It’s been a long, semi-deliberate pause in the darklord’s blog. Yes it has.

There is much afoot. The changes that are being wrought across the landscape of my goddamn mind are… effluvious (if I may use a completely inappropriate and partially made-up word).

In fact, it seems almost silly to attempt to make a record of them, so fleeting are they in substance. I change completely one day, and then the next day it’s as if I was always this way, and now I’m changing again. It’s a tumoult, is what it is, like an avalanche of changes in the way I think, feel, and look out upon the world, as if somewhere along the line (maybe, I dunno, when I stopped eating all the fucking time) I pulled loose that one big rock, and it tumbled down onto that other rock, and there was this cracking noise, and suddenly the whole cliff face is in vertical descent.

…I may sound like I’m exerting hyerpbole into the paragraph you just read (assuming that you didn’t just skip to this paragraph). In a way, that is true, and given my well-established propensity for exaggeration, not surprising, but at the same time, I don’t know that I am actually overstating the effects.

Let me give you an example. This morning I had a conversation with my darling wife regarding our current financial system, and it’s robustness and shortcomings. Now, in the past, merely mentioning this general category of topics would a) make my hair stand up on end, b) make my eyes go all wide and spooky, and c) cause molten lava to actually pour from my mouth.

Ask my wife, she’ll confirm all of this.

This morning, however, in contrast to the above, I took in fact and fiction, offered opinions and explored the data, and…

…well, I had a conversation about it, didn’t I? Yessir, I think I did. A conversation that was utterly impossible not four months ago. I’m talking Rain Man impossible here, like bashing my head against the wall to make it stop make it stop make it stop kind of thing. This, not surprisingly, causes my wife a certain amount of discomfort and concern. She has come to the not unreasonable conclusion that there are some topics best left, shall we say, off the table. Thus, I believe it was something of a surprise to her to be having something that amounted to an exchange of data with me on this previously debilitating topic.

I offer this by way of example. This is one of dozens of areas of my life that have smoothed rightthefuckout, seemingly through the effort of some freakin’ change-causing-system, one that is not being dictated to by me. All I’m doing is showing up to meetings and calling people who share my affliction, and some… thing seems to have been engaged.

Man.

You want a rather astounding, real time example of how this is affecting me?

Here we go.

Ready?

…

When I started writing this post, I wrote the title above because I haven’t told you about my World of Warcraft exploits in some time, and much has happened.

And yet, here I am, at the bottom of the page, and no WoW content.

You see? This improves your life as well.

Some days, I like to offer you all a little treat before we start. A netsnack, if you will. Today is one of those days. Something like 90% of my readers (if… it is possible to divide that group by 10, which I’m not certain about) will have already seen this, as it came my way via that selfsame group, but what the heck. The rest of you deserve it just as much as they do. More, even.

Remember: sometimes you just have to punch an alien in the face.

http://echosphere.net/star_trek_insp/star_trek_insp.html

Yes.

I sit here today, idly scratching my ribs (I have ribs. Who would have thought?), contemplating my blogitude.

I enjoy this process of public journaling immensely. I never would have imagined, prior to leaping forward into the virtual arena, that I could take such pleasure from something so simple.

But at the same time, it is oddly constraining. There are, you see, many things I would very much like to talk about, but I feel reluctant. The “Google will spider the page and it will be filed in the bowels of their archives for the next 1,000,000 years” thing is, honestly, a little daunting. It’s like… well, it’s like publishing your inner thoughts. I imagine the feeling is equivalent to people who find that their drug addled home videos have been published to the Internet.

I apologize, that was a cheap shot.

I really didn’t have anything else to say about that.

I shake my head in wonder as I write this. The changes that have been underway in the depths of what passes for my mind these days are… ye gods, dare I use the word “profound?”

…

Nah, too pretentious. And, considering that it’s me saying that, I believe that really says something. “Remarkable” will have to do.

Either way, I cannot help but comment on… my… uh…

Well, quite frankly, my emotions. I know, I know, you didn’t come here to hear about my emotions. “Tell us about your Epic Loot some more, darklord!” you shout. “We haven’t had an update on your Molten Core exploits in, like, two days!” Yeah, well, stand by, man. Sometimes stuff happens that is more important than WoW. Okay?! Read the freakin’ subtitle of this blog, man. You were warned.

I may have mentioned my turkey farming, and its recent losses. One could say we’re in the red on this farm, and in a big way. I recently took stock of the situation, and I’ll be goddamned if we haven’t lost another two of those five-pound mumbajimbas.

But that’s not really the point here, to be fair. Turkey loss is all to the good, I mean who the fuck wants to live surrounded by turkeys, for cryin’ out loud, but today, today, friends, I want to describe to you another side of this process that flat out startled me, and in a way that I believe will lower what little esteem of me you may have left by a full ‘nother notch.

I now regularly attend a gathering of sorts, where all kinds of folks engaged in this turkey business come together to share with other sympathetic ears about how fucked up a business it really is. It’s kinda the main thing that’s been making this work for me, to be honest; pulling myself out of my daily grind for 90 minutes and sitting with folks who have the same struggles that I do… well whaddaya know. It makes it easier to bear. Huh. Who’da thought.

But there are rules to this gathering. And those of you who know me know that in some profound way I am made of rules. I seem to have in fact dedicated my life to the discovery and expression of rules, particularly those rules that coalesce into a digital fantasy. So, it may be no surprise to find that I find these rules quite interesting. And the ones that sound like challenges… well.

The rule I want to talk about today is the “you can’t get up in front of the group and speak until you’ve been followin’ da rules for 90 days” rule.

Imagine, now. Yours truly, for the past 90 days, has been sitting in this group, silent, prevented from getting up there. It. Has. Been. Driving. Me. Mental. I have, in fact, had ample opportunity to consider the idea that this is partially why this rule exists: to motivate we of the attention-getters clan. It causes me despair that having full knowledge of the fact that I’m being remorselessly manipulated in no way changes the efficacy of that manipulation. “90 days, huh?? Oh YEAH?? Well, then, I’ll see you in 90 days!!” [sits silently and pouts]

Well, friends, no more. After (lesse, does the math, ummm, let’s say on average 2.5 meetings a week, 12 weeks, say …) 30 meetings of quietly, patiently (and, I must admit, appreciatively and attentively) holding my tongue, last night I got the fuck up there.

And it was funny, by the time I actually made it to the front, I had only gratitude and simple explanation of what brought me there to offer. After walking the path for three months, it was enough… by far enough… to simply be able to get up there and say something. It was awesome.

And here’s where it went all darklord on me. I finished, and I went back, and I sat down, and as I savored the final moments of my first official share, here is the the thought that popped unbidden into my head:

“That… was even better… than getting Epic Loot. Better.”

Sweet Jesus. I really need to stop playing WoW one of these days.

Let me just get this out of the way, before we get too far into this discussion.

I KILLED RAGNAROS ON SATURDAY!!

(Well, actually, I and 39 of my online friends killed Ragnaros. But let’s not split hairs.)

I have been coming to the Molten Core for…

Uh.

If the records on this topic are complete and accurate, it appears that I have been doing this one dungeon for over six months.

…

Whereas that concept might be enough for mere mortals to shrivel up and die in shame and humiliation, I, as a member of the gamerus superiorus, take that as a boast! A sign of glory! My chest swells with the bravery that I have shown in the face of my foes!

…

Lies, actually. I’m rather shaken by the notion. Strangely, though, my gamer side shrugs that off with no hesitation whatsoever. Six months? Feh.

So, as you may (or may not, gods willing) know, Ragnaros is the tenth (tenth!) and last boss you fight in Molten Core. He is the ultimate. The Big Cahuna. He is The Man.

He’s an extraordinary pain in the ass. Get this:

1. He has an area-of-effect explosion that knocks anyone that does not have at least 200 fire resist back something like 100 feet (and waaaaaaaaaaay up in the air). (For those of you not pouring your life into digital distractions, 200 fire resist means you have a full set of armor that you have collected just for this purpose. Certainly doable, but also certainly not trivial.)
2. If (this is the kicker) at any time he does not have someone actively beating on him in melee range (like 5′ away), he does this thing where he explodes flame into the entire chamber, and does like 6000 points of damage to everyone in it.

So, if you can’t prevent him from knocking your tanks back, he wipes the whole raid instantly.

And that’s just the price of entry. From there, it gets hard.

We’ve been beating our heads against this guy for something like the last three months. It’s hard. It’s a complex fight, and all of the members of your 40-man raid party need to have a certain level of gear (fire resistance, mainly) that takes some time to get. Also, it’s hard.

And, then, quite suddenly, I found myself standing there on the edge of the lava spiral that he stands in, healing my mages and priests, helping keep enough of the raid alive that we had a chance… and his health was at 20%… 15%… 12%… and it hit me.

We had 45 seconds left to kill him (before his Sons emerge, and we all die)… and that was enough time to do it.

I couldn’t believe it. But, man, it was gonna be close. Over my headset, our raid leaders had started to say things like “Unload! Get in there! Hit him with everything you’ve got!” And, they were right.

Man, I got right in there. I jumped into the lava, hopped through it, and got right in there next to that big ol’ towering column of flame and rage, and gave him everything I had.

Which, admittedly, isn’t much. I am a paladin, after all.

The feeling of satisfaction when that titanic sonofabitch finally disintegrated into nothingness, leaving only his gigantic hammer behind as a reminder of his unearthly presence was nothing short of ecstatic. My shout of delight startled my children in the next room.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… the Ghosts of Retribution, and their really big hammer.

Check out the look of satistfaction on that avatar’s face.

Uh, through the armor, I mean.