Mare Tranquillitatis

Comic update. You keep changing sig and av...

Well, happy you liked this! But, what do you say about the Vorox-thing? ( I'm asking because it's a thing I've bet much on )

Well, Darkon, what to say? It seems that this time the experiment has gone the right way.Yep, it's a relatively new style for me, and I might consider writing the others I planned to write. Actually, I was considering to get strongly directed towards this style, with cliffhanger endings and thriller-like atmospheres. The only thing I can say about the characters remaining quite faceless is the fact that this letter was meant to be written by a hunted protagonist who has nearly no time to salute the world. But you've got a point, maybe it would have been better if I put more info about the other characters.I'm extremely happy of the result and I'll be surely relying more on this style. I hope you understood what happens to the prey, because that's what means the most for me.Glad you liked it! Thanks for feedback and support, too!

Agree about the railgun, but I don't like the SAW for one simple reason: the Heavy Machine Gun will be useless, then. But whatever. And how would you reconsider preorder? In a bad or good way?

No... No. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN 343? You must be kidding. Y-you can't put the SAW in Halo!Whatever. There's railgun, and I'm definitely loving how it looks like in that trailer.

I can only guess how much you must have spent with those daggers. And I said that because that's how I got it up to 100 fast.

"Forrest Gump theme"I still get near to tears when I hear this...

I guess you got up to 100 thanks to Dwarven Bow.

Yes, yes I am.TPBM has a dog.

- Chapter 9: Prophecies and words - Now the rain fell quietly. It seemed like it wanted to massage the world, instead of hurting it. Some clouds, at the east, were already disappearing. “It’s a positive sign,” thought Aetius.But, if the storm had been calmed, something else was storming the Toa’s head. So many things to think about, and all told at once. Too much job for a brain that was still young for that age. Old, yet young to the world. He knew to know many things, but he couldn’t remember them, like if they were sealed in some deep abyss in his mind. It was frustrating.However, he couldn’t have said, in that moment, that he was unhappy. He had a flash when Aetius finished his story. It seemed like the only way for his memories to awaken was to let them find their time to rise again from the pits of oblivion. Whenever they would have been ready, they’d have come back to him, breaking the doors and running their unrelenting marathon to the finish line.---He walked under a new day’s sun. Everything shined. But it wasn’t time for happiness. Their hearts, if hearts they can be called, were dark in the inner. Many of their brothers and sisters died in that battle. Now their corpses lied on the ground. They were empty: their dreams, wishes, memories, all destroyed in the time of a hit. A foreign metal penetrating their body, and everything was gone. An entire life reduced to nothing in few seconds. That’s why many used to say “Life is what gives you everything, if you can find everything. But it doesn’t like to borrow things. So it takes back what you took and something more.”His steps drove him on a path through the bodies. Through faces that once smiled, laughed, cried. Once. Not twice. Life is like a venomous food: you can try it only once, because it’s so powerful that it won’t allow you to taste it again. They all knew it was the truth and it couldn’t be changed.As he walked, others took the bodies from the battlefield and brought them to a place where they’d have been admired from the dears that would have wanted to admire them exactly how they died. Maybe they would have guessed what they were thinking at the end of their days.The Toa was now sitting on a chair, trying to relax before the future battles. War still raged around him. Many of his mates saluted him as a hero, making him their congratulations for the excellent job on the field, for the significant role he had during the final hours of the battle. He saved the reinforcement troops. Someone else would have thought to the glory. He didn’t he thought to those lives, that didn’t deserve to die. Die. Die. Die. Die. All those words, all related to death, stormed his mind.No, he didn’t want to be called “hero”. He just did “what had to be done”, like many others said before, but only to cover their happiness for getting a medal or a reward or whatever it was. No. No one deserves to die. Life is too splendid to be wasted in a moment.He wanted to fight again, wherever someone needed his help, wherever there were innocent people dying.Slowly, he stood up and walked out of his tent.---“Hey, are you alright?”Aetius’ voice broke the silence they were submerged into.Yes, he would have helped that stranger. Even if he was a murderer, he deserved to live. His people deserved to live.“Yes, yes. Don’t worry for me. Actually, if my sword can be someway useful for your cause, you won’t have to worry about your war, too.”“Worry about his war? Oh, but he has to. And you should follow him.”A hissing voice came from the entrance of the cave, where a dark blue sphere had appeared. Aetius unsheathed his sword.“Put down that scrap metal, old enemy. Someone could be hurt, if you don’t calm yourself. As for me, I’m not going to harm anyone. Not yet. I’m here to talk. Oh, and I have to give you my congratulations, your story was really touching. I’m so afraid for your wife. Poor Aetius, so unlucky, so alone, so angry… so stupid.”“Repeat that, please.”“Don’t be that much touchy, fool of an Assassin. It won’t be good for your heart. And do not pretend to have not heard what I said. Anyways, let’s get serious. I’m here because I’ve got a flash of your destiny. The destiny of Aetius, the destiny of this Toa and the destiny of your quest companions.”“Who do you mean with companions?” asked Aetius. “And which quest?”“I don’t know. I’ve just seen pieces of your future, not the entire days that have to come. Now, if you will gently allow me to talk without interruption…” A nod from Aetius gave him permission to talk. “Good. The first thing you have to know is that you and the other three heroes won’t see the snake. Don’t look at me with that face, Assassin. With snake I mean traitor, and, oh, what a traitor! But you won’t know who he is until the end of your adventure.Then, one will be very useful thanks to his power. However, he’ll be hurt his power itself, and he won’t have a role in the final battle.Another will find his desires brought to reality, but this won’t make him as happy as he thought he would have been, because he’ll suffer from another loss.Another one will find his destiny when one of you will fulfill his.Then, one will have desires and dreams that are too big for him and will be near to see them coming true, but it will be just a glimpse.Another one won’t take the journey with the rest of the team, yet he’ll help the company during the travel. It will be a coincidence.”“Is that all you’ve got to say?”“No, Toa. There’s one left. Between these five people and you lies a traitor. One of this team will betray the others. But I still have to tell you what I saw of the last member.”“Who’s the last member?” asked Aetius.“The last member is this Toa. Look at me, Toa. The prophecy is this: you’re only a shadow, compared to the person you should be, the person you wrongly claim to be, the person you remember to have been in a seemingly lost past. And don’t think that your actions weren’t intended from the beginning. Even if you friends will never think so, you’re a shadow, compared to everything.”“Have you done spitting insults, murderer?” shouted angrily Aetius.“No, no, no. Not this way, Aetius. I could seriously wound you, mind that. And remember that the assassin, here, is you.”“I kill for justice, not for the sole purpose to have personal fun, beast!”“For justice, you say? Who are you to decide who can live and who can’t? You can’t judge it.”“I CAN’T, HUH? SO, WHAT ABOUT YOU? CAN YOU? COME BACK AND FIGHT, COWARD!”Only the nascent voices from the market answered.Aetius sighed. “Always the same thing. They never fight their enemy, instead they send their minions to battle for them and then they take all the glory. Cowards, friends, sons and relatives of cowards! Ah, but they’ll pay for this!”“Me not want ‘em pay. Me want food.”A harsh, hoarse voice came from behind. “WHAT? You just spoke, didn’t you? Y-you spoke?” Aetius couldn’t believe it. He gave a rapid glance to the Toa, but the latter was astonished as well.“Me can talk. Find no one to speak to, but can speak.”Even if that was hard to believe for both the relatively young Toa and the experienced Assassin, the voice came from the Vorox itself. He spoke with great difficulty, and they perfectly understood it. He continuously tried to find the words he learned somewhere in his limited mind ( limited because being a Vorox wasn’t as complicated as living like a “civilized”: obey the boss, find food, find water, kill intruders; the duties and needs of a Vorox were limited, so the brain was, too ), forcing the mouth to pronounce sounds it never produced in a whole life and, thus, pronouncing many of them wrongly. It was a pain for him, the few words he knew couldn’t form a complete and clear sentence.“Okay, okay, we’ll provide food as soon as possible. Now stop talking and saying nonsense sentences, we’ve understood, and I don’t want your dirty sweat on my floor! But, now, would you gently explain us how the heck you learnt it?”, exploded Aetius. He didn’t stand Vorox and was already tired of the whole thing. He thought that a talking Vorox would have been way much worse than a silent one. He figured how it would have continued mumbling and muttering the whole time. He was ready to kick it off of his hideout and send it back in the desert.“Me find a thing one day. No know name. Had many white sheets with black lines. Look into it and find I can read. Seem like I already know how.”---The Toa and the Assassin got out of the cave. The sun was shining again, but the air was fresh, now. “Ah, I love this air! Reminds me of Varxylieh. Come, let’s find some food vendor. I’m as hungry as that Vorox”, said Aetius.As they walked, no one cared of them. Seemingly, nobody was searching for them with the purpose of getting explanations on that explosion in the house they borrowed.They soon found what they were looking for. Aetius bought some fruits and paid and the two were walking back to “home” when the Toa asked: ”Tell me, Aetius. You’re a veteran of these regions. How would you explain the ability of that Vorox? How’d you explain the fact he could actually talk?”“I’m not sure, but I think it’s a recollection of its past.”“What do you mean?”“You see, Vorox haven’t always been the beasts they are now. Once they were great warriors, and some of the finest, I believe. Then, they reverted to… well, to what they look like now.” Our” Vorox probably has the ability to speak, yet with great stresses, because its mind might have saved the skills that once belonged to the Sand Tribe and got passed to him, from father to son. Perhaps, the retrieval of the book unlocked those memories and now it’s capable of talking. Talking as we usually do, I mean. Until you call their snarling and screeching “talking”, they can talk.”On the road back to Aetius’ hideout, the Toa pondered on his words. However, he doubted the Vorox learnt how to talk by accident: he often saw a light in his eyes, a light he knew belonged to sadness, a sad mood caused by a desire that others didn’t want to accomplish. The Toa thought that the desire of the Vorox was to be accepted once again.

Letter from a prey If anyone will ever read this, my name is Kadr. As you may have noticed, I left some white space from the top of the page. Actually, I still have to give this paper a title. And I can’t find one that fits what I’m writing on it, since I don’t know what to do.I suppose I should start explaining that the tombs near the place this letter will be put in contain the remains of Sh’leh and Tirqas.The grave on the left, watching from the door, is Sh’leh’s. He’s been the first victim of Ygnwush’s splendid idea. “Let’s take the way through the old sewers!”, he said. And here we are. We were running behind him when that beast appeared and attacked. Sh’leh, who was the last of the row, attempted to defend us, but his pocket knife wasn’t perhaps the best weapon to use. Now I don’t think it will cut anything again. Well, maybe some dead corpses in that beast’s belly. Actually, Sh’leh used it when he had to cut his meal. And he usually ate meat, so, nothing different would happen, if it will cut some decaying dead warrior.Then, the other tomb, opposite to the door, the one with some shreds of clothes on it. It’s Tirqas’. I put those shreds on it for a simple reason: she loved those clothes. She thought they would have been useful. “We’ll need to protect ourselves from the cold, on the Circling Mountains!”, that’s what she told us. They were quite elegant, and elegant clothes always have been her passion. Ah, if she ever knew they would have been her end. Yes, her end, because, as she attempted to take the clothes without touching the body of the unfortunate owner ( “Bleah! It’s rotten!” “It’s natural, Tirqas. He’s dead.” “Shut up, Kadr. Almost do-“ ), as she was almost done, here’s another spider! Poor Tirqas, you didn’t even see the trap. We escaped, just like she told us to do, but she was floating in the air, her leg caught in a rope. Now her body lies under a pile of rocks. Only the body. Arms, legs, head… they probably have already been digested.I couldn’t get Ygnwush’s body. As soon as he found that his wonderful idea led us into a no-exit trap, he left to search our friends’ bodies. I stood here for what seemed hours, then he came back. He carried them both without any difficulty: he’s always been very strong, I must admit this. But I always thought that he was all muscles and no brain. “Here. At least, they’ll find peace, now. So, you’ve found any clue to an exit?”, he asked me.“A clue? If by clue you mean the heaviest and biggest rocks I’ve ever seen, yes, there’s lots. We won’t survive.”“Kadr…”“Huh?”“Kadr, I was serious.”“Me too. We’re doomed, Ygnwush. We’ll never get out of this sewers.”“Never say never, friend.”He should have said “never”, instead. Because, as soon as he ended the word “friend”, a sting stabbed him and one of them took him. And then I was alone.…Hm, well, I’m still alone. I’d like to go on this way, other than sharing the floor with those spiders.Yeah, them. I can’t figure where they came from, but I guess it’s a bad place, where life is hard. They’re very resistant.Uh, maybe I could call this "Story of a Glatorian and his friends: from hunters to preys". Nah, too sophisticated.What was that?Oh, I can hear them coming! Their hissing and chattering is very loud. So, they’ve found me. I suppose I might try to fight them with this rope and that girder. If I only could tear it off of the wall…Nothing. I’ve spilled blood out of my hands to take it, but it was all vain. All is lost. I can’t fight those creatures with a rope. Well, farewell, world. I’ve loved you very much. And, King, I’ve served you with loyalty. May the blessings of the Elements save you and the City. Farewell, Circling Mountains, may your snows never melt until Everything ends. And, invaders, may you be cursed until you’re all dead, no matter which will be your death.Farewell, everyone and everything. I must go now. I must go and fight, because that’s what I did for a whole life, and I don’t want to go down without fighting. I must go and fight them with this rope… A rope. They’ll laugh in front of me when they’ll see me with that in my hand. Do whatever you want, spiders, laugh, but I don’t want to fall into your talons. Therefore I’ll fight with this rope!Wait.This rope. And that girder. Ah, at least there’s one good thing in this whole adventure: I’ve found a title to this letter. “Suicidal note” will be perfect.

Melkor took the name Morgoth from Fëanor, so you're right.I see you write stuff.

^ Well, since they mean the same person...Do you ever put down those glasses?

I guess they won at the Olympics.

Nice walk into memories. I loved it. It may sound like the classical stereotype of the "great person that rises from the mud and the dust", but it's always nice to see how those stories end.Well, what should I say then? Happy birthday, and many heartfelt wishes that LEGO will go on this way. Also, many heartfelt thanks for having grown us such a good way. I'm debtor with you, Ole.

I like lakes.

^Those aren't eyes, they're jewels. The eyes are below them.So, you're a Sergeant?

"Follow our brothers" - Michael Salvatori and Martin O' Donnell ( Halo 3 OST )

No!TPBM is writing a Short Story.

Metal could be okay, but pony...

Exactly.I'm not gonna click it.

Very good. Choice of words is well done, in my opinion, and the atmosphere is really strong. I could feel to be directly in the scene. I love dark stories like this. And I liked how a law enforcer could have so much power to actually force someone to break laws. A circulum vitiosus, if I recall correctly my Latin skills, a never-ending circle. Very well done. I like the ending, I like the title, I like the writing. I like everything of this! Excellent job, a masterpiece!

^ Less or more, that's it. Sauron took the title Dark Lord from his former commander Melkor.What boat?

Ah, burning cities. It's one of my favorite activities!

Sauron impostor? That's the boss of Sauron. Sauron is just a lieutenant of that Dark Lord. That's Melkor.I like Rocka.