I would just like to put the thought out there for a miss­ing mate. When I come to this site I am reminded of his pres­ence. His work and love of gam­ing. We should all cel­e­brate his mem­ory that helped keep this game alive.
Allan

Thank you, Allan. And not only thank you, but also have a point of Karma for that post!

I miss Ian greatly. He became a closer friend to me than any other per­son I ever met over the inter­net, and his demise was a big­ger blow to me than the death of some casual friends I have made in the real world. When I stum­bled upon TRoS and sub­se­quently the old, still offi­cial TRoS web­site and forum some twelve years ago, Ian was already there and one of the most estab­lished and esteemed mem­bers, and rightly so. He had a way of explain­ing things with­out con­de­scend­ing, of defus­ing volatile con­ver­sa­tions and of really win­ning over peo­ple with argu­men­hts like few peo­ple I know, and like nobody else I’ve ever met over the inter­net. It was Ian who opened my eyes to the full poten­tial of TRoS, and he influ­enced my style of gam­ing like nobody else since. Many of the seeds that later bloomed into Blade were laid in con­ver­sa­tions with Ian. I never actu­ally spoke with Ian, but I often spoke of him, and after his demise learned from his widow, Pat, that he, too, fre­quently talked about me. I can say that we were friends in the full sense of the word, not just the inter­net sense.

I knew of Ian’s heart con­di­tion, but it was only after his sud­den death that I learned, by watch­ing the video of his funeral ser­vice, that Ian had defeated near cer­tain death at the very end of his teens, and was sub­se­quently often asked by doc­tors to come to the hos­pi­tal and talk to patients with the same almost unsur­viv­able sick­ness that he had had and to show them that it actu­ally was sur­viv­able. I am not sur­prised that he did. I never got to know him as any­thing but kind. And he was, as I also found out only after he was gone, deeply reli­gious. It speaks vol­umes of the man he was that I — and I pre­sume nobody else on the inter­net — ever guessed that from just inter­act­ing with him. He was reli­gious in the best sense of the world, with­out zealotry, big­otry or narrow-​mindedness, and with­out ever pros­e­ly­tiz­ing.

But, to sing not only his praises to an extent that might lead some to dis­be­lieve every­thing I am saing about him, he had also a slightly manip­u­la­tive streak to him­self and a type of silent intel­lec­tual snob­bery. I came to real­ize both only in our pri­vate exchanges, where we spoke about the post­ing activ­ity on the var­i­ous TRoS and Blade fora. And as I am prob­a­bly guilty at least of the lat­ter to an even greater degree than Ian it didn’t bother me. His intel­li­gence and his pen­chant for manip­u­la­tion went hand in hand with his capa­bil­i­ties as an insight­ful and gen­tle ped­a­gogue, and I saw him time and time again to use both to lead oth­ers to greater under­stand­ing.

His death was a huge shock, because it came com­pletely unex­pected. Yes, he had a weak heart, but it was sta­ble and he was tak­ing good care of it, espe­cially after the birth of his twins a few years prior to his death — which left his wodow alone with four daugh­ters. You can get a glimpse of his old­est daugh­ter and wife stnad­ing along­side Ian, por­trayed as schem­ing noble patri­arch, on page 4 of Blade; that’s Ian.

He was fun­da­men­tal in devel­op­ing Blade, and thus it was only fit­ting that he wrote the intro­duc­tion. It was not so much his input into con­tent — all he did on that point was still done in the open forum back on his old trosfans-​forum — but the work he put into pro­duc­ing the book on all lev­els, includ­ing pro­mot­ing its Kick­starter. He put a huge amount of work into this espe­cially, and we couldn’t have pulled it off with­out him. We weren’t always happy with the direc­tions into which he wanted to take the pro­duc­tion of Blade, and he was unhappy and dis­ap­pointed with some of the final decisons we took on that count, and we quar­relled a bit and were both slightly irri­tated by the other, but that’s in the end all part of friend­ships. Friend­ships need to be able to take that; ours did, and grew and pros­pered through it.

Like I said, I never met my friend, never even heard his voice. We were mak­ing plans for that. Ian’s grand­fa­ther had fought at Gal­lipoli and he was going to go to with his familly to Turkey for the hun­dreth anniver­sary of the bat­tle, where we int­eded to meet when I was going to be in Turkey for my next stint at the Aus­trian exca­va­tion cam­paign at Eph­esus. Well, it wasn’t to be. Death made naught of our plans.

I miss Ian.

I’m glad you posted this Allan as I never get to say any word on this mat­ter, by the time of his pass­ing it had been a while I was away from online and gam­ing activ­ity and indeed, I too was shocked when return­ing under such sad news.

Over the now long years i’ve now known TroS, I had been a silent forum lurker and I’ve got to know a lot of char­ac­ters even if they never got to know me, and dare­say Ian was one of the most mem­o­rable mem­bers of any forum i’ve ever been. Saddly I never got to inter­act much with him as there was lit­tle time by the time of my join­ing BoiT and that of his sud­den demise.

I’ve always cher­ished what he had to say, he cer­tainly had a way with words as it always struck a chord, even if it was some­thing I wouldn’t agree. With­out know­ing much more, I’d say he was a kind spirit, and it showed through his text. Its no won­der that every now and then I get to think of his per­son, even while away from the forums or blade.

Thanks for shar­ing more about him Michael.

A cheers to Ian then!