Emerald and Gold

Fenny sure loves these eyes. I tried to do a shoot with him being all mopey like he can be, but no! He ended up looking smiling in each and every photo! So I guess this pair is a keeper for him... Especially since Eiko kinda stole his old eyes :D I hope to take a full shoot with Fenny one of these days though... I'm feeling a bit stuck with him, looking through his Flickr set. They are all very much alike, very plain portraits. Each fine on its own, but I'd like to have some variety.



But enough of emerald eyes, and onto gold. First I have to outline, that I had a not-so-happy workweek behind me, nevermind it being shorter than usual. I already wrote about my temporary promotion. One of its perks was that I got a new supervisor, a much more listening, caring and all-around better one. But this monday we were told that the supervisors were going to be switched and now I got my old supervisor in my new team. >:( Let me tell you, there weren't any happy faces in this team when the news were told.

So, to balance things out, I was really happy that we got a three-day-weekend coming up, and it all begun with a RQ session on Thursday. Valentine had been taking us along a nice - albeit at times a very frustrating - campaign that drew to close this time. Our impossible trio (Malkus the lawful-good bard in a tank-like plate metal armor and a mighty axe, Melkar the wisdom-seeking mage with no understanding of what it's like to be a horny teenager and Taffee the sorta-chaotic-evil pickpocket-thief-burglar-murderer who also has quite an axe along with a sword and some other random weapons from head to toe) was charged with a mission to gain alliances against an army of think-of-chaotic-Rome Lunar empire, which was invading our homeland. First we tried the trolls, who to no-one's surprise double-crossed us, leaving us running for our lives, now knowing that the invaders had the strong trolls on their side. We then survived the mountains (Taffee only barely) and found the dwarves who were our next straw of help.

Well, dwarves weren't exactly jumping for joy to come to our aid, leaving us with a very frustrating go-get-this-to-get-that mission to help them find their missing crown-prince and their ancient relic, hoping it would make the dwarves owe us enough to gain their alliance. This took us to a labyrinth on some unknown plane that hindered our magic and messed with our senses of time and space. We found a collection of races living down there, and made friends with none :D We got captured by the ducks and the dwarves, beat some orcs and tricked others. And Malkus killed an allosaurus. On pretty much his own. But we made it out in the end, with the crown-prince and the relic. Taffee had never before been so happy to see the sun!

And then off we went, to the battle against the Lunar, with dwarves on our side and some petty Sartar soldiers pissed off at us XD We reunited with Alec Pilocarbus the Wind Lord, who took Malkus with him to the front lines, with Melkar joining the mages' ranks and Taffee being in the secondary squadrons with other scoundrels. And the game ended there, with Malkus swinging his axe blade against the first enemy. Quite a cliffhanger...

And I really, really want to continue this campaign, to see how much gold Taffee gains and what she can buy with it. And what rune magic she can find (really hoping to gain that Seduction rune, and the Idler rune). And can she actually ever kill anyone with full-stealth-mode (got close last game, she was strangling dwarves all over the place, but one got away and she left the other just unconscious). And does she gain a spirit ally, the killer bunny. And does she find the Killing-Bow of Killingness XD But although I have this much to look forward to, I can also look back at the campaign we've had so far and just grin.

We've lost allies, we've blundered missions... Actually, I think our best games have been when we've tried to do something that we have then completely screwed up. But with good intentions! Getting back at a double-crossing sand-eater is totally legit, even though it results in innocent maids being stabbed in the eye with a very poisoned dagger (at least Taffee sees it that way). And Malkus was very noble trying to save those slaves and Tafs was really only just planning to relieve the slavers of their gold as a precaution. We've also thrown an apple at a dwarven noble (that was Malkus), threatened the life of a Wind Lord (Taffee) and fooled the orc emissary with a Float spell (Melkar). Good times! XD

We've grown and gotten stronger. Malkus started out as a blue-eyed farm boy, and is now the Chosen of Donandar (if you ask him), switching his thick hide tunics for a plate armor with insignia. Melkar has come from a bookworm to a lightning-throwing power-mage. And well, Tafs is now quite a fighter with her enviable arsenal of weaponry, with the ability to be invisible and simply break any lock, weapon or armor the enemy puts in her path. I'm really loving this rogueish character, since she's gotten strong in a variety of skills, making her very, very versatile. She can fight close-combat, she can hit a target with her arrows. She can climb, jump and dodge her way around, nevermind sneak and hide when things get tough. She can even give first aid if we're really desperate. And then she can (try to) sweet-talk her way. Although the latter only seems to work on Malkus... But no matter how much she tries to deny it, she doesn't really have to put up much of an act when sweet-talking to Malkus. The boy has a really special part in her heart that she doesn't even want to have. And now we really get to the gold.

See, in Finnish 'gold' is said 'kulta'. But 'kulta' can mean either gold in the literal metal sense, or it can be a pet name for someone dear. And Taffee really loves her gold, both in the literal metal sense as well as the golden boy from her home village. Enough to follow him to a bloody war. Enough to make her threaten Alec's health if the Wind Lord allowed anything to happen to Malkus. But although the boy clearly also enjoys her company, she knows that they are from two totally different places. The gold shines most beautiful in the sun, but she belongs with the shadows, to put it very poetically. To put it bluntly, he is a goody two-shoes with high morals and ambitions to save the world on the orders from his god and she's a scoundrel who can't find a dictionary to even check up the word 'moral' and neither can her god. But a girl can always dream of gold, right? ;)

But now I'm off to another RPG, where the wandering heroes of Garcia will finally meet with Snow White, the pirate Commodore with ambiguous motives.