The "Dumb Deaths" task was started over a week ago, and your mission was to
mail in stories of the dumbest BatMUD deaths.  The criterion I used to
judge these stories were the absurdity and originality of the death, the
overall hilarity of the situation, and the general storytelling.

Oh yes, stories submitted by Finnish players received special consideration
because of the "Finnish Superiority Mandate" imposed by the archwizards.
(That was a joke, for those paranoid players with conspiracy theories.)

Well, sordid stories of sorrow spilled forth from hapless adventurers of
all levels of experience.  After laughing at the idiocy of all these
confessions and pruning the stupidest, I'm ready to reveal the names of the
most clueless ghosts to undertake this task:

Honorable mentions go to Darkblood, Darshan, Dorien, Martow, Mchill,
Mordekai, Ricochet, and Rowgrem for their tales of ill-luck.

The runner-ups are Backlash, Continuity, and Ran.

And the biggest luzer is...  Kannon!  A clueless newbie without peer!

I will post an edited transcripts of these stories to the "tales"
newsgroup.  To read all the stories I received (and unedited), visit the
download section of my web page.

Thanks to all who participated!



----begin here----



From: Kannon
Subject: dumb deaths
Date:    Wed Aug 13 06:30:47 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc: help

as a level 5 fighter i was wandering around the city looking for some kills to
put under my belt. when a cleric clad in white wandered into the room. i
figured, heh a cleric cant beat a fighter.  but after one hit, i found myself
in hell. while reading the help file there some nice guy name "athalon" gave
me a tell and offered to ress me. well of course i accepted and once it was
cast the next thing i knew i was killed again by athalon.  it was'nt till in
hell for the second and bitching about being killed by a cleric then pkilled
by a player named athalon, that some one told me they were the same npc.

duke had just taken over the ranger guild and re-coded some stuff. he put in a
guild master named sable. well i was standing there looking at him, admireing
his weapons for the first time. i thought to myself, hrmm i wonder how i would
match up against him. i 'll use consider to gage my skills against the leader
of the guild. we'll long story short instead of typing use consider at sable,
for some reason i typed use bladed fury at sable... probably because i had
been fighting all day. well no sooner did i hit enter, he killed me with one
hit (possible half a hit). but the real problem was i had 100k experience on
and no way to get in the guild to train so i think he killed me five times
before i gave up and quit for the day.

kannon the stoopid-noobie



From: Continuity
Subject: dumb deaths
Date:    Wed Aug 13 05:45:41 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

cyran managed to unchest some golden arrow wands while he was carrying some
himself, causing the explosion to aggro one of his figs, that immediately
casted destructive sacrifice on him with half his eq on



From: Ran
Subject: dumb deaths
Date:    Wed Aug 13 21:17:15 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

Read my book 'sports' for background.  It is a 'game' where you get ~10
highbies mad at you (numerous ways of doing that) and then try to survive as
long as you can.  I had 2 parties simulataneously trying to summon and kill
me, so one party would summon me, try to kill me, and about 5 seconds later
another party would summon and try to kill me.  The people in party 1 thought
that one of the people in part 2 was my friend and summoning me to save me,
rather than that he and his party wanted me dead also.  (I told them 'hehe,
every time you summon me, ... summon's me right back, you'll never get me' )
so they summon him once and kill him.  After about 28 minutes of squabbling,
they finally kill me by working alone.  But I survive 28 minutes, a new
record.

As follow-up on this, I make a list of everyone who try to kill me that one
time.  When some guy (Soth, I think) posted to news that he was sorry for what
he did and wannted to be forgiven and have people stop killing him, I sent
mail to him saying me and all my friends (I listed all the people who had
tried to kill me) would never let him go or forgive him, and 'we' would hunt
him down forever here.  I never confirmed it, but I heard thatt he killed 2 or
3 of my enemies before figuring out what was really going on.  This message is
from Ran.



From: Backlash
Subject: dumb deaths
Date:    Mon Aug 18 05:13:38 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

This isnt logged,
but i was partying with Lyrik and evil priest,
and he was using the dark meditation spell where his
body is left behind, i tinned it and killed him.
          Backlash
From: Darkblood
Subject: dumb death
Date:    Wed Aug 13 06:43:12 1997
To: shadowjack dumb death
Cc: shadowjack

Here's a quick tale, harkening back to the days when we got xp back from a
reinc at a 20x rate, and it was not safe. I decided that I wanted to get lq
70, the silver battlesuit, even though lq's didn't save over reincs.  It
seemed like a good idea at the time.  Unfortunately, I had been level 72
previously, and had more than enough xp to go a good bit higher.  I recruited
Raunk and Beccy, and we got Raztax all the way to vbs (before nd) when the
skeletons finally managed to hold us back and make a partywipe out of us.  I
died with 72M on, since I had been earning at a 20x rate and couldnt spend it.
 Since resses took half off, and that was the only option, I basically lost
36M, or about 10x what I ended up saving by getting the lq.



From: Rowgrem
Subject: dumb death
Date:    Wed Aug 13 10:32:25 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

Hi,  I will recount a stupid death of my own.
I had just gone to the hospital to donate blood.  I was at 10 or so hit points
when I left BatCity by the east gate.  I needed to regen and was heading back
to the castle where I stay.  On the bridge outside of the east gate, I ran
into an aggressive cat who attacked.  It hit me and caused me to "wimpy flee"
north into the moat where I subsequently went unconscious and drowned.  :-(
That's it.  A pretty dumb death.
Cool task by the way.  Thanks.
--Rowgrem the Giant who was slain by a cat   :-P



From: Dorien
Subject: Stupid Death
Date:    Wed Aug 13 13:26:51 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

This was amusing.. :)  I ressed someone, healed him up and removed his
scar, then he promptly forgot that he wasn't standing in front of his own
castle 'n went in and up into my fig room and died again immediatly.
Whoops!  :)

  Dorien



From: Martow
Subject: dumb dead
Date:    Wed Aug 13 18:22:11 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

i was like soloing in plura's castle and i had this shyness bane..
there was some other people in front of blur's room and i was there regening.
then i got a shy and wimpied to blur's room.. and died of course.. damn. :)



From: Darshan
Subject: stupid death
Date:    Thu Aug 14 17:45:37 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

Two months or so back, I was in a party in Mythical Valley. At one point,
we were regenning just at the scenic, and, noticing that the other of my
tanks had full hp, I decided to test my blasts spells at him to see what
kind of damage I make. So, I shot him with one acid blast, an electrocution,
and, with my whole party in the same room, an ACID STORM, which nuked the
backrows.



From: Mordekai
Subject: dumb death
Date:    Fri Aug 15 04:44:23 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

looking for that stupid roving healer's guild, I followed the directions I
saw. These directions were written like "2 s, 60 e," etc.  So I typed "20 e"
at the appropriate place.  I was leading a party. unfortunately, the guild was
across water.  Lots of water. Rooks drowned.  We went several spaces past his
body. Then I drowned.  As I was leading, the rest of the party stopped.  I was
revived, but Rooks was a gonner.  Not because he was stupid, but I was. On
another occasion, I did the same thing.  This time I had water walking on.
The spell ended half-way through the trip. I was drowning, so I quit.  When I
re-logged, I was still drowning, only in the church.  No one could save me
because: they couldn't summon me from there; they couldn't cast spells in
there they couldn't use skills in there.  So I drowned on dry land.



From: Mchill
Subject: Dumb deaths
Date:    Tue Aug 19 14:39:38 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

I'd like to tell you what happened couple of days ago..

it was a normal day, school was over and i thought to play some BAT, so i
logged on and went to mines. There i killed some baby pudds and orcs, but
after that i had a thought, i'll try to kill those damn skeleton dwarves..
well, i went there and started fighting, and after a while i was down to under
100 hps, but the dwarves were both in very bad condition, so i decided to hang
it out.

That turned out to be a bad decision, because in the next round, i was lying
on the ground and bleeding. After that i died, and because nobody was
immediately willing to ress me, i prayed and ran back to mines. And there they
were, both alive and not so well. Immediately, when i went to k, they attacked
and stunned me. I just got out before dying, but my endurance was so low that
i got damage from moving, and there i was, lying on the ground and bleeding
again. Well, i died and after that, my friend immediately raised me, and again
i was running to mines, and found those dwarves, but this time i got them
both.

I was exhilarated, i took their things and started going back to city..

"You are so exhausted, that you take damage from moving."

DAMN!

/------\

|mchill|

\------/



From: Ricochet
Subject: dumb deaths
Date:    Wed Aug 20 02:02:47 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

ok, this happened a long time ago, so I don't remember it exactly
Got a 5 player party going, thought we were pretty good,
so we decided to take on the pit fiend in Zebell's area
This was the old party system, which had a few bugs, but
was otherwise ok.
I can't remember who all was in the party, but there was Karlman,
me, a tank, a newbie named Saltwater, and another mage.
Lava storm was the attack spell of choice, so I dutifully starting
casting. Once the pit fiend started attacking, the tank was
killed pretty quick, and the party disbanded- one of the bugs
or features of the time. My lava storm was still going off, and hit the
party before they ran out. The other mage was killed, Saltwater
was knocked unconscious, and Karlman picked him up and ran out.
The pit fiend started beating on me, and I wimpyed out to where
Karlman was, who was aggressive to me, so I wimpyed back into
the pit fiend, who killed me. Karlman ran with Saltwater's body to ocp
to try to get a death's door. I walked to ocp to try and get a res.
I got there just as Saltwater died from being unconscious too long,
and saw myself shout his name as he died.
I guess we weren't that good after all.
From: Kalay
Subject: story
Date:    Wed Aug 13 06:37:36 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc: kalay

One time I tried to kill the old librarian in Shadowkeep.  (actually a lot of
people have tried this) Unfortunately he has this thing where he writes you
out of history.  Try it yourself.  ;)  I know it's not a very good story but
all the rest of the times I've died it's been boring.

Later...

Kalay Alkayis



From: Continuity
Subject: stupid deaths II
Date:    Wed Aug 13 06:59:58 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

we had been at volcano area with hung doing exp, I typoed 'yes at vulcan and
we changed area and did some more exp, after a while I noticed this scroll in

read scroll
As you begin to read the scroll you feel uneasy.
You feel as if your body is getting very warm.
You are starting to feel very hot.
Your skin feels as if it is on fire.
You are on fire.
You are about to die.
That really HURT!
Your skin is CHARRED severly!
You are no longer stunned.

You die.
Your superb dexterity avoids a nasty ambush.
You regenerate astonishingly fast. You avoid death.

I was a vampire tank there :) afterwards I found out that if you type 'yes at
vulcan you accept the lq, it even warns about not reading the scroll.



From: arw4
Subject:  dumbest deaths
Date:    Wed Aug 13 11:15:22 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:


        I was fightin in smurf village, against a 1k mob.  I took a pair
of crits, and decided to flee.  After healing, I tried again, and took
another pair of crits, and fled again.  I've spent a half hour on this
damned smurf, who has me pinned into a corner, so I try again.  As soon as
I step out, the smurf gets a string of crits, and crits me a total of 6
times in a row.
        If that wasn't bad enough, noone was doing resses.  So I prayed.
This cost me 15k, and a level, so I was now out 43k xp.  I went back and
killed the damned smurf, only to find out that it was worth less than a k.
So, I spen almost an hour fightin a mob just to get -42kxp for it...
Julian the Giant

        "Tis Death to Mock a Poet, to Love a Poet, to be a Poet"
                                -Hunter of light
                                -Risa Aratyr



From: Miigor
Subject: DUMB DEATHS
Date:    Thu Aug 14 07:57:49 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

So this is one of my nice death(s).
It started when i MIPped 300k money and went to navigator.
Navigator was agro to me cause i tried to use off. skills vs
player in that room. Heh. And i died on navigator.
And got ressed and walked to newbie sign . And i got killed by
Oracle who got racism or other autoattack bane. and he attacked me.
And then i prayed cause i got angry. And my exps went there. =)
      Miigor "Stupido" Bombadildo



From: Zagor
Subject: resending dumb death
Date:    Fri Aug 15 00:57:24 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc: shadowjack

Here it is again:

Once I was in the newbie park, and the wardon kicked me out.  I  landed in a
swamp with 2 hit points.  I tryed to get back to the city by walking west, but
i landed in a river.  I drouned!  What a way to die!



From: Ramjett
Subject: Stupid Death's
Date:    Sat Aug 16 05:13:21 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

ok i wuz waiting for druid to come on and when one finally did he told me to
die and accept so i killed the bat grocer (knowing i never use him) but an
hour or so later i wuz in a party and we were killing and totally forgot about
grocer and we went by him he killed me i got ressed and party told me they
were at gen store so i went there and died again.
/
Damn it.



From: Darkblood
Subject: dumb death story
Date:    Sat Aug 16 11:45:20 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

I can sum it up in one command.  20 walk west.



From: Darquan
Subject: For a few tasks points only
Date:    Sat Aug 16 19:59:59 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

My trip to Slimy Cavern

Oh shit...look at this place..disgusting...there's slime everywhere...and hey
what a hell have we over there...two moving pieces of living shit..and they
seem to be playing with some robe that looks exactly like mine..ehm
slimes...hope ya haven't done anything nasty for it's owner...and just like if
they had heard me they replied with just the same kind of belching that one
does after eating a really delicious meal... Yach..don't ya know that I have
to kill ya for doing that...but hmm..it would  be really great to know how bad
ya might be...Hey ya slimy darlings there..hope ya had a delicious meal
there...I said trying to start a friendly conversation... but I was just
wondering how much is your exp worth?? But they just rudely stayd silent. Well
well...I guess I have to deal with a little uncertainity then...but
hey...since when have any slimes had a chance against me? SINCE NEVER!!!
Answered a great chorus inside my head...yep that did prove my decision to
attack right.. ( well in fact there was also that tiny bitter sweet voice too
in my head who always claimed to be my wits who answered..."since the
beginning of the whole fucking time" but hey...since when I have listened to
that idiot?) Chain will do ya good, I whispered when I started chanting.. And
in no time at all my beautiful lightning hit the slimes.. Oh yeah..this is why
I'm a mage..we do a rocking damage.. But then I noticed that something was
terribly wrong...those slimes didn't look dead...in fact they didn't look dead
at all...just very angry...hungry and fast. DON*T YA DARE TO BITE ME!!! I
screamed when I realized that I couldn't escape fast enough... and then..one
look at those big, open and hungry mouths told me it was just the right time
to faint...

Later...I woke up in a very hot and familiar looking place with a terrible
headache.. and there was that dark figure standing in front of me...Oh shit..I
must be having one of those dreams again, I thought aloud..'cos I never suck
this much in reality ya know.. Then the figure (who I now recognised as the
Death Himself) looked and nodded at me...yeah..sure ya don't Dar'



From: Dogi
Subject: dumb deaths
Date:    Sun Aug 17 14:27:54 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

Dumbest deaths i ever was involved to (written by dogi)

It was about more then 8 months ago, i think.
I was then playing my previously character domagojnew, which i suicided after.
Domagojnew was newbie, about 20th level merchant character wanted to help his
rl friend dodokov to get started.
So, Domagojnew tells dodokov 'Let's party, ill show you how to play this.'.
They partied and Domagojnew leaded to first bridge S from SC.
They were playing from same terminal room, so chating by voice and looked to
each other terminal too.
I told Dodokov, 'Let's split, water is not dangerous for me, but i nead to pay
troll for passing the bridge, and you dont nead, youre freebie :)'
Dokov typed 'pf <enter>', at my suggestion , and i saw it so went to the
river.:))
BUT! My command found faster way through net and batmud first recieved it,
there was some lag too and dodokov died.
Well, i apologized to him and told to angry dodokov, 'Go to sc i will not make
you diving again please.'
He told me that he dont know how to find that sc and i told to him ill do it
for him. And he told me 'Ok lead me to sc.'
And leaded him to sc, but accidentally told him wrong and he missed the way
to sc and founds himself in the river again. He died again. Sniff.
Dodokov told me 'Please, leave me, stop helping me, i can do it on my own.`.
But my pitfull passion to help my smaller friend warmed inside me , and i
convincied him to try again partying with me. :)
I told him directions to sc , pick up him , and went to the same place same
bridge.
That time i was really carefull... :)))
I realized splitting was not god idea, told dodokov 'Whatever happens, dont
stop following me!!'
Heh, but i still didnt wanted pay that gold to troll. :)
And i did one peer to se and saw message,'The water is still up to your neck
here.' or something like that. So i thought that there is no chance for
someone to die there, and i went se.
BUT!!! Dodokov was lvl1 Drow, so he was smaller then me, and i forgot that...
Dodokov shouts (in rl) HELP! HELP!
Domagojnew [newbie] Help, dodokov is dying, summon for him.
But he died.
Finally, he told me 'Sorry man, i think ill go alone, youre to GOOD player to
help me.' :))

From dogi.
p.s    Sorry about errors and sending it out from mud, but i missed escape
characher from mail office and quitted whole story i wrote, but i was
succesfull in capturing it from screen.
p.s.s. Well, it seems this mudmail works better then my own :)).



From: Ramjett
Subject: Stupid deaths
Date:    Mon Aug 18 04:14:26 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

I got pkilled 2 times for killing bambi by continuity & friends.



From: Squire
Subject: dumb deaths
Date:    Mon Aug 18 16:53:31 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

Hi. I'd like to send you 2 dumb deaths I was involved in. 1) Go to central
square to kill some pigeons. Try to cast a magic missile on a pigeon, fumble
the spell, and cast it on Ramon(the man who is clad in black). You get an
almost instant death. Second dumb death. Try to go somewhere, decide that you
do not need a road, and go straight to the forest. After walking for a long
time you get exhausted. I kept walking. So I got down to 5hp's, at which point
I stopped. I looked on the map, and saw that my destination was only 3 steps
from me. So I took 2 steps towards my goal, and then lapsed into unconciusness,
 and died from exhaustion. Both deaths actually happened, but I don't have
logs.    Squire, needs task points.



From: Phalcon
Subject: Dumb Death Task
Date:    Tue Aug 19 06:04:50 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

As I said before I had around 40-50k on and was quite upset because some small
creature killed me.  And I got dethwishh to gimme a NEW body.. So I didn't
lose much exp.. but she said don't go n in my castle.  I wasn't paying much
attention and walked n... "David Letterman" rocked my ass thus I died again.
:(



From: Aggressio
Subject: dumbdeaths
Date:    Tue Aug 19 06:16:46 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

i tried to kill Durand :) that was dumb..died m a n y times :) you can ask
durand for more info :)



From: Dryad
Subject: dumb deaths
Date:    Wed Aug 20 01:53:38 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

 I suck at telling stories, but here's what happened:

Coren and I have been good friends since way before he was a wiz, and we used
to party together a lot.  I missed partying with him once he wizzed, so I
decided one day to summon him to our party.  Little did I know that wizzes
have avatars!  (yeah, yeah, REAL stupid newbie).  SO I summon him.  And not
only do I die a dumb death, but so does everyone else in my party -- 6 of us
total, if I remember correctly.  It's probably been 2 years, but I still
periodically summon Coren.  Ain't nothing like a wiz's avatar for a quick,
dumb death.  :)

- D



From: Phantros
Subject: dumbest ever deaths to soth
Date:    Wed Aug 20 01:58:56 1997
To: shadowjack
Cc:

I have a partial log I can provide...here I'm paraphrasing:
A 9-man stands at Soth, the day that eq monsters were updated recently.
Unfortunately, both mage/conjurers in the party have gone linkdead.
Raunk [party]: Hmm we really need conjus for this
Raunk [party]: unless we go right NOW
Raunk leaves south.
Soth shouts blah blah...all tanks are slain almost instantly.
Eventually we find some new conjurers.  Prots are applied.  Unfortunately,
Soth hits so hard that one of the next times "Raunk leaves south.", the
rest of the party doesn't follow as well because Soth killed him in 1 hit
which immediately transferred leadership to Tarkus before party follow
could even kick in.
Phantros