Ryzom

On the eve of the third month of fall, the celebrations to the spirits occur. Each nation celebrates this festival differently. The Trykers dress up in costumes and party. Matis children go door to door and collect sweets. The fyros start big bonfires on the dunes and set off fireworks to light up the night. The zorai light up millions of amber spheres, and float them throughout the cites in remembrance of the dead.

In the militia, we have our own way to celebrate. We go out to the most dangerous, and remote areas of the world, and hunt down dangerous creatures, just for the heck of it.

I remember hunting Najabs in the Void one festival. It was great fun. I don't remember how many najabs I killed, but I do remeber I made somenice swords out of the claws.

The next year, I learned a very important lesson.

Najab's never forget. They do not forgive ether.

I may have come back with twice as many najab claws as I did last year, but all of them were pulled out of my flesh.

You have no idea what it is like to see twenty five najab jump twenty feet in the air, out of the surrounding jungle, right at you. You also have no idea what it is like to recognize most of them as well.

This year, I am taking it easy. I am going to steal some Javing eggs, egg the entire imperal square, go streaking through Cheapside Market, and do all of it while dressed as the man-eating yubo from the slapstick play "Quest for the Holy Dragon".

I then move to the Undersprings, change my name, grow a beard, and wait until the Pyr Playwrights Association takes the bounty off my head.

Once every year, Pyr Militiamen from all over Atys converge in one spot in the desert. The passage is perilous. It is fraught with savage creatures, ruthless bandits, and drunken karavan.

The point? To have the annual guild mektoub races. You see mektoub breeds from all over. Most people ride the dusty desert stock, a few ride the bluish lakelands breeds, some ride the striped forest and jungle breeds. I think Aliman may have even had a white Prime Roots mektoub.

In true Pyr Militia style... everything goes... and I mean everything. I routinely dodge various nasty traps that have been placed on the track, fire spells thrown by people following me, and wandering predators that just happen to be there. One time, Woody brought this giant ax to the races, and took a swing at anyone who got too close. Stewart once brought this giant autolauncher and started shooting at anything that moved. I once set a bundle of najab hide on fire, and filled the entire track with a cloud of hallucinogenic smoke.

It might have worked too... if the wind hadn't suddenly shifted. My mektoub was ill for days.

Regardless, we all have great time, at the temple, while the medics sew us back together. I would go again this year... but my mektoub is too scared to leave the stables... for some reason.

Getting lost during an adventure, is often a adventure on its own.

Not to say that any of us have a bad sense of direction, getting lost just happens to the best of us. Mostly it is taking a right instead of a left.

You'd be amazed at how lost that can get you. Once, Stewart and Chelly got into an argument over wether we should go left or right. Chelly picked right, Stewart left.

I followed Chelly, and we arrived in Zora just as night was closing. Stewart finally staggers into Pyr five weeks later, looking like he had just been dragged across the Verdant Gardens by a runaway Mektoub, and muttering something along the lines of "They're not extinct!"

Another way we end up getting lost, is shortcuts. All too often have we gotten hopelessly lost, by taking a shortcut that "Will shave two whole hours off the trek."

I wish.

More often than not, you take the wrong trail, across the wrong pond, and end up in a cave that serves as the hibernation den for the entire Najab population of the Void. It's happened, believe me.

Sure there are otherways to get lost, lack of sleep, bad directions, and psykopla moss...

Don't ask about the last one.

Boredom will be the bane of all hominkind.

I do not say this lightly. We people are bored, bad things happen. The bored mind will pop off idea's that often have catastrophic effects. I've seen it happen... it's not pretty.

When we're sitting around the guild hall, and we can't go digging because we've pushed the Kami to their limits. We can't go hunting because we don't want to push the populations to extinction, and we can't go blow all our dappers, because there is nothing worth spending them on.

That's when things start to go wrong.

Usually, someone will suggest something... like "Hey, lets go have a marathon swim across Dyron."

A good idea... one that you think would not turn into a disaster... you'd be amazed how quick that changes. First someone, never ask me who, will decied they should try and snag some fiber while they are at Dyron. They will forget that the Kami tolerance is shot.

BOOM he'll get blasted into next year by a being half his size.

Than someone will remember that we haven't nerfed the tolerance down in the Prime Roots. We will then head to the nearest Prime Roots passage and digger.

BOOM someone will nuke us, OR pull a whole pack of Kinchers on us. We'll wipe and respawn back in Pyr, then we'll hunt down the people who nuked us, which results in a standoff. They'll call their buddies to aid them, we'll call our buddies, and the next thing you know, eveyone in Pyr is squaring off in duels all over Cheapside Market.

The best way to avoid these kind of situations, is to make everyone in the guild mad at you, and thus make them Un-bored.

Now if you'll excuse me... I think they're starting to catch up.

With the grace of the nanoseeds, it is hard to forget that death is sometimes final.

I myself have been gored, stabbed, shot, impaled, drowned, clawed, slashed, decapitated, mauled, chewed, dismembered, sliced, diced, lightly sauted, blasted, burned, electrocuted, yubo-ed (don't ask), poisoned, chocked, devoured, and otherwise killed, more times than I can count.

It is very easy to forget that homins grow old, and finally die. Too easy to forget the millions that were slaughtered during the Great Swarming, and WAY too easy to forget that the next time your heart stops beating, the grace of Jena may not be enough to save you.

I am not in an hurry to find the limit of my nanoseed. Yet, way too often I have been killed. Sometimes I have even gotten lost, and than challanged a Gingo to a fist fight, just so I could respawn at the nearest kami shrine.

This fear has not stopped many members of the Militia from doing stupid things. Running through ragus dens covered in meat sauce, walking up a kami sentinel and saying "**** Ma-Duk," or even sunbathing in the middle of a goo field.

The list could go on... but Teylas is trying to juggle live launcher ammo again... and I don't want to get blood on my new armour.

Finally, I am now the Offical Chronicler of the Pyr Militia... or the "Keeper of the Lore" as the offical title goes. Aside from the prestige that goes with the title... I get a new office!

It's not large by any means. Just big enough to fit in a desk, a few chairs, a ragus bed, and my homemade chest of knowledge.

Yes, it is true, I did discover a blueprint for a chest of knowledge... I had to improvise a few (many) times, so the thing now resembles a Karavan landspeeder that has been dismantled and reassmbled by a drunken dentist. But it works! So maybe the littlest thing can cause it to go bezerk, but it works.

Lou Zhao, my pet ragus, spent over an hour sniffing out every corner before he settled down, and even then he slept with one eye open... Now he is lying right in front of the door, ready to spring... on what? Who knows?

"Hey, Fen! I finished my first draft! Can you... AAAHHHH!!!"

With the grace of Ma-duk, Zhoa sails through the air, and lands right on my new apprentice, Licam. Torn pieces of cloth sail through the air, as the ragus starts gnawing on the tryker.

"Get ystupid pet off me! AHHHHHH!"

Note to self... teach Zhoa that Trykers are not chew toys.

One day, I was going through some of the old archives from my first days as a militia member. On my way to exchange amber cubes, I aciedently set off my chest of knowledge. The thing went berzerk, tried to gnaw off my arm, jumped erratically around the room, before blowing a huge hole in the wall.

The archives were unharmed, thank Ma-Duk, but the blast opened up the way to a secret passage in the guild hall.

Now, contrary to popular belief, most secret passages don't lead to anywhere exciting. Most just lead to the secret room where the psykopla heads light up, or the underground vault were everyone stashes the porn they "do not have."

I of course headed down the passage, in the interest of discovering unknown secrets of course.

Big mistake.

I was found a month later, wandering through the Verdant Gardens, wearing a pair of fluffy yubo slippers, a full set of gibai jewelery, hefting a sack full of kincher shells, and mummbling something about pizza and shookis.

It took twenty liters of zorai ale and a well timed lighting spell to bring me back. No one could look at me without laughing for two whole weeks.

When I got back to my office, the chest was right where I left it, and the hole in the wall was patched up as if it was not even there. This whole experince left me with questions, the foremost one on my mind being...

What in Jena's name am I going to do with 200 pounds of kincher shell?

I am going to kill the moron that puts up the pictures in the guild hall. First it was just harmless snap shots of me and Gnasher digging, a bodooc munching grass, Faiyth and the girls skinny dipping, and the inside of a cuttler's mouth...

Then it was Orlaf molesting a yelk... One look at the picture was enough to suddenly make me not hungry. The only good thing that came from that picture was that it stopped everyone from cleaning out the pantry...

It only got worse... the next picture depicted the time Stewart introduced me to Yelk tea... the night I was later dragged out of the Pyr fountain, screaming about kitin plots to rule the world, yubo dressed in black who carried giant auto-launchers, and about the extistance of some substance called metal.

Later that night, I waited in the guild hall, the mother of all rifles in my one hand, and a pot of freshly brewed stinga coffee in the other... around two in the morning, I saw someone creeping through the guild hall, and opened fire on them.

I later discovered it was my apprentice Licam, who I had filled full of beckers bark. He had dropped in to give me some manuscripts to read over, when I jumped up from behind the bar, laughing like a maniac, and shot him several times with what he called "the biggest @#%$# gun he had ever seen."

Poor guy, goes to drop off some drafts, and I shot him... At least, that had better have been what you were doing Licam...

*Click*

I am lost... I will not deny it. All I know, is that I am in a jungle... somewhere...

How I got lost is a very interesting story... first... I had wandered out of my apartment in Zora in a haze... There had been a disaster, in which a spark from one of the amber lamps had ignited some dried najab skin I had out. The whole room was filled with smoke by the time I managed to stomp the fire out... an exteremely painful endevor, if you walk barefoot most of the time.

Regardless, it is well known that najab skin is an hallucinogen, and as a result, I staggered out of Zora... seeing... well, I'm not sure what I was seeing. I only remember vauge flashs, a voice that seemed to come from Atys itself, and purple mektoub doing the tango...

I came to about a day later. I was face up in a pond, it was snowing, and I was carrying a stachel with my recording supplies... strange, as I remebered leaving them in the guild office in Pyr.

Regardless, I washed myself off, and tried to get my barings... only to have the biggest surprise of my life. A 3000 kilo najab jumped out of a tree, and chased me for 40 kilometers across two rivers, and a thorn bush.

By then I realized I didn't recognize where I was at all...

Right now... I am currently sharing a den with Lou Zhoa, and a family of ragus, it has taken a whole months to dig the materials to craft enough stuff, to pay the local kami, in order to have them send this cube back to pyr... I think I should be able to craft enough stuff to afford a teleport home in about... 5 years...