The woman I have dearly loved for the last 12 years passed away suddenly in May. Deborah and I met in EverQuest, swiftly recognized each other as kindred spirits, and thenceforth duoed together in dozens of MMORPGs. In Guild Wars 2 she was known as Tolitha Furyborn and Shabine Trueshot of our tiny guild Comedy of Errors (COE).
In all those years, talking and playing three hours every night, we never once traveled the 2,000 miles separating us to meet in real life. Yet surely many couples living together never experience the kind of happiness we shared in our explorations of myriad beautiful imaginary worlds.
In her memory, I have assembled a video sampler of the many greeting cards we created for each other out of screenshots from the MMORPGs we played, set to music I composed and performed myself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV4AP8Sw-EU
Heartfelt thanks to ArenaNet for creating not one but two of the loveliest worlds in which we adventured. Alas, our tradition of making greeting cards came to an end before the release of GW2, but there are more cards in the video based on the original Guild Wars than any other game. (Indeed, I remember fondly how we lost sleep playing as much as we could in the open beta weekends before Guild Wars’ release.) To help fill the gap, I have attached three GW2 screenshots of us to this post, including one with Deborah’s (adult) daughter.
May this video and post stand as a testament to our profound love, and to Deborah’s creativity, humor, and gentle soul.
—Blake Linton aka Gareth Ironfist and Kurok Minionmaster
