Moe Lane's Blog, page 901
July 10, 2020
Technical bleg: cheapest reliable postage label printer?
Is this expensive, for a postage label printer? Because $160 seems expensive. As in, actually out-of-budget expensive*. It’s going to be a lot cheaper for me to print out the postage labels on my own on regular paper and tape ’em to the envelope.
Thoughts?
Moe Lane
*All the money’s getting reinvested into future projects. Although a label-maker may end up being a business expense, at that.
MONEY PLANE!
It needed the exclamation point.
Via @bendreyfuss*, who isn’t wrong: MONEY PLANE! has all the hallmarks of being a Bad Movie For The Ages. I already know how it ends, too. Iit ends with the MONEY PLANE! crashing right into Kelsey Grammer, slowly enough for him to come up with one last zinger of a line but not slowly enough for him to, you know, run away.
But you cannot run from MONEY PLANE!, for MONEY PLANE! is as inexorable as the tides and twice as cruel. MONEY PLANE!’s bloodlust will not be denied. MONEY PLANE! is your fate; dark, and as patient as dust. MONEY PLANE! will live on when humanity is a forgotten memory on the winds of a boiling planet.
So, yeah, you might as well quip it out.
Moe Lane
*I like Ben. He’s all right.
From the FERMI RESOLUTION RPG Worldbook: bits from The War.
Just what it says on the label.
Patreon!Course of the War
The Universal Dominion started the War in a disadvantageous position. In 2790 the Dominion had moved east of the Mississippi in force for the first time in centuries; they sent an army to kill the Great Wyrm of Philadelphia and harvest her corpse, the Virginians mobilized forces to stop them, and on the very eve of battle… the Supreme Archmage, safely back in the Dominion, slipped on the soap in the shower and broke his neck. The Dominion might have still lost that battle; but the death of the Supreme Archmage without a successor guaranteed it. The Sephiroth sponsoring the Dominion army in the field found itself the immediate loser in the succession crisis and civil war that followed; that army was annihilated by the Virginians, and no attempt was made to avenge it. Dominion forces were too busy fighting each other.
The active fighting didn’t last long (there was a recognized successor by 2795, although some holdouts weren’t pacified until 2812), but it wrecked the Dominion army for two generations. The Dominion’s enemies took advantage: Deseret declared war in 2800, and shocked the continent by liberating Salt Lake City in 2803. Four years later, Deseret was joined by Dwarvenwood, the Second Republic, the Kentucky Free State, and Greater Hershey (but, oddly, not the Kingdom of Virginia).
The War has not been like the nation-destroying titanic conflicts of the fabled 20th Century. Though few contemporary scholars really recognize this, it’s been more like the slow decline of Byzantium: armies would be formed to conquer one place or another, there would be a campaign lasting a few years, and then eventually there’d be a truce or ceasefire (usually at the expense of the Dominion). Then the armies would regroup, and start again in a few years.
The Dominion did lose significant territory over this period; the conversion of the orcs in 2835 began the loss of their southern territories, and the Mississippi river campaigns of 2920-40 completed it. But after that period the War ratcheted itself down to a level where the Dominion was contained, more or less, and the other nations of North America could progress. It was at this time that the Alliance military became the autonomous entity that it is today. After a few decades, the War’s operational tempo slowed. The Dominion was in a disadvantageous position, but it was stable as long as nobody did anything stupid.
The Dominion did something stupid in 3045: the Archmage-general running the northern front ordered an ill-advised amphibious attack on the Second Republic and Greater Hershey. The entire northeast portion of the Dominion was stripped of troops and mages to invade via the Great Lakes; but, thanks to a combination of luck and prior warning, both nations had enough ships on hand to wreck the Dominion’s fleet. The collapse of the eastern front started a cascade of military disasters on the frontier: the Alliance has taken more territory in the last nine years than they have since the creation of the Imperium Orci.
And that is how things are today.
In the E-Mail: Storm Between the Stars.
I suspect that Storm Between the Stars will be hitting paperback soon, but if you don’t want to wait there’s always the Kindle version. It’s space opera and Karl’s a good dude. Check it out!
Storm Between the Stars, the start of an exciting new space opera adventure, the Fall of the Censor!https://t.co/qPSJaIjypk#KindleUnlimited #ebook #book #kindle #scifi #sciencefiction #galacticempire #spaceopera
— Karl K. Gallagher (@KarlKGallagher) July 10, 2020
July 9, 2020
This will make you feel better. I promise.
The goal of performance is to create something with this much love in it.
07/09/2020 Report, FERMI RESOLUTION RPG Worldbook: 31,000/37,800
I powered through both the magic and the religion sections today, because those two are related in terms of mechanics and I thought it’d be easier to just get it all done at once. Tomorrow I think I can just burn through the last three original sections left and then spend the weekend punching up the rest. The goal is to hand it off to a couple of folks I’m consulting with next week and see what they think.
After that, I can get on with the sonnets. And the adventure which I’m going to run for the session*. And after that, I’ve… run out of stuff to do? I could get back to normal? But what is normal, really? I’ve kind of forgotten by now.
Moe Lane
*No, I haven’t forgotten the books. The books start getting processed this weekend. Letter, sign, wrap, label, send out, yay!
In the Mail: MR. JONES.
Trying to decide whether to watch it tonight, or whether I should wait until I’m in a bad mood anyway*. MR. JONES is not exactly going to be the laugh-a-minute riot that THE DEATH OF STALIN was, although I commend Hollywood for finally admitting that Stalin was a malignant bastard. No, really: if you don’t give positive reinforcement for behaviors that you like, you’ll never get any behaviors that you like.
Moe Lane
*I can’t imagine that a movie about the Ukraine genocide is gonna be cheerful. Why waste a perfectly good mood?
From the FERMI RESOLUTION RPG Worldbook: Religions.
This is starting to come together. Finally.
What is Theurgy?
In general terms, theurgy is the practice of interacting with spirits in order to achieve a supernatural effect. A priest petitioning God to heal a wounded soldier is practicing theurgy; so is a necromancer securing a ghost to a corpse, or a shaman asking a fire-spirit to light his cigar. Where it differs from magery is that spirits have their own opinions and agendas; some can be overcome, but others much be placated or persuaded. On the bright side, theurgy is typically quieter than secular magic. Actual evidence of actual, true, and fully Divine Interventions (or Infernal Interventions, either) is rare.
In game terms, ‘theurgy’ is what happens when a magic user has Invoker instead of Mage. Mages can make magic items; Invokers can ward against and even banish evil influences. It roughly evens out. There is nothing particularly stopping a priest from also being a mage, or vice versa: but Invoker and Mage pools cannot be combined.
Types of Theurgy
Clericism is the interaction of men with gods, or at least demigods. It is simultaneously the most powerful and most capricious form of theurgy, as it regularly entreats with supernatural entities that are more powerful than the theurgist. And gods are notorious for having expectations about their priests’ behaviors.
Shamanism involves spirits of lesser power; ‘natural’ ones are the most common, but there are other types. A powerful shaman can bind and command, but a wise one placates and entreats. A spirit in a bad mood can be extremely dangerous, bound or not.
Necromancy deals with spirits of the dead. Depending on who one asks, this is either low-grade demonology or something else. The Imperium Orci’s Christian priests are expected to only interact with spirits via exorcism (either gentle or otherwise); Second Republic Christian ministers have been known to bind human ghosts into human corpses for ethical purposes. Speaking with the dead is usually considered safe enough, particularly if the goal is to get the spirit to move on to the afterlife.
Demonology is, as the name says, about working with demons. It is not taught by any reputable, ethical magical school; and the Dominion doesn’t teach it, either. Somehow, though, there always seems to be a grimoire or two around that can provide the necessary instructions.
It’s official: FROZEN DREAMS has broken three figures in sales! Huzzah!
Trying to calculate that was surprisingly hard, actually: the Amazon reports don’t always line up with each other. But I can fairly say now that, even by the most pessimistic standards, I’ve sold at least a hundred copies of FROZEN DREAMS on Amazon by now. Which is, obviously, awesome.
It’s also a good excuse for me to dial back* the incessant book-plugging a little. I’m not particularly sorry that I did it — this is how you get people’s attention, after all — but now that I’ve hit this milestone I can tell myself that it’s done quite well for the first month of a first book. And, more importantly; I can spend some of that time to work on other things. I think that’s reasonable.
Moe Lane
*I mean, I’ll still plug it. Just not quite as constantly.
