No new story posts!?

Life is happening. Hate that; but several life changing things are going to be happening soon, one of which is marriage. (Yes, yay me!) As such, the writing has simply not been flowing, or even coming out at a slow crawl. I’m currently more worried about the temperature in September and how much lilies cost than Angelica’s little magic lessons.

So…I’m putting story updates on hold until at least August, possibly later but let’s see how things go. I’ll try and throw up little updates to show how things are progressing, but I can’t promise anything.

Stress

So I’ve spent the last three or four days flat on my back for most of the day. My body has this annoying little habit of sometimes not letting me know when I’m extremely stressed, and instead just tightens up every muscle across my shoulders and neck. As a result I can not move and hardly sit without extreme pain. Drugs don’t seem to help, and heating pads (or the like) only provide minimal relief. As such I am left simply living with the pain until it fades away of its own accord.

I spent the last two days working from home so that I could go lay down whenever it became too much. Not pleasant to say the least. This most recent bout seems to have resulted from our final push to get down Kalecgos. I suppose when you’re not dying until a wipe has been called, and are constantly top three dps, there’s not much you can do about wipes except get stressed. Of course I did not realize I was so stressed until the stiffness settled in, which is another annoying thing about it, that most of the time I don’t even realize how stressed I am until I’m already in pain.

And speaking of stress, this weekend is The Lunch, so we’ll see how that goes.

ZOMG!!

Lookie, new site look. This is why there was no update on Monday. I spent that time coloring the picture of Angelica which I had drawn by an old friend Ajinryu. Still have little tweaks, such as making the links a bit more prominent, but at least I’m finally rid of that silly little temp banner.

Yes. We. Can.

Who would’ve thought it would be this hard to break into Sunwell? I mean seriously, the place was only tuned for guilds who had been farming Black Temple and Hyjal for 6+ months and we felt the strain. Our healers were pushed to the absolute limit to keep our tanks up and somehow they kept finding more.

And since I’d rather not try to explain the stress we all went through to make this kill happen, I’ll instead talk about the fight itself. Kalecgos is a dragon of the Blue Dragonflight. He’s pretty cool and all, but a demon, one Sathrovarr the Corrupter is attempting to live up to his epithet and corrupt the dragonkin’s mind. Enter <OOB>, the group of plucky heroes who are attacked by a half crazy dragon as they’re wandering the beautiful halls of the Sunwell Plateau looking for a stupid pattern to drop instead of [Wand of the Demonsoul]x4.

With his will weakening, Kalecgos uses what power he can to create a portal that allows access to his mind, where Sathrovarr is generally making a mess of things, and trying to kill the last bit of Kalecgos’ sanity. So as plucky heroes, we have to subdue Kalecgos, kill Sathrovarr, and do it fast enough that Kalec doesn’t succumb to the pain of 0 hit points.

Took us a while, but we managed it.

In the end we got one of each bracer, which went to Llewyna, Whiteliter, and Spriz, and a [Dragonscale-Encrusted Longblade] for Koivu.

Kind of important

So I’m horrible at naming stories. A majority of the stories I have are named simply for a character or perhaps a place in the story. Angelica was no exception to that and while the story is indeed about her, it’s not entirely about her. So along with the site revamp, I have come up with a real title for the story and have replaced most references to ‘Angelica’ with ‘Shifting Winds’.

Sorry for the confusion this will cause. I’ll try to keep this post at the top for a bit so everyone sees it.

Site revamp

Things are going to be a little messy for the next…several days. I’m going to be redoing the theme of the site, but first I need to get the blog site’s pages organized to work with the new theme. That means links will be disappearing, reappearing, and moving all around. New pages will pop up, old ones might disappear, and some will change. I’ll try to make sure all the major links are always there and working. If not…I’ll probably fix it myself in short order. Anyway, thanks for your patience.

Words and Pictures

Every now and then while reading the vast amount of webcomics that I do, I begin to strongly wish that I was able to draw, to do something like a webcomic. One of my more recently discoveries happens to be a fellow who aspires to write movie scripts, and he’s gone out there and found himself artists to turn his ideas into pictures. It seems odd to me, that there are people out there who can draw so well…that don’t have ideas for their own stories? As a writer the very idea of being able to draw, and yet not being able to come up with a story to tell is ludicrous.

And it kind of makes me wish I could stumble across one of these unfortunate fellows (or gals as it may be) who would like to work with me to produce a webcomic. I even know what story it’d be (Nope, not Angelica.) though I suppose I’d have to finish writing that one as well. But then once again I’m not ambitious enough to go out to say deviant art and start emailing people. At least not yet. Maybe that can be a goal for the future: Add some pictures to my words.

OOB: Outland Officially Boring

So we’re done with Black Temple. Illidan’s down, Outland’s free, and those malformed draenei get their dank little temple back. I suppose all was not for naught. I now get a 15 min hearth back to Outland. (Take that shamans!)

Learning of Illidan was a bit bumpy, what with tanks randomly popping in and out of existence, healers moving to different states, and three days being only…well three days. We plowed into the Illidan fight to learn to not crash and burn during phase 2, holding on to the knowledge that phase 2 was the hard phase, and that it was all downhill from there.

Two nights worth of wipes to Koi dying, parasites going on a rampage, forgotten raid healing, and melee getting a little too close for comfort we were almost ready to turn over our ID to Recon. However, Koi wasn’t ready to give up for the week, and another raid was organized, healers were called, a new resto shaman was recruited and we had that near perfect attempt that turned into a kill.

Man this fight is long and boring. Here, see?

As for lewts:
[Cursed Vision of Sargeras] to Mtitanz
[Zhar’doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer] to Nyobe
T6 Chest to Amberh, Azurmahn, and Rosalind.

Character: Amebil

Amebil: Level 66 Human Warlock (9/43/5)

Name origin/meaning: Ebil is a ‘cute’ evil. As such she is ebil: Amebil.

Reason created: Two reasons. First off, the guild had no warlocks when started leveling her. Rosalind was the only warlock we had that raided, and the idea of more than one soulstone was a novelty concept. Secondly I wanted a character with alchemy. Mongoose elixirs were expensive as crap back then. I planned to get her to whatever level was required for level 300 alchemy, and just use her for that.

Key moments:
Accidentally killing the chicken in Westfall when trying to feed it.
Taking down four mobs two levels higher than I at once, which made me realize the warlock class rocked.
Deciding to level with my brother’s mage.
Getting my succubus.
Getting [Elixir of Dream Vision] for 40g.
Getting my t2 helm her first and only time in Onyxia.
Deciding I didn’t like raiding with her.

Comments:
Like I said above, I created her for alchemy and ended up loving her so much she was my second character to hit 60. Her personality was one such that she wanted to be evil (as warlocks should be), but could never quite manage it, as she always kept helping people. She also got the mechanical chicken, and keeps it in regret of the chicken she killed trying to feed it back in Westfall. Never did end up getting that chicken pet on any character…

Currently:
Working on getting her to level 68 at some point to be elixir master. (She already knows Pure Death and Relentless Assault.) She’s really easy to level; I’m just pretty burned out on leveling in general. I recently dropped herbalism in order to level skinning after Near became a jewelcrafter.

Screenshots:
Say no to DWUGS: Once again my first screenshot is one I took because of something amusing. Wonder what level she was…
Bats kick butt: Getting run through Stockades by Easterber with my brother. It was Halloween, so I was having fun with a bat costume.
Mechanical Chicken: I take screenshots of the mini pets I get. This was when I first got this chicken.
Stupid Weed: So yeah…BC was coming and they changed the Dark Portal’s landscape a bit.