Imari of the Book

[FanaticusIncendi]

So, this is a long overdue post just to let anyone who may still be interested or remember her know that Imari is dead. She actually died a couple months ago but it was the day before I was to leave on a month-long road trip so I'm just now getting around to posting.

Imari was the first PC I had in EfU who lasted more than a minute and who I really liked. In fact, I stuck with her quite a long time:

This character was created on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 10:44:11 PM.
Since creation, this character has logged on and off 275 times.
The character has spent 14 days, 1 hour, 4 minutes, and 40 seconds online.

The length of time shown here is a bit misleading because I actually didn't play for about a year and also I travel a lot and am mainly afk during the traveling, so gaming for me is sporadic.

Imari was an oddity because she was a Stargazer who was a wizard, I believe the only one. The backstory was basically this:

Strange to the other Stargazers and socially inept, Imari was always a bit of an outcast. She was autistic, and brilliant, but had no real idea how to behave with others and did not form attachments to people the way others did. In fact, the only person she ever really cared about was Leged.

While wandering the forest she came upon a cave containing the skeletal remains of a human. By the side of the corpse was a book, probably preserved from the ravages of time  by magic. Imari had probably never seen a book before and wasn't about to take it back to the village, since the stargazers mistrusted books. So she stayed in the cave and studied it, and eventually "cracked the code", puzzling out how to read. The book was the spellbook of a netherese necromancer and a big thank you to Howland who made the actual Book for Imari.

The Book became a companion to her, and yeah maybe Imari was a little bit nuts but she began to think of the Book as an extension of the "old ones" (the netherese) who wrote it, that they were speaking to her through the book. Thus when she prepped spells she always "listened" to The Book. She eventually grew quite powerful through The Book and many shenanigans and fun interactions were had due to her strangeness as a stargazer toting around a big tome as well as the fact that she clearly had a knack for necromancy due to the contents of the book being skewed in that direction. Luckily the netherese wizard to whom it had belonged was also a conjurer so she eventually focused on that and much of her personal quest became looking for ways to 'ask' the dead to come and help rather than to raise and command them.

I adored this character with all her freaky little quirks and I hope anyone who she came in contact with was amused by her antics. I wish I had screenshots but I was never very good at remembering to take them in the heat of the moment. There  were lots of awesome moments including fighting the Stygians (in particular "The Praxes" played by Caddies who achieved quite a level of infamy to her and other gazers) and of course, the Agony.

In the end with the awakening from the mist and so many new faces around, many in Team Nature were looking to her to be a leader in certain respects, without understanding that Imari really wasn't mentally or emotionally equipped to step up in that way. She did her best but she really couldn't keep it together for very long at a go and made some... ah...interesting choices. Which leads me to the only pictures of note I really have of her, the pictures of the very end:

Imari lurks in the den of the dragon, after everything had gone very, very wrong:


Final moments. I'm pleased with Imari's last words, pretty much sums up everything that ever happened, lol:


And the last words of the Dragon:


Thank you to all the PCs/Players who helped me bring her to life, I had a great time! And of course thank you to Howland who took pity on us lonely gazers and made life awesome! And thank you to the DM who ran the end with the dragon, I was at a point where I was actually done with her but couldn't quite bring myself to just retire, so this was a most excellent ending. Thank you :)

I'll try to do better on screenshots with future characters.

[Caster13]

I remember Imari from a few different encounters and she was always interesting!

[Dead Man's Chest]

Should have given up the loot. :(

[bigx2]

I remember wandering around with her and others while playing Huruuk of Bear.  We ran into a pack of Dm spicy Orcs led by some nasty champion.  We were basically being full party killed and Imari lets a wraith out of that damn book. A very vicious wraith that wiped out everything in its path.  When it was over a DM shout came on “What the hell was that?".  Huruuk was grateful, but also scared to be alone with that crazy little gazer with that cursed book.

[Jayde Moon]

Imari lives on in the White Wyrm.  Rock on, Imari... Rock on.

[Kinslayer988]

One of my favorite characters to play with: from Zhaka, Micky, and Otoah the Bear. Spot on fun.