Fitness Friday 2

Today my weight was 185.5
My exercises this week have been limited to walking at the pool.

Next week I start school again. As I am typing this my fellow guard and I are talking about the fitness classes available through the University Rec Center.  I also want to start doing the slimfast thing again. Since I will have class at 9:30 every day and I hate getting up any earlier than is absolutely necessary that will help me get a breakfast and hopefully lose some weight. It has worked somewhat for me in the past so I think it should again.

Also with school starting hopefully I will be biking a little more because it usually ends up being more convenient than parking on campus.  Even when I am not biking there aren't many good lots that are close to where I will be taking classes so I expect I will be getting some exercise from walking.

My goal for next week is 184. Lets do this.

Enasan

This was the first wizard I ever played in D and D this story refers a lot to the setting as this character came from the native people of the prime world we were on. So again lots of thanks to Josh Sterns (author of Winter's Riddle)

I also just remembered this was the other character that saved the evil priest. 
Enasan
They would bring back books. Those braves who came back at all. They would take them to the treasure pile as offerings to Collu'qan. Later, Enasan would sneak out and take the books one at a time. The dragon and his hero never seemed to mind.

She spent months, sometimes years on a work, deciphering the tomes little by little from the time she was young. She hid her studies from everyone, her parents, her elders, the chief, until the day she practiced her first spell. She didn’t realize just how loud the shout would be.

She spent the next three days in the isolation lodge. Finally the decision was made that if Enasan gave up her pursuit of forbidden knowledge from the Time of Nightmares she would be allowed to stay. Yet knowledge was the only joy she had, so she left to make her way through the mysteries.

She spent her first days sneaking into the ruins across the lake. Managing to barely survive she amassed enough knowledge to learn more spells and there she also found even more texts had on healing arts unknown to her people. When she had found as many spells as she could she studied the medical texts until she was an expert in the art.

After learning all she could from the ghostly ruins she turned to the forest and studied the creatures there. One day while watching some giant beetles a group of strange people attacked them. The group fought bravely but Enasan felt she had to step in. Using the first spell she learned she made the sound of the Rocs which hunted across the valley. Hearing the cry the beetles ran off.
Finding that the outsiders wished to meet the Strange One in the tower, she decided to follow them. The chance to learn was always the driving force in her life.

Florentine Ov'Cyrus

Florentine was my next character. Her life was so short that her history wasn't written until after she had died. But there was one aspect that made some in the party groan and others loved, she was Persephone's sister. A funny aspect of this story is that some people, who didn't know me well, noticed I was upset. They thought that Florentine (who everyone called Persephone Junior) was the cause. I can't remember what I was upset about but I was all about making new characters especially when my characters died in weird ways so yeah, that wasn't the deal.

Also this refers to another character who was played by someone who has now become a great friend (cause he is such a cool guy.) Since our characters entered at the same time we decided we were pulling the same scheme in Sigil, cannot for the life of me remember what the scheme was.

Florentine Ov’Cyrus
“There are never enough Berks in sigil,” Florentine remembered her father’s favorite phrase. “Fresh meat abounds there but you aren’t ready to tell the difference.”

The memory flashed before her eyes. Cyrus grabbing a purse off the elderly woman walking past. Florentine watched in awe. She had been training in masteries of 12 chimes with her father. She could pull something out of almost any pocket in almost any normal garment but she had not even begun to master the casual way her father could walk past an unsuspecting mark. He said having a seven year old with him helped, though she doubted her father’s appearance could ever be looked at without suspicions. He still had both his wings and an eight foot tall tiefling even in Sigil was an intimidating sight.

As her life bled from her Florentine remembered a later point. “The lawful plains have easier marks but the punishments for getting caught are worse. Remember Persephone?”

Florentine laughed “well primes are easy marks too right?”

“If your sister was interested in profit she may have a chance there. Though it was probably some barren place full of barbarians. Those poor barbarians.”

Now as Florentine was being dragged away from those very barbarians her last flash of memory was sitting around the fire with her dad before running off to start her own adventures that brought her to her partnership with Nuqyryn and led her to this place. She remembered her father’s last piece of advice.

“My daughter you are most like me and therefore my favorite so I will give you my most important advice.” As her consciousness fully left her she could hear in her head the last words from her father.
“Never get killed and dragged off by skeletons to their master.”

Fitness Friday 1

     I recently was told by my doctor that I need to lose weight. This is really a scary thing to hear from your doctor. For me its because I have been waiting for it for a little while.  I've been seeing myself get fatter and fatter and I need to reverse the process.  But when you live alone and don't like to cook that much this can be a tall order.
     This is something that I can tell needs to happen.  I have hypertension mostly from genetics but this doesn't help. I have had extreme problems with anxiety (not as much now but it happens.) I deal with depression.  Lastly there is a history with heart disease in my family. All of these things can be helped by exercising more and eating better.
     The thing is I have almost no excuse not to be exercising more.  I live within walking distance, or at least biking distance of my work and school (which happen to be in the same place.)  I work at the campus rec center.  Heck I live in one of the flattest cities ever I could bike anywhere. It would certainly save on gas.
     So I figure why not use the blog as a way to keep myself accountable.  Maybe I can post updates on my weight loss and exercise regime.  I could do it weekly.  Fitness Fridays would be a nice way to do it. Heck it would up my buffer quite a bit. It wouldn't take a lot of effort to write.

     So that is what this is my first Fitness Friday. My current weight is 185.5 as of this morning. This week I've done the following exercises
15 minutes of walking around the pool

Its been a tough week for me and a rainy week for Lincoln.
My goal for next week is 184 lbs lets do this.

The Death of Persephone

This is an add on to the Persephone story Persephone died trying to save another party member from a fiery death. This character would be saved by other characters of mine and he was an ass. It became a theme for me to the point of the other player getting mad at me for saving him. I really liked this description of Persephone's parents.

A small demon ran against the winds of Pandemonium.  Cyrus the Liar should not be hard to find.  Soon the young servant of darkness saw the characteristic single green batlike wing of his mistresses first husband.  The tiefling thief turned around quickly, knife in hand.  The demon shrank miserably at the sight, Cyrus was not known for waiting for explanations before he started killing.

“I bring a message from my mistress Shir’tha of Hgrath.” He spat it out as quickly as he could. Bdus did not like his mistress, he had reason to suspect she had been cheating when she won him and took him away from his home in the Abyss. He would follow her orders though since she always knew when he did not and, though her wrath was sporadic it was often cruel and strange even to a native of the pits of hell.

Cyrus looked down at the small figure holding up a scroll defensively.  He laughed his signature laugh that caused the demon to shrink even further, this only caused more terrible mirth from the scarred and ragged figure. He took the scroll in one sharp movement. “You better scamper off to your mistress I hear she has developed a habit of feeding bad little demons to her newest husband.” Bdus did not disbelieve this at all even coming from the mouth of a liar. He quickly scampered off to find a portal back to Limbo.

Chuckling to himself, Cyrus unrolled the scroll and read its contents.

“Cyrus, I write to inform you of an amusing story that one of my contacts recently told me.  You should remember that our first daughter Persephone recently got herself banished to some prime plane after her attempts to teach the trees of arcadia to rebel against their Lawful masters. Well my friend who is a great source of information on the movement of souls has given me his word that she managed to get herself killed while trying to find a way back to some less friendly climate.
           
Apparently a companion of hers managed to light a cursed object that caused a denizen of the Plane of Fire to leap forth.  While many of her companions (mostly primes) left her and her friend to play with the object she stayed in some silly attempt to defend him from whatever came forth from it. At least this is what my contact managed to glean from her he is a master of speaking with souls in transition.  I personally suspect she stayed in hopes of speaking with the elemental, you remember her obsession with that particular inner plane.
           
Anyway apparently she did not even die at the hands of her attacker but was left to bleed and according to her was almost saved by her travelling companions. Knowing our daughter I’m not sure how hard they were trying she often was a little hard on Primes.
           
I do not know if anyone is interested in resurrecting her at this time but I certainly hope she has learned something about the worlds if she is.

Your favorite wife
Shir’tha”

Cyrus’ acid tears burned his face as his howls of laughter caused several nearby rodents to flee in terror.  Oh, Persephone, he thought. He was sure Shir’tha was in fact proud of her daughter, her side of the family tended to have a bit of a noble streak in them.  He was sure his younger daughter Florentine would not have been so foolish.  Then again he had not heard anything of her in a while, she was probably in prison somewhere like Sigil, she always had lacked his finesse though she tried to follow in his footsteps.  Ah well, he skewered a nearby rat to stupid to run away.  Thus was the nature of the Planes.

Persephone

In order to keep regular content occurring I thought I would put up some things that I have already written.  Starting with stories and characters that were written for experience in a friend's Dungeons and Dragon campaign.  This is my first character for that campaign her name is Persephone. She was a Tiefling priestess of Chaos. The story behind the story is that we were talking about making characters for this campaign and my good friend said he wanted to make a priest of law. Well me being contrary me I said, "hey you know what would be great to have in that party as well, a priest of chaos." This campaign is still ongoing and starts out as an introduction to Planescape while still being on a prime world. I believe both Persephone and the law priest (Lex) were from the Outlands, the area beneath Sigil where the outer plains have gateways. So this is the first of Persephone's stories, I had so much fun with her and her history I just sort of kept on writing. So watch out for more about her.

Persephone Holysword
Persephone was born to a conman and a priest of chaos .  Some would consider the middle of the outlands, far from any town, an inconvenient place for a birth.  It was but in her parents defence she was a little early.

Persephone had a blast travelling the planes with her parents.  Some of the walkers in sigil would have a hard time racking up the number of adventures that Persephone had before she was ten.   There was the time her sister was born on the first ring of the Abyss, there was some sort of strange forshadowing in the way her sisters were born.  Unfortunately by the time her second sister was born Persephone’s  parents were beginning to feel the strain of travelling the planes with too many children.  So in a spur of the moment decision like most of the ones her parents made they found places for all three of the girls.  Persephone, who was old enough to decide, chose to follow in her mother’s footsteps and so she and her baby sister went to the aBby OF divIne Chaos.

Persephone received her Chaotic orders and decided to spread the message throughout the planes. At some point she managed a stint on the Plane of Acheron where she learned much in the ways of battle and sword play.  However, even with the constant threat of crushing, Persephone found the cubes and overall lawful nature of Acheron boring and soon moved on.

Despite being overall of Neutral leanings on the idea of good and evil, Persephone has found herself entangled in the blood wars from time to time.  She looks on the entire prospect with amusement and claims she has only acted in the effort of continuing the wars for the sake of maintaining the balance of good and evil on the planes.

Now Persephone has found herself on a prime world.  The number of explanations she has given for why she is there is equal to the number of questioners.  Her haste to leave the world and return to the Planes suggests that she is not there by choice, though it is possible she has simply become bored with it.

Bloggity Blog

Why am I writing this blog?  People have lots of reasons for writing a blog my friend Josh uses Winter's Riddle to write out his ebooks before publishing. Another friend uses his site Outpost Zeta to give reviews of cult movies. But what made me write this mishmash of stuff, and what keeps me writing?

I guess we'll start with the petty reasons. Somehow I think I can get famous by doing this. I know this is unlikely but hey I always dream of people recognizing my name.  Going to conventions and being able to say "Yeah I'm Aquagamer" and have people go "Oh I know you" (note to self: delete okCupid profile under that name.) I also would love to make money off this whether through ads or if I ever put up a donate button or whatever. Both of these seem unlikely, but they are factors.

I also want to have an outlet to voice my thoughts. I like reading Cracked.com from time to time and thinking "Hey I can make lists too." I like the idea of a place that I can call my own on the internet where I can at least pretend people are reading. I like to think that somewhere out there are people who are like minded enough to read my stuff and sometimes the stats show me enough to show that non spambots do come to this page (yay!)

Someday I would like to publish a webcomic that I draw when I'm bored at work. I can't draw much but those little stick figures get some of my friends in stitches. This could be a good launch point for that (note to self 2: buy tablet.)

Lastly I have fallen in love with the essay. I took an English class that had a section on essays and I discovered two things. I love reading essays and I am horrible at writing them. I think a blog is a great place to practice that art (this doesn't count even with how loosely defined an essay is this is a glorified list.)

So I guess that's it. A narcissistic mishmash of pouring my soul into a glass, drinking it and then trying to describe the taste and hoping people will want to try it. That is this blog and will continue to be so. Enjoy (note to self three: no really I'm going to stop publishing these late at night after I take sleeping pills.)