Moe Lane's Blog, page 685
September 14, 2021
FunCom has Conan.
This is not code language. FunCom is plugging Conan because FunCom owns Conan. Nothing else I could say would make more sense given what Funcom owns and what FunCom is doing at this moment*.
We are thrilled to announce we’ve acquired the IPs Conan the Barbarian, Mutant Year Zero, Solomon Kane and more! We’ll be merging these IPs into the studio Heroic Signatures where we’ll be working on various entertainment projects. Read the press release: https://t.co/1AVPDG1O1D pic.twitter.com/UTmebd10Ew
— Funcom (@Funcom) September 14, 2021
*Classical reference. God, but I miss Achewood.
September 13, 2021
09/13/21 Snippet, ETERNAL NIGHT OF THE MOON-BEASTS.
Less work than I’d like, today.
Patreon!Tobias closed his eyes out of habit, before snapping them open again. This wasn’t Earth, where you could lose yourself in a total-immersion link and not have to worry whether your atmosphere might suddenly go somewhere else. He needed to keep one eye on the readouts here and one eye on directing the drone. It was approaching the wrecked torchship now, and things looked…
…they looked really, really bad. The ship hadn’t crashed onto the ripped-away hatch; it had been pulled into it. The bands encircling the hull were far too regularly spaced to be ‘natural’ — and that was the moment when Tobias instructed his hopper to start its preflight checks. He’d seen this holomovie, although admittedly it usually involved giant squids.
Tweet of the Day, We Already Knew This, But It’s Great To Have A Confession edition.
At least, I hope we all already knew this. It was pretty obvious, right? :Goes to check to make sure there’s nothing in the archives that would contradict that confident statement:
Confirming once and for all that Slate's "Dear Prudence" is really just "Penthouse Letters" for bored creatively frustrated hipster Brooklynites: https://t.co/r63wUFo9MR
— Jeff B. tried to do his best, but he could not (@EsotericCD) September 13, 2021
The GHOSTWIRE: TOKYO trailer.
This reminds me a bit of the Tokyo boards in Secret World Legends. Big surprise, huh? When you’re drawing on specific Japanese horror folklore, and setting it in the same urban area, you’re gonna get similar-looking monsters.
GHOSTWIRE TOKYO does look fun, though. Even though I’d prefer to have my trusty AR from SWL. 2022 release.
Item/Group Seed: Nega-Ohio.
Nega-Ohio
Strictly speaking, the name is N’Gh O’Yiehrh, and that’s as close as humanity can get to the correct pronunciation, thank God. Literally. Species that can pronounce it properly tend to develop nasty personality disorders. ‘Nega-Ohio’ works well enough as a use-name; inhabitants of it are typically referred to as ‘Interlopers,’ or ‘the Unwelcome’ if somebody’s feeling vaguely pompous.
The epithets are well deserved, too. Interlopers would like to invade, conquer, and enslave Earth, only the dimension they hail from is just a little too different from our own to let them make a proper go at it. They’ve still tried several times, only to discover each time that our native reality interferes with too many of their regular biological processes. A less malevolent species would have given up long since, but the Interlopers seem particularly determined to succeed.
Interlopers have a ‘range’ covering most of the Mississippi river valley and Appalachian mountains, although they definitely prefer the latter to the former. In the flatlands, they manifest as various cryptids, usually at night (UV light levels during the day are intolerable to them). It is unknown why they try to manifest in the open, as they are barely tangible and can barely move. Possibly it’s just bloody-mindedness, or the Interlopers are acting as scouts, or they’re doing something less comprehensible.
In the mountains, Interlopers can maintain their presence in our dimension for longer periods, and typically use that time to try to acquire human servants. They pay for services via the application of ‘sorcery,’ for lack of a better word. Interlopers can’t or won’t do very many beneficial spells, but they know any number of processes that can cause serious harm. Unfortunately, humans who spend too much time in the presence of sorcery quickly become physically and mentally warped, in increasingly unsubtle ways. Which is why Interlopers are always looking for more servants*.
But, as noted before, while Interlopers are malignant they are not powerful — at least, not on Earth. Presumably they are more dangerous in Nega-Ohio, which would probably have the same effect on humans as Earth has on Interlopers. More than one occultist has wondered if that applies to sorcery, as well. Could human Interlopers in Nega-Ohio be able to create powerful curses and entropy bombs? It’s an interesting question.
Well, it’s interesting to a certain kind of mind. One that is perhaps more likely than some to want to come to an arrangement with the Interlopers. Oh, they might not last long before their inevitable implosion, but that’s hardly any kind of comfort to their victims…
*A lightly fictionalized account of this can be found in the short story “One Other,” written by Manly Wade Wellman. Wellman was definitely familiar with Interlopers and other mythological creatures of the Midwest, and this story shows that it was either a personal familiarity, or he had access to reliable eyewitness accounts. Either way: Wellman should be considered authoritative but not inerrant on the topics of modern cryptozoology and apotropaic rituals.
The Demented HAWKEYE Christmas Disney+ trailer.
My attention… has been acquired.
GeekTyrant detected a Die Hard vibe: I can see that, but there’s also a Lethal Weapon theme going on here, because Hawkeye is visibly deciding that he’s getting Too Old For This Sh*t. I also give points for there being a Broadway musical about Captain America in the MCU, because of course there would be one. They missed a bet there, though, in not getting Chris Evans to play the actor playing Cap in the musical. Farce is its own justification.
Moe Lane
PS: Kate Bishop apparently isn’t coming into this already being perfect in every way, which is nice. “Cocky 22 year old hotshot who still needs seasoning” is a perfectly cromulent archetype for a superheroine.
September 12, 2021
The HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED trailer.
There was a time where I would have gone right out and bought HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED. …Only I couldn’t, because that time was in 1996 and there wasn’t a computer on the planet back then that could play this game. Looks fun as hell, though.
Comes out September 30th. Which is, of course, in the future. Yeah, I knew that…
09/12/21 Snippet, ETERNAL NIGHT OF THE MOON-BEASTS.
Exploration!
Patreon!In the old days — which was to say, six months ago — Tobias could have flown a drone into Jetshaft from the perfect safety of his own office pod. Humans had spent forty years creating an Lunar orbital satellite network that would do the work of a proper ionosphere, and nobody had really comprehended just how useful it had been until the whole thing had just detonated, in the space of three seconds. Trying to figure out why had driven three researchers to suicide; and from what their surviving colleagues had gathered, it wasn’t because the poor bastards had failed to find the answer.
The various Lunar facilities did have enough emergency replacement satellites on-hand to allow limited communications beyond line of sight, and things could be done with relays and cables. But if Tobias wanted to remotely pilot a search vessel out past the horizon, he’d have to stick relatively close to it. That meant firing up a hopper and parking it somewhere with a good view of the target.
And it has to be me, he thought as the drone approached the target. Everybody else is too busy with keeping us all alive. Even this trip was only justifiable because it would be malignantly helpful if they could loot Jetshaft for spare parts. Plus rescue any survivors, naturally. The other facilities all needed more workers.
