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This thread will house the achievements of my two "Runescape birds of prey": the and the . There aren't any set goals for either of them, instead I'll be posting any events of interest, such as rare drops or quest completions. The posts will be daily summaries, but only if something of note happened during that day.

represents the namesake Accipiter in the land of freedom, as it's not an iron, and so it has no physical restrictions in place. Its favorite activities consist mostly of solo PvMing now that it has a max cape, with a bit of skilling and questing here and there. Sharp-shin's other notable achievements include a very early mutagen drop, 11 pets and earning the twisted bow through sweat and blood.

represents the most commonly known sparrowhawk found in Eurasia, yet it has to endure the harsh realities of life: it's an iron, and so it has to earn its living by itself. It is currently on a hiatus for an extended period of time, but when active, it is mostly a skiller, with questing where possible and solo PvM on the horizon. Sparrowhawk's notable achievements include nearly 2k total level, 3 pets and over 500 Barrows chests opened.

Twisted bow and Zulrah is an iconic duo that's led Sharp-shin to a semi-strong start: getting an uncut onyx. I say "semi-strong" because it's one of the 4 most common uniques from Zulrah, but with current prices, the onyx is only about half of the price of the others.

It's been 6 months since Sharp-shin last killed Zulrah, but it has had so much experience with it that the muscle memory kicked in very quickly after the first few kills.

Zulrah isn't the only serpent to terrorize Gielinor; Sharp-shin was asked by the Fremennik to investigate a strange disturbance in Rellekka, which turned out to be a prelude of war with the basilisks from the Island of Stone. After repelling the basilisk attack in Rellekka that soon followed, Sharp-shin and Chieftain Brundt set sail to said island, and prevented the king of the basilisks, Jormungand, from being set free from its prison, putting a halt to Ragnarok.

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It is said that most of the sparrowhawk's hunt attempts fail, and though I'vent got enough observations to confirm or deny this for myself, Sharp-shin certainly would've starved to death by now if in-game drop RNG was relative to real-life hunting success.

Over 400 Zulrah kills without a single unique drop so far; on average you should expect one every 128 kills, and this drystreak is on top of the pet drystreak too. And then this happens: a rune spear drop, which from Zulrah can only drop from the rare drop table. From Zulrah, that means having to roll for almost 4 times as rare of a number as you would for a regular unique (1/3723). So, as usual, when it rains, it pours... hard.

Finally, Sharp-shin got something interesting and I can rest easy knowing that there isn't an RNG shadowban in place. Unless, of course, there is one for the pet, which is still missing.

I actually got curious and decided to check Sharp-shin's lifetime Zulrah kill data to compare this drystreak to all the previous ones. The following graph includes all the drystreaks between any unique item received from Zulrah, but since only one mutagen and jar of swamp has been obtained so far, almost all of them are the regular unique drystreaks, same as this one was:


(Open in a new tab to see it better.)

Now, while this was an unlucky streak and a long one at that, there apparently was one time where Sharp-shin was even dryer for a drop. But this one did have a big impact on the average drystreak: previously a unique dropped every ~107 kills, now the average is every ~114 kills.

I knew beforehand that Song of the Elves would be a very, very long quest, so because I wanted to experience it in full in a single day, I had to reserve a good date for it before Sharp-shin would undertake it. I underestimated two things though: its length (it was even longer than I thought) and its tone (hence the above title).

It all started with something that seemed rather trivial: Elena, who had previously helped Sharp-shin uncover the truth behind the plague story of West Ardougne, had been imprisoned for spreading the truth around. His father wanted her freed, so Sharp-shin donned a guard's disguise and smuggled a chemical to Elena in the prison, which helped her escape.



Elena wasn't one to just hide though: she wanted to overthrow the king and free the West Ardougne of its fake plague story. Together with the other rebels, a plan was made to commit deeds in the king's name which would anger the citizens of Ardougne and convince them to join the rebellion. So, Sharp-shin used the disguise to collect extra taxes and burn food storages (under the excuse that it was rotten with plague), all in the king's name.



After the rebellion grew enough, it was time to attack the king's forces: the mourners of West Ardougne and knights of East Ardougne.



It wasn't easy, but the rebellion outnumbered the king's army, and he was captured, and summarily executed afterwards.



At this point, the story shifted from the plague in Ardougne, to the elves of Tirannwn: Lord Iorwerth had an arrangement with King Lathas to freely operate under Ardougne to uncover the Temple of Light, which was disrupted by the rebellion's success.

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During the king's execution, Iorwerth's elves kidnapped Sharp-shin and Elena, and took them back to Tirannwn. But before he could decide what to do with them, Arianwyn and his rebellious elves of Lletya rescued the two and took them back to Lletya, where they held a meeting on what to do about Iorwerth.



In particular, the focus concentrated on what Lord Iorwerth had said before: that his arrangement with King Lathas had been a ruse, that rather than trying to summon Zamorak, he was trying to summon Seren, claiming that he'd learned from the grand library of Prifddinas that a fragment of Seren was still alive, somewhere in the Temple of Light.

To verify Iorwerth's claims, it was decided that the king of the elves, Baxtorian, would be consulted on the matter, as he'd known Seren better than anyone. So, Sharp-shin and Arianwyn ventured back to the waterfall dungeon, to turn Baxtorian from stone back to flesh.



Baxtorian didn't know about Seren's fragment, but he did confirm that the method which Iorwerth had used to gain his information was legitimate, so the elven rebellion wanted to check if the information was legitimate as well. Baxtorian wanted all the elven elders to return, so that their knowledge could be used to accomplish this. First, Sharp-shin had to search for Lord Amlodd and Lady Trahaearn.




Amlodd had the knowledge to be able to reach the source of the information: Prifddinas was hidden inside a crystal seed, but its grand library which held the seals of information could be accessed via teleporting. However only one person could reach it, so Sharp-shin was chosen for the job.

Lord Iorwerth had already been to the library before though, and he'd managed to break one of its 9 seals. Sharp-shin touched the opened seal, and a memory of Seren emerged from it.

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It turned out that once opened, Seren had allowed the memories of each seal to reveal its information to everyone, so Sharp-shin learned that what Iorwerth had claimed was true: there was a fragment of Seren hidden inside the Temple of Light.



Thirsting for more information, Sharp-shin remained to open the remaining seals for even further information. Along the way, he encountered something familiar: agility handholds obstacles.



In MEP2, level 91 agility was enough to always be successful when crossing the obstacle, but in SOTE, not even level 104 (99+summer pie boost) was enough: Sharp-shin had to cross the handholds 4 times, but failed twice.

Anyway, once all the seals were opened, Sharp-shin learned a horrible truth: when Seren was still alive, she had sought to extend the lifespan of her elves, because she couldn't bear watching them die so quickly. She managed to do this and extend their lifespans to thousands of years, but she unknowingly bound her elves to her, such that if Seren wasn't nearby, her elves would feel pain, or even perish.

Once she learned of what she'd done, Seren wished to revert the curse: being an entity of light, she created a dark version of herself, hoping that the two forms would cancel the curse. Instead, nothing happened, except that the dark version sought to destroy Seren, so she had to lock it in a prison inside the Temple of Light.

After Sharp-shin revealed this to the elves, the morale in the group was devastated, but Baxtorian wished to keep searching for more elders to stop Iorwerth. Sharp-shin went to look for Lord Crwys and Lady Hefin next, the latter of which had apparently observed Sharp-shin fighting Zulrah from a nearby island.




The search for all the elders paused once more, when terrible news came.

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