A Strange Encounter

As I’ve noted, I play Slig on an RP server. As such, I’m not familiar with the world of ganker versus gankee. Therefore, when PvP happens outside the battlegrounds, I’m fascinated.

If you play the Horde side, you’re used to arriving at The Crossroads to find skeletons all over the place and your quest-giver or flight master coughing up blood. (Oh sure, a bunch of level 70 Allies couldn’t bother themselves to attack a town that might actually give them a challenge! But, whatever. ) I mean, it usually happens at least once a day. So, one day when Slig was still a teenager doing those mind-numbingly endless Barrens quests, I arrived at yet another ghost town version of Crossroads.

Except this time, it was just one druid. One crazy druid, probably level 70, laying waste to the entire town. I decided to get cheeky and see if I could bag some honor by helping to bring him down. I rushed him with my staff inside a hut where he was in bear form battling 4 NPCs with aplomb.

I whacked his head. I looked at his status bar. It didn’t move. In fact, his status bar didn’t even move from the NPCs’ hits.

I hit him a couple more times and he turned to me and hugged me. He hugged me!

“The nerve,” I thought. Sarcasm! So I kept wailing away, despite the obvious futility of it.

Then he emoted, “No! Not gonna happen,” and hugged me again.

I was flabbergasted and quite confused. I stood there watching the pummeling for a few seconds. I emoted, “Slig is confused.”

He asked for help.

I scratched my head. I mean, even if I had wanted to help him there wasn’t anything I could do. Besides, he didn’t really need help, he was healing about as fast as they were damaging him. So I backed out of the hut to see what would happen.

I knew he could kill me with one swipe now that I was flagged for PvP so I admit I was a little nervous at my rash behavior.

He followed me out of the hut and told me to wait. Then he ran off away from the NPCs.

Curious, I walked out of town through the gate where he’d left. I couldn’t see him; he must’ve stealthed. I shrugged it off and started going back to town to wait for NPC respawns.

I heard, “Wait,” again. I looked around: no one there. Then he materialized in front of me.

I didn’t hit him. I wanted to do something non-threatening so I wouldn’t get killed, so I sat down. He sat down too. He hugged me again. Pretty soon the Crossroads guards respawned and came after him again. He cried. I comforted him.

He ran away from the guards. He came back to me. This time he went into stealth form and “hid” behind/inside Slig. So I just stood still and pretended he wasn’t there. Eventually, of course, the NPCs found him and he ran out onto the road again. I followed.

With only emotes to communicate with, I didn’t know how to ask him what was going on. We saluted, we danced, we hugged, we laughed. It was so odd. Eventually, he bowed to me and said goodbye. I never saw him again, even though I looked for him in the grass around the Crossroads for weeks afterwards.

Have any of you experienced a similar thing? Or, perhaps, have you yourself done what the druid did? I’d be really interested in hearing your cross-faction peace stories.