Valar Guild

September 18, 2016 Sunday Meeting

5pm EST (UTC/GMT - 5)
AIM: Valar Guild Meetingplace

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Transcript work by Ar-Pharazon and Varda.

Attending: (4)
    Arien-(Valar)/Arien V, Ar-Pharazon-(V)/arpharazonv, GwaihirValar, VardaValar1 (presiding)

Before-meeting
Meeting begins
Membership:
    New Tolkien member: Little Jewel-(T)
Web:
    Art: from the Bohemian Weasel-(T)
    Story: from Little Jewel-(T)
Gaming
Tolkien:
    Topic: Forum rp
    Link for Tolkien books and art, other fantasy stuff. Recommended by Arien.
After-meeting:
    Flashgaming Reviews by Ar-Pharazon
    Personal gaming
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Before-meeting
Ar-Pharazon-V (ArPharazonV) has entered the room.
Varda Valar (VardaValar1) has entered the room.
Varda Valar: Aiya, still nearly 15 minutes. :-)
Ar-Pharazon-V: Aiya!
Ar-Pharazon-V: Good, just doing some questing at the academy in Azsuna. Feels a bit Harry Potter ish.
Varda Valar: heh
Varda Valar: Inviting
Varda Valar: Any sign of Sunshine?
Ar-Pharazon-V: Sunshine poked, with a large and now burned stick.
Varda Valar: Thanks :-)
Ar-Pharazon-V: No response yet.
Varda Valar: okie dokie, may be away. I'll grab something to drink
Ar-Pharazon-V: Ah, she's there.
Arien V (AriehnV) has entered the room.
Arien V: aiya al :-)
Arien V: sorry forgot time
Ar-Pharazon-V: Aiya!
Arien V: aiya Phari :-)
Arien V: aiya Varda
Varda Valar: Aiya Arien :-)
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Varda Valar: Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo!
Varda Valar: Membership:
Varda Valar: We have a new Tolkien-only member, Little Jewel-(T)
Varda Valar: She joined as a Tolkien member by sending us a short story and has a large batch more that we should be seeing after a bit. :-)
Varda Valar: Hello from Fangorn, Sauron, and Bilbo on this side of the screen.
Varda Valar: Our garage doors are now installed so we're taking a deep breath.  :-)
Arien V: Aiya and welcome Little Jewel :-D
Ar-Pharazon-V: Aiya all!
Arien V: yes and aiya to the gang
Varda Valar: Yes? Does that mean you have news? :-)
Varda Valar: Guess not, heh. Ok, news from Eonwe.
Varda Valar: The Games Site Mass Update is chugging along. Be sure to check your info on the Games Site to see that it's how you meant it to be.
Varda Valar: Thank you to those who have already responded. Here's a list from Eonwe:
Varda Valar: Arwen, Varda, Bofur, Celebrian, Elrond, Fangorn, Falathar, Menelvagor, Mirabella, Nerdanel, Scatha
Ar-Pharazon-V: Oh. Yes. I'll get right on that.
Varda Valar: Thank you, Phar. :-)
Arien V: will send in the next couple of days :-) still off tomorrow and Tuesday
GwaihirValar has entered the room.
Varda Valar: Oh good! That might give you time to breathe and even send in your news to Eonwe. :-)
Varda Valar: Aiya Eagle!
Arien V: got a few days holidays and aiya Gwaihir :-)
Varda Valar: The Games Site Mass Update is underway and needs everyone's input to make it work and be current. Thanks so much for all the cooperation everyone's been giving.
Varda Valar: Any other Membership news?
GwaihirValar: hello - probably won't say much, currently streaming, but I figured I'd pop in
Varda Valar: Thank you for doing that!
Ar-Pharazon-V: Aiya!
Varda Valar: Lurkers welcome. Scrolling is your friend.
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Varda Valar: Web:

Varda Valar: We have a new story from Little Jewel-(T), first of a sizable list that she hopes to be sending soon.
Varda Valar: "Fire" is the name of the short story:
Varda Valar: http://valarguild.org/varda/Tolkien/encyc/fiction/authorsT/LittleJewel/Fire.htm

Varda Valar: For the upcoming September 22nd birthday of Bilbo and Frodo, we have new artwork
Varda Valar: from the Bohemian Weasel-(T):
Varda Valar: "Bag End"
Varda Valar: http://valarguild.org/varda/Tolkien/encyc/art/gallery/BohemianWeasel/places/Shire/BagEnd2016.jpg

Varda Valar: I recommend sending food and maybe blasting fireworks in honor of the birthday.
Varda Valar: Maybe we could drop over to Bag End to do it for our LotRO bunch.  :-)
Varda Valar: Run over to the Party Tree!
Varda Valar: It's just down the Hill.
Varda Valar: Any other suggestions for fesitivities for your games or the website?
Varda Valar: If none come to mind at the moment, feel free to email me and they can go on the News, or put them in the forum if you prefer.
Varda Valar: or both. :-)
Varda Valar: We also have our Anniversary upcoming on October 4th. Feel free to make suggestions for that party, fireworks at various towns, send goodies to each other, send in stuff for the Tolkien Site.
Varda Valar: Whatever works for you!
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Varda Valar: Gaming:

Varda Valar: In LotRO, we continue to have our Alliance offers for Saturdays and Sundays:
Varda Valar: Saturdays at 3:30pm Eastern is the Roving Threat raid.
Varda Valar: Sundays at 1pm Eastern is the rp, story-telling, music, etc time.
Varda Valar: Some duoing mostly in kin with various ones.

Varda Valar: WoW:
Varda Valar: Two new previews are out: Raid Preview: 7 Eerie Reasons to Enter the Emerald Nightmare and Preview: Mythic Keystones.
Varda Valar: Blizzard is now also allowing Battletag changes for a charge.
Varda Valar: Check out the recent hotfixes. .
Ar-Pharazon-V: Very clever...
Varda Valar: ?
Ar-Pharazon-V: The battletag changes :-)
Varda Valar: ahh, yes.
Arien V: aha
Ar-Pharazon-V: They want something, make them pay for it!

Varda Valar: Oh, some more LotRO news, the folks gaming there this past week are:
Varda Valar:
Bregalad
Celebrian
Dis
Elrond
Elwing
Fangorn
Lenwe
Nar
Varda

Varda Valar: StarCraft 2:
Varda Valar: Patch 3.6.0 is out.
Varda Valar: There's also a blog out: Patch 3.6.0 Feature Roundup.

Varda Valar: Heroes of the Storm:
Varda Valar: A new patch is out.

Varda Valar: Hearthstone:
Varda Valar: A new update is out this week.

Varda Valar: That's all from the Games Site. Any other general gaming news?
Varda Valar: StarCraft/BroodWar gaming by Fangorn, Sauron, and Varda.
Varda Valar: (And yes, all previous Games Site info for members' games has been wiped to make way for current info.)
Varda Valar: Any other comments, suggestions, news before we change over?
Varda Valar: (and yes, the new info given has been entered on the Games Site)
Ar-Pharazon-V: Alarak's the new hero in Heroes of the Storm this week, but I think I already mentioned that last time :-)
Varda Valar: Doesn't hurt to mention again.
GwaihirValar: he's also newly available in sc2 co-op apparently
Ar-Pharazon-V: Also, there's a new event-quest there which takes a long time and I have no idea how feasible it is to get before the event ends.
Varda Valar: No sleep for gamers!
Ar-Pharazon-V: Something like that.
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Varda Valar: Tolkien:
Varda Valar: Our last forum rp post came from Arien, thank you for that. :-)
Varda Valar: Do we have an idea of what we want to do from there? We can do a time skip and jump to a new scene?
Varda Valar: We might have one post, could be short, from Calion outside the room? Then time jump?
Ar-Pharazon-V: I... suppose. I honestly have no idea what to put in.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Not sure if Calion or Fainan should respond to what Frali's saying.
Varda Valar: Hmm
Varda Valar: (Auros's last post was a surprise discovery about the blade and sending a note to Elrond that he'd made progress.)
Varda Valar: Ok, Frali's last comment was:
Varda Valar: Outside the young dwarf turned to Calion and Fainan: "I could go scouting the borders while your birds are out in the air , do the same thing on the ground if you want."
Varda Valar: I figure Elrond's people would have anything nearby well scouted.
Varda Valar: One of our confusions is that Calion outranks Fainan back home in Mirkwood. He's a noble and she's a scout.
Varda Valar: I think he's probably older too
Ar-Pharazon-V: I'm trying to remember if we planned to decide on having Fainan in charge here in the chat, or if we'd already put it in a post.
Varda Valar: That was something we considered having happen after we got underway.
Varda Valar: Fainan just has the one purpose of handling the sorceror problem, no politics to get in the way or other stuff.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Alright. So Calion's the high-ranking one...
Varda Valar: When we lost Meren to Rivendell, that made Calion the high-ranking Mirkwoodite.
Varda Valar: We also now have only the three of us.
Varda Valar: Auros hasn't joined us yet. That's what happens next.
Varda Valar: The Fellowship is about to leave. Maybe we can add to the confusion about who's going where, as we all seem to just be more parties going out on recons.
Varda Valar: Go about the same time. Our prince will be leaving, and he could give us instructions to cooperate with Auros to the best of our ability.
Varda Valar: Just like he has to with his diverse party.
Varda Valar: We get along with our dwarf unusually well, maybe thanks to his adaptable youthfulness.
Varda Valar: He hasn't been throwing tales of Thingol's necklace and Thorin's Company in the hoosegow at us.
Arien V: Callion would be saying hallo to Legolas and Fainan maybe as well if he is their prince
Arien V: cant imagine they wouldnt see him#
Varda Valar: Aye. We did see him earlier, but we're not high ranking enough to feel buddy buddy. We would see him off with the rest of Rivendell, most likley.
Varda Valar: Legolas knows very well that Gandalf is a Maia. It doesn't seem to be a secret at Rivendell.
Ar-Pharazon-V: So what's our timeline here? How long until we're leaving, and how long until the Fellowship leaves?
Varda Valar: We may know him and maybe better know Radagast.
Varda Valar: The Fellowship leaves in the autumn. So autumn is about here and we'll be setting out right after they do.
Varda Valar: What time of day did they leave? Daylight? Morning or evening? Night?
Ar-Pharazon-V: Are we talking days, here?
Ar-Pharazon-V: Weeks?
Varda Valar: I think days.
Varda Valar: We are very close to ready.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Alright. So I'll say something along the lines of, better not go scouting too far, Elrond might have us leave any day, so best be ready?
Varda Valar: Auros' storyline is a little ahead of ours and we can use our time skip here to catch up.
Varda Valar: Or maybe that his scouts already know anything near enough that we would have time to look at.
Varda Valar: It's their home territory, has patrols.
Varda Valar: Elladan and Elrohir go out often with the rangers in the area keeping the orc population very thin.
Varda Valar: They really hate orcs after Celebrian.
Varda Valar: after Celebrian's capture. They rescued her.
Varda Valar: We might ask one of them for scounting info?
Varda Valar: They would be coming and going. I expect they would want to see Aragorn off.
Varda Valar: *scouting
Arien V: Aye Calion could say something along the lines
Arien V: kind of "dont think its necessary but we can find out what we already know"
Arien V: or what is already known rather
Arien V: just a suggestion :-)
Varda Valar: That would work
Ar-Pharazon-V: How about "Not a good idea, we'd best stay close and be ready. Besides, I'm sure the area around Rivendell is constantly watched and scouted, so if you want to know something, you can ask the scouts"?
Varda Valar: Maybe diplomatically leave off the "not a good idea" but say the rest?
Ar-Pharazon-V: Sure.
Varda Valar: We could ask them close to the time we leave, for the latest intel.
Ar-Pharazon-V: That works.
Varda Valar: okie dokie.
Varda Valar: Shall we bring the meeting to a close? We made some progress today. ;-)
Ar-Pharazon-V: Hang on, still doing stuff, but being badgered on 3 sides.
Varda Valar: ok, no worries. :-)
Arien V: sounds great :-) i mean the progress with the posts :-)

Arien V: Mark Faith has new interesting and payable items on amazon by the way :-)
Arien V: i ll give you the link to his shop there
Arien V: http://shop.festivalartandbooks.com/
Varda Valar: Collectible rare art and books. Includes Tolkien
Varda Valar: er, collectible art and rare books, pardon. Includes Tolkien.
Arien V: aye he started out with just Tolkien but he promotes now young fantasy artists with Tolkien based art
Varda Valar: Sounds like our kind of guy.
Arien V: or fantasy in general but there is always Tolkien among them
Arien V: yes he does :-)
Arien V: you could try and contact him and ask him if he wants to join :-D
Arien V: he is based in North Wales but i think they have a branch in the states somewhere
Varda Valar: heh
Varda Valar: Could wander a while just from the links.
Varda Valar: *picks up gavel*
Varda Valar: *brings it down quickly*
Varda Valar: *feathers fly in all directions and take off as tiny birds*

Varda Valar: After-meeting!
Arien V: nice :-D
Arien V: ah well you ..
Arien V: not all that wander are lost :-)
Arien V: you know
Varda Valar: They may come back as a hammer when they feel like it.
Varda Valar: Great for handling falcon attacks, for instance. Surprising.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Post made.
Ar-Pharazon-V: What, tiny birds that can change into hammers? Sounds very practical indeed.
Arien V: Birds of Kazgaroth?
Arien V: Thors feathers?#
Varda Valar: They were all a member of our meeting gavel just now, and can reform into it if they please.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Ah, all make one hammer together.
Ar-Pharazon-V: What if one goes missing, do we have a hammer with a bit missing?
Ar-Pharazon-V: Hmm, for the gaming update... I suppose it's not very clever to make my battletag number public, but it might be the only way to have people contact me.
Varda Valar: Spread a wing out to cover up the hole.
Varda Valar: or just give it fellow Valarites in the game
Varda Valar: That's one reason we have the Games Site
Ar-Pharazon-V: But that's the thing. How can I give it to other Valarites if they need it to contact me in the first place?
Varda Valar: Email contact from the Membership page, if lucky.
Varda Valar: Transcript readers, please make sure your email for contacting the guild is current. We ran into a lot that weren't.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Actually, if people can just access the website to email me or contact me in AIM, what's so much worse about knowing my battletag?
Varda Valar: Trying not to let trolls get it I guess? They can drop right into your games.
Ar-Pharazon-V: I'm telling Eonwe in the email to put some spaces in the tag, I guess, maybe that'll stop people from scanning for them.
Varda Valar: They can in Diablo
Varda Valar: That crossed with your tell. I don't know if the spaces get disappeared or not.
Varda Valar: Ok, going to go work on supper.
Varda Valar: Will pop by scrolling as a lurker. :-)
Varda Valar: Thanks for posting :-)
Varda Valar: (Oh, I did invite Elladan-V, but he may have been afk)
Ar-Pharazon-V: Email sent.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Perrrrrsonal gaming time

Ar-Pharazon-V: Let me find 3 flashgames for this week.
Ar-Pharazon-V: http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/banana_bonanza is the first one! A kinda retro platformer where you have to collect bananas and gems in various levels.
Arien V: thats a nice one bit like super mario the first ones :-)
Ar-Pharazon-V: http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/steam_heart is the second one, another platformer. A bit more unforgiving, and appears to be single runs that last as far as you can make it, over various levels. A bit mega-man like, with the weapons.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Or Jazz Jackrabbit, if anyone remembers that.
Ar-Pharazon-V: http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/amigo_pancho_death_star is the third one! A puzzle game where you have to guide a ballooned guy up the shafts and corridors by changing platforms, fans and other obstacles.
Ar-Pharazon-V: One in a pretty long series by now, this particular installment being starwars themed.

Ar-Pharazon-V: Blizzard games!
Ar-Pharazon-V: Bit of Diablo 3 (finally) getting the first half of Season Journey chapter 4 complete in a few hours yesterday afternoon. The objectives here are pretty simple, in chapter 4 it's basically getting some objectives done which should be doable with the rewards for 2 and 3.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Heroes of the Storm: Trying to work on the event quest, but it's slow. You do often get stimpacks in this event, though, so there's a lot of bonus experience for your heroes.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Hearthstone: Played a bit of catch up, though some classes are still pretty far behind. This week's brawl was quite interesting! Choose a class, 3 cards that you own, get 10 of each. Some simple combinations can be pretty powerful. One of the most annoying I faced was druid decks with innervate, some card-drawing murlocs, and recycle. A really effective away to mill through your player's cards and leaving them dying of fatigue.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Myself, I got a pretty decent winrate with a mage with frostbolt, fireball and vaporize (the secret to destroy an enemy minion when it attacks). Nothing too overpowered, but still good enough.
Ar-Pharazon-V: I'm curious about the new priest hero they put in the game with the last patch, Tyrande the night elf. Apparently she's for some unannounced promotion event. Would be nice if I could get that one, but I'm not counting on it. Promotions can be quite select.
Ar-Pharazon-V: WoW: Slowly plodding onwards. My raidgroup has a testraid coming up on thursday but I'm at about a third of the way, so not making that.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Level 103 and a half now, or just over.
Ar-Pharazon-V: I've gotten all my druid artifacts, and a few more classquests, but that's a bit stalled right now because I'll need future instances and a bunch of class order missions. 2 more champions at least, and druids of the wild available as troops.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Yay bears!
Ar-Pharazon-V: Made some good progress in the leatherworking and skinning quests, but most of those have to wait until further zones. Also unlocked the Nomi quests, the panda chef who we first met in Pandaria as a cub, which should guide me through the cooking profession in Legion. This new approach to professions in Legion is quite interesting :-)
Ar-Pharazon-V: Reminds me of the old classic WoW with specialization quests and patterns, but less exclusive.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Pushed a bit further into Azsuna after all of that as well, clearing some bonus areas and almost finishing the third quest chapter out of 5. Unless there's some new Dalaran stuff coming at level 104, from here on it will be normal questing for a while until Azsuna is done, because the rest requires the other zones.
Ar-Pharazon-V: The old appearance unlocking has taken me through Razorfen Downs and both Stratholme instances, the latter of which I finished today. This included the Piccolo of Flaming Fire toy! Will start Zul'farrak tomorrow, which is quite nostalgic as the first troll instance :-) The end of the Classic instances is starting to draw near.
Ar-Pharazon-V: And yes, I think that's the end of my report for this week!

Varda Valar: Thank you, Phar :-)
Arien V: nice one :-)
Arien V: grats
Ar-Pharazon-V: Oh, and I just found a strategy for the Heroes of the storm quest I might use in the last few weeks...
Ar-Pharazon-V: https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/52v7l7 for those curious
Varda Valar: Thanky
Ar-Pharazon-V: It ultimately comes down to, put everything on easy AI and steal all the fragments because AI don't bother.
Varda Valar: heh
Arien V: hehe oki do :-) i ll go to bed tho now *yawns*#
Ar-Pharazon-V: Namarie!
Arien V: Namarie :-)
Arien V (AriehnV) has left the room.
   
Ar-Pharazon-V: Oh, and one more mention, I ordered the WoW movie comic "Bonds of Brotherhood" a few days ago, and reserved the movie dvd and several upcoming reprints of older Warcraft novels I'm still lacking. I bought Cycle of Hatred too, which appeared to be available, but then got an email that it wasn't, so there's a bug going on there.
Ar-Pharazon-V: Still, anything that adds to the collection is welcome.
Varda Valar: oops. Glad they knew about the problme
Varda Valar: *problem
Ar-Pharazon-V: Hmhm.
Ar-Pharazon-V: saving and sending transcript
Varda Valar: Thank you
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