I am from Venus, and Clanky is from Mars!

I am from Mars and Lessah is from Almond Joy. Actually, Clanky was raised all over as a Marine brat. At age 10 life stabilized in central Oklahoma. I now live and work in Houston, Texas. Lessah was raised in Freeport, TX down on the Gulf Coast.

IRL I have been an Army Medic for 19 years. (I retire next year!) Eleven of those years were spent traveling the globe on active duty, the rest I spent in the Army Reserve. I have been drunk and penniless in the middle of the night in most of the major cities across Europe! Aside from that, I am Certified Respiratory Therapist and an Emergency Medical Technician, and a CPR Instructor. Sounds cool? It isn’t. I don’t practice in the field anymore, I teach others now (especially Combat Lifesavers!) and I LOVE IT!

I am an incredibly inept mechanical engineer working for an engineering/consulting firm in Houston. I get to test mostly oilfield equipment and they actually pay me to break things. When a test sample comes apart at 3 million pounds of tension, it’ll make a warforged titan stop and check his lug nuts. Also, in my spare time, I work in the sweat shop that is the graphics department over at www.DDoCocktailHour.com for next to nothing.

DDO IS MY HOBBY!!! I started making segments for the DDO Cast and then skits after realizing what a fantastic creative outlet it was. My husband and I had already been doing similar creative animated shorts together. The problem was those took time… these new projects took hours… not days to complete. It was not until one day when he said: “I have an idea for a Mass Event,” that things really kicked off! I have to hand credit for the Mother of All Treasure Hunts over to him! It was his idea from the start. I helped with the legwork…but I could not Flash Animate my way out of a paper bag!

I like to draw and make flash-based animations. It’s super easy to be the engineer that can draw. Being the artist who can make a living off his art is infinitely harder. Getting involved in the DDO community has been great. I have recently started sending in my own little show to the www.DDOCast.com just to see if I have what it takes to make people laugh. I call it Clerical Errors because I really don’t know that much about DDo despite having played it since launch.

Where to start!?!

My favorite book series of all time are the Dragonriders of Pern Series by Anne McCaffrey. Her lead female character there has a name some might recognize…

I am in love with R.A. Salvatore! Always have been! I love the way he can take a fight scene and dissect it into a hundred subtle movements. I devoured his Forgotten Realms Novels and held men to a new and nearly impossible standard after reading his books! I wanted more after finishing his dark elf novels so I turned to Elaine Cunningham’s Starlight and Shadows series. She never chinches on the sex in her books, I respect that!

These days I love Sophie Kinsella novels because they are short and funny! Though, the last book I read was Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. A fantastic read! I recommend it!

What is this “reading” of which you speak? My INT stat is 8. The last one I read all the way through was “Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way.” I would tell you about it here, but I’m sure everyone has already read it and owns three copies to hand out to their friends. Clanky is a sucker for anything cheesy. I consider them both a bit “popcorn” fantasy, but I really loved the Xanth and the Myth Adventures series.

The last movie I saw was Diary of a Wimpy Kid. It was pretty good. The coolest movie I have seen this year was by far Sherlock Holmes! I picked up the audio versions of his stories after that, and they were VERY COOL!

My favorite movie of all time is SGT Bilko w/ Steve Martin. Don’t look now… Clanky is about to write a dissertation on Bruce Campbell!

My most recent movie was “How to Train Your Dragon”. It was exceptional. It could only have been improved by adding Bruce Campbell. *crack knuckles* Now on to the greatest movie of all time–”Army of Darkness” starring Bruce Campbell. And now for my dissertation on this film:

ARMY OF DARKNESS

Celestial Alignment Results in Perfect Film

by Clankenbeard J. Dwarf

Clanky, nobody wants to hear about your stupid mancrush movie!

What?!?!?! Double post! You are banned from this question! Get out of here. Aw, me too? Dangit. I really boiled my dissertation down to a succinct 430 pages. Another time then. Did I mention at least twice that I actually MET Bruce Campbell once? He seemed pretty cool and I seemed like a blithering idiot in his presence.

I am a sucker for classic rock! I just pulled Supertramp, Electric Light Orchestra, and Tesla from my playlist at random. Recently my 15-year old son introduced me to Michael Bulbe’ I cannot say I was disappointed!

She stole Supertramp from me! That was one of my answers! I’m going first on the next question. Clanky’s musical tastes more targeted toward “fun”. Presidents of the United States of America, Crash Test Dummies, Southern Culture on the Skids. You say you want shorter band names and some females? Okay. Garbage, No Doubt, K’s Choice, Enya, and Poe (um, not Edgar Allen).

First! I played all the time in high school. We had a rotating group of about 8 people and we played probably once a week. I played 2nd edition starting way back in the early 80’s. I played an elven druid most of the time. Back then, the classes had limits based on race and there were only certain numbers of druids allowed beyond like level eleven. So there was all of this paperwork and battling to be first chair. I was always invited to play D&D because I drew cartoons of the funniest stuff from the previous gathering. I still have some of these. The artwork wasn’t as good back then, but I can look at pretty much every cartoon and recount the exact situation. Cheers to Joe, Mel, Chad, Mike, Brett, Tracy, Lonnie, Stacey, and Jay. I want my Boots of the Spider in DDo so I can walk up walls. Now, behold the weakness that is Lessah’s answer!

I have only ever played 3.5 and that was not until I started doing the D&D gateway drug that is DDO-EU.

See? Weak with extra noob sauce. So get a dysfunctional childhood like the rest of us!

It was all my husband’s fault. I had just finished Starcraft and then Neverwinter Nights. I was Jonesing for something to play and he said… try this! I hated it at first for not being NWN, but then I learned the controls and the game play and… well… I just never stopped playing!

D&D P&P evolves into DDo. Why would I not play this game as soon as it came out? I am recapturing my youth electronically with a bunch of old fogies like myself. Lessah is only telling half truths up there. I bought the game for her when she was working nights at the hospital. There were times when she needed to stay up late to get turned around from night to day shifts and she couldn’t stay up. Problem solved.

Lets just say… Less IS More… More Or Less.

Lessah Ismora is her Paladin’s full name for those of you who may not know. It’s a clever play on words and is a carryover from her Neverwinter Nights game. Her bard is named Morah Orlessa, so you can spot the pattern here if you don’t look real close.

I needed a goofy name to personify my approach to the game and single me out as a dwarf among men. Lessah once told me there was an old name in her family of “Clankenbeard”. I tried it at the character creation screen and (thankfully) it wasn’t taken. We found out later that it actually wasn’t correct. The name in her family is “Clinkingbeard”, but that just sounds silly. I have some 11 of 10 possible ALTs (thanks server merger!) which are mules named things like Clankenbroad, Clankenboogr, Clankenstein, Clankenberry, but they pretty much stay in the stables.

Favorite race? Horse Race! Very exciting! You can also win money! My favorite class was always creative writing! The others were just a blur! Beat that Clanky!

4×400m Dwarf / Numerical Methods Cleric. I really only play one character–ever. I am the casual-est player that will ever be a Featured Player. All you people try to play less than me get here. Pfffft. You can’t. I’ve been underplaying this game for YEARS!

What server DON’T I play on? Ghandalla and… that’s it… I don’t play there for some reason. Otherwise, I like to move around a lot. It gives me a sense of the culture climate from one place to another. It also means that I am far less likely to get roped into one of those awkward philosophical discussions that sometimes comes up in a social gaming environment. I’d rather just swing my sword and kill stuff and not take things too seriously! I think that stems from having to make a career out of being serious.

I play on Argonnessen. The end. Although Lessah once made a Clankenbeard on Thelanis so that I could show up for filming mass events and such. She referred to him as “Sock Puppet Clanky”. He was probably more popular than the real Clankenbeard, but still less popular than licking a gelatinous cube.

Yes I am, several in fact! (Warning! Rap-Sheet follows!)

• The Stormbringers Of Argonnessen: The last founding guild on that server and I have called them home since around July of 2006! The Guild Leader is a lead singer of a High Energy Heavy Metal Band called Obliviaxe! How cool is that? It was obvious from the start that Clanky and I were nowhere near uber enough to hang with this crowd, but they let us stay anyway… like a cat that came over one day and never left!
• The Sublime Permadeath Guild, Of Thelanis: Just about the best bunch of Permadeathers I have ever met. They focus on strategy, teamwork, and have an outside the box approach to problem-solving. http://thesublimeguild.com/ It is noteworthy to mention that this is the ONLY guild I have ever capped a character in! Patience is a virtue where Permadeath is concerned though. Good things come to those who wait… not overnight.
• The Fellowship of the Golden Night, Of Thelanis: A great group of roleplayers who love to focus on fun and games and the spearhead of a very close-nit roleplay community on Thelanis!
• Extreme Explorers, of Sarlona: What can I say about EE? It’s like… being a visitor on Gilligan’s Island! The zaniness never ends and all the characters are there: Skipper/ Professor/ Mary Ann/ Gilligan! I love it!
• The Ireedeemable Waifs, of Khyber: Loads of fun. A static group of noob players started by the Van Hemlock Podcast. These guys are a laugh a minute! Their favored enemy = furniture.
• The DDO Cast Build Guild, of Orien: These guys are really great and loads of fun to be around!

Stormbringers! I am a one-guild pony. The guild is in a rebuilding season right now since the old management Ughh has recently picked up the reigns once again. Shine on you crazy diamond! Feel free to look into joining–we’re scouting for new members. Our biggest draw right now is that we have Lessah. Biggest handicap is that we have me.

Not really. I like to be an integral part of a quest and when I can’t understand everything that’s going on, I tend to get really quiet and just follow the person in front of me. This is not really all that fun. Suddenly I feel more like a liability than an asset in a group. However…. raiding seems to be the gold standard by which end game is measured in an MMO. Having said that, I am giving raids the old college try. Uber loots have a certain draw. Bards prefer uber lutes.

Nah. I’m in it for the group and the adventure. I find myself going solo or duo into quests that I have been scurried through by the nose dozens of times. I want to learn the quest and read the dialogue and treat it like an actual adventure. This is so much more fun that rifling through at breakneck speed.

When I stepped into Amarath for the first time my jaw dropped. It was very cool! The 1337 crowd was laughing at me, but I was freaking out! Orthons and Devils and Archons, oh my!

I love Gianthold. The epic scale of the statues out there leaves me in awe. As for common areas, my favorite is House Jorasco. There’s something about those floating trees that oozes “fantasy” to me. I assume they are made of soarwood because they “soar” in the air. If I were a wizard (higher than level 1) I would take them all out in one shot with chain lighting and make a killing selling lightning split soarwood on the Auction House.

These days I like to Solo/ Duo or Trio. If I have four people in the group, I consider it full. Why? Simple. Division of labor. The fewer people in the party, the harder the quest, the more strategy gets used. Add a Permadeath factor on top of that and you get an exciting experience that will make your palms sweat!

I have PUGged, but mostly I group with folks I know or have met through friends. Clanky needs a level of familiarity with his party members so that they can forgive a late heal or mis-click on a Word of Recall. It WILL happen. I do a lot of stuff alone for reasons mentioned above.

I play tanks and more tanks. I MUST have a Mummified bat from The Cult of the Six followed by the Voice of the Master and mantle of the World Shaper combo. True Seeing = good, especially when a caster dispels you or you run out of buffs! The Minos Legions Helm from the orchard is a must. I try to get these items on any character I plan to melee! There are plenty of things I’d LIKE to have… but I like to bet when the odds are slightly in my favor. (Steve Martin, SGT Bilko)

Clanky doesn’t need clickies. I have Clankies. I don’t have much raid loot. My favorite piece is the gawd-awful Demon Queen frog armor. I wear that half plate everywhere. It just screams “I may just be colorblind.”

Coffee… Coffee… and… More Coffee. Sometimes I forget what water tastes like.

I don’t snack while playing. I may drink a vodka tonic or three if it is a Saturday late gaming night..

One of Permadeath Guildies right before crafting some armor accidentally put this in general instead of party chat: “Who wants to see me naked!” The response was overwhelming!

“Clankenbeard has spotted +Sir Lawrence in the Hide & Seek Contest” I got me a free Sceptre of Syberis for that which spews smoke when you equip it. My Guild chat quickly erupted with “You turned down a Von run to play Hide & Seek?”

When is a party wipe NOT embarrassing!

I died while soloing the ice jump in the harbor during the 2010 Risia Ice Games. At least my corpse decayed slowly while people kicked it around on the ice rink. Still, it was a little embarrassing for a cleric.

I’d like to talk to the Paladin who gives the Black Anvil Mines Quest in the Temple of the Sovereign Host. He has a great deal to say and was really my FIRST source of information when I became interested in Eberron. He had me as soon as I asked him: “What about the Silver Flame?” To which he replied: “What about them?” I could just imagine the glib expression on his face!

I would hang out with that Natt Gann. He has spoken with me a couple times and he seems like an okay guy (if you can wade through his unnecessarily thick accent). Of course, he broke his leg during the big Tent event (which destroyed the old Tardis-style Marketplace tent) and he was replaced by Tag Hardcastle. That guy I just want to hit in the head with a shovel.

The Ruins of Threnal is by far my favorite Adventure pack! I wondered WHY Coyle was such a squishy fighter until I found out… he’s not who I thought he was! It made me feel less sorry for him in the end! Oh yeah… I almost forgot! At the end of Threnal, you get to meet Bergthram… the infamous person mentioned in a note in the Shan To Kor Series! In this way… Coyle is loosely tied to Arlos… who is also a total jerk!

Also!

I do not know if this counts, but I think that Red Fang (the spider) is tied to Red Willow who is tied to the named gargoyle in the Cerulean Hills! Follow my logic!

Lotigath of the Cerulean Hills is the brother of Toligath of RED Willow who says goodbye to HIS brother when you kill him!

Goliath of RED Fang has a name that is very close to these two! Coincidence!?! I think not!

I have a weak spot for Tangleroot Gorge. There’s something oddly enjoyable about going in there seven times with a different task every time. My favorite quest seems to be Prison of the Planes and my least favorite is Tears of Dakaan. Lessah didn’t mention her favorite quest at all?

The Pit.