Companions
Heroes, henchmen, summoned minions and owned pets, and how each is called, commanded and dismissed.
Few adventurers walk alone. Rogue gives you four different kinds of company: henchmen hired by role, heroes unlocked through play, minions conjured by class skills, and pets bought and kept as living creatures. The first two make up your companion party and share one limit between them. You may have up to eight companions active at any time.
Henchmen#
Henchmen are free, generic companions that need no unlocking and scale to your level. There are five roles: tank, healer, nuker, ranger and support.
henchman or henchman list shows what is available. henchman hire <type> takes
one on, and call <role> does the same thing more briefly, so call tank hires a
tank. henchman dismiss <name> sends one away. You may hold only one henchman of
each role at a time.
Heroes#
Heroes are unique, named companions unlocked through play. Each has a backstory, a role, and an appearance you can change. Unlike henchmen they can be renamed, re-equipped, and given their own entrance and dismissal lines.
hero list shows every hero you have unlocked and hero <name> opens one in
detail. call <name> summons a hero, and hero dismiss <name> sends them away.
hero call pulls every summoned hero adrift in the world back to your side over a
few seconds, which is the fix when one is lost.
A hero is set to your own level when summoned, to a maximum of level 100, and comes to you at full health. Heroes also earn experience of their own in combat, and that progress is saved with them between sessions.
Appearance and Roleplay#
hero name <hero> <name> renames a hero. hero short <hero> <desc> and
hero long <hero> <desc> set the descriptions, and
hero race, hero gender, hero eyes, hero hair and hero feature change the
rest of the appearance.
hero entrance <hero> <msg> and hero dismissal <hero> <msg> set the lines shown
when the hero arrives and leaves. Use $N for the hero's name and $O for your
own, and the word clear as the message to return to the default.
Equipment#
hero gear <hero> shows what a hero is carrying. hero equip <hero> <item> hands
over something from your own inventory, hero unequip <hero> <slot> takes custom
gear back, and hero resetgear <hero> restores everything to the default kit. The
slots are weapon, head, chest, hands, legs, feet and offhand.
hero skills <hero> lists a hero's skills and what they require.
Playing as a Hero#
hero listen <name> lets you play as a summoned hero. You see through their eyes,
and every line you type is carried out by them with their full class kit at their
own level and pools. Your own body fights on beside the party, guided by the same
instincts a hero of your class would have. release brings you home, and beginning
a line with / acts with your own body for a single command.
hero return breaks a listen link that has been left hanging.
Commanding Companions#
companion shows the state of your party, companion list shows every companion,
and companion henchmen lists the henchmen available for hire.
companion hire <type> and companion dismiss <number> work by role and by the
number shown in the listing. companion cleanup clears out duplicates.
Every companion follows one of three AI modes. Aggressive attacks any enemy,
defensive strikes back only when struck, and passive never attacks at all.
companion ai <number> <mode> and hero ai <name> <mode> set it.
dismiss <name> sends a companion away, dismiss hero <name> names a hero
specifically, and dismiss all clears the whole party. Partial names are matched,
so the full name is never needed.
When a Companion Falls#
A companion that falls in battle is not lost. It becomes inactive rather than destroyed, and recovers to half its health once the fight is over, announcing that it has recovered.
Persistence#
Your active party is recorded when you log out and re-formed when you return, so the heroes and henchmen you were travelling with are waiting for you next session. Hero progress and equipment are saved alongside.
Minions#
Minions are conjured rather than hired, and they come from class skills rather than from the companion system. Necromancers raise bone minions, bone horrors, corpse puppets and flesh golems; rangers call animal companions; other classes raise stone golems and the like. Each answers to the caster who summoned it.
minions lists a necromancer's active undead and their state.
Minions join your party as members for as long as they stand, and they count toward the number of attackers an enemy sees, which makes fights with a large retinue longer. See Groups for how that scaling works.
Pets#
Pets are real, persistent creatures owned by you and recorded in the world's ownership ledger. A Merchant brokers the sale and binds the creature to your name. From that moment the pet has its own hunger, thirst, energy, loyalty, cleanliness, health and training.
pet list and pet status report on them, and pet status <name> narrows it to
one. pet call <name> brings a pet to your current room, where it follows you from
then on, and pet dismiss <name> sends it back to its shelter without touching the
ledger record. pet stay <name> tells it to stop following and pet heel <name>
resumes.
Care is the whole game. feed, water, groom, walk, play and train each
address a different need, and pet <name> on its own strokes the creature for a
small gain in loyalty. A pet's condition decays in real time while you are online,
more slowly if it is sheltered, and is paused entirely while you are offline.
Neglect it long enough and the pet dies for good, or loses its loyalty and runs
off. There is no resurrection.
abandon <creature> releases a companion creature from your service so that it no
longer follows you or serves as a mount.