Requiem Aeternam

Effective immediately, as required under section 101.3 B iv. alpha alpha gamma of the new Healthcare Reform law, this blog has been moved to nordfeuer.wordpress.com. We thank you for your participation in this blog and look forward to your presence at the new location.

Sincerely,

The Management

In countless numbers they came, the tallstalkers, the Wiedmen, their green arms reaching far above the heads of those who guarded the borderlands. Two hundred years ago they overran the fortresses of human civilization and turned the valley known as Drey Nidgeditch into an impassible marsh full of strange creatures, treacherous paths, and a host of fell soldiers.

* * *

“Moth, go take back the valley from the invaders.”

I nearly choked on my breakfast–a bacon and egg sandwich with too much mustard. “Me and what army?!”

“You’ll go alone, and unarmed.”

“This is madness,” I cried. “I can’t fight the Wiedmen after my arms have been severed!”

The Exarch considered the wisdom of my argument for a while, scratching the side of his hook nose. “Very well, keep your arms. But I can spare you no reinforcements.”

I accepted the Exarch’s offer and left immediately before any worse ideas entered his ancient head. It was certainly a shame that such a powerful ruler was going bonkers and no one had the power to do anything about it. I do not know if the Exarch intended my mission as a suicide mission or had immense faith in my skill at war, or merely dismissed the gaunt alien-looking green men as opponents, but I knew that I would be extremely lucky to conquer an outpost by myself and survive, much less retake the entire valley.

But . . . while a descent into the pit was madness, if I managed to return, I no other title would befit me but “hero.”

I launched my attack the next morning, but already the sun set the air ablaze. Particles of dust flickered into sparks and the air flamed about me. I descended into the valley into the thickest most stifling heat, and was greeted by the stench of death. For centuries, the Wiedmen had buried their dead by throwing them to rot in the swamps, and the smell of decay permeated the air.

Wielding my spear (which, after much debate was considered by the Exarch to be neither an arm or a leg), I plunged into their ranks. Swiftly they fell, but I knew their individual warriors were not my greatest concern. In single combat, they were no match for me, and they fell by the dozen with each stroke of my keen blade. But soon the swamp began to close in on me; I began to tire in the heat of the sun; and my blade grew dull from the glut of Wiedman flesh.

The swamp I dealt with by watching carefully as I slew their men and stepping only on the tufts of ground left open as they fell. Occasionally I stood on their long thin corpses to spread out my weight and hold me up in the mud. The morbidity of my actions crossed my mind, but I pushed the thought aside, knowing that once the sucking mud latched onto my legs, the only way left would be down to join the gloopy mass of decay and slowly become food for the living Wiedmen.

Don’t look down at their faces, I told myself.

Against the sun, I could do nothing but force myself onward under its inferno.

Other foes as well soon made their presence felt. The swamp teemed with spiders and wasps. Even a Rodent Of Unusual Size made an appearance. Fortunately, these creatures possessed no manic hatred of humans and fled from my wrath though I feared greatly raising the fury of the Mud Daubers.

Exhaustion began to set in. I knew no mortal had before braved such heat and horror, and the endless waves of enemies made me lose hope. Sweat covered me mixed with spatter from the Wiedmen who lay at (or under) my feet. At last I felt I could fight no longer. My arms and legs gave out, but with one last desperate swipe, I struck out with my spear before collapsing.

I fell, strangely enough, on dry land. I lay there in the sun waiting for the Wiedman hordes to swarm over me, pulling me down until their roots grew through my skull, but nothing happened. I looked up and saw, in amazement, no Wiedmen in sight. I had freed the land of Drey Nidgeditch from the invaders!

With a far lighter heart than I had thought possible a few moments before, I ascended from the valley, my weapon slung on my shoulder, and began to look forward to the ordinary things of life–a cool shower, a long cold drink of water, and my next mission as the Exarch’s most trusted man.

* * *

. . . at least, that’s how I made an otherwise miserable day of weed whacking a swampy drainage ditch in the South Carolina sun seem a bit more interesting.

Sometimes when I think about fantasy worlds I go a little bit overboard. I get lots of cool ideas from movies and books and games, and I want to combine them all! It goes something like this . . .

Me: Is it really so very wrong to have wizards and 50 foot tall battle robots coexisting in the same world as humanity strives to survive the zombie-vampire Orc apocalypse?

Ooh it would be fun to watch Gandalf tear down the gates of Mordor in a 100 ton battlemech like this one!!

But I do like steam-punk settings as well, so I’ll throw in some enormous zeppelins, trains, and random giant gear wheels and all the characters can carry around special gizmos that look like fantasy wrenches and each one has a special use.

And what goes with zeppelins better than squadrons of WWI biplanes?! While Gandalf is tearing down the gates of Mordor in his battlemech, Aragorn soars above in his bright red Sopwith Camel taking aim at the nazgul and their floating fortress zeppelin!

Of course, that conjures up images of Luke taking out the Death Star, so I think I’ll add Wookies and Ewoks to the battle on the ground too while the Dread Pirate Roberts and his corsairs battle the Tomb Kings from the Warhammer fantasy games . . .

Of course all of these events are being manipulated by my version of the Illuminati, which is, of course, controlled by the elves. But a lone nameless gritty unshowered gunslinger seeks to single-handedly topple their silent empire through the use of his newly discovered necromantic powers!

Hmm. I suppose this story needs girls in it somewhere. . .

On his way through the fire swamp then, the gunslinger gets ambushed by porcibeavers (legendary creatures of legend–giant porcupine/beaver hybrids that live in the vicinity of my old youthgroup–that will tear your face right off! Their only weakness is sand :nods:). But he’s saved by a spunky pretty girl (who ends up being a philistine priestess–thanks Saint-Saens–in the Illuminati’s pay). However, since he’s the independent gruff strong silent chauvinist type, she falls into true love with him and turns against the Illuminati elves.

So in the end the illuminati send out a massive army of battlemechs to kill the gunslinger, who raises an army of undead porcibeavers and Ewoks, the Gandalf character, being exceptionally perceptive, realizes something big is happening and leads his army and Aragorn’s fighter squadrons toward the big battle in the valley of Megiddo. There is a great climactic battle, and at the end, the nameless gunslinger (who has yet to use a gun) and Gandalf (in his 100 ton ‘mech) have cornered the leader of the Illuminati, but Gandalf turns against the gunslinger and reveals *he* (Gandalf) has actually been the leader of the Illuminati all along and blasts the gunslinger with an ER PPC, leaving him a smoldering pile of ash (as the girl watches).

Aragorn sees this and realizes he has been Gandolf’s dupe the entire time and orders his squadron of biplanes to attack Gandolf, causing Gandolf to eject from his battlemech. Finally Gandolf and Aragorn face off on foot. Though a powerful Wizard, Gandolf’s magic is no match for Aragorn’s kung fu. Aragorn prevails after a climactic duel and is about to finish off Gandolf when Gandolf reveals . . .

THAT HE IS ARAGORN’S FATHER!!!!!!!

In the epilogue, it is revealed that the gunslinger had discovered a way to make a horcrux without resorting to dark magic, thus setting the basis for the sequel in which the gunslinger attempts to reincorporate his soul and win back his true love from Aragorn.

The Moral? The hard part of writing stories is what to leave out, not what to put in. :nods:

Happy Friday!

Fridays are fun days. At least they should be. Most Fridays I entertain myself by watching ESPN’s “weird web stories” videos. These videos contains all sorts of weird and cool stunts, like incredibly improbable basketball shots, ridiculously complex methods of bouncing ping pong balls into plastic cups (which I can’t find), which led to hillarious parodies, paintball art, and a really quick dragonfly.

Here’s this week’s video. Of course, everyone has seen the waterskiing animals, but I thought the virtual doggy soccer game in the middle portion of the video was pretty cool.

Recently I added a new blog to the blogroll links, and I thought I would briefly highlight it in a blog post.

“The Chinese Talberts,” Dave and Des(iree), teach English at the Shanghai Institute of Health Sciences, also known as something else in Chinese. Both graduated from BJU in the mid 2000s. Dave’s parents are missionaries in Canada, and Des . . . well I don’t really know much about her family. We’ll say they’re wealthy nobles in Northern England who breed poodles.

One of the fun (and sometimes frustrating) aspects of teaching English classes to lower level American students is being able to read plenty of compositions containing humorous (generally for all the wrong reasons) sentences. Now imagine getting those sentences from people to whom English is a second language. Dave and Des’s blog shares many comical examples from their teaching experiences as well as covering broader aspects of life in China, becoming a new parent, and even some poetry.

Here’s an excerpt written shortly after the birth of their daughter Chloe.

I have a theory: that being born is kind of like being shown onto the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise. “Here’s your ship!” the attendant says, and then walks out, leaving you with no crew and no instruction manual. So you spend the next four or five years pushing buttons and pulling levers more or less at random, trying to figure out what to do in order to reverse the polarity on the deflector array or reprogram the warp nacelles or something. Occasionally you figure out that this sequence of buttons does this thing, and eventually, everything works so well that you can’t remember not being able to do things (like we are as adults). But in the meantime, the captains of the vessels around you have a good laugh at your expense as you beam the mess hall into space, shoot yourself with your own phasers, and commit other various indignities.

Besides being English teachers and good Christian friends, Dave and Des also enjoy the occasional round of fantasy gaming. Whenever they get the chance to visit Greenville, Dave’s sisters and several other friends get together for an entire day of twizzlers, pizza, ice tea, passing the baby around, and saving the world from evils so horrible they would make the brains of lesser men claw their way out through their eye sockets at the thought.

Their blog is located at chinesetalberts.blogspot.com. Unfortunately, those of us still at BJ cannot access it blogspot blogs directly. One can see their most recent blog posts, however, by googling “the Chinese Talberts” and clicking the “cached” button for their blog (which comes up as “Shanghai’d”).

So check out their blog–you won’t be sorry!

But you don’t have to take *my* word for it.

(cue Reading Rainbow music)

Tags: blogs, China