Ah, what a night. Still kind of buzzing from that.
It was our third and going to be final shot at him. I, like the others I guess, had long given up any hope of becoming Legend. I had written it off about three weeks ago. At that point I had two weeks to go, and still needed to complete Atheon, Crota and Skolas on hard. Not being much of an online gamer in the past, I have struggled to get into groups and don't really feel very comfortable chatting away. Although the last few weeks have taught me one thing: beer helps.
But it was a random Saturday night, with not much happening that I found myself launching my newly purchased Gally at Crota. And down he went. Very easily, it turns out. So, thanks to a fireteam of Renegade Mukkers (to my shame I can't really remember who was there, though Berties Paw was probably sword bearer) my hopes had been ignited once more.
A week later, and I found myself alone. The wife was out, the kids were asleep. Could thid be my chance at Atheon? Well, no 'cos I'm too much of an idiot to post up on here to see if anyone could help. So, I stewed in my online shyness, drowned my sorrow with cider and found myself on lfg. I was joined by two brits (very nice chaps thay are) and three of the most obnoxious american pre pubescents you have ever had the misfortune to be locked in a vault with. By this point, I'd had far too much cider to be any good at Destiny, but just enough to be hilarious at taking the piss out of Americans. Fortunately, the Bungie gods looked down on us with pity, and booted us all at the Oracles.
24 hours later, me the other two lfg'ers and a few stragglers from here (including Spacehost, who clearly didn't have a clue what he'd let himself in for) settled our score with Atheon. This was it; 9 down, one to go. One big one, sure, but how hard could it be?
So the very next night, myself, Spacehost and Mafro met up to take him down. Five and a half hours later we returned back to the reef, holding our arses that had just been handed to us. It had not gone well, but we had learnt a thing or two, so we agreed to meet the next night and finish him off. There were only a few days left to get that shitty little emblem, and we had to have it. I couldn't tell you why I wanted it, but it seemed more important to me at that moment than the pressures Skolas had exerted on my marriage. For that reason alone, he had to pay.
So we met up, full of confidence, joking, laughing, singing songs to the demise of Skolas. It was about two hours into the Cabal round, with the silence only shattered by the thundering of some incredibly inventive expletives that I felt the atmosphere of our group had changed. Still, we got through, looked Skolas in the eye and took him down. Six hours later, he was dead. Sort of. He was definitely dead, we'd seen it, but because we were stood approximately .01 nanometre off the mines, that was us fucked.
We were broken men. It was too early in the morning to try another attempt, too late in the day to ever grab our legendary status. We'd given it our best shot, but it was not to be. Not this time, all hope was lost.
The next day, everything changed.
There was to be an extension. We had another week. And the modifiers weren't completely shit. So we consulted our diaries (in my case she said 'if you must') and arranged one last shot at him. We knew what we had to do, we just had to take our chance.
So, last night we met up and embarked upon the first room. And breezed it. As we did for the second and the third. A couple of wipes on the fourth and we were through to the fifth. That is more tedious than tricky and in next to no time, we went through to meet the Kell of Kells one more time.
Except, he hadn't bothered to turn up. We waited and waited, but nothing. Nobody. Not even a random dreg. So Spacehost took this opportunity to climb on top of his cell/house/dome/whatever and taunt him. This seemed to do the trick, as Mr Skolas seemed pretty pissed off with our Spacey and procedded to twat him halfway across the map.
We reconvened, and it soon became apparent that the odds were stacked against us. Not only were we having to take on Skolas, but we were at the mercy of Bungie's servers and the PSN network. I was booted back to the dashboard once, and then seemingly locked out of rejoining the fireteam. Mafro's comms fell out. Skolas we could do, we all knew it. We had the rhythm, we had the technique. We were consistently getting to the second set of mines, but fate was conspiring against us. We couldn't possibly defeat Skolas and those little red blocks next to our names in the roster.
Then, it happened, that little moment of luck that we needed. Our connections stabilised, we'd got him down to almost 25%. We hit him again. The mines were about to spawn. Spacehost set off to the far side of the map, hoping to get to it in time, when something happened that hadn't occurred before. The first mine spawned on our location. Myself and Mafro dismantled. Spacehost got to the second and dismantled.
I died at this point, and no self res. Mafro made a dash for the centre. One bubble there, and we would crack it. He was not to make, dying agonisingly close to it. Then it spawned, the last mine, and from the distance in charged Spacey, the last of his invisibility seeping away. I was watching his camera, and I have no idea how he did it (I still don't rewatching it this morning), but that last mine went down and he made it back to me to revive and pass the taint. A daring run from Spacehost into enemy territory to revive Mafro, and we back as a team.
We settled back in our little hideout, calmed our nerves and cleared the adds for one last time. Then, on the stroke of midnight, we made damn sure we didn't wipe as we finally, finally took down that monstrous space cunt.
I don't think I've ever had a gaming moment so sweet in the thirty odd years of playing. I had a stupid grin from ear to ear for a good hour afterwards. When Destiny gets it right, it gets it very, very right.
Not just last night, but the whole episode of finishing off the Moments of Triumph is probably the best gaming achievement and experience I've ever had, and will undoubtedly stay with me a very long time. So, bring on Year Two.
And to Rllmuk, and particularly our fireteam of three, thank you. You truly deserve that Legend status for pulling me and my many, many deaths through that. If I see you on the Dreadnought, I'll try and repay the favour.
Anyone interested in trying to do a king's fall hard raid over the weekend? Only done the normal raid once, but wondered if anyone still needs it for their moments. Could get a group of six newbies together to try and blunder through it over a couple of nights?