Continental Map of Shaarzahn

Here's the map of the upcoming forum RPG, Shaarzahn! I had fun this time trying to make it look like a realistic bird's-eye view, almost like a shot from Google Maps. It obviously has some flaws, but I was still impressed with the way it turned out. This will be the base for other maps I'll make for the game, including political boundary maps and a "hand-drawn" version for lore's sake.

Updates

Well, the Beat the Sweet Challenge is going okay. I've kept to it, avoiding anything sweeter than 3g of sugar per serving, for the past two weeks. This meant turning down some amazing-looking desserts at work and a dinner party, but it felt good to have that much self-control. It's amazing how much we really don't need sugar at all. Unfortunately, I'm not really seeing any beneficial effects from doing this sugar fast. I don't have any more energy, I still have down days with little motivation, and I don't feel any difference in my health or weight. I think I'll cut down on it after the month's up as a habit, but I'm definitely not going to go without it forever.
The hardest part is breakfast. I think it's great to start off one's day with French toast or something else with syrup in it. Or even sweet cereal. I've missed that most of all. But thank heavens for fruit, especially bananas and tangerines. They've kept me going. Halfway there!

In other news, I got quite a scare this week when Argaenothruzil went down for nearly three days. I thought I had lost all of my lore writings, as well as several of my best stories. In fact, my cousin Robert (of the Whited Wall blog) and I planned on making a new one, with several differences that would mitigate some of the clichéd aspects of Argae. Fortunately, Argaenothruzil came back online this morning and I was able to save the stories, but we're still excited to start something new for a change. I know most of you readers won't really care to join us, but it may be a good source of stories and graphic art for you from us.

This month has been an amazing start to this year! With this post, I already come in to the 3rd-highest number of posts in a single month in Pretzel Lectern history. Thanks for reading, and here's to keeping my post count high this year!

Abelhawk's Top 10 Most Nostalgic Computer Game Songs of All Time (Part 2)

Click here for the first 5 of the list!

Graymansnight and Other Holidays

What is a holiday? Etymology clearly spells out "holy day," which explains how they originated. In ancient times they were times of celebration and commemoration. I'm sure I'm not alone in that I have several "made-up" holidays that have come about over the years to celebrate or commemorate.

Obviously, everyone has his or her own birthday to celebrate each year, and most of the time you won't meet anyone who shares that day (I have, a fellow I met while in Brazil, in fact), and anniversaries are universal as well. But what about days on which something great happened, or a day that you just wanted to remember for years to come? Here are all the holidays I can think of that have meant something over the years.

Abelhawk's Top 10 Most Nostalgic Computer Game Songs of All Time (Part 1)

Time to get nostalgic! For an optimal experience while reading this post, I suggest you play the song while reading each description. It may help you understand what makes the music so memorable to me.

The Beat the Sweet Challenge!

Okay, it's official: I now need to come up with a month-long project every year. Two years ago it was the Techno Quaresma, last year was the memorable Data Month, and this year's is the...

BEAT THE SWEET CHALLENGE!

Children of Gods

I've been a parent for a year and a half now, and I've noticed something about the way my daughter regards me. She treats my wife and me like gods.

Think about our stature, our power, our knowledge. Think of the way my year-and-a-half-old daughter perceives this.

Out and about, she finds a granola bar or a cheese single, or even a simple plastic snack bag with pretzels inside it. She knows by now that food brings happiness and fullness, so she does the only thing she can do in order to eat them: she gives it to one of us to open.

The Creation of the World poem

I've been working on this for a while. With my exposure to Anglo-Saxon poetry, I decided to follow their patterns of alliteration to make my own. This is now an official canonical piece of Argaenothruzilian lore on my forum. For the original story I based this on, see this post.