Seanachai

Eh, I'm an angry Old Man I feel al little better, knowing that Emrys is still alive. Emrys still in the world makes me feel a bit better. But most of you lot makes me feel like someone's stollen my underwear.

Feck you, feck the others who've posted the same, and sit up and listen to the GODDAMN LAW. You useless little pussies post here, and you think you've got something to say. You don't. I started this ****ing Thread, years and years ago, and you just wander around here in the ruins, and you post. If you can't post anything good, then shut the feck up, asshole. Stuka was a good and great man, for those of us who've posted since before you were more than a a stain on this Thread. Go ahead. Tell me that I'm gone, useless, disappeared. Go ahead and tell me that I'm pointless. And I will tell you: I am the Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread. And that I knew Stuka before you ever masturbated your way onto this thread. He's gone and dead, but I'm still here, ONE ****ING WAY OR ANOTHER, and it you want to continue to post here, you ass, you'll show some goddamn respect for someone with more achievements than you can show. Douche. The best way to start is to post a goddamn apology for the fact that you never knew him. Cunt.

Jesus to Jesus, and eight hands around...You're still alive, Emrys?! It gives me hope for increasingly brutal old age, Horseman.

What the hell?! They told me you were dead, you feck.

I was offered the option of making a tribute to a true original of the Combat Mission Forum: Dan 'Berlichtigen' Brown. 'Berli', as everyone knew him. Scenario designer, game tester, map maker, and Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread. For young people, and for new members of this Forum, that means probably nothing. For anyone who lived through 'Running with Heavy Machine Guns', 'Bren Tripods' and any number of other weird ass forum topics, he stomped upon the fecking terra. He was, in fact, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypso. And you probably don't even know what that means. Well, I haven't known what to make of that offer. It's been 9 months since 'Berli' died of a particularly vicious and aggressive form of leukemia (neither capitalized nor bolded). The Peng Challenge limps on, and I give full marks to to those who have it on life support. And now...Now I'm here because I am an Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread, and I have lived so long, and so long with all of this, that I am having to mourn friends more often than an old man should have to mourn them. Glenn Allan, 'Stuka', Seniour Knight of the Peng Challenge Thread has died, of an extremely aggressive kidney cancer, and brain tumors. Stuka was one of the Senior Australians of the Peng Challenge Thread, a thread that has always mocked, and embraced it's Australians. Stuka was, for anyone reading this, probably fecking better than you. He wasn't an old man. He was a bloody good Australian. I would ask, if it is possible, for the Combat Mission guys, if we could have... I don't know...it gets so stupid, trying to find the latest incarnation of the Thread of Threads...if we could have our 'own' space. Shorn of 'whatever the current game version' is. Go to your rest, Stuka. You were one of the first Australians I ever abused.

This thread, such as it is, is ended. I will begin a new puddle of piss in a moment.

Well, well. Apparently I still get to start a Thread, now and then. I'm sure that anyone reading this will think I was going to do a memorial thread to Berlichtingen, Dan 'Berli' Brown. It is not yet that time. He's dead, and all, yes. But I've been dealing with cleaning up his life, which is almost as hard as watching him die. Ah, but this is the Peng Challenge Thread! So, I need to make a challenge, then, eh? So, I challenge each and every bastard on this forum, and certainly anyone who enters this Thread, to tell Me a story about Berli. Make it good. Don't **** it up. Arseholes

Forms are loosely fitting Jury still are sitting Sense of duty keeps us all in motion Prison sirens wailing That security is failing Do not inspire a lifetime of devotion No one will sympathize No one really tries They need a faith that leads them like a drum And I can hear it pounding down among the ruins Sad to say, I don't think I'm the only one. I awoke and someone spoke They asked me in a whisper If all my dreams and visions had been answered And I don't know what to say I never even pray I just feel the pulse of universal dancers They'll waltz me till I die They'll never tell me why I never stop to ask them where we're going Yes, but the holy, the profane Are all helplessly insane Wishful, hopeful, never even knowing. And they asked if I believe And do the angels really grieve Or is it all a comforting invention? It's just like gravity, I said It's not a product of my head It doesn't speak, but nonetheless commands attention And I don't care what it means Or who decorates the scenes The problem is more with my sense of pride Because it keeps me thinking "me" Instead of what it is to be I'm not a passenger, I am the ride I'm not a passenger I am the ride "I Am the Ride" -Chris Smither

Goddamn right.

Feck me. So I reply here? Where the hell is 'here', I ask you? What incarnation of the game is this, exactly? The game may have grown beyond us. But we have not grown beyond the game. I've been asked 'What tribute can we make to the memory of Berli? Well, you know what, I think the best tribute to him, is to...hell, I don't know, how about make the goddamn Peng Challenge Thread IT'S OWN, GAME INDEPENDENT PART OF THE FORUM. That's a lot, I admit. Probably be only visited by a handful of drunkards and faithful, possibly the odd serial killer, and frankly, a place for Australians, and me, to got to, late at night, drunk as nine bastards, to rail against the dying of the light. Well, for me to do that. The drunk Ozzies will just go on about how they just licked Vegemite off their significant others privates. But that's Australia for you. A very passionate land. So, if I had my damn way, which I never do, I'd say: 'Battlefront, Cut the Peng Challenge free of any given incarnation of the game.' The writ of our existence was: Thou shalt be a 'challenge thread', wherein your various idiocies and misbehaviors shall be tolerated, within the Forum, because the folk shall come here for hijinks, and for the droll challenges, and so that some folk shall call other folk right ignorant bastards, which they are, and all in the name of good fun, and the healthful enjoyment of the Game!' But frankly, now, when I come here, I have to do multiple searches just to find out where I should post my appropriate/inappropriate remarks. Call it 'The Wasteland'. I'll be there, at least until it's time for me to move on, and join Berli. The Justicar will be there to keep order, and Boo Radley will be there to take over when Joe...well, they will be there. I can't play the goddamn games on my computer, but that doesn't mean I don't want to post on the Peng Challenge Thread. I just get tired of trying to find where the feck I'm supposed to be posting, down some dark and unconsidered alley that smells of piss and stale beer. I actually LIKE posting down some alley that smells of piss and stale beer, but what I DON'T like is trying to find the goddamn place to do it!

Maybe I should have handed this off to Joe Shaw, the Justicar, or Bauhaus (who is sitting), but I'm not tired, yet, or quite drunk, so I will post. I am The Seanachai, of the Peng Challenge Thread. Today, at 4:15, CST, Dan 'Berli' Brown, Gotz von Berlichtingen, died. He was diagnosed with leukemia (neither capitalized, nor bolded) on the Wednesday before Christmas. It came on like an unstoppable enemy, and despite the best efforts of the hospital he was at, and despite Berli's indomitable will, it finally put him down. My last words to him were: Peng and I will see you again in the Wasteland. I know he will be waiting. Mostly to kick my arse all around and about. But that's okay. He stomped upon the Terra.

You seem like a decent lad. But I have to tell you, and I acknowledge personal prejudice, I do not like your avatar picture. It gives me the red ass. Is there not another, less stupidly annoying, that you like? I'm only asking...

For all the folk that know, and that care, Dan 'Berli' Brown, Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread, is in a bad way. In the week before Christmas, I took him to Urgent Care because all his friends here in town thought he had pneumonia. It turns out he has Leukemia, which came down on him like a freaking freight train, and I got called on Christmas Day to be told that the ICU doctors figured he'd be dead in the next 24-48 hours. He didn't die, and we're all happy about that, we who wait. He's currently on life support, which has been resorted to in order to gain time for the chemotherapy to kick in, and help him kill the goddamn cancer. Anyone who has ever met Berli knows that all he wants is a semi-even fight, and a place where he can wipe the blood off his shoes. I am the Seanachai. I am an Old One of the Peng Challenge Thread. I haven't had time to post here about this, because my buddy has been in a bad way. But now, all of you who can't access his FB page, you've been told. You've been told.

Actually, much has changed. Christmas morning was when I was called to the hospital, because they told me that Berli was probably going to die in the next day or two. They were wrong. But maybe 'just' wrong. It is now 2017. There are, and will be, and will always be, Three Old Ones of the Peng Challenge Thread. There is an old, capering fat man, with wild hair, dancing and singing in the moonlight. There is a ranting lunatic, wise with humor and anger, called MrPeng, who rails against the dying of the light. And there is a Dark Figure, patient as a volcano, who sits wreathed in smokes and vapors, waiting to Judge. His name is Berli. He waits, now, and we wait with him. Peng and I sit, in the Wasteland, and we pass the ancient bottle, by the smoking fire, from hand to hand, and we say the words, and we remember. We sit upon the felled trees that form a triangle around the dancing flames. But one seat is empty, one log bare. But the fire still dances, the bottle still goes round hand to hand, and we still sit and wait. And the folk still move on, like chattering monkeys, and they grow closer with every day, with their questions and desires, their memories and needs. They create the World, with all their chatter and foolishness, their wisdom and stupidity. And we abide their coming. And when they arrive, filled with sound and laughter, we move on. Out into the Wasteland. Berli is there ahead of us, maybe not for the first time. I've sent the word ahead, to ask him to wait for the Old Ones, to wait for the chattering folk, to wait for all the rest, to catch him up. He has always been a very courteous bastard. I'm thinking he will wait for us. Long enough for us to catch him up, and annoy him. I long to see him be pissed off with me, again.

When Letters of Marque come from the King To the scummiest vessel I'd ever seen Goddman them all!