Fan Faire is happening this weekend, and it sounds like everyone is really enjoying their trip to Sin City for the drinks, the pools and the gambling… and maybe some game news thrown in too. I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the big reveals during the community address, including the announcements of the next patches for EQ and EQ2. You probably have also seen comments on what was missing from there too, but that may just be a construct of us on the outside as I hear they had developer panels for EQ, EQ2, Vanguard and SWG yesterday but haven’t seen any news about them.

The three months between GU updates is probably born out of the survey they ran in game a few months back. I seem to remember a question about non expansion content being in there. I honestly enjoyed the once per month update with a few quests and some lore packed in, but if the storyline with the Order of Rime is any indication of what a three month GU schedule will mean for us then the devs will take care of us. I’ve been doing the quests on Kasul, the non grindy portions at least… probably the highlight for me so far was being able to finish the damn burynai faction to get a certain quest out of my journal from forever ago.

There’s news for our little group on Kithicor too, plans are once the character transfers are available for Station Cash to move servers somewhere more populated and palatable. My current thinking is that I’ll move the Sarnak, and also my carpenter/transmuter back on Najena. That’s a ways in the future though, according to news it will still be two weeks before the price cut takes effect.

That’s all for now, hope to see you all in game!

Something I wrote to be my second in game book, look for your copy on the broker in Kithicor!

~~~

Poem of the Undying’s Grace
by Shatteredsoul

O Forgotten Goddess
One of many names
Prime Healer
Desolate One
Void Mistress
Of your beauty and gifts I sing

You who were the Queen of the Sul’dae
Beloved of Anuk
Undying
Your crown shines in the darkness
The feathers that adorn it
A beautiful display

Your divine beauty inspired
The beauty of your works
The gifts of life everlasting
The beauty of undeath
Vampires, zombies and preserved ones
Owe their lives to you

O Forgotten Goddess
Were that I worthy of your gift!
My body young forever
My spirit living within
My strength augmented
Infused by your embrace

With such power who could doubt
The depth of your love
The heretics need only look
At the beauty of the vampire
At the strength of the lich
To know the desire your worship provokes

Anashti, Queen
Forgotten Goddess
Smile upon all mortals
From your palace in the void
I hear the call of the peacock
And its feathers are quite beautiful

~~~

~~~

The clock hands read 6:23. That’s what this clock has always read, all I can remember it saying. This is my moment you see, the space between the hand pointing to 23 and where it would point to 24. In the square looking up the hands on the clock tower sit unmoving, as does the painted sky behind it. As moments go, I think mine is quite beautiful.

My town, in addition to the clock tower has a town hall, a library,  and a bank. The last of these is closed, doors locked… it is 6:23 of course. I’ve found myself a comfortable sofa in the library reading room and that’s where I stay. The books are endlessly fascinating and help fill my moment quite well.

In the books time passes; characters grow and develop and interact, great men discuss important ideas at noon or at night. All that is well and good of course, but when you live in a moment like mine it’s hard to focus on anything in motion in the stories when you want to see the moments. Children are born in moments like this, and relationships are broken. Socrates died in a moment much like mine, and Plato wrote the last line in his Republic in another. A devout man lifts his hands in supplication while an evil one reaches into his pocket to rob him. All these choices and actions happen in moments just like this one. Not in this moment though, this moment is mine alone. Noone shares it with me except the frozen clock face and the painted sky.

You might wonder how I came here. I do too as I don’t remember. I remember standing on a street corner looking at a traffic light, and a whistle… and then I remember the air getting stale as if it had been sitting without being disturbed. The light was dark, the sun fixed in the west and I was here.

Since then I’ve had lots of time to read and think. Not really thinking I guess, more like daydreaming. The way I see it, a moment doesn’t exist for no purpose; it must be there for a reason even if said reason seems insignificant. The books in my library are full of moments that are significant, moments where a decision is made and somebody dies or is married or loses everything meaningful to them. There are moments where people thank their Gods and moments where people curse them. All this reading makes my mind wander on the topic of what this moment is and how it could be significant.

When I dream I see myself on that street corner thinking great thoughts and coming to great conclusions. Maybe I’m a mathematician who has just proven a difficult theorem. Maybe I’m a politician with a brand new solution to an economic problem. Maybe I’m a man in love about to make a phone call and tell the woman I adore how much she means to me. When I dream I can be all those things but my reality is I am none of them, I’m just the man who lives here in this moment.

There are times too when I dream things that I don’t wish. Times when I’m Socrates in the moment before the hemlock rends his mind. When the whistle in the air is the bomb falling, and in the next moment the clocktower and the town hall and the library and the bank are all destroyed in the shock wave. But most disturbing of all are the times when I dream that this moment isn’t mine at all and it belongs to someone else. Someone I’ve never met is having a life changing experience in this moment, while I’m just left to wish it were me.

Perhaps one day I’ll know why I’m here, and I’ll go back to that street corner and close my eyes and then time will continue on. I’ll be gone then of course, when the next moments take over and this one ends my consciousness will go along with it. Until then I’m happy to look up at the painted sky and daydream, while the clock hands read 6:23.

~~~

The 3+1 guild on Kithicor has made a goal out of collecting as many trophies as a small guild can in the game. This is possible because the heads for the trophies are body drops and can be looted from trivial encounters. You’ve probably already read about the time before I joined, when Gynok, Darathar, Godking and most recently Vox loaned their heads for our decorating pleasure. There aren’t many more  we could do by ourselves, but there is one that is elusive and tantalizing… the dragon I had no idea even existed.

Venekor is a level 55 Epic x4 that hangs out in the Temple of Cazic Thule, and he is real after all. I was watching on Hamal this morning as he lazily glided into the zone and landed in the courtyard, looking very proud of himself. We quickly mobilized the troops and went after him but alas, no head. Hamal will be on the lookout for him to wing in again so perhaps we’ll have better luck next time.

Hope everyone is enjoying their week, whichever world you choose to spend it in!

Raising an army to Anashti’Sul is an easy task, as her followers lie buried in the Sinking Sands. Part three of the deity quest involved finding a Sul’Dal elf mystic to spread the word withing the Silent City, and then a quick trip to the Obelisk of Lost Souls to pick up reality anchors. The anchors, along with some essence of shadowed man would allow the goddess to spawn a portal to the void and bring forth her army of brutes.

For the next task the Plumetor asked again for assistance gathering power for the goddess. The dark elves had carried away the Ewer of Sul’Dae, but with some water from the Pool of Immortality in Living Tombs the goddess could take it back to it’s rightful place catching the waters of the River of Life. Some coercion was needed to find the location of the ewer in Neriak, but this was accomplished with little problem.

The last step in Anashti’Sul s return was a trip to meet her avatar in the Empowered Fountain of Life, to obtain her gift to the priests of Nife. A small token of her power, to change their hearts and show them the true way of immortality.

The Plumetor had a plan to herald Anashti’s return to the priests of Nife outside their Temple of Life. My job was to administer the gift of undeath to several priests in Antonica then meet with and make a distraction for the Plumetor to go in and preach to the assembled non converted priests. This was an amazing scene, with Wpus and I watching as the Plumetor bravely stood with her five zombie converts to show the others the power of the Forgotten Goddess.

Such a well written quest series, and a real blast to go through. Kudos to the developers who designed this one, it was an amazing in game experience!

Back to Norrath for me, until next time everyone!

The third annual Festival of Unity opened last night on the Antonia Bayle server in EQ2, and I had a chance to attend the opening ceremony. In the vicinity of the Claymore Monument Antonica was crowded with revelers and couples looking to enjoy the events of the next week. According to some counts, well over 200 people were present!

Decorations had been provided by Gnobrin earlier in the day, and Domino was online to watch as well! If you can’t tell, I’m a little excited… this will be my first Festival of Unity since I missed the one last year and I’m looking forward to the events and the fun. For more information see the post on EQ2 Players which also has a link to a very cool preview trailer for the event.

This weekend on Kithicor we ran several instances, and you can see the great writeups about it over on Stargrace’s blog. I didn’t take many screenshots but I had one from the Anchor of Bazzul I wanted to share, just a view out into the void from the overlook. If the gods felt it necessary to banish me to a prison in the nothingness then I don’t know if I’d ever get tired of that view.

In other news, I’ve been playing again for one year. It’s been an amazing, life changing year and I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who made that possible. There isn’t a day I log into X-Fire or email and not get a reminder of how many friends I’ve met and how much good there is in my life, and it means everything to me, so thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

Hope everyone has a safe and happy work week!

Wpus, my conjuror friend said during the last quest that “Anashti’Sul is creepy.” Well, I think I’d come across creepy too if I had spent so long banished to the Void by the other gods of the pantheon of Norrath, only to come back and find that an impostor, an upstart had claimed my role as the Prime Healer and was living in my Plane of Health. I might be quite upset, but luckily for Anashti’Sul the death of her armies and the murder of her followers are not an obstacle. Kasul, fresh from his move to the Kithicor server ran all the deity quests for the latest returning goddess last night.

It seems the followers of Anashti on Norrath, the Fellowship of the Peacock had been scattered and hunted after their patron was banished. The first quest in the deity line has you gathering books that relate to the story of the goddess, and then finding her followers (alive and undead). The descriptions of the books you collect I thought were very well written and provocative, especially in the case of Sathir owing his gift of unlife not to whichever patron deity gave him the secret but the originator of those secrets.

After gathering the followers the next quest in the sequence involves gathering intelligence on two gods who may be rivals of the returning goddess. To do this, the quest invokes something I find the coolest ever… it has you create a potion of Waking Dream and take it to the resting place of the prophet of Rodcet Nife, the Seeress Ealaynya Ithis. As I was a follower of Bertox at the time of the world event in which she died and I wasn’t able to have a hand in it, the thought of raising her to the glory of Anashti was really exciting to me. Potion in hand, into the sewers of Qeynos I went.

She indeed led and inspired people once, and now she shall again. So amazingly cool. After raising the Seeress the second quest has you search for the evidence of Bertoxxulous in the Thundering Steppes that were once plagued and in Zek where recent activities had inoculated some orcs against a plague (a great nod to the Bertox quest Some Testing Required, that I remembered doing previously and really enjoyed seeing again).

And, as I go back to see it now the reanimating of the Seeress is also a link to the last of the new Rodcet Nife quests, Once in Life as Well in Undeath. That explains why the reanimated Seeress doesn’t make another appearance, and is even more cool!

Breaking my writeup of this into two posts, so look forward to the next one. From here, the peacock calls Kasul back to the Stilled Sea, to gather her armies in advance of her return.

Worked a bit this week on painting up some models to test my technique and paint scheme. So far I’m happy with what I have but trying to find tricks to make things go quicker… an average tyranid force is well over 40 models and painting the way I’m doing the test models will take quite a while. It’s a work in progress though, and it’s fun so no complaints

I decided on a blue/gray palette for my army, taking some inspiration from the method used to paint Hive Fleet Leviathan in the current codex. Where they are using purple to shade and line the armor plates I want to use blue on the armor and a scab red wash on the  joints and squishy bits.

My three test models are a genestealer, a termagant with fleshborer and a hormagaunt. I wanted to see how the painting would be for each basic troop type as they all have very different designs and armor plate coverage and features. To begin I sprayed them with black primer (Armory Black) and after dry touched up the undersides and any missed areas with chaos black. Using all Citadel paints for now, as what’s what I had available at my hobby store.

That was last week, tonight I started work on the body portions of my models. I first made a diluted scab red wash (4:1 with water approximately)and brushed it into the joints and crevasses on the body. This took several coats to get the effect I wanted, which probably means my wash was too dilute… and finding things like that out is why we do test models in the first place.

After the wash I began painting all non armor or claw/tooth/hoof areas on the models with my first gray coat. This is a 1:1 mixture of chaos black and codex gray, with no added water. The effect is subtle but this is only the first coat, I’m planning two and a highlight on top of it still.

The pictures from my cell phone look a bit better with light and a few filters but I know they’re still pretty awful. Thankfully a good friend may be loaning me a camera to help that problem, so I’m hopeful I’ll actually be able to show you some decent pictures sometime soon.

Another picture, the hormagaunt this time!

I didn’t get to the genestealer tonight but he’s going to take a little different approach anyway so I’m not worried about it. I’ll save him for another night. Hope you enjoyed the pictures, and come back next time to see my progress!

So it’s been years since I played a tabletop minatures game. I have a few White Dwarf magazines from 1999, and then some from 2001… a printed copy of the 3rd edition Warhammer 40K rules… minatures from the release of the Lord of the Rings tabletop and a handful of orcs and goblins from when I played Mordheim at the comic shop. It was about three years ago I wanted to get involved again (the trigger was moving closer to the hobby shop I played at before college) and I bought the 40K Battle for Macragge box from someone on ebay. That adventure was put to a stop when I was married and then moved again, and the minatures I bought laid assembled but unpainted in the box.

I’ve got the itch again, so I’m going to give painting up my tyranids another try. I have (already trimmed and assembled) a small brood of genestealers and gaunts with fleshborers from the Macragge box, a fairly large brood of hormagaunts and a brood of gaunts with spinefists. Under the current codex, it’s around 350 points worth of models unupgraded. If you aren’t familiar with the Warhammer 40k tabletop game, the points are a value the unit has meant to allow you to build a balanced army to fight against another force. A typical game is two forces with equal points value (usually 1500) battling according to a scenario from the rulebook. So my little force is a good starting point, though I would need some HQ support before I’d be able to play an actual game with them.

I made a promise to myself that I’m not going to buy any more models (barring an amazing deal on ebay) until I’ve painted the models I have, so today I put together a painting station to use.I have an old wooden schooldesk that’s been refinished that I used to start:

Oliver was helping me size things up there. It’s no good painting on the bare desktop of course, so a cover of box paper was the next step, as well as digging out all my model supplies to put in place. Here’s the result:

I still have brushes, trays, knives and glue from before but the paints I had have dried out and are unusable. The pots in the picture are just for show, hehe. :-X Once I’ve decided on a paint scheme and gone to buy paints I’ll be ready with my desk to get started.

Here are the models I have to work on, I think you’ll agree it’s plenty to get me started!

These are troops models, and they aren’t large. The bases are 25mm, about the size of a quarter. For their size, the plastic kits are amazingly detailed… and I wish I had a camera that could show that. Something for me to work on!

I’ll keep you updated on my progress, thinking about going to the hobby store for paint and primer tomorrow and getting them undercoated. Wish me luck, and see you next time!

Been playing some Spellborn recently, and I’m enjoying the combat system. It’s challenging without being frustrating, and the way you cycle through available skills using the Skill Deck is worth mentioning in more detail.

The Skill Book window displays the skills you’ve learned, as well as information about what statistic they rely on and what type of damage they do. Tooltips are displayed when you mouseover an individual skill that gives you specific information about the effects of each skill. When setting up my skill deck I paid attention to what the skill’s effect was (buff, debuff, single or multiple target melee) and also to the rightmost item on each line, which is the cooldown for the skill.

My plan was to make a balanced skill deck where I had access to my main combat buff (Battle Cry), a fast melee attack (Hack) and a ranged attack for pulling (Shoot) all on the first tier. The skill deck is set up in rows (tiers) where you can select a skill in the first tier when combat begins, and then after using the first tier skill you can select one from the second tier and then the third. The window is large so I assume as you advance in levels you have access to more tiers than three and also more skills per tier. My goal with my setup for tiers two and three was to give myself a pattern of attacks and debuffs I could cycle through so that I would always be able to attack and not be stuck waiting on a cooldown to select a skill. In Spellborn there is no autoattack, so if you aren’t actively using skills you aren’t doing any damage.

With a little calculation it isn’t too difficult to avoid cooldown issues, and the nice thing about the setup I have now is that my opening buff Battle Cry is close to being available again when I’ve cycled through the three tiers three times. Battle Cry gives me melee resistance while it is active and keeping that up is important I’ve found for my damage mitigation. Something else I’ve done to make changing skills within a tier easier is bind those keys to the scroll wheel on my mouse, so I can select available skills just by scrolling instead of having to hit the number keys and take my hand off the movement keys.

Special treat for you, here’s a short video to show you how it works. Watch the highlighted skills as I use them and the cooldown timers as they recycle. Don’t forget too that at the same time you can be dodging enemy attacks by moving to avoid them, as well as aiming at the enemy you wish to attack using the mouse. The combat is quite tactical and feels very fluid once you’ve had a chance to plan out your strategy in detail.

My Bloodwarrior is now level 9, and the setup in these screenshots has changed very little since I took them when I was level 7. When things do change due to new skills I’ll make an update post.