Moe Lane's Blog, page 628
January 10, 2022
‘Foil.’
In my Top Five favorites of his, easy.
We are just SEVENTEEN(ish) patrons away from unlocking the next Patreon tier!
So, did anything… *happen*, today?
I mean, I was more or less productive, on my own. I just can’t find anything to write about. Maybe it’s because of the new year?
…Oh! I did get the DIFFERENT TROUBLE supplement for Greg Stolze’s Termination Shock space RPG. It’s all about aliens! And how hard it is to roleplay them. It’s pretty nifty. So, you know: there’s that.
Adventure Seed: Operation FLOWERPOT WEDDING
Operation FLOWERPOT WEDDING
As you know, Agents, the island of Madagascar has been under an interlocking series of glamours and enchantments for the last sixty years, thus neatly obscuring the fact that it was conquered in 1963 by invaders from another dimension (known as the Purple-Green Eclipse Legion). These enchantments are equally for the Legion’s and our own benefit, as it turns out that the Legion’s sophonts are incapable of surviving long-term in our universe’s unique physics without the use of ongoing and sophisticated thaumatology. This odd wrinkle in space-time has stymied the Legion’s original plan of planetary conquest; apparently, their own superiors don’t want them coming back home, either. So they’re stuck here, and they don’t like it very much, and we don’t like them very much, either. But better strained relations, than a repeat of the 1964 Event.
Yesterday, a high-ranking official in the Legion attempted to defect. More accurately, it went through an elaborate suicide ritual which ended with it dead in the US Embassy in Gaborone, still clutching a satchel full of untranslated papers. The official neglected to tell us why it was ‘defecting,’ and no American official in Botswana can actually read the Legion’s language, so the satchel needs to be secured and brought to Washington, DC post-haste. You may now guess as to who has been tapped to do the securing, and bringing.
The good news is, Botswana is a developed country with a flourishing infrastructure, a functional government, and robust economy: you should be able to fly in, collect the satchel, and leave. The bad news is, every other group out there aware of the Legion and the satchel (which is probably all of the groups aware of the Legion, by now) will be likewise able to fly in, and try to intercept you. To add to the complexity of this situation: some of these groups are our actual or at least nominal allies, so there are upper limits to what they can safely do to you, or you to them. Some of their agents will want to make deals with your team, trading additional security in exchange for getting a good look at the satchel. Some of them will even voluntarily honor those deals.
One last wrinkle: this could all very easily be a disinformation exercise. The Purple-Green Eclipse Legion is in permanent exile on this planet. They cannot go home, and they cannot conquer, so they must make the best of the situation. That does not mean that they are friendly, in even the slightest degree. It is perfectly possible that the satchel contains nothing but disinformation, or even gibberish.
Then again: it might not.
So, they almost did a TIME BANDITS sequel.
Feel free to click through to GeekTyrant’s description of it. Spoiler warning: the sequel would have been a pile of shit. …I was half-tempted to come with something a little less robustly Anglo-Saxon, there – but no. There are times when you have to call a pile of shit a pile of shit, and this is that time. Go watch TIME BANDITS again, instead – and offer praise to the LORD that this is not the worst timeline, after all.
#commissionearned
01/10/22 Snippet, GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND.
Fair use, fair use, fair-use use-use…
Patreon!I looked over to see Oft carefully staring at a wall fresco. “What’s that? Oh, right, those are your gods?”
“Illuvitarians are monotheists,” he replied, with the air of somebody who’s said that phrase a thousand times in his life. “But yes, these are images of the Exalted. At least, as the inhabitants of this world knew Them.”
As frescoes made in a dead alien style, in both senses of the term, the images weren’t bad. I only knew enough of the Illuvitarians’ not-gods to recognize the names, but the One-Eighteeners had used the same kind of iconography as we did when it came to physical objects. I mean, there’s only so many ways you can draw a tree, star, or a mountain. “It’s lovely,” I said truthfully. “Very peaceful-looking.”
“Would that it had been less peaceful, and more protective,” muttered Oft. He then rubbed his face. “Forgive me, Pamela. It is at times like this that I remember how my faith is the last guttering ember left of a church that once sustained trillions of believers. And that we must protect what is left.”
January 9, 2022
‘Fanny Power.’
It’s always going to be my favorite version.
01/09/22 Snippet, GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND.
Just making up stuff, at this point. Like I know how to fly. And like it really makes any difference to the story if I do, or not (I think people overdo this, sometimes).
Patreon!I think I still may be sounding a little blase on the subject of wind-dancing. Like I’m romanticizing something that’s really just a matter of reading overlapping displays and careful adjustments. People talk up their boring jobs all the time, right? Fair enough. Lemme give you an idea of what it’s like, from my perspective:
The original inhabitants of One-Eighteen didn’t use a driver’s wheel, or a single flight stick. They liked to use all four limbs to fly: each hand controlling a separate squeezable trackball, while pushing various buttons with their feet. Including a few things that we’d put on a dashboard, like engine boosters or the emergency air evacuation switch. We’ve been able to put in a regular, Terran-style flight stick for regular use, and it works fine — for, again, regular use. If you want to get creative, you need to use the original configuration. Most people try it once, and then stop trying to be too creative.
I’m not most people.
@KarlKGallagher’s out of surgery.
Karl’s a good guy, fellow author, and former commenter here. I was a little worried when we didn’t hear from him after his surgery last week, but he seems to be at least stable. Maybe go buy a few of his books? Every little bit helps.
Surgery successful. Don't know when I'll released from hospital.
— Karl K. Gallagher (@KarlKGallagher) January 9, 2022
Thank you everyone for your support.
#commissionearned
Patreon Microfiction: It’s Better This Way, Really.
The truth in “It’s Better This Way, Really” is brutal, and many people in that world resist it. But the Cold Equations of situational mathematics are clear. Things have to be the way that they are.
Patreon!
