Moe Lane's Blog, page 836
October 2, 2020
10/02/2020 Status Update, REVISIONARY: 26,000/32,000
Moving nicely along, actually. REVISIONARY shows promise.
From “Polly Want:”
Blid peered at the researcher. Kuiz Gedro was not the usual sort of academic; he looked more like a football player. The kind whose job it was to clear away the goalies. Right now he looked like he wanted to do the same to the screen. “People should get scared?” Blid asked, curiously.
“Better scared than stupid,” Kuiz said. “You can get over being scared. Stupidity will just straight-up kill you. Trind didn’t say what Terran critters you were worried about. Gonna guess it’s the cats, right?”
So it’s ‘Trind,’ huh? Blid thought. Aloud, he said, “No, not the cats. I’m sure they’re vicious monsters…”
“Friend, you may think you know, but you don’t. That stuff on the TV, the studios have to edit the Hell out of the footage before they put any of it on the air. You know how the Terrans say something’s a ‘cat and mouse game?’ You ever see what they’re referring to?” Kuiz shook his head. “If you don’t, I have a few clips I can show you. Cats can move like lightning. Lightning that makes the world bleed.”
Last day of the Girl Genius – Adventures In Castle Heterodyne Kickstarter.
The Girl Genius – Adventures In Castle Heterodyne Kickstarter has funded, but there are stretch goals. They’re really close to adding OTHAR TRYGGVASEN* as a character! Check it out.
*GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER!
October 1, 2020
STAR WARS: SQUADRONS drops at midnight.
I probably will not stay up to download STAR WARS: SQUADRONS.
Probably. I’m seriously considering it, though.
In Nomine Revisited: Lockboxes.
Some of these could get fairly recondite.
Lockboxes-Google-DocsDownload
Lockboxes
Lockboxes themselves are fairly straightforward artifacts. They were created by the Archangel Jean’s Halls of Progress to serve as reasonably secure storage units for the Host. Philosophically, however, Lockboxes represent an interesting intellectual problem — although many angels would replace the word “problem” with “game.” Either way, they are of note to the academician.
Physically, a Lockbox is a sealable box, ranging in size from a steamer trunk to a refrigerator. When the lid is sealed, the lock engages, and cannot be opened unless someone puts his or her hand on the door and recites a phrase (usually written on the lid itself, in Angelic). If the Lockbox recognizes that the phrase is True – in the CD6 on a successful Seraph resonance sense (the secret of how it does this is proprietary), it opens; otherwise, it does not.
Lockboxes are enchanted with the Unbreakable feature, which typically prevents it from being opened some other way. The item is also shielded against anyone using their celestial form to step through, although a celestial with a Body Bag can activate their vessel and gain entrance that way. In fact, Lockboxes are typically designed to be easily opened from the inside, without a control phrase, in order to permit angels to do just that.
That’s the physical description. The intellectual debate takes place over what might be an optimal activation phrase, or even if there really can be one in the first place. It has so far been impossible for anyone to come up with a foolproof phrase: even the ones resistant to being folded, spindled, or mutilated can end up biting someone in an emergency.
The classic case was the original default phrase: “It is in the best interests of Heaven for me to open this box.” This seemed fine, until a Cherub ended up suffering from dissonance because he could not get a gun stashed inside the Lockbox (doing so would have allowed him to properly defend his attuned from a death which ultimately benefited Heaven). While a Mercurian of Flowers later used this story as the centerpiece of a rather good philosophical treatise on the conflict of what was best for humanity versus. what was best for the War, this was still deemed a bit harsh by many. “I am a servant of Heaven who is not engaged in treason against the Host” likewise worked up until the point where a Shedite simply took possession of a Soldier and opened a box that way, and so on, and so on, and so on. As noted, the topic is of much interest to angels, to the point where there is even a small quarterly journal dedicated to exploring it. This interest may startle blessed souls who encounter it for the first time, but then angels are themselves often startled by the intellectual hobbies of humans.
Most Archangels who use Lockboxes either use them for specific tasks, thus making specific activation phrases less dangerous; or they instead simply accept that phrases such as “I am a Servitor of Trade who is not out of favor with Marc” (or equivalent) will keep its contents reasonably safe from prying eyes. Some few Archangels do keep testing out new and improved phrases; there is perhaps a regrettable tendency for those interested in the topic to later test those phrases to destruction. For the greater good, of course.
Point cost: 3
This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games. In Nomine is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy .
The original trailer for ACTION USA.
GeekTyrant is calling this ACTION USA trailer “Amazingly Bonkers,” and it’s hard to argue. It’s not that I think it looks good, because I frankly do not. The confusion on my part here is that I do not understand why I didn’t see this movie on Sunday afternoon television a half-dozen times, growing up. It looks like exactly the kind of blow-em-up lunacy that syndication depends on. And yet, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it. Weird.
Anyway, it’ll be brought back to American cinema this fall. GIRD THY LOINS.
10/1/2020 Status, REVISIONARY: 25400/32000.
I’m planning to finish this project up as early as possible, which may mean hunkering down this weekend and doing a lot of, hah, revisions. It is to hope that I can offer a copy of REVISIONARY as an add-on for the upcoming Kickstarter, but I’ll know more by the middle of the month. Still kind of making this up as I go along, really.
From “Polly Want:”
“Right, the [parrot].” Blid noted that Trindy was much better at reproducing the tongue-twisting alien sounds than he was. Well, she was a xenologist. “I did look them up for you in the database, by the way.”
“Really?” Blid moved forward. “What did you find out?”
“They’re winged animals that eat a bunch of different things. This kinds eat seeds.” Trindy shook her head as she poured herself more tea. “I don’t know what you were expecting from a civilian database, Blid. Do you know how many planets with intelligent life are out there?”
“No,” said Blid. “I don’t have to. I just have to wait for you to tell me.”
Trindy affectionately waggled her ears at him. “Behave. That’s my job, telling people things before they screw up. Anyway, we’ve got records on 523 sapient species in the University database, and those are just the ones we’ve been in actual contact with in the last two dodecades. There’s a lot about Terrans themselves, sure. A bit about the more interesting species from their hellworld, too. Minor herbivore species? Not so much. A couple of pictures and a paragraph or two on cultural references. Terrans like [parrots] as pets, apparently.”
September 30, 2020
Welp, that’s September down.
Had to move up the new Kickstarter for the Fermi Resolution anthology a touch, so it’ll be going off next month. Turns out that they recommend that you end your project on a Thursday morning, late morning/early afternoon; but the only date which fit at the end of November was… Thanksgiving. So the Kickstarter starts in three weeks, not one month.
Feel absolutely free to pass that link to the notification site around; I am absolutely certain that this one is going to get less love than the first one did. Funding somebody’s first book is one thing; funding somebody’s second? …Well.
