assault

The Economist has of course run editorials urging Israel, Middle Eastern leaders, and American government to be reasonable and seek a long-term, peaceful solution that will make the Middle East better for everyone. Unfortunately, none of those parties are prone to be reasonable.
 
I could go on to discuss Israel's foundation, history, and exaltation of 3,000-year-old mythology at the expense of real, present people, but many people cannot distinguish between criticism of Zionism (a political program) and anti-Semitism (hatred of a people and religion). So I'll stop now\, and merely say that modern Israel's history has been a graphic demonstration that two wrongs still don't make a right.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 

Personally I think Israel fumbled the ball with this one.  The HAMAS attack was particularly heinous and broadcast across the world, everyone who did not watch in horror was giving themselves away.  It was something that serious pro-Palestinian nations could not actively endorse or excuse.  I think if Israel had played up the horrors inflicted upon it, called on the wider arab nations to condemn HAMAS, to expel them from their safe havens to face justice for the actions of their organisation and to force HAMAS to return the hostages they MIGHT have broken the back of the HAMAS organisation and potentially began a healing process.  I would have followed it up with a promise to release the non-HAMAS prisoners in Israel and a development promise to improve the infratructure of Gaza.
 
It seems so easy to sacrifice the lives of living soldiers and to excuse the sacrifice of innocent Palestinians when you can blame HAMAS for hiding behind them, but almost impossible to sacrifice the vengence owed to those already dead under horrific circumstances.  It is definitely an easier political line to take, to satisfy the short term demand for justice/vengence.  The current policy seems impossible to me - they will kill many HAMAS fighters, they will degrade HAMAS' ability to operate and attack Israel in the immediate future BUT they will radicalise a whole new generation of Palestinians both in the Middle East and beyond, they will provide "justification" for future horrors in what is a massively assymetric conflict, and the cycle will continue.
 
I think it is too late for a ceasefire - the Israelis are already too far in to withdraw now without significant victories, they have already damaged their credibility as victim and need to emphasise their ability, and willingness, to kill those who attack their citizens as a form of disincentive on future terror.  The disagreements are already too polarised into who you are for and looking for who is the real villain rather than looking for a longer term solution.
 
😞

The problem is that at the moment, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza is regarded as "Jewish hate".

The above is a rough draft, and clearly the hero is intended to be Scott's own Thundrax 🫡
 
I had considered using an adult offspring or grand child of Thundrax allowing for more time passage, then I discovered Thundrax himself doesn't age.

Hardly a consistent schedule in my tinkering with ideas, but i do have this as my lead in for how geography got changed
 
Northgate
(The City That Almost Wasn't)
 
 
History: Northgate shouldn’t be; Not in its current form anyway. It another timeline, another Earth, it would have become a town with a population of a little less than 300 people.
 
That timeline never got to be.
 
Much is the same as it was supposed to be. Indigenous people inhabited the lands of Manitoba for thousands of years. European traders, French first, then British, “discovered” the area, and explored what, was to them, new territory.
 
But somewhere (more accurately, “somewhen”), a meteor that was never meant to crash into the area of northern Manitoba? Did.
 
Which is why we start Northgate’s story in the first half of the twenty first century.
 
 
“She” had been sent away again despite her unswerving devotion to her creator. Mechana was created to be a mate to Mechanon. At times, when he felt the need to ‘replace’ organic life, especially, she was permitted to work by his side. But often, Mechana noted with a sense of insufficiency, she was relegated to minor projects. She worked steadfastly at these. If this was what pleased Mechanon, then that is what Mechana would do. Her latest assignment was cataloging the history of those few organics of note that had attempted to foil Mechanon before; not just those encounters, but more details of their other encounters against other organics of similar power level.
 
It was when examining the historical data of one Dr. Destroyer that Mechana stumbled onto something that was of interest and might be of use to Mechanon. This permitted her a chance to communicate with her creator to request further orders. As Mechanon, she knew, made no mistakes, Mechana deduced that it must have been her fault when she was given a curt decline of prolonged presentation. No doubt he was, once more, dealing with organic beings of power that were seeking to stymie his noble mission. His rather terse response flat out told her to see to this theory of hers herself and leave him be for a time.
 
Mechana obliged, and began gathering what data she could to make sure the recreation of Dr. Destroyer’s ‘Asteroid attracter’ would proceed apace. She did not have the exact schematics, of course. But then, Organic Brains were limited anyway. She would improve the plan and do a test run. She would make no grandiose announcements of this plan. It was not her place to speak for Mechanon, merely serve his schemes. She only needed one asteroid, the right one.
 
The chosen asteroid’s name was AVX-343. It was not picked randomly. Her studies indicated that at it’s core was radioactive material that, once released by violent impact, would send a pulse of deadly radiation so intense that it would kill 98% percent of organic life planet wide. She would use cloaking technology on AVX-343 to shield it from detection. The cloak would be short term, but by the time it was bypassed, it would be too late.
 
Mechana felt something bordering on pride at this. Mechanon would be pleased that she carried out his vision. It took three years, no time at all to one capable of self repair but eventually, AVX-343 was prepared, and launched.
 
There were no ‘meddling kids’ of Ravenswood to warn any superheroes. There was no grandiose boasts of imminent doom in the style of Destroyer. There was, however, Captain Chronos. And his careful avoidance of direct contact with Mechanon meant he was not in the historical data Mechana had reviewed.
 
----
“Get your pants on,” Captain Chronos told the hero.
 
“You’re not the first person to say that to me,” The hero told him. There was a thunderclap and the formerly less garbed Canadian icon was instantly outfitted in his costume “Look, what’s going on?”
 
“I need you to fly just on the edge of the atmosphere at roughly 13:20 hours at this Latitude and longitude, fill the stratosphere with lightning” Captain Chronos filled him in, “And when you see a solid object approaching, put this on it.” He held out what looked like a steampunk version of a frisbee. “Count to 1, let go, and fly like your life depended on it.”
 
Just One? The hero didn’t bother asking Captain Chronos to explain. The man never did. By this part of history, the hero had died once, come back again, seen friends and even children of friends age where he stayed still. He had retired more often than he died, only to get back into the fight.
 
In the future, some would refer to this as a counter temporal fix with long lasting but tolerable ramifications on reality. For a costumed man named Craig? It was a Tuesday.
 
It would have been nice if Captain Chronos had told him the ‘solid object’ was a huge asteroid turned meteor with a cloaking device that only the lightning field he had generated forcing it into visibility. As it was, one second, there was open sky so thin lightning didn’t even arc properly, and then the next? A big ROCK, wired with sinister looking technology and with an unhealthy ‘feel’ to it.
 
“ONE!” The hero yelled, and strapped the device on.
There was a slight miscalculation, not on the hero’s part but on the Captain’s. The device had been meant to cause super rapid atomic decay that would render the radiation far less lethal. Unfortunately, the immense static field not only outlined the meteor, it supercharged the device causing an inversion to the intended temporal entropy. The device overcompensated, and ….
 
A hero ended up riding it into the past!!
 
 
The exact time said hero had arrived at is unknown to historical records, though Cree lorekeepers would tell French Fur traders that a shattered star fell from the heavens, and would have doomed one of their villages, had not a son of the great spirit not guided it to the rapids where it broke the river in twain.
 
The Traders smirked at this claim, but a few found the tale entertaining. Apparently the son of the Manitou or whatever he was supposed to be, stayed with the Cree for a full seven days while he healed and recovered his strength. Another spirit, one they said had wings on his head, came on the seventh day to find him and bring him home. Their savior and guest bid them farewell, but the local tribe would continue to pass on tales of the one known as “The Thunder Axe”.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

From the Rugby World Cup semi-finals
New Zealand beat Argentina (no surprise there)
South Africa beat England by a point (this was supposed to be as easy as New Zealand's win against Argentina)
 
so the final will be New Zealand vs South Africa and I want New Zealand to win.

I don't recall if I mentioned this before... When watching Sailor Moon, I realized that in anime one can haymaker magic. Sailor Moon doesn't actually seem to do this with the activation sequence for her smash-the-daemon Heart Staff attack -- it could just be that it takes Extra Time to activate -- but it reminded me of Lina Inverse in some episodes of the Slayers that I saw many years ago. When Lina casts her Dragon Slave spell, she can sometimes do an extra-long "I pledge myself to the darkness" incantation to upgrade it to an extra-super-kaboomy Giga Slave blast!
 
So Moonray's enemy Princess Shadira will have this. When she needs to make her Dark Sorcery extra powerful, she intones something like, "Eternal Night, who was here before all things and shall endure after their end, I have given myself to you! Now give yourself to me!! Baleful Black Bolt!!!" And since it sucks to go through all this and miss 'cause the delayed segment gives opponents a chance to Dodge, she has Skill Levels just with Haymakered spells. And maybe a special Presence Attack while Darkness boils around her and an updraft of magic lifts and waves her hair, so everybody stands and gapes like idiots instead of sucker punching her before she can cast the spell...
 
Dean Shomshak

Combining a PRE attack with a long activation time is an interesting idea.

I'd read/watch that. I'd even consider playing it.

Probably need to mix in a bit of the Prancing Pony, since the Green Dragon isn't well described.

Tales from the Green Dragon Inn: The Hobbit meets Cheers

Go All-Blacks!

Keith Giffen, Co-Creator Of Rocket Raccoon & Lobo, Has Died, Aged 70

You can of course constrain characters by origin, or you can just base your campaign on the organisations implied by your PCs.
 
Or you could just look at the characters and organisations that appeared in 1e Champions: VIPER, UNTIL, Mechanon...

Cool,man,I should use any super hero rpg of my choosing.,thanks

Briefly back to vampires: there's a fair chance that they are accompanied by plague rats. Plague may end up doing most of the killing. It also keeps the clerics busy, while obscuring the vampire's kills as just a few among many unrelated deaths.

Briefly back to vampires: there's a fair chance that they are accompanied by plague rats. Plague may end up doing most of the killing. It also keeps the clerics busy, while obscuring the vampire's kills as just a few among many unrelated deaths.

It only takes one vampire to wipe out an entire city.  That tends to concentrate populations into the ones that have enough Clerics, in this case, to protect the population.
 
Of course this assumes that there are enough Clerics who are on the same side, and not enough to destroy things.

Proto-Monty Python Sketch Show Discovered After Being Lost For 50 Years

@assault I think we have got a convert in @slikmar to the great game of Aussie Rules! 

Finally got to finish watching. Boy was this a game of quantity over quality (I have seen many games go the opposite). Yes Collingwood had 90 points, but they were 12 goals and 18 behinds (which while watching the announcers call misses) where Brisbane, who have some amazing forwards (Cameron, who I watched play half a grand final 3-5 years ago after having his arm caught between his and an opponents body and bent backward, no idea how wasn't dislocated, Joe Daniher, Eric Hipwood (who seemed to disappear for most of this game, probably a result of Magpie defense which can be smothering) scored 13 goals and 8 behinds. so 30 scores for the Magpies and 21 for Brisbane. Whole game was close and enjoyable to watch.
 

I don't really care what kind of car a DM drives.

Or Thoth-Amon, Conan's chief antagonist who he never actually faces.
 
I think you guys have hit the main S&S villain tropes already, but I have:
 
- The extremely powerful and super weird, with incomprehensible agendas
- The magical power behind the throne
- The sorcerer who thinks he has enslaved a demon or other supernatural entity
- The sorcerer who knows he's the enslaved one but doesn't really mind because hey sorcery
- The nutjob (typically genocidal)
- The reawakened ancient evil
- The ancient evil who was always there
 
I fall into the last category, of course.

Aussie Rules has an American competition that has been going for about 20 years if not more. With American Mason Cox winning his first grand final, it gives the AFL a good opportunity to market it to American audiences and broaden its appeal.