I have an idea fluttering around in my head that I can’t quite get to settle down in one spot long enough for me to articulate it, so as an experiment, I am going to start writing regardless and hope it comes to me while I am doing other things.

Let’s see… well I made it through the first chapter of the newly enhanced main campaign of Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous this morning.

This means I have finished kicked the demons out of Kenebres, the city you start in, and I am getting ready to take the show on the road with the armies Queen Galfrey just entrusted me with (gulp!) in order to retake the demon occupied fortress city of Drezen, and once more make it MY god damned city.

Technically, my character doesn’t know that yet. But I do. I miss my war room and my bedroom and ruling my little kingdom, and I am going to get it all back, god dammit!

Second playthroughs are fun like that.

And I am finding that, while I clearly remember the broad strokes of what is going to happen, I have forgotten most of the fine details, and therefore playing through again is not nearly as much of a drag as I feared it would be.

So that’s all for the good.

And the new companion character, Ulbrig, is crazy hot.

He’s a big bear of a dude who can turn into a… griffin.

Bear would have been a bit too obvious. Not that I would have complained.

Bears are crazy hot too. Woof indeed.

Come to think of it, so are griffons… *ahem*.

The attraction is mostly physical. He has a more or less generic burly Viking sort of personality (battle-hungry, boisterous, barbaric) so there is not a lot to him so far.

But apparently Chapter 2 is where the whole “Last Of The Sarkorians” plotline really takes off, so there might be many high quality character moments to come for him.

And until then, I still have my Lann to drool over.

To be honest, if I can figure out how to romance Lann this time, Ulbrig will disappear from my mind like summer haze.

Fickle, aren’t I?

What can I say, Lann’s got everything. He’s smart, courageous, a natural leader, his face is half lizard, he has a very sexy sardonic wit…

Look, it’s a high fantasy setting. You’re bound to get some people with half lizard faces And tails. And horns.

You can’t afford to be too fussy!

Besides, I’m a furry. He could be all lizard and I wouldn’t bat an eye.

Here he is :

Well this experiment is a bust. Not only did I not capture whatever thought was fluttering around in my mind, I don’t have any idea what it even was any more.

I guess it got away.

Oh well. Remember that the only failed experiment is one that does not produce a result. This one produced a definite resul : don’t do that.

More after the break.

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A long walk in the woods

That’s kind what I feel I am doing lately. Walking through the forests of my inner world, trying not to give in to panic because I don’t know where I am and I don’t know which was is up, or out, or anything really. Trying instead to let my mind expand to encompass all of my environment in a natural, easy way instead of trying to impose order on everything before trying to understand it.

That kind of thing has its place, but that place ain’t here. Not now.

And you know, it’s good for me to remember that there are other ways of understanding your world and your place in it besides my narrow minded , lopsided, “analyze everything” point of view of the past.

It’s a great way to think but it’s no way to live.

And even as I struggle to give birth to a greater level of consciousness within myself, I can feel the wrongness of how I am now. I can feel the blackness and the blankness where my heart and soul should be. I can sense the sparking, flailing ends of neural pathways cut off before they could reach the parts of me that are still deeply asleep, and I can feel the rising panic as I become increasingly aware of how dead I’ve been.

That’s a tricky one. I have to raise my awareness of how deep my damage goes in order to fix it. Indeed, I have to pump more energy into those busted neural pathways if I am to bring those parts of me back to life, and that is going to hurt like hell before it does me any good.

Pins and needles, folks.

But I have to balance my awareness against my tendency to panic. The path to redemption always leads through very scary territory and I will have to keep a very firm grip on myself in order to keep moving and not get freaked out by it all.

I know I will keep moving no matter what, though. To be honest, I don’t know how to stop. That stubborn little spark in me that keeps me going no matter what, the same one that saw me through all those lonely years of school with nobody to rely on but myself, will keep on goading me forward no matter what happens.

And I know what I am looking for in this dark forest. Kinda. I want to find my real motivation and my true identity and my heart’s desires and everything else about finding the real me that you can think of.

And when all is said and done, I will have rid myself of all my senseless baggage and what remains will be a happy, shiny, solid, gleaming, irreducible me in all my glory.

And it… I,, will be amazing.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,.