Wednesday, July 12, 2006

The Cordeilia Incident (I <3 Tilanna)

Well a couple of weeks ago, I made a critical error at the auction house. Feeling positively indulgent, I stepped up to the AH in Whitegate to try to get a deal on a Noble's Tunic. Not being respectful of the the lag in Whitegate at all and not even being particularly careful with the buttons I was pressing, I began to put in my usual quick series of bids to try to win the Noble's at minimum cost. After about 8 failed attempts and with the entire screen reading "You were unable to buy the Noble's Tunic for ### gil" I started to get impatient. And whether it was the lag in Whitegate that caused the AH to malfunction, or if it was me being totally careless and hitting the worst combination of buttons possible, on the next bid I managed to pull off the following...


Yeah, for those of you keeping score, that's a Silk Cloak, not a Noble's... needless to say I was pretty frantic and began to search for this Cordeilia but even after not being able to get into contact with her, I was still feeling confident that things would turn out ok. So to get the ball rolling, I sent her back the Silk Cloak and began to wait.

This wasn't the first time I've experienced mis-adventures at the auction house. The first time I put an extra zero at the end of a +1 Katana for NIN and thankfully the guy who sold it to me was online. He was very courteous, was quick to offer a reversal of my mistake, and refused all my crass attempts to pay twice the price of the item once he had given my money back. There were also a couple of times where people had grossly overbid for an item that I had placed on the AH, and in both instances I tracked down those people and returned their gil without hesistation. No way things could turn out differently this time, right?

Wrong.

After about a week of me waiting for Cordeilia to come online (I even macro'd "/sea all Cord") and everybody in LS being extremely concerned for me and doing the same (love you guys!), we discovered that she was a lvl1 mule in Lower Jeuno. A few days later, I finally I got a reply from Cordeilia after repeated unreciprocated /tells from me... it wasn't exactly what I was looking for however...


Well she was probably fed up with being accosted with /tells everytime she logged her mule so I suppose this was her idea of an olive branch or cease fire. And in true morality tale fashion I now had a choice to make: 1) do everything in my power and use every resource I had at my disposal to find out just who this person was and then make her life a living hell, or 2) just own up to the fact that this was my mistake and just be Buddhist about it and let go of it all. Not wanting to invite Karmic retribution or catastrophe, I chose the latter and tried to stop worrying about Cordeilia and her unforgiveable nature.

Well, last night, after getting a PM from Tilanna on the forums to to come online for more Dr. Phil, I logged on before running out to Trader Joe's to discover that he had instead done something extraordinarily thoughtful and good-hearted:


I was absolutely floored by this. Such a genuine and honest display of love and friendship. Of caring and sensitivity. I'm still pretty speachless about it-- that Til thinks enough of me to do something this outrageous and kind blows me away. Luckily he was online when I got back home and I was reassured of the following: 1) this wasn't a parting gift and he wasn't going to kill his character off, 2) he had not gone stark-raving mad. I told him I couldn't accept the Noble's in good conscience, but he called me an idiot and told me to shut up... soooo Til ;)

In the end, good and caring friends are more than up to the task of off-setting the thousands of shady Cordeilias out there. I will be forever thankful for the level of consideration and thought that went into this gesture, and when I wear the Noble's I will always be reminded that in this game I have wonderful friends, not least of whom is my wonderful friend Tilanna. *sniff* /weep *sniff*


Thank you Til!!!!!