A tale of two turtles

So I have entirely given up on planning my stable on Kallimon.  The opportunity tames keep changing things!

I had no intention of taming Terrorpene.  Yes, he is a sexy sexy beast of fire, but I had Soup and that was enough.  I preferred that skin anyway.

That does not, however, mean I wasn't looking for him.  I had helped Veph tame him back in the first week of Cataclysm on Nastaran.  Earth shield, bloodlust, resist totem - easy peasy.  It all happened so fast, I barely had a chance to register what he looked like in the wild.  (Plus it was a late night tame, so I was half-asleep to begin with.)  I needed to see this turtle again.  I'd do occasional drivebys, but he was never there.

I had completely given up on seeing him when Saon posted on the Petopia forums that he was up!  I relogged in a flash and flew up with Soup to visit.  It was only then that it dawned on me that everyone who was on was either too low level or already had him.  I eyed Soup, who sniffed the fiery turtle curiously.  She seemed to approve, so I decided to go for it.

There was some trial and error involved, mostly because my brain decided to stop working and I was out of practice on Really Intense Tames.  Veph went and got Beast and Esperon, and Saon got out Kwestura.  I hadn't realized just how painful the 10k ticks were on the receiving end when you only have 48k health.  Terrorpene was going to make sure I remembered.  The first attempt was really close, too; there was under a second left on the tame when I died.

It was good getting to see the big cuddly turtle trundling around between attempts while waiting on ancient hysteria to cool down.  It took the fourth attempt for everything to come together: all my haste cds were popped, and thanks to ancient hysteria and the two spirit beasts healing, I was able to survive the tame.  The cast bar bugged out on my UI and I was shocked to see him start shrinking with time left on the tame.  It goes to show that you're never really prepared for it.

All that was left was a name.  One had popped into my head between attempts, but I wasn't totally sure it fit my naming theme.  But once he was by my side, Saon suggested it on her own.  I realized that Soup had picked up her name in the same way, so it was silly of me to deny it any longer.  This was him, period.  And thus, Chili was born.