1 Mordekai: Well, here's the exit from Dwergenberg we used... I mean, are going to use.
2 Lambert: I have a really bad feeling about this.
3 Dwalin: I feel an eerie presence wi'in, ye ken. {translation: I feel an eerie presence within, you know.}
3 Kyros: That's us, you fool.
4 Dwalin: Aye. Whut culd be more eerie arund here than oos! {translation: Yes. What could be more eerie around here than us!}

As I type this, I am sick. I've been suffering from various flu-like symptoms for the past five days. Enough that I seriously considered skipping making any comics at all this weekend and running dangerously low into my buffer (given that I'm still trying to recover to normal levels following my recent vacation). But, no, here I am, having constructed eight new strips today and now into the final step of writing annotations.

I don't get sick very often, and am usually over it pretty quickly. Except one time back in 2001 when I ended up in hospital on intravenous antibiotics for a month. And now, this is possibly the worst I've felt since then. At times like this, one reflects on one's mortality.

There are a lot of you out there, reading this. If something were to happen to me, it would affect you all in some way. I don't make any pretensions that it would be anything major, but you'd at least suddenly be deprived of a small source of (what I hope you find to be) entertainment. And given that I work with a buffer and an automated update system, it would be possible that none of you would be aware that anything had happened to me until the comics ran out and the site just stopped working one day. And then you'd be in the dark and wondering what had happened.

To avoid this, I've given a few of my friends the ability to edit the news post that you occasionally see at the bottom of this page. So, for me at least, you can rest assured that no news is good news, in the most literal sense.

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2020-07-18 Rerun commentary: It's nice how the dungeon paving (with convenient hexagons for movement) extends outside the exit of Dwergenberg. Dwarves are nothing if not thorough construction engineers.

Interestingly, as I type this rerun annotation I am also somewhat incapacitated, this time completely unable to make comics for a period of time - although this time due to hand injury, rather than illness.