Well, apparently practicing writing every day doesn’t work out. I’m not a morning person, so writing in the morning just doesn’t work out and yesterday I got up late because I had to work late. When I came back from work at around midnight I was so knackered I couldn’t focus. So no more writing practice on Sundays when I have to work.
What I wrote today, though, is too personal to share. Sorry!
This is just a ritual I dreamed up on a whim. It’s pretty generic but not really based on anything specific, at least not to my knowledge. I tried to keep it sounding more like a recipe than a religious text. I would’ve loved to put the annotations as handwriting next to the actual text, but I don’t think this is possible here. I could make it all an image, but that’s too much work for what’s supposed to be some light writing exercise.
Er… please don’t try this at home, okay? Obsidian’s probably expensive. Oh, and the blood’ll make a mess.
The Rite of Kenthonak
Thou wilt need:
One robe, black
One Needle
Some Thread, red
One bowl, silver, one gallon*
One tub, 40 gallons, ebony, with hoops and rivets of silver
Holy Water, 40 gallons, desecrated
One knife, silver
One block of black glass, as high as thine waist,
five feet in width and ten feet in length**
One virgin***
First, thou shalt adorn the hems of the robe with the symbols of Kenthonak.****
Second, thou shalt etch the selfsame symbols into the silver of thine bowls and thine tub.
Third, thou shalt consecrate the black glass with thine own blood.
Whilst doing so, thou shalt incant the first verse of the hymn to Kenthonak,*****
thus making the stone into an altar.
Fourth, thou shalt heat the holy water and pour it into thine tub.
Fifth, thou shalt cleanse the virgin.
Whilst doing so, incant the second verse of the hymn to Kenthonak.
Sixth, thou shalt secure the virgin on the altar.
Seventh, thou shalt remove the virgin’s heart.
Whilst doing so, thou shalt incant the third verse of the hymn to Kenthonak.
Eighth, thou shalt collect the virgin’s blood in thine bowl.
Ninth, thou shalt offer the blood to Kenthonak, but know that he will refuse.
Tenth, thou shalt anoint thyself with the blood.
Eleventh, thou shalt offer yourself to Kenthonak, but know that he will accept.
* Presumably, multiple bowls suffice as long as no blood is wasted.
** Carve some blood funnels into the stone. I assume the old altars had them, but the priest who wrote this done did not see fit to mention this.
*** This is a mistranslation. Any young person should suffice, which will make this bearable. Where would one find a virgin in times like these?
**** Which you will not find on this scroll. Thankfully, I have found what I believe to be the symbols in the old monastery.
***** Which you will not find on this scroll either. The hymn was only passed down from mouth to ear, but as luck would have it, a particularly forgetful priest wrote it down in his diary.
Over the past few days I’ve been listening to Voltaire – a talented musician with a taste for the weird. Many of his songs conjure up images in my mind and since I want to practice writing, these images are as a good a place to start as any.
The first song I’d like to write about is “Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of an Erupting Volcano While Drinking from a Chalice Filled with the Laughter of Small Children”, so named because a fan of Voltaire’s once equated his music to the audio equivalent of said experience. And thus I present to any potential readers:
The Rider in the Dusk
Picture, if you will, a flat, cracked, dry and dusty plain at dusk. The sun has already gone down, the western sky presents itself in various shades of red and the Evening Star is clearly visible. In the east, the sky is starting to fill with glittering jewels on black velvet. There is no moon. On the plain itself, nocturnal lizards and other small animals are climbing out of their various hiding places, metaphorical napkins tied around their necks.
On this plain, there are the faintest traces of what might one day grow up to become a road: slight grooves where the ground is soft enough, the occasional scrape on the stony surface where it is not. A capable tracker might be able to tell that these barely perceptible tracks are caused by iron wheels and shod hooves. The trail leads more or less to the north and the south from where you are standing now, an invisible watcher in the growing night. And it is from the north that you can hear the slow clopping of a single horse. Out of the dusk the Rider emerges.
His horse’s head is drooping slightly, its ears are flopping down sideways. The Rider himself is slumped in his saddle, his face barely visible under his wide-brimmed flat hat. Everything about him is dusty and worn. The hem of his brown coat is torn in places, his trousers and shirt are patched and his chin hasn’t felt the touch of a razor in several days. It’s probably worth pointing out that his boots, while dirty, look to be in pretty good shape, the soles only slightly worn down at the heels. His bedroll and the saddlebags have seen some use too, and the bags are clinking with every step the horse takes. The Rider smells of travel – of horse and sweat, of dust and ever so slightly of blood.
Right when he is about to pass you, watcher, he lifts his head, pushes back his hat with his thumb and scans the horizon. Although he looks like he might fall out of his saddle at any moment and start snoring where he lands, his eyes are alert. Up close you can see more of his face. it is wrinkled and has seen many a day of scorching heat with no shade to be found for miles. You can also see his handlebar moustache which, like everything else about him, is coming apart at the edges with wiry hair standing out at an angle here and there. He straightens, and after checking his surroundings he glances down to where you stand. His gaze doesn’t linger, but you could have sworn there was a flicker of recognition. The moment passes and nothing in his demeanour suggests he knows that you are there.
Riding on, he scratches his neck and murmurs in a surprisingly soft voice: “Storm’s coming. Better find some cover.” Although this seems to have been directed at himself, it feels like he addressed you too. But the Rider continues on his way south, slumping back down and not glancing back; a tired traveller by all appearances. And as he rides away, you can see small clouds and eddies of dust rising out of the plain while the coat of the Rider flares out behind him, flapping lazily. Pressing his hat more firmly down on his head he grunts and squeezes the flanks of his steed. After a moment’s hesitation, the horse starts to trot. A few moments later the Rider vanishes into the night. In his wake, the bone-dry plain comes to life as the hunters and the hunted once again emerge from their holes. Up above, the stars continue their conquest of the night sky.
Recently I thought to myself: “Hey self, why don’t you start writing again? Just for practice. And do it online so that you’ll maybe find the courage to show your friends someday.” So I went looking for a site to blog on and found my old wordpress account. 2008 – six years of neglect. Dust and spiderwebs fell out of my screen when I opened the blog to check on my past entries.
Oh well, maybe this time I’ll actually go through with it. I really want to write more and have set myself a goal of writing something every single day. I probably won’t upload it all, because I’ll likely have bad, unproductive days where all I manage is a page full of “I don’t know what to write today”. My first post is already finished, though, and I’ll upload it right after this. I just felt the need to dust off my blog first. I don’t think I have to apologise to any readers first, because nobody actually read my blog. Well, almost nobody and the last click’s so long ago I don’t think anyone’s going to remember me.
Anyway, off we go!
I have been neglecting this blog for a few days now, but it’s not my fault. Eve is the culprit!
No, I’m not talking about a girl here. EVE Online is an MMORPG that I started to play – again – on the 16th. I’m actually not sure what attracts me to that game. But let’s start with a description!
EVE Online is an MMORPG based entirely on space ships. You don’t have some character to run around with, you’ve got vessels floating in the endless void of our universe. There are starbases where you can dock, but even then you don’t ever see more than the face of your character. And the ship, of course. I can’t say much about the graphics, because there has been an optional graphic update that my computer wouldn’t cope with. The old graphics look nice, though.
Gameplay: You start with a frigate, run a tutorial and a few missions that show you the ropes, and then you’re left alone. The learning curve in EVE is pretty steep, but luckily there are a lot of helpful people around who answer most questions, even the really dumb ones. That’s something that not every MMORPG has: a community that actually helps newbies. Most of the time. Since EVE is supposed to be one huge sandbox where you can do what you want, there are also a lot of people with… evil intentions. Pirates, scammers – you name it. Anyway, the sandbox: You can mine ore from asteroid belts, you can process that ore into minerals and use them to build ships, equipment and other stuff, you can do missions for non-player characters (the “quests, more on them later), you can transport stuff for a living, just play the market or you can engage in player-versus-player combat. This last thing is what most people see as the core of EVE.
And indeed: PvP is everywhere. Especially when you know its definition as seen by the developers: PvP is any action that puts you into a conflict with other players. Like trying to strip all the asteroids in a belt before anybody else can. Or trying to controll the prices for certain items. Well, by this definition, every online game has lots of PvP and thus I don’t think it’s well suited to define EVE Online. But combat PvP is still a very important thing: Pirates will try to attack and rob other players or maybe hold their ships to ransom. Anti-pirates either hunt the culprits actively or accept mercenary contracts. Some corporations (groups of people with one or more leaders, headquarters, maybe even a player-owned starbase) wage war on eachother. There’s always lots of fighting going on in EVE Online
By the way: Fights are more tactical than in other games because the vessels aren’t controlled by keyboard, but by giving movement commands with the mouse. Changing directions takes some time due to inertia (and sometimes lag).
The peaceful activities (mining, producing, trading, courier services) don’t need much of an explanation. Generally higher risks net higher rewards. Asteroid belts in dangerous systems provide more valuable ore than safer systems. And no matter what you do, if you leavea station you can be attacked by other players.
But PvP isn’t the only combat there is. Asteroid belts are plagued with non-player pirates and many missions include fighting computer-controlled enemies. The rest of the missions are non-combat ones. The missions, by the way, are downright boring. Most enemies won’t stand a chance against a decently equipped player and more often than not you can just warp to safety, repair everything and come back to where you left off. And since there aren’t that many missions, they get repeated quite often. That’s why a lot of players think that missions are the only risk-free way to generate money in this game.
Anyway, a very important part of any RPG is character advancement. In EVE, this is handled in a very convenient way: Trainable skills. A player sets one skill to be trained. This takes some time, but it’s done in the background and in real-time. Yes, a player can be offline without the training stopping! This is the best thing about EVE in my opinion. And there’s no end to the skills that can be trained. It would take decades for a character to learn everything there is to learn. Because of that it ist best to concentrate on those skills that are necessary for what the character should do, e.g. mining skills, production skills, science, fighting…
Some players think that they could never catch up with a player that has been training skills for years. This is not true. There are only so many skills benefit a specific activity. After a few weeks of training, a character will be just as effective at flying battleships as a player who has trained his for years. But the older character might be able to fly interceptors too, and maybe be quite proficient in mining.
Anyway, to cut this whole story short: EVE is a great game for anybody who doesn’t mind a harsh environment. Killing other players regardless of where they are and how strong they might be is a commong practice. Complaining about that is laughed upon by most and not cared about by others. Peaceful activities carry that risk, but that makes them more fun in my opinion. Otherwise they would be extremely dull. The sandbox experience is great, since one can really do anything. That’s something I miss in most RPGs where you can’t be anything else than a fighting hero. Oh, and the skill training is a great idea. Of course it’s bad news for people who want to reach the highest level there is as fast as they can, but the lack of levels should keep those away anyway.
Oh, and this is a picture of EVE’s learning curve (not by me!). Let it be a warning…
My girlfriend is a big fan of the Sherlock Holmes tales by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She’s even bought a TV series on DVD. Now, I don’t like crime stories. They are pretty boring to me. But this series… Well, the actor playing Sherlock Holmes is one Jeremy Brett and he’s doing – or rather he did – an astonishing job. His expression, his intonation… everything fits perfectly.
Jeremy Brett didn’t play Sherlock Holmes, he lived the legend. Sadly, he couldn’t let go after the series was finished. Still, a brilliant actor. If you ever get the chance, watch the series. And that’s saying something, coming from me.
