Greetings traveler,

Welcome to the fifteenth 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 reasonable busy month. There have been several submissions in the School, Temple and Town Square. We've even received our first (film) review. Furthermore, I've been working on the vocabulary scripts and those are all up and running now. Most things I actually hoped to do this month are still left waiting. Maybe I'll get to that this month.
Enjoy reading.

This letter's content:
1. What's New
2. Coming Up Soon
3. Close-Up
4. Column: Men with a Mission

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WHAT'S NEW:

28/01/2001 - new poem in the Temple: "Standing Alone"

27/01/2001 - new character in the School: Kathos

20/01/2001 - new poem in the Temple: "Shadowchains"

15/01/2002 - new character in the School: sir Edwin

14/01/2002 - created new poll

10/01/2002 - corrected the town crier scripts for the new town picture

09/01/2002 - added new Merchants vocabulary (town screen)

04/01/2002 - new review in the Town Square: "Lord of the Rings: The fellowship of the ring" (movie)

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

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COMING UP:

Most things I mentionned last month are still not done yet. I plan to work on a day/night script for the site, so citizen comments, section introduction paragraphs and possibly even the town screen picture will be different for visitors visiting during the day or the night. It isn't extremely high on the priority list, so it may take quite a while before I've finished it. Highest on my list is working on the Elfstone Campaign Setting. The deity descriptions in the Pantheon are largely unfinished and it's about time I finish those. Furthermore I plan to work on geography pages for the setting, with descriptions and other info about the towns, regions, etc. of the maps that are already on the site. Another thing I am going to work on is adding a "close-up" link to all the items on the site that have been discussed in the Close-Up of the mailinglist. That way, you can click on a close-up link at the item to go directly to a Close-Up in a newsletter and read aditional info on that item.
One of the things that did get finished was getting someone to submit a review of the Lord of the Rings movie. You can find it in the Town Square section of the site. For the coming month I hope to get another review about the movie and possibly the book itself.

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CLOSE-UP:

Dunékàr Online RPG (The Forums and Wyvern Inn)

Preview:
[Lord Gildor; GM]: Tarannon: "I see no other entrances to the room. The creature can go nowhere, so we are in no hurry to defeat it. There are some books in the room I would like to take a closer look at. I'll signal the army to send some assistance and in the meanwhile we could search the remaining buildings outside." Tarannon walks outside and shoots a strange arrow up high. A bird's call can be heard clearly untill the arrow hits the ground.
Tarannon to Serena: "Here, use this salve on Sensor. It might help him up again." He hand over a badly smelling green salve. Assuming Serena uses the salve on Sensor, Sensor wakes up again.
[Kathos]: A faint cry just audible can be heard coming from the troll village , "Hello?! Is.....is someone there? Please help us! [Sensor]: Sensor wakes up. "It seems like there's a prisoner over there!" he shouts. All concerned about the faith of another living creature, Sensor neglacts to say something stupid and runs in the direction of the Troll village.
[Lord Gildor; GM]: You think the sound comes from one of the two larger huts you haven't searched yet.
[Sensor]: Sensor runs as quickly he can towards the direction the sound comes from.
[Lord Gildor; GM]: You stand before a large, locked wooden door in the northermost large hut. The sound comes from inside the hut.
[Serena]: Serena comes along of course and goes in, with Sensor I think. She is carefull, because of possible traps.
[Kathos]: Then out of the blue a middle aged man with short brown hair, wearing a simple cloth shirt and pants appears in the door's bared up window. "AH! rescuers!! You think u can...uh...pick the lock and get me outa here? if u do...i'll...i'll even travel with you!"

Some of the more recent lines of the Dunékàr Online RPG, from the topic "Road of Victory". This is the fifth "chapter" of the roleplaying game, that is running since the 19th of february 2001. So it started, almost a year ago, with the "Inside the Wyvern Inn" topic, where the starting players met up in the Wyvern Inn in the town of Dunékàr. After a good deal of role-playing and insane situations, it was time to start running a quest and the town got attacked by Trolls in the chapter "Panic near the Gate", soon followed by the players following the Troll raiding party, that had left a path of destruction through the forest, in "A Forest Walk". The players met up with an Elven army that was send to get rid of the Trolls in "Elves of Elenor". The players found the well defended Troll camp and lured the Trolls out of their camp into an ambush laid by the Elves. Right now, they are searching the camp and freeing some prisoners in "Road of Victory".
The Dunékàr Online RPG is a free form webbased role-playing game, now covering over a thousand posts. Fortunately, to join, one won't need to know everything that happened and anyone can join right in (though becoming a member of the forum is required to post (non member can read everything, but can't post), in order to prevent one-time posting). The Dunékàr Online RPG plays in the surroundings of the town of Dunékàr, a small town near the Elven kingdom of Minas Elen, north of the Imperial Peaks and the Empire of Vilya. See the Map of Alcarin in the Elfstone Campaign Setting section of the School and the History of Dunékàr in the Townhall for more info. Besides being a town in the Elfstone Campaign setting and the center of the Online RPG, it is the central town of the alcarin.com website as well. The RPG hasn't got that many rules. Most characters are about level 5 to 10 in D&D and new characters should be around that level. Extremely powerful characters would be an annoyance for other characters. Furthermore, results in combat situations are determined by the game master, based on what would be logical. The emphasis lies on actual roleplaying and not on combat, so no attack rolls, saves and other normal pen-and-paper RPG rules are not in use.

Check out the Dunékàr Online RPG on The Forums:
http://www.alcarin.com/forum/viewforum.php?forum=1

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

"The old man"

Jonathan is a bard of a pretty large adventurers party that once wandered around in the Forgotten Realms. He is an artist and he likes the attention, he likes the people that cheer and admire him. He loves the glory.
Long ago, he was just training. He was poor at that time and an old and wise bard was a mentor for him.
He came to Jonathan's house a long time ago, just wandering around there.
Jonathan was a growing boy then, in the uncertain ages where he isn't a child anymore, but has not become a man either, but just tangling between those, able to go so many ways that choosing is real hard.
Being the youngest of the family, Jonathan always had everyone to look up to. Being quite a clumsy and modest lad, Jonathan did. A lot of time he spend on the roof of his home, just sitting there, so no-one can see him, and writing some stories about adventures, dragons and heroics, not knowing if he will even see this for real.
His father and mother expected that their son would just stay home for a long time. Too clumsy to do something useful around, too shy to go out in the hard out-side-world. They honestly did not know if there would ever become anything of their son.
One day an old bard with a large beard walked passed Jonathans' home. He saw the boy sitting on the roof, thought for a while and decided to take the path to the house.
"Hello!" he shouted.
Jonathan looked up, surprised, and saw the man standing there.
"Are you... are you…? " Jonathan started mumbling.
"O no... don't say it..." the man called back.
"Gandalf?" Jonathan couldn't resist asking.
"I AM NOT GANDALF! ME AND GANDALF ARE NOTHING ALIKE. ONLY BECAUSE I HAVE A BEARD DOES NOT MEAN THAT I AM GANDALF!"
"Hello sir-that-is-not-Gandalf." Jonathans' father said, who just came walking outside.
"Hello sir-that-also-is-not-Gandalf." the old man said. "Is that your son up there?"
"Eh..."
Jonathans' father looked closely at the stranger. It did not seem like he had a large object in his hands he could hit him with. He did not have pieces of broken glass or so in his beard either. The man did not even look all that angry. He decided to risk it this time.
"Yes, that is my son." he said.
"Can I speak with him for a while?" the man asked.
"Sure." Jonathans father proclaimed and he went to work.
The old man climbed on the roof in a way so surprisingly handy that Jonathan would not be able to do himself. He looked at Jonathan's surprised face and laughed.
"I'm not that old yet. So, you sit here on the roof, don't you?"
"Well... yes" Jonathan said.
"Interesting." the man said. "What are you doing?"
"I am sitting on the roof."
"And...?"
"I am writing some stories. I don't know why, really. That moron from the newspaper won't even print them."
"What's it about?" the man asks.
"Heroes, sir. Big time heroes with shiny teeth, big swords covered in blood, all protecting the innocent and getting loads of money and stuff. But oh well... it's just fantasy, you know. But it seems to be all I'm good for. I cannot do something really useful because I am a clumsy idiot."
"Hmm..." the old man says. "But you can imagine you are a hero right?"
"That I can."
"Well, than you are one. You have got the spirit, right there."
The man points to Jonathan's chest.
"There?" Jonathan asks. "In my chest? In this particular part of my chest? Right here, so that if someone will cut this out it will be gone?"
The man sighs. It's never easy talking to special children.
"You seem to be a thinker, Jonathan. Maybe you shouldn't be locked up in this place. Maybe you should go out there with me. I can train you to be a bard, like I was. Then you can join a adventurers party and sing about their heroics and maybe even become a hero yourself."
Jonathans' eyes start to glitter.
"Is that possible? Just going out there, having adventures? People looking up to me? But I'm not really all that good in performing, sir." "You are what you imagine to be, Jonathan. If you come with me I will train you."
"I will have to ask." Jonathan thought.
"Dad!" he shouted. "Can I become a hero and fight dragons and so?"
"Sure son." his father answered.
"Cool!" Jonathan shouted and fell down the roof.
"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all." the old man said to himself.

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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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