Advice From Not an Overnight Sensation

If you're old enough to be part of the workforce, you've likely noticed that different companies have a different approach to employee development.

Some companies have shadowing for a couple of weeks, and then you're on your own. Other companies have formal training, but the net result is that once you're finished you're thrown into the deep end of the pool. A lot of service oriented companies take either of these approaches toward training, and I've experienced both. My first job --as a janitor-- was the first example, and a job I had just after I graduated from university* used the second.

Other corporations have a different approach to "employee onboarding", as it is described in corporate speak. Some take the approach of formal training, but in addition to that training they have a "training website" where you can access whatever virtual class you want. Proponents of such an approach talk up the ability of the employee to pick and choose the path of their career.

And finally, there are corporations that assign you a mentor when you're hired, who assists you with your initial training and then periodically meets with you to provide guidance, contacts, and training to progress in your career.

That last approach seems to be losing favor in the corporate world over the "self service" model, and the primary reason why seems to be the bane of all corporations: cost savings. It takes time (and correspondingly costs money) for one to one mentoring in corporations, and by offering a "self-service" model a corporation can say "Hey, here's all the training you could possibly need; go ahead and pick and choose what you want so you have control over your career."

But here's the kicker: that self-service model only works well for some people; it is most definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution.

***

Because I've experienced all of these different approaches to employee training and development**, I have definite opinions on what works and what doesn't. And the answer is "it depends".

Yes, I know it's a way of weaseling out of an answer, but there really is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Some people like the full mentoring process, and some people have a clear vision of the road ahead and are fine with picking and choosing which path forward. And still others are happy with some up front training and then just running with it.

And if you can see where I'm heading, then I'll salute you with a beer after hours.

***

Yes, employee training and development is pretty much the same mentoring in any other activity, including blogging. Some people prefer to dive right in, and others will pepper old hands with lots of questions.

As you can guess by the out of date nature of this website, you should probably not be asking me for design advice, although I will say that if you go the gif route make sure you can customize a gif to your liking. I've never bothered to replace the main graphic here at PC because every attempt I made at making it look more interesting --or timely-- just never came out right. I will say that ease of reading and accessibility to mobile reading are two things that I'd place a high priority on. Apparently Blogger made a change several years ago that prevents people from commenting on Blogger blogs using Safari (especially the iOS version) without requiring that Safari relax some security rules. If you're not fond of that solution***, I'd suggest looking at Wordpress. (PC is too ingrained here in Blogger for me to just up and leave, unless Blogger gets sunset by Google, which is always a distinct possibility. See: Chromecast Audio.)

Okay, that aside, I can't tell you how to write. I can't tell you that "if you write A, you'll get response B". I can't even tell you how to monetize a blog, because I've been bound and determined to never do that. There are friends who read the blog and I don't want to try to monetize their friendship, because I value their friendship too much.

But what I can tell you is that you have to write.

You must write.

A blog thrives on material, and if there isn't any, there's no blog.

Go with what you want to write about. Pour your guts out on the virtual page. You'll get better the longer you actually write posts --hell, I'm proof of that-- and you'll have content that you can point to when you comment on other people's blogs.

Also, don't try to be fake or hipsterish. People see through that shit almost instantly, and unless you're very good, any facade you create will eventually crack, and the real you will shine through.

And finally, don't go into blogging thinking you'll catch lightning in a bottle and become the next Pewdiepie. Just don't. Influencer culture is --effectively-- a way for companies to shill their products without having to pay excessive amounts of money. The most popular influencers out there --including the aforementioned Mr. Pie-- rake in tons of money per year, but their effect on pop culture is pretty damn big as well and more than makes up for whatever money companies through at them. If you really want to become an influencer and wonder how you go about doing it, there is a book out there called Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media by Brittany Hennessy that goes through the details of starting a blog, building a brand, and pretty much a "how to be self-employed" manual without the details about how to report income on taxes. Yes, the book covers fashion for the most part --that's what the author is familiar with-- but the ideas are applicable to influencer culture in general. And yes, I felt somewhat in need of a shower after seeing the details about a career that simply didn't exist 10 years ago.****

So why blog?

You tell me. What do you want to say? Why do you want to say it? And answer those questions when you write.

If that's mentoring, then so be it. But that's the same advice that I'd give to anybody else who is starting a blog: you may not have a voice (yet), but you can write. And through writing, you'll find your voice.

#Blapril2020




*I worked at Radio Shack for about six months after graduation, before I was fired for lack of sales per hour. Yes, the now defunct (or effectively so) Radio Shack. The sales levels required to maintain your employment pretty much required you to sell a computer per week, and when I worked there the Tandy computers being sold were inferior to the 386 and newly released 486 PCs sold by other companies, and I simply could not recommend Tandy computers over Dell, Gateway, or other custom built machines by small businesses all over town. I could spend lots of time talking about Radio Shack and some of the idiotic decisions they made over the years, but that's definitely another time. But I will say that their audio equipment from the 70s and 80s are worth the investment.

**Sorry, I can't mention other employers other than Radio Shack because reasons. Rat Shack is now gone, so they can't come after me with torches and pitchforks.

***I have friends who read PC but can't comment because of the weird restrictions that Blogger threw up for no good reason. If you google "why can't I comment on blogger with my iPad" you'll find the solution to the issue, but I'm reluctant to tell people to give up some security for the sake of a comment. PC isn't immune from being hacked like any other site, so why risk it? Although I'll also admit loving to hear from friends who have those restrictions.

****I personally don't see how any real influencer worth their salt would accept freebies from another company and try to walk the fine line of promoting said product versus being "objective". I put that in quotes because --from my perspective-- being truly objective means you have to be willing to tell a company that their product sucks if it is warranted. Trying to soften the blow so you can keep the money flowing, in my opinion, compromises your integrity.


EtA: Sometimes I really hate cut and paste on Blogger's toolset. Corrected cut-and-paste issues.

Journey's End

Well, I now have my answer to the question posed in the last post.

Azshandra dinged in the throne room in Blackrock Depths. On trash, no less.

To be honest, it was very touch and go at the end, as our group wiped twice in the room with all of the Dark Iron Reserves, and it was a judicious run down the left side after some of the roaming mobs had wandered away that kept us from wiping a third time.

Well, there was also the bar fight that almost wasn't, because we simply couldn't start a fight by throwing ale at the patrons, so we resorted to stealing ale and turning the entire bar against us. A long time ago I recall myself as Quintalan, Soul's wife, and Soul trying to three man BRD and getting stopped at the bar by wiping on the hordes of angry bar patrons, so this was a bit of a flashback. Still, we persevered through that only to wipe in the next area because an Anvilrage Marshall healed a runner who then aggroed the next mob over, causing a wipe.

But in the end, the BRD run was totally worth it. It was a great group to run with, and I know I had a blast.

I still have a ton of BRD related quests in my queue, but the big overarching question of actually completing the instance is finally over.

***

Finishing Blackrock Depths, especially after all of my failed attempts in the past couple of weeks, demonstrates the power of persistence in the face of mounting odds.

Speaking of overcoming odds....
Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)
From 2016, Tommy Shaw of Styx and Damn 

Yankees playing with the Contemporary Youth 

Orchestra of Cleveland.

Oh, I don't think that Az couldn't finish the instance, but I was fighting a headwind where tanks were more interested in other instances than just BRD. Back when Az was attempting to get into Zul'Farrak, I was fighting the crowd where the first wave of players had largely passed Z'F and were no longer interested in running there, so it took me a couple of weeks to get Az into a Z'F run that actually finished.*

But the BRD headwind was completely different. The first wave had already reached L60 and were running end level instances, raids, and battlegrounds. With the exception of slowpokes like me who spent way too much time enjoying the ride, the second wave of alts was passing Az by.** And, it seemed, that there were few tanks willing to step up for a full BRD run.

To add to the frustration, the quality of interactions in LookingForGroup seems to have declined a bit of late. A few players have taken it on themselves to provide commentary on some guilds who host open raids, and that provoked other reactions from even more players, and in true MMO fashion the shit hit the fan. I'm actually surprised that the player made LFG group on the Myzrael-US server hasn't seen more traffic lately, given the lack of drama there.

However, I didn't give up on Az's Blackrock dreams. I deal with enough drama in real life that I wasn't about to let the crap in LookingForGroup --or anywhere else in MMO space, really-- get to me.

***

And now it's done. Az is at L60, Blackrock Depths is complete, and I can move on in the direction of Scholomance and Stratholme. And from there, Dire Maul and Blackrock Spire.

Leeroy Jenkins, here I come.

#Blapril2020



*Ironically enough, Cardwyn has experienced no issues getting into Z'F --or any other instance-- for that matter. I suspect the reasons are twofold: Mages are in demand (Rogues not so much), and people are running alts all the time now.

**It's been kind of weird seeing people in Cardwyn's friends list show up in groupings with Az. "Oh hey, [insert name here]. We've run before, but on my Mage alt, Cardwyn." "Oh yeah, I remember Card!"

The Blackrock Blues

The real question for me lately is whether Azshandra will complete a full Blackrock Depths run or hit L60 first. Given my recent luck in BRD runs, I'm betting on L60.

Oh, it's not that the runs devolved into acrimony or something, it's just that they fall apart.

I had one where we simply ran out of time: people had to go to bed to get up for work the next day. There was another that one person said they only wanted an Angerforge run, and after they left the tank left, and that was that. A third stalled at the mobs near Bael'Gar, and a fourth stalled after a wipe near the entryway to Molten Core. In between, there have been a couple of small runs that I knew going in that were going to end fairly quickly, like the Marshall Windsor quests, but I was fine with that.

And in another recent run we wiped in the gnome area, and during the subsequent runback some people had to split.

But Az did ding L59, so at least there's that.

***

The most memorable run so far has been one that we knew almost immediately that we weren't going to get to the end, but we decided to see how far we were going to get.

You see, the evening began with me wanting to get into a Blackrock Depths run, but the runs that evening only wanted AoE DPS --basically Mages and Warlocks-- so people could farm experience. A single Rogue such as Az was not on people's radar. So, when a Sunken Temple run appeared, I was happy to join.

Once invited to the group, I realized that I'd run with half of the group before*, so I knew this was going to be a solid bunch. We spent a bit of extra time doing a full clear of the entire Sunken Temple complex --as a lot of groups simply skip the sewers portion-- and once done we began to go our separate ways.

However, the healer spoke up about how she wanted to do some more instances tonight, and how does BRD sound?

"That's what I wanted to do this evening," I replied, "but people only wanted Mages in LookingForGroup. So count me in."

One player didn't want to run, so we said goodbye to him and the four of us hearthed out and began the trip to Blackrock Mountain while asking around for a fifth.

A fifth quickly joined us, and it was yet another toon I'd run with before. Surely this meant that the stars were aligning, and I'd finally get that BRD run completed.

Well.....

One of our group disconnected mid-flight.

"Um...." I said.

"Oh, I bet I know what happened," one of the group said. "He said he was going to check his phone, and because of lag he was using it as a hot spot."

It turned out to be the case, because after he rejoined he told us he'd rebooted his phone as it was slow and had completely forgotten about using it as a hotspot.

Well, since he died mid-flight, his corpse was stuck somewhere near Karazhan, so he had to run all the way back to Darkshire to revive. Once there, he picked up some water for the healer (who'd run out and forgotten to get more) and headed out on the flightpoint once more.

While he was en route, the tank yawned and said that she couldn't keep her eyes open, so she was going to have to call it a night. We tried getting a tank, but no dice. There were two or three BRD/UBRS groups vying for tanks at the same time, and while we said "no reserves" in our call outs the other groups were offering gold as bribes. Things kind of degenerated from there into the other groups getting into a fight with some people who "claimed" to be tanks, saying they weren't offering enough incentives to tank

At that point, the healer basically said "screw it" and said that we should just go with the four of us (Druid Healer, Two DPS Warriors, and Az the Rogue) and see how far we get. The four of us were fine with that, so we figured with some luck we could at least get through the Arena portion and up to Angerforge.

We did a lot of line of sight pulls, and the healer did a great job of keeping the designated Warrior tank upright, particularly since she didn't have any tanking gear at all. We only had one stupid wipe at the beginning where we pulled once too many, but we made it to the Arena. "As long as we don't get something like the bats, we should be okay," the tank said.

We got the bats.

We wiped.

As we ran back, we debated strategy on how to take care of them, but it turned out to be for naught as the event had glitched and the bats had vanished. The way forward lay open.

"Let's see if we can take Angerforge out at least," the tank said, and led the way out.

We made it to Angerforge, waited for all of the Healer's cooldowns to finish, and we pulled Angerforge up the stairs and into a side hallway. Given the lack of that fifth person, we did pretty well in getting to within a hit or two of knocking Angerforge off, but we still wiped.

"Okay," I said as we ran back, "We've got this. just one or two more hits and then we'll have taken him out."

"Maybe we should pull him farther back," the healer suggested. "Like around the bend and close to the door leading to this area."

"That's fine. We'll wait there while the tank pulls. If the tank needs an extra heal, you can run forward a bit as needed."

So we set ourselves up, with Az (me) and the healer near the door, the other DPS Warrior hanging around by some cannons at the end of the hallway, and the tank ran past him and got ready to pull Angerforge.

"Okay, pulling," she called.

Suddenly the healer and I were surrounded by eight fire elementals, who quickly blew us apart.

"AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!" The Warrior DPS yelled.

"What the holy hell was that?" the healer asked.

The tank dropped the pull and ran back to see the fire elementals vanish.

"I was just standing here on the cannons, looking at the two of you, and you were both engulfed by those fire elementals. It was terrifying!"

The healer and I started laughing.

"It had to be triggered by my pull," the tank said. "You screamed as soon as I pulled."

"I'd have given a lot to have seen the look on your face, man," I said as the healer and I started a runback.

"I'd rather have a video of the view he had," the healer added. "It must have been some sight."

"It was, and I don't want to see it again."

During the runback we decided that this was likely a built-in protection that Blizz had to keep a Hunter from kiting Angerforge all the way and past the hallway. "Because Hunters," the healer added.

"Well, we can't kite that far," the tank replied, "so let's redo this and make sure people use their Chained Essence of Eranikus when each mob appears."**

"And if we kill Angerforge, make sure to click on him so we can at least loot him when we run back."

Our strategy in place, and everybody's abilities now completely off cooldown, we tried once more to kill of General Angerforge. And this time, we killed him before his second mob wiped us.

That had to be the happiest bunch of dead people running back to revive in an instance.

We mutually agreed that we weren't going any farther with just the four of us, so we decided to regroup some time later, get a real tank, and finish the instance.

So while Az didn't get that BRD run she wanted, what she got was a totally memorable run nevertheless.

#Blapril2020




*I had already friended them, which I typically do for players who not only do a good job but also make grouping enjoyable. Basically, they're the people I'd not mind having as guildies.

**The idea was to use one Chained Essence on the first mob, and the other one on the second. I, being a "nice guy", had given up my Chained Essence because I that's not how I roll.

Ya Gotta Have That Something, Kid

When we first started blogging here on PC, Soul performed some outreach to several bloggers that he followed to help us get connected into the WoW blogoverse. We picked up a few views that way, and were added to a few blogs, but that outreach never really amounted to much.

I should also mention that this outreach happened before Twitter blew up and became the Twitter that we all love and hate today, so if you thought Twitter is shouting into the void now, then you haven't seen the "before times".

But what I discovered that in those first few years of blogging was that it wasn't active promotion that garnered regular readers but rather the organic work of reading and responding on other people's blogs. If I had something interesting to say on other blogger's comment sections, people would follow my link back and check out PC. That's how we ended up on what was --at the time-- two of the most important WoW blog sites' blogrolls: Righteous Orbs and the Pink Pigtail Inn.

Times have changed quite a bit, given the rise of Twitter and the fine tuning of self-promotion to an art form. However, one thing that remains is the basic premise that you have to have something interesting to say if you want to keep readers. Being hip or edgy is not required. And all the self-promotion in the world won't keep readers if you don't have that interesting angle.

#Blapril2020

Have We a Dynamic and Creative Office Environment Yet?

"Tell him sorry but no. Homer, Virgil, and Milton all did it in 12. Big Dave don't break no rules."
--David Eddings, responding to an editor on a fan's request for more books set in the Belgariad universe, after he'd written a dozen books. (Possibly apocryphal)


I am, at heart, an introvert.

That shouldn't be a surprise to people who know me, and that my limit to social media is blogging* fits in with that background.

Of course, you can sit there and point out that I play MMOs, which pretty much require interaction if you want to engage with a decent amount of the content, and I'd agree that yes, you'd think that if I can play MMOs I can handle other things, such as Twitter or Discord.**

But I don't use other forms of social media, and I'm fine with that.

Twitter is too immediate and driven by emotion and the hive mind for me to utilize it well. As I've said before on numerous occasions --both in and outside PC-- Twitter would feed into my worst instincts by allowing me to shoot off a reply without thinking through it first. Whether or not you think positively of my opinions, my posts on PC aren't fired simply off-the-cuff. I write something, set it aside for an hour or more, and then come back and re-read it. I typically make some major changes, because my training and expertise do not lie in writing and grammar, and I also edit the content once my emotions have gotten back into a better state.*** With Twitter, that review period gets thrown out the window and it pretty much becomes "anything goes".

Discord --and related chat/video apps-- are not my friend. I look on the chat apps, including Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business****, as necessary evils in today's world. My actual job requires me to be available 24x7, which means that I have to respond to any texts or other alerts at any time of day or night. And because of that, the dreaded 3 AM text is a part of my life.

I've been on emergency work calls using Skype for Business that lasted 10-12 hours (don't ask), and I've been woken up at 3 AM for an emergency that required me to write code on the fly to fix a problem that was seen once about 10 years ago. So yeah, I tend to associate voice apps with work to an absurd degree.

But on top of that, I dread putting myself out there in an open Discord chat channel. It sounds silly, but I really do get a knot in my stomach when I have to get on Discord (or, in the old days, Ventrillo) for some reason or another. An MMO's party chat doesn't have my Spring sinuses clearly audible*****, and while I can't type as fast as I'd like during an instance, I don't mind that. After all, I'm supposed to be focusing on the task at hand rather than making some random quip after Archaedas says "Who dares the wrath of the Makers??!!" with "Oh, not me. I'll go see myself out now."

***

I realize that the entire point of the Blapril Discord channel is to provide a fertile breeding ground for creative synergies with fellow content creators, but for me that sounds too much like work. Especially for an introvert.

Besides, I've never promoted PC, and I certainly don't intend to start doing so now.

So, being both the introvert and the contrarian, I'm going to take a pass on joining the Blapril Discord channel. Sure, going outside of my comfort zone can be good in the long term, but I'm not going to break my internal rules concerning voice apps. For the time being, at least.

#Blapril2020




*And some obligatory Facebook.

**Or guilds in general, for that matter.

***Okay, confession time. I had a really hard time writing certain portions of One Final Lesson because of the emotions I got while writing. This extended into the review/editing period, when I try really hard to step back and properly edit the work for clarity and conciseness. On more than one occasion I said out loud (to an empty house) "This is nuts; I wrote this, dammit! Get a hold of yourself!"

****Teams is, for those who remember it, the Lotus Notes of 2020. Both Teams and Skype for Business, along with other old apps such as Sametime, are the bane of the modern office. I've been working from home for at least 17 years, and I really despise these apps because they frequently get in the way of work and collaboration rather than enhance them. And for people who opine that working in an office enhances collaboration, that only works if your coworkers are also in the same office. In a modern company where people may be located all over the globe, forcing people to come into an office just to then use Teams or Skype is silly, particularly when you can get distracted all the time in an actual office by just casual chatting with coworkers. (See: Office Space.) And on top of it, some companies use these tools to determine if you're slacking off or not, which will only get worse as the shelter-in-place directives spread over the globe.

*****The first time I got on a chat app for WoW, Soul asked me "what's up with your breathing?" And here I thought I sounded normal, until I realized that the microphone will pick up crap like my sinuses because it's a helluva lot closer to my schnoz than another person's ears.

The KISS Principle at Work

For someone who has tinkered with electronics and computers since the early 80s, I'm a bit of a low tech guy when it comes to blogging.

The Blogger suite is one that worked just fine a decade ago, but Google has pretty much abandoned it for no good reason (or at least one that I've heard), so the toolset is --to put it charitably-- lacking in modern conveniences.

You'd think that a company that owns both Blogger and YouTube would find a way to seamlessly integrate YouTube channels into a Blogger Widget so that you can see the latest entry in each channel, but that isn't the case. You don't even have much of an option to easily tinker with designs the way you can with Wordpress; if I'm going to study code at home, it's not going to be to customize my own blog but focus on enhancing my work skillset.

But I will say that Blogger is much more customizable than LiveJournal (or Dreamwidth, which is largely the successor to LJ), so it's not exactly the bottom of the barrel as blogging platforms go.

Regardless, the blog hasn't exactly changed much in terms of design since Cataclysm came out*, and every time I've tinkered with something --such as replacing the leading graphic with a GIF-- I discover that I have to pay in order to get the kind of GIF design I really want.**

Writing for PC is straightforward, too: I utilize the Blogger post page and just write when I can. I used to use Word and then transfer it over the old fashioned way (by cut and paste), but I'd found that Office was a huge resource hog on my laptop and just writing in Blogger itself was simpler. I have occasionally tried scheduling a post, but for some reason that never seems to work properly for me, so I decided that I'll post when I post. And yes, that means I'm really awake on those oddball middle-of-the-night posting times.

Why? Because that's when I get most of my writing done.

***

Like I mentioned on the 10 year blogoversary post for PC, I prefer to write at night when there's a lot of solitude. I'm a night owl, and doing things when the sun goes down appeals to me, whether it's gaming, writing, or tinkering with various other hobbies.*** A writer acquaintance of mine used to set a timer over his lunch hour at his work and try to see just how many words he could cram into a single session. And there are other writer friends who have chat sessions going through the day --the War Room, they call it-- and set up 5-10 minute challenges to see just how many words they can put onto (virtual) paper during those times.

So my writing approach is threefold: write what you want, when you want to, and edit/publish when you feel like it.

Not a bad gig overall, as long as you keep up with posting.

#Blapril2020





*Did the graphic give it away?

**The free ones simply don't cut it. There's a specific time limit, and the more images you select the less time those images spend on-screen. And, to be honest, the images would need editing and whatnot, and that inevitably means using Photoshop or one of its competitors/relatives to get what I want.

***I used to work on homework sets while I attended UD during the late evening and overnight hours. I got to know the overnight DJs of the Dayton area radio stations quite well, whether they were a national feed (Peter Van de Graaf for WDPR) or totally local (the DJs for WTUE, WAZU, and WOXY). I always meant to call WTUE up at 3 AM and ask for something obnoxious to keep me awake while doing homework, but when 3 AM hit I was far more interested in just finishing the damn stuff up so I could go to sleep.

Being a Short Order Cook Blogger

You know one thing I kind of dislike about this urge to post lots of things, Blapril or not?

The sheer volume of unfinished drafts sitting in the "post" section of Blogger.

Not counting any fiction I'm working on, there's at least 5 articles from the recent couple of months still in draft form that I intend to publish. It's just that I look at what I'm working on, whether it makes sense to finish it now, and deciding that I'd be better off leaving them unfinished for now.

It's not like there aren't unfinished drafts in the blog's Post section; over the years we've accumulated quite a few of them.* A lot of those I started, got partway through, and decided to either table it for another time (that never came) or that it wasn't working and decided to abandon it. But now, with too many things to say but being uncertain in which order to say them, I have a lot of mostly finished posts that just need to be put in some semblance of order.

***

When I started blogging, I didn't expect this would be a problem. I thought that you'd write something, post it, and maybe you get some commentary from it, and that'd be the extent of my involvement in PC. However, with the dawn of the modern influencer movement has come the expansion of brand promotion, data analytics, and all sorts of other "non-content related" activities with running a blog.

Which, on the face of it, seems silly for a blog that is largely about a gaming movement that is long past its heyday.

Even if you discard --like I do-- a lot of the analytics, brand promotion, and other traditional "influencer" activities, you still have content that needs to be presented in a coherent way. And that's where my dilemma is.

When I have one major idea at a time, it's not a difficult matter to write, edit, and post. But if I get a lot of ideas at once --hey, my brain does kick in every once in a while-- sorting them out takes a few days. Or a week. Or two weeks.

But I guess the entire point of this massive jumble is that it's a good thing to have so much to say, but making sense of it all requires an understanding of blogging meta-issues that, to be honest, are not why you got into blogging in the first place.

***

Perhaps a better analogy is comparing blogging to cooking.

Both can be fun activities, and there are times when both feel a lot like work. With both you can take the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach and just make something with whatever you've got on-hand at the moment, whether it be a specific topic (blogging) or whatever is in your pantry (cooking). However, once you get into planning things out, you can then anticipate with regularity when you'll need to focus on different things. For example, some people do the "Taco Tuesday" or "Wine Wednesday" where they make meals that fit into a theme. Converting that into a blog, you can have a "WoW Wednesday" or a "Miscellaneous Monday" where a regular topic means you have a ready made posting direction.

Sure, you can mix and match elements as much as you like to keep things fresh, and gaming news has a way of interfering with the best made plans out there, but sticking to a regular schedule helps a person plan things out and also allows for consistent feedback.**

***

But in the end, whatever works for you is worth it.

If I'm going to meet the Blapril scheduling demands, however, I need to be in more of a planning mode if I'm going to order my unfinished posts properly as well as meet the increased demands of many posts in a month.

(The same goes for cooking, given that we're in lockdown for the foreseeable future.)

Oh, and one more non-blogging tip: despite my skepticism, air fryers work. I didn't ask for one and I had no intention of buying one, but I was given one for the Holidays this past Winter. Once I realized that a so-called "air fryer" is actually a mini convection oven, that opens up all sorts of avenues for cooking that I didn't have before. But yes, you can make killer onion rings in them, too.

#Blapril2020



*I can officially say "we" because Soul has exactly one in there from eons ago. Still, it's a blank entry, so I guess it might not count.

**Sheesh, I sound like a big data miner.

Going in With Eyes Wide Open

I'm not exactly sure what I was thinking, but I signed up for Blapril.

It's not as if I don't have things to do, games to play, work to keep me busy, or family to keep an eye on, but I guess I just wanted to to it.

Well, and looking back on last month I was uncommonly busy, posting-wise.

Even if you take out everything affiliated with One Final Lesson I still posted seven times, which is high for me. I typically try to hit a once/week posting schedule, with a couple of extra posts thrown in every month, so I'll freely admit that March 2020 was definitely unusual from my blogging output.

Of course, March 2020 will be remembered for another particular reason that I need not expand upon here.

***

And now I have to come up with a boatload of topics on an almost daily basis. I realize you're not required to do that in Blapril, but come on. You know what you're getting into when you commit to something like that. And unlike my last several forays into NaNoWriMo, I'm going to try to make this stick.

Why should it be different this time, you might ask? Probably because I actually finished a story.

Sure, it was a "shouting into the void" moment, but once I started writing an "origin story" of sorts for Cardwyn, I simply couldn't stop even if I wanted to. And now that I finished an actual work of fiction, I've found I can't stop. It's like I've been transported back to 2008-9, when I first joined LiveJournal and began to connect with all sorts of aspiring writers. I burned through a lot of virtual ink during that time, writing something that could only be described in hindsight as Mary Sue meets Marty Stu with lots of angst in the way. But being able to step back and realize what was happening, writing wise, meant I could actually write something better the next time around.

And less cringe worthy.

At the same time, I dropped fiction in favor of, well, this blog. I found it sated my need to write while keeping me on a (semi) regular schedule.

To be honest, I even stopped reading or watching fiction, because I felt I couldn't devote the time to it that I felt it deserved. I was happy to see SF/F take a more prominent role in our fictional worlds --written, visual, and virtual-- but I couldn't see myself devoting time to books, movies, or comics because of my completionist tendencies. Well, that and the desire of a lot of content creators to inject a lot of "pathos" into stories just to make the stories feel more "adult". Like I've said many times before, I don't need that in my fiction because if I wanted that I'd just turn on the news.

But you know how to get the fiction you want? You write it yourself.

And you actually finish the damn thing. And post it as proof that you finished it.

***

And now I've come full circle, with an urge to write fiction and devote more time to writing non-fiction as well.

Which includes doing something stupid and signing up for Blapril.

Oh well, I guess you couldn't say that I don't know what I'm getting myself into.

#Blapril2020

Wordpress Doesn't Seem to Like Me

No, really.

I've commented on several Wordpress blogs lately, including The Last Chapter Gaming Blog, Kamalia et Alia and The Ancient Gaming Noob, but the comments never appeared.

My first thought was that I'd somehow screwed up and pushed a Cancel button or something instead of Post Comment, but I've since discovered that there is no Cancel button.

Okay, I thought. Maybe I ended up on a spam list somewhere.

The only issue with that is that I'd assume that if that were the case I couldn't post on Blogger hosted blogs as well, but I have no issues there.

So go figure.

It's not as if this sort of thing hasn't cropped up before. My wife managed to get our main PC infected several years ago, and even after I removed the infection our PC showed up on some block lists that our ISP subscribed to, so I had to wait until our PC vanished from those lists before we could connect to the internet once more.

I'm kind of hoping that's not the case, because removing infections can be a royal PITA.

Saturday Musings in a Brave New World

In these extraordinary times, when "shelter in place" and "pandemic" and "cancelled" have become active parts of our lexicon, I've been wondering about gaming. Obviously, if you're stuck inside the house one of the activities you can do --by yourself or with family-- is play games. If the mini-Reds were a lot younger, we'd be playing a ton of boardgames in our free time*, but nowadays they've been playing video games.

And yes, that includes MMOs.

The oldest mini-Red has noticed an uptick in gamers in LOTRO recently, and I've noticed more players online in WoW Classic as well, although the opening of Arathi Basin might have something to do with that.

As for ESO I can't tell, because I mainly craft these days.** and I've only been puttering around Belsavis and Hoth in SWTOR lately, which aren't typically your most populated zones.

But I've also been playing a lot of Civ IV games, and the second mini-Red has been playing a lot of Civ V.

What have you noticed? Has there been noticeable uptick in gaming?




*Relatively speaking. I work from home, and that hasn't changed. And my wife still works retail, and her job hasn't shut down yet as it's kind of important to distributing food and supplies.

**I've got it in my head that I'm going to do all of the expansions (both major and minor) in order, and that means saving up money to either subscribe or buy the mini-expacs outright, so I'm kind of in a holding pattern there.

You know the world has turned upside down when....

...I pull out an album I've not listened to since roughly 1990.

My wife asked me to fix her old Magnavox
stereo system, ~1987, so...

Some of the oldest mini-Red's university stuff is to the right; her university is going virtual for the rest of the semester, and I'm pretty sure that the second mini-Red's university will follow shortly.

EtA: Aaaand we just received word that his university is definitely going virtual. I guess it's time to hit the road again.

Happy Tenth!!

In the midst of everything going on, I forgot to mention that Kamalia of Kamalia et Alia has celebrated her tenth blogoversary on March 9th.

Kamalia's Gravitar.

I've enjoyed her fashion sense with her Sunday on the Promenade recurring series, having been able to create fashion outfits out of the tons and tons of WoW gear that you can use. Me, I'm just happy if I don't look like Burning Crusade clown gear, but maybe I should learn a thing or two about fashion sense (and I don't mean wearing white after Labor Day).

Over the years, Kamalia has seen her family grow with two new additions, and I can truly appreciate her efforts at keeping the blog running with two little ones around.

Happy Tenth, Kamalia!!

Two Inc To Lumber Mill

Yes, that means that Arathi Basin opened this week on WoW Classic, and Zul'Gurub and Nightmare Dragons next month.

A short refresher. And no, that's not
Cardwyn on the left. (From Wowhead Clasic.)

I guess that makes up for E3 being cancelled, among other major cancellations out there. eSports is but one venue being hit with the Covid-19 pandemic, but for gamers eSports and cons such as E3, PAX, BlizzCon, and GenCon are huge social events. Of course, gamer events are, comparatively speaking, small potatoes to some of the cancellations and/or modifications happening in other areas, such as the NBA suspending the rest of their basketball season, the NCAA Hockey and Basketball Tournaments to be played without spectators, and the Italian Serie A football season suspended.

Fast news week, if you ask me.

Shooting Robo-dinos with Arrows -- Coming Soon to a PC Near You

To get away from fiction for a while, news came out yesterday that the PS4 title, Horizon: Zero Dawn, is coming to PC.

From The Verge, who credit Guerilla Games.

Of all the PS4 exclusives, this is the one I was most interested in, and I know I'm not the only one. However, I'd kind of resigned myself to never seeing the game on PC because, well, Sony would like to keep their exclusives in-house and make you buy a PS4 instead.

I guess Sony must have run the numbers and decided there was more money to be made by releasing the game on PC rather than keeping it in-house. I'd like to think that's the case, as I can't possibly be the only PC gamer who simply doesn't have an XBoxOne or PS4 lying around.* Additionally, it certainly seems that consoles are driving the video games market, so PC ports can be more trouble than they're worth: with the XBox and PS architecture, you only have to design for far fewer sets of hardware than in the PC market. Additionally, PC gamers are used to much higher framerates and graphical detail than can be found in the console market. Nevermind that the number of PC gamers who have hardware that can achieve those lofty heights aren't that numerous, that the potential is there is the important part.

Officially, Sony is saying that they want to lure PC people into using the PS4, but I believe that everybody who wants and/or owns a PS4 already has a PC, so chasing after dollars from people like me --who don't have and don't want a PS4-- is kind of a head scratcher.

But hey, I'm happy to accept this lure by Sony. Sony had better not expect me to drop the full price for the game, however, as a) I don't have that sort of money just lying around, and b) I'm busy with other games first.




*I'm not including the Nintendo Switch here, as third parties aren't exactly flocking to putting their latest and greatest on the Switch. Their loss, in my opinion.

On Being Debriefed

Now that the story is fully posted, I can take a deep breath and relax.

Once I started in on the tale, I didn't expect to be flirting with a novella length story*, but that's what ended up. I know it's cliche to say it, but the characters themselves insisted on a manuscript this size, although I did chop off quite a few words during editing.** Cardwyn in particular shoved me out of the way and took over the keyboard, insisting that "this was how it happened".

I originally started this project writing in third person, but it just didn't feel right. I personally prefer third person, because you can get multiple viewpoints from scene to scene, but once I converted to first person the story flowed much better. There are events behind the story that Card was never going to know --at least at the time, anyway-- so I had to create a cheat sheet with a timeline to keep everything straight.

***

One thing I immediately decided upon, however, was to expand the size of Azeroth. As of now, in both Classic and Retail, Azeroth is just big enough to allow people to travel and keep things interesting going from point to point. In much the same vein that Turbine/Standing Stone took towards creating LOTRO, if Azeroth were as large as it really should be, there'd just be tons and tons of walking around with absolutely empty countryside. Think of it this way: in LOTRO, you can ride from Bree to Rivendell within a day of game time whereas in Tolkien's Middle-earth it would have taken close to a week's riding travel to get there.***

An ancillary point is that according to the map of Elwynn Forest, there's a grand total of four farms present in the zone, with one of them a vineyard and another a pumpkin patch. That's simply not enough farmland to feed all of Goldshire, let alone Stormwind. Walking (not jogging) from where Guard Thomas is stationed at the stream near the logging camp to Goldshire is something around 15-30 minutes of game time, which makes sense only from a plot/game perspective.

Based on all of this, I essentially blew up Elwynn Forest into a super-sized version --complete with many more farms-- which also means that Goldshire takes on more importance as a regional farming hub than the WoW Classic version would allow. Consider the difference between Troyes and Paris in Medieval France: while Paris was the center of the monarchy, Troyes was a major trading hub in the Medieval period, enough to command its own fairs and draw people from throughout the region. Troyes even has its own cathedral, which is a very big deal in Medieval Europe.

There were other items, however, that I did not tinker with.

I knew in general what Evelyn and the others could do, and also knew that the four veterans (Balthan, Daryn, Evelyn, and Mona) were considerably more experienced than the Defias they were facing. That also meant that in game terms they were significantly higher level than the Defias, so they should have been able to steamroll the Defias in a fair fight.**** The leaders of the Defias gang undoubtedly knew this, and even though they thought they were originally going to fight just Daryn and Mona, they decided to use as many dirty tricks for leverage as they could. But once the actual fight began, I had to keep in the back of my mind whether things that Evelyn in particular did were possible within the context of the game.*****

***

In addition to this being Cardwyn's story, I wanted to keep any involvement from the "main" WoW NPCs to a minimum.

If there's one thing that bugs me the most about the WoW stories that Blizz puts out, they always focus on the "big players" within Azeroth. What makes WoW --and especially WoW Classic-- tick is that it's us, the players, who have the direct involvement in the story. And WoW Classic in particular doesn't elevate us to the level of the power brokers in Azeroth, and it doesn't try to either. You might be part of the army --represented in game by 40 person raids-- that takes down Onyxia, but you're not Luke Skywalker or Aragorn. At best, you're somewhere around Fatty Bolger's level#, who had a part to play but was one of many.

But the WoW books spend so much time on the "big players" that they miss the point of what makes WoW interesting: us.

I was determined that Cardwyn's story would not involve the "big players" at all, because this is a story about, well, us. No nobles, no kings, no high priests, no faction leaders, just people. Even the NPCs aren't exactly high up in anybody's command structure, and although at least one mid-high level NPC is mentioned in the story, there's no guarantee that he'll play a part in any subsequent tale. Additionally, there's no guarantee that Balthan is as well connected as he thinks he is. After all, the guy drinks at taverns all over Azeroth, and I can't imagine a faction leader --or their immediate subordinates or even their subordinates-- doing just that.##

That doesn't mean that along the way Card won't run into some people who qualify as "big players", but the story won't be about them, but Card herself. And I'm happy with that, because while I can wander over to Stormwind Castle, I don't have quest markers over the big players in the throne room. At least at the same rate as you find in some of the later expacs, anyway.

But an astute reader will figure out who Card's older sister is, and yes, that was deliberate. I always thought there was a story there with her, and I decided to tie that NPC in with Card's story. In as much the same way as the Blue Recluse barker or Ol' Emma roaming Stormwind, these are the stories I really want told.

No more "big player only" stories in Azeroth, please.

***

There is one last item, and it is presently driving me nuts, but Cardwyn will simply. not. shut. up.

It was as if I'd opened the floodgates, as once I finished this story Card has been bugging me, showing me scenes for other stories and other people, and insisting that these stories be told as well.

That's great and all, but I don't think it's going to happen just yet. And besides, I don't want to turn this blog into a fan fiction blog. I am also aware of my own limitations. I'm not that great at description, and while I don't aspire to be a Robert Jordan with his walls of descriptive text it would be nice to figure out how to describe things a bit better than the spartan level I presently can attain.

And although I'm grateful that Ancient allowed me to use Kitwynn, I don't want to create the Kit and Az Show. I do admit that it could be hilarious in its own way, but I don't want to take creative control over Kit. She belongs to Ancient, and I really like it that way.

***

So there it is, my big debriefing about One Final Lesson, and I'm glad I wrote it. It's something so unlike the rest of PC's output that I understand that people may not be that interested in it, but the concept behind the story was something that had been bugging me for quite a while. While I'll freely admit that when I hear "fan fiction" I immediately have "Rule 34" pop in my head, I knew that if I was going to make this story work I wasn't going to come within 10 miles of anything like that type of fan fiction.

Thanks for being patient with me for putting the story out in several posts.




*According to SFWA guidelines for the Nebula awards, a novelette is 7500 - 17500 words, and a novella is 17500 - 40000 words. One Last Lesson clocks in at roughly 18975 words, give or take some 10 words as I'd made some last minute tweaks that I need to add back to the original Word doc.

**The original draft finished at over 20000 words. I guess I tend to be a bit wordy.

***I should point out that unless you've invented the Middle-earth Express, horses can't be expected to be pushed to their limits everyday without collapsing. The same thing goes for people walking from Bree to Rivendell; I can see 10 miles per day on a normal pace (and remember a "normal pace" also includes stopping time for food/rest/camp setup before dark), and maybe twice that on a forced march, but keeping a forced march up for weeks will not leave the army with enough energy at the end to fight in melee.

****And in the end it was.

*****Yes, it could be done, if she was a Frost Mage and blew all her CDs. The only item added for dramatic effect was the time it took for the frozen Defias Mage to thaw. Typically it takes much less time in-game than what it was in the story, but as Card said, she kind of overdid it.

#If there's one thing that drives me nuts about the LOTR movies, it's that a couple of smaller but memorable characters, such as Fatty Bolger, had to get cut. Don't get me wrong, I love the movies, and I'm not really complaining about Tom Bombadil either, but I felt Fatty got the short shrift based on how Peter Jackson put the four hobbits together as opposed to the books. It also made Pippin more of comic relief rather than simply naive.

##If you strip away their responsibility, I could see a few of them doing so --particularly Magni Bronzebeard-- but the thing is that they can't. Their situation does not allow them that luxury at all, and to be honest once they get far enough removed from the common people they lose all sorts of perspective. Think of Prince Hal in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2: he goes out drinking and has a grand old time, but once he becomes king he has to put those aside for the serious business of ruling. What he effectively tells Falstaff and his drinking buddies is "I don't know you" once he becomes king.

One Final Lesson -- Part 6/6

Previous Installments:

One Final Lesson -- Part 1
One Final Lesson -- Part 2
One Final Lesson -- Part 3
One Final Lesson -- Part 4
One Final Lesson -- Part 5

When I woke the next morning, I felt immeasurably better. Mom was up and moving, if slower than her usual self, but she told me she'll feel better the longer she follows her daily routines. Evelyn and the first Kaldorei cleaned up my blood in the hallway last night; when I asked the Kaldorei how she knew to do that, she said "You don't want to know."

After breakfast I sat down with Mom, Dad, and Mistress Evelyn.

"You're certain you want to go through with this?" Dad asked.

I nodded. "Yes."

"Very well. The three of us talked, and Evelyn believes you have the making of a good Mage. She also believes that you need more practice, and that reporting to Deputy Willem at Northshire Abbey would provide you with a good start. She also believes there is a Mage assigned to the detachment there at the Abbey, and that Mage can provide you with some basic instruction before you go to Stormwind."

"What about the message?"

"We agreed that you can deliver the message," Mom replied, "but only when the Northshire Mage determines it safe for you to reach Stormwind."

Where am I supposed to go, and what is SI:7 anyway?"

One Final Lesson -- Part 5/6

Previous installments:
One Final Lesson -- Part 1
One Final Lesson -- Part 2
One Final Lesson -- Part 3
One Final Lesson -- Part 4

Everything happened at once.

I cast the Frostbolt --well, not so much as cast but it escaped-- straight at the Defias Mage. No longer a puffball, it was densely packed iceball that shot straight ahead, leaving a long vapor trail behind it. 

The Mage jerked her arms upward as it smacked right into her chest.

A pair of shadows appeared right behind the two Defias holding Carys and Karyn, each plunging daggers into an arm and then the neck. I could see Carys and Karyn drop just as I heard the clang of daggers on cobblestone.

The Defias Mage hadn't moved. Bluish white ice spread from where my Frostbolt had hit her, encasing her in place.

As much as I wanted to jump up and down and cheer, I knew I only had moments. "Come on, Kit," I grunted as I burst out from the bushes. The throbbing in my head intensified as bile in my stomach lurched up toward my throat.

Evelyn raised her arms and the arcane burst forth in a blast of icy hell, freezing the Defias surrounding her. She then blinked out of view and I felt another burst of the arcane.

"Kill them all!" the lead Defias shouted just before he was bowled over by Dad. Balthan slammed into the Defias on the right and they collapsed on the ground.

"Get your weapons!" I heard Evelyn shout from somewhere to the left.

I reached the spot where Carys lay, still screaming. I flipped her over and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw there wasn't a nick on her at all. The Kaldorei was as good as her word. "Come on, Sprout," I said as I picked her up.

"CAR-WYN!!!" Carys shouted. "MAMA!! IT'S CAR-WYN!!"

I turned back to Karyn just as a Defias closed on her, dagger out. I tried to lunge for Karyn, but I was too slow; my head felt like it had split open, and while I managed to keep holding Carys I vomited all over the cobblestones.

A huge dark blur flew through the air and swatted the Defias away. The gigantic cat that nearly knocked me over in Stormwind let out a fierce roar and her jaws clamped down on Defias' neck. I heard a sickening crunch, and then another deafening roar from Kit.

My body was shaking uncontrollably as I wiped my mouth with my free hand. Something dark and red was dripping onto the ground next to me.

"Car-wyn, you're hurt!" Carys cried.

I nodded, unable to speak.

Karyn reached me and grabbed Carys, then offered an arm to me. I grabbed on and tugged in the general direction of the porch, and the three of us lurched over there like drunks leaning on each other for support. I collapsed on the top step and cradled my head in my hands.

"You're really hurt," Karyn whispered. "You're bleeding pretty badly." I heard cloth ripping, and then felt something pressed to my head.

"I'm supposed to be rescuing you, not the other way around," I croaked. I could hear sounds of fighting, punctuated with burst of arcane energy, but all I could do was moan a little.

"Oh Light," I heard Karyn whisper, terrified.

One Final Lesson -- Part 4/6

Previous Installments:
One Final Lesson -- Part 1
One Final Lesson -- Part 2
One Final Lesson -- Part 3

The wind whistled through the fields as I strolled, fishing rod in hand, to go down to the pond. Kira and Jas were out of sight ahead of us, but Linna was a step ahead of me, hopping along, as she was telling me she was going to catch a catfish as long as her arm. I grinned, as I knew she was lousy at fishing, but the day was young and we snuck out before Mom and Dad would notice. We reached the edge of the woods and I could hear Mom calling something, so I stopped and listened.

"Come on, Cardwyn!" Linna called out. "We're almost there!"

I heard Mom call again, and I waved Linna onward. If someone was going to get in trouble, let it be me first. What was she saying? 'Where's my makeup'? No, Mom never painted her face...

I concentrated harder.

Was it 'wake up'?  But I'm already awake.

Linna stomped her foot. "Cardwyn, let's go!"

"Wake up, Cardwyn, please wake up!" Mom's voice again. At first it was from across the fields, but now it sounded like she was next to me, closer than Linna.

The fields and the fishing pole and the impatiently waiting Linna all began to fade. I smelled iron.  

Wait. There was something here...

"Come on, Sweetie, please don't be dead!"

Dead? But I'm not.... Why would Mom think that? What was I doing? Was I in the fields? No, what was I...

THE DOOR. 

I threw the latch on the door and...

My eyes shot open.

One Final Lesson -- Part 3/6

Previous Installments:
One Final Lesson -- Part 1
One Final Lesson -- Part 2

Mistress Evelyn and Balthan wove through the crowded streets with such dexterity that I struggled to keep up, let alone follow their conversation. The dwarf's presence invigorated Mistress Evelyn, and she seemed younger than when she first arrived at our farm some hours ago.

"I don't know what happened to him," Mistress Evelyn was saying as we reached the bridge to the Mage District. "He used to always be out there in the field, working tirelessly to protect the weakest and most vulnerable."

"Give a man a little power and ye'll see what he's made of," Balthan replied. "Judging by his vestments he's not that high up in the Church hierarchy."

 "I just thought that he'd avoided the disease that afflicts the rest of the Stormwind nobility."

"There aren't that many that do, Evelyn. If those nobles aren't careful, someone's gonna chop 'em down to size. Look at Ironforge; there be just enough Dark Iron sympathizers out there to cause real trouble for the Bronzebeards, in spite o' all Thaurissan did. The Stormwind nobility is givin' some bad apples an excuse out there to rob the tavern, so to speak, and nobody has their watchful eye on the cask."

"Ah, Balthan, I've missed your way with words." Evelyn paused on the bridge to hug the dwarf, who looked embarrassed.

"I've missed ye, too, Evelyn. Where've ye been? I was hoping to see ye when I was last in Theramore."

"Retired. I was caught up in the Third War when I was visiting home and he came there, but aside from that I've taught quite a few of the children in eastern Elwynn and Lakeshire over the years. I wanted no more part in fighting caused by pride and stupidity."

The dwarf nodded. "Can't as say as I blame ye on that."

"So, I've been teaching all I can to try to rectify the 'stupidity' part. And also keep in touch with Daryn and Mona."

I felt there was an insult in there somewhere, but I wasn't exactly sure.

"How've they been?" Balthan asked.

"Really good, particularly given how things played out at the end. Daryn is still a bit bitter, but Mona has always been a hard read. This business might cause real problems for her."

"Speakin' o' stupidity," Balthan said, snapping his fingers, "I've been daft. I know someone who can help us out. She manages to get herself in all sorts o' trouble bein' in places she ain't supposed to, but she said she was gonna be here for another few weeks."

"Balthan, I've seen your so-called 'friends' before. How do I know she's reliable?"

"Reliable enough for me to trust her with running a message up to a friend in Southshore from Booty Bay. When I got here, I went to the Pig 'n Whistle, and sure enough the reply was waiting for me." Balthan turned back in the direction of the central part of Stormwind. "Lemme leave her a note and she'll catch up with us."

One Final Lesson -- Part 2/6

Previous installments:  

One Final Lesson -- Part 1

Traveling through the portal was one thing: first we were in our barn and then we stepped into a long room with stone walls and filled with bookshelves. But the sensation of moving was akin to a wave washing over me, stripping away all weariness and stress.

"Ah," Mistress Evelyn said. "That rush never gets old."

I felt around to be certain I still had my clothing, and just as I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn't naked I realized we weren't alone.

Men and women in various colored robes milled about the room, some reading, others talking in small groups, and some few surrounded by larger numbers of people. All seemed to ignore the fact that two disheveled women --one old, one young-- just popped into their midst.

Evelyn tugged at my sleeve once more. "Let's move," she said. "It's not polite to block the portal."

I took a step or two forward, glanced behind me, and nearly tripped over myself. A huge ring of metal with glowing runes carved in it, at least 10 feet high, stood behind me. Within the ring was a swirling mist of green, brown, and white, obscuring anything else. Standing beside the ring was a woman in robes and holding an ornate staff, watching.

"Welcome to Stormwind," she said in a carefully neutral tone. "Please clear the portal for other arrivals."

"Thank you," Evelyn replied, and yanked at my sleeve a bit harder this time. "Try not to look like you were living out in the Hinterlands," she whispered to me.

I gulped and nodded.

"Just follow me," she said a bit louder. "I know the way."

We walked toward the far end of the room, where another portal awaited. To my right, staring at a bookshelf, stood an impossibly tall woman wearing a blue, black, and gray robe with gold trim. My head barely came up to her chest, but what drew my attention were the long, vertical ears that poked out from above her golden hair and angular face. She glanced our way and did a double take. 

"Evelyn!" she cried, crossing the distance between us in two long steps and embraced Mistress Evelyn. "It's been years! How have you been?"

"Elsharin," Evelyn replied with a smile. "My bones complain a bit more, but the years since we last met have been too long."

"I would imagine," Elsharin replied. She spoke in an accent I'd never heard before. "I can see you're in a hurry, so I won't keep you." She then turned to me, her grin turning mischievous. "Is this your apprentice? I thought you'd retired."

"I did retire, but I do still teach non-arcane subject matter for the most part. Cardwyn here is the daughter of friends."

"I'm sure she is. Greetings to you, Cardwyn," she added, folding her hands together in a formal manner.

I mimicked her action. "Greetings to you, Elsharin."

Her smile grew even wider and nodded, as if I'd passed some test. "I'm certain we'll see you two around here again. Please do stop by when you're finished with your business here; we've a lot of catching up to do, and I'd love to get to know young Cardwyn better."