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ORK WAR III
by Wayfinder Wishbringer, Founder, Elf Clan
Originally posted Nov 21,2011 20:23:01
[Note: You can view photos of the Ork War starting here: http://goo.gl/gDgNa (be sure to read the captions. ;D)
ORK WAR III -- Orks vs Eberbody!!!
The day started out peaceful, the weather beautiful. It was pretty much like any normal day on ElvenMyst... except that almost all the regular builds were gone and had been replaced by Ork and Elven battle fortresses.
The Ork Fortress contained numerous heavy walls, pointy stakes and skeletons, as would be expected. The Elven Fortress contained tall towers, beautifully designed architecture, and of course signs taunting the Orks. (There were no dwagon pawprints found on the signs, but we have our suspicions.)
WHY AN ORK WAR?
Orks. Empty sim. Final day of Elf Clan on Second Life. That's all the reason needed.
IT BEGINS
The war started out simply enough: Orks on one side, Elven, dwagons, pixies and tinies on the other. An Ork shot an arrow. A tiny shot a nuclear guided missile. What can ya say?
From that moment forward anyone entering the sim experienced three hours of total mayhem. Ignore the fact this was intended to be a fantasy-based war. At the very entrance of the Elf Clan Floating Castle someone (not saying who) put two boxes full of free weapons for the taking. Those boxes included everything anyone would need or want... ranging from swords to pies to toilet paper to... well, the aforementioned nuclear guided missile launcher. No one came into this expecting a fair fight.
THE ORKS FIGHT FAIR
Well, no one except the Orks, that is. The Orks had been working for weeks on their battle fortress and it showed. Let's give creds: their setup rocked. From their authentic and ancient spiked-wood and stone battle walls, to their physics-enabled stone-blocked gate (boy, was that turkey hard to take down), to their ambush weapons set up just inside the gate... they were ready. Those weapons included:
* A log dead-fall
* An auto-firing lance launcher
* Chuina up by the gate with an enchanted entrapment archery system ... and their surprise weapon, a huge Ork Battle Dragon (supplied by Flea Bussy), which was just amazingly awesome. The Ork avatars were largely the work of Flea as well (with a couple of exceptions). We loves ya Flea! Grendels rocks!
In short, the Ork encampment was just incredibly awesome. It was properly orkish, it was fantasy based (well, except for the Space Ork weaponry they brought in later when things went nutz) and it was extremely well done. They get the prize for sheer building and preparation genius.
THE OTHER SIDE
While the Orks had spent weeks planning, building and authenticating, the other side consisting of a small handful of Elven and the rest being dwagons, pixies and tinies... well, the situation was a bit different.
They showed up the day of the war, spent about 30 minutes rezzing numerous Elven buildings and fortifications we'd gathered over the past seven years, and threw up some signs we'd made just that morning. The Orks did not find that humorous at all, bemoaning all their hard work that was almost instantly counteracted by dwagons and pixies who realized that hey, it's all gonna be pretty much torched over the next hour anyway, so why bother?
Nevertheless, despite its last-minute nature the Elven encampment did look fine, consisting of an Elven twin-tower mansion, a Steampunk building, and an ancient Inn build from a member on the Ork side (Mean Golem) that he'd forgotten he'd even given us in the first place... and left him with the unenviable task of having to torch his own building (snicker snicker). There was also the original 600 foot tall Elf Clan Castle, all 20 stories of it in splendid hugeness, sporting slogans that were somewhat uh... Ork-bigoted. (What, Orks don't really take knitting classes? My bad!)
THE WAR BEGINS
No one is quite exactly sure what happened next, because well, it pretty much went from 0 to 120 in 1.2 seconds. From my viewpoint, Ork Chuina shot a pixie with a magical arrow that caged her in a crystal globe. Someone standing by her responded with a nuke against the Ork stone blockade (which didn't budge an inch). From that point on, it was hard to tell what was happening in all the smoke, fire, screaming, mayhem, bombs, arrows, magic spells, particles and war taunts flying between the two encampments.
THE FIRST SURPRISE ASSAULT
The first thing no one expected was a certain dwagon showing up in steroid form (namely, about 50 ft tall... almost as tall as the huge wall the Orks had built). Imagine a gigantic dwagon stomping across the countryside and up to the main gate.
Snoots tried to take that blockade down. Despite the huge size (which was considerable)... the blockade held. The Orks had made it physical so it could be knocked over with enough power... but those were big, heavy stones and they had built it right. It budged... I think 1/2 a micron, but not much more. No matter how hard the mega-dwagon pushed the wall didn't move.
THE SECOND SURPRISE ASSAULT
The Orks had built their wall well, but they'd failed to take into account two things:
1. A river ran through the East side of their encampment... and tiny critters can swim pretty well
2. Despite their huge, giant, spike-tipped walls... uh... pixies and dwagons can fly (which ability the Orks kindly referred to as "lame cheating").
But fair is fair, and it was established via sim announcement at the beginning of the game that participants could only fly if their avatar allowed flight. That meant Orks were ground-bound and pixies and dwagons... not so much. (That was until later, when the Orks brought out their hidden Space Ork equipment such as jetpacks and airplanes, but that's later on in the story).
It didn't take very long for the pixies to storm the castle as they zoomed over the walls without effort... nor for the tinies to swim in via the conveniently located river. Soon the Orks were fighting inside their walls while the outside area was still being stormed by the Elven, who didn't want to go swimming and could not fly. (Tines of course, didn't mind wet fur at all.)
Having given up on trying to knock down that [expletive withheld] stonewall gate, the mega-dwgon flew up to the top of the wall where Chuina was taking archery potshots at everyone. He was sporting a terrific enchanted bow... but it doesn't do much good to try to encase a 50 ft dwagon inside a 5 ft crystal ball. It just doesn't work.
One thing we can say for the Orks: they role play very well. Chuina, seeing Snoots stomp toward him and into him, in a very manly Ork voice shouted "Ouchie!" and dove off the wall for safer ground, after which Snoots spent the next couple of minutes proudly walking back and forth along the top of the wall to emphasize the point that a 50-ft, 30 ton dwagon was more than a match for a 7-ft Ork. No one was surprised on that point. (Score 2 for the Orks: role playing).
Meanwhile, down inside the fortress the Orks were holding their own against an onslaught of tinies and pixies. Their main defenses having proved totally useless, they fell back to standard melee weapons. Huge arrows and lances were launched, boulders were thrown, and sword and axes smashed (that lance launcher was pretty awesome). Chuina was extremely effective with his archery system... more than anyone expected. He regularly incapacitated his opponents for 60 seconds (which is how long it took the crystal cages to self-destruct), leaving them frustratedly trying to move but failing. (It was not honorable to exit the cages illegally. Fair is fair. The players admirably submitted.)
Mean Golem, Zekeen and Ratien were running around with great gusto, trying to kick and pound creatures far smaller than themselves. However, said creatures are also well known for being very fast and elusive ankle-biters. The battle was evenly matched.
THE STONE BLOCKADE GIVES WAY
About that time someone on the Elven side discovered a device known as a "Happy Cat Gun". Anyone who has ever used a Happy Cat Gun knows one thing about it: when it comes to physics, it rules the day. The gun was aimed at the stone blockade in the main doorway, the trigger was pulled, and the stones vanished in a rain of grinning cat cubes. They could have been made of butter for all that gun cared as it took out huge cubes of solid granite as if they were tissue. The Ork blockade was down, their entire fortress now open to full Elven invasion.
And invade they did. The Elven side rushed through the now wide open gate and swarmed over the Orks. At a ratio of about 7 to 20... the Orks were in trouble. They're valiant fighters, but seriously, it was as if someone had opened the insanity valve at Arkham Assylum as the remainder of tinies and Elven came pouring through the now-wide-open gates.
THE ORKS PULL THEIR SECRET WEAPON
But the Orks were not without their backup plan. Ork Bussy called a special enchantment and suddenly a gigantic battle lizard appeared in the main gate, all but blocking easy access. Standing there ready to gobble down anyone who tried to pass beneath its immense legs, it instantly changed the flow of battle. Suddenly the Elven side had to battle not only the Orks, but defeat a humongous battle lizard as well!!!
(Actually, the battle lizard just kinda stood there, but the dictates of role playing insisted we attack it... as well as the dictates of tinies battle which read something like "Da bigger it is... da funner it falls". So although the "battle lizard" was mainly a prop-- it was properly attacked with full intent as if it were an active character. Score +1 for Elf-side role playing).
The lizard was attacked with fire spells, nukes, enchanted bombs, you name it. While they were doing that, a dwagon started flying over the Ork encampment and breathing fire over any building in sight. The sight of a hundred tiny fires all over the Ork camp was very satisfying.
In the meantime however, with everyone thus distracted, the Orks took the opportunity to slip through the Elven ranks and head toward their main goal: the Elven Castles. All three of them. Before you could say, "Hey, where did the Orks go?"... the castles were in flames. Not tiny flames, humongous flames.
See, in eagerness to set the Ork camp on fire, the Elves had forgotten one primary stratagem: when it comes to fire, Orks rule. And when it comes to Orks and fire, Mean Golem rules.
Again, we have to give creds. They didn't use wimpy fire spells and particles and such. They used one of the oldest, simplest, most-effective builds on the entire grid: fuero fire. Three prims. These are easy-to-rez, impressive to see, and what with the new Linden Lab 64m prim allowance... they could be stretched to huge size (thankyewverymuch LL). Before we knew it, the entire Elven encampment was on fire. Smokey the Bear had a coronary.
CALLS FOR THE FIRE BRIGADE
Dwagons have both fire and WATER breath, so Snoots flew to the castles and started putting out fires. But fair is fair: at least 15 seconds had to be spent on each fire before it could be put out (by returning it to the owner)... and there were dozens of fires (Mean Golem... you pyromaniac!). So we called to all dwagons to come help put out fires.
That's when we learned there was the only dragon on the entire sim, and no one else had water spells.
Snoots managed to put out two castle fires and was patting himself nicely on his little scaley back... when it was suddenly realized that while he was putting out fires... Orks were just re-setting them again. It was obviously a losing battle. This left the Elves with only one choice: forget the fires and take out the Orks.
ORKS IS TOUGH!!!
That however, is easier said than done, because if there is one thing that's true about Orks: they are durn near impossible to defeat. They're big, they're strong, they have almost limitless energy (in fact, their energy increases magically the more they fight), and they actually enjoy stomping tiny creatures with big watery eyes.
For the next hour it was pretty much hand-to-hand combat (well, hand to hand, nuke-to-hand, major weapons, bullets, huge boulders, you name it). The war turned into pure carnage as 7 Orks fought off more than 20 opponents. The sides were pretty evenly matched because, well, unlike the first Ork-Elf war we had in Elf Clan, in this war we had tinies, and those tinies had guns. If there's one thing tinies know how to do, it's use extensive weaponry of mass-destruction. And toilet paper throwers.
That doesn't even bring into account the cages, the push-weapons and of course, the dreaded PIE weapons. Banana cream littered the countryside as Ork after Ork was pied repeatedly. It didn't really stop them, but it did play havok with Chuina trying to aim his bow through floating cream particles.
THE NEXT SECRET WEAPON
Just as it looked as if the battle had been fought to a stalemate, the Elven side pulled out its last secret weapon: more tinies.
See, the tinies had their own event that didn't end until 2 hours into the Ork War. After that event was over, they could not resist joining in the Ork war. So while the Orks had been already fighting for 2 hours... suddenly the Elven had a whole slew of tinies appear out of nowhere. Those tinies took one look at what was going on, and almost of one mind a single thought went through their little collective brains: "BIG BADDA BOOMS!!!"
One could almost feel sorry for the Orks as tinies poured down the hillsides, all of them armed with weapons only tinies can conceive. A scene of mere carnage suddenly turned into a landscape of awesome destructiveness. The Orks were in trouble.
THE LAST SECRET WEAPON
However, the Orks had held back their last secret weapon for just such an occasion. Realizing the tinies had started the war off with nukes... the Orks pulled out their secret stash of Space Ork weapons (which they'd procured from the year 40,000... long story that) and suddenly they had jetpacks and strafer planes at the ready.
One of the elven (Cleome Jewell) went down and stayed down, her poor, beaten body the first casualty of the war (someone actually took time to bury her... as the grave marker clearly pronounced). RaptonX rained down death from the skies as he zoomed around in his jetpack.
Then out of nowhere came the Ork Boss himself, Schlitzie Martini, in an Ork Killa Kan... a huge dreadnought of significant damage, stomping tinies right and left, bombing them and reaping destruction down upon them. One tiny driving around his Camaro (don't ask me. Tinies defy the laws of space-time)... suddenly found his car underneath the huge Killa Kan and being stomped to oblivion. Everyone could hear his tiny voice yelling at the top of his little lungs: "You jerk! I just had this waxed and detailed!!!"
THE WAR COMES TO AN END
While the tinies and Schlitzie were fresh, the rest of the Orks, well, they'd been fighting a while against overwhelming odds. Koni, the gorgeous female Ork, had stopped fighting tinies and had become a voluntary moving target while she ran around snapping photos for the archives. Chuina, Zek, Ratien and Mean were still going, but Mean Golem IMed me and said, "Dude, can we bring this to a close? We're getting tired." Mwahahhaaha.
Orks may be powerful, but tinies will overcome with sheer energy every time.
So it was requested a decision be made as to who had won the war. We looked at both encampments, the amount of damage done, who had best stuck to their roles, who had fought with the most authentic weapons, and who had best achieved their goals. It was agreed the Orks won on all counts... but it was the last one that was the real kicker. Because this war, totally lacking a goal of any kind, the goal became to wreck as much destruction as possible. When it comes to that... well, Orks had it hands down.
With just 7 Orks against more than 20 opponents, they had managed to set all the Elven buildings on fire, had held their own against their opponents, and even at the end with fresh Elven troops on the scene (in the form of tinies), the Orks still pulled one more trick out of their hats (their futuristic armada, which was totally legal considering the pixies had been blasting them with nuclear bazookas since the first round).
So yes, fair is fair and DA ORKS WINNED! Of course, we'd been expecting that from the start. Orks always win.
THE TINIES CALL FOR A REMATCH
Now mind you, just because it was judged the Orks won doesn't mean that was the final say. Some Elven had changed avatars and were now dressed as Orks, Koni and Zekeen were still running around, and Schlitzie (who got to the war fairly late) was still fresh.
The tinies, having come newly to the war, hadn't had anywhere near their fill of mayhem. So strongly disagreeing with the concept the Orks had won against the Tinies, they proceeded to prove the opposite as a hoarde of them swarmed us with brand new weapons and pretty much stomped the remaining Orks into the ground, just to make a point. The Orks came to agree that when it comes to a handful of Orks against a herd of tinies.... Orks pretty much became living, walking targets.
So the tinies proceeded to beat us soundly about the head and arms for the next 30 minutes or so as we martyred ourselves for the glory of tiny fun. I have to say, they were ready too. Between Steampunk Missiles and a sword that impressed the dickens out of me (sent me flying more than a few times), tinies blasting us from all sides-- and not to mention those who enjoyed simply ankle-biting us (ie, pushing us off a hill or platform), the Orks were pretty much wasted from that point on. We held our own, but it was a hopeless fight. To be honest, against a sufficient number of tinies with a sufficient number of insane weapons, there is no hope of success.
THE END OF ELVENMYST, SL
Still, since the main war lasted two hours and the victory declared, anything thereafter was for the sheer fun of it.
When it came down to the end of hour three, everyone had thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The war was followed by a fine last-minute fireworks show by Chuina Asturia, the tinies joining us in mourning the loss of ElvenMyst after 7 years of Elf Clan being on the Second Life grid.
There was river dancing aplenty as the event came to a close. The comments we received then (and in IMs thereafter) indicated everyone had a great time. The tinies, who rarely have a chance to attend such total mayhem, thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
One university instructor who attended as a guest-- and who had never seen such a thing before-- was thoroughly delighted and fully enjoyed herself. We received IMs from people telling us how much they enjoyed the way we decided to shut down ElvenMyst (namely, in a major no-holds-barred free-for-all that pretty much destroyed the entire sim). The Orks commented how much they enjoyed it, how much they appreciated finally being able to set everything in ElvenMyst on fire (which of course they'd been wanting to do for years). A fun time was had by all.
--o--
Addendum: Of course, Elf Clan now exists on OSgrid, where we house 100 regions on our own servers (http://Osgrid.org. Download the FirestormOS Viewer, register, log in and visit ElvenSong). We invite everyone to join us there in our expanded mega-islands kingdom. Thanks to all of you who helped make our last day on Second Life so enjoyable... and thanks to the Tinies of Raglan Shire for enthusiastically joining us in our final SL event. : )
I also wish to personally thank the WAAAGH!... our ancient-friends Ork group, who worked so hard to make the war so incredible. The years just would not have been the same without their unique take on Ork lore. You all were great.
--O--
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