GAHHH_NEW_POST!

Now that I'm sure everyone has stopped visiting this blog, I am back!  I was very busy for a while at work as we had a very important deadline approaching for a couple of months.  But that deadline was reached, and good news abounds!  My tiny little start-up was very recently acquired by the best possible company that could've acquired us.  Everybody's happy.

Now, back to nethack.  I haven't played in so long that I've forgotten a lot of the little nitty-gritty spoilers I used to know.  I once again have to look up specific prices of scrolls, potions, rings, etc.  Of course, I'll never forget that my three favorite rings, slow digestion, free action, and levitation (in that order), are all 200 Zk.  Regardless, I'll probably need a little ramp-up time to refamiliarize myself with the little details of the game, as well as the intricacies of the gameplay, before I can jump back into the code.

What's important to take away though, is that this blog is not dead.  It was just wearing an amulet of live saving (ugh, I know, awful joke.  I'm here all week).

Secondly, what's important to take away is that I finally finished my tourist game.  Tourist is one of the best roles in the game.  The early game is very difficult, but the quest artifact is arguably the best in the game, and the quest itself yields tons of loot.

One fun little stupid thing I like to do is chat with Death.  The background is that there are four Riders of the Apocalypse, explained in great depth in The Book of Revelation.  It's a great read, and if you haven't read it, it's probably one of those things you should read aloud to your children at bedtime.  In the words of my boy TJ (Thomas Jefferson), it is "merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."

On the Astral Plane, in nethack, you will find three of these Riders: Famine, Pestilence (also know as Conquest in the BoR), and Death.  If I am able, I always make a point to chat with Death, because he gives some insight into who the fourth Rider is:

This actually makes a lot of sense.  You spend the game going through a dungeon killing thousands of creatures.  I can't really think of a better definition of "war" than that.