HOLD THE LINE!!
Woohoo!
I just took part in one of the primary elements of Shadowbane - Massive Guild v Guild warfare and more particularly Siege Warfare.
A few days ago one of our allies had had enough of the Pk'ing (player killing) and Grief playing antics of the nation Shadow Dominatio and so placed a Bane Circle on their Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is the centre of a city, it acts as a protectorate force to most of the buildings within its surrounding area of influence. A Bane Circle is a magic artifact and spell used to sap those powers of protection. Anyhow when the Bane Circle becomes active the Tree of Life's protection is no longer available to the buildings around it and hence they fall prey to Siege weaponry. However the way that the system works the defender chooses within a certain timeframe, when the Bane Circle will become active and hence sets the time of the siege.
So the job of my guild, Exile was two fold. Our first obligation was to smash a hole in the city wall of the City of Shadows using Trebuchets from our Siege encampment without. Our second was to then take and hold the inner city until the Bane Circle became active and our trebuchets set up within the city could start the destruction of the Tree and the surrounding buildings set up by the guild.
I was designated a position within the second group and our orders were to hold in our home city until further orders were given. However soon there came the call to organize into thematic groups (casters, scouts etc) and we were off. Unfortunately all our military planning was slightly pointless as we weren't fighting against a well regimented military force. We were fighting against Grief Players and PK's who specialized in small scale solo operations or 'Group v 1 player' attacks consequently taking the city was a complete sinch although I was killed by a hidden assassin and had to run back from Exile.
On the way there I heard reports over the Guild channel that there was an enemy wizard south of the city invisible (a Rank 5 spell) and killing (or attempting to kill) folk with his summoned Demon. I had re-spawned at our Tree of Life with a channeler called Cirwaen and so we both carefully made our way towards the south side of the city so as to try and jump the wizard. I flicked through my targets list and caught a glimpse of a Shadow guild crest and immediately set my demon on it. It turns out it was hit demon, which had been ordered to attack me. I immediately began to leg it in the direction of the hole in the wall with the demon in hot pursuit followed by mine swiping at it when it could. Cirwaen being a Channeler had a flight spell which she used to neatly float over the wall but I had no such luxury afforded to me. Then I remembered I had a teleport spell so I quickly turned round, whipped off a root on the demon to hold it in place and teleported over the wall into the city to join my guildmates who currently held a line at the hole in the NW wall of the city.
There were still some enemy Non-Player-Character soldiers on the walls and turrets of the city and they occasionally rained down arrows on our siege captain NPC's so we were obliged to take them out. I ran along the walkway and set my demon on 2. They died after a bit of heavy spell casting from myself and I went on with my duties whilst the other soldiers were destroyed by my fellow guildmates who had also assumed the task.
We had scouts placed all around the perimiter to monitor enemy movements as we knew that our second duty had to be performed - hold the city. In about 30 minutes the members of the Northerly Guild "Hell's Elite Legion's" (sic) were called to their friends' aid. They made several small attacks but thanks to some intelligent commands from Rojan the centaur commander of our segment of the force we weren't drawn out.
Then quite suddenly a scout report shot over the airways.. The enemy was massing in huge numbers bearing North and summoning a vast entourage of pets (demons, panthers, wolves etc). The call went out across the lines guarding the North Western breach to hold the line at all costs and not let the invaders sabotage any of our Siege weaponry.
I saw on my overhead map a number of blue (enemy) dots and red (pet) dots slowly trickle into range of the city. Then more come, and more and soon my minimap was awash with a sea of blue and red dots as the enemy forces fell upon us. A number of the Melee fighters dashed outside to stop the fight reaching the inner walls so as to prevent any possible damage to our siege engines. They held their ground and set up a forward point to which many of us dashed. I did not dash.. I instead cycled through my targets till I found an enemy guild crest and pressed 'a' and with that my demon sprinted off to go and chew on the limbs of the unfortunate wizard who I had targeted. In truth I could do little more with my lag which was pretty obscene at certain times.
The minimap showed our green dots slowly overcoming the blue and reds. Eventually there came a call to sally forth and run them down and our forces duly obliged as the enemy sprinted off back into the distance.
We cheered at our feat and got back to our defensive positions waiting for the bane circle to become active. In time however there came another call of massing enemy forces and in a suprise twist, instead of attacking the breach in the wall they came through the main northern gate (it was their city after all and they had the keys) This time my lag was far less severe and I was able to loose off a couple of spells which hit their targets in a suitably destructive manner. Once again however my Demon was the real victor sprinting off after their retreating forces and actually returning (albiet with little life remaining) where most other pets simply died at the hands of the enemy :)
After the second assualt the enemy evidently decided the city could not be re-taken at that time and so relented and destroyed their own Tree of Life. With it destroyed our Siege artillery pounded their buildings into rubble and with one last hurled bolt from a trebuchet their final building, a Wizard's tower, collapsed leaving nothing of what once was a home city for harassment and annoyance.
Quality gaming!
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at March 8, 2003 11:09 AM