Month: May 2004

Well, let’s see… Saturday I took Lyon and Wolf over to Sonic for breakfast.

Aryntha and Rai got stuck in traffic on I-225 and had to brave the wilds of southern Aurora without Aryntha’s GPS. It was also raining pretty good which always serves to make Denver folks freak out. See, rain in Denver is sort of like snow in Miami and people in general seem to find the change to be so completely baffling that they begin to do some extremely stupid things. Anyways they didn’t arrive till about 3pm.

Once Aryntha and Rai made it to the house it was determined that Lyon and Wolf were going to go get sodas so I took Aryntha and Rai to get some grub over at Sams #3.

We got back and attempted some gaming till about midnight though all manner of odd interruptions supplied by Kaitlin and her friend who was spending the night… It all culminated with Aryntha being the victim of a full on mooning by the afore mentioned teen… She’ll literally do anything to remain the center of attention.

So, with Kaitlin being “in da house” all night we didn’t get a lot done, but I’ll write up the paragraph or two over the next few days.

Sunday Aryntha, Rai, and I went north of Denver to get some photos of the AT&T Long Lines towers at Greeley and Timnath. Yet more amazing scenery:

On the way back south on I-25 we decided to get some non-blizzard photos of the Longmont LCXR facility and as we took photos on the side of the road we were approached by a fellow who said he ran out of gas on his way to Fort Collins from Boulder… We piled him into the Toyota and drove him the ten miles or so to get gas and back to his truck which eventually restarted and he was on his way.

Score another karma point for us.

We headed back to Aryntha and Rai’s place by way of BestBuy so that Aryntha could early-adopt a dual layer Sony DVD burner, and a side trip by “Noodles” which is a pretty keen, if extremely “California”, place to have dinner.

After that I called Larry to see if today, Monday, was really a holiday for me and as he’d forgotten all about it and scheduled an appraiser, it wasn’t.

So I tooled up the mountain, though the blizzard-like conditions of the area between Berthoud and Vail passes, and here to good ol Chateau D’Isaster.

The appraiser should be here in another 30-60 minutes so I suppose I should get everything together.

Have a good day out there folks!

Ian Anderson – A Raft Of Penguins

I got down to Denver at about 3:30 and stopped in at Dane’s place to discuss store things briefly and to hear his latest compositions, which are pretty good.

I then caught up with Lyon and Wolf at about 5:30 and took them over to a local pizza establishment called “Beau Jo’s Pizza” which serves pizza by the pound… Seriously. They don’t measure their pizzas by inches, it’s by pounds.

We left there and returned here to the house briefly so that Lyon could pick up his BestBuy card as he needed a few things there, and we headed over to BestBuy. While we were there I looked over the multi-function printers as I need a scanner/printer pretty bad for art-things but I didn’t see anything I really liked. So I picked up a PS2 game for the family here called Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy which is a real riot to watch Lyon play as he’s into puzzles and the game is all about puzzles. What is really cool about the game, besides being really well done, is that it’s $10 at BestBuy right now.

We went from BestBuy over to the “Cold Stone Creamery” so I could get everyone desert after walking off the pizza. If you haven’t been to Cold Stone yet, you should. It’s all hand made, hand mixed, and built to your order… This isn’t some “31 flavors” establishment as you can get just about anything you could possibly want, created by a real human.

From there we returned once again to Lyon and Wolf’s house where Lyon and I watched some highlights from the “Return of the King” then I watched him wrestle with ancient egypt on the PS2 till about 12:30.

And that’s about it for yesterday.

Who knows what will happen today. 🙂

Phil Collins – Wake up Call

I’ll be on my way down to Denver here in a few hours. I’ve got some things to finish work-wise as well as my laundry, which means I should get on the road around noon/1pm.

I like road trips, especially here in the mountains. I like them even more in the off season where there aren’t 1×10^32 people trying to either get here, or get away from here all at the same time.

I’ll stop by and pick up another half pound of Elk jerky for Lyon on my way down. It’s good stuff. 🙂

I’ve been too busy this week to do much in the way of writing for Wolf’s game, so she’s on her own this time. Which is ok.

I might stop by Aryntha and Rai’s place today and see if we can do some phone work then head over to Wolf and Lyon’s place tonight or tomorrow before game. I have to be back here Monday morning to get started on the photography for the inventory. Larry will be setting up and pricing his 300 piece watch collection this weekend and I’ll get it on the ‘net by Wednesday… If you’re looking for a good deal on a Rolex, Accutron, Bulova, or other collector’s watch, check out the web site when I get it done.

Well, back to work…

The Moody Blues – Dear Diary

The next morning I awake to the sounds of hooves as the centaurs arrive in our camp. The centaurs themselves are large beings having the lower bodies of horses wed to the torso, head and arms of a humanoid of appropriate size. They seem to come in every color one would normally associate with a horse, fur and hair wise, and the skin of their upper parts range from pale white to black. They all have long manes that run the lengths of their human torso and range from brush-cut to ground sweeping in length, which also tends to be reflected in their tail length as well. The other distinguishing feature of a centaur is that perched atop their head is a pair of very equine ears that twist and turn to catch sounds around them.

The small female we had seen yesterday is today flanked by six gargantuan males all carrying halberds. They enter the camp as Ta’Resh and Silthan, who were on watch, rouse the rest of the party. Not thinking of my condition I grab hold of one of the wooden sides to the wagon and vault over, landing neatly on my feet then fishing out the cloak I had on last night.

Then I realize I just did that.

While the centaur lady addresses Ta’Resh I look quite the fool as I first stand on one foot, then the other, reveling in the fact that I’m not being pitched onto my horn for doing so.

We are eventually allowed to not only pass though the forest of the centaurs, but we have been invited to meet with them to discuss the events of the “greater world” as they term it. We come to find out that we have been deemed non-threatening as they figure if we were going to attack them, we would have or if we were going to tell anyone we’d found them, we would have.

I still elect to walk with the staff Ta’Resh gave me as we proceed though the forest towards the village these people have built here. The staff gives me a decided sage-like appearance that I find useful right now, as with my borrowed cloak, long white mane and beard, and gnarled staff I’m easily dismissed as an elderly member of whatever my race is.

I find during our trek that my stride has a lot of spring to it. The length of the bones and the positions of my joints seem to be designed for sprinting… Not that I can really experiment with this right now as I try to remain hunched and elderly. For should things go bad suddenly, any surprise we might have could be deciding.

We reach the village after about an hour’s walk. It’s really quite an amazing affair with low, flat buildings that are mostly poles and roofs. A few of the larger hall-like buildings have complete walls on three sides and large leather flaps coming down over the fourth. I figure these people probably don’t need much in the way of shelter with the temperate climate of this forest and their being of an obviously hardy nature.

As we enter the village outright I note that the roads are all smoothed dirt, raised in the center and sloping to banked runoffs at either side to prevent the roads from turning completely muddy. I also see a blacksmith, a huge draft-horse sized example of the species, shoeing another of his fellows while the customer looks over a manuscript at our procession. The forge is of an amazing design wherein water is pumped up to the top of the chimney then run down the insides of it on angled steel plates. The resulting steam captures the coal smoke while pressurizing the smoke stack and allowing the remaining steam and smoke to be exhausted into the waters of a nearby stream… There would be no finding this village by its telltale smoke plumes.

As I quickly forget my act and look about me at the wonder of this little village, I notice a waterwheel-powered sawmill that uses the slow, yet steady power of the river to lift a huge stone up a rather large scaffold. Then the stone is released to provide more power for a shorter period to make the mill more efficient. Across the stream, and sharing the same water wheel shaft, a regular looking grain mill operates.

The houses are of the same single floor wooden construction consisting of a low wooden wall set into the earth then raised about two feet and polls supporting a thatched roof. I have to assume the low wall keeps water from running though the living room. All of the floors are packed earth and it appears that there are leather ‘walls’ rolled up for use in inclement weather. Each building has a central brick fireplace that uses a similar system to the blacksmith’s forge to prevent them from making pillars of wood smoke that would be easily seen.

As I walk along, trying to see everything all at once, I bump into the back of Ta’Resh who is doing similar. “They don’t seem to be savages at least.” He rumbles.

I shake my head, “No, no they don’t.”

We approach one of the meeting halls and the leather flaps are drawn aside to allow us entry. The female centaur that has been leading us makes a great show of tapping her hooves on a low board to knock any loose dirt from them before entering, so we do the same and she smiles and nods, and proceeds us inside.

Inside the building the walls are painted in a fairly iconic representation of what appears to be a great battle with many beasts and a flight from a demonic image. The images swirl and blend together and it is difficult to make out much more.

Three centaurs lay on woolen rugs woven into strange geometric patterns at the far end of the building: A male and two females, one whom we’ve been walking with, and we are beckoned to approach and are seated on similar rugs.

The large male nods to us and as Ta’Resh seems to be the leader of our little band, the centaur addresses him. “So friends, what brings you to our forest? I will apologize for any treatment you had while we determined your intentions… We cannot be to sure of anyone lest we end up the slaves we once were.”

Ta’resh rumbles in his odd accent, “No harm done. I am Ta’Resh and these good people travel with me to the northwest. We seek the castle at Valendara and to return Tatianna to her home. She is under a curse and we also seek to lift it from her if possible.”

The centaur stallion tilts his head and his ears perk, “A curse you say? Well now, that is interesting. My name is Morgan, the elected leader of my people and to my right is Melissa, my wife whom you’ve met, and to my left is Karine, our daughter.”

We all introduce ourselves and get down to the nitty gritty of story swapping over a dinner of breads and cheeses, and a fine red wine. We tell Morgan about the things we’ve seen on the way here and his interest seemed to be very intent on our descriptions of the Plain of Despair and especially keen on my travels across it.

After recounting, with as much detail as I could stomach, my seven day journey across the Plain of Despair, Morgan elects to tell us of how his people came to be in this place and in hiding…

“Some thirty years ago now our people were created by a mage from what he figured were the best parts of the peoples in the villages surrounding his tower and the horses they used in their day-to-day lives. Rather than having to work with the animals wouldn’t it be easier if the two were one? In his ideal we would have the brain and hands of a man with the strength and speed of a horse. So after hundreds of years of research he discovered the magics of life itself, the ability to create and alter life at a whim, and thus we were created.”

At Morgan’s mention of thirty years I look over at Ta’resh in confusion… Morgan seems to speak og the Mage ware as recent history, not the ancient rumors we had heard to this point.

Morgan stops for a moment and takes a long drink from a wine cup, then continues. “The mage sent out summons for a carnival of sorts where there would be tests of strength and cunning, and a running of the animals for prizes and notoriety. The peoples from the villages around the tower arrived in droves and the atmosphere was one of happiness as the grounds around the tower filled with both man and beast.”

“For three days the contests were held and the races run, and on the eve of the third day the winners were called into the tower to meet with the mage to receive their winnings and commendations. Several hours passed as a great storm cloud gathered above the tower and the assembled masses that were hastily pitching tents and pavilions for the weather.”

“That evening a strange malaise spread though the encamped peoples; a sort of paralysis that stopped folk in their tracks and crumpled them wherever they happened to be. Some fled and managed to get clear of the spell which the mage had cast, while the rest were victims of its terrible power.”

“No one is exactly sure what happened next, but the following morning the gathered peoples who were struck by the spell awoke as you see us today; a creation of dark magics and a twisted will. For twenty years our parents worked in servitude to the mage; tending his fields, hunting the beasts of the wood and supplying the tower with food, working the mines and quarries, and transporting the stones and fuel to build a new, larger tower on the same grounds as the first.”

Morgan takes another long drink before continuing. “While they were lashed to the heavy labor for the mage their thoughts flowed like mud. The magics of the mage permanently freezing their intellect to be like that of a 5 year old. They were simple beasts, only slightly better off than the horses they were wed with in that they could understand spoken commands and could slowly puzzle their way though a problem if it came between them and their appointed task. What the mage didn’t know was that he had done a far better job with his spells than he had known. They weren’t just his simple creations, they were a true race and they began to have children of their own, like them in every way… Save one.”

“We, the children I speak of, didn’t have the locks magically placed upon our minds like our parents did, and as we grew our unrest began to spread. Roughly twenty years after the creation of the Centaurs, the first of us children met in secret and formed our plans for escape.”

“During that twenty years the mage was not stagnant. He had created the mighty Minotaur from what he had learned with us. These incredibly strong warriors were trained as a military force for the mage, for not all battles are fought with magic. He also created many other halfbreeds, some of which were specifically designed for the building of his new tower.”

“We often heard rumors that the mage sought the ultimate pairing of man and animal and to these ends he had captured a member of an Elven royal house, and was searching for an elusive white beast that was steeped in magic and wore upon it’s brow a single spiraled horn.”

At this Morgan looks squarely at me, then smiles.

“We, the first children, managed to make good our escape before the other high mages took notice of the new tower and all of the creations laboring away for their master. When they saw this they became insanely jealous and desired this knowledge for themselves… There were meetings and parley, emissaries and gifts galore, but the Mage simply would not release his secrets. The others deemed to work together to pry this knowledge from his dead skull if need be and the great Mage War began.”

“The Plain of Sorrows is where this great battle happened and the powers that were released there rent the very fabric of the universe asunder… Leaving that blasted plain locked in a limbo between the physical and the ethereal. It is a place of otherworldly ghosts and tormented souls; those trapped by the war and those trapped by the effects of the war both eternally locked in a struggle for powers that died in the conflict.”

“Yes, the mages exterminated themselves and are no more; and too their vast, unimaginable power. The Army of Light, the combined forces of Humans, Dwarves and Elves, never knew what had happened to the mage for as they fought though his forces, suddenly the tower erupted in flame and a magical explosion rippled across the landscape. The few of us who were there saw the other mages arrive and shortly thereafter the explosion ripped the tower apart and sealed the fate of the Plain of Sorrows.”

Morgan takes another drink, “And that, is as the bards say, that. This all happened some ten years ago and we have been on the run ever since, afraid that perhaps the mage wasn’t killed and has merely been gathering his strength in quiet. This is why you were met with such decisive force in the woods, and why we have no posted borders.”

Ta’Resh nods to Morgan while making a slight hand signal for us to remain quiet. “We thank you for your information, that clears up a great many mysteries for us.”

“It was my pleasure. Feel free to enjoy the hospitality of our little village. Karine will show you around.”

At this Karine nods, surges to her feet, and leads us from the building. We spend the remainder of the day bartering for goods and services with the locals. The cats are enlisted for some tree climbing to place great iron rings for a rope and pulley system we couldn’t fathom for several loaves of bread and a wheel of cheese. The Druid holds a few mini-seminars on planting and crop rotation in exchange for several heavy blankets and a bushel basket of berries, and I wind up watching the blacksmith’s two children for several hours in exchange for a new set of shoes for our horse.

As the sun set we are shown to seats around a large communal fire where more story telling took place for another hour or two… When I asked if the smoke from the fire was a problem I was told that with the cool night air and the darkness, the smoke tended to stay below the treetops and disperse quickly.

We were eventually shown to an empty “house” for the evening where we bedded down. We talked quietly amongst ourselves in regards to the apparent problem with the Centaur’s sense of time. For they seemed to figure the Mage War was a mere ten years ago when we knew it to have happened over a hundred years ago… This was quickly written off as just a difference in terms for years. As everyone felt quite safe, no watch was posted and we all simply fell asleep…

The next morning we awoke in the middle of a clearing that showed no sign of ever having a village anywhere near it. We were immediately on edge as this was discovered and the theories began to fly. The woods are haunted, the Centaurs were a hallucination, and the surviving Mage took the Centaurs overnight… The problem with the “apparition” theories was the little fact that the things we’d gotten from the Centaurs were still present such as the new shoes on the horse and the foods in the wagon. The problem with the “returning Mage” theory was the fact that the Centaurs weren’t just missing… It was as if they’d never even been here.

We looked around and tried to deduce what happened to no avail and decided to stick around the site and check a few more theories while Silthran and Aryntha in his dragon form scout around.

After about an hour Aryntha and Silthran return with a tale of meeting some odd Elven person who says the path though the forest is dangerous, who knows of both of their pasts, and wants to talk to us. I decline the offer of flight on principle and eventually we decide as a group to travel to the Elf by way of traveling next to the path rather than on it…

We travel a few miles though the forest and meet this person who immediately awes us with his knowledge of not only our native languages, but also seems to know an amazing breadth and depth about us as well. Quickly we determine that this person knows how to put all of the pieces of our puzzle together and we are happy to talk to him about it… We are told that the reason he has come to us now is because we are now as we need to be and he verifies a lot of the theories we had as to how things got to where they are now.

We are also told that I am the “key to a lock that was broken that held closed a door” and that the Elven Princess is “a pawn that has fallen and who would be a queen”.

For several hours we talked with this being who spoke in riddles, had no concept of time, and seemed to either know everything or be a complete loony before we made camp and he flittered off into the woods.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

The Fixx – One Thing Leads to Another

Let’s see, what did I do this weekend?

Well, as Lyon is having to do his clinicals on Saturdays now, our game days have become game nights… Lyon has to be where he needs to be by 6:15 in the morning on Saturdays and, for free mind you, works till 3-4 pm.

So, as I got down to Denver Friday evening and now it seemed that Saturday was going to be mostly waiting around for Lyon, Aryntha, Rai, and I went out to the eastern plains of Colorado and did our phone thing for a few hours.

It was planned that we’d get an early start, but early for college folk is post-noon so I got some writing and a few simple sketches done before they showed up. Once we were rolling things took off…

We went and verified that a tower site we found last weekend was really what we thought it was; it was. We have found the elusive “Simla” site which isn’t shown on our 1960 route map, but is listed on the 1966 and gone again on the 1976. So its been decommissioned for at least 28 years, yet its still standing there. Pretty cool actually.

We then drove around a bit looking for a site called “Rocky Peak” which is a similar story to “Simla”, but we were unable to locate it on the first try. We then went to “Kiowa” and got some photos. After that we headed back to Lyon and Wolf’s place, which took us right past “Hilltop” so we stopped to get some better photos of that site too.

We got to the house just as everyone else was getting settled and things commenced. I’ll be writing up the adventure here today some time.

And that is as they say, “that”.

Stay tuned for the further adventures of Aaron and his little band of misfits later this afternoon.

Clannad – There for You

Well, in theory I’ll be heading back down to Denver this afternoon for another weekend of fun and adventure.

As for the delays in posting to ye olde journal here? No, nothing bad has happened. I’ve just been busy making with the web-enabled applications. With a few minutes of free-time yesterday during lunch I databased the OMFUXS web site and updated the page which you can see here: OMFUXS

It’s an interesting mix of chiseled stone, modern motifs, and transparent tech-y things.

Anyways, gotta run. There’s some SQL queries that need to be done before I go.

Have a great day out there!

Arthur Sulit – Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

No banter today, we’re just going to get things posted…

It’s all your fault…

The thought wanders through my mind as I push forward, shivering hard in the darkness of the barren plain surrounding me. For days now I have been fighting an internal war of regret and blame.

Did I bring it all on myself? Have I fallen from grace?

I must have, and for that transgression I need to be punished. For is it not the way of Abdiel the Judge to punish those who transgress against the law?

I’d killed my men; by my error they were all dead. And for that I must pay the ultimate price…

But it wasn’t your fault, a little voice in the back of my mind whispers. They, each and every one, knew the risks that came with the task.

Yes, but who am I to carry on while others died? Has Abdiel deserted me here as a punishment? Has Abdiel turned his back to me? Is my day-to-day existence in this strange place my punishment?

I must deserve this, or I wouldn’t be here. I am only being punished for their deaths. I’d leave me here too, I suppose. Cull the herd, remove the impurity for the sake of the rest…

I shiver and wrap my cloak about myself, trying to get warm.

I’m so cold. I wish more then anything I was home in Triskellian where it’s warm.

But no, better not to think that. Here was home now, where nothing made sense and I am truly alone in the world.

And where you get the treatment you deserve. After all, it’s all your fault. They all died for your mistakes, for your breach of faith! Another voice chillingly taunts me from the depths of my own mind.

Just think, who in your life haven’t you hurt? Can you name just one? If you hurt them all, then perhaps that should tell you something. You’re no paladin of the light… You’re a murderer! And there is no salvation for murderers!

“No,” I whisper, pressing my hands over my ears, as if that could block out the voice that coils though my mind like a venomous serpent.

Like Father Duquesne said, boy, you were made to hurt people. You’re just now realizing that fact. You fight for peace… Fight – for – peace… You’re a hypocrite to your very core! Abdiel hasn’t deserted you, you deserted him!

“No,” I whisper again, pulling my cloak about myself as trembling grows so hard my teeth chatter; yet I stumble onward…

It’s all your fault. All of it. If you hadn’t been such a drain on your parents they wouldn’t have sent you to the monastery in the first place. If you paid more attention to the teachings you’d have been a Penitent rather than a Sword Arm. If you were better. If you behaved. If you did as you’re told, then I wouldn’t have to hurt you! The voice rises to a crescendo of remembered pain and fear, the past mingling with the present in my mind.

“Oh please,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes tightly closed. “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll be good, I swear I’ll be good. Just don’t hurt me. Please, love me. I don’t want to be alone. I won’t ever do it again.”

But, of course, my whispered promises fall on deaf ears; for there is none alive here to listen to them…

It’s all your fault…

…

“Araagh!!”

I sit bolt upright, sweat trickling past the tender spot on my forehead slightly above and between my eyes, and I look around wildly… Seeing nothing but darkness…

“Just a dream,” I whisper. “I was just another dream.”

I find myself sitting in the back of a wagon as it bumps slowly along a well-worn trail. My traveling companions are near; I can feel their concern, but I cannot see them. A thick fur blanket has been spread over my legs; I can feel the soft warmth of it and feel the rich texture but again it too is swallowed in the darkness. I feel odd, disconnected, like what I’m feeling isn’t coming from my extremities and that the world has gotten much bigger over night.

“He’s awake,” this time it’s the voice of Tatianna, the Elven Princess in our company. Then the voice of Ta’Resh rumbles next to me, “How are you feeling Aaron?”

“Like I’ve been asleep for a week, very itchy and sore,” I say as I turn blindly towards the voice. “Is it really this dark here? Where are we? What…”

Ta’Resh rumbles again, “Shhh… Be still Aaron.” As he places one of his immense paws on my chest and gently forces me back onto the piled furs under me. “You’ve had a rough few days and some things are a bit… different… now. Just lie back and rest.”

I give in and slump back into the furs, then I feel one of his paws under the back of my head and the spout of a wine skin at my lips, “Drink Aaron, it’ll help you rest.”

I take a slow pull on the wine skin and am quickly overcome by a thick, warm feeling as the world recedes from me once again.

…

-sunlight-

-warm sunlight-

I pry open an eye to find myself still lying in the back of the wagon under a pile of furs. Sunlight streams through a canopy of trees above me and a beam of the golden-emerald light is warming the side of my head. The colors are the first thing I notice; everything is so incredibly sharp and detailed and I find myself distracted by every little movement of branch or leaf…

I yawn greatly, roll onto my side and up onto an elbow to peer over the edge of the wagon. Roughly twenty feet from me is a fresh fire pit and the snoozing forms of the Elven Princess, the feline warrior, and the half-elven warrior. I can sense that the druid is off to the south a little ways and that Aryntha is nearby as well. As I’m looking around suddenly the huge furry head of Ta’Resh pops up in front of me and I instinctively pull back and blink him into focus.

“How ya doin sunshine?” he rumbles then cocks his head at me, as if noting something about me for the first time. He shakes his head and reaches out to pick up my hand and check my pulse as I sit up the rest of the way.

I look down to where he has my hand encased in his huge paw and suddenly realize that he seems to have doubled in size. I then realize that the arm he is holding is not only much smaller and more lithe than the one I remembered, but is also covered in a pearlecent white fur as opposed to the black I am accustomed to. If it weren’t for the fact I can feel his forefinger on my wrist and his engulfing grip on my hand, I wouldn’t know this arm was mine.

I immediately look over at my other hand, which is equally as odd as the arm. Where I used to have three fingers and a thumb, I now sport two thick fingers of equal length and a thumb, all of which appear to be missing a joint and are capped in a rose-grey and sharply pointed hoof-like nail.

As I look over my hand much as if I had never seen this appendage before I also notice the long white hair that grows from my elbow down the back of my forearm to my wrist. I look back to Ta’Resh questioningly.

Ta’Resh releases my other hand apparently satisfied that I’ll live a bit longer, “Umm, yeah. You weren’t in very good shape when you stumbled into camp. The druid and the princess tried to heal you for hours… You were pretty messed up… and then this started to happen.” He reaches down and picks up what my mind recognizes as my tail, the sensation comes from what would be labeled as ‘tail’, but what he’s holding looks nothing like the tail I remember… This tail is white, nearly five feet long, tufted on the end, and has a ridge of the same billowy white hair as my forearms along its length.

“Ta’Resh, what has happened to me?” I ask and my ears flick forward in surprise at the sound of my voice. I clasp my hands to my throat and encounter yet another oddity in the fact that my chest is now covered in a thick mane of fur, again white, that seems to cover my shoulders and throat, and comes to a point at my sternum. It reminds me vaguely of the manes the bigger deer would get around their necks and chest in my homeland. “What the…”

My ears flick again and I stop to listen to myself. My voice is higher in timbre and no longer resonates from my chest; almost musical, like the Elves sound though with more of a nasal inflection.

“Ta’Resh? I think I either got hit on the head very hard or I’m still dreaming…” I look down along myself and find that abdomen is covered in the same nearly translucent white fur as everything thing else I’ve seen and I seem to have lost nearly all of my muscle tone. The fur is quite thin on my back and sides but somewhat longer along my midsection and continues under the blanket. I flip the fur blanket off of myself to find that I’ve been graced with a long loincloth similar to that which the feline warrior wears which serves to preserve my modesty at least. But it’s not the loincloth that I find disturbing: My legs, or at least what I assume to be my legs, are longer and impossibly thin and graceful compared to the tree trunks I remember from what seems to be only a few minutes ago. These are also covered in this alien fur like the rest of me with long cascading hair that runs over my knees and the backs of the lower legs where it swirls around my cloven hooves…

“Cloven hooves!?” I squeak.

Where I once had glossy black, dinner plate sized, solid hooves that were shod in polished steel I now had, by comparison, tiny and well dainty even, rose-grey cloven hooves like that of a deer or goat. Experimentally I wiggle my new appendages and am rewarded with the sight of the two toes that now make up my hooves doing as I bid them.

Amazed I heft my leg up and hold it so I can examine my new feet and yes, as I had expected to find, my dewclaws are hidden in the wispy white feather that surrounds my feet. The two hooves that make up my foot are quite long and pointed and the nail is much harder than what I remember. I let go of my foot and lean back onto my elbows to let all of this information and sensation sink in…

Ta’Resh, obviously relieved that I’m not completely freaked out, rumbles again in something I take as him excusing himself while I ponder.

I’m obviously smaller than I was and far slighter of build; so much so that I would have to figure this body had never seen a single day of weapons drill or marching. In fact I really reminded myself of the runners I had always seen on the battlefield; those who were very lithe and exceedingly fleet of foot, and who carried the all important command satchels from company to company.

I look around the back of the wagon hoping to find my great sword, “Lightbringer”, in an attempt to prove to myself that I am still me, and not some odd creature that merely remembers being me. I find the hilt of the sword poking out from under the pile of furs and shift myself over to uncover it. In the process I kink my very much too long tail, swear under my breath, and grab the thing to flop it over my lap.

I pull back the furs to reveal Lightbringer, which gleams happily in the sunlight. As I look down the length of the polished silver blade I discover that the sword I once wielded with but a single hand, though it was technically a two and a half hand sword, is now nearly the same length as I am, and at 3 stone, impossible to wield. The hilt alone is as long as my arm and I can barely get my hand around it, there is no way I could wield the weapon in my defense.

I sigh and let go of the sword, and sit on my haunches trying to understand what has happened to me. I look over the blade before me, touching it lightly with my hoofed fingertips and noting that I can feel the solidity of the metal, but not its texture. Suddenly I catch a glint in the sword’s polished silver surface, a flicker of light reflecting from something above me, and I turn my head to look… Nothing but the dark branches of the trees above me, and the sun is mid-afternoon and in the sky before me.

Confused I look back at the sword and see the glimmer again. Something that should be right above me is flickering in the surface of the blade.

I look again and find nothing and go to once again examine the mirrored surface of the sword when a rogue breeze catches in my mane and flips my forelock down into my face…

I instinctively reach up to tuck the stray bits of forelock back behind an ear, much as I used to do in my youth, then two things hit me; the first being that I tended to keep my mane in a military brush-cut which made my helm much more comfortable and kept my mane far to short to fall into my eyes. The second is that my mane was black, like the rest of me used to be, and this long flowing hair is stark white. So white in fact that it picks up both the blue cast of the sky above me, and the green of the woods around me.

I reach up and run my odd fingers along the top of my head and the back of my neck to discover that not only is my mane now several feet long and very thick, its also just as white as the rest of me. I also discover that my ears no longer simply stand at the top of my skull; they are now much larger and stick out slightly to the sides of my head.

Obviously whatever has happened to me, has happened to every square inch of me.

I sigh again and begin rummaging around in the wagon looking for my obviously far to large steel breastplate. I find it and a scrap of cloth with which to polish it a bit, and then get a good look at my face…

Reflected in the shiny surface of the armor is a face I simply don’t recognize blinking back at me. The nose is long and thin, dished slightly with small goat-like nostrils above an almost cleft upper lip and a long white beard that starts under my cheeks. This is in almost direct opposition of what I know my face to look like with my big Roman nose, wide bridge, and big nostrils.

My eyes are huge now with golden irises that emphasize the oval pupils and making it nearly impossible to tell what I’m looking at. Not that my big brown eyes were any easier to discern, but the gold makes my gaze rather creepy in my opinion.

By far the oddest thing I discover, and the fact I hadn’t noticed it till now making it even odder, is the rose-grey spiraling horn that rises about a two feet from my brow. This horn, I soon discover, is very firmly attached to my skull and no amount of wiggling does much more than wiggle the rest of my head. Its about three inches across at the base above and between my eyes, and tapers to something akin to a sewing needle at the tip as I quickly discover and which leaves me holding the palm of my hand in pain. I find that if I look as far up as I can, with just my eyes, I can just catch the spiral of it out in front of me, which explains why I hadn’t seen it till now.

I sit back again on my haunches and contemplate the position I’m in. Somehow, and for some reason I can’t fathom, I’m not who I used to be. Of course who I used to be wasn’t from where I currently am, so perhaps this is just a way to make me fit in… Perhaps there are others who look like I do now out there.

I decide that I’ve had about enough of this sitting around and scoot myself to the back edge of the wagon. As I’m still feeling slightly disconnected from myself, I gingerly ease my legs over the edge and place my feet on the ground… So far so good.

I push myself up, and the thought of just how little I weigh registers somewhere in the back of my mind as I teeter there, leaning against the wagon and waiting for my sense of balance to return. I stand there weaving slightly and decide to take a few steps…

The ground feels oddly warm to my feet, which makes little sense to me and is quickly written off as mere confusion. My odd feet give me far more information about what I’m standing on than I’m used to; angles, solidity, slip… I used to merely march across the ground but now I can feel it, truly feel the ground beneath me.

While I’m busily analyzing all of the new sensations I suddenly find myself face-down in the dirt behind the wagon. I manage to catch my fall with my hands and knees and avoid serious injury, but it still drives home the point that I’m pretty new to this body.

Ta’Resh comes skidding around the back of the wagon and in that basso voice of his asks that which all beings inherently ask when someone falls down, “Are you ok?”

I nod, “Yeah, I think I’m ok. Just my first day with my new feet…”

Ta’Resh chuckles and helps me back to my hooves. “I think you might need a walking stick for a while” and making sure I have a firm grip on the wagon he strides off into the forest.

Around me the rest of the party begins to stir. First the Elven Princess gets up and promptly wanders off to a nearby stream, then the feline warrior, Silthran, who looks at me quizzically.

“Is that you Aaron?” he ducks his head slightly and squints at me.

I nod, “Aye, it’s me… I think anyways. Ta’Resh tells me that things were a little sketchy for me when I made it to camp.”

It’s Silthran’s turn to nod, “Yes… Yes they were. I am hoping you don’t mind that I loaned you clothing. It is not the metal you were wearing, but it is light and will allow you to move more freely should you need to.” He then shakes his head with a toothy grin, “I still say that metal can you wore was a bad idea, Aaron. You could not help but be hit by your enemies as you clanked across the battlefield. No stealth, no speed…”

I chuckle, “I’m more inclined than ever to agree with you my friend… Mostly because I can now put three of me in my armor.”

He strides over to me… Well, there is no word for how the feline actually moves, as it is a flowing action that starts with him in one place and ends with him in another, but it’s the best we’ve come up with.

He towers above me now, eight feet to my six, where the other day we stood eye to eye, “You have gotten smaller.” He says with his usual flat statement of the obvious. “What manner of magic is this that can turn a mighty warrior such as yourself into this mere wisp of a creature?”

“I really wish I knew.” I say with a sigh while looking up at him. “I have a feeling though that this was important and that it needed to be done.”

“Your God did this?” He asks.

“Well, I’m unsure as yet. I don’t think Abdiel is present in this place, but I have had visions of a regal lady, dressed in white and surrounded in a glow of virtue that has come to me on several occasions now. Somehow I think she is responsible for this.” I say as I wave a hand at myself.

“I have wanted to ask you about such things, for I believe you are one with your gods and my Goddess seems to have deserted me here.”

I reach out and pat him on the arm, “Have faith my friend. I don’t believe we were abandoned here as much as we are on loan to whoever this goddess is in my visions, for a greater purpose. I suggest you seek her out in your own ways and she will let herself be known to you.”

He bows his head to me, “You are as wise as I had hoped Aaron. I will go and meditate on this.” Then flows into the trees in the direction the princess went.

I teeter there for a few minutes, stepping carefully around the perimeter of the wagon in an attempt to get my legs back under me. Ta’Resh returns with a staff he’s made from a fallen limb about seven feet long. Its freshly stripped bark gives it a pleasant smell and smooth texture as he hands it to me.

“Here, use this to help you.” Has says as he hands me the twig he appears to be holding.

“Thanks Ta’Resh. Hopefully I’ll be able to walk along side the wagon now rather than taking up all the space in it.”

He nods and heads over to the fire pit to skin and smoke the two large rabbit-esque animals he caught.

A moment later the druid enters the clearing and, upon seeing me standing, shakes his head and comes over to me. It’s a relief for me to see someone who doesn’t blot out the sun while talking to me.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing? I gave Ta’Resh strict instructions that you were to stay covered and resting. The furball is going to be the death of me.”

He begins to rummage about in one of the various pouches hanging from his belt while I stand there agape and eventually produces a fine white powder wrapped in a large waxy leaf and hands it to me. “Here, mix this in a skin of wine and drink it all… It’ll keep the nausea at bay.”

“What nausea?” I ask just as the world makes a sudden left turn and I grab the side of the wagon as if I’m drowning.”

“That nausea, now stop trying to make my day more difficult than it already is and get your overly hairy self back into that wagon.” The druid merely stands there, pointing, as I inch my way back into the wagon and mix the powder to drink.

Satisfied that I’ve done as instructed he pulls out a small sickle shaped knife and heads to the north muttering something about “stubborn” and “mule” and I can hear Ta’Resh chuckling under his breath as sleep overtakes me.

I awake again in the evening with the smell of the fire and the voices of the party going on about some group of centaurs…

“I don’t care if there are a million of them out there. They fired upon me and my honor requires action to this threat.” The voice is that of Silthran and he sounds quite agitated.

The Druid speaks up, “You were trespassing on their land… My people would have done similar.” And the half-elven warrior echoes his sentiment as he bites into another slab of venison.

Silthan growls, “How am I supposed to know I’m trespassing when they haven’t made any indication as to their borders!”

I sit up in the back of the wagon and try to un-stick my tongue from the roof of my mouth… The nausea is gone but I feel a bit woozy from the wine now as I slowly crawl out of the wagon and stand up. I’m a bit steadier on my feet this time and once I finish ladling some water out of the storage barrel and into me I feel downright good for the first time in recent memory. I grab one of the half-elf’s spare cloaks and fasten it around my neck then grab the staff Ta’Resh gave me and set about hobbling over to the fire.

Tatianna is the first to notice me, “Horsey looks funny.” She says in her four-year-old mode; her curse trapping her as such. The others stop their bickering and turn to look at me.

None can meet my gaze for more than a heartbeat and I attribute it to these creepy eyes.

I ease myself down onto a convenient log and examine the fire, “What have I missed?”

All at once they begin speaking; Ta’Resh mentioning centaurs, Silthran being indignant at their firing at him, the half-elf warrior saying that we were told to camp here for the night, Tatianna going on about “horsey people”, and the Druid being conspicuously silent. Missing is Aryntha who I determine though the babble to be scouting out the centaurs to determine, if he can, what they plan to do with us.

It turns out after parsing the four conversations that we had determined early in the day to check out an odd river that flowed under a mountain wherein we discovered a huge underground mural that depicted a creature similar in appearance to myself, now, who was leading a parade of animals into a big blue vortex of energy.

Once that was noted we continued on into a large forest that lay between where we were and where we want to be. Silthan and Aryntha went on ahead of the party to scout it out and while Aryntha could see little trough the treetops, these centaurs that seem to think Silthan is an emissary of some evil mage fired upon him.

Words were said on both sides and eventually one of the leaders of the centaurs came and parleyed with us. It was determined that we should camp here for the night and they would deliberate on allowing us though their forest, providing us a guide to get around their forest, or simply sending us on our way and if we set foot back on their territory it would be open war…

I thought on this long and hard, unconsciously stroking my new beard as I stared into the fire and thought while everyone else carried on as to what the best course of action should be. I eventually came to a conclusion and stood, leaning heavily on my staff and clearing my throat.

“The way I see it our camping here this evening is a test of our trustworthiness. These people see us as a threat from events long past and it is up to us to prove to them that we pose them no threat.” I turned to look at everyone gathered there as Arythna sauntered back into the clearing. “We may even be able to learn more of this puzzle that we seem to be in the middle of. For if these people fear a mage, then that mage must have lived before the war that destroyed them and that would mean that they have tell of things greater than 150 years ago.”

Everyone stopped their heated debate and looked at me, then looked at each other, then back to me.

Ta’Resh was the first to speak and his booming voice could probably be heard in the centaur camp, “Aaron is right. They have done nothing to provoke us other than get Silthan’s attention…”

Silthan stands and points at Ta’Resh, “They tried to kill me and I’ll not stand by…”

The Druid, conspicuously silent during this whole thing, speaks quietly yet with a force that silences the great cats. He holds one of the centaur’s arrows in one hand as he stands and points it at Silthan, “If they’d desired to kill you, you would now be very, very dead. These arrows are both blunted and have white fletching… Signal arrows. The ones they carried when we were talking were bladed, dipped in Veras Sap and fletched in red… Killing arrows. A mere nick from a Veras envenomed weapon causes near immediate paralysis. It passes quickly, but it would have given them ample time to skin you for your pretty white hide.”

The Druid sits back down, muttering something about “babes” and “woods” and goes back to grinding something in a small mortar and pestle.

The cats look at the now seated Druid, agape, fingers still raised in exclamation; then seat themselves.

After this it is determined that we should all get some sleep and see what the morning brings. It is also determined that I should once again sleep in the wagon due to my obvious ordeal and while I argued this, I secretly agreed with them. My joints still hurt and I felt the nausea returning, and a night on the hard ground would probably do me no good.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Queensrÿche – Sign of the Times

Yesterday’s game wasn’t exactly epic, but as everyone was suffering the after effects of “one of those weeks”, with things like Lyon’s school work and Aryntha and Rai having their finals, it was to be expected.

The day really got started around 2pm rather than noon as Lyon and Wolf went to go visit Wolf’s mom who is recovering in the hospital from hip replacement surgery and things like that just simply take longer than one expects. She’s doing fine though, no worries.

Aryntha and Rai got here and were famished so they and I made what was supposed to be a quick run to a local supermarket for munchies and some quick restaurant for lunch… We ended up in “Super Target” which was full to the rafters with people who were all doing their damnedest to be just as oblivious to the world around them as possible. It’s the little things, like standing in the middle of an isle reading the back of a package while creating a traffic jam the likes of Washington DC, that really gets to you when you’re in one of these mega-stores.

Anyways, the three of us gather up the 4-5 items we need and run for the checkout lines in an attempt to get the hell out of this shopping purgatory… And manage to get in a line with a rather corpulent woman who’s Target Card won’t clear and she’s having a bitch-fit about it. Well, she learned a valuable lesson that day; namely that if you hold up things, whine loudly, and make a general, immovable, nuisance of yourself people will cave to your demands. The manager OK’d the purchase over the phone and the lady waddled on to attempt the same scene some other day, safe in the knowledge that it works. We in turn paid for our items and made for the door, only to be stopped by a member of the elite Target Special Forces who, after just watching up pay for everything, still needed to verify the contents of the bags with the receipts.

Once clear of shopper’s hell we trundled over to a local “pizza the hut” and reminisced about how Pizza Huts used to be before the great cola disenfranchising happened to everything. See, before Coke ™ and Pepsi ™ bought “everything”, most restaurants had a unique flavor to them that the owner brought to the property… Not any more. Everything is cloned, sanitized, and corporate spin enabled for mass consumption. One has to look pretty hard to find a place that isn’t part of some international octopus organization these days.

So we returned to Lyon and Wolf’s place and had a bit of a discussion of what we’d just encountered; such as my current theory that the reason people seem to be such asshats is because of social calluses acquired to keep one’s sanity amidst the incredible overpopulation in major cities.

Eventually, at about 5pm, we get started with the game and things progressed at a much more sedate pace in this episode… Again, everyone had a week-long reality beating and just wasn’t the world’s most imaginative group this weekend. But we did manage to move the story forward a bit…

One thing I’m worried about is due to my propensity for writing *lots* of stuff in regards to my characters, I’m proving to be the centerpiece of the story and things are revolving around me right now, which isn’t good for everyone else. I suppose I need to inject everyone else into the stories I write and submit to Wolf this week.

Yes – Lift Me Up

Last night saw Ayrntha, Rai, Lyon, Wolf, and I siting around and just talking… Everything from the perception of gender to the infiltration of a Scientologist Org…

Oddly enough, the words “scientologist” and “scientology” don’t show up in my spell checker. I guess the folks at Apple figure if your “religion” is under indictment in several countries you don’t get to be in the spell checker.

Anywho I guess Lyon and Wolf have places to do and things to be this morning before we get down to the business of the RPG this afternoon. I’ll be working a bit more on the back story of my character as well as whipping up a few sketches for an event in the upcoming story arc.

Have a great day out there folks!

Jethro Tull – Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day

Well, here I am back down the mountain at Wolf and Lyon’s place for the weekend. I got a ride down from Vivian as she had to come done here for something anyways. I’ll be heading back up Tuesday as Larry needs me down here for some tech support things Tuesday… Namely the fact that he’s buying himself a new laptop and wants me there for technical things; like getting the CompUSA salesdrones so embroiled in a discussion of the merits and flaws of AMD vs. Intel that they leave him alone to make his own decisions. 😉

You know, it’s amazing how teenagers will get louder in direct proportion to the volume of something you’d really like to hear… As is evidenced by my attempting to listen to a piece of music and Kaitlin deciding that now is a good time to talk to a friend on the phone right next to me…

Anyways, there may be gaming tonight but definitely tomorrow as that is now the official “game day” around here. I’ll post the highlights here as I get them finished.

That is all…

Annie Lennox – Into the West

Ok, no more of the Mac Vs. PC thing, it’s freaking people out…

I had no idea that people I can talk deep theology with would take something as transient as computer architecture so seriously.

To put it into modern terms; “My bad.”

I’m deleting all of the entries and comments regarding this… No more, it’s not worth it.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled journal already in progress…

Yes – If Only You Knew

As today is “work on advertising” day, things are pretty low key around here… That and Larry is in Denver today. 🙂

The yellow pages ads I did for Express are needing a few tweeks because the sales-lady told me they wanted 72dpi, which I knew was wrong but they wouldn’t let me talk to anyone else about it. So today they finally get around to test printing and everything looks like ass… So *now* I get to talk to someone who knows what they hell they’re doing and, yes, as one would expect they do the art and copy at 300dpi. So here I am redoing everything quickly at 300dpi for press in the next few days…

There is also the little issue that I use PhotoShop 8 while Verizon uses PhotoShop 5, so the SWOP parameters are different and everything they do comes out pink. I have to guess that Verizon rarely has customers do their own art and copy, instead they rely on Verizon’s up-sell art department.

Sigh…

I often wonder if the whole world is operating on three cylinders…

Anyways it’s slightly overcast here and there is a little rain falling. But it’s cold outside so rain is ok. 🙂

Here’s a picture from the outside door to my room…

See? It does get green here.

Chess – The American and Florence: Nobody’s Side

Ok, after spending the better part of the last twelve hours convincing Comcast that they do indeed suck and are incapable of finding their buttocks with both hands, I have internet again… Albeit slow internet, but it beats the alternative.

---

We regrouped and discussed what each of us had noticed and amongst our deliberations it was discovered that the riders had departed oddly, as if they were confined by walls we could not see… Much like one would expect a mounted column to enter and leave a castle. The riders were also armored in a very ancient style of armament for this land according to those who knew of such things.

Oddly enough, though we individually disregarded the information, collectively we realized that in all of our travels, no one we had met, no tome we had read, no structure we had seen, dated back more than roughly 150 years.

This is when we began to search the grounds of the inn in ernest, looking for clues as to how all of these puzzle pieces fit together around us. A few things arose of interest in our searching; we discovered that the graves I had assumed were family were in fact members of a regiment of knights that the elderly man I received the inn from belonged to, and that the graves were either 75 years old, or 150 years old by looking at the dates. We discovered that the trees we had cut down to build the smoke house were the largest we could find and proved to only be around 75 years old as well, and the feline warrior discovered a hidden chamber of white stone accessed though a secret door from the cellar.

The last proved to be the most interesting as within the white marble block room we discovered many a tome of historical documents dating back 300 to 500 years. It appeared that these were hidden for some reason and we were careful to look though most, if not all of them, for clues.

We came upon an ancient map that detailed the kingdoms of 300 years ago and discovered where the kingdom the riders had spoken of used to be. We also discovered that there once was a grand castle occupying the ground that the inn now rests upon. Once these pieces of the puzzle were discovered some of the party wanted to go out and see what information we could glean from the surrounding towns, while Aryntha, not wanting to spend weeks on a horse, wanted to promptly head for the castle to the far north-west.

It was here that much deliberation was had as to how we should proceed while I gathered my few meager belongings, donned my plate-mail and secured my sword and shield for the journey. Aryntha had other ideas though and decided he’d ride a little ways to the north-west just to see if there were any ruins of the castle that once stood where the inn resides now.

Once he was seated on the animal that brought the elven woman and himself to us in the first place, it once again raced off with complete abandon towards the north-west; Aryntha flailing in its saddle.

As it seemed our decision had been made for us, the feline warrior raced off ahead of us along with the elven woman in order to relay the course we should take while the rest of us tended to the wagon of provisions we were taking with us and proceeded as fast as we could while hauling it.

After a day and a half the horse nearly drops out from under Aryntha on the edge of a blasted, barren plain several day’s walk across according to our maps. The area wreaked of death and the more psychically attuned of our party immediately fell ill from simply being near. The druid in an attempt to divine the cause of this horror was overcome by it and spent several hours in shock while anyone else foolish enough to progress more than a few dozen paces felt their very lives being pulled from them.

It was here that we, as a group, learned two things; the first was that the feline warrior was terrified to the point of hysteria by lizards and that Aryntha is really an immense black dragon…

As Aryntha changed shape in order to carry the party across, the feline warrior completely lost his composure and attacked him. There was little the warrior could do in the face of this immense beast, but we had to give him credit for trying.

Eventually the feline warrior fell to exhaustion and collapsed and the party secured him and themselves to the dragon’s back for a flight over the wasteland… That is all but me, for I have a distinct mistrust of flying ever since a bat wizard I know once told me that he could levitate me over a chasm and the resulting plummet had me bed ridden for an entire season.

Well, with my faith to protect me I headed out as the shape of the flying dragon receded to a point on the horizon. For seven days I trekked across that slice of the ninth plane while the whispered voices of the dead assailed me, taunted me, pleaded with me and visions of fortunes and fame floated before me. I was offered my deepest desires and shown my deepest fears… The nights were the worst and the first night that I tried to sleep proved to nearly be my undoing as the ghosts that haunt that place found my sleeping mind to be far weaker than when I was awake. The next six days were spent in a trance-like march though heat and freezing cold.

But my faith did not waiver and I was seen safely though the torment by The Light of Creation.

As I reached the camp the party had set up on the other side I collapsed into a heap, knowing that I had passed another test set before me, and slept in the arms of saints.

It was here that we decided to rest for a few days and gather our resources for the next leg of our journey…

Not bad for about 6 hours really. Stay tuned for next weeks adventures. 🙂

The Cruxshadows – Insomnia

We successfully managed to get our game on last night!

After a few shaky starts and lots of random peopling we did manage to actually have a bit of an RPG experience last night… And it was good.

The cast of characters:

Aryntha is playing Aryntha, a skunk with a dragon complex.
Rai is playing a very street-wise Elven druid of indeterminate agenda.
I’m playing a horse paladin named Aaron from another reality.
Lyon is playing one of his huge cat critters, named Ta’resh (we call him ‘T’) who’s a bit of a pacifist.
Maegan is playing a terminally bemused elven princess.
Scales is playing a feline warrior from another reality.
And we have two other folks I’m not familiar with who are playing two more elves.

So, I guess here is where we start the weekly chronicles of Aaron:

---

I have no basis for determining a date other than it seems to be summer…

It all started when two of my fellows from the Order and I were escaping our homeland which had been overrun. We had set sail with a crew aboard a pirate vessel and made for the mainland in order to escape the torture and death that seethed in the wake of our escape.

After a few days of sailing rough seas we were within sight of land when the vessel shook violently and cries of flooding came up from belowdecks. With a speed that was surprising the vessel sank off the coast and I was suddenly treading water with my worldly possessions strapped to my back and being drug under by the crashing waves.

I awoke on a beach near a walled city I had never seen before, populated with humans who had never seen anyone like me before and who treated me with the sort of aplomb one would associate with dray animals… I at once left this city with hopes to find another within a few days walk who would be both more friendly and hopefully somewhere I was familiar with… No such fortune I’m afraid.

After several months of traveling and trying to find somewhere I could call home in this strange land I found myself traversing an immense forest surrounding a well worn trade road of at least a week’s length between cities. About halfway along this road I came upon an elderly human who, with much effort, was tending a small garden outside of his home and, as I had no where to be with any speed, I stopped to see if I could assist him. His home was more of an inn or garrison building than the small home of a farmer and as I discovered it served as a halfway house along the trade road for anyone who needed it.

This frail and blind elderly human was relieved by my presence and over the following fall, winter, and spring I assisted him with his day-to-day existence as well as I could by tending his crops, repairing the inn, and making the week long round trips to the cities at either end of the trade road for supplies. The humans in the merchant’s quarters of these cities eventually came to recognize my countenance and warmed a bit to my presence. I also got to meet many of the inhabitants of this part of the world as they stopped in for an evening. Of interest to me was how no one seemed to know that this place was here and would always wonder why they had never seen the place before.

That winter was hard as the Orcs from the surrounding mountains moved into the forest and began waylaying travelers. It was this time that I again took up my sword in defense of the innocent and began my patrols of the road… Many Orcs learned the hazards of leaving their caves that winter…

As winter melted into spring the man I had come to know as Marcus and who had many a tale of his time in service as a palace guard for a nearby kingdom passed on. His departure from this mortal coil was calm and full of peace and his dying wish was that I take up the reigns of his homestead and continue to assist the travelers along the trade road. I promised him that I would do so as he slipped quietly into his just reward.

For the next six months I served as host to many a weary traveller, leaving my door wide for any who needed a respite from the long road. This service went well with my callings and I found a peace I had not encountered before as I ministered to the aches and sprains of travelers, gave rest to the weary, and prepared meals for the hungry from a larder that never seemed to empty thanks to the recompense of those who had a little to spare for those who didn’t… All in all it was a time of peace for me, far from the holy wars I had grown so accustomed to.

Over the months the travelers began to disregard my odd appearance and deemed me friend. As the word spread, my trips to the cities became far less of an event to worry about and I would always return to the inn with an equal amount of donated wares to that which I had bought with the coin left by the wealthy for my services…

(here is where the back story ends and the game begins)

As summer waned into fall a series of strange travelers appeared at my door which would bring an end to my peace. The first to arrive was a hooded an cloaked traveler who, after sitting him down for a meal and talking with him, turned out to be the closest thing to brethren that I had seen since that fateful day I washed up on that beach.

My visitor was a large feline warrior who spoke often of his convictions to a goddess. I eventually deduced that he was of a similar employ to myself in his homelands where he served as a holy warrior, protecting his people and supporting the bidding of his goddess. I also came to understand that he too was unfamiliar with this place and felt as if it was not somewhere to be found naturally.

My next guest that evening was an Elven man of indeterminate age who came to the door looking for shelter and a meal if I could spare it. He was sat down at the long table and fed along with the feline as he related to me the things he had seen in his travels. He was curiously tight lipped about his origin and destination, but I figured he must have his reasons and let it at that.

The Elf, by way of thanks, set about in my garden and within the span of a day turned it from a meager crop of basic vegetables into a veritable cornucopia of produce. My talents lay along a more clerical path and I freely admit to not knowing beans about beans, but what this Elf did with the garden spoke volumes about their connections to the greenwood.

The next morning as the Elf worked his wonders in the surrounding clearings of the inn, there was a noise heard outside near the garden. As I was engaged in teaching the feline warrior the basics of reading I left him with the manuscript and proceeded outside to see what was going on. I was greeted by a disembodied head floating about the garden in rapt appreciation for the Elf’s handiwork. The head, upon noticing me agape at its appearance, remove the rest of its magic cloak to reveal another feline being who was very apologetic for having startled me so.

Our latest addition was brought inside and introductions were made all around. Once this new feline fellow had demonstrated his prowess for the hunt by bringing in a full grown bull elk we collectively determined that the inn was now in need of a smoke house.

The next day the warrior and I went out into the forest to collect the lumber needed to build said smokehouse while the Elf and our newest visitor busied themselves around the inn.

While engaged with our lumber we heard quite the commotion coming from the direction of the inn and hurried back just in time to see a nearly naked and bruised Elven woman laying unconscious on the ground, a half elf standing above her putting his sword back in its scabbard, a skunk like being thanking the half elf profusely and the other feline tending to the horse they seemed to have ridden in on which was quite lathered and looking exhausted.

Chaos had come to visit.

Over the next two days it is discovered that the Elven woman is a princess and has run away from home for some reason we are unable to fathom, for she in all manner is a four year old trapped in the body of an adult elf and makes little sense. This woman had also become infatuated with the skunk, named Aryntha, whom she referred to as “kitty”, and had some how embroiled him in her escape. The half elf had encountered them and thought perhaps to rescue her from the skunk, but instead, after several days of tracking them, had determined that it was in fact the skunk who needed rescuing and had rendered the Elven woman unconscious at his first opportunity.

Once things began to settle back into a rhythm another occurrence set things into motion: A troop of Elven horsemen rode into the clearing and proclaimed that an Elven princess was missing, that she was under a curse, and that anyone with information as to her whereabouts should journey to a castle far to the north west for reward. There was also mention of reward for anyone finding a way to break this curse…

Our present party was at once divided on what to do; obviously we were in possession of this Elven princess and had but to return her for a reward, the others thought that by retaining the princess perhaps we could determine how to lift her curse. The Elven druid was the only one to notice that the riders neither left hoof-prints or raised any dust from their departure.

This caused everyone to blink a few times in silence…

(Part two will be upcoming either later today or tomorrow)

Made it back down the mountain to Lyon and Wolf’s place. Aryntha and Rai are on the way over here. Gaming will probably ensue.

I went out and bought groceries with Wolf tonight. If I’m shacking up here on occasion, then I feel it’s my duty to help out with the bills where I can… I spent $165 and Wolf spent another $100 for two carts full of grub. Not bad really.

Lyon is MIA… He had one of his “Scene” meetings to attend and that can mean he won’t be back till tomorrow… Oh well.

Kaitlin is with Scales at Maegan’s place tonight, so there is actually some sanity here. 🙂

Well, I’ll sign off here and get back to writing up the back story for my character… It’s only about 23 pages so far. I like to give the ST a lot of things to play off of. 🙂

Chris de Burgh – Ship to Shore

Well, I’m back in Vail. Back in my old room with all of stuff I boxed up two months ago.

The Toyota made the trip rather well considering its only got about 70 horsepower and is really just a four door lawnmower. Over Loveland and Vail passes the best it could do was about 50MPH, but that’s on par with every other econo-box out there. Sure, other folks in their big v8 powered SUVs blasted over the passes at 80+, but I made the trip from Aurora to here on less than a quarter tank of gas, or about 2.5 gallons… And at $1.99 a gallon right now for cheap gas, that makes the 50MPH a lot easier to swallow. 🙂

I spent the majority of last night setting up a new Linksys wireless router for the house (Larry had the cable folks move the feed from my room here to his office upstairs), setting up Larry and Vivian’s laptops to work with it, setting up the router and Viv’s laptop to work with her Bridge game (not an easy feat mind you), fixing everything that Larry had done to his laptop by way of spyware removal and system updates, adding ram to Larry’s laptop, and getting myself set up down here on the first floor.

Now, getting my Powerbook set up to work with the new wireless consisted of opening the laptop to wake it up and hitting the “ok” button for the new network. As opposed to having to load drivers, configure network settings, set up locations, work port magic… Man I hate PCs.

But, not bad for four hours and in the middle of all that we had dinner.

Anyways, I’m once again up here in the cool thin air with nothing but the sounds of the birds though my window. I could easily pretend that the last two months never happened, but I can’t.

So, here I sit, laptop hooked up to my nifty USB sound processor and routed though my big Sony digital amp and speakers… One just has to love OSX as it just knew what the processor was and used it. No “detected new hardware”, no “cannot find drivers”, no rummaging for some CD, no futzing to get the internal sound card to be quiet… It just worked.

I like it when things just work.

I mean, after spending a few hours under the pall of Windows last night I once again re-affirmed that I’m never going back. Just setting up Larry’s laptop to work with his new phone was nearly an exercise in futility, but if I got the phone anywhere near my Powerbook everything worked just fine… I could synchronize contacts from the other room and even perform feats that the mostly-working PC software couldn’t do once it was loaded; and I didn’t have to load anything.

And Windows has 80% of the OS market. Sheesh.

Oh well, I’m off to hunt down some breakfast. Have a great day out there folks.

Enigma – The Dream of the Dolphin

Well, here I am a few days into it and I’m still sane, I think. It’s been tough, but I think I’m getting those essential calluses that one needs to co-exist in close proximity in this world. I’ve spent so much time alone, doing my own thing, that I’m overly observant of the world around me now and random people are so distracting that it’s hard to get anything done.

See, I’ve lost all of the ability to simply ignore people and with that I keep having to stop everything I’m doing when some random person approaches and wants to “hang” with me. The last few days my personal nemesis has been “Scales”, an on again – off again roommate around here who is about as random in his comings and goings as one can get. There’s no way to tell when he’ll just drop in on me of a day and completely shatter any creative thing I might be doing. He’s a nice enough fellow, I just wish he could entertain himself.

This leads me to surmise that this is a problem with the world in general these days… There are so many people out there now that people are retreating into themselves to just get away… This makes them appear self centered and “not all there”, and causes them to run into you in the store, nearly run you over in a cross walk, etc.

So, maybe people in general aren’t asshats by choice, maybe it’s a learned response to the dramatic overpopulation these days.

Something for me to ponder at any rate.

So, here’s a typical day:

5:30am: Kaitlin’s alarm clock starts blaring rap…

6:30am, Kaitlin turns off the alarm clock…

By 9am everyone has gone to school/work and there is enough hot water now to take my shower.

By 10am Scales is here and I get talked at till about 2pm.

At around 3:30 The World’s Most Popular Teenager, AKA Kaitlin, comes home and immediately starts in on the loud rap and 1×10^32 phone calls…

Around 4:30 Wolf comes home and is in a “mood”… An award winning bad day at work. She wanted nothing more than to sit and veg in front of the computer. Too bad she’s “mom” to about a dozen people and she doesn’t get much peace.

At around 5pm Lynx stopped by for a while… He and Lyon are about the closest things I have to brothers and we are constantly asked if we are related, even though we really don’t look much alike. I think it’s just the way we get along.

So, Lynx stopped by and dropped off this really cool tapestry that he picked up for me at some gathering he went to last weekend. It’s about eight feet on a side and has this really cool celtic-style unicorn on it with lots of knot-work. As soon as I find a bare wall big enough, I’ll hang it and post a photo.

I, in turn, gave Lynx a few of these really keen LED penlights I picked up in Virginia for him… A perfect gift for Lynx is anything that lights up as he’s got “shiny thing” down to an art. 🙂

Anywho, Lynx is currently working on his computer and network certifications and asked me if I could help him with the studying and the answering of questions in terms normal folk can understand. I of course told him I’d be happy to.

(sorry, had to pause for about a half an hour… Scales popped in and needed to tell me all about his day so far.)

Anyways Lyon comes home at around 6:30, we have dinner, Lynx departs at around 8 and Maegan and Scales show up at about 8:30 to ask for help with a network issue.

Maegan and Scales talk at me for about an hour or so then at around 10pm I go to bed.

This is pretty much a typical day around here…

Steely Dan – almost gothic

Good morning!

Well, things here are working their way back to the normal end of the scale. It’s been a little stressful for me as I haven’t been around lots of people and had lots of interaction for some time, but I’m getting better.

See, Lyon and Wolf’s place is a hub of several social circles and there are lots of new people I’ve never met. Yesterday I was to meet a few, but I was getting twitchy before they even got here and went for a drive…

I ended up at Aryntha and Rai’s place and from there and we took a drive up to Shaman’s Rock, a place we’ve been going to for years to re-center and sort of zen-out. Here’s a photo or two from there…

I guess the only other thing would be posting a photo of the snow from the other day…

And with that, I have to get back to work…

Have a great day out there!

Jethro Tull – Strip Cartoon