meteordust | "Once more into the breach, dear friends..."

RO. Last Sunday's siege.

So we wanted to have a go at getting a fort, and Elf was the first target because they were the ones who took Valkyrie Realms 3 off us. They didn't hold that castle anymore, but they had one in Payon and one in Al De Baran, and we wanted to stretch our wings a bit and move beyond Prontera.

Anyway, we warped to Payon and attacked Balder Guild 5, the castle Elf held there. Their defence was pretty good and I died twice. Then Fatty Chubby Kitties took Balder Guild 3, which was the castle our allies Slaughtered Saints wanted, so we went to help them for a bit.

Since we weren't having much success in Payon, we warped to Alde and gathered outside Elf's fort there, Luina Castle 4. Unfortunately we were spotted by one of their hunters, who raised the alarm and started laying traps. Lunakitty ordered us back to town, but the damage was done. As we prepared to make the assault, we got to see all of Elf's allies stream past us into the fort - Ambient and The Shiny Ones and other guilds besides - a truly scary number of reinforcements. I thought it would be funny if we suddenly opened a warp and went for their Payon fort instead, but no one took up my suggestion.

Anyway, we spent a while hurling ourselves against the Elf defence, but it was in vain - they were ready for us, and I died several times to Storm Gust. Then the word came through to go to Prontera instead, so I warped to Prontera City and started to walk north to the castle maps.

I had experienced a few glitches during the siege, so being the paranoid person I am, I opened up my party list to see if I was still on it or if I had dropped off it. I could see no one else on the list but me and Mysteel, so I assumed that we had dropped off the actual list and were in our own little glitched dimension.

But no. It wasn't that at all.

Right before I got to the Prontera castle maps, I ran into a large group of people - mostly Eternal Empire - sitting in a line across the path. They said, "Don't go in. Pront is down."

So I stopped where I was. It did occur to me that this would be a good ploy to stop other people from attacking the Prontera castles - but then again, I had the evidence of my disappearing party members. They had gone ahead of me, so they must have blithely walked off the edge of the normal map - and into nothingness.

Those of us who were left regrouped in town at our usual spot near the flower girl. The people who had gotten stuck in the Prontera castle maps had to switch to their secondary characters. Since taking a castle this siege was out of the question now, we were released to follow our own whims.

A couple of us went back to Payon to help Slaughtered Saints against Fatty Chubby Kitties. They managed to get the castle, but lost it to XGMR, who were apparently supposed to be their allies. I'm still not sure what happened there. In any case, Fatty Chubby Kitties took the castle back at the last minute, and then it was all over until next time.

In the end, it was a siege like the sieges in the old days, when we roamed freely around Rune-Midgard instead of being rooted in one place. But while freedom may at times seem alluring, there is something to be said for having roots...