The Grimloch Tribune

 
LEAD STORY – Local Law Destroys Lich

In local news Pinewood was attacked by an unidentified man who was seemingly unaffected by any of the villager's attacks. This man stormed through the town hacking down locals like a famer during a wheat harvest.  With eerie green eyes he raised all those he defeated and bid them to his side.

Locals hid out of terror, one-man reported, “Watching them spread through town was like watching a wild fire spread, we were all terrified and couldn't do a thing to prevent its destruction. We thought for sure we would all be burned up in this madman’s rampage until we saw they arrived."

At this time over the horizon Warlord Jaha and a few of his T.H.U.G.S and soldiers of Grimloch were out on a scouting patrol making sure the borders were secure.

Warlord Jaha, Sir Rhode, XT, Sir CENSORED, Syruss, and Grott swooped down over the hill engaging the undead in a whirlwind of terror. Bones clashed with steel, undead fell upon the ground in a row leading up to the undead master. The Lich's powers were immense but Grimloch was swift to take action. They dismantled the creature as he let out a hellacious cry, a sentence that rocked the citizens to their core.

“We are coming, you cannot stop the *Blechhs*” his sentence cut short as his head was cut off, Grimloch would not allow him to spread anymore fear.


LOCAL BUISNESS-  KARMHA Creations Banner Debut  at Feast of Creathorne

As you walk through the lands of Realms you may have noticed it getting a lot prettier, now I know what you are thinking but it's not just the weather. It's Karmha spreading her wears and garbing the lands.

Some of you may have noticed her Banners, or her award winning garb from QoH, maybe you are one of the Nations she has made tabards for.  Perhaps you were at Knights of the Eternal Flame Tournaments this year and saw the banner she entered for the competition.

Wherever you have seen her wares there is no arguing the skills she has acquired.  She has provided tabards for such nations as Grimloch, Folkestone, Ashenmark, Kalithnos, and Rhiassa; as well as the Knights of the Blue Rose. She has also done belt favors and banners for most of the aforementioned nations and now she is passing that knowledge on to the rest of the realms.

So this Saturday at Feast of Creathorne for the low price of ten gold you will get not only a great session of instruction on how to make a personal heraldry banner, but all the stencils and materials to do it.

So if you ever wanted to learn how to make things prettier for these lands, or you simply just wanted a personal banner to fly as you run into battle; stop on by Feast of Creathorne to experience banner making from the Sizzling Seamlessly Selfless Seamstress.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit

Last Month, the Extremely Grotty corporation "Hipsters and Cool Guy Aficionado’s” began selling a line of fragrances called ALIBI designed for men who need excuses when coming home late. For example, as men come through the door, they could splash on "I Was Working Late" (to smell of coffee and cigarettes) or "An Undead Attacked" (evoking coagulated blood, burned flesh, and grease).

Grott was quoted saying “Hey everyman is entitled to their secrets and we are happy to help keep them”

NO WALK IN THE PARK a K-9 problem.

Like many cities  Compton, Grimloch, has a dog-litter problem that has proved unsolvable, as citizens continue to ignore pleas to pick up after their dogs and keep sidewalks clean. Finally, city officials designed a successful program (announced in December): a doggie-bag lottery. Anyone handing in a bag of dog litter would get a ticket (one ticket per bag) to a drawing with prizes ranging up to pieces of gold worth the equivalent of the weight of the bag. (Citizens would be on the honor system as to whether the "litter" in the bag came from a dog or from another source.)

Warlord Jaha was quoted as being opposed to this system:

“ I believe some of our petitioners are taking their title of Dog of Grimloch too seriously and APPARENTLY some of our seasoned members are helping perpetuate that false stereotype. I want it on record saying I am opposed to anybody not actually a dog (of the animal variety) publically defecating, it is unsanitary and just plain gross.”

Upcoming Order of the List Points

If you are eagerly trying to top yourself off early with Order of the List points so that you can compete in that elite tourney at the end of the year then be sure to hit Feast of Creathorne this weekend and start racking up points.

Once again it is points season and they are already off and running. So if you have missed the first couple of qualifying tourneys do not be discouraged there are many more to come.

Please speak with Warlord Jaha, Lord Temorse, Sir Rohde, or Sir CENSORED if you want your tourneys to count for Order of the List Points.

Well that’s it for this edition; I am investigative reporter Syruss signing off saying “Stay Classy Realms.”

Question of the Week - 36

Do you think there are too many spells in our system or should there be more?

Happenings on the Emerald Path

A news and announcements section of what Realms players are doing outside of the Realms. If you know of any news feel free to let us know at aearlegray@gmail.com

Sam, Hannah and Angela

Take an opportunity to get some culture and see some of our own on stage at this weekend.  New Voices, a festival of plays written by members of the WPI community opened last night.  There will be additional performances tonight and tomorrow (4/14 & 4/15) at 7 PM at the Little Theater.  Realmsies who are acting include Hannah "Devyn" Brown, Sam "Ezra" Teatum, and Angela "Monique" Wood who will be performing as dancing zombies in "Land of the Living...Living?", Alex "Tarun" Gorowara who is a reporter in "Dora's Disclosure", and Owen "Balthazar" West who is the mailman in "The Golden Apple".  Rhiannon "Tria" Chiacchiaro is Stage Manager/Assistant Director for "The Golden Apple", Owen "Balthazar" West is the festival stage manager, and Ryan "Orion" Welch is on the stage crew.  This event is FREE!! For more information and to reserve tickets visit their website.

Congratulations to Nate "Kahlenar" Soule who has been promoted to Supervisor at FedEx Freight.  Sadly, this mean he won't be at as many practices or Friday events, but it is a great opportunity for him and we wish him luck on the next stage of his professional career.

Matt "Cecil" Brenner, veteran Realms player (and current King of Chimeron), doesn't limit his gaming to realms.  He also is an experienced Dungeon Master who has been shares his wisdom in his blog, Blood, Sweat and Dice. While the focus of this website are his insights on table top gaming, much of the content including an excellent multi part post, "The Friendly NPC", have information that is applicable in our LARP world as well. 

Congratulations to Janna "Iawen" Oakfellow-Pushee and Ian "Bright" Pushee.  Their daughter Danielle Aisling Pushee was born at 11:35 PM on April 3rd and weighed 7lbs, 1/2oz.

Untitled by Diana "Kiira" LaPierre

In this spot is where I’ll wake 

But first, a spade the ground will break

The shovel grabs another clump

Till down I go with a thump

Layer by layer, they build my tomb

But for me, it is a womb

They mourn for me, lost so young

A funeral hymn will be sung

Quietly, I lay inside

Now, to time I will abide

To the dirt I will succumb

A funeral beat they will drum

In this grave I sit and wait

But for them, it’s far too late

Not seeing that my corpse was riddled

A funeral tune will be fiddled

The day is shone upon my cross

The people weep for their loss

Now the funeral song is done

But my song has just begun

The sun has fallen from the sky

And so begins my lullaby

Awakening with such a thirst

My body lives, my soul is cursed         

I’ve broken through the wood and dirt

Hands show of pain but do not hurt

Can’t take in air, yet still I thrive

Never have I felt more alive

The smell of blood rings in the air

The sweet sound I follow, but to where?

Ah, it’s such a beauteous sight

A nourishing bosom, my first bite

A harmony the tune becomes

Her shrieks delightful to my drums

As our sounds combine to one

I know that I’ll not miss the sun

The lifeless husk falls to the ground

Curdling screams had drowned the sound

A chorus had begun to rise

Bent upon my gruesome demise

Circling from every angle

My exit they began to strangle

Three had fallen to my might

Encore! I cried as they grab me tight

Alas, my ballad ends bitter sweet

A stake, a chop, and a crossed street

Ensuring I was truly slain

To ever end my unholy reign

But that night I would never trade

For longer life or treasures paid

As a god among men I had been

Would that I could do it over again

You're a Crappy Fighter by Mike "Panther" Palumbo

Photo by Metron

Recently I went to a small practice and I fought with a newbie, and despite being old and out of shape, I beat him every time. I don’t say this to toot my own horn, but rather to explain something that happened next. He said he needed a break, and sixty seconds later he was off fighting his buddy. He seemed to be having more fun, and I have no evidence that he stopped fighting me because he wasn’t winning, but the fact is that some people do this:

They avoid fighting people they think are going to beat them (probably because it’s not fun to get beat).

So, it reminded me of the three rules I lived by when I was learning to fight, and still live by as I try to maintain what level of skill I’ve acquired. Rob Riley aka Rob Scarlett started me off on these rules and over time we developed the ideas and preached them at practices and to our newbies for years. As I get older and my capabilities wane, I feel the urge to pass them on to any who would listen.

For the duration of this article I will refer to lesser-experienced fighters as a Crappy Fighters, and use the term Great Fighters to refer to those who have more skill than the Crappy Fighters. It really doesn’t matter how Great or Crappy the fighters are, as long as there is a significant disparity between them. I do this for the benefit of Crappy Fighters everywhere; the sooner you get over it, and admit that you are a crappy fighter, the sooner you can learn something.

But we’ll get to rule three soon enough, let’s start at the beginning:

1. Don’t use big weapons.

They only make you think you are a better fighter than you really are.  It’s fine to learn how to use a big weapon, but if it’s the only weapon you use, then you will never build the skills you need to be a Great Fighter.  It becomes a crutch that you lean on to hide the lack of those skills. There is more margin for error the longer the weapon is, and if your opponents are always using shorter weapons than you, well now you’re just taking the easy road. There will be no advancement of skill for you. They are extremely useful tools in melee and bridge battles, but the actual fighting technique required to wait for someone who’s not looking and stick them from a safe distance is next to nothing. Conversely, dagger fighting leaves no room for error. It’s all in how you move your body, but there is no weapon technique involved. Single short actually provides the bests of both, very little room for error, combined with a moderate amount of weapon technique. Being an expert at single short makes you almost instantly capable, if not better than average with just about anything else.

2. Give strength to your weaknesses.

By that I mean practice what you are bad at. If you are really good with the right arm, then practice with the left. Odds are pretty good that you will lose the right arm in some fights, if the left never gets any practice it won’t be up to the task. In that case, your opponent only has to take the one arm to beat you, the other arm is a foregone conclusion. Why give them that edge?

If you don’t fight well against shields, make it a point to practice against them. You will only be better for it. Other competent fighters will notice when you have a glaring deficit. They’ll pick up a shield when they have to line up against you. Why make it that easy for them? If you are really game, find someone who doesn’t believe in rule number one and fight them over and over. Learn how to defeat a pikeman or 6’6 fighter with your shorter combination and you will truly learn something. It’s not easy, but the skills you will gain in timing, distance, judgment, and speed will aid you against any combination.

Everyone has that one move that works for them, and they usually lead with it. But at practice, I recommend this: don’t use your go-to move right away. Instead, practice new techniques or ones you aren’t comfortable with. Yeah you’ll mess it up a lot, and lose limbs or whole fights because of it, but you’ll always have the go-to moves to fall back on when it counts, and practice is for just that, practice. If you do this enough, those awkward uncomfortable moves will get more natural, and eventually you’ll have a whole toolbox full of moves to choose from. It makes you less predictable, and other Great Fighters learn very quickly if you always use the same shot right out of the gate.

And now the most important rule of the three, if you want to be a Great Fighter…

3. Fight Great Fighters every chance you get.

If all you ever fight are Crappy Fighters, then the best you will ever be is someone who can beat Crappy Fighters. You will never rise above that if you don’t challenge yourself.  Why limit yourself? If you fight Great Fighters, then you will eventually become a Great Fighter.

This rule is not an easy one to follow. If you make the decision to leave behind the comfort of duking it out with other Crappy Fighters, and instead seek out sessions with Great Fighters, be prepared for the most humbling experience of your life, because you just signed up for beating after beating after beating.  You may lose fourteen times in a row or more (that’s an in-joke, ask me about it sometime). It’s demoralizing, it’s grueling, and it’s hard to see the value in losing so often, but despite your seeming lack of progress, your brain and your reflexes are learning things you don’t even realize. And while you may not beat the competent fighter even once in your session, when you return to fight the Crappy Fighters that you used to feel equal to, suddenly you are much faster than them, much better than them, they seem to move in slow motion. You seem to be able to see what they are going to do, before they do it. Effectively, you stepped up and you didn’t even know it.

A Great Fighter will rarely, if ever, reject your request to fight.  They may only fight a few fights and move on, because they too are constantly looking for a challenge to increase their skill. Or they may take the opportunity to fight as long as you are willing. But one thing’s for sure: they like to fight. And not only will they accept your challenge, but when they leave you or even during your bouts, they are likely to give you some tips and pointers regarding what you are doing wrong, or how they are talking advantage of your weaknesses. This is invaluable information. Let me repeat that. This is invaluable information. You are not going to get it from fighting Crappy Fighters, the one you beat can’t tell you for obvious reasons, and the ones who do beat you simply don’t have the awareness yet to identify what you are doing wrong, they’re still focused on their own skills, crappy as they are.

I could go on about this rule in so many ways, but the best way I’ve discovered to explain it is with an analogy. Wrestling? MMA? Ancient Samurai secret?  No.

Fleas.

That’s right. Fleas.

Fleas are incredible learners, despite what you may have heard about the myth of the flea circus. Fleas jump. They jump unbelievably high for their relative size.

But if you put them in a jar with a top on it, first they will jump up and hit the top over and over again. But eventually they realize this hurts, they don’t like it, and they adjust. The fleas continue to jump, but they no longer jump high enough to hit the top.

Then you can take the top off and though the fleas continue to jump, they won't jump out of the jar. They won't jump out because they can't. They have conditioned themselves to jump just so high. Once they have conditioned themselves to jump just so high, that's all they can ever do. After they’ve restricted themselves, they think they are doing all they can do.

Don’t be a flea.

Don’t restrict yourself or you’ll never reach full potential. Don’t train yourself to limit how high you can jump. Don’t be a flea.

In case you are wondering, I don’t consider myself a Great Fighter, the minute you do that, you cease to learn. We’re all crappy fighters, as I said, the sooner you admit that, the sooner you can learn something. The trick is to seek out fighters better than you. Don’t fear them…fight them.

Why I Want to Go- We Got Your Back

We Got Your Back: Tournaments for a good cause

April 14, 2012 (Saturday 12pm) - April 14, 2012 (Saturday 6pm)

This looks to be a solid tourney event. With the weather being nice of late it will be nice to stretch our legs in the sun and fresh air. This will be a good way to dust off those winter blahs. There will be single tourneys which will be tracked by the Order of the List (so get your points early!) as well as some team fights.

As part of the event name mentions, this tournament is for a good cause. The goal is to raise funds to buy backpacks for underprivileged youths. In fact, in lieu of the event admission price you can bring in a new backpack, but if you do pay with cash you can know that the proceeds from the event will be going to the charity 'We got your Back'.

Question of the Week - 35

Where did your character's name come from?