Greetings from a friend.

[Ephialtes]

The great doors of the reception chambers moaned their malcontent as a lone figure pushed them open with a bit more force than necessary. Hood drawn and cloaked head to toe, the stranger took several paces deeper into the room and craned his neck from side to side, taking in every detail. Though nothing could be seen of the face hidden deep within his hood, one could easily imagine a grinning visage as soon as he sighed. It was a sigh that carried only warmth and conveyed that he was pleased with what he saw before him, as much as a sigh is capable of such things anyway.

"Greetings denizens of Wessex," the visitor's voice rang out with clear human tones and a perfect Sanguine-upper class accent, "I am known as Ephialtes to those that call me friend and represent the Patron Saints of Agon as well as Agon's Faithful." Ripples of motion so slight that only the keenest eye would notice shook his cloak momentarily; the muscles of his legs coiling, ready to speed his retreat should his welcome prove less than kind.

Ephialtes bowed low, both in a gesture of respect and to also enhance his position should the need to spring quickly away present itself, before going on, "I have come in friendship to speak with your dignitaries of allying yourselves with those of like mind."

(((OOC))) - Figured if I was going to show up unannounced, I could at least do so with a little bit of style.

First off, awesome job on your guild! Very structured, incredible detail, well put together site, and members with a very obvious dedication to roleplay. Honestly, if I didn't already have plans of world domination brewing, I'd be here to sign up.

Speaking of which, I suppose I should clarify why I am here. I would like to invite your guild to join Darkfall Roleplayers, a site (comprised only of forums for the time being) dedicated to it's namesake. Joining the site does not require joining any alliances, though we will offer listings for them as well as for individual guilds. Our only requirement is that you are a roleplayer and interested in Darkfall. It is basically just a forum to follow the development of Darkfall as the official forums do and interact with your fellow players, but with an obvious focus on roleplay and a secondary focus on interaction between clans/guilds. Most of our boards are OOC at this time, eventually we will be adding IC boards for alliances as the need arises, but I can assure you that we still take our roleplay very seriously. Example - My current pet project is setting up a completely IC newspaper that will start with regular monthly issues, I would like to eventually be able to do weeklies, but until launch we'll probably stick with monthly.

Anyway, it has only been up for a week and a half or so, hence the low member count, but I plan to keep the site operational long after launch and have many plans for it as well as a committed staff to help see those plans through. The URL is linked through my sig, feel free to give us a browse and sign up if you like what you see.

That's about all I had for now, but I'll be sure to check back in over here from time to time. If you have any questions for me, or my character for that matter (though you will most likely find him to be less than happy to provide too much information about himself), feel free to ask.

Good hunting denizens of Wessex and well met,

ephi

[Destinova]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y276/katateh/ephialtes.jpg
?

[Yossarian]

Funny, I was just reading a post by you Ephialtes.
From what I have seen, there is nothing on Darkfall Rolplayers that you can't do on Darkfall forums, whether it be roleplay or otherwise, but I will still sign up soon and see how it goes.

[Ephialtes]

*sigh* I both love and hate that movie.

(Disclaimer - This isn't a lesson in mythology, I don't claim that all of the following is 100% accurate, I only have the word of a mythology major to back up what I say and I trust him as he is an old friend and majored in Greek and Roman mythology for three years at UCLA. Most of this is easily verifiable on Google, the rest you can take my word for or not.)

Ephialtes was a terrible and highly unlikely name for a deformed child born to such a physical people, pity taken on him by his parents or not.

In a fairly unknown reference, which happens to be my favorite one and originally inspired the use of the name, Ephialtes is the name of a demon of Greek mythology that is the cause of nightmares in some myths and in others is both the physical and metaphysical incarnation of nightmares. The original stuff of nightmares basically. I'll explain a little more further below.

In the more popular reference, Ephialtes (nightmare) and Otus (doom) were the Aloadae, also spelled Aloadai. The two giants, giants mind you, not titans, in Greek mythology personified as youthful hunters that grew nine fathoms in height and seven cubits in width (possibly the other way around) a year that dared to conquer the gods and assaulted Mt. Olympos. When they reached the peak though, they found that the gods had retreated to the heavens. This didn't stop them, it barely slowed them down, they proceeded to stack Mt. Ossa on top of Mt. Olympos and Mt. Pelion on top of that. They climbed to the heavens and Ares attempted to intercept them, but was defeated and held prisoner for thirteen months. Hermes rescued Ares and this enraged Ephialtes and Otus enough that they began their assault once more and were killed in the ensuing battle by Artemis.

Going back to the first reference, in some cases it is said that Ephialtes, the more spiteful of the two, refused to let his soul leave the world of the living and in a last desperate act he shredded his own soul into a thousand pieces which flew out into the world to become nightmares and plague the worshipers of the gods. In other cases, his soul remained intact and again remained in the world of the living, but to consciously torment mankind.

Either way, a little too epic a name, in my opinion at least, for a hunchbacked Spartan that would have normally gone nameless to the grave on the day he was born.

ephi

**Edit** @Yossarian - First off, awesome name, I was in a clan called C22 on PlanetSide once, bet you can guess what the C stood for.

That is the general idea, we want to make an alternative to the official forums, but cater specifically to roleplayers. We haven't seen much action yet, but there will most definitely be features on DRP that you will not find on the official forums. The newspaper that I mentioned, we will take a much more in-depth look at guilds and offer more comprehensive (albeit smaller considering the limited playerbase when dealing strictly with roleplayers) listings, as well as various other features that we plan to implement once we have a fairly decent amount of active members.

[Destinova]

So you're a patron saint that causes nightmares or is any relation to your namesake of sheer irrelevance?

[Yossarian]

**Edit** @Yossarian - First off, awesome name, I was in a clan called C22 on PlanetSide once, bet you can guess what the C stood for.

That is the general idea, we want to make an alternative to the official forums, but cater specifically to roleplayers. We haven't seen much action yet, but there will most definitely be features on DRP that you will not find on the official forums. The newspaper that I mentioned, we will take a much more in-depth look at guilds and offer more comprehensive (albeit smaller considering the limited playerbase when dealing strictly with roleplayers) listings, as well as various other features that we plan to implement once we have a fairly decent amount of active members.
Thankyou. My guess is the C stood for Catch. I've taken a better look at the forums now and can see there purpose. I like them.


So you're a patron saint that causes nightmares or is any relation to your namesake of sheer irrelevance?
Leave the man be Desti, he appreciates the awesomeness of my name and Catch-22!

[Ephialtes]

Simply put, why yes. Yes, I am.

Patron in the context of, "One who supports or champions something." Saint in the context of, "Model of excellence or perfection of a kind; one having no equal."

Not exactly the holier definition, just model defenders. Since we defend Agon, our basic premise is to combat those that would destroy her, namely l33t d00ds, and I like to think roleplayers would make a model group of protectors considering what is being defended and if holy is out of the picture, one doesn't necessarily have to be a saint to be a Saint.

The nightmare part only comes into play when you find that I number in the ranks of those on the other side of the battlefield. I usually play MMOs under Temogene Talion and FPS games under Ephialtes. I figured since Darkfall is a little of both with more FPS than MMO when it comes to combat I'd use Ephi for this one as it will undoubtedly be a combat heavy game.

Hopefully I'll be as good at Darkfall as I am at the BF series, if I am, you'll probably get a chance to see me live up to my name. :D

And how can anyone not recognize the greatness of Catch-22??? I submit the following...


"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?"


"Men," he began his address to the officiers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officiers. The officiers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it."

...and ask how anyone can recognize the text for anything other than pure rockin' with just a dash of, "Amen!"

ephi