Tindalostalbot

And so, the end of 2015 approaches. With it comes a lot of stories unfinished, a lot of things not done. Still, the stories come, as they do. Some of them are unexpected, some are what they are. Among all of them, sometimes a story appears that is the result of a question that is posed to me, here on the Tale or elsewhere. Some of those questions are requests, some are thoughtful wonderings, and, sometimes, the question brings about a story that might not be the answer I thought it was going to be.

 

Answering
By TeraS

 

There are questions that the Queen’s Office in the Realm receives on a regular basis. They come from all the points of the compass that one could imagine and parts of the universe that one might not. Many times, the questions themselves are meant for someone else in the Realm to reply to; other times, the questions aren’t.

On this particular day, the sun was shining upon a Realm covered in a few feet of snow. Tera was looking out her window in the Palace, smiling as she watched a group of succubi and incubi having a snowball fight … or, perhaps more accurately, a snowball orgy … It was kind of hard to tell from where she was standing at that moment.

But that didn’t stop her from smiling while taking a sip of her hot chocolate. As she did so, her office door opened, and Tera heard the clicking of the Receptionist’s heels as she came into the room. “So, why aren’t you out there? I’m sure there’s a tail or two that would be happy to see you?”

The Receptionist replied in a mock-stern tone: “And you aren’t there why, young lady?”

Turning from the window, Tera smiled warmly: “It’s too darn cold for my tail, and I don’t want to ruin one of Lil’s tail cozies out in the snow.”

A small stack of envelopes was placed on the corner of Tera’s desk as she was told: “That reminds me. I do need to visit her and see if she has anything planned for New Year’s.”

Placing her mug on the desk, Tera’s tone was amused: “Oh … I think Lil will be fine. She always seems to find the company she needs … though I cannot imagine why or how.”

Taking a chair nearby, the Receptionist produced her notepad and pen, settling in there and regarding her Queen: “Whenever you’re ready.”

Picking up the small stack, Tera wandered back over to the window, placing the letters on a table nearby and then selecting the first one from the pile. For a moment, she reconsidered whether she wouldn’t rather be out in the snow, but then she set to her work. The sound of her fingernail running through the flap and opening it echoed, softly, but crisply, through the room, followed by a rustling of papers and then a long pause as she read the contents of the first one.

When she was finished, the royal red-tail refolded the note and then tapped the edge of the letter against her lips … “It isn’t enough to want or ask. To ask the question is only the beginning. Such a choice isn’t one to be taken lightly or offered without due consideration. To offer, as you have, is a serious thing. Be careful that you are willing to accept what it means, what will be, before you take the next step. Look into yourself, into your soul, and see what is before you ask what might be.”

She placed the note back in its envelope, before laying it to the side, and repeating the process with the next … and the next … and the next …“I take the word ‘Mistress’ seriously. You need to take the word ‘Pet’ seriously, as well. Neither are names to be offered without due consideration and thought. You cannot demand that one be a Mistress, just as another cannot demand you be a Pet. Want isn’t enough. Desire isn’t enough. When you realize what is, then you will have the truth.” …

… “When you look into the mirror, and can see yourself there for who you are, then you have taken the first step. When the mirror looks back at you, then you see what you could be, and what you have to accept is part of yourself.” …

… “From our desires comes that which we wish to be true. In our dreams comes the reality we desire to be true. To wish our dreams to be our desires can only open the way to see. We are the ones that have to make our reality become real.” …

… “… a touch, a caress, a light breath upon one’s skin, the shiver of goosebumps as one gives up oneself to another, the bliss of being held, loved, and cherished …” …

… “… to be more than we are, to become that which none expect us to be, to be the way found for those that seek …” …

… “Because. No better answer can there be.” …

This continued for some time, occasionally interrupted by a snowball striking the window Tera stood at. She replied by sticking out her tongue and waving before returning to her answering…

The last letter was opened, the question read, and the final answer given …“Love, passion, joy … for always.”

As Tera spoke that final answer, she looked out the window to see those she loved dearly still playing in the snow, loving in their own ways, sharing their passions. She smiled, in joy, for that being here, always—love, passion, joy … for always.

The Receptionist gathered the letters and then strode from the room, calling out over her shoulder: “Now, go on and have some fun, will you?”

Her Majesty watched her leave, the door closing behind her. There were always questions, but it was in the answering that Tera found some of her own personal delights. But that didn’t mean that one couldn’t have her fun, as well.

The efficient administrator had just finished typing up the last reply when Tera’s door opened. It was a surprise when a red jacket and gloves were dropped on the assistant’s desk, the Savereign standing there in her own winter clothing: “Come on. You need to get out there as much as I do.”

She smiled, putting the jacket on: “Probably. But I still can put some snow down your back and watch you squirm, Missy.”

Tera smirked: “You wouldn’t dare.”

The answer, moments later as they both walked into the winter wonderland, was a handful of snow pushed down Tera’s collar before the ultra-efficient succubi ran off towards the waiting playmates in the snow, Tera in hot pursuit.

And there was one final answer, as their laughter and giggling was answered by all those around them.

Hovertext: Please stick to the original plan, which you were going to stick to anyway. Amen.

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Holidays & Days of Note, January 6. 2016.

*   Bean Day (U.S.)

*   Twelfth Day, now you know when that damn song is over!

*   Epiphany, This day was also at one time known as Old Christmas (Julian calendar).

*   Christmas Day (Armenia, Ukraine).

*   La Bafana (Italy) a festival on which the night before Bafana, a kindly witch flies down chimneys on her broom and bestows gifts on good children and leaving lumps of coal for the bad children.

*   la Fiesta de los Reyes Magos `Three Kings Day (Latin America) day when, among other things, the kids get presents rather than Christmas.

*   Festival of Kore (Ancient Greek)

*   Zvaigznes Diena (Ancient Latvia)

*   Little Christmas, Women´s Christmas or Nollaig na mBan (Irish)

*   Birthday of Haile Selassie (Rastafari movement)

*   The Birthday of Sherlock Holmes.  

Hovertext: There are actually quite a few journals interested in Brian.

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In 1993* my father was granted the Arms: “Argent three Anchors Sable each entwined by a Serpent Gules on a Chief enarched nebuly Azure three Martlets rising Or“.

The “chief enarched nebuly” represented the curvature of the earth as seen when flying above the clouds during his career with the Royal Air Force and then with British European Airways/British Airways.

However, it would appear that this was not the first time that an enarched chief had been used in British Arms associated with an aviator.  The January 1985 edition of the Middlesex Heraldry Society’s journal, The Seaxe, notes that an exhibition to celebrate the College of Arms’ Quincentenary displayed the Arms of an, as yet, unidentified Royal Air Force officer of “Argent a chief enearched nebuly Azure“.

In international heraldry, it may well have been first used around 1981 by the US Navy for the USS Thach.  The ship was named after the outstanding Navy aviator, John Thach.  The blazon for the ship’s Arms was: “Azure two chevronels couched fretted Argent interlaced with an anchor palewise Or, on a chief enarched nebuly of the last a trident head issuant from chief points to base Gules“.  The rational for the design is given as;

“The enarched nebuly chief refers to the sky and naval aviation; the three tines of the red trident representing “Fighting Three” and Admiral Thach’s aggressive leadership of that squadron for which he was highly decorated. The interlaced chevronels and anchor emphasize the importance of naval air to the fleet and symbolize the “Thach Weave”, a fighter tactic developed by and named for Admiral John Smith Thach.”

---

*My father’s grant may well have set a record for the slowest to be granted, but that is another story.

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Bortle Scale.

The clarity of the night sky. A low number means clear, black and amazing stars. Higher numbers mean gradually more urban environments with increasing light pollution. At 9 you’ll barely spot a star being pretty much in Piccadilly Circus or Times Square.

More detail needed? John Bortle, Light Pollution And Astronomy: The Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, Sky and Telescope, July 18 2006.

HT: Paul Lewis

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bonhomie: frank and simple good-heartedness; a good-natured manner; geniality.

The post Merry Christmas! appeared first on Indexed.

our-spooky-world:

Reoccurring Hauntings: December 24th

Below is a list regarding several haunting s that supposedly reoccur every Christmas Eve:

DISCLAIMER: This list is taken from ParanormalDatabase.com, a research site dedicated to recording paranormal and cryptozoological experiences in places such as England and Wales.  Their website is www.paranormaldatabase.com

• Kempston (Bedfordshire)- Kempston Manor: At one point in time this office space used to be the home of a family.  Legend has it that one of the children from the family ran out of the home to greet his parents, who were returning for the Holidays in a horse-drawn carriage.  The child was run over by the horses.  He ended up dying as a result of his injuries.  Every year on this date the sounds of this tragic event can be heard.

• Egremont (Cumbria)- Tarpot Area: In this area an old man was coming home for Christmas Eve when he vanished without a trace.  Both the man and his ride are sometimes seen on the date of his disappearance.

• Brough (Derbyshire)- Traveller’s Rest Public House: This location is where a local farm girl met her demise while trying to run from a drunken labouer on Christmas Eve. She died when she fell down the stairs. A woman in black can also be seen around the inn holding a large set of old keys.

• Stubley (Derbyshire)- Stubley Old Hall: Every year the spirit of a young girl named Fatima can be seen playing the harp.  A Roundhead has also been seen less frequently and a young girl can be seen here running around outside in the fields.

• High Laver (Essex)- Main Road Village:  One of the most prominent residents of this village used to be Abigail Masham.  After she passed away she was/is seen passing through the village in a carriage every Christmas eve to have a look at where her house used to be before disappearing.

• Evesham (Hereford & Worester)- River:  Supposedly a set of silver bells was hidden in the river when a local abbey closed in 1539.  Each Christmas Eve they can be heard ringing.

• Hever (Kent)- Bridge Over the Eden: Each year the spirit of Anne Boleyn can be seen crossing the bridge.  This location is also haunted by a farmer who had been murdered nearby.

• Marden (Kent)- Road to Hawkhurst: During the 18th century, a highway man named Gilbert was stabbed to death by a woman who occupied the carriage that he tried to rob.  The woman had recognized Gilbert as the man who had previously killed her brother.  Afterwards the woman went mad.  This event can be seen being silently reenacted every Christmas Eve.

• Salford (Lancashire)- Kersal Cell: Once a year a ghostly monk appears

• Bradley (Lincolnshire)- Bradley Woods: Legend has it that a woman dressed in black will appear on Christmas Eve if a person called out “Black Lady, Black Lady, I’ve stolen your baby!” This woman is thought to be either a nun or a woodsman’s wife.

• Brigg (Lincolnshire)- General Area: One Christmas Eve an old woman left her house to go and beg for money in order to buy herself a Christmas lunch.  On her way she became lost and froze to death.  On this date her ghost can sometimes be seen asking for directions home.

• Halam (Nottinghamshire)- Valley Southeast of the Village:  Hidden somewhere in this area is the buried village of Radley.  On Christmas Eve ghostly church bells can be heard throughout the valley.

• Sanford on Thames (Oxfordshire)- Fields Around the Village: On Christmas Eve a carriage of four hourses driven by a headless horseman can be seen running through the fields.

• Holford (Somerset)- Normansland Driveway: At midnight a coach pulled by a team of black horses circles the driveway before vanishing.

• Barsham (Suffolk)- Between Barsham Norwich: Each year the spirit of a Blennerhassett family member leaves the village in a coach pulled by headless horses.  This spirit travels to Hassetts Tower in Norwich before returning home before dawn.

• Beccles (Suffolk)- Roos Hall Driveway: A coach pulled by headless horses is said to arrive by the front door December 24th.  Legend states that inside the hall wall, hidden in a cupboard, is an imprint of the Devils hoof branded into solid brick.  Another legend says that there is a window in the hall which will open and lock itself.

• Outer London: East Barnet (Greater London)- Oak Hill Park: Each year Sir Goffrey can be seen riding on horseback towards the church. He then disappears through its walls.

• Madingley (Cambridgeshire)- Madingley Hall: Lady Ursula Hynde returns each Christmas Eve to the hall. She had become upset at her son after he had pulled down a church in order to use its wood to finish the Halls Construction.  Other times of the year witnesses have claimed to hear the sounds of a ghostly party, followed by the apparition of a young man who had the face of a skeleton (some have reported the man having a decaying green face)

• Saffron Waldon (Essex)- Cross Keys, Corner of King Street and High Street: People can hear the sounds of footsteps marching up and down a passageway.  These footsteps are thought to be those of a soldier of Cromwell.  
  

Holidays & Days of Note for December 24, 2015

*   Mōdraniht  “Mother’s Night” (Ancient Anglo Saxon)

*   Christmas Eve (Christianity) also secular as it’s one of the highest of holy days for retail sales, thing is, why does Christmas get an eve and other holidays don’t? Sure they get a day before they happen, but no one goes all daffy about it.

*   National Chocolate Day (U.S.)

*   National Egg Nog Day (U.S.) Because after today NO ONE is going to be buying that stuff!

Approaches to asset valuation: Castles in the air and firm foundations.

With the castles in the air approach a thing is worth what others will pay for it. If you can sell it to someone for twice the price then it’s worth that. You’ll often see this in bubbles (dot com, tulip, bitcoin…). It was described by John Maynard Keynes using the analogy of a beauty contest where you have to select the prettiest faces out of 100, and the prize goes to the selection closest to the group as a whole. Whether or not they’re actually pretty doesn’t matter if you can guess which faces others think are pretty. If you can predict what the crowd will do, then you can get their first and make a profit.

The firm foundations approach on the other hand is about finding solid reasons for assessing value based on analysis of the fundamentals of an asset, a firm anchor, it’s intrinsic value. If you can value something through this approach then a good bet is simply if the current asking price is less than the intrinsic value. The market will eventually correct for it and you’ll make money.

See A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Burton Malkiel for more.

Hovertext: The really hard thing is to click the latch into place while the fabric of spacetime is being destroyed.

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irenic: tending to promote peace or reconciliation.

For someone running an ongoing campaign, free game stuff should feel like free candy. Oh I have to run an adventure next week--oh look, what's this in the mail? I'll just take this vanilla and add some sprinkles and...

But no. Too often game stuff is literally worse than useless--the time you spend reading it is more time than it could take to make something up that was equally good.

Although I've harped on this for years, it still amazes me that you can get like a 60-page RPG supplement called something totally up your alley and juicy like "Spider Queens of the Devil Maze" and flip through it for ten seconds and then not only turn away in disgust, but be 100% sure you were justified in doing that. And that this is normal.

Going through all this WOTC and TSR stuff I'm definitely amazed and almost impressed how few genuinely gameable ideas manage to get communicated in these texts.

How do they do it? I went through and tried to figure out the most important bits:

1. Pretend a standard monster in a standard room is an encounter worth paying for.

This is the biggest one by far: Yes, it is fun to fight an ogre in a room, but it is not fun to pay to be told that there's an ogre in a room, especially not for 8 paragraphs. The idea that an ogre can be in a room is logically implied by the ogre being in the Monster Manual, which you probably already own.

If I am actually paying for it--the environment should be complex, the creature should be complex or both.

Of course, many fine products include encounters which are a standard creature in an environment, but they do this without sucking because they avoid making mistake #2...

2. Write out mundane or obvious details, so it takes forever to tell you there's a standard monster in a standard room.

The length of an encounter's description should be-, and rarely is-, proportional to its depth. For example.

Another example, from Waterdeep: High-HD skeletons that can cause darkness, riding on skeletal horses attack in a darkened wood. They try to capture someone you're chilling with and bring them to the bad guy.

That is literally everything you need to know about that encounter. It's a spooky encounter, totally legit--it takes a whole fucking page for the author to get across what I wrote in two sentences.


3. Pretend reskinning a monster is worth paying for

This is more an issue with independently produced content than with WOTC and TSR: making the orc throwing axes into a cyborg clown throwing pies with exactly the same stats and vulnerabilities isn't actually doing a hell of a lot. The creature still is dealt with, tactically, the same, and still requires the same kind of thinking to defeat. New things should be new.


4. Don't let the art do any of the heavy lifting

Lots of RPGs have bad art and that's not news, but the more heartbreaking issue here is how the art so rarely provides the module writer any help. Things that could be explained with art are instead explained with words. Or worse--both, wasting time and space.

"It looks like this" beats boxed text. A diagram of what's in a room when it's searched is better than 3 pages describing it.

Kelvin Green's Forgive Us is a great and rare example of a module where the visuals actually help the writer get across details that would've taken paragraphs to explain otherwise.


5. Be squeamish about adding special rules and tables

Unique situations are rarely set apart with special rules, tables or procedures, generally out of some misguided attempt to present the system as capable of anything as-is.

If you're using a module and you, by definition, have the book right there in front of you then you're not creating any new inconvenience by introducing a one-time-alteration in how things work. The GM's already looking at it.

There's also a related problem where unique effects are described as stacked (but unalterable) piles of standard spells. So instead of just going "magic won't work here" they go "There is an anti-magic spell whose radius has been altered with an alter-radius spell to encompass only the room and which has a permanency spell on it and...".


6. Use boxed text.

Some people defend boxed text on the grounds that that it teaches newbies how to describe things. The problem is:

-That only explains why there should be one instance of boxed text at the beginning of the book, not why there should be dozens all over it.

-It teaches GMs to read stuff out of a book, which lesson is 1000 times more bad than the lesson of how to describe things is good. I'd rather have a GM go "It's a fucking room" spontaneously than give a 300-word description from a book.

-It ruins a perfectly good opportunity to have a picture of something rather than a generic image of a palace guard looking mustachey.


7. Include lots of standard magic items.

Magic items should be weird and have disadvantages, every second spent describing one that isn't like that is pages we don't need. Even if they weren't utter shit, they're already in the DMG.

Here's a good idea someone had: Huge Ruined Scott had a kingdom where the crown was (unknown to anyone) a Helm of Opposite Alignment. So it explained why all the General Ulysses S Grants turned into President Ulysses S Grants and the murder-hungry coup-leaders turned into even-keeled moderates. That's worth paying for. A +3 spear super isn't.


8. Makes sure the game-specific cosmology is always lazily written.

As soon as anything interacts with a god in a D&D module, everyone falls asleep. Pages and pages of description just basically amount to "Here are the parts of pop Protestantism that are in this adventure". The God of Murder is not going to go easier on you because you murdered 8 orcs the day before, the Goddess of Light is just nice, she doesn't actually care more about the PC carrying a torch than the one casting Darkness, the goblins do not wear masks in church for fear of their terrible goblin god knowing their faces.

Love or hate Vancian magic, its paraphernalia--the scrolls, books, wizard schools--are lovingly and (relatively) creatively described in D&D. Clerics and anyone interacting with them just get these interchangeable cultures. Priests are good or bad, churches are vaguer versions of real history, rituals take only time and mcguffins.


9. Make monsters that are just hit point bags

...so a lot of surface complexity is generated by things which have no real effect. Like this party is three hobgoblins and three goblins but this one's four goblins. It doesn't fucking matter because there are no playable cultural or biological differences encoded into these creatures.

WOTC tried to give different hit-point-bag monsters different tactics and die mechanics, but they never had anything to do with a different essential conception of the creature, so in the end the connection between a hobgoblin and their way of hitting you was just arbitrary. The orcs mob you the hobgoblins hit and run. Sure, whatever.


10. ...and make sure they all have statblocks

Statblocks take up way too much space in everything. There are whole games that wouldn't amount to more than a handful of pages if it wasn't for the fact "A horse is faster than a person and has more hit points" is technically expressed in a different way in their game than it is in D&D. A statblock is a tool of convenience, it is not a new idea.

Unless an enemy has nonstandard powers, its playable stats can fit in two lines, in any game, maximum.

11. Structure it as either railroad or 100% location-based, include no other options described in any detail

Ideally, modules should be the perfect place for experienced writer/GMs to give examples of how to simultaneously prep complex and structurally sophisticated content while also allowing players freedom and flexibility about how to proceed. There should be flowcharts or diagrams or if/thens. And...there isn't.

Location-based adventures (nonlinear dungeons with branching paths, hexcrawls) are great because they provide structure for you. Cool. But what if you have, say, one intelligent NPC who escapes the party and starts making plans? Then you have to move beyond the pure location-based adventure. But then the only other kind of adventure typically presented is the event-based railroad--which amputates any discussion of how to structure an adventure. You just follow the breadcrumbs.

So if you are reading anything other than a location-based adventure you have to ignore half the text as it's just advice on how to railroad the players back to the event chain.

So one of the few things a module might actually be good for, they hardly ever do. It's crazy that after 30 years of horror and investigative game modules I had to write out how Hunter/Hunted works on a goddamn blog.

12. Make sure your information and graphic design sucks.

Duh.


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So what's left in a standard module when you scrape out all the pork cracklins? Here's the first 6 pages of TSR's Wonders of Lankhmar:

nevver:

Least Popular American Baby Names 1880-1932

valediction: an act of bidding farewell or taking leave.

Hovertext: And lo, The Lord spake, saying, Let the fundamental equations contain an imaginary component.

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Hovertext: Not to mention the difficulty of synchronizing your efforts with my once-per-solstice state of carnal arousal!

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