Knights, Orcs, Werewolves, Rufus And Me

I was about to log off earlier, after a quick zoom around to plant some allotments, when I ended up in my house. I figured that, since I was there, I'd check to see if a star was close to crashing. I have a top level telescope up in my study, so it's accurate to within two minutes. It informed me that there was a star heading to the ground within the next 2 to 4 minutes. I gasped and ran to grab my pickaxe. Then the second part of the message made it through my post-Glastonbury haddled brain. It was falling into the Wilderness.

Right.

Ok.

... gulp?

However, two weeks ago, I followed a penguin into the Wilderness and ended up staying there for two hours, blessing graves and trapping the thing. Any revs were piled upon and the whole thing wasn't a bit scary. I figured that if I could do that and if I could venture up there for treasure trails, then I could follow a star too. After all, I'm a big girl now.

I stripped down to default clothing, stuck on a Forinthy Bracelet, shoved a Lletya crystal into my pocket, put on a games necklace, snatched up my pickaxe and set off running for the Wilderness. I also had the Runescape Wiki open, with all of the Wilderness potential sites for stars. There are billions of them. Every mine in the Wilderness is a possible site and you'd be amazed to discover how many mines are up there. I started with the nearest, not far above Edgeville, then hurried west to another one there. With no joy, I used the games necklace to zap myself to the banker in Bounty Hunter. There a gang of PKers made me momentarily worry that I was in one of those worlds, but they were heading into Bounty Hunter itself. All good. But my next dash north took me out of teleport range of anywhere. I was on my own.

I ran to the hobgoblin mine. No star. Then legged it north of the lava maze. I remembered this from that Penguin Time. In particular, I remembered all of the revs that we piled, but none were here now. All that was there were deadly red spiders crawling up my legs, but I batted them down and searched in vain for the star. There was none. By now, I was running deeper and deeper into the Wild, crossing through the gate and screaming, 'Good doggies!' to the hellhounds, in the hope that they didn't eat me. Just west of the mage arena, I found the crashed star. I was the first one there. Woot!

However, I wasn't alone long. I'd got perhaps two good whacks in, when a revenant hobgoblin decided to join me. I hit it back with my pickaxe and was doing fairly well for someone without armour, when the nasty thing poisoned me. No-one told me to take anti-poison with me! I raced towards the mage arena and shook the revenant off, but I had no knife. I loitered at the webs, trying to hack them into pieces with my pickaxe, but they were having none of it. It occurred to me that I hadn't flashed with poison for a while, so I stupidly believed it was wearing off. I was nearly back at the star when I took another hit. I was down to 29 hp and starting to get more than a little perturbed. That's when I noticed another player at the star.

"Help!" I screamed, racing as fast as my little pixel legs could carry me.

Rufus818 immediately stopped mining and turned to see how he could be of assistance. He didn't have a knife, but he did have some anti-poison, which he quickly traded me. Heart thundering, I took a sip, handed it back and began mining beside him. This, of course, was only the beginning of the adventure.

It didn't take long before Rufus and I were attacked again. This time it was an orc, quickly followed by a knight. I ran as fast as I could back to the bank, but couldn't see Rufus behind me. I ventured out again, but he was coming. More revenants were coming with him! Rufus dived into the passageway, slashing the webs, which allowed me to run through after him. I ran for the lever and tumbled through into the bank, informing all and sundry not to go out there. (Though it turned out that there was only one actual player. The rest were NPCs, who weren't going out anyway.) Rufus hadn't followed me in! In fear that he was teleblocked and injured on the doorstep, I grabbed anti-poison and several sharks, plus a knife and hurried out again.

Rufus818 was fighting an orc. It was right there by the lever. No less than three knights had the ruined house surrounded and there was a level 63 player dying right in front of my eyes. I accidentally clicked on the lever to return to the bank, but soon came back out again. I picked up and buried the player's bones, while watching a second orc come to watch the fray. I couldn't help Rufus, as it was a single combat area, but he was holding his own very well without my intervention. "Don't you just love a parade?" He smirked, as his sword sliced through the orc again.

I dropped food to help him, but it wasn't needful. He killed that orc and bade me pick up my sharks. We reconvened in the bank, then decided to go back to our star regardless. We waited around a minute, then stepped out. The three knights were still there, though the second orc had gone. Rufus said that he was going to run around the mage arena to shake them off and so he did. I went the other way, mostly because I hadn't clue what I was doing and therefore went the wrong way.

The chase was on. I met Rufus again with both of us trailing knights. We were reunited, breathlessly pressed up against the wall of the pirates' house, while one of the knights glared at us from the other side. "South." Rufus suggested and we both took off. The second knight was soon on us, so south turned into west, until we were separated. I was dodging icefiends, while Rufus had ended up in the agility course. A revenant goblin hovered impotently around him. Each time either of us poked our heads out, the revenant knight took a potshot. We met over the fence for a strategy meeting, but there wasn't much to say. "Persistent, aren't they?" Rufus laughed, while I shared my observation that they could be trapped.

Finally, the knights went away. We crept back, unmolested, towards our star, then set about mining it. Randomly giggling at the wild goosechase that we'd been on since we were last here. Then a revenant werewolf turned up. Rufus paused to kill it, while I reached my 200 stardust. Yay! Next to arrive was an orc, which set its sights on me. I ran away, making it easily to the bank, where I collected the salve amulet that Rufus had recommended before. I came back out, but the orc was waiting. I ran around the mage arena, but it was merely waiting for me where I'd left it. I tried hitting it, but it hit me harder. I ran back to the bank, restocked my food, then ran out. I carefully trapped it in the building, next to the lever (there was no-one inside to hate me...), then sauntered smugly back to Rufus.

We mined and mined and mined, until eventually the teletubby appeared to give us presents. 50k in cash, loads of gold ore, 52 astral runes, all good stuff. I commented, "All we have to do now is survive long enough to bank it."

Rufus laughed, "Let's do it." He ran and I ran, straight into another melee of knights and orcs. We kept on running, slashing webs and yanking at levers, until we both stood there safely in the bank. Such fun. Almost makes me want to do it again.