Retreat

Artje sets the whetstone and her axe carefully aside and gazes down over the valley at Ossencrest, a small smile tugging at her mouth. She is home again, or at the home of her heart. No-one could really call the austere fort a home. It's a base, only, a place for the Priory's researchers to sleep in a real bed and re-supply again before returning to their work tracing the history of the wild mountains. But she likes it here. She likes the Priory scribes and their introverted small talk. She likes the roaring fires and the soothing sounds of ink scratching paper. Most of all she loves the Sakura, marching resolutely up through the cleft.

  She remembers the first day she came to Scholar's Cleft with complete clarity. She'd been slugging it out with the Modniir, and in fear for her life, really, at the point in the fight where only running can save you. Funny, she'd never been afraid of the Centaurs, despite their fierce brows and fleet-footed battle. They were harsh though, and they often called for others to join them  in pursuit of a lone traveller. But Artje's bow was always a good match for their speed, and her first solo battles were in the Hirathi Hinterlands. 

Now that she has her beloved Jade Bow, no Modniir can hope to threaten her, which is just as well, as their raids on the Priory outpost are still a daily occurrence. But the first day she came to the Cleft she had fought her way into what seemed like a corner of the map. She had despaired of escaping them, when suddenly the glorious cherry trees appeared, then giving way to stairs, and a marvellously solid, squat fort, and she ran for her life up through the gate to safety.

Artje gathers up her weapon and tools and packs them carefully in her leather bags. The ceremonial axes gleam where she has just finished honing them, a task she is only just beginning to master. She will never be a great crafter. It's not a thing she aspires to, and she doesn't have the time anyway. But she is proud of the skill she's gaining with the stone. Sharpened axes make for faster dead enemies, and that's a valuable outcome these days.

She hauls her weapons and bags up to the spartan sleeping quarters. The nights close out early here, most of the scribes retiring not long after sundown and arising as soon as the light breaks over the Snowden Drifts. There will be stewed meat tonight, she can smell it clinging to the eaves. It's a good, rich, smell. Modniir raiders notwithstanding, they are safe here, free to go about the work of preserving Tyria's history. To Artje, it seems all the more important in these savage times. 

She worries about travelling away from it all, from Lion's Arch and from the Borderlands. There is great need out there. But there is great need within Artje, too, and the safe haven of Scholar's Cleft called her from across the battlefields. She is glad to be here, warm, dry, and amongst peaceable friends. She is glad of the rest, the short forays for good meat, the skirmishes with the uncomplicated Centaurs. The good dependable work of protecting and providing for the Priors and scribes. She cannot stay for long, but she can stay a little. She is grateful for the succour.

Meanwhile, in Tyria ...

Artje runs alone now. The will of a self-imposed exile ebbs and flows through her soul, fierce as any tide, shifting and changing pieces of her, gathering detritus and dumping it in secluded corners. Bitter sands scour her through and through, borne along by anger and pain.

It's said the ranger is the loneliest profession. Separated from the mob by the need for distance, the ranger is fast and light on her feet. She strikes from an unseen vantage point, and for it, is never quite trusted.

Artje has been learning to use her dual axes, though her beloved bow is always at her back. The jewelled and embossed Krytan axes, with their wicked curved blades, are satisfyingly lethal, especially in the madness of Lion's Arch. She has learned to fear close combat less, and to move through awkward spaces a little easier. It's not her mountains, but the urgency there, assisting Lion's Arch in the fight for it's life, is sufficiently distracting.

It suits her to travel light. She knows it's the Tyrian way to join a guild, and she is often invited, but she rebels against their rules and requirements. She thinks sadly of her old guild, the easy companionship of friends discovering their strengths together. But even there she ran alone, darting into the mists whenever possible, consumed by the urgent ferocity of battle.

She goes rarely into the mists lately. Her lassitude is enormous. Some days, it's bigger than she is. On those days she does not fight.

She tries to return to her old home, from the time before Tyria, but it's a despondent experience. All the betrayal is there, all the trouble she can't fix. Artje looks carefully where she enters, these days.

Sometimes she catches a familiar melody, and remembers the days of old Ascalon; the breezes through the red and green and golden trees, the crystal rivers and sunny villages. The swift run to the wall, the brutal process of fighting the Charr on their turf, the excitement of learning to draw them out, to meet their fierceness and to beat them at it. The time before time, when the world was an adventure she could not lose. The joy of conquering mountains, the shocking tragedy of Ascalon burning.

Artje watches, warily, the inexorable turning of the Wheel. The old life is razed but breath and pulse and thought still, somehow, go on. So it was and so it ever will be.

2013 Retrospective

Merry Christmas everyone, my very best wishes to you, that you will find time for play and for love and especially for creativity (however you enjoy it) in these busy days. Spend time with people you adore, and please adore yourself, for without you, you have nothing. It's hard to do, believe me, no-one knows like I do, but if you think about what being loved should feel like, and do it for yourself, you cannot really lose, right?

2013 opened with the flurry of the Dance Queens awards. I wanted us to win. I wanted me to win. I wanted that recognition, from our peers and for the entire grid. I wanted to say "winner of the 2013 Dance Queens Award for ..." in our promo. I wanted my dancers to see what they have become.

It seems a little hollow, now, and not just because it got white-anted by bitterness. Guerilla Burlesque is a phenomenon, it fills the house at every show. It pleases audiences who see it, and it draws the best talent on the grid to be part of it. It inspires great loyalty in it's fans. There really aren't any awards that match that feeling of watching a dancer take a concept through to completion, or watching a team combine together like fine machinery. I am ever-lastingly proud of Guerilla Burlesque. I know I am not universally admired, and this troupe lost many dancers it would have been nice to keep; nevertheless, those who have stayed all display characteristics I find to be the best of human nature. They are diligent, warm-hearted, sensitive, open, smart, giving and immensely creative. It is an honour, truly, to breathe the air they breathe.

I wonder how many of you, who thought you would struggle to find a place as the team shifted and changed, think back through the year and see just how close we've all become. Guerilla Burlesque is a force of nature, baby, and I thank you if you are someone who's hung on for the full ride.

Losing the luxurious privilege of owning a whole sim was very hard, and I miss the unlimited potential. But Idle Rogue will always survive, in some form, and I am still, always, so grateful to Cait for giving me the playground of my dreams.

My inter-personal skills remain a bit of a worry, but I am working on it, and I know I have made some major progress this year. That said, there are times when the malice I draw baffles me. One person, and one person only, gets the unedited version of chry, and I will admit he finds it very hard going. The rest, including those malcontents who think I have or had something they deserve, are making shit up. It's more annoying than anything. I did a great job in difficult circumstances, and it won't be done as well now that I am not doing it any more. Other than that I am at ease. I try to give my best, in everything I do. But I am not everyone's cuppa tea, as we say in the antipodes.

It's no secret I spent way too much time in Guild Wars 2 this year. I love it, though Burn2 broke it's grip on me a little; it's also true to say that I once felt I was becoming part of the community there, and I no longer feel this way, which made playing the game more optional than it had been. I really only like World vs World, and my partner likes many other aspects of the game. That means, in a practical sense, that I just don't go there as much.

Let's not forget, after four very long and humbling years, I finally got a real job, and there's no doubt in my mind that just that fact has made a huge difference to my attitude to everything around me right now.

As the year draws to a close, I am busy, in both lives, and I don't have the time to dwell on things that are re-shaping right now. I am very very excited about Le Cirque de Nuit, a project that will take the next several weeks to pull together, but which I hope to turn into one of the most successful, cutting edge collaborations of 2014. I am also delighted and honoured by the calibre of the people who have lately expressed interested in projects we are working on. I am stimulated by the possibilities ahead of us all.

Chill the champers, babies, let's ring it in, I'm keen to get going on it :-)

Building Artje Orestes

Tarnished Coast server has a new forum site, which triggered a round of "introduce yourself" posts. I really love my character, Artje Orestes,  and I think that's largely because I built her myself. This is one of the very cool features about Guild Wars 2, and one that Second Lifers will "get" immediately: you can start customising your character before you even get into the game, and from the very first level, you can shape your "build".

Choices for my first character, Myf, were very much shaped by forum and blog information sourced by Shippy. I'd started Guild Wars as a warrior, but found, when I took on Monk as my secondary profession, that I really enjoyed healing and support play. I thought a Guardian character in GW2 would suit me very well, and I enjoy playing Myf, but it's Artje who has stolen my heart.

At For The Toast, I introduced her thus:

I've since tried to look up the name online, but without much luck. Cute Baby Names think it means "he who reigns as an eagle", though they don't say who told them that. I like it though, it works.

Hunting for the meaning of the name Artje, I found this:

What's in a name? Plenty, if you ask at the Kabalarian site,
though it must be noted they will tell me even more if I buy their report

Way too many ticks on that list >.<

Artje is a Ranger, she fights with a longbow, a pair of matching axes and a pet (currently a raven, because they can fly up to the top of ramparts and attack enemy there). As she levelled, I bought her armour, often transmuting it to get a certain combination of looks and stats. She currently wears a combination of the Magitech armour skins (for the looks) with exotic armour stats (for the 

kickassery).

Her armour is upgraded with a full set of the Superior Runes of Mercy, to increase healing capabilities, and her trinkets are chosen to maximise toughness, because she gets splattered a lot - although I am finding as my movement gets a little more dextrous, I get killed a little less. Some days are diamonds, some days are Artje-shaped smears on the ground. 

I am happy with her armour, but am still upgrading to ascended trinkets, which are mostly chosen to maximise healing and toughness and power when I can get it.

Her traits and skills were chosen to help her move fast across The Mists, revive allies when she can, and hit hard when she has to, and are calculated by Guildhead in the graphic to the right. Her trait lines focus on Marksmanship, Skirmishing, Wilderness Survival and Beast Mastery, because that was the combination I came up with to play the way I like to play. For example, I wanted my pet to be able to revive me (take some of the load off Ship :-D), so I took a little from the offensive traits to have that.

Artje primarily uses Entangle and Barrage to finish an argument, which means she can get on top of keep and tower hassles fast, and often (though not always) assist in the field. The trick is to get her where she can do damage fast, because it's very easy for her to get killed on the way.

 One Of Us Is The Killer - The Dillinger Escape Plan

she moves abstract just like a shadow dancing on the edge
like a storm cloud passing overhead
effortless and free
as the hours rush by
through her I can sense the end of time
there's no way this can forever shine
make the sun not rise
in the air we tried to be
but you shot your arrow through me
now one of us must die
but the killer won't survive
she moves abstract just like a shadow dancing on the edge
like a storm cloud passing overhead
hypnotizing me
as the hours rush by
through her I can sense the end of time
stretch into eternity divine
and the sun won't rise
in the air we tried to be
but you shot your arrow through me
now one of us must die
and the killer won't survive

Man Down Part 1

Guild Wars 2 has different aspects for different players. Some people spend all their time in Player vs Environment mode, completing a personalised quest and pursuing the "Living Story" new content which is introduced every two weeks.

Some like to farm materials, either to trade on the open marketplace, or to contribute to the ridiculously long list of requirements to make a legendary weapon.

Some like to battle it out, round after round, in the Player vs Player arenas.

I like to play World vs World vs World. WvW pits our host server (Tarnished Coast, in my case) against a revolving roster of other servers. The contest goes over a week, and if we win, we generate bonuses for players on our server across the game. We also get to play server teams from a higher tier. If we lose, we stay at the same tier, or if we lose a couple of weeks in a row, we move down to a lower tier.

climbing the stairs to attack a keep in
Guild Wars2's World vs World

The game involves battling across one of four maps. Each server has a home map, and there is a no man's land - the Eternal Battlegrounds - where all three servers have a presence. The idea briefly, is to block supply to the other teams, then capture and hold their assets (supply camps, towers and keeps). ArenaNet have recently introduced a "twist" where you can acquire a boost for your server by capturing three of four properties in the centre of the map.

I have levelled two characters up to the highest level of the game by playing them in WvW from around level 20. It was hard work, frustrating and even rage-inducing, but I like the way it's shaped my characters. They are battle-hard and hardy. I get slaughtered by live players at a really high rate. But I can take out a supply camp of NPCs on my own, and as someone who has always struggled in situations requiring strategic planning, I find it really fun to learn how my aspect of the game is won.

I'm also enchanted by the machinations surrounding the role of commanders.

Commanders don't get elected or win their title. They just buy it, and it doesn't come with much for the price. They might be supported in their bid to command by a guild, but I am not part of a large guild and am guessing at that. Anyone can be a commander. But of course, not everyone can be a good commander, one who can draw a zerg (a small army of militia) and roll across the map capturing everything in sight, ensuring kills and loot for all and a general feeling of having succeeded as a team. Watching commanders come and go from the rough-and-tumble of WvW, and trying to assess their goals and performance, is absolutely fascinating to someone like me, who is interested in leadership and motivation.

 A good WvW commander is a rock star. And they are welcomed to the map, and followed, and obeyed as if they were a rockstar. Many times my partner and I have hit the WvW map and exclaimed with glee when one of our favourite commanders is "tagged up" and visible on the map. We will swap maps to follow a commander we admire. And we reward commanders who've been effective leaders.

Last night my favourite commander messaged me to tell me he'd left our server. He explained his reasons, and they are legitimate complaints. Our server has suffered from an inexplicable malaise over the past two months. The Living Story content is both lucrative and engaging, so a lot of our fighters have wandered off to play that. We're good fighters, we're easily at the top of the tier we're in - but we're easily at the bottom of the tier above us. So we keep being assigned to the upper tier, and we lose, which is really demoralising. Commanders won't put on their tag, but when they do, map chat is critical and demoralising.

amazing new content is added every two weeks now,
and is lucrative and compelling for many players

Favourite commander's opinion is that guilds are leaving TC server, and there's little hope that the situation will improve. So he took his rockstar ass off to another server, where I hope he regains joy in his game. He's a good leader, able to asses a situation and respond to it quickly, without losing sight of the bigger picture. He teaches as he goes, he's patient and mostly not abusive (though guys, really, you need to put some thought into this mumble thing. We can hear you, you know). He is very very good at his game and he is entitled to enjoy playing it.

This is a tl;dnr post right now, so I am going to break it, and go back to it soon. Because as regular readers will know, I am all about my community, and my community of rag tag militia is in trouble. I want to think about the reasons we lost a good man, and ways we can stop it happening again.

Artje psyching to join battle

Venus vs Mars?

Artje with Aidan, who, just for the record, would
NEVER say something casually offensive

Artje Orestes is my new Guild Wars 2 character, and I love her very much. Artje is a human, an orphaned noblewoman who believes in fighting for her community and has joined the Vigil to live out her moral commitment to that cause.

I have another post in mind (pity they're always "in mind" and not "on the interwebs", huh?) where I tell you how I built Artje and what I love about her, and maybe just discuss what it's like to be a fully-formed human who just discovered gaming. But today Artje has a problem, and that's what brought us here, to writing a post.

Artje has been spending most of her time in World vs World, the part of Guild Wars 2 where server is pitted against server to fight over territory in a running battle of castles and keeps, sieges and skirmishes. I love it, for me, it's a perfect combination of cracking skulls and deploying strategy. I don't really get half of it, and that's a fact, but I love it, and spend part of every day there. Sometimes very large parts of every day.

After some weeks of having Mumble ready to go, I finally signed up and started listening in. Mumble is an independent voice server, widely used in the MMORPG community because it allows players to communicate using speech. Obviously it's much more fun to play running and fighting games when you don't have to stop and type, and it's immensely useful for teams who spend their time in running battle.

Not much socialising goes on in the mumble channel. There are various "rooms", and I have no idea what goes on in them, but in the war rooms, the talk is all about the battle. I don't speak, I don't even really know these guys, but I do like having access to their plans. And I want to emphasise that the use of the service is a privilege, someone pays for these rooms and allows us to access them - though it's fair to note that in WvW, at least, you are often harangued to "get on mumble" to increase the team's effectiveness.

So tonight Arenanet released new content, and of course *eye roll* it had to be patched, and we were all thrown out of the game while the patch was installed. Mumble is still going though, and all my favourite commanders, the rockstars of Guild Wars 2, suddenly find themselves with downtime. I have no doubt they talked about the stuff they talk about any time they're not commanding. They just did it with an audience.

They talked about some guy who got arrested making bath salt drugs. He'd heard that it sent women into a sexual frenzy. "Good on him," said the other Commanders. Two or three of them said it, all at once, so it was their natural reaction. The conversation moved on.

What? Ugh. Okay. It happens. Guys talk like this, apparently. I am no delicate and unique rosebud, I have worked and lived in the kind of environments where this kind of talk would be tame. It makes me want to shout, and insist that they think about what they just said, and tell me if they really think that's okay. Instead, I quietly closed the channel and took a break to get some chores done in rl. 

I'm going to go back, of course, I really love this game. And I am going to have to listen in on the mumble channel again, despite the fact that every time these guys talk now, I know they're "that kind of guy".

I'm also struck by the notion that I don't normally find myself in this situation any more. I took "be the change you want to see in the world" fairly literally, and I created environments, online and off, where that kind of talk would not go unchallenged. It's a bit frustrating to find myself here, and I haven't yet decided what I can do about it.