benlehman

Spent much of the afternoon doing bamboo sword fighting with Calder and Jasper. Ended up was a nasty wound on my left pinky and nearly lost my throat to Jasper's freaking neck shots, but had a good time nonetheless. Fighting with those two, who are more experienced and stronger than me, respectively, is a good reminder that -- hey! -- I don't suck at sword-fighting just because I never adapted to nTeraction style head-blocking, 3-flurry-striking, weightless sword, foot-hitting style. Which I hold in the deepest of all possible regards, of course :-)

But I managed to give roughly as good as I got with those two which, combined with the much needed exercise, really felt great. Afterwards I played in a strange, cool, and not entirely well directed D&D game, in which I played a wolf Barbarian / Druid, with a bad-ass pack of followers and huge pointy teeth. I must stress that last fact again. Huge. Pointy. Teeth.

The game had a very strange and interesting aesthetic. I haven't encountered much of the world yet, so I can't comment on all of it, but the main plot of the night had a couple of druid (one of the regular PCs and I) coming into confrontation with the cult of a nature god. One would imagine that these two groups would get along, but the nature god's area was very carefully portrayed as too overgrown, with trees that were too tall and underbrush that even deer couldn't move through. The whole place stunk of life, life grown without the sun or the moon. We ended up fighting a giant tree, expelling people like fruit from its branches. It was very creepy, and there were definite tones of the overcare that national parks recieve, although I don't know if that was really the intended effect or just my interpretation.

For those who play D&D -- have wolves working with you, and haste them. Two trips a round with Improved Trip is the best thing ever. We decimated the enemy lines like nobody's business.

In personal news, writing is good. I like it. And some days, it likes me.