Alcaz Island, late afternoon, and I am picking my way along the coast toward Alcaz Prison because a guide had mentioned naga overrunning the old Defias cells and I wanted to see the mess for myself before queuing in. On the rocks outside I run into this raptor, mottled and cranky looking, and it just stares at me instead of attacking, which felt like an invitation nobody sent but I accepted anyway.
I want to be clear I was not looking for a pet at that moment, I was looking for a dungeon entrance and got distracted, which is basically the story of my whole leveling life. I had just come from reading about raptors guarding treasure at a dig site up north, so my head was already full of raptors, and here was one being weirdly calm right in front of me, so I decided the universe was telling me something even though the universe was probably just telling me the mob table was quiet that hour.
Naming it was its own disaster. I wanted something that sounded like it belonged on Alcaz Island, something briny and ominous, and what I actually typed in the confirmation box was Biscuit, because I had been snacking while playing and my brain just went there. I have tried to rename this creature in my head a hundred times since and it remains, forever, Biscuit the raptor, guardian of nothing, terror of no one.
What I took from it is that the first pet rarely gets picked with any strategy at all, it just happens to be standing there while you are on your way somewhere else, and the name you give it in that rushed little moment sticks far longer than it has any right to. Did anyone else's first pet end up named after something completely unrelated to where you actually found it?
