For those who do not know, Caessa (the lovely Mare, my bride) had some surgery done on Monday at noon of this week. Nothing serious, but it will take her two weeks or longer to recover. She is able to move about a bit, but I am off this week, taking care of her, and may be off next week. She is able to sit up and watch some times but most of her time this week has been sleeping in bed, or lying on the couch near the computer drifting in and out of sleep.

I am able to play for short streches when she is sleeping and have to leave in the middle of playing quite a bit to get her more medicice, bowls of soup, ginger ale, help her down stairs, pick up prescriptions, help her back up stairs, etc etc etc.

Thank you all once again for your kind letters and words last week during the whole "Should we join another alliance" debate ["Should we Stay the Source?"]. Great reading on that web site Khali, and that web site just gets better and better every day [thanks!]. I go to other web sites, and they are so disorganized, and so user unfriendly, I can't believe how good we have it. Thank you all. And a huge thanks to Khali who really does a GREAT job on our web site.

I went to Bandy hil last night to hang out with Jadera, Muttfyre, Hiro, and Miko K-sun. (Why do I feel like i am forgetting someone) I basically just went there to be another target for the bandies and to kill the captain when he showed his ugly mugg. I was hoping to just stand around and let Muttfire, Hiro and Jadera gain a lot of exp killing bandies.

Sadly, I was hoping to talk with the people there and just shoot the breeze while we killed bandies, but as usual, that was not to be. As the people I was with can tell you, I spent most of the evening standing still aparently lost in space, not contributing a thing. When in fact, I was talking with 5-7 people thoughout the night, most of whom I had never met.

Which brings me to something else that I have said before, and needs to be said again, and needs to be posted on our web site if it isn't there already. [it is now, here]

I do not wish to be a king, or a reeve, or even a baron, by buying vassals. None of my vassals should either. If you are gaining a lot of vassals, and not paying a lot of attention to them - PLEASE STOP. I want everyone in my alliance to have a good solid community. And that does not mean with me, that means with everyone. If you have three fifth level vassals, make sure they all know each other and adventure together. Encourage them to come to Yanshi, or at the least, to a town where you are or other vassals are. I never, ever want to hear someone say about anyone of the source, "No, I never see my patron."

As the Monarch, I feel it is important that the level one people feel they can msg me any time for help and advice, but something has to be done when they feel more comfortabel msging me than their own patron. Please stress that they can msg me any time they wish, but that they should first msg YOU and then if you are not on-line, YOUR Patron, and give them your patron's name. Then me.

Mizu and I and Joshua have played on Darktide probably less than 30 hours combined. Not very much. We are experimenting over there, and play there sometimes, but not a lot. And I have not been there in probably two weeks. If the source ever moves over to Darktide, it will be as a hobby, and as a lark, and not for a long time. If you wish to play on Darktide, and have Mizu as your monarch, come join us. We are, as always, based out of Yanshi, but do not expect to see us there very often, and do not expect a major commitment from any of us. Darktide is a change of pace, it is not a move.