Neverending Nights

Despite the image above, the name for the “Dragon of Silver Lake” didn’t come from that! It actually came from a game. The above photo was near Mammoth (and taken many years after I’d finished Neverending Nights… the first time!), and I got a chuckle out of it being the “Launching Facility” – see why in a moment…

If you’ve checked out the Easter Egg page, you will see the series makes a ton of references to various things – from Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Dragonlance, Red vs Blue, Legend of the Red Dragon (L.O.R.D.), various song and movie titles – one of those references that kept popping up was the mysterious “Dragon of Silver Lake.”

Throughout the series, the various people Peter and Grayson run into talk about the “Dragon of Silver Lake” – some had heard the dragon was alive, some had heard it was dead, some heard it was alive, using the rumor it was dead to lure foolish adventurers, and some even got cut off before being able to finish their sentence.

As the Easter Egg page reveals, the name Silver Lake came from a game called Burnout. What specifically started it was Burnout 2. In 2004, Adam picked up Burnout 2 in a bargain bin (because Burnout 3: Take Down had just come out). We discovered the Crash Mode in Burnout 2 – and it was over. I can’t even begin the fathom how many hours Adam, Paul, and myself spent playing Burnout 2. I ended up going out and getting a copy for myself and picked up Burnout 3 which had a take down mode (where you race, but you try to take down other racers by forcing them to crash). One of the first maps in Burnout 3 is one called Silver Lake – and it has an achievement – if you crash someone into a railing that sends them into the lake, you get a photo-op called Gone Fishing.

This music was for the Drow/Duergar War that our trio of heroes accidentally incite…

I am pleased to be done with all 65 episodes in 1080p – so I’ve been going back and reposting them here with a little snip bit. I enjoy using silly titles that relate to the content of the episodes – this was the first time I’d used a song title for the episode title – but it certainly would not be the last!

I’ll be reposting episodes on the site every Sunday (ideally, every Saturday will be the Travis Richards music videos I do that he’d given us for Neverending Nights). When we created Episode 2, it was … just to do something. We hadn’t even had a real story, other than these two characters were going to go on a quest. Beyond that, at this stage, we had no clue what was going to happen.

All too often the music that Travis Richards provided was blended in with background and lowered to allow the dialogue to be heard. With the show done now – I wanted to release weekly videos of the music he’d provided us for the show and cut it to scenes from the show to highlight his music and talent.