The Landroval brood is settling in. Raulito recently purchased 3 Brookbank Street in Tormo's Hop. Tanzan (Darkyn) has also moved into the neighborhood at 2 Pleasant Street. Hope to meet some of our neighbors, one day. Here, we immigrants from Firefoot are simply "The White Rose."
hello
Was intending a bit of LOTRO this evening
Likely have level 10 present for your littlest one. I’d like to say, “If she moves her virtual butt a bit to get there,” well, let’s say, “like, real soon.” It’s on the market stiffly priced now for just this evening — 4 hours — and then there’s a “window” in which I’d be happy to give it away to a good head because I’ve strewn my every characters’ every path with so many veins to probe for gold that I hardly know what to do with myself moment to moment.
But you know “my game” by now, no doubt. I play for maximum activity (24/7) achievable through maximum income commensurate with advancing every character, together, more or less jump by jump, in thoroughly decadent crafted, gifted, and any other form of marketable gear, weapons and accessories.
It’s what always leads me, all things being equal, to new games and new servers…..new puzzles. That’s the child in me. Loved puzzles. Loved models and modeling (add “l” in vain attempt at distance from hardly hidden clothes-horsing).
But I’m a bit older than that now. I’ve other in-world interests to explore. Things for which I’d stop. Or at least move differently.
No, just the shocking sight of an actual Hobbit actually taking a casual swim in the Baranduin (Brandywine) River. Just imagine! Why would she do that? And for pleasure. What’s wrong with that Margarita?
Indeed, few Hobbits had ever seen or sailed upon the Sea, and fewer still had ever returned to report it. Most Hobbits regarded even rivers and small boats with deep misgivings, and not many of them could swim. (”Prologue,” The Lord of the Rings)
Going on now. The band is on the stage.
The Announcement: Landroval: Hearts & Tarts Event
More later...
Beansidhe is my newly appointed Ambassadress to Landroval.
Can’t really afford much to play here, but ready to swell the numbers at interesting events.
Say hey if you see her.
Hello from Beannighe
When I fantasize about improvements to LOTRO, I imagine a more contemporary character creator/editor with far greater modeling control over one’s avatar’s face and body than was typical when LOTRO was launched.
Nevertheless, LOTRO’s avatars have an interesting range of expressive animation, more subtle than gross in movement, which makes it possible, with patience and persistence, to capture some surprising glimpses of unexpected personality peering back at you through the wireframe.
Going where the climate suits my clothes…
Beannighe was running through Middle Earth and suddenly the scene reminded me, brought memories of many a Northern California coastal hike, long, long … oh no! three and a half decades ago!
Someone else with blurry memories of back then.
Forget all that nonsense about Swords & Sorcery. The Lord of the Rings, with due deference to what actually fills most of its pages, is really the ultimate hiking and camping novel. With The Hobbit a close second in the same curious genre.
Going down the road feeling bad
Going down the road feeling bad
Going down the road feeling bad, hey hey hey, yeah
Don’t wanna be treated this a way
Belitil stops to survey the skies from Weathertop.
This morning it was raining outside my window, later raining in Michel Delving, and right now it looks like more rain from atop Weathertop.
Nice view though. Nice to pause and breathe that cold, crisp rainy weather air. Too soon, time to ride down into more of the mud and the blood and the killing that just seem to go on and on forever.
Captain Chaitra in her Temper-Crafted Elven Armor.
I’ve always been a great believer in spoiling my avatars, fighting in the lap of luxury every step of the way, even if it means leveling slowly, and working the crafts and auction halls to raise that all-necessary gold.
Whose are those hoof beats in the night? The steeds of strangers out upon the road. Elves! Elves! The Elven folk are moving. Everywhere, across the world. Shutter the windows, close the door. Huddle close to wonder. What strange times we’ll see! As these beats come their preamble.
A recent on-site review has confirmed the danger.
Thorin Hall Advisory #D45F00
The growing consensus among workers and builders and experts of every sort, excepting Dwarven, of course, as expressed to most every Elven Council that has heard evidence on this matter, has it that Thorin Hall is not likely to prove structurally sound under, really, pretty much any major earthquake model.
Riding back into these parts after a week or so dabbling in other incarnations, in other worlds, which foul places shall remain nameless.
But I am, proud to say, starting to get this down, after so many years. If I just go for the betas, even the ones that wrangle a few bucks out of you, I get to play with the character generators. And I can pretty much skip most games from there.
Going to be bringing up the mid-twenties of my brood of alts for a change. I was starting to feel a bit sorry for them, no attention for so long. The rider is my cook, Belitil.
Tzuzeku wearing her Hobbit Kindred, Mathom Long-Sleeved Tunic.
Carrying their blasted pies, running their ever-late mail, forwarding - with enthusiasm! - their interminable, infernal bickering and busybodying, these all serve the cause. But the surest, easiest, fastest route to worm one’s way into the warm but petty hearts of Hobbit-kind is to do yeoman’s work farming and cooking to stoke their bellies. Do that enough, and they’ll raise themselves up, overlook the fact that you are a good deal taller, and treat you almost like one of their own.
Perfectly natural for Dwarfs. Acceptable if one’s a Hobbit. As for Men, it’s well established that men have no taste, no discretion, no concern for anything other than immediate survival and the passing pleasures that make theirs the most rapidly reproducing race of Middle Earth. No sense even asking about Men.
But no self-respecting Elf should ever allow herself to be caught riding a goat!
Boudika as graphic novel heroine.
Swimming around Lake Evendim and racing just about everywhere else, trying to get the 4th of my 30ish elves to 35 and both their Yule mounts before the festival ends.
Psst… Don’t tell Freney, here in the Bree Auction Hall, but the reason for his underlying edginess, that uncertain queasiness he sometimes feels, is that as one of only two male avatars I’ve ever created in any MMORPG, his little virtual claim on life hangs by a thread.
Sometimes, when one steps really hard on an image, something unexpected suddenly looks back, and one has to just pause and take it in. What is it? Who is it? An expression, a mood. Someone one knew, someone one dreamed. Or some precipitous glimpse of self, hovering, all the while uncertainly there.
Both the reading child and diehard post-structuralist in me delight in finding and losing ourselves in the images and animations of imaginary readings of imaginary texts strewn throughout the virtual world of Lord of the Rings. Hardly surprising, as for us, at least, this is an avatar experience, unlike others, born in and reanimating the reading of a very particular set of books.
Can a book be virtual and still be a book? Is the illumination of reading ever as magically bright from the glow of a device? Ever as capable of becoming and enveloping the real if not sparked alone by the physical intimacy of hands and eyes, the body and the page? Can one genuinely cuddle with a Kindle? My avatar has a hard time imagining it.
Naturally, the problem with posed action shots, assuming one is capturing them oneself, is that they are best taken while shooting small and helpless prey, which, lest they detract from the general illusion of prowess and courage one wishes to convey, are best cropped out of the scene entirely.
Otherwise, the virtual photographer-poseur is liable to suffer the indignity of being eaten more than once in the course of a session.
To my thinking, the most enjoyable aspects of Lord of the Rings Online open up once one lets loose the idea of the optimal, the ideal, the best one can and supposedly ought to do. Especially with multiple avatars — and I have nine on Firefoot — virtual life becomes a pleasurable haze of repeated discovery, even after years of playing.
Here, Beiltil, my brood’s Cooking Guild member, finally gets serious about stocking up the treats every last one of my adventurers ought to have had long ago.
