Well they woke me ’round mid afternoon and my head hurt the most.
I remember being kidnapped at a rally by its power-hungry host.
If games are like movies, my memories are films about ghosts
I could never escape even as I freefall down the coast
I knew an idiot who walked the tightrope for fortune and fame
he was an acrobat swinging trapezes but that story was lame.
If you’ve ever hung out with little boys,
the press makes your life full of shame.
And though he’ll never forgive Two-Face sometimes
I wish he didn’t know my name.

Hey, Mr. Napier, don’t die
Hey, Mr. Napier, I know why
but hey, Mr. Napier, please don’t die on me.

Well there’s a piece of my parents in every criminal sting
and the price of a memory is repaid by the justice it brings
but there’s always one more murderer to take down and one last batarang
and the last one out of the city has to lock up everything
or the inmates will get out and fill all of Gotham with dread
while Harley’s sorrowful sobbing is still lingering in my head
and the goons and the junkies disbelieve whatever they’ve read
What’s left for a sequel when my favorite villain is dead?

Hey, Mr. Napier, don’t die
Hey, Mr. Napier, I know why
but hey, Mr. Napier, please don’t die on me.

All the blue ice reflections that color Vic’s mind when he sleeps
and the business-sense distractions that accompany the company I keep
Nigma’s razor-wit taunting that cuts just a little too deep
Hey I can dream as well as anyone but Dr. Crane can’t help me sleep
So I shoot my grapnel gun into the air and it catches some beams
for a brief interruption of a question-mark grabbing scheme
Well I can’t say I knew that you weren’t quite who you seemed
So I was surprised to find out
that Karlo played Joker on that final movie screen.

Hey, Mr. Napier, don’t die
Hey, Mr. Napier, I know why
but hey, Mr. Napier, please don’t die on me.

When the Clown Prince of Crime shattered the antidote on the floor
there wasn’t another
and I wondered what he did that for
I still was not sure because he had been dead before
but I carried his body with grief as I walked out the door.
You once lived on a desert planet featuring a pair of stars
and drove past Jabba’s palace to be disliked at some seedy Spaceport bar
and you followed Kenobi after selling off your uncle’s old car
and after taking down the emperor, you became a great voice-acting star
and after taking down the emperor, you became a great voice-acting star

Hey, Mr. Napier, I’m quite touched
but hey Mr. Napier, it’s too much
so hey Mr. Napier, please don’t sing to me.
Hey Mr. Napier, please don’t sing to me.
Hey Mr. Hamill, stay for Arkham 3?

A small but noticeable grin reflected against the blue glow of a dimly lit terminal screen. Somewhere in Los Angeles, a gateway translated zeros and ones into coherent instructions which it then sent through seemingly countless bounces, finally arriving at its intended destination. This time, the chosen destination was the International Crime Database.

Fred didn’t have a cool hacker name like “El Techno” or “Digital Mage.” He didn’t need one. He was happy being Fred of the Uplink Corporation. He was happier with the steady flow of cash infusions willingly transferred by other corporations into his account for what he calls “subcontracting” gigs. Fred enjoyed his gigs very much, and he enjoyed this batch of gigs in particular.

Corporations who need to appear wholesome to the public sometimes require Fred’s confidential industrial services. That is, industrial espionage, sabotage, creating and falsifying identities, and making certain individuals’ lives miserable. From the list of jobs in Uplink’s internal services machine, he had gathered a list of names that needed police attention. Well, they would need police attention after he was done altering their records, anyway.

ElTechno was deemed too much of a renegade to hang with The Renegades so without consulting a dictionary, Dear Leader decided it was best for ElTechno to be on his way.  Finding himself once more without a guild, he began to wonder about the most peculiar things, like why his clothes didn’t fit anymore.

Yes, seriously, why does some equipment have a guild level requirement?  This belt is really members-only?  Is DDO run like my old high school with its own clothing police?  No sports-related clothes, no hats (I’ve got the hat bug so none of my hats are visible), and apparently they’ll need to see my ASB card if I want to keep wearing my crafted belt.

The problem was that I was quite fond of my gear.  The same went for Eberlinz Evil Twin and Estocean.  The easiest solution to the issue was to create my own guild.  Without any fanfare, the Guild of Estoceans was born with barely any members and hardly any renown.  We are nothing like The Renegades.  We are nothing like the Fabulous Killjoys.  For one thing, we can’t stand in V formation.  However, on occasion, I may hum the Batman theme while descending upon an unsuspecting mob and disposing of them with a wand of blasting.

Let’s talk about arts and crafts.  You see these hands?  They spent years of training in both spell-casting and rapier-based combat.  With a touch, I could draw the life force out of a creature within arm’s length.  For those further away, my hand can shoot necrotic bolts, fire, lightning, acid, or ice with similar results.  When I feel the need to see some blood, I draw my rapier and carve my way through opposition.  These are dirty, bloodied, calloused, warrior hands.

To show my more sensitive side, however, today we are using these same hands to knit a cozy cloak for Eberlinz Evil Twin.  You see, Ebbie’s a human ranger with a little bit of a problem staying on his feet.  He wields twin khopesh blades (also designed by yours truly), which I’m sure he’d love to swing around and hurt people with if only he weren’t so easily tripped by his enemies.  Because of this little issue, he asked if I could make him some sort of Cloak of Balancing.  “Sure can,” I enthusiastically exclaimed, “I just need to gather some materials.”

The first step is to decide on exactly what we’re going to make.  For Eberlinz, I wanted to give him something a little extra so today we’re crafting him an Unbalancing Cloak of Balance which not only makes him more surefooted; the cloak is so awesome it has a chance to knock enemies off their feet.  After deciding on that, we gather the necessary essences and collectible items to create the magical shards that would go into the cloak.  For our purposes, we have created an unbalancing shard and a shard of balance.

Shards in hand, now we look for a used cloak.  It is a good idea to keep a few old cloaks around just for crafting purposes.  Any will do, really.  We take the cloak, find the designer tag, rip said tag, and replace it with “Hecho De ElTechno.”  We then use a hot glue gun to secure the shards into place.  A little bit of cleanup and here we have a lovely cloak, hand-made and ready for the rigors of combat.

I am no life of the party,
my humor cold and dry
nobody ever seems to laugh
since my pranks go awry
I find it very difficult
to try and make amends
but as a necromancer,
I am always making friends.

I make for awkward conversation –
my interests arcane
and some folks wonder loudly
if I am legally insane.
I’m sure it wasn’t personal
when one rogue called me a witch
so I summoned forth his mother’s bones
and pimped her as my bottom bitch.

Others are more violent –
with my death in their plans
which I render as amusing
by causing them to dance
then we see who’s a pariah
for when this story ends
I’d have cast a strong enchantment
that suggests he kill his friends.

Up on the mast, there’s a lonely mote herd…

When people think of the Risia Ice Games, they think of sliding gracefully down icy slopes and gliding through the air through low-gravity jumps in search of assorted colored winter coins. They think of fighting fire elementals and renting ice skates. They think of the poetic snowfall in Stormreach Harbor the likes of which hadn’t been seen since a dragon terrorized Korthos.

Well, realistically, a lot of people ignore the ice games entirely, and for the longest time, I was one of those people. That was until I became involved in an obsessive-compulsive hunt for eternal wands. The basic idea is as follows: during the Ice Games, a character collects assorted coins, which gets redeemed for random items. Some of those random items happen to be crafting materials which when placed in the Risian Altar along with other ingredients, create or imbue weapons with icy properties. One of these possible creations is an Eternal Wand of Ray of Frost.

There was ElTechno’s wraith form and extended versions of “Jump” and “Expeditious Retreat” spells standing on a docked ship’s mast deciding on the best path to collect as many blue coins as possible in one leap. There was ElTechno cursing as his footing slipped, gliding back down to the dock and jumping back up to the boathouse roof for another try at a precision landing onto the ship’s mast. A successful jump netted three blue coins and a switch to another instance in the multiverse for an attempt at three more. This was repeated countless times to gather materials for him, and for members of the guild.

Thusly he herded the motes of winter, crafting recipes, an assortment of icy potions, and candy canes which he used as unexpected presents for guild and party members. After crafting the eternal wand, he embraced his jumping proficiency and continued herding motes of winter for various other recipes. He gave quite a few of the materials away and to those who were interested, he taught his methods of coin farming.

All of this was strange to the Drow rogue wizard who had lived a borderline sociopathic life.

Did you know that a Divine Union of Hirelings exists? Apparently so! In the last union meeting, countless speaker cards were filled out in order to address the issue of hireling maltreatment and abuse, with many hireling clerics speaking out against doing contract work for a Drow Wizard named ElTechno De La Biblioteca.

Yes, they spoke out against me and they made me sit through the whole thing. One cleric recounted the time when I cast Expeditious Retreat and Invisibility on myself and left her to run after me through mobs of hostile soldiers and scorpions. “I came back to pick up your soulstone!” I exclaimed. Another spoke of a time when I went for a swim through an underwater cave and left him to fight trolls and rust monsters alone. while someone else testified that I had locked them out to face Whisperdoom alone.  Yet another recalled a time I watched her get electrocuted to death by a trap I had jumped over. “That’s because most people would step away from the trap BEFORE healing themselves!” A few others spoke of being tactlessly commanded to use runes, open doors, heal others not specifically named in the contract, having to heal spiders and miscellaneous pets, and being injured numerous times by a summoned arcane skeleton mage. “You command Drow Scorpions as pets! Consider yourselves fortunate that Vulkoor has not manifested his wrath upon you!” I yelled in exasperation.

After a bit of gavel pounding, the whole episode ended with me being limited to non-union contracts over at House Kundarak. I wasn’t too worried since I knew a lot of the union clerics secretly moonlighted as bodyguards in House K. However, until the excitement that my name invoked wound down, I decided it was best to hit the realm’s Looking-For-Group Bulletin Board again for a while. Good thing, too, because I had found a group running the “Diplomatic Impunity” quest which in turn led to my being accepted into a guild.

“It’s a bit like Craigslist for looters and grave robbers,” he thought as he reluctantly asked to be invited into a group running the “Depths” chain for House Deneith.  The quest required more work in the sewers which sent his former hireling packing in a fit of rage, grumbling as he left about a dry-cleaning bill.  Not wanting to go solo, ElTechno had to resort to becoming more sociable in the hopes of having a group to go questing with.

At the group leader’s approval, ElTechno was in and on his way to the sewer entrance.  He gave a brief and almost-sociable “hello” to the other members.  As he looked over everyone in the party, he assessed each of them in his head.  There was a swordsman and an axe swinger as cannon fodder, a sneaky rogue to disarm traps, a spell caster like him, and a cleric to heal everyone’s ills in case of a pneumonia outbreak.

Spells and incantations that empowered party members were cast at the dungeon entrance as was the custom.  ElTechno cast his one mass-effect spell of Protection from Evil as well as Bull’s Strength for the cannon fodder.  He then summoned his skeleton mage and a giant spider to assist.  He turned to his side to find that someone had summoned a Drow scorpion as a pet.  It was the cleric.

“I find it a bit offensive that you would take a Drow scorpion as a pet.”  The Drow scorpion, a Drow Elf with a scorpion body, was revered by the Drow as elves that had transcended into a higher union with their scorpion god.  The cleric dismissed the anthropology lesson and said “gets the job done.”

The quest had gone quite well until the rogue took a wrong turn and gathered more blades to his torso than his health cared to handle.  With the rogue’s demise, ElTechno silently appointed himself the new trapmonkey.  After inspecting a suspicious apparatus in one particular hallway, he quickly yelled “trap!”  He leapt above a ledge to disarm the trap and others in the group tried to follow.  One fell off and was immediately cut down by giant rotating blades that had been cleverly hidden within the walls.  It was the cleric.

“Gets the job done,” ElTechno thought.  “Keeps one of my people as a pet,” he thought.  “Stupid enough not to heed my warning,” he thought.  With a sigh, he took the cleric’s soulstone and dutifully brought it with him to the resurrection shrine around the corner.  That is what any good party member would have done.

There was an unpleasant stench. Ankle-deep sewage flowed downstream like the hopes and dreams of the young Drow elf who reluctantly navigated the sewer system in search of a man named Atlas or Argos or Arlo Guthrie or something. He motioned to his hired healer who rolled his eyes and reminded him that the man they sought was named Arlos.

Even though he made more platinum than most hirelings, the unpleasant sewer smell nor the sociopathic nature of his Drow employer made the healer believe that the trip was not worth twice the money he was offered. Triple, maybe, but only if one factors in the dry-cleaning bill for the +1 to healing plate mail he was sporting.

Further along the path, the Drow elf wizard’s conjured pet charged forward to confront a couple of Kobold warriors. The preoccupied wizard took a slight left turn to break open a few barrels and crates on the floor. He pocketed the scattered contents.

“Why would you do that? You don’t even own a bow!” the hireling inquired rhetorically.

“Masterwork arrows fetch a decent price at the vendors” said El Techno with a charismatic smile.

He then looked up and nonchalantly took a couple of steps back behind the hireling as fire potions rained down from a Kobold thrower ahead, bouncing against the cleric’s armor. He checked his robe for ashes and looked dismayed by the couple of spots he found.

“Well,” said El Techno, “get to work.”

As the cleric charged forward to fight alongside El Techno’s pet, a loud alarm gong rang followed by the appearance of a large ogre set on defending his territory.

“I guess I have to get my hands dirty,” sighed the wizard, pulling an eternal wand of acid splash from his backpack.

Valve and Sony, “I think we can put our differences behind us.  For science.  You monster.”

Even after all the accolades bestowed upon Portal, I still hadn’t played the game for no good reason.  It was all because of a sort of grudge I had against Valve for neglecting the PS3 version of The Orange Box.  This time around, Valve gave equal attention to my gaming platform of choice instead of farming the port out to a third party.  Even better, they threw in a free PC version via Steam.

To prepare myself for the sequel to a game I hadn’t played, I raided Youtube for Portal videos and played Jonathan Coulton’s “Still Alive” over and over to understand the “villain” GLaDOS.  Now after playing through some of Portal 2, I’m actually liking GLaDOS in a sort of masochistic sort of way.  The put-downs are funny with varying subtlety.  Add that to various semi-hidden areas with human scribbles on the walls and contraband “radio” music and you have yourself an uncomfortable dark-humor that is only bound to get more interesting as the game moves along.  I do still have a few questions about the plot that I haven’t gotten answered yet but am hoping that it’ll come in time.

Then there’s the gameplay, which is a series of puzzle rooms solved by using portals.  It took a little bit of time to get into the Portal mindset, but when it finally clicked, the puzzles became less cumbersome and more enjoyable.  The game forced me to think in space-bending ways that I hadn’t done before.  I can only imagine that the sensation of the “eureka!” moment is very similar to the epiphany had by the many who loved the first game.

I haven’t tried any of the multiplayer since PSN is still down (grumble).  I’d like to give split-screen co-op a try with the wife, though, but am not sure how she would handle the First-Person element.  She’s good with the platformers and I’m almost sure she’d enjoy the puzzle-solving, but it may take her a little longer to get used to the controls.

I’ve tried not to give any plot elements away (as I’m still trying to understand it myself) and my only advice for the moment is to hang around for the voice acting.  Some of the early memorable quotes happened only when I decided to exhaust all of Stephen Merchant’s recorded lines for each given situation.

This is not God of War, this is not Killzone, this is not LittleBigPlanet.  It’s not like anything I’ve played before.  I didn’t think I would enjoy being a robot’s lab mouse but it’s a lot of fun.  According to GLaDOS, I am a dumb, overweight, horrible person who was rightly abandoned by my birth-mother at someone’s doorstep.  I’m not sure I like all of that, but if that’s what the collected data says, it must be right.  I can’t argue with science.