I learned yesterday that Belghast (Mark Temple) had died just a few days ago. The shock hit me hard despite the fact that I barely knew him. Cancer took him from the world as it does so many, a year to the day after it took his wife.
Belghast is… was… a well regarded blogger and podcaster with his blog Tales of the Aggronaut being a fixture focused on massively multiplayer and action-adventure games. But for me at least the more important consideration is his leadership of several blogging community initiatives- most notably the annual Blaugust festival.
I have spent some hours reading various tributes to Mark on in the blogging community. I was happy to find a list of links to such missives over on The Ancient Gaming Noob site. My sadness seemed misplaced when I started reading as I don’t really know Belghast in any concrete way, but I found lots of reasoning in the posts to help render my emotions into a bit more cogent form of grief.
In closing I’ll quote a few phrases that stood out to me:
- “If the MMORPG blogging community had a patron saint, it was Bel.” – Bree Royce, Massively OP
- “I felt his strength and compassion was a bottomless well. That I only hoped I could face that kind of hardship with such grace” – Tipa, Chasing Dings
- “You don’t have to ever meet a person face to face for them to have an impact on your life.” – Gamerladyp, Gamerlady blog
- “another person that I did not interact with much and didn’t know well, but who I saw as a role model and stand-up human being.” – Chenonetta creations
- “his loss leaves a massive hole in our little corner that we can’t ever fill” – Blockade85, Words under my name