Tomorrow is the official launch of Blaugust and I am pretty freaking excited about it. I think last I checked we had something in the vicinity of 52 blogs signed up and I am hoping once the first topics start rolling in that number will keep incrementing upwards. July 25th through July 31st I have dubbed the Blaugust Prep Week, and what you can see from me and hopefully the other mentors is a series of posts talking about how to get started. These may range from technical discussions of WordPress vs Blogger vs Tumblr to more general discussions of picking a format for your blog or coming up with a name you won’t immediately outgrow. For the participants however, they should view this as a time to stretch their legs a bit and prepare for the month ahead. Get some of those early posts in so that you can sort out your own personal blogging rhythms.
Since we had a few more folks sign up I figure I should link their stuff here as well.
New Participants
Once again if you have not taken the time to sign up, please do so. Considering we have all been there before deciding if we should be blogging at all… I promise you can do this thing. When you have signed up make sure you pop by the discord and come hang out as we chat about bloggery things.
One of the weird disconnects thematically that I have in Elder Scrolls games has always been the Dark Brotherhood. For the uninitiated, the Dark Brotherhood is a group of assassins that answer the call of the Night Mother. Around the game world individuals perform a ritual known as the Black Sacrament that calls on the Night Mother with a very specific prayer “Sweet Mother, sweet Mother, send your child unto me, for the sins of the unworthy must be baptized in blood and fear.” This prayer is heard by the Night Mother and relayed to the Listener of a specific sanctuary which then goes and seals the contract. We as players traditionally carry out these contracts that involve taking the life of someone who has generally speaking wronged someone else.
So you would expect that from within the Dark Brotherhood everyone would effectively be blood thirsty assassins ready to kill at a moments notice. While the last bit is true… the Sanctuary has a very different feel on the inside. The Dark Brotherhood represents some of the most weirdly sweet content in an Elder Scrolls game. The members all take care of each other like a family, and when you return home the various other assassins are generally happy to see you. There is something almost weirdly wholesome about the whole situation, and ultimately I think that is what makes the experience all the more unsettling.
Ultimately every tale of the Dark Brotherhood tends to end in the same manner, and I am wondering if the tale told in Elder Scrolls Online will be the same. There are several characters that I genuinely like… like the Nord who sheltered a scared werewolf girl and adopted her as his sister. Every game seems to have some characters that you just feel protective over… in spite of the fact that they are legitimately cold blooded killers. It is a bizarre juxtaposition that makes me completely uncertain how to feel about any of it… but it is also one of those guilds that I always look forward to seeing the storyline. It is progressing much slower than the Thieves Guild did, and I can’t say I am any better at getting a kill in without being noticed. That said it doesn’t really seem to matter much in the grand scheme of things as I can simply hide out until the heat and my bounty clears. The thieves guild and dark brotherhood skill lines are amazingly complimentary… and my only complaint so far is that I cannot assassinate folks during the thieves guild dailies without triggering “being seen” and reducing my timer.
May the dread father guide your blade.
