The following story is simply the first few pages of something Ive been working on so far. Just figured I’d post this out there, see what people think for some feedback. The story is a bit darker than my normal work so bear with me!

The courtyard that spread out before the entrance to the castle was one of scenic beauty. When it was made it would have been a true masterpiece of landscaping but hundreds of years on the toll of time had given it a strange whimsical feel. The centre of the courtyard was dominated by an impressive fountain, long since dried up, consisting of two dragons locked in battle with one curled around the base roaring at its foe who reared up at an opposing angle. Armies of moss and lichen surrounded the leviathans, pressing up over their wings and across their hides.
The base of the surrounding fountain was filled with dried leaves scattered from trees preparing for the coming winter. The trees obscured the view of the outlying castle walls, years of neglect and growth leaving them wild and clawing up the neighboring stone walls. Cobblestones underfoot had somehow became cracked and uneven, some even inexplicably missing and as they neared the trees they became replaced with wild weeds and savage grass. A few stylized arches formed a wide path around the fountain and to the doors of the castle, some collapsed partially while others remained strong and defiant.
In front of the great oak doors of the castle stood an elderly butler in a clean yet worn black frock suit and white puffed shirt. His head was completely bald, shining almost as brightly as his buckled shoes in the early morning sunlight. His overall appearance stood out sharply against the grays and greens of the castle courtyard, a sharp slice of black cutting into the gentle flow of the vista.
The castle itself dominated the skyline. Towers and buttresses seemed to grow out of the walls in an almost organic manner with broken or cracked windows caked with grime scattered around like some sort of architectural case of dandruff. Its heavy pale grey stones seemed to press into the fabric of reality itself, straining the eyes mildly to look at them.
A young man entered the courtyard cautiously, taking in everything slowly as he made his way to then around the fountain. He looked to be about in his late teenage years; short yet scruffy brown hair adorning his head, slightly large dark brown eyes set into a narrow defined face atop a medium framed body. Rough dark coloured travelling clothes which seem well used and worn kept him warm against the slight chilly wind from the north.
“Impressive is it not, young master.”
The man jumped and focused on the butler, “I’m sorry, I did not see you there.”
The butler offered a curt smile which vanished a fraction of a second later, “Quite. What is your name and what is your purpose here?”
The man composed himself and offered a half bow in return, “I am Jack, and I came here to explore… I thought this castle was abandoned, everyone I’ve spoken to confirmed as much…? Jack let the sentence trail off.
“On the contrary, young sir, there are at present a lot of people in the castle. Some have been with us for years.” The butler turned and opened one of the large doors with surprising ease and stood to the side “Please feel free however to explore, young master.”
Jack took a few steps forward then stopped, looking carefully at the butler, “I’m allowed to go in, just like that? Wont the people who live here be upset?”
The butler shook his head and gave a sharp bark that could have been generously called a laugh. “Of course not, young sir, I doubt they will be angry…”
The butler stepped forward towards Jack and guided him gently by place a hand on his shoulder and pulling him towards the open door. Jack, reluctantly at first, allowed himself to be guided and stepped into the open doorway.
“…after all, no one’s seen them in decades.”
The door slammed shut behind Jack with an ear-drum splittingly loud boom. Jack spun round to see the butler leaning against the door, puffing heavily.
“What, wait….” Jack stumbled to get his words out but stopped as something strange began to happen to the butler. His face slowly melted backwards as if the skin was being sucked off him from behind, revealing dark red muscle and pale tendons before they too followed the skin, vanishing into the door behind, leaving the grinning skull of the butler.
“Have fun, young master.” the skull rattled. The whole door seemed to sigh and rapidly the skeleton crumbled into the butler’s clothes vanishing just as quickly from sight. As the last fragments of bone blinked out, the clothes followed suit and in no time at all there was no evidence that the butler had ever been there.
Jack stood there, dumbstruck. He blinked wildly a few times before patting frantically at the area where the butler had stood. Finding nothing he turned his attention to the door and tried to open it but it may as well have been a wall for it would not budge even in the slightest. Jack slowly stopped shoving and pulling the door and leaned against it with his forehead, looking down at his feet.
A few minutes passed while Jack got his breathing sorted, willing himself to calm down and relax before turning around slowly to take in his surroundings.
He was in a large hallway. At the opposing end, two stairs circled up on either side to meet in the middle on the first floor where a large archway sat. Beneath this a tall magnificent grandfather clock emitted a loud tick which boomed across the pale white marble tiled floor. In the middle of the floor there was a large dark blue thin and frayed rug bearing a silhouette of a two dragons in a similar stance to the fountain, but more stylized. These ones looked more like a ying-yang symbol and didn’t seem to be so much fighting as just resting in a mirrored pose.
Jack walked forward, looking up at the walls to see large portrait paintings of various men seated at desks looking serious and thoughtful. The walls themselves were a dull red, the paint cracked and peeling as it neared the rafted ceiling. Directly above Jack there was a magnificent chandelier with what seemed to Jack like hundreds of candles, all unlit but clean of cobwebs and dust. The whole room was lit by three large windows above the castle entrance, allowing pale sunlight to illuminate the hall within.
Numerous doors left the hallway around the room, all closed aside from one to the left of Jack. This door was slightly ajar and as Jack approached it he started to hear what sounded like someone muttering angrily under their breath in time with a scratching sound. He tentatively pushed the door open a bit more, his hand still trembling after the occurrence with the butler, and found himself looking into what looked like a study if an explosion were to go off in it. Upon every flat surface there was stacked heaps of parchments, the floors were covered in scrunched up balls of paper and stacks were pushed up against the walls. In the midst of all this chaos sat a gruff old man scribbling furiously on a document with an quill pen. He was dressed in a manner not dissimilar to the butlers, aside from where the butler lacked a single hair on his head this man seemed to have a small badger wrapped around his lower face for he had beard that exploded from his jaw, large bushy eyebrows threatening to obscure his vision and reams of dark grey hair stacked upon his scalp.
As Jack entered the room he stopped his muttering and paused in his scribbling, “Well, boy?! Don’t just stand there! Name?”
Jack found himself almost snapping to attention and stuttered quickly, “J-jack, who are you? The butl-”
“Jack? Jack what?”
“Jack Dashel, why are yo-”
“Occupation?” the man interrupted.
“-u doin- what? I don’t have an occupation..” Jack looked helplessly at the man, now completely lost.
“You have to an occupation, you can’t just come barging into the castle and expect to do nothing!” The old man put the quill down and sighed as his beard seemed to shift on his face. Jack realised that the man was smiling. “Look, you’re new here, I understand – I was young once too, full of heady ideas above my station and not willing to conform to rules.”
“I don’t know what’s going on! I just came here to look around, and that butler said I could come in but then he turned into a skeleton before my eyes and now you’re shouting at me!”
“Oh he always does that, just ignore him. He only does it for attention.”
Jack felt his temper snap briefly, “What? Die repeatedly instead of walking out the room like a normal person?”
The man picked up his quill and pointed the end at Jack, peering at him through his bushy eyebrows, “Listen here boy, you have no right to be questioning your betters. Clearly you think you’re different however so I think ‘Jester’ will suit you for awhile.” the man grabbed a sheet of parchment, and muttered under his breath as the quill scratched its way across the page. Jack tried to read the page upside down and realised that there was no ink in the quill and the parchment was completely blank. After a moment or two the man folded it up, grabbed a wax stick from a drawer and after heating it up over a candle sealed the document shut. Before the wax cooled, he pressed his index finger firmly into the wax and held the document up for Jack to take.
Jack walked to the desk and gingerly took it, pausing in wonder briefly to see that instead of a heavy fingerprint in the wax he instead saw what looked like a crow with its wings spread out. The man shooed Jack away back towards the door, “Go on, go find Gren, he’ll sort your attire out.”
Jack turned around and walked out the door holding the document in both hands quietly. He had taken a few steps out of the door before he realised he wasn’t in the hallway but instead in what looked like a large wardrobe. Rails of clothing criss-crossed around him; tunics, exquisite gowns, strange stripped trousers, even suits of armour hung from the various rickety polls. Upon the walls hung various hats and masquerade masks in-between candles that weren’t lit but yet still gave off a bright yellow glow. In the middle of the room there was a dressmaker’s mannequin wearing a long black cotton dress around which a small man worried. He can’t have been more than 4 feet tall though his head was unusually large and had some thick glasses which Jack realised with horror were stitched into the skin around his eyes. He stopped fretting over the dress and turned his head to look at Jack, his eyes magnified to fill the area of his glasses. Jack felt his stomach turn as he realised that the stitching holding the glasses in place seemed to be moving and twisting through the man’s skin, constantly shifting to adjust to his facial movements.
“Why hello, you’re new here! How can I help you?” the man moved with surprising speed though with an odd stoop in his posture and looked up at Jack with big wide eyes.
“I’m Jack, the man from the other room sent me here with this…” Jack looked back at the door behind him and could see the hallway clearly just a few feet away, “I’m sorry, I’m really confused as to what’s going on. I just walked out of the other man’s room but I’m suddenly in this room.”
The little man laughed and clapped his hands together “You _are_ new here! I’m Gren, you’re looking for me right?”
Jack nodded and went to speak again but stopped as Gren laughed again, “Then that’s how you’re here!” Gren loped around Jack and ushered him gently to a stool to sit down before explaining further. “The castle can hear your thoughts and has a limited understanding of where you want to go based from that. When you walk between rooms, it simply adjusts where you are within the castle to where you want to be. It’s very practical and time-saving!”
“But what is this place?! Nothing seems right and everyone Ive met has had something wrong with them and… and..” Jack faltered as he noticed that Gren’s lenses appeared to be going all blurry. He realised that Gren was crying as a line of stitching under each eye untied itself to let the tears pour it. Not before long Gren was almost doubled over and sobbing hysterically.
“Um, look, I’m sorry.” Jack looked around helplessly and patted the sobbing man on the shoulder gently.
Gren straightened up slightly after a few moments, his sobs stopping, and moped the stitching under his eyes as it tied itself back up. “It’s ok, I understand how it must look but you need to understand that it wasn’t always like this.” Gren slipped between some clothes rails and dragged another small stool out, plopping down next to Jack, and started to twist the hem of his robe while he continued. “This castle used to be a lively and fun place where every day passed without sadness or sorrow.”
“The King was young then, always laughing and smiling. His court was of an equal attitude and it seemed like nothing could go wrong. One day however the Queen went missing – oh, she was a beautiful lady, Jack – and although the King ordered the lands to be scoured no one could find her. In a rage the king ordered no one was ever to leave or enter the castle again and of course that’s when things turned bad.”
“The residents began to change; some becoming meaner, some turned sick in the mind – some just became scared. Like me. Then physical changes started to happen. The king turned exceptionally gluttonous, to the point where he is now incapable of leaving his throne. The knights’ flesh withered and crumbled to dust, remaining as walking mute suits. This happened to everyone – myself included as you can see – though the king’s daughter seemed to grow more beautiful but developed a sharp tongue, snapping at anyone who tried to talk to her or come near her.”
“Occasionally, some residents would just vanish. All their belongings would disappear also, almost as if they had never existed. Shortly after, new people would arrive like yourself, and they would quickly develop similar symptoms to the rest of us… I must admit though, they generally seemed to intrinsically know what was going on. You’re the first whose seemed so surprised by everything.” Gren wrinkled his nose and looked up at Jack. “Did Barnabus give you a letter for me?”
Jack nodded and held out his hand with the letter to Gren who looked at it as if noticing it for the first time.
“Oh, there it is, thank you!” He took the letter and examined it carefully, as if reading something. “You’re also the first Jester we’ve had…” He wrinkled his nose again before slipping off his stool and disappearing into the racks of garments. After a few moments he emerged dusting off a red and black jester’s hat and a similarly themed tunic along with a black pair of trousers. He handed them over to Jack and smiled, “Try these on.”
Jack took them in his hands and looked at them before looking at Gren, “Um, can you….?”
“Oh, yes, sorry!” Gren turned around while Jack changed into the jester’s outfit. It fitted surprisingly well as if it had been tailored for him personally.
“Ok, Im changed.”
Gren turned back round and clapped his hands delightfully, “You look great but you’re missing something.” Gren scratched his head slowly before lighting up and vanishing once more between the clothes. He emerged carrying a small stick the length of Jack’s arm bound in red and black leather. At the top of the stick there was a small plain wooden ball wearing a miniature version of the hat that Jack wore. With a flourish he handed it to Jack.
Jack took it and waggled it a few times before looking at Gren, his eyes watering slightly, “Gren, I really don’t want to be here, I want to go home.”
Gren sighed and took Jack’s free hand, “None of us want to be here anymore, and we all want to get out.” At that moment a trumpet fanfare echoed throughout the castle, causing Gren to visibly panic, “It’s time for the Kings court – Jack, just because no one’s managed to escape yet doesn’t mean it’s impossible, never give up hope! Come on, we better go!”

Morality, karma, call it what you will but theres an aspect of ourselves that defines how we act and interact with others. I don’t believe this an unchangeable aspect but I do think its integral enough that you’d require some dedication to change it. An ex-girlfriend once described me as having no regard for human life (post relationship), a statement I disagree heavily with: I would never harm another intentionally even though I may think about it in a kind of day-dream way if they’ve been particularly annoying.

RPG games offer us the unique chance to play through a small reality with a different morality but my problem is I don’t think this is actually possible to do properly. I recently ploughed through Fallout 3 where I began with the full intention of playing a Jayne Cobb style character – an expert with guns, low on charisma, very mercenary and willing to stab friends in the back if the price is right.

Jayne Cobb. Big damn hero.

For the majority of the first few hours I was able to keep this character attitude up but then I started to care about the story, the fellow characters and most importantly how they viewed me. Come the end of the main story arc I sacrificed my characters life by going into a radiation filled room to release the pressure on a control panel even though I had a member in my team who could withstand radiation. Ultimately I couldn’t bring myself to ask another to do a dangerous task that essentially was my responsibility, even though it was just a computer game!

I know for a fact that if I restricted myself to playing Fallout 3 for no longer than say 40 mins max a time, I would have been able to keep up the Jayne character easy enough but as soon as you start to get involved in a game like this I think it requires an enormous amount of willpower to make choices against your nature. Or rather, what you want your nature to be. On reflection it occurs to me that you’re not so much playing your nature but maybe how you think your nature is?

Perhaps this is part of what is so appealing about RPGs to me. It’s not just about the storyline, characterization and development, its about being able to play an idealized version of me. To go back to my scenario in Fallout 3, if that were in real life…. Im not so sure if I would have jumped into that chamber. I think I may have eventually done it, but I would have probably waivered enough in the vain hope that the person who had a better chance of survival would step forward and stop me!

Im at a pretty exciting point in my life at the moment. In a week’s time I start my new job and I’m also taking some tender steps into the world of drifting! First up, new job. Ill be starting work at a place called Vistra as a system engineer (bowing gracefully out of the IT security world for now) which, amongst other benefits, will see me visiting random places around the world from time to time. The offices are spread around the world so occasionally Ill be expected to visit these sites for auditing, maintenance etc. A very exciting career move I feel, and one that should keep me interested and active for a long time!

The second aspect is my move to take up drifting. It’s a sport that I’ve been always mildly attracted to but never thought about too much. The closest I’ve ever come to doing it is drifting in Need for Speed, or that time I slid the bum of a Ford Scorpio Cosworth out going round a roundabout.
My girlfriend Kayliegh has offered to buy me a drifting “taster” session for my birthday in July but the majority of the sites require you have your own RWD car to use… not very handy when I drive a 1.2 FWD Punto. This has led me to consider selling the Punto and investigate some RWDs (and an AWD…) but nothing concrete yet.

I joined two communities to get a better idea of the drifting world, particularly in the UK scene. The first was “driftworks.com” and the second was “trampdrift.com”. Driftworks is a huge site, home to a successful team and a lot of users. The community is very diverse but is amazingly relatively self moderated. Abuse is handed out frequently but pretty much tempered with useful advice.

The second community, TrampDrift, is a lot smaller but more tightly knit. It revolves around people drifting on the cheap (welded diffs, cut springs etc) and so far they all seem to be really cool guys. I think out of the two communities, this is probably the one Ill end up idling the most.

Interesting little adventure to note though. There’s two drift taster people I found out about; “drift-tutor” and “driftexperience”. Drift Tutor expect you to have your own car where as the other supplies one, but after a suggestion from a forum member at Driftworks I pm’d the man behind Drift Tutor and double checked.
I got a very prompt courteous reply confirming that they could supply a car but it would cost more money and that even though I had no experience I would still benefit from the course. Grade A response and one that made me want to find a RWD just to use them.
However, I was keen to see just how helpful the community at Driftworks were and posted a question about how the LSD actually works. I need to make it clear that this wasn’t a semi-troll post or anything; I genuinely didn’t know how it worked properly. First response? I was told to google it. By a man who was advertising the Drift Experience people….
So yeah, think Ill stick with Drift-Tutor or anybody else over that company! I admitted that I had googled it before but all the answers were too technical for my non-mechanic brain but I still can’t help thinking “Wow, what a dick!”. After the general pleasant atmosphere I had witnessed over the previous few days, this just seemed such a shitty response to make. Anyway.

So now I’ve made a sizeable update to this blog, Ill update again when I have something hopefully awesome to say about getting a new car or something.

What to do in life? Its a question Ive been asking myself a lot lately and sadly one Ive not been able to answer sufficiently. Currently I work as an IT security analyst, a post that I love as I hold a strong interest in that area but lately it feels like Ive just been going through the motions with no real goals (or at least readily attainable ones). As a result Ive been reflecting heavily on how I should determine what I want to do with my life.

A recent Cracked article (on 5 Creep Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted) which mentions at one point a theory by Malcom Gladwell that to be satisfied with your job you need three things:

• Autonomy – being allowed to make your own choices within reason.
• Complexity – has to be mentally taxing, not repetitive.
• Connection between Effort and Reward – when you complete a task, you see the outcome.

Now, rather annoyingly my current job offers me all three of the above to a certain extent. This means that within the bounds of this theory I am a happy and content little worker. This obviously doesn’t answer my internal dilemma though I do appreciate that this isn’t the full theory.

The next site I came across was one of these hippy new-age deals, where the opening page contains the word “self-help” at least 5 times and is littered with the now clichéd motivational pictures representing life, energy, succe- yeah, you know the sort. Anyway, it does cover the “what do I want to do with my life?” question by asking 8 in return:

• What did you dream of becoming when you were a child?
• Where do you spend your free time?
• Listen to your inner self. What does it really wish it could be doing?
• What activity do you do that makes you feel happy and when you do it, the time just flies by?
• What activities, events, shows, books are you attracted to?
• Resolve your past issues. Your past does not have to decide your future. If you let your past go and any limitations you’ve placed upon yourself, what would you be doing?
• What would success mean to you? What would the perfect life be?
• What would you do if you had the Universal Credit Card (money is no object)?

The general gist of these questions is to figure out your hobby, the solution being that your hobby is what your job should be. The problem is that the answers don’t really give me much. Take the first question for example – my child hood dream changed depending on what computer game I was playing at the time. At one point I even wanted to be a town mayor, safe in the belief that it was just like playing Sim City. One time I even seriously considered the pros and cons of being a space pilot in an Arwing. I think the closest I came to a real job consideration would be that of a computer game designer, but looking at the world of games development as it is today, it seems quite a tough area to get into and quite a segmented area once you’re in.

This reminds me of a quote from Fight Club (the movie or the book, it appears in both albeit with slightly different wording so take your pick):

We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

The result of those 8 questions leads me to believe that I will be a professional gamer with the chance to pick up any game I please and instantly get paid for it. Bit of a shame then that although the world of professional gaming is blossoming its still not enough to give me a David Beckham life style. Furthermore Ive been down the semi-pro route in online gaming before – it made me an arrogant jerk with minimal social skills and a pale complexion. It may be what my inner me wants but the outer me (thats based in the real practical world) knows better.

All this soul searching and questioning hasn’t done anything except leave me feeling even more lost and confused about what I should be doing. The closest thing Ive come across in my searching that makes me go, “Hmm” is ‘Game Story Writer’. This role involves writing plots, storylines and scripts for computer games. Considering my love for creative writing and gaming, this seems pretty awesome! However this role seems to only ever be available in temporary contracts or one off sessions – not exactly a valid career move!

One thing that has become clear through this little research dance is that our lives are no longer about who we are but what we do for a job. “What do you do for a living?”. Congratulations people, this is the new “Hello.”

So weekend before last I was quite fortunate to get accepted into the Need for Speed World beta which was up for just the weekend. The first night I was a bit upset – frequent disconnects coupled with the initial learning curve made things a bit frustrating but after that things got awesome.

For those of you not aware, World is essentially the two cities from Most Wanted and Carbon (Rockport and Palmont) merged together and open as an MMO. Yes, you read that right – a need for speed mmo! The first “wow” moment was seeing Palmont by day as Carbon had been set at night time. The graphics are beautiful and the city actually feels alive as the npc traffic goes about its buisiness.

Unlike previous NFS games online, you are essentially getting to play the Free-Roam mode online and you have the option to drill into set races either single player or multiplayer. I think I spent about 50% of my time zooming around in Free Roam with some people in cruises though, just seeing the sights and feeling cool.

The races have retained the arcade feel (this isnt Shift thankfully!) and gone a little Mario Kart-esque with the addition of power-ups like the infamous “Call Traffic Magnet” which when used makes every NPC car near the player in first place swerve towrads them. The power-ups have been heavily attacked by a lot of players but I think the majority of them are either the racing purists who prefer games like TDU and Shift or just suck at the game and have latched onto an excuse.

To hear more about my thoughts, check out these two videos:

Need for Speed World Exp Part 1

Need for Speed World Exp Part 2

Im also an admin over at the World Garage now which you can find at www.world-garage.com

Been a bit busy recently with all the start of year stuff (you know, coming out of hibernation and so on) so I have a fair bit to blog about.

First up, the holiday to Milton Keynes to see the other half’s family for Christmas. This was epic fun except I managed to catch a nasty head cold the first day there and subsequently spent the entire holiday suffering. One very nice thing that I always like about going to Milton Keynes however is getting cans of Jolt and/or Mountain Dew.

Second up, been doing a lot of short story intros – apparently its safe to call them “flash-fiction” pieces – but as soon as I have something actually completed Ill be uploading them!

Thirdly, been doing a lot more NFS recently while I wait for World Online to be unleashed. If you check my YouTube link (look to the right there!) you’ll see my attempts at breaking/setting records.

Lastly, Ive opened a small forum for the World Online community over at www.wogarage.com. Its still small but with next to no advertising its managed to get 20 members already in a week so Im pretty confident about it.

Anyway, a more detailed blog post to follow at a later date!

So, just got back into the office after a 2 week holiday (of which I had a nightmare cold for most of!) and found that my lovely Fiat-scotland.com coaster had its image defaced:

Hah bloody hah!

So, currently in the airport waiting to check in for a flight back to see Kaylieghs family. We’re very early however because of the kindness of a passer by!
We were walking up a long and lonesome road (tenacious d style) when a jeep pulled up next to us. The window went down and a man leant out asking if we were going to the airport.
Now, if this had been anywhere else in the world we would have of course declined but it was indeed a very long and lonesome road and it was just Jersey after all!
We hopped in and the man chatted away explaining that he was just on his way home – he wasn’t even going to the airport – but saw us and didn’t want us walking in the cold.

The Christmas spirit is not yet dead!

At the begining of the month, Andrew Collins at EA interviewed John Doyle, the Senior Producer for World Online, about his ambitious online project. After some discussion over at the NFS fora, I volunteered to transcribe the interview so it could be translated by other fans into different languages for the benefit of the non-English fans. Anyway, heres my finished product:

http://fasckira.com/nfs/wo_interview_transcript.pdf

It was bloody difficult to say the least! In parts, theres a lot of ahh-ing and um-ing going on, not to mention quite a few sentences that stopped midway and suddenly changed! All told it took about 3 hours to complete.

So it’s my first day off in ages but despite having plenty to do Im having a hard time getting the energy together to do anything constructive!

I blame the equally boring weather. Damn this weather, damn.