Stories from RhyDin & The Rings

Share with everyone what your best night of dueling was, whether it the day you won a title, won a tournament or had some quality wins, or some great role playing even if you lost.

Feel free to brag! This is for you to feel good about your dueling prowess.

I will share with you four of my favorite nights to look back upon.


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STORY 1
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My first was the first Warlord tournament I entered with the character Sir Damien Cetran of Longsly. I was still fairly new to dueling and I think I barely made Warlord in time to make the tournament.

I won my first match 5-2, my second 5-3, my third 5-4 and then faced Kalamere in the finals. He beat me 5-3. I went over to the loser's bracket and then won three more matches, all 5-4. I remember that it was nerve racking and I was vibrating from all these close matches.

I faced off against Kalamere again and this time beat him 5-3. They anounced me the winner, even though Kalamere only lost once, which was confusing. I took the 4th ring as my prize and he took the Overlord challenge, which is what he wanted, so it worked out. This all took place over two nights and I remember I couldn't wait from one day to the next.

Not facing Kalamere for a double elimination final match caused some controversy and some immediate challenges. Billy Ray challenged Damien then withdrew, I think, after Kalamere declared that he did not protest Damien being crowned champion as he got the prize he wanted.

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STORY 2
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My best quality dueling was with the character Agrenish Preescott, a brash and arrogant guy. My first match was a perfect 5-0 in 5, my second was 5-0 in 6, my third was something 5-3 in 13 and my final match was against the always disagreeable RLupton. I had him up 4-0 in 4 and was salivating for my second perfect match in the night when he decided to quit. I gave him some hell about that one.

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STORY 3
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My favorite roleplaying dueling, well, there are two. I'll save the second for another thread.

As Agrenish Preescott again... I challenged and beat Var for the 10th ring. He re challenged and our characters didn't like each other much. I set up something special for him as I had defended the ring once before. I got together with one of the callers from the DoF and had a balance beam suspended in air for us to duel upon, which made role playing the challenge out a hell of a lot of fun. I ended up losing (and the subsequent rubber match), but it was a match with no losers.

I remember having a number of people telling me that it was one of the most entertaining fights they every watched. Which is cool when you consider that they're watching words.
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STORY 4
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All of that was great, but its hard to beat the night I won the crown. I had actually once challenged Dalamar under the wrong pretenses, mistaking something OOC for IC and withdrew. By the time I offered another challenge, again with Agrenish, Unagi Miyamoto was Overlord.

It was a good place to challenge as Miyamoto was the guy who challenged and lost to Agrenish when he was a Baron. Miyamoto made him do the Test of Worthiness and, knowing Agrenish's brash behavior, this was no surprise. What was a big surprise was who came to his aid. I knew Magnus Eques would step in, during Dalamar's epic reign, he stepped in every chance he got. He also lost, a lot, as I recall.

The guy who stepped in was Verceterix Favre, and I can't tell you how shocked I was that he did this. It's not like Rix and Agrenish were friends. He told me that the reason he (the character) was doing this was he was recalled a bad run of losses and was thinking about quitting.

Agrenish, being himself, lambasted him for even thinking about quitting just because he had gotten beat a few times and that helped give him the motivation not only to continue dueling but to excel as well. Again, shocked! I had forgotten this conversation ever happened! I speculate that there was some OOC in this decision, like the guy who played him was thinking about quitting because he wasn't doing too well (he may of been a GM at this point or struggling to maintain Warlord, I forget) but I never asked. When I did recall the conversation, I remember that I, the player, did not want Rix to quit because he was a good duelist and a good character and I think I played my feelings through my character.

That's what I remember. I'd love to hear from him about this, if he remembers.

Anyways, the tester was someone named Banda, who I've never seen before or after. Apperently she was chosen specifically to face Magnus as they were ready for him to intercept the test, as I was. With Rix coming out of left field, it was a move the surprised all three of us.

The duel between Rix and Banda went forever. I was so nervous, I felt like I did during the Warlord's tournament. After seventeen frickin' rounds and a score like 9-8, Rix won the match and cleared the path for Agrenish.

Now, the fight between Miyamoto and Agrenish was nothing like the challenge fight. I had studied this guy through and through. 5-1 in 7, a new overlord and a ton and I mean a ton of pissed off Warlords and Barons ready to challenge the guy who had beaten and insulted them on so many occasions.

But with one more trick up his sleeve (this was planed before the challenge was issued), three days later, just long enough for everyone to get stewed up... well, the histories said it best:

"Three days later, in a letter rife with disinterest and outright contempt, Agrenish Preescott became the third Overlord ever to retire, with the shortest reign of any Overlord. He retired from the Duel of Swords at the same time. Still, though his departure was not highly lamented by the masses, it is doubtful we have heard the last of this particular antagonistic man."

I want to cook the person who wrote that a delicious meal. Beautifully written and had me laughing and laughing when I first read it. Reading the forums during this stretch and the following days was such a joy.

I doubt that I'll ever bring Agrenish back as he's not someone I think who would ever return somewhere after he's made his made his mark and moved on, but as you can see from this list, he's the character I had most of not only my best matches, but my most memorable role playing moments as well.
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Those are my stories, tell us about yours! What do you think back fondly upon? What are some of your greatest moments? When did you kick ass like no one else? When did you feel like a Highlander and everything was going perfectly?

Twelve years later, I don't remember important move combinations and my dueling notebook is long gone, but I'm sure a lot of you remember cool little things that helped you figure out your opponent so you could own 'em like that table-scrap-pilfering-grabass's they are! Did you know the were going to Thrust after a side-step? Have you hit multiple Fancy Slash's on an opponent? Win with a disengage?

And I want to read about all of them.

No one has any stories they want to share? I find that hard to believe. Come on people, I want to hear about some awesome nights of dueling!

Hi Joe and welcome back!

Some of us are forgetful in our old age.

Recently I'd say it was during the OL challenge between Candy and Chris. I was playing King at the time and when I saw no Grazianos in the room I though it would be a straight up match between the two. Boooy was I wrong. Felt relieved for about five minutes before Chris announced Teagan was his champion, then the pressure was on.

I was somehow able to pull off the win but I liked the Roleplay more than the fight itself. Teagan swept King after a Thrust / Fancy Sidestep round and I had King walk around with a bad ankle for about a week or two after the match since it screwed up her stepping bad enough. Was a fun thing to play out, so I enjoyed the match giving me the ability to play off it.

Another fight was when I was playing on my Apple alt. She was fighting Candy in the pit and it was Emerald vs Glass. Usually our fights drag out to around 13 or so rounds, but this one got all the way to 15 with both of us at around 4-4 or 5-5 and it ended with a tie. The RP going on was really great and I enjoyed it a lot.

Seirichi vs Harris for Pathfinder. That was seriously my real reason for coming into the duels. I was told they had titles and stuff and this guy that I was off and on RPing with randomly ( Harris ) had one. So I went "WELL I'M GOING TO GO OVER THERE AND STEAL IT", which worked well with Seirichi as a character since that's exactly what she wanted to do as well when someone told her IC. It took time and a little effort but I got her to Emerald. Not as fast as Nayun or King, but it happened quick enough. Funny part is that Harris was still on 30 day grace when I hit emerald around Halloween. So I had Seiri pester him non stop on the boards / IC to drop the grace. He didn't, boo. But when it was off and I got the challenge in - it made for a good match. Took 3 fights but Seiri snagged PathFinder and ended Harris' 500 day reign with it.

It wasn't a best "Night" but the whole time during that Into the Inferno storyline that I started on my Spell alt was fun too. Got people together who I never really had a chance to RP with much and we created something that ( hopefully ) can be remembered and looked back on during the years to come.

Nayun vs Roderick for Moonberyl. Double 5-0 shutouts, that's all I have to say lol. When that happened I felt so terrible since I was going to have her retire the Opal.

I can't pinpoint a single night I'd call "the best." I've enjoyed practically every night I've dueled, which is rare in my RP experience. I can't recall a single time I did NOT enjoy my play session when dueling was involved. Any other FFRP time... I have negative stories. Hah!

But I think some of my favorites were....

Sal winning the squire tournament to become the first Squire of Seaside under Jaycy.

Later being given the Overlord grant by Teagan and using it to challenge Jaycy because of her (as he perceived) dishonorable conduct during Teagan's challenge match against Anubis.

My absolute first night dueling Swords. 5 matches. Won every single one. Went up two ranks in a single night. Have never been able to get that back since, lol!

Every single match (Swords and Fists) I've fought against Anubis. He makes it super good times. Love the violence.

The entire Tour de Rhydin thing. Deathcake Forever!

And recently...

Finally freaking winning the Talon of Redwin.

Please excuse my lack of details. I'd have to do some serious digging around to refresh my memory and provide you them. I haven't at all been doing this dueling thing half as long as many other people around here. All you "old-timers" have been tremendously pleasant and helpful people, though. I love you all.

I don't know if I should keep to DoS stories or not since it's in the DoS OOC area... so I'll keep to DoS. I started dueling (again) about a year and a few months ago. I had a brief stint in DoF four years ago with a record of six wins and six losses. Upon my returned I was pretty much focused on DoF (as my WoL in that sport compared to the other two can pretty easily reflect).

I didn't really have much of an intent to do DoS or DoM. But then Tass gave me a grant following his win in the Madness tournament and it seemed like a waste not to use it. I challenged the newest Baroness that hadn't been tested yet and had a fairly low WoL. Even so, I really didn't expect to win. The Overlady didn't show up to intercede and the Baroness picked the best of three format. The fight from Candy was pretty brutal... fiery crow bar and just wailing on Camilla. Candy ended up winning it in two and declared herself renegade, just because following someone else's orders could cramp her style.

Later Ria Graziano challenged Candy... there's a slight beef between Wrecking Crew and Candy.. sort of. After Candy beat Ria, she challenged Ria's husband since his Overlord Grant is what enabled Ria to bother Candy again. (She'd also challenged in DoF.)

Wasn't sure what to expect with the Overlord Challenge. But there was a lot riding on what Chris might do far as how many loyal barons Candy could possibly have after. Given the various outcomes depending on being tested and who won the test and who won the challenge. But King won the test and Candy won the challenge, awarding King with the barony.

That all happened just before the WLT.. which Xanth just CRUSHED. I didn't know if Candy would win the resulting challenge from that and it was close! Candy won after sudden death... and I was having a mild heart attack.

Aside from challenges, I recall really enjoying my first DoS match between Candy and Tical. And the first time I managed to beat Gnort.

Great stories! And Candy (and anyone else) I wouldn't of minded hearing great dueling nights from other venues. I posted here out of habit. I played DoF on sporadic occasions and DoM almost never, but it's not due to dislike, it just where the best action was at the time (well, I remember not liking the DoM matrix, even though today I can't remember one thing about it).

I can't wait to get back in to the Arena for more duels and eventually add to the list. Maybe we should have a "Tell how your night went" thread for people to get on to brag/whine about their latest dueling foray!

Delahada wrote:
The entire Tour de Rhydin thing. Deathcake Forever!

Oh Deathcake.. How I miss thee.

That was so much flippin' fun.

Who/What is/was Deathcake?

Agrenish wrote:Who/What is/was Deathcake?

LOL! That was the name of our team for the Tour de RhyDin 2010. Came in third place. Good times.

So, tonight was awesome. It started out with a tough loss against Spell. I had a small lead, which was lost and she eventually overcame to win in what was a close contest. It hurt because at no point did I feel that I made the wrong move for the wrong reason, she was simply better and outsmarted me. That followed with a solid win over leeroy jenkins, but those two on their own wouldn't of made for a memorable night.

Velhelmi made a new friend a couple nights ago in Eugene Holmes. That in and of itself was a great development because, the way I play this character, he's very aggressive and doesn't think before he speaks, he just speaks and acts. There's not much of a filter on him. Add in that he's very different from many of the characters around here, not versed in their customs, their time period, and suspicious of magic, so there's not much for him to relate to.

So, after a victory and Velhelmi cried a roar to indicate that he had won, Eugene surprised me by coming up to Velhelmi, giving him a drink and toasting to the victory! He gave him a drink, acknowledged his superiority in a contest he had no part in and gave a "Hail" towards it? I mean! How awesome was that? Instant friend. What a great play!

OOC, the next night, two of us trained him in DoS and DoF dueling tactics and his improvements were showing very quickly. Tonight, his character won his first match 5-0.5, finishing with a Slash. Wow! He lost his second, so the both of us were even for the night and so we decided to duel. Makes sense, as the two characters have more in common than meets the eye. Eugene is far more... diplomatic, but what they enjoy doing, that's very close.

As we were going to the rings, Robert Heys IM'ed me, asking if I wanted to go 2-1.

When I first returned and was learning DoF, one thing people told me was how Matt would go 2-1 or even 3-1. I was really surprised by this initially because back when I played, I don't think that would of ever happened. When I would say this, people would go, "Well, he runs DoF and has been here forever so he can do what he likes," or something to that effect. So, I'll admit, I was a bit jealous.

After a 3-0 night and being 1-1 this evening, I was sitting at 2WoL, which was nice after a 4-7-1 start. As a player, I knew that doing Two on One was not advisable as it would be hard to do better than a split. But it didn't matter. The situation warranted for in ring brutality. How could I, the player turn down this opportunity? How could my character, a man of limited knowledge and who respects strength, turn this down an opportunity to display his might for all to see? Neither of us could and neither of us wanted to.

I'll admit, two on one is not easy at first if you're taking it seriously as I did. Organized windows, organized word processor so I can keep track of both results, trying to keep the continuity of both matches in both integral matters and IC was at first challenging, because it's more than doubling what I normally do. As I figured out how to IC play it, and how to go about choosing moves, not to mention Apple's smart calling, it smoothed out, even if I was a bit slow.

What's better is that both opponents, Eugene and Robert, were great at working with me. We kind of got into a rhythm of, I would type out the results first on how my character went about attacking/defending both characters and they would work off me. Not always, but enough so that it was pretty easy for me to follow what was going on.

I fell behind on Eugene and was ahead of Robert. But for how I go about dueling, how I think about things and react to results, I have to admit, I don't thing I dueled very well. Looking over the results, there's a section of moves that were almost entirely neglected.

But...

It didn't matter! This was too much fun. Eugene beat Velhelmi 5.5-2 in 9. In fact, my only regret in this fight wasn't that I lost, but that I didn't last longer against him. Well, that's not entirely true. I wanted to win the first match so I could, literally, kick or throw one of them out of the ring with the final blow, but it wasn't meant to be. Instead, he was cut down and I had to have him pick himself and keeping.

With Robert, while Eugene was playing, he had caught up. After Eugene left, they traded leads. In the end, it was a 5-5 tie after 15.

Now, what was fun about all of this was the play. Having to figure out how to have Velhelmi bounce from one opponent to the next, how to balance the fights, how to keep it somewhat realistic and to keep up and doing this in character was, it was the most fun I've had in a duel since Agrenish's Baronal title loss to Var I wrote about the opening post. How do you get hit twice, or hit one or not that other... each situation was new and was fun to describe rather than finding new vocabulary for results I've seen thousands of times already.

At the end, the fight got dirty and ugly. Robert's character threw a scalpel into Velhelmi as they ran towards each other. Vel pulled it out and put it between his teeth. He was hit again and as he went down it fell out of his mouth. When he got back up, he he picked it up and threw it back, but only before he was tackled to the ground. Robert ran out of scalpels, Velhelmi had trouble swinging his axe due to fatigue and so they started to punch each other, wrestle, countering with kicks... I was planning on headbutting if the opportunity arose,

I mean, this was swords we're talking about and by the end, it turned into a DoF version of DoS! I was ready to throw sand in his face had the opportunity came up! A tie was a perfect to what felt like an epic duel.

Simply put, it was the most fun I've had since I've been back and I've already had a lot of fun. It's odd to me that my favorite dueling plays have been in losing efforts. Of course, Robert stroking my ego by saying "Velhelmi's such a badass" and Eugene cheering on the fight both IC and OOC helped just a little bit.

I heard Matt has done 3 on 1. I would like to read that log. Or watch it in person.

Velhelmi Torvald wrote: When I would say this, people would go, "Well, he runs DoF and has been here forever so he can do what he likes," or something to that effect.

Not to derail this topic, but I feel I need to address the above statement.

I do not (nor should I) receive special treatment in dueling; yeah, I'm in charge of DoF but I'm also a player just like everyone else. I have never forced a caller into doing something they were uncomfortable with where calling's concerned. There''ve been times where callers have not wanted to call Matt vs. multiples and that's perfectly ok.

To be clear, I cannot 'do whatever I like' not do I think I ought to be able to do whatever I please; I do not expect or deserve preferential or special treatment from anyone, both callers and players alike.

--Matt

Goldglo wrote:Not to derail this topic, but I feel I need to address the above statement.

I do not (nor should I) receive special treatment in dueling; yeah, I'm in charge of DoF but I'm also a player just like everyone else. I have never forced a caller into doing something they were uncomfortable with where calling's concerned. There''ve been times where callers have not wanted to call Matt vs. multiples and that's perfectly ok.

To be clear, I cannot 'do whatever I like' not do I think I ought to be able to do whatever I please; I do not expect or deserve preferential or special treatment from anyone, both callers and players alike.

(only partial sarcasm, because you should be defending yourself against my naiveté)

You know what would of been really cool? Is if you also added in your post something that would of fed this topic a little, like maybe, I don't know, your favorite dueling night or describing the multi-duels I mentioned, then you would of not needed to add the disclaimer about "derailing". Then you we'd both be happy.

Besides, I set you up perfectly for a bragging opportunity!

For anyone who may be concerned, I was merely repeating something I heard on two occasions in a group setting during a broad array of topics which had no deeper implications so the statements, I took, were in jest. I might repeat a lot of things I hear people say without knowing if their implications have deeper meaning or are superficial jabs and I don't know what people are sensitive about yet. I'm not passive aggressive and far more direct in my accusations than how I mentioned Matt in that post. My post had nothing to do with him acting corrupt or abusing his power and thus far I have nothing but nice things to say about him.

It had everything to do with me being jealous when I first heard about the multi-duels. That's what you should take away from it. End of distraction.

Okay, now that this is cleared up, let's move on... or if someone has an actual concern about this, start your own thread.

May 18 2011 was my best night dueling even though it was Mur's biggest loss of his career. He was already Diamond and had a scheduled challenge in with Aya for OL that he would later win.

I had a laptop at the time that required me rebooting almost every day and had gotten home from work a minute late for the AM tourney. The rebooting took the entire ten minute grace and Neo was calling Xanth and Vinny to the ring as Mur appeared. Since Mur was top seed and thus a bye anyway, the three players talked and allowed him in the tournament anyway even though he should have been disqualified.

Mur lost and Vinny went on to become Archmage, but it was my best night dueling because I always remembered the kindness of those three players in allowing me to take a shot at getting Mur all of the top titles at once.