Six times black

It's time for another 6 on 6, or errr.... 10. Oops, I better not make a habit of this! The past weeks have been crazy, resulting in a long blogging silence of a month. Having already missed out on the white edition of 6 on 6 last month, I decided to post this anyway. I will write more about my analogue adventures later this week.

 Six times black

1) Black Swans

LOTRO: After having played through SWTOR's Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion, I have been less active in the game; I'm now mostly logging in for guild raids. Instead, Conrad and I have started spending time in Lord of the Rings Online again. I ran into these black swans in a beautiful and uncharacteristic part of Rohan a few weeks ago when leveling captain Ravenwyn, my second character to reach the level cap of 100.

2) Dead planet

SWTOR: Trying to think of a black landscape, I quickly turned to Ziost, the planet that was completely deprived of all life by the Emperor in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The event was an important part of the background story for the current Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion, but even though there are dailies at Ziost and I generally liked the story arc, I never found myself returning to the desolate planet since.

3) Black rune-keeper

LOTRO: Another obvious choice for a black landscape would be the Tower of Orthanc in Lord of the Rings Online. Because my sparse pictures of that tower are fittingly depressing and not very visually appealing, I decided to show something related instead. On this portrait of rune-keeper Ravalinde, she wears the black Orthanc robe from the Tower of Orthanc raid. I was so proud back in the day when I won it (we're speaking 2012)! I recently perfected the outfit by adding a black mantle, cloak, runestone satchel and fingerless gloves.

4) Lost in the dark

Skyrim: What, you don't see anything? Well, that is kind of the point. Skyrim is an amazing game to experience the colour black, for a whopping 50% of your game time! The game has a day and night cycle with actual dark nights (whereas nighttime in most MMOs is often a bit lighter than would be realistic, in order to still see your character well). If it's dark in Skyrim, well, it's actually dark. Running around without being able to see anything (but somehow those wolves always do see me - eek!) is scary as hell, so I usually find a bedroll and sleep there. Although I loathe the night from a gameplay perspective, I still love this aspect of Skyrim because of its realism and immersion.

5) Guardian of Gondor

LOTRO: I'm using the opportunity to introduce you to one of my newest characters, the black-haired guardian Ravalyn (RIP predecessor Ravlin, the guardian dorf that I never played and deleted). I play Ravalyn on an almost-weekly basis for our "Moria nostalgia nights". Being eternally capped at level 60 with a Store token it is unlikely she'll ever see the light outside of Moria again, but she nevertheless carries her Gondorian shield with pride.

6) Alien, but not black!

SWTOR: It is tradition by now to end the set with an alien with a skin colour in the colour of the month. This time I will have to disappoint, though. Although I have multiple dark-skinned characters in Star Wars: the Old Republic, both human and alien, none of them are factually black. There simply doesn't exist a race like it. Instead, you'll have to do with my evil marauder Waseme, who is dressed in black. She is mostly known on this blog for my mental struggle to play a dark side character.

"6 on 6" is a series of 6 screenshots on the 6th of each month, themed on colour: August: blue - September: purple - October: orange - November: gold - December: red - January: white - February: black - March: pink - April: silver - May: green - June: brown - July: yellow. The event is hosted by Emma of the Scruffy-Little Nerd Herder.