written by ru

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Conversations Make Friends

MotM: Mihkul Review: Monster Hunter 4

UI have noticed over the course of the year as members come and

go; and as they stay that there is an underlying dilemma at our hands. Obviously, everyone has their own reasons for this problem arising, but it is one with simple fixes! This is something we can all work together — staff and members alike — to remedy: conversations are scarce.

Mind you, I am not including Forum Games, which, let’s be honest, doesn’t really involve much talking in. This primary concern is for topics outside of that spam central area. We all need to work on this thing called socializing.

Anyone is allowed to make a topic outside of Announcements, Competitions, and select areas in Elements. Members are allowed to start debates, create roleplays, and the likes. You don’t have to rely on us! Have something you are dying to talk about? Then go ahead! Make a topic in the appropriate section. We love to hear what members have to say and I definitely know other members would like to get to know each other as well.

If you have a roleplay idea but aren’t sure if people would be interested, then throw an Interest Check topic into Roleplay Discussion to see! Rather just dive in? Then post your roleplay in the appropriate section and go for it. You don’t have to wait for a staff member to create something. We love seeing new roleplays. Truly.

When it comes to topics you’re replying to just try to think about how you can actually continue the conversation. A lot of members and staff alike have been replying to topics with responses 100% focused on themselves or their view; and then leave never to look at it again. This is especially problematic in Serious Discussion because it sort of just... ends the conversation. Instead of having a rich discussion on a subject we end up with a plethora of posts going, “This is my view. The end,” and it abruptly stops. Even if other members reply to the person the member — more often than not — doesn’t read anything anyone says on it. Maybe they concluced their view is there, so who cares? I really don’t know. The only perspective I can speak from is my own.

The point being, this forum was not created to be treated like Fakebook where you leave a comment, turn off notifications, and never look again. It was born to allow creative minds to all join together and conversate. It was made for fun as well as thought out discussions. To grow, to unify, and to make friends.

This doesn’t mean you need to befriend a staff member, nor do you have to branch out of your comfort zone.No one is casting blame on anyone in particular. This is the fault of everyone and no one. A problem occuring in the shadows where the eye cannot see. It

is one with an easy remedy of simply each of us taking that step forward towards being that great community I know we are.Never be afraid to post something new. Never be afraid to talk! Conversations make friends.

“Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in

the soul.” —DemocritusPlease bare with me as I am not as eloquent

with my verbiage when compared to the lovely Sin and adorable trouble. But today I present to you our Member of the Month for March!

The third month of the year is typically dedicated to the happy holiday of drinking, corn beef, and dodging pinching. We clink our glasses and dig into a good feast. At least, assuming you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day at all. If not, desperately rummaging through your closet for clothing in a grassy hue to avoid the sting of pressed fingers is likely your route.

But, I digress. This fantastic member is very much like the celebration in question when it comes to the joy and fun it brings. Full of life and is commonly seen scurrying about the Casual Lounge posting up a storm. You can question him on almost anything in Ask the Fool on the Hill and can see him roleplaying down in Skaitrican as our Heavyblade.

Congratulations to this month’s featured member: Mihkul! You definitely deserve this, buddy!

mr. scarlet and mr. rope drawn by ru

Guess what? I haven’t been watching anime recently. Why? Because of this thing. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate has completely enveloped my life. This game is the kind of game that you’ll play for hours upon hours upon hours and still have no end in sight. I have 160 hours in this game and an overall completion towards the achievements of 37%. And what’s the best part about this? There’s no filler here. Monster Hunter is a game that does exactly what’s on the cover. You hunt monsters. All kinds of monsters. Frogsharks, dragons, wyverns, raptors, giant scorpions, hippomonkeys, and a bunch of other weird crap that I’d be here all day if I tried to cover almost 100 different monsters to fight.

The concept is simple: get a quest that asks you to kill a certain monster, go out and kill it, obtain rewards. Except it’s not actually that simple. See, in Monster Hunter, you’re meant to prepare for things, like a real hunter would. Gather your own materials to make health potions, cook meat to keep your stamina up, craft traps if you plan on using them, bullets if you plan on using a gun; it’s all on you. Your decisions on what you craft and bring along with you is all you have on your quest, lest you try to scrape something together while you’re in the field. And when you finally do take down the gigantic beast? Carve it with your trusty hunting knife to get parts. Use the parts to make better armor and weapons so you can kill even bigger monsters!

And this isn’t just a single player game either. This game promotes full 4 player local or online co-op so you can hunt with your friends for an even greater time. There’s no better feeling than going into a room with 4 people, all decked out in their own respective gear with different armors and weapons to match their playstyles, equipment being living testaments of their successes, and going out with them to take down a monster so huge, you only come up to its knee.

The monsters themselves don’t have health bars or patterns. It’s up to you as a hunter to learn their tells and movements to understand how to go about the hunt. Hit a monster in the head enough,

monster hunter 4; dsa does not own this.

written by ru

MARCH 2015 NEWSLETTER

written by mr. scarlet

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mihkul’s avatar continued on page 3

written by mozaic

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Elements Updates

Featured: The Children of LirElements is Seeking PlayersZ

CALOREBarry offers rooms to his unexpected guests in favor of having to go out where the soldiers are on a manhunt. In exchange he makes them clean. Benjamen

denies his offer choosing to go out in hopes of being able to leave the city. He leaves Cronos in charge of protecting Lily, a task he is not too thrilled about. In the meantime Barry offers alcoholic beverages to the curious young android, Anastasia. She learns quickly that the blue colored drink he pours for her

is not as desirable as it looks.Down below a sharped tooth man is selling modified weapons. He also tells Prince Staccato about a plan to kill the king without giving too many details

other than things are going to be bloody after.

YIN YANG MOUNTAINSWith the ceremony concluded those attending the Inaugeration Ceremony and Memorial Service of Kiri have left the room. Many attendees choosing to

stay, speaking highly of the deceased dragon’s name. While others exited to the entrance area to discuss where to go from there.Sertheon told Adira and her Lamia companion to meet her where they had originally appeared in to figure out their plan of action. Adira met up with her

there, explaining her foul mood and why she desperately needed to return to Lilia immediately. The human she watches over has been kidnapped by the Grand Laboratories. Her attempts to save him have been thwarted numerous times whether it be an omniscient presence forcefully teleporting her around or having to go on side quests just to get inside.

Odd is capable of getting them in with the magic she was taught by High Priest Musho Misaki in the hidden city of Lanari. The barrier preventing them from getting inside was a replicated version of his protection spell cast over the elusive town. Theirs have faults, but it is enough to prevent Adira and her gang from barging their way in. With the help of Odd — who can poke holes in the shield — they can get inside in stealth instead of futile attempts of bashing the sides.

As the young dragon finished her explanation, Damian approached Sertheon questioning the readiness of the twins.Prior to this he had left to his room to change back into his armor instead of the cermonial garb he had donned for the previous event. While there a

woman of his past confronted him. Why was he here? Where had he gone? Everyone thought he was dead up until this point. However, he gives her little relief in the matter. He was a changed man.

She also questioned why he had killed his father, which he had revealed during his speech. He yelled at her. Explaining how the kind things his father had done was to keep them apart and not meant to benefit anyone other than himself. Then further explains that it happened long ago, he has paid for his treachery, and that was the end of the discussion. When she asked when the dragon she fell in love with would return he retorted with, “When I can fly again,” and revealed his shredded wings, then retracted them.

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Z

In Irish legend the God of the sea, Lir, and his wife Eva had four children. The oldest were Fionnuala and Aodh. Their children were excellent swimmers possessing webbed feet, and gills. One day while swimming at a lake the oldest children were summoned by their father. They were told of the birth of their new twin brothers, Fiachra and Conn. They also learned that their mother had gone into a deep sleep which would last about a thousand years. For a god this was the equivalent of death.

Lir later married Eva’s sister Aoife. Their marriage was happy, but Aoife was filled with jealousy, and guilt over her sister making her ill for a year, and age faster than she should. When she alas became well her personality changed.

While supposedly taking the children to see their grandfather they stopped at a lake. Here the children happily playing did not realize their step-mother approaching with their father’s magic cloak.

“For too long you children have stood between your father and I, but not for much longer!” she cried.

Aoife turned the children into swans. She told them “…they were to spend nine hundred years as swans, three hundred on Lough Derravaragh, three hundred on the Straits of Moyle and three hundred on the Isle of Inish Glora. To end the spell they would have to hear the bell of the new God [the Christian God.]” She left them with the ability to speak, and also to sing beautifully.

Soon enough her deeds were discovered, and she was sent into exile,

Elements is our massive world roleplay which is large enough to warrant its own section entirely. The RP is hosted by Ru and Mozaic who are always accepting character applications throughout the entire duration of the RP. There are a plethora of plots, cities, races, and more!

However, due to a loss of players we are in dire need of some new faces. Specifically we are searching for fire, air, dark, and psychic Elementals. Mind you, Elementals are not limited by a specific race and, in fact, can be nearly any of them! Want to be an elf? A vampire? A Phantom Knight? Go on ahead!

Don’t let the amount of posts and topics intimidate you. We can easily add any characters into the storyline with no problems!

If you have any questions feel free to contact Ru or Mozaic.

http://www.mythicalireland.com/art/celticcolour/children-of-lir.jpg

reggie the wu from plataryan by ru

Children of Lir Continued

Review: MH4 Continued

Roleplaysforced to live as an evil air demon.

Lir made their first 300 years as enjoyable as possible. After the children would no longer be able to see their father. The next years were not kind. However, towards the end of the 900 years they came in contact with a holy man of the Christian faith, Mochua. He took them in for a few years while he collected the metal to build a bell.

Near its completion they were visited by a king who sought out the swans’ for their beautiful voices to please his wife. They agreed to go with him, and as they were about to be loaded in the king’s carriage, the bell rang. The children were turned back into their human forms, and the king fled.

Mochua baptized the children who had begun to age rapidly, and they became the last of their people, the Tuatha De Danann tribe, the tribe of gods. You can find a more detailed version story at:

http://www.ireland-information.com/articles/thechildrenoflir.htm

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continued from page 1and you might catch it standing in place and giving itself a shake to refocus. Hit in the legs enough times and you’ll topple it over. Catch it when it’s eating and starve it out so it makes more mistakes in its attacks. Use the hunger to your advantage and make that meat you spiked with poison earlier all the more appealing to it. Slice off it’s tail so it can’t hit you with it. Maybe the monster is near death? It might just try to limp away and it’s up to you to try and catch it while it’s sleeping. And the list goes on.

The music is fully orchestrated and makes your hunts seem all the more epic. Some monsters even get their own unique theme that plays when you’re fighting them. Seriously, if you ever get the chance, just go on youtube and just LISTEN to some of this stuff. Imagining yourself wielding some sword the size of your body, decked out from head to toe in the scales of some dragon you previously took down staring at a monster who could probably easily crush normal people just by taking a step.

You can’t GET stuff like this in other games. Where all of your successes and achievements are put solely on your shoulders. You get as far as you do because you EARN it. Not because your numbers are higher than the required numbers, and therefore you win. I see it all the time. Players come into my lobby with clearly hacked armor and can’t get anywhere because they didn’t earn that armor. Your gear is a display of your skill. You can’t just wield the best weapon of your respective class and expect everything to come easily. You will STILL die if your skills are not up to snuff. It’s one of the reasons why I hold this game so dearly.

I love it. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.

The idea that humanity is just an insignificance in the eyes of a grand scheme is something we as a race are prone to contemplating. The reality of this is instilled in our minds while we think about death and decay as an inevitability. We are a young people prone to mistakes even in the later years of our life. Greed, power, a hunger that drives us toward our goals of accumulation of wealth is what makes up part of our humanity, and much of what makes us human will be our undoing.

OOC Topic: http://dearsweetaru.net/forum/index.php?topic=388.0

When you’re a teenager, and something goes wrong, it’s the end of the world. Instead of going out to face your fears, you do your very best to hide from them. I was sadly one of those teenagers.

As a small child my grandfather would take me to this amazing world called Märchenhaft. A world that he had created all on his own when he was a child, with nothing more than his imagination. And trust me, it is real. He told me that if a person wills it enough they can make their thoughts come to life by believing. In doing this he opened the door to his own world. At the same time he became responsible for life, and instead of growing out of it like most of us do, he kept his duties, and stayed believing. He also created a way to save all those forgotten imaginations. This is when we had to say goodbye.

Every time the door to Märchenhaft opens, it takes in a bit of our own. There are good thoughts, and there are bad thoughts, the things we fear, and the nightmares we create. In order to save the good, the bad must come in too, then they must be separated. The bad never goes away, instead it must be contained. My grandfather had to stay to make sure the job was done. I wanted to stay with him, but he told me that he needed me to stay behind so that he could always remember. I didn’t figure out what he meant until much later.

I grew up, and I saw Märchenhaft as something I used to dream of. Reality was the only thing I believed in, it was something I could never escape from. One night, after coming down to my last go round with life, I began going through my grandfather’s things. I needed to know that he at least existed, that there was

marchenhaft banner by hayabusa

In the city of Pedoma, in the midst of the prohibition era, the battle to be the king of all crime lords commences. One of the lead players in this is James Rizzo. Unbeknownst to him he has become no more than a pawn in someone else’s scheme.

Four years ago Mikel Lombardi and Larry Giordano entered the criminal world following the murder of a dear friend. Their hope was not to rid the city of crime, but to take control of it. With this they would be able to protect the people they cared for.

Joining James Rizzo they quickly climbed up in rank earning his favor, and the respect of fellow comrades. Within just a couple years they were able to form their own circle of connections both within, and outside of the Rizzo Family. Although they all have their own motives, they all have the same intentions, power. In order to carry this out they plan to overthrow the current don, and take his spot as a lead in the battle to gain control of the city.

Now they have the attention of the mysterious man who has backed Rizzo for years, Rubin Madison. He has agreed to be their sponsor. Of course this does not come without a price.

OOC Topic: http://dearsweetaru.net/forum/index.php?topic=382.0

they all fall down banner by hayabusa

once a part of my life that was good. I discovered my grandfather’s journal, inside he had written the way to get to Märchenhaft. I tested it to make sure I wasn’t crazy, and of course it was there.

Some time later my friends, and I were discussing how we needed to get out of this place. I came out with it, and got mocked until I showed them. That was it. We would gather what we needed, and meet in the forest where no one could find us, then we would embark on an adventure like no other. We didn’t realize the consequences of our actions, and we certainly didn’t know that we were harvesting evil among us.

OOC Topic: http://dearsweetaru.net/forum/index.php?topic=427.0

monster hunter 4; dsa does not own this. kitsune drawing by ru

seeds banner by ru