[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is out!

It came out in 2006, but it came out again this week. It’s remastered and pretty and still has the Patrick Stewart voiceover. This was it for a lot of us – the video game that fulfilled the dream of a pixilated Dungeons and Dragons. The guild quests and coliseum fights are still there while the infuriating leveling system that trapped you into confidence and forced a restart because of misallocated experience perks is gone. And it looks great, on par now with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Not everyone cares. I understand. But please be courteous to those of us who do. We’ll be taking a POETS Day to defeat monstrous deadra and save the land of Cyridil. There’s a power vacuum in the wake of Emperor Uriel Septim VII’s assassination (AP, Chicago, and MLA all tell me the “’s” comes after the numerical in a possessive with a numerical name but it only looks mildly worse than “Septim’s VII.” There is no satisfaction.) so we gotta get on that. For the rest of you, Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday for whatever reason draws you. You have my permission as soon to be head of the Assassin’s Guild.

First, a little verse.

***

from The Prologue
Anne Bradstreet (1612?-1672)

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
Who sayes my hand a needle better fits,
A Poets Pen all scorne I should thus wrong;
For such despight they cast on female wits:
If what I doe prove well, it wo’nt advance,
They’l say its stolne, or else, it was by chance.

That’s the fifth stanza of the first published work of poetry from the English colonies in the New World. Defiant from the start.