RP

This is solely for RP purposes...

Demerole
His great talent is his proficiency with knives. He's mildly insane, for when he was 15 his parents and his beloved baby sister were killed...by orcs? He's a wanderer and shows his talent at odd times. Moody!

Meldorin
Gondorian, Lebennin area. Member of a defunct House, Iselin. Wields a broadsword. Escaped primarily from parents and nagging younger sisters. Has an odd passion for mapping. The most honorable.

Calen
A young man, born by Dol Amroth, raised in Rohan after his mother brought him there upon his father's death. Idealist and the nicest of the guys. Doesn't carry a weapon regularly, but a good shot. Loves horses.

Alardan
He's Alivair's twin brother, but they've been separated since the age of 7 for 15 years. He's the quiet one and prefers not to be in situations, but aids those in need and is fairspoken. Carries a haunted look in his eyes from the past.

Alivair
Alardan's twin. He's rougher and disdainful from his different upbringing (He was abducted by not-so-nice people, and Alardan was found by decent people. Their parents were killed when they were separated). The twins can feel each other if they're close enough, and are still trying to figure things out now that they've met again.

Felderon
Thief. Light-hearted.

Kariel Arenfall
Gentle and mild. She carries a few daggers but dislikes fighting. Her brother was killed as a soldier, and it devastated her. She's in need of comfort and someone to rely on and forget things. She's wandering and wishing for something to happen...

Cristiel
Fiery and strong, has a sword and proud of it. Outspoken and confident. Ranger type, half-elf. Pretty if one would take an interest in her (rare so far).

Jaena Orderon
Brooding type. Elemental/sorceress type deal, you'll see if you ever have to fight her or alongside her. Goes cloaked and in mannish attire. Fights well. Darkest of my girls--the kind to sit in a corner eyeing people.

Rayelin
A young woman from Minas Tirith. She has a brother and father in the Guard. They taught her fist and blade fighting. She's kind at heart and good with horses. She spent time in the Mordor dungeons before Sauron was overthrown.

Allora
She's a Numenorean...adaptable for RP purposes. Loves ships and the sea. Her father went on a journey and never returned, and her mother died of grief. Her younger brother is 8 years younger. They were raised by an old family friend.

Imagination

Imagination. We use it so abundantly as children, and then somehow it seems to slip away some time. I remember many days in elementary in which we ran around, pretending to be this, or that, even believing it to some degree, and creating worlds and people on an everyday basis. It’s such a powerful thing, the imagination, but somehow, at a certain age, it’s like a switch turns it off. Boys start hanging out on the blacktop and playing sports. Girls start sitting on the playground and gossiping. It comes at different times, but eventually seems to happen to all.

Why is this? Looking back, I think I looked forward to recess more, enjoyed our off-time more, than in after days when it wasn’t “cool” anymore. Imagination is becoming a lost art; it seems that at younger and younger ages the switch is turning. And yet it’s such an important thing. For without it, what would we accomplish, or achieve? Without the will to dream of things, we would be nothing. But for some reason we’re moving away from it at an alarming pace.

Some will tell you that it’s because of TV and video games. I wonder, though. When I watch or play those, my imagination is rather fired off rather than diminished. Watching such things stirs me, and brings one to imagine the glory, the adventure, and the deeds (or the love, as the case may be). They were spawned by people who had very vivid imaginings. Why shouldn’t they aid our thoughts?

Whatever the reason, it becomes more important that we can remember how to dream. It becomes more important that we can create and dream of better things, imagine things beyond. Because as far as we seem to advance, if we lose the truths that we bear it is doom that we go to. If we lose our thoughts of freedom and of peace, then we will only sink deeper. For it is this that give us our edge; our ability to remember what we fought for and our ability to dream of even better things. If you can only imagine…and believe.

Because there’s more out there than we think of nowadays. It tears my heart to see the interest of people who just want to “get rich quick”, as they say, going into the stocks and I-banking and all of that just for the money and not because they care. It pains to see scandal and such grace the headlines, because people don’t really care anymore. Most of the young people I know are idealists, but it’s lost as time gets on. Some remove it in tasting the bitterness of their pains. There are some, though, who just dismiss it as a fancy of childhood. Is that what it is? Is that what dreamers are, people who are lost in their youth, wandering and witless among their fantasies? Say not so! For there is the hope and wish of mankind. Remember, as you draw your path through the world, to dream again…

Twelve Hours (Part One, missing the point. Wait patiently...)

I couldn’t seem to elaborate on any of the subjects I wanted to address this week, so I will simply write today…
Dong. The bell rolled out one note, a deep, resounding sound, and a cloud of mist rose up and obscured everything. When it cleared, the golden sun looked down from within an azure sky…

A young girl sat in the clean green grass, smelling the wildflowers in the clearing. Her short golden hair was bright as the summer around her, bright as her white smock, bright as the light in her deep blue eyes. Birds sang in the trees, beautiful melodies, and light suffused the clearing. From behind the trees, someone watched her, tenderly and longingly. She stood up and stretched her arms to the sky. Life was beautiful, as new as the reborn world in the spring…

The bells pealed twice.

An older girl stood underneath the gently falling snow. Her eyes held gentleness, borne from her experiences. Her hands folded softly in front of her as she looked down upon the last flower of the autumn, frosted now. Its golden bloom had paled to a wan sort of yellow, but still beautiful in a sad sort of way. It was a reflection of the one who stood looking at it, with her heart full of kindness in sorrow…

Three tones rolled out like a call to remember.

A 16-year-old with long golden hair sat underneath the golden leaves of the silver-barked tree. Her blue eyes watched everything, but where once they could have been lively, they were now dulled in simple acceptance. A watching presence filled the air, but whether with evil designs or with only kindness in mind, one could not have said. She held an ornate silver locket in her hand, looking at the hand-painted portrait inside. A single tear rolled from the corner of her eye…

Bronze bells tolled four times.

A young woman, gold hair cut short, stepped out of a train with her head put down. The bright colors of her scarf and sweater failed to offset the air of sadness she bore at all times. She held a small blue notebook in her hand, with black and gold pen, filled with memories of other times. The eyes that watched her marveled at how fair a beauty seemed to be paled, most with sadness and regret that such should be. They wondered how one who seemed so fair, prepared, and well-off could have the look of long years of pain in her eyes. She did not see any of them, nor notice the whispers that followed her…

Five notes rang out.

A woman stood in a tower looking silently across the pale blue lake, reflecting the light of the argent moon. Her hair fell down and obscured much of her face, but she could see through it all. The notes of a haunting harp melody filtered up through the floor, and the cold starlight seemed to glitter ever more brightly, reflecting off her pale face. Slowly she turned and began to take the long steps down…

Dandelion Wine

I’m almost overflowing with things to write about, after having slowly accumulated them as I write them down. There is a list for my subsequent posts, including such things as belief, willpower, imagination, the end of imagination, and more. Today, however, I am going to talk about the things I got out of the book Dandelion Wine. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a Ray Bradbury book. The basic story is a collection of events, like snapshots of life, detailing the summer of 1928 for a boy and his family and his town. And every day has a bottle of dandelion wine for it, and as the summer dies they can go back and point out the days when things happened.


It is an eventful summer and a beautiful tale, but for me it was also a series of thoughts and realizations. The first of these was about happiness. In the story, one of the characters attempts to make a “Happiness Machine”. After he’s done it, though, he comes to terms with the fact that it’s not really happiness he’s created, because it takes away from the happiness you already have in your own place and time. Happiness—it’s how we make it, and we’ve got to find it where we are, where we make it. It’s all relative, and we’re losing some of it in our apparent quest for happiness that’s right there in front of our faces the entire time.

Next is the thought about what’s past. Reading this kind of a book kind of makes me wish for the days when you knew all of your neighbors, when you could walk anywhere you needed to go, when people had time to relax and be with each other and the world. Sometimes I think we’re going too fast, and our technologies that are supposed to be making things easier are instead making our lives more hectic and crazy. It feels like we’ve gotten too busy to take a day off and sit on the porch watching the grass grow and the clouds move and the bees buzz, totally content. And then it feels like even when we try to take a break, to relax, that we’re so wound up worrying about all the things we’ll have to do the next day that we can’t see it for the goodness it really is. Back when we felt like we knew the world, that it was small, that it was just this town and this sky and these trees and these people, we were more in harmony with everything. Communication, transportation, and machines have somehow disconnected us, in a way, from what’s really out there, even as we feel we uncover more of it every day. Our harmony with the world is dwindling, in a sense, foundering in the waves. It needs to be rescued, I think, or else we’ll lose something important, and maybe a little more.

Last of all is a thought on memory. At the end of the summer, the Spaulding boys are looking at the bottles of Dandelion Wine, reviewing the days of the summer. They sit there and remember different incidents from the entire summer, while Grandpa says he only remembers the new kind of grass that didn’t need cutting. The boys stare at him, thinking they’ll remember it forever, but I’ve come to see that we lose a lot. Sometimes something will happen to jog my memory, and I’ll remember something; maybe hearing Nutcracker music will bring everything we did crashing back, maybe a word about an old occasion will bring it back, but through the whole scheme of things it feels like everything runs together, and it makes me sad. I want to be able to remember things, to remember the golden days of my life when I’m old. I guess that’s what diaries and journals are for, but what if you can’t remember them at all? I’m afraid of the days of my life running away like water, without me being able to remember what made me happy, what I learned, forgetting the things that I once prized as the best memories of all.

So there are my musings upon this book. It touched me because recently I never feel like there’s enough time in the world, but I’m yet so tired that I couldn’t possibly cut any sleep. I think we’re doing too much here; one of these days it’ll all crash down on us, the entire system, unless we can find some balance again. Does anyone else feel the same way? Is it just me that wants to find a slow place again?



Comment please…I’m missing comments and I wonder what you think about this and the last two posts. Until next time…

Who We Are

“If we die, we die as who we are.” This is a quote from Tuon in Knife of Dreams, I think, the 11th book of the Wheel of Time. When I read it, it felt…striking to me, I guess you could say. It’s a powerful thought. In the book, it’s because Tuon was “under the veil”, meaning instead of being recognized as the Daughter of the Nine Moons she was hiding herself and being just the High Lady Tuon, and when they prepared to leave into danger, she decided to remove the veil. But the words itself are rather more than that.


The first thing that comes to my mind, probably the most important, is the part about “who we are”. It implies the words of someone who knows who they are, what their place is, and where they’re going. They have a set course in life. But so often as we grow up, we find ourselves not knowing who we really are. We don’t have children, or a job, or anything like that. We’re simply one of so many attending schools all over. I probably couldn’t tell you who I was if you asked me. Oh, I could tell you my name, who my parents are, where I go to school, what I do for fun. But what about my purpose? It’s so hard to know, isn’t it? Only it feels like everyone should know why they’re here and what they’re going to do. So many people, however, don’t really know, I think. There are far too many of us, even adults, who are still searching because they’re still not sure what they want to do and how they’re going to achieve it. I’d tell you I want to do something worthwhile, want to leave something behind, like a work of mine, writing, something that exhibits some of the truths I’ve known, some of which are chronicled in this blog. And maybe that’s a small piece of who I am, the dreamer, searching for something…different, and wanting to leave something behind. But there are always more facets.

Maybe it’s a gift, as well. If we knew what we were meant for, there would be different problems, like all the ones there are with prophecy; the hero is told what’s going to happen, and nothing’s going to change that, and then there are wrong interpretations, and bad things happen. It’s good not to know everything, but sometimes I wish we could know a little more. Just a little more of what we are, of who we are.

And then if we know, the second thing about those words is dying as who you really are. Not as the person you’ve built up through the years, not as the face and manner you show to others, but the person you are in deepest night when your thoughts blend with dreams and wishes. The person you always wanted to be and the person you never thought you could. At the very last, at least once, you can and must shed off the things you’ve done to fit in, to handle this world, and show, for one moment, the truth inside of you; to show to the world who you were, who you are, and who you always will be. For only then everything can come to be in full.