For many, the general story of Jesus being stuck up on a cross (Crucified) and returning to life three days later is one of the core staples of Christian religion.   Yet, many are not aware that the bible itself has a few different descriptions of this important event.

For example, the Gospel of Mark (Mark 15:33-36) reads as follows:

33At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
35When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”
36One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.
37With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

Matthew (Matthew 27:45), as well, recounts an anguish-filled ending for the Messiah, with the crowd and the guards mocking him. (Mathew also adds that there was a terrible earthquake and things happening as He died, whereas Mark says the Curtain of the Temple was torn asunder and it was dark, as if cloudy or an eclipse.)

Now, in contrast this this heart-wrenching suffering of Jesus, where he died feeling a sense of Ultimate Suffering, is Luke 23:42-46

42Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
43Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Jesus’ Death
44It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, 45for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.

John (John 19:28) recounts a slightly less dramatic ending, where Jesus simply accepts his fate as was foretold, and dies quietly, and never mentions any large supernatural rumblings afterward.

²⁸Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” ²⁹A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. ³⁰When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

I find it terribly interesting, that if the Gospels are “taken as gospel” (and that this phrase means essentially “really truly True”, there is such differing opinion on the nature of what is probably the most important event in Christian scripture.

Unless you are a literalist, which I find a strange way of viewing the Bible anyway, it seems that each apostle filtered events to slant His story to a particular audience.   John appears the most unbiased reporter.   Matthew and Mark seem to sensationalize the event like a tabloid newspaper.   Luke spreads more of a message of hope and compassion, describing a calm Jesus reassuring another criminal of his place in Heaven, and gently offering his soul to God willingly.

Interesting, eh?

Then in the course of cleaning out my feed reader, I stumbled upon this bit of wisdom.

I’ll admit it stuck a nerve and I just sat in my desk here at home, closed my Warcraft game, and almost wept for …um.. joy? remorse? inspiration?    Not sure what emotion it drew out of me but it was such a profoundly cathartic thing, I had to share.

http://domesticwitch.blogspot.com/2008/12/santas-wisdom-to-pagans-author-unknown.html

Strange, isn’t it?   There’s no one phrase I can pick out of this posting that set me off, but after I read it, things just sloooowly clicked and rushed aside, like some sort of “Kundalini rising” energy movement.

Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!

A young boy is playing a video game, involving the usual slaughter of fantastic creatures and gaining more and more power.  The character portrayed assembles a collection of allies to help fight, including a tall dark-skinned desert-warrior with a staff, and a strange moon-creature with a machine gun.

In this game, the characters carry a supply of water, which slowly is reduced over the course of play, and can be refilled by stepping into clear puddles, or purchasing in-game bottles of water.

Consider the fact that when they first join the party, the Desert dweller has a moderate ‘water supply’ limit, and can hold a few quarts of water before any special items increase that maximum.   The moon creature can only hold a small bottle.  This means the moon creature must use some special items to increase this water-limit, or risk taking more damage (due to thirst) or carrying a lot of inventory bottles to refresh the small amount he holds.

The kid smiles as this last character joins the group, and excitedly turns to his parents to confide in a conspiratorial stage-whisper that “the Desert guy obviously had more water since in the desert you need to carry water a lot and there’s not much room in the moon suit, right? Right? Cool, huh!”

Multiple choice test for all you readers.  No right answers, but I’d like you to honestly consider and discuss WHY you may choose a particular result.  (and yes, it’s biased, but that is intentional)

What are your thoughts on the above situation?

A)  Why is a kid playing so many video games? Running around killing imaginary things is not good lessons to learn.  Go outside and play!

B) Why is a kid playing so many video games?  Yes, they are fun, but you could be doing crafts and other family oriented activities.

C) That’s nice, but now turn off that game, and lets hit the Library to research Desert peoples, and the scientific feasibility of actually living on the barren moon.

D) You know, the kid’s pretty bright, to have made such a connection at something like a simple Video Game.  Do you sit and play with him, or just let him do his own thing until he asks for help?

E) Nice observation! Lets talk about deserts and moons (see # C) tomorrow after school.

…

…

Your grade, according to the local community educational institution, is apparently the letter of the choice you made.    Need a re-test?   :/

The reception though, was awesome.   I’ll keep names out, since they really won’t matter to most of my readers, but the events were nice enough to blog about here.

We arrived and the kid immediately ran out of the car to go wrestle and run with a group of other young boys around 4-10 years old.  This was a nice change of pace, since usually our son tends to be shy and hover around us for the first 45 minutes of any party and only then gets the courage to interact more.   This time, he ran off, listened half-heartedly as we told him where We would be, then vanished among the woods and fields.

The weather was warm and sunny, perfect for outdoor festivities, and there was a local band setup under the pavilion tent.  Great music, gobs of smiling people, and kids running around on the outskirts of the party.  Couldn’t have asked for a better setup.

The happy couple, of course, were glowing and beautiful/handsome, and all the guests chatted easily, and snacked on the delicious TexMex Grill food.

We chatted quite a lot with some friends who we hadn’t seen for years, trading stories of recent life, and feasting “more than we needed to eat”.   The chatter eventually drifted toherbal studies, nature spirituality, and various sundry topic, and we traded blog addresses.  Shameless plug: Go visit the lovely Lisa and her herbal supplies over by Earth, Root, and Flower.

From time to time, our little one wandered near us to check in, ask for a snack/drink, or otherwise relate some story of adventure he was having with another boy, then dashed off to play again.  His clothes were rather grass-stained and muddy, but I wouldn’t have traded clean clothes for that smile in his eyes.  It was nice to see, and reminded me that we really do need to get out more and socialize with friendly kids outside of school.  The campouts and pagan-friendly festivals are nice, but local friends are important too.

As the sky darkened, the kids started to get closer to home-base, and a huge batch of sparklers appeared from some wise woman.    Suddenly, the backyard field was filled with swirling flames, glittering sparks, and a haze of blue-tinged smoke which held the band’s music and laughter of myriad kids and young-at-heart.   This particular moment struck me as powerful Magic.  Probably not intentionally, but I had to stop and smile in awe.  No better ritual of prosperity could have been formulated, than that group of happy kids and the hand-help fireworks.   Our kid loved it!

Eventually, the band played the “first dance” (by Jack Johnson, I forget the actual song), then struck up a rousing rendition of The Who’s “The Seeker”, and rolled onward from there.   Sadly, it was rather dark then, nad our little one was starting to stagger sleepily into us when he came over for another drink or snack.   We decided to call it a night.

On the way home, as we traveled down the Parkway, we saw more fireworks directly ahead of us.  We found a nice pull-over spot in the parking lot of a nearby business, close enough to see the shadow of the people with flares actually launching the rockets, which meant the aerial explosions were huge and overhead.   The kid hopped into the front seat of the car, we rolled down the windows, and gazed sleepily into the night sky.   Once the finale had boomed all around us, we started back home.  The kid was asleep before I even re-buckled him up from the firework display.

My wife and I smiled on the way home, sending happy wishes and firework awesomeness to the happy couple we had just left.    All in all, a great and festive day, full of love and joy and a bit of magic.

Ain’t life grand!?! 

I’ve always loved fire circles.  Sitting around a campfire,whether roasting marshmallows with friends and family, or drumming and dancing for alchemical transformation, are soothing and soul-healing events in any flavour.

Last weekend we attended Drum and Splash,  (Have I said enough on how awesome D&S was?)   and this time, my wife graciously allowed me to stay up as long as I wanted, even until the sun rose the following day.   It’s rare I get total freedom to stay up late, so I was quite excited to finally attend “third shift” of the drum circles.

For those not used to the type of alchemical festival drum circles I enjoy, there seems to be three shifts.   Initially, there are tons of people present.  Drummers are loud, excitable, and spontaneous, and the fire is encircled by dancers of all shapes and sizes.  It’s more of a party festival atmosphere, just everyone jamming and having fun, and (depending on the place) kids are present burning out the last bits of energy before bedtime.

At one point, a giant deer-god arrived, costumed and about 10 feet tall, and danced around the fire a bit.   This was kinda fun.  Later, a huge red firey dragon, formed of yards of fabric like a gigantic scarf supported by 8-9 poles and a wire and cardboard face arrived.  To me, this was very magical, as it wove and danced around the fire, above our heads.  I went out and danced for a bit myself here, weaving between the poles with the crowd, until it soured back into the night (and it’s home-camp).

Second shift happens around midnight, and is not really a “timed” event.  It’s organic.  The kids go to bed, the tired and early risers drift off to sleep, and the drumming generally becomes more rhythm-driven and less furious, and starts to sound a bit more ‘tribal’ if that makes any sense.  Polyrhythms start to blend and flow together in unison, complex and almost more primal..  (The term ‘djembe cowboys’ has been used insultingly to describe some brash drummers from first shift who Must.Play.Lead.)

In the past, I’ve only ever stayed and drummed for this part of things.   Many dancers wander away, and the few that are left seem to prefer a more ascetic or trance-like nature.  Things start to feel “serious” in a vaguely playful way, more sacred-inspired, and is what I really enjoy about these drum circles.   For myself, this is where I can just lose myself in the heartbeats of the drum, and half-watch the dancers as the sound washes over me and the stress of the world is bounced out of my brain.

That night, there were a few interludes where the drumming essentially stopped.  People chatted lightly, a few scattered beats kept the place from absolute silence, and it felt very relaxed.    One group of three girls started an unfamiliar “firetribe” chant, but no one really joined in.    I did not have a drum of my own (sadly) and hte one I was borrowing had to be given back to its owner, so I went over to the chanters and asked if they knew “Let the Way be Open“, which I first heard at Starwood in 2002, and has become “The” chant in my head, which completely recalls the feel and energy of the fire circles.  Every fire I ever gaze at, I tend to hum it in my head, it’s that neat (to me).

The group smiled at finding “someone else who knew some fire chants” and we went a few rounds with it, eventually getting about 15 people who had been sitting around nearby to join in when we made a sort of conga-line around the fire while chanting.  It was rather playful and fun, but still felt sacred, and managed to get the drums starting up again.

Then, time passed and it got later and later.  Judging by the moon I’d guess it was 2am, when the energy shifted.  Many people had gone elsewhere, leaving five of us sitting around with drums.  I was handed a pretty untuned djembe and just kept a baseline for a time, and started to really really feel the groove.   At this point, there was only one dancer, who had an amazingly graceful animal/shamanic style of dance.  Very cool to watch.

As the drums do, everyone kept playing for a bit, then wound down to change the beat.   We all stopped and smiled around at each other, commenting how that last groove was kinda neat, and there was some energy built up around the fire, but the night was still early.  One of the drummers stood up and placed a wrapped bundle of sticks in the fire, and bowed his head for a moment, silently offering/releasing some personal something.   The world then started to shift away into shadow, before we even started drumming again.

Someone made a comment,  “Ohhh nice, lets get improv!“, everyone chuckled, and a simple bass beat started.   Somehow, I found myself in possession of a smaller djembe, which was almost a Doumbek, and honestly can not remember picking it up.    Instead of a normal drum beat, a few of us spontaneously just rattled our fingers on the drumheads, making a sound like rain, rising in pitch and volume, and falling, interspersed by staccato sounds of a single drum, and underscored by a deep Boom, Boom-ba-boom.  At this point, the shift in energy was palpable. Like putting a car in low gear, you could physically sense something akin to that feeling the instant an elevator starts going down.

I’d never experienced anything like that, between the five of us, each with a differently toned drum, where the sounds felt huge, and expansive.  An army of drummers, yet only our own single instrument existed.   (tough to describe in words)   I thought for a moment this must be what a runner’s high feels like, when time shifts and you just Are the drum.

Then, for what felt like hours, this simple and complex groove ebbed and flowed.  I noticed, vaguely detached now, that I had been alternating between a deep Dunn… Dunn and an almost frenetic takka-tak-takka-tak-tak-taa-something.   My hands would blur, and there were some pretty cool pauses in the sound coming from this hunk of wood and skin in my hand.  And the higher upper rhythm bounced out against the deeper djembes.

Beyond the firelight, the universe wheeled.  Within the firelight, the universe throbbed…  There was no firelight, only Space and Time… We were the universe… There was no universe, just me…  The fire was the universe and we spun with it, and were the waves of sound around it…  Words kinda fail here.  It was the most amazing disconnect/reconnect to reality that I’ve ever felt.

The lone dancer was gone, replaced by a tawny lioness.  No, perhaps a lithe mamma-bear.  Wait, make that a noble cow, who seemed to look remarkably like a lioness.   Yep, lioness.   I continued drumming, or, rather letting myself be drummed.  I still had hands, I think, and there was still sand and benches in this swirling fire of earth and distant seas and sky.  We grooved, and that lone dancer was back to her graceful twisting.   “Hmm, that’s nice“, thought a brain that may have been mine.

Later again, the rhythm wound down.  The five drummers looked among ourselves with gleaming smiles, awe sparkling in our eyes.   One, the slightly flamboyant guy who has suggested going improv, let out a sighing “coooool“, and the moment had passed.   We all shared that knowing look among friends, that something wonderful had just happened.  The dancer came over to kiss her boyfriend and said that was “one of the most awesome sacred grooves” she’d danced to in a while.

The sky was getting lighter, which led me to realize a good two or three hours had passed.   My arms were feeling quite energized and tired, such as a good workout will do.  The fire had died down to embers, and we rebuilt it.  Everyone put away their drums and moved to sit and chat around the fire.  Someone joked about it being marshmallow time, and one drummer wandered off to camp to get his guitar.

I made a comment about feeling the Universe (not the animal among us) spinning, and everyone agreed that there was some serious transformational energy flowing among us.

It was only then that my brain snapped awake and realized what my eyes had been seeing.   At one point, wasn’t there a lioness ten feet from me?!  Not a dancer, with the image flickering in my imagination suggesting beastly form.  It. was. Real.   Fur and breath and sheen of tooth… and the drum carried us all across the void.

I laughed, a bit nervously, yet still awed, and the conversation continued a bit longer.  We had all connected, that much was confirmed by everyone there, to that deep communal Drum-place.  We grooved, and thanked each other with hugs and sincere handshakes, then half of us parted company to go get some sleep or swim in the river to feel grounded again.

Even now, re-typing these words, I’m getting goosebumps.

I’d read, and heard, and know on a metaphorical level, that Otherworld stuff happens, and that Faeries exist in a sense, and drums can help you trance.  I kinda understand manifesting your will through visualization, in my inner mind.  I’ve even tried psychedelic visions under a full moon and glimpsed spirits and energy flowing, but they were always overlaying the solid reality of Me.  Always somewhat under my control, and vanishing, or retreating, the moment I stop trying, or opened my eyes.  This was different.  This is unexplainable.  This was Magic, deep and Real.

I’m still trying to integrate it all into terms I can ponder more meaningfully, because somehow “I drummed until morning” is both absolutely correct, and so far beyond the Truth.    Wow.

During the day it was a bit clearer, and I spent a good deal of time just laying in the bed and playing Pokemon Diamond on the shared DS system. My wife finished book 4 of Twilight, and we kept an eye on our son who spent a good 3 hours in the playground area of the park being a kid and enjoying time with other kids under minimal supervision. He absolutely LOVED the free range kid-time, and only wandered back to the campsite a few times for a snack or to ask us to help him in the porta-potties.

That evening, with the band jamming until 11 and the rain getting progressively more monsoon-like, we all retired to the caravan to sleep. I sat for a time in the front seat, just watching the trees sway in the darkness and listening to the pounding rain on the rooftop.

The wind grew, and the outside faded to a grey wall of vaguely shifting shadows. Buckets of water poured around us, and it was hard to hear myself even think, much less try to quietly meditate. Instead, I tried to just shut off my brain and lose myself in the white noise.

Branches peered out from the darkness, then were gone, then back again. The noise, at first a seemingly constant din of pounding drops,could be heard to ebb and flow, rise and fall in a complex pattern of wind and water. The car itself rocked and shuddered at each gust, resounding at times with a furious -CRACK- from the tarp tied over the back window for easier dark-sleeping.

I felt a primal exhilaration in the tempest, and released my mind to it. I danced among the storm-whipped treetops. I flashed with the thundering flashes of lightning, and I hovered, darting amidst the other campsites as some alien hummingbird seeking nectar from the tents around us.

For a time, not sure how long, having no clocks in this stormy darkness, I darted and played, mentally, in the wild energies around us, then returned my focus to the car-seat again, smiling like a fool, and giddy with the power raised and tingling in my fingers.

I found I had been unwinding a length of hemp twine that had been leftover from one of my son’s crafts earlier that day. I had unwoven it to single thin strand, and then knotted the strands together again into a long chain. This, I suddenly felt, would go around my wrist. Each knot typing up some of this wildness and empowering it as a potent charm. Wordlessly, I tied the finished bracelet around my wrist, knowing it was imbued with Potential, and would be worn as a reminder of the Charm until it fell off.

Because it is meant to fall off, probably within the next week, as the strands are thin and already frayed. If the weather reports are to be believed, it will be sunny and much warmer than when it was created.
The storm will have passed. It will be free.

((good luck B, this one’s for you))

One of our more persistant ‘theories’ from back in… I don’t even know how long ago, but think it was around 1990-ish..was that of Dark Suckers. While going through the attic to clean out some stuff, my father found this ancient manuscript, reproduced here for your amusement!

DARK SUCKERS

For years it has been believed that electric bulbs emitted light. However, recent information has proven otherwise. Electric bulbs don’t emit light,…….they suck Dark. Thus we should call these bulbs Dark suckers. The dark sucker theory proves the existence of Dark, that Dark has mass heavier than light, and that Dark is faster than light.

The basis of the Dark sucker theory is that electric bulbs suck Dark. Take for example, the Dark suckers in the room where you are. There is much less Dark right next to them than there is elsewhere. The larger the Dark sucker, the greater it’s ability to suck Dark. Dark suckers in a parking lot have a much greater capacity than the ones in this room. As with all things, Dark suckers don’t last forever. Once they are full of Dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the black spot[s] on a full Dark sucker. A candle is a primitive Dark sucker. A new candle has a white wick. You will notice after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the Dark which has been sucked into it. If you hold a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, the tip will turn black because it got in the way of the Dark flowing into the candle. Unfortunately, these primitive Dark suckers have a very limited range. There are also portable Dark suckers. The bulbs in these can’t handle all the Dark by themselves, and must be aided to a Dark storage unit [batteries]. When the Dark storage unit is full, it must be replaced before the portable Dark sucker can operate again.

Dark has mass. When Dark goes into a Dark sucker, friction from this mass generates heat. Thus it is not wise to touch an operating Dark sucker. Candles represent a special problem, as the Dark must travel into a solid wick instead of through clear glass. This generates a great amount of heat, thus it can be very dangerous to touch an operating candle. Dark is also heavier than light. If you swim just below the surface of a lake, you see a lot of light. If you slowly swim deeper and deeper, you notice it getting darker and darker. When you reach a depth of about 50 feet, you are in total darkness. This is because the heavier Dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats to the top. The immense power Dark can be utilized to man’s advantage. The deeper the body of water, the more Dark is stored, and the more potential can be derived from it. We can collect the Dark that has settled to the bottom of lakes and push it through a turbine, which generates electricity and helps move the Dark to the ocean, where it can be safely stored. Prior to turbines, it was much more difficult to get the Dark from the rivers and lakes to the ocean.

The Indians recognized this problem and tried to solve it, as they were well-attuned with the natural world. When on a river, in a canoe, traveling in the same direction as the flow of Dark, they paddled slowly, so as not to stop the flow of Dark. When they traveled against the flow of Dark, they paddled quickly, so as to help push the Dark along it’s way.

Finally we must prove that Dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in an illuminated room in front of a closed Dark closet, then slowly open the closet door, you will see the light slowly enter the closet. But, since Dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the Dark leave the closet.

In conclusion, I would like to say that Dark suckers make all our lives much easier. So the next time you look at an electric bulb, remember that it is indeed a Dark sucker.

The following is thus, a story by my son. Unedited, and translated from ink to electrons for your enjoyment, entirely in his own words! (Sorry, I don’t have the camera to scan the page as an image for here.)

One day there was a tillion frogs and they all turned into polywogs again. The polywogs played with the other Polywogs in the pond.

All the polywogs liked playing with the other polywogs, so they played some more.

But then, a big frog-eating bird came, but they were too fast. It could not catch them so they escaped.

The end.

I’m going to try and convince him to illustrate the story at some point, maybe this weekend, so we can make a little booklet to save and.or give away as gifts to family (I know Grandma would love one!)

I have not moved this energetic sorting to my home yet, due mainly to evenings being “TAX TIME” with the wife, and thus any scrap of horizontal surface not covered by client receipts or paperwork is still sacrosanct “For Future Use” by Mrs Maebius.

On a particularly randomly related topic, I was amazed in my online computer game last night, how the changing dynamic of a group can severely alter the experience of said group. NOTE: Jargon ahead. I want to record this for posterity here, so you non-gamers may want to skip the rest of this post.

A bit of background. For group dungeons, you have 5 people max in your group, and are in an ‘instanced” area of the game. Your team -vs- The Boss. Generally speaking, groups consist of one healer, one tank, and one or more damage-dealers. The “Holy Trinity” it is called.

Well, last night, I ran with a group of unknown, random people (I knew one of them: a tanking warrior) after being invited to heal for their group in a dungeon I knew well from past experience. (Drak’Tharon Keep for those keeping track).

The “official tank” was an egotistical sounding person (Protection Paladin) who started the group off by ordering people around and painstakingly describing the order they wanted to kill groups of enemies in. The rest of us quickly just said “Ok, lets go” since we hadn’t even started killing the first group of “trash” enemies. I had bad feelings about this, though, even if the tank was equipped with what looked like very decent gear.

The first pull happened, I started channeling a heal spell targeting the tank, and before the 3-second cast-time was up, he was dead. I blinked in surprise wondering what the heck happened to have that healthbar go almost instantly dark…then we finished off the group of enemies while I spammed fast & inefficient spells at the others in a crazy attempt to keep enough people alive. Two others died, but I and another warrior survived.

As a priest, I rezzed everyone, said I would pre-shield the tank who admitted clicking a wrong button. It happens, so we prepared to go again at the next group.

This time, The tank lived almost 10 seconds, and no one else died. At this, the one damage-rogue started complaining about how crappy the tank was, and the tank snidely reminded everyone that if the healer would actually cast heal spells on him, he would live. This of course resulted in the other (much more friendly) players reminding the tank that even the fastest spell takes 2 seconds to cast, and it was noticably NOT the healer’s fault if his life kept dropping faster than even an automated script could keep heals up.

As an experiment, we decided to let my friend the warrior try tanking the next group, since he was essentially picking the enemies up when the “real Tank” died each time. No one died, and I even got a few seconds of time to rest my fingers. What an amazing difference! Of course, as you internet-goers will imagine, this made the tank just run into the next room, attack a bunch of things, run back to us and die, then mock us while we got swarmed

…Many enemies later, and with only the druid-bear alive, we survived that “stampede” and the tank left the group in a huff. Internet Fuckwad in effect, to an extent I’ve only ever read about before, never experienced in-person.

Now, unfortunately, the rogue-character announced she had to leave the group due to time shortly. We did kill one boss of the dungeon with her active, but then were down to three of us. Two more bosses and a good half hour of trash still waited ahead of us. Still, the atmosphere was relaxed, and went much more smoothly than those initial combats.

What was left were two tankish (warrior and bear-druid) characters, and me=healer who was getting compliments from the others for surviving that intentional chaos from the first “tank”. This also meant there were no damage-specializing characters in our group. What we lacked in “strategic worth” we made up for in an awesome “Can Do” mood.

So we grabbed the next group of enemies. It went slow, and each minor battle left me almost bereft of mana, but we survived. With two tanks joyfully playing “Taunt Tag” with the enemies, neither of them were taking much damage, and I was left to poke at the enemies with my wand or cast offensive spells just to speed things up. Not the most effective form of killing, as you imagine!

To make a long story short, much later, and definitely slower than an average dungeon run, we came out of the place safely, and with no one else having died. Heck, at no time at ALL, even after an intentional mass-pull, was no one even close to dying. We developed a Synergy that has not been seen by me for a long time. It was awesome.

The final boss of the place took us about 12 minutes to kill, which is an eternity for such battles, mostly due to the lack of damage-dealers in our group. We just kept going at it; slowly, steadily, and with plenty of cushion for me to relax and deal some pitiful damage myself.

We left as friends, willingly added to my list of contacts, and each of our reputations spreading that much further across our respective guilds (I definitely told my guildmates about that dynamic duo!).

Only afterwards did it really sink in. We had cleared an instance none of us was really over-geared for, with “not enough people”… by pure skill and attitude, and patient coordination.

Having two more characters brought much more kill-things-potential at the start of our adventure. Two swords make enemies fall twice as fast as one, after all. Yet it also brought more cooks to the stew kettle.

Trimming the fat, made a lean healthy meal. I hope there’s seconds.

In the southern lands of Lititz, Pennsylvania, the sprogling named Gatorade played happily with his cousin. The pretense of names had been dropped since last weekend, as kids tend to do, but there was still great adventures in the backyard of my parents place, involving zombie squirrels and bat-men attacks.

When we were all hanging around outside, my father asked about the Crystal Dino Bone, and if the kid was still talking about it. I asked the sprogling, and was told that the kids were now after a LightSword shaped like a crystal bone. Fair enough, I figured….

Unbeknownst to me, my father took the the original Warrior Brother story to heart, and had located “an ancient bottle” buried in the yard while he was digging his garden, many many years ago. Inside this bottle was a rolled up scrap of parchment (click image for details) that appeared to be some sort of map!

The young cousins unrolled the map, and quickly realized it showed the very backyard they were playing in, with a great mysterious X near the creek at the corner of the property.

Collecting the grown ups (who, other than my father had no clue that this adventure was pre-planned) we traced out the steps of the map.

From the porch, around the small shed, then turning sharply to circle dangerously close to the water behind the large forsythia bushes. After navigating the treacherous muddy cliffs, we returned to the center of the yard, made a loop, and began our walk towards the little side fence-row garden. Zig-Zagging next to the maple tree, we then stepped sideways around a small lilac transplanted here from Everthorn Farms. Once this was done, we were mere paces away from the final destination marked on this aging scroll.

The ground around the X was overgrown with high weeds and dusty overflow-debris from the creek. At first, it appeared we might need a shovel, but the young adventurers bravely picked through the grasses until a glint of sunlight was spotted through the weeds.

The Crystal Dinosaur Bone LightSword had been found at last!

One of the boys, made the quote of the day in an almost breathless awe: “It really does exist!” after what was initially just an imaginary play-prop.

It was a fun adventure, and the finding of an actual “crystal bone” (Plexiglass) made this geek-dad smile. My father, or should I say “Pap Da Dad”, is so cool!

The rest of the day, my sprogling and his cousin carried that sword around, having quests too numerous to recount here. The LightSword gained powers in the sun, lost energy in the dirt, and had edges SO SHARP they could cut through anything that was not specially enchanted to be “lightsword proof”.

So far, I myself am not lightsword proof, so am unable to even touch the treasure. Only my wife, the sprogling, and my oldest nephew are able to do so. And even then, they must recharge their lightsword proof ability every morning after breakfast, but the details of this process are a secret to those uninitiated.

And so, the Lightsword sits now, in a special location in the kid’s play area. The map has been discarded (I pulled it back out of the trash after the kid tossed it) now that the treasure was found. He got it out this morning before school, to defeat some creature in the bathroom where I took the picture posted above.

The adventure awaiting us on next trip to Lititz? Only time will tell….