Greetings Adventurers!
I'm sorry that I haven't been posting much in the last few months. I know, I know. Things here at Hydra Hobbies have been in a bit of turmoil. My father recently passed away and I'm now become the caretaker of his estate. This means my new job is to deal with all of the properties, investments, accounts, military vehicle collections and massive amount of STUFF my father acquired over the decades of collecting and thrift store blitzes. To say he was a hoarder is to put is mildly. Not only that I'm dealing with BOTH my grandparents estates as well. Included into my Dad's stuff is a house and a six flat apartment complex in Chicago which is thankfully being renovated by my brother who has recently moved there, which is one less worry for me. And yes he is de-hoarding that location as well.
To this end I have been hopping back and forth between my home here in Austin, TX and the properties in Northern Wisconsin and Chicago. By properties I mean four full warehouses and a home. All of which are full to the brim with stuff. Some junk but much of it a collection of very unique items. These include model trains (an over 50 year collection), full sized train memorabilia (yes, this includes a full sized caboose!), lots of tools, construction equipment, heavy machinery, and (the cherry on top) several military vehicles dating as far back as World War II (one of them is a full sized fully operational DUKW, possibly used on D-Day during the invasion of Normandy.) Oops! I forgot to mention the collection of militaria such as field gear, uniforms, hats, helmets, weapons and accessories, including many world war two era weapons systems (yes one of them is a non-functional 60mm Nazi mortar!) and other assorted military hardware.
I'm also helping take care of my Mom, who is blind and has mobility issues...after all she is 84. I'm helping her deal with all sorts of financial and tax issues as well as organizing/de-hoarding her house so that she can actually get in and out of it. This has been quite a job. To say I haven't had time to work on Hydra Hobbies projects is an understatement.
For those of you still with me here I do have some HH news progress. The Dungeon of the Tormentor adventure has been fully edited and laid out with art and cartography. It is fully playtested and I recently got the cover delivered by the wonderfully talented Kennon James. It needs one last read through, some small tweaks and checks (for rules stuff) and some minor layout fixes (like adding the cover and getting the stupid page numbers to line up!) and it will be ready to go off for approval to Goodman Games, then hopefully off to the printer!
