Beth, (sometimes known as Bethuselah, whether that's her name or not) is a blacksmith and accidental adventurer, beset with calls to unsatisfying adventure when she'd really rather be walloping iron with a big hammer.
Daughter to elven and orcish parents she inherited her mother's careful hands and her father's grumpy disposition. Grumpy for an elf, anyway. Her natural affinities for craft and magic landed her a comfortable apprenticeship as a blacksmith and jeweller of enchanted goods. Her natural affinity for wanting to be left alone meant she got quite good at it.
Her sole working companion is found in the form of a stray fae-fire Flameo who, as a kindred kindled spirit, enjoys the company of people who don't talk much.
Not one to pay much heed to local politics, Beth was rather taken aback when she was enlisted as an unlikley and unknown agent in a secretive operation to take down the local tyrannical wizard. She was barely aware they had one. But it beats cleaning out the kiln of an evening, so why not?
After a brief tête-à-tête with her cousin Pal (no relation) regarding their accumulated advice on the adventuring life - most of which revolved around the benefits of spontaneous smooching - she grabbed her faithful fiery friend, her bejewelled bonking-hammer, and clambered up the cliffs to the citadel in which her quarry machinated.
An addling adventure through the grandiose grounds saw her confusedly caring for abandoned baby orcs, adamantly arm-wrestling half of a two-headed lizardman, worrisomely working as wait-staff, lightly lyricising an ogre's lullaby, quickly quaffing through a vampire's wine-tasting, and jitteringly jumping out of a 10th storey window. She was fine, the wine lessened the impact.
Bodily and service trauma notwithstanding, she vehemently vanquished the evil sorcerer by sun-drying him into a roast chicken, before striding home to a grand hero's welcome! By which I naturally refer to a scolding from her forgemaster. This was, after all, a secret mission and so she left without telling anyone. All they knew is that she had yet to clean out the kiln.
[Upper left] Quill the Elf belongs to DarkSunRebel; [Top right] Misha the Dragonborn belongs to ChibiNetherlands; [Bottom right] Melaina the Halfling belongs to KiroSveta
Before long adventure once again reared it's belligerent bonce and Beth barrelled away on a grand quest to save the kingdom. This time, however, she was not alone. More's the pity.
With her travelled the wily halfling Melaina, whose penchant for poisons and pocket-knives perturbed all but the least perspicacious opponents. Assuming they saw her coming. Which they didn't. Thereinfront the imposing dragonborn Misha loomed, one who'd sooner single-clawedly shatter your skull than hand over her self-baked potato. And floating somewhere above them was the book-drunk Quill, whose knowledge of magic extended far enough to be tiresome at parties, but not far enough to understand not to put on a cursed tiara before checking with the trained jeweller and enchanter who's right underneath him.
Their adventure ended ignominiously after a horde of flame-breathing frame-eating spiders corrupted time itself and made their continued progress untenable. Shame, Beth would've liked to study that cursed tiara, whether Quill's head came with it or otherwise.
Returning unsatisfied to her work Beth often quietly wonders what she could do to regain the lost valour of her prior outings. Perhaps a return to the denizens of the citadel she freed from their maniacal cluck-olding. Perhaps a visit to her cousin (yes relation) in the nearby port-town, who may be in a spot of adventure-inducing bother. Perhaps Solasta 2 will work. That, it seems, is for the future to decide. For now though there's wallopping to be done.
Cinema
Dead Island Highlights ~ Part 1
Once upon a blood moon the parsnip and his friends ChibiNetherlands, DarkSunRebel and KiroSveta took a brief vacation to the charming resort of Zombie Death Blood Island. Little did they know that things wouldn't be as peaceful as they thought they would be when they thought to know themselves about it.
Part two of these highlights is well under way and should be complete in the near future, so why not remind yourself of where it all started? Preferably all the way up to where it half-finished. Cheers.
Sillies
Jokes
Shotgun weddings: There's an event you really shouldn't shell out on.
There have been surprisingly few analytical studies into determining the average human genetalia, statestically speaking.
He tried to deny that he came to the village fair with me, but it was a fete accompli.
Just before the Titanic sank they recieved an enigmatic message simply saying 'Don't hit me.' Plenty of other things factored into the disaster but that was the tip of the iceberg.
Tooth decay? I avoid it like the plaque!
Crispy English Dictionary
Caravann. A sweet-smelling flower[1]
Cauliflowern. A plant often trained to herd cotton
Felicitaten. A very pleasing type of plastic
Hammockv. To ridicule a pig.
Imprecisea. It's a word or something
[1] Shakespeare W.Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene II
Comics
Outliers
October & Co.
Curiosity Corner
Word Salad
Have you ever wondered where the 'kin' comes from in the word pumpkin? Tough, I have. Contrary to the consensus in the depths of Tumblr it does not in fact mean someone believing themselves to be a pump. Instead the suffix -kin was adopted from Middle Dutch into Middle English as a diminutive, not unlike the modern Dutch -tje or German -chen. Other words with the suffix include lambkin (little lamb) and napkin (small nape of cloth).
But what of 'pump'? Clearly it's indelibly linked to pumpkins, since the Dutch pompoen boasts a similar form, with nary a -tje in sight! But etymology is never so simple. Their shared Middle French root pompon referred in fact to a melon. Thus the English 'pumpkin' translates literally to 'little melon'.
Why stop there, however? What of the English word 'melon'? Well this ultimately derives from the Ancient Greek μῆλον (mêlon) meaning, uh, apple. This is further convoluted by the French apple pomme deriving from the Latin pomum meaning literally any fruit or nut. Nul points for specificity. Néanmoins, our humble pumpkin is now perfectly sensibly translated to 'little apple'. Hmm.
But wait! Apples, so ubiquitous they are, are oft used as stand-ins for other fruits and veggies. Linguistically that is, I wouldn't recommend a steaming meal of jacket apple and beans, regardless of whether the potato is referred to as the 'apple of the earth', as in the French pomme de terre and Dutch aardappel. Unfortunately our Old English friends wouldn't be best pleased either, since offering them an eorþæppla would excite them into expecting a cucumber. Oo-err missus. That, presumably, now renders our identity-muddled pumpkin a 'little sky cucumber'.
For one final stumble we find that the English word 'cucumber' derives from the equally-defined Latin cucumis. Naturally our good German friends took the sensible approach here and from it constructed their word Kürbis thus helpfully allowing themselves to refer to, umm, pumpkins. Hence, weary and battle-worn, we can finalise our translation of the humble pumpkin to the unerringly reasonable 'little sky pumpkin'. I hope that's cleared things up.
Puzzles
Sudoku - Heartsnip
After slightly obsessively playing several hundred such puzzles over the past decade or so, I finally bit the tuberous bullet and made my first ever sudoku puzzle! And where better to start than with my veggie namesake, as well as a little nod and wink to my new favourite OC pairing.
Not only that, for those of you who might be intimidated jumping into a variant sudoku, I've got you covered. Covered in baby carrots. That's right, I also made a little 6x6 version!
Click here to play the 6x6 'Baby Carrot' puzzle, or here to play the 9x9 'Heartsnip' puzzle in the browser over at f-puzzles.com.
Crossword - Demonic Runes
In deference to the past month's frankly embarassing obsession with temperatures high enough to make me visibly and practically resemble a baked potato, this month's crossword is themed around the properties and denizens of Hell itself! So pull up a pitchfork, seek your circled seat and enjoy some infernal inferring.
Believe it or not there exists a world beyond the boundaries of this little vegetable farm, and I'd like to take whatever chance I can to show off the finer, lesser-known produce on the market. As if to metaphorically mimic this desire, we begin with the delightfully illuminating Youtube channel of Pete Beard.
Should any interest in the history of illustration, in the life of an illustrator in the 19th and 20th centuries, or indeed in enjoying a relaxing narrator read you a pleasing biography, sit yearning within you then Pete Beard has you covered. Hundreds of well-researched videos detail the lives and careers of the thousands of forgotten workers in the often thankless business of bringing ideas to visual life.
Clearly versed in illustration, you can rightly feel the personal interest he has in the technical aspects , but equally so in proudly showing the world those who would otherwise be forgotten: To document and timeline what one can in what would otherwise grow to a hurricane of works scattered to the unarchived winds. Indeed his 'Unsung Heroes of Illustration' series showcases several such creators at a time, and is now well over 100 instalments deep.
I, myself, use this channel not only as a relaxing and enlightening wind-down after a day of tilling the field myself, but also as a great geyser of inspiration. A boundless breadth of styles, media and techniques of illustration are covered in this body of work, and so I recommend simply scrolling through the archive and picking whichever thumbnail first elopes with your fancy. You're bound to find something that catches your eye. That was their business, after all.
Epilogue
Thanks for scrambling to the end! I hope you enjoyed this post-inaugural issue, thus proving that I can, in theory, possess some level of consistency. If you enjoyed it and fancy spreading the silliness forth, do share it with someone who'll likely also revel in the ridiculous.
If you have any suggestions for things you'd like to see, changes you'd like to be made, or indeed people or places to be highlighted 'Beyond the Hedgerow' then feel free to get in contact in whatever way suits the both of us the least worst.
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