Like any self-respecting Rohirric girl, Aethlin had been pretty steamed at her lack of a horse. One of the descendants of the horse-lords of the Riddermark, horseless? Scandalous! All of that changed today!

The other day, while battling her way through the Red Pass with a merry band of hobbits, Aethlin achieved level 35. And This evening, after riding fresh steeds to Bree, Michel Delving and Orthikar, Aethlin was finally able to call her horse to her.

His name is Eoryn.

My time since switching servers has certainly been action packed. There’s always something going on on Landroval and I’m liking it that way. If it’s not a group for quests it’s RP events or music.

Thaliya and I have been taken in by The Sons of Númenor, a great group of people. Active at the times when we’re around, always enough people on to get a group going. Recently we’ve started doing radiance instances, as I mentioned before - and it’s way more fun than people made it out to be. Epic boss fights are epic.

After a few runs through Skumfil yesterday with the Sons of Númenor, Valaraein finally has her Radiance leggings. They really aren’t leggings as much as an armored skirt, which is totally fine by me. Paired with the Marchwarden’s armor and gloves here for cosmetic appeal the radiance gear looks pretty fierce. Unfortunately, Thaliya hasn’t gotten any of her radiance gear yet, but we’ll get there.

The boots actually sort of remind me of snowboarding boots - I prefer a little more of a streamlined look in footwear, but with the skirt obscuring Valaraein’s slender elven legs it doesn’t look too ridiculous.

Another thing I’ve been doing on a regular basis lately is running through the Battle for Aughaire instance. I’d never done it until a week or two ago when a small group from The Lonely Mountain Band went. Aethlin isn’t big enough to join in on the adventures with her guildmates, but luckily now Valaraein is here to join in the high-level fun.

During the Battle for Aughaire, all sorts of interesting things drop - including some items you can barter for relatively unknown and rare cosmetic clothing, like the Cloak of Vigilance, seen above. Now I have to keep doing it until we can get one to drop for Galenswerd I promised I wouldn’t roll on it if the same item dropped again (obviously) but other items are fair game…

The first time I ever did the Helchgam instance in Carn Dûm, I was sick. We made it all the way through, I’m told, but I fell asleep at the end and fell into the acid, died, and didn’t get to roll on any of the loot. But last night, I did it again with a group of intrepid adventurers from The Lonely Mountain Band (Galenswerd, Harperella, Ashenwoods, Eitheliel and a new recruit whose name I do not remember)… I’ve been itching to do some Carn Dûm action for a couple weeks now, so I was really excited to do it.

And when we were victorious and rolled on the stuff at the end… well, look who ended up with a fancy new tentacle decoration for the house! Fabulous - who doesn’t need a slimy twitching appendage in a barrel to make their living room a more cozy place?!

Ever since the move to Landroval, Thaliya and Valaraein have been on the move. I think we’re both totally just drunk on all the new content we can explore now that we’re able to find groups for things reliably - bounties, instances, and yesterday afternoon, the best yet. We joined forces with a few of the fine fellows from Sons of Numenor for a Grand Stair run on Hard, Valaraein and Thaliya’s (ugh, still getting used to name changes!) first attempt at a radiance gear instance.

It was amazing. Totally f’in epic. I would do it again in a heartbeat (and hopefully will, soon!), and everyone we’ve met from Sons of Numenor have been awesome - it was a really fun group. Serious, knows what they’re doing, but aren’t so “over-serious” that it isn’t fun anymore if someone makes a mistake. They were excited for it being our first time doing it rather than exasperated that they grouped with n00bs. I liked that. Great group of people.

We made quick and efficient work of this instance - orc after orc fell to our blades and arrows. Fighting wave after wave of elite mobs wth 15k+ morale was intense and intensely satisfying. Totally epic. This is a whole new level of gameplay for me and I’m really enjoying it - and every day I’m reminded what a great idea moving to Landroval has been. Just the sheer number of things we’ve done since we moved that we’ve wanted to do for MONTHS but never even been able to TRY is staggering.  It’s just awesome.

So, of course, many, MANY thanks to the Sons of Numenor (our camrades names unfortunately evade me at the moment) for adventuring with us, I had a hell of a good time and I can’t wait to try another of these instances - soon, hopefully!

Oh, and the boots? I won the roll for the platinum coin and Valaraein is now sporting her sexy new Boots of the Great Bow - her first radiance armor!

Hey, nice boots. Wanna f….ellowship?

We’ve completely arrived, for real.

You can find the two of us as Valaraein and Thaliya (hey, we both grew I’s in our names!).  I am on quite often, please feel free to come talk to me, say hello!  We’re thrilled to be here - earlier in the day we went and did a quick bounty run with Harperella, and I have to admit that my hesitance about the “upper level” on Landroval has disappeared.  I was worried that it was basically a whole bunch of “level up as much as you need to and RP” but it’s not!

As a warning, I suppose:  I am going to continue to use the name Valaraen here, and in my writing - .  I’m still very upset that someone who hasn’t ever even logged in is sitting on my name and that the GMs won’t do anything about it, but that’s how it’s got to be, I guess.

So the transfer went through just fine. Thalya (er, Thaliya) got there and went through the rename process just fine and everything’s great…. with me, everything’s not so great. There’s not another “Valaraen” on the server, but it will not let me keep my name.

I’m freaking out.

“No, Val.  We’re not there.  Shut.  Up.”

So, obviously, our server transfer hasn’t completed yet.  We weren’t expecting it to be instantaneous but we were defintely hoping it’d take less than the vague “5-14 business days” timeframe.  Today’s the day we realisticially are going to be thinking it’ll happen for real.  Exciting stuff here, people!

We are looking forward to wandering out into the world and actually… you know… role playing with people.  Other people!  Not just the two of us.

Aethlin has been hard at work studying, and has attained the rank of Master Scholar.  With good fortunes, she will be a Grand Master Scholar soon - at this moment she has 543/1040 points necessary for GM Scholar.  Time to go harvest some more juicy strawberries - she’s gotten this far almost exclusively by making dye from produce.

Here are some gratuitous screenshots from Ales and Tales at the Mad Badger with the Lonely Mountain Band:

So, as I’ve said, Thalya and I are switching servers - there’s a problem.  The name “Thalya” is taken on Landroval, although the person who has it is level 2 and hasn’t logged in in more than 2 months.  This is really frustrating - because there’s no way to contact him/her to see if they’ll free up the name!

Wish they were high enough level to show up on MyLotRO.  It’s not a HUGE deal, but man, what a pain.

Looks like someone’s got a name change in their near future…  I suggested “Thalyia” or “Thaliya.”  What say you?

Harperiel, Aethlin, Astleigh

The ladies of The Lonely Mountain Band took the North Downs, Dol Dinen and Nan Wathren by storm tonight. Innumerable trolls and orcs fell in the battle, from which our lovely heroines emerged victorious.

Here you see a short period of rest before entering Nan Wathren to finish off “Tending the Glade” - Nen Harn, surely, is one place the Shadow has yet to touch…

So, sometime this next week or so, Thalya and I are switching servers to Landroval, unless we find a really good reason not to. Windfola is so underpopulated that it’s impossible to find pick-up groups for anything, and the whole server seems east-coast based. Since we play only at night and are in the pacific time zone, it’s a ghost town at the times of day when we’re on.

We’ve been sort of guild shopping online a little, looking for kind of a medium-large guild which is okay with someone who’s never been in a large guild before (me), will take both of us, raids regularly but still is accepting/encouraging of role-playing and is okay with players engaging in non-guild activities (pick-up groups, solo/duoing, etc). It seems like a pretty tall order unfortunately.

But we’re sort of looking forward to a change of scenery - the only thing that’s nagging me is that the guild we’re leaving behind is a group of our real life friends. There’ll be some hurt feelings there more than likely, but we *are* leaving our alts there, so we won’t be completely abandoning them.

So, thoughts? The decision hasn’t been finalized yet so if there’s any reason you’d like to throw out there why we SHOULDN’T go, let me know now Also, if you have reasons we SHOULD go, I’d like to hear that, too!

See you soon, maybe.

Thalya and Valaraen have been looking to get 2.5.5 (Defend the forges, defend the 21st hall, defend the deep-way) finished for almost four months. We can never find a group. Ever. It seems as though everyone on the entire server has finished it, our guild is too small to get enough people on at the same time (come on, there’s only 10 of us).

But today, FINALLY, we found a group to run the last two instances we needed - “Defend the 21st Hall” and “Defend the Deep Way.” A minstrel, champion, guardian, rune keeper, and then Valaraen (hunter) and Thalya (lore master). Perfect group! We were totally going to SPANK those instances.

What’s the frustrating part?

The moment Thalya and Valaraen entered the instance, Real Life intervened. Thalya had to go offline. And since doing it without Thalya would be sort of lame, I went off too. I was just unbelieving. RIGHT as we were about to do it! I went back on approximately an hour later, but they’d found two more people (and Thalya was still offline anyway).

AUGH!

Don’t you hate stuff like that? I can’t believe it. We’ll probably have to wait another four months