aggienaut: (Krusk)

Cato, original reference ROOK AT HIS WIDDLE TOOF!!

   Finally have all the entries of the long distance telephone pictionary game in

   Presently I'm tied for last in the LJ Idol poll! Which of course means I'll be eliminated unless I get some more votes!!! Please go vote for me, even if you don't have a dreamwidth account you can still vote over there with your livejournal account.


And here's a random saber toothed cat kitten and adult. The adult looks like he needs coffee.


Meanwhile in the Dungeons and Dragons came my character has bought an elephant (which I've named Bartleby). Its not something I had contemplated in the slightest until the dungeon master said a stablekeeper had one for sale and I was like.... yes! My character has also bought a lance to use on it and switched out his javelins for bolas so he can entangle people. I'm really looking forward to getting to use my new toys!


Also in the D&D game some kind of discussion of centaur anatomy inspired me to doodle this centaur trying to preserve her modesty by covering her human breasts and her horse teats.



But seriously, please go vote for me (:

aggienaut: (Krusk)

   Meanwhile in the Dungeons and Dragons inspired creative writing odyssey...

Week 10
   I won't reproduce in full here but I was quite pleased with a tastefully inserted sex scene. In my character's background it had been written that he had "insatiable desires" but that hadn't really come up yet in any log entries or storyline. It was known that my character never slept in the inn with them but hadn't been said where. So I inserted a scene where he wakes up beside a Swedish girl who had just accidentally pulled the blanket off him (the guys had been talking about Swedish girls at the previous session), then begins to feel his insatiable hungers, and then I tastefully change the scene to a steam hammer a gnome had just invented as it rhythmically hammered some metal (a steam hammer had featured on some program on the tv that was running silently in the background at last session) ... and then when we rejoin my protagonist he is just finishing a delicious Swedish dammsugare. Now isn't that tasteful?? I got a lot of push-back from the guys though alleging that "Swedish girl" isn't a valid D & D race, hrmph.

   Also I really miss dammsugare.




Week 11
   What you need to know is we wandered into a cave and came across four giant spiders. We had in our company a "giant goat" named Tandoori which we sent ahead of us to trigger the spiders because we're jerks like that. I think this giant goat was unrealistically well behaved, in reality I find they never want to do what you want.
   Also the previous week our friend Greg had tried to enter a single haiku as his log entry, which made many of us groan, and particularly incensed Ben, who went off on a tirade about how he hated haikus. Now if anything is a worthy goal its annoying Ben, so this week, I present you, our encounter with the spiders, as told from the spiders point of view, who, it turns out, only think in haiku form!!

ExpandGiant Cave Spider Haikus )



aggienaut: (Krusk)
   This is written to work as a stand-alone piece but is the latest installment in my dungeon's and dragons adventure (though there's three sessions since the last one posted here, the only event in the missing time that's particularly worth noting is when Krusk wrapped his flail in his cup-bearer's boxers to protect it while fighting an acid blob).

   The trail seemed to abruptly end amid some shrubbery. On either side a white skull gleamed atop a stake driven into the ground. A small song bird twittered atop the one on the right but flew up into a tree as they approached. They stopped briefly between the skulls and Percival, looking left and right could see more stakes with skulls spaced out to form a border between the darker forest ahead of them and the cheery forest they had been traveling through.
   "There is no path to the temple," Krusk, his large companion, explained. "It's symbolic, it's all symbolic. We have to find our own way there"
   "And we must tread carefully so as not to make a trail?" ventured Percival.
   "Ah, yes." answered Krusk, "very good."
   They carefully picked their way in the general direction the trail had been headed, careful not to disturb the grass overly much or walk where it appeared maybe someone else had. Percival reflected how this necessity made one more considerate of the natural environment and felt pleased with it. The forest past the skulls was thicker and darker but not really in a depressing way. There were if anything more birds about and generally the environment seemed more undisturbed. Percival noticed Krusk had taken his kite-shaped shield off his back, and was holding his flail at the ready.
   "There's some dangerous creatures in here," Krusk explained, "that can surprise the unready."
   Percival put his hand on the hilt of his sword. Technically Krusk's sword, but Krusk almost never used it, probably only owned it for symbolic reasons. Designed for an orc like Krusk, it was a bit big for Percival, a teenage human. Percival wondered what kind of "creatures" lurked in this forest. Sometimes the difference between a monster and an animal seemed very subjective, and Percival disliked killing things he didn't have to.
   He thought back to some of the creatures they had recently encountered. The undead creatures he didn't doubt were worth scourging away, but what about that giant vulture thing, the "vrock?" [illustration of the event] It had attacked them sure, but maybe it felt they were threatening its territory or was hungry? Percival looked forward to visiting the Geographic Society in town where he could converse on this subject with people interested in natural history.
   "That group of thieves we encountered," began the usually untalkative Krusk, "do you think we should have fought them?"
   "Oh, um, uh, I don't know?" ventured Percival, mildly surprised how closely Krusk's question matched the theme he was already thinking about.
   "Why not?" prompted Krusk, not looking at him.
   "They hadn't attacked us, there were more of them than us?"
   "Yes but they were clearly thieves, it was our duty to oppose them. We probably could have taken them"
   "Maybe?" offered Percival meekly. He thought back to the time the previous day when they had hidden in the bushes as nine humans who looked very thievish had come down the road. Krusk had wanted to confront them, but Malek, the lizard-man had held Krusk back urgently hissing to just stay hidden. Percival had to smile recalling how Krusk's cup-bearer Davidge had skillfully defused the situation by thrusting a horn of strong mead into Krusk's hand at just the right moment to console him.
   "But the rest of our group didn't want to fight them" offered Percival
   "Yes but they would have gone with it if it came to that." speculated Krusk. "I think we should have. One must have courage to fight one's enemies but also the courage to go against what others think is best for you" mused Krusk. He wasn't usually this philosophical, thought Percival, but since they were on their way to Krusk's initiation into the Third Degree of the Order of Azetlotlex, Percival supposed he was thinking a lot about his duty. Percival briefly questioned whether he really wanted to follow in Krusk's footsteps and become a paladin, the path his parents had proudly put him on. His chest swelled with pride as he thought of the honor of the righteous path and he squashed his feelings of doubt.
   "What if they weren't thieves at all?" asked Percival
   "Well I would have confronted them and probably if they were criminals they'd fight or run. If they had nothing to hide we could have discussed it." Percival nodded, remembering how Krusk had tried to talk to the goblins they had encountered, before others had taken the initiative and attacked.

   Presently they came to the temble complex, delineated by another row of skull stakes. There were a few stone and wood buildings around a square with a grove of trees in it, and the imposing blocky edifice of the temple building beside it. Many members of the order of various races, human, dwarven, elven, orcish, and more, stood around or sat at tables, wearing black robes. Several cheerfully greeted Krusk, who soon disappeared into one of the buildings to change into a black robe himself. Percival noticed an attractive human female not much older than himself and found himself wondering if she was wearing anything under the robe, which caused him to be particularly flustered when a dwarf with a fiery red beard introduced himself ("Tyler") just then with a friendly but overpowering handshake. The dwarf then introduced Percival to the "dread master" of the lodge, a grey haired centaur whose face was lined with age. As Percival was introduced around everyone was very friendly, though he felt meek and intimidated. He was grateful that despite his feeling of awkwardness no one seemed to talk down to him. Some meat was roasting on a spit, which smelled delicious. Percival recalled being told their the Dread God Sithrak, whom the Order is dedicated to, was said to particularly love a good barbecue ("even now Sithrak oils the spit!" being one of their common sayings), and had even forbade them to eat an entirely vegetarian meal. On a table near the middle several gold coins lay apparently unattended, which Percival suspected was another symbolic test of the order. As the evening darkened, tallow candles were set out for additional light.
   "These are tallow candles, laddie, but inside the temple I can tell you we use only beeswax candles," offered Tyler.
   "Oh," answered Percival, watching how the twenty-sided gold coins glinted in the candle light.
   "The beeswax burns bright and doesn't splutter or smoke" continued Tyler, "but Sithrak is pleased by tallow candles as well. So tallow candles without and pure beeswax candles within"
   Sithrak does like burning animal fat Percival thought to himself.
   Just before midnight the members of the Order entered the temple (The Dread Master seemed to determine the time from the stars). Tyler took a position beside the great door with his sword grounded. "Your role doesn't begin just yet" he explained to Percival, "so yea may as well sit." Percival gazed at the large carving of an upside-down skull above the door, lit dramatically by the flickering candle-light.
   After about half an hour several members of the order, including the young woman, exited the temble. "They are the one's who aren't yet of the Third Degree themselves laddie" explained Tyler, "but now the ceremony begins, so you come up here and take position on the far side of the door. Percival took a posiiton in mirror of Tyler on the other side of the door, grounding the sword between his feet. He had hoped the young woman would stick around but the members who had exited departed didn't hang around. Over the next several hours he sometimes heard chanting from within the temple and at one point he thought he heard a muffled scream abruptly cut short. Tyler didn't seem opposed to talking but after awhile seemed to settle into an abstracted thoughtful state. Percival himself was soon lost in thought. Did he have what it takes to join this order himself in time? Would he join a different order? Aspects of it terrified him but he urgently wanted the respect of Krusk and the friendly members he had met tonight. And that woman..
   Finally just as the sun rose, the members of the order started to leave the temple. Krusk looked tired but pleased. He appeared to have a steak of blood smeared across his forehead.

aggienaut: (Krusk)


   So we've been playing D&D every Saturday evening, as I've mentioned. I'm pleasantly surprised to find it's so much more than justy nerdily rolling die. Aside from giving us a solid reason to spend time together once a week, and ancillary things like I've really developed my salsa recipe, I've found it surprisingly links in to two favorite hobbies of mine. The Dungeon master, pictured above, has promised to give us all extra experience points if we write a "log entry" sort of thing about the day's adventure, which I've relished as a creative writing opportunity (and have yet to write from my own character's perspective though I might do so this week just to change it up). But also, perhaps most unexpectedly, because he provided pencils and paper for taking notes, and I find I'm sitting at a table with pencils and paper, getting to some degree intoxicated which makes one restless, and often things are happening that don't pertain directly to me so ... I naturally start doodling. At first it was just simple things (sailing ships are always a go-to for me) but then it was things or characters from the story (We made Ben nervous by saying the birdman was roosted directly over his face, or this saucy gnome named Coppershaft) or.. the people sitting across from me!

   Not to toot my own drum but I'm rather impressed with myself for the above picture of Mick and the below picture of Ben. For reference here's not the best picture of Mick but the only one I could find where his facial hair was the same as it was when I drew the picture. His eyes look square because he sits there with a laptop in front of him and what you're seeing is just the laptop screen reflected in his glasses. The effect is a bit cyberpunk but considering he programmes industrial lasers for a living that's quite appropriate!
   I went to look for a reference picture of Ben just now and apparently not only do I have none but on his facebook he has no photos more recent than 7 years ago at which point he looks in no way like himself. So Just take my word for it that this is what Ben looks like:



   It's funny I felt what I had didn't look like him at all until I made a very very subtle change to the shape of the mouth and voila there he was.

   Other miscelleneous D&D related thoughts: Dungeonmaster-face is really creative, he made these potions for us to actually drink when we needed to drink a healing potion. The tops are dipped in beeswax, of course.
   Also in the official manual the gold coins are this weird square shape with two concave sides. I feel very strongly the coins should in fact be coin shaped with twenty sides. You know, like the d20! So appropriate! My google search just now to provide that link satisfied me at least that most peopel seem to ignoring the stupid shape suggested in the manual.
   My character has three "retainers," of which one is an orcish bard. Once we were already started and I feel it's too late to retcon it in I have recently realized that orcish bards should totally have a highly ethically questionable musical "intrument" that is actually some kind of small animal that can squeeze and prod to make a melodious noise. And just to make it extra disturbing how about it does actually sound nice?



   Here's my own character, Krusk Thompson, a half-orc paladin. His mom was the orc. I am envious of his hat.


   If you happen to fancy reading my "log entries," here they are! I already shared the first one here but conveniently I had also written this quick note that covers the same vent very briefly, which I wrote mainly to establish the characters of the squire and the bard more:

ExpandA Brief Note to the Arch-Curate of the National Geography Society of the Kingdom of Maford )




( Another slightly better full body one of the character )
Unfortunately I drew this too small to do much with the face or the hand over the face. Also there's a classic one of those boats I draw. I actually like this one because for this world I was trying to draw something kind of different from our historic vessels and was aiming for a cross between a viking longship and a Mediterranean galley (that weird waterline cross is because it was damaged, this relates to the storyline form before I joined). Also apparently we're transporting a magic orb.

ExpandA Day Around Town )

ExpandDavvydge Finally Catches Up )


An attempt at an orcish female, possibly our bard Blortessetrix. I was aiming for like decently-attractive-as-far-as-orcs-go. All pictures on the internet all seem to concur that orcs have large protruding jaws and its the LOWER canines that protrude; and as a face in general I think I failed in putting too much space between the mouth and nose, so I might erase the lower jaw and try to correct it.

ExpandIn Which Blortessetrix Suddenly Becomes a Player Character! )



   I also decided to draw a "disturbingly sexy tentacled snail thing" just to, you know, disturb. Muahahahaha.

   I'm looking forward to much future doodling and actually the quality of the portraits, which not to heap praise on my own work but I was really surprised myself when I woke up and saw what I had drunkenly done. It's all got me thinking maybe I should sign up for an actual drawing class. And I'm really wondering if there's something to this being able to do it better while drunk thing, I mean here's what I then drew the next morning while in wonderment of my abilities, to my immediate disillusionment:

aggienaut: (Troll)
Nerd Alert: This Entry Involves Shameless Retelling of Shamelessly Nerdy D&D Adventures

   So I thought I wrote about this but maybe I didn't. After a lifetime of being vaguely d&dcurious, and even writing at least one seemingly d&d inspired entry without having actually played, my friends and I got around to organizing a weekly game. I found it involved a lot of being a fictional jerk to my friends (it helped that my character was a roguish hobbit I named Dillweed Tosscobble), such as, drawing a dick on my friend's character's forehead when at the end of a boss fight he was unconscious (Dungeon master: "okay roll, ummm performance, to find out how well you drew it"). Apparently on a night I missed Trent, who always plays his characters like some kind of psychotic chaotic jar jar binks, "used an old woman as a surf board to descend some stairs into a crowded bar, immediately angering all the occupants." Another achievement I'm particularly proud of is when I found my character with a bottle in hand when a battle broke out so I threw the battle, rolling a natural 20 (ie a critical hit, ie double damage), killing the shit out of the goblin it had hit.

   Well, while I was gone they started a new adventure, and having returned I just was inserted into it. The dungeon master is my friend Mick, a very technologically inclined character, has made a wiki for it, and a shockingly professional looking map, and a really cool little intro video which doesn't appear to be up yet. Anyway he happens to be encouraging us to record log entries about the sessions, I think enticing us with a samll amount of experience points for it or something, I don't know, I don't need much encouragement to engage in creative writing. The others have written pretty short straightforward little entries. I of course, this is not my way. Related aside: in 9th grade my english teacher had us write sentences with lists of vocab words, there was no expectation other than that each sentence would generally make sense, but I of course had to craft the whole thing into an actual story, because that's what I do. Anyway, the account I wrote is as told by my NPC retainers (apparently as a knight my character gets three retainers!), as recounted later that evening in a tavern. It contains lots of wild inaccuracies or outright lies:

ExpandThe Balladeer's Tale )




Totally Unrelated Picture of the Day

aggienaut: (Dictator)

   I had an idea today as I collected wax moth larvae to feed to the chooks. I was thinking about the back-story to the idea I mentioned earlier, of writing a sort of fantasy story in which a character is going around studying the creatures, and I came up with this idea that is actually a pretty good story in itself I think.

   But before we get into that I also wanted to note that I've always wanted to set my fantasy universe on a map of Venus as rendered to have the lower 70% of land under oceans like the Earth. I had played a Civ 3 mod once upon a time on this map and fell in love with how earth-like it is (compared to say Mars which would just be all water in the northern hemisphere and all land in the south, essentially, or the moon or mercury which would be just a mish mash of craters), and the fact that it's a "real map," not something made up of whole cloth.



   Anyway, if stories about elves and orcs make you cross-eyed you may want to skip the rest, but here's my story idea:

   On one of the large islands occupied by elves, a horde of orcs has invaded and been steadily pushing the elves back. Facing annhilation, a powerful elf sorcerer of dark magic decides their only hope is to summon an unholy previously unknown race from another dimension. He sends adventurers to the far corners of their world to bring things needed for the summoning: some coffee beans; some amphorae of tarry rock-oil; perhaps the materials used to make plastic (if "phenol" and formaldehyde can be acquired with iron age technology and maybe some help from magic?) -- and then they must sacrifice a virgin ... wetlands. By dumping this oil and plastic into it. After this unholy ceremony overnight an entire city block of some San Francisco Bay Area city appears in the area of the wetlands overnight, much to the confusion of the occupants. Some reference made by the sorcerer to having grabbed these other-dimensional beings from a time immediately prior to their great decline, assuming they'll be at peak usefulness, and, oh look they're from 2018 and don't know what to do without facebook.

   I initially wanted to do it with Dickensian London but people would probably more enjoy reading about our contemporaries adjusting to living in a fantasy universe. And anyway this obviously sets up a sequel where the humans help the dark elf sorcerer defeat the orcs .... before of course turning on the elf sorcerer because it's bound to happen. And then finally with all this back story out of the way I can get to the business of simply having a character explore the world.

aggienaut: (Numbat)

   Just as I pulled into my driveway Friday, my friend Mick pulled up in front of the house. He had had business in nearby Colac. Mick works as a "machine programmer" for a laser etching company. I haven't been to his work but I picture it as some wild sci fi scene with lasers shooting everywhere. I always have very interesting conversations with Mick; soon we were discussing why I can't cut things while holding scissors in my left hand -- I hadn't realized it's actually because of the way the blades are set up, and thought it was just something existential about scissors. He mentioned there's even left handed and right handed tin-snips, and that the left handed ones are always green, to which I objected, that the left should be red and the right should be green, as the running lights on a ship are.
   Then we moved on to the symbols I was using on my beehives. If they have the highly contagious and deadly-to-bees disease of foulbrood, I mark them with unmistakable red Xs made with red duct tape. After 75% of the hives I got from this one beekeeper came down with foulbrood I automatically places a quarantine on those hives of that batch which didn't even have foulbrood symptoms, and marked them with a red slash of tape, ie half the X. It's interesting to note that a red cross and a red X look VERY similar, but I try to make sure my Xs don't meet at right angles. Once a hive has been infected with foulbrood, one must put the bees down immediately :( , and then either burn the equipment or you can send it to get irradiated at a commercial sterilization facility. Since there's a general ban on burning things outdoors here throughout the summer, and I had a lot of affected equipment, I've decided to take it down to the sterilization center east of Melbourne. I picked up the first batch of sterilized hives on Thursday, now how to mark them so they don't get confused with nonsterile hives?? I googled around for insternational standardized symbols for sterilized, you'd think there'd be one, but other than a circle with "STERILIZED" in it, there didn't seem to be one. So I got some green duct tape and slapped an = sign on each hive -- I figure that's as opposite of the red X as I can get.

   While Mick and I were chatting on my back porch, my dear friend Koriander called me (via facebook) from Washington state, where it was 2am and she couldn't sleep. We put her on speakerphone and for the next three hours she was part of our conversation, it was kind of fun having a long rambling group international conversation. When I sent Koriander the picture of the hives marked with the symbols, the sterile ones on the left and the nonsymptomatic quarantine ones on the right, Kori wrinkled her nose and said "that's alright but... the red ones should be on the left."



   I had been vacillating wildly all week about whether or not I'd go on this camping trip with the Invertebrate Group five hours drive from here. On Friday I got so far as opening an email to apologize to the organizer that I wouldn't be able to make it after all ... and it was at that moment that I decided I would go. To shorten the journey just a bit I crashed at Mick's place that night, since he's about an hour in the right direction. I'll spare you the overwrought travelogging on this occasion since I can only talk about rolling eucalyptus covered hills so many times (theory: writing every day will help you avoid cliches because the cliches will become your own cliches), but the last hour was winding up a very pretty lightly forested valley. And very excitingly, a goanna --a lizard nearly two meters long-- (possibly a lace monitor) darted across the road. I had seen goannas every day when I used to live in subtropical Queensland up north, but hadn't seen any down here in cold Victoria.
   Since the itinerary I'd been sent for this trip noted they'd come back to camp at lunch on Saturday, I'd timed my trip accordingly, leaving Geelong just after 7am and arriving at 12:46. The campground was a nice quiet place by a river in the forest. There was no sign of anyone, and no reception of any kind. I pitched my tent in a nice grassy spot under the trees, idled about a bit till 1:16 but still no sign of anyone. Consulting the itinerary, they were going to walk along the river before and after lunch, so I set off up the river.
   No sign of anyone but it was pleasant. It was maybe 80f, sunny but with a nice breeze and I was wading along upriver since there weren't really trails on the banks. Returned to camp around 6pm to find the group sitting around a table under the awning of an RV, listening to classical music and eating cheese on crackers and wnie. They had flipped the itinerary and had driven for the day to a nearby location they had been going to visit the following day, due to weather considerations. I had been feeling annoyed, as one might imagine, having driven five hours to join a group that hadn't been where they said they'd be, but they said they had waited in the morning and I realized I was probably entirely at fault myself since I never told them I w as planning on catching up at lunch not morning. The members of the invertebrate group turned out to be a bit on the older side, when I went out with them the next day we had to restrict ourselves to relatively even tracks. I greatly enjoyed talking to them though, and it was nice to be able to say things like "when you say 'European Wasps' you mean Vespula germanica I believe?" without feeling like the colossal blow-hard I'd ordinarily feel like for dropping scientific names into a conversation. Because common names often vary between countries I find in Africa it's often only by resorting to the binomials that we can be sure we're talking about the same plant though.

   I haven't had a lot of campfires while camping in Australia because I'm never sure if it's allowed. I would have thought it wasn't but a ranger had happened by and said it was, so that evening I had myself a little campfire by my tent, with a glorious panoply of stars visible in the gaps in the trees overhead. When I put the fire out and turned my flashlight on to my tent, there was ... what I can only imagine was a fox but I swear it was bigger than a fox, its tail was longer and less bushy. It moved like a fox though, darting away a bit, turning to look at me with it's eyes sparkling in the light, then darting further away. Maybe it was the Tasmanian tiger ;)



Yesterday, Sunday, March 18th - First I led the group to see the colony on the underside of a nearby bridge wihch I had first taken for bees, but were in fact wasps. I think they were Ropalidia revolutionalis as that's the only I'm seeing on a list of Australian wasps that matches their mostly dark brown appearance. With the group we examined many little beetles and other bugs but I found I definitely am mostly interested in wasps and bees. We found some clusters of "green and gold gnomia bees" roosting on some plants (they look kind of like honeybees, indeed one of the volunteers said she'd sent a picture to an entomologist who, granted, wasn't very interested in bees, and he'd said they were honeybees). Also a spider wasp trying to haul its hapless prey, a spider, back to its burrow.

   The weather was overcast, on and off lightly sprinkling, temperature in the mid 70s, it actually felt perfect. During the lunch hour during which we were back at the camp I enjoyed just sitting in my campsite reading, thinking about just how serene this place in the forest was.

   Ducked out around 2:30, though the rest of the group will be there through today. Drive back home was uneventful. On both the way in and the way out I was listening to Paul Theroux's semiautobiographical book My Other Life. I love his writing, which includes several book length travelogues, but his travelogues are so much more than travelogues, but philosophical journeys. His writing always inspires me to try my utmost to write as best I can.



   I went straight back to Mick's actually, since we had made plans to play D&D. I've never played D&D before, though I like to make D&D references, and I've been saying I was D&D curious for awhile. I think the rest of my friends were similarly interested and inexperienced at it. We'd been meaning to get together to do it for awhile, and they'd finally done so on some recent occasion when I was out of town. So this was the first time I was able to actually catch up with them. I played a criminal halfling (hobbit?) which I named Dillweed Tosscobble, and was disappointed to find my friends had all given themselves boring names. During the evening I slaughtered two wolves and a goblin. I'm looking forward to playing more so that maybe I'll have some ideas to write a sequel to the D&D entry I wrote awhile ago that I'm quite pleased with (set in our contemporary time, as envisioned by people in the distant future). I also have an idea for a story where the protagonist is a naturalist in the style of the great 19th century expeditionists, and journeys around a D&D style world studying and writing about the specific ecological attributes of the fantastic beasts of the D&D universe. Explore ideas like how does a sphinx fit into it's ecosystem? A cockatrice? What's the natural balance between roving bands of orcs and elves?


Next Adventure: I've signed up for night shift Tuesday night volunteering on the continuing wildfires about an hour West of here. I think I'll start work early tomorrow, sleep till the shift starts, and then just survive as much of Wednesday at work as I can.

aggienaut: (Spacecat)
A few hundred years in the future: In the basement of the space station LJI-9-B5 five youths gather around the table.


   "I still can't believe I let you ultranerds talk me into this" complained Alfa, who is usually too busy hanging with the "cool" kids.
   "Whatever, by next decachron you'll be begging to bring your 'cool' friends to play Dungeons and Dragons with us," said Juliette, "and we're gonna say no." She made a sour face.
   "Okay let's get started," said Charlie, the somewhat overweight fellow at the head of the table, peering into a holoscreen that was only visible from his angle.
   "Our story will take place during the golden age of American civilization, during the presidency of, ummm, Bieber the First" Charlie was making some details up as he went, after all, none of them would really know or care if President Bieber the First had reigned in the year known as 1884, or 1984 or 2064 or 2124.
   "It's just a typical summer evening in the small suburban town of Crumpton, in the American state of West Concordia," continued Charlie, the Game Master. The three experienced players looked at eachother excitedly -- everyone knows that the most mundane day in pre-decline America is guaranteed to be more exciting than the dull life aboard space station LJI-9-B5.
   "West Concordia is currently at war with neighboring Kansas, but Crompton is far from the border and life goes on as normal. You are all in a bar called the Last Chance on a, uh, Tuesday night."
   "Okay what's a Tuesday and what's summer?" interrupted Alfa in an exasperated manner.
   "Summer is a period of Earth's rotation around the star," patiently explained Mike, whose brown hair was pulled tight in a ponytail. And "Tuesday" is one of the seven days of the earth-week, you know, like ten chrons in a decachron but they have seven and they all have names." he paused because it looked like Alfa was about to get up and leave "look, look, it doesn't really matter, Charlie is just throwing in details for the story but you don't need to know this stuff."
   "Fine, but man how did anyone keep track of time with such a complicated system?" asked Alfa.
   "Oh that's barely the half of it" said Victor, the skinny one, "there were 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour--"
   "Okay, okay. Can we continue?" broke in Charlie. "So you're all in the bar. There's television boxes on walls displaying the latest sportsing. You find yourselves sitting together at the bar. There's a level one lawyer named Elvis" here he nodded to Mike, "with a kevlar vest and a briefcase full of grenades; Victor is a cowboy from Cleveland named Barack. He has his trusty energy-blunderbuss as well as a lassoo. His horse is parked outside. Juliette is a barbarian soccer mom named Uma from the wild norths of uh 'Canada.' She has a proficiency in flame throwers but had to leave it in her minivan because of the bar's 'no flamethrowers' policy. The minivan is parked out front. She also has a soccer ball in her inventory.
   And Alfa you are a professional athlete named Ashton. That means you have really high strength attributes, but because professional athletes had a tendency towards domestic violence you'll have to do a saving roll every time you talk to a female, if you roll a one you randomly do something violent."
   Alfa was smiling about this, so Juliette jabbed at him with "oh I think that sounds like him anyway."
   "Hey!" objected Alfa, and Juliette jokingly put her arms up to shield her face defensively. Everyone laughed.
   "Hey if she's a soccer mom does that mean she has a kid?" asked Alfa.
   "No, uh, I did but he became a werewolf"
   "I'm going to assume this conversation is happening in game" commented Charlie irritably, drumming his fingers. "So Ashton the professional athlete is currently hitting on Uma at the bar" he narrated to make it official. Some snickering ensued.
   "In addition to you lot, there's a chimney sweep, a computer programmer, and two terrorists drinking at the bar to your right and to your left there's a reality television star and three pirates.
   "I'd like to look at the quest board" Mike informed Charlie. Everyone knows there's going to be a quest board in the bar.
   Charlie smiled, glad someone was going to move the story forward. "There's a note tacked to the board. It says 'WANTED: four bold adventurers to journey to Dreslin City to bring back the McGuffin Device. Will be rewarded with 1,000 gold and an artifact."
   "Sounds like a plan!" announced Victor, "Barack asks the chimney sweep if he'd like to go on the quest."
   "Barack hasn't looked at the posting, only Elvis has" chided Charlie.
   "Charlie is a such a stickler" Victor confided sulkily in Alfa.
   "Elvis tells Ashton, Uma and Barack," Mike said dutifully.
   "But on your way back you bump into one of the terrorists!" announced Charlie with relish. "They both brandish their AK-47s (a rapid firing mechanical projectile weapon) and begin shooting indiscriminently!!" Charlie gazed into his holoscreen, only the green glow against his face was visible to the others. "You all perform saving dodge rolls and hide under the tables except Ashton." Charlie paused but saw Alfa was looking completely at a loss so he punched some more things into his screen and then announced "...but you instinctively grab a barmaid and use her to shield yourself!"
   "I shoot one of them with my blunderbus!" said Victor quickly, as if quickness in real time was important.
   Charlie peered into the green holoscreen and then declared "you miss." Adding a moment later "your shot destroyed a manticore head mounted on the wall. You'll have to pay for that later
   "Ummmmm... Uma sneaks up to them under the bartop." offered Juliette, wishing she had her flamethrower.
   "I caste countersuit, transfer of liability to the pirates!" declared Mike excitedly.
   Charlie peered into the green and then declared "it works, the terrorists turn their attention to the pirates. One pirate is hit and receives 17 hitpoints of damage. The chimney sweep is killed in the crossfire. The reality television star is hiding behind a table in the middle of it, making hysterical commentary for the cameras. The camera crew are all attentively filming. The action"
   "I say we all get out of there!" declared Victor, sounding as panicked as if he were actually there.
   "Yeah, let's all run out the door right now" agreed Mike calmly.
   "The bouncer blocks your exit, you can't leave, you haven't paid your bar tab." said Charlie imperiously. "The pirates burn CDs and throw the burning CDs at the terrorists inflicting 12 and 15 hitpoints of damage respectively -- 'CDs' are thin metal disks which contain data for computers," Charlie added for Alfa's benefit. "The terrorists continue to fire with their AK-47s inflicting damage on all three pirates and killing one of them."
   "Pay tab!" exclaimed Victor.
   "You need twenty gold. You don't have it."
   "Oh for the love!" rejoined Victor.
   "Caste 'salvage rights' on the dead pirate." declared Mike on behalf of his lawyer character.
   "You gain thirty gold, a pirate hat, a 'Starbucks' coffee card, and a turkey" announced Charlie, who had forgotten the name of the kind of bird pirates were supposed to have.
   "Pay tab" said Mike, calmly as ever.
   "And now we all run out the door!" said Alfa, momentarily forgetting he was to cool to look excited about things like this.
   Charlie tried to hide a smile. "Okay you're outside. As you leave you hear the bartender yell 'you owe me a manticore head!' over the gunfire. Where do you go now?"
   "Juliette, I mean Uma, has a minivan right?" asked Alfa, still immersed in the scene.
   Everyone looked to Alfa as he enthusiastically directed the action.

[To be continued??]

***

   As I mentioned in my brainstorming post, I haven't actually played D&D ... so I blame any inaccuracy on developments over the next few hundred years. ;) anyway, the point of this bizarre little story is just how bizarre it would look to us if our current life was seen as a fantasy setting, and some day, it will be just that remote.

June 2025

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