Day 4 the heat continues

June 26, 2026

another day of being paralyzed by the heat, after failing to do much of anything at work i spent the entire day watching youtube videos and grinding slayer in osrs

this means i havent made any improvements to the blog or preped the dnd campagin im running sunday, but it dose give me the oppertunity to talk about a game i have no right to love as much as i do

I first encountered runescape in 2005 at primary school, i cant remember who descovered it but soon everyone was on it, begging parents for membership and exploring gilenor, i still recall my old account xDemonSkullx named after a specal move from some bad ps2 ARPG whos title escapes me

I recall training magic in the mages tower, starting plague city, dressing up as a HAM member and recruting prople in f2p to go kill demons in the wildi and messing up because the place i wanted to go was members only, thinking slayer was the coolest most hard core skill

another kid in my class promised me armour trimming if i lent him my login, but he changed my accounts password and never gave it back, now that character is lost to time, maybe he is still out there, burried deep in the recesses of RS3

I would return to title multiple times over the years, but never for long. a couple years back i got into settled and j1mmys series on osrs and decided to do every F2P quest, a goal i had as a child. then with the relese of sailing i decided to go for the quest cape, and i wanted to do it as an iron man to prove i did it all myself

my goal at first was to be unguided but that rule slowly became a sugestion, I decided on a whim to play an Ultimate Ironman, the same experience with no bank allowed, I didnt intend on staying that way, but i have, its been a lot of fun, but why?

in the past i have stated that i hate grind, i hate mmo's, i cant get into the detached nature of overhead games and i hate combat that boils down to who has the bigger number... if you know runescape, you know its sunonimous with all these things, but i love it

the grind is meditative, the community is welcoming, the combat has supprising neuance, its just specal in a way i find hard to describe, but i think the point i skipped out on in this paragraph is the answer.

let me tell you a story

the western land of Kourend was not a thing when i last played, its an OSRS only addition. the land is split across 5 kingdoms all under the rule of the councel, when i arrived with the mysterious Eos I found a diverse and fun set of adventures

the mysterious client who puppets Eos handed me a tombe to record my adventures, I solved the first death in arceus, teamed up with the queen of thieves, learned about the war with the lizard men and their creator Xerik

these were fun quests and i was liking all the characters, at this time i wasn't following the quest line explicetly, i was doing quests as they came up in the Ironman reccomended quest order on the wiki (i am not super into skilling and this minimised that for me) and it was time for desert treasure 1

DT1 requires 12 magic logs, which requires 75 woodcutting or nature implings, i decided to go for natures because that was less effort, but then i learned about the dark lure spell to capture implings easier and decided i needed that to save my sanity in puro puro

the quest i needed to complete is the current end of the Kourend quest line, Kingdom Devided, where you unite the 5 kingdoms to expose the corruption in the counsel and reinstate the monarchy

One of the councelers was a cultist of Yama and i fought Yamas judge on the pier, i thought that would be the highlight, but then i went on a journy to find the lost heir to the kingdom

Rose was a child when her father was killed, the story is he lost his mind and she was sent away for her safety, not able to cope, but the captain of the guard dosent beleve that, and after exposing this cultist, her, a revolutionary named martin and i set out to find her

Rose loved to play games with her father, both were smart, explorative, cheeky, they would make treasure trail like hunts for the other to follow, and before she vanished, rose made one more

the trail dose a wonderful job characterising rose, she sounds like a wonderful and inteligent person, not the person who would faliter like the stories sujested

finally we catch up to her, a small hut on the northern edge of kourend, hidden in a basement, locked in a magically indused coma by one of the councelers, one who swore to protect her, one who was once a close friend

he claims to care and that this was done for her own good, she learned they killed the king after he went mad, claimed a mage was helping protect her, furious we seek out this mage to get an explenation

a boss fight ensues with a powerful undead mage, he tells us whats happening, rose cant wake up, shes been efectively lobotomised and needs his magic to maintain her peaceful sleep

we talk to the guard captain after the battle, its possible to wake rose up, but she wouldnt be alive, she would be a shell, she had lost her life a long time ago, she just wasnt allowed to die

the next scene is of an unmarked grave at the edge of the world, a melencholic piano plays as the camera pans and we promise to destroy the councel

the man who comatosed her swears to be her ally to the end, he declairs that we killed her and he was keeping her save as he swore. later we find he has fallen to his death from a tower, its unclear if the queen of thieves pushed him, or if he jumped of his own accord

the kingdom is eventualy united, the councel removed, and following another twist i wont spoil here, the quest ends...

Im listening to that piano balad as i write this post, the song is called Rose, and it brings me to tears every time, its beautiful, this game is beautiful

this unassuming medievil point and click game where an order of knights is entierly named after puns, this game whos graphics have hardly changed since 2004, that runs on a .6 second tick system with enemies that are oursmarted by shrubbery, this game made me cry

ther is so much love, artistry and charm in this game. the developers have made somthing special with osrs, a world where i want to live forever, more immersive than any other. a game with a real heart

it has many problems, i cant explain what i love about it clearly, but i hope this makes that love apparent

tomorrow im off to the zoo with some friends then its the prep grind for dnd, this turned out to be my longest blog yet and made me realise somthing...

i need to make a better way of composing these blog posts, the endless p tags are a nightmare