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As we enter the world of Anthem, we discover the story of a young Freelancer named Colwyn Plaigue and how he becomes one of the most deadly Interceptor pilots to fly the skies of Mirrus. In part one, we will see Colwyn undertake his first true test as a Freelancer and get a little taste of the action ahead. Profile: Colwyn Plaigue was not born into a family of Freelancers. In fact, he would go on to become the first Lancer of any sort within his families lineage. His Father was an Arcanist, as well as his mother and younger brother. To Colwyn, the ways of the Arcanist always bore him. He sought out more in life. Not just cheap thrills and the adrenaline spike of flying a javelin, but, Colwyn wanted to make a difference in protecting his home, Fort Tarsis. He could of been a Sentinel, the law enforcement within the confines of the Fort, but that just seemed boring too. No, it was the dangers that wait beyond the walls that called Colwyn's name. The giant beasts that threatened him and the people of Fort Tarsis. The Dominion and their army. The Scars. All of them. Having spent some time piloting the Ranger javelin as a rookie Freelancer requirement, Colwyn is finally able to branch off and fly the other three available exosuits. He has his sights set on only one javelin-the Interceptor. As the smallest and sleekest of all the javelins, the Interceptor is favored by Corvus' long range scouts, infiltrators and assassins. While it may not be the mightiest of the javelins, it more than makes up for it with unmatched agility and evasion. In order to obtain this javelin, Colwyn will need to pass the infamous Corvus test, called The Gauntlet...something that only has a 3% pass rate. There are three parts to the test: a physical exam, a mental fortitude exam, and a written test. In order to gain Corvus' favor and pilot the Interceptor, Colwyn will need to pass all three components. This challenge is about how he does so. **I will be RP'ing Colwyn throughout the entirety of the challenge/story.** Stats: Age: 28 Height: 6'2 Weight: 188# Hair Color: Copper Eye Color: Blue Goal #1: The Gauntlet Physical Exam What exactly is the physical portion of this test? It's a grueling test to push you to your physical limits. 2 min push-ups (min 55) Max pull-ups (min 7) Max planks (min 90 seconds) Max Burpees in 2 min (min 55) Max KB front squat w/ 2x 53# KB's (min 12) Max rack pull at 225# (min 10) 1 mile run time (Sub 10 min) 1 mile ruck with 25# (Sub 15:30 min) I have 5-weeks to train for this and pass. Chances are, I'll split this workout up into 2 different ones, like the cardio ones, on a separate day. Time to get to work! Possible Points: +3 STR, +2 DEX. +1 STA Goal #2: The Gauntlet Mental Fortitude Exam What exactly is the mental fortitude portion of this test? It's split into 4-parts testing ones strength of mind through torturous means. Waterboarding (1x 5-min cold shower a week) Starvation (1x 24-hour fast at least twice this challenge) Isolation (4 total hours doing Devotionals and scripture memorization-1 hour a week) Delirium (Average 7+ hours of sleep for the duration of the challenge) These goals will be playing the long game during the challenge and require me to buckle down on my discipline. Time to get to work! Possible Points: +3 CON, +2 WIS Goal #3: The Gauntlet Written Exam What exactly is the written portion of the this test? This part will test ones creative, interpretive and problem solving capacity. Essay (Spend 1 hour a week to writing) Multiple Choice (Post 4x short excerpts over the course of the challenge-one excerpt each week) I'm gonna figure out this writing thing! I want to be consistently writing so that way when my BIG challenge happens at the end of February, I'll already be in a flow. Time to get to work! Possible Points: +3 CHA, +1 WIS I want to end 2018 on a good note with good habits, discipline, and consistency. I'm turning my obsession with Anthem into something constructive and I'm SO SO SO excited about the upcoming epic challenge once the game releases. I hope you all journey with me and enjoy the ride !! Wolf

*Middle Aged Man in Lycra It’s time to get some miles in. I’ll also be doing this kettlebell endurance program in a last ditch effort to be prepared for the racing season.

Butt Stuff Last year was pretty successful. I inched closer to my goal weight and that's just how I like it, inching towards it feels much less traumatic and a lot less like hard work too. I experienced an upswing in weight after having to take time off training due to injury in the last few months of 2017 but I am ready to kick 2018 in the face. Well, sort of. My back feels bad again for the first time in a couple of weeks but I am not going to let that bring me down and besides, my plans in this challenge should help that. I start of 2018 with my thighs a little thicker than I'd like and not in a Sloth Swole Quads way either but again, all this can be addressed. So my plans for this year are HEOUGE and can be found in my Battle Log. I read the letter I wrote to myself last new years eve and I surpassed my expectations for myself but I had forgotten what they even were which is one of my favourite things about doing this. Hang on, maybe I should explain this - every new years eve I write a letter to myself setting out my hopes and dreams for the year ahead, as well as a summary of the most important things that happened to me over the last year. I seal this and hide it, and I can't open it until the next new years eve. I keep all these letters and they're a novel way of looking back over my life. The most important lesson I learned last year is how small actions every day build up to huge results over time so this is my approach this year too and the first challenge of 2018 is about starting the fire that will burn all year. Goals ahoy! 1. Nourish I do not want to starve myself. I want my body to be strong and powerful and healthy and beautiful like a gazelle's. I want to feed it the good stuff, track everything I eat, eat 5 portions of freggies (fruits and veggies if you're new here), drink 8 glasses of water every single day and enjoy my meals. I don't want to put too much pressure on myself regarding calorie goals (although I do have a ball park figure I aim for but I find not concretely adhering to it works best for me and stops me throwing my toys out of the pram). I will for the most part be doing Pollan Rules which is essentially Don't Eat Like A Dickhead with the addition of glasses of wine. I will take pictures of 6/7 meals a week and post them here, mostly to stop myself face planting pizza every day. Pizza. Mmmm. 2. Surrender my butt to Bret (it's all in the eye contact) I want to be strong. I want to be lean and I want to be a gazelle (I appear to be suddenly obsessed with gazelles huh that's new). I want to do 3 x 30 exercise sessions every single week of 2018, and this will be cardio, strength or yoga - just in case my back continues to give me problems - this cannot be used as an excuse. My main focus will be building the best butt you have ever seen in your life. Like starlight on a moonless night. So magnificent one weeps for the majesty thereof. I am currently reading Strong Curves by Bret Contreras (the architect of that fabulous booty training move Sloth posted on my last challenge which is yet more evidence if we needed it Sloth is psychic) and I am going to put all this into action and trust Bret with my butt. I haven't finished the book yet so I am not 100% sure wtf I am doing but I have faith it will all become clear in the end. I am going to become the Booty Meat Queen, just you watch. 3. Peripherals. I want to read 26 books this year so I want to read 10 pages per day, every single day of 2018. I also want to make my bed every morning because getting into an unmade bed at night makes me really sad. I'm worth more than an unmade bed *hair flicks*. Yeah, 2018 - Deffy's back on her bullshit LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo!

Def Avoids Putting the Long ‘un in the Wrong ‘un. Ah Tetris. The beautiful game. Nobody can quite describe the thrill of getting a long Tetronimo when you have saved the perfect space for it,.. only to completely screw it up and accidentally dump it in the wrong place This, my friends, is known as “putting the long ‘un in the wrong’un” and this forms the basis of my challenge. Not doing this. Getting some Tetrises up in here. There are a number of positive actions I want to perform in this challenge and each action earns me a square towards a Tetronimo. Every time I get four squares, I build a full Tetronimo and I roll a dice to see which one I can have. I can then place this anywhere on my Tetris board. Six of the Tetronimos can be gained by doing positive behaviours which are: eating 5 a day, sticking to food rules, sticking to my training schedule, daily stretching, BuJo-ing and adhering to my skincare routine. Long ‘Uns These are gained from screwing up. If I fail a goal, a get a square towards a long ‘un. If, by midnight Sunday I haven’t completed the Long ‘Un, I can complete this and put it in a place of my choosing. If, however, I have completed the Long ‘Un, I have to stick it in the worst possible place at that moment – the wrong ‘un. The Goals Eat 5 a day – Every day I eat 5 portions of freggies (around 80g of each type) I get a square towards a regular Tetronimo. If I less than 3 portions in a day, I get a Long ‘Un square. Stick to Food Rules – This is Michael Pollan’s approach to healthy eating. All my food must be "clean" (a terrible term I usually shy away from but I know what I mean by this and if you've read 'Food Rules' then you will too!) unless it is made from scratch by my own hands. A Long ‘Un square for every non compliant item I eat. Train Every Day – I want to at least do my daily Darebee challenge workout, and I also want to do elliptical tests, swimming and yoga sessions, and P:BA is also returning (YAY!). I get a Tetronimo square for every day I do every workout I have scheduled for that day, I get a square towards a Long ‘Un for every day I do no exercise. Daily Stretching and Lemon Water – I am having a lot of muscular problems such as my back, neck and also knee issues. I want to stretch every day to try and stop this crap happening and I also want to drink warm lemon water every day when I have done it because this is what those yogis on Instagram do OKAY?! Follow skincare routine – Miscellar water helps my skin. When I don’t use this regularly, I look like shit and it takes literally seconds so there's no excuse. I want to use moisturiser at night and I also want to use a facemask 2x per week and put body lotion on 2x a week. Long ‘Un squares per missed part of routine. BuJo every day – Just keep it current. Track properly and keep my diary intact. Stick to budget – Don’t go crazy with the money, November is an expensive month for me. 2 full Tetronimos for each week I stick to this. Food Waste – I don’t waste much food at all but I’d rather waste nothing. I plan to take this even further next year but just to establish a baseline, my current goal is to waste less than £5 worth of food per week. I get 2 tetronimos per week I meet this goal Weigh in and track - every week even if I don’t think I am going to like it – A whole Tetronimo when I do. If by the end of the week I am a single square short of my second full Tetronimo for that goal, I get to complete it as a bonus for 100% the goal that week. I am also going to allow discretionary Tetronimoes when I feel I have done things exceptionally well. And for your viewing pleasure... my Tetris board! And I think that's it. New challenge............ GO!

The Clone Wars: The Prequel – Def and Shello Get Their Shit Together Are you ready for this? This is a tandem challenge. @LadyShello and I both had an abysmal challenge last go around. It was supposed to be the one where we each got back into the groove and made some progress. Rather than an improvement from the challenges before, it got worse, like, super off the rails worse. Our current levels of accountability don’t seem to be enough. We’ve been accountable to ourselves, to the Doodlies, to the entire NF community but for some reason, right now, this doesn’t seem to be enough. Before we can get back to waging war, we need to get our shit together. And what do you do when you can’t do something on your own? You get back up, you phone a friend, and you potentially risk your friendships by causing unnecessary punishments if you fuck up. So that’s what we’ve done. For this challenge we are in this together. We’ve tried challenges with rewards for hitting our goals. We’ve tried challenges with punishments for not hitting our goals and both methods have come up a little short. In order for this reset to work we need more accountability than ever before, accountability2 (patent pending). For this challenge, if either of us misses a goal, we both pay the price. The deets: We each have our own goals but they boil down to 5 workouts a week and following a sensible calorie limit. The calorie limits are tiered so that there is a specified amount that we can go over without incurring any punishment, going over more than that is either a minor or a major infraction, depending on how much over the limit we go or how we go over that limit (depending on whose challenge we’re talking about). Dietary punishments are to be completed the following day. Each missed workout incurs a penalty as well. Training penalties are cumulative and should be completed by the end of the following week. The sexy part everyone’s here for: PUNISHMENTS: 1st Dietary Minor Infraction: Add extra sets or miles on top of whatever we had planned for our next workouts 2nd Dietary Minor Infraction: Do the Darebee daily workout (in addition to our normal workouts) 3rd Dietary Minor Infraction: The same as a major infraction Major Dietary Infraction: 1 dairy-free meal and only cold showers the following day 1st missed workout: Darebee Daily Dare, with extra credit if possible, or do it twice Any subsequent missed workout: 50 burpees per missed workout Deftona's Particulars (Shut up, Scotty) I want to stick to my calorie limit which is currently 1800 calories since I am pretty active. If I eat at or below this, of any food it is a pass. I can go over this by a little as long as I eat healthy food and that will still be a pass. if I eat over 1800 calories with some unhealthy shit (eating like a dickhead, I guess) then it's a minor infraction. If I completely take the piss and faceplant a cake factory or something, it's a red infraction and Shello is going to have a bad time so let's not do that, right Def? RIGHT DEF? I also want to work out five times a week. To channel my inner Jean-Ralphio - 'IF I AIN'T MAKING IT RAININ', I'D BETTER BE TRAININ'" I have two jobs, one where I work for myself making sex aprons (this might be a lie) and another job where I work two days a week. If I am not at my outside-of-the-house job then I had better be in BatCena Boulevard paying my dues in sweat. On every training session I want to do a 5K on my elliptical and I also want to do a Darebee session because I am trying to do ALL OF THE THINGZ on there too. I also want to work on my 2016 goals which have fallen a little to the wayside of late because life has got in the way. I am doing pretty well on my financial goals but I want to make a harder push for these final months. I have spent way more money than I would normally like so far this month so from now until payday, I want to limit my spending. I have used a formula to disguise actual figures but I want to spend less than 855 Tokens of Monetary Holding (TMHs) from today until a week on Friday. I will make another financial goal after payday when I have done my monthly budget and that will be the goal for the rest of the challenge. I also want to spend the equivalent of 30 minutes a day on my other goals. I have fiction reading goals, education goals, KMing goals and a couple of others so I want a total 990 minutes this challenge on allowable activities. For this goal and the Token of Monetary Holdings goal, Shello does not get punished for me being a massive tit but I do not earn my prize if I mess it up. Shello has a vacation during this challenge and I have a mini break too. Shello's vacation is worth 6 days and mine is 3 so I am going to take 3 floating days because symmetry is very important to me for some reason. For an aced challenge, I get to keep Shello as a friend because she won't hate me. I also get to buy myself this: I think that's it. New challenge... GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Hi everyone! My name is Deftona and I have been hanging in these dark corners of the internet for a while. I usually track my progress in the challenges but since I am going to start a meta challenge that will run alongside all of my challenges for the next two years or so (wow, two years+ makes this project sound a little intimidating.... shoves fingers in ears lalalala) I thought a Battle Log to compliment this would be a sensible idea. Darebee has a range of challenges including a lot of 30 day programmes and I decided to run one of these alongside my usual cardio for my next challenge. The more I looked into them though, the harder I found it to choose one to do and the more I thought about this, the more I came around to the idea of DOING ALL OF THEM. So that is what I am going to do. I have listed them all in order in my Bullet Journal from the easiest to the hardest and I am going to complete them all. They are going to take longer than 30 days to complete because I got other shit to do but as long as I complete them in a reasonable time frame, I can consider them all aced. The first one on my list is Foundation Light and although it is probably aimed at people working below my personal fitness level, this thing is about completion so if I am doing it, I am doing it now. The challenge starts today, woo! My prize for completing this is: