Zadown

2,6,5 then .. of course.

Happy birthday old man!

Zadown (hebrew) zaw-done' http://bible.crosswalk.com/cgi-bin/lexicon.pl?id=2087h Definition pride, insolence, presumptuousness, arrogance

Hmm? I think those are old sayings, not cliche's - cliche's are things like the hero in a movie always getting the girl and saving the world and surviving. And while cliche's are universal in these times of Hollywood mass entertainment reaching every place in the civilization, the sayings vary from one culture to another. None of those three examples is very familiar to me, for example. Of course, old folk sayings are slowly fading so perhaps in a generation or two there is only one set of them with their roots in USA. *shrug* But well, "hätäkös tässä valmiissa maailmassa" as we say here in Finland.

Red defeated looking clouds sailed over Pízlywk, low and brooding. Ambient light from the sky struck through them and turned into blood-smeared lances. These spotlights illuminated the constant mist of rust hanging over the iron ground, they sweeped past the ruins of the skyscrapers, raced over the graveyard of the tanks, hit a few rare reflecting surfaces to create bright crimson stars and, lastly, showed motion down there on the ground, here and there. One of those moving specks paused and turned his gaze up, cocked his head as if listening to something. Distant thunder of artillery fire. Hollow whistling of explosive rounds cutting through air, far enough. Faint sounds of small arms fire, single shots getting drowed by the occassional machine gun or assault rifle on burst fire. All usual, all as it should be and had been for ever .. but there was something odd, some sound his ears had registered that was out of the ordinary. Jacob Vladonov turned to look towards the battle, saw some far-away explosions but paid no attention to such mundane sight and turned to continue his walk. And then he heard the doomsday whistle, the sound of destiny roaring towards him from the sky - the sound old men talked about in bars, the sound they said that would mean at the very best loss of a limb, a trip to death's edge. He turned his gaze skyward again, too slowly, but still he thought he could see it, a metallic glint hanging suspended in the air for a frozen moment before it dived down. Ground heaved, rose up to hit him with a hammer blow. He reached towards his backpack, hand moving an inch - a reflex, too slow, all he had time to think. Then ... the trembling hand moved another inch, another breath taken and second lived, and in a complete daze he drew forth his pack of cards, looked around half-sitting on the rusty ground. World was still in one piece. Everything was as it had been five seconds before: the forlorn clouds sailing on the sky, eternal war going on in the zone, errant shafts of light running around the desolate town. Except there was a dud artillery round embedded in the ground a few meters behind him. "That was too close, it really was", muttered him and held tightly to his deck of cards. With a carefree gesture that seemed to ill fit this grey-clad man, he drew a card and threw it away for the wind to carry away. Wind took this mission seriously lifting the card up and away, far higher than the light breeze there was should've been able to, towards the red clouds sailing high above the ground. It twisted and turned, and just before it vanished in the clouds, the girl brandishing two swords in the picture seemed to grin under her blindfold - behind her artillery shells started to fall from blue sky, covering the horizont of the card with deluge of explosions.

I use keyboard so exclusively I can hardly write any more. Evolution or degeneration, dunno .. at least I can type really fast, usually so that it's my brain that lags, not fingers (has partly to do with the fact I have to often type things in EQ in the time it takes to cast a complete heal, i.e. 10 seconds, and usually under stress too).

Me? I'm kinda drifting .. and perfecting my zero-income lifestyle (8 months and counting!). I guess things could be worse, but they could be better too. *goes back to sieving plankton from the air with his teeth for food*

O_O Hiya Madoka! Nice to see ye here, how's life treating ya? *produces a bottle of saki and a few glasses* Ah, but can't let ye tell such long tales with dry mouth...

Click goes the door and blocks my way: sturdy piece of reinforced wood, crafted with care, worn with time, radiating faintly the heat stored into it's dark surface by the sun earlier today. I breathe deeply in and feel everything, sense everything. Brighter grains of sand glittering in the sun - delicate wind touching my face - a flowery scent flowing from the direction of the baths - silk robes around me as a second skin. World expans and time stumbles, falls to a halt. In that frozen moment I can see the runes of my art glowing white in the cerulean sky above through the canopy above me. Glyphs of creation, the words the gods themself used, so potent one does not have to even say them aloud for them to impose their will upon reality - they are formed, linked, bent by my will. I point at the door. Time speeds up again, towards an explosion. ooc: So it wasn't 40ish words, so sue me...

Professional writing. :woot:

Easiest way to get an answer to a question like that (WHO or WHAT is Cowboy Bebop?) is to go to www.google.com and to do a search on topic.

"28 days later"! Of course, 99% of the people here are never going to see it because it is an european film ... so I'm not sure if I can gather my energy to rant about the virtues of this excellent movie. It was a modern zombie movie, with tribute to the ones that started it all (Night of the Living Dead -series), but it did not slavishly copy them. Beautiful, eerie, frightening, intense, hopeful and hopeless - having a set of main characters that were sympathetic make you really feel the emotions, knowning it is not a yet-another-Hollywood-film makes you know anything could (and does) happen. Heck, it'd be worth it to only see the start of the movie where you can see empty London...

I shudder suddenly, violently, strained to my limits. The weight of all the stone above me crushes my spirit, distracts me as I try to navigate the slippery slope (caustic blood eating away the soles of my beautiful elven boots - reason enough to cringe!). Underground darkness, stark and unyielding without stars to guide me. We elves weren't meant to hunt here!

Thank you, Rune. Oh, and feel free to add yer own 40ish word pictures on this thread - just checked the original one and some of the replies I got then were beautiful. Using so few words gives them a kind of sharper focus, makes ye taste, touch, smell and see every one of 'em better...

I drift to wakefulness in the dark, dreams escaping from between my fingers as too fine sand. Visions seemingly profound, critical, now all gone. Mental shrug as always and they are forgotten, light grasping my attention, pulling me to a window. The few trees on a nearby hill all black, dawn blazing behind them. Gravel crunches under my ancient shoes (they'd deserve retirement), a new sound every spring, half-forgotten. Sun dominates the sky again and actually warms me through my clothes. Full set of denim, all black to soak the warmth will suffice soon again. I smile and lengthen my step. Sun almost set, somewhere behind all the trees - I can feel it. World is drenched in shades of blue, a color you'll never see in the warmer lands, south. The forest breathes in and out all around me, ready for my magic. I tug my skinning knife free from it's sheath. Sixty tons of metal shift under me, take a ponderous step. Distant heat of the fusion generator, pleasant smell of oil ... and the sense of power, never fading. Sensors do my work for me as I guide the rusty giant through the dark - dusk both for the day and mankind.

I don't touch paper and pen if I can avoid it. They are good for making fast short notes, but I've always written my stories with computer. Faster, more convinient, and I can actually read what I've written.

Usually all good books have main characters that mirror at least some minor parts of me and thus get my empathy that way, but very few share my detached self-absorbtion and live-and-let-live attitude. The main character in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil", John Kelso is one that comes to my mind, but I haven't read the book, only seen the movie. Many Iain (M) Banks's books have main characters are pretty close to me... and most likely countless other books I can't just now recall. Oh, and Moorcock's Eternal Champions are somewhat close to the Dreamer - powerful but not happy, doomed to unpleasant fates in a world they are more or less detached from, play pieces of greater powers... As for the exact opposite, I once had this book with religious fanatic as the main character and I read through the whole book hoping that he'd be torn to bits or something equally nice, but since it was my only book at work and the other option would've been to listen to radio for the 8 hours I grit my teeth and concentrated on the landscape descriptions etc of the book. *shivers* Can't stand fanatics. <_<

Thank you, all ... birthday over now here, phew. Hate these milestones. *wanders off to find his false teeth*

The Dreamer is unique in his blatant power - the few who can oppose him without help are higher celestial, planar or abyssal beings. He used to be one of the rare unaligned ones walking the Void between and the Paths beyond, now he is corrupted by chaos but still not quite chained by it. I find it very difficult to write about him any more, I lack the spark of chaos in myself to do that. *sigh*

Thanks for the comments again everybody, it's feedback like this which makes me log off EQ and write even when I don't have the absolute need to do so. The end line is from 2001, yup .. and slightly cheesy, in a pratchetty sort of way. I really really liked the line. *shrug* The idea for the storm is from Greg Bear's Psychlone book and the rest of the stuff is just digested and regurgited assorted scifi stuff. It all just serves the Vision though - iron tower standing alone in the sea of sun-baked sand, storm of wind and stone and psychic powers rising in the horizont, and a lone watchman sweating in a protective suit, praying to the gods of ancient and twice-repaired science that his suit holds through...

[Wed Feb 12 16:34:55 2003] Starlighten tells the group, 'eat lure' [Wed Feb 12 16:35:02 2003] Venril Sathir succumbs to the lure of Ro. [Wed Feb 12 16:35:07 2003] Starlighten has been slain by Venril Sathir! Dunno, prolly not too funny to the non-EQ crowd...

http://spitfire.ausys.se/johan/names/default.htm Dunno, thought it might be useful to people.

The wind was whispering already. The scout should've been back, days ago. They tried to contact him, before the talented ones were put away behind the shields, under the green liquids and bluish steel machines. Just murmurings of the approaching storm, they said. Just cackling insanity. So they had a man up there in the tower, above land, out and exposed to the sands. Wind was rising, and so were voices rised in argument and anger: the scout is dead and the bird lost, finish the watch and seal the fort. There is a storm coming. A big one, with searing sand and burning heat and voices in the wind - a storm like they had not seen since the Fortification. Old pioneers, some of them old enough to be second generation, faces worn away by sand, eyes blind, nodded sagely smiling the toothless smile of tragedy and ruin. But the commander, a young man of the fourth generation, held firm. "We will wait for the scout. As he does his best for our benefit, so will we do our best for his. Not before the watch runs shrieking down, beset by visions or suit punctured by sharp rocks shall we end our vigil." And there he was, the watchman - up high in the tower of rotting iron, fierce sunlight reflecting from the twin goggles of his suit, the steady soft roar of cooling devices fighting with the slithering sound of sand on sand below on the surface. The horizont darkened, faded and vanished. He stirred, nervous - the suit was a familiar comforting weight upon him, a thick leathery protective shield but still his heart missed a beat, then made up the miss by racing forward. Nobody had survived a storm outside in ages. Sun blazed, trying to burn the beaten and battered metal, then darkened and turned red, flared with a rusty halo made of the fine sand raiding the winds. Horizont rose up making distant mountains appear on the plain, mountains turning into black talons reaching towards the outpost. And finally he could hear it, listen to the true voices of the storm. It shouted and raged inside his head, trying to tell him how it was on the other side, how much agony and pain they were in. Still too far to make out the words. Still too far, thank gods ... if any had chosen remain on this desolate corpse of a world. Then he saw it, the bird. It hang in the air, sand almost on its heels, torn and battered but remaining afloat by some miracle. Voices were louder now and rising in numbers, far-away faces forming in the dark hand that reached towards the outpost. Sand added its keening moan to the cacophony, to the true hell this damned place on this damned world was turning into. World was dwindling from great open desert to his own personal one-man nightmare. And still the bird hang in the air, kept afloat partly by the very same storm that was trying to rip it apart. It tilted and swayed, lost a piece of its left wing but kept on coming, guided by old memories or lucky gusts of wind, straight towards the target. And so the bird crashed on its perch, ripped open, spilled out its guts. The scout was saved, even with the ghosts in the storm shouting in the watchman's head, no matter how the sand tore at the suits, despite the darkness. As he was carried in and the massive metal airlocks were shut behind him, they got his helmet off. On his sun-burned and sand-scratched face was imprinted the pale horror of death upon death. Last sane thing he managed to say, dripping blood on the concrete floors, trying to wave his spasming limbs to different directions, was: "oh .. my .. god .. it's .. full ... of .. souls"

The person above me thinks that life is an orange, likes Beastie Boys and uses more "..."s than even me...

Tap, tap, tap. Numilye stilled her hand and returned to the now and here from where her mind had been. She grabbed the balustrade with gauntleted hands and looked down at the dark swirling waters that surrounded the Temple of Innoruuk, Father of Hate. The sight was familiar but always as relaxing - tiny waves, magical neon lights of the temple reflecting themselves on the rippling surface. This was her home, no matter how seldom she visited it these days. The feeling of belonging was reinforced by small things - corrupted smell of decay wafting from the direction of necromancer's guild, the very faint but always present smell of blood, acrid aroma of the temple incense. Beyond the moat a lone guard wearing the red and silver of Neriak patrolled, his boots making a crunching noise on the bare stone. Weak guards, hardly fit to guard this place. Mere soldiers, not heroes. Numilye's white teeth shone when she grinned - a wicked, hateful visage as was appropriate for a high priestess of Hate. The world was beneath her. She had plundered the secrets of the Triumvirate of Water, faced the condemned drake-kind in the Temple of Veeshan and fought her way to the planes of gods. The few lights of the underground city played on her sea-green platearmor, a gift of the dragons of Skyshrine. The lesser races trembled when she walked past, afraid she'd unleash the hate of her Father upon them ... and it was all true. But going through her accomplishments here, at the center of her power, was like reciting a false chant. Why do I feel this unease rising? As if there were some unseen enemy I can not crush, something that can penetrate the defenses of my city ... She felt a sudden unexpected vertigo. Yes, she was high up near the top of the temple but it was a familiar spot .. and not that high. This was a vertigo of a different sort, a feeling she was at the brink of some inner chasm that loomed in front of her immeasurably deep, unnaturally dark. And then someone pushed her down. When the dark elf turned away from the balustrade and back towards the temple, her eyes were swirling black of cold chaos. Ghostly lights shone near her as lines of magic connected to her body, eldritch incantations streamed out from her crimson lips in a hasty rush conjuring runes of protection and enchantment to flicker around her. Her eyes shimmered and changed color, started burning with vivid yellow and red. A new voice spoke in her head, muttering to itself, drowning the high priestess under a roar of whispered chaos. ... can't face them with what I can use safely. These mortal vessels are so fragile and useless ... Speaking aloud one of the very few useful spells this body knew, Numilye rushed down the stairs ignoring the arrows and crackling bolts of energy of the ambush as they slammed against her divine aura. She pushed through the assassins easily, showing far more strenght her small supple body should've contained, and turned back towards them when she reached the far end of stairs. Four of them, all dark elves, with the weak, almost invisible, aura all ordinary mortals had. A passing priest took one look at the commotion and ignored it, hurrying away to not get caught in the crossfire - only the strong survived here. ... not Sarnael, he would've come himself. Must be some older enemy, some useless god rotting somewhere with nothing but time and the dying light of some old baubles infused with the power he used to have, some decaying old power I insulted during my earlier years. I can handle this one without a mark that anyone would notice in the lines of power, in the currents of the Void. Just another tiny move in the games of the planes ... Reinforcing the weak divine magics by the forces of the planes, she summoned a hammer to her empty hand grinning as she felt the wrath of Innoruuk humming strongly in the bone-white head of the weapon. Her face muscles twitched as she grinned again, this time a lop-sided grin of arrogance. This would be ... fun.