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" The most intrepid brave I know and the leader of our little band of explorers made a cocksure proclomation a few moons back, that he and he alone would brave the mountains of Darkshore, risk neck and hoof and learn all there is to learn of the Elven lands there. And so he did, I can only imagine his fear as he scaled the highest peaks, traversed the most might mountains and clinged for dear life, not looking down but always, always having the determination to go on.
A few days hence, he returned, with eyes wild and voice full of excitement. Grabbing me by the shoulders he declared in tones both proud and loud, 'Brother!', he began, taking a pause for nothing more than prosterity I'd wager, 'I have made the grandest of discoveries and we have new allies!' A couple of tasty striders and an earful of complicated exposition later and I learned of the Shatterspear Tribe. Trolls who chose to be isolationist, away from the war. They spent their days sleeping and their nights were filled with wild parties. Knowing the nature of Trolls as I do, I'd not been sure whether to believe this. Perhaps our Brother had fallen and banged his head, the results of an impromptu vision quest, perhaps ...
But no, he was certain. So certain ...
And there I was then, on my way to Darkshore with my Frapsomatic Pictotron (a gift from a Goblin engineer whom I saved from a rampaging Dwarf many years ago). Apparently since I'm 'the only one who can figure out how that damn contraption works,' I was left with the task of finding this village myself. A rough map and a few pointers were thrust into my hands along with well-wishes. There had been the offer of an escort but no, if I were to do this, just as our leader had done it, I would do it alone and off I set.
It was midnight by the time I'd reached the Naga shrine on the Northern edges of Darkshore, creeping around in my ghostly form, Wolven speed to command, naught but my wits to keep me safe from the horrors of an Elven forest at night, I pressed on. Into the darkness of the thick forests, past countless Elven ruins until finally, I made purchase into the mountain and it was then ... then, the real trek began. With torch in and map in one hand, I gingerly began to work my way up into the mountains like the skillful climber I am. My spirit guide is a mountain goat for a reason! Up I went, there were a few tumbles and falls, I almost trashed my favourite bracers as they saved my neck from snapping in two against a boulder I'd fallen upon ...
It was a truly arduous journey but a path I found, a path up in the mountains, one that went ... nowhere? I examined this path carefully, it looked like a false landslide had blocked entrance. I was not to be deterred, to my friends the mountains my hooves once again gained purchase and with a will of iron I climbed, carefully and with the determination only the soul of a brave could possess. How long was I up there, hours? I think my eyes first laid sight on the village at the midst of dawn, the slightest cracks of lights from setting moons and rising sun filtering through the trees and down onto the waters and huts below. The first thing my eyes laid on was a canoe ...
With a leap of both flair and panache, I landed in the waters below, free of the jagged rocks that would've been my end had I fallen. I pulled myself out of the waters to find many, many sets of eyes upon me. It was an awkward moment of silence as I stared out across the water at ... what was that, were those Trolls having a party?! So, I danced. I threw out my best dancing moves for all to see, they turned back to what they were doing, the drummers drummed, the Troll who smacked the gong did indeed smack the gong and bongos were beat to a rythmic jungle tune. Perhaps only a few minutes remained of htis night but they would party til the very last.
Having felt I'd broken the ice, I leapt into the water and swam quickly to shore, to walk amongst these curious Trolls. There was much to see and much to talk about, it was indeed as my Brother had said, peaceful Trolls, more interested in having a good time than anything else. Oh certainly, they had the occasional pile of skulls lying around but to them, it was tradition and compared to other Trolls, they were the most joyful of spirits. I was told of the Shatterspear tribe's violent history and how they finally escaped the bonds of their hatred only to find a new way of living, a better away, away from a World of hatred. It was quite the entertaining story and digested over a number of bowls of ... strange mushroom stuff. In fact, the strange mushroom stuff might've helped to explain my attitude towards the party later and why I so merrily mingled and swayed.
Come to think of it, the strange mushroom stuff might've explained my Brother's excitement too ... but I shan't think on that.
With the night past the Trolls were ready to settle down for another day's sleep. Before leaving I decided to learn as much as I could about them, I tried to visit and chat with each of them in turn and I discovered a number of unusual artefacts and more importantly, slabs full of Trollish lore. I could only read very little of it because I'm not a Trollish linguist, I know little of their language but I think I know just the person. I know just the man to invite up here so that we may learn more. Another day dawns on this brave and his merry band of explorers and we're all the better for it, with new friends and things learned anew. Now if only the sky would stop changing colours. The spirits must be testing me ... "
<Edit> Right click then Save Link As seemed to work.
<Edit2> Rowne your file is DL'ing at a whopping 15 kbs per second. I'm on cable... I guess that's what happens when you don't have some high speed server or whatever...
Name one service that would cheerily host over 100MeBs of possibly controversial media with a smile and you shall get your speedy downloads! Until then, it'll have to be served up by my trusty old barge. I'd increase the upload time some but I don't have mod_throttle yet and if I did ... my computer would be raped and I need my bandwidth. I need it for games. I need it for ... uh, games! So it must not be raped.
As I tell you now however, you may believe this. After you have seen the contents of said movie, you will know it was worth it and you will want to go there too. Oh yes, you will want to go there too.
So is this going to be like the movie they removed from warcraftmovies.com? It showed HOW to get there along with the expierences there. Unfortunatly, I never got to see it, as I was a complete noob then and had know idea movies for WoW existed.
About the bandwidth thing, FileFront should host it. Not sure if they will, but they SHOULD.
<Edit> Without using all of your bandwidth you are thus, not allowing me to use all mine. And I will thank you for my less laggy day I will have. :wink:
O,Rowne, one other question. What video capture software are you using? I haven't seen the quality of the film yet, but I'm sure it's decent. I just don't know of any software that does this well, I was hoping for a recomendation.
1: I used the trial of fraps to grab lots and lots of short segments, I ended up with like, 16 of them, each at 116MeB each and branded with Frapness, sorry, I mean crapness. This has reminded me that I need to find an open-source movie grabber and to never, ever use Fraps again, even if I do have it conveniently lying around.
2: I then used VirtualDubMod (yay!) to put the pieces back together, I'm not a video-editing specialist however so this didn't go too smoothly but I think it's smooth enough, there's only the occasional jump here or there, I was pretty good at estimating by framerate when Fraps stopped recording. I then went about removing any redundant frames to give it a slightly more smooth appearance.
3: I then saved the Frankenstein's Movie via VirtualDubMod, I selected to use use ffdshow as my encoder from the save menu, I hit config and setup some nice quality/size ratio settings and then save, it went about transcoding from the original pieces I'd placed in to the final, ffdshow-XViD encoded movie.
I probably could've done that with a lot less hassle but I'd only just managed to get to see the Shatterspear tribe my Guild leader spoke of and I was excited. I simply had to make a movie, even with the tools on hand.
I've added a link to a Mirror of my file. I don't know how long it'll stay up or what the download performance will be like (very likely better than my server since it only supports a few connections at once at 15KiB/s) but there you go. Hopefully now everyone will be able to see the Shatterspears.
As I tell you now however, you may believe this. After you have seen the contents of said movie, you will know it was worth it and you will want to go there too. Oh yes, you will want to go there too.
Yer ol' server did well, slowly but steady :P
Nice Frapsomatic Pictotron, indeed!
Edit: I also enjoyed your story as well. I'd like to read more from you, that's for sure.
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A few days hence, he returned, with eyes wild and voice full of excitement. Grabbing me by the shoulders he declared in tones both proud and loud, 'Brother!', he began, taking a pause for nothing more than prosterity I'd wager, 'I have made the grandest of discoveries and we have new allies!' A couple of tasty striders and an earful of complicated exposition later and I learned of the Shatterspear Tribe. Trolls who chose to be isolationist, away from the war. They spent their days sleeping and their nights were filled with wild parties. Knowing the nature of Trolls as I do, I'd not been sure whether to believe this. Perhaps our Brother had fallen and banged his head, the results of an impromptu vision quest, perhaps ...
But no, he was certain. So certain ...
And there I was then, on my way to Darkshore with my Frapsomatic Pictotron (a gift from a Goblin engineer whom I saved from a rampaging Dwarf many years ago). Apparently since I'm 'the only one who can figure out how that damn contraption works,' I was left with the task of finding this village myself. A rough map and a few pointers were thrust into my hands along with well-wishes. There had been the offer of an escort but no, if I were to do this, just as our leader had done it, I would do it alone and off I set.
It was midnight by the time I'd reached the Naga shrine on the Northern edges of Darkshore, creeping around in my ghostly form, Wolven speed to command, naught but my wits to keep me safe from the horrors of an Elven forest at night, I pressed on. Into the darkness of the thick forests, past countless Elven ruins until finally, I made purchase into the mountain and it was then ... then, the real trek began. With torch in and map in one hand, I gingerly began to work my way up into the mountains like the skillful climber I am. My spirit guide is a mountain goat for a reason! Up I went, there were a few tumbles and falls, I almost trashed my favourite bracers as they saved my neck from snapping in two against a boulder I'd fallen upon ...
It was a truly arduous journey but a path I found, a path up in the mountains, one that went ... nowhere? I examined this path carefully, it looked like a false landslide had blocked entrance. I was not to be deterred, to my friends the mountains my hooves once again gained purchase and with a will of iron I climbed, carefully and with the determination only the soul of a brave could possess. How long was I up there, hours? I think my eyes first laid sight on the village at the midst of dawn, the slightest cracks of lights from setting moons and rising sun filtering through the trees and down onto the waters and huts below. The first thing my eyes laid on was a canoe ...
With a leap of both flair and panache, I landed in the waters below, free of the jagged rocks that would've been my end had I fallen. I pulled myself out of the waters to find many, many sets of eyes upon me. It was an awkward moment of silence as I stared out across the water at ... what was that, were those Trolls having a party?! So, I danced. I threw out my best dancing moves for all to see, they turned back to what they were doing, the drummers drummed, the Troll who smacked the gong did indeed smack the gong and bongos were beat to a rythmic jungle tune. Perhaps only a few minutes remained of htis night but they would party til the very last.
Having felt I'd broken the ice, I leapt into the water and swam quickly to shore, to walk amongst these curious Trolls. There was much to see and much to talk about, it was indeed as my Brother had said, peaceful Trolls, more interested in having a good time than anything else. Oh certainly, they had the occasional pile of skulls lying around but to them, it was tradition and compared to other Trolls, they were the most joyful of spirits. I was told of the Shatterspear tribe's violent history and how they finally escaped the bonds of their hatred only to find a new way of living, a better away, away from a World of hatred. It was quite the entertaining story and digested over a number of bowls of ... strange mushroom stuff. In fact, the strange mushroom stuff might've helped to explain my attitude towards the party later and why I so merrily mingled and swayed.
Come to think of it, the strange mushroom stuff might've explained my Brother's excitement too ... but I shan't think on that.
With the night past the Trolls were ready to settle down for another day's sleep. Before leaving I decided to learn as much as I could about them, I tried to visit and chat with each of them in turn and I discovered a number of unusual artefacts and more importantly, slabs full of Trollish lore. I could only read very little of it because I'm not a Trollish linguist, I know little of their language but I think I know just the person. I know just the man to invite up here so that we may learn more. Another day dawns on this brave and his merry band of explorers and we're all the better for it, with new friends and things learned anew. Now if only the sky would stop changing colours. The spirits must be testing me ... "
[The Frapsomatic Pictotron footage taken by Rowne on his trip to the Shatterspear village.]
[Mirror - Preferrable download, probably has faster speeds and it won't put a stress on my server, which means people will be able to access the AddOns I host. Win-win, then.]
<Edit> Right click then Save Link As seemed to work.
<Edit2> Rowne your file is DL'ing at a whopping 15 kbs per second. I'm on cable... I guess that's what happens when you don't have some high speed server or whatever...
As I tell you now however, you may believe this. After you have seen the contents of said movie, you will know it was worth it and you will want to go there too. Oh yes, you will want to go there too.
About the bandwidth thing, FileFront should host it. Not sure if they will, but they SHOULD.
<Edit> Without using all of your bandwidth you are thus, not allowing me to use all mine. And I will thank you for my less laggy day I will have. :wink:
1: I used the trial of fraps to grab lots and lots of short segments, I ended up with like, 16 of them, each at 116MeB each and branded with Frapness, sorry, I mean crapness. This has reminded me that I need to find an open-source movie grabber and to never, ever use Fraps again, even if I do have it conveniently lying around.
2: I then used VirtualDubMod (yay!) to put the pieces back together, I'm not a video-editing specialist however so this didn't go too smoothly but I think it's smooth enough, there's only the occasional jump here or there, I was pretty good at estimating by framerate when Fraps stopped recording. I then went about removing any redundant frames to give it a slightly more smooth appearance.
3: I then saved the Frankenstein's Movie via VirtualDubMod, I selected to use use ffdshow as my encoder from the save menu, I hit config and setup some nice quality/size ratio settings and then save, it went about transcoding from the original pieces I'd placed in to the final, ffdshow-XViD encoded movie.
I probably could've done that with a lot less hassle but I'd only just managed to get to see the Shatterspear tribe my Guild leader spoke of and I was excited. I simply had to make a movie, even with the tools on hand.
Yer ol' server did well, slowly but steady :P
Nice Frapsomatic Pictotron, indeed!
Edit: I also enjoyed your story as well. I'd like to read more from you, that's for sure.