CLD - Reign of the fellnight queen - Entry two

Dear Gilra,

The magic users are once again preparing their spells, so I have some time to write about what happened after the wedding.

Like I mentioned before, the locals had directed us into the forests to the west, where a reclusive druid might help us find some more answers to this all encompassing fog and the Tenzekil who seems to have caused it. So off we went, into the forest to the west, hoping that the druid would show themselves to us.

By nightfall however, we were still walking without success, and as we were deciding where to stop for the night a distressed dryad appeared, she quickly introduced herself as Breena and urged us to rush to her sisters aid, as she had just been captured by some sinister spriggans.

As we snuck closer to where Breena directed us, we saw four spriggan around a big fire, with Breena's sister Fira and an unicorn lying tied up nearby. As one of the spriggans threw the dryad into the fire, we knew we had no time to loose and we all rushed in. At first Gnomy and Worf focused on getting the dryad out of the fire while the rest of us tried to take down the four spriggan's, however before the dryad could be rescued out of the fire, the unicorn was thrown in too, and it became an all out grapple and slice fest. In the end we did defeat the spriggan and get the dryad and unicorn to safety before they were to heavily singed, so I'm calling it a great success.

As an extra bonus, the dryad Fira and unicorn Palombier told us where the druid Devarre lived, how his home and the surrounding area was hidden by a glimmer and how to counter it's effect.

So by the next morning we headed for the druid's home, which appeared to be on a small hill. Unsure how Devarre would react to us we sneaked on the approach, discovering some strange boulders with magical looking symbols on them before finally finding a eerily quiet home. Once we entered that we found a confused looking Devarre, who didn't seem all too pleased that we had come to visit. Since he was acting verry strange for a druid, we thought something was wrong and we decided to overpower him.

So as some of us were inside the house trying to grapple and pin down the druid, some of us were outside looking for possible causes to the druid's strange behavior while Manon managed to fall into a pit trap where a wolf's corpse was already rotting, only adding to our distrust of Devarre's behaviour. Eventually we did manage to immobilize Devarre and as we did, some strange, small creature seemed to seperate from him and fly outside and out of sight before any of us could react.

Devarre, who suddenly looked allot calmer and exhausted, explained that he had been possessed some time ago, and that whatever possessed him had forced him to kill his own companion and do other unspeakable deeds. As he was telling this, we could see him become more and more distraught, as the memories of what he had done returned in full force, so we were not surprised when he told us to ask our questions and then leave him, so he could meditate and pray about what he had done and how to redeem himself.

So we explained about our mission and in return he told us about the Deadman's drop waterfall nearby, from where he thought the magical mist originated.

Off we went again, towards the Deadman's drop, but that tale will be for later, as my companions have once again finished their meditation, and more adventure awaits.

Until soon,

Maruk

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tl;dr: Set out west from wedding to find reclusive druid, encounter dryad Breena who tells of her sister dryad Fira and unicorn Palombier being sacrificed against their will, saving them gives us info on druid Devarre's location. On finding Devarre he seems possessed, after freeing him from possession, he tells us the fog emanates from Deadman's drop waterfall north from there.

CLD - Reign of the fellnight queen - Entry one

Dear Gilra,

A close encounter with death can change how one sees the world, a few hours ago I had another close call, and I decided to start writing down my adventures, so that they can still be heard if I were no longer around to tell them.

Our latest trouble started a few days ago, we had been invited to the wedding of Kailah & Elyin in Bellis, and after the cellars and crypts we had just been crawling through, our party agreed that some rest and relaxation was in order.

By the time we arrived in Bellis, our mood had already lifted, Kupo for example couldn't resist playfully tossing some fishing youth into the water while the rest of us played some throwing games with the locals. It didn't take long however or trouble caught up with us, first Kupo ran into the father of the fishing boy, who had a different idea about the funniness of his soaking wet son, luckily we could convince him to take a lighter view on it before it came to fighting.

The customary wedding auction however, had a quite more serious outcome. You see, around here it is apparently a custom for the local girls to auction of a pie combined with a date at every wedding, it gives some extra gold to the wedding couple and offers the local boys a chance to have a date with their love interest. This time however, Drako and Gnomy decided to join in on the fun, and with their spoils from previous adventures they easily outbid the locals, in particular a now angry gnome called Tenzekil, who quickly stormed off into the woods. In the end Drako won the main auction and secluded himself with his pie and gnome girl in the decorative maze, just as the wedding got underway.

Shortly into the wedding, a low, ominous buzz interrupted the priest, and two wasp swarms appeared from behind the gazebo where the couple and the priest were standing. My daggers were useless, just as all our other weapons, as for every wasp we hit, there were thousand others still flying. The magically inclined ones among us had a similar problem with their spells, as only a few were effective, so it didn't take long before some of us were guiding the locals in a retreat, while the rest tried whatever they could think of to delay or destroy the swarms.

Luckily Drako's love for fireballs managed to show us a solution, and I noticed that I could probably make some half decent molotov cocktails from the oil flasks I was carrying. So together we eventually managed to get the locals to safety and destroy the wasp swarms.

Unfortunately, that wasn't all that our mysterious opponent had in store for us, as now a thorn wall appeared all around us and Tenzekil's bellowing voice started gloating at us, meanwhile two large, twisted and gnome looking creatures with fierce looking barbed arms appeared, who turned out to be the fabled spiggans. Luckily we could hit these, so our victory was swift.

Once more Tenzekil's voice rang out, this time cursing us for defeating his minions, and while the thorn wall disappeared, an all encompassing mist engulfed us all.

Slowly then, as the direct danger seemed to have gone away, the locals returned. From them we learned that Tenzekil used to be a beekeeper who got to close to sinister forces, and that somewhere in the forest to the west a reclusive druid wandered, who might be able to help us in getting rid of this fog and the threat to Bellis.

This is only the beginning of our story, but as our magical users have finished preparing their spells for the coming day, I fear further writing will have to wait.

Until soon,

Maruk

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tl;dr: Invited to wedding, pissed of local gnome called Tenzekil, Wasp swarm crashed the wedding, followed by fellnight spriggans and Tenzekil gloating/cursing us as a fog engulfed us.

Cronicles of the Ludus Dufla - In the beginning

Some time ago, I joined a group of friends and started playing Pathfinder, a tabletop rpg sometimes nicknamed D&D 3.75.

During the first session I considered keeping a journal of our adventure, but in the end little came of it until last weekend. I had long stopped keeping notes and apparently neither had any of the other players, so when we got instructions from one of the npc's on how to sneak into the Big Bad's castle undetected, we had some trouble remembering what exactly we where supposed to do once we got there. This time we could luckily convince the GM to fill us in again, but apparently the moment lingered in his mind.

A few days later while messaging about something unrelated, he brought up my early journal attempt, wondering if I still did something with it, and we got talking about it. In the end I decided to try another attempt at chronicling our adventures, and this time it seems to be going pretty well.

Our party is called the Ludus Dufla and Maruk is a low level halfling rogue, who after another close encounter with death decided to start writing down his adventures in a diary, in case he stopps being around to tell them himself. Those entries will be what you read in some of the posts to come.

Oh, and for some strange reason he calls his diary Gilra :)

Barefoot myths

A thread on the barefooters.org mailing list sparked this post, in it people kept mentioning 'the barefoot myths' without actually telling what those myths where, even after several people asked them to explain themselves. In an effort to hopefully answer what those myths could be according to me, I replied, but as I was typing, I realized that allot of these myths are know by name to barefooters, but might use a bit more explanation to non-barefooters, so here's another post about it, joining the dozens of barefoot sites in spreading the information.

It started with the barefoot myths, which to me means myths like the one where people are convinced driving barefoot is illegal (it's legal in about every country I've checked, which includes most western European country's and the USA), or the myth that there's a health regulation banning barefoot customers from entering stores (mainly a myth in the US, there is no such health regulation).

The typical stuff where people are convinced there's some kind of law against barefooting, just because they never thought about checking what they where told while they where growing up.
While the mailing list I was posting this on was USA centric, I'm sad to say that at least the barefoot driving myth also lives in Belgium where I live.

Then there's the stuff that isn't really a myth, more of a bad understanding, like the glass and dirt on the street and tenderfoot arguments.
When I started barefooting more often, it would often happen that I visited my dad and as we walked into his backyard, he would give a warning that I would be walking into one of his dog's droppings, or onto some bugs, or onto a piece of glass. A warning that other people too, would often give me.
And every time again, my first thought was 'I haven't walked into dog droppings or glass for years, while my feet where blind inside their shoes, why would I start now when I can feel bad things on the ground even before I put my weight down?'.

There's several important parts to that bad understanding I think, the first part is that barefooters tend to know where they are putting their feet allot better than other people, simply because they've learned that they can't just smack down their feet and hope it wasn't on a pointy stone.

A barefooter learns to scan the ground for their feet before they put them down, and to feel the ground before they puts their weight on their foot, something that (just like driving) might take some practice at first, but quickly becomes an automation.
A non-barefooted person however is taught to rely on their shoes, as they are supposed to protect their feet and dampen sensations. There's another myth in there, but getting into that would double this post's length. The non-barefooter however soon learns that they can stamp down their feet wherever they want without much trouble, so they soon stop bothering with keeping an eye on the ground and before you know it they've stepped on something nasty.
I also know there's an interesting medical article related to foot puncture injury (which I can't find just now :( I'll keep looking though) that researched the amount of children that came into hospitals with puncture wounds on their feet (from stepping onto nails etc.). It found that while there where both barefooted and non-barefoot children brought in, the barefoot ones generally had lighter injuries, with only slight punctures that quickly healed, compared to the non-barefoot children who generally had more severe injuries that damaged muscles and even bones, probably because they didn't realize they had stepped on a nail until it was already deep inside their foot.

The second part to understand is that the streets aren't littered with glass, poop, rusty nails and nasty insects, most people just don't tend to notice. What they do notice is the one time in years when they do step into something nasty while walking along oblivious to the ground, but those few instances disrupt the monotony, so they get remembered due too selection bias.

A third part to understand is that a barefooters feet are also tougher than you'd think.
While those journalists who step out of their shoes and immediately start running across pointy asphalt for their 'barefoot experience' article might think otherwise, you can't just loose your shoes and stand on nails, just like about everything else, it takes some time.
If you start walking barefoot regularly (a few hours a day is a good start), then it won't take long before your feet notice, they'll think 'hey, I'm no longer inside a hot, sweaty and overprotective coffin anymore, I better get a little tougher!' and before you know it, your soles start changing.
First they will get a little harder, while you'll feel less of every pebble you walk on. After a while however, they get softer again, turning into a tough leathery skin that while it can resist most punctures, is still quite flexible. That flexibility is even part of it's defense against puncture and as an extra gift, your feet will be even cleaner looking than you thought, as the skin becomes less sweaty and the dust has a harder time sticking to it.
And after a while of regular barefooting, you can run across pointy asphalt and even broken glass isn't that much of a worry anymore, tweezers will get out the few shards that do get in or you can just wait for them to grow out, your feet have learned to defend themselves again.

Now with extra twitter

I finally gave in and made a twitter account.
I previously hesitated because it looked like another information overload tool, it always seemed like something people would use to send way to much updates (I'm in the mall now -> I found some nice shoes -> thinking of buying shoes -> didn't buy shoes after all, color didn't match -> drinking a coffee in the mall, people watching -> found a purse -> etc. :p )

But still, don't judge before you tried it (or at least investigated it) so when I recently found something for which twitter could be useful, I decided to give it a try (after being on the fence for half a week...), so you can follow me from http://twitter.com/gemakie.
At the least I'll be posting where I'm paragliding the next time I'm going out, as that's my reason for starting the feed in the first place.

Barefoot status quo

Currently I tend to walk around barefoot most of the time, only putting on shoes when going to work or when they are needed for safety.
The safety part probably won’t change, it’s mainly for ankle protection while paragliding (hard landings) and it’s part of the insurance rules, with good reason (similar to how wrist guards while skating are a good idea)
For the work part… I’m a consultant and at the moment I’m not yet up to the task of explaining my reasons to 1) my boss & 2) the customer I’m currently working with (which can change allot) & 3) the customers of the customers I’m working with (who often come past whatever table I’m working at). So for now, I’m considering shoes at work a necessary evil while I’m representing my company, similar to how the people in suits probably see their ties :p

Now my next goal would be to combine my jogging ‘thing to do’ with this one resulting in barefoot jogging, I’m guessing the jogging will hurt allot more than the barefoot running, even if it’s mostly on asphalt :D

As for reactions I got, most where neutral or good, surprised at seeing someone without shoes and/or asking about the reason behind it.
There where only a few negative ones though, and nothing too severe.

See more progress on: go barefoot more

43things.com

While searching for 'Stop eating sugar', I came upon a site called 43things.com.
It seems to be aimed at helping you achieve goals in live, something that I'm trying to do right now, so I'm gone give it a try.
I've also connected 43things to this blog, so hopefully there will be a bit more life in here again (just as the dust was settling again...)

And if your wondering why I was searching for 'Stop eating sugar', I'm suspecting my high sugar intake might have something to do with my general lack of energy. It came up at work kind of sideways when talking about the weight watchers diet and how eating sugar takes lots of energy to burn... considering I'm sitting in an office with three other guys, once does wonder if the metrosexual has firmly taken over :p