Impermanence in the Face of Immortality

Do elves truly love all that lives or is that just a myth perpetuated by others, legend and lore, a false rumor on the table? Nothing is certain, but they do in a sense. It is true if you look into their eyes you can see a glimmer that'll tug on your heart, like starting into the eyes of an old flame. Love dead and buried beneath years of stacked dislike defensively built around the halcyon memories. Except elves don't fraternize, this love isn't personal. Not anymore, not this century.

All souls begin as elemental, ethereal beings with their highest physical form being elves. Elves aren't immortal, but for the other races they might as well be. Even the long lived Dwarves can't remember an instance of an elf dying of old age. Violent death is a different matter. Whenever an elf dies their soul is recycled into the birth pool of the lower races, and some is lost in the process. They believe all souls do this which might be true. When an elf kills it is to release the soul to try again at another life. They would tell you it isn't murder, and can be very snide about it honestly. Society isn't a fan of this.

Because of this connection across multiple incarnations of a soul whenever you lock eyes with an elf there's a 10% chance you've met before. Well, they've met you.

Roll d10 to find out how this elf knows you.

1. Former family member: Mother/father/brother/sister/cousin. You should hit them up for magical items. You were about to anyway.

2. Arch-enemy that would gladly see you die a thousand deaths. Except they're probably pretty busy right now. You've been gone a while now with the being dead and reborn as a lesser race and all. Where did those minions run off to? He'll have them kill you just wait right there.

3. Murderer: in a past life/lives this person killed you. You should ask why or just take revenge immediately, ya sociopath.

4. Lover: your soul-mate. Well one of them. That next Sex Point might be coming up real soon.

5. Adventuring comrade! Remember that time 3,489 years ago you slew that troll arch-mage with a broken arm, a dagger and a flock of bluejays? No? Well trust us, it was awesome. Immediately follows as Henchman.

6. You saved their life once, and now they owe you a favor. Make it good.

7. Rival! Can't resist a bet based on a competition between the two of you and they just happen to know where your mcguffin is, but if he beats you there he gets to keep it. This is when his crew shows up and they look equal to your party.

8. Business partner who's a little nervous about some old debts that hopefully you don't bring up and keeps patting the coin purse slung hidden under their shirt self consciously and looking at the door.

9. Drinking buddy that gave up the old haunts after you died and is now a traveling gourmand who can teach you hows to stretch your rations while also slightly improving their taste. Knows a ton about this location/region.

10. Roll Twice! And if you get family member/lover combo and don't want to roleplay some oedipal shit I understand. It'd be hilarious, but just re-roll I guess.

If you have any more leave a comment and we'll add it to the table.

Must succeed on an Intelligence Check or go insane with new influx of knowledge for 1d6 days. INT mod affects days spent insane.

Underwhelmed & Not All That Worried About It

"Underwhelmed" is the word I used to describe how I felt about the Robert Redford, 2014 Academy Award Nominated* film All Is Lost. It concerned one of our most beloved actors, one of the icons of the medium, surely one of the faces on the Mount Rushmore of American actors* whose face is the only one that appears in the film, a face that carried with it the entirety of the struggle of life and death and the toll it takes on a man. Robert Redford is a titan in the world of cinema, everything he touches turns to gold, for the most part, and will certainly add to his legacy with this film and his performance in it. However, the first word that came to mind once the credits roll, once that hand plunges into the ocean to grab him, was "Finally." It wasn't the worst way to spend two hours, I've seen worse films, hell, I probably saw worse films that week, but my enjoyment did not live up to the hype and I was glad to be getting on with my day. There was something about a rich, old, white man that looks like the Sundance Kid enjoying his retirement on a boat that cost more than my parents house that just didn't resonate with me. A craggy, all-American man facing certain death and looking mortality in the eye and persevering and rising above the odds and all the other things a man can do and must do in a movie like this didn't equate to greatness for me. That being said, it was a perfectly fine movie. I admire its originality and its different focus but I feel that having a movie with no dialog and only one actor in the entire thing was a gamble. However, it looks like the gamble paid off for Redford, the director JC Chandor, and the studio because I'm positive that it will win numerous awards in the next few months.

What I'm saying is, for a film that will be a certain Oscar lock, as well as a crowd favorite was underwhelming, in my opinion. I've seen many more less memorable movies before and since but this one stuck with me. I've thought about it and tried to like it more than I initially did but I didn't budge. In the long run, who gives a shit if I liked this movie or not? The answer is, nobody. Including me. However, I enjoy this time of year because a lot of quality films are released in an attempt to qualify for Academy Awards and I will see or at least try to see most of them. I like being able to talk knowledgeably about all these films when the time comes around to talk about the Oscars but this years slate has been unimpressive so far. I usually hate those people that say the movies are shitty every year** and I'm pretty sure this year will redeem itself for me, but so far, the contenders aren't living up to their potential. Gravity was excellent, however, it's grandeur and attention to detail will be lost if I ever try to watch it again on a television. This was yet another case of a film with not much plot and not much dialog relying on the performance of one of the most beloved actors of our time talking to herself and cursing and doing a lot of face acting. A lot of floating around in both films. I had no interest in seeing The Butler. Blue Jasmine was pretty good, although not as funny, not as interesting, not as good as other recent Woody Allen films. Today I watched Dallas Buyers Club which featured an emaciated, gaunt, pale and scabby Matthew McConaughey in yet another Academy Award nominated* performance for Best Actor. In this case, I am underwhelmed for a different reason. DBC is the true story of someone facing certain death and looking mortality in the eye and persevering and rising above the odds...sound familiar? As with the handful of other films that have garnered early awards recognition, Fruitvale Station, The Butler, Rush, Captain Phillips, 12 Years A Slave, Lone Survivor to name a few, it is recognized that if you make a somber, important movie about a somber, important event and dramatize it to it's full Oscar potential, you're good. Unfortunately, Matthew McConaughey's best film this year was Mud which will probably get overlooked because it's a smaller film, a smaller story and more noticeably a fictional story. This falls in line with the other movies I was more excited about this year so far and to come, Her, American Hustle, and Nebraska to name a few.

But in the end, it doesn't matter. I love movies and even if there were 100 absolutely awful movies released this year, I will just come back next year to see what else is out there. I'm not all that worried about not liking what I'm supposed to like and appreciate because of its importance. For some reason, I have never been too fond of biographies, documentaries and films "based on a true story." I like fiction because you can come in as a fan completely unbiased, completely free of that anchor that "films based on a true story" always carry with them because naturally someone will have heard the "real story" on NPR or read an article about it online somewhere and go "Psshh, well you know, that's not what really happened" or the opposite, and watch Tom Hanks be heroic when in real life, his crew is suing him for ignoring orders and putting them in danger with the threat of pirates looming for them in the open seas. I have always enjoyed fiction more, possibly because my life is unexciting and I enjoy diving into a completely new, original world as opposed to being beat on the head and reminded of how horrible some event in history was and made to watch a two and a half hour dramatization of it. With Mud, which will probably end up being in my top ten of the year, I got a movie about friendship, hero worship, love and adventure all wrapped up in an awesome small genre film without being burdened about its real-world implications. No doubt, Ron Woodruff is a real life hero, his struggle inspired and helped a lot of people, but reading the story, you can't help but think how perfect it would be as a movie. Hopefully the engravers of the Oscar statues know how to spell "McConaughey".

*Projected (Stay tuned for the LDB,BL Oscar Predictions post, coming soon, I'm sure.)
**Last year, while watching the Oscars telecast, some guy sitting next to me at my friends house, right when Argo won for Best Picture, said, "That's so fucking stupid, that's the one that won?" I asked what he thought should've won and he said, "Well...I didn't see any of the other ones but they look better than Argo." I asked, "Did you see Argo?" He, of course, said "No." So that's why I rarely trust anybody's opinion on movies.

A Quick Appreciation Of Hal Hartley

There's a scene in Hal Hartley's 2006 film Fay Grim where Parker Posey is asked "Fay? Are you okay?" This is a question that can be asked in almost every one of Hartley's films. His movies are populated with people who are always in the midst of a crisis. He makes movies about men who are too smart, too complicated, too big for the world around them. They always seem to be waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to them. They're too intelligent by far, attractive, handy, self-reliant, dangerous, deadpan humorous and always preoccupied with the inner workings of things, always waxing philosophically about life, the universe and everything else. The men in his films always encounter strong, complex women who are a match for their curious, awkward, stilted attempts at figuring out life. The romance is always a little strange, quirky before the word meant what it does now, and doomed. As with most auteurs, one assumes that his characters are slightly removed versions of their creator, and not surprisingly, Hartley married an actress he worked with in his 1995 film Flirt.

Hartley's brilliance as a filmmaker lies in his writing. Since his first film in 1988, The Unbelievable Truth, his signature style has been evident, and still continues with his latest, 2012's Meanwhile. His characters speak in a poetic, sometimes jarring start-stop rhythm as if they're performing live for an audience. They speak fast, always bouncing back and forth off each other, theatrically enunciating and gesturing, almost as if allowing for a laugh track to come in or a live adjustment to be made. Talking is what most of Hartley's characters do best. In 1998's The Book Of Life, Jesus (Martin Donovan) and Mary Magdalen (PJ Harvey) ponder humanity and whether or not to trigger the apocalypse at the millenium and argue with Satan (Thomas Jay Ryan) about opening a program on an Apple laptop computer that will do so. In Flirt, 3 separate characters live their romantic lives in 3 different cities using the same dialogue. People seem to rarely be standing still in Hartley's movies, as if stopping would be akin to drowning. In fact, most of his characters are either running to or from something. A running theme in Hartley's work seems to be men who are perceived as dangerous always trying to escape or talk their way out of trouble. In the film No Such Thing, Sarah Polley is sent to Iceland to find a monster who killed her fiance. The monster, played by Robert John Burke, a frequent Hartley collaborator, is a sensitive, lonely, misunderstood creature who is at odds with the world because of his appearance and struggles to connect with Polley's character who tries to get him to come back to New York with her. In Simple Men, two brothers, played by Burke and Bill Sage, set off to find their fugitive father, a formerly famous mad genius. They argue, talk, philosophize, contemplate and argue some more. Continuing the theme of fugitive geniuses, 1997's Henry Fool, which is still considered Hartley's masterwork, concerns a mysterious stranger who arrives in the lives of the Grim family. Henry is a loud, garish, blustery writer who claims to have written the great novel of his time. He wreaks havoc on the Grim family, both inspiring and incriminating Simon, a bland garbageman who crafts a poem under the influence of Henry that makes him an instant star in the literary world, something that Fool could never achieve. Henry makes claims of having the secrets of the universe if people would just listen to him, for his genius and his bravado are always questioned. He eventually seduces and impregnates Simon's sister Fay, played by a fantastic Parker Posey, who would get her own story in 2006's Fay Grim but not before sleeping with their unstable mother in full view of Fay. In Fay Grim, it's many years later and Fay is being hounded by numerous state, federal and international agencies who want her help finding Henry's notebooks, which they believe hold state secrets. We learn more about the absent Henry, who since the end of Fool is on the run with the help of Simon, who is now in prison. Hartley writes fast and furious, his characters almost tripping over themselves in conversation, and Posey puts in the best performance of her career and that of anyone in Hartley's films in Fay Grim. She embodies everything that's great about Hartley and will soon be back to complete the family trilogy.

While the first focused on Henry and the second told Fay's story, the upcoming third film will feature the now 18 year old Ned, the son of Henry and Fay. It was just announced that Hartley is turning to Kickstarter, which he was able to successfully finance Meanwhile through to make Ned Rifle. Ned Rifle will tell the story of young Ned setting out on a journey to find his father and kill him for the trouble he has brought to the Grim family. It pretty much marks off everything on the Hal Hartley checklist and I for one can't wait. All the principles are on board and hopefully Hartley can find the amount he needs to get this going. The world created in these two films so far is fantastically woven, full of the extraordinarily mundane right next to the just plain extraordinary. Fay Grim is shot almost completely in what I learned is called Dutch angles, with the vast majority of the films scenes tilted precariously, so every shot looks as if it's on the verge of sliding away into something else if the characters don't finish their scenes quickly enough. It's sneakily tense and straddles the line between drama and tragicomedy. Henry Fool, made in the heyday of American indie film, looks slightly more aged but lacks none of the signature wit and storytelling that makes Hartley so brilliant. He birthed a world in Fool that will be continued in Ned Rifle and I can hardly wait. If you aren't familiar, I highly suggest delving into the world of Hartley. A double feature of Henry Fool and Fay Grim is as good a place to start as any.

New Music Roundup

I've been slacking lately on music, I've mostly been content with listening to my old CDs and the stuff I have stocked up in my iTunes. I haven't got any fresh blood in there in a while since I've been so busy listening to all of my sports podcasts. Those take up most of my time. But I've got a few new album additions that will be added to the rotation:

iTunes SESSION - Frank Turner
Frank Turner is one of my new favorites, definitely on heavy rotation the last few years. The man is prolific, constantly putting out albums, EPs and collections full of stripped down punk rock flush with all the passion, heart and dedication that makes punk rock work. This small collection is culled mostly from his newest LP, TAPE DECK HEART, but the best track is the older "Photosynthesis," in which Turner sings defiantly about refusing to give in and grow up just quite yet when he is still willing and able to do what he loves, singing and playing guitar, exactly what he's doing here.

LINDSEY STIRLING - Lindsey Stirling
A friend at work turned me onto Lindsey Stirling who I found out is a strange mix of dancer, composer and violinist. Her videos display her skills at all three of those disciplines. This album is a retooled version of her debut release, layering her swooping, swirling and soaring violin over rhythmic electronic tracks. She dabbles in Dubstep (I admittedly still don't really know what Dubstep is) EDM, Hip-Hop and classical, all with no lyrics and this album is really enjoyable. I have it attached to a long playlist that I keep on all night and these songs always provide a nice change of pace. And she's cute as a button.

BLACK SWEATER MASSACRE - The Reigning Monarchs
I love this group. The Reigning Monarchs are Greg Behrendt and Mike Eisenstein but as a proud Cuddlah, I'm all about Behrendt. He is a stand-up comic and author (He's Just Not That Into You) but frequently states that if he could only do one thing the rest of his life, it would be playing music. In addition to his podcast, Walking The Room, this is his passion project. The Monarchs play an instrumental mix of vintage surf, punk, ska and even a little heavy metal; it's fun and fast and loud with truly great musicianship, not just Good-For-A-Vanity-Side-Project quality. They've put out a number of EPs and splits and this is their second full length album. It was partially Kickstarter funded and delayed a little bit but it was worth the wait. One iTunes reviewer says "Black Sweater Massacre plays and I am instantly a sunglass-wearing Cali punk creature of infinite cool" which is better than I could ever put it myself.

Weekends blah, amiright?

Not really, I had my first weekend off in about 9 months last week and it was glorious. I felt so free enjoying two days off in a row with the rest of the world.

One of the bad things about weekends, besides the constantly having to work them part, is no one on my blogroll updates on them. Seriously guys, I'm bored at work, give me something new to read! There's always Longreads of course, but I generally don't have THAT much time. I'm constantly refreshing looking for a new random table or some new, otherworldly monster for D&D. Sure i could just write my own, but I'm far too lazy for that. All the bitching being said here's a new monster:

BOOK FIEND (great name right?)

This lesser fiend looks like a wizard's lost spellbook except this of course is a trap. The clever devil uses the disguise to feed on the wonder and possibility that race through the reader's mind. It's "pages" have an illusion cast upon them that reads as whatever the victim imagined to be inside the pages in the first place. Victims are stuck in this trance until broken bu outside contact or until they die of hunger.
Barbarians and other characters with less than 8 Intelligence don't fall for the illusion and see the fiend as just a mundane book. If a player comes upon the fiend feeding on another being they can make a WIS/INT check to discern its real nature.

Magic Users could possibly command the fiend to tap into the memories and lives by making a Save vs. Magic at -2. Success means gaining a random spell of level 1d6 (stronger wizards don't fuck with the monster and thus won't lose any spells). Failure means losing a random prepared spell with another Save vs. Magic to see if that spell is burned out of their memory and unusable forever.

Any further attempts at domination must be made at a cumulative extra -2. If all spells are burned out of the character's mind then they can never cast again and go insane at the trauma of losing their connection to ultimate power.

On Returning From The Dead

The fascination with the dead returning is something that has permeated through almost every aspect of pop culture. One of the most popular shows on TV right now is of course The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead is, as previously mentioned, not a great show but it's effective. People like zombies, or more accurately, people like seeing people kill zombies. But what if the dead rose and they looked...exactly like they did when they were alive? Not covered in gore, not missing limbs or vital organs, not groaning and biting their former loved ones, just simply their regular selves?

That concept is explored in the French television show The Returned or Les Revenants if you prefer. It is set in an idyllic small mountain town in France that sits at the foot of a lake. Four years previous, a bus carrying 38 schoolchildren plunged off a cliff, killing all of them. The accident cast a pall over the town, it's impact still felt years later as the town and the families struggle to move on. We see the stress of a grief counseling session and how it takes it's toll on the surviving parents. The group struggles to drum up enthusiasm as one woman announces that she is pregnant again, and the father of a girl named Camille, who we will meet, copes with his grief by sleeping with one of his young waitresses at the bar he owns and showing up late and scoffing his way through the meeting. He receives a call from his estranged wife requesting his presence at home and everything changes from there. A mysterious young boy follows the town doctor around, a handsome young man wanders around town looking for his wife, as she doesn't live or work where she used to, a young woman returns home and frightens her distraught grandfather. They all show up exactly as they were that day four years ago, not having aged, unaware of their death, even wearing the same clothes, as if nothing has happened, wondering why everyone around them is acting so strange. The question always posed by zombie fiction is, How will we as survivors cope with a world that has changed? This show asks the question, How will the returned cope with a world that has moved on? And that distinction is much more fascinating to watch.

The Returned is, simply put, a creepy show. The little boy known as Victor is about the most eerie child I've ever seen on screen. The band Mogwai does the music and creates a moody soundscape that works perfectly for the dark, chilly goings-on. The returned seem to be able to move about as they please, disappearing and reappearing at will. They also wreak havoc on the electricity grid of their small town, lights they pass under flicker and the entire town is plunged into a blackout apparently at the fateful moment of return. As the show progresses, we'll see how the interactions will affect everyone and if the first episode is any indication, how the returned are mysteriously, inextricably linked to some of their surviving counterparts. And how the schoolchildren aren't the only ones returning. The best story so far is the relationship between Camille and her sister, once twins whose actions on that day four years ago put this whole thing in motion who now have to live with each other again, as strangers. Throw in serial killings that evoke similar murders from the past, Twin Peaks-ian levels of the darkness and secrets that lie in a small town, and an ability to create a dialogue about just what the repercussions of a situation like this would really be and we have an extremely compelling, smart, interesting show.

Quite predictably, there is an American version of this show coming soon to ABC called Resurrection, that will almost definitely not be as well made. It apparently will focus more on the religious aspect of this phenomenon, something that is only very briefly touched on in this show in a scene of dialogue between Camille's parents. The Image Comics series Revival has a similar story, where the dead came back to life for one day in rural Wisconsin but they don't come back completely normal and with the revival comes all manner of darkness on the quarantined town, both human and supernatural. This is immensely more interesting than just the last bastion of humanity hacking at rotting corpses with shovels and samurai swords while also doing battle with each other. Having to adapt and live again with someone you had known to be dead and gone and the innate struggles and horror that will come from that makes for quality viewing.

On a quick side-note, The Returned is yet another in a long line of shows that have been imported from Europe for consumption by fans of quality, epic, cinematic television. Series like Luther, Sherlock, The Fall and Wallander have all been brought to American screens with great acclaim. Two shows, Jane Campion's Top Of The Lake on Sundance and BBC America's Broadchurch, both shows about small towns (near bodies of water, interestingly enough) in the midst of an out of the ordinary violent crisis are this shows most recent counterparts. The Returned aired on French television last year but will begin showing on Sundance Channel Thursday nights starting on Halloween.

If You Are Reading This, It Means I'm Dead

At the time of this writing, I don't know what it is that will be the cause of my demise, but as I write in every update of this letter, I can only hope that it will be the noble death of a warrior. When the sole purpose for one's existence is to be a soldier, a soldier's death is the only one befitting him. I hope, insomuch as someone like me can, that nobody else but me will ever see the contents of this letter but if that is the way it turns out, then that, as they say, is that. My existence is a mystery to me, my first memory will not be much different than my last, I suppose. We have existed for such a short period of time as a race that our full capabilities will not be known for sometime yet. I have yet to hear of any of my people dying of old age and to be quite honest, I do not yet know how my body will age with time. We are born and bred, so to speak, to be warriors and that is the definition of my existence. I have thoughts in my head sometimes of living a life without a sword in my hand and a bow on my back, but I don't know yet if that will be possible. The war is over but the world is not safe, danger has lurked around every corner for my entire life. The desire to live a life away from all of that seems so distant that it's hard to think about.

I have finished some business and am hoping to start a new chapter in the city of Sharn. It is a bustling city and has been known to be home to many of my people, as House Cannith has an outpost here and as the creators of my kind, I am naturally drawn here. Many of my kind have chosen a life of darkness, embracing their role as pure warriors at all costs, sometimes even to the degradation of their own souls. I hereby state that we, as Warforged, owners of our freedom also own a soul, just as all other peoples in the land. I made a decision at one point to do good, to not follow the path of that abomination the Lord Of Blades and his kind, as I do not possess a desire to gain power at any cost. I have, at times, been forced to face my own kind in matters of life and death and fortunately I prevailed. But extinguishing the life of my own kind is not what I hoped to be doing with my freedom. I hope to embark on a new adventure from this point. I hope to gain a little bit more knowledge about my kind and work toward advancing my people's place in this world. My final thoughts at this time, as I sit in the public market and experience the city moving around me, are those of a man, yes, a man, who hopes to open this letter and update it at another time and place with more knowledge, more experience, and a more advanced place in this world. If I never update this letter, so be it. Live by the sword, die by the sword. My name is Ell. Don't forget me when I'm gone.