Friday, March 18, 2011

The Chattering Horde...needs you!

*Squeek*



"Fellow Warlords, exulted Grey Seers (and great-beyond-words Vermin Lords, should you be listening!) The Chattering Horde needs your strength and verminous energy.


Gather round, you heralds of Clan Mors, Clan Skryre, Clan Eshin,  (if you are here...I can't see you) and Clan Moulder and listen to my plea...(NOT YOU, Plague Priests and emissaries of Clan Pestilens, you stay at the back where you can't cause any trouble, or...retching!)"

As you know The Chattering Horde doesn't (and won't) have advertising. Today, I'm making an exception for a good cause. If you aren't interested because this is a Skaven painting related post, no worries - I don't want to waste your time! For everyone else, please read on.

As most of you probably know, March 11th saw a great tragedy unfold in Japan. A huge earthquake of almost unprecedented strength (it has now been upgraded to a 9.0) was followed by a huge tsunami that literally swept away whole towns and sadly, sometimes many thousands of the people who lived there.

The death toll has now (at the time of writing) risen to over 6,000 and may well rise to 10,000 or more. Following this, the tsunami and earthquake proved directly responsible for causing problems at 4 nuclear reactor plants.

Today, the alert level for the reactor disaster has been raised to a level 5. (To find out what this means go here.)

I'm a gamer living in Japan, working in Tokyo. I've been here 15 years. My family and I are safe. Life in Tokyo is now inconvenient (rolling power blackouts, some queuing for food and essentials) but is as nothing to the hardships those in the worst affected areas (see above) are going through. I have no intention of leaving Japan personally - Japan has been good to me...

...so I can't just stand to one side and not find some way to help those in the worst affected parts of Japan. I can't do anything about the reactor problem, but I can do something about the looming humanitarian disaster following the earthquake and tsunami. Many people have lost their homes, livelihoods and families. It is cold up there (it snowed recently) and they are running out of food, petrol and water.

That is why I have made a donation to the Japan Red Cross. How did I do that? Easy. I spent some warpstone tokens on this stunning charity t-shirt:



A considerable % from the sale of every t-shirt will be donated to the Red Cross. For price information and details Click here to learn more.

Let me say that these t-shirts are being advertised on http://www.japan-zone.com/ . Although I know the webmaster of that website (and trust him implicitly) I have no financial interest in the sale of this item. I won't profit by even one green warpstone token myself from this. Furthermore I don't believe this to be a scam. The t-shirts are designed and printed in Nagoya, Japan but you do NOT have to be in Japan to order or receive one.

Thanks for reading so far! To finish up, just let me say this. There seem to be some people out on the web who are saying things like:
"This is karma/ payback for World War II/ Pearl Harbour/ eating whale meat..."
"Japan is a rich country, why donate anything?"
etc.
You be the judge of whether these are well-reasoned arguments or not (fortunately they are vastly outnumbered by people expressing sympathy). To me, the perceived wealth of a country, or the behavior of past generations, is absolutely NO reason not to support a good cause - anywhere in the world!

Thanks a lot for reading this. If anyone is annoyed that I should post this on a blog dedicated to painting Skaven, please accept my apologies (but it is my blog!)
;-)

++Normal service now resumes++

"SQUEEK"

p.s. Happy to report that after I emailed G.W. to ask after the safety of their staff in Japan I received the following reply...


"Hi,

Thanks for the email, it’s nice to hear the level of care and consideration you show. We are glad to report our all of our staff in Japan are all ok, we received an email from the Head of Japanese retail confirming this by email on Monday.

We hope you are safe and well after this disaster.
Thank you for the concern and all the very best.

Kyle Workman
Games Workshop Customer Services"

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