So one of the things that I have been asked about is what this reference to “Raistlin and Fistandantilus” means. So I thought I’d try to explain it a little without giving away too much.

Be warned though, it involves a fair bit of introspection, as well as divulging a little bit of my childhood.

Raistlin and Fistandantilus were the two most powerful archmages to ever walk the face of Krynn. Fistandantilus was the master of the past, and for a very long time, favoured of the Dark Queen Takhisis. However, Raistlin, born a little over 300 years after the Cataclysm, overcame very major physical odds imposed upon him to become the Master of Past *AND* Present. But to do that, he had to travel back to the Past to learn from, and defeat, Fistandantilus.

The penultimate battle between these two archmages happens sometime before the cataclysm. We don’t know exactly when, only that by the time of the Cataclysm, Raistlin has defeated his master and assumed his identity and place in history. But the battle between the two was so fierce and so confusing and so wrought with power and magics, that not even the guardians of the Black Tower of Sourcery in Palanthas could determine who won and who lost. In fact, the result of the battle was that the winner acquired all the accumulated knowledge of the loser. Effectively they were joined into one person. A new person that now had to decide and define for himself who he was based on the combined lives within.

It is this battle that I wanted the tendrils at the top to be used as a reference from. Not so much the battle itself, but what it represented in the terms of my own life.

I live daily with a constant battle against my own dark self. My equal and my match. I live with a depression that constantly battles to try and take over. To plummet me into a dark abyss of foul temper, bad moods and very black thoughts. In the past I have attempted suicide a number of times, and while it has been a good few years since the last attempt, that spectre is always there. Always nagging in the back of my mind. Some people see the barrier along the road, I see the cliff behind it and fight the urge to drive over it. You might see a length of rope for tying down a tarp or a load on a trailer. I wonder whether it would hold my weight.

It is a constant battle. For the most part I live with it, but it is one that is forever raging inside of me. And so the tendrils at the top of this new design for me represent the very edges of that battle. Two tendrils battling each other at the very edge of consciousness. Fighting for control of the same life. And now and then, that battle has shown through and been visible on this blog in one way or another. Either blatantly, or a little more subtle.

And so, it is only fair that on the wall that is my place to share my thoughts, a hint of that battle be represented. Not always visible, but always there.

The only way I knew of to describe that to Nick without giving away the whole secret was to use the story of the battle between Raistlin and Fistandantilus. A story I know Nick knows very well, maybe even as well as I do. Then again, I still read the Trilogy of the Twins quite often, so it might be a little fresher in my mind than his own. :-)

But now that you know, I hope the seemingly out of place neon tendril tangling with each other at the top of the page makes a little more sense to those that know me and regularly visit this website. It probably also makes a lot more sense to Nick now as well. ;-)