Welcome to Tharkis.com!
Welcome to the new Tharkis.com webpage. It was about time that I got around to updating my website. I've had a page for years and had never spent more than 10 minutes creating a page.
About me
My name is Justin Mercier, although online most people tend to know me by the chat handle Tharkis. Why Tharkis? ...well Tharkis was the name of a dungeons and dragons character which I had back in the early 1990s. Back when the internet was quite new I was playing shoot-em-up games like Quake Team Fortress and the like, I had to pick a chat handle so I picked Tharkis and it has since stuck.
This page will be dedicated primarily to my metal work, both bladesmithing and blacksmithing. I'm a relative newcommer to smithing, and am a recently new member of The Artist Blacksmith's Association of North America the local ABANA affiliate The New England Blacksmiths and I am also an apprentice member of The American Bladesmith Society
Online Gaming
Besides metal work, my other passion and hobby is online gaming. I have been playing games online with friends for just about as long as there have been games capable of multiplayer play. Most recently I have been playing MMOGs, or massivly multiplayer online games. My primary game for the last many years has been Everquest where I am an active raider with my guild Township Rebellion
I play many other games as well, ranging from Planetside, Everquest 2, Vanguard, and World of Warcraft along with two other groups of friends and aquantences: Phank and Safe Haven
I will be continuing to try to keep this page up to date, and to collect and localize as much information as I can about blacksmithing and bladesmithing. I'm an avid shutterbug when I go to conventions and get-togethers, so I will be working on a more efficient image browsing system for all the pictures that I take. My motto with photos, and even ingame screenshots when playing games, is "accuracy by volume." If I take enough photos or screenshots, I'm bound to get something half way decent eventually. Currently the browsing is entierly text link driven, with the images all popping up in their own image window. I'm aware that this isnt the best for browsing, and hope to fix it someday soon.
Enjoy my website, and if you have suggestions or comments, feel free to contact me.