Wings Over the Pyre - February 1st, 2003

04:49 am

Grumble: Well, here I am, still in the office, and I'll be back tomorrow. Worse, I spent most of the day in meetings, then got to palm off a customer trying to get a system up before tomorrow's employees come in. The day's roughly bit hard. On the up-side, I finally figured out how to create a decent data CD and loaded up a few with a tonne and a half of music. Couple that with having Battle of Procyon here, and you get a night that's not a complete waste -- only mostly one.

This morning, I fully intended to go kicking some BellSouthian ass. Sadly, I was cheated out of it. When I called, the unduly cheerful young lady on the phone announced that the line had been unlocked around 5.45p the night before. Disapointed, I called Speed Factory to see if the order went through -- and it hadn't. More like it, I could generate Rage! Well, except no, its just likely it hadn't made it through to the Digital Services Group database. The guy I'd been working with there said he'd try to run it through tonight, and if it glitched there, first thing Monday morning. Should it fail then, I'm going on a full-bore ass-kicking rampage, and all of Atlanta might end up looking like a God:DAMM city after a serious game-on.

Momentary Whine: I wish I had people to play Battle at Procyon with. I love the Procyonese ironclads. Give me a big metal Dreadnaught any day. And, damn it all, I want my DSL back!

Dinner: tryptophan has noted that she thinks we should throw a big ol' cookout/dinner party in April when she drops by for my hatchday. I'm not sure how I exactly feel about that, frankly. I have enough trouble getting folks to go out to eat with me when I haven't had anything to do with the cooking thereof. OK, so she's a lot better cook than I am. I'm still a little iffy on the whole thing. Still, as a follow-up weekend thing after the Six-Flags run, it still sounds like a tonne of fun. A metric tonne, of course.

Sorcerer & Sword: Like any other obsessive game-geek, I've been thinking about the Sorcerer game a bit more. The idea of "personal freedom" being the central iconographic theme of the setting has a lot of interesting, but difficult, implications. For example, the best way to judge the question of whether a given moral choice is supportive or destructive to Humanity is not based on whether or not the character thinks their actions are actually motivated by a desire to a higher entity, but the action itself. The hard part, with a usual group, would be to keep them from running around acting like a bunch of wild barbarian chaoticists. It'll behoove me to make it clear that such behaviour is going to tend to end up not getting you what you want, and the best policy is a careful treading of the places between all extremes. Luckily, the folks interested at this point all seem to be very bright, erudite folk, whom I'm sure will get the tension.

Structuring the first arc and leaving the seeds of further arcs to come, in light of the theme, is a really hard challenge. Its harder than it looks, and hopefully in play it'll look like it was effortless. The fact I'm actually spending so much time just thinking about it bodes well.

Sineglazka's Destiny, to become Queen of her tribe, takes on a special significance here. Its possible that she can't resolve her Kicker until/unless she drops to Humanity 0 and is consumed by devotion to a greater power, and transcends the personal interests of Self, sacrificing her life, in a sense, for the greater good of the tribe. Her arc is very much a clear, direct one, and it seems like it provides for its own pacing -- as her Humanity drops, she'll come closer to discovering where her mother has been taken. As it rises, she'll lose the way. When it finally hits 0, her Destiny is immanent, for good or ill, and whether or not she's ready for it.

I've briefly debated the idea of treating greater organizational entities, police forces, sorcerous guilds, city fathers, as "demonic forces" in and of themselves in this context, who cannot be Bound, only Pacted with. This would give me automatic handling for the issue of Humanity loss from those interactions. This could be a significant boon. In fact, all of the demonic Rites could be mapped onto interactions with the higher organizations.

• Contacting covers attracting the attention of the right folk, maneuvering the bureaucracy, sliding through red tape.


• Binding could be entering into a long-term relationship with said entity, a deputy of the police, a member of a priestly order. If not impossible, it should be rare for the PCs to do.


• Pacting covers just negotiating a single service between the character and the entity, swearing out a warrent or studying in the sorcerers' library.


• Banishing would be the act of removing the organization's power, or subjugating it to your own will to get by it, getting someone out of jail or getting an Apprentice free of the order.


• Punishing would be the act of diminishing the organization's power by the virtue of your own charm or personal power, talking the cop out of arresting someone, or opposing the order's political influence by sleeping with the Emperoress.

Current Mood: crushed

05:27 am

MicroGov't: I find it amusing, in the wake of Slammer, that there's an article on the UK gov't getting access to the Windows source code, in part as a way to increase security, while Germany, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Air Force and Pinellas County, FL have all decided to go on over to Linux through IBM. I wonder if the UK is begining to regret their choice at this point. I also find it vaguely amusing that Microsoft seems to be doing this in reaction to Linux's open structure. The implications are staggering.

Current Mood: thoughtful

10:50 pm

16 Minutes to Home: I suppose I'm sort of oblioged to say something about the Columbia disaster, and do so while looking back to the Challenger explosion, one eye on the immediate past, the other looking deeper into it. I'm supposed to wring my hands and weep, look like I haven't slept in weeks, and want to watch and know nothing more than who and why and how and when, to the point of watching ABC's two hour special tomorrow, despite the fact no one can possibly know anything by then.

I refuse. I refuse in the strongest possible terms. I refuse to the point that I could fucking explode at the pathetic wretchedness of the American public for even allowing this degree of sad useless emotional waste over something barely worthy of it, in the face of far, far more wide-reaching issues, like Iraq, North Korea, or Afghanistan. I refuse to wring my hands and wail out like a hired mourner, for the sheer public spectacle of it all. I refuse.

Am I disturbed by this event? Yes. Saddened? Only slightly -- I didn't know these people personally, and I'm not the most empathetic person alive. Upset? Not really so much by the event, only by the ignorant words its triggered.

There's talk of just basically shutting down the space program "until the investigation turns up why this horrible event occured." I can tell you why it occured: because Mother Nature's a stone bitch. Because space isn't a safe and forgiving environment. Because you can do everything right, and still die in pain and fire. Because all the plans of Mice and Men. Because once in a million happens once. What they're talking about is akin to there being a multi-car pile-up on the highway, and the government saying, "Well, we won't let anyone run their car, or use a highway, until we fully understand why this happened." Nose, spite face.

I've always been near-obsessed by the space program; anyone that knows me can likely tell you that. I truly think that the only thing we can do that would redeem humanity is to get off the mudball, spread into space, and get all our eggs out of one basket. Anything else is suicide. I've continuously wondered why the government and people of the US are so afraid of doing what's necessary to really explore the universe around us. People die in exploration. If the past was as terrified as we seem to be today of a little loss, there'd be no New World, there'd be no Africa, every single human being would have died of boredom in the Fertile Crescent by now.

All the lives lost in the process of space exploration are a tiny sacrifice to the God of Knowledge. How many more died researching modern chemistry? Colonizing America? In the deep African rainforest? Searching for the secrets of the atom? Hell, just creating the modern automobile? Hundreds, perhaps thousands, in the grand scheme? Space has been a gentle welcoming, inviting child, in comparison.

How many thousands died in car wrecks today? How many died from drug overdoses? From starvation? Surely, more than seven people died with empty bellies, in Applacia and other rural, depressed communities. Why are suddenly seven lives doing things most people couldn't care less about yesterday suddenly a "national tragedy?" Seven people doing a job that they knew was dangerous when they took it, seven people piercing the veil of the most inhospitable environment in the universe, seven people who were neither paragons nor saints, though you'd never know it to listen to the news.

I know too much of Roman history to buy into public mourning. Public mourning is for gain, not for truth. Public mourning is for sheep, not the wolves. Public mourning is as much the circus as the gladiatorial combats, and about as meaningful. This isn't an honest outpouring of emotion, its more akin to the parasitic leeching of the empty-souled on the anguish of the bereaved families, an excuse to pretend that -- just for a moment -- there's a brotherhood of community instead of the truth, that there is a commonality of illusion. Public mourning is that illusion, and really always has been.

I'm sick to my stomach of the talk and the repetitive images. I'm sick of the stupid fears. I'm sick of the world.

If in nothing else, the Russians know what space research is about. They use technology that's hard and old, but dependable. They send the Soyeuz rockets up to the ISS Alpha station on autopilot all the way to docking, and do it with a regularity and dependability that the trucking industry should envy on a miles per miss ratio. They contract out. The only reasons they don't have a space truck the equivalent of the Shuttle are political; they never needed one as long as we were willing to do the hauling, and they haven't seen the need to spend the money. Yet. One wonders if Putin sees the opportunity to catch the hearts of the Russian peoples by kicking off a new space race, one where they have several years and an existing partnership with Europe to leapfrog over the US' space plans. In twenty years, who's more likely to have a lunar colony, the highly pragmatic Russians, or the timid Americans? Who'm I more likely to be backing?

Its almost enough to make me want to move to Eastern Europe. If only the food was better.

Feelings: I'm tired, and grumpy, and net.addicted, and looking toward another weekend without netfeed. How would you be feeling? The only upside is I'm sitting here in the office wearing plaid flannel pyjama pants. Its cold comfort.

Current Mood: disappointed