Yep. Another Belghast Post.

I slept like shit last night, partly because it was 46C and my house is 36C, partly because my rock support is across the country, and partly because I’m still in shock that Mark is gone. I thought I’d share a conversation me and Mark had last year, where we both admitted we admired one another, and both thought the other person “had it all together” when in fact, neither of us had it all together.

I’ve had many of these conversations over the years as I tried to apologize for my past immaturity. I fully admit that I was not a good person and it took some serious growing up on my part to become who I am now – and I am proud of myself for finally getting there, but I also have a lot of regret. Some friendships were beyond repair, and I had to learn to let go. Those are the ones that hurt the most, that I still think about from time to time.

Any way. I’m so thankful to have gotten to have these conversations with Mark but I’m also just filled with a whole lot of fucking sadness.

Rest in Peace, Mark

This post hurts, but if Mark taught me anything, it’s that we write through our pain. We talk about it. We share it with others, and through that, we form our community.

I had known Mark (AKA, Belghast) for … too many years and yet also just not enough. A really long time. Before I even had my own blog. He used to be in my EverQuest II guild – and I even wrote a post about him, accusing him of cheating at the game. We always had a really rocky weird friendship. I remember those days. I didn’t have kids, I was immature. I didn’t know about neurodivergence, I just knew that I had a hard time making and keeping friends. I always felt pretty alone, and I felt like I was constantly saying or doing the wrong things.

Mark helped me embrace that. No matter how many weird arguments or disagreements we had, I still counted him among ‘friends’. We would go silent for a bit, then pick up when we were playing a mutual game.

That mutual game this round was supposed to be EverQuest Legends. We had discussed getting a guild started so we could get some group activities going. Unfortunately that will not happen in quite the same capacity.

He died the same day as his wife, one year later. I choose to believe that it was some sort of sign from the universe that they’re together again. He spoke so fondly of her. In a time when I see so much sadness, struggle, and hurt – I choose to see this as some sort of fucked up silver lining. I have to, so I can move forward from this.

Everything is so raw and rough right now. I’m angry that the universe takes really good people while leaving behind … well.

It is what it is.

[WoW] Gold Making Wrap Up – Week 26 (2026)

Sales picked up a bit this week, mostly due to consistently posting (well, almost) for a lot of the week which is something I had been struggling with. A far cry from my 5-10 million gold a week days, I’ll still take it. I do also still need to restock, it just takes a bit of time so I’ve neglected it.

Sales this week were my typical, a handful of recipes and some transmog. I had one ‘large’ sale for 300k, but the rest were pretty small.

I still haven’t had much desire to actually PLAY World of Warcraft aside from doing the auction house stuff. I think that’s probably common for me at this time of year. I’m not caught up in the story, and I don’t have much community there at the moment, either. Still, the gold must flow!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

[EVE] Mom, I bought an Astrahus

In the list of things that I expected to do tonight, purchasing (and then moving into) an Astrahus was probably near the bottom of that list, and yet, here we are.

I suppose it’s not a huge surprise, maybe even a natural one in the grand scheme of game play. After all, I’ve done the Orca nomad living thing for a while, why wouldn’t I want to go to the next (obvious) step, and set up a structure.

Of course nothing in EVE is quite that simple. I had to get TO the damn structure, which is of course in a wormhole. To do that, I had to leave the current Wormlife Freeport I’ve been living in, and meander my way through much of the universe, then jump a few times through some other wormholes to finally arrive at my destination.

Rinse. Repeat.

Why? Because of course I need a seed for when I get locked out, (alt on my free account is handling that) and then I also need a few characters to do some of the basic chores like mining, huffing, and clearing some combat sites. I’m also hoping to do some PI there – but I don’t own the POCO, so I need to see if they’re open for public use, and what the taxes are looking like. Then I also need to haul some command centers in. I’m going to wait for a better HS connection to do that one. For now, I’m focusing on just getting everyone into the structure.

But Stargrace, what happens if someone blows it up – which of course, someone will. It is just a matter of ‘when’. I’m hoping to get at least a month or two of use, first. I plan on storing as little as possible in the structure, and leaving everyone logged out in ships. If I lose it tomorrow, so be it, that is the nature of EVE. Maybe I’ll get lucky (hah).

Let’s see where this adventure takes us.

[EVE] Debris Field

I found myself thinking about the bench again today.

Not a real bench, of course. Capsuleers don’t spend much time on planets. But in my mind, it always existed somewhere beneath a Gallente sky, overlooking distant city lights. A place where two people could always meet, no matter how complicated life became.

At least, that was the promise.

The trouble with promises is that they only work when both people mean them.

For a long time, I believed there would always be a seat waiting for me there. That no matter how many jumps separated us, no matter how many years passed, we’d eventually find our way back to that spot and talk about life for a while.

I know better now.

The promise wasn’t broken all at once. It died slowly. By the time I understood what had happened, the bench was already gone.

Blown apart.

By being treated like an option instead of a person.

I sat cloaked in my Helios beside a forgotten wormhole for a while, watching stars drift across the canopy. In EVE, when a structure is destroyed, all that’s left is a wreck and a killmail. Clean. Simple.

Real life isn’t nearly so tidy.

Eventually, I sighed and closed the old memories like an abandoned bookmark folder.

I aligned toward home, engaged warp, and began the familiar journey back to my Wormlife freeport. The stars stretched into lines, the wormhole chain waited ahead, and for the first time in a long while, I stopped looking for a seat that no longer existed.