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Vampire
Free Worlds League
Lieutenant Colonel
Joined: 05-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 917
Location: Spain
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 Posted: 10-Sep-2009 16:37 Post subject: Return of the Vampire |
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Hello, jymset was talking to ralgith and he said you were looking for me:
Once I ascertained that I don't owe money to anybody, that I didn't leave anybody pregnant, that I am not wanted by the law, I dare show my pale face around here.
i am a regular at a First World War aviation forum, where I have an undeserved good reputation as a sane, sensible and rational poster  i kid you not, quite a change from the fire eating, fire spewing Vampire you knew. What can I say, war changes a man...
And these days I post in a military history forum, been busy collecting war and batle paintings from all over the web and posting them.
I think I mentioned in the past two years I have been travelling around Russia and neighboring countries, no, I haven't become a KGB agent but only because I didn't get a proposal.
Oh, I got married to a Russian girl from Crimea. We eloped. No, it was not a shotgun (or rather Kalashnikov) wedding. Don't ask me for details, yet.
I have to wake up at 5:30 tomorrow so I go to sleep.
Oh yes! And the Unseen are back!
8)
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Karagin
Imperial Karagin Army
Imperial General
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 4120
Location: United States
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| Posted: 10-Sep-2009 16:46 Post subject: Return of the Vampire |
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Good to see you around again...
Congrats on the marriage.
Welcome back.
_________________
Karagin
Only the dead have seen the end of war. - Plato
"Wasted trip Man. Nobody said nuthin' about lockin' horns with no tigers." Oddball
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ralgith
Blighted Sun Battalion
1st Company
"Ralgith's Renegades"
Colonel
Joined: 18-Aug-2003 00:00
Posts: 2021
Location: United States
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| Posted: 12-Sep-2009 11:23 Post subject: Return of the Vampire |
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Yeah, we need all these old timers to show back up and make this place lively again 
Even if they found themselves a ball & chain (tease)
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Colonel Ralgith t'Mayasara
Blighted Sun Battalion
1st Company 'Ralgith's Renegades'
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Vagabond
Mercenary
Mr. Referee
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 5789
Location: United States
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| Posted: 12-Sep-2009 15:51 Post subject: Return of the Vampire |
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i'm still here.
_________________
one must work hard to cultivate the mind and body. and one must always cultivate the mind.
//^(^_^)^\\
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ralgith
Blighted Sun Battalion
1st Company
"Ralgith's Renegades"
Colonel
Joined: 18-Aug-2003 00:00
Posts: 2021
Location: United States
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| Posted: 14-Sep-2009 13:45 Post subject: Re: Return of the Vampire |
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| Vagabond wrote: | | i'm still here. |
Yes, Vagabond continues to sit in the corner and grow mold
_________________
Colonel Ralgith t'Mayasara
Blighted Sun Battalion
1st Company 'Ralgith's Renegades'
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Vagabond
Mercenary
Mr. Referee
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 5789
Location: United States
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| Posted: 14-Sep-2009 15:44 Post subject: Re: Return of the Vampire |
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i do not sit, i roll about growing mold. The last marshmallow gun fight plus my roller blades resulted in an unpleasant lazy circle in the corner. I even think that this chair has begun to think of me as its loyal satellite.
Vagabond - No longer just a man, but now a life bearing planetoid.
_________________
one must work hard to cultivate the mind and body. and one must always cultivate the mind.
//^(^_^)^\\
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Sir Henry
Team Bansai
Senior Tech Specialist
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 4899
Location: United States
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| Posted: 18-Sep-2009 08:20 Post subject: Return of the Vampire |
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Here I thought someone had put a wooden spike in your heart...
Welcome back!!!!
_________________
Sir Henry
A Dragon in the disguise of a bunny, is still a Dragon.
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Karagin
Imperial Karagin Army
Imperial General
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 4120
Location: United States
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| Posted: 18-Sep-2009 10:36 Post subject: Re: Return of the Vampire |
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| Sir Henry wrote: | Here I thought someone had put a wooden spike in your heart...
Welcome back!!!! |
Buffy and Edward meet, Buffy stakes Edward, end of the story.
As seen on a t-shirt at a comic convention.
_________________
Karagin
Only the dead have seen the end of war. - Plato
"Wasted trip Man. Nobody said nuthin' about lockin' horns with no tigers." Oddball
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Vampire
Free Worlds League
Lieutenant Colonel
Joined: 05-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 917
Location: Spain
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| Posted: 14-Nov-2024 16:44 Post subject: Return of the Vampire |
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| wrote: | | What can I say, war changes a man... |
I said this ironically but now sadly has become true.
I don't know if anybody will read this, but in case somebody remembers, and out of boredom, I am going to tell you about my life, maybe it will provide some cheap entertainment. Though I am not American, we all from Generation X to Zoomers face the same struggles with finding a job, a woman, a place to live, raising a family, so it might be of interest.
I wasted my youth in the internet in message boards like this one. I eventually hit the jackpot and married a Russian girl. Since then I got two children, two daughters, and a steady job as a government minion, and a home, not in that order.
Personally my life has never been better, I have come a long way since I was an incel loser wasting my time online and playing Battletech. I still play Battletech when I can with friends. Of all games and hobbies, is the only enduring one. I have to confess that Battletech changed my life. It made me got into the internet, I befriended a fellow poster from this board called George, from Puerto Rico.
Great guy, just unlucky like most of our generation.
Thanks to me he got me on ICQ messenger app, and by that fluke I met my wife, we chatted, and I decided to go to Russia to meet her and go in a holiday to Moscow and Saint Petersburg, so I booked a flight and she would pick me up. I went there in a one way ticket from Spain all the way across Europe, no hotel reservation, not speaking Russian (we communicated in English), not having Russian money, to meet a girl I had never seen in person (she was 19 at the time, me just 30)
When I tell people this story of how we met they tell me I am crazy or that was very brave. I shrug, I had bad luck in life and very few opportunities, so I just took the last train in my life. It worked well in the end despite all the poverty, the struggles, and in the end the war.
I am one of the lucky ones. I am a survivor. I haven't been to war but most people live safe existences, I had the misfortune or good fortune or having survived , four, no five, damn, I lost count, let me think, yes that makes it six brushes with death in my lifetime.
I got shot by accident as a baby, my oldest brother found my father's pistol and playing with it it fired and the bullet passed half an inch from my head. I still want to kill him.
I got a deathly disease as a toddler. I survived by miracle.
I almost got ran over by a speeding car when going alone to school as a kid, the car actually ran over my foot and the side mirror bruised my hand. Since the driver didn't stop, chances are he was going so fast he didn't notice me and it was my fault I never told anyone
This I once told in this forum, when on holiday I was speeding in my car and survived a crash at a hundred miles per hour. Pity there were no dash cams then, it was spectacular, I went flying through the air and the car was smashed but I got out fine. I was unhurt and so glad to have gotten through it I thought all was fine. SWell not so fine, as I age turns out that I hurt my spine seriously and now I have had chronic back pain because of it. It has been stable the past year but I am afraid I will need surgery in a few years because I will end up crippled
My life didn't improve right after that, but it gave me a reason to live as I believed God had spared me for some purpose.
That's why I didn't kill myself in my twenties when I was in a dead end. I have to thank this guy George I knew here at Mordel's who was online when I was feeling like getting my father gun and ending it all. But I don't count that one.
And my final brush with death so far was when the coronavirus pandemic started, I was so worried about that, I had missed it all until my brother called me to watch the news because something was happening in China that sounded like the beginning of a zombie movie, I was worried because I thought it was going to be like the 1918 flu, and my wife was pregnant with our second child at the time. Turns out covid was just a flu for most, but here in Spain and in particular in my town we were in ground zero of the epidemic, and the early virus could and did kill, it killed my dad that in spite his advanced age was in good health and lucidity. I only lament I couldn't save him despite being forewarned. One good thing of being a gamer freak is that in addition to Battletech I also was fond of zombie and post acocalypse movies and I was properly paranoid. I couldn't save my dad but I did well so my pregnant wife didn't got infected.
But now it wasn't corona I had to worry around. The day the state of alarm began and they sent us all home from the office, I picked my things and for some inexplicable reason I decided to check again my phone just before going out of the office door. It was a very windy day and the wind ripped off a steel and glass skylight from the roof and the steel beams weighing hundreds of kilos fell just in front of the gate. If I hadn't stopped to check I would have been crushed and killed for sure.
Oddly enough I was totally unfazed. When I crashed the car I did experience some understandable fear, I didn't see life passing through my eyes, but I can confirm time slows down and the seconds are eternal and the cold feeling in the stomach. I didn't scream but as the car crashed and bounced again through the air I was praying for it not to roll over so I wouldn't break my neck. It was eerie seeing the setting sun flash on and off as the car spun was what you will experience in a spinnig airplane, and the sound of breaking metal is awful. An interesting experience but one that I would not recommend.
But this time even as I saw the girders hitting the ground and collapsing in front of me where I should have been, now I just shrugged and though "someday, but not today". Seems you can get used to this. If it weren't for the death of my father I actually enjoyed the plague.
That was the fifth near brush with death. I eventually fell sick of covid towards the end, it was quite nasty but not life threatening.
That was to come later. For some reason last Christmas I got some bacteria, I coughed and coughed, but I thought it was just a cold, then when I got a high temperature I thought it was just a flu. Now I always wanted to be a tough guy. But there's a fine line between toughness and stupidity. I should know because many years ago in the beach at Crimea I fell and dislocated my shoulder, it's one of the most painful things it can happen to you, I am told, though my wife claims giving birth is the absolute worst. Since I didn't have medical insurance and nearest doctor was miles away, I just had my wife help me to pull it back in the socket and be done with it. Many years later and a couple more luxations, my shoulder started aching a lot and losing feeling in the hand, I finally went to a doctor and found out I actually had smashed the ball joint of my arm bone years ago and over time it had became loose and I needed surgery to reattach it. It went well, but post surgery was awful. I am pretty insensitive to pain, mine and that of others. That's both good and bad, because I ignore the warning sings and end up much worse than if I had actually seen a medic in time.
So I thought I was just having a bad flu and doctors wouldn't listen anyway, just take paracetamol and plenty of fluids. Until the cough became so bad and I was breathing hard I sweated so much my wife got alarmed and finally a doctor sent me to the emergency room. I only realized I was badly ill when after examinating me they jumped me ahead of all the other patients . I had severe pneumonia and they administered antibiotics just in time.
I was three weeks recovering, turns out pneumonia infection also affects the heart, that was discovered a few years ago in, of all places, my town hospital. Yes, I have one. But it beats slower than usual as a doctor remarked in a routine exam years ago, and now with this sickness when I got a cardio done my doctor was really worried, I felt like I was becoming a zombie or something.
This last brush with death has finally driven home that I am not inmortal, I liked to joke that I am a vampire. When I got into the internet and joined this forum I picked the name as a cool call sign. I didn't even played until much later the World of Darkness game, and despite my worst efforts, I never banged a big tiddy goth girlfriend. Goth girls are a disappointment , they are actually not into kink, the fetish wear is just a pose. But maybe that's too much info.
But funny how that works. Though my parents were well off, I have been poor and struggling all my life. But other than the injuries and accidents I never was sick until now. And if not truly handsome I got good lucks and youth.
I recall that when I was in university in the 90s I was looking at a site that photochopped your face pic to show what you would like to be when you age. I didn't like it and vowed to stay young as much as I could. I hadn't heard of Dorian Gray tale at the time but know it feels like that or that I have unwittingly done some Faustian bargain.
Ten years ago when I was in my late thirties, most people that didn't know me thought I was twenty something. I didn't think much of it but after meeting people that I haven't seen in years they are taken aback. My wife's college friends from Crimea, that are ten years younger than me. The friends of my wife's mother who hosted us when we met in Moscow in 2008 and we saw again in 2019 were amazed that I hadn't changed. No wrinkles, black hair, no grey.
One of my Battletech buddies that is younger than me has grey hair and bread and his jaw dropped when we met again after several years. I made a joke about "it's the virgin blood" but though amusing it's also sad. I don't complain of looking young, but really it doesn't help much with the girls, if at all and anyway I am married and in an age that I don't bother chasing skirts, and nobody takes me seriously at jobs. Though I have used that to my advantage, nobody expects much from the "kid". I am also very good at playing dumb.
Well, to finish this before the clock strikes midnight, I finally realized that my time is running out. I am not afraid of death. I only lament not being able to have children sooner, and my only wish is to live 20 years more so I can see my daughters grow up and marry and get settled in life. I am a bit sad of not being able to afford more children and not having a son to bequeath him my vast library of books on war, as in inherited my interest in history from my father and his library. I once counted those I had in the shelf, they were a thousand and I had read every one of them, some twice. One book a week, fifty weeks a year, for twenty years, it adds up. I have read many more. I am not a well learned and read person, just a history buff with an obsessive interest. I should have been a serious wargamer, not a beer and pretzels Battletech player, but you have to play with somebody.
When we finally could move out and have our own flat I had to sell a lot of my collection, , mostly the comics, games, and all novels and all the other nerdy hobbies with which I attempted to fill the huge void in my grey, monotone, meaningless existence in my youth. when you are an incel you spend money in a lot of junk.
I didn't sell Battletech, those books are sacred, like the gamebooks, I never played much roleplaying games, I wish I played more but have few friends and RPGs demand too much commitment, while Battletech we still play after thirty years. When my daughters enquire about the "ugly" framed blueprints or the Warhammer or Marauder or various Battletech stuff I remind them that thanks to this game I met their mother. They don't understand and never will.
I am resigned to the fate that I will not live to meet my grandchildren but if my daughters have sons, they will inherit my library. Sometimes I wonder if it was worth the effort to read so much, to become an expert in war history, to be such a nerd. Well, for once, being a fantasy, sci fi and terror geek did help me in life. I have to thank my reading of HP Lovecraft to have enriched my vocabulary so I could pass the key questions in the state civil servant examination and get my cushy government job.
Also all that reading about war and history taught me something about plagues and economics. My wife and our second daughter were safe and healthy thanks to my reading about the Black Plague and watching zombie movies. Not only that, but my paranoia made me mistrust the vaccines and we remain pureblood.
On economics, I never cared much because I didn't have money, but it did help when I had itafter the death of my parents, my mother died early a few years before corona, and we could buy a flat at a reasonable price without crippling debt for the rest of our lives, and paying the mortgage in a few years, we managed to beat the system.
I have had mixed luck with my investments with the money I inherited. I lost a good chunk of my inheritance because for once my war knowledge failed me, I had invested in Russia stocks because I thought the risk of war was over and I underestimated the stupidity, madness and desperation of the US war mongers. I got my investment funds frozen, perhaps one day after the war is over I will recover them in twenty years or so, but I have given them up for good.
I had good luck last year but awful this one, nevertheless I hope than in a couple years I will gain enough to recover what I lost in Russia so in a couple years we have enough money to upgrade to a better flat to leave it as inheritance to our daughters, though I have already made up my mind that when they grow up they will go to live to Russia , I think they will have a better life there. My country is dying and Europe is finished.
Oh, though I shouldn't mention the war, I am of course for Russia and I have my reasons. This war began in 2014 and the Ukraine regime backed by the US began a civil war against its Russian population. And it will lose it like South Vietnam did.
Despite that, and thought the US is the enemy of my people, as I consider Russia my adoptive country and when I retire I will go to live in Crimea, I don't hate you Americans, you don't know anything about the world and you live in a world of lies and propaganda. Those of you that voted for Trump have realized it already. I know most Americans are decent people and are sick of all those wars you are dragged into: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine ... while your country crumbles.
I truly wish you peace and prosperity, I was disappointed with Trump first term, but at least he didn't made things worse, and hope this time is different.
_________________
Memento audare semper
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Mordel
Mordel.Net
Administrator
Joined: 03-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 6087
Location: United States
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| Posted: 14-Nov-2024 22:00 Post subject: Re: Return of the Vampire |
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| Vampire wrote: | | I don't know if anybody will read this... |
I read it sir, every word. While I don't agree with everything said, it was interesting indeed to read a "quick" history of your life. Us old-timers are getting up there, and the history keeps growing. I actually felt a little sadness when I opened this thread because the first thing I saw was Sir Henry's post. He left us several years back at this point. 
Without getting into details, I can say that BattleTech actually led me to almost everything I have in my life at this point as well. So I am blessed in that regard, and why I have clung to it for all these years!
Someone should talk to all the "veterans" here and compile a little book about our stories. Would be quite interesting.
_________________
Mordel Blacknight - Site Administrator
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