1.
Hail! My name is Vinicius Emmanuel, but most people call me simply Vimas. My nephew call me Ni, though. He is not most people, as his mom usually says, and you're not either. So I suppose you can call me the way you feel better.
I'm a balding 30 years old Brazilian lawyer with a long black beard who enjoys hearing and telling stories. I can write and speak in English without difficult, if you excuse my improvisations and minor gramatical errors. Every day I try to learn and become a little bit better, not only as an English speaker.
Tibia was my first MMORPG and remains one of my favorites. As a pretty serious player of the genre, I've experienced World of Warcraft, Tree of Savior, Final Fantasy XIV, New World, Ragnarok Online, Maple Story 1 and 2, I saw games being launched and being closed.
In the past few months I moved in with my girlfriend and started at a new job, my life was changing very fast and required my full attention, then I quit Tibia for a while. Today finally I have organized my stuff enough to return to the legendary lands built with the flesh and blood of the goddess Tibiasula. And this time I brought Simone, my girlfriend, with me. I'm teaching her how to play the game and I'm learning or relearning things by her side. It has been a blast!
Since we are MMO and RPG players who deeply love developing our characters in-game or on the paper: telling, hearing, sharing stories, I believe that being members of the Red Rose would be magnificent! I would love to meet the players who built this guild and made it part of the gaming imaginary--and maybe become one of them.
But that is not for me to decide. All I have to decide is what to do with the time that is given me... Well, I believe Tolkien deserves the credit for this quote, even if I changed the subject.
* * *
2.
Anyway, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today, to speak loud and be heard at the halls of the Red Rose. As a guest I'll share the story of Fafnir Dracul. In her time, my girlfriend will probably make an application of her own, but it is impossible for me to talk about Fafnir without mentioning Lilith Dracul. I hope you enjoy our tales.
My character does not remember where he came from, nor perfectly who he was before feeling the slippery cold stone of the cavern at the tutorial of the game. Everything, from his first word to his first troll feels like a dream within a dream. Now here is a theory, and probably a canonic one, a good portion of the human adventurers today came through the portal of souls in the Dawnport underground.
We woke up in a dangerous world in which humanity seems to be slowly fading, corrupted by dark magic or directly killed by older and bigger creatures. Our primal instinct to survive moves us as we get a shining object on the floor--a knife--, stand up and run towards the wounded cave draptor roaring in the dimness.
This is just the usual blood baptism of a newborn Tibian, but the experience is different for each individual, if not in the facts, at least in the interpretation of the facts. I can imagine Fafnir opening his eyes in that cavern, seeing other human beings materialized by his side. They understood their situation as much as he understood his own. There were dead people lying on the floor, killed by the cornered, bleeding dragonkin. In that cacophony of screams, roars, sweat, blood, nails, claws, teeth and iron, he saw the eyes of Lilith for the first time. She had the eyes of a cornered animal, full of fear and hate--and something else: what seemed a kind of passion not directed to an object or another person, but to the battle in itself, it seemed bloodlust.
How could someone enjoy something she didn't understand?
Long story short, she became a knight and he became a mage--a druid to be more specific. Furthermore, despite the inicial aversion, they travel together. Their relationship is very instinctive, it happened slowly over time, almost without words, what might be explained by the close link with nature that druids and knights are singularly capable of developing.
* * *
3.
I hope I can write the rest of this story with you.
I really appreciate your attention during these lines of text, I read the Codex, loved too see how you as a guild value the dogs and minor details present in our shared world. I don't have a high level character yet, I'm just leveling--a level per day--at my rhythm. I can't just rush, because this would ruin the experience of my girlfriend with the game (and mine too, considering that I still have a lot to learn). En passant, during my first week on Antica I stumbled on a trail of red roses, followed it to the end, and saw your work for the first time. It was a magic experience and one of the things that kept bringing me back to the Tibian lands.
Respectfully yours,
Fafnir Dracul.
P.S. I heard about Antica Times and I know that some of you are engaged with the project. I'd love to become one of your writers! Thank you again, members of the Red Rose and the Alanui Institute, for making Tibia a better place for everyone to live.
