Been away

I have not posted much in 2017.

I have been busy and they two things I have not been doing might be related.  I have not been reading and I have not been writing.

I have been trying to create stuff, I have been world building, trying to put the setting in my head into a game.  The childhood creation from when I was a teenager, the Land of Caranus.  I have been adapting it for a dungeons and dragons campaign using 5th Edition.  It is a less complicated setting, because books can be complicated, but roleplaying needs to be not.  So I have been exploring how to make the setting playable and not too complicated for new players and scary for experienced players.

I guess I am going to reveal my work for those that are not in the campaign, so Natural20, I will post a D&D in the title, and don't read those posts.

I have been watching a series on YouTube called Running the Game, by Matt Coville, just to refine my storytelling technique.  It is funny, I am of age with Matt and I have been playing just as long, but my style and his are similar enough, I admit that he is better.  I wonder what kind of GM I would have been without Autism….  What he says though is true, you need no experience to be a DM, GM or Storyteller, because we in the beginning had none either.  Still it is great that we can learn from others now.

First game is set for Januray 6… I don't know how it will go.

D&D plot Possiblly

Plot D&D 

The nemesis: the Lord of Greysteel.  

The lord of Greysteel is lawful evil, and a Mage.  He is in fact a Necromancer and arranged the attack on his family that elevated him to rulership.  The Humanoids that attacked and killed his parents and siblings were no fools and they, with the help of the Temple of Elemental Evil, captured one his siblings and secreted him to the temple to be held as a hostage.  The Temple has been blackmailing the Lord.

The Lord has not taken well to the blackmail, but he does not know where they are holding his sister, who is a Paladin.  He thinks it is in a neighbouring kingdom, a lawful neutral state with many civilized Orcs.  In any case he feels that this kingdom is most deserving for conquest anyways.  Convenient that orcs have such a bad name in Jarda.  His bounty on humanoids is to stir conflicts up between the two nations.  

The Temple Faction has only started blackmailing the Lord in the last ten years.  The lord has a number of projects on the go.  The conquest of the Orc nation is one.  The second is the search for immortality— and he is close on this, he has performed many of the rituals necessary to complete his induction as a Litch.  Third on his list to to uncover a great and powerful artifact that he discovered in part when he was a young Mage.  He has the hilt and the tip of an extremely powerful artifact sword.  He is not sure exactly how large the final product is, but he believes it is a larger version of a two-handed sword.  The blade is bright gold and very heavy, but he suspects that when it is assembled that it can be fully attuned to and will be feather light.  Just the hilt is assembled, but with that has given him some great powers, including improved Invisibility, teleportation and illusionary projections.  When it is fully assembled he believes he will be as strong as a god.

The players will find some of these pieces when ever they complete adventures.  First when they get them someone will make an offer to purchase the sword fragment, but the buyer will appear to be a little too eager to get it.  Then there shall be break ins and assassins.  The Lord will then contact the players and ask what all this disruption is all about?  If they tell him, the lord will attempt to broker a solution, he will offer to hold the fragments for the Players until they need them.  After a serious threat and damage to the town, he will insist that they surrender them.

As the players begin to bring in more and more humanoid ears and collect more bounties they will attract the attention of the constabulary.  After they bring in 100gp of bounties, they will get recognized and toasted in the Taverns.  When they hit 200gp, a Sargent will buy the group a round.  By the time they have got 100gp/ player they will be greeted by name as they enter Greysteel and by patrols.  And invited to eat with the Captain of the Forces.  When they hit the 1000gp range the Characters will be given rank in the army, honorary members, but with salutes.  Ranks, 1, 2, 3 and 4.

The characters, when they recover contraband from smugglers and pirates they will get a similar reaction as the bounty hunting line.  1000gp recovered, toasts, 2000gp they will get a round purchased for them, etcetera.  However, they will be snubbed too.  Every ten smuggler/pirate killed will result in an act of vandalism or petty violence, "you killed my daddy."  Ranks 1, 2, 3, and 4

If the characters lawfully pay their taxes when they bring in loot they will will get folk hero status as great adventurers. Ranks, 1-4.

If the characters are good about bringing in bounties and smugglers they will be given more leeway about paying tax on their gains.  Heroes after all are given a little benefit of doubt . . ..  Ranks add partially.  Highest rank + next highest rank -1 + next rank -2 = Yx10% of tax that can be avoided without penalty.  PLAY by the rules of the Lord and you will get benefits.  If they give up the artifact pieces they will get a free rank in every area.  

When the players get stronger, the Lord will enact one of his plans and use his mastery over the artifact to cause his army to attack the town of the player's biggest interest, he will make it appear as if they are attacking Orcs, and the villagers that the army is Orcs, either way refugees will talk about the attack on the village and how it was unprovoked and the Nation of Orcs must be destroyed.  If his sister has been freed at this point he may choose that as the time to begin.  

When the attack has occurred he will seek adventurers to lead the attack on the nation of marauding Orcs.  If the players do this they should see that it is the evil of the Lord causing the disruptions.   

Introduction:

Those of you who were born to this little Dukedom know the history of the area well.  Over one hundred years ago the Holy Kingdom of Jarda, at the height of its power, was threatened by a cult of evil men.  The cult performed many assassinations on the nobility before the cult was traced to its source, a Temple of Elemental Evil.  The might of the Kingdom fell upon the Temple and destroyed it utterly— or as near to completely as they could manage.  The King vowed that never should the kingdom be threatened again by such a force and empowered his Cousin, the Duke of Greysteel to settle the region with loyal soldiers of the realm, a reward for good service.  It was hoped that if good people lived in the temple's shadow, it could never rise again.  For two generations the town of Greysteel grew from its inspirational beginnings to a small Duchy with five small villages, Hommlet, Sunnydale, Nulb, Saltmarsh and Orlane.  Things were not always pleasant, time was not always favourable, but overall life is good here.  Few remember a time when the taxman from Jarda was last seen, but the old timers say that is was near fifty years ago.  There is little news from the outside world here, so the reasons for the abandonment are still a popular topic of discussion, second after the retellings of the attack on the Second Duke's retinue, which was wiped out to a man, leaving only the youngest son soul heir, back in the Keep.  It was common knowledge that he was left back because he was gravely ill, but some claim in the darkest hours of the night after the ale has flown freely, that he was not infact ill, but the mastermind of betrayal…. Whatever the case the time of his rule has been one of strength and order.  Taxes have been laid,  an army was raised and, fortifications built; the nation is strong and hearty.  The bounty on Humanoids is new, just in the past couple of years and every year their are tales of smugglers caught and hung for display, one in every village at least.  

Adventures that my be played herein: N1, N2; T1-4; U1-3

New D&D campaign 2

Turning your setting that you dreamed up in high school into a D&D or any roleplaying game setting has a few troubles.  The things that I thought were cool don't necessarily translate very well into a game; some sound great and neat in your head, but just get in the way of game play.  Like having a world with six moons and three suns and a opposite direction of rotation all sounded cool to my sixteen year old mind, well they still sound cool to my mind now, but they mostly mean nothing or make things complicated and only that.  So, maybe, just maybe I need to de-clutter the game setting.  For example, maybe three suns will work, since only two are ever visible, but dropping the moons down to three, allows each of the suns to have a opposite, because the gods are the moons and the suns.  Rotation direction is not important except for me, so drop it entirely.  

Sometimes things sound great in your head, and writing them out they still sound great, but when you tell someone about them, then you realize that you have been talking inside your head too long.  Far, too, long.

So, let's work with the changes.

Three Goddesses and three Gods.  The goddesses will represent Law, Chaos and Neutrality.  The Gods will represent Good, Evil and Neutrality.  

The Goddess of Light is Lawful (Green) Light, Forge, Protection

The Goddess of Magic is Neutral (Blue) Arcana, Knowledge, War

The Goddess of  Weather is Chaotic (Red). Tempest, Nature, Trickery

The God of Health is Good ( Small and White, 1/4 year rotation, eclipse every five rotations) Life, Protection, City

The God of Nature is Neutral (Medium and Blue, monthly rotation, eclipse every nine rotations) Nature, Grave, Life

The God of War is Evil (Large and Green, bi-weekly rotation, eclipse every 27 rotations) Death, Tempest, Forge

List of domains

Arcana.    Forge.            Life.         Protection.  War. 

City.           Grave.            Light.      Tempest.      

Death.       Knowledge.   Nature.   Trickery.   

Those six Deities are universal, but have many names but they always are portrayed similarly.

Each Lesser God is culturally dependent, gets two domains, but one must come from one of the two major gods, example: LG goddess of Righteousness, has one Domain of (Life, Protection, City, Light and Forge) and one other domain.  There could be a dozen different gods of Righteousness, that are LG and each could have different domains.  One might be the Bright Sword, Light and War, another might be Righteous Raven, Protection and Trickery.  

An Orc Pantheon would be culturally Orcish, but have possibly a similar list of gods as a nearby human pantheon.  A city might have many different Pantheons sharing a single temple, as long as the alignment and purview were similar, and a non human god could have human worshipers too.  

Languages.  Every character will have the minimum of Common and a racial language.  Racial languages are not just the typical Elvish and Dwarven, they are regional dialects.  Typical games, the characters know Common, but in this game world there are several Common Languages and they are all easy to understand and may have a full language underlying them.  For example, along the Great River, they use a simple form of River Elvish as a common language, but each region has a language that remains apart from that common tongue.  In the region of the characters start the common tongue is quite similar their starting language with words from many languages, cosmopolitan creatures of the area understand it and speak it, human and non-human alike.  The Main language they know is Jadanese and it is used in varying forms for hundreds of kilometers from Jarda, even Orcish and Goblin languages of the area is similar.  

Character Classes

Barbarian. There is a lot of rough terrain in the area so this is possible

Bard. There is a town and a number of villages in the area with a number of inns so there is a lot of employment. Good choice

Cleric. There are two primarily important sects in the area, and Agricultural Deity, and a forest deity, in the town there are other religions which can be invented

Druid.  Lots of nature.

Fighter, most common class

Monk, select a deity, must be Lawful, because discipline 

Paladin/holy warrior select a martial deity

Ranger lots of nature

Rogue . . ..  Smugglers not a lot of urchins or city style rogues but they could be escaping the city . . ..

Sorcerer.  Possible

Warlock.   Difficult, Elder Dragon, First One.  Often begins as an attempt to summon one of the outer plane creatures or inner plane creatures and results in a cosmic rift and something getting through, eager to enter new territory and exploit it, ie the character.  It ends in blood as a shadow leaps upon it and destroys it in one blow.  And the thing that destroyed it looks over the character and determines its worth and it's importance to the world, before it kills the character out of hand, or more rarely, it takes it on as an apprentice.

Seeking the elder gods they acquire a dragon of the Pact and it eats the character and moves on, or rarely he gives them a drop of its blood to drink.  Usually the blood kills that character, but rarely they survive and they are given knowledge and power.  

Wizards. 

Races

Dwarves. Mountain dwarves are rare have a good story

Elf. High elf, wood elf, river elf, drow are very rare, have a good story.

RiverElves don't get dark vision, but can breathe under water.

Halflings are more common than other non human races, they prefer the plains which dominate the region

Humans dominate the region.  Racially they have specific ability increase and use variant rules

Dragon Born/Tiefling.   Both represent a mutant race that comes from a land far away.  It could be that you   Replace breath weapon with a bonus spell related to your appearance

Gnome. Not common at the best of times, is there a secret settlement in the area good story

Half elf, which elf, with which race?

Half Orc, with which Orc race and which other race?

()()()()()()()()

Other Races:  these races are listed in the monster manual and many of them are listed as evil, but in this world free will is granted any intelligent species.  It is their choice to be good or evil.  Let each person be judged by the actions that they make!  Just as there are evil and good humans in the world, so can there be good and evil of each of the following.  You must learn to trust what you see before you and not what you were told in the crib.

()()()()()()()()()

The region that the game is set in has a few notable features.  There is the Wild River that runs through the region.  It is navigable just to the town of Greysteel, and then barely, further down river it becomes more navigable at the village of Saltmarsh. further downriver it joins with the Jarda river.  

There is a small spur of low mountains in the East, just about ten miles long and a mile wide.  They were mined by some race of dwarves at one time and most of the minerals ha e played out.  

The Salt Marsh, located outside the village of the same name.  There is a salt mine located there, the residents discovered it as the source of the briny marsh.  The Wild River is slightly salty down river of here, but it quickly becomes sweet.  

The River Run is too small to support boats, runs from Hommlet to Saltmarsh.

The Temple of Elemental Evil, destroyed a century ago, has been rumoured active ever since its destruction.  Surrounded by three forts that have long since fallen into ruin themselves.  

The Tower.  There is no door, no window, and no one can claim to have scaled it.  It is old, very old, but it looks new with no wear and tear.  No moss, lichen or vines grow up its walls.  Old maps claim that it sat near Greysteel when it was built, but now it sits far from there.  

Rumours in Greysteel:

The Tower has been known to move because it has legs and every once in a while it needs to get up for a stretch.  

There is a Ghost Haunting the village of Saltmarsh.

The Downs has been cursed and is suffering a horrible drought caused by the Tower.

Smugglers are rampant on the river particularly in Saltmarsh and Nulb.

Hommlet is a under suspicion by the Lord, because his family was ambushed by orcs near there long ago.  

The Temple of Elemental Evil is up and running, and it was responsible for the Lord's Family's death.

The Temple of Elemental Evil has been quiet for the last century because it was destroyed by the Tower as an example of its power.  

The village or Orlane is so prosperous because of a evil pact that is due to be called in soon.  

The Lord was affected with a debilitating curse that has disfigured his body and that is why he is never seen.  

Fishmen are living in the river downstream of Saltmarsh. 

Or s are gathering near The Downs, to capture the people and enslave them.

The Lord is slowly gathering forces because he knows that there is a huge nation of Orc marauders just to the south, if he gathers his forces too quickly, they will attack before he is ready.

D&D-New Campaign

There is a town, Greysteel, away from the main commerce routes near one of the great stands of forest in the world.  This town has aspirations of becoming a city of a sprawling empire, but has not yet been able to capitalize on those aspirations because the woods surrounding the south, west and east of the town are said to be filled with orcs, gnolls and goblins of all types.  And the river to the north has many outlaws and pirates.  Also there are many smugglers that frequent the area that dodge the taxes of the city fathers impose to raise money to pay for the defences of the city and pay for the army.  The leader of the area is wildly unpopular because he has put an income tax on the residents of 25% in addition to other taxes.  He says that the taxes are due to outlaws, the pirates and smugglers, and the humanoids attacking caravans and he is using the money to pay for town defences.  This is true.  There is a new stone wall around the town, and there is an actual paid military in the town of 200 trained persons.  Hey are trying to combat smuggling but are having little impact.  There is also a bounty placed on all humanoids.  1sp per pair of goblin ears, and 1gp/pair of Gnoll, hobgoblin and Orc ears.  The bounties rise to 5 and 25 for ogre and giant ears.  The result has been a rise in young people heading out into the unknown for a few years, some coming back with bounties, but many not coming back at all.

There are 5 villages in the area tied to the town through many relations, as they are the frontiers of the town.  Nulb, Homelet, Orlane, Hookhill, and Bissel.  

Homelet, moathouse law abiding, low smugglers. NG, LG, CG, N

Nulb, temple, smuggler base and pirates. CN, NE, LN, N, LE

Orlane, clearing past forest to south, swamp to the south. NG, NE, N

Hookhill or Bissel has a ancient tower nearby whose confines are a mystery

Other location has a ruin in the area perhaps, also there is a slaver in the area perhaps.

The area is dominated by a large old growth deciduous forest.  There is a tributary to a tributary to the Great River to the north.  It is navigable by small boats and barges.  Not far away by larger boats.  

The people of the land are mostly good or lawfully aligned NG, LN, and N.  the ruler of the area is the LE grandson of the founding family the keep at the centre of town dates from then.  

The neighbours of the region are not human necessarily.  In fact, to the South there is an Orcish Matriarchy on the other side of the forest proper.  There is another human settlement to the North, where the original lord and most of the residents claim ancestry. NG, N, LN They are about five days travel from the town and are not interested in the town at all.  There is a prosperous town to the west where the river widens.LN, LE, N. To the east is a wilderness that is populated by small bands of freeholders and humanoids, CE, CN, CG, N.

North to the Right 

West most is Nulb, then Homelet, Orlane, Bissel, Hookhill.  Greysteel is on the river.

Greysteel Keep was founded on a hill overlooking the Banebrook a little over a century ago.  Lord Greysteel was sent to keep an eye on a evil temple that the forces of the King in distant Jarda had defeated.  The King supposed that if the area was settled by good folk, there would be plenty of vigilant eyes to notice another rise of evil.  Lord Greysteel built a keep, and several fortifications to keep an eye on the temple.  At first the outpost received a lot of attention and tax collectors were a seasonal occurrence, then less until during the reign of the second Lord Greysteel they stopped coming altogether.  The first Lord Greysteel was the faithful administrator of the area for 23 years.  The first decade he built and established the keep and town and three forts closer to the temple.  Each of the next two years he founded a village and encouraged settlement there.  First Homelet, then Nulb, Bissel, Hookhill, and lastly Orlane.  It was shortly after that last village that the first lord died.  The second Lord continues to follow the path his father set for him but for not understanding the reason, for he had not been alive for the battles.  Twenty years into his tenure support from Jarda dried up and within a few years the Forts were allowed to fall into disuse.  The second Lord died during a tour with his family of the villages when the party was attacked by a strong force of humanoids, about forty years ago, he was survived by his youngest son, a mage, the family’s black sheep.  

Rumours persisted for years that the Lord had engineered the ambush on his family and that the pogrom on humanoids was meant to get rid of the evidence. The new Lord was the last of seven children.

Homelet was founded first of the five villages.  The sleepy hamlet is fairly prosperous with good land and fairly frequent travellers.   The people are good and the people follow an agricultural Deity and a nature deity.  These people have a number of rumours that have persisted.  The one about the Lord’s gain of power is a persistent topic, but they think the best of their lord.  There is some concern about Orlane, as more than one family has moved from there and to there.  They talk about the old outpost a few miles to the west, and the tower in the woods at Hookhill.  There is some discussion about the bounty on Humanoids, many feel that they should practice a live and let live attitude, particularly among the followers of the nature god and those of the Agricultural goddess are in favour.  There is a similar split in ideas for the followers of the two religions.  One thing they both agree upon is that smuggling is wrong and so is tax evasion, but still barter is the most common form of trade in the village and you can’t tax that.

Nulb is a different town.  The people here are cut from a different cloth.  They are closer to the abandoned temple and yet it is rarely talked about except indirectly as the cause of some misfortune.  The creek that flows through the village is slow moving and deep as it is connected closely with the greater river beyond.  A normal village with this situation would capitalize on the harbour and become a trading centre but not so here.  The land is marginal but the village was founded to keep a close eye on the temple, something they do to this day.  The bulk of the people still farm.  But many are supplement their income with smuggling, piracy and hunting.  Smugglers are typically people who are moral but need the income to stay a float.  Many are leaving themselves open to blackmail, and many are being used this way.  The river pirates operate far down river and chose their targets carefully.  There is not much to offer them here because the area is so poor and backward, but the hidden cove is welcomed.  The Pirates sell and pay their taxes at Nulb, but have offloaded all precious cargo at the local Haunted House.  There are two sets of pirates here one set works for the Temple and the other is based out of the haunted house.  The hunters are also agents of the Temple.  They ferry information from the abandoned outposts and the temple using a few businesses in the town to coordinate.  There are five factions in the town, Earth, Air, Fire, Water and the Greater Temple.  It is no wonder that the principal faith in town is a deity of stealth.  It is located in a pawn shop on the main drag, the temple is in the back.  The Agricultural temple and the Nature grove are not well attended.  Points of interest in the town include a large battlefield to the south and several large burial mounds in the centre where soldiers and enemies were buried and great heroes fell.  

Orlane is a town in decline.  The troubles that are affecting this town are large but come from one source.  The people in this town are being being abducted and charmed and returned.  The entire town is being subverted this way.  

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The importance of faith.  

Nine days in the week.  Each month lasts 4 weeks, 12 months in a year.  One week in the winter of holy observance, 441 days in a year.  The week has two holy days one where the Red Sun covers the Yellow and one day where the reverse is true.  Priests get a +3 bonus to saves on the day of domination and +1 on the Eve and day after.  Three days there is no effect, when the other is in dominance, they get a Penalty of -3 and -1 respectively.  They also receive a bonus spell on the dominant days and lose one on the reverse.  Blue sun gods have none of this bonus but have an effect in the deep winter and high summer.

The deep winter the blue sun dominates during the Holy Week and in High Summer the blue is recessive.  Holy Week they get a +3 and in the Summer -3.  The Holy Week the Red and Yellow are both at disadvantage and during the High Summer, accept during Dominance the Red Sun the sky goes black and the stars come out, and during the Yellow, flowers close.  

:):):):):):):):)

Some changes.  The Village to the North-west will be called Saltmarsh, because there is a salt mine located above a mash on the river.  The mine was discovered as the reason for the salty nature of the marsh and has been mined by the locals and sold to merchants and sent along the river as export.  The river here is wider and more navigable than anywhere else in the area.  The river is slow moving too.   Small boat traffic can continue to Greysteel.  There is a branch of the river that heads north some ten miles down the river and heads to the old Jarda.  The series U1-3 can fit in here with little changes.  

The Village of Nulb is next, located on a separate river system, which meets up with the larger river five miles west of Saltmarsh.  The river is navigable for its length to Nulb but the river mouth is blocked by shifting sandbars.  There is a abandoned fort overlooking the river manned by temple agents.  

The next Village is Hommlet.  Roads lead to Greysteel, Nulb, Orlane and, the Downs.  The road to Greysteel splits off to Saltmarsh after a mile.  Hommlet is a hub of sorts.  

The Downs has a road directly to Greysteel, and one to Hommlet, which splits and heads to Orlane shortly afterwards.  

More G Moe

GMOs how can I make it clear.  It is like this: you need to eat food, or you will die.  When you eat food you chew it up and swallow it. It goes into you stomach and powerful acids and enzymes break up the food and send it into your intestines.  There, the food further breaks down into molecule sized chunks and pass through the cell walls into your bloodstream and then they go to your cells.  There are other processes that involve insulin and the liver, but what is important is that the molecules are broken down into useful components, carbohydrates (like sugars), fats, and amino acids.  Carbohydrates are things that the things that made the food used to store energy, generally plants store carbs and animals store fats, but plants also store energy as fats too.  It is just energy and it is generally universally useful, but it is devoid of anything important, besides energy—which is important.  

There are twenty-two amino acids.  Twenty of them are used in DNA.  That is it.  The 22 are used to make every protein in your body and every other protein in every other life form on earth.  DNA, as I said previously is made of amino acids and is thus a protein.  When a protein gets digested it torn into amino acids by enzymes (which are also proteins) and reused by your cells to make more cells and more DNA, or it is used to make proteins that your body needs to function, like insulin and enzymes.  

DNA.  If you breakdown any section of DNA you will have a bunch of amino acids, twenty different kinds of them and they can be configured in many ways to make many strips of DNA.  DNA make proteins that make other proteins that do things in the body, plant bodies and animal bodies alike.  That's it.  That is why GMOs mean nothing to the body.  Nothing at all, because all things that are digested, GMO and nonGMO alike and the body can't tell what the source of the amino acids were, because once it enters that stage of the digestion process identity is gone.  Hell, once it is all chewed up and a slurry in the intestines, you can't tell the source of the proteins.  The only thing that some GMOs have that can survive the digestion process is secondary metabolites, but most things have them so it is not really a big thing.  

What is a secondary metabolite?  It is something that a body produces that has an effect on the body that can have an effect on something that eats them.  Like drug effects.  Eat a plant or mushroom and boom you have a wild or fun time, or boom you are dead.  Mushrooms are famous for these different and similar effects.  But tobacco, marijuana, and opium come from plants and many poisons are derived from plants too.  It is a matter of dose for most things: a little is harmless, more causes an effect, too much causes death.  These thresholds are different for everything and person.  For example, there is corn that has been modified to make BT.  BT is actually a bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis, and when it is digested by insects it binds with various important enzymes and causes the insect to die.  In humans it has no effect, because the enzyme is not present in mammals or birds and reptiles, so no death.  

Fish DNA added to tomatoes to make them more frost resistant is a sequence of DNA that creates a antifreeze that protects the fruit naturally that does not affect the taste and does not make the tomato inedible, because fish have had the same DNA for millions of years and are not inedible either.  

Round up ready crops are plants that are granted immunity to Roundup, a chemical that binds enzymes in plants.  The binding of the enzymes kills the plants, but the Roundup Ready plants have DNA that uses a different enzyme to do the same process and is not bound by the Roundup.  

What GMO plants are allowing us to do is increase food production, by increasing the yield of the crop.  They increase the nutrient content.  They reduce the dependence on chemical fertilizers.  They reduce the toxins added to crops as pesticides.  Roundup affects only plants and looses its effectiveness quickly in the soil.  BT crops only affect the insects that eat the crop, whereas BT spray affects all insects near the plant.

GMO is the future.  It will allow us to grow more food on less land and feed more people than our current foods can with better nutrition and grown on more marginal lands to boot.  

Caranus, the start of a novel

In my novel, the main character is a girl.  She has been chosen by the Goddess of the Blue Sun to be her representative in Caranus.  She has been born with it and no one knows it.  There is one thing that is a clue to anyone who knows anything, which no one does, is that she can see the Blue Sun.  Which no-one else can because Rayleigh Scattering scatters its light and it is thus invisible to everyone but her.  She, however, does not know this and grows up knowing that there are three suns.  Of course, since most people only know about the two, when ever she points this out she is disciplined or outcast because everyone can see only two suns, it is as evident as the nose on her face.  So she can see the Blue Sun.  And she is gifted.  Very gifted.  She can learn everything as if she is gifted in that one thing.  So she as a youngster went out exploring from her farm on the Great Finger of God lake and she encountered a tree, she climbed it and fell, because she had no experience in climbing trees, but later she tried to climb more trees and she figured out how to climb trees.  Then later she encountered a cliff face and tried to climb it, it was like a tree, so soon she was at the top.  Later in her life she has to climb a wall that is smooth as glass, but a smooth wall is like a cliff so up she would go.  Also this girl has no preconceptions and she does not make them.  She grows up with fairy tales about horrible beasts and monsters, but she sees them as what they are lessons to teach.  When she later in life sees a bunch of Orcs beside a river, her companions react as if these are a menace that needs to be destroyed and begin to do so, she glances at them and sees three women washing their clothes with some children playing games in the bushes nearby.  The bridge where her companions see a group of hobgoblins waiting in ambush, she sees ensignia on their lapels and the coat of arms on their chest.  She sees that there is a barrier that can be moved with a cantilever system and she sees that bridge is brand new.  She concludes that this bridge was just built by the neighbouring nation and they are collecting tolls, maybe this is the boarder and they are taxing travelers.  The preconceptions of the group inform their every action, born without preconceptions means she approaches everything with the availible information only.  That is a major superpower!  

She was born in mid summer, so in the Northern Clime that she lives that means she at the age of 7, she is in late autumn and the summers are short, almost too short for the the last harvest before the Winter.  She spends her days trying to get out of her school duties which are boring to her, because she can read better than her teachers and do her sums just as well.  The outside world is more dynamic and is filled with more than what is in the books, like mud, trees, and bugs.  She has noticed that some of the little bugs are tiny fire breathing dragons.  She has also discovered that she can climb trees and likes it very much, because people don't look up when they go looking for her, because girls never climb trees.  A few weeks ago she met a friend from the forest.  He was a furry little boy from a village of furry people deeper in the woods.  Her friends from home and her parents might call them Bugbears, but she can quite clearly see that he is a boy and he is from a village of other people.  At first she can not understand him, but she soon starts understanding him by asking him what things are and swearing.  There is a special thrill knowing how to swear in a different language no one else understands.  A few days after first meeting him she follows him into the deeper woods and finds where he lives.  There are hunters and people who gather food from the woods.  There are women with children and a school, except this school is cool, because they are teaching a different language and they use a different alphabet, only she learns that it is symbols that they are teaching and not a language.  She figures that out in a couple of visits when she sees the use of the runes; they are magic!  She sees the warriors applying mud to their fur and smoothing it out and runes applied that she recognizes mean health, strength and toughness.  She sees them harden the mud and turn into tough gray skin.  Now e warriors look like Trolls.  She sees now the totems around the village that were meant to keep people from finding this place and how they would push people away mentally.  But they did not work on her.  Because she is too young to be fooled, that's it.

On her last trip she is shown a great story written with runes written on a strange disc fragment.  The village elder tells her that they had spent their entire lives journeying into the north from their homeland to deliver the story of the great Prophesy.  They talk to her for many hours and they are saddened as they learn that their message may fall on deaf ears.  They send her away and tell her she has been gone from her people too long and they will be looking for her.  They give her one of the fragments of the disc and wish her a long life.  

When she returns, she finds that there have been searchers looking for her for most of the day.  They question her and she responds truthfully and tells them that she was in the other village in the woods.  The adults get concerned and send her back home.  She is kept indoors that night and the following day.  The next morning she is allowed to leave and she sees the bodies of some of the villagers she considered friends including the young boy.  The people are talking about finding a nest of bugbears and trolls and exterminating as many as they could catch.  They were surprised at this they had thought that they were just myths and stories to tell children to frighten them.  Our hero is beside herself with grief and most of the adults think she is scared until she hugs the boy and cries.  The townsfolk think this is a bad sign and her parents decide that she has to leave and go to the Winter home in the city early.  

This is a farming community.  The community is only habitable in the late spring through late Autumn as the winters last 7-8 years.  The community leaves for the city on the coast where the winter is not as bad.  How bad does it get?  One winter in the past the water froze down to a depth of 30meters.  The Finger of God lake is very deep and very long, nearly 100km wide and about 400km long.  Barges travel it all the time in the summer bringing wheat and other vegetables to the coast, but the journey often takes longer than a month.    She is sent with her grandmother, a very very old woman, to Founder City, on the Treacherous Coast.  She is slightly more happy about this after a few days, because her grandmother is I'll and she has more free reign and there are lots of new things to see on the journey.  She does overhear a few conversations about what happened in the town before she left, about the Bugbears and the Trolls; they also talked about her reactions to them as well.  Things turn bad for her Grandmother's health.  The weather is colder as the long Autumn has spells of winter where the lake freezes over, but not for long, until the later autumn when it is frozen 'til Spring.  So her grandmother dies in one of the cold spells of Autumn.  

She arrives in the city at the docks a different person.  Something bad had happened with her grandmother gone, it has left her, disturbed, and different than the carefree child of a month ago.  She had watched the barge pass through the great locks at the North end of the lake in the mountains.  The great lock was made of some great sheet of steel coloured black as coal, but she was only half aware of it.  The way down the river through the great  black barked evergreens might have been a cause for her to look on them with wonder, they grew so tall that their tops were shrouded in the clouds… which really was not that high up because there was a constant fog on the river that rarely rose above a couple hundred meters, but even then, the trees rose higher.  She did not once think about climbing them.  The arrival in the city was uneventful, there was a drizzle, the kind that get everything wet, that will even soak through the best oil cloak if given time and the travel along the river had given the rain that time.  She came ashore at the docks alone.  No one was there to greet her.  No one knew she was coming, her chaperone, her Grandmother, dead over a month ago.  She did not trust the men of the barge, she would not ask them for help.  She was dumped as unwanted cargo on the wharf left to moulder.  

She left the dock and ventured into the city.

Winter passes.  Lots of stuff happens in the city, chapters in fact.  Nothing about what happened on the trip, but you can see how the experiences inform her.  Living on the street, constantly cold and wet.  Always seeking dryer places.  Learning that it is better to be thought of as a boy than a girl and learns to disguise her gender, first she is bad as anyone who has never done this sort of thing but quickly she is better than any and has all the other boys believing that she is a real boy.  Winter is long, late Autumn plus 6 years of Winter and then early Spring.  Eight years, she is now 15, maturity delayed due to poor diet comes rushing on her.  There is conflict, but she escapes it briefly, and finds herself in a small line of people seeking employment as bearers.  By chance she is selected. 

 It's not chance.  It is Prophesy.  Between each chapter is a small chapter with the story of how her people came to this new land and the hardships they endured.  It starts 400 years before, 200 years before her people reach the shores where they live now.  It details how a great empire far away collapsed and the refugees settled in this distant land—all because the promised one was to be born of their people, in this distant land

Caranus in my dreams

Lately I have been thinking about Caranus.  Not Exalted.

Caranus was first meant to be a world setting for D&D when I first thought of it.  It was a large map with two continents, there was a fantastically long history thanks to Tolkien.  But not like Tolkien, like something else.  It was a world where all the boundaries were pushed away.  There were three suns and six moons, the world was as large as Saturn and it had a true orbit of 25 years and seasonal variation of one year in length.  The world improved as I learned more and more about how the real world and the universe works.  Like two of the suns are locked in an orbit around themselves and they in turn orbit a third sun.  The orbit takes a year to complete and this variation in the light level creates a mild season effect, but the inhabitants who are not an advanced culture don't know this, they think there are 24 years to a real year because of sidereal motion.  Complicated, but just look sidereal days in a year for Earth, it is 366.25 not 365.25.  That is fine because it means that the true seasons last about six years each and not 6.25.  Happy coincidence I assure you, I did not plan it.  

Anyways there are gods, nine of them, three goddesses with two consorts each.  Each of the goddesses is represented by one of the suns, there is a red sun, a green sun and a blue sun.  Initiates into the religions of the goddesses  learns a secret about the goddess.  The goddess of Magic is the blue sun.  Due to Reighleigh Scattering, all the blue light is scattered, and so, the blue sun is invisible all the time.  Imagine, looking up at a clear blue sky and seeing no sun at all!  That would be nuts and cool and terrifying.  You would think that this would be the goddess of thieves, and you would be wrong, since the light is scattered, the light would come from all directions, so there would be no shadows.  There are lots of secrets you might have based on this.

The Green goddess's sun would appear as a yellow sun because of the scattering, so the first secret would be that.  The second secret is that she is not a friend of plants, because plants reflect green light, and they don't absorb it.  So this might be the goddess for thieves and murderers.  The Red sun, is exactly what they appear to be and that light gets absorbed by plants, along with the Blue light.  When there is an eclipse of the other suns, the red sun's Light turns vegetation black, so many people call the red sun the goddess of death, which she is, because she is the goddess of life and rebirth, so death as well.  

The six consorts, the gods are more universally worshiped, but they are worshipped in pieces, for example the consorts of the red sun are worshiped as the god of corn harvest, and the god of the apple harvest, the gods of hunting, the gods decay, and the seasons and many more.  The gods of the Green Sun handle her list of previews and the consorts of the Blue Sun goddess handle her previews.   There are only nine true deities, but there are hundreds of faces of each.  A high level priest would learn much over his advancement about how the world really works as they gain power.  They would look at the world differently than they did as a child.  

The yearly weather depends on the proximity of the red and the green stars in relation to the planet, the blue Sun's light is stable throughout.  The furthest away it is the cooler the day.  Also the suns rotate around each other, a dance in the sky, and there is a subtle variation because of this.  The true seasons are brought on by an axial tilt, just like on Earth, but since the transition lasts six years, there is more steady change in the weather.  The seasonsa re more pronounced in the extremes of latitude.  A winter that lasted six years is a lot more devastating than a winter on Earth.  Indeed, unless there were ample stores set aside it would be impossible to live in the extremes full time.  But the summers, six years of near constant daylight would allow a lot of crops to be planted and grown, perhaps enough to hold over the long Autumn through Spring weather.  More temperate climates might have multiple harvest years in the summer and single harvests in the spring and autumns and maybe one harvest all winter long.  The low latitudes have a different problem, extreme heat with 40°C daily averages and high humidity too.  And jungles where the daytime highs hit 60° that almost instantly turn into daily downpours that last hours.  

Mountain ranges that scrape the sky at airplane heights.  With a backbone mountain range that continues without break and without passes for tens of thousands of kilometers— the only breaks are tunnels build through them.  The mountain range is shadowed by a great river called the Great River not because of poor imagination, but because it is so… so great.  Stretches from lakes in the unbearable south, it courses north picking up tributaries larger than the Nile.  Navigable for almost its entire length it widens more and more until seeing across it is impossible.  Nations are rubbed clean as its meanders push down its length.  Cities die as they are left dry when the river moves.  Fish that live in the river found in one place are different from fish found in another. Its great estuary is a vast changing subarctic marsh, where the warm waters meet a cold ocean and blanketing the entire region in a thick fog.  Hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, millions, but with a ecosystem that supports many marsh bound nations.

I dream that I might have a story to place in this world so that I can describe it more fully in a novel.  One day perhaps.