"The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front... On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child... he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram's fleece reached his mouth from his throat... The hair of his head twisted like the tange of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage."

... Riastrad. More badass then your silly 'Bear Shirt' thingy. ;)

You are now blinking manually.

Your body is itching in at least one place.

The final countdown is playing in your head.

You are now aware of your heart beating.

You are now breathing manually.

You are now aware that your jaw has weight and you are holding it up

You are now aware that you cannot say Irish wristwatch.

You also feel how heavy your arms are on your desk.

You are now aware of your tongue.

You are now controlling your tongue manually.

You are now swallowing your saliva manually

You are about to lick your lips.

That was a very good plan as well. Pity it didn't pan out the way i was hoping it to!

Cest Fini!

Just something im working on at the minute.
Been getting really frustrated in regards to Forsaken due to feeling useless, so i decided to do some theraputic Bad-ass depicting of my character.



Edit: Apparantly, uploading an image straight to Livejournal shrinks it. Annoying, but there we go. I suppose it saves loading times. Click it for making bigger.

So i have a hilarious way of greeting 'Unwanted Guests' to my Dwarf Fortress if they somehow manage to batter down the front door.




Now ultimately, the statues are not part of the trap. But you tell me how you'd fit 4 freaking battleaxes into about 5 feet of solid stone that you've allready filled with sixe pop-up buzzsaw blades in character and i'll redesign it.

But you know, you sort of have to make the hilariousness for yourself in this game. And this just seemed like a really cool way to represent a horrific trap.

(for comparison to how deadly this trap is - The most damage a single weapon in a weapon trap can do is the Giant Axe at 250 points. The sawblades do 110 damage, but each attacks 3 times. Thats 660 x 3... just shy of 2000 damage before the axes even get involved.)

Even if the trap works only once before it needs resetting, i think it serves as a sufficient warning to the people behind.

Warning: This Fortress says hello with a Blender. This is just the beginning.

Why Yes. That IS my girlfriend.

In progress drawing of the first strip. I am dead chuffed with their Dorfy little faces :3

I've been really tempted to start drawing a Dwarf Fort comic, just because i find the jokes i tell about the poor overworked peons in Worked Bowel hilarious and i think other people would to. But i think to start off i'll go all the way back to my first attempt at a proper fortress and going back to find out why the denizens of Worked Bowel are so scared of the word Chalk.



... Shit. He heard me. *Facepalm*

Now i'm never going to get them to calm down.

So, some of you may be aware and others may not that i've picked myself up an electronic addiction in the shape of a game called Dwarf Fortress. Its a complicated cross between The Sims and Dungeonkeeper, where you first off create a random world for games to be set on and can then either play Fortress Mode or Adventure Mode.

Fortress Mode puts you in control of a group of 7 dwarves who have been tasked to carve out a new home for Dwarvenkind by the King of Mountainhome. (Please note: Due to random historical events the king of Mountainhome may indeed be female or in fact -not a dwarf at all-. Cacame Awemedenaide was the most badass Dwarf of all time, despite being an Elf). Then you chose where on the map you randomly generated you want to make your fortress (And even if you abandon a game, you can make a different fort on the same map somewhere else. Every fort you abandon stays on there forever! or at least until you make a new world...)
The game then lets you chose your starting loadout in a fashion similar to Necromunda or Gorka Morka, letting you not only choose the skills of the dwarves you start with but what you'll actually bring with you on the wagon.

Finally, your dwarves will arrive at the location and you can get started. The game is played over 3 dimensions, not only Horizontal and Verticle on your screen but also up and down, allowing you to dig deep into a mountain in search of gems and metals to make items out of.

The game is actually Sand-Box like, allowing you to do pretty much whatever you want. Remember the part where i mentioned the game was like the Sims?
Yeah, every dwarf has its own personal likes and dislikes, levels up in certain skills and can wear armour and clothing, even going so far as to be able to buy/find/make one sock and only wear one sock because they dont have another. Its fairly complex.

Adventure Mode is something i havn't tried yet, but i will give it a go when im done with my current fort which the game has lovingly named 'Worked-Bowel'.
Amusing, considering its made from Mudstone. But it could have been worse.

Could have been made of Chalk.

Anyway, the game i have uploaded for you is the version im playing with a nice graphics pack (the original is ACSII, which while im sure is great is damn confusing sometimes) and can be found following this link:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YZY8FONA

The game is -HARD-. i cannot emphasise this enough. As such, there are some great player made tutorials here:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=28477.0

Theres also a really useful wiki at:
http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Main_Page

Both tutorials and wiki are lifesavers.

Anyway, hope you guys enjoy the game. Remember - Losing is Fun

Strike the Earth!

Some people may see this video, read the subject, have played gears of war and be able to realise why i find this so amusing.

WOO!

I do arts for Amy.

For those of you who don't know the character, its Queen Runz (or just Runz, or RunzoffwithUnicorns, or Queen Dickead!), who'se a Beastkin of the Half Rabbit, Half Wolf variety. Runz is one of the most violent bunnies ever to have been born and its no bleeding suprise that the Orcs, Ogres, Demons and other assorted hardmen species love her to bits.
She is weilding her favourite warhammer, Dimples.
Not only is she fairly hard, she's also a preistess of Elmyra and for you WoW addicts out there, shes basically an unarmoured Paladin who heals!

Not quite the party tank (Slumbaz), she's probably our mob's DPS.

Oh yeah, and the bags under her eyes are because shes long suffering. TEH DRAMAS OH NOES

I finally put some actual content on his page ( http://lost.islesofdarkness.com/index.php?title=Whistling_Thomas ) and now im looking to get some Quotes on there about him and maybe some additions to his rumour list.

I'm also pondering trying to attempt some artwork for his page as well to go beside the list of information on him. This will be a work in progress but i think it will really add to the page and make it stand out a little more and put that little finishing touch in.

Quote Soon!
Quote Often!

And most of all, i hope people enjoy what parts of his story i've shared on there. Feel free to know any and all of the 'Rumours' you want, but bear in mind that information on his time in arcadia is generally kept fairly secret.

Ta!

I just finished writing up an impassioned email for Requiem. I think its the first time Johnny has ever actually supported one particular character, who has somewhat of a tendancy to be the first person in any social gathering that Johnny will pick on. He's his favourite target to bully, and he makes no attempt to hide this fact.

Jhonny writes an email to basically, counter an attempted status strip. Do i honestly think it will make much difference? Nope, i'm status 1. I still did it though, because its what Johnny beleives.

I then received an OOC message that went along the lines of 'Dude, you know Johnny is completely wrong right?'

Well, no, i didn't. Am i going to go back on what Johnny said? God no, i'm a firm beleiver that sometimes characters get things critically wrong or do things that arn't what would be most effective. I'm still amused by the looks i got when Steampunk's reaction to taking a lot of damage was in fact to completely ignore the plan he was going to go through with and instead, fall over in a lot of pain and then proceed to really suck during the rest of the combat.

I also have other reasons for what Johnny said. I really am trying to learn how to play the politics game and at the minute, i'm trying to start small. Its somewhat of an uphill struggle for me since in Requiem, all politics is pretty much PVP and that puts me on edge (And no, i dont mean combat. I just mean player versus player conflict). I need to learn to be a little more ruthless and less afraid of doing stuff like this and i guess Requiem is a trial by fire... Maybe thats the best way to learn.

So i tried to get a Scion game started up a while ago online, but i think that i dont really having much time after work.

See, Sascha will have read that and been really annoyed... but don't worry, keep reading. You'll forgive me.

So... Forum game. I thought it might help with my needing distractions in the mornings and it means i dont have to pay 100% attention to it all the time and can think before i need to react. But what game to run? We've tried action sheets and we've tried dice rolling, we've tried almost everything. Its all complicated and it all requires a lot of rules and...

Well, there is ONE game i know i could run with my arms tied behind my back and blindfolded.
And i've been pondering starting again...

Sooo i'm going to start running an Amber Diceless Forum game, Using the RPG created for roleplaying in the world of Roger Zelazny's classical setting.

I can imagine some people on my Flist just perked up on hearing the A word but then felt a bit meh when they then read the word Forum. Basically my intention is to be a somewhat social and politics based game with people socially roleplaying on the forum, but with potential to do stuff with me over Emails in a sort of Downtime-Scene kind of thing. So for example, people are free to roleplay on the forum as much as they want, but serious interaction with plot will need to go to emails in an attempt to speed things up or make it so that private scenes can be ran without everyone being able to bump into them or knowing secret plans before you've enacted them.

Not got much on the site just yet, but heres the link anyway.

http://heartsofamber.proboards.com

More content will be added, and i suppose i could say i'm starting looking for characters now. Obviously i cant just post character creation rules onto the forum page as thats bad and wrong (tm) for someone to do, but if you don't have a copy of the book and are interested in playing, get in contact with me and we'll see what we can do.

Allright, so this month has seen a resurgance of something that been hiding since 2007.

Panic Attacks.

Now, what i mean by this isnt that i have what people would normall call a panic attack, but more that occasionally through the day i feel brief moments of dread about how my life is going at the minute. Now, i'm hoping to nip this in the bud sooner rather then later, as while they are small moments of doubt now by the time christmas is just around the corner i'm going to end up how i did in 2007, unable to sleep for a month solid because everytime i laid down i started panicking to the point where it actually felt like i had a little black hole inside me just constantly sucking me into it. About things like my future, not having a job, having to stack shelves for the rest of my life because all i was suitable for was unskilled labour... stuff like that.

Now, obviously my situation has changed drastically since then. I've got a job now that i've kept for over a year and a half which i am confident i can do well, i have a LOT more friends then i did back then and not just from roleplaying circles (though, those guys are the ones i hang out with). I've got more money then i did then (Allright, not by much thanks to a quarter of it going into travel every month just to continue making more money) and i have a much more active social life.

So... Why am i panicking now, then?
I think its work. Im not really sure since the panic passes really quickly, but i think that might be it. Might be something to do with feeling like im never going to get ahead there (When really, its all my own fault im not making supervisor due to being made of fail before i even get to put in an application) and it might also be something to do with Feeling like im not supported by the job itself.
I know, its a big retail chain. Everything is very hands off and really i shouldn't be so Naieve about my first proper job where i wasnt working for a member of my family who actually had a reason to accept some of my input... But talking to management really feels like pissing into the wind a lot of the time. It doesnt do anything except get my legs wet.

So, what am i going to do about it?

Well, its been suggested that i go to a doctor to speak about it, which is advice i'll probably be taking this year. I don't want Amy getting upset because im in a bad place, and really i dont want any of my other friends upset on my behalf either. I am not really expecting them to do much about the problem, but on the other hand i really have no experience in what a doctor would do when that situation is put in their lap, so i'm happy to at least try it.
I need projects that will keep my interest. Its all well and good knuckling down on IOD projects like writing up all my plotkits, but those arn't the kind of thing i can get enjoyment from so i'll probably end up doing a bit and then going and playing a game instead when i get bored after 10 minutes of putting the jumbled nonsense in my head to word so other people can understand it.
Should i take up doodling again? the only problem with that is on some days i have a critical fail in the creativity department and i just can't think of anything to really draw. None of the stuff i'd be doodling would ever be used for something other then keeping me amused... and that just feels like kinda a waste really.
Morning internet based roleplay has slowed to a stop due to the usual suspects not having reliable internet at work anymore as well as a heavy workload, and thats hardly their fault. That has over the last year or two been whats keeping me amused in the mornings and i've recently been finding myself either staring blankly at the screen, trying to find a game to play that will keep my interest or doing rubbish things like Wiki Hopping and Youtube surfing.
Gaming in the mornings... uch. Computer games. I love them, you know? but i feel like such a fucking slacker when im playing them. Given half a chance, thats all i'll do during a day. And most of the time, i'm just playing because im bored which is a really shitty reason to play as it means i'm constantly keeping an eye on my laptop and wishing someone would talk to me (Which is pretty sad when i think about it actually). There has been one game thats kept my interest recently and annoyingly, while it will run on my computer it seriously fucking inches along slowly. Dwarf Fortress is a lot of fun, though. Could i go back to bloodbowling solidly day in and day out? Probably actually, though again i end up feeling like a bit of a slacker and the slow loading times on my laptop hack me off.

So... Bleh. I just needed to get all that out really.
I need an action plan.

And no, baby. Thinking of ways to keep you amused and sexed up is not an action plan :P

Heh. I am full of links today.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/491787

www.nihilum.eu

So. Wow players are like Terrorists.

Terrorists are like Wow Players.

...

So basically, Suicide Bombers are just grinding Allah Rep?