Monday, December 31, 2012

Thinking Outside the Rules

I had a long conversation with a close friend who has played AD&D with me for many many years a few days ago. He's never really liked the D&D system that much, always preferring Shadowrun (and a small number of other PnP games) even when we were but children. I've struggled to understand his point of view for years but its only this past week that we delved deep enough into it where I feel like I can finally make an accurate judgement about what has irked him for so long—to the point where I can almost guarantee that the reason isn't because of anything that's built into the system but rather a misapprehension about the way the game is played.

This all came about while we were discussing (in a sort of post-game manner—I have several major flaws as a DM and one of them is that I love to postgame break down the tactics and strategies used by the party so they can think of better ways to handle things in the future) the raid on the ogre-held Island of Meri. My nameless friend (let's call him Argo) had considered again and again what to do with the information they had which was this: A few weeks ago, ogres (perhaps in barges) sailed to the island and laid it waste. The few priests who escaped where so near to death that they died shortly thereafter, unable to give a clear indication of the enemy forces on the island. They were told that there were ogres and some of the dying believed they had seen a giant.

With this information, the Hounds hired up a mercenary ship full of men that was equipped with catapults and scorpions on the grounds that they could use it to bombard the island and possibly kill any giants. They were fearful that rock-hurling would blast smaller ships out of the water. Now, the issue I point out right here is that they didn't have enough information to make an informed decision.

My suggestion was that they should have CREPT onto the island in the night and done some recon work. Argo's immediate reaction was that it didn't make any difference: "Tactics and strategy can do very little to overcome higher level foes" is something like what he said to me on the phone. I was flabbergasted. I couldn't comprehend why he thought that. He went on to reveal that he was familiar with "many many AD&D modules" that were "single rooms where you fight some guys and then move on to fight other guys in other rooms, never expecting them to interact."

I don't know if OD&D modules were ever designed this way. I informed him that, to the best of my knowledge, he was quite mistaken and indeed a lot of time and effort has been dedicated to describe states of alarm in various dungeons and the amount of noise you make while fighting (and whether that provokes wandering monster checks, etc.) I told him that you really have to think OUTSIDE the box in D&D. It's my experience that if you come to a fair fight, you have a 50/50 chance of dying. Things such as terrain, numbers, and magic help make up for what appears to be fair, but you must do your best to cant the odds in your favor, relying only at the very end in the very pinch on your martial prowess to save you.

This is the way everyone and their mother plays Shadowrun... but Shadowrun explicitly has rules that make this clear, I guess. I'm not TOO too familiar with it ruleswise, only through the stories I've heard. Lateral thinking has always, as far as I'm concerned, been part of AD&D. Without it, you really can't expect to be victorious. Running headlong at any foe is a sure recipe for death unless you have all the gods of fate, luck, and dice on your side. D&D is just like Shadowrun as far as I know, in that you should be encouraged to make use of things outside the direct field of combat.

The real tricky part for him is that some rules are hidden (DM only) or non-existant (contacts, information gathering) which really throws him for a loop. As he told me, when considering his actions he thinks of what the rules are to see what tools he has available. I think we've finally come to an understanding about the way AD&D is meant to work (you think something you want to do, the DM translates that into the rules as best he can), which isn't by choosing a wrench to deal with a nail situation. This also harkened back to the thief/sneak debate in which I informed him that I would never ask for a move silently roll from a thief unless it was clearly called for—the risk to make a lot of noise and blow cover. In that same way, characters who are not thieves can still sneak around... they just have to do so using environmental cover and advantages (and are generally not going to be as good at it).

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Some notes on Goblins

I've been working diligently to get the disparate types of goblin-kin under one umbrella in the 10th Age. Bugbears, hobgoblins, and the little guys actually form a weak 3-part caste system in Arunia (and a much more cohesive one in the Moon Kingdoms) wherein the weakest link in the chain serves as a political class, the hobgoblins as "knights" generally seeing themselves as honor-bond to duty, and the boisterous (and unpredictable) bugbears as scouts and heavy elite troops.

They don't always work in common. Often times, bugbears encountering either of the other two groups will just kill and eat them. However, in the most successful goblin tribes (those that emulate the society of the vanished goblin empires of Tsaphon, Negev, and Ennegev) this triarchy holds strong and provides three legs to support the whole of the raiding culture.

Goblins of Arunia are "debased," that is, they have a lower stature and more bestial nature than their Moon Kingdom cousins. However, they are no less attracted to power, cunning, and backstabbing. Indeed, they are just as intelligent though their magical tradition has long since died out leaving them without the one thing they would really need as a people to re-establish a homeland: wizards.

For this reason and this reason alone, the goblin menace is less of a dire threat and more of a nuisance. After all, goblins have scattered to the four corners of Arunia where they have set up distinct colonies. Goblins are endemic, whether you are in a forest, below ground, or on a high plain. They can be found anywhere and everywhere, usually thriving in their brutality.

They value things that most other cultures would consider ugly. Stark, twisted, and even the gothically ornate are all types of things which appeal to goblins. Their weapons are sometimes fashioned to look  like grotesque reflections of real things in the world: dragons, birds, lions, etc.

If all of the mudmen (the creatures created by the spirits descended from the Gigantine God Ulagos the Potter) have one critical flaw, the flaw of the goblins is hubris. Whereas orcs cannot empathize, goblins simply cannot see the value in races other than their own. They believe almost inherently in their own greatness and the greatness of both their race and their person.

While the goblin-kin races may be encountered separately (tribes of hobgoblins or bugbears) or in groups without their other kin (as leaders of orcs, led by ogres, or some such) their society is at its most complex when the three strata live and work together and fall into their more-or-less "natural" social castes.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Friday Sneak: Valbois

So, this is the part of the Atlas I've been spending my time developing, for two reasons. The first is because I'm confounded by how to easily convey calendrical and time-telling information (which is the next chronologically relevant part of the Atlas) but the second is because I have a real life party playing in this area, soon.

I'm so far up my own ass when it comes to the 10th Age that I can no longer tell what makes sense only to me and what qualifies as comprehensible to the uninitiated, so if this is just a vast wall of weird lore that has no context and is totally incomprehensible... feel free to let me know by comment or otherwise.


Valbois, the Vale of the Wood

History of Valbois

The history of the wooded valley is intertwined inextricably with the Duchy of Paix and the Milean Empire. Long before it was inhabited by men it was part of the ancient Gigantine kingdom known as Rhûn which has lent its name to geography around the duchy. During the time when the Avars fled Zesh and arrived within the borders of Rhûn the kingdom was already suffering collapse. The aging stone giant kingdom could not withstand the pressures of time for they were a warlike people who had spent the greater part of their strength on wars with each other and the great giant kingdoms of the lowlands such as Umbrinol and Thuros. Their people were dying off and slowly turning to stone, and so the forested shores of the Rhûnnic coast were left empty save for elves and fair folk.

Throughout the period known as the First and Second Empires the region remained uninhabited. The elves left, after a time, as the coast was exposed to the depredations of raiders and reavers from the high seas (and besides, relations with the Greatwood spoiled in the later imperial periods) and the land was left for human settlement. That was many centuries ago, long before the modern age.

Since that time, men have dwelled in the valley lands between the Gold Hook and Giantspire mountains. Mostly townships and loosely affiliated tribes of Mercantine descent, the region was wild for many years until the foundation of the Kingdom of Pax in the 9th Age. Valbois was incorporated into that kingdom and, in the year IX.260 rule of Pax passed from the so called Usurper-king, Talaster Valmont, to his sister’s daughter, Melea of Floris who was ruler of Valbois. She built the first palace at Casselflor, then known as Floraine, and founded the dynasty of the Florian Kings who ruled from that place.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

The Deep Rich Past

I know I haven't been as active as I'd like. Constant work, the holidays, preparing adventures for a party of people who've never played before, preparing adventures for the Hounds, reading books, and watching Dexter have pretty much eaten into my blog-writing time. Oh, not to mention working on the boxed set which is actually what precipitated this post. For all of this, I apologize.

Worlds need history. Without it, they are severed from time and place and can have no sense of what they are. Unless the central conceit of the game is a world without history, I simply cannot see how a good setting can exist without deep and rich background, particularly for a game like D&D which draws heavily on the notion of fallen empires and vanished times, of ruins and ancient tomes and days gone by. These things require history, deep and dark as the dungeons in which the PCs delve.

I experienced this afresh while I was working on the region for the boxed set. The Duchy of Paix (pronounced Pax) is a region of the Third Empire of Miles and as such I assumed that sharing in the Milean timeline and history would be enough to give it a good flavor and background. However, as I built the town of Casselflor I realized that there was something missing, namely a history not on the grand sense but of these woods and these hills. It didn't matter what the King at Miles was doing, it mattered who lived in the Vallaine Wood, what murders and foul deeds were afoot in Valbois.

So I went back and traced the Duchy all the way through the beginning of the Ninth Age when it was the Kingdom of Pax. I enumerated each of the kings and queens and their accomplishments, the wars they fought, the castles they built... and then I got down to the nitty-gritty of what Casselflor itself had been like when the Florian dynasty built their keep there. The more local history that I worked out the more the very land began to make sense. Things placed themselves based on the past; the ruins of the Florian Keep, the ancient gigantine tomb and temple complex, even the inns and roads.

So this isn't a plea for rolls and rolls of ancient events, I suppose, but rather for a more detailed immediate and local history that can date back to the settlement of the region, even if the early events are only vague details. The more you know about a place, the more that place makes sense, and the more real it becomes.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Enter the Dungeon (at your peril)

So, I'm teaching some new people how to play AD&D. They've never played a pen and paper RPG before, so their experience with D&D-style things is rooted in video games, theater, and novels. As I do this, I thought it would be interesting to keep a sort of ethnography of the D&D player, examine how they grapple with various D&D concepts, that sort of thing. I've never taught an adult to play before, my last experience with TEACHING the game was probably when I was 18 or so.

This is a writeup of our first night.

Everyone trickled in and we watched a little Heavy Metal (part of the educational process for our prog-rock band, Ballchild) and ordered some Thai food. It was probably a mistake to let the night drag on for so long before we started actually talking about D&D but I drew it out as long as I possibly could for fear that they wouldn't like it, that they would think it was silly or stupid, all those fears. Yes, they're rooted deep inside me; somehow I still think of it as a shameful thing to do, or at least semi-shameful. STRANGE.

They rolled up their characters using the immensely painful 3d6-in-order method of which I am a particular fan. I explained they could reroll if they liked, since this was the hardest of all the dice methods. They were instantly derisive of doing so, which warmed my heart.

As I explained the classes they grappled with the archetypes each one represented. The most confusing was probably the clerical class because the 10th Age ONLY has specialty priests and I really didn't want to get into detail about 45 different variations of the priest.

We have one player playing across genders (girl playing a boy), which was a change from the usual boy playing a girl trope. There were a lot of dick jokes, particularly about how we would decide the size and girth of each character's dick at creation. I resisted the urge to mention FATAL since it would've just frightened them if I explained it.

They were immediately drunk with the options of play. "Can we do this?" was a common question, even before classes where decided. They swung from plotting to kill every gnome in creation to toppling the emperor in the first twenty or so minutes. This is the stage that most people are at the first time they're introduced to D&D, I think... but for kids it may last several years rather than 20 or 30 minutes.

They were also pretty enamoured (I think) of the notion that your character would outlive you if you retired, and they would become a permanent fixture in the setting. "We're making history!" Amanda exclaimed at one point. Bear in mind that they have YET to play!

Proficiencies were difficult but we got through it with careful culling of the extra prof lists (I only have Combat and Tactics and the Tome of Magic with me so there was no need to pour through things like Spells and Magic or the Complete Fighter). It was equipment that sank the night, for it took hours to distribute gold pieces, determine what was necessary to carry, and discuss whether or not they wanted to buy a donkey or hire porters and carriers to lug their stuff around.

What we came out with was this:

Ricki playing Antonio, a half-Dorlish half-Varan Grovetender of Eleia; lusty and pansexual.

Amanda playing Aubergine, a halfling thief who is all about breaking down the authority and maybe picking a few pockets.

Dave playing Talíferon, an elven wizard who may be CG or may be CE—but appears to be insane, as he discussed the pros and cons of cannibalism in character.

We stopped after equipment, so there are still spells to be had, thief skills to be distributed, and all that jazz. I have to explain how combat works, probably by running a few sample fights. I have impressed on them that one-on-one slugfests are a sure way to die, particularly if you're outnumbered. We'll see how it all shakes out. They WERE pretty sad that they spent so long on character creation since they know the death rate (the funnel) between levels 1-2 is pretty high.

Friday, December 21, 2012

A map! A map! My kingdom for a map!

First in-person session in years with coworkers who have never played a pnp rpg before, let alone AD&D. About 1/3rd of the way through character creation—DAMN I forgot how long it can take when no one knows anything about the rules! Haven't had to explain how to play in forever, so I'm certainly rusty and slow at it.

Anyway, this map is for them.

View me Separately

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Hounds of Aros

Here is the charter for the Hounds of Aros, recently re-written by Oloz Satyr-born:

Even so near the very heart of splendor, blackness festers. We have discovered foes on Meri's isle that we had scarcely dreamed of - imagined could be so near, so imminent, or perhaps even real. A pair of cyclopses, not less and likely more than two score ogres, and their darkly cunning master. We hired the help of a mercenary cog out of Blackport - destroyed now, though I do not mourn it much, callous though that sounds - and with use of its weapons slew one cyclops, though the other yet lives to be a terror elsewhere, and nearly halved the ogaritic force, but lost much of our own as well. Several times were we almost bested by ogaritic strength, and in the end shamed by their tactics, and near the outset the poor fool Galzoth and little Katerine were slain.


Did they know the risk? In my heart I know that I did, but I have seen death before and I know that as long as my fight is just my end is not to be feared overmuch. What about Galzoth, whose heart still bore the stain of his beginnings? What place will his soul find in the afterlife? Or Katerine, so much like a child? I spoke with Keir the dwarf several times on the island, and the things he had to say, his questions surprised me, and I fear sometimes that I am losing touch with these men and women with whom I shed blood. He could have lost his life and never known beyond a vague thirst for gold why he was fighting.

Monday, December 17, 2012

News from Arunia, the Summer War

In the North, rumors abound that the brief and furious summer war between Essad and Soloth has come to an end. Hyrek Thur, the Slaver King, has agreed to pay the City of the Wyrm an annual subsidy in gold and slaves in exchange for the aid from Soloth to help put down the widespread revolts inside Essad. Already Solothen forces are gathering at the Fields of Blood to march south and sweep into the Agricon where the slaves hold their strongest position.

In Dorlan, the Great Families have been maneuvering all summer around one another. With the coming of autumn and the seasonal tax dues traveling to Silano the Council of Mages has been convened to discuss the state of their neighbors and the relative weakness of Essad at this critical time. However, as the Vecchio and Vecchia leave their provinces to journey to the capital there are whispers of violence erupting between the feuding families.

In the Forest of Silversong the elves stand divided once again over the fitness of the Towerborn king to rule. Shipping and trade came to a halt early this year: before the autumn stormy season could officially begin, a band of ogres and their trained giants took possession of the Isle of Meri and its shrine, traditionally used to bless ships before they leave the Silversong Coast. Without access to the shrine there, most of the Free Merchants decided to cancel their journeys to Dorlan, staying rather to winter in the city of Tyrma.

In the East the Free Cities for once have lain down their swords against each other. Massive armies pour now into Mamil al-Tyfir, the great goblin city that stands as the backbone of the Tyfrian League. In stark opposition to Vagrysj the Lion, the League prepares for the coming spring and the blood that will flow over the rocky landscape of the Far East when that great ogre-king pushes farther north with his massive and endless armies.

Brief skirmishes erupted along the mutual Weyland/Claulan/Stonemark border early in the autumn over perceived trade rights with the dwarves. This flare-up of hostilities opens old wounds between the three kingdoms which were once united under the ancient banner of Middlemark. Seiber vel Clauren has been overheard discussing the possibility of war and King Vortigen of Weyland called his barons and erls to Cyregel for a bellicose meeting.

Fighting in the Valelands has come to a halt, with most of the Dorlish occupying force withdrawing beyond the March. The Dorls, however, have left a governor at Michelstadt along with a detachment of Baldannes soldiers to guard her. The short-lived "kingdom of Withlum" has officially collapsed in the face of strident opposition from each of the Valeland governors, who cannot be brought to an agreement about anything. Northmount Abbey continues to host them within its walls, but for how much longer remains debatable.

Of course, things are happening in the Empire as well... but they are too far and too jumbled for me to report them. Perhaps when ships set sail once again and round the Straits in the spring we will get some news of the interminable wars waged by the so-called Emperor, Tamerin.

Friday, December 14, 2012

A Chapter from Heavenly Devices

I'm posting this today because a friend (Matty Tibaldi) is going to be doing an interview with her college radio station and I guess she's gonna talk about me, the 10th Age, and the unpublished book Heavenly Devices. This is a chapter about Apollonia di Perugia, the nun who helped begin the Clockwork Renaissance:



CHAPTER TWO

Roma

Apollonia wished that Sister Mary would stop fussing. Matins was only a few minutes away and she was as pretty as she was like to get already. “Who am I going to impress?” she asked angrily, swatting at Mary’s hand.

“Sister Apollonia!” Mary chided. “You’re a member of the Papal Curia. Who are you going to impress? Everyone!”

“Not with my hair, I’m not,” she grumbled. “Hand me my wimple.”

“Oh, Sister, no,” Mary complained. “please don’t cover it up! God gave you such gifts of beauty.”

Apollonia closed her eyes and ground her teeth together. Try as she might, she couldn’t get rid of the sound of the orologe on her bedside table, ticking and parceling up the moments of every day with its knife-sharp hands. “Sister Mary Rose,” she asked, playing at calmness, “What would the Mother Superior say about wearing your hair exposed to the view of man and God?”

“Nothing,” said the frumpy nun. “She’d have let you do it, too, because you’re in the Holy See.”

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Interdependent Independent Worlds

I've spoken to a lot of people over the years about the Forgotten Realms. The number one complaint that I got was that there were too many high-level NPCs crowding the world stage followed up right behind with the idea that the "metastory," the plot progressions presented in the FR novels and later sourcebooks, made it impossible to keep up with (and therefore run) the developments of the realms. Earlier today, someone made a comment about how terrible I would feel if the 10th Age took off and someone modified it for 3rd Edition.

The real truth is that I don't care what anyone does with the 10th Age in their private time. I have my version of it, and you can have yours. The same goes for the Realms; the Realms you run are YOUR Realms, not Greenwood's and not R.A. Salvatores.

The various campaign settings that you experience are shards, fragments, that do nothing to detract from the core canon. But nor is the core canon really preferential in any real sense. Everything, every addition to the setting that is not canon is IN A SENSE canon. No setting, no constellation of fictional worlds anywhere, is ever overwritten by variation or change. All contradictory storylines, alternate canons, fictions, exist simultaneously, independently,

The same theory applies to things such as fan fiction, fanon, and all that jazz. These things are a semantic web, not a single page of writing that can be overwritten. What's the take away from all this?

USE the 10th Age if you want! Do whatever you want to it! Sink Miles, blast apart the moons, do whatever you like! I don't care, in fact I encourage it! Why should your Arunia look like mine? If anything, if anything I like to think of my own campaigns as Arunia prime. But hell, if you want to find a way to get the stories of your party into the main canon of Arunia prime that's fine too. I include all the parties I run, let them interact with the world and change it and each other.

Go for it!

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Sick magic, bro

So, I've been pretty ill the last few days. While sick, I've been working on differentiating the magical traditions of the 10th Age.

It's been a long standing descriptive rule that there are several general types of magic: Petty Sorcery, Low Sorcery, High Sorcery, and Elder Magic. What do they mean? I'm glad you asked!

Low Sorcery encompasses all spells of levels 2-4. Yes, even the dangerous and flashy lightning bolt is Low.  Level one spells are known as Petty Sorcery, and wizards who can not cast spells beyond this are sometimes derogatorily refereed to as magicians.

High Sorcery is all magic of levels 5-9. Wizards who can harness high sorcery are true mages indeed!

Elder Magic is magic from the old days of the world, invariably created by one of the Elder Races. No wizard now living can replicate the power of Elder Magic which is strictly reserved for things like one-off scrolls of such power that nothing can resist them or artifacts that can never be duplicated.

However, we've been talking about a way to make some non-human magic available to mortal PC races. That is, Wyrmish, Gigantine, and Trollish magic. So, taking into account that one must know Old Occulted Wyrmish, Arcaedon, or the Night Speech to tap into these traditions the following rules have been added:

Wyrmish magic is more powerful than any counterpart. Wyrmish versions of regular spells (of which there are a few) calculate damage as though the caster were 2 levels higher than he actually is. Additionally, all spells from this corpus elicit a -4 to saving throws. However, the caster must sacrifice TWO spell slots to memorize a draconic spell and, while casting, must make a successful spellcraft check or take d2 points of temporary and non-lethal damage per spell level as it saps his own breath.

Gigantine magic treats giants as "people" for things like Hold Person. It also doubles any durations and trebles area of effect. However, Gigantine magic assumes a much larger reservoir of internal energy (breath) than men can ever have. Only wizards with a constitution of 15 or higher can use it, and even then it deals a number of nonlethal hp of damage equal to its spell level.

Not sure on Trollish magic yet.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Spells from the Elves, vol. I


The elves of Arunia have a long and colored history of magic use. From Oronnos and the ancient elven mages of Tailimisia to the modern-day kingdoms of the wind elves, magic has always been a part of elvish society. It's no surprise that such a highly literate and scholarly culture would maintain deep archives of magical lore. Here, then, are some spells from the volumes of forgotten lore stocked away in elvish storehouses.

LEVEL 5

Prismatic Lightning
(Evocation)

Range: 40 yds + 10 yds/level                  Components: V, S, M
Duration: Instantaneous                          Casting Time: 5
Area of Effect: Special                             Saving Throw: 1/2

Much like the less powerful lightning bolt, this spell calls forth powerful blasts of energy that the caster can direct as per that spell. However, when Prismatic Lightning is cast the sorcerer flings not one but 4 bolts of varying colors. The caster can direct each of the four bolts independently. They deal damage as per a lightning bolt (1d6/caster level to a maximum of 10d6) but have other effects as well based on their color. These bolts do not reflect off of surfaces like regular lightning bolts.

Colors (roll 1d6 for each bolt to determine color):

1. RED -- Red bolts boil blood and flesh of organic creatures. Flesh sizzles, blackens, and cracks where they strike. Anyone hit by a red bolt will be filled with pain. There are no saving throws to halve the damage of red lightning bolts; instead, the target must save vs. paralysis or be in so much pain that the only thing they can do for 1d6 rounds thereafter is moan and whimper.

2. BLUE -- Blue bolts have incredible power; they knock their targets backwards 3d12 yards. The saving throw does not cut damage in this case, much like the red bolts. Rather, the target must save vs. spell or be launched backwards and take an additional amount of damage as though they had fallen that distance.

3. VIOLET -- Violet bolts leap from target to target, striking up to three additional people as long as they are each within 10 feet of the other.

4. ORANGE -- Orange bolts act as normal lightning bolts but set clothing, flesh, and surroundings on fire where they touch.

5. YELLOW -- Yellow bolts dehydrate their target, dealing double their damage dice.

6. GREEN -- Green bolts leave an acidic residue behind which deals 1d4 damage/level the first round after they strike and progressively (1 die) less damage each additional round. The acid eats through cloth instantly but takes a number of rounds equal to the AC protection of the armor they are attacking -- eg, AC 8 armor provides 2 rounds of protection while the acid burns through.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Myth, the Black Company, and Military Fantasy

My mornings seem to get more and more full, robbing me of the time to write cohesive essays. I still do want to approach the topic of the Black Company, one of the seminal works in modern fantasy, as well as Bungie's thematic successor: the game series known as Myth.



There are many powerful themes that have been latent in modern fantasy which find their reprisal in the Black Company. Magic, for example, is no domesticated Harry Potter expecto patronus but rather a dangerous, powerful, almost living thing. Those who make use of it are on the order of minor demigods and the way this affects the human mind and sense of control is deeply explored in the characters of the Taken; when the interior reality and the exterior reality are seamlessly fluid the regular concerns of morality may fall away. Glen Cook's world is a grim one, a psychedelic land of meathook realities.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Future and Prophecy: A Conference

This weekend I went to Barnard College in the City to attend a conference of medieval and renaissance studies. Though most of the papers were focused on the renaissance or the early modern period, the last panel had a pair of papers that dealt (more or less) with the 12th century, particularly chronicles and romance. Hey! That's stuff I can get behind.

Other highlights include the paper on demons and demonology that focused on aural sources—sights heard, but not seen, by the inquisitors trying 17th and 18th century demonological cases. I couldn't help but think of Warhammer when I heard of witches who couldn't look their accusers in the eye (they were being coached by invisible demons on how to answer questions, it seems) or of evil Sabbat rights performed in the very bedroom of the demonologist without his knowledge, and here I gasp for effect.

So, things have been exceedingly busy for me of late. I have to get together a feast kit for Yule and also help Jocelyn get a T-tunic made so she has something to wear (our loaner garb had to go back home). I started playing Myth II again with some friends, so maybe a long discussion on military fantasy, the Myth series, and the Black Company is in order for tomorrow.

Until then, be content with knowing that I am blisteringly tired from being on call at work always as well as attempting to fit in some of my own things that need to get done in my long day. Oh, I also started reading Lev Grossman's The Magicians at Danny's urging. It is a PRETTY pretty good book so far. I'm definitely liking it.

16,500 words on the post-apocalyptic manuscript. Now if only some people would finish reading Heavenly Devices so I could revise it and send it out... and if only some editors would take a shine to it.