The tools in his bag and on his belt are arranged carefully. He knows the arrangement well, and can find any tool without the use of his eyes; his thick fingers are all he needs. And thats fortunate& considering he only has one good eye. It buzzes and clicks in his head as it focuses on what it needs to show him. Hes had to repair the lens twice since he made it, and when he made it, his fingers were swift and certain, good compensation for his failing eyesight. When he was done, his left eye was full of clouds and his right not far from the same. The surgeon replaced his left and he spent six weeks preparing its mate. On the seventh week, his cousins and brothers were gone, leaving him alone with his clocks.

As you may have seen on the announcement board I have managed to get my own (free) roleplaying game online (and only a single year has passed since I decided Id do it). To honor the occasion Id like to share a few revelations that I stumbled upon in the process of designing Drahyr (my game). While I would be a fool to claim that the information that I will provide below is universally useful I do hope that it may provide an inspiration or two.

With one word my blood ran cold, shot through my veins and turned to ice, froze me in one spot with the sheer unreality of the what I had heard.

A gangster, by his very nature, is a racketeer. Whether hes selling liquor in a speak-easy during prohibition, or hijacking cargo from a freighter, the fact is hes found a way to make money illegally and if hes good at it, he doesnt get caught.

I wanted to write this next column about dragons. I really did. I wanted to tell you my thoughts and feelings about them and why they are so important to my vision for Alyria. Alas, that column just is not coming together. So, that topic will have to wait, which is actually a boon to me, because, instead of talking about Setting, Id like to talk a little about my Premise.

It begins in a tavern, and a stranger, coming in from the rain. Its the mean kind of cold outside, the kind of cold that bows your bones and makes them ache. The stranger shakes the wet off his steaming cloak and looks at the faces that surround him. Their eyes are as frozen as the drowned earth outside. Their lips havent smiled, havent kissed, havent laughed for years. He knows these faces; saw them in the last town he stumbled across.