Ho-ly Shit (i.e. My current working story: aka My fanfiction: aka The Intrepid Adventures of Adenine and Kehanni (working title))

The relevant facts begin with the lineage of Victor Leonin. Victor Leonin was one of the greatest paladins to ever serve in the Alliance military. He was well-known as an able warrior, a cunning general and a charismatic leader. But after his return to Stormwind from war, a few under his command began contemplating a split away from the Alliance military, forming their own organization away from the seedy politicking of Stormwind. To stave off this cleft, the Leonin Lions were formed, to appease the militant right wing of the Alliance military, the Lions were formed with the stated duty to protect and guard Jaina Theramore. But, since Jaina did not actually need protecting, this served as only a premise to excuse them from accountability to regular Alliance laws. Such it was that the Leonin Lions were formed.

From there, Victor had three sons: the eldest, Marcus; the middle child, Francis, and the youngest, Richard. The eldest, Marcus was born of Victor’s first wife. Absent of his mother’s traits, he grew up in the stead and shadow of his father’s accomplishments, eventually rising to establish his own name as a daring and stalwart warrior, a prescient leader of his own strictly devout military unit. The middle child, Francis was born of Victor’s second wife, a senator. She was originally assigned as the liason between the Leonin’s brigade and the Alliance senate, and it was ultimately she who was instrumental in garnering the necessary political impetus to facilitate the formation of the Leonin Lions. Left in Stormwind as his father fought off with his organization, Francis studied through the university system in Stormwind, gathering a sizeable presence and understanding of the politics of Stormwind’s governing Senate body. The last child, Richard, was born sometime after both Francis and Marcus. At the time of Richard’s birth, Marcus and Francis were already well into their respective careers as militant religious leader and politician respectively. Richard’s mother was quiet, soft spoken, and died in childbirth. Accordingly, of the three children Richard was the only one reared by his father, at this point a tired, old, beaten man whose views on his preceding exploits had withered into hollow warnings to keep away from the field of battle and an absolute faith in religion. This lasted until Richard was eight, when Victor had a stroke and was paralyzed from the waist down and was rendered unable to speak. In the year that his father hung onto life, Richard picked up on magic tricks to try and keep his father entertained. A year later Victor died and Richard was passed along from guardian to guardian within the Leonin Lion’s estates, his brothers effectively garnering custody over his rearing.

Several years later, at the age of 21, Richard storms out of the Leonin household. His brother Marcus controls every aspect of his life, forcing him to stay in the Leonin Lions, dictating who he can and cannot see, and constantly berating him with his responsibility to uphold the virtue of the Leonin Lions. The final straw comes when Marcus denigrates Richard’s magic abilities, the only thing over which he has ever had any control. In the passing years, Richard has bounced around the entirety of Stormwind, going wherever his handler says he should go. Be it school, military, trade occupations or other things, Richard has proven to be weak-spirited, mild-mannered, and timid to the point of milkishness. The only thing that he has pride in as his only hobby is an amateur capacity for card tricks. He kept up with his magic abilities since his childhood, learning more tricks and card illusions from the various orphans at the Stormwind orphanage most of whom were previous street urchins. He performs occasionally for them as he sees fit, and for few other people. His life is reclusive and small, but he identifies with his magic. Such that it is that when his brother insults that which should not be insulted, he storms out of the house and resolves to never again set foot in that house, walking off into the distance.

He initially intended to rush to Goldshire, find a whore, and have sex with her to defy his brother’s puritan sensibilities. Unfortunately he decided to walk from Stormwind, so this takes several hours. He heads to Stormwind where he meets Lily. Upon discovering that she is a thief, and she discovering he is a magician, they fall in love. This relationship continues for several months until his brother Marcus discovers what he has been up to, and yells the shit out of Richard.

ACTUAL BEGINNING OF STORY

The story begins with the Goldshire burning down into the ground. Locke – the goblin proprietor of the establishment, escapes with Flo – eldest whore and the rest of the girls into the woods. Marcus has sent men to burn down the Goldshire inn and everyone inside.

The morning after, Adenine and Kehanni are on their way to the Goldshire when they discover it has been burned down. They find and meet up with Locke and co, and converse on what happens, Locke sends them back to the Goldshire to pick up a few important missing things for him

Meanwhile, a rider informs Francis that Marcus’s brigade of men have failed at their task. Francis pulls out his pre-written order to get his own specialized brigade of men to go find them and sends it out.

Adenine and Kehanni are at the Goldshire when riders rush by, heading towards Locke and co. They run back to the rescue.

The riders round up all the girls and pick out the girl Lily in particular. She is handed off to specialized riders and the remaining riders then proceed to attempt to kill the girls. Adenine and Kehanni stave them off, killing a good number of the guards and saving the group. It is mentioned that Lily was taken off to Stormwind so Adenine and Kehanni head off to try and infiltrate Stormwind with Adenine’s disguise spell.

Upon infiltrating Stormwind, Adenine searches for information in a magic store, but only comes out with new spells instead. Kehanni interrogates a nearby guard after spying horses of a familiar insignia going into the stables. After he provides her the necessary information, she kills him. Adenine and Kehanni meet up again, but are accosted by local guards because Kehanni refuses to comply with an order to put away her Felhunter. When the guard attempts to arrest her, she stabs him through the head and blows their cover.

Adenine and Kehanni fight their way out of Stormwind, then decide that they should meet up with their respective contacts for information in Undercity.

As they are doing so, Lily has been shipped off to a prison ship, which is headed for Brigston prison, which is off the coast of Silverpine. On the trip there she reminisces about her relationship with Richard.

A day after Lily leaves, Richard finally speaks up and demands his brothers to let him go talk to Lily. Francis acquiesces and Richard is able to reach land the same night that Lily is transferred to the prison.

Adenine and Kehanni arrive in Undercity and contact their respective contacts. Adenine goes to Grimcow, an ex-boyfriend. Kehanni goes to Varelse, a drug addict pseudo-friend whose drug habit she is enabling. They stay the night in Grimcow’s room, and in the morning they are introduced to Simurgh and Georgiana, mercenaries that Grimcow found for them. They head off for Brigston prison to break Lily out of jail.

The night that Adenine, Kehanni and co. arrive at Brigston, Lily has been transferred there in the morning. Richard is riding to the prison, and Adenine Kehanni and co are transferring there as well. They are able to easily infiltrate the prison, reaching Lily just in time to listen in on her and Richard arguing over how he ruined her life. They attempt to break her out, but Simurgh blows their cover when he has a panic attack due to the summoned guard dogs. The group fights their way out of the prison building and Georgiana destroys the entire prison structure with goblin explosives and napalm as they exit.

They escape back to Goldshire, planning their next reconnaissance on the Leonin Lion building, to see if they can get any information that could get the heat off their trail. Adenine, Kehanni and Simurgh head to the Leonin house. As Adenine and Kehanni watch, Richard argues with Marcus. As they attempt to leave, Adenine blows their cover, and Marcus shatters the glass roof sending them crashing down below. The artery in Kehanni’s arm is gashed open by a large shard of glass. Adenine cauterizes it as Marcus busies himself putting on his armor. Kehanni sinks into the protection of her voidwalker and Adenine and Marcus fight. Adenine manages to wound Marcus but overestimates the gravity of the wound and is nearly killed when Kehanni transfers the voidwalker protection to her and lifetaps her own dead arm to regain lost energy, causing permanent tissue damage to her wounded arm. She and Marcus fight, Marcus overwhelms her abilities, and he is about to kill her when Simurgh stabs him in the back of the head, mistakenly assuming he was a guard as Adenine and Kehanni had instructed him to kill any guards that came nearby.

Adenine blacks out, we transfer back to the Goldshire. A large part is held to celebrate Adenine waking up. During the party Locke informs them that the Goldshire is being rebuilt at all because he made a deal with the steamwheedle cartel and francis that they would have to come and visit him in Stormwind.

The following morning they go back to Stormwind, expecting death. Francis sits them down and explains that he will lift the death threats against theirs and their friend’s heads because he could not kill his brother to assume power, but they have done him a favor by allowing him to do so. He lets them go, he calls Richard in, allows Richard to go free to do as he pleases.

Adenine and Kehanni exit from Goldshire. Richard comes back to the inn to apologize to Lily. End story.

Viet is not entirely drunk

Today I awoke and discovered I was depressed. Here is how it happened. I woke up, as per usual and got out of bed. Checked how quickly my illegal download of Lost Planet: Colonies had progressed, then moved over into various other things. Games are a constant part of my world and I have an overabundance of games that I will never spend any full amount of time on. As soon as I wrote that I flipped over to a different pane and opened up my friend’s facebook, Lauren’s facebook. As I had a crush on Lauren that I’m sure she knew about but she’s how she is and we haven’t talked since she graduated last year. She is how she is means that she’s lovely and popular and I was an oddball run-in kid all.

Though good call on keeping your damn mouth shut for once, good call past Viet. Good decision for once. Good gut instinct.

Anyhow. Is this it? Sit around on a fat ass, house-delivered pizza and videogames and jack-all?

And Batman? While great, is this it?
‘
God I’m depressed. Bubbles.

Bottles of Bubbles, all to be sent to Talisa. Haven’t gotten it together. Her birthday was about a week ago now.

Hurm.

I don’t know where to go. Too unhappy with current situation but too scared to move.


Fuck all man.

On my relationship with the group dynamic.

Spurred by Roger Ebert's post on matters Alcoholics Anonymous, I began to wonder about my own relationship with various provably addictive substances and why exactly it is that I've avoided them.

I've avoided them for any number of reasons: laziness, lack of commitment to actively taking something. Shame perhaps. When I speak of chemically addictive substances I mean substances that produce an active and irreversible (at least naturally) chemical addiction to a substance. This includes but is not limited to nicotene, cocaine, heroin. But, after all, Ebert was posting about alcohol, so let's start there.

It's worth mentioning I was almost absolutely certain that by the time I was 21 at least I'd be drinking myself into a miserable stupor on a regular basis. Nobody made this conclusion for me, I predicted such a future for myself. I am a notoriously poor judge of what positive outcomes will arise in my future and this was simply a manifestation of that, but, it was grounded in more factual grounds than other considerations of emotions and angst or otherwise. I was consistently depressed, I lost myself into obsessions, and I figured it was only a matter of time where once I got hooked into something, I wouldn't let go.

Few problems:

You do not think about your ADD when you have ADD but clearly I underestimated the effects of ADD on me (rhyming intentional). Even though I did lose myself into obsessive quandries over various escapist phenomena, I flipped. Constantly. Batted through channels, interest, videogames picked up and dropped in th eflick of the hat. Furthermore drugs and chemical addictions reeked of this miserable and awful thing that I did, and still do immensely despise: and that is obligation.

Nothing is fixed in the world, I prefer my world with as many possibilities and chances to adapt as possible. So anything that removes that choice, I dislike. I like being able to flip around.

But by the same token this affects my ability to work in a group dynamic. I do like people, I love people, the presence of people is a joy and their interactions form the greater human canvas by which I observe and inform everything I do with. That said, working with them can ve tiresome. After all, why do things to make everyone happy when you could just make it right? Ultimately it all comes down to a lack of respect for anyone' sopinion other than my own when it comes to matters i care about. I meana, wow I'm just making myself sound like an asshole.

Point is: I prefer working alone. More than any depression, angst or suicidal thoughts (and there have been more than one) I value agency. You have to keep your options open, it's the only way to be adaptable. By definition of course.


Well this was a fun meander. Let's do this again sometime.

-Viet

Beauty

I forget what beauty is when I play videogames. Beuaty lies within the details, the small nuances and curls of a fig leaf as the light plays in soft lilting forms against the transparent green whispers of its fibers, tracing shadows soft and gentle on its form. Beauty lies within the details, be it objects, people, scenery.

Videogames, for all their artistry, so often amount to little more than a short jaunt through these universes. They are ultimately unconcerned with details, this is a world where life is concerned with the sword and fist.

the souls of men are purchased in dollars