Your guildies and allies are far more understanding when you run into problems than PUG players are.)

In preparation for the big event, some of us have been running and re-running the prerequisite quests to make sure everyone who wants to attend will be ready. In my case, I've been taking turns running Aequinox, PEBKAC and Sarge in an attempt to provide healing services to whatever character levels folks want to run, while at the same time, trying to have more than one character who's Queen-ready. It's been an interesting challenge, though. Some folks have made several attempts to get their characters ready, but have had difficulty actually completing all of the prerequisites.

Benjarrus is an example.

Several of us got together with him quite a few times over the past few weeks to help him get his characters Benjarrus, Blackwand and Thundermouse ready. In fact, it took hardly any effort to get Benjarrus ready, which is why he was more focused on working Thundermouse through each of the quests in the series. Except that, for some reason, we kept running into situations where it was more beneficial that he switch back to Ben or Blackwand.

So, last night was what you might consider a last-ditch effort to get Thundermouse ready for the big event this evening.

It even saw a special appearance by Maeric and RedRaider (now known as RedReindeer - thanks Thundermouse!), back from the realm of a competing MMO, just for the occasion.

The goal for the evening was to run as many allied guildies through all four prerequiste quests as we could. Ultimately, there were two full groups for the challenge.

Of course, the first group filled quickly, and were off to the races. The second group didn't fill quite so quickly. In fact, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to log in last night, but managed to anyway. Which is when I found the group looking for a caster to support the cause. I happened to have logged in with Trinarius at the time. Which is when Thundermouse noticed Trin's class icon... Wizard.

Except, there's one small problem... Trin's only a Level 7 Wizard.

Now, that's not to say Trin doesn't have certain abilities that can contribute to the success of the party. But, with only Fourth-Level spells in his spellbook, he's not quite as powerful as most groups would hope he was. Which was something I was careful to warn Thundermouse and the rest of the group about. I didn't think that Trin's Wall of Fire and Haste would be quite strong enough for the things the group might want to accomplish. So, I asked if it might not be more advantageous to switch over to Aequinox, since the group also needed a healer.

Fortunately, my switching to Aequinox wasn't a detriment, because Shinzon logged in while we were attempting to round-out the party, and he agreed to join us.

We were finally out of the gates, but clearly well behind the first group.

Still, we rolled through An Offering of Blood *very* quickly and efficiently.

And, on our way to the Tomb of the Wizard King/Raiyum's Chamber, we even had a chance to check for the possible appearance of the Bloodstone chest. (Thundermouse is still searching.)

As with the previous quest, the Wizard King was laid to rest very quickly.

But, after entombing the Wizard King, some of our group needed to recall back to Zawabi's Refuge for repairs. That kinda broke our rhythm.

Once we'd all regrouped to head out for The Chains of Flame, we realized that no one really knew their way out to the quest. Sure, we all knew generally where to go, but none of us *knew* the way, by heart. And, of course, that went over like that annoying series of speedbumps in a shopping center parking lot.

Still, we finally managed to find our way to the quest and hopped in on Normal, hoping to fly though and move on to ADQ (Against the Demon Queen). Of course, the first group with Maeric and RedReindeer were long-since done. (Apparently, they even ran ADQ a second time...)

The problem was that no one in our group knew the quest really well. We followed the twists and turns through to their logical conclusions, but once we reached the top, we didn't seem to have the final key.

To exacerbate the problem, it'd taken us so long to get through the quest, working and re-working our way through, looking for something we'd missed, in an effort to find the final key, we were all getting really tired.

So tired, in fact, that Thundermouse nodded off for a good solid fifteen minutes at his keyboard. Maybe a little longer, even.

While Thundermouse was asleep, one of our group decided to search his pack for a Scroll of Knowledge that might give us some clues as to where we might have made a wrong turn. The hope was that it would tell us where we could find the last key.

I guess it was some well-spend gold, because the Scroll revealed that the key to the final encounter was given to the party member who freed the sixteenth of the thirty slaves. Of course, that may have something to do with the quest objective to free at least fifteen slaves. Hmm... there *might* be a connection there, somewhere...

So, we all headed up to the top of the cavern, and each of us attempted to open the doors, yet we all failed. All of us except sleeping beauty, that is... THUNDERMOUSE!!! WAKE UP!!!

He was out cold.

I tried (gently) shouting into voice chat, hoping to audibly jostle him awake.

No luck.

I sent several messages, in-series, to party chat, hoping the ding with each message might run together enough to sound like an alarm clock bell.

No luck.

Several others of the group tried sending /tells directly to him.

The response was "Thundermouse is away from the keyboard."

Well, no, not really. He's *at* the keyboard, as it's making an impression on his forehead, and he's drooling on it at the same time. So, *no*, he's not away from the keyboard. He's just asleep.

It made me think that maybe we should equip his system with a deadman-switch, kinda like the ones installed on railroad locomotives. There, you have to provide positive input to any of several critical control systems every thirty seconds, or the switch brings the train to an emergency stop. In Thundermouse's case, we'd connect the deadman-switch to a set of electrcial contacts in his gaming chair. That way, if he doesn't provide postive input at least once every thirty seconds, the chair shocks him back to consciousness.

:-P

We were certainly in a pickle. We were *all* tired. Apparently none more so than Thundermouse, though. Who, we determined, literally held the key to completing the quest.

...asleep at the keyboard.

LOL!!!

So, I decided to go out on a limb... I submitted a ticket to the Game Master, asking if he could help us out of the jamb.

I mean, we'd done *everything* in the quest, except open the final door, because we couldn't obtain another key to the final room.

*Fortunately*, Thundermouse woke up before I had to explain the situation to the Game Master, and I canceled the ticket.

We all yelled, hooted and hollered, hoping to keep Thundermouse awake long enough to get him up to the top of the cavern, to open the final door for us. Shinzon even headed back to escort him to the rest of us, by way of perpetual Hastes.

Of course, Thundermouse was apologizing most profusely the whole way. Honestly, I don't think anyone was really upset. More than anything, it was simply *really* funny. It was just that we were all very tired.

But the statement "I don't think I'm gonna make it for ADQ tonight, guys" was probably the funniest to that point. Heh! No kidding!!! I don't think any of us had any intention of running the final prerequisite at that point. :-) We were all thinking about going to bed, instead.

Equally amusing, I thought, was that, as soon as Thundermouse made it to the door, he unlocked and opened it, which initiated the final encounter. I had a moment to throw maybe *two* group buffs before I had to start healing. Shinzon simply started spamming fire walls and PKs as fast as he could.

It was probably the best un-prepped encounter I've ever seen.

We were all so tired, we just *did* it. All in about 15 seconds, too.

Shinzon's fire walls were still burning well after the encounter was over.

Everyone rushed the throne and cueued the completion objective, looted the chest, "double-recalled" and logged, unceremoniously, out for the evening.

It was two hours past my bed-time.

And, some folks still need to complete ADQ before tonight's raid, if they want to participate.

Here's hoping we can fit that in for them; PEBKAC is Queen-ready, but Thundermouse, Raf... som'n-r-other (again, sorry, poor memory), Kwiskwis, Joxsum and Shinzon still need to complete ADQ. If I can log in early enough this evening, maybe I can lend them a hand, by way of Aequinox.

We'll see...

In the mean time, keep it fun!!!

(Get some sleep Thundermouse!)