Freedom of tailwinds

As a habitual cyclist there are factors that make cycling difficult and factors that make it easy.  The number one thing that slows or speeds up a rider is wind.  Wind is air, moving air and most people do not understand how critical wind is on bicycle speed.  They say it is a factor, but they don't get it.  When you are walking or running the wind has to be really blowing to be a factor.  When you are swimming a current does not have to be that large to be a factor, but water is nearly a thousand times the density of air, so people don't really get it.  

A ten kilometer wind is a big thing, twenty is huge and forty is gigantic.  It is because wind resistance is the biggest factor after road conditions on a cyclists' speed.  Think about it, if I top out at 50kph on a flat surface and the wind is in my face, the wind would be going its speed plus my speed and if I am limited to 50kph wind resistance that would mean at 10kph wind velocity I would be going 40; at 20 kph wind, I would be going 30; at 40 kph wind I would be going 10 relative to the ground, but 50 kph relative to the air.

It is not a one to one relationship in speed as it is easier to go 10 kph than it is to go 20, but a head wind really slows you down.

A tail wind does the reverse, again it does not add to you speed but makes it easier to go faster and your upper speed limit is faster too.  

Today I had a great ride.  I was going fast and I was a strong rider.  I was zipping past other cyclists and I was speeding beside cars, at one point I was even passing cars on flat road.  I did not realize it but I had a twenty kilometer tail wind, when I stopped it was enough to cool me down, but when I was cycling I had more energy and I could go faster.  I went faster; I felt freer.

Hacked!!

My Twitter account got hacked.  I got Twitter in the early days of the Arab Spring.  I got it because I heard that it was a good way to stay current on news events.  I could never get it to connect to my phone and so that meant I had to actually be connected in order to receive any tweets, so I never used it.  I connected and followed some people, but mostly it was a waste of time.  

Last May 31, someone in South Korea hacked my Twitter account.  June 8th, a porn company purchased my twitter account and followed 1000 people and tweeted porn sites and pictures.  June 9th twenty people started following me and I had my first clue something was wrong.  I went home and changed my settings and changed my password.  Then I had to clean up my account and apologize to the friends who are real followers.  

My password was a level 2 password.  It was a non-standard word and had numbers in it.  Mark Zuckerburg's hacked accounts had the catchy password of lalala.  That is a level zero password, maybe a one, because who would suspect that savvy Facebook founder would have that password.  My hotmail account has a level four password a nonsense word with a personal algorithm substitution of letters and my internet banking password has a different password, nonsense word with a different algorithm substitution.  

Here are my levels of complexity:

0—common words.  password, mom, god, passwoord1, qwerty, 12345, 123456789.

1— uncommon words.  llama, beetlejuice ect.

2—adding numbers to the an uncommon word.  llama50, ll50ama

3— common words with 1337 5p334 substitutions or capitols.  passw0rd, Password.

4— substitution of letters completely with internally logical symbols, characters or numbers, so that you can remember the password and replicate it.  w<3<3dy for woody or better yet w<3<3Dy.

5— no rhyme or reason type password that you memorize and each password is unique for the account it is used for.  Sge3D6Sxdde972f2 or the like, you use every slot.

My password hint gives me two hints, it hints at the password and the algorithm I used to encript it.  And it is okay to lie on the hint.  

I changed my Twitter password, but not very much, but it is changed.

The Architect Gardener

Like my writing, my roleplaying stories are written by a Gardener, not an Architect.  I wish I were an architect and not a gardener, but I what I am.  Don't get me wrong, it does not make me a bad story teller, it just makes my stories player centered and player guided.  In many ways this is a good thing because it lets the characters, the players, shine every game.  Architect storytellers and writers know what is going to happen many sessions before it happens and writers know the start, the middle and the end when they start writing.  This means the story will not go on forever and there will be no loose ends.  I read a fair bit an I like both author types, but for various reasons, the Gardener type has left me hanging more often than the other type.  George RR Martin is a gardener, so was Robert Jordan—he died before his Wheel of time could be completed.  GRRM, don't die, just complete your work before you do.  

As for my stories, there is an element of planning to them, it is just setting.  But I let the players tell me where they want to go and I go there.  I make the story about them.  I give them incentive to do so, extra experience.  I tell them they have to choose the significance of the storyline, it can be minor, major or epic.  Minor plot lines are cheap, costing 3xp, Major plots and more expensive costing 6xp and epic plots cost 9xp.  Every time the plot line is featured in a story, the player that invested the plot line gets a dividend of 1, 2, or 3 experience points and when the plot line finishes they get the last dividend and the original investment back and every investment is guaranteed to last atleast three sessions.  Popular plots include a Sorcery Quest: the quest for the ability to manipulate reality, a Nemesis plot: one person in the recent past becomes the character's biggest foe and wants to kill them, Romance plot: one person in the recent past becomes the character's biggest fan.  There are others, the player just has to have the imagination to think of one.  

Currently there are two subplots happening, one Sorcery plot and a Nemesis.  Just recently, a sorcery plot line wrapped up.  In that plot line, the player's character got a teacher, travelled to a new place (in this case travelled from the mortal life to the Exalted life), performed a humiliating task (herding refugees who had difficulty understanding each other through the woods to safety), facing his fears (in his case being powerless and at the mercy of others) and finally, he made a sacrifice (surrendering his need to advance quickly and to take shortcuts to power).  

The future Sorcery quest is something that is difficult to plan as it has to be personal and meaningful.  The facing of fears has to be something that works for the character and the Player, the sacrifice has to hit close to the central character but not something that would make that player not want to play e character.  In this sorcery quest, the player is a crafts person, and that is a core character trait and should not be touched until the time is right, but he was also raised in the temple to an important God, it is a part of the character that has a low relevance to the future character development, but it is something the Character would not want to give up and the sacrifice, it will be; dissolve the connection to the god and gain sorcery or keep it and have sorcery denied to him.  To make the sacrifice more ponient I will have to do some subtle manipulation.  His Twilight Station of the quest is to find a teacher, he will be called back to Nowhere as his presences is requested.  There he finds that his God, Ahlat the god of Cattle and the War God of the South, is in attendance and is gifting his group a large amount of resources, additionally he will give the character at tome of knowledge on crafting artifacts and talk with him on a personal level. He will grant him also a special servant, a large Auroch of Ahlat to serve as a steed and familiar: a grand surprise and boon.  His Zenith Station he will travel into the Wyld alone to search for the core of the Forgotten city of Brahm's Bridge.  His Night Station, he will face fear, he will confront an unshaped Fair Folk who will attempt to reshape him into its desires and away from what he feels is his own shape, the Auroch of Ahlat will be instrumental to saving him.  Lastly, his Eclipse Station, where he will be forced to choose between acquiring Sorcery and his patron.  If he chooses Sorcery he will lose the Auroch and his mentor Ahlat.  He will still have other mentors though and the Auroch was just a device.  If he abandons Sorcery, the Auroch becomes permanent, but he is denied Sorcery until he take the quest again and it will be tougher next time.

The Nemesis was selected as a mortal, so there fore something supernatural must occur for him to be even close to a challenge.  I selected an Infernal Exalted.  The only thing that is left is to have a plausible way that the character be discovered.  Then the Nemesis can show up.  This nemesis is a runner; he runs fast all the time, 72kph, and is difficult to see too.  He is a conformist, so he is against breaking the status quo.  Where the hero is freeing slaves, the nemesis will be attempting to get them recaptured or simply killing them.  He will try to discredit the character and failing that kill him.  The first time he appears he will dog his antithesis' footsteps and kill a civilian and leave the blood on his hands.  After that he will kill only when the character is nearby.  When the game is up and he has been discovered, the nemesis will begin killing and causing trouble for the entire group until he is chased off or killed.  The real trick will be to keep the presence of the nemesis quiet.  Events: a former slave is murdered and the last person that they were seen with was the character, Vael and his knife has blood on it.  Later, after the suspicions are put in, the town will be raided by twenty-five Jackal slave hunter and their trail will be a straight from Injahal.  Later still a number of slaves will be found dead and the last one will have written Va- in his own blood.  Later still if he is allowed alone with slaves, one of them will be the Nemesis and when Vael is not paying attention, the Nemesis will kill the others and implicate Vael.  Meanwhile, an expeditionary force of the Wyld hunt will attack Somewhere Else and on their persons a very detailed map of the area will be found and a letter with the forged signature of Vael using camp supplies.  The Nemesis will one day reveal himself to Vael, but only him, after his reputation has suffered some.  Then one day he will reveal himself to everyone.  Remember, revenge is best served cold.

Perhaps by then, a larger plot may have developed and I will have something to run with.  

The Warrior

Besmat-bey Ayad, fifth born male of Orkhan Besmat-bey Maymut of the Burning Rock Sept was sent to live with his cousins in Chiaroscuro at the age of 5, just after you had learned to ride.  You had four brothers ahead of you and three sisters, two sisters and a baby brother behind you, but you were sent to the city as you had the most aptitude with the limited schooling available in the sept.  Your initial years growing up had been harsh as there was much drought and strife in the hinterlands of the reach of the Tri-Khan.  You rode hard and beat your escort to the city by several days, in retrospect a bad idea, but you were headstrong and a foolish risk taker, a trait that runs strong in your family.

Fostering in the big city was nothing like what you had experienced in the desert-scrub of the sept, there was no drought, no famine and the enemies of your sept walked freely and without fear.  You learned your letters and your sums in the city and you learned how to play the teachers that tried to teach you.  The goal was to do as little as possible and to still get the praises of your elders, but your true and most valuable education occurred when classes were over.  You had been sent to Chiaroscuro to attend a prestigious military college, your father had misunderstood the entrance age because he thought that you were old enough because you could ride a horse, a task that many of your older peers lacked.  The five years that you attended this college saw you grow strong and mature a little.   It was your military mind that most gave you praise from your teachers.  The afternoons were spent in drill and the early evenings were back in the classroom learning history, but it was on the freedays that you loved so much as the students played at war in the streets of the city.  

The tradition started years before the eldest teacher was born and had continued unbroken since then, the teachers at the school had experienced it and watched the youth play at war and using the results of the competition to reinforce classroom teaching.  For the first two years you were only allowed to participate as a footsoldier, due to your size and because no-one took you seriously.  A chance at command in your third year changed that and for the next three years you took the lead of one of the five forces more often than not and in the last year you were undefeated, despite the other leaders strategy to go after you first.  You used the varied terrain of the city against your opponents: you fought at the narrows of two known shadowlands near dusk, forcing your opponents to run off lest they became trapped, you used the trackless broken ruin of Bright’s Square, the legendary strike point of the Sword of Creation that ended the Fair Folk Invasion, to circumnavigate your enemy positions and you used the undermarket to disperse your foes and destroy them one by one.  Each time you fought, you did what was considered the impossible to win.  When your father called you back to the sept, your training was not completed, but your teachers assured you that you had all that you needed to complete your training on your own.  

The journey back to your sept took less time than it took you last time; you were older and your skill on horseback had improved, but when you got there your people did not value your new ideas and prefered the old ways.  In truth, many of the things you had learned were unpractical in the steppe.  You spent the next two seasons relearning key survival strategies, so that you were able to spend the customary rite of adulthood and prove yourself ready to fight in the sept’s wars and struggles.  For five years that is what you did until the fateful day that you took command after your eldest brother fell fighting desert nomads.  The sudden loss of the unit’s commander almost spelled the end of the endeavour, but you were able to rally the troops and press the enemy for a costly but decisive victory.  Your victory at age sixteen marked a turning point in your life, you were considered as a good marriage choice and several families sought you out.  In the end you married Zuhayr-pasha Kifah, a minor noble from the sept with strong ties to Chiaroscuro, the dowry included a scimitar and Laminar armour made of glass.  Kifah and your late brother’s wife Khadr joined your household and both bore you sons and daughters and your brother’s children you also count as yours.  

Many years later, the undefeated war leader of the Burning Rock sept and heir apparent to your father, the sept encountered its greatest threat.  A great war chief in the desert had banded together a great horde of nomads from deep in the desert.  The horde included a hundred Dune Stalkers that scouted the way for the horde in exchange for a hundred captives from every raid that they could devour.  The Leader of this horde was a simata riding Cataphract, Mercy’s End and her hundreds of Hobgoblin foot soldiers.  The danger of this impending onslaught had forced the Tri-Khan to ask for aid from the Realm Tributary Legions, who complied, but the order was issued that the septs immediately in the way of the horde were to hold and engage so as to slow the horde’s progress down so aid could arrive; this meant that the Burning Rock sept was sure to be destroyed, but hold the sept did.  

Your victories in the field over the past twelve years caused your tree neighbouring septs to form an alliance with you and they together with your men stood to face this threat.  The Dune Stalkers were a more mundane threat, one that every veteran warrior had faced at least once before and this threat was weathered with ease, but the other threat was not.  The alliance lasted through the night, but as day broke most of the men lay dead or dying.  Your wounds had left you lightheaded and your armour rent in places.  As dawn broke the Cataphract breached the wall of men before you, tossing their sundered frames in a wave over top of you, you heard words clear as the new day, “Rise up and vanquish the Foes of Creation, for I am the Unconquered Sun and I Exalt you!”  A rush of energy filled you and in Dawn’s light filled you and rose from you.  The image of a Great Desert Lion rose from around you at its image put most of your foes to flight.  The Iconic Anima did other things too, the Simata that Mercy’s End was upon reared and threw his rider and rounded on him joining your side.  Mercy’s End turned and as if seeing you for the first time laughed in hysteria and drew forth his matched Gossamer blades and bore down on you.  The battle was brief and you carried the day.  

The Tri-Khan’s army, who rode through the night, turned and ran down all the remaining foes, the Realm Legions did not.  They turned upon you, tired from the fight, and attempted to bring you down.  The remaining troops of the Burning Rock sept and the other three as well rallied to your cause and although your side was outnumbered, they fought fiercely and defeated their unexpected foes.  The battle became known as the Two battles at the Second Dawn.  The Tri-Khan returned, happy to greet his glorious Exalted cousin, but wary about what the fallout of this day would be.  He recognised your future claim to the Burning Rock sept and gave you an unofficial title-- Khan of Dawn, but then banished you from the Empire.  Politics of remaining independent of the Realm being what it is.

You made your way north, where you encountered rumour and found allies.  Was discovered by a powerful Night Caste Warrior named Nameless Wolf who brought you into the Cult of Illuminated.

It is not Complicated

The girlfriend.  I have not told many people about her, other than I have one.  And I have told four people about it in better detail.  And half of them have warned against me becoming attached to her because of the following paragraph.  Facebook has four settings for your status off the top of my head.  I can't recall if married is one of them.  Single, in a relationship, not listing a status and it's complicated.  My relationship is not complicated at all.

My girlfriend has two children, who she loves very much and a husband who she also loves and who knows about us.  It is not complicated, because there are no lies and no drama to make it complicated.  It is simple.  I am not The Other Man,  but I am her other man.  She loves me, I am certain beyond her insistence that she does.  I know that if push came to shove and her husband said it was either him or me, I would be gone, but I know that it would not happen because he also enjoys dating other women too.  

I read in a book recently a conversation between two people of radically different cultures one stated that their people experienced love and loved their wives and husbands a lot.  The other exclaimed, you mean you have multiple spouses?  And the response was that to rely on one person to forfill all ones needs was an unreasonable expectation to place on one person.  Sure their youth often tried to do just that, but after they had matured they realised the strain it placed on the relationship and accepted more people into their marriages.  

My girlfriend and her husband have made a life together and are raising two beautiful children together.  They have a house in the burbs and a lifestyle that fits them fine and they are happy.  Except when they got married they were different people than they are now and they have different needs, but they don't want a divorce.  That is it, it is the point.  People change and they can grow independent of each other and away from each other and they need support in areas that they are not prepared to give to each other.  Unchecked this can cause a lot of marital strife, arguments and resentment, but it would not actually mean that they did not love each other.  It would change everything though.

Imagine a white pot of paint.  White it is perfect in every way every time one of the partners contributes something to the marriage it goes into the pot.  If it is supported by the two of them, the colour is white, but if it is unsupported, it is red paint.  Everytime the marriage grows there is a chance that a drop or two of red will enter the white paint and that is okay, but eventually if it continues the paint will not be white anymore, it will be Pink.  Cleaning the red out of white is nearly impossible.  

What if the two have a seperate pot where they can add the red paint and one for blue paint the second and third jar represents someone else to share that aspect of their life and to support them in those interests.  The marriage remains white and unmarred.  Strife remains out of the marriage and the family is intact.  Everyone is happy.

My girlfriend has added a lot of new stuff in her life that are unsupported by her husband and u am picking up the slack there, I have qualities that are similar to her husband and I am different.  She is growing into our shared life and we love each other in a different way than she and her husband love each other.  If I had time for another girlfriend she an I might go bicycle riding together and spend our time doing other things and my girlfriend would know about her, even if they never met.

I am not in a complicated relationship.  There is no hiding and sneaking, just a lot of hugging and kissing, talking and not talking, fun and serious stuff.  This could last the rest of my life.  Ask yourself how many friends or family could not make monogamy work before you tell me anything.

Writing

A few quick notes…

The character profile that I thrashed out on the keyboard was the second such character that I created in a week.  Both characters required me to think up at least two other alternate characters while I was thinking for the one that I settled on.  The players I was making it for had not gotten back to me so I had to think of some possibilities so, in a sense I created the sketches for six characters and fleshed out only two of them and did so in an hour or so each.  And they liked them.  The one that I published here, the player said that I write very well and the other had a bias, she is my girlfriend.  

It is making me think that I might, might, just have a future in this writing thing.  

A character story

It was raining when you were born, so your Mother said, but that evening was auspicious as the the moon rose early and was in the correct constellation and Venus was in the right place.  That was what was said, but you know much better now; your Grandmother would have said the same thing, that it was auspicious, no matter which constellation and which Maiden was where.  You learned this, because you have been your Village’s shaman for years now and leaving her successor up to chance was not an option.  Play was considered an important part of growing up in your family, but there were many lessons that were taught in conjunction, identifying plants, insects and snakes.  It was important to know which animals were dangerous and which were not.  It was also important to know which plants were which because many of them were edible, others beneficial and still others valuable.  There was a lot to learn, but unlike many children in Creation there were a lot more dangers outside your village than other places.  It was all training for your future role too.

You started your formal training when you were six years old.  In your village all children start learning their adult duties early, so you began training under the watchful eyes of your Grandmother and Mother, the Matriarchal leaders of your family.  You were taught that your family were the leaders because of the spirit blood that ran through your veins, it was a lie, but you did not learn that until much later.  While other children were taught how to thatch roofs and how to weave boats, houses and clothing from the palm leaves, or how to make arrows and later bows and spears used in hunting as well as the crafts of stealth and which frogs make the best poison, you were learning the arts of medicine, spirit appeasement, child birthing, herbology and decision making.  There were other disciplines that were required, but weather foretelling was easy (it rained everyday two hours after noon in the dry season and it rained all day and night in the wet season), astrology (look at the stars and the Maidens and tell people that their child, hunting or whatever would be good or bad depending on the lesson you wanted to teach) and decision making, which was just common sense.  

You had your first child at the age of 14, common for your tribe and your second the next year, where your grandmother proclaimed that she would follow in your footsteps as you had, and she would be a shaman too.  When you turned 16, you were fully initiated into your family’s inherited role when you learned the final secret.  You were not spirit blooded like you were told, like the village was told; you shared the blood of the Fair Folk.  Your grandmother showed you, it was her 48th Dry Season and she said that it was her time to honour the pact that had been keeping the village safe for all these years.  This was the first that you heard of any pact too.  She told you this as the three acting Shaman went out into the rainforest, you, your mother and your grandmother.  She explained that all adults that reached the age of 48, were required to make this last journey and that one day, if you lived that long you would too.  When you reached the appointed place, an altar that you had seen many times deep in the forest, your mother and you called out in the holy tongue and asked for an audience with the Great Saviour of Forest’s Bounty.  Soon the most beautiful being appeared, it just walked out to meet them and it took hold of grandmother’s hand and departed.  

Life continued in the village like normal afterwards, only every changing of the seasons, you and your mother escorted elderly folk out to the altar to be given to Forest’s Bounty.  As the years passed you grew into your own woman, had more children and gained respect for your judgements and your cures.  When your eldest daughter reached the age of 6 her training began and other duties that your mother had performed became yours.  You were expected to travel down the Great River each wet season and bring the bounty of preserved herbs to trade.  It was at these times that you were exposed to the other cultures of the River and to that you saw sights that expanded your view of the world.  You learned a little bit of a few of the languages of the people you traded with.  The more you learned the more that you learned that some of the herbs that you traded, were worth a lot more than you traded them for.  Armed with this knowledge the subsequent journeys were much more profitable for your community and you were able to trade for more valuable things like copper cookware and steel tools.  Trading wider afield also gave you access to more knowledge too, like you learned all the terrible things that the Fair Folk did to people and that they have a weakness; cold wrought iron.  Your last trading expedition you were able to buy a weapon made of this weapon, however, you never really had any intention of using it, the Fair Folk and Forest’s Bounty had protected your village for years from many threats, so there was no reason to hurt them.  

Years past, you yourself became a grandmother and you selected which of your daughter’s daughters would join the cycle of rulership and become your new apprentice.  Your granddaughter is a real delight and full of life.  Her eagerness to rush into the training had inspired you greatly and you became a better Shaman.  You began to love all the villagers as if they were your grandchild and it was such that every meeting, twice a year that your heart hung in shame at the loss to Forest’s Bounty.  Except, they kept the deal and there were no attacks and the hunts always brought back a bounty.  It was late in your 47th year that things changed.

Part way through your 47th Wet Season things were going well.  There were stories from villages close by that there had been strangers kidnapping hunters and raiding villages.  Some of those towns had been completely depopulated.  You know that it was true because you had seen the empty towns and you had seen the fear in the eyes of the nearby villagers, but nothing had happened to your village, and for that you were thankful.  Late in the wet season things changed.  There were sightings of strangers moving in the forest and then one night, a daring raid upon the village and forty-three friends and family were kidnapped or killed.  One of those that was kidnapped was your granddaughter.  All warbands that went searching for the slavers found no trace, but one did not come back at all.  Nothing could be done, the slavers had steel and your villagers had stone tools for the most part.

When the Dry Season came it was your time to go with Forest’s Bounty and it was supposed to be your Granddaughter’s initiation.  The Fair Folk promise to protect the village rung hollow and you dried up your tears and discovered the long forgotten iron weapon and decided that you had nothing left to lose.  You met The Fair Folk after calling out to them in the holy speech.  They came forth as before, but this time things were different.  The moment that they came into the clearing the sky darkened as if the rains had come early.  The Sun was being eclipsed by the moon when it was not supposed to happen.  Words sounded in your head, “ I the Unconquered Sun Exalt you! Take your powers and set the world to rights.  Bring those that would break my covenants and bring them to their knees!”  With that the clearing filled with the strong glow of sunlight, but not from the Sun, which was eclipsed in totality, but from you!  “You Failed in your duties to to protect our village from foreign interlopers.  Your Failure has consequences!” and with that you plunged the iron blade into its chest and it exploded, showering its fellows with gore.  “The Ancient Pact with my people is over until you retrieve the villagers that were taken.  If you return them here, and promise to protect the village better, the pact will continue as before, but if we find them before you, it is over forever.”