August Life

First of all, apologies for a couple of weeks absence. Empire as always was fun, but draining and there was so much politics going on this time that I was busy the entire weekend despite planning on having a more relaxed weekend, but that’s always how it goes.

Since then, I’ve hit an energy low, culminating in being ill and off work yesterday. It was one of those things where you have low level background illness, but you have a full weekend of stuff lined up, so you just ignore the illness, and then as soon as you stop it catches up to you and slams into you.

On the other hand, I have been doing a lot of cool things, so I’ll just catch you up with some of them.

Photo Credit – Charlotte Moss

Empire

So, only a three day event but that just meant everything was packed into a shorter time frame:

• Started the weekend with a combat linear for my mages. Got to beat up an ice giant, and we rocked it!
• Got invited to a banquet in the summer realm (which was really tasty roast)
• Found out there what the linear had allowed an Eternal to do and caused drama – whoops!
• Culminated in one of the Eternals getting super mad (that part wasn’t me) and flipped her food across the entire table!
• Record length conclave sessions
• Didn’t die during battle
• Attempted to join mage coven and was prevented by yet more drama
• A meteor is crashing into the Empire and one of my nation persuaded conclave to vote to crash it on our territory, striaght onto the Vallorn – TERRIBLE IDEA
• Spent a good day running around undoing that decisions
• Got that decision undone and it is now crashing somewhere much more sensible

So yeah, that was an interesting weekend. Bring on event 4. See above for a really cool photo taken by the brilliant Charlotte Moss of me striding through the forest. As far as I remember this was at the start of the battle on Saturday and the guy that you can just see under the tree tripped and hurt his ankle so I was making sure he was okay before going back to join in the battle.

Adara

Long Weekend

So I had a five day weekend the next weekend. I was supposed to be going somewhere, but due to drama and funding issues, cancelled those plans and had a lovely five day weekend just relaxing at home. Boyfriend was also off, which was nice, although his cats were a nightmare, bless their little derp faces.

Mostly what happened then was a lot of roleplaying. Monday was Princess, and Princess continues to be great. The GM is encouraging me to write a lot of fan fiction about it and my character, and I am happy to supply him with that. I have my special snowflake thing and a friend who’s visiting for the entire month came in and played a DPC (directed player character, somewhere between an NPC and PC) to help us with plot. It was fun!

Friday we then started up D&D again!!! The last time we played that was in January sometime, and we had the break because we hit level 11 and changed tiers. Admittedly we filled the gap with a Star Wars game, which was fun, but I had missed D&D so! Playing my hot-headed Ardent, making the bad decisions, getting talked down and round into the sensible thing and then running off straight into the terrible mist of death was so much fun. That, and our paragon path powers are amazing!

NAMA August Graders

Last Weekend

So, Saturday during the day I clean the flat because people will be coming round and I’ve been putting it off for weeks and weeks. That was exhausting, but did mean that I didn’t have to stress about it when I went to my party in the evening. We saw Suicide Squad – enjoyable but messy is my official verdict – and then went for Nandos which is always fun in a large group. then back to mine for board games.

Sunday had to get up early so that I could go and grade for my next Taekwondo belt. As you can see from the photo above, I passed – First Class Pass! Although I was so nervous (and this is the ill as well) that I didn’t sleep the night before and my instructor said that she could tell I was practically terrified because when I did my Kata (set routine of moves) I was so wooden. Admittedly, I was, because brain weasels kept telling me I was failing. Silly brain weasels, I did fine. I now have an orange belt.

Straight after that I went to IoD to roleplay my changeling and werewolf. I was so tired I gave the last game of the day, Mage, a skip. And since I was grading I turned up late to the first game. But that was fine, that character’s a bitch so I can be exhausted in character and just avoid responsibility and doing things. Werewolf was the issue as the STs once again find new and interesting ways to cause my character feelings and yank her chain around. She went from confused to lamenting to lust to terror to rage to determined to full on lethal damage and hurt to extraordinarily upset and convinced that she’s got to break up with her boyfriend. Seriously. All in one game. I love the STs. And hate them. Mostly love though.

Birthday Dragon

This Week

Of course because I was putting off my ill when I did all that, waking up on Monday was fun and after calling in ill I spent most of the day sleeping. Sleeping is great. Eating not so much. Back in work today but my boss has said if I feel particularly bad I can probably go home. Hooray for summer holidays and college being so quiet it could be called dead.

Tomorrow I do have the day off though because it’s my birthday! Hoping that if I take it really easy today then I can enjoy myself tomorrow, but actually I don’t have to leave the flat and I have some presents to open and I can have a super chill day, which’ll be nice. The legion pre-patch is live and awesome and I suspect that my partner is upgrading my computer with a couple of new bits as my present so I’ll probably play that. Might also see if I can get the N64 working and blast from the past with Pokemon Snap. Maybe some sushi. It’ll be chill and great.

I also have some fun things lined up for this weekend, so as long as this illness starts going away, I should be having a pretty good week overall 🙂

Emotional rollercoaster

Death is harder on those who are left behind     – Robert La Fosse, Nothing to Hide

My changeling character is a lively, enthusiastic, bubbly, life and soul of the party kind of girl. There’s an innocence and sweetness about her which never fails to bring a smile to other people, and at the national a couple of weekend ago, I got complimented about the way that I roleplayed her, and had people telling me how much they enjoyed it.

We had our local game yesterday though, and for once I didn’t get to play her as I usually do. Not even as the slightly confused person she can sometimes be, or slightly sad when she learns an unpleasant truth. No, yesterday we learnt that my character’s husband, and another prominent member of the summer court, were dead. They died taking down a True Fae, killing him so that our freehold and Suffolk’s could live in peace and the war could end.

So as soon as the one member of the summer court who was well enough to turn up to the gathering delivered the news, my character immediately shuts down, picks up for a frantic half hour of, “No he can’t be dead, he can’t be.” Sees his grave, and then immediately goes into a fugue state where nothing really gets through to her.

(I’ll make it extra clear at this point that this is all in character in the game that we play, and no actually people have been hurt, just their character and some imaginary NPCs)

And you know what? It was so hard to play her as a depressed person. And it was completely out of the blue (well, not completely, out of character I knew that they had gone to fight him, but not that they had died doing it), so I just had to make it up as I go along and it was actually one of the hardest thing that I have ever had to roleplay, just sitting there and staring into space and not reacting to anything. I did decide to wander off, back to his grave about halfway through the game, hoping other characters would chase me. They did in the end, but not immediately like I thought they would, as they kind of went “We’ll just give her some space.”.

It’s great, because my character has been after her independence for ages now, trying to prove that she can make her own decisions, and she can be a grown up and look after herself, but then this happens, and she basically shuts down so that she CAN’T look after herself, but people are still trying to let her, not realising that all the will and effort has gone out of her because she still doesn’t believe that he’s really really dead.

And after the game ended, I started crying, because playing a grief stricken person is hard, and all the emotion I had just welled up in me and I started sobbing whilst still going around and hugging people and it was just so emotional the whole game, and I don’t think I’m over it this morning.

I love story telling, whether it’s in a novel, or in a role playing game, but that doesn’t mean that it is always easy! The one thing it is though? It is always rewarding. And the grief is hardly going to be contained in this one game. To a future filled with more drama and roleplay!

National Characters

Last weekend was a pretty good weekend. There was a national, and by national I mean people from all over the UK gathered in one place and we did a lot of roleplaying. There was also drinking and hanging out, but mainly it was for the roleplaying.

I had a pretty good time. I have a definite favourite game that I played it (it was the first changeling game, with the mirror plots. I named all the NPCs and drove people insane, it was great!) but the others were good, if not fantastic. All in all, I had a solid weekend of gaming.

However, since the weekend finished there has been a topic on my mind more than others. In under a year, the whole system, all of the games, all of the domains, is resetting. Chronicles ends, we put our old characters and stories to bed, and then start up a new chronicle with new characters and new roleplaying to happen. So, I think you can see why, I am currently concentrating on hashing out some new character to play.

I just have this tinsey little problem. I like statting characters. I love just sitting down and thinking up idea after idea and putting numbers, costume ideas, backstory and all the other things to them. I love playing around with stats and mechanics and variations, and this is before we even know exactly what the setting is going to be in the new chronicles! The people who are working on it could turn around and go ‘so it’s like this now’ which will entirely ruin a character idea and I’ll have to come up with a new one, and there will probably be some mechanical changes of how things work, or they’ll change how much xp we get or something that means that all this effort I’m putting in now will have to be re-written. Even knowing that, I’m still statting all of them. And coming up with backstory. And costume, and all the other bits and pieces that go with creating a character. I have a OneNote section filled with pages of notes, and seven excel spreadsheets of numbers for the various ideas! I just can’t stop myself!

Does anyone else ever have this problem? Writers for example- can you slow down your brain so that things come at a manageable pace and you don’t waste any effort? I know I don’t/can’t/won’t whichever one is more appropriate at the time.

So even though I know it’s probably going to be wasted effort, I’m statting all my current concepts. I have been neglecting the writing for a little while, and I probably should get back to that (especially since the beta of a web service I’ve been looking forward to just got released) but I seem to be on a big roleplaying high and I do like harnessing enthusiasm when it’s around.

Spring National 2

it’s the third and final day of the spring national and i’m not in the last game (it’s requiem, I don’t have a character) but I am sitting here having a nice time relaxing before the long journey home, which is fine.

Mage this morning was epic. the mysterium got to go on a linear to take back control of a thing that was the host’s but then the host got killed so whilst other people went and found his murderer the mysterium (turns out there are a lot of us) went and did some totally epic challenges to reclaim and take possession back of the tower.

Never mind that it was written for four mages, it was awesome and I had great fun and I got to do one of the challenges.

I feel like such a good mysterium right now. And I’ve also networkd with other Mysterium and have plans to become better in the near future 🙂

Have a lot of fun at thie national. Wish that it wasn’t monday tomorrow so I could not feel tired all week, but I think that was probably going to happen anyway.

At least the norwih games are happening next weekend, so I do not have to wait long for my next fix of roleplaying.

Spring National

In Manchester currently, having some fun at the Spring National, where there is lots of gaming, and talking about gaming, and socializing going on. It’s fab.

Saturday evening and we had Lost last night, which was very fun for me and I ran around completely ignoring the plot in the way which Zephyr does best, but had a whale of a time with all the activities.

This morning was Mage, and I got more involved in the plot, but didn’t go on any of the linear’s because I am not a combat character and screw going on a linear to kill a Stormling (read: murder chickens which feed off magical energy given off by mages, savage abyssal creatures that they are). And then I made some more connections, introduced myself to some people, and got involved in some national Mastigos plot that is going to happen in the future, going to be so good!

Requiem has just timed in, but I’m sitting on my arse writing this because they didn’t need any more NPC’s and I kind of want to nap in a second so I can do the soft roleplay for mage later. Soft roleplay means no card draws will happen, so it’s a more relaxed atmosphere.

I also largely helped/kept company the person who died during mage while werewolf was running, so I also got to indulge my statting problem, i mean hobby. Yes. Hobby.

Social Butterfly

One of my friends keep referring to me as a social butterfly. I never really though about it before, but since he’s been pointed it out, I think I have to agree with him. Especially after yesterday.

So yesterday I went to work, came home from work at 5:30pm. Jumped in the car to go and pick up my prescription for some new medication, hopped back to the pharmacy to pick up said medication. Get home, go next door for Tea and Typing (a small writing group made up of a bunch of my friends) which I had to leave early to fetch my boyfriend from work because it was past seven and the buses tend to get a little funny. And then I went upstairs, finally changed out of work clothes into exercise clothes, went to kick boxing (which was so awesome, but I am so bruised today), came home, had a shower, finished packing for this weekend and then fell into bed exhausted.

Considering I didn’t get more than five minute of down time, yeah, that was a packed evening.

And what’s worse, that’s not the only time I’ve done things like that, it’s simply the most recent.

I also insist on filling up all of my weekends with activities. This weekend is the Spring National in Manchester, which I am travelling up to tonight. Next weekend is a rare weekend off, but after that is the first Empire of the year and I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to that.

My weekly schedule looks like:

• Monday – Gaming
• Tuesday – Swimming
• Wednesday – Raiding
• Thursday – Kick boxing
• Friday – My day off
• Saturday – Occasional gaming
• Sunday – LARP

I mean, these things don’t always happen every week, but I am busy a lot of the time. Makes me wonder how I ever find time to watch all of the dvds I do.

So, my hectic social life aside, I’ll mention the other big thing in my life: I’ve been diagnosed with Iron Deficiency.

No, this is not anaemia. I’ve been doing some research on this: Iron Deficiency can lead to anaemia, and in fact is the leading cause of anaemia, but by itself it is simply a deficiency (a deficiency means that you don’t have enough of it in your system for your body to work entirely correctly). Anaemia is where you have a lack of red blood cells in your body, which is much worse.

Iron deficiency is happily very curable, I simply need to eat more iron rich foods (Mussels, Liver, Dark Leafy Greens, Pumpkin Seeds and other things) and I’ve got some prescription iron supplements to take as well. Hopefully this will sort itself out and I will stop feeling tired all of the time, as well as getting breathless walking up stairs, which where my main symptoms.

What iron does in the body is help with the production of red blood cells (hence why it leads on to anaemia) and also the binding of oxygen into the red blood cells. When you think about it that way, the shortness of breath and tiredness as symptoms make a lot of sense.

But it’s been caught, before it could potentially turn into anaemia, and now I should get better. I would love it if I could stop feeling tired all the time. I hate feeling drowsy at work. And sleeping in until 2pm most weekends feels like a waste of the weekend.

Whilst I don’t deem it likely, it would be nice if it kicked in at least slightly for this weekend. I want to stay up late socialising with people and still be able to get up for the games! Maybe I can have some afternoon naps, those will always be delicious.

This Week

Had a little bit of disappointing news this week, I didn’t get the job that I interviewed for back in January. But they said that I interviewed really well, and the only reason they didn’t hire me was because one other guy had basically done the job in another company, so had very relevant experience. But they will keep my CV on their files so if something similar comes up, I might be in there. Silver lining.

I then got contacted by another lady from an agency, who has a job that she thought I was suitable for, so she sent my CV off, the company like the look of me, so they’ll give me an online test and if I pass that then I go for interview. So there’s hope for me yet. Also my jobseekers went through a lot smoother this time round.

Apart from that it’s been a fairly boring week. Still jet-lagged and attempts to get my sleeping cycle back on track have failed miserably, but at least I am keeping to my diet that I proposed for myself back at the start of the year. After coming back from America at least. You cannot keep to a diet on holiday, no matter how hard you try.

This weekend has been fun though. Weekend of roleplaying. There was Lost on Saturday afternoon which was quite nice, I got to have some nice little scene with some people, and my new costume turned out really well for that. Then there was Shades in the evening at which I got to be as fabulous as I usually am. And then today I got to come to Cambridge mage for the first time, which was nice. Got to do a little bit here and there. And earn some Arcane XP. It was good overall. Now I am sitting in the bar whilst Requiem goes on upstairs. I have no enthusiasm to play in Cambridge requiem. But I do still like requiem, and there may be some other things I might be considering. Including running my own tabletop game very soon.

Day 28 — This year, in great detail

Well. This is not going to be in great detail at all. I keep telling you I have a bad memory, don’t I.

January onwards I was still at university, doing third year things like my dissertation and modules and things, although I only had one module plus other work, it was pretty sweet. I was still doing my blog back in January so there might be some things on there and…oh! Hey, I just remembered. Finally, a use for facebook timeline! Right, so looking back, I was blogging, eating sushi, and getting drunk at something. IoD was still really new at that point as well, so we were setting up things in that. Not much else.

February: There was snow, a friend was moving to another university and was horrified to discover they have no games society, so we suggested she start one. I was doing ref things for LARP, doing my dissertation in the library, went to Nandos at some point, bought plant vs zombies in a steam sale and went to Animus soc which was it’s usual fun self.

March: Lots more IoD and shopping for IoD. I really should stop shopping for characters. More essay writing, because 5000-6000 words is a hell of  lot for a scientist! The shipping wall was born and thus started a run of angst since I wasn’t allowed to see it. Went to Great Yarmouth with my dad, had the 24 hours roleplay and stayed up for 39 hours to enjoy it. Dyed my hair red, again. More dissertation (screw references!) which I actually finished this month and then even more IoD. I have an obsession with it.

April: More IoD, that’s just standard. Though there was that awesome comic Irina drew about us. We managed to kill deathwing in world of warcraft. Bad weather in england – shocker.  I finished university work and started preparing for exams and for some reason which isn’t explained my boyfriend was awesome.

May: Revision was the first thing this month! Followed by IoD of course, although there was that utterly annoying national plot in changeling. More classic british weather. Then i did my exams and was free of the education system. Then there was a birthday party.

June:  I was a bit ill, and I think there may have been some sort of national that happened, either tha or leading up to it. there was talk of requiem at least. Oh yeah, this was the month where there was that mouse in my toaster. I got rid of the toaster and refused to open the new one until we moved house. Moved house and everything was good, even though I hate packing and stuff.

July: Has a visit from a friend, there was summer time fun in the garden, found a hedgehog in the garage. graduated. That was a big thing. British summer hit and I started to melt. I went with ym boyfriend to meet his nephew for the first time, and got some incredible cute pictures.

August: I rediscovered scrambled egg on toast. Hmm, might have to go make now as that sounds delicious. Kept leaving my facebook logged in around my friends. Lost my purse, found ym purse, but then that started off the whole chain of having to replace my debit card. More IoD.  Had a birthday at which I got very drunk and passed the rule that I am never allowed to drink wine. Ever. Walking dead game started up. I started applying for jobs and job seekers, those little bundles of joy. Moved again in my current house which is full of lovely people.

September: Applied for a job tht was door to door sales in disguise and was not impressed, but at lest I got to play with kittens. Debit card arrived. Went to my first adult event when two of my friends got married. It was an amazing wedding. Also went to her hen party before the wedding. Cineman doughnuts are delicious. There was a new expansion of WoW and I played the crap out of it, still am. And then there was the best shades downtime forever.

October: More job searching, job seekers and IoD in general. A good day happened as well, which was a surprise at the time. Apparently a rather boring month other than that, so I have to suppose that I was playing a lot of WoW.

November: Fireworks and NaNoWriMo started November. There was a lot of shades thing going on around the game.  More IoD and a day out in London with my mother which was awesome and amazing and I discovered tapas. Had my first job interview, which I didn’t get, but the interview was good experience. Broke my laptop and then got a netbook from a friend which I fixed up with help from my housemate. Well, he did most of it actually. NaNoWriMo was great as well, I won this year.

December: Christmas thinking, I learnt to knit to knit my presents for this year and broke reality by knitting a Möbius strip. Yeah, I’m not sure how that happened either. Did a christmas spring clean and realised that my housemates manage  to shove a lot of crap under the sofa’s, although I too m guilty of that. Went home for christmas, decorated the christmas tree, bent a spoon with my mind (and a mixer). Had about four roast over the period of a week, watched Dr Who, and cleaned out my room at home.

So actually, with the help of facebook, I can tell you about my year in detail. 🙂

Day 20 — A hobby of yours

Well this one is easy, roleplaying. It takes up most of my social time, I have to say, and generally keeps me sane.

What I am in at the moment. Couple of tabletop games, Rogue Trader, Second Sight and Mirrors. I’m also thinking of running my own tabletop game, and seeing how I like GMing and STing.

Live games, there is Shades of Norwich Requiem, Mage, Sabbat, IoD Mage, IoD Changeling at the moment. No more prospects thank god because I would need to find some more time to play them. Although they are nice and spaced out.

LARP is on Sunday’s, still going, still plodding along.

I like roleplaying, it allows me to be things that I’m usually not, and there is so much possibility, and we sometimes have some emotional things going on, like a scene we just did yesterday for Changeling, which is going to be a good thing to think how to roleplay through and how my character would react to everything that happened. It’s going to make the game on Sunday great 😀

Changeling

Can’t remember whether I have done a post about changeling, but I haven’t done one in while so I can absolutely do one here. Changeling is another Live Game that I’ve been playing. It’s an IoD – Isle of Darkness game, so it’s a nation wide game (or will be hen we get through our ‘initial’ trial period in the next couple of months) and runs once a month.

Changelings are mortals who have been taken by the True Fae and spent time in Arcadia (the Fae realm). They have then escaped back through the hedge (the bit that separates this world from Arcadia) and viola, one changeling. A group of changelings is a motley, and a big bunch that live in an area (for example, Norwich) is called a freehold.

My character is called Zephyr, she’s a dancer in real life and an Elemental Changeling (like it sounds on the tin) primarily of Air. She is, ever so slightly, and airhead.

Well, more than anything she a completely free-spirited and instinctual character, but it’s funny in my head to call the air elemental an airhead.

I’m having a lot of fun playing her. we’ve had four games (and the stating session) so far, and I’ve enjoyed them all hugely, and all sorts of relationships are forming. I have my motley, which is like a family, some mild dislikes of people/their behaviour and a love interest already! I love how they’ve all come about through IC stuff as well. I’m not the only love interest at the moment, and it’s fun to roleplay, since these types of relationships don’t come into the other games I play much/at all.

We’ve got a couple of psychologists in the game, one of which is my housemate, and they’ve been making up relationship charts. I keep trying to get him to let me see it, but he won’t (meanie) but I’ve made my on charts of hat my character feels about everyone, so there! But yeah, I’m a little bit obsessed by changeling at the moment. Any thread about it on Facebook explodes when Cam and Halloway’s players get involved. I wrote my background as well. 4000 words/6 pages. And I still could have gone into more detail. Why can’t essays be that easy to write?

But yeah, been on Ebay to get some props. Zephyr is going to Paris this downtime and is bringing postcards back with her. Also I get to wear pretty dresses, which go swish when I move. This may or may not have been a factor when choosing a character to play in the game.