Hunter Becomes the Hunted

Stop me if you've heard this one.

Four humans, a twi'lek, several pets, a few droids, and numerous Rebel Troopers walk into Lok.

There's no punchline per se, but boy did we pack one heckuva punch. The squad was spending Rebel Faction points on troopers like they were going out of style. We decided to test our return on investment with a Kimogila hunt on the deadly world of Lok.

"And we're off!," Vincer would say.

"Like a herd of turtles," would come Cyra's reply. It was our running joke; our guild banter. Mileena had her noogies, Cyra and I had our schtick. Phantom had the ability to break perfectly good weapons with repair kits.

Lok was packed with pirates, snakes, the elusive runty pharple, those strange winged things, and a host of other beasties that wanted to eat us and use our bones to pick their fangs clean. Nasty, but we were more freaked out by the rivers that ran a sick yellow color. Just what WAS it? If we couldn't find a natural way across, we'd stave off our gag reflexes and cross through it. More schtick would ensue, with all the appropriate emotes. Disgusting!

And cross rivers, we did. And mountains. And plateaus. And just about everything else. Nary a kimogila did we see.

Only the largest creature on the planet, and we couldn't even find an oversized footprint to twist an ankle in. Boy, could we use a ranger! *cough cough*

I imagine Vincer said something like "Stop and take five, I'll set up a camp. Phantom, watch the perimeter. Mileena will patch our wounds." V liked to sound a commander. He could put up a sys message, and he wasn't afraid to use it.

Ask me to tell you about the time Nikki begged Vincer to use his sys message skill to fool Phantom into thinking he unlocked Jedi. Evil. Just evil!

Anyway, we set up camp, and just in time. A wicked sandstorm ripped through, threatening to ruin Vincer's hair. Not to mention it reduced visibility down to close range only. We held tight, battened down the gear, and waited for it to pass.

And when it did, we collectively crapped our camos. A terrifying sight was just meters away.

Cyra and I never forgot this image; straight out of a movie it seemed. Though we looked for a kimogila all day, we still were not prepared to see one; especially since it had found us.

For a squad that found the Rebel Base, fought AT-STs, explored the Jedi Temple Ruins and would eventually go on to have many memorable adventures, this moment became an indelible delight of excitement in our minds. To this very day, we can both recall the initial thrill of the scene as it played out.

We broke camp, steeled our nerves and set about what we came to do. Bigger then we had imagined it would be, Vincer called on his own giant pet, a Torton by the name Thunder.

"We have OUR own monster, too!" Nikki yelled at the kimogila; or something to that effect. The plan was to send in Thunder first, and then take down whatever part of the Kimogila that the torton hadn't stomped.

Just for reference, here's a picture of Thunder, a herd of turtles all unto himself.

Unbeknownst to us, the Kimogila had his own plan: Crush V-Squad.

To our credit, we did pretty well. Thunder ran some interference, but without the heals going directly on him, he dropped. Phantom and his troopers were distributing much hurt, but there were just too many Kimogilas for us to handle. "Too many" meaning: the one.

We regrouped way back at the cloning facility. (Remember, there were no player cities or shuttleports yet.) Then we marched right back out. If it wasn't this night, it was another, but we finally started to figure out how to both find and beat kimogilas.

Still, it would have been nice to have a full-fledged ranger to help find what we were looking for.

*cough cough*