Here they come, my partners in ... well, not crime, adventure

So, here is my third character, Three and Some, doing her thing. Must have done some missions before with people I don’t remember, but in this one I’m with some fellows called Drake Luxus and Stone Kain, a necro and a warrior, and another warrior. I really don’t remember his name, but I do remember him to be of the extremely annoying variety. Boasting about all the time. Drake and Stone don’t comment on his bellowing, which surprises me in retrospect. Well, Stone would not, but Drake certainly would.
This mission is about freeing some prisoners from a harsh place. We come as far as freeing them, it takes a lot of killing, and then Stone dies. The warrior runs along, and Drake follows him. The irritating warrior orders to let Stone lay where he is and to move on. Surprisingly both Drake and me do as he says. But then I think the better of it. Well instructed in team play by my daughter and player friendly as I am, I always carry a resurrection signet. So I return disobediently to Stone’s poor body and res him. Don’t know if he says ‘ thanks’. Let’s hope he did. Later on the warrior punk keeps asking Stone and Drake – not me, I’m afraid! – if they want to join his guild. It must be awesome, the way he boasts about it! Stone and Drake are not particularly interested. At some point Stone and the bugger are standing still together for a long time. I see some messages they exchange – should have been whispered ones – that give me the impression this stupid hunk is trying to sell something. Stone seems to be interested, at least, he does not run away. Sure sign of the trade maniac he is to become! Even then!
Drake and me are waiting. Drake a little less patient then me.
Drake: what’s up
Three: think they are trading
Drake: come on, bro! Haven’t got all day!
When they’re finally finished trading, we go along and bring this mission to an end. The warrior is still drooling about his guild, but at last he disappears to sell his stuff. Drake asks me if he can add me to his friends list, and Stone's as well. I happily agree and add them to my list too. From that moment on we do a lot together when we are on. Not just missions, or maybe even no missions at all. Quests, we do. All the little ones.

Drake is a funny guy. Lots of laughs – lol in GW language, as in msn, as I learn later on. There’s a lot of these abbreviations I gradually learn to decipher. Rofl is about laughing to, but a bit stronger: rolling on the floor laughing.
Then there’s rdy for ready, pple for people, omg means o my god (but I only lean that late in the game), and omfg (with f for fucking). And there’s that word I hate so much: Noob, meaning newbie. Its really insulting is someone calls you a noob. I always tell pple to skip the noob talk nowadays.
Cursing and three letter – or rather 4 letter – words are censured in GW. When you type ‘shit’, as I rather frequently do, you get ----. You can put the censuring out, but then you run the risk of being removed from the game. Big GW Brother is watching you. Now, is he really? At one time I witness some Dutchees, my countrymen, using abusive racist language in the local mode. But they do it in Dutch, so Big Brother won’t hear it. I warn them about it. They give me some blunt answer. But they disappear rather shortly after that.
I’m so angry about it that I ask both Stone and my nephew if it’s really true that people can be removed. They don’t seem to think it such a big deal.

Stone and Drake use the word bots a lot. ‘Take bots?’
Obviously they mean henches, but why call them bots? I ask them. They engage in a conversation for two bro’s, about the origin of bots. Turns out to be robots. First time I witness both of them being funny. Stone never says much. As Pret once put it, he is the strong silent type. Already in those days I play a lot, and late sometimes. Though not as much and as late as it's gonna get eventually.

Drake has a habit of playing in the morning, before work. He always calls me, which is nice. Do I want to join him for a quest? I do, of course. He’s waiting for me and he says we need Stone as well. He’s gonna call him. And Stone promises to be there. But it takes a long time. Meanwhile Drake is making himself comfortable, sitting on the ground and chatting. He makes himself a sandwich, he reports. Must have been that time that he asks me about my age. Don’t know how we came to that, but to my great embarrassment he does.
T: well, it’s a bit embarrassing
D: how come?
T: pple might not want to play with me anymore if they know
D: come on! You can tell me!
And I give in. I confess that I’m 52.
D: Cool!
D: A lot more pple of your age should be playing games
D: the world would be a better place then’
D: I’m 25
D; and Stone's 31
The remark about the world improvement puts me at ease again. So now I’ve told someone on GW my age. I have ‘about’ told Pret, but not exactly. He made some ironic remark about his own advanced stage in life, and I think he had was wondering if that would not put me off, being presumably much younger that him. He lets me guess about it . I get 3 guesses.
T: 30
P: >>
T: 40
P: Don’t be silly!
That puts me down. So guessing someone might be 40 is silly. That’s not very encouraging! So he’s somewhere between 30 and 40, and I say that makes me older than him. I don’t say how much older, the ‘don’t be silly’still ringing very clearly in my ears. So I did not really tell Pret. And now I’ve really told Drake. And no doubt he’ll tell Stone, cause they’re colleagues as well as friends. That much I know already. Don’t know in what line of work yet. That comes later.
Stone still has not arrived, so Drake calls him again.
D: he fell asleep again, the punk!
And since Drake is calling the shots, like it or not, Stone has to come out of his bed and play.

II do some quests with only one of them too. There’s a quest with Drake, where finding the way is very hard, even for a skilled pathfinder as he is. So we run about a lot, first to the right, then to the left. We come across a beautiful waterfall and Drake admires the view. GW is very well crafted.
D: makes you wanna jump!
T: well, I can push you if you like
D: lol
We die a few times, because there’s a lot of nasty scarabs and spiders. Since we’re not that high level yet, we have a lot of trouble fighting them. But patiently we start anew from the resurrection place, over and over again. This resurrection place is a long way back. Its really late – well, I thought it late then, my standards have changed a great deal since then.
D; sorry, have to go. The missus has come home
T: oh?
D: now you know the way at least, so you can finish it if you want
No way I could finish that on my own of course. I wonder about Drake having a missus. Married already at 25?
I remember a quest with Stone alone too. Not with Drake, that is. But with other pple. Some high levels, 20 or something. We do Galrath, which is a very hard one. It gets you 4000 Xp, which is a lot for a quest. A mission gets you 100 Xp and another 1000 if you make the bonus. Galrath is hard, first because it’s a very long way; second, because there’s so many foes.
The first part is through a swamp filled with undead monsters. Then you go to a cave, richly endowed with foes as well. Then you have to fight your way through hordes of minotaurs, and then there’s the hard part. Galrath himself is not such a big deal. A foe with little short arms. I know, because I did it once before with Ginger. Had a very good monk/warrior helping our party then. We all died and watched him fight in awe. Comments were like ‘now here’s a real warrior fighting!’. He made it for us.
But this time it’s more difficult than that. The way to Galrath is blocked by hard to kill bandits. We make it till we get there, but then the pain begins. All of us die, again and again. Every time you die, your health and energy get lower, so the chance for success diminishes equally. The max DP (death penalty) is 60%, and we all eventually get there, but we stubbornly start over and over again. The whole way through the cave again – no foes left in there, luckily – through the minoutaur area again, and on our way to little armed Galrath once more. It takes hours, but nobody quits.
t 4 o’clock in the morning we finally make it. Stone just runs along and does his duty. I don’t remember him saying anything in particular during this quest. But apparently he told Drake about it, because when I mention staying up late with Stone Drake knows. They see each other at work and they phone a lot.
There is another long quest I do alone with Stone one night. It’s the same I did with Drake, so I should have known the way. Stone evidently does not, because he goes to the right and keeps on going, even though I tell him its not right. We get lost. We are attacked by all kinds of monsters we did not have to meet at all.
I pick up something Stone likes to have. I readily agree to give it to him, but I don’t know how. Trade? ‘Drop it’, Stone says, in his own, not very elaborated way.
I obediently do as he says. Eventually Stone acknowledges the fact that the right way may not be the right way after all, so we try the left one. We actually find the right way. We get ambushed by a lot of spiders. So we die. And we give up. That must have one of the quests I never managed to finish.

Pret sells Three a sword he found in the underworld. For me it’s expensive, but I don’t think he asked more than 3 K. I spend more than that on weapons now, though 20K is the highest this far. The sword is a vampiric one, but weapon dumb as I am, I’m not aware of the meaning of that word. On some mission or quest my companions (not Stone or Drake) ask me why my health is dropping all the time. I can’t give them a satisfactory answer, because I wonder about that too. It’s only when I’m on a quest with henches, when my health is dropping even when I’m standing still and not fighting at all, that the true meaning of the word finally comes through. Vampric means stealing blood from enemies, but it steals my blood as well.
Drake advises me to switch weapons, and only use the sword when fighting. I try that, but find it very troublesome. After all, I’m still rather clumsy in the game, or so I think. So I’m glad when I finally get another sword, not vampiric.
While Three is finding her way to the top, I start a new char. A warrior. Lawoman is finally born.