Damn I Am Pretty Art Laboratories

Previous (19) | The Beginning  | Next (21) | Index Charlie (H minus One Month, 17 Days) I tried to focus my Oneiros.  Screw what Nasr had told me.  I could find her.  Whatever she was.  Nicky's body looked like it had melted into some sort of monster. "What's going on?"  A nervous Whiskey clung to my arm.  "Did you find whatever-that-was?" "I-"  I tried to split my concentration between my friend and tracking Nicky's slinking form.  "I exposed her, I think." "Exposed what?"  Foxtrot interrupted. I froze. "Charlie found something."  Whiskey told Foxtrot.  "I don't know what, but she says it's important." My oneiros recreated the offices Nicky had escaped through.  I couldn't pin her down.  My dream-spiders were scouting through the net for a open port she had a connection to.  Oneiric nanobots blew around the air vents, seeking her out. I tried to sink back into my concent...

As is my usual habit, I created a dungeon and asked my players for ideas for traps, puzzles and monsters.  I typically hate dungeon crawls, instead improvising or getting the players to give me fuel for them.  If I can, I'll even have them help me create the map during play.  This all stems from the idea that crawls are a form of railroading, and I can bypass that if I get other heads in on the scheming from the start. The monster I got back was the Roper, which I found myself wondering about.  Ropers are classic #DnD.  They go way back, and are probably older than I am.  So I came up with a explanation for them in #Crux.  Ropers have a alternate name I created, and I borrowed a bit from a issue of Atomic Robo (silicon-based rock life living in a "hollow" earth).  Perhaps later I'll find more underground monsters that could fit this paradigm, but here for now, be the ropers. Ropers "Fascinating."   The thick accent threw me off. ...

This Crux post continues on the ideas I started with unicorns .  Time travel.  Like planar travel, it allows Crux to sort be a Crossroads even for moving from one era to another. This post is about a connected timeline of Crux set ten-thousand years in the future.  Very long into the future, when Crux has long since been gone.  I plan to use this in my upcoming home Crux game, in that I have always wanted to use time travel in a tabletop RPG session.  IDK why. I blame Doctor Who personally. Journeys #Crux itself is a crossroads.  Not just a nexus point for the Maru Sea and the Deep Sea, the continents of Necruxa and Ainesia, the City of Curses is home to a cadre of gates and doors.  Some of these doors or gates are connections to neighboring planes and realities.  Orphos and Crux connect to them through space.  Faerie, the Aether and other places can be reached through Crux. There are neighboring satellite communities in each of these ...

The Fae. The Ursyklon call them the First Totems. Humans have always known them as Faeries. The Tengu call them the Kodama. The Fae find all three names amusing. And childish. They believe themselves to be the eldest children of the world. We can't really comprehend them. There are a few truths we know about them, but even those aren't insights into what they are. Or what they can be. Fae can be tiny winged tooth-eating pixies. They can be gigantic child-snatching Trolls. Dryads can almost freeze time with their beauty. Maenads can make entire cities fall into madness with their songs. Faeries cannot Lie. This is the first thing we are certain about. They can deceive, trick and manipulate in all sorts of ways. But lying is something they are incapable of doing. Faeries are ageless. They know they will outlive any human or ursyklon they meet. Fae will use that to achieve their aims. As ageless as they are, many Fae are addicted to youth. Be it children or time magic, ...

Sometimes I write, and I feel uninspired.  Stupid.  So I write anyway.  I listened to Neil Gaiman's advice on Writer's Block once, it was simple.  Write whatever feels like it should be written. So here we are.  Writing what should be written. Typically I don't just "blog" out something.  I like fiction writing and setting musing and all that.  I've never considered my life interesting enough to share.  It's this sort of nagging reminder that I should keep my mouth shut.  No one else cares, so why should I? His name was Carl John.  If you haven't heard of him, I'm sorry.  Your life clearly needs something like him.  Carl John, King of Sweden.  And Norway. Carl John is interesting for a key reason: he was born french.  As in, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.  You don't make people like this up: he was elected to become the heir to the Swedish royal family.  AFTER he had served as a general for Napoleon....

Previous | Start  | Next | Index Nasr (H minus 7 years, 4 months) I let Dom almost tug my arm out of my socket.  Part of the joy of this sort of thing, spending time with him, was the tugging thing.  I don't know where he pulled the bad habit from. "You are really into this."  I observed. "C'mon.  It's a rodeo, Al.  You gotta see this."  He gestured at the bull riding going on below us.  "You only get this sort of thing here." I looked down, a hundred feet below us.  This part of Haven had been heavily settled by rural Argentinian and American Settlers.  All of whom loved their rodeo.  Loved it. Haven had been one of the rare worlds with a biome close enough to Earth that it took little time for us to migrate to it.  It had been mostly plants, with few fungus or even insects.  We'd moved in and twenty years later, entire swaths of the garden world had looked more like Earth than alien. The closest thing I ...

A #Crux post this time.  I've been meaning to revisit some thoughts on various faiths in the setting, and this is the first one that came up.  I plan to continue this post, to create some faces and names to go along with the ideas going on.  The Singer of the Song, or Ariaism, is a faith about making the lives of others better through creating something beautiful. For me, this is the whimsical part of the setting.  This exists because I love the idea of a religion like this.  What sort of whimsy do you end up putting into your settings and work?  I put this one in because I like the idea of a religion that openly claims to be selling a story. "Church" of the Singer of the Song Other Names: Ariaism, Melodism, Madrigalism Names of the Singer: The City Mother, Queen Trickster, the Storyteller, The Lady of Song Holy Symbol: Three Quarter Notes Worshippers: Common people, Entertainers, Travelers Holy Days: Lastsong, Charmsday, Tales Day The Aria...

Previous (17) | Start | Index Nasr (H minus One Month, 17 Days) "Only three at a time?"  I asked Nicky. The young woman shrugged.  "Our transit site doesn't have enough power to move them all in one transit.  Too many things around here can't have their power shut off for it." "They're going to have to be transited from here to Mars."  I pointed out.  "Maybe we need to expand that site's capacity." "Why not use another transit site altogether, anyway?"  Nicky asked.  "Our facility lacks the space for all of them to be close enough for a transit too.  It seems impractical." "It could be helpful I suppose.  I haven't submitted my operational suggestions to the UN security council yet." "Suggestions?" "We've never deployed these kinds of soldiers before. We don't even have decent terminology for them.  You people call them monsters as a whole, but they aren...

In a recent session of my home #Crux game, one of my players suggested something for a future session involving #Unicorns.  I think it was meant as a joke or something.  But it got caught in my maw: what are unicorns in Crux like, and can I make something weird I'd like out of them? So, I got the idea of suggesting unicorns and their healing powers are based on them being "unstuck in time."  They flow through time in their own manner, sometimes contrary to how time should flow.  You know, walking bubbles of temporal instability, enigmatic and obsessed with preserving beauty for eternity. Unicorns . I never meant to be late that night.  But things happen, I guess.  The night I saw the black unicorn, that really did it. Like every night, I entered the grove to hunt rabbits.  My father never liked my penchant for catching them.   "Rabbit, dammit, what is it with you and the damn rabbits?"  He'd tell me.  But he'd eat it. So I ...

Previous (16) | Start  | Next | Index Moira Hobb (H minus One Month, 20 Days) #InTransit@GhalePutnam My BrainSys pinged in my mind.  Being on the receiving end of a transit always felt strange.  The crackle boom of two points in space.  I'd read that the sound was because of some pressure differential.  Or something like that. The stranger part took place with your eyes.  It takes faster than a human eye can process.  The two points flicker so fast, people look like they just popped out of nowhere. Ghale in blue jeans and leather jacket appeared.  Her black hair looked frazzled.  Rings under eyes. "Here."  I handed her a bottle. "You know I don't drink."  She said.  Her practiced, tired tone.  The one she always repeats when people offer her alcohol.  I remember because Ghale hates being drunk.  Nothing medical.  She just hates losing control of herself like that. "Yes."  I kept the bo...

#Crux post for Wednesday!  The Jarn!  THE IRONFOLK.  *cues heavy metal* Rather than go for the easy win of "vikings and ice and stuff" I instead did some research and tried to do something different.  Raiders that build their homes atop massive Mountain-Whales or Gerathim, the Jarn are one of the two peoples that hail from the ever frozen lands of Bor, north of Othebea and Ainesia.  Thanks for reading.  And as always, let me know whatcha think.  Input always helps makes these things kewler. The Jarn Jarnish Culture Aspects:   Gerathim Born; Might Makes Right; Death Before Dishonor; Ironfolk Medicine The nomads of Jarn had long raided the lands across the icy seas of their frozen peninsula.  Hunters and herdsman, the nations of Jarn in Bor only have recently been brought under the heel of Othebea to the south.  Strong, hardy, the Jarn value survival. Jarn human society has remained nomadic, even after the introduction of a num...