My Ocarina's Here!

The ocarina awaited inside of this.

So, my ocarina arrived in the mail today. Well, not really today, I actually got it some days ago, but for this posts sake, let's pretend I got it today. I don't remember exactly when I ordered it, but I think it was a couple of weeks ago, and I'm really happy that it's here. I ordered a dragon tooth ocarina, and I had a small fear of it being ruined.

When my dad told me a notice had come from the post office yesterday,  I got a bit confused about if it actually was a retrieval slip, since it was only a scan of some sort, and had no actual writing about that I had a package at the post office. I assumed it was a retrieval slip, and that it was for my ocarina, since it was the most likely thing to be, and I wanted to get it right away, but the post office had closed by then, since it was after 5. I had to wait a whole damn day before I could fetch it!

I was really looking forward to getting it after school the following day, but I had to sort some stuff out there, and got a bit delayed. I thought of picking the package up on the way home, but the piece of paper allowing me to pick up the package was at home, so I had to go by home first to get it. I went off the bus at about 16:40, and rushed home with my relatively heavy backpack to get the paper piece, but I first got home at 16:50, and knew that I had very little time to get to the post office, which is about a 15 minute walk away. I took off my backpack, grabbed the paper, and headed back out without even saying hello, and began walking fast towards the post office.

When I got about 1/6 of the way there, I checked the clock, and saw that I wouldn't reach it at the speed I was holding. I started running, and constantly feared that the wind would take the paper from my hand by some accident, and that I wouldn't be able to pick up the package. Luckily it didn't, and I got to the post office about 5 minutes to 5. I got lucky, and I noticed I wasn't the only one who had gotten late to the post office. There were about 5 other people there (and 1 heading out), so I pushed the button on the ticket-machine, and got a line number. It was a three-digit number that was 409 or something similar. I remember that it ended in 09, but I don't remember the first number.

After waiting for about 10-15 minutes, it was finally my turn. I handed the paper to the woman behind the counter, and asked if it was a retrieval slip. She didn't answer, but went away for 20 seconds, before coming back with my package. I took that as a yes.

I wasn't sure about if it was the ocarina or not, but upon closer inspection of the package, I noticed a small blue ocarina-bird symbol, and I knew that it was my ocarina. I spent about 20 minutes walking home, savoring the feel of my ocarina having arrived. I walked upstairs when I got home, into the living room, and started unpacking my ocarina. Well, first I took a picture of the box to put here.







In the box, was an envelope. The envelope was rather heavy, and obviously didn't contain anything made of paper. It shifted from side to side as I moved the envelope, and also jingled slightly. I opened the envelope (which had been folded over the middle), and discovered a metal chain, that was supposed to be attached to the ocarina to make it both easier and safer to carry.

Can I call this an ocarina leash?

The next thing I took out of the box, was ''The Legend of the Dragon Tooth Ocarina'', a brown-colored booklet with a dragon printed on its front page. It was slightly bigger than my hand, and had about 45 pages, where roughly half was purely song tabs, and the rest was a story/song mix.

The booklet in the box.

 In the box was also another, smaller box, which had been sealed with a bit of tape. The box was a typical brown box, and was about the size of my hand. In the box was a wooden ocarina stand. It had some slight dirt on it, but nothing that was really too bad, and had been carved out of a single piece of wood.

The ocarina stand. (Made in India)

After finding these things, I scoured through the box for more things, and found the main thing I had been after; In the midst of all the white mushy popcorn-thingies, was the ocarina, wrapped in a piece of decorative red cloth. The cloth was stretchy, and had a ''tail'' used for making a knot to make sure that the ocarina wouldn't fall out.

This is the ocarina in its clothing.

When I took out the ocarina, it was black, as expected, with the same type of ornament as the one in the picture from the online store. It had a total of 14 holes, where one was the hole to blow in, and another was where the sound came out of. In contrary to what many might believe (and I used to), the whole ocarina does not make sound. Only one of the holes do, and the rest only variate the sound coming out of that hole.

This is the ocarina, naked.

This is the underside of the naked ocarina.

I must admit that the ocarina looks cool, and I like the shiny-ness of it, combined with the nice sound it makes. I plan on learning how to play many songs, and I'm going to play through the booklet first, and then move on to other songs, such as songs from ''The Legend of Zelda'', or any other songs that I find and feel like playing.



---


Post Script:
I've played a lot on my ocarina the past few days, but since I had to write the D&D post, I didn't have time to write about the ocarina, despite how much I wanted to. I've learned a lot, and plan on learning a lot more. I'm not so good that I can perform in public yet, but I can play some decent tunes.

D&D: A Drunk Dragonborn And Failing Monk

Where we last left off, my odd group, consisting of a dragonborn fighter, human monk and tiefling warlock, had just defeated the zombie hobgoblin that used to be a great war hero. We had found a skull mask, a broadsword and some misc items that we decided to keep. We had, since we appeared to be safe, decided to take an extended rest, while I kept guard in my meditative state. Luckily,  Nothing happened during the night, and I decided to just enjoy the silence in the 2 hours I had until the others awoke.

I wonder why monks can't meditate in D&D, but I can.

When the others awoke, Moriag, the tiefling, had gotten some kind of message. He lifted the corpse of the fallen war hero, and threw it into its grave, before casting some kind of spell on it. The corpse let out a shriek, before opening a portal that Moriag, the tiefling, entered while saying that his father had told him to return to their home in the eight circle of Hell. We were reduced by yet a member - down to 3.

Us other in the group couldn't do much about it, but decided to look through the room again, to check if we found anything new. We found nothing, and the statue that was the secret door we used to enter the room sat still, and couldn't be moved. We were forced to enter the double doors on the end of the room opposing the grave if we wanted to get anywhere, and we agreed that it was best to do that. Despite lacking a healer and leader, we went on, into the ruins that had been infested by Kruthik.

We entered the room behind the doors, which was a relatively large room, and the most noticeable thing noticeable was a pool of blood-red goo in a small pool in the middle of the room. There were many doors in the room, and purely decorative columns. The roof was roughly 20 feet, while the columns stretched for 15, allowing some room in between. There were two doors to our right, two on the wall we had come out of, one on the left, and two that had collapsed on the end opposite of us. Our door and the one on the left appeared to be bigger than the other doors.

The bigger entrance door someone got, the smaller the you-know-what.

The first thing that happened when we entered the room was that I used the goblin salute I had learned from the previous room. I wouldn't want to risk upsetting another ancient hero of war. We'd barely managed to defeat the last one, and another would surely kill us for sure, leaving us to be devoured by the giant bugs known as Kruthik.

The monk, as the rest of us, was curious about the bubbly pool, and decided to walk up there, fill a flask with the goo, and drink it for some reason. Both me and the dragonborn also went up the the pool, and the dragonborn told us what she knew of the history of the goo. It wasn't just blood-like goo, it was blood, composed by mixing the blood of the enemies of the goblins who ruled this place. They had drunk it after battle, as a sign of domination. I, curious about the taste, decided to take a sip, and the dragonborn also drank some.

I wondered what the other doors were for, and I decided to check out what was behind them. I walked over to one of the smaller doors, the one on the right nearest the entrance, and opened it up. No sooner than I had stepped inside, I got buried by blackened bones, knocking me prone. Then, just as luck would have it, I heard growls and moans from outside the room I entered, and bubbling sounds from the blood-pit. I should have known it wouldn't be this easy.

It's a trap!

ENCOUNTER TIME

Undead goblin had stood up, and were obviously not friendly. The blood-pit had started bubbling, and let out a mist almost as red as it was itself. We were pretty bad in it, and it didn't get better when I heard a loud growling roar - obviously by a powerful zombie, and ethereal mumbling. I couldn't do much, but I heard the battle going on outside. My allies appeared to be mowing down the enemies in swift strikes, and the sound of the weaker undead horde disappeared.

It seemed like the fight was to be an easy one, but the door I had entered was rapidly shutting itself, threatening with locking me in. I fey stepped outside quickly, but I was still struggling to get to my feet. Just as I had stood up and gotten a look at my surroundings, The monk was thrown into the bubbling cauldron, and appeared to be taking a lot of damage. The dragonborn was thrown into me by a fierce-looking undead goblin, knocking me down.  The goblin used the dragonborn as some sort of eladrin-squisher, and held the heavy dragonborn above me by the throat, against the wall.

Things were looking dark, and I felt a cold chill down my spine. The dragonborn managed to break loose from the grip, attacking with her flail just after. But no sooner than that had I discovered the source of the ethereal mumbling. A ghost had seized the opportunity and attacked the dragonborn, who failed to dodge the attack.

At the same time, the monk had managed to break loose, and managed to flee away from his assaulter. It was another undead, not as big as the one who had pinned the dragonborn, but still a force to recon with. It followed the monk, and struck him. The monk responded by jumping on top of the decorative pillar, out of the undead's reach.  The ghost then vanished from sight, but appeared again not long after, right next to the monk. He was struck again, and appeared to be badly damaged.

The dragonborn delivered a strike to the undead and ran away to the same pillar the monk was standing on, and got followed by her undead foe. I could only do a little more than stand up, and barely managed to summon a cloud of daggers above the big goblin.

The monk was badly damaged, and felt the need to flee. He attempted to jump from his pillar to another one, but couldn't jump far enough and hit it with his face. After falling to the ground, he ran further away and healed himself as best as he could. While he did this, the dragonborn had managed to get over to the monk's goblin, and delivered a fatal blow.

Seriously, dude. Are you sure you're a martial artist?

I used the time to rush over to a spot I thought good for what I was planning. I uttered an elven curse-word, before raising my staff, before jutting it back into the ground, sending a wave of thunder in my proximity, which hit both the ghost and the big undead goblin, and sent them flying into the walls. The undead appeared to hit the wall pretty hard, but the ghost just kind of flew halfway through it.

Unable to move, I could only watch as I realized my mistake; I was completely open. The undead rushed over to me, striking me with his weapon, and delivered a very hard hit against me. The wound was deep, and things were looking slim. *thunk* we heard. *thunk*. It came from the other door, and I was fearing that it was more enemies, that would kill us for sure.

The door burst open, and in a swift movement, a shambling male dragonborn burst in through the door, throwing a mug of ale at the big undead, which left a crater in the back of his head, which then suddenly stopped in it movement. It fell over, and the newly entered dragonborn let out a bellowing burp, which for some reason appeared to have a healing effect on us. With the newly acquired ally, we easily defeated the last remaining ghost.

Beer bottle. Leaving a crater. In a cranium. Seriously.

I approached the dragonborn and asked him who he were. He stumbled past me without answering, heading to the now calm pit of blood. He had removed his flask from the back of the undead's head, and now reached it down into the pit, and filled it with the blood. He then gulped it up, and repeated, before complaining the drink lacked alcohol. He turned out to be a pretty heavy drunk.

I decided to question him when he had sobered up a bit (small hope for that), and scoured the room for anything valuable. I found a belt, which I used my knowledge of the arcane to discover was a Belt of Brawling (all improvised attacks count as attacks with clubs). I didn't need the belt particularly much, and neither did our dragonborn nor monk, and I decided to give the belt to the drunkard who in some way had managed to save my life.

He gave me a quick ''thanks'' before we asked him who he were. He told us he had been part of an earlier group, and that was about how far he got, before falling over in a drunken faint. He laid relatively peacefully on the ground, but didn't appear to respond much to us. He would move some when poked, but ignored any attempts of communication.

Just like in real life. Who said D&D lacked realism?

He suddenly jutted up, and headed for the door he had come from. We had no other way to go, and followed him. We arrived in a passage that split in three directions: a kruthik tunnel to the left, a more civilized door straight ahead, and the same kruthik tunnel to the right. There was a crack near the door, and we decided to peek into it, so we better could decide where to go.

Through the crack we could see a room, where a pillar had been placed in front of the door. The room was slightly smaller than the one we had come from, but didn't have the same decorations or amount of doors. There was only one door, on the left part of the room, but to get there we would have to pass a group of enemies in the middle of the room. We could hear a mechanical grinding sound, and four statues had stood surrounding some sort of iron stakes that the enemies in the room stood on. There were also some goblin and kruthik remains in a pile in a corner, together with some unidentifiable rests.

Suddenly, the drunkard loudly exclaimed: ''No, no, no, not that way'', and headed off towards one of the tunnels. We interpreted this as that the room was too dangerous for us, and decided to take heed to his advice, and not go that way. We also decided that it was best to stick in a group, and decided to follow him into the right (former left) tunnel. The passage was narrow, but we managed to squeeze ourselves in.

Not very long after entering the tunnel, we came to what appeared to be the remains of an old tower. It was very dark, but it was discernible that it was some sort of constructed area, based on the bricks near us. I lit up a light in the room, revealing several kruthik, both on the ground and in the ceiling. They didn't appear to notice us at first, but when the monk lit up a torch, they charged for us!

I have no words.

ENCOUNTER TIME!

Out of the shadows came more Kruthiks. The appeared both in the ceiling, and on the ground, and they too charged for us. I managed to react fairly quickly, and chilled the roof to the point where ice started forming over the kruthik, causing them to loose their grip and fall about 20 feet down. The kruthik who hadn't fallen down charged down the walls, and headed for us, attacking the people who had gotten first out of the tunnel. They spat some sort of green poison or acid, but were quickly stopped when the dragonborn fighter (not the drunk) threw not one, but two javelins at the at the same time.

The rest of the kruthik went down relatively quickly and without any interesting happenings, but they still managed to hurt us quite badly. We were bloody, and in tatters, and decided we needed a rest. We knew it would be too dangerous to rest here, in the middle of kruthik territory, so we decided that we needed to get out of here ASAP, before we could calm down. Going back would only buy us a slight amount of time, as the kruthik now had no hinders between them and us, and could easily follow us.

We looked around the kruthik-infested cave we were in, and found in total three other ways than the one we had come from. There was a big one up in the right corner, which had a slight glow. There was also two smaller paths, on the wall opposite of where we had entered, and on the wall to the right of it. We decided to not go the the eerie green light (which also had some faint chittering sounds), and went into the tunnel on the right wall, which went upwards.

We walked for a slight distance, before coming to a split. Here, there were two roads going down, and two up. We had come from one of the ones going down, and knew we had walked slowly downwards, so we decided to go up. One of the tunnels were dark, while the other was lit up by what appeared to be torches. We figured the torch-lit to be the option most likely to be safe, and went up there.

We ended up in the room where we had solved the puzzle, now with a statue lacking both its eyes (since the monk took them). We had thought when we saw the room that it was safe, but we were proven wrong rather quickly. Demons spawned from the braziers, that had re-lit, and we were beaten down and things were looking bad. Too bad the demons weren't the peace-loving kind.

Pictured: Some kind of smoke-breathing demon of peace

ENCOUNTER TIME!

We ran. That's really about it. First the drunkard, then the monk, then the dragonborn and then lastly me. While the others sprinted out the doors, I closed them behind me as i exited the room, and froze them, sealing them against each other. The others ran, and I could hear the demons knocking on the door, trying twice to get out. Luckily they failed, and we all managed to get out, get to the wagons, and then back to the city of Sharn.

When we got back, we ran into Molrik. The drunkard suddenly began charging at Molrik, screaming curses, but got stopped by the monk. While the monk restrained the drunkard dragonborn, also muffling him, we began talking to Molrik, who seemed terribly surprised. It wasn't weird how he got a bit scared, having a big dragonborn charging at him at random, but he luckily didn't do much about it. What he did do, though, was tell us that some scholars from the university in the city wanted some samples of the kruthiks, which we said we could get for them. Molrik told us he would notify them about it, reminded us about our quest for him, and we headed for a rest.

After regaining our strength, we decided to head back to the dungeon. We travelled back to the entrance we had left, where luckily no demon awaited us. On top of the pile of skulls in the center of the (first) room, a battle standard was now visible. The monk charged at it first, intent at getting it. Amusingly enough, despite his martial prowess, he fell, impaling himself on the spikes. I, the weakest member of the group, attempted to climb up as well, and got up with relative ease. I grabbed the standard, and threw it down on the ground, before using my climber's kit to carefully get down.

Wow, monk. Just wow.

The monk got off the spikes with some help, and the standard was given to the drunkard, because we felt him to be a natural leading figure, and that he could most efficiently use it. After that, the monk healed himself up, and we went back down, but decided not to test our luck with the demons. We headed down the tunnel beside the door to the demons, and ended up in the same crosspath we had been in, this time taking the way back down into the kruthik-infested tower.

Not surprisingly, we met another group of kruthik in the tower remains, but it was a small group, and we quickly killed, smashed, butchered, impaled and inflicted a lot of pain to them, allowing us to pass. We all agreed to take the larger, glowing path, and ended up in a large chamber, filled with flowing egg sacs. We put up some light, and wouldn't you know it, there were a ton of kruthik there, and they all rushed towards us.

ENCOUNTER TIME!

I lit up the room, revealing about 4 bugs. But this was too little, it seemed, and just like the other times, kruthik came out towards us from the pitch-black darkness. A flying kruthik was the first to attack us, but in a way also volunteered for being the first to die. All of us managed to launch our attacks against it, and it fell over dead before any of the others could reach us. But they soon did after it had died, and a smaller swarm launched at us, while all the other kruthik moved closer to us.

Spotting a huge kruthik, I knew that we would struggle against this group, much more than the other. Despite how the other kruthik had gone down quickly, that had much to do with luck. I knew we had to go all-out in this fight, and I wasted little time on doing just that. I summoned my Big Ball of Fiery Doom in a spot near both the big kruthik, and another smaller one. The big kruthik appeared unharmed, but the smaller one appeared to be rather heavily afflicted by the heat. While the sun did little against the big kruthik when it was summoned, the after-burn appeared to hit it and the smaller kruthik alike.

The drunkard placed his battle banner in the ground, giving us all a slight boost morale, and I felt like I could fight a lot better than previously. Meanwhile, the monk ran up to a small glowing object, and snatched it in front of us others. While the rest of us fought, he had snatched a bag, which I felt a strong dislike towards. We all did our best, and the monk soon jumped back into the battle, and I summoned ice beneath several kruthik, and placed my Big Fiery Ball in the middle of it, dealing a ton of area damage.

The monk seized the opportunity, and kicked the big bug directly into the fire, inflicting much burn damage to it in addition to his physical damage. It twisted and turned in the fire, but fell dead not long after. Only a single small swarm remained after that, but it quickly fell to my cloud of kittens (Having cloud of daggers as my only single-enemy spell gets kind of boring after a while).

DEADLY RAIN OF ADORABLE MAGICAL KITTENS!

After the bugs had fallen, the monk inspected his necklace, revealing it to be a magically enchanted necklace, boosting defence. While the dragonborn fighter (the one that keeps us defended) needed the necklace the most, he decided that he would sell it. The dragonborn bought it, but I didn't feel like this was a good action of the monk to make, selling what was in reality everybody's reward.

The monk had also taken a pouch lying by the necklace, which contained some gold, silver and healing potions. He kept the gold for himself, gave the drunkard the silver as booze-money, along with a promise of free drinks, and gave the healing potions to the dragonborn, which was about the only thing I had agreed upon doing. I got nothing, but we grabbed a carcass of a flying kruthik, along with some eggs (as samples), before I scorched the entire area with my ball of fire, killing any potential hatchlings along with the kruthik corpses.


---


Post Script:
-We will be playing my adventure soon.
-I have more variations of Cloud of Daggers that I used out of boredom (such as mist of raining sharp objects, dagger-puring vapor and stabby-stabby cloud), but I felt like cloud of kittens was the best one to include in the post.
-Dragonborn keeps forgetting to mark, so she's not tanking all that great.
-The rogue was missing because EL is sick, but she's healthy now and most likely will come back.
 -I have high doubts that I will be writing many more first-person summaries of our journey. It takes way too much time, and I don't feel like anyone's actually interested.

MTG: My First Draft

I, the ever so lousy Magic The Gathering player, decided to go to a draft today. I got invited to come and play by MI, the guy from math class, who I believe i mentioned is an active MTG player. After we finishing playing a little magic after school yesterday, he mentioned that there was a beginners draft today (Saturday), and invited me to join him in playing. He told me that the draft cost less to join in on the first 5 times you play, and that you get to keep the cards you play with in the draft. I figured that it seemed fun, most likely was good practice, wasn't too expensive, and that I could use a few more cards, so I decided to join.

''Hey, want to come and be judged at what you're worst in? Great.

''

Ok, so this whole ''drafting'' thing might seem a bit confusing for those who don't know what it is, so I'm going to try and explain it as easy as I can. You start by putting 8 or so players around the table, and give them all booster packs (a pack of about 15 cards) of matching types. That means they all get a booster pack from a vampire deck, werewolf deck, or similar, and all players get the same types and amounts of the different booster packs.

The players then open up one type of booster pack, and choose a card from the pack they opened. After selecting a card, they keep the card, put it in a pile that is to become their playing deck, and send the remaining approximately 14 cards to their left, and receive 14 from the player to their right. The continue this until the booster packs they opened have been completely selected and moved to playing decks, and the process is repeated two more times, alternating the direction they send the cards in. The first booster was sent to the left, so the next is sent to the right, and the last to the left again.

After this, the players pick and choose from the cards they got to create a deck that's supposed to consist of minimum forty cards. After doing this, the players put land cards into their decks (usually about 17 of them), and then have a deck to play with in a following tournament. The players then face each other off in the tournament, with their newly built decks, and compete for prizes, often being more booster packs. They play ''best out of x rounds'' against each other, swapping opponents every now and then. The more rounds you win, the better the prizes you get. If  you get any prizes.

So. Many. Booster packs. And none of them mine.

With that explained, you should get most of the rest of what happened. I arrived at the store holding the event about 12:45, and decided to look for MI, who had said he'd be there about 12:30. It didn't take me long to find him, and we decided to sit down and play some rounds before the draft started. We found us a table and sat down.

After one or two rounds, two other players sat down besides us. They said they were beginners who had only played about a week, and we chatted with them while playing our respective games. They played against each other, and I faced MI. I don't remember if I won much, but I'll assume I didn't, since MI usually beats me with his deck stuffed with almost only the best of creatures.

After some time, we were wondering about if the draft was going to start soon. We found out it wasn't going to start soon, since almost all the other players were playing a separate event that started 11:00, and was supposed to have ended by 13:00 when our draft was supposed to start, jeopardizing whether our draft was going to be held at all. We asked people if they wanted to join us, since we needed 8 players to start the draft, but not many wanted to.

After a few hours of playing and talking to various people, it didn't look like the draft was going to happen. But then, as some sort of miracle, some of the people from the other event had finished up their thing and decided to join our draft, getting us even more people. After convincing a bit more people to join the draft, we got started, even though it was quite a bit after the point of being fashionably late.

Luckily, time is relative.

We started the draft, and since it was my first time drafting, I only had to pay 70 NKR (about $11). I walked into the store, paid the cost and signed my name up on the player participation list, before going back out to chat with some people outside. Shortly after, we moved to tables beside each other to make room for 8 people around it, and started the draft.

The person responsible for the draft explained how a draft worked, and we started drafting after about 5-10 minutes of explanation. I chose the best card from my booster pack, which I think was the card ''Undead Alchemist'', and decided that the first color I would be playing with was blue. I sent the deck onwards to the next person, and went on with the whole ''take one, pass it on'' process.

I ended up having a blue/white deck, and felt like I had picked out some nice cards. I began selecting out cards I didn't need by removing the ones of wrong color that I had gotten, and then sorted the rest of the cards into piles based on color and if they were creatures or spells. I removed any cards I felt weren't really good, but I still had way too many cards. I then separated the cards once more, this time based on mana cost and if they were creaures/spells, and removed cards from the categories I had too many of.

''Any cards that are of the wrong color or are lacking in ability will be removed.''

I still had too many after that, so I asked for tips on what to keep from the man responsible for the draft, who pointed out what cards I should remove. I removed the cards he had told me, and I were finally done with picking out 24 creature/spell cards. I fetched 16 land cards from inside the store (8 of each color), and added them to my draft deck, leaving me with the 40 cards I needed for the deck.

After everyone were done creating their decks, we turned the tables back, and started facing off against each other. I started out against the guy who had been sitting diagonally across the table for me. I don't remember his colors, but he ended up beating me by keeping my creatures tapped, preventing me from blocking or attacking with them. He won 2 rounds, and since we played for a ''best of 3'', he won against me. We finished rather early, and didn't have much to do, so he went out of the hall the store is in, to take a fresh breath of air, smoke a cigarette or something. I spent the rest of the time watching MI's match, who had been sharing my table.

The next person I was facing was, to my horror, the extremely experienced organizer of the draft, who had been playing since the year I was born. He also beat me rather early, once because I only got the two initial lands I started with on my hand, and I couldn't really do anything. I finished early this time too, and he went out for a smoke. I spent the time watching the girl and guy next to me play, where she won despite being even newer to the game than I am. Topped with that she was playing against the guy who beat me 2-0 the last turn, I can't really say my confidence was anywhere near the top.

''I finish prematurely and I'm weaker than a girl. I seriousily suck.''

My third and last opponent was the woman who MI tied with in the first round, leaving me some fear of whether I'd end up with 0 victories. Luckily for me, she ended up playing a very mana-heavy deck, and I got a good start while she didn't, and I won the first round against her. In the second round, pretty much the same happened, even though the organizer told me she was 1 victory away from winning 2 booster packs, but wouldn't get any if she didn't win this turn. I considered the moral dilemma of losing on purpose, but decided that it would have been impossible for her to win in any way, so I beat her. Shortly after, I learned about ''split'', which would've allowed me to split the booster packs with her against letting her win. But since I beat her, she didn't get anything, and neither did I.

It took about 8 hours from I got there to the draft was finished, even though it usually only takes 2 hours to play through a draft, much because of the trouble from the lacking amount of players, and that the other event hogged so much of the area. I ended up getting a lot of cards, since MI didn't want many of the ones he got and gave them to me, which I am pretty happy with.

After the draft was over, MI had to run over to catch his train, which left in not very long, so I told him goodbye, and hung around about 2 minutes before I went home, ate dinner and did a quick google on drafting in MTG before starting writing this post. The only thing I really regret, is not knowing of the ''split'' thing, since I never had a chance to win any booster packs anyways, but there's not much I really can or could've done about that. I ended up getting a few good cards after the whole thing was done, and I think I'll be attending the next draft, next saturday.

D&D: I played today

Today, something unexpected happened. After a really long break from D&D, and me and my D&D group has missed playing a ton of times due to one person not being able to play, we decided that today, even though EL is still sick, we would play D&D because we've had such a damn long break. I had a great time, and we're going to finish the part we started before taking the break, and then continue with my adventure. My great, goddamn epic adventure.

I'm not going to spoil anything about what my adventure's about, but I recon that anyone from the D&D forums are eager to read about D&D for a change. We've had a break for months now, and we were all kind of rusty and had forgotten a lot of what we were doing and what items we had. One guy even swapped character (but that was because his previous character got messed up; He started naked and his stats were misbalanced).

Imagine Gimli from Tolkiens Lord of the Rings. Only without the clothes.

I got kind of suprised when I found out we were playing today, and I first got noticed about it when school ended, but I luckily always bring my character sheets and a few dices with me where I go, so I was ready to play at the short notice, and luckily everyone else were too. All five of the people playing had the things they needed with them, and the DM (The person who's referred to as XR) had prepared the dungeon maps a few days ahead, so we got right to playing when we arrived at The Owl's Nest (Where we play D&D. It's actually just MA's room, but it's really big so it's great for D&D).

We settled down in chairs and the sofa around the playing table, which actually consists halfly of cardboard boxes, and got our pencils, character sheets, spell notes, etc. ready for playing. The current campaign is a published adventure which takes place in the Eberron campaign.

We entered the city of Sharn after saying farewell with Olaf, a dwarven paladin that started out playing naked (This was due to the person playing Olaf being unprepared for the first session), but eventually started scooping up and equipping himself with the armor of the kobolds we killed in our first adventure. Disturbingly enough, him being naked was actually a better mental image than in the too small leather harness of the kobolds.

After entering the city, Misery, the half-elf rogue of our group, got called over by some stranger she walked up to without us noticing. When we finally did notice that we lacked the fourth person, and that we were reduced to three people, the dragonborn fighter and tiefling warlock agreed that we needed more people if we were to be able to survive in the wild. I, the eladrin wizard of the group, held no opinion regarding this, and we went on to search for more people to join us in our adventure. Shortly after deciding this, a human and his strange alcohol-smelling horsewagon ran into us.

He had been sent by Olaf (who we jokingly referred to as ''Brolaf''). He showed his friendliness towards us by offering us drinks, but only the tiefling accepted. The wagon of the human had a tent on top, and we found out that it was actually a portable inn, complete with a very simple sleeping area, a small bar and brewing area. The human told us his name was Abraham, and that he was a bouncer, as his father had been before him, and his father again before him. The human had for some reason though, started out his own inn, and making his own drinks with the ingredients he could find.

He offered his fighting services for money, that the others agreed to, but I refused that we should pay him to come with us, and instead give him parts of the treasure. The other three agreed to this, and we decided to rest up after the encounter with the giant beetles known as kruthik outside the city. We tested out the human's inn, and regained our strength.

Being eladrin, I awoke before the others, and decided to take a walk around town before the others woke up. I didn't find anything specific, but I got a general idea of the city. When I got back to the cart, the others had awoken, and we decided to head over to the foundry. When we got there, we ran into some guards, that I decided to ask if had any quests for us. They told us that if we were interested in that kind of stuff, we should go meet Molrik, one of the overseers, at The Slagpit (a sort of inn).

''The Slagpit''.

We went to The Slagpit, where we found out Molrik wasn't there yet. Since it's usually a good thing to know about the people you're going to interact with,  I decided to walk over to one of the workers who were resting in the bar, and asked him what he could tell me about Molrik. I was told he was a rough man, and very little refined, but there was nothing about him that was really bad. When I asked the worker if Molrik had a taste for alcohol, he proceeded to stand up, raise his mug of ale up for a toast, and yelled ''Who doesn't?!''. The workers around us also went roaring, and the mood got a lot more lively.

That's about when Molrik entered the room. He was a dwarf, looked the way I was told he was, and had a goblin walking behind him. He shouted out for us, as he appeared to have heard that we were looking for him to get a quest. We gave him a drink, and sat down with him by a table, where he told us about the task he had for us.

Not long time ago, some diggers had dug themselves into the wall of the entrance to a crypt that had been long since forgotten. Not long after the diggers had entered the crypt, kruthiks had come swarming at them, and found their way out to the open. Not many of the diggers had returned, and those who had were too shocked to be able to say anything about what had been inside.

The dwarf proceeded to ask us if we could kill the swarm, and its hive, inside the crypt, to hinder them from attacking any more people. But we were warned that these weren't the usual big bugs that people thought of kruthiks as, these ones were special. These bugs had, in opposition to the other kruthik swarms, started developing wings. Why he didn't know, but he told us he would pay us a fair sum of money for the bug-slaying deed. We managed to negotiate for him to add some days of rations to bring along into the crypts, and we got on our way to the crypt.

We rode the carts with horses we had over to the entrance, and were lucky enough not to run into any more bugs on the way there. We parked the carts outside, and entered the crypt carefully, to avoid drawing any more attention to us than necessary. The crypt entrance was a large room with columns supporting the relatively high roof, small, hovering magical moats lighting up the room, and corpse remains in cut-out areas in the wall. In the center of the room was a giant pile of skulls, with a sign up in front of. We noticed that there were tunnels, that most likely belonged to the kruthiks in the walls, and proceeded with care. We were as silent as we possible, but, as it turned out, the kruthiks were more alert than we thought they were, and we soon heard the chattering sounds we had come to recognize as kruthik sounds, emanating from the walls.


ENCOUNTER 1!

(If anyone knows if I'm legally allowed to post pictures of the encounter rooms, please let me know)

Moriag had snuck over to the pile of skulls to read the plaque in front of it, and was therefore a bit away from the rest of us. The kruthiks weren't yet here, but we could hear them rapidly coming closing from the tunnels. The dragonborn shouted at the human (who is a monk) to cover the nearest dungeon entrance, who proceeded to do just that. The dragonborn and tiefling ran over to the area between the old entrance and the pile of skulls, and decided to make their stand there. I, being a wizard, didn't have much to do without some defence, and instead readied a cloud of daggers at an entrance on the opposite side of the room.

The kruthiks poured out of the walls. One with wings from the tunnel to the right, near the entrance the miners had carved out, but got blocked by the monk standing there. It launched an attack at him, and attached itself in his face, where it chittered and started biting, dealing extra damage to him. Three more kruthiks emerged from the tunnels on the opposite side of the room, two of them smaller than the third. They all ran over to the tiefling, who lacked protection on that side of him, most of them hitting him with their attacks.

The human monk used his martial ability to jump over me, standing directly behind me, across the room, and over to attack the kruthiks attacking the tiefling, still with a bug attached to his face, in an attempt to get the warlock safe. He kicked one of them with a crane kick, and proceeded to take some sort of sweeping strike after that (by using his action point), and got rid of two of the bugs, damaging and knocking the third to somewhere else. The dragonborn proceeded to damage the last bug by the tiefling with her flail, but didn't kill it. No kruthiks emerged from the hole in the wall I was preparing my attack from, so my readiness was wasted.

I cast an icy spell on the floor, on the kruthiks close to the tiefling, leaving the terrain difficult for a while. The kruthiks didn't appear to bee too harmed, though. I then ran near the pile of skulls, to try get away from the tunnel I was standing dangerously close to. The tiefling threw a spell at the bug, but it still wasn't dead, which was when something really bad happened. Another wave of bugs emerged into the room from the walls.

One bug emerged from the top left tunnel in the room, and ran over to the rest of the group in an attempt to inflict damage to them, but luckily missed its attack. After that, since I'm the ''lucky'' person I am, another kruthik popped up from the upper tunnel, and ran over to attack me. It did a rather solid amount of damage, and the pain from its bite was more than I had thought it would be. To my extended luck, two more of the smaller kind ran out and attacked me, and blocked me in by using the warlock who had moved closer to me. I couldn't move very much, but the attacks somehow still missed me in the small area I was standing in.

It was then I decided enough was enough. I shouted to my allies to get away, which they did after launching some attacks at the closest enemies they could find. I fey stepped a few squares, to stand in the place my spell would deal the optimal amount of damage. I raised my staff, and planted it firmly in the ground, sending a wave of electricity along the ground outwards from me, hitting the monk, who hadn't moved far enough away, in the process of attacking the bugs, but my attack wasn't powerful enough to damage them. I decided that I would make another effort at it, and spent much of my strength and magical stamina on sending another wave through the ground, this time powerful enough to be similar to thunder.

I did a whooping 54 damage! As a level 2!

The kruthiks (and the monk) were blasted about 15 feet away from where they had been standing, where four of the six bugs died in the blast. One of the last two became covered in its own goo-like blood, while the last didn't seem as affected by all the attacks, but still seemed harmed. I felt a small satisfaction in the damage I had dealt to the pests, but shook it away as quickly as I could, both in respect to my eladrin heritage and because I remembered about the last two, who were still very much alive.

It didn't take us long to finish off the bugs, though, and after some attacking forth and back, we managed to finish off the kruthiks at the entrance. The vinegar-smelling blood of the slain bugs luckily scared away other bugs, as we had learn earlier, giving us some peace for a short rest to do some basic healing, before we proceeded. I looked around the room, and found a small leather bag in the skull pile, filled with a portion of healing, 11 gold coins and an old journal. I took the potion of healing, as I felt I was the one who would need it most during combat, and gave the journal to the tiefling and the gold to the human, who said he wanted it.

The tiefling soon gave up on the book, though, and gave it back to me. I spent about 10 minutes on reading through it, and I found a small leather notice inside it with some sort of hand imprint on it. Though the leather notice was of a hand, it appeared to be carved out with the usage of tools. I put it in my pocket after showing it to the group, along with the book, and didn't think too much about it for then. The human gathered up some of the moats in a flask, to use for his brew, and we decided to move on.

We noticed a crack above the door into the next room, and the dragonborn lifted the tiefling up to peer through it. He said he could see some sort of runes in a grid at the bottom of some stairs in the center of the room, statues scattered across the room, and some braziers at two of the rooms corners. The dragonborn then dropped him down for some reason, opened to door, and walked into the next room, with us others close behind her.

Just for reference, the leather note looked roughly like this.

ENCOUNTER 2!

The room seemed as described by the tiefling, with the same type of carved out holes in the wall filled with skeletal remains as in the entrance room, five statues, where four stood above the lowering in the room, and on big one was sitting at the right wall from where we entered.. I decided to look closer at the statues, and noticed that the big statue had eyes made of valuable gems. I realized that there was some kind of magical trap around the gems, and told the others to stay away from them. The monk then went to a wall and laid down to sleep, for some reason.

We found out the meaning of the runes easily, and we decided it must've been some kind of riddle to get through the doors at the end of the room. The words on the tiles were seemingly random, but also appeared to have some kind of relevance with each other. The words were east, north, west, south, hell, fire, right, hand, open, unlock, up, down, right, and a few other words. I tried pushing the one marked ''unlock'', but it was too heavy to do anything about. Moriag stepped onto one of the tiles, and with some effort managed to push it down.

It was though a short victory, as we shortly after heard a ticking sound, and noticed that the plate was moving back up to its original position. We figured that it must be some kind of mechanism behind the tiles, and a correct combination needed to open the doors. I and Moriag proceeded to push down two tiles at once, to see if the ''unlock'' and  ''door'' were the right tiles for opening the doors at the end of the hall. ''Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick'', we heard, as both the tiles returned to their positions, presumably due to a wrong combination.

I came to think of the leather piece I had found earlier, and took it out of my bag. I felt like the bottom triangle piece was some kind of hint. I pushed the tiles labeled ''hand'' and ''down'', and to my joy, they stayed pushed down. Nothing else happened, but at least we now knew that we needed a combination to pass. Moriag tried pressing a third tile, but ended up resetting all of the tiles. I pushed to ''hand'' and ''down'' tiles again, and luckily they still worked.

We took some time to experiment with the buttons, but Moriag luckily noticed something else about the leather note after a while. It was a right hand. He pushed the ''right'' and ''open'' tiles, leading to the combination of ''right'', ''hand'', ''down'' and ''open''. We heard a grinding stone noise, the torches went out, and the big statue moved forward, revealing an opening behind it we could step through. I entered the room, followed by the dragon and the tiefling, but the monk decided to push his luck, and stole an eye. He got lucky, and nothing happened.

We entered a well-lit tomb, filled with the glowing magical motes that had been at the entrance. In the middle of the room were four saluting goblin statues. Else in the room was a grave at the one end of the room, on a slightly raised area, with some stairs leading up to it, and four statues on similar platforms. I noticed two chests by the grave, and I went to look at them. When I had taken a look for about 10 seconds or so, the room suddenly went pitch black. We heard the grinding of stone, the cracking of statues, and a voice shouting at us. It claimed us grave robbers, and was enraged we did not salute him when entering his tomb. I quickly lit up my staff, revealing the grave to have opened, and the corpse of a 5000 year old hobgoblin hero to have stepped out of it.

HAI GUISE!

ENCOUNTER 3!

The corpse of the old hero looked at me, and I knew he was going to launch an attack at me. I ran down the stairs, and cast a spell that caused the ground between me and the goblin corpse to become covered in ice. He didn't seem too hindered by it, and caught up with me, delivering a powerful strike to me with his sword. I got badly injured, but was still able to stand.

The statues holding the swords had cracked open, and the remains of goblin soldiers had cracked out of them. The human lit up a torch near him, and we saw that the saluting four goblin statues in the center of the room were spinning, and that two of the undead goblins ran to the statues, and used them to launch themselves towards us, but luckily they didn't manage to reach us very quickly, leaving us time to make another attack.

I raised my staff, and planted it firmly in the ground, causing a lightning wave out from me, knocking the goblin hero and his soldiers away from me, and the two who had launched themselves from the statue had been knocked back into it, causing it to hit them and render one unconscious on the ground, and the other knocked prone right next to the other one.

We exchanged many strikes forth and back, but nothing out of the ordinary happened, except for the of the statues to launch the monk to deliver a kick to one of the goblins. That is, until shortly after we had killed one of the undead soldiers. The goblin hero let out a blood-curling shrike, leaving me on the brink of life and death. I luckily got stabilized and healed, but I ran away, after moving my light to the ground, and summoning a Great Sphere of Fiery Doom near the undead goblin, causing a lot of fire damage to them. The fireball turned out to be extremely usable, and was one of the most damaging things done by us, in total damage.

Me + GSOFD = true

I didn't notice what my group did after that, but I healed myself so I could take another strike from the goblin hero, and summoned a cloud raining daggers down on the undead soldiers, while moving my ball of fire to follow the enemies, causing a constant burning damage to them. Somehow we managed to kill all the other enemies than the goblin hero, but we had taken serious damage to the group, and two of us had been knocked on the brink between life and death, much due to our lack of healing. There was nobody to heal us but the small amount of healing we could improvise on each other, but since none of us were trained healers, we could only heal for small amounts at a time.

We somehow managed to muster enough strength to (re)kill the goblin hero, and my ball of fire did the last shot on him. We took a long breather after that, and healed up what we could, before looking through what we could find. The sword used by the goblin hero was a broadsword, but aside from his armor and the keys to the chest, there was nothing else in the room. In the chests were some gold, which was taken by the human, and some armor, that I got a skull mask from.




This was as far as we got in our quest, but we're going to play on Sunday, so it won't be a long wait until we get further on in our quest. We won't play on the same location, though, and we're planning on also swapping DM, as XR got tired of it, and the plan is for MA to replace him now. We'll try to get the swap logical, even though it's kind of hard at the moment, and XR is going to easy things up a bit for us by playing as a healer, which we've needed badly.



 ---
Post script: This is all based on my memory, and much of the encounter is missing, as evident by the difference in the amount of words in each encounter part, so I'll apologize if I've forgotten anything, or something's different than it was. We don't have the books with the stats of the newly acquired armor either, so we don't know the stats of the loot we got. We don't even have ''broadsword'' as a weapon category in our current books, but we'll get the recquired books soon.

I'll also apologize for rushing the summary at the end, but there's not long time until next time we're playing, so there's not much time to write this before I got to write the other one. In addition to that, it's late at night now, and I'm tired, and even though I got something I got to do tomorrow, I've written some thousand of words in order to complete this post for you to read.

I promise I won't forget writing down anything important when I'm DM, and I will reveal pretty much everything then, but until I am, please don't think too badly of me. I'm doing my best to remember things, and if I ever leave out anything important, I'll make sure you know what I left out, or remembered wrongly.

P.P.S: The human took a mushroom from the crotch of the goblin hero to cultivate, and make drinks from. I doubt I'll be accepting any of the drinks he offers to me, especially the free ones.

Marketing Isn't That Bad

Marketing is a big subject that affects basically every person who lives in the modern world. From the far off tibetian mountains to the busy streets of beijing, to the TV in our living rooms and the computers we use for browsing the internet. The blinking lights in large cities, the posters on the busses we ride to work, the food we buy in stores and all our luxury are all covered with different types of marketing slogans, arguments, pictures claiming that either this or that product can fulfill our needs. All the advertising is meant to get us to spend money, and boost the economy that helps society go round.

I study Marketing and Leadership in high school. It's not an easy class, and I don't really get along very well with anyone there, but it's a class that I chose to put on my workplan, and therefore I feel that I should make an effort with it. The grade I got in marketing for the winter term  was equivalent to an A, and was the only top grade I got, but that isn't so odd, considering it's basically the only class I try to get a good grade in. I've studied the subject for what I see as an appropriate while, and I feel that I've at least grasped the general consept of what marketing is, so I see myself as a person who can say atleast a bit about what marketing is.

I had a lot of doubts about taking Marketing and Leadership as my only chosen class. Firstly because I really didn't know what it was about, secondly because I didn't feel like I needed it, and thirdly because it was the least favorite of my chosen choices. I'll get back to how i ended up with my least favorite chosen choice as my actual class (and what it means) in a bit, but for now you only need to know that it wasn't the class I wanted.

What I really wanted was dessert tasting class. But we can't all get what we want. *sigh*

The first problem, not knowing what it was about, was solved relatively quickly, even though I've had doubts about what I was doing until recently. I was introduced to marketing as that it's meant to cover the needs of the consumers, even though I later realised that it was a way to get us to stop thinking it's all about the money. I'm not going to deny that marketing is about money, a marketer's job is based on getting people to buy stuff, but as I learnt, people take it for granted that it's ''just selling stuff'', even though there's a ton of background info, rules and strategies one has to know before one is able to make a move in the huge market that exists today.

The second problem, not feeling I needed it, was much due to the fact that I had no idea what I needed it for. At the point where I started taking marketing lessons, I had no idea what to do with my life, and I really didn't feel like I need any classes. I have since then found out what I want to do, but I'm glad that I stuck with my choice, as it's actually one of the only few relevant classes for what I want to do in the future. Also, as a bonus, I learn a lot of things I can use to further improve my blog, and how to get more readers (As of writing this, I haven't used anything I've learnt, though).

The third problem is what might be the most weird. Most people faced with my problem would've tried to swap class to another, especially put into the situation I was. The story isn't very complicated, but it is interesting for anyone who wants to know how I ended up taking a class I didn't actually want to take that much.

My teacher had a gun. I didn't.

When we were supposed to choose what class we wanted in the second year of high school, it was done online, unsupervised, with only a 5 minute talk of what to pick from a guidance counsellor as preparation. I had no idea what any of the classes were about, except for what I could pull out from their names. When the choice was to be made, it was extremely difficut to understand it. Firstly because it was done by editing a normal multiple answer online test, which in hindsight seems like was due to the laziness of whoever made the test.

Secondly, the questions were put into categories that had little information about how were sorted. The categories were named A, B, C and D, and the only information given was that I only could pick one class from each. Category D was the type of math I wanted, P or T, Practical or Theoretical. I ended up picking theoretical to have more choices, as some universities and colleges requires it to attend. With that out of the way, I looked at the other categories, slightly baffled with the amount of choices I had. I ended up picking IT1, IT2 and didn't see anything I liked on the last, so I figured I might as well try Marketing and Leadership.

When I later found out that my art classes took the spot of two chosen classes, I found out that both IT1 and IT2 had been removed, and I ended up having only marketing as my chosen class. I wondered for a while if I should've seen a counsellor or not, but decided to try it out. In a combination of finding out it wasn't so bad, that I was really good at it even though it was difficult, and having some confidence issues, I ended up not talking to the counsellors about changing, and stuck myself with it, in a class where I knew none of the people and I had to spend a lot of time and effort to get a nice grade.

Since I stayed with it, I learnt a lot, and as mentioned, it is one of the only two relevant classes for what I'm going to study to be. Despite being one of the hardest classes one can pick (much due to a lot of theory and terminologies), it turned out pretty well, especially since after I found out what I wanted to do after high school, and that marketing is related to it. Looking back on it, what seemed to be a waste of time turned out to be one of the most useful classes, and I'm kind of glad I ended up making the decision that I did.

''Real'' Magic

Me and XR stayed behind after school today and watched stuff on YouTube for a while. The things we watched were mainly about magic (but not limited to it). I don't mean magic as in ''Magic The Gathering'' the card game, but actual ''magic'', if it can be called that. It was the kind of magic where you make person pick a card, shuffle it into the deck, pick it out somehow and then show it to them. Illusory magic as it can be called, tricking people into thinking you're doing something different than you actually are.

I've had a small interest in the subject for a long time, but it hasn't been more than a small interest. I'm considering learning a few more tricks than the little I know, for entertainment purposes. I know how to knock a cork through a bottle and the very common ''this, this, that'' card trick, but I want to be able to do a bit more than just that. I think I'd like being able to do some more magic tricks, especially card ones, since I think it would be useful to impress people, or at least as a conversation starter to break the ice and get to know people.

I think doing The Joker's pencil trick will be a great way to find my peers.

I plan on finding a deck of cards to play with a bit as the first thing, and then maybe do a quick google to find some basic info about different slight of hands, and then try to combine them into some magic tricks. I know most magicians try to hide what they do, but there's always one or two that reveal how the different tricks work.

If I find nothing useful on google, I'll just watch ''fool us'' or what it was called, where magicians compete to get a part in the Las Vegas show of two of the worlds most famous magicians by trying to not have their tricks seen through by the mentioned famous magicians. If the magicians succeed in fooling, they go to Vegas, but if they don't, their tricks are revealed. And it is the part where tricks get revealed I'll be after when (or if) I watch the show, even though the rest is also usually entertaining.

I used to know a lot more card tricks than I do know, and I'm kind of annoyed at myself at the moment for forgetting how to do them. One of the card tricks was really impressive, even though I never really figured how out how it worked. It was a relative that taught me how to do it, on my grandmothers birthday. I can't remember it clearly, but it had something to do with splitting the deck into piles of 3 and 3 cards, and then selecting a card they'd picked earlier out from the piles. I vaguely recall something about how both me and the person being tricked chose stacks, but most of the trick is forgotten. I also remember asking my relative how the trick worked, and she told me it had something to do with math, but nothing more. I never figured out how that trick worked.

I hope to be able to create my own tricks, so I seek to extract the most important things about each trick I learn. To take an example, there's the mentioned ''this, this, that'' card trick, which taught me some sleight of hand, which can be used for a ton of different card tricks, and is based on one of the most basic sleight of hand things there is when it comes to card tricks.

I don't know how involved I'll get with the whole magic thing, but I recon it will take at least some of the time in the near future. I might also post some tutorials on how to do magic different magic tricks on my blog, so that if anyone's interested in that kind of stuff, they'll get a bit of material to start with.

For now I think I'll just look up how to do some basic stuff, and then maybe go deeper into the whole magic thing later. So maybe I get good at it, maybe I don't, or maybe I just forget about it. Anything can happen.

I Ordered An Ocarina!

Yesterday was sunday. Not much happened then. I got visited by some relatives(-ish) and played some minecraft, both multiplayer and single-player. I've built myself a small house on the server I'm playing on, dug a bunch of tunnels beneath it, carves a big cube in the tunnels (27x27x17 I think the size was) and bought the land the house stands on stands on. But that's in no way related to this post, I just felt like relaying what I spent the day on. This post is about that I ordered an ocarina yesterday!

One of these bad-asses

That's right, an ocarina, the instrument that, despite being one of the world's oldest instruments with a 12 000 year old history, is best known from the Legend of Zelda video game series. When you first read ocarina, I bet you immediatily thought of the ocarina of time, or wondered what the hell an ocarina is. I find it funny that ocarinas have just kind of ''existed'' with barely anyone knowing about them until a video game decided to feature one.

Anyways, the ocarina I've ordered costed a total of $118.95, much due to 1) The shipping is expensive across the ocean between me and The US, where I ordered it from. 2) It was an expensive ocarina even before that. 3) The ocarina is hand-crafted, so it costs a bit more. 4) It's a goddamn ocarina. Not so many people make those on a professional basis.

But those about $120 are a relatively small part of my money, since my father finally paid me for painting the house during summer vacation not too long ago, more than a half year after the job was done. I'm trying not to spend too much, but I feel like buying an ocarina is the correct thing to do since I've started taking a greater interest in music.

A proper interest. Not the ''learn Wonderwall to get laid'' kind of interest.

I believe that a ''learn to play ocarina'' thing is going to be in the box with the ocarina, so that I can quickly start playing. But if it's not I'll just have to teach myself how to play or look it up on the web. There should be plenty of Zelda-heads who post tutorials on song of time or similar on various forums, and even if there isn't, there's always some aspiring youtuber that wants another view to his/her ocarina tutorial channel.

I hope that the ocarina arrives soon, since I really want to start playing. I know how to play keyboard/piano and ukulele already (and I'm kind of good at it), but I want to learn how to play another instrument. I've tried to learn how to play guitar, but I didn't really feel anything when I played on one of the many accoustic guitars I have available.

My father isn't the greatest musician, though he plays some guitar, and my mother isn't that much of a musician either, though I think she can play some piano. I don't think either of them have ever been in a band or anything, but my grandfather owned an accordian and was in a quartet, so I guess there might be atleast some genetics involved in me. On the other hand, I didn't start liking to play instruments until high school, so it's not something that's been boiling up in me either. I guess it's a kind of mix between environment and genetics that I've taken an interest.

You most likely didn't care about this and you're more interested in the ocarina I ordered. Fair enough, since this post is supposed to be about that, so I think some more details on how it looks will be appropriate. It's a dragon tooth. Really. No, seriousily, that's what it's called. It's curved, sharp, not very bloated and black with a colorful pattern. I guess since this is the internet, I could make it a lot simpler for both of us by posting a picture of it to show you, instead of trying to describe it to you in a way that you'd most likely misunderstand.

But where's the fun in that?

As stated I hope it arrives in mail ASAP, but I chose the cheapest shipping alternative, so I guess I'll have to wait a minimum of 2 weeks before it shows up. I'll most likely have forgotten about the ocarina by that time, but I think that's most likely better. I like giving myself presents, and I think more people should do that, because it's a way of giving yourself a moral-up every now and then. It's nothing big, but the happiness of finding a dollar you'd forgotten about, or a chocolate stuffed in a drawer three days ago lasts a lot longer than you'd think (assuming that you got the correct mindset).

And that's the biggest part of yesterday. I didn't blog then because I didn't have the time (and I also felt like relaxing), but I guess this clears a bit up what I spent the day on. While ordering an ocarina online wasn't a thing I spent so much time thinking about, I feel like I made the right choice in ordering it, and I'm glad that I did what I did.



 ---



Bonus info: I actually didn't order the ocarina. Well, It is ordered, but it wasn't really I who ordered it, even though I claim so in the text. I asked my mom to order it for me. Before you call me a loser, I'd like you to know:
-I'm not 18 yet.
-I can't access my bank account online, since I don't know where my code generator is.
-I don't think my own card is usable online. 
-I barely know how online shopping works.

My mom isn't actually buying it for me, I'm sort of just ''renting'' her card, since I pay back the money it costs. But the point is: I didn't order the ocarina, my mom did.

Thanks, mom!

That last part is sure to get me laid.