DShomshak

That's probab ly the best response you could give, under the circumstances. Though we are getting a graphic example of why germ warfare would be a... peculiarly unreliable, uncontrollable, and counterproductive weapon. Apropos of this, I recommend the essay "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by physicist Freeman Dyson, in his collection Disturbing the Universe. It includes the story of Matthew Meselson, the Harvard biology professor who almost single-handedly ended the US biological warfare program of the 1960s. He kept turning up at Congressional hearings for the program's appropriations to ask questions the generals in charge of the program couldn't answer. Quite a story, though I would not be surprised to learn that a later president re-started a biological weapons program after Richard Nixon abolished it. Some presidents since Nixon have been, hm, notably simple-minded. Dean Shomshak Dean Shomshak

Oh, yes. A historian of epidemics, interviewed on On the Media, predicted that the next stage would be the search for a scapegoat. Jews for the Black Death, gays for AIDS. It's deeply rooted in the human tendency to personalize everything. Bad things can't just happen: They must be the result of someone's malice. Jews, witches, evil spirits, Communists, Catholics, bankers... or even Jewish Communist bankers. Imagining that the upcoming relief check is from Donald Trump, personally, and so one should be grateful to him, personally, is just the flip side of this. Dean Shomshak

Some of them, possibly, to the Land of Legends. Or at least the stories of them did. I gather from what LL has posted that elves, at least, survived into the Valdorian Age... greatly changed. (Dunno about the others.) But it seems quite possible to me that many of the original non-human races died out in the various cataclysms that ended past ages. But they made enough of an impression on humans that the survivors still told stories about them, which re-created them in the Land of Legends. Though not exact copies, as stories tend to be simpler than actual people. Though it's also possible that groups of actual people escaped into the Land of Legends. Over the centuries, though, they assimilated to the story-based reality of the Land and became legends themselves, as is happening to the mortals caught in the Even Wilder West. After thousands of years, it may not matter which process actually occurred. It's also worth remembering that the assorted cataclysms were at least partly supernatural. Earth's history may have been rewritten, along with the other destruction, to remove evidence that these non-human races ever physically existed. So, archaeologists are never going to find the real, unambiguous remains of a drakine city, or the skeleton of a dragon or troll. Or if they do find such remains (it's the Superheroic Age, after all, and reality is more flexible than usual), there won't be enough context to interpret them. (Such as not realizing that homo floresiensis were, in fact, halflings.) There'll be just enough for a crackpot/visionary scientist to issue some wild-sounding theories, and maybe cause an origin or two. "The fools! I'll prove that [fill in the blank] once walked the Earth -- by cloning them from these remains! That'll silence the mocking tongues of the Academy!" Or whatever, The adventures almost write themselves. Dean Shomshak

Some of them, possibly, to the Land of Legends. Or at least the stories of them did. I gather from what LL has posted that elves, at least, survived into the Valdorian Age... greatly changed. (Dunno about the others.) But it seems quite possible to me that many of the original non-human races died out in the various cataclysms that ended past ages. But they made enough of an impression on humans that the survivors still told stories about them, which re-created them in the Land of Legends. Though not exact copies, as stories tend to be simpler than actual people. Though it's also possible that groups of actual people escaped into the Land of Legends. Over the centuries, though, they assimilated to the story-based reality of the Land and became legends themselves, as is happening to the mortals caught in the Even Wilder West. After thousands of years, it may not matter which process actually occurred. It's also worth remembering that the assorted cataclysms were at least partly supernatural. Earth's history may have been rewritten, along with the other destruction, to remove evidence that these non-human races ever physically existed. So, archaeologists are never going to find the real, unambiguous remains of a drakine city, or the skeleton of a dragon or troll. Or if they do find such remains (it's the Superheroic Age, after all, and reality is more flexible than usual), there won't be enough context to interpret them. (Such as not realizing that homo floresiensis were, in fact, halflings.) There'll be just enough for a crackpot/visionary scientist to issue some wild-sounding theories, and maybe cause an origin or two. "The fools! I'll prove that [fill in the blank] once walked the Earth -- by cloning them from these remains! That'll silence the mocking tongues of the Academy!" Or whatever, The adventures almost write themselves. Dean Shomshak

OTOH Marketplace interviewed a hairdresser in Boise, Idaho who voluntarily closed her shop before any order came. She doesn't know how she'll make her mortgage payments or how her employees will get by, but she decided that staying open would endanger the lives of her customers and staff. Grade: Pass, with honors. Dean Shomshak

Count Mississippi governor Tate Reeves among the fools and idiots. Heard yesterday on All Things Considered: He addressed a suggestion that Mississippi needed to stay-home restrictions like China used to stop the spread of the coronavirus by proudly proclaiming, "Mississippi will never be China!" Wow. Way to miss the point, Guv. Grade: Fail. Dean Shomshak

Count Mississippi governor Tate Reeves among the fools and idiots. Heard yesterday on All Things Considered: He addressed a suggestion that Mississippi needed to stay-home restrictions like China used to stop the spread of the coronavirus by proudly proclaiming, "Mississippi will never be China!" Wow. Way to miss the point, Guv. Grade: Fail. Dean Shomshak

EDIT FOR DOUBLE POST, AND WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING? The people who make me actually shake with rage, though, are the "Young Invulnerables" partying on Florida beaches. Apparently they are too stupid to understand, or too selfish to care, that the virus is spreading among them, rapidly, and they will start thousands of new chains of contagion when they return home. Epidemics are IQ tests from the Universe: Can you change your behavior to stop the disease' transmission? Americans are failing the test, in ways that cannot all be blamed on Trump. Dean Shomshak

Well, firefighters make pretty good money, judging by the one to whom my sister was once married. Not doctor or lawyer good, but pretty good. But I take your meaning. Now imagine if all the garbage collectors disappeared. Though there was a TV news segment here in The Other Washington about garbage collectors receiving applause. As for athletes: Both NPR and CBS ran segments asking how cancelling the Olympic Games would affect the athletes scheduled to compete. I admit, my reaction was, "Who gives a rat's ass?" With a pandemic likely to kill hundreds of thousands, I am not worried about amusements. It's why I suspended gaming a month ago: I have to care for my 87-year-old mother, and can only get to my gaming group by spending 3 hours on crowded buses. I miss spending time with my friends, but I will not risk my mother's life for the pleasure. I call it "responsible adulthood." Dean Shomshak

The D&D 4th ed. Forgotten Realms book gave a table of "Regional Feats" for every country in the setting. If you're from Amn, take your pick from Cosmopolitan, Education, Silver Palm or Street Smart. If you're from Damara, choose from Bullheaded, Foe Hunter or Survivor. Not quite the same as sub-templates for High Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves, Sea Elves and Keebler Elves, but heading that way. <eyeroll> For my 5e campaign, I really really tried to stay close to the published material instead of rewriting everything, but... Well, the elf sub-templates are the result of training, not birth. Any elf can grow up to have Wood Elf stealth and concealment, or a High Elf bonus cantrip, or whatever. It's just a matter of how a young elf chooses to express the faerie magic of their kind. Different elf ethnicities (Rhovistae, Taishomanae, Usmantae, Chulangkorae -- or Forest Elves, Mountain Elves, Desert Elves or Jungle Elves) may favor one path or another, but that says nothing about any particular elf. There are also Street Elves, because in the Plenary Empire many elves live in cities among other folk, and this leads to a new expression of faerie power. Drow are a story to frighten children, Everybody says so. If you absolutely must play a special snowflake character, I give other options. 🙂 Dwarves? If anyone ever wants to play a dwarf, I'll let them pick either the Hill Dwarf or Mountain Dwarf template, as they feel suits their character, but nobody ever speaks of Hill Dwarves or Mountain Dwarves because there ain't no such thing. There are Fjellkin, Zilkin and Svarkin, who are identical for rules purposes. And so on. I have already spoken of my I eliminated half-whatevers, and why. One great advantage of the Hero System is that one can ignore such nonsense, and I see no good reason to bring it into a FH campaign. Dean Shomshak

EDIT FOR DOUBLE-POST: Perhaps the more interesting story arc comes after the heroes foil VIPER's attempt at bio-terrorism. Plague evokes visceral horror and disgust unlike, say, threatening to blow things up. In the aftermath, world governments might come together for Operation: Snake Hunt (AKA the Saint Patrick Sanction) -- to destroy VIPER once and for all. The public demands no less. Heroes are pressed to join the campaign, even if it's not their regular "beat." Even some supervillains might join -- they're scared and disgusted, too. No more protection from rogue regimes; no more plea deals to captured agents; no limits. Things will get ugly, on both sides. Heroes may face tough choices about how far they'll go. Dean Shopmshak

Absolutely. The more "superish" plot would be to release a deadly disease worldwide, then say you'll release the cure/vaccine if the governments of the world submit to your rule. VIPER might start with a small "demnonstration" release in an isolated area... and find that their plague spreads faster than expected. A nastier, more Iron Age plot could be to release the plague in hopes that civilization collapses and you can pick up the pieces. Cure or vaccine only for VIPER members. In my Millennium Universe campaign, the megavillain Helix has threatened to release pandemics in retaliation for moves against him. One of the PCs comes from a possible future in which he did this, exterminated humanity, and replaced it with a new species of his creation. Dean Shomshak

All Things Considered reported that Sen. Burr was recorded telling a group of his wealthy supporters about coronavirus weeks before he and the Trump administration changed their happy tune that there was nothing to worry about. ATC even played the recording. So it sure sounds like he and a group of his chief donors are all guilty of inside trading. Dean Shomshak

Well, it's hard to get a sense of sources or style from the brief treatment in The Mystic World. I also drew a bit on The Night Land and maybe a bit of Clark Ashton Smith -- I try not to draw too much on just one source. You know the old saying about plagiarism and research. Dean Shomshak

Ting is, I've learned that the first idea is often not the best idea, and sometimes the best worldbuilding strategy is just to throw things out and see what connections develop on their own. Let me give an example: As part of my Mystic World playtest campaign, I ran a story arc set on my Jack Vance "Dying Earth" homage, the world of Loezen. I'd already decided that saving Loezen would involve time travel: The PCs would need to go back in time to obtain the lost artifact they needed. (Lost, in Vancian irony, because they stole it.) So I dashed off a list of fruity-sounding past ages for Loezen: Before the modern age (not yet named because it's still happening) was the Age of the Road Builder. Before that, the Age of the Cloud Lords. Before that, the horrible Age of Red Shadows. And before that, a mishmash of Ages that were often nothing but names: the Arcuate Age, when people wrote in characters made of short, curving lines; the Age of Towers, inferred from certain massive ruins; the Anaglyphic Age, for the picture-writing carved on buildings; the Trilunar Age, when Loezen apparently had three moons (it presently has two); and the one that mattered for the plot, the Age of Six Sovereigns, when six immortal and ultra-powerful wizard-tyrants contended for rule of the world. Okay, so one of the PCs already had a time travel spel... with a control roll. Which the player blew. Badly. Instead of 8,000 years into the past, they went 8 million! No problem, I'm good at improvising. The players enjoyed an hour seeing the very strange world Loezen had been before its sun began dying. They obtained help from the;;; mages?... of that time. Not wanting to trust another time-jump, they sought other ways of reaching the Age of Six Sovereigns. I had one of their new allies suggest placing them in suspended animation, packing them into a ball and launching them into orbit, to descend and wake up at the proper time. (IIRC I'd recently read one of Cordwainer Smith's stories that had a person who'd awakened in the future this way.) The PCs agreed. Then one player's eyes widened. ""It's us," he exclaimed. "We're causing the Trilunar Age." And they all wondered how I'd set it up. Well, either my unconscious mind is a genius, and possibly precognitive... or I just got lucky, because the PCs did something that could tie into the blither I tossed out before. And the more of these fragments of information you provide, the greater the odds that something will later become useful in ways you never expected. Dean Shomshak

I'm in favor of Finland as global hegemon, personally. When have you ever heard anything bad about Finland? It's the land of Linux and Moomins. Dean Shomshak

Here's one more oddmonger: flint-knapper. This craft was once one of the most widely practiced in the world... at the dawn of humanity, 250 million years ago, and a few times since then. But the technology of chipped flint and obsidian still has a few specialized uses on Old Earth. Religion would be an easy one. Religions are often conservative, and some cults might insist on an obsidian blade for sacrificing a victim. But I don't want to play the Cult Kookiness card too many times. No, IIRC some people even IRL still have uses for an obsidian blade. The edge is much sharper than glass... and this world has skilled surgeons (as Rome did -- Galen did cataract surgery.) So there's a guy in Oddmonger who makes obsidian scalpels. A small, specialized but steady market. Dean Shomshak

Interesting speculation on the Nagas, LL. Back when I created the Nagas and the Dragon for my own campaign, I had a secret origin for the Nagas. Fortunately, I realized it was blithering idiocy before the PCs ever got a chance to learn it. From then on, I decided to keep the Nagas' origin a mystery unknown even to myself, and kept that approach in The Mystic World. Leave it open for GMs to decide on their own, if they thought an origin was necessary. Dean Shomshak

Given the incompetence of some of the debate moderators, it might play well with me. Depending on the idiocy or "gotcha" quality of the question just asked. Dean Shomshak

I have read the claim that pretending to be stupid is a very good way to win, in politics and other places. Granted, this came from someone who called him/herself The Mitanni, as key to success in EVE Online... but The Mitanni said he/she learned this from family -- Southern aristocracy, who know it can pay to be dismissed as Bahbul-thumpin' dumb hicks despite Ivy League educations, while they work to keep themselves in power. Though <cough> I do not entirely believe someone who hides behind a pseudonym, even if they add citations to academic works on Southern genealogy. I think I could pull out the link if anyone wants to read the Twitter thread and judge for themselves. More apt, perhaps, might be the adage about the fox who knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one thing very well. Trump is a hedgehog. Unfortunately, what he knows very well is bullying, exploiting white grievances, and conning loans out of Deutche Bank (3 times, 3 bankruptcies!) Dean Shomshak

Huh. I never thought to check if "Voldemort" actually translated as something. I just assumed it was meant to sound deathly and Dark Lord-y. Thank you. Do other names in the series have meanings? Checking a French/English dictionary, the closest to "Malfoy" seems to be mal foi, "bad/evil faith," which seems appropriate for some of Lord Voldemort's dedicated disciples. Though there's also mal foie, "bad liver." And the Malfoys sure show the anger ande bitterness associated with the liver's product, bile. A "baby names" book says Hermione means "Of the earth," a suitable name for the series' most prominent Mudblood. (Though Robert Graves' The Greek Myths translates it as "Pillar Queen.") Dean Shomshak

EDIT: Darn double posting....

In case it's useful and of interest, here's a small, b/w map of the part of Thalassene that includes Oddmonger. I hope it's not too small to be legible.

Ooh. Excellent thought, Duke. Especially since one thing I already established about Thalassene is that a treaty with the local merfolk has long been an important part of the city's economy and culture. I thought in terms of merfolk trading nacre, pearls and coral for land-made tools, cloth and the like. Also, the treaty enjoins local merfolk to assist the crews of wrecked or sinking ships. But now that you've suggested them, these sorts of ship services seem virtually inevitable. Thank you! (How much are merfolk part of city life? Well, since the city's legendary founding there's been the yearly ritual call;ed "the Marriage to the Sea." Merfolk call it "the Marriage to the Land." And one consequence is that some humans and some merfolk can effectively Multiform into the other race.) Dean Shomshak

Getting away from the presidential campaign (though perhaps returning obliquely, we'll see), yesterday I heard something surprising on the program Marketplace. I find the program interesting because it's a business/finance program, which pulls it one way, but it's public radio, which pulls it another. Anyway, yesterday host Kai Ryssdahl (I hope I'm spelling that right) interviewed a Mr. Siroca, the director of the port of Los Angeles. Siroca avowed that coronavirus fears were hurting the port's business, but weren't the first trouble: The port was already hurting from Donald Trump's trade wars, which he condemned as stupid and crazy, bad for American business in general and the port in particular. Not his exact words, but more or less the sentiment. This surprised me because while Mr Ryssdahl has interviewed many business people who told how Trump tariffs and trade policies made business more difficult. I don't recall hearing anyone call them out so bluntly. (And Ryssdahl, as a good journalist, sticks to objective facts such as reminding us that, contrary to what Trump says, other countries don't pay the tariffs, Americans do, and that the promised stampede of blue collar manufacturing jobs back to the US has not happened yet.) And a thought occurred to me, which I haven't heard suggested before, though maybe some of you have encountered it already. See, businesses can apply for waivers from the tariffs. The administration's process for deciding whether to grant waivers is apparently, hm, opaque. So business owners and managers can't know whether an application was denied for some greater economic strategy or... other reasons. It occurs to me that while the tariffs have been a lousy way to protect and promote American manufacturing, they might be an excellent hammer to hold over the heads of business people who might be tempted to complain about Trump's policies. Keep quiet, and maybe you get your waiver. Say in public that business, trade and economics don't work the way Trump says and his policies are counterproductive at best, and you could see your costs going way up. Oh, and one of Mr Ryssdahl''s occasional interviewees is a soybean farmer who admits that China's retaliation has hurt his business. He's holding on because of federal payments to make up for his losses. He admits he'd rather be selling soybeans than receiving government money, but he avers he remains supportive of Trump and his policies. Well, naturally. He too has a strong financial incentive not to condemn Trump. But another thought: Isn't that the long-time accusations conservatives have made against Democrats? That they create and nurture a class of people dependent on government handouts and so will keep voting for the party that provides them? Dean Shomshak