{"id":232,"date":"2014-07-09T19:42:58","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T14:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realmsofdespair.info\/blogs\/tharius\/?p=232"},"modified":"2014-07-09T19:43:51","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T14:43:51","slug":"picnics-and-renfairs-and-pubs-oh-my-stoneheft-remembers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/blog\/2014\/07\/09\/picnics-and-renfairs-and-pubs-oh-my-stoneheft-remembers\/","title":{"rendered":"Picnics and Renfairs and Pubs! Oh my! Stoneheft remembers …"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the real characters of Realms is Stoneheft. \u00a0He’ll lurk about for a while and then hit you with something that either makes you really think or makes you spit milk out your nose. \u00a0I recall with muddled\u00a0clarity some of the events described here … For those that never attended one of those long ago reunions, we essentially took over a chunk of the Ontario Renaissance Festival for a good part of the day, usually followed by small group activities and finally landing at the Fox and Fiddle. \u00a0When the Ontario Renaissance Festival folded up shop and closed its gates<\/a>\u00a0the event moved to different public parks and campgrounds.<\/p>\n

This series was inspired in part by my disappointment at there not being an organized Realms of Despair Reunion this year due to lack of committed attendees but I hear that the Texas Get-Together may happen. \u00a0Huzzah if it does! \ud83d\ude42 \u00a0Maybe some of Stoneheft’s recollections might inspire you to answer “YES!” the next time someone asks if you want to come out to a reunion:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“So many years have gone by with so many varying types of reunions. My\u00a0memories are inaccurate and likely filed out of order, but there sure\u00a0are a lot of memories. Back in the pre-history days, there were the\u00a0idirect picnics, or were those io.org? I don’t remember which was first\u00a0but I remember deciding to go to one because Grace Gemstone was going. Loril and I were curious about meeting the player behind the mother of\u00a0our favorite characters, so the “Going to these things” had begun.<\/p>\n

The venues got better as the gatherings became “Realms of Despair Reunions”\u00a0rather than ISP picnics. We had fun every year at the Renaissance Festivals,\u00a0met Edmond, Dria, Kali, and so many others. We played with the swords at the\u00a0shops, won many pints of beer at the games that were awfully easy, completed\u00a0the RL quests that Dria put together and got to know the players behind the characters we knew. Absolute tonnes of fun were had, and then we’d head off\u00a0to that loud bar in Oakville and settle down over a few drinks. We met Destre\u00a0at one of these old RenFests, in good weather Destre, her husband, Loril and\u00a0I get together to try out a new or known pub.<\/p>\n

After a fairly pleasant day, at a RenFest, way out in Milton, the evening was\u00a0getting unpleasantly rainy and everyone was getting on with getting home.\u00a0Making our way out to the muddy field that passed for a parking lot, we\u00a0merged with the crowd passing through the gate and found Hubris trying to\u00a0arrange a ride home. It turns out he lives about 25 blocks away from us, so\u00a0we crammed him into the back seat of the little Volkswagen Cabriolet with Dyrk\u00a0and headed back to the City. Fortune smiled on us, Hubris likes both beer and\u00a0the Pub between his place and ours. We hit the patio with him at least once a summer for burgers and beers.<\/p>\n

Hoerkin found us. Loril and I were enjoying a RenFest when a big guy with his\u00a0nametag torn came up and announced “Hey, I’m Hoerkin!”. He was correct, I can\u00a0appreciate when someone knows who they are, so we added Hoerkin to our little\u00a0group, then Ceirana, and continued along completing Dria’s RenFest RL quest.\u00a0We must have had fun. I remember Hoerkin’s nametag was eventually ripped down\u00a0to just “Ho” and wouldn’t stay stuck to his sweatty shirt. Sweatty Ho became\u00a0a very good friend. He does, of course, like beer.<\/p>\n

The reunions changed when Milton’s RenFest closed. There was the year at the\u00a0Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, and the community camping at Bingeman’s. In\u00a0the first year, we tented it and had a great time but decided on splurging for\u00a0a cabin in the following years. Many hours gathered many great memories out\u00a0on the porch of that cabin. Grishnakh could keep a conversation going, he knew\u00a0things and had such interesting opinions and ideas about stuff in game and RL.<\/p>\n

Alex, oh where do I start. Alex can keep a conversation going all weekend and\u00a0never drop below fascinating. So long as nobody is eavesdropping we probably\u00a0won’t even get silenced or banned.\u00a0Time moves on. The venue changes to Orr’s Lake where Thoric and Jane who does\u00a0not mud host the gang personally. Loril and I are no longer able to put in a\u00a0whole weekend, but Bulgroth went and had a good time. Loril and I visit for an\u00a0afternoon and find Jane’s theatre group putting on a “theatrical swordfighting”\u00a0demonstration. How awesome was that?<\/p>\n

Reunions… Good Memories.<\/p>\n

Thanks to all of you, mentioned here or not, the reunions are a great extension\u00a0of our MUD.<\/p>\n

Thanks for 20 years.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the real characters of Realms is Stoneheft. \u00a0He’ll lurk about for a while and then hit you with something that either makes you really think or makes you… Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[168,230,29],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospective","tag-renfest","tag-reunion","tag-stoneheft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Tri1-3K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.realmsofdespair.info\/tharius\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}