DShomshak

Between Trump winning the election and Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize, I've half-seriously wondered if we're living in the Matrix and the code has been corrupted. Or the new sysop has a really sick sense of humor.
 
Dean Shomshak

The current (March 2017) issue of Discover magazine has an article about how amateur astronomers contribute to exoplanet studies. Photometers and telescopes that are within the price range for amateurs are sufficient to detect the dip in brightness from an exoplanet transit; and combining the data from many observers compensates for the lower precision of the individual measurements.
 
This blows my mind.
 
There's also an article about early planning and development for a Europa lander mission.
 
Dean Shomshak

If anyone wants lore as well as titles, one might be able to adapt some of the occult texts I used in my Supermage campaign. As well as the tomes cited in The Ultimate Mystic/The Mystic World, here are some ones I created:
 
SUPERMAGE OCCULT TEXTS
 
SEPHER GILGALIM
The "Book of Whirling Motion" teaches thaumaturgy from a foundation of Hebrew Kabbalism. Mages have kept it secret for centuries. Understanding the Sepher Gilgalim requires an expert knowledge of kabbalism. The book is specially meant to carry on from the Sepher Yetzirah or "Book of Formation," which tells how cosmic forces link the realm of archetypes to the worlds of physical manifestation, but a student who wants to study the Sepher Gilgalim also ought to read other kabbalistic texts such as the Sepher Raziel, Sepher Sephiroth and of course the great Zohar. Sepher Gilgalim tells how to put this theory into practice.
 
LIBER ASCLETARIONIS
The "Book of Ascletarion" is the grimoire of a Roman mage. It has become one of the most popular handbooks for thaumaturgy in the Western world, thanks to the copious annotations added by later mages. Ascletarion was an early Neo-Platonist and describes his magic in those terms. The later commentators added comparisons to Hermetic and kabbalist magic theory.
 
Ascletarion's grimoire is a good source of information about magical doings in 1st century Rome, because the magus tossed in anecdotes about supernatural people and events around him. Ascletarion was also a prophet: He correctly predicted that the emperor Domitian would be eaten by dogs after his death. Liber Ascletarionis includes twenty prophecies about the future, all of which have been fulfilled. The last one to be fulfilled concerned the establishment of a lineage of Guardians of Light to oppose a lineage of Sons of Darkness. [Reference to a PC in my Supermage campaign, and to the Sylvestri clan.]
 
PATTERNS OF GEOMETRICAL SYMBOLISM
This eight-volume monograph by folklorist I. O. Morlinger (Oxford University Press, 1922) is one of the last examples of a particular academic genre: the exhaustive, cross-cultural study that attempts to Explain It All. Modern anthropologists and ethnologists reject this universalist approach and charge that the 19th and early 20th century savants who used it relied on their imaginations more than on hard data. Nevertheless, Morlinger's book is the most definitive study of its kind.
 
Morlinger studied the meanings that different cultures ascribe to shapes and patterns such as circles, triangles, stars, crossed lines, and so on. He drew his examples from dozens of archaic and modern cultures, including their occult traditions. Morlinger claimed to find universal patterns of such symbolism. Some he decided were the result of common experiences: For instance, the horizon is circular, so every culture uses the circle as a symbol of totality and completion. He thought that other patterns of symbolism, however, indicated a "primitive and intuitive awareness of forces and motions in the æther," with some rather strained comparisons to physics.
 
A thaumaturge realize that Morlinger almost figured out some of the basic principles of thaumaturgy. His book is useful for magicians who investigate the fundamentals of their craft.
 
DU PLESSIS CANON
The premier thaumaturgical textbook of the occult society called Tetragrammaton was written in 1638 under the patronage of Cardinal Armand du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu. The famous Cardinal Richelieu was not himself a sorcerer, but his librarian Jacques Gafferel was. Even master thaumaturges find political connections and royal funding useful: Tetragrammaton and Richelieu allied to curb the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs and the Hermetic ritual magicians they supported. When Gafferel and other Tetragrammaton members wrote a new textbook of thaumaturgy and mystical cosmology, they dedicated it to their patron.
 
The Du Plessis Canon consists of six thick volumes, organized according to Zoa cosmology and the six days of creation. The first volume, associated with the 1st day's creation of light, deals with magic that does not call upon extradimensional beings. The succeeding four volumes introduce the Four Zoas and magic that calls upon dimension lords aligned to each Zoa. Volume Two associates Urthona (Art) with the 2nd day (separation of waters). Volume Three associates Tharmas (Nature) with the creation of dry land and plants. Volume Four (creation of sun, moon and stars) is linked to Urizen (Order). Volume Five (birds and fish) is linked to Luvah (Chaos). Volume Six (beasts and man) discusses various unaligned dimension lords and magic that calls upon them. Much of the symbolism in the Canon is Christian Kabbalist; for instance, the Four Zoas are described as the four Holy Living Creatures from Ezekiel's vision, while dimension lords are called Sons of God.
 
Authentic copies of the Du Plessis Canon are written in Latin. They bear the Richelieu arms on the cover, and the books are enchanted so that they reveal their true contents only to someone who touches the heraldic device and says the four Guiding Words of the Magus: Scire (To Know), Velle (To Will), Audere (To Dare), Tacere (To Keep Silent). Otherwise, each volume appears to be a copy of Richelieu's autobiography.
 
SELEUCID SCROLLS
During the Hellenistic period, the School of Antioch was the largest alliance of thaumaturges in the Western world (just as the School of Alexandria was the largest alliance of proto-Hermetic ritual magicians). The School of Antioch preserved thaumaturgical texts dating back all the way to Shamballah and Agharti, including texts from empires that were erased from history. The thaumaturges included extensive commentaries on the elder texts as well as accounts of all sorts of supernatural events in the eastern Mediterranean. Some of these books are noteworthy enough to receive titles of their own.
 
Later magicians call the books collected and written by the School of Antioch the Seleucid Scrolls because the School flourished most during the 4th-3rd centuries BCE when Antioch was the largest city of the Seleucid Empire. Tetragrammaton estimates that it owns about 1/3 of the Seleucid texts. The others are lost and most probably destroyed. Tetragrammaton goes to considerable lengths to recover lost Seleucid Scrolls, if any should turn up.
 
BLOOD ANNALS
This ancient book is a first-hand account of vampiric activity in the eastern Mediterranean region. The author, a vampire called Enceladus, dwelled in Antioch during the 3rd century B.C. In his diary, Enceladus records the activities of himself and other vampires. Since Antioch was one of the largest and most important cities of the Hellenistic world, nearly every Western vampire passed through the city at least one in that century. They gave Enceladus reports of their activities from Persia to Spain. Even better for later scholars, Enceladus compared accounts and pointed out where they contradicted each other or information he gained from mortal travelers.
 
In passing, Enceladus gave much information about the origin and history of vampires, their relationship to the Dragon, and all manner of other supernatural events in the Hellenistic world -- including the School of Antioch, which was a continual threat to the city's vampires. According to the Blood Annals, the 3rd century B.C. saw a struggle between vampires who remained loyal to the Dragon and undead who sought power for themselves alone; Enceladus himself was an independent vampire of little ambition who preferred to keep a low profile.
 
According to the introduction to the Blood Annals, the School of Antioch eventually destroyed Enceladus and added his diaries to the Seleucid Scrolls. The Blood Annals remain the single best source of information about vampires in the Classical world.
 
TESTAMENT OF IALDABAOTH
Occult scholars believe that the mage Menander, a pupil of Simon Magus, wrote this anonymous Gnostic gospel and grimoire. The Testament calls the Four Zoas and other cosmic conceptual entities the Pleroma -- the sum of the truly transcendent powers -- and refers to the gods of Greater Earth as the Aeons. The Testament describes the Aeons as "reflections" of the Pleroma within the "mirror" of human thought and the Astral Plane. Yahweh is another name for Ialdabaoth, the most powerful of the Aeons. Although Ialdabaoth and the Aeons try to limit humanity and bind souls to themselves, powers from the Pleroma sometimes possess Aeons to reveal higher truths to saints and prophets. The Testament presents itself as one such revelation, granted by the Christ through the medium of Ialdabaoth. (NB: If this leaves you confused, I have adequately captured the style of Gnostic thology.]
 
Both thaumaturges and ritual magicians find the Testament useful -- if they can make sense of its opaque writing, which combines allusions to Jewish, Christian, Greco-Roman and Egyptian myths and gospels with the obscure jargon of Gnosticism itself. The Testament tells how magical power flows from the Upper Planes through the Outer planes to the Inner Planes and ultimately to Earth. It also describes the state of the spirit world in the Classical era. Many grimoires tell how to call upon spirits, but the Testament stands out among Classical texts in explaining precisely how ritual shapes the Astral Plane and compels spirits to serve.
 
AVERNUS CHRONICLES
This book tells about demonic and Satanic activity in 17th century Italy. The author was a Florentine apothecary whose brother channeled Zontar Bok in a partnership that lasted almost 30 years. The Avernus Chronicles tell about the rise of the Sylvestri clan. They also give an account of Caibarien of Agharti, who possessed a Florentine woman and deceived Zontar Bok into becoming her lover for a short time.
 
PROPHECIES OF HYDATIUS
In the late 10th and early 11th centuries, the Byzantine monk Hydatius wrote this book of prophecies about events a millennium in the future. Hydatius describes airplanes, automobiles, genocides, skyscrapers and superbeings, though he focuses on supernatural events such as the greater plots of the Devil's Advocates. He included a prophecy about the end of the Guardians of Light lineage and the concomittant Second Coming of Christ -- or the birth of the Antichrist, he's not sure which. [sorry, another reference to my campaign.] Hydatius did not understand much of what he saw, and so his poetic imagery is hard to interpret.
 
Hydatius was burned as a heretic. His manuscript has remained little-known since then, chiefly because sorcerers who knew of it also knew that it would not become relevant for centuries to come.
 
RECORD OF THE BIAFRAN WORKINGS
From 1969-70, Archimago dwelled in Nigeria, where the Biafran Civil War caused massive death from war and starvation. Archimago used the concentrated misery to power many potent rituals, including rituals of prophecy. He wrote accounts of 12 times in the next 100 years when the world could end. Naturally, he wrote his prophecies in deliberately obscure fashion, using a code of symbolism keyed to Satanic, Edomite and Qliphothic cults and magic. Archimago meant the Biafran Workings to be an instruction book, not a warning. In the ensuing decades, however, copies of the Biafran Workings fell into the hands of sorcerers who did not want an apocalypse. As usual with these things, the prophecies only make sense once it is almost too late.
 
I also created some Call of Cthulhu forbidden boods, but they might be less adaptable for a pure Fantasy campaign.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, QM, here's a *brief* overview of the ARchmage-related information in The Mystic World. It should answer some of your questions:
 
Mystic tradition holds that the line of Archmages began with Thanoro Azoic -- whoever, or whatever, he, she, or it was. It happend so long ago that mystics have only a name, which might be a mistake or mistranscription.
 
The line of archmages broke in Hellenistic times. The mage Thestor restored it. How? It's a secret. (That's a small joke.) Thestor's grimoire, the Krypticon, was passed from archmage to archmage with ol' Bohdan the last known owner. Presumably it got blowed up real good along with the rest of Bohdan's sanctum, but I gave a writeup of the book so there's hope yet.
 
Seven archmages came after Thestor. One, the Eternal Tulku, retired from the office. He's still alive but deeply senile most of the time. He and Bohdan are the only other named archmages. (The rest are left for you to fill in to suit the needs of your campaign.)
 
An archmage must obtain gifts of power from denizens of all four Imaginal Realms: the syncretic Heaven of Elysium, the Netherworld of all Hells, the Land of Legends, and Babylon the City of Man. OTOH, the archmage cannot be bound to any spiritual power.
 
An archmage must also know a spell called the Quaternion Banishment that provides Earth's ultimate defense against invasion from the Outer Planes.
 
Some mages actively try to become archmage, including supervillains like the Demonologist. Being evil is no disqualifier!
 
Some of Earth's most powerful mages, however, *aren't* in the running, or at least they don't seem to want the job. The Sylvestri Patriarch is obviously disqualified because he's bound to the Dragon. (Note that Demonologist isn't disqualified by his favored style of magic: He exploits demons but never sold his soul.) OTOH, Adrian Vandaleur and Doctor Yin Wu have no obvious impediment but have outlived multiple archmages.
 
Dean Shomshak

Pluto.

ALMA captures images of Sun
 
Cassini photographs Mimas
 
Dark energy, but no dark matter?

Here's one for a "weird conspiracy" style game: The Bayangi
 
Val Char Cost
5 STR -5
14 DEX 12
18 CON 16
5 BODY -10
13 INT 3
14 EGO 8
20 PRE 10
10 COM 0
 
5 PD 4 Total: 5 PD (0 rPD)
5 ED 1 Total: 5 ED (0 rED)
3 SPD 6 Phases: 4, 8, 12
7 REC 4
20 END -8
17 STUN 0 Total Characteristic Cost: 35
 
Movement:
Running: 3"/6"
Swimming:2"/4"
 
Cost Powers END
40 Shrinking (0.25 m tall, 0.1953 kg mass, -6 PER Rolls to perceive character, +6 DCV, takes +9" KB), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2) (60 Active Points); Always On (-1/2)
24 Life Support (Immunity: All terrestrial diseases and biowarfare agents; Immunity: All terrestrial poisons and chemical warfare agents; Longevity: 800 Years; Sleeping: Character only has to sleep 8 hours per week)
7 Discriminatory with Smell/Taste Group (10 Active Points); Extra Time (Full Phase, Deep Sniff; -1/2)
5 Microscopic (x10) with Sight Group
7 Does Not Bleed (15 Active Points); Concentration (0 DCV; Character is totally unaware of nearby events; -3/4), Requires A Simulate Death Roll (-1/2)
 
Perks
25 Robot: Vehicles & Bases
 
Talents
4 Simulate Death 13- (+1 to roll)
5 Rapid Healing
4 Double Jointed is an Understatement
 
Skills
3 Analyze: Robots 12-
3 Bureaucratics 13-
3 Computer Programming 12-
3 Contortionist 12-
5 Cramming
5 Cramming
5 Acting 14-
3 High Society 13-
3 SS: Robotics 12-
2 Systems Operation (Robot Piloting) 12-
3 Concealment 12-
2 Chameleon Effect: +4 with Concealment (8 Active Points); Only to Hide (-1), Only when not moving (-1), Self Only (-1/2)
 
Total Powers & Skill Cost: 162
Total Cost: 197
 
100+ Disadvantages
15 Social Limitation: Secret: Alien operating a robot (Occasionally, Severe)
10 Psychological Limitation: If injured, compelled to flee or, failing that, play dead. (Uncommon, Strong)
30 Vulnerability: 2 x BODY Physical Normal Attacks (Very Common)
30 Vulnerability: 2 x BODY Physical Killing Attacks (Very Common)
5 Hunted: Paranoid Conspiracy Theorists 8- (Less Pow, Harshly Punish)
5 Reputation: Shadowy "Puppet Masters" behind many world governments., 8- (Extreme; Known Only To A Small Group (Conspiracy Theorists))
5 Distinctive Features: Alien in a robot body (Easily Concealed; Extreme Reaction; Detectable Only By Unusual Senses)
 
Total Disadvantage Points: 100
 
Background/History: Bayangi (singular, Bayang) are merely a crackpot conspiracy theory of a classic type. They are said to be a tiny race of aliens who mostly live and move inside of robots designed to perfectly mimic Human beings, a typical sort of paranoid delusion; naturally it is assumed that they are the shadowy "them" who "really run things." It is said that they are utterly loyal to their own kind, each hoping to eventually earn the honor of having their personality uploaded from their bodies into a kind of legendary supercomputer, thus gaining a form of incorporeal immortality.
 
Personality/Motivation: The Bayangi are reputed to be agoraphobic, in that they prefer to remain most of the the time enclosed within their comfortable robotic vehicles; but if one takes even a single point of BODy damage, it must make an EGO roll at -5 or abandon its robot and flee, seeking a hiding place in which to go into its healing torpor. While masquerading as Human, it will supposedly use Acting to mimic whatever personality it wishes to project.
 
Quote: "No, of course we are not going to 'liquidate' you to insure the continued secrecy of our existance. How barbaric, and unnecessary. No, we do no propose to stop you at all. Go tell it to the unsuspecting world. We need not control your tongue; we control everyone's brain. Who do you think will believe you?"
 
Powers/Tactics: The Bayangi's supposedly innate powers have mostly been summed up in the phrase "fine control of bodily processes." Allegedly, their bodies isolate and nuetralize potential toxins and pathogens usually without conscious awareness; by turning their minds inward they can go into a kind of healing trance in which recovery from injury is greatly hastened. Normally, of course, they weild whatever imaginary high-tech powers are built into the "robot vehicles" that they "pilot."
 
Appearance: In the unlikely event that a Bayang is found outside of its robot vehicle, it will appear as a small creature with a slender lizardlike body and head and four very flexible multiply jointed limbs each of which divides at the tip to form a "hand" of three opposable tendrils. Skin color is said to be variable but "seems to be linked to mood."
 
Campaign Use: Look over this write up, and please notice one thing; nowhere does it state that these aliens are EVIL ™. Yes, they could be infiltrating Earth (or wherever) for any of several nefarious purposes; they could also be agents of "uplift" trying to subtly guide the world towards some beneficent goal, spies of great galactic powers fighting a "secret war" between aliens that is in fact irrelevant to Earth, anthropologists merely trying to study a culture as "participant observers," or possibly doing something so strange as to be beyond comprehension. There could even be factions among them doing all of the above and more, each commanded by its own "legendary supercomputer."
 
 
Lucius Alexander
 
Copyright Palindromedary Enterprises
 
 

Back from the ashes of yesterday... 
 
After years of hiatus, I will be in the Champions game (RDU: Red Dragon Universe) run by Neil C. again.  We are putting the band back together, using Roll20, Skype and such, hopefully starting soon.  We've been doing tons of emails back and forth.  
 
I have been inspired to draw the characters, although I only have 3 done.  I have to switch gears slightly to finish some interiors for Golden Age Champions.  
The New Pioneers are a group brought together after a decade long alien invasion of our original game.  My character, Hope,  is actually the daughter of my first RDU character, Vector.  Her red sleeve represent Mars, where she grew up and the blue one represent Earth.  Her powers are strength, mini-brick from her grandfather, Ultraman and light powers from her grandmother, Lady White.  She has some empathic abilities and strong mental defenses from her mom.  I eschewed telekinesis, because I played her dad, Vector, for years.  I've done pretty much everything I ever wanted to do with telekinesis over that time.  
 
The Terran, played by Joe C, is a martial artist, with earth shaping abilities.  Picked by the Gaea like force to heal the world.  We haven't played yet, so I don't know all he can do.  
 
Krys is a being of pure Crystaltech, given sentience during the long alien invasion.  Crystaltech was a HUGE plot point for years in RDU.   Played by Bill S.  He has the ability to mimic almost any energy ability.  
 
The campaign will be trying to rebuild Earth and reconnect it to the Mars colony.  Mankind has been devastated, population is down to 1 billion souls.  I am really looking forward to the next chapter of RDU.  



More to come, perhaps next week.  I still have Myrk, Shocks and The Blue to still do.  And oh yeah, I want to do a pic of our shuttle craft too.  

The Aahalin were old, very old, and broken. They broke themselves a long time ago, in three devastating wars. Their home planet's ecology barely survived, and less than one percent of the Aahal did the same. No Aahalin had been born since, and now, an aeon later, there were just a handful left. At the time of the great wars the Aahal had started to explore the galaxy, and their home system had a vast array of space stations. Now all that remained of that interstellar effort was dust.
 
The species evolved from a tree-dwelling, communal omnivore. Several branches of descendants fought for supremacy, until only one remained. Unopposed, proto-Aahal began dominating their world. Millennia passed, and culture and technology led to civilization and prosperity and, eventually, the Aahalin's almost-suicide by war.
 
Now, all that was left was but a handful of individuals, only neural systems hooked into computer networks, supported and kept alive by machines. They spoke to each other about the past, about faded glory, hoarded knowlege, threadbare philosophy, revisited in the infinite. No-one longer looked to the stars, apart from ignored, automated observatories.
 
One day, one of these telescopes detected something new: a what appeared to be an alien craft dropping out of warp at the edge of the inner system. It spent some time surveying the planets and debris orbiting the star, and was in an intercept trajectory with the Aahal's planet when yet another, similar craft showed up. The two ships briefly exchanged radio communications, and apparently made course adjustments to meet when the second craft opened fire witha barrage of missiles. The first ship answered in kind. When the noise died down, both craft were one with the dust of the Aahal's past glory.
 
The appearance of an alien race in their home system had mildly piqued the interest of a few Aahal -- but the fiery exchange sent them all into an uproar. The first Aahal spaceship built in an aeon surveyed the wrecks, and showed that the two ships had indeed been crewed by members of the same species -- a species not too unlike the Aahal themselves in their youth.
 
The Aahal were shaken out of their torpor. A species given to present violence against its own members? That hit too close to home. That could not stand. Newly constructed listening posts throughout the system found transmissions originating in a system not too far away -- in all evidence, the home system of the alien species. These transmissions confirmed the violent nature of the senders, a violent nature even worse than the Aahalin feared.
 
All of Aahalin came together. Factories that had been lying dormant for a geologic age roared to life, producing an armada of drones and an army of robots, with the one expressed purpose of saving this young species from itself.

The Nov. 26 issue of the Economist has a pair of space-related stories in its Science & Technology section. First is an article about the programs, plural, to image exoplanets directly. It's already been done a few times, but a number of super-sized telescopes and coronagraphs are in the works that will image many more, with a lot more information about each exoplanet. I expect to be gobsmacked.
 
The next article, "Ye Cannae Break the Laws of Physics (Or Can Ye?" is about the EmDrive paper. A clear and concise look at the experiment, with the reasons why it's exciting -- and why, despite this, you might want to curb your enthusiasm. Notably, the experimental team admits they did not wait to rule out every source of experimental error they could think of. (And peer review is less impressive than it might sound, too. That just means some qualified people agree that the experiment could find the intended phenomenon -- not that it actually did so.) For me, though, the most interesting datum was that NASA's Eagleworks lab investigates other "fringe" ideas about propulsion, not just the EmDrive. I must work this into a Champions adventure.
 
Dean Shomshak

The Nov. 26 issue of the Economist has a pair of space-related stories in its Science & Technology section. First is an article about the programs, plural, to image exoplanets directly. It's already been done a few times, but a number of super-sized telescopes and coronagraphs are in the works that will image many more, with a lot more information about each exoplanet. I expect to be gobsmacked.
 
The next article, "Ye Cannae Break the Laws of Physics (Or Can Ye?" is about the EmDrive paper. A clear and concise look at the experiment, with the reasons why it's exciting -- and why, despite this, you might want to curb your enthusiasm. Notably, the experimental team admits they did not wait to rule out every source of experimental error they could think of. (And peer review is less impressive than it might sound, too. That just means some qualified people agree that the experiment could find the intended phenomenon -- not that it actually did so.) For me, though, the most interesting datum was that NASA's Eagleworks lab investigates other "fringe" ideas about propulsion, not just the EmDrive. I must work this into a Champions adventure.
 
Dean Shomshak

I hate to be the wet blanket but these people, and all of NASA, should be ashamed for allowing this paper to be published.  The data literally doesn't show any thrust signal, and then they say that the thrust signal is being obscured by thermal expansion.  IOW their experiment is so sloppy it proves nothing.  They even admit to rerunning the experiment until they manage to get a signal by attaching some plastic components to the side of the frustum, and don't even try to explain why that would matter.
 
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and this isn't even ordinary proof, or proof of anything, other than that the experimenters have preconceived notions about how their experiment should turn out.  And this paper follows the preceding experiment where the measured thrust direction was exactly opposite to the thrust from the original experiment.
 
More on the sloppiness here.

This week's issue of The Economist has an article about attempts to design a better space suit for lunar exploration. It seems that moon dust is *really* damaging to current space suits.
 
Dean Shomshak

Er, this doesn't actually include a treasure hoard, so I'll treat the Bog Beast as still open.
 
The Bog Beast's treasure is... the bog. More precisely, several medicinal mosses, herbs and fungi that grow in the bog; growing in this location, their healing virtue is greater than equivalent plants that grow in other bogs. Local apothecaries value them highly. The Beast makes gathering these plants dangerous, but that is why the gods made apprentices. 
 
Some believe the Bog Beast gains its unnatural resilience from living among the magical herbs, but sages know the truth is the other way around: The herbs gain their virtue from the Beast. The greatest treasure of the Beast is... how to put this delicately... its leavings. To be blunt, its poo. As its droppings dissolve into the muck, the plants they fertilize gain a bit of the supernatural life-force of the Beast itself. If one can collect the Bog Beast's dung fresh, it can be used as a poultice that cures almost any disease. The hazards of collection are extreme.
 
Dean Shomshak

For this, I'll steal freely from a number of stories I've enjoyed. Citations provided.
 
Most people know ogres only as big dumb bruisers who hit things and eat people. A few ogres, however, are cunning and may even have magical powers. Ordinary ogres are wary of magical ogres, which shows they aren't completely stupid.
 
Simple folk often think tinkers are magical because they travel in strange and foreign lands, such as the next county. It's true, they see more of the world than most folk ever will. If you need advice, you could do worse than ask a tinker. Prudent folk remember the old proverb:
 
A tinker's debt is always paid:
Once for any simple trade.
Twice for freely given aid.
Thrice for any insult made.
(from Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind)
 
So when you meet an ogre with a tinker's pack and cart, keep your wits about you and mind your manners. You have met Slunder the ogre tinker. He's not as magical as his great-aunt Baba Yaga, but he is still a fairy creature. Not many people hire Slunder, but those who do may obtain magical treasures. Those who are try to rob or cheat the ogre tinker... regret it.
 
Pay Slunder a few coins and give him a meal, and he will sharpen knives, mend pans, and provide the other usual services of a tinker. Let him eat his fill (he will leave barely enough to feed the family for a few days thereafter) of offer similar kindness, and he gives one of three possible gifts.
 
The first is a silver coin. It's battered and old, stamped with the face of an unnamed king, but good silver. It's also magical. If you spend it, it reappears in your purse or pocket the next day. The Unspendable Coin won't make
you rich but you will never starve.
 
(Lifted from Monday Begins on Saturday by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.)
 
You can give the coin away, as a gift, and it becomes unspendable for its new owner.
 
Slunder has a sack of these coins. He never gives but one. Anyone who steals or robs an Unspendable Coin suffers its curse: All the person's other money vanishes within a day, leaving him with just one unspendable coin. Any other money the person makes vanishes as well. You can't lift the curse of the coin by giving it away: It comes back. Mocking you.
 
Or, Slunder might give you a pan. The magic of the pan is that it remains perpetually full of the first food you cook in it, as long as you take care never to empty it. If, say, you fry up a pan of ten sausages, you can keep taking sausages from the pan and new sausages appear. The magic stops only if you create a situation where the pan must be empty, such as flipping it over to dump out all the sausages. Sorry, you can't re-set the pan: It works only once.
 
(From Over the Hills to Fabylon by Nicholas Stuart Gray. The woman who obtained the magical pan unfortunately used it first to cook a batch of swill for her pigs, so she had an eternal supply of swill. Well, it'd be okay if you wanted to run a pig farm.)
 
Slunder's third possible gift is a doll. It's not a fancy doll, just a common child's toy. Three times, however, it animates to help and advise the child to whom it is given. The doll is virtually omniscient and prophetic, enabling it to give supernaturally useful advice. If the doll is taken by force, though, it gives supernaturally bad advice that leads the thief to inevitable doom.
 
Next: Headmistress Madame Clott and her Finishing School for Young Ladies.
 
Dean Shomshak

November's issue of Scientific American features an article by theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena about wormholes and quantum entanglement. Good background on both ideas (including some disappointing but clarifying explanations of why wormhole transport through black holes Just Doesn't Work -- including one detail I hadn't heard before, that one reason you can't pass outward through the event horizon is that time gets bent so the interior is actually in the future relative to the outside. Thus, going through the event horizon outbound requires traveling back in time.) The main topic, though, is speculation that quantum entanglement and wormholes may be related, or even the same phenomenon. Apparently the math of both makes this something more than just a wild-ass guess. Maldacena hopes that further investigation of this idea may lead to the long-sought theory of quantum gravity.
 
Dean Shomshak

The Freemasons WERE the good guys before the illuminati infiltrated them. They were the remnants of the ancient gnostics, who were opposed to the Archons, but the Archons used the Holy Roman Empire to wipe them out and destroy their repository of knowledge at Alexandria.
 
The Nazis were the first to colonize space with the help of the Reptillians. Their swatstica shaped moon base made famous by the documentary film Iron Sky was eventually turned into an illuminati run moon base called the Lunar Operations Command or LOC. The vampires are simply Nazis who gave themselves over completely to Reptillian and Archon possession and their vampiric tendencies are necessary to feed the alien parasites living within their auric fields.
 
The Socviets have far more than Ape hybrid armies. They have all manner of Chimera. They are currently carrying out said experiments on various bases below the surface of Mars. Though the Sphere Being Alliance may be putting a stop to the horrible atrocities soon...

Bulletproof went through a lot before an encounter with a mysterious cosmic being in 1947 hurled him into the year 3000. He started out as just a tough but normal brawler wearing a protective costume of experimental materials. It wasn't until 1944 that he was accidentally exposed to an experiment by Der Totenkopf which gave him true superhuman invulnerability.
 
And yes, I realize you were making a joke. But you raise the issue, yer gonna get an answer whether you like it or not.

Hey Dean! Again, yup! The first part of Chapter 6 is a runthrough of pretty much everybody and everyplace in the CU, though many are only 1 or 2-line mentions.  

Cool! Any chance of a glimpse of an occultist named John Fulton who's kind of sleazy but too damn smart? Or other master villains before they became master villains?
 
Dean Shomshak

The Venus scenario is one I remember reading back in the late '90s, maybe as late as 2000, in Scientific American. The terrifying thing is that when the oceans go, more or less the whole oceanic crust melts and goes volcanic, and the continental crust also gets buried in fresh volcanism, and the common sedimentary rocks are cooked into different mineral forms. Not even fossils are left after that episode, which makes it more or less impossible to know one way or other at this time, even if we were able to operate on Venus's surface.

This month's Scientific American has a brief article on the latest failure of an experiment to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, currently the theorists' favorite candidate for Dark Matter. The simplest, most straightforward attempts to extend the Standard Model of physics predict the Big Bang should have produced scads of WIMPs, which should then condense in clouds that have just the results observed for Dark Matter. Except, the experiments that should detect these hypothesized WIMPs. don't. Theorists are flummoxed. Numerous explanations are proposed.
 
There's also a feature article on the subsurface ocean of Enceladus. It's been mapped through its affect on Enceladus' gravitational field. Moreover, the jets of water vapor from Enceladus' south pole have been fingered as the source of silica nanoparticles collected by one of the Cassini probe's instruments. These nanoparticles can only be made by hydrothermal vents, like those on Earth, but jetting into an ocean a little more alkaline and a little less salty than our own. Still, if you transplanted a hydrothermal vent ecosystem from Earth to Enceladus, it could survive.
 
It's a really clever bit of detective work.
 
Dean Shomshak

This month's Scientific American has a brief article on the latest failure of an experiment to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, currently the theorists' favorite candidate for Dark Matter. The simplest, most straightforward attempts to extend the Standard Model of physics predict the Big Bang should have produced scads of WIMPs, which should then condense in clouds that have just the results observed for Dark Matter. Except, the experiments that should detect these hypothesized WIMPs. don't. Theorists are flummoxed. Numerous explanations are proposed.
 
There's also a feature article on the subsurface ocean of Enceladus. It's been mapped through its affect on Enceladus' gravitational field. Moreover, the jets of water vapor from Enceladus' south pole have been fingered as the source of silica nanoparticles collected by one of the Cassini probe's instruments. These nanoparticles can only be made by hydrothermal vents, like those on Earth, but jetting into an ocean a little more alkaline and a little less salty than our own. Still, if you transplanted a hydrothermal vent ecosystem from Earth to Enceladus, it could survive.
 
It's a really clever bit of detective work.
 
Dean Shomshak

Today, the NPR program All Things Considered had a brief story about Lyman-Alpha Blobs. Yes, that's an actual astronomical term: these clouds of gas, bigger than galaxies, glow ultraviolet in a Lyman-Alpha spectrum, and they are blobs. Very, very big blobs -- bigger than galaxies. Some astronomers figured out what makes one of these blobs glow. It contains a pair of galaxies undergoing crazy intense bursts of star formation. The radiation from all these hot young stars makes the gas of the blob glow, while dust in the galaxies and the surrounding gas makes the galaxies themselves harder to see. The astronomer interviewed compared the effect to a streetlight in a fog. You can see the wide area of light but the light itself hardly stands out.
 
Dean Shomshak

Today, the NPR program All Things Considered had a brief story about Lyman-Alpha Blobs. Yes, that's an actual astronomical term: these clouds of gas, bigger than galaxies, glow ultraviolet in a Lyman-Alpha spectrum, and they are blobs. Very, very big blobs -- bigger than galaxies. Some astronomers figured out what makes one of these blobs glow. It contains a pair of galaxies undergoing crazy intense bursts of star formation. The radiation from all these hot young stars makes the gas of the blob glow, while dust in the galaxies and the surrounding gas makes the galaxies themselves harder to see. The astronomer interviewed compared the effect to a streetlight in a fog. You can see the wide area of light but the light itself hardly stands out.
 
Dean Shomshak