Manses and Archeology in the wilderness

The trouble with making manses in the game as places where cities and towns are found, which makes sense, is that it make it easy to find all the good places people put things in the First Age.  

Is it right.  Certainly towns and cities have to make sense where they are in the landscape.  You are not going to have a huge city in the middle of nowhere if the is nothing to support it.  So cities and towns need to make sense as to where they are placed in RPG settings.  But there are cities that fit where they are that break the rules.  The Ancient City of Rathess was not originally a human city, so it does not need to be located where humans put cities.  The First Age city of Meru was on a mountain, but when it was built, air travel was common, so it makes sense.  The city of Hollow/Nexus is at the confluence of two great rivers, so it is perfectly placed.

The First Age was a civilization that ran on Power.  The Power it ran on was Geomancy and Essence.  As such all the Geomantic hotspots must have been tapped.  There was 700 Celestial Exalted and about a Million Terrestrial Exalted, they would all want Hearthstones and they had devices that ran on Hearthstones, like Warstriders and airships.  There was the artificial intelligence, I AM, who ran a network across the world, powered by manses.  There was need of a lot of power.  Not all the Manses would have towns around them, but they were castles and homes for various people.  With a minimum of 2-10 rooms in each manse, they would make great places to be personal storehouses and retreats.  So, if in the First Age all the Geomancy was developed, finding demesnes and manses in the second age would be like finding the best place to look for artifacts of the First Age.  

When the Contagion and the Balorian Crusade wiped the First Age away, many of the First Age manses were destroyed or lost.  Many towns disappeared, and the population of Creation dropped to one percent of what it was.  In the tweaks that I did to Creation, I put that the Shogunate sponsored a campaign of summoning Demons and Elementals to rid the world of caches of Orichalcum artifacts.  The many manses were stripped of Orichalcum, often to the detriment of the Geomancy, causing many manses to overload and blow up.  The Orichalcum was destroyed and the tombs were looted.  The Sidereal's have charms that can move buildings, tombs that were manses that powered the defenses were effectively turned off.  

Large parts of Creation are still not populated.  These locations would have manses, demesnes and places where artifacts are looking to be uncovered, but no Orichalcum and Moonsilver artifacts.  But the problem is that they are all located on Dragon Lines, so anyone can find them.  These locations may increasingly be more dangerous the deeper in the wilderness, away from civilization.  A lot of the Geomancy of a manse is dependent on things outside the building, if the outside is not maintained, the Geomancy is disrupted.  This means that there would be many manses that would have been destroyed.  Or reduced in power.

With the imbalance of numbers, even in the First Age the Terrestrials out numbered the Celestials, most of the low powered Manses would have had Terrestrial owners in the first age, at least renters.  

New Shit

So it has started.

This week Arizona passed legislation into law that will make public demonstration illegal.  Well not illegal, but organizers will be unwilling to organize them.  The law says that the organizer of a demonstration will be held responsible for all damages and illegal activity.  The organizers of any rally where such activities occur could lose personal property in compensation.

This means, if this law were in affect during the Woman's March, that since a masked man hit a Neo-Nazis during the march, the only act of violence during the demonstration of over three million people, the organizers could have lost their property.  A masked man hit someone.  The masked man could have been anyone.  The masked man could have been the Neo-Nazis's colleague.  

Hell if you saw a masked man at a rally and you took him down after he did some sort of crime, he might charge you with assault and cause the organizers to forfeit their property.  Here is the question?: Does this apply to political rallies?  If someone commits a crime in Arizona at a Trump Rally, does the President forfeit his house?  

Other news…

The News report that Trump saw about Sweden when he told people that Sweden was suffering from thousands of rapes and murders perpetrated by Muslims, was Fake News, brought to you by Fox News; The Only Source of Real News according to President Trump.

Also Fox television program featured Real and Actual footage of Terrorists in Kenya, traumatizing the victims of terrorism in that country.

And, Son and Wife of the Famous Mohammad Ali, were detained when they tried to enter the United States, because they are Muslim and have Arabic names.  Just imagine if the in the wake of IRA bombings in England, Catholics with Irish sounding names like Sean and Geoffrey were stopped and detained.  All those Fenians who took raided Canada from the United States, American based Terrorism… it does not take long to come up with an example that reflects back on them does it?  I did not even touch on the State Sponsored Ethnic Cleansing of Native People in America, opps, I just did. 

7 new Worlds

The big science news this week was the discovery by NASA scientists of a planetary system with Seven Terrestrial planets in it and three in the habitable zone.  How timely, after me posting so recently about how planets close to their star might look like.  Seven Earth-like sized planets.  Around a star that is a small fraction of the size of our own.  These planets are close to each other too, they probably have some interesting resonances.  These are the planets and their orbital lengths in Earth Days:

b 1.51

c  2.42

d 4.05

e 6.10

f 9.21

g 12.35

These are the ratios in the orbital periods, between the next closest planet:

1.6

1.67

1.51

1.51

1.34

This is interesting.  The close moons of Jupiter have a more defined resonance.  The first three moons of Jupiter have an orbital resonance of 2:1 between the one closer to Jupiter. 

Here are the orbital ratios in terms of the first planet:

1.6:1

2.7:1

4:1

6:1

9:1

It looks like ere is something wrong with these orbits.  I strongly suspect that they are going to get better data and alter the findings from this system, but to be clear, this is the data they have observed and with the best instruments available.  There is not proof that the planets are as observed, but this is what has been observed, so it is observed fact.  We are after all looking at a system that is 40 light years away and we are not observing the planets directly either; we are observing the dimming of the light from the star as the planets pass before it.  There could be another planet that is causing more dimming out further away in a more distant orbit.

One thing that the observers were able to calculate was the orbital distance from the star and the masses of the planets.  

Earth Masses:

b 0.9  

c 1.4

d 0.4

e 0.6

f 0.68

g 1.3

Distance from Star in AU, distance from each other in fractions of the Earth-Moon distance:

b 0.011

c 0.015. 2x

d 0.021.  3x

e 0.028. 3.5x

f 0.037.  4.5x

g 0.045.  4x

The moon is about 385,000 km away.  And the ratio of the masses is about 6:1 and on earth this means we get tides without doing the math I can see that there would be a subtle effect on these planets with each other.  The moon is locked with one face always towards us after all in addition to the tides.  

The scientist were fairly certain that the planets were tidally locked, but I think they made an improper guess that the planets were fixed with one side facing the star.  The eccentricity of the orbits has been pegged as very little deviation.  They might have greater eccentricity and this would affect their orbit.  Mercury is not locked in the same way as the moon is to the Earth.  The moon's day to year is 1:1 and Mercury it is 1.5:1.  There could be this sort of resonance in these planets— point in fact, the orbital ratios might mean that the planets have not settled into such a stable pattern, they could be suffering from days that are shorter than their years.

The really big news will come when we get more precise measuring instruments and we can measure the temperature of the night side of the planets and the atmospheres of these planets.  It is possible.  These planets are way too inaccessible to get there except with science fiction.  40 light years is so far that we would have to bankrupt the economy of the planet just to send a tiny satellite there, which would still take 400 to a thousand years to get there.

Remember, we have a planet perfect for life right here, take care of it, it is all we have.

Evidence before your eyes

Climate change it is this thing that people don't want to be responsible for so they tell themselves that it is not true.  It is the wealthy that most often suffer from this problem.  They are insulated from the changes to the environment, they are isolated from time.  I think it is because their wealth allows them so much freedom to move across the planet at anytime in the year.  They can if they feel like going for a sky trip go somewhere to ski at any time of the year.  If they want to go to the beach they go to the beach or a beach across the world whenever they desire.  They are not stuck to one timeline, stuck in one location and so they do not see the passage of seasons and the changes in time.  Each year is different and there is not record in their mind that they can refer to.  

Also, they are mostly responsible for the changes in the world.  The poor person contributes to climate change in the same way, they consume, drive places, and they do this in ways that is dictated to them.  The wealthy person is more likely the person who is telling other people what they can do.  They decide if the factory is going to be well insulated, they decide what they heat the factory with, they determine which technologies are used.  For example, factories are usually large boxes with thin walls or thick concrete walls and flat roofs.  An extra layer on the outside, insulation would keep the space warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.  The roof could be filled with solar panels, the solar panels would create energy for the factory and shield the roof from the sun in the summer.

There is evidence that one can see right now where I live.  I was up taking care of my parent's house while they were gone on vacation.  The lake did not freeze over.  There was a cold day that the ice froze out an additional 400m but the ice did not reach the other side.  That was the second time that the bay did not freeze over.  Second time in five years.  The ice usually froze to the point where you could drive a car on to the ice.  Thirty years ago the temperature in the winter would sometimes drop to -40°, now it rarely drops to -30°C.  This year it might have dropped to -25°C.  The plant zone map has been revised for Canada this year, the last update was in the early 80s.  Since then the all the zones in the country moved up one or two zones, back in Boonieland and Smallville the zones have moved from a 4a to a 5a.  In Big Smoke, it has moved from a zone 6a to a 6b and in suburbia I am living in a zone 7a.  Each zone is spaced about 5°C apart for winter lows, meaning the biggest factor in plant survival is winter temperature and the winter temperature of most places in Canada has risen 5-10°C.

I started landscaping yesterday.  February 25th.  The day before the temperature hit +17°C, the high of a week of warm weather in the burbs.  That is a month earlier than the usual time, no, a month and a half.  

But no, Climate Change is a conspiracy by the Chinese.  

It will get worse.  The droughts will increase, not in Canada, in the mid latitudes.  Like Syria and Sudan and all the other regions that are on the borders of dry areas are getting drier.  People move from the dry area move to the wetter areas and those areas cannot support them.  They have conflict and wars develop.  People are displaced from these wars and they move across the globe and there is unrest in these locations too.  This is the ultimate problem of Climate Change.  It is visible right now.  Climate Change is here and it is going to become worse.  

Errant numbers

So I noticed in early February that I started getting a lot of new hits on this blog.  I would like to think that I have suddenly gotten popular, but I look at the hits in detail and they seem to be from just one person.  It is like they opened thirty pages of my blog and shut down their computer and restarted it, refreshing my blog every-time, creating thirty hits every time.  Five times a day.  

I like watching the count.  I hope that each hit is someone reading my blog.  I hope someone is getting something out of it.  I hope that it is someone who wants to play in my games.  Maybe a fellow Story Teller.  Maybe someone with Autism.  Perhaps someone who likes the way I write.  I like to see if this month I will get more than the other months.  I like to look at the graphs and see how many viewers from other countries.  I like to try to see a general trend of the numbers.  

I have figured out a few things, the more posts I have, the more hits I get per month.  But then someone does this.  But really I can't complain.  I have benefited before, like when one post had 40 hits and I wanted it behind me and not on my blog.  I deleted it twice, but felt it disingenuous to do that so returned it.  Then someone opened "Uneasy Rider" and refreshed for a month and pushed that one off.  I was happy.  

My previous monthly high was about 750 or so.  Right now this month I have 2675.  Roughly equal to the number of hits I got in my first two years blogging.  There is almost a week left in e month.  Will I hit 3000?

Scammers

Have you noticed the number of scams that have been popping up in your email lately have been increasing?  I get one that plows through the junk mail filters into my inbox at least once a day.  Yesterday is was a notification I could be a secret shopper, they day before that a woman I never met was telling me I could see pictures of her naked if I click right here.  Today PayPal is thanking me for a purchase I never did.  Last month the Apple Store thanked me for purchasing a $500 computer.  I get notifications of suspicious activity on my PayPal account every week. 

The thing is, I don't read these emails any more, I delete them and laugh.  I don't use PayPal.  And I don't believe that a secret shopper could earn $300 American a day.  The truth of the matter is, if Apple wanted me to contact them they would not email me.  Or phone me.  They would wait until I contacted them.  Same with PayPal.  If I respond to a Russian Girl who complains that boy near her are immature and just interested in sex, it is because I am bored and want a laugh.  

I remember about six years ago a friend posted an email and told me that she took a trip to London England and someone stole her ID and she needed £200 to get out of the country.  I calmly texted her and said, your email has been hacked, see you at work tomorrow.  It would have been more funny if it had happened twelve hours later and I could have nudged her and asked her how fast she was, 5000km in a blink of the eye.  But I was not that lucky.

But there must be people that reply to the lawyer in Timbuktu to help facilitate the transfer of 12,344,506 dollars, or they would not do it.  

Here is a simple rule, don't respond to emails by clicking the link at the bottom of the page.  If you think this applies to you, contact them directly and send e email to them.  They will probably tell you that it is a scam and they might investigate it themselves, because these scams hurt their business.  It is fraud. And every scammer out there makes people fear to use their lawful services.  

Also if someone offers you money for doing almost nothing, you should be suspicious.  

I bet future scammers will start telling you that you can get $50 coupon at your local grocery store if you click this link, and that is something will get people to fall for scams.

Oh Poor Old Me

I watched a video today and heard a TEDtalk podcast the other day.  I always knew that the United States was really fucked up, but I just assumed that it was normal Fucked up and that Trump coming to power was just an extra Fuck up, but I was wrong.  The United States has been really fucked up for a long time.

I mean in the Land of The Free, it is the land where being poor means that you are free to die, but only as long as someone can pay for the expense.  The ACA came into effect many years ago and to everyone in Canada it was a no brainer.  The Affordable Care Act meant that a portion equal tthe population of Canada was to get affordable healthcare.  This was all coming at e time of the financial crises.  Health Care in Canada is the single largest budget item and it employs a huge number of people.  Doctors, nurses, orderlies, receptionists, hospital buildings, hospital equipment suppliers, heating contractors, grocers who sell food to people, car dealers who sell cars to people, pet groomers who groom doctor's froufrou pets.  Don't forget that a dollar spent on healthcare gets spent and re-spent until it winds up in someone's bank account or back in the taxman's pocket.  And of course, people get medicine that could never afford it before.  The Canadian Economy is run by the money spent on Healthcare, so the idea that Americans could employ all those people too, AND make 30-40 million poor people more productive at the same time; its a no brainer.  

But I heard it was repealed last week.  And replaced by nothing.  The money that could be pumped into the economy, that would be recouped by the government in income tax and sales tax and property tax, employed doctors and nurses and grocery clerks and car salesmen and farmers and the building of new hospitals, all gone.  But should I have not expected that.  I mean 83% of all expectant mothers in the States do not have Maternity leave.  They can't take time off to give birth.  They once they do give birth have to be back at work soon after. 

Watch this

 For a country that insists that women need to constantly be pregnant, according to backwards religious ideology, they sure make it hard for them to do it.  The same backward philosophy tells people that abortion is wrong, but to be poor is not their problem.  Planned Parenthood uses a fraction of their funds to perform abortions, that represent the tiniest portion of the work they do and for that people make up fake videos that tell people that they are selling baby parts to genetic research companies.  The fake videos are from right wing religious organizations that support the current Trump Administration, who complains about fake news . . ..

The TEDtalk podcast I listened to was worse.  Worse than instigating terrorist attacks against an organization that does not sell aborted fetuses to diabolical genetics companies, never did, never will.  Worse than that.  The talk was about how the poor people of the country are being extorted by the judicial system because they are poor.  A poor person is charged for a crime and they are told that they need to post bail that is beyond their means, they have to spend the pretrial period in jail.  A wealthy person posts bail and they are out that same day.  The back bone of the American Justice System is you are innocent until proven guilty, but in reality it is you are guilty unless you have money, innocent until insolvent.  The poor accused criminal is faced with two choices, wait in jail for twice their maximum sentence waiting for trial or pleading guilty and being out in half the time.  It is a no brainer and it means that every-time a poor person is charged with a crime they are guilty and then they are more likely to be charged again and they won't be able to be employed very well as an ex convict and will be poor for much longer.  That is they way it is.  But it is not all.  If you are poor in the States you can't break any law or your life will be destroyed.  You can go to jail for unpaid parking tickets.  As if sending you to jail and forcing you to not work is going to help you pay your fines.  I heard that they can spend a lot of time in jail for the smallest things, if you are poor.

TED Talk

It seems that the biggest crime in America is being poor.  Poor means that you won't have healthcare, you will spend more time in jail, you will be forced to plead guilty to crimes because you can't afford bail and pleading guilty means you spend less time in jail, well that first time and let's not forget if you are poor there will soon be no services left to help you.  If you are poor you can't go to school either, so I don't see anyway out for the poor in America.  Glad I don't live there, I would be screwed.

Books and reading

I have been thinking about my reading lately.  I have been reading, but I was thinking, or realizing that most of my Fantasy writers I follow are American and most of the SciFi authors are British.  Then I think about all the exceptions and I realize that most of the writers that I follow are from the British Isles.  Let me list some: Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Tolkien, China Miéville, Ben Aaronovitch, Charles Stross.  I have read almost everything these authors has put out except a few books, except for Neil Gaiman's books.  Their are a smattering of other books.  Then I think about it again.  How many authors have I read that I did not know that they were British?  Richard K Morgan, also British, I read him a lot.  My reading tastes seem to be a lot of British people.  I am thinking that I should be talking about the American writers I read.  GRRM, Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks, Rachel Aaron, Daniel Abraham (including aliases), Peter v Brett, there are a lot.  

Lui Cixn is a very very famous author from China, virtually unknown outside China.  I recently picked up the Three Body Problem, which was e first of a trilogy.  I learned a lot about Chinese Culture from the first book, as it mostly occurs in the recent past, but the other two are in the far future.  The series I would classify as Nhilistic Fiction, in this case Science Fiction.  There is a place for it, K. J. Parker writes this stuff in fantasy.  It is a very good read, but as you follow the character you begin rooting for them and then as the tension builds things get worse and then at the moment of triumph, everything collapses for one reason or another, usually betrayal by family and everyone dies— I mean, the entire city is butchered, the nation is put to the sword, the family is cut to pieces, everyone dies.  

James SA Corey is writing the Expanse Series.  There have been six books in each of the last six years and there is supposed to be nine books total.  The SciFi is uplifting, dark and gritty.  You feel that life on Earth is tenuous and that the entire civilization is on the brink of flowering or collapsing, they way good writing should make you feel.  And now it is a series on television.  The series on television is almost as good as the books, almost.  The Television series is Exceptionally good.  The detail that they put into things, like the technology and the people make it feel real.  The one and only problem with the television series is that the casting choices have blotted out how I pictured the characters in the books.  But, it is really really good.  And e books are coming fast.  Nine books in nine years.  I think I am going to introduce my sister to the series, the TV series, cause she has two kids, commutes three hours a day and all that silly stuff.  

Ben Arronovitch.  A series based around the rivers of London.  We are taking magical police work.  Magic has been on the rise in the past few years and e magical investigations office of e met has increased from one officer in the last fifty years to two, and there are more people coming.  The first book delt with a ghost that was possessing people and making them carry out crimes based on Punch and Judy, the real bases for the popular marionette routine.  We meet the Goddess of the Lower Thames and her sisters the Tyburn and Berverly Brook, small tributaries to the Thames.  They have magic and power, temporal power too.  What is more is the characters are multiethnic.  the main character is a second generation migrant from Africa.  His father is a jazz musician.  The goddess Thames is a West indies woman who killed her self in the 60s and found a vacancy in the Celestial Bureaucracy instead of dying.  As the series progresses we meet Father Thames, country Thames who unlike the city vibrancy is filled with hickishness and old world charm, old world as in Roman Old.  And magic, and London.  A fun read and a pleasant way to spend your time.

Charles Stross.  I was flipping through the front cover at what he has written, and then I began to start checking them off mentally, I had read them all.  SciFi, far future, near future, a future where humans all died and robots aped humanity, SciFi fanatasy present day, I guess that is just Fantasy.  The one I am reading now is called collectively the Laundry Files, because the initial building the secret agents were based in was fronted by a Laundrymat.  Picture a world where the Nazis were really doing something constructive with their death camps, they were killing people to open up dimensional rifts and make deals with demons to gain power. That was the first book.  The Second book was a parody of Goldfinger with the mystical agent slipping into a spell where he liked to wear tuxedos and he had to investigate a man with a cat in the Bahamas.  There was a girl too, but she was a mermaid from the benthic depths.  Really.  Okay here is the premise for the books:  there is magic, but it is not what you think.  It is advanced mathematical formulas that use energy to break through the curtain between worlds and other outside creatiures give you power for creating these formula.  The formula are very complex and hard to do so there were not many magical eruptions until people developed computers powerful enough to do them for you.  When it happens you get a knock on your door and you are given two choices, you can join the secret organization and except a severe pay cut and hunt down magical law breakers and attempted invasions or you can die.  Not really much of a choice really.  Oh and using magic is bad, queue drug Comercial with eggs.  Except, when you do magic without major protections demons eat your brain, so really bad.  Each book is about the secret organization and the characters in it and how they police the world.

Each book is based around a theme and each book is written after the events, they are debriefing note put into file.  The stories are filled with funny acronyms and as I said they are based around themes, like James Bond, Vampires, Nazis and the one I am currently reading, Superheroes.  Because the computing power of the world is getting out of hand, the number of instances are increasing, from one per million people per year to one per month then three per month per million people.  Remember London England has about 10 million people so that means one per day.  One day Mo, an agent with a bone white violin with a sticker that says 'This Maching Kills Demons' because the violin in her hands does that and more, is called to Trafalgar Square because something is happening.  She is a middle aged woman and that means she is effectively invisible.  She arrives to find a pyramid of naked people and other people being added to the pyramid, one at a time, lifted up, stripped of their clothes and placed at the top of the fourth pillar in the square.  There is no time to lose and she whips out her violin and dispatches the villain and saves the people, only about five thousand people had pulled out their cellphones and have posted movies to Facebook of her doing it and a live broadcast of the BBC too.  Opps.  Oh well, deflection time.  The solution is to create a fictitious organization that is fighting super human villains.  Hilarity insues.

I was entering my favourite bookstore in Big Smoke and they had a bunch of Neil Gaiman books on a shelf that had just been priced.  The release date was in five days.  They said that they had no problem selling them as the book was already out in Europe.  Norse Gods.  You can find this stuff on e Internet but it is not something I have the patients to look at all the time, the Internet that is, so seeing it in a book, I said sure why not.  Besides I know WaifGirl would read it if I gave it to her and she is stuck up in Bonnieland.  So I got it and read it.  Different than I was expecting.  Loki is the villain but he is also the hero.  His pranks are evil, but he is viewed as that is his nature, killing him is the consequence unless he can think of a way out of it.  It starts at the start and it ends with the end of the world, where it begins again.  I am not sure if it is true to the originals but it was very interesting.  

Hopefully I will read all the books I brought up then I can deposit them in the used bookstore and let someone else read them, maybe WaifGirl, but probably not.

Dreams of Demise

Jag killed by Dragon Blooded 

Black Sun suicide at Void of desire

The banquet hall off to the side of the Deliberative chambers are a spectacularly impressive show of wealth and poor taste.  Chandeliers made with glow stones, Orichalcum, Moonsilver and Starmetal, all polished to a mirror finish.  The panels of the wall worked jade with inlaid magical materials show scenes of the epic times, the overthrow of the Primordials.  You are not sure that they were made by anyone present, if indeed anyone here was alive for those battles.

The feast is a more elaborate affair than they have been in the past.  There is nothing here that is less than complex. The rumours were that the opening soup was made with no less than five meats made from animals hybridized from two disparate biomes.  A fish and a bird, ice lemurs with sun lizards etc.  The constant dare to survive greater and greater inedible foods and toxins so that you can experience greater highs.  

It is the perennial question about how to increase the potency of various drugs so that they work on bodies that resist the effects of drugs and vices that kill mortals.

The current cocktail that is making the rounds is really quite potent.  The hallucinations that are bubbling through your subconscious are almost affecting your judgement.  Across the way do you see Terrestrial servitors actually pulling weapons?  They are wearing armour?  You are nudged from behind.  Your breast parts open as a large blade slides out your front… cool.

+++++

Travel down to the depths of the Labyrinth posed no challenge.  The ghosts and other things make a wide berth around you having learned, seen, heard rumours of you. Those that seek Oblivion find it by crossing your path.  The narrow passage that leads to her sarcophagi is beyond all wonder.  The last few years you have communed with her have been fruitful.  You have bargained with her and you have made the perfect deal.  You will be the sole Champion of Void of Desire, you will fight to destroy Creation in her name, but your only stipulation is that you will retain all of your memories, so that you can best carry out those plans.

You who made Void of Desire, she will remake you and together you will seek Oblivion as one.  You know that making it clear your only price is your memories, you know for sure that it is the one thing she will destroy outright. She will double cross you.  You have taken steps though.

There is the book.  There is the Memory Crystal on your person.  There is the repositories you left in your Manse in the North, under the waves.  There is the Manse in Chaya. The cache in Whitewall.  The cache in Rathess.  The one in Darkmist.  The dozens of clues you have seeded Creation with that will lead you to your destiny, that will lead you to the end of all.  Your plan to move the twelve simpleton Deathlords to where they need to go.

You rest at the bottom of your soon to be unmarked grave with your final ciphered messages and your most excellent artifacts.  The Cloak of Shadows, your blade Last Cut, and the Mask of Eternity.  Last Cut drawn and reversed.  You thrust it into your heart. Your last seconds you fall across the trip wire and activate the avalanche, burying you… 

Nix killed by Mnemon Di-Yī

The sweaty jungles of An-Teng are like none other in Creation.  There are many that are more hazardous, and there are many that are darker and more beautiful, but the rest are far away from civilization and far from where people are.  In An-Teng, if you step off the millennially worn path between cities, you will find yourself in places that have not been trod on ever.  

You said your good-byes to your family and your clan.  The expedition to search the jungle wastes has been funded by one of the great Dynastic Houses of the Realm, the Great House Mnemon, and the prime scion of the house will be the leader.  Your ancestral lands being close to the site your family's holdings were chosen to be the starting place.

Great Lord Prince of the Earth Mnemon Di-Yī is not what you expected.  He is more humble and closer to the ground than any Great Dragon Blooded you have ever met.  He saved you from a tree Jaguar that leapt down at you while leading the way.  He has told you that you can stand in his presence and I should look to his eyes when I speak to him, not that you would ever show such disrespect.  

It took the expedition three days to cut through half league of jungle, and most of that with the Honoured Mnemon Di-Yī obliterating the jungle before his mighty White Jade Tetsubo.  Only about fifteen of the men died, I expected much more.  

We found the Great Manse, still intact as it was from the First Age.  The great entrance was cleared.  The main expedition went in search for the entrance, but the carvings on the side intrigued me.  The carvings told a story and the story was plain before my eyes.  I walked beside the Manse and found a passage that lead into the centre.  There was a chamber with a great Gemstone calling me.  It was a grand Emerald.  I grasped hold of it and I felt Great power.  The chamber was wide and expansive, but was lit by a light that seemed to come from me.  Power and lore trickled into your head.  You heard movement and something impacted you. Rolling onto your back you see Mnemon Di-Yī's Tetsubo crashing into your skull…

Akri killed by Dragon Blooded 

The days of Calibration are the days of great Festivities across Creation.  Prayers for Five Days of Darkness. for Solar Invictus and Luna.  The Solar Deliberative meets in the great halls for the Feasts.  You know that initially it was all about preventing wayward Solar Exalted for calling forth demons on this day, but has ended in a great party for all. You do not get to go this year, because someone has to be around incase something goes wrong, but you consider once every five years that you should learn to summon Third Circle Demons, just so that you are not here, floating away from the party.  You know that your Circlemates are going to tell you that this was the best one of the century.  Looking to the North and West you see the great Shadow of The Pole of Earth with its halo of the greatest city of all around it.  

There are some advantages to being far in the Provincial regions of the South.  You did arrange for ten of the most beautiful Terrestrial Exalted to help you pass the time.  The first five were very helpful in that way.  They passed you wine infused with intoxicants, the kind that they would be serving tonight at the Feast.  Your advisor from the Ministry of War in Heaven had something to do with that.  You mentally bored to thank that liaison personally.  

Five replacement Exalts for the ones that you just exhausted out just arrived, unforgivably still girded for battle.  You would have to discipline them for this breach of etiquette, probably all night long.  A wispy spirit came skirting in to the room from the window, a message from your Lunar Mate, the special way she casts that spell gives all her spirits a distinctive shine of burnished copper.  "BETRAYAL," the message starts, "TERRESTRIAL AND SIDEREAL BETRAYAL…" the message drones on, but you do not hear. Initial attacks are parried, your side is scored by sorcerous venom.  Soon the lovelies that you wanted just a few seconds ago, are all fucked up, many times worse.  

Moments later, the mountainous fortress of the Southern quadrant, careens out of the sky scarring the landscape and Creation in a way that won't ever heal.

Messenger killed by Dragon Blooded 

The Banquet held at Calibration every year was always the premier event of the social calendar.  Attendance has always been mandatory unless there were other affairs of State to attend to.  Demon Cult activity is always highest at this time of year, and the attendance of the Adamant Circle Sorcerers was always mandatory, all of them are in attendance this Calibration, so you were not needed to keep tabs on them. So you are here.  

It hits you then how much you hate these people.  Most of your time the past few decades has been you keeping tabs on these people.  Making sure that they are not spawning Demon cults or turning their subjects into crystal statuary. Lawn ornaments aside, a lot of these people are really vicious people.  Millennia ago you knew many of them and they were good people, but lately they have become despicable.  Five of the last six thoughts have been about slipping poison in some of these people's drinks, but you know that they like you can resist the most toxic venom known to the gods.  Still you dream.

Stuck in this reverie that seems to occupy most of your life recently, you almost fail to react as the banquet erupts around you.  You dodged the blow aimed at your back.  The blades of five Terrestrial servitors pass through your form. Surprise Anticipation Method, Flow like Blood, and your weapon recalled from Elsewhere, your body girded for battle. 

Of the participants of the Banquet, only a few dozen broke free of its confines.  The Battle rages across the City, the Largest city in Creation.  Your personal battle is waged under the city itself.  The great halo around the Pole of Earth where the city sits, and engineering marvel of the ages, but for you, the only place where you won't kill millions as you battle these ungrateful jackals.  Your upside down perch trembles and quakes as you battle a hundred in Celestial Battle Armour.  The halo jerks and you are in free fall.  The city of a hundred million has broken away from the Mountain and it is falling.  You know you can't survive this.  The Terrestrial betrayed splatter across the falling city bottom.  You leap the ten miles to the ground beneath you and prepare to bound to safety.  Not many claim that they died by being hit by a city… before today.

Practitioner killed by Sidereal MA

The banquet has always been the low point of your social Calendar, this has been the best one that you can remember though.  The soup you suppose was foreshadowing: ten poisonous creatures bred together into five chimera of living things fish with bird, soil creature with fire creature and so on.  The soup needed more salt.  The serving of the dry crackers to cleanse the palette was supposed to make up for the next helping of Terrestrial betrayal.  What Excitement!  

The glee that you felt as tired acquaintances were soon to be renewed in the new cycle, after you wiped the betrayers out completely.  You found it surprising that how many of your compatriots had not anticipated betrayal.  Such a simple charm, Surprise Anticipation Method,  your attackers blades turned from your impregnable skin.  Calling forth a swirling barrier of blades that mowed down your attackers and a few of your friends, well no matter.  

A few moments later your pursuing enemies were choking on their lungs, and spell you had been itching to use for decades but never had a good time to do so.  Before you stood two of the Five Score Fellowship.  Ready for battle before you with their fabled 'superior' martial arts.  

You tossed the pebble of essence that you had just spent time working on at them.  They parried it towards the city below the summit where you fought.  You would have to rebuild it after you defeated these idiots.  The battle raged a few seconds before your city triggered and annihilated the capital city of the world.  Would anyone remember that you killed so many…

Weak in the Week

This has been a tough week in the World and a tough week in Canada.  In the World Donald Trump took the lead in uselessness.  He signed more executive orders that made the World angry.  Then he spoke to people like they were idiots, but then from his television star days that is what he learned was good communication skills.  

In Canada, a lone white and Quebecois gunman entered a Mosque, shot a bunch of people, then went out to his truck and reloaded, then went back into the Mosque and shot more people, then he went back to reload.  Then Fox News reported that the gunman was from Morocco and he was therefore a Muslim.  When people called to correct them, they ignored the correction.  They did not stop reporting that the gunman was islamic until the Canadian Prime Minister told them to stop.  Donald Trump's administration then told everyone this is why the ban on Islamic refugees is a good one.  

We learned that Donald trump watches a lot of TV and he only watches Fox, because all the other news stations play fake news stories and tell lies, Fox News, is always right.  So therefore, to Donald Trump, the gunman in Quebec City was Islamic and he killed people, so banning Muslims is a good policy.  It makes me angry.

The Prime Minister of Canada also makes me angry.  After the shooting in the Mosque, he got one of his MPs to announce that Electoral Reform is not possible.  It was one of his major campaign promises.  I did not vote for him, because I did not trust him, because I view Conservatives and Liberals as they are, cut from the same cloth with minor differences.  Both claim change, but both just want to rule with a minority of the popular vote.  When a Liberal Government says it will do something, I wait for them to do it before I will believe it.  

The Liberal Government, claimed that they would be environmentally friendly, like the Greens wanted, they claimed Electoral Reform like the NDP wanted, they took those voters, then the ratified the Paris Agreement, but are not actually doing anything to work toward meeting their commitments.  They are spending money to help develop the Alberta Oil Sands, the dirtiest oil in the planet.  And now after holding meetings with the public they say that there is no consensus.  After an all party think tank was put together, one person from each party and the rest from his party, there was no consensus and therefore it can't be done.  The Liberal Party is not interested in in electoral change.  They just won a landslide election with less than 40% of the popular vote, 20% of eligible voters.  The past twenty years they were in power for ten of those years and the Conservatives for another ten, none of them have had a majority of the votes. 

The problem with the system the way that it is, is that it can allow a government in like the last Conservative Government that tried to destroy every environmental program and every scientific endeavor that was not about making the Oil Sands more profitable.  The government destroyed scientific data that was not in line with their ideological views. They shredded the research, claiming that they had to get rid of the space they were in and that they did not have enough money to digitize that research.  Meanwhile they made lots of noise about funding for the poor and the needy, but never spending the money that they set aside for those programs, except the ad budgets telling people that they were doing it.

Electoral Reform is the only thing that will stop another Conservative Government, a proto-Trump government from coming here again.  

Liberal, Conservative, Trump style governments are all big on promises as long as they don't have to do what they promised, as long as they can claim that there are Alternative Facts that prevent them from doing right by people.

Iran vs USA; who is more warlike?

My feed this morning included a news story that suggested that Trump had insulted Iran this time and was trying to start a war.  And then my mind started to process thoughts of things.  I thought about what I think about Iran and everything I know about Iran.  I had to look things up to do it.  My conclusion was that in the same amount of time comparing Iran and the Untied States on being in wars and starting wars, Iran is a much more peaceful nation.  

There was a revolution in Iran and a theocracy took power, it was an autocratic theocracy.  Autocratic governments are bad, theocracies are worse.  This is all bad news for Iran.  Terrible news.  One year later Iraq, backed by the Soviet Union and the United States, invaded Iran.  The war lasted for eight years.  More than a million people died.  After the First American Gulf War, the Kurds began an insurrection in Iran and Turkey.  Iran took the side of the government of Syria in its civil war.  Iran sponsors some terrorist activities and organizations, particularly Hezbollah a Shia based militant group.  Shia is branch of Islam.  Shia = Shiite are the same, one is an adjective and the other a noun.  It is the religion of Iran.  

Now, the number of Wars that the United States has been in since 1979.  Too many to list.  Really.  There was the invasion of: Panama, Gernada, Iraq and Afghanistan.  There have been airstrikes against Iran, Libya, Yugoslavia, Syria.  There has been state sponsored terrorism in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and others.  It has backed autocratic governments throughout the world.

Iran had dealings with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.  Canada was the number one trading partner of the United States, and thus had dealings with that nation of Warmongering.  For that matter, Saddam Hussein was set into power in part by the American Government.  Same with Osama bin Laden; the Americans funded them to fight the Soviets in the 80s.  

My point is, that relative to the Americans, Iran is a force of peace in the world.  Relative to Iran, half the world is filled with angels of peace.  Between Russia and America, the world would be a much happier and peaceful place.  Sorry nice Americans, where ever you are, I don't mean you but your governments you elect; all of them since 1980.  Many of them before 1980 too.  Actually I can't think of an American President that embodies peace.

Odd living spaces in space

I started listening to some Astronomy podcasts again.  Lectures.  And there was one that was done by the Drake, of the Drake Equation.  You know the one that tells us how common life in the universe is.  He explained his equation in detail and updated it to the time he had the lecture which was 2005.  That is, to be clear 12 years ago.  How much things have changed in twelve years.  The number of exoplanets discovered 12 years ago was about thirty.  Today, according to my app, there are 3,313 exoplanets, confirmed.  He talked about how the Habitability zone of a star really does not mean anything, other than it is where we are.  He said that new ideas would tell us that if we had a runaway greenhouse effect we might have sustainable habitat far outside the habitability zone of a star.  

There was another lecture that I heard that told a different tale about how planets that orbited in the habitability zone of small M-Class red dwarfs might not be locked in a one side facing orbit of their star.  Mercury, is locked in a 1.5 resonance orbit of our sun, that is three days every two orbits.  This idea changes the present general idea of how a habitable planet around a M-Class star.  That is one side a baked desert, the other a vast glacier, the middle a temperate ring.  Sometimes the sun facing section is not as hot and dry, but the back side is sometimes so cold that oxygen rains and snows out of the atmosphere.  Perhaps vast glaciers moving to the rim that then melt and provide lakes and rivers that then evapourate dry as they move to the dry center.

The idea of a resonance means that there would never be an area that does not see the sun.  These worlds would have to be eccentric, and therefore they would get more energy closer to their sun and less further away.  In a 1.5 resonance, every one and a half days they would have greater energy and much less on the other.  This brings the imagination to bear about a world that oscillates between Winter and Summer every three days.  The amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the amount of water on the surface would all affects this.  What if there was and axial tilt like we have on this planet?  Even more disparity, more differences.  I want to go and start up a spreadsheet program to look at what that might mean.  

Some of these planets have an orbital period of four to five days.  Think what that would mean.  For four Earth days and a 1.5 resonance orbit, the 'Day' would last 64 hours, 32hours of light and 32 of darkness.  A year would be 96 hours, so half a year 48 hours.  Summer and Winter, 48 hours apart.  The sun could rise in the Spring and set in the Fall, axial tilts aside.  The weather would be wild.  At noon, the air would be warm and the skies may be clear.  As the sun dips in the sky the air cools, condensation occurs and it rains, thunder and lightning, the weather cools lets more light in then the sun dips below the horizon and the air cools more.  A rain develops and it lasts all night long until the snow begins to blanket the ground.  The sun rises and the cold persists until the sun rises up for a several hours and the snow melts.  The water dries and the sun clears the air until the baking heat of noon.

Add wind.  The air rises under the sun and sinks at the opposite.  The wind moves along the ground towards the sunny-side.  Under the sun is a area of calm and on the opposite.  The strongest winds are at the dawn and dusk.  Latitude would have an effect, much like it would on this planet.  Jet streams, they might be more powerful though.  The winds would keep the dark-side more temperate, the day-side too.  Add water and everything mellows out more.  Add greenhouse gasses and the day and the night time temperatures come closer together more again.  

The biggest differences between our mild life on our planet and life on that close orbiting planet would be how life evolved there.  Would the plant analogies be resistant to freezing?  Would they be evergreens?  Would the animal analogies be able to operate all day long or would they work at dusk and dawn sleep on the day and nights?  Would they be semi hibernators, eat and sleep dawn through dusk then sleep at night?

What if the orbit was a lot more than a four day orbit?  What if the day was two thousand hours long?  The longer the period, the more extreme the day and night differences.  The further away from what sort of day we have on Earth and the more alien the life would have to be.  

I just thought of another wacky possible configuration for a star and planet.  What about planet stuck right in-between two M-Class stars.  As the stars orbit a common center, there is a planet at that point and it could be habitable.  No night just dusk and dawn and noon, morning and afternoon.  Would it spin? Would it need to?  What if it were a gas giant and it had a satellite that supported life?  It might be locked, one side facing the gas giant and the other gets dawn, morning, noon, afternoon and dusk, repeat.  Back to the earth like planet stuck at the common center of two stars, there could be planets closer to the other stars that could have life too.  The stars could be far enough apart that they only contribute half the energy that the planet would need to be habitable, half plus half equals a whole, and the other planets could also sustain life too. 

The geometry is exploding my mind!