Greetings traveler,

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the alcarin.com newsletter.
There is an archive of the previous newsletters in the Townhall and the columns are added to the Town Square, so you can always read it again.
It's been a slow month this month. There are hardly any new things, but one of them is certainly a big one. I've completely redesigned and modified the Town screen. The old artwork has been replaced by a new, more detailled and better picture. The new Town is an image map instead of a flash movie and everything is in one screen now, instead of the old possibility to look around. The size of that page has also decreased dramatically; it's now one fourth of the old page. It still needs a lot of work, but for more on that, see the Coming Up section. Anyway, enjoy reading.

This letter's content:
1. What's New
2. Coming Up Soon
3. Close-Up

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WHAT'S NEW:

23/11/2001 - brought the search engine back online

20/11/2001 - implemented new Town screen, changed index, removed town loading page

14/11/2001 - new link in The Gate

08/11/2001 - added Elfwood link to Art Gallery (Temple), created a new board on The Forums: "Vreeborg Campaign Forum"

Visit http://www.alcarin.com/townhall/updates.htm for the latest updates.

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COMING UP:

The new image map picture of the Town is up. Dunékàr has been redesigned. For now, the citizens still have their old vocabulaires, but I hope to change that soon. The new Town picture has more than just citizens, more different characters. So, I plan to give them separate scripts. And more fun ones to. Hopefully some of them will be up in the coming month.
Another thing I plan to do, is to add a day and a night version of the Town picture and implement a javascript that makes the night version appear when visitors visit the site at night and a day version during daytime. I'm also conisidering a full-color version (the current one is a graphite pencil sketch).

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CLOSE-UP:

"Knight of Heaven's Vengeance" (School: The Archives: Kits & Prestige Classes)

Preview:
"The Knights of Heaven's Vengeance are an order of paladins, fighters, clerics, rangers and many other classes that are devoted to the destruction of demonkind. The order's members are all of Lawful Good or Neutral Good alignment and are basically some sort of half-paladins, if not full paladin already. The order is an integrated part of the Church of Heironeous. It is closely related to the Knights of Chalice and often works in close cooperations with that group. The Knights of Heaven's Vengeance also have very close connections with powers and powergroups on Mount Celestia and Celestials and Half-Celestials are known to join the order quite often.
The Knights of Heaven's Vengeance where formed as a support group for the Knights of Chalice. That order had suffered several mayor defeats because of their severe personal restrictions and the fact that they consist of almost only warriors. The demons had made good use of the Knights' of Chalice strict following of law and honor and the fact that most of them are loners. Several of the Church's leaders considered it to be time for payback and so the Knights of Heaven's Vengeance where founded.
The order generally follows the paladin's code of honor and law and is even more keen on this than most of the Chuch of Heironeous. They make one, but only one exception, though. When confronted with the extreme evil, Demons, and situations where demonkind would profit from the Knight following the paladin's code, the Knight of Heaven's Vengeance is willing to bend the truth and law a bit. How much the truth and law are bend, of couse depends on the Knight's alignment."

The "Knight of Heaven's Vengeance" is a Prestige Class for Dungeons and Dragons, Third Edition. Although similar to the Knight of the Chalice Prestige Class, it is certainly not the same. The Knight of Heaven's Vengeance is more open to classes other than warriors. The requirements to join are much less than those of the Knight of Chalice, especially considering the to hit bonus: here +5 and the Chalice +8. Also, it imposes no requirements of armor, such as the Knight of Chalice requiring at least a +1 full plate. What wizard would want to walk around in that after all?
Still, the Knight of Heaven's Vengeance is rather warrior or cleric oriented. The Class' abilties are less strong than those of the Knight of Chalice. Basically, a character with the Knight of Heaven's Vengeance Prestige Class becomes a half-paladin that is specially focused on fighting demons. Those that join and are already paladin get more spells and improved abilities.

Read the entire prestige class in the School: http://www.alcarin.com/school

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COLUMN: MEN WITH A MISSION
A column by Wouter vd Zandschulp; wouter@alcarin.com

"Growing by experience"

This month, a movie called: "The Fellowship of the Ring" will come out in Holland, were I live, the first of three movies of the "Lord of the Rings"-trilogy.
Well, that proves your columnist can read news-papers!
Anyhow, this will get a lot of people to the cinema (ironically not as much as to Harry Potter, probably) to see what they've made of this. Well, the book I really enjoyed. Seeing those inexperienced Hobbits grow into an adventure. It was really nice, when they returned to their homes you could see the difference. They become real tough!
I believe this general idea has become very important in any rpg. You adventure and learn, and because of that you get better and better.
Take that, Harry Potter! See if your big hype will produce people role-playing that they are little boys who learn magic! Wait, I'm putting idea's in people's heads...
In real life, we also should be able to adventure. That way we all can become heroes. Don't let modern society take that away from you! Take changes! Live! Buy Alcarin.com-T-shirts!
How we can adventure, while modern society has locked us up in a life where we have to work for the community? Well, while studying to become a teacher, I can see the need is there always. Students don't want to do things as planned by the teacher, they want to try out all kinds of other various possibilities. They can write on paper, but they soon find out they also can not write, but push every part of the paper against each other, forming a big round ball of paper. Then they discover they can throw this much easier than a flat piece of paper, which will go down slowly. After this, they accept the challenge of throwing the paper to a moving target, like the man walking in front of the class. This great creativity, a lot more creative than just writing down whatever the teacher writes in front of them, is rarely appreciated. But the students have to, it's the only way the can gain experience, like not throwing paper balls to your teacher.
This process of being rebellious and learning is going on all of your life, because it's the way of surviving. Learning not to come to close to fire because it hurts, not to close to another man because he will hit you, not to close to a woman because she will kick you, not to close to a gnome because he will become your friend (and you'll have to get him out of trouble all the time).
So, through failure we learn subtle ways of doing things. We learn to handle each situation differently and right. But we have to fail first. But fortunately, humans are very good at that. Some people have to fail a lot. So when someone's house burns down because of me, he actually should shake my hand and be happy that I've learned not to play which matches. I can't help it after all; I have to fail first. Sadly, although we all seem to fail, we rarely appreciate each other failure enough. We rarely say to someone who always does everything wrong: "You must be so wise and have so much experience! I admire you greatly! Can you teach me?"
Another step, trying to fail as badly as possible at everything to learn as much as possible, also is rarely done. Strange... very strange... I mean, by writing a failing column every month, you would say I learn a lot about how to write a right column, wouldn't you?
Of course, one possibility comes to mind; learning from failure of others, learning wise lessons from experience of others; like parents. But this plan has a flaw: who would want to do that? We all want to experience ourselves, that's what makes our live interesting.
And that's why in a way, we already are adventurers, all of us, just in a different measure. And we all can dream about experiencing and learning so much by adventures that we will become big heroes, like the four small and simple Hobbits did. So, whenever you fear to take action, remember how they did so although they weren't sure of success at all, and remember that failure will only teach you, and above all, remember not to blame me when this advice turns ugly.

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Well, that's it for this month's newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it.
Lord Gildor
"May the stars guide you on your journeys"
http://www.alcarin.com

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