Centaur Slayers…
Okay, I’ve said it before here, but I’ll say it again. In RL, I like horses. Therefore, I have always hesitated when someone suggested going to the Centaur village in South Karana to hunt Centaurs.
However, after seeing yet another centaur stuck in a wall, something inside me snapped. Then I saw this guy sitting by the Aviak village…
Obviously, the Aviaks were unclean if they caused people to name themselves so strangely…and the Centaurs were in some kind of genetic feedback loop. Natural selection had to be given a kick in the rump here: these centaurs needed something to cleanse their gene pool. It would be for their own good. And I was just the cleric to do it…
03/17/00: “Ulan looks nervous…”
First we had a chat with the chief Centaur. You can tell Ulan is someone important because they put a pretty embroidered roof over his head. We told him what we were going to do. He seemed surprised, but gave his approval to our work. Or at least he kept buying and selling with us, and that’s just as good.
03/17/00: “Sacrificial Gnome”
Then, to appease the horse gods, we had to sacrifice Ickabod our token gnome. He said he was feeling cold anyway…
03/17/00: “Elephant tipping”
Then, because it made us laugh, Ickabod decided to slay an elephant. Apparently our sacrifice of him didn’t stick…
03/17/00: “Carnage”
This is one of about half a dozen similar pictures I took, all with different corpse arrangements. I am pretty sure the Centaur gene pool has been improved. Now if I could just figure out how the apparently all-male centaur race procreates…
03/17/00: “Ickabod says something smart…”
There are a lot of things I love about being a Talon. The sense of being part of a family (albeit a crazed, demented family that drools a lot…). The friendships that seem to develop so easily. The trust. All of it feeds into the fact that I just don’t die very much when I’m with Talons, and I do die a lot when I group with non-Talons.
I have often thought to myself (usually in my bad moments) that this was an indicator of my incompetence, and that I needed to be propped up by the high skill levels of my guild mates. But Ickabod’s comment really made me pause. Other folks in the guild had said similar things in the past, but I hadn’t really absorbed it before. I guess I’m not the only one who feels “propped up” when I’m with Talons. Maybe the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Or something equally profound but beyond my ability to express.
I doubt this is a uniquely Talon experience. Its what happens any time you get a good team together. Some grad student somewhere could probably do a thesis on this…