#17= Cassice - Born 4 May 2003 - 4 days 20 hours -

This is going to be a very short post. No, really. I mean it this time.

It's going to have to be because I don't have much to say about Cassice, my level 48 Druid and #17= on the list. Other that I'm quite surprised she's made it that far.

If I could remember how it happened, I'd be glad to tell you but I don't really have much of an idea, which is somewhat worrying when you realize I must have spent well over a hundred hours playing her. There's no short-cut to the high 40s that I'm aware of, no Instant Forty-Five potion you can drink or boost you can buy. I mean, why would there be?

No, she must have clawed her way up to the dizzy heights of just shy of the original level cap by her own efforts. Or my efforts, anyway.

Not that it's so much of an achievment these days. It surely would have been, back when I started in 1999. In those days, Level 50 seemed like a dream that might never come true. My original Druid, Rachel, took years to get into the fifties and I still remember even today how proud of myself I felt to see her become my first character to make it into the thirties.

But then, Rachel was a real character, with history and personality. Even without my roleplaying them in the traditional sense, all my characters from the first few years developed distinct quirks, traits, foibles and ways of speaking that made them feel like individuals.

By the time Cassice came along, which was only four years after the launch of EQ, that was no longer necessarily true. As we'll see when I come to the next character on the list, I wasn't entirely done with inhabiting the characters I made but by 2003 the vein was was pretty much tapped out.

Cassice stands out as a bit of a transitional character in that sense. She really doesn't have anything that could pass for a personality but she's not a complete cipher, either. What she mostly is is a function masquerading as a form. 

I can't remember why I wanted a Druid back in those early days on Stromm although as I speculated last time it was most likely an attempt at a viable solo character. I was relatively experienced in playing a Druid, too, so it probably seemed like a safe choice.

If she ever grouped up and did stuff with the guild we had, briefly, on Stromm, I have no recollection of it. I suspect she mostly got played when I didn't want to be particularly sociable. And as I already said, how the heck she managed to get forty-eight levels under her leather belt, I have no idea. That's a lot of root-dotting and snare-kiting.

What I do know about Cassice, though, is that in latter years she took up a second career as a photo-journalist. Of all the twenty-five characters in this series, she's probably second only to Magmia in appearances here on the blog because she's long been the one I wake up and send out to take screenshots, every time I write about something happening in Old Norrath.

There are lots of great things about EQ Druids, second only to Bards as they are in terms of range of utility, but surely the greatest is their extreme mobility. Druids can go anywhere, pretty much. They get teleport spells from an early level that allow them to pop up in Druid Rings all across Norrath, at first on their own and later with friends (Or paying customers) in tow.

I think Wizards can port to more places but I never got a Wizard high enough to compare. I've been very happy with Druids as my travel specialists and Cassice has done me great service in that role over the years.

Despite never having been much of a character in her own right, even now, after more than two decades, she remains the one most likely to be asked to do something, when I'm in an EverQuest frame of mind. She's perpetually on call but also she doesn't carry the responsibility of the two or three characters I might actually care about leveling, any of whom would require much more in the way of commitment from me if I ever decided to take them out of their cosy resting place in the Guild Lobby.

I do sometimes take Rachel out for a spin for the same reason but she's loaded up with buffs and the moment she leaves the general vicinity of the Plane of Knowledge they start to fade so usually I don't. Cassis, though, is self-buffed, not least because not much from an MGB will land on a level 48, so she's free to come and go as she pleases.

That's why the pictures of Cassice that I took today, especially for this post, show her out in the world, not posing against a backdrop in either the Guild Lobby, Plane of Knowledge or Plane of Tranquility as usual. Instead, she's on the beach in North Ro because that's where the 25th Anniversary tower was and she was there last year, taking photographs. She still has some anniversary related stuff in her bags, too, because this is EverQuest and no developer has ever, in living memory, programmed any such item to disappear when an event comes to an end.

She has some stuff in her bag I can't entirely explain, too. Part of a key to something in Lavastorm, for example, which appears to be one of four for some quest she's been doing. I think that was back when something happened in the volcanic zone and I did a post on it. Maybe...

The most mysterious item in her bags, which I had a rummage through just before I started this post, is a rather nice two-hander called Pestilence, useable only by Paladins and Shadowknights. Not only can Cassice not wield it because she's the wrong class, she's also too low. It has a required level of 75. 

Where she got it and why she's lugging it about I haven't a clue.  I've tried to look it up but I can't even find where it drops so it's a mystery. I don't think I even have a character on the server who could use it. 

If I had to guess, I'd say maybe she saw it on an NPC vendor for a pittance and bought it to resell, which is something I used to do all the time. Or she could have bought it on the Broker, although why she (Or I.) would want it, I can't imagine. 

She has clearly spent a good while browsing the Bazaar, though, spending Magmia's hard-earned money, because she's kitted out in all kinds of things she couldn't possibly have gotten on her own. 

She's clearly had quite some care and attention devoted to her over the years.

Pity I can't remember doing any of it.