Confusing Images

Nothing much exciting has happened since my last blog entry. I'm colouring another Guild Wars single-pane comic strip, and I'm thinking about re-designing Elesia just so that there is more than one look for Bob to choose from. I have already sketched out several rough designs but none of them really jumped out at me as one that fits the character. The one on my artwork web page is simply the cleanest drawing that I was able to scan and colour. At some point I will also have to do another drawing of Sten since Nick's description of him was very similar to the drawing I provided but when kitted out in his combat gear, the bard looks a little different to how I imagined him. I've got several Guild Wars inspired comics to draw, but I have to keep reminding myself to devote some time to getting adventure 5 written and out of the way so that gaming can begin next month.

I haven't actually played Thief: The Dark Project or The Metal Age or any of the fan missions for a while now but I'm hesitant to take the reference from my electronic distractions (see sidebar, left) list because they're still sitting on my hard drive/rocketdock. It's just that Guild Wars is taking a lot of my gaming time up now. I just reached the Crystal Desert having completed all the quests and missions in Maguuma Jungle. There are only about four missions so far that I've missed the bonus on but since I'm level 20 and have the same amount of skill points I'm not too bothered about it. Of course, being a level 20 character without a guild, I've had several guild invitations from people I've never even met. I've not accepted any yet but one guy did invite me to his guild's Christmas party on Tuesday. I'm not sure whether that will be in Tyria or Elona but I'm planning on attending. I don't think that they really need any more members since they have at least sixty people in their organisation, but for some reason they see the need for new blood.

When I arrived at the Crystal Desert last night I found I was the only person there. The same thing happened when I arrived at the Henge of Denravi. Thinking my character was probably sun stroked, I managed to worry the few players who did arrive five minutes later by babbling about being cooked by the sands and eaten by sand worms. Then we all sat down in a corner and traded stories. I may try storytelling again, as long as there's the right kind of crowd. I suppose this is where my secondary profession finally comes in useful. I've got at least two more good stories in mind to tell, I should hunt down some more in case I get asked for an encore. You never know.

In more important news, my mum is going into hospital on Wednesday morning. She will be groggy from the sedation for the rest of the day so I said I'd go over to help with anything that needed doing. This roughly translates as "I'll cook while you sleep it off." She seems to be kind of worried about it and hasn't given me any details, I think she'll be all right as long as she just takes it easy and Marcos and Sam don't give her any grief.

My bike is filthy. Why is the A21 so gruesome?

Oh yeah I saw Sam playing Mass Effect while I was over at my mum's last night for dinner (we ate a rabbit Sam had caught while ferreting. He said he had gutted it but the sight of two dangly little testes amongst the meat kind of put me off half way through the meal). The graphics are awesome and the rest of the game looks like it follows that trend. Sam likes being a "Renegade" (read: Arsehole) when he gets the dialogue options; his actions included shooting prisoners in the head, telling his team mates to stop being pussies all the time, shooting a scientist, agitating crazy people, cutting off his superior officers when they try to give him mission briefings, and generally poking his gun up peoples' noses until he gets what he wants. A neat little thing about Mass Effect seems to be that you can improve both your Paragon (i.e. light side, good, heroic alignment) and your Renegade (i.e. dark side, chaotic, bad-ass, anti-hero alignment) at the same time without one taking away from the other the way they did in KotOR. Most games that record your good/bad alignment often only view the situations you are put into in black and white. Mass Effect seems to have an added sense of grey. Always good.