Surprise Post after a "Brief" Hiatus

 

Hello from 2022.  So been awhile hasn’t it?

 

I make no promises of any future posts, but really quickly here’s what I’ve been up to.

 

I moved from Saint Louis Park to Eden Prairie, and from Eden Prairie to Saint Paul.  I’m still at that job I had just started back in September of 2011.  I greatly enjoy it.  After working eight years as a telephone operator in rural Minnesota (which wasn’t a bad job at all), and spending however long I spent working for CPP (a company that doesn’t even exist in the US any longer) trying to convince people to not quit their identity theft memberships they signed up for on their random credit cards, I find working for a company that manufactures actual useful physical products to be amazing. 

 

We mainly manufacture and sell variable-frequency drives and related products.  I started in customer service and a few years back moved to technical support of all things.  It’s great.

 

I still play WoW off and on (I tend to come back for an expansion, play a bit at the start and again a bit at the end).  I still play City of Heroes (thank you Homecoming) off and on.  I play the odd other video game off and on (Final Fantasy XIV for example) as well.

 

Still role-playing.  Ran a second BESM campaign set in Nayado using BESM 3^rd edition that ran for five years.  Enjoying D&D 5^th edition quite a bit, trying to DM when I can, and playing in a campaign as well.

 

I still watch the odd anime here and there.  Still read the odd comic book.  Still do most of the same things as before really.

Totally lost that game of chess back in 2011, but I'm far to lazy to go digging around in old Facebook posts to find the moves.

 

Until next time.

Nutshell

So you may have noticed, I haven't had much to say here in the last few years.  So the brief overview of my geeky life:  I've stopped playing WoW, I've resumed playing City of Heroes, I've obtained a Wii (but I don't use it very much), I still enjoy tabletop RPGs, I plan on running a new BESM campaign soon, I got a new computer, I changed the OS on my old computer to a Linux distro (Linux Mint, plus dual-booting my main computer to Kubuntu alongside the Windows 7 it came with), I'm still watching anime (but not as much as I used to), I've rediscovered my love of Doctor Who, and I'm currently engaged in a game of chess over Facebook.   For any who care less about my geeky hobbies, but may be curious about my personal life in rough chronological order:  I left Onvoy, I moved from Morris to the Twin Cities, my father died (October 19, 2008), I floundered around a bit working some jobs that weren't very good fits for me,  my roommate moved to Vermont, I paid off my car, I became unemployed, I remained unemployed for far too long, and most recently (as in this week) I started a new job that I am extremely excited about.

So that's been my last three years or so in a nutshell.

Now to keep me honest, the breakdown of the Facebook chess match with my friend Joel:

             Me                   Joel
             White               Black

 1.         e4                    e5
 2.         Nf3                  Nc6
 3.         Bb5                 Bc5        (Ruy Lopez, countered by the classical (Cordel) defense)
 4.         c3                   Nf6
 5.         d4                   exd4
 6.         e5                   Ne4
 7.         O-O                dxc3
 8.         bxc3               d5
 9.         Nd4                O-O
10.        Nxc6               bxc6
11.        Bxc6               ba6
12.        Qxd5              . . .

I leave you with an amusing video found on CollegeHumor (the ending veers into NSFW territory YMMV):

Ye gods what have I done

Last night I took Chipple into Karazhan for the first time. It was in fact my first PvE raid of any type with any character ever. While I have a long way to go before I can call myself a raider, I at least have now been on a raid. It was quite fun, and I can honestly say I'd like to do it again. I'm sure upon reading this Dan will rub his hands together and cackle in a sufficiently evil manner (or possibly mutter "excellent" in a Montgomery Burns like fashion).

Our raid consisted mostly of people who had little to no experience in Karazhan (and most of the people with much Kara experience were on alts). I guess we were a bit melee heavy as in addition to our prot warrior main tank, and feral druid off tank we had two fury warriors, and ret paladin. Chipple and another frost mage were the only ranged DPS. We had a holy priest, resto shaman, and a resto druid rounding out our healing. Our holy priest was also our only significant source of crowd control. We downed Attumen the Huntsman in one go, Moroes proved to be a much harder fight, but we were victorious on our fifth attempt (and we maintained good spirits during the attempts). We made two goes at Maiden before we reached our predetermined cut off time.

Due to circumstances and lucky drops Chipple walked out of there with two pieces of epic loot. Attumen dropped the Handwrap of Flowing Thought and I was lucky enough to win the roll for it. Moroes dropped a Nethershard Girdle and the other mage passed on it (as did the holy priest) so with no one else interested - epic number two for Chipple.

Also as tradition dictates: w00t for post 90.

I don't even know where to start with this one.

I've got no words to describe this. . .

I'm not sure if I blame Rick Astley, WoW, or just the Internet culture in general.

Oh Noez! The WoW Screenshots!!

This post could also be called Fast Mounts are Fast. Seriously getting Chipple her epic flying mount made me question how I could stand to have flown anywhere before. Not that the regular flying mount you can get at level 70 isn't very nice, because it is extremely useful, but damn is it slow. Slower, in fact, than the epic ground mount you can get at level 60, but that 3rd dimension of movement is so worth it.

As mentioned above, and as depicted in the picture I've acquired an epic flier for Chipple. A Purple Riding Nether Ray to be exact, and I love it. Well worth the grind to get the required gold (and in the case of the Nether Ray the required reputation with the Sha'tari Skyguard). Although I did cheat a little bit, I raised a bit more than 4200 gold myself, and Dan was nice enough to loan me the final 1000 gold. Thank you Dan. Thank you Dan. And did I mention thank you Dan.

Aside from the loan, the other thing that really helped me earn the required gold for the epic flier was patch 2.4. This patch raised the number of daily quests that a character can do per day from 10 to 25 (and also introduced the Isle of Quel'Danas and all the new daily quests found there), which made making money in WoW significantly easier for a level 70 character (given enough play time to actually complete these quests).

With this latest WoW accomplishment achieved, I promptly set to work rebuilding my gold reserves and purchased an epic ground mount for my hunter Steinthror. So Dan is going to have to wait for at least one more day before I start building up the money to pay him back, but since he knows where I live I doubt he's too terribly worried.

Of course now I need a new WoW goal. Well I have to pay Dan back, but that's not going to take very long. It might be time to start giving some of my alts a little love, as they did get neglected a bit while I was grinding gold to pay for my flier. And there are still plenty of factions left Chipple needs to improve her reputation with. I guess my immediate goals will probably be get her exalted with the Scryers , and raise her enchanting up to 375 (currently sitting at 335).

On a WoW related note, I recently (a month or so ago) got around to founding the vanity guild I'd been wanting to since shortly after I started playing WoW. So I leave you with a picture of Raffles, Guildmaster of <Gentleman Thief>. Anyone requiring or desiring an explanation can go here.

Sadly Familiar Behavior

Before I delve into my latest tale of my sadly predictable behavior regarding sleep, let me set the stage a bit with some background information. The weekend of Easter (I forget if it was Saturday, Sunday, or Monday) I on Chipple crafted my final piece of the Shadow's Embrace set; which was the goal I’d been focusing all of Chipple’s attention on in WoW for more than one month. Last Tuesday patch 2.4 went live. When I got home from work, I logged onto WoW, got the patch, and like basically everybody else found almost all of my mods no longer worked. I sat in front of my computer thinking to myself, “I really don’t have anything I’m trying to do with Chipple right at this second, and I don’t want to play without my mods, and I really don’t want to spend the time to update them right now.” So I logged out of WoW, and started watching some anime.

I started off with a few episodes of Pretty Cure Max Heart, but eventually moved on to starting two new series: Rental Magica, and KimiKiss ~ Pure Rouge. Rental Magica is about the escapades of a company called Astral that rents out magicians and other magically inclined individuals to people who require some supernatural assistance. As you can probably guess from the name KimiKiss is a romance anime based on a dating simulation game. After work on Wednesday I didn’t log into WoW at all instead I continued watching mostly Rental Magica, and some KimiKiss. On Thursday I finally updated my mods, and spent some time playing around on WoW. I also finished off the final four episodes of Rental Magica. This brings us to Friday my last morning shift before having the weekend off.

A brief aside here. I’m sure I’ve said this before, or at least I’ve described my sleeping habits enough that this probably won’t surprise anybody, but I stay up later than I should when I work 6:30am - 3pm shifts. Since I get up around 5:15am I should really be going to bed at 9pm, but generally I’m up until midnight. I mention this mainly to illustrate why it isn’t terribly shocking that very nearly the first thing I did upon getting home Friday was fall asleep on my couch. I woke up somewhere in the neighborhood of 8pm, and logged onto WoW and played until a bit after Midnight. I then started watching KimiKiss. I watched four or five episodes and was through 13 of the 24 episodes. It was now somewhere around 3am I did this odd combination of going to bed, but also started burning files onto DVDs. Basically I’d start a DVD burning, and go lie down on my couch where I’d fall lightly asleep, but wake up when I heard my DVD burner open up. I’d then start another disk and repeat the process. I think I was on my third disk when I finally stayed asleep through the burner opening up.

I woke up at 10:28am. I remember this because I looked at my clock, and my first thought was, “well I guess I can’t get breakfast at McDonald's today.” I’m not really sure why that was my first thought, I’ve probably eaten breakfast at McDonald's five time in the last year, so it’s not like this is something I do on a regular basis. I goofed around on an alt on WoW until about noon, got myself some lunch, and burned a few more things onto DVDs.

At about 2:40pm I left to goto Matt’s for his BESM campaign. The actual gaming portion of the evening got started sometime after 6pm. It was a really good session (not that any of them have been bad sessions, I’ve enjoyed all of them, but this one was especially fun); Dan, Paul, and I each had one really awesome idea during the course of the evening. Another aside here this time to talk about the BESM campaign. In Matt’s chaos campaign we’ve dubbed the current world we’re running around in the anime world, and we’ve picked up a magical girl NPC (which is fitting since we got a cyber-enhanced troll NPC from the Shadowrun world, and a halfling cleric NPC from the D&D world). Matt has also tossed in a few references to my last BESM campaign. Namely Obo, and the bag of never ending homework.

Originally Obo was the main character of the comic The Path, which is the comic whose setting I used for my last BESM campaign (and promptly advanced the timeline 150 years, and altered the tone well beyond anything recognizable in the original comic). My Obo started out as a Buddha like figure, but evolved into a GM device for inserting comic relief, plot hooks, and useful bits of information. Every time the PCs encountered him he was in a different guise - the head of a monastery once, a cashier another time, etc.. He was also responsible for giving Matt’s character the bag of never ending homework. Matt’s character was a high school student, and it only seemed fitting that he should have to continue his studies while running around a fantasy world collecting magical artifacts. The name is a bit of a misnomer as the bag didn’t create an endless supply of homework, but was really just an inter-dimensional link between where ever Matt’s character was at, and his school back on “earth.” Obo arranged for his class work and homework to be delivered through it, and returned to the school once Matt’s character placed the completed work back in the bag. Matt must have liked the idea, as he inflicted it upon the magical girl NPC.

The basic details of the current plot in Matt’s campaign would be our group of inter-dimensional travelers had stumbled across something utterly ancient, and alien beyond human understating buried in Antarctica on the anime world (from Matt’s descriptions of it I keep picturing a huge robotic looking thing - 20 stories tall if I recall correctly, but the theme and tone he is clearly, and successfully, portraying is Lovecraftian in nature). We were trying to get it dug out of the ice, without waking it up, and moved to the nearby inter-dimensional portal leading to its realm.

It woke up. One truly epic battle ensued. We were succeeding in destroying it, but it became apparent to us that upon its destruction it would explode with the force of, as Matt phrased it, a few nuclear bombs. Dan’s wizard had the idea to create some Portal style portals between the about to explode alien monstrosity and the inter-dimensional portal leading to its realm. So we got it out of the anime world before it exploded, but we were unable to get the inter-dimensional portal closed before the explosion happened. Fortunately we have a sentient NPC ship capable of traveling between the dimensions (we call it Bob) we could hide in, unfortunately we knew from prior experience with these things, they can hurt Bob. This is where Paul’s great idea came in. One of the magical items we picked up in the D&D world was Lyre of Building. One of the neat uses of a Lyre of Building is protecting a structure from damaging effects including such powerful effects as disintegration. Paul’s character used the Lyre of Building to reinforce Bob before the massive explosion. So instead of being thrown through inter-dimensional space-time in a heavily damaged, and unconscious Bob, we got thrown through inter-dimensional space-time in basically unharmed Bob (his sensors were fried, but easily repaired). However we were still lost, and adrift somewhere in the multiuniverse. This is where my idea came in, as I realized our magical girl’s bag of never ending homework was linked to the world we had just been blown off of. With Bob’s sensors repaired it was an easy task to follow that link back to where we started. That is were we ended the session.

Now back to my tale.

We finished up with gaming around 11pm, and proceeded to play some Super Smash Bros. Brawl until after midnight. Paul and Matt continued on after that, I played around on the Internet. Paul and I left Matt’s well after 4am (somewhere around 4:20am I think). I arrived back at my house just a few minutes after 5am. I thought to myself hey since I was thinking about breakfast at McDonald's when I woke up, I’ll stay up until 7am and actually eat breakfast there today. So I start watching KimiKiss again. I didn't just stay up until 7am, I finish the series all 11 remaining episodes. It was now around 9:30am so I went to eat my breakfast at McDonald's. And I noticed that Across the Universe was available to rent at the Redbox there. I got home a bit after 10am, and I watched Across the Universe (really, really good by the way). Once that was over it was somewhere between 12:15pm and 12:30pm and I was still feeling like watching a movie, so I put in Hott Fuzz (if you haven’t watched that, you should really put it atop your “to do” list).

Now it was roughly 3pm Sunday, and I’d been awake since 10:28am Saturday. Did I go to sleep? Nope I started watching another new anime called Kekkaishi. This is a 52 episode shōnen action series with a supernatural theme. I continued to watch it until I fell asleep sometime after 6:30pm. I woke up at about 1am. Did I go back to bed? No that would be reasonable, and intelligent, I started watching Kekkaishi again. I did this until about 8:30am - 9am Monday morning (at some point in there I did pause to watch the movie Smokin' Aces which I found to be kinda meh) when I decide that since I needed to take the movie back to the Redbox at McDonald's I might as well eat breakfast there again. I came back from breakfast and again started in on Kekkaishi. I continued this until about 1pm when I needed to get ready for work. All in all I watched the first 35 episodes of Kekkaishi (basically 14.5 hours of anime).

That is my tale of foolish behavior. A few general notes on anime. In addition to those I’ve mentioned above, I’ve finished Oh! Edo Rocket, Clannad, and Spice and Wolf. I loved all three, and with any luck I’ll have some more to say about them soon. But now I’m going to see if I cannot finish off the final episode of Rosario + Vampire before I have to leave for work today.

I took a mighty tumble

My knees hurt today. Not as much as I was afraid they were going to hurt yesterday, but they still hurt. The reason they hurt, as the title of this post suggests, is because I took a mighty tumble yesterday. Picture yourself walking out my front door, you’ll see in front of you the street on which I live, and down and to your right is a sidewalk. In one direction this sidewalk heads out to the public sidewalk running along my street, and in the other direction it runs along the side of my house to the steps leading to my side door. At the corner where the front of my house meets this little sidewalk is a relatively low spot in my yard. So this last weekend and early this week when the temperature was above freezing it was a natural place for the water from the melting snow to collect. The temperature has since dipped back below freezing, and this pool of water has become a patch of ice. A fact I failed to take into account as I was walking to my car on my way to work yesterday morning.

I was at the point where I wasn’t going to be late for work, as long as I did nothing but walk briskly to my car, and drive straight to work without any stops or detours. When I hit the ice at the corner of my house my feet slipped out from under me, and I feel forward. My knees took the brunt of the impact, followed pretty closely by my hands, and finally the rest of me. I am somewhat amazed that when I landed on my knees I slide forward into what I can only assume was the one exposed bit of dirt and grass in my entire town resulting in dirt and grass stains on my pants. My first reaction was to roll over onto my back and think, “ouch.” The second thing I did was check to see if I could bend my knees without an unreasonable amount of pain - I could. Then I noticed the stains on my pants at which point I knew I was going to be late for work - I was. So I got back up, hobbled my way back inside, changed my pants, and made attempt number two at walking to my car. This time I avoided the ice, and arrived at my car without further incident.

This was not the mightiest tumble I’ve ever taken. A few years back I slipped on some ice and sprained my ankle. Now that really hurt. While that fall would be my mightiest tumble, it certainly isn’t the worst fall in my immediate family. That distinction goes to one of my younger brothers, the middle child, for those who’ve heard the story this would be the one whose butt I shot with an arrow. However that is a story for another time. Anyway again a few years ago (although not as far back as my ankle) this brother of mine managed to fall off a second story landing outside of an apartment above one of the bars in my hometown (yes alcohol was a contributing factor). That he a) isn’t dead, and b) has proved to be basically physically unaltered I’m going to chalk up to a miracle. He certainly did sustain some serious injuries, was hospitalized, and it is only years later that I can look back on this and find it kind of funny (rest assured I found no humor in it at the time).

Physical injuries both minor and major aside, I was considering WoW a bit this last week and I realized that for the first time I have a main character. This is the first time in a MMORPG that I can point to a single character and say this is who I’m focusing the majority of my attention on. I cannot say that about any of my characters in City of Heroes/Villains, and prior to Chipple hitting level 70 I couldn’t say that about any of my characters in WoW. I've certainly had characters I spent more time with, but I never before in my mind differentiated between Chipple, my warlock Cominius, and my hunter Steinthror. In honor of her main character status I give you a picture of her on her flying mount (as well as pictures of her on her other land mounts).

I find this funny because Chipple was never intended to be a permanent character much less a main. Chipple was created during the fairly brief period of time after I signed up for the 10 day free trial, but before I decided that I was indeed going to buy this game (two or maybe three days later). I wanted to try out a mage, and I wanted to try grouping with a friend (which my time on City of Heroes had taught was much more fun than soloing). I had mentioned to Dan and Paul that I was giving the WoW trial a go (at a BESM gaming session) and I still remember they both looked at me, Paul looked over at Dan, and then looked back at me and said, “he’s got better guild connections.” At some point around this same time Dan also sent me an e-mail mentioning that he’d just started a warrior alt who I would be able to quickly catch up to in level.

So I rolled a mage on Dark Iron, but since I was still in the, “oh I’m only going to use the free trial, I’m not going to buy this game phase” I wasn’t thinking terribly seriously about naming this character. I hadn’t tried rolling a female toon yet, I wasn’t impressed with any of the names being generated randomly, and then I thought of Chipple. I will only say it is a personal reference that amuses me greatly. As a brief aside I just went and googled Chipple and on the very first page of results I learned that there was a professional baseball player named Walter Chipple whose entire career spanned 18 games for the Washington Senators in 1945. I also learned that chipple is a sexual slang for something you can go look up yourself if you really want to know. Both of those facts amused me, neither is what Chipple is referencing. Now as to why I didn’t delete Chipple and reroll a mage named Cominius (the name I’ve been using for most online activities ever since I played that character in college) I have to blame Dan. Right around the time I was hitting level ten, he mailed Chipple four netherweave bags. I hadn’t yet gotten around to rolling another character on Dark Iron, and I wasn’t really familiar with the implications of the bind of equip mechanic as yet. And since having lots of bag space is just so damn convenient for a new character I never replaced Chipple, and instead used Cominius as the name of my warlock.

That is enough for today. Hopefully sometime this weekend I’ll post my thoughts on Oh! Edo Rocket, and Lucky Star both of which I’ve finished off, and both of which I enjoyed greatly. I’ve also received move three from Erik, so I need to get him my response and I should toss the moves up here for everyone’s personal kibitzing pleasure. I leave you with one final picture of Chipple - an oldie of her in her mid 40s on her original land mount. Also woot for post 80.

I've got the sound, but do I have the fury?

I feel like there are about a hundred different things I'd like to talk about, and no way that I'm going to fit them all in. So let me mention a few things in passing with the (probably in vain) idea of addressing at least some of them in more detail in a later post (it could actually happen).

I finished off Sky Girls last week. I found it to be a solid, enjoyable mecha series. While nothing about it really grabbed me, made me want to run out, wrestle people to the ground, and shout "WATCH THIS" at them, I still have no problem encouraging people to give it a try. "Refreshingly straightforward" probably sums up my thoughts on Sky Girls more than anything else. There are no genre altering plot twists, no surprise villains, no secret organizations pulling the strings - just enjoyable mecha action. The fact these mecha were piloted by cute girls instead of angst-filed boys probably didn't hurt my opinion of it either.

I'm through the first story arc of Spice and Wolf. This series certainly started off slowly, but as the first arc progressed things did pick up nicely. Craft and Horo are very interesting characters in their own right, and watching their relationship develop has been quite enjoyable. My impression of Craft is he's a skilled merchant who is just a touch too cautious for his own good, but his dealings with Horo seem to be putting just the right amount of daring in him. As for Horo, she is a wonderful character. For a wolf spirit/harvest deity she is surprisingly human - very wise yes but also very fallible, confident and powerful but also emotionally vulnerable and even painfully lonely.

This is not your typical fantasy story, as stated Craft is not some stock fantasy archetype like a warrior, but rather a simple merchant; his big dream is to amass enough money to buy a shop in a city so he can settle down and stop being a traveling peddler. Outside of Horo's existence magic has been nowhere to be found, and even with Horo the flashiest bit of magic we've seen is her transformation into her wolf form - and that has only happened twice or perhaps more accurately once and a half since the first time we only got to see Craft's reaction to the transformation (it scared him witless). The main story arc revolves around economics with nobles, kingdoms, and rival merchant houses plotting and scheming to make money off a pending alteration to the purity of one kingdom's silver coins. For an anime the depiction of the economics gets pretty in depth maybe not quite "Moby-Dick's descriptions of 19th Century whaling" level in depth, but still I feel at times like I should be taking notes.

Oh what else: I've started in on Oh! Edo Rocket and it is ridiculously fun. When I try and think of a way to describe it I keep coming back to the fact it reminds me of Excel Saga, but only coherent with an actual plot. I'm not entirely happy with that comparison as I am at best ambivalent towards Excel Saga, while I am loving Oh! Edo Rocket. I would have to say that in every way that being silly is a good thing - Oh! Edo Rocket is just as silly as Excel Saga, and in every way that I found being silly a detriment to Excel Saga - Oh! Edo Rocket is actually logical and serious. The setting is Edo in 1842 (as the anime is quick to tell you Edo in 1842 was in the midst of numerous onerous restrictions on things deemed frivolous - like say fireworks), and the basic premise is a woman asks a fireworks maker to make some fireworks capable of reaching the moon for her. Anyone familiar with the anime will understand the magnitude of the understatement I’m about to engage in - there is more going on in this anime than I’ve just mentioned. I doubt I could do it justice were I to try and describe everything going on there, I think this is clearly a case of experiencing it for oneself as being the best policy.

I’m still watching Rosario+Vampire, I’m not sure I could even explain why. I know I haven’t made it through an episode yet where I haven’t thought, “now that is an excessive amount of fan service.” For some reason it actually makes me think of History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi. There are some similarities: Kenichi is the last anime I watched to feature a truly noteworthy amount of fan service (although nowhere near the level of Rosario+Vampire), many of the defeated foes in both go on to become staunch allies of the main characters, the female leads in both could kick the male leads’ collective asses, and while I wouldn’t really call Kenichi a harem anime the main character does pick up more than one female admirer over the course of the series. Where Kenichi differs from Rosario+Vampire (and most harem anime/manga I’m familiar with) is Kenichi (the character) actual grows and becomes more competent and mature (and since it is a martial arts comedy I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention stronger and more skilled). I doubt Tsukune is going to be much different at the end of Rosario+Vampire from how he was at the beginning.

Clannad and Shion no Ou both continue to be among my favorite anime I’m watching. I’ve been periodically pestering Dan to start watching Shion no Ou so I’d have somebody to talk about it with. Dan if you are reading this be warned I’m going to add Oh! Edo Rocket, and Spice and Wolf to the list of things I periodically pester you to start watching. I continue to make my way through Pretty Cure Max Heart, and I have only a few episodes left of Lucky Star. Sadly I haven’t gotten back to Dennou Coil yet. On that front I think it is actually an attempt by me to be responsible. I have a strong feeling that once I start watching it again I won’t stop until I’ve finished it, and because I’m only through 14 of the 26 episodes I’ve been hesitant to start watching it again since I haven’t had a window were I could comfortably devote the nearly five hours it will take to finish the series off.

I could continue on about anime for awhile yet, but time for a new topic instead. Despite what it must look like given the above paragraphs, my assessment last month that I’m making a transition away from WoW towards anime may have been premature. I’m starting to get the hang of being a level 70 character with Chipple. I’ve got my flying mount (sorry still no pictures), and I’m making slow, but measurable progress towards better gear. Assuming I keep up with the necessary farming of elemental motes, I should be making myself some Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders this weekend. I still need to get Chipple into some level 70 instances, and get her keyed for Karazhan (although given my current work schedule I just don’t see myself becoming a regular raider), but the tasks before me seem slightly less daunting.

I’ve also been spending some time working on a Tauren druid named Berenek on the server Zuluhed, because that is where my friend Erik plays (I’m sure I’m not spending nearly enough time there in Erik’s estimation). Speaking of Erik, I continue to wait patiently for move number three in our latest e-mail chess match.

Matt’s BESM campaign continues to go well. He’s seems quite happy to sit back and see where we (the players) take it, and speaking for myself I’m quite happy to see where we can get it to go. In my last post I mentioned that my character Cynthia had managed to retrieve a surprising amount of data from the memory banks/brain of our apparent main foe. It turns out this info is more memories and personality and less raw data, so Cynthia threw together a small robot to attach this personality to so we’d have something to interact with while obtaining what we’d like to know. Matt has portrayed the partial copy of our foe’s memories as being a bit morose, and more than a little bitter over the loss of its magical abilities. Its complaints on the latter topic lead Cynthia to retort something to the effect of (and I mention this mainly because Matt found it amusing), “I just grabbed the information we needed, it’s not my fault you don’t keep your magic in your brain.”

My character Kell continues to survive Ellery’s Eberron campaign, although after our last session, mostly by the grace of some amazing dice rolling. D&D has long had the idea of the “natural 20," meaning you roll a 20 on a 20 sided die, as being the best thing to hope for during combat. This has been true regardless of the version of D&D you happen to be playing (and outside of a few skill systems in the pre 3.x /d20 era rolling high on a d20 in any situation has generally been a good thing). I picked a very opportune time to get one during our recent combat with a mind flayer (technically a vampiric mind flayer but whose keeping score). Had I not rolled that 20 on my grapple check, my character was about 99% likely to have his brain eaten (just a little something mind flayers like to do). Near character death experiences notwithstanding I continue to have fun with Kell.

With that I think I've touched on most things I’ve been kicking around. So it is now time for me to go knock out a few dailies and farm some motes of water.

A Mysterious Package

There is a mysterious package waiting for me at home. I found it left on my doorstep by UPS as I was leaving for work today. I had enough time that I could have opened it up, but if it proved to be something cool I wouldn't have had enough time to properly play with it. So I simply took it inside where it waits for me to return home from work to see what it is, and who sent it to me.

 My behavior of late suggests I'm shifting out of MMORPG mode and into watching anime mode. Which isn't to say I'm in any danger of ceasing to play WoW, I just seem to be spending more time watching anime than I have been in recent months. I suspect it is a result of getting Chipple to 70. It's a nice milestone, and also a good place to rest a bit before getting serious about the grind of improving her gear. 

Misumi Nagisa

As I suspected I would, I've started watching Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart. Just like it's predecessor it is good light hearted, magical girl fun. I've noticed one amusing byproduct (amusing to me anyway) of the magical girl powers the main character's possess. Allow me to illustrate. Please note picture of Misumi Nagisa to the left. As an unrelated aside the cutesy teddy bear looking thing is Mepple, most magical girls have some sort of cute companion (often a talking animal) and he is Nagisa's.

Cure Black

Now compare this to the picture of Cure Black. If you can spot what I'm getting at right away, then good for you. However I'm guessing one example isn't probably enough.










So let me move on to example number two. Next please observe the picture of Yukishiro Honoka, and then the picture of Cure White. Again as an aside the cute companion is Mipple. Honestly the cutesy companion is one of my least favorite tropes of the magical girl genre. I probably wouldn't mind Mipple and Mepple that much if they just didn't end every sentence with "mipo" and "mepo" respectively.

Yukishiro Honoka

Cure White

Some of you may be spotting what I'm talking about, but the final example should
really bring it home. In Pretty Cure Max Heart a new heroine is introduced. So please take a look at the pictures of Kūjō Hikari (to the left), and her alter ego Shiny Luminous (on the right). I believe the amusing power should now be quite apparent. If you are guessing their transformation must include the application of magical hair mousse for increased volume, then we are on the same page. Extremely silly? Yes, but it is still what I think of basically every time I watch these characters transform.

Kūjō Hikari

Shiny Luminous

Aside from pondering the hair care regiment of magical girls, I've started in on a few other anime as well. I am just over halfway through Denno Coil (sometimes written as Dennou Coil). This one is extremely engaging - interesting characters and an interesting plot. I imagine I'll be finishing it up pretty soon. I'm sure I'll have more to say about it once I've finished it. For the curious the girl in the picture is Okonogi Yūko one of the main characters from Denno Coil. The strange looking pink things are called Satchii; they are basically antivirus software that patrol the Augmented Reality environment of the city Denno Coil takes place in.

 I've also started in on Rosario + Vampire (the first four episodes). This seems like a pretty fun series. Nothing really new here; it's a harem anime. The male protagonist is a normal first year high school student who gets mistakenly enrolled in a high school for monsters, and wacky shenanigans ensue. Naturally this includes the unintentional collection of a harem of beautiful supernatural female students (thus far a vampire, succubus, and witch). This anime has more fan service (of the panty shot and other sexual eye candy variety) than anything else I've watched in awhile. That fact isn't really anything either good or bad, but was a bit jarring at first.

Let's call it 1-2 with a Walk

Suggesting the possibility of some sort of law of conservation of shipping time my SATA cables arrived a day later than the shipping estimate I was given. I'm relieved to be able to report victory in the installation of my new DVD drive, but it was far from crushing. Getting my computer to recognize the existence of my new optical drive was a chore. One would think that with three open SATA ports, one would at most only have to guess three times which port to turn on before the computer found my new hardware. Not only did my first three iterations through my computer's set up fail to get my new optical drive recognized, but for some reason my computer stopped finding the hard drive connected to the fourth SATA port. That resulted in fair amount of salty language on my part. Eventually the repeated turning of port 0 (the port my hard drive is connected to) off and back on resulted in the seemingly spontaneous return of the recognition of my hard drive. Once that problem was resolved, I turned on the remaining three ports all at the same time, and finally - for reasons I cannot explain - the existence of my new DVD drive was recognized. One final trip through the set up to turn the two unused SATA ports back off and I was good to go. For future reference my DVD burner is connected to SATA port 2.

So Tuesday night Chipple hit level 70. The process of getting her some good gear seems even more demanding and daunting than the process of leveling her to 70 was. I guess my next few steps with her will be earning enough gold to buy a flying mount, improving her reputation with the various factions, getting her keyed to the various instances, and maxing out her tailoring and enchanting skills. Once I stop being lazy I'll get a screen capture of her, and put it up. Although I'll probably at least wait until I've got my flying mount before I do that.

Going further back in time we last gamed on the 12th. It was a fun session, of course they have all been fun sessions. My character went on a date (of sorts), that was amusing. I guess after some of the situations I put Matt through in the last BESM campaign, the date was a bit of karmic justice (although it is worth noting it was self-inflicted karmic justice). Perhaps of more importance to the campaign we captured the apparent villain, not that we have a much better idea of what is going on, but we really haven't had much of a chance to question him yet. I do find, upon reflection, that I'm a bit surprised by how ruthless my character can get when confronted with opposition. All-in-all Cynthia is proving to be quite fun, and I always look forward to our next session.

A brief update from the World of Warcraft

Last night I reached another milestone of WoW geekery. This particular milestone intersected with my Sci-fi fandom, and in actuality I probably only consider this a noteworthy achievement because of that intersection. After much grinding in Zangarmarsh, a Captured Firefly dropped for Chipple. So what does this this little guy do for my mage? Like all vanity pets in WoW, it does absolutely nothing. Well it looks pretty cool, and of course the real reason I wanted it was because it's a reference to Joss Whedon's late, lamented TV series Firefly.

To illustrate the reference I direct your attention to this post's second picture, specifically to the flavor text located just below the green instructional text. If you aren't getting that reference, you aren't much of a Firefly fan. For the curious you'll note I have several other small pets happily sitting next to my Captured Firefly. I've got a Parrot Cage from my first trip into the Deadmines, my Rat Cage from Children's Week, and my Wolpertinger's Tankard from Brewfest. What can I say I like my non-combat pets.

A really long post

So lately I've been working on a D&D campaign I'm going to be running over Ventrilo for some people from the PAA forums. Since I'm always looking for feedback on my campaigns, I'm going to post the background information I've written up for it here. I'm fairly sure this will end up as one of my longest posts.

The Big Picture Stuff

Representing the basic facts commonly known, and the beliefs commonly held.

Geography

A subject the average person has only a limited grasp of beyond their local area. Still most people know that wizards and sages refer to their world as a whole as Ainwaith (long “a” in both syllables). The concept of continents is also a bit shaky for the average person, but again most know that wizards, sages, and other learned types call their landmass Tirith, or more commonly western Tirith. Most know that Tirith stretches far to the east where the wild barbarians of Kesh and other even less civilized people make their homes. Most have heard that to the west across the vast ocean lies another strange land, the exact details of which vary by who is telling the tale, but usually boil down to monsters out of your worst nightmare live there. It is widely known that far to the south beyond the Great Middle Sea lies a vast land of fire that even the mighty Vodaccian Empire dared not explore too deeply. To the north is a land of ice and home to the Thrain barbarians, although most just call them Northmen.

History

Once long ago, farther back than mortal minds can easily comprehend, before the gods decided to populate the world with its current abundance of thinking peoples, there were the four first born races: the elves, the dwarves, the giants, and the dragons. For countless ages these four races were masters of all the world, until gods brought forth the younger races (more than one dwarf has been heard to lament the passing of this golden age in a tavern after his 20th ale or so).

Naturally once the younger races showed up things started getting interesting. Most importantly the human city of Vodacce (vo - dauch - cha) was founded on an island in the Great Middle Sea just off the southern coast of Tirith. It was here that humans figured out the secrets of civilization that the elves and dwarves had been reluctant to share with them. The people of Vodacce felt quite compelled to share the glory of civilization with other the humans (and the halflings and gnomes) of western Tirith. And after about three centuries Vodacce found itself in command of a vast empire covering most of western Tirith (as well as some lands to the east, and holdings on the northern shores of the lands of fire across the Great Middle Sea).

For the next 800 years or so the people of western Tirith prospered under the Pax Vodacia until the terrible Vash Khan drove his hordes of barbarian Keshian horsemen westward from the empty plains of eastern Tirith and pillaging half of western Tirith, laying siege to, and finally sacking the city of Vodacce itself forever sundering the Vodaccian empire some four centuries ago. Most humans stop the story at this point, elves and dwarves go on to point out that the Vodaccian empire had been in decline for nearly three centuries, and in steady decline for just over one century prior to the Keshian invasion. Even then the Vodaccian empire likely would have survived and even greatly limited the Keshian damage had it not been preoccupied in a particularly nasty civil war stemming over succession to the imperial throne. They also point out it was the elves and dwarves who rallied the sundering Vodaccian provinces to limit the Keshian’s pillaging to only half of western Tirith, and and led them to eventually drive the Keshians back to eastern Tirith.

With all major claimants to the Vodaccian throne dead at the hands of the Keshian horsemen the empire broke apart into numerous successor states usually along provincial lines. Although some of the farther flung areas of the empire reverted to barbarism. The Vodaccian empire did leave behind a great network of roads, a common human language, and its fair share of ruins (the latter being of most interest to those adventurer types).

The more immediate picture stuff

Geography

The campaign will start in the Elvish Kingdom of Myhree (My - hree, like hurry but without the u). The bulk of the kingdom is found in the Shalto river valley which is mainly comprised of great forest of Lonthalas. It is ruled by King Malgalad, Elfking of the Seelie Court of Myhree, Lord of the Glittering Throng, Defender of the Forest of Lonthalas, Blessed of the Moon, Protector of the March of Adarond. Myhree is bound to the north by the mountains of Durnhold and the dwarven kingdom of the same name - at least that is its name in the common tongue. The dwarves have basically given up correcting the pronunciation, but in their tongue the kingdom and mountains are called Dernharad (DERN - ha - rad) which translates into common as rock home, and both dwarves and humans will sometimes refer to the kingdom (but never the mountains) as Rockholm. The elves call both the kingdom and the mountains Basa Ashvae (BA - sa ASCH - va), which also translates into common and rock home. Myhree is bound to the south by the Wulfspeak mountains, or in elven Warga Basalon (WAR - ga BA sa lon) which translates into common as wolves’ mountains. The denizens of these mountains are far less friendly than the elves' neighbors to the north, and are comprised mainly of various goblin tribes, and a few particularly antisocial tribes of stone giants. Myhree is bound on the west by the ocean.

Myhree’s traditional eastern border was the eastern edge of forest of Lonthalas with the lands beyond being home to scattered tribes of humans and halflings, which later became the Vodaccian province of Adarond. Since the partitioning of Adarond Myhree’s eastern border now continues northeast upstream along both sides of the Shalto river until the Kron hills (foothills of the Durnhold mountains). From this point the lands north of the Shalto belong to the dwarves of Durnhold. Myhree’s lands continue northeast long the southern banks of the Shalto as it runs the southern length of the Kron hills. At the southeastern edge of the Kron hills the Shalto turns west (well really since the Shalto runs from the east to the west it hits the Kron hills and turns to the southwest before flowing into old Myhree, but we are following the river upstream so bare with me) and marks the northern boarder of Myhree’s new territory (the Machland of Adarond). Northwest of the Shalto is the County of Adarond the Dunhold’s equivalent of Myhree’s March of Adarond. North and northeast of the Shalto the lands were only nominally under the control of the Vodaccian empire and as such after its fall they quickly reverted to wilderness with scattered independent freeholds. Far to the north are found the cruel Northmen and the land of ice they call home. There isn’t any real geographic border to Myhree’s east. The Elf kingdom lays claim to all the land within a weeks ride east by horse from the edge of the Lonthalas forest (in reality more like 10 days ride unless you feel like killing a few horses during the trip). Beyond the eastern reaches of Myhree lies wilderness - peopled by scattered tribes of different races and a few independent minded freeholds - for a good weeks travel by horse before another surviving successor state of the Vodaccian empire is found. The southern border of Myhree’s expanded territory follows the old provincial boundary and the Duchy of Sohma (a human power and obviously a successor state) lies to the south. A journey from March of Adarond’s southern border to its northern one would take about five days by horse.

History
About 380 years before the start of the campaign the Vodaccian empire broke apart for reasons described above. Aside from providing aid to their southern and eastern brethren in halting and driving out the Keshian invaders the elves and dwarves of Myhree and Dernharad didn’t pay this event too much heed. So long as humans remained reasonable trading partners, and otherwise left them alone, they were content to leave the humans alone. Had Adarond followed the example of most of the other provinces Myhree would still enjoy its original borders, and its state of pseudo insolation. However Adarond broke up into numerous fiefs composed mainly of bandits, brigands, and other petty warlords (with just enough of the local Vodaccian nobility managing to protect their own personal fiefs to provide the bandit lords ample raiding targets). This state of affairs continued on for about 50 years until a particularly successful bandit lord named Mallory changed everything. Mallory managed to take over the holdings of six other petty lords and looked like he was well on his way to reuniting Adarond when for reasons lost to history he decided to shift his focus west to the kingdom of Myhree. He sacked the village of Elengalrion (EL - en - gal - rion)- which means Evening Star in common - putting most of its nearly 800 members to the sword and burning the Lonthalas forest for ten miles in every direction.

The elves, as can be expected, were furious. Their dwarven neighbors saw this as an opportunity, while they had suffered no signal massacre to equal the horror visited upon Elengalrion, the dwarves were always more focused on trade than the elves, and fifty years of trying to move goods to the markets in the south through bandit infested lands (yes they have an ocean on the western border of their kingdom, but dwarves do not sail) had more than tried their patience. The dwarven ambassador in Myhree offered the Elf King his peoples sincere condolences for their loss, and a plan to prevent it from happening again. Dernharad and Myhree divided Adarond in half (mainly along the Shalto river) and each conquered and pacified their half. The campaign lasted about ten years, but elves and dwarves are nothing if not patient. Mallory and most other bandit lords were hauled away to Myhree proper to face the Elf King’s justice; for two generations after the annexation humans whispered among themselves that the lilies at the Elk King’s court bloomed red from the blood of the executed bandit lords (to this day the elves of Myhree consider it a great insult to be presented with a red colored flower by any other race as they feel it is akin to being called a murderer). To the northwest the dwarves handled the justice in a much more direct manor, when they bothered to accept the surrender of a defeated bandit lord, they simply found the local people he had most preyed upon and let them decide the prisoner’s fate.

The Marchland of Adarond

Margrave Landon Spellsword is the current ruler of the March, and is a controversial figure both there and back in Myhree proper as he is a half elf and the first person to command the fief who wasn’t a full blooded elf. He is the acknowledged bastard child of the previous Margrave Saranathal Mithedel (SAR - an - a - thal MITH - e - del) who abdicated the March to him in a surprise announcement about six years prior to the start of the campaign. Why he did so, and how he convinced King Malgalad to approve such an action is a topic still subject to intense speculation both by peasants and nobles alike. Strangely Saranathal left the kingdom shortly after abdicating and his current whereabouts are not common knowledge (and thus another topic ripe for wild speculation among both the peasants and nobility). Saranathal’s legitimate son Gilthalion (GIL - thal - ion), prior to Saranathal’s surprise abdication the heir apparent to the March, remains and serves Landon as his chief advisor and court wizard. As if his parentage were not source enough for controversy, the margrave - as his chosen surname indicates - was a mercenary prior his accepting his peerage.

In addition to the Margrave’s direct holdings the March is composed of 32 baronies: 14 ruled by human barons, 17 by elven barons, and 1 by a half-elf baron. Ten of the human barons can trace their reign back to the days of the Vodaccian empire. For administrative purposes most barons divide their fief up into between four and eight shires overseen by various constables, bailiffs, and reeves. The city of Dortmund (approximately 6000 residents) is the March’s capital, and only true urban area. The northern and eastern areas of the March are mainly plains broken up by the occasional woods while the southern and western areas grow increasing more hilly especially as one travels southwest towards the Wulfspeak mountains. Most streams and rivers in the March flow north and west out of those hills and into the Shalto river.

The Barony of Umbria

The campaign will start here. The barony is March’s most northeasterly territory, and its only one ruled by a half-elf. The baron, one Archer Witherwind - a former mercenary colleague of the margrave, has held the barony for the last five years. He was installed as baron after the previous lord, a human named Kanto, died without heir. While he suffered the standard reaction most half-elves get, too human for elves and too elven for humans, his rule has begun to win the people over. Kanto, and both his father and grandfather before him, had all be unremarkable barons. Not incompetent, nor corrupt, but neither were they driven, nor particularly interested in doing anything beyond maintaining the status quo. Archer has undertaken a long list of improvements to the barony’s infrastructure and financed it all out of his own pocket a move that not surprisingly has proved most popular among the residents of Umbria. Persistent rumors state that Archer suffered a grievous injury (or possibly a horrible magical malady, or terrible curse) that forced him to retire from his mercenary work. He politely changes the subject when questioned about his days as a mercenary.

Umbria’s largest population center is the village of Alesbury located near the baron’s keep alone the banks of the Shalto river. It has some five hundred residents; about 80% human. Archer’s most recent project is converting the village’s defensive outer wall from a wooden stockade to proper stone work (his words). Alesbury itself is overseen by a council of elders.

To the west and southwest of Umbria is the barony of Zephon ruled by the elven baroness Eladil Calamdel (EL - a - dil CAL - am - del). Relations between the baronies are polite, but formal. Eladil has been baroness in Zephon since before Archer’s last three predecessors ruled Umbria and it is a widely known secret that she exerted considerable influence over Kanto. Acher seems unlikely to allow Eladil’s opinions to hold as much sway in Umbria, although all of her public statements to date have been extremely generous towards Archer a few have even come remarkably close to criticizing the rule of Kanto.

To the south of Umbria is the barony of Tamsyn (TAM - zuhn) still ruled by the human family of the same name. The family Tamsyn can trace their nobility back to the vary founding of Adarond as a Vodaccian province, and boasts a history as one of the few Vodaccian noble families to be largely successful in defending their holdings and peasants from the worst of the banditry during the days after the fall of the empire. While the family was certainly grateful to Myhree for ending the threat posed by the bandits, they were never particularly receptive to the idea of elven rule over Adarond. The current baron is Ahthelrad Tamsyn (ah - thel - rad). It is common speculation that the baron is sympathetic to the aims of the Wind Dukes.

Points of Interest in and around Umbria

The Akaya Marsh
A marshland along the northern banks of the Shalto river located about a day and a half east of Alesbury (by horse). Lizardmen are known to inhabit the marsh.

Alesbury
The largest village in Umbria (around 500 people). The nearby presence of the baron’s keep makes it the defacto capital. It is located along the southern banks of the Shalto River and is generally considered to be the eastern border of Umbria (and thus Adarond).

The Blackfang tribe
A nomadic goblin tribe that has been driven south by the events to the north. They launch occasional raids into the northern and eastern baronies of Adarond.

The Daven River
A river that flows out of the Vulture Hills northwest across Umbria and into the Shalto River at Elmshire.

Davenford
A mostly human hamlet (300 people) located just northwest of the Vulture Hills along the Daven river, near the border with Tamsyn. The ford for which the hamlet is named as long since been replaced with a bridge. Davenford is a local trade way stop. Most goods from Tamsyn and points farther south pass through Davenford and either continue north to Alesbury, or northwest down the river to Elmshire. Much trade also heads back upstream from Elmshire or south from Alesbury to Davenford and then into Tamsyn and beyond.

Elmshire
An predominately halfling hamlet (about 250 people) located along the southern banks of the Shalto river where the Daven river flows into it and against the border with Zephon. Elmshire is a trade way stop. Most goods headed for Myhree go there via the Shalto river, so most trade headed west is either brought to Elmshire for shipping or arrives there from Alesbury or Davenford via river travel.

The Shalto
A major river that marks the northern border of Umbria (and much of the March of Adarond). It eventually flows into Myhree.

The Tanglewood
A very old growth forest whose southern border is not quite a days ride north of Alesbury. It is so called because the trails and paths through it seem to shift and change location. Peasants routinely declare that it is haunted. It is also known that an ogre named Thulak makes his lair in the southern Tanglewood. Strangely King Malgalad has decreed that Thulak posses no danger to Adarond and should be left alone.

The Vulture Hills
A rocky bunch of hills that mark the eastern and southern border of Umbria. So named both for their large population of vultures, and for Vulture point. The hills periodically become infested with Kobolds until an expedition is mounted by either Umbria or Tamsyn to route them out. The last one was undertaken 10 years ago by the late baron Kanto.

Vulture Point
A rocky outcropping atop the largest of the hills that comprise the Vulture Hills. It bares a striking resemblance to a vulture with wings outstretched. Some speculate it may have been carved, perhaps by the kobolds.

The Dragon Kingdom

About ten years ago Myhree, Dernharad, and other lands first started noting the rumors coming down from the far north. Whispered stories of a half-orc warlord rallying orcs, hobgoblins, barbarians, and even, in some of the more wild stories, dragons to his side. These sorts of rumors crop up from time to time, and most dismissed them as nothing more than a tavern tale. Then the first of the refugees arrived in the south. Thrain peasants fleeing their Jarldoms, displaced barbarian tribesman, scattered bands of orcs, and even whole tribes of goblins made the journey south out of the lands of ice. The tales they told confirmed much of whispered rumors of this half-orc. He had united the Yellowdeath, and Twospears hobgoblin tribes with the Severedhand orc tribe and then raided several and eventually conquered a Thrain Jarldom. His success attracted more tribes of orcs, hobgoblins, and even a few barbarians. Over the next five years his army conquered another three Jarldoms before he halted his advances, presumably to consolidate his holdings.

In the four and a half years since he stopped his conquests little more has been learned of this warlord. It is believed that his name is Garthag, of his origins nothing is known, but the most popular of recent rumors is while one of his parents was an orc, the other was clearly something a bit more demonic than a human. Shortly after his conquests halted his forces started using a battle standard depicting a two-colored, two-headed dragon: black on the right side, red on the left. It is from this that people started using the name Dragon Kingdom to describe Garthag’s holdings. Many with experience in politics and/or warcraft think Garthag must soon resume raiding, if not attempt more conquests, or risk his disparate army splintering apart.

The Wind Dukes

The lands of southwest Tirith along the shores of the Great Middle Sea were among the first acquisitions of the emerging Vodaccian Empire, and so long were they held that their people enjoyed a standard of living equal to that of the residents of the city of Vodacce itself. This area was also spared the mercies of the Keshian invaders at the fall of the Vodaccian Empire. By all rights this area should have been the wellspring for western Tirith’s recovery from the Keshian invasion; the rulers of this area, however, proved to be far more interested in pursing personal political gain. The first century after the fall saw the worst of the outright warfare between the former provinces and once they had exhausted themselves militarily their infighting became more political while all sides rebuilt their armies. Things would likely have eventually erupted into another round of free for all open warfare were it not for events in a small county.

About two hundred years ago (about 80 years after the outright warfare had ended) Kestral, Count of Avavil (Av - a - vil), was pressing his feudal master Darius, Duke of Bonham for greater autonomy. Every Avavilan count since the fall of the empire had been making similar demands to the Bonhamer dukes, but Darius, who fancied himself a skilled general, saw this annoyance as an opportunity to give his army a little experience and perhaps as a stepping stone towards some future conquest of neighboring territories. The Duchy’s army launched a surprise attack on its rebellious province, but things quickly took a surprising turn. The Duke of Bonham’s estimation in his own military prowess proved to be grossly inflated, while Kestral revealed himself to be military mind the likes of which humanity hadn’t seen since the dread Vash Khan drove his Keshian horseman to the gates of Vodacce itself some 180 years prior. Once Darius’ ill-advised assault on the County of Avavil stalled the lukewarm support his other vassals had provided his efforts quickly dried up, and without a clear numeric advantage the Duke’s forces proved to be little obstacle to the Avavilan army. Particularly impressive was Avavil’s aerial cavalry of griffon riding knights built around a small strike force of warrior mages (lead by Kestral himself who was equally skilled with sword and spell). A short year later when accepting the surrender of his former feudal lord, Kestral declared himself the Wind Duke of Bonham and Avavil.

Flush with success and leading freshly blooded troops Kestral launched a series of campaigns and carved a kingdom for himself out of the successor states in southwestern Tirith. By the time of his death, he had altered his title to Sky Marshal and oversaw a council of seven Wind Dukes; one for each of the six territories he had conquered plus his original holdings of Avavil. Kestral’s military genius is not a trait often repeated. While his successors have all proved to be quite competent in military matters, over its 200 year history the Wind Dukes have come to rely less on straight military conquest and more on advantageous alliances, carefully worded treaties, political opportunism, and economic domination to arrange for the proper circumstances for a well timed annexation as their main tool of expansion. The current Sky Marshal, Gimlyr Ramesh, commands a council of 14 Wind Dukes.

The Marchland of Adarond’s immediate neighbor to the south, the Duchy of Sohma is little more than a client state for the Wind Dukes, most in the Kingdom of Myhree think within a human generation (or perhaps two at the outside) Sohma’s newest ruler will the 15th Wind Duke. The current relations between Myhree and the Wind Dukes are polite, but decidedly neutral. It has not escaped the notice of King Malgalad that every Wind Duke emissary, ambassador, or trade delegation that passes through the March finds opportunity to discuss the benefits of Wind Duke rule with the human nobility and peasantry alike.

OMG!! ONOZ!!

WoW has made me a tool of the Devil!!

That is all. Come back in a few days for a real post. Possible topics for this post include the end of my BESM campaign (yes it really has ended), the inevitable "OVA" sequel campaign, my thoughts on Matt's "all genre-chaos campaign" (it's BESM Saturday!!!), my reaction to finally using BESM 3e (did I mention it's BESM Saturday!!!), Chipple hitting level 40 (I really need a picture of her on her horse), the anime I've been watching, and maybe even how I feel about my job these days (that last one is a pretty remote possibility).

Before I go I should mention the final Harry Potter (see below) book did not disappoint.

Insubstantial!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Cominius my Warlock has joined the ranks of Exuberance! For a small amount of context consider looking first here, and next here. In any event Exuberance is another of the Penny Arcade Alliance guilds on Dark Iron.

I really don’t have anything else to say at the moment, except I think my Voidwalker in the background makes this a pretty sweet picture. Also w00t for post 50.

Three Unrelated Topics

I’m going to go with reverse-chronological order for this post.

My main character on WoW is a mage on the Dark Iron server named Chipple. She is a member of a guild called the Fancy Lads. The Fancy Lads is one of twelve guilds that comprise the Penny Arcade Alliance; which for those who don’t know is a group of guilds made up of Penny Arcade fans and was originally founded by Penny Arcade co-creator Mike Krahulik. Now I have on any number of occasions been quite happy to have Chipple a member of the Fancy Lads as its members have proved to be both friendly and helpful, but tonight (technically yesterday since it is now after midnight) was the first time I really, really appreciated Chipple being a part of the PAA as a whole.

I was running Chipple around a zone called the Thousand Needles working on some quests when a level 70 orc hunter happened by and killed Chipple in one shot. I panned my camera around to see if I could get a look at what just killed me, and got to witness a level 70 night elf rogue (unguilded and I never did make note of his name) give this hunter a little payback. Happy with the outcome I released my spirit and ran my ghost back from the graveyard to my corpse so I could resurrect and continue on with my quests. Sadly upon reaching my corpse I found the orc hunter wasn’t alone, he had been joined by another orc hunter, a tauren druid, and a forsaken warrior. The helpful night elf rogue was already dead, and these three horde were battling it out with two level 70 members of the PAA guild Kung Foo Roostaz (a gnome rogue and a human mage). With three to two odds the horde prevailed, but then they didn’t leave the area, and with the resurrection of the original orc hunter outnumbered the two KFR members two to one; thus when any of us tried to resurrect the results were predictable - we died. This continued on for around five minutes before the horde finally mounted up and rode off, after waiting a bit longer to make sure they were gone I and the two KFRs resurrected and started the process of healing and reapplying useful buffs. Unfortunately the horde leaving was only a ruse and as they came sweeping back in Chipple was quickly killed, and outnumbered and not fully healed my two PAA companions soon followed suit.

Once again the these four horde camped the area making resurrecting pretty pointless. During this time a few other alliance players (with levels lower than Chipple’s) had the misfortune to wander into the area and found themselves dead and corpse camped right along with the rest of us. Well a call went out to the PAA as a whole regarding our plight and a raid group of 10 or so PAAers was put together (most of whom were level 70, Chipple being one of I think 2 or 3 characters who weren’t). Once enough of the raid group arrived to even out the number of level 70s on both sides we launched our counter attack and emerged most victorious. Granted Chipple and the handful of characters in their 30s in the raid group were pretty much only useful as a distraction, but every attack one of the horde spent killing one of us was an attack not being directed against one of the alliance characters that could actually hurt them. With the horde all dead, and the remainder of the raid group was summoned courtesy of a PAA warlock, we settled down for the revenge portion of the evening. For the 15 - 25 minutes worth of camping they inflicted upon Chipple and the two members of the KFR, we (well not so much Chipple, but I hung around to enjoy the show and act a decoy) returned the favor about two to three fold spending somewhere around 30 - 50 minutes camping them in return as well as the two or three other level 70 horde who showed up to try and help them. It was very therapeutic, although I did feel bad for the three or so low level horde players (levels ranging from 25-37) who had the bad luck of wandering into the area while all this was going on (that I felt bad for our raid group killing them is further proof that I probably shouldn’t be on a PvP server).

Moving on to topic number two. I went and watched the Transformers movie tonight (again technically yesterday). Seriously what a ridiculous movie, but I mean that in a very good way. I wouldn’t waste time thinking about the plot, while the basics are quite easy to understand, there are some holes big enough to drive Optimus Prime through. However this movie was just too damn much fun for that to matter at all. I started laughing pretty quickly once the movie commenced, and didn’t really stop while it was playing, and continued to laugh about the movie my entire walk home. I know it is cliché to say you were on the edge of your set, but I quite literally found myself perched there on more then one occasion during the movie.

When I first heard about the Transformers movie, I refused to get excited about it. I mean a live action adaptation of the cartoon that existed solely to sell the toys (I knew that fact even as a child watching those cartoons, but that hardly stopped me from loving them), how could that movie be anything but awful? Then I read some reviews for it and they were surprisingly good, and then a few friends went to see it and came back saying it was a pretty good movie, so I started to get a little excited about it. I have to say Transformers is as about as good as you could ever hope to get from a movie based on an 1980s cartoon; which amazingly enough turns out to be a remarkable fun movie. Who knew?

Finally I should say a few things about last Saturday. It was a very fun time, it certainly wasn’t what I expected, as the only role playing that took place the entire evening lasted from 11:30pm until midnight. The vast majority of our time was spent playing the Order of the Stick Adventure Game (probably from about 5:30pm - 10pm). The rest of the time was spent actually working on characters for the anything goes/chaos campaign Matt has been talking about running for something like 2+ years.

For your consideration I leave you with two pictures one is another screen shot of Chipple, the other is a picture of the actor Sarah Chalke who plays Dr. Elliot Reid on Scrubs. I do this because I think Chipple looks a bit like her.