Portable Corpse and the Adventures Thereof

Portable Corpse lived (for some definitions of the term) in the period shortly after the Guild Wars. A period of warring consumed by the Searing. The loss of Orr, and even beyond the end of the living Dwarves... but as to who she is.... perhaps it is best for each of you to find this for yourself.

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It was a bright day.  Sunny.  Hot.   They all were.  Deserts just naturally are that way.  It was there that Portable Corpse found herself looking at a fragile looking female monk clad in sky blue Ascolonian robes, all alone, get attacked by no fewer than four devourers.    Even at two to one, things could get dicy. Moved by the plight of a fellow human, Portable moved to action.  She whistled for her pet, Potable (don't ask) and began the long chant of  an ice magic spell that would briefly cripple two of the devourers, when she was interrupted by the monk.
"Stay back!"

At that moment the monk made a brief motion and was covered by an aura that looked set to offer some protection.  Portable halted her spell and stared as the first blow landed, harshly tossing the monk aside.  A second, longer spell followed, and the wound to the monk sealed itself.  Three more devourers then stuck the monk, and each wound, while ghastly, was sealed even as it was formed.  The the monk then called out to her god, asking for a little wrath.  

By this time Portable had lost most of her concern and sat down at a safe distance, watching the unprecedented contest.  Potable leaned heavily against his master, staring with concern at Portable and making a weak cry of protest.  'Here is someone who could use help, and you see fit to sit on your duff?'

The monk started forward, ignoring her attackers except to pause long enough to invoke the odd enchantment.   Then the monk began scraping at the dirt with her staff.   One more refreshed enchantment and a final exaggerated stab at the dirt caused two more devourers climbed out of the dirt and join the attack.

Six to one.  The six were strong, healthy, and each looked ready to slay the monk in a single blow.  The one looked fragile, weak, and barely able to stand.   The six devourers surrounded her and attacked together.  All struck true, but the protections of the monk held.  She should have died right there.  She *was* close to death, Portable could tell. Potable started forward without prompting to help, but as each claw, each pincer was pulled free of the impaled monk's body, the wounds healed. While this left the armor punctured and torn, the flesh it had failed to defend was left perfectly healthy.

"Balthazar, bring down your might on those that stand bravely before me.  In your judgement of them, act as my shield."
From here on, for each blow that struck the monk, while it still wounded the monk gravely, the devourer would be cast back and burned by the fire of Balthazar.   As before, the wounds healed instantly. Very quickly the battle wound down to a halt, with six seared hulks of devourer and one fragile, bloodied, battle weary monk.

Portable stood and approached the monk, giving the corpses a cautious look. Anyone who can stand up alone against six devourers, and slay them all without dying was to be respected. One who would do it, willingly, was to be feared. This monk made the most frail of elementalists seem as hearty giants. Fearing something so weak might seem silly on the face of it, but results were clear, as was the conclusion: Do not anger the fifty-five pound weakling midget monk.

The monk began looking over the burned husks, kicking at shattered chitin, finding a few fragments that might be worth something to those who trade in them. Among the burned remnants, she pried free a couple bleached carapace sections, falling backwards in the process as the last one came free with an unexpected snap.

"You ok?" asked Portable as she helped the monk up.

"Yep Right as rain," replied the monk, who then paused to use a prayer to mend a deep bruise already forming on her leg from the fall.

"You did quite well with those devourers." commented Portable.

The monk nodded as she cleaned detritus from the carapaces.

One might think a monk this frail is perhaps best kept at home in a temple or abbey. "What brings you out this way?"

"Farming," was the simple reply.

Farming? In a desert? What could one possibly grow in a desert? "I know of very little that will grow in the desert, and very much that will not grow. What do you grow out here?"

The monk grinned at Portable. "I farm, by way of collecting carapaces. I then trade them to others, who barter with merchants for armor and weapons."

What an odd way to think of farming. "So you farm your crop of carapaces? You fight like this often?"

"Yep." The monk was now polishing one of the carapace fragments, a simple, frightening look on her harmless face.

That anyone so frail chose to make a living.... Unthinkable.

Turning a bit to continue on her journey, Portable called to her pet, "Come on Potable, there are some burning islands across the sea to the west. I hear they have seas of lava. Fire breathing monsters. Enormous creatures made of lava. Molten rock falling from the sky at random intervals." Portable cast a glance over her shoulder at the monk farmer. "Surely, a far safer place than this desert."

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About Portable Corpse:
Portable is a elementalist in the Guild Wars 1 era, dead, but still quite portable. She travels with her trusty pet Potable (don't ask).

About the monk: Portable Corpse encountered a monk during her journey through the crystal desert. This monk was a 55 farmer. A monk that only had 55 hp and could often fell medium sized groups of critters, when each of them might kill it with a single blow. The monk limited any single damage event to 10% of her max health, and set about regenning 10-20 hp/second. In short, making the monk invulnerble, so long as its hp remained low, and it took on average not more than about 5 blows a second (there are other heal sources working for the monk, above and beyond regen. An average critter can land 1 blow every 1.2 seconds or so).

//Yamagawa

Wanting to go to burning islands, and getting there, are two different things. For a start, no ships sail to uninhabited islands of fire. Not that there weren't other methods to get there, but... Sure, Portable Corpse might have managed to walk across the sea floor, if she didn't get lost, but her pet, Potable (don't ask) would have no longer been potable at the far end of such a journey. So after getting blocked to the west, Portable turned south. Eventually, she passed through Elona's reach and managed to cross the desolation. The sulfurous wastes did not bother her much. Oh, they stank, but that which kills you can at worst annoy a Corpse.

It was just short of a gateway that she bumped into Turin.

Tall. With a chest ticker than A barrel. Intimidating, too. He might have been terrifying, if not for the detail that he was so transparent a man. See-thru even. A ghost, to be more precise. Mind, most ghosts in the desert don't run around wearing name tags, and Turin is no exception. ...

To be continued (alas, sleep calls).