What does this have to do with Greyhawk, or gaming of any type in general? None whatsoever. Just a little subject of interest to me. Wow, that sounds bad considering the title of this journal entry, but allow me to explain....

Bind Torture Kill is the name of a serial killer. The BTK Strangler of Witchita. Some of you may actually know of this unsolved case in Kansas. BTK was a serial killer active in Witchita Kansas in the 70's. The case was never solved. Recently, in March of 2004 BTK appeared again. He was famous for sending letters as well as poems to law enforcement to take credit for his murders. Last year, BTK sent a communication after thirty years of silence. He took credit for a murder in 1986 that had not previously been linked to him. He proved this by sending the victim, Viki Wegerle's, driver's license that had been missing from the scene, as well as crime scene pictures of the body only the killer could have possessed. His communications to police, and the local news station KAKE TV have continued to present day. The last authenticated one was received late last month that led KAKE TV to a deserted road and, of all things, a cereal box. Post Toasties. The 'T' in Toasties had been circled with the letter 'B' written above the 'T' and 'K' written below it. WPD has yet to release the contents of the cereal box.

The first known murder credited to BTK was January 26th 1974. He murdered Joseph and Julie Otero in their home along with two of their children. Many believe the Otero's knew BTK in some fashion. His other known victims include:

April 4th, 1974: Kathryn Bright, 21. Stabbed to death in her home. Her brother Kevin had been shot twice, but incredibly enough, he survived.

March 17th, 1977: Shirley Vian, 28. Bound and strangled in her home. BTK had bound her children in a closet. In a following letter claiming the murder as his, BTK relayed this information about the children:

Actual quote, grammer and spelling as in letter: "They were very lucky; a phone call save them. I was going to tape the boys and put plastics bag over there head like I did Joseph and Shirley. And then hang the girl. God-oh God what a beautiful sexual relief this would been."

December 8th, 1977: Nancy Fox, 25. Found bound and strangled in her home. After completion of this crime, BTK phoned the police to tell them they would find a homicide at the address of the victim.

April 28th, 1979: BTK waited in the home of Anna Williams, 63, but left before she returned home. It is believed he was after Anna Williams' daughter. Several months later, BTK sent a poem to Anna entitled "Oh, Anna Why Didn't You Appear," telling her he had been in her home to kill her, but became tired of waiting for her.

September 16th, 1986: Vicki Wegerle, 28. Strangled in her home.

BTK is the first serial killer to ever be silent for so long, then suddenly return to his media attention attracting tactics. It is believed BTK has had some major life altering event occur, such as illness, which has sent him out seeking the media fame he enjoyed before. It is also believed that BTK was an avid 'fan' of The Zodiac, who also wrote letters to media and police boasting of his crimes. The Zodiac also suddenly stopped his communications. He told the world that he would continue his murders, only he would stop claiming credit and make them appear as random crimes and accidents. Some suggest that a serial killer is incapable of controlling their urge to kill, and that BTK may have done the same thing as Zodiac, given his similarities, and could be responisble for any number of unsolved murders in Witchita over the past thirty years.

It was said in a KAKE TV report, that BTK has managed to terrify two generations of Witchitans. And his identity continues to elude law enforcement. So far BTK has resumed his communications but has yet to kill. Many wonder if his communications are leading up to such an act, or an attempt to actually be caught, or to taunt police with the fact that he remained a free man for 30 years, and will continue to do so until he dies.

You can find BTK letters, the taped 911 call of BTK reporting Nancy Fox's murder, and his poems on a very comprehensive site here:

Catch BTK.com

It's late...or early...however you want to look at it. So I'm working on this personal devil project, right? I thought I would start with the erinyes. I did, but I just wasn't very happy with the final rough sketch...if that makes any sense. So I decided to move on to the cornugon. I'll go back to the erinyes later. I don't like the pose. It is an erinyes, peeking through the curtains of a bed with the occupant none the wiser...yet. But I think she/it could be much more sensual than I've done.

Anyway, I am rather pleased with the cornugon so far. I'm aiming for having it finished by the end of the week. I am working on a couple of special projects, but they are fermenting at the moment. I've learned the hard way that you can't rush it. When the idea isn't ready yet, at least for me, I'd best leave it alone or I won't be happy with the results...see erinyes situation above...

For those of you who even bother reading this crap, here's what I have of my cornugon so far....

Cornugon Beginning Sketch

Enjoy.

Well, the other day as I worked on my last endeavor and began trying to shape the image of a devil-kin, I had an idea. I think I'm going to start a collection of sketches for the entities of the Nine Hells.

Why, you ask? There are plenty of reference images for the devils of Hell, but I've found I really enjoy drawing them. I already have a rough conception for my first denizen, the erinyes. Aren't they fabulous? A beautiful devil from the Hells, but with a set of large feathery wings. There is a note somewhere that states the wings give away their 'devilish' origins, but that's quite the opposite in my opinion. When I think of devilish or demonic, leathery bat-wings some to mind. I think the feathers would make it easier for one to convince someone they were something lovely and sweet from the upper planes instead of the Nine Hells.

After the erinyes, I've decided on the cornugon. For some reason, the cornugon is my favorite devil. I think it's because of their unusually loyal nature, as far as not being known for any backstabbing treachery to those they serve. Plus they have that nasty old gargoyle look to them. They just look typically 'devilish.'

I like devils much more than demons. (That sounds awful! But you know what I mean.) I imagine it is because of their lawful nature. To me a devil is much more dangerous with its mouth, where a demon is just dangerous because it's blind crazy. Very simplistic, but the shortest explaination I can give without a sermon on the differences between devils and demons. 'Silver-tounged devil' right? I see a devil as a lawyer, or a politician, whereas I see a demon as a something akin to a wild indian going to shit.

Anyway, enough babbling. I'll start on my erinyes tomorrow...err...well later today sometime. Maybe I'll have a rough sketch up tonight.

Hey! I bet that got your attention!

If you're offended by nude images of the female body in various erotic poses, please flee this page immediately in stark raving terror.

Seriously...

Anyway, if you are still here then I suppose you are not offended by nudity in art. Therefore, I shall proceed. I'm working on something new. Something I haven't tried before. It was born of the recent scandalous behavior of one of my characters, Shayla. Well....and being heavily influenced by the interesting art of a certain man named Luis. If you've read the previous entry in my journal...then you may understand what I was trying to delicately avoid saying about my thief and the devil-kin Kalem. No, not the CF! Kalem, my husband, the NPC Kalem in our campaign from where my hubby got his name for CF!.

Scandalous it was, and scandalous it continues to be, for the relationship has not ended even though we all know Kalem is a devil-kin. That is why Shayla's alignment has moved. Duh.

Anyway, I've gone in a different direction with sketching the two of them..... References for devils/demons with women are not difficult to find if you know where to look.

So I get several reference pictures and I'm underway. I have a very beginning here.

Do not click here if you are offended by art containing nudity or suggestive positioning, okay?

;)

Anyways, it's just the beginning. Mr. Devil-Kin looks funny, I know, because he's just a basic outline right now. I'm working on Shayla, man. Gimmie some time! But I am worried about Kalem. In his 'true' form Kalem goes from the smokey gray of a half human/half drow, to pure drow, ebony black. I've never tried that before. I've never actually done anything that was completely black. I need a heavy lead I think...but I need to find some references to look at before I begin. His shape and coloring will basically come from his highlights. The exact opposite of shading. This will be strange. How it will develop? I dunno. We shall see.

Oh, I so missed CF! How terrible it was to be away from the internet for the past several months! ACK! I was having serious withdrawl.

What have Kalem and myself been up to? Oh, the usual. Being our nerdy selves and gaming like crazy. I relinquished my role as DM back to Kalem and he has resumed our Vailwood campaign. Not without some surprising and alarming twists, mind you. Not the least of which involves the true origins and heratige of my darling husband's namesake, the half-drow slaver, Kalem. He was the slaver involved in a thread in the forums I started a long time ago. The one involving the use of poisons by a neutral good thief.

He sent us on a little errand, there was mutual gain for both sides. Something he needed desperately, and our confrontation with a man, Kalakat, who had done some deplorable things to two of our PC's loved ones.

Oh, our simplemindedness! We thought we had Kalem all figured out. How ridiculous did we look when we invaded Kalakat's keep from underground to discover devils? This man wasn't merely a barbarian warlord from the north, but a devilkin. Yeah, a devilkin, like in Chris Pramas' Guide to Hell, only my husband took the guidline given and made his own adjustments to a half mortal, half baatezu. And was that muther mean.

Do you know how our entire party of interlopers ended up? Well, by this time we had discovered what was truly happening here thanks to some inside information from some hobgoblin troops of Kalem's that were being kept here as prisoners. Apparently, Kalem realized if he told us the true nature of what was happening, when he made his request we would have told him to shit in one hand and wish in the other and see which one filled up first. It also seemed that Kalem had not been honest about his true heratige.

We were creeping around in disciples robes of Dispater to avoid obvious detection, right? Well, naturally, as we poked about we just had to snatch open a friggin' door that was the entrance to one of Dispater's temples in the place. And, naturally, there was a service being performed.

What do you do? After our initial shock and horror at seeing an osyluth walking among the line of disciples at the dais, we just lowered our heads and got in line. Of course as the High Priest began his droning chant we winced. When the group of disciples replied, but we did not.....I'll give you two guesses as to what the osyluth did.

Yup, it attacked. Well, we engaged in this massive battle in this temple to Dispater with the priest and the disciples. When they were defeated, our intrepid heroes found themselves facing off with a lone osyluth who suddenly looked at us, laughed, and vanished. We freaked, realizing it would call down the wrath of this place known as Conqueror's Keep. And it did.

The DM maliciously, and bluntly told us we had two actions we could make. Did it help? Of course not. The whole group was suddenly ensnared by a rope...guess what kind....by an erinyes who appeared with the informant osyluth. Into the room was herded a gaggle of nupperibo. Apparently they were to dine on us as we stayed trapped by the rope of entanglement.

There were huge stained glass windows in this temple and my fighter, without explaination, got the entire group hopping toward the window. I later explained that he had intended to crash our entire group from the window to plummet to our deaths before he would have allowed us all to be eaten alive by the damned souls of Hell.

Effectively trapped and helpless we merely stared in dismay at the DM. He had made note that two of the PC's had noticed a black shape coming nearer from the window outside. And that's when we were rescued...yes...by Kalem who burst through the window. And no, he did not look like a 5'7" tall half-elf of drow/human descent. He was more like seven feet tall, as ebony as any drow...oh, and let us not forget the two huge bat wings, and the prehensile tail...fangs...horns... You get the idea. He too was a devilkin who happened to be a rival of Kalakat. Kalakat had been given something to hang over Kalem's head, but politics made it impossible for Kalem to act against Kalakat directly....so you see where this is going. That's were we came in...such complete ignorance.

Kalem attacked and killed the erinyes, freed us from the rope and entered into battle with the osyluth, just in time for Mister Kalakat to make his appearance with a contingent of human guardsmen. Kalem could not touch Kalakat, and we were left to fight him...not that we particularly wanted to be involved with the situation at this point...but that decision was well out of our grasp at the moment.

Due to issues too lengthy to go into at this point, Kalakat centered his attacks on my thief, Shayla, and very nearly succeded in killing her. I later found out it was to try and goad Kalem to attack which would have opened up an entirely new bag of shit. So I'll leave that to your imagination as to why Shayla was such a big centerpiece in this combat. I'll just make note here, that before this time, we had no idea that Kalem was half baatezu.

Whew, That's enough for now. I'll just say that a very complex relationship had developed between Shayla and Kalem the devilkin............Forget the poison issue....her alignment was shifted by the DM from neutral good to neutral with occasional good tendencies for entirely different reasons. o_0

I worked on a portrait of Shayla not long after this incident to commemorate the strangest roleplaying and moral situation I had ever roleplayed. She's not too bad, but I think her eyes are a bit off since I didn't grid my paper.

Shayla Spring Ebb

Well, those of you who don't know, we live in south Mississippi about four miles from the beach, and we faced Hurricane Ivan in the early morning hours of September 16th, around one/two am. By we, I mean, hubby Kalem and our gaming and best friend Draga.

Thankfully for us, as Ivan neared the coast it took a jog toward the east. It was projected to come ashore right on the Alabama-Mississippi border. Which is about forty miles away. That would have meant 135 mile an hour winds for us. But, it turned as it neared the shore and about all we got were gusts around 80 mph. Still scary.

After it was over we were all angry at the news coverage of Ivan. They had terrified the Mississippi Gulf Coast with talk of how deadly and terrible Ivan was going to be. They set down a mandatory evacuation for everyone south of Interstate 10. I10 Runs parallel to the MS beach at a rough guess of 8 miles north of the coast. We, Kalem and I and our two children went to Draga's house, with her, her two children and her boyfriend, boarded ourselves in and waited. Draga lives about 2 miles from the beach. Mandatory evacuation is not necessarily mandatory. They cannot FORCE you to leave your home. Kalem and I boarded up our house and went to Draga's because Draga lives in a solid, concrete foundation, brick home. Our's is not brick so we felt safer going there. We certainly did NOT want to go to a designated shelter. We are not people persons. The thoughts of being locked down in a school or other facility with hundreds of other people was not an option. Would you want to grab up what you could carry, and sit in a school hallway with four children, four hundred people, and their children until the police told you that you could leave? And you with a nervous condition? I think not.

As I was saying, we were all angry about the overload of drama that had been built up about this storm. They had the audacity to compare and use the 'C' word to Ivan. By the C word I mean Camille. Hurricane Camille. Camille is a dirty word here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Camille was a catagory 5 Hurricane that struck the Coast in 1969 causing mass devistation and death.

To Quote:
"Several sources consider Hurricane Camille the largest single act of destruction in United States history (until Hurricane Andrew in 1992). To this day, Camille remains the most extreme meteorological event to take place in North America. Although there is some question as to the total death toll, the best estimates are - 255 people killed, and 8,900 injured. A number of people (50 - 75) were never found. Nearly 14,000 housing units were damaged, and 6,000 others were totally destroyed (Coburn 1977). The total damage from Camille was $4.2 billion ( in 1969 dollars). As of the 2001 hurricane season, Camille remains the most intense hurricane to enter the United States mainland.

You can have a look here and see some destruction from Camille, whose wind gusts reached 210-220 mph!

Hurricane Camille 1969

If you look over that page, you may understand how them even bringing up the name of Camille in conjuction with Hurricane Ivan terrified everyone living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. As Ivan moved toward the coast, his maximum sustained winds were 165 mph, a powerful catagory 5 hurricane. As it neared it lost a bit of power and came down to 135 mph winds. Still a nasty cat 4. We hunkered down in Draga's house and waited. As I said, thankfully, it turned more toward the east. We still got sustained winds of about fifty miles an hour and gusts of about 80 to 100 mph. Not to say that wasn't bad, but they made it sound a lot worse than it was. And when it did not perform and make landfall where it was projected to go, many people were angry. In as much as saying that people who are not familiar with storms are going to be less apt to pay heed to warnings about future storms. Which could make for a big disaster.

What did we do? Well, we had intended to play our current campaign. But Kalem had nothing to run at the time. We have caught up to him in our current GH game. We spent most of the time settling the children in before the winds became frightening. Kalem and I's daughter is only 2 and a half, so she probably would not have been that aware of what was happening, but our son is nine. He knew exactly what was going on. Those of you that have never experienced a hurricane, or winds of that force...it's a frightening sound. Especially when the power finally goes out and you have no background noise to quell the sound of the wind howling around outside.

Luckily we were on the west side of the eye of Hurricane Ivan. If you aren't aware of hurricanes, the worse part of the hurricane to have coming at you is the east side. They call them quadrants of the storm. If you take a hurricane, and at the eye, divide it into four sections, the upper east quadrant is the nasty part of a hurricane. That is where all of the tornadoes spawn.

We sat on Draga's front porch through most of the storm after our children had been settled down in bed at the back of the house. We are all a bit crazy, but we couldn't resist. None of us had ever been in a situation during a hurricane where we could do as we pleased. So, naturally, the first thing we did was run out onto the porch when the winds really started whipping. I got some video of the storm, but most of it was of Draga and Kalem sitting on the porch beating each other up like they always do. They have a rather humorous big brother little sister relationship. I told them they were much more fun to watch than the storm, sitting there punching one another and threating to toss each other out into the wind to be eaten by the storm. They're lucky I don't know how to get video onto my computer or you guys would be seeing clips of that on my website.

Of course Kalem thought Draga and I were wimps. He and Draga's boyfriend kept wandering out into the storm onto Draga's driveway. Now if you've never seen a 80 to 100 mile per hour wind gust.....that shit is freakin' scary when your standing on a porch watching a huge oak in the front yard bending all around to hell and back. I kept telling Kalem he couldn't go out in the storm, and he thought he would be cute and run out there anyway because he figured she and I were too scared to come out there and get him. So, he and Draga's boyfriend went out onto the driveway and she and I ran out there after them.

I have to admit something here guys. We all clung to one another and stood there in the driveway with nothing to block the wind the way it was on the porch. There was no rain falling, and power was out all over the place so it was dark, yet the cloudy sky was easily visible. The clouds were absolutely racing by overhead moving to the southeast. I had Kalem on one arm and Draga on my other arm and we heard the gust coming in the tops of the trees at the end of the street. Kalem told us to lean forward and hold tight. The sound was so monstrous as the trees whipped and when it reached us we could hear nothing but the sound of wind tearing past our ears. As crazy as it sounds, it was absolutely exhilarating to stand there with my husband. I will always be grateful to Kalem for subtly daring me to come out with him into the storm. Standing in the middle of the raw power of a hurricane is something I will never forget and as ridiculous as it was to do, I am certainly glad I did it.

I saved an infrared satellite picture of Ivan from The Weather Channel as it neared us. That was a damn scary sight to see coming up on where you live, knowing there was nothing you could do except sit tight and wait for it. You can see it here: Hurricane Ivan

Just an update on the sketch of my namesake in the last entry. Tedra

Just another lil piece of unfinished art I'm working on. It's a study of my namesake, Tedra. I'm planning on doing an entire series of the group Tedra runs with.

Tedra Silvertalon

Actually, I didn't expect her turn out as nicely as she did and wasn't prepared. She began as more of a doodle. She came out exactly as I had always imagined her, but I had not graphed out my paper. So I stopped in fear of not drawing her in proportion. Ahh...the magic of hanging hair! She's a ranger, so it's not too far of a stretch to imagine her hair unkempt and dangling in her face. ;)

I think I'll start a series with her of the adventuring group to which Tedra belongs. I've never done them, and I can't rightly say why as they are my favorite band of adventurers. Can't you tell by the online handle? ;) This is the group that went through T1-4, and in our campaign they all still live in Hommlet. Our Hommelt is radically different from any canon Hommlet by this time, and we had a really good time looking through Return comparing it to the results we've arrived at through many r/l years of playing this group out of Hommlet.

Well, if you really want to call it art. I've had this picture of an NPC from our ongoing campaign for a good while now, about four or so months, but I forgot to scan him. This guy is a Suel named Bremmer. The constable of our lil town of Vailwood.
So you see how this is going to cramp our gaming life right? Hubby will be in New Orleans, working on a movie set. New Orleans isn't that far away, but for the hours he will be putting in, and the time it takes to get back and forth, I'm probably only going to see my husband about twice a week. *insert hysterical sobbing here* But you don't know his salary, so I'll sit here and sob because I miss my husband, but I'll be singing an irish jig as I head to the store when he brings me money.

So, this Saturday, the 31st of July will be the last gaming session we have that is absolutely set. We've been at our current campaign since January of this year. And ladies and gentlemen, it has been EVERY Saturday since. There was a DEATH in a family in March and the dice were rolling on the following Saturday to give the bereaved a helping hand with their sorrow. See? Gaming is a good thing. It helps with all sorts of things, even grief. Well, that and good company.:)

I figure since this magnificent, soap opera, thriller, action, adventure campaign may suddenly become put on indefinite hold after this weekend, we should go out with a bang. I've been sitting here listening to the songs on my radio server at 'Hawk Radio, and I had an epiphany. To my surprise many people like listening to the sound bytes of our gaming sessions we put on our website. I know of one here that likes the wavs because we are...well, we're a bit silly when we game. ;) So I was thinking that I might do some broadcasting Saturday, to say a fond farewell to the consistancy of this campaign. I may get a big huge mic, take my server off the yellow pages making it non-public, and paste a big huge announcement on the front page of Greyhawk, Land of Oerth with the server address on it and broadcast live, the ridiculousness of our gaming sessions.

I don't know if everyone will go for it, but I don't see why they wouldn't since I railroaded them into allowing me to post the session sound wavs. I must check into this tomorrow.

You know, I kept thinking about the Greyhawk Radio station so I did it. I downloaded all that that friggin SHOUTcast shit and fought with it for HOURS last night installing it to my Winamp and setting up the server.

Not that hard once I did it and was a little ashamed that it had taken me so long. So if you're surfing around and need some music check it out and see if I've got it up at the moment.

'Hawk Radio

I'm only broadcasting on Winamp at the moment. If you don't have Winamp, you really should get it. It's free, and it's a cool player. You can get it here:

WinAmp

Well, you must be as bored as I am if you're reading this. :) By the way, if you're a metalhead like myself you might like this online radio station:

Live Hard Rock

Or if you're partial to Metallica and Megadeth I found a station on SHOUTcast that must have been made just for me. And the guy that runs the station is cool as hell. Talked to him on AIM a few times. Check it out. This is the server link, it'll pop up and play in whatever player you have, like media player, or something. If you don't have Winamp, you should get it. Bad ass MP3 player with some awesome skins.

Darkest Hour Metal

I thought I'd make a post with an update for a sketch I've been working on. It's of Kalem, the half-drow slaver our PC's have been dealing with in our current campaign. Not, the Kalem, in the forums, who is also my DM and husband. :)

He's been a real pain for me, as he is described as wearing a full, hooded, and heavy black cloak. The last image I had posted of him is in my journal entry called I Know! I have since worked on him a bit, trying to finish his cloak. This NPC has a very interesting involvement with our PC's, especaially the thief Shayla, who is also posted under that same journal entry. Drama, drama, drama.

Kalem

I have now been asked to work on a dragon. I was going to attempt doing some designs last night as we gamed, but I didn't have a chance to do anything. Nasty dealings last night. I have not sketched a dragon before, so I have been searching through pictures, trying to formulate an idea and a few reference points. I was specifically asked not to do anything cutsey so I'm thinking fierce, regal...but will probably come out looking more constipated than anything. :) We shall see what emerges.

Does anyone actually read this bullshit? I mean really? Does anyone actually say, oh wow, I think I'll take a look through "Soanso's Journal and see if they have posted anything new!

I personally find it an irresistible urge. Of course I am female, and the general consensus seems to say that my gender makes me predisposed to nosiness, and curiosity about other's 'business.' And I would be the first to agree. ;)

So what am I to prattle about tonight? Oh all kinds of goodies. You see ladies and gentlemen, (mostly gentlemen, there seems to be a sore lackage of women around here...its giving me a complex) I have had my wisdom tooth pulled. As a result of such I have aquired what is affectionately referred to as a dry socket. Those of you who have experienced such gut wrenching pain may stop grimacing now ;) but I do thank you for your compassion. I have so fabulously aquired this because I am a smoker, and found it impossible to follow the dentist's instructions not to smoke for three days. So because of this lovely dry socket, I cannot sleep, and am adequately medicated by my prescribed pharmaceuticals. Therefore, I have this ever driving need to run my mouth...or well...my fingers. I could go into the Thursday night Greychat, but because of my medicated state, I prefer not to enter the chat for obvious reasons.

Which reminds me. I really do need to make an attempt at attending the chat one Thursday. I talk waaaay too much in the forums. I have somehow managed to post enough to get a nifty little tag above my avatar that is proclaiming I am a GreySage...though I do not know when I was struck by all of this Grey Wisdom. I am sure I would have felt it had I been granted enough wisdom to become a Sage. Lord knows, my digits are in the negatives, and what is the required wisdom for a sage? Anyway, I have been called out twice in the forums about attending the GreyChats. And it seems insulting to not attend after that. But I am usually so busy in the evenings that it would truly be hard to join in, at least enough to enjoy myself, or to not make everyone think I was being a quiet prude..a lurker and watcher...you know the type. They never say anything and sulk in the chat room's dark corners, thinking someone will eventually beg them to talk to everyone.

Wow, I can't believe I've actually been keeping up with a journal. Interesting. I've seen that Canonfire accepts fiction submissions. You know what I do with all my spare time? Write stories based in the world of Greyhawk. Would I submit something? Probably not. I think my stories are interesting, at least to me, because I write them. My husband and friends like them, because they are my husband and friends. And usually the stories are based around our PC's and their intrepid adventures.

There's too many inside jokes that only they would catch. There's too much gratuitous sex. There's too much debauchery at times. Where I take the initiative on filling in the questionable blanks or subtle hints that would be left at a gaming table.

I should sit down, I guess, and work with something more suitable. Something that wouldn't merely be a piece that is somewhat decent but unrelated.

I have the most twisted DM. And I hate to say this, as I am married to him. Have been married to him for 9 years and all together, known him for 15 years. I even have two children with this man.

We are involved in a Greyhawk campaign taking place circa late CY 570's. It is a campaign of his own design and since I have preached the glory of Canonfire to him, he has made his very own account here and uses the resources more and more. You can view this dastardly DM here: Kalem. So perhaps I should be fussing at all of you instead. ;)

This game is taking place in northern Bissel, in a little newly devloping town called Vailwood. Well, the campaign is taking us all over the place, from Molvar to Highfolk, but this is the base of our operations.

Why am I calling my DM demented? Because of this past weekend's gaming session. He designed the most disturbing temple I have ever had the displeasure of roleplaying inside. It was truly disturbing, and unfortunately, in this case, my husband has an exeptional storytelling ability. It's uncanny how he can capture your attention and imagination when he really becomes involved in his detailing.

We've been dealing with hordes of undead in this campaign and he isn't content with merely saying "Okay, there's four zombies in the room." Oh no, we get excellent description, an occasional sound effect from behind a door the theif is trying to unlock. Also, may I mention, we've found a half-drow that's running a slave operation...nothing but children. We've saved a room full of waif's. Discovered where some of these children are going. You know where they're going? To consecrate temple alter's. Yes, having their hearts cut out of their still living bodies. And you know what the necro is doing with them afterward? Raising them as zombies that we had to face and destroy in a disgusting prayer room. Did I mention he was a good storyteller? So we had nice descriptions of children ranging from five to fifteen.

This temple we were in was horrific. He pulled no punches. Awful rooms of undead creation. Spattered blood, nasty impliments, horrifying books explaining techniques. Buckets filled with nasties like flesh and muscles. Entry rooms with every wall from ceiling to floor covered with BODIES, lacquered bodies in poses of horrified agony. The next room was filled with more bodies only all were posed with one arm extended pointing toward the next door. And in the temple room? It was a masterpiece in progress with the bodies on the walls in mocking poses of joyous awe.

Magnificent! No, no, no, no, I don't mean it that way. Jeeeeeeeesus. I meant, it was a masterfully described gaming session. It was almost like playing a horror RPG. He did an excellent job. He managed to wrap his players in a sense of dread, horror, loathing, and riteous fury. Our sylvan elf archer nearly suffered a complete nervous breakdown. It was fabulous.

Great job, luv. We had a fantastic time. You've done excellently at snaring us into the feel of the game and being a DM of incredible magnitude as far as telling your story and pulling us in, then not releasing us until your book closes for the night. Props to you!

You think I exaggerate? Ask the player of the sylvan elf who almost had the nervous breakdown...Draga.

You know, I just had a thought. Frightening I know, but interesting none the less. I wonder if the Admins of Canonfire or someone, has ever considered having a DJ'ed Greyhawk radio station. Or have GREYchat with a DJ'ed radio broadcast to accompany the mIRC/Java chat experience?

We used to do this quite frequently in Hal Soft Virtual Places. VP is an interesting little chat program where you enter the program, 'wear' an avatar and you can web surf with your friends, while everyone actually shows up on the web page as their avatar. Some had gone to SHOUT cast and downloaded the free program enabling you to DJ your very own web radio station. People can connect to the page and listen to your music and chatter through their Winamp player.

I imagine it would receive quite a following.

You know, I wasn't going to do this. Really I wasn't. I wasn't going to turn this journal into an annoying babbling mess. But here it comes.

/rant on

I'd like to see the ratio of female users to male users here at Cannonfire. Well, the ratio of active male and female users. Why? Because. We girls are a minority in the world of gaming.

This isn't some strange guess or hypothosis on my part, nor a mere statement about something I read somewhere. I've seen it with my own eyes. I've been gaming for 14 years. I had never even heard of Dungeons & Dragons until I met my husband. I played one game with him and his friends. I played a human female fighter. They were playing in the FR at the time. I was hooked, though once I found out about the Greyhawk setting, FR became..well...the Forgotten Realms *insert bad joke hissing and booing here*

My point is, I have to commend Cannonfire! for being the first online forum, site, what have you, that has not, at least so far, treated me like a girl playing a boys game. When you are a female in the male dominated world of roleplaying one of three things happens.

1. You are constantly defending your intelligence/knowledge simply because you are female.

2. You are ignored and overlooked with what amounts to a patronizing pat on the head. "Oh look, she's a gamer. How cute!"

3. You make the guy gamers nervous. They don't like you because your female, and for some reason this makes them uncomfortable.

Again, this has come from personal experience. Experience as a player with my husband and how I was treated in his circle. How I was treated at conventions, how other girls were treated at conventions. I saw very few true female gamers at conventions. The majority were what I refer to as convention lizards. They were the girlfriends of gamers, they sat and watched, usually chunky and unkempt, but very sweet and nice people. But most dressed like goths, seeming to think they knew something that everyone else didn't, therefore making them mysterious, which really makes me want to get on my knees, hang on to the toilet rim and vomit my shoes straight out of my mouth.

I don't know if it was because of this, but when a girl dressed in a t-shirt and jeans sat down to actually play a game, everyone looked confused. They buzzed amoungst themselves when you didn't have to giggle and ask what was going on, or could find your own dice, and roll up your own character.

WTF, man!

I had seen Canonfire! before, as I am on the Greyhawk Adventures Webring. I had visited on occasion. But never joined, nor participated. Then, not to long ago I saw a post by Osmund-Davizid at the WotC message board "Singing the Praises of Cannonfire." So I thought, alright Mr. O-D. Let's go check this out.

I won't even comment on the WotC community forum. I only visit the Greyhawk forum and the D&D OOP board, but post rarely as that place has some serious OOP vs. 3e issues, man. They need help.

Abysslin, posted a very friendly welcome Thursday night to join the chat in mIRC or Java directed at me and others. I missed that post Thursday night and might have joined if I had seen it. But yes, I was purposely staying away. I've tried rpg chats before. And had been made aware of thursday night grey chats when I joined the Adventures web ring. I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable by the presence of my estrogen, nor did I wish to have everything that came out of my mouth...well, fingers...challenged.

Most likely I will be in this Thursday. Probably quietly to see what's happening. I have a friend, female, who is gaming with myself and my husband in his recent home grown Greyhawk campaign. She digs through Cannonfire as well, yet hasn't even gone so far as to create an account here. See? It's tough sometimes for serious female gamers.

I suppose I just wanted to say thank you to Cannonfire!.

/rant off

I've figured out what I can use this journal for. I have sketched for a while now, using nothing more dramatic than sketching pencils, mech pencils, and the occasional kneaded eraser. I've been pestered to put them up on my personal website as most of my sketchings have to do with gaming related images, and most recently sketches of the player characters in a current campaign that is being kept updated on my site.

Well, I refuse to put them up because a) my sketching is sorely lacking and b) I'm not going to humiliate myself on my own website. I do that enough with our gaming sound bytes.

So, I figure I'll put them up here where a rather small to nil group of people will ever look, and I can make certain people stop bothering me to put my sketches on the www for all to laugh at.

To anyone brave enough to click the following links I do apologize for any forthcoming headache.

I suppose I should start things off with where my handle name of Tedra came from. Which by the way is pronounced Tee-dra, not Ted-ra as many people seem to think. A ranger who made it through T1-4.

Tedra Silvertalon

This little fellow is a PC from our current campaign. A sylvan elf archer named Karis.

Karis Silverstream

A little number here named Shayla. The thief of the current gang of interlopers. I used a source picture to refer to for Shayla as I'm not all that great with shading a half nude female torso. I can't find the picture but when I do I'll be posting it here for comparing. I think it came out quite close to the original which surprised me beyond all belief given my floundering drawing techniques.

Shayla

This guy is obviously not finished. His damn cloak is about to give me a nervous breakdown. This is Kalem, an NPC from the current game. Nasty little half-elf, the elf part of him being drow.

Kalem

And this ladies and gentlemen is what happens when you've tried four times to draw a picture of a PC gray elven magic-user, and cannot get her right. On this fourth try she came out looking like a Michael Jackson Orc. And try as I might I couldn't get her fixed. So hence she has obscenities scribbled at her when I finally decided to give up. Not nice for a work cache.

Ellyiana Silvereve (Or Michael Jackson's Orc twin)

So, a blog, huh? Does anyone actually read this stuff? Wonder if I get any points for writing in this thing.

Should this be a Greyhawk blog? A gaming blog? No wait, I sort of already have a blogish type current campaign situation on my website. This could be a place were I vent my frustrations about the world around me and explore my inner-self through writing and analyzing my feelings. Puh-lease.

Or should this simply be a journal for ' the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind?' Quick! Add a comment if you can name what movie that quote was from! You'll get site participation points for it and you'll thank me later when they activate the points system and you receive your brand new DVD player.

I suppose this will become the place where I jot down those interesting little story ideas before I forget them thanks to all my daily distractions. It was much easier to write and sketch before children.