What’s said in /o stays in /o.  Its a rule i try to live by.  The things that go on in officers’ chat tend to range from the strictly confidential to the frighteningly bizarre. For those of you who don’t know it’s where your officers go to discuss current goings on, organize, and on occassion, bitch/let off some steam.  Because of the nature of the channel it’s generally accepted that what’s said there doesn’t leave.  This, however I had to share.  It struck me as the final inspiration I needed to write this post:

[O]Karmajudged: No worries Sol.  I pretty much expect you to be a bastard at this point.

Now, I can see someone finding that offensive.  I could see myself finding that offensive under certain circumstances.  What you don’t see right now, though, is my conversation with our newest level 80 Shaman during a run through Heroic Azjol’Nerub:

W to Shockti: When we get to the big hole coming up cast Water Walking on Karm. It’ll be funny :)

My poor mark victim guildy followed my advice, and Karm pancaked on the water.  Sadly (to a certain point of view) the Death Knight in our group, who was NOT a guildy, had the same idea and dropped Path of Frost, so I’ll never know which did the actual killing of our tank.

I couldn’t let this go without writing about it as, I have a confession to make.  I’ve been trying to find the words to explain it.  I’ve been trying to find a way to make it understood.  It’s been a difficult path for me, but I think I’m finally ready.

My name is Sollan, and I’m a Trickster Mage.

I blame my second guild.  We’d spent the night wiping in…somewhere, probably Molten Core, and the tension was high.  We finally call the raid and the mages set to work making Ironforge portals, as was expected of all good mages at the time. (Sollan didn’t exist yet, I was Meros the Healing Boomkin of Noobness).  Suddenly we here in Vent: “What the hell am I doing in Darnassus”

One of the mages stacked a Darnassus portal over the Ironforge portal. I wasn’t the same after that moment.  Later raids saw many things which served to further corrupt me.

• Terramer the Mage, while we’re setting up for Garr: “I want to do and Iceblock Pull, can I do an Iceblock Pull?”  Raid Leader: “Sure”  Terramer: “Ok”.  Queue the entire guild frantically attempting Garr when targets had yet to be fully set up as Terr proceeded to do the pull the moment the Raid Leader said “Ok”
• Terramer again, on ever boss kill would strip naked and start running around the boss while doing the train emote.  Usually most of the guild would follow him (Somehow we still managed 4 hour clears of MC in spite of this).  The sound of the  gnome /train is still forever burned in my mind
• If you’ve raided MC you know this one.  If you don’t well, I won’t spoil the fun (though with HP as high as it is now it’s not as much fun) “Hey guys, if you look through that window you can see Rag”

Those moments, and many I’ve forgotten warped me irrevocably.

Now, I’m the one pulling the stunts.  Some are truly my own making, some are things I’ve gleaned from others.  Fortunately my guildies all either have excellent senses of humor, or are extremely tolerant of my antics.  The greatest compliments I’ve ever received were:  ”Never trust a portal cast by Sol” and “Every time something out of the ordinary happens, I just assume it’s Sol’s doing”.  Those mean I’ve done my job well.

Some pages from my book of tricks:

• I’ve turned Portal Roulette into an artform.  Not only can I stack 4-5 portals on top of each other I’ve dropped them on top of: Summoning Stones, Refreshment portals, Permanent portals (like the Dalaran portal in ICC), and who knows what else.  I once had a portal demanded of me buy a guildy (I don’t like things being demanded of me) so I met him in Ironforge and proceeded to send him:  To Ironforge, to Theramore, to Exodar, and finally to his destination.  He learned to ask nicely after that :)
• I have a bag filled with toys for raids.  Train set, train wrecker, baby spice, noggenfogger, that stupid dancing flute, the only thing I’m missing is a Direbrew Remote.  I’ll pull this stuff out at opportune (or inopportune) times, most often if tension is running high.  Did you know baby Spice works on a lot of bosses?  Have you ever seen the raid’s reaction when a 30 yard high mob is suddenly the size of a human ?
• This is my favorite:  I have two accounts, one houses Sollan and one houses Meros.  This is an artifact of the days before enchanting scrolls when I wanted to enchant my own gear.  Now, most of the time I use the fact I can be logged into two characters at once to have heated arguments with myself whenever we get a new guildy.  I’ve had more than one person convinced I was two people who HATED each other.

My guildy’s have been known to get in on the game as well.  I can’t claim to be the cause of the chaos they sow, as they’re all pretty warped, but their accomplishments:

• Most of our priests know the best times to cast Levitate on someone.  For those wondering those times are:  Right before the Gunship Battle when everyone’s “practicing” with their rocket packs, and when people are standing on the elevator after Lady Deathwhisper
• All of our Pallys have mastered the art of wasting Divine Intervention.  1 second left before a long cast is complete? DI.  Someone about to open a chest” DI, falling through the floor in ToC? DI

Sometimes I get help in my Shenanigans.  This includes my own Crowning Moment of Awesome with the help of Evertoad:  the mage I hope to be as win as some day.

Someone decided, while we were working on Saurfang to start throwing Paper Zeppelins around.  At some point once got to me and I started tossing it to Ever.  A game of “Zeppelin Volleyball” started between us as we tried to maintain as much uptime on the thing as possible.

We continued doing this throughout the entirety of the Saurfang fight.  Not only did we succeed in keeping the thing floating through the air the entire fight, the concentration it required caused our average DPS to go up.

Needless to say we’ll be trying this again, and I will be taking video to share.

So, for the two people who read this:  Are you tricksters, like me?  If so, what do you do?  I need new ideas!