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.