D&D Character Background

Although I primarily play and run tabletop role playing games using the Savage Worlds rules systems, sometime I do dabble in others. Some friends have a casual 5th Edition Dungeon and Dragons game going which is designed to allow people to come and go, and I decided to roll up a character to play. I wanted to try a new character type, so I made a water Genasi druid; a genasi is the progeny of a human and some kind of extra planar creature, in this case a water genie. Her name is Janthina Cove and this is her backstory:

Several generations ago, there was a village in the forest devoted to the goddess Eldath. Farmers had been encroaching on it for years, cutting down more and more trees until they threatened to overrun the village. The elders decided to charter a ship to find a new home far away, where they would not be bothered again. Unfortunately, a great storm blew through in the night and they were shipwrecked on an island in the Korinn Archipelago. When the people woke on the beach in the morning, they discovered that island was lush with life, being fed by a freshwater spring in the center. They named the island Eldath’s Bounty and decided to stay. The island’s abundant plant and animal life allowed them to strike up trade with merchant vessels. They would also occasionally barter with the goblins and pirates of the other island (at the least the ones who weren’t too bloodthirsty).

A quarter century ago, a young woman named Maurea Cove met a handsome pirate visiting the island for trade and was seduced by him. She fell pregnant from the liaison, though she did not find out until after he had sailed away. Unbeknownst to Maurea, the pirate was not human, but rather a marid. Of their union, a genasi daughter was born. The girl was born with deep blue skin, black eyes and delicate, pale blue hair. The midwife was shocked and many in the village decried the child as cursed, but Maurea treasured her daughter and named her Janthina.

Janthina’s distinct appearance caused many in the village to shun her; growing up, few children would play with her and she was often socially isolated. Instead, she spent much of her time at the wellspring and along the shore. Her mother taught her deep reverence for Eldath, but her status as a pariah meant she was given the most menial or difficult devotional tasks by the village leaders when she came to the age of service. Still, Janthina’s frequent solitude made her very attuned to the natural world; she observed countless patterns among the plants and animals and deciphered many as signs and portents from the goddess. As she grew older, she became very skilled in cooking and medicine, but deep in her heart, resentment at her mistreatment grew.

On the evening before her 20th birthday (the age of adulthood for the village), Janthina’s mother passed away from a lingering illness. She was devastated and went to the shore to mourn. Through her tears, she saw a pod of dolphins approach the island, regard her for a moment, then swim away. Janthina took this as a sign from Eldath that she must leave her home, lest her heart become consumed with grief and anger. She bartered passage on a merchant ship and began to explore the islands and larger world. In one port, she met a druid and immediately felt a sense of kinship. He taught her the beginnings of druidish ways and she has sought to learn more ever since.

A Birth Story

The poet Robert Burns is perhaps best known for his saying “The best laid plans of mice and men go aft awry.” This is seems especially true when it comes to children.

My husband and I have wanted children since before we got married and had been trying to conceive pretty much from the beginning of our marriage. We suffered through years of infertility and several miscarriages and I was starting to lose hope we would ever have a child. Finally, last fall, I went to the doctor for what I thought was an unrelated issue and found out I was pregnant, only 4-5 weeks along. Finding out so early meant taking extra precautions to avoid the prior issues with miscarriage and things started to look up.

The pregnancy itself was mostly uneventful. Other than a few, common issues, I generally felt well and my health was fine. I read a ton of books and laid out all my plans for how I wanted our birth to go. My goal was to try to let nature run its course and avoid any interventions; no medication, I wanted to be able to move freely during labor and studied up on pain management techniques to cope. As soon as our son was born, I would start breastfeeding exclusively and everything would be wonderful. Time went along and we busily worked on getting ready for the baby’s arrival, putting together the crib, organizing the generous gifts from friends and family and gathering supplies. Our labor bags were packed and waiting in the car, the car seat was installed and now it was just a matter of waiting.

As we neared my due-date, my blood pressure started to creep up, but not to a dangerous level and my doctor was not too concerned. My cervix was already starting to dilate and efface a few weeks out, so it just seemed a short matter of time until I went into labor. My due-date came and went and we were so ready to meet our little one that we tried all kinds of natural induction methods, but nothing seemed to work. I had a few bouts of contractions, but they never became regular and always went away after a few hours.We were frustrated, but tried to be patient. After another visit to the doctor, my blood pressure was still trending upward, so I was put on modified bed rest; it was difficult to stay put, but I did my best to rest and enjoy time with my visiting parents.

Then, I woke up one morning and felt wetness repeatedly trickling down my legs; I was sure my water had broken. We went to the hospital and I was admitted, only to find out I had (embarrassingly) lost control of my bladder rather than my membranes rupturing. However, my blood pressure was again high, getting into potentially dangerous territory and it was recommended we start induction to help protect the baby. They started in the mid afternoon with cervix ripening agent, and just two hours later, my membranes did rupture. There was a definite greenish tint to the amniotic fluid, indicating meconium, which can be a sign of fetal distress, but his heart rate was fine on the monitor so things proceeded. The decision was made to start pitocin, an artificial birth hormone, to increase contractions as they had not yet become regular and I settled in for labor overnight. Due to the drugs, I was put on near continuous monitors and I tried my best to get some rest, but sleep mostly eluded me due to my discomfort.

By mid-morning the pain became excruciating; most of the contractions came 2-3 minutes apart (though still not totally regular) and it was literally the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. I tried to focus on the techniques I had read about, breathing and vocalizing but I soon was exhausted from pain and lack of sleep. After several hours, I finally begged for an epidural, because I just could not handle the pain anymore. The epidural process went thankfully smoothly and after a while I was drifting in and out of light sleep, though it wasn’t very restful. Relief was short lived, however, because I soon started itching all over my body. It was better than the pain, but not by much. I continued on for several hours, though at one point our son’s heart rated dropped and we had a terrifying few moments of distress before he recovered. Multiple checks showed that I had only dilated another 2-3 centimeters, despite the drugs. Twenty-four hours after my water broke and approximately fourteen hours after starting the pitocin, my cervix was still only dilated six centimeters and not showing signs of advancing. With a heavy heart, I made the decision to opt for a caesarian section because I did not want to risk any further harm to my son.

The surgical preparation was fairly swift and efficient; the anesthetist came back to change the drugs on the epidural and I soon lost all sensation from mid-torso to mid-thigh. I could still occasionally feel pressure in my feet and legs if touched, but my mid-section was completely numb. They wheeled me into the operating room, which was almost painfully bright and cool, and they let my husband sit by my head and hold my hand, once all the prep work was done. After a while, I asked my doctor to narrate what she was doing, if she didn’t mind, and was surprised to find she’d already cut down almost to the uterus. A few minutes later, she pulled my son out of my womb and soon I heard his first cries. It was nothing like I had planned or wanted, but my son was born and gave every indication of good health.

My husband went with our son as they cleaned and evaluated him, while I was being sewn up. Eventually I was taken to the recovery room and finally got to hold my child. The drugs were starting to wear off, but I still couldn’t move from the waist down. In that moment, I didn’t really care; all I wanted was to spend time with my son. I came out of the surgery fairly well and was transferred to the family unit for recovery. The next few days saw lots of checks from the doctors, but I seemed to be recovering quickly and didn’t have very much pain. My husband stayed in the room with me, and we tried to spend as much time with our baby as possible. My blood pressure was still a little high, but the doctors gave me a prescription for some medication and three days after my surgery, I was discharged from the hospital and allowed to go home.

There were definite struggles adjusting to life as new parents; the biggest was that my milk supply did not seem to be keeping up with our son’s appetite. Breastfeeding was difficult (it had been from the first attempt in the recovery room), but I did my best to keep it up, even when it seemed like the baby would never stop crying. A day or so after going home, other problems started to creep up. I wasn’t sleeping, even when the baby did, and was starting to feel short of breath. My feet and calves were also starting to swell a great deal. The second morning home I called my mom, who was still in town to help, and asked what I should do. She recommended we go back to the hospital, because the swelling could be a sign of a serious complication, like a blood clot. Barely 36 hours after coming home, I was back in the hospital and my blood pressure was now at very dangerous levels. A CT scan showed no blood clots in my chest, but the swelling from the extra fluid was putting pressure on my lungs and my blood pressure was putting me at risk of seizure or stroke. I was admitted back in and started on a regime of magnesium chloride to flush the fluid buildup out my system and protect my brain while they tried to bring my blood pressure down. Thus began one of the worst nights of my life; the medication made me feel awful and I had several panic attacks during the night. My mother was able to stay with me, which must have been very difficult on her, but it helped me keep some measure of sanity. It took another day and a half and several adjustments to my medication, but eventually my blood pressure stabilized and I could go back home again.

Unfortunately, the magnesium and all the stress had made my milk supply dwindle to next to nothing. We had to start feeding our son formula, because I just could not produce enough milk, especially while in the hospital. Now, I’m doing what I can to try to increase my production. I’m taking so much fenugreek it’s coming out my pores, as well as pumping every 2-3 hours during the day and hand-expressing when I wake up at night. My supply has increased a little, but it’s not nearly enough to keep my baby fed. Every evening, I feed him what I pump in a bottle, but all the rest has to be formula. Even if I do somehow manage to get my production back, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to breastfeed him again. I’ve tried getting him to latch after pumping, when the milk should be flowing, but even when he does latch on he just sucks a few times and quits in frustration from not getting the milk fast enough. It hurts my heart so much that what seemed like it should be a simple thing, feeding my child, has become so difficult.

So now, about two and half weeks into my son’s life, we’re trying to find a routine and making the best of the problems we have. My husband has been wonderfully helpful and supportive, and is a terrific father. I’m trying to stay positive, but it’s sometimes difficult. I just need to remember that my son’s health is the most important thing and so far, it’s been good, despite any issues we do have. God had blessed us with a beautiful child and that is what I’m trying to focus on.

 

 

Guess I’m not a ‘clean’ eater

Last Monday, I decided to start a two week ‘clean eating’ meal plan that was low sugar, low salt and low calorie (average 1500/day), with high amounts of veggies and no red meat. There were a couple reasons, but mostly I wanted something that would be a clean break from bad habits I had fallen back into. I found a free plan online and starting making out grocery lists the day before. I had some issues from the beginning, before even starting the actual meals, since many of the recipes had ingredients that I do not like at all (eggs, quinoa, and cucumber being among the biggest, but there were others) and I did my best to substitute around that. I tried to expand my tastes a little bit, though, but still keeping in ingredients I wasn’t sure about or hadn’t had before. Another issue was that the plan was only intended for one person, so I had to try to adjust dinner to feed my husband as well.

It was pretty rough going; I felt hungry most of the time and my poor husband could not handle the dinners. He suffers from ‘hanger’ pretty badly some times and can get cranky when he doesn’t have enough food. It wasn’t too hard to getting food ready the night before to take to work, but since we were running games at a convention on the far north side of town over the weekend, trying to pack meals and snacks for the weekend was difficult. By Sunday afternoon, while looking over the meal plan for the second week, I realized it was not working out for us. We sat down and decided to stop following the exact plan, but instead work on planning meals we knew and liked a week at a time, with a cheat day to account for special occasion or to satisfy cravings.

Some things I learned from the experience, in no particular order :

• You can lose five pounds in a week, but it’s not the healthiest and certainly not sustainable long-term
• Kale is pretty gross, especially in smoothies. But it’s actually kind of good roasted with a little olive oil and pinch of sale
• Salad for lunch every day get boring pretty fast, even with different toppings
• Sparkling water (I like San Pellegrino) + Crystal Lite liquid = pretty damn good substitute for soda
• Suddenly and rapidly reducing the amount of calories you consume can leave you pretty lethargic
• Almond butter and pear slices is an amazing snack
• Lentils aren’t awful, but they’re not exactly my favorite
• I’m way too much of a carnivore to not eat red meat for a whole week
• The line between hungry, not hungry, sated and full can be very small

So, all in all, I didn’t complete the meal plan per se, but I did more or less accomplish the goals that were the reason I started following it : I kick-started some additional weight loss, I curbed some of my worst junk food cravings and we’re getting more in the habit of making meals at home again. Not too shabby.

Small Successes

This morning, I stepped on the scale and for the first time in a long time (several years, though I’m not sure exactly how many) the number was below a certain big round number. Despite plateauing for a while, I’ve started to lose some weight again. I’ve lost about 30 pounds since last October when I semi-formally starting trying to concentrate on losing weight and improving my health. I know I should be celebrating small successes, but a big part of me can’t help but think how much further I have to go still. I neglected my health for too long and paid the price. Even these small positive changes don’t make me feel much different right now; I still get tired and out of breath easily, my dress size is still much larger than I would like and I still have a lot of trouble sleeping.

For now, I just have to keep focusing on changing small things. Less soda, more water. Less junk food, more fruits and veggies. Making myself exercise when all I want to do is veg on the couch, even if it’s just using the exercise bike while watching TV or walking the dog around the park. It’s a slow process, but at least I’m making some steps in the right direction.

Heartbreak

It started two weeks ago. According to my tracking app, my period was late, but that in and of itself is not necessarily unusual; I’ve always had an irregular cycle due to hormone imbalances and other issues. For some reason that I’m still not sure of, this time just seemed different. I started to think maybe I was finally pregnant. As the week went on and there was still no period, I started to get a glimmer of hope. I decided to buy a home pregnancy test and take it Saturday morning (so I wouldn’t be distracted at work). Saturday morning arrived and I took the test. I puttered around, waiting the two minutes dictated by the instructions, and read the test. There it was: a vertical line, faint, but definitely there. It was the first time I’d ever had a positive result on a home test. I stared at it for a minute, not sure I believed it, then excitedly told my husband. I wanted to be sure, though, so I took another home test on Monday morning, and the same thing, a faint line, but positive result. I’d already requested that Friday off of work, because it was the weekend of the Steampunk convention my husband and I attend every year, so it was easy to make a doctor appointment to get an official confirmation. We didn’t tell our family yet, because we wanted to have a professional opinion.

As the week went on, my apparent pregnancy was practically all my husband and I could talk about. We’ve been trying to have a child pretty much since we got married five years ago, but it was starting to seem like it would never happen. We started thinking about how our lives would change and discussing plans and preparations. My sense of smell seemed to become very sensitive, which I knew often happened during pregnancy and I even had a bout of nausea that I thought might have been morning sickness. It was becoming so real.

Then, last Thursday, I started bleeding. At first it wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to concern me. I looked it up online and saw that bleeding sometimes happened during early pregnancy, and there could be many reasons why. I tried to stay hopeful, even as the bleeding became heavier. Friday morning I had my appointment and the doctor did another urine test, and it was still positive. But, due to the bleeding, she sent me to the Women’s Clinic for an ultrasound and blood test. The ultrasound showed nothing in my uterus, but the tech said that wasn’t necessarily unusual early on (at this point, it seemed like I was probably about 4 weeks along). The nurse drew blood to test for hCG, the main pregnancy hormone, and told me to come back Sunday for another blood draw to compare the levels. My husband and I decided to tell our parents about the pregnancy, and I did my best to go about the rest of my day and enjoy the convention.

Saturday morning came with even heavier bleeding and some of the worst cramping I’ve ever experienced in my life. I curled up on the bed, sobbing and praying for it to stop. At this point, I started to lose hope. I couldn’t imagine the pregnancy could continue with the amount of blood and tissue I seemed to be losing, but my husband tried to keep my spirits up. We both had plenty of duties that we were assigned to help out at the convention, and I tried to focus on that. By Sunday evening, I was very tired but we still went to the clinic for the follow-up blood test. Then, the news: my hormone levels were falling instead of rising as they should be with a healthy pregnancy. The doctor did a pelvic exam which confirmed a miscarriage. After the doctor left the room, we both started crying, utterly devastated. From the high elation of finding out I was finally pregnant, to our hopes being completely dashed in barely a week has been exhausting in every way: mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

Part of me wants nothing more than to just fall apart; to spend days in bed sobbing, to go no where and see no one and generally just shut myself off from the world. Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t stop for minor (from its point of view) tragedies. I still have a job as well as other commitments, there are still plenty of bills to pay and as the primary breadwinner with my husband in school, I can’t afford to spend time wallowing in self-pity. For now, I have to just muddle through as best I can, hoping and praying that we can find a way to get past my issues to finally have a child.

Achtung! Cthulhu Character Journal

Our War of the Dead game has taken a hiatus  a few weeks ago, now that we reached the end of a chapter, so our gaming group has started something different: Achtung! Cthulhu. This is a World War 2 setting that merges the Nazi obsession with the occult with the Lovecraftian Mythos. Player characters are members of a secretive branch of British Intelligence (though they can be from a variety of countries or backgrounds), tasked with investigating and stopping the Germans from learning ‘Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.’

My character is Nadya Gorodetsky (I stole the name from one of my favorite book series), a cryptographer with the Russian Intelligence Agency GRU. She is the daughter of a party apparatchik with two older brothers, both in the Soviet army, and she is eager to prove herself as capable as her siblings. Despite a persistently surly attitude, she has a talent with words and excels at languages, ciphers and code-breaking. After joining GRU, she worked in the office in her home town of Omsk monitoring German communications, until one day she decoded a set of messages about a strange, possibly unearthly power being pursued by a clandestine force within the German military. She became obsessed with discovering more about this power, and recovering it for herself. Below are journal entries covering the events that happened during one of our gaming session, from her point of view.

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18-05-39 : I reached London today with my falsified papers. One would think with tensions on the continent so high that all transfer papers would receive extra scrutiny, but in truth, the customs officer gave them only a cursory glance. Foolish Englishmen… Soon I will make contact with SIS and insinuate myself into the secret division I have uncovered. It has taken over six months of painstakingly decoding British cables, but if I am correct, this may be my best chance to delve deeper into the mysteries of this occult power for which I have been searching.

22-05-39 : I have successfully infiltrated Section 6 of the SIS. No one seems to question my presence (at least not openly). As far as GRU knows, I am monitoring communications at a remote outpost in Kamchatka, but as far at the British are concerned, I was sent here by the Soviets as a goodwill gesture to help ensure their messages are secure. It is a strange team I am joining. For our current mission, there are 5 men, some military, some civilian; 4 Americans and a British colonel. Colonel Willoughby seems to be the de-facto leader of sorts, despite being retired from the military. Sergeant Peter Morris is an American signalman, quick to make a joke and seems to take little seriously. Jim Boffins, claims to be an inventor, but he is easily distracted and prone to clumsiness, so it seems unlikely he will ever produce anything of value. There is an American agent of their FBI, which seems to be roughly equivalent to our Ministry of Internal Affairs, who insists on going by the name ‘Lefty’ Heimlich. While my grasp of English is still imperfect, I believe this is a highly usual moniker. Finally, there is an American Corporal by name of Zeke Loveless who seems very focused and business-like.

The new mission is thus: we are to travel to the island of Madeira, off the cost of Portugal, in search of a German ship rumored to be sunk near there. We are to investigate to try to determine what caused the wreck and what, if any, important or illicit cargo it may have been carrying. I can only hope there will be something relevant to my search aboard.

25-05-39 : The team arrived in Madeira, at Ponta de Sol with little incident and we dispersed to disseminate our various cover stories. Unfortunately, we seemed to immediately catch the attention of a unsavory figure who appears to loiter around the wharf looking for tourists to swindle. The American army man moved to intercept and distract him, and I made my way to a taverna down the street for a glass of wine, as befitted my tourist persona. Shortly after, Sgt. Morris and the ‘gentleman’ (whose name turned out to be Pasquaal) entered the same establishment. I strove to ignore them so as to maintain our cover, but then the stranger tried to drug the drink of my compatriot and I was forced to intervene. As I went to refill my wineglass, I ‘bumped’ into Morris, while slipping him a note warning of the attempt at befuddlement. After finishing the next glass, I left to avoid further suspicion and later found out that Sgt. Morris was able to slip out a back door. Although it was still somewhat early, I retired for the night to pore over my notes again. Ever since I first decoded those Nazi cables making mention of the mystical power for which they were searching, I have been consumed with the thought of finding it. I must discover this power so I can harness it for my own ends!

26-05-39 : We gathered in the morning to leave on our ‘expedition.’ The colonel has contrived a story of a search for the lost city of Atlantis and he has loudly spread it about the town. Although it is a ludicrous notion, it should keep the locals oblivious to our true purpose. I was recruited as a “Greek speaker” to help them translate any ‘findings’ since the locals can apparently not tell the difference between a Russian accent and a Greek one. We piled into the truck rented by the colonel and set off down the bumpy road towards the north shore of the island and our mission.

As we rounded the eastern shore of the island, we were set upon by a sport cars and a truck which both roared behind us in pursuit. Soon after, men began to fire shots at us, and a short gun-battle ensued. As I braced to fire, Lefty tried to lean out the passenger door of the truck, but a bump jarred the door open, nearly plummeting him down the sheer cliff-side. I grabbed a handful of his shirt and hefted him back inside the cab and our truck veered slightly away from the edge, slowing slightly to try to maintain control. Between the five of us, we made short work of the assailants, killing three outright when the truck was forced off the cliff and wounding the two in the sports car to stop the attack.

We soon found out that Pasquaal was leader of these thugs, and in fact he was a German agent endeavoring to discover our purpose on the island. Although we attempted to interrogate him, we were unable to gather much more than that before he expired. The other hired gun was badly mangled, having been run over by our truck and also quickly perished. We pushed the corpses over the cliff and left the car to appear abandoned. The bodies disposed of, we continued down the road, reaching the north side of island by mid-afternoon.

Our mission notes indicate the wreck was believed to have washed ashore near the town of Santana. We stopped in a small fishing village just outside the town to try to charter a boat to take us the rest of the way down the coast. However, as soon our destination was mentioned, the locals blanched and refused to discuss the matter. The most coherent answer we could get was that there had been a terrible plague in the city and it ‘was a place of death’. Morris and I radioed to headquarters in London with our situation. Afterwards, we gathered to try to form a new plan, when a lone fisherman approached our group and beckoned us to follow him a short ways away. He said he knew of the wrecked ship and would take us to there, but only at night and that he would not go ashore nor stay longer than dawn. He asked for an outrageous sum of money, but since it seemed our only option, the colonel reluctantly paid him and we made plans to meet on the shore outside the village after nightfall.

After darkness fell, we gathered in the small but sturdy boat and our mysterious new friend navigated along the shore towards the apparently abandoned town of Santana. Before long, the wreckage of the German ship loomed ahead from its resting place on the beach, run aground, though by the tide or crash we did not know. As we approached, we saw a large gash had been opened along the side of the hull, exposing the inner-workings and leaving little doubt that something terrible had happened to the vessel. The fisherman would not go ashore, but dropped us off the in shallow water and again warned that he would leave by sunrise, whether we were ready to go or not, before motoring back into the deep water to keep silent watch. The buildings beyond the beach were broken down and over-grown; it was clear the town had been abandoned for some time, so we turned our attention back to the German vessel.

The great ship jutted out from the shore like a knife, the hull torn open by an unknown force. Despite the twisted metal lining the opening, we quickly determined it was the easiest way to access the ship’s interior and gingerly climbed up into the boiler room. There, we were met with a grisly scene. The boiler had obviously exploded at some point, and there were dried blood splatters scattered across the room, though no sign of any actual bodies. We resolved to climb up to the command deck, carefully picking our way through the dark water and listing ladders.

We reached the dining hall just below the top deck, when we heard footsteps above us. The colonel, who had been in the lead, motioned for silence and several of the men readied weapons at the foot of the stairs. Suddenly, a shot rang out, accompanied by a shout down the stairs. ‘Lefty’ readied a grenade, but fumbled it, sending it rolling along the floor without the pin. We rushed up the the stairs to escape the explosion and found a hallway with door cracked open directly at the top. An arm with a pistol waved wildly out the door, shooting at seeming random down the hall. I pressed into the corner of the wall and the floor, slowly sliding along the wall until the arm was in reach, then lashed out, knocking the gun from the hand.  The rest of the group sprang forward, yanking the door open and pushing the shooter back into the room.

From his uniform, the man appeared to be the captain of the ship and was clearly not in his right mind. He babbled semi-incoherently and blood trailed from his ears; his eyes were wild and darted around rapidly. As Loveless and Morris wrestled him to the ground, the man screamed ‘I will not let you take me’ and thrashed weakly about. A pen stained with blood lay on the desk. It seemed he had used it to rupture his own eardrums, though at first we could not comprehend why. I located the captain’s log, translating from the original German for my compatriots. The ship was indeed carrying a secret cargo in the forward hold, something that seemed to make some of the crew uneasy. Several days before the crash, there were reports of strange noises coming from the hold and then a crewmember had gone berserk and attacked other sailors. After that incident the captain believed the boiler may have sabotaged, causing the explosion which crippled the ship. As the damaged ship drifted, the log described irresistible, unearthly noises and inhuman figures that seemed to come out of the mist and that was the point at which the log ended. By this point, the captain was catatonic and would be of no further use to question, so we searched the rest of the cabin. There was a small safe whose lock I picked and yielded a few papers, a little money and a book  made of golden plates. The book was a curious contraption with no obvious latch or opening and elaborate sigils carved into it. This, I tucked away for safe keeping. It may contain clues to aid me in my search.

Some of these others wished to investigate the forward hold to try to determine what it held.  We clambered toward the bow, and found the hatch of the hold to be locked. Several of the men tried to wrench the door open, but it would not budge. Zeke carried a few explosives still and  set the charges along the lock. We braced behind crates as the charges detonated. Loud roars, as if from some terrible beast, emanated from behind the hatch. Alas, my nerves failed me, and I could not stand my ground. I ran, terrified, towards the stern of the ship, while shouts echoed behind me. As I ran, I caught a glimpse of some sort of… creatures climbing out of the water and up the sides of the ship. They stood like men, but had faces like fish. Their skin was bluish and they wore only scraps of cloth, ornamented with golden jewelry. The sight of these monsters only made me run faster, sprinting along the deck. Once I reached the stern of the ship, I jumped to the sand below and scrambled towards the cover of ruined buildings of the village. The others soon joined me, having also fled the strange creatures who swarmed the ship. We could make out some movement along the deck of the ship, but before long the figures seemed to vanish and quickly and silently as they had appeared.

Just before dawn, our ferryman returned as promised and we climbed into his boat to return to the village. We made no mention of our encounter, but sat in exhausted silence. I am unsure how our report will be received by our superiors once we reach London again. The only proof we have is a few bits of gold jewelry that we recovered from the shore and the agreement that we all saw something come out of the water.

This is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do…

I’ve been trying to write this post for almost 3 years, about something I’ve struggled with my whole adult life.  I’ve never been skinny since hitting puberty (though I was stick when I was little), but I was in fairly good health and mostly height-weight proportionate throughout middle-school and high school. Since I left for college, it’s been downward spiral that’s lasted over 12 years. Once I was completely in charge of my own food and exercise, I quickly fell into bad habits and made poor choices. It was often easier and faster to get fast food or other junk than to work at actually cooking a healthy meal regularly. After class and/or work, I just didn’t feel like I had the energy to work out much. I’ve always had problems sleeping, but as I gained weight, I slept more poorly and felt more tired and so ensued a vicious cycle of weight gain and exhaustion. I have a number of factors that make it easier to gain weight (hormonal imbalance, etc.) and hard to exercise (asthma and respiratory issues) , but the blunt truth is I frequently ate/drank too much fat and sugar and was lazy in not moving around enough.

I tried a couple times lose weight before, but never got very far. In college, I would sporadically use the fitness center, and dabbled in some fencing but I rarely got ‘regular’ exercise other than marching band in the fall. When my husband was overseas for a year, I used to go to a gym semi-regularly (I managed to lose about 10 pounds in about 6 months) but I back-slid before too long. I kept telling myself that I would get better and lose weight before my wedding, but I never did. Even though it was a very happy day, I still feel a little depressed looking at my wedding pictures sometimes and seeing how big I look. My husband loves and supports me no matter what, but I’ve been increasingly unhappy with my weight and my health. My size has started to make it hard to do certain things. I won’t fit in the seat for a lot of amusement park rides and theater/stadiums seats can be tight and uncomfortable. I often get winded after just light activity, which sometimes prevents me from even trying to do some things with family or friends. Then came a time when we flew to visit family and I couldn’t buckle the seat belt. I just about cried at having to ask the flight attendant for an extender. The worst was going to the OB-GYN to look into why I wasn’t getting pregnant, despite my husband and I trying for several years. The doctor (bluntly, but not entirely unkindly) told me I would need to lose a significant amount of weight if I wanted to have any chance of getting pregnant and having a healthy pregnancy

I always used to think ‘just wait until New Years and I’ll start changing my diet’ or ‘after my birthday, I’ll start exercising more,’ mentally setting up for a big, grand change when the right moment came. Finally, a little earlier this year, I realized that if I kept waiting for ‘the right moment’ I would never make any progress. I also realized that trying to change everything at once was a fool’s errand that would just stress me out and make it too easy to quit. So, instead, I started making little changes. Cutting down on soda was a big one. I’ve also been working on eating more veggies, less meat and cheese. I bought a fitbit, on the theory that having a constant reminder in front of me will help curb some bad eating habits. It tracks diet, movement/exercise and sleep, so I can get a good picture of how many calories I burn versus how many I take in. I’ve also tried to go on walks more often, either over lunch at work or with the dog at home. The little changes seem to be working. In the last 6 weeks, I’ve lost 10 pounds. I still have a very long way to go, and a lot more changes to make, but for the first time in a long time, I feel like maybe I have a shot at it.

 

 

“War of the Dead” Flash Fiction

One of my favorite hobbies is tabletop role playing games. As someone who has occasionally aspired to be an actress or a writer (but never really had the skills to hack it at either in the ‘real world’), I enjoy the chance to stretch my creative side. One of the current games my husband and I have been playing in is a Savage Worlds setting called ‘War of the Dead‘. Is is a modern zombie survival setting with lots of horror elements. The only real difference between it and our world is there was never a George A Romero, so zombies never became part of pop-culture. As a result, when the outbreak came, people had no frame of reference to deal with the undead hordes and had to learn from scratch how to deal with them. It’s been a lot of fun so far; the guy running the game is an excellent game master.

The character that I made up for this game is Claudia Robertson, a pediatric nurse prior to the outbreak. She’s not a typical survivor of the zombie apocalypse in that she is a very slight, mousy person, someone who is cautious to a fault. She is far more likely to try to run or hide, and will usually only fight if there is no other choice. The following is a dramatization of something that happened in one of our gaming sessions a few weeks ago.

The shot rang loudly in Claudia’s ears as she slumped against the Humvee and slowly sank to the ground. Her hands started to tremble so badly she nearly dropped the small caliber pistol in her grasp, which was still warm from the discharge. She had seen much death in the months since the world fell apart, but she’d never felt responsible for it before now (at least, not since the death of her fiance during the initial outbreak). She took a deep, shuddering breath and buried her face in her free hand as the tears started to flow. Her eyes flashed with the face of the man she had just shot, point blank in the head. Well, he wasn’t really a man anymore. He had turned into one of them: the dead that walked and relentlessly chased the living. Still, it was face she had grown accustomed to seeing in the convoy or around the camp, and to see the eyes devoid of all expression save hunger and the mouth gnashing in a terrible frenzy was truly horrific. With an awful pang of guilt, she realized wasn’t even sure she could remember his first name, though his surname was emblazoned on the name tape he wore on his uniform: Smith.

There had been no other choice, though. Several others had still been trapped in the wrecked Humvee and it would have only been a matter of moments before Private Smith had broken free of the seatbelt holding him and tried to devour them. After all the group had been through in the past weeks, it seemed farcical that the accident had been caused by a trio of rogue bulls, charging the convoy in their hunger-driven desperation. Claudia had been running over to try to give medical attention to the injured, but had been too late for Smith. He had succumbed to his injuries and perished, only to reanimate like so many others as mindless killing machine. The other soldiers in the backseat panicked at being in such sudden close quarters to one of the undead and it took them precious seconds to fumble with their seat belts and try escape out the rear door. As they grappled with the mechanisms, Claudia had climbed in the cab, staying out of Smith’s reach, and after a moment’s hesitation, closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. Smith’s body sagged limply against the seat belt, just as the others finally scrambled out and raced past her to inform Commander Morrison of their latest casualty.

Tears streaming down her face, Claudia took another deep breath and tried to compose herself.In her old life as a nurse, she had been used to doing all she could to preserve life, and she tried to convince herself that was what she had just done. Private Smith may have been dead, but there were others she had helped save from his fate. That was all she had left to cling to: the drive to keep preserving life as much as she could in the god-forsaken wasteland the world had become. Drying the last of her tears, Claudia pushed herself to her feet and flicked the safety on her pistol before shoving it back into the holster on her hip. She walked slowly away from the ruined vehicle to join the rest of members of the the convoy who were gathered around the dead bulls. A few who had the the proper skills were butchering them for meat. Forcing a smile on her face, Claudia asked “So, I guess we’re having steak for dinner tonight?”

Love

I have a weakness for police procedurals, detective shows and the like; you know, Law & Order, CSI, Psych, etc. I’ve been watching Monk a lot lately (yay Netflix). I think part of the reason I like the show so much is I identify with the main character. We both play clarinet, we’re very detail-oriented and we’re both rather neurotic.

One thing that always strikes me about the show is how intensely the main character loves his late wife (a murdered reporter). When the show starts she’s been dead for about 5 years, but he still mourns her every day. His love is beautiful and sad and deeply moving.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to have a feeling that intense. I love my husband, but if he died, I would move on eventually, just like I know he love me, but would also move if something happened to me. A small part of me wishes I could feel like Monk, but a bigger part knows it would probably destroy me.

Perception

It’s funny how much your perceptions can change as you grow older. A silly example: when I was young, “Xena: Warrior Princess” was one of my favorite shows. I thought it was so cool and inspiring and I would often do my best to be available when it aired. It made me interested in sword fighting and was a small part of what made me join the SCA.

Some time back I found out that the whole series was available on Netflix, and I occasionally watch an episode again. Watching it as an adult I have a fairly different impression. On one hand, I am amazed at how often I still remember bits of plot and even occasional catchphrases or other lines of dialogue. It’s also sometimes amusing to see actors playing bit parts who would later go on to be much bigger stars (like Karl Urban, for example). On the other, the acting is generally awful (melodramatic or wooden), the effects cheesy (even for the time) and there are many concepts , clothing and characters that are completely anachronistic. It’s not quite enough to prevent me from enjoying it at all, but it’s definitely a different kind of experience.