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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Morris" data-source="post: 1201661" data-attributes="member: 87">Death of a Friend (Commentary)Death of a FriendWell, not literally. Instead I'm referring to the closing of the Secrets of the Kargatane website. What they accomplished is nothing short of amazing, and I hope that the closing of the site doesn't indicate that Ravenloft's doom is indeed finally at hand.The Kargatane site is was one of the only sites that has lasted as long as this one, though it hasn't jumped around as much in the interceding years. Most websites rarely last to their 1st anniversary, and to see any site reach a 7th is amazing in their own right.But the reasons given for the Kargatane's closure bother me somewhat because I've heard them before. I've threatened to close this site when it became a chore, only to change my mind and come back to it all a few weeks or months later. In so doing I've done my own work a great disservice, not to mention the effect this wishy washy-ness has had on what support the site has had.Enthusiasm and energy comes in spurts I've found. There are days when I write 20 pages on Art of Magic, and there are weeks when I write nothing at all. This site has gone awhile without any substanive changes because one book at a time is all I can do, and that book is consuming the time I would otherwise spend on this site. That and the fact I have other work to do.Unlike this individual prone to bouts of depression and manic behavoir, the Kargatane are a well disciplined and insightful group - so I'm sure they've reached their decision after careful deliberation and planning. I am sure that, for them, it is the right one, and I wish them only the best in their future endevours.Still, a light on the internet has went dark and there is a void in it's place that will never be filled. Even as the d20 publishing world has lit up, the internet has became a darker place as talent has moved away to be paid for their work, as well they should I might emphasize. Even Dusk isn't unaffected by this - for Art of Magic and its contents are destined never to be part of this site except - at best - as a download link for a pay PDF at RPG Now.Dusk was still only a collection of my own materials when the Secrets of the Kargatane launched all those years ago. It inspired me to try to create a similiar but more general archive of fantasy information - a networld similiar in scope to the Forgotten Realms. That endevour failed and fustrated me - and echoes of that fustration haunt me still. Whenever someone new to the community proposes the creation of a networld, I laugh a haughty cynical laugh secure in the knowledge that it cannot be done. I snicker at the attempts to prove me wrong. And I hope that, one day, I will be proven wrong.But today a step in the exact wrong direction to do so has been taken, and rather than be relieved, I am greatly saddened. Are we all so self important that the only projects worth working on are of our own conception? My mind tells me yes - for indeed I am the most guilty of all in this. But my heart holds out hope that it may yet come to be.But who it will be and how it will be done I do not know. It will not be me. I have tried - and failed.- Michael Lloyd Morris.</blockquote>

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