Hi, everyone.
If you are reading this, then my suspicions have been confirmed, and I have been rendered incapable of effectively using a mouse, a keyboard, or both. I wish I could say this was entirely unexpected, but I have been anticipating this moment since the last weeks of May.
Some of you may remember me complaining about having trouble with one of my hands on the 23rd. For a brief period, I seemed to make a complete recovery, but this lasted for less than a whole week, and by the time I finally got around to preparing this message on the 4th and 5th of June, I estimated that I would have maybe a week before my symptoms returned in full - and that they probably wouldn't go away again without medical intervention (if at all).
Good News, Bad News
The good news is, there probably is a medical solution, so I'll still be good for something besides doing a Shali imitation and lying in bed all day. As for the bad news... there's a pretty good chance I won't be coming back, even after I've recovered.
For one, NWN2's control scheme seems to be particularly hard on my hands. While I'm sure this has been slowly cooking up for years, the three months I've been on this server definitely haven't helped, and I don't know if I'll be stable enough to afford that kind of wear and tear again. (Who am I kidding? Until now, I've been perfectly comfortable overriding my better judgment to get a little more RP in before all hell breaks loose, so why would I feel any different later? )
However, even if I am crazy, apathetic or simply bored enough to take my chances, I don't think it'll be up to me. If there's one thing I've learned in my nearly-22 years of life, it's that my parents will veto my decisions in a heartbeat if they believe it's worth the trouble. If I've posted this message, chances are I'm about to lose all agency in the matter for the foreseeable future... so that's probably cutting my gaming time down to a big, fat zero. Trying to delay that scenario is why I have so far been reluctant to draw further attention to my ongoing deterioration, as it would deny me the opportunity to control the circumstances of my departure... or the ability to see if I might still bounce back from this. (You can all see how well that worked, huh?)
Now What?
Speaking of my departure, I have some loose ends that need to be tied up. I would prefer to pretend none of this ever happened, in case I ever come back... but on the timescales we're talking about, this really isn't feasible. So, I'm gonna wrap these up as well as I can, hopefully leaving just enough leeway to make some kind of comeback if the need arises.
Shali Menner
I have not written this post to seek pity, or sympathy. Whatever comes next, it is the culmination of a lifetime (if only a brief one ) of deliberate decisions that cannot be undone, decisions which have inevitably locked me onto this path. Decisions whose outcomes I was initially ignorant of, yes, but it would be a mistake to deny just how long I have been aware of the consequences - how long I have told myself "Nah, it'll be okay" or "That won't happen to me," refusing to believe it will come to this until it was far too late to stop it. No - if there is anything about this that is worthy of being pitied, it is the consistently poor judgment that allowed it to happen (and, by the time this is posted, will have continued to do so).
Instead, I have written it for two reasons. One was to provide closure for my characters, yes. But I believe the other one is just as important. You see, even though I've only been here a few months (and spent one of those almost completely offline), I have found something here that I haven't seen in years. Something that should not be left unmentioned, not in what may very well be my final moments as a member of this community.
My first encounter with online gaming was a long time ago, in a number of Star Wars games sometime during the last decade. (Look, that was almost half a lifetime for me! ) I was... not very nice to be around. Nonetheless, as broken as it was, there was a sense of community, finding people with similar interests and... shooting them down or outmaneuvering their fleets and armies, or being pissed off when they did the same to me. Yeah, I'm gonna stick with "not nice" there, but the community bit was satisfying.
Later, a few months after StarCraft 2 first released, I found something else entirely in the "Cortex Roleplay" custom maps. Suddenly, I was with people who shared my own interest in creating and playing out our own adventures instead of mindlessly blowing things up or repeating the same conflicts over and over again. (Not that I don't still do that sometimes.) This was a whole new world for me, and in hindsight, I still wasn't very good at making people like me. Which mattered a lot more in Cortex than it did in, say, Star Wars Battlefront. Despite this, I made a few friends, and one of my greatest regrets in these past 5-6 years has been failing to keep those friendships alive. They went one way, and I just... dropped out.
Since then, I've been wandering from community to community, looking for those magical feelings that I'd lost along the way. Star Ruler 2, Movie Battles 2, Neverwinter, The SWG emulators "Legends" and "[An?] Empire in Flames"... Each of these had something, but none of them felt quite right. EiF was the closest, by far, but the bulk of its population has always been focused on a timeslot that I would not be capable of making for years, at the very least. I could find a community there, but it was perpetually just out of reach, taunting me and my inability to break out of the confines of my European timezone.
And then I found this place. A chain of lucky accidents, both outside and inside the game, simply dropped me into your midst. A community large enough, robust enough that timezones were no obstacle, united by the same goals that have been driving me for nearly a decade. A place to let my imagination run wild, and add one more thread (or seven ) to the fabric of a world that we could enjoy building and exploring together.
A home.
I don't know if I'm coming back (though I'm likely to lurk around in Discord from time to time). I don't know if you'll even have to read this, and the closer I am to finishing this message, the more I hope I'm wrong about having to write it. But I know that, whatever happens next, it has been an honor to be a part of this community, and you will all be missed.
Thank you, goodbye...
And good luck.
(P.S. Edited Shali's fate to be slightly more in line with her current level, and made a few minor tweaks to the rest. This morning's encounter with the Krinkraks actually gave her a passable excuse to try snooping around the High Moor...)
(P.P.S. My condition hasn't yet reached the critical stage I originally expected to prompt this message, but it's gotten bad enough that I can no longer make any pretense of normal functionality. So, that's that.
On a lighter note: I don't think I should learn any more Divination spells. I'm obviously predicting the future just fine with the stuff I've got. )