Well, hello there!

It's certainly been a while. No, don't get excited, Tales From The Pit is finished and will remain so. If I get bored, or just feel in a very random mood I might create some more, but I freely admit it's not likely.

I just had a sudden attack of nostalgia and started re-reading some of my own strips.

It's fascinating to see them, from the perspective of a few years distance. Some, I have to admit, are total and utter crap and barely deserve the title of 'filler'. Some of them I'm still damned proud of.

When I started the webcomic, back in 2005, there were plenty around. It's something I always wanted to do, but I freely admit I have little or no artistic talent. I was always better at writing than drawing. So I thought, why not do a 'sprite' comic? And I did.

Why am I posting this? Looking back at the strips, and thinking about the sheer amount of time I must have spent on this, over several years? What do I think now?

I made that. And I enjoyed it.

Whether this web-comic was interesting, dull, excellent or dire... I made it. And I enjoyed it. Two years after it finished, that's still true. I made that. And I enjoyed it.

(side note - I think I've also stopped the randomly redirecting webpage issue)

I started Tales from the Pit in late 2005. The idea came to me one afternoon and wouldn't let go. I'd been thinking of starting a webcomic for ages... so I thought "What about an Angband comic?". I drew my buffer of forty strips and set it going. I honestly thought that I'd keep going for a year or so and then stop.

That didn't happen. Five years later and it's taken on a life of its own. Didn't miss a single update. I didn't see where the characters (such as they are) would go, I didn't see most of the concepts from the start. It gets away from you. And it comes to an end. It's been quite a ride but it's time to call it a day.

I would like to thank everyone very much for supporting me along the way. Tales from the Pit has never been the largest webcomic on the net, but it's never been the smallest either. It's what any author wants - fans who like and appreciate the work.

I've really enjoyed all your comments over the years. I hope I was able to make you smile, make you giggle or at least make your day a little more interesting for a few seconds. Hopefully more than once. Special thanks go to those who submitted guest strips and those people who made me smile in return.

It's really been something.

Goodnight everyone.

Time for another multi-part story.

As before, the strip will run 5 days this week for the guest series. Have fun!

For the guest series, we'll be running every weekday until it's finished, then it's back to business as usual. Also, sorry about the outage - transit provider apparently experiencing major problem and had to perform an emergency upgrade of software.

Advance notice - due to the server moving datacentre, the comic will be down for a couple of hours on 3rd September and on 9th September. This will occur late night/early morning GMT.

Pardon the downtime last night, my service provider was installing some necessary updates.

For the crossover, the comic will be updated all 5 days this week (Mon-Fri). After that, it'll go back to three times a week (MWF)

The new version of Angband (3.1.0beta) is out now, check the official site at rephial.org

Don't they go by in a blink? I remember being surprised I managed one year and shocked I managed two. I am gobsmacked that I've now done three.

Roll on Year Four!

As you might be able to see in the adverts box on the left, the Devnull NetHack tournament is once again upon us. Beginning on November 1st, you can pit your NetHack skills against others across the globe. With awards aplenty.

Play on your own, or join a clan for shared glory. Even if you're a novice, points are still available. Go on, it's fun.

Link: The Devnull Nethack Tournament

Apologies for the lateness - typo on my part meant that this didn't go up when it should.

If any of you are DROD players you might notice that a new Smitemaster's Selection has been released... it's an official set of levels that continues the story. I was rather involved with this one, so I'm kinda bound to promote it :)

Pardon the problem with last night's comic - typo in the filename, so it didn't display properly.

For those of you who are interested in that kind of thing, I relatively recently got back into Kingdom Of Loathing after a rather long break. Say hello if you see me on there, I'm "Calamarain".