Vellarri of Sottli Ban was never much to look at. Few Sottles are. Pudgy, short, and biliously yellow in complexion, even their mothers only care as much for them as the impact they're likely to have on the family finances. His eyes became mine one chilly night in the early 1990s, and through them I looked out into something that, to me, was truly new under the sun.

Or, in this case, under the Eye of Moros. Those eyes beheld an entire world, sprung from the fertile imagination of a man I learned a great deal from, and from whom I continue to learn new things. He's spent much of the last decade trying to get me to learn analytical thinking, and that's gone well for the educational equivalent of passing a washing machine through the eye of a needle.

Some things about me are probably never going to change. Not without a woman to train them into or out of me at any rate. I'm pretty thoughtless most of the time, and I let it affect my friends and family, when really I only want it to affect me.

Not to whine overmuch or anything, but I've had some exceptionally rotten things happen to me in my life, starting from an early age, and continuing right up to present day. Some were inflicted by others, some just bad luck, many were wrought of my own stupidity. Too much thinking leads me to think of them, and then comes recriminations, and that way lies depression.

So I strive for thoughtlessness. For me, it's not just a virtue, it's a survival mechanism. But it has to stop affecting other people. So, that's kind of what this is all about. Me thinking of someone else. And it might as well be someone that's made the world a better place. And what better way to make this world a better place than by giving others the power to leave it for a while? With seven novels and an RPG to his credit, Houdini is put to shame by my friend and some-times mentor.

Happy Birthday Highlander!