Nine he gave to Mortal Men, proud and great, and so ensnared them. Long ago they fell under the dominion of the One, and they became Ringwraiths, shadows under his great Shadow, his most terrible servants. — Aragorn, The Lord of the Rings

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Archive for January, 2010

The Blight is coming

2 responses so far – published on Jan, 21 2010 at 11:11 under Computer, Hobby.


In war, victory
In peace, vigilance
In death, sacrifice

- Grey Wardens’ motto

The Blight has finally reached my home and I gladly accepted Duncan’s offer to recruit me into the ranks of the Grey Wardens. But great sacrifices came along with this decision. I lost what was left of my family, and the destiny of Ferelden is on a knife-edge as the king and his army were destroyed in the battle of Ostagar, and with them all remaining Grey Wardens – all despite Alistair and I.
But can we stand alone against hell’s creatures? Can we unit Ferelden against the plans of Teyrn Loghain, against the man who betrayed the king? Will we find allies in elves, dwarves and the Circle of Magi? Was there only once a chance that the archdemon could be destroyed?

I don’t know on what path my feet will lead me, or what lies behind the next corner, but I know that my destiny awaits me in the end – what ever end this might be.

Ankantoiel,
last of the Grey Wardens of Ferelden

Sorry for this little discourse. ;) I hope you don’t mind, but I really want to share the great experiences I made with “Dragon Age: Origins”. I usually am not that passionate a player. To be honest I seldom find I game that fascinates me more than a few hours. But Dragon Age is the first game since World of Warcraft that could hold me for days, weeks, maybe also months. It has vivid characters, great possibilities to make your own decisions, it has a nice battle system and a great story.

It all started before christmas when Alex decided to buy a Xbox360. Well, what should I say about consoles? I only own a PS2 and I hardly played more than a bit Sing Star and Need for Speed – so generally spoken I never was a fan of consoles. But I was very surprised how comfortable and easy to use the Xbox360 is. You don’t need to install every game or hope that the graphics are at least working on worst settings. You can get movies and music simply over your Xbox Live account ( to more or less reasonable prices). And of course, the game controls are so much easier compared to PCs (this is at least true for Dragon Age). After all I now use the Xbox360 nearly every day and more often as our Wii which after all, lost its fun-factor some time ago.
It was a good decision to buy a Xbox360. The exclusive titles for this console focus more on RPGs (compared to PS3) and that’s exactly what we were looking for. We both love RPGs and have already Fable 2 and some others ready to play. And the price was more than fair – a special offer from Amazon.co.uk with Xbox360 Elite, Xbox 360 Wireless Entertainment Pack and two free games. Dragon Age: Origins was one of these two free games, and we started right away as soon as we got the console.

Dragon Age: Origins

As you start playing, you will have the choice of different social backgrounds, classes and races. Of course there will be restrictions to the classes regarding your choice of social background and race – this will also influence experiences throughout the entire game. The character creation process is very similar to most other RPGs, and you can change nearly everything concerning the look of your character. It’s a lot of fun and it took me nearly an hour to decide what I wanna look like. :D
The first steps into Dragon Age: Origins are related to your taken choices, and each possibility opens you a new story – so it’s worth to make more than one play-through. You soon will meet Duncan, a Grey Warden who is searching for new recruits that wanna join the ranks of the Grey Wardens to fight the upcoming Blight. But with that the story only begins…

I don’t want to give any spoiler here, but be sure that you will encounter several problems and a great number of foes on your way to your destiny. You will meet allies in places you never expected, you will befriend them and may experience also love – but in the end, after all your choices – and they are nearly countless – you must stand against the archdemon.

2010 –  A new decade

No responses yet – published on Jan, 04 2010 at 14:28 under Fanfiction, Holiday, Sport.

Welcome to a new decade! I hope you arrived healthy in 2010 and the New Year’s Eve was pleasant. For my part, I spent that evening with Alex and my sis’ Marina having fondue and a lot of fun playing Wii – so much fun that we got to bed at five in the morning. ;) The last weeks were in general very nice. I spent a lot of time with my family and Alex, learned free cross-country skiing – a sport I always wanted to try and I fell in love with – and I enjoyed my holidays.

Finally, we also got a bit of snow on Christmas Day – not much, but better few than no snow at all – and I have tried the first time in my life cross-country skiing, skating to precise. It was so much fun that I bought me my own skis and equipment. It’s no cheap sport at all and I am sure that I spent over 600€ for everything: skis (Fischer), boots (Salomon), binding (Salomon), sticks (Swix), Björn Daehli pants and jacket. Nevertheless, I am now very proud of my first tries and I am getting better already. It also helps very much that my dad and my sis’ are doing that sport some years and that they can give me tips. Hopefully, next weekend will be not that cold at the last – -10°C were nearly too cold for skating – then I can train again. :D

Before I end the first post in the new year I want to congratulate myself to the third place in the fanfiction winter contest of FF@OBL. ;) The task was to write a ficlet containing ten given words. My story “Zauber der Winterzeit” was selected on the third place and that was quite surprising for me. Therefore I will post the story also here on my blog under writings – it couldn’t be that bad. ;)