Moe Lane's Blog, page 62
March 31, 2025
I may be doing RisuCon again after all.
RisuCon‘s moved the date to October 4th, moved the venue to the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, and – most importantly – slashed the table fee considerably. Half hour commute and a vendor fee I can make back means the venue has a lot more potential this means. Besides, I liked the staff. They were on top of stuff, last year. So I put in an application. I’ll keep you posted.
As always: if you can’t get to that, buy my books here!
#commissionearned
March 30, 2025
The Worldbook is getting there!
Mostly clearing out blank spots in the pages and incorporating material. I’m hoping that it’ll be squared away and ready for the next part of the process — fitting it to DriveThruRPG — within the next couple of weeks. Once that happens, I can lock orders and send out things like print coupons / PDFs.
In the meantime, you can preorder the Fermi Resolution Worldbook here.
Tweet of the Day, …Eggers, You Say? edition.
Robert Eggers? To do a sequel of Labyrinth? …You know something? I’m not hating this one, right out the gate. I would like to at least hear the pitch.
I'm sorry, WHAT? pic.twitter.com/ynCofrwT4d
— Daddy Warpig (@DaddyWarpig) March 31, 2025
#commissionearned
The Three Magical Cities, Part 2/2 [Fermi Resolution]
And here’s the other half.
Cinderella
(San Felipe, Baja California)
The capital city of New California has always been a magical place since the magical iceberg known as ‘Mount Jeannie’ appeared just after the Discovery. While not as inherently arcane as the Kingdom of Virginia, Cin City has been a haven for mages for centuries. It managed to keep this status even during the height of the Universal Dominion’s power. The Dominion never explained why it did not regularly raid the realm for ‘rogue’ mages, and New Californians at the time never admitted that they had mages at all.
Today, magical power is overseen by four different groups. Formal, book-trained mages are members of the Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (ATSE). Witches and the more folk-magic types belong to the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadoras del Hogar (the Syndicate). Theurgic research is dominated by the new faith of Agni, although Catholic exorcists retain their reputation as the best in their field of study. Lastly, there is the University of New California (Cinderella), which does its best to impartially train a wide variety of magical and occult traditions. The faction fighting is usually kept down to a dull roar, but every generation or so two of the groups will square off with each other. It hasn’t gotten really bad since the War started — all the hotheads go off to trade blows with Dominion mages — but the War’s almost over, isn’t it?
Old Vegas
(Las Vegas)
Officially, Vegas University was founded two hundred years ago to train mages. Unofficially, it was founded six hundred and fifty years ago, to give refuge to those few mages who managed to escape the fall of Salt Lake City. In truth, Vegas University dates its origins to the mid twenty-second century. Its founders were former criminals who had smoothly segued into being warlords, once there were no more laws to break; they stayed neutral (and indeed clandestine) during the border squabbles between Deseret and Sonora, and kept in the shadows during Deseret’s first, sometimes heavy-handed rule. Throwing their support to the remnant of Deseret might have seemed risky at the time, but it was a bet that paid out big for the university’s Board of Commissioners.
These days, Vegas University is quite respectable. They’ve gone legit, having negotiated semi-autonomy with Deseret in exchange for their support for the Smith dynasty, and the government (in that order). But the university will still wet their beak in every deal and scheme that gets hatched in Old Vegas. It ain’t gonna be onerous, you understand? Nothing that’ll be bad for business. If people can’t earn here, they’ll go somewhere else. But anything magical in this town is gonna be the business of the Commission, capiche?
Toronto, City of Necromancers
(Toronto, Canada)
The thing that strikes visitors to Toronto is how pleasant it is, if you have a high tolerance for a black, silver, and red color palette. Toronto is the unquestioned spot in North America for studying necromancy, and the accumulated death energy should be well, killing things. Instead, it manifests in a mood that, to quote the Old Americans, is creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky — yet not particularly ‘ooky,’ whatever that means. It probably means ‘bad.’ Trying to parse out what the Old Americans really meant whenever they referenced something magical can drive modern mages mad.
Toronto does not have a single magical university, unlike Cinderella and Old Vegas. Instead it has over a hundred schools and academies, all with their cliques and rivalries (both internal and external). Squabbling and intrigue are common pastimes, and indeed usually part of the curriculum (Second Republic necromancers have a well-deserved reputation in the Great War for playing humiliating, and hopefully fatal, tricks on Dominion mages). It is well-understood that while there are hard limits to what can be done to the living, schemes, capers, and outright pranks involving corpses are an entirely different matter. Although even then students (and their faculty advisors!) are encouraged to use skeletons, because of Hygiene.
Patreon!
Patreon Microfiction: “It’s The Principle Of The Dream.”
Okay, I’ll admit it: I could totally see myself stuck in something like ‘It’s The Principle Of The Dream.’ Arguing with myself over something that I did in a dream is, like, Peak Moe Lane. I’d eventually break down and pay it, though. I mean, even dream-restaurants need to stay in business.
Patreon!
March 29, 2025
‘Fire and Rain.’
Fire and Rain, James Taylor
#commissionearned
The Three Magical Cities, Part 1 [Fermi Resolution]
So, naturally, I have four.
Grand Moingoana
(formerly Des Moine, Iowa)
The Universal Dominion would contest the above [It’ll make sense in context – ed.], if the Dominion would have ever deigned to notice the comparison at all. Obviously the only Magical City is Grand Moingoana, capital of the Dominion, and all others are mere slaves’ flatteries, children’s imitations. The rest of North America disagrees. Worse for the Dominion, the rest of North America has a point.
The capital of the Dominion is only nominally a city at all, since it has no commerce or industry. Its only purpose is to give Archmages (and the Supreme Archmage) everything that they could possibly want. Even in the last days of the War, Grand Moingoana operates as a self-contained entity, offering luxuries and diversions found nowhere else on the continent, to a steadily shrinking number of mages. Still, even the leaders at the top who know the War to be lost also know that they will not run out of resources before the enemy finally destroys them all. So why not revel until the end?
In the meantime, the mages not being offered a chance to pleasantly throw away their last days are becoming increasingly thoughtful. It is rumored throughout the city that a refugee who makes it all the way south to Grand Panama might actually find sanctuary there, assuming that he has something to buy his way in. Grand Moingoana has always had the greatest (and worst-catalogued) collection of organized magical knowledge in North America, and possibly the world. A collection of the best grimoires will be sufficient for the Grand Panamanians. A second collection of grimoires might actually provide enough bribes to let a fleeing mage get there.
Patreon!
Also In the Mail: Call of Cthulhu: Arkham (featuring the @HPLHS).
More birthday money! Call of Cthulhu: Arkham was something that I couldn’t quite justify picking up on my own, but Amazon gift cards really do make the best gifts. It also came with some lovely props from the HPL Historical Society, because that is how the HPLHS do. I am very pleased to be a lifetime member of that fine organization, even if I don’t have any creative input with regard to their stuff*.
#commissionearned
*Yes, I agree, they totally should hire me for things.
Book of the Week / In The Mail: Silverlock, Including the Silverlock Companion.
Happy birthday to me!
Although there’s a problem. Silverlock, Including the Silverlock Companion is pretty. In fact, it’s too pretty. I don’t want to actually open it, it’s so pretty and clean. It has glossaries. It has commentary, including by John Myers Myers himself. It has a bibliography. It has sheet music. Let me repeat that, to anyone who cares: IT HAS SHEET MUSIC.
I almost shudder at the thought of using this book. I may end up only reading it while wearing gloves.
#commissionearned
