My Daughter

Today would have been Millie's 3rd birthday. The funds we raised to dedicate an acre of ancient woodland and a memorial bench has now been completed, and the bench now sits in a wood near my hometown. These are the maps of its location and how to get there. We won't be able to visit it for a good few months yet, but look forward to doing so. Good news, for those who do not know, is that we now have a beautiful boy, my son Rohan Robert Forster , nearly eight months old, healthy and strong and amazing. It makes dealing with the loss of Millie easier. This is him, from a recent outing to some nearby woods: Happy Birthday Millie. Love from you mum, dad, and your brother Rohan xxx

Amelia Iris Forster 31/10/12 to 26/01/13 It is a year ago today that we had the funeral for our daughter, Millie. It was about three weeks after she died, due to the necessity of an autopsy, and it was on the Friday of my first week at work in my new job. It was a strange and emotional day. We went to view the body in the morning, which I wish we had avoided, as seeing her lying there in her coffin... well, it wasn't our daughter. I could barely look at the body, and my tears flowed freely. I had thought it would give us closure, but all it did was remind us of what we had lost, and with hindsight I would've preferred to remember her as we saw her at the hospital. The funeral itself was full of people and relatives we hadn't seen in an age. My childhood friend Phil managed to attend, and I hadn't seen him in years. It felt good to see so many faces, and the support they lent us was beyond anything I could've wished for. I carried the coffin in. I didn'...

Today would have been our daughter's first birthday. This was the first picture I ever took, not long after she was born. It is weird, one year on from the moment she was born, and having lost her back in January. Not sure how I feel at the moment, other than sad. Normally, a birthday would be a time of celebration, but how do you celebrate when she is gone? We've not been staying at home feeling sorry for ourselves, as that would do us no good and be too depressing. Instead we headed out to see where we want to move to, since we don't like either the flat we live or the area. Our Woodland Trust fund is doing well. More money to go in it too. By this time next year we'll have raised what we need to dedicate a post for Millie in some nice woodland somewhere. Then, one this day, we can always go and visit it, which will be lovely & special. The last picture I took We miss you. Simon & Lorraine.

Yesterday was the funeral of our daughter. It started by the two of use viewing her body, which was so much harder than I expected it to be. She looked so different, so very much a body rather than the little girl who left us. Although it was difficult, and there were tears aplenty, I am glad we saw her one last time, if only for the sense of closure. The funeral itself was lovely, and it was nice to see so many of our friends and family in attendance, most of whom had to travel a fair distance in order to be there. Some of them we hadn't seen for years, as we'd lost touch with people with all the trouble of the past few years; so it was nice to reconnect, albeit under circumstances that we wouldn't have wished for. Lorraine wrote a eulogy for our daughter, which I thought I would share here. To our dear family and friends, I just wanted to say a huge thank you on behalf of Simon and I for the outpouring of love and support you've given us over the ...

Amelia Iris Forster: born 31/10/12, died 26/01/13. My daughter died last night. It was the most awful experience I have ever been through, and not something I ever want to go through again. No one should have to experience that, and for all those who have, my heart goes out to you. She died in our arms, as peacefully as she could, and I don't think she felt any pain in the end. But it was hard, awful, and I can't get those last minutes out of my head. With time that will ease, and I'm remember her the way she was when she was getting better. For now, we will deal with the grief, sort out her arrangements, and allow life to move on to whatever happens next. We are both strong and coping well all things considered, and I know we'll get through it, but for the moment it is painful, tearful, and bloody hard. We were lucky to have our families with us yesterday, which gave us the support we needed to see us through the day. Our thanks and love go out to them. ...

My daughter is two months old now, and although she is technically still doing well, over the past couple of weeks she has put on lots of odema (edema)– swelling due to fluid retention– and this has been causing her problems with her respiration, and she has been fast asleep the past three days, and possibly suffering from withdrawal now that she is off her morphine. All very hard to witness, and quite stressful. Hopefully 2013 will be a much better year.

My daughter is now six weeks old, and had her surgery on Monday. You can see the size of her cut/scar/wound. They shifted organs around, but couldn't put all of her stomach back where it is supposed to me; this may or may not cause any problems, we'll just have to wait and see. She is stable, and doing well all things considered. Now we have to wait for her to recover, then work on her lungs getting better.

City of Bones is on hold, indefinitely. Why? This is why: My daughter, 3 weeks old today, still in intensive care, still stable but not stable enough for her surgery yet. She has a  diaphragmatic hernia , which basically means her liver in up in her chest, her lungs are squashed and her heart needs to do extra work to pump her blood around. Even if she has her surgery in the next couple of weeks (which is doubtful) she'll still be recovering come Christmas; which means that this year, we shall be spending Christmas in the hospital. That's going to be weird. So, until she has recovered and is home, the fortnightly Sunday game of the City of Bones campaign is in stasis; in case anyone was wondering.

Dear Jack, You'll never guess where I'm writing to you from! No really, try and guess. Wrong! Try again. Still Wrong! Give up? Ha! Ok then I'll tell you. We're in a giant metal coffin travelling down an underwater river! See? I told you you couldn't guess! Also, Mr. Black is dead. Let me try and describe what's going on. Well, we fought off the zombies and camped outside instead. This morning we finally got rid of all that purple fog. It was tough but I convinced the others to come with me into the room it all seemed to be coming from. We couldn't see anything so we were expecting to get attacked at any moment, but feeling along the walls we found a dwarf that looked like he was sitting in meditation next to a fire pit. Three weird seeds were burning to make all the smoke. I guess the dwarf was a zombie as well but Mr. Black cut off his head before he could do anything. Ishy carefully took the seeds outside and put them out. We all took a break while we wai...

...and with the game temporarily on hold (holidays and the like), what to do? One thing I haven't done yet is sketched out the area surrounding the city. All we do know is that there are mountains to the north and south, the land all around is a wasteland, and that's pretty much it; there are ruins in both mountain ranges, a pass north that leads through to the northern kingdoms (and where I dropped hooks about the Stonehell Dungeon , in case the players feel like heading that way. Then I remembered an old map, and I thought, well, why not use that and add it to it later. So, here is the old map, before I do anything to it:

Within the city itself, couriers known as SPRINTERS carry messages from one Quarter to another, for a small fee. They are members of the TORCH BEARERS' GUILD, chosen for their speed and agility; many of them are children. Other guilds use their own members to deliver messages or packages, but generally only for guild business. The BEGGARS' GUILD, for example, uses its street urchins, who can move about more easily and quickly than even the SPRINTERS, knowing the streets as well as they do. For outside communication, the council rely on homing-pigeons to deliver messages between settlements, or armed couriers who travel with the caravans; or, if the message is urgent, ride off on horses that they exchange for fresh mounts at way-stations along the main roads. Occasionally, they turn to the magi of the ACADEMY for magical communications.

There are few clocks in the city; the few that exist are owned by rich nobles, the magi, and certain faiths. Most people rely on the ringing of bells from the City Hall  of GREEN HILL. The Hall's bell-tower has twelve bells, each a different size and tone. They are rung in the same sequence every day, each tone and bell signalling a different hour. During the day, each bell is rang twice upon the hour; at night, the bells are rang but once. Each hour is accurately timed thanks to an elaborate orrey, a gift from the priests of YELANA. This massive, intricately designed clockwork masterpiece stands within the council's bell-tower, and tracks the movement of the sun, moon and stars, measuring time at all levels. It not only displays the hour, but also the date (Southern reckoning)– day, week, month and year– as well as the seasons. A calendar is marked along the radius of the orrey, but follows the Southern months; thankfully, scholars have translated and tr...

For the most part the architecture of the city is a mixture of Southern and Northern design, heavily influenced by dwarf craftsmanship, as that stout race are responsible for building most of the city's structures, including the walls, towers and gatehouses that protect it. The materials used are often an indication of wealth, with the wattle & daub and stone at the lowest levels, followed by timber and brick, to marble and other precious and fine stonework. Most of the buildings in the MERCHANT QUARTER are stone; while wood, coloured bricks, and expensive stone are proudly displayed in the NOBLE QUARTER and upon GREEN HILL. Stone also dominates the RESIDENTS QUARTER, with the poorer dwellings little more than wattle & daub huts crammed together to form blocks. A few houses are built with red or sandy bricks or, rarer still, imported timbers. Most buildings are sharp-edged, flat-roofed and straight-lined; a mixture of Southern and dwarven architecture. The interi...

Despite being part of the larger kingdom, the CITY OF BONES largely operates as an independent state. It sends a nominal sum to the King's coffers, to cover basic taxes, but is left alone to govern its own affairs. Due to its location, within the desolate region where the Great Battle took place, little vegetation is able to grow and the sandy, gritty land is sterile for miles around. The city does, however, have dozens of small outlying farms that struggle to produce the necessary food to sustain the city. Wood is also scarce, with the nearest forest several days journey distant, and home to forest elves who call it home; they sell timber to the city, protecting their forest as they do so, coming down hard on anyone trying to fell trees by themselves. The resources that the city does have in abundance are minerals and metal ores, mined by the dwarves from the surrounding hills and nearby mountains, even from within the WEEPING CHASM. The raw materials and the goods produ...

Played on Sunday, which is only- I think- our third session of the campaign, as there have been holidays and the like creating long stretches between games; in fact, it will be three or four weeks until our next game. This session was spent largely hiring henchmen, shopping, and (for some reason) finding places in the city to rent or buy; they took a job escorting a dwarf priest to a tomb/temple of some obscure dwarf deity, and explore only three rooms before heading back to the city: they did manage to kill 11 dwarf zombies, and loot a hoard of weapons and armour, which they sold when they got back. They almost lost one of the party: Black Raven took a hefty punch to the head, felling him and crushing his ear. He had it restored back at the city, but still needed two week's to recover. In the meantime, Jacqui went carousing and made a fool of herself when trying to intimidate someone, and falling flat on her face. Highlights of the game: Using a Protection from Evil s...

We've only managed to play a few sessions so far, and have another planned for tomorrow, and I haven't been keeping notes as I have for my other game; not enough time to scribble down the unfolding story; so instead I shall scribble down some notes here, partly to how that this campaign is actually being played, and so I have some sort of record as to what has gone down: Three would-be adventures, monster-hunters, explorers met when a hippogriff broke loose and they killed it; They were given a job by a nan whose life they save: to retrieve a stone book from a tomb in the catacombs. This they managed, after a couple of trips and exploration (and looting) of the tombs; They explore more catacombs, slew giants rats, giant corpse fleas, avoided and got injured by traps, found some treasure and have so far survived; Recently they ventured down to the surface of the Weeping Chasm  to get some blood to sell on, earning a tidy profit, and hoping that nothing comes bad from sel...

While the CITY-WATCH are responsible for protecting the interior of the city, the IRON SOLDIERS protect the city from the outside; the walls, the gates, roads, farms, and mines all fall under their jurisdiction. They are trained warriors, soldiers dressed in lamellar cuirass over chain shirts, with conical helms with half-masks that cover their faces. Like the footmen of the Watch they carry round shields and wear tabards with the city'd coat-of-arms, although their tabards are a rust-red. They all carry swords, daggers, with additional weapons depending on their duty. Gate-Guards have spears, used to prod wagons, checking their cargo for contraband. Those patrolling the walls have arbalests, but are not skilled as the archers of the Watch. They patrol in shifts, and many sleep in the barracks in the IRON TOWERS; which is why these soldiers are known as the IRON SOLDIERS, although others say that their name comes from the fact that they are inflexible, tough an...

The CTY-WATCH are responsible for the safety of the inhabitants of the city, and are the guards you see manning the WATCH-TOWERS and patrolling the streets. All are easily identified by their bone-tabards bearing the city's own coat-of-arms; a modified version of the duke's who lays claim on the city as part of his domain, even though the city effectively runs itself and is as free a city as one that is part of a kingdom can be. Each member of the Watch also carries a badge of office: a copper brooch pinned to their cloak, with an engraving of a sword over a shield. This badge grants them the authority to enforce council orders, keep the peace, make arrests, and search the premises of suspected felons, so long as they are not on religious grounds. There are two types of CITY-WATCH guards: footmen  and archers . Footmen patrol the streets, assist the GATE WARDENS, and deal with trouble in the city's quarters. They wear conical helms, lamellar cuirass over padded ...

Below Godsend , beginning under the TEMPLE QUARTER and spreading out from there, is the necropolis, the city of the dead. It began with a few crypts, and catacombs beneath the temples; then expanded as graves were moved to underground vaults. The largest of these vaults, beneath WINTER-HOLD, had viewing chambers built-in where families could bury their dead, but have them preserved and displayed, so that they could visit the deceased. The priests of the RAVEN KING began to rent out space to other faiths, who then built themselves tunnels connecting their temples and churches to the crypts. As the centuries passed, the tunnels, chambers, crypts and tombs, the extended network of catacombs soon covered as much ground as the city above; then they began to dig deeper, as space and necessity demanded. Some pass beyond the city walls, but not many for fear of undermining the walls and fortifications. Today, the necropolis is a vast web of cared-for crypts, forgotten tombs, lost ca...

The Stained Palace http://themyzel.deviantart.com/ Nestled amongst the rubble of the fallen walls and towers, rests the largely intact palace of the former rulers of KOR. It has buckled on one side, an entire wing bending at a steep angle to the rest of the building, the rest leaning backwards as if to escape the rest of the ruins. The centuries have worn away at the stone, and the rain, blood and waste blown across the chasm have stained the walls. It's name derives from these stains, but it is also known as the STAINED PALACE because of the stained-glass windows encircling the dome that dominates the palace. The glass has retained its bright colours, is unbroken, but generally coated in a layer of grime. The windows have proven to be indestructible, repelling even spells that unleash destruction in the form of lightning bolts and fireballs. Magi would gladly pay a king's ransom to discover how they were made. The Twisted Tower Not far beyond the palace is anoth...