DAY 81 - Baseball Past

Talking about baseball yesterday got me to thinking... how did I exactly get into it in the first place?

My family as a whole isn't really big on sports besides basketball, boxing and the occasional tennis. Being a part of a Chicago-Filipino family, the most I've heard about sports relates to either the Chicago Bulls during the 90s or Manny Pacquiao of boxing fame. That's about it for my family in terms of sports. I'd say that my family is sort of bandwagon-y, but even when the Blackhawks took it home twice in the last three years, I never once heard their name in my household.

I didn't have anyone to encourage me to go into sports. The most sport-like thing I did was take karate for a year or so, but that never completely panned out for me. I also had the fortune of grow up during the time of the rise of video games, so my childhood primarily focused on catching Pokemon as opposed to catching home run balls at the ballpark, which I don't mind at all.

So my younger years seriously lacked baseball, though I remember some big events like the whole Chicago Cubs/Steve Bartman fiasco in 2003 and some of my high school teachers going nuts about the Red Sox taking it home after 86 years. I think that's about the time I got into the wide world of baseball, because during that time I met a good friend who was into baseball for far longer than I've been. I remember him saying he's gone to games when Sammy Sosa was on the Cubs.

Now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure how we got to the topic of baseball as we generally hung out through a shared interest in video games, but I think at one point we went to a baseball game. I didn't immediately fall in love with the game, but I know I enjoyed it. From there we went to more and more games, and I was even able to catch a few fly balls! After that, my friend set up a fantasy baseball game and that's when it all came together.

I did a lot of research on who to draft, who was projected to have a good or bad year and all of that. I was so invested in the game that I started frequenting a baseball site, MLB Trade Rumors, in an attempt to get an edge. I've since read it everyday and have branched out to several other sites for baseball news and, as a result, have become decently baseball-savvy. What I like about the sport, I think, is that it's very tactical. That and it just feels so... community-based, maybe? Either way, I look forward to the day where I can pass on my love for baseball.

---

Oh yeah, and in regards to the fantasy baseball league... Admittedly, despite all the player research I didn't look into how a fantasy game was played so I think I made a fool of myself during the draft period, but I quickly got the hang of it. I even made awesome moves based on sabermetrics, which is a whole 'nother beast; case-in-point, Max Scherzer. Leading the wins category in my league.

Still in last place, though. Three years straight, ha.

DAY 80 - Baseball Present

I think I've mentioned some time before that I'm a baseball fan though it's hard to remember every little thing that you bring up over the course of 80 posts that isn't the main topic. In particular, I am an avid fan of the Chicago Cubs. I don't know everything there is to know about the Cubs past and present, but I think I know more than the average fan. Enough to know top prospects, projected year for contending and all that.

I bring this up because the this weekend is the last weekend for regular season baseball. October, for those who don't know, is playoff month and the Cubs... well, they're fourth to last--in the entire, thirty-team league. Despite the abysmal record, they're definitely better than last year and their recent signings are enough to make me look forward to 2014 (or 2015). Still, I support my team by going out to games and keeping up with the latest news.

But you see, the problem this year is... I didn't go to a single ball game. That might seem trivial or silly to some, but if memory serves I've gone to at least one baseball game every year. I've even gone to some games far north in Milwaukee, which was pretty fun.

Whenever I went to a game at the Friendly Confines, I usually went with a couple of friends. I think the issue this year is that our schedules never aligned and we took it for granted. Half of any team's games are played at home, so... "that's 81 whole games! We'll catch one eventually, right? Right?" But as I'm sitting here typing this, all 81 home games have come and gone, with the last three games of the Cubs' season happening south in St. Louis. I thought about making the trip out there with my friend, but the price would probably have been high due to the Cardinals being playoff-bound and, well, the trip itself.

It's okay though. Like a Cubs fan says, hoping their team will win a World Series, so too will I say hoping to catch a game in the future: there's always next year.

DAY 79 - 'Fraid

Halloween is a little over a month away and that got me to thinking about scary things.

In short, I am no good with scary things whatsoever. At least real-time things.

Contrary to what some folks might say about violent video games making people equally violent, I can't stand watching any of that grotesque, bloody violence in live-action movies. I also am very easily surprised. That coupled with even slightly scary things makes it all the worse. To give you an idea: I flinched pretty badly near the end of The Departed--spoiler--wherein Leonardo DiCaprio's character gets shot in the head as soon as the elevator door opened. Granted, I think it was actually still pretty shocking, but hot damn that scared me. Another extremely mild example is whenever I think I'm alone and I start singing or think aloud; whenever I am promptly proven wrong, I kind of jump or reply loudly.

If it's at all within my power I tend to stop the video or the gif or whatever before it gets a chance to spook me. Even when I'm fully expecting a jump scare, I can never truly prepare for it. One thing I do which I am pretty sure is annoying is to do the jump scare myself; that is, suddenly move or something. Ruins the mood, I'd say, but holy crap. Long after a scary video or story or whatever, the memory of it stays with me for awhile and it's enough to make me extremely paranoid.

Back when I worked at my old theater job, whenever I had something scary in recent memory, the long hour trip back via public transportation was just... dreadful, haha. I walked along a road that was pretty dark for a good stretch of it and, on top of that, my neighborhood isn't exactly "well-lit" to begin with. My new job is actually right next to where I'd get off the bus I took from my old job, so the travel back home has been cut drastically. Still doesn't change the fact that my neighborhood doesn't have too many lights. The sunlight's been waning with each passing day, too.

A few days ago I learned of a new, highly-rated haunted house thing where the premise was that you'd have to go through it alone and it's pitch-dark. In addition, the actors inside the place are allowed to touch you. The video for the thing itself wasn't too scary, but the idea of being "alone" in the dark... holy hell. I've been getting more and more paranoid each night every time I think about it.

The one medium I can tolerate scary things is writing. I thoroughly enjoy creepy short stories and one time I read through a site's whole archive. It was pretty fun, though walking home at night? Not so much.

DAY 78 - Rain

World of Warcraft was my first big MMO and part of the draw for me was the huge, seamless, open world. Once I reached level 90, I spent a couple of hours travelling Azeroth via flying mount to see what there was to see. One thing I've always enjoyed about World of Warcraft was its semi-realistic weather system. Depending on the region you were in, the weather varied from sunny to cloudy to rain/snow. So while I was on my quest to explore every region of WoW's world, every time it rained or snowed, I just stopped to take in the scenery and enjoy myself.

Something about the sound of rain is just... I'm not sure. Calming, perhaps. Soothing. Maybe even a little romantic, which may seem odd. To me, though, it means comfort; staying warm under the blankets while the pitter-pat of the rain hits your rooftop. It's also somewhat nostalgic to me; it reminds me of a time when I was younger, going on long road trips with family or friends or staying inside while on vacation in the Philippines because it was rainy season. We seem to have a knack for visiting the Philippines during said rainy season, and every time it rains non-stop for a week or so. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed myself during that time.

Snow has a similar effect on me. Falling snow, the kind that falls like a feather, is absolutely beautiful, mesmerizing. I remember watching the snow fall after school one evening, when it suddenly started snowing and the buses were all delayed. I don't remember what was happening around that time, but I remember feeling hopeful... or was it longing? I would fall in love with snow even more so after watching an anime movie, 5 Centimeters Per Second.

It's been fairly dry these past few weeks, so my love of precipitation has gone on hiatus. However, Final Fantasy XIV helped remind me. Damn, rain is great.

DAY 77 - Waking Up

Today I woke up about 20 minutes before my alarm clock was scheduled to go off. That's been happening a lot lately for one reason or another, but thankfully I'm never (incredibly) tired during work. This morning was markedly different than the other days, though, because I remembered that my birthday was coming up in a few weeks.

And then I realized that I'd be turning 25. From there my mind jumped around a lot.

I thought about all the things I haven't done yet, like college or living on my own. I'm ashamed to admit that my workout plan hasn't started yet, though I have everything I need to get started. I thought about the future, where I'll be in another 10 years; will I still be here, in the same, old house with the same, old worries about the future? Right now my excuse would be "I'm still young" or something to that effect, but 35... I would ideally have had kids by that point. Settled down, moved out, have a "good" job.

I remembered thinking the exact same thing while I was in high school, still scared about what the future might hold. "Where will I be when I'm 25? Will I be teaching by then? Out on my own, living and doing things by myself (or with someone)?" I thought a lot about how crazy it was that I'll be a quarter-century old. I assessed my life and while I'm no where as accomplished as others my age, I think I'm pretty happy. Or perhaps content is the word?

While at work I realized I've now known one of my friends for exactly 10 years. That may not seem like a feat in and of itself, but I'm still amazed. 10 years seems simultaneously long and short. I'm definitely getting older.

I remember hearing with some regularity during high school that you should do X or do Y because one day you'll wake up and realize you're old and unhappy or whatever. It's interesting that this sort of happened to me, but it doesn't stop me from thinking the phrase is silly. Hm. I ought to try and motivate myself, maybe with another cliche:

I'm not getting any younger.

DAY 76 - Royal

Today I spent most of my time with my family, celebrating the birthdays of my cousin and my aunt. So, going along with this theme, I figured I'd give a little review of the place we went to. I am in no way qualified to make a big review on the place, so take my two cents with a grain of salt. Idioms are weird.

We went to a restaurant, an all-you-can-eat (I think) seafood buffet almost an hour out from my home called Royal Hibachi. Despite the distance, I'd say the place pretty much warrants the trip. As this was a family thing I didn't have to pay a dime, but I've been to the place before and if I recall the prices aren't too bad considering it's all-you-can-eat seafood. In addition to that, the whole process of getting your food is quick and easy; the only time you really have to wait is if you're trying to get a table from my experience. There were times where there were so many people you had to get in line for the food, but even then the line went through the food pretty fast.

Food selection was pretty good. There was of course a large variety of seafood, as well as beef and chicken dishes.In one section of the food area are various soups and another section is sushi; I believe there was also a... I don't know how to put it. Stir fry? An area where you select various ingredients and a chef prepares it for you. I actually haven't utilized that place in the handful of times I've been to Royal Hibachi, but it's pretty cool knowing that I have that option. In addition to the main course foods, there was also a small section dedicated to desserts, including various pastries, fruits, ice cream, and even a chocolate fountain for dipping things into.

The service was pretty good, too, considering how busy it got later into the evening. Our server stopped by frequently and, as such, we rarely had an empty drink or too many dishes crowding the table. Aesthetically, the place was pretty wide open so regardless of the large amount of people, the restaurant didn't feel cramped or anything--quite the opposite, actually. I particularly liked the colors of the place, a sort of dark blue/brown for the floors and I think white for the walls, so it wasn't too bright or too dark; the place felt just right.

All in all, I always enjoy going to the Royal Hibachi. It's a bit of a long drive out but I think it's definitely worth it. A out of 10 stars.

DAY 75 - Hairy

I finally installed Final Fantasy XIV and got to play around with it a bit before going to work. My friend had already shown me the customization part of the game, but now that I was able to take my time with it and fool around a bit, I found it quite enjoyable and far more customizable than World of Warcraft ever was, at least in terms of beginning characters. Looking over the options for the male human character, though, made me realize something.

So a couple of weeks ago I mentioned I used to have really long hair, like down-to-my-waist long. During that same time period, I also tried to grow something else on-and-off, something that FFXIV lacks in terms of character customization (that I've seen so far): facial hair! 

It's kind of funny now because that would essentially spell the ultimate neckbeard, but at the time I wanted to try it out. I wasn't going to go all-out with the facial hair--no fu manchu or anything. Just something to make myself look a little "rugged." Unfortunately for me, my ancestry doesn't quite support the rugged beard-type; instead all I get is some scraggly nonsense. Try as I might, all I get is a light beard. Not the thick, glorious, manly beard but... whiskers.

I also wished I had the type of facial hair that would connect my mustache hair with the rest of the beard. As it stands, it seems that they're destined to be forever apart. I've gotten accustomed to the idea of having X number of ways to wear my facial hair, though, just like I'll have to for FFXIV's beard-age. 

That's not to knock it, though. It's a very, very light complaint, but I thought I'd share it along with my own hair (mis)adventures too. Good night!

DAY 74 - Downloading...

An editor's note, if you will, about yesterday's post: whenever I was referring to FFXIV, I neglected to add the "A Realm Reborn" part. That's somewhat significant because initially XIV came out and it was fairly similar to the its other online predecessor, Final Fantasy XI. XIV got scrapped and most of the original people who worked on it got canned, SquareEnix brought in a new group of people and rebuilt the game. So yeah, a part of me wanted to clarify that so here that is. 

Now I've officially taken the plunge and bought the game! It comes with a month free to play it and see what it's like, so besides the initial $30 investment, I can stop I think at any time. The site is a real pain to navigate, though, and there is a lot of red tape to navigate--and I mean a lot. It took me around an hour to figure out exactly what I needed to do, though I might also attribute that to being tired. 

After a long struggle with registration passwords and client downloads (I literally had to Google the client because it didn't readily appear--as far as I know--on the site. How messed is that?) I'm now in the process of downloading the game. My other complaint now, though it's more on my side, is that it's going to take forever for it to download. I believe it requires 20GB of data and... well... currently, I'm downloading at such as slow pace it'll take about 19 hours for everything. I am a simultaneously patient and impatient person. Part of me feels I'll be okay, but the other part of me is going WHADDAFUQ right now. I'll be heading to bed soon, so hopefully by the time I wake up it's done. 

But man... thinking about this makes me realize how far we've come with technology. I was still in junior high when dial up internet was the most prevalent form of internet. I remember when 1GB was a lot of data. I'm looking forward to the day where a 1TB installation will take a day.

Well, at least for the majority of people. I'm sure there's some lucky folks out there with that kind of speed.

DAY 73 - Return to the MMO

I had a discussion with a friend today about the newest entry in the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy 14. Unlike 12 of the previous titles before it, though, FF14 is different--it's a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

I don't have extensive experience in the MMORPG field outside of World of Warcraft. I've largely played WoW on-and-off over the years with my last foray into Azeroth being their most recent expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Plenty of MMOs have come out to try and dethrone the king, but so many of the so-called "WoW-killers" have fallen by the wayside. A few I can recall right now being Guild Wars 2 and RIFT.

That's not to say that no one plays those games, just that they're not competing with WoW really. Star Wars: The Old Republic was another MMORPG predicted to give WoW a run for its money. I actually gave that game a shot myself and, from my experience with it, it felt like WoW but with the classic BioWare touch; branching dialogue trees, companions and all that. That's not bad, I still thought it was fun... but definitely not worth the subscription price the game was asking for. Apparently a lot of folks thought that way, too, because the game ended up going free-to-play in less than a year and a few BioWare folks resigned. Ouch.

So enter Final Fantasy 14. The game's $30 on PC with the first month free, then the monthly sub fee is $13. Those are pretty friendly prices for any MMO I think, but comparing it to WoW isn't exactly fair; the core game plus all four expansions would run you a pretty penny just to have to pay more to play. My friend told me about characters leveling classes as opposed to characters, meaning you can make one character and be able to play all the classes well if you invest enough time. I've heard that it's also WoW-y, but that doesn't concern me too much because I enjoyed WoW.

I think I'll give it a shot in the upcoming weeks to see what it's like, but if it's feels just like WoW, why not play WoW instead?

DAY 72 - Punk-y

I upgraded my phone over the summer, but I wasn't able to transfer all my old data to my new phone. As a result I had to rely on one of my previous phone backups, but unfortunately the last time I updated was May... of last year.

So I ended up having a lot of old apps and year-old texts, as well as virtually no data in the apps I still had (pretty much games, so goodbye progress). I also had to redo my music selection as well, and I finally just got around to fixing up one of my go-to playlists: alternative rock. Stuff like Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco and one band that not too many folks know in the states... Billy Talent.

I first heard of them through a friend I made in high school. He showed them to myself and a few others and we all pretty much got hooked. I've gotten every album they've made so far and I'm always on the lookout for more of their stuff. I think one of the things in particular I dig about BT is their use of harmonies. It always made their songs that much more fun whenever they came up in the car, especially on one of the long road trips we made back in the day. I recall two separate trips to Mall of America in Minnesota, which took maybe four or five houirs by car.

My friends and I were even lucky enough to catch a rare US concert of theirs way back when. I still have the ticket to that show somewhere in my room, but man it was great. I still remember our little group looking like we were the only ones who knew the lyrics to Billy Talent's latest album back then because, at the time, the album had been released in Canada but not the United States. Good times.

Actually, come to think of it, it's been awhile since I've been to a concert. The last one I went to was a P!ATD one, but when I'm thinking "been to a concert," I'm thinking "been in the first floor in the crowd." That Panic! one I sat at because... well, I'm an old man. That, and I didn't think Panic! was exactly "mosh" material. The next thing I'm probably going to is a Paramore concert for a birthday... probably going to sit at that one too, but we'll see. For now, I'll leave you with the Billy Talent song currently in my head: Hanging By a Thread.

DAY 71 -Situations

Tempted to start off with an Escape the Fate reference, but I'll refrain.

Today was a pretty ordinary day in terms of workload. With autumn settling in and the weather getting colder, we're getting less and less people by the day. We've also been due for some rain, and forecasts are predicting a few days of it starting either tomorrow or Wednesday, so it will probably be getting slower. However, it was not the whole day I want to write about today, but more so about what happened in the last hour or so of work.

As I mentioned before, my manager is fond of keeping the same schedule from week to week. It's great because it gives me a framework to work around and all that. On any given Sunday/Monday, I work with a girl who has a really... interesting ex, with a really unhealthy obsession with her. So with that in mind, I'll give you three guesses who happened to show up an hour before closing time.

I didn't notice him at first because cars idled in front of our restaurant all the time and, to me, it seemed like any other car. I was soon informed otherwise by my coworker, who proceeded to panic about the whole thing. The ex sat in his car for awhile while my coworker hid in the back and for awhile I was uncertain what was going to happen. Given the stories I heard about him, I was pretty worried. Was he going to come in? Was he going to just sit there until we closed?

I tried to think of things I could do. She didn't want to talk to him, that much was clear. At one point a customer walked in and I ended up helping him, but that's when the creepy ex came in and for some reason he and my coworker left together. I was later able to see that they didn't go too far; just right outside the door. It seemed like an eternity as I stood nearby, looking over every now and then to see if they were still there and to verify nothing bad was going down.

A ton of things ran through my head. I don't know why, but I ran through a lot of scenarios in my head. Many of my solutions involved cops or stupid "heroism," but I knew they were both adults. Mostly. They could handle themselves fine without my interference, of course. I was just getting prepared for if things got... un-adult-like. I was also concerned over the contents of their conversation, hoping that she wouldn't be somehow convinced or forced back into a relationship with the dude despite him cheating on here with a high school girl.

Inevitably, though, she came back in with a rather upset look on her face. I found out that he told her he couldn't be her friend anymore because "every time [he] sees her, [he] falls in love with [her]," and that she felt terrible for some reason. At the time, it was kind of surreal. I told her that I would be mad if I was in that situation and sitting down here to type this and take it all in, I've become... horribly indignant. Much more so than I was at the time, and it didn't even happen to me!

But seriously, you cheat on someone with an underage partner and you have the god damn audacity to say you can't be that person's friend? I... want to keep this blog profanity-free, but please know that there are at least a dozen f-bombs I'd like to write right now. Holy crap.

Thankfully she didn't take him back. And hopefully it stays that way.

In retrospect, I'm glad I don't have to deal with this type of drama in my personal life because JEEZUS.

DAY 71 - The "Friend Zone"

Yesterday I wrote about how the topic of the "friend zone" seemed to have, coincidentally, destroyed friendships. It all started with me saying that it didn't exist and then it all went downhill from there. Thinking on said topic, I found it interesting enough to write about it, so here we are.

I suppose the first thing to do is define the "friend zone." What is it? It's the situation when one person in a platonic relationship with another person wants to turn it into a romantic relationship, but the other one does not. The concept is nothing new; it's the idea of unrequited love. The term itself seems to have become more popular over the years though, especially with the widespread use of memes every and anywhere nowadays.

So what's the big deal about the "friend zone"? Guys complain about it all the time, about liking a girl and being nice to her and she never ends up reciprocating with a relationship or whatever. 

DAY 70 - DESTROYED

So I'm a dungeon master for two different Dungeons and Dragons groups. The plan is to run a game on Thursday and Friday afternoons into the evening every week. 

Or perhaps, more appropriately, that was the plan.

The original group, the first group I ever DM'd for, looks to be pretty much destroyed as of my typing this. The main reason behind this sounds incredibly trivial, but it essentially boils down to a Facebook status. One of my friends and a player in both D&D groups posted a status referring to a crazy thing he did in the past, but within the status he used the term "friend zone." I'll be writing a blog about that beast later, but here's a preview: I wrote on said status saying that the friend zone didn't exist. 

A mutual friend came in and disagreed, then a whole lot of people commented. One in particular was a player in the first group and in a few words, she's on the far left politically and also not afraid to speak her mind. The mutual friend who disagreed with me interacted with her I guess (I say this because when I woke up, he had deleted his comments to make it look like she was talking to herself), and then another guy came in and started arguing with her in a largely inappropriate manner. After the whole debacle she ultimately defriended the status-maker plus anyone else she was friends with who commented on that status minus myself.

Two of the people she removed were a part of the D&D group. We also hosted the game at her place. So yeah, that group is wrecked. Now I'm sitting here, merging my plans from the first game with the second game and looking over all the missed opportunities, the (hopefully) awesome reveals I had planned, everything. It's really depressing. The whole situation is infuriating as well, because why have that one friend who's a total dick and not do anything about it when he causes trouble with your other friends? 

We'll see how it pans out, I guess. But holy crap, man.

DAY 69 - Downward

Walking home from work today reminded me of something I used to do as a kid. Sometime during my elementary school years, for one reason or another I always stared directly down at my feet while walking. 

Maybe it was because I found the repetition of foot-after-foot entertaining. I certainly enjoy things that seem repetitive to others, like MMOs (mostly WoW) or JRPGs. I tend to grind like crazy in games like Fire Emblem or Pokemon. So perhaps it was repetition? 

Maybe it was because I was a shy kid. I grew up without a present father to pass on to me the "masculine" things, to teach me to be "a man." My mom is a nurse but she worked nights, so she was usually asleep whenever I was home from school. I didn't get a lot of experience with people really. Come to think of it, I didn't have more than five friends until perhaps the middle part of high school, which... seems really sad, ha. But in the end I learned how to fend for myself and I got myself a small group of friends I can trust, so it's not so bad.

Somehow, though, I stopped doing it. I think I just got tired of it in the end, that I should look up so that I could look and, perhaps, feel confident. I remember struggling with looking forward for awhile after I decided because, after all, habits are hard to break. In fact, I still catch myself doing it every so often; though moreso because I find the repetition interesting. 

If I kept that posture longer than I had, I think I would have had even worse back/neck aches than I do today. Oh lord.

Eric

DAY 68 - The 13th

Today is Friday the 13th. How spooky!

Nothing out of the ordinary happened today, though. I'm not a superstitious person (at least I don't think so), it's just that it would  have been interesting if something had happened. In my view it wouldn't have changed anything, but it would have been perhaps amusing to have suffered from a case of "bad luck" on the supposed unluckiest day of the month.

I was a bit curious about the reasons why the number 13 is so feared, so I googled it. A quick read on Wikipedia revealed a number of things, mostly that 13 was associated with some not-so-good things such as the busted 2012 Mayan apocalypse theory, the Code of Hammurabi supposedly omitting a 13th law, and in the Bible, Judas was the 13th apostle to sit down at the last supper. The Code of Hammurabi, as it turns out, was not numbered originally and the lack of a 13th was more due to a person who transcribed it as such; similarly, apparently there was never a real order recorded that the apostles sat down in.

I also found in my research an interesting story about Ireland involving their vehicle plate registrations. As the story goes, the first two digits of a normal vehicle plate in Ireland represented the year the vehicle was registered on; so if an Irishman's car was registered in 2011, its plate would start with 11. In an effort to avoid lower car sales due to the superstition around the number 13, the Irish government decided to utilize two different numbers for this year's registered plates: 131 and 132, with the numbers representing cars registered in the first and last half, respectively, of 2013. This story reminded me of how certain buildings lack a 13th floor or a 13th room.

On a related note, one of the first reasonable explanations I've heard for fear of certain numbers comes from my brief experience with Japanese. In my first couple years of college, I studied Japanese language and culture and did decently well in it. One of the first things you learn is how to count, but the number in question is for 4. In Japanese, one pronunciation for 4 is "shi," which is also how one would pronounce "death." Looking into the fear of numbers, I learned that 9 was also considered unlucky in Japan because its pronunciation--ku--is the same way a person would pronounce "suffering." As a result, these numbers tend to be both avoided and replaced with different pronunciations (yon and kyuu respectively).

It's amazing how folks do so much just to avoid a particular number, ha.

DAY 67 - Home Alone

I woke up alone today. I don't mind it as it tends to happen often, but it does remind me of a creepy story I read a couple of years back.

In it, the protagonist spent his time alone in the basement of an apartment complex, working on some project or other for work. Occasionally he'd leave his room to get a drink or walk around the place, and every time he was alone. No one around; no one in the halls, seemingly no one in their rooms, not a single car nor pedestrian on the street. At one point he got either bored, paranoid or both and hid his webcam somewhere in the hallway outside his room so he could see who might be coming.

The order gets a little blurry to me, but later he gets a strange email or series of panicked emails that prompts him to try and contact some people, both online and through phone. After a number of attempts with each one getting weirder or creepier, I think his so-called best female friend tries to get in touch with him. The main character gets more and more paranoid and the best friend eventually shows up with the police to try to get him to come out peaceably. I won't ruin the ending, but hot dang was that a good story.

When I first read it, I remember the house being really, really quiet. I hadn't received a text or a message at all while I read, and it seemed like nobody was online, so a combination of the story and my own personal situation amplified the creepiness.

That's not to say that being alone is scary to me, but I suppose it's more of the idea of being alone and knowing/thinking that you can't talk to anyone ever again sort of thing. I spend most of my time after work in my room alone, but I know people are around to talk to somewhere. Technology is great. Well, except in the story I was talking about.

Anyway, I'll be heading out now. I've got some things to do, hence the afternoon post.


Eric

DAY 66 - FIGHT

In lieu of talking more about not-happy things, today I'll be talking about... fighting games!

Not that I am particularly versed in the series, but I am a fan. Enough of a fan at least to have purchased a fight stick and to be contemplating modding it a bit for some personal flair, though cosmetic things are obviously not indicative of knowledge.

Back in high school and maybe early college I was really into a fighting game known as Guilty Gear, made my Aksys . I played extensively on pad because I was poor and couldn't afford a glorious fight stick, but that didn't stop me from doing pretty decent. I went to at least one tournament, Frosty... something or other, to support one of my friends and I played against a few tournament-goers. Long story short, I got my ass handed to me, but I still had fun. Unfortunately, Guilty Gear back in the day had some ownership issues and as a result, Aksys stopped coming out with new iterations of the game.

Fortunately for us, however, a spiritual successor popped up a bit later known as BlazBlue: Continuum Shift. My friends and I got pretty deep into that game, partly because of its similarity to GG (although it was slower in speed) but also because of it's crazy convoluted story. The game and its story mode was pretty well-crafted and I particularly enjoyed the fact that each character had their own story, not to mention that I was actually pretty decent at the game. It got even crazier in its later editions, but unfortunately my friends and I moved away from fighting games for awhile--enough to miss a whole version of the game.

Then flash forward to a year ago in August, when Persona 4 Arena came out, also made by Aksys. I had played Persona 3 in high school and 4 last year and loved them, so I was a little... well, pumped for this game. The idea of moving RPG characters to fighting games might be seem weird, but I loved both GG and BB, so I figured I'd give Arena a shot. And let me tell you... it was pretty fun. Unfortunately, when I picked it up I was unable to devote a lot of time to it due to varying complications, but recently they announced a sequel to it featuring more new characters, so I'm hoping to jump back into the fighting scene and get CRAZY SALTY. (That means mad, because I get mad at video games.)

Anyway, that's enough for now. I'll leave you with a list of characters I played (in order) and call it a day.


Guilty Gear Accent Core +
Main(s): Slayer, Baiken
Second Sub: May, Millia
Third Sub: I-No

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift
Main(s): Hazama, Ragna
Second Sub: Makoto, Jin
Third Sub: Mu-12

Persona 4 Arena
Main: Naoto
Sub: Yukiko
Third Sub: Chie

DAY 65 - Grasp

I've been thinking about life and death and all that happy stuff since yesterday's news. It's certainly popping up a lot, especially with what the media is hyping up as a possible "World War III" scenario. I'm pretty skeptical about that whole thing, mind you, but it's the implications--war and death--that have got me thinking.

I don't want to spend this post waxing philosophical. I've got about 25 years of life experience, but I haven't spent years on the subject of "what it means to be alive" or whatever to have a logical, reasonable point of view. One of my friends once said that there's no point in arguing over things that neither party knows extensively about. I'm inclined to disagree with that partially, but the sentiment remains: what's the point of talking about something you know nothing about?

What I do know is that life is precious. I think that folks are taught this idea at one point while growing up, whether that be by a teacher or parent or by the reality of a situation. I remember hearing from somewhere (though I'm not quite sure from where) about kids thinking their invincible when they're young, that you'll live forever or something like that. That made sense to me because I could--hell, I still can relate.

I'm still relatively young, though I'm starting to feel smaller aches and pains. I'm already past the age where famous people I grew up with are starting to pass away; Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston are a couple of bigger examples. Right now I'm that age where people I've actually been in contact with or know through other people are passing away, and soon... you get the idea. I haven't really ever known the experience of losing a loved one. I think I'm both blessed and cursed for this fact because... well, I don't know how to deal. I can still understand to an extent the death of a friend's loved one because of basic empathy: I try to imagine if the same thing happened to me and it just breaks my heart. It breaks my heart real bad.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing, to realize that no matter how many letters you write or calls you make to a deceased person, they won't be there. Or no matter how many times you go to their favorite cafe or bookstore, you'll never see them again, no matter how badly you want to. In a word... it's awful, but I don't think anyone doubts that.

DAY 64 - Remembrance

Today I learned that a teacher at my old high school passed away. He died in his sleep last night after a fight with cancer.

I never had a good reason to approach him because I never had him as a teacher nor as a coach, but one teacher I did have for the majority of my high school career was friends with him so I saw him a lot anyway. Whenever I saw him he always seemed so energetic and happy, cracking jokes with my teacher and the like. Those among my friends who did know him spoke nothing but positively about the man; indeed, he was a beloved and important teacher to my high school and its community.

Looking through the Facebook memorial page was no different. People spoke of him so kindly, so fondly. Despite my never knowing him personally, I always liked and respected him, and I'm sure there are countless others like me because he was just that kind of guy.

Thinking back on my high school days, I feel... well, how that saying goes. "Taking things for granted." It's not so much that I thought he'd be around forever, but I never expected him to be gone so soon. Then that other saying comes to mind... Why do bad things happen to good people? An eternal question it seems.

I intentionally keep things vague in on this blog to protect myself and others who may be associated with me, but doing it this time would feel like a disservice. So... Rest in peace, Mr. Horyn. 

DAY 63 - PPD

Originally I was going to get a gym membership and start working out tomorrow, but as I was thinking about it today at work I realized that the pieces weren't properly aligned. In baseball terminology, PPD refers to a game being postponed either because of weather or some other circumstance. So unfortunately, that's what'll be happening to my workout plans.

I have a couple of things I need for my workout--the money for the membership and, well, my person. In order to help maximize my exercising though, I need to get a protein supplement because, as it turns out, I have very little access to protein through my daily life. Another thing I need to do is finalize my workout plan by sorting out which exercises I'll be doing and looking up their proper forms so as to not hurt myself in the process. Oh, and speaking of hurting oneself, I'm scheduled to take a delivery for my workplace on one of the days I'd work out, so I think not piling on the lifting would probably be good for me.

Also clothes is another important factor. I don't have the proper workout clothes besides some old high school P.E. clothes, so I'd like to upgrade those. And though it's more of a personal preference than a needed... thing, I'd like to have headphones that can stay over my ears while I work out so it won't be bored/utilize to be a more effective workout (e.g., running to the beat or taking a short break during X or Y song).

Despite the list, I'm not entirely unprepared for the workout. I ordered the headphones a few days ago and I also placed an order for protein powder and a shaker bottle thing today. I have about half of what I need before I can finalize my workout plan, and I have the days set out: Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I have some good songs to use for my exercises and I've also been dieting to prepare. But perhaps the most important thing is the motivation.

So next Monday, the 16th. That's the date. I should hopefully have everything in by then, but if not I should have most everything. Will see how it goes, hoho.

DAY 62 - Dizzy Diet

The past few days I've been getting dizzy at seemingly random. That is to say, I can be doing something like sitting at the computer typing something up and be fine, but later I start getting nauseous and have to lie down for an extended period of time.

I thought I knew what was causing it, but I think it might be in relation to being hungry as well. In preparation for my working out next week I've been looking up a proper weight-loss diet. I was able to estimate how many calories my body needs per day and, using that knowledge, have aimed for my diet to be 20% less; in this case, I think it was 1500/1900-ish. As such I think my body is still trying to get used to the lessened calories because, in one instance, when I ate some leftover chips I felt a little better afterward. Hopefully it'll stop in time for my first workout, because I doubt being dizzy while lifting free weights is a good idea.

Speaking of diet, it's either because I never really paid attention to calories or because I didn't know how many calories I personally needed to get by, but holy crap is everything so... calorie-ful. As I previously mentioned, my target calorie goal is ~1500; my break at work alone was around 1000 or so! I was really surprised to say the least, but also a little worried about how my diet will pan out in the future. I need to look up general calorie counts for things because I don't think I'd be comfortable asking folks at restaurants how many calories X or Y product is... at least not yet.

I also need to focus on eating protein foods because that's what is supposed to make you feel "full" as well as help build muscles. I plan on buying a protein powder supplement thing that I'll mix in with water or milk because, as it turns out, I have very little access to protein. The site referencing for the needed protein is about 1 gram per pound of your weight, and I think the total protein I'm going to have today is 50-60g. So waaaaaaaaaaay less.

Talking about it all is making me both excited and nervous, ha. Anyway, that's enough out of me today. More diet things to come, hohoh.

DAY 61 - The First Step

I mentioned nearly a month ago that I wanted to start working out and was going to ask some folks if they'd be interested. Turns out that answer is a lazy "no," as in "Well..." or "I don't know..." so I'm going to run it on my own.

While I'm no stranger to attempts at getting fit, if I had to compare it to relationships, I'm probably more of the acquaintance than anything. A friend of mine who was on cross country in high school gave me tips on running and, for awhile, I followed them, but... running around in my neighborhood always made me feel conscious. Stupid reason, perhaps, but it's a reason. I worked out at a gym earlier in the year (or perhaps late last year) however and, surprisingly, I actually really enjoyed it. 

Sure, I'm out-of-shape and most of the folks there, well, weren't... but working out in an area where others shared a similar goal to be fit made me feel pretty good. So next week starting September 9th I'll be starting my workout program. 

Like I've said, I generally have no idea how to workout. Thanks to some quick Google-fu, though, I was able to find a seemingly legit guide that didn't try to lie to me. Everything in the guide matches up with what I know or heard of in regards to working out, so hopefully it'll work out. And yes, pun intended.

With that in mind, I need to form a workout right now so I'll post it here in a bit once I get it down. I am a total noob so it'll probably look lackluster, but I plan on adding more to it over time. I gotta lose that fat and gain that muscle! If all goes according to plan, perhaps I'll make a before/after thing about it... but there I go again, living in the future.

Yes, baby steps indeed.


Eric

DAY 60 - Samurai

A long, long time ago I had an equally long amount of hair. To illustrate, I am about 5'9"-5'10" on a given day, and at that one point in my life, my hair went down to my waist. After I finally got it cut, it measured out around two feet, though that was shoulder length and not the total length of my hair. But yes, I hope you get the idea here: it was real long.

I don't know why I kept it so long for an equally long period of time, but I did. I guess part of me hated getting haircuts; I'm particularly ticklish on my neck area, so I always hated getting the short "masculine" hair cuts. I was always stupidly conscious about that too, which probably contributed to that as well. Additionally, I was a combination of poor and lazy because, despite having a job at the time, the hours were really crappy (maybe 20 or so on a good paycheck) and I was nowhere near a hair cutter (because I don't drive).

Though in retrospect I probably spent way more money on shampoo than I would have on haircuts.

Still, it was both a pain and, to me at the time, a pleasure to have such long hair. It was fairly easy to manage because of my Asian (or Pacific Islander) heritage, which meant crazy straight hair without having to try. I was also savvy enough to know to shampoo and condition, so my hair was generally nice. One of my coworkers at the time used to call me "samurai" because of the long hair and me being Asian (or Pacific Islander), and perhaps that's why I kept it so long. Not because of him, mind you, but because it made me feel kind of like a samurai. Kinda cool.

Of course, a few years and a few years later, I knew I was completely and utterly wrong. It was an awful, awful idea. That's life, I guess, haha.


Eric

DAY 59 - Rage

Last night I got a lot more sleep than I normally did. Usually I get about 6-7 hours of sleep, but last night I think it was more along the lines of 10. I can't say I was particularly tired over the last few weeks, but for some reason I just fell asleep way earlier than I normally did. So with that in mind, I thought I would feel more rested or generally just better.

While I don't recall feeling sleepy-tired, I do recall feeling a lot of something else: anger.

I'm not sure why. Every little thing at work just angered me a lot more than it would have on any other given day. The same things happened today that would happen any other day, but for some reason it just set me off. Thankfully I never got mad at a customer; usually I settled down as soon as I started talking to one. It was always just a flash of unbridled rage for some reason or another.

It got to a point where I started getting mad at things that weren't even at work, like thinking on bad times when I should have gotten angry or been angrier at the time. It sort of devolved into a "why me" situation, which is never a good thing. After I had my lunch break, though, I started to settle down mentally. It's interesting... sort of like the Snickers deal, hm.

I don't think I tend to get mad often. I think if anything I let a lot more things slide, which is strange considering today. The only times I remember getting mad are at video games or at people being terribly stupid, but there was none of that at work today. Maybe next time I'll just have a light snack or something, that seemed to do the trick today.

Oh god, that sounds like weight getting ready to be added. 

DAY 58 - Daydreams

In high school a couple of friends and I were fans of a show called Scrubs, which, for those who have not heard of it, was a medical comedy/drama. It aired all the time on Comedy Central at random points during the day, so whenever it was on I'd watch and it was pretty great.

The initial main character was a doctor nicknamed J.D. Often throughout the series, J.D. would daydream, often in the middle of conversations, where he would then imagine something usually outlandish for comedic effect. It made sense as the story was told from his point of view and, from what I recall, the series used these types of jokes often but not so often that they were a nuisance or distracted from the main story. Now that I think about it, they poked fun at J.D.'s daydreaming, when the narration was handed over to other characters in the show. When one of those characters interacted with him, he'd look off into space and the other character remarked about how he was doing a stupid face and probably daydreaming.

I mention this because it came up while I was, well... daydreaming. I think I tend to daydream quite a lot. Perhaps not as vividly as the good doctor did, but enough to take me out of reality for a brief moment and distract me--though whether that's good or bad is a different story. 

But yes, today in particular I was thinking about older folks and comparing their relationships with relationships that young folks have. I've always pictured the latter as super-mushy, or passionate or emotional or something to that effect whereas the former, I've always pictured as calm or quiet. I know that's probably not right, or at least it wasn't always that way, so I imagined an older couple acting like a high school couple for instance. 

I'm not sure if the right image is popping up in your head right now, but I'll also add that it's nothing but chaste because... yeah. 

I never finished Scrubs, I don't think, but I'd certainly like to get back to it. Except that last 9th season, maybe. I believe it featured a mostly all-new cast and from what I understand it wasn't too good, but will see how that pans out.

Happy Tuesday.

DAY 57 - Labor Day

Today is (or was) Labor Day, and boy are my arms tired! 

That's actually a true statement and not a joke. My arms are somewhat sore and my feet are kinda aching, but that's generally what it's like after a day of work.

Yes, I celebrated the day the United States celebrates those who work by taking the day off and not working... by working. Furthermore, the job I have currently doesn't do time-and-a-half, and it's the kind of restaurant that should be open 24/7, 365 days a year barring any freak accidents. And to top that all off, I also missed out on a family barbecue hangout thing today, which is made even worse by the fact that one of my cousins who goes to college three hours away was also in town for said barbecue. 

But despite all that negativeness, I don't really feel mad or angry with my situation. I suppose it's because I'm used to it, as the theater job I held before this restaurant gig was very similar. Open every day of the week, even holidays and all that. The silver lining in this new job, though, is that on holidays we might be able to close early and... that's what we did! A whole hour early, which doesn't make a huge difference (I still didn't make it back in time for the barbecue), but it's still one more hour for me to get home and relax... and to type this, of course.

I started thinking about my reaction to today and my past experiences with working on holidays and things. My old place was pretty strict about everything. If you can't work a particular day for a holiday reason despite putting it down on your availability, that was grounds for termination. 

Man, just writing that down makes me realize how terrible that job really was. Anyway...

I've missed out on a lot of things: birthday parties, family gatherings, even Christmas or the turning of the new year. Thankfully my boss at the restaurant is fairly generous for days off, so long as I do it ahead of time, so hopefully I won't have to miss anymore important things. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but I'm feeling optimistic. 

DAY 56 - Drowning

Happy September!

I figured after talking so much about rain yesterday and how much I enjoyed it, I should talk about the negatives of water and one time where I almost drowned.

I'll preface this by saying I took swimming lessons for several years as a kid. I vaguely remember hanging on the to edge of the pool in a part of the then-deep end for a second-grader me, my feet on the wall of the pool. I'm not 100% sure on how I felt at the time, but I'm pretty sure I was terrified. Ultimately those lessons never stuck.

So fast-forward to a 15-16 year-old high school me. I was at the local pool with some friends and they decided to go to this one big slide. I think it's about two stories up, so naturally the pool below would have to be deep to make sure no one would get hurt. At this point in time, nothing had changed in regards to my swimming skill 7-8 years later, but for whatever reason, I was convinced (by myself or otherwise) that I would be fine despite not really knowing how to swim.

We got in line for the slide and I recall being a little nervous. We climbed through the line and one by one my friends went down the slide. Eventually it was my turn. I figured I would be okay, "I'll probably be close to the edge or something so I can grab on to that." So I took the plunge--literally.

It all happened in a flash. I hit the water and sunk below the surface. I opened my eyes in the water saw nothing but darkness below; not the pool's bottom that my feet had grown so accustomed to, but just darkness, and I immediately felt uneasy.

I eventually rose up to the surface, but I was nowhere near the edges of the pool like I thought I would be. Naturally, I panicked. I tried to kick towards the nearest edge, however, like I said before the swimming lessons never paid off, so I ended up going nowhere, probably flailing more than swimming. My inability to swim started to drag me down into the water and I had trouble breathing. My fear was mounting and morbid thoughts began to fill my head, but just as suddenly as I had gotten myself into that situation, I was saved by the lifeguard.

Ultimately I had to fill out some form about the incident, which was in itself kind of embarrassing in retrospect. I think at the time though I shrugged it off and got back into the water (short end, of course).

I think back on that time every so often. It's where I usually go when I think about drowning; just fear. Though sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I wasn't saved in time.

DAY 55 - Thunderstormin'

The last few weeks have been pretty dry, dry and hot. So of course we were due for a little rain, and boy did it rain hard yesterday. 

I think the storm lasted a little over two hours, but it was rough. I was in the middle of a nap when it started raining. I keep a window open in my room during the warmer months and usually when it rains, that particular window doesn't let water in. Yesterday, however, the storm was so strong that the window's curtain flapped around violently and I got hit by some water, which promptly woke me up. 

I shut the window and went into the living room to check it out, and it turned out that it was raining so hard that it looked like it was the middle of the night instead of late afternoon. The lights were flickering and, at one point, my internet went down. My house is generally lucky enough to be a higher elevation I think, so we managed to avoid flooding. Unfortunately, others weren't so lucky.

I also heard a lot of dinging on the awning and, as it turns out, it also hailed during the storm as well. It was so bad that my friend who works drive-through at a fast food restaurant told me that he got pelted in the face at work in the brief moments he had to stick his head out.

On my way to work today I got to see the aftermath of the storm personally. Lots of strewn leaves everywhere, but also tree branches. At the end of my block was a fairly large branch that looked like it could have stopped traffic; I assumed it actually was in the middle of the street and folks moved it there. Around the halfway point from my house and my work, I saw an even bigger branch in the middle of the sidewalk. It was big enough to block two lanes, which is crazy. 

Across the street from my work is a park. A large part was cordoned off with police tape because a few medium-sized trees got blown down by the storm and you could see exactly where it snapped. The lights on the main street were also out, so it was way darker by the time I got out than I was accustomed to. As it turned out, half of the streetlights on my way home were also out.

Despite the destruction of the storm, I couldn't help but think how cool it would be to sit outside during one of those storms. Not just me without any rain gear or anything, of course. I imagined sitting in a small bubble or perhaps something like a phonebooth, staring out in the storm and marveling at it. I've always enjoyed rain and thunderstorms. Something about it is calming--soothing. It's something I wish would happen more often!

Eric

DAY 54 - A Bugs STRIFE 2: Electric Boogaloo

I've been thinking a lot about bugs lately, partly because of the sudden warm-up at the end of summer. There was a good amount of time where it was sub-80 I think and all the bugs were napping, but now? They're everywhere. Cicadas have a particular fondness for showing up at my feet. Creepy bastards.

Mostly, though, because of one of my friends' houses. He's always had a cockroach problem, even after living in three different houses over the last two decades or so. It's really messed up when you can't go a minute without seeing one. It's gotten to the point where I need to make sure that, if I bring a bag, it needs to be sealed at all times and that, when I leave, I have to shake my bag down. I ain't risking that, no way no how. 

The last few times he's brought video games over to places, I've always seen a roach or two crawl out of it. It's usually killed on the spot, but holy crap. I've danced around the idea of fumigating his house a couple of times, but I think if I'm ever going to go there again, I'm going to want to push it. Maybe he's used to it, but I don't know. What I do know, though, is that it's simultaneously gross and annoying.

Eric

DAY 53 - Timeline II

It's been a couple of days since the last entry. I was originally intending on doing the parts in order, but I severely underestimated the length of the whole thing. Holy crap.

But I digress. The next timeline post will start getting into custom stuff, oh my! But in the meantime, let's continue, going on with the Dawn Age today.

---

For this timeline, there are seven major parts as follows:

• The Mythic Age
• The Dawn War
• The Dawn Age
• The First Imperial Age 
• The Sealing War
• The Second Imperial Age 
• The Modern Age

The Dawn Age

"The Dawn Age was a time of mortals rising up to dominate the world after the gods retreated to their astral dominions. The chronology of events during this time is extremely shaky. Without inter-event references, it is difficult to determine whether an event occurred before or after another event."

Derros:

Derros are descendants of a mad, power hungry civilization that nearly ripped apart the planes when the world was still young. Craving primordial power but unwilling to bend their knees to any master, the derros create portals to the Far Realm in hopes of harnessing its power. The madness and horror they unleash cause the World Serpent to drag their lands beneath the surface to halt their machinations. 

Devils:

• Asmodeus consolidates his rule over the Nine Hells. 
• Bensozia, once a bride of He Who Was, is taken as Asmodeus' consort and gives birth to Glasya. Bensozia teaches Glasya to hate Asmodeus. 
• Moloch and other archdukes rebel against Asmodeus, manipulated by Malagarde and Beleth. The rebellion fails and Moloch is exiled from Hell. 
• Geryon replaces Levistus as the Lord of the Fifth. When the other Dukes try to overthow Asmodeus, he remains secretly loyal and betrays the betrayers. For reasons unknown, he is still deposed and exiled by Asmodeus, who elevates Levistus in his place. He finds himself in Tytherion, where he becomes lord of other exiled devils. 
• Levistus slays Asmodeus’ consort, Bensozia. Asmodeus imprisons him in a massive iceberg in Stygia. 
• Glasya, Asmodeus's daughter, is elevated as Lord of the Sixth shortly after Geryon's elevation without serious opposition after she slays the Hag Countess and usurps rulership of Malbolge. 

Dragons:

• Dragotha, a red dragon consort of Tiamat, compacts with the human priest Kyuss, promising him immortality in exchange for the dragon’s service. When her spawn slays him as a punishment for slaying one of Tiamat’s sons, Kyuss raises Dragotha as a dracolich, betraying the pact made with him. 
• Ancient dragons master the power of arcane magic and use it to shape the world around them. Brown dragons that serve as exarchs and demigods of Tiamat found the great empire of Maru-Qet, which lasts for “thousand of years”. Those days of limitless power do not last and the mighty dragon sorcerers soon fall. The last pharaoh of Maru-Qet, Nefermandias, wages a war against cataclysmic dragons, which ultimately destroys the empire, transforming the verdant lands into an arid desert. 
• At Tiamat's instigation, the dragons fall upon one another, with chromatic and metallic battling for dominance. 

Dwarves:

After the Age of Chains, dwarves build impregnable fortresses in the mountains to guard the treasures they wrested from unyielding stone. Their fabulous wealth drew greedy monsters to their doors and precipitated a series of wars whose results were ruin and death. Their fabulous kingdoms fell and their people scattered to the world’s four corners. Among the strongholds the dwarves build are:

• Bordrin's Watch 
• Gar Morra, the City in the Deep
• Ironstone 
• Mountainroot Temple beneath the Stonehome Mountain
• Overlook

Fey:

• Eladrin Empires are founded by the eladrin, including the Anauli Empire, the magic academy Callanar, the ill-fated Cendriane Empire, the Realm of the Twin Queens, and Solaneillon. 
• Gremlins are made by the fomorian king Thrumbolg in the aftermath of his assault on Mag Tureah. 
• Harpies are formed when an evil elf witch-queen is exiled by a hero who breaks the magic tiara that allows her to spy on her subjects as a golden eagle. 
• Mindaris, the greatest of eladrin heroes, has his legendary adventures. 
• Mother of Scarecrows sacrifices some farmers to a devil and learns the secret of animating scarecrows. 
• Nymphs are born from the union of the Archfey of the four seasons and the Archfey of the four winds.
• Orbs of Dragonkind are made by eladrin to protect their empires and overthrow their dragon overlords. 
• The Summer Court is made by an archfey. One of his daughters, Sharaea, falls in love with a mortal. To escape an arranged marriage, she makes a deal with the Raven Queen that she and her lover would be thrust into the future to a time when her intended would agree to release her from her promise of marriage. The betrayal transforms the archfey into the Prince of Frost. The ring of betrothal cast away by the eladrin maid becomes the ring of winter.
• Serpentine Owls are fashioned to serve as companions and scouts for the first elves who travel the world. 
• Sovereign Elk, a powerful archfey, imprisons an exarch of Zehir in a prison that exists at a juncture of the Feywild and natural world.

Gnolls:

Gnolls dwell in a single location before spreading out across the world.

Gods:

• Bahamut hides his immortal essence in a platinum sword he hides in the natural world. When Tiamat commences the War of Dragons, Bahamut awakes his immortal sword in the form of a deva named Amyria. 
• Bahamut seals a rift between the World and the Abyss, and in that place was build the city of Karga-Kul. An order of dragonborn paladins of Bahamut found the elite group known as the Knights of Kul to watch over the seal.
• Bane slays Tuern, and reclaims the former's domain of Chernoggar as is own. 
• Bane plots to rule over all other gods. Erathis and Moradin oppose Bane and he backs down. 
• Gruumsh invades and binds his domain of Nishrek to Bane's. The invasion occurs thousands of years after Bane kills Tuern. 
• Bane subdues the god Maglubiyet and makes him his exarch, after the hobgoblin Senekos converts many goblinoids to the worship of Bane.
• Corellon gifts mortals with the power to perform arcane magic.
• Corellon and Gruumsh fight over some mortal followers. Corellon shoots out Gruumsh’s eye with an arrow. 
• Gruumsh and Kurtulmak steal Corellon's Misty Isle, hiding it somewhere Corellon could not locate it.
• Melora withdraws completely for generations, her whispers silenced. She passes the time hunting alone in Arvandor. 
• Tiamat and Zehir struggle for millenniums over control of Tytherion. Tiamat occupies the underground, while Zehir retains the surface world.

Halflings:

Avandra adopts halflings and gives them good fortune.

Hobgoblins:

Senekos converts many goblinoids from the worship of Maglubiyet to the worship of Bane. Hobgoblins carve out an empire with goblins and bugbears as servants. They develop magical methods to breed beasts for various purposes. The empire falls due to civil strife and possible fey interference. 

Illithids and Gith:

• Nihilath is the mind flayers' empire which stretches through the Astral Sea and the Underdark and was created after they arrive from the Far Realm. They use the gith and the duergar as slaves. 
• Gith are created when the illithid attempt to create the perfect slave race, through selective breeding and magical manipulation. The slave race revolts and name themselves after the leader of their rebellion.
• Tu'narath, the gith's capital, is founded in the Astral Sea within the floating corpse of a dead god. 
• Zerthimon, a gith who desires peace, rebels when Gith declares an eternal crusade against the illithids. After much fighting, Zerthimon leads his people into the Elemental Chaos. His followers become known as the Githzerai. 
• Tiamat compacts with Gith, giving the support of red dragons in exchange for her soul and the souls of all future leaders of the githyanki. 

Minotaurs:

Minotaurs establish the great city of Ruul, a model of civilization. Agents of Baphomet work in secret to undermine Erathis’ followers. The minotaurs break from Erathis’ fold and the Horned King overruns Ruul. Melora and Kord then destroy the city.

Shadar-Kai:

A tribe of humans make a pact with the Raven Queen to be her servants in exchange for a shadowy form of agelessness. Some shadar-kai cut their ties to the Raven Queen, placing themselves above the gods. They broker with the Shadowfell’s dread powers, offering their shattered souls in exchange for the power to move freely between worlds and do as they please, and become the "gloaming dancers". 

Sigil:

The Xaositects form as a philosophical faction in the great planar city of Sigil, studying chaos to master it. 

Thri-Kreen:

The Thri-Kreen lived in nomadic tribes for thousand of years. 

Yuan-Ti:

Proto-yuan-ti found the Empire of Zannad, mastering flesh-contorting magic to improve themselves and become the modern yuan-ti. The magic warps their minds, and their society slowly rots from within. They construct a pyramid structure in homage to Zehir, called "Sarpacala". Some humans, calling themselves the Hastani, are slaves of yuan-ti who worship a demon called "Merrshaulk". They escape when the gods destroy the sect.

DAY 52 - Dawn

An early post, how interesting! The reason for that is a simple one.

Today was my first day doing "delivery" at work, which basically refers to taking in food deliveries and restocking our fridge and freezer. It was as easy as it sounds, though I'm a little tired from all the lifting and a little surprised; tired because some of those boxes can get pretty heavy and surprised because I thought the whole affair would have lasted two-three hours. Turns out it was a little under one. Granted, one of the managers was there and did one part of the delivery, but I don't think that would have lasted more than 20 minutes tops, let alone a whole hour.

The main thing I wanted to talk about though is an observation I made. Everyday that I have to work, I walk because it's literally within 10 minutes from where I live. I almost exclusively close, which starts around 3-4PM depending on the given day, so whenever I go to work it's in the middle of the afternoon when people are finishing their day jobs or school and whenever I go home it's when people are or are about to go to sleep. 

Working this super-early shift at 6AM, of course, is the opposite: people are just waking up and getting ready for the day as I headed to work and folks are heading out by the time I got home. Of course the contrast is huge, seeing as they're the complete opposites of each other, but it was just interesting to me. The mood was completely different going and leaving work for this small shift than it is for my usual; today felt, I don't know, hopeful or perhaps more energetic whereas at night it's quiet and... well, not dull, but there's not as many folks up and about.

Since leaving high school and taking mostly late-morning/early-afternoon college classes, whenever I wake up in the morning I just lounge around or go somewhere I want to go, so it's been awhile since I've had to go through a whole routine to go do morning work. I'm not sure if it's me being tired that's talking, but perhaps I am a morning person after all.

Eric

DAY 51 - Beach

I was thinking about what to write today at work and my mind hovered back to summer. Recently it's been getting hot, like summer hot (well, in terms of northern Illinois heat; definitely ain't Florida heat probably) despite it almost being August. The summer as a whole here was actually pretty cool temperature-wise, but now I'm feeling it. Waking up feeling hot and sweaty is not the best feeling.

While I was thinking about summer being over, it occurred to me that I never once did one of the quintessential summer things to do: go to the beach. I'll be the first to admit that I: a, can't swim and; 2, don't have a great summer body, I always find it fun to go to the beach with friends or something and just hang out; swimming optional. 

In retrospect it probably all goes back to my schedule, but I occasionally had a day off where I had no obligations. But then there's friends' schedules... lining up everybody's free time is mega-hard. I suppose the fact that I had to think about the beach, though, shows how much of a priority it was for me. It still would have been nice to hang out with some friends.

Though, come to think of it, summer isn't quite over yet... Ha. We'll see. 

Eric 

DAY 50 - Restless Redux

Usually I'm able to get out of a restless funk but, unfortunately for me, it seems to have carried over from yesterday. I've been thinking about what's different from the last couple of days and when I started feeling this way, and I suppose there's a number of things I can point to.

For one, I've been listening to things like Panic's newest single and the S1 opening for Oreimo. I found recently that I really enjoy the group that performs the latter, Claris. Despite me not knowing Japanese well at all, it's something about the voice and the emotion in all their songs that just gets at me. It's something I used to feel all the time growing up in middle school and high school. I suppose the same thing can be said for Panic, too.

Secondly, there's a handful of important decisions for me to make very, very soon. Mostly the school thing and what I want to do with myself and all that gooey goodness. I've said before that I generally don't put myself in situations where I'd be anxious or worried, so perhaps my lack of experience with the feeling is making it all the more terrible. 

And thirdly... well, work. Work mostly. That's all I've been doing lately. By the time I get home, I usually watch something, play a game or something. Maybe work on D&D things. More often than not, though, I fall asleep. Then I wake up and go to work, rinse and repeat. This... is what I've grown to disdain. 

I don't hate my job. The people are nice, the hours are great. I get paid and all that, I get to buy food and things I want. That's more than a lot of people the world over can say. I suppose I'm just bad at managing my time, or maybe enjoying it. Right now it just doesn't seem worth doing for the rest of my life. Hm.... 

I still need to find that thing that makes me happy. 

DAY 49 - Restless

Ever feel like you want to do something but you have no idea what that is? I used to get that regularly and they were always semi-intense. I remember one particular summer-like night when that happened and, compounded with the heat, well... that combination did not make for a happy me, no sir.

It's back tonight, though, and boy is it frustrating. I have the urge to do something, anything, but I can't for the life of me figure out what that is. I mean, I have plenty to do: currently I have games I have yet to beat on a multitude of platforms, there's plotlines I need to write for my D&D campaigns (as well as that timeline that I am simultaneously working on), and there's shows or videos I wanna watch but... the mood doesn't strike me. Which is a damn shame because all that backlog ever does is grow.

I know I shouldn't complain. If there was ever a competition for the biggest first-world problem out there, this would definitely finish in the top three if not take the gold. I mean, "wanting to do something but not knowing what" hardly compares to "how am I going to pay for [IMPORTANT THING] this month?" but yes. Still plenty frustrating.

I recently watched The World's End and, lemme tell you, it was pretty good. I won't spoil it too much, but the one of the main ideas was something that I could relate to. I think I've mulled on this topic in one of my posts here--or thought about posting, but I've talked about that before already--but it's the idea of moving on, or coping, or getting somewhere. Right after the movie, I got home and heard about an apparent NYSNC reunion performance on the VMAs. I found the subsequent video on YouTube (I'd link but I bet it's going to be down by tomorrow) and that took me way, way back.

So now I'm feeling rather... mixed, I guess. Perhaps it's too much conflicting feelings at once that's making me feel this way. Or maybe I'm just putting too much thought into this and I really just want to do something... or perhaps both?


Eric

DAY 48 - Rivalry

I attended a high school that shared it's name with another high school across town. As you can imagine, there was a fairly big rivalry between are two schools; I was, er... lucky enough, I suppose, to be at my school during the time where I believe we started dominating our rivals, after years of the opposite being true.

Being a naive person and having friends who generally didn't mingle with others outside of school groups, I never really knew anybody outside of my own high school. Folks from our rival school I pretty much regarded as "them." It's interesting to me, then, that after so many years after high school I wound up being friends with a big chunk of people from that school. I don't know why that's a big deal, but for me it's a little surreal I guess. 

I generally thought of the rival school like, "Ooh, they're the enemy! We gotta beat 'em, woo," during the spirit weeks and all that. Granted, I never attended any non-mandatory spirit week events and, granted, the only time I think I went to a game was during homecoming week after I had graduated and we were mostly just visiting friends who were still there, so I was never really, enthusiastically for my school against this rival school. Still, it's a little surreal after being surrounded by folks all those years going "GRR RIVALS." 

Looking back on it now, my school life has generally seen a setting of a rival-like entity or entities, then during the next transition I end up being friends with those kids anyway. Elementary school was like that, middle school was like that and, ultimately, high school was like that. 

Thinking about stuff like this is always interesting to me, ha.

Eric

DAY 47 - Nervous

When it comes to things that I've done before or things I should be familiar or comfortable with, lately I've been feeling a bit nervous. I'm not sure why exactly.

I don't think I'm normally a nervous person. Shy, maybe, but nervous? I guess I would attribute that to being generally laidback, which I would attribute to my lack of decent judgement on situations and all that other stuff. I guess I tend to avoid things that make me feel, er... not-good. I think that's a reasonable thing to strive for generally. Though, of course, it's good to get yourself out of your comfort zone often to grow as a person.

Hm, maybe that's the thing. If you grow as a person by putting yourself out there, what happens when you withdraw? Would it be reasonable to say that you diminish yourself as a person? I suppose that interacting is a lot like anything else, really. Both the idea of practice making perfect but also not putting it to use constantly results in decay. Rust.

Strange thought, I guess. Still doesn't make me feel any less nervous, but I suppose it's something to chew on. 

DAY 46 - Timeline I

Alright, so breaking away from the self-analysis or "memory lane" posts for now, today's post is going to be mostly about something I haven't talked about in detail for awhile. What is that, you might ask? Well, you'll regret it because the answer to that question is...

DUNGONES AND DREAGINS. So exciting.

A week or so ago I told my players I would be constructing a timeline of the world, but time was not on my side. With work and sleep taking up 2/3rds of my day, the only thing I've been able to do is read up on the default/core world's setting's timeline which was conveniently outlined by some folks on the D&D forums. Kudos and a big thanks to them for helping shape what you (read: me) are about to see.

So yes, if you are into fictional backgrounds and timelines, I hope you'll enjoy the following. I'll generally be lifting from the default source material, but it will start to deviate once it gets into more recent times. Also, when I first went into making this thing, I thought it would have been a little less... er, long, so as a result I'll be breaking it into three different pieces over the next couple of days. Or weeks. Holy crap this is long.

It feels like a cop-out, urgh. But I'm putting work into this! Anyway, I'll make the appropriate links for the table of contents when the time comes. Today I'll be covering the Mythic Age and the Dawn War. 

---

For this timeline, there are seven major parts as follows:

• The Mythic Age
• The Dawn War
• The Dawn Age
• The First Imperial Age
• The Sealing
• The Second Imperial Age 
• The Modern Age

The Mythic Age

"The Mythic Age was a time of myths and legends. So far back in time, most events were remembered only in distorted tales and conflicting traditions. This was a time where the gods were still very active in the world." It ended around ten thousand years ago.

In the beginning, there was a point of infinite potential. A tiny disturbance caused this epitome of perfect to erupt, splitting existence asunder. From the detritus coalesced the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos; the gods arose out of the Astral Sea and the primordials arose from the Elemental Chaos. Other lesser entities also arose during this time, such as angels, slaads and djinn.

In the Astral Sea:

• Various gods such as Corellon, Erathis and Zehir attempt to end in-fighting among the gods. 
• Amoth and Moradin create the first maruts, constructs that serve as impartial arbiters and later enforcers of divine pacts. 
• Maruts develop and spread the language Supernal throughout the Astral Sea.
• The goddess Khala gives birth to the gods Kord, Tuern and Achra. 
• The god Nerull becomes the deity of the death domain.
• Corellon, Lolth and Avandra create Arvandor.
• The Lattice of Heaven is created, its purpose to link all of the gods' astral dominions together.
• A nameless god kills the guardian of the Living Gate, releasing the defiling energies of the Far Realm. The gods Ioun and Pelor seal the gate shut at the cost of Pelor's dominion, Verdant.
• Shardminds assemble themselves from the shards of the destroyed Living Gate.

In the Elemental Chaos: 

• Djinns are the most advanced society of all the elemental races. 
• Primordials create various creatures such as titans and hell hounds.
• They also create the world with the help of the titans. However, the world was one of elemental fury, engulfed in an endless cycle of destruction and rebuilding.
• The bright and dark pieces of leftover creation-stuff form the Feywild and the Shadowfell respectively.
• Fomorians and Death Giants are the Feywild and Shadowfell's respective versions of the Titans

Gods and the World:

• The gods look down from the Astral Sea and see what the primordials had created. They covet this world because they understand how to make it better.
• The attempt to improve on the primordial's work by creating natural life, taming the churning elements, and creating the sun and moon in the world.
• Primal Spirits come into being.
• Devas form when some angels, out of love and desire for the mortal world, make deals with the recently awakened primal spirits and give up their true immortality. 
• The deity He Who Is creates humans.
• The deity Io fuses astral spirits with raw elements. The greater spirits become dragons while the lesser spirits become dragonborn, the latter serving the dragons.
• Lolth creates the art of weaving after watching spiders make their webs, becoming a deity of fate who wove strands of mortal destiny.
• The deity Maglubiyet creates hobgoblins. 
• The deities Melora and Sehanine create halflings.
• Moradin chisels dwarves from the bones of the earth. Shortly after creating the dwarves, legends state that Moradin creates a divine beverage, not realizing his creation is watching carefully. 
• Erathis gathers the greatest tribes of all races to the plains, where she inscribes the first laws in stone. 
• Erathis and Melora work together to improve the mortal world. Melora and her hunters protect the cities as well as the wilderness from aberrants and from deities that crave destruction, such as Baphomet, Gruumsh and Yeenoghu. Partly as a result of this protection, cities prosper and their citizens develop skills, knowledge and an outlet for their creative urges. 
• Sahuagin are born from a chasm deep underwater when the god Sekolah kills a great behemoth of the deeps and, in his victory, sings a song that shakes all the ocean. 
• Jackalweres are created when a primal spirit, Dark Sister, transforms an almost-extinct pack of jackals.
• Zehir, unable to properly create his own race, convinces Avandra to teach him how to alter the creations of others. Avandra does so, but attaches a condition that Zehir may do so only with the creator's permission.

Gods and the Feywild:

• Corellon discovers the Feywild and creates elves to inhabit it. The name of this unified elven race is contested, but the most commonly accepted story claims that the elves arose from the Corellon wept from sorrow, beauty and mirth during the days before Lolth's fall.. From sorrow's tears rose the dark elves, from beauty's the high elves (eladrin), and from mirth's the wood elves. 
• Corellon, Lolth and Sehanine head the fey pantheon unchallenged.
• The oldest fey spirits become the Archfey. Some are noble eladrin so old and powerful that they have transcended the bounds of mortality. Some are awakened spirits of mighty forests, mountains or rivers. 
• Lolth, to restore her place as Corellon's favored, beguiles an eladrin knight and weaves a glamer to make him look like Corellon. She then has him seduce Sehanine, who conceives a child. Corellon, enraged by Sehanine's infidelity, dooms the child to remain at the pool where she was conceived until the day when she might give her heart freely to another. Sehanine gives her daughter power over the night and powerful magic. When the knight learned how he had been used by Lolth, he hurled his mystic weapon into the pool and vowed never to fight again.

Gods and Primordials Interact:

• Balcoth, a primordial, finds the impressionable minds of mortals fascinating.
• Titans create giants to serve them, taking inspirations from the smoother, symmetrical creations of the gods.
• Envious primordials demand dwarves of their own. Pleased that the primordials appreciate his creations, Moradin gave generously and returned to his work. Unfortunately, the primordials give these dwarves to giants, who then use them as slaves. Moradin either cannot hear their cries over the sound of his own hammering or cannot face the wrath of so many primordials alone. Thus began the Age of Chains. 
• Some dwarves infuse with the elements, becoming forgeborn dwarves, galeb duhr azers and eisk jaats.

The Dawn War

"The Dawn War occurs when the primordials and gods clash. The primordials are manipulated by the Chained God, who is driven mad when he grasps the shard of pure evil. According to the gods, the primordials plan to destroy the world and create something new, so the gods intervened. The gods fight to save the World and their mortal servants. Each god selects an aspect of creation to champion and care for during the war, defining their domains. The primordials, who vastly outnumbered the gods, thought they would easily win, so they did not organize armies."

The Shard of Pure Evil:

• As the name states, the shard is made of pure evil. Beings within its proximity to the Shard transform, corrupted by the evil energy. 
• The Chained God finds the shard and grabs it. He falls mad with a desire to unmake reality. Luckily he has enough sense left to partially repel the whispers of the Shard telling him to put it in the Astral Sea and instead plants it in the Elemental Chaos, resulting in the Abyss. The shard exists at the very bottom of the Abyss, "digging" further down and creating more layers as it descends. 
• In an alternate universe the Chained God succeeds in destroying reality. The remnants of the destroyed universe coalesced into aberrant creatures called the sharn, eventually finding their way into the Underdark of the World.
• The being Juiblex is created when a mass for fluid and solids comes into awareness due to the shard. Later, the creature retreats to a plane known as Shedaklah.
• Primordials and the Chained Godbattle for control of the Shard and the use of it, but the two forces reach a stalemate.
• Obox-Ob claims the Shard and becomes the first Prince of Demons. Seeking to replant it in the Astral Sea, he is soon unseated by a combined effort of the newly-transformed demon lords Demogorgon, Orcus and Baphomet, who blast him down into the surface of the Elemental Chaos, creating the Blood Rift of the Abyss. The Shard still burrows deeper to this day, creating more layers of the Abyss.

Choosing Sides and Making Allies: 

• Abominations are made by both the gods and primordials as war weapons.
• The divine beings come together in a great assemblage, surrounded by hosts of angels, the races of the world, and other creatures and beings. The greatest of the gods' mortal agents in that war were invokers, imbued with a fragment of the gods' own might to fight alongside them.
• Aquatic giants abandon the primordials and begin to worship Sekolah, an exarch of Melora. Astral giants ally with the gods as well.
• Astral warwings and other astral war engines are made by the gods to fill out their armies and counter the chaotic creations of the primordials.
• The astral domain Carceri is created by the gods as a laboratory to spawn abominations to serve them in the war. The gods also create runes of unmaking.
• Dao and efreet elect to remain neutral.
• Djinns ally with the primordial against the gods.
• Doppelgangers are believed to be made by Sehanine from reshaped elemental spirits. 
• Elementals are made by primordials out of elemental spirits.
• Giants ally with the primordials.
• Medusas are believed to be made by Zehir from reshaped element spirits. 
• Minotaurs are created by Baphomet, a great primordial-turned-demon-lord, as his soldiers in his bid to replace Melora as the god of nature. 
• Nagpas are created by the primordials.
• Glaur is a stronghold built Nehushta, a primordial, to serve as one of the central fronts in the Dawn War.
• Pegasi are the offspring of a great god.
• Rot harbingers are created by Orcus to mock a failed attempt to kill him.
• Primordials develop the Godslayer Infernos, which consist of torrential elemental spells that tear away the divine essence of a god. One such spell churns white and violet flames that prevent a deity from discorporating and suppresses its immortal nature. 
• Primal Spirits remain neutral. Some of them, such as Stormhawk, help keep the world from being destroyed. Other Great Elders protect the people caught in the crossfire, allowing the humanoids' survival. 

The War Begins:

• The Elder Elemental Eye marshals the primordials and other denizens of the Elemental Chaos in order to try to overwhelm the combined might of the new Demon Princes. Some, such as Codricuhn and his chief lieutenant, Miska the Wolf-Spider, join EEE in the Abyss and are corrupted into demon princes. Others, such as the Elemental Princes, spread the cult of EEE. 
• The cult believes that if the Elder Elemental Eye could gain the Shard of Pure Evil, he could lead them to victory over the meddlesome gods and immortals of the Astral Sea.
• He Who Is and other gods overwhelm and chain the Chained God away in a deep layer of the Abyss, striking his real name from the annals of history and naming him the Chained God. His armies are scattered but not defeated. They are led by Miska and fight on. Asmodeus is assigned by He Who Is as prison-keeper of the Chained God's tomb. 
• Shortly thereafter, the gods give the angel Alusiel the Ebon Stone, telling the angel that the stone held the essence of the Chained God, though it doesn't. 
• Haramanthur, a god, is tasked with the protection of the Astral Sea against incursions of creatures from the Elemental Chaos. 
• Io first refuses to become involved in the Dawn War.

Battles:

• The primordials invade the Astral Sea and destroy the Lattice of Heaven and steal the Rune of the Stone Eternal, the mechanism that serves as the power source of the destroyed Lattice,  hiding it from the gods. 
• The god Achra defeats Tabrach-Ti, the Queen of Bronze. She is the first primordial to fall. Achra begins to be called Bane from then on. All of the All of the gods agreed to work on an united front, under the command of Bane.
• The Master of Tides, another primordial who sought to wreak havoc and destruction between the planes, is one of the first primordials to fall.
• Amoth and Orcus, Demogorgon and Rimmon fight in Amoth's dominion of Kalandurren. Though Amoth manages to destroy Rimmon and nearly slays Demogorgon, but Orcus strikes him down and his realm becomes a shattered land of fear. In the days following the battle, specks of bitterly cold light begin to rise from Kalandurren's landscape. The light forms semisentient creatures that fuse the wrath of the slain god and the fury of the dead demon lord. The creatures disperse the cosmos, fueled by an insatiable desire to destroy immortals and elementals alike. 
• Yeenoghu reputedly creates his signature triple flail from the bones of a god he slew during this war.
• Moradin goes into battle to liberate the dwarves from their elemental masters. He aids the other gods in the war by supplying weapons and armor. He also makes Clangeddin Silverbeard an exarch. 
• Clangeddin Silverbeard makes two fine axes and melds into them the strands of his own silver beard. He shows the dwarves how to cut the giants down to size, and offers the titans the gift of fear.
• Dwarves deliver a blow that cripples the giants, betray their masters and unleash the fury of a hundred generations of repression. Moradin gives the Axe of the Dwarfish Lord to the first dwarves.
• Gildur and Toris Irontop, a pair of dwarven champions and twin brothers fight fiercely until they confront Durandus, "the Iron King." That night, after a vision from Moradin, they become the soulforged, and defeat Durandus. After their victory, the brothers gather the most pious followers of Moradin and teach them what they learned, forming the first generation of the Soulforged knighthood.
• Haemnathuun, the Blood Lord primordial, is slain. His corpse is cast into the Astral Sea. His black blood filled the maze of tunnels which will eventually become the Keening Delve. 
• Heur-Ket, a powerful primordial, invades the Astral Sea unchallenged until he is stopped by Pelor, Erathis and Ioun when the gods fuse their dominions together. The fused dominion became the city of Hestavar.
• The deity Kord defeats the primordial Tantagaras in single battle. Later, Kord challenges the dread slaad lord Ygorl, but the two fight to a standstill and Kord retreats.
• Melora defeats the primordial Cryonax to gain mastery of the waves. Cryonax is then sealed in a deep trench underwater beneath Melora's great stone shield.
• Miska seeks out and corners Obox-Ob in the Abyss, following him all the way to a portal that would lead them to the Shard of Evil. The demon lord Queen of Chaos appears and slays Obox-Ob, and then recruits Miska in return for her aid to defeat the gods.
• The Elemental Prince of Fire Imix, bound to the Chained God, throws his forces against the god of the forge, Moradin. Moradin smites the corrupt primordial, casting the squirming prince down to the Elemetnal Chaos where he would later be bound in adamantine chains. 
• Mual-Tar the Thunder Spirit seeks to reclaim the skies from the gods who had claimed them. The gods drive it back into the Elemental Chaos, where Moradin chains and traps it.
• Orcus creates his wand from a god of virtue and chivalry, or from a human hero. Later the gods attempt to kill Orcus with a host of angels while he was away from the Abyss, but the attempt fails. 
• Shom, the God of the Word, dies, leaving his dominion Shom without a deity. Ioun gifts its inhabitants, the Illumians, with two syllables of the Word of Creation so that they may continue Shom's work. 
• Io, seeing creation at the brink of collapse, joins the fight. He defeats many primordials during the war.
• The elemental princes Sisanthak and Vorsheen turn on one another in the Astral Sea, creating the astral motes called "Frostburn." The gods enchant the mote so the inhabitants do no realize how long they have been battling.
• In the latter days of the Dawn War, archons and other elemental soldiers begin forging increasing numbers of weapons, having learned the value of such tools from followers of the gods. They found the mines of Irdoc Morda.
• In the final years of the Dawn War, in his arrogance Io faces Erek-Hus, the King of Terror, alone. The primordial cleaves the dragon god into two halves which become Tiamat and Bahamut. The dragon gods slay Erek-Hus, then battle each other until Tiamat flees. 
• Io's violent death causes a rift between the planes. Haramanthur realizes the only way to prevent the primordials from using the rift to invade the Astral Sea is to close off the way with own essence. He sacrifices himself by turning himself and everything around him to stone to seal the rift. 
• Catastrophic dragons form after some dragons, seeing Io destroyed by Erek-Hus, believe that the gods would lose the war. Rather than follow Tiamat or Bahamut, who they regarded as weak and selfish, these dragons turned to the primordials for leadership. The primordials embrace the defectors with welcome arms, transforming them into manifestations of chaos and destruction.
• Bahamut pursues the primordial Nihil into the living god realm Lakal and slays it there. The dragon god's divine breath shatters Nihil, but this results in the shattering and death of Lakal. The quom, Lakal's followers, dedicated themselves to "unsundering" Lakal.
• The gods lure Balcoth from his place of hiding by creating a hardy-minded race, which would take him longer to corrupt. By the time he succeeds, the gods find him. Bane severs his head, Moradin fashions a prison for him, and Bahamut mans its garrisons.
• A great and powerful primordial, Timesus the Black Star, travels to the Shadowfell to feed o nthe departing life force of dying entities to increase his powers in the place known as Death's Reach. Nerull and other gods create Nerull's Gate to gain quick access to this place. Timesus was defeated by the combined might of several gods.
• Torog, a god of perfect health and for whom any injury healed almost instantly, defeats the primordial Gargash, but not before being cursed with horrific injuries and constant torment. Torog is then binded to the Underdark.
• Volunt, a defeated primordial, is cast into the plains of the Shadowfell, where the shades there tear him apart, leaving only the Darkreach Mountains behind.
• An exarch of Moradin and seven angels of Bahamut known as the Wind Dukes of Aaqa craft the Rod of Law in Torzak-Belgirn, the soulforge of Moradin. With this Rod, they strike down Miska and the Queen of Chaos, the latter who dissipates into the Abyss, only to return at another Abyssal Eclipse (which occurs once every millennia). Though the banishing of Miska to an unknown plane causes the shattering of the Rod of Law into the Rod of Seven Parts, their fall turns the tide of the war for the gods' favor.
• Baphomet pursues his erstwhile ally Yeenoghu when he flees the field and throws himself into the Abyss rather than submit. 
• Near the end of the Dawn War, seven brethren angels fall in battle. Three manage to return to He Who Is. The god cannot save them all, and instead fuses them into one: Geryon. 
• Nagpas betray the primordials when the gods' victory is imminent.
• Kord slays the primordial Sehil in the final battle of the Dawn War.

Wars Within Wars

During the Dawn War, other wars erupted among the gods, primordials and demons.

The Death Wars:

• Nerull chooses a mortal queen who died of plague as his consort. She slays the god and usurps his throne. The other gods rise up to stop her, but she becomes the Raven Queen. Some of Nerull's priests found the cult of the Seekers. 

The Kinstrife Wars: 

• Lolth may have descended into the Abyss in search of power and become corrupted by the Heart of the Abyss. She leads her chosen people against the other elves.
• The Raven Queen allies with Corellon. After the conflict, she takes the domain of fate from Lolth.
• Elves break away from the eladrin and depart for the natural world. They settle into forests of the World and are commonly known as wood elves.
• Eladrin remain in the Feywild to rebuild the ruined kingdoms. Some eladrin refuse to participate in the war and flee to the natural World.
• Boreanis, an alchemist, crafts nine bronze griffons for nine eladrin lords as gifts for the esteemed heroes of the Kinstrife Wars.
• Drow are banished into the Underdark after this defeat.
• Winterkin are eladrin who retreat to the Winter Lands following the Kinstrife Wars.
• Corellon and Sehanine leave the Feywild after the war to fight alongside the other deities in the Astral Sea.

The War of Betrayal:

• Pazuzu, a demon prince, whispers words of deception and corruption into Asmodeus' ears.
• Asmodeus grows proud and hateful of his position as prison-keeper, and seeks out the Shard of Evil instead, abandoning his duty. Claiming a sliver of the shard of pure evil, he creates his ruby rod and fights his way back to the Astral Sea. He Who Is allows Asmodeus back into his forces.
• Bane takes on Asmodeus as an advisor. Bane is the only deity who predicts Asmodeus' rebellion.
• Devils are created by He Who Is from Asmodeus and his followers for allowing too many innocents to die in battle.
• Narzugons, servants of He Who Is, are tricked into betraying He Who Is and damning them to serve Asmodeus for eternity, despite their hatred for him. 
• He Who Is is slain by Asmodeus, becoming He Who Was. He Who Was binds Asmodeus to eternal prison in Baator, the once idyllic plane of Baathion. Asmodeus seizes his former overlord's divinity and creates a rigid hierarchy of power. Having devised a way to subbert and harvest mortal souls, the devils also require infernal pacts to breach the bindings of Hell. Even still, he hungers for a larger fragment of the shard of pure evil. 
• Alloces, an angel, begins defending He Who Was, but eventually turns traitor and joins Asmodeus to eventually become his chief inquisitor. During the War of Betrayal, he serves under Geryon.
• Geryon leads the forces of He Who Was into an ambush on the Bridge of Storms and then turns on them. He becomes one of Asmodeus' greatest generals. 
• Brother Eiulo, possibly the last servitor of the deceased human creator He Who Was, pens a massive tome called the Codex of Betrayal.
• Zehir, who may have aided Asmodeus or killed He Who Was himself, claims humans as his own. The other gods defeat Zehir and free the humans from his control.
• The gods, desperate for Asmodeus' skills, compact with the archfiend, granting him autonomy in return for his aid in defeating the primordials.

The Blood War:

• Grazz't, Asmodeus' most trusted advisor, is sent to the Abyss to seize the evil seed within but the evil of the Abyss corrupts Grazz't and makes him a powerful demon lord. When Grazz't's invasion is stalled, the archdevil surrenders to the plane's corruption. Glasya, Asmodeus' daughter, descends into the Plain of Yawning Pits to punish Grazz't and complete his mission, but Glasya is routed.
• Glasya stabs Grazz't, creating the babaus.
• Bulezaus are spawned by Baphomet during the Blood War as a race more vile than the minotaurs, many of whom had become civilized. 

The Winter War:

• Khala, goddess of winter, tries to become the Queen of the Gods. Leading an army of evil gods including Kord, Gruumsh, Tiamat and Zehir, and primordials, she casts a long wintrty night over the world. She is opposed and eventually defeated by Pelor, Moradin, Bane, Asmodeus, the Raven Queen and a repentant Kord.
• Moradin battles Kord upon the heavenly mountains and across the world. Kord unleashes his full fury but succeeds only in wreaking terrible damage on the land and its mortal inhabitants. When Kord takes a moment to renew his strength for another blow, Moradin calls his attention to the wanton destruction. Kord regrets using his might so carelessly and destructively. Soon after, Kord launches a direct assualt against Gruumsh and crushes his erstwhile ally.
• The duergar legions of Tor Zarak fight and capture Kord. He is brought to the deepest vaults of the city, but priests could not cause him pain. The clerics of Asmodeus construct eleven racks before they could extinguish Kord's mortal shell. Then they disassembled the rack and split up the pieces, intending to use the fragments as weapons should Kord or his followers seek vengeance on the duergar.
• In exchange for power over winter, the Raven Queen banishes the defeated goddess Khala into death. Kord was present at his mother's passing and may have also claimed some of her power. Later, Kord and the Raven Queen begin an unconsummated courtship that continues today.
• When the Raven Queen claims the winter domain, the primordial Umboras, a reluctant ally of Khala, leads the assault against her astral realm of Letherna. She pretends to flee before his forces, luring them to the domain Pandemonium. There, in the labyrinthine corridors of the realm, she separates Umboras from his host of dragons and titans and traps him in one of the domain's empty vaults, where he still remains.

The War Ends:

• The gods win by banding together in small groups and destroying the mightiest primordials, who usually operate alone.
• Primal Spirits realize the gods' danger to the world after the Winter War, and decide the world must be protected from both sides of the conflict. The gods, too exhausted to object and fight another war, retreat to their astral dominion. 

Aftermath: 

• Avandra, Corellon, Melora, Sehanine enchant Carceri so that any abomination that escapes is sent to their dominion of Arvandor and instead joins the Great Hunt. They then retreat to Arvandor and away from the other gods.
• Bahamut, Kord and Moradin, after a series of unseemly incidents in the early centuries of the joint occupation of the astral dominion of Celestia, create the Game of Mountains to channel their rivalry into a friendly competition. 
• Bane is upset that the gods refuse to follow him after the war and angered by their decision to allow the Primordials to live on.
• The Raven Queen abandons her dominion in the Astral Sea to inhabit a grim winter fortress in the Shadowfell.
• Death's Reach, the mechanism for ensuring spirits of the dead were sent to their final reward, is grievously disrupted. Unable to restore Death's Reach to its former function, the gods transform it into a storehouse to seal away dangerous artifacts and enemies from the war. 
• Demons who manage to flee the Abyss come to natural world.
• Djinn are bound into mundane objects as punishment for warring against the gods. Those few djinn who are free lose much of their power. 
• Dwarves are placed in the natural world and immediately develop ale. 
• Erathis assumes dominion over the minotaurs.
• Grave-Minders, a cult originally dedicated to watching over the prisons of the primordials, is founded within a few generations of the Dawn War.
• Nerras are created from a group of powerful invokers known as the Sect of Seventy, who believe that the gods are too detached from worldly affairs to protect mortals from the threats that linger in the aftermath of the Dawn War.
• Pandorum, a godslaying weapon that personifies the emotionless void of utter annihilation, is imprisoned. 
• The Princes of Elemental Evil except Imix escape to the far reaches of the Elemental Chaos, where they remain in exile.
• Sagawehn, a goddess of insects, attempts to destroy all individuality from Arvandor until a group of eladrin heroes kill her. A high priestess of Corellon who is overcome in the battle spawns the lamia.
• Supernal tablets rumored to contain knowledge of either the fate of souls that pass beyond the gods' reach or the ultimate fate of the cosmos, are lost.