Lemmings Returns!
You know, I have to confess, I wasn't particularly looking forward to the lemmings event. I'd popped onto mud during the day, and had my ass handed to me in no uncertain terms by a certain PK (coughblueeyescough) three times, along with every other MU in The Land, and frankly, I was a bit dispirited. Expecting a similar treatment throughout the event, I nevertheless trudged along, had my sorceror fodded for my troubles, and made ready with dread for the crazed dash that is the MUDII annual Lemmings event. Boy was I ever wrong. If you missed it, you missed the most crazed, insane, confusing but incredibly fun event you ever did see, young fella-me-lad. Maxmage even managed to avoid crashing this one. What's it all about? I hear you yell, waking up the sleeping warlock in the caved-in-grave. Rather than attempt it in my own words, it's over to Karya to explain.
Clear? Good, because I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Taking the name Dalek after a notorious Wireplay PK that popular rumour had as one of Turrican's wizmorts (perhaps I hoped some of his deadly skill would remain sticking to the name. No such luck eh), we were subdivided into teams, as follows:
Due to uneven numbers, Team 1 started with a good advantage, but I'm not sure anybody noticed. Let's be clear. The beginning of the round was sheer, unadulterated, CHAOS. People were running around willy-nilly grabbing everything they could see, fighting without weapons, dropping every lemming they could see near a convenient cliff to fling itself from. Attempting to use my sensible brain cells (there's only a couple of them), I grabbed what I could, and ran off to do the pillar. Of course, I got intercepted on the way, and foolishly fought the whole time carrying the incredibly heavy marble pillar. What an eejit. Anyway, I fled down to spellbinder, and paused a moment to collect my thoughts. It seems everyone was going so nuts that they'd forgotten most of the basic kit. So I grabbed what wafers had been left lying around and spent a few minutes healing up and trying to do the pillar before giving up, and going out into The Land to grab my lemmings. Knowing that people largely ignore it, I'd been stashing the blue lemmings in the bottom of the pagoda, canny old me! Time for the first score update.
I pause for a moment, before realising that actually I'm on the green team, and I've been helpfully pushing the blue team into an early lead. Oops. Confess to Ohno (aka Heiachi, persuaded out of retirement), and do some more frantic running all over the place for not much results. At this time we gained a late-arrival third member in the shape of Dash (Corwin), and the game is on! Or off in my case, as my kit drew the attention of team 1 and 4, who double teamed me in a rather conclusive fashion. First death to Gilagamesh, Ragalaz, Meerkat and an invisible Superted. *sniff* Now I was after blood, and I'm back in raring to go. Another fight ensued with Norm, Gilgamesh and Meerkat, and Gilgamesh is down to close to death. I overdid the attempted re-attacks, and have to flee. Weeee, spellbinder again. I decided to revert to my former tactics, and spent some more time running around typing QN a lot, and getting nowhere. Hey, I got some major skeelz going on here! Second score update:
As you can see, there was rather a lot of lemming killing, and not very much lemming saving going on. I'm weaponless at this point, so grabbed a fragile favourite of mine from one of the mausoleum tombs - it's usually there, as not many people bother to work out the puzzles these days. OH-HO! DING! BRAINWAVE! Why not stash our lemmings in a mausoleum tomb? You can close them from inside, then resite out of it. So long as no-one thinks of it as a hiding place, there's no reason they'd go look there, right? Genius! The plan is afoot. In the mean time, it turns out the blue team have blocked off the cottage attic, and have been hiding lemmings inside. But they've neglected a vital piece of treasure that gives you access! There's a frantic rush from the other three teams to grab it, only when we made our way up there, it turned out that lemmings are rather slippier than we thought, and had legged it of their own accord past the supposed blockage. Foiled, blue team! A short encounter with Gilgamesh lost my magic, and puts me to superhero, although he fled to fight another day. Our number of stashed lemmings was rising, but so was the Red team's number, as they'd gained access to the tricky-to-find Crypt Beneath Church, damn them! After a couple of fights, we're dying all over the shop. Things are getting risky. A glimpse of Superted showed him carrying the cowl, the amulet, the broadsword, coracle, cape and several wafers! Eep! The battle went on, we're neck and neck:
Dash has left the game by this point, and it was just the two of us, To secure victory we're going to HAVE to get to the red stash in the crypt. But how? Hhmn, there's an alternative way in, but you need the {censored} - I've got it! I sidetracked to drop a lemming in our tomb, and found Meerkat and Diablo fighting in the mausoleum. Foolishly, I entered the tomb, and gave away our hiding place! Lawks a'mercy I hoped no-one knew the answer to the riddle! Up to the monastry I went, and put the {censored} in the {censored}. There followed a moment of stupidity as I stood blankly thinking, "Tsk, a locked door, and I haven't got the {censored}." Oh well. Out into the world once more. Yellow Team 4 had got their act together at this point, and were team-killing other players to spawn their lemmings. They got me twice and gave the reds the chance to pull away. There's only 15 minutes left and the scores are getting dangerous!
Karya idly mentioned how I was partway to freeing the red lemmings and it's like lightning has struck me. HOW COULD I BE SO STUPID!? All that was stopping me was a locked door - unlike me, Lemmings can't die! There followed a sweet, sweet gaming moment ...
There were 8 minutes to go, and I was frantically dropping 10 red lemmings at a time at the cliff, and panicking as none of them actually jumped off. This isn't helping either:
There was much rejoicing (from me and Heiachi, at least), and traditional patronising of the losers, as we were awarded a magazine subscription of our choice for the year, and a month's free MUDII! Runners-up prizes went to the valiant yellow team, whose last minute turn-around had netted them a cunning second place! And of course, HUGE thanks to Karya and Foddy for organising the event - top fun. See you next year, lemmings fans!
Crowley ... click here to return to the front page.
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