Opening a box o' trouble

When I released Odysseus, I knew I was giving up some PvP utility.  But I had never really liked having him out, so when my stables got purged, he went.  But then I saw one of my friends with a monkey and asked him about it.  It seems that there are particular arena group compositions that monkeys are more useful against than a spider would be.  Mind you, this is the same friend who encouraged me to get a spider in the first place, which caused Orpheus to gain his final form, so I was listening.  (This is also why I can forgive him for almost anything regarding pets and griefing.)

I had to tame a new monkey.

This was a very difficult assignment, since I wasn't fond of any of the skins.  I had chosen Ody's black skin because of the green eyes, but I just didn't feel anything for him.  I liked the brown well enough on principle, but Sandwiches already has a brown monkey - and somehow, I wasn't a fan of it next to Kalli anyway.  This left the gray and dark gray monkeys, and I wasn't fond of either of their faces.

It seemed like an impossible assignment, but off I trekked to Deadmines anyway, hoping I'd get lucky.

I easily cleared through to the mining monkey section of the instance, killing all of the goblins in the area and zooming in as I walked around.  Most of the monkeys were black, brown, or dark gray; there was only one gray one up.  I had paced around the area a couple of times, checking out the monkeys, when I got a small pull from one of the dark gray monkeys near the door (the one on the left as you enter that section of the instance).  I got the feeling that if I was going to give that skin a shot, it had to be with that monkey.  I waffled slightly, eyeing the identical monkey just to the right of the door, but trusted my gut and tamed the one who had specifically spoken to me.  I was surprised that the skin seemed to click.  I had no idea for a name, so I took Monkey with me through the rest of the instance, then off to the Molten Front for dailies and Dante's approval.

Monkey stayed Monkey until Korii suggested Eris for a name.  This was a big game-changer, since I had never pictured the monkeys as female.  I tried it out, but it felt wrong, partly because Eris is the goddess of strife (Persephone, who was also named for a goddess, washed out too), but mostly because it just didn't seem to be the right name.  I decided to give Circe a shot, but the name is too regal for a monkey (and would have been more appropriate with a boar, which I have no plans to tame at this time).  Then it hit me.  Pandora was the name I had originally bestowed upon my PTR dragonhawk, but she never clicked.  Pandora was a troublemaker, but not maliciously so.  It wasn't her fault she'd been created to unleash the evils of the world upon mankind.  That seemed to be the right mix of troublemaker and innocent to match the face, which had grown on me by this time.

I actually like her.  I think this is going to work.

Provided that Pandora can stay out of trouble, that is.