Fireworks and Fun

Linett says…

I returned home to Combe earlier this week to join my father in the Bree-land Summer Days Festival. Bree is beautiful this time of year, alive with colors and smells and sounds.  And the people! The town seems busier than I remember it after months away. Even in the face of darkness looming from North and South, the people engage in a most hearty celebration of these bright days while they last. I joined in dancing and merry making with the townsfolk – and took a day trip out to Hobbiton to celebrate the season with the merry little folk there as well. I’ve acquired a new hat which I rather like:

A new cloak as well; though it’s rather gaudy for everyday wear, its brightness seems only fitting while I am here celebrating the summer.

This evening, some folk gathered at the festival grounds outside of Bree for a night of fireworks and games. I love a good fireworks show! After a few preliminary displays of lights, we took off for a game of hide-and-go-seek within the town. The wily dwarf Godiff hid himself up on one of the roofs for the first round! Nevertheless he was soon found by one Gloinon. For the second round, both Godiff and another celebrant, Blakgrim, hid within the town. I nearly found Blakgrim, but he was spotted first by an Elf called Elalfer, who kindly insisted on sharing the prize with me since I had come in right on his heels. We found Blakgrim hiding in the Cat Lady’s house – or so the people of Bree call it! The lady who keeps so many cats was not at home, but I do not think she would mind her home’s use in our revelries.

My prize was a supply of fireworks prepared for this year’s festival, so I joined our hosts, Godiff and Medallion, in displaying them for the final show. I enjoyed myself greatly in the festivities tonight, both the hide-seek and the fireworks. I always think that setting off a single firework looks so lonely and forelorn; only when it is one of a series of them, or a crowd of little lights all sent skyward together, does it really come into its own. Tonight’s show was just such a delightful display!

Becki says:

Thanks, Medallion and Godiff, for hosting the hide and seek and generously providing the prizes as well! Both it and the fireworks were a lot of fun. I often see notices of special events like this coming up on the forums for the other servers, but it seems like Nimrodel doesn’t do a whole lot of that, so it was extra special to find myself in game just in time to get in on this one! Hope to see more of it in the future…Hm, maybe I should host something myself?

Summerfest, Summerfest! (And other Book 8 fun)

Two of my girls have a new title!

So nice to enjoy the brief Sunshine, and to carry its legacy back with them into battles in the dark places of the world…(Hey, it’d be nice if having the Sunshine title entitled you to brighter lighting in Moria too, wouldn’t it?)

Alduine has been having a wonderful time at the Summer Festival this year. First she helped stock the Bywater pond with fish from the far corners of the map (the first fishing she’s done!). Along the way she assisted some scatterbrained individuals with finding various items they had misplaced, and restrained herself from suggesting that in future they keep said items attached to their person with one of those parent-to-child leashes…since they do seem to lose them again every year…

She bet on numerous races of overstuffed Hobbits and drunken Dwarves, most of which ended, like the following videos, with the contestant she supported coming in well behind the winner…

Mudric loses the Taste of Hobbiton race | Lar loses the Dwarf Race

In all the races she watched, every time her favorite lost (and Linett has only won one of them so far)…but they were fun every time, all the same! Those Dwarves and Hobbits in the races are hilarious, so much attitude!

In between races Alduine did a lot – A. LOT. – of fishing, because with her record for not winning the race bets, that was the best way to earn a lot – A. LOT. – of summerfest tokens, namely 56 of them, the amount necessary to upgrade her blonde sorrel horse to a beautiful new festival horse!

Which shall be named Freckle.

In celebration, Alduine let off some fireworks:

She watched others set off fireworks, too, quite frequently, especially while waiting around for races to start!

Then there were dance classes. Alduine made it around to all four festival grounds to learn the dances of every kindred. Actually she already knew how to dance Elf-style; she learned that at the last festival…so this summer just called for a few more advanced classes. She’s thinking of trying out for a chorus line or something, so here she shows off her newfound dancing abilities:

Dwarf Dance 1 | Dwarf Dance 2 | Hobbit Dance 1 | Hobbit Dance 2 | Man Dance 1 | Man Dance 2

She also discovered why you should not dance while holding a fishing rod. It becomes airborne!

Linett’s main goal at the festival, since she is content with her wintry steed, is apparel. Something about her being a Tailor… So she has a flashy new cloak, and will continue fishing to earn a pretty new sunhat that she can tuck her hair up into for these sultry summer days.

Linett has spent some time on more “serious” pursuits than festival fun and wardrobe upgrades, however. First thing she did was to reorganize packs, vaults, and housing chests with the new bigger stacks of food and crafting items, as well as exchange some old materials for the new, much more logical ones, and thus free up some pack space, hallelujah! (Such a pack rat. It’s just dreadful.)

Then she went to Lothlorien, where this gorgeous view of the Celebrant just south of Echad Andestel distracted her for a moment before she could go on to find Haldir. That led to revisiting ol’ Mazog…

But it didn’t lead much farther into Book 8 quests than that, because once Mazog was safe in custody again, soon after that Linett got a note in the mail about the summer festival and dropped everything else to go play. She watched some races, caught some fish, and also wondered how this fellow managed not to fall over backwards:

(He ran up on his horse and dismounted into that strange angle, so I think it had something to do with the horse climbing the steps…but weird!)

Now, Linett’s heading back to the docks to fish up some more tokens and fetch that sunhat…and maybe a banner or flowerbox for the house as well! Vanita might see about getting a sunhat as well, and Arethryth is eyeing Alduine’s new horse….Then Trumpkin and the other younguns must have a look at the newly restructured Breeland quests! I guess it’s safe to say I’m enjoying Book 8 so far…

Levity

Spotted today in the Lone-Lands: the notorious floating onion. Alduine paused to inspect it more closely.

Although it says green onion….but definitely looks like the common yellow variety. Perhaps when the green onions have been growing long enough to build up, er, a bubble of helium that permits them to float, they also grow into this non-green-onion looking form?

Mounted Minstrel

Once Alduine had hit level 34 I took a look at her savings and found it somewhat lacking, unless she wanted to go on running everywhere for a while longer than necessary. So, she’s been fundraising for a day or two by finishing up some deeds and quests…mostly in the Lone Lands, which are usually quite bleak but occasionally as pretty as this:

Finally raised the 4 gold etc. needed for a horse, not long after hitting the fine old age of level 35…so on to the Bree-fields to deliver some horses! Wow, those horse quests are just as tedious the second time around as they were for Linett…glad that’s over, and I’m not looking forward to delivering those steeds again for the other alts! However, Alduine would like to boast that she did finish the 2-minute course – the final quest in the horse-buying chain – the first time around! It took Linett a few tries to do it, what with figuring out how to avoid the water and when to jump in order to get it all in under 2 minutes. Of course Alduine learned from Linett’s mistakes…And now she has her own lovely mount:

Just in time to trade it in for a Summerfest horse, too, if I like how the festival horse looks!

A Very Crowded Common Room

Going through old screenshots for some to put in the Gallery over on the left, I came across some from the Bullroarer stress test a while ago. What an event that was! So many people logged on at once, it was quite a challenge to move anywhere. I ended up in Bree somehow or other, at the Prancing Pony, and then it took several minutes just to get in the Pony’s door…because you would (along with 25 other people at the same time…) click to open it, then try to move forward through the door so it would load in the inn interior, but the lag was so bad that before you could reach the door (and you’d be standing right up against it…just waiting for that forward-step click to register!), it would close again. Took at least three or four tries opening it before I made it through, so I gave up on trying to go anywhere else that night. But it was fun there, as the Devs (well, two of them at least) were holding court ’round the fireplace. So I settled in there for a fun evening of just watching them answer questions as the room got fuller and fuller. The following screenshot amused me particularly for the irony of Aloryana’s comment that I happened to catch with it…did not notice that comment when I took the picture, not until today looking through them again!

View more LOTRO screenshots on WeGame.

If the Pony’s common room had looked like that when Frodo was posing as Mr. Underhill, no one would even have noticed him disappear when the Ring slipped on his finger!

Another Night Sky

Arethryth did some star-gazing today, too…anyone recognize this constellation? I don’t…

View more LOTRO screenshots on WeGame.

In the Night Sky

Alduine’s been questing around Esteldin today (including Othrikar, as in round 2 of Where’s Alduine below) and paused on her way out of the hidden Ranger camp to admire the stars of Middle-earth. What a gorgeous night it was! I feel like I should be able to identify constellations within these pictures, but I’m not much good at locating anything besides the Big Dipper and Orion. (I see the former in the first screenshot here, with the moon…) Pitiful for a classicist, I suppose, not to know all the constellations since they have so many mythological connections…

Anyone recognize any other constellations in the LOTRO sky here?

View more LOTRO screenshots on WeGame.

View more LOTRO screenshots on WeGame.

View more LOTRO screenshots on WeGame.

Click to see full size…that starry sky looks a little hazy when you shrink it down to thumbnails!

Bound for Rivendell

Alduine is almost to level 30. She hasn’t yet made the run to Rivendell, so it was enticing to see her racial deed Enmity of the Orcs II pop up a few days ago…What’s this? Just kill 150 orcs and I can find my way to Imladris straight away? I am so in!

She had forty or so of those orcs accounted for when I logged in today, and not too many quests that I really cared to work on today, so I decided to do some grinding and work on that deed. And you know what? It didn’t really feel like a grind, plowing through those orcs in Gurzlum. More like…combat practice. Having not played Alduine for a little while (I’ve been having too much fun leveling a runekeeper actually…Handuilas, whom I should introduce sometime), going through the motions of combat with orcs a few levels beneath her was a nice way of getting the hang of minstrel play again. So before I knew it, Alduine had finished off over a hundred orcs (!!!) and received her Return to Rivendell trait. Yay!