LOTRO Players News Episode 64: E.E.Y.O.R.E.

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Featured Comments

Tim left a comment on last week’s show:

“Ethelros is definitely a good sport after the two stories. It does seem, though, that Pineleaf was made out to be the villain in that story.

I also appreciate fan fiction getting some love. Andang and even Ethelros say great things about my series but for fan fiction as a whole being portrayed just as strong as the lotro news means a whole lot. To the whole lotro news panel, thank you very much”

Amenhir left a comment on Where’s Tinki:

That last one is diabolical. I know where tinki is in the pineleaf tier two picture! An alternate dimension bending both time and space

Emails

Amarthalion sent in an origin story:

“Hey all, love the podcast and listen every week. Attached is an origin story which explains some of the reasons for certain behaviors (I will let the story do the talking). I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing. Keep up the good work.

Christopher a.k.a. Amarthalion, Captain on Landroval.

I feel obligated to contact you about a very important matter. First a little bit of background as to who I am, and what I am doing. You see, many years ago I was approached by a young man who you know as Pineleaf Needles, but whose real name is [omitted due to client confidentiality]. This young man was troubled, for he was losing his ability to retain knowledge and he would constantly forget things. Needless to say, he was confused, and did not know what was going on.

At the time I worked at a state of the art facility (I am a psychotherapist and a robotics engineer by trade), which employed some of the most intelligent people in the nation, so we brought him there, and we ran tests on him. And as we ran these tests, as we probed the mind of this young man, we were quite concerned. For he had a rare disease that, up until this time, had never been observed outside the lab. We have since named this disease “AltitusWardenitusSegueitus”. Therefore we quarantined him, for we feared that this disease would spread amongst the population, and there would be a mass loss of knowledge. We sought for years to deduce what was wrong, how we might cure this young man, and finally we developed a solution. We designed a robot that would help stimulate Pineleaf’s memory, to help him recall those things which he had lost. And it began to work. The method this robot used was known as “Electronically Elucidating Yesterday’s Originally Recalled Events” which we reduced to the acronym E.E.Y.O.R.E.

While we had great success with this program (in fact it worked so well that Pineleaf began not only to recall his own memories, but gain knowledge at an amazing rate), it was not without its issues. For instance, when Pineleaf came to us, he had already been heavily self-medicating with alcohol in an effort to calm his nervousness about losing his memory. We knew that we had to stop him from this downward spiral, as it was only reducing his already decreased memory capacity. So, we sought the help of a world famous therapist who was able to replace key words in the vocabulary with other key words, and by this redirect harmful addiction. We decided to replace Pineleaf’s addictive association for alcohol with the word “Squeamish”.

Unfortunately the person we hired was not a native English speaker, and thus could not properly pronounce the word squeamish. Instead he said skirmish. Thus Pineleaf’s addiction for alcohol was replaced with an irresistible and unquenchable desire for the skirmish. This is why he ends your show with the phrase, “skirmish responsibly”.

We had another staff that we hired to program the emotional side of this robot, and he misread our instructions. We wanted this robot to be patterned after someone who was cheerful, and would bring joy and positive thinking into the life of Pineleaf. But the person programing the emotional side of this robot saw the name Eeyore, and thought we wanted this robot patterned after Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Unfortunately this was too late in the coding process to catch and thus our robot has a dour disposition.

With these setbacks, we had to find another way to combat Pineleaf’s memory loss. It had come to our attention that he loved to play video games, and also loved the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Therefore we approached Turbine and asked them to design a character that would require more than button-mashing, but rather would require the memory to be fully engaged. At that particular time Turbine was planning to release their Mines of Moria expansion, so they worked to develop the warden class for our purposes. (While it is not yet public knowledge, we are working with Turbine and the Beorning class for those with body image issues.)

This worked marvelously, and also fulfilled Pineleaf’s obsession with the skirmish (see above). As Pineleaf slowly regained his memory, we allowed him to roam the facilities freely. He and E.E.Y.O.R.E. would daily walk the facilities, conversing about many different things. In our facility, not only did we work on humans, but we also had a great number of animals under study. One of our focuses was on seafaring mammals. It was on one cool autumn day that Pineleaf and E.E.Y.O.R.E., while taking a daily walk, came to the dolphin enclosure. And as they were walking E.E.Y.O.R.E. told Pineleaf a hilarious joke and Pineleaf broke out in laughter. In fact, he laughed so hard that he fell from the scaffolding above the dolphin tanks and into the water. These particular dolphins were part of an undercover operation to infiltrate the porpoise mind and transmit messages throughout the world. Thus, when Pineleaf fell, his laugh was transmitted through our robust satellite network and into the minds of every dolphin on the planet. Pineleaf’s laugh then became a catalyst to communicate with dolphins and porpoises. If you go to SeaWorld or some other aquarium, please do not let him laugh, or the dolphins will become highly agitated and might cause harm to those around them.

Well, all this is leads up to this fact, and the purpose of my letter. It has come to my attention that this robot has escaped our facility and is at large on your show, under the assumed name of “Ethelros”. Now I do not believe that Pineleaf is yet aware of this, because that part of his memory was erased. You may have noticed that E.E.Y.O.R.E. (or Ethelros, as you know him) is starting to wear down after long use, and is especially weaker when Pineleaf is not on the show. Therefore I fear that Ethelros is on your show to glean his memory back from Pineleaf, for you see these two are still mentally connected. And so I warn you, watch them, look over them, be careful! For these two are so intimately entwined, that one without the other might possibly cease to be an entire being.

Sincerely,

Dr. A.”

Contact Us

Email us!

podcast@lotroplayers.com

The Players Alliance @PlayersAlly

LOTRO Players @LOTROPlayers

Andang @PvMP_Andang

Braxwolf @Braxwolf

Cithryth @Cithryth

Draculetta @Draculetta_72

Ethelros @Ethelros

Lilikate @LilikateBuggins

Mysteri @Mysterixox

Pineleaf @PineleafNeedles

Final Thoughts

You can join us LIVE for LOTRO Players News each Saturday at 8:30 p.m. Eastern at lotroplayers.com/live.

You can also join us on Landroval for LOTRO Players Adventures each Saturday at 5 p.m. Eastern.

Thanks for listening!

5 comments

Araewenel / September 15, 2014

*Thank you* all for the great questions and discussion about character gender 🙂 I saw lots of bile in World chat about this a few weeks ago but didn’t really want to chime in so it’s a relief to hear it being talked about sensibly. When I started playing LOTRO I was creating characters that looked as much like me as I could make them (the game needs a super-long hairstyle option, just sayin’). Then a (female) friend started playing and created a male Hobbit as her main and I couldn’t get my head round it for a while. We talked about it and she just said she’s happy playing with all the different options we’re given, whereas I guess I see my main as an extension of me, with a bit of my identity tied up in her somehow.

But then I found I needed to create a prospector toon so I took a deep breath and made a Dwarf…..and then a Man, and then two male Elves, just for kicks and trying out new classes. I’m really having fun with them. But I still feel weirdly dishonest when I’m running about as one of my male toons. I sort of want to put ‘BY THE WAY I’M A GIRL’ in my character bios for them :p I think the great social/community side of LOTRO means that I do want to connect with players both in the game and outside of it so I’m happy for people to know who I am (you know, to an extent :)) and that definitely plays into my male/female choice in character creation too.

I have a problem on Landy right now because my main is a female Elf Guardian but I’m not enjoying Guardianing so much. My second main is a male Elf RK and I love playing as him, but don’t want a male as my main. Woe.

(Hah, and to think I was going to try tweeting my thoughts about this to you.)

Great show as usual 🙂

Barnabras / September 15, 2014

Another great show. My main is a cross-toon and I never really thought about it. Whatever gender I feel like making at the time is what I do.

I really enjoyed the O.S. the more absurd the better. That is two stories in a row where Pineleaf’s and Ethelros’s minds are connected. This cannot be an acciedent, and in fact has become a scientific fact. I heard there was going to be a new Warden Gambit (six slots, all shouts) “The Brain Drain”

Tim / September 15, 2014

Lilikate needs to add an excuse section to her “Were’s Tinki” posts. It seems like there are always fresh excuses for not finding her. So far out there they get into X-Files territory.

- Lilikate Buggins. / September 16, 2014
  
  I was hoping to hear where Pineleaf thought she might be. I think this shot was my toughest to date! I have yet to hear of anyone finding her in the Pinelead Tier 2 mode 🙂
  
Tsu / September 17, 2014

A quiet Youtube vid, but wacking up volume worked a treat 🙂

My OS story has finished percolating and is nice n strong, will be pouring it out into an e-mail soon (i.e. it is at final editing stage and soon could be a week!)

It could also be a musical but they may be pushing the technical boundaries of The LPN-team….

Out of 15 alts have 2 female chars (1 of them on a direct consequence of twisting in guild chat of Tsu into Sue! And the lyrics of the ‘Boy named Sue’, by Johnny Cash, being repeated!)

PINELEAF – native Indian Warchief (female)

Made me remember my favourite Indian strange name: MANKILLER (derived from indian military rank!)

Wilma Mankiller was the first female Chief of the Cherokee nation; I came across here after finding this awesome quote:

‘In Iroquois society, leaders are encouraged to remember seven generations in the past and consider seven generations in the future when making decisions that affect the people.’

Now I wish LOTRO developers would do that…

Great show as always 🙂

LOTRO Players News Episode 64: E.E.Y.O.R.E.

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