Patrick

To answer a question I received via PM: the timeframe of the game shall be around the beginning of the 20th century.

They had not expected to hear a baby crying. The sound was quickly followed by a canine yelp, as Tug unceremoniously landed on top of Spot in some dark and damp cave. The soft whimpering of the baby came from nearby. This was what his father had always talked about when he mentioned stories of his Uncle Greg. Uncle Greg was a knight in shining armour, who did the kings bidding, saving damsels in distress, slaying dragons and single-handedly defeating entire armies, if Tug's father's stories were to be believed. This was an adventure, of the scariest sorts. In the pitch black of the cave, Tug and his faithful companion had to save the helpless baby. Its crying was actually quite annoying, and Tug groped around blindly in the darkness, not sure whether he cared more about saving the baby or stopping the awful crying somehow...

Sign-up shall be open for a couple more days, to allow those who expressed interest the time to come up with a character.

One thread title fixed.

Sorry couldn't help myself, but seeing the title this was the first thing I thought of...

Tanny/Mynx...I love that character idea.

Disclaimer: This WW game will not respect the kid-friendly rating. It should go to the Scarlett Pen, but in order to allow Honoured Guests to also take part it will take place in the Conservatory. Take part only at your own risk. This WW game won't exactly be like the others. For one thing, in order to be able to explore the characters involved in a bit more depth and to compensate for the general slowness of the Pen as of late, phases shall be longer. Quite a bit longer. I'm thinking maybe having one week for night phases and two weeks for day phases. Roles will not be revealed when someone is killed or lynched. I might also spice up the roles, but exactly how is still under consideration. Since this WW deals with pretty bad people, as per the disclaimer at the top of this post, expect unpleasant mental images and unpleasant words (to put things mildly). Sign ups are open at least until the beginning of June. Feel free to pay one of the "residents", a guard, a visitor (they'll get stuck in the asylum...) or anything you can come up with that fits the setting.

Well, skype is fine too, I have one lying around.

Happy Mother's Day to all Mothers out there!

Glad to hear that. You should come on to MSN some time, been a loooooong time since we've chatted.

Heyhey! Long time no see! Thanks for dropping in and commenting. How have you been?

Welcome, welcome! I hope you'll stay shall be a pleasurable one. Peredhil seems to have taken care of all explanations, so I'll just say that if you encounter any technical issues while using the site, I'm the one to turn to. I'm the geek (should that be the geekest?) of the bunch.

Thanks for the comment. Nguyen is the most common family name in Vietnam. I am planning on explaining the name at some point since James and John are very not-Vietnamese. As you said it's just starting. For once I have somewhat of an idea where I'll want it to go, of course ideas are made to be scrapped.

Anyone feel free to continue this story from where I've left off. I had an idea for an ending, but couldn't see how to get there. No, I won't reveal the ending I had in mind and this thing doesn't have to move that way. Feel free to add any length to it. I'm just curious to see where this'll go. Once upon a time, in a kingdom very far away from all that we know lived a young boy named Tug. Tug, a lively boy of unkempt black hair and matching black eyes was the youngest of a family of five sons and five daughters. His father, a beast of a man, over six feet and two hundred pounds had been a lumberjack for the bulk of his life and only when his hands had grown weak and his knees feeble and his sight deserted him had he finally hung up his axe and given himself over to his second passion in life: dice. Tug's mother, by contrast, was a frail creature, several heads smaller than her husband and looked as though a stronger wind could snap her in two. Our story starts in the twelth year of Tug's life on a fateful day when his father's usual luck with dice deserted him and he found himself in the debt of some very unpleasant men. This specific day Tug had spent in the woods with Spot, the family's faithful greyhound, who showed the signs of age as much as Tug's father did. Spot had been a faithful companion to the whole family for many years and in his old age no longer had to work, he just savoured the pleasures of life.

Awesome.

Saw a couple of movies recently. A couple old ones and a few newer ones. 12 Angry Men - definitely one of the older ones. Great acting from nearly all of the actors. Not much in terms of action, romance or all that, just some good acting. Quite enjoyable and time hasn't degraded the quality of watching it. 4.5/5 Seven Samurai - time has not been kind to this movie, in many places it was visible how things could have been much, much better with modern filmmaking techniques. Still it's very easily visible that it was a revolutionary movie at the time. I had watched it in Japanese with English subtitles. I still prefer watching a film in the original language, even if I don't understand a single word of what is being said (apart from samurai, ronin and the other usual suspects...) 4/5 The Wrestler - I did not know Mickey Rourke prior to this film and so it did not surprise me to see him come back (read afterwards that he hadn't made a movie in some time). He played brilliantly in the movie, carrying the whole thing easily. I'm not really a fan of wrestling (hurting oneself for the amusement of others doesn't seem a smart thing to me) but the movie was quite enjoyable. I haven't yet seen Milk so I'm not sure which of these two was more deserving of the actor Oscar, but this one definitely would have deserved it. 5/5 The Reader - lovely movie. The acting, while not brilliant flowed quite nicely. What was unsaid in the film actually added more to it than what was said. A great movie about the consequences of WW2 in Germany. 4/5 City of God - Probably the one I liked the most from this bunch of movies. A very hard movie, due to its subject matter. The mostly amateur actors actually work quite well, since first-time gangsters don't usually know what to do either. Definitely worth watching in the original language, judging by the subtitles the English version isn't perfect. 5/5 Gran Torino - If, as things stand to be, this'll be Eastwood's last acting film, then he gives a great performance to end his career. Others in the film however...unfortunately in this film it's quite visible that some of the actors were amateurs. Still, the story is good, and the ideas behind it well though out. 4/5

The rain was pouring. It had been raining hard all morning and there was no sign of it letting up anytime soon. The ground was already drenched and the water ran over the ground in riverlets, gathering in deepening puddles in the hollows. The dark mood of the weather was perfect to describe the dark mood in the graveyard. The priest had been the last one to depart, leaving the solitary man alone at the side of the freshly dug grave. He had neither umbrella, nor raincoat and both his hair and clothes were thorougly drenched. But still he stood motionless in the rain, barely taking his eyes off the inscriptions in the marble. It was visibly new compared to the other gravestones nearby, not yet weathered. In a couple years it would take on that appearance that marble gets when exposed to the elements, but it still had that polished look to it. James John Nguyen April 19, 1984 - September 12, 2008 No "loving father", no "beloved husband". There was no family left to remember him. And truth be told, most of those present at his funeral hadn't come because they had been true friends. "Did you know him?" The rain-soaked figure did not reply, but simply continued to stare at the simple gravestone. "Excuse me?" the voice asked again. The voice belonged to Sergeant Simms of the Metropolitan Police Force. She was a veteran of the force, having served nineteen years, starting on the streets and slowly working her way up to detective. And for the last seven years she had been investigating the man whose body now lay six feet under the ground. "I did." She was caught off guard by the answer, suddenly not expecting it after the long silence. "In a weird way I guess I had been his only friend this side of the world." The man turned around, revealing an unshaven face, but still with youth in the eyes. "Officer," he said while tipping an imaginary hat. Raindrops trickled from his hair as he made a slight bow. "Care to share his story?" Sergeant Simms asked. "Buy me a drink and I'll talk all night long. Let's go someplace warm, I'm soaked," the man replied, only with a trace of an accent betraying that he was not a native. On closer inspection he had the characteristic eyes of someone from Eastern Asia. It was over a warm pint of Guinness in a smokey London pub that he started to recount the tale of James John Nguyen, which had started more than twenty four years ago in the jungles of Vietnam.

Written for a roleplay at another forum, but works quite nicely on its own. It was cowritten with someone else, me writing the beginning and the old man's actions and point of view, and other person writing the young man's point of view. (originally posted at: http://www.ironworksforum.com/forum/showpo...p;postcount=156 - Calaethis is the one I collaborated with)

The board might be vulnerable to spam sent via private messages (real person signs up, solves the captcha image and then the spam bot takes over). If anyone gets/got spam via a PM, either send me a PM or an email at patrick.durham (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll take care of the offending users. The board was offline for some time today, it was because we were automatically patched for this problem by IPS and the patch didn't go perfectly. Nothing has been lost.

Happy 26th Wyv! (sorry for the OOC post)

Fatso scurried around the ground, swerving behind the Wii, his little feet almost soundless among the whirr of older machinery and the soft purr of new generation gadgets. His teeth were firmly clenched around the Wii's power cable, ready to tear it and electrocute himself in the process, when Slimmo emerged from his hibernation mode. With a scream of angry electrons he sent angry pulses to the brain of the pesky rodent and after several frantic nanoseconds, managed to calm the overgrown rat down sufficiently. Sorry about that... he emitted over wireless frequencies to the Wii and then made Fatso move someplace safer.

Happy birthday both of you!

I'm at 127.0.0.1

Now we're toast... *hides*

*steps in wearing his most formal attire* "As Elder of Techy Tinkering I feel it my duty to point out this." *steps out with a wide smile on his face enjoying Wyvern's surprise at his Almost Report being disrupted*