Where have I been? 8(

Ah, well. I have posted this at several other places, so I just as well post it here too:

I was doing my random Amazon-browsing a week ago and found this book: A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent

After having investigated a bit about the book, it seem to be about a fictional Lady Trent, whose studies about dragons has been transcribed by Marie Brennan. It is, from what I can gather, a cooperation between Marie Brennan and Todd Lockwood. Todd Lockwood is a great fantasy artist who has a passion for anatomical studies and he is very thoughtful about making the dragons in his art believable. At least I am having high expectations that this book will turn out much better than your regular dragon-anatomy book on the market. It will be released Februrary next year.

If you are contemplating on joining the Norwegian Dragonkin Gathering next year, I would be very grateful to know which of the suggested dates would fit the best for you. Even if you do not know yet if you will be able to attend next year, it will still be very useful for me to know when it would fit you best. The gathering will last for a week and a few days, but if you are unable to attend all days, it will be focused around last weekend. We will try to keep the gathering a free-of-charge event, where your only expense will be your trip to Oslo-Gardermoen airport. :)

Please go to Doodle (http://www.doodle.com/ekzfcvn65cge8qr4) and select the dates that you would be able to set aside for NDG 2013. There is no need to give your name if you do not want to. We are most interested in the statistics on when fits most people the best.

I hope to see you next year. :)

Our guests for this year were Shanrrosh, Razkhel, Ethelshai, and Golder. We also had a one-day visit from Sayh and Swandog. Thank you all for coming, we had a really great time together! ^_^ It feel so strangely quiet now that you all have gone again, but I really hope to see you, and many more next year.

We decided to hold the gathering at our home this year as many people had to cancel coming here this year, mostly because I accidentally planned it at the same time as AnthroCon was, and some other people had exams or money issues. Though, despite that we were few, we still had an awesome time. We took it easy the first days due to bad weather and allowing people to settle down and showing our guests the surroundings of our home, like taking forest walks. Though, Sayh and Swandog came over for a visit on Sunday and we had barbeque and playing Munchkin.

On Monday we went down into Oslo and we had a guided tour of the centre by foot, though, I think we forgot walking up to the royal palace. ^^; But we had a very nice tour of Akershus fortress, which is located pretty much in the centre of Oslo, and then we ended the day at T.G.I. Friday to eat. As we had walked for the whole day, people wanted Tuesday to be a resting day too, as we were going to climb a mountain the following day. :p

Wednesday Razkhel came over and we climbed up on Rundkollen, which is a mountain top right nearby. The day started rather chilly, but as it is a long and hard climb it was probably for the best. At the top we had a lunch and signed us into the log-book that is located there, and afterwards we headed back down and tended our feet and playing games the rest of that day.

I was unfortunately called off to Sweden for family business on Thursday, so my mate were taking care of our guests for that day, but I suppose they were rather tired after the mountain trip we had.

On Friday we fetched a rental car so that all of us could go down to Oslo for visiting the reptile park. I do not think we did anything else but watching some film that day, but we got a nice home cinema, so watching films is rather enjoyable here. ^_^ The next day we went down into Oslo again for the medieval fair. What is a medieval fair without dragons, anyway? :p Pretty much our whole day was spent there, looking at the market, watching the show, and enjoying the music. In the evening we went for dinner at a mongolian restaurant that I love and back at home we watched Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition.

Sunday was spent playing Dungeons and Dragons, and then in the evening it was time for Razkhel to head home and for Ethel and Golder to pack up their stuff as they were going to leave next day. Thus Monday was not used for much else but sharing farewells and for Julien and me it was time to get back to our daily life, which kind of sucked after such a great time with friends. However, Shanny stayed with us for a few days extra, which made it easier to get back to our work-days. :) And finally today we had to share our farewells with Shanny too, and I am already longing for next year's dragonkin gathering. Hopefully we will be more people next year too, so be sure to keep early July 2013 free, all of you! Exact dates will be decided upon once I have consulted with a few friends and got an estimate on how many we might become.

Be sure to look at the pictures from the Norwegian Dragonkin Gathering 2012! Take care all! <3

From my dream diary night to 3rd April 2012. It was such a vivid dream that I had difficulty to get all the details recorded before it faded, but thanks to a well worked-on habit I got to record my dreams, I think I got this one recorded pretty much in its fullness. Some things do not entirely seem to hang together, but I think that this one ended up surprisingly consistent still. I might have unintentionally filled in on the dream as I was writing it up to make it readable, but I have as far as possible made sure that the dream got recorded in its original state, unmodified by post processing. Also, please bear with me that English is not my primary language (or even second), but I translated it as well as I could.

April 3rd, 2012:

It was taking place in an independent state that consisted just of a land mass that was probably no bigger than a small theme park would be, surrounded by a large city. It was really a state in a city, like the Vatican is, but surrounded by huge fences, and managed in the same way as North Korea. Their supreme leader had achieved godhood in the eyes of his followers and he had a large army of eastern dragons whom served him. In a way, they seemed like they were mindless beasts in the beginning of the dream, but yet not. They performed really complex tasks, but performed them in a way that seemed as if they were programmed to perform them. There were also a huge lot of soldiers. The dragon's and the soldiers tasks seemed mostly to keep population supressed and keeping them from fleeing across the huge wall to freedom. Aside from the terrible rule, the place was really beautiful. There were also tigers in what looked like enormous bird-like cages. Their main task seemed mostly to be intimidating. The place was like a huge garden with water deep down in ravines and trees hanging over. The buildings were old chinese style, as far as I can tell.

Somehow I ended up in there and I got to know that the supreme leader of the "prison state" wanted gifted people for completing his super weapon, but I never got to know what it was in the end. I can not either remember how I ended up there, but as far as I could tell, it was something about that I was a gifted person who had the knowledge needed for this super weapon. I attended to a disiplination meeting, where many people sat down while the leader spoke to us. We were forced to do kowtow and the dragons demonstrated by eating one of the people there who refused to kowtow, so in the end everyone did so without questioning. I, however, refused to bow down to him as well, but as the guards ordered the dragons to demonstrate again what happen to those who break the laws, the dragons just looked at me and suddenly they did not seem to be mindless beasts. But the moment lasted short and they were on their patrolling again, as if I had not been there. The guards seemed confused at this and I was forgotten in the crowd after the others there had finished grovelling.

The meeting was done, and I can not remember really what it was about, but it seemed like its main purpose was that the supreme leader had to prove his god-hood in fairly lame ways, such as that he could slide around on the ground without moving at all and that he could hover on the spot while also sitting. It was really like cheap tricks used by illusionists. Afterwards I walked around at the place, looking at the place and trying to forget I was a prisoner there. For some reason I met Kent Ove and Thorbjørn there, of all people. They seemed to be quite the merry bunch, drinking beer and listening to music. I talked a bit with them and they said they were having all these amazing adventures in their sea-plane, going pretty much all over the world with it. For some reason the plane was stuck above, though, like a helicopter. I do not remember much of the talk, but eventually they seemed like they were ready to move on and climbed up the rope ladder to the plane and flew off. I wished a lot that I could have joined them, but something prevented me.

By now it had turned to be night and the place was fairly ok lit up, however, the light kept flickering on and off at random intervals, as if the power supply was struggling. I met some other guy there, who seemed like he were kind of edgy and paranoid. He was clothed like a brittish World War I soldier but he was stammering and impossible to talk with. Some of the guard soldiers took note of us and they charged at this WWI soldier I was talking with. I tried to run after him because I wanted to know what he was doing there, but he dived off a walking-bridge into the water and seemingly disappeared. I stood there looking down in the water, a bit apart from the shouting soldiers, and I was sure I could spot a light flick on and off for a short moment, a bit as if someone had opened an underwater hatch. I immediately thought it could be my escape, but at the moment I tried to get away. The soldiers where disiplining a dragon, who seemed to not like that at all.

As I walked past one of the tiger cages, I saw that one of the people there fed them with dead mice, and I thought to myself what a horrible place this really was and that I had to free the people who were locked in there. I randomly walked into two people who were hidden in a building, and my intuision instantly told me these were spies. I grabbed one of them, who looked quite pale and frightened in his face when I faced him. I was surprised at myself that I was able to lift him with one hand just like that too. I fumbled a bit with my words, but managed to tell him I knew they were spies and wanted to know if there were ways out and into this place. They took a short time to gather themselves and one of them nodded a lot and the other one shook his head. Then, they looked at each others and the one who was nodding his head now shook it while the one who shook his head nodded. It was a bit comical so I gave a laugh, and this seemed to make them calm down and they said that there was, but I had to make sure to keep it all quiet. They were spies in there to find out about this super weapon. I told them I was supposed to work on it, but I had no idea what the weapon was yet, nor did I want to find out. I just wanted to free this place of its tyrannic rule. They tried to talk me into helping them, but somehow I managed to talk them into helping me instead. After all, if this place was freed, there was no longer any super weapon to worry about.

We made a plan, but unfortunately I can not recall at all what it was about, but my part involved to be a distraction and interact with the dragons, and their part had something to do with freeing the tigers. The spies told that the dragons where following an ancient rule that they could only break free of if it was broken, and for some reason I was the key to break it. They said the dragons acted differently around me, and I was the only one who were able to have any kind of two-way communication with them, even if it was just looking at each others. The dragons otherwise treated everyone who was not under the direct influence of the supreme leader as mindless animals. I walked off to do my part of the plan, which was to round up some of the civilians who were there and create some sort of distraction for the soldiers and the dragons. It did not take long before I had made a big enough distraction. The soldiers took note of me again and they just ran towards me, shouting things I could not understand. I ran off and had the soldiers after me while they kept shouting. The dragons reacted to this at first, but they quickly gave up the chase as they saw it was me being chased. The soldiers caught up with me and they cut me at several places with their bayonets. For some reason I did not bleed or hurt, though, and after a short moment the soldiers backed off and it did not take long til they were out of sight. Suddenly I was in my Elmandrian dragon body and it felt really great. The soldiers shouted again, and this time I could understand them, they shouted for the tiger cages to be opened. My keen sight could spot them in the distance and I saw that the tiger cages were empty. I hurried over to where the civilians and the dragons were and the soldiers shouted for the dragons to attack me again, but they just looked at each others, then spoke for the first time in my dream, saying something about that the ancient rule was broken and that they no longer would take any orders from their leader, which they called something I can not recall. Suddently it became a lot of life there, people were running everywhere, towards the huge gates at the wall that encircled the whole place. The dragons attacked all the soldiers and killed those who chosed to oppose them. Some of the dragons tore down the enormous gates as if they were nothing and the people ran out, shouting from joy and excitedment. I flew up and settled down on top of a building's roof to be away from the commotion that happened below, and I felt very happy and quite content with myself. Helicopters suddenly filled up the air too and it became quite noisy, and at this point I woke up.

~Etath

Putting my whole heart in it
Using all my skills for it
To illustrate my deepest love
For all my friends to enjoy

And then some blob comes around and tells me digital art is not "real art"!

What, so you think I merely press a few buttons and lean back to watch computer make it? >:[

*blubb*