i'm losing it...

... or that's what a friend claimed. but here's what my D&D character said. and i quote this:

Thorn looked a few moments at Angy.
"You're still a kid, Angy. You ain't seen nothing yet, I'm afraid." He paused a few moments. "I mean neither to scare you, nor to hurt your feelings (he frowned here) but it's better you're prepared for whatever's out there in your path. My vengeance upon my so called friend in Calimport wasn't terrible, as you put it. I just served him back what he would've brought upon me... One day, you'll be past your grief and you'll discover the anger that has built up. You'll go mad with rage. And if you survive that... though others may not (he grinned)... well, then you'll cool down and maybe discover who you are and where you're headed. Just maybe. People get stuck along the way all the time."

He got up and shook the snow from his cloak.

i can only say... wow! i love the guy.

neverwinter nights nights part II

Ok, I promised I'd be back. Don't suppose you are all to keen, but now I am curious about the blunders our little friend from bella online has made :) I've long since given up on her, if I ever get stuck I just check the walkthrough from gamebanshee.com, at least those people know what they are talking about. I am well into chapter three now, so let's take a look at two.

Well, nothing new on the henchman side, the title still reads six, they still are the same five. Names, classes, races and the likes all jumbled up. She keeps mentioning titles of books you find, though might find others, or totally different items and she keeps believing quest givers become merchants after you quench their hearts' desires...

Port Llast and surrounding areas

Kendrack is the head of the Merc guild, and offers a bounty for the ears of criminals. He'll give you 300g apiece for the 5 criminals.

Quick note... this quest never happened to me :-s. I didn't ask the dude about it in the first place and the next time I went there, his daughter was already rescued, which means the criminals had been slain. Someone must've been there before me I suppose :P. I am only sorry for the lost XP but... ah, well.

Terran is a sweet talking person who says bandits stole his brother Neva outside Charwood. He offers 300g reward. Turns out he is just trying to lure you south to kill you. Ah well, can you trust no one?

Elaith Croolnober was a smuggler and wants to go to Evermeet. He wants you to steal 3 gems to help him go. Sorry, but no.

Errm... the first character is actually a chick. And the second dude... hey, he wants his daughter to see the native lands of her ancestors. How can you be so cruel, bitch?! 'sides, you get one gem anyway, from the witch in Neverwinter Woods. You get reward in gold and XP for each separate gem. And don't tell me you missed out all of Wanev's quests because you didn't enter his house?!?!? You do his quest and get the gem for it... only the third one needs to be "stolen". Which I didn't do, I just chatted the woman up and she wanted a date in her room. I agreed and demanded the gem. Left her broken hearted but hey, that'll teach her about throwing herself in the arms of strangers met in inns :P.

Note if you use your Stone of Recall you end up at a Tyr temple with Neurik. He asks you for help with a werewolf. You get 4 silver charms to help out with Sir Karathis and 3 boys. Calindros is here and will heal you. To return via the portal costs 150gp.

Errrrm, not really. Neurik does the healing and the trading. The other dude is attending the portal.

Visit Gerrol again and give him Dergiab's head for 150gp and 250xp. Give the gold back. Talk about his wife and he gives you 150gp and250xp. Again, give the gold back. You're now set with this area for now.

Errrrm... why? Oh. Good points. I forgot. How do you ever buy equipment? And just what is your alignment? Super-lawful, over-good, I presume...

Now the 2nd golum - read the scroll then talk to him. He lets you in.

You mean golem, right? :)

Janis is to the side, he needs his son, Revat. [..] OK, now to the dig site.

Actually, Janis needs her son. But it's rather the other way around, her somewhat moron of a son is looking for her. Which you would've know if you had cleared the surface area before jumping headfirst into the first cave you saw...

Find Dregin, the guard that won't let you past yet.

Why would I? If you just walk into the camp, he's the last one you should meet. By now you would've talked to the Arch-Druid and he'd let you pass. No problemo.

Once you get all 3 druids, kill yourself at the shrine. You'll go into the Spirit Realm.

Pssst! You talked about the druid in the spider's cocoon in a cave and the one caught by the Nymph, but you forgot to mention where the third is. Namely in the house of the witch Selate. She asks you for the mirror of the Nymph and will let you free the druid in return. Oh, and give you the gem for the elf you chose not to help ;)

Constance is there. Convince her that Erik loves here, and then pay her 400g to get the brooch. Go to Erik, give him the brooch and you get 500g. You can't refuse it for some reason.

Errrrm.... maybe because you've just paid 400 gp for it and the game is somewhat idiot-proof? Hmmmmm....

I overwrote much of my dungeon notes. I also overwrote my graveyard notes.

Thank God. Heaven knows what you might have come up with otherwise :) Quick note on the graveyard and the undead arcane brother. He has a rod of terror, so you and your henchman might be stricken with fear and not be able to react until he finishes you off. Get some protection from mind spells - items, amulets of will to increase your saving throws, potions of clarity etc. Also, invisibility helps - either the spell or the potions. He activates the spell as soon as he sees you but if he doesn't, that would be a bit hard :)

Luskan and Host Tower

OK, go to Lady J and persuade her that Erb will be hurt. She'll give you the ring. Go to the slum buildings to the north and find Galrone. Buy the child for 1000g. Give Erb the ring for 500g and 150xp. Give Yvette the baby plus 250gp and get +7 good and 150xp.

Or else, persuade her that keeping the ring is illegal. Worked for me :D. Also, I got the child for far less, 400 gp, I think. And because the dude was such a bastard, I charmed one of his dogs into coming with me. For the umpth time, you get the XP from Yvette anyway. I didn't give her any money, but this is the one occasion when I refused the bounty, that was 3 or 4 good points.

From a circle building in the SW is a route through sewers with bugbears. You come out by a statue in a new map area. [...] THere's a big battle with six strong guys - one is 'hero'.

Fallen hero to be precise. And the new map area you just stumbled in is the Luskan docks, from a sneaker entry.

To the northeast is Baram's Lair. He says he'll release the kids if you bring him Kurth's head - that Kurth is with the Auril Priestesses. When you bring him Kurth's head he laughs and says he ate Londa's children. Lovely!

I talked to Kurth first. Actually, if you talk to the two High Captains, you can play their offers out against one another, they each want to other dead and you'll convince them to give you more gold. I killed Baram first, he was the bigger ass :D

OK, at the pinnacle. You find a corpse with a note indicating he was Aarin Gend's spy trying to protect Lady A. Ah well. Go down the stairs and in Maugrim's lair you'll get his yournal about the words of power. You're done in the tower, head back to Aarin.

Oh really? How about the lizardfolk you fight after Maugrim, Aribeth and Morag teleport away? By the way, I did encounter the bug mentioned in the gamebanshee walkthrough, but the solution didn't work. I tried something else with success - I attacked them with ranged weapons through the closed doors, that triggered the script - the doors opened, the leaders fled and the lizards attacked. This is a print screen of the character somewhere in the Host Tower of Luskan.


All in all, the chick's notes got messier and messier, I think she was by now mighty bored of the game. Good news is, I'll spare you the third chapter from her, seeing that even though I'm playing it right now, what I've read about the bits I've done hardly makes any sense. She must've given up halfway through the game, cause there are no notes on the fourth chapter. Or maybe she has overwritten them. With the Pony Princess Notes or something. Ok, I'm mean, I know.

neverwinter nights nights

nope, no mistake in the title. that's what i'm losing my nights with lately: neverwinter nights 1, because nwn2 won't work on my stupid computer. yet. :D dungeons&dragons based rpg game. there.

on the past few days i was looking something up, and stumbled on a walkthrough for the game made by a chick for an online women's magazine. woo-hoo for rpg playing chicks. boo for stupid rpg playing chicks.

This is a really hard game to write a walkthrough for. You have many options of what to do at every step in the game. You can choose to help people and become more "good", or hurt people and become more "bad". Just because I choose to do something in my own style of gaming doesn't mean that you couldn't do the exact opposite and be playing just as well.

ok, i got that. so you want to be 'good'. at a first guess, seraph and i thought she might be a paladin given her desperation to acquire 'good' points. apparently she played a ranger. if she started out with a good alignment... how exactly was she acquiring more points? anyways... well, you can find the walkthrough here, if interested. i'm just going to point out a couple of things, in the chronological (sort of...) order of the game, from the introduction and chapter one. i'll do another entry, i guess, when i'm done with chapter two of the game.

In this little library area is a book you can grab - The Northern Four Adventuring Troupe.

false. except for quest items and certain stuff certain creatures drop when dead (ex. fire beetles always leave a fire beetle belly behind), stuff you find in bookshelves, piles of books, piles of skulls, chests, boxes, crates, armoires, corpses, wells, rubble, piles of stone and garbage (yeah, look into that too) as well as remains from defeated enemies... it's never the same. this mistaken affirmation appears throughout the walkthrough. you find a potion of xyz there, you find the abc book in that other place. ntz. doesn't work that way.

Fenthick asks you for help, and you level up again.

false. you level up based on how much experience you accumulated. you get that by killing enemies or doing quests.

There are four henchmen you can hire to help you out. Note that you should end up hiring ALL FIVE of these during Chapter One.

errrr. ok. it's five, really. and she goes on mentioning them:

• tomi undergallows, halfling thief. not really, the character class is rogue, which covers much more than a thief. trust me, i play one.
• daelan red tiger, half orc fighter. not really, he's not a fighter but a barbarian. image attached. different class, different skills. oh, and his mom did not fall in love with a 1/2 orc, but with an entire one. and the 'falling in love' part is not too clear either.
• grimgnaw, lawful evil monk. why state his alignment instead of race, as with all others? dwarf monk.
• sherwyn, human archer. she's a bard, really. an archer
• class does not exist. am not too sure about that human part either but i guess it's correct... and her name is sharwyn. she's deliciously stuck up, so you might not want to address her other than her name.
• linu la'neral, the cleric. she is an elf.
• boddyknock glinkle, mage. mage? whuzzdat? he's a gnome wizard. after completing his quest, he doesn't give you a lantanege ring, but a lantanese one. because lantan is the place he comes from.

tomi is to be found in the temple of tyr, where you start out. the other four are in the trade of blades, not trail.

Desthar is annoyed. The Nurse, when pressed, says that Desthar and the Helmites showed up just after the plague came, very suspicious. North is Arabeth.

false. it's desther and aribeth.

Nyatar by the tree wants animals freed - gives you a zoo key and transport via plants scroll, for the BlackLake district. You get 200xp and 400gp when you do this task, and then he becomes a merchant.

false. another mistake appearing throughout the walkthrough. characters who give you quests do not become merchants. they have wares for sale from the start. if the option doesn't appear in the dialogue, just re-enter conversation with them.

Moonstone Mask is a whorehouse. Ophala Cheldarstorn in there wants you to rob some nobles of their artwork. I refused. Giles wants you to kill someone. I refused. To let you in the back, she wants a letter from Oleff. If you go and get one, and pay 200 to Torgo, you get a coin. Up on the third floor is Tamora, Luce, and Tanith. I was female so only Tanith was willing to talk to me. Really he says nothing at all interesting and won't do anything "illicit".

oooo-kay.
(1) you refused loads of experience and gold by refusing to steal the artworks. had you done it, you would've also found out that maybe ophala was right...
(2) gilles doesn't want you to kill anyone. he wants you to bring the artifacts from the tombs to him rather than to oleff, so that they can be desecrated and grant power to the goddess talona. i refused it myself, though it's worth more gold to be evil, just like in real life. i draw lines too, but i draw them more comfortably ;)
(3) you don't steal artworks from the rich... but you did pay to have a date with a male prostitute. interesting attitude :P

by the way. this is one spot where the game is not balanced between genders. normally, gender doesn't influence your character but males have one more quest here, for the prostitute tamora. she'll give you her broach to go to the docks district and frighten hoff out of bugging her. you can sell the broach to hoff for 200 GP, frighten him and return to tell the story to tamora or kill him for the XP. they could've made tanith the brother of tamora so he can give you the same quest when playing a female character, or else find something. whatever.

Peninsula district:

A corpse by the fountain has the Sword Coast book. {...} When you finish clearing out the above-ground area, it's time to head into the estate, in the northeast. {...} There are firebelly monsters here. Head into the prison. {...} Head west, grab the gauntlet in the chest, and head downstairs.

1. that book... or something else.
2. or use the prison key... whichever.
3. fire beetles. they leave behind firebeetle bellies when slain.
3. the gauntlet or... whatever.

Beggar's Nest:

There are lots of zombies, a skeleton mage and Gulnan in here. She's a Yuan-ti. Lure the mages/skeleton over to one side to kill them (the mage first) without involving Gulnan. Then go kill her altar to weaken her for 200xp. Finally kill her off, being sure to run when she starts casting a spell at you. You can dodge most of them and just beat her down.

well, i've let my henchman take care of whatever zombies he could and ran straight for the altar. once destroyed, the undead disappear and only the yuan-ti is left.

Blacklake:

There are various noble estates on this map. If you're playing evil, you can steal things from them and do a quest to steal artwork, given to you in Moonstone Mask. I was a good character and left the houses alone.

errr... i was playing a neutral character that ended up being good. still, i did the quest. you don't even need to kill off the owner, just the guards. he gives up the items to you and explains why ophala wants them. oh, and poking your head into every box, crate and barrel is part of the game. nothing evil about that. you get evil points only for killing people at a whim or doing something purposely evil, such as giving the tomb artefacts to gilles, i presume.

If you leave the doors closed you can do it without killing them, or if you're seeking revenge for the poor animals (as I was) you can kill them too.

nice ranger. good ranger. you kill people for keeping a bear locked up but won't steal a statue :)

You find a +1 greatsword in this room which you can have Marrock turn into a Harbinger Kin Greatsword for the sword, Adamantite and 500gp. It's a great sword! Does fire damage. Get down to the main room with the tree on one side and cage on the other. Save here because you're about to fight Meladen. Touch the cage doors to start the fight. I found it REALLY easy - just two or three hits with my Harbinger Kin Greatsword. Let him go, get the key, he gives you nothing else.

(1) the stonefire axe, from a +1 axe, adamantite and 500GP does more damage and the same fire damage.
(2) meldanen is pretty easy to defeat once you got here. you should also have a belt that offers +12 magic resistance by now, so no problem.
(3) he does give you something else. for example, 500 GP to leave him alive. without you taking good penalties :P you might also kill him, i hear, to get one of his teeth to give to formosa. and to stop all trouble in blacklake. i admit i didn't. i just pressed him for his gold and got the key.

You need to kill everyone you can get your hands on (that is evil) to get red coins.

that is not evil. they have "thugs" and "ruffians" written above their heads and they attack you.

In 20 In a Quiver, Jerol sells stuff. You can buy 3 red coins from him at 150g a coin. He says Gilda at the Golden Apple has one or two more. If you head over there, Gilda has some but refuses to hand them over.

you really needn't buy those coins. plenty to be found on various muggers, thugs, ruffians and bloodsailors. i didn't spend my gold on coins and gilda did give me, one or two, i can't remember.

OK on to the Seedy Tavern. First, Jalek enters a drinking contest with you. You drink: Neverwinten Sailor Spirit, Dockside Dunn's, Orc blood Brew, Dwarven Red Eye, Thayvian Fire Juice, and Catoblepas Death Cheese Wine. He admires your spirit and says you can talk to Christov now. Christov gives you a tavern key to get downstairs. The auctioneer will sell you things for those red coins you found. I bought the +1 longsword for 10 coins, the AC2 +1 leather armor for 5 coins and the shimmering sash of spell resist 12 for 6 coins. None were anywhere near as good as the stuff I already had. Good for selling I suppose.

i didn't enter the drinking contest. then again i am a rogue and open most doors for myself. i bought some stuff for myself and when i finished off the entire district, headed back and bought some more for the coins i had left. there's nothing else you can do with them and the stuff you buy is virtually free, since there is an abunadance of coins being carried around by the various thugs you have to kill off anyway. i sold for good money whatever i didn't need.

OK, back to the stream. Charox sends you downstream. [...] Note if you go back to tell Dara'Nei that all is OK, she's gone. There's a note there with instructions on an alternate entrance to the sewers.

errr... it's charon. and the note was there ever since you freed dara'nei, it was on one of her guards, which you supposedly killed already to free her. people... do pick up remains from corpses. you never know ;)

Helm's Hold

Yuri the Knife is in one cell - if you free him and he runs to warn the others. You have to kill him to stop him. I just talk to him and then leave him there.

errr... and miss out on 200-something XP for killing a bad guy. how do you survive this game? i'm not advocating pointless killing here but... errr... whatever.

OK, now head over across the bridge. You'll meet a visage that tells you Desther served his purpose and now tries to defy his fate. Go into the courtyard. The corpse right by the doorway holds a gem. The gem activates some robotic "friends" that help you kill the enemies. I actually don't like to use the gem until the end because I want to kill all the enemies (and get all the XP) myself.

i'm not sure, but i think you'd get the XP anyway. you do when your henchman does the killing, after all. if you enter the room with the robotic friends (which don't really fit a d&d universe, miss... they're animated armours actually) without the gem, they attack you. you can thus either enter on the right side. or take the cave entrance.

Working your way around, Chaohinon of the Void is in the top right. He wants the Black Grimoire ritual book in the study. I refuse to free him and take the book. Up center is a book of Helm on a shelf. South of here is where the 'main entrance' is - you can put the gem on the pedestal if you want to activate the robots to help you out.

ok, not reading creatures' dialogues and quest book descriptions carefully leads you to here... the grimoire also contains banishing spells. put it in the altar before the demon creature and banish it for xp and good points, i think. then place the book of helm there instead and you can summon the spirit guardian of the place, which had been destroyed by the demon. you get another batch of XP, good points i think and the spirit lets you choose a reward. a magical weapon (a longbow with + i think), a magical item, the blessings of helm (true ones this time: increased attack, strength, endurance, defense etc... there were like six green belssing icons next to my character) or his insight on things. i reloaded and took the magical item, which i later identified as a ring of element protection (fire, ice, acid, electricity...).

The room left and straight is the final room so clear out the other two first. Then go in to kill Desther. Kill the rest before starting in on him. He gives up and you get 300xp.

errrrm. not quite. go in the main room first. kill off some ritual creatures to break desther's defence and try to kill him. i couldn't, so i just lured the creatures into the corridors and took them out as they came, but not all came. when desther arrived and he surrendered, all creatures disappeared, except the ritual ones, which i killed off easily. it also cleared the neighbouring rooms, so raid the chests there. make sure you've done everything else in the hold before going for desther, because once you entered that door, it seals shut with a force field.
well... this was my 2 cents on the walkthrough. presuming anyone interested finds it... coroborate it with what this chick wrote at the link i provided. am not sure there aren't other things left out, but at least you have more covered now.

one day....

i seem to see ahead in a kind of way. i know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but i know i can't turn back. it isn't to see elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains, that i want - i don't rightly know what i want: but i have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead.

j.r.r. tolkien, the lord of the rings, book one, chapter IV - a shortcut to mushrooms

not now... but some day... when the darnkess lifts... i'll see the Road... and i'll bear this in mind. i have something to do. something that i owe myself. and it lies ahead. and elves and dragons will always surround me.

dragons and books

well, dOGTOBER fEST has come and gone. however, i decided not to blog about it (i'm a bitch, i know). all in all, it was an interesting experience. oh, and i got the chance to give a bit of a hug to a bearded dragon. no, am not talking rubbish here, there is a species of reptile called like that. they're absolutely cuddly, as their belly is very soft. also, unlike iguanas, they don't bite. i'd consider getting a pair, but unfortunately, their menu includes maggot-like things.

(by the way... as you can tell from the fact that it is pretty much down to earth, this blog is none of the ones planned. so you still have five coming up, hehe).

today i've decided to torture my hair. i do that once in a while, but in a somewhat kind fashion. today however, i really tortured it, i wouldn't be surprised if i got mad at me, if only it possessed brains of its own. luckily its brain is mine :D. so, i dyed it blue black, then i decoloured four strands and dyed them blue. it's still in the drying process so i can't tell you how it looks :) i missed having my blue strands. am really fond of them.

last week i bought myself karl may's winnetou. for those of you who don't know what i am talking about... well, shame on you, am not going to enlighten you. for those of you who do... here's the deal: winnetou is the first novel i ever read on my own. i was 8 at that time and picked a book from the shelf for the holidays. it was winnetou volume 5... i must've thought that it meant it was a five star book, i definitely didn't think it was the number of the volume :)

i loved it and cried bitter tears at the end. i was relieved to find out that there are other four books i can read. it was like i could resurrect winnetou reading the other volumes after the last one, in which he dies. that series still holds the record with 6 readings. coming up next is old surehand, by the same author with 5 readings, dune with 4 and lord of the rings with 3 (catching up fast, since i have also bought LOTR in english and am re-reading it. aloud. to polish my english).

anyways, winnetou came up in some discussion, i remembered it when editing a picture i took which i eventually named after the two main heroes' horses. and then i saw the book, published in three volumes in a bookstore two days after. guess i was meant to buy it :) my old five volumes look miserable (i tortured books i loved as a kid) and are at our cottage in the mountains anyway.

so, i am indulging in escapist readings again: the seventh winnetou, the fourth lord of the rings and the third harry potter reading. all in parallel :) am multi-tasking.

and no... in this post i refuse to complain of the amount of work i have to do. as a matter of fact, i think i am going to post this and then i am going to shut down the computer and go read. one of the three. whichever. i need that :)

so my advice for the start of the week is... go read a book people. one you like, not one you have to. it doesn't matter whether you've already read it or not, what other people think of it (i've raised some eyebrows with harry potter), what else you got on your mind, how tight your schedule is... just pick up a book and read. leave this world for a couple of hours. it's divine.

from unicorn to dragon

there are two films that deeply moved me as a child - e.t. and the last unicorn (well and terminator II at some point, but that doesn't fit the clumsy picture i attempt to paint here). i have seen both a couple of times as a child and cried every time. i would like to see the movies again, but i am afraid they will lose that dear and special glow that surrounds them. maybe they belong to my childhood and shouldn't be touched. maybe i should just keep them encased in the shrine of early days and not desecrate those moments, tainting them with the slime of the present.

i found peter beagle's the last unicorn a some days ago and i have just put the book down now to write this blog because something occurred to me. it is weird how metaphors wriggle their ways into our lives and express them even if we are not aware of them.

there used to be a time when i was a lover of unicorns and pegasi, and sometimes even of the cross-breed that so called fantasy artist made of the two (woo-hoo, why not draw both wings and a horn on the same poor creature?). there used to be a time when i gathered every half-decent picture of any of them. there used to be a time when i loved to draw them (well, it was more copying, since i'm not good at drawing). there used to be a time when it broke me that someone else stole my idea of drawing silvery white unicorns on black cardboard before i got round to do it. there used to be a time when i identified those wonderful magical horse like creatures as my second nature.

for those out there unfamiliar with such beasts:
the unicorn is not merely a white horse with a horn; it's smaller, more graceful, with cloven hooves, a lion's tail and a goat-like beard. ageless and immortal creatures, their horns may cure diseases and neutralise poisons. unicorns are a symbol of grace and beauty; fierce but kind, they are the uncatchable cretures that can be tamed only by pure hearted maidens.
pegasus is the winged horse of greek mythology, mount of heroes and companion of the muses, often seen as a symbol of inspiration. he was born after the slaying of the gorgon medusa, a mere look at whom might have killed, by perseus; allegorically speaking the said medusa was a personification of paralyzing fear out of which nothing good comes. instead of looking at her directly and becoming a victim like all others before him, perseus aimed his strike while watching her in a polished shield. using another, cool-headed point of view, he overcame fear. at fear's death, inspiration was born.

i couldn't tell you when magical horses, be they winged or horned, faded from the picture :( eventually they did and what replaced them was the imagery of the dragon. dragons too populate the world of myth and lore as mighty beast, through whose veins the magic of earth (the planet, not the element) itself courses. a race older perhaps than any other, time has but little significance to them and growing age only renders them wiser, stronger, their scales thicker and more resistant and their breath deadlier and reaching ever farther. they watch, prey and hoard when offered the occasion but prefer the solace of their lair to the company of others.

while i confess to be a lover of dragons and regard them as highly misunderstood creatures... i must also confess i find the transformation sad. to be going to a happy, careless and free roaming creature of the skies and forests such as pegasi and unicorns to... well, an old, sulking reptile thing, with still the power but not the will to roam at large, hoarding to no end other than the hoarding itself (be it material or spiritual possessions), avoiding encounters and finishing them briskly if not even violently when they happen... that is not a good think.

however, if mythical creature it must be... the world is fitter for a dragon than for a unicorn these days. innocent maidens are deceiving, the hunters countless and their greed unmeasured. thick scales and deadly breath make better surviving tools than grace and playful nimbleness.

do chairs have dreams?

do balrogs have wings? god, i love pointless questions. don't know about the balrogs. but chairs have dreams. and i am here to prove it (well not really. but i have to justify this blog entry somehow :) ). just please don't call me in the middle of the night to ask me this.

just like humans, chairs can live in two different types of worlds. the world can be a dull and downright opressive, a black-and-white world if you wish, forcing one to find ever new means to satisfy escapist tendencies without getting into (serious) trouble (of course this doesn't work in 1984-type of worlds). or, the world can be your average every day grind - a colour world, where escapism is a perfectly normal way to keep you working as a little wheel in the big system, while at the same time allowing you to keep your personality intact. now, let's analyse the dreams of chairs in the two possible worlds.

CASE STUDY 1 - the black and white world

the initial condition for a chair to start dreaming, is a rupture with the world it lives in. not fitting in the surroundings, no communication with other chairs, be it lack of chairs near the subject, or the existence of other types of chairs that reject communication with our subject, on grounds of its different nature. in other words, in order to start dreaming, a chair must feel alone in a black and white world.


the dreamt "escape" from the narrow-minded black and white world has two dimensions. first is that of the chair's inner world. we, as mere humans, can only begin to fathom the extent of a wooden chair's imagination, the height to which it takes the chair's inner self in its daydreams. neither can we graps the colour spectrum in which wooden chairs of various essences then perceive their otherwise dull b/w surroundings. we can only reach out with our inner eye and thus perceive a chair's dream of spreading imaginary wings and floating above the daily monochromy in levitation.


the other dimension of the chair's escape is the mutation its dreams and trips in imaginary worlds bring into its behaviour in the 'real world'. every chair capable of such dreams wears their mark that it cannot conceal, just as humans may not conceal their inner fire that will always shine through their eyes. sparks of higher spirits will burn through disguises. now, for the unformed human eye, such a manifestation in a chair is hard to detect, and yet there are signs for the willing to see. the drooping chair below is an example. its drooping board is just the obvious manifestation 'against the system' of straight lines that makes up its world. but there are other, more subtle clues. notice that its hind legs are showing, that it doesn't 'stay in line' either. it is a rebel chair in more ways that meet the eye and in that lies its chance of success. while the system might try to opress the obvious signs of rebellion, the more subtle ones will burn their way into the minds and hearts of others and subminate the system from inside.


CASE STUDY 2 - the colour world

as said, the colour world is your average daily grind. escapism is a must if a person - or chair, in our case - is to preserve its personality, its self, its sanity after all. again, as in humans, not all chairs mind being reduced to a wooden mass in a room. others do. and they dream. the image below is an eloquent example of such. remember le fabuleux destin de amelie poulain? there is that part where amelie's father, being too stuck in his routine, refuses to fulfil his life's desire and travel. amelie then 'dwarfnaps' his revered garden dwarf and sends him on travels with someone; her confused father keeps receiving pictures of his dwarf in various locations around the world that he himself desired to see. this is in short what this particular chair does. back to the wall, in a sunny yet unchanged place, it goes back to its spring of power. it rediscovers its green and very much alive inner tree nature, sprouts new leaves and grows out of itself. since it cannot move, it sends a part of itself on travels, to live the life it dreams for itself, to be its garden dwarf on the great adventure of life on which the chair itself cannot embark.


ps: photographs courtesy of bogdan h. more to be found here.

sapphire blue

apparently, lately i am torturing my brain. that's pretty common, bet it's used to it by now and would probably miss it if i didn't, but i'm stretching its limits now. latest example was the thinking with a twist exercise. should've had some sort of positive impact, guess it did, but it still feels a bit like raping one's mind, forcing it to view in a positive light something that it usually finds utterly unpleasant.
on sunday, when walking home from work, i tried another thing. at first, unconscious, but then willingly. i started by noticing how deep blue the sky was on that particular day. one thing triggered another: i remembered a passage from eragon, when the main character gets a chance to see the world through a blue dragon's eyes: the blue seemed more intense and had more hues than he imagined, while the other colours were a bit faded. i tried picturing my surroundings making the blue stand out. i read somewhere about an exercise to train your brain: trying to count all white cars, or finding all red items in your office and so forth. this was a bit like that. i tried to notice only the blue things, and they were surprisingly many: the perfectly blue sky, traffic signs, people's clothes, patches on commercial meshes, cars, flowers in a flower shop... amazing.
and the thread of thought went on (does it ever stop?). i remembered i fairy tale i had listened to as a child on a vynil disc. as far as i recall, it was called 'the blue stone'. i don't remember it exacly, i don't think i ever understood the story properly as a kid. in a far away country, all people were given a blue stone at birth. for some reason, the emperor hated the blue colour. he let his men confiscate all blue stones. he called ravens to cover the skies. he covered the wells and made the river dirty, people with blue eyes had to cover them and so forth... no idea how the story went out, but whenever he thought blue was gone, someone reminded him that there is still something he can do nothing about... and i was just thinking how foolish it is to try to erase blue. and i think i like living in a blue world :)

on eragon, old friends and official e-mails...

seeing that i felt pretty lost for a week or so because now that i have again finished HP i was again at a loss as to what nice fantasy themed thing to read, i did the next best thing. i immersed myself again in the world of alagaesia. that is the realm where the action of eragon takes place, the first novel of a trilogy by christopher paolini. to many re-reading a book may seem pointless. to me, it's like meeting up with old friends. i've left them there, between the pages of the book, and now i'm re-visiting and we're just having a good time reminiscing. cozy, isn't it? i've sent an e-mail to the publisher wondering when they plan to translate and publish (or at least publish, lol) the second volume, eldest. wonder how long it'll take them to answer, if at all. am still at a loss why the representatives of a major record lable won't answer a mail in which you ask them where you can actually buy an original cd of a major-selling artist... i also have another mail on the roll, waiting for an answer - to the sanitary veterinarian authority, asking for a list of all authorised veterinarian clinics in town. that shouldn't be such a fuss, should it? i'll let you know how long it takes, though.

vampragons

vampragons make great pets. no, i am not talking about the next big breed of your regular dog or cat friend. i am talking about the pets you can buy when playing adventure quest online, the free rpg game by artix entertainment. they are magically bred creatures, the crossings of vampires and dragons. there is one for every element in the game. coming up next is a list of my pet vampragons, seeing that yesterday i have got the eighth and final one :), comprised of the element and a short explanation of the names i've given them (yeah, you can customize those). their "surname" is for each a breed of dragon mentioned in the harry potter series. i just gave them one name when i started out, but then i was thinking about naming one of them and the idea occured to me. you'll see why :) coming up next - vampragons in order of acquisition.

• fire - dark red - razor fireball (razor is the first vampragon i ever got and is named for a blue dragon in the 'dragonlance' book series, even though that one was breathing thunder, not fire; the dragon species is the chinese fireball dragon species, one of the four encountered at the triwizard tournament, assigned to viktor krum)
• light - dark yellow - rashid opaleye (rashid was named after 1001 nights tales' sultan harun al-rashid, which i seem to remember means 'the bright one', though am not sure. anyway, the name fits his light element and i wanted it to have the same starting letter; the dragon species is the antipodean opaleye, native to new zealand)
• wind - dirty white - nino longhorn (well, i was looking for a 'windy' name and came up with nino, which besides meaning 'kid' - he was my errr... youngest pet at that time - is a climatic occurence, so i thought it fits. the dragonspecies is - ha! ha! the romanian longhorn. charlie weasley, would you please show me one of those?)
• energy - light yellow - norbert ridgeback (again, the name was meant to have the same starting letter as the previous. couldn't really come up with something connected to his element ( 'volt' didn't sound paticularly enticing). since i was re-reading volume one of harry potter at that time, i thought of naming him norbert, after hagrid's pet dragon. since that was of the species norwegian ridgeback, i've given all others dragon names, too. ridgeback sounds good for an energy dragon, after all)
• ice - pale blue - sirius ironbelly (i was determined to keep up the family names tradition, and from the series, the ukrainean ironbelly sounded like something that would fit an ice vampragon. well, and sirius comes from everyone's favourite macho-with-a-heart-of-gold-rebel in the harry potter series, sirius black. thought of naming a black vampragon like that, but decided against it, since the black one was of the dark...)
• earth - green - salem horntail (now from the dragons, horntail sounded very much like earth element, though its original posessor is a nasty piece of work and harry's task in the triwizard tournament, the hungarian horntail. again, i had a hard time looking for a first name starting with the 's' letter, when i was reminded of the tomcat in 'sabrina the teenage witch', salem)
• water - light blue - dannie shortsnout (dannie resembles my nickname and my star sign is a water sign. apart from that, i got a light blue pyjamas with a cute diddl mouse on it, and his name is dannie. so i figured that all goes with the water theme. as for the dragon part, the name of short snout somehow evoked the image of seahorses, don't ask why. the swedish short snout is cedric diggory's opponent in the triwizard tournament)
• dark - black - draco vipertooth (there was no question as to which vampragon would be the vipertooth, the dark one, obviously. its namesake is the peruvian vipertooth. keeping in theme with the 'dark' and the 'snake' of my black vipertooth, i thought of the slytherin house of hogwarts, and what name does spring to mind if not that of draco malfoy. oh, and by the way, draco means 'dragon'. couldn't have fitted better)

now, i must mention the other pets i have had. my first was a cardinal bird that i got rid of pretty soon and have not named it. the others were a dark wolf and then a cinder wolf, names remus and lupin - yeah, that's right, i got the habits of naming them after hp characters early :).
then i have had a thundertroll named hathor (after a very nice troll i encountered in another fantasy series, the 'runeswords') and a blue krabb named herman (after melville, the author of 'moby dick', which is obviously sea themed), i thought it such a fitting name for that creature :)

heed the warning bell...

... for they are coming. one of the tag lines of the movie the village. no, i will not give you a synopsis, and i will not give you a review. there are people who do that better than me on dedicated sites. i'm afraid i'm not even going to give you a humble personal opinion about the movie, although i do think it was underrated from what i've read of reviews. what i am going to tell you about is the ideas i've been left brooding about. yes, in the end it made a lasting impression.
i've been left thinking of how tabus are constructed, passed on and reinforced when questioned in tight communities; of how an outside threat, whether real or imaginary, creates cohesion within a group and shifts attention from inside problems - these questions are mere signs of professional deformation for me. but there are others, deeper and more meaningful: thoughts of the lengths some people go to escape the ghosts of their own past; of how human nature surfaces in primary instincts like love, curiosity, posessiveness, a certain murderous instinct - always; of how sooner or later any good intention is tainted by the need to inforce one's vision upon others, by matter of deceit, if necessary; of how far one's right to lead people allows them to intrude upon their free will... and others as such. a somehow bubbly elogy of the power of love has somehow gone under on me, under the weight of these questions.
and then, another interesting aspect of human behaviour is concentrated in something that, for me, was the most memorable phrase of the movie. heed the warning bell that echoes within it.

"sometimes we don't do things we want to do so that others won't know we want to do them"

might and magic

a universe i am most fond of, as you might have guessed from other posts. well, that universe had a marvellous incarnation in the heroes of might and magic series. i only played III and IV. but good things come to those who wait. every time i check the game's site there is some new piece of information on the fifth game of this particular might and magic series. i can hardly await its release as the trailer and demos look very promising. also, what i have read so far about the factions and creatures shows real hard research and compiling work has been carried out, each nation has a background, a philosophy, a personality. indeed, it promises not to be yet another 'go forth slash eveeything you encounter' game. here's a little teaser - a picture of one of the available wallpapers.

the goblet of fire

the countdown on mugglenet states there are 40 days left till the release of the movie. so i figured it's only natural for me to share my excitement with the world (*giggle* as if the world cares about my blog). judging by the turn the story takes in volume 4 of the harry potter series, the goblet of fire, the film promises to be a most dramatic experience. the trailer i've seen seems to confirm my hopes. i sure hope that it's not rated general audience. a black magic resurrection ceremony in a cemetary is something i'd rather watch without disturbing scared kids' shrieks ;). until november 18, when you can all feast your eyes and your fantasy addiction (now why on earth do i keep assuming everyone suffers of that?) on the real thing, here's the poster of the upcoming goblet of fire.

a fantasy christmas present

i was already wondering what to treat myself to this christmas, seeing that the lord of the rings trilogy is now complete. well, i found an answer to that question. the first movie from the chronicles of narnia is due in winter. ever since delving into the adventures of middle earth, i have wanted to explore the world of narnia, but i never found the complete series of seven novels. but now, with the news broken that the film will be out soon, i solemnly promise that i'll read them before watching it. in lack of any better alternative, and until i find the complete series in the same edition, which i firmly intend to, i have downloaded the texts of all seven novels and i plan to start reading them as soon as i finish the series i am currently reading (another fantasy one, mind you), some time before christmas.

wonderful web game

this is something that i've come across in long hours of boredom and pointless surfing. it's a web-based game. if you like fantasy, d&d, rpg or the sorts, you really need to check it out. just click on the banner below to become a part of the great story of Adventure Quest.