Looking for Group - Alexis Hall Page 0,55

and if it reaches a hundred stacks, you become some kind of slave zombie thing under the control of Lady Bloodrose. If you let this happen, you are a noob and a scrub, and you will need to feel very bad about yourself.”

Bjorn sounded like he was really enjoying himself. He reminded Drew a lot of Anni in some ways, but in other ways he really, really didn’t. It was like he used all the same words, but they didn’t mean the same things.

“The Barbed Briars should be prio-ed by ranged, always. Entrancing Briars will have little white flowers on them, and they will randomly mind-control people. You will stay MCed until the briar is killed. Melee can attack Entrancing Briars safely. Please do so. Finally, Entangling Briars will wander around and grab people. When somebody gets grabbed, DPS them out of it. Also spawning in phase one are the Veiled Attendants. These are the spooky cultist people who come out of the doors in the northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest of the chamber. They will make a beeline for the nearest pillar, where they will activate its special power.”

[Raid][Jargogle]: Tell us about the special powers, Uncle Bjorn

[Raid][Dave]: seriously what game came out before I was born

“Any game worth playing, David.” Bjorn took a deep breath. “So these powers—thank you, Magda—include massively increasing the spawn rate of briars, massively reducing the healing output of the party, massively increasingly the damage dealt by everything, and sticking Heartsblood on the whole raid every few seconds until we all die. If an attendant starts channelling, it must be interrupted and then the tanks should pick them up and pull them away from the pillars. During this phase, ranged DPS will be expected to switch between Lady Bloodrose, the briars, and whatever else needs killing. The phase will end when her health drops to seventy percent. There is a lot that can go wrong in this phase, but I get very depressed when we don’t make it out of it.”

[High Theurgist Venric] says: Aaaaagh!

[Lady Bloodrose] says: So trusting, Venric. A pity to come all this way and then to fall so easily.

[Raid][Ialdir]: Baldur’s Gate 1

[High Theurgist Venric] says: You . . . are . . . no . . . longer . . . Anthariel.

[Lady Bloodrose] says: Not for many years, but do not worry, my love, I will not let you die . . . yet.

[Raid][Ialdir]: There’s an enhanced edition out. You should definitely play it.

[High Theurgist Venric] says: Strike now my friends, while I still have strength to aid you!

[Raid][Ialdir]: In a minute, dude, we’re still doing the tacs.

[Raid][Morag]: That’s what you get for pulling without the tank.

“In phase two,” Bjorn went on, “Lady Bloodrose will come down from the ceiling and start to activate the pillars herself. There is nothing we can do about that except DPS her to make her switch. We want her travelling for as much of the fight as possible. There will still be briars, but if we have not cocked everything up, the Veiled Attendants should all be dead. Instead she will open Nether Portals—”

There was a snigger across Mumble.

“David, I am doing the tacs. You can laugh at the word nether in your own time. The Nether Portals will spit out adds, and expand until they fill the entire room and kill everybody. Our portal team, consisting of Magda, Morag, Prospero, and Dave—”

“Woo. Nether Duty.”

“—will dive through the portal and destroy the Realm Heart. The rest of us will be dealing with the adds and DPSing our hearts out. At thirty percent she will go into the final phase, where she explodes into this enormous plant-monster thing and sits in the middle of the room. Then we burn her down really, really fast before we get completely overwhelmed by the buffs from the pillars, which will all be active at this point. Remember, if you are having trouble controlling your Heartsblood stacks, stand near the high theurgist when he puts golden light on the ground, and it will reduce your debuff by 20. Of course, this will also lose you precious DPS time, so it is better to just do things right to begin with.”

A readycheck popped up, and when the signal was given, Ella ran towards the middle of the room, triggering the fight.

[Lady Bloodrose] says: Come, pierce yourself upon me.

“Oh man,” sighed Dave, “that just sounds so wrong.”

“You know what else is wrong,” said Bjorn, fifty seconds later, “how quickly we screwed that