Hello? Is anyone still here?
Man, this place is sad. Going back is like visiting an abandoned building. Or walking through a cold wasteland.
I remember when it was full of life. There were several posts every day, active moderators, fun suggestion posts, long comment threads, technical requests, posts getting hundreds of likes, and a warm group of regular members, all full of fun and drama. They were good times.
We were younger then, I guess. If we had a little more wisdom to match our love for the mod, maybe the way things ended up would have been less shocking. We were ambitious. We were clever. We were arrogant. We were haughty. Back during the days when Renewed was updating faster than the blue blazes, we knew the mod was great, that it was the best, and cared to know nothing else.
Do I blame Mevans?
I try not to. There's always someone at fault, but that isn't the same as blame. He made it and he can take it away. He had a life. I think of his pains and pleasures and wonder how little I really know. But sometimes I remember what could have been and see this forum empty except for the last few.
Then I blame him.
How strangely light, how delicate those times seem now; as if their weight departed with their life. Well, we had our times, made our fun, and it came up on a bad number. Who can deny the value of such experiences that we've had, the worth of learning through what we remember in every new instant?
Ahhh, but it's the past.
Don't you understand?
It's only the past.
There's a certain courtesy in the way Mevans abandoned the mod. Slowly it will evaporate till nothing remains, nothing; no space is taken up and it has the whole planet as a resting place. He did what he wanted, and if it wasn't good enough, it had to do.
The price of love is grief. I loved the mod and I loved the people who shared in that good. I knew what I was getting into. It is part of the program. Did not Christ say that blessed are those who mourn? But I still don't like it.
Sometimes I wish I had cried off the mod long before it died, left the road that goes ever on, before Mandos, that old and patient demon, had taught me the real price of my love. I would have given anything to change what had happened, anything to close this book without an ending. But this is a world where time runs just one way.
The story has gone crooked, and I am left, and I cannot plead before the inexorable Mandos.
Well, we all loved that mod. And now we're obligated to perform a human labor.
We should bury our dead.
I say goodbye to this mod. I loved it. I bet you did too.
...
Each word I type here is a kind of sacrificial ceremony, but I'll go on.
A storm just passed by my house.
After it came through a great silence moved down upon my world. When I went outside there it seemed that I saw every single grain of dust and every blade of grass, and that I heard every cry and shout and whisper going up in the world now. Silence fell down in the sifting sunbeams and all the leisure I might need to look around, to gather the reality of the day into my senses.
Then I decided to write this.
I'll have time to put things right with myself. And someday, after it sets in me a long time, what I did here will make me better. After I'm done with this post, I'll just start walking today, out of the Shire and into Eriador, and see the world, and the way the world walks around and talks, the way it really looks. I want to see everything now.
When I first saw the mod's map of Arda, I was overwhelmed with delight.
Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there! I thought. Outside me, out there beyond my face, and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally in me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times, ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold on to this someday. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.
I'll go outside and walk beyond the Shire. Not in the character of a game, laden with the booty of a dozen hobbit-holes and alehouses, but as myself. Whatever I find on that journey I'll accept. Times come to mourn, times come to sing. All sorts of times are behind and ahead.
I'm proud to have lived through them and speak of them with you all. Friends don't forget. The breath of this mod is our breath, for we'll pass it on through man till the end of time.
We should bury our dead.
Thank you. I loved you all.