Monday night was interesting to say the least. I had been trying to convince my brother to bring his character west to the continent of Antonica (even to the west coast of Antonica), along with trying to convince Charcon to come west as well (he's currently hunting on the east coast of Antonica and doesn't like Oasis or N Ro much). So I just had conviced Qpdaj (my brother's character) to come (and he was bringing a friend or two) west, it was just a matter of how to get there and where to meet. Initially I was going to let him come and meet me in the Karanas because I still had a lot of business to attend to on the west coast of Antonica, but after chatting back and forth I had decided that I would travel to Rivervale (just east of the mountains in the center of Antonica) to meet him halfway and escort him back to the west coast. I figured if I got to Rivervale (which I've always wanted to visit) I would be close enough to go to Freeport if I was ahead of schedule.

I made it as far as N Karana, he never made it to Freeport. In the process of getting from Faydwer to Antonica, you have to take a boat that leaves from the docks on the northwest corner of the Butcherblock Mountains. Since Qpdaj and Felweniel were travelling together I figured they'd be okay, so I didn't bombard them with advice (nor did they ask) figuring they'd find their way (I had told them which zones they needed to cross). So I'm on my long run through W Karana when I get a tell from Qpdaj asking how to get back on the boat (he fell off). Now it's difficult to get back on the big boat if you fall off (in fact, I've never done it and don't know how you would do it), and you can't leave the zone without being on the boat, so he needed to swim for the island in the Ocean of Tears with a dock (there are two). At least, I thought he was in the Ocean of Tears (and so did he but since he has his anonymous flag turned on, I can't see what zone he's in when I do a '/who qpdaj all' command)...

So I'm getting locations from him, looking at the EQ map of Ocean of Tears and telling him to swim this way, that way, trying to figure out how he got where he was when he fell off (such an odd coordinate, not near the boat routes shown on the map). I thought we were doing okay when he hadn't gotten eaten by sharks after 30 minutes (and he seemed to be making progress), but then he ran into a pack of bandits on some boats and got killed. (Corpse recovery in the middle of an ocean is bad news if you don't have a location coordinate.) Fortunately, we had a location (he has a hot key setup that when he yells, it spits out a '/loc' command too) of his corpse so it would be fairly easy to find. I'm thinking, okay, this just went from bad (falling off of the boat) to worse (corpse recovery in a semi-dangerous zone in the middle of an ocean with no landmarks).

Fortunately, I had just reached N Karana where a Druid Ring is (a means by which druids can teleport their groups between Druid Rings) and arranged for a teleport to the West Commonlands (about 4 zones closer to Freeport than where I was) for 10pp. I made the trip, got a Spirit of the Wolf laid on me and ran through West Commandlands, East Commandlands, Freeport and just caught the boat leaving for Butcherblock with 10 seconds to spare (I didn't even have time to bind in Freeport, but I did bind in West Commonlands). In fact, if you ever want to be social, go hang around the druid ring in W Commandlands, there must have been 20-40 players sitting around auctioning, arranging transport.

Qpdaj and Felweniel were waiting on the dock when the boat arrived in Butcherblock and we stayed on for the return trip to Freeport via the Ocean of Tears (where we could get off at the island and use one of the little boats). It still didn't dawn on anyone that they had taken a different boat the first trip (Felweniel had just gated back home to Greater Faydark instead of trying to figure out how to get home). So we got out to the Ocean of Tears, got off at the first island, I made sure everyone had food and water, summoned a pet, buffed myself up for potential battle and we boarded a small boat to take us out to the coordinate where Qpdaj's corpse lay.

The trip was uneventful (thank goodness), but when we got to the spot and Qpdaj attempted to use his '/corpse' command he got the dreaded 'you have no corpses in this zone'. Which means either the server ate the corpse (unlikely) or he died in a different zone (where?). We somberly took the little boat back to the island with the dock and talked with some of the higher level players in the zone to find out what we should do next. It was quickly decided that he needed to petition a GM to give him a location of his corpse or assistance in retrieving it.

The GMs were pretty quick and we found out that his corpse was in Timorous Deep (a different ocean) and looking at the map things suddenly made a lot more sense coordinate wise (he had stumbled across the ship graveyard with bandits in the western part of the ocean). The GMs agreed to move his corpse to a 'safe spot' but wouldn't tell us where that spot was. So now we have to figure out how to retrieve his corpse.

1) Get a high level claric to 'Revive' Qpdaj. This is the best option, could cost us nothing, but has to be done within 3 game hours (and we've used up two in the Ocean of Tears attempt). The disadvantage is that Qpdaj will still need to travel back from whereever his corpse is (you revive standing where your corpse is located, hopefully someplace safe). This isn't a big deal as I can travel to Timorous Deep and escort him back to Faydwer. The good thing is that he camped in Ocean of Tears which is full of high level players so it will be easiest to find a cleric there.

2) Use a level 4+ bard or a level 1+ necromancer has a living compass to help us triangulate and locate his corpse in Timorous Deep (which is a huge zone). Time consuming, possibly difficult if his corpse is in a dangerous area, but I should be able to find a bard to help me do this. I have my pet and other skills at my disposal which makes this achievable.

3) Buy a coffin and find an upper level necromancer or shadow knight to do a summon corpse. Unfortunately, this is expensive (100-200pp) because of the coffin (which if their spell fails, we'd have to go buy another) that gets used up by the spell. Advantage is that we can pick the place where he gets summoned to.

We'll see what happens, it's a great mini-quest and we're learning all sorts of new things about how EQ works. I'll likely advance scout into Timorous Deep early to try and narrow down where his corpse is (what part of the zone).

Vorish of Morell-Thule, High Elf Mage lvl 17